By Madalena Lambrou

Madalena Lambrou was born on the 5th of March in 2008 in Greece. She lives in the city of Agrinio, located in the West of Greece. She has been writing since she was 12 years old. Her work includes mostly poetry, songs, and prose written in both Greek and English. The themes she addresses through her writing vary: from sadness to hope, from life to death, from pain to love. All feelings tattooed on her soul have been marked on paper as well. She has submitted poems to numerous literary magazines and has had her work published.

My love has lived in many places,

Many more than my body has.

It is there on the swing I sat

5 years ago on a late afternoon

-I can almost hear my laugh.

I spot my love  on the skin I held in a blossomed spring,

On the kiss I started summer with,

On the luminous tears I ended up with.

My love breathes every time I hear a melody

Every time I see hope come out of a fire

Every time I close my eyes and I can still see.

My love lies in the ashes of my grandmother,

In the screams that I didn't hide,

In the dreams I loudly marked as mine.

My love still lives in the letters I wrote,

In the fear for the unknown ,

In a faded exchange of smiles.

My love is somewhere passing the bridge of a Venetian canal,

Walking under a full moon on the road to the Parthenon,

Reading poetry to the waters of my hometown's lake.

My love is following art down the aisle. 

My love is simple words just like my will in life. 

I've sent my love out to the world

And it came back immortal.

By Syahna Maryam

Syahna Maryam was born and raised in Samarinda, Indonesia, where the riverside of the city inspires her to flow with her fluency of words. She's currently studying English at Mulawarman University. She wishes to be an essayist/film director/anthropologist, and her portfolio for the mentioned fields can be seen through @syahnamarch05 on Instagram.

Cryptic Days

by Syahna Maryam

I. STEPHEN

Breakfast today is a bagel with powdered sugar and a glass of tea. It always has been this set since the beginning of my troop veteran days after surviving the World War II. I finally understand why my father loved to ponder his thoughts in his dining chair for hours during this time of the day. I always wish I had his thoughts, a lovely wife who prepares pancakes for kids before school. I never do, I think about the secret annexes and wonder, wholeheartedly, if my Darlene turns on BBC to hear from us, the armies sent to concentration camps. Every Monday I write to her, three pages with smearing ink here and there. I begin with such prompts: Today’s weather, what has happened last week, my latest duties. I planned to marry her after the war ends, but I’d never heard back. We have Beth, our helper, sending the letters to people of our choice as British troops. Beth has always said Darlene moves around a lot and on some days it gets impossible to see her, except she’d give her photographs I keep in a wooden box. My friend, Garrick, married the helper some years ago after their daughter, Elle, was born. I assume she’s around 21 now, meaning I’ve been consistently writing for as long as a child matures. 1944-2004 feel like picking up your baby at the daycare after a long day if I think about my Darlene. You know, I’m supposed to have a proper, full-on British breakfast. I would even have a black pudding, I would kill for a spotted dick. No bet. Beans, tomatoes, sunny side up. Bacon, or frankfurter if I had a grandchild. Eat away my hangover. It’s a miracle I’m still alive even after those beers.

I send my letters on my own now that I’m free, as Elle would come and help with my walking stick. For some reason, I am never able to remember Darlene’s address given by Beth back in 1962 then. I got my legs shot while protecting this tiny note, and I’m always proud that I protected this paper in my sock is the reason why I need my walking stick, and not me being old in age. Ah! There she is! What a sweet girl, rushing to help me standing up! 

“Ready, Stephen?”, she says with her curly bob that I always notice. If she has terrible days, they will be even messier than this. Today she’s wearing jeans, meaning she is going to go out with her friends Molly and Imogen past 10 AM. 

“Always”. She’s the only Harry Potter hipster whose shoulders I would put my arms on. Darlene would have loved her. After she ties my shoes, we walk down the stairs. Beth has never reminded me to wear my hat, Elle does. These youngsters with weird obsession to avoid the sun.

As we arrive in the post office, Elle writes down all the forms that we need. I always make sure to have pennies with me because Elle loves being paid with free stamps, and we can buy them in the post office in this era. Three to four times she bought me postcards, “Just show Darlene where you are right now!”, but I’m good at writing. I wish I had a grandchild to inherit this talent, but no.

However, for the first time today Elle asks the question I always give myself, “Why don’t you ever visit her?”. Darlene loves handsome men, and I have a limp in my leg. Will she be taller than me then? Will she need to stop wearing wedge shoes, her favorite of all times? Am I scared? Has it been that long that I question it instead of being in fear?

I. HARVEY

Every Monday there are pages of a letter in my front door. Now, I’m just a stressed student at Durham who doesn’t need more of these. I won’t ever win medals in an Olympic, nor I even have time about who’s elected as the mayor. If I don’t get heaps of them cleaned up by now, the landlord is going to kick me out of this loft. When the first three letters arrived, I read them just in case it would bring me fortune. I’ve been waiting on the Lens Culture Photography Awards since forever. It’s been four years of me thinking I have a shot, or at least a talent. Most of my money goes to submissions for nothing. About the letters… The first one, I couldn’t even finish reading the second paragraph. Just some random guy speaking about the weather inside a dystopia of some book. After that, I read about hiding in a secret annex and other nonsense. The last one I read was telling me about guns and that made me sure there had been a Halloween trick-or-treat I didn’t care a bit about. The handwriting seemed consistent, but everyone in campus get things like this all the time in 2004. 

It’s not a secret that a college student’s loft usually doesn’t smell good. My plant has gotten wilted for weeks, leftovers from Tesco are my home-cooked meal, the only exciting day of the week is Wednesday when it is my turn to be in the laundry and feeling clean for a while. I should improve this before the inspection day. That being obvious, I must go to the nearest Aldi I can find to get… I don’t know. Short-cuts. A bucket of that Tide powder, I heard it absorbs all those nasty smells.

As I open my front door, I see an old man with a walking stick and presumably his granddaughter. I don’t know why they look ostracized. That man has an odd-looking leg behind his trouser, probably something to do with his health, so the granddaughter hold him not to fall down. “May I help you?”, I ask carefully, which is rare.

The old man chokes and trembles, and however uneducated I am I understand that it is a sight of disappointment. “Why, this isn’t Darlene’s house!”, he whines. I don’t like kids, and I hate that this reminds me of them. The girl pats his shoulder slowly as she asks, “Do you know something that has to do with Darlene Kula?”. I shake my head hesitantly and almost suggest them to go to the police when the old man trips to the wooden floor. I immediately lift him and tell the girl to bring his walking stick to my living room as I prepare them tea. Obviously Lipton if they expect Twinnings. 

I figure this girl speaks for him as the old man chokes and continuously wipe his phlegm with the back of his hand. “So, Stephen over here has been sending letters to a woman called Darlene Kula since years ago, and he decides to finally meet her. But I figure she doesn’t live her anymore?”.

“She doesn’t. I’ve been here since sophomore year and it’s always been a student’s housing”. The beginning of a new century and I got kicked out of my dorm. “I will have my inspection this Friday, and… I need to clean up the letters I assume he has accidentally sent me”. I present the letters in front of the girl when she raises a tone, “Why do you open the first three?”. I answer, “It’s a spam and I need to stay cautious! I’m only 21, I must always be aware and content of when this place increases in pricing!”. I must also be the same when an old man stares at the frames of pictures in my living room.

That’s when Stephen speaks, “What if you stay at my house as long as you help me find my Darlene? A young man like you must be brilliant in decoding ciphers…”, what is this, World War II?

I. ELLE

This has been two weeks since Harvey stays with Stephen, and although he doesn’t want to admit it, I know he’s been suspended from his own loft. He rejected Stephen’s offer at first before calling me on the phone. This comes with a prerequisite, though: He needs to help Stephen finding Darlene. Whatever way it might be.

This has been another Monday where I go to Stephen’s and there have been photos all over the floor. Stephen is biting his pen as he has a photo in his left hand and a small notebook in his right one. He seems like he’s been familiar with how Darlene smiles, or what clothes she likes. I’m jealous for a bit because I’ve been growing up here and Stephen has never shown me any single picture. I know he doesn’t think of me as his own granddaughter, but I didn’t know then I’d feel more like a stranger now seeing Darlene with golden specks in her eyes I’ve envied in the posh girls that come in my classes. There’s a picture of her baking Madeleine cakes, I didn’t know Stephen was a sweet tooth once and he’s having Digestives with a stranger.

There’s a gigantic map of Britain stuck on the wall, with some X’s scribbled on it. In half of Durham it’s filled with that. “We’ve been walking all over those areas to find Darlene!”, awes Stephen. I worry about his leg. “Harvey over here has been a reliable hand. We’ve even found people my age!”. Both of them chuckle in the same manner and I wonder if there’s anything else they keep. 

“So, how’s it going? Have you any resources yet?”, I ask.

            “Not much, but today Stephen is going to go to Littletown. For some reason, Darlene sent pictures there the most”, Harvey is getting tender day by day. He’s been having lesser acnes, he’s already been online at 6 AM and I bet Stephen has cooked him anything other than pot noodles. I think I’m raised by a grandfather figure and he lives with Stephen’s habits. I know about Stephen’s leg and that’s triumphant, so I ask him, “You’re not coming? What if he needs help?”. I’m immersed between how I like the attention he’s been giving Stephen, but I wish he was only doing so for a rent-free stay and then go away from our lives. That’s why I didn’t expect him to say, “Well, my plan is to come along without him knowing, following from the behind like the rats in Nutcracker. Fancy giving yourself a go?”.

Suddenly, all I know is that I have to walk on my toes beneath the small alleys before pivoting whenever Stephen’s espionage radar is turned on. Harvey and I get to see him entering a bakery that’s probably been here for four generations, him being known by the police officers that it feels like a trip, him being frustrated over the traffic lights, and him staring blankly at houses that could possibly be where he grew up. Harvey’s so good at hiding that I understand my distrust in him, I hope he’s been lying about the affection for these past weeks. Stephen’s rarely conscious about us. He says it’s because he strolled around a lot when he was in Year 9 before A Levels and there was always something to be taken pictures about. “You might’ve been here since ground zero, Elle. But I’m the one who told Stephen about Darlene’s habit I could see right through pictures. Things she couldn’t say by letters alone”.

“And what are those?”.

“Tell me, how are you going to tell your boyfriend in the army that you’re a smoker? Darlene’s always had the tip of her hand on powdered tobaccos. Stephen might’ve had an issue with his vision, though”.

“And what else?”.

“Diet pills. Learned about how photos were back in the 50’s. Her blush on, or what she and Stephen would call rogue, wasn’t that vibrant on the previous pictures. But it’s not a saturated portrait, she was simply getting paler. Stephen, on the other hand, might’ve only focused on her dimples”.

“You’re just making that up”.

“What if I’m not? Tell me why Darlene has always had her hair tied down instead of blown dry? It’s not as simple as idleness for someone as sophisticated as her. She’d been having hair fall, but she was a woman so what must be heard were the happy thoughts. See, I know these stuffs”.

Why do Darlene’s habits sound so unhealthy, so unlikely of love, so desperate for care? Was she depressed? Was she feeling out of love? Her disappearance has never been this big of a question. All I cared about was how to make Stephen happy, not lonely, and possibly to eradicate his regrets. All I wanted was a closure I didn’t realize Stephen needed it. A lot of occurrences happen in my mind, what if she was an unhappy housewife to someone else? What if she couldn’t bear it all?For a stranger, Darlene’s made me feel so much and it takes someone’s perspective to understand why Stephen would bleed himself dry for her. I thought I’d always known him.

We are in the middle of Littletown now as Stephen makes his way through a three-story book store. I must admit, for someone who’s 80, Stephen is an unit. He loves crosswords and strip comics, he would probably buy Peanuts. Sometimes one must be a tourist in his own town to see what he’s all about. He’s a gentleman, but I know he’s burdened sometimes. He’s served too much for the country that I hope he still has a space for self love in him. I wear Harvey’s jumpsuit to be undercover, he ruffles his hair messily all over his eyebrows and put on a mask. We stumble over shelves and stairs back and forth, and boy it was wrong of us to think that Stephen’s gotta be slow at climbing them.

He glances over a newspaper stand when another old man as robust taps his shoulder. I don’t know what they talk about, but it seems light. Stephen’s ears turn red like a young man fluttered over a job well done, there are sparks in his eyes. That must be an old friend. I pay every attention to his expressions while Harvey’s busy trying to remember something. “I’m trying to remember the letters he let me read back at home. This feels familiar somehow. Wasn’t this one of the secret annexes? Wasn’t this the one he stayed at?”.

I hope he’s wrong. My gut feelings deny it. Come to think about it, this book store does have an unusual placement of things everywhere. I knock on the walls and it’s sturdier than other cements, probably layering bricks. There’s a pendulum on the back, behind boxes of books. That’s when I see Stephen’s getting horrified when that old man threatens him, and he points a handgun at him. He shoots him.

Stephen’s leg is bleeding, and I call the ambulance while Harvey chases him outside.

NARRATOR

K.-B., D. K.

July 10, 1962

Dear Stephen,

By the time I write this, I am now married to Peter Boyle, unwillingly. We’ve been married for years and I finally have the courage to tell you so. My parents had demanded me to be a housewife so that I could have a life, while I would’ve been on my knees waiting for you. Unfortunately they were stiff.

I’ve moved places so Beth couldn’t find me, and I wish you well. I decide to not have any children; I aborted one when the doctor decided I was too weak for those kicks in my tummy. I wish you well, and thank you for our friendship. I have been yours.

Your companionship has been one of a kind, and I treasure this for an eternity. I hope you do the same; Keep me in your memories, where I’m (always) supposed to be. Or not. You will be with the greatest woman at heart, someone patient, and I would know it from afar.

This is my last message, and I wish you a good life. Or as our people say now, go break a leg. Take them places

Sincerely.

As Beth found this letter in Darlene Kula-Boyle’s house, she burst into tears before deciding to keep it in Stephen DeLambilly’s last Christmas sock for him to read whenever he’s ready.

By Tallulah Conolly-Smith

Tallulah Conolly-Smith is a fifteen-year-old writer from Queens, New York City. She is a sophomore at Stuyvesant High School. She has been writing all her life and fully, recklessly, intends on being an author when she grows up. When not reading or writing, she spends time with her friends, watches sitcoms, and does her best to keep up with schoolwork. Her work has been published in the Blue Marble Review, and last year, she self-published her first novel, Young And Sweet.

       He snaps his fingers at her sometimes, instantly summoning her to his side, where he rattles off orders. Sing a little song for our guests. Take off my slippers. Pour my evening mix.

        She’d been a bartender for a while after dropping out. Not even of drinking age, but the owner had felt enough pity to let her stay for a tiny salary. One night, a man in brown fur was in the corner, smoking a cigar. He approached the bar after everyone left, saying that she reminded him of himself when he was younger. He had money. She had youth and a rumpled sort of beauty. The transaction was not complicated.

        A few days later she turned in notice and moved in with him. Precocious children tend to think that everything will work out for them. Precocious children with poor judgment quickly learn otherwise.

        The villa matches him. He’s lived there for decades and it shows. The halls are adorned with dead animals, foreign sculptures, and abstract paintings. I collect them, he says, smiling, because they don’t run away from me like people do. In the middle of it all is the sitting room, where he spends most of his time. He perches in his velvet armchair, watching her putter around the room.

        Sometimes he calls her over.

        He himself is weathered, peeling around the edges. His posture is hard to look at, and he spends his life hunched over his eagle-headed staff. His greatest war in life is against age, and every wrinkle serves as a battle scar. But his eyes are still sharp and yellow. He’s stronger than he looks.

        There is a stray kitten who wanders into the kitchen sometimes. Alaska named her Denali, after the mountain. But when he sees Denali, he kicks her out the garden door again with pointy-toed boots that strike like fire. When Alaska begs him to take the creature in, he shakes his head, saying that he has “no room for strays.” Then he looks her up and down. “Except for you, my dear.”

        She takes care of him, and she takes care of the house. Her favorite of his eccentric collectibles is a board of pinned butterflies. Sometimes she slides out of their bedroom at night and removes the glass to dust them off, careful, always careful. They’ll disintegrate at even the slightest touch, but she loves looking at them, she loves the way their wings are spread in a permanently frozen dance, gilded in poetry by the moonlight that streams in through the skylights. 

But day would come again, and it would be time to throw another ball. The guests would appear one-by-one in masquerade attire, faces obscured Mardi-Gras style. They’d coo over Alaska as she carried in plates of shrimp cocktails. 

        “You look so much like him,” his guests would say to her. He would smile back with the eyes of a bird of prey. 

        And Alaska would try to smile too, try to think of some world in which that would be considered a compliment. It wasn’t even true. It’s not believable that we’re from the same family, she’d tell herself. Because we aren’t. Not really. He’d see the pause in her expression, and one night, he says, “you are of me, my dear, whether you like it or not.” And the guests laugh. Alaska tries to use her brilliant mind to read between the lines and find the joke. But it’s just not there. 

         At least she’s still present enough to recognize that her state of being is not a mere trifle.  

        That night, after the guests depart, she serves him his drink. He taps a long fingernail against the side table. She sets the drink there, ice clinking. The drink is a blueish white today, and he observes it with a critical eye, prodding at it with his eagle-headed staff. “Did you remember the bitters?”

        She nods. As he takes a sip, she moves into the hallway, closing the door behind her and watching him through the little glass window.

        He’s still in his armchair, and then the first cough comes. She takes the key from her pocket and locks the door.

        He tries to cough the burning away, and then he realizes what’s going on. Yellow eyes dart to meet Alaska’s through the little glass window. He lets out a bellow that sounds something like the goddamned stray. 

        He stands and falls immediately, his staff slipping from his hand. Alaska watches him writhe on the carpet, her heart pounding staccato against her ribs. He screams and screams, and never breaks eye contact.

        But it doesn’t mean anything, because she doesn’t break eye contact either, and she isn’t the one dying.

        The poison’s in the ice, and his screams finally stop. And now he’s dead.

        Alaska unlocks the door and walks into the sitting room. She steps right over his body on the wood, where his limbs are splayed straight out and his skin is starting to get very cold. She goes to the butterfly case and opens it. Then, just for the sake of it, she dusts the butterflies off with one of his monogrammed pink handkerchiefs. 

        She goes to the kitchen and leaves the garden door open. She hopes Denali will come in the morning. 

        The villa is hers now, the art, the decorated rooms, and the man’s fortune. She can leave. She can start a new life. But she knows that she won’t. 

        She is Alaska, the girl who let herself be bought for less than her worth. And now, she is Alaska, the woman who will stay and take in the strays. This is her home. Someone needs to rule over the gilded cage. Maybe she is of him, after all.

        Someone needs to dust the butterflies, and do the pink handkerchiefs not still bear his initials? 

        Denali does not come in the morning. Denali never returns to the villa, and never comes back through the garden door, because in the eyes of a friend she now sees pointy-toed boots. No longer boots that strike like fire, but boots that strike like ice.

By Karishma 

Karishma is a 15 year old girl who wishes to be the best version of herself and finds solace in writing poetries and flash fictions.

"I wrote this flash fiction because I believe that many of us have spent our entire lives trying to prove our worth to others, no matter how much we had to sacrifice on our wishes and desires but the truth is that every single human being on this planet is worthy and we don't have to seek external validation because at the end of the day, nobody will stand up for you if you can't stand up for yourself. This world is excellent at bringing others down, so you have to lift yourself up when others try to pull you down."

She masked her face with makeup, that overloaded mascara, those fake eyelashes, and they all screamed, "Hail Beauty." 

Nobody noticed those fake smiles or teary eyes, those sleepless and endless nights of diffidence, all they could yell was- "Hail Beauty." 

But what beauty was it, if it was a teary and vacant one? 

The crowd gazing and applauding her beauty, but not her. 

Nobody saw her soul or her broken heart, but all they could fancy was her fake eyelashes and mascara. Nobody wished to know the true beauty hidden under that foundation. No one did.

 So, she fled from there, with desperation for endorsement beating in her chest.

She couldn't be disguised anymore. She couldn't be that fake person anymore. 

And at last did she realize how much that make-up made no sense, for she was complete beauty in herself and was insulated from the judgements of the masses. 

The mascara was removed, and the fake eyelashes were taken off, and so she stepped out. 

Nobody turned to look at her or even smile at her. No one yelled "Hail Beauty," but her heart did a million little times.

By Anjali Panwar

Born in Delhi, India, Anjali Panwar is a postgraduate in English who has always been fond of literature. She has been an avid reader since childhood and began writing at the age of 15 looking for an outlet of inner expression and her true voice.  

I write letters addressed to you, but

They always reach to your ghost –

To what you were and what you are not, 

To your sleepy eyes, and an empty space. 

I write with bold markers, my reds and blues, 

But white oozing out your eyes – the cottons I picked 

Along with wailing women in my head; they wail and 

I sit – an object of their pity, their song bittersweet, and I,

A fissure in your bedrock, darker than you are –

A present absence I am to become when waters will erase you, 

What will I be when clear waters wash you away? 

Decades I spent with you, and decades more, 

I will write letters addressed to you –

A sign is enough for me – a whisper, and I 

Will hold on to pieces of myself you left in 

Debris of years we spent, unknowing and unspeaking. 

Unmoving rocks, but my letters etched in stone; 

If you don’t, someone will read my letters addressed to

Your ghost. 

By Anjali Panwar

Born in Delhi, India, Anjali Panwar is a postgraduate in English who has always been fond of literature. She has been an avid reader since childhood and began writing at the age of 15 looking for an outlet of inner expression and her true voice.  

Fumbling –

I speak, stopping mid-sentence,

Catching myself a firefly, 

Cold fingers pointing –

‘look! A butterfly’,

Lost forever – like

Blurry faces in intentionally skipped trains,

With the fear of finding a ‘you’ there.

Remembering – 

I seek alzheimer’s vault, 

My memory catching myself a cold, 

Standing in a thick fog –

Bold words i could not read, 

Everywhere I take the fog with me,  

Because

I dared to catch myself a dream

Unlived

Because 

All i’ve lived is a dream

Unlived. 

Out on the grass under the sky when

I caught myself catching an unattainable thought in the childhood of my mind – a memory fabricated of me picking petals of each flower – and the exhaustion from chasing a mind-made butterfly, 

But yes, i caught it in my mind,

Where I live 

All my dreams unlived. 

By Iqra Khan Turk

Co-Author, Iqra Khan Turk from Haripur, kpk, Pakistan.

I have encountered a car,

Bloodshed and the mourns of war. 

Some are known to me; 

Others ,for the first time I have seen. 

I glistened my lips a bit and 

Took a step or two of it. 

I lingered slowly, trembling.

© Iqrakhanturk