ScarboroughFair16.pdf

S C A R B O R O U G H FA I R

FULL SPREAD OF REINDEER

© 2016 Scarborough Fair All rights reserved. www.scarborough-fair.ca Front cover by Daniel Bernal Inside cover by Carol Cheong Designed by Julia Rao Printed in Canada by Mormark Print Production Inc.

Editor-in-Chief

Faculty Advisor

UTSC Writer-in-Residence

John Dias

Andrew Westoll

Helen Humphreys

Managing Editor

Production Editor Director of Development

Trevor Cameron

Julia Rao

Natasha Ramoutar

Marketing Assistant

Web Administrator

Promotions & Events Director

Eilia Yazdanian

Vincent Ye

Senior Editors

Editors

Kris Bone Chelsea La Vecchia Vicky Loder

Zujajah Islam James Lord Parker Alisha Sharma Katrina Valenton Terry Tambacopoulos

Joshua P’ng

Magazine Assistants

Dr. Nancy Johnston Daniel Tysdal Nino Ricci Miriam Toews Karen Young Trevor Steven Abes Justin Lauzon Dr. Sarah King Kevin Connery

Photo Credit: Darren Hendren

Amanda Loo Daniel Bernal Rachel Chin Nicholas Thomas Jonathan Mavilla Krystal Naval Michael Chachura

Special Thanks to:

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Photo Credit: Kevin Connery

S C A R B O R O U G H FA I R IV

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Image Credit: Carlos De Pano

Table of Contents Creative Non-Fiction

VII.

Letter from the Editor • John Dias

26.

Trigger Warning • Leanne Simpson

VII.

Foreword • Helen Humphreys

31.

Study of Scars • Julia Dasbach

X.

Thoughts from the Cat • Cat Criger

34.

The Star that Almost Burned Out • Kevin Liu

Poetry 11.

Fiction

How To Grieve Addiction • Julia Dasbach

38.

12.

Body Language • Jerico Espinas

The High Way • Erica Berry

43.

13.

Taps • D.C. Diamondopolous

We Are The Generation • Gina Marie Mammano

49.

It’s a Family Recipe • Batool Amiree

14.

Love • Adam Phillips

15.

After Tammy Ho Lai-Ming’s Hula Hooping • Anna Yin

16.

Banging and Whimpering • Cathy Bryant

17.

Cigarette Incense • James Lord Parker

18.

Paranoiac • Leeland Seese

20.

Ancora Imparo • Sean Mahoney

21.

The ABCs of Bats in the Belfry • Kit Hornby

24.

The Carnival • Sarah Ng VI

Letter from the Editor I received my first chance to share my writing when I enrolled in one of Professor Daniel Tysdal’s creative writing classes at UTSC. Through the writing workshops, I came to realize that I had never actually completed any of my poems or short stories.

I had scrawled countless words in half-a-dozen spiral bound notebooks, but I had never subjected those words to criticism. I learned that revision was a critical step in the long process of crafting creative works.

I soon found myself in Professor Tysdal’s office every Wednesday afternoon for C.O.W., UTSC’s creative writing club, and became part of a community of writers. Each week, Professors Andrew Westoll and Daniel Tysdal would guide us students in our creative endeavours with a plethora of writing prompts and tips on how to improve our work. What struck me most about UTSC’s creative writing program was its diversity. The students enrolled in creative writing at UTSC were of many different fields of study, ethnicities, linguistic backgrounds, religious beliefs, and sexual orientations. The creative writing program created the opportunity for students from various communities to share their personal narratives, struggles, and success stories with their peers.

As UTSC’s creative writing anthology, Scarborough Fair aims to promote equity through creative works.

The publication is now in its 48th year and recently launched an international creative writing contest, in partnership with Minds Matter Magazine. The contest aimed to create a platform for mental health by sharing the success stories and struggles of writers. Mental health issues are misunderstood in society, and as writers, it is our duty to voice the unheard, to write their words into realization. Our writing contest with a special focus on mental health was a major success, receiving more than 800 submissions from 18 nations.

This issue of Scarborough Fair proudly presents the winning submissions. But it also showcases an array of poems, short stories, and art pieces by UTSC students as well as a collection of paintings by Carlos Franco-Ruiz, one of Scarborough Fair’s 2016 featured artists.

I would like to thank Professor Andrew Westoll, Scarborough Fair’s faculty advisor, for helping to organize this publication and motivating UTSC students to push the boundaries of their writing, and step bravely into the great unknown. I’d also like to thank Professor Daniel Tysdal, who continues to impassion budding student writers, with the fervour of his teaching and his innovative poems. Furthermore, I’d like to express my gratitude to UTSC’s writer-in-residence, Helen Humphreys, as well as Dr. Nancy Johnston and Dr. Sarah King from the UTSC Writing Centre, for their invaluable work and support in our creative writing contest.

On behalf of the UTSC creative writing community, I would like to thank you for picking up a copy of Scarborough Fair and I encourage you to become involved in the many creative writing activities happening at UTSC.

Sincerely, John Dias Editor-in-Chief, 2015 - 2016

VII

Fo r e w o r d The first and most important thing is to have a writing practice. This means writing with some regularity attached to the activity of putting words on a page or screen. It is this routine – whether it is an hour a day, or an hour a week – that will keep you on course and will result in the accumulation of material and experience. Quite simply, you are putting in the time in order to make yourself a better writer, and it matters less what you are writing about, as it does that you develop a routine in order to write. Life will get busy and push in from the margins, so you will need to fiercely guard your writing routine and not feel guilty about doing so. This is how you will get poems and stories and books written. This is how you will be a writer.

Helen Humphreys

UTSC Writer-in-Residence After a writing practice, a reading practice is also essential.

Reading the work of other writers is the best way to think about your own work and to learn new techniques and approaches. It will also help you to discern what writing works and what doesn’t and why, and reading widely will make you appreciate the rare occasion when something you read is not just good, but truly excellent. Reading work you admire is inspiring and will go a long way to keeping you feeling good about being a writer. Writing is hard. It is laborious and fiddly and it is rife with rejection, so you need to keep your spirits up in order not to become discouraged.

Reading the work of writers you emulate helps to keep you confident and optimistic.

The last thing I want to mention is how important it is to have a community of other writers where you feel you belong. Writing is already work done in isolation, so you need community to balance the loneliness of writing, and to help shape your writing with feedback and commentary and emotional support. At the very least it is helpful to have one writing buddy with whom you can share ideas and writing.

And this brings me to this magazine, because what is created here on the pages of Scarborough Fair is a community. It is a place where you can publish your stories and poems and where you can read the work of your friends and fellow writers. It is an invaluable support and resource and is one of the building blocks of community while you are here at UTSC. I hope that you participate in it as both writers and readers, and that it nourishes your writing spirit while you are here in Scarborough, and long after you have left.

VIII

Cat Criger is an aboriginal teacher and has been a traditional teacher and healer for more than two decades. He is the traditional elder for UTSC, UTM, UofT Faculty of Law, UofT Med Sciences, and the Indigenous Education Network at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. He is a recipient of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee medal.

Image Credit: Heather Trollope

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Thoughts from the Cat My spirit name is Mkwa-Giezhgaad (Daytime Bear), my given name is Mark Taylor Criger. My blood comes from three worlds: my mother is a mix of German and English, my father is of the Haudenosaunee (people of the long house), and my tribe is the Cayuga. My clan is Turtle, which defines not only my blood relatives, but extended spirit relatives as well.

I reside in Toronto, a meeting place of many peoples.

I was once made to feel that I was not connected to my people because I am far from my homeland. But my young son, at seven years of age, gave me connection and understanding.

He said that “a hawk is still a hawk, even if it lives in the city.”

I can at any point return to my lands in mind and spirit. If I am lucky, I may return in body.

I look at myself as made of mind, body and spirit. All must be nurtured and cared for in a balanced way. One could vision this as a tripod, all legs the same length for a level attitude.

If one leg is neglected, more weight is transferred to it and it soon fails. I remind myself of this each day when I put a small braid in my hair. I consider the coming day as I weave the three plaits that make a braid: mind, body, spirit. Perhaps one day I will make a perfectly balanced braid...…

Have story, thought, and poetry in each of your days. Be aware of your mind, body, and spirituality—hold them in balance while you walk this earth. Be aware of your heartbeats and the beats of those around you. Remember, it is hard to learn something new if you are the one speaking.

Cat Criger, Traditional Indigenous Aboriginal Elder

X

First Place Poetry

by Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Oregon and is a student in the University of Pennsylvania’s Comparative Literature program. Her poetry has appeared in Missouri Review, Gulf Coast, TriQuarterly, and Southern Humanities Review.

Julia is the author of The Bear Who Ate the Stars, winner of Split Lip Magazine’s 2014 Uppercut Chapbook Award. She is also the Editor-in-Chief of Construction Magazine.

HOW TO GRIEVE ADDICTION To tell you that I’m dying would be a lie. Instead, I’ll map your way over what’s left.

1) Align your ear with my naval and listen, listen close for rise: Denial, a nail in stone, Isolation, a fallen ocean, the small intestines closing in.

2) Hold hard to the ribs: the heart’s cage rattle against your fingers, Anger floating in the bones, and guilt, a stone again, the color of spent rainwater.

3) Make a deal with God: the one I’ve warned you hangs from my uvula, throwing stones and bargaining for his pendulum sway to turn from noose to tire swing.

4) Skip the quiet and Depression. Scream. Scream until you’re hoarse. Until my eyes sink into stone and bottomless white. Until you stop searching for a soul.

5) Accept lack. There is no Acceptance. Take my skull in your hands the way you would a stone.

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p o e t ry

THE HIGHWAY Driving the curls of cold asphalt I passed a man drumming the horn on his ’99 Jeep with the diligence of a clock-tower church boy, each blast preceding him around the tight curves.

I could think only of someone I once knew, a girl with a face the color of cut pear who swerved through school chanting I’m sorry / I’m sorry / I’m sorry.

That afternoon, at the bridge with the dogs, three oiled vultures spiraled above the shore.

Distracted by their poker faces, it did not occur to me something had died until Tess appeared with an organ dripping green the color of lobster tomalley. Behind her wagging tail, the bloated torso of I-don’t-know: body limb-less in the grass, already sainted for sky and dog, air scent-less but for my own sweaty sentience.

Even Tess moved slower the rest of the day, walking with pause and half-moon eyes, her long tongue swinging like a dick above the gravel, between her legs.

Second Place Poetry

by Erica Berry Erica Berry is an MFA candidate in creative nonfiction at the University of Minnesota, with recent essays in Guernica, The Morning News, Appalachia, The High Country News and Nowhere Magazine, and on Eater’s best food writing of 2015 list. Selected as one of the Poetry Society’s Foyle Young Poets of the Year in both 2007 and 2008, her poetry can be found in Acumen.

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WE ARE THE GENERATION Whose mothers knew bark cloth from chiffon and chintz; with clothespin fingers, hanging up their cotton names, Barbara, and Doris, and Norma, and Ann, flapping, wet, clean, hanging their names, Stransky and Castellino and Schmidt, out to dry- for good.

Whose mothers placed jewels of grapes or smoked cod in towers of gelatin, aspic, encased in windows of deer hoof dew to make-do, an up-do for affordable things in cans, to mock-up English aristocracy in the days of queens and dukes; Whose mothers had beautiful paralyzed hair, aqua-net perfect, stuck under a dryer, heavy with heat, blasted for hours, staring at Harper’s Bazaar or Good Housekeeping hoping for good, hoping for perfect, hoping for better; We are the generation with glassy eyed mothers staring through store-front windows at us, longing For a windstorm.

Third Place Poetry (Tie)

by Gina Marie Mammano Gina Marie Mammano is the host of a public radio show, an author, and a teacher. Her upcoming book, Camino Divina—Walking the Divine Way: A Book of Walking Meditations with Likely and Unlikely Saints will hit the market in March.

She lives on Whidbey Island, Washington.

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p o e t ry

Third Place Poetry (Tie)

by Adam Phillips Adam Phillips splits his time between Boise, Idaho, where he makes his living teaching 8th graders, and Rockaway Beach, Oregon, where he mostly chops wood and stands around looking at the ocean. His most curent work appears in Blue Monday Review, Dark Dossier, and Oddville Press. His first novel will be published by Caliburn Press in the summer of 2016.

LOVE After years of strenuous sealing, stuffing of cracks, caulk gun, plastic wrap, somehow still the door was left unhung.

She’d come right for it, threading through the forest, swimming in the night, fishbelly with the eyes of every starving creature in the swamp.

We warmed in the glow of the moon. Took walks across the submerged surfaces of the earth. In the glow of the worm.

By the time I noticed jellyfish drifting in her liquid eyes, well that was fine too.

“I have brought something to you, I mean for you,” she said.

Our faces rose to the ruptured, dangling tendons of a thousand stars.

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Anna Yin is the author of six poetry books and won the 2005 Ted Plantos Memorial Award, the 2010/2014 MARTY Awards and the 2013 Professional Achievement Award from CPAC. She is Mississauga’s Inaugural Poet Laureate and Ontario representative for the League of Canadian Poets. Her poems have appeared on Arc Poetry, New York Times, China Daily, and CBC.

AFTER TAMMY HO LAI-MING’S “HULA HOOPING”

by Anna Yin

The girl who has a sharp chin, carries tiny scissors, long toes bearing broken love string, wandering in the early spring.

The soil is wet, she weighs her poems on a wingless umbrella.

Between London and Hong Kong, storms continue to change lovers’ courses.

A night bus carries her like a sleepy fish – the shadow of a street lamp grows a long-stem black rose – Snow White sealed in a glass coffin.

The wind drawn from her poems tastes spicy and salty…

As I turn the page, the hula hoop spins…

How well does she swing, a slim girl, waist already too thin?

Hula, Hula, leaves swirl in a circle…

Hula, hula… her eyes stare at dark clouds…

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p o e t ry

BANGING AND WHIMPERING

by Cathy Bryant

To look into a morning mirror is to stare down the barrel of a cliché – a gun, unlike me, loaded and cocked.

Yesterday has crumbled away like a stale roll at dinner, hours gone mouldy in the compost bin.

You are tearfully grateful, yeah big man, yeah big woman, as I am, for the love of your cat.

Soon the routine noises begin and we are able to shrug on our personalities with the kettle’s click.

Breakfast, if nothing else, will define us.

Mine is high in carbs and fat.

Oh, sick, sick, sick and tired and it’s another cliché, the dread of age and illness, and when I’ve got my lipstick on and read some emails then it won’t seem so bad.

So many people took time to compose messages to me, as if I am a functioning, coherent person.

As if I am. As if.

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CIGARETTE INCENSE

by James Lord Parker

i Ignition: The rapid cranking of gears losing a visceral gnarl, yielding to a heated hiss. ii It’s a slow burn —a moment’s hesitation; a luminescent, orange ring crawling up towards your fingertips, gnawing at the ground, awaiting your breath. iii Impact.

Lungs swell, eyes shut.

Carnal relief—lips on calloused flesh.

A chalky tongue grazes the edges of your teeth. iv Catch & release. Expand the arching distance between two points: mistress and addict. v Once more, our weekly ritual, —the yellowing of teeth— then hourly, its transformation from ritual to necessity.

“I think I’ll have another.”

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Image Credit: Daniel Bernal

then daily,

p o e t ry

PARANOIAC

by Leeland Seese

Busy, busy, stuffing steel wool in all the seams beneath the wainscoting along the walls where memory and conscience dwell. A man sat down beside me on the local running late again, stethoscoped intentions up against my heart.

I was late for the forensics team who pieced it all together: ligaments of feelings through a looking glass, tired radio tuned-in to innuendo. But the little slippery things are never standing still. They have the tiniest incisors.

And they’re designed to lay their eggs just below the blush level of skin.

They mutate and become resistant to all treatment.

If I could only sleep invisible, one eye open all the time, avoiding foxhole termination underneath my bed.

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Image Credit: Carlos Franco- Ruiz

p o e t ry

ANCORA IMPARO

by Sean Mahoney

Villages my love has yet to see by foot awake to hairs crossed and spitting images. No timetables here save the afternoon of birds, evening of reckless stars, and loose mooring of hunters.

New days are ripe with those seeking justice or just a meal in countless other places like this.

Over coffee, under white gloves, past the smell of toast and burnt powder, sung into ears upon those with toe tags from the dusk of talkies and the dawn of smithereens there are songs being sung of advantages to be. A fatal harmony but that is not what my love can know, not just yet. Those voices shall be logged. And smeared.

Crack crack crack...shots swallowed by the vast river plain create a rise of unseen singing Grebes. Coalitions fall in line up the slopes of as yet to be liberated hills and city sites; cradles rock and ears tarry. And Sunday is the bush my love shelters in: birds sing; rifles move; notes jotted.

Crack crack...executives of chipped elocution and foolish grace stand resolute watching over green lights at the intersection of populace unable to move, rooted like wheat set before threshers, bones winnowed into digital clouds. Jaws of paste and zero tolerance pose in a glitter of discrepancies deep within shadows.

Wag dogs seeking trouble. Crowds gone mental with anxiety.

A moment for sorrow and the fears of my love yet past.

The table has been the set of efficient strikes and lobbied meals.

Let us grieve and eat fast my love, as fast as the professional breeze for the people tire. They wither under hot, hot information.

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THE ABCs OF BATS IN THE BELFRY

by Kit Hornby

A preacher once said a prayer for me, Back when there was no name for my Condition, affliction, call it what you will.

Down in front of the congregation, he knelt, Eyes to the masses, hands to the heavens.

Focused on some unseen power, he said, “God, this girl needs all the help she can get.”

Help? What did they mean, was something wrong?

I had never thought I was in need of saving.

Joined by the rest, he spoke the holy “Amen,” Keeping their gaze on a confused little girl Leering at some fatal flaw I could not find on My own soul, bared for them by that man, No explanation as to why they needed a holy Observer to look at a child of circumstance Pushed to the front by a desperate family Questioning what they had done so wrong, Regretting days before my birth, as if I had Slipped through all their careful plans for what They had been told to expect when they found Ultrasound scans with twisted hands and small Veins that barely reached to the tiny deformed brain, Wreaked from a few short years of life on Earth.

X-rays couldn’t find the mistakes in my bones so You came to this holy man, hoping for an answer But these things rarely end so satisfactorily.

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Image Credit: Carlos De Pano

p o e t ry

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Image Credit: Hanz Kua 23

p o e t ry

THE CARNIVAL

by Sarah Ng

The plastic horse trains its gaze on us; we crank the lever and ask it to mimic movement – to be animate and aware – “only three tickets” for three minutes of phantasmal flight.

The grass is cold against our ankles, and the ground holds still – a centre stage – a common spectacle. It tries to tell us that the wind rushing past is just like flying.

And for a second, maybe we do – maybe this metal is just as alive as we are.

Somewhere, beyond the entrance, we hear a man preaching about the Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. And I think to myself, “Who are we to wish for saving?” I bite down. The apple scrapes against the roof of my mouth.

We talk about death at the carnival – legs crossed and sweaty on the bench beside the merry­-go-­round.

You tell me eternity is terrifying; I tell you it doesn’t exist. Somewhere inside, the lever releases, and the hollow sound of galloping begins again.

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Image Credit: Carol Chang

Leanne Simpson is a creative nonfiction writer from Scarborough, Ontario. She graduated from UTSC's creative writing program before receiving an Ontario Graduate Scholarship to pursue her Masters in Professional Communication. She also teaches creative writing at Ryerson University and plays competitive dodgeball. Leanne's stories about living with mental illness are featured as a weekly column for Michael Landsberg's mental health foundation, SickNotWeak.

TRIGGER WARNING First Place Creative Non-Fiction

by Leanne Simpson My undergraduate experience is bubble-wrapped; it fits me snug in all the right places, including extra time on assignments, note taking, and exclusions from morning classes. I’ve really only heard of the harshness associated with university from a second-hand source. I was probably busy writing my exams with plushy headphones on, in a sound-proof room. One time, my professor even brought me a cookie because I was anxious. If I had a cookie for anxiety attack I’ve had at U of T, I would probably outweigh our school mascot – a giant trash panda named Rex the Raccoon. I like to use the term “trash panda” to give Rex the exoticism he so rightly deserves.

I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder when I was seventeen, attempted suicide for the first time at eighteen, was seriously hospitalized for the second by the time I was twenty and had dropped out of school twice by twenty-one. I’ve been on so many medications that I’ve lost count; I’ve dropped weight and gained weight and fought it off just long enough to remember what it felt like to be one person instead of a spectrum, alternately smiling and waving and crying, depending on where the sunlight hit.

I don’t talk about it much. I also don’t talk much in class either, because my meds tend to give me “drunk mouth” in the mornings. My psychiatrist recently took me off Lamotrigine (it was turning me purple) and put me on Epival (so now I’m losing my hair), and when I later complained that my 10:30 am class attendance was suffering as a result, he beamed and said, “I’ve got something for that!” I’m now taking daily narcolepsy medication and questioning the entire psychiatric field.

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It was one of the most glamourous days of the year in our ever-growing English department – the Humanities Conference. The conference is a celebration of all things liberal arts – narrative analysis, creative writing, overuse of the word “pedagogy”, and the chance of financial compensation for said academic pursuits. The conference featured academic and creative presentations from U of T students, and a keynote speaker, whom I conveniently missed. For me to even be there, voluntarily speaking in front of a crowd, was kind of a big deal. Because sadly, my disability accommodations do not include crowd control at school-wide events, and I was reading my story with no safety net.

I find academia intimidating for a number of reasons. People throw around big words that I’m afraid of, criticize people for having the wrong ideas – or worse, no ideas – and operate on a system of hierarchies that I don’t understand. I enjoy a lot of the reading I do for my still-in-progress English degree, but I never particularly identify with anyone from “the canon.” Mental illness has only recently been taken off the no-fly list of literature, and most of the autobiographical stories I see are told in retrospect, in a gentle (albeit patronizing) voice that assures you that you will get through this. As a result, I often don’t get through these books.

I arrived at the conference fashionably late, and slipped into the room between panels, shoving a few bottles of getaway juice into my purse. The only seats left were in the front row, a place I usually avoid like book-to-movie adaptations and flavoured Cheetos. The projector screen heralded the title “Mental Illness and the Dramatic Monologue,” which sounded like the name of a lecture that I skipped the previous term. My inner mental health advocate was extremely pleased to see some representation of mental health issues, but a bigger part of me hoped the talk wasn’t about bipolar. There’s something so alienating about understanding yourself one way, and seeing yourself presented in another. My health has been so fluid that I long for my identity to stay static, to ensure that one part of me is real.

The presenter was a graduate student with the kind of purple hair my mom forbade me from in Grade Ten. He addressed us confidently, drawing vague parallels between therapy and soliloquies and artistry as treatment, and I silently wondered if I should try yoga again, even though last time, I had walked out. The ambient sounds of the studio had overwhelmed me and infiltrated my lungs until I was certain that there was no room left to breathe. Somewhere in the differentiation between mental health and physical health, an idea emerged that we, the sick, could do more for ourselves – and for some reason, yoga seems to be the Nike swish of mindfulness.

The screen faded to black. The purple-haired presenter suddenly wheeled towards the back wall. I became aware of an immeasurable frequency in the air.

Something different. Something sharp. His breath became ragged as he ran his hands over his knees in a jerky, repetitive motion, turning around to face us with hunched shoulders and blank eyes.

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He was transformed; his natural ease gone, replaced with something I couldn’t put my finger on. I felt it too, unfurling around my heart – not quite danger, but perhaps the sensation of being hunted.

I glanced around the room to see if anyone else had felt the change. Eyes were riveted on the purple-haired man, the listless veil of intellectualism swept aside for something more impassioned, more savage, more suited for primetime TV. From a worn-down office chair, he performed the one-sided conversation of a patient with his doctor, the occasional shudder escaping his body as he crammed jellybeans into his mouth by the fistful. The blue ones gave him nausea; the purple, nightmares.

The yellow, I don’t remember what they did, but I knew I had tried them. My voice, emerging from his lips like a hackneyed puppet.

He stood up, fingers twitching and eyes wild, marching along the length of the front row, addressing each of us in turn.

“Do you feel sad?”

Fingers scraped against the plastic of my chair, teeth clenched.

“Do you feel guilty?

My breath was shards of glass in my throat.

“Do you feel worthless?”

He was standing in front of me now, dark eyes probing mine like scalpel on stone, waiting for the resounding “yes” that would confirm all of the medically supported reasons why I would never be safe here in this rigid room of academics. It didn’t matter what rainbow assortment of pills I took – I would never be enough on my own. My victories felt hollow, felt fixed, felt like something handed to me as a consolation prize for my sanity. I hadn’t told my professors yet, but I had just been awarded the top scholarship in my incoming Master’s class. I hadn’t told them because it was just another thing that I could give up on.

Vacant and graceless, I sat in the straight-backed chair and awaited my sentence.

“Are you afraid of the dark?”

The first sob escaped my body like the soft hissing of a balloon, followed by another, a racking, guttural sound that shook my lungs. My professors hustled me out of the conference room, away from the curious stares flung in my direction. My shaky words, barely audible above the wreck: That’s my life. That’s what I am.

I spend my nights reliving the tenth floor of Rouge Valley Hospital, a place where I hovered somewhere in between sick and well – the patients thought I was a narc, and the nurses thought that I was faking. But there’s no faking when there’s a cut in your wrist the length of a paperback novel. Sometimes stories do fit the mold.

There’s a scene on the cutting room floor, shot the night before the conference. It was a scene where I crawled into my parents’ room at 1 am, sobbing hysterically over the small capsule I held in my hand – a flat, chalky, pill I had been staring

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at for hours but couldn’t take, a pill that looked like the sterile walls of the psych ward, the distorted faces seething against the glass of the emergency unit door, the overwhelming fear that I was exactly where I belonged. That’s the real nightmare.

The presenter finished his dramatization before coming to check on me, his face streaked with black paint.

“Are you okay?”

“Why is your face all black?” I asked, feeling numb.

He explained that it symbolized the scars that depression leaves on the mind and body, then asked for my email so we could talk about it more in-depth. I politely declined.

I learned later that he was an exchange student studying medicine who desperately wanted to dip his toe in the humanities pool before pursuing psychiatry at a post-doctoral level. And that’s the thing – most doctors I’ve had, were not treating me from a place of experience. It’s textbook authority on something that can’t always be learned. Mental illness is a sickness, but it can short-circuit the emotions, and people often get confused about the root. They make assumptions.

But I knew better than most how damaging these unfounded, negative representations of mental illness could be. I’ve seen it in the way a boy starts to look at me differently, halfway through our date. I’ve felt that imperceptible coldness that comes with asking for workplace accommodations. People are afraid of what they don’t know, and what they do know is often wrong. Anxious people don’t need jellybeans and doctor’s office props to demonstrate who they are. They need a chance to speak for themselves.

I returned to the conference room with my head down, back tight, tears closing off my face like caution tape. I stepped carefully around my original chair and settled in another for the question period.

“Did you ever consider the ethical considerations of this project?”

It was an old classmate, shooting daggers at the purple-haired presenter.

“What do you mean by ethical considerations?” he answered, blinking.

After an earthquake, there are always stories of survival – people crawling out

from the smallest cracks in the soil to live again, to tell their stories and grow stronger for the next time the ground is snatched from beneath their feet. My moods aren’t something I can predict (let alone control), but what I can do is plant as many roots as I can, so I can always find a way back to myself.

After having a massive anxiety attack in a public place for very obvious person-

Image Credit: Theresa Lee

al reasons, I can honestly tell you that I was not the one who was embarrassed. One by one, my classmates crawled out of the darkest parts of themselves, cheeks blackened but taut, to fire off questions about the appropriation of mental illness and the importance of trigger warnings. I could not speak, not until the purple-haired man had retreated to his corner, but when I did, the only words I needed were thank you.

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Image Credit: Carlos Franco-Ruiz

c r e at i v e n o n - f i c t i o n

Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Oregon and is a student in the University of Pennsylvania’s Comparative Literature program. Her poetry has appeared in Missouri Review, Gulf Coast, TriQuarterly, and Southern Humanities Review.

Julia is the author of The Bear Who Ate the Stars, winner of Split Lip Magazine’s 2014 Uppercut Chapbook Award. She is also the Editor-in-Chief of Construction Magazine.

STUDY OF SCARS Second Place Creative Non-Fiction

by Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach

I

t starts with the study of scars. I learned all of his the way young-lovers first explore each other’s bodies, early cartographers longing to discover that island on

naked ocean flesh, the one no one else had noticed, the story of whose shape and origin no one else had heard. Above his left eyebrow, a thin staple concave from the time his mother threw him into the bedroom and he hit his head against the trundle bed. I deserved it, he said, I was playing in the running washing machine. And after, she held a mirror to his face and said, “Look what you did to yourself.” Did you deserve that too? I asked him once.

While wandering around his collarbone, I followed the path across to his suprasternal notch and then up the neck towards the first bones of his face. There, I found a ravine splitting the underside of his chin. Nothing grandiose like a canyon, more like a crack in concrete where ice and water have split stone. I’ve done it twice, he said and I moved my finger back and forth across uneven skin, trying to feel this repeated history, trying to picture both events. The first in childhood play, full of too many drugs, too little water, and too much pool tile. The second in a sweat-drenched club in Baltimore, where excess is at work again, too many drinks this time, which convinced him he could break dance. He broke his skin open on concrete instead. I could imagine almost everything, the way his eyes squeezed into tiny seeds as he ground his teeth from the pain or maybe shock of it, the way his hands had to cup his chin to hide or seal the wound, and the way there was no one, on both occasions, to be with him when a stranger worked a needle and thread against his flesh, interlacing skin with skin over exposed white bone.

But there is no blood in the study of scars. No blood in it, I must repeat. Though I used to try to imagine his blood, the red of it, and I would keep having this same, common dream: my teeth are falling out or coming away from the gum line. And in one recursion of it, I put my hand in my mouth and take out a molar. I inspect it, but there is no blood, just clean white.

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Then, that white crumbles down to powder in my hand and turns viscous, the way blood might, but the red is missing. “It means someone is going to die,” my mother told me, “but not someone close to you, blood would signify closeness.”

There are also the hidden scars, bloodless, redless in a different way, lying dormant, deep inside the body like undersea volcanoes whose deadly heat still churns inside the core, bracing for an unexpected moment of release. At first, it was the one in his heart. Not of first-love’s betrayal or that of the many thereafter, but of the tissue itself, overgrown with a weed-valve that interrupts the human rhythm. It’s just a congenital defect, he said, telling me how he only learned he had it at 21, waking up in the hospital after being found unconscious on a beach in Miami, high on everything under that very Florida sun that scalded his back and stopped his heart, even if only for a moment. Now, there is a whole galaxy of freckle scars unexplored along his spine and shoulders. It never really bothers me, he said, but, once—no twice it happened—he came and his naked body fell, cold and lifeless, against my back, and I knew then, his words were lies. His heart, the one that had started as a gallop of horse hooves, fell suddenly, terribly silent. When it regained a sluggish rhythm, and he was conscious again, his only memory—both times—was the ecstasy of release, whereas mine was the stillness of his body, sweat-leaden and as heavy as death against my own flesh. Now, every time we make love, I keep the pace of his heartbeat against my chest or spine.

And what to do when blood itself becomes a scar, or more aptly, a wound that won’t scab over? And no one knows how to make him stop bruising. How to stop the rupture of capillaries and venules, the hematoma of tissue allowing the blood to seep, hemorrhage, and extravasate into the surrounding interstitial tissues. So they draw vials and vials of blood without answer and they excavate deep into his bone marrow which also solves nothing and as his skin darkens to a map of amethyst islands, the doctors say, “Just don’t get hit in the head or cut yourself or fall and you’ll be fine, mostly.”

And what to do next when the ear becomes an open sore unable to distinguish

voice, an ancient ammonite that ebbs with centuries of torrents? And no one knows why the quiet pulsing started or how it turned into a thunderous rushing waterfall, which turned to pain which grew to deafness and a continuous booming still there, still beating down inside his head. But every scan showed nothing and every doctor’s words amounted to the same. “It could have been a malformed vein,” they said at first, “Too small, too close to the eardrum.” It could have been immune related, it could have been a bleed, it could have been a clot—unlikely with the blood so thin and all—it could have been what it could have been. But it is what it is, he keeps repeating. And now they put a magnet in his head. And now he has a convex outline all around his ear, as though it were torn off and sewn back on like the hand or eye of a loved stuffed animal—re-attachable, but forever changed.

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Put back but not grown in like a fallen branch a tree takes in and makes its own again. And daily, two or three times, I would cover the outline in Vaseline to keep out infection. And daily I would check that he was not on fire from deep within the body. And daily I would wait for blood, but just like in the dream, it never came.

So what do I do with his body when every touch is nothing but a study?

Should I turn to what’s already healed?—simple, legible wounds, whose stories I helped write. The channel down his forearm carved out by our dog’s panic at being held in the water against her fear and will. The cave of his hard pallet where there was once a growth, and now, just absent flesh. The slightly off colored diagonal across his back where like a spade, a sharp beam upturned his skin and left a trail of freshly plowed earth-flesh, and I covered it with cream and gauze back in the days when his skin sealed on its own. The once scabbed over, now still callused knuckles from the time he drove his fist into the drywall of our dining room and left a ribcage of exposed bricks, wounding the body of our house more than his own. And going forward, to the furthest inside of his lower lip, that narrow rise just before skin meets teeth. There, I’ll bite down hard and leave a brand new scar. And in an imagined future, fifty years from now or tomorrow maybe, when we are grey or bald, missing teeth or toothless altogether, I will read this story, his.

Image Credit: Carlos Franco-Ruiz

I’ll reach my tongue inside his mouth to study one final bloodless scar.

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Kevin Liu is currently in his second year of studies at the University of Toronto, pursuing majors in English and Computer Sciences as well as a minor in Creative Writing. His piece, “The Star That Almost Burned Out” is about his mother who was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 2006.

THE STAR THAT ALMOST BURNED OUT Third Place Creative Non-fiction

by Kevin Liu

I had never heard the word “schizophrenia” back then—but it didn’t take a genius to realize that something wasn’t right. I had woken up that morning to find my mother, still asleep, repeatedly moving her arms in an umbrella-like shape, as if trying to paint a rainbow with her hands. I tried to get her to open her eyes, to no avail. Tears trickled down her face as she continued her arm movements. I left the room, calling for my father.

“Mom’s crying,” I said, finding my dad and sister in the living room. My father got up and started toward their bedroom, concern creeping onto his face.

Some time passed, and my sister and I entertained ourselves by punching wrong answers into a Jeopardy video game, giggling as the host scolded us. We could hear shouting from upstairs, but tried to drown it out with the game.

Eventually, the noise made us go up to my parent’s room. Mom and dad stopped arguing, but they were on opposite ends of the bedroom. My mother didn’t look right and nobody said a word for a while, until my mom called me over. I could tell that my father was uneasy about me being near her.

There was a CD player in the room, and my mother began playing a song we had all heard many times before. It was my parents’ honeymoon song. My mom kept turning up the volume knob until the music became almost deafening. We lived in an apartment, and the other residents must have been able to hear it. My father told my mom to shut it off, but she ignored him.

When my dad crossed the room and switched the music off, another argument broke out. My mother sprang up and raced around the room, my father and sister chasing after her.

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I heard my father shout and then everything happened in slow motion: my mother clutching a kitchen knife, pointing it towards herself; my sister snatching the blade to take it away; the blood trickling down her palm. Blood was darker than I had ever imagined.

My father smacked the knife out of my mother’s hands and she started to sob uncontrollably. My sister and I both burst into tears. My father tried to dial 911, but every time he did, my mother would hit the cradle, hanging up the call, until my father threw the phone in frustration.

“Why are you being like this?”

My mother didn’t answer. She sauntered back into her bedroom, shutting the door. My father sat outside the room, in case my mother got any new ideas. He applied some rubbing alcohol to my sister’s cut and bandaged it.

“Does it hurt?” he asked.

“No, no, it doesn’t.”

I knew that my sister would have said that even if the pain had been excruciating.

Soon after, she went with me into the kitchen to hide all the knives.

“What about these?” I asked my sister, pointing at a pile of forks in a drawer.

She paused, and then nodded.

A few hours had passed, and my father still sat outside the bedroom door. It was quiet on the other side, and he occasionally opened the door a crack to see if my mother was alright. My sister and I ate some leftover pizza—my father said he wasn’t hungry, and my mother hadn’t eaten since morning. There was a knock outside our apartment door.

“This is the police, open up!”

I can’t quite remember what I was thinking then, but I felt slightly relieved that other adults were there. My father answered the door, and spoke to the police. He claimed the call was a mistake—that one of the kids had accidentally dialed 9-1-1. The policemen eventually accepted his story, though I’m sure they were skeptical.

Time seemed to hold still after the police left. My sister sat in the living room, staring aimlessly ahead. My mother was in her room, and my father went back to his spot by the bedroom door.

“She’ll be okay,” he told us, but his voice wavered. My mother was beginning to talk to herself from inside her room.

It was almost midnight when my mother left the bedroom, waking up my father as she strolled into the hallway.

He asked where she was going.

“To the bathroom.”

The bathroom was right next to her bedroom, and my dad figured that nothing

could happen. But a long time passed and then there was a sudden clattering noise and a thud. My father burst into the bathroom, shouting in agony. My sister ran after him.

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The stench of bleach filled the air. I ran out into the hall of the apartment and started banging on my neighbour’s door. Two men answered. They saw a ten year-old kid with tears streaming down his face, begging for help.

The two men followed me and found my father holding my mother’s limp body.

One of the men instantly took out his cellphone and dialed for ambulance. He told the operator that my mother was bleeding, and that the scent of bleach was overpowering. I just stood there. I glanced at my father. He was shaking my mother’s body, searching for any signs of life.

The police arrived. They were accompanied by firefighters and paramedics, who carried my mother out into the living room. I could hear one of the paramedics.

“She drank it.”

My mother was barely conscious. Her eyes drooped, and there was blood smeared all over her mouth and chin. She held out her hand towards me. I think she wanted me to hold it, but one of the firefighters ushered my sister and me into our mom’s bedroom.

“Your mother’s going to be fine,” he told us when he brought us into the room.

“We’ll make sure she gets better.”

We both nodded, sniffing back tears as the firefighter gave us a reassuring smile.

“Mom’s going to be okay,” my sister said.

“Yeah,” I replied.

She pulled a large health book off the bookshelf.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m figuring out how to help her.”

I could hear the sound of a door closing, and I saw an ambulance take my mother

away.

My father started repeatedly banging his head against the wall.

“Stop!” my sister begged.

Through his tears, my father managed to tell us that he was going to drive us to

our cousin’s house, and that we would stay there for the night. He was going to the hospital. He said that my mother was going to be fine and that she loved us, and that he loved us.

I thought that both my parents would disappear forever.

When I saw my mom again, she was in the I.C.U., tubes and machinery snaking in

and out of her. Her eyes remained shut.

“She can’t speak, but she can hear you,” the doctor told us. “She should be fine.”

Only two people were allowed to enter the room at a time and speak to her; my

relatives were all sitting outside. When my dad asked me if I had anything to say to my mom, nothing came to mind. I just looked at her. There were so many tubes.

My mom eventually recovered. Physically, at least. Mental recovery was a differ-

ent story. She was kept in the hospital ward along with other schizophrenic patients, and had to take pills. She had hallucinations when her illness was at its worst. She would look out the window of her hospital room, and see water everywhere, a flood.

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She would hear voices telling her that her children were about to die, and that she had to save them. She was caught in a war-torn area and had to evacuate, and Bill Clinton and George Bush were on their way to save her.

After a few weeks, I visited my mother again. She was moved to the common

area, where the recovered patients were waiting to be discharged. When I saw her, I remember thinking that she looked like my mom again.

We moved to Toronto shortly after, and my mother seemed completely back to normal for a year or so, until she stopped taking her medication. One day when her bedroom door was closed, I heard her laughing. When I opened the door, she was just sitting on the bed, laughing to herself. When she saw me, she stopped.

“Why were you laughing?”

“Nothing.” She shook her head. “It’s nothing.”

I tried to ignore it, tried to tell myself that it was normal. But when my sister

came home from school, I told her about the incident.

“We need to tell dad.”

My father didn’t get off work until late at night, but was quick to act when he

came home.

“She stopped taking her medicine,” he told us. “Where is it?”

We had no idea our mom was taking meds, no one had told us, and it turned out

that she had started hiding her medication. The effects were unsettling—at some moments she seemed fine, then she would just let out a burst of laughter. Fortunately, my father stood by her and convinced her to take her meds again.

The doctors and nurses focused on my mother’s recovery after she was admit-

ted into the intensive care unit. Day-by-day my mother slowly regained her health.

When she was brought out of the I.C.U and into the beds with the other patients, she joked with us and told us not to worry as she offered us some of her hospital food.

There was a collective feeling of relief, and my father had never looked happier. My sister and I visited my mom every day after class, curious as to what my mother was having for lunch that day.

There are still days when where I feel incredibly fortunate. My family’s life

gradually went back to normal. Today, my sister is currently pursuing a specialist in psychology and mental health at the University of Toronto. I’ve never asked her,

Image Credit: Matthew Martinez

but I think the events of our childhood likely set her on that career path. The scar on her hand has faded over the years, but the memory is as fresh as it’s ever been.

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Image Credit: Richard Wang

Jerico Espinas is a first-year law student at Osgoode Hall Law School. He graduated from the University of Toronto in 2015, specializing in bioethics and majoring in human biology. He wrote “Body Language” for Innis College’s Seminar in Creative Writing.

BODY LANGUAGE First Place Fiction

by Jerico Espinas

IV.

“You’re leaving?” Connor asked. He took the wet plate from me and dried it

with the same efficiency and vigor that he usually reserved for the bedroom.

My eyes were busy looking at the cracked dishes, the flowing water. There was

a special way you washed dishes at our place—slowly, fretfully, so as not to wet the thrice-glued undersides of the broken porcelain. I nodded, perhaps a bit too eagerly. “How did you know?”

I looked up. Connor was gazing outside. I followed his eyes and watched from the kitchen window as one, two, three small embers of light glowed and faded. Cigarette fires, stoic dots lighting up the sleeping face of the high-rise across from ours.

I imagined each of them warming themselves from some inner cold.

“The newspaper this morning,” he said. He set the dried plate on the cupboard with a clatter. “And your good shoes are by the front door, in a shopping bag.

Shined, too.”

I bit my lip, waiting for more. There was only silence.

I passed him a final plate and moved onto the cups, careful not to cut myself on the jagged rims.

“I could just be getting ready for a quick shopping trip.”

“Bull,” Connor said.

When I was done washing, he grabbed the cup, stuffed the towel inside, and twisted. The handle snapped, falling to the floor with a clatter. We sighed together.

He put the half-dried cup to the side, leaving it gagged. I put down the cup I was

rinsing, letting the water fill and overflow. We bent down together to pick it up.

Connor got to the handle first. Our eyes met for the first time that day. I was close enough to smell the champagne on his breath. Another office party in his honour.

Yet another celebration for Connor, the company’s rising star.

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He took a hand and ran it behind my ear, his thumb rubbing along the upper

ridge. A preferred act of tenderness, undiscovered except by Connor. I leaned my head into it.

“How long?”

He took the two jagged corners of the handle and held it like a bar in front of

him. I let him hook the cup handle under my pinky, and I wrapped three fingers around it. He pulled and I pulled, a doggish game of tug-of-war. Our arms rocked together. Another one of our small intimacies.

There was a beat, a small pause between us. I could have passed it off as a mere

joke and we would have been better. But at the back of my mind, there was a kind of frantic desperation pushing me forward.

“It’s permanent this time.” I widened my eyes, pleading, willing him to be

convinced, or at least to play the usual part. It would go more smoothly that way. “I thought it out. I made the plans and it’s going to last.”

He yanked sharply. “Yet you’re still here.”

“Not for long.”

Our tugs escalated, turning into the arcing motion of a battering ram. He looked

at me expectantly, wanting more. I relented. “I’ll be moving out at the end of the month. I have packed bags in the spare closet.”

“Then good,” said Connor. He waited then let go of the handle. I fell down with a

thump. He turned and started to walk away, with his trembling hands in his pockets then he simply stopped. I looked at him, waiting.

“Just one night,” he said, a familiar edge to his voice. “Can’t we be happy for one damn night?”

He raised his shoulders, and my heart skipped. My back tensed and tightened,

ready to give full resistance. He dropped his shoulders with a violent shrug.

“Congratulations to me,” he muttered. He stared at me for a moment, the long

day weighing on him, before he left the kitchen.

I stood up and fingered the rough edge of the broken handle. The uneven sur-

face acted like an imprint. Images flooded my mind. Connor clutching another snapped handle. The remains of a porcelain bowl on the ground beside me. The sight of coffee spreading across the floor, soaking my shirt. A blur of details.

I thought for a moment about gluing it back to the cup—upside-down, looking like a bead of sweat or a lopsided tear. Another reminder for Connor of how he used to treat me. I put the handle on the counter and continued washing the dishes.

The closing of a door. The clicking of a lock. The soft pocketa-pocketa of the

overhead punching bag. Connor’s motional monologue confirmed my fears. Not tonight, it said.

I looked outside at all the lonely fires. “Goddammit.”

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III.

I woke up to the slam of the kitchen cupboards and the occasional pocketa-pock-

eta of Connor’s overhead punching bag. I sat still on the bed and listened to the quiet racket outside.

The room was black, the curtains drawn shut to hide from the moon and other

curious faces. My bedroom door was blocked with a chair under the doorknob.

And the space underneath the door was jammed with a towel, stopping the hallway light from coming in, preventing me from seeing the passing shadow pace fitfully outside. Old, familiar, protective gestures.

I heard the screech of a curtain rod. The swish and slam of the balcony door.

And then the barely audible pop-pshht of a beer can.

These small acts—the locked door, the stuffed towel, the can of beer hidden at

the bottom of the trash—were personal phrases that Connor developed as we began to understand each other. It was a motional dialect, painful and redemptive, punctuated by blows and nuanced by my reaction to them. It was another rough day, this one said. It said, stay where you are, I’m sorry, I can’t, not tonight. These motions were becoming less frequent. Connor was gaining experience, was getting used to the subtleties of his workplace. Business was a language of such precise words, with every small misstep giving way to such large, legal loopholes. It was tough, for a man like Connor. Given his history, given the way he was. But he was taking my lessons seriously, and they were working all right in the end. He was getting better.

The door opened, then closed. Connor returned to his usual monologue. His

speech was muffled by the towel and slurred by the alcohol, but I knew he was trying to remember what I had told him the other day. Some important advice or the steps to some obscure procedure, half-forgotten and poorly implemented.

Connor often hit himself with his hands, slapping his forehead with open palms, trying to scramble his memories into perfect order. A remnant from his past life.

I heard them then, like the meaty whacks of a thick riding crop, loud enough to penetrate the bedroom wall. He was trying so hard. It was almost a shame how I acted. That night, like so many others, I got out of bed. I walked across to the blocked door and listened for his footsteps to come closer. I rested my forehead on the painted wood, closed my eyes, and placed a hand on the cool doorknob.

He paused in front of me. I felt the thunk of his forehead as it hit the bedroom

door, heard his weighted sigh.

We were inches apart.

He placed his own hand on the knob. I imagined the heat of his hand warming

the metal as it lingered there. He was trying so damn hard.

We were speakers of our own language, the only ones of our kind, in conversa-

tion but talking past one another. Not tonight, he said to himself. Not anymore.

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I hesitated. For the first time, I felt a pause, a break from the habits that were

building between us. But there was something there at the back of my mind, a kind of addictive force, a bad urge drawing us together.

In the end, I rattled the doorknob, just as I sensed his hand was about to leave.

Connor stopped and gave a choked response. He slowly turned the doorknob, the smooth, circular metal caressing the inside of my palm. It was a promise and an apology. But I needed neither.

“Connor,” I said, my voice a whisper. “I’m thinking of leaving you again.”

I paused, and he paused, and there was silence but we were moving forward.

I heard my racing heart thumping and veins pulsating in my throat. I gripped the handle and turned it back. I sauntered back to bed. Then I heard the usual motions, but in reverse. The soft rumble of a towel. The clunk of a chair being moved away from door. The closing flick of a light switch.

The door swung open.

For a moment, Connor stood in the doorframe. He was in shadow, a sharp out-

line of a man. Even then, with my eyes barely adjusted to the darkness, he was made of such hard edges. I shivered. My back tensed and tightened, like last time, like every time. He entered, whispered something barely audible, and began.

II.

I was on the floor, backed into a corner of the kitchen. My entire body was ach-

ing. My throat was hoarse, bloodied from all my obscenities. The fucking bastard did it. He stopped pulling his goddamn punches.

The table was overturned. The remains of the cup and saucer were on the floor,

looking like white bone on top of muddy water. I took half a cup and threw it at Connor with my uncut arm. It hit his broken beer bottle with a light shatter. Connor took a few more plodding steps. He reeked of the bar.

I crawled back farther. I sneered, readied for another round of assaults, but he

collapsed into a pile of clothes before me. Muttered something, clumsy and unmemorable.

I shook my head, said I didn’t believe him.

He extended an arm. I refrained from biting him.

I shut my eyes, and was still yelling when I felt his fingers brush the side of my

face. He cupped his hand behind my ear, just so. His thumb rubbed the ridge, in broad, clumsy brushstrokes. An instinctual act. It was the first time he had done that, and I leaned into the caress despite myself.

I stopped shouting, cried, fell onto his chest. And he held onto me in that same

damn delicate way. His touch was expressive, wanting to love, to apologize. It was Connor’s language brought out in full force. An overwhelming intimacy. My cuts and bruises, their nerves frayed and sensitive, were suddenly areas of intense sensation that overcame pain. My body forgave him before my mind did.

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I spoke back as best as I could. I wasn’t fluent, but I knew enough to get by. A

tourist’s knowledge. Enough to say hold me, kiss me, and take me in clumsy phrases. In mechanical touches.

We talked that way throughout the night.

I.

I heard the scratch of metal on metal, the dragging sound of a key searching for

its lock. I stood up, turned off the kitchen light, and sat back down. At last, the lock turned and the door opened with a sudden thud from the doorstopper. I sat in the dark, facing the kitchen door, holding my breath. There was a cup of cold coffee in front of me. I didn’t know why I was waiting for him.

Connor had done this several times before—had called, had stumbled back late.

There were a few one-sided shouting matches, a handful of broken dishes, and a couple of clenched fists. But nothing more. So there was a sort of hope, a loyalty, I suppose. That the excuse would be overtime, or an office meeting, or an errand.

Something else, anything else.

We were still new to each other then, still getting used to speaking. It was nice,

sometimes, the way we miscommunicated. He’d make my coffee too sweet, forgetting that I like it black. He’d apologize in his flustered sort of way and start making another. I’d drink it all the same, creating an act, grimacing with each sugary sip.

I’d laugh, he’d laugh, and then we’d give each other cloying little kisses afterward.

There was the thump of shoes being kicked off, then a soft rumple as he discard-

ed his coat. Heavy, uneven footsteps came closer. He turned on the hallway light with a light click, creating a small bar of light beneath the door. In a moment he was just outside the kitchen door, the hard shadow of two legs wanting in.

I closed my eyes. Part of me hoped that he’d pass. That he’d go into the bedroom

and see the empty mattress and just collapse, arms flailing, fists molesting unfeeling pillows. That he’d just fall asleep. I wanted to finally stand up. To slowly finish my drink. To slip into bed carefully beside him. But that was wishful thinking. I didn’t understand it. I’d left the bedroom door ajar for a reason. It was an open invitation, an easy course of action.

He twisted the doorknob and felt the resistance of the chair I placed against it.

Perhaps Connor just knew me too well, even then. The barrier lasted only a moment. He pushed the door in sudden shoves, each swing punctuated by a louder yell. The chair moved forward in harsh jerks. Its metal legs ground against the thing. I could have slammed myself against the door, forcing it shut. I could have called the police, screaming into the receiver. I could have grabbed a knife. But I didn’t. Even then, something stopped me.

A hand reached through the opening and knocked the chair aside.

I didn’t know why I was waiting for him.

Connor opened the door.

I let him in.

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Image Credit: Daniel Bernal

floor, creating gouges on the wood like a carving knife. I could have done some-

fiction

D.C. Diamondopolous, is an award-winning short story author whose works have appeared in literary journals and magazines. D.C. has completed two novels and is currently preparing an anthology of short stories.

TAPS Second Place Fiction

by D.C. Dismondopolous

Peter crouched in front of the attic window and gazed down on old man Muel-

ler’s cornfield. The plow, unhitched beyond the stalks, was turned north like he’d meant to continue but got interrupted. Peter looked toward the barn—no sign of Mueller’s horse and buggy. The Amish and Mennonite neighbours, with their peculiar ways, kept to themselves. Mueller only talked to his pa when he accused Rufus of killing his chickens, or that time a year ago, the day his brother’s mind broke.

When Gabe went screaming from the veranda, twisting his ears as he ran into Muller’s cornfield. That day, Mueller had shot out of the house, the top of his unsnapped overalls flapping as he sprinted after Gabe. Mueller’s wife and five children had dashed onto the porch, the boys still in their pajamas.

After that day, Gabe was never the same, and neither was Peter.

At fourteen, he felt all grown up. His childhood ended when his brother and

best friend came down with a cold inside his brain. Ma said he’d get better. They just had to pray harder. Pa wanted to send him somewhere, to a place where they removed part of the brain or shocked it back to normal. Peter listened as they argued back and forth, Ma blaming herself and Pa’s eyes wet with tears, as they tried to decide what was best for their eldest son; feelings of helplessness sat like a centrepiece on the dining room table.

“How come I don’t hear the voices, Ma?”

“Thank the good Lord you don’t, son.”

The sound of Gabe’s trumpet now sailed out of his window across the beauty of

the corn and wheat fields, the notes drifting as new ones began over the vast cloudless skies of Lancaster County. Gabe played Taps, Taps in the morning, Taps in the afternoon, and Taps at night. Peter thought it must have to do with the sadness inside him, but once in a while Gabe scratched the air with a different kind of song; it would sail smooth, cut off, spiral and dip. In those moments, he thought his brother had talent, enough to make Peter enjoy the fantasies they provoked.

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He coaxed Gabe to take lessons, maybe play at the church, learn Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing, so people would like him—that part he left out. Gabe had scowled, and Peter had fallen quiet, afraid he’d make his brother go to that place where a chorus of devils shuffled his mind.

Peter learned to rake words the way he did leaves. Words like sure, and all right

calmed him, but others, like before, and used to, could bring on a fit.

The screen door slammed as Gabe came out of the house and stood on the ve-

randa. He brought the trumpet to his lips and began to play. Peter bounded to his feet. Gabe had never taken the trumpet outside or played it in front of others. Peter hoped this meant he’d been healed, that his parents’ prayers and his own were finally answered. Excited, he ran down the stairs, wanting his parents to see. He passed the room he once shared with his brother until his pa separated them, after the sickness came. He jumped onto the landing and rode the banister sidesaddle down to the living room.

“Ma? Pa?”

Peter ran through the kitchen where his mother’s cornbread sat on the stove.

He caught a whiff of its warm, sweet smell and realized his brother had stopped playing.

He pushed the screen door open, but Gabe wasn’t there.

“Rufus, come here boy!” he shouted from the porch. “Pa?”

Where was everyone? His eyes darted from the tether ball to the lawnmower to

the Troyers’ house. The late September day was as still as the sun. It was Saturday.

Life always had something going on. It didn’t just stop.

Peter found it strange that his father’s hammer, pliers, and screwdriver lay on

the porch swing. Although his brother wouldn’t hurt a gnat, he’d often hurt himself.

His pa made sure to keep his guns and tools locked up.

Peter leaped off the steps and ran around the brick house they had moved into

three years ago. The front yard looked no different from any other time, the ‘47 Buick station wagon parked in the driveway, nothing out of place, except the absence of his folks and Rufus.

Maybe they went to the Kerrs’ or the Troyers’ ‘cause someone got sick. But Ru-

fus’ disappearance downright confused him. That dog always came when called.

He’d better tend to Gabe.

Peter ran to the backyard and saw a swath cut in the cornfield. The Amish and

Mennonites were acquainted with Gabe’s screams, his running away and hiding in their barns. They knew about the time he’d sprinted all the way to the feed store and climbed into a grain sack to get away from the voices.

Six months ago, Peter and his pa found Gabe in a dumpster. His pa picked him

up by his armpits and dragged his crumpled body over the edge and placed him on the ground. Peter felt like something died that day; a corner of his heart just fell off.

His pa helped Gabe get to his feet, put an arm around his shoulders and told him: It’s gonna be okay. Peter wanted to believe him.

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Later that day, his father told him: You’re the older one now, son. Tend to him like a pup. He followed Gabe’s tracks, swatting through the rustling stalks, and batting away flies.

“Gabe?” He felt trickles of sweat form on his brow as the smothering shoots

closed behind him. “Where are you?”

“Go away.”

“Where’s our folks and Rufus?”

“I don’t know. Leave me alone.”

Peter took careful steps so as not to upset his brother. He wanted to make sure

Gabe was all right and not doing weird things like banging his head against the ground, or clawing his ears until they turned purple-blue.

Peter brushed his dark bangs out of his eyes and parted the stalks. Gabe sat

cradling the trumpet, rocking back and forth.

“You seen Rufus?”

“No.”

“Heard you playing outside.” Peter parted the shoots to give them more room.

He stepped around his brother. “What’s that on your shirt?”

“Nothin’.”

“Somethin’. Looks like blood.” He reached to touch the shirt. Gabe shoved his

hand away.

“Leave me be.”

“You tell me how you got blood on your shirt and I’ll leave you be.”

“It’s not blood. It’s ketchup.”

“Hogwash.”

Peter took hold of his brother’s shoulders and gripped them as he leaned down

andsmelled the shirt. “It’s blood.” He ripped it open and saw slash marks on Gabe’s chest. “Jesus, Gabriel.”

“I’m cold.”

“Where’s the knife?”

“You tore my shirt.”

“Here, put mine on.”

Gabe did and started to blubber as he mismatched the buttons with the holes.

“Gimme the knife.”

“Mueller has it.”

“You’re saying Mueller did this to you?”

Gabe nodded.

He couldn’t trust a darn thing that came out of Gabe’s mouth.

Peter leaped on top of his brother and tried to roll him over, but Gabe fought

back, swinging his fists and grazed the side of his head.

“I’m trying to keep you out of trouble,” Peter said as he straddled Gabe’s legs

and ran his hands along his brother’s pockets. “Where’d you throw it?”

He rolled Gabe’s shirt into a ball, stood, and picked up the trumpet.

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“Don’t have it.”

Peter glanced about. It could be anywhere. “Let’s go find Rufus.”

Gabe grabbed onto the stalks and pulled himself up. “Mueller killed him with

the knife.”

Peter swung around. He dropped the shirt and trumpet and lunged at his broth-

er knocking him to the ground.

“You’re lyin’.” He looked down at Gabe, not feeling a bit sorry for him. “You can

talk crazy all you want, but not about my dog.”

Peter felt a rush of trembles coming on. The kind he had as a kid when he’d

wake up in his own piss. Sometimes his brother was just too much responsibility.

Peter picked up the shirt and handed the trumpet to Gabe.

“I’m goin’ home.”

Gabe followed.

Old man Mueller would never use a knife. He might shoot Rufus if he killed his

chicks, but he’d never use a knife. And, when it came to hurting his brother, well sir, that just didn’t make sense. It bugged Peter that Gabe could get to him like that after all, his mind was sharp. He could grasp a situation and pluck its essence clean out.

When they reached the porch, his father’s tools were still lying about. He’d put

them away once he cleaned Gabe’s wounds and got rid of the shirt. No sense telling his parents; it would upset them, and they would send Gabe away.

The screen door slammed as the brothers went into the kitchen.

“Take off my shirt. I’ll clean those cuts,” Peter said as he took the dishrag from

the washbasin and soaked it in warm water. “Put the trumpet down.”

He reached into the cupboard and pulled out his pa’s whiskey.

“Come here.” He poured a little onto the rag—his pa wouldn’t notice—and

wiped his brother’s chest.

“Ouch! That’s for drinkin’.”

“It’ll clean the wounds. Seen Pa?”

Gabe slowly moved his head to the left and the right, reminding Peter of an

elephant he saw at the carnival in Hershypark.

“No.”

Peter took the bloody shirt and put it in the sink. He lifted the lid of his nanaw’s

bronze striker that hung on the wall, took out a wooden match and struck it, lighting the shirt on fire.

When the flames licked it to ash, Peter ran the water.

“Let’s go upstairs. We gotta hide those wounds.”

Gabe started to laugh. Peter saw the madness in his brother’s eyes, as if his

mind had hooked a corner and kept spinning, unable to right itself. No amount of shaking, coaxing, or yelling could bring Gabe around. Peter remembered that same laugh Memorial Day when the Kerrs’ invited them to a picnic in their backyard.

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Gabe scarfed down a slice of watermelon, then he started to laugh. ‘Course everyone wanted to know what was so funny. His laughter grew to hysterics. Let us in on the joke, Lester said. But Gabe kept laughing like it was his own private thing, even as the juice ran out his nose and into his mouth. The look in his eyes when Lester persisted, come on, what’s so funny, was dark and ugly.

Peter would never forget the look on Gretchen’s face, the girl with hair the col-

our of wheat, and eyes as dark as the Blue Ridge Mountains. He wanted Gretchen for his girl the moment he saw her in the church choir. But on the day that Gabe snapped, and she brought her finger up to the side of her head and made fast circles laughing at his brother’s torment, his feelings for her died.

Did he hear Rufus? Peter raced to the screen door and opened it. He stepped

onto the veranda.

“Rufus!”

He’d taken three stairs when he felt something strike the back of his head.

The force was so great he toppled forward. He struggled to get away as he pulled himself along the ground. Crawling in his own blood, he was sure he heard his dog.

Rufus sprinted up to his master and barked. “Hey, boy,” Peter moaned.

“Oh my God, Gabriel!”

The distant wail of his mother’s voice reminded him of the way Gabe faded the

final notes of Taps.

“Put that hammer down. Now, Gabriel!” The fear he heard in his pa’s voice

scared him.

Peter struggled to get up.

He felt a searing explosion and lost consciousness.

Image Credit: Richard Wang

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Image Credit: Carlos Franco-Ruiz 51

fiction

Batool Amiree is a third year student at the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus, specializing in English literature, She enjoys taking real life issues and turning them into fictional stories.

IT’S A FAMILY RECIPE Third place Fiction

by Batool Amiree

The waves hit the rocks with a crash. Ali relaxed the muscles in his face and

welcomed a soft smile. He closed his eyes and took in as much air as his tired lungs could hold, and let it out. A faint blast went off in the distance, just loud enough to send a shiver down his spine. He opened his eyes and welcomed back the reality of the dirt-covered stones and debris he was sitting on. There were no waterfalls here; no gentle breeze and no dancing branches. There was rubble, and there was wreckage. The stones, which had once held up shops and houses, were now fallen in heaps on the dry land.

The explosion that had caused this came yesterday, followed by trucks and gun-

fire hours later. When the trucks rolled by, letting Aleppo be for another forty-eight hours, the soldiers forgot to take their chaos with them. Families and neighbours ran out of their homes and their hiding places to pull their neighbours from under the wreckage. Some alive, some not.

Mothers screaming, children crying, men praying: that’s what happened next.

Ali wasn’t here, in Deir, when it got hit, but that’s how it always happens. Now he sat there alone, the streets empty and silent. A ghost town. Civilians took refuge in their houses and dared not come out so soon after an attack. That was the way things were done here now. Ali stood up, stepping over stones and other fallen bits of the city to make his way home. Tomorrow he’d be at Jedda’s house, his last chance to convince her to join the mass of thousands leaving the country.

His running eased into a jog, and after a couple minutes, Ali stopped and gasped

for breath. His hands on his knees, he looked down at his cracked heels. The leather of his sandals was faded and wearing out fast, one strap was ripped straight down the middle.He kicked the sandals off and walked his bloody feet two more yards to Jedda’s house. Ali walked through the broken front gate and, ignoring the front door completely, turned down the alleyway and stopped at a side door to the house.

Sticking his hand through the wrought iron gate, he beat at the wooden door. Moments later, a tall man was standing at the doorway. He smiled.

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“Ali. Here.” The man held out a key through the gate and Ali freed the padlock.

He locked it again from the other side and handed back the key.

“Come, Akhi. Jedda’s inside, waiting. We were afraid the trucks would come out again.”

“Yeah, I heard them on the way here. I ran before they could get closer.”

“Good.”

Ali lingered for a moment before following his brother down the narrow hall

and into the main house. This didn’t go unnoticed by Yousef.

“Akhi?”

“I went to Deir. Yesterday.”

“Deir?” Yousef lowered his voice to barely above a whisper. “And yesterday?

That would have been barely a day since it got hit. Trucks would have still been prowling the area, Ali you know this! How can you—” Seeing the look on his younger brother’s face, Yousef understood. “You had to, huh?”

“It was empty, Yousef. I sat on the stones that used to make up Haji’s shop, and

I just—”,

Ali’s voice cracked but his sobs were muffled by his brother’s strong embrace.

“I know, Akhi. It’s hard to believe sometimes, I know.” Yousef felt Ali’s body

shake against his and held on to his little brother tighter. There was nothing to say, and Youself knew this. He held his brother and let the emotions pass.

After a couple minutes, he pulled Yousef up and said, “Listen. You’ll be out of

here by this time tomorrow. And until then, let your family see you happy. Don’t leave us like this, Akhi.”

“You’ll come. I know you’ll come, Yousef.” Ali was almost begging.

A voice came from inside the house. “Yousef, did you die on the steps?! Huh?

Was it Ali or no?! Or are you going to wait till I’m dead to bring him in?”

The brothers chuckled. Yousef put his hand on Ali’s shoulder and steered him

into the great room.

“Jedda.” Ali hurried towards the old woman and held her in an embrace. She was so small and fit like a child in his arms. Ali leaned down and kissed his grandmother’s forehead.

“Come, Ibny. It’ll be dinnertime soon, I just need a couple more things from the garden. She stopped the moment she got a glimpse of his feet.

“Ali! Maada? You’ve brought themuck from outside into my clean house. Go now and wash your feet!”

“Jedda, please just —”

“Wash first, talk later. Go.”

After she left the room, Ali turned to his brother. “Have you tried to talk to her

at all? Will she come with us?”

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“Come. We’ll take care of your feet.” Yousef didn’t look at his brother as he

spoke, instead stared at the worn out Persian rug which Jedda worked so hard to maintain. He saw the smear of blood left where Ali was standing just a moment ago.

The war had come into the house after all.

Ali went through the bathroom door and stepped onto its concrete floor. There

was a drain in the middle of the floor with the hose hanging a couple feet away. He washed the dirt and dry blood from his feet, wincing as the water burned his fresh cuts, peeling skin, and cracked heels. He dried his feet and walked into his brother’s room.

“I got these for your feet.” Ali took the bandages from his brother and started to

wrap his cracked heels.

“Yousef, stop ignoring me. Why aren’t your bags packed?” Yousef sat opposite

his brother on an old wooden chair that he’d had to fix several times before.

“I can’t just leave her here. She won’t go. You knew that.”

“Can’t you see —”

“But that doesn’t mean you can’t go.” Yousef’s voice was stern and left no room

for argument. “Ali, you have to go. You’ve got your chance to leave, so leave. We’ll be fine. Jedda won’t go, and someone has to stay with her. It should be the older of us two.”

“So you’ll both leave me? You’ll leave me to a life where I’ll constantly be wondering if you’re dead yet? That’s how you’ll leave me, Yousef?”

“Akhi—”

“No. No!” Ali stood up so fast it surprised Yousef. “You can both come. And you

will. I’ll talk to her. What kind of a life is this?! Waiting every second for the next shell to go off in your backyard. You think the people in Deir expected it to go off in theirs?” Yousef tried to comfort his brother but Ali pushed him away.

“Pack your bags,” he said through clenched teeth, then left the room.

Once in the corridor, Ali turned around and could see just far enough into the

room to see his brother sitting on the chair with his face in his hands. Though he loved his brother, Ali couldn’t help his anger. He wanted a chance at a new life, a life without the constant fear of death; but he wanted to share that new life with the small family he had left. He walked out to the back of the house where he would find his grandmother.

Ali crouched on the ground as he snapped parsley stems from the little bush in

Jedda’s garden. She was next to him, her hands coloured in dirt and bruised from hollowing out zucchini. His grandmother always had dinner on the table. Even when there were trucks parked outside the house, the old woman’s perseverance made mealtime a battle her family always won. She used to invite families over to help nurture the soil in the garden, each leaving with a basket of her best vegetables. From her garden, Jedda fed the mouths of the hungry people, recipes the tyrant had never tasted. Every night, they ate like kings amidst the war zone.

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Ali put down the parsley and took his grandmother’s hands in his.

“Please. Please, Jedda, come with me. I can take you. Stop this childishness,

you’ll come with me. Won’t you?”

She kept at her work.

“Jedda.” Ali moved his hand to her shoulder and gave it the slightest squeeze.

The old woman looked up at her grandson and smiled.

“Look, now. You’ve gotten dirt on my new dress.”

Ali yanked out the parsley bush with his fist and threw it aside in his frustra-

tion.

“Jedda, what are you doing? You’re worried about your house and your dress, can’t you see past these walls? There’s a war, Jedda, I’m trying to get you out of it!”

She kept working at her zucchini, seeming not to have noticed the butchery Ali

had made of her best parsley bush.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for yelling Jedda, but please talk to me. How can you leave

me like this? You can still come. I can still take you, I’ve saved the money.” At this she looked up and studied her grandson’s face. Tears had washed stripes down his dirt covered cheeks, so hollow-looking now. The sun had darkened his fair features and dust had settled itself into the creases of his skin, making it impossible to believe he was only twenty-one.

“Will you pay me to take me out of my country? Or will you pay them to do it?

I’m not leaving, Ali.” “Jed—”

“Stop it!” The old woman shook like he’d never seen before. Ali ran to the other

side of the garden and brought over a chair. He helped her in it and sat down at her feet, his hands on her frail knees. He laid his head on her lap and trembled.

Not with anguish nor anger, but with fear. His grandmother stroked his head and looked straight ahead at nothing in particular.

“You know,” she started, “You can tell exactly what day the peaches will be ripe

based on the rain. See that peach tree in the corner? Those peaches on the topmost branches are ready to pick. Come.” Ali got up and helped his grandmother to her feet. Together they walked over to the short peach tree and gazed up at the plump fruit growing from its branches. Ali reached up and put his hands around one.

“No Ibny, not that one. Give it another day. That one. Just there.” She pointed her slender finger to the high branches and singled out a nice round peach, the colours of a sunset staining its tender skin. Ali reached higher and plucked the peach from its home on the branch and handed it to his grandmother. She took it in her hands and brought it up to her nose.

“Yes. This is good. You want maamoul, Ibny? We’ll fill the insides with peaches.

You and your brother would like that, yes?”

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“No, Jedda. I don’t. I don’t want maamoul, or harisi, or atayef. I don’t want any of it. I want you and Yousef to come with me. Why won’t you talk to me, Jedda? Please.”

She put her hand on his shoulder and turned him to face away from

the house.

“Look there. Beyond the house gate. You see the olive tree?” Ali turned

to look. Yes, he could see the olive tree. It was the olive tree his great-grandfather had planted, under which he was laid to rest.

“Three generations of our family are buried by that tree, you know.

Remember, when you were a boy and Yousef went to school you sat under that tree and waited for him to come home. You remember? You remember helping me pick olives from that tree?” She turned him to face her.

“I know there’s a war, Ibny. I do know. But that’s not all that’s happening here. Yes, people are dying, but people are also surviving. Things grow here, Ali. That means something.”

“They’ll still grow when you leave, Jedda. I promise. Come with me.”

He put his hand on her cheek and used his thumb to wipe the garden

dirt off her thin skin. She took his hand.

“Sit with me. I’m tired.”

She walked back to the chair and took her seat, Ali on the ground next

to her. Yousef entered the garden and saw the two of them. He walked over and took a seat by his grandmother’s feet and put a hand on his brother’s knee. They stayed like that for a while. Ali closed his eyes and took deep breaths of the familiar air. He could see a waterfall, could almost feel the cold mist spraying his face. Ali opened his eyes, because for a moment—just a moment—he preferred this reality: sitting here with his brother and his grandmother in the garden from which so many feasts had been prepared.

“The fillah, the farmer,” she began, “is the one who knows what Syria needs when she is thirsty. He is the one who knows his country better than anyone. It was him who took the first bullets and it is him who will always stay behind.” She chuckled and looked down at her two grandsons.

“This farmer will cook for the starving people using your grandmother’s recipes.”

The boys returned her smile. Yousef saw the lines of his brother’s face

soften.

“Get up, Ali.” He raised his brother to his feet. “She has to stay here.

And I do too.” Ali pulled Yousef in for an embrace. He felt his grandmother’s hand on his shoulder.

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Letting go of his brother, Ali turned to face the frail old woman who

had always been much stronger than he was.

“This is not a goodbye. You go, and I know you’ll come back one day.”

A single tear rolled down her cheek. “Ali, I swear, I make the promise that I will write down every single one of my recipes when this war is over.

I know what Syria will need, and I will rebuild this country. When you come home, we’re all going to be waiting here, Ibny. This is not a broken land.”

She pulled him in for a kiss. Ali held her in his arms, where she fit

like a child. He kissed the crown of her head and swallowed his sobs. She parted from his arms and walked over to the garden and picked up the zucchinis she had been working on earlier.

“Come in and wash up, my sons. Tonight we will feast like kings.” She

waddled towards the back door and without turning around said, “And do

Image Credit: Heather Lam

not to get the muck from outside into my clean house.”

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Artwork by Carlos Franco-Ruiz

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Artwork by Carlos Franco-Ruiz

Artwork by Carlos Franco-Ruiz

Featured International Artist

CARLOS FRANCO-RUIZ Carlos Franco-Ruiz (°1987, Managua, Nicaragua) is an artist who mainly works with painting. In 1988, as the civil war was winding down his parents immigrated to Miami, FL. Franco-Ruiz was raised in Miami, in the neighbourhood of Little Havana. At the age of 14, he was accepted into the Commercial Art Magnet Program at South Miami Senior High School. After graduating, he would continue to pursue art as a career and complete his Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Miami in 2011. Two years later, he moved to Uruguay and continued to follow his passion for painting. His most recent solo exhibition, titled “Fractured Moments,” was held at Roggia Galerie. Franco-Ruiz currently lives and works in Sauce, Uruguay.