Moving Days

Picture this:

You're sitting on a wooden box with your lover, eating takeout from a vietnamese buffet, giggling and watching 'So you think you can dance.' Your worldly goods surround you in cartons you've brought home from local shops on recycling days, most of them from the pet store. You two make love that night.

You merge into holiday weekend Montreal traffic—a full hour behind the movers—in your mom's borrowed car with your trunk and backseat packed, including your cats. One of them has just pooped in his pet carrier. Traffic's pretty smooth.

You have to call VISA from the payphone beside the toilets at that big service centre just before Kingston while your lover wanders around and buys a Powerpuff Girls® keychain from a coin machine. It's a teeny tin box, "just big enough for a little bud! Think I'll get one for Erin!" You're uncertain that this $2G payment will go through.

You let your lover play DJ so you're treated to The Orb, Led Zeppelin, and ELO. You love her so much. Traffic's light all along the 401, except for around Oshawa, which forget it.

You pull around the corner. The big blue truck is already outside your house. The evening sun shines through the trees that canopy your street. Your lover disappears for a while on a mission. The mover guy, who's been hitting on both of you the whole time, and his jolly old dad, whose missing pretty much all of his teeth, have to unload the truck from the neighbours' driveway because your front walkway is almost completely overgrown. Your house looks shabby from several years of renters but you can't swallow the lump of pure love in your throat.

Your lover returns with brie and strawberries and ice wine and new windchines made of old wood. And when you hang them in the tree it looks like some voodoo lady lives here.

A neighbour actually hugs you.
The variety store lady says you look just the same.
You hear blackberries falling through leaves.