I damaged up the tissue -
not to say that it's a scar -
it's an old wound, ever-tender
from that time I stumbled in the dark

I feel it in the nighttime!
Place the traffic cones around me,
and cover all the mirrors -
I don't need to see you leave

Is a goodbye really goodbye
if it feels more like good riddance?

I forget, I forget,
that we share the same world,
that we’re in the same realm,
because all of your letters
are postmarked from hell

And to think these precious lives around us
breathe your air,
and have smelled your cigarette skin,
and are your next of kin -

oh, what a comical life we live in

a magnolia tree
on spring’s eve;
bare branches blooming.

Drying eyes,
don’t you shut
I want to see -
I want to see it all.

Sometimes,
when it’s quiet enough,
I can hear its vibrations

A taut string I will not play
A pillar
that one could almost see swaying
when the knots are high

Haven’t I turned every leaf in my garden?
Doesn’t the grey turn back to green?
Or must it all fall before it grows again -
Too soon I feel it’s been
since I raked up the parts which made me

I look out - I’ve painted over every piece
And still,
in just enough silent nothing
stands the imprint I appease
Oh, I’ve tried and I try to make peace

Wide awake at night,
waiting for sunrise,
I wonder and wonder...

Do I watch the clouds
in wish for rest?

cavernous cupboard,
with your door swung wide open
like an arm to invite me in -

if I clamber inside,
will you promise to close flush?

will you turn your key?

tidy my commotion
as though a commodity

Lines on the road,
heart beating,
and you in the passenger seat
like we've been doing this forever.

Am I the rhythm
of broken lines on the road -
how it all feels ready for collapse?


Sometimes I forget I exist,
and I can't touch enough
to know this isn't true.


But you touch me
and I am part of this world -

I am the lines on the road,
I am the wheels turning.

This is a tender love -
tentative and bittersweet

Oh, I could never tend a garden
I lack the patience, the sensitivity

How could I be trusted with
a little warmth,
a frail, embering coal,
a glow almost ceasing?

I could
crush it up,
***** it out
easily

There is violence in me,
do you know?

This is fire you play with,
this glow

You know I’m quite sure
I am the Devil’s own

Yet I try not to walk down those roads

(But, oh, how they feel like home.)

And yeah, sometimes I find myself here

on this endless lake,
and my canoe is sinking

Getting creative, getting by

In the holes of the boat
I am clumping the reeds,
clutching at straws,
and wondering what I do this for

Half afloat, I ripple -
see these ****** echoes?

I cannot move without a trace



And still, the boat is sinking -

I think about how
I’ve never been good at swimming

Treading till I ache

Aching for the shore -
where could I find it?

Half afloat and rippling, as I empty
and I’m sinking

Yeah, I find myself here sometimes

I keep my door open -
for you, I always do

People like to say nothing’s that deep,
but I find nothing but the depths of us
in our little actions -

Please don’t shut me out
of your room, of your life

I wish I were a tree
giving shade to a dog with my leaves
and never asking, nor needing,
to be told how good I have been

I wish I were a tree
but I am the rain
(lately too much,
people running away
to find a tree, for its shade)

I love and I love -
I have drowned the roses
in my neighbour’s yard

I did not mean to, I swear

My neighbour’s dog does not care
if I drown a rose, for a rose
does not smell like a bone

My neighbour’s dog barks out the door
She stays inside when it pours -

And it pours and it pours…

Why the endless machine
of my broken dam heart?

I have failed to stop
since my very first start

My love is the rain,
people running away
to the shade of a tree
till I go away

Why is it too much?
My love, like the rain

I am good and yet never
quite good to embrace

I ask into the air,
I ask, and I ask,
and it comforts me to ask,
questions floating above me,
swimming around me,
like an early summer's
dew-dropped morning

I ask like I breathe,
and am wiser for asking,
regardless - no, in spite -
of not knowing.

There’s always someone older,
in some twisted threatening way,
saying "when you're old like me,
you'll see - just wait"

But I’ve seen enough
and now I’d like to go home -
back to the drawing board
where I was better off
shooting for my stars alone -
to write new storylines
that aren’t too hard to be told,
and to one day reap the bountiful harvests
of the seeds I'll care to sow

And so, I find my life
up in my head -
the sparkling visions
I dare to dream beyond
the comfort of my bed,
and catch that bus each day,
and cast far my lines,
and to slowly, deftly, carve to shape
this little life of mine.

I guess now I’m good
There are people who will go to my funeral

People who remind me I’m a tree on a hill
giving shade to a dog, being home for a bird

I guess now I’m good
I tend to say all things tentatively

I guess I’m scared I’ll miss my parents
I guess I’m scared I’ll regret
rushing forward to my chosen lights
always choosing, always rushing

Scared to look down the trap of the past
so I keep running

Once I leave I am gone

I am going

My mother was right
to say I would go and stay going

Some steps cannot be backtracked,
some doors never reopened

Why does it feel like this door is forever closing?

I’m sorry I am short of breath for you
I’m sorry I want so badly to be somewhere else
I’m sorry you were right

with all certainty,
commanding -
like you're all-knowing
when you don't know,
when you're owing

and last night I had another

one of those
confusing glimpses
down the barrel

like I had to watch my back
accidentally hurt myself
accidentally able
to turn these worlds upside down

silly to perceive
that everything could simply shatter
when I wake and I scream
and it still doesn't matter

how it boils my blood
to watch you know what you know
and never reap what you sow

while they shovel a path home
as it snows, and it snows, and it snows

without certainty,
teetering
on dried earth -

to crumble and break
any day now -

will you tell me -
where is my ride off into the sunset?

And, oh, but you're so sweet,
with your big laugh - you little kid,
I feel so young with you.

In that secret mailbox
I read back your sorry words

just to wonder
if I still feel
any kind of something
for you


But I hear it now -
tenderness -

and I’m still not sure


(if time healed over,
or if time just made me
a new pair of rose-coloured glasses)

Little by little,
one step, another

I step, and I step, and I step

These brushstrokes are anxious,
but I have time and patience

I once had a steady hand
and I will once again

A step is a leap
in increments

A step is a sweeping change
in slow motion

I am worlds from where I began
I have whole universes ahead

So I step, and I step, and I step

inside the shell
I heard the emptiness
of my ear canal

I watch the *** of cool water
slowly boil -

a bubble, five bubbles, seventeen, and more

and if only I could multiply,
I could watch each bubble
die as it were born

but I am at the stove
with my two hands, my two eyes
and my one brain, and my sole life

that never seems to make good
fast enough in time

I am tired of patience
I am tired of waiting
for water to boil

I am boiling on full flame
just watching the water giggle at my toil

and if I could simmer down
I would, but I don’t

because I was born boiling
and it will always be so

the bubbles appear and they vanish,
taking thoughts as they go

here they come,
there they go

I don’t know if you can see it

Every action of mine is a shadow of you
Every movement in movement with you

So now that I am older, now that I synthesise
I am long-lost, now I see

Every move I make for you
is a move away from me

What you don’t know is
sometimes now I forget you exist
the way I used to forget myself
when I was too busy thinking of you
(and you were too busy
thinking of someone else
to bother with someone
who bothered to think of you at all)

Hey, have you ever thought of moving on?
I’m never coming back
Or is your world so empty, so small?
(You always liked it painted black)

Look, I’m just too busy to bother with
someone who only cares enough
to bother someone who’s better off

Love, I’d write you a reply
except - why even try?
If not to make my feelings known

But it’s not a worthwhile use of my time,
I would rather turn anguish to fanciful rhymes
and write for the fun of it; quite useful for a nuisance
(yes, that’s what we call you - a worm and a fly)

All I know is that life was fully atoned
until you rumbled through it
like a great rolling stone,
and crushed all the soft light
I’d been careful to grow

I’m so sorry to be scathing
(not in the slightest, no!)
just to slight you, and slice back a piece
for my once-starving bones

What you don’t know is
when I’m not forgetting your ghost
I am up in my mind
burning allllll of the photos

Here, take my resumé -
I hope you will take me

I give you my choices, my history

Justifying myself
to a chain of perfect strangers

Yeah it’s “just a job”
(my time and my life)

represented so neatly
in the attached PDF, 30KB

(hours, and body, and mind)

I just hope your computer screen
makes these corporate words pretty

I just hope you will throw me a line

I just hope it will make you see

that I’m just a person
who, given the chance,
will try.

Sincerely,

cracks in the pavement
stepping with my eyes closed

the ghosts under the dinner table
have nothing on
the skeletons in your closet

have nothing on
my lack of superstition
and the squid ink you deposit

over oceans
around me

say I never could, so I did
say there’s no such thing as love
so I go ahead and make it

they say on the news
that we'll live past eighty-five

see you slouch on your couch,
how tired you are of life

and you're thirty-two
chewing through
life - like it's a cardboard box

and I know that you will
recycle these shreds
and chew through it again

the way you do with
your lovers and friends

You left them all -
creaky tractors
out in the rain,
bring on the rust.

A slippery cricket,
I leap from your hands
again and again,
and you never quite catch.

Scramble for me, dear,
just try to keep up.
Once I see your sweat beading
I think I could rest.

Funny how
you built this house -
no windows to face these fields.

Just know,
I will be here
in the field of your mind,

to shine like a black river pebble,
to show you your face in the dark.

Today I saw Van Gogh
and he looked right through me
with his cold painted eyes
and the words he wrote in French

His stiff arm detached from his side
and slowly he reached out of the canvas -

(They really meant it when they named
this exhibition) so I had to ask him -

How did you know how
I would feel today, back then?

When I saw you today, I understood
that sunflowers lived in your heart
the way oranges live in mine

And I felt less small among the stars
because you paint stars with so much yellow
and yellow is such a joyful colour

because the existence of stars
makes my life small,
makes my life fleeting
and endable,
and so,
precious

I thought you were tragedy
but oh -
the hope and the wonder
you saw!

I seek a mother in every other mother,
a father in every other father

I am still a daughter
I am still not sure how to find home
I am still a daughter - but whose?

I am also just some person now
Not a girl, not a child,
not anyone’s anything

And today,
in the stark middle of this sunny day,
I can see the moon in the sky

Profound and silly to remember
that it’s always nighttime somewhere

Today I remember
it is always nighttime
somewhere in me.

the mahogany red
of these sticky beads,
they stick to me
and stain the sheets,

even here in bed,
even in my dreams,
clotting in my head -
a book that won’t be read
words printed large and wide
as the blinding of dread

could I make out a letter?
backing up on the bed,
hit the wall with the back of my head,

peeling, scraping the scabs off
old wounds I don't know how to tend

just once, could I
peel, and feel
my skin again?

Ain’t the water a drag to wade in?
All I know is what I don’t want

Off the top of my head
I can think of
nothing in particular
particularly pleasing -
more evident
with every morning
the apathy wakes with me.

Through the day
this apathy is an anchor
inside my body -

My body and its constant crashing
into sandbanks,
under unpredictable waves,
saltwater scorching through

I take all my slow walks with apathy -
it holds my hand, saying nothing
but it's there
when I swallow till my lungs are full

Anything but air

And I don’t need a sigh
for this constant exhale -
clenching my jaw,
waiting for rain

If the world was water
I think I could breathe

easier

In this winding one-way street,
I sent for the fire brigade,

a couple years too late,

a couple years
too young to know
how to dial a telephone.

hush me down

the more I talk, the less I know
your face is a stranger to glance past
for twenty four years in a row

hear your anger in so many tones
raise your voice to a bird from the wilderness
a bird you claim to own

the threat is to go to your garden shed
to find those wing clippers,
to make this bird an object for show

silent and beautiful and alone
nothing ever to come by
no place ever to go

slice the scars into wounds again
for you never did say in what way
you would love me so
and you never did so

letting me be, till I’m plotting to leave
then to strike when I stretch my wingspan
learning to fly, trying to grow

hush me down now
the more I talk, the less I know

nothing ever to come by
nowhere for this to go

Still, I can’t forget
how you would like to tell me lies
just to see if I’d believe them
and you knew I always did;

a body built of blind faith
the skin of our arms touching -
two forsaken parallel lines

hands to never meet or hold
your body plumed too deep
within a cloud of cigarette smoke

And selfishly
your bold-lined letters came,
dusting off your guilt-laden coat -
you tell your tales, such make-believe,
to make belief of old false hopes

I wake sometimes remembering
our years-long fever dream
broken out in sweat of dread and shame
at having fallen for so grand a scheme

Of all things, I did not believe
in love but common decency,
until you shook me to my senses
shaking off the rosey lenses

Did you cage me or set me free?

Who am I now if you’ve changed,
and you’re better,
and every second sentence you say
isn’t just a way
to tell me that I am the face of all your regrets?

Now that we get along,
and my mother is gone,
I have a tentative friend
(and walls and countless methods of defence
and guilt at not perceiving a single threat)

Now that we get along,
what do I say to her about you
and the transformations you pushed her to?

I slip into my dressing room
and close the door behind me

I take off my people clothes
and rub my people skin

I am people too

So why don’t people feel like people?
Why don’t I feel as people do?

I wipe off my people face
and look into my people eyes -
I often forget that I look like a person
and what that person looks like

So, I sometimes spend
secret minutes staring
at this people person
and wonder why

a people person
is not really a person at all.

My cat has learned
to love my kisses -

cats don’t kiss -

somehow he learned
that it’s a good thing.

All anybody, any lovely, can do
is to embrace the love they’re given,

and I can’t take it -

how few of these good things
do we find?

Why does a good thing
hurt to find?

May the stroke of midnight lose me again
in the new year’s eves to come

I remember forgetting time and looking up
among the laughter, the smell of soda,
and my quiet fear -
it was six past midnight into the next year.
I didn’t know this would be
the year I heard my darkest voices
and dared to reply,
to be left by my fighter’s will, high and dry

Here now, this new year
is marked by the midnight
my friends and I missed,
grabbing for the remote control
to watch the fireworks broadcast
in a room dimly lit.
We laughed -
it was lovely
to escape
that dreaded turnover again;
the false promise of magic,
that last digit switch,
the secret wishes -
secretly superstitious;

May our future year endings
slip by us

May these minutes
make safe passage through our lungs

May the moment pass quietly by me
in the new year's eves to come.

In these words
do the valleys
open into plains -

in these words
are the sounds
made silently,

as these words
are not easy
to speak in earnest.

So here I am
putting thoughts to paper,
to the sounds of my bleeding heart

And it’s so silly in its drama
but I can’t do it any other way
without shrivelling these petals;

it's all so delicate.

A wildflower

Is a thing of contradictions,
Flourish in the sun and in sadness,
Asks for nothing in return
But to keep making sweet of the rancid.

Pushes through the dry earth,
Holding frost drops in the winter morn.
Asks not for admiration,
Stands quiet and soft and strong.

Ever-growing everywhere,
And through its generous sprawl,
Turns a place into a paradise,
Dotting hills like stars at nightfall.

my mind plays tricks on me

kitchen sounds
of false hope
and warm breakfasts
still early
cool blue

and maybe I woke
to those sounds one day
but I forget

that my mind plays tricks on me

your smile in pictures
tender words
trust in midnights

I forget

could I dream
up a life?

sometimes I remember nothing

I forget,
I know nothing -

I forget I know nothing

Carved myself down
to become the pool
through which Narcissus stares

nothing more
when he found
brighter lakes to peer in

so I lie
in the curves of the meadow
and to everyone who passes by

What good is reflection,
if I do not move on?

And these boys are ever nicer
than he ever was,
that I wish it were easy to love,
instead I hold back

the gut-wrenching bile
that their niceness
brings up

The thing with carving is
once carved, forever gone -
a phantom limb
to taunt with what was,

and to finally know
that no action or word
can truly be taken back.

last summer
when it began
the air wafts of its smell again

and I can’t remember any other summers
before the one I’ve spent with you

only a day here and there -
in fact I don’t remember much
of any of these seasons

every extra hour
we rewrite
the way the winter chills down to my bones
the way the rain sounds when it falls
the way the short-sleeved shirts come out again


this might just be
the longest year I’ve ever had

and now I’ve been through
almost every season with you

still, our summer never ends


I like to tell the story
of how we both heard the same song
and tried to Shazam it -
mere happenings in parallel,
two years apart

and I don’t believe in fate
but I do believe in
the coy humour of coincidence

how our summer never ends
because we took the sun
and shared it between us

how the song Summer Girl
has nothing to do with
a girl wanting to be anyone’s anything

at least not to me

And you say you love me
in the hiss of coffee’s steam,

but you clang the spoon into the cup and -

splash!

coffee on my skin
and the cold shock of heat,

what a joke of sensations -
what a joke made of me.

running to leave something behind
I don’t know

love, my love,
will have to stand for itself
on its own
I have nothing except love
to give you

do you believe me?

is it enough?
it will have to be enough

I look back only in the rear view
my naked eyes
and naked heart
cannot bear to see

all of what I do feels like carnage
the carnage I create is just loss and desperation

but I hope you will look back
whichever way you please
and see me waving,
calling out
see you soon
I love you

I love you

I do not go anywhere,
I do not collect anything -
I do so little of everything!

(but string together spider threads
to make up fluttering spider webs
of the temporal doom inside -
then, in these webs I reside.)

The sadness clings to me like lint
and brings the cold to my skin

But among the lint
stick the warm words of friends
to say this will not be forever

And I’m felting quite a coat now
from these accumulating words

Sometimes in secret I see
the sadness forget itself,
I see the sunlight incubating me

Sometimes, I look
and there,
among the wool of friends,
is my pain
padded up on all sides
like a winter newborn

wordlessly sinking
to the soundtrack of soft rain
and Explorers on the stereo

I’ve said time and again
that life really is a joke

but right now, as I tell you that I -

Explorers plays obnoxiously,
I hear myself speak so comedically

and we can’t help but laugh about it later.

As bad as life can be,
at least it can be funny -

I said

free me
free me from this world

Sunday shut-in

thoughts like moths
in the basement

beating their wings
on the sores in my mouth

I am terrified of moths
I am the dark

I am all the plagued things
that I didn’t think I could be

I used to believe I was made of sunlight,
being born to a summer Sunday’s sunrise

but right now I lay in the dark
to the sounds of everyone else having dinner

thoughts like moths in the basement

I am a low-hanging light bulb,
I am slow-burning toward the inevitable

dust settling

I might just be a little hungry or tired
I might just be a little scared

Used to clawing for the sunlight
even in moon rays

For once
I am afraid of a good thing

I am loved and I am scared

What does this mean if I can let go,
if I can lean a little?

A little loved,
a little scared to lean a little