It’s April 21st and it’s hailing in Halifax. A sunshine Sunday has come and gone, and with it has wilted the promise of bees. In the naval shipyard across the highway from our apartment, cranes have been unloading heavy things all morning, sending booms like antiaircraft flack echoing through the north end of the city. Boom! I tied a letter to a rock this morning and threw it over the highway. It said: “Could you blast us a hole in the hail? Flip the cranes upside down,” I said, “and make a little space for the sun!” They gave their reply: Boom! On Brunswick Street, faces have again retreated behind rampart scarves. I walked a bag of garbage across the parking lot to the dumpster, and all of the people I saw looked routed by the weather: squint-eyed and mitten-handed, with pieces of hail on their shoulders and in their hair. Boom! Up the street, the food bank line was long. I came back inside and washed a mound of dishes down to a pile. Boom! This place feels weak and dirty. In the basement, we’ve been filtering waste vegetable oil; it drips slowly through our filter jeans, making our apartment stink like fried meat made rotten by the wait. Boom!
They say we’ll be wet and cold for the next three days, but that the weekend promises warmth and sun. So I’ll put a potted plant by the window, and I’ll say to us both: “Hold your head up, kid, it’s almost May. You’ve only got to keep yourself wintersweet a little longer.”
