Walking through Grant Park along the waterfront of Lake Michigan as its still waters mirror the dark blanket of the sky fixed with stars blinking with what little of the heavens shines within their light, I listen as the wind rushes and disperses among the trees as their leaves rustle like the flapping wings of birds before they take flight. Making my way up a hill and strolling around the colossal walls of the Field Museum, like the split second of a paralyzing pause in a heartbeat, I stop when I see it. Sitting in the parking space that has all but been deserted for the night is a bus. Its destination: London, Ontario.
Remaining still, my eyes gravitate until they are staring at the bus's open door. Exhaling, the second it takes suddenly becomes a minute, an hour, a day, a month, then an entire year as the part of my soul dwelling within my heart empties all its beating chambers, crawls up my throat, and out of my mouth. Standing before me, I watch as it smiles at me for the last time before walking towards the doors and up the star is of the bus. Where it will be borne five hours across the lake. Five hours to a place where birds where birds fly to for the summer. Five hours to a place called home.
One year has passed since I left the quiet streets of London to follow my literary endeavours to Chicago. Yet, in a city as small as it is secluded and quiet, there exists yet, another world of its own. Two hours south of Toronto, after you pass a sign that says: Welcome to London. After you drive past The Ceeps -- the oldest bar in the city. After you make a left on Richmond Street onto University Drive. After you venture past Alumni Hall, Med-Syd, and Delaware Hall -- where I was a resident. You will find yourself smack in the middle of the University of Western Ontario.
Registering at the University of Western Ontario, or Western as it is known by most Canadians, to pursue a post-bac in English Literature, I had already obtained my bachelors two years ago. It was only two years, but it mind as well have been 20. Coming from a generation of youth who began college when MSN was still relevant, it was easy to feel like an anachronism now taking classes and living amongst students where any form of social interaction could occur as fast as Snapchat or Instagram took to capture and record it. In fact, as many of my friends and colleagues will recall very fondly at the possibility of my expense, my tenure at Western was the first time I appeared on both mediums without actually having an account.
Nevertheless, if the university wasn't able to give you back a youth you once had, it was certainly more than capable of revealing what little of it remained inside you. It was only less than a month before Western, its faculty, and its students became my family away from family. From the sea of purple that flooded and drowned the campus during Homecoming, the chemically induced buzz that vibrated through the speakers at The Spoke, the all nighters at Weldon Library, listening to the hysteria of drunken and narcotic banter at three in the morning, to occasionally participating in the hysteria of drunken and narcotic banter at three in the morning, it was hard to not get lost in the school's desire to indulge and cling to an exuberant bliss that seeped through grasping fingers like sand rushing down an hour glass. It was a yearning that lingered within the very oxygen of the air that enshrouded the campus. Passing through locking lips, pulsing through fingers hustling on keyboards of phones and laptops, and carved into words by clattering teeth flowing out of countless mouths eager to attach themselves to ears just as eager, there was a desire to inhale it. A contagious desire to breath it.
Yet, amidst all that is remembered and forgotten at Western, the fondest of my memories remains confined to all the long walks taken during my study breaks. Drifting among the school's many fields and pale lights that illuminated the walkways surrounding the more than a century old buildings, I would stare up at the trees. The trees. Allowing my thoughts to gallop amongst the leaves accompanied by the wind that reminds the world they are still here to make noise, they roost among the branches. And there, staring at all that lies beneath them, above them, and around them, it is where they make their nests. Where perhaps I will return one day to stare at what lies beneath them, above them, and around them. With them.
Savouring one last glance at the bus, a torrent of air rushes in like a sudden gasp at the departure of a lover's lips for the last time. Turning back towards my apartment, I hear the wind disperse among the trees. As the leaves remind they are still here to make noise, I know that part of me remains five hours across the lake. Five hours to a place where part of me still stares up at the trees. Five hours to a place where part of me still calls home.
