Turns out the chicken was bad.

Preface: Big Sad Face

My chicken, which I was planning to roast with rosemary sprigs and lemon, smelled like an Easter egg this afternoon, when with gritted teeth I took it out of its wrapping to do the deed. You know, the one where you stuff your bare hand into its chest cavity and scrabble around for its innards... Oy. Almost enough to make me turn to veggies exclusively.

And then the Easter egg part. This was the egg you found in your backyard when you were extra small - the day after Easter. The egg whose shell you peeled back eagerly to discover the nice smooth white flesh you anticipated had turned a strange moldy green color, like that spot behind the toilet you discovered while cleaning the bathroom two weeks ago.

And the smell  . . . Alas.

Turns out the chicken was bad.

Woot! "A Time to Live" forthcoming from Existere

In "A Time to Live," a girl searches for escape in the safety of a strange city,
but she can't run from the cutting pulse of her own shame.

~~~

The story will appear in the Spring/Summer edition of Existere - Journal of Arts & Literature by York University's Vanier College.

"A Time to Live" is an excerpt from my literary Gen-Y novel STARFALL, in a which a seventeen-year-old girl and her single mother must struggle to overcome a history of sexual abuse and transience.

Excerpts of the book also appear in A cappella Zoo as "Calling Rain."