January 2011
23 posts
4 tags
Effervescence
There were fizzing bottles of champagne lined up along the ledge. The small bubbles danced upwards to break the surface. You watched them die upon reaching their destination like so many matches going out all at once. The bubbles kept rising even as he knocked the bottles down — one by one by one.
You told him you wanted to go swimming behind the glass, and he granted your wish. He took...
Girls with Insurance →
One of my pieces has just been published in the online magazine: Girls with Insurance. Please take a look at it and show your support if you like my writing. Thanks!
“The man or woman who feels strong enough for two, seeks for every other quality...”
– George Bernard Shaw (Sequel from Pygmalion)
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Chasing The Chill Away
It was a raging winter. The blizzards blew through us until we turned into chattering wind chimes. Your voice was all of the warm notes and I was the colder ones at the top of the register. I watched the shape of your mouth change as it moved from vowel to vowel. The fire of your speech flushed your cheeks red and kept my hands from freezing. When we made it home you sealed the gaps between the...
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Hewlett
I figure you are a careful sort of girl. The type to watch her words and tie her tongue before it tightens the knots in everyone’s stomachs. But not quite the kind to make clean partings in her hair every morning. Your eyes are dark, but I can see past the murky depths to the short circuits waiting to happen. You spend all of your time with this other girl who is not all ropes and...
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We were bred on such grand ideas of love. Now we are grown and trying to take life down into our books with my words and your pictures. You draw in all the details as you see them, but I always struggle with writing things the way they come to me. I tell you that I am embarassed for the world when I scribble syllables that say ‘his heart stops’ or ‘her heart breaks’ because...
12 tags
Conversations With The Real Imagined Boys (2)
“So what’s the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to you?”
“Romantic? I wouldn’t remember something like that.”
“Oh right, sorry, your translation of the word romantic doesn’t equate with mine.”
“Romance isn’t love. People don’t read ‘romance’ novels to learn about love.”
“Then what is the...
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Presence
We wrote to each other for weeks, and when you finally arrived I was too tired to be with you. Instead I fell asleep in your lap with the television bright and blaring across the sofa. The channel you were watching had this gameshow on where they had you pick prizes that were behind doors — so many doors that it was like looking through a kaleidoscope. It made me dizzy to see them, and...
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Pleasantries
Good news can flavour your food better than spices. At the dinner table, taste how the dinner rolls gain their texture from the phonecall you received about that job interview. Or how the meat is richer because of this morning’s reconciliation with your best friend. The drinks go down so smoothly when you’ve heard that your father is being discharged from the hospital. And the dessert...
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Compliance
Recently she has developed a tremor in her hand. Her left hand quivers every now and then the way wings flit back and forth before you can notice them move. Sometimes she will spill scalding drinks all over her dresses when she doesn’t intend to because of this new shaking habit that she never willingly began to keep. And while clearing bits of china and washing the tea stains, she will hold...
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Sometimes I read the words written by the hand of a past self. She is the same girl as I am, but her desires shine through much more purely than I can recognize them emerging inside myself. I wonder if I am living the future that she was writing about. I wonder if someone with the same eyes, same face, somewhere in the perforations of coming years will read my pages and wonder the very same thing.
fairywren asked: I love your writing style. I love how you write like you're talking to someone, penning a letter. Also, the way you put sentences together is so lovely, and they flow so beautifully. I don't think I'll ever get tired of reading them now that I've found your page.
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If the season permits...
All the world can be heard with their feet smacking the pavement outside your window. They are quick tapdancers — eager to cement friendships that they’ll trample before the sun comes up. You are convinced that you could dance circles around them all, but the doubt is the lock on your door and the way your shoes are brand-new-soled beauties collecting dust. A little lint is better...
Anonymous asked: what type of camera do you use?
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Records
He was a meticulous man of few comforts — always making charts or tables to track one daily activity or another. I would whisper about him saying that I did not understand his need to document everything to the milligram. But his ears were sharp like his pencils, and he heard me one evening. He told me that I was really no different from him, and that I could not argue because he had seen...
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Conversations With The Real Imagined Boys (1)
“You should really unpack.”
“I will if you kiss me.”
“We aren’t lovers —”
“But you do love me.”
“Of course I love you. But I don’t love you.”
“Didn’t you say so yourself? Love is love is love.”
shazzamilicious asked: i love your "year in photos" blog (:
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Apologetic
When I open my eyes the sunlight has poured through the window screens, spilled through the splits in the blinds to fill the room. The room is a giant glass pitcher of lemonade. The sun is the colour of summer even though it is January, and you are sitting by my bed letting the yellow light jaundice your skin.
“Your mother let me in,” you tell me because you know that before even...
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The night is young and we’re doing that thing again where we fall half in love with the first person who asks us our names. It’s too quick and we don’t really mean it. We like the way you’ve knotted your scarf. We like the way you might look in a black-and-white picture. But please don’t mistake the way we’re leaning into you to be anything more than it is. We...
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Elise
I saw you hanging half out of your window every afternoon — all longing, all desperation. You had stopped wearing red, and would bite your thumbs to keep from making a sound as you cried. Your tears went down your cheeks and took my heart with them. It sank to the bottom of everything where I kept every memory I couldn’t bear to remember.
Your problem was a boy who had stopped...
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Resolution
This year I have resolved to take one picture every day for a year. I would love for all of you to see the photographs I take. If you’re interested in this project of mine, you can follow me at www.shutterbugproject.tumblr.com.
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To Be New Again
We bring in the new year at the center of our city — the restless mass of people become its pounding heart. The ten second countdown is a heart attack as we all freeze. And when the end is near the fireworks burst into the sky like the electric shock of a defribilator — granting a new life, a fresh start to the onlookers who keep this metropolis alive. After midnight they turn to...
