It looked to me like he’d woken from a sleep, eyes glazed and stunned, looking around with a calm frantic. the kind of slumber that gives way to a confused consciousness. to see emotions coming forward unannounced, dazing even the person carrying them. it was a relief, seeing some semblance of what I could decipher as human emotion. I on the other hand had fallen asleep on my heart, woken up to the feeling of it numb and buzzing. electricity kissing my with the weight of so much that has passed.

The cycle of violence. Echoes of which have found their way into my mind even this far away. Still to this day, I wake up and sit up in bed in the midst of sleep, trying to shake the words and blows and bruises. I take my time erasing them, one by one, but the invisible ink with which they were etched brings about a difficult challenge. How can I erase things I can’t see? These transparent markings left behind by an unjustifiable anger born from mosque side bullets raining down on worshippers – a drive by shooting fuelled by social hatred rooted in perceived religious difference. stories I can’t verify except for the markings it has left on my insides. I think to myself that one day I will be rid of this weight.

Prayers and slow brewed tea on cloudy Thursday afternoons. I watch the rain spatter against the window, poetic in its release, carefree in its destination. The day I chose honesty over love marks the turning of a page in a book I’ve always wondered if I should have even touched at all.

Retrospect is twenty twenty.

**

Photo: Cold February morning, Old Ottawa South, 2011