Penumbra 2021 by Greens Farms Academy

Penumbra 2021

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 Eleventh Edition

Senior Editors SAMANTHA FREEMAN LUCY NELSON

Associate Editors MENNA DELVA KAVYA KRISHNAMURTHY

Editor of Equity and Inclusion JAFFIR WAJAHAT

Editorial Board NANCY DUER ANDIE DURKIN ALLIE FARBER MAX MORFOOT COMFORT OMOTUNDE

Staff LIZA DOWLING MARK FREEMAN JONTY HAMMER GUS MORFOOT TALIA ORBACH PAIGE PARISI EMMA SMITH CHARLOTTE WALTER

Faculty Advisor GAIL GREINER

Cover NETANYA BRAVARD, “iCovid”

Dedication

The editors and staff of Penumbra dedicate this issue to Dr. Daniel Jump. As a beloved English teacher, esteemed mentor, and head of the Visiting Writer program, Dr. Jump helps unite our community. Every day, he guides and empowers his students by engaging them as colleagues, making each individual feel seen and heard. Under Dr. Jump’s mentorship, GFA students are challenged to achieve their full potential as students, writers, and people. Each year, he further inspires and enriches our community through the Visiting Writer program, which connects the Upper School to the literary world beyond GFA’s gates. Dr. Jump’s contributions embody our school’s culture of empathy and curiosity: qualities alive in the pages of Penumbra. Thank you, Dr. Jump.

Table of Contents Poetry 14

The Fireflies in Our Future ~ ANNA REYNOLDS

Meaningless ~ RYAN AUDEMARD

He Would Give His Life ~ SHAAN CHANNAMSETTY

Hope ~ EMILY TWITCHELL

Her Lullaby ~ MENNA DELVA

Apollo’s Lament ~ ANNIE DIZON

The Stranger ~ SPENCER HENSKE

Journal Entries ~ ALEXANDRA MODZELEWSKI

The Morning Show ~ PETER LUI

Eighteen ~ SAMANTHA FREEMAN

Repentance ~ KAVYA KRISHNAMURTHY

Place 32

The Green Mountains are Seldom Green ~ CAROLINE McCALL

Southport Harbor in the Late Summer ~ TIM NORTHROP

Longboat Key ~ LILLY BECK

Summertime Shore ~ RYAN AUDEMARD

Reflections on the West Lake ~ DANIEL HONG

Path to Tranquility ~ SAMARA COHEN

Inishbofin ~ CAYLA BERNSTEIN

Great Blue Heron ~ AIDAN MURPHY

The Hollow Shell ~ JAFFIR WAJAHAT

The Fire Burns ~ JACKSON RASSIAS

Fiction 52

Between the Roots and Tree ~ ANNIKA WHITE

Quincy ~ SOFIA EBBESEN

The Folding ~ CJ SHEA

Christian Couples Counseling ~ HALEY NILSSON

Another Way to Disappoint Him ~ BEYZA KALENDER

Hayden ~ HARRIETT WELLS

Ice Cold ~ MAX HOWAT

These Sorts of Things ~ KEVIN KURLYA

Childlike Wonder ~ KATE MILLARD

Palingenesis ~ COMFORT OMOTUNDE

Personal Essays 78

Craft Interview with Leslie Jamison ~ MENNA DELVA

Life Cycles ~ MARY KESSLER

Photographs ~ KAVYA KRISHNAMURTHY

The Yellow-Rumped Warbler ~ MENNA DELVA

Missing You Missing Me ~ ALEXANDRA AGAH

Erosion ~ EMILY TWITCHELL

portraits of a girl in progress ~ ANTARA GHAI

Whale in the Sky ~ CHARLOTTE WALTER

Ecstasy and Orange ~ BEYZA KALENDER

Stricken ~ CHRISTOPHER NOLAND

101

Seaglass ~ ANNA REYNOLDS

102

The Paperweight ~ JAKE FARBER

105

The Portrait ~ ROSALIE CARGILL

106

No Place to Be ~ NEIL GAWANDE

109

Night Air ~ ZOE MONSCHEIN

110

Strength in Self-Identification ~ CARL CORIDON

Friday Speaker 114

A Single Step ~ RONALDO JOHN

119

The Click ~ CAROLINE SMITH

Art 9

LIZA DOWLING

EMILY TWITCHELL

JACK CICHELLA

COMFORT OMOTUNDE

ALEX LIND

SOREN MORRISON

GABRIELLE McFARLANE

SAMANTHA FREEMAN

NANCY DUER

HARRIETT WELLS

ANNA REYNOLDS

LULU WU

JEMMA SIEGEL

NETANYA BRAVARD

HARRIETT WELLS

100

BELLA BOHNSACK

108

MADISON GORDON

112

KATIE GABRIELE

Liza Dowling

I believe in specific observation as a way into deeper and more truthful thinking. When your writing is taking you to places that are difficult and uncomfortable, take that as a sign that you are on the right track. The pain is what you make of it. You have to find something in it that yields. I understood my guiding imperative as: keep bleeding, but find some love in the blood. LESLIE JAMISON

A Letter from the Editors For decades, Penumbra’s pages have reflected the creative talents of our GFA community, showcasing work from student and faculty writers and artists. This year, we are honored to include a feature craft interview with Leslie Jamison, an award-winning novelist and essayist who visited GFA this winter as part of our Visiting Writer program. While meeting with English classes, small groups of students, Penumbra, and the whole Upper School, Ms. Jamison formed a lasting connection to our community. She encouraged us to keep a journal, to collect details, and to continue to put pen to page. Moved by her words, we designed this year’s edition of Penumbra with the “writer’s journal” in mind. Many pieces throughout the book are reminiscent of journal entries, including a spread from one of Leslie Jamison’s own “cheap black and white drugstore composition books.” In the back of our book, you will find a page of generative writing prompts and a journal spread of your own. We believe that while Penumbra is a collection of final drafts, it also represents inspiration for new writing. We hope you find solace and insight in the creative voices of GFA. THE EDITORS

Poetry

The Fireflies in Our Future ANNA REYNOLDS It’s a divine thing, To feel free. To sink your feet in the earth and envelop yourself in the stars as the wind of a million willows flood your lungs, dripping off your skin as it returns to the ocean. A familiar friend, like fireflies our young hands tried to keep. Naive to the time when we are forced to sleep and the moon slips its head under, making room for the sun. Darkness. Did the sun forget its duties? Its promises to the moon and to the earth? Soon the sound of fireflies beating their tiny wings ceased, and their collective soft glow dissolving through forests of faces. Our faces. Time fades like the sun smeared shadows etched in the sidewalks where we skinned our knees and forced back tears. Wide eyes opened up to the gray sky in surrender. Until a new light peeked through the clouds, and I knew, there would be fireflies in our future January 20th 2021, US Inauguration Day

Meaningless RYAN AUDEMARD This world is populated with words that are said yet not meant. I believe. I care. I love. I dare. Affirmations—they’re candy to the ear, pleasant to hear, but every breath you take helps fuel everything You say that’s fake, and I just can’t bear it anymore, all that’s left is our war with words as we fail to make ourselves feel heard.

Jack Cichella

He Would Give His Life SHAAN CHANNAMSETTY He would give his life to swiftly run through the green grass just to pick that last dandelion, seek for his friend, the grand prize, as he hides behind that tall tree. Oh, he would give his life to open the window behind the front seat and feel his hair blow on his home street, watch the traffic pile up and drift away on his booster seat. Oh, he would give his life to smell crayons from pineapple buckets and scribble with them on every sheet, love a girl worth everything and carry no heap of pain along. Oh, he would give his life to replace pens with colored crayons and those salads with chocolate chip cookies. to run without feeling back pang and kick a ball without a cramp. Oh, how he grieves those golden times now he would kill to give back his life.

Hope after by Richard Blanco EMILY TWITCHELL Hope—a new constellation Circulating above the miscommunicating misunderstanding neighborhoods of our existence too distant to flip a moment but close enough to change a course. A constellation hidden by the overpowering lights in the sky constantly proclaimed invisible by the glare of the afternoon sun and the sirens of cop cars racing down dark suburban streets A new constellation— One that can twist and run into the tips of hair blowing in a train car wind or the soft tap of shoes digging into a plastered sidewalk. One that provides moments of simplicity, found when least expected or desired and one that provides moments of breath, even when already drowned in an unwanted truth.

Her Lullaby MENNA DELVA her fragrance ripples through the air our kiss softly lingers on my lips tiny pieces of her within me, encroaching upon my dreams benevolently burning pinholes into my skin upon midnight’s gentle breeze, her silhouette pauses in the wind her voice whispering in silk-hushed a voiceless lullaby enrapturing the vacancy of my heart she—a paragon of ethereality waiting in the quietness of the stars trapped in the luminous prison within herself she jades! for her, my limerence blossoms! i write to her but she hasn’t read a word

Apollo’s Lament ANNIE DIZON Powdery sand of gold, divine drops of crystallized ambrosia dribbled down from the lips of the Heavens, flickered aglow by the ocher rays of dusk. A stark contrast to shining cerulean swells speckled with the crash of white-caps far beyond the sandbar. Soft rollers tumble effortlessly upon the smoothened shore as if collapsing into the arms of a lover once torn away— they rush towards each other, legs racing rapidly, fastened to feet that hardly graze the ground, arms pumping to the pulse of tender, unscathed hearts. They collide, unruly flitting fingers clutching on to anything they sense in their grasp. Such is the youthful kind of unrestrained lust, a uniquely frenzied insatiability, a sort of violent passion even the most malignant of stars cannot thwart —intertwined, so the rollers and shore become inseparable again. The clouds dance along limitless horizons, twirling across Earth in a ballroom with no boundaries, moving in symphony to the zephyrs’ syncopated song accelerando: crescendo to fortissimo, lightning strikes with the blustering blasts of a raging storm adagio: diminuendo to pianissimo, sails fill with the whispering winds of an indolent breeze. I soar across the open sky, gazing upon my carefully curated exhibition of flawless creations, my Elysium of beauty. Yet a flash from the fin of a flying fish lures my eyes, windborne, only for a second, he flutters above his watery prison, chasing after the setting sun. A forsaken child, a woeful boy, abandoned. Deserted to drown in the depths of the fathomless waters, as his father forged on leaving only a tear to sacrifice to the vast abyss below. A lonely, lamentable demise manufactured into a parable to memorize; the drowned Icarus gliding over the ocean on his scaled wings still trying to touch the Heavens. 20

The Stranger SPENCER HENSKE A flood of faces Streaming past my eyes Coming And going They trickle by Then evaporate But my gaze catches On a particular face Where it eddies While my thoughts flow wild A whole life Spills into my mind Stories and memories From a life I’ll never know A bond That never was But then It, too Evaporates

Journal Entries ALEXANDRA MODZELEWSKI I feel peace October 21 I feel peace. Sometimes it’s disturbed, like the ripples created by the kayak gliding across the calm waters. Nothing will sit still in the breeze. I will sit still. I’ll anchor myself to avoid rippling. I will live in the depths of my own universe, a glistening star in the outskirts of the world. I will create my own waves. this is my life now… October 22 A better day Better than most The sun aligns perfectly The fluorescent rays kiss my soft skin Often the pieces on my board are scattered like pawns on a chess board. An exceeding story you feel will never end. But light sneaks into my mind today and the pieces on my board play as one.

I woke up, he did not November 26 It creeped around the corner like a demon disguised as a shadow. Today… I woke up. He did not. The memories of that night scurry like pests watching him slowly lower his head like a rock sinking in water watching his breath stop a light you never thought would die the whimpering of my family suffocated the room A sword plunging through my heart.

The Morning Show PETER LIU clouds start to tremble the sky is aging grey like the hair on my mom’s head I noticed just today the chilled car window bites the side of my cheek as phantoms in the forest play hide and go seek turn on the radio she says with a holler as z one hundred answers the next caller when the last song fades and drums no longer bounce Elvis Duran has something to announce “times are changing” “things are going to get rough” “we’ll get through this together” “you’re never safe enough” the sky slowly falls trees curiously stare up ahead on the road crows cry out “beware!” north st is quivering the cold air is shivering above in the sky the sun starts flickering they call it a virus which technically is right, but it will be remembered as a parasite. 24

Comfort Omotunde

EIGHTEEN

a poetry collection in progress SAMANTHA FREEMAN

10:07 she lets her chin rest on her knee, face tilted down. she glides the small brush of blue polish along the first nail—a pastel that matches her flowy pj shorts. she feels a peer through her covered window jumping up, knocking the polish over she pulls down on the already pulled down shades so no cracks of the black night shine through. she glances back towards the rug, holding the wet flat brush in one hand, stepping back to pick up the bottle—steady it. she pours acetone onto the hardening stain and blots the blue mess with paper towels. she knows that the one streetlamp on the other side of her window illuminates the drizzle with an orange tint every few seconds light, dark, light, dark smooth blue polish now glides down the wand clumping at the tip of the brush, not letting gravity act just yet It won’t blink forever, she thinks, one day it will stop stop forcing itself against the inevitable night that wants to remain black but for now, it blinks on she already knows the rug will stain a periwinkle, matching the dried spot two feet away. she likes periwinkle, anyway. she folds the towel over the stain and sits back in her spot, resting her chin to her knee, a few strands of hair mingling on her face. she dips the brush back into the bottle of blue, wipes the edges of the brush on the cylindrical edge of the container, this familiar choreography all to paint her next four toenails.

White Caps Watch white caps tumble Tumble themselves over Over sunken blue sea See what’s beneath Beneath clear understanding Understand how shielded you might be Be conscious of who may watch Watch white caps tumble Tumble above & over Over grainy grey sea See truth lying beneath Beneath blurred understanding Understand there might be Be more to watch Watch the white caps tumble.

Alex Lind

Repentance after Walt Whitman and Amanda Gorman KAVYA KRISHNAMURTHY One hundred years of solitude—of plague; To bring a city, city upon a hill, so slightly abominable, to repentance; Such slight repentance, but still, we repent! I ask, repent us of these sins: the gluttony, pride, the greed; Repent us of the blood spilled between two stories, one darker than the other; Repent us of the feathers we left in the grass, of the burnt white sage, of the slaughter and disease; I beg, repent us, to history who does not hear me—to history that will sink the hearts of my grandchildren, if we do not repent; So in my room before I sleep, I lie awake, afraid of my own dreams, Dreams of children, love, dance, hope, Lonely children, punished love, forgotten dance, but still hope; And I bury this hope in my pillow, and in the morning I place it in my hand; Tyrants fear the poet; white men fear words that shake the sky they know; But every night, the stars seem to be in a different place, And as constellations shift faster, burn brighter, I think that we may be forgiven after all; So in my room before I sleep, I lie awake, less afraid of my own dreams.

Place 31

The Green Mountains are Seldom Green CAROLINE McCALL I am lying on my stomach with my hands by my sides and my face sleepily pressed into the white flannel pillow case. My eyes flutter open. I can’t tell if I woke up because of the numbness in my toes or the soft light shining through the window, tickling my eyelashes. I push myself out from under the massive comforter to meet the crisp air and come to a seated position on the birchwood bunk bed, the upper bunk of which the top of my head now touches easily. I look northeast out the window in front of me, which is divided by white horizontal wooden slats. A cascade of gentle white light pours into my room. Each branch in the vast forest in front of me is enclosed in an envelope of translucent ice, trapping twilight inside. The sky is painted in messy swaths of pink, orange, and peach. The sunlight, peeking curiously over the rolling mountains, is refracted in every direction by the prisms of ice on the branches, creating tiny beams of rainbow over the forest. It occurs to me that the Green Mountains are seldom green. This morning, they are white, covered with snow and ice from the storm the night before. Mount Ascutney, straight ahead and ceaseless, stands tall above the other hills in the range. They look now like the whitecaps of waves breaking close to shore on a stormy grey day. If you look closely, you can see the observation tower at the top of my beloved Weathersfield trail, and two cell towers on Ascutney’s lower peak. I find myself there in the summer, when the mountains really are green. But the forest that gives them their namesake hue is so much more complex than that. Each family of trees has its own shade of green. The pines that dominate much of the forest are a deep hunter green, so ubiquitous that it’s subtle. The oaks are lighter, almost like emerald but lighter still, with lofty branches that let dappled sunlight reach the ground. Chipmunks rustle the leaves on the forest floor, and frogs repose in rivulets that diverge from waterfalls out of sight, but near enough to be heard whispering secrets to any creature who wants to listen. Summer is my dusty brown hiking boots and the fresh smell of the morning breeze, infused with pine and earth. It’s swimming in the glacially cold snow melt of Buttermilk falls and eating strawberries so fresh they stain my fingertips. In the fall, the same range that is today a silvery white looks like a Jackson Pollock painting of deep amber and auburn with splatterings of gold. Early October is gorgeous and teeming with memories of roadside maple sugar houses and warm apple cider donuts. The air shivers with premonitions of the impending winter and annual excitement over the first flakes of snow dusting the treetops. Spring is lamenting the end of ski season with my siblings, accepting that in the coming months, I’ll rarely see my cherished friend, constant and dynamic. It’s watching her through my window in anticipation of the moment that the buds burst and spread their color—unmistakeable chartreuse—over her resting body.

Southport Harbor in the Late Summer TIM NORTHROP The painters come to the harbor to make paintings, their easels standing tall on the green. Southport Harbor is nestled between a peninsula occupied by a large, open golf course and a little town. The water never gets choppy or violent; it’s too far inshore. The painters come in the daytime, and they leave before they should. They miss the times when the sun becomes lazy and strikes the ships’ masts as if they were purposefully constructed sundials. The sun’s radiance plays like a movie across the water. Tonight it’s calm, and the water submits to the show. It’s high tide, and as a result, the only odor present is that of what breeze there is. Members of a cocktail party sit astern on their boat, fast to the dock. Marbella. A man is being hoisted up the mast of another boat, working on a system to keep the birds away. Libertas. A guest’s boat is crawling down the channel preparing to pick up a guest mooring. I’m the driver. The dark water’s my road, the north anchorage my route. This place sees seasons come and go, members pick and choose the days they come, and golfers on the course across the harbor go home for the winter. But I stay, and I see that when it’s time for everyone to return to the undesirable part of their lives, the dock’s nails rust. The varnish on PYC 1’s tiller becomes rough. Ice creeps over the channel in the coldest months of the winter. So while the others drag through their monotonous days, I take out the work boat to break the ice. I take a pry bar to the rusted nails. I strip the tiller of its varnish. Tonight, however, driving is my sole responsibility. The hard noise of sailors calling over the radio. Another trip across the mirror. As the hull of the launch splits the water like scissors, I watch the sun part greens into the blues and yellows that made them. A bell rings. Ben yells, “Please rise for colors!” Shortly thereafter, the ambience of the harbor is shattered by the sound of the cannon. My passengers turn to the flagpole on the green and watch the flag slowly make its way toward the earth, like a curtain over the falling sun, where it lay dormant until the morning. I pull up to my passengers’ boat and grab a stanchion to let them get off. An older woman is getting off. Her recently-ironed slacks make a zip sound with every shuffling step across the deck. Her son, who’s already onboard their yacht, gives her a hand for the small step up to his level. She gets up onto the yacht and I push off and start heading back to shore. As my boat rounds the end of the mooring row, a cormorant crosses my path. The flap of its wings causes a disturbance in the water that soon gets covered by the wake of the launch.

Longboat Key LILLY BECK The midnight blue wave crashes at my feet and pulls at the sand stuck between my toes. In the moonlight, the water seems to sparkle. A faint reflection of the night sky above covers the surface of the water. I see a crab a few feet to my right. Its pale white body would’ve blended into the sand if it wasn’t for the faint red marks covering its back. It climbs over hills of sand and weaves between seashells. As it approaches me, every bone in my body wants to move, terrified that it will come and get me. But the water is surprisingly warm for January, so I decide to stand there for just a little longer. As if the crab heard my silent pleas to turn around, it scurries in the other direction, and I let out a sigh of relief. I look back at the water. The waves are bigger than usual. There are white caps visible for as far as I can see. Every wave crashes on the sand with a thud, spraying my legs with water. Seafoam litters the sand around me, waiting for a wave strong enough to come and pull it back in. I don’t know how long I’ve been standing here, staring at the water. When my legs start to ache, I decide it’s time to head back in. However, as I turn around, I take a glance at the sky above me. I can make out the Milky Way, a cloud of dust painting the sky different shades of rust and coral. My feet carry me to a spot in the sand, just past where the crabs can reach. I sink down into the sand, not caring about the amount of it I’ll find in my hair later that night. I try to find as many constellations as I can but give up shortly after finding the Big Dipper. Just to the left of me, I can hear my aunt laughing with my parents and my brothers wrestling in the sand. My attention shifts back to the sky as a star soars by, and then another. The flash of golden yellow seems to emerge out of nowhere and fade into nothing just as quickly as it had appeared. I let my mind wander as I stare at the sea of stars above me—memories of childhood summers spent here with my grandparents. I remember spending many nights like this one, on the beach, staring at the stars. I remember my grandfather’s chair. The needlepoint pillow sitting in the corner with “sandy toes are a no no,” stitched neatly on the front. The brown coffee stain on the rug below it and the closet to the left that reeked of his 4711 cologne. The little bowl of peanuts he’d have while watching his old wild west films. I remember the gold ankh my grandmother would wear around her neck. Her short hair and bright floral shirts. Her deep blue eyes that I see in my reflection every day. The peanut butter and jelly sandwiches made with raspberry jam. A taste so distinct that every time I have one now, I am six again sitting at the kitchen table with my feet dangling off the chair. Innocent and naive. I remember waking up at the crack of dawn and crawling into bed between my grandparents. My grandmother would turn on the TV; it’s light hum stirring my mother sleeping in the room next door. My grandfather wouldn’t wake up for hours, his light snores filling the room. The faint buzz of a conversation pulls me back into the sand. For a moment, my grandparents are right there beside me, pointing out each constellation, but then the memories slip between my fingers. It’s been too many years since I’ve been back here. I can feel the grains of sand sticking into my hair and creeping their way into my clothes, nearly a handful of it to be found in 34

my sweatshirt pocket weeks later after I’ve returned home. I look to my left as my brothers yell at me to get up. They look disheveled. Their ties have come undone, and their suits are speckled with sand. My mother will be furious at their attire especially since they’ll be wearing the same suits at the wake tomorrow. I slowly lift myself out of the sand as my feet guide me towards my grandparents’ condo. It’s not until I hear my brothers call my name again that I realize I’m heading in the wrong direction. The condo has been uninhabited for months; the new owners are probably moving in any day now. I turn around and begin to head back to the hotel. I take one last look at the sky. The brushstrokes of purple and orange fade beneath the sparkling canvas of stars. My eyes blur with tears as I know this is probably the last time I’ll ever be here.

Summertime Shore RYAN AUDEMARD The Jeep’s rubber tires crunch and slide on the sandy asphalt. Ready to go, my bare feet poke out the side door and my heel is met by a popped cockle shell. Sunken into the green oak leaves stand the worn clapboard houses that stare out at the water—a native sight to this side of the island. Ahead of me lays a tiny foot patch through the beach plum brush—a swath of green dotted with colors of the sunset in the form of late summer fruit. Walking towards the low thunder of the Atlantic waves, I am already hurting from the hot and coarse sand on my bare feet. I find myself in a place that is more than familiar. To my right lies the many times I caught dogfish and seabass with my family. The countless times I was bit by horseflies and ran for cover under my jolly roger beach towel. I begin to live vicariously through these memories; I become inundated with the physical feeling of my feet on the wet rocks, the sand in my dried out salty hair, and thoughts of long walks on the beach. The afternoon sun beats down through this morning’s clouds, the sand grits between my toes, and the seagulls unleash a smell of dead Jonah crab. I gaze out beyond the bend of clay cliffs to try and find the farthest tip of the island, and the familiar woody, salty, damp beach smell is wafted to me by the autumn breeze for just an instant. The unique smell has managed to sit in the air for as long as I can remember. I begin to sink into the sand and watch the same wave crash along the curving shoreline: an ancient cycle that never stops, it is something I know will never go away. Tires sliding and crunching on the sand fill my ears once again for what would be the last time. In the blink of an eye, days turned months that turned into years. There’s a pain of uncertainty that comes with not knowing the next time you’ll see something that is held close to your heart. It’s as if all of my experiences and time spent are being sold off too—my mind’s time capsule up for sale. My eyes took their last long stare at the house through the parting oaks. Eighteen years come back into my head. Countless summers. Countless seasons. Every. Single. Birthday. It was a rush, like that new autumn wind that leaves just as fast as it came. Eventually I, too, go. Just as slow as I arrived, still holding on.

Reflections on the West Lake DANIEL HONG The muted red glow from a sea of taillights drew me closer and closer to sleep as I rested my head on the side window, tired from a long day of travel. After spending three agonizing hours on the highway and meandering through the bustle of two metropolitan cities, at last we were driving alongside the legendary water. Half-asleep, I wondered why we had traveled eight thousand miles just to see a lake. But as we approached it at night, my eyes, fatigued from jetlag, were awakened by the West Lake glistening in the light of a full moon and the red lanterns radiating from the little pagoda on the opposite bank. It was like the beginning of time, dreamy and otherworldly. I leaned back into my cramped seat in the tight third row of a minivan, half convinced that my tortuous journey might be worth it. The next morning, we gingerly boarded a shaky rowboat with red Chinese New Year decorations lining the canvas canopy. Inside the boat were two cushioned plastic-wrapped benches facing each other where my family and I sat. The amber stained wood hull appeared to be artificially weathered to give it an antique appearance. While there were noticeable cracks and imperfections in the wood, it had a mirror-like gloss, almost like that of a polished ebony piano. The rowboat was roughly fifteen feet long and four feet wide, just enough to carry the three of us. The oarsman was a talkative young man who was skilled at multitasking: using his left hand to check social media on his phone and his right to gently glide us through the water with a single oar. On the horizon, faint outlines of distant rolling mountains vanished into a moderate fog, giving the sun a convenient place to hide from our view. The fog, however, did not extend below the horizon. There, the quietly rippling water could be seen for miles. Many other rowboats like ours dotted the water but they all seemed to occupy their own private stretch of the lake. Surprisingly, the water was not clear, but quite opaque, not as reflective as the night before. The endless surface was more like a kaleidoscope than a mirror, distorting my face like an abstract painting as I leaned overboard to examine it. I let my hand pierce the water, my fingers tingling with the sensation of the silky coolness. A sweet breeze, infused with the fragrance of jasmine, caressed my face. The breeze has a certain soothing warmth to it, like an iron ironing out the wrinkles in my weary soul. I suddenly felt a connection to this place, like I had been here before, like I had never left: some ancient genes in my body were awakened. The noise of chattering tourists on the bridge, the oarsman playing with his phone, and other boats alongside ours faded from view. It was just the West Lake and me, if only for a moment.

Gabrielle McFarlane

Path to Tranquility SAMARA COHEN In the darkness, Garden Hill felt like a completely foreign place. I sat up on the dampened grass, attempting to recognize the wooden shed behind me, knowing—without seeing— that the gardening shovels and dirty wheel barrows were stacked inside. The hill sloped downwards beneath my feet, and the fifteen solar panels that stood at the bottom reflected the moonlight off their midnight blue surfaces. Just past the solar panels, the dorm building stood tall, and the artificial yellow that shone through each window lightened up the dark scene. Up on the top of the hill, I lay my head back down on the grass, melting into the soft ground beside my classmates and letting my eyes fall closed. The thousands of white stars that hung far above our heads crept through my eyelids, the crickets sang in unison, and body heat enveloped me in still-dense September air—I felt overwhelmingly surrounded, wrapped in the unspoken silence of my classmates. I lifted my eyelids, almost mechanically, to return my vision to the showing of stars. They were scattered on the dark sky, as if in a pattern. The foreground of larger, brighter stars appeared to have been calculated so exactly enough smaller stars could be scattered in between. I tilted my chin upwards to locate the familiar Big Dipper, as it stood out from the other nameless constellations. Darker, reddened shades of black were painted around the sky in a circle with whiter, concentric circles of sky continued inward. A loud chorus of ringing from Dean’s watch told us that it was curfew, and footsteps started along the gravel, kicking up dust into the darkness as we walked home. ~ The sun gave the hill life again. I walked ahead of my group along the path, and for the first few moments after I reached the top, the bright afternoon sun and ancient green pines were just for me. The patch of golden yellow sunflowers at the bottom of the hill was now visible in the light. They seemed to be facing me, though I knew it was really the sun that gleamed above my head. I turned around to face the weathered shed and recognized the grass outside as where we had laid down the night before, looking up at the now-blue sky. The fresh scent of mulch surrounded the shed, and followed me to the rows of crops, lingering on the bucket in my hand. Further up the hill, behind the shed, stood rows of green. I made my way to the garden’s entrance and began my harvesting. The first broccolini head snapped off perfectly, sounding like rushing water as it landed in my bucket. The rhythmic buzzing of insects reminded me of the nightly crickets. My group caught up with me quickly, and the unspoken rules of the night before were no longer valid. I recognized Dean’s deep voice before I turned around, as he rattled off one of his usual riddles, breaking my moment of isolation. I half-smiled at his childlike giggle that muffled the soothing sound of snapping broccolini stems. Before I knew it, Liam joined in, scouring for any nonsensical answer to Dean’s jokes. I chuckled at the expected stupidity of his answer, but I couldn’t help but feel like my perfect, tranquil time on Garden Hill had been rudely interrupted. I tried to watch the murmuring bees dancing across the vibrant blue sky, relishing in being their only audience. The bees’ peaceful humming, though, only lasted so long before it was drowned out by thundering laughter. We were walking down from Garden Hill before I could even take in 39

the other rows of green and purple plants that sat upon dark soil or the radiant yellow poplars that had begun to spring up across the valley or the calm chirping of goldfinches. Instead the sour smell of compost baking in the sun wafted into my face, greeting me once I stepped off the path, and I wanted to run away from it, back up the hill. ~ By the time I reached the top of the path again that night, my classmates were already there. Their bodies, lined up in two rows shoulder-to-shoulder, mirrored the lines of crops, which were invisible in the darkness. I was met with the comfortable silence of another starry night, and I found a place in line to sit. The garden and the shed that stood behind me were camouflaged with the blackness, and all there was to see was in front of me. Something sharp stung my shoulder, but I refused to turn my head towards the person next to me. Without the heat from their bodies and the light smell of sweat that drifted through the heavy air, I would have thought I was lying alone. The quiet breathing of my friends beside me was pleasant, warming my heart despite the light breeze. Eventually the singing of crickets must have melted into strumming on a guitar, but the painting of stars was too captivating for me to notice.

Inishbofin CAYLA BERNSTEIN 4:45AM. Inishbofin, Ireland. An island with 120 inhabitants. That is, without the birds and sheep and cows and horses and goats. Up on high ground, I sit on a rock that’s cold like marble with a pencil and paper in hand, a cup of tea beside me that sighs steam into the twilight. At the bottom of this hill, fields of green are sable, splattered with the pristine boxes that are the cabins where we stay. I face North where the rolling mountains lie, treeless, nuances of ebony and navy just distinct enough to give them shape in this dim light. To the west, shadowed pastures crawl up to the feet of hills, now silhouettes, outlines luminescent from the shine of the receding moon. And to the east, the fields of a dark jade meadow blend into the eggshell white sand before reaching the coast of the Atlantic, the indigo abyss stroked with pale glimmers where a winking sun breathes warmth among the waves. Beside me, the high ground continues, covered in hairs of shivering groundsel and blushing poppy and lined in raggedy fencing. The fence, more like wooden sticks and wires, can barely be seen in this dark if only by the lines and curves shining in the black air. I blink my marbled eyes that are watering from the brisk air. I hold my warm mug and notice that my fingers feel stiff with the cold against the heat. The steam from my English Breakfast tea whispers through the air like a breeze. It smells of toast and vanilla and honey. I bathe my face in its mist. The air is bitter but tastes sweet and fresh on my tongue. I take a deep breath that sounds like the water purling to the east. 5:20AM. An ivory orb hangs in a sky that starts as honeydew at the horizon and climbs upward into a dusty blue, the work of an artistic genius stroking the sky with lapis paint on his brush as the morning creeps over us. The rolling mountains ahead are colored with kelly and army greens where I can see the bumps and bruises of rocks splattered among the green. Behind me, the bushes tickle one another, the dryness of the weeds rustling like sandpaper in the breeze. The moon to the west has disappeared beneath the golden hills, and the jade pastures are dotted with the shadows of bushes, Nature’s footprints. The finches and robins and sparrows have risen, warbling in the dawn of morning, their chords like syrup dribbling from the teetered grooves of a honey dipper: a soft and smooth crescendo as the melodies drip into the air and then recede like an echo fading away. Sheep babble to the west with the groans of cows who sound quite displeased about waking up early this morning. I can almost make out the conversations of three people standing along the coast, like ants. With my pen and paper, I scribble what words I can make out. 5:45AM. I am watching a goldfinch soar, cut through the blue sky as though swimming in a steady stream, when I hear stems and nodes and petals and tubes crunching to my left, the chomping sound of footsteps. I turn my head to see four dark hooves, legs like posts in the ground. They’re shaded a dark hickory that melts into an umber brown underbelly. Muscled shoulders and hips and sides are like cedar stone that twinkles with the reflection of the sky: a horse! A lone horse. She catches my eye as I stare into hers, the large black marbles, grey eyelashes spreading like wings from her eyelids. Around her eyes is a stone gray mask, but around her mauve mouth is 41

a snow white that crawls over the bridge of her muzzle and collects itself at her forehead where a circle of white sits beneath her bangs like a daisy. I tuck my notebook and pencil in my waistband and feel it cold against the skin of my hip. I approach the horse, staring into her eyes as they grow larger with nearness. I reach my hand between the wires of the fence, my pale fingers tinted blue with the morning chill. In unison with my outreach, she brings her face toward me, the strong exhale from her snout warm on my knuckles. She pushes herself into my hand, and I let her twist my wrist, push against my fingers to press herself against my palm. I put my hand around her muzzle, solid like a rock, her fur soft like grain, her touch warm against me. She nuzzles into my hand as if she, too, appreciates my warmth during this brisk dawn. There she stands dark like soil against a green meadow. Like the moon shining against a lightless sky. I decide to call her Luna. I sit with random shrubbery tickling my legs, and I let it. I reach for grass and offer it to Luna. I listen to her exhales, like the talk of waves along the shore. Luna breathes. I breathe. The island breathes.

Great Blue Heron AIDAN MURPHY From a statue launched into a bundle of grey, he rose out of the underbrush and into midafternoon, under the golden autumn sun, broad, rounded wings, unfurling, spreading them like a peacock fanning its feathers out, then a majestic glide overhead, out into the cordgrass returning to his domain, his razor-thin, but sturdy legs severing the spartina beneath ankles midway up his legs, his amber beak met by a dark blue crown and then black plumes above sauntering strides of royalty toward the bank of the river, a leap into the water, waiting, water ankle-deep waiting, patient piercing strides waiting, stalking his swimming prey waiting, striking quickly seizing his meal fit for a king then vanishing back into his realm behind the muddy ramparts.

Samantha Freeman 44

The Hollow Shell JAFFIR WAJAHAT The distinct crunch of gravel at dawn, as I walk over to a nearby bench, where my mother sits restlessly. Her gaze is distant, unfamiliar and vacant, as she stares out at the wildlife of the shadowed salt marsh, the coated blend of dark green pines and jade cordgrass mixing with a few light green elms and oaks that line the banks. Tears coat her light tan cheeks. “We shouldn’t have returned,” my mother whispers. “I ... I’m sorry mom. I promise I won’t be long. I’ll be right back,” I say, determined to see the beach I treasured so much, a place I was first introduced to as a starry-eyed three-month-old infant, the first beach I had ever been to. Coast Guard. I pass by the two-familiar shingled, snow white Coast Guard structures, their shingles colored lobster red. One’s grander in scale than its partner, both adorned with mint-colored shutters, hanging loosely by glossy, black, iron hinges. Dormers jut out from its gable roof, fixed on both sides. Summer is fading on this August day. A step into adult life, as my junior year will soon begin. Responsibilities I had never once held, a sweeping wave of fear, the death of my young mind. One last moment here, I promised her. Exiting the mouth of the path, I stand on the peak of the shoreline, gazing upon the landscape, a vast canvas of soft beige mixed with the burnt, tangerine glow of a young sun, just waking from its restful slumber. My eyes catch the gliding Atlantic, where seas of morning spruce lap gently against the coast, the spray of the crashing waves dotting my face as I approach the base of the shore. I clutch my warm mug of coffee in hand tightly, heat radiating from the top of the beverage, wafting a familiar scent, rich and dense, in nature. The scent blended with the long-forgotten smell of warm, frosted donuts that permeated the morning air, mixing with the dark, bitter strength of my grandfather’s cup’a joe. We would rest on an auburn-colored wooden bench, where the two of us would gaze out over the expansive rolling tides, frosting smeared on my lips as the sun shined down on us. Everything seemed simpler then, a time when life was of no concern, when I lived in the present, without mind of the past or the future. His aviators reflected the bright morning sun, with his navy-blue Yankees cap resting on his head, as he sipped his black coffee. He smiled gently, as he watched the sunlit salt marsh, gingerly holding my small hand with his large, callous, freckled hand, rough, yet comforting. The sun continued its approach on the horizon, as my small legs dangled over the ledge of the sanded bench, as the nearby scrub pines with their dark-green, bristle branches swayed in the peaceful morning breeze. A moment captured in time. A window into a past life. Standing here all these years later, I can’t help but admire the view of Coast Guard Beach. Shadows are cast on the rose hips behind me. Accompanying stalks of faded-green beach grass jut up from the wind-moulded dunes. The stalks dance in synchronous motion, their narrow figures pushed back from reaching stems of dark hickory. The dunes are steady, waves in perpetual tranquility, each grain of sand, older than life itself. In the endless tides, luminescence rises from the depths, casting away charcoal skies of eternity, dotted with departed light. The sea-green’s forced back in half tide. Beneath the retreating waves a shade of coffee-brown’s visible. Amongst the chilled sand, lay a single bronze shell embedded within the smooth reflective surface. Instinctively, I reach down to collect it. My eyes meet the foreign object as my cold hands hold the ribbed, 45

rust-colored shell of a scallop. The shell’s patterns evoke images of stratum in a cliff face, each section layered, a different shade of cream, caramel, or hazel. I stand firm in my position, rotating the object deposited by the great tides. I remember a time when smaller hands gripped a similar shell, one that was whole, a living animal, air bubbles popping from the seal in its split shell. The creature sputtered, the rusty lips of the shell gently moving, opening and closing, whispering secrets to me from its pursed lips. The words were indistinct as I set the animal back in the frigid autumn waters of the Atlantic, sprinting away from the mollusk as I went to join my grandfather at the peak of the shore. My laughter rang through the empty dawn-lit beach as my grandfather and I jogged down the coastline. A wide, pure smile creased his hollowed age-spotted cheeks, with a rich, tan complexion, short, wispy gray hair, and two piercing blue eyes that mirrored joy and life, embracing them in open arms. He wore his slim, steel blue and cardinal-red striped flannel shirt and his tan khakis, matching the color of the sun-drenched sand. Up the shoreline, I was carried, by my small feet, eager to move, rampant with energy, as my grandfather and I crested the hill, leading back to the path, where the old Coast Guard station sat, rigid, and sturdy, watchful of its surroundings. Its white paint shone brilliantly under the light of the warm sun; its red shingles bathed in golden sunlight. Its presence, welcoming, but fortified. Then, you were a friend, the guardian of my beach. My grandfather and I soon reached the pebbled gravel, up the path, outlined with tall tan beachgrass, life fading from their narrow forms. The memory dissipates. Harsh winds whip around my frame, as my bare feet sink into the wet grain. The beams reach the darkened, murky surface of the waves, now shimmering with glee as daylight begins to warm the brisk waters of the Atlantic. The spiral rays of gold interwoven with carmine and skyblue hues cast a shade of fluorescent orange light on my hands. I step back from my position near the breaking waves and begin a slow walk down the rising shore. Herring and Black-backed gulls blanket the shoreline ahead, resting freely on their chests, feathers tossed by the wind. Their spotted pepper gray young nestled under their mother’s wings, eyes closed tight, at rest. The yellow eyes of the parents, reflective spheres, view the beach carefully in sync with their rotating heads. A reminder of the eye of a lighthouse, in a constant state of alertness. Soon, I pass the wetlands of Nauset Bay with their tall, disheveled scrub pines and their twisted umber bark. The air’s a ghostly presence, left behind, years past. A mix of deepened spruce and fresh seaside air. The landscape conjures blurry images, evoking thoughts of a perfect time, when the clock was without motion, when naivety was a gift. I’m alone, in your presence, Coast Guard, left to listen to the crashing of the great-blue waves and the calm whispering of the seaside breeze. I learned your beauty from him. The time I’ve spent with you, before I could even stand, I will always remember, but you were not my teacher. My grandfather, he alone taught me the names of the wildlife that resides on your sloping shores. From the armored horseshoe crab, to the magenta beach rose, he taught me to respect and appreciate the life you bear, to watch the beauty of nature unfold on your shores. My heart longs for a return to those moments, when we would enjoy those warm frosted donuts and the deep taste of bitter, black coffee, and afterwards when we would run down the sloping coastline. Standing in the bitter cold, I realize that I will never hold his hand again. I will never be able to hear his familiar laugh, filled with his characteristic warmth. I won’t be able to speak with him ever again, his voice, now a mere echo in my mind. I won’t be 46

able to see him ever again, as his face dips into the realm of obscurity after all these years, only recognizable in hollow photographs. I won’t be able to relive those moments with him, standing by his side as we watch the dawn of a new day. My eyes drip wet, as I gaze out at the encompassing void of the deep, restless Atlantic. Clouds of steel rise in the distance. Leaving in the wake of my tears, I pass through the nearing path, lined with skewed picket fences and a bed of splintered, wooden boards, both a matching shade of weathered ashen gray, reflecting the darkness of the ominous clouds lingering overhead. At the peak of the sloping path, I look back to the darkened beach, with the rolling, navy-colored ocean giants, merging with the howling winds. My vision begins to cloud as the surroundings dissipate, the gloss, receding into a solemn picture, as I turn my back on the fading image of Coast Guard. That picture is what I will depart with. I can let go of you, for now I realize, my memories weren’t defined by your image, Coast Guard. They were defined by him. Without his presence, your canvas lies a blank slate, without definition, ready to be cultivated, for new memories to shape you. For now, I leave you, until better days approach. Only then, will I return, to greet your visage once more. We will be strangers then, and a new relationship will begin. Until then, I bid you farewell.

The Fire Burns JACKSON RASSIAS I remember the sound of something hooing, which you would assume to be an owl, only I always heard it in the middle of the day— this persistent smell of lawn clippings that dominated your senses. I remember the amount silky handfuls of yellow dust that poured from the trees, so much that it caked nearly every surface, including my four-year-old self. I wasn’t allergic to pollen then. When we first moved in, hundreds of these shrubs obscured the background. Carved from a broken brown clay, they had branches reminiscent of old rotting finger bones. The shrubs were quickly removed, with the exception of a small patch in the northeastern corner, and thrown into our opaque bronze fire pit. Those decayed branches created a warm winter, one with aromas of charred wood and an ambiance of its expanding moisture. Soon after, my family purchased a single teak Adirondack chair, quite durable. An interesting decision for a family of three, but this resolved itself quickly: it was around that fire pit, during that warm winter, sitting on that Adirondack chair, that I learned about my soon to be baby brother. Day crossing his nightly threshold, and the shadows of my parents and me danced as an infant fire changed the natural light across the imperfectly groomed lawn. After both my brothers were born, I never again heard the hoo of that owl. The removal of those gnarled shrubs also gave light to a ruined, beat up rockwall— constructed from arrays of mismatched stones that somehow just fit together, light refracted off of some and consumed by others. A strong breeze would provide enough force to shift the foundation, so a slightly adapted wall greeted us year after year. Behind that northern wall stood an onyx wire fence. Twists of cream honeysuckle encircled the wires, flowering white to contrast the jet. The fence served as a final barrier between my yard and the neighboring country club golf course. However, this barrier was anything but impenetrable. My brothers and I made a habit of scavenging the yard, searching for dimpled pearls—those golfers always overshot the fifth green. Because of our expeditions, we never had to purchase a golfball as we found infinite ProV1s, enough to lose five balls a hole, and still never see the bottom of the shoebox in which we kept them. Eventually, I grew older, the fence got torn down, and the northern wall got rebuilt to become something far more cohesive and robust than his predecessor. One day, my father wanted a real fire pit, so we discarded the old bronze one and began digging into our earth. We used the saved mismatched stones of the previous rock wall as a foundation. They insulate well. They keep the fire burning even without someone always there to tend it. Nevertheless, we were always close enough to chuck a log on. I now sit alone by that same fire pit, surrounded by the duplicates of the one Adirondack. However, no matter how crisp the new ones look by comparison, I only ever sit in the original—still in good condition. Late that night, while the fire burns, I find myself staring at the northeastern corner of the yard, where the new and old rock walls meet, where the fence used to be. Where the only remaining gnarled shrubs are, the ones that my parents never decided to clear out, and I just 48

realized why. Now, a senior in high school, I see these burning bushes as a preservation of a moment. A moment when a family of three bought their first house. A moment when their son was still young and dependent. I never stood in that corner in my thirteen years living here: I never wanted to approach the sinister shrubs. This childish notion cemented itself with me, and it warped my perception of those bushes. But now, I see them for what they are, the roots of my childhood and the branches of my adolescence. And this can be scary, especially to a child, but I’m not anymore. I know this now, just as the embers still glow, and I live the final year in my backyard.

Fiction 51

BETWEEN THE ROOTS AND TREE a novel in progress ANNIKA WHITE

Adira It is Addie to my friends at school, Didi to my Dad’s family, and just Adira to my Ma’s. To strangers, it’s a jumble of syllables–a handful of miscellaneous things found in a junk drawer. Not important enough to remember. Not valuable enough for them to take the time out of their days to practice wearing a new tongue–even just for a moment. It is an offense to my Ma when people mispronounce my name. She reflexively corrects them–sharply. Ah-deer-ah. After we take our seats in the waiting room chairs, I ask her why she had to correct the lady at the desk at the dentist office. Because that’s not your name, she says. I don’t tell her that I do not correct people when she’s not around. To the internet my name means noble, powerful, and wise. To me, my name is just whatever someone decides to call me. I don’t know why it is any more noble or powerful or wise than any other name. How can a name stand on its own without the support of whatever it is attached to? My name is not me. My name is a flag–bent and twisted by the wind. I am Addie, Didi, Adira, and all of the mispronunciations.

Look Like Me My favorite American Girl Doll to play with is my “look like me.” I put lotion on her brown skin and paint her finger nails hot pink, just like mine. She has brown eyes like mine and dark, dark hair, but her’s is long and straight and mine is short and curly. Ma peers into my room through my slightly cracked door. Over my shoulder, she sees me put lotion on my doll’s arms–sees me rub it in all the way so there’s no white. She sees the towel on my floor, polka dotted with bottles of nail polish. With my doll laying against me, I think about how I sit on the edge of Ma’s bed every morning before school while she kneels behind me. She lotions my face–rubs it all in. She brushes and braids my hair and sends me back to my room to get dressed in the still-warm-from-the-iron outfit that’s waiting for me. Ma sees my doll sitting on the edge of my bed. She sees me splash water into her hair, the way she does to mine so it doesn’t hurt as much when she brushes it. She sees my blossoming curls that barely reach my shoulders while I adoringly brush my “look like me”’s hair that reaches her mid back. “Why don’t you take care of your hair like that hmm?” I don’t respond right away: I don’t want to lose my spot. 77, 78, 79… Ma says 100 brushes a day makes your hair grow. “Can you straighten my hair on Sunday please? I want it ready for school.” I keep brushing. 81, 82, 83… “Ok.” Ma finally pushes my door open and sits behind me on my bed. It sinks a little with her weight and my back falls into chest. 95, 96, 97… Ma licks her fingers and uses them to slick my baby hairs back. I usually hate when she does this but now I don’t care. 98, 99, 100. Soon, I’ll look just like my “look like me.”

Harriett Wells 54

Quincy SOFIA EBBESEN My nightly routine hasn’t changed much. Every night, I still slide over to the cabinet, after putting Quincy to sleep, to pour a drink. It used to be a scotch with three ice cubes. Only now it’s scotch with one cube, and I pour for one, now that you’re gone. Our apartment hasn’t changed much either; except, I moved your book shelves above the bar, for reasons I’m sure you’d understand. I’ve considered switching to tequila: I hear it’s the only alcohol that lifts you up rather than brings you down, but I know you would say “that’s all bullshit, stick to your roots’.’ Tequila also reminds me too much of college; granted, I doubt the kind I would buy now would smell the same as the $7/a liter bottle. I miss college sometimes, or maybe I just miss you. Do you remember how we first met? You were sitting in Brooks, past midnight, on a dark-brown leather chair with a rusted-gold reading light. You wrote in a black leather journal. I came in frantically that night to write a paper I had put off. I remember exactly what I wore: baggy gray sweatpants, an oversized pink sweatshirt, and a beanie. The library was a ghost town, as could be expected for homecoming weekend. I sat at a light-oak table and opened my laptop to start writing; Then, I saw you. It’s safe to say after that my paper was days late. I woke up the next morning in your bed, fully clothed, with a hot cup of coffee and a bottle of Advil on the side table labeled with a yellow sticky-note that read “Take This.” You came into the room, a towel around your waist, looking fresh. I sat up, rubbing my eyes, and asked “Did we have sex?.” You laughed, “no, we didn’t.” I nodded. “Thanks for the coffee.” I shook the Advil bottle, “You need?” “I’m good,” you said, “I only had one drink.” You left the room to make breakfast. I spent a while observing your room. The room smelled of a fresh load of laundry and was tidy. It was quite plain. The walls wore two floating shelves that held only black leather journals. There must have been only ten then, nothing compared to my shelves now. On the desk was a small photo of you and a woman which I thought was your mom at the time, smiling in front of Niagara Falls. All I could think that morning was who is this guy?! I was intrigued by you, your obvious love for the pen and the page, your intentions with me. I didn’t understand you, so I wanted to investigate. You were put together; I wasn’t, and I didn’t know if I wanted to be yet. I had a future ahead of me, so I wasn’t sure if getting to know someone was in my plan for that time… I thought that night would be the last I would spend with you. We got married a year after college. Maybe that was too soon, but I thought I knew you, everything about you. We had our routine together that I loved. I would go to work, you would spend the day writing, and I would come home at the end of the day to our tiny apartment we had back then to sit on the couch with you, have a drink, and talk about our days. I would perch myself on the couch, and stretch my legs on to your lap, and when I fell asleep, you would write in your journals, and carry me to bed to tuck me in. As work got busier, I know our time together got shorter, but I was always there at the end of the night to sit on the couch with you. I remember the first night you weren’t there. I had texted you it was going to be a long night at work, and that I would be coming home late. I lied: I planned on picking us up dinner and surprising you with a romantic night. I even bought a new lingerie set 55

and wore a trench coat over it, like Aurdrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. When I got home, the bed was distressed, and you were nowhere to be found. I texted you saying I was coming home early, to which you responded, “Be home soon. I am out with a friend from out of town.” Who was this friend, I thought. I tried to think nothing of it. That night always stuck with me. When we moved into this new place, everything changed. You got a job, and I got pregnant. You were out more, and I was out less. Our nights on the couch seemed to have slipped out from under me, and so did you. When you finally came in to bed at night, we never had pillow talk or even sex at that point. I would doze off to sleep, and you stayed up writing in another black leather journal. Writing your life away. Yesterday marked a year you’ve been gone. Yesterday Quincy turned three months old. I read the journals yesterday. I have this fucked up ritual where I read them every fourth Sunday of the month, but sometimes, when I miss you, I read them to remind myself I shouldn’t. Yesterday was one of those days. I have been looking back to the past recently, looking for clarity or answers or signs or I don’t know, something. How did I not see the waving red flag that stood in your place on the couch? Why did I never ask to read your journals? I’ll never forget that night. I had suspected something was going on for a while, but I saw no place to turn. I went into the library, and sat on the couch with a cup of tea. My eyes locked to your journals. I picked up one, ran my hand over the smooth leather, and turned the page. Hours later, I was still turning pages. You walked in, your hair fluffed. The next morning you left. I ask myself every day why I don’t resent you, and then I look at Quincy. She has your eyes, your single dimple, and when I cuddle her all I think is I hope you are well. I have many questions, and it is hard having them unanswered. But now, Quincy is my answer. She has taken your place on the couch with me. I thank you for her. I imagine the falls are beautiful. Enjoy the view.

The Folding CJ SHEA We would play catch in the autumn breeze, tossing the four seams at each other’s mitts through the falling leaves.  I would huck in a few curve balls and switch up the pace to keep myself entertained.  You would help me practice tracking down pop-flys.  You would fling the ball towards the clouds and it would disappear for a split second at its peak.  On its way back down, I would follow my instincts and run to its destination.  But as the ball picked up speed, more times than not, it landed in the grass. We’d beeline to the pool afterward to take a dip before you would start preparing dinner.  You’d toss some refined carbs in the microwave and head over to the Weber to grill up some of your infamous chicken.  I would drown the meal in ketchup and chase it with some kool-aid.  I remember our poker games.  You had a stone-cold poker face which kept me on my toes and I would fold too early.  Hand after hand my mind would become fatigued.  We’d play until someone collected all the chips; but my lack of mental fortitude ended our games early.  I folded too early. At dusk, we would laugh over Adam Sandler’s movies till my eyelids became heavy.  You would wake me up at dawn with the smell of blueberry pancakes seeping from the kitchen.  You would drive me to school every morning in your Toyota Corolla, blasting country music while I listened to my music through earbuds.  You’d say, “Have a good day,” and then I’d nod my head and walk away.  If I heard you say those words again, they’d become a reality. I remember when they would bark at each other all night, making it impossible for my mind to settle. Only if I knew my fate, I would have intervened.  I thought the tension would subside, but it persisted.  Our daily catches in the backyard became weekly as you claimed to be “busy.”  Their screaming wars began to snowball. Waking up to the smell of blueberry pancakes became rare, giving me no desire to get up.  After one of your late-night battles, I remember the rubble throughout the house when you smashed the door shut.  The vibration shattered my heart and pierced my lungs.  A warm sensation jolted through my body as my emotions took real estate in my mind.  I was used to their screaming for another hour or two.  I became more restless in the silence, as it reminded me of your absence. The days dragged on and the nights even longer.  I would listen to country music on the bus ride to school, with my grilled chicken and white rice secured in my backpack.  After school, I’d drag my feet to the back door of the house.  I would pass by the backyard and glance at the baseball embedded in the overgrown grass from our last catch.  Our poker games are what I envy the most when I look back at my time with you.  One day when I was rummaging through my closet, searching through clothes and old textbooks, I found our poker set resting at the bottom.  I dusted off the front and popped open the latches.  When I opened it, the cards and chips were jumbled besides two cards that laid face down off to the side.  I reached for the cards and flipped them face up.  A Pair of Aces.  I folded too early.

Christian Couples Counseling after Stuart Dybek HALEY NILSSON A boy and a girl are sitting on a boat in the middle of the lake. For now, the water is calm— there is no wake to disturb the gentle rocking of the boat, and a slight breeze is the only force that propels them as they drift further and further away from the shore. Up ahead in the distance, storm clouds are rolling in—but they need not contend with that now. For now, the engine is off, and the girl is slouched behind the steering wheel with her arms folded across her chest; she turns to the boy, squints her eyes, and makes a face at him, as the late-evening sunlight drenches her skin. “What’s wrong?” the boy teased. “I don’t see why you can’t just tell me how to get home from here,” she laughed, as she gave him a gentle shove. “Hey!” The boy exclaimed. “What if something happens to me and I can’t help you navigate?” he reasoned. “I think it’s important that you know how to do it yourself. And besides…” he shrugged, flashing her a sly grin. “... I don’t know where we are.” She rolled her eyes hoping that it might distract him from her smile. She shook her head. He had been going up to that lake with his family every summer since he was five; he had told her that he once memorized the map of the entire lake, but she knew he could practically tell one island apart from another based on the trees that grew in its soil. This was her first time on the lake, and only her second time driving a boat. Nonetheless, he pulled a map out from under his seat, and held it out for her. “Thanks,” she said sarcastically, as she took it from his hands. She unfolded the map, and looked around. As she traced the wrinkled paper with her fingertips, she turned to the right, and saw what seemed like endless water that was bound only by pine trees and rocks in the distance. Feeling disoriented, she turned to her left, where a familiar group of cottages along the shore met her gaze. One of them belonged to the pastor, who had invited the young couple to dinner that night. Staring at the house, the girl saw herself, the boy, the pastor, and his wife sitting around a small oak table all holding hands as they said Grace. The pastor led the prayer, first thanking God for the blessing of having enough to eat; as she listened to him speak the girl realized that she had forgotten that many others in the world were starving; the pastor then praised the Lord for providing him and his wife the company of such a wonderful couple, whose love, pure and honest as it was, was quite unusual for a pair as young as they were. She thought that she had felt the boy gently squeeze her hand in response; she had forgotten how much she loved him. Sitting at that table, she immediately felt bad about the argument they had had before dinner—they had spent close to an hour bickering over how they would get to the pastor’s house. The girl wanted to take the Ford—though it was sunny before they left, she had seen a thunderstorm warning on the news, and argued that it would be safer to drive. The boy dismissed her proposal and said that they should take the Whaler—it’s a beautiful night, he said, the weather is perfect for a boat ride, he said. 58

The girl felt a single raindrop hit the tip of her nose. She hadn’t realized how long she had been staring at the pastor’s cottage. Now it’s drizzling, and the glimmer in her eyes seemed to say I told you so when she looked at him. But now she didn’t really mind the rain; After all, she had loved him for over a year now, and knew that their days were numbered; come fall, she would return to her home in Virginia, and leave the boy behind. Either growing impatient, or realizing that, if left to her own devices, they would never get home, the boy smiled and said, “Here, want some help?” She nodded, and the boy took his arm around her shoulder, lacing his fingers in between hers, and guided her finger across the page. He stopped when they reached a blue space labeled Bear Cove. “So, we’re here,” he said. “What direction do we have to go to get back?” She thought about it for a minute before nodding her head forward and to the left. She took it as a sign of affirmation when he planted a kiss on her cheek, so she pulled the throttle down, and started off southeast at 25 knots per hour. Before long, they had reached the inlet, and stood on the platform in the boathouse to dock. The wind had just picked up, and the water that was once calm began to rock the boat as it filtered into the boathouse. Struggling to keep the boat from floating away into the rip current, she tied the bow line while he did the stern. She wrapped it around the post once, before tying four tight knots—she knew that she only needed two, and the boy, who had finished tying off, stood behind her, waiting for her to let go of the line. When she felt that the boat was secure, she turned around. He pulled her in by the waist, and kissed her. She looked up at him. “I love you,” she said, before she buried her face into his chest. His embrace grew tighter. “I don’t want you to leave.” The current began to subside, and the boat stopped tugging against the line.

Another Way to Disappoint Him BEYZA KALENDER As she once again sat down to try and complete a sketch, she found herself wishing that maybe one day she wouldn’t be able to hear the continuous squabbles between her siblings. They had been arguing for the past 30 minutes about whose turn it was to watch TV, an argument her mom could’ve easily settled if she would just answer her phone. Their shouts rushed out from underneath the closed door of the bedroom and the “Give me the remote!”s and “Stop yelling at me!”s quickly made their way to the room she was in. It might have been her fault for choosing the living room to sketch, but she preferred the soft, sinking leather couch to her stiff wooden chair. The living room was happier, and the sunlight coming through the window behind her warmed her back and felt comforting, like a hug that was long overdue. She leaned over the glass coffee table, opened her sketchbook, picked up her graphite pencil, and began to draw what would hopefully be a happy character. And this would’ve been fine, except she often found it difficult to draw emotions she wasn’t feeling. In an attempt to drown out her siblings, she put on her airpods and opened a playlist, so that at the very least she could sketch without hearing, “Give it back right now or I’ll scream for Anneanne!.” Her ears soon filled with the sound of the calming slow strum of a guitar as the singer once again sang away his sorrows as he did in her ear every day. She began the basic shapes of her character as her foot tapped along to the tempo. The song always began more upbeat, and he always seemed happy at first. But soon the sadness that had been hiding under layers of filler words emerged, and the exhaustion he felt enveloped her. You left, yet the tune remained from the misty voice of this love. A tired gray surrounded her and filled her lungs as she slowly floated inside it. Missing is more painful than living could ever be. The harder she tried to reach the surface to take a breath, the farther she was pulled away. The memories are unbearable. In a small moment of clarity amongst the fog in her mind, she glanced back at her character and noted how much work she had left to do. The shading was off, the lines uneven, and she had only completed its eyes. They looked incredibly tired, with despair looming over them, like tiny reflections of the emotions bubbling inside her. She often wondered how different her life could be if only she could figure out how to be content. Maybe she asked for too much, and God took things away as punishment. Was it all her fault, for the ungratefulness she had seemed to show? Had it been her fault that he had stayed behind, and not left with them? Was she the reason all of them had lost him? She was drowning again, in that sea of grey emptiness. All she had wanted was a break, perhaps a breath of relief and all she had to show for this attempt was an incomplete sketch of a sad doll with ugly eyes. She just wanted to take her mind off of everything wrong or unfortunate in her life. A break from the guilt. But the harder she tried to forget, the more she remembered, and the angrier her strokes became as she continued the sketch. Was she so incapable of feeling contentment that she couldn’t even create a happy character? Having failed again, she spewed any emotion she could find, any rage she had for her mother, any loathing she felt about herself, any sadness she still felt about her dear dad, out onto that page to end this nightmare of a sketch that had brought up so much pain. It no 60

longer mattered if the doll looked happy because she didn’t feel that way. The fog had buried her inside itself. Then, the music stopped. The musician packed up his sorrowful words and left once again, while the memories he had dug up lingered as reminiscences of a cruel, unfair exchange. All that was left for her was her vain attempt at being happy, and the shouts of her siblings coming from the room next door.

Harriett Wells 62

Hayden after Regina Spektor HARRIETT WELLS You approached me, even though I was with my little sister and two of her guy friends. You yelled my name while I walked away. You came up to me even when others were around. Your six-foot-two-inch frame intimidated me. Your brown hair was quickly turning blonde and your skin was fried from sitting in the sun for eight hours every day. I could see the green through your squinty eyes. Your chest was hairless and your veins pulsed as you carried a bright red paddleboard. You said you wanted to take me somewhere, somewhere other than this small town in Rhode Island. We hauled the kayak to the end of the pier in Swansea. I could see our destination island from where we were standing. It was in the middle of the lake surrounded by factories. I had never been to this place before; this was your place. You pushed the paddle in and out of the water while I sat on your lap; the champagne you were so excited to bring sat in between my legs, and the puddle at the bottom of the kayak grew deeper. You laid a blue and white striped towel out so we didn’t get the sand on our damp bodies. Your sculpted body created a shadow over mine. Your gold chain hung down almost touching the tip of my nose. We looked into each other’s eyes and didn’t say anything for a while. We didn’t have to. But you interrupted our silence with, “You are something else, aren’t you?” Really? I could feel the butterflies flying in my stomach. I could feel myself getting warmer, looser, opening up. You wouldn’t break our eye contact; it was like you were waiting for me to look away. I loved the way you looked at me like I was the only girl in the world. But I knew that’s not how the world works. Even though you loved my eyes, you always ended up looking somewhere else. I liked being with you. I don’t know if it was you or the validation I had been looking for. I was the girl that guys went to for advice about other girls, not the girl that guys want to be with. But you were someone who gave me attention, someone who wanted me. I knew the people you worked with. I was close to them. They worked in the kitchen, while you worked on the beach. I know they wanted what was best for you and me. They all told me how amazing you were. How sweet you were. How you were good, unlike the rest. They said you were real, that you cared. You wouldn’t be with someone just for a hookup; it wasn’t temporary. It meant something for you. I saw girls walk up to you on the beach. They would talk to you, make you laugh, and ask for your Snapchat. And you would give it to them, with no hesitation. Since last summer, you gained 20 pounds of muscle, switched from working maintenance to lifeguarding, and you had the confidence you had been searching for after the sudden break up of your three-year relationship. She hurt you. I know she did, even if you didn’t want to admit it. You chose me. For our second date, I showed you around my place, Little Compton. I brushed my long blonde hair for the first time in a couple of days. It would never sit right; it was flat on the top and 63

poofy towards the ends. I tied it back in a low bun and pulled out some baby hairs to cover my cheeks that are just a little too big. I put on a white tank top and blue flowy shorts and painted my eyelashes black with mascara. When you picked me up, the first thing you pointed out was my mascara. You didn’t like it. You don’t like it when girls wear makeup, so I didn’t wear it again with you around. We kissed in the playhouse. We watched the stars on the golf course. I saw my first shooting star with you. You put your gold chain around my neck, and I gave you a charm with the first letter of my name to put on your silver chain. We always wore them. You met my family. My mom. My dad. My sisters. My grandfather. They liked you. You talked to them like you cared. When I was ready to leave, you stayed so you could hear the end of my grandfather’s story about growing up in Little Compton and being a lifeguard during the summers in the 1940s. You stayed to hear my mom talk about her job in Africa. You stayed to hear about my little sister’s boy drama. You stayed to see my “happy family.” I met your parents and your sister. It was weird; your parents didn’t speak to one another. I understood then what you meant about your parents’ relationship. We spent the night together in Swansea. We still wore our chains. You didn’t want to hang out, or when I asked you said you were too busy. But you still wore your chain. I could still see it sparkling in the sun while you sat on the lifeguard chair. Every day I would walk across the beach and try to get you to notice me; you didn’t. But you would Snapchat me later making conversations regarding superficial bullshit. Three weeks passed since we spent the night together. I saw you at a party at the beach. I was having a bonfire with a group I introduced you to; you showed up uninvited. You sat down without acknowledging me. We faced each other on opposite sides of the fire. They all thought we were together. They knew what I thought about you, how much I liked you. But you didn’t talk to me that night. You just looked at the fire, while I looked at you. Somebody said you were my boyfriend. Then another asked if we were dating; we both looked at each other not knowing what to say. Later that night, I pulled you aside and asked, “What are we?” You said you “enjoyed hanging out with me and my homies.” I wanted to understand. I didn’t know what was happening, what we were, what I did wrong. Our night together in Swansea meant something to me, and you knew that. I waited for your shift to end the day after the beach party. You said you didn’t want to hurt me. You didn’t want to hurt me like she hurt you. You took off your chain, but I didn’t. You said you didn’t want a relationship, so I said I didn’t want one either. You asked for your chain back. I saw someone else. I don’t know if I did it because I liked him or because I wanted to hurt you. You told me we weren’t exclusive, even when we were together, but I hoped you would care. You didn’t. I saw your post. So did my friends. They sent it to me asking what was going on, but I was asking myself the same question. They say she looks like me. She wears mascara and your gold chain.

Ice Cold MAX HOWAT When the summer rolled around, I left without hesitation. My parents and friends all got half hearted goodbyes as I shot out of my driveway towards the Block Island ferry. Somehow dockboys had become essential workers so the pandemic didn’t affect my plans for my first summer working on Block. When I got off the ferry I saw everything my mom dreaded. People without masks in big groups, people smoking cigarettes, beer everywhere, and loud music. This was gonna be awesome. I went straight for the only place I was familiar with, my grandpa’s boat. His boat had taken up the whole 125 foot slip on the end of Payne’s dock my whole life. I wasn’t allowed to stay on the boat for the summer, because he didn’t support anyone from the family working on Block after what my cousins did. I mean he wasn’t wrong, a boy that was caught stealing from work sharing a last name with the guy that owned the biggest boat on the Island wasn’t the best look. After reassuring my grandpa that I’d try and fix the family reputation, I decided I’d head down to the dorms I’d be staying in. The first thing I saw as I rolled down the scarcely paved road to the dorm was a tall lanky guy with brown hair, red athletic shorts, and a white sleeveless T-shirt standing outside. When I got closer his socks and flip flops became more than apparent and so did a nametag that read, “Hi, my name is James.” James didn’t seem eager to speak. When I said, “Hi, James” in the happiest of ways I received a grunt like response. He then shuffled through the door and brought me to what I could only assume was my room. While I was unpacking my things some dude with long hair, colorful patterned clothes, and a visor busted through the door like the kool-aid man and yelled, “Block Island Baby.” This was apparently Rob. Rob was 22, had been working at the dock for 4 years, and didn’t plan on stopping till the day he died. Rob was from Louissville, Kentucky and had chosen to not go to college because he believed he could make it in the docking business. He introduced me to all of the other guys that worked at the dock and showed me all the places on the island that “tourists’’ would never know about. Turned out he was my roommate, and by the time he had unpacked everything our room was filled with posters of brazilian models in bikinis and his favorite rappers. After not being able to sleep because of Rob’s music pouring out of his headphones all night I had my first shift tying up boats. I got dressed in my collared blue shirt, khaki shorts, and belt while simultaneously running down to the dock in fear of being late. The job was amazing. I understood why Rob might’ve thought he could make a living off this because the tips were divine. Midway through the summer I realized that something wasn’t adding up. How was Rob making money from tips? He just sold the ice. Who the hell would tip someone for selling them ice? Rob was making more money than the Dockmaster himself. When we were on break I ended up asking Rob how he did it. He wasn’t charming enough to persuade people into tipping him. Where was the money coming from? He ended up pulling me into the ice shack, looking around to make sure no one was looking, and we started to wait for a customer. I couldn’t wait to see this. A woman came up with her two kids and asked him for a pound of ice. As he motioned for me to go get the ice from the back of the building I heard him 65

say a price. A price that caught my attention. That wasn’t the right price, it was a dollar more. It all made sense now. One hundred people had to go in their daily to purchase AT LEAST a pound of ice, sometimes up to twenty. I didn’t know what came over me, but I needed to say something to my boss. I walked out of the shack and straight into the office. I knew what I had to do. The next day the posters and beer cans from my room had gotten on the ferry and left for Kentucky. No more unwelcomed sleepless nights due to music, no more screaming in the room while I tried to read, but most importantly, Rob could no longer steal from the innocent on Block Island. As word got around of my good deeds, my pay increased, and my grandfather’s smile grew by the day. The family that had doubted me revoked their claims when they came out and heard the good things from my boss and grandpa. I was partying and meeting girls from all over the country every weekend while also getting praise from my family. I was the king of the world. As the summer came to a close my whole extended family and I had a big dinner on my grandpa’s boat. My grandpa insisted that I show off my work uniform to the rest of the family. Smiles and laughs echoed around the table for the first time in what felt like forever and it made me feel amazing that it was because of what I was doing. At the end of the dinner my grandpa stood up from his chair and banged his glass with his spoon. “Harry, you have made me so proud. You’ve made it clear that we still have hard workers left in this family, and you’ve proved that to the whole island. I mean for god sakes you’re making more than the dockmaster himself just from selling ice.”

These Sorts of Things KEVIN KURLYA “Krebs went to the war from a Methodist college in Kansas. There is a picture which shows him among his fraternity brothers, all of them wearing exactly the same height and style collar. He enlisted in the Marines in 1917 and did not return to the United States until the second division returned from the Rhine in the summer of 1919” – Ernest Hemingway, “Soldier’s Home” “The 1918 influenza pandemic was the most severe pandemic in recent history. It was caused by an H1N1 virus with genes of avian origin. Although there is not universal consensus regarding where the virus originated, it spread worldwide during 1918-1919. In the United States, it was first identified in military personnel in spring 1918… The number of deaths was estimated to be at least 50 million worldwide with about 675,000 occurring in the United States.” – CDC, “1918 Pandemic” Krebs noticed that the distant claps of thunder sounded a lot like the 10-inch guns. The overcast sky was growing increasingly dark and throwing a shadow over the miles of trenches on either side of him. After he glanced down the right and saw the 9th battalion hunched as they tugged off their helmets to pull on their rain slicks, Krebs turned on the damp, wooden fire step to point this out to Maury. The short man from Boston was mildly surprised when he realized that thunderclaps were mixed into the rolling artillery that was almost entirely coming from behind the friendly lines. He peaked his shock of red hair over the top of the paper that he was reading. “Hey Krebs, check this out,” he said as he shook out his newspaper and displayed page 2A to him. Krebs leaned in with his eyebrows slightly raised to read the article as Maury shook the paper out and angled it towards him. “Some Jerry doctor reckons that there are these little things called gurms that spread diseases.” Avery looked up from lighting his cigarette. His green eyes brightened as he removed his cupped hands and flicked a match into the dirt. Krebs knew that he had been a scholar before this. He hadn’t let the war take that away from him yet. Avery shook back his sandy hair and blew smoke into the air. “They’re pronounced ‘germs’ and yeah, they are responsible for that mess.” He waved his hand in the direction of the back lines. Nobody questioned what he was gesturing towards. The hospital tents had been packed for a week and hundreds of thousands of people–no, soldiers, Krebs thought–had been dying. A year ago, Krebs would have pursued this conversation. After all, he had talked about it in college with Dr. Kelly. It wasn’t that he wasn’t interested now, he just didn’t see the point of it. Krebs remembered the last man who he had seen take an interest in something. The artillery sirens had sounded, and everyone had sprinted for niches in the sides of the trenches. Everyone except for one man. The noise had caused him to fumble with his wallet, and a picture had fallen out. Krebs hadn’t seen what the picture was of. He stumbled out of his seat and chased after that picture and in that split second that the man was exposed––there were just more important things to focus on. Maury stared at his boots for a moment and then looked up at each man’s face, his gaze finally falling upon something behind Krebs’s shoulder. Turning, he saw a man violently coughing as he was escorted by a medic with a gloved hand on his shoulder back from the front. Turning back to face the group, Krebs saw a morose look pass over Maury’s face. “This is scarier than when 67

the Krauts come over the top at us,” he said. He mindlessly placed his middle finger and thumb together and flicked a spider that had been trying to sneak by the group unnoticed. Avery frowned. For the first time, Mcgowan spoke up from a shadowed corner. He pushed his dark hair out of his eyes and sat forward on the firing step. He forced a single, mirthless chuckle and rested his forearms on his thighs. “At least they are upfront about trying to kill us.” Their dark laughter took on a gaseous form as it mixed into the dark cloud cover. Krebs hadn’t noticed that it had begun to rain. The precipitation was light for now; it made a gentle ping as it made contact with the brim of his helmet. Krebs sighed as he tugged out the weathered poncho from his bag. The rain was sure to pick up, but no matter. He had learned to ignore these sorts of things in the army. A private jogged up to the group of men from down the line. “Ha-Harold Krebs?” he stuttered as he surveyed the group. Krebs hadn’t been called by that name in a long time. The private was really only a boy; if he really was 18, then his birthday must have been only a month before he was shipped overseas. His eyes flitted around the circle until Krebs gave a curt nod. Breathing hard, the private handed a furled up piece of paper to him and quickly scurried away. His boots squelched in the rapidly softening ground and sent up debris into the air. “Watch it!” Mcgowan yelled after him, wiping flecks of mud out of his dark eyes. Eyebrows furrowed, Krebs opened the letter. He spread the slip of paper over his knees and huddled over it to keep off the tempestuous downpour. Krebs, I’m not doing too well. I’ve got the flu and I’m in the medical tents right now. I’m writing because I want to ask you to do something no man should ever have to do. Please tell my mother about me when you get back. Because you will get back. Peaks He suddenly found it much harder than before to look at the three men sitting around him. The low loops of his “g”s were the same as they were when they were just boys, when they had just been Harold and Charlie. Charlie was three streets over, and one June day the pair had raced past the town fountain to the baseball field before Charlie’s mother could tell them to sand and paint the old fence around the perennial beds. They didn’t touch their weathered leather gloves or the roughly sewn ball once. They sat in the open field, and Krebs asked Charlie, “Do you think we’re bad for not painting the fence?” “If you were bad you wouldn’t ask that.” Charlie grinned at him and grabbed a handful of grass and threw it at Krebs. They walked home. Charles Henry Peaks was the only person who had accompanied Krebs to war from his hometown, had graduated with him, and now Krebs wouldn’t accompany him back. How could he? Krebs was glad that the rain had picked up, for it disguised the slight watering of his eyes from his comrades. He had been the man who had signed his name under Harold’s bad handwriting at the little table run by the two men dressed in olive fatigues with a flourish, a death warrant. Krebs felt like dropping down on all fours and vomiting. In the low loops of Peaks’s “g”s, Krebs saw an empty baseball field, the grass wild and unkempt and the infield filled with dandelions. Something must have shown on his face, because Avery looked at him concernedly. “What’s wrong, Krebs?” Avery asked. Maury had noticed too. He leaned forward, cocked his head, and waited intently as Krebs stared at the pooling rust-colored water. Krebs opened his mouth, but no sound came out. He sat back and let the persistent downpour fall onto the paper spread across his lap. The ink began to run. Krebs heaved a breath. “Peaks is sick,” he said quietly. 68

“What was that?” Maury raised his voice, but Avery had heard. Krebs raised his voice a little and tried to keep the quavering out of it. “Somebody is sick.” Neither of the men knew Peaks. They were in different battalions, after all. “Somebody is sick? No shit, Krebs,” McGowan said. He and Maury guffawed, but Avery stayed silent. They were crows, they glided above no mans land and greedily feasted upon the woes of the fallen with joyous caws. A lump was forming in Krebs’s throat, and he felt something white hot course through his veins. Avery looked at Krebs and said, “He was your friend from your hometown, right?” Krebs tried to speak, but as he opened his mouth the words snagged in his throat like barbed wire. He closed his mouth, bowed his head, and nodded once. Maury noticed that he was not at all entertained by Mcgowan’s comment and pursed his lips in an attempt to not smile. But then he made eye contact with him and the pair sniggered. “Come on, Krebs,” Maury finally said. McGowan chimed in. “Yeah Krebs, it’s not like your mother was shot in front of you. It’s war, these things happen.” But Krebs didn’t know if he could feel this way about his mother’s death. This was different. “Guys, come on. Don’t jump down his throat, it’s his friend,” said Avery. “So what?” McGowan’s eyes flashed like the scope of a sniper. “I’ve had people get shot next to me, and you don’t hear me bitching about it.” The bullets he fired at Krebs tore through his skin, puncturing deep and began to ooze. It was raining harder now. “It’s not like you could have done anything about it,” said Maury matter of factly. McGowan spoke again, but it was in a softer tone than before. “Look, Krebs, we know better than anyone what you are going through. It’s hard.” Maury suddenly shifted in his seat. A cat was trying to take shelter in a nook near his feet. He kicked out, and his muddy boots made contact. “It’s the worst. But you have to move on.” Avery furrowed his eyebrows. “It’s not that easy to fucking forget about sombody.” “Nobody ever said it was.” McGowan pulled out a tarnished hip flask and took a sip. He winced, then continued. “You can’t live life in the past, Krebs. We’re soldiers, not playwrights.” Maury nodded. Avery looked at Krebs. “Do you wanna go and pick up our dinner rations?” Krebs looked at MaGowan who had leaned back into his corner and then back at Avery. He scrubbed his nose and cleared his throat. “I’m not that hungry now, let’s just go later.” Krebs fished around in his haversack, looking for his pack of cigarettes. He pulled it out, but it was empty. He looked back at Avery. “Can I have a smoke?” He bumped the pack softly against his leg and held it up to Krebs. His hand shook slightly as he stretched it out and drew one. Wordlessly, Maury struck a match, and held his hand up to shield the ember from the rhythm of water. Krebs inhaled deeply. Charlie and he had once stolen a pack from a gas station. When they had tried them for the first time, Charlie had coughed so much that he hadn’t dared to try it. Now, Krebs thought, as he brushed the tip of his nose with a forefinger that was loosely clutching the paper, it wasn’t that bad really. Maury continued reading the article, “Anyways, this guy is saying that germs are little things that we can’t see, and they can go inside you and get you sick.” One gets used to these sorts of things in the army. 69

Anna Reynolds 70

Childlike Wonder after Regina Spektor KATE MILLARD Do you remember when the moon was your most loyal companion? Whenever you pressed your face against the minivan window at night, it was there. Suspended in the black velvet sky, it followed you all the way home to make sure you arrived safely. Do you remember when you thought your American Girl Doll’s hair would grow back after you hacked it off with safety scissors? Even after your mom told you that Kit was now stuck with the choppy bob, you held out hope that golden locks would sprout from her plastic head. Do you remember when you passed those oil refineries along the highway and thought they were cloud factories? You gazed at the marshmallow-like puffs, mesmerized by the way they danced in the wind, as they floated up from the tall stacks to join the others. Do you remember when the moon was always there to tuck you in as a little girl? Well, now, as a grown up, you spend countless hours confined to this bed, staring at the ceiling panels until dawn. At some point every night, the moon slips away in the midst of the whirring machines and the prodding nurses and needles. It leaves you alone as you recede into the scratchy hospital sheets. Now it’s the sun that tucks you in. Do you remember when you thought Kit’s hair would grow back? If only you were right. Because now you lean over the vanity in the sterile bathroom and untie the bandana covering your head. You run your fingers over your skull and through the scattered tufts of peach fuzz that give it its patchy appearance. Do you remember when you were mesmerized by the haze emerging from the cloud factories? Well, now you might lose your mind if you keep watching the mask on that respirator fog up with each shallow breath. It’s impossible to ignore as it sits on your nose and leaves indents in your jaundiced skin. Just like the vapors escaping from the smokestacks, the machine hisses. You didn’t know it then, but the clouds escaping from the chimney were pollutants. Every breath you take is poisoned. This respirator is the only thing keeping you down here on Earth, but you wish you could rip the mask’s elastic straps right off your face. You would float up into the atmosphere like the clouds from the factories, and you would find your long-lost friend, the moon. You would nestle into a crater, and the midnight sky would swaddle you in velvet. From your place in the Milky Way, you would follow every innocent little girl home each night and tuck her into bed. You would smile as she butchered her doll’s hair, too innocent to understand that some things are damaged beyond regrowth. The nurse comes in to take your vitals. Another tuft of hair flutters around and lands on the rubber tile floor. It’s been a long day. You turn over in the bed, away from the fluorescent glow of the monitors. Out the window, above the orange haze of the parking garage, the night sky is blacker than ink. Goodnight moon. Wherever you are. 71

a graphic novel in progress COMFORT OMOTUNDE

Personal Essays 75

“I chose this particular spread because it’s representative in a particular and important way: on one side, it holds some scribbled thoughts for a novel draft, and on the other side it holds my daily to do list, which breaks down different things I want to write, but also the rest of life: daycare arrangements, emails to 76

students, professional correspondence, the daily gratitude list I circulate with friends...writing life and daily life are always happening together. The notebook holds that.” - LESLIE JAMISON 77

Craft Interview with Leslie Jamison MENNA DELVA INTERVIEWER: What was the first book that made you cry? LESLIE JAMISON: I think it was probably The Phantom Tollbooth. It was either that or The Red Pony, and I wish I could give you a more definitive answer. The Phantom Tollbooth was certainly the first book that I remember completely just falling utterly in love with and being utterly moved by. Have you ever read The Phantom Tollbooth? No, I have never.

INTERVIEWER:

LESLIE JAMISON: So The Phantom Tollbooth is about this little boy named Milo who is like totally, completely bored by his own life and one day he gets this tollbooth in the mail and he pulls it out of the box, and it comes with a little car, and when he goes to the tollbooth, it takes him to this kind of like enchanted land where there’s like a kingdom of numbers and a kingdom of words. I just remember feeling like, I mean feeling I think among other things even though I wouldn’t have said to myself this way at the time, that it was like a metaphor for reading itself: that you could sort of be lifted out of the tedium of everyday experience and delivered somewhere else. I think it struck some chord in me around being a child who felt like life was happening somewhere else... a kind of feeling of FOMO at a very young age, exclusion or outsider-hood. And then to feel like there might be ways that you could enter into experience... something as simple as the tollbooth you get in the mail. I think that’s the emotional chord it struck in me. So it was either that or the pony dying in The Red Pony. INTERVIEWER: And were these children books? LESLIE JAMISON: The Phantom Tollbooth is a chapter book for kids that I probably read when I was seven or something like that. And yes, The Red Pony is an adult book by John Steinback, but in my school, they had a sort of philosophy about having kids read adult books very early on. At the time, I think my parents were like, “Why are you reading The Red Pony?” But I actually think it wasn’t bad to be in this space where you offer yourself up to a book, and you aren’t exactly sure what it is going to do to you, and you can’t quite control what it is going to do to you. I think there is something useful and powerful about that.

So as a girl, what were your passions?

INTERVIEWER:

LESLIE JAMISON: My passions were getting my older brothers to love me, for sure. I had two older brothers, and they were these kind of mysterious, godly figures to me. They were nine years and ten years older than me, and I really worshipped them when I was young. And because they were both quite reserved, I think I would often become passionate about the things that they were passionate about as a way of finding them because they didn’t make themselves readily available in other ways. And so I remember there was a season, and they were big fans of the Washington Redskins, and I remember there were a couple of seasons in the early ‘90s when I was like maybe 8, 9, 10 years old where I was a devoted football fan with them. It was a way of getting close with them. I was a big Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen fan when I was young, again, because I loved loving what they loved. I was a big Star Wars fan when I was young too. But I also had a lot of pets, and I really wanted to be a veterinarian for a couple of years when I was little. I also really wanted to be a fashion designer. I loved imagining all types of things. I would invent little imaginary outfits that I would also sort of make. Sometimes I would sew clothes or sleeping bags or things for my dolls, or I would also write almost like fan fiction. I was really into Nancy Drew, and I would write these sort of fake Nancy Drew stories with special cliffhangers. INTERVIEWER: Can you describe a typical writing day for you? Do you have an ideal place to write or a favorite time? What does that look like? LESLIE JAMISON: Yes. So these days, I have a three-year-old, and I am a single mom, so these days writing is very contingent on when I have child care. So an ideal writing day is a day when I have a babysitter, and that’s the most honest way to put it. But I do think it’s important to put it that way sometimes because I think when I was younger, writing felt very contingent on inspiration, like this question of when and how would I feel inspired or when and how would the muse strike. Now it’s much more like when and how will I have an hour when I’m not taking care of my daughter and not working my day job as a teacher. So that said, I do feel really, really incredibly lucky and grateful that I am able to make those hours happen sometimes. And in the pandemic, you know...I live in a quite small apartment in Brooklyn and so just really anywhere else is usually a useful place to write. In a non-pandemic time, maybe there would be a little more range. I think having pressurized and limited time has changed my writing practice in a couple of different ways, and one of them is just being less precious about needing to feel inspired in order to write and more just like, okay, I have an hour. I am going to sit down and see what happens, and just come to writing with both a ferocious desire and a sense of gratitude and not in a like good-girl-I-should-feel-this-way-so-I-do kinda way, but just like, “I am really fucking lucky to have this time to write, so I want to show up for it pretty fully.” INTERVIEWER: Right, and I understand that completely. It’s been a really weird and very busy year. 79

LESLIE JAMISON: And there’s both a lot of limits and also so much sameness. I feel like we’ve been lacking some of those like externalities like seeing strangers or being in lots of different places and spaces even within the same city. INTERVIEWER: My next question for you is, in your opinion, what is the most beautiful word? LESLIE JAMISON: Great question. I love that question. There are probably a thousand I could say, but the one that keeps coming to me is the word “ambushed.” And I think part of it is the word itself enacts a feeling of a turn or a surprise. I feel like “am” feels like a sound that is moving in one direction, and then “bushed” is a sound that comes in from another direction. But I also think I love it because, I mean obviously, there are forms of ambush that are violent and terrible, but I think some of the forms of ambush that I have been really interested in in my creative and honestly personal life in the past decade have been just these forms of direction or inspiration that come as a surprise. Like the project that didn’t work out because I was actively planning it or actively seeking it, but the kind of thing that surprised me from another direction entirely, which is like how I started working on essays in the middle of trying and failing to write a novel and, you know, I just love that way you can think a piece is going or is about something, and it surprises you by being about something else. I think ambush works for me on those levels as well. INTERVIEWER: I think I have so many words. I kinda like plethora. I like the way that sounds. Or luminescent. LESLIE JAMISON: Yes. “Loom” is a fun sound. When I was a kid, I used to feel really strong about the word “marshmallow.” In part, because I liked marshmallows, but I also think there’s something about the “shh” to “mmm” sound that is really kind of a fun turn too. INTERVIEWER: I noticed from your first novel, The Gin Closet, your writing has changed from writing fiction to writing predominantly nonfiction. What caused this shift? LESLIE JAMISON: Yes. So I always thought that I wanted to write fiction. And it was what I wrote when I was young. And, you know, these brothers that I worshipped when I was a kid, I would even before I could read and write myself, force them to transcribe my stories for me. So I think I really liked making things up, and my first book was a novel. But I think part of how I came to the essay was that I was working on a second novel about the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua. It was a historical novel, and I had done all this research. I had this big timeline on my office wall that had all these photographs and dates, but I just couldn’t feel the pulse or heart of it. I felt so dutiful in relation to it, but I wasn’t truly passionate about it, and I started to feel instead like I had this deep passion about these essays I would let myself write or imagine writing, and some of them were personal, and some were more reported. Like I went to Tennessee to write about this crazy ultra marathon, 80

this one hundred-and-twenty-five mile race my brother was running, and I loved this idea that I didn’t need to invent everything because the world already had so much in it that was mysterious and fascinating and infinite and if I could show up and respond to what was already all around me either in my own life or in the lives of other people... that responding to that– what was already in the world– could be as illuminating as inventing things. It just felt less … it felt like engagement, rather than just being trapped inside the confines of my own head, and that felt really, really liberating. INTERVIEWER: That’s beautiful. And you like to write about actual people in your life, correct? Do you ask for their permission when you do so? And how do they tend to react to that? LESLIE JAMISON: Yes, that’s a great question. I don’t ask for their permission before I do it, but I do have a practice around my process where if I have written something that includes another person from my life, after it’s drafted but well before it’s published, I reach out to them and ask if they want to read a draft of the manuscript and have a conservation about it. A conversation about anything that troubles them or anything they feel like they want another layer of complexity added or something they see differently than me. And yes, basically reach out and say if you want to read it, I would love for you to read it, so we can have a conversation about it. So that’s my process around it. And I don’t kind of grant veto power--like that’s not really the way I frame it--but I do want them to have a voice. And often--not to be too rosy about it because sometimes it does create friction or sometimes we do remember something differently--but a lot of the times it actually makes the work better, because their perspective or the difference in their perspective adds another layer of nuance or complexity. INTERVIEWER: Do you get writer’s block? What does writer’s block look or feel like for you? LESLIE JAMISON: Yes! I absolutely get writer’s block. Often, on the micro-level, it feels like frustration and the desire to have a snack. I mean that literally--when I’m wrestling with something tricky, staring at my computer screen, I’ll literally start thinking about the snacks in my kitchen at that moment and often stand up to get one. These days, I’m trying to turn this into awareness, and even respect for bewilderment and frustration as part of the process, almost like talking to myself: Your desire to eat ten thousand cookies is a sign of wrestling with something difficult, and that’s okay! It means you’re beyond your comfort zone, trying to figure something out. It’s almost like the mantras I would tell my baby while I was trying to help her soothe herself to sleep. What do I do? I tell myself, just write something. It’s okay if it’s not any good. Or I set a timer and make myself write for 20 minutes and tell myself at the end of those 20 minutes, I can have a cookie. Or two. Or ten, or whatever. Honestly, also writer’s block is partially helped these days by having so little time--and I’m paying for all of it because whenever I’m writing, I’m paying for childcare, so I sort of have to throw myself off the cliff of writing even if I’m not feeling particularly inspired. 81

INTERVIEWER: Do you think about writing even when you aren’t writing? LESLIE JAMISON: There’s a lot of time that I’m not writing– whenever I’m teaching, taking care of my daughter, watching documentaries about NXIVM late at night when I should be asleep– but I truly believe that all this time, in addition to being devoted to other worthwhile tasks– not the NXIVM so much, maybe, but certainly keeping my daughter alive!– is a fruitful part of the writing process too. Things are shuffling around in my brain, getting reorganized and re-ignited. Sometimes not being able to work all the time means that things bloom in the darkness or dimness of peripheral vision. A writer-and-mother friend of mine talks about something called “the mom simmer,” by which she means the ways her ideas and projects are simmering inside her when she’s doing all the other daily stuff– and I love that, like rocks getting shaken around in the rock-tumbler of daily life, and when you come back to them, there’s something different. INTERVIEWER: What does your editing process look like? LESLIE JAMISON: My revision process involves many, many drafts– four, five, six, nine– usually over many years, especially with personal narrative and with books. It involves taking time away from drafts so that I can edit them rigorously and ruthlessly but also with more love and excitement– often, I get saturated with a project, but if I give myself some time away, I can come back with more enthusiasm. Also, other readers! I have friend-readers who I’ve been reading and read by for years, sometimes decades, and their eyes and voices help me see projects in fresh ways when they’ve gone stale, or I feel dispirited– and help me stumble when I prematurely think I’ve nailed it! INTERVIEWER: Do you have a book you believe every high schooler should read? LESLIE JAMISON: I don’t teach high schoolers, but one of the books I do teach, that is, again, just the book that is coming to mind is The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin. Part of what I love about it is not just the context of thinking about the relationship between racism and love in really urgent, beautiful ways, but also the craft and form of that essay. It’s more like in fiction. My friend, Heather, talks about the nonfiction novella. It’s kinda like a novella. But I love the way it has three pretty distinct portions, and one feels like personal narrative, and one feels more like reportage, and one feels more like a kind of criticism or thinking that rises out of both. But I love the idea that it could start with these personal memories of being a young street creature and kind of move from that into these, you know, extremely mature, complex ways of thinking. I love that he kind of gives this access to the child self that some of his thinking is coming from, and in a way, it’s like another way of thinking about forms of ambush or forms of surprise…the way a single essay might not go the way you are expecting and instead take these turns you can’t see coming, but they all build on each other and in the end, and you can see how. 82

Life Cycles MARY KESSLER I dreamed of a little girl who loved all things disregarded in the world, the things that people don’t appreciate until they realize they’re gone. She loved emojis, playing hide and seek with the salps in the ocean, handwritten notes on the endpaper of books, the photo she stole of her parents dancing to “Wonderful Tonight” by Eric Clapton, the scent of the Old Spice Swagger deodorant embedded into the fibers of her oversized, half given/half stolen, navy quarter zip, the commonly forgotten tails drawn on “t”s, the inconsistent consistency of metronomes, family portraits on holiday cards, the final page of Harold and the Purple Crayon, the sound of stable breaths. We met when I was a sapling, and she was a child. She always tried to present herself as older than she was, but the Bruins shirt that could pass as a dress, her brother’s blue cargo shorts and colorblock swim trunks that went down to her crocs, her smile with teeth loose enough to fall out with a gust of wind, and curls no longer than the length of her eyelashes, told a different story. As the youngest child, it was going to be a while before she grew into her hand-me-downs, and part of her wanted her own clothes. Every day, she came outside and went through her step by step routine: she looked for the smallest leaf and enclosed it between her thumb and index finger, feeling for dry patches. She wanted to make sure it was receiving the sunlight and water it deserved. And when she put it up to the sun, she counted every cell until she lost track. She named each insect in the grooves of my bark and checked in on them each day, convinced they returned for her. She liked to see the homes they made themselves under the protection of my branches. Though she knew my branches were sturdy, she never climbed them: she said she was afraid of heights, but she knew and I knew that it was because if she fell, nobody would hear. She always leaned up in the same spot against my trunk, between the two roots that molded perfectly around her body, just sitting and breathing. I valued her breathing as much as she did: her exhales are what expanded my growth rings, keeping my core dry. Much like I liked to be dry, the girl did too; she was afraid of storms. Though many would tell her to do otherwise, she trusted her instincts and sat beneath me for protection. I was afraid of storms just as she was, but I never told her. I did my job and kept her dry and absorbed the shock of the lightning. They left scars inside my trunk, but she couldn’t see them. She said the sound of the thunder reminded her of the roar of her brother’s screaming. From childhood into her teens, whenever he lost his temper, she came to me for security just as she did during storms because under the roof of her home, nobody was there to wipe her tears, so she used my leaves as tissues and my soil absorbed her stream of tears. My growth rings weren’t so large during rainy seasons. When the girl turned eighteen, her house was put up for sale. By the last time she visited before leaving, she no longer fit between the mold of my roots. I worried for her future without me in it. I worried that just like she couldn’t handle the storms of her brother, other disasters would come her way. Only this time, she wouldn’t have me to protect her. And though I’d miss her when she left, I had hoped I wouldn’t see her again. I promised her that I would look after the families of insects resting in my bark, and keep my trunk upright for her if she ever needed somewhere to sit and breathe. After we said our goodbyes, I spent years missing the girl, but I was grateful for every day I didn’t see her. As long as I knew she was okay, I’d be okay. And as long as her eyes were dry, 83

my growth flourished. The hardest days for me were the rainy days. I feared more than ever that she would return to me just like she used to. I counted the days that passed by the number of my leaves on the ground; they were always my smallest leaves, no longer having the girl to move them into the sunlight. But as time went on, the drier and sunnier the seasons became, and the fewer leaves fell. I was happiest on breezy days. The wind was what parted my branches, allowing for sunlight to reach every single leaf, even the smallest ones. I knew it was the girl, and I was happy for her. By the time the girl was in her twenties, her old house had still not sold yet. And though I had been alone all this time, I was okay because I knew the girl wasn’t alone. On what had been the sunniest day of the year, a minivan with boxes hanging out of the trunk pulled up to the house. I watched a toddler with little curls, just like ones the girl had, reaching to place the “Sold” sticker across the sign in front of her new house, but she couldn’t reach it. So she signaled to someone with boxes in his arms stacked higher than their head, and when they placed them down for her, a man stood there. He had sweat dripping down his face and was wearing a navy quarter zip that was identical to the one that the girl had all those years ago. The man rolled up his sleeves and lifted the toddler up to the sign as she slapped the sticker on. As he placed her down, she tugged at the man’s arm, and pointed at me with a smile on her face. The man smiled back at her, nodded, and nudged her towards me. She turned her back to me and extended her arm out as if she was waiting for someone to hold her hand. And I watched a woman with curls that rested below her shoulders raise her pointer finger over her mouth and take the toddler’s hand as they began to walk towards me. When they arrived, the woman knelt down, facing the toddler. She then unlinked their fingers and placed her hand on the back of the toddler’s hand and then closed it for her. The woman then shut her eyes and took a deep breath. When she could no longer hold it, she exhaled, lifting one of her fingers for every second of air released. Once she had all five fingers up, she signaled for the toddler to do the same. By the time the toddler mastered it, their breaths were synced and consistent. When they opened their eyes, they chuckled, and a tear formed in the woman’s eye. So the toddler walked up to me, climbed the first of my branches, and reached for the closest leaf she could grab. She then signaled for the woman to pick her up. So the woman walked over, lifted the toddler up, and held her tight. The toddler then brushed the leaf below the woman’s eye, catching her tears before they could fall. And the woman then loosened her grip, walked right up to me, lowered the toddler into the mold between my roots, and walked away. And the toddler stayed in my arms and breathed.

Photographs KAVYA KRISHNAMURTHY There’s that photograph, the one of the sailor kissing that lady in the street. I remember the toe of her white shoe pointed down, his hand around her waist, her arm dangling by her side, and her, pleasantly disoriented by such an intimate, sudden celebration. I remember the men and women behind them, exhilarated by this day of romantic whims and victory. “VJ Day in Times Square.” Japan surrendered. Americans were heroes. It was in a slideshow for my seventh grade American Studies class. I remember a lot of things from that class: one boy of German descent saying he got a sick feeling when he saw that he looked like the soldiers in the videos. I remember wondering what mortification I might have if my ancestors inflicted such pain. I remember a debate about Hiroshima and Nagasaki and whether that was a moral choice or unnecessary violence. I remember saying it was for the best. I remember my history teacher asking me if the slides on Japanese internment made me feel uncomfortable, but I felt nothing. After all, I’m American. My mom’s name is Mary. Mari. Mariko. I’m not close with her parents: I thought they didn’t speak English for the longest time–strange considering that my mom’s father was a professor here for thirty years. He’s brilliant, actually. When he was in middle school in Japan, he worked at a factory, building Kamikaze planes. My mom’s mother went to school with Korean girls who were living in Japan during occupation. She made fun of them for the shape of their eyes, their bad teeth. When my mom told me this, I accepted it as history, someone else’s history. My mom never made fun of Korean girls for their bad teeth. I once read in a book that Americans had pretty teeth, like large loaves of white bread. My mom has monolid eyes, but she also has pretty teeth. I have pretty teeth. I have pretty teeth, but I don’t photograph well. Nobody in my Japanese family does, but that’s because they all smile with their mouths closed. My family photographs are cold, dead almost. They’re not like the kinds of photographs that you can look at and know that everything was romantic, and that beautiful strangers kissed in the streets, and that people were alive and in love. I know that white people have photographs of their grandparents from the fifties, from weddings, dinners, graduation ceremonies. I know, even though they don’t share them with me–there’s no reason to. But in my own life of wood-framed pictures of stoic ancestors with narrow eyes, I somehow seem to be bombarded with other people’s photographs, beautiful photographs, that I can never have. I am bombarded with photographs of unfamiliar lips meeting and white shoes on lovely white people and American heroes with big white teeth. I don’t see myself in them. I don’t see my grandparents. But I don’t see my grandparents in images of Pearl Harbor either. My grandparents aren’t violent. They’re barely people. They’re always afraid. They’re quiet. I see my grandparents in photographs of nothing but broken wooden planks, burnt jagged obscure things that may have been beautiful once. Photographs of the clamor of death, the noise of heat and corpses and nothing. Here, I see my grandparents. I don’t see any American heroes. I don’t see Kamikaze planes. I see destruction, pain. A barefoot woman on her hands and knees, crawling in the remains of her city. A dead baby’s charred face. A man whose back looks like ripped up raw meat, even in black and white. 85

Jemma Siegel

The Yellow-Rumped Warbler MENNA DELVA Getting out of bed that Monday morning was difficult. I wasn’t confident that my routine of faking a smile and pretending everything was ‘okay’ was going to work. I knew my eyes told another story; my spirit was deflated, and my body felt heavy. But as I lay on my bed with my curls spread across my pillow and eyes studying the tiny cracks that covered my ceiling, I remembered an important math test I had to take. Like always, my old middle school not only provided me with an incentive to get ready for the day but also an opportunity to dismiss my emotions. I managed to lift my head from my pillow, swing my two feet off the bed, and walk to my bathroom. But as soon as I took my hair out of its bun, everything fell apart. I didn’t sleep with my hair scarf, as I accidentally slept on the couch finishing homework, resulting in dry, flat curls. I didn’t have enough time to rejuvenate them. In a desperate attempt to control the situation, I told myself to pay no heed to my appearance, knowing my perception of my worth shouldn’t be contingent on how I looked. But the problem wasn’t my ugly appearance, but rather my inability to control the way my curls looked. I had an anxiety attack. These breakdowns weren’t unfamiliar to me; I’d had one a few weeks prior when I was reminded of the anniversary of my friend’s death, and another one when I had performed poorly on a quiz. These breakdowns usually occurred in my bathroom; a place where I gradually found safety. I threw my brush against the wall and collapsed on the cold, white tiles of my bathroom floor. It was a silent cry. Silent because I was embarrassed I wasn’t able to control the hot tears flowing down my face and frustrated that something so minuscule, like a bad hair day, could affect me so painfully. I wanted to embrace my tears, and understand why I was feeling so exasperated, but as I heard the sound of my brother opening the door to leave the house, I knew I didn’t have time. I frantically wiped away my tears, stuffed my notebooks into my backpack, and grabbed two blue pills to soften the loud pounding of my headache. I had studied for my test the night before. Those closest to me know that I take my grades seriously. I view my academic performance as a reflection of my intelligence, and my intelligence as a reflection of my worthiness as an individual. It’s worrisome that my happiness is dependent on arbitrary numbers and percentages, but attending a prestigious middle school programmed me this way. I also view my grades as the one thing in my life that I have full control over. But as I came to school, I knew I lacked the mental focus to sit in a room and make algebraic calculations for an hour. I knew performing poorly on this test would be an example of my emotions eroding my control over my academics, which would also represent my lack of strength to prevent it. Plus I hated math. So, to avoid a second breakdown, I asked my teacher, an individual whom I viewed as sagacious, to postpone my test. They had no sympathy. They told me I didn’t have any credibility regarding how I felt that day. Yes, those were their exact words. Their response triggered an internal frustration because as sappy as it may sound, I longed to be understood. Looking back at the situation, I don’t blame my teacher for their insensitive comments, but rather their lack of education on the topic of adolescent mental health disorders. I think if my teacher knew that about 20% of high school students suffer from depression, they would have been more sympathetic to my situation. Or if they knew 87

that about 60% of adolescents with depressive episodes don’t receive treatment, there would have been a slight trace of warmth in their eyes. I wished I had control of the words that came out of their mouth; to twist them to become commiserating. Obviously, I didn’t have the superpowers to do that, so their eyes remained a dark, cold blue, and her words continued to feel like hot daggers puncturing my skin. I exited her classroom with a feeling of desolation and embarrassment but relieved I would soon be in the comfort of my home as the school day had ended. The beauty of nature and the tranquility of journaling were my coping mechanisms, so when I arrived at my house, I grabbed a cup of warm, clove spiced tea and my brown paperback journal and went outside. I began to fill the pages with ink as I felt a subtle heat from the sun, and heard broken leaves softly abandon their branches and fall onto the cold grass. I watched the mailman make his way around my street delivering his standard white envelopes, and I saw the two inseparable black and gray cats that always bathed in the sun whenever the weather was warm. Everyone around me seemed to go about their days normally, even though, in my head, it felt as if the world was moving aimlessly and mundanely. As I drank the last of my tea and began to shut my journal, a yellow-rumped warbler, a brown bird with patches of bright yellow feathers, landed a few feet from me. She stood elegantly in a silent serenity. There wasn’t anything fascinating about the bird, but she was what I needed at that moment. When she noticed I was there, she glanced at me with a beautiful kindness-a wordless acknowledgment to my struggle. In that brief, silent exchange, I understood the importance of not always being in control. I wasn’t in control of the bird’s decision to land next to me, yet she did, and I was glad I experienced that moment with her. Her free-spiritedness made me aware that I was forcing myself to carry a hatred for my teacher when all I wanted was to forget the situation. I longed to feel the same peacefulness the bird was emanating. So, emulating the bird, I allowed myself to choose how I wanted to feel, liberated of my excessive control. And as the yellow-rumped warbler lifted its gray, black-streaked wings to fly away, just as the loud anger occupying my body lifted, I not only forgave my teacher but also myself.

Missing You Missing Me ALEXANDRA AGAH While I was in preschool, my grandparents, “Mimi” and “Papa,” retired ‘down south’ in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina where they had vacationed for years. The island and its surrounding counties are part of the “Low Country,” containing centuries-old plantations where African Americans, known as the “Gullah” people who derived their language and culture from creole tradition, tended land and crops. Visiting my grandparents always gave me a chance to experience life in this “sLow Country,” as I came to call it, sitting on their back porch for hours, watching the resident alligator camouflage itself as a moss-covered log in their lagoon, motionless while red mullet constantly vied for attention, breaching the water’s surface like skipping stones, whether at dusk when the fading sun’s reflection off the glass deck doors of houses across the water made us squint or at dawn when November’s chill raised the mist from the water like steam escaping a pot of gumbo. Our annual visits to Hilton Head Island took place over Thanksgiving break after Connecticut had already turned brisk and the tree leaves were swiftly falling like party confetti. On HHI, we could still go to the beach, bringing sand toys for building castles and shovels to bury our dad in the sand. Mimi always sought out safe real estate, so our construction would not immediately be wiped out by the waves. Papa assembled kites for each of us and helped them get airborne into a gale which nearly tore their tails apart. When he left me holding my taut kite string to help repeat the liftoff with my brother, I wondered whether my kite would fly up to heaven or crash down to earth if I let go. Mimi flashed a radiant smile and said, “Since that kite is brand new, let’s not try and answer that question for a while.” Every trip, my grandmother, mother, and I went to the Tanger Outlet stores. We would go from shop to shop looking for the best Black Friday deals. The three generations of Agah women took the phrase “Shop ‘til you drop’ literally. We’d always stop to refuel at Olive Garden for pasta or Zoe’s Kitchen for a hummus platter. Dining out always offered her a break, as Mimi did all of the cooking and housework. She was always the last to bed and first to rise, and caused a ruckus whenever my parents slept past 7am. “Get up you lazy bums and get breakfast ready for the kids,” she scolded, breaking the small house’s silent slumber. Over many Thanksgiving dinners, Mimi and my father sparred in the kitchen until she had had enough. In 2015, everything seemed to change, when Mimi chose to simply make the pumpkin pies. They had started cooking at 6:30am, aiming to put dinner on the table by 4:30pm, when dad noticed around 1pm that Mimi hadn’t even started the pies. He asked Mimi for an update and why she hadn’t started baking. She looked disoriented, even though she had made them for years without forgetting a single step or ingredient. From the adjacent family room, I saw tears trickle down his face, when he watched Mimi try to measure out the ingredients for the pies from a family recipe card she’d made. She was helpless when reading her recipe, not being able to understand measurements, directions, servings, etc. My dad called my mother over to inform her of this ‘development.’ He helped her measure out and make the pies. In the interim, my mom asked my Mimi ‘for the time’ but she hesitated to answer. First she tried with her watch. Then, after realizing that 89

digital time might be easier, she failed to read a digital clock correctly. Then my dad asked me to show Mimi a calendar to see if she could remember our birthdays and other important dates. She stared blankly upon the pages embossed with photos highlighting the island’s wildlife and lighthouses. I asked her to point out her own birthday on the calendar, and well as other dates she’d always remembered (my birthday, for instance). She couldn’t recollect anything and didn’t turn the page. Though the food was terrific, we were seated with anxiety and fear about Mimi. We looked at my Papa but he wanted us to not dwell on it and wasn’t ready to discuss it. I couldn’t understand what was happening to her and why. Later in the week, my brother tried playing some of his practice pieces on their console piano, yet the keys were so out of tune that they sounded like screeching baby birds calling for their mothers. My father decided to hire a piano turner, and when it was time to pay him, my grandmother could not remember how to write out a check. My dad turned on the TV to distract my brother and I, then went into the kitchen with my mom and Papa. I hid to the left side of the dining room door to listen in to their conversation. When talking about my Mimi, I heard them mention “Alzheimer’s” and “dementia” multiple times, yet I had no clue what either of those words meant. The next time we visited, my grandfather had moved my grandmother into an assisted living facility. When we arrived at the home, we went straight to her room. As soon as we opened the door, she seemed startled and almost irritated instead of overjoyed. What was happening? Why was she acting like she did not recognize me? What kind of a joke was this? As my father got closer, her facial expression remained constant. She didn’t even recognize her own son. When my mother got out her camera to take a picture, my grandmother must have felt like a superstar. I would too if people I did not recognize approached me to take a photograph. She had forgotten me. My father told my brother and me that she had Vascular dementia: “dementia resulting from disease, esp. atherosclerosis, of cerebral blood vessels, most commonly associated with multiple small areas of infarction in the cerebral cortex.” One of the main causes of vascular dementia are strokes yet I knew for a fact that Mimi had never had one. At this time, I had never felt more selfish. I was not thinking solely about how it would affect my grandmother yet was thinking about how it could affect me. What if it could be inherited? I could never live with forgetting everyone I hold dear. Does that make my grandmother selfish or does that make me selfish for even thinking that? Whenever someone passes, consolers will say “They’re in a better place now,” which in my Mimi’s case was true. After living with such a terrible condition for several years, she was freed. My whole family believes that she really is in a better place now. Whenever I go back to HHI to visit Papa, I look in the bathroom mirror and ponder. What if the gene that puts one at risk to develop vascular dementia is passed down to my father? What will happen if it is passed down to me? The thought of forgetting everything and everyone that I love paralyzes me, yet there is nothing I can do but wait.

Erosion EMILY TWITCHELL The cliff began to fall the summer after the hurricane. It had stood tall for years on Lucy Vincent Beach, surrounded by the company of Martha’s Vineyard’s summer visitors. I’ve visited that beach my entire life and always paid attention to the cliff, decorated with the remains of misplaced pebbles and cream-colored shells. I would notice the way the light cascaded down it at dusk, dripping down the cliff until it hit the forceful waves, and I would trace my fingers over its skin while passing by, feeling the way it mimicked the craters and mountains of the sea. Before the cliff began to erode, the beach was a place for extravagant sandcastles, seagulls who’d steal snacks out of beach bags, and waves which would crash up against you as you dipped your toes into the freezing tide. My grandparents, who I referred to by the Chinese names of Nainai and Yeye, would sit at the top of the beach in colorful beach chairs under a floral Marimekko umbrella. The beach was a place for time to pause and drift out to sea, with the breeze blowing up against our necks. When I was ten, the hurricane hit Martha’s Vineyard and the erosion of the cliff began. When we went to the beach that summer, the cliff looked backwards, like the sky had picked it up and flipped it in the other direction, or the sun had beat down so hard on its back that it had to shield its face from the light. But up close it looked the same, cream-colored shells and misplaced pebbles. My Nainai stopped coming to the beach that year, the sand was too difficult for her to walk on, so my Yeye now sat alone, shaded by the Marimekko umbrella listening to the ambiance of the waves in the distance. It was strange to drive away from our house without my Nainai, leaving her to sleep under the glow of the television rather than under the hue of the August sun. When I was twelve, the cliff eroded faster than it ever had before. Missing important sections of its structure, the cliff now resembled the profile of a face. It could watch the waves swaying in the distance, the seagulls flying above, and the occasional seals darting between the tides. As the school years became more difficult, the short month of August was now designated for finishing summer reading. I now took the place of my grandparents as I sat in those colorful beach chairs, a book in my lap. As my pointer finger held down the pages, my attention was drawn away from their glossy print and instead, to the younger kids, who sprinted away from the creeping waves and dug holes in search for tiny crabs clawing beneath the rocks. Time felt shorter at the beach, it didn’t stop like it used to. The endless days of sun melted into a moment. Last summer, when I was fifteen, the cliff crashed down. Now, it was as if there was too much sky. The cliff no longer blocked the clouds, and you could see straight past where it had once stood, onto the oversized concrete summer homes. We didn’t spend much time at the beach, instead focusing our time on going through my Nainai’s old clothes and belongings. The few times we did go to the beach, we walked down past where the cliff stood, occasionally dipping our toes into the cloudy sea. The artifacts of what was once the cliff were scattered everywhere, those same misplaced pebbles and cream-colored shells now spread out across the forgiving damp sand. I picked up one of the pebbles. It was warm. The smoothness of the stone felt familiar in my palm, and I slipped it into the pocket of my raincoat. 91

Netanya Bravard 92

portraits of a girl in progress ANTARA GHAI For as long as I can remember, I’ve known what a wedding is. Hell, I’d been an essential part of one: at my aunt’s wedding, I was the witness to their ceremony as a pudgy toddler just one laddoo1 shy of throwing up. My earliest memories are of flashing lights, red lenghas2 and the jingling of bangles3, and, of course, tables stacked with food. I suspect my experiences mirror those of many other desi women: the concept is everywhere in our culture, particularly in Bollywood films. The story is always the same: Beautiful girl meets mediocre-to-slightly-attractive boy, they fall in love, something gets in their way, but they persevere because of pyaar4, and bam! Shaadi5. Every film is about education or marriage-like some binary imposed on our culture occasionally meets in the middle. I suspect this focus is because weddings in my culture are grand affairs, full of dancing and singing. In my younger years, I knew, without a doubt, that I’d have one of my own one day. However, as I grew older, weddings increasingly seemed to me to be a trap. Learning the concept of nuance had ruined some of my idealism, and marriages weren’t an exception. Yes, it’s a huge party, but it’s also a departure from an old life into something new, where you’re expected to be subservient to a man. Yes, the concept now is antiquated, but it persists in the way women do most of the housework. Younger me hated this concept. If I was going to do housework, it’d be for myself, thank you. Attempting to say this out loud– that I didn’t want a husband or children– just got me a laugh and a fond head pat and a “you’ll understand when you’re older.” That only infuriated me even more. I do not come from a family that treats their children like, well, children. I wanted a proper conversation, and I did not get one until my father briefly explained it to me. “Beta6, it’s complicated, and honestly, you’re too young to learn everything about it. Maybe you’ll find someone, maybe you won’t. Just wait until you’re older, okay?” His answer satisfied me enough to get me to stop talking about it, but I still privately thought that weddings were a trap. What is a desi woman? It is to be from a culture where your freedom wasn’t even a question, then to be put in an exotified, gilded cage, and now to peak around the bars of the cage and wonder if this freedom they promise is really worth it. I suppose that’s true for all women, but for us, it’s a strange, strange contradiction. You can’t blame all of the boundaries placed on our behaviour on colonization, but you can identify many of them. Chafed isn’t a strong enough word. I should probably use struggles. I hated this concept in a way that I’ve hated nothing before or since, the idea that people would look at me and just see a box rather than a person. I hated that I was told to cover up whenever we went out in India, and I hated that those in the U.S. thought it was all that much better. I cut my hair, started wearing 1 A very rich indian sweet made of flour, fat and sugar. I had my sixth after the ceremony, and I did fall sick. 2 Thin bracelets made of glass or metal that make a noise. 3 Lit translation country, but as an adjective, referring to people of South Asian descent. 4 Love. 5 Wedding. 6 Lit. son, but more commonly used as term of endearment for a child.

baggy clothes, all in an attempt to escape my increasingly gendered. When people thought I was a guy, they treated me better. That just proved my point. What I had privately referred to as “the woman issue” only got worse in my move to the South. I was convinced that this tiny town was a microcosm of the 1940s, where no woman hadworked ever. Questions abounded about “did your mom make you breakfast?” “Is your mom coming to pick you up?” Eventually, I got so irritated I answered all of those questions in the negative, even if it was a lie. “No, my dad is.” This was followed by a “My mom’s in Connecticut on work,” which was usually correct. Seeing people’s faces shut down provided some small form of satisfaction. When I described my actions to my mother, furious in the way only twelve-year-olds can be, she laughed. “You can’t have them thinking I’m negligent, Antz.” “Well, clearly all their fathers are negligent, the way they speak,” I shot back, fuming in the car on the way home. Eventually, my personal crusade against sexism gave me somewhat of a reputation. Not a good one, but I was known around school, and it inflated my head to an extreme degree. My feelings evolved from being less personal to more of a system to more of an I have to do this because it’s what everyone expects of me. I still hated the course that was charted for me because of my gender, but at least a little bit of my railing was preformative, even as doubt rose in my stomach once more that I wasn’t doing the right thing--not for the world, but for myself. I wish I had a good interlude for this story, a transition between then and now. I don’t, sadly. Eventually, I softened, metal put to heat. Some of the trappings of femininity have come back to me, though I wouldn’t say I’ve embraced them fully. I’ve taken what I like and disregarded what I don’t. This slightly more selfish worldview of the concept of balance has impressed onto me what I was really trying to say all those years: it’s not all the bars of the cage I hate so much as the fact that the cage exists in the first place. There’s nothing inherently wrong with wearing a skirt, it’s just that society devalues those who do. That’s what infuriated me as a child, and that’s what it took so long for me to accept. I guess the most important thing right now is that I’m at peace with myself. Maybe one day I’ll find a cause that makes my blood sing as much, makes me want to dedicate my whole life, but I can wait. I have time.

Whale in the Sky CHARLOTTE WALTER Today, I found myself sitting on the icy stone step that led to my front door, my head tilted back, looking up at the sky. It was almost completely a cold baby blue, a huge cotton ball of a cloud being the only thing interrupting the color. The gentle breeze rustled through the trees, pushing the cloud steadily through the blue. It had always disappointed me that clouds weren’t actually soft and fluffy, that they weren’t made to be bunnies or elephants or dogs walking through the sky. When was the last time I looked at the clouds and brought them to life? The last time I still believed the dangerous sharks and dinosaurs above me came from the factories, before I found out the real danger the animals caused? I can’t remember. Back when the scariest thing to me was the T-Rex stomping high over my head, I used to take time out of my day to spend fully immersed in the sky. I would go into the backyard with my Mom to lay in the grass, ignoring how it itched our backs, as we searched for the animals that were playing hide-and-seek with us. “Look, a rabbit!” I’d exclaim, pointing at the clouds that were peppering the sky. “Yes, I see it!” my Mom would reply with a smile, her eyes the same color as the sky darting around, trying to find an animal of her own. I wonder if she really did always see what I saw. The two of us would lay there for a while, taking turns calling out when we spotted something in the unknown forms above us. The puffy clouds were the best for this, they had the most life in them. I would’ve stayed there forever, effortlessly recognizing the clouds that tasted like cotton candy, sweet and melting right when they hit your tongue. Breathing them in would smell like right after it’s done pouring and you take a walk, and everything is so clean, so fresh, and you can just exist. I found utter enchantment from staring at a completely separate world filled with limitless running, swimming, or galloping creatures, that had been above me my whole life. Clouds have become so common, so boring, I barely even give them a second glance. I wonder what happened. As I turned my focus back to the beautiful blue sky, I decided I would freshen up my skills and animate the white shape above me. It didn’t take long for me to conclude that the one cloud today was a whale. It started out round, full, and thick, gradually getting thinner and thinner until it finally split into two flukes. My lips turned upwards as I watched the whale take its time swimming solitary and slowly through the sky, and I stayed there staring until it completely vanished into the vast infinite sea of blue.

Harriett Wells

Ecstasy and Orange BEYZA KALENDER “How can the sky be orange?” I wondered out loud, amazed at the sight that had taken hold above our apartment that night. Standing on our balcony, with my mom’s silent presence behind me, I found myself staring at the incredible color reflected against the pale beige of the apartment buildings. The sky was filled with a stunning orange light that rose from the city, reaching so high up that the color almost spilled out into space. And I was lucky enough to have a front-row seat to see it all as if all of this had been done just for me. Maybe someone had come along and seen the pretty city, with its big windows that covered the tallest buildings I’d ever seen and the shiny lights that filled those buildings, and decided the sky couldn’t reach those same standards. So, just like a superhero would, they rushed in to save the day with a paintbrush and a bucket of orange paint. But if they had seen the look my mom was giving the sky, they would’ve dropped that bucket in shame. She looks so… serious. Maybe she was still processing how pretty the sky looked and her face hadn’t had enough time to react. With all of that amazement that had just washed over me, I’m surprised it hadn’t taken me longer. The air was filled with this exhilarating energy that somehow made the air crisper, each breath more satisfying than the last as if the air somehow gave more life to life itself. With each inhale, I was left wonderstruck as if I’d just discovered a new way to breathe. Taking in the air was like inhaling energy, like my chest would burst open if I didn’t exhale quickly enough. The wind blew around me, rushing past me almost silently so only a soft woosh could be heard. As I stood nine floors above everything else earthly, on a small balcony surrounded by other small balconies, with the wind and my mom to keep me company, I felt myself wanting to reach through the cool air and touch the extraterrestrial sky to find out what the orange felt like. And although I could barely reach the metal railing, I felt that if I stretched far enough, I would be able to touch the color. Would it be as soft and smooth as I imagined, the texture like freshly whipped cream? Or would it be more like a house of cards, so fragile my touch would cause the clouds to part? Would it feel as warm as I imagined, and smell like freshly baked poppy seed cake with its sweet aroma that reminded me of my mom? Maybe it wouldn’t be like anything I knew at all. Maybe it would be an entirely new sensation of its own. A sensation no one has ever felt before, special just for me. “It’s just the lights from the buildings, sweetie,” my mom explained, in a way so nonchalant I had to turn and look at her in alarm. Her face was solemn, her green eyes looking calculatingly towards the orange sky, then at me. So serious. How could she have looked at the sky, the one that simply from the sight of it, I froze in astonishment, so interesting that I could only stand in captivation, and only think of the city lights? It was hard to imagine she had even glanced at the same enchanting orange I had. This sky with its color that had left me with the most intense yet calm feeling I’d ever experienced, this beautiful, ecstatic night sky that had let me believe my wildest dreams could come true, and the first things on her mind were the lights. The sky had turned orange, and her first thoughts were the streetlamps. But, then again, it did make more sense. It’s not like anyone could actually paint the sky, let alone do it just for me. And when we turned to look up again, both my mom and I looked at how the city lights had turned the sky orange. 97

Stricken after Joan Didion CHRISTOPHER NOLAND I don’t remember when I first noticed my tinnitus. I remember hearing it in old memories when I tried to sleep, but my memories are so fuzzy past a certain age that I can’t be sure if I created an artificial ringing sound to fill the gap. What I do know is that it became a problem about three years ago in eighth grade. Something changed inside me so that I became aware of a constant, loud noise at the border of my head and right ear. I have tinnitus. Tinnitus, at its simplest, is hearing something that doesn’t exist, which manifests in most cases in both ears as a high-pitched monotone noise somewhere between the sound of chalk on a blackboard and a dog whistle. Tinnitus is a symptom that something’s gone wrong somewhere around your head: it could be from noise exposure, hearing loss, pressure problems, bone movement, neck stress, earwax buildup, physical trauma, jaw issues, cholesterol issues, tumor growth, bad posture, concussions, or plain old aging. Most cases are linked to noise exposure and hearing loss, which come hand in hand. Everyone’s tinnitus is unique. I’d bet the 20 million Americans who call theirs burdensome and chronic could talk about theirs for hours. Mine’s a bit unusual; My tinnitus’ pitch is ~900 hz in my right ear only. It sounds like a constant A6 note on a piano, right next to the high note of the “Just killed a man...” piano part on Bohemian Rhapsody, a low pitch compared to others. Sometimes, a more standard tinnitus noise somewhere in the thousands of hz appears right between my eyes. My ‘middle’ pitch isn’t problematic to me at all because the right one is almost always 5x louder, a little quieter than what I’d call indoor speech volume. It’s difficult to describe how I’ve learned to play with it: when I yawn, it becomes higher-pitched and deafening, when I lay down it becomes louder, if I change my ear pressure with my nose it becomes two or three times louder… Little quirks like that are hard to miss. The one thing I never pinpointed while exploring my tinnitus is why it appeared in the first place. When my tinnitus came to my attention back then, I felt frustrated above all. I’d lay in bed, unable to sleep for hours, with a permanent, constant distraction in my ears, knowing that nobody would believe me because only I could hear it; a phantom noise. I obsessed over trying to find answers. I studied it, memorizing what changed its volume, but simple, unavoidable things like sitting down or being in a quiet place made it so much worse. One thing became clear as my hunt across the internet continued, and I absorbed more info; there is no cure for tinnitus. Time passed, and my anguish over my tinnitus grew. Why would this happen to me? I found it unfair. I couldn’t accept that I wouldn’t find a magic pill to cure it. I discovered ways to fight back and cover it up but never found the root, the cause. My right ear’s tinnitus happens to become silent when I hear literal white noise or when a certain volume level is reached. I sought out more and more of these relief methods, like one of my favorite things; music! Music emerged as my silver bullet. My unique tinnitus, with its low pitch and residence in a single ear, seemed to evaporate when exposed to music. Music gave me both my normal pleasure of listening but also relieved me of an inescapable malady. I listened harder than ever before; 98

“Should I believe that I’ve been stricken,” my music asked me. “Does my face show some kind of glow?” David Bowie wrote that line in 1975 for an upbeat and triumphant song during the height of a life-wrecking cocaine addiction. My problems were galaxies away from his, but I found comfort in our shared feelings of doubt. My tinnitus’ nature as a ‘phantom noise’ made me question its severity and whether I overreacted over some trivial matter. Did I really have tinnitus, or was I imagining it? Did my face show some kind of sign of pain which others could see? If nobody else could see my struggle or hear the sound, did it exist at all? Anytime I wanted, I could escape into music, careful to keep it at low volume to not worsen matters. However, once I found sweet immediate relief there, my mind turned to questioning why tinnitus chose me in the first place. Nothing on those inescapable, infinite “Causes” lists seemed to apply to me. I knew the when, the who, the where, the what, but not the why, and that consumed me. Tinnitus is a symptom; if its cause had a cure, then the symptoms would go with it. Time continued to pass as I researched that dreaded why, becoming both desperate and exhausted. Maybe there’s something wrong with my jaw. Maybe falling on a ski trip caused it. Maybe I hit my head once. Maybe my brother blasting music once a million years ago gave me tinnitus. Maybe I’m about to develop heart disease and discover that my blood vessels are clogging around my ears. “Who knows? Not me,” my music agreed. I still haven’t found the cause of my tinnitus nor found any proper treatment. Ever since my discovery of it, I’ve learned that there are few true constants in our lives. What’s always with you no matter your age, your body, your class? Almost everything in life changes, evolving as time marches on, eternally. Maybe that’s why those definite, inevitable happenings can be comforting. The sun always rises. Winter always comes. My ear always rings. I have tinnitus.

Bella Bohnsack 100

Seaglass ANNA REYNOLDS I opened the door of my old sun-stained room, and there it sat, our seaglass. Tightly sealed, the jar kept all the pieces and memories safe, each with smoothed edges, carried by careful hands. A sort of melancholy feeling rushed through me as I reached for it; the same way the dominant ocean collided with the beach that day. My mother told me we can’t control the tide. I still remember that last perfect day with Zoila. My mom called her our “Babysitter,” but I remember her as my friend. She had earthy brown eyes that would open so wide, every time they met mine. Her thick black hair fell to the lowest part of her back and swayed back and forth, like ocean waves. I only saw her hair down on certain occasions; it was almost always tied up in a neat knot. She would walk around our house with a towel draped over her shoulder, humming and smiling every time I asked her questions. Her soothing voice wisped about like a cool breeze on one of those unbearably hot summer days. When my mom told us she was leaving I was sitting at the kitchen table with my peanut butter sandwich. “Zoila just got engaged,” my mom said in a forced happy tone. “Really?” I smiled and looked down studying the bread. I didn’t know she had any other friends. My mother could tell I didn’t know what this meant. “She’s not going to be babysitting for us anymore.” My heart started to sink in my chest, like a boat choking on ocean water. I could tell my mom was doing her best to comfort me but I couldn’t hear her. I could faintly see the silhouette of Zoila’s long black hair through my flooded eyes. Her hair was down. I blinked hard and could feel my face start to turn red. Why would she leave? The last day we spent together we walked down to the beach and started to pick up little pieces of seaglass. Zoila was always good at picking out the best ones. She told me that each piece of glass was from a different part of the world and washed up here for us to find. We searched for hours stopping countless times to sift through little sections. I was obsessed. One piece that reminds me of that day was tiny, bright blue, and egg shaped. It was hidden under other small stones, something that beautiful needed to be searched for. I showed Zoila, and the corners of her mouth creased upwards and her brown eyes lit up. She loved it and told me blues were the rarest. I clasped my small hands around it. It was almost like everything was normal again. Until we got home, and it wasn’t. And she left. I poured the seaglass we collected into a jar and dropped the tiny blue egg in last. I watched as it fell through the cracks and nestled itself in the middle. It was hidden once again, but I knew it was there. The jar still sits in my room untouched and unopened, a film of dust collecting on its rim as the years pass. Now, when I gaze up at the jar on the top shelf of my bookcase I’m no longer reminded of when she left or how angry I was. Instead, I think about how she taught me to look at everything with eyes wide, just like hers, even though mine are green.

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The Paperweight JAKE FARBER A couple of weeks ago, I was redoing my room when I stumbled upon the metallic star that had gone missing for the past two years. It was one of those things that you lose and then try to look for, but after a couple of weeks, you no longer have the effort to keep looking. Because I had made the reasonable choice to start the process at around 10 pm, I ended up finding the star close to midnight. I was looking through a drawer full of impulse purchases when I saw the hand-sized paperweight in the back corner. The gold-colored metal star gleamed in the light. As I picked it up, I bumped one of the points on the side of the drawer. It took me a little time to adjust to the weight of it. The fuzz still sat on the bottom of it, and there seemed to be no significant changes, but it almost felt full on the inside, almost like it could do more than just hold down a couple of pieces of paper. Without thinking, I placed it on the side of my nightstand closest to my bed. I’ve heard plenty of stories about my grandfather Gene throughout my life, from his IBM adventures when he traveled the world to his sense of humor and good spirit that he took wherever he went. I guess the ones I cherished had to do with Gene’s trips to South Africa and Capetown, of which my grandmother always spoke. There was something about those scuba diving stories that never failed to brighten my day. I can’t remember when I finally made the connection that I’d never meet my grandfather. I’ve always been going back into different albums and looking at all of the photos of my family. Still, I can’t remember when I comprehended the fact that I’d never shake his hand or truly share anything with him. Carrying his name never changed how I thought about him or the person I was. I never met him, so I didn’t know what kind of person I was supposed to emulate. For me, the name Eugene was just something that came up only occasionally. During attendance at the beginning of the school year, my teachers often say “Eugene Farber,” and I usually respond with “here, but I go by Jake.” There’s also the security boarding pass check where I have to respond with the obligatory “Eugene Farber” when they ask me what my name is. Other than that, I have sort of steered away from Eugene. I was never ashamed of the name; it’s just that Jake has sounded better to me for the longest time. It might also be the fact that nobody called him Eugene. It was pretty apparent that he went by Gene, whether my grandmother was telling me a story about him or I was looking through his old documents from IBM. Gene’s a cool name too, but I don’t see myself going by that anytime soon. A couple of years ago, more of his stuff started to accumulate in my room. My grandmother began giving me more of his possessions as I got older, and I kept putting them aside in my room. When I first started to do this, it was because I thought all of the IBM pieces looked cool in my room, like the mini, tan-colored computer that, when you pulled out the bottom compartment, revealed a bunch of paperclips. If it had something to do with IBM, even if I didn’t have a clue about what it was, I found space for it in my room. From this IBM computer paper clip holder that I keep on my desk to the old photos of the IBM processing machines that he held over the years, I’ve tried to decorate and fill my room with everything IBM. For the longest time, that’s all they were, decorations. Even the star sat there, undisturbed and unnoticed. It was only after my 102

grandmother got sick that I slowly started to put more of an emotional and historical emphasis on the IBM objects in my room. When my grandmother got sick, my family was sad but understood what was going on, or should I say everyone but my twin sister, younger sister, and I knew what was going on. The same thing had happened to them when my grandfather passed away 16 years earlier. For us, though, we didn’t know what to do. We visited her as much as possible, spent as much time as we could going through old photos and remembering trips we went on with her. We also each had our ways of dealing with the situation. For me, I just kept collecting and collecting, as if I could buy back time with her by finding more and more star-like objects. It’s been over a year since my grandmother died. More than a year since I heard her tell a story about before I was born. When Gene was alive. About a month ago, my family and I went to visit her at the cemetery. When we got there, clouds began to hover above, and there was a slight drizzle. We spoke to her and thought about her. We each put a small pebble on the top of the tombstone and said our goodbyes. For me, the monument didn’t mean much. After all, it’s just a stone with a name on it. It’s not even close to what that star held. It was my grandmother who gave me his star. She probably told me what he got the star for, but I can’t remember. The paperweight sat on my desk for the longest time, forgotten because it was not needed. The bronze shine didn’t need to tell a story. The “NEA #1” engraved on the front didn’t need to remind me of anything. The small scratches and scrapes on the star didn’t need to keep anybody alive. My grandma was there for the longest time to do that. I guess I only started to realize this when she was gone, when she wasn’t there to tell me all of the stories about him, when she wasn’t there to embrace me. Now the star sits on my nightstand. The hard metal shell protects everything that’s held inside. The countless stories I’ve heard over the years. The fuzzy underbelly of the star ready to soak in any new accounts that come in the future. I look to it every night, reminding myself of all that it has seen, all that it reminds me of. The stories of my grandmother now live in it too, from sleepovers at her apartment in the city to countless Mahjong and Mexican Train games we played over the years. I can’t help but think, how many more people will live through this little hand-sized star that sits on the side of my nightstand closest to my bed, and how long will it be before it’s not just me that the star is hugging memories for.

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Photographer Unknown

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The Portrait ROSALIE CARGILL The young woman unfurls her hair-curlers and touches up with one more spritz of hairspray. Her mascara smoothly rolls onto her thick eyelashes, and one swipe of her favorite lipstick shade leaves her lips a pale, faded rose color. She picks up a delicate bottle filled with golden liquid and sprays it on her wrists and along her collarbone. A faint aroma of Gardenia and citrus drifts behind her as she walks up the stairs. The woman and her husband– whom she met in her hometown of St. Paul, Minnesota– moved into this house in Southport, Connecticut just under two years ago, yet it still felt new. She makes sure each one of her children dons their Sunday best. One woman wrangling four of her young children down the steps while carrying the fifth, who is on the brink of a meltdown. God forbid her husband help her. Instead, her husband stalls the photographer while checking his watch. “Can I offer you a drink? Her husband is tall, his hair slicked back like his favorite movie star, Clint Eastwood. When his wife reaches the bottom of the stairs, he whispers, “what took so long? You know the photographer was only available before 3:00.” His signature stench of bitter scotch and Vitalis Hair tonic repulsed the woman more than usual. Finally, everything is in place. The dog barks one last time. Her husband smiles straight ahead. As she holds her eighteen-month-old daughter, she looks at the camera lens. She hides behind her fake smile and waits for the end of the photoshoot... The camera flash makes her flinch. “What a beautiful family!” says the photographer. The woman’s smile says: This is what our parents want. This is what the world wants. A picture-perfect family. Don’t we just look great? She looks over to her husband-what is he smiling about? Surely he couldn’t be happy with this life. Unfortunately, she was right. Her husband was thinking about the life awaiting him in Spain, the life without his wife and children. The young mother winces at the grinding sound that fills her ears as the photographer winds up the film camera. “One More. One...Two...Three...” Click. Flash. The camera click echoes like the slamming of the door behind her husband on the day he left. Was her husband ever coming back? But the woman wasn’t so sure she wanted him to come back. Last night I stood there in my grandmother’s empty apartment. I gaze at the damp photograph in my hands, the layer of gloss almost entirely worn off and the paper yellow with age. Why would my aunt want this to be included in her mother’s obituary? She writes only about the amazing things my grandmother experienced, yet she chooses to include a photo that represents her suffering. After reading her obituary, I decided to write my own version. The real story. And I begin with this photo. The portrait of my grandmother’s pain.

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No Place to Be NEIL GAWANDE When I was young, my mother used to fly around a lot, my father was busy a lot, I had nowhere to be. For most of my early years, I lived around those who could only speak Marathi. My aunt took care of me. I was an American boy in India, dressed and pampered like the son of a king, relatively. I wasn’t allowed to drink the water that came from the tap; my western tummy was deemed too weak. In my grandma’s home, there was a servant woman who lived on top of the house and spent the day sweeping, cooking, and talking with me. I shopped in the local markets with my grandma and built contraptions with my grandpa. After what seemed to be a haze, hordes of kids would fly from the back of shoddily built school busses, and after half an hour or so, they would flock to the park. At four years old, I didn’t really need to go to school. The park had my last name on it. I would linger around until I finally approached the kids with dirt-covered bare feet to play, but I felt guilty because I had an advantage with my Nike shoes. I could see the ridicule in their eyes, “Kona he mula ahe,” (who is this boy?) one boy said. Why am I here, and why are they there, I thought. I watched a lot of movies. Anything… there was no rating limitation– my grandma didn’t care. My grandpa put on all kinds of action movies. “The Good, The Bad, The Ugly” was his favorite. I was entranced by the action, explosions, parkour over bullock carts, and sprints through rooftop laundry lines. I found it amusing when the hero would go through people’s ordinary lives while creating chaos, oblivious to them. I wanted to be like “The Good,r” a solo soul on some adventure. After an ambiguous amount of time, things settled, I was back in an American public school. I was in kindergarten. It was Friday. It was dull. We were learning about colors and shapes and vegetables and things. The beautiful blond teacher asked the class about what color was on the board. I raised my hand, “the vejietable is green.” No one knew what I was saying. I clarified, “the vejietable is green.” I caught the teacher’s gaze, with her half crooked smile and scrunched eyebrows. I whispered, “the vejietable is green....” I was now an Indian boy in America. After what felt like an eternity, the bell rang. I was guided to the school gym along with the rest of my classmates for dismissal. Behind me, a group of boys and girls were talking. I tried to listen, but it felt as if cloth was being stuffed in my ears. They were, the boys were messing with me. “look at this girl... with his stupid long hair,” they said. In front of the mean white and black kids, I felt they looked at me the same way I looked at the impoverished in India. I felt dirty, poor, and weak. My parents had moved to Connecticut in 1999. They found friends among the Indian community, mostly other couples who had just moved to the states. As the weekend came around, they would all pick a house to hang out. Usually, it was mine. I could not understand why the friends of my parents all decided to have little girls. I tried playing with them regardless. A boy among girls, bored and ignorant, I threw a green ball to one hoping for a regular game of catch; it hit her forehead and landed back in my lap. They all looked at each other, then at me with a glow in their stares. I took steps backwards while my hand and my 106

ball slid into my pockets. Tired of all the kids, my father put on a movie in the downstairs theatre for the kids. It was Kung fu Panda, the first one. A movie about a fat panda, the chosen one. Only he saw himself as nothing but a noodle seller from a small village. He had to defeat the Jaguar, but he had to believe in himself first. The final fight scene began. I took my hands out my pockets, gripped them behind my head, and enjoyed myself. I wanted to be the chosen one, the statistical anomaly, all I had to do was believe in myself. The fight was amazing, and it wrecked the whole village, which I found beautiful in a way. At the end, the kids stayed below speaking what seemed to me to be childish gibberish. I felt like an outlier. I ran upstairs into the musk of maturity. It smelled like leather and poisonous perfume. I sat in a little corner and listened to the adults. I paid attention to the way their eyes moved when they talked about their jobs. It seemed odd the way coughs appeared at the troughs and peaks of their discussions. I talked with them as if I were equal. It seemed it was the world of their words where I should be. But they shunned me away. I got bored again. In my mind, the floor started to sting and sizzle … I hopped onto the couch. I began to imagine the floor melting into lava. My fingers discovered the absence of my bouncy ball, it was in the theatre. I had a mission like the heroes I admired. I had a challenge as well, the couch was far from the kitchen table, and the table was far from the basement door. This man, they called him Goldy, I jumped on his back, avoiding the floor. He jerked forward, sending his wine through the air. He slipped. I flew off onto the kitchen table destroying the platter my mother arranged. Curry, meat, rice, drinks, all over the place. Destruction, like the village. I could see the horns in my father’s head erupt as he charged towards me. I ran like a crippled monkey, betweens peoples’ legs and tables. Out the porch door, over the railings, onto the trampoline, and into the woods. In the woods I heard a noise, I ran again. I’m an American among Indians, an Indian among Americans. I’m not boy enough for the boys and too boy for the girls. I’m too classy for the rough and too rough for the classy. I’m too grown for the young and too young for the grown. This pattern repeats itself all around me; I am too much or too little. It’s evident in every nook and cranny in my life. I don’t know where I’m supposed to go or what I am supposed to do. In school, in my relationships, in my sports, in my future, I am utterly confused. Perhaps the place to be for me is not stationary. Like the western wayfarer mentioned above, all I need is an adventure. But, if only someone were there with me, if I didn’t feel so alone. The truth is I am just a coward, unwilling to let my attachments go. I should be like the wind, never here nor there. Maybe when I am eighteen, I don’t know.

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Madison Gordon

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Night Air ZOE MONSCHEIN There is something fragile about the silence of the night. I had given up on the notion of sleeping an hour ago, but I still sat there in my darkened room, not wanting to break the silence with a step towards the door or a turn of the knob. My house is old, my room messy, and the only light was coming from the glow in the dark stars on the ceiling, put there by a little girl who’s probably older than my mother now, and I knew if I wasn’t careful, I would fall flat on my face and wake everyone up with the noise. No one ever wants to be the person who messes with the tranquility of the night time. No one wants to deal with the glares that come from their neighbors the next morning because they accidentally forgot their book in their car and set off the car alarm at one in the morning (that only happened once, I promise). But seeing as sleeping was getting me nowhere, I decided to brave the warzone of books and art supplies that is my room and take a walk to visit an old friend. The night air smelled the same as it always had, clean like some higher power had taken soap and a sponge to the world as we know it to make the next day even better, pure and refreshing, and it was that familiar feeling of fresh, cold wind that sent me running down the street, barefoot, on my tiptoes, so I wouldn’t make any sound. The pavement was cold and damp from the rain earlier in the evening, making little puddles in the crumbling potholes and deteriorating concrete. Wearing shoes probably would have been a good idea, but I was notorious in my neighborhood for never wearing shoes, and seeing as every single parent in my neighborhood was already mad at me for being a bad influence on their children because they no longer wanted to wear shoes either, it seemed a shame to ruin my reputation just because I was chilly. I slowed down to a walk, gasping for air, trying to slow my breathing. As any regular visitor to the world at night would know, if you find the right place and you stay still and quiet for long enough, you can almost see out of the corner of your eye the night breeze reaching out with its many tendrils to scrub down the world, make it new again; and if you are respectful, if you mind your place in the universe, the night air reaches out to you to run its fingers through your hair, making it windblown and frizzy and clean, and fills up your lungs with the purest air you’ve ever inhaled. The breeze passes through the trees, bringing them to life and making them dance as they aren’t allowed to when human eyes fall on them, before moving along to the puddles left on the concrete and sending ripples through it, making the surface bright and clear. I leaned over it and saw my reflection. It was different from what I saw when the sun was out. I looked taller, my eyes were sharper, and I could see knowledge in them that daytime me would never understand. In this moment, I was invincible, as if the night itself had taken me in and made me one of its own. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and then looked up at the sky, almost as if I had to check to make sure that it was there, the same sky I’ve lived under all my life, to make sure I was still here and the night hadn’t stolen me away. The sky was a mixture of indigo and violet, of darkness and new beginnings. Almost like I really was in another world with closed up houses and a sense of freedom in the air. Daytime was different, daytime was when people would come outside with their loud voices and louder children, their machines keeping their artificial lawns a green so bright it should be a biohazard. I let them keep the day because right now, the night air is mine, and mine alone. 109

Strength in Self-Identification after Brent Staples CARL CORIDON Indistinguishable: “not able to be identified as different or distinct.” I’m indistinguishable from being black. Whether it’s hearing the now routine racial jokes or feeling everybody’s eyes on you as you read To Kill a Mockingbird, being black is inescapable. It’s not just a race thing; it’s a culture thing. The music you listen to, the way you dress, the hairstyle you have, the dances you do; all of it gets thrown into this umbrella of black. The way I talk, using words such as “aight” instead of alright and “you buggin” instead of you’re freaking out;” that dialogue gets labeled as “hood” or “ghetto,” words synonymous with black. Looking back at it, there were many subtle signs and ways that my classmates tried to me feel indistinguishable; I just consistently missed those flags throughout the years. To me, I was Carl, and part of my identity was being black. To my classmates, I was one of the few black students, and my name just happened to be Carl. My ears picked up the whispers of my classmates claiming all I listen to is rap music or the only sport I can play is basketball. While I did enjoy those things, I never limited myself to a few categories. Continually listening to rap was a barrier that could’ve kept me from experiencing new genres such as blues and reggae; only playing basketball would’ve prevented me from enjoying sports like paddle tennis and lacrosse. I always explored and stepped outside of my boundaries. As moment after moment occurred, my vision started to clear. A common tactic of my classmates was “mistaking” me for my friends Mason and Anthony. I used to think it was an honest mistake even though I didn’t really understand how you couldn’t differentiate between us as we were vastly different appearance-wise. I had the glasses and extremely short hair combo, Mason had the wild afro that could hide small objects like erasers and mini pencils, and Anthony had the high top fade that’s reminiscent of Will Smith’s haircut during his “Fresh Prince of Bel Air” days. Only months later did I remember the condescending sneer that followed their “sorry!” I was definitely annoyed and very angry; however, I never felt identical to anyone; in my mind, I was unique, from my bright and neon sweatshirts to my obsession with beanies that have a pom-pom on top, and no one could lump me in with anyone else. Boy, was that mindset about to change. During 8th grade, I was fortunate enough to go on a class trip to Washington DC with my class. One of the highlights of our trip was going to the National Museum of African American History and Culture. I was walking with Anthony when a kid ran by yelling, “Yay, we’re going to the black people museum!” Anthony and I went silent while that kid and his friends started laughing hysterically at the joke like the idiots they are. A couple hours passed, and suddenly I was talking to one of the teachers leading the trip about how I felt when that was said. I was disappointed and disgusted because this kid was someone whom I considered to be a friend, yet he showed no respect towards the museum. The teacher understood, and we were able to have a productive and helpful conversation. After talking with the teacher, I decided to talk to this kid and his friend group was also present. I used slightly different, NSFW wording to ask, “What was going through your mind when you said that?” Phrases like, “I didn’t think it was offensive,” and “It wasn’t intended to hurt you,” flew out, but the phrase that stuck out to me the most was, “I don’t get why you’re 110

so mad about a joke like why are y’all always so sensitive.” Y’all... as in black people. This might seem like exaggeration, but this is the same kid who would intentionally call me Anthony or would shout racial slurs or would even talk about how all of “us” (black people) are bound to end up in the system. That y’all wasn’t just you all, and it wasn’t just our small group at NCCS; it was every single black person that he could think of. That y’all attempted to strip me of my individuality and lump me into a group. And if it ever got to the point where I let him say that and just accepted it… well, I guess I truly would be indistinguishable. The moment reminded me of one of my favorite Kanye West lyrics, “Even if you in a Benz, you still a n**** in a coupe.” When my classmate said, “Why are y’all always so sensitive,” it didn’t matter what I had done to distinguish myself from others; in the end, I was still just one of them, one of those “black people.” And that feeling that I felt when he said that- the feeling of my heart dropping down to my chest, down into a pit with no visible bottom; that’s a feeling I never want to experience again. That’s why I’ll stick to wearing my glasses at the bridge of my nose and buy new bright, neon sweatshirts to wear and energetically skip through the halls, smiling and singing the lyrics of whatever artist I’m listening to- Kanye or Kendrick or Kesha… (well, not so much Kesha: I just wanted another artist that started with a “K,” but that’s not the point.) I’ll embrace my awkwardness to the point that it might make you uncomfortable; I don’t mind being looked at as different. Because to me, anything’s better than being seen as a copycat or a look alike. If you asked me if I wanted to be seen as an outcast or indistinguishable a thousand times, not once would I pick being indistinguishable. After all, what’s not to like about a neon-sweatshirt wearing kid who skips through the halls, occasionally bumping into walls and doors because their glasses are always on the bridge of their nose?

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A Single Step RONALDO JOHN The Chinese philosopher and writer, Lao Tzu said, “the journey of a thousand miles, begins with a single step.” I’ve always used this quote throughout my life journeys. It has accompanied me throughout the series of crossings I’ve made, and it will continue to be my mantra for the many crossings that lie ahead. I want to share with you all a series of crossings that I have made in my life, some of my personal experiences that would give better insight into who I am. After 6 years, I finally felt compelled, as an educator that has stood before you in the classroom, as a colleague you have interacted with but most of all, as a black man in this community, to be your Friday speaker. Through this address, it is my hope that we continue to engage in dialogue in light our Coyle Scholar, Mrs. Julie Lythcott-Haims’ address. I was so moved by Mrs. Lythcott-Haims’ address (my eyes welled with tears many times during her talk) that I would be remiss to pass up on the opportunity to talk to you all today about my experiences as to how it has felt and what it means being ‘black’ in white spaces. I must admit, I was first at conflict with our speaker. Her introduction to herself at the start of her talk as a biracial woman of lighter skin (self-identifies as black) coming from college-educated parents and belonging to an upper-middle socio-economic class stood in glaring contrast to my identity as a black (AfroTrinidadian) not of lighter skin, who was not raised by college-educated parents and belonged to a middle socio-economic class. “How was I going to connect to her story, I wondered? As a black man listening to this black woman introduce herself, I felt no connection to her, for I was the total opposite. I do NOT share the “privileges” she has! I imagined myself as a black student here at GFA or elsewhere in the country whose parents weren’t college-educated or who did not have lighter-skin or belonged to an upper-middle socio-economic class… How was I or students similar to me going to connect with her? My identity is complex and, I hope that the selected stories that I am about to share will hopefully allow you to better SEE me! I was born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago, and oftentimes, people assume it’s in Africa but to avoid that inaccurate presumption, I’ll help you out. It is located in the Caribbean chain of islands, right above the South-American continent. I lived there up until the age of 18 when I headed off to college right here in our very own state of Connecticut. I attended Trinity College, however, to give a bit of context to this story I’ll start at my first home. Growing up in Trinidad was a completely different experience compared to living in the US. For you see, in Trinidad, yes, there are varied races, yes, there are racial tensions (especially on the heels of elections), yet nevertheless, my social context has ALWAYS been diverse, and black and brown faces are the majority. I never had to question my blackness or even had my blackness questioned. I never felt like I stood out. I had the privilege of feeling like I BELONGED. So naturally, when I arrived at Trinity’s campus, overwhelmed by all that was new, I needed to find a retreat, a safe haven, where I felt comfortable. When people reference Daniel Tatum’s book, “Why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria?” he could have very well been writing about me and my other black and brown friends that sat at “minority island” at breakfast, 114

lunch, and dinner. My college cafeteria’s layout was like this: ‘minority island-inhabited by all the blacks and students of color’ and the other side, ‘no man’s land,’ where all the white students sat. Minority Island became my safe haven, the place where I felt most comfortable because the kids there looked like me. I remember spending hours at a time laughing and clowning around with the other kids. Minority Island was always lit, and we had all sorts of conversations and debates. In retrospect, I consider my time spent at minority island to be my formative years. It helped me discover who I am but that came at a price. My place of refuge from my very white college campus threw me for a loop when one day, in one of our heated debates, I discovered that some of my African American friends did NOT see me as black. This was the first time I’ve been told that I was NOT black. “Yeahh... you have dark skin,” one pointed but, you’re not really black, you know, like American black. Another even went as far as saying that I was taking the spot of another black “African-American” kid who would have loved to have this opportunity. I was at a lost for words because in all my 18 years, I considered myself to be BLACK. I guess what some of those kids were trying to communicate to me then is that, at first sighting, for the white folks and African-Americans on my campus, I am BLACK, but my BLACKNESS was only REAL right up until I spoke. Here enters the conundrum of being ME. The privilege of having an accent made me a “different” type of BLACK to white folks while it revoked my “BLACK CARD” amongst African American students. My safe haven didn’t feel so safe anymore. My BLACKNESS was put into question and for some time, I even questioned whether I was black enough. I questioned where I truly fit in but, what I did know, was that ‘no man’s land’ was NOT where I belonged. Throughout my college career, I was the definition of ‘a fly in the milk’. I was a double major and for my 4 years at Trinity, I was the only black student in my Spanish classes and one of two blacks in my French classes. I noticed my reality, but my privilege of having grown up in an entirely different social context made me ignorant ( for quite some time) that being the only black kid in my classes was in actuality a pretty crappy thing. I did not perceive these ‘white spaces’ the way African-Americans did. I didn’t give it much thought because the environment in which I was raised did not require me to know what it feels like to be black in white spaces. I guess that’s why the black Americans questioned my BLACKNESS… why they didn’t see me as one of them. In my junior year, I studied abroad in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I was extremely excited after hearing about the amazing experiences of the students who visited, but AGAIN, I did not consider that their experiences would not have necessarily been my own. Why do you think that is??? They were WHITE and I was BLACK. The city of Buenos Aires is the ‘whitest’ in the South-American continent. The city’s demographic makeup and quite frankly, the snobby attitude of some porteños (what persons from Buenos Aires are called) has given the city a negative perception by neighboring countries. When I arrived in Buenos Aires, my first day on the ‘colectivo’ (bus) heading to orientation with my host mom met me with many stares from the Argentines. (I’ll say this, in the US, if someone is staring and eye contact is made, the person looks away… In Argentina, that is NOT the case. They make it known that they are looking into the depths of your soul). I expressed my discomfort to my host mom and she said to me, “es curiosidad más que nada” (It’s curiosity more than anything). I suppose they didn’t see too many six-feet black men with dreads very often. I endured these stares for my entire 5 months there, but I was only bothered for a few weeks. I had to make the decision whether I would allow the stares to ruin my opportunity of experiencing the culture first-hand, engaging with the people, and improving my Spanish, or look beyond and live it 115

up as planned. So, I put on my blinders and blocked out the many stares and heads turning while I walked in the streets. Oh, and how can I forget the many people always wanting to touch my DAMN hair at the clubs. I never told my white friends about my experience and they never noticed. I’ll just say that being black means being used to feeling discomfort. There are some people, like myself, who have the privilege of spending 18 years of their life not truly feeling discomfort thanks to their social context, while others feel it and have been made to push through it from a very young age, and then there are those, like my white friends, who will never know and understand the discomfort I speak of. My experiences in Buenos Aires changed my perception of Trinity’s many white spaces. Upon returning to campus I felt emboldened, more comfortable, because I had perfected the craft of inserting myself into places that once caused discomfort. After a two-year relationship with ‘minority island’, I decided it was time. Crossing that imaginary barrier into ‘no man’s land’, some 20 feet away, wasn’t such a big deal after all given the many barriers I crossed during my time in Buenos Aires. When I interviewed at GFA, like Trinity, I found myself, AGAIN, in a predominantly white space. However, this time around, I was more equipped for this crossing. Being at Trinity and having lived in Buenos Aires equipped me with that ‘tough’ skin to push through and allow myself to embrace the experience at hand. The faculty and staff, the students, and everyone I met that day were all warm and welcoming. This soon-to-be college-grad was used to being the fly in the milk, but man I tell you, I was not an ordinary fly then. I didn’t allow myself to become paralyzed in the sea of whiteness. Instead, I swam… I backstroked, breaststroked, and freestyled my way to getting that call back from Mrs. Hartwell some two days after my interview offering me the job. My experiences at Trinity and abroad in Argentina armed me with the tools to NOT retreat when in white spaces. I pushed through and blocked out the distraction so that my inner black boy magic would shine through. The point I want to make of this anecdote is that coming to GFA did not change the color of my skin or my reality but instead reminded me of the strong person that the color of my skin has made me. I’ve navigated white spaces since the age of 18, almost half as long as my students of color have been alive, and the task does not get easier. No, we just become better adjusted to our current realities. Yes, we have progressed as a country, we’ve elected the nation’s first black president and now our first Black and South-Asian female Vice President and in the midst of celebrating these accomplishments, we also witnessed the Black Lives Matter movement and the whirlwind of hashtags: #handsupdontshout, #sayhername, #imatter, all calling for an end to systemic racism and the unjust treatment of blacks, an end to police brutality, and an end to the murder of black and brown bodies. I CAN’T BREATHE… WE JUST WANT TO BREATHE! All these too are part of my reality each and every day I wake up and make my way to this school, and I am confident that the black and brown persons at GFA share this reality. We never let the suffocating pains we feel deep down inside show. We show up to the doors of GFA, full of hope for a better future, longing to feel seen and heard, to be treated justly and to have our concerns be validated by the people we consider to be friends, classmates ,and colleagues here at GFA. To my black and brown students, my students of color, I SEE you, and I understand the struggle. I walk these halls every day as one of the few faculty of color in the upper school and as one of two black male teachers in the classroom. I understand what it means to be BLACK in white spaces, to feel tokenized. I understand the anxiety that comes with walking at night with 116

your hood over your head and the need to make yourself look ‘non-threatening’. I feel the fear that some of you carry or will face when pulled over by the cops, not knowing whether you’ll make it out alive. I live this reality with you. You are NOT alone! My advice to you is this: you cannot and should not allow your reality to dictate the opportunity that you have here at this institution, to discover your passion and to seek out new experiences. At GFA, you have a wealth of resources at your disposal, resources I wish I had available to me when I was in high school, and I encourage you all to just look beyond, find your best ‘stroke’ for navigating these white seas, and capitalize on the resources made available to you. SPEAK UP! Say what you NEED to thrive and be your best selves in this community. You’re asked for your best, but the institution MUST ensure that it is providing you with the BEST environment that will facilitate your growth. Mrs. Lythcott-Haims wasn’t incapable of the rigor at Stanford University, she just needed the support to be able to thrive just as each of you do in whatever area or capacity it may be. Make your voices heard. I know it gets tiring always being the one to have to “push through”, to reach out, to make the first move, but remember, you’re doing this because creating the BEST experience for YOURSELF in spite of, is your number one priority. To my white students, you should NEVER feel guilt or shame for being YOU. While you did NOT choose the color of your skin and the inherent privileges that it provides, you ought to RECOGNIZE and ACKNOWLEDGE the privileges you have and the obligation to use said privileges to make this school, your communities, our country, and the world a safer, more just and equitable space for people of color. You will never truly understand what it is to walk in the shoes of a black classmate, you will never have to endure “the talk”, you will never carry the burden of fearing for your life and wondering whether you’d make it home alive after being pulled over by the cops. You may listen to this address and feel ‘just over-it’ having to talk about race, race, race all the time, BUT I say this to you: your white privilege affords you all of these passes in your life. Having these privileges do not make you a bad person but NOT acknowledging them, after having been told about it time and time again, DOES put your character into question. Hell, it puts your humanity into question. Our speaker, at the end of her talk, asked two important questions: “Do you see black and brown people as WHOLE - and what makes them whole?” She then asked, “what can you do to make your inner circle ( family, friends and community) more kind?” Forgive me if I’m being presumptuous, and I am by no means trying to speak for the entire black and persons of color community, but I am confident that many students and faculty of color would agree that having YOU, white students and colleagues initiating and engaging in these very difficult conversations with us, would be greatly appreciated. Don’t always look to the black student in the classroom when issues around race and discrimination arise. Don’t wait for the Asian or Indian student to come sit at your table. Don’t let the black students always sit alone. Insert yourselves into these spaces and welcome others into yours. Don’t only speak to the Latinos/as when you need help saying something on your Spanish paper. We’ve always had to reach out, because our world is structured in such a way that having white allies/friends has ALWAYS been part of our recipe for success. Again, white privilege has afforded you the opportunity to not have to contemplate needing to befriend a black person or a person of color to better your experience. Here at GFA, we strive to be an inclusive community and a family, however, there is a lot of superficiality roaming our hallways. I under stand that these are difficult conversations to have, BUT they MUST be had. Otherwise, we’re only 117

fooling ourselves, masking our reality. So this is what I’ll do: I’m taking off my mask, and I’m making myself totally vulnerable to this entire community, all formalities aside. I’m no longer Señor or Mr. John at this moment. I’m Ronaldo or Naldo as I’m called by family. My friends and some colleagues have given me nicknames over the years: Naldz or Ronathon. I am a BLACK man living in the United States. My experiences growing up may have been different from my African American brothers and sisters, my privilege of being Trinidadian makes me less of a ‘threat’ to white Americans, nevertheless, I have similarly endured microaggressions, overt racism, and the trials of navigating white spaces. I had to learn about the experience of African Americans and people of color in the US as a means to better sympathize with their struggle for equality, equity, and justice. In my twenty-something even years on this planet, I’ve had to break many barriers to connect in an effort to make the best experience for MYSELF, and today, I stand before you all, my colleagues, and you, my students that I am fond of, sharing some of my deepest emotions and my innermost fears hoping that I will inspire you all to embark upon this journey with me, to remove yourself from your comfort zone, to embrace the feeling of discomfort, and to use it as a stepping stone to engage in thoughtful conversations with your classmates, friends and colleagues, black and white alike. Embark on this crossing with me… because as I near the end of this address, I have opened up to you a lot more than I intended, but that’s okay! Now you all get to KNOW me a whole lot better. You get to SEE me. Always remember, the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step!

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The Click CAROLINE SMITH My name is Caroline Smith, I’m seventeen years old, and here are some of my secrets. I’m terrified of rejection. I still don’t know how to work my calculator. Sometimes I don’t call my friends back even when I remember to. I am a procrastinator. I’ve overshared to my advisor in all of our meetings. I read too much Kurt Vonnegut for my own good, and I think modulation is a cheap trick that composers use to create variance when they lack ideas. I fall in love with people and things too easily. I scribble poems on the back of the CVS receipts that litter the floor of my car. I forget a lot of birthdays. Everybody in my life—friends, cousins, mailmen, randos—would describe me as prodigiously Type-A. I tend to spiral when I make mistakes, I’m stressed out all the time, and I’m so self-critical that it borders on chronic condemnation in the eyes of the God I don’t believe in. At least two times a week, I convince myself that all my friends hate me, which means that three times a week (twice to manage my crises and once preventatively), Kavya has to talk me down from my baseless pedestal. I know how lucky I am to have someone like her in my life who is quick to yell me out of being ridiculous and quicker to hug me when I’m freaking out anyway. I am immedicably a control freak. I walked the same route to Chapin every day, I always eat the same thing for breakfast, I journal religiously, but it has to be in a graph-ruled black Moleskine. I am the “lonely and resistant rearranger of things” that Didion talks about in “On Keeping a Notebook.” My calendar is so color-coordinated. I dislike discontinuity and having my plans derailed by things I can’t control… so… suffice to say, my life has been rather anarchic in the past year and change. On March 11th of 2020, my family drove out of Manhattan for what I assumed would be a few-week-long refuge from the pubescent Covid bubble that was New York. My parents had had the foresight to have us pack up all of our things the week before (a request I’d deemed ridiculous because there was no way this virus would have me stuck in Connecticut for more than a month), and as I loaded all of my stuff into the trunk of the chunky SUV my parents wouldn’t let me drive yet, I bade goodbye to my school and 79th Street and all of the wrinkled normalcy I’d managed to collect in the absolute maelstrom that was sophomore year. March became spring break, became April, became distance learning, and before I knew it, I’d spent two months in this unfamiliar town. Westport had quickly turned into backaches, headaches, heartaches, and woe. I had nobody to wake me up from whatever cyclical bad dream I was trapped in, and all of these questions I didn’t know the answers to. Would I be home soon? Would we close out the year in person? Would I watch my girlfriend graduate? Would I still spend junior year at SYA Spain? I word streamed my worries in sporadic texts to my best friend Kiera, who at a spry fifteen was owed at least an edible arrangement for talking me out of my pandemic-induced grief spirals. I felt royally screwed over by the universe. It seemed like things had just started going my way. After two years at my new school, I finally felt like I’d settled in. I had real friends, good relationships with my teachers, leads in the plays, a band I performed with—I’d gotten the hang 119

of high school (albeit once it was halfway over). And enter coronavirus. These places, these nooks I’d found at last, the first communities I felt like I belonged in, were… gone? Postponed? I didn’t even know. The worst part of this emptying, existential monotony was that I was starting to lose any and all aim. New York seemed irreparably damaged. Trump was a maniac, De Blasio was a dunce--hell, I don’t even think Anderson Cooper knew what to do. I gave up my last shred of hope of performing at spring coffee house, of seeing Annie Hall at Film Forum, of Commencement, and the six train, and pre-show coffee runs. When was I going to turn in my Suez Canal paper? Would I ever get my driver’s license? Why did I buy a dress for senior prom in April? There was no prom, there was no Commencement, and I turned that paper in three weeks late. On the last day of school, I went to the two-hour-long special assembly dedicated to the seniors (a poor placebo for missing their hard-earned traditions because all it managed to do was make everyone’s lower back pain worse), and I couldn’t tell if I was going to laugh or cry. Here I was, at the desk in a room I didn’t really live in, watching my girlfriend graduate on the dumpster fire that was the Institution of Zoom, texting my mom to see if today was the day we’d finally make our maiden voyage into Walgreens, and for the first time, I felt like I saw my circumstances from an elevated perspective. The world was in chaos! My life was upended! I just wanted to go back to New York and my friends and my band and the really nice man at the deli around the corner who sometimes gave me my orange juice for free. I descended into total freakout mode, and in this fit of stress, I finally heard “the click.” “The click” is an audible moment of revelation in Kurt Vonnegut’s novel God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater that completely inverts the outlook of whoever hears it. The click, which sounds like when you hit the return key on a typewriter, is only perceptible to he who is having the revelation. It has virtually no effect on circumstance or external characters—it’s purely about a shift in perspective, an internal reversal. In the book, the young Eliot Rosewater hears his first click and makes the decision to abandon his status, his senator father, and New York City to travel through small random American towns in hopes of finding his own humanity. At last, he settles in Indiana and moves into the attic of an old fire station. Rosewater disregards hygiene, answers calls half-naked in the middle of the night from distraught townsfolk, assuages these people’s troubles and woe by offering them “unlimited amounts of love” and writing them out-of-pocket checks over the phone. This click enables him to develop a conscience. He discovers meaning. He discovers compassion. Now, I’m not a totally insensitive thirty-year-old alcoholic man with a statusy politician for a dad, and I had already left New York, so my click was a little different. It came in the form of the realization that, yes, things were kind of awful. Yes, I was upset. Yes, I wanted to go home. But. I had been doing what I could to stay afloat. It wasn’t like there was some magic cure to all of my Covid-caused afflictions, no foreign country to run away to, no smuggler with shady vaccines I could use my parents’ wedding china to pay for, no magic spell to wish my life back to normal. I’d been trying so, so hard, and I couldn’t just resign myself now. Still, I was stuck in a lot of places, and unlike Rosewater, I didn’t have $87 million at my disposal on my journey to self-fulfillment. So like most non-senatorial-heiress sixteen-year-olds, I’d have to find fulfillment elsewhere. I had to keep trying. I would get out of bed, I would call my friends more, I would fight to make my life more normal again. I’d go through the motions until the motions turned into routine, until routine turned into progress, until progress made me stable enough to pursue a sense of purpose while I waited for things to go back to normal. And this was all I could really ask of myself. 120

Epiphany and assembly both over, I went downstairs to make a cup of coffee to remedy the dull, tired ache in the back of my skull. I poured the milk into my Breakfast of Champions mug, and my parents, who were lingering by the kitchen table, told me to come sit down for a talk. They had news for me, and they made it explicitly clear that I wasn’t to tell my siblings yet--after all, they weren’t yet sure whether we were definitely leaving New York. I knew that my parents had liked spending the spring in the suburbs. Having the ability to get out of the city when Covid got bad was an immense privilege. But I never thought we’d stay here for good. This was supposed to be temporary. This was a temporary thing. After the taste of freedom and outdoor dining and closet space, I guess they didn’t like the idea of going back into the city. We’d be inside all day, we’d have three kids Zooming into school while my dad worked from home in our non-house-sized apartment, we’d have to get in an elevator we shared with half a hundred people if we wanted to go anywhere—but Westport provided an opposite lifestyle. Still, I countered, wouldn’t Covid get better by the fall? No, they said. No, quite the opposite. I was suspicious of their proclamations of doom, virtual learning, a second wave, but I didn’t push them on it. Instead, I pretty much disregarded the news. “We’re considering the possibility of leaving New York pending the three of you receiving acceptance to Greens Farms Academy,” they had said. What I chose to hear was, “Here’s this thing that probably won’t happen, but you’ll have to write an essay for it and fill out some forms, but it’s probably not legit, and you probably won’t end up getting in, and if you do get in you might not even go, so basically the best assumption here is that you’re NOT moving because that would be ridiculous for a number of reasons.” Needless to say, I was off the mark. So I complied. I filled out the application. I wrote a personal essay about music that was probably one of the better pieces I’ve written in my life. I had an interview with Ms. Miller, informed my Chapin advisor that I’d need a copy of my transcript, and filed into the back left closet of my brain this secret possibility that I was either really excited about or really detested (I didn’t know which). On top of being hesitant to unpack my feelings about this process (because as it seems to go with depression and bank heists, it’s usually just easier to tell nobody), I was also hesitant to embrace living here, even if only temporarily. Covid was the reason I was like this in the first place--friendless, alone, apathetic in Connecticut. At first, I was overwrought with sadness. Heart-striking, chest-heaving, all-consuming sadness that rendered me pretty much unable to get anything done for a month. But because I was and probably will always be uncomfortable with feeling my feelings, I buried that sadness deeper in my chest. And then a new feeling emerged, one that felt safer and more actionable than this incapacitating despair. I started to feel angry. I was angry at life, angry at the world, angry at my parents for making us stay here and politicians for not doing enough and anti-maskers for being the geniuses prolonging this whole ordeal. The anger made me feel safe and in control. The anger was not an effective coping strategy. I spent the rest of June resolving to get out of the house more than I did because it’s pretty easy to wallow when you’ve been stuck inside for three months in a place where you know nobody, and the most exciting part of your week is stepping foot in a Stop and Shop. Truthfully, I probably spent more hours sitting at my desk deleting and rerecording the same eight bars of my song than going outside, but I did manage to get out of the house enough to solidify my sock tan. And yeah, the sun and the warmth and New York Times Crossword did help lift my mood, but only marginally. The anger hadn’t subsided, and I started to feel as though it was controlling me more than I was controlling it. 121

After spending all of the Fourth of July weekend reading at the beach, me becoming gradually darker and my tan lines becoming comparatively paler, my parents received confirmation that my siblings and I were accepted to GFA. This phone call, (or email, or pigeon with a scroll taped to its leg, or however they send acceptance letters these days) confirmed that I, Caroline Smith, bornand-raised city slicker, would be relocating to Westport, Connecticut. Full. Time. Oh jeez. Oh man. I’d known this was a possibility, but I hadn’t actually clocked it as “possible.” For months I’d refused to acknowledge the very real chance that my already-upside-down life would pick up and move to Westport. I didn’t want it to happen, so I pretended that it wouldn’t. But now it was real, and even if I buried myself in music and writing and season 14 of Criminal Minds, I couldn’t ignore my inevitable fate. Not even Matthew Gray Gubler could save me from the fact that I would not return to Chapin in the fall, I would not do another play, I would not get a class ring, I would not walk out of 583 Park Avenue with a diploma and cigar my senior spring. In two months, I would be at school in the suburbs (which I imagined would be like some sort of Perks of Being a Wallflower meets High School Musical meets Contagion--you know, the Jude Law movie that’s like our pandemic but with a better soundtrack). But I had nothing to do about any of this! Once again, life was just THRUST upon me. Oh, Caroline. You poor, short-haired, liberal idiot. This must be cosmic retribution for eating your brother’s Halloween candy. This must be karma for your habit of routinely paying for your coffee with the quarters floating around your backpack. If only the cashiers of Manhattan’s finest corner stores could see you now. How they would laugh. So I sat in my room for three days feeling all kinds of weird about what was coming next, going back and forth between catastrophizing and idealizing this move. I’d have to start over at a new school, which would probably be difficult both for me personally and whoever was going to have to read my multi-school mess of a common app. I’d have to make new friends again, which I guess I could handle because I’m a pretty social person. I’d be severely out of my element, but I was an avid summer camper back in my heyday, so I could deal with the bugs. At the same time, though, this was not what I’d envisioned the rest of high school would look like. I started to realize how many things I’d been looking forward to that would just never happen. I started mourning losses left and right. Every hour I had a new realization--no more running lines over breakfast in the Gordon Room! No more hopping the M79 without paying the bus fare! No more Friday 7am chorus rehearsals that I always hated going to, or being a peer leader my senior year, or moving in with my host family in Zaragoza. So much excitement, so much possibility with this change--and so many things I would lose. I walked around numbed out, detached, stressed, confused for the rest of that week. And then one night, I was sitting on the floor of my room drawing butterflies on my legs with a sharpie, and I heard something. I heard a second, newer click. It was less patient than the first one and had substantially worse people skills. Frankly, it was more of an avalanche than a click. It kicked the door off its hinges and yelled, “HEY DORK. GET UP. WE’VE GOT SOME THINGS TO ADDRESS.” And I, being as unassertive as possible in all situations unrelated to -phobias or -isms, threw on my shoes and went for a VERY pensive walk. I don’t know if you can tell yet, but I tend to overanalyze things. And I’ve known that for a long time, and on this walk--well, it wasn’t really a walk, it was more me pacing in circles around the pool while my dog looked at me like I’d popped one of his doggy Xanax and started having a conversation with God--but I was outside at 11pm, drowning in thoughts, aware and oblivious all at once. I saw my summer flash by like one of those montages they do at the beginning of TV 122

shows because they assume you’re not binging the whole show all at once. But I’d spent months in agonizing anticipation of what was to come, letting fear gnaw at my body from the inside out. It clearly had not been serving me well because I was still here freaking out three months later, wasting all of my mental energy on things I just wouldn’t be able to know yet. So I made a choice. Again. But this time I wasn’t only shifting my behavior, I was shifting my thinking pattern. Westport and GFA would no longer be a good or a bad thing until I started living my new life. For the next four weeks, I’d do my best to remain completely neutral on the matter--cautiously optimistic, even. No more assumptions, no more snap judgments. And NO stalking the school Instagram page. I would let myself grieve what I was losing by coming here and be curious about the future, but I would not be reduced to the sum of my sadness. After the first day of school, I came home and cried to my parents on the kitchen floor. But it was good crying. It was the best crying. I was blissed out, beyond relieved, beyond elated. In just four hours I was so impressed by the people here. I don’t know if you all feel this way, I’m not sure if this is what the rest of the world is like and everywhere I’ve been is an outlier, but from an outsider’s perspective, the kindness in this community is palpable. On the first day, it was little things that I noticed--people going out of their way to interact with me and make me feel welcome. My teachers sending me lovely emails to make personal introductions. A little kid held the door for me! It was precious! The third graders at my old school would have just stomped on your toes. But right off the bat, this place felt like a breath of fresh air, and it only got better. I was having a hard time in the fall--there was like this span of two days when I broke up with the girl I dated for a year, and my therapist moved so I had to stop seeing her, and then my FISH DIED– it was awful. I was so sad! And everyone was so kind to me. I had a completely unwarranted breakdown to like two of my teachers, and by the end of it, I was crying more because they gave me such good pep talks. The people here are just kind. I don’t know if I’ve ever been embraced so quickly and so radically before. New York is a different speed. When you’re trying to find your success on an island with one and a half million people, compassion gets put on the back burner. There’s a reason we have so many stereotypes. If you follow the Overheard New York Instagram account, I can assure you that that was my New York on the daily. When I came here, I realized how many sharp elbows there were back home. And I realized that my elbows were probably pretty sharp, too. But I was getting softer. I was getting softer, I was getting calmer, I was getting happier. My name is Caroline Smith, I am a junior at Greens Farms Academy, and here are some of my secrets. I am very bad at small talk. I make a dogma out of letter writing. I got cyberbullied in the eighth grade, I put up posters on the walls in my room to remind myself that this is home now. My parents went to grade school together. My favorite form of prose is the confrontational email. I have synesthesia. My middle name is Elizabeth. I love the show Pretty Little Liars, and you can bully me all you want for it. I didn’t know my friends’ names for the first three weeks of school. I’m bad at writing happy songs, my beverage of choice is a dirty chai, I still have my New York driver’s license even though I’m pretty sure I’m technically supposed to change that. I am a very different Caroline than the one I was last April--more indecisive, more introspective, equally unproductive. I’m half an inch taller. I released a song. I have real producers. I’ve 123

witnessed death. Thirteen months ago, I thought none of these things possible, and it’s rattled me and my convictions to our core. For the first time in my life, there is not a SINGLE thing I am sure about. Not one. And as someone who needs to be at the helm of All Things Always, that’s horrifying for me. But I have learned this. In uncertainty, in disaster, in conflict, in life, the key to making the bad things less bad is embracing them, in all their suckish, agonizing, aleatory glory. It takes more than accepting our circumstances to open ourselves up to genuine happiness. For almost two decades, I’ve been walking around this silly blue marble with worries pounding the back of my eyeballs. The only constant in my life has been catatonic stress. Maybe it’s the way my brain works, maybe it’s that my last high school was a total pressure-cooker, maybe it’s because I grew up in a place where people don’t wait and hold the door for you so I had to learn The Hustle when I was, like, nine. If I knew why I was always a ball of nerves, my sister wouldn’t have to do breathing exercises with me before calc quizzes, Dr. Jump wouldn’t have to put up with my repeated existential crises that make our meetings run an hour over, and my dog would consider me substantially less needy. But I just am the way I am. And I can’t change that, the cortisol and shaky palms, and I don’t even know if I’d want to. I think the nerves made me a better person in the sense that I am always living such a raw human experience. I’m swimming in my own biology. I am embracing the anxiety, the fear, the worrying about my future, the panicking over my history paper. It’s not fun. It’s not easy. But I’ve come to see that it is a skill to be comfortable with discomfort, and if you’re anything like me, I am extending my hand and inviting you into terrible, miserable, beautiful uncertainty with me. Control is an illusion, and the longer we cling to it, the more we depend on it, and the more we depend on it, the worse things get when our agency dissolves. I took a lot for granted before Covid. The standby presence of my friends. The Q train always running on time. Normalcy. It boggles me sometimes that this is where I am and who I am and who I have become, and it boggles me that I just had the hardest year of my life and we’re still in a global pandemic, and I know thirty people at my new school, and I am standing up in front of I don’t know how many strangers spilling my guts, and I’m still the happiest I’ve ever been. It is okay to be scared and welcome something good. It is okay to miss something old and embrace something new. I didn’t anticipate loving here. Any of this. Connecticut, school, my stupid friends, the most wonderful people I know. Six months ago, I wrote in my journal, “I will never have roots in Westport. This is no more than a pitstop for me. I have a year and a half before I graduate, I have one foot out the door. This will not become my home, but that is okay. I’ll enjoy it while it lasts. What could possibly be the harm in that?” And, man, I always hate having to say this, but I was so wrong. I am no oak tree flowering out of the Connecticut soil, but something has started tethering me here, and that’s a hard feeling to get when you know that everything is transient, especially when things have been transient for so long. But GFA embraced me. GFA embraced me when I was at my most sensitive, my most fragile, my least assured. The small kindnesses people have shown me– they don’t go unnoticed. I did not come here looking for a love like this, but I found it. I am pleasantly surprised that I found it so soon, for now, I can relish it even longer. I do not offer this speech to you as a hello. I do not offer it as a goodbye. I offer it as a “see you around.” As a “thank you.” As an “I’ve spent seventeen years looking for a tree to rest beneath and somehow you gave me shade and diet coke in six short months.” So my poetry borders on prose, my body is reliant on caffeine, and my home is Owenoke Park. And on this April 9th at this covid-proofed podium, I would not have it any other way. 124

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Acknowledgments First, we would like to express our gratitude to the writers and artists who submitted their work for the 44th annual issue of Penumbra. Every submission was read blind and selected solely on its merit. Next, we recognize the many people behind the scenes who make Penumbra possible every year. Ms. Waldstein and Mr. Baykal-Rollins nurture talented artists and their work. Ms. Moore expertly and patiently guides us through InDesign. Mr. Jones enthusiastically supports the production of the book with Camp Penumbra. Ms. Sullivan enriches our community with her lovingly tended library. Our printer of 20 years, Furbush-Roberts Printing in Maine, brings Penumbra to life. Caitlin Roberts Sullivan, in particular, shares her expertise and graciously and patiently leads us through the publication process. Mrs. Orefice, Mrs. Furegno, and Mrs. Gibb help us with mailing. As always, thank you to the English Department for encouraging students to write and share their work in Penumbra. Your passion for the written word and dedication to teaching inspires writers year after year. Finally, the editors and staff cannot thank Ms. Greiner enough for her devotion to the book and endless creativity. Thank you to everyone who made this year’s issue of Penumbra exceptional. Keep creating! THE EDITORS

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A Note on the Typeface This year’s edition of Penumbra incorporates two separate fonts, Plantin and Kepler, along with the special inclusion of our own handwritten font for the cover to emphasize our more individualistic take on the literary magazine, and to make the statement that our publication encourages freedom of expression, diversity, and creativity. Plantin has its roots in a font originally created by the French type-designer Robert Granjon during the 1540s-1590s. It was eventually re-invigorated or re-imagined in its modern form as Plantin, named after the famous sixteenth-century printer, Christophe Plantin, in 1913, by Frank Hinman Pierpoint and Fritz Max Stelzer. Plantin as a typeface is renowned for its elegant, classical, but strong and impactful appearance, harkening back to its historical French roots. In the case of Kepler, named after the 17th-century revolutionary German astronomer, Johannes Kepler, its inception was much more recent, being designed by Robert Slimbach in 2003. While it may be a contemporary font, it emulates classic, modern typefaces from the 18th century, keeping a subdued, refined, classical appearance, while conceptually being rooted in ideas of modernity and progression, hence its name.1 The text is printed on 100% post-consumer recycled 70 pound Rolland Enviro100 Print Paper.

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Inspiration... Write about a time when you felt truly alive. What’s one thing beyond your control that you would change if you could? What’s one thing you would never change, even if you could? Write everything you can remember about a person you miss. Write everything you can remember about a place you miss. Describe a framed photograph in your house in as much detail as possible. Write a story about a family secret. What about you is most misunderstood? Write a story from the perspective of the polar-opposite of yourself. Write about a strange/exciting/scary/recurring dream you’ve had. Write about a time you got in trouble as a little kid. What happened? What do you strongly believe in?

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Penumbra 2021

Articles inside

The Yellow-Rumped Warbler ~ MENNA DELVA

Missing You Missing Me ~ ALEXANDRA AGAH

Photographs ~ KAVYA KRISHNAMURTHY

Craft Interview with Leslie Jamison ~ MENNA DELVA

Life Cycles ~ MARY KESSLER

These Sorts of Things ~ KEVIN KURLYA

Ice Cold ~ MAX HOWAT

Hayden ~ HARRIETT WELLS

Another Way to Disappoint Him ~ BEYZA KALENDER

Christian Couples Counseling ~ HALEY NILSSON

The Folding ~ CJ SHEA

Quincy ~ SOFIA EBBESEN

Between the Roots and Tree ~ ANNIKA WHITE

The Fire Burns ~ JACKSON RASSIAS

The Hollow Shell ~ JAFFIR WAJAHAT

Great Blue Heron ~ AIDAN MURPHY

Inishbofin ~ CAYLA BERNSTEIN

Summertime Shore ~ RYAN AUDEMARD

Path to Tranquility ~ SAMARA COHEN

Longboat Key ~ LILLY BECK

Southport Harbor in the Late Summer ~ TIM NORTHROP

The Green Mountains are Seldom Green ~ CAROLINE McCALL

Her Lullaby ~ MENNA DELVA

The Morning Show ~ PETER LUI

He Would Give His Life ~ SHAAN CHANNAMSETTY

Hope ~ EMILY TWITCHELL

Apollo’s Lament ~ ANNIE DIZON

The Fireflies in Our Future ~ ANNA REYNOLDS