20081121

To her wrist from her shoulder

Five clones get on the bus mid-route. Clones that is if cloning meant that your tight jeans from waist to feet, your hair style, your speech patterns, your mannerisms, your gait, your jacket, your boots, if all of those were exact replicas. If cloning meant that everything that was the least you part of you, everything that wasn't an accident of birth, was a copy. Because genetically, these five clones could have been models for an advert celebrating multiculturalism.

And then I think of my partner. With her tribal tattoo that cascades down her left arm to her wrist from her shoulder. Her leather jacket with duct tape to cover the spot that got burnt. Her crooked teeth that overlap (just like mine). Her hair the result of telling a hair dresser, "do what you want, as long as it's short and has colour." I think of her.

20081107

Josie's house

It was warm and sunny outside when she asked me to walk home with her after work. We both knew it was likely going to be the last day of the year where I could actually wear shorts outside, considering the last couple of weeks had been strictly toques and scarves weather. What we didn't both know, what only I knew, was that the route she suggested was going to take us right by the house of a woman I once dated, Josie.

Josie was one of those situations where the ending comes about because of a different point of view. From my point of view, which went unexpressed, I thought we should take a step forward from dating to relationship. From hers, we should take a step back from dating to ceasing communication. That was the last time we spoke.

It wasn't until later that evening that I realized that I never even saw Josie's house. That we'd walked by it without my even noticing.