The mountains are cold and blue now
And the autumn waters have run all day.
By my thatch door, leaning on my staff,
I listen to cicadas in the evening wind.
Sunset lingers at the ferry,
Supper-smoke floats up from the houses.
...Oh, when shall I pledge the great Hermit again
And sing a wild poem at Five Willows?

I see your face in my mind all the time, but it's blurry
your lack of middle name
your distant and beautiful voice, growing pains
our hilarious jokes, you have my father's name

tangled together, beautiful and untouched
your lips press against me until I say it's too much
and we laugh and we laugh and we laugh at the cats
you tell me this is too beautiful for words to reenact.

you take the whole world in your hands and you hug it
and you give it to me to hold
since I met you I've known I don't need much more
than our perfect hundredth kiss by new library doors

you're coming closer to me, I can feel the world moving
it's like canada's shrinking and it's all your doing
i'll take the bus and the train and the plane and the world
to your doorstep to you to your hat and our beauty

you can sing songs by Joni, and I'll do the same
and we'll laugh and we'll laugh about being insane
we deserve the love that we're giving and the love that we'll get
I hope that you wear that PEI hat.

next time when we hold hands across the coffee shop table
the contemplation will be gone and your coffee will be black
I'll smile to you as the world's loving arms hug us
and we'll make love again to embrace the love again, we just must.

it seems my entire life is defined by drinks.

mother's milk out the womb.

(and maybe those suckles were sweet - it's not like i remember - but her words, for the rest of my life, certainly weren't.)

an hour-long debate, with my best friend at twelve years old - apple or orange juice?

(orange, obviously, is the right answer. we rehash the argument sometimes to this day.)

the day i turn 19, a beer in my hands.

(i'm sat around a campfire with my closest friends, birthdays all older than me - the beer tastes disgusting, as cheap alcohol is, but i'm glad to be there.)

yesterday, i had 1 coffee and 2 mugs of lemon honey tea, 4 glasses of water.

today, no tea, but 2 cups of coffee, a glass of milk, and 3 glasses of water.

i bite at my nails when i'm nervous, swallow down the spit that comes with it, the bile that rises.

last summer, i visited pei, had a raspberry cordial - my favourite drink to date - then bought a case of 4 more to take home with me.

last summer, when i lived in new brunswick, my friends in the same building knew me as the one who would always have a drink in hand - a milk tea, or maybe a pink lemonade, maybe that obscure korean soda i liked.

when i left new brunswick, i took a photo of my 2 trash cans, of the way they were both filled to the brim with empty bottles and cans and jugs.

i still miss the apple cider they made there.

my life is defined by drinks, sips, swallows, taking five minutes to breathe by making myself a nice whipped coffee, trawling the internet for pretty coasters and glassware for an hour in lieu of doing actual work.

Eventually, i close the shopping tabs, take a sip of coffee, and resume with the rest of my life.

Paakar tuhje na paya mene,
Tuhje na paakar bhi apna banaya mene.
Meri pyaar ki raah tujh tk banayi mene,
Afsos uss raah ki manzil ko tujhme na paya mene.
Ki Teri baato Mei khud ko na paya mene ,
Tere hone ke ehsaas ko hi baate banaya mene .
Mana Mei Teri zindagi Mei nahi ,
Par tuhjko hi apni Zindagi banaya mene.
Khokar bhi na khoya tujko,
Paakar khud Mei paya tujko,
Bharkar aankho Mei nami,
Aur leke hotho pei halki si muskaan ,
"TU MERA HASIL NAHI "
Yeh bhi khud ko samjhaya mene.