Nexus Magazine 2

NEXUS Spring / Summer 2010

NEXUS Spring / Summer 2010

Welcome to the second installment of Nexus, the magazine showcasing creative writing from the Department of Humanities, UWIC. Since our inaugural edition last October we've had a busy year.

And a successful one too. Liam Johnson, First Year, BA (Hons) English and Creative Writing was runner up (and won the audience prize) in the John Tripp Award for Spoken Poetry.

And Julie Owen-Moylan, MA English and Creative Writing, has had a short story included in the anthology 'The Voice of Women in Wales', published by the Wales Women's National Coalition.

Not only is one of Julie's stories including here, but a wide sample of work, both poetry and prose, from across the Department. I hope you'll find each as enjoyable to read as I have.

Dr Spencer Jordan sjordan@uwic.ac.uk

The Truth (To Emily)

By David Kelly (BA (Hons) Educational Studies and English, Year One)

“Tell all the truth, but tell it slant”: distress from all our lies.

The light, to my fullest ecstasy, brings superb surprise!

Allow lightening: Nothing is eased with shaded words unkind; our truths may shine completely as we’re already blind.

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The Witch and The Wolf (excerpt)

By Andrew Henderson (BA (Hons) English and Creative Writing, Year One )

The boy ran through the graveyard, naked skin shining under the halfobscured moon. He dared a look behind him, almost fell, turned back to face the front and ran faster. Ducking behind a mausoleum, he leant his back to the stone, gasping for breath. His head darted forward to look around the side of the small building, back the way he had come.

Nothing.

With a sigh, he heaved himself up, turned to go deeper into the warren of tombs and stopped short. He stood before him, a small smile on his lips. The boy threw back his head and wailed.

“You’re too wild-looking,” the boy said to the Wolf. The Wolf replied with a snort. They had been together for long enough that the boy knew this to mean “You’re one to talk”.

“I know, I know,” agreed the Witch, rising from his crouch, brushing the fur on the Wolf’s head one last time. “But I’m not trying to pass for a dog.” It was true, they’d been on the road for many months now, and the boy was almost constantly covered in a thin rime of dust and graveyard dirt. His thick, dark hair was tangled and snarled, and his fingernails were black with grime.

The Wolf’s dusky fur was equally matted, and whereas most people assumed he was a dog, they still gave them a wild berth.

The Witch caught a glimmer of mischievous light in the Wolf’s ambergold eyes before his four-legged friend trotted over to an alleyway across the broken street. The boy sighed and dropped to the curb,

resting his arm on his leather rucksack. After a few moments of squinting up at the blue-grey sky, he took out a tobacco pouch and rolled himself a cigarette. Exhaling wisps of silvery smoke, he glanced once more towards the mouth of the alley, only to see a raven-haired boy striding confidently across the cracked tarmac to stand at rest before him.

From his seat, the Witch’s eyes traced the contours of the newcomer’s naked body, from strong calves and thighs to torso and arms, finally coming to rest on the boy’s green and gold eyes.

“I could walk around like this,” the Wolf said. “But I’m sure a boy bereft of clothes would be slightly more conspicuous than a travel-worn dog.”

The Witch smiled up at him, still squinting into the sun, which now framed the Wolf’s head like a corona, and took a drag of his cigarette.

“Here,” he said, holding out the rucksack by its straps. “Put some clothes on.”

The cemetery of Pere Lachaise stretched into the night, a city of death melding into the still black dark of midnight past, moonlight barely filtering through the shadow-web of trees that guarded the cemetery.

High walls encircled the graveyard, acting as a buffer to the outside world; no sound came from the streets outside, and the only sound that came from within was the gentle rustle of leaves in a sporadic breeze.

The Wolf crept between two rows of towering mausoleums towards the guard’s hut, just to the left of the main entrance. The place had been closed for hours now, but the night watchman would still be at large.

The Wolf kept his weight on the backs of his pads, making sure his claws didn’t sound against the concrete and give his position away. When he reached the end of the row, two tombs up from the guardhouse, he lifted his muzzle and scented the air. His Wolf mind reeled at the unfamiliar scents, but the human part picked them out and analysed them. Stale deodorant, sweat, cigarette smoke, old coffee. Under that the smell of the grave: earth, flowers and decay. He edged farther out, peering around the side of the dark stone grave to where the guard’s station was.

It was empty.

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Single Beds

By Ashleigh Davies (BA (Hons) English and Creative Writing, Year One )

For sixteen years We’ve slept alone; Festering in single beds, With only raw desire For muted company.

Our cold, virginal desire.

The shattered visage Of great expectations, Lies with us now, A living thing; Startled and desperately fevered.

Frenzied, innocent hands Explore each others bodies; Exciting foreign climates, As smooth as a promise Ushered from the lips of lovers.

We have never been so alive; So blissfully naive.

BOYS GET ALL THE GOOD TOYS

By Anna Fruen (BA (Hons) English and Creative Writing, Year Two)

SATURDAY, JANUARY 11TH 2010 Every time I walk into a toy shop, I’m reminded of the huge gender divide in the way toys are marketed. The huge variety of toys, available in a huge variety of colours, and targeted at all kids – except girls. Girls have pink. But that’s ok because girls like pink, right? They like dressing up as fairies and princesses, they like playing with Barbies and babies, they like pretending to cook and clean and have little houses, and all pink pink pink. I’ve heard all the usual defences – they like pink, they’re sold because they sell, what’s wrong with being feminine – but none of them really address the issue. Surely it’s unhealthy to expect one half of the world’s population to relate to this colour? And, far worse, everything that this colour has come to represent?

It wasn’t always this way. Until the 1930s pink was considered a strong, masculine colour, and blue a gentler, feminine one. Nobody really knows when or why the change happened, but it did, and now it’s unthinkable that a baby boy would be given pink clothes to wear. Well, I was a little girl once, and I wanted to play and get dirty and climb trees and go exploring – all of which is very hard to do in a dress! And you should try playing hide and seek in vivid pink, it’s not easy.

You don’t have to look too hard at a science kit or a toy aimed at ‘adventurous’ kids to see that girls are hugely underrepresented.

The lego.com shop, for example, has fifteen categories, one of which is ‘girls’ – what does that tell you? That girls are some kind of subcategory

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of human. You have people, who like lego; and girls, who like animals.

Seriously, check out the recommended items for girls: animals, flowers and hearts all feature heavily.

Anyway, what’s the point in complaining if you’re not willing to change anything? So, I’ve decided to make a change. Perhaps those who think that the Pink obsession is no big deal just need to see it from the other side.

POSTED BY CHARLIE AT 11:37 PM LABELS: TOYS, SEXISM, PINK, GIRLS

...........................................................................................................

COMMENTS: ALAN SAID...

All this stuff about toyshops being sexist is a load of nonsense. I have a daughter aged 5 and a little boy of 3, and whenever I take them to a toyshop he always runs STRAIGHT for the blue area of the shop. He loves blue! He has blue bedsheets, blue toys, and loves playing with cars more than anything. So all this stuff about boys not being given a choice is ridiculous.

JANUARY 12, 2010 12:05 AM JAMES SAID...

I’ve always hated blue, to be honest. When I was growing up it seemed like I didn’t have a choice, relatives would buy me blue clothes for my birthday, and I hated it. I don’t hate it so much now that I’ve grown up a bit, but I still don’t like how it’s forced on boys.

JANUARY 12, 2010 12:33 AM STEVEN SAID...

I love blue!! I don’t mind being called a boy, in fact I like it, and I like doing boy things like playing football and driving fast cars, so do bear in mind that not every boy is like you Charlie.

JANUARY 12, 2010 12:57 AM PETER SAID...

What upsets me is that we’re not taken seriously in business.

At my last job we were never explicitly told to dress sexy, but we were encouraged to dress ‘masculinely’.

You only had to look around the office and see all the women managers to realise that we ‘boys’ aren’t respected as much.

JANUARY 12, 2010 1:41 AM ALEX SAID...

The problem isn’t with the colour blue, it’s in the way boys are encouraged to identify with the colour. Every time a new phone or laptop or mp3 player is released, there’s always a gap of a few months before the “now available in BLUE!” ads start cropping up on Facebook. They have literally no reason to assume that I like blue other than that little ticked ‘gender’ box... I’m not overreacting, or reading stuff into it that isn’t there. There’s literally never an advert for a new orange version of a phone, or for a green or yellow one. Always blue. Because I am a boy.

And therefore like blue.

JANUARY 12, 2010 6:29 AM ESTHER SAID...

Charlie if there were no demand for them they wouldn’t sell them.

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JANUARY 12, 2010 8:14 AM ANDREW SAID...

My daughter Sharron asked for a toy truck instead of a doll for Christmas, so I got her one! And I actually had my wife’s mother take me aside and ask if I wanted her to grow up gay. That kind of attitude just baffles me. She says she doesn’t have a problem with Shaz liking blue stuff, but I know she’s mentally discounted the possibility of having great-grandkids.

JANUARY 12, 2010 11:12 AM CARLOS SAID...

Charlie: Boys have it better. If you just dress up a little bit and the worlds you’re oyster, lol I think you’re just bitter because you’re ugly.

Lol and prolly a homo too JANUARY 12, 2010 3:50 PM KATE SAID...

Wow. Thanks, Carlos, for that startling insight.

Charlie, I think you’ve missed the point somewhat. Yes, it’s odd that the lego website has a category just for boys, but they’re not excluded from the other categories in any way. All this means is that they have more options available to them than girls, not fewer. If boys don’t like blue, or football, or cars, they still have a range of gender-neutral toys to pick from!

JANUARY 12, 2010 8:52 PM CHARLIE SAID...

Kate, thanks for your comment. I agree that boys do have choice, in theory, but the fact that the ‘football, cars and blue’ stereotype exists at all is a worry, let alone that every major retailer caters to it...

Anyway. I guess this experiment has been a failure; it’s going to be a long time before people stop forcing gender roles on children.

JANUARY 15, 2010 8:22 PM IZZIE SAID...

LaY oFf PiNk!! I lOvE pInK!!! pInK iS mY fAvOuRiTe CoLoUr!!!!! lol JUNE 22, 2010 11:05 AM CHARLIE SAID... *facepalm* JUNE 22, 2010 2:44 PM

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Broken Lighter

By Kayleigh Read (BA (Hons) English and Creative Writing, Year One )

A mixture of plastic and metal, translucent, icy blue.

Scratched, treasured possession, overused, familiar but still better than new.

I remember it – an object that creates a flame, glowing orange, a rush of heat.

It felt like it would last forever and always stay lit, old – it’s become incomplete.

I remember the night it was given to me on a bus.

Used to feed an addiction – with pleasure at first, but pain in the long run.

It’s a darker lighter now compared to then The addiction I can’t abandon even when the flame is dead.

Candy’s Room

By Julia Owen-Moylan MA English and Creative Writing

Candy had a black poodle on a silver chain. When I was ten I thought Candy was the best name in the world for a girl. It rolled off the tongue like the real thing.

She had a frizz of mousy hair but everyday Candy tied it into tiny thick rolls and carefully wrapped a band of blue velvet ribbon around it.

Candy wore navy blue mascara, the kind you spat in and rubbed on with a tiny brush. She would swing on her front gate while her black poodle yapped at passersby. Smiling her tiny white smile at boys. Some evenings Candy would put on her red suede heels and walk up and down our street pretending to walk her dog.

‘There goes Candy, ‘they would mutter or ‘Here she comes like Lady Muck’ as they stirred their tea and dunked their Marie biscuits. My mum used to call her the Queen of Sheba. I don’t think people liked Candy.

Sometimes young men would stop and talk to her and pretend to fuss her dog but then they would move on. Out would come the red suede shoes and here comes Candy click clacking down the street in the summer sun bursting like berries in June.

One grey November afternoon I was kicking a tiny stone along hopscotch squares when my mother sent me down the street with a letter that had landed on our doormat by mistake. A smooth lilac envelope with Candy written on it in big black letters.

I banged the big old door knocker a couple of times and a woman opened the door dripping cigarette ash down her front and straining to hear me over the loud music. I held out the smooth lilac envelope

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with big black writing but the woman shrugged and hooked her thumb towards the stairs turning her back and drifting away. I thought about propping the letter up on the small hall table which really doesn’t serve any other function except for dropping and propping stuff but I knew my mother would insist I personally delivered the letter. She was fastidious about stuff like that ever since a birthday postal order for five pounds had gone missing once and broke her heart. So I climbed the stairs following the sound of reggae music and the sweet smell of something in the air. The house was the same layout as ours. Standard council fare, small and draughty. Our hallway was scratched cream but this one was kind of mouldy green colour with bare floors and not in a good way.

CANDY’S ROOM - KEEP OUT - PAIN OF DEATH drawn with a big heart round it, was nailed onto a door at the end of the landing. I trundled towards it still holding tight to the smooth lilac envelope and knocked as loud as I could.

I heard a muffled voice and then the bedroom door swung open and there stood Candy in a peacock covered Chinese robe staring at me.

She leaned so close to my face I could smell chocolate on her breath. I like chocolate but not the milky stuff.

“What?”

My mouth dropped open and I forgot the letter. My eyes were fixed on the bedroom walls behind her which were red with bits of billowy chiffon nailed to the picture rail. The bed was messy, tiny pink cushions strewn over it and clouds of sweet smelling smoke filled the air. I swallowed hard and tried to think of something to say. My brain suddenly registered the lilac envelope in my hand and I shoved it towards her. Candy laughed hard and low.

“What’s this kid - a Valentine?”

She took the envelope and looked at the big black Candy on the front of it. Her face got soft just for a second. She turned away from me and drifted back to the bed to drag on her sweet cigarette and open her

letter. The door wide open now but no invitation to proceed.

I shuffled from foot to foot trying to look casual and leant against the doorway the way girls did in Saturday morning movies. Candy lay on her flat white belly trailing peacock blue robe over her legs and dangling her feet in the air. She kicked off her red suede heels.

One small white foot flicking the shoes off. I watched them clatter to the floor wanting to pick them up and slip my skinny kid feet into them just one time. Candy read the letter and then read it again. She sat up in bed. The peacock blue robe fell from her shoulders. She read the letter a third time. Candy sucked a drag of her cigarette and sat back on her bed.

“You know something kid?”

I didn’t know anything at that moment but I was sure I needed to know anything Candy might tell me. I nodded angling my foot slightly so my toes almost touched the red suede shoe. She fixed me with a long stare and got to her feet.

“All men are sh*** liars.”

Candy crumpled up the lilac envelope and threw it at me. Her eyes glassy and hard now.

With a quick swipe she flicked the door shut leaving me on the wrong side of it. The music notched up even louder and muffled sounds I couldn’t understand.

I turned and ran away from the sweet smells of Candy’s room.

I never saw Candy and her black poodle after that. My friend Laura told me Candy had a job on the beauty counter in town but I don’t know about that. She doesn’t look like she sells beauty to me.

When I left home years later one summer’s night I saw a pair of red suede shoes click clacking down the street.

Sure enough it was Candy walking away only stopping to talk to men in cars.

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Crimson leaves

By Daniel Kingman (BA (Hons) English and Creative Writing, Year One )

A midnight moon shone on Roath Park lake.

It made the water glisten a murky green.

Midnight wind was cold and bitter, it howled a familiar, seasonal song.

The wind blew and blew, it made your letterbox clatter and bang.

You nudged me and whispered, "Autumn is here."

"Wake me in the morning," I replied.

"Let’s tread through those crimson leaves."

It has to come out someway

By John Davies MA English and Creative Writing

She was adamant that she would not “murder” our child. I said that I would support her decision. The doctor informed us that the likelihood of the child having this disability was due to her age. She’s only 34.

She is lying by my side. She is crying uncontrollably.

“So that’s the baby’s back, a nice line.”

The midwife moved the ultrasound over her stomach.

“Can you see it, Andy, can you see our baby?”

I said yes. But it just looked like the scan of my cancer ridden lungs.

The letter from the trust informed us that there was an 85% chance the baby would be Down’s syndrome. I stared at it, looked at the digital clock, and glanced at her.

“I don’t know if you’re going to be able to cope alone.”

I sat on our new leather egg chair. I had been spending freely since my diagnosis.

“Can’t take it with you,” my Nan used to say, as she planted twenties into the palm of my hand.

I sighed, looking out onto the opposite houses. A woman was cleaning her windows, her partner holding the bottom of the ladder.

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An Indian man passed in his Mercedes, Bangra beats blasting from the speakers. The fat taxi driver who lived next door was cleaning one of his cars that took up all the parking spaces on our street. I had threatened to smash the windscreens on every one of them. But I never did, or would, and I ended up apologising.

She has run out of tears.

She has run out of tissues.

I went for my last blast of chemo. No hope, no point. It’s like taking a sledgehammer to a mosquito. I am sick of the doctors not addressing me anymore. It’s always the Cancer this and the Cancer has progressed.

And the bloggers who talk about “surviving”, and how they are thankful for the cancer, because its changed their lives forever…

I went along just to get away from the house. The mother in law was there, knitting baby boots, getting all excited about her first grandchild.

She had finished the pink pair, and was working the needles with some blue wool. We hadn’t told her that the scan had revealed it was a boy.

The mother in law keeps knitting, and crocheting, and visiting.

I spent the next weeks in my egg chair circling programme titles in the TV Guides, ready for my wife to change the channels when I can’t.

She sits by the bedside, beginning to show. The kid is growing all wrong inside of my wife. She comforts her stomach with a circular motion as I cough and cough and cough. She is adamant. She screams words at me then leaves. I read in a trash magazine that an upset mother during pregnancy can cause an emotional effect on the unborn child. The unborn child when born would be more likely to suffer from mental health issues such as depression. She suffers from depression. I had never been depressed, but when I told her that she really should reconsider having a termination she shouted that maybe my lack of emotions had caused the cancer. Keeping all that stuff inside my head had made me ill. “It has to come out someway,” was one of her favourite quotes.

I am not concerned about my death. I can’t take this pain for much longer. She has told me she has been having second thoughts about having the child. She said that she didn’t know if she wanted to bring up the child alone. She didn’t know if she could cope. She thought that

maybe if I was alive that we could do it together. I am alive, I remind her.

I struggle to eat anything now.

I have stopped shouting at visitors and I just lie on the bed.

The chair became too uncomfortable.

I get cold.

There is a heat wave outside.

She has been talking to me for three days.

She has decided that she is going to terminate the baby.

The alarm clock changes from 05:32 to 05:33.

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17th Ode to Myself

By Anna Freun (BA (Hons) English & Creative Writing, Year Two)

This poem is a masterpiece, I'll tell you how I know: I've hardly even started, yet the words already glow With genius, intelligence, and most of all, you see It's by me.

My work, it has a radiance. Oh, surely you can tell.

The people here won't buy it; well that's fine, I wouldn't sell.

So somewhere in my bedroom, all my best creations lay On display.

A novel (not quite finished) and a poem pages long, I'll cause grown men to weep with just the lyrics to my song.

Sonatas, paintings, limericks, a sonnet and heaps more, On my floor.

My little tabby nestles in my third Ode to Myself, And pictures of my countenance abound upon my shelf.

My mirror on my ceiling, and another on the ground Can be found.

I know I should be happy with what I've achieved, and yet, It's difficult to live up to the standards I have set.

I find my raw, wild talent still just doesn't seem enough.

Life's so tough.

So I walked into the city, where loads of people are, I climbed a high-rise building there, to prove that I'm a star.

They said "What are you doing?", though I'm sure they really knew, And I flew.

The Ghost Of Winter

By Rosella Pollard (BA (Hons) English & Creative Writing, Year Two)

She woke mid afternoon.

The events of the night before had brought on an earthquake headache.

Tilly struggled to imagine that the problem would ever produce phlegm.

It was the thinnest of times and the fattest of times. Some dreaming state became apparent and she quickly jotted down a description or two, though the memory was dispensed in a matter of lines.

In the smudged eyeliner of desperation, I see them swishing past my window on an old bicycle. Both impressively gaunt with appetites of wolves, her red scarf cheering the fog. In the freedom of the wind they are paired so eloquently and I am clouded with grateful relief. Next comes the laughter, so sincere for a while. As the night wears thin, my appetite surges and I feast upon mundane tasks to pass through a nocturnal tunnel.

No charming man could fill the hunger of sleep that panged regularly through the awakening hours. It was not a macabre month, but grief lay dormant waiting to pounce. The problem would know nothing of chipped nails, Tilly felt that for certain. What peers she had, so brutally honest and always ready with disinfectant to hand. They knew the best ways to remove flammable liquids from pristine desks.

Swimming for forty, the coloured flags light my way and the transparency of water purifies all dread. I'll tell them all, never, after

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telling too much. Though it was only to save face, all that remains is a used toothbrush and some modern records. The memory of his jokes have dwindled, whilst sightings of wheels and blonde hair become less and less. Spring will steal another year of youth and all the pretty leaves will soon disintegrate, but I shan’t cry.

It is only the way of the wise, clearing the air between two lungs, stepping into sunshine.

Writer’s Block

By Elisha-Mae Trevan (BA (Hons) English and Creative Writing, Year One )

The kitchen was musty and humid, cigarette smoke almost tangible, snaking its way around the room, its silken coils closing slowly, clinging to the air, fouling its taste. It hung onto the fading sunlight, like a limpet to a rock. The choked light slinked miserably through the slats of the shades, broken in crisp slices. You could barely see the setting sun, bright outline winking between the plastic strips, its molten ruins disappearing into the horizon, its shape chapped by the silhouettes of spindled trees.

It was quiet but not silent.

Tap water dripped into a half-empty sink.

The dull hum of the extractor, set on low.

Warming pipes cracking and shuddering.

A pen tapping on a blank page.

His glass was barren apart from the huddled melting remains of ephemeral ice cubes, a bottle neither empty, nor full, its closest companion on a marble counter.

Next to the work-pad. Next to the pen, and the hand that tapped it to an irregular and tone-deaf beat. He was sat precariously on a stool,

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crumpled shirt loose at the throat. His left hand held the fading scar of a wedding band. He was slumped, head down at the island in the centre of the room. On one side of the stool sat a gorged waste-paper bin, on the other, a cat, almost lost within the smoke, a phantom in the gloom. Her eyes aglow, staring at him. Her feeding bowl lay at her paws, empty. She reached out a paw and caught hold of a trouser leg with her claws, jerking it in her funny feline way.

But he remained unmoved.

The counter was cold against his forehead, as cool as the drink, yet lacking its potent burn and indiscriminate comfort.

The clock ticked, uncaring and monotonous.

She mewled.

It would not come.

He drew, scribbling violently onto the page, the biro biting into the unoffending paper.

Failure.

Floating in a sea of words, yet unable to drink.

Keys

By Ashleigh Davies (BA (Hons) English and Creative Writing, Year One )

Cries of broken glass, Filled your words, Slathering blood-soaked jowls, With your poems – Tears That slowly drowned your soul, Flooding onto page After page of despair.

Stars Plucked from your temples, Or your sapphire eyes, Or whatever it was That filled you with effervescent genius, That shocked me into recoil, Left my mind branded With the faintest imprint Of a birdlike soul – Itself a cage – Muttering in indecipherable Godspeak.

Locked forever In a fortified temple All of its own; A windowless cell, With only locked doors Mocking your delirium.

I would spend whole days, That could have been decades, Searching for your freedom keys; Futility my company – Better company Than your destructive poetry,

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Still churning out Broken glass memories, That even when intact In your labyrinth mind Were always destined for the Minotaur.

When flayed across a page – Lethal.

A language wholly itself, Some kind of ancient hieroglyphic, A scattered code that Your minds encryption Glanced up over the heads Of mere mortals And into the cobalt atmosphere.

I merely played at brilliance, Alone, in my own personal nebula.

Watching, Jealous, exposed, As you found all the words, And kept them to yourself, Selfishly nursing them Into frenzies of sparked luminosity.

You saw my hope, A perfect sheet of glass, A glacier, As you raised that hammering pen, Ready to break one pane Into a million crystalline memories; Stinging blood to my fingertips, Your broken keys.

Eta Carinae

By Cat Hoyle (BA (Hons) English & Creative Writing, Year Two)

Julia had never been beautiful, even as a little girl.

"Don't bother love, it won't do any good."

The words echoed from her mind and reverberated off the old mirror in front of her, until they were all she could hear.

The tears pricked at her eyes as she sucked in her cheeks and pulled her crow's feet taut.

Her head made a thud as it hit the glass. She blinked, the world blurred.

"Julia?"

Young again ... The call is multiplied by empty corridors and bare walls.

"Jonathan is here to pick you up!"

Angrily wiping her face dry, she re-adjusts her corsage. That night had never gotten any better. The sherbet paracetamol spike still lingers on her palette, just reachable from the darkest corners of her mind.

Zombie-like she staggers toward the origin of the call.

Aunt Marilyn says that all little girls should be told they are beautiful.

What happened?

At the bottom of the stairs, the furniture is dust covered, the corridor empty. Nobody awaits her on the porch.

Stepping outside she chirps, "Hello," and the garden listens. The hedges rustle and the stars flicker their response in the dawn-scarred sky.

She murmurs melodically, beneath her breath, the words inaudible, floating rapidly away on winter breath.

Aunt Marilyn is dead.

Is it over?

Julia does not believe.

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Aftermath

By Elisha-Mae Trevan (BA (Hons) English & Creative Writing, Year One)

3 hours from now, I’ll lie, gasping parched air into painful lungs.

3 hours from now, the haunting aftermath of tectonic rebellion will have moved the skyline, and the streets will run in dust and blood.

3 hours from now, my shattered body will reflect my shattered life.

3 hours from now, broadcast live, the world will tune in, their TV dinners turning tasteless on their tongues as they watch the search.

3 hours from now, broadcast live, the world watches the broken form of a child in my arms.

He’ll sleep forever.

3 hours from now, broadcast live, in the wake of Mother Nature’s protest, I’ll grieve.

Thankyou

NEXUS Spring / Summer 2010