Luca Mael Milsch

How do you exist in a system that makes it almost impossible to breathe? Like every morning, Selah sits on the veranda and waits in the silence. Three months have passed since Selah called in sick to disappear. But the desired solitude unexpectedly becomes a driving force for the past and the repressed: having grown up in modest circumstances, Selah's relationship with her mother is characterized by pressure of expectation, silence and shame - they accompany Selah into adulthood. When her mother is dying and Selah has long been living with her own family, the still gaping wounds become apparent. There are unwanted experiences and decisions that cling to her skin like phantoms. A debt to be repaid, even if Selah doesn't know to whom. And beliefs that are so deeply rooted that shaking them off is a life task.

Luca Mael Milsch writes about fragility that becomes strength, about a world full of ambivalences, about the longing for a self-determined position in a rigid structure. And about what remains of us when everything else disappears. A polyphonic, haunting text that searches for sounds in a seemingly unchangeable space of silence.

*BIPoC means Black, Indigenous, People of Colour and is a political self-designation by and for people who have experienced racism.

**Queer is a political self-designation of people who deviate from the social norm in terms of gender identity or sexual orientation and identify, for example, as trans, non-binary, inter, asexual, lesbian, bisexual or gay.