Winter, TorontoBy Z. N. Zelenka
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—Still life with yaw marks.
Half-circle view through snow-covered windshields. Snowbank-jump with dog at the crosswalk. Coffee cups in gloved hands raised as magic wands, melting a path in the frozen air. Icicle-watch on the lakeshore—the water’s edge, up in arms. The water’s back, shielded with geometric murmur. A pulsating, blue balcony railing in the night sky. An April short of spring. Sorry, Not SorryBy Z. N. Zelenka
It’s difficult to say the right thing on short notice.
Bad Magic, Chapter OneBy Z. N. Zelenka
The ground puffs. Dawn brings earthy scents. A cold stream of air whooshes through the forest. Invisible people stretch their frigid limbs and sit up in their tents. Under the thin canvas of thousands of years of civilization, cramped, cold, hungry families zip themselves out into the open and look for a match to boil a clump of ice into drinking water. Their world has ended many miles from here; it has ended in two places at once as most worlds do. Now, they’re here, inside a border, inside a forest, in between the in-between. On both sides of this border, the land is the land of people who themselves have been turned into ghosts before and now they’re afraid of the ghosts of other lands. Maybe, it's not just fear but something worse too. They’ve seen the ruins in the news, and among the ruins, they’ve seen only ghosts; the dust of destruction has turned the people whose world has ended invisible in their eyes. They’ve been trained to see people only on tidy streets and in tidy buildings. And now the lines are drawn hard and there’s no crossing the lines. A spell is in place. In the forest, invisible people remember their ancient cities, a kinder climate, and a warm wind. They remember home. They’re invisible for what they’ve lost and the world keeps ending. The spell is working. Under the sofas of the tidy world, dust gathers as it always does. The night takes a life in the forest.
 Z. N. Zelenka is a writer of speculative and literary fiction and creative non-fiction and has an MA in history. Born and raised in Budapest, Hungary, she spent the last ten years in Toronto, Calgary, and Vienna, Austria before moving back to Toronto. Her writing has been previously published in filling Station. She writes under a pen name.
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