Category: Toronto
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How to Fix a Girl with a Half-Broken Neck
Artwork by Jessica Gerardi A Reimagining of The Green Ribbon Jenny always meets the Dressmaker in the backroom of his shop. It’s quite small—just like the rest of the store—with heaps of dresses from last season collecting dust in the corner. A spindle sits in another corner, and in the centre of the room,…
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Ode to November
Artwork by Ava Maggioni I had the first depressive episode of my life in the fifth grade, beginning promptly as November’s grey rolled in. It was a sort of dissatisfaction I’d never experienced before, the days bleeding together and fuzzing out until they felt like nothing. I fuzzed out into nothing. I remember…
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IT’S TIME WE WAKE UP
Artwork by Danni Nguyen Think of last summer—between the daily drone of mindless work, courses, and life events, something was lurking in the air. Something that Toronto would have never experienced under normal conditions: an omen of our future summers. It coated our streets with a grey fog that thickened the air. Our sun…
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rehearsal
Artwork by Aarushi Gupta There are eyes in my memory. In my muscles, in the corners of rooms where no one sits. Even air enters me uninvited. The world presses its thumbprint into my wax, and I melt into the shape they’ve named woman. Someone speaks her name as if they know it,…
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perpetual motion machine
tomorrow the moon, moving forward; and then. tomorrow i find that everything will; the history of existence stretched out before us. like it will never be this way. like that will make a difference. indefinite spin cycle on the basement floor, chalky fluorescence splashing over steel-rimmed panes. forty-four minutes. three dollars and twenty-five cents. and…
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Infinite Universe Theory (An Alternate ending, a sadder song)
4. Welcome to Universe H (An Alternate ending, a sadder song) (From out of the darkness, bells toll) I knew you once, sweet girl / Eyes big and wide in the dark. Yeah, I knew you. Hair twisted up in wonky braids / Scar under your left eyebrow. I write your name out in morse…
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ataraxia
i have discovered a new place to belong. i have left the sanctuary empty and linked arms with my mother on my way out. i take photographs of my own and etch the images onto my ribs. it serves as a reminder of today for when i become distracted by tomorrow. if not eudaimonia, i…
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A – ANATOMIC
A – ANATOMIC C – circuit, v : to travel completely around I have looked at your face thousands of times, each with a different set of eyes. I have watched it crumple and fall, time and time and time again. I can see my own gaze in the reflection of your irises. I see…
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My Love in Comparison: A Call to Keep Lesbians Loving
In 2023, I wrote My Love in Comparison: A Critique On Modern Love. I wrote this piece out of desperation. It was a gasp for air as I felt myself drowning in the expectations and critiques of others, my head bobbing out of water enough times to profess my undying love for the way I…
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Small hands walk in.
My little room at the end of the hall. It is a home converted into a piano studio. Small hands walk in held by tiny bodies, their mothers’ sweet perfume, jagged bangs, crooked glasses, baby teeth, and high pitched laughter. I look at memories from the vault that I forgot were already stored in my…
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Ready-Lights, Action
I can be described as 3 stages: the first is blinding, the floorboards reflecting off the cold, white light. Every inch of the stage is visible—you can see the pieces of masking tape on the ground for the various set designs, the layers of paint flaking off the back wall. Every wire of the lights,…
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Papier Monsters
1 There are two kinds of monsters, and there are two kinds of days you learn what they are. There are closet monsters. There are under-the-bed monsters. There are outside-in-the-dark monsters. These monsters occupy one kind of space of time of danger. These monsters are unfamiliar. Molds of your childish over-imagination. Borrowed nightmares. These are…
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4 Times Dylan O’Brien Saved My Life and 1 Time He Didn’t
Werewolves, masks, and my digital footprint
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Purdah
Edited by Alloe Mak The Rorschach blots beneath my sleeves: two white swans streaming down this tunnel of love— or an iron waterfall staved off by pills below— or a bated-breath virgin, winning the war but losing her last name. Left unsaid: I’m betrothed to my mother’s walls of calligraphy, yet I love best alone.…
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liar, liar
Edited by Alloe Mak If you met me between the ages of eight and twelve, you might’ve thought I had a brother, and you would think so because I would have told you as much. I wanted an older brother badly—one who would tease me and get upset when boys were mean to me, so…
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And Still, the Goldenrod Pushes up Through Slats of Fir.
Edited by Alloe Mak PROLOGUE: Enter THE PLAYWRIGHT, there she is again, at a desk, at a stage, lingering in the doorway of a Room that does not know her, a room she does not know. There she is, peering out from behind a deep red velvet curtain into the dark of an empty stage,…
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Choose Passionately and Badly
Edited by Alloe Mak “Twenty years of subtle self-indulgence, self-denial; until the subject thinks herself a queen & yet a beggar – both at the same time. She must doubt herself in everything but love. She must choose passionately & badly. She must feel lost as a dog without her master. She must refer all…
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HOW TO BE GOD
Edited by Alloe Mak The face is always the most difficult to sculpt. Some say it’s because it’s too personal—too intimate. Eyes mirroring souls. They say a non-human individual could never truly sculpt a face worthy of breathing, blinking, or seeing, because the fingers that slide across their craggy flesh are smooth. They are unbeaten,…