I Can See Soldiers in the Above

Kiki Grace '24

There are mountains in my view. There are soldiers in the sky. Parachutes like perfume blooming into a velvet parlor.

Pilots land on clouds, carrying confusion.

Tracing breaths of wind, carrying fear. The heavens stretch to capture.

Slowly the above withholds wind. And so it creeps and restrains those floating in the sky.

Marionettes reverse.

Yet to reach the maple leaves, green roofs, of these rustic hills and sullen valleys where we wander. And wait for slaughter.

There are mountains in my view. There are Americans in the sky. That new millennium is floating into the traces of medieval bones, a lost reign.

Eager bleeding youth skipping across the hot air

Rising from beneath the soil

Seeking crowning. Cramming, crowding, climbing the chimney of the House of Nemanjic

A Serbian dynasty within our roots.

There are huts on my lane. There are uniforms sinking beneath the leaves of the valley. Parachutes entrenched.

In the above there is rain

Miles away there are Germans scavenging. And so in the chronicles of the sky, Pilots of sinking shadows floating into the sullen valleys of a divided Yugoslavia.

We seek the Americans dropping in our valley. Lift them and feed them

Hide them and need them.

We let the soldiers of Yugoslavia. From the deep green, growing, walls of this sullen valley. Shun evil from arriving.

Germans creep in secret. And steadily we seek them. And stealthily we stop them.

There are Americans by the fire. Eating portioned vegetables. Talking to mother. There are American planes to grab them.

And so we are given their hats

Their shoes,

Their eager youthful waves from glassy panes. Pain in relief and in remembrance.

In unity and in bittersweet, rich and robust sadness twisting and fluttering within me, separation

And so we wave with the end of the war.

And there they go to the above once more.

Antiques

Photograph

Pigs

Cream Chinthammit '23

Falling Catherine Yan '24

Digital art