She sat on a greenish boulder beside a lake beneath a maple tree. Her soft little hands were trembling with the weight of the letter she was holding, a letter of goodbye from someone who once used to sit next to her on this same boulder. They used to compete on who could throw rocks farthest into the lake. In her mind, she was lost in a typhoon on a wrecked ship with no signs of shore.” Tears kept running down her eyes from her cheeks to her chin, later turning into white shiny pearls dropping on the letter, blurring the words:
“My love, you are the sole beacon of fire, Fervor of my life, Elixir of my soul’s Obscurity. I forget how to breathe in your absence, I’m just a body whose soul is entrapped within yours. Each night I spend in this dugout staring at the stars, the brightest of them reminds me of you. The cold dazzling wind in my ear whispers your name. I close my eyes and see you in my arms, as if Vega itself has landed on Earth. Sometimes fire shells land near my dugout. Every day feels as if it’s going to be my last. It does not unnerve me, for love of my soil steels my heart.”
“It ignites a fire of passion in me, laying down my life for my country, so that I can honor the oath to which this uniform bound me. And the thoughts of me returning to you bloom a garden of daisies in the barren lands of my heart. If death finds me, when we are apart, I promise you to accompany you as a sheltering maple tree beside the lake where we sit, play and laugh. As a full moon brightening your darkness, as night jasmine blossoming a fragrance around you, as the rainbow that comes after rain. As the spring that comes after the autumn, and as a melody of love that adds rhythm to your a capella. If Death takes me away from you, I shall return to you as my letters of love to you, and if my corpse is placed in front of you, just know I’m standing right beside you, grasping your shoulder, holding you close to me, and like a brave lady, accept my keepsakes of valor with a smile.”
Amidst the typhoon on the wrecked ship, she was moving towards shore, but suddenly someone called her name. The shore disappeared, she began to drown. She screamed, struggled to reach the surface, but it was no help. She fell deeper and deeper, but it wasn’t merely a physical ocean, it was the oceans of her sorrow, which engulfed her and her world, bit by bit.
“Amber, Amber! The ambulance is here!” said her childhood friend Anne. Anne paused, looking at the ambulance. “He kept his word. He came back.”
Fiza Amir is an emerging writer, poet, and medical student from Pakistan. Her work explores the intersection of empathy, memory, and the human condition. She has been published in Fevers of the Mind and Pandemonium Journal.
In the Play “My First Ex-Husband” Ex-Wives Discover Their Superpower
Joy Behar exposes marital complexities with caustic & hilarious wit currently touring at a city near you…
By Jacques Fleury
Joy Behar, legendary comedienne and co-host of The View, gives us an intrepid and authentic adaptation of true stories with serrated comicality–minus any sort of politically correct filters. The play is an introspective of the often-muddled hysterical realities of love, sex, and relationships. Whether you’re joyfully united, guardedly devoted, or considering altering the locks, relationships are intricate—and collectively associable. These stories could be all our stories, except wittier. The basic premise of the show is every weekend, an ensemble of four stars from theatre, television, and film join the show, bringing their inimitable dispositions to voice these tales that may be uncannily familiar to you or someone you know. Shocking yet profoundly germane to the times, this show will reverberate with anyone who has piloted the tempestuous and often prickling seas of love. In addition to other titillating surprises, the show contests and questions ideologies of patriarchal authority, blind loyalty, self-esteem, physical and psychological abuse, gaslighting, subservience, physical and emotional constraints, lack of respect and more…The play showed to sold out crowds at the Huntington Calderwood at the Boston Center for the Arts in September of 2025 and will resume touring possibly in a city near you. According to the My First Ex-Husband website pending performances will at the following cities: Florida, California, Washington, Colorado, Texas, Connecticut and more…
“The stories are very relatable,” utters playwright Joy Behar. “Even if you never got a divorce, you still have problems with in-laws…or sex, or kids, or money… Marriage is a work in process all the time.” Behar was emphatic about how “true” the ex-husband stories are but said that they were admittedly tweaked for dramatic effects…A touchy yet facetious aspect of the play was when members of the “Ex-Husband” ensemble related tales of how their husbands used to cause them to feel insecure by poking fun at their weight, or “subtly hinting” that they need to improve their appearances to fit their husband’s standards of beauty. The fat jokes scored big and landed like a hilarious thud with audience members.
My First Ex-Husband is a visceral emotionally charged experience that explores and shatters any preconceived notions of marital uniformity. It extrapolates on the gradations, conceptions and misconceptions of marriage lore. With her signature brand of dynamic caustic and facetious wit, Joy Behar “brought it” to the Calderwood Pavilion stage at Boston Center for the Arts along with three of her equally funny female cohorts: Veanne Cox, Judy Gold, and Tonya Pinkins.
When you are embarking on the often symbiotic and potentially precarious journey of marriage, the core of you are could pose as a barrier or asset depending on who you married and your ever evolving marital circumstances. The play “My First Ex-Husband” can serve as a cautionary tale when entering marriage or any type of relationships in your lifetime. Times Square Chronicle declares that My First Ex-Husband “appeals to men, women, and anyone who has ever been in a relationship.” And I couldn’t agree more…
We are entering the dawn of a post “Me Too Movement” era, where women find personal freedom to discover their own versions of their authentic selves while redefining their own notion of beauty, not what their husbands or patriarchal society’s vision of what they think beautiful should be… In the grand scheme of things, I think until you get to know yourself and find out what your source of power is, you’ll be disconnected from the world hence you would only be moved by external circumstances, not discovering that you’re the one who makes things happen. In “My First Ex-Husband,” the women discover not only that their super power is self-love and self-respect but also that “true love” is one that frees not imprisons.
“My First Ex-Husband” has prodigious comic timing and socially conscious substance suitable to the times… A witty, emotionally charged and colorful artistic theatrical brush stroke of daring dramedy! I give this in-your-face smartly premeditated rumpus a 5 out of 5 stars!
Jacques Fleury
Jacques Fleury is a Boston Globe featured Haitian-American Poet, Educator, Author of four books and literary arts student at Harvard University online. His latest publication “You Are Enough: The Journey to Accepting Your Authentic Self” & other titles are available at Public Libraries, the University of Massachusetts Healey Library, Wyoming University, Askews and Holts in the United Kingdom, The Harvard Book Store, amazon etc. His works appeared in publications such as Wilderness House Literary Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, Litterateur Redefining World anthologies out of India, the Cornell University Press anthology Class Lives: Stories from Our Economic Divide among others. Visit him at:http://www.authorsden.com/jacquesfleury
Jacques Fleury’s book You Are Enough: The Journey Towards Understanding Your Authentic Self
You are my wealth, my dearest and unique, And always because of you my speech is art. Don’t let your peace be broken and bleak, I will not let your candle in my heart depart.
Your presence means that my existence is true, I have no happiness and joy apart from you My nation, in my heart, pride I knew, For you are the light that illuminates my way anew.
Abdusaidova Jasmina Quvondiqovna A student of class 8-“D” at School No. 22, Gallaorol district, Jizzakh region. Born on July 20, 2011. I am interested in artistic skills such as drawing and writing poetry.
Til Kumari Sharma is an internationally awarded poet, essayist, story writer, reviewer, translator and so on. She has won numerous awards through writing around the world. She is a best-seller amazon no 1 poet “A Spark of Hope Vol.III, Creating a Better World, Break the Silence Vol.III” and so on. She is a featured poet “The Poem Posse 2023, 24, 25” and many where around the world. She is a poet in world record book “ Hyper poem”. She has got “World Creative Hero Award” from LOANI. Anyway she is world famous author who was born in Paiyun 7- Hile, Parbat, West Nepal. Now she is in Kirtipur Kathmandu. Her portrait by Ukeme Udo is famous.
Talem was someone who had once forgotten his own name. He lived in a city where names could be changed as easily as shoes: one in the morning, another in the evening, a third in dreams. The city had no name, or rather, it had all of them at once.
One evening, when the shadows from the streetlights grew thicker than the lamp posts themselves, Talem found a letter at his doorstep. The envelope was black as the ash of a burned book and warm to the touch, as if it had only just been held. Inside was a card, inscribed with silver writing:
INVITATION TO THE GREAT MASQUERADE
Location: The Hall Between Times
Time: When the clocks stop
Bring your mask with you. Or let it find you.
He didn’t remember agreeing to anything, but he was already on his way.
The Hall Between Times was a glass palace, standing in a place where the city ceased to be real. The walls reflected not faces, but possibilities: you could see who you might have become if you had chosen differently. Or whom you had lost by choosing as you did.
Talem was not alone. He found himself among the guests, each wearing a mask — strange, alive, breathing. Some wore the faces of lion-headed beasts, others had the likeness of hawks, some bore golden tridents, while others had six eyes. The masks moved, shifted, as if they were worn not by humans, but by beings with their own life.
Talem wore a blank mask — smooth, like a mirror’s surface. He had received it from a random street vendor as he passed by. The man had said:
— Here, this is it. Without this, you won’t get in.
He felt like an outsider, as if he were a mere shadow against these vivid faces. But that was the point.
He met three of them.
First was Horus, the Egyptian god of the sky. His mask was made of pure gold, with falcon eyes that blazed like the sun. He stood by the window, watching the clouds slowly move, not in a hurry.
— I lost my father’s throne, — he said. — And now I know: the truth cannot be found when it disappears with every glance.
Talem said nothing.
Next was Kali, the destroyer of illusions. Her mask was made from a tangle of skulls and serpents, and she seemed both wild and merciless. Her hands were many, each holding a lotus, a sword, or a bone.
— I do not kill bodies, — she said. — I destroy lies. I become what your soul hides. Look at me, and you will see what you hide. Put on my mask — and you will see what remains of you.
Then came Odin, the god of wisdom and war, his mask made of horns and raven feathers. His gaze was penetrating, as if he knew what would happen to everyone in this hall a thousand years from now.
— I gave up sight for wisdom, — he spoke. — But now I don’t know what to do with it. No matter how much you know, the answer is always hidden in another question. Are you ready to find that question?
But Talem did not take any of their masks. He simply remained silent, listening to their words, which seemed to grow emptier with each passing moment.
The next gods approached.
On the balcony, far from the rest, stood Tlaloc, the Aztec god of rain, wearing a mask of jade. He laughed, but his laugh sounded like a storm, a prelude to disaster. His fingers slid through a bowl filled with water.
— People call me good when they desire rain. And evil when I bring floods. Are you ready to be the one who no one understands? The one who is both condemned and exalted at the same time?
Then in a corner appeared Ereshkigal, the Sumerian goddess of the underworld. Her mask was made of burnt clay, with eyes that seemed to peer into eternity.
— I was once the sister of the sky, — she whispered. — Now I lie beneath the earth. Are you ready to consume darkness? To be the one who never sees the light?
But even she did not tempt Talem to wear her image. Instead, he approached one corner of the hall, where stood the Nameless — a god whose name had never been known. His mask had no eye sockets, and his face was just a dark void.
— Who are you? — asked Talem.
— I was a god, but I was forgotten. My name no longer echoes in prayers, but perhaps you know me. I am the one who is never remembered but always present. I am the future of all gods, even if no one remembers us.
Talem was silent once again.
At midnight, when all the clocks in the Hall Between Times stopped, the Exchange began — an ancient ritual in which the gods could leave their masks. And the mortals could take them, to become what they were not.
Talem felt the weight of many hands before him, each holding a mask, each offering a promise.
— You are empty, — said Kali, extending her mask. — But this emptiness can be anything. Fill it with me, and you will become the one who destroys illusions.
— Or become mine, — said Odin, holding out his mask, full of wisdom and loss. — Become the one who sees, but cannot close his eyes.
— Are you ready to be the one who gives everything and takes everything away? — asked Tlaloc, his mask flashing like rain in the light.
Talem stood in the center of the hall, feeling their eyes on him, the weight of these possibilities. But he did not move. He simply looked at them.
— All of you fear emptiness, — he said softly. — But I do not fear it. I do not want to be someone I do not know. I do not want to wear a mask. I am a human. And I choose to be empty, but real.
He took off his blank mask and placed it on the floor.
A silence settled over the hall, like a cloud that absorbs the light. The gods were silent. They did not speak, but there was something new in their eyes. Fear. Respect. Understanding.
Talem turned and left. Behind him, the gods remained, once again locked in their masks, which now seemed not alive, but simply dust in the air.
When he stepped outside, the morning was already knocking at the city windows. He walked, and the world seemed the same. But Talem knew: now, he was just a human. And that was enough.
Night. The quiet whisper of the sea waves. The dark night and me. The cold wind is shaking my legs, the cold feelings are shaking my heart. No matter how tired I feel, there is no sleep in my eyes. My dreams took me back to the bottomless past. A small village, a house on the riverbank. Dusty streets, endless wheat and cotton fields. A woman sitting on a stool in the courtyard, embroidering.. A pain arose in my left chest. A tear flowed from my eyes. Closing my eyes again, I looked at that woman’s dear face. Unlike mine, thin as a bow, slightly furrowed eyebrows, a small elongated face, curly hair falling to her forehead and touching her forehead. Only curly hair and a stubborn character remained as a memory of her. Mom… Hot cakes just out of the oven…. Sweet evening tales.. My chest hurt again. I miss you mom!
A person is so weak that even his own imagination can hurt him. I gently took off my white sneakers and got rid of my socks. As I put my feet on the warm sand, my body felt a certain pleasure. I walked. Slowly, with fatigue. The waves of the sea hit my feet, and the gentle winds gently caressed my curly hair. As my steps slowed down, the distant past pulled me back into its embrace. My thoughts flew back to that small village. My childhood and adolescence began to pass before my eyes one by one.
Memories of playing in a snowstorm, avoiding lessons, and being reprimanded.. Precious faces, faces that smile but stab you in the back…. Another face… A face that always avoids remembering, missing you… A face that makes my heart tremble when I think of it, my eyelashes tear up…. Oh, I have no more strength left. I knelt down on the warm sand. Suddenly tears rolled down my eyes. Enough…
As I stared at the distant sky, I felt that these would never end. Nothing, no one just disappears. All things, events, and people are in our hearts. Forever…
Turdiyeva Guloyim. Young literature lover. Author of several scientific articles and creative works. Official member of the “Voice of Girls”, “Young Reformers Council” and “Golden Wing” volunteer.
