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...
I found a letter in my mailbox addressed to someone who doesn’t live here anymore. The same mailbox where someone left used cotton balls, rubber bands, and needles inside. The mailbox that I removed from a crumbling brick wall to sanitize with a bottle of...
The bartender starts work now. He doesn’t drive. He walks. I guide: a vanilla glow peeking at winter’s chalk drawings. He goes in through the front door. I go in through the window. The bartender’s lips are dry. He fills craters with liquid. Warm in the stomach. Water on the moon. Drops sift through space, down our cheeks, like...
Jane was leaving the convenience store when her romcom was ruined. What they don’t tell you about meet-cutes is that meeting is never as cute the second time around. In fact, the so-we-meet-again is the most awkward part, and it always happens when you’re not expecting...
Before he died, the last time I spoke to my father we were broiling underneath the August sun in section 126 at the old ballpark. All the covered seats at the diamond had sold out, but, despite knowing we’d inevitably get sunburnt, my father had...
When water melts would it smell like wax Unlikely: Butter. The oil that won’t come off I do not see the birds, only their feet, and even then, only the ones missing talons I’ve been pulling my hair out since I was little, letting it fall from my...
There is a boat in the middle of a gray and choppy sea. Actually, the boat is more of a raft, tree trunks barely stripped of bark, lashed together with the rawest of rope. Maybe the rope is handmade, too, wild grasses woven together by...
i’d never had a real coffee until the portuguese bakery on the street corner where concrete peels like dead skin no skateboarding this is toronto is dufferin grove the curb is nicer when it’s made with the opposite intention blankets unfamiliar if everyone is sober...
an apple is the doorstop. in lieu of a working lock it is an invitation, a trail of pawprints from stoop to kitchen to hallway and back again does it count as smoking inside? if we pour our lungs to the front porch and the smoke trails slither between the chipped green paint, green skin to...
November 2010. It is Tihar, the Hindu festival of lights. For five days, there are fireworks and rituals and prayers; everything is done for Yama, the god of death. Each day something different is celebrated: first crows, then dogs, cows, oxen, and finally, our brothers. Crows...