In(side) the betweens

-Amelia Walker

Limen sounds like line. Which it is, in the sense of being something you can cross. A threshold, my online dictionary tells me. An edge. Something that runs between two spaces or states, joining or dividing them or both, depending where you stand and how you see. Yes, in these senses, a limen is a line. Yet it is also more than a line. Or maybe a reminder that all lines are already more than lines. Draw one, you’ll see what I mean. Don’t worry. It needn’t be neat. Crooked, bendy, broken, branching lines are all still lines. The looping squiggles on the page before me are also lines, forming into words—thoughts—sentences… un/certainties. The point is, take any of these lines, real or imaginary, then press it close to your eyeball, close as you can without touching. At this proximity, the line widens, reveals its volume, its shape: what seemed simply an edge or border between other spaces is after all its own space, one in which it is possible to dwell, and even move, albeit typically not without encountering certain constraints.

Hey! Are you there?

Stop staring out that window. Pay attention.

This sum on the board—can you solve it?

Hmmm… as I thought.

When will you grow up and stop daydreaming?

These dwellings and movements that go on within limens, these are what people signal when they breathe or scribe the word liminal. When I search this word, I find explanations supplemented with examples including the state between sleep and waking, the transition of a society from one historical period to the next, the situation of someone travelling or migrating, and—most commonly—rites of passage in the lives of individuals, particularly those marking the transition of a child towards adulthood.

Hey! It’s been years.

Are you married now?

Or still looking?

Huh?

What do you mean, “Neither”?

All these definitions assume the limen is only for crossing, that all things worthwhile lie only ever on one side or another.

But what of those of us who desire to dwell in the limen of and for its own sake, to stay in a space that is by definition between space(s)?

A margin can be like a limen, except it’s not for crossing because instead of a space between other spaces, it’s the marker of what is and what’s not. Words on paper and the air surrounding the page’s edge. Possible and impossible. Thinkable and unthought.

Hey! Look over there. Look at that…

…that person.

What on earth is that they’re wearing?

Are they meant to be a woman or a man?

Consulting the dictionary again, I’m reminded, a margin is also a marker of difference, for instance the margin of votes between competing parties in an election. And this difference might be the condition on which some or other thing is able to happen or exist, as in safety margins and margins for error……or creativity?

What? You know them?

You love them?

But you said you’re unmarried.

What do you know of love?

Margins are the condition of the page, after all.

My dictionary says that limen probably relates to limus, which may suggest something transverse, as in askance, askew, oblique, or sideways—though in another meaning it signifies silt, dirt, muddy earth, such as you find around the edge of a forest or woodlands, which is another context in which we might use the word margin, too.

Well anyhow, what do you do these days?

For work, I mean…

You make art? Well, okay…

…but do you have a real job too?

Dirt disgusts. Yet it’s a source of life, from which things grow.

When I was a child, adults told me to take care of books, not to fold corners, circle things, or scribble notes. But I needed—and still need—to do those things to make sense of what I’m reading, to interact with it, get intimate, connect. It’s a different way of caring.

There’s as much to read in margins as there is in and between the lines of words, which are themselves of course many lines within lines, and thus spaces, wide, and overspilling.

For real!

Are you still staring out that window?

Just like a child.

When will you stop dreaming?

About the Author:

Amelia Walker lives on unceded Kaurna Country (Adelaide, South Australia). Her sixth poetry collection is forthcoming in Gazebo’s short poems series. She also recently published Reading

 and Writing for Change: Theories and Tools for Confronting Power (Bloomsbury, 2025).