A mix of dim light and sharp contrast —
a bedroom at 3:17 a.m.,
where the glow of a screen casts itself onto a dusty mirror.

There’s dried lavender tied to the doorknob,
a ripped movie ticket folded into a cracked wallet,
and a coffee mug stained with lipstick and cold tea.
A Tim Hortons bagel wrapper on the floor,
beside a half-folded script marked in red.

She’s a blur of contradiction:
Muted winter tones with one accidental splash of neon,
Long coat drama with chipped nail polish,
Fiona Apple echoing across a frozen lake,
Voicemails unsent, and text drafts that never leave,
Floral borders framing forensic screenshots,
Sadness iced into snow,
Shame at the supermarket,
Wine untouched, then poured, then forgiven.

Sticky notes whisper “don’t text him today”
beside a reminder to feed the dog she no longer has.
There’s a still from Barry Lyndon,
and a grainy photo of Southern Ontario in March.
Boots at the door, still wet from sleet,
and a book cracked down its spine —
the protagonist doesn’t make it out.

She is the color of pale yellow, dried blood red, late-night blue, and hospital beige.
She knows the white of prescription labels,
and the gold of fairy tale endings that never arrive.

kind eyes and crooked smile,
the inner child that shows its face in the morning
how strange to have been strangers once
how strange to be strangers once again

thousands of light years away
on an island off the West coast of Venus
there is a cottage built of moonstone
with a stove that runs on stardust
and a violet retriever with antennas for ears
who roams the yard and barks into the void.

there is an ocean where our love runs deep,
so we bathe in the memories of our past lives
and ride the wave of our endless future.
we smoke moon cheese when the sunrises,
we drink from the milky way as the sunsets,
we collect the shooting stars that granted us all of our wishes
and put them on display in glass cabinets.

and though a version of us exists on Earth,
in a world of pandemic and isolation,
where the stoves run on gas and the dogs foam at the mouth,
where the oceans are tainted and the stars are out of reach,
it is enough to know that thousands of light years away,
there is a cottage on the West coast of Venus,
where you and I live in perfect harmony.

nothing about these moments feel fair,
time keeps passing and i fear that i am growing younger,
that i am becoming more childlike.
i feel small again, like i need to be held.
i tell myself i forgive you,
but i fear the resentment that threatens to surface,
and i'm terrified that it doesn't matter anyway.

i still love you. i don't know if i'll ever stop.
maybe you need me more now than ever,
because i need you, too.
but i fear this nostalgia only exists in my mind,
and i'm terrified that it doesn't matter anyway.

when the goodbyes are for good,
after months of caving into yourself,
sadness spilling out of yourself,
you begin to let go of the things that only ever almost existed -
but died before they could live outside of your mind:
the weekend getaway to new york city you almost booked,
the christmas lights on the roof we almost put up,
the 'i love you' that you almost meant.

you learn to let go of the potential happy endings:
throwing our caps up at the graduation we almost made it to,
the hidden trail we almost hiked,
the new year's eve kisses we exchanged for almost 4 years in a row.
but there are things that still swell beneath the surface -
every exhale threatening to spill the words i almost said,
every memory embedded in a cinematic masterpiece so beautiful that it can only be viewed through rose-coloured glasses.

so i lay them down here:
a graveyard for every almost,
a cemetery for every possibility,
a sanctuary for every end of the line disguised as a new beginning.
and i let them rest in peace.
i bring them flowers once a year,
daisies because they remind me of your smile.

i pay my respects and mourn the love that could have been.
i thank you for almost being the best thing that ever happened to me.
i thank you for the laughter that almost lasted forever.
i thank you for almost loving me without end.

last November, you said, "I'll always be here when you need me."
so thank you for staying gone.

there's something in the quiet about this town,
the vacancy after the sun goes down,
the trucks backed in to their wide driveways,
headlights fading into distant rays.

the only movement outside is the gentle fall of the snow,
and the darkness seems to have an odd sort of glow,
no sounds of children, music, or the roaring of a crowd,
but the absence of noise has never been so loud.

there's something about the quiet in this town,
that reminds me of how peaceful it was to have you around,
during that first snowstorm of the new year,
whispering truths of our greatest hopes and fears.
the grey in this sky like the hue of your eyes,
as familiar as the nose kisses you gave me goodbye.

you'd hate this place: too cold, too far, too much of nothing to do.
but something in the quiet of this town that reminds me of you.

he can't breathe in summer without smelling my perfume
those mid-july kisses always destined for doom
december comes around all too fast,
faced with blurry memories from our past
spring gives birth to a life that don't feel new,
*** the grass ain't greener, just a different hue
time apart from you don't seem to fly by
but when the Sun reaches its highest point in the sky
it somehow always brings him back to me,
hot and sticky nights with my baby

You have never been worthy of the love I gave to you -
I will love myself til I don't miss yours anymore.

loving you wasn't an innocent kind of love,
it was guilty and achy in a way that felt so good i couldn't even talk about it.
and when we finally decided it was time,
i lost my best friend.
i felt you forget me every evening before we became strangers
and i still wake up in tears in the middle of the night because in a dream, i remembered what it felt like when you held me

eventually, you become numb to the pain that is no longer constant
the feeling of nostalgia becomes muted by the louder sounds of life:
like the ringing alarm clock reminding you that you’ve still got a job to show up to,
like the radio announcer's voice telling you that we're expecting clear skies.
there are moments throughout the day when you forget to think about them, forget to stare at old pictures, forget to cry in bathroom at work
there are milestones that will take place and they won't show up;
like your graduation, or your brother's wedding
and you almost don't notice their absence.
almost.

you think you won't be able to go on without them,
but you do.
you find there are new songs stuck in your head, even if you never forget the lyrics to your old favourite one.
you learn to let go in small parts -
you hear his name and your body doesn't flinch,
you walk past the liquor aisle without thinking to pick up his favourite brand of whiskey.

and one day, without even realizing,
you notice how straight you stand without the weight of their world pushing down on your shoulders.

they say if you love something, you should let it it go.
if it comes back to you, it was always yours
if it doesn't return, it was never yours to begin with
you've came and gone so many times that i've let you turn this home into a hotel room,
let you turn the bomb shelter of my arms into just another pair of limbs -
let you leave a vacancy between my fingers where yours once intertwined with mine like a promise.

these days i keep a lock on the door,
guard my heart with my arms crossed.
I keep my hands to myself.
they say if you love something, you should let it go
sometimes letting someone go is the same thing as pushing them away
sometimes letting someone go means holding onto yourself
sometimes letting go means not letting them return,
no matter how hard it is to lose something that once belonged to you.

there is a fire in my chest
that roars with every breath i take
i am suffocating,
choking on the fumes

at night, i am my own firefighter
i use the jaws of life to cut open my skin,
reach inside of myself
and extinguish whatever is burning me alive
until the flames re-ignite again in the morning.

grey eyes and gold buzzcut
psychopathic smile, tongue like candy
calloused palms, arms like a bomb shelter
wrapped in a bow of good intentions and charm
christmas came early that year,
you were all mine.

the memories form a lump in my throat,
the nostalgia - a hard pill to swallow
4 months since you ripped my mouth off your hook and i'm still trying to find my voice to speak
i tell myself its time to write something
write anything, just let it be something

because i believed you
because i never realized how brown your eyes really were until i had the courage to stare
because you told me you were happier this way
because i don't feel suicidal when i'm with you
because you wanted me to meet your mother
because you never ask me what's wrong
because you don't care about anything
because i wanted to know what would happen
because i was too scared to ask
because ******* for leaving the first time
because i love you for coming back
because you only ever touch me when you're drunk
because his lips didn't feel like yours
because he made me laugh but not the way you could
because of 3 am nights with you are all i want to remember
because 3 am nights without you sit in the middle of my chest like a boulder
because my father warned me
because i can't do it anymore
because i can't do it anymore

If you give a girl a with a big heart your broken pieces,
she will gently pick them up and carry them in her soft hands,
and pay no mind to your sharp edges.
She will try to glue you back together
and she’ll do it in a way that made you forget you were ever broken.
With scratched finger tips and ****** palms,
she’ll lift you up to the sun,
letting it's blinding rays shine through you
to show you that even the worst things have things to love in them
and that even the shattered can again be whole.

If you give a girl with a big heart your body,
she will study you like an archaic God.
She will learn your curves and surfaces like braille,
she will adjust her hearing to the pitch of your laughter
so that no matter how far apart you become,
her ears will perk up like a dog's when you giggle,
and she will smile, knowing that you smile.

If you give a girl with a big heart your time,
she will make each second feel like infinity,
and each sunset like the end of the world.
You'll forget that the universe is as vast and wondrous as it is,
because you will be so captivated by the light that she emits
right where she sits,
by your side.

And if you take from a girl with a big heart,
please,
for the love of God,
do not take it all.

If you take from a girl with a big heart,
please remember that her love is not a renewable resource.
The wind and the sun and the water will forever be there to serve you but
she will run dry, and become another fact of history that will one day be forgotten.

If you take from a girl with a big heart,
please remember how sharp your edges were before her,
how lifeless your body was before she touched it,
and how meaningless time was before she made it into something magical.

In dreams, you reach out to me like you used to and you say my name the way you promised.
Waking up is starting to hurt.
I'm trying hard to be the right kind of patient but I don't know if what I'm waiting for is still worth waiting for.
I'll wait,  anyway.
I don't know where I am going with this.
I swore I wouldn't write about you again, and I did.

last Easter I wrote a poem for you
with rhyming words and beautifully constructed stanzas
about the way your hair looks and the way I wanted you and the way things were changing but -
April came back around all too fast this year and I don't write poems like I used to.
this isn't poetry.
this is October nights with glazed eyes,  burning throats and so much trauma, so much trauma, so much ******* trau-
this is November afternoons smoking my lungs black and tears that i drowned in for every day of that month.
this is December mornings when I spent all my money on Christmas decorations because I thought it would be my last.
this is New Years Eve, clutching her back and sobbing into her shoulders because I couldn't believe I made it - how the hell did I make it?  this is me thanking her, and her, and her too for stitching me back together. this is champagne and the grace of God.
this is February when you came back to me  and as much as i wanted to throw dirt back in your face, I held onto it in hopes of planting something new.
this is March when it wouldn't stop snowing.
this isn't poetry.
this is April,
this is me taking the dirt and burying the idea of us six feet under.
this isn't poetry,
this is Spring and this is the last time you will be mentioned with it.

it only took one week for you to re-light the candle,
and it only took me six words to set afire
(i'm so sorry i ****** up)
you were reckless with heat and i was so easily flammable and ******* for coming back when you did

there's always been a whole lot of grey between us
it wasn't black and white from the start
i was always making exceptions and you were always doing the wrong thing,
but making it seem so right

it feels like the butterflies in my stomach have turned into bees
stinging and buzzing whenever we talk and
im far past the school-girl crush, with sweaty palms and shy giggles
my hands are shaky and there's a lump in my throat because this isn't romance anymore,
this is red eyes and fractured ribs.

you keep referring to her as "a mistake"
but i keep hearing you say "i want her back"
and i wish you knew that the more you try to disguise your anger as indifference,
the more apparent it is that you wish things were different.

i will always be the altarboy,
i will always wait for you on hands and feet.
i will never be enough for you.
*i will never be enough for you

Kissing him sounded like wailing sirens,
a traumatic experience already in motion

Your Dad was never around to teach you things
like riding a bike, or how to ask for the things you want
so you own a dirt bike now and steal for the thrill of it.
I still think you turned out just fine.

I  want to romanticize the way it felt to feel your presence but always being at such a distance from you,
but its hard to make something so painful sound poetic.

Still, I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy it all, just a little bit.

You'll call some other girl "babe"
and I'll change my mind
the same way the leaves go from green to red and
one day I won't think of trauma when I hear your name,
I won't be calm when I sense danger,
and I won't be at peace when I hear sirens wail.

A cell is not a home,
those bars keep you too far away.
We all try not to think about it too much,
and like this we keep ourselves sane.
We dance around the topic and I pretend not to hear Mom howling at night because if I don't acknowledge it, then it doesn't exist.
Has your vision faded to black and white?
Do you pretend that if you don't see the colour orange hanging from your body,
that you're just in another place?
Another empty room?
Another lonely night spent with  strangers at a location you're trying to make home?
You've always liked the way your hair looked long,
do you still like it now?
Have you began to hate the things you once loved yet?
Like cartoons, or colouring books, or the drugs that twisted and knotted your brain cells?
The drugs that sent you there?
The drugs that keep you there?
Have you began to resent every memory you have of us growing up?
Who do you see when you have nightmares?
Whose name do you curse when you awake in a cold sweat?
A cell is not a home
and those bars are going to ruin you.

"If I could paint a picture of how we used to be,
it would be a landscape of a field
with sunflowers that all look the exact same.
The exact same.
Over and over and over again."

it comes in flashes
bright, red-hot
you feel it take over and if you feel it fast enough,
you can destroy everything in your path within moments
you spew words like venom and leave scars without thinking twice
and when it's over and done with,
you hate yourself for it.
this is what anger is,
this is how you have made cynics out of every person that's ever loved you.

i still hold my breath when i hear you late at night

you're locked behind closed doors and you think no one can hear you, but i hear you
howling like a wolf in search for something in the night,
roaring with anger like a lion

i'd like to say that I'm not afraid of you anymore but I can't help but feel like a small child in the dark when you curse

maybe this is why I try so hard to please people like you
I'll swing a right hook at a woman before I'll do so much as raise my voice at a man and what the **** does that say about me?

take a shot if you were conditioned to keep men tame
pop a pill if you were raised to stay silent when your daddy yells
light one up if the lines have blurred between love and fear

i haven't been sober in years

i used to think there would never be enough people like you and I,
we were singing together when i told you that you were the only friend i needed.
but now i only think of you in past tense.

what a shame,
what a misadventure it was to know you.
I've never seen a light more blinding than the one that was forced into my vision when i heard about you,
even in all those years that we spent in the sun.

i like to think that you're not as terrible as you've proved yourself to be,
but i don't know how not to confuse compassion with weakness,
or the distinction between forgiveness and forgetting.

so many of our secrets will forever remain in this small town,
memories of us live on every part of your street.
Christmas came back around all too fast this year and
i keep finding the pieces of myself that i gave away buried in the ornaments we hung together.

i don't have enough time to pretend i'm not hurting,
and i don't have enough heart to feel sorry for you.
more than the clouds want the dying grass to know that they will pour all they have to bring them life,
more than the moon wants to bring full light to our darkest nights,
i want you to know
that i am not sorry.

we are sometimes lucky enough to know people who illuminate our skies like the northern lights

we appreciate them even when we don't show it
and love them even with our fists slammed into the wall.

we do not have to be broken hearted.
we are so conditioned to believe that it is the people who love us that will hurt us most,
which in turn,
distorts our meaning of love into pain.

they say the only way to reverse this idea is to forgive, but
forgiveness is a tricky thing
and if we don't learn when to use it for others and when to use it for ourselves,
we will end up alone.

but people like me aren't afraid of being alone.

and you should know,
that i don't spare the lives of those who hurt me.
and even if you lay breathing tonight,
by morning,
you'll wish you were dead.

You forget that you're good.
You forget that you're kind, and gentle and caring.
People have been so callous with you that you forget that you are not the sum of their mistakes,
and you are not to blame for the damage that was done to you.
You forget.
You forget that you are full of  good intent, that you're thoughtful and creative.
You're so used to being made to feel stupid and selfish that when someone brings out the beauty in you,
all you feel is guilt.
You have a heart of gold.
You would never do to people what they have done to you.
There is a light in you that remains bright even with the layers of charcoal that surround it.
Don't forget.
**Don't forget that you're good.

Love is not the way your father slams doors,
or the way your mother stays locked behind them at night.
Love is not the way your brother loses his temper,
or the alcohol disintegrating your grandfather's brain.
Despite what you have been raised to believe,
love is not waking up alone on Christmas morning,
or the hand that hit you wiping away your tears.
Love is not the screams of rage on Saturday night
and the singing of hymns on Sunday morning.
Love is not leaving a light on for someone who’s never coming home,
and love is not the empty trust fund with your name written on it.
Love is not the pain you grew up in.
Love is not the pain you grew up in.

You wonder when you will stop bleeding.**
On the night of the accident, there was so much blood loss that they didn't think you'd make it.
You still wonder how you made it.
You haven't bled like that since and the wounds have scarred over but
whenever you drive past where it happened,
whenever you see an icy patch, or a blue Honda,
the scar tears a bit.
You've tried to avoid those things, but you can't forever.
And so you wonder when the scar will fully heal.
You wonder when you will stop bleeding.

I see you in the chair on my front porch when I'm alone and it's dark.

It all goes quiet after a while.

It's easy to lose count of how much you've smoked when the air is cold.
Whether it's puffs of cold air or puffs of cigarette smoke,
I can't tell
It doesn't matter anyway.

**I'm still thinking of you.

i loved you like a hot air balloon that was never coming down
but all things run out of fuel eventually
and the higher you get,
the harder the fall.

I used to believe that nothing hurt more than disappointment.
Then I felt the pain of betrayal and believed that nothing could hurt more than the untruth of the one you loved most.
And now,
I'm throwing up from one too many cigarettes,
one too many drinks,
and I'm starting to believe that nothing hurts worse than feeling nothing at all.

Fall is less beautiful at night

When the wind is blowing and you've forgotten your jacket and there isn't enough sunlight to illuminate the colour of the leaves and finally you see the season for what it really is
A season of death.

But we try not to think about it too much.

We are the crack pipe babies,
the suburban rats that lay in fields at 2 am.
We are the children of the night,
We smoke till we can't feel the chill of October anymore.
(we smoke till we can't feel the chill of anything anymore)
We are the boys and girls with holes in our gloves and rips in our boots and parents that swear to love us for the beautiful colours we have grown into to.
But they are colours of dried blood, and rust on metal and stained teeth.
They are the red and brown and yellow of autumn leaves.

We are the Fall.
But Fall is so much less beautiful at night.

Something about literature universally connecting people
something about verses that we can identify with
something about using words in the a way that makes people feel less alone
I see people using poems as band-aids
and poets writing poetry like their last saving grace
I don't know.
Some things hurt.
Some things burn
and bruise
and fester inside of you and run in circles around your mind
until it hurts to think about it any more
it hurts to read about it any more
it hurts to write abou-
my head hurts.
It hurts to write about this any more.

I think I lost my ability to write sober and it scares me shitless
Everything I've ever wrote that's worth something has been a product of drugs
Everything that has ever rhymed
and flowed
and ebbed like the sea has been a result of alcohol
I am a cliché
All of my thoughts are the same recycled ones of the media and social influence that are only brought to surface with chemicals in my bloodstream
All of my romanticism and pain and obsessive verses are mediocre when I am not high
I am not as creative as I claim
I am a fraud
I am a fraud.

...And I've seen what it's like to have good days,
really ******* good days.
Days when things go horribly wrong and surprisingly right but you see how much your mother has sacrificed for you
and how the sky looks so ordinary but it will probably never look the exact same way as it does right now
and  the sun shines on your best friend in a way that makes you feel happy to be alive.
I am happy to be alive.
I don't know what that means in terms of progress,
But I know it's October again,
and this Thanksgiving I am able to say the words that I couldn't say last year:
**I am happy to be alive.

Good girls in rows of frilly dresses and kitten heels and pigtails
seated with black tie fathers and black eyed mothers
in the sea of hymns and Church bells.
Don't fidget with your fingers,
don't stare at people too long,
don't ask why.

Good girls in short kilts and knee high socks and dark lipstick
seated next to boys in khaki's with hands that move like serpents
in the sea of rumours and stealthy glances.
Don't kiss in the stairwell,
don't talk too loud,
don't ask why.

Good girls with black eyeliner and opened wounds and glazed eyes
seated next to nothing in particular and nothing that matters
in the sea of emptiness that's left behind when they are alone.
Don't let your smile falter,
don't stare at the black pit of your stomach,
don't ask why.

I could probably write a bunch of stanza's
With black letters and white background of metaphors and similies
I could use pretty words and figures of speech
And end with something ironic.
Or use lines that we've all heard before and try to pass it off as my own,
or write something that's all too vague.
But the truth is
All I'd really be writing about
Is the same old concept that's been written about in poetry for years
And the same feeling that's felt all across the world on a Saturday night when we are alone:
A little bored
Maybe even a little lonely
And a little desperate for a miracle.

There are always people
who will want to pretend nothing ever happened
who will want to pretend that they didn't drive nails through your wrists
and that they don't see you bleeding dry through the gaping holes
There are always people
that say they want you to go far
and they tell you that if you dig deep enough, you'll dig a hole to China
but stand above ground, throwing dirt back in like a burial service
And there are people like myself,
who forget what they're writing about half way in
who have gaping holes in their wrists that were never from a cross
and bottomless holes in the pit of their stomach
that never led to China.

It can feel like you're being torn apart
Limb from limb
Like the skin that has been holding you together for so long
Is finally wearing thin
Do you remember the first time you were drunk?
Like the world wouldn't stop spinning, no matter how much you wanted it to
And you could swear everyone had their eyes on you as you stumbled down the stairs
It can feel like the moment before a drop on a rollercoaster
Not knowing when you're about to fall,
only knowing that it's a long way down
Because you can be alive for 18 years, and life can still feel really ******* new
And anyone who acts like growing up feels like freedom
and flying
is only telling half the truth
Growing up feels like responsibility,
and losing your best friend
and being so scared of never being somebody that it keeps you stuck in bed all day with a "flu"
And getting older does feel like breaking out of your skin,
being drunk
and riding a rollercoaster -
**but all in the worst ways.

You find yourself so bored out of your mind,
that it becomes amusing to drive others out of theirs

Good girls will leave their heart at your doorstep
and days later, you'll have the pieces scattered around your bedroom

Your old drug of choice just doesn't seem to cut it any more,
but manipulation has never felt more addicting.

Make them say your name, make them tell you they love you
Keep that memory alive when you stop returning their calls
and when your words have cut deep enough, don't flinch when you see your mother cry for the first time
and don't think twice when you know that you're the reason why

Where did your feelings go?
You see how red your anger can be,
but do you remember what shade remorse is?
You prey on the people that love you most and run them dry
You feed off of their hope that maybe you'll change.
But you don't entertain the thought of love anymore
and you'll never see that people are not just another notch in your belt.

The smoke rises
and soon the stars in the sky look like coordinates
and you count the way each set of three makes a triangle.
This view makes you feel happy that you're still stuck in the suburbs
but then you begin to feel scared because you're still stuck in the suburbs
(maybe the view is better elsewhere)
I miss my best friend
and I know that if I lean over this balcony any further -  I'll be dead.
Suddenly you're glad you aren't dead.
and suddenly you're scared because you could be.