0202 PES
ogma
4 .ON EUSSI
'Memory'
Editor's
Letter
issue
four
-
memory
Welcome to the fourth issue of the Ogma Magazine. I cannot believe that it has been four months since our first issue! The team and I would like to thank all the talented writers and artists who has submitted their work to the magazine - we could not do it without you! And of course, to our readers, thank you for supporting us! We plan to keep this magazine going and make it better with every issue! The theme for this issue is very special, memories are something dear to us all, the emotional poems and fiction pieces featured this month are inspired by this theme and what it means to each author. Our cover art is by the amazing Nicole (sprigofbasil on tumblr) who designed last month's art too! One of the staff writers Dian Loh here at Ogma has written a 26 page chapbook this month inspired by the prompt "Memory" and this will be available for purchase on our website and tumblr in the coming weeks! We also have our first 'Dear Diary' section. In July we asked on our tumblr for people to fill in a small type form anonymous confessional box. Now we have those answers displayed and will be making it a classic section in each of our issues. Want to be involved? Check out our linktree, in our insta bio Future plans for Ogma include spooky season things for October and being more active on our instagram (ogmamagazine) with writing prompts and motivation! We hope you enjoy reading issue four!
Aneleh Enner Editor-in-chief
Dear
Diary..
.
I wi s my fri how h m u ch I cends knew them a love thand how re about ti me e em. I have much I feel an xpressing a hard to kn d I just w how I me aow that thaent them every d better y make person ay.
's at iti'm h w nder and if o w i n, mes,e huma i t e som to b ugh. like an eno hum
i love yo
u
every morning, i scribble on a piece of paper for what feels like hours but is only five minutes-- a cream sheet, a white pen. you can barely see it, if it's not in the light. "not my skin," i whisper. when i'm done, i tear it to pieces, vitriolic, as if each rip is justice. "not my bones," i whisper. it's heavy, it's tired, this thing that lives inside my chest. but it's not more powerful than the spite roaring in my veins, screaming "live, live, live," louder than i believe i could consciously muster.
I see myself in the spaces between the stars. There is no end to their darkness, spiraling out, down, and up towards an inevitable doom. I wish I could see myself among the Earth; in the tall grasses, in the worn streets, passionate rain. I wish I could see myself with a place in this world. I know I belong, otherwise I would not be here, but I struggle to understand where it is I am going. There is no fateful destination for the space between the stars. It is an enveloping unknown. As am I. As is my future. As is my life.
Part One
POETRY
contents 11 - space between 13 - salt skin 15 - love letters and eulogies 17 - the death cry 19 - memory 22 - crochet 23 - crayon 24 - falling 26 - twelve hits 30 - butcher from two perspectives 32 - visible light
Space Between
BY JIMINI @MADETHROUGHLOVE
More often than not, I find myself reminiscent Of a much more naive version of myself and everyone she shared moments with, When we were simultaneously the oldest and youngest we’d ever felt. I remember the moments of laughter until we couldn’t breathe, The moments of silence when there was nothing to say at all. And of course that version of myself couldn’t realize it then but, There was so much space in between the laughter and silence. Love filled the space. It fills the space.
Salt Skin
BY VIERS AUTRY “You don’t believe in anything,� she crooned. From beneath her, I shook my head slightly. The material of her dress ruffled slightly, her fingers coming to a slow stop as she waited for me to settle again. I hummed low, the sound vibrating at the back of my throat before I sunk even deeper into her lap. My eyes met hers, a clash of mud and copper before I fixed my gaze onto the lake in front of us. The air was thick around us, trapping us within our own bubble separated from reality and all our fears and worries. She was a lover in the middle of heatwave coma season, shades perched upon tanned skin and with a sigh, her breath mingles with the blinding sun until she and it becomes one. The sight of her was enough to bring a person to their knees in tears - left to weep and marvel at the angel before them. Perhaps, it was the fissures in her skin. They formed cataclysmic constellations and galaxies a breath away from collapsing. Maybe it was the nebulas under her eyes that burgeon in astral shades of mauve and vermillion. It could have even been the gibbous azure veins that bulge with moon rust torrents and stardust that scorch, burn, and stain her from the inside.
This bubble we resided in couldn’t completely shield me from my insecurities. Growing up for her was tough. She was treated so differently and learned to unlearn the behaviors of a societal downfall. She tiptoed through the small eggshell she named “life” and beat against the confines of her mind. The idiocy that awaits her burning flesh cuts into her mind and flays the skin from her bones. It bites away eagerly on her stardust bones until all that remains is the bastard that produced the bastard’s mind. Perhaps, I am insecure because she does what I cannot or it's because she's something I can never be. “Je crois en toi,” I murmured in response, my lashes fluttering against the lens of my glasses as a slight breeze and silence washed over us.
Love Letters
and Eulogies
BY ZHANA
Some of the most interesting people I know don’t know what to do with their lives — I love to sit awhile and know the other side. It’s nothing (from the documents) that makes any kind of sense. we don’t know how to live we don’t know how to die. I stand in the tartan curtains and wrap myself in burgundy (I’m loving the way the wind brushes the grass) mid dying, a carcass discarded. Notes date back centuries — an existence in decay, to love is to remember, it shapes and forms like clay. burn brightly under hate, a wicked smile plays I remember the cream crinkled paper The charred remains — it breaks apart like smoke. The ash coats desperate hands/departed on the outskirts. It’s nice to see the sunrise from the hill in the graveyard, it’s winter snapping strings on command. Wet knees and soggy socks hands blackened and ink dried in fingernails — I wail— I wail— I wail.
yrC htaeD ehT
BY SANCHI
Between the beats of her heart his soul crumbled to ashes the intangible memories came running as glaring flashes
He stared into darkness devil manifested her in blood red broken frame She searched for the light in blackness Angels voice-a-singing,sparking his name
His soul was of night sky the darkest ebony with the speech of light It all happened under the sky on fire flames glazed upon his burning heart that night
'Memory" BY ADELINE COLE
Harvest memory You will find it in green pearls of the river When the great gods emerged from the lotus flower they dropped unseen You will find it in the sun reflection For the chaos bore it from evergrowing pain and perished for its fire You will find it in the green and golden fields of men Who lived of wheat and dust and pomegranate Submitted to the life of eternal fear You will find it in the sand and rocks and mountains Creeping fouly from their bones and back You will find it in the sky of beaming stars Cutting time with sharp rays of silver light That will pierce through your soul with warmth of human hope
wrinkled hands grasp at the steel edges of a needle
Crochet
sitting cold against the exposed skin when did my body lose its youth she wonders loudly to herself
BY CARO RUIZ
amber colored yarn falls at her feet
@caroruru on twitter
protective, invasive
it surrounds her because it knows, and it remembers even though she lost her core and clouds hover where her eyes rest it has stored inside its veins the laughter of the children that once played tag and read to her before time had taken her brown curls a forgotten cassette tape that contains but a voice honey covered promises of a brighter tomorrow before she forgot how her body could bend to the color of dissonant guitar riffs and worn down dancing shoes and so she knits echoes of a golden past
breathe in the yellow crayon feels heavy in my hand my lungs dissolve into color and i let the stars find its place
Crayon
in my rib cage childhood sunsets cruise through the length of my veins i let the crayon melt shower my skin with its unsuspecting light there's a map in my body i trace back the lines that lead me to a time of scraped knees and flushed cheeks the loud call of an old friend in between shut lockers and the ring of a bell pink walls that were never part of me they keep secrets once shared in the first lights the tenderness of a coffee embrace keeps me rooted to the voices that weep for the missing i feel my midriff expand the gold threads i call memories take shape in the spaces between my fingers breathe out
BY CARO RUIZ @caroruru on twitter
Falling BY OSKAR LEONARD @ozzywrites on Instagram, oskarleonard.wordpress.com
Late afternoon. Too late to be in school, but a uniform still clung to my chest, royal-blue. Itchy. Ignored, while I marched across the wall, feeling invincible. A soldier, a tomcat, anything but a small kid, anything but reality. Too boring. A friend. Sat there, laughing, joking, not quite 'best friend', not quite 'stranger', the sweet in-between where anything and everything was conversation. Toys. Games. TV shows. Teachers, pets-domestic life seemed so interesting. Vivid. Tumble. Balance lost, little limbs flailing, trying to find grip in empty air. Nothing. A concerned friend. An open wound. Bright red. Was that bone? Or was it tears, leaking down a soft face, not that of a soldier, or a tomcat, but a small kid. Calling for mum. Finding a plaster.
Twelve Hits BY JADE ELDRIDGE inspiration: 36 Holes by Brenda Miller warnings: references to drug use, relationship conflict, illusion to domestic abuse, suicide, depressive thoughts
1. Swing and a miss, the only breeze brought on by the whiff of your bat through the air. Summer’s humid heat was heavy on us. I held my breath as you lined up over the plate again. And there it was, that sharp crack of bat to ball. Your home run carried the game. 2. Everyone was going to make it big, but we came to see that reality was the cruelest dream. So many ODs, a couple got called suicide, and that’s just looking at the ones who died. One damn street in a cracked old neighborhood has swallowed up another generation of lives.¹ 3. The haze of a lost afternoon made us smile. She made the hours pass slow. Mary Jane kept the moments melodic. We felt the music washing us clean. There was plenty to worry about, plenty to fear, but we blew that all out on the remnants of the last hit. There was something sweet and innocent about those times. We'd have better weed later, but there and then, we were young and knew nothing. It was a more accessible high.4. We burnt down the highway skyline. Eyes closed we went back in our minds to the places we used to live. Even when we were talking like gentlemen, none of us looked like Jesus.²
5. Bourbon Street brought absinthe green into our lives. We should have stuck with what we knew. Moonshine had made us brave, if stupid. If we could drink something from a still, surely we could hand anything New Orleans had for us. We drank until we were sick—the heaving of our stomach in time with some drum strike of a passing band—boom, boom, boom. 6. We searched for what we were promised. The question was asked if a life was taken did beauty stay. Miss Murder gave no answer.³ 7. Your hand against the wall struck just as loud as that drum, or so it seems in my memory. I know that recollection is distorted. I know there was nearly no sound to the collision of bone to the drywall. You did not even leave a hole behind...at least not a visible one. That hit did something to us, though. 8. Apologize a trillion times.⁴ 9. We had been broken before. Way back in the before time... do you remember I had to cancel our dates for an age after I hit that tree. I couldn't walk. Seventeen and I couldn't walk. I figured it out again, though. We should have let that be the end for us. We would have been better for it.
10. We swam through sick lullabies and choked on alibis. That was all part of knowing Mr. Brightside.⁵ 11. But we couldn't let my mother be right. So, we ran down the aisle together a decade later. Still foolish. Still not right for each other. No surprise that we didn't last. After you went back to your father, it wasn't long until I got my hands on a hit of acid. My head wasn't right for a trip like that. 12. I tried to remember what the dormouse had said. When able to join a hookah-smoking caterpillar, I made sure to feed my head. Just ask Alice.⁶ ¹ Reference to “The Kids Aren’t Alright” by The Offspring. It was released
September 21, 1999 as the first track from the band’s fifth studio album Americana (1998). The son was written by Dexter Holland and produced by Dave Jerden. ² Reference to "When You Were Young” by The Killers. It was released on September 18, 2006 as the lead single from their second studio album, Sam's Town (2006). The song was written and produced by The Killers and co-produced by Flood and Alan Moulder. ³ Reference to "Miss Murder" by AFI. It was released on April 3, 2006 as the lead single from their seventh studio album Decemberunderground. It was written by Davey Havok and produced by Jerry Finn. ⁴ Reference to “Ms. Jackson” by OutKast. It was released on October 17, 2000 as the second single from their fourth album Stakonia. It was written by André "André 3000" and Antwan "Big Boi" Patton and produced by Earthtone III. ⁵ Reference to "Mr. Brightside” by The Killers. It was released September 29, 2003 as the band's debut single and is featured on their debut studio album, Hot Fuss (2004). The song was written and produced by The Killers. ⁶ Reference to “White Rabbit” by Jefferson Airplane. It was released on June 24, 1967 as a single from their second studio album Surrealistic Pillow. It was written by Grace Slick and produced by Rick Jarrard.
Butcher, in Two Perspectives BY SASHA CONAWAY instagram: @las.brumaas tumblr: @lasbrumas tw: animal cruelty/death, blood
My memories are not sharp, more domestic animal raised for the slaughter than wild game. Easier to swallow. Maybe that’s why I cut to the bone faster, meat tender and soft, the quick flash of a butcher’s knife. How quick it is to serve them up on a platter. Uncomplicated, painless. In hor d’oeuvres or as brisket, take your pick. An endless supply, on sale at the grocery store. The bloody current flows steadily outward, and I am reminded of Hotel California, Don Henley singing about guests and their feast, the animal that refuses to die. Is that memory? Fish multiplied to feed the crowd, so that no one may go hungry? Their mouths are ravenous. How long until they gorge themselves? When will my work be finished, the final cut made, blood rinsed from the floor to glut someone else’s mind? My knife stays sharp, meat soft, and I pull another memory out.
Visible Light BY ELIZA KENT Instagram @elizarkent blog: elizakent.com
There’s golden light through the window, and the house smells musty without you in it. We were always auspicious, so why did you have to go? The weeds are overgrown without you pulling them, and your sister called again, she said I have to grieve. I hung up and let my mind go to the sweet memories of the forest, of eyes and lips, of a river and brick walls, and the visible light through the branches. My mind is broken without you, and sometimes I pretend you’re still in the garden, watering the white camellias. If you were here now, we’d sit in the windowsill together and read, squinting painfully through the golden, visible light.
Part Two
FICTION
contents 36 - memory 42 - sunflowers at night 50 - take a sip, spin the bottle 54 - stitches and memory 61 - tales of memory 65 - paths that cross
'Memory" BY NATALIE @apollosvotive on tumblr tw: violence
When I think about peace, I think about the opposite. I think of things caving in, of a colony of red ants leading a march of lovelessness, of Samson reaching for the ebony jawbone half-drowned in golden sand. This is the curse of living in my household. The sky is colored a dusky blue. Even though the encroaching dusk casts a darkness over our household, the lights remain turned off and the curtains are left semi-drawn, the way my mother likes it. In the afternoons, I can see a sliver of light creep in through the gap. In the evening, it is gone. My mother rocks a slow rhythm on the old rattan rocking chair, silhouetted against the window, so she shades in a person-sized shadow against the blue-toned curtains. The sky is so dark I can barely see her face. When she rocks forward, she looks as if she’s keeling forth, as if to suck a desperate breath like a dying man. But then she rocks backwards, falling back in a graceful, sweeping arc, and returns to her rest. Peace, until she rocks forward again. Standing by the kitchen, I watch my mother vacillate between near-death and nearpeace with a cadence so achingly gentle that I eventually leave and head to my room. Things my mother is: gentle. For the most part of my childhood years, I would come home to find my mother in the kitchen stirring around a pot of noodles meant for me, drenched in her strange concoction of sauces. She’d tuck any stray hairs behind my ear as I ate, ensuring that I didn’t accidentally eat any. After lunch was done, she would help me do my homework and give me two hours of television time. She’d give me her morning glory smile, the type of smile that curved across her face in a sweet arc, beautifully.
Things my mother is: angry. Between the paper-thin walls, noise travelled effortlessly. When I was in bed, I would keep my eyes on the clock, if only just because if the hands of the clock reached eleven before the door opened, my mother would transform into a poltergeist, almost like a full moon lycanthropy. I could hear the anxious footsteps outside in the living room, the sound of a chair being pushed in and out at the table, and my mother’s furious mutterings. I didn’t see any of it – I was afraid to – but I heard the sound of glass breaking and creak of furniture shifting, axis-tipping, as if like tectonic plates. I would fall asleep to her manic voice muttering: my husband… her father… where are you? Things my mother is: loving. My mother keeps a leatherette bible with her, well-worn and coming apart at the seams. She’s fumbled with it so many times that the paper has become soft and limp. Once,she tried to make me read it but it’s always been something at the back of my mind. On days when she was free, she’d make me sit down in front of her and braid my hair neatly down between my shoulder blades. After that, she’d whisper a prayer into my hair. One word never seemed to be absent. Peace. Things my mother is: violent. When I came back from school one day, I found my mother sitting on the sofa in silence. As I cautiously placed my shoes to the side, she beckoned me to approach her. She slotted the sweet curve of her palm against my cheek and let her thumb trail down my face. Her eyes were inscrutable.
“I…” she started to say. Slowly, her grip tightened. I could feel the stinging sensation of her nails digging into my skin. I let out a gasp and wrenched away from her grip, but not without feeling something wet flow down my cheek. Horrified, I looked into my mother’s eyes. She told me, “You look so much like your father.” I couldn’t look my mother in the face again. Every time she held my face in her hands, I fixed my eyes on the crucifix oscillating from a chain around her neck, the hardwiring of my genetics scorching me like a brand. Morning comes when I open my eyes. The shaft of light that reaches into my room illuminates my mother’s old leatherette bible perched precariously at the edge of my bedside table, a book which I have appropriated for myself. I found it once in a box of things my mother put outside the house for donation, and decided to keep it. My mother hasn’t moved from her position from the old rocking chair. The room is drenched in darkness, save for the rectangle of light leaking in through the portion of uncovered window, and the rocking chair is still. Imbued with a sudden concern, I approach my mother with an afghan, ready to throw it over her sleeping figure, but just when I’m a second away from doing so she jolts awake, leaning right into the sparse light.
For the first time in the long while, I see her face. I instinctively recoil. Her hair is greying and wiry, her eyes blown wide and darting all over the place fearfully. The shadows under her eyes look like bruises. Her skin is ashen and wrung-through, carved with harsh lines. She looks like a nocturnal creature that has been startled by light. How long has it been? She turns her face up at me, ravaged and frightening, after so many years of vacillating between near-death and near-peace, decades of head over water and head under water. Her morning glory smile has become a relic of the past. She snatches the afghan from my hands and fixes an accusatory glare at me. “Who are you?” “It’s me, mom.” “Oh.” Once she’s finished resettling the afghan over her body, she seems to have noticed my presence again. “Who are you?” I guess after saying all this, what I’m trying to say is that two eyes, a nose, and a mouth don’t necessarily make a face, and a mother, a roof, a bed, and a bible don’t necessarily make a home.
When you have a mother who stares at you like you’re an open wound, a bible near disintegration, and a house rank with ossification, maybe the lack of memory is for the better. Sometimes my mother opens her mouth when she sees me, intending to say something, and I think that maybe a memory might have returned. It leaves me horrified, or hopeful, or stuck in a strange intersection of horror and hope. But before I have the chance to react, she shuts her mouth and turns her eyes away from me. She has forgotten everything, including me. Decades worth of memories and unspoken words gone wastefully. My mother and I – two strangers staring at each other across asea of people, two lonely plows engraving our unsightly but separate stories in the mud. Maybe peace is possible, if only with the absence of memory. Let us forget the trails we left behind us in the mud.
Sunflowers at Night BY CARMEN ARRIBAS This is an excerpt from my novel "Sunflowers at Night", which follows the story of a group of teenagers growing up in a small secluded village in the mountains. This excerpt deals with the memory of the village, Romello and sets a firm setting stone as to how the village develops and works. tw: death
The village of Romello was founded by a fake saint, a broken heart and a sunflower seed. Many, many years ago, so many that nobody could tell exactly how many, there was a great drought that affected all the country. Crops withered, rivers and ponds evaporated, the rich soil of the forests hardened and cracked, and the animals died one after another, leaving behind a dry path of bones and hardened skin. A great migratory wave took place, people from the villages fled to the big cities where a drought wasn’t much of a problem, or in search of other lucky villages that had somehow been able to avoid falling in the dry grasp of the Great Drought. Around that time, Saint Valbanera left her natal village along with the boy she loved. Back then she wasn’t a saint, of course, and the boy had a name. They didn’t take anything with them, except a rachitic pony, a saddlebag with bread and water, and the last sunflower seed left from what had been last successful crop five years before. Valbanera had been keeping that seed in hope that someday, when the drought came to an end, she would be the one who would be able to start a new sunflower crop. Sunflowers were Valbanera’s favorite flower, because they were in love with the Sun in the same way that she was, and because even if the Sun abandoned them every night they would always follow his unlikely path to be waiting for him when he came back the next morning.
So, Valbanera, the boy she loved, and a rachitic pony left together. They were happy, the three of them, even if their tongues were always parched and their feet blistered, and their skin flayed by the sun and the dry air. They were happy because they had each other, and they walked and walked for weeks, for months, leaving behind deserted villages and tree cemeteries. After two months, the rachitic pony became a part of the abrasive landscape they were trying to escape. They mourned him for a minute and continued their way. After five months, Valbanera and the boy she loved left behind the eternal lonely desert and entered the Pierce Mountains. After five months and eight days, they found paradise. Paradise, of course, is always relative, and given the circumstances, paradise was a valley between two sharp mountains with some scattered half-dead pine trees. Half-dead was the best they had found in almost six months of desperate wandering, so they settled there, in a cave they found after some hours of searching because they did not dare to bring down one of the few standing trees in kilometers just to build a shabby hut. To their surprise, the cave’s walls were humid —not dripping wet, but slightly moist— and after months of digging in the proximities of cacti to satiate their asphyxiating thirst, they did not have any qualms in venturing inside the cave and licking the walls there, where they could feel the humidity with their fingers.
That night, as they smiled into each other’s mouths, reveling in their luck ―because they had found a place, because they were alive, because they were together― the real inhabitant of the cave attacked them. It was a black bear, a scrawny starved thing, but they were scrawny starved things too. The bear had the advantage of being angry. In one quick movement it teared off one of the legs of the boy Valbanera loved. A shout choked in her throat as she scrambled to him, ignoring the wild terror of her heart, drowning out the bears growls in favor of the boy’s painful screams. She took off her muddy sweaty shirt, knotted it around the ripped limb uselessly. Valbanera´s lungs were wheezing for air; her face was wet with tears and blood. She breathed through the panic and looked up looking for something to stop the bleeding. There was nothing but rocks and dry sand. The bear was no longer there. The boy Valbanera loved died quickly. She didn’t know how much time passed until his eyes closed because she didn’t have a watch, but it felt like seconds and centuries at the same time. She wished she had a watch. “Find a new safe place, build a home,” he said through his white lips, “and name it after me.” Valbanera knew she would choke if she tried to speak, so she swallowed thewords singeing her throat and nodded. “Don’t you dare die before you do,” said the boy she loved.
Her eyes closed at the same time his last breath left his lungs. When she woke up the next morning, among dried blood and still wet tears, the black bear was looking at her, his snout dark with the boy’s life. Valbanera scrambled backwards, then came forward again to grab the boy’s empty body. The bear didn’t move. Then a rage came over her and swiped away the fear. She picked up a rock and threw it at the bear. The bear ran deep into the cave. “Where are you going!” she shouted. “Come back, come back and fight me! Come back and eat me alive!” Then she saw that the bear had left some plants and herbs behind. This scene repeated itself for two weeks, these words the only ones that left Valbanera´s mouth, the plants and herbs and moisty rocks the only thing that went in. Time looped on itself and around her: bear, rock, screams, plants. Again and again Valbanera bent on herself to grab a rock, bent on herself to throw it, bent on herself to rage, bent on herself to scramble towards the plants the bear left and stuff them down her throat. Again and again Valbanera bent on herself to weep over the decomposing body of the boy she loved.
On the first day of the third week, she couldn’t bear the smell of the corpse anymore, she couldn’t bear its purplish hue nor the black fingers and falling skin. She picked up the body of the boy she loved, hating herself for the gags that constricted her throat when the dead skin touched her. When she stepped out of the cave, the sky was cloudy and the air heavy and plump with something so foreign and distant she didn’t even dare imagine what it could possibly be. Ignoring the unnatural weight of the atmosphere, she dragged her feet, and the corpse, to a clear esplanade. There were sick-looking weeds growing through the cracks in the floor. She dug a hole with her hands, ignoring the pain when her fingers started to burn and blood sprouted under her nails, and buried the body. Just when she was about to fill the hole again, Valbanera remembered the sunflower seed that she had kept in her pocket ever since she had left her natal village six months before. She took it out, dropped it inside the poor tomb and covered it and the body with the dry soil again. Valbanera cried over the grave for one whole day, her tears drying up as soon as they hit the stirred earth. One week later it rained: a shower of long-kept water and mud. The rainfall lasted for another whole month, in which neither her nor the bear went back to the cave. They lived under the downpour in comfortable solitude, and the tears falling from the sky mixed with the tears falling from her eyes. A sunflower grew from the grave of the boy she had loved ―the boy she still loved― and the bear and Valbanera added sunflower seeds to their previous scrawny diet.
Three years later, there were enough trees in the valley for her to tear one down and build a hut, next to the thriving sunflower field that grew over the land under which her love slept. One frizzy morning a group of six people appeared at the door of her house. They had been walking for more than a year, they said, and she was the first contact with another human being the had had in that time. Valbanera invited them to come in and told them her story. “Can we stay here?” a filthy kid asked. “Is the drought still not over?” Valbanera asked back. “No,” a withered old woman said, “only here the rain has reached.” They stayed and, with Valbanera’s permission, built another house. One night they brought her a present, to thank her for her hospitality. It was a black bear. They cooked it for dinner, and while her teeth fought with the rough meet, Valbanera cried. It had been years since she had last cried. The population in the valley grew. People followed rumors about an Eden made of sunflowers and pine trees spreading beyond the coarse mountain range and the haunting desert. At one point, when Valbanera´s fingers were wrinkled and her skin thick and her eyes old, there were four hundred and ninety-nine inhabitants in that little oasis. The kid who had asked her for her blessing that first night so many years before, who was now a grown-up charming lad, knocked on her door one afternoon.
“My wife has given birth,” he said. “We are five hundred people now.” Valbanera smiled from her esparto hammock. “Congratulations.” “The villagers have been talking,” he said, bending his head. “We think it’s time to give a name to this place.” When Valbanera didn’t say anything, he continued: “Places need names just as people do. There are some names that are favored―” “Romello,” said Valbanera, raising from her hammock. “Excuse me?” “This village,” she said, holding his gaze, “is to be called Romello.” For some unknown reason to him, the boy felt his heart stuttering and a wave of sadness took over him as he looked into those timeless black eyes. “Of course,” he said, because he had never heard that name before, but in that moment he could not think of any other name to baptize his home. Valbanera died the next day. She was buried in the center of the village, where not many months later the construction of a church would start, a church which would bear the name of the girl who built a village with a sunflower seed and her broken heart. Or so the legend went.
take a sip, spill the bottle BY ASENA F. tumblr: @astralis-elysian tw: allusions to not sleeping and not eating
It’s three am you’re on your back staring at the ceiling and the words call to you like a mother would a child. little songbird why are you still awake your memories haunt you but what is the point they are just snippets of a life gone by whizzing past your car window too fast for you to snap a picture, too blurry to see anything. memories, little songbird, are best kept buried sometimes. It’s five am you’re pacing the room typing a message on your phone but you don’t want to send it; you reread past messages then delete the draft. two months ago WHO?: are you up? YOU: yes WHO?: what are you doing? YOU: nothing one month ago WHO?: how are you? YOU: fine It’s seven am you’re sitting at the table staring down at your food and wondering: what’s the point of thriving now?
The cereal box is empty. You poured everything out. So is the milk carton. Empty, that is. Also in the bowl. Empty, like your heart. Hollow. Nothing. Space. Air. The cereal’s getting soggy. You poke it. Pick up a spoonful. But you don’t eat it. Watch it float in the little pool of milk gathered on the metal. Is the cereal good? Are you happy? There is a world of difference between the two questions, but a world is not far away enough. You must run elsewhere, take the memories and throw them out in another spot. Here is too close to home. Too close and yet so far. You wish for stability but only get hurt and pain and sorrow. It’s nine am you’re out at the park listening to music and staring at nothing and everything and you realise: it’s fine. “hey! watch where you’re going!” “sorry, sir.” “teenagers.” “sorry, excuse me, would you mind stepping aside?” “sorry." “don’t worry about it, dove!” “it’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine.” “mommy, are they talking to themself?” “hush, darling, don’t be so rude.” “everything’s fine.” It’s eleven am you take a sip and spill the bottle water splashes everywhere what went wrong it was going so well?
little songbird don’t stress yourself out over it what’s done is done there’s no point trying to undo and redo something you can’t change look ahead, beautiful, look ahead and see the light of day you may walk in the darkness but everyone awaits you in the light go forth and claim the world, and remember: memories, little songbird, do not define you. It’s one pm and you realise: don’t believe what you can’t see. they speak from a mouth dripping with the sweet lies they feed to you.
Stitches and Stories BY JYOTSNA NAIR tw: death
I never called Olga Maria Martin anything except Grandmother all my life. Not Grandma, or Granny or Gran- just Grandmother. I sometimes wonder if that was how she introduced herself to me – a newborn , her first grandchild- when she picked me up with those chalk-white hands and looked me over with her needle-sharp gaze. “I am your Grandmother. Now quit that racket.” According to family lore, Grandmother was the only person who could stop me from crying. All she had to do was walk into the room: back straight, lips pursed, forehead slightly wrinkled- and I would clam up. Just like that. It was as if she possessed a remote control for me. I never cried, sniffed, or needed a diaper change when Grandmother was around. Even as a six month old child, I behaved. And,when I was older, I didn’t stop behaving. I knew Grandmother better than any of my cousins, any of my family, really . I knew how to read her,knew that if her thin lips settled into a ruler-straight line, it meant she was mad, and that a storm of harsh Russian was coming your way. I knew that if she sighed, it meant you had done something staggeringly stupid. I knew how to talk to her, the moody, nit-picky bundle of stubbornness most people were too scared to even approach. She used to correct me all the time- about the way I dressed, the way I held a spoon , and even about how I tied my shoelaces. “Sit straight, Alisa! This is not a movie theatre.”
She was a little more friendly with me than any of her other grandchildren. I was her first grandkid- her eldest daughter’s eldest daughter. She used to make a lot of sharlotka apple cake, and the first slice would always go in my mouth. Every time we came over, watering her orchids was my job. My siblings always pitied me for having to do chores, but I carried my watering can with pride. I knew that it was a sign of Grandmother’s trust in me, and there was no greater trophy the world could offer me. After lunch, we would sit together with pieces of muslin to embroider. My stitches were inevitably clumsy and lopsided, but I didn’t care about them. I was there only for her, and the stories she told. Olga Maria was born in Moscow, but her family had fled to the United States 7 years later, following the overthrow of the monarchy. So the tales my cousins and I heard were ones of wartime strife: no bread, very little water, danger, gunfire, arrests at odd hours. And other ones: a month long voyage across the Atlantic, learning English from battered dictionaries, an almost absent father , and a mother as drained as a dried up leaf. Then there were stories of Grandfather. We loved those. I wonder if anyone else noticed how Grandmother’s voice changed when she spoke about him. It became softer, and filled with warmth, more gentle. The voice of a little girl. Grandfather had been an engineer, and Grandmother a seamstress. He had built bridges, and she still designed blouses and dresses. Every birthday,
I would get a beautiful gown or frock- one was grass-green, embroidered with gold thread. Another was scarlet- my favorite color. And every birthday, Grandmother would demand a photo of me, to stick in her album. If I wasn’t wearing her frock in it, communication would cease for ten days. She was very, very sensitive. Every time we got a new calendar, we’d circle her birthday in red before hanging it up on a wall. Forgetting Grandmother’s birthday was as deadly a sin as wrath, sloth , envy or any of the other four. She would labor over each piece she worked on, not just my birthday dresses. It had to have the perfect buttons, lining or thread-work. Sewing was not a job. It was an art, right up there with ballet and opera. She loved putting tassels on skirts, and embellishing them with sequins. Her fees were expensive, but you could bet your bottom dollar that the result would be magnificent. Ever heard ‘the customer is king’? Not to Grandmother. She didn’t like her clients making ‘fancy’ requests, suggesting a design that she did not approve of. She would flatly refuse to do it. She knew best. She was Queen of the Singer; she ruled over her shop with a needle shaped scepter. I can see her in my mind’s eye: neatly snipping, crouching at her table with a piece of silk, filing away receipts. She was orderly in everything she did. She bought enough supplies every spring to last her all year round- rolls of multicolored threads, gleaming buttons , fine wispy ribbons and cords.
The mincemeat for the Christmas cake would always be soaked in rum in the first week of September. Copies of magazines were stacked in gaudy piles on her shelf. Nothing was ever lost, forgotten or mislaid. All our birthdays went into a red leather book, written whenever someone was born. I’ve flipped through it many times. Our names are written in black, in Grandmother’s pointy font: David (my brother) : 24th June. I’ve traced my hand over my name many times: Alisa: 12th December. The red leather book also had a list of all her appointments- clients, visits, grocery lists, and so on. A few months ago, I looked through it idly. One page said: Appt. Dr. Wilson, 5:00 p.m. A doctor? Grandmother had never liked doctors. She regarded them as quacks who thrived off the worries of those unfortunate enough to confide in them. The more degrees on their shiny plaques, the more she despised them. “All that glitters is not gold, “ She’d say, lips settling into that even line, like she’d sewn her mouth shut herself. So why had she made an appointment with a doctor? I knew better than to ask, and so returned the book to her handbag. I soon forgot what I had noticed. I forgot a few other things too. How Grandmother, a being possessing insane energy , was sometimes too tired to go for her evening walks. How she stopped working, when it was one of her biggest joysapparently because she wanted to spend more time with us. I was too happy to notice how strange it was. I forgot. I will never forget the Call.
It will always be capitalized in my mind. I’d come home from flute lessons,had taken a donut out of the fridge and was lazily flicking through T.V. channels. I registered the phone ringing, and my mother’s rushed footsteps. “Grandmother’s in the hospital.” At the hospital, the doctors said it was too late. Metastasis had set in weeks ago. She was barely clinging to life. I held her hand tightly . I was afraid that if I let go, she would too. If she had been awake, she would’ve squealed indignantly at the pain, and I would’ve gotten a very prompt pinch. But she did nothing. Her hair seemed more straggly, shaggy like stiff fabric. Her eyes were closed. She was heavily sedated. Her death was peaceful. She was in no pain now. I sat on a hard plastic chair, a little away from everyone else. Grandmother had known about the cancer, but hadn’t said a word. The appointments, the quitting- it had been because of this. She had expertly shielded us from the pain, all because of her love. In a way, I should’ve expected this. It was so typical of her. She wouldn’t have wanted us fussing over her, though she would’ve liked the attention. She wouldn’t have wanted us treating her as if she were as fragile as a worn thread- not Grandmother. This was a woman competent even in the face of a tumor.
It may have been against the dress code, but I still wore my scarlet birthday frock to the funeral. Combed my hair the way she liked it best: a mermaid braid. Wore, for once, ear-rings. She would have approved. She always approved of anything ladylike. Even in a coffin, dressed in a silk blouse and white skirt, she looked sophisticated- elegant to the very end. Days later , we went through her things. I smiled whenever I found bits and pieces of her life tucked away in nooks of the house. A box of cinnamon quills she used in pancakes. A silver thimble . I also found the red leather book. I stroked the cover. Traced each name with a fingertip. When the tears came, I was careful not to let them drip onto the pages, so the ink didn’t smudge, and the words didn’t get blotched. She would’ve hated that. All our birthdays were there. Every cousin, aunt , uncle and in-law. Except her own. I found a biro, and wrote on a fresh page: Grandmother: 4th September
Tales of Memory BY A.D PAYNE Instagram @talesfromboredom
Some Three Thousand Cycles into my duty The light streams, like it always does, through the window in a soft gold and white blaze. The curtains are pulled back, and the doors are open, which means I am ready for my work today. A couple chairs, carefully positioned to give just the right effect to any potential visitor, are currently empty. They have been for a while. So I write in here, again. Collecting another stream of thoughts, for they may form yet another story to tell. No one values a good story anymore. I have tried to pretend it was otherwise, for a while, but it is but the truth. There is no one, absolutely no one eager to be a visitor to the Memory Keeper anymore. Even my apprentice admits it. Everyone’s so eager to create their own memories, their own stories. We agree on that, but that is about as far as our agreement goes. Olga thinks it is good, that they have forsaken the old tales. She says creating their own stories, and having no heed towards the past will help them grow without restriction of the previous generation’s judgement. Of course, she so conveniently ignores how we are a part of that previous generation, which is entirely like her. She is quite the character. It has been so since her lover died, and she begged to be taken on as Apprentice. Sometimes I think it would have been better for her to share that story, the love and loss set free into the world once more — and yet she is so secretive.
There she comes, with my morning tea. She is a good Apprentice in many other ways, really. After all, she makes good tea. And for all her secrecy, she is completely enamoured by the stories, and has learnt every single one. She will have no problem telling them as well to the visitors when I am gone. I only fear she will not, for she hates many of them. Now she has taken a seat by my side, and is peering (very obviously and rudely, too) at me, and I know what she is thinking. It is a conversation we have had many times, and will have in just a moment. In fact, we know it so well that I do not even need to look up from my writing to have it. I shall simply record it today. 'Is that a new story you are writing, maybe?' 'No. You know I never write new stories. It is the Visitors that come and jumble them up according to their own heads. That is how the world receives new stories.' 'You might try writing one of your own some day, though.' 'Some day, yes.' There will always be a pause around here, where I think I will never do such a thing, and she glares at the book, because she knows that I am thinking just that. I have learned to be comfortable with that silence. I have not touched my tea until now. It is bad manners, so I must part with my book for just a moment.
One Cycle into Olga Berezovsky’s duty There is a new story to tell, and it is of the Apprentice’s tea that bought her way to the position of Memory Keeper in the Undying Library. The details of his death are rather gruesome and will not be remembered by an Visitor anyway, so I shall not note them down. What I will note down is this: there will be a new oath. A new mission, and a new purpose to every Keeper and Apprentice of this Library for every Cycle to come. We will not stifle the young with our stories, and neither will we drive them away. Their added details are a beauty, proof of their existence as a creative race, and we will do the same. The old stories and every memory is sacred, yes. And yet, we will build upon them, to add beauty to this Undying world. The Princes will no longer kiss a sleeping, defenseless Princess. The Evil Queens will reign with true cunning and ambition, as well as corruption. There will be Fools as well as Geniuses, and their names will change with time. The Princess will kiss another Princess, and the Prince his own Prince, and each memory will have been made anew. We will keep the stories alive, for that is what we have sworn to do. Change will happen; it is the beauty of Memory.
Paths that cross BY RAY MORDEN tumblr: @flimseywhimsey tw: suicide mention and parental death, mention of weight gain
It’s me; the author of this short story. I would like to tell you about a memory that has stuck with me for twenty years. It seems to fade in and out of my recollections as time goes by; but it never disappears. When it does surface in my mind, it consumes my attention. I often ask myself, does it carry as much weight for the others involved as it does for me? That question is why I would like to share it with you. There seems to be something so unfathomably human in it, one of those concepts that you can easily internalize; but can’t quite put into words. Maybe you’ll have an easier time making sense of it. I wonder, will it stand out in your mind as vividly as it does in mine? How far can human compassion travel? And how many lives will be affected by the minutes-long interaction I had twenty years ago? I would like to recount this memory in the third person (replacing ‘I’ for ‘he’ and so forth) because I think it will better capture the detachment of the experience. The attachment only came afterwards. Maybe attachment isn’t the right word: the captivation? the fixation? the reoccurrence of the scene in my mind. How often do we experience something and only come to realize its impact afterwards? The essence of the memory that has lingered and, in a way, haunted me is this: where are they now? How did they fare in life? Perhaps the most burning question: do they remember it even happened at all?
He was walking through the dusty aisles of a department store. A ramshackle outlet that sported the bleating of an accordion player at the entrance. Dusty, yet scientifically bright from the fluorescents and white walls. The kind of store that would look like it’s out of a different dimension to people who lived in a big city. But to a small town, it fit in just fine. Truthfully, it was probably 50 years out of date compared to the emporiums of larger cities; but so was the rest of the small town, perhaps regressed even further in the past. It was late March in 2001. He would not remember that the weather had been lovely, flowers blooming outside of the store in giant pots. A fresh smell of life had clung to the air and invigorated his senses. He would also not remember what he had gone into the store to buy. Perhaps potting soil for his wife, or groceries with a toy thrown in for his children. For some reason, he had decided to go shopping alone. He had been around 30 years old then. He had dark brown hair with a cleanshaven face, and dark blue eyes. He was of average height and build at that time. Well, in truth, he had just started an attempt at quitting smoking, and he always gained a bit of weight on those occasions. He was inside the store and parked in a lane next to a stretch of aisles. He hadn’t been looking at products when it happened. He had probably been flipping through a flyer, one-handed; checking to make sure he hadn’t missed any big deals before heading for the checkout.
He felt a warm, light pressure on the hand that was dangling by his side. Startled, he looked down and saw a small hand firmly gripping his own. He discovered quite a bit in the moment he glanced from that hand to that face. The first realization was the size of this person; this child. She barely stood past the height of his knees. Her hand was tiny in his but held a fearsome and unmoving grip. Looking further from the hand he observed her arm. She was wearing a long-sleeved cotton pajama shirt, but the colours were faded and blurred. It was inside out. Looking further, he noticed a mop of unkempt, slithering hair. Very thin and light blond. Still, it was her face that was the strangest. The girl stared at him with a look of determination that was not often seen in a child. Her big, ocean blue eyes were scrunched with effort. An accusation fumed behind those eyes. She neither frowned nor smiled, her mouth a straight line. While he was glancing from her face to her hand and back, the child never took her eyes from his. Not quite sure what to do, he scanned his surroundings, hoping to find the girl’s mother. To his relief, he heard a female voice, calling out with the appropriate level of panic, and she appeared at the nape of an aisle some feet away. Suddenly, he felt compelled to offer explanations. What would the child’s mother think? That he was a kidnapper? Would he have to have a discussion with the police or security? He tried to disentangle his hand from hers but found it impossible. To pull his hand away, would hoist the child along with it, and that would surely raise alarm.
The woman, who was perhaps in her early thirties, wearing soft and baggy attire, looked at the man for a few moments. Her eyes were brown and tired. She offered no words as she stepped forward and pried the girl’s hand from his. She pulled back a few paces, hand in hand with her daughter. He grappled for words, for explanations, but they didn’t come. The girl continued to stare into his eyes, unflinching. He opened his mouth to apologize, but – “I’m sorry,” the woman said. “Her father just died and you look a lot like him.” The child’s blue eyes remained locked on his, non-reactive. “His funeral was just yesterday. Suicide.” she said, perhaps so used to saying the words that their weight had dissipated. He didn’t say anything as they walked away. The woman’s back was to him as they retreated, but the child turned to look, never breaking from his gaze. It was interrupted as they walked into the aisle the mother had emerged from. He was left with a moment to think, but no thoughts formed. After a moment, the mother and child came out of the aisle, the girl was now in the base of a cart, seated. He saw two other faces from the shopping cart, one older and one younger than the child that had taken his hand. All three stared at him as the mother pushed their cart towards the register. The other two children’s amber eyes eventually strayed, but the ocean eyes remained locked. The eyes that were the same colour as his own, and had been the same colour as her father’s. There was a promise in those little girl’s eyes: I know you’re alive. I’ll find you again.
And before he knew it, they were gone. They had left the store, but he remained in place. In someone else’s mind’s eye, he remained in that store. Forever. Only now did he have time to reflect. Should he have said or done something? Told the girl that he wasn’t her father maybe. Would that have been for good or for harm? How long would that 6 year old girl remain convinced that her father was alive? How would that shape her views of death and the permanence of it? Should he have waved goodbye? Offered to help somehow? Saying and doing nothing was an instinctual reaction, not a conscious choice. Would that indecision scar a life forever? There would be no way to have the answers to those questions, because he never saw them again.
The gravity of that random, chance occurrence has never left my mind. It feels like that child’s gaze was never truly broken. Unresolved questions and daydreams are all that remain in my attempts at closure: was the memory impactful enough to nestle itself in their minds as firmly as it was embedded in mine? Were they able to move on and cope with what had happened? Does the memory linger on or was it forgotten alongside the majority of childhood recollections? What became of that determined child? Who is she? To answer that question please reread the first line. - Rachell “Ray” Morden
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CONTRIBUTORS aneleh ( editor ) ( in order of appearence ) jimini viers autry zhana sanchi adeline cole caro ruiz oskar leonard jade eldridge sasha conway eliza kent natalie carmen arribas asena f. jyotsna nair a.d payne ray morden