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.

A chameleon's ability to camouflage itself is a fear response. Something in its environment is detected as a threat, and instead of confronting it, it retreats and changes its colours. I am this way, too. I have been this way my entire life. The fear of not knowing who I am, of feeling as though I do not belong anywhere at all, has led me to change the very core of my being- again and again. I cannot stop this pattern. A pattern that is driven by boredom, the Devil's favourite play thing. If, like me, you're unequipped to deal with boredom (and it doesn't matter how many knives you have), you'll notice how quickly it's presence will mutate itself until it turns into a chronic emptiness. I spend most days trying to fill myself with anything at all, only to reach in a few hours later, grab whatever it was I deemed oh-so-interesting at the time, and hurl it right back to where it came from. My hands have grown tired and rough in the process.

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.

Heartache! My God, heartache! There has been so much of it since last year’s snow fall. Lapses in time! How I’ve longed for this, a deceitful memory; one where your face becomes a blur to eyes that once engaged in simultaneous worship with hands and knees and mouth. My God, how this mouth has failed to hold back words of longing. I have been trapped in unapologetic desire, hands and feet in chains and always at your mercy.

I only dress pretty because I like the way your breath stops as I shyly toy with the straps of my dress. 

“Would you kiss me here?”

The ebb and flow of things.

With every one of your shaky exhales more layers of soft fabric will drop to reveal even softer skin, as if my ****** functions are in sync with your breath. We are connected this way.

“I want you to bite me here”

The ebb and flow of things.

I close my eyes to the rhythm of your heart rate speeding up.

Your eyes are wide open.

Ebb and flow.

I dress myself up, and I am alone again.

The ebb and flow of things.

The thing about spontaneous beginnings and rough endings is that they're often the same thing & I have been an abrupt ending ever since I could remember opening my eyes. I'm sorry you looked into them and saw something more than chaos, i was a slow burning fire and you were patient but unsuspecting. I'm so sorry. I don't deserve the patient ones. I am an abrupt ending, I am all endings, I am nerve endings exposed. I have never been a beginning. Let this be it and let it be without an apology.

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.)

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.

Lonely people will burn holes into your mouth when you kiss
and I swear to God you'll remember them everytime you reach for the bottle and stop.

Your lips taste like wine but I miss when they tasted like water
and your eyes stare back like a sign indicating a cross road when you don't know where you're going
and your hands trail my skin like you're looking for home in all the wrong places

Did I forget to tell you that I have never been home either?

Did I forget to tell you that I am less home,
more motel room?
Less forest
Less evergreen
More woods
More dark and deep and quiet.
Quiet like the nights thick with emptiness
Quiet like the nights spent in this cluttered room
filled with all the empty bottles
you've held longer to your lips than you've ever held me
but I stay because I understand
and I stay because I wish you'd change your mind
and I stay because I wish that maybe you'll change mine

Down two klonopins with beer
Tuck yourself in & stare at the walls
You can't help but think,
"this is no different than all the nights I've tried to sleep sober"
"But this will be the last time"

We were out on the town one day
when momma asked me why I wanted to go
I told her there's just no breathing space
And I don't think she understood
because she brought me home
and opened the windows
When she should have
barred them shut.

I feel like I should be moving forward but I have been in retrograde ever since my soul looked at you and kind of smiled, kind of went “oh, there you are”,
and I had to run because I knew my mouth would not get me out of this alive

It’s not right but it’s not wrong either
and now the whole world is a grey canvas
with subtle shades of blue
I wish I was colour blind
I wish I didn’t want to kiss your face
and send you every thank you card ever made
for making me feel like a human being
who isn’t all walls and sky rise buildings strategically blocking the sun
but vulnerable and warm and thriving and willing
and open
I want to be open
but I will sew myself shut
and trap the ghosts between my thighs and in my ribcage
and put up a “warning” sign:
to all future visitors,
I will never not admire you for your curiosity
you want to be a connoisseur of skin and quickened breath
a connoisseur of just how far down the road you have to travel before you make them gasp **** in that tone that’s halfway between a shout and a whisper
a connoisseur of just how many words you can make sound *****
if they’re coming from a pretty mouth
I will never not envy you for it
I will tell you about a time in which I relied on it to feel alive
instead of checking my pulse on the metro
How it made me feel like a child again
it's summer time and I am in the yard in a dress with a print like the flowers
and you're bending me over the swing set

to all future visitors,

you can stop for a visit
I don’t mind
you can enter at your own risk
and you can enter if you don’t mind
playing with yourself

****. 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?

Your pink blush dissolves on my famished tongue.
You slip in me and I slip into another
cooler facade.
and the world falls into a deep slumber,
as I am seduced by my only lover
My careless lover.
But she makes my head spin and when she beckons me,
I open wide,
all bright eyed like the Vegas strip.

It was not an affair of the heart, or of the emotions. It was an affair of the body, an experience, an innate response to loneliness. I do not regret it, but sometimes I tell people I did. Mostly because they do not deserve to know how extraordinary it was. And mine it was.

I don't think I know how to love people. At least not in the traditional sense. But what is traditional about love, except for the sheer mortality of it? There is no consistency, no textbook definition for how to act when faced with the wide spectrum of emotions that are evoked when you believe that someone finally fits your skin, even after all the holes you've burned
into it.
There are so many holes in my body.

"I've found you, I've found you,
I've found you."
"Now stay in me."

Consistency is the hard part. We are fast-paced creatures, going through lovers like cigarettes and knowing all too well that they'll burn out. Everything is a fix for boredom and this is why we never hold hands for long enough. Oscar Wilde wrote that life imitates art. Art is a form of creation, produced by it's very antithesis, destruction. Whether we are creating something that is intangible, such as ideologies, or building homes with our elbows deep in the wet earth, history has proven that we always have to destroy what came prior to it.
We are always re-creating ourselves. It is at the very basis of growth, and the overbearing weight of our crushing mortality only pushes us to do it as often as we can. It may seem as though we have not done enough, have not seen enough, have not been enough, but the inconsistency in our way of life only ensures that every new experience is a way of re-creating ourselves in fragments that are searching to become a whole. Now, you might be wondering, where does destruction come into play? Let's face it, there's no sugar coating the fact that we encounter far more dreadful experiences than favorable ones. Some are even so mundane that we'd rather not call them experiences at all, and thus end up forgetting that they ever occurred. But they did. And now I'm going to bring up the holes I mentioned earlier. The ones that get so large sometimes it feels as though you're going to slip right out of your skin. And that's what you want, but you know you can't do that literally (even though it sounds pretty on paper). These are the holes that make you use people without even realizing it. Or maybe you do, and you're sitting on your porch at night with a glass of wine and it's raining really hard out and it's too dark to see but you're writing about holes because you think you'll be able to make sense of them (tip: you won't). Whatever the case, I want you to imagine the following:

You meet a person and you find yourself leaning closer every time they speak, hoping that the sound of their voice will stay fixated in your brain if you listen hard enough. It's similar to the way we behave when we're trying to learn the lyrics to a song (reminder: you will get sick of this song and probably hate it if you listen to it enough times). Next thing you know, you're comparing their voice to the sound of soft rain or your favourite Drake song or whatever. And then their hands are so gentle you can hardly believe they're touching you, let alone making you *** or having you shout some really embarrassing stuff you'd be ashamed to admit to later on. Now you're both doing some really lame stuff like going for walks in the park or going grocery shopping and it just feels a lot less lame because they're there (tip: it's probably not). Then one day you get a text from them and you put it off for a few hours. This keeps happening until eventually the phone stops ringing and you don't miss the sound of it anymore. You don't think you know what happened, there are no hard feelings, but if you read enough books you know exactly what put a halt to that once-marvelous feeling that had you producing more metaphors for their skin than any of your high school English teachers could have prepared you for.
Life.
That's right, that terrifying, looming thing that's there to constantly remind you of your mortality. Life, that imitates art. Life, that encourages destruction in order to create. "Burn holes into your skin" it whispers, and there is no master of seduction like the threat of mortality. You know, just as I do, that if you would have stayed with that person who fit your skin so well you'd have no more holes left to fill.

Boredom is the Devil's play thing

I dislike quoting without reference almost as much as I have a distaste for human nature, but it is very late and I am at a loss for a better way to explain how it is deeply rooted inside of us, how it's in our wiring, to use other people as tools to fight off boredom. We, as a species, have always been bad at consistency- dissatisfied with routine, but experts at burning holes only to fill them again and again. We will **** to be reborn until mortality extends it's looming arm, and even then we will flirt with death for the sole purpose of having something to do.

I fall in and out of love with people all the time,
like at 3 am when your eyes are opening and closing and your head rests softly against my chest and you can't see me with the lights off but we both know that this is when you know me best
This is when you whisper softly
This is when the world is quiet.
I've fallen out of love by morning,
hurrying to put my dress back on before you wake.

Dying is perceptual.
People die all the time.
They stop answering their phones, they break old habits and take a different path to the closest bar.
They may even stop going to that bar altogether.
They do all of this while being re-born to other people.
Flesh against flesh,
A new home that rains honey in a thunderstorm.
There are no lightening bolts, you should know you struck them one too many times.
This is how you **** someone
And this is how you set them free

And the prettiest I've ever felt
was when you had me on the floor
begging for your hand to scold me
Your punishment was something I adored.
You tied me up in ribbons,
and marked my skin with shades of blue
and they reminded me of my shadow
because I'd imagined it to be that color, too.
I'd traded in flowers
for ropes and chains
and I'd submit myself to daily beatings
just to feel pain.
I knew, if I was good this time-
I'd get a kiss or two.
You call me princess when you're done with me
and send me to my room.
I often stare out of the window,
and wonder
why I do what I do
but love is a funny thing,
and you haven't a clue
You don't know how to love me
because you believe
no one has loved you
but oh,
I do.

*I do.

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

Someone asked me what my greatest fear is. I failed to answer it honestly. It's a loaded question. Well, in English class today we were talking about last words & how they're always along the lines of "I wish I had travelled more, loved more, spent more time doing the things I enjoy" & they were never "I wish I worked more, been more successful." We were talking about how people who live in a somewhat wild manner (drifters, artists, people who dance on the outskirts of society) tend to feel much more fulfilled than those who succeeded in, for instance, a career path they'd always wanted. I spent the rest of the day looking up peoples' last words. And I think that's it- my fear, I mean. The scarcity of it all. The fleeting moments of happiness that don't have to be fleeting. I have hands. I'm afraid I won't use them enough. I'm afraid I will use my mouth for all the wrong reasons. I'm afraid I will do everything for no reason at all. I don't want to have any last words. Maybe I want to look up at the sun one last time, see it rise and fall. I don't want to have to tell you "I love you" or anything like that. I need you to know that I do. I need to know that I did it right.

I remember the sting of the belt, the sting of the knife, and how easy it was to forget about the pain once I woke up next to you. I remember how every fibre of my being wanted to kiss you awake. But then I recalled that you don’t sleep very much. And I turned away, closing my eyes. Letting you disappear, retreat into yourself, even as you lay next to me.

The sting of your silence is what I can’t un-feel. A wound destined to never heal.

At midnight the streets are wet concrete,
we lay our heads and sink into the reflected moon river.
The sleepless are the ones who wait until the world is dark and quiet,
They're the ones who declare a curtain war against the sun rise.
And as they put the day to rest,
The night bleeds black velvet into the empty artist
and the moon tastes like wine.

I made friends with the mailman today.
Because I thought he'd care to know
I'll be gone soon, he won't have to come around for much longer.
He smiled at me, with a hint of uncertainty
and carried on with his daily routine.

Doesn't it make you feel silly?
The way that love can make you teach a grown man about the way his eyes stump you every single time and oh, God!
Remember that time I tried to tear out the thorns in your side
and wear them as my own
even though I knew better
than to walk around bearing someone else's pain?
-----------------------------------------------------------­---------
I cannot help but think, It must be terribly unnerving to be cared for by a poet. To think of all the times they stay up late writing metaphors for your skin.

When my father showed me just how rough a man can be with his fists, I wish I had listened sooner.
Maybe then I wouldn’t have waited twenty years to finally stop living as a victim,
to meet someone who would effortlessly show me just how soft the world can be.
Bonjour, tristesse, you had whispered.
You don’t have to smile if you don’t want to.
Don’t be a marionette to the system.
You are not the sum of all the wrong that has been ****** upon you.
I never want to hear you say you’re sorry.
Blue eyes, boyish features. Highlighted by a tenderness only a woman can possess. You’re as pretty as you are handsome. Cigarette on your lips, a vision of a rebel
who spills compassion like wine.
You planted something in me that continues to thrive long after you have left
You used your bare hands, soft as they were, and I could tell from the start that they were going to be strong enough to pin me down when I needed it.
I used to walk around baring a sign that read "handle with care"
but I wanted to feel everything with you.
And when I wanted you to be gentle, every day was Sunday morning.
My body was a pyromaniac’s playground and you were the first one to stand over me and never hold a match.
You have tamed my violence and in its place,
ignited something that burns bright but slow
Brightest when the Earth is dulled by winters,
Slow when the sun is draped by the velvet blanket of night.
I am a child again, sitting around a campfire, the stars are bright.
I can count the times I’ve seen the inside of a hospital room on one hand.
His hands have never tainted my body.
I don’t utter the words "I’m sorry" every time someone asks me to introduce myself
I have known warmth,
I will continue to know warmth.

You were like a train coming at me head-on. I saw you from a great distance, but I couldn't be bothered to move. Don't kiss train wrecks.
I wasn't afraid.

They say the seconds before your death are elongated, that time feels different there. The clock ticks in an altered fashion. What is nothing but a mere millisecond, a second if you're lucky, is outstretched in the passing between life and death. That's how our time together felt.

DON'T KISS TRAIN WRECKS

Like any other story,  my happiness was short lived. Reality intervened and that collision was far worse than any train wreck. You told me it was foolish, to presume we would ever truly be good together. You spoke these words in such a way, like I should have known- and oh, I should have. Don't kiss train wrecks.

You were but a passing train. I was lost, stumbling stupidly in your way, as if I was appointing you to save my life. Irony had never been so cruel.

I felt a numbness in my whole body.
And then there was smoke and it was dust that I'd become once more.
Don't kiss train wrecks.

“Tell me if it burns” you said
“Not after this” is what I want to say.
No, never.


But my mouth hasn’t moved.
46, 47, 48.
The seconds crawl like my skin
I haven’t spoken for almost a minute.
I smile,
the curve of my lips put you at ease.
Good.

“No, not at all.”
Your hand inches forward, fingers slim like sharpened knives
I am reminded of my mother’s favourite kitchen set.

“Keep going.”