Littoral

Place: The corner seat next to the windows, Happy Goat Café & Brûlerie, Mile-End, Tiohtià:ke Date: 2026-10-16, 13:35 EDT Conditions: 9 °C, light drizzle. Zipped up coats, scarves in the wind, trees shifting from red to green to yellow to orange and back down the street.

In my desire to break routines recently, I’ve erred into restlessness. When I woke up, I wanted to get out and find a place to settle. I zoomed across buses and métro trains without intention and waited for the inspiration to find me. It didn’t. No place was good enough, or cozy enough, or a close enough walk through the rain, my small, shaking black umbrella covering my freshly braided hair. I wandered Sainte-Catherine, then Plaza Saint-Hubert between Jean-Talon and Beaubien, before hopping on a train back south to my favourite dumpling spot on de la Gauchetière for a solo lunch.

Sammi et Soupe is always busy, and today was no exception, though I showed up before it hit its peak. I got the same table I often do, pressed into a corner near the front. As always, I draped my coat over the chair and slid my backpack onto the wooden seat with a thud that was just a touch too loud, then settled in on the bench opposite. A cursory glance at the menu, but I know why I’m here. The juicy lamb and coriander xiao long bao—number 17—are in the acknowledgements of my dissertation, or might as well be. I always bring friends here who are new to the city or visiting, a little taste of my everyday life that represents this city well. It’s a bit out of the way, and small, and not everyone knows about it. Sometimes you have to wait outside on the pedestrianized stretch of de la Gauchetière until a table is ready. But goddamn, is it worth it.

I think I may be circling the way I have today because I’ve made some decisions about my place in the city recently. I had two applications due by yesterday, and I submitted both. Neither is here. A few months ago, I realized my body was trying to memorize this space before an inevitable departure, one it had been preparing for before there was even a direction. As of the past week, those directions are taking shape. And they’re pointing out. So I wander. I blend in like sheer curtains billowing in the wind, seeing where they might lead, if anywhere at all.

The windowed wall of this coffee shop is what brought me in. I was riding the bus aimlessly up Saint-Laurent from Chinatown when I saw it, rang to get off at Saint-Viateur, and trekked east under the rain. I settled in and got to writing.

But before long, the windows begin to fog up and it gets warmer. It gets harder to see through them, the neighbourhood now only barely visible through the O of HAPPY GOAT on the glass, like one of those tunnel shots from a movie. The illusion is quickly broken as a tour group walks past, followed in short order by a group of four Hasidic kids on scooters. I wipe a patch clear with my sleeve. The neighbourhood’s still there, ordinary and wet. I peer through the mist a while longer, sipping my latte with nowhere to be.