(what day is it?)
I'll ask like it matters
I'm going to tell you how I feel in an hour
(or how bout right now?)
as my heart pitter-patters
then sinks to my stomach like a wet paper towel

you had expectations – I know; I had them too
you had them for me like I had them for you
and I had them for me; thought a million times through
if I think it enough then it's got to be true

but I know that ain't right;
it's a ruse, it's a myth
ain't no silly concoction brings a mind to commit
nothing's real til it's written, submitted in ink
I'm the blood in the drain clogging your kitchen sink

didn't want to forgive, or for you to say sorry
because what if you leave while I'm still fucking horny?
you say you've got fear of rejection, abandon,
well how bout me too but like more than imagined
growing up's making sure other people respect you!
so behave in a way they could never reject you!

so I'm tryna hold fast, put my instincts ahead of you
but feel like if I say it you'll pretend you already knew
growing up's making sure other people respect you…
or is it something about a reflection in residues…

Your day is hearing about a multi-page obituary for a man you didn’t know and yet somehow still feel for really only because the end of his life brought so much fuckery to those who were left of him, and he never would have wanted that. He was also an addict, like you, and you were a baby, but even then you could see him popping pills and lighting matches and keeping his fears tucked under dusty old piles of things that your grandmother, his keeper, kept in that house, and you remember being scared of him, and not much else, but different kinds of scared, like the scared of getting in trouble but then also like the scared you felt when you would see him choke up with emotion because he thought you were incredible and how could you possibly be real and you were confused and a baby and so you ran. And he ran and everybody in the whole damn family ran. Miles and miles and miles and whole damn marathons. You ran when you saw your parents hugging in the kitchen on that random day that is seared in your memory and you don’t even know if it was winter or summer or fall and if you’d ever seen them touch before or since but definitely not since. Maybe it was spring. You ran when you finally saw a flicker of someone showing anything that wasn’t nothing and that was your mother screaming for your father not to leave her and you ran because not long before that the person who first ever fucked you (and you still remember the underwear you picked for that Tuesday in September) later wished you were dead and his mother wished you were his ex and his ex said you were just a mini worse version of her and basically you were never just right being just you. And you wanted to scream like your mother for him not to leave you either! Because at that time you were a doll and you played in these houses for these people who you thought if you played well enough for would never leave you, could never leave you because you were perfect. But only you will never leave you and it’s only you there at the end at the very, very end. And the only way out of loneliness is to shake his hand and tell him it’s okay, he can touch you, and suddenly he is, and you feel nothing only shame that your antidepressants have made you less than your best. But the next time you see him, you’re off your meds and you’re sitting right beside the devil and you say you’ve been waiting and you’ve orchestrated this moment by moment by moment from the 401 to cumming on your couch and you’ve been sleeping with loneliness for months now and he’s so deep inside of you that now you’re the one standing at the end of that long dark road and beckoning, beckoning, beckoning. Please come and stay with me, please come inside of me, please. Please.

INT. BDRM. LOW LIGHT. ROOM TONE; DOG SLEEPING.

Living in this city alone;
it's a privilege,
but it ain't easy.

I have friends who I wish would talk to me more
and other people who won't shut up.
I know; it's not meant to be easy.

I used to have this thing my friends and I made up back in high school,
where, if I found out a guy I was dating didn't have a microwave,
the relationship was deemed instantly and unsalvageably toxic.
Now, I don't have a microwave,
but I ain't no self-fulfilling prophet.

(I used to have one, and I used to be one…)

I'll stay disciplined and work hard,
and I'll stay within budget.
Only thing catching me off guard, be sometimes wakin' up in the mornin'.

I'll show up to scheduled calls and SAY NO! when I'm tired.
I'll demonstrate restraint and
on-read forever the fucking vampires.

(except you, cause I can't fuckin' quit ya
and show me one person dun have an addiction)

I'll call my muhmah though I'm feeling resentful,
I'll watch neighbourhood families with a pang in my chest;
I can't really remember our last kiss though.

I'll think about swimming the pool in the summer,
I'll take it all back; no you can't have my number.
I'll play and make silly lil vidvids on my cellphone.
and I'll watch every sunset completely alone.

in 5 years I see myself on the coast
closer to water
closer to my heart
closer to somewhere warmer
remembering to drink water
not a mother nor a daughter

in 5 years I see myself with my dog
I would do anything so he doesn’t have to suffer
I picture seeing you only sometimes
and flying overseas
a 1000-year-old pub
dark in the wintertime
warm bodies
cold beer

I miss you so much sometimes it's crazy
and I think
my family misses me.

I want to hold our little traumas and form them into cups and eat them at a thousand different little restaurants on tiny plates and wash them down with wine and mead and lots and lots of butter. I want photos of me in this body in Paris and Hanoi and Iran and countries and cities and I don’t know fucking St. Lucia. I don’t want to grow old but I am. it’s sadness that comes from knowing it took me 30 years (well 20 because the first 10 I really didn’t know how to situate myself in time) to even begin to understand how crazy crazy incredible worth more than anything it is to love yourself and how hot yourself can be and how beautiful and other people want you and think you are kind and smart and artistic. 30 years to realize that I didn’t need a diagnosis I just needed people to tell me that how I am is okay and not even tell me just see me and not do anything except go about their days. and making little sounds and flicking my tongue and finding safety in silence and just being with me and giving me small things to do with my hands like folding up the wrapping paper into little swans. and that I’m not going to fit into this beautiful little box made for girls like me who grow up and get married and give their fathers' grandchildren and fix their mothers' computers and call them every day to make sure they’re also not lonely like I am.

the loneliness is constantly on your tail – isn’t it? and the boredom is like a fog, and when it clears, you can see the loneliness there, standing at the end of a long road, tall and unearthly like Slender Man and like the kind of fear you first discovered on early YouTube and so you take drugs and then you can throw a blanket over just everything and douse it in whatever oil but the less expensive kind and toss your half-assed cigarette over your shoulder because fuck that shit, kind of, and you walk away and you keep walking and you don’t look back but you do cry because you know that’s just not how it works and that shit doesn’t just up and burn like so many other things do.

one time they caught him doing coke in the bathroom and after that no one was invited back to the cottage - ever!

(I can’t keep giving you dying technology [re. giving my mother my old devices]
that’s gotta be my problem
that’s gotta be my demise)

I'm takin' anything to feel something

don’t ever have both feet in cause
then what if you need to get out!
ready to jump from a moving vehicle
or you're sinking through the ice
drifting through suburban cul-de-sacs
we’re lucky nothing bad happened that night

my brother lives out West now and I'm going to visit him soon
I’ve never been to the beach but I’ve been to the moon
writing only comes easy when you do it enough
follow the lights and follow the pattern; rough

this high is failin'
feel like I’m flailin'
my neck is sore and my body is waning

but I’m more beautiful than I was before 
(more beautiful than I was befoooore)

in a week I am going to a concert with Amalia the 10th anniversary of An Awesome Wave
the first time I listened to that album was in the Mint Mansion which is now the Grey Mansion in the room with the shag carpet that looked like it had swallowed more than just a few live hamsters
the vinyls lined the wall and I remember that one, with the purple and blue, then the one with yellow and red and purple and green, the paint smears, the next title
I lay on a mattress on the floor dressed up as a dead doll but refused to go out to the Halloween party because I too badly wanted to die
you went to the party wearing your kaftan

the red and white streetcar lulled me to sleep every night and I loved that sound it reminded me of other times
I spent riding down the Broadview line
past Riverdale park and the summer breeze
blew through the open window onto my face as I watched the skyline overcome me

I missed living in that basement for that one month, the one in the Danforth, where I first saw a house centipede
it was right before I moved into Sherbourne so I guess I was getting prepared
I looked up the reviews of that old apartment recently and at least I'm glad we got out before the cockroaches got worse
I’m really tired and have yoga tonight but i want to keep writing and know I have to keep writing even when I’m not on drugs

probably need to take less drugs
always trying to take less drugs
I’m addicted to a few things and the first is pain
the first really is pain
fantasizing about the knife digging into my thigh in a few weeks time
fantasizing about the different colours I can fill in the holes of my chewed-up nails
manic mini mani
filling in my cracks with rainbow ceramic bits
moulding it until it perfectly fits
and the rainbow bit is in full flex where a crater used to be

I’ve been thinking a lot about the moment I cut my face open
almost every time I run my tongue along the inside of my lower right lip
and feel the flip of skin
I was 3 or so I guess
so it's not really my memory but
my parents had just gotten home
from the NICU with my brother
I ran around the first floor of our house

Ariel

Ariel

Ariel

Ariel

Ariel

until the hardwood floor gave out from under me and my face
collided with the walnut rail
blood down my front my dad picked me up and we drove right back the way they came
they glued me shut and my parents always hated
them for that because I grew up with
a scar-tissued flap and my face
is imperfect on the right side
why didn't they stitch me? glue!?

I’ve been thinking a lot about how when I was small I'd write in circles to fit the words on the page
and now the pages are endless it seems and I don’t have the words to fill them
I’ve been thinking about writing left-handed
and how I’d be different if I’d been allowed to keep going
I think about writing right-handed and how
I can’t hold the pencil right, right?
I think about writing now and how
ink and lead just aren’t fast enough 
so I write in 1s and 0s
and then I think
if a tree falls in 1s and 0s, does it make a sound?

the answer is no –
and yes!

I think about things I’m supposed to love about myself
things that are making me 'me'
before the influence
I used to sing in my crib
I’d put myself to sleep by writing lullabies
close my eyes and picture the bed spinning off into the sky with me in the middle
little animals and partnerships - fox and the hound, Pokemon, cool groups, bands, emo, skate, figure skating, yoga, fighting, holding my brother down and sucking back up my string of drool at the last second right before it'd hit his face, recording noises sound nice together my eyes in eyeliner going away far away Japan anywhere from the video games and what Sarah said and early moments of discovery the Allan Parsons Project on cassette The Fall of the House of Usher? Phantom of the Paradise the Aviator but perhaps what what more interesting to me than the planes was the romance of it all; the Hollywood, the Leonardo DiCaprio, the mental illness and I used to drink myself into oblivion at 14 alone in my room and I think my body’s mostly forgiven me but I'm still addicted to sugar and other drugs too.

I kissed your left ribs and left you in your bed
I went to sauna and the tears left my head
the guy who worked through his desire to kill his friend while on mushrooms at a Tool concert helped me breathe through the ice bath and
I cried for being anybody's fool.

I remember a bit of a dream,
a bit more of a dream, from another night,
an apartment near Sherbourne and Bloor but on the other side of the DVP or kind of right in it but also North York
like my old apartment
but way up high like the one in Harbour Square
darker, higher
South-facing
near a Loblaws where I would drive and get groceries
another dream of a big tsunami
bowling through Toronto, downtown
all of us in the skyscrapers could see each other watching the water below
did this happen in the day after tomorrow? or was it something else?
I could feel the building swaying
face down on the concrete of the 46th floor

I caught your smile as I walked into the church
you looked handsome in your tie and shirt
I sat in front of you and watched the crowd filter in
I sat with my friends and the dopamine

nobody knew that you played with my hair behind the pew

later in your room we were on the bed
I looked out the window it was speckled with droplets
they gently distorted the rest of the world
like how you did for me

two truths coexisting at once

I could see the bars, the park, the arcade games, and our favourite food spot from where I lay
in my distraction you got soft
I played with your hair
I missed living there

it has been a long winter of quiet reflection. years and years and years. when I close my eyes I see a blinding sun over a field of icy snow, reflecting its brilliance back towards the piercing blue. I resolve that this is what I will see when I die.

it has been an experiment. I have held all these different ways of being in my hands and watched them trickle through my fingers like sand. my middle and ring fingers have never lain seamlessly against one another; the sand flows faster through the gap. warring over domains, numbers, names and aliases. truths, perhaps. distorted memories and portraits of. what’s left is an idea of the soul in this body.

I write it down because I’ve been told you feel the same. that you might make use of some pieces left behind, or even some still held. if you do will you tell me? if you’ve seen these things and felt these places will you share? I’m looking to alchemize, to find the charge, and I only ask so that when we die, we can pick it back up next time.

dreamed I
was finally getting my own apartment
just me
it was my brother’s old building in Simcoe
but on a different floor
someone had died there but you would almost never know
from the renovations.

it was furnished and well-lit, lots of windows and a small
TV
there were original walnut floors but refurbished maybe, and floral couches and bed sheets and
I hadn’t signed the lease yet because

I could feel this pit

deepening in my stomach
I couldn’t live there alone
so sleepy, but knew I couldn’t sleep there.

unfinished crevices and golden
railings
the bathtub was nice but
something about it made my heart sink

into the widening pit.

you could see from the bedroom window
the old Main Street
it must have been autumn; like it is now.

the balcony was concrete; big enough to do yoga. I had my yellow mat with me.

I didn’t have much else,
I didn’t even have my dog.

I was starting to worry about finding an Airbnb

in time for dark
I was talking to the building manager in the lounge area and I think she was microwaving hot dogs for dinner there was a puddle of mustard on her plate
it was still orange outside

it must have been a September evening.

I met some f*ckboys who were also apartment hunting

and they made me feel better

but when we went back up my stuff was all over that apartment
I guess I thought I might crash there, just a quick rest on the couch, and be out before anyone could make sense of me ever being there in the first place.
I still hadn’t found a place to sleep

But then I woke up

I can’t wait to sit on your

couch again; it’s really comfortable.

a sudden onset of existence.