Rejection used to feel like a verdict. Since coming to Canada, something has shifted in me — maybe the confidence that comes from surviving a multitude of things, maybe just the quiet growth of living alone at seventeen. Either way, it no longer feels final. When my piece didn't get accepted into Load 3 — the magazine of my favourite ENG140 class — I was bummed. Of course I was. My first instinct was to retreat completely: I decided I wasn't going to share that piece with any

I think about the lives I almost had. Not in grand, cinematic ways — like becoming someone entirely different, or waking up in a life that feels wholly unrecognizable. It's quieter than that. Softer. It lives in the in-between spaces, in the pauses between one decision and the next, in the moments where a single choice could have rewritten everything. What if I had chosen to begin my life somewhere else: the city that once felt like a dream I could almost reach, close enough

Sometimes, in the middle of living, I realize I am already remembering. These moments in time when the only thing I want is to freeze them: not just to remember what happened, but to hold onto how it felt. The texture of the air against my skin, the softness or sharpness of it depending on the night. The sound of a familiar voice, half-lost in laughter. The quiet rhythm of walking down an empty road, where the world feels like it belongs only to us for a brief, suspended seco

There are these small moments, the ones so fleeting you almost miss them, when lives overlap in the tiniest of ways. I look out the bus window to see a red Honda at the light, the man inside finger-drumming on the steering wheel; a coffee in my hand as I exit the subway and walk past a crowd toward Union, my bag heavy on my shoulder, moving with a confidence that feels borrowed from some imagined movie scene. Every Friday morning: the bus, the subway, ten minutes of walking t

Once upon a sunny day, I finally acknowledged the existence (and the presence) of seasonal depression in my life. For months, I had grown tired of the endless comments about the cold whenever I mentioned moving to Toronto, and while I often rolled my eyes or laughed it off, those little remarks somehow managed to irritate me more than I cared to admit. I adore the snow, the way it blankets the city in a serene white landscape after a snowfall, but even that joy became fleetin