The Bilingual Ghost of Parc Lafontaine

True Story

The bench by the duck pond is haunted. Not by the dead: by the living who loved badly and left quietly.

Today’s specter is a woman in a trench coat, reading a German magazine folded wrong while her phone buzzes with unread texts. I know this ritual. The careful alignment of reading material, coffee, body; a performance of solitude so perfect it becomes an invitation.

“Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” I ask, my accent butchering the poetry.

She looks up. “Only when I’m homesick.”

We talk about Berlin winters, Montreal winters, the winter inside her marriage. Her husband thinks she’s at yoga. The trees think we’re lovers. The ducks know the truth: we’re just two people using the wrong language to say the same thing.

When she leaves, she forgets her scarf. I don’t chase her.

Ghosts always leave something behind.