Sitting down, my hand uncovered soft, wet grass under the thin layer of snow in High Park. The snow seeped into my skin. It was the center of the world, an axis point, and within this safe place my hands and legs became visible again. I rocked back and forth, aggressively humming an incomplete melody for a song in progress.

Every step I took, I was running face-first into uncertainties. And just when I found my footing, everything collapsed and ceased to make sense. Your surroundings became unrecognizable. Volatile. Following rules that you didn't understand, but everyone else did.

Here I could pretend I existed in a world that made sense. Snow fell from above, squirrels hunted for their buried acorns, and black-capped chickadees flitted about the black, damp tree branches before freezing temperatures swept into the city.

That being said, I should be screaming in pain. Literally. My hypersensitive nature hated sensory changes, and I'd left my jacket in the restaurant. But Nature's frigidity was the one change I could bear, regardless of whether I used my invisibility. Obviously I had deactivated it by now--not seeing your own feet while running led to a high chance of falling.

I'd stopped looking into the poetic implications after realizing it didn't make a good song. My lyrics didn't twist the truth, and no one wanted to listen to something that sounded inconsistent.

Just as I was mustering the courage to retrieve my jacket, footsteps trudged up behind me. My jacket fluttered onto my shoulders.

"You forgot it," said Monty. "When did you leave?"

That wasn't important, so I didn't answer. At this point I needed to rework my schedule to pay for this month's expenses. Since Monty was my room mate and we had agreed to be transparent about financial stuff, I used up the last of my energy to tell him this.

"That's what you're worried about?" he sighed. "It's fine. I have time to work it out with you later this week."

Sometimes I wished my emotions could diffuse to him and then he'd understand. They stayed buried, like water underneath ice.

—

We walked back to the restaurant's parking lot and got in my car and started to drive to the University of Toronto. The city planners designed its street grids back in 1787, and while I was grateful for its orderly grid network that corresponded with the cardinal directions, the lanes were narrow. During my first few months away from Mississauga, I had to relearn the rules of the road and the etiquette about street parking in front of businesses. Then there were the TTC street cars that operated in certain lanes and followed the metal groove marks. But thanks to the winter snap a couple days ago, the street car wires overhead were frozen solid.

We pulled over at the university. Snow lined the rectangular eaves of the St. George campus, its domed rooftop of the main building supported by cream-coloured pillars. A few students milled around the entrances, sharing coffee or kicking snow around. A guy wearing a white T-shirt walked out one of the doors and spotted us. I waved back. I didn't know Monty's boyfriend that well, but from what Monty told me, Joachim was in the media studies program at the University of Toronto. Apparently he also wasn't afraid of the cold.

Monty reached over into the backseat to grab his backpack and a rolled up poster board. From the insides, I glimpsed rows and rows of printed code. "Thanks for the ride, Tai. I'm busy today, but I'll see if I can find you some new places to do gigs."

I was grateful that Monty didn't push the subject of my discussion with James. But I wasn't completely okay with him picking a fight either. Before I could make up my mind on what to say, he got out of the car, stopped the car door from slamming at the last moment, gently shut it, and met up with Joachim on the building's steps. They went in together.

I leaned back in my seat, wondering what would have happened if I hadn't quit architecture school. University laid out the groundwork for its students; you chose a course and you went with it. It had kept me on track until I decided music was the real passion I wanted to pursue, not geography or urban landscaping. People said you weren't ever satisfied with anything though. The institutional setting blocked out the rest of the chaotic world--a luxury I didn't have at the moment.

—

Back at the apartment, I propped my guitar against the wall, threw my jacket on the sofa and flopped down. It surprised me how little Monty used his own apartment before he rented it out to me. For him this was a place to sleep. Now he only checked in during break weeks, if he'd forgotten some supplies or if he needed a breather from the world of academia.

The apartment gave me the quiet space I needed without making me feel like I was entirely alone. The living room had stashes of Monty's old video games, academic medals, and clutter that hinted at a busy student's life.

But if the living room was sloppy, then my bedroom looked like a tornado whipped through it. I spent the next hour collecting music sheets into folders and cleaning up the mess. "Check, check, check," I muttered, going over the instructions I'd typed for myself in my phone. In the end, I placed my guitar on the bed and sighed. It wasn't great, but at least I could see the corkboard of my favourite artists, the map of Toronto, my collection of paper city models, a photo of my siblings and parents, and Post-It notes reminding me to brush, take a walk, and go to the grocery store. I added a reminder to look for restaurant venues and budget for upcoming December, a task I dreaded.

On my nightstand was a lava lamp I had filled with clear glue and small 3D shapes. My little sister, Tienne, had the idea of adding confetti so now the lava lamp reflected sunlight threw shards of rainbow specks on the desk. She also painted the lamp's base in a lotus flower pattern, something I'd only agreed to because of how upset she was over my announcement of moving away from Mississauga.

Sitting on my bed, I held the lamp in my hands. I knew what it was like to be left alone unexpectedly, watching the person in the distance pursue their dreams. No one said how hard it'd be to walk that path.

It was the last days of November, I reminded myself. I still had my tutoring job at Kumon, and a few hours driving an Uber would earn enough money for rent, and then some. Or would it? I'd have to wait until Monty got back so we could figure that out together.

Monty didn't question it, but most people would think I was joking when I said I didn't know how to budget. At all. I'd never been explicitly taught it. Yet people thought that my mediocre academic grades in math was proof against my own words.

No matter how much I convinced myself to focus on more worthwhile things, the events played in my mind like a broken record. Had I misread the manager's intentions? Surely he was a kind person. Then why did he not tell me this as soon as possible? Was there a clue somewhere that I'd missed? Even Monty had that unsurprised look on his face, like he understood something I didn't.

I'd been dismissed from potential gigs before thanks to my social blunders, but now it seemed like my music was an issue. Not its content, but its consistency. But consistency was crucial for start-ups like me to create a public image. Or was consistency my problem, where I wanted the security of playing music at a place without worrying about adjusting to a new set of relationships, locations, and schedules?

It'd be wrong to call it a problem. I spelled out my requests, but when an important date neared, they looked at me like, "You actually meant what you said?"

I needed to find a balance between doing what was possible for me and making sure others only saw what I could bring to the table. I'd prove that music was my stage to own.

My phone buzzed. Nora's icon--a picture of her pet cat, Meabh--lit up the screen. The background pulsed with colour.

I met Nora during the summer in Aurora, up north of Toronto. Our relationship had a rocky start. Each phone call filled me with anxiety, because I never knew if I was saying the right things, but Nora was definitely calling me more often after our misunderstanding.

We'd agreed upon our relationship boundaries, but still. It was a battle when she preferred talking and I preferred texting. We were a couple who traded playlists instead of gifts, artwork that displayed our feelings instead of cuddling. Her synthpop playlists helped cheer me up.

TAI: Bad day.

NORA: Oh I'm sorry to hear that. What happened?

NORA: Have you written any new songs?

I turned off my phone and retreated under the blankets, wanting to fast-forward time to a better day. Just thinking about talking sapped the energy in my bones. It was better for me to talk when I had the stamina to, and when this happened, Nora would type up a well thought-out paragraph for me to read the next day. Both of us were problem-solvers; she might have some insight for what I could do.

As I curled up in bed, listening to her synthpop playlist, I kept looking at the photo of my family. Everyone was smiling slightly off from the camera at an unspecified point in the distance. Were they seeing my future?

I hoped so. I really hoped so.