Dr Forrester pushed her spectacles up the bridge of her nose and folded her hands in her lap. “So, Nieve, how are the dreams?”

We’d agreed not to call them night terrors.

“I’m still having the same one. Every night.”

“Would it help to talk about it some more?”

I blinked, and the memories began to resurface – being frozen still, as though pinned down by some invisible force, the darkness around me converging to reveal the figure at the foot of my bed, its presence too hellish to face.

Still waiting for my reply, Dr Forrester spoke again. “Perhaps we could talk about the figure. . . the person?”

“Not today.”

I must’ve looked shaken because she gave me a moment to collect myself.

“That’s perfectly fine,” Dr Forrester said. “How about your art? Are you still drawing?”

“Yes.”

“And you find that this helps you?”

I glanced at my bag, lolling open on the couch beside me, and spotted my sketchbook. Some small part of me wanted to share it with her. Flipping through the pages, I found the cherry blossom tree I’d sketched the previous day.

Even though it was just roughly drawn with pencil, it was good. The dimensions, the depth, the movement. It was almost exactly like the one in our back garden when I was a kid. I reminded myself it was OK to feel proud of it.

I slid the sketchbook across the low table between us, careful to avoid knocking over the box of tissues in the middle, or our empty teacups on either side.

“Wow, Nieve,” Dr Forrester smiled. If she was only pretending to like it, she was doing a pretty convincing job. “This is beautiful.”

I looked again at the sketch, now facing Dr Forrester and upside-down. From this angle, it took on new characteristics. Intertwining branches became a web of chains. Thorns and leaves mutated into claws and teeth. Falling petals shifted into droplets of –

Contine reading →

 

When this letter finds you, I hope that you are well.

    That you are smiling and enjoying the first days of the marching spring. Reclining in your worn-out garden chaise longue, among the carefully trimmed grass and the purple pansies, eating ‘apricot spoon sweet’ straight out of the jar.

  As for me, I would say that I am well…

That both of us are just fine.

 I would be lying.

I have no energy left within me to lie to you anymore.

   Things have been challenging.

   I always remember the way you smiled to me when we reunited, a constant reassurance and I long for it with each passing day. Will everything be alright? It has been a year now into the pandemic, and the world around me changed in more ways than I can count, even in this small, forgotten village by the cerulean sea.

 Darkness seemed to have made a permanent residence over the bereft roads. It didn’t matter if the sun was out or not, the world had lost its splendour and liveliness, leaving behind empty and silent ruins of what used to be. Everything was dull, an endless winter. The government failed us -as it always seems to do. Silence descended upon the houses like a thick veil, bringing along with it a foreboding sensation that the world would never be the same again.

‘Είθε να ζήσεις σε ενδιαφέροντες καιρούς.’

  ‘May you live in interesting times’; no wonder ‘interesting’ could be considered a curse…

   People responded to the pandemic the same way they did a hundred years ago, two hundred, and many more. Disbelief, realization, fear. They withdrew. Will we survive this? A tragedy like the ones we had read about in history books, in ‘The Betrothed’ or Thucydides’ ‘History’, a ground zero that levelled humanity and all we had worked for. Nothing seemed normal anymore. Our balance had been overthrown.

 Numb. Afraid. Alone.

   Unable to fight an enemy we could not see, touch or understand, we locked ourselves inside our own homes. We waited. Patiently. For the enemy to breach the last sanctuary we had. Close in on it. Slip through the cracks under the door, through the gaps in the windows. We assumed refuge; no such sanctuary existed. Our houses were no longer safe and we waited for the inevitable siege, for the enemy to kill us. Because it killed so devastatingly many of us.

Contine reading →

The night creeps up on you when you don’t pay attention. My eyes were so focused on the screen, I didn’t notice the daylight leaving the room. It’s quiet, apart from the sound of a tv coming from one of the neighbours’ apartments, even though it’s way past midnight. The lockdown has been going on for months and things don’t seem to progress. Days turn into weeks and weeks into months. Time somehow manages to crawl and run at the same time. I rub my eyes and snuggle deeper into the blanket that is wrapped around my shoulders. The stubborn heater not even bothering with keeping the freezing winter cold out.

A sudden bright light coming from outside makes me look up from my screen. The apartment opposite our narrow street is lit and it throws its light into my own room. Ever since I moved in, the flat had been empty. I didn’t mind. On the contrary, it gave me some privacy. This new situation feels strange and unusual. The windows are big and I can make out a desk mirroring my own. A sudden movement makes me lean closer to the window. A tall man enters the room. He is wearing a bright yellow suit and a purple hat, dragging a sack behind him. He looks a bit like a very confused Santa Clause. As my eyes try to adjust to the strange scene, a white alpaca comes into view. It’s wearing a red scarf around its neck. I rub my eyes. I must be dreaming. Maybe I fell asleep. Maybe I’m overworked. Or… it takes every ounce of me not to google the symptoms of the virus again just to check whether having hallucinations maybe is one.

I don’t notice I’m staring until I feel his eyes on me. He waves enthusiastically. His teeth are white and his smile so big, his eyes almost close completely. I raise my hand and give a tiny wave. He disappears for a second and comes back holding a sign.

“Hello. Are you okay?”

The handwriting seems surprisingly elegant. He looks at me and fumbles with his hands until I understand that I am supposed to give an answer. I search for a piece of paper and scribble something on it.

“Hello. Yes, I am. Thank you.”

He beams and bends down to write again.

“You seem very busy.”

 “I am. I have deadlines.” Contine reading →

Sister, darling

How strange that you have come to me,

As starlings do come

When day succumbs

To dusk.

 

In velvet dark

Wheels below me

Steine, Way, Park,

I cannot hear my thoughts

But I can close my eyes,

And there we walk

Greenway curling emerald to amber

To sparsery flaming there, in ember –

This bond we hold

To age, twofold;

Contine reading →

The Persian carpet lies silently in my father’s living room, no defiance, no opposition, no nothing.

I wonder how many Iranians have walked on it, and where it once used to lie.

The rich and harmonious colours shine through the wool.

Glimmering beams through a spec of light,

Of a luxurious golden yellow and a deep red damask.

The intricate patterns of the Mina-Khani design and Shah Abbasi medallions slither through the carpet.

The Symbols of Eagles representing good fortune, and Leopards representing bravery, run through the fabric. They stand strong.

They all trace back to our culture, our heritage.

Something I have never been a part of.

 

I imagine lavish parties.

Row after row of carpets, just like this one,

Existing magnificently elsewhere.

I imagine them praying together, most definitely laughing,

And the people of Iran dancing with fluidity and freedom.

Respected, celebrated, and adored.

My waist-length black curls remind me of the natural serum that blesses,

And curses, any Persian woman that walks.

I wonder if they were bullied in their own country.

My country.

A place I have never been.

Contine reading →

Our worlds are so individual. Each encapsulated by an experience; an inheritance of culture and custom. Others enter – sometimes by invitation, but more often than not by seeming co-accidence, if such a thing can be believed.

It must have been lost. It slipped from a child’s fingers, the adults unnoticing; only for another to find it and imprison it now on the boundary fence.

Visits are made to other worlds. They look familiar but are always different. That lost doll could never be ours. We can only gaze and wonder. And yet it’s a disturbing presence. The form and its representation.

But what do I know – ‘Mansplaining’ they call it? (Re)claiming the oppressors’ sightline. We call ourselves to account: a witness for the prosecution and the defence. Hoping for clemency. A precedent’s pardon.

A week later and the doll has gone. Was she lost and found? – or am I being too literal, as usual?

All this is dislocating, intentionally so. But each day now, the same paths are trodden. If we’re lucky, or by design perhaps, resonance and meaning are found. Recognition too. A ready reckoner. The rhetorical rhythm of it all, beating our heart up for amusement. And we live in hope, always.

 

 

© Mark Price, 2021

 

About the Author: Mark Price a writer, educator, and researcher, working with narrative border crossings and becomings. He has worked previously as a teacher, youth worker and psychotherapist.

 

There’s a particular reason shades of red are named after wine: burgundy, marsala or claret. The glass on the kitchen table is either half full or half empty. I can see my reflection. More than that. The past is drowning in a glass of red wine.

It’s been a year since the first lockdown. Two lockdowns, a year almost completely lost, the sense of time long forgotten and a bit distorted, as the reality in which we have been chosen to live. Sometimes I lose hope. I’ve experienced lockdown in two different countries, and I’m advised not to travel to my home, to Greece. I follow the rules because this is me, it helps me stay organised. I like rules, at least most of them, but never those that constrain me. I keep thinking of Jane Eyre declaring passionately I’m no bird and no net ensnares me. I could always relate to this quote. I don’t like feeling caged, trapped, captured, confined. I am no animal and even animals don’t deserve to be constrained not even the domestic ones – tell this to my cat. Yet, the pandemic regulations and restrictions sometimes make you feel exactly like this. An animal in a cage. In Ancient Greek, ζώον used to referred to both animals and humans. You may have stumbled across Aristotle’s popular quote Ο άνθρωπος είναι ζώον πολιτικόν. Humans are social beings, they need interaction to thrive, they need to feel the bond between them and somebody else, family, friends, a lover, their birth country, culture. By denying people the inalienable right to interact you deny them their existence. Does this sound relevant? No? Let me tell you a lockdown story. After all, we are not only social human beings: stories are what makes us humans too.

The story dates back centuries ago. Let’s travel to Greece of the 5^th century BC. The golden era of Pericles. Ο χρυσός αιώνας του Περικλή. I will not bore you with too many details. The peak of Greece hits this exact time spot. The clock fingers meet and everything flourishes, blooms: philosophy, democracy, architecture, the arts, drama, rhetoric, politics, everything spreads fast as fairy dust. But this isn’t faery magic, it’s reality. It is during this era that the gem of Athens is polished and engraved. The citadel has another reason to be proud, as the Parthenon, the temple of the Olympian goddess Athena, stands at the top of the Acropolis rock. Pericles asks the sculptor Pheidias to use his gifts to curve the Parthenon and the Erechtheion, the old temple of Athena. Pheidias uses marble from the mount Penteli and the Athenians carry it all way down to the citadel. Temples need their guardians though. Before Notre-Dame had its gargoyles, Erechtheion had female guardians to protect it. Six maidens stand in the entrance of the temple, one hand holding their dress, and in the other, a jug to pour offerings to the gods. These kóres are called the Caryatids.

Contine reading →

I opened my notebook and began to observe the squiggles that fall down the page.

Long lines of frantic scrawls written in early hours of the morn.

Those whispers of poems and song lyrics.

Only hit by inspiration when I should be sleeping.

The endless drawl of half-baked thoughts and all-consuming emotions.

The diary of a teenage girl rests upon the first few pages,

Setting scenes of love lives that spread thick like treacle,

Words like sprinkled sugar falling into a damp cup,

Only to leave a sodden mess at the bottom.

 

I saw the sadness within the pages.

Reflecting a stranger talking in riddles,

And finding comfort in her own four walls.

Her smile has faltered but she still scribbles upon the ceiling.

Sometimes, they flow from her pen and kiss the paper.

As the words spin into a trance of love and hate,

And madness and pain.

They twirl in the tune of daffodils and dance like woodland creatures.

They spin to the melody of marching bands and strawberry shortcake.

Contine reading →