A Script for The Geometry of Leaving

This part of the city doesn’t have the curated history of the Exchange. This is where the past hasn't been sandblasted and repurposed for loft apartments. The ghost signs on Sargent Avenue are for bakeries run by families whose names I can’t pronounce, for delis that sold pickles out of a barrel, for little cinemas with sticky floors. It feels more honest, somehow. Less like a museum piece and more like a well-read book with a broken spine.

"It's different here," Leaf says, her voice lower than usual, more observant. "The ghosts are louder."

She's right. You can feel the layers of community. The signs are in different languages, some painted over others. English, Ukrainian, Portuguese. A timeline of immigration written in flaking paint. I wonder what it’s like to move across the world and build something here, to paint your name on a brick wall. And I wonder what it’s like for your kids, or their kids, to decide to leave it all behind.

My entire life has been lived within a thirty-kilometre radius of this spot. My past isn't a ghost sign; it’s the house I grew up in, the school I went to, the park where I broke my arm. It's all still here. Tangible. And I can't decide if that’s a comfort or a cage.

"Could you do it?" I ask, as we turn onto a residential street lined with small, neat houses with vegetable gardens in the front.

"Do what? Start a perogy empire?" Leaf asks.

"No. Stay. Could you just… pick a place and stay there? For good?"

She kicks at a loose piece of gravel on the sidewalk. "I don't know. I've never thought of my life in terms of 'for good'. I think of it in chapters. Maybe Winnipeg is a chapter. Maybe it’s a whole volume. But I can't imagine reading the same chapter over and over until the end of the book, you know?"

"But what if it's a really good chapter?" The question sounds defensive, even to me.

"Then you re-read it sometimes," she says gently. "You dog-ear the page. But you still have to see how the story ends. Don't you feel that? The pull of the next page?"

I feel the pull of a steady paycheque. I feel the pull of a life that doesn't involve a constant, low-grade panic about the future. But I do feel what she’s talking about. A low hum of discontent, a curiosity about what’s over the horizon. The two feelings are at war, constantly. Stay here, where it’s known, where my family is, where the history is mine. Or go, anywhere, somewhere new, and start with a blank wall.

The V-Formation

At the end of the street, the brick side-wall of a community centre has been turned into a canvas. The mural is massive, simple, and powerful. A flock of Canada geese, their wings spread, flying in a perfect V against a deep blue sky. They’re flying out of the frame, heading somewhere beyond the edge of the wall.

We just stand there and look at it. The artist captured the sense of movement, of purpose. You can almost hear the honking, the sound of a prairie autumn.

Geese are a Winnipeg cliché, but this doesn’t feel like one. It feels like a statement. A question.

"They always come back," I say. "They fly south, but they always come back here. This is home."

"But they have to leave to know that," Leaf counters. She doesn't look at me, just at the lead goose, its wings beating against the painted sky. "They wouldn't appreciate the summer if they didn't have to fight through the winter. Maybe home isn't a place you stay in. Maybe it's just the place you always return to."

Her logic is circular and perfect and it makes my head hurt. She turns to me, her expression uncharacteristically serious. She points a single finger at the mural.