Monday Moments: Borrowed Cultures, Borrowed Stories

Introduced By Amber Hall

We’re continuing to look at the theme ‘Borrowed’ and, for my page this month, I’ve been thinking about borrowed cultures and where storytelling fits into that.

I’m very much a believer in allowing people to tell their own story. It’s easy to assume this is the case: to think that everyone has the tools and resources they need to be agents of their own narrative. But the reality is quite different, despite the work many cultural institutions are doing to improve accessibility.

We all have rich cultures and stories worth telling, but that doesn’t mean we each have a platform to share them. Marginalised and minoritised people are often the subject, but they don’t always get a say in how their stories are told, even today. And when this happens, I think things can get lost in translation, so to speak. The true essence of storytelling lies in nuance and detail – in the things outsiders might overlook. Characters become caricatures, plotlines become parody, and then the connection is lost.

Storytelling is all about connection. When we don’t give people access to spaces where their stories can be shared safely, we all lose out. We miss out on better understanding our fellow human beings and the breadth of their experience, and we’re worse off for it. In a world that feels increasingly divided, storytelling remains a beacon of hope.

The pieces I’ve chosen for my page this month are rooted in lived experience. Each shows how the written word crosses borders, boundaries and differences, ultimately bridging the gap.

First, Layla Sabourian takes us on a journey across cultures, landscape and time, beautifully capturing the essence of what it means to belong to – and borrow from – a place.

The Iranian

 I was born in Iran, but no one owns a country. We only borrow the ground beneath our feet, and the land, when she is ready, takes herself back.

My childhood stretched beneath Damavand’s crown, among Tehran’s smoke, swirling and rising, and the Caspian: jade-gray, thick, ancient, heavy with centuries of the same transaction. People arriving, people scattered, the water unchanged.

We say the land belongs to us. But she insists on the opposite and laughs at our small conceit. She calls to us. She holds us. We obey. And then she lets us go.

California was where I spent my youth. San Francisco, golden by the bay, open, untamed. There I found love. There my daughters were born, two girls who have never seen Iran’s sky nor swum in her dense waters.

And still, Iran has claimed them. Their hands remember what no one taught them: saffron, dried lime, lamb slow cooked in turmeric. At the piano their fingers find Persian melodies whose names they never learned. We do not pass land to our children: we pass longing, which is older, and harder to lose.

Exile, my friends, begets exile.

Now the third chapter has begun. Many oceans later, Andalusia opened her hands – as this land does everything – with unapologetic light, a sea so blue it seems lit from within.

Benalmádena has claimed me, for now. Orange trees line the streets. Honeysuckle smells of Iran. Orange blossom fills spring nights with grave sweetness and, the first time I breathed it in, I stood still on the sidewalk, understanding that I had been here before – or that here had been inside me all along.

This land, too, knows what borrowing costs. Three faiths built their houses here, prayed in three directions, called this ground their own, and were scattered into salt. The orange trees remember. The stones keep the names. The land forgave them all and lent herself to someone else.

At the table they ask – carefully, almost in apology – what I think. I who carry two passports, who wear two flags on my chest and am at peace with neither.

Of war, of intervention: I hold the contradiction like a stone in each hand, knowing they will weigh no less if I let them go. We fight over what was never ours to keep.

Night falls on the Costa del Sol. The sea breathes. Between the golden rock and the patient horizon – where the faiths once circled each other like weather, like light – I understand at last what Iran has been teaching me across every border I have crossed: we do not own the places that have shaped us. We are lent to them. We are lent to each other.

And when the lending ends, the earth simply folds us in – without asking permission, without letting go, without end.

© Layla Sabourian, 2026

Connect: Instagram @laylasabourian Linked In: laylasabourian

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In this next piece of flash fiction, Eithne Cullen explores inherited things and how we wear them, both literally and ideologically.

Uniform

I am not familiar with this uniform. I’ve never felt this rough serge against my skin. The starched collar chafes my neck. How to tie the tie? A bow? A knot? It isn’t clear. But I’ll persevere.

In my memory, my father wore a uniform like this, and I remember my mother trying to maintain its splendour with starch and steam – constantly struggling to achieve the right effect.

I tried to emulate his style, his figure on the stage as dignitaries passed by. But disappointingly, I felt the cloth had lost its dignified appearance. I sagged; my starch did not hold.

I used to dream I’d take his place in the parade, on the podium. What I had never dreamt was the meaning of this get-up. I dreamt of the salutes from the passing troops, until I realised they did not think like me.

The birds fly up from the parade ground, frightened by the gravel crunch, the jack boots and salutes. I hope they shit on them as they fly. I want to shed this uniform and follow them, off into the blue, blue sky.

© Eithne Cullen, 2026

Follow Eithne on Instagram: @eithnecullen57 and X: @eithne_cullen.

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In this next poem by Julie Dexter, we join the narrator on a dive into the ghostly depths. I think there’s something existential in this piece. It highlights the power of the written word.

Tectonic Descent  

Fastened to a
tectonic escalator,
low-lying coastal
cities
—Amsterdam,
New Orleans—

are receding fast,
drowning in shifting epochs

Geological
layers
settle,
compact.

What once was
concrete, steel, brick,
glass—
a mass of rubble compresses, transmutes:

Rhodium.
Limestone.
Silica sand.

Metal rusted,
milk-white bottles crystalline as bone,
concrete bitten into fossil pools—

Now, booted, roped, weighted, sealed, the diver
drops.

Below the strata,
her body bends —
The light recedes.

She passes shells
and crabs, cockles and coral;
a drifting net of seaweed
caught on rock, like gauze.

Driftwood floats by, scarred and pale.
Fish scatter.
A stingray folds itself
into the sand.

The coral thins, the colours mute.
Now she checks her depth.
Five hundred feet.
Ears ache.

Breathe, equalise.
A voice from training rises:
mantra, keep the mantra:

Breathe—count—descend—
breathe—release—descend—

There is no count.
Just descent.

A lantern fish half-buried in silt
watches her go.
No more driftwood.
No more Shells—

The sea becomes a silent,
seamless thing.

At two thousand feet
The body forgets how
to belong to itself.

She is outside light,
scale, reason.

Yet still—
she drifts.

And still—
she descends.

Should anyone
belong this far
deep?

© Julie Dexter, 2026

Connect with Julie on Instagram: @latenightswimmer.

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Finally, a poem by our Editor, Madeleine F White. This is taken from the ‘Crone’ chapter of Madeleine’s second poetry collection, Maiden, Mother, Crone – available from Sea Cow Press, Amazon, and other good bookshops. Maiden, Mother, Crone is all about reclaiming narratives, so that women’s voices are valued and celebrated.

An anthology version of Maiden, Mother, Crone, which is based on submissions in response to the original work, will be available from 2 August. It can be pre-ordered from Sea Cow Press here: www.seacrowpress.com/product/maiden-mother-crone-the-anthology.

Huge congratulations to Madeleine on this latest publication of her inspiring and powerful work!

Knowing

Life is full of comings and goings: my boobs for one.
But, like any self-respecting crone, I still do glam.
I have make-up that glides over wrinkles,
and special pants hiding a stomach that crinkles
and droops – at the same time.

It’s helpful to me that my eyes aren’t as good
which means appearance is guided by mood.
From pyjama-clad cosy, to 40+ glamorous
there is strength in my fuck-the-world fabulous.

I any case, I’m quite pleased with my face,
when I look in the mirror I’m still a disgrace.
Each drop of story in me is a mote in someone’s eye,
as a pushing-past-perfectionist, insurgent insurrectionist
I know my worth. And will go to the ends of the earth
to call my soul my own.

Vibrant, courageous and beautiful
we crones can be dutiful
but we’re dangerous too. Fearless.
In the face of happenstance we dance.

© Madeleine F White, 2025

Connect with Madeleine on Instagram and Bluesky: @madeleinefwhite.

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Issue 28, featuring Alison Weir is out now. You will find it in libraries and other outlets. Alternatively, all current and previous editions can be found on our magazines page here.

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