why can’t I say what I feel for—? if we were closer
we would lavender, or even after we could knuckle
bones raw—but instead here we are cutting ribbons

from the sky, skinning time purple & bare,
cursing the gods of iridescence as they smoke
hookah into our lungs, burn incense into our spines.

We inhaled and exhaled, Eve and Eve. No serpents here,
we dove instead of fell. Through repentance or maybe love
(but what’s the difference), you got on your knees that night.

You still believe.

Leviticus 18:22. Genesis 19:1-11. Romans 1:18-32.
It is an abomination.

King James Bible, leather bound.

But how? I thought. We knelt too hard and felt too deeply,
hearts wound up like little grenades. Drowned within each other,
running out of air from one another; all the usual cliches.

It was on your tongue that I first found salvation.
You danced from transept to apse to nave, singing,
Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. Forgive, forgive, forgive.

Inhale, exhale, heartstrings ticking like faulty clockwork.
Your Sunday skirt dangled like a limp, shredded flag,
while I thought of the pink in your skinned, knocked knees.

The heavy woodwork of aisles, filtered light, the smell of
musk. There’s a steel flagpole holding your spine ramrod straight,
You have no room for warping inside.

I think it felt like this, I replied, A little tender but more
bitter than sweet. Maybe sad; inevitable defeat.
But most of all, it probably felt good. Relief, and release.

Best friends return to a place of their childhood and uncover their old time capsule buried beside a tree many years ago. They revisit these special memories from the past, bringing their magic into the present, and release pressed flowers into the Lake of Two Mountains.

16mm, black and white, and hand-processed in Hudson, Quebec