How lonesome the night

A photo taken from the sidewalk of an apartment complex at night with the lights on inside. A silhouette stands from a balcony in the top left room.

Words by Anjalica Solomon, Photos by Saumya Kamra, Illustrations by Emilija Vītols Harrison

Published Dec. 6, 2024, 8:39 p.m.

7:00 p.m.

The days are getting shorter.

My eyes are still tired from the night before. I've decided to go for a walk to wind down for the evening.

South Memorial Park is beautiful as the day turns — parents bring their kids to the playground, people play cricket in the field, crows fly across the sky and the day dims around us.

I walk to the willow trees and sit for a while before calling my best friend.

I complain, “I have a hard time being single, because I just want to be cuddled all the time.”

She’s one to keep it real with me.

“It’s because you don’t have a practice of being alone in your body — you don’t play sports, you don’t dance, so of course cuddling and sex are the only times you feel truly embodied.”

“Okay, you didn’t have to call me out like that!” I say, while imagining myself in another yoga class led by a problematic white woman or a dance class where I’m falling behind embarrassingly.

I watch the kids across the park chasing a soccer ball and the tops of the cedar trees shining golden as the sun sets.

I always feel less alone when I’m among my neighbours here.

8:00 p.m.

Shiela Ma calls me daily like the clockwork of her delicate vintage wristwatch.

I can hear in her voice she’s exhausted, recovering from a cold. At 83, her daily life is routine — she’s usually in bed early, she makes her last phone calls of the day, reads her Urdu bible and prays in a fierce whisper to God.

But today, she’s had a different kind of day. She’s just returned from a visit to see her sister, who lives in a nursing home, and to the gravesite of my grandfather. I can sense she’s had a day of dancing around mortality.

Shiela Ma’s way of resisting death is being close to the ones she loves. So every day, without fail, she dials the number of her brother in Toronto, her aunty in New York and her son in Singapore.

It’s her way of staying close, staying connected, staying alive.

9:00 p.m.

Before my former partner of five years moved out, this was the Netflix Hour. Almost certainly dark, it was a good time for it. At this hour, you can decide on a movie and still get to bed before midnight, or get a few episodes of a show in.

I’d put the kettle on, let it turn orange-red, wait for the steam to rise and brew chamomile petals for tea like an evening potion.

He’d queue up whatever we decided to watch. I’d ask to put my feet up on his lap and the TV’s glow would light up our faces in the darkness of our small but cozy living room.

We broke up and he moved out five months ago. I contemplated getting rid of the TV but I’ve made peace with it, knowing watching TV won't be quite the same without him.

Now, I cover the screen with a blanket and try to find something else to do.

10:00 p.m.

I stopped smoking weed a few months ago, realizing it was clouding up my dreams, slowing my reaction time.

But I still really like the smell of a bong toke. It reminds me of the evening ritual I used to have with my old roommate Elisha.

We’d sit out on the deck and rip the bong, sending big clouds of smoke up to the power lines as we debriefed the day and contemplated the nature of time once the cannabis started talking. How slippery, how incomprehensible, how endless the hours could be.

I haven’t seen Elisha in years. They moved back home in a hurry during the COVID-19 lockdown in the spring of 2020.

I kept our ritual alive for a while on my own in those early days of the pandemic. I’d walk through the neighbourhood all by myself with a small secret torch between my fingers, feeling the night’s cool breeze through the tall leafy trees on Elgin Street.

11:00 p.m.

I lay in bed —

tuck my pillow under my head just right.

Pull the blanket over my shoulder.

I lay in bed —

Wanting to be held.

This body wants to be rocked and cradled.

This body wants to be scooped and spooned.

What seeds will be planted here in the darkest parts of my soil?

This body of decaying flesh

wants to be touched, caressed.

This body, like an endless night

is hungry and ink-stained.

This body wants to be oiled with lavender’s scent

And steeped in salted epsom water.

This body, I remind myself,

is millions of tiny organisms

in the dark universe of my insides

turning like small galaxies.

I am never alone,

Always a We.

Midnight

That’s the hour Cinderella runs home, right? — clock strikes, carriage to pumpkin, ballgown to apron.

I used to go clubbing when I was in my early twenties and take five too many shots of tequila, looking for myself in the back of someone else’s throat with my tongue.

I still go out to dance with my friends these days. I take the oath of being the designated driver, put in my earplugs to drown out the invasive boom that pulses through the club. If I get home by midnight, it counts as a success.

1:00 a.m.

One is the loneliest number.

My ex messages me to say, “You are far from lonely.”

I put pictures of friends and the departed up on my wall so I can remember this. I talk to the photos of my ancestors, especially the one of my grandfather gleaming. Though his physical body is six feet under, I feel how alive his memory is in me.

“Hey Dadu Ji.”

He’s watching after me with that sparkle in his eye. And I hear him now, laughing and singing his nickname for me, “Oh mere gideruuuuuu!”

How can I ever be alone with these memories?