Oralia
A heavy weight presses down on my chest. It feels like a chasm is forming under the breastplates covering my heart. I take a moment…
Writer’s Choice
History Lessons
Mid-way through a week of walking the vales and fells of the Lakes | My new friend Judy asks: | What do your parents do?
Under Water
The Sunday I first went to the quarry was after I made Tito choose. He’d been back in the States a few weeks. This is what his mother…
Mumina, the Mouse and I
I arrive late at my writers group, stepping into the quiet swish of pens on paper, of fingers tapping on keyboards. I love that look of concentration…
Bring Me Your Yearning
Two days before the bicentennial and Madeline Harper’s tenth birthday, someone rowed an eighteen-foot Statue of Liberty constructed entirely of Venetian blinds…
Book Review: Requiem For My Rave
It’s all here: the good, the bad and the sketchy. Hulla parties were an exciting and risky destination for the underground kandy kids of Toronto…
The Psychiatric Patient Profiled in My Application
I hold the paper in my hand. My case worker is friendly, not callous or distant. I ask him to decode the letter I have received in the mail. I think it says what I hope it says…
Sunflowers
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about sunflowers—the kind that kept Van Gogh tethered to his body and that convinced Hannah Gadsby that human connection can shield us…
The Babies
The room is small, jail-like, with windows high in one wall. The air is humid. Breathing requires deep heavy intakes of energy. The bits of daylight filtering through…