Cold War

There are no explosions of temper,
no words going off like land mines –
only short salvos of silence,
tongues loaded in our mouths, but waiting
for the other’s voice
to provide a target.

We move through our days, sparking
when we bump shoulders, eyes like crosshairs
on the back of each other’s heads.
There are no shots fired,
nor are there polite words exchanged
in the name of diplomacy.
No peace treaty is coming.

I ask myself whether it would kill you
to say that you’re sorry,
even if it was just a lie
to disarm this situation.
Part of me knows it wouldn’t,

but the louder voice in my mind
is reminding myself that it would kill me
to say that I forgive you.

Escape Route

Without signs, every street in the city becomes faceless.
The same corporate scams run under different titles
at every intersection, as the people dissolve
into a quilt sewn from logos –
our cultural mosaic.

No street signs obscure this side of town.
We embark down Neglected Street
and Forgotten Avenue, searching for direction.
We lose ourselves in the boundary
between chaos and order.

The tires wearily kick pebbles along the curb,
as we carefully turn each corner on instinct,
navigating through unknown space.
We feel our feet drift off the ground,
as we dissolve into the city, and become lost.

Featureless

It’s a fallacy
that suicide is painless.
I hung the darkness inside of me,
shot it in the head,

threw it off an uncountable number of bridges,
stuffed it full of enough sleeping pills
that it should nap
for the rest of infinity;
it woke up screaming

every single time.
There was always something
standing between the darkness and the light
that refuses to be reconciled,
or killed.

So I brought it out with me tonight,
where we can dance
in the moonless night
for the rest of infinity,

a pair of shadows,
featureless,

and as dark as our desire.

Josh Stewart is a recent graduate of the University of Toronto, seeking employment. Josh enjoys sushi, hats, and Tuesdays.

Email: Josh Stewart

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