The Selected Morse Code of a Writers Past

Three years ago almost, an old series of photographs
to go with my dusty, old poetry.

I’m feeling nostalgic today. Particularly honest.
Most of this old work is ridiculous but it’s all
a part of me.

---

1.) June 27th, 2012

Sometimes, I  really envy people
a glass of wine with dinner
you replaced your margarita in
my favor and sometimes,
I go months without writing anything

we must try, our school teachers told us
if we want to become anything
but I am sitting right now and
lamenting one of those days
where nothing and everything
are the same thing

five days ago,
I was sitting on the balcony
11th floor, warm LA
crying to my mother

over a long-distance phone call
I still cry and phone my mother even though
I am 19 year old woman,
I am,
I am
but sometimes she doesn’t answer her phone
and sometimes … I …?

---

2.) January 1st, 2012

Thy Flesh, Thy Bone

I don’t know where I am going or how
I will get there
but I know that I am leaving
before the sentence can finish itself

I have my fingers on the map
and my feet out the window
of the second floor building
in the room where we used to
slow dance in our underwear to a symphony of shadows

truth behold, I am always looking for a way out
before I have even found a way in,
oh how this restlessness used to bother you
to no end

I brought you to your knees
slowly until you were kissing the ground with the very
same elbows that held me, cajoled me so many nights
into sleep

this is the secret, small and barely recognizable
only felt in the evenings
when I am very much alone

I cannot throw you far enough away from me

I think about your body and how your muscles arched
to rise and fall
with each breath
like tiny roman empires
surrendering themselves fully to
defeat, the scent ever present, of lust

and in the mornings, too tired to say much
of anything, we excused
our flaws and let our eyes betray us

and you say I am so
full of secrets, that I am a language
you could spend lifetimes learning

but I fear lately and with age, that I have
become a magazine with missing pages

there is nothing of me worth knowing
the small of my back, the spine and its vertebrae,
are common features
to your average woman,

you will
find pieces of me now
everywhere that you look
oh the torture! but nothing useful
in describing

except the tact you use
when you are ripping out the paper from the
bindings

just for a tiny gasp from my mouth

to make me say the things you want to hear

and I am losing density, soon I will no longer be
strong enough
to hold onto this name, nor place and age

So that when you try to find me, years from now

You will ask yourself if I was
ever someone real

---

3.) February 2011

when you left me, I started writing notes to myself
little notches to measure the time in which
we were apart

first it was just a word, then a sentence
in pen on the palm of my hand(s) then to
my wrists

eventually, I understood that the silence
was everything and they became tattoos
without even really trying

I forgot your first name but every so often
at night, I’d wish to be something more
than a girl, my bones wanted to be called
woman, freedom
and I’d hear you as if you were right there

Instead of in another bed, far away
and with another lover

for another year, another lesson

I am the girl always leaving and never really
knowing how to say goodbye

---

4.) June 29th, 2012

I am sleeping on the wrong side of the bed
even though neither side
is really the right side
when you have the whole room and your entire body
to yourself, every night

a quarter pack of bobby-pins later
rain, dropping into
the ocean
in a town where everyone pretends
to know me,

the real strawberry blonde
five stray
palm bays later and your bow-tie
hits the soft parts of my thigh
And I want you to know,
that I don’t have much to say
about you, to you,
for you, anymore

and I paint my lips red
because a best-friend once said,
that the best colour
For a sallow girl,
is bright and reckless
just like all my summer freckles
I draw maps in my sleep
on your hands
in an empty bed

in front of a dirty vanity mirror

and I have booked my flights out of this country
with a valid passport

and a different first name
than the one you used to call me

---

5.) May 10th, 2013

The Great Lakes of Canada

On the fourth day, I begin looking for messages
in my cheerios, drinking almond milk
with tingling disgust so that the
boys won’t notice

how often my body trembles
alone in bed at night, like
a frequency, barely picked up
by the human ear and
although i have scrubbed your
name from my skin, sat long and
hard in the sun, dried out the
pieces like fruit, bittersweet
on the end of my tongue,

I still know where to find you,
at the edge of my bed, with your
hands in my hair
like hooks, digging into my flesh

I could make a map out of this
place with the consistency
of your bite marks
on my flesh

but,

today, your last bruise fades
from my shoulder,
today, you are in the wilderness
on the outskirts of a city I do not
know well,
will never come together
again

so, I am falling out of sleep
and into the daylight like a bird
flying toward the horizon
because I have no where else to
go, you are paddling the great lake
in Algonquin park

with nothing left of me in your blood
and I am pounding my fists against the
wall, the lonely whale in the ocean
who cannot be heard by anyone
but herself

yet still, I am eating my cheerios
quiet and slow,
floating in this god-damned almond milk
soaking up nothing but the way
my love bloomed
and was cut down
by the raging waters of
Ontario and how distant
your body is
in relation to my heart

---

6.) March 2011

I want to kiss you with my eyes open
I want to read to you,
lines from books that I don’t remember
that have somehow pressed themselves
like drying daises between my muscles and bone
the same way you press yourself
between my lips and hair, falling asleep
as a boy that I am not loving with 
all my heart because my excuses for our escapades
are tiny and quiet
like the wings on a bird, so fragile
and if our tongues were made of glass
maybe we would be more careful
with speaking but
we are made of different metals
fused together and could you think of all
the jokes, we may or may not have
shared over the years?
how does it embarrass you to realize that we have spent many
of our nights the same way, so in love that it hurt
and pulled apart our veins, felt like nails
in our skin, pressing down and onward
used up all our declarations of innocence
other snaps of identity that
grew and displaced themselves
flowers in jars
smaller than their roots
and as the years went by,
I became less of that woman
and more of my own
with no one particular, an image, a smell
swimming through my veins
at the mention of late night binges on letters
handwritten, you left by my window
and secrets colder than air that seemed to stall our actions
but all of these things are relative,
somehow subjective
and your diction isn’t loud enough,
you’re too far away
the truth is, I never wanted you as much
As you thought

---

7.)

February 27th, 2013

I bought a pack of Malboro lights today
for myself, for emergencies

this isn’t really a poem, so much as it’s
working guilt into never opening the

pack of cigarettes that I have for no reason

---

8.) May 1st, 2013

Stay.
I have invented a new language
full of just that word
and my body begins
slowly at first, in the mornings
naked with your fingernails
tracing my ribs
to betray me

this compost heart
ragged
hums the word
over and over
the silent prayer
until I am made of nothing else
but for holy sorrow
and the way you kissed
my mouth
on that first night,
how our bodies broke together
like panes of glass
sharp enough to bleed
and now I’m jumping from cliffs
with my arms around
your neck
up in the early mornings
worshiping the sun
in your place, my bed empty
my arms outstretched, aching

I never wanted you
the way that you thought
until it was too late
to cash in the flights

you’re made of money
not of time

and I don’t want you to go
but you’re already
far, far away
even inside of me
that place sacred, your eyes
clouded with hopes
for a future
that does not include me
and still

this tired heart beats
stay, stay, stay
because it does not know
what else it could be

I’m exhausted, so heavy
with the things I cannot change
the men I will come to know
with fingerprints and tongues
I have no interest in anymore
just you

I am standing endlessly
back straight, spine-tip topped
pouring hot tea on your lap

and these life lessons, designed
to make my bones steel
my kisses lighter..
one after another, as I watch you
pack your things
and walk out the door, I wonder
the use of destiny, cursing God
or natural acts, sins
because I have committed many

I need something to make me weak in the knees,
it would taste and feel
so much better
than your body, on top of me
swallowing all the words
I will spit up later

---

People will always try to take the salt out of you.
The truth is, you can’t let them
no matter what.

Love everyone. Every leaf. Every ray of light.

Forgive.

Write often.
Never apologize for your strength,
your beauty,
your potential.

Not everyone will understand you.
Not even you sometimes.

Love,

Zandria

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

The Slow Dance to Love (Or Why I Like Black Turtlenecks)

Valentines day is still well over a month away but somehow it’s already everywhere. Hearts, chocolate, roses and big fuzzy teddy bears galore. Unlike most other holidays of the year, I have no sincere memories of February 14th. It’s never been a thing that I have taken super seriously which is kind of weird since I consider myself a closet romantic. I mean.. ew gross everything. There just hasn’t been a good moment or the right person where I’d find myself vulnerable enough to open up to celebrating a silly, made-up day. Not yet anyways.

However, all this Valentine’s day stuff has me thinking about the celebrations of love and the meaning of romance in a day-to-day context. It always fascinated me how people say I love you in unique ways. Sometimes that’s a hand on the shoulder at the right moment or a cup of hot coffee in the morning or sharing their lunch with you. You see, I’ve always been a very vocal person. I think that I show my love in tangible ways. I’d bake cakes for friends and cookies for co-workers or remember the blazer my friend picked out at Value Village and surprise her with it. I have and always will take tiny mental notes about the people who are closest to me (likes: kit-kat bars, belly rubs, good whiskey).

As I get older, I realize that different and yet equally important ways of loving are more needed from me than the take-home stuff or knocking the ball out of the park kind of gestures. These are the scarier things. Letting someone see me cry. Telling a story about my childhood that I’m embarrassed by or a trivial fact of my existence (hates: olives, certain kinds of mushrooms, doesn’t trust lettuce from Subway). The thing is, these kinds of admissions feel so similar to confession. The kind they used to shove me in every Friday at my Catholic school. Back then I would make up sins to repent for but twenty-two years into this life thing, I have enough to account for. I confess that I am not always the kindest person. I confess that I sometimes need to be alone. I confess that I am terrified, tired, in love, broken, whole, a person, a woman. I confess that I have no idea where I’m going next. I confess. I confess to you. So, I’m reminded of a Syvia Plath quote, “And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter – they are so rusty, so ugly. So meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small, cramped dark inside of you for so long.”

When I was small, I always imagined I’d meet an Englishman and flee to the countryside where I’d write novels and he’d do … something. Or when I was twelve that moved more towards an Englishman and I (at this point, decidedly I would have short, dark brown hair and wear only black turtlenecks) living in London while I wrote madly successful plays and he also.. did something. Whatever. The specifics were never that important. I imagined we’d be passionate about each other to the point of insanity. We’d be in on that shared secret and oh yeah, we’d have that untouchable, lusty flame. The timing on everything would be perfect. We’d never be faced with challenges and we’d never hurt each other. We’d always be that train arriving at the station at exactly half-past eight in an exciting yet reliable way. My earliest fantasies of love are things that everyone should strive for but, like bad television, exclude famine, fire and flood. I use that phase in relation to the fact that really caring for someone is a constant admission of flaws and willingness to step back and tinker things that might not be working as well as they could. I’ve never been able to believe that there is someone out there that’s perfect for you but I have always believed that everyone has a person. In my mind, the person is a someone that you meet who really makes a lifetime of flaws and fixings (… and famines and fires and floods) totally something you’d really do for the first time in your life. Real love requires fluidity. Change. Willingness. It requires us to confess. To be as we are, whatever that is in the moment and it builds only with time.

In an every day way, you practice the passion to be preached in your exploration of the world, in likes and dislikes  that may last longer than any relationship you could have. For instance, I grew up in the film industry (more on this later). It’s a huge part of my life and my personality and most of my past. I don’t really know much else and for me, that ritual is a labor of love. I value tradition and I secretly find a lot of passion in the field (shh, don’t tell anyone) which is probably why I will succumb to it’s magic at some point. I’ve always loved the smell of books which evolved into reading which somehow further grew into a Canadian literature major. My favorite poet is Leonard Cohen which is why I started writing in the first place which seemed just as natural and important as eating or breathing. These are all things about me and about my life that I couldn’t ever have anticipated and yet I hold them closer to me than anything else. I confess them here. I would confess them to anyone in person. It is love in action to find the things you are passionate about and not just people. What a waste a life would be if spent entirely chasing other people.

In short, this year I might be thinking of Valentine’s day a little differently than I have in the past. No more packed, sweaty clubs where I’d kiss a strange boy at some point in the night to feel important. Maybe I’ll bake a cake or spend the night skype calling my friends at home. I’m not sure. But I am so grateful for Valentine’s day and its cheap reminders of all the things in my life that radiate love and persistence and for making me question it all. For the first time in my life, I don’t feel like resisting my truths. I still hold some crazy ideas about love, don’t get me wrong. I want to travel the world with someone and come home together, a little tired, a little sunburned and a lot in need of a shower but from the best trip of our lives. I want to challenge someone and be challenged like level 25 on tetris, challenged. Challenged because they know I can handle it and then some. I want to be opened up in a way that needs four hands instead of just two. I want time and trust and kindness to help me build something I can be proud of in my professional life and my personal life. I want to be with someone who creates and who inspires me to create and create and create because there’s never an ending to art. It is a way of life. It is life. I want to find ways to say I love you that are more about sharing and talking and being supportive and small and soft than they are about always having to knock it out of the stadium. It’s never easy. It gets hard sometimes and it gets raw but if I’m lucky (and a little of all the headstrong, hearty person I am), one day I will meet someone who isn’t afraid of getting knocked around a little bit.

After all, life is about falling in love with yourself. It’s about pursuing your passions, it’s about constantly willing to tinker things. It’s a challenge to open yourself to you and to the people around you. It’s not always liking yourself but resolving to love yourself no matter what. As I learn more of this world, I can’t wait to unfold with it and to experience as much of it as I can and to applaud the parts of that come out with every new discovery. It’s a life-long confession. I aim to stay inspired, to inspire. I will. I am already. And one day maybe, I’ll meet my person. Hopefully he’ll be someone who offers me his hand in the middle of the kitchen, with the kettle nearly whistling and loads of writing deadlines approaching, to slow dance with me (crucial it be in our socks) to some Frank Sinatra song from my childhood.

Until then, I’m going to enjoy every moment of this journey from broke university student to grown woman. Incredible things take time and apparently plan on acquiring a plethora of black turtlenecks at some point in the future and an Englishman that does … something. Whatever. Details are never needed. Besides, he’s not the important one here, I am.

Love,

Zandria