Have you ever analyzed yourself during a moment’s mourning?

What peculiar creatures we are, confining ourselves suddenly into a cage we had thought could never be forged for us. How does it jut out from nothing, thin air, ashen dust, and void, simply to ensnare us? It isn’t a warm embrace, and if it is, it feels cold. Shuddering. And we find ourselves clinging onto its iron bars, waiting for something, but nothing ever comes.

These peculiar creatures we once called “ourselves”, and “us”, are now withering, turning to fleeting identities, a waft of a soul into the wind. And no-one catches. No-one reaches.

But there, the iron still holds us. Memories we hold back onto, and we firm our grasp around them, not to lose them too.

How petrifying is it, the mere threat of forgetting someone’s voice?

So we close our mouths, losing our own.

Curse will take you through the journey and different stages of mourning, and for me personally it has always been kind of jarring whenever I return and read through the beginning chapters. I wanted to convey the stages of grief realistically—of course, different people convey it differently. But knowing that particular character, it always hits me to revisit the abrupt shift in them. And perhaps, to me, that enforced numbness is the most jarring one of all.

Art depicted: Curse Logo, by Alexander-Calin Moga