the rentokil truck was blasting dancehall

I happily killed a piece of my resentment last week. In fact, I swung the axe with an enthusiasm that equally excited and terrified me. I wasn't even aware that I was murdering it while I was committing the act – something that will surely catch up to me in court one day – and as I spoke to him, my mouth moved with a certain grace and respect that only appears after months of premeditation. When it was all said and done, I felt for the first time that it was more important to understand than to be understood. 

As when anything dies, there's an inevitable amount of grief that seeps into the sinews of your heart and at the time I thought it would be ridiculous to kneel in front of the tombstone. Rik told me I was shutting the door on my emotional bedroom with all the crap still strewn across the floor. I'll clean my real bedroom a hundred times over and over, get new sheets, replace the furniture, but sometimes it feels like the room never, ever changes. I sat on my stoop in the blazing sun and smoked a cigarette and cried and I didn't care if anyone saw me. When the pain was born I didn't feel it like I do now because it sank to my stomach like a fishing weight, catching debris and the algae of shame as it floated to the bottom. 

The axe that killed resentment was self-forgetting. It was how much capacity I now have to love and tolerate others. I was never going to be the exterminator – I could dance all night with the words and affirmations I memorize in the dark, but that's not the hard work. Every morning, my radio alarm clock turns on at 7:30 and I listen to CBC news for a few minutes. The news is loud and never good, but sometimes it's nice to wake up to someone's voice. Lately I've been dreaming vividly of old lovers, old bedrooms, old insecurities and I imagine plucking each dream like a ripe peach and taking a giant bite, juice exploding from the soft fruit, dripping down my chin and trickling into the divots in my neck. 

The smell of the air in June late at night when it's still warm reminds me of doing shrooms with my first boyfriend, when I had only loved and not yet lost. Now I drink in the rich smell of that air and feel thankful that I've so oft been subpoenaed to forgive.