Revelry

He turned upside me down. He kissed me and my head hung off his bed. His touch was soft, softer than it had been, because we were going somewhere new. He always took time kissing me, touching me, being close. I got the sense he liked beginnings.

“Tell me nice things.”

He moved slower and I felt him. He kissed me again and the air was gentle, like warm water. The night exists in memories that don’t make a story. Flashes of dreams and moments of hope, obscured by the alcohol that I could taste on our skin. I didn’t want to dawn to come. I wanted to stay, to be against him, in that moment, frozen.

“Like what?”

“Nice things.”

Reality lived like shadows.

We woke up laughing. He pushed the hair off my face, his hand against my forehead. Later, he took my hand and we crossed the street.

“Look both ways.”

Sympathy for the Devil - Personal Essay Excerpt Two

He broke my heart on a warm and sunny day. I broke his heart on a cold and rainy day. With long distance marriages, you are never experiencing the same thing at the same time. Not even the weather.

That summer, I would sit on the streetcar, going nowhere at all, just wanting to be in motion and never still, listening to the same fifteen songs on repeat. It was there, amongst the anonymous population of Toronto and with the city gliding past me, that I felt calm. There was a space that enveloped me. In that space, I could finally think clearly.

I don’t figure things out through talking. If anything, the talk pushes me against a wall with a knife against my neck. I feel suffocated in words, in ideas, in hypothesis’ of why we didn’t work. Sweating, with the music, my legs crossed on a metal seat and looking out a dirty window, I could make my sense of what had gone wrong.

For three weeks, I only cried on the 501 streetcar, headed west.

Forever Ago - Short Story

To Marianne, forever ago.

There isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t, at some point, think of you.

They aren’t long thoughts.

I just saw a woman pass me on the street and she had hair like yours. An acquaintance talks the way you do. Or did. Maybe you don’t talk like that anymore.

When my girlfriend smiles at me, with the morning light hitting her face having left some shadow, I see you, not her, lying in bed next to me. There is something about the expression, the sadness under her skin. You both share a vulnerability brought on by sleep.

I see you even when I’m not looking, when I don’t expect to see you at all. Is it wrong to see someone everyday that I might never see ever again? Please know that I don’t see you in a way that is tangible, in a way that feels close enough to touch. I see you like a photograph and with all the time, you’ve become two-dimensional and out of focus.

Forever ago. That’s how long it’s been. Does it feel that way to you?

Do you remember us sitting, on your wood floor, with no furniture, no bed, no money, nothing at all, laughing until daylight? Do you remember that summer two years after we got together? When we made dinner in the dark every night? You had taken to wearing jean shorts and combat boots, flowered dresses and ripped tights. You lined your eyes, thick, like permanent marker. You’re hair hung so long down your breast.

Do you remember how happy we were?

Or did I make that up? Were we sad? Were there flowered dresses? We were happy, weren’t we? Was it my fault that it changed? Do remember that night it rained and the apartment flooded? Do you remember how Seinfeld was always on?

I forget how your voice sounds. Isn’t that weird? The hours we spent talking and I can’t remember your voice. It feels unfair. There must be so much else that I don't even know I've forgotten. Small moments that we shared together just up and left, forever. Is it like they never happened?

Do you sometimes think that if we’d taken a left down that road instead of a right, if we’d stayed home instead of going to the bar, if we’d seen that movie we were considering going to, if one small insignificant thing was different, we’d still be together? If we’d met later, if we’d met earlier, if we’d never met at all?

Why am I thinking like this, when it all happened forever ago?

I'm sure you're very different now. I'm different. I know the people we were together don’t exist any longer. You always told me that when two people are in love they create a world together that didn’t exist before. That’s true. My world is different now that you aren’t in it. The women I've loved are not all like you. Some, yes, some, no. But it’s in a touch, a gesture, a sound, and you’re right here, all over me again. I wonder if it’s in the way they make me feel. If all those feelings are somewhere rooted in you, in what we felt together.

I wonder if the man you’re with is like me. I hope you find ways to stay warm when it’s cold. Did you end up moving to California? Why don’t you have Facebook? How’s your Mom? Is your British accent still funny? Do you still cry when you don’t want to, but never when you do want to? Do you still stumble over words when you’re nervous? I bet you still smell pretty. I also bet you still wrinkle you’re eyebrows when you’re annoyed. You probably still hang up on people too.

I'll always know you in a way that time can't erase. Do you think its fair I get to know you like that? Am I being foolish in thinking that I do know you? Because I don’t, do I? I don’t know who you’ve become. I just know who you were.

Is that more valuable?

I thought I saw you about a year ago. It was Christmastime, and you’re hair was shorter, as I assume it now is. The woman I thought was you was carrying a brief case. But you got lost in the rush hour crowd of the New York City subway. Since then, I wonder if I’ll see you again. If cosmos will throw us together. Sometimes I get off at that stop for no reason other than that you might be there. If you were there, would we have this conversation? Would I know what to say?

"Do you really carry a brief case?"

Do you remember when we went to Europe? Do you still have the pictures? Do you remember how I would make you tea anytime you asked me? Do you remember the way you would fall asleep on my chest? Your hair felt so soft against my skin. Do you remember how I would blow air into your mouth, filling your lungs? It was like an exhale for me, an inhale for you? Then you’d force that air back into me? And together we’d be like one person, depending on the other to finish a breath?

These things all happened forever ago. That’s how long its been. So why do I still remember them?

For some reason, I want you to know, that I do love the woman I’m with. I don’t love her how I loved you. I can’t decide if that means I love her less. Maybe I’ve loved them all less. Do you ever love people more or less, or is it just different? Or maybe it's that I don’t love her enough. She’s not the one that disproves everything I thought I knew. I’m still waiting for that one. Stupid, right?

Do you remember the day things ended? Just one more cup of coffee before I go, that’s what you said before you left. Did you end up drinking the coffee I poured you, black with sugar, full to the brim? Or did you leave it on my table, like you left strands of your hair, that tiny bracelet, that black t-shirt?

I can’t remember. I want to believe that you drank the coffee, slammed it down on the table, and then stormed out. But I know that’s not how it happened. Our goodbye was slow. I don’t think either of us knew when it really began, how it became complete.

I got that letter you sent me a year later. I should have replied. I didn't because I was young and stupid and mean. I didn't understand that things aren't people's faults until you get a little older.

But its my fault that so much time has fallen between us. I didn't intend it this way. It was like I woke up one morning and suddenly, I didn’t have your phone number, I’d lost touch with everyone you knew, you’d moved with no forwarding address. Why did it feel overnight? Is time passing this fucking fast for you, too?

Forgive all the stupid questions. I have no business asking them, no business thinking of you every day, no business contacting you at all, when all of this was forever ago.

There’s just one thing I want to know.

Do you, at any point in the day, think of me?

Forever - Personal Essay Excerpt Two

Then I realized that there are few universal milestones in life; graduating high school, going to university, having a kid. Getting married is one of them. And so, most people, who aren’t looking deeply, do look at you differently as a married woman because you’ve crossed another hurdle. You’ve given up a little of who you were to become who you’ll be. You’ve taken the step towards what’s next. In most people’s opinions, getting married is remarkable and life-changing.

The irony being that my milestones, the moment’s that have changed my life, don’t happen in big, sweeping events. Change in me happens slowly. At a diner at 4 a.m. I’ll realize that something has taken place, that it’s over now, and that for better or for worse, I’m finally not who I was before.

Sternum - Short Story Excerpt

God created sex, exercise and cleaning for girls like me mourning the loss of men like you. When my limbs are moving, when I’m full on someone else, you don’t live inside me, banging on my ribcage. Without them, your fists hit my solar-plexus echoing like drums. Your fingertips slide down my sternum ringing like bells.

I move with music and men and moments, all strung together by your not being there. In motion, time rides a continuum. No one second feels so different from the next. No one second is so different from the next.

I tap dance, hard metal on soft floors, left then right, back then forth, up, higher than humans should jump propelled by change and lonesomeness. I kiss, hard and stupid and mean, arms over my head, legs wrapped tight, squeezing the breath out of someone else. I scrub and sweep, hoping the bleach and its pretty lemon smells will seep into my veins, hoping the cleanliness will permeate me.

I move angry, fast, without thinking. I don’t stay still. Not even when I’m sleeping.


When I stop moving, there's a stabbing pain, a violent silence. With the quiet, I feel glued to the concrete of some new place I’ve never been. Its some city I don’t recognize, somewhere I can’t stay, not for a moment. It is so sparse and I don’t see anything but grey. When I breathe my body is filled with cold, hard air. The coldness freezes so deep that it stops my heart, it puts my lungs in an ice suitcase, it buries my legs in a heavy snowdrift. When I feel the coldness coming, I move again, kicking and screaming my way home. I hurt myself, manic and unhinged, to be warm again.

Can you feel my heart beating from a million miles away?

On Being A Writer

I’m sparked, waiting for the light to hit.

I feel you, a hot whisper on my neck all the live-long day, only hearing you when the moon rides high, when most people won’t speak, except in guttural, human noises; a nightmare’s cry, a lover's call.

But you, you scream my name in the nighttime. Your noise is deafening. I don’t want to listen, but what I mute becomes so loud that I can’t keep my eyes closed. I toss and turn in my bed, strangled in sheets. When you won’t stop, I get up, bare feet on a wooden floor, sliding towards the sound like new shoes on shiny, untouched ice.

I can’t turn you away; scared that if I don’t listen to the words, if I don’t strain to hear the voice that’s not mine, I’ll blink and miss the moment, blink and miss what will finally show me to myself. You are like a cicadas; buzzing and incessant. You are like a piano, dusty and haunted, played by old hands. You are like a lady-singer, sweetly pretty, hurt and poetic, with a voice so sad that she could never have loved herself.

You are something bigger than me. I don’t know where you come from. When you’re gone, I don’t know where you go. When you come back, you tell me of your travels, whispering stories to me, letting me keep them as my own. I am a woman possessed, spending my life waiting to hear what you have to say next.




When you speak to me, we live somewhere else. Where the world echoes like harps and violins, where the wind moves, choreographed, like a prima ballerinas, where strangers look like black and white photographs. Here, with you, there are beginnings. There are ends.

We are selfish with each other. You don’t speak to me when other people are around. When you leave me lonely, I study them, wondering how to describe their voice, how to write their face, how to tell them to you later. You set me on fire. You drown me with rocks. You drive me miles from home, spin me like a top, and leave me to crawl. Together, we jump from buildings. We fly like sad sparrows. We dance like Fred Astaire. We kiss, chests cracked wide open; lungs touching hearts, organs touching bones.

I can never get it all out, I have never said it right. The words have never sounded as truthful as they feel. And so, I keep digging, piling thick mud into a hole with no bottom, waiting for you to speak again. I will wait, forever, listening for the petals to unfurl, waiting to hear the sound that’s made when hope blooms.

And I sit; like the man counting the seconds until the guillotine falls, like the woman, stranded and miles from her umbrella who just heard thunder, like the teenager, drunk for the first time, struck by nausea that starts in his toes, waiting for this to hit me.

Like a soldier with amnesia, I can’t remember the good times even when I try. But one night soon, I will dream reminders. I won’t be able to hide anymore, cowering in the corners of my skull that weren’t yours yet.