Sometimes I think I know so much of this city, there is nothing left to learn. There is my friends’ art studio full of life sized puppets, here is the coffee shop where I spent half my maternity leave. There’s that spot in the sidewalk that rises up to trip you like a Hogwarts staircase. The side streets and alleys are like cousins and siblings, the rivers the proud heads at the Thanksgiving table. I jostle and frolic between them, repeating the same dances, the same little jokes, understanding each tree and brick like my own heartbeat, ever slowing in weariness with sames, sames, sames.

And then, from beneath the years of mud and leaves and snow, waiting for this one improbable moment as I rush by with another medium cup of grogg that spills onto my hardening hand –

a new, yellow blossom.

Hello!