When all the migrant flocks return
flapping and cawing,
and the remnants of snow
melt to feed the thirsty earth;
when the rivers trickling in a gentle song,
join in the symphony of spring awakening,
and the puddles of perfume
infuse the air with dewy scent;
when green buds bestrew anew
the barren branches,
how the bitter winter cold
is so quickly forgotten
and forgiven.

How oft has the piping poet iterated
the many nuances of feeling,
the many ways to love, or hate?
“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.”
But where in these enumerations
have we distinguished the longing
that boils up within us
at an absence, the missing,
whether momentary or eternal?
For there are many ways to miss someone.

There are, of course, the dreary ways
to miss someone, the ways
of grief, the yearning never to be fulfilled
for the departed and never to be seen again.
The moving on because you must
and still like ringing bells
the memories perpetually toll -
at first so loud as to obscure any sound
or thought, yet eventually
fading to a distant chime, ever still present,
lingering tintinnabulation;
if you stop and listen, you can make it out,
but day-to-day you’d hardly notice.

But there are many ways to miss someone,
like subtle shades of purple:
while some are dark, oozing, sickly,
violent, like bruises,
blood pooling just beneath the surface
threatening to burst;
or some are near-grey, cold, desaturated,
a sensationless day,
a gloomy cloud in our sky;
others would induce with their very sight
the soft scents of violets and lilac,
the songs of spring birds chirping;
and others still are rich and royal,
thick like honey, endowed,
velvet sheen, lustrous silk.

Yes, there are many ways to miss someone.

Like craving the crunch of an apple,
or the tingling acidity of citrus.
Like the thirst before the first gulp,
lemon water warmed beneath the sweltering sun.
Or like how dusk to dawn deprives us of that very sun,
and yet so soon will it return,
crying out a yellow hello into the night blue sky.

There are many ways to miss someone.

Like the budding excitement,
the cocooned caterpillar,
the anticipation of soon-coming,
daydreaming, enriching, sweet, joyful,
delayed gratification.

There are many ways to miss someone.

And when you finally bite into the fruit of your longing
the juices seep into all the cracks and crevices
of all the moments past of absence,
fill you, elate you, concentrated,
and you ask yourself
was an orange always so sweet
or the lemon so sour as this?

We swallowed our tongues,
fleshy caskets for our feelings
buried in the cemetery
of our guts

Do you feel
that
turning in your stomach?

What we left unspoken
buried
is rolling in its grave.

My love,
when it comes back to life as
vengeful
rotting corpses without spirit
it will eat us alive
from the inside out.

How do two butterflies find each other
between the earth and the great sky
when there is so much space
and so much wild brush and wind
and so few of them, tiptoeing
from flower petal to petal?

I hear they dance
when they meet
their colours blending in pirouettes
and a hundred-stepped tango.
What a dazzling courtship it must be,
what a blessing to witness.

But I still cannot fathom how
in this enormity
do butterflies find each other.

all I had to say
was
it’s been a while
eh?
and twist
uncomfortably

because I'd heard your yowl
the night before
(and cried at the sound)
something that wasn’t meant
for me
but which you let loose
for all the world to hear

in hopes
it would be heard
by one

Today you were waiting for Serendipity
out on the corner of some street
which shall remain nameless hereon
because it doesn’t matter.
that’s not the point.

the point is, you waited there
all day.

the point is
at dusk you called me
to ask
if I’d roll by
to make it happen.

but

I am not Serendipity
that woman you so longed for,
with breezy golden hair
and charmed green eyes and
her arms dangling gracefully
with no thought given
and no ***** wasted.

I am not Serendipity
with her good fortune
and sunny days.

I am not Serendipity.

I am a planned vacation
with a hiking backpack
full of good intentions
and good will
and good humour

and when it rains
(and it will rain)
let’s go out and dance
and call this our fortune.

I have left the Earth,
no longer entranced by the contours
of his maps.

He thought he alone needed to be Atlas

so that when he trembled
the world shook,
and when he trembled
oceans swallowed coastal villages,
and when he trembled
mountains buried lone wanderers,
and how he trembled
that the very core of the earth
did erupt in molten rage.

“Baby,” I said, “you need to downsize."

honey warms in my palms
his is still the name that comes to my lips

Scheherazade
sneaks into your bed at night
gives you the shake down
for stories
then slips quietly
into the cover of darkness

you wake
without dreams

it was the second time

this month
catching the last metro
from Charlevoix
lugging my bike
and a poor night's misfortune
with sore feet

and thinking
about the lack of history
that lay beneath Montréal

how I longed for Sofia:
an underground museum
at every metro station,
the time there waiting
amidst the relics
like a tree growing
into its roots

but here on the platform
of Lionel-Groulx
with its gaudy orange
60s bathroom tiles
I must occupy myself,
and so I reminisce about
how some numbers
make me feel

how 6875 reminds me
of what I’ve been putting off
and 5359 used to be my go-to
and 777 brings me cheer
and 888 was supposed to be
somehow luckier

I watch as the humble spider
builds her web
concentric circles winding inwards
pulled taut with each diligent step

and I think to myself
how I should like to be a moth
and caught in such a web
to be the prey
of so elegant a creature

Suspicions and mistrust
run high

so we hold ourselves tight
dread locked and buy
deadlocks for the doors
and deadlocks for the deadlocks
in case anyone tries to steal those too

then circle the whole thing with a moat
and from inside we burn the bridges.

We watch our backs
our fronts, our wallets
our mothers, but
oh mother, especially
our wallets
because that is how we speak
now.

We speak
not with words but with money
and self expression is a valuable thing
and it’s a crime to keep quiet.

At two in the morning
the police come to knock on your door
to chide you and remind you
that a number value is
very relatable.

You want to be related to,
don’t you?

They go on to tell you just how valuable
it is and was (before inflation)
because
we’ve been tracking it
with google statistics.

You’ll find all the details
in the police report.

the sun sets to the west
over Mont Royal

like the sun sets to the west
over the Hudson Bay

and you run to catch it
as if it were the last one

and you think time passes
while you're away

but everything is on standby
even the rotation of the earth

waiting for you

kissing you feels like
you’ve pulled down the stars from the heavens
and you’re tickling my lips with them

kissing you feels like
you’ve bottled liquid sun
and you’re pouring it into my mouth

kissing you feels like
you’ve grasped the clouds in your hands
and you’re smothering my eyes with them

     - kissing you feels like kissing the sky

My dear familiar,
come stand a little closer
that the tether between us
may hang slack.

Come stand a little closer
and with love we will tie a bow,
so loosely
so fragile
as to be easily undone.

Oh now my dearest,
we need not cut our ties
when the circumstances of life
pull us apart,
as they are wont to do.

And though apart we stand
I will feel the familiar tug
that draws us together

and together we will come
again
and
again
until the motions become
so familiar
as to make dance of it.

Don’t call it wisdom that
you’d never known the pain
of being stung
and so with a childish naiveté
you cradled the dazed bee in your palm.

And don’t call it mercy that
when the needle lodged
burning into your flesh
so briskly did you crush
a creature
already fated to die.

Blazing down the dirt road,
nothing but sky and and and

renegade on the run
like my loose tailing past no longer matters
like everything I was
am
will be
is lost in the dust burned trail
nothing but sky and and and

it is found again some
forgetful Sunday
when the air smells of
dry salt asphalt
spring mud, river,
racing rapids
bound to lose
nothing but sky and and and

don’t look for me
I’ll be home soon but
don’t look for me
when there's
nothing but sky and and and

me.

We didn’t sleep that night
the fire burning in our eyes,
our lungs filled with smoke and ash.

We didn’t have the heart to put it out.

No, we didn’t have the heart to **** it,
but we didn’t dare leave it unattended.
At some point we'd resolved
to let it die off on its own – but
we didn’t have the heart for that either.

All night we fed the flames
with stories told in delirium-states,
our truths embedded in fictions
occasionally exploding in crackles.

All night we circled the fire-pit
in ritualistic and futile attempts
to escape the capricious winds.

All night the flames danced hypnotic
while the waves on the shore sang lullabies:
homicidal, tempting melodies of sleep.

But,
when the morrow broke the sky
and faint blue crept in,
when the clouds gasped
coloured in superfluous reds and oranges,
when the last flicker finally puffed out
and we could at long last close our eyes,
there,
eternally etched,
we would still see the flames
burning under our eyelids.

it was beautiful how we grew together
like two vines climbing the same trellis
- entwining

I find myself thinking of you
with alarming frequency. For instance,
today while folding my laundry,
I caught myself thinking of you
and wondering, as I'm apt to do,
how would you fold your laundry, or
do the dishes? Do you sing
when you’re alone?

I think of you every time
when passing the street corners
where we’ve lingered
on snowy evenings, or the park
where we played grounders
in the summer. I think of you
even in places we've never been together
and a longing rises up in me
to share them with you
one day.

Even now, I am thinking
of how I am thinking of you,
which is really the same thing
as thinking of you, is it not?

And while I'm thinking of you
I think
*wouldn't it be sweet
if you were thinking of me too?

Piecing together a story with timestamps
from letters you published, and
clues raining down like hammers,
(which is to say, at first dangerous, and then
amnesia-inducing, leaving me certain
I was delirious all along)

you asked me “what kind of person are you?”
and I hesitantly shrugged,
“whatever kind you need me to be, if only
I can.” If only
I can.

I can be a mirror,
a reflection,
a deflection,
a misdirection,
an inter-introspection
asking only what has already
been asked before, rapid-fire
and firing faster, until it shatters
like
“what kind of person are you?”
and
“what do you see when you look at me?”
and
"how can you see what's looking at you,
if you didn't first know to look to see?”
and
"what if we run out of things to say
or questions to ask?”
and
“how many bites does it take
to get to the centre of a person?”
and
"if I promise there's no venom in my fangs
could I bite into you?”
and
I wonder what you taste like.

In a dystopian future where mosquitos have been all but eradicated, manual injections of anti-coagulants are a luxury in which the rich partake. Demand is high and access is highly restricted. On the surface, this is justified through religious ideologies, but at its core it is driven by class discrimination; it is a way for the wealthy to give yet another hearty ****-you to the poor.

As often happens in the case of substances which are both in demand and restricted, a thriving illegal drug trade has emerged. Low-quality anti-coagulants trickle down to the poor, but are, of course, subject to higher sentencing, for the safety of those taking them.

People share needles. Facilities for safe-injections exist, but mostly people prefer to attend ‘injection ******' where they literally scratch each other’s backs.

He worships at the shrine of capitalism
prays for a better fiscal quarter
with money spent in shopping malls,
a scrambling search for off-the-rack meaning
through blessèd, holy consumerism.
He gives thanks to this, our daily microwave meal,
while he mutters under his breath,
“What be the will of these, our stock-market Algorithms?"

He listens to sermons from business and econ profs preaching
from the higher-education steeples, teaching
students gathering like stampede sheeples, reaching
for a measure of worth in semester-long bursts
a silent choir scribbling in exam halls to petty praise,
leaving them burned out,
and crying on the bathroom floor,
lights out, itching for a wink
amidst insect hallucinations
adrenaline rushed
from Dexadrine or Adderall
dissociation flushed
from ketamine or alcohol
asking,
“What is wrong with me?”

Seeking answers,
he pays weekly penance to shrinks
a confessional of mental disorders from the Gospel of DSM:

“Forgive me, Doctor, for I have sinned.
It has been seven days since my last confession.
I’m obsessive, I’m depressive,
antisocial personality,
ADD or ADHD,
I’m poor as I ever was and ever will be,
I’m no service to society,
I'm squandered in sobriety,
but please
keep my hands tied
in these shackles of student debt!”

And his only act of contrition
is a medical prescription
made sweeter to swallow at communion
than the blood and body of Christ.

Welcome, the new order!
Welcome, the New Religion (TM)!

Pray it will be a better one
than what we left behind.

When we tumbled out into the spring, free at last from our winter entrapment, I couldn’t hold it in any longer. All winter they’d concocted strange notions about the candle, in desperate hopes of making it warmer. Huddling about the ember hand in hand, a religion was born. And it was a miracle, yes, that it had lasted the whole winter, but...

“We didn’t survive because of a pithy candle,” the words burst out dry and impatient, “we survived because we huddled together. Who was I, then, to start an argument? It would have been the death of us all! Better to be alive than to be right, I reckon.”