I’m reminded of Ava…

Every time I look at the wall behind my desk
Full of drawings and letters she wrote just for me
Gifts that came from the heart
Handmade with love, my precious treasures

I’m reminded of Georgia…

In the music I listen to and hear all around
Jamming together in the backseat of the truck growing up
Karaoke on the TV, even in our adulthood
Liking the same songs, keeping us connected unknowingly

I’m reminded of Mom…

Mornings on the bus thinking about my upcoming day
Nights working hard, so I can make her proud
One thing isn’t enough to name when talking about her
Part of her is in everything I do and hope to be

I’m reminded of Dad…

Quitting work for the day and heading home
Ready to show him all the different photos and videos I took
Scrolling endlessly through to pick the best ones for him
The smile on his face when he sees my little collection is contagious

I’m reminded of my family…

Under the covers after a hard day
Various thoughts in my head, but one sticking out most
Wherever I find myself I can also find them
Examples of strength, love, expression, pride, and joy
You are my everything, and my everything is you

“My mother told me that it was like a library, you learn things, but not like the school library” said a small blonde boy named Avery, who was usually too ill to come to these sleepovers.

I snorted at the notion “Now that’s really stupid, who’d want to find a boring library?”

“No really! She told me they have all kinds of books about helping hurt people and even how to bring the dead back to life. There’s a guy there and you talk to him and tell him what you want, and he finds what you want, you just gotta find him and give him something he wants!” he insisted, an earnest look in his green eyes.

Avery and I had been rather close, but we lost contact when we went to different middle schools. I heard that he had moved away to live with relatives for some reason, and never really heard from him after elementary. The relationship had changed from eagerly discussing movies and videogames to being mere facebook friends, perhaps posting a single “Happy Birthday” message each year. Life moved forward and any kind of talk about the Clandestine room was dismissed as a childish story, and albeit a boring one. The secrets of a place hidden and possibly dangerous held no sway over my interests of fitting in and impressing my more attractive peers, if it even existed. I eventually entered a relationship with Evelyn, the first girl who paid me any mind. She almost always smiled, but bore a melancholic expression when she thought you weren’t looking. We would discuss our days and our likes and dislikes, but whenever family came up she would get quiet, and leave soon after. These conversations would make me irritated and confused. The interactions would make me feel responsible for her emotions and I didn’t know how to help. Never imagining it to be a big deal, it came as a complete shock when I learned that she had taken her own life. There were whispers about how terrible her home life must have been, but I had never taken the time to find out.

Memories of the Clandestine room and its supposed purpose came to me and I began to try and reach out to Avery. Wracked with guilt about my inaction, I wanted to do anything to get her back, and maybe try to save her. When we spoke he offered me his condolences, and asked what he could do to support me. “Can we meet up in person? Talk about some things? It’s been such a long time.”

Seeing his dour green eyes and hearing him speak I knew we had both changed a lot. He’d grown from a sickly child into a thin, almost gaunt young man. We spoke of small things, and updated each other on the major events of our lives. I learned that his mother passed away several years prior as well. After catching up on the last few years of our lives, I approached the topic of Evelyn’s death. My breath caught in my chest for a moment before I managed to whisper “The Clandestine room. You told me long ago that…that there was secrets there…secrets that could maybe bring someone back to life”

Avery was quiet for several long moments, his lips pursed and a haunted look in his eyes. “What you’re talking about isn’t a joke, and it isn’t exactly safe to try…I went there when my mother passed away to try and get her back. It was a very weird place, odd to get to” “Whatever man, I don’t care what it takes, I need to bring Evelyn back if I can, so I can help her” Silence stretched between us, and I realized how crazy my request sounded. I was about to turn and leave when his shifting eyes met mine and he agreed to help me. Avery met me early the next morning and we set out together, passing increasingly neglected buildings and streets before arriving at an abandoned apartment building. I paused, peering up at the dark windows missing their panes, feeling the hairs rise up on the back of my neck. Avery calling my name pulled me from my reverie and I walked into the building. We walked through the empty lobby and to the stairs where we began to descend. I began to sweat as a feeling of foreboding crept over me with each step, but I had come this far, and this was for Evelyn. I soon began to lag behind Avery, but he wouldn’t slow down no matter what I said to him, merely telling me that we need to go down further. The concrete stairs had changed to stone stairs at some point which ended in a hallway that was impenetrably dark. Gesturing down the hallway he told me to “Head down there, no flashlight, you’ll piss it off. The Clandestine room is at the end. When you get there ask, and you’ll find what you seek” I swallowed past a lump in my throat and put one foot in front of another, my eyes wide to try and see anything. Behind the echoing of my footsteps I could hear a low rumbling which made my blood run cold. I turned around to look how far I’d come just in time to see Avery helping his mother to her feet. His green eyes glinted as he looked at me grimly and calmly stated “I’m sorry, a life for a life. Goodbye”. Avery then turned and pulled his mother up the stairs with him as the rumbling grew louder.

One evening I broke my back
bracing myself into high beams
to build us a humble home,
with sky-high ceilings,
auxiliary offices on every sixth floor
and underground parking lots
for our hordes of indoor slippers
and outdoor shoes.

I remembered how my arms
baled around your body in the bed,
how your beige eyes blinked mindlessly,
beaconing endlessly up and into my angles.

I remembered you swaying softly
while I held my breath and folded my limbs,
meshing my tissue fibers together
to transform into a hammock,
holding onto the thought that you

could never despise this haven, this asylum, this shelter
I assembled for the two of us.

But I shrugged it off,
convincing myself those clusters of sparks
slugging off your skull were signs you loved me back,
but really they were just empty shells of a warm shotgun.

I passed out,
waking up to the fumbling dance
of a fire no longer flickering
but instead loitering leisurely
on top where scars foamed up on our flesh
and flakes of skin were filtered across fissuring gaps
upon the charred up floorboards.

I blamed myself,
battering the bullet point
straight into the streetlines of my brain
that I was a buffoon for not hearing you beg for mercy.
Nowadays in my sleep, I wonder often
if you tried slithering out to escape.

Or what would’ve happened if you slipped a sliver
of a whisper into my ear to tell me:
“Please stop suffocating me in my sleep.”

Or what would’ve happened if you slammed your shoulder
into my stomach and seethed your teeth
into my skin while you screamed:
“Let me out!”

Or what would’ve happened if you slit my eyelids
away from sitting shut to let me see the signs
that I was doing too much in such a short amount of time.

Or what would’ve happened if I stopped thinking
and actually tried to save you;
instead of reminiscing these tragedies
and turning them into scattered tattoos
to commemorate for the next lifetime.

“Oh my god;

I
am
so sorry”.

prose left on pause
But the girl who scribbled these words in ink is gone
changed by experiences yet to be written
Words lamenting past lovers that scorned her
trying to heal fresh pain through pen and paper
Now those feelings are a distant memory
only existing as echoes in my identity
And the ghosts of my past try to haunt me in these pages
but their barbed wire smiles don’t scare me like they used to
The wounds have scarred over
the girl has grown
and this work will never be finished
Forever a poem in progress
as they all once were
and all will be.

My damp fingers leave fingerprints,
as though I walked through the sand,
barefoot through the Kitsilano beach.
Each chocolate chip stumbles in thick
play-doh and an alabaster halo pond.

I think about him and his rustic voice,
the way Inglewood is so steadfast,
the streets are filled with art galleries,
paintings of messy rooms and lovers,
and vegan cafes we used to go to.

Fairy lights hung from the ceiling,
draped on the walls and curtains,
fireflies in the nook of our kitchen,
between walls of coniferous and
evergreen, in between him and me.

My chocolate eyes sharpen at the dough,
a beige beanie bag of seeds of chocolate,
ready for a chill, the winter inside the home,
the box of ice and packaged goods for
months down the bumpy icy road.

The pain throbbed her into the present moment. She saw the man again and tried to ask him about her current situation, but the ball gag produced only a muffled groan that got his attention. The man looked odd to Carmen, and not because he was somehow standing on the ceiling. He wore a dinner jacket with a matching black bowtie, a much more respectable look than anyone Carmen would voluntarily associate with. What perplexed Carmen further was the fact that she could smell the comforting but still, septic stench of the Wren Island City docks.

Fancy suit, standing on the ceiling…The hamster wheel inside Carmen’s head slowly chugged to life. Vampire. Only a vampire could walk about the ceiling as easy as he could on the—oh wait no. Carmen looked up to find a grimy cement floor, putting two and two together, the brilliant detective now realised she was actually the one upside down. He still could be a vampire though.

The man grasped the rope, halting Carmen’s centrifugal tour of the abandoned dockside warehouse. Carmen’s vision pieced itself back together and she could see objects that were farther than ten feet away. Behind the man was a gathering of people talking, laughing, and taking polaroid photos of the person next to them. They all hunched over a metal table clad with scented candles, and one of those red-and-white-checkered tablecloths that wasn’t quite plastic and not quite any other material. What was that material? Her mum back in Cardiff had the exact same—the man bent down to address his captive, rudely interrupting Carmen’s runaway train of thought.

“Would it be totally cliché if I said that you were joining us for dinner, and that you are to be the guest of honour?” The man’s Chicago accent salted Carmen’s eardrums. She nodded in agreement through the wincing.

“Mmmmfggg hhmmmauuuu.” Carmen said, ‘Have we met before?’ was what she tried to say.

“Why do they always try to talk?” He said to the table, prompting a hearty mid-western chuckle from all of them. “What do y’all say? Shall we hear her out? Grant her some final words?” The diners slapped their palms on the table, the man took that as confirmation and pushed the little tab, letting the gag loose.

Carmen spat out the red ball covered in her saliva. She focused on the dinner guests, and they licked their lips, anticipating their supper. They all focused on her too, drooling, and howling. Literally drooling and howling. Recollection of the last 24 hours slapped Carmen in her frontal lobe. Oh god I know what these people are. She looked up, well down for her, towards the roof. A skylight exhibited a full moon. Carmen examined the table. Underneath the “I went to Wren Island and all I got was this lousy shirt” t-shirts were tufts of fur. Novelty Canadian flag sunglasses were removed to illuminate bright yellow eyes. Canis erectus. Werewolves. Werewolf tourists.

The man gave Carmen a slight nudge and sent her slowly spinning again. The table laughed. The strangely calming rotation of the rope jolted her memory. That morning, Carmen had been hired by Wren Island City Police, again, to investigate a mysterious murder, again, believed to be the work of something that went bump in the night, again. Carmen’s memories slowly sobered up. Parts of a body mixing with the surf at Tituba beach. The smell of brining flesh and the screech of seagulls. More parts farther down towards the pier. ‘Musta been some kinda animal,’ the coroner concluded. If there had been a TV camera, Carmen would have looked into it and winked. Carmen got to work, started sniffing around, asking the wrong people the wrong kind of questions. She met her contact in the city’s werewolf community and was assured that it was not one of them. After a day of cold leads and a bunch of I ain’t seen nothin’, she began walking home, hoping to drink and sleep on it. She was pondering down the dingy, over-priced streets of the Wren Island City boardwalk, when a man approached her. He picked her up by the neck—dinner and a movie first, sailor—and threw her against an alleyway wall. That was all she could remember. Son of a gun, the man who attacked Carmen had the same toothy grin as the one in front of her.

Now that Carmen had sussed out that these loud, musky tourists were werewolves, she racked her brain for their weaknesses. Silver bullets, but Carmen never carried a gun. I shouldn’t have given that silver-headed cane to my dad at Christmas, a powerful Welsh artifact that was now sitting in Harry’s golf bag. Wait. That afternoon, during a lunchtime rum and coke, Carmen’s hypothesis regarding the case was leaning towards a werewolf attack, so she went home and grabbed her dog whistle. During her hazy awakening a few moments ago, Carmen thought she had got a twig—or more likely—a human finger bone stuck in her shoe. In fact, it was the whistle, a fantastically convenient weapon against slathering dog-people.

“Look, you lot are making a bloody big mistake—” Carmen spun facing away from her captive audience, she sighed waiting to face them again. The rope creaking echoed through the silent warehouse, after a moment of them staring at her, she faced them again, “I am a registered private investigator hired by the Wren Island City Police Service.” Carmen fumbled in her back pocket with zip-tied hands, producing a wallet. Tucked behind a see-through slot, she waved her British Columbia Security Worker Licence. This didn’t have any effect on the man as he scoffed and walked away, letting Carmen spin away from him.

The man swaggered over to a fridge near Carmen. Inside were bottles of Coke, a few severed human heads, and some yogurts. “I know this ain’t the main course, but I thought we could use some appetizers!” The man lifted the heads that were on a wooden platter like morbid charcuterie, the diners barked and whined for their grub. The man served each of his six guests a severed, chilled cranium. After serving the last guest, the man took his place at the (sigh) head of the table with his own disgusting treat. In synchronization, each tourist reached inside the mouth and ripped the tongue out. Lingering on their own fingers as they gobbled the tongues down, the same way Carmen imagined they ate fried chicken on the days the moon wasn’t full. They then scooped the eyeballs out and slurped the wound, sucking and licking for the juices inside.

Whilst they were all distracted, Carmen shuffled her feet around exposing the whistle. She shook her foot, trying to wiggle the instrument free from her sock. She took a deep breath and reached up to grab it, cursing every second her abdomen strained. Carmen considered herself to be in decent shape, maybe not in shape, but something close to it. Perhaps she could cut down on the lunchtime drinks, and maybe even the mid-afternoon drinks. She plucked the whistle from her sock just as her core gave up. The last grunt could have rivaled any tennis player, grabbing the attention of her soon-to-be butchers.

The fancy man jumped from his seat and rushed his main course. Carmen put the whistle in her mouth, tasting sweat but still better than the teeth-marked ball gag from earlier. She barely heard the high-pitched screech that blasted the ears of the werewolves. They all slapped their hands over their ears and howled to drown out the noise.

Carmen untied the knots in the rope and fell to the ground. She wasn’t going to land on her head after being tied upside down this time (don’t ask), so she had the foresight to tuck her noggin in and land on her shoulders as the rope slithered loose. Carmen picked herself up and took off running, still blowing the whistle until her lungs reminded her it wasn’t a good idea to continuously exhale and sprint at the same time. Carmen removed the whistle, clenching it tight in her still zipped up hands. As soon as she stopped, the pained howls turned into gnashing barks as at the other end of the warehouse, the tourists contorted into their canid shapes. She barged through a metal door and slammed it shut, just in time for a fully-formed werewolf to crash headfirst and dent the steel. Carmen ran the only way she could, farther down the dockyard. She concentrated on the sound of her breath, then the click of claws on water-soaked asphalt. Carmen looked back. The wolves funnelled out of the warehouse. All yellow eyes aimed at her.

OhDearOhDearOhDearOhDearOhDear. Carmen kept sprinting. She was running out of pier. Wolves were behind her, and two galloped along her flanks. The one on her right sped up and was ahead of her, it thrusted itself forward and before Carmen knew it, she was barely a metre away from the maw of the wolf. She skidded to a stop and held out the whistle like the gun or silver-headed cane she didn’t have. The wolves circled her, slowing down to a menacing crawl.

A howl pierced the air. The wolves stopped. They looked around, as confused as Carmen was terrified. That sounded familiar. Carmen’s neck was suddenly warm. Something was right behind her. She turned around to face it. Standing over a foot taller than her, a thick, grey fur coat and two yellow eyes staring back at her. She knew those eyes. Sylvie, her contact in the werewolf community. Sylvie looked down at Carmen, then to the wolves snarling at her now. The hassles on her back flared up.

“Friggin’ tourists.” Sylvie’s soft, growling voice a relief to Carmen. More howls. All around them tall, dark silhouettes slid out from over rooftops and out of shadowed corners. “How on Earth did you find me?” Carmen forced words out through the chattering of her teeth.

“Well, you figured it was werewolves, so I started lookin’ around myself and Reggie got the scent of another pack, only that it also had a strange smell, like fried chicken or something. Figured we’d check it out.”

I knew it.

The American werewolves didn’t know what to do. They converged together, forming a defensive circle but were whimpering as they did so and tails between their legs. Sylvie skulked towards the crowd.

“You guys are hunters too, why aren’t you ripping her apart?” Carmen couldn’t tell by looks which wolf was which, but the voice was that of the mysterious host, only deeper and with a sharp barking finish to the Chicago accent.

“You tourists are all the same. Look, we have rules around here. Laws.” Sylvie grabbed the Yankee wolf by the tuft on the nape of his neck, like a mother grabbing her cub. “And when you break those rules, there are consequences.” Sylvie’s pack fully encircled the trespassers.

Carmen sparked a joint she fished from her jacket pocket, and slowly retreated to give Sylvie and her pack some room. Carmen slipped away, she needed a drink and a toke in the comfort of her own home. The pained yowling echoed among the shipping containers as the full moon lit her way back to the city.

Without choice, I left for Glenbrook in middle school, Highland Park in high school, Dalhousie when working as a cook at the children’s hospice, Bowness when living with my ex-fiance, only to finally return here to Killarney all these years later. Tucked early to bed beneath a downy duvet of snow. Peel back frost ferns coating a blurry window to glimpse Venus gleaming shyly through blueing dusk. Wrapped in whiskey-scented candles, watching flurries swirl. Breathe deeply, inhaling calm, feeling darkness rising all around, unhurried and gentle as yeast.

“Home is where the haunt is / The past still present tense / Need more time to mourn” —American Football

Eventually, I wake up. Sunlight has been bleeding through the real window for hours already, staining the inside of my eyelids pink. How long has it been since awaking in full darkness? Circadian rhythms still attuned to farm chores and a 5AM rising inherited from ancestors who worked the land. Nevertheless, waking remains a ritual act. As consciousness filters in, orient towards the sacred objects kept close: Tibetan singing bowl, vintage maps of collapsed countries, jasmine and sandalwood incense, black kettle. Talismans rendering this space mine—even when everything else feels contingent.

I recall Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, how her manifesto reflects my room. “A lock on the door means the power to think independently,” she wrote. No lock adorns my door. My bed, wooden frame forged in sheepherder days, now bearing a startup mattress with false warranties of Casper/ Brooklinen/Parachute. The jade plant hangs with trailing rosary beads down from the windowsill. Coffee rings etching sigils into the hand-me-down desk, poetry laid atop the palimpsest of past assignments. The makeshift bookcase of two-by-fours and plywood scraps sagging under the collected weight of paperback anthologies, broken-spined textbooks, and yellow-paged secondhand novels ravaged by the eyes of strangers long before mine. I sleep here, I write here, I eat here alone. I fuck and make love furtively like a squatter unsure when reprieve might end. My presence is conditional in this building rented in another’s name. The ritual of waking, yet, gives me sovereignty over consciousness itself; training my attention makes reality submit to my lens. Outside these plaster walls people scurry to catch buses or yell at service workers or jostle cars from ice, but peering through thrifted kaleidoscope windows fractures a working world into jeweled shards. An outsider to my own home, a flâneur foreign in native land, subsisting by chance rather than through inherited claim. Morning’s light—spilling over quilts sewn by ancestors long dead—gives permission for the belief, if only for one more dawn, that I might still have place and purpose in this world.

Eventually, the sanctuary of self is left behind. When emerging onto the creaking front steps, the brisk air raises gooseflesh even through the feathered-stuffed coat. The key slips into the stubborn lock, jiggling until the pins catch—no posh mortise mechanism here but a humble doorknob from the hardware store my step-dad frequented when we needed to replace stripped screws or bent brackets on the homestead. The knob itself broke off years ago, leaving just a metal shaft poking out along with holes where screws once anchored it. Each tenant has left it, functionally nude but still guarding the threshold.

Without a deadbolt slammed securely home, the door would swing wide to winter’s whims, free and unlatched. Picture returning to a snowdrift forcing entry across the worn welcome mat, ice edging over the threshold to craze the laminate flooring inside. The key must, then, be turned forcefully, wrenching it sideways to ensure the tongue slides fully into place, then test the handle unsuccessfully. Only afterwards does attention drift outward, noticing at last how ice has varnished every bud and branch in glittering lacquer, frost’s refracting prism rendering each twig alien, otherworldly. Inhaling crystalline air tinged with woodsmoke, descend the slick metal steps, edges rounded by uncounted footfalls of strangers under this same cold Sun. The locked door stands vigil behind me, patient for my return.

Typically, shortcuts are made through the back lane, slipping between the neighboring houses to emerge onto the road parallel. Packed snow crunches underfoot, then gives way to slick black ice where runoff pools. Tread gently, placing each boot heel to toe, skating the frozen rink behind garages. Suddenly raucous shrieks slice the cold air—a parliament of magpies erupts from beneath a spruce pine, inky wings glinting colourful like fresh gasoline. One hops atop a ripped garbage bag, timidly plucking at the plastic before plunging its beak inside seeking nourishing scraps. Soon more swoop down to join the frenzy, competitive bodies jostling feathers. In childhood, enthralled and terrified by magpies in equal measure. Avian majesty dressed in tuxedo plumage, yet an utter disregard for boundaries or manners. Oftentimes cruel—dive bombing unto outdoor cats. Many boast tails longer than their bodies, streaming and shearling.

As the cache picks over waste, notice one with a near-bald head—likely self-inflicted from curiosity and desperation. Another magpie nearby hobbles with a broken wing bowed at an odd angle, perhaps struck by a car or harrying hawk some weeks prior, now biding her time. The corvid impulse for discovery and desire yields both violence and intimacy. As one they rise skyward at some secret signal, dispersing over rooftops and fences. Every few moments one lets loose a warbling trill, echoing and overlapping, never relenting even as their flying bodies shrink and fade invisible. Defiant cries carry over the frozen town, announcing enduring fellowship even in winter’s grip. Stand listening long after the calls have faded, wondering at their strange solidarity before turning down the lane toward whatever discoveries await me.

Emerge from the back lane onto streets, inescapable no matter the season. Sidewalks pockmarked with puddles turned to gingerly frozen water by night. Asphalt roads resemble miniature ice rinks. Each house sacrifices square meters of front yard, each public property sacrifices walkability to slabs of driving like an altar offering, keeping the idols of internal combustion satiated lest they one day go hungry. In childhood, vehicles parked were reds, greens, blues. Over the years I’ve noticed the painted steel skins traded pigment for austere metallic monochrome. Driveways and streets flow with matte graphs of black, white, gunmetal grey, matching the drab aggregate of sidewalk and road. Winter’s white muteness only amplifies the gloom, broken occasionally by a child’s garish ski jacket or a holiday wreath on an abandoned porch.

If only some bylaw could be enacted to outlaw pavement and the dangerous, useless car. Grasses and wild blossoms reclaiming lost terrain outside each home, little parks exulting from plot to plot. Songbirds winging freely through the corridors, all of Calgary a habitat rewilded. But instead, native plants persist only in overlooked margins—where chain link fences bisect a bypass, or in the yawning gulfs between highway lanes. The forgotten gaps still bursting with tallgrass prairie flowers come summer, paysage moralisé reminding us what this land once was, and could be again if we relent our conquering. But winter’s crushing snow erases even those remnants, enforcing concrete’s replicate empire. Only the birds remain, flickering between stark branches, their calls asking where else but here?

There are plenty of dog walkers bundled in parkas, their pets’ leashes tracing chaotic scribbles through snowbanks as they sniff and mark. Fit moms in black Lululemon power past pushing strollers, their breath frosting with each exhausted exhale. Retired couples promenade arm in arm over slippery sections, careful but cheerful behind tinted prescription glasses. And there are the joggers, of course—young suits or students bouncing to some internal tempo, eyes half-mast as music blares from over-ear headphones. Yet absent from the streets are any wanderers. Amblers out simply to witness the world—not bound by mundane errands or routinized self-improvement. As if merely existing and being outside has become taboo, petty crime or aberrance, permitted only when tethered to chores or commutes or canines. The requirement of obligation and purpose. We have successfully outsourced aimless meandering to games and simulated worlds.

Stuff numb hands deeper into coat pockets, grains of windblown sleet needling exposed skin, shuffling onward. The outsider’s vantage detects frantic human patterns made visible by contrast with more-than-human stillness—squirrels frozen in feasting upon the bough, snow muting rooftops, the prairie itself enveloped in mile upon mile of dormancy. Against nature’s poised repose, humanity’s hustle is inadequate, even plaintive. My steps slow, boots scuffing fresh scars through the glazed crust of snow. Walking now simply a reminder other choices still remain—to dwell alongside this living land not only as farmer or developer, jogger or snow-shoveler, but just beholder biding winter’s passage. Just bearing witness to a world awakening. Wonder alone grants right of way. The rest reside only by grace of winter’s begrudging clemency.

Amid the greyscale miles, any eruption of colour catches my eye. A rush of gratitude for the gardeners and landscapers, cultivating our shared inhabited soil. Flower boxes adorning porches, dwarf trees prized for blossoms hauled inside most winters, certain plots designated to zaftig daylilies or well-behaved hostas. Such splashes of lively pigment stand defiant against winter’s sterile rule. And confess an equal thankfulness for my own furtive habit of kleptomania when it comes to the prettiest roadside blooms. Carefully pluck purple fireweed and crocuses, tapered stems soon stripped nude by my pilfering. Arrange the stolen bouquet in a heavy glass vase at home, a neurotic curator adjusting each flower as museum pieces.

The bright fuchsia Fireweed always grows first after forest fires, tiny parachutes of seeds lighting upon the scorched earth. The bright yellow blooms of shrubby cinquefoil? A favorite snack for butterflies and fluttering sulphurs. And wherever the soil lies undisturbed, a mix of wildflowers cling—the fuzzy rock-cress with pale petals, a burst of telltale lavender from a Western Showy Aster, the yellow glow of Rocky Mountain Goldenrod alive, echoing last summer’s humming insects. These plants keep withstanding flood and drought and bitter cold, keystone species holding prairie ecology together, generation after generation. Rooted resilience, floral defiance. Each summer, returning no matter what traumas the land endured from one year’s end to the next. The persistence pays tribute to the place itself, the otherwise forgettable suburbia, a covenant between soil and seed gradually encoded in strands of genus and gene.

Killarney alone contains such a richness. Seen and unseen. A block north of my house stands the Central Full Gospel’s humble steeple, with voices raised joyfully skyward in Korean chants each Sunday. Head westward to pass the Holy Name Catholic church, the original wooden chapel now swallowed by an imposing brick and stone cathedral stealing the vista where spruce and maple once presided. Just a few blocks away flies the triangular pennant of the Coptic Orthodox church, strange architecture paying homage to Egyptian dialects of an ancient faith. And if feet follow the sidewalk further towards the lively pharmacy and cafe, come across the once-Baptist church, now Beth Shechinah sharing space with a taekwondo school, a modest sign heralding a “House of Glory” for the Messianic Jewish. The resonant bells, melodic psalmody, and raised arms of countless seekers spread maps to holiness visible only to the spirit-hungry.

Stand back, now where the loop began—before the front steps leading up to home, not fully claiming me. Glancing up, the locked door winks knowingly through glass filigreed with frost. Inside, heavyweight books and half-drafted poems consummated with corrections await return. Yet part of me yearns to keep walking this elliptical route circling my temporary harbor, if only to glimpse more.

All cardinal directions from the entry gate hold storytelling from those who call this region home, whether houseless wanderer, veteran settler, or new arrival navigating the foreign boulevards and Blackfoot place names. Like winter’s wind and water, collective memory sculpts Physical landscape unto monument. The city cannot help but slowly shape herself around our searches for meaning, yearning, awe—not unlike trees bowing outward from internal rings while trying to stand utterly still. Such restless patterns and holiness haunt every doorstep no less than mine. There are as many myths as footfalls leaving bootprints across the lonesome snow. Few share the hunger for aimless walking, the hunger for meaningfulness before death, and perhaps solitude makes one more permeable to subtle shapings. Shapes taking lifetimes to discern. Standing here with skin numbed and mind cleansed by the flurried air, burning profane store-bought Russian sage, envisioning the years-to-come reading buried cartographies like braille. For now, it’s growing dark and cold; my vase awaits replenishing. Home is sacredness passed down through generations who celebrate the familiar. For the community of writers who map place onto page, home anchors our wanderings while reminding us of ancestral rooms granting refuge. I turn the sticky lock once more by habit.

They stop me dead in my tracks,
With whispers of worries out of my control.
They hit me hard but leave no visible marks.
They just keep coming.

They consume my mind.
Unable to focus on what’s around me,
Only harsh words are deeply ingrained by them.
They just keep coming.

They tell me to feel shame.
They tell me to feel guilt.
They tell me I will forever be theirs to torment.
They just keep coming.

I’m not normal,
They tell me.
I know,
I whisper.

Visibly functioning,
Capable to the eye.
But they always tell me otherwise.
They just keep coming.

Paralyzed by the beliefs of their constant words.
Forever consumed,
Forever their prisoner.
Forever to be captured by my own mind,
My own thoughts…

They just keep coming.

Nestled in the corner of the room, as if time had stagnated.
A place where everything changed.
A place where everything began.
A place I longed for when it all went bad.

The night we met I sat across on the barstool, half human-half rum.
Friends teased, we smiled, we exchanged numbers.
Prior to tonight, I had carefully coursed and plotted life in order to avoid this place.
However, in this moment all I can do is smile.

Two kids barely aware to the reality that encompassed them.
The priority was joy, at the expense of every other emotion.
After it was all over, I drove home from your house through tears remembering that booth.
Over the span of many moons, the pain has blossomed to fondness.

“Hey, sorry, I’ll take a double rum and coke spiced please – thank you”

Analyzing each and every person he could see with his eyes. Scanning their every move, learning what made each and every person tick and what would push them over the edge. Many found his antics very stalker-like. So later that day his teacher phoned his parents, subtly voicing her concerns over his behavior. Marco’s mother, Julia, was not in the least bit concerned over her son’s actions. She was his mother after all; she was well aware of his tendency to stare and analyze people.

Perhaps it was because she was his mother and it was her job to love him no matter what, or that she thought it was a phase he would outgrow. Well, whatever it was, it did not worry Julia one bit. The woman simply listened to the teacher go on and on about how she should go see if it was normal for a kid Marco’s age to stare at people as much as he did. In hindsight, she probably should have listened to the teacher, or even took it into consideration, however, she did not. Maybe it was a mistake, maybe it was fate. Whatever it was, it did not bother her one bit when it really should have.

Marco soon began to question his mother’s love for him and his four brothers, and whether or not a mother should be as distant as she was. Yet he never worried about it. That is, until one unfortunate night Marco wandered too far into his parents’ closet. It is possible that his father and Julia were right to tell him and his brothers that curiosity killed the cat, and that if they were ever curious about something that they should just ask.

As he looked through the drawers that contained Julia’s undergarments and other necessities, he stumbled upon a small notebook. The notebook itself was very worn out, some of the pages in the book seemed to be ripped out. Harsh jagged lines littered the inside of the book. Angry scribbles adorned a handful of pages. Marco, with his delicate hands, gently picked up the book. Tracing the jagged edges with his callous-free fingers. The paleness of his hands contrasting the deep mahogany of the notebook. The soft fingers continued to skim through the pages, gently outlining the faint dried water droplets.

Time became a figment of his imagination, something the boy conjured up as he became enveloped in an unfamiliar book. Suddenly a paper slips out of the book, swaying left to right gently as it falls to the floor. Reminding him of the way the leaves fall in the autumn. There was a certain calmness that came with nature preparing itself for the howling winds the winters bring. The paper falls face down on the floor. Marco gently lays down the small book, crouching down on his hands and knees, he slowly picks up the paper.

Examining it, he slowly turns it around in his hands, shock floods him as he discovers it isn’t a piece of paper but rather a photograph. The boy looks at the photograph in his hands. A petite woman, with raven hair, stood with her back towards the camera, a black silk dress on her body. Such a perfect fit, almost as if it was made for her. In front of her stood a tall man, head full of brown ringlets that seemed too unkempt for him to even bother. However, the man only had one thing that he was fixated on, and that was the raven who was sinfully standing right in front of him. He looked at her like his entire world was there, and was not anywhere else. Like if he took his eyes off of her for a second, she would turn into ashes and be blown away with the slightest breeze.

Looking closely, Marco thought to himself how the man in the photograph resembled his father, Paulo. A pit began to form in Marco’s stomach, reminding him that he was not allowed to be in his father’s room. It was strictly forbidden for him and his brothers. Marco was never one who listened to the rules, if he wanted to stray from the path, he would. And nobody would think twice about stopping him. Grabbing the picture in his small dainty hands, Marco gently tucked it into the middle of the mysterious notebook.

Closing the notebook, he then proceeds to open Julia’s drawer. Moving aside her socks, he gently places the book in the area where he found it. Carefully, he places a couple of items of clothing on top of them and gently closes the drawer. Turning and walking out of his parents’ closet, he then swiftly exits the room.

Marco liked the quiet. He liked solitude; it allowed him to think. It allowed his thoughts to roam around wherever they wanted to go, free to do whatever they desire with no interruptions. Marco’s life, however, was anything but.

At times it did get lonely for Marco. Watching his older brothers constantly praised for the things they would do no matter how little they were. Whether it was doing good in school or cleaning his room. His older brother, Roman, was constantly surrounded by his father’s endless pool of support. While his three younger brothers, Marcello, Luciano, and Romeo, were doused in the love that Julia showered them in. He never once felt like he belonged in his family. They seemed perfect, and it would be perfect if it was just them. Marco may have only been seven, yet he was the most cynical out of the five. It never fazed him. Nothing ever did.

As the years went by, Marco fell more and more into the shadows, disappearing into the walls. He was like a ghost; he saw everything and everyone, but nobody ever saw him. This went on for years, time and time again he watched his siblings be shown more love and affection than he had ever felt. He never blamed them though. He was the black sheep of the family. Soon, he started disappearing from dinner tables and family events.

However, he always dreamed of what it would be like to meet his personal sin. He didn’t call it love because he never felt what love was, but he had felt sin. How it crept through his bloodstream, numbing every inch of hurt and pain. Sinning felt so good regardless of its consequences. To hell with them, he can deal with the consequences when he was being judged by God. But for now, he would sin. He would sin, and then he would regret, then repent.

It was a never-ending cycle. In a way, he thought he was saving his soul. That all would be forgiven and maybe it was, but he never knew and he never would. Not until the angel of death comes knocking on his door. Only then he would know if his pleas of redemption had been heard and fulfilled.

He occasionally thought about the book he found in Julia’s drawer, and he often thought if anyone would ever look at him the same way the raven-haired woman looked at her lover in the photograph. He then came to the conclusion that nobody would ever look at his tainted heart in that way. His soul was simply unrepairable, and Marco was okay with that. However, his heart simply could not accept it; his love story was destined to end in a tragic manner.

So he made a deal to himself that no matter what, he would try his best to be the best he could to his future lover. The older he got, the more tainted his heart became, and the more he feared that he could not adhere to the promises he made himself. With age also came the fear that he would not find someone to love him; it would be pathetic to him at Twenty-Seven. He was still single and had never experienced love. All he ever hoped for in this world of spilt blood and shredded loyalty was for someone to breathe life into his cold rotting corpse.