Have you ever kept too many things, things with memories attached?

In honour of the lunar eclipse.

Have you ever felt in the same moment lots of hope and lots of hopelessness?

They say a fog came one summer and lasted ninety days. When it lifted, it took the colours from our irises, revealed a city that had been repainted grey and chipped. No one was left who was in love, but every debt was forgiven.

I took the ferry to Halifax once and the trip stole my memory. As I stood out on the deck and felt the spray cold on my face it felt like hands were reaching up out of the frigid choppy waters to unravel me like thread, leaving me salty and clear. Absolved.

Let us destroy the Martello Tower. Destroy it again and watch them build it back every year, growing more determined to catch us. Growing craftier, subtler, causing all our friendships to falter under the weight of mistrust and betrayals, until only you and I are left. We both know we are too few, and too poorly equipped to keep the rebellion going. We try anyway and are caught. The prosecutor demands that we hang, one before the other. Instead we escape, and drown in the attempt, swimming from the island fortress to a land we imagine but know nothing about, except that we know it is hopelessly far away.

I know where the tunnel entrances are, beneath the Citadel and the Signal Station. They are flooded and murky and icy. They are dangerous and perfect. If you can show me something better, then I am yours.

Has the sex usually been better when it was still secret and wrong?

Have you ever wanted to break up, but didn’t have a good enough reason? I am still fooling around with pens and working on my penmanship. But it feels good to be writing by hand, doing this without digital type. Someday it will be good and legible for you, too. I promise.

When we get to serious augmented reality, people are going to be leaving secret scratches all over the place.

For this instalment, I took my dirtiest eraser and rubbed it onto sketching paper.

What a decade. I am going to be spending New Year’s Eve holed up at home, I think, trying to figure out just what happened these past ten years.

Have you ever realized something that seemed pessimistic, except that it made you a better person?

It’s the longest night of the year where I live in the northern hemisphere. Do you ever go out to watch meteor showers, stare at the sky until you see a streak? Have you ever cast a wish, then realized you could make it come true?