What song gave your choices their forms?
by Julia Retkova
But come, what currents would rage
if only for the taste of light? What monster throws a peaceful mind into tatters
resplendent with suffering?
You are nothing but a beast who breathes through but a man. What creature burrows
into the hollows of your mind? What creature sits quiet
on a throne crumbling in blasphemies of all-jade? Of empty fires?
For the gathering dusk brings flowers of confusion: this my mother tells me as she strokes my hair.
Is it the creature or the man who weaves the tapestry of life?
What choices come before you? What song can give them form?
But come, the day is drawing deeper, deeper—
let Dusk set smoky arms around you, let breath sink deeper, still—
let all those rest behind you, heads heavy, heads filled
with the bursting song of night-birds.
(But ask, still, while the house rests thick in sleep: would you strive for the unearthing of truth?)
It is a home with no rooms: truth walks freely. That we know. So come,
let peace descend, cloaked as she is in star-stained veils. Let us close our minds.
There are currents everywhere we look.
by Julia Retkova
Let me tell you: thoughts flow like waves
over the face. The underneath, hidden.
Skin turns to white froth, and in
the dips of cheeks, in the crash of the brow, there’s the color
of frenzied, blackened seas.
This all began last Sunday.
I saw a man cut off his head and throw it
in the sky.
I had stopped, then. How extraordinary, I thought, but the crowds around me
they kept moving, kept pulling me deeper into currents.
Their heads buried down, I thought, how do you come up for air?
So I ran, knee-deep and coughing, and caught up to the headless man, thinking at least he
would share
in my amazement. But, the shining of his eyes—
it pierced at me with such
hatred
that I felt my lips go numb.
About the Author
Julia Retkova is a King’s College London graduate student with two degrees in Literature and Digital Studies. When not working on an app that connects foreigners with their family overseas, she’s lucky enough to be running a small literary journal called Nymphs. She was born in Ukraine, but grew up in the south of Spain. She loves reading books in the sun and writing when everyone’s asleep.