The gate clicked shut too loudly behind her, and I stood frozen for a moment too long. Afraid to go after her, afraid to take the time to look at what she’d passed me, I slipped down the stairs to the underground barracks and felt the way through the dank black to my bunk.
Tag Archives: Canadian Literature
in my riverbed
after half a lifetime of breaking my own heart, I find
peace among the pieces cast away
The Library of Borrowed Lives — Part 3
It was blank.
Both facing pages were completely blank. Nerves burning a hole in the pit of my stomach, I knelt and tentatively flipped to another. Still blank. I quickly thumbed through the entire second half – not a single word, symbol, or picture printed in the book.
My Top 5 Dream Publications
Every writer has a few: those legendary lit mags we dream about when hitting “submit” on Submittable. The ones we read and reread when imposter syndrome sets in. The ones that feel just out of reach, but we can’t help but try anyway.
The Library of Borrowed Lives — Part 2
No one I had ever met had ever learned to read.
And yet here they were, books by their hundreds, being shelved day after day after day by dozens of unquestioning workers happy only to have a temporary job and a roof and a meal.
Unexpected Inspiration
Trying to write in the aftermath of grief is harder than I ever imagined it would be. Good stories demand emotional resonance. Writing something worth reading requires tapping into the same well of memories and feelings where the grief resides, raw and ready to spill over.
The Library of Borrowed Lives — Part 1
In the corner of the library, behind row on row of shelves, past the dusty and the musty and the entirely disused, there is a door without a handle.
Small Town Summer Nights
It’s a summer night like a fever, sticky with sweat and verging on delirious. Every front porch swing and backyard Adirondack down the street plays host to listless bodies searching for some scrap of cool in the darkness. The cool is not forthcoming.
Jellyfish
Now I’m a bag adrift in this never-ending sea
Trying to remember how it ever felt to breathe
Darkness Lingers
All the love I’ve experienced
Has felt like pain
Like a bolt of lightning
Through a warm spring rain
Aly Writes 