At first there are just a dozen of us. Strangers who’d heard the news. Many of us didn’t know Oliver personally. The newspapers said he was 26 years old, whip smart, about to start med school. Bright eyed and handsome, in a small-town kind of way. We could’ve been friends with him, we thought. We loved him in a way that only strangers can, through our individual imaginations. Maybe some of us had seen him on the patio at the Second Cup. Maybe we’d danced beside him at Fly. Maybe we’d even kissed him years before, fleetingly, in a midnight disco haze.

Have you ever missed someone you’ve never met?

Soon, we swell. Fifty to one hundred to more than we can count. Most of us wear black, but a few arrive in the clothes we wore to work. One of us, a barista, has hair that smells of coffee and baked cinnamon. Another brought his dog. Another brought her three-month-old baby, bjorned to her breast like a marsupial.

A woman in a yellow puffer jacket hands out white roses, still studded in thorns. We hold them gently to avoid cuts. Others pass around votive candles stabbed through plastic cups to catch the wax. Dusk glows pink and tangerine in the village windows, giving them the illusion of life. Lots of people like to hate this city as a pastime, especially those who’ve never been here, but we find beauty in the plainest places. It’s part of what we love about each other, our aptitude for silver linings.

Do you know what it’s like to start a new life?

The Facebook event mentioned silence, so we speak in mimed gestures. Once the sun sets, we light our candles and walk south. The roll of footfalls on the empty street is like a passing storm, ready to burst.

We know the route and why we’re taking it. Oliver had been on his way home after his sister’s birthday. They were best friends. He didn’t have far to go, and besides, he’d done this walk countless times before. It was after midnight, two weeks ago. Early October. Crisp and quiet, the perfect time to clear your head. We imagine what he might’ve been thinking. Replaying conversations from the party. Making plans for the weekend. Possibly even visualizing his lavish wedding-to-be—the playlist, the table arrangements, the lilies. We imagine his fiancé opening the door the next morning to two police officers. We try to picture what comes next, but imagination can only take you so far.

A police officer on a silver bicycle guides us through the streets. A whistle dangles from his neck, and he blows twice to freeze traffic. We know his presence has less to do with courtesy and more to do with municipal code. Shortly after Oliver’s death, investigators assigned to his case said there was no evidence of a hate crime. We wonder how it’s possible to make statements like this without arrests or suspects or witnesses. We’ve cultivated a healthy skepticism of the authorities over the years. We remember the raids, the whip of metal batons, inky bruises blossoming on bare skin. Some of us lost our jobs and pensions for the crime of falling in love. Years from now, when lookalikes start disappearing from our streets, the police will tell us to stop spreading rumours, to stop posting misleading pamphlets on city property, that this is all just a terrible, terrible coincidence. We will not believe them, not out of spite or anger, but for the simple fact that they do not know us. We’ve learned to distance ourselves from certain men, the kind that lean on tired assumptions and call this logic. Obviously they’re afraid of us, but maybe—going out on a limb here—they’re just a touch dim.

Have you ever been so misunderstood it could kill you?

We walk towards the lake, but it’s too cold to smell the water. If you listen closely, you can hear the wax dripping into our cups. Our silence stops traffic, redirects streetcars, and probably makes at least a few people late to dinner.

Some of us carry banners that read “Take back the streets.” Some carry flags. When the baby cries, it’s like a cellar door creaking open. There is a twinge of ancient in the air, as if we are trying to cast a spell for Oliver. If magic was real, we’d bring him back. Instead we settle for something more ordinary: the vapours of him, swirling around us like a kite on a string.

Do you believe in ghosts? Because we have far too many.

As we get closer, our mood shifts. You can tell by the quality of our silence. Reverence is dewy eyes, hunched shoulders, lips between teeth. But rage is pulsing jaws, burning ears, downward stares. Our thoughts move from him to them. Unlike Oliver, they are impossible to imagine. Maybe this is because imagination requires empathy. To us, they are a vague nothingness. Smoke spilling from a pit. Police only released a blurry picture of their black SUV and asked the public to come forward if they recognized the vehicle, which is almost funny when you think about it. How can you recognize a static smudge on a screen? Those of us who’ve dealt more closely with the justice system know that old cliche is true: if you’re not laughing, you’re crying.

Don’t you think it’s funny how our minds can make things funny when they’re not really funny at all?

We turn west and bend like an elbow. Those of us in the front can now make out our destination. A patch of blank, grey road surrounded by blank, grey towers. Hardly a landmark. In the daytime, some of us work here. We admit that it’s bleak and soulless, that the outside matches the inside, and we try to blend in as best we can. We’re professional blenders. We modify our clothes, our voices, our opinions, but only to the minimum degree necessary. We know this is a weirdly temporary place, bustling in the day and eerie at night. How can it be that a well-lit intersection in the heart of the country’s biggest city had no idling cabs, no late-night runners, no wandering insomniacs, no overnight security guards? We ask these questions, but the answer is a shrug. Police are combing through all relevant evidence, please be in touch if you have any information. Not that anyone is to blame for a lack. Still, some of us can’t help it.

Then we remember that photo of Oliver’s face. The one on the front page. The unstoppable smile of someone who feels every piece of their life finally falling into place. A part of us can’t help but feel an abstract guilt. For not knowing Oliver personally, as if our hypothetical connection could’ve had the potential to change everything. Grief can be leaky.

Finally we stop. We’re here. We arrange ourselves in a circle, leaving a blank space in the middle. We become what black holes look like: energy swirled around an infinite emptiness. A gravity so intense it devours every last speck of light. Scientists call the boundary around the mouth of a black hole the event horizon, and this is where we place our photographs, our roses, our melted candles. A pastor removes his mittens and lays his bare hands on the cold concrete, whispering the Lord’s prayer. On Earth as it is in heaven. We fill the emptiness with everything we have, but ultimately all we have is a thousand different versions of love.

Is love enough? Yes and no.

A woman with her hair in braids begins to sing a song we all know. One at a time, we join her, even those of us who can’t quite carry a tune. We sing of blindness and snares and ten thousand years. We sing of wretches like us and a God who will save us. Some of us are believers. Faith taught us how to forgive, which has become our superpower. Our necks are stiff from turning the other cheek. We build bridges and put out fires but rarely get the credit we deserve when panels of well-dressed men and women on television speak of landmark legal victories and a growing culture of tolerance.

But others among us, despite our best efforts, cannot bring ourselves to believe. We’ve tried, but this trying requires too much contortion. We can’t forget what others have said about us in the name of faith. We remember the words they used at start of the plague. Some wounds are personal and some are shared, and we miss what it felt like before we were tending to our cuts. This is why our joy never ceases to feel radical, if not a little ridiculous, like a disco in the morgue.

The song repeats once and then ends. Those who’ve cried use our coat sleeves to wipe our cheeks dry. Sadness has washed over us, and the tide is now moving back out to sea. We are flotsam, tumbled and waterlogged, strewn about.

Slowly we recognize each other. We say hello, ask about each other’s jobs, our girlfriends and boyfriends and dogs and cats. We gossip. A few of us deal with the intensity by making jokes, and it doesn’t take long for the first of us to laugh—high and bright and spinning. With this, the light shifts and a balance returns, wobbly but there.

For the most part, we do not know each other by name. We have a vague sense of one another, from cheap bars and dog parks and hungover brunches. The funny this is, we do not need to be intimately known. We know, push come to shove, we can rely on each other. It’s a gift, the radar we’ve developed, to sense each other in crowds of strangers. It helps us to connect, to crush, to fall in love. But it also serves as a means of protection—a safety net, anonymous and free floating. Living here, we know one of us is never far away, which makes it hard to leave. Life without the safety net scares us. Some of us dream of green pastures and spotted cows and honey sold in glass jars from the shoulder of the highway, and we let ourselves create a prospective self out there, up past the Green Belt, an imagined future that feels equal parts dull and thrilling but all the while impossible.                                                     

We hear the horns and recognize where we are—downtown, blocking city traffic—and we shuffle over to the sidewalk. Some of us make plans to grab a drink. Others head south and hop on the subway. Many of us stay back and linger, holding hands, remarking on our size, how many of us came out despite the cold. But really, we’re not surprised. We understand the power of showing up.

Have you ever been surrounded by strangers who love you back?

We thin out, dwindling from to one hundred to fifty to twelve. Eventually just one person, a young woman, is left. She picks up everything left behind. The photographs, the roses, the melted nubs of candles. It all goes in a yellow No Frills bag. She refuses to let anything end up in the trash. She understands that all of this is precious.

Gradually we make our way home. It’s an odd sensation to be alone in our apartments and houses and draughty dormitories again. We’ve changed, but it’s hard to say exactly how. We rest our heads on our pillows and think of a beautiful man most of us never knew. We can’t promise to build a world that will save him. We know that’s impossible. All we can do is conjure another future, a better one, and pray that one day our spell will work.

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