moonshine
so okay, i was walking into a paint shop down king street the other day with my tired arms hanging low, when a tall albino man pushed open the door and stepped right onto my foot with his buckled boots. i was wearing old adidas trainers in crimson with red laces, dirty mutant gazelles i cannot find anywhere. i've had them for the last nine years, and when this grease-dripping blond character stepped down with his fucking man heel, the suede cracked up the side. i started to cry softly because those shoes are probably one of the oldest things i own since my feet stopped growing. what a jerk! at seven, i used to clip metallic barrettes to my laces to make them look beautiful.




when i was a small child, i lived on a base. my mother was always working and our dad was an alcoholic fresh-faced country boy heavily into neil young and pocket knives. they were like salted pork rinds together, gross gross. i had a dog named penny, a treasure trove in my closet, with a bear doll, a marigold doll, and the other two from polka-dot door. there was a quilt tapestry above my bed, i had a little shelf packed with red yellow green stuffed toys. my kindergarten school was called "toronto jail" or something with an apple logo and rows of tiny windows. i remember on the first day the kids were playing ker-plunk on the floor. i ran up to them and pulled out a bar before i got the chance to introduce myself, the marbles fell down and they kicked me in the leg. i moved around shortly after and when i left the place, i was given an aesop-style joke book signed like a yearbook. on the back, one teacher wrote "bye bye sweet girl" i hated moving.


on the last day of first grade everyone got to have vanilla ice cream. i had a crush on a boy named judd (his hotter baby-friend curtis was unavailable, we were six?) and i walked up to him and stuck my ice cream cone into his back and it stayed there, i remember wanting to eat it off his back, because i was hungry. second grade was the year i fell in love with movies. my teacher miss falls had an alternate way of teaching where she believed we could better educate ourselves through weirdo bbc films. my favourite was the golden phoenix, harriett's magic hats: the movie, and a thirteenth-hour clock with secret garden one. she also hypnotized us with the mirrors on her home-made outfits, and made us twiddle our thumbs at the door like fucking bbc kids.

a few years later i flowered into a beautiful awkward mess of permed hair, faux-denim stretch pants, iridescent purple la gears, archie comics and dance classes with jodeci. i was made fun of for reading family love story novels by vc andrews at recess. everyone hated me because i was happy. then as i grew into a teenager i stopped talking, and brushing my afro blonde hair. i wore ridiculous kohl stenciled t-shirts with stale words bleeding down my chest "bisexual epoch" and chewed on melba toast, wore too much mascara, got big into bowie, moved in with my friend aimee and her creepy war veteran grandfather, who had a tranny porn stash, cases of moonshine, and a glass eye. sulked about a drummer i dated for awhile who left me, missing his teeth and tree arms and blue blue eyes, got a cold cold heart and then i took off! a million things happened so i burned my journals and drew pictures on lace paper, writing important words on the back of my hands every morning like a divine proclamation to remind myself, my eyes were punctured with gold rings and now i am an adult, my shoes are broken.