I cut my hair off to spite one ex boyfriend
turn on a current one
and make all the femme girls love me
but instead
I discovered a great freedom that comes when you are no longer
held down by ‘flowing’ locks of hair that snap like
actual locks, found on school lockers
weighing you down like promises never meant to be fulfilled
I never meant to be a promise
I wanted to be a girl you met in the night
who fled like the shadows when met by the morning
instead, you kept me
took me home and made me breakfast
brought me a beer in the morning and fucked me again
make-up smeared in blue circles over my cheeks
you still said I was beautiful
You were always a promise
of future sunrises and future homes
of cats and window-seats and someday, something, maybe
Something like you in the morning with your hair in your eyes
and a rasp in your voice
but you recognize my touch before you really wake up
and that smile, that half-turn of your lips and the way you look at me like
I am the only good thing
about getting out of bed
I never meant to be a promise
but the way you touch my bare back when I am almost asleep
and the way my stomach touches ground when I am alone
made me different from when I started
made me stick around for breakfast after
I am the seconds away from minutes away from
the hours we spent in my bedroom under covers of darkness and
a fuzzy blanket your friend gave you before you met me
was there a time before you met me?
our history is hazy and I like to pretend you emerged, fully formed,
from the fog of everyone else’s hands and everyone else claiming you
I want to say no one knows you like I do, but no one knows me like you do
and suddenly words escape my tongue as I speak them into your mouth
you are beautiful, tangled in my sheet and smelling like sex and beer and weed
and me, wanting to touch your face
but you look so peaceful and god knows you never get enough sleep
so I let you sleep away the minutes before you have to leave
and now you are a thousand miles away from this
leaving a puddle of blankets and sweat on my floor
my heart on your sleeve
your taste on my tongue
If I write you into the way that I speak, will you be remembered?
If i imagine you are watching me as I leave, will I stay longer?
I write a word for every time I miss you and by 12 o clock Friday
three hours after you’ve left
I have written a novel
I want to describe to you
how the way that you move sometimes
when you know that i’m watching
infects me almost to the point where I
can’t speak or move or change
I want to make you understand how I don’t deserve you
because I look to far and speak too fast
and sometimes I say things that hurt before I realize
I’ve opened my mouth
but if you ever quite realized that
I don’t know what I would do with myself
that one night where you needed me
and I grabbed your hand and a red marker and now
our tags are together as a memory, as a signpost
a portrait of every second of our existence
I need a record of our existence
I need proof that you’re here to stay
I need photographs of the way your eyes smile and your mouth
twists when you see me sometimes and of the way your hands play with the
hem of my skirt and the possessive twist of my arms over your stomach
and the way you turned back towards me and looked almost mournful
some days I can read you like a book that’s lost its cover
but today you are distant, you are drifting, you are preparing yourself for absence
don’t
just stay
It was the moment before sunrise
but we did not know that,
we were in bed, not sleeping
not fucking
not touching
just looking, and the sun just barely lit up the corners of your eyes
and I knew it was morning
but then it had been morning almost all night
or it had been night, almost all morning
and we had not slept
sometimes I wonder what you see when you look at me
what you say in your head when you hear my name
you are perfect in your failure but you have never failed
in anything involving us
involving me
please don’t start now
you are the moment before sunrise
and the moment after sunset
where light is hovering over the horizon like
breath that can’t quite leave our chests
you do this to me
you are dancing on the beach with
no clothes on and you are
fighting with the wind because you can
and it’s cold but you are warm
you mean everything
i want to walk the streets of toronto
with a paint can and your hand in mine
writing our names on walls and
proclaiming our love in semi-permanent art
you are beautiful
you take the breath in my lungs
and freeze it into shards of crystal glass
i find it hard to breathe when you
look at me the way you do
you know i can’t live without it
you are mirrors that never tell lies
you are the hours in the night where
no one moves but ghosts
you stumble over my heart
you whisper my name and I find you
it’s sometimes sunrise before we sleep
and my daydreams are peach-coloured fantasies
we fell through the looking-glass
and onto your front porch
listen, darling, we come in peace
it’s sinister, how the sun sets over the horizon
just like eyelids sink down over tired eyes
my darling, your eyes are a beautiful shade
of green, but sometimes you look right through me
and i am desperate for attention
but desperation’s not becoming; desperate girls
are never chosen
the future’s coming faster than either of us
could ever have imagined
desperation turns to denial turns to regret turns to
i told you so’s under dirty bridges and
flashing lights of ambulances remind me so much
of high-quality lights in high-quality parties with
low quality drugs and mediocre experiences
life is what you make it, you told me
but sometimes there’s nothing that can change
for the better, at least, but there is some sort of
beauty in fucking up as an art form
in digging yourself so deep it takes a miracle
to escape
i never wanted to escape but you pulled me
right out of my perfect little hole
and some days i hate you for it
once i drew a thousand invisible tattoos onto
the pale canvas of your back
my fingers twist and shudder into your hair
as your mouth takes lazy turns down my side
if your eyes were needles and ink my skin would
be multicoloured from the intensity of your want
once we are finished i will collapse at your side
and curl into the comfort of your arms
you asked me once what i was writing on your skin
with my trailing fingernails leaving faint red marks
it was a work of art, a collection of words and sentences
it was nothing, circles upon lines, the formation of languages
renewed with every word and touch
i wrote you love letters in goosebumps and scars
i am shaking out of my skin
and the only thing holding these
dirty pieces of flesh to bone
are your hands gripping me tightly
i am sweating out the chemicals
and the drips of sweat taste metallic
if i close my eyes and lick my lips
i can see shiny chrome coating and
bright blue spray paint
covering dents and bruises
scrapes and self-inflicted scratches
when this is over i will be new
when i’m sober, ask me again
when i’m sober, tell me you love me
when this shaking ceases and my private
earthquake leaves me with room to breathe
i will still need you to hold me together
it was one of those days
and i could not get the stain of you
off my skin
every touch seemed to leave marks
sometimes we are more violent
then we are loving
and sometimes i feel like i’m fucking to win
to prove a point
to cause you pain
i kiss your neck when we’re done
and i beg your forgiveness
caress the marks on your wrists and
the cuts on your back
and pretend that you don’t mind
pretend that you like it
pretend you don’t hate me slowly
the house burns down around us
standing standing gone
it’s fragile
the way the walls stood until the last moment
crumbled down
we were invincible, were we not?
we stood in the fire and held on to
each other
untouched
let me touch you now
let me prove that you are real
sometimes
you tell me that you’re glad you
stayed alive to meet me
sometimes
i cry myself to sleep because
i can’t see myself living another day
