Uncategorized – Page 7 – wordandcolour

On Colonialism in Edmonton: “Here”

On First Life: “Here”

Look Here. At the house in the sunlight

The light that is rising or falling on the house

The house that is the First Space

We imagine being in. Look Here at the light that

Sets everything on fire in making and unmaking You

Visible. Is it making You

Unforgettable or unimaginable? Where is Here?

Here is a place

Of imagining pain, of forgetting pain

Of weapons that look like light

Light that conceals by throwing shadows on the snow

Light that lets Us pretend We don’t know

What Here is, where Here is, who was Here.

You were Here. You are Here.

Here being Yours, We come always

Like light

Spreading silently. Here being

Where We learn how to hear or not hear

The dying You. Here being

In Our imaginations. Our imaginations being

Where You are always drunk, always obscene, always

Too much and too many to be seen. Here being

Where Your space and voice and people sink into shadows.

Look Here. The house. The First Space. The Vastness.

What are We if We are Here

Where You continue to make noise

Where We cannot hear You without knowing

That We have been murderous

That We continue to be murderous

That We are infected with murderous light

Light that hates to see

Light that divides the First Space, the First Life

Light that is diseased with difference and destroys

Difference

Light that runs knives along the earth’s splayed bodies

Light that makes and unmakes Here.

Where is Here? Here is

Where My light continues to rise and fall on

You. Here is

Where the edges of the living

Find the edges of the dying.

these words by Charles Gonsalves were inspired by the colour of Sarah Williams

From the author: “I grew up in Edmonton, Alberta. One thing life in Edmonton exposes is the still-very-much-alive hatred and violence enacted upon First Peoples in Canada. The degree to which this behaviour is normalized in the everyday gazes, thoughts, and speech of Edmontonians is disturbing—and something that I, as a youth and young adult, have been implicated in.

Unlearning—unmaking the weapons with which we so easily, so automatically harm people—is part of our responsibility as settlers and a process that is necessarily uncomfortable, difficult, and destructive. This poem reflects on the sustained presence of systemic colonial hatred and violence in Canada and takes a few premises about place and pain for granted.*

-To have pain is to have certainty. To witness pain is to have doubt. To doubt or ignore someone’s pain amplifies their suffering.

-To inflict pain on a body is to destroy that body’s world, voice, and self. To inflict pain on many bodies (a people) is to destroy that people.

-The distance between the person(s) in pain and the person(s) observing or inflicting the pain is impossibly vast, and can only be occupied by the imagination.

-Home is the First Space. Home is where we learn to imagine.

-The First Space is sacred.

-We are destroying everything that is sacred. Our homes occupy the imaginary space between the bodies in pain and the weapons.

* I owe these ideas to Elaine Scarry’s The Body in Pain and Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space.

On Running Away: “Jack-o’-lantern”

Big city at last. Buildings, cement, a few trees. Some birds tweeting the fall of dusk. I’d hitched in. Now what? I must have had a lost look on my face because a van pulled up and drove alongside me, matching my pace.

“Hello there!” called the driver.

“Hi,” I said.

He stopped the car and got out. Introduced himself as Norbert.

“What’s your take on the problems of this country?” he said.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Feel like talking about it?” he said.

“Sure.”

“Feel like having a free dinner?” he said.

“Alright,” I said. He opened the back of the van. There was a young woman in there.

“That’s Sarah,” Norbert said. I got in. Norbert shut the doors and the van took off.

I talked with Sarah. Another runaway picked up off the street. Where the hell were we going? Can’t be any worse than where we came from, we both laughed. She took my hand in hers as we bumped along.

The van came to a stop. Norbert opened the back. I heard cicadas.

“Come on, you two,” said. Sarah pulled up her tights and we followed him onto some sprawling estate and into a red brick country home. The cooking aromas were scintillating. I had not eaten all day.

“Help yourselves,” he said. “After that we’ll have a little presentation.”

The food was laid out buffet style in the dining area. Stacks of clean plates, plastic cups, a pitcher of water with lemon slices in it. There were six or seven dishes to choose from. Some other young people joined us. They were all quiet and respectful. The food was vegetarian, cooked to perfection, completely satisfying.

“We’ll begin the presentation whenever you’re ready,” said Norbert. There were about ten cheap plastic chairs unfolded in the salon, but only Sarah and I sat. It was a slideshow. Norbert used a pointer as he clicked from slide to slide. The world was in crisis, he said. It was up to us to fix it.

I raised my hand. “Is this a cult?” I said. Not that I really minded if it was.

Norbert laughed. “We are called a cult by the mainstream. But we think the mainstream is a cult.”

In my mind’s eye I saw a generic house, some generic suburbs. The home I’d bolted from. The home my father came to at dusk, exhausted, complaining. Ugly mood. Hating his job, his colleagues, his family. Yet, judging the fools who did not live their lives as he did.

Good Riddance, he’d have said Mom. The only way we let her back is if she cries and begs and apologizes. Otherwise she does not set foot in this house again. Is that clear?

Mom would nod, her head down, hands folded, like a statue.

He’d sleep. She would not. The light would be on all night. The house like a Jack-o’-lantern. My mother at the kitchen table, begging me to call, to let her talk to me one last time, so she could beg me to grovel before the old man like she did.

these words by Alden Chorush were inspired by the colour of Sarah Williams

On Male Entitlement: “Water”

In the southern suburbs of Manhattan you’ll find these immense water towers. They hover above the rest of the city, providing high-pressure to showers and sinks across the Island with water that, allegedly, contains high levels of estrogen, but as anyone on the North Shore will tell you, there’s a filter for that.

It’s winter; one of those nights the snow is frozen solid to the ground and darkness spreads across the city at 4pm. We’re all inside Murphy’s—the place you find yourself when you get out of work late and you’re too tired to stay in The City. It’s a full house tonight; there’s this Guthrie-esque musician, he’s playing something John Mayer and we sway either because it’s nostalgic or from too much mulled wine.

Sylvie and I are plotting the matriarchy when Ben approaches. He’s tall, got this shaggy yellow hair and the forming of a goatee. He takes a seat, Budweiser in hand.

“How’s life treating ya, gals?” It’s been two years. He’s aged but in a sad way.

“What have you been up to?” I ask him.

“Been working lights at Rosie’s.”

“Any good shows this season?”

He scoffed. “Oklahoma again.”

“Cheers to that,” we drain our glasses together, old times, and Sylvie goes to the bar for another round. Ben turns to me, tilting his head in her direction.

“Damn, is she seeing anyone?” I can’t help but smile.

“Yeah, we’re together.” Beat. He snaps his head towards me.

“What? Like, you two?”

“Mhmm.”

“Is that even…possible?”

“It sure is.”

He considers it, takes a swig. “I could be into that, I guess.”

No one fucking asked you, Ben.

Sylvie comes back with two beers. I wrap my arm around her waist to make my point. Ben can’t decide if he’s disgusted or turned on.

“Whose place are we going to?” He asks. Sylvie shrugs. It’s like this: they always feel entitled to a space in your bed.

***

These words by Annie Rubin were inspired by the colour of Sarah Williams

On Reclaiming Space: “Incense”

Content Warning: Assault

My childhood cabin was built on an island that was built into a peninsula. At the top of that peninsula is another island, connected by an inconstant sandbar. No matter how many times I have crossed that sandbar, I have never made it past the tip of the island. Sometimes, I like to imagine that this sequence of islands never ends, that on the other side of the island is just another sandbar, although a search on Google maps suggests I’m wrong.

Crossing the sandbar is the closest I can come to walking on water. Between islands, the lake stretches out of view. Like the ocean. Like how I used to imagine the ocean.

Sometimes it is too windy, or rainy, or icy, or deep, or cold, or hot to cross. On those days I sit across the lake from the island and write about what might be on the other side. Sand fills my shoes, my shorts, gets under my nails.

Sometimes there are animal tracks on the sandbar and I wonder, if I ever do make it past the peak, whether I might be devoured by a cougar. Sometimes I can imagine myself as a deer. Not Bambi, but wild and afraid, at constant risk of being hunted or running in front of a truck.

I have a photo of the lake cast in ice: frozen waves caught in motion. What makes the shot so beautiful is that I almost died taking it, almost froze myself into the landscape.

The shore is sinking into the lake now, but I still recognize this spot. This is where he held me to a rock and put his hand down my pants. I remember that all I could think about were the bugs, how the mosquito bites would keep me up that night. I remember that as the moment I realized the difference between romance and romanticizing.

A frog rustled the leaves next to us. That was the summer of frogs – they were everywhere. You couldn’t drive down the street without crushing them. That was the summer of death, the air sick with hundreds of tiny dead bodies, and none of them princes.

Under sheets of snow, it has been hard not to long for summer. But what I hope for is not always what I get. I used to imagine a lot of things. Now I mostly get them wrong. My wrongness sees the flaws in what is right.

It snowed again in the city and a stranger grabbed my arm in the station. I looked at his smile and didn’t know what to say.

I escaped to a bookstore. I noticed the shop smelled like my cabin and I told this to the cashier. “It’s the incense,” she told me, “to cover up the smell of rot.”

these words by Eileen Mary Holowka were inspired by the colour of Sarah Williams

Laëtitia, an elegy

A barking, seal-like cough, melancholia. Morphing sounds. Reinvent your face. Chaos. Knot of reeds. A village in the south of France, Vaucluse department. Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur. On the banks of the Rhône. Shut away. Years were lost to you. To me, us. Aged twenty-nine. Seizures. Psychosis. Laëtitia.

Incarcerated at Montdevergues Asylum, avenue de la Pinède. On a hill in Montfavet, near Avignon. You survived. The brutality you had lived. Short term memory loss. Until that savagery. Until disfigurement with straight jackets. Cast of grisaille. Branches, mixed media. Tore into your skull. Prisons and carceral spaces. Pages ripped out, the many rooms.

fields of lavender
tossing stones into river
summer after summer

Unkempt children, dirty dishes. When life became surreal. Relentless fatigue. Weight loss. The layering of old. Acrylic on cradled wood panel. Finishing nails. Bamboo bone folder. Juxtaposed grey-black. Dreamlike. Scraping. Shadow boxes.

Wrapped in ochre earth. White and the silences. We all will have narratives. As if we had witnessed it. Little did you know about the curse. You did not know the word madness, Laëtitia. Born in Nogent-sur-Seine. Fascinated with clay and shells as a child. Collage, junque, glass.

Unmournable. A grave in the cemetery of Monfavet. You’ll know about how I loved, Laëtitia. Avignon scouring mistral winds. Leaving the sun to shine. You will never speak the word, Mother.

guided to water’s edge
goddess appearing as crow
summoning the moon

these words by Ilona Martonfi were inspired by the colour of Raphael Varona

From the author: “Marginalized, the outsider. From the locked doors of the psychiatric ward and hospital. Led us to the local outpatient foster home, homeless shelter, streets where they spent their days.”

On Silence and Domestic Abuse

I was fifteen years old when she told me for the first time. I had asked her how she was doing. She looked squarely into my eyes, which look exactly like hers, and said words that she would go on to repeat many times: “I am waiting to die.” She said it in her usual way: tired yet hard and brazen. No tremble, no sadness. Defiant eyes. She didn’t say it to complain, or to illicit pity. (Though that’s what the others sometimes said about her.)

Most grandchildren don’t expect to hear that kind of language. Not me. I was fairly certain I knew why she said it. I knew about the angry welts on her body from his hands. I had been there once as a small child when he grabbed her by the hair and smashed her head toward the corner of the wooden cabinet. It was the last thing I saw before she pushed me out of the room and closed the door with her falling weight. I knew that she had been the sole breadwinner her whole life, working manual labour to put food on the table, to pay for her children’s school fees, to unwillingly fund his addictions to gambling and prostitutes, cigarettes and alcohol. (This later came to include funding his child support payments for those illegitimate children that we didn’t talk about but whose mouths were also fed by her hard work.) These, after all, had been the constant realities of my life as I flitted in and out of their home, not quite innocent enough to escape their burning silences but thankfully spared from the fits of rage and violence that I knew existed underneath. But I still had to ask her “Why?” to hear it from her own lips.

“Because my health is clearly worse than his, and at this rate, the only way I will find peace away from him is when I’m gone.” She was in her mid-seventies at this point.

“But if what you want is to be free of him, isn’t there anything we can do other than wait? Can’t you get a divorce? Can’t you move out and stop living with him?” I asked. Visions of my grandmother as I had never known her, happy and carefree, danced before me.

“There’s no point.” She seemed instantly to regret saying anything, shooing away my questions and telling me that I wouldn’t – couldn’t – understand. There was too much I didn’t know. In my teenage mind, I felt patronized. What was she keeping from me?

I asked my mother. I asked my aunts. I got mixed responses. From “We’ve tried. We’ve offered multiple times to move her out, but she won’t leave. And he won’t leave either,” to the more frightening, “She’s past the point of moving on. There’s nothing you can do for her now.” I felt impotent. I thought about those defiant eyes; that hard stare that she gave him when she wordlessly served him his breakfast, lunch and supper which she cooked from scratch, no matter how bedridden the doctors told her she was. Diabetes, hypertension, a heart attack: nothing could stop her from keeping him fed. It seemed impossible to understand – if she wanted it to end, why didn’t she just walk away?

Ten years have passed since she first declared to me that she was waiting to die. Her body is older, closer to the relief she seeks and further from us who love her. On a warm January morning this year, she told me yet again, “My bones are very tired. I am waiting to die.” And for once, finally, she was ready to say why.

“My father had wanted to choose a husband for me, as was common in those days, but I was headstrong and insisted on marrying your grandfather out of love. We had known each other since we were children; we grew up as neighbours. My father relented and we got married. The first couple years were okay. We had your aunt and your mother. But then, things started changing even before your uncle and aunt were born. You know already: gambling , alcohol, prostitutes. I had to start working, and then I had to work more and more. We were getting poorer and poorer…at some points we were barely eating, and we had to pull your aunt out of school. My father tried to loan us money but your grandfather always spent it all. Since I’m a woman, my father couldn’t trust me with money…he always gave the loans directly to your grandfather. But it was always gone before it ever reached me or the children, and I could never pay my father back, no matter how hard I worked. I could barely put food on the table with my salary. He eventually had to cut us off because he realized that any cent he loaned us would be a cent wasted. He passed away before I could ever pay him back, before I could ever apologize for costing him so much and for having wronged him so greatly with my choice of husband.”

Before I could say a word, she continued.

“My mother was much more sympathetic. She moved in with us to care for your mother and her siblings so that I could work more hours. Sometimes, I would have to go away for days at a time. She always begged me not to go for too long.”

Tears were falling down her cheeks.

“One day, your great-grandmother got sick while I was gone. She must have been in her late 70s and she was such a tiny, frail person. Your aunt took her to the doctor’s, where they diagnosed her…”

The tears came stronger; her words almost a whisper.

“With an infection that came from untreated chlamydia. Your aunt had to translate the doctor’s questions as to how on earth a woman at that age could have contracted…”

She paused. The realization dawned on me.

“…a venereal disease. And that’s how I found out that he had been raping my own mother for nearly twenty years.”

She took a pause. We blew our noses, and wiped our tears.

“She said she never told me because he threatened her by saying that if she ever told, he would hurt me and the girls. Of course, by that point he already had… your aunt and uncle were forced onto me by assault. I didn’t want to have any more children after your mother was born. And my little girls… I could only protect them when I was home, but when I wasn’t around…Your mother was seven years old when she came crying to me when I got back from work. She said she had been bent over, feeding the chickens when he came over and…and…”

She couldn’t finish.

“He used to break broomstick handles over your mother’s head for her insolence. But she always fought back. Not like your great-grandmother. She was so tiny, so meek…I can never forgive myself for any of it.”

My ears felt like they were ringing, my chest felt heavy, my eyes were stinging. Three generations of women before me had been abused by the man who was sitting on the other side of the house…

Except that he wasn’t. He wasn’t on the other side of the house. Somehow, in all our sadness, we had missed the sound of his footsteps approaching. He was suddenly standing there, in the doorway looking silently at our puffy eyes and runny noses.

As our eyes met, he said, “Did you read the news about the EU?”

I was incapable of saying a word. I wanted to get up and punch him in the face. I wanted to lash out and scream at him. I wanted to push him down the stairs, out of the house and away from all the people that I loved.

I looked at my grandmother. The defiant eyes were gone. She did not look scared of him: she looked scared of me. She gave an almost imperceptible shake of the head as if to say “Don’t.” I thought I understood. He had already ruined everything that was sacred to her…her mother, her father, her children, herself. If I said anything, he would be on her as soon as I left. I kept my mouth shut. Once he had crossed to the living room, she whispered that I must promise to never never breathe a word to him about it. I promised, frightened of what he would do to her.

I spent much of the next twenty four hours horrified. I tried to convince her that we needed to make a plan to get her away from him. She was infuriated by my many suggestions.

“You promised me you wouldn’t make a fuss!”

When it was clear that I wasn’t intending on giving up, she took me aside and looked me in the eye.

“I’m not afraid of your grandfather. He can do nothing worse than what he has already done. So stop trying to ruin everything. I was foolish to think that you would ever understand.”

I was so confused. I had thought that she didn’t want me to say anything precisely because she was afraid of the violence he might cause.

It has taken me a long time for me to understand why she hasn’t left. I see now that my grandmother has had very few choices in her life…but her choice to stay or leave is hers to make, not mine to make for her. So much has already been taken from her. Who am I to take away her one last choice to solemnly await death? She has decided for herself that while on earth she cannot escape the madness and guilt of his doing. No physical distance from him can set her free from her anger towards herself. She seems to choose to be within hating distance of him so as to concentrate all her silent fury outward, instead of in. As much as she hates him, I feel she hates herself more for not having been able to stop him. She comes from a generation that doesn’t believe in counselling, so I have no way to help her shed her guilt. Instead, she waits for the end.

these words by Jo-Ann Zhou were inspired by the colour of Raphael Varona

On Vulnerability: “Forsaken Feathers”

Two seagulls fly low, weaving underneath and above each other. Their interactions caught in a glimpse, mid-form. Black footprints upon the white glistening snow match these black tipped birds as they fly against white cloud. They weave underneath and above, through their mirrored existence. Our environment runs parallel to our creation; our image is chosen/created, our feathers with which we cloak ourselves.

Their flight draws my eyes down as they land on the branch above you. The wind dances through each branch of the tree, an invisible force that shakes the soul from complacency. That same wind blows your coat open from across the park. Stealing the air right out from my lungs, it continues to power through your feathers.

Above you, the leaves rustle against this force, and your subconscious proclamation of self exposes itself through vibrancy, a testament of individuality.

I only see what you have conscripted to be yours. The cultivation of your portrayal is just an accumulation of elements favoured and adopted from others. (I would know.)

The tree above me is my own product. A manifestation of a lifetime of observation and careful selection, with cherished values, amplified desires, and distorted experiences.

My tree, your tree; up through the rough, textured trunk which grows stronger and taller with every opinion adopted. Each tree is an existential playground for us to swing, explore, and grow in our own identity: a branch for every joy, a root for every sadness. The forest of humanity lives and breathes, grows and dies. The leaves shed as seasons of growth embody the human condition of evolution.

Who I am and how my tree grows is an elaborate reflection of all that I chose to define me.

Unfamiliar feathers tickle my chin. One leg wrapped around another hold us close. Velvety flesh sliding and sticking; we are but two trees in a winter forest. You’ve dominated my perception as shards of you sear into my skin. Hot breath heavy and damp pass between us… through us… The wind is still. There is but you and I. Aside from our biologies/biology, we are indistinguishable.

My tree will never stand as tall as it does in this immortal moment, next to you. Perhaps, before, it did, when we met in crisp white and black footprints.

Our fingers then fumbled with the buttons of our cloaks and we cautiously shed our defensive feathers, leaving them for the birds. The same feathers where we chose to hide ourselves left us in blank white nakedness. Nude from perception and projection, abandoning ego driven expectation.

But they will return, just as we must re-dress. And my walk, your eyes, my charm, your laugh, will carry on painting an image from borrowed colours. Each personalized tree a displayed collection of borrowed attributes. We can do nothing but motion forward in this jungle world, searching for those moments where our feathers shed and our trees stand taller than they have before.

these words by Alexandra Sheffield were inspired by the colour of Raphael Varona

From the author: “This art inspired an exploration on the self engineered image we wear for others recognition. Ones image as a lifetime of accumulative elements becoming hypostatized as an emblematic tree. How far are we willing to go to maintain this image? When and for who do we drop the façade and allow ourselves to be exposed?”

Dear Men: You Can’t Opt Out of Patriarchy by Derailing Her Post

Bro: you gotta stop.

No yes buts or but not all – just stop.

Some posts are not open for debate.

Yes – breathe: some things are not debatable.

Some posts are shared to simply call out bullshit.

Some are shared to release pent up things that destroy mental health.

Some are shared because violence is contingent on secrecy and omission.

Don’t comment yet – acknowledge that some posts do not require your input.

Breathe, brother!

What the fuck am I talking about?

When you comment on a post shared by a woman about how women are not believed when they say they have been attacked to say that well men are not always violent, it’s more than ironic that you’re trying to discredit a woman who says the discrediting of sexual assault claims reinforces the frequency of violence against women through its normalisation: it’s gutless.

Where the fuck do I get off?

I am a man. I feel entitled to talk about anything.

Seriously: violence against women is the disproportionate responsibility of men to resolve, and this is why men need to prevent each other from derailing women’s solidarity movements in order to make ourselves feel better.

WTF why is it my disproportionate responsibility?

Violence against women is disproportionately committed by men and patriarchal systems benefit men – whether or not individual men invented the system.

We play the game on an easier level than women, and this easy level is drawn from the fact that they play on expert level.

What the fuck are you saying?

If you live in a system whose insecurity requires body counts to show it is working, someone’s bodies will be targeted, and, in terms of gender, they are not ours.

When was the last time that you were attacked because you were a man?

How does this relate to anything?

A woman who is traumatized by being attacked releases the truth about her attack (with all of the stigma that will now be associated to her; which is why so few women expose sexual attacks) and you choose to remind her that even her friends are going to join in on discrediting her, revealing your support for systemic violence against women while you are tasked to dismantle it.

The least you could do is not derail the anti-violent labour that you aren’t doing.

Your choice to question the validity of sexual assault survivors says that attempting to exonerate yourself from being associated with violent men overrules the health of women’s bodies.

This choice is more than gutless: it is violent.

Instead of using up a reserve of guilt to make sure that you are not associated with other men (impossible because you’re benefiting from the violence just as I am; easy level), use it to hold violent men accountable.

Use your passion to instead investigate why rape is so normal.

Investigate why the pervasiveness of rape means that rapists are the students sitting beside you and the teachers at the front of the room and the bus drivers and cousins and customer service folk and your best friends, and what this pervasiveness says about the strength of the influences that socialize us to become violent with women.

Or do anything that serves to dismantle patriarchal violence.

If your goal is to stop violence, break down the influences that prompt men to rape.

If your goal is to stop violence, and you discredit victims while ignoring the existence of the attacker, you’re being inconsistent.

That’s not how murderers are held accountable.

Bro: be consistent.

Do anything before outing yourself as part of the problem.

Comment support or do not comment anything at all.

colour of Raphael Varona

From the author: “I wrote this after seeing male reactions to women’s sharing after the verdict of serial abuser Jian Gomeshi. Guilt of being associated with this violent man seems to have prompted guys to question women about the seriousness of their experiences of sexual assault, derailing posts of solidarity, placing their attempts for exoneration over the health of female bodies around them – although patriarchy is not something men can simply opt out of.

Men were similarly commenting on posts that were made out of solidarity as though to ask that these women educate them about sexual violence, presuming that women exist to volunteer their time to make men less violent. Men are instead responsible to educate one another to reduce violence, and this type of commenting represents the disparity of emotional labour in Canada.”

On the Invisibility of Mental Illness

“When Surviving Is Too Difficult”

They say that genius and madness are two sides of the same coin.

Well, my genius is elusive—I am descending into madness.

I feel crazy. Genuinely crazy. I feel as if an intangible, impregnable, unidentifiable force is weighing down on me, is clouding my mind.

It limits my judgement and tests my patience. I am struggling to break free from my own self-imposed shackles.

It is difficult to be strong when I feel so mentally and physically weak.

The bones in my body are frail, my sanity is fragile. The bones in my body do not form a skeleton—they form a carcass.

I am carcass.

Inside this carcass is emptiness, but the emptiness has a heaviness of its own.

I am a victim of my insecurities.
I am overwhelmed by my shortcomings.
I am burdened by my expectations.

For some of us, surviving is too difficult. I am tired of battling against my own mind.

I am tired. I am tired. I am tired.

My mind is an incredible thing, its capacity is endless; yet it continues to torment me.

these words by Fiona Williams were inspired by the colour of Alex Andreev

On Masculinity and Relationships: “When I’m Alone”

I’m pretty sure she fucked her ex at a wedding once. I mean I can’t be sure but I think that’s probably what happened.

When she’s away I wear the same pair of underwear at least two days in a row. I throw a little party for myself in the kitchen with a bottle of wine and I cook food that I know I won’t have to share. I always thought, Why does dad make spicy food when mom’s gone? Why does he cook steak?

When we first got together (yes it was summer, and yes it was humid, and yes the light on her face through the lace curtains in her room was dappled and soft) we would talk about how we’d never cause each other any pain. We would talk about how we should never leave the bed and we would wish we never got hungry or thirsty. We would scrunch up our eyes and wish we never had to get up to go to the bathroom.

She goes away on business sometimes or to visit her mother in Vancouver. I don’t know what she does while she’s there. I send her text messages and ask her what she’s doing. But I don’t tell her I’m sitting by the kitchen window eating a whole pizza, getting drunk and chain-smoking to reruns of Seinfeld with my laptop on the table.

The two of them went to this wedding together and it was no big deal because we’d just spent a whole week in bed wishing we didn’t have to go out to buy milk. Now that we live together, I think about it. Some time I’m going to ask her, Did you sleep with Bryan at the wedding? (I won’t say fuck him, I’ll ask if she slept with him.) Or I’ll say, I know you slept with Bryan at that wedding.

I always clean the apartment before she comes home. She brings it up when we fight, that I don’t ever finish cleaning the place. I’ve always got laundry to do and it takes a long time to vacuum the carpet. I’m usually hungover so it takes more time than I thought it would.

Once she’s back, I apologize. I ask her how her trip was and I make a salad or pasta for dinner, then we eat in front of the TV.

When she’s home I go out for walks by myself.

these words by Sandy Martin were inspired by the colour of Alex Andreev

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