Promised Lands
I saw you last on Hestia’s hill head high, solemn and waxed in weightpaste, holding the Olympic flare defiantly over the valley— its firelight, bright in marble-star night, falling softly on matted grass, its kindling sparks like flies in measle-blotch blisters and hives upon the scarfaced sca
Greetings from Depoe Bay
To my retroactive dismay, I believe I’ve had a nihilistic summer. With what felt like endless time spent languishing in my own solitude, spinning out over the impossible quagmires of love, career, and selfhood, I managed to whittle my beliefs to a single point. The Answer, if you will. The intangi
Greetings from Cairo
After about a week in Cairo, my host, and by that point friend, Walid, asked me if the city matched my expectations. ‘It’s hard to say,’ I replied. ‘I didn’t really have a clear picture in my head before I arrived.’ Yes, I had skimmed through a travel book and looked a few things up, [&h
family curses
after clytemnestra’s husband returns from the ten-year war, she hacks him to death with an axe. she says a curse made her do it. her son kills her in revenge. all the while — birdsong. i. the first year // petrification we were happy until the summer i turned ten. i hadn’t lear
Greetings from Woking
Greetings from Woking! Whilst some students sunbathe in far-off lands and others spend eight weeks completing gruelling internships, I spend my nights under strobing lights, shoes sticky with beer, with shrieks, music and laughter ringing in my ears. It could almost be mistaken for Ibiza. Almost. &n
Greetings from Boston
Boston seems to stand alone amid the current political clusterfuck of America. Clusterfuck is not a word one should use lightly— not language befitting a postcard— and yet, it is the only term suitable for a nation taking a hacksaw to its own foundational pillars. I don’t mean that Bost
Greetings from a grown-up
It is summer, still. I can tell because it is warmer outside than it was last summer. I can tell because sudden hot rainfall is welcome: it makes people laugh and leaves behind an earthly dirt smell like it did in Khartoum, where I spent all my summers as a child. Now, with Khartoum desolate, [&hell
Smoking. Hot?
The slim tube of paper rests elegantly between my fingers—I can almost inhale a swirl of smoke emerging from it. ‘Are you going to eat that lollipop?’ my mother asks. I gingerly turn the sweet the right way round and suck on sugar instead of fictional nicotine (not that I am awa
Greetings from Cotonou, Benin
Editor’s Note: the author has used a number of French words throughout the text. These are denoted by an asterisk, which corresponds to an explanatory footnote at the bottom of the page. Like all language students, I began my second year at Oxford by attending an informational sessio