Dispatches from the Void. X.VI.

Mowgli: Vows Revenge on the Dawn.
Foiled Again by Chicken at 5:12 AM. Demands Silence Pact from All Avians. Sits in Window with Thousand-Yard Stare. Accepts Consolation Chicken, Begrudgingly. Shreds Bag of Cotton Pads for Emotional Release.

Akela: Feels the Walls Closing In.
Detects Suitcase Activity. Sleeps on Packed Clothes to Prevent Escape. Refuses Sausage Offering. Communicates Solely Through Sighs and Tragic Poses.

Poe: Begins Spiritual Customs Check.
Sniffs Each Object for Portals. Reassures Others With Cryptic Murmurs. Asks Celia If the Moon Is Coming Too. Licks Immigration Forms. Vanishes Briefly, Returns with Ancient Dust.

This Week in Underland:

• Chicken Diplomacy and Grief
  Noise escalates. Visa approved. Andrea Gibson leaves us breathless and broken.
• Waiting Games and Poetic Ghosts
  Celia gets stamped. River watches inbox. A chicken violates our boundaries.
• Cluckageddon and the Quiet We Crave
  No sleep achieved. Pani puri consumed. Grief and paperwork take turns.

This week in Underland has been… a lot. There’s really no other way to say it. We’ve had some incredible lows, some unexpected highs, and we’d very much appreciate it if things could just calm down a bit now. Emotionally, logistically, sonically. All of it.

We’re craving silence. Like, actual silence. But if it’s not the neighbor’s dog barking, it’s the neighbor’s chicken. And if it’s not the chicken, it’s the neighbor. Can’t a couple of queers get a little peace and quiet?

We’d planned a lie-in this morning. A proper one. Doors shut, alarms off, the whole fantasy. But the chicken had other plans. She started squawking before sunrise and didn’t stop until we finally opened the door. At which point she immediately marched into our garden (and tried to come inside), completely silent. Just… staring. She got what she wanted. We’re up now. There’s no going back.

On the bright side, Celia’s visa was approved! It actually came through on a Sunday night, which was a weird surprise, especially after a day full of stress, confusion, and yet more paperwork. But it finally broke some of the tension we’d both been carrying. Now it’s my turn to obsessively check my inbox every few minutes while pretending I’m totally chill about it. Totally.

In other good news, we won first place in another writing challenge! This time, it was for a poem about Bisan from Gaza. It felt like an honour, but also a complicated one, given the subject. So we donated the prize money to Habiba, a young woman in Gaza with cystic fibrosis who urgently needs to be medically evacuated. It didn’t feel right to keep the funds when people are literally starving and suffocating. You can read more in our article here, and if you’re able, please consider donating to her fundraiser.

We’re doing our best to locate individuals and families who need help directly, not through mutual aid accounts or official charities, but real people whose names and stories we can share. That’s where we believe money does the most good: no middlemen, no bureaucracy, just help, human to human.

Something that hit especially hard this week was the death of Andrea Gibson. It’s difficult to put into words what Andrea meant to me. I found their work when I was still a sad, confused, very queer young poet trying to make sense of the world. Andrea turned language into something that breathed. Their poetry held joy, grief, rage, softness. Often all at once. I’ve never met them, but it feels like losing a friend. Their words live deep in me and always have, especially since the first time I heard Maybe I Need You. I keep coming back to what they said near the end: that they felt they won this life. That brings a kind of comfort. And the fact that their voice is still here, still reaching people, still opening something up, that brings peace.

So yeah. It’s been an emotional, noisy, deeply strange week. The kind of week we hope to eventually look back on and laugh about, or at the very least, exhale deeply and mutter something about how far we’ve come.

R x

It’s been another strange week here in the Underland. Personally, globally, internally, externally. Life is coming from every angle right now.

Andrea Gibson’s passing has been sitting with me. Of course, we didn’t know them personally, and I wasn’t as close to their work as River has been over the years, but it still feels like a loss. They gave so much to queer identity, to art, to the idea that joy and love can be radical. That matters. It still matters. They won this life, for sure. But it’s still just really fucking sad.

As River said, there has been a lot. We’ve been overloaded for a while now. Not in a heavy way exactly, but in the unknown. There’s a pit lingering in my soul about what happens next, ever since we made the decision to move to Thailand.

Though, that decision wasn’t really ours. It belonged more to our respective governments and their bureaucratic, extremely expensive systems. And now, with the shit show that is Trump’s “reign,” we literally had nowhere left to go to be together. So Thailand it was. Away from the West. A new world for us to explore. And most importantly, a place where our “us” would be safe. Legally safe. And also walking-down-the-street safe.

We’re excited now. At first it was a necessity, but now it feels like the only thing that makes sense.

Being together here in the UK has solidified our love, even though it has challenged us to the hilt and back. Our house is small. Hobbit-sized, even.

It started back in February with job hunting. Application after application, either rejected or ghosted. Interview after interview for me. Unsuccessful. Not good enough. It took a toll. Though I don’t blame the schools. They want jazz hands. They want the uber-confident talker who can show them exactly what they want to see.

I’m not that.

The version of me that exists inside a classroom is nothing like the one people meet in the outside world. I don’t know. I guess I just am how I am. So it was rejection after rejection, again and again.

Then finally, a school in Thailand. And a helpful set of circumstances. The interviewee was leaving and they wanted to fill the position before they went. Quickly and without too much fuss. I didn’t clam up as much as I usually do. Somehow it all lined up. A perfect rip tide, I guess.

I got the job.

Then came two weeks of waiting while the school was on holiday. I kept doing interviews. Kept failing. Still no offers.

After that, it was time to wait for the contract. Then the visa information. Then the list of things we needed to do. We finally started moving forward at the beginning of June. I applied for my visa. Then waited. Got my visa. Then we applied for River’s as a “trailing” spouse.

Now we’re waiting again.

Waiting has become a way of life, even though all we want is to start living this real life we’ve been planning for so long.

So, all in all, I’m really bloody tired.

But we’ve done some cool bean things.

We had our first paani puri at Mamu’s Chaii, an Indian tea house near us. It was a revelation. If you’re ever in Newport, go there. If you’re not, find similar wherever you are. It’s a dish that might make you believe in god. Or something. Okay, maybe not quite, but still. It’s that good. Spiced chickpeas and potato inside a perfectly fried shell, with a tamarind and ginger dipping sauce. Incredible.

Also, we’re writing. I’m so, so proud of my wife. They always write from the depths of their gigantic heart, and it’s been wonderful to see them get recognition for their words. They managed to nab first place in a writing challenge, as they mentioned, and we were able to donate the prize money to a family in Gaza. You can read about them here. It feels like a sad Pyrrhic victory, if I’m honest. We shouldn’t have to write about genocides and children being massacred. But it felt like the right thing to do. We don’t have a lot of money, but we couldn’t keep the five hundred dollars for a piece that highlighted the struggle of others. It was the only thing we could do.

We’ve managed to clear most of the house now, which feels like a bit of a win. The cats are doing what cats do. Causing stress. I really wish I could just sit them down and explain what’s happening. That after this, this one last upheaval, they’ll never have to be uprooted again.

Also, we got our apostille marriage certificate through. Official. Stamped. Done. And there’s no orange non-president who can take that away.

In a nutshell, we’re looking forward to the great escape.

Can’t wait for life to start.

And, secretly, I absolutely cannot wait for someone to leak the Houdining Epstein list. Come on. Do the world a solid.

C x

If this resonated, please give it a share on Bluesky (or anywhere folks still have an attention span longer than a moth after a sleepless night), leave us a comment, or check out our latest anthologies

Poetry Collection, ‘Is this all we get?’

Prose Collection, ‘ Fifth Avenue Pizza’