BAA's Literary & Arts Magazine: May/June 2022

The cardinal Bishop Allen's Literary & Arts Magazine

May/June 2022

Welcome to the last issue of The Cardinal for the 2021-2022 school year! We are so grateful to be ending the year with so many wonderful submissions. In addition, for this edition’s special “TV Show Recommendations” segment, we asked students to recommend shows with 2SLGBTQ+ representation in honour of Pride Month! As the school year comes to an end, we hope this segment and all of the lovely submissions will end everyone’s year on a positive note.

A final thank you to our special submitters, who have been very dedicated club members. We hope to see you all next year! To our graduating members, The Cardinal would not be possible without you and we truly wish you all the best in your future endeavours.

To the Bishop Allen community, thank you for all the support!

We wish everyone a restful and amazing summer break.

- Jenna Kim, Nina Popovic, Sophia Lezhanska Executive Team

Table of Contents Poetry "Neptune" by Echo (pg 1) "Pomegranate Tree" by Roxolana Luzskov (pg 8) "Falling" by Alessia Cataudella (pg 14) "Venus Flytrap" by Veronika Kulin (pg 18) "Neverending" by Sonya Pashkewych (pg 21)

Written Pieces and Special Features "The Weeping Willow" by Anonymous (pg 3) "Choose Your Own Adventure!" by Yohanna Ostrowski (pg 10) "Upon the Death of Hamlet" by Ryan Opresnik (pg 15) TV Show Recommendations - Designed by Jenna Kim (pg 24)

Artwork And photography Cover Art by Sabrina Hu Digital Art by Juno Crow (pg 2) "Being Woman is Superpower" by Viktoriia Mihalevska (pg 5) "Change, but don't" by Isabella Torres (pg 6) “Human Emotion” by Isabella Torres (pg 7) "Mushrooms" by Mariana Angelova (pg 9) "The Beauty of Emerging Tech" by Prerana Manoj (pg 13) Photo Sheet by Matthew Falcone (pg 16) "Cute Anime Boy" by Alexander Bilousova (pg 17) "Postcards" by Olga Steblyk (pg 19) "The Seven Sacred Teachings" by Roland Alger Tabing (pg 20) "Cow" by Khrystyna Boychuk (pg 20) Word Play by Mikayla Amornsophon (pg 22) "Women's Rights Matter" by Viktoriia Mihalevska (pg 23)

Neptune

By Echo In the suffocating dark she whispers a secret to me.

I don’t understand it.

She looks at me and quirks her lips into an abyssal smile.

A knowing grin of cobalt storms and icy teeth.

I know she knows something I do not.

That is what pulled me towards her in the beginning of our swirling relations.

Her ethereal wonder draped in tempests.

I can never truly see her.

That is what scares me the most.

I doubt she even wastes even a second of her eternity to merely entertain the idea of me.

And yet here she is, cupping her slender, polar fingers over the back of my ear to tell me a secret.

Chills dance their way up my spine.

Her grin widens.

-1-

-2-

By Juno Crow

The Weeping Willow

By Anonymous In my death, I am sadness risen.

I am rooted and I am stiff, unable to turn and unable to run. So I stand. So I watch. So I wait. It has been this way for one million years.

One million years ago, I might have cared. I might have strained my chains and attempted to escape, but this fate that is mine I have learned to accept.

My tears revolve me like the Earth with the sun. They need me; they yearn for me. But they never touch me. With the wind they sway and they dance—but me: I stand, and I watch, and I wait. Once upon a time this might have made me sad, but that was one million years ago and now I am numb.

I am waiting. For what, I no longer know. I might have one million years ago, but since then I have forgotten. Perhaps it is light, for it is raining now, and the clouds have obscured the sun. Perhaps it is the stars, for it is day now, and too bright for their hopeful blinks. Perhaps it is singing, for it is twilight now, and the birds have gone to bed.

Here where I wait. It is quiet and still by the sleepy lake over which I guard. This lake has been my companion for one million years. Together we talk. Talk, but that is all—for lakes do not laugh and trees do not cry.

I love my lake. I love its tiny ripples and its little waves. I love the spirals that the raindrops make on its shiny surface, so fleeting and frequent that they seem infinite. I love the little hum that it makes at night, when it is dark and I cannot see it, but the little splashes on the shore let me know that it has not left.

A girl drowned herself in my lake. All but one million years ago. She was a widow, you see. Not of love and such, but married to and mourned by life. She had no past, no present, no future. And so she stared, glassy eyed, at the horizon in her sight. She stood and she waited and she watched for many hours, until the sun sank below earth and the sky turned a dim shade of purply blue. Still, she felt nothing.

-3-

Nothing.

Only hollowness where her heart should have resided.

She could not think of anything to do but walk. And so she walked.

One pale foot in front of the other, into the cool lake. Until the water covered her eyes and she submerged herself into darkness completely.

Still, she waited. And only when she let the water invade her lungs, did she cry. But by then it was too late and the tears mixed in with the lake, never reaching the ground.

I stand here waiting. Waiting and watching. My wallows are my leaves, blowing in the breeze, mere inches away from the soft kiss of the grass at my feet.

I am sadness, forever frozen.

I am the weeping willow that waits.

-4-

By Viktoriia Mihalevska -5-

“Change, but don’t”

By Isabella Torres

-6-

“Human Emotion”

By Isabella Torres -7-

POMEGRANATE TREE A Found Poem inspired by The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

By Roxolana Luzskov I shouldn't have come up the hill.

Looking at the wilted, leafless tree “Amir and Hassan, the sultans of Kabul.” Those words made it formal: the tree was ours.

I hurled the pomegranates at him Red juice soaking through his shirt like blood “What are we doing here?” I panted, my stomach roiling with nausea.

Sunlights and shadows of pomegranate leaves Giggling, laughing; I can still see Hassan up on that tree One more story, one more chapter “Do you want to go climb our tree?”

A sadness came over me.

I unfolded the story I’d brought along, turned to the first page, then put it down The droughts have dried the hill and the tree hasn’t borne fruit in years Hassan’s smile wilted The words I’d carved on that tree I couldn't stand looking at them now

-8-

MUSHROOMS

By Mariana Angelova -9-

Choose Your Own Adventure!

(Grade 12 Student Edition)

By Yohanna Ostrowski DISCLAIMER: The fictional content reflected herein is a creative construction that in no way reflects the moral conduct of the excellent Bishop Allen student body, the professionalism of our very fine staff and the generosity of its superlative administrative team.

Beginning: Your best friend invites you to a party on Saturday night that lots of people are going to and it’s supposed to be a great time. Your initial plan for the weekend was to stay home and study for your Calculus and Vectors exam on Monday. You decide to 1. Go to the party, save the studying for Sunday (Go to paragraph 1A) OR 2. Stay home and study, the parties can wait until Wasaga (Go to paragraph 1B) Paragraph 1A: You go to the party and have a great time! At the end of the night, you realize your designated driver is highly intoxicated. Your curfew is 2:00 AM, and you have to get home somehow to avoid getting in trouble with your parents.

Since this is a Mississauga bush party, transit is out of the question, making your only other option to take an Uber, which costs $80! You decide to 1. Let your designated driver take you home, they’re only high so it’s fine (Go to paragraph 2A) OR 2. Call the Uber, your bank account can take the damage (Go to paragraph 2B) Paragraph 1B: You stay home and study like a good student. The next morning, you sadly scroll through everyone's posts from the night before. Suddenly, the person you’ve had a crush on since Grade 9 who was at the party, DM’s you! They explain to you that, since they were at the party, they had no time to study and really need your help. Because they’re in the third-period Calculus and Vectors class and you’re in the first-period class, they ask if you could give them your answers during lunch since your teacher is lazy and never makes different exams for the different classes. You decide to 1. Help them cheat, what’s the worst that could happen? (Go to paragraph 2C) OR 2. Politely tell them no, you gotta prioritize your academic success over theirs. (Go to paragraph 2D)

- 10 -

Paragraph 2A: You and everyone in the car end up in a tragic accident and die. The school proceeds to hold a bunch of tedious “Don’t Drink And Drive” assemblies in your honour. You and your friends as the school's pity story for the next 20 years until someone else messes up worse than you guys did. The End! Don’t like the ending? Go back and choose another!

Paragraph 2B: You got home alive and on time! But now it’s Sunday night, and you only have a couple of hours before that first period Calculus And Vectors exam and you really, really, really need to study! You decide to 1. Stay up all night and cram, sleep is for the weak (Go to paragraph 3A) OR 2. Sleep, you’ll study in the morning (Go to paragraph 3B) Paragraph 2C: You help your crush, and you both end up doing well! Your crush does so well that they end up going to the university that was your first choice! For some reason, you never get an offer from that university and have to go the rest of your high school career knowing that you goofed up. The End! Don’t like the ending? Go back and choose another!

Paragraph 2D: You reply to them saying you can’t and they leave you on “seen”! You’re a little heartbroken after that, but find someone else to like after your crush fails their exam and ends up having to do a fifth year of high school. The End! Don’t like the ending? Go back and choose another!

Paragraph 3A: After staying up all night, you sleep through all your alarms! You hustle to school, looking like an absolute mess, but manage to write the exam on time!

You end up doing well on the exam, and to celebrate, you go out next Saturday and drink enough alcohol to intoxicate a small village! You then lived happily ever after till the end of your high school career! The End! Don’t like the ending? Go back and choose another!

- 11 -

Paragraph 3B: Your sleep was great, but you barely managed to get through the first unit of Vectors on the bus! You can’t afford to fail this exam, since you really need it to help boost your mark. If you do badly in the class, there’s no way the university you want to go to will accept you into their engineering program! The bell rings for first period, and you have to act fast, you decide to 1. Take the exam, maybe if you pray hard enough you’ll get over a 50% (Go to paragraph 4A) OR 2. Pull the fire alarm, no one will know it was you (Go to paragraph 4B) Paragraph 4A: You write the exam and end up failing miserably. After begging and pleading with your teacher, you manage to work out a deal that if you tutor some of the teacher’s Grade 9 students, your teacher won’t count the exam toward your final grade. You agree and spend the rest of your high school career tutoring snotty-nosed Grade 9s until the end of June. The End! Don’t like the ending?

Go back and choose another!

Paragraph 4B: You pull the fire alarm and get caught immediately. Guess the school didn’t have enough money for a prom, but enough for all those discreet security cameras in the halls. You go through the whole suspension process and end up only being accepted into your second choice university after the incident.

The End! Don’t like the ending? Go back and choose another!

- 12 -

The Beauty of Emerging Tech

By Prerana Manoj - 13 -

By Alessia Cautadella Falling /ˈfôliNG/ adjective/verb 1. their twinkling eyes. warm smile. soft embrace, that causes their name to repeat louder in your head with every beat of your racing heart. a brick wall slams in front of anything that does not represent their glow. their words enter your ear, seep into your chest, convince you to believe that the angelic voice singing within your body will never die... so you lose control to the risk of demons masked by a halo.

2. toxic thoughts race through your mind. dissatisfaction devours inside. every breath tries to fill the missing puzzle piece inside your chest, the one that will finally allow you to flee your body and see yourself the way the world sees you. spiraling, spiraling, spiraling, your mind doesn’t know which thought to listen to, so it’s spiraling, in efforts to climb the grand mountain of your dreams, you do the opposite.

- 14 -

Upon the Death of Hamlet A Eulogy by Ryan Opresnik

Lords and Ladies of the court, we gather today to honour the former Prince of Denmark: Lord Hamlet. Prior to his all-too-untimely demise, he could be remembered as a jovial, well-to-do youth with a sense of humour to rival that of Yorick. Alas, poor Hamlet! I knew him well. Though his reputation be tainted by feigned madness, rest assured, there was method to it; let it be a tribute to his trickery that no one was the wiser to his true ambition. While the task administered upon him bore prospects ever-bleak, a more loyal man there lives not in this land; for who else would undertake no less than regicide to avenge thine father? Thy name, good Hamlet, will forever go down as the most valiant ever borne of the Danish throne. I consider mineself honoured to be counted among those privileged to know the real Hamlet, and will never know any as deep as he. It is sad to say it, but sometimes sad things are better said than let sail away. Such thoughtfulness was ultimately his undoing. While considering all the possible possibilities, it was plausible that he may have rendered his deed all the more implausible. That is to say, the bloodbath which I was most unfortunate to witness could well have been avoided, had Hamlet merely cut short the hollow hymns of Claudius’ prayer. But no matter! Let such stand as a tribute to thy commitment, Hamlet, and it is ever-fitting that thou should meet thy demise in a duel. To die for something worth fighting for, is all too befitting of thy character. Once a man of inaction, now thou perish amidst too much action; all I hope is that thou mayst find peace with thyself once more, for the time for madness has come and gone, yet unfortunately thou hast gone with it. To reiterate mine last words, I was lucky enough to speak unto thee, “Now cracks a noble heart—Good night, / sweet prince! / And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!” (Shakespeare 5.2.357-358).

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Matthew Falcone

Cute Anime Boy

By Alexander Bilousova

- 17 -

I own a garden, Which has a Venus fly trap.

My plant eats people.

By Veronika Kulin

- 18 -

By olga steblyk

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The Sacred Seven Teachings

by Roland Alger Tabing

Cow by Khrystyna Boychuk

- 20 -

Neverending

A Found Poem inspired by The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

By Sonya Pashkewych Home.

I am here, yet I am not.

Grey sidewalks, grey clouds, grey buildings.

I think back to when I was a child.

Happy and free.

The yellow sun, shining down from the blue sky.

The red pomegranate juice dripping down my chin.

The sounds of busy Kabul echoing through the air.

I search for familiar aromas.

Familiar textures.

But they are not here.

I climb one mountain, looking for somewhere I don’t feel so out of place.

But all I see staring back at me is another mountain.

I climb higher and higher, but after every hill I top, another peak looms in the distance.

Neverending.

- 21 -

Word Play Art Piece

By Mikayla Amornsophon

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By Viktoriia Mihalevska

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BA's TV Show Recommendations

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e i l r a h C s n e e T r e v o c s i d k c i N and unlikely ir e h t t h g i m R E p i P h s P d O n e T i r S f HEART be somesththinegy more a school navigateng love. and you

What We Do In The Shadows Based on the feature film of the same name from Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi, "What We Do in the Shadows" is a documentarystyle look into the daily (or rather, nightly) lives of four vampires who've "lived" together for hundreds of years in Staten Island.

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a , t e n n o B e d e t S pamperaetd, ocr fe t s i r a OUR FLEAGATH abandonsilehgise ltio of priv a pirate MEANS D become arly 18th in the e tury. cen

THE OWL HOUSE Self-assured teenager Luz stumbles upon a portal to a magical realm where she befriends a rebellious witch, Eda, and a tiny warrior, King; despite not having magical abilities, Luz pursues her dream of becoming a witch by serving as Eda's apprentice.

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STRANGGSER THIN

, a n a i d n I s 0 8 9 1 In g n u o y f o p u o r g a friends awtiutnreasls supern d secret forces arnnment gove s they exploitsc.hAfor sear the answers,nravel childrenrieus of a se inary extraordries. myste

D E N R U T I R E THE SUMPM RETTY d n a l r i g e n o n e e w t e b e l g n a i r t A love rothers. A story about first two b t heartbreak, and the magic love, fitrhsat one perfect summer. of - 27 -