Ryan

Dew. Soft dew blossoms into a million shards of light that pierce the bedsheets, the warm wool blankets, and enter inside my core. Light near my ribs, my heart. Arranging itself snugly. 

With love, we crave the fiery twine,

we revise and rewind 

until we live it all again. 

"What is this love that loves us so?"

I wake up in a pretty hotel room in Vancouver. Big curtains fall into velvet waves. I touch its folds and close my eyes. Maybe a hungry salmon mouth will nibble here and there.

Nibble. 

No.

Ryan is shooting on location for another six months. We said goodbye last night. 

The British Columbia fogs and mists are perfect against Nina's ivory complexion and blood gushes. Good blushes. Blood gushes. 

She'll scream and claw her way through the set and through his eyes. 

I am doing a semester abroad in Paris. I ain't never been to Europe before so I'm nervous. B.C. was the first time we left the states and went north to Canada where the land is cold and friendly.

We explored, we swam the cold rivers. Him in me, me in him. Cold and clean and pure. Rocks that break in half from the cold. They didn't break but our hearts did.

He packed my stuff neatly. He is organized. He bought my plane ticket, he near wanted to go to Paris for me.

I didn't find love for Ryan. I made it.

We tried back in the day. When we were younger, when I was smaller, when he was a boy making himself a man.

Ryan's hands. I've been searching this world for Ryan's hands. Men. Hands tell a lot. 

"My favourite part of you - I can't touch that", he tells me and I close my eyes against the hurt, the rupture.

He hugs me tight and I breathe in pine smells and wood, his truck and his hands. 

"I will film you through the trees. The morning light. The dusk. I'll find you. I was made to see you"

So I watch him leave, and can't smoke one. Can't bear his sleepy eyes, his shoulders anymore. I can't bear it anymore.

There's a blank.

We make new lives everyday. I imagine Paris. A mosquito flies by me. I smack it against my cheek. Blood smear thick and metallic oozes like paint. I lick it.

It hadn't bitten me. Lucky me.

Lucky lucky me. 

I get into my hotel room late. I peruse the city. Talk to strangers and dip in and out of pubs like a drunk needle forgetting its stitch. Funky stitch.

The phone rings.

"Hello"

Metallic

Static

"Hi"

"Did you get in safe?" I have to pee so I stand like a crane beside the table and lean on the couch with left sole against my right knee. It's gonna rain. My knee hurts mighty hellish.

"Ya"

"Okay"

"Okay baby"

We don't say the words that matter.

"Did you read?"

"No"

"Getting stoned yet?"

"Never liked it. You know that"

He's high. On our white.

"Months fly. Nothing changes"

I miss his mouth.

"Talk tomorrow?"

"Maybe. I'll see if we get reception near Trois Rivieres"

"Have le fun in Paris"

"have le fun in Quebec"

The part that isn't irish in his blood is French. What a mangled boy.

We swap the new with the old. The old with the new. We'll understand the world together. We'll make it whole. Through the distance, we'll get close.

I fall asleep soon. The red wine made my blood sleepy and married into the maroon.