Ultimately, vampires are paradoxes. They are both alive and dead, human and the Other, desirable and monstrous. And who in society understands paradox better than a teenager?
Desiring the Undead in the Twilight Era
Category: Print 2021
Angel of Death
‘Angel of Death’ by Taylah Livanes: 2021, digital painting.
Ask Diogenes: Advice from the Afterlife
Alright, alright! Fine! I will answer your inane questions so long as you stop dropping stone tablets on my head! Do you people think I chose to keep living in a barrel because I like being bothered? Honestly, to think a shade cannot find a moment’s peace even in the afterlife.
Evermourn
Despite the stark difference between a soldier’s need for slaughter and the relentless research of the sage, they were one and the same in the end: naive wanderers—none of whom would ever know the sun’s warmth again. If one believed everything they heard, at least. Around me, these tales upon tales were all eagerly dismissed—but still… still, I wondered. Perhaps I am one of many. But I am no man.
Expiredia
“Just as T. S. Eliot described, ‘this is the dead land, this is the cactus land’, and I’d like to leave now please.”
Grave Affairs: Grief, Mortality, and Death in Literature
Processing mortality is a daunting task—but it is important that we learn to digest its impact and grow more comfortable with it as a natural part of life. As this is easier said than done, consuming different forms of media that focus on death and dying is arguably one way of beginning to acquaint ourselves with these eventualities.
Schnittlauch Pfannkuchen
One summer, your mama took us to the forest to collect Schnittlauch.
We came home and mixed the Schnittlauch with our pancake batter,
and I was happy, because these pancakes were not sour, or familiar like our Dosas.
maybe memory is all the home we’re allowed
I remember the first place I moved out to. It was still, serene, as all plodding outskirts of farm properties are. I thought it was apt that I resided next to a cemetery. It was the attractive part, curated with manicured grass and linear rows of granite headstones. At day, you were meant to grieve; at night, you were meant to avoid it.
Is That Human Hair? A Brief History of Mourning Jewellery
Love of the macabre hasn’t always been isolated to your local goth population.