Lately when you’ve looked at the Facebook chat bar, you’ve noticed names that you haven’t spoken to in a long time.
As if Facebook knows what has happened and is saying “Look! Other people exist in the world! You had a past before all of this.”
Too soon, Facebook.
Even memories excluding him somehow manage to involve him all the same.
You spent 5 years in Toronto, and only at the tail end did you two learn each other and find a love that was ******* brilliant.
And now Toronto is a landmine.
U of T is tarnished and bleak.
The ROM, the TTC,
Every quaint and adorable breakfast cafe, Mexican eatery, Starbucks.
Tragic.
And **** Queen’s Park.
And **** High Park.
**** dog parks too because maybe at some point you walked past one together.
And the bookstore.
Never again.
You loved that bookstore
(it brought you him).
And death to bubble tea, and 0 calorie vitamin water.
(No one should ever experience the misfortune of 0 calorie vitamin water, but it’s a memory, so it hurts).
And **** board game cafes. Even though the only game you actually managed to finish was Jenga.
But that’s because you were falling for him and you would rather talk for hours than look away from his face to read too-long instructions.
Catan could wait.
A different world ago you suffered in a city too congested for the likes of your small-town spirit.
And somehow you found life there.
Would have gone back there.
And he will never know.

Each time I clean the bathroom
A little bit more
Of his DNA
Is scrubbed away
How many dead skin cells
And strands of hair
Sprinkled from my bedroom to the front door
A veil of history
You and me
Decay in matrimony
There is a guitar case sleeping
Under my bed
Hidden from view
It is a dream catcher
It gives me you
And waking up
Is a nightmare

I love you like Zeus loves his cow-eyed wife
As Cronos, scared and jealous, loved his young
Like Agamemnon cherished afterlife
And Creon prized his niece’s nimble tongue

My love is like an ocean full of sharks
Where mortals fly too high upon wax wings
My love is Oedipus kept in the dark
The Minotaur to Theseus’ string

I see you with Tiresias’ eyes
A play with no deus ex machina
Hephaestus’ lust to wise Athena’s thigh
My heart as blessed as mother Hecuba

Though from your mythic love I’m left irate
I cannot use a word so strong as ‘hate’

Some days you wish you were a vengeful god
Rising from your sorrow, stormy-eyed and
Silver-plated.
See who I am, you would say. Look how I
Swell at the hardships of my adversaries.
But you are too naked.
Sprung from the earth-
Mortal -
soft as soil worked by worms.
Yet a fantasy is planted there
Seedless though it is.
Sacrificing demons should be a ritual
By now