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.