Heyday

257 Pages·2015·2.631 MB·English

by  Woodrow, Marnie

heyday
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2015
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Copyright © Marnie Woodrow, 2015
All rights reserved
Tightrope Books
#207—2 College Street, Toronto, ON M5G 1K3
www.tightropebooks.com
Editors: Natalie Fuerth and Deanna Janovski
Typography: Carleton Wilson
Author photo: Janette Piquette
We thank the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts
Council for their support of our publishing program.
an Ontario government agency
un organisme du gouvernement de l’Ontario
Printed and bound in Canada
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Woodrow, Marnie, 1969-, author
Heyday / Marnie Woodrow.
ISBN 978-1-926639-90-1 (paperback)
I. Title.
PS8595.O6453H49 2015 C813’.54 C2015-904877-X
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For Janette, with big love,
and in memory of Tiff.
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I Know I Am But Summer To Your Heart (Sonnet XXVII)
I know I am but summer to your heart,
And not the full four seasons of the year;
And you must welcome from another part
Such noble moods as are not mine, my dear.
No gracious weight of golden fruits to sell
Have I, nor any wise and wintry thing;
And I have loved you all too long and well
To carry still the high sweet breast of Spring.
Wherefore I say: O love, as summer goes,
I must be gone, steal forth with silent drums,
That you may hail anew the bird and rose
When I come back to you, as summer comes.
Else will you seek, at some not distant time,
Even your summer in another clime.
—Edna St. Vincent Millay
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We met after the man Ferris invented his wheel and before time-
share villas on Mars. It was hot for June. You came dashing down
the ramp of life, all boots and hope. In the sun we made promises,
plans to conquer the world outside the one we’d had named for us.
We designed a wild world of cotton candy dreams and cold drinks
and always the decision of whether to spin or coast, soar skyward
or rush downward. Do both, you tell me now. And when night
comes, autumn—keep your promises, no matter what.
That one day the carbon stench of scorched wood and charred
canvas drifted over the harbour. Silver tendrils of smoke rose still
from the devoured skeletons of roller coasters. Before even reach-
ing shore I could see and smell the destruction. It was necessary to
shut my ears to the comments of gawkers riding the ferry, out for a
last good look at the fall-out of a wayward spark in a wooden king-
dom. Our world. Their heartless curiosity was nearly unbearable.
Talk of insurance and arson and none of it mattered till I clapped
eyes on you again and knew that another girl had been taken away
from someone else.
She was the healthy one, everyone said. If anything, I should
have been the one to get cancer. Me with my long love affair with
cigarettes, my big fat appetite for everything decadent and bad for
you. And then there was my dishonest heart, loving elsewhere but
with cowardice. Loving you through time. You must be this tall to
ride this ride…
We’ll go to Coney Island, it won’t matter. No crying. Girls died
every day. Not mine.
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