I see you, blistex, vaseline or burt’s bees in pocket, lips glossy, well licked, fighting the eternal Montreal wind tunnel, overstimulated by city life but with your lip balm mask gifting you with the powers of naivety, blasé-being—

I know you, underworld roamer, veritable subterranean, user of below ground spaces and

member of marginal groups—

operating within your own water cycle because you refuse the mainstream save that one great torrential river roar (TAYLOR SWIFT) but no you are better than I—

There is no doubt, entangled as I am in the riverweb and strangling in disposition, undetermined, out in the boondocks, off the edge of the map, where aye, there be monsters.

But do you feel at home within the drawn lines? Do you feel situated, at ease, inversely

homesick, unbecoming to solastalgic feelings of dread ill-suited to status-eager 4 1⁄2

apartment—

wifi, hydro included, no pets, no indoor smoking but a great little communal courtyard shared by six equal 4 1⁄2’s—

though two are unoccupied, and one other might be a meth lab or crackhouse, drug den erstwhile criminalized by the gens du quartier but as yet uncovered by law enforcement archaeologists— 

a lock on your door that works well enough, and the upstairs neighbours are only really loud on those gloomy sad weekend afternoons or when they have a dinner party and you can hear tasteless music through the pipes whenever you use the toilet—

back corner, usually clean, but always smelling slightly…off, no matter the copious quantity of febreze or incense employed—

but yes, do you feel at home here? Is this city all you wished for? Do you miss your parents, miss the pastoral auburn idyllic portrait of a childhood summer spent catskill-ed like Dirty Dancing— movie appealing to large audiences, the kind you could never picture—because though millions live in this city one could never imagine that many faces looking back and matter-of-fact I know you get nervous when you attract too many stray glances like you’re a magnet for construction site nail pickup, and who wants to feel like that ever? No one.

But what is the ideal feeling? Is it that childhood bliss orange sundown-tinted and aspartame sweetened by one too many nostalgic reruns? Is it the sea of calm, substance-achieved, be it drinks mixed or beer bubbled, acid engaged, joint smoked, 20-second nicotine headrush orgasm or all of the above all at the same time? Or is it that victor’s character, post-Settlers of Catan longest road win, smile from cheek to cheek, hesitant to gloat too much while the losers rebox the instruments of your success? Or gosh, could it be those late warm summer nights, intensely serene and glowing, walking over the bridge from la ronde and seeing the river open up for you and then the city—both deeming you Moses in this ambient pilgrimage—and maybe you’ve got a friend with you and a half-empty, nihilistic bottle of wine (on sale at the Super C, 10 or 11 dollars), didn’t even get carded so you feel even better about your age—but you’ve got delirious empty speech—all the while you can think of nowhere better to be, nothing better to do than to step forward and step forward and look at the time maybe but then check again a few minutes later because you’ve forgotten already—yet you don’t know or don’t remember how your life spread to the point where you’re walking over this bridge in the still-life of unemployed city lights, the night mature by now just as you feel on account of being up so late and not having shown your ID as proof of age—and that’s exactly it, you’ve nothing to prove and nowhere to go in this home outside of home—in the midst of familiar places always full of strangers, yet you couldn’t give one shit, let alone a second, and the future seems so far away right now—so everything is bliss in this ardent fervour of sometime-past-midnight because nothing seems to matter right now save one foot forward, another step along the path.

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Gabriel Lamothe is a third year student at Concordia University who enjoys writing poetry in his spare time. He's tried to add more facets to his creativity when not studying and reading books, but always comes back to the pen and paper.