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.

twenty candles will light up the room

music: mr. weather man, rebekah higgs

mood: thoughtful thinking

after a certain point, it was obvious, growing up wasn't going to have any further effect on me. years stacked on top of my experience could be peeled back like a sardine lid to reveal - voila! - the same little person peeking out from under.

-sarah sheard, 'almost japanese'

sunday night was cold but we brought blankets & tea & brandy, we watched the moon rise over our picnic. the angle of almost full, the tilt of citadel hill; darkness fills the eastern sky & streetlights stretch for miles through the spring & the winter & the morning. i fell asleep to strange dreams, i could feel my bones growing old against themselves.
i gave myself an empty, open day: eating a carefully-chosen persimmon and writing in point pleasant, dragon-chai for cold fingers at trident, walking, listening, wishing. i bought 'the great hopeful someday' by elisabeth belliveau and stopped to read under the rhododendrons on my way home. in the afternoon, i ate chocolate, watched a french movie & took a nap.
knowing friends find the most perfect gifts; an antique magnifying glass, a journal for favourite places, blank canvases, orchids, beautiful poems & letters, a rice paper balloon, morse-code messages, lunch on the library wall, spray-painted horses, an indoor birthday-day picnic!

and i almost had my fortune told but when beside the curtain, i mostly wanted mystery.

music: how it feels, thomas dybdahl
mood: snippets

i want you to know that the truth is beautiful.

before sunset, the world becomes over-saturated with feeling & you have been absent from these dizzying places for so long. you sit listening to the far-off voices of your friends, watching birds weave against the last brilliance of day. nothing changes but everything, everything folds over & into itself. hey listen, i've known you ever since thirteen years old. there are maps & ruler-lined memories and a terrible, overwhelming neatness. and when we meet you cannot stop footsteps; i cannot bear to witness.

today, i filled the last page of my notebook.

what if birds had leaves & trees grew feathers?

when awake tastes of a dream

listen: skinny love, bon iver

i went to where you are and i got lost from you there. i wandered the squalor of glass buildings, clay buildings, iron buildings stretching up, up to the sky. i was so much alone. when i returned to where we'd been, everything had become anonymous; all hotel carpet & hospital lights. none of the people knew me and i could not bear to tell them.

there is a richness to this day that reminds me how quickly everything will change.

i like you for understanding the importance of hugs to those who live away from family.

the mouse has returned to our house, my roommate is wearing her rain-boots inside.

i am drinking licorice tea & editing articles & reading vogue at this very moment.

we made a friend for our lonely, across-the-street ghost out of shopping bags and branches.

'robot ponies' have been a mysterious theme running through this week's conversations.

i have been taking more photographs lately, but noticing small details so much less.

we're all going to meet up for the early showing of 'across the universe' at the oxford.

i am filled with over-fondness for these people and their lives.

a memory of goodness & splendor

music: you look so alive, julie doiron
mood: assured.

three dimensional objects have two dimensional shadows, so three dimensional shadows have four dimensional objects & all we see of each other is not what we are.

today, i like the way we inhabit our bodies, how everything gets more unusual as afternoon wears toward its very end. (this follows my night awake) and i like to curl up in my velveteen armchair and drink coffee while you are still asleep; i like to stand barefoot on the porch, feeling the temperature of the day. before work, i sit outside the public library reading children's books and write softly to myself. and why are my most honest conversations with strangers? why do i never ask questions i cannot answer? the bench bends and warps from my body; tired eyes set the motion of everything ashimmer. three boys in football uniforms bicycle by; adrienne clarkson wanders in the boutique. running fingers over silk jackets, wrapping and unwinding scarves from her neck - this is the boredom of well-tailored clothes.

we walk northward and arrive at local jo's and have two minutes to spare. we both drink peppermint leaf tea, we sit on a wooden bench with chocolate & boggle & pencils. (i remember stories that were forgotten, forget the things i mean to say) cats twine round the corners of this october night and passing cars light up the letters and our words. talk home, walk with a gift-baguette under your arm. i am surefooted, i know the way.