The Wind

For tourists, Rue St-Denis was the glorious visage of rich culture—the epitome of an old, eclectic a emprunté French state epitomized by the splendor and grandeur of Le Plateau Mont-Royale. Jakub never felt that way; he didn’t care much for the poetry, the passe-partout to a once-majestic nation. How unfortunate he was to live so close to what some come from so far to see. How unfortunate for them.

He hated the muggy city and its vile humidity; he hated that the wind could not penetrate the heart of the cold, beating metropolis. But more than that, he hated the tourist trap that was the allegedly “Royal Mountain.”

“It’s just a mountain,” he used to think as he walked the bustling streets. “Full of dead folk, some evil, that stand lifted with pewter wings as though without flaw, without sin. Fools. And here, the English follow in dance, song, and drink. Tabernac’ de fou.”

Instead, he found solace in the trees of the nearby Parc Jerry. He particularly enjoyed the autumn winds. The tail end of Indian summer would’ve passed by then, and the Saint Lawrence would add just a little nip to the wind—the kind Torontonians unknowingly enjoyed before spending the winter season bemoaning Lake Ontario’s frigid wenchhood.

But autumns were met with mixed emotions nowadays. Jakub was growing older with each passing autumn, and the slow withering of the trees seemed to rival the pace-keeping decay of his soul. All his life, Jakub sought a single thing. Passionately, ceaselessly he had quested after it, knowing full well his lust would forever go unrequited.

He stood in the park one day and took in the scene. A dull amber hue filled the sky as the sun took its final bow for the day’s show. The wind rustled gently past his hair. She would embrace him only for a second, whispering sweet nothings before being, again, gone.

He realized what he had always feared: he could never catch the wind. She simply wouldn’t have him. For he was a city boy, and She never favors our kind.