Missed Connections at the Convention

Curls and dark eyes, intense. You look down when you talk. No, you look at the person you’re talking to, but I made you reminisce, and that made you drift. Now I want to go to Florence where Michelangelo drew on the walls and to Sicily (the eccentric city, the dark city, the scarred city). I think I just like that you said, “It’s okay, I’m not going to judge, I’m an artist too” when I paused before telling you what I write about.

What I like about you is that I know how you see the world and I can play by those rules. Your eyes are very green and there’s a bit of a cleft on the tip of your nose; somehow it suits you.

I felt so bad for you. I really really hope everything works out for you and you turn into a super-successful tycoon or something.

You were so cute and serious. I hope my friend didn’t scare you too much. You don’t seem like a Patrick at all.

And you! I am a little in love with you. Everything from how you gesticulate to how soft your lips are from smiling to how you think; it’s a neat bundle. The first time I saw you I thought hockey player; I saw you getting off the bus, I saw your shaggy hair pressed flat by helmet, I saw you turning to a teammate panting, talking plays. It makes me so happy when my random mindthoughts are right. Junior B in Finland, that’s where the scars on your chin are from.

You made me feel lonely.

What it means to be a sports fan

I want a gun.

Not to use on myself or anyone else, but just to have. To be able to take out the cartridge and place the muzzle in my mouth, to taste the sharp metallic taste of death. To feel the cold handle in my hands and know that that, at least, is solid and real. To know that I have this choice after another year of not-quite-good-enough, ten, fifty.

I want a gun not to kill myself, but to know that I could.

Only the good die young is a lie

The problem was that it was three in the morning and he couldn’t have slept even though he wanted to, badly, and all he could think of was the smell of grilled cheese sandwiches and how he would never eat one with her again

They were both young and beautiful and fully aware of it, and if he slept around sometimes then so did she, but at the end of the day they loved each other. Loved each other. Enough for him to get on one knee in front of her after God knows how many years and pop open a box with a diamond ring. Him sweating and nervous before their routine dinner date and her laughing when she saw him bend down – laughing, even then of all times. Like it was funny that they would stay together, and in a way it was.

There were prettier girls, and smarter ones, but there wasn’t anyone else he could stand for longer than a month or two. He would miss that. He’d miss the fact that she didn’t mind if he didn’t always keep up his end of the conversation as much as he should have, the fact that she wasn’t too awestruck to not-care. How soft her hair was even when she was all dolled up. How looking at her was like looking over a thousand memories – his high school prom and the draft and a summer sun that would never come down with woodsmoke in his clothes and hers and the afternoon pleasantly blurred from booze

The problem was that he didn’t know if he should – if he could – put his name on her tombstone.

 

Rest in peace.

Wanted: Dancing shoes and publication deal

What would you say if you had to summarize your life in only six words?

Bookbabie got the idea from a book written by Larry Smith and Rachel Fershleiser, Not Quite What I was Expecting: Six Word Memoirs by Famous and Obscure. It is a compilation based on the story that Hemingway once bet ten dollars that he could sum up his life in six words. His words - For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Here are the rules:

1. Write your own six word memoir
2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like
3. Link to the person that tagged you in your post and to this original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere
4 .Tag five more blogs with links
5. And don’t forget to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play!

Mine: Watched the sunshine through library windows.

Alternately:

Given wings; forgot I had them.
Slowly learning not to be afraid.

Interlude

Today the breeze was clean and the  sun never wanted to come down and his arm was reassuringly heavy against my shoulders.

Obama wasn’t the best American to visit Canada.

Ten True Things

1. I spend far more time in front of the mirror than I should.
2. I miss the feeling of having a camera in my hands.
3. The Starbucks cup is always full. I only bought it for the smell.
4. After seventeen years of denial, I’m finally embracing the colour yellow.
5. On the same day, I sent out two stories: One to Writer’s Digest, one to the New Yorker. I’m starting to think I have an inflated ego, maybe?
6. I believe in the healing powers of pain.
7. Fact: I went on www.theclaremontreview.ca every day for two months to check whether the fall edition was up because I wanted to see my name in print.
8. I’m in love.
9. I think my fear of drowning stems from the fact that I imagine it constantly. Even when I’m walking to school on a beautiful crisp autumn day with the sun in my eyes and a breeze in my hair.
10. I need a job.

Insomnia

MR. BROWN stands menacingly in the doorway, wielding an envelope-opener: I don’t like to be kept waiting, Mr. Cole.

 

BOB drops the folders in his hands: I – I really do apologize – like I said – accident – really – you could hurt someone with that…Mr. Brown – oh, my God, Mr. Brown!

 

FADE OUT

 

 

For the first time in three years, I think everything will turn out okay.

Meet Joe

Joe is young, hip, and unbearably pretentious. He has those shoes you wish you had, but don’t, because you’re not as prone to using your elbows. He lists “jamming” as one of his Facebook interests and has one of those awesome torchy voices that make you think dirty thoughts. Joe isn’t really that good looking, but he does his darnedest to make you forget that when he talks about Nietzsche or “the establishment.”

Maybe he was your old roommate. Maybe he changed his name from Joe because it took away from his scenester cred. Sometimes I wish I was Joe, if only I had better hair, and, uh, a sex change. I mean, he makes things look so damn effortless, like some people are just born quoting Kerouac and eating corn chips, bully for you if you’re not one of them. But then I realized, man, how hard must it be? Those shoes, for one. How much time did he spend rooting through other peoples’ garbage to find that shit? You know, worn, but not too worn, with just that touch of I’m New-York-raised-French and you aren’t…bitch.

Now that I think of it, I feel kind of bad for Joe. Joe has to listen to Peaches, which is cool and all, but almost-naked women telling you to fuck your pain away gets old fast. And Joe will never be exposed to the delicious trash that is Paris Hilton’s music, or Neopets, or The OC. Joe watches movies he secretly can’t stand, or uses slang he doesn’t understand. Joe –

Oh, screw it, I’m just really jealous of those shoes.

Day 1: Somewhere in Ohio

Ohio reminds me of a burnt subterranean plain. Everything is some shade of yellow or brown, and the trees are dried across their branches like dying coral. Mid-west is a good word.

More than anything, it’s like a mother of six at 9pm, making lunches, drying dishes, moving quiet tired steady as Jimmy struggles over his letters and Jane marries Barbie and Ken in her dreams.

The Awakening of Spring

Don’t stand under the cherry tree
You might just
Fall in love