Snow The snow never shovels itself but it melts if you are willing to wait my grandfather never could his beard of snow hardening in the cold the neighbour dog lifts his leg to melt their snow yellow hole after yellow hole one steaming piss at a time the little holes are like dead eyes in the white snow empty and still and colourless my father joked don’t eat yellow snow! my mother showed me the bugs I took snow in my hands and watched them crawl the sky in the palm of my hands little stars shining like diamonds in the snow the bugs moving little black holes 2 It’s hard to tell two five-year-old’s that you are getting a divorce all my twin sisters have ever known their parents together alone my grandparents always lived under the same roof in different beds in different rooms snow melts slowly in spring the ground opens and closes like a mouth green blades of grass green teeth opening the wet green ground if the snow melted any quicker if the sky opened up this whole city would drown Fireflies It’s really dark and it smells cold so it must be winter we’re playing hide and seek before dinner running out of places to hide my sisters will hide in the same place over and over and over laughing and whispering and peaking with their legs sticking out my father calls supper! but they haven’t found me yet I am hiding in their closet like a monster in the dark the only room in the house with the light switched off 2 I am surrounded by their tiny clothes folded and hanging like the bodies of children their legs crossed their hands holding the hands of other children one of them has pissed himself again his ass a chemical stain on the blue carpet cloudy and grey and seeping I listen to knives and forks scraping their plates and teeth through the crack in the closet doors I watch their fish coming up for air their little sea of light fireflies in the dark 3 Remember how we would let them crawl across our fingers their bodies like the bodies of angels before their death suffocation in a mason jar hell of a way to go my nightlight danced in the corner a halo fading like a trail of smoke from the candlewick of a suffocated flame I watched the fireflies flicker ticking like little heartbeats electricity a pulse I would wake to find them dead in a semi-circle the pads of my fingers swollen glowing bright and burning Whale Watching Rattlesnakes are to Texas as Humpbacks are to New Brunswick off the coast of Grand Manan Island the captain his mate his deckhands all hands on deck wreak of sea sickness like a hangover the seeping scent of beer from the night before on basement carpet a queasy feeling like an optical illusion my brothers body moving in unison with the white waves the cusps crashing out of the blue knocking against each other and the boat like giant fists on cold wooden doors when I saw one side of the whale’s face break the surface of the water I could no longer tell if it was me moving first the boat the water or the whale moving us all the only other time I felt this way when I shot my little brother blood breaking skin under the plastic bullet like spume blowing water a whale breathing misty-warm Cocaine I never did cocaine with my friends because I was afraid to snort anything afraid that I would enjoy it crave it even like sex at sixteen a pinch of tobacco after my morning coffee anything that touches the nose and lips enters the mouth is intimate leaves an impression still my friends are never not doing it even the simplest of gatherings backyard barbecues any event at all where there might be alcohol they stay up all night mixing drinks and biting their tongues forgetting everything but song lyrics the cost of an eight 2 Everyone is still alive everyone wakes up in the morning and drives to work or school or both none of my friends are panhandling outside the grocery store like our parents and teachers told us nothing but a nervous tick cocaine drip twitching and clenching of nose and jaw the gentle throb from head to toe finger to palm some of the fathers will even join them smoking cigarettes inside the house blaming the boys for the bottles of beer filled with cigarette butts the cocaine trail lining the bathroom sink over the toilet above the fireplace Falling Asleep 1
Have you ever laid in bed at night and felt nothing not tired or awake not even alive just there your head floating above your bed your body hovering like a chandelier over the floor when I fall asleep it feels like sinking in a boat filled with sand 2 I remember falling asleep the way I remember things when I’ve had too much to drink my eyelids flutter like flat rocks skipping across the surface of a lake my body is a paper boat taking in water until it sinks the paper plane I built in elementary school flew the furthest it crashed against the tile like glass falling asleep is kind of like dying when you think about it billions of candles burning at varied lengths all burning out in time in a little room somewhere surrounded by loved ones the way my grandmother did whispering closely to those who mean the most our final sounds are not even words in the moments before the breathing stops before the silence breath comes out of us in measured whispers muffled silence our final breath fizzles out in short gasps cigarette butts suffocated in sand
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