My father built the bench when my husband and I bought our first house. He had some oak left from a project, and put the bench together quickly. Too quickly, he always said: One board on the seat stuck up slightly at one end. The first person who sat on the bench would sit on […]
A long path opens before me, a dark and twisted path with no end. This was my decision. This was my choice. I said what I said. It’s better if you move on. This was the only way. I can’t stand to see the people around me get hurt because of me. The trees that […]
You can’t witness pure, unadulterated, innocent joy without some of the sparkle lightening your own load. It had been a long winter of non-stop nausea, but it wasn’t until the fifth month of chemo that I actually became sick. My white blood cells were depleted, I had a low-grade fever, and the doctors were worried. […]
by Elizabeth Williams I sit, staring at my computer screen. Upstairs, my 10-year-old daughter shrieks, “I hate you!” Her brother rumbles a reply. He’s 13, and his newly deep voice still surprises me.She shrieks again. School is cancelled because of snow, my husband is out of town, and I’m the lucky one who works from […]
Of all the gifts in my life, I think the greatest one has been the gift of reading. I didn’t acquire the gift early or easily. My mother and my first teachers tried to convince me that it was worth my time to try to decode those little black marks on the page. I remained […]
Outside, the drifting snow accumulates on pine trees reaching toward a goose-grey sky. I watch a solitary Blue Jay fly where fading light at dusk illuminates the tracks a deer inserted in the snow which, should this wild precipitation stay as strong, will all be finely brushed away. I am at home. I have nowhere […]
Broken, blackened branches,sculpted by fire –Nova Scotian bonsai. by Lynn Reicker
Whenever I seemy stonesa three,I pause—to know,to sigh, to be.In all I have done,or not, or failed—in allof this,my three prevailed.My three who workedtheir way to me,to crack the calm,the storm,the sea.My three are here,they freed the caves.I watch them now,they skip the waves. by Melanie MacDonald
They’re terrible birds,says my granddad, an old farmer.Eating the crops, making a mess.We always used to shoot themwhen I was a boy. I watch for them,to see them glide and dip and swoop.Their wings gleam in sunshine like obsidian.Sometimes they fly in formation, andI think they’re playing. They’re cruel birds,my songbird-loving mother says.Eating other birds’ […]
They took my friend Joy away today, zipped up in a red body bag. I’ll not forget that last unglamorous moment we shared. Instead, I’ll remember seeing her last month at my Christmas party shaking hands with one of my large male friends, and saying in her best Rodney Dangerfield voice with a knowing wink, […]
