The memory was painful. Vivid, so perfectly forged that merely to unsheathe it meant pain. Little things could draw it out. The smell of wet lumber, freshly cut. Maybe a combination of words or a strange pattern of falling leaves. Try as one might, it was an experience that could not be contained. Like water falling, it would find a path through, no matter how hard you worked to stop it. This time it was a name.
It was New Year’s Day at eight in the morning when I looked out the window, hung over and blurry-eyed, to see my neighbour, Ivy…
Homing “So, you like it?” Navin asked Puja as they got into the car. “Mansfield Park…” Puja tossed the name into the air. “It is…
I stepped into the living room of my Uncle Bernie’s modest bungalow near Islington and Bloor. The banana yellow walls of the quaint room gave…
“… I remembered from the movie that at the end Kiera Knightly keeps getting called ‘Mrs. Darcy’ by the dark brooding guy. So I just looked up that and I got something called Mr. Darcy’s Daughters but apparently he’s not supposed to have daughters yet either.”
He led her to the Austen section, in Fiction, in the A’s. How difficult could it be, really? He had heard of that new film from several years ago. But who had two hours to sit in a dark theater, can’t hear anything, can’t talk to anyone, and besides, that is valuable reading time.
“This yellow flower, is called Josephine’s Passion,” she told me, picking a blossom, “did you know she lived on the island, before she went to France, and met Napoleon? So, the flower is named after her, sweet, don’t you think?”
They all knew who she was. The only question was who was going to do it. No one wanted to do it. No one wanted to say it.
The sudden death of her youngest daughter so devastated Lily Polowski that she was unable to attend her funeral. Despite being heavily sedated, Lily still suffered from debilitating anguish over the loss of her beloved child.
She had been looking at a copy of Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, when she looked up and saw him a few feet away, staring at her intently.
“You don’t want to get that,” he said, his voice calm but firm, like a parent addressing a child.
‘Hey God,’ he said quietly into the air, ‘I still got that empty feeling in my gut that I told you about this morning. Am I doing the right thing in going to Africa?’
This was the village thief. What could one say about him? And how much? The best one could possibly say is “Inna Lillahi wa Inna Ilaihi Rajioon” and at least in his death, leave him alone. My mother must have had her thoughts running regardless and this is how her letter read.
Kamakshi knew she did not quite fit the profile of a person who would frequent such a space. She was a mousy looking middle-aged woman, slightly overweight, with scraggly salt and pepper hair scrunched into an untidy bun. On her nose perched a pair of oval glasses, which were at least five years old, and on the verge of falling apart.
The roach began to run with great speed for a creature its size. It had realized that something was amiss, even though it didn’t understand why. While it was executing its escape, thick clouds were rolling in, darkening the sky.
She stood to the side, almost an extension of the tent, enveloped within the folds of canvas waxing and waning in the desert breeze. Only…
I first saw the fireflies when I was a girl, on a hot summer night. “What are those?” I asked my mum. “Fireflies!” she whispered….