He leaves and kisses you gently in the doorway. It is a soft kiss, one that lingers longer than it was supposed to. There is the feel of his hand on your neck, your hand touching his shirt collar where fabric meets skin, and you breathe each other in.

The only proof Luke had of his accident was the scar on his left knee where a shard of metal had gashed through his skin. He usually forgot it was there, but today he was reminded as Annabelle ran her fingers over it. Girls liked scars. He had come to understand that over the years with each new relationship he found himself in.

I used to hate Sundays because there was that looming awareness that Monday was coming, which meant back to work or school and a routine that, for me, often also meant restriction. 

Now I look forward to Sundays because they've become time I get to make my own.

In Cohen’s Beautiful Losers there are three characters who all have a different relationship with their bodies: F., who is obsessed with perfecting the human body, I., who is fixated on his body's flaws, and Edith, who attempts to reclaim her self-identity through body manipulation.

[originally published here on elephant journal.]

The city isn’t built for the disabled. It’s a battleground of staircases and broken handicap buttons forcing those with temporary injuries—or long-term ones—to fight our way to our destinations.

There are a lot of people in the world that I look up to. My parents have been a huge motivating force in my life, and their own accomplishments are ones that I admire. My sisters both are ambitious and successful young women, and so many of my friends in my life are doing great things.

The Saturday before I left Montreal over a year ago now, my friends threw me a goodbye party. And by friends threw me one I mean they suggested it and then I proceeded to make a Facebook event for myself titled “au revoir Montreal.” Au revoir, of course, can also mean “goodbye for now”. 

I headed straight for the women’s washroom after passing through customs off my flight from Barcelona back home to Toronto. I hadn’t flown back into Toronto in ages and was impressed by the new machines they had to scan your landing card and passport so that you moved quickly through to baggage claim.