- Emma Bider
I keep spilling my water lately. My psychic says I’m going on a trip soon, so Arlo must be coming back from San Francisco.
When I first met Arlo, he brought out my most aspirational self. Ever since I met him, I’ve been a more attentive person. I play my guitar again, even write a few lines once in a while.
Arlo’s got a condo and he cleans it,
I rent a hole, but I dream big.
Arlo, man from San Francisco. The kind of guy who deliberately chose a job that requires a three-piece suit. I met him at a bar on a rainy Friday night. I asked him if he was from the city and that’s when he told me he travels a lot of work. I didn’t ask what kind of work it was so I would seem aloof and unattainable. He stayed with me at the bar all night, admitting later he’d been waiting for a blind date. I was wearing a low-cut blue dress, totally unsuitable for the weather. He asked if I wanted to come back to his place. I agreed without hesitation.
I had no interest in falling in love with Arlo, but I was caught off guard by his condo. Once, months later, he took me on a business trip to Milan. The hotel was on a hill a bit out of town, full of sunlight, with terracotta walls and climbing roses everywhere. But it wasn’t as nice as his condo.
By the time we grabbed a cab to his place, I was getting tired, so I didn’t notice we were making our way through the old money part of town. His condo was in a refurbished warehouse and it took up a whole floor. The front door opened on the living room, and the back wall was all windows. The living room had a fireplace and two grey couches facing it. When you sat on them, it was like sitting on a cloud.
The kitchen was new, all stainless steel with dark wood accents, and opened towards the living room. The two bedrooms were enormous yet cozy, with a view of a nearby park. Both had walk-in closets and antique-looking dressers.
The bathroom really did me in. All done up in greys and ocean greens. There was an infinity pool in the second bedroom ensuite. You stared out at the city like a god floating above it. There was a small watercolour of St. Paul’s Cathedral above the toilet. Arlo had to tell me about that, because I’ve never been to London. He said he’d take me one day.
I stayed over, and then stayed the rest of the weekend. I could tell he was happy about it, but to keep him sweet I made pancakes in the morning, ran out to get coffee and fruit, wore his shirt while I lounged on the couch. I didn’t ask him to make a fire because he’d mentioned before it was a pain to get wood in the city.
When I left Sunday night, I vowed to do everything I could to get back into that condo. It was everything I’d ever wanted in a home. As I walked down to a busier street to grab a cab, back in my blue dress, I was already imagining the tasteful abstract art I would put on the walls, the fine bottles of wine I’d buy to sit pretty on the oak butcher’s block.
The following weeks were difficult. I spent too much time with my psychic, trying to figure out when Arlo would be coming back. He tended to be vague in texts, so I feigned detachment right back. I had dreams about his condo. I dreamed we were having sex on the clean white carpet in front of the couches. I dreamed I was cutting fruit and placing it perfectly in a blue pottery bowl that sat on the kitchen’s marble countertop. I dreamed the sun shone in through the floor to ceiling windows like it was welcoming me into a new day.
I am usually able to focus in my classes, but I became scattered and distant with my students. While writing out the Dorian mode on the chalkboard I thought of where my guitar would fit in the condo. It matches everything so well.
Arlo comes back every month or so, though he never makes promises. In the early days I practiced my seduction patiently, until he asked if I’d like keys to the condo, “just to keep an eye on it while I’m gone.” I said I’d think about it. I did a dance in front of my students the next day. No better way to practice your rhythm than dancing, I said.
Now it’s been four months since Arlo’s last visit. We’ve been seeing each other for about two years. He’s been really busy with work. “The big wigs want me here,” he says when I call to let him know his ficus is improving with more water. I’ve never heard a real person use the term big wigs. It makes me wonder if the condo actually reflects his own tastes, or those of someone else.
I don’t think about it too much. His absence means I get to spend more quality time with the condo. Right after I hang up, I knock a glass of water on the floor. Even the glass on the hardwood floor glitters like its meant to be there.
Tonight, when water spills out of the infinity pool, I know to expect another call. He’s got a surprise for me, he says. All I can think of is new light fixtures, flowy drapes for the windows, a silk robe that matches the bedsheets. I smile and say I can’t wait to see him. I dim the bathroom lights. I turn the infinity tub’s jets on. I think about the condo’s new locks and feel a wave of calm slip over me. I watch the city dreaming.
"Dream Big", by Emma Bider.
Emma Bider is a writer and PhD student living in Ottawa. Her poetry has been featured in Unpublishable Zine. She's currently trying to identify all the trees in her neighbourhood. Emma's collection of short stories We Animals is available at Octopus Books in Ottawa and on Amazon.
Twitter: @ebider
Instagram: @bideremma
- Meghan Wilson
"Thirty" by Megan Wilson
I’ll admit I’ve been avoiding its eyes and the call for self refection in its gaze. Can’t we do this later? I’m busy.
Thirty was always a distant marker in the sand. Raising her hand to her forehead, squinting her eyes against the sun.
She turns her head away and makes her way towards the water. It’s deep and cold and all consuming. It bites against her warm skin as she throws herself in deeper and deeper until her toes no longer graze the soft and comforting floor. She kicks into its vastness.
I crossed the threshold of my thirties peering back at my twenties with the warm fondness reserved for a small child. A tender sigh when they stumble on their own feet and drop clumsily to their hands and knees. Okay, come on now. Upsy daisy we have somewhere to be.
I’ve crossed the threshold of my thirties carrying with me a much different perspective than I did in my twenties. It’s lighter to carry. At times I wish I could return to her, stop her in her path, and trade perspectives with her. Here, take this one. It’s easier to hold. I’ve got this one, it’s fine. No really, I got it.
But if she wasn’t forced to carry it herself, where would she be today? So, I don’t stop her. I let her walk on by without so much as a cursory nod. I turn around to watch her go – because what else can I do but know. Know that her hurt and her mistakes will swallow her whole. Know that she’ll turn her back on loss and pain, stuff it into a box and push it into the corner, buried beneath the clutter in a long-forgotten space. Know that loneliness will be an acquaintance she doesn’t care to be acquainted but who will continue to knock at her door and see himself in. Do you want a glass of wine? I have a bottle open. She pours a glass and brings it to her nose. Still good.
Know that her triumphs and glories and moments that will carve out the shape of her soul will come. Know that she’ll find a world with arms so wide that she can close her eyes and throw herself backwards into it. A world so sweet she’ll continuously run the tip of her tongue across her bottom lip just to make sure the sweetness is still there. It is. It’s still there.
As I take these first few strokes into this foreign body of water, I ask myself what I intended to ask myself all throughout my twenties. Does thirty look like what she envisioned? What she wanted? Well?
But before I can catch my breath, a new question bubbles up to the surface. Does it matter? No, it doesn’t. What matters is what thirty feels like.
I feel loved and am full of love. I feel proud of what I’ve done and a drive to do more. I feel spontaneous and adventurous. Rooted and nestled. Healthy and whole. I feel filled up by the living I’ve done and charged up for the living ahead. I’m full to the brim with laughter and remember whens.
Happy tears come easy these days. I stand in the corner of a light-filled room, balancing on my toes, my friend leaning into me in giddy anticipation. I look around at the happy faces of my friends and family, gathered in the name and act and spirit of celebration, and the world slows down just for a moment as I think to myself – when did we get here? The infinite conversations and decisions and efforts and complete and utter chances that tip-toed us towards where we are today. I feel grateful.
I want to grab onto these moments. Lodge a stick into the wheel of the universe and hold them in my hands. Turn them over. Feel their softness on my fingertips.
Truth be told, I don’t know how thirty looks for me or where that image stacks up against whatever cultural metric of success. Whatever staircase of social constructs. What I do know is that I feel happy.
I can feel the bottom again - the murky mud beneath my toes.
"Thirty" by Meghan Wilson.
Meghan Wilson was born and raised in Ottawa. She has a degree in business from Western University and works as a management consultant in Ottawa.
IG: @megisabel
Website: http://www.megisabel.com
- Ava Droski
Excerpt of "Photos of a Wren" by Ava Droski, Chapter 1:
“All right, let’s go boys and girls.” Joe said calmly as he hopped out of the cabin. Dean and Ryan secured their helmets, nodded, and hopped out of the jump seat with the crew. Sam had parked the engine behind two parked cars on the edge of a dark road.
There were no streetlights. Thick woods flanked the road, absorbing into their complete blackness any natural light from the starry sky. The whoosh of ocean waves crashing on the nearby shore cut through the silence of the night like faint, distant bombs.
“We’re in Sun Row, aren’t we?” Dean glanced at Ryan.
“Yeah. ‘The Nest’.”
His eyes attempted to focus and adjust to the darkness; his ears absorbed the calming coo of the ocean’s song; his skin shivered at the touch of Poseidon’s breath on his face. The trees on each flank of the road seemed to have swallowed the twilight and regurgitated an ominous pall of black nothingness. The nearest streetlamp must have been at least two kilometres back. The only light challenging the gloom was the unremitting red bulbs atop the emergency vehicle.
Ryan had mentioned The Nest to Dean once or twice - the desolate outskirts of Sun Row Harbour where the lone main road came to an end at the sea, about a ten minute drive south from the town centre. There were walking trails within the flanking woods, but fitness visitors were rare due to the dense and sempiternal fog that swept the area.
The end of the road appeared to be abruptly swallowed by the beach; a dangerous unity of land and the ocean’s doorway.
Ryan said The Nest was a popular location for teenagers to smoke and drink on the beach late at night. The closest home from the water was approximately two kilometres back on a small piece of land just before the emergence of the woods.
A green Volkswagen was parked in the middle of the road. A woman stood beside it, frantically waving her cell phone above her head, calling attention to the fire crew. She was attempting to speak through hysteric gasps. Joe approached her earnestly.
“I called you. Two cars – over – two cars – I heard the crash – the rocks – I was just leaving my son’s house up there – I was visiting my son up there – I was leaving and I heard the horrible crash – I drove down here to see what happened, if anyone had been hurt - and -”
The woman was frantic. Her cheeks and eyelashes glistened with tears and it appeared as though she had been pulling at her hair.
Joe interrupted her, “Ma’am, I need you to calm down and stay by your car. Do not leave the side of your car. Do you understand?”
The woman nodded and clasped her cell phone tightly against her chest. There was another witness on the scene: a short, stubby man with glasses. He was sitting on the hood of his Taurus. He sprinted to Joe at his beckoning. “She’s my mother. I just got down here a couple minutes before you guys showed up. I live in that last house up there,” he pointed down the road. “She called me. She was shaken and told me she saw an accident, so I walked up a little bit and saw the car up on the rocks just ahead.” He pointed into the darkness toward the beach. “Just at the edge ov- ”
“I need you to stay with your mother,” Joe interrupted, “the two of you need to stay by your vehicles. Do you understand?”
“Yes, yes of course, Sir.”
Joe called to Dean and Ryan. He pointed forward to the beach. “Go. Now.” They sprinted down the road, leaving Joe and the witnesses behind. A single, dimly lit antique streetlamp greeted them as they reached the edge of the pavement. A weak circle of light floated and flickered innocently against the blackness. The bulb illuminated the surroundings just enough to make the edge of the road instantly visible to emerging motorists. Just beyond the streetlamp, a car had crashed plumb through the centre of a rocky knoll. The car was encased in a temporary tomb of weeds, rocks, and boulders; hundreds of tiny, shattered pieces of glass shrapnel sparkled on the pavement in the flickering light, the ocean roared thunderous just beyond. Dean and Ryan dashed to the vehicle. Glass crunched beneath their heavy bunker boots as they each chose a flank and climbed the knoll. They moved adeptly and knelt on their haunches by the driver and passenger windows. The ocean continued its midnight howl.
They sprawled on their stomachs atop the knoll. They dug at the rocks and cast away debris that blocked their view inside the car. Dean crawled to the front of the vehicle and peered through the shattered windshield.
The car was empty.
Ryan glanced over his shoulder and scanned the road. “Shouldn’t there be two cars? The woman back there said there was another car – where is it? And where’s the driver of this one? Out there somewhere?” He pointed to the beach beyond the knoll.
Dean rose to his feet and extended his arms laterally, maintaining his balance on the rocks. He turned his flashlight inside the car once more and searched for any sign of movement within.
Ryan sighed. “There’s no one here. What the hell?”
Dean squinted in the darkness. The ocean stirred angrily; the moon cast a faint glow atop the restless waves. He shone his flashlight on the beach for any sign of movement – or another car.
Then he saw it.
The other car.
Dean hurled himself off the peak of the knoll and sprinted across the sand. He dashed impetuously; his face and body dripped with perspiration beneath his helmet and bunker gear. He ripped off his helmet and tossed it in the sand. Ryan followed closely behind.
"Photos of a Wren" by Ava Droski.
Ava Droski is a graduate of the University of Windsor and holds a Bachelor of Arts in Music degree. She lives and writes in Windsor, ON., where she also owns a music school and teaches piano and vocal lessons. "Photos of a Wren" is her debut novel and is a work that has been 10 years in the making! It will be available on Amazon (Kindle and Paperback) on March 1st, 2021.
Instagram: @ava.droski.author
Facebook: Ava Droski - Author