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It was almost three in the morning when she walked home after her shift at the bar.

This time, this twenty minutes, was a pause in her life that was always her favourite part of her day. It was like a clearing in the woods, an opportunity to slow things down and start the process of cleansing herself of all the want that filled the pub each night, clinging like smoke in her hair.  All the solitary men who needed drinks, who needed her to pay attention and make them feel valued as they sat there at the bar, searching each night for some unlikely route to love. And there were the needs of her coworkers, always wanting her to cover shifts so that they could either go to a party or recover from one, always needing her encouragement or complicity, and then simply the need to have a job, to get somewhere on time and serve the needs of others, always dressed in a prescribed, deadening uniform that made her feel like a stranger in her own life. All of this, all of this started to fall away when she walked toward home.

And one night she came upon a pigeon lying on the sidewalk.

She barely saw it, but she did, and as she leaned in toward it, the bird spasmed and flapped about in useless, frenzied circles. And then exhausted, collapsed and looked up at her, it’s chest heaving. She did not know exactly what she saw in those eyes, but she could not deny whatever it was that was calling her. It was her burning bush.

She picked the bird up, held it tight to her chest, and took it home. And as she delicately cleaned it in her kitchen sink, it struck her that she had never before felt so whole. Over weeks she nurtured this bird, restoring it to health and flight– and then other birds followed, and then others, and without any conscious intent her life began to organize and cohere around these lost and wounded creatures, and the person who inhabited the body she had travelled within for 37 years was finally discovered.

When the waitress brings me the bill she sucks in her cheeks like a super-model and shakes her shoulders from side to side, “Good music tonight”, she says.

George Michael is playing.

Freedom.

I like her, although I am not entirely sure why. Maybe it’s because she’s wearing a grey t-shirt just like the one you had. Maybe that’s all there is to it. Maybe I like her because the grey t-shirt she’s wearing connects me to you, helps me to draw a line back to your body.

At the table next to me sits a couple. The man has thick fingers and puffy eyes, and the woman is skinny and looks reflexively defensive, like she’s used to evading attack. They are speaking slowly, as if English were their second language, but it’s not. They’re just drunk and concentrating, trying to summon something true from their well of hurt. He looks into his glass and then up into her wary eyes, “There is something about you I have been missing so much,” he says.

And the waitress, looking from side to side at the nearly empty pub, sighs as I dig out my credit card to pay the bill. I ask her why the heavy sigh. She tells me that it’s been a long day.

And then there is a pause, and in that moment the space between us fills with something.

It’s sadness.

It’s desire.

And we look at one another, our invisible lives inching closer now, everything closer.

Last night was Pub Night at the rehab centre.

It took place in the same generic, over-lit space that all our social events take place, and the “bar” itself was a few cafeteria tables that had been pushed together, upon which was a scattering of paper plates with a few potato chips and cheesies on them. If you had gotten a note from the doctor you were allowed to get half a glass of wine or beer, but most of us had forgotten to do so, and settled for a ginger ale.

More cafeteria tables, also pushed together, formed a U in front of a small stage upon which a band was playing. Many of the men watching, arms crossed as if judging the music, perhaps even their circumstance, sat as far away as possible. It was as if their bodies were clenched, resisting both the music and all that lay before them. Meanwhile, the women seemed entirely receptive and accepting. Happily fanned out to the side tables, closer to the band, they sat swaying to the music and singing along together. It was beautiful to see, and it was hard not to imagine them all fifty years earlier out on a Saturday night in some smokey dance hall, each one of them a vibrant and glowing presence, each one desired– their entire lives still waiting to unfold mysteriously before them.