✩LITERARY WORKS ✩

A collection of my writing, mostly from the last year or so.

A collection of my writing, mostly from the last year or so.

A collection of my writing, mostly from the last year or so.

✩ GRADE 9 ENGLISH ✩

Redwater Tsukumogami

The house was finished in the November of 1909, built in Redwater, Ontario. It was a two story, surprisingly stable thing, too far away from the lakes (Upper & Lower Redwater) to be eroded by them, but close enough for them to not be yearned for. It held life and humanity within its walls for years, keeping columns steady and walls patched together.
The house had been lived in long enough to know the ins and outs of humanity; what flesh would feel like as skin, what teeth felt like when they were pulled, what a voice box would feel like in its throat; speaking, sobbing, screaming.
By 1924 you could see flashes of their soul through their dirtied stained glass, the kitchen knives and the shining handle of their root cellar. They peeled off their wall patches, begged for a name and a pronoun, for a share of early breakfasts and walks to the railroad. They practiced their speech and cooking skills; stressed over how they would get a job as a railroad worker.The Redwater Sawmill was closed in 1928, and there was nothing left for the family in Redwater after. They watched as clothes were packed, as the wife left for the railroad with her children. They waited for them to come back, they waited for weeks. They waited for the kids to run through their doors, crying that they missed their beds and the pristine, sturdy columns.
They wanted the wife to come back, to put the sheets back on the beds and apologize to them, say that they were a good house, a good friend, and that they would be an excellent railroad worker. But no one had ever or would ever speak to the house.
“What do you think I am?” They seethed, taking in their unanswered prayers, the rotting walleye in the cellar, “Who do you think I am?”
They were a dead dog with too many teeth, now. A thing snapping at anything that came close, without anything but itself.They pushed up their floorboards, degraded their columns in retaliation. Threw their windows open and closed till they shattered, knocked over shelves, forced themself to sway in the wind. Creaked all day, screaming for the lake to give it a limescale cover.
They screamed so much their walls started to bleed, and they began to cry. Stalactite formed like teeth, every surface stained red and kept wet. 1947 was the year they started swallowing themself whole, held their knives and shards of stained glass close - bringing them into their insulation - and reaching down to grasp the rusty handle to their cellar.The gas pipes ruptured that winter, the one thing the house had kept intact until then, until they were too wrought with despair to fight off the freeze. Deep down they still wanted the family back, for someone to sweep up their shards of glass and hammer down their floorboards. They wanted the kids to spin around stalactite and to be comforted when they slipped on wet, red floors.
That was not an option anymore, and the house had no words left to scream as it was lit aflame, its body turning to ash before lying quietly on the burnt ground. It remained a shallow gutter of consciousness until it had a flicker of recognition in 1957 as the Redwater Water Tower was burnt down. It was then laid to final rest.

Redwater Tsukumogami
- Written in January 2024 (14 yrs old)
Made for a spoken word poetry assignment (I later performed this for my class).Tsukumoagmi are a kind of yokai in japanese mythology; objects that when neglected/forgotten for long periods of time develop souls, often growing eyes and mouths with long tongues.Some extra context about Redwater and Tidbits found in the poem:- Redwater was a town built around a request stop on the Northern Ontario Railway, and later the Redwater Sawill in the early 1900s. It has been considered a ghost town since the 1950s.
- W.J Dyston, a telegraphy operator on the railway stop, was murdered in 1909
- Walleye is a kind of fish found in the Upper Redwater lake
- The vast majority of homes in Redwater had been burnt down by the 1950s, the last structure in Redwater being the Water Tower, which was burnt down in 1957
- I chose to mention the root cellar of the house so often since the cellars are some of the only remnants of the houses of Redwater

Times Like Ours: Trans Day of Remembrance

Me and my friend walk away from dinner, and towards the vigil. We talk about worst case scenarios and if we should go up to speak. We light candles with each other. The cold is agonizing, and it’ll get worse, but we’ll stay. The speakers start, and they talk about clinics closed down, about the undocumented, about living despite it all. They talk about the 30 less than last year. People from the crowd line up to read names. It takes over an hour. We take a long moment of silence, of stillness, despite the chill in our bones.

Times Like Ours: Trans Day of Remembrance
- Written in November 2023 (14 yrs old)Part of a '100 word memoir' assignment, meant to capture a short moment/memory in an evocative way. Written about my experience at the TDOR Vigil in Ottawa (after a community dinner at Kind Space).

✩ GRADE EIGHT POETRY UNIT ✩

1. (asylum)
I [haven't] knew[d] a girl whose house was such a reminder of her own mind that when -