Her hair rose like a careful helmet, brown waves shellacked into prayerful stillness. She rode the bus smiling politely, beady eyes skimming passengers while pretending to gaze out the windows. At my stop, a gust blew through the door. Her hair did not move. Instead, somewhere inside it, something whistled.

Maria Tass has a degree in Psychology and her work has appeared in Gray & Granite Magazine. Based in Toronto, she revels in the city’s secondhand shops and hidden laneways where the strange and beautiful converge.