Embedded Files
The Twenty-Ninth of August
The airplanes bask like lizards in the sun.
No scaly hides are theirs, nor venom’d fangs.
Still, long and pale and cold, and one by one,
They slither off with shrieks and land with bangs.
Inside, devourèd by their own consent,
The victims of these welkin-monsters vile
In stifling cold, in chilling heat sit pent
And try to quell their fidgets for a while.
Make me a victim! Let me die the death
Of those who fly past reason’s upper bourn
In steely serpents belching fiery breath,
Or those insane, ecstatic, and forlorn.
For soon those wicked worms shall lift me high
To my beloved, far across the sky.
Lawrence Barss
Erika Rakowsky
🐟 Haleema Ghauri
An elephant I drew in RELI2710
Julia Cabrera
Couplet Therapy // in Two Parts
i see without opening my eyes and i talk without my mouth.
i wish that i could shout out loud but the words just won’t come out.
i see you in my dreams, i see you when i wake,
i see you when you’re not around, i see you when i drink.
i like it when you say my name, i like when i’m distracted,
i like it when i know the words, i like it when it’s practiced.
i know you enough and yet i want to know you more,
i say it’s time to leave and yet i linger at the door.
you will never see this, so mark it incomplete
i dream of falling at your doorstep, visions of begging at your feet.
i don’t have to try at this and also i don’t have to let go.
i don’t try to say anything so i won’t have to know.
what could have been for me belongs to some other,
all that i have could have been yours to discover.
heart and lungs and hope and souls,
i want to entwine myself so intensely with others.
leave the door unlocked, pack our bowls,
i am not myself when you are with another.
and so i don’t make things profound, i only make them rhyme.
i tell myself it’s my therapy to prove it's not a waste of time.
•••
and so i won’t say those three words
because i imagine if i did it would feel like defeat,
and i’m not saying that it's true, i’m just saying it’s scary, like a monster under sheets,
like a skeleton in the closet, like a flame that burns without heat,
and i’m not saying that it makes sense because that’s not how i want to see reality
i’m just saying that i’m scared that you’ll admit you never liked me,
like even a little, in the most general sense
like you’d ever say that to me, to which i would lack a defence,
rightly so, after having been so previously fooled.
i knew some times when i slept i drooled,
but was i so wrong in thinking my spit so divine it should be collected where it pooled?
what i really must do is get over myself.
i’ve placed the ability to create rhyming couplets too high upon the shelf,
(where no one can ever see them), and called it flirting
but every idiot on the street knows it’s only me i am hurting.
but, to step into the world and offer it everything you’ve got
at the chance of rejection is why i’ve never really taken my shot,
and i’d like to think i’m mature enough to fully admit
that my shots-not-taken have resulted in nothing being hit.
Erika Rakowsky
The Outsider
I stumbled through years of longing
Searching for my place in the world
As if trying on pairs of jeans
Some spaces too tight to accommodate me
Some too loose that they would
Flow off of me if I let go for even a moment
So I’d tighten like a belt, perhaps a hole too far
But the constriction never worked
They would pool away from me all the same
None a right fit for me
I felt akin to the windows of a clothing shop
Invisible myself, but revealing
Goods inside that people wanted
I’d given my goods freely, even my favourites
But my stock eventually ran low
And a new season, a new fashion was upon me
Just like that, I’d become out of place again
The same people who would rush in
Every time my doors opened
Walked past me without a glance
So when I finally found a space for me
I couldn’t trust it
How long before it realised I stuck out?
How long before it would see through me?
Seeing past the goods and reaching
The dust, the cobwebs, the decay in the back shelves
It feels foreign to bask in the feeling
To allow myself to enjoy belonging
The outsider still lurks within me
Watching from a distance
He reminds me that just as I was a stranger
A stranger I can yet again be
And a stranger I always will
Zayn Daureeawoo
Rug Burn Canadiana Erika Rakowsky
idk Kaitlyn Hughes
Sophia Laporte
Lunch Break with the Greats
lunch break with the greats
this must be how
the great old authors did it
(or at least the healthier
of them, do not think i advocate
for byronic measures here)
send a letter to a dear friend before
a dance in the evening, a great book
read and then swiftly to bed to awaken
the next day early and bright
and then attend to studies in the morning
come home to exercise, wash up
eat a meal already prepared by one’s
housewife or father’s servants or such
except of course i live in my apartment
and am rather dim at 7:00am
the meal prepared was by me, the previous night
i doubt John Milton was ever acquainted with
bowls of microwaved leftover stir fry
which i forgot to put hoisin sauce on because
i was busy thinking
about this very poem
Nico Charron-Groulx
Holding
Nico Charron-Groulx
HOME IS WHERE THE HUMS IS
Erika Rakowsky
Excerpt from my Diary
Tues/Jan/13/2026, 8:32pm
Today marks a monumental day in my life. I hope to turn over a new leaf and have bright glowing hope for the future. “For why today?” you may ask. Well. For today I have deleted the infernal and insidious Instagram off my phone. Hark! The heralds on high sing my praise! Bless me thy heavenly spectre! Grant me luck, O fortuna. I must be strong against the might and force of the unholy, impure, putrid, festering, wickedly evil algorithm. I spit on thee who praise its hypnotic powers. Everything I will miss about the app is only meant to distort my ego and self-esteem. What I will benefit from this, is the same benefits Bubbe Ida had when they chopped off her gangrenous toe. Cut it off before the rot spreads. At least before it spreads more than it already has. I’m going into the business of mental harm reduction. If I wasn’t such a bitch I’d cut the whole cord and go all the way. Every app wiped away in an instant. In fact, throw the whole thing away. Resort to a flip phone. Too bad I like to text so much. Too pussy for phone calls, too weak to live without a phone.
The only problem now is the boredom. The boredom phones and Big Media sought to cure. Don’t be bored, have every thought projected into your brain for you in a way that traps you, sucks you in, pins you down and takes hours from you without ever giving you a truly meaningful experience. That's their cure for boredom! We know it and they know it. That's why they chop everything up and stuff it with ads so that you never truly know if you’re being advertised to or not.
Why am I so scared of being bored? Who taught me to be so? Or was I born this way? Who snuck into my spinal cord into my brain and whispered into my nerves and wove into my chemical makeup that the monotonous work, the trying and the doing were to be avoided like the plague? How many times have I read the Vonnegut quote about the mailing of the letter? DANCING ANIMALS he said we are. Who or what came in and took it all away? The least we can do is speculate and shift the blame onto rectangles made by child slaves instead of a world that made conditions in which that could even happen.
As I said before, I have hope. Mya said that deleting Instagram makes life 10% better, but my heart thinks that's a conservative estimate. I don’t know how long this will last. A large part of me still hungers for more followers and likes on stories but so many other parts want to write more, and get better at it, and play the kalimba and cook and think and READ! In short: I just want more time to do things that make me a more confident, smarter person, and I always had that time, if it weren’t for that damn phone.
10:23pm
Drew for so long. Sweaty now and hating the world. I have to shower but I want ice cream. I should shoot myself in the face.
Erika Rakowsky
Haleema Ghauri
Movie Lovers Gabriella Priori
idiot life advice
on a slick icy trail isolated by moonlight,
a wary stoner loser sits and asks if the time is right.
o silly child, riper than the fruit in the sun,
how many days in the shade have you wasted looking for some fun?
you will not find it in there,
in some terrible solitude in a far off lair,
with a crummy attitude, wild eyes, and unkempt hair.
you must walk straight through the open air,
and cast off your worries and let down your cares,
and be a force that gives and takes and shares.
and give into your urges without putting up a fight,
and soon you’ll see simply that you will never know when the time is right.
o silly one, riper than the fruit in the sun,
you will only know the good after it is gone.
Erika Rakowsky
Apprehension
I’ve been haunted by the fire
I’ve been haunted by the fire
For the smoke, it clings to me
The stench of burning clings to me!
Infernal visions still transpire
The blazing of a funeral pyre
Oh, how they do things to me
The pain every thought brings to me!
I picture myself ablaze
Shrouded in a smoky haze
Running with fire at my soles
It engulfs my very soul!
All this puts me in a daze
Consumes my dreams and waking days
Unravelling me like a scroll
Becoming my eternal toll!
Oh wretched, hellish landscape
From which I cannot escape
From which I find no relief
Only a pit of endless grief!
I envision my falling shape
Reaching Hell’s maw agape
That moment, however brief
Undoes all of my disbelief!
I’ve forgotten where I stand
I’ve forgotten where I stand
I’ve become blinded to this life
Forsaken my place in this life!
I know I haven’t yet been damned
To Hell’s barren, scorching land
To that cursed realm of strife
Where misery and pain are rife!
But what would God’s judgment say
If I were to die today?
Would I join the Holy Light
In Paradise’s sweet delight?
Or would I be made to stay
Creeping upward day by day
In Purgatory’s toilsome plight
Salvation far but still in sight?
Curse these vile, puny thoughts!
For why must my mind be brought
To these vain contemplations
Of things lacking explanations?
It appears my mind is caught
And all because I have sought
To explain life’s machinations
Trapping myself in a hell of my creation.
Zayn Daureeawoo
This piece is a WORK of LABOUR….ACTION!
Erika Rakowsky
I’m Written in Pen
If this were written in pen I wouldn’t be able to erase it. I make so many mistakes writing in pen. It’s as if I’m always speaking in pen. Mistakes, of ink dried between the pages of my books. My mind full of preconceived notions and ideas. Miscommunication when nothing feels right to say. So you simply have to write, and write and write. Over and over again, incessantly until you have offered your mind rest.
Mia Desira
Autumn’s Epic Catalogue
(the names of all the saints and monsters and trees I know)
Nico Charron-Groulx
The Lounge Haleema Ghauri
I'M GETTING LOUDER
Erika Rakowsky
Chemical Dreams
I spend the three hours after six inhaling ammonium hydroxide
the evening section
coming back home, 10 PM
a trip to Canaan then Greece.
I'm back in Ottawa by midnight.
What do I see after in my chemical dreams?
I see an ocean being parted.
Only jawless fish and algae.
From order to chaos
never the other way around.
Extremely low entropy.
A pinprick universe exploded.
The order before our chaos
After all, an organism at equilibrium is dead.
So we fight forever against peace.
When K = Q, the system can no longer do work.
So we toil to ensure that we never cease.
Because we live in the corpse of a salt water goddess.
Created to be labourers
endlessly obstruct, thwart, and sabotage that chaos to bring order.
An organism at equilibrium is dead.
Its decomposition harnessed
exergonic reactions coupled with the endergonic.
A hero's body hollowed out by maggots
Enkidu gone, from boundless energy to a morbid peace
When K = Q, the system can no longer do work.
Ecclesiastes tells us to enjoy the toil that must never cease
There is nothing after
Do not be too righteous, says Job
Antigone
the final straw
burnt too bright, brought chaos in search of cosmos
Why should you destroy yourself?
Cast out of the Garden of Eden
doomed to existence in PA 303.
I don't see the Rideau Canal
I see an ocean being parted.
We are biological historians dealing with a time far before writing
far before hands
looking at the skeletons of organisms without bones
trying to remember who we are
how we are
why we are.
When you say Homo necans, I say Tiktaalik
bridger of sea and land
who dared to take a four footed step upon a world before flowers
carboniferous
That's the past I want to remember.
From one to many
from whiteboard to ink
from brahman to atman
from the single cell to the multi-celled
the source to manifestation.
I want to see the source.
A new world opens up to us
Doors opened and closed
Is it not a pleasure to practice what you have learned?
Lauren Clarke Wu
(my passport art throughout HUMS 1000!)
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