A monument sketched on a disposable napkin

He does not know that I am disinterested
he is only interested in
filling, making nauseous work like
a dog finishing every scrap
in the bowl long past
the pains of hunger.

He does not know that chasing words
coy smiles and hands gently pulling wrists
is not a filling meal
that I am a person,
not a prize to be won
but he is a subway car
and sometimes the hands trailing down
my stomach are only tender because
they know what to do when they reach the bottom.

He wipes his soiled mouth on a napkin and makes
sweet artistry of me with his eyes
because he knows that I am the model
the rough draft
the fine collector’s item.

So I wipe my mouth with the tablecloth
and make a bridge with my knuckles
a skyscraper with my thighs
flesh homes and a pumping gurgling heart
teeth like beautiful bricks
because I am the fucking architect.

Capgras

I decide to walk home instead
swing open the door
and my stomach drops
you used to catch that
I drink warm beers
and don't always seem to make it home
how long do skin cells live?
because these ones don't seem to go

Puked into a paper cup
as I remembered
how my head fit right under your chin
I hope she tasted okay
because now my mouth tastes like bile

You couldn't figure me out so
I figure
I'll wipe the corners of my lips
and take only what I need

because I can't be yours
but I didn't want to leave

It is the ocean

lips are not soft.

they are like waves as they crash
and foam and swallow up
goosebumps

and whatever moves your hands
across reefs of skin
is no small pleasure:

those tender smiles
are shit-eating grins
because we know the cycle of the tides.

love is not soft.

it is the ocean and it knows no mercy.

The balm to that little sadness

Some part of me longs for the breezes that would gently shake the wind chimes in my grandmother's backyard, as the little pieces of metal would tremble and that's when you would know that the whole world is silent. That part of me remembers the strange ticklish feeling of laying your head in the grass and looking up at the sun and the blue sky until your vision became spotty, knowing that you could lay there forever if no one disturbed you. But that part also remembers sitting at the kitchen table, staring at the sunflowers on the tablecloth or the rabbit-shaped egg cup that held a porcelain-coloured egg, yolk dripping down one side of the rabbit's ear. It remembers the little sadness that would grip my heart as I ate my egg, a sadness that I would wonder at curiously and ask what business it had to be there. I would receive no reply. It is the same sadness that was much more tyrannical as I laid in the dark in my father's apartment, squished into bed with my sister who had long drifted off to sleep as my fresh tears hit her bare arm laid across the covers. That time, I would ask the sadness what business it had and its reply would be, "you just haven't earned it yet". I believed it and as a result some other part of me softened.

I carried this around, this little sadness, for a long time. I would even say that I am still carrying it, that it clings to me like pollen on the tiny hairs of bees or as dark yellow streaks on a new summer blouse. Or it could be a wound, something like a sunburn inside me that stings and feels open. For so long I wanted the balm to that little sadness. Perhaps at this point I've found it.

But I could never muster a response back to the little sadness, and watching the sunset on the ants crawling through the cracks in the pavement, I never thought I would. Everyone in my life would watch me, as spectators, clasping their hands together and hoping that this sadness wasn't part of me. But some part of me knew that it was, and that part of me longs for the sprinkler and the pink and orange tulips and the sticky sugar of a popsicle running down your forearm. Somewhere, some day, maybe on the shore of the lake where the waves lap and where you ride your bike, the response burst forth from me, saying, "I never will, and that's besides the point".

He does not bark, and he knows the secrets of the deep

I'm not sure that I know how to be alone with myself anymore. I mean, I do, and I always have, but it's getting increasingly harder. I want to be alone all the time but when I am alone I don't want it anymore. The terrifying intimacy with a crowd of strangers unknown to you. I guess the city changes faster than the human heart. 

There have been moments where I wait until I can be completely alone, and in that silence I cry. It's almost as if I can't stop, that if something or some thought didn't stop me I would cry forever until my body became some dry, waterless husk. I cry about everything and nothing in particular. 

The thing they don't tell you about becoming more independent is that you have to actually face yourself. You have to know your eccentricities and particularities and when that becomes too much, the release just pours back into you, like how every time the tide goes out, it must come back in because it has nowhere else to go. 

On the other hand, I don't worry about myself often enough. I've gotten comfortable and when I get comfortable I worry about every person in my life and that's worse than being alone with yourself because the feelings that you allow to latch onto you are agonizing. You try to fix someone else's falling apart and the more pieces you hold up, the more it turns into ruins. You make it worse by pretending it's yourself. 

I wish it was simpler. I wish I could practice empathy less dangerously. I wish I could find the reason why I cry. 

You can swim in the crowd and its peculiarities, but at the end of the day everyone always goes home to an empty apartment. 

Fire drills are just drills, anyway

Today I decided to take my daily shower a little earlier than I usually do, just after dinner. As I was rinsing the shampoo out of my hair, an alarm started going off. For a moment I stopped and wondered what the heck it could be. Residences don't have fire drills very often and I couldn't imagine what else they would need an alarm for. After a few seconds of wondering whether it would be truly worth it to put on my clothes and skip my moisturizing routine (which, in this dry winter season, is very important), I made a somewhat safe assumption that if it was a real emergency, someone would check the bathroom. I continued my shower and the alarm eventually stopped. My roommate later told me that it was in fact a fire drill and everyone was thinking, "McKenzie must be freaking the fuck out", meanwhile I was peacefully rinsing soap suds off my body.

Live and let live, I suppose.

Halifornia doesn't really deserve its nickname right now because it's been really shite weather lately, cold and snowy and wet. To make matters worse, Rhys is in Arizona right now for a shooting competition and I guess it's cool and all that he's so talented and whatever but I'm just really fucking pissed that he's enjoying 25 degree weather and beautiful sunsets and I'm over here trying not to slip on the slush and mud that's now the quad. But I digress. Knock em dead, baby.

As I'm nearing the end of my first year of university, I'm starting to feel more authentically independent. I have a distinct and unwavering feeling that this will just get stronger as time goes by, and this is when I want to document it. When I'm throwing myself into the world and slowly cutting all the strings that weren't truly me. The time is now.

In other news, I'm sick with a cold that's not bad enough to warrant any whining (although I still do). I've been popping those halls vitamin c lozenges like it's no tomorrow, even though they're like 90% sugar and 0% menthol. They just taste good. Let me live.