invisible love Archives - this is worldtown

Invisible Love: Still Life at Twelve in the Morning

The idea behind this series was to curate stories and pieces that reclaim the love that isn’t always visible. The love that makes us question what defines heartbreak, what defines a connection, how we learn and unlearn, how we teach and feel love. These questions are brought to the surface through this collection of visual works, poetry and text created by women who’ve beautifully visualized all the love you can’t visibilize.

Still Life at Twelve in the Morning
by Oyin Olalekan

I close my eyes to keep your hand pressed against my cheek,
to count the callouses between your fingers.

I open my eyes and I am bigger than my room,
I have been to all the places on my walls.

I am learning to trust myself again
to kiss the face of desire open-mouthed and not be sorry. Which is to say,
there is a man who lives on Calle Goya

He kisses me open-mouthed
and I am not sorry.

I close my eyes and it is siesta. Someone is making an omelet,
its snap and sizzle skips into my room. We make my bed a ship without anchor
and the lady across the street wails her notes to buoy us up.

At midnight, the birds flash golden in the light of the cathedral.
When it rains the streets run with color,
the ground mirrors the sky, and I find myself splashing through stars–
this is how love found me tender-tongue and bared teeth for that which I adore.

In Zahara, your eyes were a patient river buffing my jagged edges smooth,
I gathered what was left of me tossed it into the ocean
and scrubbed my face clean.

This is how I marked my way home:
by the Torero who keeps his three loves encased in his chest,
and the porter who pats my cheek like his own,
and the old man who stands on the corner of Esperanza de Triana and promises to marry me.

I close my eyes and it is 6 am. All the alarms are ringing.
Guapa, you say, Que tanto suerte tienes. How lucky you are.
I count your breaths, match your rise to my fall,
count the number of men I have smiled for.
But you have kind eyes and soft hands
and a quick tongue to fill your mouth with my name.

I remember the linen of your fingers against my ribs,
you say, Guapa let me paint you.

I say, listen, the man downstairs sings for us
his voice so rich our silence is lush with sound.

I open my eyes; I have been stranded in your sweater for days.

Now, when I say your name it is only the mouth of midnight that catches my breath.

Sketch by Ellie VanBerkel

Oyin Olalekan is a Poet, Screenwriter, and Filmmaker. Her solo exhibition Speaking (in Tongues) was followed by an appearance of her work in the Sawubona Project. She is a Winter Tangerine Writing fellow, and was selected as an Emerging Director by the Doc Institute’s New Visions Program. Her forthcoming short film, Kitchen Talks will be her directorial debut. She holds a Masters Degree in Media Production from Ryerson University and is always reaching for the next story to tell.

Invisible Love: unlearning love

unlearning love
by Anushka Ataullahjan

when honour breathes in the soft
of women’s flesh, and its heartbeat
deafens the roar of unwanted gaze,
when disgrace coils around
larynx like serpents,
disappointment peels acid drenched flesh,
and form sinks into river,
fire,
exile,
wherever our sisters are
disappeared

in such a place
how can a woman love and be loved?
how does she let her edges soften?
to embrace the swell below her hips
to divorce love from unravelling-
intimacy with destruction,
hold herself through the act of making love

how does she become more than a vessel,
for the desires of the men she lays with,
and the reputation of those linked by blood

in such a place
how does she
become

-unlearning love

Photo by Shaanzéh Ataullahjan

Anushka Ataullahjan is a Pakhtun Muslim poet based in Toronto. She once heard someone define a poet at as a person who keeps asking but why? She has never heard a better description of the thread that pulls together her life.

Invisible Love: Post-Memory

Post-Memory
by Maya Bastian

Post‐memory is a term used to describe the inter-generational transmission of experience. Traumatic experiences are passed down to younger members of the family as one collective memory that is often recalled through imaginative investment, projection and creation.

My ancestors’ memories are saturated with the bloody civil war that ravaged my homeland for 30 years. As a first generation Canadian and a member of the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora, some of my first memories are of stories being told in hushed whispers, of people escaping terror and of those who could not get out. These stories have taken up residence in my psyche and create a visceral cognizance, a deeply empathic understanding of what my closest family members have endured. As such, I feel as though I am living two parallel lives and that I have another history, an unspoken one that inflects every action and though that occurs.

Maya Bastian is a Tamil-Canadian writer, filmmaker and artist based in Toronto. Her work focuses upon justice and conflict within the context of community and culture.

As a filmmaker she has exhibited her award-winning short films internationally, which run the gamut from narrative to documentary, to experimental. In 2009, she spent several years traveling the world as an investigative video journalist, documenting areas of conflict and post-conflict. She is a recent recipient of Regent Park Film Festival’s Home Made Visible grant, received the 2017 Al Magee Screenwriting Fellowship and was selected for Reelworld Film Festival’s Emerging 20 program in 2017 to develop her thriller feature film ‘Red Tide’. She has received widespread press for her 2017 short narrative film ‘Air Show’ about the effect of the military air shows on newcomer refugees.

Maya’s writing appears in online journals such as The Huffington Post, Her Magazine and Commonwealth Writers. Her video installations and mixed-media artwork is showcased around the world, most recently at Edinburgh Fringe 2017.

Invisible Love: When I Refuse You

When I Refuse You
by Fiona Raye Clarke

When I refuse you
you wrap your resentment around me like netting.
Catch me in your freezing waters
to take me home and slice me open.
Discard the soft parts, the fluids, the insides
baiting me with worm promises.

Don’t you see all the times I’m kissing you
hanging onto something
you already given up:
put your foot over the railing,
swing your legs over the other side to jump.

I have to be the raft,
the boat,
the sail,
the anchor.
I have to navigate the winds
with a lick of my thumb and forefinger
while you get called ‘Captain.’

I am not even second mate.
I ride the ship’s bottom.
Hang flank on the ballast,
dancing with the slaves.
To keep my body limber
not for my own sake
but so that I can keep working.

Fiona Raye Clarke is an award-winning Trinidadian-Canadian multi-disciplinary artist. Her writing has been featured in print in Broken Pencil Magazine, alt.theatre, and The Peak Magazine, and online at Room Magazine, Shameless Magazine, and The Puritan. She was a 2018 Diaspora Dialogues Long-Form Mentorship Program mentee and a Firefly Creative Writing Writer-in-Residence. She is currently based in Toronto. @fionarclarke

Invisible Love: Capes

Capes
by Elizabeth Mudenyo

I was 12 and in love with the summer

In the evening

just laying out on the lawn

falling asleep

waking up to a world changed

It felt like five minutes before

the night fell to pitch black

I kept falling in love with everything

that was the problem

The grass sticking onto the back of my thighs

The sun’s red glow on the back of my eyes

Hugging my brother’s back,

falling into the cave of his spine

smothering my face

risking a little discomfort,

I was a constant lover.

Once I asked him if I could borrow his cape

his red plaid shirt

“Its too big”, he said

and I asked again

“its too big for you”, he promised.

And I thought I knew what he meant

about powers being a lot to carry

magic being difficult to have

so when finally

I borrowed his cape

he rolled up the sleeves

and on me it only worked when I ran

when the wind picked it up

and it went flying

I ran fast fast

and felt my heart racing

I knew it was the magic working

I waited for him to wake me up in the morning

to cook us meals

to speak first

to reply to my questions

I waited for him to say yes

to remind me that the fact that I was there was a good thing

a TV screen reflected in his eyes

so he couldn’t see mine

he said he couldn’t describe it

because he couldn’t see it

(it was inside of him)

and that he couldn’t feel it

because it was a lack of feeling

“I think my guts have spoiled

I think at my very core I’m rotting

that the stuff that made me is no good anymore”

he said ‘before,

it was a beast

a monster

grumbling

howling with distress

deep inside his stomach

into a pit of emptiness’

that’s why

it came as no surprise

that with an aurora of magic around him

and empty insides

he disappeared into thin air

Still I recall

the cape in the wind

and how I loved him

Image by Purvis Kwagala

Elizabeth Mudenyo is a Toronto-based poet, screenwriter, and arts manager. Her work centers Blackness at the intersections of mental health, gender, and sexuality. Observing the magic in the every day, she aims to transform spaces and bring together communities through art. She was a fellow of the Poetry Foundation’s 2018 Poetry Incubator and is one of the writer featured in the recent Black Like We (2019) anthology. Elizabeth supports platforms for BIPOC voices through her all work and is always collecting her tools.

Invisible Love: burnt-butter skin

burnt-butter skin
by Sabrina Sukhdeo

we lie in a pool of daylight
dissolved in the emerald glaze of summer
the heat of our burnt-butter skin
sinking into the pause between our bodies

mouthless gods grip our tongues
us babies born away from war-cut coasts
as haloes of our holy histories
weld together metalled belongings & faiths

the gilded pulse then grows savage
the injustices we share gnaw at unripe want
but in its violence we forge refuge
from the oil-water love rotting our homes

now our wounds have drunk their fill
rousing a bright flush of prayer & pleasure
to lift the scars of tortured mothers
from our trembling hands softly clasped in silence

Visual by Ayse Koca

Sabrina Sukhdeo is a Toronto-based writer of Indo-Guyanese descent. Her poetry and personal essays intimately explore the concepts of longing, belonging, and rootlessness through her experiences as a third culture daughter. She has previously been published in Kajal Magazine. Sabrina is completing her undergraduate degree in political science and will soon be pursuing a law degree, with aspirations in women’s advocacy. Find her on Twitter @sabrinaids.

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