For better or worse dipped in depression
sautéed with dissatisfaction served crying à la carte
between the crags of winter bordering a Fascist state
we huddled around pale fire next to psychopaths of the night
You, asked me to tell a story
Once upon a time I was a hair
width from existence, whether
by abortion or their fleeing abusers
Croatian grandmother, Métis grandmother, might
have seen me waving on this future hilltop. How
can I thank them for enduring so much violence?
You vacuumed snot from my ego
saying, they did it to survive
Sighing, you lifted my body, weight of systemic
shackle. I cut off pieces of my flesh, tossed away
to lighten, as we trudged into the shrouded valley
We crossed the Fraser River, toward post-
apocalyptic shantytown. Made home
from a hollowed-out railroad boxcar.
We spent PTSD on each other, worried
we weren’t making enough. So, I collected
the stars, put them in an old coffee tin, where
every year on the date of our first kiss, we
found our wounds with blame. I tried to hold
what we were, in a long, linear, line, of repetition
that needed to be shred and scattered in a breeze
After we died, you swam along shores
of heaven, just out of reach, my
hand could feel threads of frayed net
I tied them together, like the feathers
of an eagle. Maybe, I could fly to meet
you near the sun, where we both would
melt, drizzling wings searching for new
hands to shape us. Not into scented
candles sputtering away. But into
the eyes, of an ever-beating voice,
glancing,
the fulcrum,
of infinity.
ABOUT:
Jonathan Bessette has many hobbies which inform his writing, including astrology, gaming, gardening, and anarchism and he lives in the unceded and traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) Nations, so-called Vancouver. He’s a founding member of Held Magazine and has published poetry in The Capilano Review and CV2, nonfiction in Adbusters and Quill and Quire, and fiction in The Antigonish Review and Carte Blanche. Follow @jonathan.m.bessette on Instagram or Bluesky: jonathanbessette.bsky.social.
EDITOR'S SONG PAIRING: HYLLS — Feathers
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