Beside the Point vol. 9 (2022) "Returning"

Editorial Committees Creative Nonfiction: Isabella Blackwell, Aidan McLean Council of Poetry: Kayleigh Bowden, Stirling Brown, Marley Dahl-Bates, Kane Miller Fiction: Jonathan Brenneman, Duncan Carter-Johnson, Simone Gittens, Kaylee MacQueen, N’Donna Russell Artwork/Fantasy: Delta Arena, Rheanna Bruce, Alyssa Fraser, Nicolas Ihmels, Emily-Jayne Smythe Contributing Artists: Jonathan Brenneman, Phoenix Guzzo, Del Wilder Cover Art: Kayleigh Bowden

Faculty Advisor: Micaela Maftei

Designed and printed by Graphic Services / Print Services at Camosun College © 2022 Camosun College Beside the Point is produced on the traditional territories of the Lekwungen and WSÁNEĆ peoples in Victoria, British Columbia, by the members of Camosun College’s Editing and Publishing class (Creative Writing 159).

Published by Camosun College English Department 3100 Foul Bay Road Victoria BC. V8P 5J2

ISSN 1918-8714 Volume 9 This publication is licensed under a Creative Commons License, Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works

The text may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes, provided that credit is given to the original author.

Please contact copyright@camosun.ca for permission beyond the usage outlined in the Creative Commons license.

Contact us at btp@camosun.ca

MANIFEST

On Returning This year’s issue of Beside the Point has come together at a fraught time. Submissions began arriving during the tenuous first term back on campus. In the next term, our class formed to prepare and build an issue of the journal for the first time since 2020 – all guided by the theme of “Returning.” During the editing and preparation process, we wrestled with what it means to return, where we might be returning from, and in which ways return might be impossible – even if desired.

The pieces in this issue address such questions, in their various ways. We have returns that are yearned for, returns that simply can never be, returns that are as reliable as the seasons unfolding one after another. Returning can be cheerful, heartbreaking, or an unanswerable taunt.

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After an unintended hiatus, we are thrilled to return to publication, even while understanding that, for Beside the Point, as for so much else, things look and feel a little different.

It’s unclear if one can ever truly return anywhere; places change, societies change, and people change. Perhaps every return is, in all honesty, a first visit to somewhere echoing old and lost things.

Over the past few years, much was lost, and now we must grapple with what our post-pandemic futures might look like.

These unsettling times have had a profound effect on us individually and collectively. We have all experienced loss, fear, uncertainty, and confusion. We tend to return to art in search of solace, answers, hope, and connection. Things may still feel unstable and hard to pin down, but we hope the artwork and writing here offer an opportunity to pause and reflect as we linger over what has changed, what will return, and how we understand ourselves at this moment in time.

-Beside the Point editors

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Table of Contents FICTION

14

Unsent Letters and Empty Beds Stirling Brown

70

Saving Max Alyssa Fraser

84

I Want You To Know That It Gets Better Alyssa Fraser

POETRY

9

Afar Simone Gittens

18

Shallow Depressions Grace Guiney

22

Ode to a Dropped Poetry Course Jonathan Brenneman

27

My Submission Jonathan Brenneman

35

Sunshower Simone Gittens

46

Driftwood Simone Gittens

50

Coming Home Aerial Leister

68

Robbie Bobbin Pantsless Robin Del Wilder

4

CREATIVE NONFICTION

10

Laundry Days, 1965 Patti Arlidge

24

10 Years Soph Helm

28

Untangled Megan Roddan

47

Sweatlodge: A Braided Essay Sherry Jakesta

52

Come On, You E. M. Andrews

58

Miniature Memoirs Micah James

60

On the Weight of What We Keep Marlon Fraser-Buchanan

92

To Name a Mayfly Mya Roy

FANTASY

78

Unearthed Emma Minto

ART WORK

6

Sunset on a Hometown Phoenix Guzzo

36

Ten Images Jonathan Brenneman

5

6

Sunset on a Hometown

Phoenix Guzzo Acrylic on canvas, 16”x24” November 2021

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ARTWORK

Sunset on a Hometown Phoenix Guzzo Acrylic on canvas, 16”x24” November 2021

In relation to the theme of Returning, I painted the piece Sunset on a Hometown. The subject matter of this work became a bittersweet goodbye to my hometown of “Kamloops” on the Tk’emlúps territories. I visited home during the first weeks of August, and by then everyone in the southern interior had grown accustomed to the endless smoky days of that summer. It was an inescapable smoke that smothered out the sun and burned my eyes. However, the summers weren’t always like this. It has always been hot in the summer, but I remember many picture-perfect days. Outside, my friends and I would jump in the river to cool off and relax under the shade of my grandpa’s peach tree. Cut back to last summer, and I was constantly worried about the fire evacuation. There was the disturbing possibility of my parents losing their home and neighbourhood to the wildfires just kilometres away. This worst-case scenario was the horrifying reality for many other families in the town of Lytton. Climate change affects and distorts our natural landscapes, as well as the familiar ones. Subsequently, this piece explores the fallibility of our memories in relation to the reality of our new situation.

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POETRY

Afar Simone Gittens

Her plane landed home.

She was there, I am alone.

I miss her dearly.

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CREATIVE NONFICTION

Laundry Days, 1965 Patti Arlidge

My mom would have everything ready for me when I got home after school. Once a week I walked down Shelbourne Street from Knight Avenue, pushing the yellow baby carriage piled high with dirty sheets and towels and clothes.

We had a wringer washer at home in the yard. My youngest sister once broke her arm by sticking it through the wringer. Mom washed the diapers in that washer — so many diapers! One of my all-time favourite jobs was hanging the freshly washed diapers on the clothesline. I still love to hang clothes outside to dry on warm breezy days. The fresh smell of clothing hung outside feels extra clean.

Climbing into a bed made with outside-dried sheets is the very best, and feels like bringing the outdoors inside.

With six kids born within seven years, Mom was extremely busy and could not keep up with all the laundry. She was always washing clothes. And dishes. And faces. Being the second oldest, and a girl, I was expected to help out with running the house. That’s how it was in the sixties; girls and women did all that dirty work. I liked doing the laundry, so I didn’t mind at the time. Thank goodness that ridiculous thinking has changed. Nowadays, you see dads all the time out there pushing strollers, playing with their children, making dinner, and sharing the household duties.

When I arrived at the laundromat, I would quickly push quarters into the coin slots in each of the machines. I raced myself to see how fast I could be. Now, more than a half century later, I realize that while I thought there was so much laundry that I needed all of the twelve machines, that wouldn’t have been possible.

I couldn’t fit that much laundry in the baby carriage! And we did not

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have that much stuff, even with our family of eight. I quickly sorted the lights and darks and sheets and towels and felt proud of myself for always managing to fill the machines before they started to swish.

The race and thrill of getting everything done so fast stuck with me. One of my first jobs as a teenager was working at the Royal Jubilee Hospital in the laundry department. We had to work in pairs to carefully feed sheets into a contraption called a mangle. Most of my coworkers were older and not exactly happy to be there. But once in a while, I worked with another person who also liked to race to see how fast we could go. I liked partnering with Vanda, my friend from school. We would work hard and fast, chatting and laughing all night long. Sometimes we turned up the mangle so fast we jammed the machine. Then we got lectured and had to slow it down again.

In the laundromat, after all the washing machines were full, I had time to go window shopping at the stores. My favourite was the Nearly New Shop. It had second-hand clothing for under a dollar.

Mom bought all our clothes there. Wild Birds Unlimited and Cobs Bakery are in that spot now. Merry Mart was right next door, and it carried all kinds of fun stuff to look at. On the other side of Nearly New was Slater’s Bakery, owned by my friend Heather Slater’s family.

Heart Pharmacy has taken over the bakery’s spot. Shop Easy was the big grocery store where Fairways is now. The same automatic doors are still there. There used to be hard candy wrapped in cellophane just inside those doors. The store owners saved their old, unsellable lettuce for me to feed my two pet rabbits, Timmy and Alice. One of the very kind produce guys always put a handful of those candies into the boxes of old lettuce. He recognized me as one of the kids

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from that tiny house with six kids, and he knew we didn’t have much money. We recycled those lettuce boxes and used them as laundry baskets.

The dryers at the laundromat were huge, so I only used half as many machines for drying. After each dryer was full, I slid the dimes into the slots, and for a few seconds I watched the contents get tossed around. Then I walked across the parking lot to Tastee Freeze, which is now just parking spots, directly across the street from Fujiya. Mom always made sure there was an extra 15 cents for me to buy myself a pop. I got Pepsi because it made me feel more like a grown-up. Adults don’t usually drink Orange Crush. Back at the laundromat with my drink, I would watch the dryers going round and round. Standing right in front of the dryers, soaking in their warmth, watching the clothes tossing and turning, I was mesmerized. Nowadays that would be called a meditative experience. I was transfixed. As the dryers stopped one by one, I grabbed and folded each item as neatly as I could, stacking the towels perfectly so they looked like they were sitting on a store shelf.

When the last article of clothing was folded and packed into a box, I used the last dime to call Mom from the payphone. It was always dark when she arrived. She always thanked me and told me how much she appreciated my help. We would put the boxes into the Ford Anglia, but the car was small, so I walked home with the baby carriage. On my walk home I was always tired but felt happy that I had helped.

My laundry days often creep into my memory when I am shopping at Shelbourne Plaza, where nothing is the same. When I walk along the sidewalk from Frontrunners to the new laundromat, Squeakey’s, I think about those days, more than half a century ago. If I close my eyes, I can go right back to 1965.

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13

FICTION

Unsent Letters and Empty Beds Stirling Brown

In the mornings she awoke to the emptiness of half her mattress, colder without the comfort of her lover’s arms. With frigid toes and fingertips, she shivered. She reached out, arms outstretched across the lonely pillow to her left side. Pulling it closer to her chest, she inhaled the scent her partner left behind. “I miss you,” she’d whisper into the dawn air. Spending most of her mornings just like that, she would awaken, turn to her side, embrace what she could and sulk.

As she stepped out of bed, bare feet connecting with the wooden planks of the floor, long brunette hair falling to her waist, she took her first deep breath of the day. Looking through the sheer curtains and out the window, inhaling, exhaling, her thoughts remained stuck on her absent flame.

“My love,” she heard her flower humming into her ear, while a pair of slender arms wrapped around her waist, “I have to travel back to London for work again soon.”

Taking a bite of buttered toast, she continued to reflect back to the times they shared tea.

Pouring a teapot of chamomile into two mugs, her fingers grew hot against the ceramic, “cream or sugar?”

“No, thank you,” her flame lifted her mug toward her mouth.

In silence, they sat until the warmth of the tea spread throughout their bodies, hands entwined on the coffee table between them.

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Sitting at the same table, she poured some tea, for only one.

She glanced across the table toward a tray with an empty porcelain creamer and a small bowl of sugar cubes. She leaned over to pick one up, rolling it between her fingers. As it slowly began to break apart, she placed the cube back where it came from.

Spending the rest of the early morning writing letters to her travelling lover, she wrote anything that came to mind. The words flowed freely from her pen, silent whispers echoing onto the paper.

As her pen hit the page, she’d recall memories of her hyacinth.

Her mannerisms, the way she moved, spoke, and breathed. She remembered how often her companion would spend her evenings in the garden, tattering away at the petals and roots of the roses.

Pulling her gloves off her hands, she used her teeth to assist, one finger at a time. She even remembered how she combed her hair each morning and night, maintaining a strict grooming schedule so her long blonde hair wouldn’t end up in knots. Then she thought back to the mornings she would awaken first, taking the extra few moments to glance at her lover, hair spread across the pillowcase.

On the page, she wrote: “I’ve been longing for your presence as of late, my love. Oh, how I ache for your lips, your fingers, your softspoken words, your thoughts. Everything. I beg for your kisses that send shivers down my spine, for your admiration that lights my heart. You feel right, darling. And I’ve never craved another as I do you. Never have I experienced such intense love. Truly, you’re my everything and I’m entirely yours, heart, soul, and all.”

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That was how she spent her time as the sun rose across the sky, thinking and reminiscing. More than anything, she missed the occasions where they laid in silence. Comfortable with its presence between them, they even welcomed it, for they needed no words to communicate. Their fingertips spoke more fluently than their lips and tongues would, caressing one another as they settled against the mattress. They were twin flames, depending on what you believed in.

Soulmates with a closer tie.

It felt emptier when she woke to her lonesome. Those feelings of incompleteness followed her through her days, awaiting at her bedside. Despite it, she would sleep through the nights with the occasional dream that distracted her.

The cycle would continue, as every morning woke her with shivers. Groggily, she crawled out of bed. The absence of her companion weighed heavy on her shoulders, but she couldn’t help but feel the warmth from outside her bed. Startled by a knock at the front door, she froze, not expecting any visitors. Cautiously, she peered through the tiny slit of the open door. She gasped, opening it as much as the hinges could handle. She nearly tripped while pulling her hyacinth into an embrace. She nestled her face tightly against the crook of her neck, inhaling the sweet scent of a floral meadow, her lover’s natural scent.

Staying in her flame’s arms until she finally woke, she opened her eyes to the pillow she tightly embraced against her chest, so close she would almost taste the faded floral scent. Then her eyes gazed at the gap on the other half of the mattress, still unoccupied and empty. Her feet hit the wooden floor as she wrapped a cashmere robe around her chest. Still, she reminisced, unconsciously dreaming. She stared off into the yard until a chill shuddered her back to reality, to her own body. She sulked and turned towards the kitchen and began preparing her morning tea, boiling the water in a kettle before

16

adding a teabag. Chamomile. Pouring the hot water into two separate teacups, steam billowed against the teacup’s cold ceramic interior.

She set the kettle down on the coffee table, and her eyes remained fixated on the whirling pools of honeydew in the teacups.

Staggering in the opposite direction, she pushed herself toward the bedroom, stumbling over her own feet in the process. She caught herself on the bedroom door, eyes focused on the closed closet door across from her. With a few steps and a hard yank, the door hit the wall as it opened, leaving a small pitiful crack. She dug through cramped drawers until she found an old backpack, pulling it taut to brush off the collected lint and dust. She tossed in whatever pieces of clothing she could find. She tugged the zipper shut, battling to keep it fastened against the closure. Next, she made her way toward her bedside drawer. She yanked at the cabinet, sending it clattering to the ground below. She plucked out a handful of sealed letters, decorating each one with a kiss before tearing them in half. She took the paper remnants and stuffed all she could into her bag. Taking a deep breath, she stood up and made her way out of the bedroom and back into the kitchen and then finally out the front door.

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POETRY

Shallow Depressions Grace Guiney

You go to the river.

The bank flickers green and crescent carcasses drape over cedar roots. You crouch beside one as somebody lifts a curtain of skin and the exposed maggots twine like lovers. Mom makes spaghetti for dinner and asks about your field trip.

You go to the river.

You see the salmon slumping into parentheses and people not seeing the salmon. They reek of halfdeath as they walk a time-lapse around you and Grandpa. He says you’ll miss it if you move too fast.

The parentheses straighten as volts of river run through them.

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You go to the river.

You seek a metaphorical death and a literal survival but they are dying literally and surviving metaphorically. They are laying eggs in shallow depressions and climbing the spines of trees and their teeth are emerging from the stems of Nootka roses.

You go to the river.

The river is carbonated and bleeding out. The salmon are on the wrong side of the fence.

They’re supposed to be running but today it looks more like wrestling and every ovoid future is being rinsed down the drain.

You know this feeling.

19

You go to the river but there are no rivers anymore.

Only salmon swimming up the streets and streets dissolving like teeth in Coca-Cola floods.

The people run along the rim like dentists with chisels and glue but the decay outruns them and so do the salmon.

You go to the river and you force your eyes open.

They don’t have fingers for plucking but they have tails for scooping and they need a shallow depression to lay their eggs in.

The pavement won’t do but your depression has the alluvial appeal of a riverbed.

20

You go to the river and alevins are stirring in the redds of your sockets.

Hundreds bloom from your optic nerves and through their embryo eyes you see the world in silver crescendos. The sky is a mirror reflecting the gills emerging from your neck.

You go to the river.

The salmon sank into silt long ago and you are gathering the stones they disintegrated over.

You fill your pockets with them and then you remember that you aren’t Virginia Woolf. You paint them instead and lay the eggs in unsuspecting gardens.

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POETRY

Ode to a Dropped Poetry Course Jonathan Brenneman

Oh, poetry! I intended of you, a cornerstone of new skills to hone a freezer’s supply all the feelings that I can concentrate* but now it’s too late I clicked the “drop” button like it was clickbait Oh, poetry! I wanted to do, all hours expected even though I suspected that I had neglected to factor in sleep and although I elected to ignore it and weep I have not (yet) perfected wakeful counting of sheep

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Oh, Poetry! I have to admit, my rent is not cheap and my time, un-infinite for my grades to keep at a level inveterate in fact, to better it I have to make a choice (this is why I ride a bike and not a Rolls Royce) Oh, Poetry! I quit!

But only for now if you would just allow another semester I’ll find an investor or bribe the professor.

Because I’m eager to learn, give me credits to earn, and I swear I’ll return * - (like juice, get it?)

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CREATIVE NONFICTION

10 Years Soph Helm

Grandmaman was a joyful woman. She grew up in Bex, Switzerland, which made French her mother tongue. She spoke five languages: French, English, Spanish, Italian, and German. She spoke in a beautiful sing-songy way; her words danced off her tongue and twirled into my ear. I remember seeing tiny ballerinas twirling around the room. She loved gardening; she had the prettiest backyard with perfectly trimmed bushes and beautiful plants of all types blooming in their respective seasons. She travelled the world extensively, before and after she met my Grandpapa. She came to Canada alone, and gave birth to her first child, Richard, alone. Grandpapa found out Richard had been born in a letter, because he was away working. She was a powerful woman, a kind and generous soul who could do just about anything.

Alzheimer’s disease is a chronic neurodegenerative disease: it is irreversible and it is not a normal part of aging. Alzheimer’s disease causes brain cells to degenerate and die, which causes thinking ability and memory to deteriorate over time. There are four main stages of Alzheimer’s disease, though their length and symptoms can vary from case to case. The Early Stage refers to those who have mild impairment due to the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease – forgetfulness, mood shifts, difficulty following conversation, difficulty concentrating...

I have a video from my seventh birthday, when my parents got me my first camera. It was a bright pink point-and-shoot that I’d been begging for. In the video, Uncle Peter is talking to Natalie about yoga, my younger brother Nathan is trying to get my mom’s attention, my dad is handing out slices of cake, and Grandmaman gives me a compliment on my outfit. I love that top, it’s very chic.

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I was seven when you were diagnosed. I don’t remember it at all.

Mom and Dad tried to explain it to me but I didn’t get it. I didn’t notice much of a difference – you seemed fine. You’d forget words and mix up names but that’s just who you were.

The Middle Stage of Alzheimer’s disease refers to the greater decline in memory and cognitive abilities. This is the point where the care for the person with Alzheimer’s will need to be increased substantially, and moving them to a long-term care home may be considered…

You were still you, at least to me you were. This was the time I knew you best. I’d give my friends a heads-up before meeting you so they knew that if you repeated phrases or didn’t make sense that it was just a part of it. You were a part of me. You saw my school performances, and went to Theatre Under The Stars with me and Aunt Sue. You gave the best hugs and always did the classic three French kisses on my cheeks anytime I said goodbye. You didn’t know my name, and you didn’t know how we knew each other, but you treated me with a softness that could only be due to love. You didn’t tend to the garden anymore, Aunt Sue did, but you loved to sit in the sun. You’d sing old French children’s songs that you still somehow remembered. And when we went down the stairs you’d grab my arm and count each step out loud – un, deux, trois, quatre…

The Late Stage of Alzheimer’s disease is when the person living with Alzheimer’s is unable to communicate verbally or take care of themselves due to the increasing severity of the symptoms – memory and recognizing time and place are severely impaired, speech becomes unrecognizable, and the person needs assistance with eating, walking, using the washroom…

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You didn’t talk anymore; you hadn’t in a while. I longed to hear you say something that didn’t make sense, but it never came.

I brushed your hair and spread moisturizer on your drying arms. I cried when Dad talked to you. I cried when you looked at me and didn’t seem to see anything. In the end there is no warmth.

End Of Life refers to the final months of Grandmaman’s life.

You had Alzheimer’s disease and now it was going to kill you. It already had. You needed to go. During this time the focus shifts to palliative care, and respecting Grandmaman’s wishes. You are not you anymore. You need to die. You are hurting. You are lost. But I can’t help but want to hold your hand as we cross the street.

I was seventeen when you died.

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POETRY

My Submission Jonathan Brenneman

We love your submission So poetic There’s nothing to change It’s perfect You’re so inspiring We could learn a lot Our journal is hiring Here’s fifty bucks All this and more I imagine they say Before my submission Is returned to me today

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CREATIVE NONFICTION

Untangled Megan Roddan

I was thirty-two years old and had been living in the Okanagan for only a few months with my husband and two kids. We had moved away from Victoria to try and buy a house where the real estate was less expensive. This was the farthest I had ever been from my extended family and usually I spoke to my mom once a day. She didn’t approve of our move and was jealous that we were buying a house. Her phone calls had increased since we’d moved, and she often found negative things to say about our new location. I had made a new friend at my son’s school, who knew a family member struggling with mental health. When she talked about it, something sounded familiar. I had heard about other mental health disorders, like bipolar disorder, but I had never heard of the term personality disorder. One afternoon, after we had been talking, I got on my computer and googled personality disorder.

I came upon the diagnosis of narcissism. Many people overuse this term to describe someone that they want to vilify, when really this is an actual personality disorder, for which there tragically is no cure. If you know someone that is suffering with addiction or mental health challenges, you may be left with some hope that they could get help or medication. Narcissists will never change.

I had just gotten off the phone with my mom. She raged when she didn’t like what I had to say and hung up on me. She was making another of her home-made magazines with her poetry and paintings and was going to try to sell it around Salt Spring Island and Victoria.

My mom did this a lot when I was a young teen, printing out a calendar or some sort of a newsletter she made herself. She would print it out on normal paper and attempt to sell it around town. It

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was humiliating. I had tried to encourage her to do a website or a blog – something less conspicuous. The conversation turned when she complimented some family photos I had recently gotten done.

It was unusual for her to comment on something of mine, so at first I was flattered. She went on to say that she wanted to use one of my family photos for her magazine. It felt like a glass had been filled up and then smashed on the ground in front of me. This sounds minor compared to many things I have endured from her – and it was – but something inside me just snapped. I told her absolutely not. She tried to persuade me, but when I stayed rigid with my answer, she became increasingly angry and disinterested.

Talking to my mom is sometimes like talking to a wall. She nods or says “mmhmm,” while she is thinking of what she is going to say next. Mostly she just drones on and never really listens to the other person. When she does listen, she is mainly gaining information to use against you later. She talks about herself constantly. My siblings and I have literally put the phone down while she’s talking and left the room to do something else, and when we would pick up the phone again, she would not have even noticed. She will go on and on about what a great mother she is, or cook, or artist, you name it – she is amazing at it, and it appears that she genuinely believes she knows everything. I have never heard her talk disparagingly about herself or blame herself, even in a humorous or self-deprecating way.

My mom loves to have news before anyone else, especially when it’s tragic. Did a celebrity die? Is there a hurricane coming? She will call you up and take immense thrill at being the first to tell you.

People with personality disorders tend to hurt those around them

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because of their own low self-esteem. They can go from calm to rage in record-breaking time. My husband and my best friend are both registered nurses and quite educated on an array of mental health disorders. When my husband came home from his shift the day of the phone call, I sat him down in the kitchen.

“I think my mom is a narcissist,” I announced.

“Oh, yeah I know,” he responded nonchalantly.

It was not a revelation for him. Not that he knew exactly, but all the clues made it obvious to him while I was still wading into the idea. My best friend said basically the same thing: “Megan, when you had that art show at the coffee shop, your mom just talked about her own art for the entire time.”

I felt relief, and justified that I was not crazy. All these years, something had felt wrong, and now I had a word for it. This feeling was fleeting and followed by immense guilt and grief.

I have not spoken to my mom for seven years. There are times when I feel like I am free from her and her abuse. There are times I worry that as a product of my parents I will somehow invertedly pass on toxic behaviours or habits onto my kids. It can be terrifying.

When I first saw a counsellor after realizing that my mom may have a personality disorder, she said something that struck me to my core. I told the counsellor how my mom kept phoning me and how I just felt like I couldn’t talk to her all the time.

“Why do you have to?” she asked me.

“Because it’s my mom,” I replied tearfully.

“So? You don’t owe her anything, you don’t have to talk to her if you don’t want to.” She paused. “You can do whatever you want to.”

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It was many counselling sessions later that I realized I had been conditioned to feel controlled and guilt-tripped. When I stopped picking up my mom’s phone calls and answering her texts, I spiraled for awhile in a storm of guilt and sadness. I grieved for my mother.

It took a while, but over time I slowly begun to feel free. I started to see how the guilt trips and gaslighting were bars in a cage that was finally lifting. I no longer felt controlled. I began to question earlier decisions and ideas, asking myself, like the questions usually asked to a toddler and child: do I really like this colour? Did I like that meal?

What should I do or not do?

I realized I had adopted a dog that was my mother’s favorite breed.

That I had not finished college due in part to my mom’s constant taunting that “maybe it was all too much for me.” A hard pill to swallow was realizing I had chosen to have kids at a young age partly for her approval and love. I realized, listening to old messages from my mother, that disguising her words as concern was her method of control and keeping me at her level. When my older sister and I bought houses, she never responded with excitement or pride. She was quiet, jealous, and critical. All my life choices up that point felt manipulated. I was trying to untangle what was me and what was her.

I had nightmares that she would show up at my house unannounced (which she had done when I lived closer to her), or that I would see her out in public unexpectedly and she would confront me. I felt jumpy and scared.

“What if I am a narcissist?” I muffled through tears one day to my counsellor. I wanted to run away and leave my own family at this point. I was so terrified of passing on the legacy of my mother, and what she had taught me, onto my own children.

“Because you are asking this, it means you are not a narcissist,” she responded. I knew she was right, but it still haunted me.

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My mom grew desperate, calling constantly, leaving guilttripping voicemails and calling my siblings. I blocked her number and started to have my husband listen to the voicemails and let me know the gist. I knew that just hearing her voice would trigger me.

My older sister was the only one not on either side of the battle line my mom had created. She had her own tumultuous relationship with my mom – she recognized my mom had issues but did not know what to call it. Meanwhile, my two brothers and little sister cut communication with me entirely. At first, they had tried to make me feel bad that I was not talking to our mom, but I would not let go of my new boundary. My siblings today are completely divided. My sisters have cut ties from my parents and also received counselling, and the three of us unfortunately have no contact with our brothers.

One day, my counsellor encouraged me to talk to my extended family members and find clues on how her personality disorder may have developed. I phoned my uncle, my mom’s younger brother, and asked him questions about my mom’s past. He shared information with me that allowed me to gain insight into how my mother became this person. In 1962, when she was two years old, my mother had open heart surgery to correct an artery. It is a risky procedure and even more so in the 1960s. This experience petrified my grandparents, who both had come from England still traumatized from the war.

They ended up having even more children, and my aunt, their youngest child of five, was born developmentally challenged. My aunt and my mom were not raised to be independent or take care of themselves. My mom was given anything she wanted and grew up quite wealthy. Her parents owned a beautiful house in a very small town in Ontario, and they had a cabin they would go to in the summer. My mom had expensive braces, fancy winter coats from the Bay, and piano lessons, and her father built her a barn for her very own horse. She felt entitled to wealth and expected her brothers and parents to give it to her when she demanded.

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When I phoned my uncle, he was in the middle of dealing with my mom’s berating and criticizing. Years of financial handouts resulted only in an ungrateful attitude and a huge sense of entitlement from my mom. My uncle is a very blue-collar individual, a hard worker that built a highly successful trucking business from the ground up.

This kindest and steadiest of men finally broke down and had to seek therapy due his dysfunctional relationship with his sister. I have since reached out to most of my extended family. My mom has never been able to keep steady friendships or relationships with her siblings and in-laws. There was never a time in my life she was not on the “outs” with someone. It was difficult to keep track of who we could or could not talk to week by week. The drama discouraged us kids from ever being close to extended family.

Following in my mom’s footsteps and having children very young, I had hoped my mom would want to be more in my life and be involved with my kids. It wasn’t long after I had my first child that my mom began to say, “don’t expect me to be one of those grandparents that spends all her time with her grandkids or comes to all their birthdays. Dad and I have lots of plans.”

She did not want to be categorized as a normal grandmother, or old in anyway. She loved to hint that one day she would be rich and famous from one of her business schemes or art projects and that, if we were good, she might throw us a bone. Instead of small goals, basic financial planning, sustainable employment, or education, my mom believes in entrepreneurship and running her own business empire. She does not see the steps to success but believes it will just come to her one day. She feels entitled to others’ money and does not feel shame asking for it, especially from her relatives. The poverty she is in is just temporary to her. The dichotomy of this is that I grew up impoverished and I always feel like any of my wealth is temporary.

I am not very attached to possessions and would never want to start my own business.

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As the holidays get closer and the messages of family, traditions, and togetherness are portrayed in holiday movies and commercials, I try to shrug off messages like “family is forever.” I sometimes miss having a mom, a mom I never really had. I wonder sometimes who she really is under this personality disorder. I wonder if I ever really got to see the real her, or was it just bravado or a mirage? I wonder if she ever saw the real me, or just her reflection? The truth is, I do not think I will ever know, and I am learning everyday to be okay with that.

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POETRY

Sunshower Simone Gittens

The rain will retreat, The sun will return and it; Shall shine like you did.

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TEN IMAGES

After You Move Jonathan Brenneman

Return #1: After You Move For me, this picture of the house I used to live in in Vienna (when we were renovating it) captures the sense of alienation you have when you come back to a place where you have lived. When other people live there and have changed things around, it no longer feels like home. You feel like an intruder, you stand out, you don’t belong.

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TEN IMAGES

Catharsis Jonathan Brenneman

Return #2: Catharsis This picture of a Blue-footed Booby in the Galapagos is an easy one to anthropomorphize; the bird looks to be sighing in relief, possibly after a long day hunting for food. To me, this is what it feels like to come home after a long and difficult day.

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TEN IMAGES

Guiding Light Jonathan Brenneman

Return #3: Guiding Light This picture of a lighthouse in Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine evokes for me the concept of home when you are away; the light is not shining at the moment, and no ship is coming in. The warm autumnal colours bring to mind nostalgia and deep yearning for something you cannot have.

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TEN IMAGES

Nostalgia Trip Jonathan Brenneman

Return #4: Nostalgia Trip This image of a person joyfully riding atop a ruined old plane (Gjirokastra, Albania) is suggestive of the process of revisiting, or attempting to revisit, the precious places of the past. You go through the motions but the passage of time has made it impossible to truly replicate the experiences you remember. The communities have moved on. What was once new is now old and in a state of disrepair.

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TEN IMAGES

To Shore Jonathan Brenneman

Return #5: To Shore In this picture we see a popular beach in the town of Ende, Flores Island, Indonesia. Families flock here to swim and enjoy the proximity to the ocean, but there is no ignoring the sheer amount of plastic rubbish that has come in from the sea. Time and time again, humans return to the same places, and so does their waste. There is a clash between the idealized world we want to live in versus the one that we are creating with our choices.

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TEN IMAGES

To the Earth (from whence you came) Jonathan Brenneman

Return #6: To the Earth (from whence you came) This picture, taken at New Brunswick’s Ha Ha Cemetery, shows how language norms change and how things which once seemed deadly serious now can seem positively absurd, and vice versa.

Time recontextualizes everything, even death; something to keep in mind as we go about our lives.

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TEN IMAGES

To the Moon Jonathan Brenneman

Return #7: To the Moon This image of a rural farmhouse in Iceland under a full moon is meant to evoke the passage of time by reminding us of how quickly our civilization has progressed. Less than a hundred years ago most people lived closer to nature, and landscapes like this one would have been much more common in many people’s shared cultural memory. As a counterpoint, the glaciers behind the farmhouse remind us that while they’ve been around for hundreds of thousands of years, thanks to human “progress” many of these will probably not exist much longer, melting and disappearing within a single human lifespan.

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TEN IMAGES

To the South pt 1 Jonathan Brenneman

Return #8&9: To the South (Pts 1&2) These images are meant to show a little more levity. Penguins are of course known for making their habitats in Antarctica near the South Pole. In the first image, the man wearing a penguin hat is bringing a human-made penguin costume to the polar environment that inspired it. In the second image (following page) – taken from a toilet stall wall in Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia – we are asked to question if we truly trust the motivations of the penguin man.

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TEN IMAGES

To the South pt 2 Jonathan Brenneman

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TEN IMAGES

To Your Vehicle Jonathan Brenneman

Return #10: To Your Vehicle This image builds on themes from “To the South.” This sign in the parking lot of South Africa’s Table Mountain National Park attempts to remind us of our individual footprint, to remind us to care about the fate of the natural wonders that we are ostensibly here to enjoy.

Simultaneously, one is reminded of the penguin man, and questions re-emerge regarding the purity of his motives.

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POETRY

Driftwood Simone Gittens

Take me to the beach.

The one we always go to.

We’ll drift with the tide.

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CREATIVE NONFICTION

Sweatlodge: A Braided Essay Sherry Jakesta

My mind suddenly calms thinking about being there. The smell of cedar, smoke, and sage in the air. I know the ancestors will be with me. It’s where I long to be.

The physical The materials needed to build a sweat lodge are: sixteen young willow saplings, a roll of heavy twine, a mallet, a couple of knives, blankets and tarps, and rocks. Willow is the preferred sapling as it’s flexible, strong, and easy to work with. There should be at least two people building the sweat lodge, but more is better, so that everyone is working together as a team. First, a hole is dug in the centre of your chosen area. This is where the sacred Grandfather rocks will sit. The next step is to dig sixteen holes in the earth in a circle surrounding the centre hole. Take a willow tree, pound the butt into a hole, and bend it towards the centre till it connects with a willow tree on the opposite side. It’s important the young willows are not broken in the bending. Once the two willows meet in the middle, twine is used to tie them together. Before there was twine, “They were secured by weaving them into the structure, and by braiding the branches at the ends around the sapling opposite.”1 This process is done for all sixteen willows until a domed shape emerges. Lastly, the structure is covered with blankets and tarps to ensure darkness during the ceremony.

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There is sudden darkness.

I enter the door that faces east, crawling on my hands and knees so, Creator, you will know that I am a humble being. I enter the darkness with anticipation. I find my place in the sacred circle and wait for it to begin. I am calm. Creator, I can feel you now. I hunger for your presence. Finally, I hear the hiss and feel the steam from the water touching the Grandfathers. The smell of sage and tobacco is in the air. I’m finally where I need to be. I feel the emotions begin to surface. The pain, the anger, the hurt. The darkness in my mind. I’m safe now. I can talk to you, pray to you, and cry to you. You know me.

You understand my hurt. You want me to let it go. I need to be clean.

I have to remove the dirt that’s not mine. I need to get strong again. I need to feel balanced. In this sacred circle, all of this is possible. I am not judged here. There’s no room for shame or guilt. You love me for who I am. You believe in me. I am a beautiful, worthwhile human being. Creator, help me feel the pride in my heart that was taken away. Creator, please cleanse my mind, my body, my soul. Help me be free. Creator, thank you for not giving up on me. Creator, I pray for all the strong beautiful women in my life. The ones who loved me until I learned to love myself. Those who walk and have walked the Red Road with me. Please watch over them and their families.

Creator, I pray for my ancestors who have left this world. May their spirits soar in the afterlife, filled with happiness, joy, and peace.

Creator, I pray for all those out there who are still suffering. May they find their way to the safety and comfort of your arms. Creator, please stay in my heart. Help me be a good person. Let me take you with me when I leave. Walk beside me on my journey.

�

New Brunswick Aboriginal People’s Council (n.d.) The Sweat Lodge. https://nbapc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Youth-THE-SWEAT-LODGE.pdf � Garrett, M.T. et al. (2011). Crying for a vision: The Native American sweat lodge ceremony as therapeutic intervention.

Journal of Counseling & Development, 89(3), 318-325. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1556-6678.2011.tb00096.x

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The sacredness The sweat lodge is a sacred ceremony that Indigenous people have been participating in since the beginning of time. Nations from all over the world practise their own culture of the sweat lodge. No one way is better than another. Taking part in a sweat is a traditional and spiritual experience to help a person feel balanced with the land or with themselves, “a desire for a spiritual approach to gain balance in their lives; desire for cleansing of the mind, body, and spirit.”� Those participating in the sweat enter the dome-shaped lodge, usually on their hands and knees, while a person stays outside to watch the fire; they are called the Fire Keeper. The sacred rocks are brought in one at a time and then the door is closed and the ceremony begins.

The sacred circle is dark inside and heat is immediate once water is poured on the hot rocks, called the Grandfathers, which sit in the centre of the circle. Steam fills the sacred circle, instilling that feeling of cleansing both physically, mentally, and spiritually. It’s a safe place for people to pray and get rid of any negative energy or negative emotions. There are usually four rounds, but sometimes there is only one. Each round is an opportunity to pray for whatever is weighing heavy on a person’s mind. There may be songs, drumming, or prayers spoken out loud. This will be decided by the Elder or Knowledge Keeper running the sweat. Between each round, more rocks are individually brought in and smudged before being put down in the circle. If a person is unable to handle the heat, they can leave at any time. No one is expected to stay and suffer or stay longer than they can handle. Most people describe a sweat as the same as being in a steam room. A sweat ceremony can last up to two or three hours. When a person is ready, a sweat will appear. That could mean working together as a team to build one, or taking part in the sacred ceremony to help heal your mind, body, and soul. To sweat means to pray, connect, and be at one with the Creator.

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POETRY

Coming Home Aerial Leister

The drive home is long The roads are windy The mountains, incessant Everything is familiar Funny faces, cows mooing Comfortable, yet jarring Home brings contented memories The smell of a meal cooking Delighting my senses with every inhale The vegetables harvested from the backyard The field of grass and dandelions outside my house Where I would practice for my dance recitals The fire crackling in the stove My siblings and I mustering the icicles off the gutters Watching them as they sizzle to vapour on the fireplace

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Home brings gut-wrenching memories Sleepless, anxiety-ridden nights The sound of violent, loud whispers Closeting myself for fear of rejection Acting the role of the family therapist Ceaselessly searching for validation Home brings a sense of community People sharing their time and resources Sometimes communities help you flourish My community manufactured my compassion And sometimes they restrain your growth My community terminated my self-worth Home doesn’t know me Home is lonely Home is broken Home raised me It did the best it knew how I just don’t belong here anymore

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CREATIVE NONFICTION

Come On, You E. M. Andrews

You are only free when you realize you belong no place, You belong every place, No place at all. The price is high, The reward is great.

— Maya Angelou

Some say it takes a year. One trip around the sun, to begin to feel remotely human again. To redeem some sense of self, after experiencing the breakdown and displacement of a divorce. Three hundred and sixty-fivegrueling days and nights, one (un)wedding anniversary, countless birthday celebrations, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, Valentine’s, and all the rest of the bloody “firsts” no one ever looks forward to marking. If I can make it through each of these days — one full year of graceless transitions, awkward exchanges, looks of unwanted charity, lonely breakfasts, lullabies for tears, insufficient funds, and most of all — most of all — carefully holding three tender little hearts, so gently and reassuringly. God! Let me not disappoint them most of all! If I can manage that, let there be peace. And moments of joy — pure joy.

Let the new family that we become be strong and tenacious. Let there be so much love! And laughter — to the point that our bellies hurt from it. Let life begin again.

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Come on you truth teller — You seer of visions, Come on you maker, you mystic, You unmarried mother, And shine.

November 1st, 2016

3:30pm - Arrive at Royal Jubilee Hospital Emergency Intake.

4:00pm - Psychiatric Emergency waiting room. (PEZ) No bags, no phones. Turn out pockets. Asked to wait.

5:00pm - Waiting still.

6:00pm - Interview with nurse.

6:30pm - Waiting.

7:00pm - Interview with doctor. Ask for medication for migraine.

7:20pm - Given T3s and instructed to take them under watchful eye of nurse. Back to waiting.

8:00pm - Interview with a Psychiatry student.

Must wait behind glass door as student doctor confers with supervisor.

9:00pm - Admitted onto Psychiatry ward.

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I remember your tenderness. The kind a man possesses when he is raised by a lonely mother. Soft spoken, slow to anger. Taut, square shoulders, juxtaposed by timid brown eyes.

I mistook your solitary nature for the complex-artistic type, but there was pain behind that mask that I did not yet know existed. I, too, carried scars from my past. I hoped we could somehow bind ourselves together and create something beautiful, more fearsome than whatever might threaten to undo us. I clung to that hope, yearned for it to come and find us in the hollows of the night. In the placid darkness, when nothing stirred — I woke, weeping, from a nightmare, to find you sleeping on the couch.

Come on you dancer — You seer of visions, You botanist, you baker, You bellyacher, And shine.

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November 3rd, 2016

Royal Jubilee Hospital, Room N263 Nurses: Shannon, James, Janet Medications: Pristiq 100mg, Clonazepam .75mg 5:30pm - Dinner

November 7th, 2016

Room N263 10:00am - Nurse: Noreen, gives me handouts on breathing exercises and positive mindsets. I noticed the glass vase of fresh flowers my mom brought in was politely swapped for a plastic, shatter-proof vessel.

November 9th, 2016

Room N263 5:00am - Wake early, stare at ceiling. Decide to shower.

No locks on these doors and no curtains for privacy.

8:00am - Breakfast. Talk with a bearded man in a neck brace who studies at the conservatory. Meet a twenty-eight-year-old guy who plays the guitar.

We talk about our love of Pagliacci’s bread as we pick at our cafeteria food and sip decaf coffee.

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Mary Shelley perfectly encapsulated how I felt when she wrote, “There is something at work in my soul which I do not understand.”

I could feel that work, deep within my bones, long before I found the courage to speak it, and I began to accept that my depression was not a personal failure. Four years after my hospitalization, I was still living as a sick woman.

Entrenched in shame and defeat. One day, I locked the bathroom door to undress for a shower, silently looking at myself in the mirror.

The vacant eyes reflecting at me spoke honestly, “If you don’t do something, you will end up back in that hospital. This sickness is all those boys will ever know of you.” I saw that life ahead of me and understood. In that moment, as one realizes the first drop of rain upon their face before a downpour, I saw I had a choice.

I cringed, anticipating the wave of grief and brokenness that would grip our family once the words cast off from my lips: “I want a formal separation.” It stung my throat just to mouth the words in silence. Perhaps I knew already that you — unflinching, without a breath of protest — would agree. Just like you would do when I’d suggest we order in for dinner, because we were both too tired to cook.

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Come on you dreamer — You seer of visions, You swimmer, you sailor, You screw-up, And shine.

November 14th, 2016

Royal Jubilee Hospital Noon – Lunch in the cafeteria. A weary-looking man who I usually find asleep in his wheelchair suddenly shakes himself awake, lifts the plastic cup he has been clutching (is it empty?), and bellows, “WE ALL DESERVE TO LIVE!” It is oddly profound, like a soothsayer suddenly overtaken by a vision. The hairs on my neck prickle. I and two others beside me glance briefly at each other, before lifting our own cups together and repeating, “We all deserve to live! Cheers!”

Portions of this piece were inspired by the song “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” by Pink Floyd.

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CREATIVE NONFICTION

Miniature Memoirs Micah James

It’s hard to return when you’ve never really left. Lived in the same house in the same city. Gone to the same school with the same teachers and the same friends. Visited the same places.

But sometimes it’s not the physical distance that is required for us to return somewhere. Sometimes it is the place itself that has changed. Sometimes without you realizing it.

That is when we return to how we used to see it, how it was, and how it is now.

A time when there were no apartments. When the field was just a field. When trees drooped over the fence, dangling honeysuckle before greedy eyes. When there was a path small enough to fit just us, before it was swallowed by untrimmed shrubs. When the fishing dock was at the first staircase, not the second, and when that beach was more of a steep hill into the lapping shore. When that store had a different name. And when all this was just a forested mystery.

Sometimes it’s indulging nostalgia. Sometimes just meaningless flickers of memory. A scent, a texture, a colour, or a sound.

Spinning on the swings until I felt nauseous with whiplash.

Ramming into the fence on a too-fast toboggan on the hill. Washing my stuffed chihuahua in a ten-gallon bucket in front of the shed to get the mud off. When a wood bug “hotel” had some escapees in the playroom. When one went up my nose and I thought I was going to die. Falling off the back of a horse scared by a marmot in Midway.

Slip’n’sliding into the blackberry patch and the resulting dish soap rashes. Caving and crying “I’m too sad” to eat cookies. Irrational fear of water skeeters. Rickety tree forts in the side yard. Neighbour kid climbing up them and then getting too scared to come down.

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Sometimes we can return through every sense but physically.

Strong and vivid memories almost transporting us back to a time not forgotten.

Building stick forts in the school forest, cedar branches for a roof.

“Sticky weed” wars with the other grades. Umbrella domes under the tree on the tarmac, the only dry place to sit on a rainy outdoor recess.

Collecting pretty dresses from second-hand stores with nowhere to wear them. Old rusty toy truck in the sand pile in Grandpa’s garden.

Baby bunnies nesting in a hole in the soil covered with leaves and twigs. Grandma heeding my suggestion to add the ferns to her quilt.

There are many places I cannot return to, because I have no reason to, because there is someone or something in the way, or because they no longer exist.

Playing with the Tinker Toys on Nana’s rust-coloured shag carpet.

Popping Dilly Bar bags. Collecting a pile of purple starfish when the tide went out. Baby octopus in an ice-cream bucket. The prettiest shell I ever found, kept in a Cheezies bag and thrown away by accident. Bobble-headed kitten training to hunt with a neighbour’s white cat. The gravel pit in front of my house that we played in as kids and picked blackberries in as teenagers, where the apartments now block our view of the mountain.

While I cannot return there, I still want to go back. And I do go back, in my memory, and walk through each room and path, the landscapes carefully etched into my being. I’m afraid that those memory maps will fade into oblivion one day, and photos won’t be enough.

At that time, when the concrete imagery erodes away into sand running through my wrinkled fingers, I will be fortunate to have written those memories down. A million miniature memoirs to myself.

And when I read my words I will once again remember, and return.

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CREATIVE NONFICTION

On the Weight of What we Keep Marlon Fraser-Buchanan

On Art vs Collection My dad was not a minimalist. He wasn’t a consumer in the way we hear about with grandparents having 10,000 different Christmas decorations still wrapped with tags in the basement. He wasn’t the Gulf Island archetypal older man with six decaying cars in the front yard and a shed full of bits of metal and wood that some hypothetical day would transform into a testament of practicality and frugality.

Instead, when you rambled up our narrow and steep driveway, the grass was unkempt. You were greeted by a plastic pig, suspended on wires from the small hill next to our cabin. A concrete garden horse, that I picked out as a child, had been spray-painted neon orange and guarded the steps up to the house. The steps were worn and painted red. At the front door, a glow-in-the-dark Halloween skeleton hung over a paper target practice. Inside the door, immediately to the right, was a work of art: a large cut-out of Joey Ramone, D.O.A concert posters, Grateful Dead artwork, a Frank Zappa poster, my sister’s childhood paintings, all collaged together on the wall. Our lampshade, made of a woven bamboo material, was full of ornaments: tinsel, a glass Jerry Garcia ornament I bought for him at West Edmonton Mall as a child, a plastic goldfish with wings on a magnet attached to a wire, a small white ceramic angel with a bell. The coffee table Dad stacked his newspapers, magazines, and copies of Adbusters on had an ongoing display of toys from Kinder Eggs, long after we stopped buying them as kids.

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Whenever friends came over, they’d exclaim, “Your dad is so cool!” upon seeing the wall. He wore black Converse low-top sneakers, black Levi’s button-up jeans, and a rotating cast of humorous or offensive t-shirts. His long salt-and-pepper hair was often bound with neon hair ties. He didn’t dress the way my friends’ dads did.

My dad never claimed to be an artist. He never pined for better materials for his mediums. On the coffee table was an X-Acto knife in a yellow plastic case, a large yellow glue stick, and a small pair of scissors with purple plastic handles. He made collages and birthday cards out of construction paper and “Bat Boy” images from National Enquirer. My best friend loved the sandwiches for school lunches he made, and I’d share them with her. They were multigrain bread, mustard, cheddar, and fake salami.

“It’s not the ingredients, but if anyone else made this it wouldn’t taste the same. Whenever he makes something though, there’s something about it,” my friend said.

In my years observing him, it’s not the creative output Dad made against all odds that sticks with me. It’s that he kept making things despite impermanence, without knowing he could stay somewhere for any length of time. When Mom and I were packing up the food he never ate after he passed, in his room in a shared home, we found tiny plastic mice and rats hidden behind the jars of rice and cans of soup. This was something beyond personal character, or a map of the inner world. That when no one sees what you’re making, you still do so with humour and delight.

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On a Library of Things I was sitting on the wooden futon in Dad’s room, covered with a towel so Grouchy Girl could climb up without getting her claws stuck. She was old and could no longer retract them. Whenever I came to visit, Grouch hid under a spot on the bed where Dad’s fleece blanket fell over and touched the floor.

“Is little Grouchy Girl scared of visitors? Can she come out just to say hi?” Dad prodded the shape of her, a little lump, behind the fabric. She gave a mew of protest. Grouch had been my sister’s cat; it took him years of care to earn her devotion. Leaning forward, he pushed down on the black plastic top of the French press slowly: “You can’t use too much pressure, or it will break.”

I’d already had three cups of coffee. I didn’t have this problem at my house, with pushing the top of the coffee maker down. He made the coffee strong, pushing against too many grounds.

“I guess the thing I was saying is that I don’t really need to OWN things, you know. Like why do I have a book I look at once a year? Why don’t I donate it to the library and take it out when I need it?” I was speaking quickly, feeling a bit unwell from the amount of coffee we’d had. He handed me a mug with more, nodding. I took another sip.

“I don’t know, Mars. All this ‘you can have electronic copies of everything’ is fine until some solar flare comes and you are left with nothing. What are you going to do when you only have MP3s and your computer dies? What are you going to do when we can’t get books anymore and you don’t have any on your shelf?”

“I mean, having a specific rendition of Terrapin Station from 1979 would not be my worry if a solar flare wiped out technology.

Anyway, the paper books are still there, they just don’t need to be in my house. Every time I go to the free store, there’s piles of books on the floor. Are they all going to vanish in some apocalypse?”

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He furrowed his brow and looked across the room. The far wall was lined with hundreds of DVDs and CDs. “I don’t get it. It doesn’t seem right to have to pay to use everything.

I want to stay here and pull books and movies off my shelf. If I give them to the library, I can’t use them when I want to.”

“But Dad, the stuff costs you. Not literally because you pay for it, but it takes up space. Remember in the other room you lived with a dozen boxes of records, no floor space, and no record player until I took them off you?”

“Yeah, but I’m still hurt about that. You’re right I had no space with the boxes, but some of that stuff was rare – you don’t know where I had to get it. Some of it was early printings. It would’ve been worth money if it could’ve been stored in a warm, dry place, but it stayed in that shed for ten years down on Burt’s property.”

“It’s just stuff. You can order almost anything online now, even the rare things. And if you couldn’t, would it be that big of a deal?

Is it worth holding onto so much? If you can’t enjoy it, it’s better to share it with people who can.”

“It wasn’t like that when I was young, though. Books and records were harder to get. You bought things and you kept them for a long time. You remind me of your mom sometimes; she was always throwing things away. She didn’t ask, she just decided you didn’t use it. But sometimes people throw things away that matter.

I saved a lot of stuff, your toys, drawings. I didn’t get a say when people threw my things out.”

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“I think the thing is, Dad, you’re good with things. You read your books. You fold your clothes. My stuff ends up in piles on the floor.

The only way I get by is by having less. Plus, things got cheaper for my generation. We throw things away too often. It’s not good to be wasteful, you’re right. But we don’t want to be materialistic. Do we need to own everything ourselves?”

I looked over at Dad’s coffee table. He had the same calculator he’d had since I was a kid: large, white but stained yellow with age, solar powered. He had a pair of square metal nail clippers. A hairbrush with black bristles and a thin wooden handle. A pencil sharpener shaped like a portable CD player. All those things he’d kept, since I was a kid. They had a totemic power, objects so associated with someone they stand in for them. Things that, while not valuable, we weren’t supposed to play with and always put back as kids. He never lost things like I did. The last time I left the country, I only really missed a few things: my computer, my car, and my French press. I didn’t miss my clothes, or most nice things I own. Did he engage with things more deeply and everything felt like that to him?

He poured us more coffee. “Look, it’s great if you don’t need stuff. You just don’t want to live in a world where you’ve got to pay a dollar to listen to any song, and it’s all online. Giving it all to McAmazon Hell Corp. Corporations already control all that stuff, and if you don’t keep it yourself, they’ll guard even more.”

I frowned. I had deleted all my MP3s and movies off my computer and signed up for streaming services. The more I got rid of digitally, let alone materially, the freer I felt. “I guess I’m more confident I can find things online than I am that I’ll have space to keep them. For me it feels like work, having so much stuff. It doesn’t guarantee anything. But the library does. I can go there and get what I need. We can take care of it together.”

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My dad put his coffee down and looked down at the lump of cat still behind the blanket. He patted her, and she mewed. “Look, Mars, I know I say this stuff, but don’t worry about what I think. We are the same in a lot of ways, kiddo, but you don’t have to keep all this stuff. When I go, I’ll be dead, I won’t be here to care what you do with it. You should keep the Trungpa books; I think you should get into Zen someday, even if you’re not into it now. Your sister should keep the art books. But I don’t care much what happens to it. Don’t tell me to give my stuff up now, but it doesn’t matter once we’re all in the ground.”

On Things That Go in the Fire “What are we going to do with his bear?” my aunt asks, looking at my sister.

I had been thinking about the bear on and off for a couple days.

The brown fur was so worn it was threadbare in many places. It had two small black plastic eyes. Dad had always kept it hidden, in a drawer, not on display the way so many of his things were. I couldn’t keep it. It reminded me he had been a child, and not in a way that brought lightness.

“I think we should burn it with him. I can’t keep it,” my sister replies.

“Yeah, that makes sense. It can keep him company where he’s going. Oh, Kev.” My aunt hadn’t seen her brother in six years.

“They also want to know if we want to cremate him in the clothes he was wearing when he died,” I add. “He was wearing his Salt Spring Inn t-shirt.”

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My sister bursts out laughing. “That seems right. Of course, he went wearing his work t-shirt. Stubborn to the end. Won’t call in sick on his death bed.”

“It’s not like he wore a suit when he was living. Wouldn’t make sense to put one on him now,” I reply, giggling.

“But imagine him with a corsage!” my sister says, still laughing.

On the Things I Kept A paperback copy of Gary Snyder’s Earth Household that’s missing the front cover. It is signed K, ’70. With a sketched hand holding a peace sign up in blue ballpoint pen ink. In the table of contents, “Buddhism and the Coming Revolution,” “Glacier Peak Wilderness Area,” and “Why Tribe” are underlined.

A new hardback copy of Chögyam Trungpa’s The Bodhisattva Path of Wisdom and Compassion. A picture of a hamburger is cut out and taped into the hand of the Buddha on the cover. Many pages are bookmarked with Kinder Egg instructions.

A black sketchbook. Written on the inside cover: Hold me tight never let me gooooooo…

An entry on January 26th: Determined not to croak without leaving a few words behind. For you, my chilluns. About what? Good question. What about. I’m sorry for not being more of a “present” Dad for so long.

And my favourite page: So, what was I supposed to conclude? Here I am, pretty much as old as I’ll ever get. Living happily and untethered with my cat. The Little Grouchy Girl. Me and ol’ Grouch and the two outside. Gray tabby with white crest and boots, and the black one. I took their house, but they seem accepting of their adversity/diversity. I LOVE cats.

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On his side table was a brass bracelet with jade leaf beads. My sister found it, unceremoniously inside a Celestial Seasonings tea tin.

She said she thought I should keep it. When my aunt came to visit his room, I showed it to her.

She burst into tears. “I thought this was gone!” she exclaimed, wiping her eyes. “I have the other one, with white beads. I wanted to give it to you girls but didn’t want to pick who to give it to. Our family brought these from China. They couldn’t take much with them. Oh, I’m so happy, Marlon, you should keep it. Your Dad said I had to forget about that stuff, that everything with our mom was in the past and we couldn’t bring it back. He kept it next to where he slept. He did care. He cared more than I knew. He kept all this stuff and he never told any of us.”

On Where I Landed I wish I could say I changed my ways – that I attend to my things with care and internalized my dad’s lessons. I have not. I just had my birthday, and my house is full of gifted flowers – a delightful mess. I recently bought a new desk and started keeping more of my things in the drawers to lighten chaos. I have glass perfume bottles, my dad’s Buddha, and the jade bracelet kept in the open. I let go of most of my books, yet they stack up again every time I go to the used bookstore. Life feels like an exercise in letting things go and constraining what I keep. I have a two-yearold black kitty with a broken tail named Baby – an impulsive gift from my mother. She was intended for my daughter and ended up mine, in spirit. She is not affectionate, but follows me from room to room, always sitting nearby. She stays with me in bed when I have time to drink coffee until 11:00 am. She runs to the door whenever I come home.

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POETRY

Robbie Bobbin Pantsless Robin Del Wilder

Robbie Bobbin is a red-breasted robin, Deep in a late winter’s dream.

He dreams about being a trendsetting icon, In a good pair of blue faded jeans.

Robbie sings out; the coolest bird on the town, To announce the arrival of spring.

He coos and he caws, To let everyone know, About the great fashion good weather brings.

Robbie’s new style is the talk of the town; He attracts the envy of friends!

And they coo and they caw at the sight of it all, To see a robin in double-stitched hems.

Come morning he’s up, and what terrible news!

To find that his blue jeans are lost.

Not a button remains, Not a zipper or thread, They took off with the last winter frost!

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“I can’t find my pants! I can’t find my pants!”

Robbie trills from a perch in his tree.

“Robbie can’t find his pants!” a choir of beaks whistle out, And Robbie’s inclined to agree.

Robbie is woebegone, despondent and bleak, Until a hummingbird breaks through his woes.

“Robbie,” she says, With a cock of her head, “You’re a bird, you’ve never owned clothes!”

Robbie lifts up his woebegone head And tickles his woebegone chin.

“I just dreamt I had pants,” he trills with relief, “What a silly old robin I’ve been!”

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FICTION

Saving Max Alyssa Fraser

“I’m looking for a—” the secretary checked the list in front of her, “Miss Nicky Smith—?”

“That’s me.”

The secretary pursed her lips as she peered at Nicky over hornrimmed glasses. “My apologies, Mister Smith,” she corrected herself.

“Would you follow me, please?”

Nicky nodded. “Just a second.”

The secretary sighed and checked her watch before going to wait by the large oak doors that led to the courtroom.

Nicky turned to crouch in front of his brother, reaching down to finish tying up his laces. At six years old, Max should really be able to do his own laces, but he’d always had Nicky, so he’d never had cause to learn.

Nicky could kick himself for being so stupid. It was such a basic thing, tying your shoes. He should have insisted that Max learn to do it himself. He shouldn’t have been so soft on him. He should have— “Nicky?” Max, who had only moments ago been asleep, blinked up at his older brother. “What’s happening?”

“Hello there, sleepyhead,” Nicky said with forced cheerfulness, reaching to zip up Max’s big puffer jacket. When he stood, the jacket reached all the way down to his knees. “That nice lady over there said it’s our turn. You ready?”

Max widened his eyes, definitely awake now. “Don’t wanna,” he protested, slouching.

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Nicky sighed. This was hard on Max, he knew it was. Hell, it was hard on him going through this entire process in the first place. But knowing there was a chance he might not be able to keep Max? It was unbearable.

“I know buddy, I don’t wanna go either,” Nicky told him, “but this is the last time, I promise.”

“Not goin’.” Max repeated in tears, crossing his arms resolutely across his chest.

“Max, buddy—” “No!” Max wailed, well and truly committed to a tantrum now.

The secretary — who had been waiting, if not patiently, then quietly — seemed to have reached the end of her rope. Nicky looked up and saw her eyes narrow.

She called across the room to him: “Mr. Smith, we really do need you both in here now. The judge has a schedule to maintain.”

“Just give us a second,” Nicky called back desperately; he could feel the disapproving eyes of everyone in the lobby trained on him.

Max cried, screaming and flailing his limbs. The sleeves of his toolarge jacket flopped off the ends of his arms, and his borrowed glasses slid down his tiny nose.

Nicky couldn’t focus, couldn’t keep Max calm, he couldn’t do this. He just couldn’t.

“Max, mate, what’s all the fuss about?”

The voice came from behind. Nicky turned in time to see James Martin walking towards them. The heat under Nicky’s skin changed from a burn to an embarrassed itch.

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James was Nicky’s childhood friend, although it felt a little odd to be calling him that lately. Nicky wasn’t quite sure when the shift had happened, he wasn’t even sure there had been a shift. It was more like… growth. They were becoming something more. James had been there to support Nicky through everything. He’d helped him and Max get out of their parents’ house, let them stay at his apartment while they found their own place. He hadn’t even batted an eye. Sometimes, Nicky felt like it was more than they deserved.

Well, more than Nicky deserved, anyways.

Nicky watched James close the distance and crouch low beside him, their elbows brushing together gently as James peered into Max’s tear-filled eyes.

“What’s up, pup?” James murmured, reaching forward to gently slide Max’s glasses — well Nicky’s glasses really, it was sheer luck that they had the same prescription — back up his nose.

Max sniffled. The tears had stopped, but his face was still wet, and his nose was dripping. Nicky patted his pockets for a tissue but James beat him to it.

“Don’t wanna see ‘em,” Max told James shakily.

“Me neither, but you know what?” James paused theatrically, darting his eyes side to side, gesturing for Max to come closer. Max quickly obliged. “I brought something special with me this time.”

“What is it?” Max asked, lowering his voice to match James’s, eyes round with curiosity.

“Promise not to tell on me?”

Max nodded vigorously. James reached into the inner pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out an old penny, pressing it firmly into Max’s outstretched hands. “This is my lucky charm,” James said, “nothing bad can happen when you have it. I want you to keep it.”

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Absolutely beaming, Max shoved the penny deep into the pocket of his jeans and jumped up, marching straight for the courtroom doors.

Nicky sighed. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“Nonsense,” James waved him off.

The two of them followed Max to the doors. Now that he wasn’t focused entirely on a fussy child, Nicky could see that James was wearing a well-tailored midnight blue suit. Nicky fidgeted with the cuffs on his own dress shirt self-consciously; it wasn’t a bad suit he was wearing. Far from it. It probably cost more than his parent’s car.

However, because he’d borrowed it from James, it was about two sizes too big. He felt like a kid playing dress-up, despite the fact that — both legally and physically — he was an adult.

“You ready now, hun?” the secretary asked, her voice sweet yet insincere.

Nicky reached down and took Max’s hand in his own.

“We’re ready.”

It was both easier and harder than he’d expected. Easier, because they’d listened and believed him. One by one, Nicky’s friends, doctors, and former teachers had stood up and confirmed what Nicky had already explained to the police, to social services. Harder, because, in the process, Nicky had discovered that it was one thing to experience it, but an entirely different thing to hear the cold, hard facts laid out in front of a room full of people.

The worst of it was when his doctor finally took the stand. With Nicky’s permission, she put slides of his x-rays up for everyone to see.

As many times as Nicky told himself that it wasn’t that bad, he couldn’t ignore the truth of his childhood when it was staring him right in the face. In a calm voice, Dr. Fitzgerald indicated to the room evidence of fractures in Nicky’s wrists and fingers. It was obvious from the pictures

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that he’d never received medical care for his injuries, and with Nicky’s testimony, everyone knew how he’d gotten them.

Max had done so well. He sat in James’s lap for most of the proceedings, between Nicky and the social worker, fiddling with the coin and listening to stories James whispered in his ear. But, eventually, even Max had to give his own recollection of events.

Nicky wanted so badly to shield Max. But, to protect Max’s future, he had to let this happen.

As per their arrangement, Max allowed the social worker to lead him into the judge’s office down the hall, so he could give his evidence in private, away from watchful eyes. Nicky had seen the defiant tilt of Max’s chin, his square shoulders, as he walked alongside the social worker. His right hand clasped in a tight fist at his side, no doubt clutching James’ penny.

Nicky’s lawyer had explained how vital Max’s testimony would be for the case. No matter how hard Nicky had tried to hide the abuse, Max had still seen it. Max was the only person who had witnessed the things his parents did. He was the only one who could corroborate Nicky’s version of events. And it was more than luck that had stopped Max from suffering the same abuse — it was Nicky.

Ever since the day Max was born, Nicky had assumed the role of shield between him and their parents.

Once Max was safely escorted out of the room, their father turned his furious gaze on Nicky. He couldn’t do anything here in the courtroom, but Nicky still felt his hands shake.

They shook with fear, with guilt. No matter how much he knew that he was in the right to be doing this, he would always feel this disquieting, undeserved guilt.

James must have felt him tense; perhaps he caught him gazing at his parents across the courtroom. In response, James shifted his body to block Nicky’s view.

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Nicky heard the stiff exhalation his mother let out at the intrusion on what she must have perceived as a private family disagreement.

She was wrong there, though. James was Nicky’s family, so much more than she would ever be.

Eventually, the last testimony was spoken, the last bit of evidence was examined, and the only sound in the room was the judge’s pen scratching across the document in front of her.

Nicky had Max in his lap, clutching him to his chest. James was at his side, hand resting gently on his shoulder. The judge met Nicky’s eye. Her mouth moved, but Nicky couldn’t hear her over the roaring in his ears. But then James was jumping to his feet, he was swinging around to look at Nicky, still holding Max close. James was beaming, tears in his eyes, and Nicky finally understood. They’d won.

Nicky still couldn’t believe that he got to keep Max. He’d fretted for months that Max would end up in the system. The tipping point had likely been Nicky’s character witnesses, his boss and co-workers from the daycare who testified to his character.

His parents weren’t getting jail time, because Nicky hadn’t bothered pressing charges. He knew that he could have, but it would only be one more painful experience to drag himself through. All Nicky had wanted was custody of Max. From the time he was born up until this moment, Nicky had been Max’s real parent. The only difference now was that he would be Max’s legal guardian. His parents wouldn’t be able to take Max from him. He could keep him safe.

The air outside was cool, the breeze inviting. Nicky held Max’s hand as they left the courthouse for the last time, James at their side.

“Can we go home?” Max asked.

“Of course, buddy.”

Nicky heard a familiar scoff behind them and his heart dropped.

There was his father, several paces behind them. Much closer than the restraining order allowed for.

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“Are you happy now, you little shit?” he growled. “You think I’m gonna let a couple a’ queers steal my own flesh an’ blood from me?

Where the fuck do ya get off?”

James picked Max up and placed him in Nicky’s trembling arms.

“Take Max to the car,” he instructed gently, “I’ll be there soon.”

“But—” James shook his head. “Just go, I’ll be fine. You’ve done enough for today.”

He turned to Nicky’s father, blocking him and Max from view.

Nicky backed up a safe distance, but didn’t go to the car, afraid to leave James. “Mr. Smith,” James said, “the court reached a decision on Max’s behalf. I’m asking you to honor their decision and leave us in peace. Max has been through enough.”

“Leave you in…” Nicky’s father sputtered, incredulous. “Why you little prick.”

Nicky didn’t have time to react, didn’t even have time to tense up, before his father’s fist swung at James’s face. Time skidded to a halt.

Hundreds of nearly identical moments flashed behind Nicky’s eyes. The first time his father hit him, he’d spilled juice on the carpet — he was five. When he was ten, he interrupted a baseball game by dropping a dish in the sink too loudly. When he was fifteen, his father had caught him hugging his friend Kyle after school. Nicky had nearly died that night.

No matter what he did, no matter what injuries doctors confirmed or what horrific stories his little brother recounted, they’d never get away. It would always be like this. Nicky, Max, and a fist ready to pummel them into submission. All Nicky could do was watch in horror, preparing for the fallout. It never came.

James’s hand darted out and grasped his father’s wrist, holding him still. His father jerked in his grasp like an enraged bull, but James remained steady.

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“I’m not going to hit you,” James said in a low, dangerous voice.

“Even though you deserve it. Because they don’t deserve any more violence in their lives. Not from me, and especially not from you.”

James took a steadying breath in through his nose, out through his mouth. “But just know, in the future, I won’t hesitate if you get anywhere near them. I don’t care if you simply run into them by accident. You stay away from them.”

Nicky’s father looked small and meek under James’s furious gaze.

He ripped his arm from James’s grasp and turned on his heel. Nicky’s mother shot James a dirty look, but wasted no time in scurrying off after her husband.

Later, as they were driving in the car, Nicky looked over at James in the driver’s seat, hair ruffling gently in the breeze from the open window, one hand on the wheel and the other resting on the gearshift.

His heart didn’t pound. His blood didn’t race through his veins.

Nicky reached out and brushed his fingers across the back of James’s hand. He didn’t take his eyes off the road, but Nicky could see his lips quirk into a gentle smile. James flipped his hand over so they could thread their fingers together.

“Max?” James called into the backseat. “If you could have anything in the world right now, what would it be?”

Nicky craned his neck back to look at Max, he was sitting in his car seat, face contorted in a look of intense deliberation. “Ice cream!”

“Ice cream it is,” James replied merrily.

They got ice cream and went to the beach, opening the car doors to let the smell of the ocean in. Sunset came quickly, and Max fell asleep as the last beams of daylight slipped behind the mountains.

Nicky and James sat together in the front seats and watched as stars slowly blossomed across the night sky.

They were home.

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FANTASY

Unearthed Emma Minto

In an unnamed forest, a young enchantress awoke on a bed of ash and snow. Her sticky eyes peeled apart and watched the smoke curling up to meet the sky. Blackened trees surrounded her and soot stained the virgin snow. She inspected her bare limbs, finding them unmarred by flames, and pulled close the fur that had slipped off her weedy shoulders.

“Hello?” she called out, followed by a wet cough.

No one answered.

Numb panic shot down her spine as she rose to her feet and stumbled forward until the smoke cleared and the soot disappeared from the trees. Winter blew fat drops of snow onto the white birch trees that came into view – they wailed toward the clouded sky with their spindly arms raised. The enchantress wandered in the entanglement of trees, unsure of where she was going. Something teased at the end of her tongue, it danced like hot spice – she had lost something, something important. Stolen, a voice whispered inside her head. She trudged through the ever-rising snow in hopes of finding what had been taken. The snow clung to her legs, the winter chill tickling her skin with frosty fingers.

She travelled for days, loneliness gnawing at her chest. On the third day, she broke through into a cluster of spruce trees. The snow had dressed the branches in white, the green needles barely poking through. Nestled among the trees stood a warmly lit cabin, illuminating the dreary grey of mid-winter. Whatever was cooking at the hearth flowed out through a stout chimney; the crisp air suffused with a mixture of saffron, onions, and citrus. A family was gathered around a man with an open book balanced on his lap. His

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children sat captivated around him, except for one young girl who sat by the window, watching the snow fall, unaware of the stranger outside. The girl looked past the enchantress, as if she didn’t exist at all. Perhaps she no longer did. The enchantress felt a pinch in her stomach and an ache in her throat at the thought. She stifled another cough. Sidling close to the house, she raised a pale hand to the window, willing the child to see her, and aching to join the warmth and company behind the glass.

“Who are you?” came a voice from the trees.

The enchantress was startled; her eyes darted around the silent forest.

“Who said that?” she responded through a tight throat.

“This is not your home,” the shrill voice replied. The enchantress followed the voice to a spot on a grand spruce tree. There, a small sprite sat, its short legs dangling off a branch. “I am the guardian of this home, and you do not belong here,” it said.

“How is it…how can you see me?” she asked, bewildered.

“Many strange things live in this forest, you are not the strangest I’ve seen.” The creature looked at her with ancient eyes.

“Who are you?”

“I–I do not know,” she stammered with a cough. “Something of mine has been stolen. I…I think I must get it back if I am ever to remember.”

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The sprite looked upon the enchantress, who now looked to be more snow than flesh, and more ice than bone. “I cannot help you look for what I do not know is lost,” said the sprite. “What do you remember, witch?”

The enchantress closed her eyes, willing herself to remember. A memory, nothing more than a flash, scurried across her mind – a man with dark eyes and a subtle smile, a crown of spells that hummed like a swarm of bees, a name being pulled from her tongue, and an ancient power along with it. The memory disappeared, and her body convulsed into another coughing fit.

The sprite slipped down from the tree. Its rounded body came up to the height of the enchantress’s knees. To her shock, it began to sniff her, as if to glean something from her scent. It looked intently at her with beady eyes. “A man is to blame for your misfortune, and a clever one at that. He has stolen your power, and without it, you will never remember who you are.”

The enchantress’s heart stilled. “How do I get it back?”

“I do not know,” the sprite said, stroking its chin pouch. “But the wolf might; it is a more knowledgeable creature than I.” “Where do I find this beast?”

The sprite pointed a stubby finger towards the eastern woods.

“But be warned, young witch, you will need an offering of some sort.

One does not enter his den without paying a price.”

The enchantress looked down at her thin, empty hands. “I have nothing to offer.”

“Nonsense, everyone has something to offer. Perhaps a finger, or two…”

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“Surely there must be something else!”

“Think on it, but you must find the wolf ’s den before nightfall, for I fear you will not survive another sunrise.”

The winter woods in all its majesty began to fade, growing dark and bitterly cold. The enchantress’s steps became more clumsy with fatigue as she pressed on towards the eastern woods. It wasn’t until a ghostly swath of indigo swept across the sky that she came upon a grotto. Icicles like canines fanned the mouth of the cave, their points glittering and unforgiving; drips dribbled down in salivation as she neared them. The cave expelled a cool breath as she entered and a honey-coated whisper coaxed from beyond. The whisper tugged her to the belly of the cave, to where a lone white wolf slumbered at its centre. Its ears twitched before opening a gilded eye.

Its voice rumbled into her head. What little mouse has scuttled into my home?

The wolf rose and circled the enchantress. She could feel the beast’s breath licking her skin; it stung like an open flame. She tucked her trembling fingers into the folds of her fur, and willed herself to speak. “I didn’t mean to disturb you, beast.”

It chuckled; an eerie sound. The beast prowled closer, its smooth coat brushing against her arm. Again, its voice floated into her head.

Tell me, what is your name, my dear?

Her lips parted to answer, but no name was on her breath. She clutched at her throat; it felt clogged and tasted of something bitter.

The wolf narrowed its eyes. Rotten games. I could help you remember, it purred in her mind.

Her mouth went dry and sticky as she contemplated the wolf ’s offer.

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“At what price?”

A dangerous question to ask. Alas, I will not be greedy, for I see you do not have much to give.

It paused for a moment, its nostrils flaring. I have never tasted an enchantress before. I wonder if you would be ripe enough without your powers…

The enchantress shivered.

One bite, and I will make you remember. You will bear a mark, but that is a small price to pay.

The enchantress took pause, weighing the sincerity of the creature’s promise, her throat scorching with every breath. She remembered the sprite’s words: “I fear you will not survive another sunrise.”

She let her eyelids flutter closed. “Make it quick.”

She cried out as long canines punctured her neck and began to drink her warm blood.

Am I dying? she thought.

Do you wish to? the wolf replied, hearing her thoughts.

No, I wish to remember.

Very well.

The wolf released her and, like a wave, her memories came flooding back.

The young enchantress stood among a cluster of thickets, willing berries to bloom early in the season with her powers. She felt the eyes of a lone rider watching her from the trees. She ignored him as she grew the berries, sampling them as she worked. The rider finally revealed himself, breaking through the trees.

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“Are you lost, young maiden?” he asked, for she had no horse with her, and was clothed in nothing but a long fur coat. The man wore an easy smile, his eyes the deepest shade of brown.

“How could I be? This is my forest,” she replied.

“What is your name?” he asked.

“I cannot tell you that.”

“Why ever not?”

“A great deal of power rests in a name.”

He came back every day after that, and watched her as she worked.

He offered her smiles and compliments, bringing warmth to her cheeks, despite herself. On the seventh day, he presented her with a gift: a crown made out of an ancient elder tree, festooned with a ribbon.

Naïve as she was, the enchantress accepted. When he placed the crown upon her dark hair, his mouth stretched into a serpent’s smile, and his dark eyes filled with mischief. The crown began to hum, growing loud as a hornets’ nest. Her name, along with her power, was dragged from her lips by sinister magic. Her body rebelled against the intrusion, as she lost her memory — her power.

And then he sent her world up in flames.

She was drawn back to her body; her limbs were no longer thin and brittle, but strong and flushed with colour. The wolf lay on the ground in a stupor of bliss, her blood matted in its maw.

Brilliant fractals of light exploded around the walls of the cave as her power coursed through her once more. The light danced off the ice, sparkling like stars around her; a homecoming. Tears crystallized on her face as she whispered her name.

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FICTION

I Want You To Know That It Gets Better Alyssa Fraser

“Remind me again why we’re going to this?”

With my cell tucked between my shoulder and chin, I turn the sign at the front of the shop around so that Sorry, we’re closed faces out into the street. Dust motes and flour particles dance and twirl in the late afternoon sun. I watch them spin, wondering idly if my lungs will get clogged up from airborne flour. It’s probably too much to hope that it’ll happen in the next hour.

Noah’s tinny sigh crackles through the receiver. “Because it’s the proper thing to do.” I hear what sounds like a car door slamming in the background followed by the crunch of gravel. “Also, that asshole Chad Caruthers will be there, and I need to rub my law degree in his face.”

I roll my eyes. “You don’t need me there to do that.”

“I don’t,” he concedes.

I wander into the kitchen, hanging up my apron and washing dried dough off my hands. “But you still want me to come,” I say, more a statement of fact than a question.

“Of course.”

“But why?”

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Noah harrumphs over the phone. It’s a noise that sounds charmingly indignant in his accent, but would make me sound like a moron if I ever tried to replicate it. The English have a certain knack for sounding frustrated that no one else can ever quite match.

“Because,” Noah says, “I have an incredibly hot boyfriend and it would be a crime to attend that party without him.”

“So that’s all I am to you?” I shoot back, a smile tugging up the corner of my mouth. “Arm candy?” I have to pull the cell away from my ear to put on my coat, but I can still make out a string of colourful curses coming from the speaker.

I don’t really know why Noah wants to go to this reunion in the first place. We haven’t kept in touch with anyone we graduated with - except with each other, obviously.

“Look,” Noah says finally, “I’m standing outside the gymnasium right now. I will wait exactly twenty minutes. If you are not here in time, I’m finding the most attractive man who’ll have me and taking him to Valentinos.”

I freeze outside the bakery, my key in the lock. “You wouldn’t.”

“Don’t test me, Levitsky.”

I make it there in ten.

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Time has done nothing to improve our old high school. Someone has obviously tried very hard to disguise this fact with dim twinkle lights and copious amounts of crepe paper. What’s the saying? You can put lipstick on a pig, but that doesn’t make it a person. (I think I remember Obama saying something like that once.)

Despite the lackluster décor, the makeshift bar with a single bartender and a couple of folding tables is appreciated.

I’m glad that someone had the foresight to put out some stools.

Some of us are only planning on getting through this evening cocooned in a thick, bourbon-scented security blanket. I plan on keeping the bartender, whose name tag tells me her name is ‘Claire’, within arms-reach for the rest of the evening.

The first soothing tendrils of alcohol are just beginning to weave their way into my brain when the stool beside me scratches along the floor, announcing the arrival of some other poor soul trapped here for the evening.

“Laurie?” An unfamiliar voice inquires from the newly occupied seat.

I look up from my red Solo cup. The woman beside me isn’t immediately recognizable, but that doesn’t mean much. Most of the people here tonight look like total strangers. I’m not sure what’s more jarring, when someone looks exactly the same after ten years, or when they look like a completely different person. I think the former, really.

“Yes?” “Sorry to bother you, it’s just,” she gestures out into the crowd of fellow hostages, “I think you know my wife?” I follow the line she makes with her hand, quickly finding the woman she’s referring to.

She’s standing beside Noah, who’s flushed and waving enthusiastically in our direction. Somehow, his tie has ended up

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wrapped around his head between the moment I left him and now; I make a mental note to get a glass of water for him.

Then I look at the woman beside him, and for one terrible moment, I don’t recognize her. I worry I’ll have to go through the humiliating experience of either asking who she is or pretending I know. I’m saved from this when she cups her hands around her mouth like a megaphone and hollers: “Pee-Wee Levitsky!”

There’s only one person who ever called me that.

Bethany McNally.

Now that I know it’s her, I can see that she still has the same grin that I remember. All teeth and crinkled eyes. When Beth laughs, the world can’t help but laugh along with her. It was one of the things I liked about her.

The nickname is one I haven’t heard since I last saw her, and had, quite frankly, happily forgotten about until this moment. Trust Beth to hang onto it.

Beth’s wife watches the whole charade go down with her lips quirked up, amused. “For the record,” she says, leaning in so I can hear her over the thumping bass, “I don’t think you look like Pee-Wee.” “It was the hair,” I snort, “I used to spike it at the front.”

“Ah, that explains it,” she says. She holds out her hand, “I’m Rosa.”

I take her hand. “Laurie.”

We both pause, watching the two of them chatter away drunkenly under a tacky disco ball hanging from the ceiling.

“She still talks about you, you know.” I arch an eyebrow at her and she laughs. “Not like that. High school was rough for Beth and you were there for her, even when her other friends weren’t.”

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My teenage years aren’t something I think about often, but it’s hard to forget what Beth went through.

She was outed in sophomore year — by her parents. Beth’s mother went on Beth’s computer while she was at work and found the messages between her and her girlfriend at the time.

I hadn’t known about her girlfriend, no one had. Beth’s parents found out on Friday and, by Monday, the entire school knew. She never asked her parents if it was them, but she didn’t have to.

I hadn’t even known about myself in high school — and I wouldn’t be able to admit it to myself for years after — but all I knew at the time was that Beth was my friend. I would have been there for her regardless.

“I guess I just wanted to thank you for that,” Rosa says. “And I know that’s weird because, you know, I don’t really know you.” She pauses thoughtfully, looking out onto the dance floor. I follow her gaze. Noah and Beth are still under the disco ball, but now she’s got a hand on his elbow to steady herself while they sway uncoordinatedly to Shakira. “But I honestly think you saved her,” Rosa continues. “I don’t know if I would have met Beth without you.”

“Er, it was nothing, really,” I say, like an idiot.

Rosa gives me a look. “I think we both know that’s not true.”

I keep my eyes trained on Noah, he’s somehow acquired a posse of dancers now. The man attracts people wherever he goes.

A hopeful-looking woman has begun eyeing Noah up from across the room, eyes catching on the sharp line of his cheekbones and generous ‘V’ of skin visible on his chest. Noah has always given off the same confidence that I imagine the well-to-do lords of the early twentieth century embodied. The image is marred slightly by Noah’s deadly three-inch heels, but the comparison stands.

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The woman, however, apparently hasn’t gotten the gay memo. I almost feel bad for her. Almost.

Just then, Noah looks up and catches me staring. He nudges Beth, pointing towards us, and they begin to weave their way through the crowd. Beth walks with very obviously calculated movements, clearly attempting to not show just how intoxicated she is. Noah, on the other hand, moves towards us with a gleam in his eye only possessed by used-car salesmen and drunks on a mission.

He collapses into me the second he’s close enough. Head nestling in the crook of my neck and hands braced on my thighs. “Mmm,” he hums drunkenly, “‘lo darling.”

“Hello, sweetheart,” I chuckle. I get a glass of water from the bartender and press it into Noah’s hands before maneuvering him gently into the seat next to me.

“Your posh little boy toy refused to introduce himself without you present,” Rosa interjects, shooting Noah a dirty look.

I roll my eyes. “What is he making you call him this time?”

“The goddamn bloody Queen of England!” Noah supplies, raising his glass of water in a toast. Beth grins and fist-bumps the side, and they frown drunkenly at each other.

“Tequila?” I ask Rosa.

“I think they’d graduated to gin last time I was there,” she replies.

“That’d do it.”

Beth passes me several shot glasses filled with clear liquid, “You have to catch up, Levitsky.”

I laugh and accept the shots, “Game on, McNally.”

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We end up being the last people to leave. Rosa makes everyone drop their keys in her bag as we stumble out into the night, ensuring that a Noah filled to the brim with alcohol and unchecked confidence remains out of the driver’s seat.

We don’t make it that far. The four of us wind up on the soccer pitch — Noah singing something that sounds a bit like God Save the Queen, but with more electric guitar.

Beth laughs and tugs at Rosa’s waist, leading her towards the bleachers — no doubt hoping to fulfill a long-held youthful fantasy; Rosa grins into the crook of her wife’s neck.

It’s hard to imagine now, dancing, laughing, loving under the wide and endless sky, that we could be anything other than beautiful, and loved, and right.

I see the tilt of Noah’s head as he regards me from over the lip of a cheap beer. His eyes say I know you, the curve of his lips say I love you, his eyebrows are a challenge and his hands on my hips are a promise.

He brings his face close to mine and I kiss the laughter from his mouth.

What beautiful creatures we are.

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CREATIVE NONFICTION

To Name a Mayfly Mya Roy

‘Equally, as I have been myself, I have been many people. The gentle ebb of time changes a person, so much so that I can not say that I am the same as I was a second ago.’

‘These huge constructs, the ones that make up someone, are often not dictated by tangible nor detectable things. More so they are characterized by catalysts, by subtle realizations and by indelible divulgences. Like when your parents admit to you the inexistence of some fabled character or when you realize that something you used to love no longer excites you.’

‘However, for me, these transitions have been realized by way of my various names.’

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To Name a Mayfly

Mya Roy

‘There is an interstice which the purpose of a name rests between.

They are both an umbrella from under which we are able to identify someone, as well as a wellspring of one’s identity.’

‘I have always understood that kind of apperception as a consequence of our culture. Though the allure of ambiguity has greatly skewered my conception of names in and of themselves, they have over the years, instead, become a tool which I could use to reinvent myself.’

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‘When I was born, those around me called me ‘Mya’. When said, the sharp yawning sound it made commemorated the guilelessness of the girl who held it.’

‘When ‘Mya’ died, those who loved her mourned, regarding her as being far too young.’

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‘Later, I would be known by both my peers and my instructors as ‘Mickey’. The chirp of its annunciation reflected that of a keen consciousness. When I was ‘Mickey’ I was a child as much as I was a student. A young thing thrust into college at the ready age of sixteen, obsessed with acknowledgement; with acceptance and affirmation.’

‘But, at this time I was also a fragile body that clothed a confused, disconsolate mind. Weakened by shouldering the weight of the many cans of worms my friends had opened and then aimed at my face. I became a character meant to console and comfort others. A hotel bed laid bare and left defaced by those who once slept on it.’

‘When ‘Mickey’ died, the world watched, unbothered.’

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‘Subsequently, my name was ‘Marcy’, and those who knew me, knew me as such. It was a coldish name, with a hiss at the end, one that people would make sure to emphasize when scolding me. The name called a wayward personage back into itself. ‘Marcy’ was an adage to the maturity of my own womanhood.’

‘When I was known as ‘Marcy’, I was also known, quite plainly, as a whore. A corporeal explorer, a sexual investigator. Always waking up in the beds of strangers, coming to class with a boxer’s worth of bruises freckling my neck and chest.’

‘When ‘Marcy’ died, she left a twine of broken hearts in her wake.’

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‘Today, I am ‘Micah’. Tomorrow? Who knows? That’s one of my favourite things about being human.’

‘We are made to change.‘

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‘I am not the same person as I was in every instance of myself.’

‘But isn’t there something so beautiful about that?’

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‘To wait eagerly for your next reimagining.’

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CONTRIBUTOR BIOS E.M. Andrews is a mix of Canadian prairie and coastal upbringing. Falling in love with flowers at a young age, she has engaged in a long-term affair within the flowering community as a designer, collaborator, and overall botany nerd. If she could do anything in the world, she would write beautiful prose, read endless amounts of poetry, and swim in the sea.

Patti Arlidge is Grandmother to five. After retiring from thirty-one years at Camosun College Child Care Services, Patti decided to go to the other side and become a student again. Having always loved writing, she enrolled in a Personal Narrative creative nonfiction course. She enjoyed the class so much that she plans to take more writing courses. In her spare time, Patti likes to ride her bike, walk on the beach, read books and write.

Jonathan Brenneman was born in Vancouver, but has only just now returned to Canada after more than 15 years living in Europe; over the course of that time, he produced numerous radio-plays for the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF) in English and German, travelled extensively as a journalist, and published articles, chapters, and creative nonfiction in a variety of magazines, newspapers, and academic journals.

However, this year’s return to BC, and subsequent enrolment at Camosun, was precipitated by a strong desire to hone his craft and learn how to use other creative mediums to tell very different types of stories. Hallelujah.

Born in Ontario, Stirling Brown moved to Vancouver Island nearly a decade ago. Currently, she is a second-year student at Camosun College who studies both English and Creative Writing and overall has a passion for all forms of artistry. Despite only recently starting her studies at Camosun, she has always had an interest in writing and exploring tales through written word.

Alyssa Fraser lives in Saanichton with their partner and a wonderfully weird cat named Rupert. In their downtime, Alyssa enjoys reading and writing fanfiction, hiking, and drinking their weight in London Fogs. More often than not, they can be found staring aimlessly into space as they plot their next story or ponder whether or not bees do in fact have knees.

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Marlon Fraser-Buchanan is an avid coffee drinker, social work student, and community support worker living in a cabin with her family and three cats. Writing has provided Marlon a container to hold the past and all that she loves while exploring futures where collective care and joy are the right and duty of all people.

Simone Gittens was born in Calgary. Alberta, and moved to Victoria in 2013. As a first-year student in the Arts & Sciences program, they are taking classes to improve their writing skills. At fourteen years old, Simone found an interest in writing and taught herself how to become a writer and learned by reading other stories and applying those skills into their work. Ever since then Simone has dedicated themselves to the artform.

She is working towards becoming a part of the gaming/movie/animated workforce as a writer. They hope to produce stories that include BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and mental health representation.

Grace Guiney is an enthusiast of photography, mental health, highway hawks, and tidepooling at night. When not immersed in the natural beauty of the Lekwungen traditional territory she is grateful to have grown up on, she is a full-time student who hopes to incorporate her interests into something that resembles a career. For Grace, writing is both a hobby and a coping mechanism.

Phoenix Guzzo is a student artist and uninvited settler from Tk’emlúps te Secwepemc territories. Currently, he studies visual arts at Camosun College. Phoenix explores many mediums in his practice, including painting, sculpture, and videography. His work has been displayed in the internship exhibition, “’Yelō” (2018) at the Kamloops Art Gallery.

Phoenix is also one of the Kamloops short film festival award recipients for his films, “Drive Me Crazy” (2018) and “Perception of Existence” (2019). Throughout mediums, his work is inspired by and in response to current affairs, environmentalism, and personal experience. The visual imagery he creates is often attributed to his dreams.

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Soph Helm was raised in Vancouver, BC, but now lives in Victoria, BC, where they attend Camosun College. Soph has had their work published once before, in “New Shoots”. Soph’s mom, Holly, has been their biggest source of writing inspiration and support. Soph wants to thank their mum, their pops, their brother Nate, their friends Lauren and Livs, their partner Will, and their cat Tito.

My name is Sherry Jakesta. I was born in Ft. Nelson, BC. My mother is Tahltan/Tlingit from Telegraph Creek, BC, and my father is French Canadian from Saskatchewan. I’m a mature student enrolled in the Indigenous Studies Program at Camosun College. I chose Indigenous Studies because I was raised in the foster care system and had no contact with my family, community, or culture. I made the decision to get an education to help me reconnect with my heritage and help me understand my identity. I’m grateful for the opportunity to learn in a safe and welcoming environment.

Micah James is a third-year student at Camosun studying in the Arts & Science program. Born and raised in Victoria, BC, she has been writing as both a hobby and a passion since the second grade and took her first writing course in the fall of 2019. Her favourite authors are L.M. Montgomery and David Arnold. Micah enjoys reading historical non-fiction and fiction, writing poems and short stories, watercolour painting, beautiful British Columbia, and her two tuxedo cats.

My name is Aerial Leister. I am 22 years old and am originally from the Kootenays but have made Victoria my home. I use she/they pronouns and study psychology. I love all forms of art and have a special connection to poetry. One thing I love about creative writing is how freeing it can be. I also love to spend time outside hiking and camping. If you can relate to my poem I hope it can bring you solace.

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Emma Minto is a local writer in Victoria, BC. She spent her early years writing stories on printer paper and binding them up with string before investing in her first laptop at the age of fourteen. While her primary focus is fiction, she dabbles in screenwriting and playwriting when the mood strikes. She is a former Camosun College student who is currently pursuing a BA in Writing and Anthropology at the University of Victoria.

Megan Roddan is a student at Camosun College. She is a mom of two kids and has a rare bone marrow disease called Black Fan Diamond syndrome. She is alive today from the generosity of monthly strangers’ blood donations. She enjoys writing about her unique and sometimes traumatic experiences and hopes to publish a memoir one day. As a personal goal, she hopes to gain a bachelor’s degree one day in Psychology or English.

Mya Roy is a second-year student at Camosun College who is pursuing a career in neuroscience and psychopharmacology. Reared on Vancouver Island, BC, she often found consolation in the creation and scripting of small, hand-drawn comics that she and her little sister came up with in their youth. However, this is her very first, technical, publication.

She has a soft-spot for introspective stories and wishes to use this, alongside any future work she may produce, to inspire in others an appreciation for the bitter, the sweet, and the weird.

Del Wilder is a community organizer studying political science at Camosun College. They are learning to hone their creative writing skills for fun and enrichment. While they have heretofore mostly written fanfiction —a heralded pastime for teens of the early-modern internet period—they also enjoy writing fun poetry, kids’ books, and satire. They aim to pursue legal studies at UVic, to buoy tenancy and worker advocacy, and to hold Student Loans accountable “for everything they’ve put me through.”

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FEATURING THE WORK OF: E. M. Andrews Patti Arlidge Jonathan Brenneman Stirling Brown Alyssa Fraser Marlon Fraser-Buchanan Simone Gittens Grace Guiney Phoenix Guzzo Soph Helm Sherry Jakesta Micah James Aerial Leister Emma Minto Megan Roddan Mya Roy Del Wilder