Lately when you’ve looked at the Facebook chat bar, you’ve noticed names that you haven’t spoken to in a long time.
As if Facebook knows what has happened and is saying “Look! Other people exist in the world! You had a past before all of this.”
Too soon, Facebook.
Even memories excluding him somehow manage to involve him all the same.
You spent 5 years in Toronto, and only at the tail end did you two learn each other and find a love that was ******* brilliant.
And now Toronto is a landmine.
U of T is tarnished and bleak.
The ROM, the TTC,
Every quaint and adorable breakfast cafe, Mexican eatery, Starbucks.
Tragic.
And **** Queen’s Park.
And **** High Park.
**** dog parks too because maybe at some point you walked past one together.
And the bookstore.
Never again.
You loved that bookstore
(it brought you him).
And death to bubble tea, and 0 calorie vitamin water.
(No one should ever experience the misfortune of 0 calorie vitamin water, but it’s a memory, so it hurts).
And **** board game cafes. Even though the only game you actually managed to finish was Jenga.
But that’s because you were falling for him and you would rather talk for hours than look away from his face to read too-long instructions.
Catan could wait.
A different world ago you suffered in a city too congested for the likes of your small-town spirit.
And somehow you found life there.
Would have gone back there.
And he will never know.

we wake up and absorb it,
tightly write dry plans,
best laid to go awry.
i exhaust all my options now,
turn off the curling iron,
blow out the last candle,
tie up loose ends, mark my calendar.
transit apps quantify me home,
but i still overthink breathing,
always late, or too early,
there’s no timer for this life,
no remorse for the lists we’ve made,
or the poorly scheduled TTC train.
control is a bottomless pit, and
i drink every last drop, knowing
you could wake up tomorrow
and feel differently, and i guess
so could i - so let’s try,
with whatever control we have left.

The landlord told us never to go on the roof.
We take to borrowing others, tiptoes clanging on steel and iron
My knees rubbing gravel and asphalt.
We finish the wine and **** three stories up.

Most days we sit curled on broken patio chairs
Cigarette to split
No, I want my own.
Unspoken fourth neighbor snoresputtercoughsnortsneezes from the corner.
*******, Chaz.
We didn't come, by pick up truck and bicycle, to live above crackheads again.
I could smell it, those May mornings.
Misha, always sick, he said.
He was.

You were always the Junction.
Where
drunken promises
sober **** ups
idle hope
came and met ****** up ugly only to straighten out again.
Destined Final Resting Place of my last drops of liquor.
In a way it could never amount to more than that.
A wasteland we did nothing but lay waste to.

Avery taught me how to french inhale sitting on the hood of her 74' Ford something or other.
Fishnets Valu Village miniskirt, lakeside cold
Her zippo lighter roman candle flash bright.

Didn't I steal that?
Didn't I, one winter darkened morning, rifle through your jeans for TTC fare and a fiver for an Egg McMuffin?

Who can remember.

Skin fibres trace across us burning,
and all I can do is smirk at your shivers.
You know I’m an expert at *** and ex’s?
That’s why you find them in eachother.
Trained six years, broke three hearts.
Crossed a few seas and brown eyes
to find yours staring lonely in depths.
So ******* blue and yet so much softer -
would you ever hurt me like they do?
I can find all your secret soft spots too,
map the space our lips drew out.
Across Royal York to Jane? No Runnymede - where we ran to our bakery’s.
Where you loved me plainly,
if you think I didn’t know then here’s how:
I can see it in between takes, the ttc stops,
between breaths your forgetting to draw.
Like our map we are objectively real.
And you think I don’t see past you,
with a past like mine?

the way i triple text with, full consciousness,
unapologetically say how i feel, with kindness,
bump heads with the dryer door, too often,
lose track of the ttc stops, i go too far,
frame every mistake like, an opportunity,
give affection like i'm running, out of time,
make sure i never air, ***** laundry,
check in with my friends, hold everyone close,
open Waze 20 times in case, always planning,
day dream vividly away, minds another reality,
make friends with everyone i meet, being friendly
ask 5 times if, everyone is comfortable around me,
donate money every time, because giving is everything,
this is just to say that i love me endlessly

her dads car rammed on the ttc tracks -
drinking a spicy caesar on the road,
looking out for the Toronto police cars.
we ended up at Seoulshakers,
tap danced at the pizza parlors,
and I texted friends a picture of my rings.
i bought the bartender a shot,
but couldn't get steady on my longboard.
reminding locals that i'm an addiction therapist,
over the sound of tequila crashing into marble.

if you weren’t my friend,
i wouldn’t know who i was -
a part of me replaced by insecure ex’s,
musicians with bad communication,
software developers, underdeveloped,
shifting parts of identity made out of static.
i would cry somber and alone again,
instead of under christmas lights
to the Gilmore Girls opening credits,
where we sing too loud to hear our thoughts.
a sour wine bottle between us, and
vacation magnets lining my refrigerator
from all the places we’ve face-timed from.
reviewing in details your love bombing dates
and my anxious attachment -
raw parts that feel unprocessed,
which you quickly dismiss as normal.
i hope he can love me like you have,
simply, softly, like breathing - and
as brilliant and cunning as we can be,
but never as handsome, obviously.
i love to grow our gardens together,
tending to one another’s strengths and
nurturing weakness for authenticity.
i would take the miway, gotrain, and ttc -
just to laugh on the cold beach with you,
and make some mistakes for review
over another cup of coffee.