Alicia Elliott
is a graduate of York University's Creative Writing program. Her writing has appeared in the anthologies
TOK 5: Writing the New Toronto, Initiations: Selections of Young Native Writing
and, most recently,
Women in Clothes
. Her short story “Across the Barricade” won Enbridge’s Aboriginal Writing Challenge and was published in
Canada’s History
. She writes, reads and worries she will one day die in Brantford, Ontario, where she currently lives with her husband and daughter.
1. Dental hygiene was a self-directed exercise in my household, which meant it didn’t happen. Unused toothbrushes sat stiff-bristled and impeccable in cups on the sink. I only ever noticed a smell on my father’s breath, though: an alcoholic bitterness. The smell usually corresponded with the subwoofer trembling at midnight, spitting out Bonnie Raitt and other smooth-voiced saints of heartbreak. I separated my father into two entities: the one who drove me to basketball practice…
