Yearning retains what she wants to forget. — Eden loves kiwis. They soften when they ripen. She remembers reading somewhere that they’re rich in vitamins which ward off colds, which is just as well since they thrive in winter. Snow absorbs sound. Air enclosed between snowflakes attenuates vibration which mutes ambient noise. …

Everyone needs someone to cover new ground. — Eden finds herself inshore a coastal gorge overlooking the Bay of Fundy. The gulf subsumes a coastal tide whose undercurrent eddies beneath. The water trickles earnestly, intent to break free although it is repressed by shodden disbelief. Shorebirds and the tidal cycle sieve what foundry buds along the sediment planes…

It’s love. Call a spade a spade. — Pecan suds trickle down Eden’s shirt. Not that anyone sees or cares. Patrons stare through her. She glares at her pint, then the cigarette butts that litter an ashtray nearby. Ava and Mia insist she needs a night out. They swear her head is in the clouds. But her heart…

Anything goes because everything comes down to nothing at all. — Eden hates this class. Captive to the minutiae of cinema studies, she follows the methodic clicks of the lecture. Each slide comes thick and fast. Her heart is heavy. Her eyes are vacant. She is no stranger to this campus and the errands of tutelage. Undergrads colour the autumn grounds…

If only those hands could talk. — Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit. Maybe we’ll be laughing about even these things in the future… The slogan should spur Eden to build a brave new world, brick by brick, but it doesn’t. People are hopeless. They endow magnates and bankrupt those who pay it forward. Those who are…

“I can’t remember the last time I’ve wanted someone like I want you.” — No one likes Eden. She’s always known it. She knows more when she eyes the labourers along the wharf. The breeze carries a lick of saltwater over the pier. Shelled wood planks cleave to a sandy dock that was once a rainbow of varnished hues. Most know it’s seen better…

Fire doesn’t create. Fire bares the ghosts within. — When Eden was eighteen, her uncle told her countless tales of life in the desert. He lived there for many years. Perfect, he said, because the people there had inhibitions. People in the rest of the world never think twice to share. To think everything, every place, everyone can be…

Zara hooks up with a runner who likes her boots. — Zara hates mornings. All the same, she figures she should be grateful for them. It’s impossible to know what you love if you don’t know what you hate. And, Zara loves the night. That’s when time trickles onward into lurid numerals, and the city comes alive with luminous panes and…

Tonight, she craves a woman’s touch. — Lola has wide hips, legs overshadowed by voluminous thighs; and a heart ribbed within a cage affixed to a column that snakes to her posterior. Every crook and crevice is alight with a flare as high as noon: incisive and wakeful by day as the moon keeps her secrets. Lola…