Artwork by A.R. Tivadar It was a cloudy, early spring morning. Not even roosters were awake yet. Multiple young ladies, chaperoned by parents, grandparents or aunts made their way to a remote manor in the Carpathian mountains. A terrace was set up outside with umbrellas, benches, and appetisers. Older women with elaborate brooches on their coats and peacock feathers in their hats whispered to one another when Mrs Mihaela Ardeleanu, maiden name Codrean

a heart can / growl like a stomach, and be so unsettled. I like the / thin veins like a shadow. like rain / tracing trails on a window, as though it weren't sand.

Missing you is like that. / I carry you around, and you follow me. / The sun rises and sets every day, just as I miss you deeply every day.

I send my love in waves and whispers, / letters folded with prayer, / voice trembling into calls that slice the oceans, / hoping each syllable finds you alive,...

Silence will echo long after the cries / The hunger, the famine, the heartbreaking goodbyes / And should evil prevail / Through the greed and the lies, / The silence will echo long after the cries