The Governor Journals

On her first day on the job, she noticed that the two grandfather clocks she could not try to locate yet could hear chime throughout each corner of the house were both too slow. The one in a room somewhere ahead of her sang the hour eight minutes past, and the one that lived behind her rang six. She thought this added yet another layer of character to the old house, especially since, after the tightening and rewinding of the gears, the faces still refused to speed their hands.

Kim was a letter-writer, a self-acclaimed title that seemed fitting for such a place. Time moved slowly here, in the big yellow house where the river forks. Whether this be because the place was timeless and the job required you remember that, because it’s clocks are simply old and not as useful as they used to be, or, maybe, because of the lack of conversations with real people, allowing more air time for those she kept inside her head. She didn’t really know, she thought, as she circled back and forth from library to dining room, dining room to veranda, veranda to library. Like clockwork, sometimes moving a bit too slow.

She used to be a busy person. She missed it at times, not realizing it was simply the few extra breaths that she was not accustomed to. Over these past few years she had forgotten what it had meant to slow down, forgotten what it was like to finish a book without months between sittings, what it was like to be in tune with herself again.

This was why she loved her job. Cataloging and moving and delving into boxes and boxes of forgotten words. I’m saving them, she would think. Saving these lifetimes, these stories and people from their moldy, water-damaged cardboards that would have become their graves. She enjoyed the distraction from her own thoughts, her own ghosts. Walking up the carpeted stairs to the library’s creaky, large-pane door where, through its stuffiness, she could breathe in the sweet aroma of age. She loved the freedom allowing her to organize the shelves in which ever way she pleased, grouping mystery and romance and poetry in places they would never be lonely or hidden in the dark. Her favourite thing, however, was reading the inscriptions inside the books. Tracing her finger where the ink had lovingly marked the page, as someone from long ago had. She found herself sometimes envious of these people who weighted thoughts like the goldsmith weighted his wares.

One Tuesday morning, after sifting through a large box of play scripts and prose, she happened upon a small, lined journal. Near bouncing with excitement, she tenderly opened its covers to find that its pages were blank, but pressed in between were letters. Love letters, she soon discovered, between a man and a woman who lived far apart.

” I yearn for you much like the waves yearn the shore, or the river yearns the sea. ”  she traced the pointed nib strokes, ” And much like the sea, I long for you to be within my sight, wherever I go.”

“Look at this!” she said to her coworker, an older woman who cooked breakfast, cleaned rooms. She was hanging billowing white sheets out to dry in the wind and the sun.

She looked at the scrawled words and, with a humoured-air, handed them back to her.

“Don’t go chasing ghosts now,” she said. “They’re not looking to be missed.”

“I’m not chasing.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“They’re just letters.”

“To you, maybe.” she said. “But to them, they were probably their whole world.”

“Sounds lonely.”

“Mm-hm.”

She placed the letters back in their home and tried to forget, but she found her mind wandering while she worked. She couldn’t help but be drawn to the emotions of passion, want, and torment that were bound to the folded crease. Lines of desire she could not only relate to, but felt as if they could have been once written by herself.

Work changed after that. She was never one to believe in ghosts, but in the days following she found it difficult to decide what was footsteps on creaky floorboards and what was merely the wind. The ideas of these people followed her like an aftertaste that stained her tongue. She was suddenly faced with an unwarranted consumption of thoughts that took root inside her head. Was this because they reminded her so much of her own past? She thought. Or am I going mad in this place? 

In an attempt to silence her thinking, she made herself busy again. What was once casually paced work she turned into high-speed, getting through boxes of books so quickly she began to grow light-headed. She didn’t want to think about this boy and this girl who thought they had fallen in love some time ago, when in reality they did not know they were confusing love with lustful ideas that soon became toxic. Thinking about these things caused an introspection she struggled to shut down.

“I feel like I’ve lived this life before.  Like I’ve been these people. She found herself writing. “Maybe I feel this way because I have lived through what they have written about. Human situations never really change as time does, do they? 

I wanted you to let me go, as I have for you. To be honest, I don’t know if you have, but your ghost follows me, lingering around corners, in books, pressed against my shoulder. 

Who knew something dead could get so attached?

All is well here, and I wish you the best.

-Kimberley.

P. S. Please, let me go.”

 

 

Passersby (2/2)

Someone’s hung over. – person standing with him as they wait to cross the street.

Ew, god you smell bad. – Shoppers DrugMart cashier.

Please don’t look at me. – stranger in her parked car as he passes by.

What a slob. – restaurant employee.

I wish he would quit and go away. –coworker.

Phew. Can’t see us being friends. – person who finds first impressions important.

I hope he goes through Tyler’s cash and not mine. – grocery store clerk.

I feel bad for him. – people-watcher.

Gosh, he makes me uncomfortable. – his niece.

I wish he would look after himself better. – his brother.

Why can’t he try harder? – his girlfriend.

You’re perfect the way you are. – him.

 

Passersby (1/2)

He’s pretty. – person waiting at the red light beside him this morning.

Hello, mama. – gas station clerk.

Holy crap he was cute. – stranger who had their attention caught as he walked down the street.

I wish we could talk more. – coworker.

I like him. – person who finds first impressions important.

I hope he’s not married. – grocery store cashier.

I wonder what he’s like. – people-watcher.

Was that-? – movie fan in a passing car.

Handsome man, right there. – senior women together at Tim Horton’s.

I’m so lucky to have found him. – his wife.

Love you, Daddy. – son.

You are an ugly piece of shit. – him.

 

 

 

Laundromat

It was 12:02 in the afternoon. He was getting on the bus that would take him to York street, where he would begin his shift of cleaning retail store shelves that were once spotless last night. He was fumbling for change as he tripped over the curb, throwing his King Cole with two cream onto the grey jacket in front of him. Both persons gasped; one in fright, the other surprise.

He cursed over his words as he apologized. Feeling bad for the woman, the coat, his inability to form words that served their purpose, and the hot beverage he hadn’t realized he had been looking forward to. She turned, smiling the polite smile you give to strangers in need of help, and the elderly you wish you could talk to.

“It’s okay.” She said, over and over. Seeing how through his rambling, it was the only effective way for her forgiveness to be heard.

He offered to take her to a Laundromat, or better yet, a dry-cleaners.

“I have work.” She said.

“I do too.”

They watched as the bus pulled away from them.

They entered a conversation neither of them would forget as they began walking the streets of an area they found out they both did not know. He told her how he had just recently moved there. How he hated the city but somehow chased it with the idea it would grant him everything he wanted in his life.

“What do you want?” She had asked him.

He admitted he did not know. No one had asked him that before, and in that absence he had neglected to ask himself.

He said. “What do you want?”

They were sitting in the only two chairs available in the building that now housed her jacket when she opened her heart for the first time. She wanted to visit the Colosseum in Rome for no reason other than the idea that it looked haunting on the inside. She wanted to learn how to play the violin but claimed she would never find the patience in her youth. She wanted to fall in love in Lithuania because it sounded romantic in a way that is not heard of, but most of all, she wanted to find a place where she could stop searching for all of the things she wanted.

He said.”I don’t know if such a place exists.”

“Neither do I.”

Little did they know that the beginnings of this place began inside themselves.

 

It Was Fall

The first time we said goodbye was in the fall. I’m not sure if it was the letting go the season does imperfectly that was used as inspiration, or maybe, more like the leaves, I could feel my stems breaking. It wasn’t your fault. Though I’m sure the leaf does not see the tree in this way. I was unhappy and you were miserable. We both cried, in secret. I didn’t tell you I wasn’t sleeping but you figured out, somehow.

I remember you were saying how pretty New York was. You had gone hiking for over four hours, a walk filled with rejuvenating reflection. It was fall. The sites were beautiful. You told me how much I would love it the same moment I broke your heart. You cried in your hotel room that night. You didn’t have to tell me, but when you did I had already guessed.

I cried well into the snow. I wrote poems; about you, about us, about the nothingness that strayed after the nothingness we were, but somehow we claimed to be something. You wrote poems; about me, about us, about the futures you dreamt but never told anyone. Not even yourself. Only the paper knew of your reveries.

The second time we said goodbye was in December. You had written me a letter that had made me cry after I thought I was done crying, about you, about us. You claimed you had taken something from me. You wished me happy birthday. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I replied and regretted it, thinking my words to be what broke you. You wrote me a poem in January, and eight more in February. I wanted to let you go.

Then it was fall. I hadn’t heard from you since March. I had stopped looking for you in the things I believed to be unrecognizable, only to look closer and find you. You had a job now. Something that took you near the rivers, the sea. I know this because of the pictures you sent to no one in particular. They came with your words, saying how you still thought about me, about us. It was fall. A year had gone. I didn’t reply to your poem. Knowing if I did, you would want me to stay.

I wrote to you in secret. Only the paper knowing of the things I wished to tell you. I had been angry, sad, upset. Emotions I no longer felt towards you, towards us. The entirety of our nothingness that somehow turned to somethingness now irrelevant. I had school, we had had summer two summers ago and now last summer was distant in my memory. Though I still find myself searching for the books you have recommended me. And the songs you sang but never titled. To think of you now leaves me feeling odd, and lonely for something I don’t understand. You once told me you were the only coffee person you knew. I wonder if this has changed.