twenty-first

My twenty-first year will be marked by poetry. By wordswordswords, like all the years before, only this time there are spaces between them that declare things like, "I am twenty-one and trying to be an artist, can't you tell?" Even these words could be a poem if I just hit enter instead of space a little more often.

"morning"

finding sighs between the lines around your mouth
i can tell you're really thinking, now
my fingers find their way up your spine
counting the notches like years of your life.
lie here with me for a while without speaking --
it's only our breath, now
only the air between the thoughts between the sighs
only the lines of our arms and legs and fingers and faces
only the shapes of our shadows and the last breath
you took before opening your eyes and noticing
the light.

"ghosts of our old lives"

I saw your family today.
They are full of brave smiles
and unending hospitality.

I stepped inside your favourite place
expecting to feel familiar
but I felt like an outsider in a time capsule.

Like I was standing on the set
for the Sunday-night movie
someone made about your life.

Not that it was the real thing.

I touched your old things today.
Ran my hand down a stack of your breeches,
felt the weight of your riding bits,
touched your hats, your jackets,
your brushes, your tack.

Every last piece of material
that defined who you were --
and all of it will be gone.

I lay in your pasture today.
I sank into the grass and closed my weary eyes
against the bright white lights
of your Alberta sky.

I felt like sinking my whole body down.
Like growing into the earth beneath me
so that I could be closer to you.
So that I would be a part of you.

"I can't believe it's over," I said,
and looked up at the white clouds
in the bluest sky
And thought about the ghosts of our old lives.

the time is nigh!

I am quitting the greenhouse. Today.

Possibly even right now. I'll just close this window, get out of my desk, go outside and while leaning against my car like someone Really Cool, I will phone in and tell them it's over.

I'm not good at quitting. I'm not good at breaking up with employers. It's awkward. I always feel bad. I always wonder what they must think of me. If they think I was a waste of time.

Okay. I'm going.

It is time.

don't know what

I need to get out of this. How can I get out of this? Of the maddening rush-hour commute to the farthest reaches of the city? Of the alternative: standing behind a counter at a greenhouse, trying to look busy, wiping down the espresso machine for the eighty-five-thousandth time?

I feel that it's socked right in for the rest of the summer. And then I don't know what.

"the start box"

Early morning, quiet except for the munching sounds: animal jaws closing around mouthfuls of sweet hay, stamping little rhythms on the bed of shavings beneath their feet. A low nicker, the scattered sound of grain splattering into the bottom of a bucket.

Then, an hour later in the start box: the slap of leather after triple-checking the girth. The familiar clink of spurs on the stirrup irons. Puffs of air from the horse's nostrils, air condensing into a fog. A whoosh and a snort, steady. The beating of your heart in your own ears.

"Five, four, three, two, one..." the start box attendant says, and at once the sound of hooves on the grass take over, and then the sound of your own breath -- all you hear is hooves and heartbeat and shaky sharp inhales and exhales.

Then the first jump: all sound suspends in the space in the air above the jump that you occupy. You hold your breath, the horse holds his hooves in mid-air and the silence is like all your sounds rushed out of your ears until the landing, when they all rush in again.

"limited edition, at night"

To enter the barn is to step into a breathing entity, filled with muffled stamps of hooves against straw, equine jaws munching hay, old incandescant lights buzzing overhead. And the dark yawn of the tack room door -- no lights inside there, to conserve electricity. The saddles, brushes, veterinary supplies -- pieces of equipment lie low in the dark, sleeping between use. Collecting the dust that perpetually hangs in the air. Hearing swallows pad their nests with horse hairs in the loft up above.

"neon green"

There was one line on the constantly scrolling marquee
in Times Square that hollered out to me
in a blaring neon green voice every time I walked by.

You smoked your last cigarette on my balcony.
You stood facing the street. I watched you
from inside and wondered how long it would be.

Smoke slipped from your lips, curled upwards
from the balcony and slid towards the sky.
It wasn't very long.

You moved your things out the next weekend.
The neon green letters hollered at me,
"Choose your best self."

fear and writing in las vegas

I am feeling an intense urge to do a book of short stories and poetry for Tanya. About her, and my friends, and our stupid little stories, and the ways our lives were changed. And I want it to be illustrated.

But I'm not working on it yet, because I am afraid of it. I'm afraid of a real project. And I'm afraid of revisiting my old ghosts, because I don't know what they will say to me.

"letting it be," edited version

The night he phoned me from Vancouver was the same night I put a letter in the mail for him. It said, "I will be good to you," and I included a cutesy little photo of us that we did in a photo-booth at the mall. We are cheek-to-cheek in the little black-and-white square and our eyes seem like they belong to other people, now.

He phoned me from Vancouver and he sounded far away. Farther than the west coast; like he was calling Edmonton from China or New Zealand or the South Pole. I was just about to say,
"I've been thinking of you," when he blurted it out.

"There's someone else," he said, and coughed. There were several beats of silence while I thought about the letter -- in my mind it was already floating magically through the clouds across two provinces, knowing its destiny. It was following an imaginary line from the red mailbox down my street to the little cubby that has his last name on it, in the lobby of his apartment building (because that's how mail gets around, in my head, anyway). And I want to snatch the letter out of the air. Send a trained falcon after it, or a skydiver, or a seven-forty-seven jet airplane.

"Oh." This was all I could think of to say. I was seeing our black-and-white faces, now -- our cheek-to-cheek grins.

“It's been this way for a while," he said, and coughed again.

"Okay," I said, thinking about the way I'd signed my name with a heart next to it. Thinking about my saccharine little x-o-x-o.

"Be good," he said, turning the tone of his voice upwards, trying to sound amiable. I found this little sentence enormously ironic, and maybe if this had been happening to another couple, and if he and I were just standing together on the sidelines watching, I'd mention that fact to him and he'd laugh and say, "you're right; that is ironic," but as it stands I didn't think I should comment on it.

"I guess so," is what I eventually came up with, and he muttered a strangled-sounding "be seeing you" and I pressed the phone down into the receiver.

Outside, at the end of the street, I approached the red mailbox. I opened the little slot, peered inside, tried sticking my hand in. I tried jiggling the box to and fro, as if that would suddenly make my letter shoot out from inside and land safely in my hands. I thought about going back home and getting a screwdriver: maybe I could dismantle the entire mailbox, sort through the pile of birthday cards and bills-to-be-paid, locate my letter, and then put the whole thing back together. I thought about contacting Canada Post: maybe they would bring down some sort of Postal SWAT Unit, maybe they already have such a team in place for emergencies like this one. Maybe I could throw a lit match down the little slot. As a last resort, I kicked the mailbox and then jumped around in pain on one foot for a while. None of these ideas, while brilliant, would work.

So I went home. The roll of stamps was still on the kitchen table. There were no messages on the answering machine, no laughing voice saying, "Darling, I was only kidding! Got you good, didn't I? Anyway, I love you, and sweet dreams!" Just my dark apartment, and my enormous, empty bed.

"I will be good to you," I said aloud to the cat, who looked at me strangely and left the room. I let out a snort of laughter -- this whole thing reminded me of a sitcom -- and sat down on my bed. Maybe I could write another letter, to counteract the first. It could be all spiteful and mean, and I could include a photo of us together with his face all inked out with a Sharpie, and there would be no adorable x-o-x-o, and no heart next to my name -- no, I wouldn't even sign my name at all! The paper and stamps and envelopes were just in the next room. If I did it tonight, he'd get both letters at once.

Then I thought about his Someone Else. Someone Else is beautiful and serene, and she'd open the letters before he got home and then they'd look at them together and laugh and think about how glad they were that I was out of the picture, and the two counteracting letters would solidify their relationship. He would smile lovingly at Someone Else and know that he'd made the right decision.

If this were happening to another couple, and he and I were standing together on the sidelines, he'd grimace and say, "She should not have sent that second letter!" And I'd agree, and we'd watch the story unfold in all of its gory detail. He would think that sending a second, spiteful letter would be a bad idea. He'd say, "She should know to just let it be."

I curled up on my side of the enormous bed we’d bought together seven months ago. I stared across the white sheets where he used to lay on his stomach – he would put his face right into his pillow, and I never understood how he could possibly breathe, but miraculously, each morning he’d get up and make the coffee and turn the shower on for me to stumble into. His face would look all crinkled and pillow-indented.

So I tried pressing my face into my pillow, then. It felt cool and comforting, like drawing the curtains on a bright morning. I stayed like that for a long time, breathing in and out through the fabric of my pillowcase. Even when the cat jumped up onto the bed and walked across my back with its prodding little paws, I kept my face in my pillow and my arms at my sides. I was actively letting it be.

With my face in my pillow and the cat curling up at the base of my spine, I decided to cling to the faint hope that he’d feel guilty when he received the letter. He’d look across the kitchen table of his apartment at Someone Else, and wonder if he’d made the right decision. Instead of tossing the letter into the trash, he’d secretly keep it in his sock drawer. Someone Else would find it one day while packing for a romantic weekend trip and confront him. There would be an enormous fight, and Someone Else would leave him, and he would lie for hours with his face pressed into his pillow.

What I hated most about the whole thing was that, either way, there was nothing I could possibly do to change anything. I took my face out of the pillow. I turned my head sideways, and after looking at the emptiness of our fabulous bed, I shut my eyes against the reality of my impending loneliness.