Though it is wise to keep an open-mind, there are times we should live in the warmth around us.

Poetry has this capacity to describe the contradictory impulses and parts of our identity that don’t make sense, and publications like Hermes enable students to hear that from each other, where otherwise they may not.

“If I had just been a better child, less of a troublemaker in school, less of a problem child, would she be whole? … I broke my mum.”

To put it simply, family stories fascinate me. I always want to know about people and their pasts, how they spend time with their family, how their family sees them, and about what families can teach us.

I had my first kiss beneath one of these winged stairwells. I learned how to love here. Guided by this passion and chaos, I learned to love here.

I was five years old, or thereabouts, when I developed this alibi — I was not different, I was Andy.

Vulnerability can, of course, be experienced physically as well as emotionally, or even both at the same time. But it seems that whilst physical vulnerability is accepted as inevitable, emotional vulnerability is often presented as something to be overcome.

What do Renaissance-era slurs, electronic music, and sibling love have in common?

Pondering the value of platonic love in the pandemic.

On clutter and holding onto the past.