What's the difference
by Micky (Maaike) Neuville
What’s the difference
Micky (Maaike) Neuville | JUly 2025 | Issue 47
what's the difference
between the mother with a suitcase and a child on a black and white photograph soon about to die because someone had decided—
and two men crying in each other's arms
behind them the ruins of their homes and families
because someone had decided—
What's the difference between
the mother and her child
in 1945
soon about to die
after the photographer had gone home
and the two men crying
finding warmth in living limbs
What's the difference
What's the difference between black and white and colour
what's the difference in time
what's the difference in sound when hearts break
what's the difference between the soils on which salt water falls
what's the difference between the desert and the walls
what's the difference between the nameless limbs
what's the difference between the raising of the hand
and the raising of the money for the bombs
What's the difference between two young lives
What's in between
what lies between the picture black and white
and a headless baby corpse
What lies between the cries
what's the difference between people stuck
What lies between the flame and the gas
what's the time
what's the way the world is turning
what's the space between the fingers of the raised hand
what's the time between the target and the flames
what lies between the mother and her lifeless child
what's the space between her salt water and mine
what's the difference
what's the difference between a child and a corpse
what's the word
What's the land between their border and mine
what's the crossing time
what's the burning time
what lies between the time of birth and time of death
what land lies between the beats of the heart
What's the space between a man and a man, raised hand
and never again
what's the distance between never and again?
What lies between history?
what lives lie between history
circling around history
like broken toys of a bored and fearful boy shouting never and again
and again
and again
What's the sound of bones on borrowed land
what's between the marrow and the bone
what's the sound of breathing land?
What's the space between the skin of time
what's the way the turning takes
what's between backwards and flames
what's the way the river flows
what's the way salt water goes
what's between the membrane
oscillating without end
what's the time
what's the space between the skin and its end
what's the difference between again and again
What's afraid?
what's afraid?
what's afraid if losing is all there is?
what lies between the shell and ripped skin?
what's the word when losing is the world?
what's the way the turning takes?
what's the difference between the arms of two men?
what's the word?
what's worse?
what hurts when salt water fails to fall?
what is heard when land and mothers cry out again and again?
what's heard, what's smothered, what's burned?
What lies between the bruise, the bomb, the picture and the earth?
What's the time again?
Micky (Maaike) Neuville is a Brussels based writer and performer. She is the author of She., her debut novel, published in 2023 by the Dutch publisher De Bezige Bij. Micky is currently working on her second novel, appearing in the spring of 2026. Apart from writing, she has directed several shortfilms and as an actor she plays for film, television and theatre in Belgium and the Netherlands. In her work she loves to linger on the crossroad of these different disciplines. There is one thing that runs like a red thread through them and that is an unapologetic, fearless quest for the often inconvenient truths lying deep within the matter of the themes she touches upon, be it as a writer, an actor, a director, a mother, a friend or a lover.