Mayflies by Dimitra Dede

THE MUSIC STOPPED

Beginning of summer.

Waking up every morning having the same feeling. I want to go back,
I want to touch again the strange, deep scar that my difficult entrance into this world created on her.

The scar of the infected c-section wound that I used to call her second belly button.

I wanted to kiss her goodbye.
I wanted to hug her goodbye.

I could feel she was leaving but I didn’t want to accept it.

My hope was stronger.

The phone call in the middle of the night confirmed,
what I didn’t want to believe.

I lost the entrance.
I won’t lose the exit.

The journey will be harder.

A feeling of opposing temperatures grips my heart and mind.

Cold.

Very cold, almost frozen.

No mother should be that cold.
No mother’s touch should be that frigid.

Hot.

Burning sun on her face.
Burning sun and feelings overwhelm me.

Insane thoughts.
Is she going to melt?
Is she going to move now?

Last kiss.

No, don’t put this white cloth with the cross on her face, she looks dead like that. I think I’m going to faint.

Don’t take her away.
I want to see her some more.

The unbearable noise of the soil on the coffin.
The silence after, void, emptiness. Pain.

On the road again.
My way of dealing with life coming to terms with reality.

Isolation, distance, thoughts, questions and creating pictures, decoding subconscious images, or coding them.

The journey continues, still looking for answers, still looking for meaning and peace.

The difference in this journey is the lack of music.
This summer left me experiencing panic attacks at the sound of music.

.

The music stopped.
The music along with the veritable cornucopia of love for me are buried now.

Dimitra Dede is a London based visual artist working mainly with photography. Her practice combines painting and the use of chemicals with photography. The making of the imagery is based on an intuitive process. Her subject matter quests the connection between space and time, memory and displacement, loss and longing, life and the Absurd. Her work has been presented in galleries and festivals internationally (Center for Fine Art Photography — Fort Collins, Black Box Gallery-Portland, Brighton Photo Biennial, Les Rencontres d’Arles, Athens Photo Festival, Unseen Festival Amsterdam, The Benaki Museum — Athens etc.).

‘Mayflies’ is her first book published by Void and it was shortlisted at the Unseen Dummy Award 2018 (Unseen Festival, Amsterdam).

Dimitra Dede website: https://www.dimitradede.com

For more details of “Mayflies” on VOID website: https://void.photo/mayflies