“special pings” by Julia on her patio

By: Julia
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Sunday July 14, 2019
6:50pm
5 minutes
Tinnitus
Emily Osborne

High as a kite and no plans of coming down
Down is the place where all the dirt lives
The down and dirty, the hole, the pit
I’m going to fly high right over this town
Town is a place where all the small people
get together and wage wars against any one
who seems like they have finally learned to
love themselves

They don’t know anything about us
They don’t know anything about us

And oh what a war it already was, the lonely
people all huddled together with their ideas
and their weapons because the truth feels like
too much to fight
Oh the light, that glittering thing illuminating
all the inside from the bottom of the barrel
sending them a mirror to see themselves clearer

High as a kite and it could be on life itself
or life alone and you would never even know
think it’s a strain or a pill or a potted plant
a cheap kind of thrill that leaves the seeking
emptier than when they started

They don’t know anything about us
They don’t know anything about us

They could come if they wanted to but they don’t

They don’t know anything about us

“We need drugs” by Julia on her couch

By: Julia
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Wednesday March 27, 2019
8:02pm
5 minutes
A quote by Wendell Berry

Let’s get through the wedding, the heartache, the backseat, the rain.

Give me drugs and I will write you the world’s worst poem, but my heart will be honest. Does anyone want that?

You said earlier the way I see the world is authentic and that’s why you love me.
I said, what do you mean, and you said I don’t filter things to make them better, and I said am I mean? You said no. That was a good answer.

We need some shrooms for the dance party in a couple weeks. That would be smart wouldn’t it? Find the light in the room and float to it?

The third time I did them I wrote the best song I’ve ever felt. It was full of pain and lonely but, hey I went all the way in and came back out again. In retrospect I could have done them with a friend but I was curious about what I would do on my own. I danced with the moon. I don’t know if a companion would have yielded the same results.

“unapologetic about her love of narcotics.” By Julia at Ocean Village

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Friday February 1, 2019
8:41pm
5 minutes
Orange Is The New Black
Piper Kerman

I met her the night we dropped MDMA and spoke with sweat and sweet and true and good
I was grateful for the peaks of love that kiss sunlight
So high the only thing we could do was see each other

The time before that we found cocaine on the bump of her key, the public bathrooms at every place we ended up: the bar, the house party, the tennis court, after moving a rustic ladder from the back of my apartment to her’s—wearing heels and dressed ready
We felt like we were made of arms

The same two of us, and deeper,
found a butterfly sanctuary on the day we were decided on being real joy

“that you already know and like.” By Sasha on the 9

By: these five minutes
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Monday February 22, 2016
10:16pm
5 minutes
gnoosic.com

I arrive at his apartment above the bike shop, with the deck that looks like a pier and the tiny plastic, dancing monkeys on the old reel-to-reel, with the roommate that is only a voice on the other side of the door, who I’ve never actually met. Ben meets me at the front door, shirtless in old grey sweat shorts and a brown hat. He whispers in my ear when I hug him,

“I’m really high right now”.

Ben has recently broken up with his girlfriend of five and a half years, Sonja. She’s in Paris doing an internship at a gallery. I imagine her to be really beautifully, thin, knowing an a whole lot about Marina Abromovic and fancy cheese. Ben speaks of her often. He clearly still loves her. I know what he’s doing, replacing the woman’s body beside him in his bed. I wonder if I’m the only one.

“Are you expecting us?” By Sasha at her kitchen table

By: these five minutes
fiction, five minute story, five minutes, short fiction, these five minutes, Uncategorized, unedited, , , , , , , , , ,


Tuesday, December 29, 2015
12:35pm
5 minutes
from a Kitchener Utilities Pamphlet

“Are you expecting someone?” you say, picking up on my anxious energy.

“Yes. Shit. You know that!” I snap, picking at the scab on my right forearm. The sunflower tattoo that I got last week to cover the butterfly tattoo is itchy and dry.

“Relax,” you say, cracking your knuckles.

“I can’t!”

“Haven’t you ever bought drugs before? Like, when you were a teenager?”

“No…”

“Goody two shoes – ”

“Shut up.”

“It’s going to be fine. Larry says he’s a good guy. I trust Larry.”

“I don’t…”

You raise your eyebrows and smile and it disarms me. I sink into my chair, and sigh. The doorbell rings.

“the most infamous female sexual offender” by Julia at Dark Horse

By: these five minutes
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Wednesday, August 19, 2015 at Dark Horse
2:23pm
5 minutes
https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/a-womans-touch-when-pedophiles-arent-men

Okay I’m a bit confused. Is it wrong to want to meet her?
No, I don’t think so. It’d be interesting to hear her side at any rate.
I feel like my mind is on a different page than me right now. I’m not convinced.
Then don’t reach out. It’s not like she’s the only one.
But she’s the most infamous!
So ask her.
I don’t know.
I don’t know either.
You think she would even meet with me?
Yeah.
You do?
Yeah.
Really?
Yes.
Okay, so then, I’m going to draft a letter.
You’re going to do that now?
Yeah.
Oh.
What?
Just, I don’t know. Maybe wait till tomorrow?
Why because you think I’m too high?
Yeah.
You’re right. I’m too high.
But tomorrow you’ll be able.
Yeah tomorrow I can edit, though.
Yeah. But draft it in your notebook or on Word or something then.
God bless you.

“It is impossible to live without failing” by Julia at Valens Restaurant

By: these five minutes
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Tuesday, June 23, 2015
5:23pm
5 minutes
A quote by J.K. Rowling

She came home huffing in and out like she was attached to a ventilator. It was exaggerated and annoying and I wanted to punch her strong in the throat to get her to just shut up and stop bragging about how gassed she was. She had seen me earlier on the couch with the TV blaring and I guess she thought I hadn’t left that spot all day or something? I did, for the record, in case anyone’s actually keeping tabs on me. I’ve been working more than ever, more than I should be, more than her and I combined, but sometimes it doesn’t look that way at all. She was smiling at me as if she pitied me and was trying to include me in something. Conversation, self-improvement, something like that. She asked, “How was your day?” And I pretended I didn’t hear her. She repeated herself, “How was your day today?” And I refused to turn around when I said, “Oh. It was fine. Thanks so much for asking.”

“It is impossible to live without failing” by Sasha at Higher Grounds

By: these five minutes
5 minutes, drugs, failure, fiction, motherhood, orphans, short fiction, short story, unedited, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,


Tuesday, June 23, 2015 at Higher Grounds
1:07pm
5 minutes
A quote by J.K. Rowling

The last time I saw you I didn’t recognize you, which is funny because I came from your body so one would think that that’s the find of recognition that just sort of, happens.

In class, my writing teacher is preoccupied by “Obsessions”. He makes us list them and recite them and feel them on our tongues. I hate it. I find myself writing the same obsessions every class and feel as though I’m boring everyone. I’m boring myself.

Failure
Mother
Mother
Mother
Failure
Orphans
Mother
Drugs
Cancer
Mother
Mother
Failure
Mother
Mother
Mother
Drugs
Orphans

“Overthinking it” by Julia on Amanda’s couch

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Sunday, June 21, 2015
2:10am
5 minutes
from a tweet

When Alana showed up everyone else had already taken their pill, or their half, or their second by that point. She was the only one who was seeing the world the way she was and she didn’t know if she wanted to even be there. Someone offered her some M and she took it in her hand but didn’t put it in her mouth. She wondered about leaving with the pill and doing it completely by herself so she could experiment with the environment and have access to recording devices. Alana couldn’t stop pre-planning and she was getting excited by all the possibilities of finding herself away from these people. Some guy with a bow tie danced past her and told her she looked exquisite in the moonlight. She smiled and said, “so do you”, and she meant it, but she wanted to mean it the way he did. She debated where that would best occur.

”Many people want love to function like a drug,” by Julia on the 505 going east

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Monday, June 15, 2015
4:48pm
5 minutes
A quote by bell hooks

Do me fix me haunt me lick me
i want that kind
that sticky kind
that getting matted in your hair kind
tangled in your feelings
watching a parade
dare me wear me tear me care me
i want that kind too
that exposed kind
that open and vulnerable scary and beautiful kind
accepting and overwhelming
sitting side by side at the river
ease me lift me tease me shift me
i want that kind
that vibrant kind
that moment intensifying everything is interesting kind
promises projected in each other’s eyes like a private motion picture show

“The sound of cracking bones” by Julia on her bed

By: these five minutes
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Wednesday April 22, 2015
1:01am
5 minutes
from an e-mail

This one is a nod to three old friends from a former existence who found each other again in this current one. Their souls were already promised to one another and they were happiest then when they loved each other without question. There is a story about a hotel room and sharing beds and drugs and jokes and chips. It’s a good story. It started with a road trip and it ended with truck stop ice cream. In the middle there was a lot of laughter and unexpected ease. In the middle middle there was a promise wedged in that this would be how it is. When these three old friends met in a different dimension, they exchanged a round of flat stones they found in the ocean that represented loyalty and acceptance and longevity. There was a grand speech made in that different lifetime that would inspire their strength in this one.

“I haven’t messed with or taken anything at all today.” By Julia at the Bloor/Gladstone Library branch

By: these five minutes
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Friday March 20, 2015
1:07pm
5 minutes
Black Butler
Yana Toboso

Clean As a Whistle Wendy! That’s what they call me. Cause I can be counted on when it’s important (and when it’s not) to be fully present. And to drive people home when they’ve consumed too much! You can call my references, who are mostly my friends, because I’ve been nothing but a good one to them and they know it and they’ll tell you. If you want an example? Allow me to give one through a story. I was not my best self, one day, long ago, and I was finding myself easily persuaded. I would say yes to anything! I would say no to the consequences! But when I was asked if I wanted to put things up my nose like the rest of them, I said no! I said NO to that and I said yes to everything. So I made sure everyone arrived alive! Because It was a very clear choice! Say yes to everything but stand up for one thing. See, black heart and all, but my veins are clear as day! And that’s how I got my name!

“I might be” by Sasha at Matchstick Coffee Roasters

By: these five minutes
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Monday January 19, 2015 at Matchstick Coffee Roasters
5:12pm
5 minutes
from a poster in Ricardo’s studio

I might be the only one here with any real love in my life. Sorry. I don’t mean that in an arrogant way but like, I feel badly because in some ways it feels like I shouldn’t even be here, you know? Why am I fucked up when I’ve got all this love going on all over the damn place?

We have mice. My roommate and I. And she’s new so I feel like a dick that’s been leaving granola out or something… Which I have been doing… I just, like, I forget, you know, I forget about wiping the counter. There’s better shit to do.

My name is Alana and I’m an… Shit. This is so fucking weird. It feels contrived. Or, like… I don’t think I belong here. I might be that one person that everyone looks at like, “I feel bad for you…” Feel bad for me! Do it! I dare you!

“Smoking seriously harms you” by Sasha on Nadeem’s bed in Mississauga

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Wednesday December 24, 2014
1:16am
5 minutes
A pack of Marlboro

We’re not sure he’ll make it
We hope you can take it
We don’t want to give you a start

We’re sorry to say it
We don’t want to relay it
We hope that we’re doing our part

He shouldn’t have done it
His lungs just couldn’t bare it
He wasn’t the smartest of smart

The nicotine sticks aren’t the worst of it
The drugs and the alcohol are it
Here’s a lemony tart

“These days it’s hard to get a decent haircut” by Julia in Venice

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Friday December 5, 2014
10:54pm
5 minutes
Kinfolk Volume 13

Man sits beside me. Smells like the hair shampoo my best friend Natasha used to use. We’re not best friends anymore. She tried drugs and became best friends with the guys who sold them instead. She told me once, here use my bra. I’m too big for it. Borrow it or just take it cause it’s too small. I said, thanks so much. My mom won’t let be buy one. Says I don’t need it yet. Says a sports bra is fine. But hers never fit me. Turns out she never had anything to fit inside them in the first place. Turns out I did, just I didn’t know it. I was slow to know myself. I was slow to question anyone. Guess it’s cause I believed in people. I trusted in someone’s word. Shouldn’t have. Didn’t need to. Guess it was just a life lesson learned like don’t leave your window open at night without the screen down, or don’t eat a brownie if your friend gives it to you while smuggling a bit of laughter cause she really found it on the ground and now you’re the butt of everyone’s joke. So I look to the man. I say, have you always smelled this way? He crosses his arms and looks in the other direction. Then I know I know how to distract people from the truth. I learned by distracting myself.

“Paper Resistance” by Julia at her desk

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Friday November 28, 2014
3:01am
5 minutes
from Internazionale 14/20 Novembre 2014 edition

It’s itchy so I’m scratching
Got that pill addiction happening
Wish it wasn’t wish I didn’t
But then there’s that paper resistance
I keep trying to replace it but the fact remains it’s aces
It wants me like I want it
And so it goes tat for tit
Game changer when it stops the feed
The hunger grows
The need for greed
And I keep singing to myself
calming the notion that my answers are on a shelf
Somewhere stuck the bottle shakes
I hear it moan my whole earth quakes
I’m somewhere stuck without the drug
But the magic makes me glug glug glug
Hop to it one more instance
15 down and I’m still with this
Wishing hard for a bell to ring
Saved by the moment someone else will bring
Alone in the hope that is called denial
Cross-legged on the cold hard floor and pray to the bottle for a little while

“Have a beautiful night, beautiful.” By Julia at Nicole’s desk

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Tuesday August 26, 2014
12:31am
5 minutes
Overheard on the streetcar

On our night in the woods we drank the blue stuff and turned the yellow stuff into powder. We clinked our glasses, and our thumbs, and we tilted our heads back to send the gift down-offering up an opportunity to our souls (we were looking for some peace of truth, whichever came first). The stars twinkled in sequence, telling a story, singing a song, drowning in ecstasy and not waving or struggling to stay above the tide. The moments lasted as long as they should have-the romance elongated, the touch softened. Our tongues traced tiny hearts on each other’s belly and we prayed with the night’s temple lit on fire from our commitment. We spoke only with our eyes and I said, Forever, and he said, Yes please.

“saving me right now” by Julia at her kitchen table

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Tuesday June 10, 2014
4:17pm
5 minutes
a text message

There’s an entire bag of Oreos in my bedroom that I’m saving for later cause they’ll be saving me from this shithole of a town I’m being kept in. I’m serious, my mother, she got this new boyfriend and he lives in bum-fuck-nowhere and this nowhere town is really getting to me. I’ve been here for three days-no internet. I can’t even keep updated with my own life cause this guy thinks that the internet is a gateway drug for procrastination and failure. I’m thinking, yeah, I’m so sure the second I check an e-mail I commit myself to a life time of serving fries at McDonalds. Please. You know, it’s all a control thing. He lays down some rules and my mother, she just goes along with all of them because she needs structure and she sees that he’s willing to give it to her, so she just lets him treat me the way he wants. He doesn’t know about the Oreos, by the way, cause if he did he’d confiscate them too and tell me they were a gateway drug for obesity and heart attacks.

“Safety pocket” by Julia on the 506 going west

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Wednesday March 5, 2014
10:33pm
5 minutes
the box of matches

She’s got that safety pocket that ooh will she or won’t she take off and rocket that if she does how far will she go to Jupiter and back to the very last row to the end of her dreams to the start of her screams to the depths of the water back to the barrel that shot her she’s got to she ought to stay back or she’ll rot you and then she can fly birdie high in the sky kissing every try and dying to die she’s got that safety stuff that guess what she’s doing and is it enough that party go hardy that coarse and the rough that mixture that tincture that pass pass puff puff

“uniquely connected to her” by Sasha at Balluchon

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Thursday February 20, 2014 at Balluchon
2:08pm
5 minutes
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/theatre

He tells me that he’s sorry but I have this bad habit of not trusting anyone with dark eyebrows. It comes from too many times left alone with this bad boy, dark eyebrows arching into Never Never Land. He’s been crushing his Ritalin and snorting it. I’ve been inadvertently supporting his drug habit, picking up his prescription at the pharmacy every Tuesday, like a diligent, Subway-riding idiot. “You don’t understand,” he says and I wonder, for the seventeenth time, if we ever really understand or if we’re just really talented at “fake it til you make it”. We are not making it. He forgets that he came home drunk again, that I found phone numbers in his pocket written in blue pen by girls name “Shannon” and “Mel”. He forgets that he humped me as I pretended to sleep, his dark eyebrows furrowed with carnal focus.

“Serve.” by Sasha on her couch

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Monday, September 23, 2013
12:11am
5 minutes
www.foodnetwork.com

Ya know Ian? Ya know Ian who lives over der by dem pines? Ian killed his wife. I’ll tell ya the story but you have to promise that ya won’t tell no-one. I don’t wanna be that kinda gossip, ya know?

So. Story goes, Ian is a shady kinda character. He has a grow-op in that basement. We’re not talking a few plants, we’re talking a whole operation, a big ‘ol operation, with the lights and the special liquids and whatever. He had this girlfriend, Caroline, and she was around for longer than any of the other ladies. Ya know those meth head ladies? With the real bad teeth and the scratchy faces? Lotsa those ladies. Story goes that Caroline had finally had enough, she was tired of his wily ways, she was trying to get clean. She left Ian and started goin’ with some hotshot guy in Kingston, some guy who was the president of AA and in a biker gang or something. Story goes, Ian tracked down Caroline, who was cleaning out a camper on this new hotshot’s property. He shot her. Right in the head.

“with/without food” by Sasha at The Big Secret Theatre

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Sunday, July 7, 2013 at The Big Secret Theatre
4:12pm
5 minutes
From the label on the vitamin C bottle

“Don’t drink this on an empty stomach,” Nathan says, picking at a scab on his elbow. “Obviously,” I say, but it’s not obvious. He brought it back from Thailand, and it comes in a jar with the kind of lid that has to be popped off, like on a can of cocoa, or paint. I didn’t ask for a gift like this. When he called at three in the morning my time and said, “What do you want me to bring you?” I thought we were in the sarong or jewellery realm. Not this. He didn’t kiss me when I picked him up at the airport. Maybe it’s because Matt was there. When I asked him about it later, he said, “Don’t get all weird on me,” so I figured I should drop it. He got a tattoo of a lotus flower. I hadn’t gotten up the courage to ask why. It didn’t look feminine, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s one of the most beautiful tattoos I’ve ever seen. I wish that he’d let me trace it for a whole night. He says, “I should get to work,” but he doesn’t have a job yet so I don’t know what that means. “Sure…” I say, glancing down at the tin of tea and back up at him. “Maybe you should wait for me to make it. I can show you the ropes,” Nathan grabs his backpack and his bike helmet. “Yeah, good idea. Why don’t you come over tomorrow night and we can make it together?” “Deal,” says Nathan, smacking me on the upper arm and squinting his eyes.