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the outdated address of someone I met in pennsylvania still haunts the back pages of my favourite book that I nearly gave up, when I almost gave up.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.