When daylight settles onto the back window. Right through the little crack, it tears itself apart into an array of color, splayed all over the hardwood floor. Outside is nice and lovely, winter grabbed its coat last week and signed off on the year. I haven't gone outside yet, I'm afraid that if I do, I may never want to come back in. What if the sensation of a new spring grips around my feet, pulling me toward the soil. What if we accidentally let ourselves fall so far into a new ground, that we begin to root and grow. I stay sitting at the table right beside my thoughts. Someone said something about change once, but my throat tickles every time I try to re-introduce myself. All this to say, I'm not afraid of the spring or what it might bring, or how sweet its fruit. I don't want to open the door, because I worry winter's still standing on the other side. Before I knew it, it would say, "I think I forgot something" and settle back in with us. A fresh sheet of snow clouds would blanket the daylight, and all its colors would fade. I shake off the chill. I guess I'll stay here, and look from inside out.

I often find this desire to rinse my lungs
under the tap and wash out all this debris
comes from that same feeling
of sitting on this carpet floor
and staring out into the open fields
thinking just how remarkably vast these voids are,
resembling the oceans
I would cross if it meant you would understand
how much I believe in everything you can do
against all the sand and dust
through these voids with cleared lungs
I'd come back with boats carrying
little ways to tell you about all the things
I believe you'll get through

Look back and see
just how remarkably vast
are these oceans you have crossed

I scrolled through my camera roll. Here’s a photo from five years ago, it’s still fresh in the mind. In it were canola fields and a glittering wind. I could still feel the breeze lingering on my fingertips. It was me and a camera I no longer own, my dad, who, in his impatience, still drove me out to a field, outside city lines, so that I could take a photo of the sunset, for a class. There are some simple things, simple pictures. No person, or place of any significance, but they sit on you, right on your chest. They weigh heavy. I wonder why. Background set. Now I will look and feel the touch of yesterday. Swallowing every color in the picture and letting its sounds ring in my ear. I wonder why. No person or place of significance, but it sits on me, right on my chest.

The brilliance of a clouded morning
is often overlooked in memory of the sun
I have been twirling these thoughts
between my fingers for far too long
yearning to reach out through broken windows
to immerse my hand in a dense morning fog
not knowing what will find them
and to take this ache in my bones
that tends to follow me home
rinse it under the falling rain
waiting for the sun, waiting for a new day
until morning comes in a quiet dream
and I wring out these bones
and yesterday's clothes
throwing them into laundry baskets
woven from this tired soul
and taking it all out to dry

To be there under the shade of lemon trees
where my fingers can dig into the terracotta earth
or to be here, where cold nips at my skin
in summer and the spring, little hints of winter
always alive and well, in every greeting and farewell
I am, as you can see, often divided
between oceans and places, sometimes in the same room
I am divided between corners and angles
where I can have the best view
where I can hear the most and feel the least
where I can see the perfect way the sun dances
into our space around noon,
when it hits the glass just right
and divides, into colors, into blooming flowers
no matter the season, no matter the year  
I divided, shuffle around as if I were a photographer
Searching for the angle where it hits your face,
coming to light
coming to life

To bind the books
I have written in a consciousness
about all the little things
that manage a heavy weight
the things I pour into my mouth
along with the endlessness
and swish it around like mouthwash
hoping to taste the peculiar flavour of wonder
enough to forget the pain from
dunking my hands into buckets of wood chips
and fishing around for the next steps
retracting my fingers from future mess
that are now covered in the challenge
of scarring and healing

Sometimes, it feels as if my arms
are reaching out to the sky
as gravity pulls everything I am
all the way down, beyond the ground
into those little spaces
inside my head
where I scold myself
and say everything is dead
where I run my hands
against jagged edges
looking for reasons to bleed
but even then, like two ropes
tight around my wrists
or better yet, two hands
with an endless grip
hope, or the glass dish on the top shelf
whatever it is, it pulls and pulls
till I flood, and those little spaces
vanish, momentarily