i'm here on an edge of a thought i used to long entertain  

i loved to swing my legs out the window pane

our ocean ***** the water and spits the rain
and i loved this city all the more and all the same

in those days i was more
i was more

i was vain

so today just put me out of my pain
before this hollow town swallows me
vein by vein

but gives me that cue first
to prompt us both to look up
at the clouds, that same old sky
we were together for days but this one...
it tastes

different

waning, i've seen moons do it
waning, i've seen candles do it
but i can't watch this

crying without crying
laughing to fill the room
because small talk
isn't big enough
and see you soon
doesn't mean
see you soon

but small shrinks too
i've got so much to empty talk to

and I don't miss that storm
(I'm lying. I miss that storm)
or maybe i miss the chase and
the holding hands that came as it passed

i never run but i did it then and there
because you pulled me past so much already
and i knew the only way to get out of it was to get out with you

you're my oldest
i scratch out all the firsts before you
but you have no youngest
and i know i'm a child

the trees and the bridges and the humid
in Toronto it all smells the same
i hope you liked it too

we did it best when we turned our time into a playground
and it's finally almost right
that i want to swear to you on something

that you don't miss the storm
please let me tell you, and trust me on this
you don't miss the storm

i miss you helping me out of it i miss helping you out of it
but we don't miss the storm and i can't think outside of it either

it's all foggy now and you offer to stay to help but damage is damage and
baggage is baggage

and i'm travelling guilt-free this year

yet i'm sad and i'm sad and i wore down the led of the pencil you loaned me
to write about that

and forgiven once but never twice i say
and trip me up, so do it, that's a cost i'll pay

but i've got no money to pay for that now
and i miss you
and i miss you

but i don't miss the storm

I think too much
you said that, right?
I think too much, I feel too much
I am too much?
is it the excessive pull,
or the half-hearted tug
that starts to bug you first?

is it all the push, baby? is it
all the push?
cause i know when you ask me
plain and simple
it comes out tangled and wrong

so you say // what do you want
well, i want fair and square
but then i want to
spin you in circles
to learn my way around

you pull tighter to my hand
closeness. dizzy. closeness here closeness now. i miss it.
do YOU miss it.

God I miss it I miss you
I miss this

then you say I'm making you dizzy
always keeping that knife close around
but you hold me in those moments like i want you to.

he said:
you are the type to turn to an empty crowd  and scream
         you are my people.
look them in the eye you would and
scream YOU are my people.
and i just wonder, man, do you see people there? in the emptiness? what do you see that makes you say those things?
or is the emptiness your people. do you see people.

it's long before he asks again
please baby do you
do you
do you
do you

YES my God. YES
yes yes yes YES i see people.
in people i see the empty.
and in the empty i see people.
and here i have to turn to them to tell them
when they most feel like they don't belong
that they are my people. and with me in my
soul they are always home. and though i am weak
and i can't carry the world i can
carry these people.

i guess it was always this cold every
winter but i never fully realized 366 days
later this is exactly where i'd be again

i say goodbye to it every year and i
take whatever veil everyone makes for me
to throw it over

we all want to start over

but it's here that january starts to cry on my shoulder
i liked this shirt, and i liked to keep my heart on its sleeves
but i let her cry until i feel each shoulder freeze

knowing this year was a bad one and
that she's lost a lot

(this entire time i think: ***** you. ***** you for hurting her)
(but i also want her to forgive)

the entire time wishing i could have her back
and soon i'm having a panic attack

my hand over her now
under my breath i'm praying
i wish i could take the weight off her
i wish i had plainly had more
to offer
i wish i had it in me to say i could stop her

from everything but mostly from her own suffering
even months away i'm so ****** cursed
to already see the sadness buffering
her software overload

switching her hardware up thinking it would do us any good
when the world will still spin and the events planned
will still happen as they should

all i do is hold her and hold her fists
away from her eye
stop rubbing them while you cry
she said she'd have worried about wrinkles too
if she didn't plan to die

i'm getting too old to ask her to justify why

every year i get asked
  please won't you please
  keep this boulder?
i need it to stop me from getting older
please won't you please?     i want to stay on your shoulder

and every year she says:
don't **** my dream don't **** my hope don't **** my illusion
unless you want me dead too

i said this year i want this and i want you
but
keep that february away from me
if you want it gone i want
all of it gone

she said
i might not be right but i can tell that
that is wrong

(and she adds
i wish instead i was
left
cause i need you going and i need you gone)

but i'm
hanging tight
hoping my heavy burns down to your light

no , light
lightest lit light
stop me turning everything into
a fight

no light
isn't that winter?
yes
wake up
it's winter it's march

you know what i want to say?
i'm waiting for sweet april days
roll around fast paced craze
and all her showers i'm waiting for
i'm itching at stories because i can't wait for more
and thank april for the showers for the flowers for the
bloom for the
run around turn around
find yourself hanging on her
every move

till May said May
till May said
you may May
you may stay you may be mine
you, may,
be mine

you maybe
mine

you, maybe mine

just for a few days more

till june comes around to hack and **** up my door

unsturdy but there
one against the problems door against the thought door against
the dizzy door against the rot

so  hinges slipped and hinges slid
and nothing felt heavier than
my eyes, right shut close they did

i was holding in the only way i knew
i was keeping up before i blew

i was keeping in as much as i could
i was holding on more than i should

and tell july she was ugly

and tell her if i hadn't been too busy crying
and too busy sad
i would've been mad

dare she
did anyways
and poked me in the eye

she said

they have to be open

i said

you're the one trying to **** me now

she said august is here and
you missed it fighting

i said i missed myself
more than i could ever imagine
and i feel myself
on seven clouds
at once

she said i know who you're talking about and give her four days
she's going go away

i nodded
but i knew it couldn't be true
this was a form of me as much as it was all i cared to say i knew

till friend my friend called her friend to call my friend friend to call around and say that i found myself
at the edge of myself and i realized much of the ******* up and i realized more than sorry
and i remembered big guilt filling up pools of myself and
incapacity to swim and
overcrowding
means drowning

in august i remembered how ugly
i could be in the rawest form of myself

and i spent 2 weeks with my hands on a blade wondering
when the day would be that i'd ditch
the body

i was possessing feeling and thought and i was
something more than that

i was surprised to read in my journal that this was something i thought consistently about

so if i were to let go it'd be the body it'd be
the mind and i'd let them die
the only way my spirit could ever learn to fly

and body got weaker call me
weakest on the plane
but september came here right back and
she came back quite like the best
hug attack

no hack no more she said
no need for
a door

she came back to say i'm here! she came back to say i missed you!
and i missed her too i missed you so much i love
you so much i love myself i am superwoman i am
superwoman today

she said you are superwoman everyday jesus
christ you have no idea what you've missed

i said i love you i love you i love you don't you
dare go away

and friend called friend and friend called friend
till the sad came around to finally
shove me again

locker of myself i thought
bullies were insecure

but she looked me straight in the eyes with words
and a voice that made me know she was sure

i didn't even say hi to her this time
so don't give me crap
i hate her
as much as you do


and i was thinking out loud to my best friend to
please just make her go away make her go away

but stupid idea because i stayed for months
in a bed
with her
in my head

so month beat month till month turned month
happy birthday month happy
anniversary month
marking days
i knew what it
was for

and in october i swore i
was feeling it come on this year mild

but november was so cold and december
looks at me in that way that january felt
and i knew it wasn't innocent enough to leave me alone

i can't defend you january i am so sorry this is
so much bigger than both of us

i'm just so sorry to have not kept my promise to you

full disclosure:
1) i don't know whether coincidences are real or not.

2) bad timing, i badly want to call it that.
ultimately it comes down to not really knowing whether it is or it isn't and what this is... is really just a whole series of what-ifs no one ever prepared me to answer. the truth is that i don't know if i'd have only figured out what was going on later or if it was going to happen this year no matter what i did. but i tried my best, i hope every version of me in the future believes the person writing this right now that i did what i thought i could to stop what i felt was about to happen, happening. i had a weird feeling this entire year about what was happening to me. i know i saw it coming. anyways i should be sorry and, i'm not going to lie, i am, even though sometimes i am reminded by good people that it isn't my fault. that might be true. but i am still sorry. even my dream me gives me **** for it.

3) this is the most ironic thing to happen so far, but i think i say that every year. at least i do, in my head. i kept saying what's gone is gone and what's going, should. but i won't pull it back or push it to go like i used to. what's happening is happening, mantra or no mantra, i am not reducible.

4) i've been weak and i've been strong, left and right and wrong. and let me be honest that this year has been fire in my veins and let me be truthful that i had people beneath me to put out some flames. i realize somehow that this isn't the worst river i've drowned or will ever drown in and that isn't even close to being the hottest hell i've escaped from. it is tiring to think it could be worse and terrifying to think it could be better before i see the thermostat turning itself up again. before all that i love burns again.

5) conflict. they teach you about it in literature. there's different types and somehow i've made myself familiar with them all. some people egg me on, they like that i'm a fighter and they think i can fight bad things away for them. someone told me that i was their guardian moon and i got so high off the idea that i could be something like that for someone one day. and to be told that i already was sent me onto that higher plane. i know i'm not holy or divine but i can do something like that and i know God would call it worship.

6) sooner or later people piece together that a fighter's struggle goes both ways, that someone like me could turn on them at any moment. that sounds very spontaneous and unplanned and i don't want to deny that i am. yes i am unplanned but i swear also that i am always on standby. and i can feel the explosions going off inside me a million times over, but i am helpless to stopping it. and before i know it i am set off and before i know it people are hurt. i wish i could warn people i was about to blow up. but i also wish people could warn me they plan to push me to.

7) i can't help but serve the worst part of me the best part of me. does that make sense? you get what i'm saying? the worst part of me literally feeds on the best part of me. and guess what. the best part of me is a faulted one! she is BLIND, she is LIGHT and she is straight up DELUDED. she gives herself way too much credit. she told me she could save all of us but she's wrong. don't take her word for anything. she'd have you believe the sun is out in the dead of the night.

operator
pick me up a fix me up

pick me up at 6 and pick her up too


he's calling me but i'd rather talk to you


and won't you also shut the backdoor too
i'm having a private conversation

you have to stay outside

but don't leave me i'm
going through a bad time in my life

operator operator pick me up
don't you dare drop
this call
i don't ever want to be
without you at all

operator operator call me back i

am having a panic attack

dad called me names

i know you can hear
i know you're always here

operator operator i believe
in you

operator operator i believe in this system


i need you to come through

i see you leave
before you go

i see
you
leave
before
you
go