cover art by Shuhan Chen
I was wandering through the trees late one night. It must have been early May. I had to get out of the house; I couldn’t take it anymore, and I thought there would be no better place to clear my head and just think than the woods a few blocks out. It was a relatively short walk.
Then I saw someone lying on the grass on top of a small cliff, about six feet off the ground, with his legs dangling off the edge. He was lying back and staring up into the night sky. This was one of the few nights the stars were out where I lived.
I walked a path around that led up to the top of the ledge and got a better look at who was lying there. I immediately recognized him, but I really didn’t want to. I can’t handle something like this right now. He was on the smaller side compared to other boys his age, but it had been a while since I had last seen him, and he was a lot bigger than I remembered. Though I couldn’t talk, since I was as small as they came.
He had fluffy, brown hair that almost went down to his neck. There were small sticks and leaves in it that he clearly hadn’t tried to get out. He was wearing a red baseball cap with a jack of hearts sticking out from the back. I had always wondered why he had it there, but I never asked. He had blue jeans and an orange Aerosmith shirt.
Despite not wanting to, I revealed
by Sebastian Lambmyself from the shadows of the trees and out onto the empty grass on the ledge. He hadn’t noticed me yet, even though it was a fairly small platform. I was probably within his peripheral vision, meaning he clearly didn’t want to see me either.
“Do you see the swan?” he asked. I couldn’t see his face; it was covered by the baseball cap.
“What?”
He let out a big sigh and sat up, not turning around yet, just staring off at the trees. His mind was clearly somewhere else. It always was. He took his cap off and held it between his still dangling legs.
“Of course you can’t, I don’t know why I even asked.” He lay back down, leaned his head back and looked at me. His blue eyes showed an emotion I couldn’t describe if I wanted to; he seemed… lifeless, dull, empty, devoid of emotion, yet in a place of contentedness and deep, clear, unabridged thought.
After realizing I wasn’t going to respond, he continued, “You live with such purpose, you always know what you have to do, you never waste time, you’re always working towards an objective.” His face turned sour and remorseful. “Even if those objectives may
be questionable.”
I know it was inappropriate, but I suddenly felt a spout of anger. “Like you can talk,” I said as I approached. He stumbled to his feet, losing grip of his baseball cap and watching it fall to the ground beneath the cliff. I now stood next to him. I had so much pent-up rage from the past few days that it was starting to leak out. “I’ve never done anything wrong; why do you keep insisting I have?” I said angrily.
He paused, and turned his head to the stars once again. “Do you know what one of the brightest stars in the night sky is?” he asked, lacking emotion like before.
“Isn’t it the North Star? Polaris, I think it’s called?” I responded.
“No, it’s that. Arcturus.”
“But, the other stars are brighter.”
“Maybe so, but it’s 113 times more luminescent than the sun. It’s just really, really, far away.” He turned and looked at me, showing remorse instead of ‘I’m smarter than you’, which I wasn’t expecting. “It’s based on perspective, the way we see the world. Right now, there could be an alien on a planet far, far away, and Polaris is as visible to them as Arcturus is to you. They’re all the same stars, just seen differently.” There was a pause that felt like forever as I stared at the night sky, and everything was silent. It was calming; I hadn’t heard true silence in a long time, and it was refreshing. The trees stopped rustling, the wind stopped blowing; it seemed like the world was frozen in place.
I looked back at him. I had my moment. “There’s a worm on your hand.” I told him.
“I know.”
“Aren’t you gonna do anything about it?”
He looked down at the worm, and lifted his hand in front of his face. “No. It can do whatever it wants, in exchange for how hard it works,” he said, examining its movements. The worm suddenly lifted its front and turned to me, as if it were staring at me, judging me. I felt my sins crawling down my back, all the memories and the guilt I suppressed resurfacing for a split second. “It produces fertilizer that helps this forest grow. It does so much to the world around it, but gets no recognition from the world it helps.” He didn’t see my guilt. I’m glad he didn’t; no one can ever see it.
“I never thought about it that way.” I said, though I didn’t exactly care.
“I know,” he said. “I remember how you could never shut up about how slimy, disgusting, worthless creatures they were.” He gave a weak laugh, finally looked away from the worm and instead looked at me. Just like the worm had. As if he were staring into my soul, judging my actions, even though he already has, many times. Then he continued. “Just like you said about me, so long ago.” I had begun to see him in a new light; instead of only seeing the things that I remembered, the things I hated, I had begun to see a different side of him I had never noticed before but was clearly always there. I wanted to say something, to apologize, but I couldn’t.
“Don’t worry, it’s all ancient history now. I’ve got more important things to worry about than words of the past,” he said reassuringly. He had never spoken in such a tone before… or maybe I just
couldn’t hear it until now.
I wanted to say something so badly, anything, anything at all, but my mouth wouldn’t move. Then, “Let me get your hat for you,” I said. I didn’t look at him; I couldn’t bear myself to. I walked down around the ledge. The hat should’ve been easy to spot—bright red surrounded by fleeting green—but I couldn’t find it anywhere. I did find a folded piece of paper on the ground where the hat should have fallen. When I opened it, it read, Everyone’sperspective is different. That’s how changes in theworldaremade,peoplewithunique perspectivesseeingtheproblemsinsociety and having the drive to change them, for better or for worse. I have no control over which you choose. I wish I could be there to see it nonetheless. Just know, I will always be proud of you. It was my father’s handwriting. It had been a long time since I had seen it, but I knew right away it was his. But how did it get there?
“Do you know what this note is?” I called up to him, but got no response. I figured he was deep in thought again. I circled back around to the top of the ledge, only to find that he was instead gone. I went over to where he was laying and sat down there, legs dangling and everything. I looked at the night sky, the way the stars shined so bright, but the brightest ones were the farthest away. I looked at the worm, slowly inching away. I looked at the city skyline, and suddenly, I saw the swan he was talking about. There was a crane constructing an office building that leaned in such a way it looked like the swan’s neck. Arcturus was behind it, shining, and making its eyes. There was a big
hotel right in front of the site, carving out the swan’s body. The worm crawled onto my hand, I lifted it up to be right next to the hotel, it lifted its front up, and it formed the swan’s tail. Once you looked past the surface and found the big picture, it could be something completely different. I knew that now.
I sat there, staring at the swan, for how long I didn’t know, but was interrupted by my brother crashing through the trees behind me, onto the platform. “What are you doing out here?” he asked. I turned around, startling the worm. It fell flat on my hand.
“Do you see the swan?” I asked him.
He chuckled. “I thought I was the only person who saw it. Like brother, like sister I guess.”
“Wait, what are you doing out here? Hypocrite.” I asked accusingly.
“Same as you, had to get out of the house. Also, I had to make sure my little sister wasn’t eaten by a bear.” He came over and kneeled next to me, giving me a noogie. I tried to give one back, but he had his red cap on, and it would’ve been too much effort to take it off him.
“Come on, let’s go home.” He said.
We got up, but before we re-entered the trees, I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned around and saw my father staring back at me. His beard was as long as I remembered it, his eyes as blue as I remembered them, and I felt that sense of safety I always had around him, like nothing could ever happen as long as he was near. He may have been some hallucination of mine; he seemed to be in an ethereal form. But it still felt so real.
Maybe I just wanted it to be true so badly I had tricked myself into thinking
he was still alive. That he hadn’t wanted to go for a drive with me that night, that I wouldn’t go back home that night without him, that I hadn’t distracted him… If none of that happened, he wouldn’t have to be just a hallucination.
“You coming?” My brother snapped me back into reality and my father’s projection was gone, and so was that safety. I reached into my pocket, meaning to pull out the note, but instead pulled out a king of hearts, my father’s favorite card. I guessed it must have been inside the note and I didn’t see it. My father had always said he wanted to be like a king of hearts, a strong leader who protected those around him, but was a just and kind ruler over his subjects, having a big heart. In my eyes, he succeeded.
“I think Dad wanted… wanted you to have this.” I put my hand out and offered the card to my brother, who
stared at it and reluctantly took it. That feeling of safety returned as he took the card.
“We should really be getting home now,” he said, trying not to cry, but it wasn’t working. On the way home, sitting in the passenger seat with my brother at the wheel, blasting Aerosmith, I began to think about the reason my father wasn’t here now and how it was exactly the same situation I was in now.
My brother stopped the car abruptly as he saw I was about to cry, and clearly recognized what I was thinking of. “Hey, I won’t let the same thing happen again. You won’t lose me. I’ll always be here, even if I’m not.”
I looked over at him from my hunched position in the seat, but where I should’ve seen my brother, I saw my father. f i n .
by Abby Sanchez
It. i see It as It ticks on by. It paces around and round. forever, ever. It does not seem to learn, nor hear, nor create. It does not seem to watch, and It has not moved or changed at all. why is It so useless? It does nothing. Nothing! just sits there in the shadows, hiding away. nothing. is It alive? ths what i heard once and i was surprised, because i did not think It could think. still i replied. but It did not seem to notice. or It noticed, and It did not care. so i continued to now i see It. It’s gone now. so quickly, just like the other here in the shadows, being nothing, and i will wait for
“the grandfather clock”
