Kt0mic

For a few weeks now I’ve been thinking about that first fall day where it’s the right temperature for me to run the heat in my car in the morning. 

The smell always reminds me of fall 2019, crunching along the wet gravel driveway of the Schuylkill Center, brown leaves falling on my windshield. I was still in college then, and was planning to get the hell out of Philly after graduation, but life has continued to make me other plans. By my records this is either my sixth or seventh September 16th in Philly. The city just won’t let me go. 

Thinking about the smell of the heat and the exhaustion from a busy weekend I didn’t realize until I was on my way home that today was the first commute in a while where I didn’t think of this patient on an oncology study I run at work who died back in January. 

I spend a lot of commutes lately thinking about how I talk to patients the same way almost every time I see them, and I never tell them goodbye. I always assume it’s a “see you next time”, maybe a “thanks so much for your help” if I know they’re graduating into post treatment life. I wonder to myself if it would change anything for me to tell someone goodbye, if it were someone I knew I wouldn’t see again, like the older gay man who chose hospice right after assigning me Gertrude Stein books to read. 

At home, on the other end of my commute, there is a much anticipated item in my mailbox. 

Way back in summer of 2018 I stayed in a motel in Niagara falls while on a road trip. It had these old school room keys with the diamond shaped tags on them. For sentimental reasons I have spent years thinking about emailing them to ask if I could buy the tag for the room I stayed in, but could never recall what the room number was. 

This summer, while excavating the caverns of my life between 2017 and 2023, I found a photo of the key tag: room 17 at the Swiss Cottages motel in Niagara Falls. I ordered a reproduction from Etsy. 

Which probably feels like a trite little memory, considering you’re here for a story about my day in the city I can’t escape, and not for me to reminisce about other places. The room tag is kind of a big deal for me though, I’ve had my keys on the same $6 Hot Topic lanyard since 2014. 

This is a life transition to me. A passing of the torch from teenage me to this me, ten years older and ten years wilder, by way of an artifact from the life of my 20 year old self. It is a little bit of a saying goodbye to past selves. Lanyard me and even 20 year old me could never have pictured key tag me, and key tag me can’t do much for them except keep the parts of the heart we share safe from trouble. 

This departure does not make me the same kind of sad as when a patient dies, but I do feel put in my place by my being here yet again, another life transition in this city where I expected a transition out of, to somewhere new.  I think I’ll probably be here next September 16th too.

Kt0mic has lived in Philly since 2017 and likes to joke that if you live in Philly for 8+ years you’ll never get to leave. During the day they do cancer research, and in their free time they train as a circus artist, draw comics, sew, and baby their cat. You can find them @kt0mic on instagram, and their comics at ktomic.com