i.
I miss you the most because of that look in your eyes I vaguely remember. Such a stubborn, prairie man that stared  back into my curious, and sometimes childish, gaze. Your face is the definition of a closed book. I would crack my spine when it got sore and pretend you were still there, hugging me from behind, lifting me up and arching your back with mine. Full spinal-cord-popping sort of pleasure. Sometimes your back would crack at the same time. Your hugs were always so engulfing. Even though its an unhealthy habit I can’t help but want it. That is, the bone snapping that  I’m talking about, not your presence. Right? What’s the use in calculating anyways. Your one of the hardest people to write about. Maybe its because your still such a mystery, but I think it’s the most hard because when I write you down on paper that’s when you make me the most sad. You’re an very un-wrappable present quiet giant. I used to write you simple love notes, and translate them into Latin, or French or Spanish, depending on what mood I was in and what online translator was the most efficient. I would post them where you could see them, attached to very conceptual photographs and hope that you would be curious enough about me to decipher the messages. It’s a damn good thing you never did.


iii.
My mother bought my brother and I a chocolate advent calendar. It was a curious situation since we hadn’t had one in years. None the less I thought it was a sweet idea. My brother claimed the nicer, more calm and Christmas-y looking one and I was stuck with the ridiculous cartoon one, with reindeer that looked like very bad Scooby-Doo knock-offs. Any amount of persuasion , tricks and tactics I used couldn't get him to trade with me. I became foolishly bitter, and increasingly more so when he pointed to one of the days and said "Look on the 22nd I get to open up and eat this little Bambi's head..." I hated every stupid count down that existed.


v.
If the poetry and words I like best were a color, it would be the shade of dark gasoline rainbows. An ideal I’ve become familiar with associating to certain people. It’s a powerful sort of sadness that leaks across pavement. It captivates and changes me in numerous small ways. When I was in grade two the biggest thing about my daily school life was my pencil box. There was one particular pencil that had a silvery-gasoline-rainbow shine to it. I loved it to death. The wood was smooth and nothing like the standard HB’s, the pencil lead soft and faint grey. I would write my stories with that. The best and most elaborate Santa Claus letter was written with that pencil. I still have the letter, tucked away in some unforgotten corner of my top most dresser drawer. It’s funny how the tiny and most significant things end up in your ‘junk’ drawer.


vii.
One particularly regular day my soul mate and I had just briefly finished a joint out on my back steps. Bored and both of us waiting for the same phone call, we picked up computer paper, scissors, scotch tape and an arrangement of sharpies and high lighters. We proceeded to sit down at my kitchen table and make a collection of random stickers to put on top of the flaps on my calendar. Most were a variety of cartoon animals, and some were interpretations of  inside jokes, and some poked fun at the bad quality of the calendar scene they were covering up. We weren’t motivated enough to make a caption for each of the 24 squares but I don’t feel as pathetic now when I open each palette and eat the over sweetened chocolate I find underneath. We made a point of getting up and finding specific pencil crayon colors for the giraffe sticker we made. No one else would’ve felt such a strong need to have the correct hues, but that’s why I distinctly love them the most.


ix.
Sometimes I love to feel tragic.