I can still hear your lisp
the way it covered every "r" you sounded
bare skin under mist, your eyes
matched your hair
the first, all blue raspberry stained lips
the second, pure spring sky

Never before, had I loved the rain,
as much as when we ran through it
we let the downpour soak our clothes
and congruent, thunder couldn't scare us
we felt naked, or I did,
but I didn't mind it
to be naked with you
was all that I wanted

Never before, had I looked at a girl,
and wanted to hold her, the way I held you
suddenly, the laws I believed in felt
paperclip thin, and completely untrue
it didn't take much strength
to twist every one of them
into a shapeless and easily
ignorable pile of waste

You knew the flags of every country
as if your allegiance was to the entire world
I wanted it to be to me
only
and I think I knew that it was,
but that doesn't mean
I didn't want you to say it

i bought myself a cake
i bought myself a bottle of wine
i mixed quiet and noise like paint but it never felt like colour
i sent you a letter
please write back

give me a moment to clean the cobwebs of the future
off my face
there, now I can see where I got me
look in the mirror and love my body
and maybe save the girl who for the past year I've been burning alive

you can spend three forevers looking for arms to embrace you
only to forget the ones on each of your sides
there must be a reason
they bend towards my ribcage
and wrap around my heart

a year later, I still want to reclaim
our violet and jagged forever catastrophe
and return to our attempt to name
the space between the moon and wherever this is

I want to know if they were right about you, fully
they said you were arrogant, but to me
you were almost entirely sewn by parasitical magic
and powerful, you had fingers that held all the answers and sometimes,
held me

you could roar deception but you could only
bring yourself to whisper the truth
lightyears away, you told me I was all you belonged to
lightyears away

after you left, the space was
flat like the floor of a jetway
and sharp like the pop of my ears on the way down to home

we expected too much of each other in different ways
you wanting closeness, and me, just wanting
trying to understand and live in the space
the space between the moon and wherever this is

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

I was playing La Vie en Rose for you
my fingers straining over the keys
"I want out of this noise," you said
and left to get some air
or smoke a cigarette.
Without you, the notes grew cumbersome
and before I knew it, I had stopped playing.
Removing myself from the bench
I went to close the windows but

fumbled with the blinds, and the strings
snapped, the daylight pouring in
carrying with it, your shadow
like a seashell, typical, but still somehow treasure,
important enough to hold on to, to some people,
to me.

Curious, I stretched my body, became
the finishing piece of an inordinate mosaic by
some anonymous Catholic, all stained in glass.

I fit there perfectly, in your outline
never before had the answer to
the question of what to be
been so clear
you were a jar and I was a liquid
for a moment, my only obligation was to follow your rules.

But my lungs itched.
Another world away, back in the sunlight
La Vie en Rose hung in the air
unfinished

this is the land where everything is coated in dust
here, lips go dry waiting for something to taste
travel north, wander to meet the aurora
and if you go
won't you return to tell me
what it was like to have so much water
it spilled over every rooftop
and made atlantis out of suburbia

I have often dreamt in liquid color
lurid with motion, I’ve woken up dizzy

******* the tear 
in lullaby time

tempted to test it’s fragility

wiping the sleep from my eyes

to find them sealed shut

I’d extend one arm, brushing the greyscale
unable to escape what I couldn’t see

“this is blindness”, I thought

as the world shrunk to a sliver of sense

all crunch-sounds and sandpaper jaws



I fashioned myself armor made of the transparent melodies

chanted by nameless birds, unidentifiably perched 

on the other side of my window

it didn’t fit right

I had misinterpreted my body

the fabric clung too tightly to my skin and then jutted out

like a Christmas parade

I can’t remember if it was only a story, but north of here

they fastened wheels to their feet, to roll over pavement
what would it be like, to glide over miles

or grow gills, and escape this
stale air
I could live a dream, in the north
I could make a hero
of the river

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

waiting for spring to open her arms to me
takes up all my time, my mind is a
single barrel gun with only
one shot to fire at
a thousand targets, all of which I could miss

welcome back on the scene, intruder
welcome back in my dreams, assailant
here is your natural home in my heart
here is your rightful piece of my brain

I loved dividing myself for you,
whole I had more strength than I knew what to do with
I loathed dividing myself for you
but when you asked me to, I did it again

I know spring tastes of warmth but I forget warmth
tastes of you
I found myself in winter, but who wants to be a
single-snowflake-being, born of darkness and chill

I'm waiting for spring to open her arms to me
layers of skin melting away
afraid of what I'll be
when there's nothing left but bone

I did not have a dream but instead dreamt
of eating a lobster, crustacean salt of sea
I cracked open your arms to taste your meat
all salty warm butter you shattered
so easily, like my hands were meant

to break, or you were meant to be broken or we were
meant 
for each other
it was love I think it was love it was



a dream? I woke to insatiable itch
my skin flaking, then hardening over
I explored my arm with my tongue
and it tasted of salt crustacean
and the flesh wouldn't move it was
rock
maybe this shell will protect my pink insides
maybe this shell is my saviour but then
why can I barely walk

I felt very strong I felt protected, I turned
to demonstrate, to preform an act of magic
to make you disappear, to eclipse you
with myself

but you weren’t in my bed, you woke

alone, safely tucked away

love, promise me the summer

and your arms
your fragile bones

i honestly dreamt that you were braiding my hair
but I woke up to find it falling in my face
i know that it's hard for you to write me but would you at least
once so I know you're alive?
that late-night text to say you'd been admitted
i was so mad that you hadn't asked me about my day
you were so scared because you hate the hospital
if i was there maybe i could have fixed everything
if i was there i would have made it worse

i wonder if i even have that Power anymore
have you taken it away and ARE YOU EVEN THERE
CAN YOU JUST ******* GIVE ME ONE STRAIGHT ANSWER

I guess we were always queer, you openly, me secretly,
you devotedly until I devotedly and then you
completely illegible

i guess we were always queer, you secretly, me openly
you noticed me until i noticed and t15s
wq3tvf15 6oZje

then again, you never wanted me to read you

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

doing yoga in my room
trying to level my
level my
anxiety

if the tension melts off my
shoulders and into the
ground, earthbound like a line of
tears, i'm holding my ear to the floor,
catching whispers of
energy leaving or gathering, perhaps both
a tangible exchange

                                              is
                                      skin
                   ­             my
my mind is rising            transparent, a bird hits
my window because she didn't see it, i turn my neck too fast and
pull a muscle, the only way out of this room is feathered by
ineffective attempts, planned escapes leading
nowhere, arms that reach but can't grab when everything i want is
catastrophic

doing yoga in my
room trying to le
vel my an
xiety, holding my breath
listening for the cautious whisper,
a voice that breaks in the tone of my own, hesitates
to form words, says in a quiet lull:
"I trust you"

melts

ener
gy lea
vin
g or
gathering,
perhaps both
a tangible exchange

it was an ambivalent orchestra
every sound I heard through winter's gossamer veil
the frost and my window, two shatterproof layers
between me and the outside world
but time forces everything to crack, even the river
who broke fissures in her icy armour, working slowly,
understanding patience was perhaps her greatest ally
her only accomplice in escape

now she is incandescent with sunlight
still muddy brown, but at night, when I pass her
she is unforgettable luminance
and those who used to carve their journeys into her back
with the blades of their skates
don't dare touch her, now that she's free.
I have noticed I still don't have answers
but I think I trust myself enough now
to turn all this fear into something
so ridiculously triumphant
that you'll have to stop and listen

I used to pray endlessly
for some enchantment to carry me upward
but I am learning to be earthbound
and from here
the sky is a different kind of beautiful
seeming closer now
like an eventual promise,
all destiny and syncopated light

overlook rooftops, three-quarters sky
she’s white like insomnia, overshadowed by
snow, gusting the gaps in the buildings
gutting gasps out of air, breathlessly,
you remember fog and the way it left the ocean
the way it left the ocean to kiss your skin
how much it hurts to be landlocked is more
than the fear of no return instilled by water ever was,
watching tiny bodies waddle through furious winds

noses runny and red, arms fat with fabric, reaching for doors to perform
an act of disappearing

and while you stare at a single hooded figure
putting foot in front of foot, crossing the courtyard to warmth
the sky will use the privacy to perform an act of transformation
she will become cerulean, and once again you can't breathe

I wasn't here to dress in grey only,
it just made my skin look so ******* good
I've closeted five feet of violet velvet
and maybe it belongs there, in the dark

I watched colours move like courage on their shirts
and had to try it too, you couldn't blame me
who wouldn't force taffeta over their arms
after watching it kiss and reflect the sky's
smile, cut-crash on its back like lucidity

On me, however, it just sat plainly
it was the motion of their bodies underneath
that'd brought beauty
what a grand illusion
what a waste of time

New continents call me but I don't answer
all hues clash with a heart black and white
I know grey and what comes after
the foreign taste of day after night

Tiny hairs on sturdy arms that I imagine blonde
envision you sun-kissed without knowing why
all in the dark to myself  
with you finding
my waist, stomach, and
parts of me I didn't offer

I fix hands in your hair, let them stay
brush the stubble and entwine
longer pieces, maybe pulling
knees curling up to my
chest, butterflies forming but
falling away on numb nerves

I force legs to unfold and
outside in unclear night I
look behind me more than once,
embarrassed I even checked

that night wasn't smoke through my fingers it was
your body in my hands and then
not, in the morning I tried to count what I'd lost
but the only empty was the hollow of my neck

dreams where I'm standing in front of myself
taking in hazel eyes, pigeon toed feet
she is tall but I am taller
we each roll our shoulders back, grimace
lick our dry lips, scoop thin hair off our face
I pull the first punch to prove that I'm quick
It hurts but it feels amazing because catharsis is the process of releasing,
and therefore providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions

but then there's you? together we used to
enter refuge into careful arms
your name, your name, your name

alone, I am a person without a country
the captain of a ghost ship, skirting water, shuddering
amidst the noise, cringing under this bright light

six months, six months, six months

the sun was so bright that it bled through the blinds and
my hair was so short i felt naked
you told me you liked it,
my short hair
i wondered if he would notice

i try to keep the memory fresh, i avoid that photo he and
i featured in accidentally, my back to the camera,
his eyes his gaze his eyes on me
when i see it, occasionally, i have to wonder, was that
transfixed interest or him just wanting
to ****

maybe
it's the same
thing maybe what i want is to be
wanted maybe i want what he wants and he wants to take his hands and
put them where he wants to and maybe tell his friends about it later and then i'd be all used up

for two weeks, swollen lymph nodes rake razors down my neck,
making sleep elusive sleep even though sleep i
want it so badly
i hope when i see you i'm breathing easy
i hope my hair grows
back just a little
i hope to learn the male secret of infinite resource,
to give to others without diminishing myself

It was the wild girls you called your friends,
the girls who wore only what they could steal
their skin tattooed with india ink,
the first to dare to paint their lips
violet, who showed up late,
then never showed at all.

Under the glare of outdoor lights
you watched them wrap
fingers around cigarettes,
bones and teeth chattering.
In the cold they looked onward
through pacific ocean eyes,
narrowed to hide
any tenderness,
moving with cuts newly scabbed
a week or day before.
There was always someone older,
a fearless woman with cropped hair
they just couldn’t help but study,
there was always some boy, watching.

They were the first girls you knew
who ditched class, who popped
a crystal filled pill, who stayed
awake until three each night,
pupils wide.
You watched them fall
quick and bright and beautiful
into the outdoor pools of strangers,
you watched them disappear
then return to hold your hand
before you even had to look.

Oh, they were cool and secretive,
but sometimes they spoke to you
with such extravagant vulnerability,
about the time they stuck fingers
down their throat,
hoping to be skinnier, or the day
their mother demanded they leave
because of who
they chose to love. How you wished
that you could comfort them,
salvage their newly
pockmarked skin. For months
you watched them stretch
waiting for the moment
they’d break, as if
they’d allow you to gather the pieces.

The wild girls had the strongest
legs, the most coveted secrets,
and told anyone who’d listen
that they were okay
and had always been,
though in the narrow darkness
of an Old Quebec alleyway
after a few drinks
they would tell you of their
first time, and how they hadn’t
been ready.

The girls you loved
knew everything, guided you downward
and under, showed you what it
was to rebel. Now,
it is their lies
you want you revoke, the parts of themselves
they buried within or laughed away
as they learned too soon
too many years ago
what it took and took
to be unafraid.

I don’t know when four years from now turned into tomorrow
or when I first became afraid
everyone that matters, poised to run in all directions
and I have been running less
but when I do
leaves I used to reach for
now slap me in the face

the last time I walked these halls I wanted nothing more than
to leave I was convinced that outside would complete me but
here, I've studied the rules until winning became second nature
I've been around the board twice and back again
I can survive here
in this limbo

but I’m not turning my clocks back over and over
and I’m not hiding clues to remind those who stay of my former presence
I’m not letting the sun set on my back again
I was in love with the idea of tomorrow when it wasn't skinning me alive
peeling me back layer by layer digging its nails in crudely, leaving me surrounded by light my eyes hadn't adapted to see

when I am inattentive, the optimism
bubbles upward, but another voice, underwater says
what if you're wrong wrong wrong

I thought these four years were supposed to fade away, effortless
that I was the one that got to leave
but time is up, and kicking me out

I  wasn't here to dress in grey, only.
I never asked you to switch spots with me,
so my eyes wouldn't water in the sun
you live roughly three Beach House songs away but for all I know we were born to different spectrums
my waves lie beneath everything and I want nothing more than to hum to visible colour

but the words I chose to speak
were always duller, and clumsy
always falling idly
I wasn't electric
the nights I'd leave work
wondering, completely in
awe at your arrival
I wasn't electric
the dawns I'd awake
with every mistake cutting
into me, and every distraction
too weak to make me stronger
I wasn't

when the frost bit my skin I couldn't
feel my fingers I wrote poetry
and wished that you would see it I was delirious and I fell
head over heels for every gem I saw encased in glass
trust me, I know how to love impossible and hopeless
I can love older and untouchable
I understand out of reach and distant
but I'll go anywhere after summer
thaws my hands
so please
know
new continents are
calling me, away from the prairie

and at least a plane could lift me up

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

just like that, july
finale curtain fall,
and fog-laced everything
and future forever-question
less fear, less failure
more numb

we've been forewarned
the lake has risen
the tide, eternally arrived
and rain-frothed earth
that clings to cloth

I was born *****,
wiped fresh, and expected
to remain so
"Stay golden", no,
stay lily-white,
and mom and dad
I tried

we are told, from the beginning
over and over
a mantra of non-ending-knowing
"something is different about eighteen"
and in thirteen days
will I be
different

I look to nature
I look to strangers
I look anywhere but inward
for the last-piece-of

something there
is stirring, I think
something is certain
inherent in me
but I don't need to be certain,
no,
not immediately

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

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

winter bites at me harder than anything with teeth ever could
at me, ever biting, winter's teeth are harder than anything
I am freezing I
am in the middle of a clearing of
fresh snow, no feet have
walked here no feet walk here, here
no feet walk winter home at night she walks alone
like I do, when I make my way into empty rooms
empty rooms like I make my way in to sit
rooms like my way and one sealed envelope-

frost clings to the walls making me claustrophobic taking air
zapped like a last breath, winter takes, cold cautions you leave
or die here, empty rooms and only the envelope, waiting
thinking maybe, it could contain anything
thinking I could contain anything, maybe-

and off the outer walls, icicles crack under their own weight, time shredding days into darker pieces, slivers so thin I barely believed they could get any smaller until you told me we
still had a ways to go
and something within me fell over, then
fell over like icicles
cracking
and I knew then I wasn't maybe containing
then I knew anything I could contain maybe wasn't
and feet that indented snow froze still, the footprints I'd
made sealed over in ice and refused to change
all that fresh snow, I was Schrodinger's Cat, I was walking around
unaware at the time, my feet just filled footprints already made, already frozen, already mine

turning to my neighbors, I ask if they’re awake
just as our clenched fists 
find a body in our river
I thought I could trust what I held in my hands
but this history of ours ruins everything we touch
I want you to believe my fingers scrape at nothing
when I reach into my past
because all I’ve got so far
is dirt under my fingernails

I can angle my head in such a way that the plains of
my face echo the imprint of my ancestors, who
didn’t hold arms out but inward, to pray

they were settlers in Israel, colonials in Canada
cutting irreversible fissures
they prized their knives, winking an eye
and smiling upward at a God that wasn’t there

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

don't think I don't notice everything about you
digging your heels into the ooze that used to be snow
waiting for me to stop mourning summer like I lost it
I can't help that we're our past
I can't help that you're her name

this night tastes like spring, but in January I know better
would you place a palm over my mouth
and wait by my side for the ice to erode

and then when there's nothing, will you let me breathe again?
you could keep my winter soul safe
I see it in
your eyes like
the goodbye I'm waiting for, but
I saw it in
his eyes
too