Spring 2012 | Illumination: the Undergraduate Journal of Humanities

Spring 2012

I

llumination The Undergraduate Journal of Humanities

fall 2011

ART • LITERTATURE • ESSAYS

letter from the editor Dear Readers, Once again, I am proud to present another issue of Illumination: the Undergraduate Journal of Humanities. This year, we’ve printed a journal that is an incredible product of both innovation and tradition. I want to thank each and every member of our dedicated staff for working hard to create such an amazing issue.

With budget cuts persisting throughout educational institutions like our university, I feel fortunate that we can provide a journal like Illumination for the campus, students and loyal readers alike. Illumination is such an incredible portal for the humanities, providing an exhibition for art, poetry, prose, and essays for undergraduate work.

Therefore, my largest thanks is dedicated to all of the readers and artists of this journal. Without you, our journal would consist of empty pages. Today, I’m happy to present an issue filled with incredible artwork and creative literature, all produced by the undergraduates of the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.

I would also like to dedicate a special thanks to the Publications Committee Director and Advisor for supporting the journal in all its facets. Each step of the production process has benefited from your endless encouragement and faith. The staff and I appreciate everything you have done for us!

I would also like to thank Adam Blackbourn, the founder of Illumination for establishing a foundation for this publication. We have been extremely blessed to have the ability to continue producing undergraduate student work. I leave the position of editorship with an intense appreciation for the challenge and resulting success of each issue this year. This experience has been incredibly rewarding and I feel lucky to have managed this journal.

With the warmest regards,

Brittany Estrada

Administrative Committee Editor-in-Chief: Brittany Estrada Assistant Editor-in-Chief: Kiran Gosal Events and Involvement Coordinator: Elyse Kowalczuk Release Coordinator: Katherine Busalacchi Social Media Director: Rachel Seurer Financial Advisor: Justin Walker WUD publications Committee advisor: Jim Rogers

2

Staff Art Editor: Molly Rentscher Art Reviewers: Alex Vogel, Punbraye Vang Copy Editor: Jenna Severson Copy Reviewers: Amie Kjellstrom, Casey Nordman, Shaun Miller, Heather Sieve Essay Editor: Alex Dunn Essay Reviewers: Brianna Karis, Emily Rossmeissl, Kelsey Sorenson Layout Editor: Alice Walker-Lampani Poetry Editor: Tracy Shoberg Poetry Reviewers: Taylor Brown Prose Editor: Chelsea Bliefernicht Prose Reviewers: Sarah Vroman, Jordin Barber, and Allie Koelbl

Table of Contents Prose:

4-9 Dream Giver: KT Howard

11-15 The Intolerable: G M Cottrill 16-17 Preservation: Gabriella Bonamici

Essay: 20-27 Snapshots of a kiddo: an essasy about overcoming life

by Kaitlyn Gartner

Poetry:

28-29

Poision Moon: Tony Paese 31 Holes: Michael Ashley

33 The tumble: Eric Lynne

34 the desert: Noah Whitford 35 Rope: Danielle Kutka

Art:

Cover/back and 3 6 and 7 9 and 30

10, 28, 34, and 35 15, and 18-19 17

22 and 32

G M Cottrill Marley Wheeler Jennika Bastian Olivia Baldwin Elise Berry Mia Mueller Paula Helmsedt

Thai Pavilion G.M. Cotrrill Photo negative 8x10’’ On back of Issue: Water Rust Photo negative “8x10”

3

Dream Giver

By KT Howard

I stood at the end of the corridor repeatedly opening the door for the first time. But I couldn’t be at the end of the corridor, because I was walking through it. Sterile doors lined the walls. Even though my feet propelled me forward, I didn’t move an inch. My goal was to reach the me at the end of the corridor opening the door for the first time, then again, and then once more. As much as I walked forward, I still passed the same door. A piece of paper on the door read SATCHEL in big, handwritten letters. I don’t know why this was important. My goal was ahead of me, not beside me. As I returned my gaze to myself at the end of the corridor, I recognized the building.

This was the thought that alerted me to my actual state. My feet did not tread in a sterile corridor. In fact, now that I knew I was dreaming, I started to move. Nothing would happen after this. The feeling was broken. I could not change anything in the vision unless I was dreaming.

Soft sheets curled around my shoulders — my real shoulders. My husband radiated enough heat to warm my back. I briefly opened my eyes to clear my vision of the dream. Strange dreams weren’t new to me, but this one didn’t feel like my own. Perhaps it was just the new house.

I would get used to it. Rolling over, I curled against my husband’s back, breathed deeply, and slept once more. *

He woke up before me. The smell of scrambled eggs and bacon filled the house. I loved it when he cooked breakfast.

Once I was out of bed, I stretched and put on my robe. The bedroom was almost fully unpacked — only a few boxes of winter clothes stood in the corner. We both pondered over the eventual placement of the clothes. Our dressers remained in inconvenient locations. Eventually, we would rearrange the bedroom into a more aesthetically pleasing arrangement.

The kitchen was in a similar state. We had unpacked most of our stuff yesterday. I still had to find room for the blender and electric mixer, which now inhabited an out-of-the-way corner of the counter. I suppose I would have to find a place for the largest frying pan this morning, since that was what Omar was using to cook eggs and bacon.

I sat on a chair free of empty boxes. Omar stumbled through the rest of the kitchen looking for plates and then glasses for orange juice. I yawned to announce my presence, and he leaned over to peck me on the cheek. “Good morning. Where did the plates go?”

“The cupboard over the counter,” I answered.

4 Prose

“Glasses in the one next to it. Silverware in the top drawer to the right of the sink.”

I smiled at his exclamation of victory when he found the plates. He waved the plate of breakfast under my nose, and I happily sniffed it.

“You’re doing everything without me,” he said as he sat down. He dressed in nice pants, but he wore an undershirt instead of a collared one. He would change shirts for work before he left.

“Well, there’s not much to do otherwise,” I told him.

“I told you, you can find a job.”

I took a bite of the scrambled eggs then added salt to add flavor. He eyed the salt shaker with distain.

“No,” I said. “I want to unpack the house first. Then have a baby or two.”

“Isn’t this our house?”

I smirked at him. “Nope, it’s my house that you are paying for. Take it or leave it.”

“Then I get the kitchen, since I cook wonderful breakfasts.” He took a bite out of his own eggs, made a face, and added salt to them. I rolled my eyes. Breakfast was the only thing he could cook, and it’s only because I prefer to wake up late.

I chewed a piece of bacon. “How about this: since I unpacked the kitchen, and we unpacked our bedroom, you can unpack the living room.”

“How are you going to manage without your camera?”

I threw a forkful of egg at his face. He laughed.

My camera was a Canon EOS Five D Mark II. I packed it away when we moved, but I haven’t had an itch to take it out since we arrived. Omar doesn’t know about this last bit, and I hadn’t had a reason to really tell him.

When breakfast finished, I cleaned the dishes. I decided to hand wash them even though we had a dishwasher. In Omar’s rush to get ready for the day, I simply put them in the sink for later. Instead, I read the newspaper at the kitchen table. Silently, I cursed the pens missing in the living room boxes – the day’s crossword was easy enough for me to know more clues than usual.

Omar came through in a collared shirt, pecked me on the cheek, then left the house with a “Bye! Love you!”

“Love you too,” I muttered as I turned the page.

In my impatience to find a pen, perhaps he wouldn’t unpack the living room after all. Besides, my camera was still in there.

*

Her hair was the color of sunlight through lemonade in the middle of June. Behind her, the sun’s light radiated through the branches of the growing maple tree. It barely gave her any illumination, but I liked the mystery. A tattered cloak hid her shoulders and frame. What she was doing in our back yard, I didn’t know. But she radiated the feeling of summer. I felt like I could trust her.

She disappeared when I blinked. My hands soaked in water just warm enough to be comfortable. Their stiffness made me think they hadn’t moved for quite some time, but that didn’t explain why the dishes were clean. They rested in the drying rack, but I didn’t remember scrubbing them. Just to be sure, I cleaned them again.

I thought about the woman in the backyard as I cleaned. What was she doing out there? *

I heard Omar’s sniffing before I felt it at the base of my neck.

“Smells delicious,” he said to my hair.

“Glad you think so.” I turned around and leaned against his chest. He took the wooden spoon from my hand and stirred the macaroni in the pot on the oven.

“Mac and cheese?” he asked.

“With hot dogs.”

“Yum.”

“I need the car tomorrow,” I told him.

“For food?”

“Maybe some clothes too.”

“Well, it is Saturday.”

“Excellent, you can come with me. I saw that face. Is the macaroni done?”

“Um, sure?”

I turned around and checked it myself. Omar could never make pasta the way I liked. The only thing he can successfully make is breakfast food, which is good because I always burn bacon. Pancakes have never been my specialty either. This isn’t to say he didn’t attempt to make other food – the last time he made beef stroganoff, he undercooked the beef and the noodles were overdone.

He set the table; I laid out the food.

“How was work?” I asked after my first bite. I cut a piece of hot dog and stabbed it with my fork.

He squirted ketchup on his own hot dog. “It was informative. I think I found a way to help my patient.”

“That’s good. What’s wrong with him? Or her?”

“Her. She’s in a coma and we’re trying to get her out of it. She’s our top priority.”

“Why her?”

Omar shrugged and shoveled some mac and cheese into his mouth. “She’s special. But that’s confidential information.”

“What?”

I must have had a face because he took one look at me and set down his fork. “We went over this. You knew this was going to be the case at the Institution.”

I stabbed the next piece of hot dog with more force than I intended. Omar massaged his forehead with the fingertips on his free hand. He sighed. “I’m not going to try to convince you. You’ll just have to live with it.”

But I still pouted. This still irritated him.

“Hey,” he said. “If you don’t calm down, we’re not trying again tonight. And you know how much you like this.”

He gestured to himself, leaned onto the table, and smirked. I stared at first, but he licked a finger and touched his behind with a small hiss between his teeth. My pout broke and I smiled.

“Fine,” I surrendered. “You can’t say anything.”

Satisfied, he picked up his fork again.

“Speaking of work, have you done any of the mind exercises?”

“No.” It was said with more force than necessary. I attributed it to my previous anger, but probably came with a distaste for the Neural Institution’s presence in my personal life.

“Is this some sort of protest? Have you even read the information packet I gave you?”

I lowered my fork and looked him in the eye. “I’m busy unpacking this house,” I told him in a level voice. Even as I spoke, it felt like a feeble excuse. “I’m also busy dealing with neighbors who come by to give more bread and salt than a single household should need. Besides,” I picked up my fork again, “I can’t remember where I put it. And pamphlets are tedious.”

Omar rolled his eyes. I waited for a rebuttal, but it didn’t come. He stood up, picked up his plate. “I’m eating in the next room if you’re going to be like this.”

I spent the rest of the evening glowering at nothing in particular. I admit I was probably being ridiculous about the subject, but I wasn’t about to tell Omar. He already knows that I do whatever I want. This is the first time since college he has attempted to coerce me to do anything. Silly Pride, why must you get in the way of rationality? *

I walked through a sterile white corridor. Beside me, a strange man held my hand. His grasp was firm but gentle. I had never seen him in my life, but I felt as if I had been holding his hand for years. Although we were walking forward, we still passed the same door again and again and again. It read SATCHEL in big, handwritten letters. At the end of the corridor, I repeatedly opened a door for the first time. Our goal was to get to her. We had to get there fast — something horrible was coming. We didn’t run. He looked at me and smiled, and I knew everything would be all right. Turning back to the door at the end of the corridor, I felt something hot propel me off my feet, burn my back.

5

Object A

6 Prose

And then I woke up in Omar’s arms. His deep breath sent the dream away as if it were a whisper on the wind. I could have sworn there was someone else with me in this one. My heartbeat slowed to match Omar’s, and I fell asleep with his pulse in my ear. *

“I think I’m having a hard time adjusting,” I announced halfway through my pancake. It was a good time to announce this — we’ve only been here about a week.

“Adjusting to what?” he asked with a full mouth.

“Life here.” I stabbed a triangle of delicious breakfast and inspected it at the end of my fork.

Omar’s body language changed at this statement.

He lowered his fork, weaved his fingers below his chin. It looked as if he went to work in an instant. I could see worry in the tension of his shoulders. “What makes you say that?”

“I’ve been having strange dreams,” I told him. “And the other day there was a vision, but I can’t remember what it was.”

Omar furrowed his brow, frowning. “And this just started happening when we moved?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure you’re not pregnant? I heard women have weird dreams when they get pregnant.”

The way his eyes shifted, I knew he was asking as a precaution. There was something going on that I wasn’t aware of, and it had to do with his work. It was the only thing he wasn’t telling me about.

But the mention of pregnancy sent a chill up my arms. What if I really was and these dreams weren’t a reaction to moving here? My heart skipped at the thought.

“I –”

“I’ll talk to the doctor at work tomorrow. Have you brought in to get tested.”

“There’s an obstetrician at the Institute?”

“In the meantime, start doing those mental exercises. Start doing one right now. Count to one hundred but don’t say any of the numbers aloud.”

“Omar, what’s going on?”

He sighed and shook his head.

“You can tell me what’s happening!” I yelled. It’s been months since I raised my voice at him. Instead of flinching, he leveled his gaze at me. There was fear in the twitch of his brow, worry in the set of his shoulders. In return, I felt like I had somehow been invaded.

One. Two. Three. Four . . .

“Omar?”

“My patient isn’t like everyone else. She has this . . . ability. There was an incident some time ago and it sent her into a coma and killed another patient. The doctors know she’ll try to invade another person’s mind. They are positive she won’t invade another patient. I had no idea her range was this far.”

Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen . . .

“What do you mean by invasion?” Breakfast was forgotten even though it was in front of us.

Omar shook his head.

“That’s why you should do your mental exercises. So she can’t get to you. Start writing down your dreams if you can remember them. I’ll head to the Institute now and talk to the doctors on duty. Don’t worry. We’ll sort through this.”

The dishes went into the dishwasher after breakfast.

As the appliance rumbled, I sat at the dinner table staring into the backyard through the glass back door. The pamphlet Omar wanted me to read sat in front of me, unopened. It was midmorning and the sun’s light streamed through the maple tree in the back. It didn’t frame it like it did a few days ago, but I still liked the effect. My hands itched for my camera.

Before I could move to locate it, she caught my eye. I watched her stroll into my sight. Her thin frame, though hidden by a tattered cloak, matched my own. Bushy hair the color of sunlight through lemonade framed a face hidden in shadow. She was a different person, but I could tell I was looking into myself.

Ever so slowly, she raised a hand and motioned for me to follow.

I froze, afraid that movement would make her disappear. The dishwasher finished the rinse cycle. In the wake of the silence, my hand slipped from my face and slammed the table.

The dishwasher door slammed open in the same movement. I jumped. The dishwasher door bounced on its hinges.

Water dropped from the edges as I stared at it, wide-eyed. Did I do that? But I couldn’t have – I was at least ten feet from it.

When I looked back at the maple tree, Yume was gone.

Why did I know her name?

Still on edge, I rushed to the living room and found a pad of paper and a pen. The episode went into the dream journal – her appearance, the dishwasher opening by itself. Finally, I wrote down her name at the bottom of the page. When that was finished, I calmed down enough to take a deep breath.

Nothing explained how I knew her name. Yume. I’ve never heard of that name before. How do you pronounce it?

Yoo-may? Yoo-mee? As I stared at it, I slowly wrote down another name underneath. I could have sworn I had seen it before, but I didn’t remember where or when.

Satchel.

Yume and Satchel. They went together like Trisha and Omar --- two people drawn together by a connection neither of them could understand. Friends. Lovers. Lifetime partners.

Compelled by this thought, I slowly drew a heart next to the two names.

A small part of my head noticed that this action was not endorsed by me. I tried to remember a mental exercise, but I didn’t actually read the pamphlet yet. I only knew what Omar had said at breakfast. So I tried counting again. Where did I leave off?

Thirty-three. Thirty-four. Thirty-five. Thirty-six . . .

Something slammed in my head like someone slams a doorway. I was aware that I was sitting cross legged on the floor, my skirt bundled against my hips. (Good thing I was facing away from the window in case anyone saw my apparent lack of personal modesty). I straightened my legs, adjusted my skirt so it covered them. The pad of paper fell to the floor. I read over it once, and then I started counting again.

Object B both works done by Marley Wheeler Wood and Milk Paint Complex dimensions

7

Thirty-seven. Thirty-eight. Thirty-nine. Forty . . . *

Walking down the corridor, Satchel subtly reached out and grasped my hand. I squeezed it and smiled to myself.

The doctor accompanying us didn’t pay attention. He was thinking about his son’s baseball game, so he didn’t see. I was sneaky like that. They didn’t know about that either. We used that to our advantage so often it was as natural as breathing. It was also something we laughed about. They were supposed to study us, to help us improve our powers, and yet they didn’t know the extent to which our powers have grown. I learned how to read around the mental exercises constantly running through their heads. Satchel’s specialty was moving physical objects, but they didn’t know he could probably control them against their will.

A man we didn’t recognize rounded a corner at the other end of the corridor. I tensed. Satchel grasped my hand, but I could feel his worry. I was worried too. We both stopped, and the doctors stopped with us. They were tense because we were tense.

The man wasn’t like the doctors. He thought he would be doing the world a service, getting rid of us.

“Bomb,” I yelled. The doctor in front of us ran the way we came. He pushed us backwards, but we stumbled in our haste.

I fell to the floor, and Satchel picked me up with his powers. Before I could set my feet down again, I was propelled forward.

Fire hot as rage engulfed the corridor. The explosion threw me forward and I crashed into the tile. Something slammed into my head, but since whatever it was wasn’t doing anything, I left it be. I couldn’t hear anything with my physical ears, but I heard the thoughts of everyone else in the building. Where was security? Call the paramedics! Call the science division and tell them what happened. Distract any press that shows up. With so many people trained for something like this, clean up was very efficient.

I left that to them.

There was something new in my head. It was the thing that slammed into my thoughts, and it came with memories of its own. I knew the same memories, but now I had the same from Satchel’s perspective. There were a few new ones in the mix, but they were mostly about me. And there was a new sensation at the back of my head. It was similar to my own, but it wasn’t mine. That power was not mine.

And I knew.

My body couldn’t move even though I wanted to lash out and scream. My arms didn’t even twitch when I tried to reach out and feel for him. I was unable to tap into his power to make me move. The frustration was unbearable, the pain too much to think about. If I had more time to myself, I could have probably brought myself out of it, or at least joined him for the ride.

Within moments, I had a breathing apparatus shoved into my lungs. They forced me to stay alive. For days, they had me attached to machines. I thought I would wake up eventually, but then I realized that I couldn’t.

Prose 8

I was a psychic in a coma, and there was no way for them to get me out. *

I jumped from my dream when I heard the car pull into the driveway. The living room was exactly how I left it.

When did I move to the couch? Never in my life have I taken a nap in the middle of the day.

Standing up, I waited in front of the door for Omar.

He came in, a worried look on his face.

“There’s no time. We’re going back.”

“To the Institute?”

“Yes. What’s wrong?” He was about to hold out my jacket for me. I looked into his eyes. Something in mine told him all he needed to know. “Put your jacket on. You’re coming with me.”

I did as I was told, followed him to the car. He held the door out for me, but it wasn’t romantic in the slightest. He slammed it when I was inside. I tried to pretend like nothing was wrong, but it only made things worse. Something tried fighting my hold, but I kicked it down. This mind wasn’t used to these powers --- my leg actually kicked the inside of the car.

Omar pulled out of the driveway, sped through the town to the Institute.

“What do you want with her?” Omar asked.

I put a finger to my lips. “Psychic’s secret.”

He slammed the steering wheel when we pulled to a red light. “Dammit!” I didn’t know whether he was cursing me or traffic regulation. A thought not my own said he cursed both. He was hers, not mine. She would know better. I looked away from him. Do you know how lucky you are? The light turned and we sped off again.

“Let her go.” Omar had calmed at the light, but he still demonstrated a leaden foot.

“I don’t need her for very long.”

“What do you want?”

I looked at him, but I didn’t answer right away. He tried keeping my gaze with his, but he would have missed our turn. My body flung against his as he took it faster than recommended. I had thirty seconds until he pulled to the front doors, and I put my finger on the unlock button.

“You’re never going to get me out,” I said. “Try as you want, I’ll be stuck until I die of old age. I’ve read enough thoughts to know when my brain is dead.”

“Why Trisha?” The car was almost to the entrance.

“Because she’s most like me.”

My door was open before the car completely stopped.

I flew through the front doors, blew past the nurses’ station, ran down the corridors until I came to the right one. *

I woke up running down the corridor of my dreams.

There was someone behind me trying to catch up, but I had a head start. A door halfway down the hall had the name SATCHEL in big, handwritten letters on it. I watched it pass, a gaping hole in my chest as if it were Omar that was gone. She couldn’t live without him. Would she have chosen a differ-

Churning Growth Jennika Bastian Pen and Ink on Wash Paper 24’’ x 36’’

ent fate if things were different? Before I could answer, I stopped before the door at the end of the corridor.

For the first time, I opened it.

As soon as it closed, I locked it even though I don’t know how. She lay in her bed, an oxygen tank by her side with a breathing mask over her mouth. A heart monitor kept her pulse, which was just as fast as mine. A bag hung over her shoulder with a tube connecting to an IV needle in her hand. Slowly, I walked forward and grasped the hand with the IV in it. I watched the hand for a second. It did not grip my hand back. It hung limp, lifeless.

“Of everything that happened,” I said aloud, “you want to die because of Satchel.”

You understand, don’t you?

I dropped her hand, thinking of Omar. What would I do without him?

I have to tell you something before you do it. She couldn’t open her eyes for the life of her, but I still looked at them.

You cannot keep the power to yourself. Someone else has to share it with you.

Omar?

No. A child growing with the powers is more likely to control them.

My hand rested on my midsection.

Don’t worry. You won’t go crazy right away.

A fleeting whisper brushed against my thoughts and left some things behind. One was mine, the other for someone else. I grasped her hand again.

“Yume?”

No response. Not even a thought. Her brain was officially dead without her ability.

I removed the needle for her, took off her mask because she could not. Then I stepped back. Her weak heart beat skipped.

Another step backward, and her mouth involuntarily opened and closed like it was gasping. Step back. Step back. Then I was at the wall. I fell to the floor, raised my knees to my chest.

And I cried. *

When Omar was finally able to get in, I was calmed enough. He didn’t enter by himself – I had unlocked the door.

Satchel gave the ability to Yume, who gave it to me. And her ability will go to my child. This final decision was entirely my own. I had enough of telepathic games.

He stopped over me. I turned my gaze to him, and he fell to his knees. We embraced. He smelled of sweat and relief.

“What happened?” he asked.

“She wanted to die, that’s all. Couldn’t get through to any of the doctors. She’s gone now. No more dreams. No more ethereal walks. She’s gone like a dream in the morning air.”

“What about you?” He pulled me to arm’s length, looked into my eyes as if making sure I was really me and not someone else.

“I’ll be okay,” I said. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be okay.”

9

Death and Valentine’s Day, Olivia Baldwin; Oil on Canvas, 72’’ x 96’’

The Intolerable By: G.M Cottrill

I turned away as the black death-cloth was pulled roughly over the boy’s face. Papa says the death-cloth protects us from the evil escaping the dying as they breathe their last breaths. My uncle says it’s so we don’t have to suffer looking at the sonsabitches’ ugly faces as they twist about above the noose. I think it’s so the person doesn’t have to see people smiling at them as they die. I never smile at a hanging.

I didn’t want to come, but Papa made me. My uncle looked at me funny when I showed up crying, and I thought he might hit me if we weren’t in public.

“Why are you crying? You better wipe those tears off your face.”

I looked down, pretending I didn’t hear, but my uncle grabbed my chin and made me look at him. “You stop crying or people are going to think you’re a Sympathizer.

They’ll shoot you, and then who will help your Papa? You want to leave him all alone?”

“No,” I whispered and shook my head in his coarse hand. My curls brushed softly across my face, and I wanted to lie down and let them cover my tears as I cried for the boy who was about to die.

“Let her be, Ed,” Papa said. Uncle glared at him.

“You raising a Sympathizer, Jack?”

“She’s young, Ed. It’s hard for her to understand sometimes.”

Uncle scoffed and let me go. I stepped behind Papa and peeked at Uncle. He glared at me.

“There’s nothing to understand except that some people aren’t people at all. They’re Intolerable. And Sympathizers are just as bad. I’ll hang you myself if I ever find out you’ve become one of them, you hear?”

“Ed—”

“And I’ll send you to prison, Jack. Don’t think I won’t. The Intolerables should all be hanged. What a waste to keep them around until they break the Statutes.”

Papa looked at me and patted my head, but he didn’t smile. “They work for their keep, Ed.”

Uncle grumbled something but seemed to be done talking for a while. I hoped he had run out of things to say, but I think he stopped because they were leading the condemned Intolerable to the platform. I wanted to look away, but I could sense Uncle watching me. The Intolerable was about my age. I knew who he was, but I pretended I didn’t. I

stood as tall as I could behind Papa and watched.

Cameras were trained on him as he walked, capturing his frightened face as he was led along. I like to watch the screens that hung above everything. It was easy to pretend that what was happening wasn’t real, but sometimes I could not ignore the real scene. Everyone in the Compound had to watch it, but the hangings always took place in the City so the condemned could face the people who controlled their lives.

The boy’s hands were tied behind his back, and a tall man led him along by a rope around his neck, like how I would walk our neighbor’s dog. He looked nervous and scared, like he did the first time I had seen him.

I had noticed him watching me from behind some trees in the forest Papa told me never to enter. I was afraid he might be a criminal, but I was curious. I looked right at him, and he froze. “Hi,” I said.

He ducked down and looked behind him. No one was there. He waved back sheepishly.

I smiled again and ran at him. He bolted.

“Wait!” I called.

He was quick and knew how to keep hidden. Branches scratched me and my dress caught on a sharp bush. I knew I would be punished for ruining my dress, but I was worried what Papa would say if he found out where I had been. The boy was getting too far ahead, and I didn’t want to be left alone.

“Hey! Stop! Who are you?” I tripped on a stick that flew up and scraped against my leg as I fell. I couldn’t see the boy anymore, and I was bleeding and lost. I wondered if Papa would be worried about me. I knew he’d be angry.

I let the tears come and stood up. My hands were smudged with dirt and leaves clung to my dress. I tore them off and threw them back on the ground. I turned around and decided to try to get back home, but I had no idea where I was. I wiped my nose and eyes and then I saw the boy leaning casually on a tall walking stick. I wished my eyes dry.

“Why did you run?” I snapped.

He was studying every bit of me so I stared back. He looked like he was my age and his eyes were dark. They made me feel young and made him look older. He didn’t answer me but just kept staring. I crossed my arms and stared back and tried to look annoyed.

11

The boy was just a little taller than me, but his clothes were much filthier and much too big. He wasn’t wearing any shoes, and I wondered how he had been able to run so well before. His feet must have been hurting and were probably bleeding, but he didn’t seem to mind. His pants had holes in the knees, and his thin shirt hung like a dress on him. It was a dull grey, like his pants, had a high collar, and buttoned at the top. His hair hung like a messy tangled nest on his head, and he had to keep twitching his head to clear strands from covering his eyes. And he kept on staring at me as he stood there silently with his big stick.

I puffed out my chest. “What are you looking at?”

“You,” he answered. I felt stupid.

“Why did you run?” I tried again.

“I thought you were trying to catch me.”

“Well of course I was. You were watching me.”

He hung his head. “Sorry.”

I smiled. “That’s okay. I’m just glad you aren’t some sort of criminal who was trying to kill me.” He gave me a funny look, but I just grinned and stuck out my hand. “I’m Andie.”

The boy didn’t move, and I scowled at him. “It’s impolite to not shake someone’s hand, you know.”

He took my hand awkwardly but looked at the ground instead of me. I gripped his hand as hard as I could and shook it roughly a couple of times. He didn’t even wince.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“I don’t have one.”

“What? Everyone has a name. Just tell me.”

He shrugged and twirled his stick, digging it into the ground.

“You’re serious aren’t you?”

He nodded once and wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“Well, what do people call you?”

He looked at me as if I just suddenly appeared.

“You don’t have any idea what I am, do you?”

I shook my head, confused.

He walked towards me until we were inches apart.

I looked up to meet his eyes and they bored into me. He pulled back the sleeve on his left arm. I looked down as he said, “People call me 48791-XY.”

I gasped, not sure how to respond, but I didn’t scream, I didn’t yell, I didn’t even step back. I just stared at the black ink etched into the boy’s forearm. He was an Intolerable.

He covered his arm back up and began to walk away.

12 Prose

“Wait!” He didn’t stop, so I ran after him.

“Wait!”

“I have to get back,” he said without stopping.

I fell into step with him. His pace was quick.

“You mean get back to the Compound?” He didn’t answer, and I felt stupid again. “Why are you out here?

Did you need something from the City? I can help you if you want.”

He stopped abruptly and stared at me with fierce eyes that scared me. I thought maybe I had made a mistake following the strange boy into the woods.

“What is it with you? Are you an idiot? Are you that naïve and protected in your beloved City that you think the Compound is just a joke? That you can just help an Intolerable?”

“I—”

“Just go home and leave me alone.”

“But I—I don’t know how to get back.”

The boy’s eyes hardened. “Are you trying to get me killed?”

“What? No. No, I would never. How could I?”

“Don’t you know anything about people like me? I could be killed for just being here right now.

Killed for talking to you. Killed for looking at you.

Killed for mentioning we met. Killed if you mention this to anyone. I’m an Intolerable, Andie. We’re not allowed to be past the wall with people like you. So go home.”

I didn’t know what to say. I had heard of such things. I had seen Intolerables hanging in the square.

Papa and Uncle had said that they were evil, that they were a danger to us all, but I began to sense this boy was not dangerous. He was quiet, but I trusted him.

Certainly he wouldn’t be killed for talking to me just this once.

“I don’t know how to get home,” I persisted.

“I can’t help you.”

“Please. I’ve never been out here before, and Papa will yell at me if I am home too late, especially if he learns I was in the forest.”

The boy studied me, which I’d become used to.

I think he was trying to read my mind. After several long moments, he sighed.

“I’ll make you a deal. I will lead you to where you saw me if you promise not to speak a word about seeing me to anyone. No matter if it’s today or a hundred years from now. We never spoke, we never met, we were never here.”

“Deal.”

He took off, and I kept pace at his side.

It wasn’t a long walk to the edge of the forest, and the sun had nearly disappeared. I only had a little bit of time left before Papa would be on his way home. The boy seemed anxious to get home too. But I had one more question for him.

“Can we do this again sometime?”

“Do what?” he asked.

“This. Meet in the woods and do something.”

He shook his head. “I shouldn’t be here. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get this chance again.”

“How come you could today?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Oh. Well, I hope I can see you again.”

“Why?”

“Because I like you. You’re not the like the Intolerables Papa and Uncle talk about. You’re my friend.”

“You shouldn’t say things like that,” he warned.

“Why not?”

“It’s not right.”

“For us to be friends?”

“Yes. Now, just go home.”

I glared at him. “You are intolerable. You better come back. I’ll come look for you, just in case.”

He looked sad. “I can’t promise.”

“That’s okay. I can. I can come back every day until you can,” I said.

He nodded and turned to go.

“Wait!” I called after him. “You must have a name.”

He paused and thought for a bit. I didn’t think he would answer, but then he said quietly, “Ira. My mother used to call me that, but no one’s called me that in years.”

“Ira. That name suits you,” I told him. Although I’m sure he never intended them for an Intolerable, I used the manners Papa had taught me and said, “It was a pleasure meeting you, Ira, and thank you for the adventure today. Good bye!”

“Good bye, Andie.” And after only a few steps, he had melted into the darkness of the forest, and I headed home wondering if he would ever come back.

We were able to meet a couple more times, but now as he was being led towards the hanging platform, I knew I never would be able to see him again.

Ira had told me about life in the Compound and I told him about life in the City. I was glad I had not been born an Intolerable. I told Ira that once without thinking and immediately regretted it. I could tell he was hurt,

but he hid it well. He said he was glad I wasn’t an Intolerable either, but I knew he really wanted to say that he wished he hadn’t been born one. I didn’t blame him. And I didn’t envy him. I felt terrible, but I could never shake the relief of arriving home after spending time with Ira. Papa occasionally yelled at me, and Uncle often slapped me around when he came over after drinking. I hated it, but it was better than living in the Compound. When I showed up once with a bruise on my cheek, Ira said it was nothing and showed me marks from a whip on his stomach and back. I asked him why they did that to him, and he said it was because he got home too late the day before. I blushed and felt guilty. He had been late because of me.

The same guilty feeling came rushing back as Ira stood poised in front of the cameras. The Compound’s High Chair read Ira’s crimes aloud. My insides clenched, and I wanted to throw-up my breakfast. I could not help feeling that Ira was going to die because of me. If I never asked him to come back maybe he never would have been discovered outside the Compound. I stood behind Papa and hoped that Ira could not see me. I didn’t want him to see me watching him there, waiting for him to die. But he was an Intolerable and had left the Compound and broke one of the Statutes, so now he must be hanged. And Papa would never let me miss a hanging.

After his crimes were announced, they pulled him along and led him up the stairs to the top of the platform.

They had screens up behind the platform for those in the back of the crowd to look at. I was close to the front, but the screen was like our television at home and it was like I was watching it from there instead of right below the platform.

I watched Ira carefully as he took each step. I thought he looked so brave, but I could tell he was afraid. I wanted to run to the steps and climb them with him and hug him. The first time I tried to hug him he shoved me away.

“What are you doing?” he snapped at me.

“What?”

“That must be illegal.”

“Says who?”

“Society. The Statutes. I don’t know.”

“Don’t be so silly,” I said. “What’s so illegal about a hug?”

“Well, why hug at all?”

I was stunned. “I—I don’t know. It feels good I guess.

Didn’t your mother ever hug you?”

Ira shrugged. “I hardly remember my mother.”

“I don’t remember mine either,” I told him. “Papa never talks about her. You’d think she never existed. I think he just misses her. Sometimes he tells me I look like her, but

13

I’m not sure if that makes him happy or sad.”

“Does your papa ever hug you?” Ira asked me, and I had to think about it.

“Not often, no.” Suddenly I was angry and frustrated and sad all at the same time.

Ira must have noticed because he grabbed me and pulled me to him. It was a comfort I had never known before, and when I thought the hug was over, Ira still held me, so I wrapped my arms around him too and squeezed as hard as I could. He squeezed back and eventually we squeezed each other so hard it hurt, and we laughed until our sides pinched in pain like we’d never experienced before.

I wondered if the pain of hanging was like anything Ira had felt in the Compound. What did it feel like to die?

I liked to imagine it would only hurt for a few moments and then would turn into a tickle or a dull ache, and then suddenly everything would just disappear into a black hole of nothing. I didn’t want to imagine Ira slipping into the noose and falling into death. I wanted him to meet me in our secret spot and spend time with me. I didn’t know what I would do with him gone, and I was angry that he was leaving me. As I quivered behind Papa, I thought of being alone again, and I thought of joining Ira on the platform. I thought of Uncle’s face as he saw me with Ira, saw me hug him and cry for him and plead for his life. I thought of Uncle’s face turning white in horror and shame, and I would tell everyone he was my uncle, and they would look at him in disgust, like how people were looking at Ira the Intolerable as they prepared to kill him.

My uncle pulled me out from behind Papa and held my arm tightly in his hand. He squeezed it hard and I cringed.

“You watch now, girl. You keep watching and enjoy it,” he hissed.

I kept my head straight, but I was looking off in the distance, beyond Ira, beyond the screen. I became aware of the conversations around me. Uncle was telling Papa that he enjoyed watching the legs the best, when they’d twitch and kick and try to find solid ground. But he also liked watching the head snap back, and he cheered when the neck broke. I tried to block out Uncle’s voice and concentrated on others around us. Some were discussing work they’d be doing later that day. Some talked about how they thought too many Intolerables were escaping lately and that the system was breaking. Soon the City would be overrun with Intolerables and then what would we do? I heard one person say they thought that this boy had been helped by a Sympathizer.

Someone responded, and said the Sympathizers were more dangerous than the Intolerables. I thought about being dangerous. Maybe Papa and Uncle would run away if they

Prose 14

found out I was a dangerous Sympathizer.

Cheers brought me back to the hanging, and I looked up at the excitement. Ira had been placed on the platform door, and the noose was replacing his rope lead. The executioner smiled and made a show of it, pausing just enough before he put the noose on, lifting it high as if he had changed his mind and was going to remove it all together. Boos erupted from the crowd.

The executioner nodded and flashed his teeth. He lowered the noose slowly and cheers grew louder and louder as it was brought down closer to Ira’s neck. The sound was deafening once the loop reached his shoulders and tightened. Ira swallowed, and my eyes were pinned to his face. I searched it one last time, trying to remember every feature. My eyes froze when they found his.

He panned the audience frantically but found me too, and he locked his eyes with mine. I wanted to cry, but I would stay strong for him. I wanted to smile but I was afraid he’d think I was happy. Instead I stared back at him, searching for something from him, anything. Anger, hurt, betrayal, forgiveness. But his eyes were dark, like the first time I had seen them. I saw his shoulders relax just slightly, and then the executioner covered his head, and I turned away as the black death-cloth was pulled roughly over Ira’s face. Whistles and cheers increased and drums rolled and a cymbal crashed as the lever was pulled to open the door. My eyes stung, but I held back the tears.

I didn’t watch him fall. I couldn’t. Uncle said he never kicked, that he just fell and was dead. Uncle cursed, but Papa shrugged and said some just go more easily than others. Uncle said Intolerables who die easy are just weak. Papa shrugged again, and he and Uncle began the walk home. I followed slowly, remembering what Ira had told me on the last day I saw him, when I asked him what he thought happens when we die.

“We end up in a much happier place,” he told me.

“How do you know?”

“Any place would be better than this, right?”

featured on page 15 Chase Elise Berry etching hard ground, soft ground, and aquaint) 22.25’’ x 30’’ featured on page 17 Study of Toys and Religion Part 2 Interior, Mia Mueller Metal/enamel/lens

15

The walls of your bedroom are shit brown and bare.

You’ve taken down photos from New Year’s Eve, postcards from Prague, autographed posters of shows you went to see together. You’ve emptied your desk drawers of ticket stubs and playbills. You’ve unpressed the dried flower petals from their plastic container. These remnants remain preserved in a giant blue recycling bag in your closet, along with other forgettable items. A stuffed Mickey Mouse won in a carnival game. A borrowed collection of poems by Pablo Neruda, never returned. A map of an intimate relationship, traced through inanimate objects.

Phone call number one, July twenty-eighth, 2011, eleven forty-three PM.: You remember lying in bed, wide-eyed, watching red numbers on the digital clock blink themselves into eternity. You remember, because there isn’t anything else to remember.

He wants his White Stripes t-shirt back, the one that he lent you three months ago after you went swimming in the lake and didn’t have anything dry to change into. The one that you slept in almost every night because it was oversized and comfortable, because it smelled like him. The one you spilled purple paint on once and it wouldn’t come out no matter how hard you scrubbed.

You can’t keep it, he says, I ordered it online and it was expensive. You can’t keep it.

I don’t think I have it…how are you?

A beat. I’m pretty sure you do have it.

Listen, you hesitate, concentrating every effort on speaking coherent sentences, Do you ever think you’re about to do something really bad?

Irritation. What are you saying?

Nothing, nothing, I just—it’s good to hear your voice, that’s all.

A short stretch of silence. I have to go to work. Just look for it, okay?

Two days later you leave a box of borrowed items with the doorman: CDs, books, a set of pastels. The White Stripes t-shirt remains at the far end of your closet on a plastic hanger. Remarkably, it still smells like him; a harsh mixture of smoke and cologne that reminds you of the Catholic church you grew up in. You take the long way home, commandeering through a complex maze of side streets. A detour route down the stream, through the hedges, over the train tracks. You avoid the habitual nature of walking through his neighborhood. You skip over parks and diners like cracks on the sidewalks. The superstitions of memory.

The sun has yet to set but the house is dark. Karen is asleep on the couch again (you’ve always called her Karen, never Mom). She is wearing your father’s old work shirt, the one with primer stains and a missing button that she kept promising to sew back on but never did. She often wears it around

Prose 16

PRESERVATION By Gabriella

Bonamici the house during the day, cleaning and recleaning bare surfaces and streaked floors. She moves through a thick curtain of prescription comatose, dreaming even in the waking hours. That first year, she tried to sell the house.

She said it smelled of sickness. She said the walls were caving in from sadness. There were many offers, but in the end she turned them all down.

When I die, she says, this house will be yours and you can start a family of your own.

But you’re not interested in families, you tell her so. You’re interested in pet snakes and power suits and one-night stands. You’re interested in California. There is nothing left for you here.

It isn’t death that you crave, but rather the absence of life.

You realized this years ago, only now it’s become more profound. Example: all the colors in the world seem dull and dirty. Undersaturated. There are no more elegant black and whites, only slightly varying shades of grey. You fear that you are going blind or crazy. You stop renting your favorite movies. A pile of unwatched Woody Allen films still sit on top of your dresser, collecting dust. You stop ordering Thai food. You stop painting. You try not to think of him. A new hobby forms: crafting suitable suicide plans.

This proves much harder than it seems. You immediately rule out slitting your wrists because the sight of blood makes you gag — this also obviously rules out a number of other options by default. You can’t take pills because if it doesn’t work you’ll just end up sick to your stomach and you hate vomiting. Sylvia Plath first tried to off herself by barricading her body into a basement wall. This idea intrigues you for a while, but let’s be honest, you haven’t the figure nor the patience for something like that. And forget about sticking your head in the oven, because that would

anxiety. The details of death, the irritations of unfinished business.

Who will pay back your student loans now? Who will water the potted plant in your bedroom, or change your facebook status to Dead? And you’re trying to push these inconsistencies out of you mind but you suddenly remember the pile of Woody Allen dvds sitting on your dresser, and how the video store doesn’t carry more than one copy of the older films at a time and it could be weeks, even months before someone rummages through your room and thinks to return them. You open your eyes to the burning of the blaring sun. You could die, but traces of you would still exist.

You check every case before you slip the four dvds into the drop box outside of the video store. You examine them for clearly be unsanitary. So you lie on the floor, limbs fingerprints and dust, the smudges that prove your existence. akimbo, and try very hard to will yourself dead. But And just as you deposit the last box, your heart drops. You these efforts are in vain. You keep existing. hear him before you see him. More importantly, you smell Phone call number two, August seventh, 2011, twohim before you hear him, holy water cologne and French twelve AM: cigarettes. Your body is aware of his presence before your A drunk dial. He is laughing uncontrollably. Voices mind, an instinct, a sixth-sense. And for a moment, you are and rap music blare in the background. certain that you will break down, right there in the middle What? of the street, in front of God and everyone. But the moment I’m sorry, he says, I’m just really fucking sorry, and he passes he greets you like a new day, and you answer without sounds choked up but then he starts laughing again crying or shouting or running away. and you don’t understand what in God’s name could

He greets you, Hi there. be so funny.

And you answer, Hi yourself, without any trace of I miss you, he says, no laugher this time. I really do. sarcasm or maliciousness or embarrassment.

You hang up. You laugh until you cry, or cry

It’s good to see you, he says, until you laugh. It’s getting harder to tell.

And you reply, It’s nice to see you too.

It is six twenty-seven and the sun is still out. According to the schedule, the next train should pass

He doesn’t ask you how you’ve been, and you don’t through at ten-thirty sharp. Punctuality is essential. apologize for the missing shirt. Neither of you talk about sad You are dressed in the same black dress you wore to dreams or second chances. These things are left suspended in your father’s funeral and gothy black pumps (you the air between you, ephemeral curtains, forever fading. were always one for the histrionics). These tracks are He says, Well, see you around. desolate, practically abandoned, but you take several You say, Goodbye. quick, self-conscious glances to make sure that no one

It is not a long goodbye or a permanent goodbye, is around before you lay yourself down. Your body fits you realize, because his scent still hangs in the hairs of your perfectly within the frame of the tracks, a make-shift nostrils and your touch is forever burned into the skin of his open-casket funeral. You squeeze your eyes shut. You legs and neck and stomach. His past winter and spring and try to think of all the things that you’re supposed to summer are yours, your first feelings of falling, his. There is a at the end of your life. Childhood, favorite memories, world of memories preserved in bits and pieces. And it isn’t loved ones. Classic. But these things don’t seem to forever. But it’s enough. register and you can’t shake off the intense pangs of

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Snapshots of a Kiddo: an Essay of Overcoming Life

F R E E F A L L What do I do now? Everyone is right and I am wrong. Everything about me is wrong.

By Kaitlyn Gartner Lying on the floor of your brother’s two bedroom apartment, you play Super Mario Brothers and eat chocolate. You are alone.

Eighteen years old. A freshman in college studying creative writing and journalism.

Five years from now you want to be working under the New Mexico sun in the dry heat, or maybe still in school. But right now, it is winter. Cold. Wisconsin – where you thought you belonged but you don’t.

Your brother’s neighbors are blasting hip hop music that shakes the floor. The clock ticks and the hamster runs on his wheel. Your character in Mario dies a pitiful death in a winter level and the game is over.

You have run out of things to do. You should be studying anthropology notes but you aren’t. You grab your laptop and take over the couch. You begin to write. *** July 16, 2010 I wish I was never born. Then there would be no fight or flight.

No endless battle for control of my mind.

Influence is a poorly determined thing. There is right influence and wrong. No good and bad. Nothing is ever good. But there are always things that are bad.

If this were still my old life, I wouldn’t be alive today.

I don’t know how I feel about that.

I really like listening to The Doors. Drugged up, unpredictable, random, crazy – like me. Like my mind.

Everything is difficult.

Today, I forced myself to be on a bicycle. Now I am in my room listening to The Doors and writing. Writing difficult things, thinking difficult thoughts. Being a difficult person.

This is a hard existence. I want to be the good kid. But I’m the bad kid. Messed up kid. Hell. I always forget. I’m old now. Fucked up adult.

20 Essay

I question my decision to remain alone. But who am I to question when I don’t even know who I am? My mind is on rapid fire, holes in my skull, releasing common sense and self-preservation.

I don’t want to be like this. I don’t want to write this on paper.

I don’t want to see myself. I don’t want others to see me.

Invisible?

There are two of me. One doesn’t give a damn. The other wants to be awesome. I can never tell which one is winning.

It depends on the day, or minute, or second.

Help me. ***

Pre-school. I remember a surprising amount about it, considering I was there less than a month. The place was called Camden Community Pre-school. It was on Dupont Avenue, just a block away from the corner of 42nd and Fremont. Not a good location for a pre-school, dangerous. Not too far away from the Hell’s Angels Clubhouse.

There was a little playground off the side of the building. It was fenced in with just a few play structures. I think there was a merry-go-round. Everything was metal.

This was back before the city decided that metal was dangerous for kids and made all the playgrounds out of plastic.

The big front doors were red with square windows.

I think the reason I didn’t stay long was because the administration locked the doors during the day, no one was allowed in. My father didn’t like that. He didn’t want to be locked out.

I guess it makes sense. Bad neighborhood, lock the doors. But it didn’t matter to me, I hated the place.

I cried. All day long. I didn’t want to be there.

I wanted to go home. I have three distinct memories of Camden Community Pre-school. A big wooden slide in one of the classrooms. A circle of children singing songs. And a teacher trying to calm me down while I cried for my parents.

That’s it. ***

One year later. Loring Community school. Named after the great Charles M. Loring, founder of the Minneapolis park system. I was in afternoon kindergarten, the blue group.

For some reason, I did alright in kindergarten. I had some friends. I learned how to count to a hundred and write the alphabet.

I befriended a little black boy and everyone said he was my boyfriend. Then one day someone found a BB gun in his backpack and he wasn’t at school anymore.

We watched a lot of Arthur and played house.

Sometimes, we got to pound nails into scrap blocks of wood and wrap rubber bands around the entire thing. We put on a lot of plays and choir concerts. My best friends were Melissa and Jane.

But kindergarten wasn’t all fun and games. I remember being taken to the counselor’s office because I “looked sad.” I was sad because the night prior, my father had gone after my mom with a knife. I think I told the counselor that. Looking back on it now, I’m surprised they never did anything. My life might’ve been a lot different.

***

Kindergarten was my last year in the Minneapolis public school system. I would eventually attend school again in downtown Minneapolis for just one year, but it would be a small, private Catholic school.

My father was the one who pulled me out of Loring. The administration wanted to combine first and second graders in select classes. He didn’t like that idea.

For the first grade, I was shipped off to Forest Elementary, my father’s grade school from when he was a boy.

About a fifteen minute drive from my home in north Minneapolis. And a drive it was. Two of them actually. Every single day until the end of my sophomore year of high school.

My first grade teacher was a man. This is unusual, elementary school teachers are almost always female. I wouldn’t have another male teacher after that (besides for gym) until I took Woodshop in middle school.

I did very well in first grade. I went to a lot of birthday parties at Discovery Zone and Circus Circus. I wrote and illustrated a story I made up. My teacher liked it so much that he laminated it for me.

I learned how to read, fast. I was reading entire chapter books by the end of first grade. Real ones, not the kind with big print and pictures.

I learned how to use a yo-yo. I had a coloring contest with a boy named Joey Johnson. We were coloring pictures of apples and we wanted to see who could color the apple best, with the least amount of white showing in the end. ***

The rest of grade school is a blur of distinct memories that I cannot place.

Seeing a lady holding a ferret in the front foyer (this is how

my obsession with ferrets began).

Playing soccer, wally ball, and sometimes baseball with the boys at recess.

Pretending I was a spy like Harriet, from Harriet the Spy. Going on a field-trip to the Rockford Road library.

A teacher telling me that I would make honor roll someday.

Not being able to climb the rope to the ceiling in gym class.

Getting in trouble because I couldn’t learn how to add columns fast enough.

A fire drill that landed us at Saint James Church down the road because chalk dust had set off the alarm.

Going to Camp Snoopy at the Mall of America with my sometimes best friend, Hannah Benjamin.

The year I got cats and won a bicycle in a drawing.

School carnivals and free passes to Skateland.

Wanting to play the violin but being told I would never be good at it, learning the clarinet instead.

Grandparents’ day – when all our grandmas and grandpas could come eat lunch with us.

Endless games of freeze tag, kickball, jump rope, and soccer.

Winning Subway coupons and candy from the chance jar.

Assemblies, guest speakers, concerts, field days, and award programs.

Elementary school was a blast. I think that the trouble started when I was in middle school... ***

Two-thousand-and-three. Sixth grade on the red team. Sandburg Middle School, Golden Valley, Minnesota.

At the end of fifth grade, I had applied and got denied from an accelerated program for the following school year. It crushed me. It wasn’t the first time I had been denied from something; I didn’t make the cut for All District Choir either (I would later be a member of both the All District Band and district 281’s Honors Orchestra.) But I knew that I should’ve been in that accelerated program.

The task was simple: write an essay. I had been writing since I learned what a pencil was, easy right? But I was and have always been a procrastinator. My brother John was over the night I was supposed to write it. I was playing A Bug’s Life on my Gameboy. I was much more interested in John and my video game than an application essay.

In the end, I rushed it. It was poor quality. I deserved to be rejected. And I knew it. I would apply again at the end of sixth grade, an exceptional essay, and be accepted.

But I think, if I remember right, that was my first real failure.

And it would only get worse. A string of anxiety, depression, and perfectionism: all mine.

I breezed through the sixth grade. I wanted to play soccer but the team was co-ed and my father said no. Somehow, I ended up at the girl’s tennis informational meeting. It was an accident. I would play tennis up until college. I was pretty good at it too. But I will always remember my first love: soccer.

I got straight A’s. I remember though, I had to do some extra credit to earn my A- in science. My grades were very important to me. I would never fail a class until I got to

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Untitled Paula Helmsedt Acrylic on Canvas 16’’x20’’

my senior year of high school, another science class: physics.

I finished my first year of middle school on the high honor roll. I had a new best friend, Jenny (she spelt her name ‘Jenni’ back then). I played in the band. I got accepted into the National Junior Honor Society (My brother John scoffed when I told him, he said that he had been in the “real” honor society in high school. I dragged that information with me until graduation, when I fought my way through to earn those honor cords dangling around my neck, proclaiming that I too, was in the “real” honor society.)

Then I was off to seventh grade, the accelerated program, and basically the beginning of the rest of my life. ***

I was an annoying seventh grader. Literally.

I think I tried too hard to fit in with my new group of friends from the accelerated program. I annoyed them. They told me so. But they accepted me nonetheless.

When I look back on it, I believe seventh grade to be the turning point of my life. I think somehow during the course of the year and the

22 Essay

events that took place, I was pushed too hard. I guess I never really came back from seventh grade. The rest of my years in school were spent in a trance of bad decisions and an unhealthy amount of ambition and denial.

To start with, my classes were harder. I was enrolled in Spanish, band, a humanities class, gym, a high level math, life science, and a handful of electives.

We read plays like Macbeth and learned about slave ships and the genocides in Rwanda. I studied Guglielmo Marconi, father of modern radio, for a history project. We mumbled our French and Spanish and tried to coax the teachers into telling us foreign swears.

I played tennis in the fall, basketball in the winter, and softball in the spring. I was in All District Band. I volunteered every Friday night for an hour as a requirement of the accelerated program. Then, disaster struck. I remember it clearly.

My first test in life science. I sat behind someone who would be a good friend of mine in my sophomore year of high school. But on that day, I hated the boy. It was his breathing. He made a clicking noise with every breath; it seemed to come from his nose. I couldn’t focus on my test. I don’t even think I finished.

When mid-quarter grades were announced, I received my first ever B in life science. I remember asking my teacher, Mrs. Franz, if I could use the restroom. I locked myself in one of the stalls and cried for a good ten minutes. Of course, mid-quarters meant nothing, they weren’t even recorded. But I took them very seriously.

The last week of May. Memorial Day weekend. My brothers John and Lucas are over that Sunday to visit. We spend the day at my mom’s elderly cousin’s house doing yard work. It is the last time I would ever see my brother John alive.

The obituary stated that he died on May 30, 2005.

The day after his birthday, morning after really. Alcohol poisoning. Asphyxiation actually, but alcohol poisoning seems a nicer way of saying it.

His funeral was held on Friday, June 3, 2005. Three days before my thirteenth birthday. I was taken out of math class so I could attend. ***

Eighth grade. A mess. A mixture of black clothing with chains dangling from the pockets, a field trip to Washington D.C. that my father wouldn’t let me go on, a bad date to the eighth grade formal to which I wore a sparkly orange halter dress.

There isn’t really much to say about that year, other than I acted dumb. I dressed all in black clothes from Hot Topic. I dyed my hair purple, red and dark brown. I would

skip lunches in favor of reading long books or writing disenchanted stories about my friends. I learned how to play tenor saxophone in the jazz band. I stressed out so much when I had to play a solo at a concert that I developed a shaking problem.

Sometime during that year, my father and I had a very bad fight. I took the scissors of my desk and scratched them all along my wrist in anger. On purpose. He called me stupid. The scar that remained looked like a Christmas tree. Eventually, it faded. Unfortunately, it would be replaced a few years later with razor blade and X-Acto knife scars.

I turned fourteen the summer after eighth grade. At the beginning of my junior year of high school, for an AP English assignment on narrative essays, I would write a very powerful essay about that very summer. It was centered around a barbeque.

I wrote it in two hours, one of my fleeting moments of optimism before my life changed forever.

illumination: prose

As the year progressed, I guess I became less annoying. I had a tight group of friends. They were strange people.

But I fit in alright, I had always been a kind of misfit. I wasn’t popular by any means.

My best class was English. In fact, upon completing my senior year of high school, I got my portfolio back from when I first started the accelerated program. In it were a few essays and projects from seventh grade. Every one of them had some sort of ‘excellent’ scrawled across the top. I have always been a talented writer.

Then there is a memory that I don’t really know how to explain. But it is important. It was a field trip to Grand Slam. I bugged my friends the whole bus trip out to Coon Rapids. I kept asking them if I was fat. Finally, they got sick of me. They stopped my teacher Mrs. Franz (who embarrassingly enough was pretty obese herself) and asked her if she thought I was fat. She looked at them, then turned to me and gave me a sour look. No.

In my seventh grade yearbook picture, I am not fat.

I am wearing an ugly brown shirt with shiny material on the shoulders. My hair, bleached by the sun, is long and wavy. I am smiling big with my crooked teeth.

I guess I didn’t believe them, Mrs. Franz included.

Because I remember from then on, I thought about everything I put into my mouth. This would culminate into a big problem the summer after my junior year in high school, and again shortly after I started college. But it was something that was always there from then on: a war with food.

It really wasn’t my fault. My father had been calling me fat ever since I can remember, saying things like I should only eat when I’m hungry, and then he would never date someone larger than him (my father is six feet tall and probably weighs less than 120 pounds, he eats maybe once a day and always leaves food on his plate). But then, for a little while, I was distracted by a much larger situation than how much I weighed.

***

In the summer of 2006, I was fourteen years old. That summer was a summer of change. Within the walls of those three short months I experienced new things, I was faced with new challenges, new decisions, and I was given a second chance to live like I hadn’t been able to in the year before. That summer for me was a turning point. I was finally moving on from one of the worst experiences of my life, and one of the most strengthening. In the summer of 2006, I had faded purple hair, bad acne, and high hopes for the coming future. When I look back on that whole summer, and all of the events that led to it, one day in particular stands out in my mind. For most people, the events that occurred on that day are commonplace, and insignificant.

But for me, they were special, new, and so very important to who I am today.

My birthday usually lands near the last day of school. In fact, the day I turned fourteen just happened to be the last day of eighth grade. I would be starting high school in the fall; I would be in advanced classes and hoped to be on the tennis team. I had a lot of plans for the new school year; there would be new people, new activities, and new challenges. But for the time being, I didn’t have to worry about any of that. I was looking forward to hot summer nights, bike rides, trips to the pool, and time to relax, something I hadn’t had a chance to do for a long time.

Before I knew it, June of 2006 was gone. I hadn’t done hardly anything I had hoped. I had missed the registration deadline for camp so for the first time in six years, I would not be attending.

That took a toll on my optimism, it was something I had always enjoyed and looked forward to. My mom made a compromise though, instead of going to summer camp for a week, I would spend a week at my cousin’s in Hinckley at the end of July. I reluctantly agreed, mainly because I had no other choice.

The first weeks of July flew by; I was in a summer band program for the last time before I was deemed too old. This seemed to take up a lot of my time and energy, but I remember squeezing in a couple of trips to the public pool with the neighbor. By the time my band program was over, it was the weekend before I was to leave for my cousin’s house in the country. I wasn’t as excited about leaving as I had been before. I guess the realizations were starting to sink in; there were no pools, tennis courts, or libraries in Hinckley. Actually, there was a library, a

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small one, and it was open for a grand total of two hours on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. I love my cousins, but I had never been with them for more than a few days. I didn’t know if I was ready for a whole week of being volunteered to baby-sit only because I was the oldest, and having to listen to my 12-year-old cousin Hannah speculate as to why I didn’t have a boyfriend yet. But for the moment, none of that mattered. It was a Friday night, and I had just gotten word that my older brother would be coming over the next day.

Once again, this sort of event might not be considered significant by some, but I hadn’t seen my brother since Christmastime and I missed him a lot. He had been a big part of the events that had occurred the following year and seeing him was as meaningful as it had ever been. I immediately began planning how we would spend the following Saturday, I hoped he would bring his rollerblades.

My brother and I have this longstanding competition going, I vowed that someday I would beat him at roller hockey. Of course, with him being eleven years older than I am, and the better skater, I’m fighting a losing battle.

That Saturday was one of those days where any sane person with central air would’ve stayed indoors. But my father doesn’t believe in air conditioning. By ten-o’clock I had evacuated the house and was situated on the front steps trying to hide from the late-July sun. Finally, half an hour late, my brother Lucas arrived, armed with roller blades, his hockey stick, and a two-month belated birthday gift.

My father and I have never had a father-daughter relationship. Our family is dysfunctional, to say the least. We didn’t do things that “normal” families do, my father had never been to any of his nieces’ or nephews’ birthday parties, we had never been to a baseball game as a family, and we had never barbequed. We owned a barbeque – we had for as long as I can remember – but the extent of my barbecuing experiences had been spent in the fenced-in yard of my neighbor’s house. So after a long day of chasing my brother around the neighborhood on rollerblades with a SuperSoaker, no one was as surprised as I was to come home and find my father in the backyard with a bag of charcoal and a bottle of lighter fluid.

The sun had started to go down and the heat was diminishing. Lucas and I had cut through the alley to get back to the house. We found my father and his ancient charcoal-fueled grill and my mom with a book and a Pepsi.

My father wasn’t yelling, my brother was home willingly, and my mom wasn’t holed up in the basement with a carton of cigarettes. I couldn’t believe that this was happening.

I could smell the scent of grilled pork chops and it was coming from my yard, not the neighbor’s. I wanted that evening to last forever. It was the first time we had come together as a family in as long as I can remember. My parents are not going to win any “Parent of the Year” awards; our little family doesn’t typically do anything together. My parents drive separate cars to my concerts and programs, they fight, and it’s not in their nature to make up. But that night was different. We talked, we ate, we watched the sun

24 Essay

set over the trees, and then we lit the barbeque once more to roast marshmallows. I don’t even like marshmallows, but if it meant another hour of bliss, I would pretend to like them. That night was peaceful, happy, and short. But it was special, so very special. Because we were acting like a family, something I never thought would be possible after only a year before, our lives were turned upside down and backwards with an unexpected loss that tore through whatever semblance of a family we had had. I didn’t think anything would ever be the same again, much less be better than it was before, but I was wrong.

That night, two years ago, was the first and probably last time that my dad did something like that. Unfortunately, that night was not a turning point for our relationship as a family. My parents still scream at each other, my mom still smokes, Lucas still forgets to call, and my dad is still an alcoholic. But that’s not the point. We came together that night.

We didn’t fight or argue. We talked. We laughed. We lived.

That summer was when I finally began to move on, I stopped dying my hair funny colors, I started calling my brother more often, I tried to be more tolerant of my father, I made an effort.

We all did. When I left for my cousin’s the following Sunday, I had new stories to tell, new memories to store away forever.

I learned from the people around me that summer, especially that night. I learned a lot about myself too. I learned that life is tough, life is challenging, difficult, and life isn’t fair. I’ve learned the same thing over and over again, but I’ve also learned that life is good. The first time I heard that was from my other older brother, John. We were playing Monopoly and he had just made a lot of money from one of his hotels. He said, “Life is good,” and smiled that crooked smile he always had. I didn’t think much of it, I was little, but I remembered what he said.

I think that night, sitting around the grill and watching the last flickering embers die out, I think I finally understood what John meant: life is good. Even though life can be tough, there will always be those moments, those moments when you realize that things are going to be okay, that challenges can be overcome. That night, sitting there with my family, being a family, that was one of those moments. ***

This essay is also the first time I came clean about my father. My father: the abusive alcoholic. The man I came to fear.

Memories I would never overcome.

Maybe that was my mistake. Perhaps I should’ve left well enough alone. Just kept pretending my life was okay until I turned eighteen. *** July 28, 2010 Today is one of those days that I would like to forget. However, there are so many of those that I feel it would be best to just forget about them all. To make it all go away in the most permanent way possible. How, I don’t know.

As The Happiness Floats Away As if it was just a daydream.

And gone.

I’m not happy with this life. I am happy where I am now; however, I hate myself. I hate my memory, my lack of control, my life.

So long, lonesome.

I don’t even want to know what I will become because right now, in this moment, I don’t care. I’m not sure that I’ve ever cared. I suppose I must’ve at one point as I’ve made it this far, but not now. Not with this feeling inside of me. No. If I’m even making sense. I do not know. No. My mind speaks for me. My actions are meaningless. My hands are worthless.

And my mind is too heavy to carry all that it must contain.

I’m upset. Very, very, extremely upset.

I don’t want to do anything anymore. I just want to lie here in this bed, sulking in the past and present, the future as well. I just want to cry, to walk silently away, to give up. I just want this all to be a very bad dream.

I’m ready to wake up but there is no off-switch.

So long, lonesome.

***

Ninth grade. Robbinsdale Cooper High School. New Hope, Minnesota. Still getting rides from my father. An embarrassingly loud red truck with a camper top and a bench seat. I was ashamed when we would give my friends rides because it reeked of pot smoke.

Sometime around my seventeenth birthday, I would begin having nightmares about that truck. I would start seeing it whenever I was out walking or riding my bike. It would pose quite a problem for me and even the anti-psychotic medications didn’t make the hallucinations go away. I would see him and his truck everywhere. I would have panic attacks and fits of hysteria.

It finally subsided when I went away to college.

Starting off on the wrong foot. My first day, freshman assembly. A big black girl turns to her friend and tells them that I stink. I don’t. Even I know that. But her and her group snicker and make jibes. I won’t ever forget.

A year of faded memories. Reading Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild and becoming obsessed. Planning my own journey into

the wilderness alone, almost acting on it two years later. Joining the speech team and performing a speech about Bethany Hamilton, a young professional surfer whose arm was bitten off by a shark. A series of hideous romantic encounters with a sophomore Asian boy I met in middle school. He had fat lips.

My first homecoming game; we lost. Marching band. A lacrosse team which I promptly quit because I didn’t give a damn.

***

Tenth grade was easier. Jenny, who had been attending different schools than me ever since our introduction in sixth grade, had transferred to Cooper to be with me. We did everything together. I lost most of my middle school friends because she was there.

She taught me to loosen up a little bit as far as school went. I skipped my first class ever. A health class. We sat in the girls’ bathroom together and ate Oreos.

We did speech together. My speech that year was about a dying boy whose life goal was to date a redhead. We also participated in track and field for a little while. Our events were discus and shot put. Jenny never returned her uniform; she still has and wears it to this day.

We were inseparable. Like twins. We went to the homecoming dance as each other’s dates and made fun of a boy in a cowboy hat.

I had my first romance with a boy named Martin. And another with a boy named Bobby who I never even kissed even though we dated for well over six months (this was a running joke between Jenny and I).

I went skiing for the first time and vowed never to do it again. My hair was entirely too long and was well on its way to becoming waist-length. I tried starving myself to get skinny.

I gave up because I liked food too much. I graduated from my accelerated program and earned the coveted IBMYP medal.

Tenth grade was also the last year I was ever driven to school by my father. I would not return to Cooper High School for my junior year. ***

Delasalle High School. Home of the Islanders. Downtown Minneapolis centered on Nicollet Island beneath the Hennepin Avenue Bridge.

It started at the end of tenth grade. I suddenly decided that I didn’t want to go to Cooper anymore. I did some research and found a little private Catholic school near the heart of downtown. It accepted financial aid for those who qualified, which I did by a marginal amount. I applied, was interviewed, accepted, and enrolled.

The school was religious. Liturgies were held on holidays. Uniforms were required. The word ‘Christmas’ was allowed. The faculty decorated the lockers with Christmas lights and holly before break. It was college preparatory and offered numerous AP classes. Lunch was homemade.

My father was completely against it. He was raised Catholic and had resented it. He did not want his daughter going to a Roman Catholic high school. Too damn bad.

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nice. We would meet at the Panera Bread on East Hennepin on days that school started late. My friend Daphne would order french onion soup and a whole french baguette and I would steal bites and refill her Dr. Pepper.

I missed a lot of school that year – sometimes whole weeks even. My teachers were concerned. My home life was crumbling, my father was worse than ever. My mother was ignorant. I spent as much time away from home as possible. I spent Christmas break at Jenny’s. Eventually, I would move in with her near the end of the school year.

Jenny and I had one more thing in common that year. We both managed to find long term boyfriends. She started dating Zach in October. I began dating Jeff in January. I had originally met Jeff through my boyfriend Bobby, at Cooper. We somehow forged a friendship while I was away at private school and became good friends. He was a senior then.

We started dating officially on January 22.

We will celebrate our two year anniversary in one month.

My school year (and unfortunately, my time at Delasalle) was nearing a close. My home life was at its worst. I would stay up all night long listening to my parents fight and scream. Usually near morning my father would turn his anger towards me and let me know what a horrible person I was. I would go to school with dark half-moons under my eyes and slurred speech from too much caffeine and a lack of sleep. *** Fast forward.

I took a bus. It was an hour-long ride, miserable, but worth it. I took AP English and Composition and AP U.S. History. I received a five and a two on the tests, respectively.

I wrote and wrote and wrote throughout that year. I filled pages upon pages of notebook paper with pencil-scrawled lines of depressing poetry and strange abstract stanzas. I won a library-sponsored poetry contest and a $50 Target gift card for a poem I crafted about anorexia. I wrote it in the library while skipping lunch.

I played my first year of high school tennis. I loved it. My teammates were amazingly nice. We practiced at Kenwood park next to Lake of the Isles and Cedar Lake. On the bus rides over we would sing Disturbia by Rihanna.

My junior year was hands down the best and worst year of my time in school. I had a bunch of friends. Good friends who were quirky, funny and

26 Essay

I began this story in December of 2010. Today is December 6, 2011. So much has changed.

January 2011, right after the beginning of the New Year, I was holed up in my room singing Auld Lang Syne over and over to myself. Crying. Wishing and praying. I tried to kill myself by taking pills and burying myself in the snow.

Shortly after, I was committed, a 72-hour hold on the psychiatric ward; the same hospital I was born in.

So it begins.

Roughly one month later, my first break with reality.

A hallucination. They were going to get me, shoot me, kill me. I screamed and hid. I cried. But it did not stop there.

Slash-men following me home. Scuttles on the wall.

A dog called ‘Free’ perched on my shoulder. Blood on the walls and dead men in the bathroom of Taco Bell.

Another suicide attempt. Three deep slashes on my left wrist.

You can still see them now if you look close enough.

Then a second hospitalization. Four days on double lockdown.

Meals brought to my room. I couldn't even wear my own clothing. I had escorts to “the other side.” When I was released, they didn’t know what to do with me.

All the while I am in college still, struggling with my Journalism major and failing a math class.

The last one. My third hospitalization. It is April. Slightly warm like springtime. I am there for two weeks while they test my first schizophrenia medication. It works.

Paranoid schizophrenia. How does it feel when you say it out loud? It is not my label. It is not who I am. It is not what has me clutched between iron fists. It is just something that is there.

I pass most of my classes that semester. It is a miracle. I take approximately ten pills per day. I am tired a lot of the time. But the hallucinations are under control. I am. Better.

January 15

That summer was difficult. I had to adjust to my new life, my new medications, and my new attitude. Some people make judgments about schizophrenics. I was used to being judged for my clothes, looks, and oddities, but I wasn’t used to having to explain to certain people that I couldn’t go to the mall because I was paranoid every person there would be out to get me. Or that I couldn’t go to the concert because loud noises scared me sometimes. Or that I didn’t drive because I saw things that weren’t actually there.

But there was more to it than stereotypes. When I opened up to others, sometimes they would flat out not believe me. “How can such a smart girl think that the salesman at the J.C. Penny is reading her mind? What a waste.” Those types of people were the worst. I would rather be thought of as a violent crazy person than a liar.

Surprisingly, I made it back to college in the fall.

Sometimes I wonder if it’s worth my time. Going to class is a

Featured on page 26 He Offers Samuel Stiver Etching 11’’ x 17’’

giant challenge for me because most classes have at least 200 students. I can’t handle crowds. I can’t handle bright lights and loud noises. I can’t handle scary movies or stories. Some days, I can’t handle myself.

People ask me what it’s like to be schizophrenic. Sometimes I’ll tell them. It can be interesting. I’m not crazy, I just see and hear things that others can’t. Brighter, more vivid colors, talking animals, shapes and faces in the sky and trees, philosophical ramblings that often don’t make sense but pass the time.

But it is also horrifying. Light shadows that chase after me and I fear will shock me, scary men without faces and others that just follow me, a constant conversation of angry words or laughter in my head. Have you ever had to step back and question whether the guy that just had a conversation with you at the bus stop was real or not? Or if the dead dog on the side of the interstate was truly there? Because I have to all the time. *** Beginning of sophomore year. I am a Social Work major with a double in English. I love it. Social work is my passion and I’m going to change the world someday – just watch.

I am still schizophrenic. You can’t tell by looking at me, can you?

I am schizophrenic. I am also a 19 year old, white, female, college student, cashier, juggler, tennis player, reader, writer, fan of Joan Baez, Led Zeppelin, and Tom Petty; meditator, Christian, bike rider, clarinet enthusiast, coffee drinker, brownie maker, MTV watcher, cat lover, daughter of an abusive alcoholic, sister of a drug user, cousin of a bunch of cute little kids, daydreamer, crocheter, peacemaker, dance-like-no-one-is-watching kind of person.

Can you tell?

No.

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Poison Moon by Tony Paese 1 Sarah sleeps, sitting at the center of a spinning record.

She doesn’t hear the song that plays, but her head keeps nodding to the beat.

2 At an all-night diner all bright fluorescent white, the waitress hands her a Lucky, says, “You look a little tired, honey.

The coffee’s on me.”

Out in the moonlight an old man plays guitar,

quick fingers picking a silver note for every silent truck driver and exhausted refugees bent over their coffee, like it’s all they have left, the only home they’re not running from or missing dearly.

Sarah shivers in the Tennessee breeze.

On the hood of the car in the parking lot, she lets that cigarette burn down to a memory.

3 Sarah sleeps alone in a crowd of ghosts that caress her gently and remind her that a funeral is both an end and a beginning.

Sarah sleeps while I drive beneath a relentless silver moon.

It shines down, filters light in through the leaves, refracting off the windshield, all distended when it hits her dreams.

Sarah sleeps, and though she’s only dreaming, a tear streaks down her cheek.

Her head is on my shoul der so the moisture soaks into my sleeve.

She tucks her knees up to her chest.

Sarah sleeps.

4

Olivia Baldwin Self-Portrait at Forty (If Lucky) Ink on Paper, 5’’ x 7’’

Poem

Hey moon, I think tonight your light is poison – it’s making Sarah look

as pale as a ghost. Everything seems strange now, driving back to her home town;

Portrait of Anna Hart Samuel Stiver Oil on Canvas 36’’ x 48’’

I don’t know what to feel, it’s all so surreal, and she’s sleeping so much that it’s been just you and me, pondering the role that I should play in all of this.

Moon, I could use some advice.

Just show me where to go from here.

Keep the road well-lit. Show me how to fill the shoes she clung to as a kid.

5 Sarah sleeps, sprawled across the hood of a black baby grand. she can’t feel the strings quivering beneath her, but her feet are gently stirring to keep time.

6 The radio plays a glowing echo of some old jazz piano piece.

A static lullaby that scatters my wayward thoughts about how this beat-up Ford is like a phonograph spun by hand, how the wheels play needles that fit into the grooves of a road she and I have memorized by heart, how tonight that hand started slowing down and all sounds are warped and foreign like the swaying cypress trees we pass beneath on the long winding roads of West Virginia.

And right before Ohio, right before she falls asleep, when the bumping car begins to feel like static from a well-worn record, she says, “I don’t recognize this country now that it’s so empty.

But you look just like my daddy when he would drive to church on Sundays.”

She takes my hand and holds it like it’s all that keeps her tethered here.

The radio plays the final track from My Aim is True.

Someday soon I will laugh right in the face of the poison moon.

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Grasping, Jennika Bastian, Pen and Ink on Paper, 24’’ x 36’’

Holes By Michael Ashley I. My first homecoming date got married freshman year to that train surfer, Asian Bob. In our village, gossip hisses like Coke in the icy glass of judgment.

Picket fence smiles belie the scorn behind the neighbors’ eyes as they pass hours and aggression with so soons? and it’s not the right times,

III. My new girl wouldn’t let me quit the hospital where we’d visit my Grandpa Jim. We’d brave the neighbor’s reclinable tomb cries — Help me, please. I want to die.

as if their paths diverged from a proven plan bestowed through the knowledge of old.

But even my liver spot Pop still says, When I grow up.

My girl would heal the terminal ward tension with a smile, while Jim kept scheduling some day.

We didn’t have the heart to tell him the calendar only went Saturday to Sunday.

II. No one was more sure than Ms. Giffin, ideologue qua English teacher, with a focus in competitive landscape design.

She hated my questions and saw through coke bottle lenses of piety that induced tunnel vision.

But she’s got two kids sans dads.

I don’t think that was her grand plan.

Neither my father nor his ever found their bearings.

They simply scratched at crestfallen snow, leaving limp tunnels as offerings at my feet.

I pray ambivalence is not hereditary.

I learned nothing from her lessons of The Faerie Queene, for no knight knew the trials of a boy whose teacher preacher paved Holy pages over hypocrisy’s holes.

Instead, Giffin taught me that we move more like flies than geese, not with a point but a swirl.

IV. Perhaps there was a day when truth was sweet and whole, but as my knowledge grows from this village to the world, I find that truth is filled with holes, rotted out from mold.

And I am just a worm, tunneling through the chaos searching for the core — a safe house structure that hasn’t browned from exposure to this caustic air.

So I curl tight around the smile of my too-soon baby girl as she reminds me to stop and Play with me and Mommy in the snow.

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1

2

3

Poem 32

Paula Helmsedt, Acrylic on Canvas; 1 Untitled (24’’ x 30’’), 2 Kalimera (11’’ x 16’’), 3 Untitled (16’’ x 20’’)

The Tumble by Eric Lynne Her sneakers give out a quick squeak, abruptly interrupting the hum of fluorescent lights reflecting on the linoleum.

She shatters his stillness with a simple smile, then the word uncontrollably hurdles over his teeth and, through half-opened lips, escapes—Hello— She echoes him with a heavy breath.

Pajama-clad and a high pile of delicates tells him she was not anticipating the company, so he quiets.

Swiftly chucking them back into his basket, he hides his own underwear, and continues folding his whites.

A thud, and again she silently sighs—Damnit— the blue liquid bleeds away from the orange jug.

He unfolds his white shirt and cleans the soap away from the grimy tiles. She picks up the bottle.

Empty. She looks at her load of unclean clothes.

He turns to retrieve his own detergent. When shaken, the bottle’s silence admits its emptiness. The buzzing lights take over the Laundromat again.

Then, taking the detergent-stained shirt from his loose hands, she slides open the dispenser, wrings the blue into it, throws the wrinkled mess in with her lot, clicks the on button, and leans satisfied against the rumbling machine. He returns a

smile.

The silly pile—tumbling—begins its playful chase.

Exterior Interior Samuel Stiver Etching 11’’ x 17’’

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the desert by Noah Whitford I threw away the wine cork today the one with the daisy painted on its side the one you gave me, softly saying “it lasts longer than a real flower” and that etched flower was the last in this long stretch of wilderness and I was sorry to feel it fall from my hand into the garbage can but it helped my eyesight adjust to the harsh light radiating across the tough gravel the rest of which I’ve got left to travel once lulled to a place that felt like togetherness not really sleep, just closed eyes and hope but somehow we soured and I’m awake now un-rested and startled after screeching to an unexpected halt stranded in this desert with an empty gas tank

but it’s just as well because the town is filled with all the restaurants where I learned about you where we showed up again six months later drunk and high

Featured on pages 34-35: Olivia Baldwin Oil on Canvas (Above) Head 6 30’’x40’’ (Right) I Saw Your Mother Last Night 40’’x 80’’

34 Poem

and all the theatre marquees are filled with names of movies we rented some we watched intently some we knew by heart and some just ended up being background noise and the walls of the town are murals

the cork’s daisy is sketched across the weathered brick as are the midnight swims we never swam

the apartment we’ll never rent together

the partner I never am and there’s a library there full of things I know things I learned from you things I want to forget and learn again on my own

Your green eyes sparkled and shined, the fire flickered lively as you sang with life.

Every string you chose, chord you smoothed, and lyric left me in wonder.

Your green eyes glowed bright even in the dark— you had spirit, a fight in your heart, you’d be damned to quit— don’t quit— we just started and my God it’s beautiful.

Rope By Danielle Kutka

You fell.

How your green eyes gawk at mine, the dull shadows yearn for life, lackluster and supine, the fire flickered and died.

Confused and lost, reality blurred by the poison pulsing your veins, the only fight you have now is with me, the enemy.

The ballad has ended, but echoes in my mind.

From you to me, the we is gone, falling from your lips as the strings snapped, chords clashed and burned, lyrics slurred to blunder— the curses the swears, God damn.

Go to Hell.

You are there, my friend.

The fire is out. The embers are ash— your spirit disowned you, or you it.

You’re damned.

You quit.

We ended and my God help me.

Stare on, little demon, my man is lost inside you— a new type of spirit fills your eyes, delusional nectar.

Lights out— falling, falling, gone.

And I’ll forever look down at you holding the rope.

Climb up, back up, back here, by me, the light, come to the light… but you see a noose.

35

Special Thanks.

Illumination would like to extend a special thank you to John D. Wiley Illumination would also like to thank the following people: Jenny Klaila, Vicki Tobias, Andrew Gough, Eliot Finkelstein, Kelli Keclik, Adam Blackbourn, Gary Sandefur, The Font Bureau, Inc., Pamela O’Donnell, Tom Garver, Elisabeth Owens, Mary Rouse, Jim Jacobson, Ken Frazier, Carrie Kruse, Ron Wallace, Gayle Cottrill, and Jim Rogers.

Special thanks to the Lemuel R. and Norma B. Boulware Estate for funding this issue.