happy anniversary~
i have been posting this newsletter for a whole year! what’s this all about, then?
here’s to another year of reading and writing~
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the writing
Once she’s through the Gate, freedom is hers. Vera tenses, ready to bolt—when two familiar figures come around the corner, their gaze pinning her in place. “My lady,” says the man who is an angel, “I believe we have a bargain to settle.” “Yes, you’ve put us off too long, clever girl,” says the man who is a devil.
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before the sunrise before packed bags, train tickets, a key, left behind: one sleepy goodbye kiss one less body in the bed
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The logbook of The Silver Rose is salt-crusted and fragile; most of the pages are stuck together, many of the daily entries washed out, but the final entry is mostly legible. The morning of May XX, 17XX started with fair skies and a good wind. A follow-up paragraph, in a different hand, tells of a pirate ship almost overtaking the Rose, and how an unidentified female passenger “called into the wind”, seemingly summoning a sea creature of “ungodly features and hideous proportions” that destroyed the enemy vessel “swiftly, savagely, utterly unforgiving”. The female passenger was arrested, gagged and bound, and placed in the brig. The Silver Rose never put into port. She was presumed lost at sea with all hands, with no confirmation of this fact until the logbook and other relevant objects were delivered, anonymously, to this agency…
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the reading
Poem: “Night Migrations” by Louise Glück
“What will the soul do for solace then? I tell myself maybe it won’t need these pleasures anymore; maybe just not being is simply enough, hard as that is to imagine.”
Short Story: “Reindeer Mountain” by Karin Tidbeck (from Jagannath)
“Cilla was twelve years old the summer Sara put on her great-grandmother’s wedding dress and disappeared up the mountain. It was in the middle of June, during summer break. The drive was a torturous nine hours, interrupted much too rarely by bathroom- and ice cream breaks.”