about this time of the night

Past midnight to be precise. Technically morning. This technicality makes me buy the wrong Megabus ticket sometimes between Toronto and Montreal. When you buy these tickets on line, there is a list of departures starting with 00:30 for that particular day but I seem to forget the time in question belongs to 'the night before', for example a Thursday night, past midnight and not Friday when the departure is listed, cause honestly Friday starts at 9 am... So I am late for the night bus the day before because it doubles as the morning one the day after. A day en retard, retarded forever? Gosh, no, it should be in my new year's resolutions not to be harsh on myself. Be kind to this self of mine. Smile, even.

A Torontonian again for the past two days, I just went out on my terrace as the snow was melting, about this time of the night. All's quiet and most of my fellow city dwellers are nicely tucked into their condos, town houses, apartment units, basements and bank machine entrances. One of the last things I heard on the radio in Montreal, way more briefly than Canadiens' Michael Cammalleri's being traded to Calgary Flames was that two elderly people died at a shelter while the city was blanketed under a snowstorm. The temperature icon on my desktop twinkled a -20, as if I needed a reminder to notice the hair in my nostrils was in fact tiny icycles tingling tunes from the tundra. It is now 3 degrees in Toronto, feels like 4 with the silence, it's a winter's night all the same. Kristina and Matteo left, the latter even agreed to let go of the toy car and the motorbike and looked me in the eyes with the conviction of a three year old forced to be reasonable.

This time slot in the 24 hour chronology is my favorite for reminiscing. Somehow my footprints in the melting snow on the terrace make me think of how Vivian danced at the very spot in May, how Shirin smiled in June, Thomas carried my laundry basket from the basement in September, Ferdi climbed to the rooftop in November... The Amnesty International volunteer at the corner of St Patrick and Dundas "gimme high five"d a guy who walked by but his hand was left hanging in the air this afternoon. I held out mine, bare against his big black glove. "What is your name?" he smiled. The three syllables took me past him and onto the crossing as the light turned green.


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