parts of toronto you should've seen and didn't

the beer store at queen and river on sunday afternoon seven minutes before close hosting a handful of hardened alcholics ordering bottles of max ice with exact change for the second, or third, or fourth time today. allen gardens at night, every night, bundled bodies collapsed on benches under the weight of the world and its temptations, its necessary oblivions, its unnecessary cruelties. boys with sweet faces and enemy memories hiding in the alleys around church and wellesley, like stray cats at war, waiting. the hungry screams from whispered beings at the methadone clinic south of king, east of parliament. the low-income landscape of woolner, the sunset painted by pollution and the smell of crack. men fondling eachother in queen's park, under the cover of darkness, like warewolves howling at their so-called lives. all the parts of toronto you should've seen and didn't. because they remind you too much of everything. because you'd rather not and no one's going to make you.