PAULA TURCOTTE
PAULA TURCOTTE
Neither of us were sorry to leave the rats behind.
We posed by the house for a fuck-you selfie,
our backdrop mouldy siding, broken eavestrough.
The dog took a final shit & I was inclined
to leave it for the landlord who’d given us grief.
Our rear tires sprayed gravel into the street
as we passed the pizza place where we’d dined
every Friday, its bluepink neon blinking on and off.
Where we’d walked each morning, near the mill,
a still-white rabbit stood in freeze-frame.
We stopped at the doughnut shop one last time:
for me, sour cream, and for you, jam-filled.
I cried a bit as we crossed the city limits sign,
though not for any reason I could name.
We’re a moving target, red and blue Alberta plates
heading west on the 401. If you aren’t From Here
you should wish you were, and we don’t.
I wave to the mechanic off exit 628
who once saved us from dire straits when I veered
too close to a pothole. I hate this road, how it furcates
endlessly, pours you down Toronto’s throat.
I flick the wipers and wasp guts smear
across the windshield. The city I’ll miss: arcane
rooftops, the Communist’s Daughter, tuna
sandwiches at Donna’s, Hyde Park in the rain.
Walking on Geary on a Friday afternoon.
Somehow the same as the city I won’t:
a fortress, inscrutable. An impassable moat.
We’re just outside Barrie when hunger catches
us. You bite your burrito and juices stream
off the tin foil, stain your favourite jeans.
The road winds and the conversation matches:
your thoughts on Camus, the students I teach.
A thirty-minute podcast about sunscreen
lasts six hours—we keep pausing for tangents,
thoughts braiding together like interchanges.
At the pictographs in the limestone, the sign
reads closed, but we’ve come all this way.
Below the cliffs, the lake glows almost-green.
I’m safe on the dirt while you grip the chain,
lean over the edge until you can see the designs,
so much smaller than you thought they would be.
Early season heat sees us in to Thunder Bay,
weekday traffic crawling down the main drag,
windows down to catch the breeze.
The dog needs to pee, so we walk a ways,
stumble on a store that only sells cheese.
Next door, I buy a pét-nat beaujolais,
feel rich when I don’t look at the price tag.
It’s my turn to drive, so you toss me the keys—
I have us to the campsite before we lose the sun.
While Lake Superior licks the basalt crags
we eat three nights’ worth of Brie in one,
watch the sun slip below the rock-forms.
When the tent zipper sticks on my sleeping bag,
you pry it out gently, closing us into the warm.
Paula Turcotte loves her dog, your dog, and Raisin Bran. She lives in Moh'kinstsis (colonially known as Calgary). She is the author of the chapbook Permutations (Baseline Press, July 2024) and was the winner of People's Choice in CV2's 2023 2-Day Poetry Contest. Her recent work can be found in PRISM international, untethered, and elsewhere. Paula is a poetry editor at MAYDAY.