Posts Tagged ‘canadian fiction’
The Boys
“Why aren’t you two sleeping?” “We are.” “No, you aren’t. I can hear you goofing around up there. Don’t you lie to me.” “We’re not mom. We’re just getting ready. William has to brush his teeth.” “Go. To. Bed.” William and his adopted cousin William sit still on the floor of their bedroom and watch…
Read MoreThe Untitled Document
Teneya and Billy in bed in the morning, Teneya with her leg draped across those of Billy and her foot tucking around his ankle, moving softly over his feet and her head on his shoulder and her fingertips spinning through the hair on his chest, lowering to stroke his stomach. Her body is young and…
Read MoreA Story From a Friend, millionth draft
The skin between my toes has disintegrated, raw and stinging as sweat and miles of movement rub them against one another. The cold too, the cold doesn’t help. Running through the snow is slow and as it continues to fall so the slowness will grow. But this can’t wait so I hurry. When Jim first…
Read MoreA Half Full Moon
The boys stood in the clearing behind the house before the first trees of the forest, a darkening sky above. Wow, that moon is exactly half a sphere! Half a circle. What? It’s a circle. What you can see is a circle, and only half of it. A sphere is an orb, like a ball.…
Read MoreAutumn, deep into it
Autumn, and deep into it. Glowing leaves in an absence of light, yellows to envy and a green so lime and bright, so tucked in, a little bit of sheen against the dark richness of the surrounding pines. Deep into autumn, long past the careening energy of summer, the hustle and bustle, the dragging of…
Read MoreThe Close and Distant Valleys
Billy on the rear gate of the pickup truck with his ankles crossed above his boots and the cuffs of his jeans wet from walking through the new snow woods and his chainsaw resting on the floor of the forest, his elbows then resting on his knees and his chin then resting on the heels…
Read MoreA Much Softer Light
Billy woke in the morning and knelt on the cold floor and scratched the skin through the thick fur of the mane of the sitting dog. He looked out the window to the thin crest of light over the shoulder of the mountain, starting orange and rose and fading upward into the dark firmament of…
Read MoreThe Small Warmth of the Sun
It was during the last of the good, warm days when Billy went to visit Dr. Duggleby, a check up before the seasons changed in earnest. Billy walked to the doctor’s office with the warmth of the sun on his back, with a lengthened shadow in front of himself and those things around him; the…
Read MoreSnippet
Billy watched the valley, and the clouds staggered their passage first on the western mountains and then caught again on the eastern ridge. In between was a space of very blue sky, and the clouds were lit from behind by the western sun that fell away as the world spun on axis in the other…
Read MoreThe Pull of the World
Before the alarm howls the morning is on their room through the blinds, lines of it against the closet door and into the bathroom. There are doves in the trees cooing, wringing night out of their feathers. Elk move through the park across the street and their wet fur steams in the earliest bits of…
Read More