I was once five characters in search of an exit. 

The ballerina, the bagpiper,

last wishes of a life I never knew.

Manitoba prairies, long chains on pale flesh and 

conflict constructed within the bounds of a black and white cylinder.

I come from Bobbys and Eds

and Normas and Nadines…

Clueless and seeking a long lanky body. 

The army man, the clown, the homeless haggard outline of

a familiar figure, 

eyes I’d seen before, lines I’d spoken.

I’m the girl in the car and I am the man she is most afraid of.

He is the craggan earth at the base of the cement that

dampens children's soiled feet when the air gets cold.  

I left my home to leave the grasp of other wandering minds; 

the courthouse marriage,

the president,

the grocery store clerk, 

And the distance between islands where I trace the lineage of those imaginary friends who slither through the cracks of 

brain fog and smokers voices on flashback television programs.

The fireman, the football coach, adjusting the wilted petrol

soil in the brush of a Squamish settlement.

Boney tracks 

on the steps of an old wooden structure, built over another man’s earthen sanctuary.

And I can picture his tiny car

cramped, entangled in living

brushed with luscious ferns in search of an exit:

where the highway ends and the end of the world begins…