There are a few advantages to sleeping with ex-lovers, no matter how hung up on them you are. One is that, though you are both certainly telling yourself that it's just sex and a one (maybe two) time thing, the familiarity of a past romance may allow for a shower in the morning, a moment to wash off the smoke from that after hours and the beer spills from the party before. You know probably know where they keep the spare towels- failing that you've probably been naked together enough times that using his towel doesn`t seem as appalling as it otherwise might. So I woke in a familiar place, hungover or maybe still drunk, I stepped down a familiar hallway, knowing which creaky floorboards were best avoided, I knew to wait at least 30 seconds for the water to warm up before stepping into the shower, I knew that the black towel was the roommates, the blue was his, mine for the day. I knew that even though sharing a toothbrush is a little gross it was probably a better idea than to leave smelling of cigarettes and beer and ass. I reached into the medicine cabinet for toothpaste and on the shelf above it there was a bottle of cologne. I smelled it, I smelled him. It feels stupid now because of course no one smells that good all the time but at the time I felt cheated, I felt betrayed in a way that was so irrational and powerful as to make me nauseous. It felt stupid then because I was smelling every memory I had of us from a bottle.

walks late at night

cold wind gusts on a cool august night it smells like fall already and you're not ready you feel hungover already and you're not even durnkyou feel heart broken aready but haven't said anything about love. it's there though, in the subtext. it's in the way you look at him, the answer his eyes won't give you, the way his hand is limp in yours. it's in the way he never calls anymore too but that could be forgiven with a fuck

someplace else

You feel like someplace else 1.1 ( // we spoke at length about our sense of place, the way buildings facades tell stories about their days, how urban shape provides structure or erodes it – my feelings sprawled over your landscape in an untidy mess, an uninspired mimicry of rurality, cul de sacs and winding lanes. Nostalgia for good simple livin and dirty hands, two things things you’ve never had. Staying smart in the city, focused in all you do, right? Lay out our lives a colonial town turned metropolis- grids, numbers, streets! Avenues! Boulevards! (roundabouts to make me dizzy) your roadmap is too worn to read the street names clearly. It’s like Vancouver I guess, you’re beautiful and lush and alive but I hate your fucking yoga pants and the way everything’s so far apart and long car rides and taking the bus and not knowing where home is anymore. You know I get motion sickness and sometimes just want to lie still and close my eyes while I wait for it to pass but that’s not how it works. I have to look out the window and watch another block of detached homes with shitty basement apartments go by and I get claustrophobic just thinking about the low ceilings which doesn’t help. I was staring at a ceiling here at home in Montreal, thinking about the 2x4s that hold it up, the decades old mold growing slowly in my friends’ bathroom, worn out wooden doorframes and creaky floorboards. I was thinking about climbing onto the roof to make out with someboy in the early evening darkness of a mid November night- it seems like years ago. I was thinking about the way the roof of my old apartment buiding sloped to the center, the crooked floors of my 3rd floor kitchen, the bathroom painted Hello Kitty pink, the basil plant on the balcony I could never keep alive and the mint that grew uncontrollably all summer, something wild in the backyard just two floors down. Amidst all these memories, as they rushed around my head in a blur, I felt your body rigid like a steel beam holding far more than its own weight. I’m feeling more like decorative wood panelling.

HWY sketches: You feel like someplace else

We spoke at length about our sense of places, the way building's facades tell stories about their days, how urban form provides structure or erodes it-
My feelings sprawled over your landscape in an untidy mess, an uninspired mimicry of rurality- cul de sacs and winding lanes- cheap nostalgia for good simple living and dirty calloused hands, two things you've never had.
Staying smart in the city, focused and sharp in all you do (right.) lay out our lives like a colonial town turned metropolis
grids,numbers, streets
Avenues! Boulevards!
(roundabouts to make me dizzy)
Your roadmap is too worn to read the street names clearly

It's like Vancouver, I guess
You're beautiful and lush and alive
But I hate your fucking yoga pants and the way everything's so far apart
And long car rides
And taking the bus
You know I get motion sickness and sometimes just want to lie still, eyes closed, while I wait for it to pass
But that's not how it works, I have to look out the window and watch another block of detached homes with shitty basement apartments go by
And I get claustrophobic just thinking about the low ceilings which helps nothing.

I was staring at a ceiling here at home in Montreal,
Thinking about the 2x4s that hold it up,
The decades old mould growing under the tiles of my best friends's bathroom
About climbing onto the roof to make out with someboy in the early evening darkness of mid November- it seems like years ago
I was thinking about the way the roof of my old apartment building sloped to the center (and how hot it got on the ground floor in January when the radiators were turned up so high that I slept by my open window)
The crooked floors of my 3rd floor kitchen and the basil plant on the balcony I never could keep alive
And at the end of it all I felt your body, rigid like a steel beam holding far more than it's own weight,
I'm feeling more like decorative wood paneling
Or yellowing wallpaper

HWY sketches: it's not the trip, it's the destination

It's not the destination, it's the journey i thought.
Freeways are monotonous, endless things, all asphalt and white paint, concrete overpasses and worn out rest stops. Playlists of 90s pop for road trips we used to promise we'd take play on and you sit still and silent with too little leg room in a late model sub compact rental car with nothing to do but watch farmland and forests and small towns pass by. Blurs in the fog and the distance.
Airports are cold and sterile even as they thrum and hum and buzz with the movements of people and machinery, activate removed from you as you sit, immersed in the NYTimes crossword or a book of sudoku, craving a cigarette to keep your hands busy, and order a bland sandwich to be washed down with a glass of house red.
The plane itself is no better or worse, really. the air is just as cool but now stale from recirculation, the mechanics of the vehicle and the many strangers are closer, nearly touching you, the plane humming lifelessly, your neighbors uncomfortably close.
Take off is a flash of sensation, a brief moment of feeling that is really just a change in pressure, a bit of vertigo when you look out the window.
Trains are nice in theory, there's some romance to the gentle, steady forward movement and the unfamiliar landscapes that roll by but really who takes the fucking train anyways.
No, there's no pleasure to be had in the voyage and no destination really worth getting to is there. Plane, train, highway,all the same stillness-going somewhere and trying not to move your limbs

On going places, or not really

Complacency and stagnation are just the names I call comfort and home's a dirty word too, I think, a place to be fled once it starts to feel too real, too real like this city is.
Whether running from comfort is a courageous act, a challenge, a way of extracting the best in me or a case of my own half assed pop psychology getting the best of me is what I can't quite figure out.
Vancouver, you're different but familiar. Cooler, not montreal's warm embrace but then again I did sometimes say was suffocating in that city's sticky heat. The trees here are greener-like they've been that way for so long without interruption that they've forgotten what it's like to be cold and fall apart from changes in the seasons. the air is cleaner too, or I'm just noticing the absence of Portuguese barbecue's distinctive nose from my surroundings. I walked the city-once, twice- and no one ever felt I was familiar and so I never felt compressed

running yrself down to empty like it's just to prove a point about how you don't need anyone's help to fill you up again. sillygoofysexdrunkgrinningwide falling all over ourselves grasping clutching at skin that flushes with the blood rush to your head to your core to your fingers i measure the distance to you in street numbers 12th to 21st and three blocks west, alley entrance to the basement suite, second bedroom to the left and we twist and turn and stay up all night and it never seemed like much to you and it never seemed like much to me and it's not much at all anyways is it really but what matters is the rush from holding your breath a little too long, from standing on your head, the heat stroke and the 420 stairs and our bodies pink in the sun, burning so we can't touch.
what matters is we're burning so we can't touch.

i'm lumping them all together.

we slept like knots and i felt every breath wrapped up in each other like ropes which made it easy to forget
that we're more like snakes than ropes when you use your head
am i just a glutton for punishment or do i never ever use my head?

some lies about spring

the pace of your steps and the way the wind gusts, blowing dust and dead leaves just recently released from winter into your eyes are the only two things i can think about. later on it will be with hesitation and regret that i try to recall your facial expressions as you looked at me every few steps (i always looked down and to the left) or where your arms fell and what shapes your hands made.
stupid details i wish i could summon to gleem some significance from because you're so fucking inscrutable the way you just nod when i say nothing. i didn't say anything, forget it. not today.
maybe tomorrow.

physical

i don't have any pictures of us.
and i don't understand why i care but i do. it's not about you, or maybe a little. but it's mostly about the moments, moments i wish i could see again, through the haze of cheap flashes rather than cheep wine.
moments i just want to have confirmed, so i don't periodically wonder whether they really happened. you sitting on my bed in a sweater too big for you, too wooly for the weather. glitter smeared on the sheets and beer spilled on the kitchen floor. i want messy, messy truths.
but it's not more than a little bit about you.

(JUNE)

humming through another mistake and buzzing, wings beat against the cage and you're worn out
wet feet, cold feet, work it out.

a certain violence

a rasp, a grunt, something from the back of your throat. desire by sound, not through your eyes, anger even as you're placated.

ohayearagotowantyousowhatawreckwhatawreckconnectdisconnect

march is the cruelest month

just hold me and i'll make you let me down, just watch how i'm never around

sparks fly but it's still kind of cold outside so bury them under sheets where they'll either be smothered or BURST into uncontrollable flames