held against forgetting
a march of mourning. they carry the names in cloth, the weight of what has been done. downtown tries to pretend it’s still normal. but we are past normal. this is not protest. this is a procession for the dead.
traces
what grows anyway
l’art existe. tucked between brutalist lines and fluorescent shadows. not a declaration— a reminder. of what survives the structure. of what glows anyway. even in institutions. especially in ruins.
#tiohtiàke #drift #traces #surfaces #refusals #fragments #holdings
careful language, violent ends
they call it wisdom but it reads like distance.
pages upon pages to say: perhaps you are real but not yet certain. perhaps you belong but only if it doesn’t make others uncomfortable.
they write of tension like it’s an external thing. they measure discomfort but not whose it is.
they gather everything but us.
no affected voice in the room, no hand in the margins, no breath in the footnotes.
somewhere, a child tries to speak and finds their name missing from the glossary.
dire bonjour en partant
walked here with oriol.
afternoon sun too bright to ignore.
the sign said bonjour like it meant something,
but i was already thinking about leaving.
met with malica this week— potential postdoc supervisor at beniba. submitted the queen’s predoc application too. if it all goes through, this might be my last summer here.
the city looked soft in the light— like it didn’t know i was saying goodbye.
drift doesn’t ask for arrival. just movement. just the soft ache of being somewhere you already know how to leave.
before it dried
it started slowly, like most good things. paul and i drifted through vieux-montréal, not in a hurry, not quite anchored. work came in waves—open tabs, notes half written, a reply sent too late but still meaningful. the afternoon stretched without agenda. there’s a softness in being accompanied without being watched.
the streets felt unfamiliar in a familiar way. like they’d been repainted since last week but forgot to dry. a man singing to himself passed us near saint-paul. no one looked twice.
by the time we reached frontenac, the air had changed. just enough rain to make you notice. just enough light to feel like something was ending.
we said goodbye without ceremony. no need for it.
i kept walking east, alone. the drizzle softened the sounds of the city. my breath felt louder than usual. there’s something about walking in the rain that makes your thoughts feel more like weather than noise.
the lights on sherbrooke flickered early. someone had chalked a heart onto the sidewalk that was already dissolving.
i didn’t take a photo. it didn’t need to last.
i just kept moving. not away, not toward. just through.
still there
in between
after the rain, the colours feel staged. the village waits to be repopulated. someone forgot their joy on a wet bench.
light changes
they cross just as the light turns green. the street doesn't pause, but something in the air does.
for the community
accountability, laughter, cucumbers on the table. ballroom business, mid-afternoon.
sometime in april
i haven’t been back to italian class. not really a decision—more like a slow unthreading.
at first i missed one, then two. a message half-drafted. a reminder snoozed. now it’s just a tab i don’t open.
i think of them sometimes, conjugating without me. the schwa still soft in my mouth. still mine, even if unused.
there was no rupture. no reason. just me, always a little too tired, a little too elsewhere. it’s not shame. not quite guilt either. just the shape of absence when you let it stay.
i’ve left so many places like this. no goodbye, no explanation. not because it didn’t matter, but because it did—and i couldn’t hold it all.
the leaving isn’t loud. it’s slow. partial. unfinished. like language. like me.