Life is Your Story

We had met on a sleepy, Sunday afternoon, at an Espresso Bar in Old Montreal. It was the kind of day that you don't want to leave your place, or even get out of bed.  But the loneliness, creeps in, the day lingers on and you leave so you can find someone to bring home. I was sitting at a corner table, writing words that didn't connect, wondering where the missing piece of the puzzle, to my sunken love life had gone. He was at the table beside me, sketching birds flying across the sky in unison, in a shape that resembled a heart. He had sandy brown hair that he pulled away from his face, only for it to fall back within seconds. His eyes were blue and he had a cleft in his chin that I wanted to nibble. He felt my eyes upon him. We struck up a conversation. He showed me his art, I showed him my words. We didn't ask one another's names. Who cares about a name. We knew we would be leaving together.  He held my hand from under the table, stroking his fingers across the ...

I couldn’t sleep. I found myself sitting on the side of the bed, negotiating with the hurricane that had blown through my life. I made my way to an all-night diner for people like me who find themselves wide awake while everyone else sleeps. All members of a club with no name and only one rule, "Don't judge me and I won't judge you." I was in need of a gentle hand stroking my back.  I needed to hold someone and be held. I needed to spend time with someone who knew nothing about me and who wouldn't ask the questions everyone asks. I needed someone to stay without leaving and leave without staying. I needed a bright shade of blue upon my weeping, blank canvas. Two stools down the counter, sipping coffee and reading  an old messed up copy of “Beautiful Losers” by Leonard Cohen, sat a man with a face chiseled and shaped by the greatest artists of all time. He was wearing a white t-shirt, faded Levi's and Converse shoes. His arms were graced in tattoo...