Inner Pieces by Eve Naden

Let us take you by the hand and walk you through a York trying to wake up and find its feet. Delighting in the small details that show us so much, this York finds itself something different, something… new.

The road inflates, stuffed with cold air. Stepping out of my tin can dorm onto campus grounds might as well be jumping into a chasm filled with unknown creatures and crumbling stones. The world exists on a slant. I’m walking a tightrope suspended over the grass like a slightly paler ET.

 

Each second seems to alter the atmosphere leaving me stumbling around an alien planet. the emptiness of Campus grounds was appealing, at first. The introvert inside me was whooping with glee. If I wanted to dance to 80s ballads, no one could see me, if I tripped over a loose stone, no one would ever have to know. But, as I drift over the paving slabs, I might as well be a ghost unable to touch the living world.

Our Streets Unmasked commissioned seven stories in three parts, asking young and emerging writers to write pieces that reflected the changing faces, real and imagined, of the places we live as they took off their masks and woke from their lockdown slumber. Notebook in hand, writers visited their chosen location on three dates to gather inspiration for their three-part story conjuring often surreal and magical changes within them. All commissioned writers received advice, editorial guidance and a small fee. More about Our Streets Unmasked here.