Halifax

Photo cred: Husayn Eblaghi

It’s familiar, yet strange —
like aging walls propped up ‘round rubble,
a silly scheme to preserve the nostalgia of old bricks and mortar, making room for new developments.

I drip donair sauce sitting on a doorstep with my back to a bright-coloured door. Scarf a quarter-slice of pizza, thin discs of cured meat curled like tiny bowls of grease soup. Savour the folded pie and my feet dangle against the stone wall separating Grafton St. from St. David’s Presbyterian.

The Black Market opens and a Bohemian babe empties white goods onto the sidewalk.

I’m in the right places, doing the right things in the ways we’d do them, but in the company of ghosts. Silent films of yesteryear, fleeting projections of memory. Distant apparitions.

Now vegan bowls in Vedic chic.
The Qibla relocated North.
My battlegrounds glazed and iced with threaded lights above bustling beer gardens.

Still, chill Atlantic waters slap the docks.
Seagulls cop fries and battered cod.
Gilded trees in Public Gardens bring boiling sprints to gentle strolls.

This old town clock keeps time —
this place, so strangely familiar.