This Translation Tuesday, in honor of Pride Month, we present a fiction excerpt from the desk of Swiss novelist Annemarie Schwarzenbach, written ninety-four years ago and now translated by Natalie Mariko. In these impressionistic scenes, the nameless, genderless narrator (a thinly-veiled insert for Schwarzenbach herself) is drawn continually to the thought of Ena Bernstein, their unseen fellow guest at an alpine ski-lodge. In Schwarzenbach’s hands, the gossipy high-society atmosphere of the ski-lodge gives way to a quasi-mystical perception of the natural world, which is reinforced by the ineluctable “oceanic unknown” of the narrator’s desire for women. “The ardent love which had always tethered me to this landscape grew in a violent way,” Schwarzenbach writes, as the narrator’s longing for Ena refracts the mundanity of everyday life into something beautiful and strange––a powerful reminder of how our desires can enrich the world. Read on!
To see a woman: just for a second, just in the short space of a look, and then to lose her again somewhere in the dark of a hall, behind a door I’m not allowed to open—but to see a woman and in the same moment to feel that she also saw me, that her eyes hung puzzled, as if we were meant to meet one another at the stranger’s threshold, along this obscure and melancholic borderline of awareness . . .
Yes, to feel in that moment how she also faltered, almost painfully halted in the hall of her thoughts, as if her nerves contracted, being touched by mine. And if I wasn’t tired then I wouldn’t have been bewildered by the day’s memories: still, I saw fields of snow, and thereupon the long evening shadows; saw the bar throngs, girls passing by to be sloughed like puppets from their partners, carelessly laughing back over their thin shoulders, the blustering jazz starting alongside their laughter. And before it blew again I took refuge in a small corner, Li waving there, her little face quivering white under high, shaved brows. She slid her glass back to me—stubbornly forcing me to drink the whole thing—and laid her slender hands on the Norwegian’s neck. She floated past dancing, and he hung with his eyes at her lips.
Then the cool winter night approached. The two walked near to me for a while and spoke in bumbling German. “It’s a shame,” he said, “you don’t understand how dangerous Mongolian girls are . . .” He was talking about Li and I nodded, despite knowing Li wasn’t dangerous: a twitching porcelain face with thinly shaved eyebrows, white hands, always shaking at the shoulders of the men whom she dragged through the pell-mell of dancers—Li smiled, yes, a nervous childish smile could appear on her mouth, and I know that men love its sweetness, but what is that: near the little ones’ smile, the blondes and innocents without animus meeting us out in the sun, who watch us and are held dear even when tired and poorly from the quietly beginning disgust for laughing and merriment, from the excess of smoke and noise.
How pleasantly the cool night air strokes my face, snow still clinging to my shoes. New light is already here, someone takes the ski poles from me, I shake hands with Lange who rushes upstairs. Now I ring, the lift operator closes the doors behind me and I stand with my head down as the lift stops at the halls: Warmth and noise pile in a moment. I raise my eyes. A woman stands across from me wearing a white coat, her face brown in the dark, manly hair austerely combed aside. I’m stunned by the gorgeous illuminating power of her look. And now we meet, a second long, and I feel irrepressibly the urge to move myself nearer to her. Harsher, more painful still, to follow the oceanic unknown that stirs like craving, like a dare, from in me—
I lower my eyes and take a step back. The lift stops. The operator opens the doors, with a hardly believable tilt of her head, the strange woman goes past me—
24 Dec. 1929
It’s late now and I’m tired. At first there were others with me, we drank coffee and only ate late into the evening, most tables in the restaurant empty. Next to us sat the old man who’d invited me to a sleigh ride yesterday and who led me that same evening to Frau Bernstein’s table for an introduction. He smiled at me, lifted his glass and bowed invitingly. I felt that only the physical presence of others prevented him then from saying “To Frau Bernstein’s health,” and I nodded at him smilingly, but in me a wave of blood had violently risen and nightmarishly insisted upon my heart. I continued to silently eat and only seldom threw a look toward the large restaurant doors, though I knew she wouldn’t come, she told me herself that she ate in her room most evenings or with her friend.
Finally my companions and I stood up. The waiter accompanied us to the door, which the brown-clothed boys tore open swiftly and with devoted obeisance. I looked around, with secret discomfort noted that Director Boheim’s table was empty, and finally acknowledged the old man who waved to me from his lonely place and followed his prompt to join him with relief. Lange came past a few times to ask if I dance, and as I told him yes a second time and went with him into the adjoining bar, he used the opportunity to plead with me, insistent that I should drive with him into the village to dance some hours in the palace with his friends, and I managed to dissuade him of the plan entirely only after long cajoling. I promised him I would convince my cousins—who, by virtue of their guardianship, really did hold sway over me—of the harmlessness of such an undertaking and to reserve one of the coming evenings for him. In particular, I suggested Lange at least invite my youngest cousin Erwin along, seeing as the older, Wolfgang, less from antipathy than from his wife’s strenuous demeanour, seemed ill-suited for it.
As we came back into the hall, we ran into Wolfgang and Lucy waiting for the lift. I enquired after Erwin, promised to spend time with them soon, and wished them both a good night. Already in the lift, Lucy called to me saying she’d send Rudi down the hall at 9 a.m. to ask if I wanted to take him skiing. After I succeeded in bringing Erwin and Lange together behind a glass of whisky, I could finally return to my old man, who’d fallen deeply into an English newspaper in the meantime. He offered me a stool and ordered a new coffee, then took a silver cigarette case from his pocket and handed it to me. I was struck by a photo, thrust into the lid, in which I instantly recognised the clear features—thin head, austere and mannish—of Ena Bernstein. Perhaps I started a moment. At any rate he pulled out the photograph with a smirk, laid it in my hand and asked me to hold onto it. I looked up confused, unsure of his offer’s meaning, but he nodded friendly. “The photograph suits you far better than it does me,” he said, “it’s a just punishment for my arrogance (carrying her around with me) that I willingly put her into the hands of a young person whose claim would fulfil his wishes far better than mine would.” These words seemed to age him before my eyes, his posture momentarily fell and his quiet, truthfully noble, face leaned tired toward folded hands.
Afterwards he told me, as if he had to lovingly prove he was right and affirm and embolden me in my claim—which I hadn’t even expressed.
I heard the name Ena Bernstein used in a warm human context for the first time, coming from someone who knew her, who for years followed her tracks, unassuming and hidden, whose love never touched her close enough to unravel the secret of her being or to minimise the tension of her powerful and beautiful presence through habit and wear. And if I’d first learned yesterday to bind this name to the woman who’d just days before trod into the zone of my life, if hitherto I’d shyly craved her propinquity, if I’d nearly retreated shocked before the immoderate attraction that’d echoed and tore space seismic within me since that first encounter in the lift, if in such a way all the gathered strength of these happy days was thrown to one end, a desire, still breathless and unclear, yet irrevocably there in the most secret part of my feeling—thus Ena Bernstein appeared to me here suddenly unmasked, moved terribly close, as if she could pop up before us, place herself next to me, force me to endure her presence and to experience everything the man across from me had revealed of her. And how much harder to understand was the actual, the occurring power of this woman than that which filled the blood like hunger, which one could still deny, disclaim or damn in rebellion against one’s own being—
For could one blot out that which another, a stranger, said, and which without compulsion one indulged, yes, indulged with a secret delight, as if one had gained some entitlement to it? Oh, I knew well these things the old man told me, and I recognised that he searched for words to express them; but as he sank further into a sort of desolate sadness, I sat in feverish excitement, it was as though for the first time my heart glimmered powerfully, I felt the gift of my youth and revelled in it, as if it held the key to that bliss otherwise only revealed to us in dreams—
[. . .]
The days are full of secret tension, the nights pass in a blaze of expectation like a fire that rises up from a wintry white. Often one harkens in silence. As if the organs were sharpened by fever, one listens for answers one dare not question and is divulged a silent and yet supremely riotous muddle that first grips the body like an ailment as the soul shies away from it; and then, all the more tempestuous, succumbing to the same shock that courses the blood faster, breathlessly through the veins, one hears its pulsing in the room’s stillness, a noise in the temples, and the hands shake against the covers, moved like tree leaves in the wind.
Nights are lonely and exposed. I read many books and over the books I feel the trembling expectation of what’s to come. Sometimes I think I can no longer withstand the wait as life flies away from me in these hours. I put away my book. Near my bed I see the telephone’s receiver. I need only stretch my hand to lift it—the concierge would answer and ask about my wishes, and what would be easier than to say her name (this name that is more than a wish, already rendered possession in its thousandfold repetition)? Then it may be that her voice is on the line (not her: I won’t risk the thought—but her voice, deep and tender and full of diffidence)—
It’s calming to see the receiver next to you, I smile a bit out of gratitude. Because what are possibilities: Do they not signify promises if one is only courageous, do they not imply a grandness of will—and to know it’s enough to also be able to wait, yes, in meekness and forbearance wait for the New’s inevitable hour—as the old man said: “Go easy on yourself—” because the paths of the future aren’t accidental . . .
I get up and stand stock in front of the large mirror, still halting and uncertain, still dazed from the game of possibilities. Then my visage stands before me, the image of a young, very young person. I press my hands against the glass and contemplate. It seems to me as if I’d grown fond of this pale and secret-fever shaking face, as if I hadn’t known it all too well before now. I passed over its melancholy. No smile did I gift these eyes, suffused as they were with doubt and gloomy severity. No lenity had I for these fair and skinny hands, the slightness of which became clear to me today for the very first time.
All this for the first time? Maybe that isn’t so, my life is already many days and nights old. I’ve surely also already met and seen and recognised myself in many mirrors.
However, today I love myself the way one loves a younger brother. I feel the commonality that rises up from these lower ages. A silent exhaustion saddens me, but also I love my sadness and find it in my reflection, which I delve into emphatic and close –
Finally, I feel the cold night air and go to the window to close it. Outside the forest is large and dark and the mountains stand clear against the night-time sky. Men are working at the ice rink, their muffled voices drift up to me. I listen close to the sound of the boards they slowly shift over its mirrored surface, and then they lift the hose—the water shoots over the rink in silvery bows like from artificial fountains on the stage.
The goings-on no longer moved me in the same way. They had become facile and took up no share in my thoughts. Yet randomness became total relationship. I began to love things because a thought of that strange woman bound her sisterly to them. My tremendous sense of being fulfilled let such connections form all over, and the ardent love which had always tethered me to this landscape grew in a violent way. So every minute of my days was gifted an incomparable shine: I happily breathed the pure and clear morning air; trembling, I awaited the sun’s appearance, which came over the mountaintops and spread in lavish glory over the white snowfields; every sleigh that drove past with limpid bells and colourfully-clothed people filled me with the awareness of a happily improved existence; and sometimes I sat many hours in the sun in front of a cabin, blinded from the almost summery rays and outrageous blue of the sky that arched wide and blazing over the valley.
I stood in the hall and waited for Frau Bernstein. The minutes slowly passed. Gradually, the last skiers arrived. The boys brushed off their snow-dusted suits, sleighs drove up, women in fur coats crossed through the hall and rang impatiently, the elevator doors unceasingly opened and closed. Already men in dinner jackets showed up, steadily descending the stairs, a lit cigarette devil-may-care in the hand. Women followed with arms exposed. The veils slipped silkily from their white shoulders and their brocaded shoes shone dull in the hard light.
Excessive impatience gripped me. As if all the hours of waiting had huddled together to take hold of me today in this hall: because, yes, days of waiting had passed, such days arranged in restlessness and mounting emotion, hour after hour, which then lean softer towards evening to suddenly plunge into the clear wintry nights, themselves also filled with restlessness and a secret premonition of happiness.
The mornings in the snowfields’ dazzle were new and of a great happiness that seized the heart. Erwin and I climbed up the hill and he seemed to me cheery as never before. Yes, a sort of tenderness towards him suddenly took me. Up until now I hadn’t ever known that he could be caring and cheerful. A good and trusty comradeship bonded us on our long trips.
In the village I was overwhelmed with reproach. I often forgot agreements and promises, and only in the late afternoon did I, almost without meaning to, again find myself in the loud palace halls, where people colourfully crowded and outdid one another in chromaticity of language, names and clothing. There was also a strange woman there who came to me and addressed me, her peculiarly ugly face twitched in hidden arousal. I was startled by her eyes’ cool mockery, which didn’t want to match her feeling. However she, no longer respecting my restraint as simply the embarrassment of youth, made me come to her table, where she told me Li would also be arriving shortly; then she overwhelmed me with sharp and funny observations, I answered her amused and attentive, and also the blatant expressions of sympathy that were quick-fire interspersed left me smiling in increasing amusement at her wit. Li actually also came, two Argentines and the blond Norwegian with her. She secretly waved to me and without a word took me by the arm into the hall where, nervously pacing to and fro, she explained that Anna Barnowska loves me, she saw my picture in Li’s room and since then had tried to meet me—Frau Barnowska (as I’d learned her name) told me as much herself, but, with an indescribably sweet smile, Li added that if I did not love her any more, as I’d shown in these days, then I should at least not let Anna Barnowska go, since her influence was wide-reaching enough to help me achieve any success. She knew Anna well enough (here the smile, sugary and, so to speak, bedewed by a strange melancholy, didn’t give way), she was strong and smart and dependable to whomever she’d turned her affections. “Be reasonable,” she continued insistently, “you need people to help you.”
In this moment, Anna Barnowska appeared. She took us both by the arm to lead us back toward the table. I, however, affirmed, suddenly impatient, I must go home, whereupon the young Argentines leapt up from the chairs to offer me their company. Frau Barnowska interrupted briefly that that was surely her business and followed me to the exit whilst she lit a new cigarette. Then she took my cigarette from my hand and at the same time gave me hers. I thanked her and threw it into the snow. For a moment I felt the woman’s gaze. Then she helped me into the carriage that had pulled up in the meantime and told the coachman the address without shaking my hand.
The next morning I was called early to the telephone, and, in the sunshiny impartiality of such effulgent days, I promised Frau Barnowska I would visit her. This visit was also an odd sort of adventure. I was lead into a large and bright room. Anna, still in bed, offered me a seat, her nervous restlessness hid behind the well-chosen mask of extreme brusqueness, yet she didn’t hurt me at all. With an abandon that shook her security, I spoke about thousands of things, ate oranges and chocolate from her table without permission, and observed, secretly astonished, Anna’s mounting impatience manifested in unmistakeable expressions. Then, surprisingly and from out of nowhere, she asked me if I knew Ena Bernstein. Shocked, I looked up and said, yes, fleetingly, I ran into her in our hotel, whereupon she, suddenly transformed, replied, now she understands me completely. I assured her of the complete baselessness of her assumptions, but already the beloved name’s mere mention took away my advantage. I was close to tears and repeated, again and again, she should explain to me why she had spoken of Frau Bernstein, and only broke off when I saw her look, cool and dispassionate, now resting on me.
I already believed I’d lost the game as I, still trembling, noticed that her control was also becoming weaker, and instead of changing the subject she followed me in the indicated direction. Moved and almost tenderly she spoke of that woman who had so unremittingly occupied my thoughts. Also, in her mouth, in its peculiarly gruff way, the name took on a seductive sheen and I for the first time suspected that the meeting in the lift, that silent recognition in the second as our eyes met, was ‘real’ in the sense of a power Anna Barnowska had also felt once, and with her and me there had already developed a kind of legality that shut out either hazard or deceit and which gripped and calmed me simultaneously. What Anna told me: It was nothing but this very shivering, far from every experience, by which she was seized, and she, the much older of us whom many men and women had already approached . . . she said only this: “I knew Ena Bernstein once, 8 days long . . . One New Year’s Eve I took a trip to P., where we were nearly in an accident. It was madness, more appropriate for adventurous youngsters than for me. I did it because of Ena Bernstein: What do you expect, this woman has a power for passion, the strong fall for it by being strong just as the weak do through weakness—You needn’t feel envious, by the way. I never knew Frau Bernstein more intimately. It was a coincidence that I met her, but this coincidence taught me to love women . . .”
I stood up and approached her. “Do you want to kiss me,” I said. She looked at me, unsure and with a bitterly cagey expression which made her face lonely and inviting. A smile took hold and I repeated: “Kiss me,” but quietly and not without shyness. Because she leaned over me, I felt her hands’ heavy quaking as she held my shoulders and silently and passionately kissed me.
The same evening I was reeled in by Lange on my way home. He told me Li had waited for me in the palace and, despite the most assiduous effort, they had not succeeded in replacing me with her. Incidentally, he was by no means the only one who had noticed this. “You and Li have the reputation of a liaison,” he said. I looked at him, affected. The memory of Anna Barnowska’s words appeared. From all sides I felt an unfamiliar world invading in which I had never before taken part and which now suddenly accrued with insinuations and temptations. Taking hold of Lange’s arm, I asked him to pray tell me why I was being bad-mouthed, I was almost childishly afraid of slander and only the assurance that he just wanted to warn me could calm me in the slightest.
But as I felt Lange’s brotherly friendship both delightful and securing, several comments from my cousin falling shortly thereafter made me leery. Insecurity took over. I couldn’t answer her out of fear I’d misunderstood the accusations and, bewildered, I looked over to Erwin who had gripped my hand under the table. The meal passed in awkward silence. Afterwards, we managed to leave the hall and in my room Erwin explained to me that an acquaintance of Lucy saw me with Anna Barnowska yesterday, a woman as intelligent as she was of ill-repute and with whom I at least shouldn’t publicly show myself if I couldn’t manage to avoid her altogether.
Now my eyes opened completely. I grasped the network of surveillance and tattle that had taken possession of me, and I understood suddenly the thousand looks, the open and concealed jibes of the people I’d met in the sports grounds and the grand hotel halls. How many women who turned after me had answered my smile, how many after had taken part in the conversations that followed in my steps! I’d loved them for that: their every word, their accidental caresses, their tender hands whose movements could be so valid had been to me signs of a solicitousness which gladly blazed through me. A Russian I’d met whilst skiing and whom I thereafter frequently met in the bar of our hotel had told me women would always love me—he too had I answered with just a smile. But now I felt left without boundaries, all love appeared to me as hostility and falsehood, and Erwin had trouble calming me with many reasonable and fine words. Yet he fell for the unfortunate thought of reminding me of the departure. He said my father had telephoned Wolfgang and already expected me back by the end of this week.
I looked at Erwin dumbfounded, this news hit me so unexpectedly; but smilingly he grabbed my arm, it was high time to work again, he meant, and the floor must be burning under my feet—he had always known me to be a diligent and almost fervent worker, and so my father’s suggestion was only welcome in every respect.
I followed him into the hall. Wolfgang and Lucy welcomed us, seemingly relieved and pathetically attempting to reconcile with me. We planned a ski-tour for the following day and only left one another after midnight. I was so tired I could no longer sleep, the tension in my nerves and limbs wouldn’t leave me for a moment, the hours appeared to me long and desolate, and what’s more there came a new dread just to think on the people to whom belonged my love: their traits hardly appeared in my consciousness before a secret resistance also arose, which made me unsure, such that I finally attempted to keep the thoughts at bay and so took away the last hope for sleep.
Towards morning, however, (I sat bent over in my bed and propped my head up against my knee) I felt a great calm take over; it was as if I could overhear her coming and I bowed to her, meek and thankful. As a child, after long and desperate weeping, I’d known this gentle calm; and perhaps it had been my mother then whose hand swept the wet hair from my brow. Perhaps this woman would also come today, unspeakably beautiful was, yes, this word alone––Woman––its fulfilment was so full of silent and sad expectation, so full of devotional bliss, that the edge of the magnificent heaved forth and left room for a comfort I turned to wistfully––
And in this moment the thought of Ena Bernstein abruptly gripped me.
[. . .]
The following notes I’ve carefully held onto are from the first night and I hold onto them because no memory can be stronger than these pages, calculated for no effect, that now should stand for interpretation amidst my great bemusement . . .
I truly knew nothing before this fear that struck me again––like a pain in which one cannot believe and one takes it on smiling, but suddenly it grows and becomes unbearable; and one smiles on, but it distorts from it––my God, one wouldn’t wish to believe me, that I was honest and that I was only yesterday convinced of my own words––how could I explain that it came over me suddenly like a sickness?
That is, a sort of instability: I know not how I bore a yesterday, and a day before yesterday, and the many days still lined up behind. And I was happy and felt not how lonely the nights are and how from the darkness some terror I want to escape came my way; but at the same time I knew that a larger courage belonged to this feeling, and whomsoever gives me courage: I listen to him and feel my torn-wide-open eyes are full of presentiment and sleeplessness.
And then still the tiredness is too great, I can no longer stay awake and slowly my looks turn inward: There dances a world of colours and lights and if the lights grow dim then they are the shine around the head of a saint––and all around is the room a dazzling sun, as if I’d drawn into me all the blaze of heaven and all the brilliance of the snowfields, and I am all over flooded with warmth.
But it was only enchantment. Lights and colours are like a torch’s projections: turn it and they disappear.
Don’t cry, it’s unreasonable to cry. What do you know, then, how many of those you love in our world are projections of an enormous torch. You are dependent on light and shadow like a minion on the whim of his master. Once (do you remember, it’s only a few weeks ago now) a person told you it was miserable to be a minion. Or a beggar. There is a great light somewhere shining in the eyes of good people like from pure and perfect artworks: It is unmistakeable because it is in you, as it is in everyone. But you shouldn’t spoil it through your fear and hate, come up with little games and avoid dark places out of cowardice.
The light is much larger, after all, and much more pure: Turn to it.
It’s late, I think, the sky’s become clear. But I am too tired to open my eyes.
[. . .]
We left the skis at the door of the hotel, the heavy revolving door was set into motion and Franz swiftly bid me farewell in the hall: I would surely find people I knew and drink tea with them and if it was fine by me we would meet by the bus at 6 o’clock.
And with that I was suddenly alone and left to my own devices. I suddenly felt it like a pale and looked uncertainly in all directions, as if searching for something to hold tight to. The concierge I turned to recognised me and inquired after my wishes––and I wanted to answer, but then I noticed I was shaking all over: My voice was unnaturally hoarse as I asked Ena’s room number. Then I followed the man with my eyes, it seemed to me inconceivable he took my question seriously as a matter of course, his hands reaching into a box and at the same time answering: “Just a moment––I believe it’s number 510––right, here we are.” He took a square paper from the box and added: “Shall I ask if Frau Bernstein is in?” With great difficulty I said it wasn’t necessary and went down the stairs. I stood stock in front of the lift and called. Here too my hand shook. The eventful life of tea time swam before my eyes, the swirls of voices slammed in my ear. I said perhaps acquaintances were here and could reveal me, yes, I even had the conscious sensation of being watched and it only intensified my nerves’ torturous tension––In this moment, the lift door opened and a woman in a white coat rushed by the waiting pageboy. I recognised Ena’s clear and austere features in nameless dismay and was simultaneously taken by the radiant power of her eyes. I felt as if I had to face her, as if I had to sob out in agonised bliss––
She recognised me. She strode toward me surprised, asked, it seemed to me, in a hushed voice, where I’d come from and if my relatives knew I was here. I answered no and felt the eyes of certain women who’d turned to us from a nearby table. But Ena meanwhile had waved down the waiting pageboy, shoved me in the lift and, before I came to, we’d landed, I know not how, in her room.
Translated from the German by Natalie Mariko
Annemarie Schwarzenbach (23 May, 1908–15 November, 1942) was a Swiss novelist, photographer and journalist. Born to a wealthy family in Zurich, she showed an early tendency to dress in men’s clothing. Much of her fictional writing is written from the perspective of a person of indeterminate gender. She was also a morphine addict, having tried the drug in Berlin in 1933, and a lesbian (in a lavender marriage to a gay ambassador) in a canton whose laws outlawed homosexuality until the year after her death. She counted many German-language literary and artistic giants among her friends and acquaintances, including (from 1930 onwards) the Mann family. She wrote extensively against the Nazi regime, was the first woman journalist to be stationed in and write about the horrors of the Belgian Congo and travelled by car through Afghanistan, Iran and the American South in the Jim Crow years. In America, she met Carson McCullers, who developed an obsessive love for and dedicated a book to her. In 1941, following a disastrous trip with a lover through Afghanistan, she attempted suicide and was brought home to stay with her family. After a tragic cycling accident in which she badly injured her head, she was brought by her mother to Les Rives de Prangins, a psychiatric hospital in Sils which was only a short time earlier home to Zelda Fitzgerald. Whilst there, and still badly injured from her cycling accident, she was diagnosed with ‘schizophrenia’ (a catch-all diagnosis at the time, including for lesbianism) and subjected to shock treatments. She died––malnourished, neglected and delirious––of pneumonia only a short few weeks later at the age of 34. Most of her letters, many of them love letters to women, were thereafter destroyed by her mother.
Natalie Mariko is a writer from New Jersey, currently residing in Athens, Greece. She is the managing editor of the annual arts and fashion magazine, CODE, a junior contributing writer for CLOT Magazine and a former poetry editor of SAND Journal. Her debut poetry anthology, HATE POEMS, was published in 2023 by the independent Australian publishers, no more poetry. Her works have appeared widely, both online and in print.