• things i like, in no particular order

    i like unicorn tattoos and swedish accents. i like guys with long hair and girls with short hair, and people who stand outside the drug store yelling stuff about god and the devil. i like emaciated looking punk boys who have leather jackets and patchy pants, but are toxic and usually full of drugs and bad decisions, but they’re cute to look at. i like drag queens and kings, i like rude girls with red lipstick. i like orange cats with stripey tails and pug dogs. i like bunnies and black coffee. i like boys with sad hearts and athletic girls who never miss a work out. i like that one guy in those tailored pants and nice shoes, but i also like boys who look sketchy and ride bmx bikes. i like fantasy art books and antique photos. i like old churches and those denim jeans from the 1990s that have no back pockets and make everyone’s butt look really really nice. i like books about BDSM and reading the bible. i like angel wings and see through dresses made of stars but i also like big goth boots and jewelry made of bones. i like trinkets and boxes for trinkets. i like old churches and new cars, i like really highly curated street style and fashion even though i only wear comfy basics and could never.

    i like blundstone boots and my orthopedic insoles, i like my pink fjällräven kånken, and my gel pens and my vintage cameras. i like magic the gathering and bad mystery novels. i like girls with knives in their bags, i like those silver lighter cases that look really edgy. i like libraries and dive bars. i like books of poetry and realtree shirts. i like cloudberry jam and bannock. i like my mom’s cigarette stained french manicure. i like 10k gold jewelry because i think it’s fancy. i like acoustic guitars and EDM. i like the gay guy that develops my film sometimes because he’s beautiful and has really nice nailpolish and i could never. i like this hot girl i went to university with that i still think about sometimes. i like serious boys and i like quiet boys. i like black cats and white dogs. i like people with two different coloured eyes. i like antique jewelry. i like raunchy comedies and disturbing horror films.

    i like this swedish pop star called axel ruby and i don’t really know why, i guess i just think he’s neat. i like big beards and small hands. i like this vancouver jewelry brand called pyrrha because it’s silver and this couple made it and they seem neat. i like corsets and lingerie and i like old silk kimonos. i like those vintage 1990s table lamps that look like flowers. i like going to the big city to go to the big thrift stores. i like the stars she used to draw on her face. i like girls with bleached blonde hair.

    i like paintings and CRT tvs, i like birds and whales and shows about aliens.

    i like old dictionaries and national geographics. i like bible cartoons.

    i like pad thai and dim sum and pierogis. i like wood panelled houses and talking about sex. i like old radios and girls with lip piercings. i like old typewriters and silver rings. i like yard sales and yoga and green juice and kombucha. i like vitamins and candy. i like old valentines tucked in between the pages of books. i like the smell of church incense and old people’s homes.

    i like people who collect cool things like antique buttons or thimbles. i like paintings of dragons and faeries. i like watching true crime on netflix. i like vegetarian pizza. i like sydney sweeney’s boobies. i like marlboro menthol cigarettes. i like dreaming up being friends with people because i don’t have many friends in real life. i like beach walks and snail shells.

    i like collecting bird feathers and writing in my endless journals.

    i like drawing horses and angels. i like mean dogs. i like ethel cain and mitski and danny schmidt. i like reading about norse mythology. i like my labubu and the clothes for my labubu.

    i like old trunks and boxes because it feels like i can fill them with possibility. i like old kandi raver bracelets. i like avicii and crying over avicii. i like playing chess. i like learning languages.

    i like vintage clothing and fancy chocolate.

    and i like you, of course.

  • the estate sale guitar

    i bought a guitar at an estate sale today

    it’s small, with a shorter scale and it was handmade in mexico and hung on a wall in a beautiful living room with a fireplace and lots of big fancy furniture

    i paid $30 for it, counting out a purple ten dollar bill alongside a crumpled green twenty and a handful of change for the other things i purchased:

    -an unused leather bound journal

    -a bag of beeswax tealight candles that smell like honey and hope

    -a chipped fluorite crystal

    -a large chunk of raw amethyst

    -a small metal plate with seashells on it

    the man who brought it back to canada loved music. he was the husband of the woman who died. he died before her. his photo is stuffed inside the guitar.

    i hear whispers about an ambulance and then the house was empty, neighbors come to paw through her things and offer $5 for a lamp or $10 for a stack of old photo frames.

    i don’t need another guitar, i have several already. when the mood is right and i’m feeling a little bit like my aging hands need to play some classical music, i pick up my instrument and make music again, mostly for the lazy enjoyment of my cats.

    i don’t need another one. but i buy one anyways. and i go home to my room and make music and write and take photos and think.

    one day someone will be buying the guitars off the wall at my estate sale or pawing through my things – drawers of crystals and gold jewelry, books and old photos, all the antiques i treasured.

    estate sales make me pensive. i think about death and guitars and the inside of stranger’s houses and stripped mattresses and family photos in the garbage. i think about cleaning supplies and when i had to clean out my uncle’s things after he died.

    he was a criminal and schizophrenic, but he had always been kind to me.

    i kept two things that belonged to my uncle – a rock and this copper tray he made in a high school art class. i think about those things sometimes – how delusions and paranoia could be laid away in order to cut and hammer a beautiful vessel. you wouldn’t think by looking at it, that the person who made it was crazy and spent time in psych wards and prisons.

    i wonder about the rock. it’s this strange twisted specimen and i don’t understand it or why it was kept, but it was and now i keep it on my vanity where i keep an alligator’s head and some taxidermied starlings and a victorian perfume bottle like the one from the 1993 film “the secret garden”.

    i wonder about the estate sale lady’s crystals. did she like crystals for their beauty or their supposed metaphysical properties? why did she keep the broken fluorite? what did she see in it? did she see anything at all?

    i wonder if someday someone will wonder about me.

    i wonder if my perfume bottles and paintings and bibles and guitars will be held like i held them?

  • just like a cup of mint tea

    he’s just like a cup of mint tea.

    he wakes me up and comforts me the same, the same.

    he’s a hand on a grumbly tummy, and he smells delicious and fresh and i can’t get enough so i touch his hair and his skin, and i constantly find reasons to put my face into his chest.

    i tuck his hair behind his ear and smile at him like a crazy person because he’s all pepperminty and perfect even with his crooked eye and wolfy smile and small hands.

    i think he’s so beautiful and he just doesn’t see it and that’s ok because he thinks i’m beautiful and i just don’t see it with my clenched jaw and big ass and short little legs.

    he makes me a cup of mint tea because he knows i like that and he knows i like it plain, no sugar, no nothing, just like i like my conversation and sex and people.

    you don’t have to tell me something that isn’t true so i will like you. if we are talking then let’s talk. don’t flatter or feign interest – let’s talk about sex and fucking and dirty jokes and what you think about death and god and the bible and cocaine and if you ever tried it, even just once in front of those people and you thought it might make you look cool. you know that song “i took a pill in ibiza“? yeah like that but worse and avicii wasn’t there so you didn’t look cool. talk to me about your dead dad and your dead friends and that time you were gonna blow your head off and how you hate your mom and your body and that one reality tv show everyone is obsessed with.

    tell me about horror movies that made you cry and that vintage sewing machine you bought that one time at a flea market in paris but you never used it so wasn’t that a bit weird?

    anyways i liked him i liked him because he was real and kind and he was my friend when all my other friends had cut and ran and turned off the lights and didn’t return my calls or my texts even when i was the one that should have been really mad at them and instead they were mad at me! at me? yeah, at me.

    well sorry, my father died, and sorry i lost it a lil bit.

    i’m sorry i thought i had it handled when i didn’t.

    i’m sorry for my hands that twisted into claws when i was lying on the cold kitchen floor with unwashed hair and unbrushed teeth and a cup of mint tea because i couldn’t eat and i couldn’t sleep and i couldn’t do anything other than ache and get shingles and then i ached even more (must have been the shingles)

    i’m sorry for the laundry that piled up and i’m sorry for the forks i didn’t wash stacked next to old tea cups and minty tea bags going moldy inside of them.

    i’m sorry for the way i yelled at work and made people cry because my grief was masquerading as anger that day and i kinda ruined christmas and made myself look crazy.

    i’m sorry

    i was drinking mint tea when i went on reddit and asked for a friend and he was there and he didn’t ask for anything in return and that made me want to give and give and give and so i gave and i gave and i gave.

    he saw my pain and climbed into that hole with me and sat there too.

    and he’s sat with me ever since

    he makes me mint tea and asks if i want it and i say yes

    yes yes yes i want it and i want you and i want this and i want it all

    i want this ocean between us to turn into mint tea so i could maybe swallow it all or drown in it with you or we could drink forever and become mint tea mermaids except the scary ones with big teeth so we can chew away the gristly grief that’s filled both our mouths for a long time and i’m tired of chewing so let’s rip out our teeth with those pink pliers from the craft store instead

    i wonder if his father would have liked me

    i think my father would have liked him but we won’t ever get to know, but my dad kinda liked everyone, didn’t justin bieber have some lame ass song about that shit or something, fuck off his music sucks anyways

    anyways they say the pain of loss gets a little better with time

    but i don’t know really, maybe it does

    but here i am sitting at my $200 macbook from facebook marketplace and i wanted to write a powerful poem to inspire the feral wild thing inside me and talk about blood and rage and all my sharpened elbows and fangs

    and yet i’m writing about mint tea and grief and love

    (what like some kind of fucking girl?)

    and i’m drinking mint tea

    and i’m thinking about grief

    but i’m thinking about love too

    maybe it’s all the same

  • untitled sapphic poem from february 1, 2011

    all glitter and roses

    crosses and bunny rabbits

    chrysanthemums and silver

    a gentle white winged morning

    shedding feathers in a sky-blown pillow fight

    punctuated gently by hydrangea incense

    softs hands and faery maps

    a treasure chest beneath our clothes

    and i am ever searching

    milky, silky, swirly girly skin and smiles

    all shiny teeth and kohl rimmed eyes

    all princess toyboxes and dress up

    and my love for you

    She was the still point of the turning world, man. I never got over that girl. Never. I mean… you know, I loved a lot of ladies, but not like that. That was real. I’ll never forget the first time I saw her. I didn’t know what had hit me. I didn’t know what to do, cause it was so easy with all the other girls, but she wouldn’t look at me. I was never the kind to pursue, if you know what I mean. That girl drove me crazy, man.” Trip Fontaine, The Virgin Suicides (1999)