John looks down at the wrapped cat. He trails his finger across it like a child guessing what’s inside a present, thinking of Edwin in the window the other night. Of the little things: wrapping presents and putting nails in wood. The forest and the grass and the umbrella. His finger dips when it falls into a socket.
“It can’t be buried here.”
“What?”
“It can’t.”
“Why not?”
He pauses. “Because. It can’t” …
Bio:
Daniel Green is a PhD student at Western University. His writing has appeared in Queen’s Quarterly, the Lamp, Carolyn Smart’s Lake Effect 10, the Undergraduate Review, and the Journal of American Culture. He is the winner of the 2021 McIlquham Foundation Prize in English for his short story “Ballad of a Thin Man,” and he co-founded Quilt, which publishes academic and creative writing at Queen’s University.
[IMAGE CAPTION: Artwork by Xiaorou Fan]