Last Breath

By: Katerina Kouloufakos

Life is too short to spend the last of your days in a white room.

White is the colour for people not fit or able to move out of their bedroom. Vegetative. But even 

vegetables are colourful. If I had to describe the colour of life to someone, I'd say vegetable coloured. 

Always different. But always part of the same food group. There'll be sour vegetables and sweet vegetables. Life is anything but white.

As I draw a breath and look around, I realize that white is also very peaceful. Calming. Relaxing. Tiring.

I exhale.

I'm Sorry: Excerpted from “25 Straight”

By Jaye Mangione

Another hand pats me on the shoulder, mumbling something that I don’t bother to decipher. They all say the same things, I’m so sorry, or He was a great person, or You were lucky to have him as a father. Some distant relative gives me a hug, her cold hands pressing against my back. She lets go, asks me a question. How are you feeling? I think it is. I look at the small patch of grass between us, trying to breathe normally through my constricted throat. Kiera? she asks. I turn and run, pushing through the crowd of people before breaking into open air, trying to see through the tears. I stumble and fall, tripping over the new shoes Mom made me wear. Dad wouldn’t have cared what I wore, but Mom insisted. Dad. Today, he’s not ‘Dad.’ He’s Michael Lavoisier, a name etched onto a cold slab of granite, and on the lips of everyone here. I get up and keep running, ignoring the dirt on the front of my dress. My eyes are fixed on the forest that borders the cemetery. I slump down against the rough trunk of a maple, hug my knees to my chest, and bury my head in my arms.

He taught me to waterski up at my grandfather’s cottage, seven years ago when I was ten. I remember laughing as we bobbed in the water, trying to wrestle my feet into the ski bindings.

“They have to be tight,” he said, “otherwise you won’t have any control when you get up.” Once I had the skis on, he passed me the tow rope. My heart was pounding as I gripped the rubber-coated handle.

“If you get into trouble, let go,” Dad told me. He held me lightly around the middle, keeping me from falling over. My teeth were chattering. There was a jerk as the rope went taut. “You can do this,” he said, “Just relax. It’s hard to hurt yourself waterskiing.” I nodded, thinking I could probably find a way. “OKAY!” he yelled, and the Seadoo engine roared. I was yanked forward, and the water rushed toward my face. My head went under, and I let go of the rope. The green tinge of the water was everywhere. When my life jacket pulled me up, I was wracked by a violent coughing fit.

“Sucked up a bit of water, eh?” my dad said as he brushed the wet hair from my face. I looked around, and saw that my skis had flown off in opposite directions.

“How far did I go?” I croaked.

“Oh, you didn’t break any records,” my dad said, chuckling. “But don’t let that discourage you. That wasn’t so bad for a first try. Way better than what I did. I forgot to let go of the rope when I fell on my face.”

“What happened?” I asked, grinning.

“I was dragged underwater. Went right down to the bottom. I got towed through a weed patch, too. It was not a fun experience. Getting dragged through the weeds at twenty miles an hour is a great way to put you off salad for a week.” I laughed. “So,” he said, putting an arm around my shoulders and squeezing, “Want to give it another shot?”

“You bet,” I replied.

 “Try leaning back more,” he said. “You’ll get the hang of it, now that you know what to expect.”

I didn’t get up that time, or the next, or the next, but I kept trying, spurred on by my dad’s encouragement. Once I could stay up, I fell in love with the sport. My dad and I would get up early, and go waterskiing before breakfast, when the water was so flat the wake of the Seadoo made the only ripples in the perfect reflection of the sky. When we came back, Grandma would have breakfast ready for us. We would sit at the table in our wetsuits, towels around our goose-bumped shoulders.



“Kiera?” a soft voice says. I open my eyes. My mom is kneeling on the ground beside me. “Everyone wants to talk to you,” she says.

“Yeah,” I say. It comes out harsh, strangled. My mom cringes.

“It’s going to be alright,” she says, tucking a stray strand of hair behind my ear. It sounds so cliché, such a typical thing for someone to say to a crying, teenage girl. How could things ever be ‘alright?’

I get up, and we walk back.

How I want to Go

By Kiera Sandrock


People always fuss so much over last words. It seems a ridiculous way to go. I mean, why would you just want to say last words? Why not spice it up a bit? The way I want to go is simple. I want to live to a ripe old age and die:
In my bed
Surrounded by friends and family
Comfortable
But not in my sleep
Because I want to make things more interesting.
See, when I’m ready to go I’m going to pick up a paper and start writing. And everyone will ask what is it? Perhaps I’ll confess to something horrible, or write an incredible story, or reveal where I buried my treasure. But, whatever I decide to write, I know when I’m going to die
Three words before I’m done
So no one will ever know my precious last words
And I will be
In heaven
Or hell
Or wherever good scientists but bad pranksters go
Because if there’s one thing I know
It’s that I’m going to die
Laughing

Images of Back-To-School (End of Summer)

By Alex McGowan


Humid hugs from sun-burned arms.

Feeling your hair rustle as you wave out the window of the car, starting the trip home.

The scratch of pen, pen, old pen as you test for ink on once-used paper.

The crinkling pool tarp getting roped down for the fall.

Tasting the first peanut-butter-and-jam sandwich in two months.

The aroma of the gym hallway: the newest kind of Axe smells no better than last year’s.

Specks of Crow

By Zoë Perkins

"It's almost midnight.  You can't hear a sound, but the dazzling lights atop each New York skyscraper are breathtaking.  There are dozens of statues and pieces of artwork scattered like specks of crows across Trafalgar Square.  They say that if a child waited long enough, these masterpieces would come to life before their eyes.  They would dance across the beautiful streets, then settled back down before dawn."  Jimmy closed his book.  He walked over and peered out his window, but nothing outside moved.  He sat back down and finished the story with his aunt.

Fading Footprints

By Michal Leckie


I thought that if you gave me wings,
I would be able to fly.
I would be able to touch the sky with my fingers
You told me to spin around fast,
And eventually, I would lift off from the ground.
My feet would make a wet mark on the wood,
I flew from.
You looked at my footprints,
And you looked at me.
The sun was catching me, holding me.
The footprints on the dock started to disappear with the sun.
The sun held the footprints in its hand, taking them away.
The sun gave me my footprints, so I could hold them in my hand.
You looked at the dock, and touched where my feet had been.
The sky surrounded me, hugging me close, as I held
The fading footprints in my hand.

Charts

By Marie Payne

His parents and background had no part of it. He grew up in Toronto with equal opportunities and adequate schooling. It was in his temperament, or his mental environment. He just succumned or collapsed in a gradual way, little by little then all at once. His parents couldn’t save him. The counselling couldn’t save him. Then his parents were dead and his therapists didn’t care about him anymore. A grown man can take care of his own health. But it wasn’t his fault either, it couldn’t have been.

Childhood

By Emilly Renaud

It's over. There is no more asking your parents if you can play outside longer. Adults won't forgive your mistakes as easily. Store clerks won't smile at you while your mommy and daddy buy groceries. You understand how the universe works. You know why the sky is blue, and why thunder is so loud. Your dolls are dull. Your sandbox toys have cracks in them. You're scared of having an imaginary friend. You can't wait to get to bed, but you hate waking up in the morning. Your dinner dishes are glass now, and not nearly as colourful. Your candy tolerance has lowered. You care if your hair is messy. You have to shower more. You stick out your tongue a lot less than you used too. Your parents expect more from you. There is no more recess or nap time, though you feel like you need it even more now. Store clerks always think you’re stealing. There is no going back.

The end

By Caitlin Hubbard

What is the end of a book? Its last few pages, where the story is all wrapped up? The afterword, and the author's note? The back cover? Does it end when we no longer read it, and instead recycle it into new paper? Does that new paper remember the inked words that used to linger on its alabaster skin, tattoos it didn't choose, but, if it was lucky, were deep and meaningful, and pretty nonetheless? Is it when the book, or the reborn paper, goes up in smoke, burns with new passion? Do the ashes and the smoke and all the tiny atoms released into the world once more remember what they used to be? Remember what it was like to be a book, as they are lifted by a soft breeze? Do those atoms remember their beginning? Do they sigh in relief as they float up into the sky, carried in the smoke, and think, “I'm home”? Do they dance with the old reflections of themselves as the old and new twinkle and twist together, the light of ancient dead stars still lighting the sky, met by the low glow of embers rising in the heat? If books come from the stars, is there really such thing as a bad book? Do books really ever end? Why are we so quick to finish them?

Space Left

By Sian Bolliger


Tonight I'll kiss the Big Dipper.
Taste your smile like strawberries cut into
quarters I was too lazy to
wash. I will
sing so loud that I can't hear
myself care if
anyone else does.
Tonight I skip rocks across the
sunset, watching red
turn to gold
as it explodes into a
million rays of lemonade
and
summer days
and
times that I smile
at the spaces that the stones left.

Veal

By Dawson Bennett

“Hey, I just got here from another barn. What’s up?”

“Just chewing this hay. Other barn?”

“Yeah, just down the road.”

“Road?”

“You know, outside?”

“Outside?”

“Never mind. Man it’s dark in here, you can’t even tell it’s day.”

“Day?”

“When the sun is up.”

“Sun?”

“Wow have you ever been out of this room? Grazed in the fields?”

“I guess not. Sometimes my friends go through that door. I never see them again. Maybe they’re in the fields?”

“Maybe. Well let me tell you what you’re missing.”

“Too late. Pink two legs is coming in.”

“The human?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Well I guess I’m going out. I’ll see you on the other side!”

Making My Fingers cry

By Emily Mai


Making daisy cranes

And paper chains

Fingernails bitten to dust

The grime in my eyes is making me blind

And the sea is making me blush


For every time

I close my eyes

I see you dancing there

The space in your ribs a mile wide

And bloody grass in your hair


So here I sit

Leaving midnight days

Behind from where I lie

With the colours the sun is bleeding

Making my fingers cry

The End

By Rowan O'Brien

My hands shake above the deep brown of her hair; the cruelly chosen colour of her casket. The lid gleams the same way her hair did when it bathed in the sun. I would brush it behind her ears when it fell across her face, blocking her eyes like clouds obstructing the sun. Now the sparkling green will be forced to stare into the bottomless black of her cold eyelids for eternity. We kept a nightlight on her side of the bed, because the dark haunted her with childhood memories. If she woke up in the middle of the night she would wake me up as well so I could hold her in my arms until she fell asleep. Now she will have to face the shadows alone as the coffin lid separates her from the living.

~A month earlier~

I retract the keys from my back pocket and slip them into the keyhole. In one arm I cradle a cluster of purple crocuses. Vienna always tells me when she was little she dreamed of a prince proposing to her on a white horse with purple crocuses braided into its hair. Though I’m not a prince and a horse is a bit beyond my price range, I can at least afford a bouquet. I hear the shower running, so I get the wine and ring set up and examine the flowers while I wait for her. After twenty minutes the water is still running, so I knock on the bathroom door and ask if she’s all right. After a couple seconds I hear a loud crash and then only the sound of the shower. I try the door and it’s locked, so I start banging on it but no one responds. I break down the door and Vienna is crumpled on the tile floor like a twisted welcoming mat. I only need a couple seconds to piece together what happened. I drop the crocuses, which I forgot I was still carrying, and remove the needle still sticking out of her arm. I preform what I remember of CPR, but now I can barely feel her heat beat. I reach into my back pocket for my phone, and remember that I left it in the kitchen. I gather Vienna in my arms and rush out the bathroom, crushing the crocuses scattered beneath my feet.

~Eight months earlier~

The power goes out right as she’s making her way from the bathroom to my bed, where I sit. It comes as a shock to her and she trips over an ill placed chair in my room. I help her up and lead her over to the bed. I leave her for a couple minutes and return with a lit candle. I put it on the bedside table and glance over. Even in the dark I can see she’s been crying, so I hesitantly ask her if she’s okay.  She says that she really likes me, like really, really likes me, and if it this is going to go any further she has to tell me something. I start to explain that she doesn't have to do anything, but she interrupts me and says that, no, she wants to. So she tells me about how she used to stay with her uncle when her parents traveled. She tells me how he would come to her room in the middle of the night, and what he would do to her in the dark. She tells me about how the dark haunts her, how she does heroin to keep the memories at bay and how she’s getting help. And then she gets really quiet and looks at me through wet eyelashes and says maybe she should go. I wonder how I ever convinced a girl like her to go on a date with me, and I just answer by folding her into my arms and kissing her on her forehead. I tell her it’s okay to be afraid of the dark because everyone fears some form of darkness. She smiles at me and says “I’m not afraid now.” I point out we’re not in the dark, and she leans over and blows out the candle. “I’m still not afraid,” she whispers, and she falls asleep encompassed in my arms.

“If I speak of Vienna it must be in the past tense, as a man speaks of a woman he has loved and who is dead.”
-Erich Von Stroheim

Putting Shadows to Bed

By Alexis Clarkson


A girl, standing
inside
her own shadow.
Skin pale
in the bathroom mirror
and eyes
a deep blue whirlpool.
She touched
the foggy mirror gently
at first, then tugged
and scratched and clawed
until she could see her
shadow clearly.
Darkened face.
Can a shadow be made
of concrete?
Looking down
into the sink, seeing
blood and razor blades,
hearing tears well.
She held
her arms out in front of her
and counted
the lines of crimson ink pads;
she wanted to know
how many times she could
possibly feel
connected to an angel.
Three surface, seven deep.
She would have rathered
six
         feet
                   under
but shadows don’t die
do they?
Hell raging in a girl’s veins
hell unleashed upon the earth
once she has escaped
Can shadows
even be saved?

Without A WArning

By Julia Pama


The young man sat at the mouth of the small earthen cave he had called home for little more than a week. He gazed upon the ashen landscape, set to dust by fallen clouds of coal and ash. Where buildings once stood proud now sat only misshapen piles of blackened rubble, lying amidst the burned corpses of unfortunate individuals caught in the blast. He watched as fires burned upon things thought long burned out and he wrapped his arms tightly around his legs, pulling them into his chest to fill the hole. Around him for as far as he could see lay the bodies of his friends, his family, his loved ones, and there was nothing he could have done. Nothing.

It hadn’t mattered anyway. It wasn’t his call. There was no way he could have stopped it, no way he could have warned the entire world of the oncoming doomsday. Perhaps if there had been more time. But there simply hadn’t been.

The young man took out the pistol he had kept in his pocket from the first spoken word of the blast. He weighed the familiar piece in his hand, considering the way it balanced so perfectly. Once more, for the last time, he glanced toward the barren landscape and was filled with regret. Bringing the gun calmly to his head, he closed his eyes. His finger slowly tightened on the trigger and when it finally clicked, he could have sworn he felt a warm soothing hand on his shoulder before the cool darkness set in.

Famous Last Words

By Sonia Gill


“I live!”

—A Roman Emperor, as his own soldiers killed him

“I am going to die.”

—A French Grammarian

“Either this wallpaper goes, or I do.”

—Oscar Wilde

“I’m bored with it all.”

—Winston Churchill

They say that the world will go out, not with a bang, but with a whimper. Not me, though. In my last moments of death, I will not remain silent. I don’t want my parents to remember me for the fight we had yesterday morning, or my best friend for the party I left her at last night. I want them to remember me for my famous last words.

Those lucky souls that leave this world with their famous last words, always seem at peace with themselves.

I am done with this world, they say.

I’ve never felt better, they exclaim.

There is blood, blood everywhere. My breaths come in short, hitched sips. My red dress is torn in more places than veins in my body; it was white yesterday.

I am not at peace. I have never felt worse. But something about famous last words kind of romanticizes death. Why remember that Humphrey Bogart weighed a mere 80 pounds at the time of his death when his last words were, “I should have never switched from Scotch to Martinis!”

Why remember that the young girl died in a dirty alleyway when her last words were more brilliant than anything she said in her entire existence?

It was funny how, when you needed them most, words escaped you. Some people have a punchy retort to greet death, or ironic wisdom—something to summarize their essence in a few short words.

I could say I greet death with open arms, but I don’t.

I could pray for God to let me go peacefully, though I don’t see what good that would do me.

I could say that I look forward to the world on the other side.

I could say whatever I want really, but if a tree falls in a forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it really make a sound?

Afterword

By Natasha Laycock


After two solid hours
of flipping, turning, and scanning,
my emotions have been sautéed
in a pan of spicy conflicts
and sweet romances.
The pages are dotted with tears
of both laughter and sadness,
and there's one streak of blood
from my paper cut.
The nice guy was killed off,
the ditzy blond got pregnant,
the quiet ginger was sent to jail,
and the protagonist lived happily ever after.
Until the sequel comes out, that is.

Colours

By Emma Rektor


In grade 1, the six year olds learn that

blue and red make purple

red and yellow make orange

yellow and blue make green

And all the colours together make brown.

I’ve never met anyone who likes brown more than any other colour.

But.

Brown is hot chocolate dotted with marshmallows

Brown is a well-used wallet, whose white wrinkles crease the leather

Brown is gravel coated snow banks, proof of spring nearly here

Brown is tree bark, rough against skin as children dare each other to climb higher

Brown is the crayon not handed out at Swiss Chalet

What would happen if the colour brown ended?

Would it fade away like mosquito bites in September

Or leave a haze, a smeared lipstick stain?

Disappear like socks in the laundry.

Leave nothing but lonely pieces.

The Destruction of Yakushima Island

By Anonymous 

Scarred, paper-white skeleton trees
Cast starving shadows as the breeze
Blows toxic remains of burned coal.
Aluminum, silicon roll
Through ancient hills. Nature, they seize.


Born from China, these poison gems
Were sent eastward to feast, condemn
The great virgin forest that is
Yakushima 

The gemmed cloud settled and turned snow
To black. The earth coughed; air sunk low
And nested in thousands of lungs
As if dying crows had dropped crumbs
On the life forces that still glowed. 

Pine trees continued to wither
Yet China kept growing bigger
As Asia’s wealthiest country.
Goodbye, nature.

And as the eastern wind blows ‘round
The world, these poisons will be found
Again, one day, at their birthplace.
For they’re the projections, the fate
Of earth to which mankind is bound. 

“When giants decide to stand, when
Giants decide to grow again,
The world shakes and is forced to face
The fact that man, the human race
Cannot become great without
First having to leave its Mother.” 

The End. For Real.

Most images courtesy of alexiuss.deviantart.com