remnant in a silent way i can still see you sitting at the dining room table in your apartment. your friend veronica had left. it was just the two of us, our lips stained red from the wine i'd brought. you chain-smoked and told me you wanted me to come with you to toronto, where you planned to move into a run-down apartment complex with your girlfriend. "it's pretty sketchy and decrepit," you said, "but people are starting to move in there." you would get a job in a flower shop. and i would...well, we didn't get that far. my job and my life were here. as tempting as it was to follow you into a new city with no great plans of my own and play it by ear, i knew it would have been a mess. the only compelling reason for me to move was to keep you close to me, when i could never really have what i wanted with you. still, it was nice to pretend for one night, dreaming of what a life with you in some other place might be like while we listened to billie holiday and john coltrane on a mixtape a friend had made for you. there was something about the way you looked that night. the way you held your cigarette. the way strands of dark hair fell around your face like they were guarding something precious. the way you stared into space during lulls in the conversation, calm but full of purpose. that was the most beautiful you ever were to me. i can take any other moment i ever spent with you and put it up against that one, and it's not even a fair fight. had i known the way things were going to turn out, i would have leaned across the table and kissed you, just to see the look on your face. i thought about it, before deciding it was wiser just to sit back and enjoy the sound of your voice, conjuring paper-thin dreams and letting them dance through a thin haze of smoke. i don't miss you anymore, and i don't think of you often. but i like this memory. i think i'll keep this one. 130109 what's it to you? who go blather from