On the island of Newfoundland on the southeast tip of the Avalon peninsula in a nearly vacant fishing outport called Beacon’s Lift, there’s a church on the hill that looks out over the whole place and across the North Atlantic. The tide is high, the air is damp and diagonal, and Gord’s square pink house stands its ground like it has for more than a century. But if you were to place your hand on the wall in Gord’s front room, the one with a wood stove and a worn leather daybed and a gilded framed picture of the Sacred Heart, a smaller framed picture of the Angelus, a pair of wool socks hanging over the stove; if you placed your hand on the wall, a stubborn cold would shoot through you, stand up the hair on your arms and neck, shiver your scalp. The howl of the wind through the beams of that house could be straight from the throat of something relentless. And it’s no wonder. It’s no wonder they are always saying the rosary in these parts.
From where did this piece tumble? This bleached face, these bleached teeth with zero minutes. She looks delighted, this one, but I don’t believe her, not for a second. She’s trying to record me, but she’s not looking through the viewfinder. All around her are signs of decay, of rolling right along, of crunchy gossamer underfoot, yet her concern is her teeth.
The new growth appears propped and positioned, like a stand for one of Nan’s fancy plates. The ones she dusts tenderly as if they were dolls.
Fresh, all the same.
Faded, but fresh from flight.
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Sara Power is a storyteller from Labrador and a former artillery officer in the Canadian Forces. She completed a Master of Fine Arts in Creative writing at the University of British Columbia. Her writing has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies including Best Canadian Stories 2024. She was a finalist for the RBC/PEN Canada New Voices Award, and received a National Magazine Award nomination in the fiction category. Sara’s fiction has won awards from The Malahat Review and Riddle Fence, and has been a finalist at The Toronto Star, The New Quarterly, Prairie Fire, and Fiddlehead. Sara’s first book, Art of Camouflage, is a collection of stories featuring a cast of girls and women caught in the military’s orbit. Originally from Labrador, Sara now lives in Ottawa.
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Image courtesy of Angeline Schellenberg.
The Litter I See Project 