I longed for memories and I have begun to receive them. Like exotic birds flying through nondescript Toronto skies. Grade six and going to sleep away camp, breaking up with my boyfriend at the beginning of the trip and finding a new one by the end, enthralled by the drama of it all. The boy I broke up with is still cute, I don’t know what happened to the second.

I remember being four years old and enraptured with my babysitter, Sylvia. She was sixteen, approximately the age that I imagined all my dolls to be. She was the only teenager I knew and just knowing her was like being in on a secret. We watched girlie movies together, the kind my brother would protest to, but with Sylvia on my side, we would watch them anyway. She’s living in New York, I think. I wonder if it would be strange for me to contact her. I wonder if I’m ready to take the beat of seeing her almost 40. I guess if I waited, she would only be older. The beat comes whether you like it or not. Swing sets make me nauseous now. I buried my dog and I wish I didn’t have to, but the fact is, I did.

 

Tessa McHattie is a Canadian writer living in Brooklyn, New York.  Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Shoegaze Lit, Eunoia Review, and Star*Line, among others.