(Abridged version published by TWIG magazine: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1agXkJLRZsbzY3D2Z1KxcqRNDlQweFoxl/view) Emergent layer She drops her ring, a thin jade band with a vine of glistening diamonds twisting all around it, beneath her. We watch it tumble down, surely it’ll be caught in one of our nets, maybe land on one of our wooden bridges, maybe we’ll find it in someone’s hammock of woven […]
Also published on the Sheffield Review (https://thesheffieldreview.wordpress.com/camilla-sechi/) I still live in the very first body I was ever gifted. I only had it repaired once, aged thirteen, when I fell off a tree in our garden and landed onto my arm. It took a month to heal, a month I spent living in my emergency body. It might as well […]
If the mirror isn’t lying, then I know I am faceless. I try to remember what I looked before, this word hangs around me like a fluttering of feathers. I know there is an answer, out there, somewhere, something knows who I am, and while it may seem an unsolvable mystery to me, the truth that can never be uncovered […]
I have to admit, I’m an excellent ‘two truths and a lie’ player. The pin has been on my jacket since that night, a testament to the fact that I can be extroverted, even if I have to be not sober to become so, which leads to always being met with a chorus of laughs, eye rolls and ‘jeez I […]
I can stitch your heart back together with a brush of my fingertips. Did you know that? I run through the jungle barefooted, hiding from you. Some of my people trail me; we must reach the gates to return to the sanctuary; you do everything in your power to stop me. You cut down the ropes I tie between the […]
In Memoriam. It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Eleonora Pacini, who departed this world on the twelfth of January at the age of twenty. Eleonora was born on the twenty-first of December to Carlotta and Marco Pacini in Prato, Italy. An avid reader, she was studying literature at a local university. She will always be […]
12th of March. I have always had this striking suspicion that I wasn’t born on my birthday. Maybe I tricked everyone into believing I was, even my own parents. Whatever the case, every year it comes along I smile and thank my family and friends for their gifts and wishes, but deep in my heart, I feel like a fraud. […]
The last thing I pack before a trip is my soul. I stick my tongue out, peel it off my taste buds, and pull it out from my throat. It burns as snow does, a chain of handkerchiefs with my every memory embroidered all over, with threads pulled from the inside my cheeks. I place it in my jewelry box […]
When I was a child I got lost in a shopping center. Surrounded by living statues, while standing perfectly still. I looked up at the fake airplane that hung from the ceiling, and instead saw a banner made of cement, over a gallery I had never seen before. “They are coming” it read, an engraving of hands holding a megaphone […]
Back among the mountains, I keep on getting on the wrong tram. I need to go home, to leave, but I end up going in the opposite direction. Shops that only sell strawberry ice cream, fresh clouds of familiar shapes. I’m there with someone, I think. I don’t outright see them, but I can sense their presence. Time clouds my […]