Sometimes when I take the bus home from school on a late night, I stand inside the bus shelter downtown across from the Tim Hortons. I could wait just past Hughson, but there is no place to stand and brace the wind and the nights are usually cold. I try to catch the 1 King before it leaves the GO station so I can huddle up against the glass and not be too whipped by the wind.
I welcome a little bit of cold, but sometimes it becomes an insult after the end of a long day. One more thing to deal with. When I am away from home for twelve hours in one day its worse than being away for days. I get used to being away, and I imagine my life as being absent from a home. A woman without a home where dinner could be waiting for her, where people are angry in her absence. and could discover things about her she would rather they did not know. I have to come home to this place night after night. I can never stay away for as long as I would like. I would like to stay away forever.
Last Thursday after my night class I stood inside the bus shelter and blew onto the glass, fogging it. I traced a heart and coloured it in with my finger. I breathed on it again, and the finger streaks were still there, but fading. The bus came, and then I got on it, and went home. It was Sunday when I was out late again. Maybe Saturday. I'm out late too many nights. It used to only be the one night, but I keep choosing to stay out later and later for reasons you could half guess
Between those days I had things due. Papers, assignments, and things I chose not to do and pass onto the next day. Still, I found myself in the bus shelter huddling against the glass trying to keep warm. I remembered then something that my mother told me when I was a child. That if you draw on the glass, it doesn't really go away, and this is wrong. Something about drawing with your fingers makes it stay there for longer, and it steaks the car windows even after it fades away. And your mother is the only one who cleans the car windows so the next time that you draw on the window you can clean it yourself, I give up so much for you to be happy and the very least you can do is not draw on the car window and make them messy, are you listening to me because I told you not to do this a hundred times and you still do it.
I forgot where I had drawn it on the bus shelter wall. I told myself, if its still there I will tell you I love you. If its there, I will tell you I love you. If its there, I will tell you I love you. I smothered the glass in my breath, and the man and the woman who shared the shelter with me didn't seem to notice or care. They were too busy talking about Ontario Disability Services. About coverage, and grocery bills that didn't seem to add up. Real-life, real world, real real things. And then there was me hinging too much on a finger drawn heart.
Two curves that found a point at the bottom caught the heat from my mouth. It was there. I felt happy knowing that something that wasn't supposed to be permanent was still there after all of the days that had passed. It was more permanent than I knew, except that now I had to tell you I love you. I am too scared to do this because you don't really exist, and if I do it I will become an arguable point. An arguable point is like something you write in your essays that you are trying to prove or say. There is always an opposite idea that is sometimes better than yours. There are always better girls than me that would make better support sentences in your life. In the one I'm writing, you're a topic sentence near the end of page nineteen turning twenty.
When you're about to flip that page, there are things that you are supposed to understand. You have to want things that people can buy for you. Music, a CD. You are supposed to want a book, or a shirt, or a dress, or a purchasable item from a website or a mall. You are supposed to go places, go out, and do things in celebration because it is your birthday. Tell me what you want! Tell me what you want. What do you want for your birthday? What do you want?
I want someone to hold my hand who wants to hold it, and who in holding it means they they are something more than they are my friend. I want to chase someone down the street, usually some strange girl, and not have to catch the 10:50am bus. I want to not be told that I drink too much coffee by anyone. I want to break down completely. I want to be left alone for a few hours or a few days and left to my own devices. I want to tell my story through my body. I don't want to be judged. I want to finish something. I want to sit in Allyson Mitchell's Mentrual Hut for twenty minutes and tell someone twenty things they don't know about me, and have them tell me twenty things I don't know about them. I want my figure skating pair. My artistic, platonic counterpart who pushes me, and I pull. I want a lover. A messy, messy relationship with text messages and being stood up in a different province and a road trip which brought us together and tore us apart. Something dramatic I will eventually condense into a novella entitled This and That. This being this, and that being that which has not happened yet.
I want you, but you don't exist. You are a ghost. A sentence fragment. A noun with adjectives I ascribed to you. When I looked at that heart I thought of you. I wish you could take something for this. Maybe I am taking writing for it. I need to show my quiet craziness somewhere, so why not in these predetermined spaces between letters and words. So much seems to be happening, yet so little seems to be really happening. I think of little hearts made of nothing more than my breath, my finger, the night, the cold, and a piece of glass. Love never seemed easier than that. Then there's the longing, the wondering, the desperation. The whispered promises I never intended to keep. I will tell you I love you. I will tell you I love you. I will tell you I love you.
I never told you.
Tonight I am going to go back to the same bus shelter. It will be another cold night, and I will hover my lips above the glass. If my heart is still there, I will tell you I love you. I promise I will tell you I love you. Even thought you don't exist.
