Emily Riddle

rivers like when you know their real names, it’s only polite

  the northern pike laugh when you say saskatchewan

     but appreciate the effort

       of the girls living on the banks.

as kids, our parents drove my sister and i up to the columbia icefield,

  told us to fill a water bottle straight from the source,

   showed us the signposts of the receding hairline of ice

i can’t bring myself to visit now, to face the glacial m

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in the treaty negotiations, we told them this agreement was to last

as long as the rivers flow

that the mountains were too sacred to be included in this treaty

  as was the water (obviously)

we have been warned!

that glaciers that feed the arteries of our territory will vanish one day,

and then what will happen?

i used to panic about this particular treaty clause

     i still panic thinking about our river no longer flowing

i was full of despair the summer the TMX pipeline was quietly

doubled underneath it,

while another plague hits the people,

who live along one of the rowdiest parts of the river

there was a small comfort to be savoured when i was told…

    the rivers flowing references the fluid of nêhiyawak who give birth

(not just women)

   this is one of the ways in which i am connected to treaty in perpetuity,

     a demonstration of diplomacy, aqueous intentions, fluid continuity

today, the ndn sisters who drink glacial water surrounded by tourists

with their mom

    (who would cut a bitch if anyone tried to steal them, as she was)

are just as much the flow, as the droplets from the mountains

that summer had eight terminal points
an octothorpe of endings
every day i woke up with a mouthful of vinegar
spit it out onto freshly laundered sheets
took them down to the basement laundry room
old men picking through my bin of panties and pillowcases
while i was in queue for the dryer
nothing is ever dry on the salish coast
maybe only a discount paperback
found on a sale table out front of a used bookstore
cover fading in the fleeting sunshine
think of the author of this threadbare poetry collection
perhaps a peristeronic boyfriend that no one liked
an older millennial who still used eggplant emojis
that boyfriend and i both with incurable lethargy
trying to muscle through clouds
parting the condensation with such fervour
i didn’t order this brain cocktail
nor did i ask to be part of this bootlegging operation called canada
the border of a turtle’s carapace has twenty-eight sections
thirteen pentagons inside
i have twenty-eight days between each full moon
thirteen full moons
to pray for/request clean sheets
unbridled sunshine
an end to the bootlegging operation

this week in massage therapy, i learned about the importance of the spleen. this week in therapy i learned to ask my friends, “what do you get out of the relationship?” instead of outright saying “DUMP HIM.” did you know that if red blood cells are worn out they are ruptured by your spleen and then recycled to make new red blood cells? a very cutthroat process. can you imagine if we applied spleen logic to shitty boyfriends? our system has determined you can no longer be in circulation, but we are willing to work with some of your parts in the creation of something new, refreshed, better.