Open Air

By Sapphyre Smith

Illustrated by Audra Crago

There by the wind-wake and diesel fumes, peeling off the road I can chase a younger version of me to the playground

It’s dark; I can barely see the swings, but once I’m there I’m a ghost a dark sweatshirt on a pendulum, a metronome of flesh and bone swinging through empty space back and forth trading breaths with winter

I wake up small again on the swingset almost sure I can feel short bangs brushing my forehead, braids my mother wove for picture day clinging staticked to the itchy sweater vest all curled around the edges of a gap-toothed grin (my teeth aren’t straightened yet)

The veined arms of a blackened tree stretch out to embrace a cold sky, the moon is just a streetlamp, and my shoes block the waxy glow on the upswing, holes worn through blue inner soles years had rubbed the treads smooth on carpeted hallways studded with spilled aquarium pebbles and road salt and crumbled granola (I’ve worn them since I was thirteen) but it’s been too long since I was a child— when I let go at the apex to fly again, I misjudge the landing, stumble on grown-up legs and when my ankle twists, first I think: the medical tape I bought two months ago how to get to class will I need to go to the doctor

Then, I think: the gap-toothed girl would’ve just cried.

All for nothing, anyway. I walk it off, tuck loose hair behind new piercings she would’ve never imagined and leave the ghost of myself on the still-rocking swing; She can find her own way home.

By Rachel Riddell

Illustrated by Abby White & Catherine Marcotte

My nonna was the last to eat in her family, scooping bowls of pastina soup for her husband and children, hovering over the table in case there were pleads for more parmesan or pepper, serving seconds before she got her first; a comforting lunch turned lukewarm by the time she sits in the kitchen alone.

while spooning mouthfuls down her throat sunlight pours on to the table, illuminating details of the soup: rice-shaped pasta, peas, cheese, and carrots, immersed in a chicken broth birthed from the bones of last night’s dinner— she imagines the bowl is as hot as when the soup was first served, mentally trying to replicate the flavour and heat that her husband and children experienced.

sunlight pours on to the table, and she is reminded, despite the cold broth, that it is a blistering July— her children run through a sprinkler while her husband watches them from a lawn chair, and she watches him, smoking a cigarette in the garden.

my nonna gathers all the dishes, empty except for the peas and carrots left by her son —who is more keen on the cheese— and places them in the sink.

before running the tap, she looks out the window, her husband now spraying the children with a hose, their laughter roaring into the kitchen with smiles as wide as their faces.

her daughter wears a white linen dress that my nonna sewed in the spring, wet and clinging to her body while she runs through the sprinkler yet again.

her daughter’s hair, blonde and damp, reminds my nonna of her husband years ago, laying on a towel in Italy days before they left for Canada, enjoying the last of Lake Como before Lake Ontario; enjoying the last of their youth before the youth of their children.

her daughter’s hair, long and thick compared to summers before, dries underneath her husband’s towel, and my nonna expects there aren’t many summers left that her daughter will remind her of her husband but will soon become like her: trading water and sunshine for water and soap.