we are breathless, but we love the days
they are the only way to walk from one night to the other
“We are breathless, but we love the days. They are promises. They are the only way to walk from one night to the other.” - Nina Riggs, The Bright Hour
I can’t recall the exact moment when I decided to move to Rome. I remember being 28. I remember how it was the end of August in 2021, how only Canadians were allowed to enter Italy, and how free it felt to wander around the empty streets. I remember the grocery store I would go to for my daily pizza rosso, the fresh apricots and peaches. I remember how coffee became the new snack. I remember how my Airbnb host would have to be on-call every single time I’d go out, because I could never unlock the door to my apartment. I also remember how he took me to the roof, how we kissed, how he held on to me for a bit, and how I felt sad. Maybe it was because we knew it was all just going to be one moment in time. He would go back to be with his girlfriend in Liguria, and we would both become memories.
After spending a month and a half (on what was originally supposed to be a 4-day trip), I decided Rome was going to be my new home. Freedom, freedom, freedom. That boundless freedom. I was born to be that girl in a tiny dress, running through the piazza with the slightest frizz in her long, dark brown, wavy hair. Wine drunk, always smelling like another man’s cigarette.
In October of 2021, I found myself back in the city. There was paperwork and processes to go through before my official move.
I’m with OFM on what felt to be our annual “What Would Have Happened If” Meeting.
He tells me he just broke up with his girlfriend. I tell him I want to move to Rome. I can’t read his reaction. We make out in the bar’s bathroom stall. A man knocks on the door. OFM almost fights him.
I turn his face towards me and put my hand on his chest to calm him down. He snaps out of it.
“I think moving there will be one of your most well-looked upon decisions.” He tells me the next morning.
“Probably.” I pretend to be unbothered as I button up my jeans from the night before. I do a scan of his bedroom, and silently hate the fact that I can easily picture myself waking up here every morning. In a bedroom the size of an apartment.
“Do you want me to make you a coffee?”
“No.” I call my own Uber and leave.
I still love him. I do. But he’s right. And I will count down the days.
-
It is my third week of living in Rome. A dream travel publication accepts my pitch on “Italy’s Most Innovative Cocktail Bars”. To be honest, it was my least favourite idea, and the one that was the least thought out.
I send the first bar’s Instagram page to my friend. We’re both on different continents, but we’re both laughing together.
“Why does this look like the Italian version of Vanderpump Rules?” She texts me.
It’s the way the photos are shot, and how they’ve featured the bartenders.
“The guy on the left is kind of hot.” It’s Peter Pan, but April 2022 Emily doesn’t know that yet.
“No. It’s this one.” She sends me back a circled photo of a man with tanned skin, tattooed forearms, and a heavily furrowed brow.
“Absolutely not.” I reply. “He looks too sad.”
-
Reflections From A Morning After. I title my first letter. I write it the evening after the man with the tanned skin and heavily furrowed brow leaves my apartment.
It’s been two days. I’ve barely moved from the couch. The apartment still smells like him. I still smell like him.
“Tell me something, Emily. Tell me anything.”
“Ok. I love this life. I’ve created it in a way that I’m…very protective over. And I’m very careful as to who I let in. Because once I do, I think it will give them the power to destroy me.”
He looks at me for a long time before answering.
“That’s not really living though, is it?”
-
“I’m happy you’re happy and all that. But I don’t exactly love reading about any of this.”
Friendly communication between OFM and I had coincidentally come to a halt after that first letter about PN was published.
“Because I’m not writing about you anymore?”
“Because I’m not getting into this right now.”
“You know what? You could have had me. You’ve could have had me four, three years ago, two years ago, even. And you could have had me four months ago.”
I don’t receive a reply. And I wouldn’t for another six months.
-
“You’re doing exactly what you should be doing. You were born to be this…nymph.”
A tarot reader tells me over the summer.
I smile. It’s confirmation. I’ve always felt like some sort of fairy.
These spirits had the power to change history, supplicate to their own gods, and to refuse men—even if that meant turning into trees or flowers. Nymphs represent female desire and agency: the freedom to make impactful decisions, to say no, to honor her feelings, to freely and unabashedly follow her heart.
-
“Am I going to be okay?” I ask my spiritual healer over the phone. It’s that Happy Hour Red Night.
My spiritual healer always has this hunch. She calls me as I’m on my third glass of red. It’s like my mom whispers to her.
“Emily. Of course you’re going to be okay. You’re having a human experience, that’s all.”
I hang up the phone, and to distract myself from the growing disappointment that continues with OFM, I text someone else.
“Hi.” I send to PN. It’s been 11 months since we last spoke.
What am I looking for? What am I following? What do I desire?
“Hi Emy.” He replies back.“Where are you now?”
Emy. I smile. Maybe it was just this. To have love be acknowledged. And to have love be remembered.
“Toronto.” I respond.
We are breathless, but we love the days.
-
I finish writing “right person, wrong time” last Saturday, around midnight. There’s a weight off my chest. I feel free.
Sometimes the written word has this way of moving universal energy around.
I send it to my best friend. “Only if you have time.” I tell her.
“Emily.” She immediately replies.
My heart skips a beat whenever someone sends, “Emily”.
She sends a photo. I open it.
It’s PN’s Instagram story. A photo of the CN Tower and the Toronto skyline.
My heart stops.
“My new signature drink: The Toronto.”
“There are no coincidences in this world. I’m convinced. ” I text my best friend.
“None. It’s kismet. This is his art. He is your muse, and you are his.”
-
“Why did you guys break up in the first place?” I ask OFM at the bar a few weeks ago. He’s telling me about his second break up with his ex-girlfriend.
“She wanted kids. And I…I don’t know. There’s so much left that I still want to do.”
“Well. I think it’s good to wait. I know people in Italy who have gotten pregnant in their mid-40’s.”
He doesn’t say anything for a while. Until.
“I know the story is there.”
“What do you mean?”
“The story. About you and him. It’s all there for me to read. But I still can’t bring myself to read it.”