windowsill wide I lined all my acrylic
paints in a perfectly straight
line with no intention of inflicting order (sorry)
I looked up to see the trees but the paints blocked the view
so I knocked them down, one by one, red and yellow, black and white
but blue, it's simply untouchable
like a fissure in my wrist I paint my
nails blue and I wait for the sky to reveal
who she truly is, instead of reflecting the water

as more days pass and you pass me by I find myself passing myself on the street and I can't look in a single mirror because I'm there every time, I beg the noise to burry my pulse but it's there underneath like a layer of pigment I brushed over so many times to
cover it up

it doesn't end until it's over, you can darken
blue, you can yellow it green and red it violet
escape it on a canvas, decidedly omit it
but it's with you, underneath you, inside you
blue, it's inescapable, buzzing between frequencies
alive but without purpose

after I feel everything properly
I will take it upon myself
to engrave our history on the walls
of every place we’ve been

even if you won’t read the words

or claim what’s there is completely illegible

the city will swell beyond the both of us

carrying me away
the city can stand on it’s own two feet

but not me, not yet

later, when I feel nothing at all

I will travel by foot to lay a wreath
along every sidewalk where I thought of you
until every airborne eye can view

a trail that leads absolutely nowhere



and you will wake to drink your coffee

and interpret the world, you will
weave yourself further

into this city, move concrete
like sand to erase my validity,
you’ll embed yourself in the earth
all in the name of belonging, you will
fall on your knees and bruise all the skin there

but never tell a soul, you will laugh for days

at how you’re above it, your uncanny awareness
of these rules, this life


and in the evening you will take your words and try your best
to assemble them
and I will do the same with mine,

but I will try better

I was out of my element, the outlook of ocean encompassing
limbs happily landlocked beforehand, I could taste it through the fog,
the way the city lights glowed with a chromic hiss and the shore fell away into artifice, just like all of those pictures we failed to take

the stars are more clear when you turn your back on St. John’s
but even when defined they still drift without unity and hold
no power, we were never under scrutiny like they raised us
to believe, instead our hands hold tight to scales and swords,
we cover our eyes and tread lightly

until we taste flame and we run

you and I drove to Middle Cove and stayed until my skin smelt of bonfire, 
we watched the ashes float up into the air, fighting for room in the breeze, nothing can burn in the gut of Cape Spear, so the air smells of ocean and
 endings, like the edge of this round, round world, where direction is entirely relative

It went for my throat but hit me in the chest

this molten lava, broken August
everything once put to rest

was out and up and kicking

there’s nothing to do here but try to be buoyant

I want straight answers

to be clairvoyant
and blanket myself in omnipotent thunder
I don’t want to fear anything


I am certain I would be content
to live a life so morosely stagnant 
that
my muscles calcify and the pressure to become anything else but a fossil disappears

though also, underneath my skin

is the desire to stretch and end and begin
and no season will ever bruise it

and time can never fully dissolve it
and the fear still clings, but I know not to trust it
the lightning strikes, but I too, now emit

the flash
the moon waxes and wanes
and the shadows thrash

but the sky

remains 
malleable

It was December
I had thought it was January for the longest time but
it was December
and dead of winter
and dark enough to swallow every fairy light

I only have to think the word ‘frostbite’
and I remember how trapped i felt
in your arms

why didn’t my fists beat no no no

against your chest
why did i lay there

motionless
and if it was so foggy, why do I still

remember everything

when morning crashed over me
I woke up, so warm
I just wanted water
to breathe and to leave
you moved your hands up and down my bare back
and I sat frozen, waiting for my cab

every time someone mentions your name I want to
scream so loud I create a second winter
what you did to me
when i was too dizzy
to stand on my own two feet

I know I know I know all too well

that no one wants to listen

and I hate myself

for continually wondering

was it was it was it
my fault

just when I think I’ve fully, finally scrubbed

your fingerprints from my skin
you step closer
and your shadow
ecl i pses
everything

Let me understand
just one conversation
magic to nightfall, mythic notation
I wanted to impress you
and I still do
I wanted to best you,
lion-mane moon

rise as soon as the clock marks
sunset
this is the dynamic of you and me
and if I can't explain it right,
I don’t deserve your empathy, but
I’ll carry on in different ways
observe the other, inhabit the area
night takes, and refuses
         to adjust

yesterday, I miscalculated my city and found myself stranded alone

I wasn’t afraid, but had you been there I wouldn’t have felt

so lost

for now, I can cut corners until
my surroundings are common
to me, I can fold paper but
somehow the creases never end up
how I want them to be

last night, the sky was orange but you weren't there to see it with me
day to day I vacillate between trying to find and escape you
and you, parallel,
        don't see any of it

Five months long, you held it
in your fist, squeezed tight 'til
the edges etched fissures
in fingerprints
Now, I'm asking you to dare to be empty
let fingers curl
back like
tempted wings
desert safety-blanket 'what if' and 'one day'
open your hand
become weightless

without hope in him
there's nothing to grip
but your own palm
both ancient and new
you thought your hand was empty now
but you,
you you