"History is written by screams" states the opener for October 2025's issue vi of EchoReview, a literary magazine filled with art that, much like springs, trickles from the very depths of the human soul; the souls of newly published writers, not unlike mountains, wild and largely unmapped. In truth, history has always been recorded in accordance to things "witnessed" - tales of heartache or bravery, of bloodshed and tears, victory or defeat, from a victor's or bystander's perspective.
"But what about the whispers?"
The unseen, or rather, unrecognized. Be it hero or victim, often left unspoken for, forgotten through time and space. In the issue titled "Silenced", EchoReview has once again dipped their fountain pen into the pools of poetry & prose, and brought us another splendid, short anthology of raw tales, like honeycomb, spilling greedily, faster than lips can cage, in every turning page. Hardly sweet - the tartness of the silenced seldom allows it; yet the addiction is all the same.
'First Light', is a diachronic tale about oppressor and oppressed, abuser and abused, perpetrator and victim. Tracing its still pulsing veins back to the Massacre of Smyrna in 1921, it references the endless cycle, the fight for survival, and facing loss while it pulls the shards of your shattered heart like teeth. A story with faceless, voiceless characters, that applies universally through the fabric of space and time, to every massacre, holocaust, and genocide. From rivers to sea.
Opening at the close, on page 48, this story speaks about the defiance of the unbreakable human spirit, the detrimental loss that both the fallen and standing carry in their bones for generations to come, and the cycle of never-ending violence, that only ever changes hands and sides.
Hatred doesn't discriminate, it destroys us all equally.
Besmirchingly yours,
Melisanthi Greco
The Mathematician, Anne Zahalka, 1994
