i was a little girl once and when i was one i never imagined it might be so easy to return to these bridges, to find my way home by the lamp posts. there weren’t any lamps back then and the walk was more jagged, confusing. where nothing amounted to anything, now everything does and it has for a year (a very good, long year).

if i were pretty enough to be model it isn’t difficult: i’d be a model. there would have been a bridge or at least a walkway bathed in gentle light. instead i was underneath the rest of everything, dipping between tires expecting them to bloom into bursts of rubber. and now i’m not. it isn’t difficult.

i also come because there are ducks and planes overhead and for all the noise there is solitude and silence. it would have been easy to have been young and to have imagined writing on a phone, if i could have dreamt of a world without paper lamps and notebooks. but that never occured to me then. the ducks and the planes remind me of the minnows and the sound of the highway. the sound of kids laughing across the canal isn’t anything except four-door family cars slowing for the stoplights at the corner, softer and still somehow less comforting than transport trucks and buses, the cars that really carry something.

a follicle his mouth
pretended not to taste,
and sharply, like
a spoon you snapped
in half, dropped for
jagged edges, the
morning folds around
my shoulders and
is cold

i can’t legally drive
but it was a good time anyway

at the end of the
street is a school
and we parked on the side, i
talked you through while
your nerves
sank like keys in my purse
you rolled down the windows

when you were my age
you killed an eight year old girl

you couldn’t stop and she
died on the street in front of her house

now you are old
and on morphine and telling me this
so i’ll carry your pain

instead i’ve stopped
having hallucinations, fantasies,
of much older men, and i don’t
drive cars
and i don’t drive on carling

your seeping wealth
of beads of sweat, dark
hair,

your back blurred

in the dryer of a
mens’ room.

stray cats, sex, grey
shorts alone and one
less cigarette a day and night

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.

he bought four bottles
of ketchup because it was on sale
and he still lives in 1962
and every spot in the sky is a
reconnaissance plane

every spot in the sky was a cloud
marked by breath you’d expelled to
the stars,
every sound that had failed to
reach space

there was one bottle left in
the cupboard at home,
but he said that
he never wanted

to buy it again

so this wednesday march 28th i will be the featured reader at the in/words magazine open-mic & reading series extraaaavaganza. i’m kind of stoked on reading, now that i’ve thought about it for a bit. i’ve hung around in/words for my entire ottawa life so it’s cool. i don’t read a lot. but whatever. so i guess, as the event says, it truly is a “rare sight to see”, hah.

if you aren’t doing anything this wednesday night, the event takes place at 9pm in the basement of the clocktower pub on bank street (at corner of pretoria). there’s also an open-mic set before & after the reading.

more deets can be found on the facebook event page.
more info about in/words can be found at their blog.

sort of hope to see you there.

you came up through swamps,
through metres of
dampness, miles. you swam
pools of water for me and

my wavering faith,
an idea you would travel
much farther,

give lessons in sadness
and strength

when i got the phone number of my first “love” this weekend, from his mother (that classic boy-next-door, the one our mothers dreamt i would end up with), it all became so clear. if i just called him, i could walk a small town party with him, in my high-heeled shoes (he’s an AUTO-mechanic, say it with me), linking arms and catching up on the fifteen years we lost. i’m sure i could. but i saw everything beyond that fallen concrete when he kissed me, though i forget the kiss. i remember that there were two mouths and flaring nostrils that i could see straight into. i remember that i touched his skin, protruding, an uncanny and disturbing scar. i remember that there were teeth because they bit me. i remember that there was a boy there doing this with me, but i forget his face the way i forgot his number and was reminded (incorrectly – he’s always been a kidder).

there is no chance for me. in the same way that there is no remembering. there are only small town memories, churches and backyards. addresses in covers of trade paperbacks. places to linger. places to look back at and remember the man i have loved from the very first day, a man who never wrote me a farewell card. a man who had not been a man, who had still been the boy next door.

until that boy next door gets married, i don’t stand a chance. even if he disappears without a trace i will always stay this way, making all the same mistakes, choosing all the wrong numbers to remember. somewhere in me i’m sure that it’s on purpose.

because i’d rather drift alone forever never knowing, than know that he was just one call away.

scratches
to come in, be
let through a window
with shoes on