By Miya Mastrofini
Edited by Ashley Yeung, Alloe Mak, and Liam Mason

1: The farm

Before I was anything,
I was twelve years old and knew nothing except the farm I called home
That lived constantly in the swell before the storm.
It’s soul lost and stuck between eras,
Both peeling and white, but not without horticultural lights groaning awake.
Every night—
A new sun. False life giver in the dark. Cold candy bitter.
Fluorescent blue swathing the landscape’s every nook and cranny (because God forbid anyone sleep).

In another version of this the lights could look like the sky or the sea,
But here the blue does not look like anything but itself
No metaphors of Earth can bridge it.
Lights extraterrestrial in nature— thus home to the
Aliens that visit.
Spacecraft floodlights hidden, amongst it all.

There’s nothing important here. Nothing at all.
I stay, you visit.
Is there something that you want? Is there anything here that you want?
Do you come to see me?

I cannot imagine a universe that is not infinite
My farm, naked and alone
In the hollow of the mountains.
Visited every night.
Infinite times, infinite ways.
Again and again and again.
Iterations,
Reflecting and warping off eachother.

Apple head, fir tree, asleep in the barn,
The bridge, us, and grey vast unknown.
The one where you sit in my bedroom and we’re sixteen forever.
You know this, you do.
Extraterrestrial Intelligence or whatever.
Write them down, fill the books.
Somewhere in here is what I’m looking for.

Back at my farm all I have is the
Cross on the hill that it faces,
Filled with Vegas neon.
And the church at the root,
Made of the same wood your den is (the one with the deer head).
I never go there.
I never pray.

When you cut a new sun into the quiet of night,
Harsh and all enveloping,
God does not come easy,
Instead appearing on signs taped to traffic lights in augury,
The rapture is coming.
Repent,
Repent.

Where we are now (pre rapture, before),
I know you want to see me destroyed
In some way or another.
Like burst into the stardust,
My blue neon drowns out.
Or you’re messier,
And knuckle deep into my eye sockets.
I never know which one,
So your visits make my stomach drop.

I know you want to see me destroyed,
But I still preach you like a Goddamned televangelist.
On glowing tv screens,
And late night radio broadcasts.
SETI/FBI/CIA messages in Morse code renditions,
Picked up on your alarm radio.

I’m not as smart or brave as I hoped I’d be in this situation.

You know my name— my real name, and
It makes me sick.
Descend and wreak havoc in your UFO,
Say,
Take me to your leader.
But don’t you dare say my name.

Every night you hide in my rows of crops,
An ink blot on blue.
I see you from my window, and you see me.
Of course.
You never show up on camera the way you’re supposed to.

I can never sleep when you’re around,
So I drive for hours and hours
Country roads, bridging darkness.
I never get anywhere.
And the night stretches over farmland,
Carpeting it all into nothingness.
It is nothing but wind and Void and Alone.
Infinite universes, and in this one only,
My farm and aliens and churches exist.
And me.
I am doomed to this.

I am doomed to this.

Here is only the instance it is now.

I cannot remember how I was before this.
I cannot remember a single thing.
I cannot imagine I ever was,
Before this.

2. You, again

I see the same barn in every Southern Ontario field
Kicked in hayloft and bleached boards
Reappearing, reiterating, following me like a hermit crab.
A hundred times I must have seen this barn.
I construct its interior in my head,
Down to every last loose nail and leaning shovel
The hiding space and the light on the hay.
Painting it over and over. Learning it.
Because it drives me crazy not to know it.
Out of the corner of my eye, I refract.
The barn follows me but I am always going too slow or too fast to catch it.

I know that in Universe C
You know me and I know you and we phase into each other like it was always meant to be.
Infinite universe theory and the unpleasantness of Universe J where everything is the same but we’re lizard people with ray guns.
Or Universe R where everyone is hurting.
But in Universe C we are happy and known and we have a ranch or something.

It is seven forty seven pm and I cannot breathe because for a split second I recognize my fir tree.
I put my back against the bark, and I know momentarily
That I have Loved and Died here.
And it all rushes through.
So fast, so fast I can’t catch all of it.
But for a second it is there, and the sheer euphoria of knowing for that instant is enough
My fir tree, my fir tree.
I know you, I know you.

Scene 24:
Okay, put your back against the wall of my room plastered with posters and I’ll sit cross legged on the bed.
I put my chin in my palms and then clasp my hands in my lap.
I’m indecisive in your presence.
A song that you love (so I love) melts into our skin.
There is a crick in your smile
That I will get to know so well, but for now is new and exciting.
What do you want to know?
I want to know everything [—-], I want to know everything there is to know.
Cut.

All stairs in this house (dream) lead back to the same place.
Do you remember how we were when we were nothing,
When we were nothing at all?
Put your hands in my face,
Put your hands in my heart.
I can only ever see the kitchen from the doorway (dream)
But it’s filled with gold light and something I need is inside (dream?).

I miss you like I knew you.
This neighborhood is so wholly a maze.
And I cannot recognize the street names anymore.
But someone who was me had walked these halls.
So close, so close you are.
What’s there,
In the middle of the field?
The tree, the dream, the barn.
In another time we were happy.
In another time these things were not dead or unknown.

But now (Universe A, Awake, Seven forty eight)
These things are not meant for me.

3. Good luck list

Pretend you’re like roadside daylilies that distract from
The construction vehicles tearing up the country.
Take a breath and hold it.
Take tweezers and an eyepiece and make yourself as many four leaf clovers as you need.
But the train will keep running.

What can I tell you about being alive that you don’t already know?
Spine to oak, you want all the answers sung by organ.
You never experience the Epiphany the televangelists promise you will.
A church with three crosses on the outside, is this God times 3?
Enlightenment, times 3.

I’d like to imagine I know what I’m doing.
I’d have a lucky rabbit foot if the thought of it didn’t make me sick.
Keep painting, sometimes the mess is okay.
Sometimes you have to leave the farm.

I live in dead homes because I know they breathed once.
Dissect a tree hoping to get inside it, squeezed tight; heart.
Palms to the sun, just in case I knew it before.
I am still a toddler’s shoe over miniature ant cities.

You look for signs everywhere you go,
Always in the edges of your sight.
They promise you are doing okay.
You are doing okay.

Mourning dove call means I’m not nothing yet.
Sun silent on the almost dead November meadow,
I give God the benefit of the doubt.
I give God the benefit of the doubt.
This is it.
Good luck list.

Nothing is blue anymore.
Leaving the farm means you can’t find it anymore.
And maybe the LED’s have burnt out.
Maybe you have stopped visiting.
The aliens are bored of crop rows.
I do not need to know these things anymore.

Nothing is quiet anymore,
And everything is right because everything Is.
No charms can save you from what lies.
And I am here- UFOless.
Am I doing this right?

The paintings are more abstract the more I look at them,
All there is, is what I know now.
What I am.

I can meet your eyes and maybe I better understand that,
Not all pain comes from evil.
And not all of you destroys.
All there is now is all of what I am,
All I am now.
I cannot imagine an existence more beautiful than the one I am in at this second.
Gold light.

Face up to the sun because the warmth saves me now.
Good luck list.