Poet's Corner: “The Same City” by Terrance Hayes

by Mikaela Brewer ​for The 44 North

Senior Editor

“The Same City” by Terrance Hayes from Hip Logic. Copyright © by Terrance Hayes. Reprinted in Poetry with permission of Penguin Books, a division of The Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

A car in the rain at night

Note: This poem is not in the public domain! Please use the link above to read it.

Terrance Hayes is one of my favourite poets, with a long list of collections, awards, and fellowships which you can explore here. He is known to invent formal constraints, and often writes on themes of music, masculinity, popular culture, and race. His breathtaking poem, “The Same City,” is no different. 

The first thing you might notice about it is the shape of the poem, much like falling snow or a rain-streaked windshield—especially in the cold. The lineation could also mimic tassels or something woven, drawing attention to the layering of time and relationships in the poem. We feel the movement, which Hayes mentions in this quote, via Poetry, originally from a 2013 interview with Lauren Russell for Hot Metal Bridge:

“I’m chasing a kind of language that can be unburdened by people’s expectations. I think music is the primary model—how close can you get this language to be like music and communicate feeling at the base level in the same way a composition with no words communicates meaning? It might be impossible. Language is always burdened by thought. I’m just trying to get it so it can be like feeling.”

The movement of water, juice, breath, cables, mouths, electricity, radiowaves, bodies, traffic, and light are musical to begin with, but Hayes illuminates this by braiding time in: the present moment’s, Noah’s, Joseph’s, his when he met his girlfriend, his father’s as a younger man, and the infant’s biological father’s. And all of this life shares space to say that he—we—exist within all of these times. A stunning example is in the first half of the poem, where we almost feel like the speaker could be the infant’s brother—that he’s longing to be a father through this lens: “I’d get out now, / prove I can stand with him / in the cold, but he told me to stay / with the infant.” 

And then, we burrow further into the soil of time by visiting Noah and Joseph, setting up the multi-generational rescuing that happens in the second stanza—“But to rescue a soul is as close / as anyone comes to God”—by beginning again. This is especially resonant of Noah’s story, after the flood. In the case of this poem, the rain is still falling, and the rescue is ongoing with tendrils in every time portal Hayes has opened (and left open). In other words, he’s writing about love. 

The complexity of love is further enacted through the breathtaking enjambment Hayes uses. These lines stop me every time: “There is one thing I will remember / all my life. It is as small / & holy as the mouth / of an infant. It is speechless.” Read each line individually, without the others. Hayes doesn’t tell us what the ‘one thing’ is, either. I read it as ‘love’ while knowing how intentionally he leaves himself and us speechless. It’s so profound it’s unnamable. And all we can do is hold each other—our smallness, sacredness, and innocence—in the cold.

Thinking about the holiday season and the onset of winter, this poem is a tender though strong reminder to remember who we are because of who is or has been for us. “In 1974, this man met my mother / for the first time as I cried or slept / in the same city that holds us / tonight. If you ever tell my story, / say that’s the year I was born.” Look at the enjambment again, and how it’s shifted to capture a clear love, honouring, and admiration for a father, even though I’m positive it wasn’t a perfect relationship. The holidays remind us that perfect relationships don’t exist. We continue to love, give, and carry grief regardless. Whose name(s), in your life, could you substitute into this poem, perhaps changing a few details here and there? We are all born when someone else is, whether blood-related or not. And to tell them we feel this is one of the greatest gifts we can give during the loneliest time of the year. 

Before you go, I wanted to share a few other poems that are in conversation with this one: “Perhaps the World Ends Here” by Joy Harjo, “A New Law” by Greg Delanty, “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden, and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost. Please read them—I hope they offer you a hand or hug this winter. 

Writer’s Room | What Happens When You Call 211: Re-braiding Trust in Community Care

by Mikaela Brewer ​for The 44 North

Senior Editor

A dark forest at dusk

As the holidays approach, bringing with them colder weather, loneliness, and isolation for everyone—especially folks in need of mental health support or experiencing homelessness—the Toronto Community Crisis Service (TCCS) “provides free, confidential, in-person mental health supports city-wide from mobile crisis worker teams. TCCS supports Toronto residents 16 years of age or older and is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.” All you need to do is dial 211. “The service provides a non-police-led, community-based, client-focused, and trauma-informed response to mental health crisis calls and wellness checks.”

Please engage with the TCCS website for further resources. Please also view this illustration for examples of support offered by TCSS. This story was inspired by the profound impact TCSS has on the Toronto Community, with the hope that services like this will continue to expand across Canada. Across Ontario, please see these resources if you need non-police-led mental health & social services.

Please note: this short story discusses suicide attempts, ideation, loss, and grief. It may activate folks with similar lived experiences, beyond what feels safe to spend time with. Please engage with this story how/whenever it feels safe for you.

***

I turned eighteen last December 23rd, the same day Oscar Peterson died in 2007 and a week before my parents died in a house fire. It’s almost cruel that it wasn’t our house, mostly because I might have been home. Or maybe it feels premeditated that our home was still there for me to face.

My parents took the bus a few blocks over to feed a coworker’s cat, near where I was attending veterinary school classes that evening. They were going to meet me afterwards.

My parents were firefighters.

***

I’m sorry this is written between the lines of old sheet music. Jona gave it to me. I know it’s jazz music, but I’m not sure what song it is. It belonged to her partner. 

I heard Jona in the back office of the laundromat—where I live and work now—over the rhythmic thumping of the machines. Jona’s red nails clicked the keys of her archaic typewriter with the fierceness of a novel’s climax, so she tells me. Jona immigrated from Jamaica decades ago and owns this vintage laundromat. She hasn’t changed it at all—the walls are still half wood panelled and half mint blue wallpaper; the machines are still orange; and the tile still looks like a cracked checkerboard. The washers and dryers stare each other down with their frontload-door-eyes, forever at the beginning or ending of a game.

Jona’s old, warm, and not always friendly, but unfailingly kind. And a bit too impatient. The place has been wreathed in cedar boughs and frankincense taper candles since early November.  

“O’scary McCloud!” 

If you’re wondering, yes, that is in fact my name. I’ve grown to appreciate it. My parents loved Oscar Peterson, and I love him because they did. When I was born, and the nurse asked about my name, my mom said, “Oh, scary!” It just stuck—a fun take on Oscar and the best example of what my parents were like. Later, when I was a toddler, and my mom was braiding my hair, she always said she was braiding pathways for sadness to leave my brain—like special scars for my fear to escape. 

“How does your sadness escape, Mommy?”

“When Daddy and I put out fires, sweetheart. We help the hose with our tears.”

I’ve gone by Scar since. Jona’s just sort of formal, if you feel me? In the best way.

“Yes, Jona?” My voice rattled a bit—I was perched cross-legged on my favourite dryer in the back corner of the laundromat. 

“Did you check again?”

I smiled involuntarily. “Yes, Jona, it’s still coming. Supposed to start at 4:06 p.m.”

“It’s about damn time. I’ve been waiting for snow for a month!”

I laughed so she could hear it as a response, but it was hollow. I ran my thumbs over the harmonica in my lap, and watched the clothes and bedding spin in the washers and dryers. I’d stopped feeling the waves of sadness coming. Now, it just leaked. Unlike my parents, I didn’t have a hose to channel it with. Had they been keeping this fire of pain at bay my whole life? What about their own? My nose started to run, but I didn’t snuff it back up; the air was thick with cotton and dryer sheet fibres. And I hoped, maybe, like blood from a shocked wound, it wouldn’t stop. 

The laundromat was one of the few places that still took change without it being weird. I know that’s when I first fell in love with music—hearing the change jingle in my parents’ pockets when they tossed my small body in the air. I’ve felt small again since they died, like I could fit into those machines, barely, tumbling over on myself with nowhere to go, stuck behind a locked door I always have to pay to open, waiting for someone else’s cycle to finish. 

***

They say you need a lot of water to put out a fire. So I jumped. 

But last February’s water wasn’t cold enough, and the Humber bridge wasn’t high enough. The burn just seared, bone cold as I lay on the raw rocks, hoping my blood, too, would dry out. 

But the cops found me partially conscious. Cuffed me. Asked invasive questions. Someone had called, saying I looked suspicious. They locked me in a burning yellow room in the hospital, so bright with artificial light I felt like I was looking directly into the sun. Or another irreversible fire. The cops hovered outside the door, pacing to some militant beat. 

I’m not sure I consented to anything, if I’m honest. As a young Black man, I never would’ve called 911.    

And I won’t now. I won’t call anyone. 

There are 547 unread texts on my phone. All from my freshman year friends at veterinary school. I stopped opening them the day I left the program. I’m afraid even knowing what they’ve said is a burden for someone else to carry. 

I let my head fall back against the corner, crashing into this dead White guy Jona likes. I think she likes him because his last name is Frost and he wrote about snow a few times. I’m positive she’s the only Canadian immigrant who worships winter. But there’s this poem she has framed, behind my head right now. It’s beautiful, stamped into my brain, and I can’t bear to look at it.  

“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost

I do have a few miles to go, but I’ve decided only as far as Biidaasige Park, where I could be both inside and outside the city at once without being found.

***

The temperature drops fast this time of year. I wait for the blizzard to build my disguise before I slip into it.

At 4:10 p.m., I yell, “Jona! I’m going to get a coffee. I’ll be back—”

“Don’t be too long, I need you to empty the coins from the machines tonight! We’re closed tomorrow!” 

I didn’t answer, but I know she heard the front door chime like a bell tower as I left, ringing in the dark.

***

The park was desperately quiet—stopped. When I was a kid, any prolonged or encompassing quiet felt like noise. It felt misplaced. But now, I wanted it to absorb me. The snow kept falling as if God were pouring it. Wires, cables, and branches slumped under the weight. I lost the internet as I wound deeper into the woods, past picnic tables, ziplines, and buried plant spines. The snow hid whether I was on a trail or not, but I couldn’t see street lights anymore. I stopped when all I could smell was animal bodies and pine, and all I could taste was the metallic cold.

Jona had stitched an extra layer into my dad’s bunker jacket so I could wear it as a winter coat. I peeled it off and dropped it. In my t-shirt, I dropped my body beside it. 

My parents had taught me how to cry, but I’d forgotten. Now, I wondered if sitting under a tree in a blizzard was another way to put out a fire. 

At least it might be another way to drown. 

I fell asleep. 

***

My phone rang too soon and woke me. I couldn’t feel my fingers, and I don’t know how or why I answered. I was so cold. 

“Scar? Where are you?”

“Jona?” My voice crumpled like tissue paper. 

“Where are you?”

I was delirious, my brain churning the last thing I’d thought of—the poem. “It’s filling up fast. So lovely and dark and deep, Jona.”

“Scar, my dear, where are you? Can you get to my house?”

“There’s no house. I’m far from the village.” 

“Not that far. Hold on to that harmonica.”

“But I can’t keep my promise.” 

***

I wasn’t surprised that she hung up. I didn’t think anything of it. I didn’t think at all. I was so sleepy and somehow warm, my muscles fizzing. Honey light spilled across the woods. It hadn’t soaked through to me yet, but I could see it dripping in the air, dancing with the snow like golden ghosts. I was afraid of getting stuck to its strings—of getting pulled like a lasso, plucked like a guitar. My parents’ blonde wood guitar. 

Somewhere at the edge of the park, the Toronto Community Crisis Service (TCCS) dispatch team was afraid they wouldn’t find me in time. Jona had called 211. No police. 

“On the Trail” by Oscar Peterson trickled weakly from my harmonica. I couldn’t feel my mouth or my fingers. I closed my eyes. Let me be music. The last sense I was conscious of was my hearing. And my ear training—my judge of trust—was tuned. 

The last thing I heard was a disembodied voice, “Keep playing, honey! We hear you! We’re coming!” 

***

As I started to warm up, I felt two bodies sitting on either side of me in the back of a truck, ready with hot water and food. Warm clothes and blankets were layered across my shoulders, and a sleeping bag was pulled up to my torso. The two bodies came into view—two Black women with kind eyes. They asked, tenderly, if I’d like to be connected with Afrocentric support, a shelter bed, or crisis services. They outlined every available option for me. In this little cut out of warmth, amid one of the darkest nights of the year, I felt safe enough to tell them where I needed to be. 

The TCCS team drove me back to the laundromat, listening intently the whole way as I told them what had happened. They helped me climb the fire escape to my rented room, and told me they’d wait if I felt I still needed them. I thanked them and said I’d love a ride somewhere to be with a friend so I wouldn’t be alone. They smiled and waited for me to grab something I needed to bring with me. 

***

A few minutes later, I knocked on Jona’s front door. It was bedazzled in dollar-store lights and decorations that illuminated the front stoop in pools of colour, as if the night had broken apart into the rainbow it’s made of. I turned and waved to the TCCS team, who waved back as they drove away.

I’ll never forget the look of relief on Jona’s face when she opened the door. Cooking, cigarette, and fire smoke spilled out with her, filling the space between us like suspended snow, melted into steam. 

She grinned and said, shakily, “Well, thank you for stopping by my house, this snowy evening.”

I held out a cardboard storage box, filled with coins from the machines, and smiled. Surrounded by heat, I didn’t feel afraid—I didn’t feel the urge to put anything out. 

Jona hugged me and kissed my cheeks now stained with tears.

“Oh, my dear.” Jona’s eyes scanned me before she added, “Your hair. No sir. Not in such beautiful frost and snow.” 

I’d tied my hair into a large bun, now soaked and astray. 

“Would you let me do your braids?” 

I paused for a moment, but nodded. My heart remembered how to fight fires, and it had been a long time since I’d let my fear escape.

Letter from the Editor-in-Chief: Holding Multiple Truths

by Gillian Smith-Clark, ​for The 44 North

Editor in Chief

Pine boughs decorated with small yellow lights

As the year turns, we’re invited into a season that often arrives wrapped in a package of expectation: celebration, connection, spiritual renewal, reflection. Yet the holidays also hold multiple truths at once, and for many, the season arrives with more complexity than cheer—distance from family, uncertainty about the future, unresolved conflicts, and more questions about spirituality and religion than answers; alongside the not-so subtle pressure to reinvent ourselves on January 1st. This December/January issue of The 44 North looks at the holidays with honesty and curiosity, and joy and hope. Not because everything feels okay, but because to find joy and peace in the holiday season it is not only possible, but necessary, to hold multiple truths at once. To see the world as it is: in all its beautiful messiness. 

This issue, our team explores the realities that shape our well-being at this time of year. Our feature story by Abbigale Kernya examines what it means to spend the holidays away from home—whether by choice, circumstance, or necessity—and how distance reshapes belonging. Abbigale and Helena together take on the pressures of New Year’s resolutions and career planning, challenging the embedded assumption that success and happiness in life can be scheduled like a process, or a destination at which we eventually arrive. The latest Life Outside the Box podcast episode is a powerful and inspiring conversation with Cal Campos, focused on questioning the systems we’re in and having honest conversations about suicide.

We’re also excited to share this issue’s Artist Spotlight, featuring Extended Mic, a community-rooted platform showcasing diverse young creators pushing the boundaries of film and poetry. And in our Book Review, we take a closer look at John Green’s Everything Is Tuberculosis—a deeply human, vulnerable reflection on illness, interconnectedness, and what it means to care for one another in a fragile and inequitable world.

We are honoured to publish a powerful work by Rohit Doel, whose poem and essay on disability justice push us to listen more deeply, to expand our definition of community care. Our Poet’s Corner highlights Terrance Hayes’ “The Same City,” and Mikaela Brewer brings us into the world of social support with a short story about calling 211, asking what trust in community looks like when it’s tested. Plus, we offer a collaborative gift guide from our team—because hope and joy can also taste like a good meal, or arrive as a small, thoughtful gesture.

Lastly, we're excited to be offering our very first essay contest. If you're hoping to submit over the holidays before our January 6th deadline, check out the recording and resource packet from our writing workshop, here.

As we close out another year, we’re not chasing perfection. We’re choosing presence: with ourselves, with each other, and with the complicated realities shaping our world. Whether your holidays are joyful, heavy, chaotic, beautifully quiet, or even all those things at different points, we’re grateful to be there with you on your journey.

Here’s to truth, peace, and possibility!

— Gillian Smith-Clark

Editor in Chief, The 44 North Media