“In Saint John, sunshine was rare. When day broke, the sky turned grey and light glared through to front steps where people huddled and smoked, to dockyards where people worked, to park benches where people slept. In the city’s peripheries––the east and west––people sat in breakfast nooks and morning rooms, and maybe the sun shone there, rising over pine-crested cliffs and frozen bays as bacon sizzled in the pan and accounts were discussed, as affairs ended in lawsuits and bitter resentment rather than fistfights and broken windows; but, in the heart, Saint John woke when the light shifted and darkness retreated behind the clouds, distant but ever-present, looming over the uneven rise of flat-top roofs.”

Saints Rest (March 2025)