and just when my night was bad enough

you're gone

too bad you didn't return the last two years of my life

when you checked out

fuck you, end of story

so i woke up this morning and took a couple deep breaths and decided to take control of my day

i can still feel your fingertips grazing my side

two minutes is just never enough

this is the worst

take me, take me back to your bed

i love you so much that it hurts my head

i don't mind you under my skin

i'll let the bad parts in, the bad parts in

are you always sad? someone asked.

(always is such a long, long time.)

i couldn't say. but.

if sadness was a sea, i'd drown in it.

(salty and warm, sadness is.)

(cold, too. sometimes.)

and i happen to love the sea.

you tried to taste me

and i taped my tongue to the southern tip

of your body. our bones are too heavy

to come up, squished into a single cell of wood.

i made an excuse, you found another way

to tell the truth. i put no one else

above us. we'll still be best friends when

all turns to dust.

you are so smooth now. our edges are

beaten, drift wood widdled down.

old bodies slip when they make love.

we'll mine our sparks to shout us above.

i find myself following the same routines

back to the places i've always been

but noticing more every time

finding new cracks to step over

new views that i missed last time i was here

i've found the indents in the sailboat

on your neck and i've noticed your

smell, all too familiar but stronger

since i haven't been this close to you in awhile

and i like how your lips hover over mine

late at night when we're reckless and whispering

your arms are smooth and your hipbones

protrude a bit and you just feel so warm

and i like when you say you miss me

even when i'm right here

and the only reason i slept in today was so

i wouldn't have to be away from you

i wanted nothing more than to hear how you miss me

so i could inch my way closer and kiss your cheek

and say hey

i'm right here

i'm right here

you make it worth it, no matter what, always and forever.

it is my third week of school and i've already broken down in tears thinking that i will never finish everything that i need to finish. i'm just so fucking tired and overwhelmed.

i've become selective of

what i'd like to build my life around

what i'd like to keep in and

what i'd like to throw out

no matter how much i try to cut out though

i'm still scared

i'm scared of souls getting old and worn

i'm scared that i've been wrung out

too many times

i'm trying not to let my fears loom over me

like ghosts and thick fog

i've busied myself lately with remembering

the taste of sweat and the sound of screen doors

and everything else comforting from the summer

that's slipped through my fingers

and how i want it back

i can't function with intangible things

slipping through my fingers - i need yours

with the gold ring on your right hand

laced through mine, holding on tight

i can't let them through

this is going to be a difficult year

but i'm not letting your fingers slip away

like the summer slipped away

quiet and calm

it's just that

it's easier to recognize what's missing than

to realize what's been here all along

i'm trying to work on the latter because

our fingers will still be laced together tomorrow

and i will fall asleep beside you and

hold every second of it in my grasp

i know i'm not that far away but it feels

like i'm on the other side of the world

sometimes

and i miss you so much

always

boris mikhailov hand-coloured his black and white photos to mimic the way soviet propoganda added sickeningly bright colours to their 'grey' and upsetting posters. extremely affected by the soviets, boris included a handwritten caption on a photo he failed to colour completely: everything here is so grey in grey that there isn't even anything to color.

i will start publishing to do lists here to feel more organized

• finish colour print of burning couch, write down ALL printing info
• take photos of jordan at 3, finish roll of point & shoot
• bring to shoppers at king & yonge, develop film, get prints
• eat something
• go home, scan last photo, size it to a 4x6
• type up photo descriptions, pray to god jordan's printer works
• write review of boris mikhailov exhibit at MOMA
• go to sleep
• be out the door tomorrow by 9 to print photos @ copy center
• be ON TIME for artist talk at 11:30

some lovers promise their girl the stars. i wouldn't do that. what would a girl want to do with a billion-tons heavy, rotating hydrogen-helium ball? no, my girl should have an ocean, preferably the atlantic ocean, because it is the one i have seen and i consider it appropriate. an ocean manages itself, it is there, friendly in the morning, you can swim in it, you can wonder about the color of the water, you can build a ship to get over to the other side. the stars have their own place up there, and it is a good place for them, i think when i see them dancing. but the ocean, the ocean should always be where you are, it is practical to have an ocean near you. it is good for becoming what you were born to be, beautiful and without worries.

the concept of home is a strange one. i've found places to call a home and they're disappearing right in front of me. i'm finding new places i'd like to call home and still feeling a little lost and uncomfortable. i can't sleep here. i find myself pacing around my room every night trying to catch a hint of something familiar but i guess i don't have a tight enough grip on anything anymore. i feel like i have to force myself to be mature but i've never felt so young and naive.

i dream too much

and i don't write enough

one of us was good at listening to sad songs when it was still daylight and the other one was good at letting the lyrics anchor themselves bone deep. i am as heavy as the sea, and just as blue. guess who was who. i understand now why hurricanes rise from oceans, understand how heavy the atlantic must feel with its anchors, and sunken ships, and drowned bodies. imagine the weight. i would grow myself from a storm too, kiss it hard on the mouth and call it irene, set it free with a promise of destruction had i spent seasons of watching some couples fall in love, felt others stumble drunkenly out of it and into the sea. that's the problem, everything makes me sad now: couples in love, couples out of it, young people who never leave, young people who do, broken boys, unbroken boys - everything is tragic because i am. it's nothing. it's the kind of tragedy you find in the eyes of teenagersafter a bloody summer. i'm tragic, it's pitiful, tragic and bitter. but bitter especially - mostly i'm bitter. bitter because i'm the one that's still here, because i was the ocean, am still the ocean, will always be the ocean, because i grew heavier in the songs while you opened your mouth to sing them and the wind hit the inside of your cheeks hard enough to make them into sails and whisper you away.

i'm looking for the space between bedsheets.

holes in this tiny atmosphere.

anything to grasp with my fragile hands.

i can't deny that i'm always thinking of you.

there isn't much left to want, nothing that isn't futile at least.

it's quiet here, but i'm comfortable.

that means something, right?

i can use my imagination to fill in the blanks for the time being.

my body is useless without your arms swarming it.

you are what i know.

i miss you already.

listen. it's morning. soon i'll see your hand reach

for my watch, the water will agitate in the kettle,

but listen. traffic. i want your dreams first. and

to slide my leg beneath yours before the day opens.

wait. we slept late. you'll be moody, the phone

will ring, someone wanting something. let me put

my hands in your hair. who i was with last night i would

be again. this is how the future holds me, how depression

wakes with us; my body shelters it. let me

put my head on your breast. i know nothing lasts.

i would try to hold you back, not out of meanness

but fear. oh my practical, my worldly-wise. you

know how the body falters, falls in on itself. tell me

that we will never want from each other what we

cannot have. lie. it's morning.

i don't want to go anywhere tonight unless it involves you, parks and recreation, and my bed

distance is nothing

more than a few extra

fingertips and

soft breaths and

warm whispers and

heavy eyelids

between us.

nothing more,

nothing more

i am utterly exhausted and i haven't even made it through the next forty eight hours yet