Winnipeg

The winter air in Winnipeg freezes stoplights.

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These days she is either blogging or throwing up, the bats in her stomach fluttering with a fury that will bring her down, soon enough that the yesterdays will freeze themselves in remarkable place and one late afternoon her family and friends will face her absence, a loss of something so huge the space she leaves cannot freeze. It will never freeze. She is dying now, writing in her own wry and wily way for her family and to her great surprise, now for a few hundred others who follow her light irreverence, cry real tears for her willingness to deal, doggedly try to package love across the keyboards, each of them in so deep that their stomachs ache for her and they cannot eat, cannot stop thinking about the bats, unlike her, who keeps writing, keeps the light on, keeps the chill at bay. “Fucking bats” she might say, often accompanied by a little piece of art or inspiration “Those bats won’t leave me alone today.”

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It might be today in Winnipeg when the air lightens and the stoplights swing again and the bats stop their torment. This might be the day when she will die, 53 years of living large, tucked under her Senior Angel wings, ready for her next assignment.