ISSAC

Written April 2014 as part of a poetry course at UBC. First time lines borrowed while eavesdropping in a cafe in East Van.

“I’m terrible at relationships,” she says,

“I butcher them.”

After I raise them hand-fed in a barn smelling of hay,

And feed them in heat drenched meadows.

And when I walk them down,

The long, cool path,

Smelling of lily,

The shadows dance to swaying leaves,

To the song of their brothers,

To the music of sweet grass in the wind,

To the slaughterhouse.

And they never see it coming.

I watch her

Spin

Gold,

Around her ring finger.

I want her

To look up.

She paints our story

In false promises

Of winters that will never come

She writes our story

In parables of spilled blood.

But when we danced

We felt like children.

She despises

She despises

She despises

The human that is me.

Because I can’t hold myself

Inside her mold.

Because her waist is perfect between my hands

But we never quite fit.

The noonday sun

Burns.

She is lost

Five blocks from home.

I would kiss her back

To our two room flat

But we turned in the key this morning.