Tucked neatly between a new dispensary and some club that’ll probably be shut down in a few months rots a bundle of flowers and the body of my neighbour Undiscovered, made anonymous, the scent is sweet! sweeter than the sugar wafting out from the almond croissant sitting in the cafe across the street. It’s spring, of course. they never got the chance to know it the way I’ll forget to For a moment, the fog picks up and reveals a thread looping its way through the chambers of the people made into strangers rushing in, out, through, sometimes past each other and it’s like, sure its time to pay our rent, clock in the next day, Wake up, practice whatever this curious dance we’re all doing is For the recital that can’t ever be booked For the crowd full of cowards, traitors, liars who show up empty handed hungry, always unsatisfied It bends our joints backwards, immobile, unnatural. lifts our heads up to some lazy parody of heaven this way we can always be three years old crying "pick me, carry me up across this puddle it's bigger than my body, I'm so much smaller than the world" anybody Some body anybody But the fog lifts right before the song loops Damn, there’s that moment of silence Our breath catches out of rhythm I know you know we know I know I know I know The bouquet’s made of dandelions, Goodnight texts sent and responded to through Do Not Disturb, grass, Funeral RSVP’s, Your hands held open (a door) for the person behind you when you’re already late, creeping buttercup, The blueprints for how to blow up every bank every prison every border every police station every plantation (physical, mental, spiritual or otherwise) Milkweeds, A bottle of all the bitter tears shed for someone else’s futile suffering, Some more dandelions. and finally, the flower I didn’t know the name of last week that I took a picture of so I could find out when I was granted some of my time soon, sometime soon The thread’s made out of the same kind of stuff too. We can probably cut these ‘weeds’ at the root. Take back what always belonged to us, share them to say “I love you too” It grows with or without prayer, pushing through the concrete It’s waiting, bloomed.
1Advocates identify man found frozen to death at Toronto bus stop in January
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this was written in remembrance of Bernard Kelly, and to the person who killed themselves in the subway on one of the first beautiful, sunny warm days of the year a few weeks ago
and to every one who didn’t make it through this winter, or only did so in parts.