FRIEND.

…

seventh

eighth

seventeenth

nineteenth

twenty-first 🧺

- part two

twenty-second 🧺

twenty-fourth 🧺

DRAWER.

I get the feeling and a strange sense,

that you’re glad that I escaped, that from there I left.

When our towns daily newspaper had talked about me,

I wonder if you bought that edition to see.

I wonder if somewhere you hide a secret drawer,

where you keep your memories and regrets,

Movie tickets, funeral cards,

newspaper clippings, and cassettes.

Do you go through that drawer while sitting on the couch,

The one my mother designed from the catalog?

That couch that has seen you through three marriages now,

The same one your new wife sits on?

I wonder what the difference between us is,

why we are the way that we are,

We don’t have many similarities;

The contrast is so stark.

Your opportunities were boundless,

You could’ve done anything,

your parents were married and owned their home,

you played sports in the spring.

But me, I didn’t have those privileges,

and it’s all because of you,

my childhood I spent bounced back-and-forth,

you divorced when I was two.

Mom raised me independently,

and independent I was raised to be.

Everything I’ve done is no part thanks to you.

Its all been because of me.

But even all these years later,

I know you’ve watched, and listened to the grapevine.

Even after everything that’s happened,

you’ve been proud of me all this time.

I wonder if someday when you’re gone and when I get that call,

I’ll go over to your place, survey, and start to comb through all,

your personal belongings, prized possessions, and some more,

But I wonder more than anything, if I’ll ever find that drawer…

LOVE, DEAR ABBY

…

twelfth

fourteenth ❄️

eighteenth

LOVE, DEAR ABBY

“You are the most beautiful place I’ve ever been.”

i was a lover, you were a lesson.

BAND-AID

Call your new toy by your pet name for me,

insist that that’s not how that is but I see,

I caught you red handed as you replaced me.

It was plain and simple, Destiny.

Pretend that you’re pure and that you share love,

But I know how to tell when looking at one,

You’re unstable and you blame everyone.

No wonder you’re so lonely in Edmonton.

Claim you don’t take sides yet turn and ‘campaign’,

To get others to leave me, but with you to stay,

The fact that it’s not real, that’s really the shame.

They’ll leave you one day.

You were shocked and confused when I stood up to you,

Went crying to Kevin, but he thought it through,

He knew that you were lying to him too.

Too bad. Screw you.

Do you need an emotional Band-Aid?

You’ve got no friends left after your charade.

Wish I could say I’m surprised, but I ain’t.

And it’s all because you’re a snake.

On Monday, you cried to me bout your boyfriend,

Then Tuesday, you told me, I wasn’t a good friend,

Three weeks ago you decided it was the end.

Not such a nice Canadian.



You made up some false narrative in your head,

Badmouthed me to all of our mutual friends,

And now to me, you’re simply dead.

Hope it was worth it in the end.

LOVE, DEAR ABBY







There’s a statue of you in the gardens of my mind.

KEYCHAIN.

Walking two miles in the night rain, crying, shaking, nervous,

Feeling like Red Riding Hood,

standing on my grandmothers porch, How do I tell her,

her son’s the Big Bad Wolf?

She tells me in public that effort goes both ways,

That I need to try harder,

She knows that he’s made his choice,

That he doesn’t care and that he’s no father,

The fact that in public, she’ll tell me one thing

and in private, something different

It’s all an illusion and smoke screen.

I know that I was never important.

Holding that stupid keychain is proof that I never stopped trying,

So often I try to make plans and he’d put me off every time,

She’d look at me as I cried to her, with her own crocodile tears,

I don’t know how her son being a deadbeat isnt one of her biggest fears.

And so I left with that same keychain, not knowing what to do with it

Maybe I’d throw it in the woods or a lake, but I couldn’t go through with it.

I held onto that thing for a goddamn year and it taunted me every day

Until I eventually found the person it belonged to, the person with whom it was meant to stay,

I had a whole speech ready to recite upon giving him that keychain,

But of course, when it came time to actually do it, I had nothing in my brain.

I stuttered and rushed and mumbled hoping that whatever I said,

Would still carry its meaning and at the very least make sense.

To my surprise he actually cared, and used his words to convey,

How much he loved and was honored that I’d given him the keychain.

Immediately, he hung it up somewhere safe, making me feel like a daughter,

It was then that I realized I had missed out on what it felt like to have a father.

LOVE, DEAR ABBY

“if you ever wonder why your friends leave you, you already have your answer:

friends don’t leave you; users do.”

“If there’s a sun in my solar system, it’s you.”

- abby