This night we are on the Ilê St. Hélène.
The only way to get here is by the tube snake subway under the legs
of the St. Lawrence River. There it is, the skyline of Montreal, beautiful
and sleazy and detached. We sleep in its lungs and walk across its
brow. We have crossed so many fences getting here, I am not even sure
that this is still Canada. How many fences had we crossed? We could
do it forever, and maybe we were going to, but we stop here for a
moment, at the center of where I come from, and it begins to snow.
He is from Texas and so the bits of downdruff snow are new to him
and he becomes younger, like a child, surprised. Our hands freeze
from making snowballs scraped off empty benches and they become little
closed fists around each other. We stroll, arm in arm, slowly, alone,
his fist in mine and mine in his, within and within like water going
down a drain. Its supposed to be this way at this time. Tonight the
river is like an ocean or a wall, and somehow on this island we have
found a place that everyone has abandoned. The snow is just for us,
here at the brink of the river with the waves going around us like
glancing tongues. At the point of the island is a steel sculpture
forty feet high made like a clawed fist into a frozen black spider
against the ground, and underneath it I will not tell you what we
did or when or how it felt to be the half of that atom, clutched and
clutching. This night could go on forever but it doesn't, because
this is a memory I am looting, snapping the padlocks of the months
previous and pulling out the gems before he can get to it himself.
Sack over my shoulder, swimming across the St Lawrence to the frozen
bank, to the road that leads for home.
