when i packed up our apartment,
and said goodbye to final memories,
ones i lived in alone for months,
i noticed all the little things i gave,
to make you significant.
the things i bought for our love,
that i thought we’d do together
from the pan set, to the rug, to the vaccum,
i cared so deeply for you,
anything you needed i provided you,
i gave you my future,
and that’s a reflection of my love
that made you seem so special
surrounded by neutral items,
turning into a person,
i no longer believe in.

i miss you in the sense that i miss the summer,
only on the coldest days, when i remember
altered realities, moments i felt warm and funny.
i miss you in the sense that i miss our ankles crossing,
and i think about venting to you, even when i think
about how you think about, how i’m a bad listener.
i miss you in the sense that i miss football,
because it gave me an excuse to be at your place,
after i could wear those sweatpants i liked -
now i think about my cozy apartment with coldness
and clarity, that i don’t want this bored moment
to last longer than my longing, which it has.
i miss you, when life is full of greys and grandeur, or
electric intensity, self doubt, self hate, and scoring to
track our mistakes before they keep repeating.
i miss you when i’m stubborn and annoying and
none of my friends have the heart to call me out, but you
do, and pull me in with ease, our bodies crash like waves
coming together only to pull tides apart.
i miss you in the sense that i miss myself, because you’re
always a part of me - and there’s no good in goodbye,
and no good in going steady, but i miss you, so i text you anyways.

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

I’m not the girl you kiss on a New Years Eve.

I’m not the girl next door, just across the street.

I’m not the girl who pretends that they think you’re funny.

I’m not the girl that runs or pretends that they’re neat.

I’m not the girl that tells you what you’re suppose to say.

I’m not the girl that knows that their hot, okay?

I’m not the girl that thinks they’re good at your sport.

I’m not the girl that pretends that you’re only a joke.

I’m not the girl to say yes just because of how you’re feeling.

I’m not the girl who conceals everything they’re really meaning.

I’m not the girl who sits low when you raise your voice.

I’m not the girl who thinks that they have no choice.

I’m not the girl who’s funny, docile, and sweet.

I’m not the girl that collects pointless expensive jewelry.

I’m not the girl who lives off their parents dime.

I’m not the girl to tell you how to live your life.

I’m not the girl to leave you if you had no money.

I’m not the girl to eat kale salads with hungry.

I’m not the girl to hold your past like a knife to the back.

I’m not the girl that doesn’t know what kind of power she has.

I’m not the girl to reveal all the tricks up her sleeves.

Actually, here’s the trick...

I’m not the girl.

I’m the beast.

How my morals and ethics lay at night,
soundly waiting on the day’s break.
I do not shake for desire, or
knocking on woods for a stranger like you.

A tender birch, stiff and rounded sharply,
I’m a whaling dog to the moons closing.
The world was one before me,
and the world will be won after.

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.

everyday is an exertion
if you look hard enough
you can see my brain
in two places at once
but being this competent
has a consequent price
& I'm not even sure how to explain it
it seems with every accomplishment
i get further caught up in my abilities
my talents being a by-product
of unattainable stress
that i'll never be able to recognize
so when its time to shutdown
& cool off from the heat of the days work
i'm always stuck in the warmth of it
the fuzziness over my head
the future tasks awakening me
digging burrows in my skin
& nesting upon my amygdala
emotional strain detached
until the time comes when
the stress of accomplishment
becomes too much for even me
the double tasking
anxious achiever

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?

I stayed so long I began to look like you,
and started shrinking into myself,
amnesia to the cold infantile display.
Promises from my own imagination,
and gifts of pretty projection.
Laura you can't change people -
but love, love comes so easily.
But like an expired library book,
with overdue charges and a cliché cover.
You can't blame me for judging.

light fragrant cologne, wide cappuccino cups,
rainy afternoons, and somber evenings, warm soft grips, velvet couches, and awkward silences, four legs fitting closely, overwatered money trees, church bells, crossed arms, rude tones, relentless giggles, prolonged eye-contact, tacos, the funny buzzer entrance, tears, riding skateboards home, watching art, park walks, dinner in, conspiracy videos, avoidance, breakfast sandwiches, fancy pants, cringe sayings, dad jokes, detachment, attachment, week night calls, impromptu singing, the neighbours parties, your friends drama, my friends drama, our drama, impulsive confessions, snapchat streaks, warehouse keyronas, tiny donuts, documentaries, game of thrones, embarrassed, attractive, exciting, the body pillow, convience stores, your sweater, friendly debate, heated debate, resentment, come on in, open windows, open arms, hurt, resentment, the 501, and your oatmeal sweatpants

i wanted you there
i wanted you to want to be there

I was never there in your vintage sweater,
standing at the convenience store
when you failed to toss the cigarette out, or me.
I was never there when you got us pizza,
and we did the same walk four times
just to see each other in a different light.
I was never there after you got the news,
and you looked like you were crying
when your mom called and I left quietly.
I was never there when you laid asleep,
picking up my clothes softly to tie up
the loose ends of whatever we were doing.
I was never there,
because I never let me stay to begin with.

I will enjoy this life. I will bite into
the overripe bananas, the in-season
strawberries, and remain impartial.
I will not worry about the tempers,
the Karen in the Niagara Dominos,
weeds that daunt our growth,
we can choose to love past this.
I will stir the *** of doubt, and
balance salt and sugar in style.
Burning insults, when I call myself an
ironic idiot, both brilliant and broken
pushing open the pull doors,
we can choose to live past this.
I will enjoy this life. I will bite into
the frozen mango, wait for pain, like
a slow elevator, and remain impartial.

if you take all my sheets off,
& say the worst things in the dark
i can learn to find some rest, knowing
i won‘t love you any less.
even when i’m mad and blue,
and say the same things back to you,
pack your things and leave a mess
knowing, i won’t love you any less.
& when i hold on much too tight and
cling to all the what-if/mights,
even when you don’t pass my tests,
i won’t love you any less.
if you forget how i feel and turn
away to something “real”,
i hope you’ll remember how i felt, but
i won’t love you any less, i guess,
because of all the ways i’ve loved,
and all the ones that i let run,
i take a breathe, and beat my chest, cause
i won’t love you any less.

and the ground is soft as it should be here,
eleven minutes past midnight on new years eve.
you've seen me for who I should be,
in all my sweaty palms, broken stars, and pillowed moons.

and I see you for who I could be,
a kind hearted, celestial, tall glass of admiration.
ending and entering more years that could be
more ours if you'll so thoughtfully see through.

and if you'll still smell your tropical breeze best
singing in the Honda with me as we will be
in the next years I can drive you to the airport
as you kiss me down where we should be,

humming old jazz tunes like we could be,
and I'm telling you that we will be
on the hard grounds again
in Jacksonville, Florida.

quietly a mess,
my parents planted it when i was born
and every year i kicked and screamed more
and played make-believe with Emily -
that we would one day be grown too.
i still hold onto my innocence
so tightly that wrinkles are growing around it.
i try to be steady now,
twenty-five and slow to notice more of -
but every so often I turn bright red
and no one can hide from my ageless trends,
to be credible, reliable, dependable, unshaken,
but able to bend backwards, your sun mistaken -
and when the light goes out, and I turn away to rest,
will you still remember to water me,
quietly a mess.

he pushes my hair behind my ear
and asks
"is this romantic?"
he would not have to ask
i am driving in my brothers car
half a tank of gas
a strangers hand on my thigh
he says
"this is a tumblr thing isn't it"
i wish it wasn't a "thing" and just was
i make sharp turns
i make wrong escapes
our conversation ends in
the heat of the afternoons burn
he touches my face
compliments it as smooth
but our drive is bumpy
his voice is unsettling
i smile and he squeezes my face to his
"can i kiss you?"
so i give in
i let it all go
i have wandered between empty fingers
too long to know it's not the destination
it's the drive

see me without a pen,
shaking out emotions, reeling
run on sentences, trying to catch
a moment as it’s passing.
i’ve tried to live in the moment,
but they leave me too soon,
and i can’t hold anything in -
thoughts fall with gravity.
i wish i was mysterious, even secretive,
harsh questions of wondering what
she might do next -
that facetious woman with
a superiority complex.
i break the binds of open books,
kiss and tell to voids beneath me,
and i’m not obscene, just obvious -
okay, give me my pen back.

i write to you when i forget
how my feelings work,
and when their nicotine addiction
curves into lost sentiments that break.
they don't know who they are,
so i was born with a strong sense of self,
and the assurity of my next breath,
despite my chronic asthma.

people think you need to be sound,
so he plays spooky guitar noises
to silence the idea that life is quiet.
we are always running for safety,
looking for constance,
some find it in a glass of control,
but i've made peace with not knowing
practically anything at all.

loving someone
does not stop
at the pain
they caused you,
or the pain
you caused them.

it exists somewhere
deep within the mind
between suffering and forgiveness -
because forgiveness IS love,
and that sliver will always remain.

you left me on the corner of
mistreated and mishandled,
stone cold cobble stone for
a heart and clicked heels,
tossing a **** on the ground,
only to throw out my feelings,
pushing passion in the name of
whatever suits you -
and it hurts you to see me now.

say something sweet to me, tell me i'm everything,
wipe away all my tears, show me there's no fears -
kiss me in bed every night, **** the bugs and the bad guys,
tell me i'm perfect, lie to me, i'm worth this?
say i'm being melodramatic, i'm your bad habit,
wipe the sleep from my eyes, show me how i'm divine,
hug me in the mornings, this is your warning,
tell me w'll be okay, lie to me, i'm hoping.

You remind me that I should be present,
so you always wake me up on time.
As dependant as the sun breaking in,
love was meant to be simple.

Like the whole package had arrived late,
expedited shipping sitting in the rain.
I was never handled with care,
but I had your hands to guide me there.

like a true poet, i sit at my desk and write,
smoke nicotine over spilled ink, pour myself over
a glass of 19 Crimes, because it feels like it is one -
to be a mad woman, cursed with obsession
of hearing your own voice and alluding alliteration.
how quickly i can disrupt, then ask for forgiveness later,
saying exactly as it is, in one breath and nine tones -
which makes it easier to hate me - do you?
they call me a *****, but at least they're calling,
to condense my multitudes (and diction), to mania.
i always felt most beautiful with my eyes rolled back,
and you let me talk-back, I love you more for it,
when we play with words, and sometimes each other.
these days i've been resting more easily, learning slowly
not to bite my own tongue, or the hands that feed it.
i am all too often self-centered, and violently expressive,
skipping dinner, and structure, for expansion.
i want everyone to trust me, so i speak too earnestly,
and make everyone uncomfortable in the process.
but it's not my fault, that i can only be myself,
a mad woman, but not always a woman scorn,
like a true poet, i am mostly just a brat with a pen.

I write about the middle aged
bald guy, giving the finger
to the citibike business bro,
holding a pack of Pabst.
Or about the cold air in August,
when we ran down Ossington
screaming “Feral Girl Summer!”
Maybe I do it to pass the time, or
to relive feelings I can’t forget.
To me it’s all the same -
words pouring onto the sidewalk,
pieces of my Milky’s iced coffee
with painful oat milk affliction.
I write because I’m always bitter,
or because my memories melt?
But mostly because I want you
to read this, instead of me.

obviously, it’s about you,
and the thousand hairs in your
bathtub, and the fact you read these
trying to decode my midnight delusion,
with a hope that it’s all perfectly fine -
and it always is, because we decided it.
let’s not read into this, you’re here,
(we both know we’re still broken)
and life isn’t going to be smooth or kind,
but i’ll try to make it sound sweet.
so trust my soliloquy's and good nature,
hold on to cheek kisses and prolonged stares,
treasure the sound of my eight alarms,
stay with my rolling eyes and shaking hands
for a moment longer you’ll understand,
nothing is ever picture perfect -
and poems are just like relationships,
everything could ****,
but it’s all about the framing.
if it wasn’t any good, i wouldn’t be
sitting here painting pretty words,
obviously, it’s about you.

Never rolling eyes,
but rolling a perfect joint
in your friend Nick’s
place, I feel safest.

Always kissing shoulders,
while I read horror fiction
together laughing at
our stupid matching moles.

Never getting the last word,
but having my last bite
in the trees of the Kawartha’s
under maple keys flying.

Always carrying my worry,
buying the good leather bags
so my shoulders aren’t burdened,
when you hold me up quietly.

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.

maybe it will stay, maybe it will grow,
i can’t pretend to know, either way
we tend our yucca plant, we absolve the root rot,
weather the mistakes we make together,
drill the door with two towel hangers,
knowing we can’t always patch things up,
and still we think of baby bassinets in the study,
and still, you could leave me or love me, either way,
i’ll be just the same (alone in the end),
the funny girl with the comfort of every woman,
death do us part, but with you beside me, maybe
well maybe, i’d just have a better time rotting,
maybe it will grow, maybe it will stay,
i can’t pretend to know, either way.

Somewhere along the narrow path,
I dream of what I cannot have.
Lushes and blooms fill the gravels
whisking away at scared ankles.
Skies scream of consistent mellows,
drowing about my broken trebles.
The winds of change play their harps,
but I am singing past their darks.

Sometimes my lonely
cannot by conquered,
fears tear at nails
and then myself.

Have I ever known peace?

Sometimes my lonely
tells me I can’t.
Fears eat at hopes
and then myself.

Have I ever known trust?

Even in myself,
my nails tear at fears,
that can be conquered,
sometimes I’m lonely
but it cannot be owned.

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?

Contemporary composure,
compassion fatigue,
and the endless misery
of loving someone that
could never love you.

i'm sorry
read in the most hollow voice
i'm used to people misusing its choice
is it a choice?
no?
am i wrong?
to think the person you are is gone
because what's an apology without no fear?
to admit your wrong, your at fault
your unclear

i'm stupid
we say to ourselves at night
looking back on a fight
saying maybe i could have handled this better
or maybe i should have wrote you a letter
tell me does it matter now?
looking behind what's already sound
"the pasts in the past"
that's what my mother says
laura you can't change it
if you did
you'd be dead

i'm misunderstood
said the girl in scarlet letters
how can anyone know who you are
it's just feathers
things that float in the air
eventually to be caught
how can anyone know
what they never even sought

i'm in love
we say when we finally learn the feeling
we share it with friends, family, when we're dreaming
it can be anything it wants
in any form it can
a chocolate box, some flowers
when he finally says "i can"
cause some need to overcome things
others need to listen
to their heart because sometimes

the beating of a feeling
needs to learn
to glisten

you call me again today.
it’s Wednesday at seven-o-clock,
my phone displays signs of battery drainage
because my life is equally burnt out, it blinks
for every second that we mull over details,
life’s silly intricacies that we dissect in delight,
like your terrible boomer boss Trevor, or
the bad banh mi you bought for lunch,
sometimes the person i’ll text next,
or my 2nd degree burn from the hot steamer.
i come over next, and we walk to Type Books,
buying more fiction than we can create.
you stop us at Tecumseh for A&W burgers,
because you watched a fun commercial on Youtube.
we go back to yours and watch period dramas,
everything about us is child-like. we huddle,
covered under a wool blanket, like the grandparents
in ***** Wonka, i stand up and perform a one woman
show reenacting a scene from Shrek, i go home.
i call you again tomorrow

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.

Who threw the first snowball?
White packing snow flying across,
Av des Pins O and Rue University,
to where we felt wise and so wicked.

Taken by the purity of being young,
naive and valued far more than lost,
to another grace and kind phrase.
I love my friends and hold them dear.

Montreal you project myself too fondly,
involved in culture, rhythms, and sweet language.
and grainy film on knit sleeves in February's dread.
With a bright smile written in cursive letters.

fallen from the path
you forced me to land on
i stand here at a crossroads
two roads diverge
your favourite poem
and i don't choose
the one less travelled
i choose
to build my own

i am a shaper
i was moulded to be your everything
i was who you wanted
who you loved
by design
but that was never me
i was reading from a script
of what i thought was the truth
even if i did write it
in the end
i was the only lie present

there is no one to blame
but the insecure girl
held by promises and lies
who took what you said
and made it seem like it mattered
but matter is relative in space and time
and i am something much more
than i had ever even thought
or dreamed

today i'm still an insecure girl
but i'm held
together
only
by myself

walking across my neighbours lawn
creates a deja vu
sometimes the moments i've lived
feel completely see through
i always make the same mistakes
and sometimes there's regrets
but the only thing i can remember is
how my mind felt complete unrest
during those times you played your mind games
the ones that left me bare
cold to the core at a single moment
telling myself i shouldn't care
it left a couple marks on me
at the time i felt completely used
but now i'm trying to move on
across a lawn
covered in all the memories you put me through

silly to fall for you again
under the abrasive Pizza Pizza lights
with your childish blue Old Navy thrifts,
and again at the market picnic benches
where you said you didn't want me.
through prolonged stares about
what i meant last month when i left you -
you’re questioning why i don't follow you home?
i hope this is the last time again,
bringing a man to Red Room and my face
turning the same conspicuous colour.
when i tell you i have a stupid crush
and you don't even say it back
because you know that i know,
that you know too well, it’s true.
so, do we both have to have trust issues?
you’re calling me babes over dm's,
while we laugh at each others dad jokes,
except it's not all colloquial sayings this time.
if i have feelings for you, will you still think i'm funny,
or like us is it just mutually exclusive?

If masculinity's attractive -
and still socially confined.
Why do your crying eyes,
light my heart a million times?
Your weaknesses I favour,
to cunning hopeless tricks.
Messages once ignored,
and gaslights burning thick.
Call me your precious darling,
tell me your forever heart.
Every peice of you adoring,
even the smallest parts.
Your strength has come in threes
as goods and bads always do.
You have feelings,
You have morals,
You are more of a man,
that's strength too.

if you weren’t my friend,
i wouldn’t know who i was -
a part of me replaced by insecure ex’s,
musicians with bad communication,
software developers, underdeveloped,
shifting parts of identity made out of static.
i would cry somber and alone again,
instead of under christmas lights
to the Gilmore Girls opening credits,
where we sing too loud to hear our thoughts.
a sour wine bottle between us, and
vacation magnets lining my refrigerator
from all the places we’ve face-timed from.
reviewing in details your love bombing dates
and my anxious attachment -
raw parts that feel unprocessed,
which you quickly dismiss as normal.
i hope he can love me like you have,
simply, softly, like breathing - and
as brilliant and cunning as we can be,
but never as handsome, obviously.
i love to grow our gardens together,
tending to one another’s strengths and
nurturing weakness for authenticity.
i would take the miway, gotrain, and ttc -
just to laugh on the cold beach with you,
and make some mistakes for review
over another cup of coffee.

Barely nineteen, he shipped for life.
On a cold windy Pacific shore
carrying relatives?
Old polluted tin cars,
and refugees mailing brown letters;

Silently noted
his lover of his depart.
               One July dawn,
               when the boat calmed.
He knew his biggest regret sailed too.

Later, with new wife and son,
he’d scan the lake for her scooner.
Kawartha grasses grew deeper.
He had a daughter Rosemary,
his past, only a cinematic keeper.

A smirk and a pinch meant “love”.
He ate jam on toast at 7am sharp.
His daughter wore whorish nail polish,
another mistake he’d eventually forgotten.

At Eighty, trembling his hands;
he put on the nights hockey game
        meeting death on a shoot out.
Embracing the warm uncertainty
of the son he left behind.
                     Only to set sail again.

sometimes i think my life is a movie,
my consciousness a delighted narrator,
except these aren’t all paid actors,
just some people i met over the years.
friends laugh at my every delusion,
my words are not a plot device,
forgetting how they have consequences,
the character gets no sleep at night.
my love interests don’t speak in haikus,
don’t run after me when i try to leave,
or affectionately rub my back at night
as i finally fight to fall asleep.
mortgage bills pill on my desk,
i look stupid smoking cigarettes,
main character energy is hard to come by,
when you have severe asthma and a god complex,
i guess my life is not a movie,
but at least it passes the Bechdel test.

you call me to check in,
assuring me of your new composure
and make bad jokes for hours,
galloping between Dundas & Augusta.
i’ve known you since you were fourteen -
you’re still tormentingly silly
and too easy to lay with.
you never really made me nervous
until this week -
feelings growing out of cement
in age and moments between memories,
falling into places painted over.
i don’t think we ever wanted this
to really be together,
but we can’t seem to get
rid of each other either.
Flinging back into comfort -
do i like him or is it familiar,
why not both?
Let’s sit a while longer this time,
and see if the paint dries differently.

the afternoon fell like a slate of snow,
tumbling off the rooftops,
a cool haze of memories of the year -
flashing moments of serenity, pain,
and all the stupid ways i’ve loved -
lost and found. if i am anything,
let me be resilient (and humoured) -
this year was an underground parking spot,
takes me 3 point turns, and 20 minutes,
but in the end i get it done, and spend
another 20 minutes laughing about it.
i dance with you to Usher in the car,
water my plants with conviction -
i’m not sure what the plans are now,
i don’t know what the time is,
i’ve just been learning how to be,
authentic and optimistic -
all i have is hope for the new year,
but when i run out of that too,
i have my resilience to keep going.

nobody has to know about us
sharing longer stares at dinner,
kissing in the elevator up,
wondering about the next mistake,
knowing each others secrets.
trusting it's going to be different,
singing now on the walk home
and eating chicken fingers through confessions.
while i'm still scared to hold your hand,
and it takes four walks a day
to believe it's happening.
we're just a couple teenagers now,
at the skateboard shop on Queen.
trying to draw a line in reason,
so i can finally learn patience, so
nobody has to know about us.