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Clarity in Uncertain Times

Where We Stand as a Canadian and International Magazine

Edmonton, April 14, 2025: In light of the ongoing social and political challenges in the world, SeaGlass Literary reaffirms its core values and unwavering commitment to justice, inclusion, and human rights. As a platform dedicated to amplifying diverse voices and fostering meaningful dialogue, we believe literature is inherently political, and we stand firm in our responsibility to advocate for positive change.

We are proudly Canadian-born and owned and hold steadfast to our values.

We stand for equity, inclusion, and dignity for all people. We affirm the right to love and exist freely, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, race, or ethnicity. We believe in a world that is accessible for all. We advocate for bodily autonomy and gender equality. We uplift marginalized voices and reject all forms of discrimination. We actively promote diverse perspectives in literature. We support religious freedom, self-determination, and humanitarian causes. 

Our hearts go out to those in Palestine, Ukraine, and the rest of the world who are suffering in unjust conditions due to the egregious actions of oppressing nations. We recognize migration as a human right and believe that people cannot be illegal. We are against all forms of genocide and neo-nazism. We believe violence is never the answer and should never be used by a government for fear mongering.

We support facts, research, and public health initiatives. We believe in the power of knowledge and books and support everyone’s freedom to learn and read. 

We support the separation of church and state and religious freedom; belief and non-belief should never be weaponized against others. Empathy and ethics are at the core of what we do and hope to spread compassion and humanity throughout the world. Finally, we believe in the sovereignty of nations, which includes Canada, Greenland, Palestine, and the Ukraine as they are not for sale or taking.

We believe that writing is inherently political, and for many of our volunteers, authors, and readers, their very existence has become politicized. We refuse to be silent or neutral in times of injustice. Our commitment to advocacy, unity, and truth will never waver.

SeaGlass Literary will never be pressured into sacrificing the morals and ethics we have upheld since day one. We remain a space for open discourse, community building, and transformative storytelling—because literature is not just about escapism; it is a force for awareness, empathy, and action.

For more information, interviews, or inquiries, please contact: Makayla Anderson at pr@seaglasslit.org

This message has been approved by the board of SeaGlass Literary for public distribution. No contents of this letter may be changed or altered in nature. To view the full and original document, please use the button below.

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For as much as she can stand

Written by Tia

What happens to the mind,
When one floats above the Earth,
Witnessing our mother’s magnanimous beauty?

When does her beauty overcome, 
the boundaries of human-made geographical lines?

What does it feel like to be free
From the politics of patriotic existence?
-These concepts that cloud the brains of us tiny people down here.

Our Lilliput minds.

What does it feel like,
To float in space and realise,
That we never listen to
Our mother’s pleas?

What does it take to realise that she continues to forgive?
-paying the price of bleeding from within.

As our lilliput nations continue to hug,
Submerge themselves in political fantasies-
Fantasies of power,
Destruction,
Greed-

How much longer

Should our mother whimper,
Sob in silence, while she continues to stand
For us?

How much longer?

The State of Our Nationalism

Written by Omyra Lakhanpal

In today’s times, patriotism takes numerous forms – some that elevate society and others that cast shadows. At its best, it nurtures pride in national progress, honours shared history and builds a sense of unity among citizens. At its worst, it becomes a performance, where showing loyalty outweighs living it with sincerity. What was once rooted in genuine devotion and respect is now too often packaged, politicised and weaponised. In this process, patriotism risks losing its depth, serving instead as a convenient mask for vested interests under the banner of nationalism.

The politicisation of patriotism reflects both its potential and its drawbacks. On one hand, governments have used national events such as Republic Day and Independence Day to highlight achievements in science, infrastructure and social welfare, reminding citizens of how far the country has come since independence. Flag-hoisting ceremonies in schools, tributes to freedom fighters and televised addresses by the President and Prime Minister have all helped reinforce a sense of collective national identity and democratic pride. However, there are occasions where political leaders shift the narrative, sometimes adopting a sanctimonious tone that turns these celebrations into platforms for party-driven agendas. 

In parallel to this, the commercialisation of patriotism has also been channelled by the government and corporations into opportunities that amplify national pride on a grand scale. Independence Day sales and public campaigns often use the national flag and tricolour themes to bring citizens together in celebration. National holidays now spark vibrant activity across e-commerce platforms, malls and fast-food chains, which introduce tricolour-themed food, limited-edition merchandise and incandescent social media campaigns. While critics sometimes worry about over-commercialisation, these initiatives can be viewed as creative ways of keeping national symbols visible and engaging younger generations in fresh and meaningful ways.

Acts carried out under the name of patriotism have sometimes been misinterpreted, leaving citizens disheartened when fervour spills over into violence or confrontation. However, the government has consistently emphasized that true patriotism lies in eulogizing the values of altruism, harmony and respect that defines the freedom struggle. By steering public discourse away from mercurial extremes and towards unity, the state continues to encourage citizens to channel their pride into constructive actions whether through service, civic responsibility or contributions to national development. In this way, patriotism is shaped not as a coercive force, but as a positive, voluntary sentiment that strengthens democracy.

What the framers of the Constitution once saw as a unifying force is now, at times, redirected for political advantage, commercial profit or even coercion. Such shifts risk reducing patriotism to a tool of exclusion or opportunism. Yet, its positive side is still visible- in government programs that honour freedom fighters, in investments that drive national progress and in the strength of India’s democracy, which continues to inspire pride among its citizens. Patriotism, then, is neither entirely noble nor entirely corrupted: it remains a breathing idea, with the power to both unite and divide. The real task is to create expressions of national pride that emphasize inclusivity and service, while staying alert to its misuse as a divisive or self-righteous weapon.

Hopeless Cause

Written by Vanshika Srivastava

The wine intervened before something broke,
I left the chair, before your I told you so.
I never once had to believe in your faith,
But that was my heart’s aching wish.

I had no choice, you left this mark 
On the face of my cracking laugh.
I pined and pined,
Learned to love from wrong to right 
Yet my fairytale was still a hopeless cause.

What do I say,
To that little princess 
Who once laid her head on the pillow,
Dreaming and wishing of that one fate, 
Her fate.
How do I look into those two eyes, 
Still flickering alight with hope and joy, 
That it was never in the cards.
And now her laugh is the echo 
Of the tale of a beautiful girl,
Who drowned in the fragments of her own long lost dreams, 
Her hopeless cause.

With a Glass of Milk and a Choco Chip Cupcake, I write.

Written by Tia

The air around me envelops itself with an illusory sense of stillness, like water floating, unmoving. Nowhere to head to and nowhere to go back, this water is floating, frozen, in its present state. 

The clock keeps moving. Days keep passing. My mobile phone keeps blowing up with news headlines of infrastructure being hit, debris falling, people outside this bubble of safety in which I am confined, dying.

Civilians losing lives with dead birds falling from the sky.

I witness. My mind races. My body is stuck in a vigilant state. 

I am trying to be as alright as I can be. Jogging on the treadmill of this present that keeps changing its pace every minute.

I am trying to be as good as I can be in this uncertain pause between the present and future. 

But the real question is: 

Do I deserve to be in this bubble? 

Do I deserve to be promised safety?

Helplessly, I watch chaos unfold while promises of defence and safety blind me  from the political truths of this world.

I wonder if this was always the case – the gilded cage of gatekept opportunity which my privilege gives me. 

I wonder if I was always blinded from the reality that hid behind money, glamour, safety, media, and praises. 

I wonder if I was always inside a bubble.

I wonder if the war is cracking it. 

Blood is flowing beyond the expanses that my naked eye can see. Explosions are growing louder, beyond the decibels my ears can hear. 

I know thousands are being sacrificed. I can feel it.

I can feel it in the gaps and pauses of words that string reassurances together, keeping everyone quiet and steady. I can feel the chaos overflowing in the curated words I see on my screen – words crafted to not worry my nerves.

Even if everything is alright, nothing is.

Disaster is ensuing. 

Systems are breaking down, in the form of glass bubbles forming cracks, holding themselves together save they shatter into tiny pieces over us.

Who pays the price for war?

Truly.

Is it statistics of economic growth and infrastructure?

Is it the money being drained away in the use of weaponry?

Or is it… children?

Children – of all living forms.

Their families. Their generations.

Their lives.

Their promise of hope.

Their right to safety.

Is that perhaps the price for war..?

Even when war lurks around this bubble I am in, and uncertainty hugs my body, I can still get myself a glass of milk and a choco chip cake to have.

In fact, I have been promised  more.

But.

Is it so difficult for everyone to be promised their glasses of milk and a choco chip cupcake?

Is it?

I do not think so. 

almost-mother

Written by Zoe Younessian
T.W.: Implied miscarriage

You write obsessively of motherhood & only 
the tragic kind. The kind people ignore or sweep
under a windowsill to mourn tomorrow.
Sunday mornings, you skim articles about women
whose sole tragedies are absence. Swallow
the rising pain — there’s been no loss, no death,
nothing except the life you’ve always known.
Blank pages, black coffee, birds fading out of view.
One robin built a home so close to yours that 
from your window you could count five eggs
speckled with sky, & every day you drank them in
as if they could fill the hollow in your belly, the notebooks  
devoid of love sonnets. They couldn’t; there was a storm.
What you remember now is how much you longed 
to watch the hatching, how easily you made a god of
your animal. You loved that robin like a dog would. You loved
like a dog well-versed in long waits, in strong winds. In 
flying back, worn, storm-dazed, to a home full of nothing.

Hungry Ghost Part 4

Written by Holly Wilcox Routledge

The train wasn’t crowded, in the end. There were only a few stragglers coming home from closing or late-night shifts, carrying old shopping bags crowded with reusable water bottles and lunch boxes, backpacks ceremoniously slung over their shoulders with laptop chargers snaking out and coiling around the straps. They sat scattered across the plastic seats, staring at their phones, the neon glow catching in the frames of their glasses, until they became glowing white squares on tired faces, somehow making them more withdrawn than they already were. Others simply leaned back against the windows with their eyes closed, only opening them to jerk awake at the announcement of their station, collect their things, and then pass through the open doors, disappearing between the folded open doors and map stand on the station platform. 

The train whirred through the stations, quietly slipping into Chinatown MRT with a cold announcement from the tannoy. I got up and out onto the empty platform without a word, my trainers tapping against the cold tiles the only sound that reverberated across the station at this time of night. I was halfway up the escalator when the doors hissed closed, and the train stuttered out of the station at the sound of the departure alarm. There was the churn of the escalators rotating upwards, the hum of the AC, and nothing else. 

I caught the dark outline of someone sitting behind the large advertisement plastered across the glass walls of the staff information counter, the muted red of the SMRT uniform only just visible, but as I got closer, whoever it was vanished into the back office. The door was slightly ajar, and even from where I was, I could make out the small sliver of computer monitors lined up neatly on desks, the sharp black edge of the CCTV television systems. It didn’t look like there was anyone in there either. The whole place had the air of a recently vacated house, the final pieces of furniture that were too heavy to be carried away by the owners waiting for the movers that would inevitably bring them to their final destination. 

The stillness only seemed to exist in the underground depths of the station. As soon as I was within a metre of the station exit I neededto leave, I could hear the distant rumble of human noise: the sounds of dozens of footsteps walking over the stone floors, the industrial sounds of restaurants operating and serving, and the buzz of hundreds of human voices speaking all at the same time, compressed down into a single, contained area. As I made my way up the escalator, I could even begin to smell the faint whiff of burning paper. 

The exit was churning with people, emerging from the mall to the immediate left of the station exit, or coming and going down the street that led towards the shops and restaurants that sprawled around the MRT exit like coral growths emerging from a reef. The cool white light of the shopping mall spilled from the ceiling to the floor windows on the bottom floor, around the luxury items on display shelves, so that by the time the rays managed to reach the crowd of strangers passing by, they had already passed into the shadows. 

Now and again, the bright, coloured lights of the neon restaurant signs roved over the body of a person walking by, sudden flashes of light clashed against a piece of metal or jewellery, so bright it hurt to look at. Standing at the very edge of the exit, watching everyone pass by, I didn’t know what else there was to do tonight. I could go and have dinner at a restaurant, maybe even play it risky and have a few drinks whilst I was there before staggering back home. Maybe I’d see if I could find a midnight showing of a film somewhere, or stop by one of those twenty-four-hour Don Don Donki and mooch around, going over the items marked down for discount for an hour or two. Or I could stand here, for hours and hours, watching the lights burst off of people, watching the crowd grow smaller and smaller as the time passed by. 

I was only delaying the inevitable after all. When you know that sleep won’t be there for you, that the only dream you’ll encounter will be the same as it was yesterday, the same as it will be tomorrow, it seems to leech something out of you. Life here was a solitary existence long before he started appearing in my dreams. 

But I think you already knew that, didn’t you? It’s why you’re here, after all. Don’t worry. It won’t be much longer now. I’ll explain why you’re here. Soon. 

That night, I went back to my apartment. There was no point staying awake much longer. I had an afternoon shift the next day, and wanted to be well-rested for it when I started. I had a couple more days’ work before I got my days off from the hotel—true days off, this time—and I wanted to savor as much sleep as I possibly could. At least, as well as I could. 

Festivals or holidays were never particularly hard for me to handle. I walked by stalls and shops every day of the year, rain or shine, overcast or sunny, here in Singapore and everywhere else on the planet I had been to, without ever once finding myself feeling a kind of emotional tug at the decorations or items I saw. If I went out to eat in Little India for Deepavali, the sight of families gathered together to eat at the restaurants, everyone pressed into seats, wearing new clothes, exchanging and catching up on all the events they had missed out on, stirred nothing in me. I ordered my food, plugged in my headphones, and watched or listened to whatever film or TV series I had missed lately. A buzzing would occasionally pierce through the background, through the veil I had stashed myself away in, the only sign that I was not where I wanted to pretend I was not. 

The same was true of the nights during the Hungry Ghost festival. I walked through Chinatown, the alleys and roads so full of people that at times I could barely see over their heads to look into the shops and restaurants I passed, feeling nothing. Not even mild irritation at how slow it would take me to reach home. It was the reverberating echo of noise ringing through me and nothing more. I never felt alone. But I never felt like I was in company either. I was merely passing through, another figure cutting through crowds to their final destination. I could be anyone, about to do anything. They had no idea who I was, where I came from, or what I had just finished. I had no one there waiting to catch a glimpse of me, or who would be pleased if they did. 

I walked on towards the Buddha’s Tooth Temple, cutting through a gang of middle-school girls who were chatting about something on the set of steps near the mall complex next to the

temple. They were still wearing their school uniforms, and their regulation backpacks lay in a pile next to them, identical save for the glittery, multi-coloured keychains that hung off their straps and zips. They must be waiting for their families to come and collect them. 

The area in front of the complex was buzzing, the getai stage devoid of a lead singer as the band members in the background tuned and fiddled with their instruments, the neon stage lights roaming over the empty first row of chairs. I stood on the corner and watched the scene unfold. I wondered how many people were in the crowd tonight. 

I turned and made my way down the length of the temple, the electronic twinge of a guitar being tuned slowly fading into the night behind me as I walked further and further away from Chinatown. Outside of the main area, it was quiet. Now and again, I would catch a small glimpse of light from the red steel drums as people burnt gifts for the ghosts, but the night was still and sure. In a way, it felt reassuring.

By the time I reached my apartment complex, only a few of the windows were dark and bottomless, with most glowing dark orange and yellow above the bright white lights of the void deck. Red lanterns hung from doorways, lit, and their red lights grew stronger and stronger with every step I took closer to the complex, like anti-aircraft lights flashing alone in a still night sky. 

The smell of burnt offerings reached me before their voices did, the soft twinge of charred paper and ink, along with the sweet waft of joss sticks and incense. There was a barrel right at the edge of the void deck, dark red and metal, blazing with the fire as people poured their gifts to the ghosts in, one after the other after the other. Ash blew up into the air now and again like a strange kind of snowfall, with people hastily shaking their heads and clothes free from where it landed on them. 

Did he have offerings sent to him? Could anyone still remember him at this point? Did anyone? 

Some aunties were chatting in low, hushed tones by the elevator, but dropped into silence as I came around the corner. Pressing the button to summon it, I stood facing the silver doors, my reflection smudged, my features round, undefined blobs. 

They remained silent until the doors began to close. As they came within inches of each other, their voices started back up again. The back windows of the elevator were made of heavy plastic and were clouded with age, dented, and scratched. In it, my eye sockets loomed, dark and hollow, the rest of my face appearing like land surrounding two deep lakes. The elevator rose, and through the clouded plastic, I could watch Chinatown suddenly drop away beneath me, like I was flying through the air.

The elevator came to a stop, and the doors parted with a chime. I was at the level of my apartment. There was nobody in there anxiously awake to see where I was, and the lights would be turned off. There was nothing else for me to do. 

As I left the elevator and glided down the corridor to my apartment, as though coming from a memory, I could hear the first notes of an electric guitar as someone began to sing.

As the Silence Spoke

Written by María Juliana Ramírez Cabal

The moon hangs between us,
a pale wound that neither will name.
You stand with your hands behind your back,
as the night holds its breath.

Once, we spoke to fill the silence.?
Now, silence speaks for us;
gentler, but crueler.
Because it knows what we’ve become.

Two men, two ghosts, two aching shapes.

The moon does not pity us.
It only reminds me of your eyes,
And how they used to meet mine.
But now that distance has become our language:
One I try to speak.
But every word tastes like winter.
And the cold’s already at my feet.

You shift your weight
as if the ground itself were breaking.
So we stand there,
pretending the moon is enough;
pretending that wonder
can replace what we lost.

For a moment,
it almost does.

On Being 21

Written by Subhashree Pattnaik

Once, I was seventeen and young at heart, thinking that I would be young forever. But two years from now, I will be twenty-three and I always think of the feeling that lingers every now and then. I will never be young like that again, even though my youth – half wild and unregretful –  is not much aged. But I was seventeen once and invincible. I think now that when they say you can be eternally young at heart, they construct a collective myth.

That’s what I do: think a lot. My thoughts often dance along the terrible edge of adulting. Most of my independence is made up of this very process of thinking that keeps me stuck between the instant and extreme polarities of an adult life. Twenty-one is full of polarities. I know this because it is a shared experience among people of this age: you have just left your youth and the horror; a cloud of a long, consistent future floats in front of you. There is a contradictory urge to chase after it and then chase it away. They are both very different terms, you see. Impulses that reflect on the very polarity of the emotional experience. 

Modifying Shakespeare’s question – “To Be, or Not to Be”, I wish to ask “To Do or Not to Do”. From an exhausted heart and mind, I can truthfully say that my ability to do something is a dead lot of passion. A passion that once seemed possible to be effortlessly performed. I say I am passionate, but thing I have realized is that passion also requires an effort to keep oneself burning,p performing and doing what one wishes to do.

Doing something at this age, where I have free will and passion, does not come easy either. Am I lazy? Is it too difficult? No. The difficulty arises from the probability that something might go wrong. It is, in fact, too much to handle when you are just learning how to handle yourself in the first place. And am I too lazy to handle myself? Maybe. Sometimes. 

It is a subconscious fear that births itself as one’s teens fade away. Because when you turn twenty-one, you suddenly turn resentful and unable to forgive, not just others but also yourself. The harshest judgment is a result of your own mocking shadow and a questioning reflection. Their silent critiques just add on to the awkwardness of making mistakes at the grand age of twenty-one. At this age, you become more aware of the social conditioning that you had rebelled against all throughout your life. The past tense does not refer to the cessation of the subjective young force, but rather the fact that retaliation now comes in a different form. You retaliate against the very social forces that control you directly. You learn truths that undo your full understanding of a singular aspect. In the bustle of it, your innocence becomes used up and disappears

Sometimes, it becomes difficult to even make coffee, which was something that kept you going for a while back. Should I have this much coffee? Is this dependency an obstruction to the self;  a manipulation tactic and a romanticization of capitalistic consumption? Or is it a colonial habit I have inculcated through years of generational habituation? Or is it just coffee? Can I do it without coffee? But do what exactly? There is so much to do at this age, especially when I have just left the house of memories.

My parents are getting old and my family waits for me. At times,  conversations are full of love and other times, they are rather forceful moves so as not to appear distant and tired. There is a need to do something as soon as possible. Sitting idly is too much of a pressure when performance is more of a subjective than an objective demand. Some desires and yearnings dangle and dance. There are things yet to do, never finished, never on time. Being twenty-one is a state of emergency. To do or not to do? How to? When to? 

I was seventeen once and invincible. I wanted to be seventeen forever. Now, the hangover is gone.

Stuffed Duck On Trial

Written by alarminglytired

They sat me on the witness stand, 
a stitched-up beak, a cotton chest. 
A white duck held in trembling hand— 
the one on whom they blamed the mess. 

“You cracked the glass, you tore the thread, 
you watched the paintings lose their hue.” 
I blinked with eyes of black instead, 
too soft to fight, too small for truth. 

They said I ruined all they made, 
that I had danced through ash and flame. 
But I just lay there, gently frayed, 
a toy too still to earn the shame. 

They called me selfish, cold, untrue, 
a monster in a feathered skin. 
But I was made to comfort you— 
not wear the weight of all your sin. 

If this is what they want to hear,
then let them stitch the tale in tight.
Three years clean, but now I fear
they’d rather see me lose the fight.

If this is what they need to say—
that I’m the one who broke it all—
then let them throw my name away,
and watch me shrink, and watch me fall. 

I had a marvelous time, they claim,
committing crimes I never knew.
Now I’m the one who wears the shame—
a white duck, judged and blamed by you.

Hungry Ghost Part 3

Written by Holly Wilcox Routledge

T.W: Allusion to an animal injury and imagery of an animal injuring itself. Mentions of muscle and tissue.
You shouldn’t think I have this attitude because I hated working in hotels, or working with people. If I hated working with people (which, quite frankly, was just a way those who had a hatred of people outright attempted to disguise their true feelings) I would have chosen a field to go into that would keep me away from them as much as possible, and let me live a solitary existence. It’s an easy mistake to make. You’d be surprised how many people manage to convince themselves that their own reaction or discomfort with humans can be put aside to pursue something for the sake of money. I’d seen it in hotels, I’d seen it in cafes, I’d seen it in schools and hospitals and churches and homes; beyond all existence on the waking human world, I’d heard it, felt it in every dream, a visceral, bone-deep emotion that pulsated deep within, a wound that festered but was never given care, until it grew, open and rotten in the dark of night, letting me see what the sleeper wished they never could know. Or maybe, they did know; they just knew that they had to sit alongside it instead of revealing it. 

I went to hotel school after I graduated high school, a local one just forty-five minutes away from my parents home, which I could easily reach by bus and train. , It was the perfect location.  I didn’t need to worry about getting up too early and making a mad scramble to get a train that only came every so often, or run like hell once class was over to try and get on the last train of the day. I could, if I felt so inclined, go out to the pub near the school and enjoy drinks late into the night with my classmates and still be able to catch a train back home. If I brought my bicycle with me, I could bike—albeit, in a very wobbly line—to the bus station near my house. Some nights, I forwent public transport entirely and biked the full forty-five minutes back home. Sober, of course. I never bicycled whilst under the influence. I was sensible like that. 

The hotel school was relatively straightforward. We studied the basics of hospitality and hospitality management in a classroom environment for the first six months, before we started the hands-on part of the course. This involved working for a local hotel for twelve months, each of us being interspersed in one of four different departments before moving into the next after three months. It was supposed to give us a greater idea of the day-to-day goings-on  behind the scenes of a hotel as well as encouraging us to explore different options in the hospitality field. 

Maybe it was a nice way of tactfully telling those who wouldn’t make it to the back office that they and their talents deserved to be elsewhere; ‘Look, you don’t have the computer skills to go back of house, so you can kiss that dream away. But you’re much better working with people, so you should go into the restaurant side of the hotel, and you should get much more out of it there! What do you say we sign you up for all those restaurant courses once the year is up?’ 

There was an overall sense of illusion that most of our teachers wore when we reported to them during our time at the hotel, the kind of endless energy that came into trying to convince a bunch of teenagers that it would be oh so cool to become a restaurant manager instead of the high paying job they’d set their sights on. A kind of tight grin that they wore when we told them of our displeasure with the managers, supervisors and higher-ups in the hotel, who seemed far

more interested in making us squeeze money out of visiting guests than encouraging us to grow into the next generation of hoteliers. 

I was in my final year at the school, just two weeks shy of finishing off my studies, when it emerged that the teacher who ran the practical course was the adopted brother-in-law of the hotel owner. We were all paid for working in the hotel, of course, and had been constantly reassured that our work experience there would be well-paid for, since the hotel wasn’t going to risk officials getting involved and sniffing around; but, it seemed the teacher had been taking a nice little slice of our earnings in exchange for sending us to that hotel and that hotel only, starving any of the other hotels in the area of gaining any new workers, or possibly training reliable staff for themselves. 

People went ballistic, of course. People felt they’d lost out on opportunities elsewhere, with different styles of hotel management, with different experiences. The teacher resigned out of shame. But by that point, I was too tired to care whether or not I could have had a different experience at another hotel. I had wanted to snap and bite at anyone who came near, tell them to scram and leave me alone, so I didn’t raise too much of a fuss. I was already planning on leaving that town as fast as I possibly could and didn’t want anything that could possibly hold me back or draw the process out. I graduated, collected my diploma, and started to make my plans on which city I should move to to put my degree to use and start getting as much cash as I possibly could. 

That was what it was all about, at least. Around a month after the scandal broke, they held the career fair in the canteen of the school. Usually, it featured table after table of hotels looking for others to join their ranks, with maybe a few other administrative businesses there to tempt any stragglers who weren’t feeling so optimistic about a hotel career into switching careers—and four months earlier in the year. As it was, due to what had happened, the overall attitude towards the industry had changed and the administrative staff decided that it was probably a good idea to give more opportunities to the students. That year, they had stalls for business management and administrative work alongside the usual hotel stalls, which boasted all the staff benefits and perks of choosing them above anyone else. 

I’d patrolled the canteen, eyeing up the offerings, weighing it all out in my mind. I’d joined hotel school for the express purpose of getting out of town, with money only coming in close second in importance. But after what had been revealed, maybe it was time for a change of scenery. Maybe go into another industry that would get me out of here. It could be anywhere else in the country, operating out of a shack and involved doing nothing more than watching paint dry, but so long as it was anywhere else, it would do. The weeks leading up to the fair had been nothing but disaster after disaster whilst I worked non-stop, and the more I had to think about the future, the more my mind seemed to turn in on itself, chasing the same thoughts over and over again, until every second thought was that I had to leave. Like an animal that had gotten a leg caught in a trap, with the only option left for freedom gnawing the limb off, I contemplated how I was going to leave.

At that moment, looking at the options, I was struck by an agonising wave of the realisation that  my dream was just out of reach unless I managed to make the right choice. I had thought I had done that a year ago when I chose hotels, but the revelation of the scandal only made the jaws of the trap sink deeper into the tissue and muscles. If it had snapped clean through bone, I would have a way to leave, albeit, in shock and pain. I’d have to start all over again, but I would be able to leave. But what would prompt the jaws to snap shut? Or would I have to chew and chew, around flesh, spitting out blood and tissue, to find my freedom? 

The thought of going into business administration or any other admin role made me want to scream. So many of them were in towns adjacent to my own and the possibility of being sent back because I knew the area better was high. I knew nothing about management or administration skills outside of a hotel environment, either. If I couldn’t find something here, I had no other choice than to go  to a hotel within the town, or potentially nearby. 

As I thought about it more, under the woollen sleeves of my jumper, the scars that ran up my upper arms seemed to throb with each step. The plasters I’d hastily put on just two days prior were catching on the fabric every now and again and the constant tugs were only adding to the overwhelming thoughts that were chasing after each other. 

I tried to focus on what I was seeing in front of me,on anything other than the small flashes of pain that fizzed with every step I took—anything other than the memories of the night before last, running through the stone path in the dark, running into the depths of the night. 

“If anything”, a dark voice said snidely, “That should motivate you all the more to find a way out of here.”

Where to next? Where to next? What would get me out of here? Which one of you in this room was going to help me escape? 

I scoured over the pamphlets for a computer software company that seemed to be stressing they would teach us any particular skills regarding development, giving a small nod to the nervous looking representative standing behind the table, before moving to the next one. It was covered in brochures for hotelier training and pamphlets for wine tasting and other luxury skills. I looked up to see who the owner of the stall was and was surprised to see a foreign man in a fancy suit with a pin in the shape of two golden keys on his lapel. 

Funny. We didn’t often get foreigners here. I barely knew anyone who talked about wanting to go overseas. If he was surprised by my staring, he didn’t show it. 

Instead he had beamed and offered a polite greeting and an enquiry about what it is I was looking for. He spoke with only a small trace of an accent and when he spoke, he pulled up different pamphlets and went through all the benefits on them. I could barely pay attention to the benefits as I thought about the situation I was in over and over and over. Did I go to another post-graduate course? Did I go to a university and study something there? And where was I

going to get the money for that? Where was I going to find the money to afford a place, what job would I have to work to get that? I already had a certain amount saved up, but would that be enough? How much longer would I have to work here before I could finally get out? 

And all the while, the scars itched and throbbed. 

The man was saying that my hotel background seemed pretty solid and the work experience I must have accrued here at the school would make it easy for me to get into any other major hotel. Though, given what he’d heard about what happened, maybe I wasn’t feeling up for a career in hotels; but, if I did, hospitality offered the chance to go around the world and work in any place that would accept me. This included places where I didn’t have to worry about visas. It was, after all, how he had been able to work and travel.It had given him the opportunity to explore the world, even though he had had to learn two other languages to be able to do it. 

‘Are you good at languages?’ He had asked. 

‘I’m okay with them.’ I didn’t really know it at the time, but I would turn out to be quite adept at languages. Then again, you probably become adept when they’re your key to getting the hell out of somewhere. 

He nodded and ran his hand through his hair, which was pulled into a small blonde ponytail, the end perfectly curved, so whenever he turned his head, the overhead light in the gym made it gleam like freshly washed wheat. ‘You should continue on with hospitality, I think. Learning a language is a great way to stimulate your mind, and you learn even better when you’re on the job and having to think on your feet.’ 

‘Uh-huh.’ It sounded an awful lot like the kind of stuff the language department at my old school had tried to shove down our throats every year to encourage more people to pick up an extra language, but I was feeling generous. ‘How many languages do you know?’ 

‘Oh, about three, fluently.’ He grinned and his eyes squeezed so tightly that crows feet spread out from their edges, even though he couldn’t have been older than his mid-twenties. ‘But I pick up more here and there. I think it’s something that happens when you get involved in other cultures in hotels, you start picking bits up here and there to make sure that you can communicate with everyone.’ 

‘I see.’ I looked down at some of the pamphlets that covered the table, showing smiling hotel workers in fancy blazers pointing out things on computer screens to smiling customers. They were written in English, Mandarin and Japanese. I picked up one of the English language brochures. ‘Whereabouts are you from? I can hear you have an accent.’ 

‘Oh, I’m from Australia.’ He said, ‘But I’ve been in Japan for the last three years.’ ‘Where in Australia?’

‘I’m from a place called Brisbane, it’s on the East coast of the country. I came from a farm in rural Queensland, where my parents bred sheep.’ 

That caught my attention. I looked up at him. ‘A farm?’ 

‘Yep.’ He grinned. ‘Kind of like the ones you guys have out here.’ 

‘Did you leave Australia three years ago?’ 

‘No, I was in England before that, and I spent some time in Canada as well before I decided to come here. I’ve always liked Japan and Japanese culture though, so I knew I always wanted to live here. It took me about a year and a half to learn the basics of Japanese and get my writing up to speed, but wanting to be here gave me encouragement.’ 

My heart was beginning to race. England. Canada. Australia. They were so far away from here I couldn’t even imagine how long the journey would take. My hands were beginning to tremble. The scar began to throb. ‘What was it about Japan that made you want to come here?” 

How could you want to be here? How could you possibly want to live in this town? How could this world here be anything close to how wonderful the rest of the world could be? 

‘Well, I always wanted to climb Mount Fuji,’ he said, ‘And I’ve always loved Japanese food, but if I’m being honest, I think I just wanted something different, a different type of living, in a totally different country, if that makes any sense. I always just wanted to live anywhere other than home.’ 

It didn’t really matter why he wanted to come to Japan. I didn’t really give a shit about what he loved about it so much. He could have told me he loved Gundam, or Japanese literature, or geisha, or skiing. All I could focus on was that he wanted the same thing I wanted, and here he was; in the position I always wanted to be in. 

I could feel the jaws of the trap beginning to winch close. I didn’t need to chew any further. I could hear the machinations of it all beginning to slip into place. I had spent so much time in hotel school, through the industry, it would be a waste to go elsewhere, start over again from scratch when I could plow ahead with what I knew and take a risk to go abroad. 

‘Tell me how you did it.’ I said. ‘Tell me how I can do the same.’