One week

i.

Pandora’s box was a vase but I like mistranslations. 

A vase carries an implication of humidity and dark spaces. A box is friendly and often inhabited by something furry. 

I stroke your fur with my foot while you keep spinning on your pottery wheel.

ii.

I’m trying reversed magical thinking. 

For example, when I want to make a cup of tea and need to choose a cup, and something tells me not to pick this one up because terrible things will happen otherwise, I will pick it up, stridently.

It’s starting to feel good, this looking into the abyss.

iii.

I begged god to rid us of god, and the female goddess to be silenced. I’m building my own altar, for once.

Autocorrect wants god to be in capital letters (God) but doesn’t mention the goddess.

iii.

His heart is getting too big, says the cardiologist. Keep him indoors, he says. Fuck you, I think, but don’t say anything.

I like to keep my oceanic feelings private.

iv.

I am having freaky Friday feelings on a Saturday. See the sea as you want, I’m sitting right here, feet in the sand, hands butterflied.

I am a visitor that someone just called a snob.

v.

Nights in this partnership I can sleep spider, plum, Turkish delight. Slates of solid snow are rafting down the roof.  

Death by lighting follows, probably. 

vi.

I’m used to speaking in this language when I want to hold a cup, or when a scent in my pocket shivers an inconspicuous dance. 

And with it some sort of leakage on my thigh. 

Words dripping like a warning.

vii.

I am a wet nurse when it comes to navy blue and also leather, sometimes I think my inner child is made of red, pink and lives in a submarine, not under the bed.

I believe in my inner child a bit too much even though we have different temperaments.

I went to a playground and climbed on the top of a frame but she still wouldn’t come out. When the train separated in two she stayed on the other side. When the NHS asked me if I was booking for myself or someone else, I ended up not booking either. 

She has become a good excuse to be static while in my dreams I am murdering walls.

Tap here for more time to live, she whispers.

Alex Keramidas is a poet and experimental sound-maker based in South East London. Her written work has been published in various magazines, including Pamenar Press (UK), Brossura (GR) and Dears Magazine (CH). She has had three poetry pamphlets published: Galeotto Fu (Antiphony Press, San Francisco, 2025), Vestibular Training (Bored Wolves, 2024) and Guidance to Translating Sound on Paper (Zimzalla, 2024). Her sound work has appeared in Form IV and Plastic Language (NTS Radio). She performs with experimental musical ensemble Aster, and has released a tape with Sacred Tapes (UK).