I’m just trying to eat my french toast and drink my coffee but you keep cutting me off as I’m about to take a sip take a bite asking why I like it with sugar i add a spoonful of creamer and you’re laughing
but not in a loving way
talking about my schoolwork and my plans for the garden
and you skip over the congratulations and mention your ex girlfriend
going on about your ex girlfriend and my face has hardened
i drink my coffee and try not to listen
i eat my french toast and i don’t pay attention
i’m looking at the man with the book eating alone
i’m looking at the waitress wishing she were home
excuse me and i’m up
the bathroom is empty and nobody saw me
the mirror is clean and i am *****
the lights are brighter than i want them to be
and the soap dispenser is empty

The French language to you, was little more than an inheritance
It was the promise between mother and daughter that a grandchild ought to know the language they used

In Bonnyville, they occupy the church, the Sobeys, the liquor store with that butchered accent
The hybrid between Quebecois French and rural Albertan English - ugly, and indecisive

You don’t live in Bonnyville, where the French roam free
The French in Edmonton feels lost, almost unknown
Poorly funded buildings house these Franco-albertans - children with the same inheritance as you

Immersion becomes a ***** word,
worthy of contempt and disgust
All the French kids know each other,
forced to grow up together while being deprived of options
They all go to the same university - the small francophone campus which stands unimpressive in the only neighbourhood in Edmonton where stop signs say ‘arrêt’

Oil Country, home for the right and prosperous, they don’t like you
You, you’re Francophone -
Stuck up, ******, pretentious...
Besides, there are no such things as Franco-albertans.

What could you be other than an invented term by some lost souls?
You aren’t French enough -
Alberta is an English speaking province.

The time you went to France,
someone asked if you were French-Canadian
Before you could reply, your friends spun your story - something believable, commendable...
your parents, lived in Montreal, and moved to Alberta with their wholly French children

Your father grew up in Edmonton,
memorizing the parks and malls by name
while your mother lived on a dairy farm, living in french - the ugly acadienesque french.

But, to everyone around you, it’s much more believable that you are a stranger to this province.
Maybe you are.

The whole universe paused
Oh Jeune Homme,
What have you done?

Your eyes reflected a picture
of how Proxima Centauri held its feeling no longer;
It exploded!
Into trillion heaps of wonders
it shattered
And it seemed like the sky is falling
That even the earth stood still wondering
But why did you not flinch at all?

Though on your chest I felt the great vibration
Of Mount Vesuvius fulminating once again;
Getting rid of all its innards and pain
As if trying to turn us into ashes
And for that my heart beat races

But you were smiling instead-
looking at me in the eyes and said
"Not a single mountain had erupted,
and not a single star had exploded.
Jeune fille, you're just in love."

-8/4/19-