Draw me in like curtains,
                   sheen whites,
holding onto
                   morning lights.
Legs asleep,
                  minds dreaming.
Your eyes are
                   forever reading
crispy morning
                     Toronto Stars.
Just a Sunday moment
                    fleeting?
Or someday a memory,
                    but,
                    i am
                    only
                    ever
            ­        dreaming.

We belong in this time
of wonder and questioning,
calling strangers home,
and dripping wax seals
on unsent DM's to Diplo.
My algorithm is broken
because I felt safe with you,
after we swam naked in the
Mediterranean Sea at 3AM,
and gave up on planning.
We belong to the sweaty beats
at Electric Island, and the
voices that tell us to slow down.
My voice is broken but bold,
carrying you to solutions
that look like truths.
We belong to no one
but ourselves.

The rigid grey hills in-
between his shy pale arms
cheer with conviction.
As he reminds me of
how it feels to be.

Autumn’s fog dances over
the lake so calm it chimes,
as I sip its reflection,
and with it,
his small half-smiles.

I write every night
on the dark cedar floors.
Tumbling in old terry sheets.
Falling in and out of,
waves of grandeur.

I will always remember the curve of streambank drive. The way the definitive black Pontiac would make any neighbour incapable of getting home. Always sitting there blocking the entrance of my street. Swerving into oncoming traffic was a chore, but something about it made you feel alive.
Charlotte and Hannah Tarr's house was 37 and a half steps from Saginaw. Their driveway was winding and inviting to my gaze. I was never far. I remember when I ran away from home at 4am on an unusual Sunday morning impulse. I spent a whole hour throwing on my warmest red fleece sweater and packing a backpack full of Dunkaroo's and fuzzy childish socks. I went out the back creeky tin door from my basement, and made my way.
Charlotte was asleep, and her blinds were drawn. I spent another hour tapping light enough on the glass to wake her and not her dad Bruce. She never woke up.
I ended up walking through the crisp morning to Woodeden park. It was only 5minutes from me, but I knew it could be a dangerous venture. As I walked slowly and quietly down the street, I had passing strangers on runs question why a small little girl might be up at 5am:
"Is there anything I can do for you sweetie? Are you lost?"
"I'm okay thanks", and I ran. Just like that my attempt to prove a point to my parents was over. I ran all the way back home.
My mom asked how I got up so early and I told her I was outside testing the weather.
"It's cold Laura. I could have told you that."
"Sorry."
"Go get ready for church. DigaDiga is going to be over any minute."
DigaDiga is my grandpa. He smells like Nutella and has a button nose. He's not quick like he used to be with my 20 year old brothers, but he chases me around and yells DigaDiga until I lose a shoe. He's the only person I like.
"Is everything okay Laura?"
"I'm okay thanks."

This retrograde is always
sentimental radio silence.
Risings of the cresent moon,
shining off the suns old memory.
We have been reflections
of fires consequently burnt out,
long before we could grasp -
Orbs of celestial comprehension,
just falling short of brilliance.

He outgrew me like a pair of jeans. Spun too long in the wash on high, left running hot and sunken in. I am loud and my jeans a gentle blue. Vibrant orange t-shirts don't go with dull blue jeans. My lips are blue too, thanks to ignoring my mom's eager growl to wear more layers on Toronto's lasting cold advisory days.
"Laura you better be wearing that scarf I bought you", she says sternly shaking a grey wool scarf in my face. A toddler to a raddle. I never liked the itch of wool scarves anyways, they always make my hair turn up and out of my head. Waving hello to passing strangers untamed.
He took his time that day to notice each and every hair, as we walked along the quiet Trinity Bellwoods area. Pristine and clean red-brick townhomes guide the sharp sidewalk, keeping you on Queen St. for hours, whether you liked it or not. The whole morning, he kept reaching out to pull my tall hairs and inspect its frilled mechanics with close sharp eyes. Feet pushing wildly into the ground, pulling my head to his forearm on the street side, "Your hair looks like it's trying to escape". He says while stepping across the moldy Toronto ***** cracks. I retort away, my hair snapping back up and out, "Yeah, I know my hair's prone to static, it's this ******* scarf, just don't be a **** about it". He pushes me away and adjusts his new black leather boots. Some pre-authenticated Doc's bought at Eatons.
I never seem to listen to the washing labels on things. They say, "wash with like-colours in cold", but I don't own a **** like-colour. I admire a hot wash that makes denim skin-tight like a millennial scuba suit. Britney and Justin's denim-on-denim-on denim power move from 2001 reincarnated - I just don't have that kinda confidence.
The grass today seems confident. Luscious and green, a Pleasantville with White Teeth Teens. That's a good Lorde song. If he heard it today he'd remember the line, "Their studying business, I study the floor", because it's authentic and mundane, like most conversations go.
I've stared at a few floors. One word too many escaping in process, running from my thick lips that tear around corners and cliché's like a marathon. My jeans too, with one stitch too many, now past a recovery point. I kept kneeling down on the wet pavement trying to gather myself and always tear a new one.
One time I took him to the Port Credit Busker fest in 2012 and him and I listened to Vampire Weekend on the paved stone walls that guide the walkways off Lake Ontario. "I like them their cool", his voice affirming into the moist summer winds. We continue on watching the street magicians yelling from afar with tall black caps disappearing behind fixed red velvet curtains that pull apart in good beats. We finally find a place to sit and relax, I lean back to hear the ****** of Obvious Bicycle as the magician finally pulls his curtain.  Grabs my **** firmly. His thick jeans dragging against the rigid pavement to catch his prey. It left a mark.
I stand the next morning on the same shore but with new jeans, before my early soccer classes I teach. Just kneeling to allow the waves to break apart in my hands and push away, my cleats stinging my cuts and molding over. I wait as if I expect some varied response in this set.
But here it is, plain water. Nothing extraordinary. Here I am with plain jeans and another grass stain. Or maybe, another layer of lint in his pocket. Lost from a tissue forgotten in the wash when your too busy enjoying the better parts of life. The velvet curtains, the climactic choruses. I stare at the floor.

To wake up as your twirled self,
not a single fragrance wrong,
making silence of your closed world.
Never questioning clarity.
To me that is most scary,
because I have never fit in skin,
I ate the feedings in one sitting.
Lived to tell my fractured beginnings.
To sing love ballads at a Wake,
wearing the ripped tights from the third date,
and you are what you take,
but I’m just learning to ask.

the grass is a trap for us both here
keeping us apart by sheer centimetres
each blade guarding our arms lightly
trusting our legs lying there quiet

you play me your favourite soft rock bands
i pretend to listen and to care more than myself
but all i know is your soft smirk lines
and that you can’t keep your blues off me

tell me about your “super” computers
and how all my poetry is just 1, 0, and maybes
and i’ve never believed in the binaries
or doing work for someone else

so when i take off your cut off jeans
and you ride your hands up my black cherry dress
do you feel like your operating machinery
or is it just another maybe?

If we fell together tumbling
for every fist shattered.
Punching holes in ourselves
for every season changed.

We would miss all the breadth
of our own paths travelled.
Tearing apart at the new loves
we didn’t know we made.

When digging our holes
on a strangers grave.

At twelve I am the storm.
The three second delay
between thunder and lightening -
never really knowing which is closer.

At one I am the moon.
Witness to slow decaying stars
already laid to rest -
shining still and silently.

At two I am the winds.
Hallowing grey movements
sliding between each other -
never going the right direction.

At three I am the trees.
Dancing petals of soft memory,
delicate to gravel, food for though -
and home to lonely sleeping crows.

At four I am the heat.
Sticking to skins and foreheads,
rising above the sidewalks -
causing mirages to those too far.

At five I am the sun.
Giving light for the moons glow,
giving food for the trees growth,
warming up the earth - for you?

If I can learn the way
to walk Belvedere, and
make one-way’s, wrong ways,
your rock t-shirt my best pillow,
a cats relentless meow
a joyous morning alarm.
Than I can find a way to
sleep soundly beside you,
hold hands without sweating,
and park under a sap-less tree.
Ones that shade our backyard dinners,
the fish and fudge left uneaten
and the lies left unlearned.

Asphalte - nothing more sinister
than black wicks and
melted British Columbia coniferous'

Beige pavement - sleeping legs,
the hum of traffic, and
grey-toned depressions

Chalked up - memories,
scrawled out on blanks,
video tapes, and Air Max 97's

always thinking about you,
half way across the world
holding my own two hands
waiting for the plane
thinking how we’d pulse them,
as in, “love you”, fingers rough,
you’d make me laugh,
through all the delayed flights and
Sofia gossip, we’d eat good cheese,
hold onto memories with less resent,
because everything’s simple when
all i do is hold onto you, the love i left,
distance makes the heart grow and i’m
half way across the world,
just thinking about it.

lying in your confidence,

and my confidential feelings.

eating up inches of my mind,
the things we say at midnight -
toxic ideas about what love looks like.
please don’t remember me for this,
clinging to ideas of what could be,
romanticizing the way you look idly.
i’ve never been the easy choice
guiding my madness to digest slowly,
and i know i’m off putting in a beautiful way.
the same way tornados look cool as hell
from the comforts of your cement block.
there wouldn’t be a siren loud enough,
to make you see me more.

I wish I didn't care so profoundly for people,
for the hair curls and the leftover Crest Strips.
Or the unnoticeable stack of old Metro Passes
piling over your Hilary Clinton autobiography.

I wish I could tell myself to be more numb,
like I had been for the past year and a half.
Listening to my own advice and shaking voice,
instead of making time I don't have left.

I wish I could be more sure of my rocking self.
Tell you my sweet limited edition offerings,
things I didn't have three years ago.
Version one me, smaller and idealistic.

I wish I didn't come with so much precaution tape,
all the needs of someone too ****** up.
A series of trauma responses and consequential ideation,
more tickets on the dash than the cost of the car.

Why bother paying?

i sit alone all night and watch as the
cars cross the bridge in rhythmic cycles,
i’m bundled on my couch under layers
of paperwork and half a medium pizza,
planning a summer trip in February.
i watch 4 episodes of the Walking Dead,
write a masters paper on Neoliberalism,
and call my mom to celebrate survival.
i live another week as a mid 20 something
who owns a Yeti cooler, a bright pink vape,
and a terrible personality to match.
is this what growing up looks like? i wonder.
i FaceTime my friend who bought a house,
another who lost a bet shaving his head for fun
and it is… to be this old and this young,
because either your friends are getting married,
or they’re sleeping with a CTV actor named Donald.
i don’t think there’s a point where this adds up,
the wave of maturity dances on our sore backs,
now it’s paying property taxes, it separates recycling,
goes to bed at 10:30pm sharp with a longer hangover,
meal preps for 7 days, only to order Uber Eats again.
you told me once there wasn’t a textbook for all this -
so I guess like my poems i just have to wing it.

your the one to blame,
for my frontal lobe spinning,
for the jack of trades tipping
the waitress twenty percent

to show me you are solid
teaching me boundaries
i sit patient and still
for the drawing of cards

He’s a tall live wire,
in a small blue pool
of my sweet subtle charities.
Picking sacred cherries
near the goals we
once made together.

How does Mount Fuji
keep her fire beneath?
Green satan kimono
lace, and overlined lips.
He’s got soft knuckles
but red palms.

If you plant a shot
you may shoot
my bowing deer.
Osaka’s shrines
sing of the blue eyed
souls they keep hidden too.

Finders of lost artifacts
lost in battles of the heart.
I haven’t cared in
a retrograde.
But I wish I could blow too,
like Fuji at a whistle.

Our jacaranda tree waves
with eastern movements,
and fast September shifts.

Teaching my temples
to hold on for moments -
months of abrupt melancholies
and state-less depressions.

Pouring worser shades on
brighter faster mornings.
I find my pieces in what I’ve known

All along -
an unhinged gate
to a fortress of starving pansies
overgrown and unloved.

I wish I could love
in the same tender kisses
that I loved then.
These pink Sunday skies,
and your red gym shorts
too long.

I wish I could smile
through the same blonde roasts,
same blue water creases,
but I can only accept
blue mornings before work
and his undone hairs.

I wish I could give
and receive.
In the same sweet
voices and hold you
like I wanted you.
I don't want you.

I wish I could lie.
I wish I could talk to you
like an old friend.
Give you a hug,
as if it was a simple
greeting.

I wish I could know you.
But I can't.
I never could.
It's never that simple

Is it?

Head torn against itchy familiar grasslands, I lie in a field of decaying cow ****. Sixty years ago, Great Uncle Adolf owned upwards of 8 large cows that would roam on the endless back green property of our cottage in the Kawartha Lakes. Hazy recollections from distant Easter's tells me at least three must have died eventually due to a heatwave in the early 90's. Their skulls sitting in the back ***** overgrown pond for a time, sweet yellow daffodils and sharp wild strawberry's framing it into place. When my brothers found the skulls, they spent an afternoon sulking and moping out of character on the rocky shoreline of Balsam Lake. They aimed their ruthless rocks at stinky dead catfish floating peacefully, throwing for every pang of 12-year-old pain they felt towards the somber history. When I found out, I must have just eaten my Lindt bunny and shrugged unimpressed, but my mom would have said I cried.
I was young back then, but now that I'm a full-fledged adult, I sympathize with the greens for enduring endless winters and **** storms that I haven't. My cottage has been taunted but never shaken by the continuous tornado warnings that curse the northern lakes, but she aged steadily in spite. Waves of modernism guiding her burgundy wood panels. Air conditioning, flat screens, and the down feather pillows my grandma collected and sewn for each sunken crisp bedframe before me, replaced by industrialized cold artificial fluff from Ikea. Now that I think about it, I didn't really mind breaking my neck. This cottage lacks truth, but gains in history, my favourite place on planet earth, all greens, blues, and natural floral arrangements that put the edible ones to shame.
There's dirt and mud here too but I always choose to be blissfully ignorant. If I ever ask my mum about the shambled green roofed tin cottage on the corner of the always pebbled School and Omega Roads, and their Jesus warning signs I get kissed lips and back glares. There's more to this old country town than they put on. There's a story waiting here.
Right now, I feel it's roots on the phone with you Jordan. Because you only remind me of my grandpa when I'm here, his tall slender frame, strong jaw and warm charm that makes old women gawk and causing shrill laughter in the presence of ripe anger. He didn't let my mom wear nail polish cause it was for ******, guess I'm from a line of ****** huh?
This one time at Christian camp they tried to teach me to meditate by picturing Jesus with me in my favourite place. It was so weird seeing Jesus sitting perched in this tall birch tree, looking at me, looking at the old broken down barn that waits for me to smile back. The sky orange, celestial, fiery. I sort of wish you were here and not my mental perception of Jesus, he sort of freaks me out. But in this open field where you could walk 8 miles in any direction and find grass and only grass. Sun and only sun. Trees and mostly trees, sometimes poison ivy too if you took the wrong turns. I am surely free.
I know all the turns with you too. But that's only because I'd done them over and over again, and still I'll face a dead end. I'm not sure we can solve each other like my Papa's Sunday morning crosswords, we're more like his raspberry jam with burnt toast. But I do know that I want to have more greens like the ones in this field. Build more pillows, farms, and people. I want more pastel pinks from the cheeks left kissed in the fresh mornings on Lake Ontario where our teen selves and adult selves get caught up in some interlope of history that isn't supposed to happen. Another Kate and Leopold situation, a timeless love analogy gone too long.
Today in this field it is peaceful, when the tall grass blows with steady patient wind, it feels like your soft lips. When the birds chirp annoyingly overhead, and I hear my brothers laughing loudly from the brown rusted dock, it feels like your aged smile.
I think Monet got it right when he said, "I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers", because without you I couldn't paint these words all day.

Are you scared of the way
I let my lips curl?
That I think pleasantries avoid
responsibilities
to be more uncomfortable.
Stumbling into the unforgiving
fortress
of your worries.
I have had none.

My optimism
is not a scam
calling from Burundi.
It, at least, leaves a message.

Making mosts out of somes,
I have tried to find answers,
conclusions,
and a hypothesis worth exploring.

But maybe sometimes
we just don’t deserve one.
So we get 10.

We lay in it. A king?
A queen? The daffodils,
a side table. Etching white lines
on your dark skin. Cashmere.
Clouds are pillows. Moss is fabric softener.
I am tumbling out of my - drawers
are thick blades of grass.
You think trees are equations.
Masterful and wise. I think they are god,
pure and solved. When I was born,
they planted me firmly. You plant a kiss,
the wind brushes, my cheeks are red -
You smell like apple crisp.

I'll always remember summer,
from the comfort of my winter solstice.

Skin fibres trace across us burning,
and all I can do is smirk at your shivers.
You know I’m an expert at *** and ex’s?
That’s why you find them in eachother.
Trained six years, broke three hearts.
Crossed a few seas and brown eyes
to find yours staring lonely in depths.
So ******* blue and yet so much softer -
would you ever hurt me like they do?
I can find all your secret soft spots too,
map the space our lips drew out.
Across Royal York to Jane? No Runnymede - where we ran to our bakery’s.
Where you loved me plainly,
if you think I didn’t know then here’s how:
I can see it in between takes, the ttc stops,
between breaths your forgetting to draw.
Like our map we are objectively real.
And you think I don’t see past you,
with a past like mine?

To protect your laugh,
sacred gleaming subtleties.
Your pink flushed cheeks,
with dots too often observed.

The innocence of turquoise walls,
where do your bones lie?
Past reminiscent of a 1gb USB -
my closet is stuffed and cracked open,
their mixtapes in alphabetical order.

To protect your honour,
softly sharing my heavyweights.
Your pink flushed lips,
with softness never overlooked.

i'm not good at math, approximations,
don't like uneven numbers, cos sins, whats right?
your star sign is the worst, sometimes you too,
other times i am complete, prime, whole,
i'm not good at relationships, only staying,
don't like even tempers as bandaid approaches,
your picking up your skeletons in the closet -
other times i am cleaning up the bones and dust,
i'm not good at goodbyes, only apertures,
don't like to leave things closed, sometimes you are,
other times i am warm, safe, sanctioned,
don't like to be the entirety of a set, that you deem null

Arms have swallowed me whole,
caught me on guard again.
After being lost in myself
you hold more doors open
to options of optimism
or Tuesday work breaks.
I am practically calculated,
disorder on draft,
overflowing with grandeur
and pity projects.
I am not gifted nor humble,
but if your parents will like me more
I have a LinkedIn to match.

I want your sweet turpintine musks,
and a sunny Sunday in Augusts ambers.

Glaring at identical indigo’s,
sitting in cognitio cognitions.

I want sharp shooter pupils,
diving for overthought opportunity.

Keeping my time full,
and my heart fuller.
Grass greener, taste sweeter.
Summer sambas and
shining webs of old pleasures.
I have taken strangers dancing,
and met the suns eternal wave.
Taking on a new me -
high risk, high reward,
and everything to gain.

my bags covered the hallways, and i
took the shower curtain, not the memories,
like when you left me to go party in January,
dissembled us and lost the allan key -
left the birthday cards in the junk drawer,
where you can find me - discarded dust bunny,
sat on the balcony, and cried about it…again,
then remembered when you yelled at me,
made me feel smaller than a strawberry -
shortcake never sweet enough to make you see,
recipes and ikea instructions won't fix us, so,
you left me, thinking i should never get close
to anyone, ever, talking in my sleep,
now it feels better in my own company -
but tonight i feel weak, maybe i don't have any
redeemable qualities, that they can love deeply -
but i pick up my bags, bolt the rotten door, and go,
hammer in my resentments, kick my head up, so
leave us in the cold, **** around and find out,
but you still text me though.

chocolate godiva hair
          plush pinks
curving
          more than I could
heaven vanillas
          must have tasted
like the almonds
          her skins olive
oiled up for summer
          tasteful photos
you're there too
          in the pools
          reflection
i wish i could
have been        her
selling my sanity
          for an IG
or a glass half empty

if i have a daughter,
will she have my thin hair
and sneer at social niceties,
will she hug strangers tightly,
or hide in the corner at awkward parties?
would she have called him back,
or blocked the number, before
it all got so bad.
if i have a daughter,
will she have my imagination
and mold words into minds,
like holding onto herself wisely,
carrying confidence that glides past,
those who haven't met themselves?
or will she trust in the bigger picture, before
it ever gets taken.

do i deserve your sympathy,
even when you see the worst in me?
a mosaic of broken pieces,
sharp fragments of memory,
and time well spent.
i am not a good person,
only crimson reds,
someone colouring in the lines -
trying not to fall off,
but still collecting the evidence:
my dark parts
are cut by the light, so,
the hue of being human
casts the glass either way.
like schrödinger’s cat,
i'm both half full and half empty -
so tell me what's your angle,
can you see right through me?
a mosaic of broken pieces,
sharp fragments of
mistakes and time wasted,
i am not a bad person,
only a prism, of shaded spectrums,
someone walking the line -
trying to balance virtues,
but still collecting the evidence:
my light parts
are cut by the dark, so,
do i deserve your empathy,
just cause you see the best in me?

When will I be held so deeply,
that I lose sight of my own two arms?
Sipping up my seems and loss ends,
burning last words on my hard shoulders.
Heavy that you are passive to me,
but I pull you in on each breath.

I take you in with my long strides too,
and double shot pink lemonades.
I’m sorry that I am not gentle for you,
but I’m mostly sorry that I know better.
Because if there was a way to make you love deeply,
I’d have sent you the deposit by now.

There are more women
unseen.
Doing more work than you'll
ever have to do.
Asking the right questions,
to open fields.
Kissing glass ceilings for
spots at table ends.

Despite my skins translucency,
I am seen more.
In T.V., Magazines, Movies.
If Black women are "loud",
it's only because you're not listening.

Suicide by pesticide,
Guns to police.
Sold to be a wife,
Don't put up a fight.
Getting your nails done,
by a stereotype,
you look at your T.V.s.

To see you,
the same consumable ****.

The state of the consumer,
as long as your
pretty,
impartial,
straight,
able,
classed,
and most of all,

white.

you turn on the hallway light,
make us another coffee to share,
and if i tell you now how it felt
how i feel, would you still want me?
if i tell you, that i’ve been rotten too,
will you still bring out the best in me?
you give me the calm, what ifs are
what our kids names could be,
is it taboo to love this deeply?
there’s a gentle scent of peace, that is you
and i’ve never fell this softly,
into you, my sweetest taboo.

you say we're running out of pages,
i say, i'm running out of time,
to make what's left art, my character's arc,
i find beauty in the madness all the time.

you listen to whoever’s loudest,
i'm writing quietly, "you're sadistic",
for never caring how i could fit in it,
stories coming to an end,
resolution's just pretend,
why did you call me your friend?

you know i'm more for retribution,
daggers in my back, i pull through it,
sharpen blades and play okay,
let you narrate your mistakes,
i bite tongues and say it’s fine,
calculate my grand goodbye,
now i know it's the last time.

you say we're only getting older,
i say, i'm not the bravest solider,
when you made me go to war,
waving white flags at our shore,
did you think i could take more?
i’m out of pages, writing more...

your magnetic strung up
hydro fields sit in this
delicious precarious
silver storm
of my new June

your rain tethers on
into gentle purple trees
across from the NE window
where I sit perched
in May's altostratus fogs

your gliding about
the unrequited escapings
of my consciousness
or lack-there-of
my unresolved words
now tracing across lined sheets
of which I sip relentlessly

i am thriving
off unreliable narrators
to which I cannot name
achilles' heels
to which I cannot see

neither you nor I
can make sweets
out of
these bitter
and too often
extended
metaphors

(it’s awful) to not be loved by you, (i do),
to feel i never will, mainly because i have a weird laugh,
and know too much about the wrong things, and too little
about the right things (things they like). because i have too many
opinions and i don’t like to be wrong about them (i am).
now i’m either a push over or being pushed,
and you find every button in me amusing.
i don’t find this funny at all, does he? (do you?)
you think i am unfeeling, but you never say how you feel -
i flood out the basement of my heart for what’s less of us. (not much).
you push away to an island of self hate and sabotage (avoidance),
ignore the problems and throw anchors down at “bad timing”,
you find more reasons to hate me, because it’s easier (it’s not.)
i think i am a deeply flawed good person, you think i hate you,
against my better judgement, i always learn
to love them more, and where’s the u in animosity?
that has always been my way, (unlike you), i believe i can change,
so i learn to love me more too, tell myself i need more (it’s true.)
(it’s awful) to love someone you don’t want. (i do).

I do not have the time,
nor the energy,
to make myself consumable to you.
I am sweet to gluttony,
but sour to those who know me best.

I cannot lower myself,
in height nor heart,
to lose an inch on your ego’s behalf.
I am vibrantly tracing my path,
home grown roots of nothing less than sincerity.

I will not lose an inch,
becoming less than myself,
for your lost moral compass.
I am both the richest and the poorest,
cashing moments of free grandeur,
that you’ll later need answers to.

I should not feel bound to dance,
across the egg shells you toss,
apart from the breads I’ve broken -
I am an open book,
so I have broken more book binds
than hearts.

I hope you’re not offended.

sometimes i think i’d be easier,
if i drifted away so slowly
that i don’t make a shift or screech.
just a click of a door, the floor board
creeking into the night, creeping,
like my writing at dawn stirring,
soft, wistful, and depressing.
i can leave, don’t worry about it -
i know i exist so violently, i like to.
people think i'm off-putting -
they want me to eat my words,
but i just keep typing more and more,
im hungry to disrupt and find peace after.
Emily says i know better,
but i only know a few things, like
i’m annoying and loud, opinions
bustle out of me in vexing prose -
i want to be a good listener,
but i’m selfish. i want to be likeable,
but i’m stuck in muds of misery.
losing the best parts of me
to insecurity and the instagram bots
that like his posts before i do.
how can i compete with algorithms and
softer blondes, waves that glide so gently -
i am a car crash, the intersection preacher,
the storm before the calm, but the calm too.
i want to disappear, i want to be gone,
but there’s always something left to say.

i wish i made you up in my mind,
instead of all the ink i spilled over tropes and trophies.
you’re much better than their tireless scripts -
only to be caught offside like the running red herring.
you’re not my cup of tea really either,
more like my morning blonde roast with too many substitutions -
but new things excite me and make me grow still.
and i have been stretching these pages longer,
taking up every inch of you that i can muster
hoping that i see an ending,
and not another oxford comma.

Cohesively graced
in soft warm browns.
Never going slowly,
but i have gone.
To see new moons,
the shaking falls
of forearms and
river bends.
I have turned in
muds like a lotus,
a hypocrite anew.
Drowning in dirts
for perspective,
for answers,
for hope,
but not for you.

i like my body when it is with your
body. it is a natural tug and pull.
my head draws onto your shoulder.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its edges. i like to feel your arm
and how it holds me, trembling
for my hands which felt foreign then.
your smooth ness and ridges of thumbs,
i want to hold you tightly, firmly,
- again and again and again and again
kissing, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, making a home in your skin for us
both reeling with electric forces, parting
flesh  . . . . . and hearts widened to eat
all the love-crumbs we trailed years for,

and possibly i just like the amusement

of how i look underneath you.

If I could paint you
in a single moment
and twist out mauve.
Calm thoughts would form
for a jester like me.
You remaining audience.
I would draw out
my cold feelings like Poe.
Shout for resolution,
knowing you share resolve.
If I could paint you
in a single moment
and pull out trust.
Soft constance would form
for an angel like me.
You remaining front row.
I would draw out
my warped touch like Dali.
Shout for self reflection,
knowing I share the mirror.

you’re my little secret, vicious
how you come into my life
without a plan, heaven gracious
when you hold my back, and
tell me you’ve been waiting,
for my texts, i wish i missed my ex,
you look like a convenient solution
to a problem i haven’t defined yet.
because i’m fine - at least
that’s what you call me, to tell me
that your mine for the night, but
i’m not your protector, just a collector
of words, situationships, sometimes
masking longing for maturity, just cause
i’m a therapist, doesn’t mean i make sense.
i still don’t know what i’m longing for,
you stay a while, hold me more,
because i asked, but mostly because
you’re too drunk to drive, you lost
my number in the crash, it was
a while back, so you email me to ask.

a light knock on your friends door,
come out and run with me -
let's fly on our bikes for answers,
down a hydro field - down a mickey,
watch the wires send messages, before
the Facebook status', before we knew
how to find peace in doing nothing.
the currency of youth, the awakening,
we all have a voice in our heads? developing
self conscious, *******, an anxiety disorder?
you don't know who you are yet -
you don't know anything!
just walking around garden sections
of Canadian Tire's with your dad -
who kept all his fake Monopoly money.
look dad! the peonies, look! the orchids,
and i'm still absorbing life like this -
noticing beauty, collecting e-currencies,
posting Instragram stories - and
i feel too young to be responsible for it.

you’ve listened to this song
one thousand times,
each line getting warmer,
to the crafted chaos.
it didn’t make sense, did it?
tempo too long, keys off,
until the chorus rang true.
“this song was made for us.”
nothing can compare to when,
the past and present conjoin,
twisting lyrics into the context
of falling feelings of bliss.
it didn’t make sense, did it?
does it have to,
if it makes sense now?

drive slowly,
i know it’s not what you wanted,
the long haul, just stuck and controlling,
can’t always turn where you want to.
it’s been a long ride,
tunnels, and drifting between stops,
i lean on your shoulder and get lost,
don’t know where the line crossed.
are we there yet,
eager and getting our feet wet,
can’t plan a good thing, just wait for it,
maybe another hour or two,
this will pass too, so -
drive slowly.