Between the lines
Submission: Issue 03, A different future
12 questions. 12 reasons to go a little deeper, and help us articulate a different future in 2027.
Write on the train, or under a tree.
Write in your mother tongue if that's how you think. Just please, please, write from the top to the bottom of your beating heart.
—Zosia Świdlicka
• Founder • Opening Line
Author Note:
I use prompts as crowbars.
I strive for control.
I live for madness.
How do you feel about love?
Is it even love if you’re not scared?
They say madness is doing the same thing and expecting a different result.
If love is the body responding to a kind of madness, then love with all of yourself.
Love often. And if it doesn’t work, embrace the madness.
[Love again]
What are you reaching towards?
Is it possible to reach for the present?
The present can seem so distant.
Now is when I live.
These are the days.
I’ve heard they always were.
What is your relationship with the passing of time?
Fractious. No, perhaps fractured. I lose track so easily.
What conversation do you most often have with yourself?
I am no longer allowed to have conversations with myself.
We’ve decided that’s best for us.
What is the fire inside that keeps you going?
I drank ten cups of coffee a day, each paired with tobacco and flame.
Strong blacks, long draws.
I left caffeine for a while.
Two vices? I’m wiser now.
Ten cups ante meridiem.
I don’t count the cigarettes.
What are you carrying?
I am carrying a 25-litre backpack. It’s a roll top bag. The lining is bright orange so I can see all of my things inside it. I’m particularly fond of this bag because it is waterproof but also has external pockets—ideal for a coffee cup and a brolly. I love my umbrella. It’s yellow, and the handle looks like a duck head.
Inside this bag is a collection of smaller bags. They’re all waterproof too. And they are colour coded! The orange one contains toiletries, the blue one has fresh underwear, the yellow one is the best. Yellow is my favourite colour. I don’t have time to list everything inside the yellow bag. Trust me when I say this. I have everything I need.
I also carry my keys, a phone, and a lighter.
My keys are attached to my trousers on a leather thong. Instead of a key ring, I carry a miniature pen knife. It’s a beautiful object because it is clad in wood (not the classic red plastic). The drawback of the wooden pen knife is that I have had to sacrifice the toothpick and the tweezers.
Inside my leather tobacco pouch are a toothpick and tweezers.
I’m writing this in a coffee shop some ten minutes away from my home. Anything could happen in the next half hour. I would be ready for it.
My therapist asked me if I had moved house a lot as a child.
(I have never lived anywhere for over five years.)
What would it take for you to let it all go?
What does it mean to let it all go?
I hear a dream—an idea of freedom and independence. Freedom to live and love without consequence. Independence to do so without causing harm.
Harmony: a balance between authority and responsibility.
To let go of responsibility sounds like pleasure.
Perhaps that is the trap.
When did you realise you were different?
I was in a mental health hospital when I realised that we are all the same.
My recovery hasn’t changed my mind.
If your shadow could speak, what would it say?
Does it matter if nobody is listening?
What draws you to the past?
My incessant need to prove a point.
The past has always provided a case study.
Perhaps… prophecy.
What are you afraid of?
The end of love.
The end of loving your neighbour.
The end of loving your enemy—or at least their ideas.
I am afraid I’ve already checked some of these off.
I’m not yet forty.
When do you feel most alive?
Having ideas at altitude.
Thinking in water.
My clients say I work best when I’m wet.
I know I don’t have great ideas when I’m high.
Submission open until Sunday 5th July 2026.
Form: https://3t4jwnskoxk.typeform.com/to/WSvoDxCN