before a wealth of windows
waiting to take off belt and watch
with the hope of few official questions,
scan bone-through, transparent
before you’re cradled in the air
over the twice-tossed glass
landscape, tearing a little
packet of salt, spilling it over
the tray table,
dusting your knees.
is there enough
to just explode already?
the blue, clean line of land
precise, only crooked.
each night I dream the neighbourhood
as an obstacle course stopping me
from catching a train.
it is never this city,
and often my little legs seem almost mechanical.
I can be hours away from the station
with the final call flashing and I still try.
never really miss, never catch it,
just bolt up, clattering
awake.
when I was a girl, I had a postcard
from a married man,
a photograph of a mirror
that turned the room into a bowl,
brittle curtains raked into weedy filter.
one dubbed blues tape
on the mantle,
the joke of a logoed ball cap,
his thumb, an eclipse
in frame,
opening the eye
that recorded
while dodging his reflection out,
I will promise this short-shrift season
in video and voicemail from Toronto,
to ride past the chop shop, detailing
the concrete with wet wheels.
making a meal of single servings,
you lie in long grass and break melba toasts in honey against your palate,
a twist of rebar prodding your shoulder blade.
scatters itself in dust, airbrushed through
thistles puffed into seed,
little worn-through heel of fire,
not melting, but streaking the glass shards it’s ringed with.
enough of the passport-sized photos,
backless, scanned on screen,
no dregs of ink smeared flathand
across the waxy paper,
enough of just scrolling,
never ceasing to scroll.
what was looking when there wasn’t
a date stamp that kept rolling in live feed?
even refresh was a tread in thickness, then,
clicking through to another slow-loading version of
another girl’s bedroom when it required anticipatory pause:
a sliced couch or quarter-window
blur of an eye, hairfall,
enough bra strap to give you the glimpse
of an other on the line.
I guess this is supposed to be exciting.
we are entering a story in the middle. it creeps up your pant legs
on your way to the video mart
where you will read boxes,
try to pick a tone that won’t leave you
envious or haloed.
in straight-to-video of the neighbourhood you once lived in,
crying and grey are motifs.
every fifteen minutes there is a slow pan to rooftops –
you laugh, then are covered in crumbs,
fleas bouncing off your ankles, shaking it all off.
