a series of erasures
alec chaya
i.
It’s a funny thing, time. A common thing, made uncommon by design, by greed, by fear. When I left my ex for the last time, like many others, I grieved the time that that relationship had consumed. “a series of erasures” is rooted in rededicating time, space, and art for myself.
ii.
Each stitch on the photos, each swipe of black marker, rendered the original moments changed and reformatted to suit the person I have become in the time since. It required me to sit with it all and choose to rewrite these narratives.
iii.
The poems are from a crown of sonnets I wrote for that partner years ago; The two featured here were published in their original form in an online literary magazine in 2019, and I used to think of them as some of the best writing I’d ever done. Rewriting them now, I expected to lapse back into the fear I felt in my past relationship and to grieve the loss of the writing as well. Instead, I relished the challenge, and I was struck by how much I have healed since then, due in no small part to a very loving romantic connection and many dear friendships.
iv.
The photos were a particularly fun project—I wore medical gloves when working on them to keep smudging minimal, which led to a lot of interesting and curious conversations when I embroidered in public. It was an extremely meditative experience, watching there be less and less of my ex’s face in the photos. Moss grows in spaces with little light, where the ground is not frequently disturbed. I included the back sides of the photos in this piece to reflect that the work of healing, while often beautiful on the surface, is messy and complex underneath.
Copyright Credit: “a series of erasures” by alec chaya from Survival & Beyond: A Survivor Anthology, Issue 2 / Fall 2024 (Safe Passage, 2024). Copyright © 2024 by Safe Passage. Reprinted with the permission of the author.