Penumbra 2022 by Greens Farms Academy

PENUMBRA 2022

Penumbra (pi-num-bruh) A space of partial illumination (as in an eclipse) between the perfect shadow on all sides and the full light.1

1 Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary Tenth Edition

Editors-in-Chief Menna Delva & Kavya Krishnamurthy Art Director Nancy Duer Associate Art Director Paige Parisi Editorial Board Liyana Asaria-Issa Liza Dowling Mark Freeman Jaiden Voelkner Staff Sahana Bettegowda Fiona Burton Andie Durkin Jonty Hammer Will San Jose Riley Meyer Gus Morfoot Deniz Nalbantoglu Serra Nalbantoglu Talia Orbach Sadie Paulos Jack Pegler Julianna Penna Caroline Smith Addie Tenser Charlotte Walter Cover Design Deniz Nalbantoglu 3

Dedication This issue of Penumbra is dedicated to Ms. Stephanie Van Hatten. Ms. Van Hatten, thank you for your warmth, empathy, humor, and relentless efforts to keep our community healthy and whole. You remind us that we are acceptable and lovable in all of our humanity. Your kindness is our strength. May you always spread love and light to every person you touch.

Table of Contents 13

the collector - KAVYA KRISHNAMURTHY

B206 - CHRIS NOLAND

Sundripped and Drenched - FIONA BURTON

My Computer Therapist - CALLUM MCCRACKEN

Fake-Cheese Taquito - ZOMA TESSEMA

Artist’s Conk - CALEB SEYFRIED

As the Light Dims - CONOR MINSON

A Room of One’s Own: A Contemporary Jump in Time DENIZ NALBANTOGLU

Kimba - JENIFER BONILLA

Simple Times - JULIANNA PENNA

when it hurts so bad - MENNA DELVA

Soul-ache - SERRA NALBANTOGLU

Disfigurement - JENSEN GREEN

Leaves - AARON HOPPER

sometimes - SANSKRITI KUMAR

My Hands - KARI ERGMANN

SHE - CAROLINE SMITH

Thalassophobia - WILLIAM MCGONAGLE

Sinking - KEVIN KURYLA

Mr. Oliver Fitzpatrick and the Quietus - SERRA NALBANTOGLU 5

This Blue Screen - YASH GAWANDE

The Apocalypse Behind the Unknown - EMME GALABURDA

when i sleep on my left side - MENNA DELVA

Body - IRIS DICKINSON

California Oranges - ANNIE DIZON

Nature Haiku - LIZA DOWLING

The Girl - LULU WU

Red Streaks on New Years - FIONA BURTON

collect me in missing drafts - MENNA DELVA

The End of Romance - KAVYA KRISHNAMURTHY

Ballet Dancers - RILEY MEYER

Love is a Tricky Thing - ELIZABETH JONES

Khushi Ka Yeh Din - LIYANA ASARIA-ISSA

Freedom - KEVIN KURYLA

and god asks, “well how can it compare to a love like that” CAROLINE SMITH

The Origin of Peanuts - CARL CORIDON

104

For my Dog Sunny - MORTIMER HOOD

105

Kovda - WILLIAM MCGONAGLE

105

The Sound of Water - WILLIAM MACKLE

111

Craft Interview with Ross Gay - PAIGE PARISI

115

Ant House - LUCIE HONARVAR

116

Pine Cones - SERRA NALBANTOGLU

119

Ode to Dazed and Confused - WILLIAM KURYLA

120

Ode to a Blue Tin Roof - BRENDAN HOWARD

124

The Non-Ode to this Damn Portfolio - SHERIDAN OBERHAND

125

Ode to Opening the Oven - HADLEY SALEM

127

Ode to My Almost, Yet Not Quite Perfect Nose SAHANA BETTEGOWDA

129

Catalog of Irrepressible Sisterhood - MADELEINE SPELLER

133

Catalog of Effortless Love - YASIEL ESPINAL

136

For Ross Gay After Ross Gay - KAVYA KRISHNAMURTHY

142

Migrations - ANNIE DIZON

144

Essence - CAROLINE SMITH

145

Bloody Waters - WILLIAM SAN JOSE

153

new years resolutions - LIYANA ASARIA-ISSA

155

The Illumination of Unfiltered Beauty - ANNA REYNOLDS

Doodles CASSY CALLARI MENNA DELVA NANCY DUER MARK FREEMAN KAVYA KRISHNAMURTHY JOHNATHAN MATTE GUS MORFOOT DENIZ NALBANTOGLU SERRA NALBANTOGLU PAIGE PARISI

It’s okay to write about yourself as a question. - Ross Gay Say it clear, and it will be beautiful. - Lucille Clifton What star falls unseen? - William Faulkner

A Letter from the Editors GFA’s literary magazine was named Penumbra in 1982, making this Penumbra’s 40th year. In the spirit of this anniversary, we chose to celebrate an even earlier edition of the magazine, using it as a model for this year’s book. The simplicity and warmth of the 1979 edition – simply titled “literary magazine” – was made before students had computers; it was laid out with a typewriter and the drawings were done by hand. When we held the book, we felt it had a timeless familiarity, like we could read it late at night by candlelight, a feeling we tried to emulate in Penumbra 2022. We made a book that looks hand-crafted, rustic, and sweet. This year we had the honor of hosting poet Ross Gay as GFA’s visiting writer. In an interview with Paige Parisi, he gives us invaluable advice: “Let love be the engine of your inquiry [...] Everything that you wonder about, everything that you write about, everything that you pursue, it is worthwhile to let love be the reason for that.” The pieces we have selected this year are authentic, soulful, and are driven by (or searching for) love. This book has been driven by our love for poetry, and much of our poetry has been sourced in pain. This year has been particularly difficult for both of us, as well as for many of our peers, and for the world. The work here reflects the truths of all of its contributors without the attempt to mask or lighten darkness. Giving voice to internal darkness can be profoundly cathartic. Writing pain can be healing, and reading it can be healing too. We believe that Penumbra is a space for young people to share what’s close to our hearts and to be understood. In this digital world, there are few sacred places where we can freely create something that is ours. Art is intimate self-expression: creation and connection. An act of self-love. In the back of the book, we have compiled a list of mental-health resources and hotlines. You are not alone; there are people who can and want to help you. We hope you find reverence, delight, and poignance here. Love binds this book.

HALF-LIGHT

the collector the day you threw a glass jar at someone else i went to find you i told you you could have hurt him i asked you what if that had been me? you told me it would never be me and you asked me are you afraid? i said no not of you never you you take photographs of flowers admire the violets on the ground the shape of a teacup you collect beauty carry it with you i know what it means to collect beauty i used to collect shells at the beach and then arrange them when i got home not by color or shape or size but by which i thought needed my love the most and i have lost all of my shells because they were not mine to begin with i took them from their homes lonely child thief dislocator i wonder if i have been collected the same way i took shells from the beach trapped in an old jewelry box left alone until someone is ready to love me in such an insufficient way foreign way to arrange me instead of letting the sea roll over me

carry me in and out caress me i have displaced many things misplaced many things misplaced you in the shelves of my memory among other things glass beads and leather bracelets and grief and broken shells and i have been misplaced too placement is a perilous thing so i trapped you under and in between my ribs though i cannot feel you there anymore that bone is softer when you touch it hold me tend to me place me where you might forget about me soon where you told me that only i live let us collect each other like time collects death and like death collects dust i seem to be only able to put you in places where you collect dust or shatter or lose yourself in whatever broken piece of glass broken piece of me i have forced upon you let us collect each other like you collect violets and like i collect shells and hearts and hurt it’s the only way i know how to love i hope i have not made you afraid you asked me are you afraid? i said no not of you 14

never you never you but i wonder why you have bled but not to me and why i have only bled to you undressed -Kavya Krishnamurthy

B206

After John Updike He woke me up by slamming the door on accident as he walked out of our dorm. I mean, he probably woke up the whole floor. I guess it worked better than my alarm would have, but... jeez. He decided to charge right back in anyways, though. I sank my head into my pillow sideways and tried to fake being asleep so I wouldn’t embarrass him, but I couldn’t have fallen asleep if I tried in that stuffy little room. I gave up pretty quickly anyways and decided to watch with one eye cracked open instead. He was kneeling down and digging through our closet, looking for something to replace. He looked very frazzled as he searched through the piles of clothes, before finally settling on a Cool-And-Casual-But-Also-Socially-Acceptable Flannel. I watched him rip off his C.A.C.B.A.S.A. flannel to trade it for one with an identical pattern but with blue and grey squares on it instead of red and black. He stopped one last time at the small mirror by the closet to watch himself run his hand through his hair and then he

made his exit with a soft door-closing. He must have been too focused on his hair to notice he’d put the flannel on inside-out. Four out of five days- four out of the five days we had been there he’d rushed to the dining hall for breakfast way ahead of time to try and skip the line before his first lecture started. It was kind of excessive. Yeah, go wake me up and stomp out so you can get the Froot Loops before they run out. Since I was up, though, I thought I might as well get going now instead of when my phone was supposed to buzz in five minutes. Maybe there’d still be some faux Frosted Flakes or something. I threw my green tee into my pile of shirts in our closet and began to try and plan out my day while I changed into something presentable. Leave in 5, get to the dining hall in 10, find my counselor’s room in 30… Just as I chose my new tee (red this time!) I heard his voice from one story below our room’s window, outside. Some tall 15

skinny brunette was gesturing towards him while they both laughed-his inside-out C.A.C.B.A.S.A flannel had been discovered, demoted to its rightside-in version. They started to walk towards the dining hall but he started to turn around and looked up and pointed towards our dorm– I started to freak out and thought they must be pointing at me so I jumped away, waited, then creeped back to the corner of the window to check if they were still acting normal. They both had turned around and continued walking towards the dining hall, relaxed. Maybe I needed a C.A.C.B.A.S.A. flannel of my own because I was freezing out on the lawn between my dorm and the hall in just my tee. Well, maybe not freezing, but summer still had a couple of weeks left on the calendar. If Mother Nature decided to make it this cold now then she might as well have made the leaves fall, too--just skip to the good part, right? The cold actually made me get to the dining hall pretty fast though, fast enough to see him still twenty-five spots or so ahead of me in the breakfast line. He was standing in line with someone different- must have ditched the girl for this guy, a clone of himself with different styled hair. They were both smiling and staring at his phone as he dug through endless texts until he rediscovered a photo I couldn’t make out from where I was, only for them to start having full-on laughing fits in the line. I even took out my phone and found his name in my contacts and everything to try and text him some BS question that’d lead to the photo, but I realized he 16

would have seen through that so I just checked the weather instead. The people around me in the line were all talking to each other and I was kinda lost so I just stayed on my phone and protected my place in line. Thanks to some benevolent forces far above, there were still Froot Loops left and I served myself a generous portion while questioning in my head how many kid’s tuitions went into the yearlong Froot Loop supply. The dining hall was packed at that point and it was only the first week so none of the faces seemed very approachable but I did see him finish a conversation with someone and start to walk away into the crowd. I didn’t think I had any other choice so I ran after him before he melted into the entire population of the ten square mile area. I caught up to him right as he set his sights on a nearby table- I had to try something, so I just let out a single pathetic little “hey” and immediately regretted it. Right after I said that though, he let out a dumb “hey” too and we started walking together. God, I sounded so stupid but he sounded pretty stupid too so it all balanced out. He said sorry for slamming the door earlier; I laughed and said I was awake anyways. We sat down together on a long and half-empty table like we were Jesus and the apostles at the last supper but people began to take the rest of the seats immediately so I didn’t get to make that joke out loud. That’s probably a good thing. Just as we began to settle, Tall Skinny Brunette and The Clone sat down across from us and I finally got to meet them for real. Turns out they had

names, Cathy and Matt. I think they liked me. I hope my t-shirt didn’t look too shabby. -Chris Noland

Sundipped and Drenched I opened a fortune cookie last week Well actually I opened three fortune cookies last week But I accidentally put two fortunes in my sweatshirt pocket and they got torn To pieces by the washing machine I remembered to take the last fortune out Fortunately It tells me that a long awaited event will arrive soon I wonder if it will arrive today But no, I don’t think it will Isn’t it…. Weird how the sun is always above us? That even when it’s cloudy it’s still up there somewhere? And I know this isn’t possible… But… Imagine if someone lives up on the sun with a telescope And they spy on us Opening fortune cookies The sun in and of itself is a horror A massive Spinning Orb Of heat It’s… terrifying But we would die without it So there’s that I think it’s romanticized actually But my memory of it has always been a marvelous wonder When it hits the snow in Chicago 17

And the smell of the car’s heating system The feel of the warm leather seats And 2013 Taylor Swift playing on the radio And… Do you remember... Oh, nevermind. Well The last sliver of sun just sank below the horizon of November trees And I’ve always liked the name ARIA Apparently Capricorns don’t believe in astrology And I’ve decided that all the weird people in the world Have picked grass and stared at the sky during sports practice At least once in their life I was picking grass and staring at the sky with a girl named Krista once We were at lacrosse practice And it was October The sun hit the top of the church just right And I thought I was in Boston in the 1800s or something I wanted to go home and make soup from scratch So I did And it tasted disgusting And OH WELL When both the sun and moon are up Well That’s certainly something It happened last Thursday When there was an eclipse I missed the eclipse part though (too much rain) There was just a FULL moon On one side of me And on the other side A FULL sun If you can call it that But you know what I mean And if you stood at just the right spot on the sidewalk No, not there… there You could see it all This other time I was on a hill With my cousin 18

It’s called half mile hill And it’s in Massachusetts You can google it I don’t know if it’ll come up But We climbed it and when we got to the top I expected to just see the buildings of my grandparents’ retirement community But There was a lake And I had totally forgotten there was a lake I had been to that lake back in 2014 But That was a long time ago I had forgotten it was there But The sun hit it And I kind of wanted to stay there forever Because it was all perfect But my cousin had to get on a flight to Seattle in 3 hours so we left That particular era of our lives. What else? Oh. I just saw the sunset the other day. From a dock in Florida I saw it twice actually The first time I was standing under the roof of a deserted citrus shack In front of a swaying bell with my cousin The second time I was alone There’s a sign on the deserted citrus shack that tells you to ring the bell to make your wish come true And to ward off evil spirits I closed my eyes and wished for my cousin to never become as annoying As her sisters Blinked 8 times Rang the bell 7 times (the second part of my lucky number - 27) Then we both lay on the dock with our heads over the edge Looking for dead priests 24 hours later I came back Alone I wanted to watch the sunset dramatically In a much more civilized manner 19

But when I sat down The trees were threaded across my view Immersed in an act of obstruction I was too lazy to move So I stayed And watched the trees I read a scene in a book once Where a prince was sitting on a dock at sunset with a girl Who could control the sun Or maybe the girl who could control the sun Was sitting on a dock with a prince Their eyes were described as “flecks of amber” So now I associate flecks of amber with the sunset Sunny orbs. Orbs that hold so much meaning The hope The aspirations Of the future The naïveté That everything will remain the same That you will be the only one to change Never in the history of the earth has that happened. I opened a fortune cookie last week Well actually I opened three fortune cookies last week But I accidentally put two fortunes in my sweatshirt pocket and they got torn To pieces by the washing machine I remembered to take the last fortune out Fortunately It tells me that a long awaited event will arrive soon And I’m so confused because I don’t know what I’m waiting for And how soon is soon? Eventually would probably be a better word A long awaited event will happen eventually Then it can never be wrong -Fiona Burton

My Computer Therapist Falling out of my mom’s dark grey SUV I slowly climb the steep stairs up to the farthest room to the left of the stairway, my room. My leg muscles cramping after a day carrying my backpack filled with big textbooks from Math to Science to Computer Ccience to Mandarin. Gracefully I dive into my bed and open my computer. While I slump in my bed with khaki pants scraping at my skin and a rash from my uniform t-shirt, my AirPods stuck to my ears, becoming a part of me. I stay almost frozen in bed only my eyes darting back and forth reading the pages and my fingers tapping away at the keys so light you don’t even hear a click. I make a new window and wait for a moment trying to decide if I want to go to Youtube or PowerSchool. For a split second, I believe work is the right choice. Then after thinking about it again, I decided that now is not the time for studying. I type Pewdiepie and graze my 2nd and 3rd finger across the trackpad till I find a suitable video to fall asleep to. I can hear my mother working in the kitchen at a furious pace that sounds like the speed of light. I can hear her footsteps and the clanging of dish plates. The last time I see on my computer clock is 4 pm, then everything goes black and I pass out. It’s the kind of sleep where my mouth is wide open and drool is creeping down my chin. I toss and turn causing the computer to shift the edge of the bed. Once I make the smallest move, adjusting the pillow so that I get the

cold side, the computer slips off the bed and slides into the gap between my bed and the wall. Then a deep “BOOM!!” like dropping a 20lb weight on hollow steel. The computer leaves a dent on the wall, chipping the paint and the computer. My mom yells from downstairs, “CALLUM, WAS THAT YOUR COMPUTER?!” She drops the dishes she was cleaning and darts up the stairs. I see the fire in her eyes and her teeth grinding. She grabs the computer off the floor and dashes away. My computer is now off-limits, shoved in one of the cupboards in the kitchen downstairs. I hear a drawer slam shut. It won’t stay hidden for long. I know that she always puts the computer in the first row, bottom-most draw next to the pantry. I waddle down the stairs, legs limp. I am on a silent mission. I don’t hear the sounds of creaking wood from the steps or my hand sliding down our polished black railing. My mom has a terrible relationship with my computer. While I, on the other hand, have a splendid relationship with it. Procrastinating is a trait of mine and my computer is my tool. I feel most whole when I am in bed watching Netflix. I am watching the same shows over and over, mouthing the words. This is what makes me happy. It lets the stress melt away and allows me to get my energy back that I used up during the day to play basketball. Of course, I play instead of doing the homework. The shows that 21

I watch are some of my favorites and I have watched them over 15 times. The jokes, the characters, and the events just bring me back into a happy place. Andrew Glowberman, from Big Mouth, yelling at his dad “DON’T TOUCH Pillbo” it’s one of the most memorable lines. The afternoon hours slip away. It’s 7 o’clock in a blink. I take in a big breath and sigh as loud as I can. I feel every inch of my body even more than I usually do from the tips of my hair down to the nail on my soft pinkie toe. I have superpowers to move the smallest muscles in my body. I push myself up into a sitting position in bed with my long arms, and just like that, I start to get my homework done. -Callum McCracken

Fake-Cheese Taquito I slouched in the back of the line but heard the shouts and screams from the class before us, writhing in agony. A gate stood on the side of the hallway, making me think they’d lock us in here until lunch ended, and only the survivors would walk out. My hands trembled, my steps weakened, my eyes darted back and forth, waiting for the lunchroom to launch its attack. As I stepped in, I saw the pale pink walls against the blue-tinged long tables, along with the scuffed off-white tiled floors. They led us to the outside of a wall shared with the kitchen and told us to wait in line. First day of kindergarten, four feet, six years old, nervous. So far, I survived the day relatively fine, didn’t say a word besides my name – but I liked it like that. To me, a low-stakes environment was the best thing to start the year: the simple question and answer format of the classroom was oh so familiar to me – that was until lunch. The horror stories my sister revealed to me made me scared of the lunchroom already: grotesque food, mean lunch ladies, and crazy students shoving into each other; she refused to eat the school lunch, and I planned to do the same. In fact, I tried to avoid the cafeteria altogether: lagging behind in the line hoping the teacher forgot one extra kid, then going to the bathroom and staying there until lunch ended – but these plans were foiled by the grumpy TA who eventually discovered my schemes, and pulled me back to the line. Eventually, we stomped down the stairs into a dark green hallway that led to

the lunchroom. We felt like inmates being led to our execution – no getting out of line, no talking, just staring forward into our imminent doom. Well, at least for me – for others, it was lunch. Most of my first day fled into the recesses of my memory, along with the rest of the year. I savored every moment before hell – the day before school was heaven. My failed attempts to ditch lunch made me even more desperate to escape. Gouging my eyes out seemed better than facing the disorientation of the lunchroom. I was terrified. The line resembled a snake digesting its lunch. Instead of a single file, different parts were chunky and others were thin. My classmates ran into the heart of the snake as I slipped into the back. Facing the wall, I saw mysterious splotches: dirt, food, blood? I didn’t want to find out, so I turned to face the crowded tables. I watched as people ran up and down the room, waiting for a teacher to give them the side-eye as a cue to sit down. I saw kids fighting over a fruit cup, stabbing their plastic sporks into the glistening mango. However, the more I stared, the less scary and prison-like it looked; I saw tables with people sleeping or nibbling their lunch – my kind of people. The feeling of sitting in a classroom was so different from the jungle of the lunchroom. Like a lamb to the slaughter – I was out of my element. Staring at the thin chalk lines in 23

math didn’t prepare me for the chaos I was thrown into. Answering questions about grammar didn’t prepare me for the craziness ensuing around me. Bubbling in multiple-choice didn’t prepare me for havoc. Before I knew it, I was being pushed forward, heading towards the kitchen. As I reached the front of the line, I grabbed a hard-plastic blue tray. The soles of my shoes met the floor as I surveyed this new room. The gray kitchen, with shiny counters propping up the food, created a stuffy atmosphere of warmth that clung to the back of my neck. To the right, a small refrigerated cutout in the wall housed the milk cartons, close to the ground so we could reach; a gaggle of students surrounded it, trying to beat the heat as they waited. I rushed to the counter, grabbed my lunch, and headed out the doorway, eager to get out of there as fast as possible. I looked down at my tray and into the flimsy paper container; inside it sat two conjoined doughy cylinders with brown bubbles attached to them and white goo seeping out of both ends. Getting lunch was one thing, eating lunch was another. The seating arrangement was as staggered as the lines, clumps of people on different sides and people racing to get a good seat. I froze before someone bumped into me and almost set my lunch flying. I held back tears – yes, tears – and decided I should finally sit down. I wandered, scanning the tables through my damp eyes for an open seat with the least amount of people, and once I found one, I made my move. I honed in as my periph24

eral became a blur. With my short legs, I speed-walked to a seat at the end of the bench. I slid my tray onto the smooth table and studied my food and surroundings for a while. Three or four other kids munched on their lunch while I gave an exaggerated nod as a hello, to not disturb their peace or mine. I watched as people ate, making sure they survived their first bite before I took mine. The table trembled as people fiddled with their trays, waiting for lunch to end. Once the food seemed edible, I took a bite out of the fake cheese taquito and smiled. I glanced around – did other people like the food too? Across from me – another big smile. My first day in the lunchroom stuck to the walls of my mind. The feeling of relief after being put into a new environment is euphoric. Relaxed shoulders, steady hands, and sure eyes. The school lunchroom, however scary it may seem, was just a school lunchroom. Not a prison, not a jungle, not hell, not a lion’s den – a lunchroom. I happily finished my taquito at my table as I stared out into the fray – kids running around with teachers following soon after, throwing their lunch onto the rough floors. Tomorrow was a new day – with new food, the same people, and the same lunchroom. The taquito rested in my stomach. -Zoma Tessema

Artist’s Conk We carry platters out of the kitchen and begin setting them along the length of the gray ledge on the porch overlooking the northern side of the lake. Two eastern white pine trees frame the scene; their long skinny limbs, sparsely clothed and far from one another, stretch out towards the light blue water. I furnish warm tortillas on my indestructible plate with meats, vegetables, and sauce, taking my fill and racing, but not racing my brother to secure the coveted rocking chair. I vie for this chair because this year, it has become difficult to maneuver between the bench and ledge where in the past I would voluntarily sit. I have grown while the island has waited. The week of living barefoot has blackened my feet, and with each push against the deck to rock my chair, I stamp dull gray splotches on the wooden planks. I fall into a rhythm, and a pepper slice from my fajita drops to the ground; I throw it over the ledge into the plump shrubs lining the space between the two trees. These green hedges are small enough not to hinder the landscape ahead yet are too small to guard the porch from the fisherman’s gaze as they float in their rowboat in the island’s cove, casting until we tell them off for interrupting this rare and constant view. Through the magnetic bug door, my mom parades out of the kitchen coddling a large semicircle in both hands whose half-moon figure is immediately recognizable as the artist’s conk - a name reporting on the fungi’s properties. The conk, scientifically known as

Ganoderma Applanatum, is a rarity of the island, a hidden treasure whose natural perfection evades our hopeful and desperate pursuit nearly every year. But this year, my Mom obtained one thanks to her experience from fifty years of mushroom hunting. She takes her seat next to my rocking chair e at the bench of the picnic table with her body open towards the lake, resting the conk on the glossy table cloth. Mom begins to outline the scene before our eyes, working first on the shrubs near the mushroom’s corklike base. I watch her intensity as she conducts each stroke of her twig upon the faultless, pillowy material of the truffle’s skin. It is far too delicate to use a knife, and she is cautious as she wields the wooden blade, making each engraving purposefully and with care as if she were operating on a patient with a scalpel. She traces the slim shore that hugs the front of the brush from where the waving limbs emerge. It’s currently encumbered with kayaks, paddleboards, driftwood, and the shadow of darkness cast from the framing trees. From my periphery develops forested mountains, sloping down towards the head of Long Lake, where they converge to a point at the bow of the canoe-shaped lake. To the right of the island, the earth resembles a woman lying on her side with a distinct outline of pointed toes, wide hips, broad shoulders, and a resting head facing those on the sundeck on the far side of the island, who, upon meeting her gaze, obey her command of relaxation. In a final display, the 25

waning sun illuminates the head and chest of the sleeping lady a verdant prairie green, and from afar, she looks to be solid, a static hill rather than millions of individual swaying trees.

traces the mountainous trail that we took earlier today, moving her hand only a centimeter for the length we had walked and extending further up the mushroom to areas we have yet to explore.

Now, with the sun straining to hold its eyes above the rugged horizon, protesting the forfeit of its lake-view to the stars, I am similarly caught between night and day as I yearn for the sun to lighten the day’s games, but am enlivened in anticipation of the revelrous night. The rose and tiger orange sunset that strikes the sleeping lady with a great stroke of its brush disregards the landscape beneath, shadowing its underbelly in a dark seaweed green, void of the brilliance of dusk. While watching Mom outline the trees on the darkened side of the lake, I notice that the print is lacking in the personality of its creator, and so I ask, “Can you put us in the scene.” Accordingly, Mom includes a kayak pointed away from the island’s cove. It encapsulates three small faceless stick figures within its contour, and she details a single two-sided paddle across its center. She is recreating our journey from earlier today when we ventured off the island to the private beach postered with no trespassing signs across the thin stretch of the lake. The island as a closed-off sanctuary offers three forms of exercise: swimming around its perimeter, circling the border by foot time after time, or paddling to the shore of the mainland to hike. Going with the last option on the sixth day, we had traversed along the hidden path parallel to the water for several hours, following it deep into the woods. Now, Mom

Many miles down this path, past where the slightly smaller island cuts the lake in half like an anchored boat, past the ripples of water escaping through streams and thin outlets taking itself as far as the descent will allow, the mountains begin to rise. Standing tall on the horizon like titans endure the mighty Algonquin peak and the infamous Mount Marcy advancing from behind and unwilling to be looked down upon by any. My mother captures in her picture their overall upward climb of numerous ups and downs towards the ultimate prominence at the snowy summit of Marcy, which she details with heavier hand pressure. The hundred-mile expanse separating these two towering peaks is obscured from this distance as the mountains meld collectively into one. Sitting in my rocking chair with my plate in my lap, my attention is split between Marcy overtowering the lake before me and heading the mushroom, and the words of Uncle Malcolm. “Do you always have to ski right when dinner’s ready?” Malcolm questions me. “Of course I do. It’s when the water is glass,” I respond, rummaging my hand through my still wet hair, “My food can always wait, but the water won’t.” His vexation at my insistence on waterskiing between 7 and 7:15 is a daily, no yearly occurrence during this week’s vaca-

tion. Every day I predictably carve around the anchored-boat island in a 15-minute loop, and every day since I was 8, Malcolm and I have shared the same rebuke. The Island stagnates in the rapidly changing world, and we capture its continuity through irregular stampings upon the artist’s conk. The indentations of each impression are permanent, and after Mom’s final illustration, the memorializing painting is stamped with ‘Scragg’ for the original name of the camp from my Mom’s youth; and, written in small block letters, as every mushroom has been branded with for the past 14 years, near its base where the island meets the lake is scribed “Ethan.” Here my uncle’s ashes were sprinkled, and where he too became eternal, everlasting through the undulation of the water and the world, forever synonymous with Long Lake. -Caleb Seyfried

As the Light Dims My attention is drawn to that small blonde boy, young enough that his parents still dress him and comb his hair every morning before watching him climb up those bus stairs bigger than him. He sits in the grass, pulling individual blades from the field below him. Those lights on both sides of the garage door are turned on, inviting visitors even after the sun eventually sets on that gray house with a large brown door. As he sits, his grandmother stands over him explaining her plan: “First you rake the soil, then use the new blue shovel I gave you to bury this flower in the hole” she explained, forcing a small flower with little purple buds onto the boy. “Someday you’ll thank me.” When it became obvious he was not interested, she laughed, picked him up off of the ground in her arms, and pulled him close to the purple sweater she knitted herself. She grabbed his hand with hers and together they did everything she had just described to him.

That was the day I learned to appreciate the nature that encompasses me. It started by noticing those purple bellflowers we planted as I looked over my shoulder from my bike, riding off to the neighbor’s house to play basketball. Soon, it became every new flower and plant that I was exposed to including that lively green tree with yellow leaves that sits in the front of my house, or the flowering cherry tree that we watch carefully in the corner of our backyard every time the sound floods over those tall sea walls.

powerfully than any plant since those purple bellflowers is American pokeweed. As I walked along the side of the salt marsh, its vibrant purple berries called out to me. In the sea of green, this purple menace was hiding in the back, isolated like it was aware and ashamed of the abilities it possessed. The stalk, placed all the way at the back, stretched towards me begging for my acknowledgment, like a man searching for a lover yet aware of his inability to love back. That glowing purple light of those berries calling attention to anyone who looks at it while it hides from those same possible visitors reminds me of my own house, the one that boy planted those purple bellflowers at so long ago. The house is hidden at the very end of that long one-way street with trees encompassing the road and covering the sky above, with those two lights on the side of the garage doors acting as a tunnel for any guests that made it that close to the large wooden door. Soon, the vibrant purple glow of the American pokeweed berries will dim itself into a blacker color with the darkness of winter, and leave me awaiting its return in the spring. As for my house, these lights on the two sides of my garage door will also dim for the coming season, but next summer they will not return to invite guests up that tunnel and into the tall wooden door. Instead, my house will be cleaned out, my purple bellflowers will sag into the driveway without the right care, and the light of my house will be permanently dim.

The plant that speaks to me more

-Conor Minson

A Room of One’s Own: A Contemporary Jump in Time A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf dissects and critiques the rights of women and their role in society through extensive essays. In my own work, Virginia Woolf’s style of writing is mimicked and mainly, her ideas are translated into the XXI century world. The first line matches the same line as the original book. “But, you may say, we asked you to speak about women and fiction -what, has that got to do with a room of one’s own. I will try to explain…” I previously answered this very question almost a century ago but yet -- still, in the XXI century, I find myself wondering, has anyone learned anything? I have observed that in this new era of technology, one still finds an overwhelming concoction of treachery and hypocrisy from men. For whenever men claim to be on the side of progress and social change, I have seen remarkable reluctance to move beyond empty promises and act when such action might cost them benefits and privileges over female kind. Society, perhaps, has made great advancements to the role of the woman, if those contributions are contrasted with last century’s works. In these modern times, women have professions in which they make their own living and are theoretically able to receive the same education as their male counterparts. However, what good are these resources if inequality still exists, still roams around the plains of everyday life, infecting the opposite sex so often with dishonesty

and inequality? The woman born to the average couple, part of the middle class to-day, still does not have a fair chance at life. It seems that such ‘luxuries’, which should be basic genderless human needs for education, are only known to men and only reserved for men in our society. Even men who claim to be on the side of gender equality often inscribe inequality through unconscious bias, such as teachers who favor and prioritize boys in math class due to the longstanding stereotype that men are more logical than women. Women, still today, remain elusive to uninterrupted times of learning and enrichment, varying in importance depending on their living conditions around the globe. As such, it is impossible for her to invent, to write, to solve and live enhanced just as a man does, if she does not receive the same education. Why is it that basic necessities of life are constantly constrained? Women have suffered enough through centuries of these institutionalized patriarchal foibles but yet, the human race has never reached a sufficient point of enlightenment: any changes to society are meager and inadequate. One hundred and twenty-nine million promising young women, who perhaps could become the next Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Sylvia Plath or Emily Dickinson, or in the light of these more modern times, Toni Morrison, Lauren Groff or S.E. Hinton, do not even have access to the mere simplest form of education and will therefore 29

never step foot in an academic institution. All of these women have achieved success at the highest most impactful quality early in their lives, and it seems that not every woman has the chance to do so, even if they wanted to devote their most precious time and hardwork. Citizens, when have we become accustomed to such unjust treatment? When will we wake up from such a deep-rooted slumber and create cocoons for blossoming societal transformations? Unless women become accustomed to far more commensurate treatment, they can never escape the chains of the unfair values instilled in humankind for centuries. These inequalities must be rectified for the lower-class women to become more than just a member of a household for the use of her male family members. Such little data is released to the public in first-world countries, it seems these issues can be forgotten,

overlooked and neglected for eternity unless they directly affect us. For the luckier women who have those necessary educational opportunities, there is still inequality. A wealthy white woman obtains more of an equal playing field compared to women of other races and women of lower income. However, even so, the gap between men and women of any background is still significant, and only worsens as the intersection between race and gender is present. As such, women need access to education and sufficient resources to reach their full potential and therefore, contribute to the literary and scientific achievements of the world, while feeling their best. The amelioration of living conditions in times of poverty, in which girls attend school must be an important implication for there to be a hope for the future of a better, more advantageous and righteous society for the woman. Let me imagine, since facts are so hard to come by, what would have

happened had a talented young caucasian man had a younger sister who wanted to start a multi-million dollar technology business from scratch. The gifted man may have gone to a wonderfully gifted school, where from a young age mathematics and science are preached to be most important to him, and all the elements of logic are installed. As the years go on, he works hard in school, receives help from the adults around him, and breezily reaches every possible educational milestone. When his family members ask him what he is studying, they beam delightedly at the words higher-level mathematics and computer science. He may suffer hardship, but none that concern discriminatory behavior. Eventually, he takes over his father’s relatively large software business, to continue the legacy that has been emphasized into his brain, like a code to a computer. Meanwhile, his extraordinary, equally as gifted sister, has aspirations but it seems that her ambitious imagination can only get her so far, as she has been mocked, disregarded and discourteously treated. Her dreams are treated like a project of Neverland, because she was not encouraged to be like her brother and pick up a computer, learn the ways of mathematics or business. Perhaps she was given dolls as a child by default instead of cars, stuffed animals instead of legos, and a tea set instead of a deck of cards. She opened a computer every now and then, and only discovered her passion in high school through her own impulse. Her parents, meaning well, urged her to try the arts: painting, playing the piano, writing poetry,

even if they were of no interest to her. At school, she excelled in coding, even created her own applications, when she was not yet seventeen through her own devotion and commitment to self-teaching. However, everyone always seemed to ask her brother for help, for all things logic and code and computer. She made it through high school, and university, often in classrooms with a handful of women, no one to help her combat pre-existing prejudices. Upon graduation, she had a great pitch, years of experience, talent, money saved from work experience and more than a few brain cells to start the technological company of her dreams. A software engineer perhaps, or an application developer appealed to her the most, but no one took her seriously. She stood at the office door of managers, programmers, early app adopters, funders, but to no avail. She was young, she had a future ahead of her but to them she wasn’t raised to be a leader, perhaps she was just a pretty face. Her brother was the brains, the action, the confident leader that wasn’t as emotional, or naive. Maybe as the months went on, her dreams were clouded, with such an overwhelming darkness that made her take a smaller position, where climbing the hierarchical ladder was near-impossible. Yet she was just as qualified, just as enthusiastic and hardworking. Years would pass by, and opportunity after opportunity, extraordinary potential would be wasted. That more or less, is how the story would run. Do you see now the importance of education for the female kind? 31

However, none of this truly matters if a woman does not have bodily autonomy. Control over your own body is an essential, most basic right: a universal value that dictates how a woman simply functions as a person. It has come to my attention in recent times that the sexual and reproductive rights of women remain under question and in danger. In the twenty-first century, although major inequalities have still not been dismantled, in theory, women have the right to choose whether or not to reproduce, whether to carry or terminate an unwanted pregnancy and the right to select their preferred method of contraception. Nonetheless, these laws are not universal and often, they are not respected by all. In Indonesia, spousal authorization is required for almost all reproductively invasive procedures, and thus the woman does not have any control over her own future nor her body. Even pregnancies stemming from serious atrocities such as rape, do not constitute grounds for medical intervention or termination. As a result, a deep sense of fear is installed in women, as they are not protected, nor educated in their impartial rights. Larger, wealthy first world countries such as the United States are not exceptions to unfair treatment. In states such as Texas, abortion has been prohibited after six weeks and any individual helping another gain access to abortional medical intervention will be sued. It seems that instead of moving forward with change in regards to the fundamental rights of women, other laws are being created to challenge older, more progressive and promising ones. Liberty, social 32

justice and equality are all values and concepts written by men, who have promised such autonomy for all. However, it seems that the woman’s struggles in maintaining and practicing their rights have still not been addressed and the advancement of womens’ human rights in general are deemed not important enough. The role of the woman is once more linked to the patriarchal values in our society, as in modern cultures they are still not trusted with fundamental decisions in respects to their physical selves. Limited power is given to women, as a way to disregard their basic human nature and thus far, in all societies there seems to be little change regarding these matters. Women often go to medical professionals for procedures such as tubal ligation, only to be rejected or need male permission. In certain states such as Indiana, there are no laws forcing a male signature on a permission slip, however this is disguised through hospital policies and doctor refusal. This violation of the trust of women as autonomous beings who have control over their bodies is abhorrent and contributes towards the impairment of women in society. How can women contribute and achieve success if they are prohibited from making the most basic potentially life-changing decisions? If ever a mind was so unconcerned and disconnected from reality, I decided it would be the patriarchy’s mind in regards to the reproductive rights of women.

Once a woman is given the limited opportunity to pursue a profession, she is faced with countless arduous obstacles that hold her back from flourishing in her role. The challenges women face at their place of employment are far more complex and formidable than what is known to men. She may be paid less, confined to an inferior position, evaluated more severely and be subject to existing prejudices, circling through society. If the burden of their gender is already not enough, women of color succumb to even more injust treatment as a result of racial discrimination and ignorance. For instance, a qualified, accomplished young woman could apply for a position in the business work field. Through rigorous, conscious efforts, she might land herself the position, only to find a building full of white men around her. How will we install diversity, equality and innovation in our society if more than half of our population endures such heterogeneous and gender dominated conditions at their workplace? Different opinions will never truly be considered, women of all backgrounds will face challenges and we will continue to have discordant pyramids of hierarchy at our professions. And what if one day, that same woman who finally earned a high-level position may want a family? Maternal commitments and the strenuous effects of postpartum are never truly considered enough to stay away from work for longer periods of time. In the United States, maternity leave is only six weeks long, which is hardly enough time to recover from an invasive procedure and leave your newborn child at home. That woman may risk los-

ing her important position because of ignorance, and lack of acknowledgement from men. It seems as though empathy, compassion and empowerment are foreign words in society’s dictionary. Advancements, progressions and diversity must be elevated if a woman is to become independently accomplished in her professions. A room of one’s own, a place of understanding, mutual respect and independence must be reached for the status of a woman in society to be equated with that of a man’s. Through new technology such as social media, news articles on the vast internet and mainstream television, more information about the difficulties of women across the world can be shared and transmitted. Men should not be praised for participating in the bare minimum, rather they should publicly acknowledge long-standing issues and be judged in the same way as women. Resources, not gender, wealth or race based, should be offered to all as basic human necessities that value the greatest possible future. Regardless of previous knowledge and prejudices, women should be regarded with more respect and equality like their male counterparts to ensure a better society for all. -Deniz Nalbantoglu

MOONLIGHT

Kimba I cling to you on weekends. In the mornings, boiling water for coffee, I push your rocker with my foot. Noon is fixed as your bath - you slap the water and squeal with glee when we bathe you. Four is cooking time. Mama and I side by side, arrhythmic mincing and sizzling wafting our efforts. By nightfall, we all lay on Mama’s bed dissolving into one another. I rest my index finger on your palm, you grasp it and coo at me. Your clutch on my finger warms me, diminishes me, and soon I feel as delicate as you. When I look into your eyes, Kimba, I see the brightest, love-filled future I could ever imagine for myself. You’ll never be alone like I was with Ma. You have a swarm of open arms at your disposal now that our whole family lives in the same house. Ma will be gentler and understand you better; our arguments, silence, and our development of basic conversation skills now seem to have a purpose. You’ll get the best of Ma when you’re stressed or upset. When I think of my purpose, you revolve around it. I want you to see all the things I couldn’t, let you live the American dream, and have a “normal” childhood. No paying bills at 8, no translating in court and doctor offices, no feeling alone when you have to act like an adult at 14, and no feeling like you aren’t enough when you don’t know how to register for financial aid in high school. None of that. This time around, Ma has the knowledge to pay the bills when I’m

gone, but I’d like you to help her out when you can. My purpose lies in all the possibilities I see in you. I want to give back every bit of knowledge I have and lend a helping hand to anyone who needs it in the world since you are my world. When I embark on my college journey, what I hope I leave behind for you is opportunity and pride in your family. I hope I can be the role model I searched for in the outside world. I won’t pressure you to be top of your class. Don’t worry, I made sure to talk with Ma about not being overly demanding like she was with me. Though we come from Bridgeport, it doesn’t mean we can’t seek intellectual spaces beyond our area. I never in a million years saw myself going to a school in Westport - I never saw it happen in our area - but I hope you see my leap of faith and use it as inspiration to seize any moment of opportunity. I hope you’ll find love in learning naturally - attaining the highest grade isn’t the purpose of being in school. It’s your place to grow. Be unafraid of asking questions. Question everything. You have the right to know what you don’t know. I want you to feel confident in who you are. Right now, you hear our family affectionately say, “Ay, mi morenita!” But, in the outside world, sometimes the affection of “little brown girl” won’t remain. I can’t shield you from the world, my Kimba. I’ll never know what it’s like to be a darker-skinned Latina in the world, but I’ll always provide you with un37

conditional love and affirmation of your worth. I want you to learn English from TV shows like me, but I will make sure you keep the pride of your mother tongue while learning to be multifaceted in America. I want you to struggle. This sounds harsh but, in my lived experience, struggle shapes you. Kimba, you are a bundle of hope, prosperity, and rebirth that came at a time where we needed you the most. In the span of a year, you’ve revolutionized our lives. -Jenifer Bonilla

Simple Times Affection’s mere display of black Winter’s slowly rising The curls that lay atop his ears Perky and devising They’re found beneath the vowels where 3-syllable sobs Ink stems the crow’s wings Of plastic, now robbed. I study neon yellow lines And shades of pink and green Laced and faulty ‘mems’ write Jealously orange stains But where have not you gone, my love? Guilted and gullible Traits you paint with animal fur Covered in gunmetal. -Julianna Penna 38

when it hurts so bad when it hurts so bad i often drift to the two desolate swings in between the pine trees that held up the sky swings that seemed to still be lonely even when they carried me i know loneliness very well which is why i think i gravitate towards things that swing and hold unrequited love no, it was not limerence but rather two unripened souls who knew how to bleed as one and not how to love or get back up when we fell on the floor of the abandoned gym in our tumbling and collapses i would trace the scars that encroached upon your cheeks with my green coated fingernails because they reminded me that drugs don’t work i hated my palms after that day because they couldn’t heal you my body is here in some arbitrary restaurant with a meat lover’s pizza in front of me my dad is angry with me for not keeping in touch with my grandmother i am cruel and thoughtless and carry unabating shame- i know because sometimes i still believe i’m in the swings- something so gracious about being lifted into air that holds you collects you and flies you above the wind to bring you to kiss the God my mother tells me to pray to when it hurts so bad i soften in secret my bones dissipate into my bed sheets my mirror gathers my wrinkles the river within my lungs rumbles and stills dying- i bleed tears and dying i do so well because i believe death will gift me a breath some things remind me of you the plant that rests on my windowsill that my friend gave me-only she has faith in what tenderness can yield

the plant requires water and sunlight and nutrients of which only i can provide i tend to forget the warmth of being needed and the coloring book i stole from the dollar tree is a reminder too i color only with green crayons because i like to believe i am spring lately i’ve become an amalgamation of men who don’t love me the wonders and hurt of my sexless being the tears of my father that seeped into the cracks of the kitchen floor and the white paint that covered the dried tears the next day the eternal damnation that i inflicted upon my house because sometimes i swim in my own blood and my prayers to find the ghosts that spite my reaching towards the swings -Menna Delva

Soul-Ache Perhaps love is of great value, consequences: devastating. To question its worth is a normality forgotten, between a thinker and reader: remember. trust. the the the the the

burn madness cheat poison mind

A mending of the heart is the equivalent of the breaking of a soul, an unforgivable aftermath of the red passion. Tenderness—a lie No one is victorious and once in, there is no out. The choice given, is no choice at all, is but an illusion.

there is no escape the hope enough to make hate the expectation in the guard -Serra Nalbantoglu

Disfigurement Remember that time when we sat in your basement and watched some show while our parents drank wine and ate log cakes upstairs? When festivities and insignificant chatter was saved for foreign accents and sophisticated blouses with pearlescent buttons? We would order takeout and watch horror movies to pretend the world above us didn’t exist. Now we’re upstairs, but instead of wine it’s ethanol and instead of log cakes it’s that one red cup of noodles that we spent our last coins on from the vending machine in Shanghai airport. On the last night of that trip we ate out. We sat at a fancy table in a fancy restaurant with a pink backlit bar and glass tabletops, all paid for by our parents’ cards. You said the view of Pearl Tower was something we’d never see again. I couldn’t have agreed more. Remember when we were delirious in The Diner? When Billy Joel and Olivia Newton John turned the night upside down? When brewing Liptons and crying to our waitress was more than enough hilarity for a lifetime. When the only salvation we needed was in the form of Jello cups and Mario Kart, Belgian waffles and Irish breakfast, “Bad Religion” and “Ultralight Beam”.

Remember when you saved me from an unlocked door way up in the mountains in that birch-lined room in Vermont? When, just before we were about to sleep, you grabbed me by the shoulders and said you’d always look

out for me? I waited up just in case. Remember when it felt like we couldn’t breathe because the woman sitting next to us at that noodle restaurant in the city was eating ramen with two forks? When the air was still cold and fresh, and the blue Christmas lights above that 3-star hotel seemed blurry and distorted cause it was only mid fall? You saved me that night too, remember? Remember when we sat, swaying in the back of a cab near Washington Square Park? When you told me family means everything? Your cousin was a real estate agent, and you wanted to follow in his footsteps. My cousin was a stripper, but family doesn’t mean as much to me as it does to you. Remember when there was too much to talk about, when we were never silent? When we had to turn down Doja to really hear each other? I heard small talk is for strangers and con men, and silence is only between friends. Or maybe it’s the other way around, silence is for strangers and conmen. Remember when we stayed over at a friend’s house in July? When I passed out on the bathroom floor and let the cool tile chill my spine? You shook me to wake me up, told me I should get going, that you called an uber that was waiting outside. Do you remember when you couldn’t save me? Wandering hands and crudely suppressed desires are all

that the subway has to offer, and it’s been a while since we took the train together - Jensen Green

Leaves In my childhood I loved the trees

Let them fall I hated all flowers Because of the bees Let them fall Times were changing, The leaves grew fear Let them fall The leaves knew their fate, Winter drew near. Let them fall The leaves started Changing color Let them fall Going from green to orange I didn’t find them duller Let them fall Some would turn A bright red Let them fall Sadly, Others were sent to bed Let them fall As they fell So did the snow Let them fall The white powder Began to glow Let them fall The days would go on and on, The trees stayed bare Let them fall Only after a year The leaves grew back like hair Let them fall Now I know Nothing can avoid death Let them fall No one Can avoid the last breath 44

-Aaron Hopper

sometimes sometimes my sudden lack of empathy astounds me it’s fleeting, but true void of understanding detached from humanity, the inhumane part of it. it’s immortal, undying temporarily removable attached to humanity, the inhumane part of it. sometimes adulterated love is enough the caress of the cheek, palms smoothing down the hair lips fused, assuring everything will be alright permanent creases on the forehead, bruises on the heart that never seem to heal limbs entangled, assuring everything will be alright sometimes solitude can be suffocating words float together, briefly connecting just for a moment pressing its letters around my throat slowly draining any elation left, leaving behind a sole thought, lingering, no, festering, all alone -Sanskriti Kumar

THE WITCHING HOUR

My Hands

After Joan Didion I have always been insecure about my hands. I don’t like the way my fingers look or how my nails grow out. I hate the feeling of longer nails that my fingers aren’t long enough for. I hate how weak my skin is, or maybe my nails are just too sharp. When I find myself falling into a spiral of thoughts, where all I can think about is the worst situation possible, I tear off my skin. My hands start to tingle and itch, and I can’t satisfy myself unless I tear. The sensation is terrible. The tingling gives me an impulse to pull and tug until my skin can’t take it anymore, and then it snaps. Then, the blood comes down my finger. The sensation is cured until the next urge comes. Sometimes, the tearing helps my hands not feel trapped in tight gloves, but sometimes I rip too hard, and I have an open wound for a few days. I sometimes get huge scars on my hands, and then I try to pick them off. It is the worst when there’s one tiny piece of skin hanging on for dear life, and it won’t come off without force. Then I have to use my teeth to pull it off. Using my teeth causes way more damage because it’s more accurate, and I can take more off in one go. The ones that need the most force are usually the most painful. A few days ago, I had one right near my nail on my pointer finger on my right hand. It took hours to peel it off, and then I finally had to use my teeth. It was the strongest piece of skin I had ever tried to pull off. After I finally got it off, it caused me so much pain. I could feel the sharp pain for days, and I was re-

minded that I had done this to myself. Every day, normal activities turned into strange tasks. Then when the picking gets so bad, I have to put a bandaid on. Bandaids are only for when the picking gets so severe that I barely have any skin left, and there is just too much blood. Sometimes if I don’t have a bandaid on me at the moment, I apply pressure to the cut with a t-shirt. That’s probably why most of my sweatshirts have tiny, little blood spots, and when I have a band-aid, it gets a lot of attention. People ask, “what happened to you? “Are you ok?” “Why do you have a band-aid on most of your fingers?” It’s funny that the bandaid gets more attention than the I am always terrified to get my nails done at a salon. Whenever someone says “Hey Kari, let’s get our nails done! It will be fun!” I always find a way to avoid going, “Oh, I have a theater class,” or “I don’t like the way nail polish feels on my hands.” The truth is that whenever I get my nails done at a salon, everyone comments on my nails. Last time I went I remember the woman putting polish on my frail fingers turned to me and said “You bite your nails, don’t you.” How could I respond, I was frozen in time. I just simply replied with a simple small yes and ended up getting a lecture from this woman who barely even knew me. All I could do was smile and nod and continue with the appointment until it was done. I have never been back to a nail salon since that day, I just wish people would un49

derstand, and not rush to judge something that is different. Even the tiny comments bother me. I received most of them from my mother. She has never been fond of me picking my skin or biting my nails. I have heard “hands out of your mouth!” or “ stop eating your fingers!” for years. Somehow the more minor comments bother me more than the bigger and less frequent ones. The smaller ones are just repetitive and uncomfortable. It’s like one of the Water Drinking Birds. It’s fun for a few minutes or even an hour, but when you leave it just to peck, it keeps going and never stops. It starts to get boring after a while. It’s not taken as seriously anymore. Even if the plastic bird’s bowl runs out of water, it will keep pecking unless you manually stop it. After about four years, I took the cup away from her by having a conversation about how I couldn’t control myself from ripping the skin off my fingers. But, even with the cup gone, she still keeps pecking. Yes, I know that this is not great for me, it’s not healthy, and it’s not the smartest idea during a global pandemic, but I’ve tried everything to get myself from picking. No fidget toy on the market can help; it’s not the same pulling and tugging sensation. It’s so satisfying to watch it leave my hand. I’ve even tried that bitter nail polish. The coating it goes on your hands is the feeling that I cannot stand. It made me want to bite even more; however, I couldn’t touch anything that would go near or in my mouth. I usually like bitter items, but 50

this was out of control. The bitterness starts at the front of your mouth and creeps towards the back, like the monster that you feared as a child coming out under your bed. I couldn’t escape it. It kept reminding me that I was trapped in this prison of skin picking, and this was my punishment. Punishment for something I can’t control: I just want to stop. Nobody fully understands what it feels like. When somebody says “just stop,” they don’t realize how much more complicated that is. It takes time and different coping strategies that take years to find. For me, even some of the recommended coping strategies made me want to pick my skin even more. I understand it is unhealthy, I know it can cause an infection, and I know it’s not something to be proud of. It has turned into a part of me now. I have started to accept that this will live with me all my life and will haunt me forever. I have come to realize that I just pick my skin, and there is no way out of it. It is there and it will always be there. I am just sitting in a ticking time bomb until my hands slowly fall apart. -Kari Ergmann

SHE

After John Ashberry she bites the heads off of matchsticks. she wears bells on her ankles. she stands in the street like moses parting the sea of fifth avenue traffic. she’s always smiling like someone is about to take her picture, like this is some goddamn house of the holy. the house of the holy, she points out, is actually where she grew up. her decadence is so habitual, ritualistic, even, for someone who CAN’T! STAND! JAZZ MUSIC! she writes her deliverances on the back of her tax returns. after all, her self-expression is vices. after all, her house key is under the doormat. you try to take her pulse while she’s sleeping on your chest, but her heart beats in rhythms you don’t know how to count yet. she paints your face in constellations. she kisses orion goodnight. her appetite is one of destruction. if you tell her, “i’m thinking of getting a pet” she’ll show up at your front door with an osprey and a bird cage. and how she naps –often, and comfortably– in her empty bathtub... how she sings, how she worries, how you think you love her for the first time when she’s standing naked in your bathroom. she showers. she puts her bra on backwards. she turns your tuesdays into prayers. she is magic in a way that you can only understand if you’ve been to Truth or Consequences hot springs in New Mexico. her hips are like butterflies. her hands are prometheus. you’re kissing her in church on sunday while the pastor sings his graces, and it doesn’t even matter if god is watching. -Caroline Smith

Thalassophobia I was not even seven years old and stranded on a boat in a vast and empty ocean. I was alone and didn’t want to be there. It was summer sailing— a hellish activity for only the most insane people. A quick gust of wind comes in and pushes the sail to one side of the boat— Striking me in the head. Thalassophobia is the fear of the sea. My uncle Ted stood there at my father’s funeral— revealing a story about our family. The most common way for a McGonagle to die, he said, was from drowning. Most of our family— poor drunken fishermen back in Ireland— would try to pee off the side of the boat, but most of them fell, were unable to swim, and drowned. Thalassophobia is the fear of the sea. My mom persuaded me into sailing on big boats— they’re forty foot yachts, what’s the worst that can happen? I like it. I begin sailing more often and start to go on trips. One day we go out and there is enough wind to tear our boat in half. It capsizes one of our opponents— bringing a sixty-foot-tall mast down to hug the roaring waves. Thalassophobia is the fear of the sea.

Another time, there was scorching heat and our captain had only one solution— swim. I dived off the front of the boat and I plunged into the water. It felt like years before I would surface to the waves, but eventually I felt the warm touch of sun against my face. I looked up, and saw the body of the boat— unreachable. Thalassophobia is the fear of the sea.

And just the summer after— Lazers started. They’re big but lonely— built just for me. I start growing friends, and I learn how to become the best sailor on the team. But all I can see is that lonely seven-year-old boy, stuck in that bathtub-sized boat. And in that Lazer, all I can feel is the pain he had, and the pain that afflicts me today. Thalassophobia is the fear of the sea. Because again, I was ripped away— plucked— like all summers before. I dived into my terrified feelings like they were home. I now feel the ocean’s sorrow and the pain within it. And how the waves crash onto rocks not through anger but still with uncontrolled rage. And how the gulls cry and sing the tales of lost sailers as their creed. And how my forefathers drowned in the same seas that I cut through as a midday activity. I hear the stories of dead soldiers and fishermen, my family, filling every lonely drop of water— and I know that when it dries to salt, it is not forgotten, but rather leaves a stain to keep for all eternity. I feel myself drifting away to sea and I no longer fear it. I instead see myself content, even if the pangs of death drag me down into the deep blue. I am now a sailor and though I fear the sea, I know that I have become a truer sailer because of it. I know my father, and his father, and their fathers going up the line, all feared her. And I am just like them. After Lazers, Big Boats started again.

This time, it was unforgettable. My friends from Lazers joined and we made memories like never before. We hung out on weekends, went on overnight trips, and became family. It all surmounted in the overnight sail, where we watched a storm roll over us. Thalassophobia is the fear of the sea. We danced, we smiled, and most of all— we lived. All of the problems in our little world would dissolve around us as we pirated. We would laugh around the dinner table and listen to one another’s stories— hearing about Ryan’s hookups, smerking at Jemma’s misfortune, and charmed by Nardone’s bickerings— I felt infinite. Thalassophobia is the fear of the sea. I will never forget driving to the diner with Ryan. We raced down Post Road in his beaten-up 2002 Nissan with a custom-job engine. He kept taking fat tokes off of his Red Bull flavored Juul, and as I asked him to slow down, he just chuckled. But I realized as we cruised down the street and weaved between cars— that they were waves on the bow of our boat— and that I was safe and just at home. Right there I shed the chains of my anxieties and with Ryan— as we flew over a pothole— I smiled. Thalassophobia is the fear of the sea. -William McGonagle

Sinking Evening shadows dimmed my grey bedroom walls. I punched my computer keys, trying to throw words into a college application like shit at a wall as fast as I could. My fingers couldn’t move fast enough. I still had three subjects of homework after this. My eyes flicked to the left and saw darkness through the two windows. My eyes wandered from the white window blinds in front of me to the white and blue gloves carefully propped upright on the mahogany shelf above my desk. The blue embroidered “D” with crossed lacrosse sticks was partially hidden by shadows. Out of every kid in the powerhouse Darien lacrosse program, I was one of ten kids who made the A team all four years. In fifth grade, my mom picked me up after school. I tossed my navy Nike backpack into the backseat and climbed into the front of our 2008 BMW station wagon when she said, “You made the A team!” She would’ve been an All American if she had played all four years in college. “You should be so proud of yourself!”

An earlier memory jumped into my vision. My little brother learned to ride a bike when he was four, but I was still petrified to take the training wheels off at eight. Dusk fell over the muggy night. I’m not sure how my dad convinced me to get on my bike with a wrench in one hand and my training wheels in the other. I sobbed as he held my hips, guiding me down the neighbor’s semicircular driveway. Even after a twelve hour work day, he still waddled behind me in a

white undershirt for twenty minutes among the dancing fireflies until I was laughing through the tears, peddling laps around the driveway lined with mossy belgian blocks. I doubt that his father ever taught him how to ride a bike. My dad wiped his forehead. “You should be so proud of yourself,” he smiled. I opened my eyes and looked out the window again. “Fuck,” I muttered under my breath. I still had three subjects of homework to do. I shoved my computer off of my lap and yanked my hair. Eight dark blond strands pulled away with my hands. I stared at the follicles glued to my fingers for twenty seconds, and then buried my face into my palms. I knew what it meant to work hard. The stack of SAT practice tests as tall as my desk told me that. The hours after school locked in my room from six to eleven told me that. And after everything, I still wonder if I did everything that I could do. My late grandfather told my mom, “Cream always rises to the top.” She has passed this message on to me countless times. But how do I know if I’m cream? My breath started quavering. I grabbed my computer and tried to write. The screen blurred. My knees shook. I couldn’t press the right keys. But I needed to write. I had to. I still had three subjects of homework to do. The computer slid off of my knees. I sank into the mattress and tugged the covers over my head. I had been

locking myself in my room from six to eleven after school for the past two months. “What is wrong with me?” I whispered. I ran my tongue over my salty lips. Neither of them ever said it. “You should be so proud of yourself,” rang through my head, but it was never, “I’m so proud of you.” I rolled over into my pillow and whimpered. Why am I not cream? My feet dragged down the shadowed stairs and carried me towards the kitchen. Murmurs of conversation between my mom and dad floated towards me. I looked into the bathroom on my right and saw swollen eyes and pale cheeks in the mirror. My mom sat with her palms flattened on the black granite island. The light sparkled on her diamond engagement ring. My dad’s weight was on his elbows; his hands were clasped three feet from my mom’s. They stopped talking when I stepped into the kitchen. I grabbed the doorway and croaked, “Why don’t you tell me you are proud of me?” They looked at each other. My dad spoke first. “You shouldn’t care about what we think. It should come from within.” My shoulders slumped. I couldn’t make eye contact with superman. “How could I not care?” My mom said, “Are you not intrinsically motivated?” “I am, but…” She dragged her hand across her face. “Why do you need our approval?” My breath shook. “I....I think you two are everything. I think you can walk on water. And I try and I try to work as hard as you do.” She said, “When you were three, we went to a child psychologist, who

said that we should always say, ‘You should be so proud of yourself.’” She smiled and glanced at my dad. “It became our running joke, catching each other when we said that we are proud of yo––” “Can you please please please please not listen to a psychologist you heard fifteen years ago and hear what I am saying?” Ten seconds passed. My dad said, “Of course we are proud of you. But you already knew that, didn’t you?” I stared at him for ten seconds. My mouth opened, my throat locked, and I closed it. My shoulders sagged. I released the doorway and felt their eyes on my back as I trudged up the stairs. They think that I’m cream. My body felt just as heavy as it had before. And I still had three subjects of homework to do. -Kevin Kuryla

Mr. Oliver Fitzpatrick and the Quietus Chapter 1 Mr. Oliver Fitzpatrick was neither old nor young, and at the bland age of forty-two, he didn’t surpass many with his looks. In fact, if one was asked to describe him, they might’ve said that he was perfectly adequate. Though there were men far more unfortunate than him in the physical department, the fact meant little to him when women no longer fell at his feet. The dark aura he carried with him in his youth seemed to have vanished, and the spark of magic which used to have young ladies competing for his attention had gone with it. He was no longer a prize to be won, and instead of the intricate beauties that used to follow him, Oliver was stuck shooing away the faker women who seemed to love his wealth more than his personality.

Regardless of his internal problems with his ego, Mr. Fitzpatrick had bigger fish to fry. The year was 3025, the quarter of a century, and that meant the Quietus was to be hosted. The Quietus was a competition, hosted once every quarter century, where 10 intricately selected people competed in a series of tournaments for the ultimate prize, known at the Dispatch. In all honesty, no one genuinely knew what the Dispatch was, yet it was the most sought after prize in the entirety of Sonningham. A single fact was sure when it came to the Quietus, and it was as follows: those who won the Dispatch, were never seen again. Many people assumed they were sent to an incredible place, heavenly, al-

most like paradise. Either way, the prize was said to be spectacular. Our story begins January 3rd, on the cobblestone streets of Mordina, Sonningham. Mordina was a rather small town, yet it was never quiet. The bustling of the market place and laughter of the children always filled the air. However, there was an underlying eerie sense to the town, because of its secluded culture. Mordina was the only town in Sonningham that couldn’t be pictured in a sci-fi magazine. There were no floating robots like in Rottolar, or giant skyscrapers like in Balterfield. It seemed that the small town hadn’t changed much since 1857, but strangely enough, it was the town where the Quietus contestants were always announced. Perhaps this was due to the amiable ambiance: fights were less likely to break out. Or maybe it was just a coincidence, though that was unlikely as the government in Sonningham was rather strict. There were two rules that all people from Sonningham were to follow, regardless of whether they lived in Rottolar or Mordina. First: never question the government. The government of Sonningham, located in Golterna, was known to be secretive. Their main base being a large, white, dome looking building, it was highly restricted to ever look into anything the government did. People who were caught were taken to a different base, and their families never saw them again. The second rule, even more important than the first: never investigate the

Dispatch. Those caught snooping for information were executed on national television, and the one time someone was almost able to say what the prize was, officers immediately shot him down. Of course, every now and then, Mr. Fitzpatrick’s curiosity did almost best him, but he knew better than to try anything. There was a time when Oliver seemed to have everything: the money, the looks, the power, the girls. That time had come and gone though, and it was definitely in the past. Now, Oliver didn’t have the looks: he wasn’t quite moldy cheese, but he wasn’t definitely Gruyère. Mr. Plain Old Parmesan didn’t have the power either, which had only seemed to further his curiosity in the government over the years. Although he had the money, the girls he attracted weren’t the same as they were 20 years ago. In summary, Oliver’s life had gone through a downward spiral since his youth. Perhaps if he had spent more time working on his personality, he could’ve lived a more fulfilling life. Instead, there he was, standing behind hundreds of different heads, trying to get a better view of the Mordina town screen, where they were announcing the Quietus contestants. Any second now, he thought to himself. Oliver didn’t have any expectations: the chances of him getting selected were one in a billion. That didn’t stop him from coming to town for the first time in 3 years though. It was a tradition to watch the announcement, and besides, the government required everyone’s participation. Regardless of the police officers’ attempts to keep

everyone in check, the town square was practically in shambles. There was no space for everyone to be organized, and instead of looking like law-abiding citizens, the Mordinians looked more like a cluster of chickens in a farm. Yet as soon as the screen went green, silence immediately fell over the crowd, as if hundreds if not thousands of people weren’t chatting together just seconds ago. “Welcome, to the 27th selection for the Quitesian Games,” ap plauds from the crowds were heard in the medieval streets of Mordina. “I am your host, Lorticia Kalone, a member of Sonningham’s top tier government, and I will be announcing our competitors this year.” Lorticia spoke as if she hadn’t announced the competitors for the past 3 games. She was now 87, and had started her announcements when she was only 12. Kalone was always a beautiful woman, and now, even at the age of 87, she still looked relatively youthful. It made Oliver envious of what she had: how come he hadn’t been able to preserve his features? It was, without a doubt, due to her high position in the government. She had access to all sorts of technology, including youth preserving treatments. In fact, most people from the government lived until they were 150. Technology had improved by a lot, and medicine was getting better and better. The same, however, couldn’t be said about citizens who lived outside of the government. Taxes were high, and technology wasn’t always sufficient. 57

Life spans had decreased notably and people were now dying in their late sixties. Regardless, it was as if people in Sonningham didn’t care. They paid their taxes, and protests hadn’t broken out in probably two hundred years. No one ever doubted the government. Sometimes, late at night, when Oliver started to have his doubts, his thoughts would travel not only to the government, but also to himself. Was he the only one thinking this way? How come no one ever said anything? It had always seemed strange to him, yet he swallowed his curiosity and continued on with his impeccably boring life. “As you all know, The Quietus is an incredible opportunity given to 10 people every 25 years. We carefully review each contestant to make sure that the right people are picked. As usual, we are excited for our winner to experience the Dispatch! The Quietisian Games will be broadcasted on live television for everyone who is interested to see. Happy Games!”

and Mayorka Rolnie” More sound waves drifted to Oliver’s ears. Loriticia would announce Golterna, Porsenia and then… “From Golterna we have Malik Jokavik and Mariana Lewis. From Porsenia we have two people from the same family: Elara Davis and her daughter Brielle Davis.” The selection would’ve been surprising to Oliver, if he wasn’t so focused on the next announcement. “And finally, from Mordina we have George Seawood and … Oliver Fitzpatrick” Oliver swore he felt his heart stop. Chapter 2

Applauds broke out around the city square: all of the citizens were excited to hear the rest of the announcement, the most important part. Suddenly, the screen broke into 6 parts: one square was given to Lorticia, and the rest were given to each other the deputies from the 5 states of Sonningham: Mordina, Rottolar, Balterfield, Golterna and Porsenia.

Never in a million years, did Oliver think he would get chosen to compete in the Quietus. Contestants were specially picked by the government, and Oliver was anything but special. His dull brown eyes, slightly graying hair, nearly invisible wrinkle lines, and completely average way of thinking never stood out to anyone. Nevertheless, he finally had a shot at doing something incredible: winning the Dispatch, whatever that was. He could get the validation he thought he deserved, the validation he used to have when he was younger. In order to do so, however, Oliver had to win the Dispatch. He was ready to do whatever it took to get that prize.

“And now, for the contestants,” Lorticia continued, “From Rottolar, we have Malore Gray and Johanes Kehinde.” Applause was heard. “From Balterfield we have Leticia Merana

So, when the police officers came to find George Seawood and himself in the crowd, to take them to Golterna, Oliver didn’t resist at all. The same however, couldn’t be said about Sea-

wood. He wrestled his way out of the police officer’s hands multiple times, in hysterics, saying he didn’t want to die. Oliver didn’t quite understand this: though the Quietesian Games were quite difficult to win, no one ever died. A Victory in these games was the only goal most people had in their lives, and the 9 contestants who didn’t win weren’t executed. Instead, they were sent back to their homes, with a tracker implanted in their necks. Oliver wasn’t truly sure of the tracker’s use. The only thing he knew was that former contestants lived peacefully, in fact, he knew three. Several hours later, Oliver found himself in a gray, claustrophobic room made of pure concrete, with 10 other people. This was it: the Quietesian Games. He was strapped onto a metal bench, with the 9 other people that had been chosen, and was waiting. Waiting for what, he didn’t quite know. All of a sudden, the room turned purple, and Lorticia’s voice was heard over an obnoxiously loud speaker. “Welcome contestants. We are very ecstatic to have you here with us, in order to compete in the Games,” something in her voice made Oliver skeptical, “you all have five days to prepare for your challenge, and get to know each other. I recommend not getting too comfortable with each other: you are all still competing against each other. As today is Monday, on Friday night, you will all individually be sent to rooms. We will then attach tubes and electrical gear to your head, hands and heart in order to

track your vitals while in the Games. These games are completely virtual, but they will seem real to you. You will go through a series of psychological events, and once your body can no longer take it, according to our vital trackers, we will bring you back to reality. The last person standing will be our new Champion. As one might say in a book I once read, ‘May the odds be ever in your favor!’” The room went green. A door opened, leading to a room that looked like a hospital, with a bit fancier technology: the Training Room. Other contestants rushed out of their seats, unstrapping themselves immediately, but a certain duo piqued Fitzpatrick’s interest. A mother was helping her daughter, no older than 6, get out of her seat. The woman was beautiful, no doubt, with raven hair and icy blue eyes, but there was something missing in her expression. She was smiling at her daughter, yet when Oliver looked at her, she seemed to be but the shell of a person she once was. Her daughter, no older than 6, was surprisingly well-behaved. She giggled at something her mother had said, then rushed into her arms when she was free from the confines that held her against the chair. They entered the Training Room, and it wasn’t till the raven beauty looked back at him with a scowl on her face, that Oliver noticed he had been strangely gaping at them. Inside the Training Room, people were making friends, after all, they would be spending the next week or so together, and would know each other 59

for life. There weren’t many people out there who would be able to relate to the experiences they had. Oliver walked around the Training Room, inspecting different devices. There were several VR kits, all labeled with different sorts of simulations branched to them. “Questioning Government” “Questioning Culture” “Questioning Sonningham” The quietesian challenge training kits intrigued Oliver, and did nothing to settle the skeptical feeling he had around the entire competition. Fitzpatrick was pulled back to Earth from his thoughts when he felt a tiny hand tug at his pant leg. “Well hello little one, what’s your name?” regardless of his player ways, even in highschool, Oliver had always had a soft spot for kids. It was completely unexpected of him. “Bri!” the most adorable voice Oliver had ever heard squeaked out. Just as

he was about to reply, Oliver heard a much older voice speak. “Brielle! What did I tell you about speaking to strangers?” Oliver turned around to see the raven haired woman. He tried a smile which was not returned. Instead, the mother narrowed her eyes at Oliver and scowled. “I meant no harm, we were only making innocent conversation,” said Oliver, the smile leaving his face. “Oh, you meant no harm. I’m sure. Brielle get over here right now,” the little girl left Oliver’s side and ran to her mother. “What’s that supposed to mean? Why did you make it seem like I’m a bad person?” Oliver asked, now genuinely confused. “Are you not Oliver Fitzpatrick?” she replied. “How do you know my name?” “I thought as much. I wouldn’t forget those cynical eyes from anywhere. I had a lot of friends who went to your highschool, and the amount of pictures they’ve shown me of you, is

astronomical. In fact, my husband was from there. No one had any nice things to say about you, you arrogant playboy.” she frowned, and Bri dug her head into her mother’s leg. “I’m sure your jerk of a husband and lie-telling friends had no idea what they were talking about! I am nothing like an ‘arrogant playboy’” he replied, feeling a slight red tint flaming up on his cheeks. “My husband would probably turn in his grave right now if he saw that I was talking to you. Your answer to my claims makes me believe that he was right.” “Listen, my highschool days have come and gone, and believe me, they are now long gone. I think we should be able to start on a fresh plate as grown adults,” Oliver replied as Elara’s glare darkened. “Do you remember Sophia?” “You can’t expect me to remember a Sophia. That’s an extremely common name and I’ve met dozens in my life!” “Sophia Escitus. You broke her heart only seven years ago, way past your highschool days. She wanted to simply forgive and forget you know? I insisted she didn’t do the forgiving part. You’re just an arrogant little boy who uses an alpha-male exterior to cover up your own insecurity. And you definitely don’t deserve my daughter’s attention, so stay away from her,” and with that, the woman turned and walked away, leaving Oliver openmouthed. Over the next week, Oliver spent a lot of time trying to get to know the Raven haired woman, who he later learned was named Elara, and her

daughter, Brielle. It was no problem getting to know Brielle, she loved to talk, and even spilled some information on her mother. Elara, on the other hand, was as stubborn as one could be. Anytime she saw Brielle talking to Oliver, she would quickly take her away from him. Oliver didn’t understand why she wasn’t even trying to get to know him. His highschool days had come and gone, they were in the past now. He had changed, so he thought. As he thought further about it, he realized that “I’ve changed” sounded quite cliché of him. But what more was he supposed to say? It was the plain truth, and if Elara wasn’t willing to accept it, he had no choice but to move on. Unfortunately for Oliver, Elara was not about to let go of her grudge. Although cold to a stranger, she loved her friends dearly, and couldn’t stand the thought of someone hurting them. Besides, although she never told Oliver, he stole her then boyfriend and now deceased husband’s captain spot on the football team, solely because the Fitzpatrick family had money. Elara didn’t grow up fortunate, and worked for everything she got: it was the lifestyle she wanted to teach to her daughter Brielle. Hence, one could understand her immediate displeasure in Oliver, and the way he tried to communicate with her child. Luckily, by Friday, Raven, as he liked to call her only for her displeasure, seemed to have warmed up to the idea of him. She no longer immediately removed Brielle from a conversation, and sometimes, on very rare occasions, Oliver caught her gaze. 61

Nevertheless, his relationship didn’t advance much with Elara. After all, it had only been a week. Oliver supposed that moving forward in a relationship with a child, a toddler almost, was easier than a romantic one with someone his age, or a few years younger. Brielle was excited to get to know new people, and Oliver found that he had grown a feeling of protectiveness over the little girl within the week that he knew her. He almost didn’t want her to win the Dispatch, and it was not because it would take the victory away from him. If she won, they would likely never see each other again, which upset Oliver to an extent. Soon enough, Friday hit, and Oliver found himself in the same concrete room, waiting. He was untrained, but at least he had something to look forward to if he didn’t win the Dispatch: getting to know Elara and spending more time with Brielle.

Lorticia’s voice cut out. Oliver watched with curiosity as ten doors that he swore weren’t there before opened, revealing rooms similar to the ones you see in horror films. Each room was assigned a name and a guard, dressed from a Star Wars movie. But before Oliver could wonder what was going on, a man dressed in a suit came out, with a hint of evil in his eyes.

“Hello to all of you,” he said snidely, “My name is Daniel Mooncross, and no, you may not call me Dan. I am here to give you instructions on what to expect within the next few minutes. Once I am done speaking, you will all calmly walk to your assigned room, and take a seat on the chair. You will not talk to anyone during the process. We will then attach you to all our machines, and you will be sent to a virtual world. The process will be Oliver was jolted from his thoughts simple: you will be asked questions when he heard Lorticia on the loudby someone who is, or once was close speakers. to you. We will access your answers, and decide the winner accordingly. Chapter 3 You may not discuss any of the questions or answers you gave outside this “Welcome back contestants, I hope room. Thank you for your cooperation, you all used your time wisely, training and good luck.” for the Games. Believe me, you definitely want to win the Dispatch,” Lor- As soon as Daniel stopped speaking, ticia’s voice shook over the speakers. contestants got up from their seats “I would like to present to you Tobiand started making their way to their as Wright,” a man, no older than 30 assigned rooms. Oliver did the same, entered the room, “He will be taking but not before noticing Elara talking care of the Games this quarter cento Brielle, and giving her a giant tury. Tobias will explain all instrucmomma-bear hug. His eyes softened tions you need to know, and will help at the sight, but he quickly looked you enter the Games. My time with away, not giving Elara the chance to you has ended, so I wish you the best reprimand him. He entered his room, of luck. Thank you!” And with that, where the guard pointed in the di62

rection of the seat. The man dressed in a strange suit of armor didn’t say a word, and only communicated through curious signals. Just as Oliver got into the seat, he was attached to multiple chords. He thought he would have time to prepare himself, but Mr. Fitzpatrick was definitely wrong. Before he knew it, Oliver found himself unawarely staring into a virtual reality screen, where he was face to face with Zina Crawford, the only girl he ever loved. Oliver had met Zina his freshman year in highschool, and to say they hit it off was an understatement. Oliver quickly found himself completely enamored by her, only to find out that he had been played. Zina was the person that caused Oliver’s actions throughout the rest of highschool. Ms. Crawford truly created Oliver Fitzpatrick: the heartbreaker. However, somehow, as he looked into her pale blue eyes, it felt like he was a freshman all over again. He had completely forgotten about their history, and once again felt like a love sick puppy. “Hello Oliver, I missed you so much.” Oliver nodded. “Did you miss me?” Mouth agape, he nodded again. “I was wondering if you could answer some very simple questions for me, and then we could restart where we left off in May of freshman year.” “I have the answer to all your questions Zina,” replied Oliver, dumbfounded. “I was wondering, what do you think of our governments… secrecy, if you will?” she pried.

As she circled him, her hand on his shoulder, whispering about how much she missed him, Oliver almost found himself falling for her tricks again. Almost. Just as he was about to fall right back into her web of lies, and answer her questions honestly, he remembered a particular woman in a room next door, worried about her child’s safety. He remembered the training he was supposed to do, and how suspicious his government had been lately. So, with his better judgement, he twisted his real thoughts. “What secrecy Zina? The government is extremely trustworthy…” “But don’t you think the Dispatch is a little… strange?” “Not at all, and I’m unsure as to why you’d think that. Do you have something to confess, Zina?” “No! Of course not! I was just wondering what you were thinking...” “Well I think our government is doing an incredible job at keeping us all safe Z.” The questioning went on for what Oliver felt like, was forever. Luckily, his practice in lying from his youth seemed to have paid off, because eventually, he found himself back in the concrete room. As he looked around, for the first time ever, the guard spoke. “Sorry to disappoint you,” he said with a snarky tone, “but you didn’t win. You’ll have to wait outside with the rest of the contestants.” 63

Oliver stared blankly at the man, and then without speaking, he got up out of his seat and made his way to the main room. Five other contestants were already back in the room, and Oliver couldn’t help the slight gush of pride that followed him when he realized he came in fifth place. Though he didn’t win the Dispatch, Oliver wasn’t too upset: he would be able to spend more time with Bri and Elara. Now that they were going to be former Quietus contestants forever, it would be a perfect opportunity to further improve their relationship. But as the time went on, and Brielle came out, followed by 3 other contestants, Elara was nowhere to be found. What Oliver didn’t know was that she was battling her own struggles, revisiting a time when her husband was still alive. Unfortunately, the adrenaline and joy from seeing her husband so soon caused Elara to spill everything she was thinking. She couldn’t hold back her true thoughts on the government’s secrecy, and how weird she found it. So, just like that, the winner was announced on the speakers, and Oliver felt his heart sink into his stomach. “Congratulations to our winner, Elara Davis! Her daughter will be taken into custody now, and we will proceed according to her will. You all should have updated your will prior to the Games, as you were informed, 6 hours before we started the competition. Thank you, for your participation, and please proceed to the chipping center!”

Epilogue

Two weeks later... Oliver was back to his normal, boring routine, regardless of the chip that was now implanted into his body. After the games, nothing had changed. Occasionally, he found his thoughts drifting to Elara and Brielle, but he quickly shoved them out of his mind. It was time to move on, and since he didn’t win the Dispatch, his life would stay the same. Oliver didn’t mind that, not really anyways. He was pulled back from his thoughts when he heard a knock at the door. Mr. Fitzpatrick groaned, before getting up and proceeding to answer. The sight in front of him was shocking: there was Brielle, looking up at him with teary eyes, holding a note.

Oliver, The government is not what it seems. Sonningham is no longer safe. The Dispatch is execution, and I cannot protect Brielle. Please, grant me my last wish, take my daughter and run. Run far, far away from here. Elara. -Serra Nalbantoglu

This Blue Screen He slaves away, he dies every day, Looking at this blue screen, Luminous, dubious they are Capturing this young teen, This boy who is barely thirteen Playing games, watching porn, He had come to trust the great web, Here, he had been reborn, On the internet he had met The wrong crowd, he was doomed Gained his trust through games and good will You see, this boy was groomed. -Yash Gawande

The Apocalypse Behind the Uknown 11:17 AM “If two sides of two adjacent acute angles are perpendicular, then the angles are complementary” The demon in my right ear starts singing” My eyes follow theorem 3.10 across the board “Is it in my hamper?” “Is it at the bottom of my clean clothes bin?” Again and again “Is it in my hamper?” “Is it at the bottom of my clean clothes bin?” It wouldn’t stop The pause button disappeared My mind tries to crawl out of the bubble it was in hours ago My ears turn red when the stranger by the biology room says “I love to be neat” “I clear my tabs before bed” “I can’t have a clothing piece on the floor” I wish it was just that I feel like I will run, not walk into a brick wall 65

Labeled “FAILURE STARTS HERE” “ENTRY IS FREE OF CHARGE” My stomach starts to turn like a washing machine My fingers start to wiggle There unstoppable My fingers start to rise One after the next 1, 2, 3, then 10 They all drop 1 rises again 2, 3, 4 then 6 16 fingers were counted The washing machine stops The load is done Because I counted to 16 the oil stain from earlier will be gone It’s engraved in my mind My hands sit still As the water strikes my body My wet hands Meet my wet hair My conditioner streams out The water coming off the strands is blurry 50% water, 50% conditioner My fingers start dancing The demon wearing the smock with the comb and the scissors once said “Rinse rinse rinse, or else!” 1,095 days ago It stuck… Like Elmers glue My pointer finger and thumb start to hit And snap Over and over again I blink repeatedly Slamming my eyelids shut These motions tell my brain to just, “CALM DOWN” It works This routine My motions They’re tied to me Now As I’m staring into the screen My fingers glide along with the keyboard The clock ticks It’s

3:21 PM My fingernails press down Light pressure, on the grinning button that sits still on the bottom of the screen Snap Shot Photo taken I can continue on with my day My fingers find it The bright yellow and washed white app that haunts me Shows up in my nightmares actually The white lines like a piece of lined paper The yellow top of the app I wish it made me feel cheery Yellow tends to have that effect Not for me “Blue sneakers, maybe in cubbies” My fingers glide Letter after letter is pasted on the white screen that laughs at me Unstoppable, my fingers sail across the screen I try the “it will come back to me” Even the “I’ll do that later” My fingers shake And dance “Blue sneakers, maybe in cubbies” Sings in my head as clowns laugh They grin My fingers are forced My eyelids are heavy Like boulders sitting right on top. I love the off-white shirt, with a small tear on the bottom left corner I don’t love the pale blue one that is kind of a boxy fit And I really don’t love not knowing My head begins to feel like its a thousand degrees Balls of smoke start slingshotting my hair Large water droplets stream I’m leaving the house I start to spread the blue tape The screeching noise begins It quickly begins to lengthen I immediately get de ja vu To the fifty other times, I have done this The picture of my white shut door with the blue tape haunts me 67

I tape it Every Single Time In terror My thoughts twist inside me My eyes bulge And then I flood I wish there was an answer for you More for myself A simple one at least I wish there was a cure One that didn’t force me to shove a bean-sized thing down my throat I wish I wouldn’t have to feel numb to feel normal I wish my fingertips could hit and suddenly I am fine I wish I knew why this thing makes me the way it does, and kills me I wish I could listen to myself instead of the demon in my right ear I wish my thoughts didn’t play on replay I wish the pause button worked I wish I felt the baseline feeling I wish I had a better answer when someone asks “why?” The only answer I have is that I don’t know Who knows if I will ever know I’m exhausted. -Emme Galaburda

when i sleep on my left side when i sleep on my left side, i always place a pillow between my back and the monsters crawling at my hair a form of protection- i tell myself protection from my window whose shadows twist and distort into shapes that terrify me and the trees that climb through my window and reach toward me and hold me until i suffocate it seems quite asinine to fear an inanimate object but i’m really terrified of a boy who walked through the snow and came to my window to show me the delicacy of his heart and left his soul on my windowsill i never opened the window to let him in so his soul decayed and wilted, like a plant that was not tended to that night the voices in me said, if i were a real woman i would grab a baseball bat, perhaps a knife, to scare him and protect myself but dare i admit and confess my admiration for this boy how he departed from my window so thankless and whole and how he entered the blackness of the night with such humility, like a prince in exile in the morning, i traced his footsteps in the snowthey led to an abandoned forest so maybe he was never human, just a spirit that belonged to the trees often, the boy encroaches upon my dreams horror sensuously moving over my sleeping flesh and stealing the warmth within my bones but sometimes the boy loves a wild, beautiful, encompassing, and desperate love that beheads the birds in the sky and stains the clouds with blood that only exists when the universe finally sleeps and when i’m humane enough to leave my window open as an invitation for the moment when the voices in the boy say, if he were a real man he would kill me -MD 69

Body I guilted and pressured my mom into buying me this dress two sizes too small. It’s skin-tight and I squeeze my disproportionate body into it, and cease my breathing when she pulls the zipper all the way up the back. I saw Rocky in my favorite TV show, Shake It Up, wearing something like it, and was desperate to mirror her tiny frame on my own body. Her character is at least five years older than me, but all I want is to be a cool teenager like her, who is popular, gets attention from boys, and is tall and lanky. My mom told me that it was too small, to not wear the dress out, but to me, all I hear is that is all the more reason I should. I don’t feel as fulfilled as I thought I would when I leave my house and walk with my family wearing the dress, but I keep my head held high. I walk past a group of older men with gray beards, and they whistle and shout words I don’t really understand. My mom tucks me behind her and drags me by the collar of the dress past them, her face flushed.

We are taught as young women that we are our bodies. Our bodies are us. I am just a body. Our bodies mean more to others than we as women, as extraordinary individuals, do. Pressure is put on our bodies. We are forced to make decisions about our bodies. How we treat our bodies is in the hands of a cruel society instead of our own. As women, we are taught to please others. We are taught to stay silent. If we want to be respected and treated with human decency, we must change our own habits, our own

selves, to constantly bend and mold and squeeze ourselves, to the standards of others. I think of myself as just my body; nothing else about me really matters. Because that’s what society has taught me, the hard truth. I destroy myself, I betray myself, I’m torn in pieces just to give up my self-respect for a fleeting feeling of validation. Everytime I get up, each time more broken, and search for another person to shatter me like a worthless piece of China. My innocence has been stolen by scarring experiences and I’ve been forced into womanhood. Growing up is realizing that it’s us women against society. I naturally connect music with experiences. I immediately connect the strong emotions that music creates in me with experiences in which I experienced intense feelings. Music helps me understand my pain. Music helps me feel when all I want is to go numb. It’s better to feel pain than

nothing at all.

I listen to the same grounding songs as my life progresses, and allow myself to reminisce on the pain of the past, knowing that I have grown since then. It’s okay to look back, it’s okay to feel hurt. Scars are souvenirs you

never lose, the past is never far. Here are some vivid memories.

“Down in the Dirt” by Bobby, I Miss You I have that feeling in my stomach when it’s so empty that it feels hollow and with every breath, it rumbles and echoes. It’s 5am and the sun is rising and all I want to do is sleep but I don’t feel safe anymore and I won’t let myself. I can’t bring myself to trust I’ll be safe when I’m asleep or alone anymore. I’m acutely aware of how alone I am. I’ve been shocked awake, and I already know that nothing will ever be the same as it was. I wasn’t ready for this change. I wasn’t ready to grow up yet. I wasn’t ready to let go of all the innocence I had left. I fear what I don’t know. I’m so

scared of feeling low.

My body is covered in violent scratches that I don’t remember feeling, even though they look like they would’ve really hurt. I don’t remember how they got there. I keep discovering new open wounds. Bruises are already beginning to form on some, but others are too deep and it’s too early to start healing. I tuck my legs underneath me, try to cover the evidence, out of sight out of mind. The scars are there to mark that what happened was real, that I can’t just wake up and assume it was a nightmare. I can’t escape. We stop at a gas station and no one says a word. My body is shaking even though it’s June and it’s warm outside. I don’t feel in control of my own body. I watch myself in this movie as my mind floats above my scarred body that bleeds out. I’m scared to speak because I fear I might burst into tears. Everyone knows what

happened, but no one knows what happened. It hurts because they won’t understand. They’ll never understand. They didn’t experience it. They didn’t feel their body go numb. They didn’t fear for their own life. They didn’t feel their heart drop when their desperate screams for help were ignored. And I’ll never speak of it again. Now I understand why women stay silent. I’m already trying to erase it from my mind. My naked body’s going. I buy a strawberry Pop Tart as my makeshift dinner/breakfast and get in the car. My anxiety nausea fights me, but I push it down. My head is pounding and my eyes beg me to let them close. I don’t want to stay awake with the flood of emotions that’s drowning me, but I know sleep won’t help me escape. I hate these feelings. “Slow Down My Thoughts” by Zachary Knowles I’m sitting in the passenger seat while my brother stands outside the car and pumps gas after school. Our car rides are always silent. It’s freezing cold out because it’s February, I’m wearing my khaki Dennis skirt that I hike up way too short and get dress-coded for on the daily. My brother doesn’t own a winter jacket, so he’s standing outside in the cold, shaking. He went inside to buy gummy worms. I’m starving but I won’t eat them. I’m dying but I won’t save myself. I won’t eat one. I forget what they taste like, so they just look like these weird crystalized vibrant colored stringy things to me. I get a bottle of water and gum. This was the time of my gum and green grapes diet. My legs 71

are pale and skinny and bruised all over. I’m good at lying and even better at faking a smile. I feel alone, if

forever. I want to stay here with you forever. Forever is impossible, and we’ll never know how things could have turned out, and I’ll never know how you felt or feel and sometimes I question if you did at all. Forever suddenly means I’m never going to see you again. “After today, I’m gonna disappear. There will be no me anymore.” It stings me, and I wonder if you meant to hurt me with those words. I choke down anything I want to say. Don’t ruin the moment. Don’t ruin his memory of you.

All the pressure, all the madness going through my head. I watch my brother eat his gummy worms with disgust. He knows not to offer me one. I’m cold but no amount of heat will warm me because I feel hollow and empty inside. He turns on the 70s radio, his favorite in his old car, and we drive home.

The parking lot is empty but somehow it feels magical. I feel like I’m in a movie cut short. The film ran out. Budget cuts. One of those old black and white ones. It’s one of those moments when nothing else in the world feels like it matters because we’re the only two people in the world. We’re two kids slow dancing under the dim shine of the Chinese restaurants’ flickering red sign and I’m smiling like an idiot but I don’t care. I hide in your arms and look up to you and admire how perfect you are to me and how much you’ve taught me.

you listen you can hear it in my tone. It’s so much easier to cause myself physical pain than to ever fight the feelings that eat me alive. I’m in my own world, in this weird state where I know this is bad, but I also kind of love that it’s bad. I know this sounds crazy, but that’s what starvation will do to your mind. I’m proud I’ve accomplished a goal I didn’t even know I had.

“What A Time” by Julia Michaels This part is painful. I’m desperate to soak up all the memories, all of you. Because I know I’ll never forget you. We both know what has to happen next, but all of a sudden I can’t let go. There’s so much I want to say but I don’t. I don’t want to ruin this moment we have, in silence, our hearts are in sync, beating against each other. I know we are thinking the exact same thing. I’ve never felt this before. It’s an overwhelming connection, powerful yet simple, written in our long, deep breaths. We’re thinking about what could have been. Us. The way you’re holding me hurts. You

clinged to my body like you wanted it 72

“All good things come to an end.” I don’t know if I want to take that with me as something you’ve taught me. You say those words right into my eyes and I want to believe you. “It was good while it lasted.” -Iris Dickinson

AURORA

California Oranges I hate everything I write. How is it that words seem to shrivel in my brain as soon as they blossom? Fresh, sweet ideas rotting and wilting, falling from frail branches and hitting the ground with an unsatisfying splat. What happened to the joy of putting together perfect phrases, of letting the words, the rhymes, dribble off my lips and soak into my tongue like sweet nectar from the ripe oranges of my grandmother’s tree? I took it for granted, how easy it was, to just open the door and step, holding my grandmother’s hand tightly and letting sun-warmed Spanish tiles lead me, my bare feet digging into the strength of brown earth underneath. I’d pluck the fruit carefully, my grandmother holding the basket. I’d place plump oranges in the cloth-bedded cradle, a curated assortment for our family. She smiled as I set the fruit in her fragile hands-Unlike the way I snatch words out of thin air and jam them together, watching them rot in my cold, greedy hands, mashing them to a point past pulp. I miss that tree, those oranges. Now there’s only gnarled roots clawing at dry dirt, and sorry oranges the size of golf balls. But sometimes I’ll still pluck one, laying it in the palms of my grandmother’s cupped hands, and she’ll still smile, looking at me through eyes covered in the clouds of fog settling over the San Francisco Bay harbor. God, I hate these mildewed expressions, these synonyms gone sour, those molding, miniscule California oranges on that dumb fucking tree. None of it will bring her back to me. -Annie Dizon

Nature Haiku

A leaf, outstretched, Catches the sky’s tears In its green hand

Pitter— The earthy, sweet scent of petrichor emanates from damp vegetation —Patter

Nestled into the White Oak’s nape, The chipmunk’s vast, enthralling eyes meet mine— Time stands still

-Liza Dowling

The Girl The bright and warm sun radiated down in Abingdon as the girl strolled down the pavement toward the town’s bookstore with a small tote bag over her shoulder. Alva watched as an autumn breeze rushed through her short dark hair revealing her face. The girl opened the door and came inside. Alva looked up to the chime of the bell hitting the door and smiled as she walked past, head down. Her ruffled skirt laid upon her crossed legs as she settled into a chair in the back corner of the store where she was still visible from the register. She fascinated Alva. Alva started working as the cashier two weeks ago. It was going well. Alva needed a job and enjoyed the quiet, cozy environment of shelves of books waiting to be picked up and read. It was a nostalgic place where Alva remembered reading hundreds of books among others in their own separate world. Alva sat behind the counter looking forward to the girl walking in everyday and taking a seat in the same corner with headphones in her ears. She had yet to take recognition of Alva. There were a few daily individuals who stopped by, but she never bought anything. She sat in the corner zoned in her own bubble sketching in her sketchbook. Whenever the girl entered, Alva smiled at her. Whenever the girl left, Alva smiled at her. Alva received nothing in return. There was a bounce to her step, almost as if she was flying. She was also really pretty with angelic big eyes and a cute button

nose. A month later, Alva decided to get closer to her presence by walking along the bookshelves in the last aisle pretending to look for a book. When Alva was a few feet from where she sat, the girl turned the page of her sketchbook to a blank page without looking up. Alva finished pretending to look for a book, grabbing a random musty green book, and returned to the register. Alva imagined what to say to her. How to approach her better. Alva felt as though they could get along welland she illuminated this vivid energy that Alva wanted to possess too. The girl did not show up to the bookstore the next day, or in the following week. Alva missed her. Alva wondered what happened to her. The store carried on the same. Customers came in and out of the store with new findings; others took over the girl’s corner to study their own work. The atmosphere of the store was still quiet, but her silent vibrancy was gone. The sun still shone down on the small town in Virginia. One day Alva came into work and found a small stack of paper behind the counter. “Alva” was printed in the corner. Turning the stack over and revealing her drawings, Alva knew it was her, even without ever seeing a sketch of her’s. The drawings were all of events in the store with Alva smiling, each one unique. One was of Alva behind the register 79

helping a customer, crooked nametag and all; another buried in a book. On the last page it was a sketch of Alva in her aisle looking for a book. There was a post-it stuck on it that read, “look up.” It took a second to refocus but Alva caught a glimpse of her shy smile before she disappeared from the shop window with wisps of her dark hair trailing behind. Alva rushed out the front door but she was gone. Her smile still glowed in Alva’s mind, warming up and dissipating the tiredness of Alva’s achy morning body. -Lulu Wu

Red Streaks on New Years The concept of New Year’s Day is atrocious. What if I don’t want to start again on January 1st? What if something horrible happens on January 2nd? 3rd? 4th? As it always does. But I don’t want to tell you about that. I want to tell you about my renaissance. My New Year. It’s today, February 27th. Thank you for understanding. I want to cut my hair and dye it red. Not a complete dye, but streaks. Just like in that movie, Lady Bird. Have you seen it? If not, you should. I want to be like Lady Bird. Without all her drama of course. I don’t want her fake friends or her substandard relationship with her mother. And I don’t smoke. Don’t worry.

to be poisoned by noxious hair dye fumes. Brigitte already looks like she’s been poisoned by some noxious hair dye fumes. She’s wearing a sickly expression, and clutching my scissors too tightly. Her knuckles look like ghosts. Her “I HEART Hollywood” sweatshirt is so big that I’m worried she’s going to get swallowed up by it. And who wants their friend to become a turtle right before their eyes? Sighing, I gaze up at the window above the toilet and begin the process of “patiently waiting.” I can smell the popcorn from the movie theater down the street and I don’t know why that is. Maybe they open their windows too, or maybe the smell of popcorn is just strong. As we all know it is.

My parents are vacationing in Argentina this weekend, so they’re not here right now. It’s just me, and my friend Brigitte in my nearly empty apartment. It’s unusually quiet and the only sounds are coming from the dishwasher. It’s been gurgling all day and won’t shut up.

God, I love Boston in the winter. It’s like time’s in standstill.

We’re in my bathroom, facing the mirror. I’m sitting on top of a book on gardening, which is sitting on top of my Revolutions of the 1800s textbook which is sitting on top of my yearbook from 6th grade which is sitting on top of a stool I got from a nice woman downstairs who plays the piano for dance classes at Boston Ballet.

“Do it now. While my hair’s wet.” “No, I really don’t think so. What if you regret it?” I make exasperated noises in the back of my throat to communicate my feelings and thrust the printed image of Lady Bird from IndieWire at her. “Does she look like she regrets it? Cut.” “No.” “Brigitte, please…” “No, I won’t.” 81

All the windows are open even though it’s 17 degrees outside. I don’t want

I turn up the “meditiational classical music for Sunday evenings” program on the radio and give Brigitte a hard glare in the mirror. It’s now or never. Patience isn’t really my thing.

“God, give me the scissors.” I don’t know why she did it, but she did. And I cut my hair One big chop on the left side. Then the right. The back was harder, and I think I cut it rather unevenly, but it still looks good from the front, so I don’t mind. I hold the scissors out to Brigitte and ask her to kindly clean up the loose ends a bit. She ignores my request, swoops down to grab her backpack, and storms out of the apartment proclaiming that I’m a psychopath. I should probably mention that Brigitte doesn’t like breaking rules. It makes her feel uncomfortable and she has taught herself to walk out on difficult situations. I find this funny because I’m not breaking any rules by dying my hair, and she wouldn’t be breaking any rules by cutting it. It’s my hair after all. I find some tape next to a pile of “Swiffer Sweeper Wet Mopping Cloth” boxes and stick the picture of Lady Bird on my mirror. Then I turn on the sink, pull up the stopper, wait until the water is nearly overflowing, dump the red hair dye in the sink, and stick my head in it. I’ve never dyed my hair before, but I know this isn’t how you’re supposed to do it. I just figured reading the instructions would be a waste of time since I don’t have anyone to help me anymore and the normal way would have been harder. The sun is setting and glinting off my shower door. I’m staring at my Australian shampoo upside down and 82

counting to sixty fifteen times. I’m sure fifteen minutes is enough time to dye your hair red. Right? While I’m upside down, staring at my Australian shampoo and counting, I reflect on my past year. I think about how horrible it was and how this coming one will be better. I also ponder the infamous philosophical question: “Am I ready for a New Year?” and decide that, yes, I am. And it will officially begin at sunset. I think my fifteen minutes are up now, so I fling my head out of the sink, sending droplets of hair dye flying all over the bathroom and beyond. My hair looks like a faded autumn leaf collage. Like an art project gone wrong. I look at the picture of Lady Bird, and I look at the reflection of my hair in the mirror. I look at Lady Bird, and I look at my hair. Her’s is more streaky and rebellious. Mine is more… vintage. But there’s this one section of my hair that seems to have made direct contact with a wad of dye in the sink because it is flaming red. I must be related to Jackson Pollock or something. I climb up onto the toilet seat, and put my elbows on the windowsill. It has started to snow as I knew it would. I checked the weather earlier this week and it said it would snow on February 27th, so I chose February 27th as my New Year’s Day.

I love when it snows at sunset. It feels so contradictory. I look down at the alleyway outside my window, and notice how the sun is making the bricks turn a bold shade of red. I wonder if it will do the same to my hair. I breathe in until I can’t smell the popcorn anymore. I can only smell the cold which is the best smell in the whole world. The radio has started playing a piano piece that is both dramatic and warm, and I realize how happy I am right now to be alone with my window. At times I think it’s all I need. Which of course isn’t true. -Fiona Burton

collect me in missing drafts collect me in missing drafts I often demand of you on mornings when I open my heart enough to let the breeze fly in and tickle my insides fuck this poem is, yet again, a requiem for you how many ways can I express my indebtedness to our scrambles and reachings only to fall and our rooted history that hides within the balls of my feet maybe that’s why I trip so much- I’m often clumsy see me past my undressing I ask you on nights where I no longer seek tomorrow’s moons sometimes you wouldn’t speak to me “wait, i’m thinking about some weird shit right now, gimme a minute” and I would grant you space for your mind to inflame and burn and then extinguish in my palms so though you did not speak your silence shared and I would find you later so we could count the ladybugs on the windowsill and I could finger your calluses feel your breath fall through my chest and kiss your eyelids because I felt so beautiful and raw and black under your looking I believed the world only loved me, spared me when you were with me it’s funny when I was young I used to live in double I had to make two free throw shots at basketball practice touch my door handle twice bleed twice singularity is the warmth you so carefully placed in my bones I loved only once somehow we dance our tears and fly our grief as one -MD

The End of Romance

After Ada Limon

enough of sunshine, summer’s day, twilight, nightshade, violet and rose, enough of breast, belly button, lash, wrist, pinkie toe, enough of running away with me and finding freedom and deep gaze and withheld breath and fate and faith and photo, enough of sunset and moonlight and dusk, enough of mystery and big glossy brown eyes holding a single fucking tear, enough of beautiful and soft and scarred, enough of cry myself to sleep, head in clouds, suicide note in the margin of my math homework, can’t tell you what’s wrong, enough fixing, enough healing, enough of broken and cut, enough of holes in hearts and potential patches, enough language and letters and love poems, enough of appearing in your sleep, enough of pretty girl bandaids, enough of sunlight filters through my hair and my skin is so soft and enough of me dancing or crying dancing or crying, enough of unreachable of misunderstood, enough of longer and stronger than time, enough of forever, of always, of cross my heart hope to die stick a needle in your eye, enough to do list, dream, and want, enough I am begging you to love me, enough I am hurt, enough hurting, I am asking you to know me. -Kavya Krishnamurthy

Ballet Dancers Of all the new, blooming nature on a spring day- the trees with green buds peeking out, small patches of emerald green grass stretching from the ground, and birds chirping happily at their return home from the south- the most magnificent sight of today’s search for spring is spotted along the side of the marsh. While this feature does not sit center stage on the scenery -- it is tucked into the side of the high marsh -- it instantly catches my eye. It is a small tree that stands proudly, its new and fragile limbs gracefully pointing out from its thin trunk. On each limb grows smaller ones, and on these are the true source of beauty; the limbs of this tree are clothed in white flowers with a pink tint, their petals with streaks of cherry red. The flowers’ faces point towards the sun’s rays, soaking up the light. Occasionally, a gentle breeze passes through the sea of white and pink, sending the delicate petals twirling down like ballet dancers and landing in a pile, covering the ground like a layer of thin snow. I knew the flowers would eventually die, fusing with the ground as summer came along, but their few weeks of beauty masked this reality. When we visited DC in years past, I used to pick the same pink flowers and stick them into my hair as I smelled their sweet fragrance, while my younger cousins would run beneath the trees as the wind blew, laughing at the pink snowfall created from the small gusts. My mom, uncle, and aunt followed close behind, smiling and chatting as they tried to guide us to dinner. My dad was last in the group, holding the arm of my Great Aunt Janet, though we used to just call her Aunt Janet because of her youthful nature, ensuring that she would not trip on the cracks of the uneven sidewalks. “We are visiting her with everyone just in case she gets worse,” I remember my mom told me before the trip, but the distraction of these dainty flowers took my thoughts away from the true meaning of this family gathering. Aunt Janet especially reminded me of these beautiful trees; they were all around her DC apartment, surrounding the industrialization with delicate pink and white. I imagine she used to have a sort of bond to them; their graceful appearance was like most of the things she loved, the classical music, opera, ballet. When she was younger, she would travel the world to see these elegant performances; now walks to dinner were the farthest she could go. During our visits, she would show us her photos, her pale hands pointing at glossy pictures from Europe and Asia as her eyes lit up behind her wired glasses, excitedly saying, “This was in Russia, oh and this is from the Middle East!” Maybe back then she thought the same as I, that the petals were like the beautiful ballerinas in their pale pink shoes that matched the colors of the flowers. 86

I also always thought she had the same youth as those new flowers, her brightness and spontaneity like those streaks of red. I was old enough then to understand the destructive nature of a sickness, but there was something about this that seemed unreal, almost impossible. Perhaps I wanted to see her as a flower, new, youthful, bright; I was trying to keep the idea of the Aunt Janet I knew, the one with no age, no fragility, no weakness. Perhaps I wanted the new nature to deceive me, keep me in the bliss of ignorance for as long as it could. But after the last DC trip, when I started to hear more about her surgeries, her sickness, and finally that dreaded call of her death, I knew the flowers were just a fallacy, that they too would eventually die. Glancing back at the marsh again, I start to notice the rotted petals at the base of that beautiful tree. The once white and pink colors turn into a brown, crumbled and broken from animal steps or rain and wind. I no longer notice the intricate streaks of cherry red and the supple branches of the young tree; instead, all I can see is future months when this graceful feature will be destroyed by cold winter winds and icy snow, tearing apart the bark and branches until all that is left is a skeleton of wood. No matter its youth, the deceiving delicacy and elegance, it too will be gone. -Riley Meyer

Love is a Tricky Thing In the Bible, Paul the Apostle says that “Love - agape - is patient and kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. ... Love never ends.” I like Saint Paul’s definition. I love my parents. I love them because I know they love me. Easy. Saint Paul is right. I love my best friend. I love her because she’s never boring. I love her because I trust her and I can tell her anything. I love her because I know that no matter how dark my secrets are, she’ll never leave me. I love how I can place my chin on her head when we hug. I love how her small hands fit in my larger hands; our fingers remain intertwined even if we have to fit through a door that allows one person to walk through. I love her because she makes me feel happy when I feel like I can’t. Saint Paul is right.

I loved my significant other. I loved being able to tie myself to them. I loved being able to call myself theirs and for them to call themselves mine. But there was something that made me feel so unsure that I fell out of love. I didn’t tell them. I feel guilty that I didn’t tell them. I kept telling myself that it wasn’t possible to fall out of love with them because they were the exact right person for me and I couldn’t imagine the pain I would go through if I lost them. I lied to myself. I lied to them. After crying

for what seemed like forever, I realized what I was feeling; it was desire. Desire to give myself the “girlfriend” label. I need time to recover. I’m 17. I’ve got loads of it. Saint Paul is wrong. I’m in love with a boy. I think I’ve been in love with him since the first day I met him. I’m in love with his laugh. I’m in love with how his smile hasn’t changed. I’m in love with his now short, but still soft, curly hair. I’m in love with how considerate he is. I’m in love with how he puts his warm, clammy hands on my shoulders and walks me backwards, playfully stepping on my toes while he keeps his pecan-colored eyes locked on my hazel ones. We’ve been friends for three years. I get nervous because sometimes he’ll look at me like I’m something more than just a friend. That’s what I want to be. And he deserves to know. I don’t know if Saint Paul is right or wrong. I love this other girl. I love her because she makes breathing easier. I love her because the world slows down when it’s just the two of us. I love her because when her leg shakes, I put my hand on her smooth kneecap and she whispers “Thank you.” I love her because when she taps her soft index finger, her fingernail polished in grey that’s chipped on all sides, against my shoulder, I look forward to seeing her cadet blue eyes and wispy blonde hair as I twist my spine to answer her question. Saint Paul is right.

I love my “brother.” I love him because we share everything with each other. I love him because he’s real with me and gives it to me straight. I’ve never had a sibling. I was going to have a younger brother. My father was setting up the crib in my room and I was examining the shelves filled with an abundance of toys, figuring out which ones I would give the baby boy. My mother was getting checked to make sure everything was fine. We get a phone call. It’s mom. Things aren’t fine. My going-to-be baby brother wasn’t going to make it. He would die before I ever got the chance to hold out my finger and for him to wrap his entire hand around it. Ever since then, I’ve always felt a part of me was missing. This “brother” is filling up this part of me that I lack. I don’t feel lonely anymore. He is the brother I never had. He considers me to be the sister he never had. This works. Saint Paul is right. Love works its tragic magic in too many different ways. It’s impossible to hide from it. Sometimes I wonder what I would be like if I didn’t feel it for these people. I imagine that it would use its tragic magic to turn my life into a tragedy. Sometimes I wonder if someone or something has felt it for me. I imagine that it would use its tragic magic to turn their or its life into a tragedy. Love is an enigma. Love is unfair. Love is invaluable. Let it never be a lie. -Elizabeth Jones

Khushi Ka Yeh Din1 1 Roughly translates to “State of Joy” “Ya Ali Madad”1 Nisha greets me in a whisper. I’m late, but not by too much. After taking my shoes off and putting them in the rack with the other hundred belonging to the people inside the prayer hall, I walk in and take a seat. We’ve got a good hajri,2 but it is Mawla Bapa’s3 birthday after all. It’s not often we all congregate like this. Once every few months we come together to celebrate. We put on mehndi, sequined saris4 and pack our purses. We slip our feet into the heels we won’t get to show off and speed over, running late as always. People love to make fun of “desi time,” we function an hour later than the rest of the world. If we’re told to be there at 10, we’ll be leaving the house at 10:45. But it’s days like these that we pay extra attention to the time. By mid-day, the house smells like biriyani,5 and by sundown we’re stuffed and putting coats on, getting the kids in the car. And we rise for tasbih,6 a collective wave of brightly colored dupattas7, supported by the jingling of bangles, as we face the Khabbah8 side by side.

It’s easy to get lost in the sea of people but that’s the beauty of it. We are one of thousands prostrating before our God, before each other, interconnected by our devotion to Allah.9 Everything happens for a reason, it’s God’s will. As the hall quiets to silence, the sounds of children drawing and the clock ticking remind us we are still here, and we pray, in sets of 11 or 33. “Ya Allah, Ya Mohammed, Ya Ali” over and over again until a voice breaks the silence. And we all join in, one voice rising as we pray out loud. We pray for ourselves and for one another. We have been brought up on compassion, unlike anything else I’ve ever known, fasting the month of Ramadan just to understand what it is like to be less fortunate. We’ve been brought up on the guidance of Hazar Imam,10 to pray, be kind, and be studious. The list of life lessons goes on and on. And that’s why we stand together, celebrating the birthday of a devoted man millions of miles away. But he is always in our hearts.

1 Typical greeting roughly translating to “May Allah be with you” 2 Attendance 3 Living spiritual leader 4 A type of traditional clothing; stereotypically worn by women 5 A traditional slow-cooked meat simmered in aromatic spices with saffron rice 6 A prayer 7 Long scarf usually corresponding in color with our saris 8 A building of special significance to Muslims located in Mecca 9 God; same one worshiped by Jews and Christians 10 Synonymous with Mawla Bapa

Religion is just a mask for culture. It’s a way to unite people, but it goes deeper than a belief in a higher power. Being Muslim is not just about saying your dua11 three times a day or observing Ramadan, it’s about the cake and sherbet.12 It’s the music and the dance and the clothes and so much more. I may not be religious like the woman next to me or the man across the hall, but we all come from the same culture, we stay for the culture. We carry our culture with us everywhere we go. And beyond this deep seeded devotion to God, we are connected by these traditions outside of the prayer hall. It’s nights like these, earrings dangling and mehndi on our hands, that we let that culture show. We may not look Indian or Muslim, but tonight we do. Tonight we are as Indian as our relatives living there.

We take it upon ourselves to carry on this legacy, this culture. In 20 years, we’ll be cooking traditional food for our kids, buying tiny saris once they’re old enough to walk, sending them to religious education, and more importantly taking them home. Home to the prayer hall, and home to the smells and sounds and friends that we consider relatives before anything else. So Salgirah Mubarak13 and Inshallah,14 we’ll see you for the next Khushali! -Liyana Asaria-Issa

And culture is more than looking the part. It’s feeling the part, cooking the part, understanding the part. It’s hard to grasp as a young kid that there is more to Islam than the lengthy history none of us remembers or the halfhour of having to sit still to pray on a weekly or daily basis. It’s the love in everyone’s eyes when we finally end the prayers and ceremonies, milling about and catching up with people who’ve watched us grow up. It’s the soft murmur of voices as you lay your head on your mother’s lap, too tired to focus on anything but the comfort of the familiar smells and sounds.

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Prayers Traditional celebratory rose flavored drink typically served cold Similar to “Happy Khushali” Commonly used expression signifying “If Allah wills it”

Freedom Eerie shrieks split still air, freezing me like the look of a basilisk. I whip my gaze from the tiny forest of reeds towards the yellow sea of marsh grass and the urgent beating wings of twenty-two geese taking off from the creek, wind shepherding them towards my slightly parted lips, which I lick as the back of my head is guided backwards, and the sun tattoos my face with warmth as the flock of geese leans left in a crescendo of wings, and I fall forward, extend my pale plumage, and we soar out: over the water that glimmers white like snow on an empty mountain at sunrise. We are voyagers, watching the leaves change from gold to green until we are higher than air, 92

until a bear whistle stings my ears and knocks my balance back into me. And I can only listen to their pitches changing. They are crying for the sun, as I am, and soaring south, as I can’t. -Kevin Kuryla

MORNING GLOW

and god asks, “well how can it compare to a love like that?” and i say, “it’s simple. it is not a competition, will never be a competition, does not spend hours clocking generosity like 1...2....3........ minutes out the door. it does not wait for may to spring up out of the ground and blossom, but instead takes that implacable city pavement and shoves its knotty seeds between the cracks, makes a space for itself, gives shape to itself and hell be damned if it doesn’t become a peach tree. it does not mask its sincere beauty, its somber humanity. it walks around with a glowing angel on its shoulder, hand in your back pocket, smoking a spliff like even jesus couldn’t be so blissful. it paints you, holds you, wraps golden ivy up the inside walls of the siloed sky and all you can do is sit and wonder ‘what for?’ this kind of love kisses every freckle while you make her pancakes. and if the pancakes suck because you left the butter on the skillet for too long so everything tastes like ash, love runs out to the store to buy fresh eggs and a can of processed pink frosting instead. this love does not judge like messy girls who ask you to fold their laundry, does not order you around. this love is knee-deep, detox, fifth sunday of the month walking on water is subways running on schedule. is arcadian, incendiary. is man and marble strung up like lovers, and designs great motherfucking tattoos.” and god says, after a pause, “i think i’d like to meet her.” and i say, without hesitation, “i think i’d like that too.” -Caroline Smith

The Origin of Peanuts Cartoon Network was always playing those old-timey shows: Family Guy, American Dad, and The Powerpuff Girls. But, the one that always caught my interest was Peanuts. We watched that Christmas movie every year and when I was 10-years-old, I got a pet Snoopy for christmas. I don’t think I’ve ever loved a gift so much. Me and Snoopy would go everywhere together. On the road, on the couch, inside the shower. Whenever I was watching Charlie Brown perform his antics with his Snoopy, I would think about mine. Then one day he was gone. I looked everywhere: under the covers, even under the couches, but I still couldn’t find him. It was days until I slept again, turning and tossing covers until sunrise.

I’ll never forget that time I first ate peanuts. To this day, it haunts me as my family still uses it as a key point whenever making fun of me. It doesn’t matter where I am: whether that’s the kitchen, living room, or the backyard. Once I start to hear the chants of “pufferfish,” I leave before I explode. The most annoying part is I still don’t get what all the fuss is about; after all, what kid wouldn’t want to just eat his halloween candy. Yes, my mom did tell me plenty of times to not eat the candy, even going as far as to hide the candy on the top of the fridge. However, I couldn’t stand it; I hated the suspense and how everyone gushed about the greatness of peanuts. Even as a third grader, I hated when people talked about peanut butter like it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. I briskly

walk past the living room and into the kitchen. I quickly scan to find the jar of demon candy and smirk. Honestly, I don’t know why my parents didn’t think I was capable of climbing to the top of the refrigerator to get the jar full of demon candy. I move a chair from the dining table and place it in front of the fridge. One foot on top of the chair, then the other as my hand grasps the top of the chair for support. Creak! The chair withers for a second and I start to second-guess myself, wondering if my parents had heard. I persevere on and use the chair as my platform to bring the jar down to the dining table. I hop off the chair landing with a plop and immediately regret it, thinking about if my parents had heard the hard impact of me landing on the kitchen floor. I shrug my shoulders and do a “too late” type of motion and untwist the cap of the jar. Upon looking into the jar, I determined my choices: Snickers, Butterfingers, and Reese’s. I decided to go with the one I had heard the most hype about, so I ate that Reese’s without a moment’s hesitation. It didn’t taste as good as people hyped it up to be, only being a decent at best treat. Unfortunately, I felt the rashes and the closing of my throat occur shortly after. Once I lower myself back to ground level I start panicking, wondering what I’m going to do next. I ran out of the kitchen and up the stairs. Clomp, clomp, clomp, my feet reverberate across the steps. I make a sharp left into my parents’ room, wailing for help. My parents just laugh at my pain like I’m not going through a life or death crisis. I

cried and cried, very much afraid of my impending death. My parents just focus on the TV as if my crying is just part of the show and I’m just a character present for comedic relief. I cry until no more tears are coming out of my eyes, just the wails coming out of my mouth. The last thing I remember is my mom saying, “Okay, okay, shut up, Carl, the benadryl will take care of everything.” I wake up to the sound of the Xbox playing. I look around, touching on my previously goosebump-filled arms and massaging the throat that was about to close up not too long ago. I’m alive, no thanks to me of course, but life is life. That’s when I started to secretly fear the potential impact of peanuts on me. That’s when I started to lose grasp of the life that was my own. Scott didn’t even like nuts, but for some reason he got so much enjoyment out of eating them in front of me because I couldn’t eat them. Only my parents have basked in my short-comings as much as him. It was the late night facetime calls during that endless summer when he would just look at me, smile and pull out a peanut. Honestly, I don’t even think he’d eat them, just look at the nut then look at my face and smirk. It got to the point where his calls of, “Hey, look at the camera,” went unanswered or got responded to with a, “Just ready up, dawg.” Atopy is the genetic tendency to develop allergic diseases. My genes definitely possess this trait as I have multiple allergies. The one most

relevant in my life is my allergy to arachis hypogaea or peanuts. They are grown in warm climates around the world, being a very healthy food and an excellent plant-based source of protein and high in vitamins and minerals. Allergies in general have increased from being inside around 3% of the population in 1960 to around 7% in 2018. The main theory for the increase in allergies is called the dual-allergen exposure theory. The premise is that when food allergies, most notably in peanuts, started appearing, parents didn’t want to risk putting those foods into their children’s diets, so the common notion was to hold off on giving your children peanuts until they were three years old. Instead, parents should have done the opposite and introduced those allergenic foods as early as they could. By introducing peanuts early, there is a better chance at establishing tolerance within children. In fact, a study by

Learning Early About Peanut Allergy showed that introducing peanuts between four and 11 months gave five-year-old children an 80% lower chance of having peanut allergies. After talking with my parents, I found out that I hadn’t been exposed to peanuts in my younger days. Perhaps with more peanut exposure in the youngest stages of my life, I’m writing a braided essay about something else. In conclusion, I blame this allergy all on my parents. Years of teasing, the dozens of threats involving feeding me peanuts, the constant reading of labels on boxes; yeah, I plant all of those hardships and struggles I went through within

my parents’ consciousness and I hope until it eats them up until they compensate me monetarily for the trouble they indirectly imposed on me. When I first started going to the allergist, I would sign in with my mom, then sit in the waiting room, drinking water out of cone-shaped cups and solving mini Rubik’s Cubes. Inside the doctor’s office, I see a large tray of alcohol wipes and needles laid down, waiting to be injected into my skin. I immediately tense up knowing the power that those needles hold. A middle aged man with a bald spot comes into the room. His name is embroidered into a white coat, under it reads allergist, and he introduces himself as the person that will be conducting tests on me. The allergist monotonously explains their purpose: each needle has a certain concentration of foods i’m allergic too, from peanuts to tree nuts and from shellfish to lobster. The needles penetrate my skin, yet I have to stand still, bearing the pain and going against my urge to itch the growing rash. This process repeats. Five, ten, fifteen different needles break the skin on my arms and back leaving me full of unscratched rashes. At the end of the session, the doctor conducting the tests comes up to me and says, “Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like you’re growing out of your allergies. See you next year!” This happens for a couple years until one day I go to the allergist, and instead of seeing a needle, I see a paper with Stamford Hospital at the top of it. My allergist explains that my allergies have gotten so bad that they can no longer run the needle tests on me. Instead, I must go to the 100

hospital to get pints of blood drawn out and then the needles are reacted with that blood. I listen in disbelief. I thought the peanuts were supposed to get better, not worse. What did I do to deserve this? My allergies weren’t even in my control; there was nothing I could do to make it better. When I eventually went to get pints of blood drawn out, I couldn’t feel it:my thoughts were in disarray. I fought back tears, not from the pain of the needles, but from the consequences I had to deal with because of my allergies. Despite the cyber-bullying, Scott was the person I talked to the most about my depression. After all, he had dealt with it for a lot of his life, so he was always telling me to go outside and to stop sulking because I’ll miss out on life if I just do nothing. Nights after nights of long Fortnite games played where we don’t even win once but run around the map and hide in bushes, focusing on our deep discussions instead of getting a battle royale. I didn’t go more than two nights in a row without talking to Scott about whatever: boarding/private school, depression, and our future ambitions, all while absorbing a peanut joke or two. He taught me to not take my life for granted and to live to the fullest which, of course, meant to stay away from the peanuts and prolong your life as long as possible. So you can imagine my disdain when I found out that Scott committed suicide. Uselessness: an adjective meaning the inability to achieve an intended purpose or desired outcome. Synonyms for uselessness range from fruitless to

useless to futile. I think that’s what I felt. When people couldn’t eat peanuts around me and I was getting teased for my allergy, yeah I was pissed, but I more so felt unneeded and useless. When Scott died, that same feeling rose up in my chest, greeting me like that cousin you see every year. Wherever peanuts take me, that feeling of uselessness seems to lag behind. Scott got the distinctive and honorable title of being the first name that’s officially etched into my shoe. I’m sure he would laugh and then make some stupid peanut joke if I told him that we won the sweepstakes. Anyways, me and Death have become pretty good buds; I’ve lost half a dozen people by my count, and everytime it happens, it feels like my emotions are unwillingly stripped from me as I feel less and less and become more and more platonic. It feels like the only time you’ll ever get a reaction out of me is by forcing me to eat a peanut. I was especially sad that day. It was during the summer before my Junior year. Honestly, the whole summer was a blob, so I can’t tell you exactly what day it was. I walk into the kitchen with a permanent scowl, pjs and my bonnet on. Even the polar bears on my pajama pants seem down, probably from thinking about global warming and things of that nature. My mom takes one look at my face and says, “if ur so sad, here, *gestures to the peanut butter* that’ll make you feel better.” I simply roll my eyes, responding, “thanks, but no thanks mom.” It was another long day during what seemed like an endless summer. The depression had consumed me whole and controlled

me from the inside out; in fact, that was the first time I’d been outside my room in days. No Xbox, no basketball, not even using my phone or computer. And what’s the first thing I have to smell? Peanuts. Jeez, I hate my life. That stupid aroma taunting me, knowing I coudn’t taste it irked me especially that day. Even when I went in my room, the scent followed me mocking and laughing at me. It drove me outside, something that no person was successfully able to do. I don’t even remember doing anything besides making faces at the sky and scowling at the world, reluctantly enjoying the sunlight placed upon me. The peanut had put me in their initial position. I was a slave to the dirt, baking in the sunlight and hopefully growing in due time. The roots, an arm sprawled out to the left and a leg to right, lay still as if stapled to the long weeds inhabiting my backyard. “Why weren’t those weeds cut? This backyard looks like trash.” Seconds pass. “Oh yeah, that’s my job.” A laugh came out of my throat, so foriegn and uncommon that I surprised myself. I couldn’t believe I still had that function after so much time without even showing a hint of happiness, or any expression for that matter. I look around, not doing anything, not saying anything, just one with nature. It was more peaceful that way. I reminisce about the days where my only worry in the world was staying away from peanuts. Believe it or not, peanuts or Arachis Hypogaea are actually very interesting and intriguing. For example, the average person will eat 3,000 PB&Js in their lifetime, and the average adult eats three of them a month. 101

The average Carl on the other hand will eat zero in their lifetime, barring some unseen event. Another interesting fact is that Thomas Jefferson and Jimmy Carter are two peanut farmers who became Presidents of the United States. I wonder how one goes from farming to politics so successfully. The furthest throw a peanut has ever been thrown was 124.4 feet. I personally feel like that is not that far, and as a professional peanut hater, I feel that I will be able to channel my anger in order to throw a peanut much farther. Of course, I would need gloves in order for me to participate in the activity of throwing a peanut. Finally, I learned that in a high-pressure environment, peanut butter can be turned into diamonds. I am very upset that I will not be able to reap the benefits of this because I am in dire need of financial assistance. Somehow, I just keep spending money faster than I make it. This may in part be due to the weekly visits with my friends to Bonchon, Panera, and most iconically, the Diner.

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Talking with Julia about how we don’t have epipens and instead just say screw it, risking exposure to peanuts everyday with no backup plan, makes me wonder if I’m just careless or stupid. It’s one of the weirdest things I’ve bonded over after all, like did we become friends over the fact that both of us irresponsibly deal with our allergies to peanuts. The times in the PAC replay in my head: the rants about wanting to skip school, the small compartment full of candy in Julia’s car, and most often the random, unique things that have happened throughout the day. Regard-

less of the discussion though, peanuts can always shed its ugly face and make their way into our conversation. I always used to talk about it like a liability, feeling bad for others because wherever I was became deemed a strict “no-peanut” zone. I couldn’t eat the PB&Js that everyone spoke so fondly about, and everytime my family ate peanut butter, they had to wash their hands twice. Julia simply didn’t feel the same. She would tell me to stop worrying about it, to stop letting a little thing like an allergy affect how you live your life. When I first forgot my epipen, the first thing that settled in my mind was fear. When Julia purposefully didn’t bring hers, it was an act of freedom. My fear started to subside and while that uselessness I felt was still apparent, I was more at peace with it. My tone changed from, “oh my gosh I don’t have my epipen,” to a, “oh well, guess I don’t have my epipen.” Eventually, that turned into “I haven’t seen my epipen in months,” which elicited some harsh words from my parents. Honestly, I can’t blame them; I wouldn’t be happy if I paid for my child’s epipen only for them to tell me that they haven’t had it for months and don’t really care about it. However, I do plan to redirect their anger to their consciousnesses and hopefully speed up the monetary compensation phase. Even now, I look at how carefree I am with peanuts, especially compared to back then and I realize just how tight the shackles from those stupid little nuts were. Those constant conversations and laughs with Julia were more than freeing, it gave me a sense of euphoria.

I teared up when thinking about Scott and our friendship. I felt accountable for his death and at the same time felt powerless, even useless. Just like how I felt about the peanuts. I remember how I would call his number, hoping for an answer but only being left with, “leave a message at the tone.” No matter how much you miss them, they never come back once they’re gone. “Pick yourself up,” they say, “life keeps moving with or without you.” Well, the world might’ve kept on moving, but for that summer, I was suspended in a pocket of nothingness. A place of stillness, where particles cease to move, instead remaining in a paused state. But slowly, I started to move again. The weight of uselessness starts to feel like something I can handle instead of being too much weight to bear. One foot in front of the other, I keep on moving. Until I get to the door of the cage that’s locked me in. And what do you know? The seal to the door is peanut butter. A smile of familiarity follows as I look eye to eye; the first time ever that I haven’t been looking up at peanuts. And as I push through, the door makes a creak, like the wheels and knobs of my life have begun to spin again, and the action and motion in my life have been restored. -Carl Coridon

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For my Dog Sunny For when you raise your little head Your fur in a jumble And hop off my bed Causing the floor to rumble For hobbling out of my room When the mornings are so young So slowly you walk Like a man about to be hung While it takes you a while, to get down the stairs, And you sometimes occasionally give me a scare You always are able to do it It must make you feel like a millionaire For eagerly but slowly walking to the car, You always make it, my little superstar For resting your soft and furry head, On the centerpiece of the car And catching up on lost sleep, dreaming about a world afar For raising your head to be petted when we arrive, Arrive at school and then you suddenly feel alive Why are you leaving me you might say Sunny, oh little sunny, I have to get on with my day -Mortimer Hood

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Kovda You are my dearest love, with your look so cold and pale. With the resemblance of a quaint dove, I hope our life shall prevail. Whenever you are around, I want to hold you tight. Like a bird reaching ground, you fix my internal plight. If one day you choose to leave, I will cry the whole night through. I would always stop to grieve, living my life without a clue. Don’t kiss my lips tonight, all I want is to hold you near. You need to kiss my heart right, and brush away my fear. -William McGonagle

The Sound of Water How do you describe the sound of water? When water is still it can turn a whisper into a scream But when it ripples over rocks and green stones, you close your eyes. It is a flock of chickadees, with a transfixing melody, and a rhythm that is forever evolving. 105

They don’t sing in sharp cries that split the air like an ax, butchering the quietude But in flowing, rolling laughs that trickle into the air and hush all else. It absorbs the angry whistle of a passing passenger train and the faint, agonizing scream of a little girl who slips on a pile of wet leaves and scrapes her knee on the frozen dirt. It drowns out the belligerent bustling of traffic on the freeway that crosses the sputtering stream. It suffocates the hammering of nails, into a rotted and weathered wooden sign that reads “No fishing or trapping” in fading, mustard yellow letters. It smothers the wind’s low, deathly cries of an impending dark winter. Open your eyes, and the chickadees stop their song and fly off. -William Mackle

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DAYLIGHT (DELIGHT)

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Photo by: Natasha Komoda 110

Ross Gay Craft Interview Paige Parisi Interviewer: What kind of writer were you in high school? Ross Gay: I didn’t write. I didn’t read. I was a skateboarder. I played football. I read one book in high school. It was The Stranger by Albert Camus. When I got my PHD and my first book was coming out, I saw my eleventh grade English teacher on the street in Newtown, Pennsylvania. I think she was a great teacher but I didn’t know because I didn’t pay any attention. When I told her that I just got my PhD and that my book was coming out, she said, “You have to be kidding me.” In her class, I was probably this kinda smart kid who was a clown and didn’t do anything else. I started reading in college in a very serious way. I: Who are your favorite authors? RG: Some poets who I love are: Steve Scafidi, Aracelis Girmay, Patrick Rosal (a friend), John Edgar Wideman, Rebecca Soloman, Saidiya Hartman, Fred Moten, Rebecca Amira Ohaeri, Maggie Nelson, Henry Hayes are writers who are really important to me. I could just go on and on forever. I: Do all of your favorite authors all have a theme that unifies them? Or are they just a wide genre of authors? RG: A really wide and different genre. Plenty of those people probably know each other or each other’s work. Plenty of those people don’t know each other. I: What is your favorite word? RG: I don’t think I have one. I have a phrase that I will say is one of my favorite phrases. It has a couple words. It is a phrase from a June Jordan poem (another one of my favorite writers): “In mercy fathom.” It comes from this essay where the writer, June, was at the time, probably thirty, asked to comment on the moon landing in 1969. June Jordan was basically saying: Why are we doing this? We could do better things with the money. She lists in a sort of poetic way what we might set our better intentions for. She says x, y, z and then she says, “What if we mercy fathom?” Meaning: What if we plumb the depths of our mercy? What if we see how deep our mercy is. To me, there isn’t a better question. I: What is your inspiration for writing a poem, or how do you start to draft a poem? 111

RG: I always have a question. Some sort of fundamental question. I might not even know the question when I start but, the question will start to emerge. The inspiration is something like what I don’t know or what I want to know. I: What would be an example of a question that you would ask? RG: When I am looking at a poem like Be Holding, the first real question that guides the poem is: What am I looking at when I am witnessing this move by Dr. J? I ask the question repeatedly in the poem: What am I looking at? What am I looking at? I want to know what my practices in witness are. How do I see? How does what I see make the world? In real life, I found myself watching this basketball move by Dr J. In the process of watching it, I was like, “What am I looking at?” I: Do you ever have writer’s block and how do you deal with it? RG: Yeah, I almost always get writer’s block when I have an assignment. I do periodically get assignments, like a magazine might ask me to write something, or an introduction, or a blurb for a book. I will get writer’s block. In a sort of way, it is because I am writing out of obligation. It is not the same as when I am writing out of a genuine need. The way that the Be Holding book happens, that question, What am I looking at?, that question is a question of need. I have to answer that. When I am given an assignment for whatever magazine, they want me to think about something for a minute. I don’t mostly feel like I need to do that. I feel like, ‘‘Yeah, I am doing it because they asked me to do it.’’ Which is to say, I have sympathy for students who have to write out assignments because I can’t do it. It is actually why I don’t give assignments as a teacher. I offer things. Ultimately, I want people to learn how to find their own questions. I: Yeah, I was doing an English paper recently and the topic, I couldn’t sit with it. Normally I get really into it and I felt so obligated to do it. I was like this is the worst paper I have ever written. I totally know what you mean. RG: That it, that’s it. It is one of the things we as teachers need to figure out how to do. You know, to give everyone the skills everyone needs to have. Most importantly, what are you really curious about? I: What is your editing process like? RG: There are all kinds of levels. There is one where there is the real genuine revision where I am actually in the process of trying to discover what is really underneath the poem or essay (after I drafted it). That is where I am re-seeing the thing itself. Often that will mean that the thing will break off entirely, it changes radically. It happens many times and that is actually what 112

I am going for. I am also looking for the thing in the piece that is the break in the piece that will break up the piece. The break is something really profound that I could not know prior to it. There are other things that can lead to a break in pieces. I think very hard about diction; What does the word choice make possible of the meaning? I think very hard about syntax: how the sentence lines are organized. I think very hard about the image. I want the image to be as crystal and as precise as possible. When I do scenes I want them to be so precise: how bodies move, how bodies interact, how a setting looks or behaves. I also look at punctuation or pronouns. All of the various things that if you get it right: cool. I: How do you know when a poem is done? RG: If I have my question answered, or illuminated my poem, I feel that is one thing of being finished. As I get older, I get less interested in finishing a poem. For example, in my book Be Holding, I kind of refuse to let it finish. In the acknowledgments page, there are ways I keep changing the poem. I don’t want to close things. I am trying to see how formally I can do this in writing. It’s so interesting to me. It is sort of like a musician like John Coltrain. John Coltrain had a studio version of “Love Supreme.” He recorded it twenty, thirty, forty, fifty times. Each recording was very different with this guy. I am interested in how I can do that on the page. It is like everytime you redo the poem, you are unfinishing the poem. I am interested in how I can do that in a poem and how to do that. I: I have one personal question. I sometimes get stuck trying to find the right word. In class we do a lot of free writing. How do you find the right word, without it sounding fluffed over? RG: It is crazy how much time I spend finding the right word. If you were to look at my original drafts of things, you would see that I have a word that I am unsure about and I will have a list of words on top of it. I am trying to find out, how does this precise word describe this feeling, at this time of day, in this context? It is a lot of thinking hard about what is the right word. There is nothing more fun to me. I will revise for an hour. Then two days later I will change it. This is part of the process of unfinishing it. I: What is the best piece of advice that you would give a young aspiring writer? RG: Let love be the engine of your inquiry. Or let love be your motivation. Everything that you wonder about, everything that you write about, everything that you pursue, it is worthwhile to let love be the reason for that. Practice that in community to rely on each other. To be like, “Is love our motivation for that?” 113

Editors’ Note: The poems in the following section are inspired by Ross Gay. 114

Ant House Friends, I am here to cooly report in the cracks of the warm stone in my backyard; An ant bearing a mere crumb almost twice his own size slowly moseying towards his home on the other side of the patio. Now friends, he trips, and he fumbles, as his crumb trails on the ground; creating the smallest of noises. I can only imagine as the crumb scrapes the scratchy surface of the stone to that poor ant it must sound like an anthem. The grooves where one stone meets another are the worst obstacle of all; like mountains and valleys standing in his way. There is no way to avoid them. Slowly, but surely, he is trekking. Obstacle after obstacle, over and over, heaving that small crumb along the way. He takes a moment to rub his pointy face, and then continues to lift the crumb back up. His pace hasn’t slowed since the beginning of his tracked journey, and friends, he is so close! His home, looking like granulated brown sugar, pilled up where the stone meets the grass, stands still; 115

waiting. And not soon enough, he crawls in -Lucie Honarvar

Pine Cones Friends, I am here to eagerly report seeing in my backyard, as I stood in grass all too vivid from the rain and under the sky surprisingly blue regardless of weather patterns, a series of pine cones growing on the evergreens surrounding the shaded fencing. And friends, it is crucial you know that one morning they weren’t and the next they were and I swear to you it was a little miracle, unfolding in my very own backyard, because the slight confusion was there when I thought 116

the pine trees had turned raw umber, but no the pine trees were still myrtle green full well alive and instead they had developed new tender offspring for a temporary stay. And friends, these pinecones laid and mixed perfectly among the trees who supported them with no worries of the strength of the wind, friends, these pinecones were but babies, warm orange-toned yellow infants to the world, ornamenting the emerald shade of their parents and supported through the evergreens, whose branches sagged ever so slightly with the added pressure, only noticeable to a seeking eye. And friends, they grew and turned a darker caramel over the course of my week, separating from 117

their safe nests one by one, plummeting onto damp patches of lawn, leaving their nurturers with the impossible weight of their sudden absence. And friends, these pine trees just looked so colorless, dull green, without their temporary children who appeared out of nowhere, who grew so quickly, who come and go. -Serra Nalbantoglu

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Ode to Dazed and Confused It takes ten seconds To look up and play a song. I went to the record store To buy this masterpiece/history/feeling For 21 dollars. Vinyl albums are beautiful things That our evolving culture has forgotten about. I snatched the album from my bookshelf. The crisp sound of the record sliding out Reminded me of what I frequently imagine what it would be like, To grow up in the 70s. I slid the sleek black oversized disk Smoothly onto the record player and skipped to track four, Then cranked the on/volume knob Until it wouldn’t turn anymore. It started spinning. The bass started slowly, walking down a flight of stairs As harmonics from the guitar started soaring free like an eagle. After some random heavy bangs from the drums Came a spew of blue poetic howels. This slow synchronized peace, was like the calm before the storm. All of a sudden the guitar roared And the drums started clashing for a brief moment, Then returned the stairs And the eagle And the bangs became taps. A psychedelic shift in the tone began When a violin bow dragged across the guitar strings. It didn’t sound good. But it was also amazing. Something beautiful was happening. I was crowding the speaker to get the most out of it, When I realized, My hearing shifted from my ears to my soul. By now the guitar is running and screaming In every direction to the steady and collected beat, And the bass was jamming in a spiral. Then the roles suddenly switched. The guitar hero started striking power chords And the drums went ferocious. It was as if I had a rapidly charging battery in my chest Preparing to release every single volt, Or a balloon about to pop as the beat got faster. 119

Then came a split second of silence… Where all time stopped at the crest of a roller coaster. The lone guitar roared a shiver throughout my whole body As time shifted back And the balloon popped And the battery discharged. Then just like that it went back to the stairs But more intense because this time the guitar walked with the bass, And the drums were feral again. I was left with an undescribed feeling, That caused me to blast my guitar Until my fingers began to peel Pretending to be Jimmy Page. -William Kuryla

Ode to a Blue Tin Roof I hate to break the rules. Every time that my sullen gaze meets the eyes of the person who’s trust I just broke makes each bone in my body crack and send each organ down to my feet. So, I’ll make it to that meeting, I’ll do that homework, I’ll run that errand. I won’t skip that class because my heart would drag my feet back to tell the truth. Even if I shook my brain from my toes, Nobody likes a buzzkill. 120

So, it was odd for an alarm clock to go off at 2:00 AM, for six eager students to crawl up the shepherd’s-staff-shaped tree onto the blue tin roof. Blue Tin Roof, you taught me how to pin-point where to step on a wooden porch so that my breath stays louder, and I can make it to the shepherd’s tree. From the tree I’ve calculated how much sweat I need for my hands to pull myself up onto the smooth, aqua, tin roof. Now, it’s always best to go slow from here. Take a lesson from the porch and crawl on the edge of each slat— the middle likes to warp in. Go barefoot for traction. And finally, bring a sweatshirt. It gets cold. On blue tin roofs I empty my stress in the silent breaths of a crawling wake. I leave a second world and return to the first, letting the calculations flow down with the rain— flowing from blue tin panels and softening into wooden porch beams. 121

The wind gracefully charges from the laps of ocean waves sent through blue tin panels and up with our gazes to what is further. At 2:00 AM the lights are off, all except for the white crystals of the night— joined by dozing brains and the artists of the night who display their mysticalities. It was odd for me to stay longer than the others and look up further to view a blue flare, burning from the horizon of the second world up across its semblant dome. Its oblong shape meets at a sharp tail and somehow transcends what we as citizens of the second cannot see from blue tin roofs. It was odd for twelve crystals, each spaced apart to form a sort of rhombus, to hover at the same path of the flare. Citizens of the second have already made crystalline frauds —airplanes and satellites— but I liked to think that those twelve crystals, they were born of the first. No trickster. And I can’t help but to wish to be among them —free, living past our choking dome— chasing a blue flare 122

so that it can take them away of their invariable troupe. Maybe I can continue to let the calculations soften wooden planks so another can creep to the shepherd’s tree. Maybe I can follow the wind up and join twelve crystals on their search for a blue flare to take us away. But thirteen is an unlucky number down under blue tin roofs. Maybe it isn’t in the float of the first. But suns do rise, three hours do pass, and I have to follow the rain away from twelve marching crystals, away from the horizon’s wind, away from golden blue flares, and stay within the dome. But while it lasts, I can still dream on blue tin roofs. -Brendan Howard

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The Non-Ode to this Damn Portfolio Why? Why must we be forced to write? Why so many prompts? How are we supposed to find our delights? Essay after essay. Word after word. Examples of students in the past. Each one is made perfectly, it’s absurd. I hate writing these ballad poems. Emily Dickinson makes me want to cry. It takes weeks to understand her stanzas. And the meanings you come up with, Dr. Jump denies. The ballad poems have to be in perfect form, like a perfect song. I have to look up rhymes, but then realize the tempo is all wrong. The personal essay from early in the year, the one piece of writing that had no limits. Reading about my crazy, yet amazing coach. Basically putting my whole life in exhibits. Going back to this analytical bullshit, where already on my first draft, I got the lowest expectation. One week left before our final submit. I had time over a long winter break, but I obviously didn’t do shit. Sorry for all my swearing. I am just really stressed out. The end of the semester is terrifying, it has been like this all throughout. Now I’m mad at myself for wasting time. And I still have more to revise, probably just going to keep procrastinating, which I know is unwise. 124

I I I I

never understood how to write poems. never understood how to write analytical essays. can’t believe you’re still reading this, am kind of amazed.

-Sheridan Oberhand

Ode to Opening the Oven My great-grandmother gathered fire with her clever hands striking a match, creating light and heat that blankets her kitchen and mine like her patchwork quilts. I glide my hands over the flour-crusted metal, barely cracking the oven open when gravity does its job and the rectangle falls open its golden smile pouring smells of warm maple and chocolate out onto my bare feet. Inside rest soft, pale cookies. They need more time. I close the door and return to the kitchen table, to my half-filled crossword, puzzle and deck of cards to wait. “Il forno,” she would teach, pointing to the oven 125

of my ancestors, rising round breads, roasting holiday turkeys, baking peppers, ziti and my favorite chocolate chip cookies.

Think of me when you make our cookies she wrote at the bottom of her recipe that morning the snow fell on her last visit. And so I do. -Hadley Salem

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Ode to My Almost, Yet Not Quite Perfect Nose To the people who compare themselves to a false sense of beauty, Last year during the winter As I scrolled Mindlessly through my For You Page On TikTok Comparing myself to every girl who popped up Focusing on how my features do not even Compared to the beauty standard My nose The shape unlike anyone else’s on both sides of my family Sometimes I wish I had my dad’s nose because then At least that type had a bump, but mine, So close to perfection or at least what we define it as A video then comes up A video perfect for my dilemma It is called the For You page for a reason, Right? A video I never knew could change me this much It was a video on how to mold your nose at a young age Your nose is Something that never fails when Smelling pulao cooking in the oven Becoming dry when I taste Chicken curry that has an extra chili in it, Wondering how to change it As if the technology could read my mind, The video talked about other features, But my focus Was my nose As I practiced the motion of Touching my dry nose bridge With a few bumps The warm brown with a few old scars, Light stars on my dark complexion And I started Applying light To medium pressure on it as instructed Using a downward motion Although, I likely pressed Too hard 127

Trying to get a result My eyes burned through the screen Willing for a result After seeing all those girls with their fair skin And their perfect button noses I kept repeating the pressing motion until I too exhausted To look at my reflection and too tired to even Continue I then went to my mirror and Cried like I did when I was younger Finally accepting that I will never have an upturned nose like the ones The disney princesses had There will always be a curved edge to my nose A smooth barely flawed nose with many prospects until the final tip It is the last nose of its kind My great grandma who passed Was last to possess The imperfectly perfect Nose And I know I should be proud, but Still I only accept it when I hold my head At a certain angle, Looking slightly up and to the right Then the slight bump is invisible and it is perfect But that is an illusion and the true shape Is a reality The bend too soft, Never straight down and upturned A bunny slope Never a black diamond -Sahana Bettegowda

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Catalog of Irrepressible Sisterhood Even in a storm, you can still find a bumblebee out doing her duty, collecting her nectar, bumbling around in her pollen-dusted fluff. Did you know that all of the bees we see outside the hive are females? She flies from flower to flower, from tulip to hydrangea, seeking shelter from the rain as she does her duty. Because she knows that the world doesn’t stop turning just because it’s raining. She still has a hive, young to feed and raise. She still has a job to do, just like all her sisters. She’s still there. Even in chaos and uncertainty and loneliness and snarl, she’s still there. If there’s one thing I know for sure, I am a rower. I row! It’s what I do! It’s what keeps me sane sometimes, gets me through the hard parts because when I am rowing, when I am sitting in a boat or on the erg, I can do anything! Because I am not alone. I know for an absolute fact I have eight sisters doing this exact thing. They are pushing just as hard, getting the same feeling of lethargic legs and tingly feet and burning throat, wanting to cry out in pain and frustration, just wanting to stop, to be done, but we don’t. We finish the piece. It’s over all too soon, and we’re still there. And it’s not uncommon to find fallen tears and sweat in the carpet and vomit in the trash can after a workout that drained us of everything, everything except the fight in our eyes and the spirit in our hearts and our dedication to this crazy, crazy sport and to each other, which, not unlike the smell of salt packed onto boats at the end of the season, is incredibly potent. Our allegiance to this sport and to each other gives us life, gives us the wings to fly above adversity like the osprey that nests not too far upriver from the boathouse I consider my second home. For even when wind knocks her nest from the tree, the osprey is still there. Even when a test piece kicks my butt, 129

I’m still there. Even if my boat loses a race, we’re still there! We are there for each other, which keeps us standing there, unflinching and fearless, because our bond will carry us through, be a lantern in the dark, guide the way home. If one of us loses our path, our sisters will bring us back. The sisterhood allows us to keep standing, keep pushing, keep being there, still.

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The bond between us is stronger than the nuts and bolts that hold our boats together. It’s the way stern four picks our coxswain up and carries her to her seat in the boat at a race where we have to wet launch so that she doesn’t get her feet wet, even though everyone else is up to their knees in the river. It’s the way everyone goes all out for capture the flag. Face paint, pep talks, meticulous planning; our flag is under Amra’s foot, they’d never suspect that. It’s the way that a girl - any girl - does a 2k test on the erg and everyone else, novice and varsity, gathers around her cheering her on, telling her she’s almost done, and she gives it everything because they motivate her to do her absolute best. It’s the way when we race and our coxswain tells us to take ten strokes - one for each girl in the boat and an extra one for the collective whole she takes the time to say each girl’s name out loud, and we hear her. We push for each other and that’s what pulls us through to the finish line. It’s the way you can hear your coxswain chatting with stroke seat over the speakers. They’re discussing whether brownies or cookies are better, and that ends in a stalemate when the boat narrowly avoids hitting a rock. It’s the way we race Saugy Bottom and everyone goes all out for the best skit. What went through that senior’s mind to have the underclassmen dress up as cheese and do the Rasputin Dance? Whatever that process was, everyone fell laughing on the patio watching. It’s the way one of the captains will bring a speaker during winterizing, and we all sing our hearts out to Taylor Swift. Our laughter is a warm winter coat, keeping us from freezing. It’s the way every winter the seniors

do senior promises and tell us how they’re going to make their seasons left their best seasons yet. It’s the way that we still sometimes address each other using the nicknames Mike gave us as rookies: Rascal, Motown, Shorty, Magic. It’s the way that Grace never fails to bring a baguette on nights when we stay late to rig up the trailer and without fail, everyone flocks to her for a piece. Her nickname is Bread. It’s the way Ella always asks to listen to my music because she likes my playlist, so we each erg with one airpod, two halves of a greater whole. And hundreds of miles away in The arid Saharan Desert, a herd of elephants is led by their matriarch, trusting her to guide them, to lead them, they raise each others’ calves to be strong and intelligent, to trust their sisters and their queen.They survive because they trust her to lead them away from danger, and she does; they’re still there. And farther away still, a tribe of lemurs is led by females who keep the peace and lead the way from peril. Even the males follow, they swallow their pride because she knows what’s best. And you, if you have a day where you drop your breakfast on the floor and trip and fall up the stairs and don’t get that promotion, you’ll wake up tomorrow morning and you’ll still be there. You’ll still go to work and you’ll work even harder because even on the bad days, your sisters will carry you through. And you, who’s new to the team and are terrified by all the girls who are so much older and stronger, they’re really nice! Get to know them, they’ll get to know you, and they’ll become your sisters. And you, who just broke up with your partner of however long, you’ll be okay. Your sisters will come over with ice cream and pick you back up and you’ll get over it together. He didn’t deserve you, anyway. Your sisters will pull you up off the ground and tell you to wipe off your hand 131

off the ground and tell you to wipe off your hands and get back to work. So you’ll get back up, and you’ll still be there. When a storm hits, that bee is still there, doing her job. She’s still there, she’s still there, and chances are she’ll still be there tomorrow. She’s still standing because she’s part of that sisterhood and because her love for her sisters has blinded her from the pain, thus making it even more immortal. And maybe, just maybe, I’m that bee, the one who’s still there, who’s still flying, who’s still doing her duty, who nevertheless persists in the name of what she knows and what she loves, and she keeps going because she has that thing. It’s the motivator, it’s the teacher, it’s the guardian angel telling you to keep going. It’s the support from your sisters that got you here today, that will get you where you need to be tomorrow. That’s why you’re still standing, you’re still there. -Madeleine Speller

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Catalog of Effortless Love friends, will you please and thank you grab yourself a nice and warm blanket and some pillows and maybe even some chips as I will be here expressing my love for life don’t you love waking up in the morning feeling your eyelids weighing down on you nothing in the world feeling more important than your gray and black spotted blanket don’t you love getting that first refreshing sip of water making you feel like that time as a kid you rode down full speed that hill on Marion St. on your gold hot wheels bike alerted and refreshed don’t you love flipping your pillow and feeling the cool side upon your face don’t you love showering hot water running down your back just standing there thinking through how the day just might go feeling your curls run down on your face your mom in the background, “Hurry up you’re going to be late to school” don’t you love walking into your kitchen and smelling the sweetness of the pancakes filling the air don’t you love getting that hug from your mom assuring you everything is going to be okay like that one time you believed the world ended because you missed the fly ball that one foggy day losing the game for you fellow teammates “Everyone makes mistakes, It’s okay. Next game show them the player you are,” your mom tells you don’t you love being able to tell someone you accomplished your goal “Yooo bro, I just got accepted to GFA!!!” “Let’s go!!!! I knew you were going to be” don’t you love strolling outside 133

cool breeze chilling your spine plants blooming birds chirping don’t you love taking that nap you so desperately needed throwing yourself into that bed “CRACK” almost breaking it forgetting the base was loose don’t you love getting an email your package is almost here don’t you love watching your little sibling rushing out the bus “Bella!! Over here” yelling to her across the street her pink LOL Dolls backpack strapped as tight as it can go making sure not to lose it so excited to come home don’t you love getting complimented or so much of a greeting or even a handshake and even better a hug “How you been Carlos!”wrapping your arms around your close friend you haven’t seen in what it feels like centuries don’t you love seeing your loved ones showing up to the family reunion wearing the ugly gray knitted sweater your aunt got you seeing Tio Francis, Tia Yasmin and all your crazy cousins don’t you love sitting on the train watching everything zoom by from the window cars birds traffic lights trees and that one bakery on Main St. in Milford you so desperately want to try don’t you love walking into school and seeing your friends don’t you love playing baseball just the adrenaline as you walk on the field crowd gazing and shouting at you throwing hitting running the feeling of the red slightly teared stitches on the ball don’t you love turning on the radio and your favorite song is on Jungle by A Boogie “THIS IS WHAT THAT JUNGLE DO” you sing at the top of your lungs don’t you love having 100% charge on your phone don’t you love buying a new pair of shoes, smelling that fresh scent of unworn masterpieces like freshly printed paper don’t you love treating yourself with a nice meal filling your stomach up with that warm dish of fettuccine after a stressful day 134

don’t you love watching someone get great news don’t you love the yankees finally winning the red sox not losing the bet you placed about 100 times don’t you love sitting down after standing for so long feeling as if your legs were immobile don’t you love getting in that warm blanket after shivering in the cold for so long don’t you love someone acknowledging your new haircut “Okayyy I see that you got a fresh cut” cute girl tells you makes me feel above the clouds, I don’t know about you don’t you love the old lady wearing the striped orange coat and shiny green boots greeting you every morning before the train don’t you love getting GFA emails telling you how much work you have p.s. sarcasm don’t you love the audience that is still with me right now listening to every little thing in life that I love and appreciate Mr. Coll I know you’re one of them so thank you don’t you love, being able to say I AM HERE through everyday struggles through over workload through not enough sleep through long practices you are still here kicking life’s ass think we all deserve a round of applause for that one don’t you love smelling something that triggers a memory a sniff of that notebook bringing you back to the time you was in 4th grade math admiring how fractions work don’t you love looking back on old photos comparing those times to now don’t you love admiring yourself cause I do all the time mirror camera true story don’t you love being able to openly 135

write about things you love for a poem I mean it’s great just my keyboard and my true voice here don’t you love walking into a restaurant and being given a seat right away don’t you love receiving a good grade after a test you were incredibly nervous for don’t you love finding just the right book for you definitelyWonder no questions asked don’t you love hearing the sound of the microwave beep after your food is done heating up don’t you love life? -Yasiel Espinal

For Ross Gay After Ross Gay Wednesday Late wake up I’m aggressively sober and Wearing a shirt that says “I *heart* MIA” as in My sister Mia not the musician or the Acronym missing in action though I do love Both of those things But mostly my sister and mostly because I was sad and She asked me if she could buy me anything so I sent her a link and she forwarded me The shipment notification email the next day It’s a facile and beautiful love language of hers that I did not Recognize until that day and so I am wearing this shirt to say Thank you Mia To everyone except for her I did not tell her that I wore this shirt because That’s how sisters are Also it’s hers and she would be upset at me for wearing her clothing because That’s how sisters are And no I will not say why she has a shirt that says “I *heart* [her own name]” 136

I know all about love languages because I read Letters from Two Gardens between you and your friend Aimee Nezhukumatathil see I did my reading do I get a sticker Do I get a gold star? I’m a straight A student which I like to tell people because I like makeup and boys (and girls) and reality tv so people sometimes Tell me that I’m vapid Or that I seem that way and sometimes I am and sometimes I do but I would be told different things about those things if I weren’t so unashamed of them Anyways I’m a straight A student which as I’m writing for the second time I realize is not true given my grades this year and my grade in math last year and My D minus in physics which was such a lost cause that I had to drop the class But I’m sure you don’t care anyways because You don’t seem like the type of person to think about Anyone or anything being vapid You carry reverence and love and I know this because You hold your hands out in front of you like you’re going to Pick lemons off of a lemon tree and you’ve got smile lines under Your goatee? Beard? I’m not familiar with facial hair on a nominal basis but You’ve got smile lines from reading poems like you’re singing and You’ve got a green beanie on that molds to your head like a Sleeping cat in a hammock and you say pardon my language Or no you say that another time this time you do not Excuse yourself pardon yourself or apologize you just Open your eyes wider and yell GO MOTHERFUCKER GO and you yourself soften Into laughter You soften so many things And maybe without even trying You softened Maxine’s hands when she recited your poem “Ode to Buttoning and Unbuttoning My Shirt” for Our English class performed readings because She also held her hands out in front of her kind of Crumpled like but also kind of like she was water bending Or something and I thought that was funny and none of us ever Buttoned or unbuttoned our shirts the same and You also softened the pain of leaving my friends to go to opposite sides of such A violent country when Lars went MIA for a few months and The only words he emerged with for me Were your poem “Thank You” 137

And because of “To the Fig Tree on 9th and Christian” Two people with too much love and too much pain between them were further From strangers than they’d ever been And so you softened that distance too Today is a new day and I can see your hair which is different but Your smile is the same and you ask us To write for ten minutes and so I do I write about Pokemon Go and the ways in which my mother wakes me Up in the morning and the ways in which I woke up this morning and I read it to you You ask me if it’s a diary entry and I say yes because what you don’t know is That I had decided to give up writing forever until you Asked me to try again that day And of course that’s not true I had not decided to give up forever but I did Decide that I am a straight A student and that I don’t need my silly little poems anymore not for now But you don’t care about my grades you don’t Care if I did my reading well really I don’t know what You care about but what I think is that You care if I have a soul And you will not remember me but I watched you speak At Dodge Poetry Festival when I was fourteen and you said the word Fuck in front of everybody Which was new and funny and strong And I haven’t stopped saying fuck Or all kinds of other things in front of everybody since You might not remember me but I hope you remember what I have to say which is too Much that I cannot reach with this language and so I am Left struggling and searching until once again I find myself at Thank you -Kavya Krishnamurthy

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Migrations To survive, birds need to move south for the winter. How? Why? Google suggests birds migrate based on cues like weather and the availability of food, and can get compass information from the sun, stars, and sensing the earth’s magnetic field. Strikingly intelligent. But aren’t they colorblind? Do birds even see stars? How does the magnetic field feel on the wings of a bird as it flies? Do they tilt a little bit more to the right in winter and to the left in the summer? Do they drop lower, grazing the surface of the sea? Or do they soar higher, caressing the clouds with their smoothed feathers? The same creatures that I curse at in the sky after they shit on my car windows and rob me of fries I leave unattended at picnic tables have secretly been living double lives as some of the brightest meteorologist-astronomers known to man. The Phoenicians, an Ancient Mediterranean civilization, were known for their maritime prowess, challenging that of sailors centuries after them. They didn’t have any kind of naval technology, no form of navigational strategy. They followed coastlines, watched stars, and plotted their positioning based on past landmarks and estimated speeds. As a sailor, to know a boat like the way you know how your breath rises and falls, that is truly a feat. How would they have guessed their speeds? The frequency of the sound water made as it licked the hull of the boat, cutting through waves and making wake? By counting how quickly the boat sliced through puddled throngs of seafoam? The ancient Greek writer, geographer, and historian Herodotus, known as “The Father of History,” wrote about the Phoenicians. He noted their adeptness at maritime ventures, of course, spoke on their evolved language, their agriculture, their trading. He was the first historian to record the origins of the mythical bird known as the phoenix during his time traveling in Egypt.

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In Egyptian mythology, the phoenix is thought to represent the Sun God, Ra. However, the mythological bird has origins in various cultures across the globe. Its counterpart in Chinese mythology is Feng-Huan, the leader of the birds. In Hindu mythology, the Garuda is an immortal bird that is the vehicle of Lord Vishnu. There are resemblances of phoenix counterparts in the histories of civilizations across the globe. Each culture has its own stories about this majestic creature, but they all follow central themes: renewal, rebirth, and change. The phoenix is

immortal. Ever evolving. Growing, progressing, changing, learning. I’ve always believed that animals, even mythological ones, can tell us things that we ourselves don’t know yet. They’re translators of the infinite wisdom of nature, signaling little messages with tiny paws and claws as I glance outside windows and look across dirt paths into the green brush. I watch. Speak to me in languages I will never be able to understand, I say, to pairs of beady eyes and twitching whiskers. Tell me what you think. Teach me how to feel the magnetic field on the tips of my fingers, how to tell the exact speed of a boat with nothing but the wind brushing up against my back, how to combust into fire and be born again, soar out of the ash, how to fly. I am listening. I am waiting for answers -Annie Dizon

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Essence Before I was born, I was a concept. I was nothing. I was empty matter. I was New Year’s, a cashier’s check for a thousand dollars. I was two grains of sand picked off the Great Kobuk Alaska dunes. My father took the sand home and put it in a box. He is the only one who has been to Alaska. When nothing turned into something, my mother waited. She knit a red hat, which I kept. It sits in my dresser drawer in the white box--my Sacred Things (these are the lists and letters, the ticket stub from the french movie my girlfriend and I saw on my birthday, poems written on napkins by the same girl I saw the movie with. I am not wondering, but if you are, I still love her very much). I was born. I was half a stranger in my own body, I was gifted and overcontrolled, I would always love people and things too deeply. I inherited lamotrigine and fluoxetine prescriptions. I was the only musician in the family. In the hospital, my mom looked at my ears and wondered why they were like that. They’re a little better now that I’m older. I always hated them, but at least they’re pals with Beethoven.

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To clarify: my ears work on the inside. It’s just the outside that’s bad. Which is good–-I’m far too dependent on music, and I have a language fixation. I like poetry. I like prose. That teacher who changed my life, the one who speaks Greek and taught my eighth-grade Latin and English classes, she’s terrific, we still email-I send her my work sometimes. She

is very encouraging. She wants me to publish. I read too much Vonnegut but in a topical sort of way. “I never met a writer’s wife who wasn’t beautiful.” I don’t know if I want to be the writer or the wife. The girlfriend–she shared with me

Rosewater, Monkey House, Breakfast of Champions (which I read for her as in “in place of her” as in “she says she read it but really I told her what it was about”). I loaned Slaughterhouse, she lent me Goon Squad, I gave her Fahrenheit and a thirteen-dollar ticket to Westport. I am not from here. I take the six train and read Sylvia Plath. I run in the park. I jaywalk. I cried when I left New York and started hating high school–but I don’t anymore. I’ve made my peace with a lot of things. I won’t bore you with the story. Point is, the world spins on. And funnily enough, I will go back to New York. I will not go to music school. I will get old (turn thirty) and adopt kids (a kid) and work a corporate job (but the cool sexy criminal justice kind). I will live in a small apartment and hang my Stratocaster on my wall. In so much white will be the perfect space for music. In so much white will be the perfect space for grief. -Caroline Smith

Bloody Waters Right after I wake up and right before I go to bed, I coat each side of a cotton swab with a certain gel, and apply it to the inside of both nostrils. Fail to do this every twelve hours or so, and my nose flows blood at the slightest touch or warm temperature. In short, I get nosebleeds. My nosebleed tendency is inherited—my mother and father both got nosebleeds when they were younger, and my sister sometimes gets them too—but I have them by far the most frequently and severely out of all my family. Whatsmore, I didn’t outgrow them like my parents did, and because I’m now seventeen, and well past when they stopped having nosebleeds, I don’t think I ever will. The doctor said the blood vessels in my nose just open really easily, but to me, it doesn’t feel like they ever actually close. It feels like every one of my nosebleeds is a belated resumption of my very first, and twice a day, I only reinforce the dunes which keep the waves at bay for the moment.

Wave #1 I went to a religious preschool. They talked about God a lot, considering we were three years old. I missed a lot of class there. I would get nosebleeds. I don’t really remember the beginning of any of these nosebleeds, even though they happened a lot. I only remember sitting in the office on the corner chair, head tilted up and back. I still don’t really get why people tell you to do that during nosebleeds. I would always end up swallowing a lot of my own blood. I spent enough time and swallowed

enough blood in the office that I still remember it pretty well. The preschool secretary, to whom the office belonged, was named Ms. Martin. Ms. Martin would clean me up, give me some tissues, and tell me to pinch my nose to make the bleeding stop. Sometimes she would do that part too, and I remember that it kind of hurt when she did. Other adults would occasionally come by Ms. Martin’s office while I sat in the corner. They’d make a bigger deal about my bloody noses than Ms. Martin did. They’d want to know what happened to me, and sometimes also if I’d been pinching my nose, because that usually helped the bleeding stop. Yes, Ms. Martin would say, he knows. I liked Ms. Martin. It was like I was a regular customer at her diner. And I liked that between visitors, her office was always quiet. Sometimes she would talk to me for a while, but usually, she just sat at her computer across the room until my nosebleed stopped. I would tilt my head back and listen to her type. She had those plastic hourglass-looking toys on her desk, the ones where green or purple or blue water would drip down from the top when you turned it over. Sometimes I got to play with those when my nosebleeds ran long. I never really looked forward to leaving.

Wave #2 One of my best friend’s elementary school birthday parties was held at an indoor jungle gym, the kind where parents lose their kids among the dark, claustrophobic depths of tun145

nels, platforms, and ball pits. I remember there that we were playing tag, because I was chasing someone. I was running hard, and I was hot. Too hot. I was midway up a rope ladder when something dripped down from my nose onto the blue rope. The surface was too dark to tell if the drop was that deep red of my nosebleeds, so I chose to believe that it was sweat. I knew that it was probably blood, but I didn’t want to accept it, not now. I wanted to keep running. I ascended a few rungs higher until I tasted it. I couldn’t deny what that taste was then, not after I’d spent so many hours of my preschool career in Ms. Martin’s office, tasting that same taste. It made me feel sick. I had to stop running. I crawled out from the depths of the jungle gym, timing sharp sniffs when I felt like more blood was just about to escape my nose. It’s a good last resort for keeping nosebleeds at bay, and by this point, I had plenty of practice. I thought I could handle the nosebleed myself because of this. But this one was pretty bad. I sat alone in the bathroom with paper towels to my face while the other kids continued tag. I was anxious to get back to them. I hadn’t tagged anyone yet. I willed my nosebleed to end. I tilted my head back. I pinched my nose. I bled through paper towels. I swallowed blood. At this point, I still thought I could just wait for my nosebleeds to stop, as if one ever waits for a river to stop flowing. I hadn’t discovered yet that my blood takes more than several minutes of time to cease its onslaught. I got picked up early from 146

that birthday party. “Look how nice your parents are,” my friend’s mother pointed out, “coming all the way here to take you home early.” But I wanted to stay. I felt like I failed. I couldn’t tame it. What for? I was just a little too hot. I never finished that game of tag. Technically, I was still “it.”

Wave #3 The summer after my eighth grade year, my family went to China, specifically the central region where my grandmother was raised. I was excited to go. I was excited to breathe in the culture and the history of the land which gave me my racial identity, my defining characteristic in my mostly-white hometown. I felt, in a sense, like my grandmother, like I was returning home. While in China, we would sometimes split off into groups, my mom, fluent in Mandarin, with my sister, who didn’t know much yet besides numbers, and my dad, who only spoke English, with me, who had three years experience studying Chinese. Being assigned as my dad’s translator felt like an important responsibility, one that I was finally capable of handling now that I knew some of my ancestors’ native language. I was determined not to fail him, or them. But there was so much there that I did not know. Central China Augusts are notoriously hot, much too hot for my nose to handle. I had perhaps the worst nosebleed of my entire life in Yichang, a city I didn’t know existed until I got there. It was over a hundred degrees that day in China, so hot we had to retreat into a mall to escape the heat. I’d

already had a nosebleed earlier that afternoon, one that I thought was by that point over. It’s like I discovered before, though. It’s never over. We were lost. Cell service didn’t work outside of the country, and despite my best effort, I couldn’t understand the Chinese mall signs. I thought, however, that I could still help my dad exchange currency at an ATM. I could recognize the word for money. I could recognize the word for America. I could recognize the word for English, if I even needed to change the language of the machine. Maybe I should have recognized earlier that wasn’t enough. That I’d be so overwhelmed with every character I didn’t know in the bank without air conditioning that I’d get too hot again, and a single small circle of deep red would stain the bank’s tiled floor and confirm my failure to understand. Or maybe I did know then that understanding was a long shot, and I was trying to make up for the events of a couple nights before, when I thought I could help my dad understand the prices at the convenience store. Twen-

ty, the cashier said. Twenty...and then something else. I didn’t know. Twenty…? I struggled back to him. He repeated himself extra clearly. Twenty, he said. And then something else. I didn’t understand him. I couldn’t understand him. I couldn’t. While I stared blankly back at him, the cashier reached over the counter and pulled a couple of the bills from my hand. I didn’t even notice which ones they were. He gave me change. We left the store. I wouldn’t know until later that I hadn’t learned the word for cents yet. I didn’t think until later about how the cashier could have easily robbed us blind, taken all of our money if he’d really wanted to. He didn’t. I felt that I failed a good person by being such an inconvenience, failed my dad by not knowing enough, and failed my quest to discover my culture by not having the skills to prove I deserved it. I was embarrassed. I was the stereotype, the ignorant American tourist. Whatsmore, I was fourteen, so I still thought myself better than everyone else, and felt that I needed to prove it so. Then the first drop of blood hit the floor of the bank.

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The famous prerequisites for nosebleeds are temperature, altitude, and maybe fistfights, but I propose that stress has just as much to do with it. While I can’t get a nosebleed from just thinking about a test I have tomorrow, I do get nosebleeds if I’m under any serious pressure. It’s part of the reason why I tend to be early to things, because running late means rushing, and rushing means pressure, which means nosebleeds. It can feel like nosebleeds just happen at the worst times, but I think it’s really because nosebleeds are brought on specifically by these moments. Moments like being lost in a crowded, foreign shopping center, where, as it turns out, you can’t speak the language at all. Something I did discover on my trip to China was that you’re only allotted a few squares of toilet paper in public restrooms, which, incidentally, is way too little to stop a nosebleed. I could tell a funny story about me and my dad running cluelessly around an Yichang mall, trying to find my mom and sister while making a bloody scene in the men’s bathroom—but it wasn’t funny. I had failed again, and now, as the strange, English-speaking Asian in the men’s bathroom of the mall, bleeding uncontrollably over the sink and floor, I felt more embarrassed than I’d ever been in my entire life. My dad tried to contact my mom, in an effort to help them to find us. “Where are we?” he kept asking me. I was supposed to understand the signs. “Where are we?” There was so much here that I did not know. Where are we? Where am I? I was lost.

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Wave #4 Sometimes I wish that I could make myself cry. I don’t mean just manufacturing a few slow tears as a kind of party trick, I mean I wish that when I needed to, I could curl up in bed and break down until I’m through. I’ve only been able to accomplish this on a few occasions, and I need rather specific conditions. I need to be alone, I need to be in bed, and I need to have music on in my headphones. I wish I could know why I can’t cry in public, or even on my couch watching a movie, or even on my bed in silence, but I don’t. All I really know is the catharsis when it does happen. It dissipates pressure in an instant. In this sense, my tears seem to stand in contrast to my nosebleeds, which simply reinforce the pressure. I get punished for running late with a nosebleed, making me even later. My tears, on the other hand, validate my sadness, their arrival and departure directly correlated to my needs. When they do come, they come because I make them, because I lie down in my bed and put on music to wash myself clean. My nosebleeds arrive simply because it’s too hot outside, and leave my face highlighted with streaks of dry blood. During some of my breakdown attempts, I’ve run out of tears before I was done crying, before I stopped feeling sad. I flowed myself dry. I sometimes wish my blood would run out the same way instead, stopping before I expected it to, stopping until a time when I was ready to handle it. My pointless blood. Yielding to the temperature, and not my will. Compounding on external pressures, never regarding my attempts to relieve them. Once, by accident during a bad nose-

bleed, I learned how to make myself cry. If I plugged my nose and held my breath, the blood had nowhere else to go. My vision blurred, and when it cleared, a thin red trail ran from my eye down my face. I didn’t really need to make myself cry until after I turned sixteen. I think this fact marks my sixteenth year as the one where I started feeling real emotions, as the one where I desperately needed a release for them. I used to be a really edgy teenager, which is to say, I made sweeping claims to emotions too complex for me to yet understand. I had a lot of anger that I thought was just towards the world in general, and it manifested in the way that I approached my nosebleeds. I didn’t know yet that I was dealing with these nosebleeds the wrong way, and by extension of that, dealing with my emotions the wrong way too. But that shouldn’t invalidate what I was in fact feeling then. I was angry, and I was sad, and I should’ve admitted that I didn’t know at what yet, but I was angry and sad nonetheless. Believing that this anger wasn’t justified would hurt me later too. One night while I was sixteen, I couldn’t sleep. I was angry at this because I couldn’t control it, and also because I was angry at everything. I threw off my sheets, then threw them back on, then rolled over so many times that I was tangled in them. I should have kept them off. I was too hot. I sleep on my side, so whenever I have a nosebleed in my sleep, I wake up to a streak of dried blood across my face, and a circular stain of maroon on my pillow that my mother

would wash out. I always feel the blood before I taste it, like I might if I slept on my back. This time was no exception. I felt a drop of blood leave its red trail parallel to my upper lip before settling on the pillowcase near the corner of my mouth. I didn’t try to stop it. I was so done with nosebleeds. I was so angry with everything. I still felt like I was better than everyone else. I didn’t feel like I deserved this—as if crops which die during the dry season ever deserve a drought. Why me? I pleaded. Why me? I didn’t get up to go get tissues, I didn’t pinch my nose, I didn’t tilt my head back. I cursed everyone who ever told me to do those things. They didn’t work. They didn’t make the bleeding stop. They couldn’t. I lay on my side as the blood pooled on my pillowcase, and I begged. Make it stop, I thought. Please, just make it stop. The bloodstain grew wider and darker. The side of my face soaked in my own blood. Please, I surrendered. Please. I would lie here forever if I needed to. I would lie on my side until all the blood in my body flowed out my open blood vessels, or until I drowned myself in a pool of it, or until my nosebleeds ended. I fell asleep that night as my pillowcase sunk into red. When I woke up the next morning, I couldn’t move the right side of my face. It was held petrified by a layer of dried blood. As I became able to move, small cracks formed across the layer of blood, like a red salt flat. I was a mess. My bed, of course, was a mess. But I could wash my sheets and my face. It would look like the whole thing never even happened, until it probably would again. 149

After I finally dragged myself out of bed and out of my own blood, I saw myself in the bathroom mirror. I felt really stupid. I looked really stupid. Why didn’t I just go get tissues? I

touched my face, and the dried blood crumbled into the sink like an eroding cliff into the ocean. I was like a little kid who had just thrown a tantrum. I turned on the tap, keeping the water cold. I’d made this whole mess to try and prove a point to...my nosebleeds? I thought about all the times I’d stood over my sink before, nosebleed dripping onto the white ceramic. Why was I so angry at this thing that did not, could not even care about my anger? When I bleed into the sink, I’ve given in to frustration. I wondered if the previous night’s expression of my feelings was as pointless as I found my nosebleeds themselves. When I bleed into the sink, I’ve stopped trying to block my nosebleed up with tissues and instead just surrendered to it, begging for it to stop itself. The potential futility of my anger was too complex a concept for sixteen-yearold me to reconcile with. When I bleed into the sink, I turn the tap on to wash the blood down, but the water doesn’t immediately rush everything away so much as it creates a whirling mixture of blood and water, a red river that flows perpetually, angrily around the drain, the phantom rings of some drops of blood still staining the basin. Why me? The water isn’t enough to wash away the blood; it’s thicker than that. Why me? Interlude: Boys Why me? Five percent of Americans identify as bisexual. It’s way lower than the sixty percent of people who 150

will get a nosebleed in their lifetime. It’s even lower than the six percent of Americans that are of Asian descent. But somehow, despite the odds, I got stuck with all three. Maybe I should have anticipated earlier that I was different. I wasn’t much like other boys that I met when I was younger. I was quiet. I was afraid of thunderstorms. I got nosebleeds when I engaged in their kind of roughhousing. I didn’t fit in, and while there were of course some other boys who shared my traits, minus perhaps the nosebleeds, I was, by the time I met them, too busy being edgy, and pretending that they, along with everyone else, hated me. In this way, I was caught in a vicious cycle. I selected myself away from boys so early that whenever I would meet them later, my biases were already firmly in place. And my refusal to reach out, unsurprisingly, left me with few friends, which I thought then was just natural proof: I was not like the other boys. When I was very young, attending preschool, I think I actually was unusually sensitive for my age. I don’t think it’s unfair to say that I was pretty different from the other boys that crashed toy cars into each other while playing on the road rug. I remember trying to actually follow the road, driving on the right side from building to building. I was a weird kid. But not as much, I think, as I went through middle and high school. There were other boys like me there, ones that I still remember, that I refused to get to know because I believed I could not. I was closed-minded. I place blame on

myself for this, although not entirely. I don’t think my cynical teenage self was all wrong, at least not yet. He was right that there is a system in place which kept me at times on the outside looking in, like watching from outside the jungle gym all the boys I couldn’t play with during my nosebleed. He was right that there is a system in place which, as it teaches boys to play tackle football and crash model cars, forbids them from being sensitive, removes them from their emotions, renders them empty. He just did not know yet that the reason he couldn’t deal with his anger, the reason why he would once want to lie on his side until he bled out, was in large part because of this system. He didn’t know yet that the anger that he kept towards all the taller boys who spoke louder than him, ran quicker than him, and empathized more infrequently than him should have been expressed instead towards the system, that it was not these boys’ fault for his perceived ostracization. He didn’t see that he had fallen victim to this system too, and would later not even know how to cry because some other had kept the key to this privilege far away from all those poor boys. He did not know yet that one day, he would be capable of loving boys, loving people. As soon as I realized I could, or maybe even before, I fell in love with a boy. I fell in love with his sensitivity, his introspection, and his eyes. I fell in love with the fact that he was brave enough, bold enough, quiet enough to be everything I wanted to be, everything I always should have been.

There was no hate in this boy, or if there was, it was expressed correctly, not at people. I chastise myself for the fact that I once thought myself either too good or too inept to talk to this boy when I had the chance, and now I have to admire from a distance his silent rebellion at everything a boy is forced to be. When I see them, his eyes remind me of the desk toys in Ms. Martin’s office, or maybe the ocean, blue or green or gray, depending on the mood you’re feeling.

Wave #5 I had a nosebleed during the course of writing this essay, which isn’t surprising. I had overslept past my alarm, which was surprising, and thus, was running late for school. Whenever my nose so much as runs, I instinctively press my index finger to my nostril to check for blood. When I am having a nosebleed, and as it did this day, a red streak appears on the inside of my finger. I was under pressure. My nosebleeds, as I see them now, are simply an indicator of pressure. They tell me that I’m trying to do too much. If crying rewards me for recognizing my sadness, and recognizing my need for its release, my nosebleeds serve as discipline for my complacency, my failure to recognize and calm my mile-a-minute mind. They keep me waking up early enough so that I don’t rush too often in the mornings. They keep my ego from getting too big so as to think that I speak fluent Mandarin, or that I understand Chinese culture any more than another American. They keep me embedded in my routine, so that at least twice a day, I am forced to 151

slow down and coat a cotton swab with gel. There were days, many when I was sixteen, where I felt unmotivated and unable. I wouldn’t leave the house. I wouldn’t take care of myself. I wanted to cry. I couldn’t. Brought on by my slipping out of a daily routine, my nosebleeds would save me. Get up, they’d say, and fix this. I learned that to take care of a nosebleed, I don’t need to tilt my head back. I do need to pinch my nose, put pressure on it, but not so much that it hurts. Under these conditions, my nosebleed takes, at the very least, five minutes to slow down. Five minutes might not sound very long, but it feels long when you’re running late to something. I learned how to make peace with this fact. I made a mistake, and I am paying the price. I deserve this. Being late is my punishment, and it stings, but it is temporary, and it is preventable with adherence to my routine. It took me years of blood to reach this peace, and, almost as soon as I accepted it, it was like my nosebleeds realized, and the bleeding slowed. Now, when I receive discipline in the form of nosebleeds, I need only reach out to this peace, and let it lift me from my headspace of unwillingness or anger. I can remove the pressure. After the bleeding slows, I can wall my nose off with gel, and there it remains harbored until I become complacent again. It would be easy to discuss how, given this kind of enlightenment, I swiftly conquered this most recent nosebleed 152

and have now gotten past all the issues held in my blood. But it wouldn’t be true. I didn’t pinch my nose for five minutes that day like I was supposed to. I tried to do it for two, and then three, and then two again, hoping I wouldn’t be late, though ending up taking even longer than I would have in the first place. I wasn’t at peace. I still am not always at peace. I still sometimes hate the fact that I like boys. I still bled into the sink the other day. I still can’t understand my grandparents’ Mandarin. But I can accept these facts now. I can remove the pressure. I turn over a plastic toy, and the green and blue water slowly drips down towards the base. -William San Jose

new years resolutions this year i will be bold and loud and brave. i will take up space, as much as i need, and i’ll love and learn and i’ll smile and i’ll go out for ice cream with my friends and look in the mirror and love who i see and i’ll make new friends and i’ll open myself up. this year i will be kind and loving and soft. i will breathe compassion and empathy and i will give you room to grow and i’ll ask you what you need. but above all else, this year i’ll ask myself what i need. i’ll buy myself flowers and take myself out on dates and i’ll slow down and breathe and i’ll write and talk to my therapist and surround myself with people who want me for me. this year, i won’t worry about being perfect, i will create and i’ll love and i’ll evolve and i promise i’ll be proud of myself when no one else will. this year i’ll do what i want, wear what i want, be who i want to be and i will NOT be the force holding me back from my full potential anymore.

i’ll stress myself out and talk myself down from it and go outside and play with my dogs and have another gender crisis and question my sexuality and i’ll have no idea what i’m doing and write about the same two people and talk to old friends and rediscover myself and change and never get enough sleep and try to figure out how to talk to people. and i will write all about it. -Liyana Asaria-Issa

and i’ll run in the rain, and make art and be art. i’ll reorganize my room a thousand times just to mess it up again and i’ll make mistakes and read terrible books and i’ll write even worse poems and i’ll break down and i’ll feel alone and i’ll put on my sad playlist and i’ll cry in the shower and i’ll get up again. and i’ll smile through the pain and i’ll fix my grades and learn something new and i’ll feel accomplished and i’ll learn to love myself and i’ll be graceful and i’ll add even more photos to my overfilled camera roll and i’ll tell my mom about all the new people i meet and 153

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The Illumination of Unfiltered Beauty: A Portfolio by Anna Reynolds

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Anna’s portfolio conveys beauty in a way that pushes the conventions of perfection. She plays with light, surface, color, and clarity, and her effect is beautiful, powerful, and evocative. The obscured faces and paint streaked photographs display her understanding of the nuances of image; we notice color first, then light, then texture, and underneath all of it, we see humanity with beauty peeking through. We see how light and dark, exposure and obscurity, smoothness and texture, vulnerability and strength, live side by side. This body of work asks us to explore and break down our constructions of feminine beauty, teaching us to find it in unexpected places and ways. In her manipulation of image, Anna reveals the humanity and complexity underneath. In Anna’s portfolio, we learn to hold contradictory ideas – beauty, darkness, lightness, vulnerability, and strength – within ourselves and within our heads. We find the courage to see beauty in the countless contradictions of the world. -Kavya

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Acknowledgments We would like to thank the writers and artists who submitted their work for consideration. As young people, putting our art out into the world can be scary, but sharing is admirable and important. Each year, members of the GFA community work ‘behind the scenes’ to make Penumbra possible: Ms. Moore guides us through InDesign and patiently helps us troubleshoot technological issues. Ms. Sullivan tends to our school library and spreads her love of literature and learning. Mr. Jones is an avid reader of Penumbra, and has supported the magazine by incorporating it into his classroom. Our printer of 21 years, Furbush-Roberts Printing in Maine, makes our design and collation dreams come true. Mrs. Furegno and Mrs. Gibb help us with mailing. Ms. Waldstein and Mr. Baykal-Rollins nurture talent and passion in art. As always, thank you to the English Department—their joy of teaching translates into their students’ love of the written word. Thank you to Ms. Pembroke for letting us use her classroom for meetings, and to Dr. Jump, Mr. Kravitz, and Mr. Coll for helping the editors navigate a chaotic and challenging year. Finally, we’d like to express our gratitude and reverence for Ms. Greiner. Every year, she extends her devotion, enthusiasm, and beautiful taste, so that we can create this place for art and writing to live.

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A Note on the Type This year’s edition of Penumbra is set in F25 Executive. Created in Berlin and released in 2008, this timeless font is inspired by typewriter fonts from the 50s and 60s. We were determined to use a font that closely matched the 1979 edition of Penumbra, which was made pre-computer: typewriter but not too square. We chose F25 Executive for its warmth, roundness, and sweetness.

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How to Get Help If you are struggling with negative thoughts and emotions, worried about a friend or family member, or in need of emotional support, please reach out to the numbers below. Help is available. You are not alone. National Suicide Prevention: 800-273-8255 Crisis Text Line: Text TALK to 741741 CT Crisis Hotline: Call 211 LGBTQ Crisis Text Line: Text START to 678678 Trans Lifeline: 877-565-8860 Connecticut Alliance to End Sexual Violence (The Alliance) is a statewide coalition of individual sexual assault crisis programs. Statewide 24 Hour Toll Free Hotline: 1-888-999-5545 GFA Upper School Counselor: Stephanie Van Hatten, LPC, LMHC, CCTP- 203. 256.7550 svanhatten@gfacademy.org

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Penumbra 2022

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