Wanted* (read the three day old paper):
yourself, position effective immediately, pay negotiable

Being in the job market for longer than I’d care to admit, I applied.
I could be a yourself.
I hoped I wouldn’t have to sit in a cubicle.
(I knew I could though, if it came right down to it).

I wore Roots sweatpants to the job interview,
It’s quirky, I thought, I am *just doing me.
I envisioned my power animal: that vastly underrated emoji
(You know the one; he’s coy as ****).
I was also coy as ****.
Or as coy as I could ******* feel in pants whose proud purpose was to make their wearer perspire.

I bet NO ONE had thought of this.

Turns out everyone had thought of it.
****…

Needless to say, I didn’t get the position; the yourself life wasn’t for me.
So I applied elsewhere.
Somewhere far away from that whole embarrassing sweatpant fiasco.

I was getting SO SORE! I know the exposed wood seats were very 21st century, but they were the most uncomfortable ever..
What are you going to get?
I don’t know, what are you going to get?
Probably the pasta – with goat cheese.
Pasta, eh?
Yeah, why?
No reason.
Okay.
Okay.
Why is it that we go out for dinner with the ones we “love” and the ones that we’d dine on toothpaste-out-of-the-tube with (if it came to that) get ignored for the sake of making things better.

This isn’t better.

But it is softer than the concrete floor
And my sleeping bag is here
Unzipped like a blanket
Except for the very end; that won’t unzip.

Wine from an old water bottle
With a carabineer clipped onto the lid
(I always felt really good about knowing it was called a carabineer).

I can see the mountains from my window
Sometimes the clouds cover their peaks
But not today.

Sometimes I feel okay that I’m not in Denmark
But not today.

There you were, with chocolate all over your fingers
And a huge grin plastered all over your face.
You plopped those truffles into your mouth
As if you were a starving child,
Eyes shining, like it was the first time you’d tasted food in weeks.

That night I heard you crying
And when I came into your periwinkle purple room
You had chocolate all down your cheeks
As if your tears weren’t made of salty water
But rather, salted caramels
Melting down your burning cheeks.

There you were, looking so small buried in your mountain of a duvet.
I hugged you, and squeezed you
Told you that if I could, I would serve you chocolate truffles for every meal
With chocolate milk to wash them down.
I asked you what was wrong
And you said you didn’t know.

And you still don’t know.
And still, when I sneak in to kiss your cheek
When the lights are dim and I think you’ve fallen asleep,
My lips meet chocolate tear drops,
And my heart sinks because never has anything so sweet
tasted so bitter.

Capitalism is a funny word
The kind that you throw around to sound fancy
with your pinky raised whilst you sip green tea
out of your bone (or is it off-white?) porcelain teacup.

What does it mean to mean?
Contemplate this cuddled under your quilt from IKEA
wake up, startled, kicking yourself out of a fall
because, darling, you do not mean anything at all.

and rumor has it
the night she died
her computer history showed 32 Google searches
all with the key words:
how. to. get. the. most. out. of. life.

rumor has it that it's not through the internet.

hey life,
slow down, would ya?
forever yours,
E

There is no such thing as time,
Just Globe and Mails that go unread,
Mugs of tea that go unsteeped,
and musings, oh so many musings, that go unconsidered.
Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
In the silence it ticks on…
So keep sighing, with no means to
an end that is inevitable yet
elusive, advertised nowhere
in the bolded Times New Roman type.
So let those breaths rattle through your chest
and remember:
a stopped clock is wrong 22 hours of the day.

Remember the evening you took the windsurfer poster off the wall?
The one with the two strangers in green swimsuits
riding the waves
or maybe just trying to stay on their slippery boards.
I guess, in retrospect, that **** poster had no place on the wall –
an empty room really doesn’t deserve decorations.

You slammed the front door when you left
and it was strange because those you left inside seemed stronger
so, as proof, we smashed all the clocks and held their hands
because tears had never flowed so fast
for someone we would see again on the weekend.

It’s funny, isn’t it?
Under that waterfall of sweaty tears
and behind those blurry eyes
faded blue eyes, as if they were cut out from an unfocused photograph
there’s a smile, awkward and uncomfortable,
but it’s there because it takes fewer muscles to smile than to frown.
And it’s funny
that you’re smiling,
and he laughs because he knows
you’re too weak to muster anything more.

Does it count as hot chocolate
if its only lukewarm?
If it tastes like bitter raw garlic,
or acid rain?

It burned the skin off your tongue
and dulled your taste buds…

…And still on fire are your fantastical day dreams
inspired by watching those wandering clouds that,
as it turns out, were actually marshmellows
floating, not in a never ending sky,
but in a bounded, off-white mug
with a cracked handle
whose pieces were sloppily super-glued
back together.

She never said she was sorry,
And worse still,
She never knew that she had done anything wrong.
For while those ridiculously red lips of hers
Were biting viciously on the stale red rubber
She called Twizzlers,
I was pouring instant coffee into that mug,
The one she tried to paint the solar system on.
She gave up though when she realised only 6 planets would fit
and smeared that mug,
Handle and all,
In black paint.
I know it was fired at the ceramic shop,
The paint made dry as lips in late November,
Yet every time I dare to stomach a sip
Of my once warming brew,
My mouth is dyed darker than
a night that has never known stars.

While the wine and cheese and skinny upturned mustaches
Were all there,
Wrapped in gold tissue paper and tied with white bows
The passion, desire, and spark
(which were promised by the $24.99 guidebook)
Were nowhere to be found,
Not even floating down a gondola on the Seine
(or am I thinking of Venice now?)

I wrote home in two postcards
(not because I had so much to say)
But because I thought my family should see the Eiffel Tower in both day and night
As plastered on the pair of plastic, flimsy cards I mailed away.
Being away from Mom and Dad, I thought I’d enjoy it
But after investing in a French-English Dictionary
I learned that the love letters I’d been receiving here
(voulez vous coucher avec moi?)
Weren’t so lovely after all.

I told them that I’d tried French Onion soup,
That I’d walked down that street featured in Midnight in Paris,
and that between the guns slung over shoulders
(worn like fake Louis Vuittons advertised by desperate venders)
and the solicitors outside the Moulin Rouge
the city of love
had shattered my unprotected heart.

They say that lighting never strikes the same place twice
And so I ask
Who are they to quantify, compute, calculate or frame
The unnerving jolt
(One, two, three clear!)
That will not, will not
Leave my valentine’s day-pink
(That good ol’ colour of excess)
heart alone.

The dark winter sky was draped with stars whose dainty shimmer
mimicked the sprinkle of snow
caught up in the crisp winter breeze.

The white flakes winked as they came to rest upon a silent sheet of ice,
accumulating on the sleek surface until abruptly–

a clatter of loud and excited voices interrupted.
Skates slashed and
                            sticks crashed onto the cold, hard ice.
A black puck cascaded haphazardly across the rink, bombarding the once settled snow.
Chunks of ice catapulted recklessly,  
the smell of sweat rose relentlessly into the wind.

Furious and frozen wisps of breathe were choked,
as bitter cold filled eager lungs.
The ruthless weather, however, could scarcely graze the laughing dimples on rosy cheeks.

But just as hastily the clatter was silenced,
the commotion halted.

Footprints crunched softly away, their noise secretly swept away
by the sprinkle of snow
caught up in the crisp winter breeze.