staring at my knuckles & the tattoos I don't have. a couple of small boats rock around at low tide. stepping on & cracking through sea ice & it's past midnight, late in winter. I had an idea that I'd quit drinking & move to st. johns or the states. because it was the straight edge me that felt complete & knew I'm not a liar. but I lied when I put my hand on what was left of him & said "I love you". plastic wrapped stomach & rubber skin. you are dead & I don't love you like this. I accept that my toes are always going to be cold & though I can't admit what that man did to me it was not my fault. I'm standing undressed, drunk. the books on vertebrates in my backpack don't tell me anything & my pockets are always wet from biking in the rain. theropods in print won't show me what to fix. if I still had the imagination I did when I was ten I'd pretend this was the south pole & would've never known that when I turned seventeen I'd run away to here. I throw rocks into the ocean & pretend that they are me. my stomach tries to eat itself & I sadly agree when it notices & reminds me I'm absent & empty. & how I want to be smart & not pacing up agricola looking for the safety in snow. the girls you know have been raped by the boys that they trusted. it's unsaid. trap me in this body & call it disgusting. I regret ever believing that I was not worth it or sleeping pills & fake connections would be what I need to dream. every scared syllable will come out of me like proud alphabet fireworks exploding.

at what point does it happen that we stop being young & no longer innocent. suddenly something feels wrong & you're dripping from your face & breathing awkwardly. & you look up with dead eyes that are trying to detach & find something familiar that you always seem to lack. & everyone around you looks like no one you would know. you just never could notice how bad things really were while you were growing up. there aren't many things stranger than simply just being alive & aging each day. except for being born & confused by your gender & covering your genitals with your hands when you shower. or keeping an old photo of a friend who died last year, with you standing right next to them, smiling & unaware. it happens to all of us. there is always something terrible just waiting to start & all that you can do is try to be strong & brave. be brave. the only love that some people will feel is drunk sex. I just closed both my eyes & took it. we're all having bad dreams & feel sick when we stare at our own reflections. my death rattle will be a cup half full of change shaking noisy in the cold wind in every persons face. & my arm will rot off & someone will take it home, lay it next to them in their bed so that they don't feel alone. I wish we weren't here, didn't feel this, had no hair growing on our heads. you are not real, & I am dead. but I don't believe in god; I believe in you.

the glimpse of the atlantic isn't enough & the roar that I'm hearing now comes from above that one giant building I crushed with my fingers. & my mosquito bites start to swell bigger. it's best to view a city from far away or if you can on a giant hill where you can be taller & not so defenceless against the concrete that gives you a cold. I am sicker than I've ever been. some in the head, some in the skin. I play the ukulele with your drivers license & stare in awe out at the sea, thinking about a couple thousand kilometres that I have been. & they mean so little to this body of water. & if turtle island ever went under I'd never be able to swim back the way that I have came. I'm going to start being a little selfish & cut off a piece of the galapagos or now that I'm here, maybe nova scotia would probably do just as well. I wish you would bring me the tools & a very detailed map of the world. just go to the sea & never be seen. I honestly feel like I take in one breath a year.

scribbling on the back of a ticket, forty seven minutes away from the feeling of resentment. passing houses with backyards made of construction & plazas. & I wish I could be cruising in your head instead. & I'd find no ladders out.

one week before I turned twenty years old in the center of the country, in a french speaking car. "96 degrees, 48 minutes, 35 seconds north". & I'm not willing to trust the extent of my luck, or the brain that put me lost in manitoba. I am not in love. I am far. for the first time headed out off the peninsula, climbed in an empty 48 overnight. it reminded me of something that dylan had said from his tent outside of an old gas station. "when I was younger I used to look at maps & think, 'where can I go if I don't want to live in a country?'" one billion lights, not an airplane, just fireflies & the stars. half asleep in tennessee valley or somewhere in new brunswick, still hating all of my oldest scars. sitting in the top floor of a building on water street. dreaming of the far north. realizing that I am warm. & the pen pal I met looks like a new bestfriend. & walking in st. john's feels like I'm on creighton. & my house is left farther up, or separated from us by a strait. the outdated address of someone I met in pennsylvania still haunts the back pages of my favourite book that I nearly gave up, when I almost gave up. relationships based on drugs & common faults resting so awkward in the truth of it all. & I am somewhere I was when I close my eyes. when I open my eyes... I wake up in key west to the heat in my tent, to the strangest of noises across from the ocean. the furthest south my ugly brain has ever forced me to think of you from. I wake up in transcona alone in the rain, scared by myself in the interior plains. the lightning made deer jump across the perimeter highway & I cried in slow motion. I wake up in an attic three summers ago. several years younger, in love & I know that kitchener, ontario has nothing left alive but the you I miss. canada. atlantic. I'll fall asleep for the last time in halifax.

window open, below weather, knee deep snow banks. the ice & frost melts & breaks into shapes of states & north eastern maps. the inland sea starts to recede & deposits me deep under shale. maritime provinces drawn on my honest skin with birthmarks & dotted towns. ideas sewn into hair by a couple of close friends. the arctic circle escape explained through collect calls from a brooklyn phone. I sing to the cold & it shows me my breath & the slowest highway home. I'm trying not to explain, between song lyrics, mannerisms or the same name: connections with a face I'll never see. like the two drunkest people in the room slow dancing to the jangle of their keys... it won't be remembered.