Category: Issue #6

In Toronto’s crowded coffee scene, it takes more than an exposed brick wall to stand out. Storefront of Colombian café Maderas on Ossington Street featuring a coffee bean in a simple but distinct design. As I was sitting in a café with my friends a few days ago, we talked about it: the dreaded six-dollar…

College applications are approaching, and all my thinking about this defining time has not prepared me for one of the feelings I am experiencing. A feeling of being behind and wanting to catch up. I do not feel this in the typical sense—of not being prepared for the application process or not knowing where I…

When my older sister was born, she had a condition called neonatal jaundice. She came out with a yellow colour on her skin and in her eyes, and the doctors said that she needed sunlight. So, my father held her up, a baby just the size of his forearm, to the sun everyday. He would…

It only rained — broken drops fell forthe cold stones,dustingloneliness.Autumn cold felt like pinching white chalk on a blackboard,little white flies shed under.Their feeble screech burntyearnedlike loveI couldn’t get my attention off the chestnuts,danksmashed needles bloom like algae,green like your jacket’s sleeves.I trod on it ferociously,I hated to rememberit was also green likeWhere my heart…

The night is cold.  Cold in the sense that I cannot feel my wind-eaten fingers; cold in the sense that I am left wondering how my heart has enough heat to keep beating.  Don’t get me wrong; I am very familiar with frosty nights. I tell myself that I was born with cold in my…

Someone keeps sewing my mouth shutwith stitches that match my skin. My nights are haunted by dreamswhere a slippery arm pulls out my heartfrom my throat.In the clean palm of your handit is you who holds my heart—an eyeglass in one hand andneedle and threat in the other.Asking:Why do you cry?My mouth is sewn shut.Why…

By Elisa Penha There’s a rabbit on the face of the moon.  Well—the shape of a rabbit mapped out along the craters. It’s a rabbit in the same shitty way that constellations are bears or men with bows and quivers. I wonder about who must have been staring at the moon for long enough to…

Show me who you are on the inside.  Divulge yourself to an audience of thousands—perhaps millions. Do you like what they see? Are you okay with it? How does it feel to have these unwashed hands inside of you, picking apart everything you think you know about yourself, tearing at it? Imagine—you are cryogenically frozen…

I find solace in the fact that this vision of him in my dreams is simply a fairytale. I am mourning a person who doesn’t exist, for he never existed how I wished him to.

The names in this article have been altered to maintain privacy. “Come on, we’re gonna be late!”, Sophie whispered. It was 1:58pm on a Wednesday. Our routine Strings rehearsals were at 2:00pm, and we were going to be late for the first time ever. I was rarely late—even obsessively early in my strive to receive…

i arrive home. the lock to my condo jams and i spend a few seconds shimmying my key aggressively. as i do so, i can hear incessant meowing from the other side of the door before it finally clicks open. my cat is waiting in the hallway for me as he always does. the moment…