INSIDE YOUR MIND

Note from the Editor Dear reader, The goal of this anthology is and always has been to showcase the creativity, imagination, and writing of KCL students and alumni. While this anthology only offers a small selection of all of the outstanding, beautiful, exciting, and heartwrenching pieces submitted to us over the past year, we have all been deeply impressed by the works we were lucky enough to read in its making.

Whether it is the pain of heartbreak in After the Rain, the gripping story of What I Saw Last Thursday Night, or the world of floral significance in Hanahaki, we hope that this anthology will enthrall you and that each piece will make you ponder, laugh, and ache as if it were your own experience, taking place INSIDE YOUR MIND. Some of the pieces you will find here have been written as part of our writing competitions for the themes of freedom, home, present, kinship, and change. We are also featuring two pieces which have been created during our Blackout Poetry workshop in February—one of our last events before the world as we have known it changed for most of us.

The past months haven’t been easy for any of us due to a variety of reasons besides a pandemic spreading over the world, its repercussions engulfing every part of our lives. We have had to face change, both positive and negative, have had to adjust our expectations for this year, and have had to cope with isolation and loneliness. This is by far not an exhaustive list and I think it is safe to simply note: no one could have predicted how this year would turn out.

In times like these, it has become even more important for me to express myself creatively, to try and use hastily scribbled pages and Word documents I have stared at for hours to make sense of what is going on around me and inside my own mind. I think this is a notion that many people will share. The KCL Literary Society will continue to provide a space to do so for everyone; a space for creativity, inspiration, exploration, and self-expression.

It was an honour to be your Editor-in-Chief and to have been able to watch this anthology come to life—its conception, its steady growth, the filling of its pages, and now its launch.

I hope you will enjoy this anthology and wish you all my very best, Veruschka Haas

Editor-in-Chief

Contents

6 After the Rain

By Sachel Bise

8

9

Cannot Break, Must Hold

By Kameron R.L. Johnson

Right Now

By Petra Scutaru

10

12

14

Enemy

By William Nash

How to Make Tuak

By Nadia Mikail

Tempus Fugit

By Karolína Silberová

15

16

17

Chryses

By Douglas Eveleigh

Noblest Sons

By Karen Ng

Relationships

By Hattie Walker

18

20

23

Change

By Nicole Ai

I am not in London, I am in my family home

By Charley Nash

Orpheus Weeps, Icarus Falls

By Unique Clarke

32

36

What I Saw Last Thursday Night

By Nadia Mikail

Summer Nostalgia

By Paakhi Bhatnagar

Growing Pains

By Hannah Abdalla

38

40

44

24

Homecoming

By Jade Le Moing

Hanahaki

By Unique Clarke

Freedom

By Petra Lindnerova

47

48

50

Loophole

By Alex Blank

Distant Recollections, Pt. I

By Veruschka Haas

52

53

Whiskey

By Kameron R.L. Reuel

A fish living in the sky:

By Karen Ng

Distant Recollections, Pt. II

By Veruschka Haas

After the Rain

By Sachel Bise First came the rain Then my head started throbbing With the pattering of hail On the dark hard pavement Once my head started at it My heart then followed With the pain of separation From my one and only love Then went my sanity Slowly slipping away As the yelling and the screaming Took all that was left Until there was nothing But seclusion and darkness When I could no longer feel The world around me as I knew it And it hurt more than anything The pain never stopping And I wished from my heart That it would go away But the rain kept coming Pouring harder and harder And my head kept spinning Faster and faster 6

My heart longed for him As it beat slower and slower Then my sanity was slipping Farther and farther It was all right there Ready for the taking Until it disappeared Now nothing left for me I cannot survive Without the guarantee of success Without the hard work paying off And my desired result But it will be okay Because the rain will slow and stop The sun will emerge from the clouds And my life will one day be surrounded by brighter circles Until that day comes I need to learn to love the rain And all that comes with Dance outside and see right through it The darkest clouds are here For still a short while And I will revel in the seclusion Emerging with the sun shining greater than ever

7

Cannot Break, I Must Hold

By Kameron R.L. Johnson

8

Right Now

By Petra Scutaru

Forgive me, I thought you were coming – later.

The city lights don’t flicker, only the barren trees are here.

It is windy I’ve been told, but the misery? Sincere.

I wish I could be with myself, the words divine In which I shelter with my solemn thoughts, and sigh.

Forgive me, I thought you were coming – later. I had hoped, So I could get away from all…

Finally alone.

Alone with you, my gentle thoughts, I feel you deep inside, Plunging into the despair I oft reside.

A lament, and possibly forever – beginning now, before, and after.

Could this plague follow me here?

No more despair, I stand forgiven for all the moments I have lost, With you my dear, take my hand: follow me to somewhere soft.

9

Enemy

By William Nash Coming home to the enemy is something that I’ve gotten used to and although I have been touched by sun for a long time now I tend to forget that when we move through each other and I write poetry on your skin while seeing my reflection in the window there’s me roaring slowly staining myself white and becoming the enemy.

Back in Mauritius my ancestors would look out of their windows to those they could never touch the dirty ones and they were lovely people I hear all of them and squinting you could barely tell the difference.

10

My ancestors loved white people most of all they really really wanted to fuck them.

Today when I walk into rooms you’ll see my sun-loved skin and while you’ll talk about the guilt and shame you feel you’ll be pouring bleach over said skin and in me then you’ll say that the problems are fixed or don’t exist and that no more change is needed because now I’m clean and sunless like you and meanwhile I’ll see me smiling at the window’s reflection honouring my ancestors because now we are indifferent.

11

How to Make Tuak

By Nadia Mikail Deep in the core of the rain-soaked Bornean jungle halfway through a bottle of tuak Push past the vicious threshing to the heart of the seed way– way before the flooding.

The grains have been trampled, slow.

What makes the rice (in the end) is the danger-softness of the tiger’s banded paw on his gently violent way…

In the morning comes the Harvest, the slight snip near the seed’s enquiring head.

Further ingredients include threshing’s brute force winnowing’s whistling wind dehulling’s enduring exertion:

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Rice! spending the rest of its life cooked, cooled, contemplative in a clay jar dissolving inevitably into intoxication.

Deep in the core of the wild Bornean jungle halfway through his bottle of tuak– an Iban man has marks up his forearm and three inked souls on a finger.

The tuak makes everything blurry –his arm a tiger’s limb 13

Tempus Fugit

By KarolĂ­na SilberovĂĄ Approaching and crashing, soaring and tumbling, moths always pursue the light. Seized by a temporary blindness to the rules of the universe, they emerge from the shadows to perch on the burning wire behind a wall of glass. Never has a single one of the flyers overcome the translucent barrier, and yet all fly with a ceaseless devotion to kiss the warmth of its internal singularity.

And then the delicately tame fire crackles for the last time. The wire snaps. The glow vanishes, and the moths turn away to find another idol to tell; there are dozens of shrines, all illuminated by the same light. The death's-head hawkmoth bears a sign of every fragility severed in that connection.

Beneath its soft body a retired pocket watch sings a mercilessly monotonous melody. With every metallic exhale of the tiny machine a caterpillar morphs to flutter its velvet wings and set off into the growing shadow of the past.

Ah! How the time flies...

14

Chryses

By Douglas Eveleigh The city bustling is the place of war, Engines humming workers drumming streets.

Plague of days that wheeling whining cure‌ Black pupils turned to sunlight, crowned God bleats.

Above it all a most nefarious affair: From vacant towers vacant limbs once full.

Silver-footed yuppies spring through the air To down the heart of drunkness, organs dull.

By happy fecund palms on coastlines sweet Bountiful horns sound fruits of 'coustic brass.

Dancing on the sandy edge men beat The bursting blood-pumps to a leperous mass.

Coagulated kingdoms gasp for breath.

A city bustling is the place of strife.

Low and high lungs bellow out: "Not death!"

Beyond the sun-god’s bow he begs for life.

15

Noblest Sons

By Karen Ng

16

Relationships

By Hattie Walker

The urges overcome the need For the softness of sweet delectable Flesh that only saturates my dreams and Fantasies. But that will never be a reality.

I am scared – Of losing what I know with you, As I perform to the best of my ability something That is so natural and basic.

Holding you is power – Yet the power trips up on itself When it notices the idling faults of everyday monotony.

But the monotony drones in my head and Comforts me when everything is too loud And the quiet comes in relentless drives.

Needing you is an issue that I Have not been able to cope with.

Loose hairs get caught in my mouth And in my teeth.

I sleep with them in and pull them out When morning comes, as I realise That you have entered into every living Part of me, and I cannot escape this.

It pulls as a hand grips my cheeks and my stomach, Refusing to let go.

17

Change

By Nicole Ai I will make a tigress out of you.

It is all rotting, a pile of decay, a mile of yellow river, leaps on the brace of eastern winds and her toes, and a thousand years’ threads, and, a flight flies away, always wraps her lungs.

The water as mama's scent runs long, draws her, submerges into the Atlantic Ocean, spits out, then merged in clean, silk-like claws, waves shrink, in a hastened flow.

How could I compare, the power in my bare claws only sharp in my eyes, to the land of far away?

I am a beam of light, too light for its history.

How could I bear a dare, think about fueling a tiny spark, and burden a mountain of dark?

I am a fist of fire, too young to hold water, or ice may melt by the moment of a crossing fate.

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Yes, she and I, the past planted by a fearless tigress near to the river south.

You sense the whisper, and the roar beneath?

She said, she shall not shout a roar for me.

Yes, I and her, the young fire, before the youth dies no, it will never die because I, will bury it when roars rise, on my own!

Ages, they fold in shades under sun, masks they wear, don’t leave me any joy, I am alone in a changing spin.

Ages, they walk in trees, they breed nature, and rings are, just parts of nature, I am not alone, in an everlasting race.

All of a sudden, I have been alive for many years, with her and I, with I and her.

It is true, it is true, I turn, I confront her in person, the future, in the river south of a tigress, in the yellow river of my mother, and we watch her fading away, and remember, who said a queen cannot roar louder, than the king?

19

I am not in London, I am in my family home

By Charley Nash For various reasons, I am not lying on my side looking out over London. Instead, I am lying on the bed in my teenage bedroom, in West Sussex, wishing I were lying on my side looking out over London. And by London I mean a part of Battersea where the lights twinkle like stars (or, if you want a less romanticised image, a construction site and a train track), listening to what can only be described (affectionately) as a symphony of sirens.

But I am not here, I am in my family home.

As we have already established, I am not in London. But if I were this is what I would be doing: I would wake up and eat a bowl of granola looking out over the Thames (a view which is slowly disappearing due to construction). I would then get dressed, put on my best coat and get the tube three stops from Vauxhall to Green Park on the Victoria Line. l would get a seat, but I know it will get very busy when the train pulls into Victoria.

I would silently notion to someone if they would like my seat, they would silently notion ‘no thank you’ and we would continue, silently, on our journey.

20

I would get off the train at Green Park because I don’t like the endless walk between the Victoria and Piccadilly Line; the walk between Green Park and Leicester Square is my favourite of all walks. I would walk down this road—which might be Piccadilly Street, but then it might not be, I have no idea—dodging countless hand-holding couples, serious business people and Big Issue sellers. I would do this as if it was an Olympic sport and I was going for gold (and, yes, I do keep a note of my personal bests in the part of my head where useful information ought to be stored).

As soon as I would exit the station I would immediately pass by the Ritz, which I associate exclusively with the film “Notting Hill”.

Continuing walking straight, I would also briefly observe the window displays of Fortnum and Mason, but I would not stop because I am not a tourist. Many people will, though, so you have to skillfully slalom.

I would then mentally acknowledge both the BAFTA offices and Hatchards (the bookseller of the Queen, I would, again, mentally point out, even though no one can hear). Once I pass the big Waterstones (formally Simpsons) I would find myself at 21

Piccadilly Circus. There are a few things that I must impulsively take a picture of every time I see them (Brighton Pier for example) and Piccadilly Circus is one. I don’t know why but I think it’s magnificent. I would then note that I will one day go to the Body Worlds museum (I will never go) and continue on my journey.

Leaving my friend Eros behind, I would pass the man outside the Prince of Wales theatre, trying to emphatically flog tickets to the Book of Mormon (he isn’t lying, it’s good) and arrive at Leicester Square. My friend recently told me he has never been to Leicester Square though we have lived here for over six months. I was horrified.

There are at least four cinemas here which essentially means it’s heaven. I would sit in Cineworld for a couple of hours watching anything that’s on. I’m not fussy! Afterwards, I would repeat the walk, although by now it’s probably rush hour, and get the tube back home.

I would then make dinner. I won’t dwell on what I would make, but if you’re asking today it would probably be some kind of pasta dish (because, as a university student, when isn’t it a pasta dish). I would then watch countless other people make dinner from my chair (which is at the head of the table). In the evening, my flatmates-turned-friends and I would have ‘kitchen time’, whilst another friend makes carbonara for the 12th day in a row. I would then get into bed, lie down on my side and look out over London.

But I am not in London, I am in my family home.

22

Orpheus Weeps, Icarus Falls

By Unique Clarke –Orpheus weeps– Orpheus weeps, love forlorn, A ghostly apparition, his saving grace.

Faint remnants of a violin voice, often sweet but now melancholic, The last sweet tune he hears.

He rises from the depths to meet the grace of the Sun, and–

–Icarus falls– Icarus falls, without hesitation or breath The sharp stab of water, a faultless death.

Beneath the sea he lingers, Wreathed in a crown of seaweed, Hands raised apart, eyes shut asleep, There he slumbers in the ocean deep.

The impermanence of death proved permanent once more.

The hope of freedom tragically proved flawed.

Alike in failed dreams, despair, and hubris– Orpheus weeps and sweet Icarus sleeps.

23

What I Saw Last Thursday Night

By Nadia Mikail As a bidan, a midwife, I know these stories by heart. As a bidan, I have to. In a kampung our science is stories and they’ve served us well—passed down worn and verbally dog-eared, with memorized interjections from generations past. It was my grandmother, my Nek Jah, who taught me the profession, who taught me how to rub herbs over a swollen belly and how to check to see whether a cord was wrapped around a baby’s neck.

It was Nek Jah who taught me the stories about the women who cry in the dead of night because they can’t hold their children.

The pontianak comes from an abomination of the Malay words perempuan mati beranak, which directly translates to ‘woman who died in childbirth’. And truly they’re supposed to be abominations: in their most ferocious forms, they’re beasts who tear organs right out of bodies. Gaping maws, matted hair, blood all over their bloodthirsty teeth. Blood all over their legs, too.

Remember: they died in childbirth. And they’re furious about it.

When they’re seducing men, though, they’re lovely, graceful, fragile women: pale skin, dark hair, white dress.

Here is an interesting collection of facts about the pontianak: When you hear the loud cry of a hungry baby, she’s still far enough away that you can escape. When the cry is softer... she’s too close for you to run.

She smells of something that some say is tuberose but others 24

say is plumeria: something lightly, sweetly floral, anyway.

She finds her prey by scenting the laundry outside their house.

Keep your wet clothes indoors, my mother would always say.

And if you want to stop an attack the only thing you can do is stab her—a nail in the nape of her neck. As long as it’s in there, she’s docile. Then she’ll be a good wife for you.

Nek Jah told me if I ever heard a hungry baby at night where a hungry baby should never be, or stood too near a banana tree and realised I could smell the sweet scent of frangipani, all I should do was walk home, as steadily as I could, reciting surah all the way. “She won’t come for you,” she said. “It’s not you she’s after.”

“Then why should I pray?” I asked.

“For her soul,” Nek Jah said calmly. “She’s filled with rage.

Nobody should spend their afterlife so angry.”

Still, I always carried a nail on me when I came home late at night, my apron still stained from an infant’s sobbing, watery entrance into the world. I kept it in the drawer on my side of the bed. My husband, when I married him, did not ask: I assume his grandmother had told him the same stories.

And so it went for the fifteen years since I had started delivering the babies instead of Nek Jah—ever since her knees had hurt too much to travel all over the kampung, and her piercing eyes had grown too filmy to go traipsing about at night. She handed 25

over the reins as gracefully as she did anything, which is to say, with many a constant reminder on how to do things every time I went to visit her and my parents. She said it was to keep my mind sharp.

In those fifteen years, I grew up. I met my husband when I was twenty-two, his sister giving birth to his niece on a humid, sweaty night: all roaring bike and full, dark hair that he’d push to the side with an elegant movement I grew to love (“to see your lovely face better,” he’d say, “you look like a painting.”). He worked on the outskirts of the kampung, in a textile factory. I fell in love with him the first time he brought me something he’d carved himself; a tiny little wooden horse with a flowing mane he’d clearly spent many hours over. When he asked for my hand in marriage he charmed my parents over, easy as anything. My grandmother not so much. I told her he wanted me to give up midwifery and look after the children at home.

“No,” she said. “Your mother gave it up. Who’s going to continue it?”

She didn’t need to tell me anything, anyway. I wheedled the permission out of him. I loved it too much: the urgency and adrenaline of running to a house, climbing up the stairs, and going into the room that smelled of sweat and iron already. The maternal rush that came over me at the sight of a poor woman sobbing in pain, telling her, “It’s going to be alright,” and making sure it was. The writhing of a new life in my arms, so full of confusion and promise.

I am always the first to hold the babies. I think they remember 26

me.

He finally agreed (“because I love you so much,” he said with a wry smile, gently chucking me under the chin, “but if you stop making time for me, I’m finding my second wife.”). We got married on a Friday, after the men had done their prayers at the surau. My childhood home smelled like blooming flowers and my hands were marked with henna. The kampung gathered to watch, putting their well-wishes into huge steaming pots of meat that we’d all partake in later, sitting on the wooden floors. My mother sobbed with happiness. Nek Jah watched, brown hands steady on her stick. My father gave me away. Irfan kissed me on the forehead as I bowed my head slightly, signifying our union. I was overwhelmed, happy, a wife instead of a mid-one.

With marriage came children, quick as anything. I watched my belly slowly distend over the trimesters and discussed with Nek Jah who my bidan should be. Eventually, she called Mak Danna over from the next kampung, thin and wiry with a wide, kind gaze: sort of like a stick insect, but with large gentle hands. Those hands held Adriana first, then, two years later, Adnan, and a year after that, Azita. At last, I could feel what I’d only seen before: agonizing pain and wonderful tender triumph, a long aching vigil and the kind of love I would never have been able to imagine before I felt it.

Right after the pregnancies came the time for my forty-four days of confinement: bathing in water filled with sharp-smelling herbs, keeping my abdomen warm through heated stones, post-natal massages, and berbengkong, a wrap to keep my figure slim for my husband—or at least that was what everyone 27

said. Irfan stayed with his parents during the confinements. He said there were too many people underfoot: my mother, my grandmother, Mak Danna, my various aunts and female cousins.

I guessed he was right.

Being a mother made me take a step back from my work. There was always a child to nurse, one to kiss, one to pick up after.

Meals to cook, clothes to clean, spit-up milk to wipe up. My mother to offer advice and Nek Jah to coo over her greatgrandchildren. Mak Danna was busy in those days, doing the work of two kampungs, but luckily, she was training her own apprentice, who was able to help more and more the more she learned. Those were the early years.

But I didn’t stop for longer than I had to. I loved my children more than I loved my work, but, oh, did I love my work, and if my mother or a sister or a cousin could watch them I would go, and if not I would send for Mak Danna. Irfan didn’t love this; he said it was dangerous to go wandering around at night and he said he didn’t care for being saddled with the kids on the nights there was hard labour until dawn. He said he’d married a wife, not a mid-one. I thought of giving the joy on a new mother’s face up and said no—but placatingly—, kissing him until he softened or forgot. And the next day if I was called, I came. And so it went.

Which brings me to yesterday. It was evening, the hour where the sun’s golden rays have not deepened into dusk, when they are warm on your face and you feel very comfortable with the world and the fact that you’ve made it through another day.

Adnan was dragging Azita about on a palm leaf, and Adriana was puzzling over some sums on the steps. Her curly head lifted, eyes mutely begging mine for help. I leaned over, studying the page.

28

eyes mutely begging mine for help. I leaned over, studying the page.

It was then that a boy came running up to me, calling for Mak Bidan.

“Ana, sayang,” I said. “You’ll be able to manage until Abah gets home in about an hour. Food is on the stove, just heat it up.”

And I grabbed my apron and my nail, kissed my children’s cheeks goodbye and ran.

The girl lying on the mats couldn’t have been more than fifteen, her features still soft with childhood, so very like Adriana’s. Her dark hair was spread out and already matted with sweat. Her hands clutched at her younger sister, clenching and unclenching.

Her skin was already drained with effort. “Help me,” she said, in a low moan. I bent and felt her stomach, started massaging it to soothe her. I could tell, even then, it was going to be a difficult birth, and I prepared her perineal area, wiping it as gently as I could. “Where is her husband?” I asked her sister, who bowed her head in shame. “There isn’t one,” I realised. I recognised the girl vaguely as Halimah’s daughter, who hadn’t been seen for months. This was why. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

It wasn’t okay.

Throughout the night her pulse steadily grew weaker. I silently prayed for a miracle, for divine intervention that would get this girl help that wasn’t me—help far away and unreachable to us, doctor’s rooms we’d never been able to reach. “What’s your name?” I asked her, but her sister answered for her instead.

29

“Okay, Intan,” I said, soothing her as I would my own child. “Okay, sayang, just a bit more.” It was almost midnight when the dark, full crown of the baby’s head appeared. “Just a bit more,” I told her, watching her, holding her legs steady, trying to keep my voice from breaking. “Then you can rest.”

Her sister was crying openly. “Where are your parents?” I asked, and she shook her head. Not here. Too ashamed. It was times like these that I considered Irfan’s request to give it all up; nothing could feel as terrible as delivering a child while their mother was slowly dying. But the baby came out, whole and sticky and crying, and I caught him in my arms and swaddled him and I said, “Intan, he’s beautiful; what do you want to name him?”

She reached out—a weak, aborted movement, one that looked like a mere muscle spasm. She looked at her son. She closed her eyes. In the suddenly chilly silence of the room her sister hiccupped in grief and there was nobody to whisper the azan in the child’s ear; her father had disowned her, and she had no husband or brother.

“Nana, will your parents take care of the baby?” She shook her head no. “Well, can you go home to them tonight?” She sobbed harder, holding her sister’s hand still, but then nodded.

“Come, then,” I said, rising, unable to look at Intan a moment longer. “Come on, you have to go home. If not to them, with me, because I won’t leave you here alone and I can’t stay. I have to call the Ustaz, I have to–” The baby stuck a fist out, dangling, and something caught my eye on a table nearby: a tiny wooden horse with a delicate, windswept mane.

30

Intan’s sister clung to me as I made my way back home, the baby in my arms. I didn’t need to see to know the way, but the moon was helpfully full that night, softly lighting up the path.

And all of a sudden, near home, there was a baby’s shriek of hunger, high and wailing and growing softer and softer... in my arms, Intan’s son quietened.

The smell was hard to place. It was roses, maybe, or jasmine— or frangipani. I wasn’t sure, but it was my favourite scent. It made me want to follow it. I was frozen in place, chilly, Nana’s grip like a vice, but Nek Jah and her incessant reminders kept me muttering verses. I thought of abominations and the young girl lying alone on the wooden floors, covered in a white cloth. I thought of my children and I prayed for them, too—for my daughters and my son. I thought of my wedding day and the flowers all in bloom, my hand in my husband’s. And when I couldn’t smell it any longer we started home again.

We had to step over Irfan’s mangled corpse on the steps to my house. I made a mental note to cover him with white cloth before the children saw him in the morning. Tiredly, I placed the nowsleeping child into my old, faithful crib, and tucked Nana, exhausted from grief and terror, into bed beside me. I took out the nail I always kept in my apron, put it back into my drawer, and was quietly glad it hadn’t been around to keep Intan a good wife.

Then I said a prayer for her soul, and mine. Nek Jah was right; it wouldn’t do to spend your life—after or otherwise—angry.

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Summer Nostalgia

By Paakhi Bhatnagar Look before you flee.

Somewhere within me there is a part of me, apart from me. And sometimes it talks to me and I don’t feel lonely. It ripples and it says, “I am here, I am here, I am here.” I listen and I nod even though I know it cannot see me. And I don’t feel lonely.

We take walks in Her garden and it reeks of summer nostalgia.

The leaves don’t look aesthetic and neither one of us speaks because we are engrossed in the ugly beauty.

The stones are sat by the river and She makes them skip on the surface of the water. There are ripples. They talk to me, “I am here.”

I pick up a stone and plunge it into the river. It doesn’t skip and I think, “Obviously.”

She turns around and looks at me, “What was that?”

“What was what?”

“Obviously?”

I didn’t know She could hear me think. I start thinking like I speak, but then I realize that it doesn’t matter if She hears me think. “I can’t do anything with water. It hates me.”

She laughs, “I’m sure it does,” She says sarcastically, and I frown.

I look around and there are no stones and the river is empty.

There is no river at all. There is just grass and it does not look like the sea. It looks green and it looks like grass and it bears the weight of me happily. I try to think of all the people I know who are like grass. She comes to my mind instantly.

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“Do you think I’m like grass?” I ask her.

“I think you’re like a Dandelion,” she says.

“Why?” “Because you’re a cliché.”

I wonder if everyone is a cliché. Everyone in their own riot, in their own vintage store, in their own books and in their own mirrors. No one talks to themselves unless they talk about themselves. Because then no one listens.

The sun covers Her face and it becomes hard for me to see.

“Let’s go inside,” She says and tries to grab my hand. But I don’t want to meld just yet.

“No let’s just stay here. Inside is cold.”

“Okay,” She shrugs and sits on the grass. The roots take Her in, and She camouflages, and I wonder if She would recognize me in a field of dandelions.

I sit beside Her and I am conscious of how I stand out. The dirt sticks to my thighs and I sigh when I realize that I am sitting on the only barren patch in the garden. I cross my legs and press my hands on the back of my palms. My cheeks are hot, and my freckles are vibrantly palpable. There was a time when they made me cringe.

“Do you want to go to a river?” She asks.

“We were at a river,” I reply.

She rolls her eyes, “A real river.”

“The water hates me, remember?”

“No, it doesn’t. You’re made of water.”

I get up and follow Her. She walks lightly and I wonder where She keeps all the weight. She opens the rusted garden door that leads us to the road and smiles. I keep following Her and the kids on the street think that I walk alone. I keep my eyes on Her green slippers as we both walk to the river that She has don’t have to swim.

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only been to once.

We take walks near the river. The sand is wet and there are more footprints than people. She still leads the way but sometimes we walk side by side. I close my eyes and try to imagine the water over me. Swimming around me so that I don’t have to swim.

The waves rush to us and then fall back because they have second thoughts. Sometimes the whispers turn to roar and I can vaguely hear them say to me, “I am here.”

“The pier is not far from here,” She says. I watch as She walks ahead of me, Her feet only touching the ground when She lets them and I try to fly like Her. But now it’s too warm to try anything new.

“Do you want a funnel cake?” She asks me as we turn towards a kiosk.

I shake my head, but She sits down at one of the benches nearby and I know that She is waiting for me to buy a funnel cake. So I do.

We both sit and eat on the bench – the people around me don’t look at us but I imagine that they do, and I feel better and worse at the same time. The cake is sweet, and I feel glad after eating it. I think She knows that I feel glad that I listened to Her, so She keeps smiling at me until I picture the Cheshire cat on her neck. Then She stops, “That’s too morbid, Ocean.”

I cringe when She says my name – the sea doesn’t treat me well.

We walk to the pier and the wood beneath my feet reminds me of Her attic. We hide there when we want to talk about things we would rather think. It sounds like the floor of Her attic and I can’t help but feel like I need to tip-toe, so I don’t wake Her parents downstairs.

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We reach the edge of the pier. No one is here except the river. The river that looked small but keeps getting bigger and now I can feel it meld into the ocean from which it had gotten away.

“I am here.”

I open my eyes to see Her looking at me. She hands me a stone and picks up another for Herself. She throws it in the river and it skips until I can’t see it anymore. I throw my stone too and it drowns until I feel safe.

“Do you think we should swim now?” She asks and I know that She is thinking of going away.

I look at my school in my head, at all the kids who go there too. They are all clichés so we all fit in. She doesn’t because She is grass, and now She doesn’t want to be remembered.

I nod.

“Look before you flee,” She says to me as she strips off her summer vest. I see Her sink through the surface in the same direction my stone went.

I follow Her. I feel the water around me, Her shape seeping into mine. I feel myself meld and I don’t feel Her anymore. I come up for air and now I know where She kept all the weight. She kept it with me.

Somewhere within me the part of me that comes apart says, “I am here.”

And I don’t feel so lonely.

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Growing Pains

By Hannah Abdalla You do not just grow up getting older in age and taller in height; There are also times at which this process is reversed.

Among days of goal chasing, new faces and new stakes, there are moments in that exact present where all motion ceases.

You hold your breath and suddenly you are trapped in a daze; The familiar smell of petrichor consumes you.

You fall backwards into an old shell that was once your former self– It is familiar, almost comforting As you remember a few lessons learned from old faces Alongside life-changing moments in others.

You realise that you are still not breathing, Slowly suffocating.

You realise that the feeling is familiar, The pain, almost comforting.

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You step out of the daze and wake up To your new truth, Your new shell.

Smiling at the girl in front of you, You apologise for zoning out midway through the conversation.

Looking out towards the continuous sky, You notice the streaks of white against the blue.

You do not just grow up getting older in age and taller in height; There are also times at which this process is reversed.

In this very process of growing downwards, You’ll learn to welcome the final growing pains of your story.

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Homecoming

By Jade Le Moing I can feel myself slipping away; Come home, the bubble says.

Courage – believe me I had done it.

My dreams of belonging Were the enlightened masters of my escape.

She – had let me, She knew better.

She is a part of you, Never can you leave her.

I had left in the early day, To chase the intimate nexus, the fire of Heraclitus Which ignited somber stars into radiant consensus.

With utmost trust in the constellations, As a wise King, as a solitary magus I fled towards the glare.

Now – I am crawling back, Lovingly she awaits my return My faithful Penelope, Our ardent nights consumed weaving this dousing shroud...

Use it, do it, smother the sun out!

For brightness had blinded me, And I had leaned in for Judas' kiss.

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At last – jealous lover, be at ease Destitute hopes can no longer burn.

Our soundless conversations Have conquered my passions.

From light, you led me onto your path.

Absolute obscurity finally found, And in its nest emerges alienation’s epic reign, A self-fulfilling prophecy Revealed in birth and in death; A millennium of lone harmony.

For I long more than ever before To be tethered to you, dear melancholy.

Heroine of my peace, Confined in your stifling devotion – I vow, No more desertion, I take your dark veil.

And in exchange, My undivided attention, The sovereignty of my soul, Surrendered – to myself.

For I have chosen in your company To be lonely.

For better or for worse, Until the end, Sweet isolation – only you are with me.

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Hanahaki

By Unique Clarke Hanahaki: a fictional disease in which the sufferer of a one-sided love fatally coughs up flower petals unless the love is returned.

She knew the meaning of flowers before she knew who she truly was; the colours that symbolised the only child her mother could ever have, borne in blood and sweat, adorned with her mother’s tears and kisses of devotion. She bestowed upon her daughter the only blessing she could, the name of a flower. Iris – for faith and hope.

Carnation

Love

The first flowers she ever coughed up were for her mother; her mother, working the graveyard shifts to give her warm food and a bright future. It started with a tingle in her chest, an itch cured only by coughing. She coughed and coughed, and in her hand, lay colourful carnations. Red for admiration, pink for love, and white for innocence. Her mother cradled the delicate flowers in her hand, and with the other, gave Iris her own flower – an Amaranth, for unfading love.

Geranium

True Friendship

She cried the first day of school because everything was alien.

The food her mum packed so carefully was taken the instant she left the classroom by agemates who glared at her with dark eyes and cold sneers. Alone and hungry she cried in the bathroom. She was named for hope, yet all she felt was fear and isolation. She wanted her mum – but she met someone else.

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“You can share my lunch,” said Lily, another child named

after a flower. She coughed up oak-leaved Geraniums for Lily – bright pink, stained with a darker rouge in the centre of its’ puddles. Lily gave her identical Geraniums and Iris knew they would forever be tied by friendship.

Tulips

A declaration of love

The third time she coughed up flowers, something was different.

The flowers lurked in her lungs for days, a heaviness accompanying the bitter-sweet taste of the petals that blossomed in her chest. Tulips, for love. The red hue was a tinge too bright, glaring to the naked eye. A trepidation grew in her heart at the off-colour of the petals. Perhaps, if that was all, she could supress the nausea and fear simultaneously growing in the pit of her stomach. Yet that was not it… the tulip edges were curling dangerously, misshapen, and distorted. Even more disconcerting were the darkened edges of the flower petals. She sat on the bathroom floor, darkened petals in her hand, and knew this love was deadly.

Aster

Symbolic of patience

The days passed, yet her breathing did not become easier. The burden in her chest grew heavier and tighter, vines rooting their way through her lungs and wrapping tightly around her heart.

The next time she coughed, it was an Aster. Patience. She smiled bitterly.

Indian Cress

Resignation

She could not stop coughing, chest wracking, voice trembling…

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she knew it was near the end. The sight of the purple stained Anemones against the white tiles of the bathroom floor confirmed her fears. The petals were beautiful, though stained with sprinkles of bright red blood. Each breath was adorned with the aromatic taste of petals, yet stained by the copper taste of blood. She knew that soon, all she would taste would be copper.

The mixture of Anemones and Indian Cresses sealed her fate. Like his heart, she could not make the flowers grow for her.

Instead of blooming in her palm, they withered.

She remembered how her mother had been a gardener, bringing to life flora and fauna under her withered hands. As a child she would sit beside her mother, bathed in the warmth of the sun, and watch in reverence.

“See this one? It means love. And this one, endurance.

You hold it gently, so as not to break the petals. They need sun, water and most importantly, love. Love, my daughter, is the most important. For in the darkness, even with hunger, the flowers can grow if they have love.”

She would hold the flowers gently in her hand, her tiny hands cupped by her mother’s. Together, four hands would gently pat soil, tentatively touching the bright petals the way a worshipper touches Godliness. In the sea of colours, brought to life by her mother’s gentle touch, was the largest flower she had ever seen. An Iris, borne the same day she was. An Iris for hope. For faith. The largest of all the flowers because her mother had cared for it the most. Love is the most important. She was only eight then, and the flower neared her height. And every day, she would marvel at its strength and tenacity, hoping that one day when she was grown, she would have a garden full of flowers borne from her love.

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Hemlock

Poison

A horrible irony lay in Hanahaki. For every flower borne from forsaken love, for every petal shaped and coloured, the bearer lost a little of their life. And as the flowers grew and withered, as the bearers’ coughs were so frequent, they coughed more than they breathed; as every breath was tainted by hemlock and ash, they mourned. Once the Hanahaki set in, the only flowers the bearer could ever bring to life were the white bunches of Hemlock. The only flowers that would ever survive, were the same flowers that would kill the bearer. The bearer would give life to a deathly flower, and in return the deathly flower would take theirs.

Her torturous dreams were filled with dying petals and wrathful vines. She lay, in a daze between lucidity and dreams, prostrate in a bed of fading flowers. Imprisoned she lay, in a cage of flowers forged from her unrequited love.

“Don’t you want it?” she wanted to ask.

“These flowers are my heart. This is my love for you. Don’t you want it?”

In all her dreams he rejected her flowers, and therefore her soul. Red and purple hues turned murky and dark as they withered away. And standing alone, heartbroken, the flowers always died in her hand.

“You see, my daughter, not all love is returned. But, I think, for those who learn to cherish the love that is returned, they might one day hold Irises in their hand. Afterall, sweet child, what are Irises for?”

“For Hope, mama.”

“For Hope.”

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Freedom

By Petra Lindnerova When I was little, you could still buy those milk chocolate cat tongues in the old village corner shop. Two or three white kittens with puffy heads would look at you from the box, as if excited to offer you pieces of themselves. I could always hear meowing from the sweets aisle, but my mum would not believe me. It was the only kind of chocolate she would ever eat, maybe because cats are slender and agile and have nine lives. Maybe she wanted to be like them.

My family laughed at me for being what I would call a vegalitarian. I never got what was so funny about respecting animals. But I did not pay any attention to their mocking. I would not take away an innocent feline’s tongue for a chocolate bar.

“Cats can’t speak anyway,” my brother would sneer at me from across the sofa. His shirt was stained with everything he had eaten that day, a Pikachu smiling from behind the ketchup blotches. I bet Pikachu did not fancy ketchup.

“What if they stay silent in fear of someone taking their tongues from them?” I snapped back angrily, shutting my picture book.

The holidays were always too long for me to deal with him.

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I went to the kitchen to cut my carrots and sweet potatoes. I was slowly getting better at making them roughly the same size.

Mum was working late, finishing up the paperwork for a book deal with her new debut writer, Rashid. She was his publicist.

Rashid had questioned me about my vegalitarianism when mum had brought him over and seemed to understand my point perfectly. Not once had he scoffed menacingly like my brother.

I remember mum slamming the door so powerfully after her entrance that I snipped a millimetre of skin off my pointing finger. I quickly sucked on it to stop the blood. Mere sight of it used to make me extremely dizzy.

“Hi, mum. How was work? How is Rashid?” I put both my hands behind my back, just in case she’d start blaming my cuts on my diet. My mother gave out an exasperated sigh. Her long hair was messy as if she had just walked through a hurricane. In these instances, she was usually the hurricane herself. Even her long hair seemed to have the colour of dusty mud.

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“I am absolutely done with that man.” She poured herself a glass of water, splashing a lot of it over my vegetables, and started rumbling through the cupboard.

“He refuses to leave out a portion of his manuscript that recounts his grim childhood in wherever he used to live,” she said before I had the chance to ask, waving her free hand dismissively. I was carefully placing my little vegetable sticks on the baking tray, leaving enough space around each.

“It’s supposed to be popular fiction. Nobody will buy a book to cry over in the current climate. Consumers need distraction,” mum continued.

“Who?” I frowned. She took a box out of the cupboard. It landed on the worktop with a thump.

“You wouldn’t understand,” she said, shaking her head agitatedly. After that, she grabbed a couple of chocolate cat tongues and started chewing on them noisily. I could hear muffled meowing emanating from mum’s mouth for a split second. After that, the trio of kittens on the raided, empty box sat motionless, never raising their voices again.

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Loophole

By Alex Blank Living a loop. Loop within living.

The end comes first. A wave goodbye to the waves enveloping the past in their embrace. It’s an expired kind of glory—we plunge into the flattened water, becoming one-dimensional.

That’s where roaming the foot-past gets us.

The start comes after. The beginning of the future. Looking through the scraps of effort and dipping toes in cold water.

Looming over us; a long winding path we never really want to embark upon.

Not again.

Everyone hates beginnings, they are too uncomfortably tangible. Everyone loves endings—the tail of responsibility. No wonder living is such a drag, stuck between an unrequited being and a daunting doing. What has been does not want our humanity. What is to come feeds off of our humanity.

Looking for the in-betweens to cheat time out of its unknown.

What came first, the question or the answer?

What comes last, the beginning or the end?

What dies first, the wave or water?

Too many questions. Too many gaps.

Living within loops. Looping a living.

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Distant Recollections, Pt. I

By Veruschka Haas A shade of silver just a little too dark. A shade of wood just a little too light. A mattress and pillows just a little too soft. A shower with the water droplets just a little too hard. This old home is still vivid in my mind, but the distant recollections of its smaller details have been diluted by my new home; the colours and the feel of objects in my old home have been assimilated to the way they appear in my new home.

At once both familiar and completely alien, revisiting my old home feels like I have stepped into a copy of it, have been lured to a place which has been modelled after it, am trapped within a space which only pretends to be my previous home. The creators of this deception have paid attention to most details, have changed the arrangement of some of its furniture, have made new photos and art appear on the wall, have reorganised some of the things which I had left behind when I moved out. They have attempted to create a realistic feeling of twelve months of absence, have spent sleepless nights in a room full of photos of what was once my home of seventeen years, in order to ponder over what could look different after my prolonged time away.

The details that are wrong, the smallest aspects which make me feel alienated from the place which was once as familiar to me as the backs of my hands are all ones which can be found in my new home. A conflation of my old home and my new home seems to live in my mind, and I am in a constant state of uneasiness, readying myself for yet another small feature which seems out of place. When my eyes look downward, I expect the 48

cool, dark shade of wooden flooring which I have found beneath my feet for the past year. But I am met with the warm, light brown which once served as the ground for all of my Lego creations. At night, when I go to sleep, I expect the familiar resistance of the mattress and pillows that I have come to appreciate in the past year; instead, I sink into this bed, which embraces me after my long time away, as if to welcome me back and express its longing for the shape of my body.

But the soft pillows are met with my salty tears which sink into their fabric similar to the way my head did when I lay down to get some rest; and rest there is none, only the lasting feeling of uneasiness, of no longer belonging into a space which I once thought would always be the most familiar environment to me, considering I have never spent as much time in any other place as I have here. This alienation from my former home is intensified by the sense of loss of my new home. Whenever I notice a discrepancy between my expectations and reality, the longing for my new home rolls over me like a tidal wave, pushing me back into the memories of just a few days ago when I could still call it home with the full conviction of it actually being just that– Because my new home is no longer my new home. I had to leave it and all of the feelings and history it held for me behind, and I have to accept that I will never be able to return. There will never come a moment in which I will stand within its walls and fail to recognise the materials and colours it was made of. I will never be surprised by its features as compared to my childhood home, for I will never set foot into my new home again. My new home is my old home now and soon my memories of it, too, will only consist of distant recollections.

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Distant Recollections, Pt. II

By Veruschka Haas I stand in front of the mirror and while I recognise the reflection in front to me as my own, I am surprised by its presence. The bathroom is blurry and the indistinct shapes of soap dispensers, shampoo bottles, toothbrush holders, and hairbrushes surround me. The reflection in the mirror, too, seems vaguely shapeless, as if it were not whole, as if it were not on full opacity, as if there were layers missing. Everything around me feels wrong, like a badly designed VR-experience which may look realistic but is buffering and therefore still shown in low resolution. A part of me expects to be able to grab the glasses, take them off, and to find myself in another place altogether. I bring my hands to my face, touch my cheekbones, the bridge of my nose, my forehead, but there are no glasses there, and the only thing that changes is the hazy reflection opposite me mirroring these searching gestures.

An innate sense of feeling lost washes over me as I realise this and become fully aware of the fact that I am not whole. A small part of me seems to have been left behind when I came here.

Or, perhaps, it is only a small part of me which has come here, and my more complete self is still in London.

Surely, a part of me is still there, still walking the familiar path along Regent’s Canal to read a few chapters of a book in Victoria Park. Surely, a part of me is still there, still sitting on her window seat and glancing up to look at Canary Wharf while writing her essays. Surely, a part of me is still there, still waiting at Mile End Station and wondering if she will get onto the next 50

Central Line train to make her 9.30 seminar. Surely, a part of me is still there, still standing in her friends’ kitchens laughing with them while they cook. Surely, a part of me is still there, still having coffee in her usual place and going through a stack of post-its, hurriedly scribbled at night, to write a collection of prose about falling in love; with places, with people, but most of all with London, again and again.

It has been weeks since I have done any of these things, weeks since I have been in any of these places, weeks since I have been in London, but these experiences are as present as if I were currently living them. They are far from being distant recollections; instead, it seems to be my surroundings, the space that currently contains me, which are memories only.

Do I lead parallel lives? Do I exist in two places at once? Can my body be separated into different parts and is it my mind which can only fully be present in one of them, can only inhabit one place at once? When I close my eyes, almost every single scene from my life in London can be conjured up in complete clarity, with the colours of each moment as vivid as if I were currently experiencing it; with every tiny detail as clearly visible to the eye of my mind as if I were making the memory this very second and it was not a few months old. But when I open my eyes, I am once again met with a view that is washed out, fuzzy, and bleak– My present is a distant recollection, my past the life I live.

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Whiskey

By Kameron R. L. Johnson at first taste, i brace for him to make my teeth itch. he is saccharine, goes down smooth, has an aftertaste of honey like long-dead muses. he dances on my lips, slips down my throat, and heats my stomach. he leaves me dizzy on a platform, swaying where i stand and wanting. i am mellowed by age and cold, and the burn of his eternal summer only makes him more intoxicating. his youth is ancient. he is reincarnation. he has been sitting in oak and waiting for another jove or poet, and i am neither. but i will drink.

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A fish living in the sky:

By Karen Ng i saw the cloud wring its naval softness. that weight pushed me over, mimicked me, legless waving, who, scale–ing stairs, sought seeping sanctuary away from the sea. (ALIEN!) the cloud, supple, light, taunted me: that my belonging body shimmered, that it scaled nine kg. “alien foreign swimmer”

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Closing Remarks from the Deputy Editor Dear reader, you’ve reached the last page of our anthology. I hope you enjoyed it – did you have a favourite? As I write this from my bedroom in Hong Kong, I’m reflecting on things that have happened since I began working on this collection. I was nineteen then, and I’m twenty now. In that time, all around the world, changes have again and again redefined reality as we know it. Whilst some were remarkable, the most devastating changes were ones we were helpless to do anything for, besides watch as their effects spread wider and wider. I’m referring to a whole stretch of things here, including the climate crisis and the socio-political movements that have erupted across the globe… And of course, the chaos and tragedy of the pandemic, which continues to permanently scar virtually every community in the world.

Now, more than ever, communities have the power to really change lives – if not save them. The right words can inspire confidence in ourselves, help us deal with the most convoluted emotions, and even help us remember the value in being alive because… Even though our societies are suffering, there is so much that makes being alive – at the same time as you, as me – utterly worth it. It really is worth it. And I’m thankful that our team has picked out so many of those right words for you to read today.

I feel blessed to have worked with so many literary talents here at King’s, and to have had a hand in nurturing this space intended to call attention to emerging voices. I’m also aware of what a rare honour it is to sit on an editing committee as tight-knit as ours – thank you for this opportunity!

From the bottom of my heart, I hope that the work featured in this publication affects you, at least a little. Does the final, haunting stanza from Growing Pains prompt some self-observation? Or, do the stunning images from How to Make Tuak help you recall the beauty of our natural world? Does the line “Courage – believe me/I had done it.” from Homecoming offer you a kind of reassurance? Or, to point towards my own entry, perhaps “alien/foreign/ swimmer” from A fish living in the sky moves you? Whichever works you enjoyed the most, I hope that some of their lines stick with you long after you leave, and give you strength – something we all need in this current climate.

Thank you for reading our anthology!

I hope you stay healthy and safe, wherever you are.

Karen Ng

Deputy Editor

Editor-in-Chief, Layout Designer: Veruschka Haas Deputy Editor: Karen Ng Contributing Editors: Paakhi Bhatnagar Unique Clarke