Silver ribbon Assiniboine
a sash for a city--a Ceinture Fléchée
tied into the Red just off Highway 1
          You leak into the topsoil
           in the place you call home
          and come back up a street map
          with fingerprint roads

I remember the way you'd trace these out on my back
with fingertip pencils--cartographer's hands--
Bird's Hill and Lag' and Portage and Corydon
     laid 'em down in my veins
     just under my skin

Where are you tonight, in your smiling Great City?
Crossing the bridge and inhaling the skyline?
Or walking the river in my iced over thoughts?
Maybe walking, mid-tempo, around KP mall?

Those hipsters in Osborne Village
          and Wolsely
had nothing on us, did they?
                    Cooler than Main
                              on the 1st of the year

I trickled away
                    and I leaked into topsoil
enjambed between rhymes in apology poems.
An Irish Goodbye; a blip on the radar
stopped flashing to fade off the map of your streets.

Our voices still echo, our spectres still haunt
Dollaramas and sidewalks, Tim Horton's and pubs
Our hands still lace up--at least so in theory
Perimeter Highway's still traced on my back.

          Here's hoping our avenues
          meet again soon.
          Here's hoping that luck can outrun shortcomings
          one more time.

For as long as I can remember-
This is where I've lived.
I've never moved.
This house, this room has always been mine.
My mother has always slept on the other side of the wall.
Then why, at two in the morning, do I find myself wishing to go home?
Why do I repeat "I want to go home." over and over.
Tears stream down my cheeks, etching patterns and trails.
Creating a map for me to follow.
But where will it lead me?

you asked me where i wanted to go,
but all i said was i don't know.
you handed me a map,
but i laid it on my lap.
i rested my head on the window
and watched the passing show of
tree
after
tree
after
tree.
i took solace in the one thing
i knew i had-
myself.
it might not have been enough
but it was the most that i had.
so i held it tight in my chest
and braced myself for the road
set before us.

Quilted maps attached with tape
Graph paper parachutes paper the room
The unknown is calling
Through 3 by 5 lens
These books brag the stories
That I’ve yet to live

i arrived in this world with no map to guide me but the palms of your hands. you let me hold them sometimes, and they’re warm and inviting.

sometimes you make me feel starry-eyed with your words, or at least that’s what you used to do

but i’m waiting for you to send me constellations of goosebumps running down my arms and spine

i will shape myself into an amateur cartographer, and make it an active point to mark places on the map that we’ve been to together, and as i trace my fingers across towns and mountains we’ve yet to cross, a part of me wonders if we’ll even get to any of those destinations

because somehow you’re staggering and i don’t know why or what’s holding you back

still i persist, i yearn for adventure.

i leave the map unfurled and smooth the creases of my sudden remembrance that i came here alone. i made my own decisions and ran into you in the meanwhile.

you too, were a wandering traveler. your feelings as nomadic as your feet on these lands. i wouldn’t call myself foolish to have ever gotten involved, but you are embedded in my memories. a new story for me to flesh out every time someone asks me how i got here or there. i’ll keep meandering from town to town, but no longer will i seek you — you may find me.

i realized this was not your map, but mine.