by Timothy Day
Image: Timothy Day

When Jane visited her parents on her 26th birthday, she found them stricken with a persistent wetness. The three of them sat on the towel-covered couch and Jane listened as they told her about work and the cats and holiday vacation plans. They asked how she was doing and Jane did her best to inflate the recent small victories. Jason was starting yoga; the car was running fine; that mould that had been on the wall of their apartment when they moved in? Gone. Continue Reading →

by Riley Vainionpaa
Image: Riley Vainionpaa

I needed them to exist. I set the table for the ritual, spread a yellow sheet filched from the hall closet over it and placed an element in each quadrant. Fire was a tea light, plucked from the bag in the cabinet where my moms kept the bone china platter with the painted lilacs and their collection of limited edition Peter Pan plates. I always chose Tinker Bell. Water was the conch shell from that time we went to Mexico and the whole trip all I did was search for aluxes in the gardens outside our hotel, convinced the knee-high tricksters could get me out of the dance contest that night. Air was a feather I’d found at school, probably dropped from one of the Canada geese that liked to shit all over the soccer field. Randy Ayzer said it was dirty and said I was dirty for touching it. I told him everything in Sudbury is dirty, even if you can’t see it, because of the refinery fumes. Earth was a pebble from the driveway. Continue Reading →

by Haran Sivapalan
Image: Haran Sivapalan

“Life will get better”

Lenny the Lemming always hated this phrase. It was a phrase laden with hubris, as if the person who uttered it could confidently predict the trajectory of one’s life. Life could get better, perhaps. But it could also get worse. The trajectory of life was as capricious and unpredictable as that of the best-made North Korean missiles. Continue Reading →

by MiKA MiLK

She prayed for some light for the photographs that would become his internet presence.

Her skirt caught burdock as she kneeled down in the deep soaked snow to frame a right angle. The sun came out and smiled down on her. Each burr needle entangled in the fabric felt like the one found in some haystack. How many barns must a man walk down..

To what rarity shall one go—when coming from afar, all this way to see you. Continue Reading →

by Rose Cullis
Image: Kate Dembski

It was one of those cases where the neighbourhood recluse had died – and when they cracked open the door of the little row house on Robinson Street where he’d lived, they discovered that he’d been creating magnificent works of art that would likely prove to be of great importance.

Continue Reading →