I used to live as the wild things did, the trees and the spirits that roamed the woods day and night. Let us not forget the time when the life force was felt between every wall, inside every colour. I did not wait for daybreak to go exploring, any time and everywhere was my place,
Afterword by Ingrid Love The 30’s – Edinburgh, Scotland My adventures started even before I knew where I lived. According to Mum, as a child, I would tend to wander away from the avenue in which we lived and end up on one of the avenues that ran parallel to ours. In those days, mail
If you asked Rosie, she would have said it was the perfect weather. When you get up in the morning, walk outside, and when exhale you can see your breath, then you look past your breath to the world beyond, and everything is still. The grass is just slightly crispy from freezing overnight. You can
I was invited on a forest walk, a slow, mindful walk, pausing to look, really look, at the canopies of pines, cedars and aspen, down at the low-lying milkweed, leaves turned yellow, the variety of mushrooms growing in waves on the ground beneath it all. I sat on the forest floor, eyes closed, breathing in
The water was always dark to me. I would stand on the shoreline, bundled in the coarse wool sweater Grandma had bought me at the Granville Island market, watching my father watch the sea. He never knew I was there. Not unless I spoke. And sometimes even still he wouldn’t notice me. He had sold
Slugs. Slimy, revolting, gag-inducing, leaf-and-fruit-munching, plant-murdering slugs! I had arrived at my garden plot early that morning—with the sun only just cresting the tops of the houses to find that a small army of the bulbous black mollusks were advancing through my territory, leaving glistening slime trails crisscrossing the dark earth. How many of them
It wasn’t the shag carpets or the original stove that dripped black grease onto the linoleum. Nor was it the fifty-year-old sliding windows that housed leggy spiders creating webs between the panes and those giant furry black houseflies that hatched out of the walls every spring. It was the view! Through the French doors that
Run your hands through the thick, silken whole of it Once Twice Divide into three equal sections Right over middle, left over middle Repeat Fold one strand in half Braid in end Braid in loop Pull remaining strands through Divide into three Keep braiding Hold finished work pinched between your fingers One breath Two breaths
Wear a mask The air is poison Choke on the ashes of Californian dreams on the ghosts of Okanagan homes As sick yellow skies melt into stifling nights we wake from sweating nightmares with Lytton on our lips Wear a mask Your breath is poison Cross the street away from your neighbours to show you
toddlers with their faces blurred out or covered by cowboy hat will the mother keep this up until the kid is a man using the initial for his name a short story collection about L. # She’s crushed by the faucet. The charring of the hand. The flooring peeling up after run, run, run, running
when you’re waiting for your check to go through – come on over to my house I have a prayer – I am working with a stutter come over, take an echo bath: share with me come over – make it undone make it lush – make it future make my body a harp you
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