Neli Ivanova

Joined March 2024

98 stories

Bio

Neli Ivanova!

She likes to write about all kinds of things. Numerous articles have been published in leading journals on ecosystems and their effects on humans.

https://neliivanova.substack.com/

Achievements (10)

Stories (98)

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Flickers of Warmth
Mug between my palms breath snakelike in steam from unparsed lips, snow taps on the glass.
By Neli Ivanova13 days ago in Poets
The Common Colours of Christmas
Why are Christmas colours red and green? Red and green are the colours of Christmas, they have been for hundreds of years. Green represents eternal life with the presence of the evergreen tree and a hope for renewal that it will return green as ever after being dormant all winter. And that is how the fir tree came to be a central Christmas symbol.
By Neli Ivanova27 days ago in Humans
Christmas Tree Fun Facts
History & Origins The tradition is older than you think — Germans began decorating evergreen trees as far back as the 16th century, taking them inside and ornamenting them with apples, nuts and candles. The practice caught on in Europe, from where it slowly made its way back to America in the 1800s.
By Neli Ivanova27 days ago in Longevity
What the Embers Know
It’s been hours, I’ve been watching, the way you watch anything that’s leaving: with attention at an hour too late, and as though waiting for a fugitive greed of almost-gone.
By Neli Ivanova27 days ago in Poets
The Bread and the Dark
This is not, of course, how meteorology works — the days of the week do not in fact somehow self-arrange thus — but it feels like it does in my memory. The first true snow, the one that sticks, the one that changes the garden into something else entirely, comes on a Thursday evening, as the light is giving up. And in the morning on Friday, I make bread.
By Neli Ivanova27 days ago in Humans
The Soup Pot Vigil
On the winter solstice every year, I prepare my mother’s lentil soup. Not during a gathering, not for guests. For me alone, during the hours where darkness stakes out the longest land-grab of the year.
By Neli Ivanova2 months ago in Humans
What Holds, What Reaches
My grandmother's hands were roots— gnarled, brown, pulling sustenance from ground I did not learn to read. She spoke in the old tongue,
By Neli Ivanova2 months ago in Poets
The Door I Should Have Opened
That room you used to wait in, I walk by, its quiet as thick with accumulated dust and age. There the door I should have opened is shut tight.
By Neli Ivanova2 months ago in Poets
The Breathing Room
The key felt wrong in Maya’s hand — too light, too small to protect seventeen years of silence. She was in front of the door at the dead end of the third-floor hall, the one her grandmother had locked a week after Grandfather died. Maya had been seven then, old enough to remember the sound of the lock clicking, the way Nana pocketed the key decisively, the way she said, “Some rooms are meant to rest.”
By Neli Ivanova2 months ago in Fiction
Behind the Display
Then came the notification at 2:47 a.m.: “Ring motion detected on your doorbell.” Emma would have almost missed it. Well, maybe just another raccoon or a lost delivery driver. But she was awake, mindlessly scrolling on her phone, and her reflexes prompted her to tap the alert. The live feed showed fuzzy night-vision-green images.
By Neli Ivanova3 months ago in Fiction
The Hunt
I followed you through September's waning light, over foggy woods and falling-out hope, where every snapped twig was inscribed,
By Neli Ivanova3 months ago in Poets
The Tale of Two Sarah's
Sitting in front of her, she stared at the glowing message on the screen: "We need to talk. Tonight. It's important." From Marcus. Her boyfriend of three years. Her partner, with whom she had made a life in their tight quarters of a Brooklyn apartment — complete with his guitar propped against the wall and her unfinished paintings taking up every available surface.
By Neli Ivanova3 months ago in Fiction