It’s been a year since my last letter and I wondered if it’d be my last.
I tried to start one at the beginning of this year and it just wasn’t right. I wanted time away, time away from this form, this direct address. That’s what I said about newsletters to my friend Harry the other day, which reminded me of an answer I gave once in an interview to join a university journal board. They asked me to name a poem I loved and why. I answered with James Baldwin’s “Untitled” because of his intimacy, the art of the confession.
Lord,
James Baldwin, “Untitled”
when you send the rain
think about it, please,
a little?
I tried to write a novel this year. I started a few. I tried to write poems and they’re getting somewhere. Mostly, I wrote for myself. In a little beige book, then a pink one. I read a few things I liked and a few things I didn’t. I lost friends and made new ones. I fell more deeply and clearly in love. I moved and made a new home. I worried and I thrived. I was grateful and graceless. I want to know myself without judgement. I wanted to know others with love.
At the year’s end, I find myself turning here. Back to you, to booklight, to confess rather than address. Has it been a hard year? Has it been a good one? There is too much I can and cannot write.
I find myself wanting to share pieces of my journal from the year, for the precision of the fragment, for their quiet and consistent honesty. This is what I can offer—dense enough, intimate enough, purposeful enough—to you, my friends of direct address, my friends of a newsletter I wrote in 2022 and now meander back to like a long overdue visitor, a longing and wistful friend.
That’s how it is sometimes —
dorianne laux, “Dust”
God comes to your window,
all bright light and black wings,
and you’re just too tired to open it.
JANUARY
I'm still somewhere near January 3 but January 13 is almost over and what? Do I feel like myself? Who am I? What is this about? This month that makes all these questions feel annoyingly new and important. I reached out to a new therapist. I don't know if my relationships are meant to last but maybe it's my relationship with myself that I'm worried about. I don't know if I've felt like "me" in a while but am I longing for someone it hurt to be?
FEBRUARY
I am not on my own. I am my own. I will be okay.
MARCH
The other day, someone asked me why poetry and I couldn’t answer. I read something I wrote a year ago and it felt unrecognizable.
APRIL
All the time I miss the flowers hidden beneath the spring. No one I love understands me. No one I love notices how I miss the flowers in the spring, before their bloom.
Two years ago I was no one and I still am. I must become comfortable in this silence.
MAY
Ice cream, blue, orange, yellow. Luna the dog. Rivers. Critical arc, criminal time. Tired grey sleep. Summer is almost here.
JUNE
Jericho Brown said once, Write like you've already won and now I can. It feels good to know how far you've come, to see the old files and the scrapped stories. A fullness I feel so distant from, which could be mine again.
Here we are, at another final page together. Someday, I will look back on 30 years instead of 3. I hope I will have forgiven life by then, and everyone in it, for what matters, at the end of the day, a strength I choose to preserve joy.
JULY
This month began at a campground in Prince Edward County. A blue campfire and a crowd of people on drugs and dancing. I was tired. I was tired then and I'm tired now. July is ending and I haven't felt time passing for most of it.
If I close my eyes, the last time I was here—really here—is at least a few weeks ago. My mother arrived and left again, my sister and I briefly rekindled. Last summer, my mother wasn't speaking to me and now my father isn't. I am about to take a big step and I am scared. I am not ready to say goodbye to my brief and beautiful home. I never will be. I was lucky to live a year of this patient life. The first space of my own. This little apartment above an Italian restaurant on Bloor.
It makes sense, then that my heart is so sore at the thought of leaving even as I am heading to a place that will be just as good, even better. Love is not comparative. The greatest grief of all is that everything changes. Time. The river of time sweeps us away from the places we've loved until they become places we miss. What I will miss: the evening light in my bedroom, the bookshelves, the view of the church outside my window, the sound of rain on the skylights.
AUGUST
I have been listening again to an old playlist. Its called grief's play and the description says, "nani's daisies in the garden, looking at me." It starts with the song Moving Day but I came back to it for Eva Cassidy's cover of Time After Time.
During my yoga class this morning, Sharon said, "The moment you start taking yourself seriously, you lose." You stop having fun. Being in the moment, enjoying everyday to its fullest. This is my task. These are my goals. To live each day, to understand its task, happily. Alhamdillah, I texted my friend Basmah the other day. Tomorrow is my friend Anne's birthday and I am going to get her tiger lilies. Today is August 1. A feeling is welling up inside me too big to explain and I must let it be. I must be grateful to live in it, rather than understand it.
SEPTEMBER
My heart is thick with the sweat of work.
Today, I woke up worried. The emotional hangover of the night before followed me through the day, masquerading as doubts or restlessness. I think my body doesn't know how to live without a threat. I said to Harry on the phone, "Optimistically, I mean." And then, "Pessimistically, probably."
OCTOBER
I did a reading at a little newspaper shop and a co-reader's wife called me candid. I understood better my new direction and was affirmed in reciprocity, generosity. I could recognize the queer people in the room when I read a poem about my family. Do I want to be queerer than I am? My mother sat in my kitchen and did not harm me, even as she disagreed. Nick and I are more settled in each other. Every day my heart grows. My love is pure, as bright and clear as the day we met.
NOVEMBER
A pretty big tarot spread for myself. Unusual. The highs and lows, side by side. The elk, the hummingbird, the peacock. The crocodile says, Wait. The cards say the same things over and over and so do I. Start over. Be brave. Don't overthink. Try. The cosmic egg says, Life holds onto you. It is time to push past fear again.
Tomorrow, I will drive to meet a puppy and call her mine. Ours.
At one point after her surgery, my mom randomly asked my brother, "Are you happy?" He was over the kitchen sink. He said, "I have everything I've ever wanted." I quietly agreed. I must protect the life I make. I must protect the love I've found.
DECEMBER
I wrote a list on the white board called THING I NEED TO FEEL OKAY TODAY.
The pace of my life has slowed. A year is an odd unit of measure. Even between months there are eons. October is already so far away, let alone July. But look. I have so many answers for her. Her fears, her questions. I am settled now. Raising the dog is one of the most difficult things I've ever done but I don't regret it. I am learning about patience and practice. Discipline and temperament. I have new dreams to work towards, as old dreams fade. Full circle. My concern for a self dwindles. I turn towards community. Good. Let the cycles continue. Let the past become the future again. Even as the world crumbles, I have faith in my neighbours. I have faith in my faith. Wittgenstein again. My life is too full to fit on this page and that is my greatest achievement.
No hour is ever eternity, but it has its right to weep.
zora neale hurston, Their eyes were watching god
In 1937, Zora Neale Hurtson wrote, There are years that ask questions and years that answer. I wonder what this one will be, the former or the latter, how they always slip together.
I wonder which is yours. I wonder which is mine.
PS: To start the new year right, consider answering the call by Palestinian activists to raise awareness about what is happening in Gaza by attending local actions, participating in BDS movement, sharing information online and contacting your local government bodies to call for ceasefire. More than 85% of Gazans have been displaced; over 20,000 killed; 100+ journalists murdered; hospitals and refugee camps bombed. A genocide is unfolding and we must stand with Palestine.
Sanna Wani 