I wake to the sound of unclipped claws scratching against my wooden door. A quiet moan comes from just outside my bedroom. I roll over and turn on my side light –yellow light falling across my skin. It makes me look sickly. I ease out...
[audio mp3="http://www.queensquilt.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/put-aside.mp3"][/audio] Trickles of rain upon the canvas roof, Gentle rappings paired with the crackle of flames devouring poplar, The smell of rotting leaves covered in moisture creeps in from the outside. The thermos is set on a crumbling log Through the parted canvas, put aside for later. The reminder of...
[audio mp3="http://www.queensquilt.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/i-will-raise-my-Babygirl.mp3"][/audio] As a child, I would cling to her arm. Both my hands wound tightly around her muscle; skin that sunk and sagged from gravity fifteen years too early. My dad looks at photos of her from their twenties and tells me, “This is how...
[audio mp3="http://www.queensquilt.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/redamancy.mp3"][/audio] They marry on a Sunday evening, with no witnesses but the birds in the trees and the stars in the sky. The valley is quiet. A soft summer breeze ruffles the leaves of the willow tree the pair has found shelter under, the brook murmurs...
[audio mp3="http://www.queensquilt.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/year-of-the-rat.mp3"][/audio] They burrow too deep within the earth to know nothing, says the rat man. He wears on him the appearance of the witch Rasputin, and it is witchcraft indeed that he performs. The rats had for a time forced me to divert from my...
On her fifth life, Georgia stops trying to save the world. She gave it her all. She gave it four of her alls, actually; didn't even stop after the lucky third try left her smoldering on the metaphorical barbeque of a distracted amateur griller. Georgia spent...
Around twelve he slipped into the boardwalk diner; a cheap little place that reeked of nineties sensibilities. He’d had too many beers to pass for sober, but too few to really be drunk. His belly was warm. His vision spun softly when he looked in...
June 2002, Before It was early in June when the storm hits us. It didn’t do much damage, besides ripping away one of the biggest branches from the maple tree. Just a week after we moved into this house, our neighbours told us about that half-dead, century-old...
Telemachus is not the only fatherless boy in Ithaca. When Odysseus left to go to war, he took the men of Ithaca with him, and now their sons are old enough to eye his palace and his wife. Telemachus does not want one of his...
If I’ve learned anything, it’s that Sunday night might always be heavy. It might always remind us of every night we spent convincing everyone else they were worthy of healing, every instance bringing rise to the nights that we didn’t want to live. Maybe all...