"So, yes, love turns us into drunken golden fools. & I had books to write, work to do, silences, to bandage. I had no time to fall in love with girls who lived oceans away, & even less to fly across those oceans to see them. So my longest playlist shouldn’t have been named after her. The warmest space in my chest shouldn’t have been carved for her. She shouldn’t have made me feel safer than song. I know this. Do you think I don’t know this?
But in my defence, her hands. Every bud would unfurl, every silence would hum, every winter would melt for those hands."
Topaz's Winters' Silver-Tipped Swallow is a semiannual column published in Half Mystic Journal & on the Half Mystic blog. It chronicles the ways in which music intertwines with our experiences in loving, losing, & lingering on what remains.
Past editions of the column have covered subjects of fury, heartbreak, memory, mental illness, & unrequited love in the modern age, all reflected through the lens of music.
"The Silver-Tipped Swallow column is something I look forward to every time I know an issue of Half Mystic Journal is on its way into the world. I adore everything Topaz writes, but her Silver-Tipped Swallow pieces are that extra level of special. They pull me in and take me on a journey, and they always stay with me after the last word."
"When I want to be alone and retreat into myself, I read Topaz Winters' Silver-Tipped Swallow. It’s a reminder that there is always a kindred soul out there who hears the same music as you, one that has been kissed and bitten by it and still went on loving it, and there is nothing more comforting than that. For all the sensations and emotions I have felt but could never find the words for, Topaz has done so."
"‘A song can be a prayer or a sin. This is not the hard part, it's just the truth.’ Topaz Winters' Silver-Tipped Swallow column neither hesitates nor shies away from heartbreak, pain, and longing. Instead, Winters writes with raw and steadfast honesty, dissecting what it means to ache, to love, to hurt, and to listen, through both the harmony of song and the cacophony of life."
"In her Silver-Tipped Swallow series, Winters’s language is musical, her words arranging notes and memory, side-by-side in jagged rhythms and aching contemplation. The entries are not just a reminder of how our love letters feel, but more importantly, of how they sound when we write them in our minds or say farewell to them in our hearts."