i.

change.

vines with nails, holding my hand.

breathe it in

cosmic pressure.

i sound alive but what if i'm simply

not?

the seasons change too quick - you saw it all,

felt it, anyway. watched the sky turn red.

i've got hummingbird wings

and i live outside your window; far.

ii.

past.

i screamed a lot in the silence.

bled out for things that didn't deserve it.

lived to regret it, or not.

drew circles in the dirt and thought i knew

where to stand.

iii.

present.

atoms and black holes: pressure.

had a fist around my life until

i let it go.

falling through the trees, landing in the brush.

assessing my injuries,

trying to pluck the sun out of the sky.

iv.

future.

i'll trip over my feet. fall in and out again,

i'm sure.

make up some nonsense in my head for who i am,

but all of it will be meaningless.

write a million words.

sing in the sunlight.

melt under the light of the moon.

watch days slide by.

claw the thorns out of my palms.

cry laugh burn and do it all over again.

v.

change.

once i was on a boat in a sea of darkness,

but it wasn't a boat

and i wasn't alone.

i'm shooting through time.

speed of light

it was flashlights in the dark,

soft glowing flames,

a small sprout on a crow,

broken galaxies, the unfairness of it all,

pocket knives and cat eyes and jagged rocks.

plaid, croissants, poetry.

i am it, and it

is i.

i am becoming

I once cradled a phone to my ear on Christmas Eve, screen cracked and memory filled with images and videos of teenage debauchery I felt made me better then everyone else. Breakup texts and photos of horrible moments captured for posterity I felt made me more understood than anyone else ever had felt. I proudly denounced my family over the speaker to their heart aching silence. I screamed that they were not my home- that I had found it within a someone or other's decrepit little shell of a place a teenager had been able to drink, smoke, and engage in anything they wanted to. It felt like a party, not like the strict confines of a family. I deserved to wallow and hate, because hate is easier than hurt. My shadows couldn't quite reach me, so small and obscure beneath dingy bulbs and the diet of fast food and faster living.

And I woke up today, Christmas morning eighty years later in my childhood bed with my mother bringing me coffee. Her face is so weathered from the stress I've caused among many others, but she still offered me a warm smile and a kiss to my forehead. I ate breakfast with my brothers, and scuffled with them as a little sister ought to before we played our favourite childhood video games with the same level of skills (I lost, and they would tease me, and I would cry for my mom to make them stop). And then I gathered with my grandma and my aunt's family, and noticed under warm and full bulbs that my shadow had grown up, too. It sat behind me with the old ghosts that haunt each of my loved ones, and for once, I felt at home.

I am sure there have been pivotal moments that have led to this change aside age. But somewhere out there, a tree was planted the day I was born. And that tree stands still, as do I. And that must mean something. But, today, I woke up, and I felt okay. Linear as it may be, or as sudden as comparing the two moments everyone in my family remembers from that lonely and fateful night, I am okay. I am home.

Nick is standing at the side entrance of his apartment building. There’s a cool wind coming off the Saint John River, that’s chilling his bones. He shivers, and he knows that his faux-leather jacket, bought for a mere 30 bucks at WalMart, does nothing to insulate his body, but he doesn’t care. Nick is going for a look, and big-headedness aside, the reflection in the glass door, seems to say that he’s pulling it off.

He has a guitar in a case that he's holding, and though he tries not to make a habit of it, he’s smoking a cigarette. Nick is smiling though. He’s happy as a clam. He’s 21 years old and he’s waiting for a cabby to pick him up and take him uptown for his first solo gig. Just him, a stool, a guitar and a mic, in front of a couple hundred people at Jesse’s bar and grill. And sure, he understands that they aren’t there for him, they’re just going to be enjoying Friday night wings, there’s still going to be an audience, and he’s going to play his heart out.

He’s 33 years old sitting at his home office, staring at a picture his son made him for Father’s Day. It’s a rocket ship flying through space. There are stars and a moon made of glitter. There’s tin foil and green, blue and orange markers on the rocket ship. At the nose of the ship is a cut-out picture of his son, smiling. On the bottom of the black construction paper, is written. “I love you to the moon and back.”

Tears are streaming down Nick’s face as he stares at the picture. He’s remembering the day his son brought it home from school. Jumping and giddy with excitement. On his desk, there’s another Father’s Day gift from his son from the year before. This one says My Dad Rocks in black paint, and there’s a large round rock for Nick, and a small thin rock for Luke. Beside that is a framed picture of him, his son and his daughter sitting on bleachers at Coronation Park on a beautiful Saturday in July where a nice cool breeze blew through the ball field. Nick’s wife Cassandra snapped the picture, right after they raced across the park and their faces were beet red.

Cassandra is upstairs packing a suitcase. She’s leaving, and driving to the East side to her parents place. The kids are leaving too, but they don’t know it yet. They’re both playing with their Christmas presents on the floor of Nick’s home office, which has been deemed “The Dancing Room” because his record player is set up next to his desk, and he spends more time dancing with the kids than he does working on his manuscript.

She told Nick to say goodbye to Luke and Emily. “I’ll bring them back in a week,” she said coldly. Zero trace of the woman who read in her vows that she’d love him enough for a hundred life times. She was gone. Nick feels like in many ways, he killed her.

Emily is wearing a pink tracksuit that Nick’s mother bought her for Christmas. Her Tony Soprano outfit, she called it. She’s dragged her Sesame Street bin of Barbie’s into the dancing room, and she’s on the floor repeatedly changing their outfits, and making unintelligible but beautifully precious conversation between them.

Luke is sitting on the love seat with a small table in front of him. There are Pokemon coloring pages, and several packs of crayons dumped into a tupperware container. He’s coloring and humming to himself. He’s always humming, and whispering under his breath. It’s strange, but it never fails to put a smile on Nick’s face.

He turns and looks at them. And just says, “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.” They don’t answer. They’re both in their own world. The beautiful land of make believe, where Nick spent many years as a kid, only to find himself thrust into a world of reality so painful, he couldn’t bear it.

In the corner of the office, are his bookshelves, and two acoustic guitars. An old Fender that belonged to his father, and a red Takamine that he bought on Marketplace several years before. They’re both collecting dust.

He grabs the Fender, and sits on the floor next to his kids. He closes his eyes, and tries to channel the land of make believe.

He’s 21 years old again, fumbling with a patch cord that’s in a large plastic bin at the back of the pub. He’s trying to untangle it, and he can feel his face flushing. He isn’t sure if the people in the bar notice, but he’s sure they do, and it’s filling his face with heat.

Nick manages to unplug it, and then makes it way to the soundboard. He was told that someone would come and set it up for him, but there isn’t anyone around, and he’s figuring that no one is coming.

But despite the rough start to the evening, he figures it out and sits on a small stool, takes a deep breath, and says, “mic check. Mic check.” No one laughs, and he even receives a couple of thumbs up from some guys in the back corner booth. Something small like that, takes the heat away from his face, and lowers his heart rate.

The set is two hours long, and for a mediocre guitar player without a band to extend songs through jamming, he has about 35 songs prepared. He played them and recorded them at his apartment and they went fifteen minutes over the 2 hour mark, but he figures here, in front of these people, his nerves will speed up the songs.

He’s written 15 originals, some ready to be performed, others not so much. The rest will be covers of Neil Young, Springsteen, Lennon, McCartney, The Stones, Paul Simon, Billy Joel, and a few Jack White songs.

A pretty red headed waitress brings him two bottles of Alexander Keith’s beer and tells him to break a leg and winks.

His first song is an original called For You, a rocker that he always envisioned playing live with a fully plugged in band, and rocking out at a great venue like Madison Square Garden. It seems to go over well. He fumbles a few chord changes, and messes up a couple of verses, but this was one of the songs that wasn’t fully completed, but a favorite of his nonetheless, that he felt he needed to play.

There’s a woman sitting near the front with a couple of big loud mouths that are laughing obnoxiously amongst themselves, as though they’re the only two people in the bar. But she isn’t part of the conversation. From Nick’s vantage point, she looks like a third wheel, though he assumes that she’s one of their girlfriends.

She has black hair, and pale skin, with scarlet lipstick. She’s wearing a leather jacket and skin tight jeans. Her hair is straight and down to her shoulders, and she’s wearing glasses with large black rims.

Her hand is resting softly on her chin, and she’s listening, fully listening. Nick scans the rest of the bar as he covers Springsteen’s Atlantic City, and doesn’t notice another person in the entire pub that’s paying attention, but she is. And man, is she ever beautiful.

Her name is Cassandra.

Nick is 25 years old, and he’s sitting on a flight next to an old woman who’s reading an Agatha Christie whodunnit. His hands are clammy, and he’s rubbing them repeatedly on his jeans. He has a Larry McMurtry novel in the mesh of the backseat in front of him, but he’s too nervous to grab it.

He hates flying, but he’s happy to be going home. He’s been gone for over two months training for a job on the railroad. While he’s been gone, his pregnant girlfriend gave birth to a beautiful baby boy and just before that moved to Northern New Brunswick to a house he’s never been in, and to a city he’s never lived in.

He’s thinking about landing, and how he’s going to kiss the pavement on the tarmac when he does. He’s thinking about the cab ride that’ll take him to his new home, and to his new family, and the thoughts are hard to comprehend.

The plane lands in the tiny airport, and though he doesn’t kiss the ground, the walk from the plane to the airport is one of great calm and accomplishment. The cab ride is quiet. And when the old man pulls him into his new driveway, he sees Cassandra, waiting outside, holding a newborn baby boy. Nick feels tears stinging his eyes.

He thanks the cabbie, exits the car and grabs his suitcase out of the trunk. The walk across the small driveway is one that’ll forever be etched in his mind. He hugs his wife and his son, and feels like he could stay in that position forever.

He’s 33 years old and he’s playing music for his kids, as Cassandra walks down the steps and tells them to get their stuff ready.

He’s 34 years old, and he and Cassandra are sitting in Nick’s car overlooking the river and drinking coffee. He’s telling her how he’s been attending anger management classes, and how he’s been seeing a therapist. He also tells her that he’s back at the gym and working out five nights a week at the fitness center on McDonald.

They get out of the car, and walk over the grass hill to the walking path below. She takes his hand in hers, and they walk.

He tells her he’s dealing with his financial problems, his issues of abandonment, of loneliness and inadequacies as a husband and a wife. He tells her he’s sorry for taking those issues out on her, and that it wasn’t fair.

She tells him that some of the things she said weren’t fair either.

He’s 35 years old, and he’s sitting on the floor of the dancing room, playing music, and in front of him, Cassandra, Luke and Emily watch attentively.

Since she’s had my baby, Lord, how I’d love to see her again just once. The boys make dirty jokes about her and I don’t care, I’m telling you, I just don’t. ’Cause the day I rode up to her momma’s house and brought her to the church to make her my bride, when she was so skinny about the waist, I pictured her getting fat one day, and not so girly.

Not just fat, I seen her in my mind’s eye old, wrinkly and foul. In that purdy white dress her mammaw made, I tried to picture her foul. But even when she’s old like that, I seen her pretty blue eyes and her modest expression, and I knew as long as she had that soft expression, she would always be purdy to me. It’s the darnedest thing. Ain’t a woman who lived purdier than my girl, that’s for sure.

I met her in high school. She was almost 17 on our wedding day, two weeks before I shipped out. And soon enough she wrote me a letter telling me, she says, “Come home soon. I’m having your baby soon.” It scared the hell out of me, ’cause I’m a daddy now. But I just want to see my girl. I just want to know how she looks since being a momma. I know she looks different, I already know she won’t be the same. But I do think, I really do, I think, she’ll be even purdier.

Life keeps going on

While I'm sitting on the floor

Watching the mirror

Touching the skin on my skeleton

The soul has gone, yet return with the limb

Bringing back a broken vessel

Clothed with white tape

Tinted with spit and splat on my lap

Sudden knock come on my door

The phone rang non stop in the next room

Call for the missus from the next line

And I

Gracely run

Showed off my patched vessel

A bright soul with no color or tint

your words scorched my skin.

the flesh peeling off bit by bit with each hurtful phrase.

left naked and exposed.

I molted your grip.

Shook free.

The me you created.

is not me. At all.

I died with this change.

I am beautiful. And powerful.

You were an exoskeleton of deep seated pain and deep rooted darkness.

I am once again light. And love.

A glow worm.

A phoenix.

A unicorn.

All things adorable. mythical. majestic. and untouchable.

A tiny seed, shed by a flower long ago,

Fell to the ground and got covered with snow.

Despite rain and deep frost

The little seed started to grow!

Though throughout winter it hibernated,

Like the bear, it awakened

And metamorphosed,

From caterpillar to butterfly,

One life, two forms.

The seedling grows and blooms

And sheds its own seed in turn.

A new year will come

And new life will come and go.

Every year I watch the flowers grow,

And await my turn to go.

Jarring. Jagged. Destabilizing; as my janky world view stumbles through the temporal space. Chunks fly off and half-baked ideas hastily bolted on. A spaceship on fire and resurrecting in unison as it moves through an infinite void. That's how I felt as I make my way through a former coworker's Christmas party. I learned that Tai, another former colleague, finally found their one and had gotten married and bought a house in Surrey; whereas my relationships have been a trail of shambles. Tom has been smashing down shots after shots the whole night, walking into glass staircases as he reels over his 12 years of marriage coming to an end. I had vagabonded from one social event to another, in search of a friend or a patch of camaraderie. Year's end, year's beginning - a random stake in the Gregorian calendar year - a striking symbolic blow to our Now.

Something magical happens

When you let grudges go-

When no one has no longer wronged you

In times when you only thought of it so-

Something magical happens

When we get enough sleep

Take a break from our busy day

Rest, Cry, sleep, weep

Something magical happens

When we tell someone how we feel

The chemicals in our brain-

Release anxiety

Thoughts heal-

Something magical happens

When were under the light of the moon

Naked in nature

Or educated in school

Something magical happens when were in the right crowd-

When we find each other surrounded by others

With friends who won't let us down-

We feel our spirits lifted

Like we could rule the crowd

Something magical happens

If we look for it here-

When we transform ourselves from last year-

When we change without fear

We need to find magic

For there's not a lot left-

Let magic be the one to guide you

As you take your next step

Watch as......Something Magical happens