excerpt

I felt like I was at an eighth grade dance. Alisha Keizer was leading Ryan Houghton out of the bathroom by the hand, after putting makeup on him. We were all jealous of her then, with her hair dusting back from her face, her small, pale fingers gripped around that brown hand as they walked in to some 90’s tune. But it was winter this time, and cold and dark, and I was being lead, following O’Connor’s back patch to the bar the west ha kept him away from for a year, while he was shuffling around with new found ambition before returning home and laying around like the rest of us, sullen. He was eager before he left. There are pictures of us from when my hair is still pink. He is wearing my hat, and giving a thumbs up, and I am laughing. Our teeth look white, and we look young, healthy and happy, tattooed and alive.

I was never satisfied, that was my problem. What the hell is your excuse?

character study

“I hate the people,” he grunts, for he grunts like a bear when he speaks and walks as if there is a 2 by 4 stacked under each arm pit, he is that large, that unmovable.
“I hate the people that you sort of hate for no reason, or like a dumb one, like they talk funny, or they have a terrible sense of humour, and they always insist on talking to you, and you want to ignore them,”
He coughs and braces his arm as I skid on the ice in my sneakers,
“You want to ignore them,” he continues, assured I have my balance, “But they won’t stop trying to converse with you. And you give them one word answers, like yes, and no, and nothing works.” He notices a police van and spits. “Keep moving.” He’s technically not supposed to be drinking or near the place for another 3 days, but it is a new year, and he’s avoided trouble so far, at least in public. “You want to be a jerk to them,” he tells me, charging ahead in the cold, “But you got no good reason, you know? Except for this feeling,” I swig my shitty mixed drink from a water bottle and nod. He pauses, “This feeling that they’re no good.”

and all i ever wanted was to come in from the cold.

Freely I slaved away for something,
And I was bought and sold.
And all I ever wanted was to come in from the cold.

My memory is almost cruel to me. I remember pretty much everything. I remember the first time I met you. Go ahead, ask me. You probably won’t, but I will. I’ll remember what you wore and what I thought of you, and how that contrasts with now. I’ll remember the things you said or didn’t. I remember all those moments. They pile up in my brain like the letters and post cards my mother collects from me. She told me once she used to turn them over and touch them as if they were me in the room with her instead of who knows where, on the side of a road or in a tent. She traced every letter of my scrawl, my rushed x’s and o’s and sparse explanations. “Sky was so beautiful it hurt. Will be home in a month. xo” Those things I write down. The things she tells me that I can’t forget.

Mom never knew what to think of her wandering, willful, distant and dreadlocked daughter through mail, and face to face, I was a mystery. I would leave for weeks at a time, then come home, start school, go to work, come home, do my homework, and lay on my bed with headphones on and the door mostly shut. A cat would curl under my bent knees, and I would listen to a mix cd a boy I messed around with gave me. It was pretty average for the most part, lots of Rancid, my favourite band at the time, Stiff Little Fingers, awkward punk rock love anthems that people only sort of like because it’s novel a punk band is writing love anthems. But as if almost an afterthought, he tacked a Joni Mitchell song on the end of it. Come in From the Cold. The song is seven minutes and thirty seconds long, and it’s from the early 90’s. It was so strange it seemed hapless and calculated, so perfect for the weather and wrong for my age.

I listened to that song over and over through the winter. In my car to and from my crappy mall job, in my room, and in the shower. On my headphones between classes and in the library while doing my homework. That boy would run off that spring to go tree planting with a 15 year old traveler girl he met in Quebec city. I graduated and stayed put. Dour and silent as ever, drunk half the time.

These are the things I remember when I hear a stupid song on my iTunes I thought I deleted 3 years ago.

night hawks

I walked home with a staggered step and a hundred things on my mind as the world heaved around me. It was mild and I missed our late night walks for a second, before I worried that meant I might miss you. No one finds me at 11pm anymore, travel mug in hand, scaling our city for all it’s worth and I haven’t slept as soundly as I did then since. I lay awake, toss and turn, too many thoughts in a brain too stubborn to turn off.

So now I make lists of the things I want and the things I need. I fold them on tiny bits of paper and lose them in my pockets. I recite them like a mantra, holding onto them like love or kicks in the teeth. Skating in the winter at night in the park, learning more about trains, working on fledgling and lasting friendships, and finding all the best dumpsters. I want to be better, and more inquisitive, but mostly I want someone to walk with me, late, when the city winds down and forgets to disapprove, distracted by the drunks and the students crowded around pizza corner and pouring out of the palace.

We’ll be at the waterfront, laughing out loud.

open letter.

Freight trains move fast. Like people, and time, and days, and changes. My friend Travis wrote a song… One of the lines is “Days fly by like trees along the rails.” The banjo is picky and mounrful in that song. It picks up and falls back like a heartbeat. Like a train. We love trains, us crazy people. We love travel. We have a love/hate relationship with change. We all think we’re going to stay the same forever, or the same with just subtle differences.
We don’t.
It’s ok.
We just don’t.

These days it is cold, and I wear three sweaters and a thick scarf when I walk from my apartment to work to the bar to my apartment. I kick garbage and leaves out of my way when I am in a bad mood and stomp in puddles when I am in a good one. If I run into someone I know, I get a hug and a high five. My days in and of themselves don’t change much. My life however, is so different, yet not all that surprising. I have a retail job at the mall. I dumpster dive. I champion causes. I sleep outside in the summer because I can. I stay up all night at house shows. I make street art. I want to start skateboarding again because it’s better than biking. It takes me place to place and makes me think of other times when I lived in my parents house and my belly was always full, I never had my own bills and my clothes were newish and cleanish always.

I get hungry sometimes now. Sometimes I’m cold, but I am always happy. It’s weird what we own and learn to own up to. I have a cat who sleeps in my lap every night when I come home and kisses my face when I wake up. I have a string of ex-boyfriends who still talk to me, I have a group just strong enough and just mobile enough that when I leave them, I won’t leave that. That something, that whatever.
I’m restless.
I’m changing. I need to change. I guess it’s just in me, you know? That motion. it sits in my heart, and moves around my chest and pushes and pulls me forward. I’m restless as hell, but I think it’s in the best way possible. Does your new city do that to you? or do you love it there? I hope you love it there for now, but I hope you get restless later. Restlessness is good. It keeps you young and and powerful and just scared enough. Some days are terrifying for me and I sort of love it.

I saw a tall kid the other day, waiting for the bus. There was a shorter girl beside him. He had a skateboard and was making dumb voices at her. She covered her face and laughed. I thought of you and me and being dumb and sixteen. I miss that sometimes.

This all seems very vague in retrospect, so let me just spill my guts.
I am good. I am great. I am hyper and lonely and filled up as hell and waiting for the time to pass. My mother thought I lost my mind for awhile and so did I, but then I realized I am just the happiest I have ever been and half drunk on possibility. She is better with things now. We both are.
We’ve changed.

he asked if this was ok.

all these years.
i gave them to you.
stuffed in the pockets of your jeans
and your sweaters.
folded and tucked behind the tongues of your shoes.

little victories.

These sore legs are bruised from bending and cut from scratching. This hair is pulled out and these eyes are tired.

it was dark and i have all these memories that crawl into my head at the worst times, trying to keep me still while we move together, jarring our rhythm. a knock at the door, smells of black licorice, the back of a familliar sweater.

Reckoning (A bear and doe story.)

You are the bear. A great grunting lumbering thing with a voice so low it rumbles in my chest, and I can barely distinguish the words from behind that beard. Something about life in our woods, the bush and all the beer cans and cigarette butts living on the brown hardwood of your apartment floor. A constant stream of thunder from between your teeth, while you stand, legs apart, hands on naked hips in front of your closet, barely aware of your exposed skin.

I listen from the bathroom, doe eyes and a deer neck and a soft pelt for my predator. I carefully cover the square angry marks of your savage mouth and wild flat fingers. These spots that blend me into your earth tone world and keep me protected. To you, a backwoods greeting, something between umost care and utter indifference.

(When we fuck-yes, fuck-you pull me on top of you, long white legs bent around a muscular brown frame, rocking with a gruff steady rythmn. And you press my neck between your hands, gently but firmly stroking and squeezing my throat, never breaking eye contact.
A look.
A hunt.
A way to be eaten whole.
A reckoning.)

dullsville

We went outside for an hour and he squatted beside her, humming into her ear on the step.
While I imagined that I was invisible,
Tiny and gone.
Crawling between my ears and staying.

Now I’m counting you among the casualties.
On that list
Of people I pretty much didn’t bother calling anymore
Because you just weren’t interested
And I suppose I’ve never been that interesting.
Just this big lumbering quiet thing
With paint stained everywhere
Staring down into her
Liquor store bag
Picking her dirty fingernails
And looking for an excuse to leave.

that i could choose another over her.

You don’t talk to him much anymore. You’re both a little busy these days, and you half sustpect that maybe he’s avoiding you, but honestly, you could be just bitter about the whole thing. You’re thinner, more intense, leaning over your computer. You need to get out of the city. You imagine woods. Beaches. Places wrapped in cool green, where there is mist in the morning, and you can hear the birds through the window screen.

He meant a lot to you once, but now he’s most likely tired of you. It hurts, but you probably read too much into it anyways. He was gentle. You liked that, but he also didn’t put up with your shit. That doesn’t mean he wouldn’t just walk away from you and you know that. Another girl that gets vapid eventually. Silly. Are you silly? You’re not sure. You’re not pretty like the girls he points out on the street. At coffee. You’re paler. Your hair is an in between shade of brown, not dark enough. He wanted things differently a few months ago. Maybe it wasn’t you he wanted. Maybe it was the idea of you. This makes you vaguely uncomfortable. The best thing you can do is be pleased someone wanted something of anything you had to offer, real or imagined.

Sometimes you like to defy him in these tiny ways and you feel powerful, just because he seemed always right for so long. You dislike music he likes, you talk about better books and better things, but it’s pointless. Defiance only matters when the other party acknowledges it. You feel like a young girl, acting out to get attention. Dull and stupid.

And you are nothing.