In The Sky

I fall in love on the airplane home.

No, too easy.

I would have fallen in love on the airplane home, maybe, if that’s what love is.

It’s not.

I got the middle seat. He was on my right.

Things like this never happen to me. I’m always two rows up next to the obese lady who shoves my arm off the rest and breathes heavier than the engines. I’m always right in front of kicking children or right behind that baby who won’t stop screaming.

So, imagine my surprise when this time, on the flight from Toronto to Halifax I plop down next to a warm smile and crinkled eyes.

There are a hundred stories that can be told in quick and easy banter. 40 days and 40 nights of Arabian tales. Fingers that find skin under armrests.

Tray tables and whispered conversation.

His lips by my ear.

A shared crossword.

A hand, caught.

The electricity jumping between hairs, the silent dance of forearms.

Turbulence.

Trapped.

Playing out a year’s worth of sweaty fantasies between our seats.

I want this:

Ripped at the seams, bruised. Teeth imprints at my neck. Thumb marks blossoming on my throat. Make my body your canvas. I’ll fight back, hard, struggle for each kiss. Rough. Forced against a door or a wall. My thighs tight. My fingers tearing your hair back, exposing your soft underbelly. My tongue tasting, claiming.

Burning my scent into your skin.

Signing my name with nails.

I fold the finished crossword, tuck it in his pocket.

No number, no name.

Next time, maybe.

If you find me in the sky.

Chromeo – Night by Night

*Unrelated note: if you can move like the guy in this video, call me.

The Jar and The Sun

If I could fill a jar with what ifs. Round, smooth, multicolored marbles that I take out one after the other and roll between my palms. You would be the one on top, light blue with speckled yellows and oranges that catch the eye. I’d hold it up to the light, turn it this way and that, examining the tiny universe frozen within.

It’s one of a thousand possible mornings. The sun creeps up slowly as though to avoid startling the couple in bed, peeking through the curtains, caressing a smooth cheek and the hands tucked up under a chin. I love you like this, the sun whispers. You’re beautiful with your guard down.

A soft moan, barely a sigh, escapes pursed lips and the girl flips over, away from the light and into the curve of a waiting arm. He pulls her closer, still half-asleep, finds her forehead with his lips. It’s a habit now, a motion he performs so often that he does it in his sleep.

The sun crawls past the girl’s head and flicks his lashes until he pries one eye open. Squinting he reaches past her body to the curtains—almost—but no, not quite reaching. The girl snuggles closer to him, her nose crushed against his chest. He tries not to chuckle but each breath tickles his skin and soon he is shaking with suppressed laughter.

She whimpers, fighting a failing battle against waking.

His face softens at the look on her face, forehead scrunched, mouth frowning, eyes tightly, defiantly, closed.

“Baby…” he whispers.

Her breathing changes, consciousness pulled decidedly from dreaming.

He waits a heartbeat and whispers again, “baby…”

She ignores him.

“I know you’re awake.”

She fake-snores.

“We both know you don’t snore.”

She fake-snores louder, burrowing her head into his armpit.

“Ok, you’re right that was a test. You do snore. Louder than that guy on the plan to Mexico that one time. Remember him? The flight attendants had to make a mock-announcement to wake him up. The whole plane was complaining. Good thing you didn’t fall asleep on that plane, baby. We’d have been banned from Air Canada for life.”

A giggle escapes from underneath his shoulder.

“Plus,” he continues “what with all the farting you do in your sleep you probably would have poisoned all the passengers and we’d be dealing with a whole—OW!”

She props herself up on her elbows, glaring. “I don’t fart in my sleep!”

“Did you bite me?”

“Say I don’t fart.”

“That really hurt.”

“Say I don’t fart!”

“Are we talking in general or only in your sleep because I swear every time you make me order Thai—OW! Ok ok ok you don’t fart, ever.”

“That’s what I thought!” She grins triumphantly, her hair a mess of tangles, eyes alight.

He reaches out and twirls a strand around his finger. She cocks her head slightly to the side, then leans down and kisses the top of his hand.

“I love you like this.” He tells her quietly.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, like this. Right after you wake up. Open, like this. Before you have time to put your faces on. Before anyone else gets to see you. When you’re just mine. When you belong only to me… when we exist only to each other.”

A shadow passes over her eyes and she looks away.

“Hey.” He tangles his whole hand in the hair at the back of her head.

She looks up at him from beneath her dark lashes.

“All that… to say… I mean… only that I love you.”

The shadow passes like clouds from her eyes.

“You know what I love?”

“What?”

“Pancakes.”

“Is that your way of asking me to make you pancakes?”

“Maybe.”

“Hrrmph. What do you think this is? Top Chef?”

“It’s just that you make them the best. Cute little circles. Every time I try to add bananas the machine explodes and the batter burns.”

“That happened one time. One time!”

“Once was enough. I know when to throw in the towel.”

He removes his hand, crosses his arms over his naked chest.

She surveys him. “Ok. Ok, one back massage.”

He raises an eyebrow.

“A back massage AND a foot massage?”

He raises both eyebrows and snorts.

“Really? Really?! Ok, a back massage, a foot massage, and…”

Her lips find his.

She swings a leg over his hips, climbing on top of him.

Her hips rotating and grinding until a moan escapes him.

She pulls away.

“No one is ever going to love you more than I do.”

He reaches up, lightly traces the outline of her lips, the corner of her eye.

“Baby, come on.”

“I mean it.” A lip trembles, vulnerable.

“You had me at ‘cute little circles’.”

A slow smile.

The sun rises in the sky, leans against a cloud, runs a hand through his sun hair. Sometimes, every once in a while, he thinks, they don’t even need his help. Sometimes, they get it right all on their own.

If I could fill a jar with what ifs. With all the nagging fantasies. With all the mornings I never live, the things I never say, the people I never love… or leave. I’d fill it to the top. I’d screw the lid on tight. I’d push it to the edge of the table, take a deep breath, and with one more soft touch, let it fall.

Let it fall, smash, smash, smashing on the ground.

If I could.

Sleepy Bears and Rainbows

“Let’s be sleepy bears.”

“Sleepy growlybears?”

“Yeah.”

“Ok.”

I lay down on the rocky hill-top and she crawls under my chin, curled up next to me. I make a cave of arms and wrap her up in it, my perfect two-year-old cousin.

“Are you a sleepy bear?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m a sleepy bear too.”

“What’s this?” She picks up a pebble between her tiny little fingers.

“A rock.”

“Eat it?”

“Nooooooooo.”

She giggles and picks up a different one, “eat this?”

“Nooooooooo.”

Another fit of giggles.

“Bears eat rocks.”

“Do they? Really? Rocks?”

“Yeah!”

“Nooooooooo.”

She rocks back into me giggling madly.

The whole world is spread beneath her. Each moment waiting to be picked up and examined. All the different experiences that are going to turn this perfect giggly ball into a complex puzzle of a woman. The secrets she will carry with her. The broken hearts she will house. Not right now, though. Not yet.

On the walk home we fall behind. Her tiny hand in my own.

“Look, Willy.”

A broken paper of iridescent plastic  lays folded on itself in a puddle. The sun reflecting rainbows like an oil spill. She oooooohs and crouches over it. I fish it out of the puddle, lay it flattened on my jean leg, and dry it off with my mittens.

“What is it?”

“A rainbow!”

“A rainbow like the sky?”

“Mhm.”

Dried, I hand it to her. She holds it in her hands, awed.

“Want me to carry you?”

“Yeah.”

I pick her up, and walk faster, trying to catch up with the others.

“You know what happens sometimes is that a rainbow finds someone they really love down on earth, someone like you, Willy. So they jump down from the sky and wait to be found. It’s lucky, Willy. Really lucky. That rainbow wanted to be with you. You rescued it. It’s yours. Your rainbow.”

“My rainbow?”

“Yours. It’s a Willa-Rainbow. It’s special because they hardly ever come down to be with us. You must be really special for it to come all this way to be found.”

“For me.”

“Yes.”

“A Willy-bow.”

“Yes. Just for you.”

She grins and holds it up to the sky, looking through the colours. She holds it out and watches it flutter in the breeze. She clutches it tightly all the way home. Showing everyone she meets.

While we eat lunch she crawls into my lap and puts her little arms around my neck.

Whispering, I can’t quite make out her words.

“What’s that?” I lean closer.

“It’s a happy day. Happy day.”

“The best day, Wills. I think so, too.”

She’s perfect. Getting bigger, smarter, sweeter with every passing day. Collecting hearts like keepsakes. I hand her mine. Easy. Tie it to her wrist like a ribbon. She’s making up the pieces of her puzzle, slowly, day by day.

Today is a happy day.

Today I got to be a piece.

If You Give A Little Love

At 7:17am they turned the radio on, listening to clips of news between rushed conversation and the habitual movements of yogurt to bowl, grinds to french press, and steaming liquid to mug.

“Have you ever been to the Toothy Moose?” The mother asked the daughter, rinsing out her to-go coffee mug and leaning against the counter.

“Only one or twice. I was there on New Years.” The daughter mumbled squinting at the label on a container, shrugging, and dumping it into her bowl.

“They just said it was closed down, five citations, they said. Five. And there were drunk people passed out in the bathrooms when they went in to shut it down.”

“That so?”

Her mother looked at her and frowned slightly, the skin gathering in tiny folds between her brows.

“They said the place was supposed to only have 100 or so people in it and there was double, maybe triple, that many.”

“Bastards.” The daughter said sprinkling dried cranberries on top of the cereal.

Between the lull that followed the radio piped up.

—considering changing the last call in bars from 3:30am to 2:00am. Stay tuned for weather and—

“Well, that won’t do anything but backfire.” The daughter cut in.

“I think it’s a good idea, get the drunks off the street and—”

“No, see, what it will do is put them on the street, earlier, around 10ish to get in the way of all the people that don’t want to see them. Remember that time we walked home from the play? When did that end? 10:30? It was some holiday the next day or something and there were drunk frat boys and skanky skanks everywhere. 10:30.”

“It was obscene!”

“Yeah, it was. Bringing us down from our sophisticated night on the town. You want that every weekend? That’s what will happen if they close the bars early.”

“Maybe, what they should do is just wait for someone to get drunk and then drag ‘em in the street to be shot!”

“Brilliant plan, Mom. Though, from what I remember, you might not have thought that was such a great idea on your last wedding anniversary.”

“I wasn’t drunk!”

“The dog vomited on you, you looked in your lap and said, ‘Oh, that? Don’t worry about that, I’ll clean that later.’ And then you went back to shouting out Trivial Pursuit answers.”

“It was a heated game!”

“You should be shot.”

The mother faux-glared at the daughter for a moment and then pulled her roughly into a hug, bowl and all.

“You should be studying Law out in BC with your brother, you little argumentative cuss.”

The daughter smiled softly, took a bite and said between chews, ”well, I learned from the best, didn’t I?”

Leaning into each other, like two dominoes about to fall.

The radio offered —snow today between 2 and 4 centimeters and chances of freezing rain—

And they broke apart. Toppling.

“What? Snow? Now? After weeks of sun? Right when we try to leave? This better not delay our plane. I don’t know why every time, every single time, the weather and the damn—”

“I think it’s because they love us.”

“What? Who?”

“Halifax. They don’t want us to go.”

A half-smile.

“Did you pack yet?”

“No.”

“Are you planning to pack even five minutes before we leave this time?”

“Maybe.”

“I’ll pack your passport next to mine, okay?”

“Okay.”

“And I love you, Lindsay.”

“I know.”

“But, I wasn’t drunk.”

“Okay, Mom. You weren’t drunk.”

“Of course I wasn’t drunk.”

“Because that would be obscene.”

“Go pack before I smack you.”

The mother went back to filling her coffee mug and listening to the radio. The daughter gathered her bowl, mug, banana, and glass of water in arms and gingerly made for the stairs. Hesitating just outside the door. There, if we could see her, standing in the shadows, you might see the skin around her eyes soften, the hand around the glass tighten, all the signs that something bright and muffled was expanding in her chest. The picture of her mother, puttering, back-lit by the soft light of March. A million mornings like these.

“Hey Mom?”

“Mmm?”

“I love you, too.”

End scene.

Noah and the Whale – Give A Little Love

When It Means Yes

Someday you’ll be wondering how to tell if I’m not pretending, if it’s the real deal, if behind all those silly smiles and flirty looks my heart is quietly pounding yes yes yes. If when I walk a couple steps away and you walk a couple steps away the hesitation in my heel is whispering I love you when I turn, when I come back. You’ll ask with your eyes and your roaming hands and peer under my lashes and every one of your pores will be screaming, screaming, is it real? Do you mean it? But you will just bite your lip and worry and wonder if I’m going to reach in, carve out your heart and add it to my collection.

Here’s how you tell: If I reach up and hold your face between my palms, it means yes. If I cradle your head in my hands like a newborn, like the first mother that ever saw a son, with that look, it means yes. If I whisper something nonsensical that only you could understand, if I say, “you make French toast taste like afterglow,” or “my heart is playing Ratatat, feel it,” or “I can see Orion sitting in your pupils and he looks happy,” it means yes.

But, here’s the real sure-fire indicator, the not going to miss a thing, indicator. The holy-shit-did-I-say-that-and-did-she-say-that-too, indicator. If you pluck up the courage and form the words. If you lean down and whisper in my ear, “No one has ever loved you the way I love you in this moment, on this street corner, with your purse by my feet, and my hands in your hair. No one. Do you know that?”

When I whisper, “yes.” It means yes. It means a million times, yes.

But, still. When we meet in a flurry of lips and teeth and tongues. When you lift me up and pin me against a cold brick wall. When my legs knot around you and my arms snake around your neck. When I nibble on an ear, arch my back into you, moan your name.

You’ll be thinking in your head, man-eater, don’t eat me.

And I’ll be thinking in my own, but you taste so good.

The One With All The Honey

Press play to set the mood, then read.

Eddie Holman – I Love You

“There. That should hold you over.”

It’s past seven, the reservation is for nine. I’m cross-legged on the bed in my fluffy robe, hair wet from the shower. My stomach is already growling as he hands me the roll, sliced lengthwise, covered in butter and honey.

“No plate?”

“Wha–oh, shit. I forgot.”

I shrug and bite in. The honey thick, the butter creamy underneath it, the bread soft. He watches me eat. I’ve told him a million times how I hate being watched while I eat, but this time it doesn’t bother me. I hold his eyes with my own, watch him smile as I take another bite, the honey sliding down my fingertips, pooling delicately in my palm.

I take big bites. Savouring the moment. The sweetness. His eyes.

When the honey begins to travel down my inner forearm I hold it aloft, meet the rogue drip with my tongue, follow its path back up to my wrist.

He gulps.

“Hungry?” I offer him the untouched piece.

“Not for bread.” He whispers, but takes the bun proffered to his lips.

“Just hold it, then.”

With a full slice in his left hand and half a slice in his right he gingerly takes a bite. Occupied for the moment, I rise to my knees, untying my robe as I do, letting it fall over my shoulders and shaking out my damp hair.

He moans, mouth full.

“Good, huh?” I say gesturing to the bread. He slowly shakes his head, smirking.

Swallows.

“You have five seconds to get this bread out of my hands or it’s going on the sheets.”

I smile.

“5…”

Reach out a finger and swirl it in the honey.

“4…”

Hesitate a moment before my lips.

“3…”

Then there is honey on my tongue. I let my eyes close and moan as I suck my finger thoroughly.

“2…”

I open my eyes with a start, smacking my lips. “Well, that was deeelish–I’m just going to go get ready.” I say bouncing off the bed.

“Fuck it.”

I’m halfway to the door when his arms are around me. Giggling and squirming as he tosses me back onto the bed. Pinning my wrists above my head. I crane my neck up to meet his face above me. Suck softly on his bottom lip.

“Thanks for the snack, baby.”

“Anytime.”

Honey in the covers and my hair. Skin sticking to each other. Two bears sharing a jar.

I’m going to need to shower again before we go.

The One In Which I Can’t Stay Away

It’s one of those days where the sky can’t help itself, its face wide and blank, leaking rain from its eyes. I didn’t mean to cry, I imagine it says. I don’t want to cry, but it’s a struggle to hold it all in and even the sky falls apart, from time to time. Don’t be mad at me.

Don’t be mad at me.

I wanted a haitus. I wanted to rid writing from my body like a detox. I wanted to prove something, something small and insignificant, to someone who doesn’t notice these things anymore. I wanted to quit because quitting feels good. Quitting feels like slipping into a worn pair of jeans that fit just right; like an old friend you catch up with now and again but don’t plan to see regularly; like the kind of sex that you know is the last sex but you haven’t said it out loud, yet.

Quitting feels like my default setting. If I had settings, if I were a robot.

But, look, the emails and the comments and the concerned looks. They worked. I’ve been spending my week siphoning all the kindness off my screen, bottling it for hard times. And, so, here i am.

Quitting, the quitting.

Thank you. I love you guys.

Seabear – I’ll Build You A Fire

Dear Blog

You’re not real. You’re not real. You’re not real. You are words and convoluted emotions. You are fiction. You are my life written out, my dirty perceptions, changed, modified, embellished. You are moments that I cling to and thoughts I wish I had or things I should have said. You are mistakes and confessions. You are practice. You are issues worked through or ripped apart. You are my broken heart in pieces, unfixable, unavoidable. Why did I write you? Why did I write you? If you were paper I would tear you apart, I would throw you in a fire, I would watch you burn. You are not a diary. You are not a journal. You aren’t truth or reality. You are my greatest mistake.

What came first: The writing or the misery?

You are a crutch, a red flag, a buried time capsule. Words. Just words.

If I could go back, I would never write you. If I could rewind.

Hiatus.

Tegan and Sara – Come On

Tao & Embers

He doesn’t really want to buy anything when he comes into the store. He acts like he does, at first, choosing a sandal or two to try on. Slipping his sock foot into the leather, kicking his leg up, demonstrating a martial arts move and smiling at me slyly.

“Ever practice Tai Chi?” He asks, spinning his foot around and sitting back down.

I shake my head, bemused.

“You should come out sometime, I teach it. You might notice us, in the Public Gardens in the summer.”

He winks at me, pulls on the other sandal and stomps his foot on the ground a couple of times.

“I’m a photographer.”

“Oh?”

“I’ll give you my website.” He stands up and makes a show of patting his pockets, finding no pen or paper.

I study him for a moment. He seems harmless. Just a middle-aged Asian man trying on some sandals and making small talk. So, I walk over to the kiosk and provide him with some. He beams at me when I return with the pad and pen, marking carefully in block letters his name and the website, underlined twice.

“What kind of photography?” I wonder aloud.

“Cultural. I travel all over. Usually western rural China, though.”

He looks me over, settling on my hands. “You like jewelry.”

I look down, turn the rings around a few times that cover most of my fingers.

“Me too,” he smiles. Jabbing a finger to the Tao broach on his lapel. “Pure gold.”

“So, how do the sandals feel?”

He holds my gaze until I look away and then chuckles. “Okay… is it alright if I don’t buy today?”

“Sure. Absolutely.” I start to pack them away, smoothing the tissue paper, replacing the lid.

He follows me to the store-room.

“Maybe, you message me through my website? I can send you tickets to my show.”

“Your show?”

“At SMU. My pictures. The real thing. No digital. No fake Photoshop. It’s important.”

“Yeah. Yeah, maybe.”

“Thanks, Lindsay.” He says peering at my name tag. “Goodbye.”

He reaches out and squeezes my shoulder. Holds it, tight, for an extra second or two. I stare into space until I hear the door close. I put the boxes away. Unseeing. Finger the paper folded in my pocket. Change.

I walk home hard. Heel to pavement. Hoping that by some trick of fate, in that brief moment of connection, he transferred something to me. Some kind of peace. Some sort of energy.

Maybe a flicker of fire to ignite these exhausted coals.

I Leave a Trail

The Sweet Serenades – Die Young

My arms aren’t wide enough, I think, as the words crawl across the bedspread and lodge their pincers in my forearms. Little bites that would be indistinguishable from freckles if you didn’t know to look; if you couldn’t see the ink leaking from me like blood. Leeches that drain me, leave me withered, ready to break apart between your fingers. Ready to leave my essence smudged into your fingerprints. Ready for endings, I leave my commas at the door, printing black periods on the soles of my shoes.

I leave a trail.

Orion, you cheated me this time. Every time. Breaking into my heart, leaving muddy prints on the floor. I know you were here, I can smell your scent  in my pillows, I can see your reflection in the mirror. The Hunter. You’ve been rearranging. When I wake up in the night nothing is where it should be. I trip over the lamp and get glass buried into the soft meat of my heels. From my carpet to the bathroom’s white glare.

I leave a trail.

The laughter is hollow. Mouthfuls of frustration that bubble up bubble up bubble up. I could suffocate on the things left unsaid. I could drown in the things that are. I could be a skeleton bird, if you’d let me, if these hands would cease to reach up grasping and drag me back down. I could fly, shedding pieces of bone like hail.

I could leave a trail.

If all the days melted and then re-hardened into today I would hold the sunrise up and shine it on you. I would sculpt you an afternoon in twigs and clay. I would build a fort of all evenings, high in a leafy tree, pluck the constellations from the sky and share them like jelly beans in a bag between us. A milky way of icing sugar in your eyes. The walls made of all the books we need to read and somewhere a song playing that I just can’t place. The hum of a million nights just like this.

An infinite amount of realities lined up next to each other, and me, skipping through the heart of them. Ducking into different lives, new existences, other versions of me. Here, me with a family. There, mind-broken chewing lips on a street corner. A me in a suit, high-powered and rushed. A me in an apron drinking before noon. A me looking up and one looking down. A me that jumped. And somewhere in all of the strings that bend, twisted, mangled into each other, diverge—us. Unencumbered and content. Hearts like half-shadows. Love like the sun. I might curl up there, wrap myself in possibilities. Stay a while. Warm my hands on happiness, just to see what it feels like, just to mark the page.

And then up. And out. And on.

And on.

Because that’s what this me knows. Always with half a heart. Always no direction. Wandering.

On and on.

I leave a trail.