INTRODUCTION
After over two years of lockdown, closed borders, and mask mandates, the world is beginning to return to its previous normalcy. For many students at NYU Abu Dhabi, this return includes the end of mask mandates and Al Hosn green passes, the revival of Student Interest Group activities, and the renewal of impromptu mid-semester travel plans. Some veteran and new students may recognise this state of affairs as “normal” or, at least, as a return to the normal. Others are experiencing a slow shift, an opening into a version of NYUAD they have never seen before, having started university life remotely or with restrictions on gatherings, socializing, and the like. What is returning to some is a beginning to others and so we ask:
As the world emerges from the shadows of the coronavirus pandemic, how do we begin to return to normal? And what should that “normal” look like? Should it be the same as before? Or can it be better? What does it mean, in other words, to begin, possibly again?
Returning to normal doesn’t have to mean abandoning all those things that proved useful or instructive during the pandemic. Though the Fall 2022 semester marked a full return to in-person operations at NYUAD, our editorial board found Zoom, Google Jamboard, and polling websites to be indispensable tools that allowed us to connect across campuses and timezones, and discuss this issue and its contributions. The possibility of hosting hybrid meetings broadened our ability to communicate with members with far more freedom than would have been considered possible in pre-pandemic years.
Beyond the convenience of online meetings and asynchronous coordination, however, these questions of how to begin again manifested
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in discussions about how to evaluate the pieces submitted to Airport Road 14. Time and time again, we asked ourselves (and each other) what it meant for a work to be “generic,” “unique,” “relatable,” or “unusual”; how these qualities should factor into our evaluation of pieces; and what the basis of a distinctive work of art should be. Over time, we developed an increasing appreciation for the way art asks us to rethink what we think we know, and for how it probes us to look at the world around us through new and/or different lenses.
The pieces in this issue do exactly that. Pivoting around the idea of changes that we have been confronted with as a society, they bring to the forefront themes such as loss, movement, and communication. Taking place in worlds both realistic and fantastical, across seasons and continents, the reader journeys from Tokyo to Abu Dhabi to Cyprus, through airports and in taxis and even the journals of loved ones, reminiscing about conversations with grandparents, and confronting the light and darkness that pervade various facets of our lives. Cycles of life, of birth, and death, growth and setbacks, unfold before our very eyes as we recognize resonances amongst work from the array of talented artists and writers featured in this issue.
Bombastic in some places and subtle in others, these works of art force us to reckon with these complicated times with honesty, without losing sight of what we have right now, and what lies ahead. Previous issues have confronted what it means to create art during times of great upheaval, and emerge during its immediate aftermath and effects—now, in Airport Road 14, we explore what it means to move forward despite it all.
Practically, beginnings are not always true starts—often, they continue what comes before. Just as the celebration of a new year does not
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wipe away the 365 days that preceded it, the idea of something ending (temporarily or otherwise), so that we have something else to begin, can bring us some satisfaction or peace, or even a sense of agency or power that carries us forward. Waves of the pandemic still progress, and COVID-19 has not been rendered extinct—but we are better prepared to face it by the day, with each successive nugget of knowledge we earn. We no longer flounder in the face of the unexpected—that catalyst has passed, and left us ready for uncertainty.
Airport Road 14 is a meditation on what it means to begin not a new era, but perhaps the next arc of a large and cosmic circle, or the next verse of a song—to pick up what we have been given, and to make something transformative of it. Amal
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Surmawala Amrita Anand
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hello boss, New York University, Saadiyat Island please Yoonsik Chico Park
airplane seat protectorate Amal Surmawala
when man protects his wife from strange girl on the airplane (white earphones in, big glasses, voice like an American) he does it with injustice with rage with that’s our seat when it isn’t and leaves his wife to shrink avoid eye contact because the protection of one woman means the degradation of another. he says it three times like a witch in a fairytale that’s not 41K it’s 41J can’t you read it’s not on the screen if strange girl is deaf and dumb then man is blind. air hostess intervenes with her professional smile takes his tickets points to his seats. man was wrong but won’t say sorry. why should he apologize to strange girl on a plane? why should he accept the blame
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for yelling at a stranger? so he raises a hand in apology the same way he would raise it for a slap. strange girl says nothing. girls do not argue with strange men on airplanes.
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Saadiyat Beach 1 Yoonsik Chico Park
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Saadiyat Beach 2 Yoonsik Chico Park
(T)here Ioanna Orphanide
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Two Homes
Maya Iliniza Blodgett
Cities and Memories
In Tokyo, each memory tastes like steamy sweet bean paste between soft taiyaki dough and iced sour 9% lemon chuhais in the karaoke room. Like sharp pickled ginger and sweet eel that melts in your mouth, like my mom’s warm vegetable minestrone and lemony quinoa salad.
Each memory sounds like crows echoing through Nogawa park and the 10 second songs at every train station and distinct voices talking over each other in the BLR. Like the air hissing as it squeezes out of my tires before my dad pumps them up with air and my mom’s singsong voice trying to pronounce our neighbor’s last name.
Each memory feels like the warmth of the heated carpet that I study on in winter and the popping of tobiko under my teeth and the chill that fills my lungs as I exhale a cloud of winter air. Like the smooth stone floors at the bottom of a steaming onsen and the gentle brushes against passengers in the crowd of a rush hour train.
Each memory looks like the squared green logo of the yamanote line and the beady eyes of huge black ravens and the 108° symbol on sushi labels as they traverse through the conveyor belt, like the purple-hued shrubs of hair on the heads of Japanese grandmas and the dotted-textured backs of stink bugs and boxy cars entering narrow streets.
In Abu Dhabi, each memory tastes like strawberry watermelon vape and daily bagels with cream cheese and sprinkles of cinnamon. Like free
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programming board banana pudding and passionfruit russian bear vodka and D2 plantains that remind me of home.
Each memory sounds like knocks on doors at dorm parties followed by nervous silence, absurdly inappropriate music resonating through D2 and Maram’s mini cooper roof compacting before a drive. Like my speaker welcoming me to “Geepas music world” and the repetitive playing of High School and P Power.
Each memory looks like grandiose skyscrapers and new ROR posts with every refresh and white sand beaches. Like revolving Al Hosn QR codes and climbing taxi meters and billowing abayas.
Each memory feels like the instinctual muscle movement of folding my mask, and biweekly PCR swabs, and sweat accumulating within minutes of encountering the May sun.
Cities and Regions
In Tokyo, regions are separated by train stations.
Shibuya is where we go when we know we may not make the last train home, where we will sing karaoke until we’re out of song suggestions, get warm-happy at Nomihoudai, dance with new Japanese friends during a quick stop to TK, and feed ourselves an oreo mcflurry and fries to power through the night.
Kichijoji is where we go to see the best quality establishments crammed into the smallest area, like the freshest tapioca bubble tea, the spiciest Thai food, the hippest tattoo parlor, and the prettiest park.
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Shimokitazawa is where we go to feel like hippies, to wander through thrift stores and browse pipes and woven bags and incense, and leave with fingers full of rings.
Roppongi is where we go to experience expat life, to admire the view from our friends’ apartments, to question how we entered clubs underage, to chat with foreign men in Irish pubs, and to watch other foreigners get offered spice outside of Don Quijote.
Tama is where we go when we are prepared to forget we are in Tokyo, where we congregate in a bubble of an American school and run into our history teachers and principals walking their dogs. It’s where we sit in the park and watch tiny airplanes take off from the smallest airport and where we race our bikes at night to stop envying those who live downtown.
In Abu Dhabi, regions are separated by islands.
Saadiyat Island is our home, where we go to swim when we want the best beaches and where we come back to every night through the prolonged U-turn that makes our head spin every time. It’s where we gather every night in our friends’ dorms and where we know we won’t be disturbed by the traffic and crowd of the city.
Yas Island is for special occasions, when we have energy to cycle around the Formula 1 track, when we have saved up enough money to visit Ferrari World, and when we want to celebrate a birthday at a lounge in Yas Bay Waterfront.
Al Maryah Island is looped in with Al Reem Island, where we go to experience the city without discomfort, where we walk through the ritziest
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mall, attempt to make it through a movie at the cinema, embarrass ourselves at bowling, buy frog balloons at Reem Central park, and hire a professional to pierce our noses in our best friend’s apartment.
Abu Dhabi’s main island, which we just refer to as “the city,” is where we are apprehensive to go but explore for culture, to watch the flocks of families wandering down Corniche, to eat at hole-in-the-wall restaurants with workers coming back from their shifts, to glance in awe at Emirates Palace on the way to Al Maya, and to fidget with nerves at Medeor Hospital before our first MRI.
Cities and Time
In Tokyo, time is separated by seasons.
In the summer, when the hum of cicadas is always a distant melody and the humidity loosens my hair, when the nights are sprinkled with thunderstorms and the morning starts with the smell of sunscreen, I know it’s a time where I’ll go on bike rides at night, where my camp counselor lanyard will fill up with stickers, and where I’ll cut up Japanese pears every afternoon and still not get sick of them.
In the fall, when the breeze picks up and everyone chooses paths based on which has the most crunchy leaves to step on, I know it’s a time where I’ll form my first impressions of new classes, I’ll think too much about Halloween, I’ll check the “going” list of the first Afters party too many times, and I’ll create a detailed spreadsheet of my plans that I convince myself I won’t abandon halfway through the semester.
In the winter, when my windows fog up and my hands freeze and I pray for a snow day before every exam, I know it’s a time where I’ll be
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swimming every afternoon and every weekend accompanied with unusual excitement over having pasta for dinner. I’ll write out an insane amount of new year’s resolutions but swear by them, I’ll run on adrenaline for the entire January and February and I’ll undoubtedly cry the day before my birthday out of stress.
In the spring, when the pollen begins to activate everyone’s allergies and bugs begin to reemerge and jackets get abandoned and resume their places in the back of the closet, I know it’s a time when I’ll try to figure out why I’m burnt out and I’ll somehow have less energy than I did when I swam everyday. Most people love the spring, but I’d much rather take January and February over March and April.
In Abu Dhabi, where there are no seasons and each day is as sunny and warm as the previous one, where going to the beach in February is perfectly acceptable, time revolves around school—time is separated by semesters.
Freshman “spring” was a period of adjusting to Abu Dhabi, watching Mexicans split open watermelons with their fists, crying in the amphitheater, spending more time in the fitness center than the library, changing my major and spending the rest of the afternoon making drinking game cards. This was when I learned to meet new people by forcing myself not to say no for a month, to value routine, to be authentic, to trust myself, and to get comfortable surprising myself.
Sophomore “fall” was a period of meeting my best friends, projecting movies in their rooms every night while passing around coca cola gummies, identifying as a rock climber, playing “durag activity” on the way to Galleria, spontaneously driving to Oman to camp at an allegedly
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haunted fort, and experiencing the warmest combination of relief and nerves after being diagnosed with bipolar 2. This was when I learned to prioritize quality time with people I care about, to push myself, to accept people as they are and not attempt to change them, to open up when hurting instead of pushing people away, and to let myself know that I am loved.
Sophomore “spring” was exploring Rome alone during a canceled J-term, becoming a nightly runner to expel inexhaustible energy, recording parts of my life to work towards stability and getting better, taking a huge risk and feeling like everything is finally coming together. This was when I learned to do everything fully, to trust others, to write my heart out, to prioritize living, to finally install the printing software, to stay in the moment, to be delusionally optimistic.
In my brain, time is separated by episodes, phases, and swings. Cities and People
In Tokyo, the city is made up of the faces that raised me.
My dad’s intelligence answered my non-stop flow of questions, his fairness taught me to stick to my principles, his adventurousness taught me that challenges are the greatest part of life, his wittiness taught me how to make people laugh, and his encouragement taught me to make myself proud.
My mom’s passion taught me to stand up for myself, her lovingness taught me to try to be selfless even when difficult, her bubbliness taught me to not take life too seriously, her spontaneousness taught me to take chances, and her affection taught me to love and be loved.
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My brother’s relatability taught me that I’m not alone, his humor taught me to cheer people up, and his easy-goingness taught me to live at my own pace and take time to breathe.
Xian’s ability to read my mind taught me that anyone can become family, her shamelessness taught me to be resistant, and her spirit taught me to never stand still. Miyuki’s thoughtfulness taught me to appreciate the details, her endurance taught me to respect the stories of others, and her kindness taught me how to make Korean pancakes.
Sarah’s loyalty taught me to stick by my friends and help them change when necessary, her pranks taught me to be strategic, her schemes taught me to think creatively and critically, and her perseverance taught me anything is possible. Elise’s warmth taught me to want the best for others, her competitiveness taught me to motivate myself, her letters reminded me to tell people exactly what they mean to me, and her excitement taught me to appreciate everything that life can be.
In Abu Dhabi, the city is made up of the faces that changed me.
Maram’s vocality motivates me to speak my mind, the way she pushes others causes me to not tolerate disrespect, the way she encourages “not deep-ening it” prevents me from overthinking, the way she cares for her family encourages me to do the same, the way she defends her thoughts and her friends leads me to be passionate about what matters to me, her ability to understand me stops me from hiding my feelings, the way she truly wants the best for me encourages me to seek advice, and her french-fry-arm dance moves make me feel less embarrassed about mine.
Yerk’s eccentricity shows me how people can be surprising in the most strange, beautiful ways, our love and support for each other helps us both
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keep fighting when worn down, his incomparable passion leads me to build on what matters to me, his brilliance is a reminder of how special people can be, his opinions keep me open-minded, and the way he can speak makes me want to write down and hold on to every word he says. Every familiar face on the highline shows me how similar I am to people raised so differently from me, from countries I haven’t been to and in languages I can’t speak.
Cities and Language
In Tokyo, Japanese slang is used around you so often that you begin reverting to it in your head.
You begin describing clueless people as “KY,” which means they can’t read air. If you are able to read air, then you have an awareness of what is happening around you—common sense. Not all of us have it. When surprised you hear “maji” and when enthusiastic you say “meccha,” when impressing someone you receive “suge” and when unimpressed you give a “dasai.”
In an Ecuadorian household, the Spanglish becomes so familiar you don’t notice the transition from one language to the next. English requests are paired with “porfa.” You hear the word “remojar” so often that you forget the English equivalent of soak when washing the dishes.
In Abu Dhabi you collect phrases from different languages.
You get your friends to stop their daily debates with “khalas” and to head to the basement parking lot with “yallah.” You hear “wallah” when you are skeptical and are called “haram” when you pierce your nose. You go to
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“suhoor” at 3 am for waffles and notice the distinct difference in who is there because they’re “halal” and who will be hungover the next day. Your friends toss you a “mashallah” when you look good and accompany their plans with “inshallah.”
Your playlists become filled with “callaíta” and “dakiti” and “mía” after endless Latino aux hijackings. You collect the names of the cuisine as you order Georgian “khachapuri” and try Polish “soplica” and cook Ukrainian “syrniki” and dip your bread in cold eggplant “moutabbal.”
You joke about different pronunciations of “onion” and the unique way people phrase things: “in parallel” and “mind you.” You listen to the same argument over whether Egyptian or Jordanian Arabic is less harsh and are asked which particular words you prefer. You and your friends have your own variations of words: “dumplings” “momos” “gyoza” “varenyky.”
Cities and Comparison
Sometimes, when you get used to the city you live in, you have to buy plane tickets and fly 5600 km away the week before your final exams. And each time you visit somewhere new, your perspective on the cities you know change completely. You can’t really understand where you live until you can compare it to what it is not.
In Venice, the paint peels off building walls, the alleys are narrow enough for people but not for cars, and the houses are the color of different shades of sand with green-painted windows and brick-colored tile roofs. Old palaces and churches are the main attractions and tourists line up to cross the famous bridge.
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Venice makes Abu Dhabi’s sports cars and futuristic skyscrapers become a lot more noticeable. Abu Dhabi’s population split of migrant workers and sales executives becomes a novel phenomenon after seeing a population split by tourists and people who make their money from them. Abu Dhabi selling itself from modernity is perplexing when you consider how Venice sells itself from ancientness.
In Florence, you could expect every street to have at least one gelato shop, a few bars, old statues, buildings that had been renovated at least three times, and a handful of young adults going on aimless walks through the classical city.
You don’t find that on the streets of Abu Dhabi. The streets here are known for luxury hotels, corner shops that sell watermelon juice or kebabs, floods of orange talabat and blue deliveroo motorcyclists, drivethru vape shops and large English and Arabic signs announcing hospitals or resorts. It’s rare to see people walk without reason—Abu Dhabi isn’t built for that. Abu Dhabi is built for convenience and cars and fancy pool and spa staycations to forget about the pollution.
In Portofino, everywhere you look you’ll make eye contact with a tourist: usually English-speaking, middle-aged, dressed in colorful windbreakers and ready to flip through a menu to spend twelve euros on an aperol spritz and an aperitivo.
In Abu Dhabi, everywhere you look you see someone from a different background who is here for a different reason–to be someone’s maid, to run a company, to stand in the sun doing construction, to make a business deal, to inherit money and shop for perfume. Customers have their phones out to scan an electronic menu and spend 200 dhs on a cheeto-covered burger and lotus milkshake.
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Cities and Culture
In Tokyo there is only Japanese culture.
There is only salarymen passing out drunk on the last train, there is only hanabi festivals to sit in a park and watch the sky light up in colors, there is only izakayas serving edamame and fries and oolong highballs. There is only Kanji and Hiragana and Katakana characters on menus, there is only the Chuo and the Yamanote and the Keio train lines to get around, there is only straight black hair and platform boots. In Tokyo there is one culture.
In Tokyo there are two positions. There is the position where you are Japanese and it’s easy to blend into the culture, to be undisturbed if not invisible on the train and to be respected by the older generation. It’s easy to go to a local ramen shop and read the calligraphy on the wall to know what to order. You know the right tenses of sonkeigo and kenjougo to make your phrases sound extra humble when necessary.
There is also the position where you are not Japanese and you do everything you can to blend in the culture but you are stared at on the train and you are cursed at by the older generation. You are stopped in the park by people who want to take pictures with you. You are let into any bar at fourteen years old because foreigners are assumed to be older. You are stopped by the police and asked for your residence card in your own neighborhood. You are conscious of how loud you are being at all times to not contribute to the stereotypes of obnoxious outsiders. You are yelled at outside of your house by a neighbor for drawing with chalk, and scolded for splashing water on the street in the hot summer. You hear the word Gaijin over and over and over.
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In Abu Dhabi there is every culture.
There are Emiratis and their opulent perfumes and silky abayas and iftar dinners. There are Egyptians and Americans and Ukrainians and Australians and at least one Nicaraguan. There are imported products in every supermarket so that no one misses home. There are labels in several languages. Every cab driver speaks English. No one stands out.
In Abu Dhabi there are two positions. There are students and consultants and doctors who can enjoy the novelty of Abu Dhabi’s hotels and bars and the serenity of its beaches and the exoticness of the desert. And there are migrant workers who are left with the hot sun and loud traffic as they work on the side of the highway and the clustered bunk beds in their shared rooms as they rest at night.
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St. George (Rooftop Cleaner on Top of the Arts Center) Yoonsik Chico Park
Car Ride
Manuel López Ramírez Sea-boy floats from A to B but he cannot feel the wind. Outside, there should be an idea— That of monumental flows and agitations, Which should remain unseen But become heard and sensed.
Sizzling, the sand whispers; Secrets rush towards him in mammoth stampedes. But they crash against the half-looking-glass Through which he sees it all in a single horizontal strip, yellow and monstrous in its sameness.
Yes, Deep within the desert He can only distinguish himself And the sun, Tiny and burning against its own will, With rays flowing out of it as if they were lightning.
Sea-boy left his head tucked under the waves, Laying amongst starfish and fine strings Of turquoise coral, which entrap his thoughts Like iron bars.
Now he passes by and does not understand. He misses and wishes to go back To a place he knows is no good for him,
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To a place where flowy things wait, With shocks on the tips of their fingers.
Because grains of sand look like dried-up bubbles to him, Upon which he cannot find his reflection, Unless he looks at the tinted windows Which entrap him inside his own heart.
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Milo with Soaked Oats Cadence Cheah
I added four tablespoons of Quaker instant oats and three scoops of Milo powder into my green mug. Boiling water dissolved the mixture into a thick brown oatmeal; and my nerves untangled to the smell of malt. Holding the mug in my hand, I walked out of the kitchen into the corridor. Here I had a choice: take a few more steps to enter the living area, or take a right for the stairs up to my room.
Ahead of me, I caught the side view of Popo in her usual spot. Her tiny frame, hunched, occupied the couch in front of the flat-screen TV. The morning light that landed on her face made her cheeks sunken. I watched as she lifted her steel mug up to her lips using her skinny right arm. Instead of resting her arm on her thighs afterward, she lowered it to the level where it could prop on the red stool beside her, as if it was too much weight for her diabetes-stricken legs to bear. The ceiling fan whirred in the background.
While studying abroad, I usually went home in summer. Each time I was back, I found myself having to re-navigate who Popo was. I always thought time worked differently for her, and I drowned myself thinking what could be left of having time steal so much from someone that quickly. That morning when my parents had gone out for work, I noticed how quiet it was. I was first upstairs. My ears were searching for sounds from the living room below, and I panicked when I could not locate Popo’s feet shuffling into her couch, nor the TV chatter.
With the excuse of making myself an earlier breakfast, seeing Popo was reassuring. She was in her usual spot, breathing, still alive. Mortality liked to haunt my imaginations. I was obsessed with tracking the amount of
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time I had wasted while I put off reaching out to Popo in the way that I desired.
Noticing my movements, Popo’s head turned toward me. Our gaze met and I stuttered to a question, “W-W-hy did you not turn on the volume?”
Popo smiled. Her shoulders shrugged in slight embarrassment. She rummaged through the piles of things she came to hoard for the remote control which she then lifted with her skinny arm again, signaling me to reach for it.
“I don’t know how to,” she confessed. I stole a quick glance at her and she was smiling. “L-Let me help you,” I said.
I looked for the oval button with the “+” sign and pressed it around 15 times.
“Is this loud enough?”
“Louder.”
“This is okay?”
“A little more,” she nodded her head in politeness as I pressed the button a couple more times, “Okay. Okay. Okay.”
My ears recognized the dramatic background music of the Taiwanese soap opera that Popo loved, or just happened to be, filling her free time with. A show with thousands of episodes on never-ending family feuds and sibling rivalry was not my cup of tea.
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“Thank you. Thank you.” She held out her two hands to take the control back from me, head still nodding. I nodded back at her.
Just as I turned and was about to leave, Popo waved a purple packet at me, Lexus biscuits with chocolate cream, one of my childhood favorites.
“Come, take this. Take it upstairs with you and eat. Come.”
“Oh ... thank you,” I reached for the packet; and felt obligated to sit down. I placed my mug of Milo on Popo’s red stool and, after a moment of hesitation, chose a spot on the marble floor right beside where Popo’s feet in pink flip-flops were. Popo beamed at me in delight.
On the screen, a woman in a matching set of gold jewelry was yanking at the hair of another woman also with a matching set of gold jewelry. They tumbled from the desk to the couch, then happened to be back on their feet again to slap across each other’s face. My eyebrows raised at their curious behaviors.
Popo chuckled, something she rarely did while watching the show alone.
“This woman stole her husband. Hit her. Hit her.” Popo chuckled again as another slap landed on the woman’s flushed cheeks.
I let out a chuckle and Popo went along with it to further amuse herself.
“Ah, she deserves it! A bad person, isn’t she?” Popo turned toward me as I nodded, mumbling in agreement. “Very bad, very bad,” she added delightfully.
We engaged in this exchange for the next 15 minutes until the show
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switched into intermission. Then I hid my embarrassment behind a smile that I knew Popo would appreciate, and scrambled for an excuse, “I … I am going up to do my homework.” Popo waved and responded heartily, “bye-bye!”
I hope I provided you with good company was my only hope that morning.
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Arrival of Spring Yoonsik Chico Park
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Rainbringer
Joseph Hong
Mother always liked the rain. She spoke fondly of it each night as she laid me to bed. “The tears of angels, tears that leave good fortune in their wake,” she would say, pulling the soft silk sheets up to my neck. She would tell me stories of days long ago, before she had met my father, recounting the dozens of kingdoms she had visited as the mystical Rainbringer of the East, and my eyelids would grow heavy under the sweetness of her voice.
“A city that shone like the sun, visible from miles away. Do you know why, my prince? Its walls were made of gold, gates of silver. Precious stones were embedded in its streets and sunstones adorned its lamp posts. The radiance of the city choked out every trace of shadow so that there was no night within its walls. The Golden City, they called it ...”
At the age of seven, I believed every word she said. By then, I had already seen her bring the rain. To me, there was nothing more fantastical and captivating the first moment those thin trails of condensation gathering in the empty blue sky, twisting and turning into nimbostratus clouds, before becoming droplets of rain that threw themselves down against the earth, leaving but a trickle in their wake. Though I had listened eagerly to Mother’s stories each night, it was when I saw this that I began understanding they were more than just fairy tales, that the word “Rainbringer” truly meant something. And it was when I saw Mother’s expression, smooth porcelain painted with a calmness that only appeared when she called the rain, that I wanted to be like her someday.
There was one story she would tell every night without fail, the one she told as my eyes were all but closed and my chest was rising and falling.
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It was the story of how she met my father, one afternoon in the rain. How a princess from the far East fell in love with a dazzling prince from the far West––and how they met somewhere in between. A story of love, trust, and compromise; topics far too complicated for my young mind to comprehend.
“One day you will understand,” she would murmur before pressing her lips against my forehead, the soft curtain of her obsidian locks brushing against my cheeks. She would stroke her fingers through my unkempt hair, whose color matched her own, then would blow out the lamp on my nightstand. And through the darkness, she would whisper the same words, her voice filled with love, pride, and a hint of sadness: “Until then, good night. My prince, my blessing, my little Rainbringer.”
*
Mother was revered and respected in every land but her own. In the East, where torrential rains were frequent, she was the embodiment of natural disaster, the incarnation of floods and typhoons. Being born into the royal family of her kingdom did nothing to change that perception. But to the people of the far West, who lived in a land of abundant sun but scarce rain, she was held in the highest regard, an invaluable piece in the proverbial chaturanga board.
She had the worst of both worlds. Despised by one, coveted by the other. And yet she never blamed the rain. She never complained about the curse that had brought out all the hatred, fear, and greed of those around her. She simply smiled, traveling wherever she was needed, calling the rain in one place, driving it away in another.
The latter, to drive away the rain, was an ability she had acquired over
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the years. When she had first arrived on the Eternian continent, the rain had followed her wherever she went, causing intermittent downpours and continuous drizzles. She did not know how to call it, much less control it. The power to dissipate storms was not something she had been born with, but rather something she had learned to do nearly a decade after her father had sent her to the foreign continent across the Great Divide, formerly known as the World’s End.
“Sent is a very weak word, my darling prince,” she said one day, giving me a strained smile. Whenever she talked about him, there was a bit of irritation in her voice, but that day it sounded more like poison. “Saying that he traded me would be more precise.”
People did not know that there were quite a few Rainbringers in the East, she told me. Rainbringers, or the Cursed as they were called in the East, were sacrificed to relieve the anger of their gods, bringing the perpetual downpours to lighter rains for a few years on end. If Mother had not been born into royalty, she would never have lived past the age of twelve––the same age I was now. But her father had learned of a continent past the Great Divide that would be willing to do anything for rain. She had been traded for a large sum of gold and silver; her father had sold her away, covering it up as an ‘exile’ to appease the gods.
But that exile had led her to discover new abilities she did not know she had.
“Watch closely,” she would say whenever she pulled apart the gray clouds like candy floss, the barest grimace on her face and a single droplet of sweat trickling down her creased forehead. The wind would howl around us, resisting Mother’s touch, exposing the strands of granite that streaked the obsidian of her hair. She was well aware that, despite
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having awakened my abilities, the most my twelve-year-old self could do was call a drizzle when becoming distressed. I wanted to be like her, but I was far from it. Yet she showed me such complicated things, as though she expected me to somehow perform such feats––almost impatiently, as though there was not enough time for her to wait.
Then one morning, as rain began to pour around us, she collapsed.
*
Each time she called the rain, it took something from her. That “something” was her life. But she didn’t blame the rain, even when she was no longer able to get out of her sickbed a year later.
She never blamed the rain.
“The rain made me who I am today,” she said, lifting her frail hand to stroke my soft obsidian hair. “The best and worst moments of my life were all spent in the rain. It shaped me. You are also a Rainbringer, Damien. You, too, will understand what this means.”
It rained on the day Mother breathed her last. Who brought that rain, I’ll never know.
*
Mother’s funeral lasted an entire year. People from every nation in the West came to mourn the loss of the continent’s Rainbringer, the queen who gave and gave to the very end.
It had been a stroke of good misfortune, she had once said, that her
39
father had learned there was a continent in the Far West willing to do anything to have rain. I didn’t understand why she had thought it was “good” in any sense. She had still been a piece, just in a different political game.
Now she, too, was gone, leaving me as the new and sole Rainbringer of the West. I could see greed in the eyes of the royals of the West as they bowed and curtsied before Father, the disgust in the expressions of the delegates of the East who came to “mourn” in my grandfather’s stead. But to me, none of that mattered. I simply wanted Mother back.
*
During the final month of the funeral, I slipped out of the castle in the midst of heavy rain, through the servants’ gate hidden in the far northeastern corner of the castle walls.
Though the rain obscured one’s vision quite well, I knew that my actions would not go unnoticed by my elite escort, the Royal Guard. But they, in their dark, oiled cloaks, said nothing when I navigated through the thick underbrush to the gate, nor did they stop me when I reached it. Elite knights they may have been, but before that they were friends of Mother. She was gone, yet I felt her presence in all the people whose lives she had touched, all those whom she had befriended over the years. Her shadow was immense; the role she had left me to play was too large for a mere fourteen year old.
“How did you do it?” I murmured aloud, looking up at the dark clouds from under my oiled hood. How can I even begin to fill your shoes?
It was the first time I was walking down the streets without Mother by my
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side. The road had never felt so wide. Thousands of raindrops dashed against the cobblestone, a never ending, deafening echo of pit-pats. The gutters were overflowing with rainwater, small rivers trickling between the stones embedded into the cobblestone street. Two-story buildings of plaster and wood loomed over me on either side, roofs painted with rubber to keep the rain out. Their signs, swinging violently in the howling wind, leered at me as I walked down the empty road.
I walked through the downpour, the manifestation of my mourning. The rain had not stopped for almost an entire year now and there was no question as to why––there was only one Rainbringer left on the entire continent.
I reached the tavern at the end of the street leading to the royal castle. A dull light came through the thick, frosted glass of the windows. Standing in front of the heavy oak door, my hand resting against the handle, I hesitated. Never had I come here since Mother had fallen ill. And never had I ever come here, alone
“Hello there, traveler,” the innkeeper called when I stepped inside. She was wiping down a table, getting ready to open up for the evening. “Welcome to––”
She stopped mid-sentence and dropped the rag in her hand when I lowered my hood.
“Hi, Miss Wilkes.”
When I smiled weakly, her eyes filled with tears. She raised a hand to her mouth. I had grown over the past two years, but there was no mistaking who I was. Miss Wilkes was one of Mother’s closest friends in the city and
41
had become the aunt that I never had.
“Little Rainbringer … Lady Ayane …” she stammered out a few words, her eyes wide and lips trembling. “Are you … okay?”
My vision blurred as tears welled up. I couldn’t tell her that things were alright. They weren’t.
“It hurts,” I whispered, shaking my head. “It hurts so much.”
Miss Wilkes wrapped her arms around me as I pressed my face into her shoulder, sobbing as I had never before in an entire year.
“It’s okay to cry,” she murmured, patting my back. “It’s okay, Damien …”
Away from the diplomats, away from the castle, away from the life of royalty, I was just a young boy who had lost his mother.
*
“Someone who doesn’t know the face of her people is no ruler at all,” Mother would often say to her escort when she was confronted about the frequent visits into the city. “Besides, who in their right mind would hurt me, the Rainbringer? The entire continent would tear them apart.”
Many of the places she had visited for her Rainbringer duties were the small villages and rural towns that grew a majority of the continent’s crops; her countless interactions with those who cared little about status had rubbed off on her. She even insisted others simply call her “Ayane” rather than address her by her title, eventually compromising at “Lady Ayane.”
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And I, inseparable from Mother, had tagged along each time she visited the tavern, earning me the nickname “Little Rainbringer” because of how closely I had resembled Mother. Two Rainbringers with black hair, mother and son, sitting at a counter, surrounded by people from all over town who wanted to meet the charming queen who never backed down from a drinking match.
I would watch, sipping warm apple cider from a small wooden cup as Mother would fold with peals of laughter, out-drinking and out-cursing a burly sailor from the port. Sarah, assigned with both protecting me and carrying Mother home, would sigh each time she met my eyes, telling me not to be like Mother when I grew up. I would smile and shrug. Mother seemed like she was having a lot of fun, as did the people raising drinks in her name.
“Is there anyone else?” she would shout into the roaring crowd, shaking her dainty fist in the air. “Is there anyone else?”
Of course, Mother wasn’t always drinking, otherwise Father would never have let us out of the castle in the first place. Other days she would simply sit and chat with anyone who came through the doors, sipping a cup of spiced lemon-ginger tea. Sometimes, she would ask the townspeople about their lives and how their families were doing. Other times, she would give advice on how to grow better crops, catch more fish, or watershield a roof, things that she would learn from spending time in different regions around the continent.
“She probably knew more than all the townspeople combined,” Miss Wilkes said with a small chuckle. “I never met anyone more charming or wise than your mother.”
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As customers trickled in, the conversation grew louder and my smile grew wider. Each person had something new to say about Mother, how she had touched their lives in some way. The room felt a lot smaller than it had before, filled with laughter and warmth. There were people whom I could share memories with, people who made me realize Mother was still with me, still in my memories and the memories of those around me.
For the first time in a year, the rain stopped.
*
“Why didn’t you talk to your father back then?” Miss Wilkes asked when I had finally settled down at the counter for our usual monthly chat, sipping on a mug of spiced apple cider. Two years had passed since the night I had learned to stop the rain. Sunlight streamed through the stained-glass windows, illuminating the tavern with a spectrum of colors. “Even then, the two of you weren’t on bad terms.”
“I was going to,” I replied, recalling the moment. “But then I heard him crying in his room when I was about to knock. I had lost my mother, and he had lost his lifelong partner.” I grinned ruefully. “I didn’t want to burden him with my own problems.”
A lot of things had changed. For one, I was now officially the “mystical Rainbringer of the East,” proudly carrying the title Mother once had. I was not as skilled as Mother had been, but I was learning quickly, at a much faster pace than Mother had, according to Father. We now talked about Mother often, sharing our memories of her whenever we could. Remembering her was much less painful than trying to forget about her. Remembering, together, almost made it better.
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“And to think that she knew ...” she trailed off, gesturing at the small pile of letters my mother had been ‘sending’ me over the years. One for every birthday since the year she passed. I suppose it was her way of looking out for me, the way mothers do for their children. Each year brought a new story she had never told me before. Stories of her childhood, before she had come to the West, but also stories of why she had done what she did all those years ago.
Mother had written that she had felt the power slip away from her when she gave birth to me. It was some kind of unnatural sensation she couldn’t explain, she just simply knew she was no longer the Rainbringer, no longer protected by whatever blessing had been given to her. It had been passed on to me.
“She could still call the rain,” I tried to explain to Miss Wilkes, even though I was still trying to understand just what Mother had been talking about. “But at the expense of her wellbeing. And she chose to do so to keep me from having to live the life she did. I don’t think she knew she would have so little time, though.”
It had surprised her when I had willingly volunteered to follow her around once I turned twelve. Perhaps she had never thought anyone in their right mind would pursue a life of constant displacement. Nevertheless, she decided to teach me everything she knew from that point on, even if it meant straining herself, sensing that her time was drawing nearer with every passing day.
Miss Wilkes frowned. “And that’s why your grandfather is calling you?”
That was another change that had occurred since Mother’s passing. My
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grandfather––Mother’s father, the one who abandoned her––sent envoys to the kingdom. He had heard from his subjects how Mother had learned to dismantle storms and apparently took an interest in me, demanding my presence in his kingdom. He believed, and rightly so, that if I had inherited Mother’s blessing, I would have the same ability. Father rejected this demand and made a counterdemand that his father-in-law come in person if he wanted to take me away.
In the midst of this political-yet-familial back-and-forth, however, I couldn’t help but wonder what Mother had once said about Rainbringers in the East. If they were so common, why weren’t they able to stop the rain where they were? And Mother, with her additional abilities; if she had been able to awaken those abilities only during her time here in the West, did that mean they weren’t hereditary? There was always the possibility that no Rainbringer in the East had ever lived long enough to awaken those abilities. But what if it was more than that? Mother had mentioned that there was no flow of mana in the East, but here in the Eternian continent, most vegetation was made of it. Did these additional abilities have to do with where we were?
*
Four long years of planning later, I clasped hands with the lead shipwright, Silas, as we stepped off of the S.V. Rainbringer, the newest addition to our kingdom’s fleet. It was the largest voyager built to date, enough to fit two hundred crew members and twice as many passengers, and boasted massive canvas sails capable of covering half of the royal castle.
In normal situations, such large sails would have been useless, too heavy for any winds to pick up. But our kingdom had a Rainbringer. A very talented one, in fact.
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“Thank you for the help, Sir Damien.”
“You’re always welcome, Silas. And thank you for this amazing ship.”
“Are you sure about this, Damien?” Father scratched his beard, either thoughtful or doubtful. Or both. “It’s quite the journey to the East.”
“I’ll be fine, Father,” I laughed, slipping behind him and massaging his shoulders. At eighteen, I had reached his height; now, two years after that, I stood a head taller than him. “Or are you doubting your own son?”
Father cleared his throat, shoulders tensed as though he were thoroughly distressed. He ran his fingers over the buttons of his coat. “You’re just like her, Damien. The way you stop at nothing until you get what you want. You got the expedition approved; do you really have to go on it?”
“It’s just a few months, Father.”
“A few months without rain.” Father ran his fingers through his unkempt amber hair, now streaked with gray, giving a ragged exhale of resignation.
I glanced at him before peering up at the sky, where the barest traces of clouds were beginning to form. “That’s what you think, but you’ll be wrong in three weeks. And then another three after that.”
Father’s eyes widened as he realized what I was implying. “Damien, are you saying ...?”
“There’s a lot that Rainbringers can do,” I said, looking out where the sky and sea embraced one another, out at the sunrise, my hair blowing about in the light sea breeze. “And even more we still don’t know about.”
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Rainbringers didn’t simply bring rain, contrary to common belief. They could also drive it away, as Mother had shown me. But that wasn’t the end. Wind, temperature, humidity; there were so many things Rainbringers could influence, things left undiscovered because no one had tried. “And that’s why we’re going to the East.”
The plan was to slip them away, unnoticed, before any sacrifices could be made, and bring them to the West, where they could live as normal people––or even revered as Rainbringers, instead of the Cursed. The decision would be up to them. I was going to stop the sacrifices to save them and give them that choice. The way that Mother had saved and given me that choice. She didn’t want me to lose my childhood the way she had lost it in the past, so she compromised––a compromise that came at the cost of her life.
She traded my freedom for her life and left me with memories, in the townspeople and in the rain, to keep me company even when she was gone. And she did.
In the rain, I had mourned the loss of Mother. In the rain, I found her again. And in the rain, I had become what she wanted me to be.
Her prince, her blessing, her little Rainbringer.
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Anabranch (after Lyn Hejinian) Aarushi Prasad
The darker the henna, the stronger the bond with your future husband they said, so I vigorously rubbed my palms with diluted lemon juice and cinnamon. The neighbour's younger one had to share her Barbies and she wasn’t pleased about it. As soon as my kite was cut, I sprinted across roofs, across baskets of dried chilis and mangled wires to collect it. While the watermelon had white and black seeds, the guava had pink ones. My oesophagus flooded with the fermented alcohol disguised as hydrochloric acid. The incessant stream of traffic on the road bridges the gap between the bourgeois and the bourgeoisie. We The People. She shook her umbrella and droplets of water fell on the floor. I was forbidden from going to the sea when the tide was high even though the aroma of spices and clarified butter whirled throughout the apartment. Where do dreams birth themselves? We did not have a maid’s quarter so her groans became a lullaby. “Think outside my box” rallied swaths of people, as a blindfolded woman with a scale in her hand stared intently at them. Don’t let history retweet itself. The french fries and chicken tenders became soggy in the trunk of the car. Sylvia shuts her eyes and all the world drops dead. The sumac stuck stubbornly in the crevice between my canines. Give this notebook to my mother when you go to my native land for your honeymoon. It was so romantic that I was frightened to press fast forward. Who are we if not the stories we tell ourselves.
The washing machine whirred and she sat above it reading Little House on the Prairie. The zebra crossing hypnotised her so she stood still and aimless. Celery stems made the broth bitter and Papa twitched as he took the first sip, followed by the second. Although she was beautiful, she
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was married to someone else. Papercuts ran so deep that the yellow pus soiled the gauze bandage. There were three sofas aligned in a column, however the fourth one was out of line. After ravaging the jamuns we stole from the meadows, we carefully preserved the seeds as souvenirs from our adventures. The probability of throwing two sixes on a dice is one-twelfth but it happens quite often. The glass was neither half full, nor half empty. For there are some who grasp tightly onto a rung of the ladder but have their toes twisted towards gravity. Stick one palm to the other and cross your thumbs to pray. The paper clip transformed into a mangled piece of metal and the burglar used it to open the lock that bolted the gate. Mirrors shattered and the glue was feeble. Peeling the onion reminded me of how my therapist peeled my skin, the flesh followed next and finally the garb that draped my conscience. I wanted a hug so I combed the street, privately, insanely and without recourse. The mason arranged the bricks one above the other and cemented them with sweat so that the earthquake would not destroy the sacred abode. I stood and stared at the dirt accumulated in the buttons of the coffee machine and burnt my tongue. The light on the night that I passed by her window flickered like her smile. Press your thighs against one another. The dough was watery, so the oil explosively vaporised in all directions. Cameras flashed during the burial, slashing hymns of a dignified death. A caged parrot emulates my benevolent kindness towards the orphans but not my cruelty. Cleopatra’s hourglass illustration made the teacher anorexic. Disillusioned by the homogeneity of her cult, she thought he was an extra-terrestrial object that walked, that smiled. One coconut had water, the other one greasy flesh. A rodent went through one ear canal and discovered its way out through the other and it was a periodical occurrence. Wooden shrapnel derailed the train of thought. Corpses
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shrouded in bureaucratic failure obscenely decorated a once secularly flagrant Delhi. The potency of a knight to prance across the chess board challenged my mobility. A brunette’s comb had strands of blonde hair. The avant-garde graffiti vandalised the generational abode. Knees were apparently suggestive even though the voice reiterated a firm negative. United Nothing (UN). Her luscious locks swept the morsels of food on the floor. Genetic inheritance does not alter when alteration finds. He committed a burglary to escape the New York snow and nursed his cold under a penitentiary roof. The cerebrum was a sieve for intrusiveness but the incense burns never went through the minute holes. I was lost like a slave that no man could free.
The magnitude of melanin in my skin masked my humanness before the jury. A single star in a sky of violent constellations. Moans escaped the mansions of her vocal chords only to be deflected back from the blackboards of societal pedagogy. The beetroot coleslaw stained my fingertips as it amalgamated with the blood from my grated skin. His sister-in-law tied a knot and suffering became her currency. The jasmine cologne brought back memories of brand new white erasers that I sniffed during carpentry class. My clasp around his waist tightened as we raced the blaring Police sirens that haunted our arteries. Chapped, unpigmented lips yearning for matrimonial moistness. Cilantro and coriander can be easily confused with each other, is it fair to be punished for it? Passports forbidding the privilege of being blinded by skyscrapers. Her piggy bank flooded with tears. On Halloween, he treated children with virile venom instead of candy. She had promised her ailing father that she would be good and goodness made all the difference. The taste of water became subtly sweet as she hopped onto an aeroplane. The bread and butter of a historian are their sources. I heard frantic knocks on the door but
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there was only a prejudiced shadow. Tabooed concoctions of rum and coke choked the maid’s son and he screamed and wept but to no avail. And we drank our tea and pretended not to look at each other, until we squeezed a peek. The rules are simple: there are none, unless you have someone you'd rather take?
During La Tomatina, a potato dislocated my jaw and I looked around for a demon but to no avail. Thirteen stripes and fifty stars strapped me to my bed with electrodes in my brain. The nephew hid under the car during a game of hide-and-seek but was never found. After fifteen-years of waitressing, she encountered someone who knew how to use chopsticks well. Termites gnawed on the stacks of papers that lay abandoned in the basement. The ruminations of a dangerous mind. I hate goodbyes so I saved a few flies and kept them in a jar. Set your worries on fire and let your heart lurch and slide. I told the crow my treasure of secrets but he was loyal to Mama who gave him a morsel daily. The ashes of cigarettes pile up in silence, testament to compressed memories and torment. The polaroids never saturated and the evening became one of “what-ifs.”
Mother bought onions, capsicums and sweet potatoes but forgot the rice. I hope you fall in love and I hope it breaks it your heart. The mechanic removed the support wheels off my bicycle as tears and mucus became one. The pink elephant in the room painted the walls rainbow with its trunk. A stranger treated me with tea and cookies in Sarajevo and I ate them, even though I was told strangers are bad bad people. Honey was mixed in the powdered medicine to make it sweet. Little Mrs. Sunshine and her family on the verge of a breakdown. For the living and the dead we must bear witness.
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`
From My Window Amy Qian
The Standing Shoe: Un-Solved! Cadence Cheah
Peele asks you to see what the better eyes did for our common good as a species. We are born from rainforests, now sprouting lives with trunkloads of cash rolling down fronds—each taken with extra care—bearing rubber for education, cocoa for depression relief, and palm oil for us all
Jean Jackie the Monkey says “Knock, knock!” past your green window glass made of his eyes pardoning you of your innocence, hopeful that you grow into a fine man one day. “Some men deserve to die, not you—yet. My eyes may draw you a fitting shape but my eyes, they’re still mine.”
You say:
Taming horses taught me that they deserve love and respect just about enough so I snap my final heroic shots on top of Port-au-Prince, Potosi and the Great thin limestone hill icon of Ipoh while I watch my horses implode, dead floating in the air, basking in my perspective, the best of God the painter’s art!
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New Dreams Yoonsik Chico Park
55 `
21 Lightbulbs
Rifal Imam
Yellow overhead lights. 21 lightbulbs. 3 silver MacBooks, 1 black Dell. Four glaring laptop screens, one consistently blank. Empty cup. 1 unfinished glass water bottle. seven p.m. beachfront. It’s pretty dark out, the waves look almost black. The winds push them to the front. Crashing, washing. Away with the day’s imprints on their dear friend Sand. I wonder what they communicate to each other. Do they laugh at the passersby? Maybe empathize with them?
White shirts. Green aprons. “What’s your order ma’am?” “Just one smoothie, and one water, please.” He offers to open the bottle. The smoothie has a banana punch. I hate bananas. 8 p.m. “Real food crafted by nature.” Vegan wraps and cauliflower shawarmas. 12 women pictured on the hung-up plate. They look like carrots from here.
Blank screen. Still. Classical music overhead. Felukah in ears. Wired headphones. They’re in style now! I actually just lost my AirPods. Oops. A change of scenery, I convince myself, is all I need to get back into shape. But. The plants look dehydrated. Same. The couch looks comfortable. The clock reads ten-thirty.
The screen stays blank. I feel like SpongeBob.
Keyboards clacking: “T” “H” “E”
They say atmosphere matters. Put yourself in the right atmosphere and you can accomplish anything. Perhaps the atmosphere is more interesting than the accomplishing.
The screen is no longer blank, The. Only.
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From Battle of the Bands Yoonsik Chico Park
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`
Rain in May
María Emilia Baca
It was May when she realized death was money. Flower money funeral money church money. Dirty money dirty enough to stain that church any church but clean enough to shine not like a shrine but like cheap glass. In church that day the whiteness is blinding. Every wall and every floor every vase and every flower. All white and holy. All white and holy. All white and too holy for the sin. The sin that brought down the tears and told the tears to fight. I can hear your heart breaking he said. Tears don’t fall that fast (it is not supposed to be this way). I tried to clean the altar when I came (it is not supposed to be this way). And then it started raining so it was no use it just kept falling and falling and couldn’t fix the cracks or the swallowing of the Earth. Not even when it was God’s rain and not even in that church. Not even when it was too white and holy and not even when it should have been empty and not even when there was no money for ugly flowers. But with no mercy God’s rain kept falling upon your garden not to grow but to drown. Falling upon the whisper that spelled from ashes to ashes. Only stopped when she asked God about the wind.
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Raw Mangoes of the Graveyard
Aarushi Prasad
nourished by the decadent remains of men who dreamt and loved plump green symbols of adverse fortune outlawed from being touched
the mango tree stood ashamed testament to tears and torment as corpses shrouded in bureaucratic failure piled and obscenely decorated the streets of a once secularly fragrant Delhi
scantily dressed morticians PPE’s being three-lettered figments of imagination overwrote in their already brimming record books Body 142, unclaimed cameras flashed during the burial slashing the hymens of dignity fashionable front pages of magazines milked from the labor of slaughtered beings. it is but a banal man, in pursuit of his incessant political gluttony willing to lynch dissidents, willing to crush bones O! Who will bear the fruits of his acts?
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Looking Up Yoonsik Chico Park
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`
Breadcrumbs
Joseph Hong
I don’t recall when the switch happened. Which is weird, since I should have jotted it down somewhere, right? Maybe it’s the whole chicken-and-egg thing; I can’t write until I write but I can’t write until I ... wait, something isn’t right. Right? Or is it left? Something I left but never remembered to pick up till now? Something left, out of left field? I suppose it was rather sudden, something that went from input to output, reading to writing, a function somewhere in between that jumbled up the words I’d seen and spat them out in a way that made sense. Sometimes. But it’s always been something that I’d done since I was little because
back when all the kids at school had their Nintendo DSes, GameBoys, and iPod Touches, I had books. Books, because being broke brings budgeting. Buying things that are essential. And essential apparently meant three entire bookcases filled with books. See, my kindergartener mind never connected the dots between Asian parenting––that is, developing the “ultimate mind” meant to calculate math problems at lightning speeds while somehow also being adept in reading, writing, music, sports, and just about anything and everything you could think of ––and budgeting. I’d say it was because I was so sure we were broke. And being broke brings budgeting, and brings trips to Barnes & Noble. It’s been years since I’ve seen one, decades since I’ve visited. But when I was in first grade, which by then I had gone through every one of those books on the shelves at home, there were two places that my mom would take me every week without fail: piano practice and Barnes & Noble. “The library for rich people,” she would call it. The latest and greatest books, all with that brand new book smell. My kicking and screaming when going to piano practice and my kicking and screaming
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when leaving Barnes & Noble showed which of the two I preferred. And in what I preferred, I found what I enjoyed, and that was stories. It didn’t matter what kind of story it was. If there was a plot, characters, and my oh-look-a-squirrel mind could hold focus long enough to get past the first few chapters, I would be sitting next to a pile of novels for hours on end. Reading, reading fiction, was extending my sense of self to become more than just the self-proclaimed broke first grader. I was putting myself in the protagonist’s shoes, exploring the world around me––and occasionally cursing in my small repertoire of known “bad words” when I did something that “I” wouldn’t do. And this is where it gets fuzzy, because at some point I thought that I could start writing my own stories to entertain myself, to make characters do what I would do. Which usually meant that the entire plot would end within a few pages as half the cast would either be dead or missing, but that’s about as far as a deranged first-grader’s mind can get you, I suppose. But even if the exact moment where my reading became writing is uncertain, the way I viewed writing changed entirely when I made someone cry. Or so I was told by Mrs. DeVos in fourth grade, who congratulated me when I had turned in a fun little piece where both the main characters died at the end. It was a romantic piece, or as romantic as a fourth-grader with zero romantic experience could write about romance. Maybe that’s why both characters ended up dying. But regardless of the outcome of the story, the outcome of that moment was a realization of how stories evoke emotion—or more importantly that my story had evoked emotion in someone else. Maybe she was just trying to be nice, or was trying to get me to find a passion for writing. If she was, damn. Fell right into that one. Because that’s when I started writing not only for myself but also for others. And writing became even more important to me, all the more personal, when I
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started over. In a new town, in a new city, in a new country, in a new continent. Or was it old, since I had been born there? What I learned, however, was that being born somewhere does not necessarily mean that you will fit in there. As a kid raised in the US with the barest trace of Korean left in his veins, being placed in an environment where everything was Korean was a hit of ecstasy minus the high. In other words, it sucked and I crashed hard. All my friends were back in the States and I didn’t have the linguistic capacity to make new ones. So I turned to my writing again in middle school, but this time writing to an empty audience, and thus I became a (lonely) writer.
“Well, not exactly.”
“Whaddaya mean?”
“You write, but you don’t write well. And you’re not alone. I’m here, too.”
“But I––”
“Also, your chapters don’t go anywhere. The dialogue is empty.”
“But that’s because ...”
“And the plot–– is this just some carbon copy of a show you watched?”
Long story short, I stopped writing. My brother was always my harshest critic. The moment I decided that I wanted to write for other people, “other people'' disappeared. I was wandering, lost at sea,
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my aspirations nipped before they could really bloom. It didn’t help that the only person who read my work––over my shoulder, of course––was telling me I couldn’t do it. It was only when I moved yet again and found a new audience, that I even considered writing again. But time had eaten away at me and my writing. I wrote. I read. Then I erased. I had hit this wall, which I later learned was called writer’s block. I would spend hours on end simply staring at my screen or notebook, not wanting to write because I didn’t know what to write and, even if I did, I was sure that I would erase everything at the end. My writing was like me throughout my childhood–– ephemeral, only existing somewhere for a brief moment before disappearing to who-knows-where. But I had gotten through this. Surely my writing could do the same. I just needed to get something finished, something tangible to prove to myself that I did have what it took. And so now I’m
starting over. It’s hard, of course––the urge to rewrite everything that I’ve written so far. And to be honest I’ve given into that temptation more times than I’d like to admit. But I know that if I want to stay on track, I need two things: a plan and no plan at all. A plan of how the show will go on; detailed enough that I won’t get lost in the storm or find myself at the wall. And no plan at all; free rein to let my characters lead their stories. My frustration as a child was understandable. When a character does something that I would never do––and doubly so if that action causes a problem later on––it’s easy to forget that the characters are, in fact, not me. And that’s precisely what makes them genuine, makes their story genuine. I think about my story––which I sure damn hope is genuine––and about how I got where I am as the
culmination of all my decisions. I started writing for myself, to make characters do what I wanted them to do. Then I wrote for others, to evoke emotions in them. After that, I wrote for myself once more, once
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the others in my life had disappeared. And then there was a time where I didn’t write at all. But now I’m sitting here, with a notebook in front of me and a pen in hand. A run-on paragraph, some might call it. A rant, others would say. But to me, this seemingly never-ending trail of half-finished thoughts and fragmented memories is the story of who I am.
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Moving Fiona Lin
Lily existed on the periphery. This was a simple fact of her life, a silent acknowledgment that there would always be certain secrets that her family kept from her. As she ran through the house in search of her favorite toys, she would hear the muffled conversations between her parents through the thin walls, just loud enough to notice but not quite enough to be heard. In the afternoons, as she bowed her head and furrowed her brows over her math assignment of the day, her siblings would shoot worried glances at each other from their seats across the table. These subtle moments and gestures seemed to fill every crevice of Lily’s home, a sensation of something always just the slightest bit out of reach.
Lily did not know that the state of the economy meant that living costs had risen, that her parents’ wages from working in the rice fields were no longer enough to sustain their life, that her eldest sister was contemplating dropping out so she could help support the family, that her father was in failing health. What she did know was this: her mother was too busy to play with her, her father’s work was difficult and often left him tired and in need of rest, her elder sisters studied whenever they could, and her elder brother was the only one who had time for her anymore. This was their routine. Above all else, Lily knew that her family would be moving soon, leaving this place that they called home to move closer to the city, where everything was metal and concrete and shiny and new. Collapsed cardboard boxes had made their way into every room of the house, stacked in the corners and folded up beside desks or lamps or sofas. The words “in the city” had made increasing appearances in her parents’ hushed conversations, bleeding through their thin walls. Finally, one evening at dinner, her parents had sat them down, all four of the
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children, and told them their home would be changing. Industry was booming and the need for labor was rising—jobs would be plentiful in the city. For her family, it was a necessity. For Lily, it was an adventure.
Their family had a routine, and the process of packing slowly integrated into their schedule as the days passed. In the early mornings, the parents would head into the fields, rubber boots pulled onto their feet and sturdy straw hats shielding their faces from the sun. A little later, the eldest daughter would fix a quick breakfast and pack their lunches, as the second daughter ushered the two youngest out of bed. They would have their simple meal, get dressed, and walk off to school together. In the afternoons, the children would return, the youngest sent to start on their homework with the second daughter’s supervision, while the eldest tidied up around the house, packing smaller, less-used items as she went. Once their parents returned, the father would go off to rest before dinner while the mother began cooking their meal. The two eldest children would start on their homework while the younger two ran off to play. As they drew closer to their departure, the routine shifted further. In the evenings following dinner, the mother would take some extra time to sort through their possessions. Folded stacks of clothing would go into a couple of cardboard boxes, and kitchenware would follow into another. More and more boxes were unfolded in every room, gradually filling as each member of the family deposited items within, almost as an afterthought to their movement throughout the house. Textbooks and stationery were sorted carefully into the eldest sisters’ boxes, while toys and comics were tossed haphazardly into the younger children’s.
Lily saw it all as a game of sorts. It was as if her house had transformed into a treasure trove, items that she had not known they owned surfacing from the far corners of their closets and cupboards. Instead of helping with the chores around the house, Lily poked and prodded at her family’s
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progress, pulling out whatever caught her fancy. Some days, she and her brother would chase each other through the house, getting in the way of everyone else’s movement and knocking boxes out of their places. More often than not, they ended up disrupting her mother’s careful organization, and eventually, they were shooed out of the house while the others worked. On these occasions, they would move their games outside, content to chase after dragonflies and compete to catch frogs by the muddy road. They would build rockets from soda bottles and toy guns from rubber bands and bamboo chopsticks.
It was on a day much like this that Lily found the journal. She and her brother were playing another game, this time with rules similar to a scavenger hunt. Perhaps it was not the best game to be played in a house filled with boxes and scattered items, but the two children found that the mess in the house only made the hunt more interesting. Lily was in the midst of searching for a new place to hide her item—a small rabbit keychain—when she happened across their aged coffee table, pushed into the corner of the living room. The wood was smooth, the varnish worn away in places with use, and the handle to the little compartment under the top was beginning to rust. It was such an old and small piece of furniture that it appeared to blend into the chaos of the room. It was the perfect hiding place.
“Lily, are you done yet?” Her brother’s voice echoed through the house, coming from upstairs where they had agreed for him to wait. She decided not to answer, lest she gave away her position, and hurriedly yanked the drawer open. Inside it sat a journal, a thin volume with yellowing pages and a flaking leather cover. Lily stared down at it in confusion, certain that she had never seen the book in her life. It looked too tattered to be recently bought, but she could not recall ever seeing her family
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with anything like this. Her sisters preferred sturdy notebooks with an abundance of paper for their notes, her brother disliked studying in any form, and it had been ages since her parents had used this coffee table. “Lily?” Her brother called for her again. In one quick movement, Lily picked the journal up and shoved it under her shirt, held in place by the waistband of her shorts. She then stuffed the keychain into the deepest corner of the drawer and closed it with a soft thud, racing up their narrow staircase immediately after to start her brother’s scavenger hunt.
Later that night, Lily hunched under her covers with a flashlight in hand, careful not to wake her siblings as she brought the old journal out from where she had hidden it under her pillow after the scavenger hunt with her brother. Perhaps it wasn’t proper of her to go through someone else’s possessions, but she couldn’t help but be curious. The journal looked so old that she was sure it didn’t belong to any of her siblings, and its aged appearance seemed almost magical to her young mind. It was as if she had discovered a secret in her house, and she wanted to be able to experience that herself before sharing it with anyone else. She opened the journal gently, afraid that she would tear the pages by accident as the paper crinkled softly under her hands. At the bottom of the first page, scrawled in messy, looping text, was her father’s name. Lily barely held in a gasp and a sensation of worry crept its way into her stomach as she acknowledged that the journal was her father’s. It felt as if in opening the journal she was doing something forbidden, revealing her father’s private thoughts and corrupting her understanding of him. At the same time, however, Lily couldn’t contain her desire to learn more about her father. They had never been particularly close, with him being so busy with work and fatigued from the stress as head of the family and her being an energetic and noisy child. It wasn’t that Lily did not love him or vice versa, it was simply that their positions within the household and their day-to-
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day tendencies were incredibly incompatible. With this wish to learn more about the man who did so much for their family, Lily flipped to the next page and began to read.
I simply could not be happier. Today, finally, Meryl has become my wife. Our ceremony may have been small and simple—God knows we could not afford much more—but it is not the size of our wedding that determines my joy, but the fact that we are now able to start a family that we can call our own. We have a small place, just big enough for two, and both of us will continue working in the fields together as we previously had, but it feels as if my entire life has changed. I hope that from now on, this happiness only continues to grow. I dedicate this journal to our lives from this moment on; a new start as we reinvent ourselves in our new home.
Lily couldn’t help but smile. In her hands was a journal for the beginning of her family, a story that her parents had rarely spared the time to tell but was so clearly saturated with love in the way her father described the events of his wedding. The following couple of entries were equally as short, dated roughly a week apart each time, describing her parents’ life as newlyweds. Privately, she allowed herself to wonder if she and her siblings would be a part of the journal as well. With this thought in mind, she skipped past the next entries until she reached the ones close to her eldest sister’s birthday.
Meryl gave birth to our first child a week ago! A lovely baby girl that we named Evelyn, so small and precious it seems as though she could disappear. We were both elated to welcome her into the home, and are now adjusting to having a child to care for. We’ve been so busy with the new addition to our family that I’ve forgotten to note down how I’m feeling. For now, Meryl and I plan to save up
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our wages so that soon we can move into a slightly larger house, with enough room for the three of us and for the children we plan to have in the future.
A soft warmth bubbled up within Lily as she read. Her father had always been a man of few words, and though it should have been obvious that he felt as many emotions as the next person, it had never been as clear to her as it was in that moment, with a book of his wealth of thoughts and feelings in hand. Although she couldn’t understand everything that her father wrote about, especially when it came to entries about his work and other boring matters, she could clearly see how happy her parents had been. She had, however, been reading for quite some time now, and was beginning to get drowsy, so she put the journal away and resolved to ask her father about the entries when she found the chance. It was nice reading from the journal, but she was sure it would be even more so to hear it from her father himself.
As the next couple of days passed, Lily gradually finished reading her father’s journal. The journal itself was quite thin, and the time between each entry became longer and longer. One of the final entries was one about Lily herself, celebrating her birth and their move to a larger home to accommodate for all four children.
One evening, Lily found the perfect opportunity to confirm for herself what she had learned from the journal. She caught her father when he woke up early from his nap and had the energy to spare, and approached him shyly, anxious to disturb his rest. “Dad, how did you and Mom end up marrying?” The words bubbled forth from her lips without her control, and her eyes immediately widened in surprise at herself. She slapped a palm to her mouth in an effort to hold back any further questions, but the words had already escaped, spoken into existence. She lowered her head, afraid
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of her father’s response, and scuffed her foot against the floor as the silence dragged on a beat too long.
“What brought this on, Lily?” Her father’s soft voice prompted her to raise her head, and she was instantly put at ease when she saw the open and curious expression on his face. Despite her renewed confidence, Lily fumbled with her thoughts, opening and closing her mouth without speaking as she struggled to find a valid excuse. She knew she should simply come clean with the truth and tell her father about finding the journal, but she was so afraid that her father would confiscate the journal and berate her for her intrusiveness. “Well,” he continued, “I suppose that doesn’t matter much. It’s quite a long story, dear. Are you sure you want to hear it?” Lily’s face brightened and she nodded with vigor, watching as her father’s usual sternness melted away into something warm, soft with fondness and time. A small and possessive part of herself reveled in the comfort of this moment, wanting more than ever to keep the journal and its contents close to her heart, to treasure this tangible manifestation of her father and his love for their family.
Life continued as it had previously, but it was as if something had changed for Lily after learning more about the formation of her family. They moved into their new house, and her parents took on factory jobs in the city’s industrial sector. Though Lily was as unhelpful in the process as always, she found herself spending more time indoors, hovering around her siblings or playing quietly in the corner as her parents unpacked. She still played outdoors, of course, but she did so mostly in the company of her brother, and less so alone as she had sometimes used to. From time to time, Lily would crack open her father’s journal and reread her favorite entries—the ones describing her parents’ marriage and her siblings’ growth. She continued to keep it a secret, allowing herself to be
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a little selfish as her father appeared to grow weaker, the factory work that he had taken on in the city taking a toll on his body. She justified her actions, telling herself that she was featured the least in the journal as the youngest child and her father was not healthy enough to spend time with her consistently, and as such it was alright for her to hold onto this part of him for herself. This secret selfishness only became more relevant once tragedy struck her family three years later.
The day that Lily’s father died, the world turned gray. Color drained from every corner of her universe, muddling together into a wash of blinding monochrome. Misfortune had crept upon them and struck as they were weak, destroying the tentative stability and joy that had illuminated their new life. A hush descended upon the house. There was no sound in the aftermath: not when the news came, not when the funeral ended, and certainly not when they returned to their empty house, dressed all in black. The silence was almost too loud in Lily’s ears; a deafening call for help that scrambled her thoughts until she couldn’t take it anymore, clapping her palms over her ears and escaping under her blankets, where she could pretend as though she didn’t exist, or the world didn’t exist, or that everything was okay.
Dinner that evening was a miserable affair. Each remaining member of the family stared unblinkingly at the food on the table, stubbornly averting their eyes from the empty chair at the head of the table, and the cutlery that had been set there from force of habit. It would have been terrible to look at, had any of them found the strength to dare even a glance in the direction after the initial realization and the choked-up sob that had escaped their mother at the sight. At the same time, however, it seemed sacrilegious to even consider removing the cutlery, as if in doing so they were erasing the memory of father and husband. The house and
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everything within it seemed suddenly too big, too silent, too empty to be their home that was once filled with laughter and joy. And so, once again, they were moving.
This time, instead of the innocent wonder and excitement of a new start that she had carried previously, Lily could only bring herself to feel resentment. Perhaps if they had never moved, if they had not been so poor, if she had been older or more useful to her family … This time, Lily helped her family pack. Gone were the soda bottle rockets and the frogcatching competitions, the scavenger hunts through the house and the adventures through the stacks of cardboard boxes. This time, Lily had grown up.
She was rooting through her desk, packing away the books that she had accumulated recently, when she found the journal once again, tucked into the corner of her shelf. She opened it and ran her hands over her father’s name scribbled on the first page, finding a tightness in her throat that she couldn’t tamp down. With a renewed determination, Lily reached for a fresh notebook, sat down at her desk and began to write.
This will be a love story. Not between a man and a woman, though that occurs as well, but between four children and their parents, between a family and a home, between a daughter and her father.
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Road to Where?
Yoonsik Chico Park
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temporary fix
Amal Surmawala
problem detected diagnosis determined: you and your big mouth and the thing you said two weeks ago when you told that almost-friend of yours “yeah you too” when she said “hi” solution? solution, solution, solution simple: don’t speak * issue detected diagnosis determined: you and your gaze when you made awkward, accidental eye contact with that kid on the bus and they gave you that look the who-is-this-weirdo look
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and you wanted to sink through the floor solution? solution, solution, solution
claw your eyes out
* accident detected diagnosis determined: you and your brain when it short-circuited went haywire in a class full of people when you gave the wrong answer the stupid answer to what was a simple question and the giggles erupted solution? smash the grey bits into tinier pieces let them splatter onto the floor
* accident issue problem detected diagnosis diagnosis diagnosis determined
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you you you are always the problem please fix it now fix it delve into your mind extract every flaw lay it all out on the surgeon’s table cut into it with a scalpel systematically remove the tumors the nuts and bolts the neural pathways that just aren’t good enough reorganize and rearrange fix it fix it fix it faster faster faster why are you so slow how long will it take you to get the puzzle done why doesn’t it look like the one on the box why can’t you do anything right when will you be the person you should be
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the person you have to be the person everyone needs you to be what is that team of schemers of writers and dreamers your head doing why can’t you get anything right when will you be good enough
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On Cat Island
Ioanna Orphanide
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It’s Okay to Feel Alone Yoonsik Chico Park
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Museum of Emotions
Dixit Timilsina Many years from now In the museum of emotions
You will find love But not violence For museums only hold the rarest of things
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Skeletal Photographs
Sidra Dahhan
Mona lugged out a heavy, leather-bound photo album from the back of the bottom bookshelf and set it on her lap. For a moment, she observed the embroidered white flower petals falling from a browning stem on the book’s black cover. Her heavy heart fell with the petals, dreading yet yearning to do what she knew she was about to.
She started to gingerly sift through the pages. What once was a book rich with years of memories now laid bare, with translucent sleeves holding page after page of blank, white photographs. The album sat empty with the souls of lost moments.
The blanched spots where colorful photos brimming with humans once rested were a reminder of Mona’s weakness. The truth was that she was, and had long been, unable to merely look at the souvenirs, at tangible pieces of memory. For this, she was left with pages of skeletal remains. She could not recall in detail all the mysterious moments that she had lived and lost twice.
She reached a page near the end, and paused on the lone remaining photograph.
The woman sitting at the center of the image was dressed in a soft, silky blue shirt, unaware that a picture was being taken. She was dreamily staring off into something beautiful in the distance, entranced for reasons unknown. Her mouth opened slightly, eternally captured mid sentence. Perhaps she was whispering her praise of a glorious view to the person behind the camera, or she was passively singing a lullaby to the child she was holding in her lap with one arm.
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The child was maybe two or three years old, and she seemed to be struggling to keep her eyes open. Most of her body lay limp on her mother as she let herself relax. Her hands, however, were tense, as she gripped on to her mother’s shirt as if she was afraid that she would disappear.
Mona’s fingers absently traced the woman in the photograph, as she desperately drank in the image with her eyes. The weightless piece of paper dominated over her senses and rendered her powerless. Still, she resisted the creeping, intrusive voice itching the back of her mind, for she was determined to fool herself. Determined to believe that she was capable of absorbing the snapshot the old fashioned way; to become the child within without sacrificing the photograph. She longed to be merciful and give the image a chance to live, and not die like all of the others for her own greed.
But the child was not her. And it taunted her that that ungrateful, inanimate being got to forever exist in a perfect memory, while she was regulated to being an observer, unable to grab onto the moment.
That is when Mona made an impetuous decision to be selfish to her future self. Her favorite, and only, photograph with the woman was marred by her hatred, not for the woman, but for Mona’s mirror image, who greedily reaped the benefits of eternal contact with her. Mona was jealous. Resentful. And in that moment, she decided she would rather live one moment as the child than be forever reminded of what she could never experience just by observing.
Mona tore the image from its plastic sleeve, leaving one last blank space behind in the empty album. What remained was an album that was ready to be reborn with newly taken images, or to perish with all of its past memories erased forever.
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Moving on to her desk, Mona opened up the book-sized photo extractor from where it had laid unused, yet ready to operate, for years, and she placed the image inside. She observed as the image’s ink slowly melted into a pool of color in the transparent container below it. The liquid had a blue tinge to it. The blue of the sky, or of the azure blouse. As the ink droplets slowed down from a cool rain to reluctant, stray tears, to then nothing at all, Mona detached the container from the extractor and poured the liquid out into a dime-sized hole of a headset.
Then, she placed the metallic machine over her head and raised a finger over the familiar button near her left ear. She hesitated. As much as she wanted to press the button and experience the image, she was afraid of not capturing the moment perfectly. She was afraid of being disappointed, and of having saved an inconsequential moment as her last one. She was afraid of wasting her only opportunity to live the photograph. She did not know how long it would last, a moment, a minute, a day. Nor if the woman would recognize her beyond the child she no longer was. Nor if she wanted her to recognize her in that way.
Before she could question herself any further, her finger betrayed her and pushed the button.
*
She could smell jasmine. Not perfume, but the flower. A musky scent she seemed to have smelt only in long ago dreams, a smell she had not known she would recognize as immediately as she had. She wanted to cry.
Then, she felt her hands weaken against the slippery fabric she was holding onto. She gripped on tighter, desperately trying to keep hold.
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She heard a booming laugh over her head as her world started shaking and her hands detached from the silk. But one of the woman’s arms kept her in place, tightly hugging her. The woman was not humming a soft lullaby or whispering, as the stillness of the photo had led Mona to imagine. Instead, the woman was animated; she was alive. Remembering the woman’s awed expression to a sight off camera, Mona turned her head to the direction she was looking at. She wanted to see the spectacular sights that had haunted her imagination and dreams for years.
She saw nothing. Well, nothing of significance. All she saw was a cracked, beige cement wall in an unfamiliar place.
Still processing the mundanity of the moment, Mona was startled as the woman above her started shouting. No, she was only speaking, loudly and joyfully recounting a story of what seemed to be her past. A memory of her own. She was not looking at Mona, but to the man setting down a camera onto the table between them. A memory, that was the beautiful thing the woman was looking at.
Mona watched as the man grabbed a sunflower seed from the small ceramic bowl on the table. She heard a crack, and a small clink as he threw the empty shell into a second bowl. She heard a beautiful melody, composed as the seeds opened and fell into the bowl, as the man ate them and the woman released her spirited voice. While the seeds moved at a soothing, repetitive, and dependable pace, the woman’s words disappeared into the air as soon as they were told, dying as ghostly echoes as she simultaneously produced more and more lively sounds.
Finally, Mona looked up to the woman and gleaned at her actions. Her blue eyes gleamed as she spoke, not exactly sparkling, but shining.
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They were half here, half adrift in her own memory. They shifted between warmly acknowledging the man, and brightly acknowledging forgotten snippets of the past. Her voice wavered with emotion and strained at the exertion of remembrance, and the arm not hugging Mona danced along with her story. But then, the woman paused, hand midair, and eyes frozen. She was lost. Confused. There was a gap within her memory.
And that’s when Mona cried. Cried for her empathy in the moment. Cried for her sorrow of her own damaged recollection of the past. The woman’s eyes shifted down to her with furrowing brows as she acknowledged but still did not look at her. Instead, her attention was placed on reprimanding the man.
“Stop letting her stay up past her bedtime! Look at her, she barely slept, she’s exhausted.”
Mona sniffled, trying not to ruin the moment with her tears. She hugged the woman, as tightly as her little body was capable of hugging, deceptively strong. She felt the woman stiffen, bewildered, yet placing her other arm around her for a complete hug.
The man chuckled. “Looks fine to me.”
The woman shot him a glare as she began to bounce the girl on her leg, shushing her last few tears away.
“Mama,” Mona whispered feebly. The word felt strange, foreign.
She had the woman’s full attention now. But Mona could no longer speak, even if she wanted to, for her head started to spin. She knew this was the end. She knew this was goodbye. And all she could do was stare as the
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waterworks came back and overwhelmed her tongue and senses with saltiness. She hated herself for wasting her last moment on something seemingly so mundane, something she would not remember. She hated herself for being weak, and for wasting an eternal snapshot for a spotty memory. For exchanging a goldmine of photographs for the false reality of memory. She hated herself for not committing to a meaningful goodbye.
Mona then realized that she could no longer smell the sweet jasmine, and that the cracking of sunflower seeds was no longer audible. She became increasingly near sighted as the world lost its shape around her. Even the plain wall was less vivid than it was a moment before. The man was fading. The silkiness of the woman’s shirt as well. The woman’s questioning gaze disappeared, as well as her face. She was gone.
Mona saw white, and another image became a skeleton to be placed inside the album that would forevermore tantalize her for what it once was.
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DEBRIS
Manuel López Ramírez
Many years later, he/she is back.
Crack-ack-ack. Neck turns 90 degrees to look at the door. There he is/ There she is. A moment of adjustment. There he/she is. Wheels and gears to the right. The engine must find a crevice for what just entered.
The cups of white wine. The bowties and high heels. The tulips at the center of each table. Crack-ack-ack. Still processing.
It is decided that it should all go on as normal. One in a crowd of millions. The show must go on.
The one with a pit and the one with a swelling. All is moved to combine. Crack-ack-ack. Legs stagger and arms push others by the waist. The machine must ensure its own survival.
Yet there he/she is. One in a crowd of infinity. The silverware. The warm yellow haze of nights past and present. He/she wonders if he/she ever really left. Crack-ack-ack. Arms bend around her/him to go on with their evolutive duty. The engine must find a crevice for what just entered. But it must not touch.
Crack-ack-ack-ack-ack.
The system glitches:
How you’ve changed, they say. How you’ve changed, they say. How you’ve changed, they say.
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Is it that they don’t remember? The show must go on. That one with the beard and the one with the long hair. Match detected. Crack-ack-ack legs, crack-ack-ack arms. The machine must ensure its own survival. Malfunctions are expected, the system must learn how to deal with them.
How you’ve changed, they say. How you’ve changed, they say.
They haven’t really forgotten. Difference has always existed, but times have changed. Reactions must shape themselves to ensure the safety of the machine. He/she cannot alter the course of the engine. Arms and legs must make something new. Replace hostility with curiosity. Crack-ackack. Processing.
It mustn't be easy over there. How are you?
But, really, how are you?
The opera in the speakers. The ringing bells of laughter. The one in blue and the one in pink. Crack-ack-ack. Push puzzle pieces together. He/ she cannot interfere. Keep him/her out of this. Keep asking questions. Increase the looks. Now take them away. The show must go on. The system must learn how to deal with malfunctions. Best to drive them out completely.
*
In the dark, everyone slithers in-between. The air turns in slow spirals up and down, left—right—to—fro. Neon lights wet with body salt. A boundless crowd of open mouths. Loins and hearts make their own rules here. They like to dance. They say they like to try things. Loins and hearts make their own rules here. He/she’s here.
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¿Who are you? I’m nobody. ¿Can I love you? ¿Are you nobody too?
Everyone slithers to each other. He/she tries to. Eyes look with suspicion. Arms move in circles and out of sync. Thousands of hands on him/her, driving him/her hither, thither, downward, upward, like blasting winds of no repose. Some let go after the first touch, as if he/she were on fire. Some hold on hard, with shame.
Hands grope to question, hither, thither, downward, upward. Blasting him/ her closest to the orange tones which form at the end of the hallway, at the very end of his/her field of vision. Yet pulling him/her away from those summer days which can be seen at the end of the hallway, at the very end of his/her vision.
The infinite hallway, at the periphery of bowties and white wine, comes to an end which all are unknowingly trying to get to. There, there are promises of once-in-a-lifetimes and clothes spilled on the beach. He/she knows of those who have reached. The special ones. Those that do not stir questions, whose body is fought over—not with—by the hands. Those who are a single thing, not two.
Because it is true that these hands, eyes, arms, are the debris of the great machine. They carry it deep within them.
*
(He/she has a dream:
It is not far from me, about five steps away. Everything is pitch-black, except for the white light coming through the tiny little space at the
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bottom. Tiny yet big enough to let blazing white-hot light cut through the dark like the sharpest of razors. I stand five steps away from the door and the light that comes through the tiny little space at the bottom cuts through me like a knife and lights a path so hot to step on it means to light myself on fire. Five steps away from the door is me and the shadows, deep, infinite, as cold as space. Me and the shadows or me, the shadows, are five steps away from scorching heat. Five tiny, immense little steps.)
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Ebony
Klethon Gomes
Piece of dark matter in your mouth
Ripe blackberries popping on your tongue
Chew me like ebony
Spit me out sculpted
Polished in the finest varnish
Before you, I harden and soften: complete Metamorphosis
Transmuting in suspension
From carbon to diamond
From nothingness to opals in sunlight
You caress my charcoal skin with your eyes
Fire and honey dripping sweet as lava
Incandescence of my disaster
Nature's ultimate martial law
In thy love, I'm lost
In your wicked soul, I'm found.
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Circus at Columbia University Yoonsik Chico Park
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Xaymaca 60
(List Poem inspired by Allen Ginsberg) JJ Jackson
I have seen the best minds of my generation writhe in their miseries and stoop to labour in the dunged dirt and squirm in the faecal filth and dine in the manured muck of another like cowards, taking flight and lusting over the putrid pods of pigs like prodigal sons, but too prideful to be poised for a glorious, patriarchal return
who sacrilegiously strain their consecrated bloodlines into grimy buckets of diluted Möet and white overproof spirits and the THIN platelets of their mothers, and gasp greedily, slurping it to their chapped mouths with dirtsmudged hands and work-cracked palms and grime-lined fingernails unto a wretched kind of numbness: Disappointing Drunkenness, Stumbling Stupors, Blind Bacchanalia
who spread their brains out on the dilapidated pavement of the aged concrete and SPREAD THEIR LEGS to scrape out the remnants of what is left and stumble through checkpoints and cheat for survival; entirely scamming subjects and stashing phones in dark places, sloth sludging through their streams and exiting only through sneezed rags of snot or slithering through intestines and crawling out of cheated appendixes
who, today, frolic like finches and fête forgotten fineries but, tomorrow, fine-tuned the finished polishes of their frowns; forever finicky and floundering farces, but two-faced, refining the “I’m fine” while harbouring the “I” AS FOE
who loiter on the street sides burning holes through the middle of their palms, licking letter-less envelopes mailed to no one mailed to blurred skies,
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temporary highs, and overwhelming lows, bloodshot eyes peering over the darkest hours, and dark lips staining the countenance of their corps
who bend over backwards with battery-powered beatings, bulldoze bellboys bustling and breathless in blind corners but casting the first stone in bold blows with beams in their eyes, refusing to lower themselves in the presence of their women and boast spurting Belloite jizz in Her faces, their evidence stored in soundless films rolling on and on and unseen, its script rewritten in illicit servers with HER-NOT-his-NOT-THEIR penned apologies to follow in from nuns’ frowns of excommunication
who canter over with foal legs strewn together too tightly wrapped in gashes of denim, tartan ripping at the seams of overlined linen, and they’ve fried what was STEW and CURRY and STEAM and ESCOVITCH and BAKE, rolled in TURMERIC CRUSTS, across state borders with Bluegrass spices lines of engines on the Sabbath a coiling ravenous snake
Who dim their ears to the tolling of bells and whet their defiled lips on the wooden flats of an anche, purring hymn notes with no conviction and placing the wafer-flat pad of their index onto hallowed tongues under the watchful eyes of their Genesises, and fall back, hand-crossed, into boiling water; skin peeling, heads lolling, EYES-ROLLING BACK, occultists pushing them around the rims of a golden goblet that has touched the mouth of gOD
Who crown Miss Worlds and hire bank tellers preferring more milk to coffee, weeping blue teared mountains with white matter crusting in eye-
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ducts and crushing the souls of brewed dust, patterns AB BC but no CC, paper bags and hyperventilation, unknotting locs with broken combs and rubbing out at that damnéd spot in feverish anger when everyone tells you to ‘LIGHTEN UP’
I have seen their minds implode, what a sight it was to behold.
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crazy eyes
Amal Surmawala
once upon a dream i freeze in terror as a stranger’s crazy eyes meet mine through the glass window. i never thought i’d be terrified of a smile.
i scream, run to my brother, to man to protect me from man, and he leads the stranger away. the stranger smiles triumphantly; i shiver, go back to my room. and already he is replaced. another one stares through the glass window and this time there is no one here but me.
i fight, fling his hands from the windowsill, watch him fall to stone pavement, wonder if i’m now a murderer, but he gets back on his feet. people are shouting encouragement. he looks at me with eyes that are even more dangerous than before.
and i know now that this is a dream. i know this is a dream. those windows so white and easy to open aren’t mine; my brother would never have left me. i scream at myself to wake up and i do.
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to darkness and silence and bars on the window and locks on my door and a window in the bathroom that’s too small for anyone to climb through. Allahu la i-la’ha crosses my lips along with a string of pleas.
i ask the divine for help because there is no one else, no one else to save me, protect me from what i just lived. my racing heart slows.
i can now hear the fans whirring above me, see my little sister sleeping on the bed near mine. i pray for her too.
i still can’t get the stranger’s crazy eyes out of my head. because i know that this dream, this nightmare, is real to some girl somewhere.
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The Cursed Blessing
Aarushi Prasad
god blessed a womb but also did not it conceived a boy and a girl draped in magnificent muslin his cries made anklets chime impetuously draped in moth-eaten cotton her body writhing in malnourished neglect
god blessed a womb but also did not it conceived a boy and a girl he flourished eating chicken breasts she drank the leftover broth with unwavering zest god blessed a womb but also did not it conceived a boy and a girl he lived the American dream she sojourned a connubial nightmare
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god blessed a womb but also did not it conceived a girl and a boy he mutilated his loved ones’ flesh for estate she decorated their wounds with freshly ground turmeric
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The Vicissitudes of the Weather Marta
Natalia Pienkosz
These illustrations convey the abstract sense of space involved in weather patterns. Drawing on real-time weather data from specific locations, the seemingly aleatory, shifting nature of weather is explored. The program built in TouchDesigner sends HTTP requests to the OpenWeather server, retrieves data, and generates ever changing digital graphics. In this process, one type of digital information, weather data corresponding to temperature, cloud cover and weather conditions such as rain, fog, or clear skies, is being transcoded into a set of parameters affecting the final appearance of the visual. This process translates the abstract, random weather patterns into location-specific representations of the condition of our personal surroundings.
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Procession of the Seasons Amrita Anand
Summer watched in silence as the rising sun turned the still horizon fiery. She had been growing tired of her duties for a long while now, but there was no forsaking them. It was not in her nature, after all, to be neglectful. Some would say the opposite, in fact—that she was prone to overdoing it when she did not have to go to such efforts. Only three truly understood her plight; they understood her position as well as their own.
The wind rustled behind her, stirring her hair.
“You are late,” she murmured, not turning. She knew without looking, the rasp of her partner’s trail against the ground, the gentle crunch of their footfall. “Kindly cease to make this a habit, or Winter will be very cross.”
“He is even worse than I, my darling,” Autumn said, forgoing their usual greeting. “And you know these things are hardly under my control. I only come when I am called, unfortunately not by you.”
Summer bit back a sigh. They were hardly wrong, though she often wished otherwise, barely able to keep up with what was expected of her. Even the beauty that came with the toil seemed … less worth it, these days.
“Nevertheless,” she demurred, “I look forward to the respite you and the others will grant me during these coming months.”
“Were it up to me,” said Autumn, “I would come to you sooner, and grant you a longer rest. You look tired.”
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The breeze had begun to stir up the hem of her dress and the few fallen leaves along the tree line. The sun had risen a bit more, staining the seascape in vibrant reds and oranges and yellows; the colors of morning and rot. The same colors that, fittingly, adorned her partner’s cloak. Finally, she faced them, taking in their easy grace and the gentleness in their eyes. It was an alluring offer, to take up the opportunity for rest so easily—but she had quite a ways to go yet, and said as much to Autumn.
“Then let me be your escort,” was their eager reply. “You know I love to see your work.”
Though they were slow to praise, they had never lied to her, nor anyone else. She had no reason to doubt, and ample to believe. “Very well,” she acquiesced, heart skipping as she extended a hand for them to take.
The almost gallant gesture was unlike Autumn, really—it was Winter who was more prone to such displays, though nobody could tell from the way he carried himself in his domain. Beloved, sharp-edged Winter, soft as snow and cold as ice—and just as swift to thaw, especially more so in recent years.
Rather than consider any of the horrors of changing times that loomed over them, closing more of the distance between their transitory states by the year, Summer let those thoughts fade away as she linked her hand through Autumn’s. They tucked her into their side—voluminous, leafy cloak fluttering around her shoulders—and led the slow and steady march across her domain.
Truth be told, Summer was proud of her work. She had always prided herself on maintaining the perfect balance between all the best traits of her domain and the worst, and was pleased still by the results, even
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though conditions were changing swiftly. Autumn squeezed her hand as she directed them towards a field of lavender: one of the highlights of her achievements this year, not the very least because she’d spurred its growth along for the very purpose of seeing her partner react with their characteristic wonder and love for the living.
Autumn generally let the flowers be—they had always been partial to late blooms, and prone to admiring them as they readied the way for Winter.
Even now, she delighted in their awe, wishing only for a moment that she could share this joy with Winter and Spring. Alas, it would only be well into the season that the pair could venture out freely without causing an early and untimely onset. By then, the flowers would wither and wholly become part of Autumn’s domain. There was splendor to be found there too, in the shades of the rising and setting suns, and the beckoning of Winter just around the corner—but Summer relished these private moments as much as the ones they all spent united.
She turned back to peek over the edge of Autumn’s cloak—no small feat, given their height—and watched the leaves dry and crack just a bit faster than normal, the yellow standing out starker than it had mere moments ago. It would not be unusual, given the strength of her reach this year, but it did mean that the pair could not stay for longer.
They barely needed a tug at their arm to concede, craning their neck to keep watching the purple sprigs as they passed them by.
“When I have escorted you home,” Autumn said at last, as dawn broke into day, “I shall enjoy returning to this field. Thank you.”
Summer smiled. It had become a little ritual between the two of them, a way for her to welcome her seasonal successor—one of the many
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ways of saying hello and goodbye and I love you and see you soon that the Four had devised to make the transitions between domains easier. Perhaps others in their station might have mourned the passing of their creations before their very eyes, might have cursed the never-ending cycle for its constant demand for labor, but the Four—
The Four Seasons loved each other. The cycle was no death, merely a retreat, and it heartened Summer to cede her lands to her partner thus. No, not cede—this was no loss, merely a shift—a gift.
And Autumn expressed their gratitude in turn, taking up their tasks where she left off with a fervor that had not lessened since their first awakening. The next time she walked them across her fields and grasslands and bright, blistering sands, they would be just as eager, just as they would after that, and again once more, revitalized in spirit every year even as they diminished in station.
“I am still here,” they murmured, when she voiced the thought, tilting her head up to press a tender kiss to her nose. “And as long as I still exist, I shall not worry about the changes time has wrought upon my domain. I ... would prefer that you not do so as well. Take each moment as it comes, my love. There are many more to look forward to, before it is over.”
Summer raised her head just a bit further, and smiled when she met their eyes. She could do that much. She would look forward to every moment they’d share and relish in her partner’s presence for every single one of them, build monuments of vine and fruit in their name and love with everything she had in her soul.
She did not know when their time together would end, or if it would at all, and what the changing times would mean for the Four. For now, it was simply the turn of the seasons, and she the herald of Autumn’s reign.
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Enclosed
Rishit Saxena
midnight dances Amal Surmawala
New Year’s begins with gunshots and fireworks and a declaration to ce-le-brate good times outside, in the cold, with no jackets, and a little black speaker New Year’s begins with dynamic stretches with strategic movements to garner warmth in synchronized and unsynchronized beats as swinging legs begin to move forming a circle, first stationary and then in motion, till the movement takes on its own breathiness, its own life, and we start our own little tradition in the dead of night where gunshots do not terrify and the cold is but a backdrop New Year’s begins with little giggles, little sparks of laughter to warm us on some other cold day in the distant future New Year’s begins with a lively little circle with a not-so-secret ritual and while the sun on 2022 has yet to rise we feel its heat already in the sweat, in the smiles of these here midnight dances
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Crescent (The Beginning) Aneeka Paul
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Luna: The Mystical
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Aneeka Paul
Visions in Darkness Amrita Anand
Hearken, O sweet maiden, maintain in thy mind’s eye a vision of my soul, After I have lain it bare for all to see, like the blue, iridescent Eye-spotted tail of the peacock in all its majesty. Work with your droll, Witty mind, remember me with your love and your humor effervescent.
Witness the arresting darkness of the sightless, the night everlasting With the stars all missing—endless black. But the vision begins in my mind, Not in my sight, and though I see no more, my heart remembers yours, casting To my other senses, the feel, the smell, the sounds—all of you it can find.
My love is stronger than all of my parts together, it moves, breathes, lives In every inch of my soul—hark, my dearest, hark!—There is more to my life Than loss. Worlds away are we, but I am with you from Kyoto to Venice In spirit, if not in form, devotion precise as the edge of a knife.
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Conversations with Grandpa Yoonsik Chico Park
It’s Halloween Night and I Will Dress Up as a Happy Woman Zhiyu Luo
It’s Halloween night and I will dress up as a happy woman. I will dress up as a cathedral with glorious rouged windows And eyes like transparent candies.
I will dress up as a rosy ghost in the form of a summer zephyr. I will dress up as freedom to say what I want. A button to end racism. A button to neutralize Vladimir Putin.
I will dress up as a faulty bomb. A mistaken death sentence. A false tsunami alarm. A war cry, but as a bad joke only.
I will dress up as the opposite of eating disorders and sleep paralysis. I will dress up as a blood moon. Or a bloody period. Or a pregnancy test that says you’re not a mother yet, relax. Or plan B. Abortion pills. Marie Latour.
I will dress up as somebody whom you love deeply. Who loves you back too. Without failing. At least, I could pretend.
I will dress up As Icarus with diamond wings
As Achilles head to toes in the River Styx
As the color
The taste
The shriek of bold blue
I will dress up as a story that has a proper ending
(Not this; we shouldn’t say goodbye Like this.
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I’m sorry.
My poem chokes me)
You see, I will dress up as a happy woman
Whose heart is safe
Who is not afraid of the family heritage of Cardiovascular detonation
As soon as her feet touch the earth
Who closes her eyes And sleeps soundly
Without forcing herself to dream, to weep, to remember to breathe.
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birthed Linh Hoang
In my mother tongue “mẹ” is just a slight alteration of “me”. A female figure with a little being under it pushed out of her vagina, not from the head. or thigh. unlike when Zeus (gives) birth. they said when the time comes (and i hope it won’t) the end of individualism wouldn’t be collectivism but motherhood otherwise how could an individual bear another life just a little mark but in Vietnamese it’s called “nặng” synonymous with “heavy.”
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My Heart Exhumes Thee
Klethon Gomes
Every day, my heart exhumes thee
From soils of a neverland I’ve never touched or kissed
As vast as the graveyard is your love for me
Transvaal daisies, a tomb, your corpse; I could not see Across the Atlantic Ocean, endeavoring death’s mist
Every day, my heart exhumes thee
Had I only heard the cry of the banshee
Your petrichor laugh would not be missed
As vast as the graveyard is your love for me
Sometimes I dream of drowning in the Black Sea
If I stop breathing as you did, would we coexist?
Every day, my heart exhumes thee
Shattering my alabaster heart into a flame tree, The everlasting torment of my soul persists
As vast as the graveyard is your love for me
Your whispers in my heart will never set me free
I won’t ever let you ascend; I am an egoist
Every day, my heart exhumes thee
As vast as the graveyard is your love for me
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124 یھب ےس نج مہ جآ روجات لایناد اہر ماکان ہشیمہ ادنھد اک رایپ ایآ ںیہن رادیرخ رپ ایاجس لایھٹ ایآ یھب ےناٹل لام رگا روچ لد ضارتعا ایک ںیرک مہ ایاگل وت ھتاہ ےن یسک ہک ںیہ ےہر ڑکس لوھپ ہی ےس ےصرع ےنتک وناج ہن مت ےہ یہر لبا سایپ ہی ےس ںوسرب ےنتک ںوناج ہن ںیم نیدلاءلاع ےسیج رک با اہر مرجم اک ےنامز رہ وج بلاقنا ےڑھک رک وت دازآ ںیہ ےتوہ ےس تواغب ہک ناسنا ےنب ےس ینامرفان روا ولچ ےلچ روا ڑکپ ھتاہ ںیم ےریھدنا ےس نادان سا رارف ںیہ ےتہاچ انلم تار ےب تار یھب ےس نج مہ جآ ےگ ںیلاکن تایح زار ےئوہ ےٹرگر وک غارچ مہ روا
With Whomsoever (Aaj Hum Jinn Se Bhi) Danial Tajwer
I’ve always been rotten at the business of love Never did a customer visit my adorned stalls
If a stealer of hearts were to pounce upon my goods
Why should I put up a fight?
It’s better than being touch starved
Don’t you know how long ago these flowers withered away? Don’t you understand how ancient this thirst is that burns in my chest? So why not do as Aladdin did
Who as a criminal found glory in every age
Come raise the banner of revolutions
For freedom is won by rebellion
And humanity was conceived in disobedience
Take my hand and let’s run away
Soaring through the darkness of this most innocent of nights
Tonight we will strive to rouse the genie from his unfeeling slumber
And in rubbing the lamp, we shall discover the Secret of Life
Translated from the original Urdu by the author.
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Arson in my Arteries
Aarushi Prasad
chapped, unpigmented lips yearning for matrimonial moistness, her pupils gazed intently, at the rusted pendulum that swinged to the beat of her pulsating heart
forbidden concoctions of rum and coke became one with her benign blood as sweaty palms blissfully caressed every inch of her cellulite-infested flesh.
the thrusting weight lifted off her he smiled. she smiled he turned over. she turned over he slept. she craved under the blankets of prejudice she worked and worked propelling herself into utopias where her toe-twitching thirsts were not quenched by diabolic poisons of patriarchy.
her moans escaped the long empty corridors of her vocal cords, only to be deflected from the blackboards of societal pedagogy
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i’ll be good she had promised to her ailing father as she watched him transform into pale rock i’ll be good and the goodness made all the difference
Yoonsik Chico Park
