I learned a trick as a teenager. When you feel a mosquito on you, instead of swatting it, use your thumb and forefinger to pull your skin taut on either side of it. The mosquito can't withdraw its stinger and gorges itself until it explodes. With a little spit on a tissue, you can wipe away the blood and carcass.

Inch by inch, year upon year we rub each other the wrong way. Your devastation at my anger, our laser focus on our son. How you slept in the guest room after your mother died, how my loneliness made me awkward. We were better looking before we got fat, lost some teeth, grew turkey necks, gray hair. But like the land mass of the Pacific plate as it dives beneath the North American, you make me laugh, which can’t be faked, like being caught off-guard. Your clear sin

He was 13, three years older than me when I moved to Oshawa. He was also Shelley’s older brother, so when I went over after school, it was Bobby who’d play hockey with me in their living room, short plastic sticks, foam ball – we’d shout when we scored. We took our hockey to the streets – he’d shoot a tennis ball I’d catch with my baseball glove, block with my stick. He was first in our neighborhood to buy a 10-speed bike – boy’s style, lime green from Canadian Tire. I bo

After we crossed the Canadian border, exported and imported cars, paid taxes, made note of which crossing had nice officers, filled out...

She’d asked for me. My mother was in palliative care outside of Toronto after being diagnosed with stage 4 cancer - liver, lungs,...

Getting sober is like climbing a mountain - a daily choice, one step at a time, over and over - until weeks become months, months, years....

In the mint green hospital room, I notice every gesture of your birth family. The lilting voices, how often they pass you around, the...

At twelve, Elizabeth asked my mother about sex. Being a practical woman, she thought it best to kill two birds with one stone and so...