no. 1

he was the rockstar and she was the groupie who was too afraid to say his name. she knew his family, drove by his house and knew all the lyrics to all the songs that his shitty band played at the YMCA on weekends. she'd heard that he was a jerk but she just didn't believe it, couldn't believe that such a good looking, nasal singing, long distance running kind of lead singer of a highschool boy could ever say those things, would ever think those things. she left him behind in highschool, that was the tragedy. it was over, she could follow his footsteps online but what use was it with him in another province? no drive by sightings or gossip filtered from friend to friend. it was embarrassing to admit. it sounded worse than it was, like she was some kind of stalker groupie girl, some kind of crazy. it could stay behind her in middlebrook, no one at elliott would ever need to know.

titles are too hard

laguna beach
what a treat
no offense but
theres no suspense
in what you like
and dislike:
celebrity news and
surface insights
thats why all we do
is reminisce and
shoot the shit and
make no new
memories.
nothing in common
except highscool
i can fuel the night
by rolling my eyes
inhaling my sighs and
holding my tongue
holding air in my lungs but
i still like you just
not like i used to.

flannel sheets

she woke up between warm sheets in her empty frozen room. she never wanted leave the comforters, her fortress of pillows. she was a trapeze artist: one person was holding her ankles and another swung towards her, with arms outstretched. choose a direction! it’s not that she couldn’t face the world today, nothing quite so melodramatic or interesting. she could easily rise and dress, stuff her warm limbs into icy foreign fabrics, splash water on her face and move through the day. she couldn’t choose: apple or orange, toast or cereal, the next year of her life. couldn’t she just lie in limbo, make angels in the sheets, lie with her bare stomach pressed to the mattress and her head at the wrong end of the bed? indecision turns to apathy perched on her shoulder.
instead let’s think about everything that is irrelevant, because the summer’s too late to decide you know. pack a suitcase with some things, find a map, read a book. and most importantly: find a willing friend, someone who can listen to you talk about stupid stuff for hours, list your anxieties alphabetically with fluctuating pitch and urgency. it’s not running away, it’s just running laps; you’ll come back eventually. out of one hundred decisions you can make this one –
she thinks about this from under the striped flannel. indecision twists into motivation; a place, a plan, a project. as long as she keeps moving she’s accomplished something. as long as she keeps planning you couldn’t call her static.

telephone traveller

there is only so much of my smile that i can throw across to you, like an anchor, hoping to catch your sleeve and bridge the gap between decent and despair. sometimes my smile isn't enough for me. when words die quickly, collapsed shells littering my lap like pathetic efforts to live a better life, there are only so many questions i can ask. but i wish i could travel through this telephone cord to you, spin through wires and electrocute my cells. i would watch blue currents travel up and down my body, flashing lights flickering over my eyes, speeding through those black strings that hang through the skies connecting voices to each other. emerging into your yellow lighted room, shadowed and underground, through your receiver and in front of your face. my lips, numb from the cold flashing speed of travel through telephone wire, know ten ways that they can make it better for you, for me. a corsing heat spread through your body, violent and unrelenting from the leftover electrolites running through my veins. i wonder why it is that we cannot relate to each other's voices alone. your hands trace my white wrists, tiny blue veins criss cross and show through translucent skin. you say you forget who i am when you cannot see me, you need to see my wrists because they hold all of my secrets, all of my weakness. you need to hold this close to your eyes so you can remember that we are both flawed and lost because that is the only way you and i are supposed to be together. our voices are too much like our minds talking, our bodies are extensions of our hearts, blood-filled and responsive to touch, to smiles, to wrists.

i feel as though the water has finished boiling, big sloppy bubbles bursting at the surface, satisfying sizzles when the spray hits the hot element. like the sky has blushed in dark blue, with gathering speed the clouds are running away and the wind is setting in. like i need to wash the sheets on my bed, spread them clean over my matress and sleep feeling fresh between them. i feel like i need to rearrange the furniture in my room, live a symmetrical existence and see things from the other side of the mirror. cut my hair shorter or throw out all my things that don't mean anything to me. throw away everything that begins with a consonant. only eat fruits that are in season, only talk to people i like. learn something new. stop learning altogether, stop laughing when i am alone. stop with every day life, make life unnecessarily difficult for myself just to stop routine from stalking me. cook for people who appreciate me. stop asking for things. try to deal with something, stop avoidance. avoid everything altogether. get straight a's in school. pretend more. lie more, i think i need to lie more.

she will ask you

i like the way she will ask you any question. without any regard to social conventions she will ask what your prescription is for, why you were crying, what that fight was about. and she isn't rude and she is not obtuse. i think that she is honest. she will come into your house for the first time, meet your mother and run her hands over your things. she is perfect posture and confidence without a trace of arrogance. she strings together these words so easily, i cannot imagine her feeling shame or petty embarassment. she is a geniune question, an authentic dislike for indirect communication. her words fly like paper airplanes into the walls, over your head, onto the floor but it doesn't matter. there is no urgency, no desperation, no anxiety about her.

flake

that slice of dried out cucumber that you chop off and throw out. the puddle of milk that collects in the bottom of the plastic bag that gets disposed of with the bag. that second pair of gloves that you bought when you thought you lost your left glove of your previous pair, but then you found the left glove. those plastic grocery bags that get holes in them so they cannot be reused. that sweater you bought and then shrunk in the dryer and is now unwearable. that five dollar bill you lost, that picnic you made before it rained, that movie you rented to watch with your friend who cancelled. wastes, wastes, wastes. but theres nothing worse than wasting your time.