wein a constant state of change?
What efect does this natural
SEVEN
hti srehto ?egnahc tahW seod ti leef ekil ot erotser/ecalper nrobewerA?gnissimsitahtgnihtemos a iag?n hW e r e d o t he p hy s
SEVEN
maintenance have on the physical and the metaphysical?How does itfeeltophysicallyletsomething go? D o y o u r e goc n ezi yehtewerasyawtahwnI?flesruo emas ?tnerefidro woH seod ruo pihsnoitaler htiw sevlesruo dna iw
Editor-In-Chiefs
Annabelle Adams
Jonah Hodari
Editorial Director
Margaret Kaprielian
Visual Arts Director
Ning Chen
Photo Director
Lilli Drescher
Design Director
Cherie Laroche
PHOTO
Lilli Drescher
Ore Fashesin-Souza
Paige Kaiser
Ilana Grollman
Lex Jimenez
Nathan Kahn
VISUAL
Ning Chen
Isabel Dantas
Maya Drooker
Sofia Misisco
Sydney Grantham
EDITORIAL
Annabelle Adams
Danielle Bartholet
Maragaret Kaprielian
Lucille Kelly
Camilla Mackay
Coco Meyerhofer
Erin Norton
Caraline Shaheen
Talia Vyadro
Lyanna Zammas
Sarah Zirin
DESIGN
Jacob Goldberg
Lilian Holland
Margaret Kaprielian
Jade Kong
Cherie Laroche
Emily Malkan
Mckenna Smith
Camilla MacKay
Lex Jimenez
Camilla MacKay
Ning Chen
Sasha Zirin
Nathan Kahn
Margaret Kaprielian
Polluted Amniotic Fluid
Maya Drooker
20 Year Old Teenage Girls
Caraline Shaheen
Droste Efect
Ore Fashesin-Souza
Instinct
Paige Kaiser
An Imperfect Smile
Lucille Kelley
Hair Tug
Coco Meyerhofer
For Better or Worse
Sydney Grantham
Breast Stroke
Talia Vyadro
Bunnies and Free Will
Erin Norton
Losing
Ilana Grollman
Annabelle Adams
Letter From The Editors
Hello,
Thank you for taking your time to hold our magazine in your hands, turn the page, and be with us. This issue marks Jonah’s last with EM and Annabelle’s last year; EM has been a constant in both of our collegiate experiences, giving us the space and the opportunity to engage with greater concepts of communal art making. Starting at this magazine as staf members in our lower classmen years, EM has watched us challenge ourselves and grow as people. It’s no surprise that a theme that encompasses regeneration and expansive growth touched us this fall.
SEVEN was a theme brought to us by our newly appointed and transcendent editorial director, Maggie Kapperlian. When she came to us with a quote from Steven Hall saying that “Every single cell in the human body replaces itself over a period of seven years. That means there’s not even the smallest part of you now that was part of you seven years ago,” it sparked a fire of curiosity and introspection in the room. It was empowering to see a new generational leader of EM pitch an idea that spoke to the team as a whole. It was then we knew we’d made the right decision.
To us, SEVEN represents all that the body can hold and all that the body cannot contain, simultaneously. The feeling of forgetting something, needing something that you no longer have, growing into and out of truths that you once thought to be definitive. In this constant state of change, can we look back and see something that we recognize?
In this age of definitive and commercialized identities we wanted to explore the ever-evolving idea of self. The rebirths that happen on a large and small scale throughout the days and years making us more experienced and enlightened individuals. As college students we understand the amount of change that can take place within a short period of time and the open mindedness required for oneself to learn. In this time of political turmoil, global abuses of power, economic uncertainty, and continual technological advancements, it is necessary for one to not just believe in the possibility for change but find the capacity to enact that change within themselves. We encouraged our staf to investigate this relationship in SEVEN, the conscious and subconscious changes that define our personhood and way of life in all realms.
With love,
Annabelle & Jonah Co-Editors in Chief of EM Magazine
A Psychologist’s Theory Of Us
WORDS Maggie Kaprielian
Psychologists say that if a friendshiplastslongerthan seven years, it is guaranteed to last a lifetime.
I sometimes wish we could trade bodies, that way you could feel the golden light tucked inside my chest that glows when I’m around you, or the soreness in my stomach when you put me through a laughing fit. I want you to see yourself from my eyes, look internally through my mind at the memories you placed there with your own two hands.
You were the girl with long hair in my art class. I was jealous of the way it draped over your shoulders, how easily you could braid it, the gentleness it possessed in the wind. Little did I know you admired my waves, believing I washed my scalp with salt water and the Altlantic’s breath.
That was when we were twelve. One minute we’re in your bedroom, feet on the bare floor, dancing uncoordinatedly to “Ribs” Lorde. The next we’re in your car, and the same song plays faintly as we mourn the summer on her death-bed.
With crooked grins being fixed by braces, we didn’t seem to care about boys much. They were never as interesting as us anyway. Then I watched your heart break, and then you told me I was the one who mended it in the end. When I went on a horrible date, you were the first person I called from the confinement of my dorm. Maybe our truths from midnight conversations when skies were full of more stars still holds true.
Turning thirteen meant my guts filled with the fear of being forgotten in a sea where I am only one vessel. If only I could tell that version of myself that the girl who stops by my locker will be there for each of my teenage birthdays. You’ve decorated your walls with polaroids of us, flashbulb moments where our smiles aren’t fabricated. You say you’re cursed with a poor memory. Yet to know you is to be remembered, even as childhood’s expiration date has passed.
I cannot stomach how nothing lasts forever. My little sister has passed the age I still feel, and there are gray furs surrounding my dog’s bright eyes. It’s nauseating how easily people walk in and out of life. But psychologists do say that if a friendship lasts longer than seven years, it is guaranteed to last a lifetime; it’s been over seven years and you’re still here.
For over seven years, I’ve been subconsciously writing your wedding reception speech. For over seven years, we’ve witnessed versions of ourselves that no longer exist. For over seven years, I’ve been loved as much as I love. Nothing lasts forever, yet this will.
Thank you for loving me for over seven years. I will love you forever.
one of the r t e
r o t t e n o n es
VISUALS Lex Jimenez
MODELS Genevieve Peters & Caroline Mcginn
At 7 Years Old, I Loved My Mother
WORDS Camilla MacKay
At 7 years old, I loved my mother
She wore nothing but denim overalls and a bra
At 14 years old, I hated my mother
She desired everything only the best
When my parents first met They fell in love
His bald head and motorcycle
Her broken, below poverty-line parents
Expected perfect prayer to permeate snake skin
At 21 years old, I pretend to understand my mother blaming everyone and everything
To be considered immaculate by conception
the kids that bullied me for poorly-packed lunches the job that paid for your absence at bedtime the nuns that taught me Spanish instead of you
At 28 years old, I’ll love like my mother
If the empathy of every 80s romantic comedy could fit inside one person they would kiss like you with a gentleness only found in the way my mother says goodnight to me her miracle in a crib
God loves hard but you love soft more worthy of worship than our Father
At 35, I hope to look like my mother as I remember her now
Black curls
Heavensent picture frame-ing prayerful angel face full of Grace
At 42, I hope to become a mother like my mother
If violence and victory could fit inside a baby girl it would be me
Who left battle scars on your belly because being born felt like a descension into a world where you can no longer carry me
One day
I’ll hold something as precious as myself in your eyes and when I give birth to her
I’ll wear my battle scars like a badge of honor
Madre y Hija
WORDS Camilla MacKay
It’s been months since I’ve hugged my mother. But when I’m in her arms again, I imagine it’ll feel like being reborn. Her wingspan will birth an oval absence so womb-like it heals my wounds, erases my memory and replaces my spirit with a younger version of myself. A version that finally finds warmth.
When I embrace my mother, I want her to smell my loneliness, make a candle out of it, and give it back to me as a reminder that desperation reeks but desire fuels flames. And I am never alone.
Because I am her in so many ways. Our instinctual reaction to the cold–pretending it’s summer. Playing mermaids in the snow and imagining what Boston would be like if it was in Texas.
Our laughs, refusing to apologize for making volcanoes out of mouths. Erupting in giggles, melting soundwaves, extinguishing the collective fear that the joke might not land.
Our curl patterns which mimic our manners–Hers: professional and flirty. Mine: unpredictable and frizzy. Rebellious in comparison to the wig my grandmother chose to wear when the hispanic of her hair had fallen.
One day I’ll miss my mom the way she misses hers. So I hug her hard and hold her tight with the strength of both madre y hija.
Our Past Converges into A Single Moment
VISUALS Ning Chen
What it often means to start anew
WORDS Sasha Zirin
December
She had been stuck at the airport for six hours Others on her flight had been ruminating in exasperation for three She’d been gaming on her laptop for two Sipping cofee for one The cafe by her gate sold it to her, they sell strawberry smoothies too but she could not justify getting one knowing her father was waiting for her [“I got you a chicken caesar salad with fries!”] She felt like the image of a twenty-one year old, Liking what everyone else liked, She has tried to make meals she’s seen online when she remembers to buy ingredients as opposed to an energy drink, protein bar, chips. The classic twenty-one year old replacement for viral expensive restaurants and recipes Everything around her every day still seems new, it keeps its excitement, because she still feels twelve, still feels like she lives in a world where every aspect of her current life Doesn’t exist.
It feels like she was just about to give up entirely, honestly!
When the flight boards.
Living, with roommates, a safe three states away from home working, taking classes online, it feels great to never ask her parents for money yet still have them buy the plane ticket she was using
It feels great to accumulate money and get good grades
It feels great to be like other people, to be welcomed, to be forgettable
Home life was as imperfect as anyone’s
The idea of going home is setting something of in her
Her parents had stopped paying for her antidepressants but that hadn’t bothered her, if anything it was more convenient not to take them
[“$100 co pays nearly weekly?”]
She knows her uncle is sick, her best friend, the one family member she felt knew her at all!, she saw him a month ago sinking into his bed
The lines in his face deeper than she ever saw them
His eyes had permanently widened with the fear of mortality
But she did not think he was actually going to die
[“the upswing!” Her father had insisted. “He’s on the upswing!”]
He told her she was his favorite
Out of anyone he knows, anyone he has ever met
And she knows she couldn’t have grown up into that twenty-one year old
Without him there every step of the way
She looked in the mirror and felt like life was too short
She looked in the mirror and did not recognize who she was
She felt lonely, like she’s never done anything, like everything she was working towards meant nothing.
It really doesn’t mean anything
If i just do what everyone does, she considered, then why can’t i have fun like everyone else? Why can’t i do what i want? How much more meaningless is hedonism over workaholism?
January January
“He is a fucking asshole”
January
January
Her roommate said as she lined up rows of ketamine and coke, courtesy of their barista paychecks and asking their fathers to send fifty dollars “real quick”
“We just gotta get fucked up and hang out and everything will be okay”
The harsh month managed to go by quickly
in her glorious twenty-one year old apartment she didn’t have work or assignments to do for class, February yay!
Her eyes opened,
11am on a Saturday,
February
It was a month since her date pushed her down the stairs and she let herself think about it
She told him about her uncle god damn it why would he push her? She remains in mourning! She’ll probably never leave! But it was three fucking weeks after the death!
The self-pity was pathetic.
She was bored of the weed and the coke
She hated alcohol and going to parties
She wanted to have fun.
She was bored of her online classes, was a non-profit communications degree really worth it? Can she actually do anything that fills what’s missing in her? She used to want to help people, now she only thinks about herself. Everything was mediocre.
She liked tripping on mushrooms, though, which she tried recently, because they made her feel like a child again
When distraction didn’t feel like fulfillment, And being online wasn’t the most fulfilling thing she could do
Like many people (she knew), psychedelics tugged on her thoughts
She never thought about them two months ago, she would’ve never even considered it [she didn’t know where to get them at the time]
That shit used to feel so meaningless compared to her goals [she couldn’t use them because of her SSRIs] [she used to try to avoid being depressed]
So it was saturday morning. She wanted shrooms, she thought passively, prophetically
She didn’t end up doing them but found herself at CVS with a bottle of cough syrup [“This is the least sober i’ve ever been!”]
She found herself loving it
She thought the medicine helped her heal from her ex-boyfriend from last year, who used to be her only source of pain, back when she was sober and medicated and just wanted a boy to talk to
She found herself going to work and logging onto class Monday like nothing happened
These acts of self destruction don’t seem to exist Everything is normal
March
She can hurt herself all night and as long as she goes to work and class most days, nobody notices.
Realizing that gave her a rush, she thought about how lucky she was her privilege and family’s support turned into something that took away any sense of urgency she once had to work harder, be better
Her best friend died so who is there to impress?
[“I don’t talk to my parents that much—he told me that made sense, he knew them better than anyone”]
It gave her a bit of a rush
The invincibility of her lifestyle
She gets to be as indulgent as she wants! But with the balance of a barista job and a course schedule devoid of math and science
She used to read books and learn languages.
An especially cold winter was holding onto spring this year
She was starting to recognize herself
A sick feeling settling in the bottom of her stomach
[“I’m officially a diferent type of twenty-one year old.]
Seven Acts
Tove
VISUALS Nathan Kahn
MODELS Anushka Dixit
Mallory Grothman
Scout Davis
Kallie Green
Jegeus
Bree Ligon
Ellie Rowles
Nikki Yar
Four, the physical
Three, the spiritual
WORDS Danielle Bartholet
Icy mud closes around pale and frantic ankles as the four are running through ruin, ruin, ruin
Three were woven together by the hand of the one above like a braid of grass in sunlight
The taste of escape is dried brown blood on their lips, four years gone, driving, fast, fast, fast
Praying together thrice they stood, united, warm, happy, basking in gold and green
Watching dirty hands grasp for warmth, a weary string quartet, playing them away, away, away
The rich sweetness of a trio closed then to a fourth, laughs in a heaven-bent harmony
The black smoke’s smell drifts in; the four realize they are all who are left, they fear, fear, fear.
“The black smoke’s smell drifts in; the four realize they are all who are left, they FEAR, FEAR, FEAR.”
Made to Change
VISUALS Isabel Dantas
Mito sis
MODELS
Anushka Dixit & Bianca
Todini
Greta Blaskovich & Calvin
Pardee
Lilli Drescher
Blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm. The four ancient humors by which the Greeks understood the human body. Each one tied to a season, element, celestial body, and vital organ. Any imbalance of the humors could explain physical ailments and illness in the body. Each one’s influence changing with the seasons, the times of day, and across a lifespan. Adolescence is hot and moist, the Spring of your life and mine. Wintering, synonymous with aging, is cold and dry.
By eighteen, my mother had survived a dozen winters already. Uprooted her life from Cuba to the United States. Endured the abject terror of an unsafe home with no safer alternative. Became a parent to herself and the little sister her mother bore when she was just fifteen. Despite living in the tropics, my mother learned to make room for unwarranted colds.
During the 17th century, humorism began falling out of favor. Vestiges of knowledge crumbled under the light of The Scientific Method. Galen, the father of humorism, was charged with some 200 errors in his description of human anatomy. The humors were revealed to be situated in leaps of his imagination and inflated assumptions made after dissecting animals. By 1850, scientists had deemed the four temperaments a faulty medicine.
Shedding Skin
WORDS Lyanna Rose
Between Darwin killing God for the Victorians and the discovery that body chemistries of disparate species were by similar design–more sensible theories about the inner workings of the body emerged. Scientist Claude Bernard marveled at our ancestors’ evolutionary ability to “carry the oceans with them.” He found that our bodies necessitate an internal ocean, similar to the seas from which we evolved. One that could bathe our cells constantly, aiding to maintain a level of continuity in the internal milieu. Providing our tissues and organs with protective stability.
I was born by an ocean, to an occasionally unstable house. Seaside is the place I feel most myself. It’s where I go to feel smallest, the whole world washed away in a wave. The waves I used to pretend I could command; that my brothers and I would anxiously turn away from, eyes peeled shut, except to make sure the other wasn’t cheating. We played chicken with Mother Nature. Fueled by our youthful bravado and sibling rivalry, my big brothers were immovable stones. With their legs hip-width-distance apart and feet planted firmly in the sand, they braved for whatever was to come. Neither shifted or snuck a peek, as though the ocean wouldn’t dare send big waves when we weren’t looking her way. I was always first to turn around.
Homeostasis is the term Walter Cannon coined for what Ernest Starling called “the wisdom of the body” just sixteen years earlier. The inexorable knowledge the body equips itself with to carry out physiological processes that maintain the larger whole. A constant action meant to maintain a state of equilibrium & best-case scenario.
Teeth strong enough to tear meat from the bone, bones resilient against gravity’s pull on each vertebra; vertebrae stacked strategically supporting everything above the pelvis. This is the machinery of the body, programmed for optimal function.
When a cell is born, the carbon-14 (C14) levels in its DNA reflect those in the atmosphere that year–creating a time capsule of sorts. In 1945 and 1963, nuclear bomb testing flooded the atmosphere with radioactive C14 atoms. These time capsules elucidated to scientists how old the cells housed in various parts of the body were. Knowledge unearthed by a strangely apocalyptic mimetic code.
The bones that carried us through childhood, whether feverishly broken or carefully tended to, will not bear the burden of adulthood.
Our skeletons absolve us of all they dissolve; maintaining healthy regulation of calcium and phosphorus through the slow-moving deconstruction of old bone by osteoclasts and reconstruction of new bone by osteoblasts.
The gut is under constant attack.
Incessant exposure to harsh digestive acid calls for continual cell renewal; every few days, the stomach lining is refreshed.
Every month or so, the entire outer layer of the skin sheds and is replaced.
I ofer this knowledge to a woman I love. I tell her the flesh a man unwantedly touched is gone. No part of the shell he grabbed, kissed, fucked, or touched remains. The body he made his–is yours, and has worked hard returning itself home to you.
Only a few details of our unique makeup will be with us in the end. Our bodies birth us more than our parents do.
I am a solution-oriented girl. A reckless optimist, a fixer. Find my name wedged in the word:
Pollyanna, adj.: A person characterized by irrepressible optimism and a tendency to find good in everything.
There are certain things I cannot fix. I read:
“Your body has an excellent system of DNA repair genes that actually remove most such mutations [compromised lymphocytes] as they occur before they can be propagated. ”
2
Almost all people (nearly 100%) survive for more than 5, or more years after they’re diagnosed. ”
My little cousin asks if I knew yet. I told her I did but didn’t know how to face it. That “I’m sorry” seemed wrung out. The words must have lost their meaning by now. What would an apology for her father’s unfixable diagnosis accomplish? I tried finding hope, and when I couldn’t I just shut my eyes.
Our bodies seek to protect us. Shield us from the chaos of our environments and preserve peace within our own. White blood cells (B cells and T, the two main types of lymphocytes) attack and defend. The B cells are attacker cells, while the T cells–their noble companion–take on defense and seek to destroy those cells that have been compromised.
Inscribed within each of us is the manual for healing once a foreign object has entered the body. The foreign body response. Every ten years we get new bones.
2 Why aren’t you equipped with those; have you passed your repair-less genes onto her? Does this make you weak? Does it make her?
3
3 Why then, did you tell her you only had three months to a year left? How biased are our sources; were these researchers’ fathers also diagnosed at only 37 years old?
You could take a scalpel to this body and it would still forgive you, still fire of the necessary receptors for healing.
Scar-like tissue forms a protective barrier around the object, the body resists its invasion–even if it has entered once or twice before already.
Try as humans might, to disrupt their careful machinery, infinitesimal soldiers have spent their whole short lives learning, adapting, even dying for the process of knowledge cultivation, to adequately scatter to our defenses.
Sometimes our bodies harbor their own faulty medicine. But when the body turns on us, it fights to resist itself. Even when we turn on it.
I was the only one who knew about the experiments my big brother would perform on himself. In the room nestled between my childhood bedroom and our sisters that I’d moved into. At eighteen he thought his body would only ever be good for one thing. He was curious to see what it could take. He didn’t look both ways when he crossed the street or dared wear his seatbelt. Even after a car thrusted itself into our grandmother’s body. Even when I asked him to.
He was quite convinced, as I was, that the drugs he was taking would kill him. I was fourteen then–six years ago now. My brother is now a social worker and one of my favorite stories.
The body degrades as it ages, worn by years of winter. Many of the processes mentioned slow to an eventual stop. Cells can no longer divide and take longer to be replaced. Skin stretches and sags, adorning people’s faces with proof of their astonishing existence. A relic of the special assemblage of parts that make up the whole, and the life lived.
The universe is riddled by dark matter. Any existence that is not nothingness is rare. A startling fraction of a fraction of a probability that you or I is here. A Greek’s poignant declaration beckons to us from a distance: to understand anything, we must understand what it is not. What we are not–the absence of the void.
My Yia Yia’s lungs were recently diagnosed as faulty. I see no reason to blame the ill-advised use of cigarettes. They used to smoke them in the hospitals when she was a nurse.
She’s not a nurse now, and hasn’t been one for years anyway.
I’ll miss you when you’re gone, the words she wrote in a graduation card as thirteen too-short years of picking me up from school at Rose Price park came to a close. I was a freshman in college, setting of to live in the state where she was born. We stopped by her childhood home on the drive up. Since then, I’ve been scattered across coastlines. Felt myself becoming something closer to a woman. Like my mom was the first time she traversed the Atlantic on her own accord.
I have written letters I have not sent. Dreamed up speeches, swallowing words I yearn to say but instead keep inside and feel through every cell of my body like
No time would be enough, you are an angel amongst Men.
Christmastime will never be the same and
I just can’t believe you won’t be at my wedding.
The 1st law of thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created or destroyed. All matter is the same as it was at the inception of the universe; absolutely nothing is new and nothing has been lost. Not in destruction–not in death. In physicist and writer Alan Lightman’s words, “the atoms remain, only scattered about.” The human body is built of seven trillion atoms on average. The same stuf stardust and sea salt is made of. My mother and father, cosmic reconfigurations of ancient matter–collided together and created me. And while these exact distributions of matter will not be again, they are the making of every great, every demon, everything. We are wild inimitable anthologies.
The 2nd law of thermodynamics states that entropy always increases. One of the implications of this law is that the universe, as an isolated system, is constantly creeping towards a heat death. An even dispersion of all energy.
One final bout of ultimate redistribution in which the universe reaches its own state of thermodynamic equilibrium. It is almost a guarantee that all of the chaos in the universe will amount to this.
Whether or not there’s an after. Where you or I will linger in time and space–in between this and thermodynamic equilibrium, I wish I knew. I hope it’s nice and that your atoms stay near. I guess, I’m just not sure what the ending should be.
“What I feel and I know is that I am here now, at this moment in the grand sweep of time. I am not part of the void. I am not a fluctuation in the quantum vacuum. Even though I understand that someday my atoms will be scattered in soil and in air, that I will no longer exist, I am alive now. I am feeling this moment. I can see my hand on my writing desk. I can feel the warmth of the Sun through the window. And looking out, I can see a pine-needled path that goes down to the sea.”
Alan Lightman
Visuals Maya Drooker
20 Year Old Teenage Girls
VISUALS Sofia Misisco
WORDS Caraline Shaheen
“Dr. Armonson stitched up her wrist wounds. Within five minutes of the transfusion he declared her out of danger. Chucking her under the chin, he said, “What are you doing here, honey? You’re not even old enough to know how bad life gets.”
And it was then Cecilia gave orally what was to be her only form of suicide note, and a useless one at that, because she was going to live:
“Obviously, Doctor,” she said, “you’ve never been a thirteen-year-old girl.”
– Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides
Now at the age of 20, how would you describe who you were as a 13 year old girl?
“Insecure. That’s the first word that comes to mind.”
“I started thinking about sex, um, all the time.”
“I realized I was gay.”
“I found my passion for science. I suddenly became determined to do something.”
“I didn’t care about anything. Except for stupid, small things, like if someone liked me back or not.”
“Really, deeply, profoundly sad.”
“I had an underbite and an overbite. And I was so immature in the way that I wanted to continue to be a child for as long as possible.”
“My mom, at the time, felt like the worst person.”
“I got on medication for the first time.”
“I was really anxious. About life and the way people perceived me.”
“I felt like I was much more mature than my peers. I was just waiting to grow up.”
What did you want most at that time?
“A boyfriend. And for my parents to be proud of me. Or, at least, not disappointed in me.”
“To look really good in skinny jeans.”
“More friends.”
“I wanted to get straight A’s and attention from all my crushes.”
“Ripped jeans and a sweater that hung off of my shoulders. Or to wear leggings to school without a dress over them because my mom had some restrictions on what I could wear. I wanted to look cool.”
“To be older and taken more seriously.”
“Shawn Mendes.”
“A thigh gap. I wanted a thigh gap so bad.”
“To have my first kiss.”
What about now? What do you want the most now?
“To fall in love. Money. And for my parents to be proud of me still.”
“I miss my mom. I wish I could see her.”
“To feel wanted.”
“Today, I want genuine friends and a more realistic work-life balance. “Sleep.”
“To be fully content with my life. And a boyfriend still to be honest.”
“To have nothing in my head.”
t was your biggestfearat13yearsold?
“Getting bullied.”
“I had a feeling that, I knew that when my parents were gone, I was going to have to takcare of my brother.”
“Growing out of friendships.”
“The huge, wide, ocean. Not knowing what’s out there. The vastness of something.”
“Having to go live with my Dad.”
“My dad dying.”
“Losing my mom.”
“Not getting into NYU.”
Whatwassomething
Did you ever think about the future at 13? If so, how did you picture your life at 20 years old?
“What did you dream of?
“To live in a triple decker purple bus and travel the world.”
“Wearing a bandage dress at a club.”
“Being on Broadway.”
“Hiking Denali.”
“I started worrying about getting into college at that age, weirdly.”
“In college. Happy all the time.”
“Living in New York City.”
“Marrying rich.”
“Getting a wealthy husband.”
“I dreamt of getting out. And I did.”
What would your 13 year old self think/say if she saw your 20 year old self?
“Who is that?”
“This is so cool. She is so cool.”
“Surprised about how my hair is now.”
“Surprised that I have a boyfriend who likes me.”
“She’d probably think I’m cringy now.”
“Hey, I’m no longer suicidal but I’m still on the same medication. Just a lot more of it.”
“She’d be so excited for me.”
“Well, I didn’t think I would get out of it. I thought everyone would be better of without me. But now I’m the healthiest I’ve ever been.”
“Confused. My mom, at the time, was like, the worst person ever. Now, she’s my best friend.”
“She’d be proud that I finally changed my last name.”
“That’s so hard because I’m so wildly diferent. And that girl was so afraid of becoming who I am now.”
“She would think I’m so fucking cool.”
Artist
Even though we cannot always see it, we change daily. Every day, when we look in a mirror, we see the same thing, but if we could inside, nothing stays the same.
You are always changing.
VISUALS Ore Fashesin-Souza MODEL Shawnee Sims Jr.
INSTINCT
VISUALS Paige Kaiser
i mp erfect
WORDS Lucille Kelley
Chewing a wadofhubba-bubba asI tussle w ith my older siblings,Igetthrownrightintothe metal chairatmy desk.I was smilingonmy
dissension
as my mouth hit the starklyhard metal.
As my brother and sister go my whaling cry echoed through the house. with who is to blame, back and forth
my whaling cry echoed through the house.
my whaling cry echoed through the house.
The tears spilled out of me like an overflowing faucet as my hands clung to the agonizing pain in my mouth. My siblings attempted to shush me before my father came storming down the hall. He was greeted at the door by each sibling pleading their innocence as I rocked like a wheelchair on the floor still sobbing. I looked up at my dad with my glassy eyes and bloody lips mustering up a smile, and his face was filled with fear. I tried clearing my siblings’ names to divert his anger onto me, as blood dripped out of my mouth. The anger that filled his face was eerily similar to a comic book villain. Spewed out his fiery rage upon his three children. Reigniting my tears, I stormed away into the bathroom.
I placed my stepping stool upon the ground to fully see the damage in my own eyes. When I met my reflection in the mirror, the throbbing pain in my mouth was becoming harder to dismiss. I felt the blood circulating and overflowing in my mouth that I had to spit. The priorly white sink was splattered with my bloody savalia and the piece of gum I forgot about. I stared at the red-stained hubba-bubba that had little pieces of something white in it. Upon inspection I spread out the gum and picked out the hard bits of white substance very puzzled. I glanced up at the mirror to continue on with cleaning up, unconsciously laughing to myself at the shock I was in. As I grinned I realized what those bewildering specs of white were. My smile had changed. I scrambled to collect the pieces of tooth stuck in my gum and looked at my reflection in horror. Shuttering at the mirror I was most upset by the fact it was my two front teeth were the ones who were minorly harmed. It was only a few years before that I had the disturbing experience of losing my front baby teeth at the same time and wishing my new teeth would alter my smile. I barely survived that. I felt so oddly attached to my smile, it shaped my face into my father’s unlike my resting disposition. I was always told I looked like a copy of my mother my whole life, but it when I grinned my father’s likeness hauntingly appeared. It scared me, I never knew why as a kid. It deeply scared me when I saw his terrifying face
in my own face.
I rinsed out my mouth as my tears started to run down my cheeks again. I heard a knock on the door. My sister walked into the bathroom and attempted to comfort her nine year old sister who was experiencing a word vomiting spiral. She took my chin with her hands and asked me to smile to make her own verdict. I whined like a baby stating there’s no point, I was forever ruined but I listened to her request.
She said “that’s it?” in disbelief, which I thought she was continuing to instill in her belief that I am a crybaby. She told me I would become used to it. It doesn’t matter to the whole world but you. The only person who would recognize it is either a dentist or the love of your life, besides that no one would give it a second glance.
I never cared what others thought. I stubbornly argued against her as she wrapped her arms around me to squeeze the stress away. I stood like a board as we hugged. As I quickly abandoned her grasp I saw her smiling and resentment filled my mind. She never understood how I felt. I moved my tongue around the new groove in my front teeth. I had no choice but to accept it. The vision I saw in myself when I smiled became further tied to my father, it told the story of the man I was most terrified to see. I could never escape the memory of him now, but in a way I never could. I hated how he was forever tied to the opposite disposition I felt about him. It never became unnoticeable to me.
As I grew more into my face, I realized how idiotic my nine year old self was. My father never allowed me to get braces despite my pleading. I spent years battling the reflection I saw in myself of him.
Time passed.
The chip was undetectable to any witness. My smile had not physically changed from that day. But I had. I cut ties from my father, but he never left my face. A haunting reminder that he is forever a part of me, I will never be able to escape it. I had no choice but to accept it like the stupid slight chip in my teeth. I found myself clinging to the chip as a constant in my life. Whenever I am nervous I place the tip of my tongue against the rigid unevenness in my enamel. It is my little secret. My reminder that the little crybaby I once was is not forgotten, she is still in me. She didn’t understand the hurt she was experiencing, but I know now. I have not changed completely but grown. I have grown to claim that version of my smile as my own, not his. I find comfort in that fact, there is a part of my body that reminds me of who I once was and how it is still a part of who I am now. It’s nice to know that every person that makes me laugh has a glimpse of the smile I made on my own. An imperfect smile.
Hair Tug
WORDS Coco Meyerhofer
I have been 20 for 3 days: I had a stranger pull my hair, Went to a party and lost an arm, Bought an apple which I really did not need at all, Washed out the dirt underneath my fingernails instead of showering, Those types of things.
I saw a spider and asked my roommate to kill it, She keeps her potted plants on the windowsill, Picked one up, dropped it on the spider. Killed it. Left a red stain in the carpet.
I scrubbed the stain with laundry detergent, Was all I had, Didn’t come out, though. Was hard to do with 1 arm.
Went to another party: I wore a feather boa, Bet on horses from California, lost, Bit someone’s leg when they asked me to, Stained my favorite skirt with cranberry juice, Left a trail of molted feathers from the front door to my bed, Think I’ve picked them all up. I always see more.
The sun comes in the windows as I wake up in the mornings, Gives away a remaining feather, Was invisible before but I can see now.
Finally got to eating my apple, Has weird bruises, doesn’t matter much and tastes just fine, I chew and think about how: I push my luck Too far. Apple could’ve molded, gone sour. It’s not. Stain is still there. Spider is still dead.
Thinking about how: my roommates are just Down the hall, Don’t live my life, I don’t live theirs, Can hear them singing to a song I don’t know anymore, Maybe Carpenters or Dolly or Elton or Clash, Doesn’t matter, I don’t know it now, They sing like birds Of a feather, Reminds me of my feather boa before it grew old, Lost its pieces on my carpet. twenty three one
I think about how: their sounds are like my Sisters’ sounds, My old house, they were Through the walls, down the stairs, on the roof, Picking up blonde hair from the shower drain, Drew Barrymore on a school night, Holey hand-me-down bras, miss being able to fit in those, Black wedges that click.
No stains in the carpet, I wish a little bit that they will always live down the hall.
Stain in my carpet still. Staring at it, I feel a little restless.
Like someone is calling me away.
My roommates are making noise, My sisters are making sounds, The dead spider in my carpet talks to me, Tells me the truth, Asks me to apologize, It stands in front of me, stain gone, full body, 1 one leg missing, Smothers my mouth and nose with its hands, Stops me from responding, Tells me to make the decision 1 one more time, Walk away or kill it?
I’m indecisive, I crawl, I stand, On all 4s, I’m in my carpet, Need to apologize.
Nose is covered, I can still smell everything, Can’t see, feathers in my eyes, But smelling is just fine, I remember the apple on my fridge, Did I eat it? I can’t remember now. fours
I wish a little bit that they will always live down the hall.
for BETTE or ORSE
I am housand hIps of
VISUALS Sydney Grantham
WORDS
Talia
BRE A STSTROKE
When she used to swim at night her bones cut through water like perforating paper. It was always the same ritual, pants of first with a slight shimmy, arms up high overhead to get rid of the tank top, then it was nothing but the goosebumps on her skin that accompanied her into the blue.
Coming out? Insane.
Often, she was the only body in the gym’s pool long after the custodian’s final reminder that facility hours were over. As she swam, she would fixate on the cautionary posters peeling from the walls warning of non supervision leading to drowning. This didn’t scare her.
A girl swimming alone was rarely questioned. A girl could do much worse things.
“The set of spare keys are here under the orchid. Matilda has her flute lesson at 6, Miles will be with the English tutor so they shouldn’t come outside and be a bother. I’ll be out for god knows how long. Daniel doesn’t seem to care so long as there isn’t a gnat in the water.”
“Sure, thank you.”
Alice, ever so economical with your words.” The Baroness sighs, picking at the bowl of cherries on the counter.
“Not much of an economist. Gambling runs in the family.”
“Oh, so then it’s only appropriate for us to communicate through monetary measures?” The Baroness slips a wad of cash into her hands. Their palms meeting only briefly in an exchange of not just propriety but also dominance. Sometimes, she wishes she could record this weekly physical contact and rewatch in slow motion how one hand, white and glistening, meets another, chapped and blistered. She suddenly has a desire to grip the Baroness. Shake her. Push her. Would her grip even make a dent in someone so solid or would her hands go right through?
The pool was an afterthought added onto an already overthought property. While the rest of the house was burgundy stucco and cultivated hedges, the pool was a marble slab, something out of the Jetsons if the Jetsons happened to be Silicon Valley heirs. It was funny really, to imagine the Baron and Baroness of Palo Alto describing in detail to an disgruntled architect their vision for a third home yet leaving out any kind of notion of what the accompanying pool should look like. Architecture was supposed to be a meticulous art, accounting for all kinds of fractures and collapses, yet it too had failed humans.
The air today is surprisingly crisp. Seemingly, the LA wildfires had vanished overnight. The lull of August is immediately visible everywhere. A slow forming rot disguised as last minute dashes to eat ice cream and lie out. Lackadaisical. The word comes to fruition with a sting. Diana’s voice in tandem with that of her old swimming coaches.
“Alice, stop being so lackadaisical with your breaststroke.”
That fall, in science class, they had learned about the process of fossil excavation. How people in white suits would chip away at rocks and needle with small incisions into solid, unforgiving forms to unearth remnants of the past. After all that efort, to be left with a skeleton. The two of them, hunched over a model of a sedimentary formation, chlorine still dripping from morning practice. Diana’s jawline in the shadows of the classroom lights, the faint hum of the projector.
As always she begins with the right side of the water. Dragging the net clockwise, a pantomime of dusting. It’s easy to get lost in the motion, an extension of a front crawl. The more she cleans, the less she feels.
It had started innocently enough. A slight touch on the shoulder, a combing of post-practice hair. The innate severance of body and mind at that point so ingrained in her that it didn’t make sense to question these newfound developments. During the hours of 5 am to 9 am they were teammates, then it was up to interpretation. There was no such thing as power dynamics or roles –just her and Diana fulfilling what their bodies were meant to do. It was beautiful really the way that they could exchange and extract information from each other verbally and then melt entirely diferently physically. One minute arguing about which candy sticks to the roof of the tongue worse Milk Duds or Swedish Fish, the other putting those theories to practice.
With Diana there was a surrender, a weightlessness she only otherwise felt floating in on her back between practice whistles. It never felt like sneaking around, but rather a conscious delayment. There was always tomorrow to explain. If it had been like one of those outrageous movie scenes where they had been found out or shunned or branded as despicable or dirty then perhaps the current pain would be much more bearable. But this was California where everyone had a rainbow sticker tattooed across their ass. Rather, the circumstances had been framed as “standard procedure” and “NCAA compliant,” for the team always came first. No distractions. Diana and future college sponsors yanked away because of a locker room kiss. No scholarship. No money. No future. Laughable really in this progressive day and age. The left side of the pool required a joint. Hand-rolling was calming for her, the methodical preparation and consummation of ethereal numbness. She fumbled around in her pockets until she found the lighter and sparked it under the glare of the afternoon sun. How inconsequential. She was but a skeleton in a world of other skeletons. A faint melody from the world outside clung to the breeze.
“Cruel to be kind you’ve gotta be cruel to be kind in the right measure, cruel to be kind, it’s a very good sign cruel to be kind means that I love you, baby.”
Solitude wasn’t so bad if it meant escaping cruelty. Even cruelty disguised as kindness. Like that of her coach. The dismissal from a sport she once had proudly claimed her own. It was ironic really, all of this time policing her body for nothing. Her mother and father never even questioning the series of events, almost like they had been waiting for a fuck up to occur for years. Most parents would have been enraged, arranging meetings with the school board, writing vicious vindictive emails, but her mom continued to dutifully make dinner as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Easier to practice stoicism.
The most horrible part was the waiting. Waiting for her body to catch up with her brain. For her brain to catch up with her body. There was a knowledge that lived inside her that she wasn’t a victim. She had done this to herself. The blame game went a little like this. Coach. Diana. Mom. Dad. Herself. Coach.
The Diana that said and did nothing to prove that what they were wasn’t some fleeting experiment. Mom. Dad. Herself. The blame game went a little like that. No relief. Even when she scrubbed her skin after showering, the smell of chlorine would escape all sanitization eforts.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the opening of the screen door. The Baroness flung herself through the glass with such violent force that she was forced to reconsider her own gravity. How long had she been outside? “
Alice, thank god you’re still here. The fucking drain, the FUCKING drain.”
“The drain?”
“It’s completely clogged. Daniel’s having a conniption fit. He just called, said the underwater camera was beeping like crazy. Said he had to leave his ESG meeting to call.”
“I didn’t notice anything.”
“He’s going to be home by seven. He’s furious, and says an ape could have fixed it.”
“Should I call someone? This may be beyond me.”
“Jesus christ, leave it to the two of us to be dealing with a drain. Fitting isn’t it. My whole life I feel drained.”
“I’d laugh if your house didn’t come straight from Vogue.”
“This might blow up in my face, but –”
The Baroness doesn’t hesitate, she jackknives. How had she never noticed the ligaments in the Baronesses’ body? They are that of her own. That of a swimmer.
The Baroness’s arms extend into a linear plane beyond the reach of that of a casual beach goer. She watches as a body that was once foreign take the familiar shape of the girl she loved. The Baroness is a swimmer. She is a swimmer. She was a swimmer. Three months in the company of this pool and really never truly a part of it. Following the Baroness, she dives in.
At the bottom, the Baroness yanks at a miniscule piece of plastic before slamming it down so hard that bubbles escape. After the Baroness shoots up to the surface, she is forced again to follow. For everything that has happened this summer this is perhaps the craziest thing of all - to tread water across from the Baroness.
“What the hell was that?”
“Probably the efect of the last gin and tonic from lunch setting in,” the Baroness’s voice is an arrow.
“You thought you could just do it yourself?”
“Didn’t you hear me earlier? Daniel said an ape could do it. I’m a pretty lovely ape don’t you think?”
It’s not really a question. It’s an invitation. The face of this woman is pristine. Green eyes that of a tiger’s. But she can’t shake the feeling that it’s a face forced into its own type of submission. She’s been forced to submit to events both in and out of her control. Can she make something of this? Can someone finally submit to her?
She can hear her own breath coming out in spurts. Before she knows it she’s propelling towards the Baroness. Less of a kiss, more of a demand. She’s not sure if she’s actually surprised when the Baroness doesn’t stop her.
On the stairs, she grips the bannister trying to keep up with the Baroness. In the pool, the water had felt like a blanket, enveloping and supportive. Now, she was cold. Frigid. It didn’t matter how good things felt in the moment or how right. Sooner or later there would be nothing but stark consequences. Punishment. Erasure. The Baroness turns back briefly,
“Are you coming? I can’t have you dripping like a wet dog on the carpet.”
The Baroness’s lips were blue. Not like the cotton candy tufts she would sneak from Diana at the fair but that of an organic blueberry left behind on the counter.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t do it.”
“What?” The Baroness looked back.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t fix it.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t be strange.”
“Don’t be strange?”
“You’re assuming I expected you to be able to fix it. I never said that.”
“I was employed by you. I’m supposed to provide a service.”
“Alice, just because I say I’m going to not eat sugar doesn’t mean I’m not going to eat sugar.”
“This wasn’t what I wanted.”
“This isn’t what I wanted either.”
“What do you want?” She’s shocked by her own directness.
The Baroness laughs, it’s the first time she’s heard her laugh. Her laugh is neither here nor there. Not a girlish giggle or a throaty echo. It’s dry and practical. Solid.
The click of the thermostat alerts her that they really are indoors. She sits on the bed and waits for what feels like eternity. The Baroness disappears into the closet with the promise of dry clothes.
“Here, we’re about the same size. If I’m good, that is.”
“I’m not good. I’m actually rotten.”
The Baroness pauses. “I wanted love. You asked what I wanted. I wanted love and I chose stability. Nothing fussy about it really.”
“Love got me cleaning pools.”
“You chose love. You chose to clean my pool. The rest is a mystery.”
“And you chose Daniel?”
The Baroness laughs again. “We both know it’s never that simple. I chose what was easier. I’m only 29 you know. Four years ago I was doing more than just kissing women.”
“How did you know? About me I mean.”
They both laugh. What a dumb question. 100 / EM Fall ‘24
hair with a towel.
“Alice. That’s part of it, you know. Choosing.”
“I don’t think I can handle the price of my decisions.” It’s the truth, for once. The pain is searing but not as overwhelming as she thought it might be.
“I didn’t think you were one for my kind of cynicism but remember Alice, life is a glass castle. Sometimes the first step is melting your own.
“Do you have a lighter?”
“No, but I have a cigarette.”
“Am I fired?”
“From this job? Most certainly, but I think we both know you have other matters to attend to.”
The Baroness passes her a cigarette.
Once
more, twohandsmeet underthePalo Alto sun.
WORDS Erin Norton
I don’t think I carried much of an opinion on free will and agency before I took a class on it. I signed up for it to complete my required ethics credit and the title and description of the class seemed interesting enough. It was through those lectures where I took at least five pages of notes each class period, that I learned free will itself is an illusion. I found myself resonating the most with philosopher Daniel Dennett the most out of all of the scholars we discussed. According to Dennett, we are the agents of our own decisions, but not our immediate future. Our own agency and ability to make choices is the crux of what makes one feel as though they have control over their narrative.
JOne night when I was aimlessly swiping through Tinder, I saw Ilana’s face pop up on my feed. I was swiping left furiously on nearly every other girl I saw and I almost swiped left on her too. I paused and looked at her profile, letting her pictures illuminate my face. A year ago we were in free will class together. The two of us studied together along with our mutual friend, using them as a bufer between us since we didn’t know anything about each other. The bulk of the information we swapped was concerning our difering upbringings. She was from Manhattan, I was from Vermont. The two of us held the other’s hometowns on some sort of pedestal. She loved the rural charm of my home, while I adored the chaos and never ending nature of the city.
I swiped right. We matched the next day.
“what do u think robb would think about this?” I used our free will professor as a pick up line. I hoped she would remember that Robb sees himself as a determinist, who believes that the consequences of our actions inform our later realities.
Bunnies and Free Will
JFor most, if not all, of my sophomore year of college, I laid frozen in my dorm bed and stared out the window. Happy as a descriptor is vague and nondescript, but it was never a word I could use to describe my general demeanor while studying in Boston. I enjoyed the city, but the stress of school tainted every other aspect of my life. I only attended one class out of the four I was registered for. My outward excuse for the perfect attendance I maintained in free will class was that it was expected of us to take diligent handwritten notes each period. The reading material was dense and hard to comprehend from the homework alone. It was much easier to digest Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics or Sam Harris’ much too palatable, watered down book on free will, through Robb’s lectures. But my inward excuse continued to be unknown.
JWe watched one and a half movies the first night she came to my apartment. The week leading up to this evening, I asked every single person in my life what movie I should show her, since she told me she was too indecisive to pick. I asked my friends for sapphic films, preferably comedies, and noted their suggestions. I asked my boss one day at work. She was coming over the next day and I still couldn’t decide on a movie. He told me to show her Airplane! A classic comedy never hurts. Later that shift, he told me an anecdote, that I can’t remember perfectly now, about him, his wife, and pancakes. I figured that it would be in my best interest to listen to a happily married man’s story, and I decided to make Ilana and I pancakes to share.
She arrived at my apartment four hours late and was already fed. She went on a run with her best friend who has heart issues and had to help her recover from the run. I didn’t mind her lateness, it only gave me more time to pace my room. I took big strides across my bedroom floor, counting each step in threes or variables of three. Soothing myself with the lullaby of my rituals.
JThat year, I saw god was in everything. It was in a three pronged fork, the lucky numbers on the stove and microwave, ground floor elevator buttons, the correct side of the sidewalk. My life felt controlled in my sufocating dorm room. It lacked this god that asked me to perform rituals for the sake of my own happiness, simultaneously providing joy and despair. When I rarely left my room to attend free will class or work, I counted my steps in threes. A
fucked up waltz. I would think with great intensity:
1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3. If I was going to work, I couldn’t look at the clock. I would wait to clock out for the day or go to lunch until someone reminded me that it was time. I pretended to be ditzy and unaware, while internally my whole body twisted from the fear of my bad luck numbers. At least when I was in free will class, I learned that randomness is a construct for our inability to calculate and control it, and that happiness is the sum of one’s decisions, but so is sadness. A nonnumeric, non-ritualistic equation I found peace in.
JI hugged her when she stepped into the lobby. It was awkward and stif, but I am nothing if not a ball of afection waiting to be eagerly unraveled.
I gave her a quick tour of the apartment I shared with four thirty year olds I met through the rental listing on Facebook Marketplace and entered my candle scented and fairy light lit room. The absence of a living room restricted us to sit in my cramped room where my bed was the only piece of furniture. Initially she didn’t want to sit too close to me, but I placed a few of my stufed animals on the floor and told her to come closer. I didn’t want her to fall of the edge of the bed, which she was very close to doing.
After getting settled, I played Airplane! for her. I tried not to quote every single line. It was Ilana’s first time watching it and the both of us laughed about it as the credits rolled.
“Wanna watch another movie?” She asked as I closed out of the tab. The both of us were way too nervous to make a move. We went with Infinity Pool, a movie so outlandish that we couldn’t fully focus and giggled uncomfortably over all of the dialogue. She went to use the bathroom at one point, and while she was out of my room, I took my cardigan of, letting
the rest of my low cut sundress do the talking and reapplied my tinted lip balm. She pretended not to notice my subtle gestures when she came back from the bathroom, but I could tell that she knew what I was doing.
Halfway through the movie Ilana reached over to pause it.
“I’m getting bored.”
“Me too, what do you wanna do?” I ask her.
“I don’t know, but just so you know, I never make the first move,” she avoided my eye contact.
“Oh really?” We both giggled, leaning into each other a little bit. I feel the thin strap of my dress slipping down my shoulder. Neither of us fixed it. I kissed her mid laugh. My glasses bumped into her face, and our teeth clashed, but we continued kissing. Each one was better and more natural than the last. I never made her those pancakes.
JIn the last month of the semester, we discussed how people who have OCD are often considered agents who do not possess free will, not even the illusion of it. They act on certain compulsions in order to gain a sense of control. They often believe that by acting these out, it will change the outcome of certain situations. For instance, a person may count as they complete certain tasks and repeat the amount of times they act on their compulsions. They may also avoid certain places or objects out of the fear of bad luck or potential logically unrelated consequences. Suddenly the god I saw in everything was reduced down to a philosophical scholarly text.
JAfter three days of being her girlfriend, we carved our initials into a bench at the arboretum. I etched I+E into rain rotted wood with my apartment keys as she admired the smell of the May lilacs. After three weeks of being hers, she invited me to her family home in Manhattan, where her father made me breakfast every morning that I was there. He continued to do so every time I visited after that. There was a time when I would tell myself that all good things come in threes so we must be intrinsically linked. The three pronged fork gave me good luck afterall. And all the times I put my back to the microwave until I heard it beep paid of. I’m in love and god thanks me for listening to it. But now, I see us as the sum of twenty years worth of decisions. Two lines intersecting on a graph. The supernova of two stars, pulling the remainder of the universe into their vacuum.
JIlana, our mutual friend Aidan, and I all studied for the final together. We spent a nearly sleepless night on my dorm room floor re-reading our chicken scratch notes in an attempt to decipher what our professor lectured on in class. Even after we all ended up getting As on our exams, I kept trying to find excuses to interact with Ilana. At the very end of the year, I pushed past people exiting the theater after our college’s annual awards show, attempting to find her. She was working on the production. I found her standing far away from the crowd. I gave her a hug, told her to have a nice summer, and suggested that we should get cofee sometime. There was not a corner of my mind where I considered that just a year later, she would always take sips of every drink I bought, even if it was cofee, a drink she hates.
There was one night Ilana and I were on a walk together. I don’t remember where we were, but I know that we spotted some bunnies. I told her that I had been seeing bunnies everywhere recently. Outside of my apartment, on the way home from work, by the bodega. Everywhere. Coincidentally, she was noticing them too.
“Bunnies are good luck!” She said, squeezing my hand as we walked. I thought it was maybe just a superstition relevant to her urban upbringing. There cannot be many bunnies in Manhattan. But come to think of it, I didn’t really see many bunnies in my childhood, making their sightings special to me. With her, they’re even more precious. A superstition that brings a smile to my face. As long as I’m with her, I can spin any kind of luck into a poem that I’ll write onto a cocktail napkin and press into her palm.
The god I worship is the smile my words bring to her face.
this is my first love poem / so please go easy on me / the more i write about her / the less i make sense / what is the point of infatuation / if coherence is involved? / beginning with the day / we pressed our noses into fresh may lilac petals / we wished our past selves / carved their initials into the bench at the arboretum / years sooner / if only we could have made wishes on our eyelashes / instead of blowing out our twentieth birthday candles separately / we’ve shared this city for nearly four years / always less than six degrees away from each other / now that we have only months left in boston / we finally ask ourselves / does she love me? / does she love me not? / will i take her name? / connecting our lineage with a hyphen / she’s the reason i keep my fingers crossed when i’m on a plane / and the reason i count the rabbits i see on my walk home / a good luck charm / sewn into my pocket / a mirror that will never shatter.
We met in a class about free will where in the last few weeks of class we were taught that the very subject of our class did not exist. I chose to believe that whatever will be must be, as according to Daniel Dennett himself, it is the consequences of our choices (the illusion of free will) that informs our later realities. We are the agents of our own decisions, but not our future.
JFor most, if not all, of my sophomore year of college, I laid in my dorm bed and stared out the window. Winter felt infinite. The aggressive Boston snowfall that kept the light out of my room replaced most of my memories from that year. It was as if before or after did not exist. Only a perpetual winter and a blue tinted dorm.
I didn’t realize I was gay when I first met her. To both of us, I was only a girl in a long term relationship with her boyfriend. But upon being single and newly out, it was her face I swiped right on. Just a week later, she was in my apartment. We watched Airplane and half of Infinity Pool before I worked up the courage to kiss her.
JThis was the year that I found god in everything. It was in a three pronged fork, elevator buttons, sidewalks, the numbers in the microwave. I could never escape it no matter how hard I tried. Even if I locked myself in my dorm for hours on end, trapping myself with the blue haze. It was safe in my room, even if it felt destined to become my coffin if I stayed in there too long.
VISUALS Ilana Grollman
MODELS David Grollman
Danielle Wu
Erin Norton
osin Lih
Where does the rest of me go?
WORDS Annabelle Adams
And then what you said made me fall down. Paper thin I fall slowly. A shift has been occurring- I have been hollowing out and laying my sediment on the wooden floor. The parts of me that saw this house as more than a house bleeding out as dust bunnies into wooden corners.
I blow the air out of my nose and watch as the fragmented pieces of me move on the floor. Minuscule remnants that I had shed ages ago, airborne for a moment, before falling back on the ground.
My body keeps no room, even for myself. I’ve rejected, reinvented, restored.
Everything that I have still brought me here, what has happened to all I let go? The vertebrae in my spine stiffly pops and I bend into myself. I count the goosebumps on each arm to take stock of what I still have. I try to remember what I have forgotten; what I did not need enough to keep back then I see flashes of now. Photocopies of blurry pictures of ghosts through a window. The only space in my body it takes up is in the shape of a foggy memory. But I’m sure I’ll lose that soon, too.
My finger glides over the seams between the wooden panels that make up the floor, gathering the grayish grime and soot of myself before slipping it into my mouth.
My nose floods with the smell of this past Autumn’s sunbaked grass. The taste of my bigger sister’s lip gloss. The words a boy traced on my back with his fingers. Feelings that don’t make sense now, which is why they fell from the seams of my mind, unstitched and frayed.
What I outgrew finds me eating dust on the ground.
My eyes dim and I try to break the seal, between me and all that was, with a swallow. I feel a reel running in my stomach as a streak of light coming from the window gets intercepted by floating pieces of dirt. I breathe directly into my lungs and think about absorption. Can I keep something forever- can I go where it goes when it leaves. The blood that is in me now must be diferent because it does not rush to my skin the same way.
My stomach slows and I look up to the ceiling, I make a wish for the sharp brightness in my head to be released so my headache can stop. But can I aford to lose anything else? I’ve lost track of everything that I’ve given up. Everything of me that I’ve relinquished and everything that I wanted to retain but had to give up anyway. I don’t even know how it happened.
“I’ll always be right here.”
I’ve never said that to myself, but maybe it would mean the same as someone else who says it to me and I end up lamenting for their dust on the ground. Light from the window wraps around the walls like a still brook. The sun sets slowly and the light wans.
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Cover photo by --Book design by Cherie Laroche, Emily Malkan, Lillian Holland, Mckenna Smith, Margaret Kaprielian, Jacob Goldberg, and Jade Kong. First edition printed by Flagship Press in North Andover, MA.
2024
Typeset in Legitima by Cesar Puertas
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