A Canadian Literary Journal
Agnes and True: a Canadian online literary journal dedicated to providing a place for the work of Canadian writers, both established and emerging.
A Canadian Literary Journal
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The Bench
I came to the park again today. The bench sits unobtrusively at the top of the bluff overlooking the river. It never changes, day to day or season to season, it simply sits and waits, taunting me. The doctor says that I should either approach it and make my peace with it or stop torturing myself. But I can do neither.
I’m closer to the bench than I’ve ever been, and this makes me jittery. Beyond the bench the snow swept river valley crawls towards the city skyline, stark white against dull grey. I turn away to the worn path lined with bare trees standing naked in the bitter wind.
The pathway is empty today. The rest of humanity shuns the frigid white landscape. But I couldn’t stay away. Something draws me as if a tendril of this place has knotted inside […]
Frostbite
by Helen Rossiter There is a moment between sleep and wakefulness when anything is possible. You know in that fraction of a second, before your brain clicks into gear, that you are flying or dancing with the stars, or that you are alone in a dark cavern. It’s a fragment of time when the impossible and the implausible might frighten or amuse, but don’t strike you as odd.
Somewhere Warm, With No Snow
by Heather Debling Barbara pointed to the chicken she wanted. It would have bothered her once: the wholeness of the meat, the unplucked skin, the head lolling about, the wattle—if she looked at it hard enough, long enough—still seeming to shudder. But after her trip, she would find what was once normal to be unnatural, her stomach turning at all the headless little chicks lined up in a row at the grocery store, cling-wrap worn like a second skin, tight hospital corners to hold in the juices.
