Scars

April 16-29th, 2015,

Published by: Galerier, St-Laurent, Ottawa

Showcased the poem Scars

Alongside visual artist, Manon Labrosse: https://www.manon-labrosse.com/painting-peinture#!

---

I hate living out here, my mistakes are left out in the field, they’re scratched out in in stacks of five, carved on a prison wall of green trees. There’s nothing left to do out here but search for slivers, work out the knots in my hair while I mark the hours with pencils that have no lead. Out here, my faults are Roman numerals, they jam-up my DNA, leave tiny scars on the soles of my feet. They are moldy stumps in a Petri dish waiting to be discovered or moss, that only grows on the north side. Out here, I am at the mercy of a highway, a snapped chain full of jagged teeth and dead ends, a slippery scar across my chest that never heals. The road takes everything and leaves nothing. Even my eyelashes, have been dug out pulled back and clear cut from me. Shipped to my sister in the city for safe keeping. Out here, only the prehistoric remain, isolated, stranded, struggling to live off the dead skin that surrounds this town, in the end, they too fall like timber.

-Thomas Leduc