Bossier Issue 6

BOSSIER

ISSUE 6 | SPRING 2019

Resident Creator Projects

Laurie-Maude Chenard.......23-25

Caleigh Andrews.................38-39

Maya Silardi.........................42-44

Mackenzie River Foy................55

Content Warning: Mental Health

Content Warning: Sexual Assault

Editor-in-Chief: Aires Miranda-Antonio

Creative Director: Olivia Jimenez

Art Director: Caleigh Andrews

Business Manager: Elaine Liu

Head of Marketing: Charlotte Böhning

Head of Outreach: Isabelle Groenewegen

Head of People: Aurore Ndayishimiye

Layout Director: Chloe Suzuki

Managing Editor: Aden Choate

Editors: Sienna Brancato, Samantha Freedman, Eliza Phillips, Maya Silardi, Natalie Chaudhuri, Leina Hsu, Teak Hodge, Renae Salunga, Taylor Kahn-Perry

Layout Designers: Stephanie Leow, May Tan, Alex Smalto, Toella Pliakas, Geritza Carrasco, Gabriela Gura, Claudia Chen

Resident Creators: Clara de Solages, Delia West, Laurie-Maude Chenard, Rachel Harris, Sebastian Bedoya

Visual Content Creators: Mikko Castaño + Maya Archer

Resident Illustrator: Layla Gorgoni + Kimberly Jin

Outreach Coordinators: Lauryn Reynolds + Natalie Kim

Newsletter Curators: Narisa Buranasiri + Fran Mbonglou

Marketing Curators: Anita Kelava, Nyana Morgan, Sydne Scales

Social Media: Chelsea Luo + Gina Kang

Cover:

Font: Garamond (body), Fat Frank (title)

Contributors: Jabari Butler, Dan Rojas, Emily Shambaugh, Hanna Chan, Ariel Kurtz, Mayeesha Galiba, Theron Pickett, Tarina Touret, Audrey Eto, Sydne te Wildt, Shraeya Madhu, Kelly Goonan, Ninna del Cid, Jade Ferguson, Emily Quatroche, Gwendolyn Viles, Emily Arnold, Ivana Gabriele-Smith, Nickie Demakos, Alexa Lemoine, Sophie Septoff, Naomi Taher, S.L., Melissa Morgan, Stella Cai, Emma Burns, Jaden Kielty, Isabella Cantillano-Sanchez, Rebecca Raslowsky, Allison Herr, Natalia Perkins, Alexandra Enright, Paige Raborn, Alexandra Schlesinger, Gary Simons, Esthela Gonzalez, Sylvia Epps, Elisabeth Cregan, Allison Herr

The opinions expressed in Bossier Magazine do not necessarily represent the views of Georgetwon University unless specifcally stated. All content is submitted freely by individuals and may not express the views of the Bossier Magazine staff.

See all Issue 6 content at bossiermag.com!

Like our Facebook page and follow our Instagram at @bossiermag

yearbook notes | 2 intro | 3

masthead | 4 letters from the editors | 6 playlist | 7

Some Ennui On Me | 10-13

See all content from the contributors on our online edition at bossiermag.com

Resident Creator Projects

Content Warning: Mental Health

Welcome. Welcome back. Welcome home. Here are some secrets/reminders/notes/disclaimers you should know

1. You are currently holding onto a piece of magic. Tis ‘zine seems like anything but sensible, especially on this campus + yet, here we are. Magic is intrinsic to art. It’s about belief, the belief in that which you cannot see but know you feel — Te magic you currently hold in your hands is our truth, our words, our craft. Te strength + bravery it takes to do so is what makes Bossier magic. Te magic is inside each page, so handle with care and with respect.

2. You are apart of this magic + this community. From the second you fipped open this ‘zine, whether immediately jumping in, skimming pages, or for whatever reason reading this frst, you stepped into a community that has been awaiting your arrival. However you interact with Bossier, you automatically become a part of the B Team. No membership card necessary, however, we do have fve collectible items now.

3. Your work is valued. While some attempt to dismiss Bossier as “just an art ‘zine,” consider the place of art in healing spaces, in justice movements, and in the process of reclaiming spaces. Tis semester the B Team showed out, not just in submissions + hard work, but in their commitment to making this campus better. Celebrate your magic + celebrate yourself.

4. Prioritize your joy. Ignore all the damn binaries, fuck capitalism + screw institutions that keep you from happiness.

Enjoy-

Aires Miranda-Amor (COL ‘21) Editor-in-Chief

Dear Bossier,

Oh, Bossier, I don’t know where to begin. I feel like I shouldn’t be allowed to be writing this, but all I can say is that in this past semester and these past three years, you have given me more than I can count. You’ve been there in the hardest times of my life. Tis is an extra special issue, though, my sweet Bossier, because your creators are moving on past the gates of 37th & O. Part of the reason you’ve been so special to me is because you have introduced me to some of the most beautiful minds I have ever met. Michelle, Tif, Dan, Liz, you have been the greatest role models and friends I have had at Georgetown; thank you.

Tis semester, like most, has been a rocky one. Tere were moments when I feared for Bossier, moments when I thought the organization that made this school home would start to fzzle. It didn’t. What never faltered was what Bossier’s pages have meant since it began.

Most people don’t know this, but, if you’ve submitted, there’s a large chance I know you. You might not know me, but I, at least a teeny tiny amount, know you. I have been given access to parts of your brain, your soul, your fears, your dreams, your loves and losses and life. Tis is what Bossier has given me most of all—the understanding of our complexity, vulnerability, strength, and beauty as a student body. Contributors, thank you all for sharing your work and for being vulnerable.

I know we’ve only barely started, but I am in awe of where we have gone. Readers, thank you for sharing in this moment and sustaining us. Bossier, thank you for existing.

All my love,

Olivia Jimenez (COL ‘20) Creative Director

I’m GoInG to tell You everYthInG,

SInce You never ASk

I’m sorry to be bitter but I can’t shake the taste of my tongue that the sweetness I once saw in you is artifcial, unhealthy— my mom warned me to stay away from this. I guess I never paid attention when she told me that everything is better in moderation. Why else would I expect that, even after all this time, your tastebuds wouldn’t grow tired of me? 4

I am fragile, and I hate myself for it. I hate how the tears that I swallow burn the back of my throat, how my head spins in circles around you and taunts me like a broken record: nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. I fall asleep to this soundtrack, to the reel of every single moment since I met you—I pause in pain every time I realize I went wrong. Stupid, stupid, stupid girl. It was my fault.

2

My hands shake and my breathing is uneven, choppy waves crashing against my throat as I bury my head in my pillow. I can feel your presence like a current pulling me out to sea, the ocean I once loved so much is now my worst panic attack this year. I cannot outrun my heart it is racing so hard. I wish I could get myself together.

3

Te winter cold does not bother me today, my blood is boiling so hot. I scream Coward into the air and hope the frigid wind whips it against your face. It’s one of those Don’t Look At Me days, I Hope You’re As Unhappy As I Am weeks. Resentment blankets everything in my wake like frost.

5

Sunlight streaks across my face, cupping my cheeks and planting kisses on my forehead like you once But these hands are divine, they show me only Love, and you are not a God but a human who also makes mistakes. I bathe in this warmth, and forgiveness washes over me like holy water.

6

by Samantha Freedman

7

Sometimes, I see us as a specimen, turn us over in my head and examine our ailment. Is this what we are, something to be eradicated? A syndrome to which the only remedy is erasure? I feel unsure of myself, inexperienced; I don’t know the right way to heal. I just wish it were true what they say about time—I think all my wounds are still open.

I come to terms with myself in the bathtub today. Te longer I soak, the fainter your fngerprints become, and as I slide slowly underwater, I promise not to come up for air until I love myself again. After this, I light candles in my bedroom, and I imagine myself drifting up towards the ceiling like the smoke that wafts out from the fickering fames. One day, I’ll be so far away from here that the remnants of my unhappiness will have turned to barren ash. Can you feel me disappearing?

waters of Her

High Contrast

by Emily Shambaugh

Te feeling was ignoring the fact that I hate burning bubbles but needed the water. Was so thirsty but the citrus Polar helped me stay in those fabric confnes, those tangles of long limbs. Looking out the window brought me back to red velvet seats, in an auditorium with dim lighting, and the feeling when the Coke commercial came on because we were just watching snow and you were so warm. Te main feature though! it was your touch, the way our noses brushed, the accidental! slight! swipe/futter! but no! the main event was staring, the searching for the personal without words. Te desire to know all of you in the 10 hours where i knew all i know of you, the searching for moments and glances and signals that reminded me of the night before. Of walking through a frat (progressive one though) house dazed and essentially nude. it was 3:30 a.m. and it seemed this was going one way.

Stepping in, now I feel that you chuckled, but maybe you didn’t you were wearing fannel pj’s and i was in my calvins. dived into the divan that i called home for a few hours. I wanted to restrain myself there, so i wouldn’t be able to leave, it was no use i had to leave but i tried to think i wouldn’t ever and using every part to tastefully cover myself, so you wouldn’t see that i was just in the calvins again Trapped, of my own volition, in the plush and we were trapped into immediate conversation with a sense of captivation, that wrapped me up more than the blanket did i try to replicate that, those laughs with someone that, if i were standing, would’ve brought me to my knees.

5:00 a.m. and we tried and 45 minutes later, I fell asleep, and woken again by a grip, a trap you set that i fell into, wildly again

8:30 a.m. I shifed and you responded, or so you say — and i’m sorry for waking you i think, but not — your lips parted and when usually i would smell cigarettes instead i felt quicksilver — fast and glimmery —- but too much, and there was too much, it could hurt, and it did

As God Watched

by Dan Rojas

Definitely not sorry, we woke and we went with an encore of entangled arms and biting lips then we fell asleep and then it was 10:00 a.m., your alarm was set for 11:34 a.m., i remember because it was so particular. 1:34, an hour and 34 minutes. just the time for a full-length feature but there were moving pictures, i remember those scenes most clearly your eyes were still and clear and radiant and startled me yet again. your hairs were light and fluttered against me, just like our noses.

Rachel by Emily Shambaugh

so we just lay there and shifted and attempted to find comfort, it was successful. but there were only 72/54/47, I don’t know what was left. we looked out the window and to the left of the president’s house was jesus on a candle, is he God or is God God? he was there the whole time, he’s lucky he doesn’t have to leave. we’re texting and now its been 20,35,47,68 between mine and yours. I turn and see my desk and then i turn and see my wall and it’s been 24 hours, how many movies is that but i turn and see the dark, i’m not in the red velvet chairs, i’m not even on the Megabus riding back. I’m here and i see light hair and i flutter again but those eyes aren’t right I know I won’t hear a laugh that fills my thoughts. he’s a candle but he doesn’t watch the snow, no he’s lucky because he sees your eyes every day. no i’m lucky. because i got your touches/brushes/swipes/glances/you/flutters. Had but still got.

As God Watched

by Dan Rojas

Tere is a reason why women have been portrayed nude in art since the dawn of time: our bodies have come to represent sexual objects. If we quickly glance at ourselves nude in the mirror, it’s because we don’t believe our bodies are sexy enough. Tis project began as a way to represent physical and emotional scars beautifully, but the experience led to a much more joyful product than anticipated. Each of these three strong and intelligent women exposed themselves at their most vulnerable. I hope that I was able to capture their strength, uniqueness, beauty and more importantly, their character. Our bodies are not sexual objects; they represent our strengths and passions. Tey tell the story of our pain and insecurities, as well as our love and resilience.

by Clara De Solages, Resident Creator

power unafraid

It’s 6:30 pm and the sky is exploding and my cheek is rattling against a bus window. Night creeps up on me at the same time every single day of the year here, and usually, I hate it—I hate how the darkness engulfs everything so quickly, so early on. But tonight is diferent.

Tonight, the orange is forming puddles on the shiny white seats tops, and the red is slivering through her curls like a serpent. Tere is yellow pooling on his cheek and dripping down his jawline, and he is a mutant; half boy, half sun.

Tonight is special, I think, I can feel it. I can feel the bus engine thrumming beneath the soles of my sandals, a steady heartbeat bringing me slowly back to life. My eyes are not empty now, but flled with fre, and as I peer past the glass at the houses and the people who blur together in a cloud of color, I revel in the speed with which they are whizzing through the air. I wonder how they are able to pass me by so quickly, because it surely cannot be me who is moving, not when I want my whole world to linger in this moment.

T e city is being fooded now, the metal rooftops falling victim to a tidal wave of pink. She wiggles her toes under the black strap of her sandals and he pushes his glasses up on his nose, and I wonder if they too are seeing the chunks of sunlight that are setting f re to the f elds and turning the mountains black with ash.

As I close my eyes, I feel a newfound closeness, imagining myself becoming the f ery serpent getting tangled in her hair, the drops of honey trickling down his face, and the ocean of sunlight in the empty seat next to me. I sink, and sink, and sink in this, and here is how I would like to die, drowning in this sea of happiness.

by Samantha Freedman

Sunsets on the Road to Puntaneras Mulholland Drive

by Layla Gorgoni

Seasons of Queer

by Hanna Chan

10/12/18

I think about How I don’t like the way it curves It doesn’t tickle my inner thighs Or my heart

I thought I always needed it Because everyone was supposed to need it But now I lay [an empty vessel] Down my head

And wait for the panic to set in.

2/18/19

When I pulled out of the ground A lone beetroot, Bleeding red and round in the oh-so-satisfying, swirly way, I said “You don’t really know how to garden, little human, but I guess it’s time to— ask my heart if it is whole. look at my arms the way someone else might, olive branches beneath a purple sky. feel my own shame, bursting at the seams. unlearn the learned.

let myself try to sew my little heartstrings back up; to mend.”

Tat summer, I danced in my underwear in the kitchen with my beetroots. “Tey can survive frost and freezing temperatures,” said the Old Farmer’s Almanac. Summer came and went, and breathed into late fall.

I held my dearest red, spherical friends until winter (and my usual seasonal depression) passed. Now it is almost March. I lived a whole year in the 28 days of February.

I still dance in my underwear, In the kitchen, With my beetroots.

I. to say I failed, that is walked out and into the chill how should I know where I was? women march in the streets below trafc is halted.

watermarked newspapers of burden curl and foat in mystical gutters. paper-bagged meanderers loiter in the chill of the bus stops of empty freedom, asking why.

and what of the invisible? they sufer, it isn’t just us, as we tend to believe— the weight of the words we carry remains to be seen.

Fight

Song

by Aden Choate

I want our masses to call to fat cat politicians and their faceless companions locked and hidden in great halls from the avenues of public thought. I want them to know that my body is my own, that we—my sisters and my brothers— will not go quietly at the frst resistance, for our strength is in our number.

IV. our faces become one, sharpening in dissent We are all here tough as guts moon-eyed girls sleepy from last night’s dancing real men advocates of a new age ladies of the canyon children running wild hemp-scented hippies, veterans of an old war Flares and no shoes, wine drunkenness on forgotten park benches, secret joints rolled to warm numbed fngers and smoked on musty bathroom couches it tastes sweet as we slip beneath the lull of the blue and the birds sing a song deep in our bones

I want to rise up over the black thinness of the city at night, I want to proclaim in the markets and restaurants and paper lantern light the time is now and it has chosen us time futters and ebbs I am with you head down in the chill of Motel 6 nightmares, coat hangers hooked and ready as powdered donut lips tremble thick and supple rubber band snapping wrist the threads pull me back

V.

they’ll talk about the mark we leave after young hustler onset on hoods of painted rust the spiteful kisses that burned illuminatingly, consuming stilted darkness and tangerine dreams when wildness rode on the brink of time and the world did not remain asleep on the blossoming mornings of possibility

III.

II.

“Guns Down”

by Izzy Groenewegen

by Caleigh Andrews

by Leina Hsu

The fish sink, the birds fall from the sky, the moon hides, and the flowers shy away from the beauty of the woman, as a Chinese idiom recalls.

But should this be the way the woman is made to feel: in every form fantastical, unnervingly wondrous, as though the northern lights? Is there not a fleetingness to that ethereality, with the woman existing as a by-product of said supernatural force rather than the sole emitter of it?

I pose these questions with a sort of unease, but not hostility. I often come across poetry written by young women that speaks of romance in terms of starlight and fog, and womanhood in terms of rivers and earth—and with these poems comes a concerning airiness.

That is not to dismiss the entire Romantic era, in which nature imagery was used to evoke strong emotions. The popularity of Romanticism in the late 18th century was a reaction to the rationalism of the Age of Enlightenment. Nonetheless, what was imperative during that time period is not necessarily appropriate now. I wonder if the Romantic era’s modern repackaging is a means of conflating femininity with emotion, and in turn, a lack of rationalism.

That being said, I am a young woman myself and have read and written my fair share of syrupy poetry. My apprehension about (self-)imposing a particular style onto female art is rooted in my own grappling with femininity. Consider male poets like Keats, who have portrayed women like “fairy’s children,” and male directors like Zach Braff, who have commercialized the Manic Pixie Dream Girl archetype. In and of themselves, lightness and playfulness are not dangerous, but how can we be sure that we as women poets are not simply playing into the boxes of femininity that male creators have set for us? And in turn, by aligning our writing to this ideal of woman, are we also aligning our own portrayals of women to it?

In A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792), Mary Wollstonecraft observes that the way women are taught is intended to produce an appearance of refinement as opposed to a depth of understanding, in other words, “manners before morals.” The woman is expected to be a virtuoso of music, dancing, and literature, all of which, in Wollstonecraft’s opinion, produce a “susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste [that are] almost synonymous with epithets of weakness.” Contextually, her piece was written against the background of the French Revolution. Nonetheless, it is still applicable to today’s age, where aestheticism can override substance, and many women are damned to the position of “muse”—a position not rejected strongly enough, perhaps not rejected at all, and sometimes perpetrated by female writers themselves. Nonetheless, certain structures and tones that we associate with “good writing” and “good poetry” are inherently phallocentric, and have been used as a means to delegitimize the works of non-male, non-cisgender, and non-Anglo-Saxon artists. When writer Hélène Cixous first coined the term écriture féminine, which literally means “women’s writing,” she did so to point out the “handicap” female writers suffer in using a medium (prose) that is essentially “a male instrument fashioned for male purposes.” It is no wonder that young female writers turn towards poetry as a means of expressing sentiment, of which the logicality of prose would not be nearly as accepting. “Instagram poets” such as Rupi Kaur, receive a lot of criticism for diluting “true poetry,” yet her nonconformist and emotional style is likely a product of her experience as a woman of color.

Having been a critic of “Instagram poets” such as Rupi Kaur, I see now how her minimalistic and emotional style may be a product of her experience as a woman of color, and how my criticism may originate from a biased understanding of what poetry should look like. Certainly, my intention is not to expand the category of “male” to include cogent female creators and exclude the rest.

Poetry—a means for women to become curators and a method by which they are suffocatingly curated. A powerful tool never to be used to dissolve the bonds of female solidarity, especially by women themselves. I recognize that there is a potency in the prettiness of art; I believe that potency can coexist with, and perhaps elevate, our responsibility as female artists to eliminate the archaic standards for what is and isn’t art. And that can only be done when our creations, no matter sentimental or methodical, originate from our genuine experience of womanhood, these creations themselves testaments to unabashed femininity.

“relevance” by Olivia Jimenez

A CONFESSIONAL: on BEING ANGRY

BY MAYA SILARDI

Content Warning: Sexual Assault

ANGRY

I’ve fallen accustomed to settling into calmness. To swallowing slowly, and letting myself softly whisper words laced with neutrality. I’ve become more comfortable in my vulnerability. It wasn’t always this way. I cry a lot, mostly alone, and have been teaching myself each day to replace anger with anguish, to engage in reason instead of rage.

I have learned to process the world intellectually. Soften the blows of trauma with the pages of hooks and Lorde. Find solace in academic spaces that allow me to digest wounds from afar. Examine hegemony with the protective limits of logic.

I am drunk on theory. Addicted to its intoxicating quality. I love the way it smooths my rough edges with the words of the wise. How it blends my pain into theirs. How, with every sip, I am able to drown myself in frameworks and fairy tales. I savor each gulp. Greedily.

But I am so angry. I have been for a while. And each day as I try to exchange fury for forgetfulness, I feel it build. It tightens violently in my chest, cranks more and more until I am being choked by my own hands.

I am so angry.

I am so angry at him for ravaging my bodily greedily. For hungrily gripping my waist as though I were inanimate, as though I wasn’t there at all. I am so angry he moves freely through the world, as I lug each pound of him every time I think too hard about intimacy. I am so angry that I can feel his hands on each ounce of skin that is supposed to rest peacefully on my hip bones. I hate how he penetrates time and follows me year after year. How my worth is buried in the cracking white house I will never f nd. How my body will never be my own again.

I am angry.

I wish I could nestle my head in sorrow forever. It is easy. But I fear if I do not confront my anger soon, I will su f ocate.

by Izzy Groenewegen

headspace

by Toella Pliakas

In my mind, there are towns. Tere are rolling hills patched intermittently with spots of brown grass. Tere are sleepy beaches with white sands that sound like white noise tapes. Tere are cityscapes with skyscrapers that scratch the underside of God’s living room foor.

When you built your frst home in my mind, I was annoyed. You were an inconvenience, An ugly property in a well developed world.

When your property started expanding, I felt bad for you.

When you began to take up towns, states, countries in my mind, I began to get angry at your imperial expansion.

Why couldn’t I contain you? I had tried everything, Hadn’t I?

Nothing could put an end to your dominion. I felt shame.

Eventually, I thought of the Greeks, And the Romans, and the Egyptians, and the Brits, And I remember that empires are temporary.

A Familiar Weight

by Eliza Dunni Phillips

On the days when I can’t bear to look in the mirror, I wear my robe as an excuse. Te full length of its purple body covers me, leaving only my ankles and feet exposed. Tick, and one size too big, it dulls the curves of my hips and my thighs and my chest until there’s nothing really left to look at. Sometimes, when I’m really still, I almost can’t feel her. Or rather, with time, I forget what it is like not to wear her weight. When things get like this, she can keep me in bed for days.

Flecks of dried acrylic paint spot her right sleeve, a reminder of that one day in the summer when I left my bed. I won that day. But most of the time, she does. Most of the time, I fnd myself caught in her cushioned clutches on a Tuesday that is suddenly a Sunday. As I start to feel stickiness, she insists it is just warmth. So I lay there, frozen still, telling myself that this familiar weight is comfort and that this comfort feels good.

NOTES IN RHYME

A rainbow tie. A ship that knows. Want wheat or rye? Rips that grow.

Wine that runs. Four giant mice. Tree sheepish nuns. Too tasty rice.

A happy knee. A wild laptop. An ugly bee. A closed-up shop.

Once too meta. Twice too cold. 3x feta. Some old brown mold.

Across the span. Imply the change. Grease the pan. Hens free range.

Brains are plastic. Her boobs are hot. Touch fantastic. Leaves that rot.

Emotion centers. Beauty robbed.

DERNIER CRI

A cat has entered. Clouds will sob.

High-waisted genes. Soy milk or cow? Sure what it means. Planes fy now.

Hamper too empty. Quiet’s too loud. I think that’s plenty. Ducks in a round.

Orchids react. Hands go under. Joy for a snack. Adult wonder.

Snowfake children. Run-away thoughts. Penicillin. Plant-based draught.

Infnite faith. Smiles that shine. Pay for an eighth. Te kiwi’s divine.

Tink of the road. Please mind the rain. An angry toad. Stay insane

by Gwendolyn Viles by Charlotte Boehning

Compliations of Grief

by Mayeesha Galiba

“everyone handles grief diferently” handling grief sounds so strange to me don’t worr y, i’ll handle this this task this project this spill on the kitchen foor slipping under my feet

i’ll handle this all business, no worries assurance, no reservations

rip anthony bourdain, by the way, i think about him a lot maybe he felt he had handled his grief but would the world view the loss of him as just another task, project, spill on the kitchen foor slipping under our feet?

i think about that a lot

I think about you a lot and you and you and you and you the words might sound the same but a homophone is just that it sounds the same but it’s diferent, diferent, diferent if grief is supposed to land on my heart in perfectly measured slices

i don’t understand why my mouth is still fooded to the brim with devastation before the next morsel is forced upon me

i can’t chew that fast

my teeth are shattering against the bits that harden within seconds if not swallowed whole brittle broken barbs in a mouth that used to say breathe baby breathe

i ride the grief like waves under a surfboard except i never learned to swim so i never learned to surf so i don’t even manage to stand up before another fush takes me down and ’m used to the burning of the salt and the loosening of body tired of f ghting fght or fight just keep swimming just keep sinking because maybe once i hit the ocean foor the waves can’t reach me anymore

i’m sorry to the tired girl in the tired mirror

i’m sorry that your fatigue goes so far beyond what a mediocre night’s sleep can fx

“haze (i)” by Caleigh Andrews

MANIFESTO OF AN ANGRY BLACK WOMAN

by heron Pickett

Angry. “Having a strong feeling of or showing annoyance, displeasure, or hostility ”

You might be angry when you walk all the way to the library and forget the one textbook you needed to study or when you forget what you were about to say You might be angry when you drive all the way to McDonalds to get a McFlurry and the ice cream machine is down or when you stub your toe on a chair leg. You might be angry when someone ignores you, lies to you, or criticizes you. Tis is a normal reaction for anyone regardless of gender or color. People experience anger at moments, but that does not mean they are angry all the time.

So, this leaves me to pose the question why are things dif erent for black women? Why are we always labeled angry

I am not angr y. Tis is my face. I am simply thinking and I am not thinking anything negative about you. Do not project your assumptions onto me. Just because I did not laugh at your joke or did not smile doesn’t mean I’m angry or that I think I am better than you. Let me be. When I speak up for myself or share my opinion it does not mean that I am angr y. I can disagree with you without being mad. I can stand up for myself without losing control of my emotions.

I am not mad, angry, upset, or out of control and whatever you do DO NOT describe me as sassy. T is is an insult whether you or not.

Why does it matter to you whether I am angry or not? I have the right to be just like you do. We are tired of hiding our emotions in order to escape your unfair labels. Have you ever stopped to wonder why you always think black women are angry? Maybe because you give us so many things to be angry about. When you tell me constantly via media that my beauty is always less than my white counterparts. When I worry that my brother, father, or cousins might be caught up a system that does not treat all equally or fairly. When even if you are educated and black you still have to prove that you are an American or qualif ed or equal You blame black mothers raising their kids on their own for their predicament and then stereotype them as welfare queens. Sounds like a fair thing for black women to be mad about if you ask me. Maybe we should work on f xing these injustices.

Society should stop labeling black women who are educated or well-spoken or who hold leadership roles as angry. What is making black women mad is that fact that we are continuously labeled as angry which is just another way for society to ignore our voices. Be afraid America because now we really are angry

“Brokenness” by Allison Enright

on perpetual sadness

by Renae Salunga

there is an emptiness they do not talk about— not sadness, nor anger but the exhaustion to even endure such

it is the hollowness that’s found home in your stomach, like a graveyard of butterfies that exists solely to remind you of a time you knew what it was like to feel

by Allison Enright

“Breaking the Surface”

Faces of Color

by Delia West, Resident Creator

“Now, it’s more acceptable to be non-normative (whatever that means), and it’s cool to look however you look as long as you embrace it. I used to only think my hair was beautiful when it resembled some celebrity’s I knew, but now it’s cool because it’s mine.”

“In dance, is my hair distracting you from the lines I create? But also, it is a part of me so why would it distract? No one can tell what my body needs to look like when I’m dancing for them.”

“Facial hair, and beards specifcally, are seen as more masculine, and nose rings are traditionally more feminine I like how the two compliment each other, the subtle juxtaposition.”

“Tere’s a reason for this hair on my body.”

“My hair feels very womanly. My hair shows that I’ve been here for a while; I have matured.”

“Why do I feel self conscious raising my hand if I haven’t shaved?”

“I used to be really insecure about my body hair, but now I don’t care and it really doesn’t matter at all.”

“I personally feel more comfortable shaving. I dislike when racial diferences are not taken into account in anti-shaving movements because white people’s body hair isn’t thick or course ut when I don’t shave, it’s very noticeable.”

“I was told I was lucky because my body hair was less visible.”

“Sex-ed could do a better job teaching that there are various ways to be hygienic and maintain your body.”

Finding Power in Choice

“Body hair can be fun like the hair on your head.”

“People don’t even think about the stigmatization of body hair; they’re just programmed to automatically shave.”

I was 8 when I f rst noticed the hair on my upper lip as I was obnoxiously mouthing songs in my mirror, 11 when my mother pointed out the hair under my arms when I was wearing my “ peace, love, dogs” rainbow tank top en route to a playdate, 13 when I begged my mom to let me shave my legs for my Bat Mitzvah (we settled on Nair), and 16 when I went through various rounds of laser hair removal to remove the hair on my upper lip (a highly anticipated birthday gift).

My relationship with my body hair is just about as consistent as SaxaNet’s functionality I’m not exactly sure when I consciously decided to stop removing my body hair in its entirety, but what I do know is that the brand new razor sitting idly in my bathroom cabinet signif es a nonbinding, individualistic choice a choice in which I derive power.

Although the glares, taunts, and internalized societal norms pertaining to my body hair are still prevalent in my third year of not shaving, I have come to fnd comfortability and security in my personal gender performance. For me, my femininity does not entail reverting back to my prepubescent body. It took me a while to get here, though. Even when I started growing out my hair, I had dif culty reconciling the idea of being both fat and hairy embodying two nonnormative and traditionally undesirable physicalities.

“I never really got to shaving my arm hair and I’m glad I didn’t.”

“My courage and comfortability with my body hair difers in the communities I’m present in.”

With the help of some beautiful people, I wanted this project to highlight the value of individuality in self expression. I wished to showcase how people’s varying identities infuence their decision to keep, remove, or alter their body hair and both normalize and validate those decisions. Although I still have hesitancy wearing strapless shirts to parties or confdently pulling of a bathing suit without shaving, I am comforted by the fact that others fnd power in claiming what is theirs, too.

by Rachel Harris

“I shaved because I thought I had to, not because I wanted to.”

“Standards change according to what men want, and women have been changing to subscribe to that.”

“Everyone has a right to take care of their body hair as they please.”

“My beard is my identifying factor of my appearance, and for me, that’s neither positive nor negative.”

“I enjoy wearing tube tops, and I often feel the need to shave my armpit hair.”

“Most men shave everyday in my family.”

“I tend to remove hair in places where it is not as common, like sideburns, and I enjoy sharing my tactics with other people of color who wish to do the same.”

“I tried not shaving for some time and I just didn’t like it.”

“My mom knew I was going to have a lot to deal with being one of the only black girls at school, so she dealt with facial hair maintenance early, like 3rd or 4th grade early.”

“It doesn’t make any sense that I’d leave school to have my face numbed and get my facial hair removed while simultaneously crying from pain.”

“I do like the hair on my head, but I like it much better since I chose what to do with it.”

“Why do male partners get to prefer anything about my body?”

to: my mother

i see the sky in you –also the sea i’ve always painted you BLUE. well, it’s your favorite color, right? it’s also the color of your eyes

–i’ve always believed your soul was peeking blue like resilient waves or strong snow-capped mountains refecting the sky. so, i guess i’ve always painted your soul BLUE because you have taught me strength + kindness + grace; how can i thank you?

maybe, too, because you feel blue or, to me, you seem blue blue with nostalgia and with worry for your little daughter who gave you quite the scare

mom, i like to imagine how you lived your past life past life before we were around before you were mom

i like to think you did.

when i am here, i remember: you cut your fngers often when chopping garlic and you remain steadfast on the crossword and s doku and you push yourself on that spin bike and you like to read outside–i guess, like me, you like fresh air–and i remember that it’s hard to be away like this… do you remember when you went out to dinner and i would cry and rage and lament, shaken to the core of my little toddler body by your absence? once the babysitter, patient and amused, tucked me under your own covers and played a movie for me to calm down.

i feel similar often and i fall into stories like i did back then to avoid missing you and everyone so hard.

i also remember: you’ll always be my mother and i always your daughter and, for that reason, i know it is okay.

by Olivia Jimenez

Swimming Pool

My older sister got smaller the summer before eighth grade. I knew because I heard people talk about it. I couldn’t have known by looking at her. I was ten. I didn’t know where to look. I didn’t know how bodies worked yet, that they could lengthen and curve and stretch and expand. I didn’t know they could shrink. My only experiences with growth were the marks on the wall where my father marked my height each time I thought my gaze felt higher. I didn’t know that people could feel separate from their skin.

Summer in Charleston meant heat. Te kind that makes your insides boil. Te entire city was a fever dream. Bodies red from the sunlight slogged forward, heavy through the thick and humid air. We swam that summer. Perhaps we thought that the chill of the water would wake us, that we would emerge from practice each day light and full of air. I suppose now that the pool is where it happened, where my sister frst tried to shed the edges of herself. I suppose it was a game she had learned from my mother.

I spent the mornings at the pool completing drills nobody had the heart to tell me I simply could not do. I splashed around in the water like something wild, as if I had never quite learned that my body parts were all connected, unsure how my legs and arms and back were supposed to push me in any sort of coherent direction. I can still feel how cold the water was, the sharpness of it, my bones airborne beneath me, my mind miles ahead of my body, running fast and loose and clumsy like it always has.

In the far lane, my sister swam laps with the older kids. Her strokes were clean. Te water was perfectly still, save for the routine disruptions of her limbs propelling her torso forward and the turning of her head above the surface for breath. While I have never seen my mother swim before, I am certain she glides through the water like this, as steady and sure as the way she taught me to breathe when I get nervous.

My sister swam before she ever walked. My mother spent her pregnancy in the pool, until the day my sister was born, until the day her tiny self braved contact with the earth and the air and the faces of people she had never before seen. I like to imagine it—the months of my mother underwater, the heartbeat of my sister right there with her, the two of them sprouting like a feld of wildfowers pushing through soil in the spring. Te two of them welcoming expanse. Te two of them slicing through water for the sheer enjoyment of it, for the rush of travel and distance and the good kind of exhaustion that lets you drift into the deepest of sleep come nighttime. My mother foating on her back, her eyes glazed shut, the sun warming her entire body. Her hands light on her belly, the one season I’m certain that she welcomed growth, the one time she never doubted that growth meant life.

by Taylor Kahn-Perry

On the Potential of Island Water

by Alexa Lemoine

I had a tongue like a palm frond for the whole fve days I visited the Dominican Republic. It had been, almost exactly, seven years since I had last visited. Ten, I had been just ffeen, unsteadily embracing what was the tender time before I could call myself a woman. I still didn’t feel like I could, even afer I had shed my teenage skin and adopted that of someone who was supposed to feel older.

Te apartment in which which I had spent so many summers had remained largely unchanged, which flled me with an intoxicating nostalgia and a profound sense of unease. Faced with the passage of time, I began to realize how little had changed. Or rather, how much had changed and my reluctance to even notice even that.

For the entirety of my fve-day visit the short fve days of my stay, I didn’t so much as walk but drif through scenes from before: . Tthe mall, the beach, the winding streets and dangerous motorcyclists. Te pillows I slept with smelled the same, and I could still pinpoint where my grandmother’s church was. My head was flled with the pointed accent I had tried to conceal for so long. My Americanness mingled with the island, coloring the roof of my mouth with the lush green outside.

Despite my frst-generation status, I don’t quite feel like Dominican enough. Within the grasp of the Caribbean and its salt, I feel like I should be more American. My tongue gives me away, my mannerisms. People coming into the elevator would give their polite and curt “Buenas,” and I would only know to respond with the same when I was speaking to their backs.

Tere is this one notion of personhood that I still don’t quite don’t understand. It keeps me up at night wondering if I’m deciding of it myself, or if it’s something that just happens to me, gifed from up above like a chalice. If I drink from it, I’ll magically know in which direction to throw my body. It’ll be an infnity disguised as wine.

Have I become a person in the amount of times I’ve cradled my adult body in my mom’s lap to cry big, heaving sobs? Is each wretch a kind of salt water birth? Or when I once laid in bed with an ex in the morning feeling like an unfurled comma? When I remember words in Spanish during a conversation and say them just for the pleasure of it? Is my whole being resting within those in-betweens?

Anxiety seems to preoccupy itself with the things it cannot solve. Shouldn’t my body existing in my city be enough to classify me as there? Does the threat of my brownness make me any more seen? Is my diploma, my job, my writing, or even my misspelled Spanish, a marker all markers of occupied space? At the bottom of it all, am I still a mama’s girl, small and tripping over the words with which to exonerate myself?

I crave something that I can’t even visualize or describe. A motorcyclist was hit on our way to the beach. I tried not to look even though there wasn’t much blood, just the fanfare of catastrophe. I felt like that; my body colliding with the potentiality and burden of self-realization was intimate like the bottom of a bird’s wing.

“Walking Along” by Layla Gorgoni

September, 3 Generations Later

by Natalia Perkins

You are the American Dream.

Sweet girl, strong girl, can’t do nothing wrong girl–They laid brick and mortar down for you.

Tough girl, working girl, that feeling still lurking girl–A sea of hands are holding you up–

There’s nothing you can’t do.

Smart girl, short girl, just the right sort girl–Look where you are–

and it only took them eighty-two years.

Blue girl, witty girl, makin’ it in the city girl–

You can spot a Monet from a mile away. Your own past decays, torn up by a tangled family tree.

Pretty girl, big girl, dragging on a cig’ girl–Don’t wake them up.

Photo by Audrey Etro

by olivia jimenez

Aftern o on i n Lujan Cay

by Melissa Morgan

The Luxury of Feminine Hygiene

In this unconventional “fashion shoot,” I aim to raise awareness about the tampon tax by portraying feminine hygiene products as luxury goods, as that is what they are deemed in most U.S. states. Tampons and pads are subject to valueadded tax, unlike the tax exemption status granted to other products considered medically necessary. The tampon tax affects women, particularly women of color, who are already negatively impacted by the gender wage gap. It is part of a wider phenomenon, the “pink tax,” which specifically targets women by marking the price of “female” products higher than the “male” equivalent of those products.

“Basically we are being taxed for being women.” -Christina Garcia,

“Tampons and pads are necessary items that half the population must acquire a dozen times a year for about 40 years of their lives. They are not optional.” -Maya Salam, Gender Reporter, NYT

CA Assemblymember

by Laurie-Maude Chenard, Resident Creator

Models: Rachel Harris, Chelsea Luo, Caitlin Peng, and Aurore Ndayishimiye

A reason only 9 states have eliminated the tampon tax is because in most cases, menstruation is thought of as a taboo subject and many women feel as if talking about it will make others feel uncomfortable. On top of that, “institutions of power are male-dominated. [Men] are not thinking about it, or they’re afraid to approach it” (Garcia). My photos purposely aestheticize feminine care products and periods to visually show how failing to talk about the topic distances us from the material reality and lived experience women face every day.

“When you say you’re for ‘menstrual equity,’ it means you’re for educational equity, workplace equity, and health equity.”

-Jennifer Weiss-Wolf, Author of 2017 book “Periods Gone Public”

Suspension by Tarina Touret

I existed between sand and air.

My earth was the sand. She ate me as I fell through, an efect of the loss I felt that summer.

A full entity of non-existence, she had to learn to love the pain She became obsessed with the thrill of it, which overtook every inch of her body.

Drained in a pool of burgundy nails, she convinced herself that you could save her. She wished at that moment that she was a man and when she realized she wasn’t, she became seduced by the norm of you.

Her covert exploitation of self caused an efusion of an, at frst, unbearable being and then, lightness it was then that the era of ethereal self-love began.

And in the end, her suspension through rings of fames taught her to eat the air and swallow the earth.

questions by Kelly Goonan

if you knew you held my heart in your hand what would you do? would you speak more delicately? tread more carefully? care more expressively?

if you knew you had the power to destroy me what would you do? would you strengthen me? water me? nourish me?

or would you get drunk of of the power and clench your fst around my heart just to prove that you could? would you shrink from the responsibility of tending to my soul?

what would you do if you knew i loved you?

in public

by sydney te wildt

Content

I’ve started crying in public this semester. It feels foreign and shameful to be publicly seen as less than perfect. It detracts from the persona that I have tried to craft over the past 3 years — that I’m happy, healthy, and fully recovered from my eating disorder.

It is safe to feel like I have it all together. I posted meals on Instagram to proclaim that I loved food again, I hung out with people who gossiped to avoid any emotions, I worked hard in school and job recruiting to seem successful. If you look at my social media or LinkedIn, you would think that I was happy.

Based on the whole ~crying in public~ thing, it is clear that I am not happy. I don’t eat the food I take pictures of, I feel alone in those friendships, and I have intense imposters syndrome. I’m not happy. It feels shameful for other people to know this, to see behind the perfect mask that I have crafted.

Ironically, and it has taken a lot of public tears to see this, I feel more free without the mask. Te right people actually want to know how I’m doing, my grades don’t fall apart when I take a deep breath, and recovery seems that much more possible when I actually recognize that I’m not there yet. I feel a bit light and a bit happier every time those tears stream down my face.

I’m crying because I’m sad, because I’m scared, because I feel lost, because life is fucking hard. I’m crying because I’m human, and that reality scares me a lot.

I’m also crying because I’m trying, because I’m hopeful, because I’m relieved, because I’m unafraid to feel. I’m crying because I’m human, and that’s a hell of a lot better than the mask that keeps it all together. I’m crying in public, and that’s okay.

Warning: Eating Disorder

When the Cold Went Away

e weather on Monday made me feel unzipped. I rolled down the window in the car and let the undercurrent of cold air hit my face. Te whole thing made me feel lonely, but in a way that I could stand. It made me feel like something was about to happen, like some great sadness or John Hughes monologue, like falling in love or running a red light.

I told my friend the other day that stoplights are as tall as us, but we don’t notice, because of the perspective. “Is that true?” she asked. I wasn’t sure. I thought I had seen a photo once: colors on a screen, a glare on the glass of my laptop. Not real, not always true.

I’ve learned how to tell when my parents are lying to me: the rises and falls in their voice like watching a needle on a polygraph. I tell my mom it’s going to be okay. Is that true? I’m never sure. Te needle goes crazy and I’m left with spasmed mountainsides, an ink spill.

One night, over FaceTime, I asked her what movie she was watching. She told me several bullet points about it, including that it was not very good, but not including the title––that, she couldn’t remember. As she checked the screen for more information, the blue light of the television fashed on her upturned face. It looked as though she was suddenly caught in a lightning storm––rain coming in of the coast, or the dry heat lightning that’s tied to Texas summers.

Tere’s a trepidation about running through sprinklers that I always felt as a kid. Blades of grass would cling itchy and undeterred to our bug-bitten ankles. Clothes would get wet––and then what? We sit in the sun like sliced fruit, sweet, almost rotten, waiting for whatever was’s next.

Lately, I’ve been writing down things I see. Soft purple coming in through my window, a string of lights, imitation stars. I don’t understand constellations, but pretend like I do. You’re such a Taurus, someone will say to me. And it makes me feel better, knowing that this brokenness was written in the cosmos, that my mess is coded into the deep blackness of space.

I took videos this week, like I was writing things down but lazier. A cat walking endlessly across a fence––Philippe Petit but less impressive. Te neon sign of the pancake house: Open 24 Hours, dark, Open 24 Hours, dark. Buzzing red in a dirty parking lot. Jordan had picked me up. “Don’t look at how much sugar I’m putting on this.” Buttered grits, snow falling on sand. I watched her anyway.

by Elizabeth Cregan

on emotional manipulation

On going to work with a hickey the size of a golf ball on the side of your neck:

Context—I work in a bakery and my boss is a sexist, conservative, middle-aged man who once explained to me how to count to the number 14. Imagine the look on his face at the realization that his 20-year-old “bakery girl” has a sex life, eyes wide, mute horror.

Sexist boss man manages to close his mouth and is silent for the rest of the day. I thought I used enough concealer to cover it, dulled it from angry red to fading bruise blue. But I’m sure I’m not imagining the lingering gazes of customers— hard to use ponytailed hair as a shield. Tey notice, and immediately condemn. And my feminism tells me I want to wash of all the concealer, feminism tells me that shame makes me weak, compliant, submissive and I want to walk around without embarrassment and I want to make this about empowerment, but then I remember your hands, my body tensing under your fngers, the bruises left out of “love” on my thighs and shoulders, split lip, unrestrained teeth— I didn’t tell you to stop, couldn’t fnd the voice to say “there, not there, no,” too fast, too sudden, too new. And you don’t genuinely apologize when I ask you to take it easy, say you don’t think you can, say you’re proud of the claw marks you leave behind. Most likely intended as a compliment but perceived as unwillingness to listen when I say no and telling me you love me so much that you can’t control what you do to my body sounds a lot like masking possession with desire.

by Sienna Brancato

And this is what happens when you don’t teach girls about their own bodies, teach them to say no but not how to correct, ignore the complexities, the blurring lines and so you grow up basically clueless until you fnd yourself in a relationship, anxious and terrifed and willing and even more clueless and slightly unnerved that they seem to know your anatomy better than you do, or at least they’re not afraid of it, and you feel grateful. Somehow they know the secret to you. You don’t have to fgure it out for yourself anymore!

And that’s so appealing, until it’s not.

Good girl, sexy girl, adventurous girl, proper, pliant girl, sexualized, exoticized, our silence is romanticized, and you say I’m the sun in a dark world, and the movies tell me I’m supposed to eat that shit up, but you can’t fuck your way out of chemical depression, and you can’t use me to do it anymore

Manipulation and toxicity often fy under the radar of abuse, sly and cunning, avoiding detection by friends and family. It’s not until a stranger asks me if I’m okay that I realize to break shame is to name. Not submissive, but subversive. And maybe this is about empowerment, whatever that looks like. And I remember what my body is capable of, all by itself, and even though I no longer care about you, I care about myself, so this is me speaking up.

“Her” by Layla Gorgoni

by Shraeya Madhu

Honey, what do I drink?

Is it sweet venom under my tongue?

As much as I wanted to spit it out, that’s easier said than done. A sunshine latte, warmth and spice liquid happiness sitting heavy in my stomach like my mother’s advice.

I used to pour it down my American sink because I’ve never really liked milk and I’ve always been weak for temptation. Resistance to what is mine has never been my fxation. Next time I leave this city and go back home I will drink a mug of turmeric milk from which I have grown.

TURMERIC FENCE

by Audrey Etro

Feelings

I. It’s me, Ms. Tri-racial.

II. Your perfect Petri dish of colonized and colonizer, plus some occidental tones for you, a scientist, to make a new discovery.

III. Hello, I am not your choose-yourown-adventure just because I may look like ] whatever you please (or whatever you hate); I told you what I am, three times actually, and no I don’t mind you asking but I do mind you arguing with me (about me).

IV.And, yes, it stings a bit when you assure me that I’m white (or __ or __ or __) because I have lived my entire life until now trying to straighten my hair and lighten my pictures to match 70% of my hometown’s population, to not be known as the “other,” to have my friends’ little sisters call me by my name and not “the tan one.” I have lived my entire life trying to be a part of a community that I am not a part of, only to fnd that now the communities of color tell me that I belong to the prior one (or any one that is not theirs).

by Stephanie Leow

XI. My apologies that it’s confusing for you to approach my white house with its black roof and shutters, flled with the scent of my mother’s chow mein, to hear my parents speak in accents that you can’t match to anything I just named, but it probably shouldn’t surprise you that people can be mixed in the U.S.

XII.To complain about my 30% privilege is probably an evil within itself. I’m sorry. XIII.But I’m not sorry that I like too much “white music” or “dance white” or don’t listen to enough Drake or whatever. I didn’t realize that Ed Sheeran could snatch the color out of my skin.

V.Yes, some Hispanic people are mixed. No, that does not mean I’m Hispanic.

VI.And if he shows interest because he thinks I’m a light-skin, does that not make me just as culpable as the men who look past my dark-skinned sisters?

VII.I never asked to be your colorism pawn.

VIII.“You’re part __? You don’t look __.” Okay, and?

IX.So now I need to drag myself across the world to prove to you that my family didn’t lose our ancestors’ cultures, even though we did, but what does that entail? You want me to speak a word of Mandarin, or wear Indian garments, or listen to rap music, or dance rumba, or pretend my family has always enjoyed a Thanksgiving meal because if I do not wear a tidbit from your dense idea of culture on my wrist, then I must actually be this or that or nothing at all.

X.Why is my identity suddenly contingent upon how you see me?

XIV.My mother once told me that it may be easier to just tell people that I’m Asian, to give a half answer instead of a whole, to claim my father instead of her, but I know she only suggested this familial blasphemy because she, too, knows that people prefer one answer over two or three.

XV.Sure, exotic can be a compliment, but not when you say it like that.

XVI.Everyone is an anthropologist nowadays.

HOROSCOPES

if your sign was a spring haiku

ARIES

you made time your friend passion for independence mars made you honest

TAURUS

strong for the sake of winter’s harm, but now you can lie without resistance

GEMINI go ahead tonight without wit, or even care fll your vase to bloom

CANCER

let your emotions plant seeds for summer as you don’t know who’ll tend them

LEO

being ferce right now you do not have to look back you are everything

VIRGO dance under Venus

perfection doen’t quite get as close to you as this

qww

LIBRA

amidst just beauty there is no point in choosing whisper to the moon

SCORPIO

intuitively

fow with the grass tomorrow you are allowed to grow

SAGGITARIUS

blind ambitions for that you know of wandering but without patience

CAPRICORN plan for tomorrow glimpse of spontaneity then kiss without fear

AQUARIUS

fnger tips tingling with existential questions in this horizon

PISCES

mid afternoon rain

closed eyes daydream of blooming your sensitive strenght

Whatever your sun sign may be, we hope that spring semester brought you a little bit more insight into how incredibly brilliant you are.

Without their story, we wouldn’t be able to tell ours.