stamp it off

“I can’t tell if you’re back,” she says to me.  And I don’t know what to say.  What does one say?

There’s mud in the snow or under the snow or both.  Our boots make a sort of squelching noise, and gunk accumulates on the rubber soles in layers.  The ground is wet from melting snow, and the temperatures aren’t quite cold enough to do a good job freezing anything.  Everything smells kind of rotten.  The earth knows damned well it’s not spring.  It protests.  And I can’t tell if I’m back.

“I decided not to stay there,” I tell her, trailing off.  It’s not really a sufficient response to her statement, and we both know it.  “It didn’t really feel like home,” I add.  “I was never really comfortable.”  Feeling like I already said more than I wanted, I stop talking.

The air is warm, but not so warm that you could go without a coat.  I wear my winter coat that I’ve owned for far too long, but don’t really want to replace.  It was never fashionable, so will never be out of fashion.  Anyway, I don’t want my life to be measured in how many winter coats I went through, and this one is good enough.

“So, you’re back for now,” she says, sounding almost accusatory.  She’s trying to pin me down, to get me to commit.

“That place wasn’t meant to be my home,” I explain.  “It was a place to be for a time.  When that time was up, I arrived at something of a crossroad: stay or leave.  I left.  That I came back here is something I wasn’t really planning.”  I try to catch her eye, but she’s watching her boots squish through the muddy snow.  “But here I am.”

“What do you plan to build here?” she asks.  And I don’t know what to say.  What does one say?

We stand at an intersection waiting for the light to change, listening to automobile tires hiss past us on the slushy asphalt.  Everything is so dirty when winter doesn’t do its job right.  Red and green lights trade places, and we walk, muddy, wet boots clomping over the crosswalk.  We’re in the middle of the suburbs with downtown, the heart of the city, kilometres away.  I don’t know what I plan to build here.  What did I build before?  So much of what I knew is gone.

“I don’t know,” I say, “that depends.  Is here the same place I left?”

She’s silent now, while the warm chinook wind playfully picks up her hair.  I think I catch the hint of a smile, but I’m not sure.  And it doesn’t really matter.  There’s mud in the snow or under the snow or both.  Our boots make a sort of squelching noise.  Gunk accumulates on our soles in layers, causing us to walk a little off balance.  We try to stamp it off.  We try in vain to stamp it off.