theFlame
2014
Table Of Contents Poetry 6 13 14 16 29 30 33 34 38
A Backwards Moment Emily LaPlante Indigo Mireille Heidbreder Volatile Jane Blackmer Forgetting Proof Caroline Failon That Old Barn Abigail Winfree Terms and Conditions Jack Maraghy Octopus Anna Morgan The Radio Always Plays Emily Cyr Dreams Nash Wiley
Nonfiction 5 24 36 41
Instead of Paradise Mohamed Karabatek Lucky The Grass Grows Katie Ciszek The Longest Day Mohamed Karabatek The Long Carry William Dabney
Fiction
8 Truth Of Hazel Eyes Annie Norman, Sarah Newsome, Caroline Weinberg, Blair McLarin, and Sydney Stein 11 Alone Kyra Gregory 11 Chasing Memories Clair Spotts 26 The Raven On Anchor Street Caroline Henry 32 Season’s Greetings From The Hipsters Kelsey Mathern Editors Erin Cross Mireille Heidbreder Addie Johnson Staff Advisors
Emily LaPlante Anna Morgan Dorcas Afolayan Jordan Joseph Abigail Winfree Clair Spotts Allison Grainer Olivia Brown Allen Chamberlain Pete Follansbee
Artwork
Cover 1 2 3 3 4 7 12 15 17 17 17 17 17 18 19 20 22 23 24 29 31 33 35 37 38 39 40 41
Ella Massie Christy Bacon Ellie White Sydney Stein Eleanor Dillon Aven Jones Kyra Gregory Aven Jones Kyle Mosman Tori Spivey Emily Gerber Clair Spotts Addie Johnson May Donahue Allison Grainer Zach Jecklin Max Gordon Mait Innes Jack Maraghy Madeline Nagy Kyle Mosman Abigail Winfree Sydney Stein Peyton Lyons Ginny Zhang Erin Cross Rahily Sutton Payton Reed Addie Johnson
Special Thanks to the Darr Davis Advisory Board, B&B Printing, Taylor Dabney, the English and Art Departments, to theFlame Flash Fiction Contest judge, Amy Rider, and to theFlame Team Writing Writing Contest judges: George Wickham, Kate Cunningham, Charlie Williams, Rives Fleming Editors’ Note Our mission in this year’s edition of theFlame is to highlight the details that make a difference at Collegiate today. These details are to be found in the talent and creativity of our community. Our gift to you: A portrait of Collegiate in 2014.
The Flame is a creative arts publication produced by and for the students of the Collegiate Upper School, Richmond, Virginia.
Christy Bacon
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Ellie White
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Sydney Stein
Eleanor Dillon theFlame 3
Aven Jones
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Instead of Paradise Mohamed Karabatek I rested atop the monkey bars, my feet dangling below me. The pitter patter of rain tickled the hollow alloy of metals. I opened my eyes. I noticed the light reflecting off the rain; it distracted me from the wave of goosebumps surging through my body. The coldness of the night enveloped me, yet I failed to notice its grip on my weak figure. Then I saw him standing there, weeping. In his teary eyes, I saw the troubled young man he once was. I tried to make out the person, but my heart buckled. The troubled young man in the eyes of the weeping man was me.
* * *
My mother told me a story about the Islamic angel, Jibrael. Jibrael’s hands were characterized by thousands of fingers, continually moving like blades of grass in the wind. She told me Jibrael carried the responsibility of counting, on his fingers, all of the raindrops falling from the sky. The angel cried because he no longer desired to count the raindrops, but he could not defy the will of Allah. Jibrael’s tears fell like the very raindrops that he counted. After the story, I remember feeling overwhelmed; why didn’t he stop counting? Why didn’t he stop crying? Why didn’t he run away? My mother and I kept close–so close that, at times, minor quarrels escalated to major disputes. Nevertheless, we gradually forgave each other, which reinforced the love between us. She was the most important woman in my life, always caring for me when I needed her. Due to my father abandoning us, I matured at a relatively young age to assume the role of looking out for my mother and brothers. As a result, my mother depended on me to relieve the pressure in the household, a responsibility that meant the world to me. On that rainy night, I stopped assuming the responsibility, I stopped trying to relieve the pressure, and I stopped trying to count the raindrops. The same night, I had gotten into my routine quarrel with my mom. It continued to escalate, with more and more diatribes thrown around. “You’re just like your father!” my mother would cry. The knot in my throat began to expand. “At least my life isn’t a mess,” I would retaliate. “Get out of my house! Leave and don’t come back like him!” It hit me like a speeding bullet to my chest, I was in disbelief of what she said. I needed to collect my thoughts, but I couldn’t find them. Then, the knot in my throat exploded and I began to cry. I felt blinded by my rage and sadness, and I sprinted out of my house. Instead of running to paradise, I ran to the monkey bars. When I got to the schoolyard, I did not stop. I climbed to the top of the monkey bars and sat there. They were cold and wet, but I couldn’t notice it. It was raining, but I couldn’t notice it. I was crying, but I couldn’t notice it. I stopped counting the raindrops, but I couldn’t notice. Instead of paradise, I rested atop the monkey bars, my feet dangling below me. Instead of paradise, I heard the pitter patter of rain tickle the hollow alloy of metals. Instead of paradise, I opened my eyes and noticed the light reflecting off the rain. Instead of paradise, I saw him standing there, weeping, and in that moment, I saw myself.
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Sestina: A Backwards Moment Emily LaPlante She said to never let someone you care about go a day without knowing you love them. She looked back on her own life and told me to make my own mistakes. I wish I could tell her I love her every waking moment. What is a moment? A flash of sadness only some people know about. That time you thought, “Wow, I really love her.” Surrounded by your best friends, you want to tell them every one of your mistakes. A moment is one lifetime. As walls keep tumbling down, you are drawn to life. And in most moments you only think about your mistakes. You wonder, “What do people most care about?” You wish you could understand them, but you know one day death will claim you, and you’ll think of her. You’re running out of time thinking about her. How she tells you that you’ll get over it and eventually enjoy life. She doesn’t understand. She doesn’t see them. She can’t walk in to see this moment. You tell her it’s not her fault.You tell her not to think about each of her mistakes. You pace around these mistakes and you finally admit to her what these attempts are about. You hate this life. You can’t live with these moments because you really just despise them. You’ll never understand people. What makes them get over their mistakes. But in one brief moment, you know that you love her more than life. And that’s all you care about. You will always wonder about them and your life will surrender to your mistakes, your tears tell her everything in that one moment.
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Kyra Gregory
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Truth of Hazel Eyes Annie Norman, Sarah Newsome, Caroline Weinberg, Blair McLarin, Sydney Stein Winners of the Flame Team Writing Contest 2014
From what I can tell, we all start out in this world essentially honest and then life makes liars out of most of us. My Aunt Donna entered the convent at eighteen, left a few years later, married a couple of unlucky guys–including a New York City police officer who lost his job for trying to shoot her–(This is where my father, if he were still alive, would opine somberly, “Can you blame him?”)–and then moved to Chinatown to spend her golden years living with a woman named Winnie. “I don’t like to pry,” my grandmother always says in a stage whisper when Donna and Winnie are around. “But I’m certain they’re just very good friends.” I met Finn Ballard when he was four and I was three, and most days we played in a sandbox in Amsterdam while our mothers swapped expat housewife stories nearby. Once, after Finn took my red shovel, I bit him on the arm hard enough to draw blood. During the years after we moved to Switzerland, every time our mothers talked on the phone, I always pictured him crying. And so, as I rode my bike across Amsterdam some sixteen years after that bloody sandbox summit, I half-expected to encounter an overgrown toddler with boundary issues. What I wasn’t expecting to find, sitting at a table by a canal, his curly hair making a wild silhouette against the afternoon sun, was anything interesting–because when your mother makes you take a day off from school to go meet “an old friend who needs some cheering up” you know in advance it’s going to be a time suck. I locked my bike and trudged over to where he sat sprawled out like your typical scruffy, entitled, self-satisfied American. Finn stood up, looked me over slowly and said, “You know, Sylvie, your eyes aren’t really brown or green: they’re hazel. Hazel is the color of disappointment.” “Funny,” I said slowly. “I heard you got kicked out of Harvard just for being a jerk, but I’m completely sure they had plenty of other reasons.” Even though I was right in calling Finn a jerk, for whatever reason, I was completely drawn to him. He was certainly no toddler anymore; he was a man. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what made him so attractive to me. Was it his golden curls that looked so enticing? Was it the silhouette of his chiseled arms that were glowing in the sunlight? Was it the way his jaw line flexed when he bit down? I quickly realized how absurd these thoughts were that roamed through my brain and I came back to reality–where Finn and I lived two different lives. After a few years of playing in the sandbox with him, we slowly drifted apart after he entered into kindergarten. He quickly became “too cool” to be playing with a young dweeb like me. Even though we attended the same school during kindergarten, it was clear that Finn wanted nothing to do with me. On the playground during recess, he would play “King of the Hill” with his friends and they would race each other to the top. One day, I tried to join in on the fun and beat Finn to the summit of the hill. He quickly shoved me down yelling, “What do you think you’re doing? Girls aren’t allowed to play this game.” After that horrifying day on the playground, I decided that Finn and I were over. Done. My best friend from the sandbox had completely left me. Things were different at the canal though, the way he looked at me. His dark eyes were so harsh, yet sweet and genuine. We hadn’t been friends in such a long time, but suddenly it felt like we were sitting together again making small sandcastles and throwing sand into each others eyes, followed by one of us screaming, crying, and running to our mothers to tell on the other. I wanted to pry open his brain and figure out what he was thinking, what he was feeling. Because if I had to guess, I would have said he was completely, head over heels, in love with me. Well, maybe it was just wishful thinking.
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I soon became lost amongst all my wishful thinking, only to be drawn back to reality by noticing that his beautiful eyes had begun to well with tears. “So then they just gave me the old boot,” he mumbled in the manliest voice he could muster, as if a deeper tone was somehow compensation for the warm tears accumulating just above his bottom eyelashes. “And now I’m right back where I started. In Amsterdam. Living with mom. I had one chance, Sylvie. And I blew it.” He blinked and the tear broke free from his beautiful eye, rolled down to the tip of his nose, and stopped. He didn’t even attempt to wipe it off; he pretended as if it weren’t there. My mouth opened and closed slowly. I tried, but no words came, and all I wanted was to shove back into my mouth my previous words about his expulsion. I had been far too distracted to hear the details of his account, but it was obviously painful enough for him to describe it once, so I was not going to pry. Still at a loss for words, and yet feeling an excessively strong desire to ease his pain and wipe the tear lingering precariously at the tip of his nose, I heard myself suggesting that we go on a walk together. I had absolutely no idea how a walk would help the situation, or even where we would go, but I had the feeling Finn wasn’t so worried about where we would end up, as much as he was content to just have somewhere to go. This feeling was confirmed by the speed at which he practically flew off the table and made his way towards the bridge arching over the canal, with me in tow. As we reached the summit of the bridge, we looked into the rippling water beneath us, barely making out our ephemeral silhouettes in the reflection. I couldn’t help but notice the fact that the tear had vanished from Finn’s nose, and that his beautiful eyes were no longer concealed by a watery film. I was watching his beautiful, chiseled face, but I tried to conceal my obvious stare, hoping he wouldn’t notice. I didn’t know what to say next. I guess we shouldn’t talk about the last chance that he blew, but what should we talk about? We’ve been apart for so many years. Do we have anything in common anymore? Finn cleared his throat and asked pointedly, “How have you been, Sylvie?” Should I tell him about the list of unlucky guys I had associated with, or would that hint at my interest in him? I needed to say something, so I mumbled “I’ve been good, I guess you could say.” I really was hoping he wouldn’t pry too much. I didn’t know who I really was, so how could I tell him? As I watched our silhouettes in the river, it reminded me of our late afternoons in the sandbox years ago. I remember making shadows in the sand with Finn as the sun went down as our mothers would tell us it was time to go home. This was always the saddest part of the day. But this memory made me feel closer to Finn. I finally felt comfortable, easy, and relaxed with him. I opened up to Finn. I told him about my bad luck with the men I dated, and he shared similar stories about women. We began talking about how much we loved spending time together when we were kids. He even apologized for the time when he pushed me down at the summit of the big hill. He stopped speaking and he looked into my disappointed hazel eyes, I couldn’t remove my eyes from his beautiful stare. All I wanted to do was look away, but nothing could keep my eyes from his. After a few moments of uninterrupted silence, Finn slowly moved his hand from out of his right pocket. I watched his movements, my body frozen where I sat, but my mind anything but frozen. I haven’t seen Finn in so long, why do I feel so strange around him? We used to be so comfortable together, and now I feel nervous even breathing next to him. I looked behind me for a second to act like I was curious about what was going on around us, to make it seem like I wasn’t completely and hopelessly glued to staring at his perfect face.
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While curiously looking behind me, I felt a warmth on one of my hands. Startled, I turned back toward Finn, realizing this warmth was from Finn’s own hand. My eyes nervously made their way from where our hands shyly touched to the summit of his curly head, purposely skipping his eyes. “Sylvie… I need to tell you the truth about something really important.” My heart began beating fast again, my ears anxiously waiting to hear his next thoughts, hoping they were what I was dying to hear. “I didn’t actually get kicked out of Harvard… To be honest, I never even got in.” I was shocked into a full minute of silence, waiting for him to say he was joking. This doesn’t make sense. Why would he lie about something like this? “Finn, no, this isn’t true!” I stammered. Why would you make that up?” “I had to get out of Amsterdam, at least for a little while, there were things...things I needed to think about and sort out. But now I have thought long enough, and I know how I truly feel and what I want,” he said quickly. Okay, I was thinking, this has got to be the part where he tells me he loves me and has returned to start a life with me. Filled with hope, I passionately grabbed his other hand, creating a silhouette of our two hands as a shadow on the bridge. “Finn, what have you figured out?” I asked, even though I was sure I already knew the answer. “Well...I’m not sure how to say this Sylvie, but I…I…” his voice trailed away. “I love you too!” I shouted. Shocked and nervous, I quickly covered my mouth with both my hands, and then began fanning my face as it turned red, while my eyes stared doggedly at the ground. Utterly shocked and at a loss of words, Finn muttered quietly, “No Sylvie, I’m so sorry. I left Amsterdam because I thought I was gay. And now I’ve come back because I know that it’s the truth.” That’s when I realized that life doesn’t make liars out of everyone. Sometimes, you meet someone who cares about you enough to tell you the truth no matter how badly you don’t want to hear it. And that gift, the gift of honesty, just may be the greatest gift of all. I will never love another man like I loved Finn Ballard that day on the bridge, but I will love other men in different ways and better ways and worse ways. The last time I saw Finn he was getting on the train in London and heading off to St. Andrews. “You know,” Sylvie, he said. “Hazel isn’t really the color of disappointment, it’s the color of home. See you soon, kid.” And he did.
[The above story, “Truth of Hazel Eyes,” was selected by a panel of four judges as the winner of the 2014 Flame Team Writing Contest. One writer writes his or her section of the story before passing it on to a teammate, who continues the piece until the fifth writer must bring the story to a close. Among the rules each writer had to follow was the required usage of this year’s three words: pry, summit, silhouette.]
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Winners of the 2014 Flame Flash Fiction Contest Chasing Memories Clair Spotts I didn’t used to be like this. Back in the day, in my childhood, when I would run around chasing butterflies in fields of daisies. I know that sounds cliche and all, but it’s the truth. I was a kid. I was just a normal kid. I would skip around, my jeans brushing together, like tch, tch, tch. I would walk in the morning, just listening to the breeze, rustling the leaves of the apple trees. And the sunrises. They were always amazing. Reflecting off the water. The possibility of the day ahead. I’d talk to the ducks, and they’d talk back to me. And sometimes I would go swimming with Tanja and we’d talk about everything. She’d ask me how school was going, and I’d say alright. I’d ask her about her new job as a chemist, and she’d smile. She wouldn’t tell me about it, though. Some days were rough, that was true. But some days, most days, everything was fine. I’d go about my usual routine, and everything was normal. But those few rough days, they got worse. The butterflies went away. And the fields of daisies. And the sunsets and the river. And Tanja. There were times I would find myself alone, in a room, staring straight ahead and wondering how I’d gotten there. My friends were supportive, at first. They tried to help me out. But still I was disappearing this way and that. I didn’t know where I was. Things started to disappear. Memories. I’d wake up in the morning, downstairs, eating cereal, already dressed and ready to go for the day, but having no recollection of getting there. And then, those few lost minutes, hours, became days, weeks, months even. I’m still missing last January. And people, because they were people now, not friends, would try to tell me what happened in those lost memories of mine, what I’d missed. And sometimes it was just normal things, like getting dressed. But, and later on it became mostly this, they couldn’t place where I was or where I’d been. I had just simply disappeared. So I’d go back. Step by step I’d go back, trying to figure out where I’d gone. Sometimes I’d get pretty close, too. I’d talk to people who saw me. On the streets. In cafés. At the movies. I was a detective, following my own leads. But I never got back to the origin. I never returned to the place where I had started. I never knew where I was. Even now, as I stare down at my charred hands, I realize. I don’t know where I am.
Alone Kyra Gregory Her laughter breaks the silence; it shatters around her and rains down like broken glass, freeing her from its intangible prison. She walks through the field laughing out of pure joy, her bare calloused feet sensing the ground and everything it connects to. She feels the soft, padded footsteps of a child, the sunlight bathing a woman’s face, the trees grasping the soil, water rushing over rocks, the Earth moving, atoms buzzing, stars exploding, the universe expanding. And in this moment she exists with it all in pure, uncensored enlightenment. With the stars hiding behind the thick clouds and the crickets murmuring around her, she lifts her chin to the moon and closes her eyes. The darkness breaks the shackles of the day and thickly cloaks her in aloneness, melting away masks and misconceptions, and leaving her naked and exposed where no one can possible see. At peace and alone, raw emotion runs rampant, and freedom engulfs her. The swirling night churns in anticipation and possibility. The stars rejoice in her presence, the sky awakens from its slumber, and the ground rises up to meet her. Her heartbeat quickens as she races through the darkness; the night swells around her, matching her pulse. She is free until the sun catches the horizon and forces her back to prison. She is a nightcrawler, an insomniac, a nocturnal one. theFlame 11
Aven Jones
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Indigo Mireille Heidbreder I broke the stained glass windows Because they lied to me. When she lay on the ground Like a puppet, I was the puppeteer With no arms. Lying underneath The table, my memories sit One by one, aligned In a box, Organized by color. Sitting on the couch, The TV flashes Blurred figures, Dancing on my face. I could have stayed home Between the curls Of smoke from my father, Asking God for forgiveness From the very room I sinned in. I could have plucked the keys From my friend’s hand, Like the extra glass of liquor He took from mine. It didn’t have to End this way. The floorboards complain Under my feet, Cracking my mirror Of life. That box Of crayons Is still in My sight. theFlame 13
Volatile Jane Blackmer
Part I: Empty My thoughts were taken captive and all I received was a ransom note, magazine-cut letters clambering across the page– I strike them down to cut their motion, stop the progression, trim the grass. Growing in the drainpipe and dying with the weeds in the flower bed– unable to umbrella into complete thoughts of glass– delicate, breakable, transparent, a fragile worry of a desperate flower. I sold their secrets for a dime, amber rubies, and a quilted totem, just to hear the screaming pounding on the inside of my skull, trying to break free as magazine Barbies curl their lips and release the letters from their prison, sending them back into motion. And the thoughts betray me and never come back. Were they stolen in the first place, or did they run away?
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Part II: Looking for a Whole
Part III: The Battle
What’s the matter? Gosh, I don’t know. Something’s gone, something’s missing. It washed down the drain as the sink dripped along to the beat of eternity and found a new home among last night’s dinner– a fallen ring (someone’s in trouble for that one) and an unfulfilled promise, airing itself out to dry.
He was a fallow field in winter, trying to cultivate life, imprisoned on his leash and the cement of their standards.
The blades of the disposal will surely break us. That is, if we are still whole, if we are not broken already. I’m not sure. What’s the matter? Maybe that’s the matter.
Rocks thrown through the window: I eye them. They blink in morse code messages that were never delivered. She sits by her pretty little vanity mirror, waiting for pretty little messages that never come. She should know better, but that pretty little head doesn’t carry the cargo of a jet plane, or a mother’s burden. Does she know? Thoughts crash into the sand, leaving a temporary imprint and then fade slowly down to the stars: sandcastle constellations of a broken heart. Can you hear them whispering?
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Ghazal: Forgetting Proof Caroline Failon Now that we have gone through all the evidence, I’d love to bid farewell to the evidence. Mark the crime scene with sharp yellow caution tape To construct a cell around the evidence. Trace the aged rings on the hollowed surface and Neglect the past as tortoiseshell evidence. Follow the bloody trail that leads to the door; Then investigate the shrapnel evidence. Once again stranded in the indigo night, Rummaging for morel mushroom evidence. I should banish all I’ve failed on from my sight, Yet pinned on my coat lapels is evidence.
[This poem was selected as an honarable mention in the Hollins University Nancy Thorp Poetry Contest]
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Tori Spivey
Clair Spotts
Winners of the Instaflame Photo Contest
Emily Gerber
Addie Johnson
2014
May Donahue theFlame 17
Allison Grainer
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Zach Jecklin
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Max Gordon theFlame 21
Mait Innes
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Jack Maraghy
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Lucky The Grass Grows Katie Ciszek
Lbrain,ately,bouncing Emily has been the only thing inside my head: a single elastic thought in my otherwise vacant off the walls of my skull and echoing through the corridors of my mind. I sit down to
write an essay for a class, and every other topic evaporates before my pen can even meet the paper. So I’ve stopped trying to fight that. This is for Emily. And anyone who says she’s not a valid essay topic. . . is right. 24 theFlame
She’s not an essay. She’s not a novel or an epic poem. She can’t be diminished into words on a page or my silly attempt to string scattered thoughts together into grammatically incorrect sentences. But I will try nonetheless because Emily, who sleeps with a dictionary of unusual words at her nightside table, is a lover of language. And I am a lover of language. And I am a lover of Emily. And I am just crazy enough to attempt a marriage of the two. When I first met Emily, my eyebrows and confidence had finally begun to grow in, but I was still trying to rid myself of residual middle school memories. I wanted someone to grab a hose and powerwash all the grime and dust and puberty off of me. I wanted to forget the lackadaisical boys and the ruthless preteen girls. I stumbled over my insecurities and into the realm of high school, more specifically, the first rehearsal for Sound of Music. Emily was new as a freshman, and although I had been at Collegiate for five years, I’m a bit ashamed to say that my three best friends had left for other high schools, leaving me in roughly the same situation as Emily: awkward, sticky, get-me-out-of-here solitude. Thank God for Tori, who would also prove to be an amazing friend. Fearless, confident Tori introduced Emily and me, and in that moment, we both knew we would become friends. I’m not sure how. Nothing particularly amazing happened. There was no jolt of energy that struck me when she first smiled at me. The world didn’t freeze when we shook hands. But I looked at her coppery bangs with the silver strand held tightly by her hairclip, at her thick eyebrows and strong nose, her lovely smile and kaleidoscopic eyes, and I thought that if reincarnation does exist, then I definitely knew this girl in a past life. Our friendship was nearly instantaneous. And since then I’ve grown to know the messier parts of her. We’ve cried together; we’ve laughed to the point of oxygen deprivation. She has become my great friend in the truest sense of the word. But four years later, I am still perplexed. I cannot fathom how Emily works. She is ambiguity of the best variety. And although Madeline’s lovely art tantalizes minds with questions, Emily can’t be confined to the blue and purple triangles of a torn painting, sewn together with red string. She can’t be reduced to colors on a two dimensional surface. Don’t even try to find her in a certain song, because three to four minutes of melody can’t mimic the staccato rhythm of her heart. Pulsing, breathing with love. Bu-dum. Bu-dum. Bu-dum. I’m here. I’m here. I’m here. There is sugar in her veins. Reaching for the corners of her fingertips, leaving a thin film of crystallized kindness over everything she touches. I want to tell her all of this. And, Emily, I’d say to her, don’t worry about finding your color. I know she sees people as colors and she wonders sometimes if she’ll amount to anything more than grey. Let it go, I’d say. Because one color could never capture her; I doubt I could find her anywhere on the electromagnetic spectrum; she is more than photons or waves. And come to think of it, finding her spirit animal is akin to finding Atlantis. It would probably be some beautiful, graceful, humble creature who sank with the rest of that platonic island. She is more than the shadows underneath her eyes. She is more than the unanswered questions she encounters at 4 a.m. I want to unroll her mind and lay it flat like a map, to examine her topography. All the mountains she has climbed would be there in print. Every river, stream, estuary, marks a rivulet that has flowed from the very lakes of her eyes. I’d scan each inch of terrain and try my hardest not to want to fix any of the pain, because we all know that some beautiful things are better left untouched by unclean hands. And her mind is a truly beautiful thing. The contour lines I’d find there would resemble the lines that have crossed her forehead, or each line of sight: the world according to Emily. Everywhere she looks, a star: she puts Olber’s paradox to rest. I’ve watched her through her hardships, even held her hand through many of them. I’ve felt how much life can weigh on her, and I’ve seen it take its toll on her. And yet, she is still the kindest, most loving person I know. Rumi said, “The ground’s generosity takes in our compost and grows beauty. Try to be more like the ground.” In all my searching, this quote is the only thing that has captured the essence of Emily. Portrait of Emily by Madeline Nagy
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The Raven on Anchor Street Caroline Henry Charlie Banker lived on 4326 Anchor Street. He was a different kind of kid, with a spotted family history, past, and childhood. No one really knew why he left or where he went to, but one day he was gone. In our town of Makersville, PA not much happened. It was your typical suburban town: Craftsman houses lined up in perfect rows that became streets and neighborhoods. The school was in the middle of the town, within walking distance for most, along with the church, the library, the police station, and the grocery store that was owned by the Somers family, who lived on Jenkin Lane. I wouldn’t say we were a perfect town, because we weren’t. We had kids like Charlie and his family. But I guess every town had those kids too. So maybe we were somewhat approaching the perfection that was the ideal suburban town that was featured on Saturday night television. But if we were perfect, then why did he leave? Why didn’t he stay? For a while it was what was on everyone’s minds, but then the situation fell back into the shadows of the past, like the town’s football team did every year after losing the final game. But I didn’t forget. It’s hard to forget something like that when you live across the street from the kid your whole life. He wasn’t popular but you knew he was there. No one at school talked to him but everyone talked about him. He was one of those kids. The kind that no one would really miss if they were gone, but you would notice if they were missing. You don’t really think that a high school age kid could have that much of an impact on a town of 2300 people, but Charlie did. Charlie was not your average kid. His parents were divorced and out of the picture. He was living with his aunt Clara in the house on Anchor Street–though “living with” was probably an overstatement given his aunt’s real whereabouts were with her boyfriend in Florida. It was his sophomore year of high school when people really started to notice him. Trouble never really came up in the creaky halls of Makersville High. Sure there were the town scumbags who breathed their marijuana-filled scent all through the back hallways and closets of the seventy-eight-year-old building that the town called their school. But this kind of trouble was different. The smell was horrendous. It wafted through the halls like the smell of charring glass that came from the science labs, filling every nose, classroom, and locker in the school. Teenagers wandered through the halls, mouths and noses covered with sweatshirts, textbooks, and paper towels from the moldy bathrooms to try and avoid the stench that was plaguing the air. No one but me had their eye on Charlie, like always, but it’s a good thing I did. While everyone else was busying themselves with the stench, I was watching everyone and everything. That’s why I saw what was in Charlie’s locker. The dead raven that sat on the top shelf of his locker had obviously been sitting there all weekend, marinating between the pages of the ink filled spirals and textbooks he had forgotten to take home. The strangest thing about it though was that it didn’t phase him at all. Charlie closed his locker and carried on with his day like nothing had happened. Then things got weirder. Charlie volunteered at the hospital on the weekends, visiting with patients and cleaning rooms and laundry. It was a normal week at the hospital and Mary Owens, Charlie’s favorite patient was doing just fine. Her late stage leukemia had reached a plateau and for the past couple of weeks her condition had remained the same.
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Charlie was in the room with her when the machines went off, or so said the nurse that was on duty. She told me that Mary’s eyes rolled back in her head and she started to seize. And as the monitors started to scream, Charlie kissed the woman’s hand quickly and ducked out of the room before any of the hospital staff arrived. The doctors and nurses spent the next three hours in the operating room trying to keep Mary alive and determine what caused the seizure. After the three hours of fighting, they lost, and Mary surrendered to the disease that she had been battling most of her life. The nurse’s interest in the story dwindled as she neared the end of it, like she was used to telling sad hospital stories like this to people all the time. It was like the bit about Charlie wasn’t even strange to her, until she mentioned the feather. It was the only weird thing about the visit to her, other than the seizure of course. They found it under Mary’s pillow when they were cleaning out her room. A long black feather, one that used to belong to a raven. It was those kind of things that really made me think about Charlie, how he could be so caring and reserved one minute and then all these strange things happened around him. I spent the last years that he was still in town trying to figure out what fueled all these incidents. Was it just a teenage rebellion? Was it that he wasn’t doing well in school? His parents had lived in the town of Makersville since they were kids and loved living there. He had amazing influences, ones that you would think would steer a kid in the right direction. Not steer him into a late night flame of hatred that would cause him to deface the front of the town library with spray paint, engraving the word RAVEN across the front door in red. Everyone knew he was strange. Charlie was always strange, but as he got older it got worse and worse. His clothes got darker and darker. His grades got lower and lower, which was almost unheard of in the town of Makersville. But he wasn’t a real delinquent. He never did anything more than what would receive community service as punishment. He was never arrested. He was confused and troubled. When Charlie left everyone was confused. The first day or so no one really noticed. A day off from school wasn’t that unusual, you know, maybe he had a stomach bug or something. But after three days and the absence of the dark and gloomy figure wandering around town, people realized that he really was gone. Rumors circulated the town. He was in jail for killing a girl in the next town over. He’s being homeschooled in the basement of his house and his aunt won’t let him come out. He committed suicide in his bathtub and his aunt had hidden his body. Everyone had their own reason he was gone, but I was the only one that I think even had a reason somewhat close to the real thing that made Charlie Banker leave. It was the perfection. The perfection of the little town of Makersville, Pennsylvania. Where everyone got perfect grades and went off to the state college, but always seemed to return home to carry on the family business. It was the perfection of the town landmarks. Standing perfectly pristine in the center of town, posed, as if a magazine photographer was always coming in to take pictures of the perfection that was the library for their front cover. It was the expectation that you were going to grow up perfectly, with the best manners and etiquette. It was the perfection that was expected of you in school or on the field–things that Charlie was never able to live up to. Charlie was mediocre. He wasn’t at the top or at the bottom. He was just there. And in the town of Makersville there was no “there”; there was only perfection. Or at least that’s what Charlie thought.
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On the night Charlie left I was up in my room studying for a biology test. I was up later than usual and I guess Charlie didn’t expect me to be awake at the ungodly hour that he left. It caught my attention when the motion sensor lights went off in his driveway across the street. The small gaslit street lights that lined Anchor Street barely cast enough of a glow for you to see the shoes that were on your own two feet when you were walking at night; and the shock of the unpredicted brightness caught me off guard. I forgot about the functions of chloroplasts for a second as I glanced up to scan the street with my bloodshot eyes that were running on caffeine. Seeing nothing unusual, I returned to the green plant diagrams that plagued my biology textbook, hoping to absorb some of the material on the pages. After a couple minutes of undisturbed brightness, the light across the street turned off. I had dozed off for a good five minutes when I woke up to the clang of metal hitting metal somewhere outside. I quietly made my way out of my room, down the stairs and out the front door onto the driveway when I noticed the light was back on across the street. Just before it clicked off again I noticed the dark and gloomy figure making its way down the street. I breathily yelled at the figure, trying to catch his attention, and in response the figure turned around. The small face of Charlie Banker peeked out from underneath a black hood, and with a smile and a nod he turned around and continued on down the street. I looked up and down Anchor Street, or what I could see of it, after Charlie’s body disappeared from my view. No one was up, no one had seen him go. No one but me. I slowly started to drag my sleep-deprived body back up my front walkway when I noticed the card sticking out of the mailbox. Even now, years later, Charlie still comes up in the town gossip. Someone mentioning that they heard he had become a big shot on Wall Street. Or that they had seen him back at his aunt’s house the other day. But I knew none of that was true. Because Charlie would never return to the town that he left–or become that “big shot” that was agreeably some people’s version of perfection. That wasn’t Charlie. And I knew it because of what the card said. I still have the card from that night. It’s tucked away in my wallet and I still look at it occasionally, because it’s somewhat inspirational. Charlie knew I had been watching and that I had in fact noticed him; that’s why I received it. That card is the one thing that helped me understand Charlie and why he left. And what it says I will never forget, even though the town may sometimes forget the man who wrote it. Never change yourself for perfection, because somewhere out there you are the perfection someone is looking for. And when I read over those words that dark night, our senior year of high school, I knew that no one else could have written it, because drawn as a signature at the bottom of the now yellowed and treasured card was a picture of a black raven starting to take flight.
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That Old Barn Abigail Winfree That old barn stood way far down home Where the rope swing once swung And where Blackie and Pale Face were once slaughtered. That old barn, that fed the family That held Queen–at whose death they rejoiced– And where the children earned their keep. And many years later that old barn fell. The grandchildren remembered the memories; They saw themselves as children. That old barn was the place Where they knew their grandfather lived, Where he was young again And that one piece of wood from that old barn Recalls the bloody mosquito bites And the summers that delivered them.
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Terms & Conditions Jack Maraghy
I hope you remember your first love. Mine was a girl named Robin. With hair as red as her namesake, I spied her from across the pre-K classroom. She was in the pretend kitchen area, making pretend spaghetti; she made the best pretend spaghetti. With brow bent in frustration with her meatballs, her hair, like fire, licked her face as she shook her head, and she had freckles as numerous as the stars and just as bright. Suddenly, she looked up from her bowl of uncooperative meat. And as her eyes ascended I swear she snuck a glance at me. In this moment I fell in love with a preschool angel I’d never spoken to. This is my oldest memory; falling in love is the first event on the timeline of my life. Now that my timeline is a little bit longer, I spend a lot more of it looking for answers, Answers to questions a preschool angel could solve with a heartbeat. For the day will come when I have to hold my father’s dead hand. And there will be a day when my children hold mine, and my grandchildren will ask where I’ve gone, but no one will have an answer for them. You see, we live our lives as if we will never die. Denying the finite number of throbs our hearts have. And too late will we know the meaning of darkness as our eyes stale and our beloved consciousness turns to little more than sparks of a distant previous. There are sixteen letters in my name. I am sixteen letters. Sixteen little scratches on a page. And we’re all just letters unfit to carry our souls just as words are unfit to contain their meaning, every moment threatening to burst. So every day, we tell ourselves, “This one will be different.” We say, “Today, I’m going to kiss her, because she is young and I am young. Because she is beautiful and deserves the world and I am poor but rich with color.” We say, “Today, I’m going to weep. And, if only for a moment, I will take all of your pain because I know one day I’ll need the same.”
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We say, “Today I’m going to run, because the jolt in our knees is the only way to know that we are alive.” But we do none of this. Instead, we lay in the dark, throwing question marks toward the ceiling just so they can drop like lead and stab us in the chest. And oh how we bleed. We bleed into poems and books, songs and art. But no matter what we use to cover our wounds, the blood never stops. Some of us drown and some of us learn to float. I’m making a raft with these tired words, and I want you to help me. Because I wish to straighten the crinkles in your mind and I want you to straighten mine. I need you to remind me to kiss her and to weep for a while. Remind me to run. Hold me when I start to slip and I’ll hold you. Don’t let me forget that we are all full to the brim with throbs, and we have more than enough time to use them. And if you lose me, I’ll be there: sitting in preschool, grasping at red feathers, gripping my first memory as if it would save me. See, I’ll always be waiting for Robin to come complete my Swiss cheese soul. Because I only learned to love angels from across the room. I guess it’s just part of coming to terms with being human.
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Season’s Greetings from the Hipsters Kelsey Mathern Merry ironic Christmas, our conventional friends! We’ve had a very busy year in our household. My husband, August, started a new artisan pencil sharpening business during his namesake month, which thrived as trendy parents purchased their beanie-wearing babies’ sustainable school supplies. But, as October rolled around, we decided as a family to venture into something a little less mainstream. So, August is now a proud craftsman of hand-carved handles for straight razor blades. He’ll be happy to attach any custom straight razor blade at a fair price, and they make wonderfully unusual Christmas gifts! Our unique children have also had an eventful year. Halcyon, at the tender age of six months, has received her first pair of Ray Ban Wayfarers, and although most of you would agree that these glasses have become rather popular, no one has thought to put them on a baby yet! Plus, they look great with her hand-knit Etsy flower headband! Also, our dear six-year-old son, Corduroy, has released his first album of folk rap nursery rhymes which has gotten rave reviews on Pitchfork. We couldn’t be prouder parents, Corduroy! Instead of engaging in the mass consumerism that Christmas promotes, we will be celebrating Festivus, which our family actually invented back in the early 1900’s. I guess you could say we liked Festivus before everyone else. Happy Festivus, everyone! The Hipsters
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Octopus Anna Morgan She slithers through the water, reaching out puckered hands. A sly predator combing the ocean. Spindly limbs flex, rubber, elastic, slimy. Bitter, salty octopodes, like Medusa’s spawn. Pruned and wrinkled, curling, looping mass. Stretched between each arm, translucent tissue skin. Full of disdain, she glides through indigo waters, head held high, her gaze following smaller fish
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Sestina:The Radio Always Plays Emily Cyr We danced to that endless song on the radio, without fear of anyone watching, doors open. The cyclical nature of the movement lilted happily, and I laughed until tears fell from my eyes, and I almost threw my cares out the window, but the girl in the corner looked too small. I myself had never felt smaller than when I heard her crying over the sound of the radio. It was just us, and I stared out the window dreaming of a world where hearts were open, determinedly avoiding the shine of her tears and focusing instead on the music, the lilt. She speaks with a birdlike lilt to her voice, and everything about her is small. We’ve shared everything: memories, books, tears. When she laughs, people turn off their radios to listen to her heart broadcasting, open to the world, reverberating off of the windows. She likes to look down from windows and see people walking with their particular lilts, trying their best not to be too open. She wishes I wouldn’t make myself so small, but I prefer to keep my heart compact enough to fit inside a radio, too condensed to have any spare room to produce tears. We don’t wear much makeup; tears are the liners under our eyes, using the window as a mirror, distracting ourselves with happiness on a radio. Music has this magical power, lilting just enough to make an oh-so-small happy impact on a life you’d rather not be kept open. We keep things to ourselves. See, open lives are for the people with silly tears who worry over everything small, while she and I live looking out of the window. And our lives don’t run with a lilt; our lives are too still, trapped, like static on the radio. I hate the radio now, and never drive with the windows open. Any lilt, a snapshot of a moment of a song, would be drowned by all of the tears. I see the beauty in a windowsill, and how it can be endless, however small. 34 theFlame
Peyton Lyons
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The Longest Day Mohamed Karabatek I remember getting off the bus on a Monday, the gleaming sunlight reflected off the dark asphalt. I remember the road and how it felt with each step I took. I remember my backpack, filled with pencil shavings and broken crayons. I remember the pinecones I stepped on, and the way they fit the contour of my feet. I also remember the sound they released–as if they held it in and anticipated its escape–a splintering noise that became the tune of my existence. At the time, I didn’t know that. How could a child know that? I remember opening the door, the aroma of my mother’s cooking melting away the stress I carried. The transition of going from school to my house was the same; it became something I could trust. Looking back, I wish I had treasured it more; I wish I had done something to preserve the moment; I wish I knew what was happening. The last I remember of him was his face. The withered bags under his eyes defined the life of an immigrant with a dream. The evanescent smile, which my mother and I cherished, ceased to surface. His bloodshot eyes exhibited depression, yet he could not cry. Not in front of me. Every week, my father would decorate my ceiling with luminescent stars. I remembered the steps groaning, and the light pouring in from the corridor light as he stepped into the room. I noticed the addition of a star, and I lay in my bed observing its shape. While gazing at the star, I thought of its purpose. Why was this particular star clinging to my ceiling? Why did it keep me awake throughout the night? Why did it anger me certain nights while exciting me other nights? At the time I didn’t know that. How could a child know that? I remember asking my mom every day if he had returned, but I was always let down with a “No honey, he is on a business trip in New York, remember?” or “Baby, he is on a long business trip.” I remember feeling distressed every time I would hear that. I counted the days my father was gone; I planned on telling him when he got back. I remember thinking if I did that, he would never leave us again. Months and months went by, the transition remained the same, the pattern continued unchanged.Yet each day that I didn’t see my dad, my hope began to deteriorate. I began to think that he would never come back. I began to look at the stars on my ceiling not with anger or excitement, but with sorrow and unknown depression. Looking back to that Monday, I find it extraordinary how that one day tore my family apart. One day when I was told something I shouldn’t have heard. One day when I could no longer look my father in the eyes. One day when my heart began throbbing and my hope vanished. When I came home from the bus, I looked at my mom. “Where is he?” “Baby, he is on a long trip.” She said with a crack in her voice. I looked outside the window; it was a beautiful day outside. “Mom, Sarah told me that Daddy came to her house last night and got his stuff and left. Why didn’t he stop by our house, Mama? Why won’t he see us? Doesn’t he want to see us?” “I haven’t seen him for 284 days, Mama,” I continued.“Doesn’t he love us?” I asked. “Doesn’t he love me?” I continued looking outside, but tears blurred my vision. She looked puzzled at first; then the color in her face began to fade away. I saw the fear and trauma in her eyes as they swelled up with water. Compared to the gleaming sunlight outside, her figure now became frail and cold. Through my tears, I saw her beginning to cry. I hugged her, holding her close to me. It was still beautiful outside, I remember hearing some of the birds chirping. Then I could not hear a thing. I couldn’t hear the chirping of the birds. I couldn’t hear my mother crying. I could only hear the splintering pinecone noise coming from within me. I didn’t know what was going on at the time, but I remember a piece of me was crushed that day. It was the piece that cared about the purpose of the stars on my ceiling. It was the piece that cared about how many days he had been gone. All 284 of them. It was the piece that had full faith in the pattern of my childhood. It was the piece that could trust. It was the piece that helped me feel whole. All of those pieces, gone. How could I have known?
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Ginny Zhang
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Dreams NashWiley A dream is a red dog. A red dog barking at a pretty woman in a black dress made of coal flying her silver Porsche as the sun comes up and the crisp winter air makes a movie of the dog’s orange breath. Dreams are made of things you have seen heard felt. A paragraph from a book with a line of a poem, and a quote from a song colliding with a clip from a TV show and a pretty girl from a movie. All exist, just coming together in unity to make the perfect world.
Don’t call it a dream. Call it a possible. A tall man in a shiny suit with a baseball bat standing on top of the Eiffel Tower with your best friend whistling the tune to an unknown song as the last glimpse of orange sunlight dips to purple then black and then finally, gravity flips. And you slowly drift away.
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Rahily Sutton
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Payton Reed 40 theFlame
The Long Carry William Dabney It’s late summer. We turn right, onto a gravel road. The tan-grey gravel crunches beneath us, shifting slightly as we move along. The road slopes down, away into the woods that tower on either side. We are alone in the middle of these trees, the middle of a forest, the middle of the wilderness. But I’m not looking at the woods, just the tan-grey sea beneath. My friend is exhausted. We stop and switch places. There is a mile marker ahead, on the left side of the road. No, wait, it’s in kilometers. It’s been about one mile. A car passes by us on our right; earlier an all-terrain vehicle had gone by on our right, it was going in the opposite direction. Even though the sun isn’t directly shining on me, I can still feel the heat: the blistering heat and the sweat as it clings on my arms, on my back, and on my face. But not my shoulders, there is something much heavier on my shoulders.
Addie Johnson