Claire Polders" />
  • ABOUT
  • PRINT
  • PRAISE
  • SUBSCRIBE
  • OPENINGS
  • SUBMISSIONS
  • CONTACT
The Missing Slate - For the discerning reader
  • HOME
  • Magazine
  • In This Issue
  • Literature
    • Billy Luck
      Billy Luck
    • To the Depths
      To the Depths
    • Dearly Departed
      Dearly Departed
    • Fiction
    • Poetry
  • Arts AND Culture
    • Tramontane
      Tramontane
    • Blade Runner 2049
      Blade Runner 2049
    • Loving Vincent
      Loving Vincent
    • The Critics
      • FILM
      • BOOKS
      • TELEVISION
    • SPOTLIGHT
    • SPECIAL FEATURES
  • ESSAYS
    • A SHEvolution is Coming in Saudi Arabia
      A SHEvolution is Coming in Saudi Arabia
    • Paxi: A New Business Empowering Women in Pakistan
      Paxi: A New Business Empowering Women in Pakistan
    • Nature and Self
      Nature and Self
    • ARTICLES
    • COMMENTARY
    • Narrative Nonfiction
  • CONTESTS
    • Pushcart Prize 2017 Nominations
      Pushcart Prize 2017 Nominations
    • Pushcart Prize 2016 Nominations
      Pushcart Prize 2016 Nominations
    • Pushcart Prize 2015 Nominations
      Pushcart Prize 2015 Nominations
    • PUSHCART 2013
    • PUSHCART 2014
Micro Nonfiction, Narrative NonfictionOctober 6, 2015

Dimensions

Collage

Image by Aiez Mirza, Courtesy of the Artist; The Manifestation of her own Existence by Hamida Khatri and Fairy God Mothers 1895 by Saadia Hussain. Images courtesy of ArtChowk Gallery

Ashes
I picked up my father’s ashes from the crematorium in Gouda. They were collected in a gray urn that I carried in the crook of my arm as you would a newborn baby. I guessed the weight of the ashes to be 3.4 kilos, then transmuted them into flesh. Twenty-two years earlier my father had picked up his newborn baby from the maternity ward of the Gouda hospital, carrying me in the crook of his arm as you would an urn of ashes.

Seeing Clearly
I do not leave when he locks me out; I beg to be let in. I do not leave when he drives off while I’m still in the car, screaming to be let out. I do not leave when his creditor comes knocking, nor when he sells my books, my watch, my clothes. I believe him—no more gambling—and settle his daunting debts. Night after night when he wanks off while watching porn beside me in bed, I do not leave. I merely pretend not to notice. But when he shoves me in a fight and snatches the glasses off my nose to make me blind, I see everything very clearly and I leave—never to return again.

Grandmother’s Math 
She lived for ninety-four years and six sons carry her coffin. Four daughters hold hands and swallow, strengthening the room with their gazes. While music plays and candles flicker, twenty-two grandchildren rise to encircle her. A subtotal of eighty-three nephews, nurses and neighbours whisper goodbyes from the pews. One husband and nine siblings await her in the earth. And others of course, loved and lost: one stillborn child, two parents. When she descends into elsewhere, the sum of her life, squared by death, multiplies in myriad memories.

Claire Polders is a Dutch author of four novels. She holds a double master’s degree in Literature and Philosophy and has studied at the Sorbonne in Paris. Her short prose has appeared in anthologies and magazines in the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. Currently, she’s finishing her first novel in English. You can find her at @clairepolders.

Tags

Claire Poldersmicro nonfictionnarrative nonfiction

Share on

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest
  • Google +
  • LinkedIn
  • Email
Previous articleSurviving Chernobyl
Next articleKnitting a Sweater

You may also like

You Arab?

Twenty Questions

The Know-It-All Who Didn’t

Ad

In the Magazine

A Word from the Editor

Don’t cry like a girl. Be a (wo)man.

Why holding up the women in our lives can help build a nation, in place of tearing it down.

Literature

This House is an African House

"This house is an African house./ This your body is an African woman’s body..." By Kadija Sesay.

Literature

Shoots

"Sapling legs bend smoothly, power foot in place,/ her back, parallel to solid ground,/ makes her torso a table of support..." By Kadija Sesay.

Literature

A Dry Season Doctor in West Africa

"She presses her toes together. I will never marry, she says. Jamais dans cette vie! Where can I find a man like you?" By...

In the Issue

Property of a Sorceress

"She died under mango trees, under kola nut/ and avocado trees, her nose pressed to their roots,/ her hands buried in dead leaves, her...

Literature

What Took Us to War

"What took us to war has again begun,/ and what took us to war/ has opened its wide mouth/ again to confuse us." By...

Literature

Sometimes, I Close My Eyes

"sometimes, this is the way of the world,/ the simple, ordinary world, where things are/ sometimes too ordinary to matter. Sometimes,/ I close my...

Literature

Quarter to War

"The footfalls fading from the streets/ The trees departing from the avenues/ The sweat evaporating from the skin..." By Jumoke Verissimo.

Literature

Transgendered

"Lagos is a chronicle of liquid geographies/ Swimming on every tongue..." By Jumoke Verissimo.

Fiction

Sketches of my Mother

"The mother of my memories was elegant. She would not step out of the house without her trademark red lipstick and perfect hair. She...

Fiction

The Way of Meat

"Every day—any day—any one of us could be picked out for any reason, and we would be... We’d part like hair, pushing into the...

Fiction

Between Two Worlds

"Ursula spotted the three black students immediately. Everyone did. They could not be missed because they kept to themselves and apart from the rest...."...

Essays

Talking Gender

"In fact it is often through the uninformed use of such words that language becomes a tool in perpetuating sexism and violence against women...

Essays

Unmasking Female Circumcision

"Though the origins of the practice are unknown, many medical historians believe that FGM dates back to at least 2,000 years." Gimel Samera looks...

Essays

Not Just A Phase

"...in the workplace, a person can practically be forced out of their job by discrimination, taking numerous days off for fear of their physical...

Essays

The Birth of Bigotry

"The psychology of prejudice demands that we are each our own moral police". Maria Amir on the roots of bigotry and intolerance.

Fiction

The Score

"The person on the floor was unmistakeably dead. It looked like a woman; she couldn’t be sure yet..." By Hawa Jande Golakai.

More Stories

Lampedusa

“…currents of meditated cruelty / pull them namelessly
into a tally/ across the only real frontier…” Poem of the Week (May 5), by Daniel Voskoboynik.

Back to top
One last love letter...

April 24, 2021

It has taken us some time and patience to come to this decision. TMS would not have seen the success that it did without our readers and the tireless team that ran the magazine for the better part of eight years.

But… all good things must come to an end, especially when we look at the ever-expanding art and literary landscape in Pakistan, the country of the magazine’s birth.

We are amazed and proud of what the next generation of creators are working with, the themes they are featuring, and their inclusivity in the diversity of voices they are publishing. When TMS began, this was the world we envisioned…

Though the magazine has closed and our submissions shuttered, this website will remain open for the foreseeable future as an archive of the great work we published and the astounding collection of diverse voices we were privileged to feature.

If, however, someone is interested in picking up the baton, please email Maryam Piracha, the editor, at maryamp@themissingslate.com.

Farewell, fam! It’s been quite a ride.

Read previous post:
for zainab

"today marks an entire year of living with this half-finished poem..." Weekend Poem, by Hira A.

Close