Dear reader,
It is with much love and dedication that we present to you the 11th issue of Future Histories! In your hands, you’re holding: six weeks of content review, hundreds of emails, an unusually high volume of baked goods, months of labor from our passionate editing and design team, and, of course, the endless talent of artists and writers from our diverse, creative community. As you flip through these pages, we hope you’ll find each word and stroke of art as lovely and inspiring as we did; for best enjoyment, we recommend a cup of your favorite hot beverage and a cozy spot to dive into this unique world of work.
Thank you to everyone who made this issue of Future Histories possible! From the extraordinary artists and writers who submitted their work, to our dedicated content review team, to the hard-working staff of editors, designers, writer liaisons, social media coordinators, and online editors behind-the-scenes, we are staggered by the amount of passion and care the community brings to our magazine. It is thanks to every single one of you that, each semester, we’re able to start with an empty Google Drive folder and end up with a new issue of beautiful, original, physical, student-made work.
Whether you contributed to the making of the magazine or just opened it up to read these first words, we are grateful. For a publication founded only six years ago by two people with a stapler in the basement of Tisch, it is endlessly awe-inspiring to see how far and quickly we’ve grown. It is because of your support that we get to create this community for creatives of all perspectives and backgrounds to share, so, once again and with all our hearts: thank you, and we hope you enjoy the issue!
With
Love, Antonia and Jay Co-Chairs
Our team
CO-CHAIRS
Our team
JAY GUO
ANTONIA RAMIREZ
HEAD COPY EDITOR
HEAD DESIGNER
COPY EDITORS
NEWT GORDON-REIN
LAUREN FISCHER
WILLIAM ZHUANG
SPENCER VERNIER
LILI NEWBERRY
TATIANA BALCARCEL
DESIGN TEAM
MADISON RED
RACHEL LIANG
AMELIA MILLER
EVELYN HSY
PHOEBE YAO
WRITER LIASON
SOCIAL CHAIR
ONLINE EDITOR
ANNIKA CRAWFORD
ISABELLA GISMUNDO-HOOK
ALEXA HOPWOOD
photo | Lauren Fischer cover art | Phoebe Yao
Michelle Zhang
Lauren Fischer River Smith
LolaOwett
Annika Crawford
Thanks to all our content reviewers!
ARTITABLEARTICONN FEATURED ARTISTS
Tony Li
AmeliaMiller
Yuchan (Angela) Yan
Phoebe Yao
A pink complexion carries well the mark of queer restraint. Enshrined within these satin palls three scourges yet remain. Bested, crested, faintly vested, white embers echo cold.
Victory excised from her perch— a wretched, rushed revolt. Defaced, deflowered, mirrors wheel before the painted thane. All-seeing wounds, all-birthing eyes with virgin specters reign.
Paper Airplane
by Chloe Cheng
You saved my life two Octobers ago with a paper airplane. I remember when you threw it over the barricade of furniture I had constructed around myself under my lofted bed. It flew poorly—barely making it the two feet between us.
The paper airplane is taped to my wall now, unfolded but still creased, your pastel highlighter and gel pens as bright as ever. “I’m not sure what’s going on, but I’m here for you!” Your letters are ever so slanted—the curls at the bottom of every lowercase “l” and “t” remind me of your gentle fingers running over my sweater sleeves as we laid in bed on molly the second August I knew you.
I always think of you when I smoke. I buy the same kind of cigarettes you used to: Marlboro lights, the gold ones. Maybe because they remind me of you, or maybe because I’m scared to ask for anything else. “Can I get this,” I mutter, just like you always did, as I place a bag of watermelon Sour Patch on the counter, “and a pack of Marlboro lights please?”
Some days, I walk our old roommate back to the dorm on the top of the hill where we all lived last year. I say goodbye at the door, then shuffle my way over to the spot where you and I used to smoke together; on the edge of the parking lot, behind the storage container that looks over the field and the red house. I pull out my pack and my Bic lighter, and as I lift my hand to block the wind, I look to my right, half expecting you to be there.
Did you know I’m trying to quit? At least for a while, until I can get everything else under control. I’m not letting myself buy more until April, and maybe by then I won’t even want them at all. It’ll be good for me, but I feel guilty; smoking seemed like one of the only things we still had in common. When you’d smoke with me on the phone from an ocean away, you didn’t feel so far.
You never liked it here, you made that known. It was always too stale for you. Now you’ve moved on and you’ll probably never be back. Next spring, I’ll ask if you can come to my graduation, but I won’t be offended when you say no. It’s okay, I understand. .
photo|
LaurenFischer
Checking Out Checking Out
by Hannah Rappaport by Hannah Rappaport
“The self-checkout is broken!” the man in the red shirt declared yet again, wiping a bead of sweat off his brow. Grumbling customers redrew their paths, forming a bulky, disorganized clump behind the single register decorated with a brightly colored OPEN sign.
Leila paused and took a breath, thinking back on the many small choices that had led her to this job and regretting every single one. Wiping her sweaty palms on her uniform, she took a shaky breath, wishing desperately that she might miraculously disappear. Alas, her body remained persistent. The man first in line huffed impatiently, arms tightly crossed.
Leila did her best to focus on the items she was scanning rather than the customers’ disgruntled looks. Mayonnaise, detergent, eggs. $22.69. No receipt. She had done this hundreds of times before. Deep breath, in and out.
The third woman in line gave Leila a brief reprieve as she pondered whether or not to buy the yellow t-shirt draped across her basket. Leila began to dream, as she often did, about a different life, lifted straight from the movies, smiling parents, and a warm dinner to greet her each night. Leila imagined the most pleasant part of all–sliding her two-week notice across the table. A satisfied smile flickered across her face, only to be interrupted by an irritated cough. The woman had decided to buy the shirt after all. $8.89.
The next man in line had forgotten dish soap. With a hasty assurance, he abandoned his cart by the conveyor, hurriedly walking to search for his coveted cleaner. Customers behind mumbled annoyance, waiting for Leila to usher another customer in front to check out. Instead, she closed her eyes serenely and took a deep breath. After a long day of work, she often felt pains in her chest. Her face hurt from smiling, and her legs shook with exhaustion. It wasn’t hard work, certainly not back-breaking labor. But the constant interactions never failed to sap Leila of any slivers of energy she had possessed before her shift.
She hadn’t imagined any of this when she handed in her application all those months ago. The pay was good– more than minimum wage, and the brightly colored advertisements promised a happy work environment and ample schedule flexibility. Her mother had thought a job would be a good idea, to help Leila gain some people skills. God, if she could see Leila now. And then she got the job, and now, somehow, the job was still here. And as much as Leila hated the store, she hated the apartment more–the dark hallways and the empty walls and the ghosts. Leila was never one to believe in the supernatural, but there, it was undeniable. Every floorboard creaked with regret, echoing a noisier time. And every time they did, as much as Leila tried to fight it, her heart jumped of its own accord–as if things would go back to normal as if she was no longer alone. But she knew better–it was only the ghosts.
art | Phoebe Yao
In the store, Leila was miserable. Her certainty increased with every displeased customer. But here, at least, there was always a little hope. It was far more likely, of course, that the next customer would complain or yell or look at her in a way that made her want to disappear. But maybe, just maybe, they would have a conversation. Maybe she would say just the right thing in just the right bubbly voice, and they would listen. Maybe they would make her laugh. Probably not. But she could dream.
And here, now, was the man, half-jogging back to the register, two bottles of electric blue dish soap cradled in his arms.
“Thanks for waiting,” he said, out of breath. “My wife would have killed me.”
Leila didn’t mind the waiting. She wished she could wait forever, hiding in the spaces between customers, dreaming.
$56.12. No receipt.
The last person in line–a teenage boy in an oversized hoodie–began placing his items on the conveyor belt. Chocolate bar. Flowers. Valentine’s card. Leila felt a moment of gratitude for his assistance, enough to channel her brightest, most artificial voice. “Chocolate bars are buy 1, get one 50% off this week. I’ll hold your stuff if you want to go grab another one.”
The boy gave her a thin smile. “Thanks, but I’m good with just one.”
“You sure?” Leila countered. “Don’t you want to spoil that special someone?” Leila’s boss would have been thrilled. How many times had he asked her to be more personable with the customers? Small talk flowed out of him like a river and trickled out of her awkwardly like someone’s broken, leaky faucet.
The boy’s smile disappeared so quickly Leila wondered if she had just imagined it. He stopped loading his purchases on the belt and started twisting the string of his sweatshirt in knots. Leila’s stomach, too, was in knots, reminding her with sharp pains why she didn’t try talking to customers.
Leila picked up the greeting card to scan. It wasn’t a Valentine’s card, as she had originally thought. No, this one said “My condolences.” Her heart dropped.
She clenched her fists. “I’m so sorry,” she said quietly, voice barely a squeak, heart beating so loud she was sure customers halfway out the parking lot could hear its thump.
“I hate when people say that,” the boy said and then looked up, alarmed, as if the words had slipped off of his tongue without his permission.
“Yeah, me too,” Leila said softly.
The boy looked at her suddenly with understanding. “You lost someone?”
She nodded, placing the flowers in a bag carefully and presenting him with his receipt.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, the ghost of a smile on his face, and against her best judgment, she smiled too.
Numb fingertips rub sand to feel sensations within. The seagull’s corpse—swan song—is a creation within.
Yesterday’s eyes were blinded by ocean spray, eyelids. Behind them, a vomit of stars births mutations within.
Your mangled wings leave begrimed scribbles on yellow paper. Guilt folds twice: the scratching, then an observation within.
To capture so much yet so little is but a failure to adapt. Tear feathered skin away to find only steel; a revelation within.
Frizzes of pissing light pierce through now naked eye holes. The brain is still water, a tidal basin within.
I, the romanticist, peer into this yawning reservoir. How tonic to see one’s own condition within.
by Maxwell Li
photo | Tony Li
by the cor ners of your pain
I pause by the corners of your pain cut my hands on the edges reach up to run my fingers along the ceiling crystals humming in the dark a universal tune
I sit with this corner of my pain as the walls close in hardness between my eyes and my ribs spreading out
by Sarah Goldstein
photo| Amelia Miller
Anticipate, wander the tubed walkways, stiff overshirt sleeves clipping submarine walls.
Eat re-hydrated vegetables, listen to the sonar tongue-click trilling air
like a tuning fork, knowing all the while that the water wants more, it is waiting, it is pounding at the hull to be let in.
The signs might be predicted in an ordered system, one that says each 33 feet adds an atmosphere’s pressure, one that drops 20 skies on an unlucky sailor, order that ends when it happens. When it happens,
photo | Tony Li
when the porthole breaches, when salt begins to seep into your skull. It is different when you are the one doubling inward, contorting, folding limbs like origami.
The seething ocean barrels
through your body, structured in its shapely bipedal fantasy.
All that remains drifts amid the flooded rocky cliffs and diving sperm whales, leaving them to wonder what unusual fish has come to claim its place upon the sediment.
by Lili Newberry
SYSTEM
FAILURE
CW: self-harm
Sunlight
by Aaron Yontrarak
The frigid Medford weather makes you long for the sun again, but it sank below your windowsill and out of sight last month – you don’t know if it will ever return. Cold seeps into every corner of the room, rendering the desk you’re sitting at freezing to the touch. It’s an old wooden desk. Its six drawers are each adorned with one brass handle, fluttering every time you pull. It’s old, broken, tired; its hue no longer a luscious chocolate, but a dull and dried out shit type of brown. As you pull out the top left drawer and see what lies beneath all that shit, dim light refracts into your eyes. A flathead screwdriver lies sleeping on the edge nearest to you, and next to it a pair of scissors with red plastic handles sitting beside some Gillette razor blades – dormant for the moment. In all that shininess, you can see your own mangled reflection. Stray hairs have crept out from under your skin. Barnacles on your hull.
You begin to miss that metallic kiss.
The cold blades caressing your skin, trimming, shearing, flaying. Friend, you call them. Painkiller. Lifesaver. You can’t help but admire how pretty they are, so shiny, so sharp. A box of Kleenexes rests on the desk to help you wipe away the blood. There are towels too, hanging in the cupboard across from your desk. The one closest to you – the one you’d grab first – is white, tinged with shades of unwashed yellow. Dirty yellow and blood red. You imagine the life seeping from you, laying itself to rest amongst the piss and filth of the cloth.
But you begin to wonder…
Maybe you’ll regret it just as the blades slice through your veins. Maybe when you stare at your reflection in those clean and shiny things, you’ll wonder if the person staring back would rather live. Maybe you’ll begin to wonder if the sun will come out tomorrow. And maybe you’d rather be there to see it.
Pictures I took through my microscope Of plant cells and water droplets. Life on a scale so different from my own Painted in Teeming, vivid spots of color. The pictures were Transparent, and sometimes, I’d layer them on top of each other. Two truths occupying the same space. Colliding. My home is gone and my home is not Gone.
I hold both of these truths like Fragile bits of glass. They cut into my skin, bleeding a Living contradiction, but I cannot drop one in favor of The other. One was made real by the sting of smoke and loss And one has Burrowed itself so far into my heart that I am not sure where it ends and I Begin.
photo | River Smith
art | Michelle Zhang
patterned islets throughout Lake Superior
a warm grace undercuts
Frigid air, day resumes its march
Toward possibility
paralyzed Flies in pooled water crystallized free of smallness
stairwell resonance into Birds, which scatter they sit between trees bushes and their calls swing through air, between buildings
Sun keeps moving in and out
diagonal pathway
Trucks, engines,
bySpencerVernier
Sunchokes in sandy grass, Swirling around before it thunders, the mess we would make art | Phoebe Yao
Unkempt Promise Unkempt Promise
by Annika Crawford by Annika Crawford
What dreams make your heart buffet? Raise like a sail—white as a summit?
On the school bus, I lowered the window held my cheek to the current of wind breathed in: the horse dung, wind chimes, hills rolling by, like a flapped rug, flecking rain. Held on to the book that was mine: this dogeared page.
My scrawl jittery, my grip unlike a lady, but words steady: beads wrung from my life that glistened, when I didn’t: slack-mouthed and sweater sleeves swinging, buffering, “What?” “What?” “What?” to every question tossed toward me
Catching only the wind: unseen, until written.
art | Annika Crawford
nettles/ sediment / debris in the Arroyo Seco* nettles/ sediment / debris in the Arroyo Seco*
by Vernonica Habashy
by Vernonica Habashy
I knew / the manzanitas / were cold / but would not admit it / I knew it / the way my feet would not settle in my shoes
/ why must I insist on denying / I am perpetually suspended / in the moment / immediately / before snapping /
I had / a good dream last night / despite / oaky omen / dry burning / marking autumn each october /
I am / curiously well-adjusted to / seasons / ways they change / turn over / you could even call *me / hungry for it / curled / as a fetus / bored / bruised / pruned / greeting committee for / brittle dehydration of my fingertips / ensuing molt / resulting pile of sediment / who named
california / hospitable / hostile / bitter / dirty / still / don’t know / what would / compound fracture / sound like / certainly / not too far from a branch / sharp music / don’t get me wrong
/ I am / extremely predisposed towards grazing corners with my hip / don’t get me wrong I / blame only myself / allow every solid thing to beat me / if it wishes / nobody really knows / what happens / when you inhale / the smoke / citric rust / a fire / three freeways / away / don’t think / trees ever / seek violence / suppose / ought to be focused / on getting by / enough water / how long until / this drought is over /
most manzanita trees / Arctostaphylos / not cultivated / all they know / to be at the mercy of trail runners / dusty squirrels / hostile holly bushes / incidental rain / (for which I am always grateful) /
I avoid / my own mouth-breathing / often / even I find / harsh / somber company / rather afflictive / if communion is meant to be a bath / why do I / so frequently melt / that fruit / between my palms / each Sunday night / those grapes / I’ve been saving for the days / one full hour before the mirror is / not enough / to shed that rouge bark / acridly heavy / phonetically sound / take on / wrinkled aged / imprint of my palm / most days / can convince myself / just my fingernails are enough / to pry each piece of / myself / from myself / satisfaction is brief / gives way to / crude twang / gaping hole in the belly / I aspire to that / graceful candy-stripe reaction to change / never once nodding to / what the manzanitas must give / wrong to believe I may simply / curl out of my skin / without facing the consequences for / flesh / each time I am mistaken / nothing is / enough / to burn away / ashy red streaks / and I am embarrassed / and / I am ashamed /
for being ignorant / a pain / mistaken / for sweetness / (like me / trees are / rather / prone to shame) / mostly I do not / grant myself / that simple pleasure / icing the wound / thought freezing meant / the grapes would never / go bad
where would anyone be / without this / tart ache / something that was meant to be better / do I disgrace / that lush fruit / for needing it so / if only / I were cold to the touch / nothing is harder to bear / slick / flush / heat / pinprick / a nettle you / cannot / pry / from your skin / only try/
Coup
by Tony Li
a kindred path we shared. Through fallow pastures we once leapt with baleful bosoms bared.
So churned her velvet wheel of lies, so tall her tall tales rose. On cracking ice her kiss awaits fantasies to depose.
Of diadems she has long dreamt, our lusts take flight as twins. Flesh and steel entwine, auguring the one true sovereign. Her prefects mount, her deacons tense, her champion sallies forth.
A blinding platter bore her head, her gaze fixed on true north.
photo| Lauren Fischer
Lively purple clusters of frond
by Evelyn Hsy
We nurture little spheres out of purple blossoms
Coil the first petal small and tight
And huddle the others close around it
Lay them all in the sun to dry, to meld. Careful, careful
Layer again.
Hugged by spry, pressing fingers
Dye seeps from the spheres, purple currents
Cropped hair and wiry skin
My siblings and I are craftsmen on this porch
Flowers from the branches, too high for young limbs
We gather the fallen, snatch from the air
Magpies, searching the shinies that fall
Gather in our life lines, our heart lines. Roll about on our skin.
There’s pigment in my brother’s hands. Purple in my sister’s palms. Color, In my life, my heart
The steps match our hands, patched browning to brown
Like footsteps where we set our orbs to dry
Our trails, when the rain comes, All swept to gray
Our treasures, alone in the sun, Crack and fall away
Lively purple clusters of frond
Layer and layer and immensely careful layer
Growing and growing
Growing and cracking
All to be washed away
| Annika Crawford
Translation of “First Dates”
by Andrei Tarkovsky by V. D.
Translation of “First Dates” by Andrei Tarkovsky
by V. D.
We traced our meetings by the hour, Divine like a manifestative power, Alone in the entire world. You seemed To flutter bolder than a songbird’s wing. You’d spin my head descending down the tower, Over the step you’d leap and bring Me through damp lilac into your empire, The other side of glass that mirrors everything.
When night arrived, I had a grace Bestowed, the altar gate Was opened; shining in the dark, Nakedness slowly bent into a question mark Upon its wake: “You have my blessing!”— I said and knew how daring was confessing Such a blessing. You still dozed And, on a table, lilac was its branches stretching To touch your eyelids with the azure of the universe, And, touched with its azure, your lids Were calm and your hands never froze.
Inside the crystal gem, pulsating rivers bent, All mountains smoked, all oceans raved, And your palm held up a gemstone, A crystal sphere, and you slept on a throne, And—o, good Lord!—you were just mine alone. Then you awoke and soon began to rearrange The dictionary of mankind, pristine, And you turned sonorous speech long constrained, Transforming the word you to openly proclaim New meaning, signifying king.
Everything changed on earth, Even simplicities—a bowl, a pitcher—when, guarding The distance between us, water was firm, Layered and unyielding.
We did not recognize a single thing. The cities parted before us like a mirage, Earlier having risen in a blink, And mint would freely under our feet land, And with the birds our road was shared, And up the river fish’d ascend, The sky unfolded right before our eyes...
When fate was following in our stride, A madman with a razor in his hand.
| Michelle Zhang
art
An English Sonnet Turn of
the Season:
by Max Lerner
Ides of June mark the turn of the season, Yet the sun stays high for weeks to come.
Night-bugs storm castles, highest of treasons; The battle of winds, still for Notus, won.
September rolls, begging nary a cost; Trees — enwrapped in colors of flannel sheet.
Soft air greets a return, to form not lost But never less content to mourn the heat.
Once November makes its hasty egress, In deepest minds, summer musings are found.
Worn sweaters and knits we dare not distress, Leaves, like soldiers, nosedive towards cruel ground.
A quarter-year past, a century felt, Another mind lost, a fatal blow dealt. art | Phoebe Yao
Distant Animals Distant Animals
by Jay Guo by Jay Guo
We stood by the highway, sky milky and cerebral. Petals kept splitting off Garvey’s bouquet. In the pale green hills I saw the moving specks of wildhorses grazing the rye. We gather in light of the awfulMarie keened—a sepulchral, mutt-filled sound—that morning. We carried her to bed and pressed filial kisses to her pale, sweaty skin, then came back out to stand by the roadside. Could you possibly sum the life- The cool vapor made me itch. Bill fished one out and let me bum off. I thanked him but tried not to look at his face. I hadn’t seen him in years, so it was shocking to see his hair glassy and almost gone and his chin receded into his neck. His hands stayed petulantly in his pockets. Markey, I mean, Marley is survived by his two, middle-aged- Well, boys, I’m off, Linda’s mad worried, just terrible, will be back, you’ll take care of mum, won’t you lad? Bill said to me and then nodded at Garvey and walked off for the next bus. We’d been standing in a line, the three of us, so then it was just Garvey and me with a gap in-between. Let us learn to celebrate a man while he- I tried to speak to Garvey. We met him at the service. He came from the mining town three miles off, carrying his cream hat and loose bunch of daylilies in his elbow. Queer business, innit? I said. Yes. What’ll you do now? Back to work, ‘suppose. I didn’t ask, though I wanted to. Well, I coughed, good luck to you. He nodded. He looked quite like him, more than Bill or me. When I was a ways down the road, he called out. It was nice meeting you lads, he said. I thought—all that time, his father, our father, only an hour away. We were the same age, Garvey and me. Nothing was left for him. I nodded, and he turned to the hills. A few cars passed, but not many. All the while, the distant animals breathed and moved.
photo |
Lola Owett
woman named For a
by Lola Owett
The breeze blows where she Walks for she is a woman of Art and song. She is! She is!
And I miss her, more than I Could say for She is the rock that redirects the stream
The rock that pulls us down And she, her song
Her art Pulls us back up
The river flows from Boston to New York
To LA to her heart and It’s burning hot it’s On fire! Why oh why?
photo | Lola Owett
Because she is on fire!
She lays by the river with Seashells in her hair and She cries out this hot water
And I miss her dark stare
And the shells are shaking The sand is meek
The fish are singing and She prays for the end
But she lives another week
Where the sun shines she Emerges from the ash and She billows in plumes of Smoke and it’s beautiful! She doesn’t believe me! She prays for the end but I will bring her back to The beginning once Again for she is the River she is the rock
She is the sunshine
And she is going To live through
This awful week
And she will Be the river
She will be the rock
She will be the sun
And she will Live through This week.
at the galleria borghese, 07/31/22
because in the gallery, they blocked the entire room off with red rope and placed you turned away from me. because Swinburne was wrong. because I refuse to see you from only one angle. because love has not abandoned you. because I stood next to two girls whispering into each other’s hands and giggling at your placard, and I wanted to tell them off or leap over that stupid barricade to your bedside, but I walked away with tears in my eyes instead because you’ve been lying on that mattress for centuries and they still want to kill you. because half a year later I swallowed a pressed flower in bed and suddenly I saw a future with me in it, and you were next to me, and there were enough words to write a thousand aubades about your sleeping figure. because you are not a division but a union. because we should ditch Swinburne and go back to my place. because someone loved you enough to cast you in words and stone. because of the patch of sunlight on your peach-fuzzed, ungovernable shoulder.
photo | River Smith
Dig
by Sam Cranston
We cannot endlessly reflect on the forbidden fruit. Bite into a pear, nectarine, plum–taste the earth, the ground beneath you. Earthly limits enforce heavenly expectation, only if you let them.
The wind guides the calm and gentle hand. Sunshine seeps into the cracks of our children’s smiles and guides the soul. Every hug and handshake a groove in a boundless canyon–working tirelessly, bringing water to the depths of our hearts; home of our darkest truths and most forgettable whims.
Pieces of imagination can be bought with the dollar but can’t be sold. You’ll find them chewed up–freeze-dried on the back shelf of your local seven-eleven. Take those thorny thoughts and puncture plastic. Become the wind. Outrun the highways and their blinding beams, you hold a light within.
photo | Lauren Fischer
Birches
By Paul OsmOnd
I once saw a young birch tree, Whose bark had shed before the rest
For wicked lumber-lusting men, When ivory bark hangs in youthful curls, Bare branches seem fresh, shaven legs
The law says— Birches can’t be cut down Until their fourth year
Yet, I have seen some lumbermen Mark first-year saplings to raze.
photo | River Smith
Poisoned by Hannah Rappaport
June was laying on the couch, curled up between two blankets, when the first shot rang out. No, it wasn’t a shot. Just Mike in the garage tinkering with the car. She wrapped the blankets around her head tighter, covering her ears, until the whole world was muffled and fuzzy, and waited. And then there it was again. Another shot, louder this time, closer. June squeezed her eyes shut and prepared for it to happen.
She’d thought a lot about what it might feel like. Painful, certainly, worse even than the broken arm last year that had left her sobbing and heaving at the bottom of the stairs. Or maybe it wouldn’t feel like anything, just a sharpness, and then it would be over, all over. But time passed and nothing happened and as June resurfaced from the blankets she was forced to realize that, again, it was just Mike in the garage.
June wondered, not for the first time, if Mike was fixing the car to run her over. Or to lock her inside with the engine running. And she’d sit there, alone, just thinking, until it happened. She’d think about her life, probably, probably everything she regretted. Which wasn’t much, really. School had been good. She liked her job. And then Mike came along and that went well. Until of course he had locked her in the car in the garage to die. So maybe she would just sit in silence, in the car. Maybe she’d think of a good book. And wait.
June had been lost in this fantasy for quite some time when the door slammed. She jumped upright, both blankets falling to the floor. It was just Mike, coming in from the garage. “Dinner almost ready?”
Dinner was not. June had been on the couch all of the evening and most of the afternoon. “Almost,” she said cheerfully, and then picked the blankets off the floor, folded them neatly on the arm of the couch, and got up to go make dinner.
The weather forecast for tomorrow wasn’t good. Mike mentioned it idly as he sipped his soup, which was left over from dinner two nights ago, scrolling through the weather app on his phone.
“A storm?” June asked, and Mike looked up, surprised, at the vitality on his wife’s face.
“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe I should take the day off.”
“Oh, no,” June said. “But you have that big proposal coming up.”
Mike nodded, acknowledging the concern. “Yeah. But I don’t wanna drive in that. Heard a crazy story from some guy the other day ‘bout his cousin who lives in Texas—”
June took a sip of her soup and stopped listening. She wondered, absentmindedly, if it was poisoned. Which was ridiculous. She had made the soup herself, just two nights ago. But two nights was plenty of time to tamper with it. And she didn’t remember it tasting this salty.
After dinner June was clearing the dishes when she began to cough.
“Oh, man,” Mike said. “Think I gave you a cold? The guys at work have been hacking all week.”
June shrugged, and then took out her phone and googled poisons that might make you cough.
By the next morning, June could not get out of bed. Her body ached from head to toe and her hands shook with the mere effort of raising a finger. Her face might have been the color of a mint leaf.
“June, baby, I don’t want to leave you home alone like this,” Mike said. “And there’s the storm—”
“No, go to work. I’ll be fine. I’ll read a book,” June said. Mike seemed very concerned and even kissed her sweaty forehead. As he did, June heard a loud crack and instinctively recoiled into the bed, hands in front of her face.
“Relax, baby, it’s just the lightning.”
“Be careful,” June said. “Keep your—lights on.” It had been many years since she had driven.
“I will,” Mike said, and kissed her again. “Can I get you anything before I go?”
June asked for hot tea with lemon and her phone, so that she could google antidotes.
Once Mike had gone she made herself more comfortable and sipped her tea. She wasn’t much worried about the tea. The soup had clearly done its job. June wondered how long it would take. She hoped it would hurry up and that it would be over before Mike came back from work. That would be nice.
But alas June had finished her book and her tea and nothing had happened yet. The lightning cracks didn’t even resemble shots, anymore. June wasn’t sure how they ever had.
June began to wonder, in her bed, why Mike had done it. They’d had a good marriage. She had used to work, once, and drive, and do all of the things he did. And then things had gotten hard, so hard, and it had all slipped away. Did he wish she would do those things again? Was he tired of his pale, fragile wife on the couch with all those blankets while he worked so hard? For it was true, day after day Mike came home later and later, beads of sweat on his brow, not to a home cooked meal but to June on the couch and leftover soup. Perhaps after she was gone he would find a wife who played tennis.
June could see this wife clearly–thin, thin but muscular, not the kind of wispy thin where you might blow away at any second. And blonde, but with brown roots, which showed at the top of her ponytail when she played tennis. And after she would come home and shower, so that she smelled nice when he kissed her, and she would bake a pie and roast a chicken.
June could smell the chicken, it smelled good, and the more she smelled it the tighter her fists seemed to clench. And as she waited she thought about the woman, and her tennis racket, and then she grew tired of waiting.
June was soaked when the next shot rang out. Water was streaming down her face and into her mouth, but still she quivered, clutching the bark of the tree for dear life.
It wasn’t thunder, though, not like the last two, but a car engine, and then it was yelling. “What the hell are you doing? Get the fuck inside!”
June wondered, dimly, why the tree was yelling, and then she stepped outside from behind the tree and there was Mike. Somewhere in the back of Mike’s voice was concern, and June marveled at his clever theatrics. And then she wondered why he was the only one allowed to yell.
“No,” she yelled back at him, and it tasted good in her mouth, better than soup or chicken.
June couldn’t see Mike’s reaction, which she had to imagine was awe, for had she ever dared to say such a thing to him? But she couldn’t see him, the rain was pouring down and her vision had started to blur, and then she felt hands wrapping around her back and lifting her into the air.
June wished she was a thousand pounds, an immovable statue, and wondered why she had spent so much of her younger years afraid of being so.
“June, baby,” Mike was saying, and June began to thrash, but the rain was gone, and everything was gone, and all she could taste now was the sofa and the blankets, her blankets.
“You’re sick,” Mike said. “You’re hallucinating.”
“I’m dead,” June told him. “It just hasn’t happened yet.”
Mike wrapped her in her blankets and kissed her forehead and went off to get her a towel. June sat on the couch, dripping, waiting.
Then all she could see was blanket, and all she could taste was blanket, and June held her breath, and smiled, and thought about a good book.
The Knit Between a Note & a Song
by Annika Crawford
I’ve too long been skittish like a horse. Weaving my speech with ribbons: Yes—but it doesn’t matter! No—but that’s cool for you! When I only meant yes and no.
Filling the silence with a light, sifting laugh like the scattering of sugar on burnt toast.
Easing into the pool, like the first time: forgetting how the shock becomes cool. Or the knot in my muscle to paddle, to dunk, to kick waiting to be unspooled.
Or in the rear of the engine, swaddled in smoke and dangling metal, wishing my wit to be as easy as the jolt of a wheel— Crack a smile, quick as light through the window
If only to belong
A trained dog pawing daily for a treat it long since earned.
Soft or rough, I only want to be true be what gravity holds me into! A stitch on the canvas we struggle to unravel the beauty we are given the life we begin in:
Be still, you note, surrounded by notes, and listen.
art | Phoebe Yao
My heart a home vacant with white cotton sheets over the furniture.
Bedrooms with yellowpatterned wallpaper to soothe babies that may never be born.
Bedtime stories stored safely to tell sleeping bodies who may never take refuge in the rooms I prepared for them.
An attic with unfilled diaries an annotated copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude half the Beatles’ discography on vinyl an antique tea set.
A kitchen with nothing in the fridge but an aging strawberry shortcake seventeen candles still pitched like a white picket fence, mocking me, outside the home maiden love didn’t build, into the permeable layer of sweetness now stained with lipstick gnaws and kisses captured alike.
My heart with wide open windows through which the sun may shine and the rain may soak.
My heart a home with a black umbrella I never use Because everyone knows I am going to lose it.
CW: Homophobic slurs
The night you got disowned, we spun out in the wintry parking lot & drank in the copperburning moon.
Your car smelled like gunfire & pinesol. You slugged a constellation of pills & shot out the bleeding light.
In the back you gave me wings & slipped on an inky slit dress from the trunk, &
At midnight the wolves screamed fag til resin filled your throat like oil spills across the interstate.
Gap in the Boy The
by Jay Guo
Later, you downed an IHOP coffee with your hormones & I asked what kind of person keeps a bullet in their glove compartment.
Your brother’s a West Haven big shot. Your dad got forty in the force and died a year later.
Outside the rain fell like sewing needles & you asked for maraschino cherries to stain your mouth red.
I wonder if it tires, being misfits in the dark. Whether God chokes, watching his children splash & Anthrodance across the concrete, headlights smearing as the stars reek of envy.
photo | River Smith
Love Letter to My Mother Tongue by
Qing Cheng
Dear Canto,
You have been with me for as long as I can remember. You have known me before I even knew of you. Your melodies were a comforting presence, embracing me when I was growing up. I sensed the rise and fall of your breath, as loud as the shrieks of angry parents and as silent as the secret sighs of my childhood mind. I took you for granted. Then we came Here, and suddenly, you were no longer omnipresent and always with me, anymore. Yes, you were there, at home. Yes, you were there, at school: once, twice, always at a distance. Faint whispers of you swam through space like short bursts of breath, fleeting as if you were never here at all. We heard you in the bustling streets –though mostly sound-alikes, interestingly accented, and rarely you exactly as I knew you. That was fine. That was enough for me.
I was younger then, and afraid of many things Here: the school bus rides, the other kids in class, the language, so I seized every opportunity to embrace the new. Every day, I was making progress. Every day, I was losing more of you. I realized too late, but looking back, what could I have done to keep you closer in my mind, in my heart? You are like the red string bracelet from my carefree childhood: you started to unravel, day by day, little by little, and I did not notice. When I finally did, you were no longer where I expected you to be: by my side. The memory of you, the sound of you, the connection I had to you, all falling away like a paper boat down the swift-flowing river of time. I let you go voluntarily, almost unconsciously, believing you would never leave me. I didn’t try to stop you as you crept away, maybe waiting for me to notice. I can still feel the space you left behind – a confined emptiness. Sometimes I want to speak about something on my mind – my gratitude, or frustration – but I struggled with the words. I want you to help me, but you are not here.
Then, something that brought you back.
I still remember the date: June 12th, 2020. It was easy to remember because it was around the ninth anniversary of the day we immigrated Here. Nine years sounded like a long time, but I still marvel at how vividly I recall the little struggles and triumphs I have faced over the years. Here that was once so new and scary to me and still manages to, sometimes, make me feel alienated. Nevertheless, on this day, feeling bored and listless, I listened to a song called “Under Mt. Fuji.” I tried to follow the lyrics, but the unfamiliar melody tumbled in one ear and out the other before I could catch up.
Words about love and pain, loss and acceptance, fluttered through my mind like butterflies released into the wild. I was distracted by my inability to understand all the characters or to pronounce them. I pictured the cherry blossoms and majestic mountains,
I imagined a story I never experienced, but there was something else that made me pause. I had to listen to it again. It moved me, waking and drawing forth something hidden within my mind that I had forgotten. What was it?
It was you, old friend.
I have always been slow to understand my own feelings for things, for people – let alone recognizing the feeling of love. But this time, I knew. At that moment, you were as beautiful as I never knew you could be. I don’t know why this song allowed me to see you in a way I couldn’t before, or how one could suddenly fall in love with something that one has known all one’s life. But one could, as I did.
I still remember the date: June 12th, 2020. It was easy to remember because it was around the ninth anniversary of the day we immigrated Here. It had been nine years since you started to slip from me, and it took me twice as long to see you for what you are, and what you are to me. People in love like to ask, Where have you been all my life? The answer to this question I now know: you were here all along.
When I listen to your music and watch your movies, what I crave is your voice, the sense of familiarity and homeliness with which you surround me. That time, going home to—or should I say, visiting? – our city, everything was in its place, except for me. Where did I belong? Feeling like an imposter There and feeling like a foreigner Here, I feel most at home wherever you are. I haven’t always understood this sentiment, but then again, it took me many years to see my neglect of you.
In retrospect, I laugh at myself for how long it took me to realize and find what I had lost, yet I also worry about you. The children of our native city, yours and mine, do not care enough to learn your ways. The rise and fall of your tones and pitches that I admire and seek solace in are but intelligible babbles to them, at which they wrinkle their noses. They claim that you sound dissonant, that you will never last, but they have not seen the gentle side of you. They say you are too old-fashioned, you are not needed, but they do not know that they need you There even more than I do Here. You are a part of the short histories of our lives and of the long history of our city. What is New Year’s festival without your presence among the auspicious lanterns and kumquats trees in the flower market? What is dim sum and morning tea without your incessant, excited buzzing in the background? Maybe like me, they too have a journey to take to know you. If one day you cease to be, I hope that it will be after my time.
With infinite love, Your friend
photo | Lola Owett
