my hair is getting long
i wonder if i should cut it
we don’t have to think about the past
ever
not if we don’t want to
my dad started sending me songs
to learn on guitar
he showed me breakup songs too
from the 1980s
i called my grandma when i got home late
and walked around the block
and sat on the curb
at the bottom of our walkway
that we used to shovel to make snowmen
now we shovel it just because
i cried on the phone under the streetlights
the tears felt good
i remember the surface tension breaking
relaxing
warm wetness smearing
my cheeks and hands
my feelings are immense;
i should not have thought
one person
could contain them all.
i went to the bayfront with my family friday night
i was going to go downtown instead
with iggy and matt and jason cop-short-for-copperfield
but my mom said “come with us!” so i did
and we got ice cream
and we saw the sunset on the conservation wetland
the arching support lattice of the skyway bridge
the steel factories with pipes spitting smoke and fire
the freighter ships lit like little towns of their own
after we got home my mom opened my window
so i can hear the crickets now
“I wrote “crickets (diary excerpts)” in the month before moving to Toronto from Hamilton, Ontario.”
Nicola Lawford is a first-year Engineering Science student at the University of Toronto.