Internal Decay
A nest of starlings laden with parasites or a bowl of oranges strewn with mildew.
A caricature of me, but unaware.
I still long for you, but my stomach is unaware.
Screaming beyond throat aches and a rush of pained tears-dry heaving at a green light-ignorant.
This is what it is like to know not where to exist-whether to exist.
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Jerney Harms Class of 2023
Maiden, Mother, Crone (Tripytch)
Ophelia Scott
Multimedia Class of 2024
31
By the Porch
My father sneezed hard three times.
“Damn that pollen,” he said. His disgruntled attitude was juxtaposed by my mother ’s smile. She potted three bright bulbs, all eager to blossom in the sudden warmth. Meanwhile, I stepped out and took a deep breath, ecstatic to no longer have chilly air cut my throat.
Spring felt as good as always.
But March had brought my family a surprise. A small compilation of twigs that housed four little eggs by our porch. With painful anticipation, my younger brother and I would watch the eggs, hoping that one day, we would see minute fractures on their surfaces.
One morning, the eggs disappeared, but in their place were four bright orange beaks bound to little bodies, their eyes still too scared to open. My pastime soon became seeing the baby birds grow. Four pairs of eyes eventually opened, and they built enough muscle to start fighting over Mama’s food.
But one baby didn’t grow strong enough, and he didn’t chirp loud enough for Mama to hear. I started to see three heads stick out of the nest.
The others didn’t seem phased. In fact, Mama took full advantage of having fewer beaks to feed. Their legs soon grew long enough for them to jump around. My brother giggled at the shaking nest, saying, “Look, Bhaiya, they have a trampoline!”
I laughed too, until one baby jumped a little too hard. His wings didn’t catch the air. The stray cat ate well that night. The two sisters in the nest stopped jumping after that.
After a few more weeks, Mama stopped coming so often, as if to tell the two babies left that they were ready. There was hesitation, but then one took a leap of faith. Her body dipped down a foot, but I saw her feathers start to spread. One flap, then another, and in a matter of seconds she was up.
She circled the yard twice, boasting her identity as a grown bird to her sister. As she started her third lap, a crow swooped in with his long talons to humble her. The lone baby bird trembled in her nest.
Why am I the only one left? What did my brothers and sisters do wrong? Where did Mama go?
She would never find the answers to these questions. The only resolution she had was that she must live long enough to lay her own eggs.
Tarif Islam Class of 2025
32
It’s Quiet Today Greta Simolke photography Class of 2023 33
21519 Nottinghill Dr.
A new family, fresh to start, A single mom and her daughter-Only them
They were in it together, Two peas in a pod
New beginnings, friends, jobs
Even the first day of school
She figured out how to ride a bike
How to climb a tree
The sweet first touch of freedom
She went to the neighborhood pool by herself,
Even walked through the neighborhood alone
It was here that everything happened
Friends came and went
Enemies lived just down the street
The first sleepovers
The first science fair projects
The fence knocked down by a hurricane
The late nights and early mornings
Spring water fights
Summer nights on the sidewalk
She raked the leaves just to jump in them
She blew just to see her breath in the crisp winter air
There were storms that kept heru up at night
When she thought the worst was just around the corner
And when the streets flooded
She ran around in the dirty water
Just because it was fun
She bruised her butt when she rollerskated
She skinned her knee when she fell off the bike
She used to run away from the crazy cat
She would try to raise roly-polies
The time she “ran away”
When all she did was hide in the backyard
She would play cops and robbers on the dead-end street
She went to the park and made origami with the little kids
But
This place saw many beginnings
That slowly
Turned into endings
Her mom’s new boyfriend
Who became her mom’s fiancé
And later her mom’s husband
She started calling him “daddy”
He was the first and only person she gave that title to
But He meant change
Change meant moving
Moving meant goodbye
Goodbye to neighbors that were like family
Goodbye to friends and all the memories
She spent that summer away from the
34
house
She went to other people’s houses
The park
The pool
Anywhere that didn’t remind her
That she wouldn’t live there next month
Next week
The next day
She didn’t want the reminder of leaving
She made the most of her last summer
Away from the house that had been her home for so long
She had wondered what her new home would be like
What were the people like?
Would they like her?
What could she do there?
The possibilities were endless
Her thoughts were racing
She hoped for the best
But couldn’t help thinking of the worst
The day finally came that she didn’t come home
They all left together
She said it wasn’t forever
But it probably was
The house saw her leave
It waited like a puppy for her return
The first day of school came
Their voices sounded weird
Not like they were back home
There weren’t many new kids
Which meant she was the odd person out
The people seemed nice
After a while
Their voices weren’t so odd
Her family back home commented on her new accent
“You’re one of them, now aren’t you?”
After a couple years
She came back to the house with her mother
It looked so different
There wasn’t a big tree in the front
It was a different color
There wasn’t a car in the driveway
Maybe it was in the garage
They had never kept it in there
21519 Nottinghill Dr.
No one would ever remember it the same as they had
No matter how long it was there
The end really had come
She hadn’t thought about it in a while
Maybe the end had been there for a while
And she never knew because of all the new beginnings
Now was the time to accept it
Now she could completely move on
And go home to 139 Hall Rd.
Siobahn E. Stanley Class of 2024
35
My tongue is firmly lodged in my cheek, so much so that I cannot move it. It wouldn’t matter anyways, for my lips are sealed with wax melted from the candle that I use to set alight the painstaking notes I write with blood and tears as ink.
My bones are rotting with the weight of the words I’ll never say. Sentences with subjects and verbs and periods lay stagnant in a mouth so full I might choke. But, as desperate as I am to say my piece, I am more desperate to keep it, so instead I nod along as the words bitterly slide down my throat and dissolve into acid.
Emma Greer Class of 2025
I am a quiet poet.
36
Texas Labyrinth Bri Callicoatte
37
Photography Class of 2023
What It All Comes Down To
I. Let’s take the whole world and let’s give everybody a name, let’s call them Tom, and let’s say that you and Tom are going through a nasty breakup. It’s too gritty for a Monday morning, it’s cinematic in all the wrong places, there are entirely too many lens flares as you’re trying to rip his heart out through his throat.
You tell Tom you hate him as you slam his car door. You hope he wraps his car around a pole, in fact, and you don’t even ask forgiveness for thinking it. It doesn’t mean anything, you’ll see him tomorrow when he calls about returning your sweatshirt and the spare key to your house and oh yeah, the shards of yourself you left in his heart.
He’ll say it just like that and you’ll scoff, thinking about disasters of metal on asphalt.
II.
Let’s say you wake up on Tuesday and when you turn on the news you hear a small collection of words: Tom and car crash and dead, dead, dead.
It’s not him, but it could have been. It was, for a moment, because you wanted it to be. Somebody is dead even if it’s not the boy you loved until 9:43 yesterday morning, even if they only share a name and that annoying fact of mortality.
You step out into the sunlight hoping for some fresh air and there’s a cardboard box on the stoop, your de-ringed key and fresh-washed sweatshirt safe inside. The pieces of yourself that you used to kill Tom, however, are conspicuously absent.
III.
Let’s say it’s just past nine on a Monday morning and you’re out with your current favorite person in the world, we’ll call him Tom. You were supposed to meet on the hour, sharp, but that’s one of Tom’s endearing little quirks that makes you wish he’d wrap his car around a pole. Just a little. Only sometimes.
Only when he’s late.
The sun is shining through the cafe window and he’s been talking the entire time you’ve been chewing on this scone. It tastes like nothing, and he’s not saying anything. You’re not happy, not
in the slightest, but this particular moment seems so far from disaster that it’s outside of conception. You’re safe here. The rest of eternity is placid and exactly like this: You in the sunlit cafe, chewing on the same bite of scone, listening to Tom talk incessantly of nothing.
IV.
Let’s say it’s 9:43 on the morning that Tom died in a car crash and Tom returned your sweatshirt and your key but kept a fist around your heart. You’re looking in the mirror as you brush your teeth but your eyes won’t focus on your own image in the glass. These collar bones don’t look like they belong to you, this jaw is too ready to snap shut, these cheeks are too hollow and hungry. You’re starving, but you know you won’t be able to taste anything that you try to eat. You’re starving, but there’s no food in the house and you’d rather die than get into a car.
V.
Let’s take Tom and let’s split him back into the pieces we made him out of, disperse him back through everything. He is the boy who washed your sweatshirt with the wrong detergent, yes, and he is the cafe employee who handed you a scone without looking up. He is the cadaver on the 8 o’clock news. He is the fist closing around the shards in your heart and he is the hungry, hollow lines of your face staring back out at you as you lean, heaving, on the bathroom counter.
VI.
Let’s take Tom and let’s trap him in the mirror so that whenever you try to remember what you’re supposed to look like all you see is the car crash, the corpse in the road that bears a name you once loved the taste of, a familiar body that wore your favorite sweatshirt better than you, now mangled and ruined and unrecognizable. You’ve been trying to look past him as you brush your teeth, rinsing with placid sunlight and spitting out blood, but you can’t focus on anything else.
Phoebe Cragon Class of 2023
38
Evening on Ladybird Lake
39
Bri Callicoatte Photography Class of 2023
Psalms 147:16
Class of 2023
Remi Miller Photography
40
Ariana and the Beginnings of a Disastrous Birthday Bash
It was nine in the morning and Ariana had never had such a terrible birthday morning because her cake had gone missing and her dress had shrunk in the dryer and her mother had to leave for an emergency meeting all the way in New York which was five hours by plane and everyone knew that fathers were good for their money not for their planning but alas Ariana had only her father and Charlie the maid and Leon the driver for help so she would have to make do with whato she had and the first thing that needed to be fixed was the cake which Ariana fully suspected that Leon had purposefully lost because he was always muttering to himself and never smiling that is until earlier that week when Ariana had seen him smile for the first time and that had been exactly when she had suggested he pick up her cake the night before her birthday so Charlie would be in charge of the cake now and Leon would drive her to the store to find a new dress and the last part of the plan made her veins freeze and her breath rattle in her chest because the last part of the plan involved her father making sure that the rest of the party did not fall apart while Ariana was out of the house
41
Jordan Fong Class of 2024
42
Tea Wiith Oblivion Jan Gary Ink Class of 2023
the dead cat text
The saddest part is probably how close I came to smiling when first I saw your text, before I actually read the one-line obituary for your sweet old she-cat. We used to groan when our parents would joke that they only saw their friends at funerals. Is it stranger that we once had a script for this kind of thing, or that I notice that you've forgotten it?
i just thought you should know.
You came to a funeral with me, years ago, my first, though you didn’t really know my grandfather. The only familiar face in a crowd of blue elders, you had me laughing in my black dress. We had our own language back then, I swear we had a script for this kind of thing.
Now, I don’t know if I can trust you to read this as a condolence.
I came over for a sleepover, years ago, my first, though I was afraid of cats and you had two. Half-dreaming on your parents’ leather couch, I woke in the night to find your sweet old she-cat crouched on my ribs, purring, gold eyes floating in the dark.
I can’t help thinking of that every time I love something new, and I just thought you should know-Not a day goes by where I don’t wish I’d said thank you back when it still made sense.
Phoebe Cragon Class of 2023
43
Class Study: Brushes on Pinboard
Jan Gary
Charcoal
Class of
2023
44
Scribble. Scratch scratch. Erase. Scribble some more. The process was agonizingly tedious, and Oliver’s facial muscles were beginning to cramp.
He dared not make a single sound of complaint or let out the slightest breath that would alter his position. Mr. Frank was quick to dish out discipline with a thick metal ruler the other muses called “the whacker.” The sound of it making contact with the unlucky hand-- or in rare cases, soft flesh of a cheek-- made anyone else in the area outwardly cringe and thank their lucky stars it wasn’t them that time. That time.
Oliver had noticed several months ago when they’d first met that Mr. Frank was an unusual man. His irregular body proportions made the man quite unappealing to behold, but they were perfect for an artist. Long, thin hands, not much thicker than the charcoal pencil he gripped, rounded off impossibly huge biceps with wide legs to match. He sported a hunchback that caused him to constantly lean to one side of his workspace. There was a considerably larger dent on one side of the desk because of this.
There was no air conditioning in Mr. Frank’s studio, only a small fan that was rarely turned on. Basement air that was already damp and stiff and never circulated made Oliver miserable, but he never acknowledged it. Mr. Frank griped that the whittling of the blades disrupted his concentration and it wasn’t even that warm in there anyways. And that Oliver should try going down south sometime and see who complains then. He’d stay silent, inwardly rolling his eyes, but remaining still.
This is why he demanded him as a pupil, Oliver decided. That, and his own appearance. Before Mr. Frank, Oliver had always seen himself as quite average. Not ugly, but not incredibly handsome. Oliver looked almost the exact same as he did when he was a child: brown hair stuck at a terrible mess between curly and straight, too-large hazel eyes that had drawn the comparison of a fish, and splatters of freckles across his nose which were neither too big nor too small. He used to be rather tan, but his complexion was becoming fairer and fairer the more time he spent in the studio, making his eyes appear far darker.
It was this normalcy, the fact that not a single part of Oliver seemed extraordinary, that fed Mr. Frank’s obsession.
It had been an irregularly cold September morning when the pair met while Oliver was waiting for the bus. Mr. Frank was walking past him, stopped dead in his tracks, whirled on Oliver, and stared at him incredulously.
“You,” he whispered in a barely audible tone.
Oliver, stunned at the sudden attention, froze. “Me?”
The man shook off his initial shock, stood in front of Oliver like a creature stalking its prey, making Oliver inwardly gulp.
Some way or another, the man convinced Oliver to exchange information with him, and six months later Oliver still found himself walking the six blocks from his apartment to the musty basement to sit still for hours on end.
“Beautiful boy,” he’d mutter to himself in his thick accent as he scratched away at his sketchbook.
Oliver clenched his jaw to keep his head upright, fighting a wave of exhaustion. His eyes slipped out of focus and fell outside the window in the far right of the studio. He daydreamed of activities outside of the stuffy room, after Mr. Frank would step back from his work with a “That’ll do” and wave the boy away. Although he was never satisfied, he always had to finish the rough draft for the piece. The two of them often sat together in the small room long into the night. The sketch had to be just right.
“Beautiful boy.”
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Reece Maguire Class of 2024
Beautiful Boy
Art House
Emma Foster
46
Collage Class of 2025
Nature's Table Emma Foster Collage Class of 2025 47
Behind the Scenes
Photography
Zya Kelly
Class of 2025
48
Getting lost in the sea of they or we, no longer me but us.
Walking down the sidewalk is me, Silent and Solitary. From destination to destination, no time wasted but the we swirls around me, stripping me of me.
No longer am I seen, am I heard By you or them.
I pass by, not a word spoken, not even a glance Not given a chance to be who I am.
The me becomes lost in the sea, No longer me but we.
Colin Dixon Class of 2022
Me
49
What happens when you start a fire? It sparkles and glitters and shines. It doesn’t really seem that dire, The fire is small, in its confines.
A fire needs fuel and tinder though, You give that which you can and more. It hungers, it desires to grow. Even still, you don’t know its core.
Seeing all, you ignore the smoke. It’s in your lungs, and you’re, retch ing
You were too slow, and now you choke. All the while, the fire’s still catch ing.
On the ground, your vision blurry, One last mercy from God above: It moves quickly to engulf you, This all-consuming fire called Love
Zane Harper Class of 2024
Fire
50
Bovine Fields and Watchful Eyes
Class of 2023
Remi Miller
Photography
51
Pearlz Jackson LaCour Painting Class of 2025
52
Wonder Woman Emma Foster Collage
