A casualty in your quest to healing.

(on the bright side i love a good classic trope)

I’m busy killing this new found vulnerability. You and I were a sort of experiment with tenderness. Until it turned ******, violent.

(****** the love right out of me and then skipped town, but I like that)

There’s a certain catharsis in hurting someone who loves you.

(I think so, yeah.)

The covers move on top of me. I roll on my side, groaning, and open one eye to scan the room for the culprit. Immediate regret. A dull grey light is spilling through the fourth story window, the kind that’s not-quite-sunny but still bright enough to kickstart today’s hangover. A camera falls from the bed-side table and the source reveals itself: Anna’s cat, a tabby, nameless and found mysteriously missing a tail near Saint Denis street four years ago. More groaning, but being more awake than not, I kick the covers off me and look at my phone. December 30th. Scared to check my texts, I’m suddenly flooded with the memory of drunkenly messaging friends I hadn’t spoken to in years, hoping they hadn’t succeeded in overcoming their weekend MDMA habit. Most of the replies went as expected: “Who’s this?”
“No one” I text back, throwing a pillow at my friend, finding an injustice in the fact that I was woken up by her nameless, tail-less cat.
“I know you’re awake.”  
She looks up, smiles sheepishly. When she gets up, the light catches the right side of her face and I can still see patches of glitter. I smile. Say, “I can’t believe this is the last time I’m going to see you.”
“I can’t believe I’m still wearing the same make up I had on three nights ago,” she shoots back.
“Always the sentimentalist,” I tease.
“Yeah, yeah. You’re coming to visit me anyway.” Right.

I smile nervously. Somehow it felt like I was breaking up with someone after a six year relationship. Not the kind where you’re necessarily in love with the person, but the kind you stay in out of comfort and because you don’t know where else to go.

11:51 AM
That morning we walked to a local cafe on Rue Ontario, the one we’ve passed by almost every Friday night for the past two years, sometimes dressed to go to the dep and argue over what mixes best with peach *****, other times wearing Red lipstick, laughing in the 3 am August breeze, cars honking and men gesturing for us to come closer (laughing, you explained to me once, if you’re from around here then you know about Rue Ontario.)

Joi de Vivre. Joy of ******* for cheap. Missed opportunities. Never realizing my full potential. My wife, she doesn’t love me no more.

Laughing.

I know what kind of girl you are.

Laughing.

*****, where are you going?

Laughing.

Frigid ****. Don’t go asking for it.

Dead pan.  “I’m fifteen, *******”

His turn. Laughing.

If you’re fifteen then I’m going to jail tonight!

11:52 AM

We order four polish donuts and coffee, sprinkled with cinnamon. “For the special occasion,” she tells the man behind the counter. Paul. I’m hit with the notion that I probably wont see Paul again either. My feet feel light, I forget my name. Forget to thank the barista as she hands me my coffee. We find a table next to an arrangement of biscuits with all the ingredients labeled in Polish, exchange stories about the first time we realized our vaginas could lubricate themselves. We exchange stories about the day we were born.

“Use protection!” I yell as she walks off. “Never,” she winks.

I forget my name.

That night she's on a flight to Portugal to be with a boy who’s just too busy to see her.

February 2, 2018
12:32 AM
But we’re so in love.
12:41
He’s just been really busy.

2:52 AM
I was so, so, busy.
Read √√

I’m sorry,
√√
I’m so so sorry.
√√


Find your friends!

Search: Anna

Location: 3,263 miles away.

February 11, 2018

I wear Red lipstick, wake up with glitter on my face. Laughing, laughing.

I kiss him and it’s the first time that it doesn’t feel like I am watching my body from the other side of the room.

Watching my body be submissive

I kiss him and my body takes and wants and is

and is

and will be

i’m sitting on a park bench having a cigarette with my best friend and i don’t know i’m in love with him yet

i’m consoling my best friend as he tells me about The Girl who broke his heart and my body nods in understanding, but I don’t know why yet

it’s four am and I just want to sleep but you’re in a different timezone and you’re drunk and you wont stop texting me and it’s four am and I don’t want to sleep


it’s December and you just got back and we’re sitting at your kitchen table and our eyes are glistening and you’re telling me about your childhood but then your hand is on my thigh and you’re telling me about the Red light District and how I make you feel dangerous

And we’re laughing about that time we were so drunk we almost kissed and we’re laughing a little too much and then your mouth is on my mouth and it’s two months later and i’m crying in your car and you’re standing a calculated distance away from me and your hands are in your pockets and my hands are in your pockets and I go home biting my lip

and i go home and i am watching my body from the other side of the room

****. I’ve come undone in your arms. under your sweet breath. my back arches and i submit to each one of my little deaths. my thighs hold little worlds in them and you were born a voyageur, a vagabond. Feed to me my little deaths; these forbidden ecstasies. each one finding its way back into you, into you. and out again. This is where it ends, isn’t it?

They call out to the muse,
Asking her
For a life source,
The source
Of which all that has unravelled
Can be made sense of again.
To be wrapped neatly,
only to be unwrapped again.
Asking her consent,
To find the answers
Which, in time
Unveil themselves to be the questions,
That continue to live on the tip of your tongue.
She looks up,
Eyes draped in thick lashes,
As if to hide,
As if to reveal,
As if to locate the source.
“There are no answers here,”
Says the Muse.
and her voice echoes through the four seasons
And you wake up
New years day.
New moon.
Same you,
Wholly deprived.
Every bit as Wonderful
As I remember you to be.
(As I made you up inside My head)
Same questions.
But the Source —
The curiosity,
(The Life Source)
Runs dry into the new year.

They call out to the Muse—
Who is she?


Who,

me?

Who are they?

Where is your power?
“Here,
It’s right here,”
You say, with your hands in your pockets, remembering how your mother used to say,
“Walk with a straight back! What’s wrong with you?”
As she washed the dishes with her two good hands
As your father sunk into the couch where he would shout obscenities at the television screen for three hours
Something about hockey teams (a crisis)
As your mother washed the dishes with a straight back.
Your mouth burns
from all the cavities
Sugar venom in the business end of the gun,
The gunslinger aims with his good hand.
Hits.
Boom.
Where is your power?
“Here,
“It’s right here.”
Bang.

I think my problem, in relation to last year’s writer’s block, is that I wish to write about me, and I wish to write about the world, and I’ve been waiting all this time for these things to extend beyond you. It’s as if I had been waiting for this poignant moment where someone—anyone— would announce that my life could begin again, as if continuity would seamlessly occur once the halt in time had pursued for long enough.

What a shock it would be to discover that the world waits.

(It doesn’t.)

In this time, I cut my hair and I let it grow. I looked in the mirror, hair falling halfway down my back like velvet drapes, keeping the sun out of my space and solitude, and I felt the power slipping away from my body. I knew that I needed to find a way to hold on to this power, one that was rooted in my own flesh and my own vision rather than yours.

(I did.)

I don’t get as lonely when I see crowds or busy streets or lights that remind me of you, drunk and obscene — laughing with your head thrown back, eyes glimmering like the Vegas strip. We slipped into an intimacy that, in retrospect, was simply me having a first-time love affair with myself. No hands were strange hands up until this point— no hands except my own. Trembling against my collar bone, realizing that what you gave to me was a home to live in. I look up. No ceilings, no roof, just space. The wars, they’re far away from here. I look up, find my power. It’s been here all along.

Resting in the unclenched fist, in the phone that remains unplugged on the bedside table. My power is in the hand that brushes the inside of my thigh, my power is in forgetting how to say I’m sorry when I’m less than quiet, when I forget how to bite my tongue. I keep looking up.

Blissful starry skies,

Atomic wasteland,

Wonder and boredom live side-by-side.

I am in you. You, in me. Open those velvet drapes you used to hide behind, child-like, curious but afraid of your own flesh, of your hot temperament.

The Sun goddess is rising in the East, raining on the wild seeds of May. I, body of water, offer myself to a new seed, grow like the deciduous plants of the Northern world, a whole forest dizzy from bliss and impermanence.

Thank you for visiting.