maybe it’s the smoke in the air and how it makes me dizzy and irritable, but im really over you and i wish you could get over me too. 

things ended. that’s what you wanted deep down anyways and it happened.  it happened without fanfare or arguments or angry emails. it was a drift, like a river changing course and im not angry at you for it. it had to end. it was painful yeah, but i would not have been able to become the person i am now if i had sat around waiting for you to love me like i loved you, to want me like i wanted you. so, i let the drift happen like a river washing over the banks of my broken open heart and i let myself be pushed by the current to somewhere else to become someone else. 

and its been a couple years now and still you run from me whenever you see me and i guess thats okay if confronting my tired face makes you that uncomfortable. 

i should say though, im actually the one that should be real pissed off at you. you’re the one who cut and ran the morning my father died, the morning i needed you the most, still stinking of that hospital room and death and morphine. 

but i guess that’s life. 

all those self help books say we need to stop expecting things of people and that’s true, we do, but at the same time, isn’t it normal to want our friends to be there for us?  is it not natural to want to lean on community when your heart is broken?  

the truth is that i loved you more than you could ever love me. maybe that wasn’t always true and maybe you tried to love me in your own way. but what became crystal clear to me at the end was that you loved alcohol and anger because they both covered up the sadness you carry inside and for that, i genuinely feel bad for you. truly, and i mean this completely, i wish the best for you. i hope you get the help you need and one day you can realize that you don’t have to live like you are. you deserve more. you deserve better. 

you deserve better than after work liquor store runs. you deserve better than being alone all the time. you deserve better than the yearning that lives inside you. you deserve better than the anger that lives inside you that you direct to people you don’t even know. you deserve better than being stuck. 

but, ive also realized that you, as you are, as you were at the end, is bad medicine. you used to stick to my clothes and my thoughts and just like when i leave somewhere and wipe my feet in order to not carry bad medicine home with me, i wipe my feet when i leave the grocery store, or the office, or anywhere i run into you. i dont want to take you home with me ever again. 

i pray for you, god, creator, great coyote, i really do. i pray you’re doing fine out there but i don’t wonder if you are. you don’t keep me awake at night anymore. 

ive got new friends now. ive got a new lover. they are everything you could not be. they are gentle with me. they don’t drink all the time. they don’t scream at the television.  they care about the art i make. they hold space for the grief inside of me because grief lives inside them and i hold that grief too. maybe that was the difference between me and you. everything for you was all loving parents family dinners best friends trips i was never invited to. my life was harder. and i dont think you understood that and i forgive you for that, you know. 

you’re bad medicine for me. you used to taste sweet. 

i wont carry you across my threshold 

wont stand around waiting

after you’ve stood me up again

i wipe my feet when i see you

so i dont take you home with me

and i want you to know this

you can forgive yourself

you can get over me

i forgave you

and i got over you

so burn some sage and make sure the smoke

gets in all those corners

so you can get rid of

any traces of the ghost of me that may linger

and open the window

and let it leave with that smoke

wipe your feet when you leave

so you wont take me home anymore

don’t carry me through that threshold anymore

you can let go 

maybe it happened when i was hanging off the back of a golf cart going too fast on the reservation on my way to the big pow wow with my sisters. 

maybe it happened when i met her for the first time ten years ago. my mentor, my sister. 

maybe it’s because she believed in me when i didn’t believe in myself yet.  

maybe it was the first round dance she took me to and how she corrected me gently and taught me protocol. 

maybe it was the office i cried in at work when things got out of control or the deerskin drum i donated so others could access culture and songs. 

maybe it was realizing that i had been missing something, something i told myself that i didn’t deserve, something i told myself was reserved for other people. maybe it was the jealousy in my throat when the beautiful girls at work would talk about weekend adventures with girlfriends and girl gangs. 

maybe it was that i didnt know what to ask for because i didn’t have the name for what i was missing, what i needed. 

maybe i just needed the land and the sagebrush and my sisters and a free pancake breakfast and screeching through a pow wow and taking phone calls on a broken pay phone. maybe i just needed them. maybe they need me too. 

and what a privilege to be in community to bear witness and to laugh and eat and connect and have a grizzly bear summer. 

and i feel it alongside my sun pink skin looking out into the valley of coyotes and medicine – maybe this is what home is. 

maybe this is what connection is. 

maybe this is what joy is. 

i look back, as i often do, to the girl on the kitchen floor with hands twisted into claws, full of grief. she could not have ever imagined the woman i am now, this all would have been a distant and impossible dream. 

maybe that’s what resilience is, but fuck it, i don’t know if all i want is resilience anymore. i want sweetness in my mouth and my heart – the taste of haskap berry ice cream and warmed cherry flesh between my teeth and i want the drum to guide my heart. 

i want weekends that reek of sunscreen and a bag full of cedar and smokes and roadside snacks and the eagle overhead and the creek water on my feet and lemonade and new jewelry and songs and stories and jokes told over malt vinegar and french fries.  

and i would go through all that grief again to feel this alive and this wild and this young and to feel this grateful to god and creator and my sisters and the land and my mother and my lovers and this time and this space and the woodland in my blood and the desert in my heartbeat. 

life really is beautiful, you know. 

miigwech for these teachings. 

how many

how many have to die or go crazy

before we learn lessons

and get right

get right with who i don’t know

god maybe 

great coyote maybe

the manitou or buddha

every year someone else 

another funeral

another grave

grief to stack upon grief

and i want to fucking scream

and claw my fucking eyes out

at the last funeral 

kids huffin gasoline outside

out of bags in the parking lot

doing whippets and ill advised

bumps of white powder 

looking like the moon came down

and got inhaled into greedy noses

remember that old song that went

“this ain’t a scene it’s a god damn arms race”

well

this ain’t a scene, it’s a god damn death cult

and i guess im just an apostate

no one listens to apostates

there’s an old legend, from the interior valley where i was born about how death came into this world and i will tell you as it was told to me. different tellings exist amongst the different nations and this is the one told to me as a child.

in the time before time, there was no death. everyone lived forever. raven, a greedy chief of the north, came upon the great coyote and along with his friends crow and worm and maggot, beseeched coyote that all things should die and be dead always because there would be too many people and animals eventually. they said this with one side of their laughing mouths, but truly they wanted to have a great feast of yummy and delicious rotten meat. coyote, thought for a while, and suggested that perhaps death could be like a long sleep. raven said no. death would be death and that was that. death would be forever.

coyote agreed, “and then it is done” he said.

and from that moment on, all things would die.

raven’s daughter was the first to fall ill.

she grew weak and sick, slipping away.

raven’s daughter was the first to die.

raven was distraught, and he flew to coyote to beg before him – “take it back”, he squawked through his tears. “take it back,” he bawled. the grief he felt was the first grief, the first pain of loss.

but coyote would not.

“it is done”, coyote said.

and this is how death came to this world.

raven was first to feel grief and he wears black forever, for always.

lunch break and i walk to the beach where the city tried to cover up the goose shit with lots of new sand. 

girls on blankets and beach towels are getting tans in thong bikinis, sunning their butt cheeks. kids make sandcastles and jump in the wading area of the mighty thompson river. 

there’s a breeze and it catches the heady scent of coconut tanning lotion, beers drank sneakily out of coolers, hot dogs, weed smoke and promise. 

desert city summer – here you are, it would seem and we all come out into the heat to worship at the banks of the twins rivers who give this city her name. and this city is a wiry bitch carrying a fringed leather bag wearing cut off jean shorts ready to start and finish some shit at the bingo hall, full of love and pain all rolled into one. 

a girl stops me on the beach as i walk and I notice she is beautiful with her hair wet from the river, big tall boyfriend with her. she says she likes my outfit and i tell her thank you.  she asks where i got my belt buckle and i say a flea market, from and old dude in a tent who sold belt buckles only. people love turquoise and today it looks like i carved out a little piece of the desert city sky and put it on the silver buckle. 

some guys pull up on jetskis and start throwing water around. guys being dudes. 

i pick up feathers on the beach. not many left today because moulting is almost over but i still get some nice ones.  i carry them with me, the girl with the feathers. 

little kids play in the water park and they look so happy. tourists in canada shirts take photos in front of the native themed statues and eat big ice cream cones. someone is smoking crack under the big oak tree. 

a young dude asks about my tattoos and normally this annoys me but today it doesn’t. he’s nervous to get one and asks where i go and i tell him. he asks if they hurt and i think he’s hoping ill say they don’t, but i laugh and say of course they do. he really wants to get one in memory of his grandfather. he misses him and i know that feeling. i miss nimishoomis, my grandfather and his devilish smile and his pocket full of butterscotch candies and his coal black hair and chocolate brown eyes. 

i close my eyes in the park and breathe in slowly. i feel so alive and real and wild. i wish i could show the frightened girl i used to be, the woman i have become. 

it is so fucking beautiful. 

the city and the river and the grief and the love and the people. my throat tightens as i try to swallow it all down. 

i hope that kid gets a really cool tattoo someday.