Tag Archives: loyalty

house.

there is a spoon in my house that isn’t really a spoon at all. it isn’t mine; it was just here when i moved in & probably belongs to my roommate.

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.

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an arm.

every living thing comes
full circle, and stops to eat
out of our garbage

obsessed about the frame
around the window
we took out all the nails, a pillow
for a plate of glass just like an arm,
for underneath my neck at night

the open hole for gardening,
for watching and unlocking
words we never said

underneath the moon
he breaks a bottle on his foot

i continue digging,
preparing for the dawn

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frame.

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

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pros & cons.

this morning i made a pretty wonderful pros and cons list to address my increasingly ridiculous ‘life’ situation. there are 10 pros and only 7 cons. at these stages i always make silly decisions that most people would probably regret and i never do, i stumble awkwardly through a series of encounters i didn’t really want to find myself in but don’t mind once they happen, don’t care once they’re over, don’t remember why i did it and feel good knowing it doesn’t matter. i’ve always done the same thing, just over and over on repeat and later i find the most comfort not in the actions themselves but in the fact that i’m still me, i’m a revolving door always, i always go back to being alone in my head because i’m the only person i trust completely and, too much of the time, the only person i like. i know that it isn’t perfect because sometimes it’s nice to have someone kickin’ it to be alone with, but i never like when things are too perfect anyway.

i’ve been sorting everything again, and cutting and pasting and organizing all my pictures into online scrapbooks. i dance just about everywhere i walk, i sit in the windows of my apartment and count the cars going by because part of me wonders how many will come and go from my life before i don’t have the option anymore. i watch movies in my bed as i fall asleep and drink tall glasses of water, i kill bugs and forget to shower until it’s too late. i haven’t lost my focus and smoked to the filter in what must be months now, weeks have unraveled. i’ve started video scrapbooks for the apartment, with matt, it’s absolutely fabulous, i’m trying to remember that i don’t want to forget. it gives me something incredible to look forward to even as everything disappears, because every detail is recorded, i record just about everything because i know one day i’ll push myself away from it. i wouldn’t want it to be another way.

overhaul.
it’s completely personal. i can dig it. this is the first time in three years, potentially ever, that i’ve used all three sections of a notebook. not for different purposes.

we used to smoke cigarettes
together on the
backs of benches, you were
younger and even though
they’re all younger you
were the youngest, it was
a sign i wasn’t
serious, that it wouldn’t work,
you talked about trains
you’d never take, i talked
about smoke rings and the sky,
i said i’d take the train too,
the magic of forgetting
on my tongue, i don’t know
what we thought
would happen but i’m glad
it never did because
now i still have you, and i love you
to death

 

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karaoke.

karaoke is something
like pills, the rush,
the need to dance and sing
sudden, something
not quite right, sneakers,
phone calls made in middles
of airy nights,
small step stages, friendly
otherwise vacant
entirely

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bruising.

he came
home, books
splayed on bruising
hardwood and her
name etched into
every inside cover,
twitching legs crossed
underneath her knees

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get them back.

when i was fifteen years old some friends of mine started spreading some unfortunate stories about me around my high school. i had some crazy stuff happen to me after that, as high school is naturally a cruel environment and the people there (often by no fault of their own) tend to succumb easily into the trap. i’ve always maintained that it’s easiest to be cruel and unkind in high school because there isn’t much else going on. you wake up, go meet your friends, gossip, try and be liked, go home, watch tv or play after-school football, do your homework and go to sleep.

i had too much going on outside of school to give a damn about what people had to say about me while i was there. life when i was fifteen wasn’t easy, and it had nothing to do with that little p-side world. when i came home, my homework was typically the least of my concerns. and i was okay with that. in fact, i didn’t even give it much thought at the time. when you’re forced to deal with something bigger than yourself, you push through it without recognizing it. it isn’t until later that you look back and see what you achieved.

the point is that when all the craziness was going down in my sad little high school, there were four or five people i was able to turn to. people who didn’t hear the stories about me because they didn’t spend much of their time in class or the cafeteria. people who wouldn’t have cared even if they had heard the stories. people who learned to love me, despite how terrible i could be to them (and them to me) at times. the kind of love that is built in high school, blended with loyalty and certainty that will probably be intact until the end of time, whether or not you know it or believe it.

as much as i loved them, i lost them all when my four years ended in 2003. i kept in touch for about a year and then i moved on. i had little choice. things happen. they were always there though. and so was i, waiting, just in case. if they had called i would have answered. sometimes i even believed that they’d do the same.

and now, six years later, baby steps are being made. i don’t want to attribute this entirely to facebook and twitter, but what can i say. messages and comments and likes. whatever. it is what it is! and i love how in the end, after everything, after what’s happened over the past ten years of my life, it comes down to the same people it did in the beginning.

i know that this is rare and i’m lucky. i know that things don’t always come full circle, not for everyone. sometimes people lose their best friend, someone they’ve known since the first grade, and they never get them back. they don’t even get the chance for baby steps. i never really considered it. i left things as they were. but now that i see there’s a chance, i’m taking it. i can’t afford to pass it up. i know what i’d be losing.

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