Transits (12 page)

Because no version of her can ever outdo the one he has created of her in his mind via his aforementioned addictions.

4.
Three Quarters Home
: She is soaking wet. He is the embodiment of a time and place that can never be recreated or reenacted, and she loves him only as a pathway, his words are connections to that nostalgia, a memory that is fading with each day passing. There are reminders; scenes in movies that make her cry inappropriately, passages in novels she underlines with a blue ball-point pen, songs in the supermarket she must willfully ignore while picking out frozen peas and canned corn.

5.
On the street where she lives
: She is soaking wet. She wonders about destiny and wonders what happens to the rest of the world when a person locked inside its pull carelessly dismisses it. She considers the notion that this is where war and famine and the outbreak of disease originate from—
that disaster is bred in the moment where lovers meant to collide begin denying
, their dismissal setting the ebb and flow and the order of things off balance, breeding violence and pestilence, murder and decay.
To dismiss destiny is to cause chaos
, she considers. And because of this consideration, she blames herself for the misery of millions, faces on the covers of newspapers, calls for donations stuffed in her mailbox and starving children on her television. Every gunshot and bank heist happens because she failed to submit to the will of fate and fall for a billion miles away.

6.
Removing her keys from her bag
: She is soaking wet. This guilt and melancholy is assuaged only by some brief flicker of hope that freewill is an impotent concept, and if they are, as he says, meant to live out their days brushing their teeth side by side at the bathroom sink, that life will simply steer her there without her knowledge.

He says: and feel like everything is perfect once again
.

7.
At the gate
: She is soaking wet. And then there is a text message, it hums in her pocket and she feels a distinct, distant ache.

He says: Sleep, wake up, repeat
.

8. She views the message, is angry now, perhaps only for today
: Angry that she is soaking wet for the cliché of love, angry that fate gives broken, impossible gifts. Angry that our hearts are incomprehensibly large, massive and gaping enough to engulf impossibilities, multiples, lives both here and there, both fictional and raw reality. Angry that while they gape and swallow, they bleed without relent, that we drown in our own ability to care about the most minute of moments. She is angry that there are messages all around her, conflicting and constant. They come to her in dreams, on streetcars, in supermarkets, begging her to run and begging her to stay. She is angry that she closes her eyes and sees two separate lives, angry that she cannot decipher experience, encode the secret languages that lead the fated elements of life.

That disaster is bred in the moment where lovers meant to collide begin denying. That beauty is bred in the moment where lovers meant to collide finally find each other's flesh.

She is soaking wet. She strips off her clothes in the front hallway of her apartment, stands naked and momentarily considers.

Sarah Mian
is certain the damp winds of Halifax blow fictional characters into her path. Her work has been published in
The Antigonish Review
and
To Find Us: Words and Images of Halifax
. This spring, a play she co-wrote will be produced by Metamorphic Theatre.

Devon Code
is from Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. He currently lives in Montréal, where he is completing a graduate degree at Concordia University. Invisible will publish Devon's first collection of short fiction,
In a Mist
, in fall 2007.

Pablo Strauss
is from Victoria and lives in Vancouver. He moved to Montréal once and Québec City twice, but eventually, always moved back west. He'll probably keep doing this until King's Café and the Gabrielle Roy Public Library are in the same city. He teaches French and English. He tries to write a little every day. He copied and stapled most of his previously published work himself.

Ian Colford
's fiction has been appearing in literary journals since 1992. In 2001 he won the H.R. (Bill) Percy Prize for unpublished novel from the Writers' Federation of Nova Scotia. His story,
The Reason for the Dream
, was selected for the 1998
Journey Prize Anthology
. He has been editor of
Pottersfield Portfolio
and served on the WFNS executive board. He is currently working on a novel titled
The Lives of Hector Tomàs
. Evidence is taken from a collection of short fiction that will be published by Porcupine's Quill in 2008.

Sue Carter Flinn
is a Halifax-based writer and journalist, and a regular contributor to the Blowhard reading series. Her website is carterflinn.ca.

Maggie Dort
is one third blood and two thirds guts. She lives in Halifax.

Jaime Forsythe
is a Haligonian living in Toronto. She is currently pursuing a Master of Fine Arts through the University of Guelph.

Wanda Nolan
lives and writes in St. John's, Newfoundland.

Sean Flinn
is a freelance journalist and author living in Halifax. He regularly reads in the Blowhard series in Halifax and is working on a novel drawing on his Estonian grandparents' arrival in Canada in 1949.

Stacey May Fowles
' writing has appeared in
Fireweed
,
subTERRAIN
,
Kiss Machine
and
Hive
. Her first novel is forthcoming with Tightrope Books in fall 2007, and she is currently working on a collection of short stories.
every other love that is happening to you right now is not this big
is an excerpt from a novel she is currently collaborating on with the very talented Thomas Hill, an American writer living in Moscow. Find out more at
www.staceymayfowles.com
.

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