2 minute read
Nightlight
an exerpt from:
Nightlight
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by Casey Weaver
OLIVIA: 18, she/they, Chinese-American, founder of GSA at their middle school, total flirt, has flouncy hair barely contained by little clips at the crown of her head INEZ: 18, she/her, second generation Venezuelan-American, goofy, nerdy, often overthinking, oldest sibling in busy house with cousins and grandparents
Setting: a cool Saturday night in July at an intimate concert venue.
At rise, Olivia and Inez are on their second date. OLIVIA: It sounds like a lullaby. Inez hums along lightly. OLIVIA (cont.): It’s just like something my mom used to sing. Did your parents ever sing to you? Inez thinks for a minute. INEZ: Not too much. We read a lot of books at night. Old stuff from when my dad was a kid that bored me to sleep. But I always woke up the second he left my room. The stairs would creak. Beat. INEZ (cont.): I guess it was sort of like singing, hearing him read. What songs did your mom sing? OLIVIA: Everything, it seemed. It always felt the same, though.
Olivia takes a moment, lost in memory.
OLIVIA (cont.): She would sit at the edge of my bed and sing as I fell asleep, and then she’d sing in the doorway, and then she’d keep singing as she walked down the hall just to make sure I didn’t wake up. I never really wanted to go to sleep, though. I could’ve listened to her singing forever. Olivia and Inez each close their eyes. OLIVIA: It’s like I’m six years old again. INEZ: I can hear the stairs creak.
The music slows. Inez and Olivia take a few beats to close the gap between them. Upper arms pressed together, they find each other. Softly, silently, they hold hands.
find the full piece at futurehistoriesmag.org
thoughts of a cockroach
by Megan Amero
how easily i seem to let myself harden in the mold of an alien existence, not a drop seeping through the cracks in the fight to forget this wasn’t always normal.
i was often told, in between memories of childhood ease and clarity, that if the world managed to end, one might still find cockroaches crawling among a landscape of twisted iron and rusted skeletons and stagnant pools of toxic water.
though i have the utmost faith in their thick little shells, i wonder if we are selling our hard heads short.
after all, each day i pour myself out, carbon copies in the cast again and again— steadfastly ignoring the million little ways the world has already ended.
photo | Isabel Fernandez
