Winter Anthology

I wanted to reflect on the grief of seeing how friendships change once you prioritise yourself. All I do is handle...I never live. Every day I wake up knowing that my 24 hours will be on loan. I feel like I don't live my life. I get out of bed, and I start sorting out things for my Mother - mop a floor, get some wood, set the fire. I don't mind helping her, she's my Mother, but it's rarely received with gratitude. Hard work should earn me a thank you, rather than asking me to

I wanted to write about this difficult time of the year, which I feel keeps coming back, every time with a slightly different theme. November drags me to bed I have the river’s frost in the veins I feel blood burning ice expanding into the pipes into the capillaries Abyssal sounds and inaudible words underground of arctic days Behind swollen eyelids Surface’s memories flicker, underwater figures, each piercing its needle deeper, into the heart. A heart I know is mine, but I c

About the Writer: Nasta Martyn is an artist, graphic artist, and illustrator. She graduated from the State Academy of Slavic Cultures with a degree in art and also has a bachelor's degree in design. The first personal exhibition, "My soul is like a wild hawk" (2002) was held in the museum of Maxim Bagdanovich. In her works, she raises themes of ecology. In 2005, she devoted a series of works to the Chernobyl disaster, drawing on anti-war topics. The first big series she drew

This piece is about the grief of the love that never was, a grief that arrives softly like cold wind. There’s a kind of winter that doesn’t appear on the calendar. It arrives when you realize that the love you feel has no destination, only a trajectory. Like the frost that forms on windows overnight, beautiful, fragile, destined to melt with the first ray of sunlight that dares to touch it. He and I have retreated into our own inner winters. We still see each other on Tuesday

This piece is about growth and change using ice as a metaphor. I used to wonder whether ice enjoyed being stepped on. As we walked across it, thin veins rippled beneath its skin. Dirt carved small cavities into it, leaving indents and uneven crevices. I used to wonder, too, if ice liked the moment of breaking—being crushed back into a semi-liquid form, drawn closer to its younger, simpler state: water. Maybe I have too much hope. Maybe ice prefers the act of freezing, the sat