Catch Me Running

It is without much ceremony, the act of
living so I am bored enough to fall
madly in love with myself.

In all honesty, I have been
known for showing a little skin under
short sundresses, some thigh
and a handful of summer freckles

But I am as much of a play on words
as the next person, never stopping
all this changing and the second
everything moves upwards and
onwards is the second that I
forget that someone new
is breaking out of me to make
a name and a place
for all this mess and all this joy
and every moment of our
humanity

She looks every year
of my twenty-two birthdays so far
which
is to say, she looks like nothing
at all but the height of the mountains
in a city that she was born in
but hates with a passion
and the litre of ocean water that was poured
into her eyes the day that she came into
this world? Well that can be followed
anywhere on the globe
with a coast to it.

So, what can I say now except
I have turned my chin up at less
and you know by now that
my skin is braille, each beauty
mark mapping a different world
in my mind than the one I’m in
and so I write
to get it all out of me, like turning
your palms upwards
and putting a knife to your
own skin
just for the blood.

I find fewer and fewer reasons
to do anything but hustle
in this place, flatter than my
grandmothers porch, busier
than the busiest day
of the year, with everyone
always moving to you, around
you or through you.

I have known only a few things
in my life but I know that I am
made for something more like
this, the crowds, the tastes
and the smells, the faith
that pulses under each
street lamp and on every
corner that we are all
alone but together

now, I am softer and softer
like a flower in the sun, looking like
something
blooming and with it I find
such intimacy in all
the places that I had never thought to look
and isn’t that where it all begins?

and lights and burns out and lights again
with every carton of cigarettes
that I have ever tasted.

With a smile sharper than my own tongue
and almost velvet charm
like my favorite black dress
that shows more of my back than of my
thighs
there is no where
and I have no idea
how it is
I could have learned all these new habits
and desires that come from my mouth,
and ring in my ear, the very
kinds of things you truly have
not one word for

It is only in the way I watch myself in
mirrors like I might escape
that I realize
I am not a creature to be known
or understood anymore, the word
used to catch my attention
is one one syllable too long, always
mispronounced or missing a letter
and it has no solid meaning.

I am serious about nothing more than
myself, than the weather
and poems that speak of
passionate sex
while these parts, foreign
settle themselves in
and I begin again
anew as the girl buttoning up
her shirts, still showing a little
too much skin, shaving my legs
in the middle of winter with
the simple truth
of change and changing, filled
and filling with the weight
and the lightness
of a different woman now
and the cold here is not as bitter
as it once was

So I have started running again
and that is how I find my new language, entire
beginning with
the way a man comes up
behind me and zips my dress closed from
the bottom of my spine and afterwards
leaning in to taste the nape of my neck,
and ending with my favorite flowers lined
up in rows
all down the avenue on the snowiest
afternoon of the year,
handed to me and later thrown
into the trash
a sunflower for every letter
of the alphabet so just

catch me if you can, using old textbooks
on biology and art history. I’ll be somewhere
In this big old city with my hand outstretched
grazing my own, blood-red mouth
and
wearing a dress shorter
than the time it takes to sin,
not caring if you call me or not

On Leaving Friends and Making New Ones (Sort of)

There are a few things I’m really glad I didn’t think through when it came to making the decision to move. Namely, the friend bit. There, I said it.. I’ve been fortunate enough in growing up that I’ve been able to make some very permanent, very lovely connections with people I can only describe as the crème de la crème. The thing is, it didn’t quite settle with me that I would be parted from them … like good and parted. Indefinitely. We threw the words around a little bit, closer and closer to my departure date but it never felt quite real. “You know, it will be weird when Zan isn’t here.” And now I’m not there and it is kind of weird.

All I could think of when I realized this was one evening, many moons ago. Two of my closest friends and I had been out drinking, not long after we’d found out about one being accepted into a masters program in the Netherlands for the following January. Back then, the following January of the year seemed ages away. So we did what we always did and forgot about grown-up things for as long as possible. The night was average, even slow but the three of us seemed content with that. Somewhere halfway through the evening and way too liquored up for a twenty year old, I’d proposed a toast. It went something like, “Everything is changing, we’re all going our separate ways. By the time I see ya’ll again, we’ll all probably be married and have kids. You know, since the next ten years are crucial in major life decision-making time.” We hugged a little tighter that night but laughed it off in an uncomfortable way. This is how things are going to go now, might as well get onto the next.

Years later and during my first week at a new university, I was approached by a rather friendly yet fast-talking young girl, not unlike myself. Within 20 minutes, I knew all about her brother, his tendency to throw weak shoulder punches and her newest litter of kittens. I didn’t even know this girls name but I knew where she lived?! I felt overwhelmed by it all. It’s not that I didn’t think she was a nice person, I just couldn’t understand how I’d gone from being a complete stranger to someone she was inviting to eat dinner at her house not fifteen minutes later. I admired her boldness but couldn’t figure out how to properly react to it. Needless to say, I ended up losing her phone number and not even on purpose.

I met a man (as you sometimes do) and he introduced me to others and I spent the first month in a new city drinking more alcohol than I knew what to do with but I had fun doing it. Perhaps that is the crux. For the first time, I wasn’t hanging out with someone I’d known since high-school or someone I’d met in a lecture. I was meeting people to meet people. And it always seemed crucial to mention that I wasn’t from around here. That became the point from which my identity seemed to spring forward (unbeknownst to me). I had left Vancouver because I didn’t feel partial to it. There wasn’t enough going on. I was restless, hopeful, needing. Subconsciously, I was tired of my safety-net, the laundry list of people I’d grown beside and into over time. But suddenly there I was being the “Vancouver girl”. Self-identified.

As time goes on, I’m hiding less and less behind that label because this is one of the last frontiers; learning how to make new friends in a city I don’t plan on leaving for a long time. It isn’t easy. And I don’t know what choice I would have made had I known that before I’d left home. I’ve had to accept that the friendships I’ve had for so long might not age gracefully while I’m gone. Already, due to lack of availability and physical time together, I’ve drifted away from some. But such is life. We all have our own paths to follow and I decided to walk in a different direction than a lot of them. What is not for me, is not for me.

It’s not as glamorous as it might seem leaving your city to live on another coast. It isn’t for everyone to just up and start again elsewhere but I find comfort in so many previously uncomfortable things. This lets me know that I am on the right path even when there are nights where I am lonely in a way that only a specific person can cure. Geographically, I’ve never lived so far away from an ocean in my life but that’s exciting, isn’t it? Instead of wandering to the water, I wander down unfamiliar streets. Instead of the mountains, I look up at the CN tower and I remind myself that I am here, here, here and it is the familiarity of the unfamiliar that drives me forward.

There are nights when I am just lonely. In leaving, I have been striped of the comforts I was tired of having. I yearned for a fresh start and the excitement of a blank page but at times, I would be lying if the blankness didn’t feel a little insurmountable. However, I’m comforted by the idea of passing time, for once. Right now, everything is new and big and flashy but with age, I will settle down here just as I settled in Vancouver. Now is the time to savor, when I still don’t quite know where I am at all times, when I can’t quite point you in the direction of North and when I vaguely dodge requests for directions because fuck if I know.

It is in this part of my life that I realize I am not the Vancouver girl anymore. I grew her for a few years on the edge of the water, in the pub on the corner and at the VPL on a Sunday afternoon. She didn’t quite fit me as well as I might have liked. My life felt too much like I was re-reading the same page of the same book over and over again without ever really understanding what it was that I was reading. I used to write about opening myself for others. I used to write about biking down empty streets at dawn or cutting my legs on coral at the beach. I used to watch the sun set behind the mountains. My heart is full of one too many of these moments. It never felt quite right.

That was my life then, this is my life now and I’d replace the mountains with the snowy flat lands any day. I’m ready to grow into this girl for a while and see how well she fits. I am learning how to say hello to strangers, how to share a pint with a neighbor, how to be okay with being more alone. I am learning how to say I love you without having to be in the same room. I am learning to miss things less and less. Making new friends in this big world is not the easiest task but nothing worth while was ever achieved without a fight. The first step on this journey is a simple hello. And the second step would probably be learning not to leave the house without a proper coat and winter boots on. It really does snow here… who knew January was the start of winter.

Love,

Zandria