dear Montreal,

I’m writing to you from Ottawa, having just left your soft, cheese-filled embrace, and I miss you already. (Just to be clear, I do NOT miss your traffic, and I do not miss your construction)… but I do miss the way the morning light shines through those big beautiful windows of a third floor flat at the top of those crazy wonderful circular stairs.

I miss the view of flat-topped row houses, weathered doors and every-colour colour-schemes.

I miss your windows.

Your biggest buildings.

And neighbours who have different uses for their balconies and which make me think of poetry about loaves of bread and hyacinths for the soul as I pass.

I miss your alleyways and secret gardens with statues of buddah and jesus and others, like you’re covering all the bases.

And those green olives swimming in spicy red pepper schmoo.

I miss your cars, so well disguised we hardly know they’re there.

Things seen under stairways.

Your art.

I miss your shadows.

Hells bells, even your handyjustdownthestreet IGA is all meilleur…

Tea and trumpet by the canal.

Oh and dear Montreal… who wouldn’t miss your signs?

I miss your public napping chairs.

I miss being able to buy handmade paper at an unassuming factory that prides itself on being almost impossible to find (discovered by reading the absolutely wonderful Gutenberg’s Fingerprint).

I miss the doodle I mistook for a labyrinth until I tried to walk it.

Community gardens-in-the-hood, enclosed by fences covered in morning-glories.

Views from unlikely places.

And let’s not even talk about the food.

So, yes, much missing but enough sniffling…

a bientot, eh…

 

     More from Montreal here.

 

♥

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