I feel less and less like a number, more like a notch. This is something you’d write in your sleep, or something you’d whine about on a tuesday afternoon, all coffee breath, your fingerless gloves and broken boots. I swallow light and chew dirt. I’m not tired anymore, just sore necked and penniless. Lips like lawyers forging words for documents no one wants to read but has to. Mortgage payments, hydro bills, diner food. Fucking to feel something. There’s an ache, there’s an itch. Cut it out, take a sip. Feed your rage. Knotting up my insides. Sunday night, lamp light, four cigarettes after dinner. Sticky fingers. Swollen ankles. Your hair on my bed. All the things I wanted to say, wading knee-deep in vodka waters, sipping slow to burn whatever it is that sleeps inside my chest cavity. My shame is wrapped in tissue paper, my secrets are in the garbage bin beneath my desk. I don’t want to be held: come and go, come and go. I haven’t grown, I probably won’t. I just swallow amphetamines, trying not to sleep. When I do, I shed my clothes, jump down from whatever perch I’ve been resting on. I can still smell your breath, hours after you’ve left. I can still hear your slow expiration.
Posts tagged words.
Marked But Undelivered
I still hush that afternoon, spring 2003, when you said you’d be leaving. I still hush the shaking voice, hush the words.
I remember being ash. I remember being smoke. I remember sunday mornings, murphy beds, scrabble games. I remember, half asleep, hearing the click-crush of your beer can. I remember being carbon, rising from your fingers.
Now, I am the cigarette, you are the aftertaste. I am the can and you are the carbon. Now you’re married to foreign thoughts and I’m transnational. I’m reordered and you’re unaltered.
Now, I’m noise and you’re a television screen. I’ve got empty pockets and you’ve got swollen cheeks. I am tepid water. I’m armed only with theories. I’ve got nothing but time. You’ve fallen asleep.
I still hear the heaving, still feel uneasy sometimes. Now I’m carrying the bottle, I’ve got the bitter breath. I still close my eyes when I cross bridges.
You’ve given me mannerisms to work with. People ask, “why?” and I answer, “genetics, I guess.” I exhale smoke.
I hush the evening you brushed my hair. I hush the late breakfast, the customs line. But my hair still curls at the ends. I still count to ten when I’m lonely.
On Four AM walks through the sleepy city, blowing smoke that seems thicker because of the temperature, I think about what I miss. The lipstick on her teeth that always showed because she always smiled. Orange cat hair on her navy blue blazer. That stale scent that I tried so hard to get rid of in her car. I think about you, too. Your blonde hair. Strawberry shortcake and scrabble on the deck of your condo (22nd floor, buzzer number 436). A pile of dirty laundry in the kitchen. Washing your dishes for a toonie. The little things. Coffee and hot chocolate and newspaper-blackened fingers. I think of what I’ve lost. How minute my problems are and always were, but how much of me they consume. How little I care about the things that should matter and how much I worry about the easy things. I think about myself. I think of my body. Of cancer. I wonder where you are and if things are good for you. I hope they aren’t. I hope you decide to catch the first flight back home, but not here, not for me. For you, because I can tell that you’re tired, and you’re sad and so am I, and maybe a long plane ride will fix that. Maybe gin and medication, maybe coffee and nicotine will fix all of this. Because there are no support groups for sensitive girls that long too much. There’s no twelve step program from heartache.
Perspective
Hands rummaging through an old brown bag.
She always carried around the same old pills,
and fiddled with them, thinking
(in public, in her head)
what if I wasn’t too nervous?
What if I woke up courageous some day?
and in a state of mania she drew circles and lines and imagined herself
drowning in them.
Geometric shapes replacing familiar faces,
approaching her quickly but with no sense of hostility.
She kept things in drawers like
erasers and broken pencils and old love letters
that were written but never addressed,
and she kept photos that were taken by shaking hands,
like hers.
Anything she had ever loved was a memory,
a melody or a misshapen beauty mark on someone’s neck.
The feeling of sun rays seeping through cotton,
fickle arguments with cute-faced boys on midnight walks through alleyways.
She had dirty knees from hiding in tall grass,
and long fingernails on the ends of her crooked fingers.
In diner booths she scribbled words on off-white paper,
and the elderly gave her funny looks,
and her server asked her what she was writing and she said,
“I’m making lists.”
“Lists?” They’d say, and walk away
as if list-making was debatable behaviour.
She’d drop one cream into her black coffee,
and watch the white and black blend together.
And with her chin cupped into her hands, she’d wonder,
what it would feel like to be more than just an afterthought.
I haven’t been trying to be anything lately, except maybe thinner. Someone told me once that girls in their teens are so soft and so susceptible to all of this bullshit that floats around in magazines and on tv screens and I just think, well, I hate the way I look in mirrors and in jeans and tight dresses. I’m not trying to impress boys anymore, not trying to stop cars or turn heads anymore. I’m born with the kind of face that speaks (in all languages) “get to know me”. It’s not the kind of face that prompts any sort of feeling or excitement, except for raw contempt, and I’m slowly (very slowly) getting used to that.
Where do you find the light?
The shadows have blanketed my foolish skin and now Don’t let me take the tops off the cages, They won’t let me. I’ve found that you are always full. My eyes are tired and I I don’t know much about space, Can’t I just pack up my things and go? It’s been awhile since I’ve seen the light
my flesh is painted grey and creased black like oil-stained cement.
I’m canvased and waiting to be painted in bright colours again.
My feet are trailing marks along your white floor,
I’m sorry
for making everything that was clean dirty again.
I have a tendency to damage all things that were once good,
always wearing this veil of innocence and childhood
thinking it’ll cure me.
I’m not allowed to touch the animals in there.
I’m not allowed to figure out where
the sounds are coming from.
and all I am is hollow hollow hollow
hollow.
Hollow,
though I feel so heavy.
Can’t follow the lines on the road,
or read the books that I’m supposed to
and I don’t know much about history
but I know a lot about beauty,
I just never know where to find it.
but I know that it hurts when it’s present.
and I don’t know much about anatomy,
but I know that the ache in my chest is constant
and I can’t nurture it any longer.
Speak fragmented français to handsome garçons?
Boire du cafe avec une amie nouveau?
Je suis terriblement perdu.
Est-ce que vous pouvez m’aider?
Trouvé mon coeur,
je ne sais pas où il est allé.
and I’m always weaving through backstreets trying to find it,
but my leaden feet won’t let me.
Driving at night
Streets signs pass you like little opportunties
waving like jerks wanting nothing to do with you.
Driving with the windows down in the middle of the winter,
the same thoughts finding their way into your mind.
(We’re all a little part of this big mistake our fathers made,
We’re all cleaning up someone else’s mess for no pay)
Driving with the windows down trying to remember what it was you were trying to forget.
A long road, you’re cold now.
Stop off for a coffee and remember how lonely it is,
determining the difference between nostalgia and regret.
Hindsight isn’t always 20/20,
sometimes it’s just a dull ache,
a pain in the back of your teeth, the long of your throat,
the corner of your jaw.
And you want to eat but you can’t bring yourself to.
What a day it has been, you say. What time is it?
Have a smoke. We’re all dying anyway.
Speed it up or slow it down.
