Where You’re Planted

Rain soaks the day at one hundred percent.

The old man was stabbing dirt with his pitchfork when Minka arrived at the community garden.

Uncle Claude robbed banks. Just one really, but the neighbours talked about him like he was Jesse James.

Sitting at my kitchen table, I find myself wondering whether I deserve this life—and whether this life is enough.

Yet another thing she didn’t know. How to save a duck that was trapped, flapping and quacking, in a marshy part of the lake.

Mary is certain, from the moment Delilah walks in, that she must win the new hire’s soul for Jesus.

It is mid-November, when night descends early into this valley.

The frost has knocked down the last of my verbena.

Helen squeezes the plant pot so hard it cracks and almost slices the skin of her palm.

Billows of snow break like meringues beneath us.

I rarely saw my mother without a cigarette in her mouth or one burning down in an ashtray nearby.

You are an artist.

My wealth was a barrier.

Ambrose sees True sitting there, in the dust of the parking lot.

This is the story of a tree.

I told myself I would wait until morning to write, when the house was quieter.

The worst part about weeding, I figure, has to be determining what belongs and what has to go.

The bench is hard.

Vincetoxicum rossicum, or dog-strangling vine, is a highly invasive plant alien to Ontario.

A detour in the rental car to visit her brother’s grave in Courtenay.