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Relativity

by Aoife Mannix

Here is a photo of my mother

standing in the snow in Stockholm,

her gloved hands curled

around the front bar of a green pram.

I am nestled newborn in January

when the winter light bleeds

through the stark question marks

of trees, silver birch or baby oaks,

air crawling with frost.

Next year my mother will be dead

for as much of my life as she was alive.

Her grandson, my son, tells me,

humans only understand time

as relative.  One year

to a two year old is half a lifetime.

But on this frozen morning

of a brand new year

after a night of vast stars,

the dawn floods the bedroom with

millennia after millennia of lost mothers.

I am once more that scrap of a snowflake,

invisible in my Swedish blanket.

My mother pushes me along the Soderstrom

towards the Baltic Sea. Light singing off water

white green, her face infinitely young.

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Writing Exercise 1 – Posting Change

write a letter to an ancestor you wished you met. This could be someone in your own family or someone in history. Tell them why you’re interested in them. Describe how the world has changed.

Send an email to a descendant in the future. Tell them how life is for you and how you hope life is for them.

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"Look! Over there in the mist" I shout. "I can see me." Well, he looks like me. He has the same hair as me. Even if it's a little bit darker. Always messy on the top from Jessica ruffling it. Except, he's not dressed like me. I'm in my favourite t shirt and comfy jeans. I'm not sure what he's wearing. It looks old, itchy and definitely not comfy. "Jessica, Look! Can't you see?"

"Shut up Joshua! Why aren't you ever quiet for a second? We'll never be able to hunt for forest fairies if you keep shouting." That's just like Jessica. She never listens to me. She's always full of what she thinks are brilliant ideas but even when I've thought of something amazing, she'll just never listen. "But Jessica, please." I tug on her t shirt to get her to turn around. She pushes my arm away and carries on inspecting a small mushroom. She's convinced it's a fairy toadstool and there really are fairies in this forest. "OK, well I'm going to play. I'm not staying here staring at fungus all day."

I bend down to do my laces up. I hope he likes football. I walk off up the hill towards, well me. The higher I get, the thicker the mist, maybe I should have grabbed my jumper. It's getting a bit chilly. I look back towards Jessica thinking about running back to grab it, but I've walked much further than I thought. It will be fine once I'm running about. I keep walking. He doesn't seem to be getting any nearer. "Hello, I'm Josh. Do you like football?"

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Writing Exercise 2 – Across the Divide

Aesthetica Magazine - Diana Cheren Nygren

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Aesthetica Magazine - Diana Cheren Nygren

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Diana Cheren Nygren is a photo-based artist interested in the ways people understand – or misunderstand – themselves and their relationships.

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The veil (Across the divide)

By Austyn Bambrook Jan 2025

“Can’t you see them” she asked her brother.

“See what?”

He never was that sensitive.

“The children. The children in the mist?”

“I can see a grasshopper” he said and carried on pursuing it, oblivious to the apparition.

The nanny looked across the grey divide. Our eyes met. Can she see me?

“Come along now Clara dear. Do join us”.

I looked over my shoulder. No-one was there. Was she talking to me?

“I caught it Jenny” said Tom, running towards me with his hands cupped together.

“Shush,” I said. “Can’t you hear her?”

He opened his hands to show me his captive.
“Hear who?”
The grasshopper jumped away, towards the children. Tom didn’t wait for an answer. He ran after the bug.

“Tom… Stop!”

Too late. He ran straight into the greyness and stopped.

“Tom?” I shouted.

He didn’t move. He didn’t respond. He didn’t stumble. He just stopped.

“Come along Clara dear. It’s time we went home.”

“What have you done to him?”

The Nanny looked at the boy.

“Are you quite alright James?”

The boy nodded. Maybe she couldn’t see Tom? Tom couldn’t see her.

“There’s not a thing amiss with him Clara dear. Now stop your dawdling and do as you’re told.”

“My names Jenny”

I stepped closer to the veil, and could see Tom standing precariously on the toes of one foot, his other leg reaching out before him, overbalanced but not falling. He was still running, but impossibly slowly.

“Enough of your foolishness, young Clara. Come here this instant, or must I fetch you myself?”

Toms back foot rose from the ground leaving him suspended in the air.

“Tom, Are you OK?”

He still did not respond.

“Why, you insolent child,” cried the nanny stepping purposefully towards Tom and myself.

Defensively I reached for my brother through the grey veil. I felt a chill on the other side. Tom was just out of reach. The nanny was nearly upon him, so I stepped across to protect him. The nanny didn’t stop. She passed through Tom, like he wasn’t there. I braced, expecting to crash into her, but she slid right through me, freezing the edges of my teeth, and scraping my spine.

Tom chased after the grasshopper, laughing. I turned to see the back of the nanny on the other side of the divide. Where I had just been standing there was a girl, looked just like me, but dressed like the other children. The nanny grabbed her wrist, and pulled her back towards us.

“No supper for you my dear.”

As they returned across the veil, they dissipated and the greyness turned to light. I looked across to the emptiness where the other children had been.

“Got it” shouted Tom, cupping his hands again.