Last Words
it was always about wanting something else. maybe i'm about to get it, or we are never supposed to. regardless, it's time to decide.
Praire Ghosts
she went missing for a couple of days, maybe even a few months. she was in most of my classes. she orbited the corners of the classroom and flew low. her presence was blank, but the law of Closure made us think she was still a part of us, whether she was actually here or not. she was one of the kids in a smoked-out black hoodie and a hunched back every day. she didn't creep, i didn't think she was weird, but it seemed expected when she went missing. i thought about her, but the thought only lingered long enough not to completely fade out. when the thought was at one of its peaks, i wondered where she could have gone. in the prairie oceans, she was a ghost ship, only haunting when you went out looking for her, among the others: the daughter written about on the train bridge, the mother with her son swept up by the wrong crowd, the trafficked girls along the Trans-Canada Highway, the hundred lonely suicides, they were all lead by something violent. they are all wandering around now. this big sky is for wandering. the West has always been for getting lost.
Second-Generation
their neighbours have weapons and drugs and the neighbour kids are mauled by creepy vans. they're not even safe in their workplaces, since the one doctor was murdered in his office. they left South Africa and Puerto Rico and the Philippines to get away from this, why is it here all of a sudden? where can you go now? this town has gotten bad. i don't know why that is. it's not their fault, it shouldn't be their fault. they're just trying to get by like the rest of us. they worked to get here, they did not. this is a sick society and the window for antigens is closing.
Lockdowns = Communism
This is not a request, this is a demand. We are gathering today - without 'social distancing' - to call for the immediate end to all COVID-19 control measures. This includes the opening of all businesses, the end to the mask mandate within said institutions, the end to the murderous vaccination program, and the end to the misinformation campaign. We are here for this government to finally tell the truth! We are not here to compromise, we are not writing to our bought-and-paid-for MLAs, our assembly will not be peaceful if you meet us with coercion. We go to work, we got to buy groceries, we go to the malls, we go to the bars, the arenas, the theatres, the gyms, our schools, our workplaces, the hairdressers, the park, to see our friends and families, to worship, to observe the holidays, and you meet us with fines, search and seizure, lost livelihoods, and brutality! You have begun to beat us in the streets, you make them single-file and totalitarian! This is supposed to be Canada, not communist China! I cannot leave my house without what you make us put on, or else you charge me. The others scold us - the ignorant and less hungry - but we will not concede. This should be a free country, and as free agents, we will maintain that by any means necessary. We will not be made aliens in our own homes. We will not be made slaves to fear and lies. There will be no more lies. With every closure, we will be moving. You close our churches, we will go back. You tell us not to see our friends and family, we will still see them. You tell us to only buy the essentials, we will buy whatever we want from whoever is selling, from whoever is with us. You tell us we can't go to bars and the gym and the mall, there is nothing you can do to take us away. You block our path, we break down the wall. We will not resign our freedom! This is our land, this is our money, these are our lives!
Teenage Spaceship
i only remember what those days were like after school. we'd walk home in total hysterics because then we could finally hang out with each other since we hardly had any classes together. it took longer to walk home than others, it depended if i had something to show you or if something had happened that day. but regardless of anything, after school, it was fucking on. we would both be yelling. everything was awesome and how could anyone else keep up with you and i, we always had so much to talk about, even when we didn't. we would jump on each other's words, building them up into an infinite hype. we'd flood each other with ideas and anecdotes and stupid people and funny shit and things to do when we had the time. the momentum would only let up once we got to my house and into my room because there we would fall into everything we just built up. there we would put on the records.
i'd sit in the chair, you'd lay on my bed. i'd look around, you'd stare at the ceiling. we got up by the stereo, saying few things in between, not wanting to break this. it could be thought of as cathartic, but this was the day in itself. we were just getting started. it was just as bright with the blinds drawn or not. my bedroom was the liminal space between night and day: it existed forever.
the talking picked up after the music burned out. it would be slower, but more careful, more fucking gay, and beautifully awkward. we would deep dive. the laughter was more sparse but more earned. it never mattered if it got slow, there was enough of everything to last as long as we wanted it to. we'd do it past dinner until we had to do something else. but if we didn't, it lasted all night. if not in my bedroom, then in someone else's. if not in our neighbourhood, then the rest of the town. our wandering was a steady march, there was nowhere we couldn't go. we never worried about it ending. high school was that: we just hung out the whole time. it's been so long since then. i wonder what you're doing now.
