scraps & books along our sidewalk

supper: toast, apricot jam & chestnuts
song: lóri, amiina

(found at a fleamarket in the netherlands, 1934)

going to market
i am thinking thoughts of you;
fresh bread & coffee.

my words turn haiku;
i count syllables on the
inside of mittens.

cold-weather chatter
here, in the seaside city
time is turning back.

i am five years old;
appleseeds in flower pots
leaf majestic trees.

we are too perfect -
(i think i want to tell you)
we could never work.

the skylight-sight moon
does not make me wish for you;
for i am content.

sunday afternoon:
terror, art, humanity
& eggnog lattes,

listing all the names
our friends would call us by, only -
if we were not us.

the makings of a terrible muse

hearing: tea & thorazine, andrew bird's bowl of fire
feeling: wrapped up in books; wrapped up in dreams, fibs & lies

carrying an artful latte (success in the shape of a sparrow!) to my room for breakfast, i knocked the vase of birthday flowers still beside my radiator. they were dying beautifully; i'd left the stems and tissue-paper orchids to slowly scatter pollen & untraceable patterns. water spills across floorboards, pouring out their sweetness and green decay.

on tuesday night, we walked for hours and sat on a bench overlooking the ocean until we were frozen through. talk of planets becoming stars, people becoming different, conversations between ducks. he said that i remind him of the little girl from 'pan's labyrinth' & there were silences when i had no words to say. perhaps this is how we become dear to one another, but i am not trying to fall. i am heart-pressed; never headlong. i have no desire to change lives.

death to miss givings

it's just feeling, a wing
safe-kept records &
the history of our bodies
unconscious, falling away;
immunity from you.

the manila structures
of uncareful, folded anger
i smooth them flat
for weathering sketches
while memory erodes.

fingertips follow backward
cross-hatchings, cursive
tracing before i found
all your secrets -
(misplaced mine).

not a want for words,
but the pattern of your voice,
i am hoping for you now -
to walk by, smiling:
this is your way home.

a lull; a lullaby

listen: bishop allen & the broken string
mood: familiar, nevertheless

days are following days that follow days

new patterns seep in, gradual as stasis



i am hopeful without clutching at hopes

but i think a sea-change is coming

this afternoon, it snowed.

how lamplighting became lost

music: tv show, martha wainwright
mood: leaves leaving trees

things are inevitable, shapeless; things are waiting.

this november is julie doiron, stale croissants, the wind. in my dream you write me stories & pin them to these walls - as if understanding where you've been, i will also understand. we went to a hallowe'en party on wednesday night (i was silent & dressed as louise brooks & certainly at the wrong sort of party). so i left, i ran away for a walk with the mad hatter & when i returned, we had all become people i did not recognize. how did we get here? (did we get here?) your drunken hands hold these hands for moments far too long; until i turn away.
the flatmates and i have been spending afternoons keeping our hands warm with tea, reading about gainsbourg's ghost-house, wearing sweaters, eating cookies. the public gardens will close next week - the ducks have gone quiet, the flowerbeds are covered by the evergreen smell of christmas. and we are happy for this coldness; we laugh into each other's bundled forms. at night, the sky is rich with woodsmoke & sends our frosty voices curling upward.