AZORES

Dirt floor basements. GO Train track backyards. Light bulbs with drawstrings. Believing in ghosts. Cats named Gus. Bathroom matches. Skipping work to play handball on the last nice day of the fall. Van taxis. In at 4, up at 6:45. Arthritic hands carrying 24’s through the cold. Bourbon collections. Syrup and tea. Nuno. Dragon stout. Aunt’s houses. Parent’s houses. Floor shows. Galleries. Eviction parties. If you can’t beat em in the alley you won’t beat em on the ice. Maple Leafs angst. Sterling streets. The same jeans worn for three weeks. Rolled cigarettes. Walks of shame. Seventeen year old girls. Seventeen year old women. 3:30 pm, Dundas and Ossington. Bassett hounds. Little brothers, older brothers, only children. Drunk in the summer in the early evening. Getting hit by cars. Putting holes in walls. Boxers fractures. Your friends are all better looking than you. Funemployment. Beastly legs. Bare chests. Team captains. Jordan. The pangs of gloom like come downs upon feeling sorry for Value Village employees. Stealing from Value Village. Ratty Blue Jays t – shirts. Fruit fly infestations bred from empty beer bottles. Bed bugs. Friends in teachers college. Friends in jail. Faces splashed with cold water not to get sober but to look younger. Getting asked to show 2 pieces of I.D. Dave. Bad skin modesty. Feeling the colour of bruises. Numbers deleted and recalled in call histories. Wrist braces. Walking out of an apartment at 6 in the morning to the first snowfall of the year. The little gold hairs on your belly. Maps of the world on zinc bars. Portuguese islands. Azorean colts.