She emerges from his room, the mask of her grief dissolved in a mascara-streaked snotscape, black rivulets of her heart leaving trails down her beautiful face.

My gaze flicks away from the sharp-edged rawness of her private loss. North America acknowledges Death with sideways glances. Muted voices.

It’s easier, no?

Karen is a writer, pianist, and composer based in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. Pivoting after a thirty-year teaching career, her studio-turned-writing-sanctuary continues to be a creative space for her art and her voice; she’s still weaving melodies, just with a different medium. Her creative nonfiction has appeared in So To Speak, Red Noise Collective, and been longlisted for the 2022, and 2023 International Amy MacRae Award For Memoir, GritLIT’s 2023 Short Story Contest, and The New Quarterly’s 2023 Edna Staebler Personal Essay Contest. She has publications forthcoming in Slippery Elm, and Beyond Words.