Goose Fiction 2019-2020 Journal

goose AN ANNUAL REVIEW OF SHORT FICTION

Volume 9 Spring 2020 Produced at Victoria College in the University of Toronto

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Masthead

Table of Contents

President & Editor-in-Chief

Letter from the Editors

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To The Flame

7

In the Wind of the Wolf

11

Borne of Water

16

Jenny

22

Don’t Think I Ever Told Anyone

35

Take me to Skagen

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Isobel R. S. Carnegie

Vice-President & Editor-in-Chief

Julia Edda Pape

Hadiyyah Kuma

Editorial Board

Sam Rosati Martin

Charlotte Chellew Syeda Hasan Emily Hurmizi May Jagodkin Phoebe Jenner Laura Kim Caleb Sandblom

Bronwyn Garden-Smith

Siena Kunanec

Artistic Team

Liam P. Bryant (Head Illustrator) Sayaka Daly Brigita Gedgaudas Yoon-Ji Kweon Caleb Sandblom

Ze Xi “Jessica” Ye

Lana Glozic

A Portrait of Madame Bovary on the Subway 43 Window

Layout Editors Sayaka Daly Caleb Sandblom

Veronica Spada

Cover Art by TBA

About the Authors

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Letter from the Editors

In times of social crisis and uncertainty it has become increasingly evident that we need stories. We need to write stories, read stories, live inside of stories. The talent in this collection is a strong reminder of the importance of social connection. That connection is not always physical, but boy is it necessary. Many of these stories contain life, many contain lost loves, and loves yet to be found. For these beautifully crafted narratives, we must sincerely thank every writer who submitted pieces of themselves for our consideration. To the writer’s in this journal: we could not exist without your creativity. This could not have been achieved without our wonderful team, who we have loved working with and becoming close with over the last eight months. We value your work, dedication, and love for Goose. Thank you for everything.

It is odd to be crafting a letter that will not be read in the hands of our peers for a long time. We take pride in printing at a local Toronto gem, the care we put into the design and how our readers should feel as they read and absorb the stories we give them. At this time, when all our hard work seems to have built and built only to dissipate into a fog, we hope it has cleared by the time this little binding of paper, words, and love finds its way into your hands. Before that though, we will be putting this journal online, where we can reach Victoria College, the University of Toronto, and beyond - because there is a beyond.

We hope you find a connection in these stories. Share them with your friends, parents, the older lady down the street. Perhaps you will find reprieve from whatever is troubling you in these carefully edited and crafted pages.

We offer you this with love, a lot of love. For stories, our team, our writers, Victoria College, and beyond.

With love, Isobel R.S. Carnegie & Hadiyyah Kuma Co-Editors in Chief 2019-2020

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To The Flame

by Julia Edda Pape

I used to like taking long, winding walks through the woods

behind my childhood home. I’d collect dead moths and still wiggling worms and snails in my pockets and tread gracelessly through thick, black mud and icy streams that cut through the forest like the flowing veins of mother earth. I’d return home late in the evening, emptying my pocketfuls of tiny creatures, letting the snails and worms free into my composting garden and tending to my lovely moths. I’d clean them up, until their wings were just as admirable as a butterfly’s and pin them neatly onto a picture frame, careful not to be too forceful on their delicate little bodies. I’d set the frame up sweetly, with decorative lace and tulle. I’d pick a bright patterned paper background to pin them to.

And when all was said and done, I’d hang the frame up on the wall that tied the kitchen to my bedroom. My moths stayed the way they were, captured in time, the memory of a moment shared between myself and the ground beneath me.

One cold winter evening I found a corpse stuck between two

trees. The branches intertwined into a tangled mass above its head, like Sayaka Daly

the canopy of a king-sized bed. It took me a moment to understand exactly what I was looking at; to recognize that fallen branches and sticks were really thick-soled, leather boots strapped onto sturdy legs clothed in parchment coloured trousers. Then it called to me, a glowing,

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gold locket nestled under the body’s blue button up. Sparkling in the

the deepest corner of my junk drawer. The polish was craggly and half

early winter sun like an ember of hellfire, I worried it might scorch my

dried from lack of use. My little cottage was no longer home to anyone

hand as I reached out to it. Radiating against the blue, white and grey

who spent Sunday mornings shining dress shoes before rushing out the

of the wintry scene, it seemed impossibly foolish not to take the little

front door, a hymnal tucked under the arm and a spritely spirit dis-

locket for my own. I unclasped the locket to find two frames, one with a

guised beneath a solemn habit. It was mid-afternoon by the time I re-

portrait of a young man. The other, empty where a photograph should

alized I’d stayed up through the night. I made sure my boy was posing

have been. Of a loved one; family, friend, pet, lover… I ran my finger

prettily in his chair, brushed my dirty hands on the front of my pants,

along the cold copper bezel which seemed to hold all the sad senti-

and headed off to the woods to start my day, the locket tucked gingerly

mentality of a ghost town. Tiny twisting vines were engraved into the

into my coat pocket.

vacant frame like a spindly floral wreath adorning a gravestone in the

dead of winter. Tilting it under the streaks of sunshine peering down

His hair was thinner, cheeks more sunken, skin greyed. His face was

through the forest cover, I attempted to catch a glimpse of my own

spotted with flecks of missing flesh, petals of translucent skin floating

reflection in the metal, to no avail.

down and landing on his contorted lap. His mouth hung agape. Ex-

posed teeth were enlarged by receding, strawberry-coloured gums. Like

Preserved in the frigid northern air, the boy’s face was still del-

When I returned home, my boy was nearly unrecognizable.

icate and lively like it was in the picture, fingertips nearly pulsing with

a wilting, sun-starved flower set on a shaded windowsill, my boy was

freezing blood. I dragged the boy along the trail of crushed dead leaves

slumped over, cheek resting against shoulder. His eyes had fallen open,

and flattened snow I’d made on my approach. I propped him up on a

now staring up at the ceiling, unseeing.

chair by the fireplace and stared at the locket, wondering what contents

it might have once housed in that lonely second frame.

whipped cheeks. I rushed toward my boy, hurriedly restoring him to

how he had been earlier that day. I set the locket on the countertop.

I set to work on my boy. I washed his clothes and ironed them,

I couldn’t help but cry, letting saltwater tears sting my wind-

careful to do the buttons up properly and make sure the pant pockets

The photograph was my muse, my reference for how my boy ought to

didn’t crease. I scrubbed under his fingernails which were blackened by

look. But nothing seemed to work. No amount of shoe shine or hair

dirt and washed his long, greasy hair, combing it back from his face.

combs or ironing could make him so pristine again.

I used a sharp blade stolen from an old pencil sharpener to shave the

fresh stubble on his chin. I re-laced his boots to make two, even bows

the days and nights. I slept when I could stop my worrying for my

and shined the deep, brown leather using old shoe polish I’d found in

boy from keeping me awake. I ate only in the empty time when polish

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After a while I stopped counting the hours, stopped counting

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In the Wind of the Wolf

dried. All day long I worked on my boy, wondering if he could ever return to who he once was. The caring, gentle boy who kept a photo of his love close to his heart so that every beat might remind him of the one he called his own. The sweet boy whose only intention for life was to love and be loved in return. He’d see beauty in summer sunsets and

by Sam Rosati Martin

the snowfall of bitter winter alike; he’d love the song of the sparrow as much as the owl; he’d hang tin lanterns from the porch and watch fluttering moths dance in the moonlight, beckoned by the hypnotic fire, waiting not to love them in death but to dance with them in the cover of twilight. He’d love me more than the call of faraway places.

One morning, I decided to fill the second frame. I grabbed an

old family photograph from when I was younger, four smiling faces peering up into the camera lens, each wearing a handknit sweater over a belly filled with a hearty home-cooked meal. They had not yet outgrown this humble life, their ambitions not yet tied to distance from all they had once known. I took the scissors out of the cutlery drawer and cut an oval around my youthful, blushing face. I slipped the photo in beside my boy, thinking of what a wonderful pair we might have made.

We’d have gone through the woods together, laughing and singing sweetly as we jumped over fallen branches and splashed through rushing rivers. We’d cook together and clean together and make moths into pretty pictures together until the sun set. What a quaint life we would

from each other, painted purple and orange from the September sunset and dancing in delight. The whole wind embraces her, whipping hair and squinting eyes. She stands with her feet apart; her shoulders are defiantly braced against the force of it. She has never seen something so pretty in all her ten years, she thinks, and her smile spreads widely.

She stands on a grassy hill with her little brother, Emmet, who takes great interest in the affairs of fireflies. He sits, he drools, he watches.

Paragons of light, beautiful when unobserved, they gossip with the little boy and his chubby fists grasp towards them in vanity. He giggles in delight, Sally pays no attention, she is entrapped in the will of the world, its vastness of forest, just starting to blush away from green into rust. It is Autumn. The flight of the sun gives the siblings goosebumps.

She is not looking at the trees, though her eyes are glazed in wonder at what she sees. She must be the Queen of the whole world.

have led.

Sally tilts her head back and watches the clouds twist away

“Fluffy?” Emmet says, and Sally laughs. She wheels around

and gazes into the wilderness, then turns back to her brother.

“I love you.”

I said to my boy, thinking about how if someone were to find

us here, they’d think we’d lived and died together.

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“You can see the Pyramids to your right, Emmet, Alcatraz to

your left, you see,and we’re on a rollercoaster, an airplane! Let us fly

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Emmet, let’s go there, you and me! To Louisiana and beyond.”

stamps her foot again. The sky turns black and the sparrows cower in

Sally is not quite sure where Louisiana is, but she can see it

“Doggie,” offers Emmet. Sally ignores him, frowns, and

with great clarity. She does not move her feet from the hill. Emmet

their nests, the wolf looks down at the hill which is trembling like Vesu-

drools over his shirt, fixated on a point above Sally’s shoulder. Fireflies

vius, turns, then gazes forlornly at the two children. He bounds across a

whirl around, buffeted by the wind and quite uncertain of their path.

valley in a single predatory leap, a shrinking, shifting shape. Sally

“Fluffy.”

seethes. Emmet drools. The wind dissipates to nothing.

“No, Emmet, wait till you catch one. They’re squishy, not

fluffy.”

Emmet starts blubbering, his little shoulders shake and his

eyes water. Sally softens and says to Emmet that he shouldn’t worry, oh

Sally looks to where Emmet is gazing into the distance.

no, because the big bad wolf is gone and he won’t come back, silly boy.

There is a big, grey wolf standing about twenty feet away. He

Why are you crying, Emmet, don’t you see Alcatraz, don’t you see

smiles. Sally smiles back politely. Emmet drools. The wolf snuffles. Em-

the Empire State Building? Don’t you see it all before us?

met snuffles back. Sally taps her toes. The wind rages faster and louder,

almost whining.

darker shades of black until the heavens are imperceptible and nature is

unknowable. The Moon watches the Earth in futility and nostalgia, and

“Can I help you, mister?” a grinning Sally says, using the

At that, Emmet blubbers louder. The sky folds into darker and

best of her manners. The wolf steps through air, sniffs once, seems to

so She reluctantly reflects somewhere else.

sneeze, then abruptly turns and lopes away.

Sally crosses her arms and stamps her foot loudly. Clap. It

Sally takes the time to crouch and tie her shoe, looping a big

loop with her laces before crafting another bunny ear. A perfect bow

echoes across the valleys and ravines somberly; the fireflies fly away

appears. Sally delights in this power and smiles with her whole face.

and the wolf stops in his tracks. The sky darkens. The wolf raises an

She resumes her stance amongst the tall grass to see the entirety of

eyebrow at the girl.

the world with ease, it’s all so wonderfully contained! There exists

no distinction between what she sees and what is, for if imagination

“Oh, shut up,” she says condescendingly, “I can’t believe you,

not even saying hello. My God! Where are your manners?”

is boundless then the bounds of the globe must be contained within

Sally’s splendid mind. Sally knows she possesses the unique power of

The wolf ’s eyes contain a million mortalities, and their irises

could be anyone’s but Sally’s. His fur is the color of the clouds before a

containing the mercurial, she answers to nobody with this power and so

shower.

smiles once again, radiating satisfaction like a bomb.

He is unbothered by it all.

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Her smile flees bitterly at the return of the wolf in the dis-

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tance, languidly pawing through the tall, still grass. His eyes shine like

He opens his briefcase, shuffles a few papers, closes it, and strolls into

the moon despite the all-consuming darkness. He walks slowly, but

the night, whistling mournfully like the wind.

covers an incredible amount of ground. He denies air like a dancer.

He neither grows nor shrinks on his way up the hill. He seems at once absent and looming as he carries a gnarly tree branch in his mouth and sets it down a few paces from the pair.

“Doggie,” says Emmet glumly. “Fluffy. ” The wolf nods calmly

at the boy, then turns to Sally expectantly. Sally’s eyes brim with a white, lunar rage. She slowly shakes her head. She stands with her feet wide; she does not budge.

The wolf sighs and undergoes his transformation. He does not

grow, mutate, or convulse, nor does he howl. He does not cry and he sheds no fur. He changes so quickly that had history not been invented nobody would have believed he was any more than himself. He simply is a man and a briefcase: dark, smooth and unreflective, darker even than the night sky. He is a tweed suit and a hooked nose. He is a thin, tight-lipped smile. He is tall, long legs. The eyes, of course, could be anyone’s, but the bowler hat perched upon his human head betrays no multiplicity. His lanky figure is a silhouette against the moon, which is rising completely into the blackness of the sky.

Sally sees the face of a stranger looming over her. The city

before her eyes vanishes. The skyscrapers, pyramids, and bridges of the mind are spruces, maples, and oaks of the earth. Her imagination deserts her and so she flees, clutching a blubbering Emmet tightly by the hand. The children disappear into the darkness of the forest. The man

Yoon-Ji Kweon

peers into the woods for a moment, squinting, then relents and sighs.

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Borne of Water

by Bronwyn Garden-Smith

out my phone and fruzzled with the wire connecting to my headphones for a moment then took a photograph which I’d be happy to show you if you ever want to see it. I’m an open book like that, I’d show you anything of mine. What is the point of hiding, I continued thinking, hoping no one might think I’m strange taking photos of useless things but the thought was so fast that it didn’t happen in words just hotness

I am going to tell you what happened when I walked home.

First I thought that maybe I could write a short story where I use the opposite of the word I mean, the antonym, at the important parts of it. I was walking from the library where I had been listening to Jessica Pratt’s self-titled album. An old man had been situated sort of across from me and I briefly wondered what he thought of me. By avoiding his gaze I was catching it. And while I did so I looked at the legs of the chairs in the room and thought that it was a whole universe in which the crumbs upon the floor were planets, all brown and together like a monochrome solar system. I couldn’t bear the thought of writing my essay for school and couldn’t bear the thought of eating the food I had brought with me either, so I got up not knowing if I’d get home or die on the way there.

normally I might not have stopped but the triptych held me. I pulled

in my stomach. Walking walking, I was on College Street and a rhythm came to me as a crane moved languidly to the very same gorgeous sway of the song in my ears. The crane had attached to it something which looked like a future part of a building but in the space between us it was simply the most beautiful creature I had seen. I could have kissed it with tongue. The strings that held it to the horizontal part of the crane, the arm, were getting longer elegantly like they were meant to be suave about it. I wondered whether we were in love and decided we were. The love was in the rhythm and how everything had completely matched in that second in that longing in that pull in that crane in that sky I wanted to feel those metal lines. To the right and ten metres above there was a hole in the sky that I liked because it revealed the angel clouds behind the regular human ones. Angel clouds are something I

Something was over me. There was no coming over, but the

thing, it was over me. I was walking walking no longer feeling my legs, all ears and eyes, all invisible as I became each passer-by so intensely I thought I might burst. First I stopped at the corner of some little street on the part of campus where the engineers go to class. The world had created a lovely triptych which had been awaiting my gaze, and maybe

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created right now that are deeply moving, they are wisps of cloud lit by a setting sun, they are a loss and a gain, they are a simultaneity.

Okay I was walking into the hole in the sky and the light

changed to the white man so I followed it and did not care much if a car was close by because I didn’t fear death anymore or was perhaps not living in a normal sense perhaps feeling quite like a spirit. There

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was someone in front of me with two small clips in her long black

just to immerse myself, you know. My body looked back at the world

ponytailed hair and I watched the hairs and the fringe of her jacket

that was behind me now and there was a man with dark hair who I

move and I’m not sure where she went afterward or whether I will ever

wondered about and he was quite far away and I briefly worried wheth-

see or know her again. Seeing is not necessarily knowing. I continued on

er my languid pace was too slow for the poor thing. I felt my legs again

and reached the rest of the world that was on the other side of College

for the first time in thirty years though I am twenty and three months

Street. I must have crossed because I found myself on the west side and

and four days and fifty minutes and I’m not sure how many seconds

suddenly smelled the same incense at house number two-oh-four that I

old. I crossed the street in a lyric poem again and felt strange for not

had smelled the last few days when embarking on this same journey, my

caring about the people in the intersection. I continued. I was on Bev-

love, two-oh-four, with the most perfect font I have ever felt in my body

erley Street which is the street of the apartment I rent from. I stopped

before. Another gorgeous moment, I spun around to see the smell but

at the corner around Baldwin because I noticed that the blue building

couldn’t, but I did see a small circular bird, and another and another

that turns into the sky in summer dusks was very beautiful beneath the

and another and another and another and another and another and

barest branches of a tree and beneath the empty socket of the street-

another and another and another so I imagined holding the first one in

light, which, ugly alone, formed the loveliest pastiche and I think I

my hands, held in a perfect sphere because, oh, they’re so round, and

photographed it again. Soon I reached Dundas and had forgotten about

it’s splendid, it’s divine, it is. I found that the hole in the sky had been

the holes in the sky until I turned and faced west where we all know the

replaced by many many many many less beautiful holes but I had a

sun sets, fiery as ever, and forming four or three horizontal light banks

good time anyway.

where the clouds made barricades parallel to one another and I liked it.

Walking walking I made contact through my eyes with a man

Upon the end of my cross I swished around a man as if I was

on a bicycle and something he held had been orange and it had been

a school of fishes moving all in one twirling motion and as if I really

artificial and it had been near his face and it had been altogether a

swam as if borne of water. A man passed me and I briefly wondered

nice event. I remembered the last hat on that billboard surrounding

how in the world this man had come to exist if he hadn’t simply

the building that was being constructed or destructed or however you

emerged from my mind. How silly and self-important but I did wonder

might like to refer to it, the last crown, I don’t remember what it looked

it, and at first wished him ill because the way his hair sat was not at all

like but I remember that it was last and I remember the one before it

lovely but then I realized his coat though brown was the same length

which was not a crown but instead a kind of hat which had a face on it

as mine and he adjusted his pocket in the same way that I might and

with its tongue stuck out and as I type this now I stick my tongue out

I know I know psychology. I know that in individualistic cultures and

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really as a human the self is very important so I relate every good

with the grace of a figure skater, and every time I looked over

thing to myself and that’s true but hey I must declare that sometimes

except just now they have been swaying to what seems like the same

I also hate myself while thingking “thing-king” no just thinking that

slow dance rhythm. They matched as the crane and the object had to

I am actually, oh, just the very very best. The man walked and walked

the song which began to end.

probably forever and I wished him well as I wept into the stairs (I wept because the stairs themselves told me to) and felt my keys in my pocket absolUTELY mirror the grandmother’s grandmother’s ring I always nearly wear on my left hand, pointer finger, because fuck every other finger, I was wearing my key-ring on my right pointer, because, notoriously, fuck every other finger. Then fluidly I jingled my brown brassy key into action into its duty as an opener of doors, how delightful, how thoughtful of it, thank you key, and I was inside my home for now. Not sure when I took my coat off but somehow I was naked of my coat and my shoulders and collarbone exposed, I went into my room with the popcorn I bought hungrily a few days ago. We all have vices that arise from things in our childhood, yes I know, yes I know. It was in the most perfect bowl you could imagine, yes, go ahead and imagine it, I know you already are you dirty scoundrel, you’re sexy, take my clothes off. I got into my bed and looked in the mirror before doing that, and thought maybe I am beautiful! I got into my bed anyhow and unzipped my bag enough to snatch this computer and opened this document and somehow the blinds, my blinds to my very own favourite window in my very own favourite room so far, they were

sway - - - - ing Caleb Sandblom

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flat and low sky crush her. She rolled up her dusty skirt and started to

Jenny

by Siena Kunanec

In the moments before she saw her, the sweet smell of wheat

was overpowered by souring sweat.

Sweat in that field wasn’t unusual. She had sweat in that field

before while hacking, yanking, and plucking alongside the men. But this sweat curdled, it bubbled, and was heavy in the air like the anticipation of rain.

The field was yellow like honey and on most days it had made

her happy. Not on that day. Maybe it was because a sheet of grey clouds threw away her happy honey, replacing it with a dusty brown colour.

Maybe because that same grey sky taunted her.

The ground beneath the meager wheat stocks was caked with

dust. The cracks appeared to expand with each shallow breath she drew. Yes, the sky taunted her. There seemed to be a promise of rain.

A promise to quench the thirst of the ground she lay on. Rain would keep her company as she waited by herself. But the rain never came.

The grey clouds only gnawed away at the emptiness that she would feel later on.

over and over. Her cries alerted someone, and by the time it was over, a stout, gaping woman stood over Jenny with a rag and bucket of water.

Her daughter arrived while Jenny was alone. The only time she

saw her was in the field.

1936 – Winnipeg

push, enduring what felt like a metal rod being swung at her stomach

She was laying on a bed of waspy wheat, which she had made

as she started to feel the pains. On her back she waited, watching the

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Through the dusty wind, Jenny carried her silent daughter in

her arms. Her husband carried Jenny. As she laid the still infant, white as porcelain, on her bed, Jenny watched her husband pray. She felt the woman from the field tug at her hand, begging her to clean herself and get some rest. She watched them cover her still daughter with a blanket.

That was the last time Jenny saw her.

Mum delivers this story with glossy eyes. She tells me that the

angels took the baby. As a child, this was the image that stuck with me—sparkling angels floating down to my great grandmother and carrying her daughter away.

But as I’ve grown up, the picture of flying angels has become

an innocent afterthought. Instead, Mum’s shaking words echo and resonate somewhere deep inside my head.

“If your Great Granny can give birth in a field alone, we can

do anything.”

Who were you?

You had to die for me to want to know.

I want you to see me. To look at my long blonde waves, pierc-

ing green eyes, round rosy cheeks, and see that they are yours.

Could we have been friends? Did you try to be mine as I shut

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you out, afraid of your wrinkled skin and shaking hands. I didn’t un-

up, kissing your cheek where your round glasses usually are. You hold

derstand their power.

her tight and your whisper her name, filling the midnight air. Lynny.

Lynny. Lynny. She smells like grass. You let her lead you to the kitchen.

This is me trying. This is me telling your story, the one your

family—our family—could never put down.

***

Your granddaughter stands on a chair, you in your satin night-

gown. Together you lay out the ingredients: flour, lots of butter, potatoes, cottage cheese, and onions. Though Lynny crinkles her baby nose

2001 – St. Michael’s Hospital

in disgust, you lay out the blueberries because they are your favourite.

The first time you saw me, I was a day old.

Together, you mash the potatoes, mix the cheese, and fry the onions.

You glide through the hospital doors, letting the rain melt off

The morning doves begin to coo as the two of you knead the dough.

your dark eyelashes. You walk arm in arm with your son. He is a grand-

You love to feel your granddaughter’s soft hands in yours as you help

father now and his newfound jubilation creates a light around him,

her practice the technique—your veins and tendons rippling under thin

piercing through and separating the fog of early spring.

skin. By the time the sun arrives, Lynny’s blonde, baby curls are pinned

You run your hands through my mother’s thick curls. They

back, you have dressed yourself, and the pyrohy are on the table. You

have always reminded you of the wheat fields. I find my place in the

eat yours stuffed with blueberries and your rosy-cheeked girl eats hers

crook of your frail arm. Your loud green eyes—the ones I will wear

dipped in ketchup.

from now on—dance as they watch me breathe. You tug on your pearl necklace and I find my place here in your arms for the next three years.

***

***

2007 – A Small Apartment on Milner Avenue

The last time I saw you was on my sixth birthday. I was

1971 – A Bungalow Framed With a Rose Garden

annoyed that I had to share my day. Your birthday was the following

week and Mum said it was the right thing to do. I have to sit carefully

The five-year-old girl who will grow into my mother wakes as

if on cue. It is just past midnight. She throws aside the knitted blan-

on your lap. When we blow out the pink candles—six for me and ninety

kets and goose down quilts, stumbling down the hallway. Her tiny, bare

for you—I can feel your stale breath slip into my nose. Your brittle

feet know the way to your bedroom even in the dark. She wakes you

hands are cold on my waist above my yellow tights, so I squirm out of

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your grip with blue icing on my lips.

strange madness. The sound of cicada beetles pierces the air. It makes

you dizzy, but you walk on towards your first day of work. From the

Later, I bounce on your bed, your rosebud sheets enveloping

me as I land. You shake your head, chafe your hands, and roll your

bottom of a winding path leading up a hill, you see an uncompromis-

shoulders. You hum really loudly. Mum tells me to stop jumping. She

ing, dominating house with white siding and wicked green shutters. The

tells me you don’t like it.

family that will devour you for the next three years waits inside. A man

in his twenties answers the door. Most of his features are hidden in the

Ten of us are crammed in your beige apartment. It smells like

rose petals and rubbing alcohol. I feel nauseous and Dad says it’s from

shadows, save for his jet black eyes. They sear through your blouse.

the cake. You hum and rock in the corner. I ask to go home.

than you intend. You think you sound pathetic. He thinks so too and

A week later, my little sister awakes in a fit. She’s wet the bed

You introduce yourself. You are Jenny. Your voice is quieter

and she screams out your name. It’s like she knows. My dad describes

startles you with a villainous laugh. His black pits for eyes flash as he

it like a sign from God. Two hours later, Mum leaves in her car, driving

shoves you into a dark hallway. He bolts the door behind you.

head-on into that Toronto morning sun. She is going to see you because

you are dying.

man. You are caught off guard. You think he is young—too young to

be a father and too young to possess so much wealth. He offers you a

A few days pass and they bury you in your field in Winnipeg.

As your eyes adjust to the dim lighting, you turn to look at the

drink. Bold. Neither of you flinch. This is the Prairies. ***

Yes, the man is young and yes, he is bold—the strength of

youth and the arrogance of a snake. In the coming months, you will 1931 – The Prairies

discover this to be a lethal combination. You will learn that the man

likes to hurt little girls. This is the Prairies. Under the moon and under

A pebble waits for you on the path. You want to kick it. Your

feet are itching to push it along with you down the dusty trail.

moonshine, he likes to hit them.

You walk with your arms held high above your head like your

But, you don’t know that yet.

sister Annie taught you. These sweat stains will ruin you. Your mother

A little girl with braided brown hair hides in a doorway. She is

was up all night starching and pressing your uniform and polishing your

nervous of strangers but can’t help staring at your twinkling eyes and

shoes with vinegar. You can protect her hard work with your hands

hair that is yellow like sunshine. You are magic to her.

reaching towards the sky and by leaving dusty stones in your tracks.

and thinning black hair makes her way into the stuffy hallway. She is

The early morning sunrays beat down on the dry path with a

26

Preceded by a swishing skirt, a woman with round, puffy eyes

27

carrying two more of her daughters, their dripping noses staining her

of the hallway. You check on the woman one more time before mak-

collar. You will never mention their names to anyone.

ing your way down the dark hallway. Setting your head stiffly on your

You begin the three years that will shape the rest of your life.

shoulders, you refuse to look back. Then, maintaining a ridged shuffle,

Each day, you wake up and follow the stars to the north, then

you let the light from under the doorway guide you through the dark-

the rising sun to the west. Your shoes scrape along the dusty trail in

ness.

summer, crunching in thigh-high snow in the winter. You starch shirts,

polish wooden tables, and shine silver cutlery. You wipe tears, clean

They have wet their bed. One’s eye is swollen shut, as black as her

wounds, and hide frightened girls in bedrooms. Your teenage years are

father’s pupils. Another’s nose is rimmed with dry, crumbling blood.

spent struggling under a current, of tyranny and undercompensation.

Their small chests rise and fall in sync.

You stifle a whimper.

can scrape together. So you keep working. But it’s the Prairies in the

You want to take them, feel their warm cheeks and thin baby

30s—everyone needs money. Everyone but the man with jet-black eyes.

hairs cradled in your arms as you run. You swallow this thought like

Ending your day in the dark, you watch rough and hairy men load the

you swallow the dusty lump that’s been building in your throat for the

young man’s crates of burning gold liquid onto their carts. They drive

last three years.

off into the stars with clinking bottles at their feet.

wooden door behind you one last time, separating yourself from the

Your parents need whatever money you and your six siblings

One day in late autumn, you arrive to find the house consumed

Their hair is stuck to their faces and between cracked lips.

That night you starch that man’s white shirts. You latch the

by a stillness that you’ve never experienced. Not even the calls of

broken girls on the other side.

grouse and chickadees or wheat whispering in the wind can be heard.

You walk through the house calling out, is anybody here?

insides until death.

The memory of the black-eyed man’s daughters will eat your

Something thuds against the floor and a door flies open.

The woman of the house tumbles into the hallway and stares at you

***

with puffy, bloodshot eyes. She keeps you busy that day, the two of you alone in the rigid, stuffy house. You ask her where the children are. Are

1934 – A Dance Hall in a Town Far Away

they with their father? You hope not. You polish the bannister three

times before she falls asleep on her rocking chair.

sound of drums is overpowered by his beating heart.

Your skin prickles. Something calls you to the door at the end

28

The first time he saw you, you were flying like a bird. The

He is short, a mere one inch taller than you, but people don’t

29

notice his short stature. He walks like he’s floating, his head so high up

proposes. He wasn’t planning on it. He walks into your kitchen, your

in the sky. Up where things don’t matter, where things are okay. He will

hair like fire in the sunrays, and he can’t help himself. He gives you a

reassure you. He will remind you that things are okay.

cigar band he finds in his shirt pocket. You slip it onto your thin fingers

and the two of you cry.

You have spent that summer dancing. You think you are a bat,

awake in the night and bolting through the sky with a rush of wind.

You will die with the red and black band clenched in your fist.

Climbing out of your bedroom window, you and your sisters escape your

At nineteen, you get married. You tell Nick that you want

farm. If only for the night, you can be free.

daughters. He holds you tighter and tells you that he does too.

For the first time, in a town so far from your own, you can fly.

You soar and twirl and clap and laugh, the music carrying your mind

***

far away from endless flat fields, moonshine, and little girls with wet and bruised cheeks.

Last Week – At Your Son’s House

You fall in love with his eyes first. In the barn under golden

It’s the first hot day of spring. I put on a sundress and drive

lamplight, his iceberg-blue eyes find yours. You think they are a river;

over to your son’s house. Granddad spills your stories onto his din-

the the miles of brown fields around you are a foil for their startling

ing room table, stories stained and wrinkled with age of you on your

blue.

wedding day, of you as a teenager, you at my baby shower, and of you

Your sister will laugh at you when you tell her this.

holding my five-year-old mother on your shoulders.

He asks you to dance. His name is Nick. What is yours? You

I see myself in all of them.

are Jenny. Together you move like milkweed in the wind—him floating

My grandmother watches from the kitchen, her blue eyes

and you flying.

shining. The words are wet and spill out of her like pieces of melting

ice. She normally likes to choose her words with care and precision. She

He walks you the four miles home; back to your far away

world.

can’t stop these words though. She needs to say them.

For the next two months, you watch him shake your father’s

“She gave birth in a field you know. She was your age and she

calloused hand, bring your mother baby’s breath flowers, and kiss your

was alone.”

giggling sisters on their cheeks. He leaps over your fence to enter your

I tell her that I know.

world on the other side.

I now know the power that you have in my family, why they

keep flipping through your pages years later. You are their favourite

As the green leaves begin to prickle with yellow and red, Nick

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31

story.

I understand how, in our weakest moments, when everything

seems to crumble apart, that your magic can rescue us. You stitch us back together.

I know what beauty means. Why every time someone who

knows you does a double take when they see me, why they hold me a little tighter and run their hands through my thick, wheat-coloured hair.

Why my eyes, the loud, green ones, scare people.

Because they are yours.

I would do anything to watch your delicate hands—the ones

that aided you through a lifetime of courage and tenacity—knead and pull the dough of pyrohy as you teach me the technique.

I tell my grandmother to go on, tell me Great Granny’s story.

I look at the pictures of you. I see you. And as if for the very

first time, I see myself.

Brigita Gedgaudas

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33

Don’t Think I Ever Told Anyone

by Ze Xi “Jessica” Ye

“There has to be something wrong with me.”

She’s facing away, elbow resting on the open window of my

passenger seat. The smoke is getting thicker, but you can still see her freckles underneath that grime. Sunspots on her shoulders that she always tried to hide.

“It’s okay.”

Shifting of a blue cocktail dress and she’s looking at me again.

Premature wrinkles and a mind that needs comforting, but all I could provide were bad answers given in darkness. I turn to face the wheel.

Tap, tap, tap. Crickets provide no substance.

“Is that what you’re gonna tell the cops?”

I shake my head. She keeps staring like there’s a hole goin’ inta

my neck too and she’s just watching it bleed. Just tears though. Just weakness.

“I’m not gonna say nothin’.”

She laughs, says, “Still a coward.” Then she’s gone. Left a pair

of Websters with a missing heel in the glove compartment. Left a cigaSayaka Daly

34

rette burn hole in the leather of my daddy’s car.

My grip tightens. I drive away.

35

Take me to Skagen

by Lana Glozic

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful? We could walk along the water

together—oh, take me to Skagen, dear,” she would say, describing the houses in detail, the buildings that were painted uniformly yellow and topped by roofs of red clay.

She would mention it every now and then. He caught scrib-

blings of water along a coast, glimpses of Wikipedia articles and tourists’ accounts.

They could feel that something was different, like a cat aware

that it is about to die. The pair crawled off, away from each other, into respective hiding places. Hers was the town in northern Denmark. He withdrew.

What were initially brief mentions of Skagen as some far-off

daydream, a future, became desperate pleadings. She was nervous, not sleeping well, and one night he acquiesced. They were in bed at a late hour. She tossed and turned, which roused him from his usually deep sleep.

“Could you stop? I’m trying to sleep,” he complained, sitting

up against the headboard. He groped around for the light-switch and Caleb Sandblom

shielded his tired eyes from the sudden brightness.

36

“I can’t,” she said, “I’m nervous.”

37

“About?” he asked, eyes still covered.

“You can’t even say full sentences to me anymore.”

the landscape change below him. For some time there was nothing but

“I just woke up.”

wine-blue water, then long stretches of crop-fields. She napped on his

“You aren’t even looking at me,” she sniped at him, crossing

shoulder. They set foot on the northern tip of Denmark, seagirt Skagen.

On the plane, he looked out the window listlessly, watching

her arms so tightly that they pressed into her gut. Her breathing was

labored, partially self-inflicted.

bathed in dandelion light. Approaching the ocean spit, she bounded

through the dunes, leaving a trail of kicked-up sand in her wake. He

Most of her anxieties, he thought to himself, were self-inflicted.

Together, they plodded over grassy hills. They were luminous,

She dug her arms into her gut and felt genuine surprise that she could

followed distantly behind. She slowed to a stop, watching him, shading

not breathe. She dropped glass and marveled that, by the pull of gravi-

her eyes with her hand.

ty, it would shatter into pieces on the floor.

“You’re taking forever!” She called, fingers outlining her pout.

He walked at a measured pace, hands in his pockets, unsure

“It’s the light,” he said. He removed his hand, wincing from an

ice pick headache. “Better now?”

why he agreed to be here. It was a shallow sea—there were no fish, nor

any other signs of life. The only unique aspect was that the shallow

“Yes,” she lied, still visibly upset, still suffocating herself and

the room. They were stewing in bad air.

waters stretched out unusually far. Still, she was gleeful. She kicked

off her shoes, not caring that they landed at two different spots in the

“Is the problem really what I’m saying or how I’m looking at

you?” he asked. “Are you sure it isn’t something else?”

sand.

“No,” she lied again.

“Should I get those?” He asked her.

He mulled over how to calm her breathing. Finally, he said, “I

She smiled and shook her head, not speaking.

can buy the plane tickets tomorrow.”

“Are you sure?”

“I won’t need them anymore.”

gently over her duvet-covered knees. A smile lit up her face at the pros-

She had a wild gleam in her eye, wordlessly beckoning him.

pect of realizing her daydreams. She planted a kiss on his forehead, and

She looked at him deeply, neglecting to straighten her disheveled, white

facing him, fell asleep. Watching her, he brushed aside the loose strands

sundress.

of hair on her forehead. It was a rare sight, her brow neither furrowed

“Aren’t you going to take yours off, too?” She asked in turn.

nor upturned, her chest was rising and falling slowly. He turned away

He came close to her, holding her arms. He looked at her sadly.

from her, facing the wall.

He could feel her pulling him, slowly, into the water with her, the tide

As he expected, her arms, previously stiff, relaxed. They folded

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39

frothing over her bare feet.

“Months,” he said.

“Come with me,” she said.

“Oh, god.”

“Where are we going?”

“I have to turn back. I was here to be with you when you left.

“I don’t know, but we need to go there,” she coaxed. “Come

I have work tomorrow.”

into the water with me.”

“But I need you with me,” she bawled. She craned her neck

“Not until you say where we’re going.”

to see the horizon. The line between sky and water blended together, a

She paused to think, gazing at something distant, searching for

towering wall of light blue.

the right words.

“Remember what they said about the water here?”

came all this way.”

“Kind of.”

“I don’t know what’s there—and I don’t want it.”

“It’s shallow for miles out.”

“Please,” she begged. She took his hands again and tugged.

“So what?”

“No,” he strained, pulling back. “I’m sorry.”

“We could walk out without stopping, couldn’t we?”

She let go, and his hands returned to his side.

He recounted, “The locals say that people who walk out-”

The water numbed her legs, and the wet hem of her dress stuck

“Lose sight of the shore,” she finished.

to her skin. The water was cold. It dug into her legs like long finger-

“And they don’t come back, do they?”

nails, as if unidentified hands were tightening their grip. She needed to

“No,” she answered.

go. But she wanted to stay there in that spot, in the water. She wanted

“No one finds them.”

to look at him. She wanted to look at his face, the one that she saw

“We’ll be elsewhere. We’ll be different people,” she agreed.

every day when she awoke. Her hands tremored. She nearly reached out

She gave him another tug. He resisted.

again, but knew better not to.

“I can’t come with you.”

“Where will I go?” She sobbed. “What will I do?”

This shook her excited, confident demeanor. His arms slack-

“You’re going to walk into the water.”

ened, as she put together all of the moments that, in retrospect, were

“But-I’m-afraid,” she hiccupped.

warning signs.

“You have to.”

“I don’t have a future anymore,” she cried.

“It’ll be good, I promise,” he said.

“How long did you feel like this?” She asked, voice breaking,

eyes widening in shock.

40

“I thought…” she paused, “that you would come with me. You

41

A Portrait of Madame Bovary on the Subway Window

“How am I going to get there? What am I going to do?” She

repeated.

“You’ll get there somehow.”

“Please, please, oh god, please come with me,” she wept, “I

can’t do this, I can’t.”

“You can and you will.”

She fell silent.

“You set one foot forward, and then another.”

She turned away, away from him, away from the world. She

set one foot forward, and then another. She walked until she forgot how

by Veronica Spada

cold water enveloped her. The water rose up to her knees, then her hips,

then her chest, and finally her head.

fingers touch the tawny pockets of my skin, my cheeks, the brownish

long she had been walking for. He, along with the shore, was gone. The

I age 50 years in the blemished subway window. Leather-gloved

piles of a baker’s sweating dough. Something rare in the visual mesmerizes me. My dough is kneaded, transformed.

My picture could speak with the accent of Golden Age Hol-

lywood. Her scarf is made of lambswool, her fortune born from her charm. She wears gloss serums under her eyes and mink pelts over her shoulders.

A man shaped like a snowbank smiles around his cigarette at

my strange image.

I remove my glove to ensure he sees my wedding band.

The train enters the station; the light obliterates the reflection

of the woman’s famous head. Now I see a mosaic wall and businessmen in leather shoes. I deposit my ring into my skirt pocket and return my glove to my naked hand.

42

43

On the Queen’s Park station platform, a raisin-eyed accordi-

He rubs my shoulder, coming closer. “Exactly.”

onist and under-dressed trumpeter play, “Si Tu Vois Ma Mère”. Gossa-

“And I’ve always preferred poetry when it’s spoken.”

mer mist embalms me while I swing my skirt. Snow lunges down the

“You mean to say we should speak poems to each other? Make

stairwell and decorates my hair. I throw the musicians pennies from

them up right now?” he replies, wide-eyed. “I can’t write poems on the

heaven. I’ve been told heaven is beneath the pockets of my skirt.

spot. I’ve got nothing memorized. I’m a human being, not a character

in a sonnet. People like that don’t exist.”

I’m soon reflected on the yellowed sliding door of the 7-11 on

Spadina Crescent. The image is a sixteen-year-old girl, a city-dwelling

urchin who takes molly on Jarvis Street when summer’s embrace aban-

people from poetry?”

dons her.

mid-discussion it was Madame Bovary.”

Soon, I twinkle in the unwashed window of a double-parked

His impatience delights me. I laugh, “Don’t you ever recognize

“I suppose,” he says. “I once met someone and realized

Mercedes, a grease puddle on Huron Street, and the stained glass win-

dow of Knox Chapel. Each image quivers in the light. They laugh like

ers? What about Don Quixote?”

cathedral bells. I have no time for them; I’m running late.

“Of course. Faustus too.”

“And brave Macbeth?”

mocks me with a stuck-out tongue, so I return the favour and wait

“And a Karamazov.”

beneath his stone ledge for my would-be beau. He promised me a book

“And Achilles?”

of sonnets. He promised we would read from it.

“Yes.”

His Romanticism excites me; we could be poets.

“Really? You’ve met an Achilles?”

I wait with the gargoyles and contemplate their posture.

“Maybe not Achilles. Not yet. The city’s not in flames. Still,

Gradually, like mist, his silhouette forms between the church

life has me like Hector’s corpse fastened to his chariot.”

When I arrive, a bloated gargoyle on the Knox Chapel edifice

“Madame Bovary! That’s terrible! Haven’t you met any oth-

doors, and I wish he would hesitate so I could paint the impression on

my brain. He approaches my station at the lattermost pew with impa-

Troy, the last flicker of a crumbling city. Spectator to the crashing mon-

tient eyes, empty-handed.

uments, armoured soldiers, terrified faces, and twinkling gore.”

“I dropped the Shakespeare in the sewer,” he says, “so we can’t

“Now there’s a lovely vantage point: looking on the burning

“A spectator,” he murmurs. He takes my scarf in his hands and

read it. Sorry.”

unravels it. “That’s real clever.”

“No worries,” I reply, “We’ll do something else.”

44

He embraces me, resting his chin on my shoulder and reaching

45

towards heaven, yet now I’m entranced by a second gargoyle adjacent

mirror from the bathroom vanity, revealing a blank, clay wall.

to the first. With a bloated face, it opens fat lips to reveal grey, stone

teeth. So I scrunch my nose and stick out my tongue; the gargoyle and

the skirt is the corpse of a stranger, unknowable and bizarre. I lose it in

I share a good laugh at the would-be beau’s expense.

the murky sea of clothing, so when I exit, I am swimming in a pair of

his tatty blue jeans.

While I laugh, I realize that on the stained glass window, the

My skirt on the floor is like a cadaver, and that’s all I see. Soon,

would-be beau and I are a single shape, a mound of love entwined like

the mud of a hill. I pull away until our bodies are estranged.

the morning, I look eighty-years-old. Fingers brush the pouches of

leathered skin beneath my eyes, the curtains of my heavy cheeks, the

The would-be beau leans to smell my hair and groans. “Why

In the subway window, homeward bound at one o’clock in

don’t we go to my apartment?”

strange images teeming in my head, whistling like a kettle.

I say, “Okay,” and we’re promptly in a streetcar on College

The woman in the window glimmers like the dull face of a

Street with one hundred city-dwellers, our bodies compressed like an

penny. Naked fingers aimlessly brush the weary flesh around the brow,

unconscious orgy. A young stranger with waist-length hair and a news-

the chin, the throat, the sighing mouth, the doughy cheeks.

paper divides me from my beau who is alternating between lusty grins

and scowls at the warm bodies.

decapitated, a hand still searching for my beauty.

When the train-cart plunges into the light aboveground, I am

I refract on the thousand sliding doors and peruse the strang-

er’s newspaper. Graciously, the stranger tips the paper to my eye-level so I can ogle the Calvin Klein models and imagine myself in their lace bralettes.

When we arrive, the apartment is a sea of tatty clothing. A

brown leather jacket, bell-bottom jeans, a yellow gingham dress. Scarce furniture. A cold rice cooker, a mattress, and a radio all belong to his old roommates. They come and go like phantoms, leaving single gloves and handfuls of pennies. Change litters the room, glittering like tearful eyes from the pockets of scattered blue jeans.

I wait for my beau on the mattress while he struggles with his

button-fly. I can’t see myself lying there. A bygone roommate stole the

46

Liam P. Bryant

47

About the Writers Bronwyn Garden-Smith is a third year student studying Psychology, English, and Equity Studies. In her work, she explores relations to power, multiplicity, and the individual strangeness of being alone in one’s mind.

Lana Glozic is a second-year Philosophy specialist. Her written work has previously appeared in the Claremont Review and the SMC Funnies.

Siena Kunanec is in her first year at Victoria College and plans to do a double major in Art History and Latin American Studies. She enjoys comparing stories with her dog while on hikes in Scarborough, gossiping with her grandmas, loud country music, looking at art, and cooking pasta.

Sam Rosati Martin, is a first year student studying Philosophy and English. I’m excited for springtime and enjoy finding beauty in all places.

Julia Edda Pape is a first-year student at UofT. An aspiring author and actor, and avid ukulele player, she lives in Etobicoke with her two aloof cats and one toothless kitten (as well as the rest of her family). She wishes she had been born a Weasley.

Veronica Spada studies English at the University of Toronto. She enjoys writing fiction and deeply admires Gustave Flaubert Ze Xi “Jessica” Ye is a third-year History major with minors in Anthropology and Sexual Diversity Studies. She is named after two autocrats (in Chinese) and is happy to have defied expectations.

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