(twelve years later)
i just put the single most painful experience of my entire life into writing
for the first time (ever).

now i’m not so sure if it was really the sex,
or the drugs, and i’m
not sure i’d like to know either.

i’m sorry for all the bad things i said to you and about you and behind your back. you are cold and cruel, but you are lovely also. you didn’t hurt me; i hurt myself & tried to bring you with me.

you did not lie to me any more times than i lied to you or to myself. i was wrong. i am aware that i could have been different, if not for myself than for you, because you could not have been different.

you lose a day for three years out of four. you are unpredictable and dark, you are not tall. you are unfriendly. your shoes are thinning at the soles. denim shows the fat your legs are lacking. i could not love a thing about you, except that you exist. i still do. as you fade into the melting spring i will end up lonely and you will be a memory.

of walking in our winter clothes, of sunshine on cement. old coffee in a paper cup. i’m so much more than fine with that.

the memories are worth it and
i’m sorry. you are good.

my heart bled for a year.
on the arm of my couch
like it hadn’t

your tongue melted mine
with the lights from the streets,
sirens for earliest
dawn

for me
you glue a piece,
one at a time, but glue is cheap

and i’m a liar.

it’s cut, because it’s long, and really only for me.

i waited for 2011 my entire life. year of jesslyn. i called it. like a little moron. a cute moron. but a moron all the same. everything was going to go my way. i had everything i could ever need or want. and then, because right whenever something is actually going really well i feel the need to cast it aside, i decided that i didn’t really need or want everything i needed and wanted and etc and etc. so i broke up with my boyf and he moved away and i moved in with roommates and quit my job and blah blah blah.

so whatever. it wasn’t my year after all. as an aside i’d also just like to mention that i fucking called it. straight up. but whatever, no big deal. i guess i’m just someone who jinxes things? i don’t care. i’m someone who does a lot of terrible things and i like being that way. as it turns out, the best part of last year is that i learned that i am amazing. i am young, and smart, and talented, and beautiful, and funny, and kind, and loving, and generous, and i have absolutely everything going for me. i know that i complain a lot, and whine. i get that. i know i shouldn’t be bitching or whining. i’m a realist. i get that. i have a lot of flaws and that’s a big one. i know that i can be really harsh and stuff. i know that i am brutally honest with people, and that even when the honest words are kind words, the brutality of them is still there. i know that a lot of people don’t like me. i have said a lot of things to people that made them stop speaking to me altogether. i get that. i don’t care. i miss them, but i would not trade who i am to have them back in my life.

i have a great life. and despite all my weird fucked up damage and my piles upon piles of super annoying flaws, i’m still awesome. and maybe last year truly was great. i did a lot of fantastic fucking things. some of the best nights of my life happened last year. some of the best writing i’ve ever come up with happened (and some of the worst, which is also fantastic). maybe i just had to spend the whole damn year bitching and complaining so that i could come to this conclusion. i don’t know or care. but i’m really, really stoked on what i’m going to do with all my confidence and optimism in 2012. and let’s be real, i’ll probably find a way by the end of this month to lose that too, but whatever! hakuna matata! scrapbook!

january

old months let you drift,
on frosted glass your empty
hand, a clenched
fist, a
surprise

february

“when the bars closed, we’d just smoke up and go bowling all night. we’d just bowl until someone bowled 300. stoned out of our minds.”

“i ordered a tea.”
“by accident?”

“she’s not the brightest crayon in the toolbox.”
“don’t you mean in the cookie?”

we sang happy birthday in a bowling alley.

“haha, sup.”
“here’s my number.”
“pft here’s my vagina.”
“that’s how i say hello.”

march

something wholly magical happened tonight.

good dreams.

april

video scrapbooks and optimism.

i say probably when i
really mean something

i’m quiet, and think
about the
frame around the window

i think i fell softly,
which is unusual, and i am quiet,
trying to come out of shock

may

in a frame on my desk
you’re drinking
from a forty ounce
bottle of unrealistically bad
beer, you are the only one
(looking into the camera)
and the glass is heavy

her torn tradition built,
rebuilt itself two hours south
of tag-lined borders,
circling shores of lakes

in an alley in toronto in
the sprawling dusk
defense was
in each other only, a ship
derailed continues
sailing on

PMA.

june

i will always take those things. i will always want to learn more about myself through the eyes of someone else, and in the process i will always leave someone behind (because i’ve taken all i can).

“i have a list on my hand right now and your name is at the top of it.”

overheard in starbucks, a woman leaving a voicemail:
“are we still meeting? because i think i’m at the wrong tim horton’s.”

july

baseball.

months ago i trained myself to give up on the idea that skipping certain songs is healthier for me. it isn’t. i let everything play now, even if it made me nauseous at a train station in a city on my way to him. i’m far too sentimental. these days i’m even sentimental about being sentimental. it would have been wonderful to kiss him goodbye before i left. we tried to meet up but it never happened, and i didn’t mind. kissing him is fucking fabulous but i don’t need it. goodbye is not my favourite thing… i’d rather leave it as it is. he never makes me want to skip a song.

august

i don’t wear mascara anymore. i wear heavy spring jackets in the humidity and put off straightening my hair. i’m not worried about scars on my legs. i kick off my shoes. it doesn’t really matter what i’m wearing. i can still dance sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk, i let friendly german shepherds kiss my face, i am growing.

the pub was our glasses,
half-empty or less

the only shadows
those of men who drank
wholly, enormously, while
you were a blink

each kiss comes
more deeply, to vanish, hold
tighter, as
close as each spill never
swallowed

they had their chance
to grow old, expire

the nice thing about the war
memorial is that
there are no voices, you
can’t hear a word

when he would touch me
i’d explode, i won’t
forget that, or his eyes

but i’m needy
and dependent and i don’t
deserve that magical kind of sex anyway

as it turns out i was
actually, really, in love
with someone else

september

staying in bed ALL DAY.

waking up and everything is different.

october

reasons i’m not giving up.

1. i got rid of the hat.
2. i have a date this week.
3. i have only a few friends, and i treat most of them like shit, but they are still my friends. they are always there when it’s really needed.
4. i’m working.
5. it’s fall!
6. i’m going to stop drinking (as much).
7. i have the best pros & cons list ever.
8. the terrible day i was dreading finally came and it wasn’t so bad after all.
9. i love my room & bed.
10. at least i have gunther.

november

for the first time in too long i feel something unselfish.

december

not being scared of anything.

:)

this really was a fab fab year.

anyway the spoon is mostly flat. it still functions and everything. i don’t use spoons very often but it will hold my cheerios or my coffee if it has to. it’s slightly awkward but at least it functions. it just isn’t really a spoon.

and it’s christmas now, and it isn’t like last christmas. last year i had an apartment with a boyfriend and a christmas tree and coloured lights in the windows. everyone’s gifts were wrapped weeks ahead of time. we made hot chocolate and bought candy canes and put cards in the christmas tree. i made new friends and plans to spend my holiday with them. i ended up getting sick and spending three days alone on the couch with no one to help me feel better. it was a sign, of course.

this year i bought half my gifts at gas stations on my way back to hamilton. i didn’t take any time off. everything is simple. i don’t have any loyalties or promises or responsibilities. i have my neighbour feeding my fish, who are my best friends now. i don’t have any reminders of any of the people who have come and vanished from my life between last christmas and this one. except a slinky on my shelf, because it’s cool. i miss them all the time and try to convince myself at least once a day that i don’t because i can’t, i can’t miss anything because it is giving a part of myself away, because i have tough skin, because that layer of skin is strong but thin. and of course i don’t care. i just eat cheerios and drink beer and wear comfort sweaters and pretend.

so this christmas is christmas, again. and it’s all scattered and fucked up and different, but it’s the way it should be. last year i was too prepared. trying too hard for something i didn’t really want. and so i got sick. and another year over and a new one just begun. and my heart and my head are still exactly where they were last year. and i don’t mind and won’t apologize (to myself).

and it’s like a flat spoon in the drawer.
it shouldn’t work but it does.

merry christmas friends.

losing my phone.

now i’m not scared of anything.
and, like last year, i am not making any resolutions.

he tells me it’s been
a long year, thinned like
the bottoms of socks we would
fold on his bed,
deflated like bellies
emptied for
summer, bites from
the bugs in the grass, or limp,
fallen like leaves, as far as
we have to the floor.

i say i forget.
don’t remember that bed,
or the weather

i fall for the
drywall, the bottles of wine

if you were not
you i would reach for
wrought iron

the gate would swing in.
you would vanish. if you
were not
you i would find

lost pieces of bolts in the ice.

a seamless graft
protracting his old bruises,
tearing at the stitches never sewn

on louder nights i’m vacant,
more cavity than full, or
all i am
less chunks of skin

but with
these wounds all nights are quiet;
in certain light teeth
make a sound

1. he’ll adore me and i’ll adore him, but sometimes we’ll probably have sex with other people.
2. he’ll have a car.
3. he’ll have a dope job. not to be confused with a job selling dope. not that i’ll care what he’ll do for a living. anyway.
4. he’ll have a loft condo.
5. he’ll only ask me over on weeknights.
6. he’ll be so into sports he won’t even know i’m there.
7. he’ll only watch movies that i want to watch, when i’m around.
8. he’ll force-feed me fruits & vegetables. especially when i complain about it.
9. he’ll call me for girlfriend stuff, but also for sex. except he’ll text me because i don’t like phone calls.
10. he’ll still do all the non-boyfriend stuff in bed.
11. he’ll drive me to work in the morning and stop at starbucks on the way.
12. he’ll wear ties & smoke cigarettes.
13. he’ll never take me shopping, ever, ever.
14. he’ll wine & dine me, but only at home.
15. he’ll listen to all my girl whining & we’ll both pretend he’s really listening.
16. he’ll be tall, but only to me.
17. he’ll like my pet fish and not mind that i have mild fits of insanity because he’ll get that it’s not his problem.
18. he’ll be quiet.
19. he’ll ignore my texts.
20. he’ll eventually not ignore me, but there will be the unspoken promise that he will again.
21. he’ll leave me alone when i want to be left alone.
22. he’ll call someone else if i can’t cater to him tonight.
23. he’ll have the most comfortable clean blankets that will always smell like laundry. except he won’t, because he’ll be kind of gross.
24. he’ll have a sweet collection of badass shoes.
25. he’ll be totally badass. totally.
26. he’ll get drunk in bed with me and listen to music.
27. he’ll only see me in black lingerie & we’ll pretend it’s the only underwear i own.
28. he’ll be apolitical or at least not care.
29. he’ll have fantastic. fucking. hair.
30. he’ll be completely in control & so will i.

it’ll be fucking awesome.
i’m pretty sure it’s called true love.