Travel Advisories

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Every two weeks I collected my welfare
and went about my small life, unashamed.
The travel agency went on without me, I supposed —
the odd ticket, inbound, coming home.
I went home too,
facing unprecedented times.
The spring thaw felt warmer to me.
Mondays had no shape.
I delighted to go for a drive without sliding,
no hard destination in mind,
at any time of day.

The person I love made room for me,
around the apartment more,
let loose from forty hour weeks.
We made time for books,
for more coffee,
for quiet meandering about our days.
We caught each others’ eyes more,
learned to rest our heads on long silences,
celebrate simple survival every night with wine.
Our consciousness become something else –
living, a real occurrence.
I began to notice what life could be —
and felt like a child, awake in a sun flooded bed

after a bad dream.
before wellness and normalcy
overtook the news again
in spite of the pre-existing conditions
that go on and on and on.
Sickness and wellness turned into numbers
like everything else, and
I, too, found a 9 to 5 job again
in the fall.
After my first eight hours in more than a year,
riding home on the capital line,
grey sliding past the windows,
I notice my insides held taut,
my head vacant, thoughts thin.
We can all go travelling again.

Job Search

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Sadly, sadly singing
in some soft apartment,
underground, snowed over.
White noise: fridge hum
and soft electric buzz.
You are at work, and I
am humming too, to
make my presence known.
I put the dishes away,
pick off the bits that stayed behind,
reheat my coffee
and sit in front of my screen
to scroll through job boards
and look, again, for some cash register to work.
Last night, I dreamt I had it:
an old job I quit years ago. In it,
I remembered just where to stock
specific housewares and what their codes were.

Perhaps I should have stayed there
and become the old woman
who kept her first job forever,
knew everything,
let complaints roll off her back,
and went about her business
rolling her eyes at young management
day dreaming and scheming, alive
and thriving on minimum wage.

Sheltered Kid at a Cat Funeral

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My mother insisted the cat be buried
but we had no land of our own
so I paid a man to box her up, laughing,
under a tree he had grown.
The burial took too long for my liking.
My mother, too sad to appear.
“From ashes to ashes, dust to dust” –
The cat doesn’t know we are here!

The cat had been loved more than she could handle
and rode that wave into the sky.
Her heart was enlarged with it, that’s why she left us
alone, just my mother and I.
Of course I don’t blame her, for mom’s love was stifling.
The cat and I lived much the same.
We well-kept possessions, we beautiful playthings,
too precious to go up in flames.

keeping records

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Does my father have friends?
Once, he spoke of a college friend
now lost to another city, to whom
his record collection was promised in death.

How I wanted his records.
Does my father know how I in those small years
wanted to be his friend?
Did he carry it with him,
my wide-eyed admiration,

when he journeyed out to Home Depot
selling floors to put a roof over us?
Did he have friends there?
Did his coworkers – most half his age –
extend their hands in comradery to him?

Sometimes he showed me his record collection.
Perhaps he was just listening and I, just there.
To me, it seemed an occasion:
reaching back with Dark Side, Tommy, Sgt. Pepper.
Voices sounding from somewhere far beyond
yet not too grand to fill the space between us
in a cigarette smoked room.

When I listen to the same albums now
I tear through the lyrics for hidden lessons,
proverbs I pretend he meant to lend me.
How I wanted his records

but I have never asked for them
and he has never offered.
Both of us are too embarrassed
and the records, apathetic and warping.

I navigate new friendships now,
out in the world but mostly alone.
Once, days before I was to move out,
he put on She’s Leaving Home, Lonely Hearts again.

What did we do that was wrong?
It goes: We didn’t know it was wrong.
The girl in the song leaves home anyway.
Of course I know he didn’t know.
I do not hold it against him.

Snail

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Nearly still, small yet long, always wet,
Stuck fast to glass, turning slowly, slowly
toward the rotting pear.
Tiny eyes, swaying on antennae:
delicate black beads,
slumping down to scan the fruit.
Slick body convulsing in gentle waves,
each small movement coaxing
an unremarkable glide
a slow, controlled slide.
At the bottom of the jar,
the snail feasts.

Unclaimed Evenings

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I want to dissolve into our bed and into you
blend into the fibres, into your pores,
particles flush with particles in the dark.
No more of this —
operating a metal machine to
move my body where it doesn’t want to be, to
carve a life out of busywork.
The planet is dying, and the lifetime
you and I roughly share isn’t guaranteed
to say nothing of our smallness
within our planet’s smallness
within our solar system’s smallness.
What I mean is,
I no longer have the capacity to think about my credit score.
The universe experiencing itself experiences
lunch n learns, the DMV, conferences, car trouble.
And how quickly I forget, how chronically,
that I am here and your are here in bed
and no one attempts to steal our labour away
all night.
I am here, and you are here.
What fragile, abused creatures we all are.
I am here, and you are here.
If the sun comes up tomorrow, I will try
to remember that.

Snabitat

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Water droplets on plastic
A carrot
A piece of cuttlebone
The snail I found in an apple crate
Seems to be doing alright
In the habitat I set up for him.
It has been nice to have something to take care of
While I wait for my third mental health assessment
And try to decide what to tell them.

Semi-employed at a fruit stand
Previously over-employed at two service jobs
My slow days come at a cost;
You can only claim so much welfare.

The snail gets what she needs
Because I like to watch her glide around.
If only I could glide similarly
And hang upside down from a plastic lid.
Maybe someone would give me carrots and fruits
And spritz me with water twice a day.

My Hand of Cards

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I thought about how to write
down the feeling of my lungs
held up in clouds or my heart
melted down into a shapeless mess, when —
all at once I knew you —
and knew you were
moving in the same timeline,
on the same planet
in the same city
in such a way
making enough noise so that I
could find you.

All at once, we are not the sum of our
miraculous parts, immaculate parts…
(wet parts, hard parts, warm parts, soft parts)
even when we are apart,
even when we go to pieces
and those pieces social distance and self-isolate.

We make,
or made, something good
when we swiped right or when I climbed
into your truck or when you kissed me —
whenever you want to call it —

In that moment, I’m sure a star was
born, and a chicken hatched, and
twelve million new discoveries were made
and a flame was lit, and a seed planted, and
a song conceptualized in a brain —
and you and I, all emerged from some
same magic.

What I’m trying to say is it’s bigger than me
and nothing was before.

slept with

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You sleep different.

Some others, hidden away under miles of sheets,
inside the duvet cover, even —
buttoned or zipped up tight
while I, folding and tossing about,
frantically search
another sheet, another pillowcase.
A body lost in layers with no heat to spare.

Still others, sleep-talkers and -walkers.
A mumble, a shout in the night
means that much more —
shakes a house apart.
Any step in dark stillness seems its own radical act
and I listened, I watched, always.
Awake. Tired.

You do two things:
You drift off after saying your piece,
still, you say it
I weigh it, and you hear me mumble back
some sleepy pleasant thought
lost by morning, but I remember the feeling.
And,
you hold me and I hold you.
Even off in a dream not about you
and you, in a dream not about me —
mutually found
warm in a cold room.

career choice

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i would like to learn to roller skate
and embroider funny quotes on circles of fabric
and hold the person i like holding.
i would like to sink into the art of friends and strangers
warmed in the thick of their thoughts.
i would like to make one of those big meals for dinner
you have to start in the morning
and i would like to feel like a day spent doing nothing
is special, still. precious, still.

we pause and we pause and we pause.
i feel it in our conversations
i see it on vacant evening streets, empty morning buses.

the common theme of this collective breath — in —
shouldn’t be fear. out —
it shouldn’t.