Voices from the 2nd Floor

Voices from the Second Floor 2017-2018 Literary Arts Department Pittsburgh CAPA 6-12 A Pittsburgh Public School

Voices from the Second Floor 2017-2018

CopyrightŠ2018 by CAPA Literary Arts All Rights Reserved For Information Contact Mara Cregan, mcregan1@pghboe.net

Grade 12

Ryan Andrews White Vans Don’t Stop Driving, nonfiction

I walked into a convenience store, steps behind my dad, only to have a stranger’s hand wrap

around my neck, cover my mouth, and absorb the saliva from my eight-year-old screams.

I was always afraid of getting kidnapped. I used to wake up in the middle of the night, run into my parent’s room and cry, imagining getting stolen like I was a candy bar or lunch money. On my side of town, kidnappings were prevalent in the news, and my mom seemed to bring them up often.

“If you see a white van pull up to you, don’t talk to them. Don’t get in. Don’t stay where you are.

Run,” she would warn.

I reminded myself of this lecture every day, repeating in my head that white vans are bad. I had a bias. Anytime I saw one, my pupils dilated, and I grew tense; I got where I was going just a little faster, putting one foot in front of the other as I increased the speed of this real-life treadmill until I couldn’t go up anymore without falling on my face.

My dad was one to play around, always making dad jokes, and described as funny by his friends. I guess other dads love dad jokes. When I went to the store with him on a summer day, I expected the automatic doors to open when I stepped in front of the sensor. I didn’t expect a pale freckled hand to grab me, lift me in the air, and leave me feeling like a caged bird. I felt like I was trying to fly to heaven, but was being dragged into hell. I’d say my heart dropped, but it was over seven feet in the air at this point. I tried waving my arms, but they were locked down by a devil I still wasn’t sure of.

I yelled for help.

“Dad!” I screamed. He stood there, lifeless like the price-checker machine next to him. A smirk appeared on the side of his face while I was throwing a tantrum. Did I do something terrible? Is this punishment for not going to sleep on time? I contemplated my whole life while over everyone’s head in CVS Pharmacy. Why would someone abduct me in the middle of the day, with my dad standing right in front of me? I had listened to my mom for the last few months about child abductions: I wasn’t alone, I was very close to an adult, and I screamed for help when I was snatched. I got frightened looks from cashiers, but that was all. I couldn’t understand why I was flying like an angel in this terri-

ble situation.

He put me down on the worn gray carpet. I ran and did a 180 at the same time, looking at him frightened. It was my neighbor, but I saw a child predator. I couldn’t comprehend at the time this cruel joke that my dad and neighbor had played on me. I was never more scared in my life. I understood why my dad was laughing; I would be at that age. But when kidnapping was a huge fear, things don’t seem funny to victims. He ended up apologizing to me in the moment, but I didn’t speak the rest of the store trip. Down the aisles, I was silent. He bought me a pack of gum to lift me up. My neighbor tried talking to me, but I also ignored him. After checkout, we left the store, getting in my father’s truck. We watched a white van back out of the urban parking lot, but my neighbor wasn’t driving.

Sweat Runs, poetry I trudge uphill at midnight.

White earphones plugged in, “Stronger” by Kanye is blaring, vibrating the dewy grass I crush.

Uneven cobblestones shake my knees; I’m getting shot at.

Rain bullets tear my chest; Breathing gets harder.

I run faster to keep up with Kanye.

My legs move in a circular position, like riding a bicycle without the frame.

Rough concrete forces my soles like slow wasps against the ground, but I keep running. My heart is an offbeat metronome, making my breath escapes faster than the music beat.

Sweat pours from pores and falls on the road, raining on dry pavement, creating a tiny ocean that runs back home.

Pain shoots up my leg; I keep running.

I exhale fog into the air, warming my face as I sprint through clouds of moisture.

My calves are lighting fires; I’m burning.

Flames engulf my chest, gobs of fire shoot out of my mouth, lighting the sidewalk more than the moon ever could.

Maisha Baton-Stawson Cereal, nonfiction

The biggest sale on cereal I had ever seen, in my local Giant Eagle. Jaw dropping. The aisles

were crowded with other Honey Bunches of Oats fans, and we filled four carts with them. My sister worked there for a number of years, and found that by some good grace of god, you could keep using the buy one get one free coupon on as many boxes of cereal as you could fit in your sputtering minivan. When the cashier checked us out, her hands were covered in blood soaked bandages as she fondled each box in search of a barcode. Each box a car and her hands the freeway on which they could speed down. A bit over fifty boxes the machine let out one eerie tone for a minute, then she entered some code and continued. We had Honey Bunches of Oats for months, each golden crystal glistening in the milk. I stuck the spoon in quick for a fat splash across the kitchen table, rippling away from me.

Things just move too damn fast. I don’t appreciate it at all. When I’m waiting to cross the street

Downtown, the cars fly close enough to kick my hair up and throw it behind me. They speed down sixth into the Strip, never stopping to breathe. Then I’m sitting at the oil lathered rivers. I drown out the traffic behind me with the running water. The geese find me. They chase me into CVS, the bottoms of my pants are muddy and will crust tonight because I will be too tired to wash them when I get home.

I’ll be in my faux field. A 100 foot wide area of patchy grass and withered trees bordered by smooth tar and exhaust. Even the sunset might fall early, rushing out of the smog to find a breath of fresh air under the hills.

I heard the silence this weekend. Momentarily, I was able to relish in it. My boyfriend lives in

the no man’s land between the suburbs and the “boonies” as he calls it. At night we watch the stars, mostly because there’s not a single other thing to do and he pokes fun about me, never seeing the sky in my life. Maybe the stars serve as necklaces to the sky, just something to embellish a sight already quite beautiful with. But when you eat cereal, the plain of milk serves as a perfect base for the crystalized cereal to contrast against. Not only that, but if somebody offered me a big bowl of skim milk for breakfast, I would have to tell them to go fuck themselves. In the nicest way possible. In this

way, the empty sky may or may not be able to go fuck itself as well.

He and I sit at a pond behind his house at night. I dipped my index finger into the still water,

guiding the ripples across and tickling each individual reflection at my will. The water blew into the moonlight, handing me the power with it.

Olivia Benning We Aren’t Them, nonfiction

Money-maker Bill Gates and I will never shake hands. Civil rights leader Gandhi will never kiss me on the forehead. The Almighty will never speak to me like he did Moses. These things have not hindered me from living the life I do, no matter how pitiful or prosperous it may come to be. Who has the right to judge me, based on a society driven by money, rankings, and prejudice, tell me I am unsuccessful?

I once dreamt of teaching a classroom of kids who enjoyed learning until I loathed kids. I thought of writing freelance in New York, living in a penthouse, until I lost the passion. I thought about being a doctor and saving lives until I thought about not wanting my own. I concluded that money won’t make me happy, no matter how much I have. It gets spent anyway. I don’t care how many kids my age I see acting on television and walking red carpets, they lose their privacy. Show me how pretty Beyoncé is, with her beautiful kids and solid career, her husband still cheated on her.

I want the most for myself, the joy that comes with helping others, the loving family and faithful friends, the relative peace and control over my life in everyday things. I want to be prosperous in the things that are “simple”. I’ll live on a college kid’s budget, eating ramen until I’m swimming in it. I don’t want to know how it feels to drown in your own money.

Weston Custer MY FATHER LECTURES ME ON THE WAY HOME FROM SATURDAY DETENTION, poetry You don’t run all that fast and you’re not all that lucky.

Never broken a bone, never worked a day in your life.

I’m not saying this to be mean.

You think I’m mean? My old man used to sieg heil in the shower, for God’s sake. Bar of soap raised high in the air, hate evaporating like steam.

Listen to me. This family bleaches our skeletons milky white. We keep them in the foyer to greet our house guests, not in the closet, not in the basement with the black mold and the busted xmas lights, coiled up like a rat’s nest.

What do I know? I’m just your father. Stop giving me that look.

I’ve seen bone tear through muscle, leaving it ragged and chewed. I’ve prayed until my palms blistered and bled to a little hollow plastic baby Jesus on our tawny front lawn, his face bleached milky white by the sun.

Noor El-Dehaibi My Jesus, flash nonfiction I learned who Jesus was in a mechanic’s garage at the age of six. It had been converted into my town’s only mosque two years prior. My mom took it upon herself to organize a Sunday school program for it, with herself as the head teacher. She gave out the papers she had printed the night before, worksheets asking us true or false questions about God: Did God create the universe? Can God die? Does God have any sons, daughters, or wives?

I argued God’s family with a group of kids my age. My sisters, who were some of the older children in the class, heard me mention the son of God. They blinked and went back to weaving beaded Lebanese flag keychains. My mom hurried to my end of the one-room space, leaving the other teacher, a woman she had met through the mosque, to read Quran to some of the students. She knelt down to my eye level before gently telling me that Jesus was not the son of God, that God had no sons, no daughters, no children. That Jesus was a prophet and was closer to God than most people, but he himself was not a god. I tried to argue with her, but I didn’t know enough about Jesus or God to explain myself.

“You think that because that’s what’s been told to you by Christians,” she said. “They don’t know about Jesus. They think that they do, but they’re wrong.”

She continued her talk in the same steady voice she would have used to tell me to not tease a classmate about being in a different reading group. She told me to not argue with them, to not pick fights with them, but not to believe them either. That they were wrong, and would find out the truth on Judgement Day. I didn’t say anything in return. She walked back to the other children. I picked up my worksheet and erased the circle I had put around “True”.

I sat next to my friend Fisher on the bus the next morning, popping the windows open and wriggling on the leather seats.. He told me about his own Sunday School, at the large, flat church down the road from the new Kmart. Our town had two Kmarts and ten churches. He told me that he had learned about the Holy Spirit, and tried to explain to me what exactly that was. “It’s like God in the air,” he told me. He told me that God had three bodies—God himself, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

“Is Jesus the Son?” I asked him. “The Son of God?” He gave me a look before telling me, “yes”.

I bit my tongue, remembering what my mom had told me. Still, I didn’t know how to grapple with the realization that Fisher was going to go to Hell.

Fisher, possibly thinking me a heathen and having a similar realization about me, didn’t bring up his Sunday school again. I would say the same thing about myself, but he never knew that I went to a Muslim Sunday school in the first place. None of my Christian friends did.

Maya Frizzell To Serena Williams, from a Young Athlete, nonfiction “But then I realized that you really have to learn to accept who you are and love who you are. I’m really happy with my body type, and I’m really proud of it.”

-Serena Williams Serena, I hate my body. I’ve always found that I was larger than my friends, especially in middle school, while still growing up. Because of athletics, they slimmed down, shrinking to my bulkier, misconstrued body. My mother told me I was beautiful, but she’s just about the only one. Boys prefer girls they don’t feel emasculated next to.

Serena, I’m tired of myself and others trying to justify my weight by saying it’s just muscle, telling myself that it enables me to do things no one else can do. There are stronger, faster, smarter, skinnier women than me. I think, by now, I’m just making excuses.

How did you learn to love your body? Was it after the Wimbledon win? Did you need success to see beauty? In the past year I’ve thrown myself into my sport. I think I need to be the best and achieve more to excuse my body. Serena, our bodies are near the same. We don’t have curves.

We’re shaped more like building blocks. You can afford that body type when people know how good at your sport you are.

When people slandered you for being outside the norm of body standards, how did you respond? Did you spit in their faces or did you run to your room and hide, ashamed of the body you’d been born into, the one you’d worked so hard for? You wouldn’t do that, but Serena, I’m not you.

I’m tired of seeing models that don’t look like us. Shopping for clothes is a constant reminder of the faults in my body. Our thighs are bigger, bellies stretched to accommodate muscle, our hands calloused and dry. I’ve hidden behind the safety of unformed athletic clothes for so long, I don’t remember what figure-hugging looks like.

Serena, did you learn all the tips and tricks for dressing our bodies at a young age? Never wear dresses. They were never made to flatter our bodies. We don’t have curves to accentuate and

we shouldn’t leave our legs exposed. Were you scared people might see your cellulite too? I still have trouble unapologetically sitting in a chair. My legs might meld against the plastic and there’s no way to hide them then. Don’t look at your body too long in the shower, you may get lost in the flaws.

When did you stop comparing yourself to others? Did it ever happen? Do you still look at other women and wonder why you’re built so differently from them? Have you learned to find comfort in your body yet? Serena, I’m so scared I never will. There’s no comfort in knowing others will always look more beautiful than you. There’s no comfort in constantly not knowing why.

Serena, I hope you know you’ve inspired me. I’ve found solace in your cellulite and solidarity in your stretch marks. I’m less ashamed to be an athlete because of you. You made it beautiful and graceful and eloquent. Maybe we’ve never met, Serena, and maybe we never will, but I’m glad I know you.

Six Times I Saw Myself in Pop Culture, creative nonfiction 1. Angelina Jolie: My grade school best friend, Addy sat on my lap during Afterschool. We chatted away about our middle school drama and what homework was due and which boys we liked.

Our friend, Josie, had worn makeup to school that day, there was history homework, and Addy liked a known player, Hayden. We hung out with a group of boys sometimes in afterschool.

Upon seeing the way we were sitting, they laughed at us and said, “What are you guys, lesbians?” Addy never sat on my lap again.

2. Snooki: On a whim, I cut my long hair into a blunt pixie cut. When I came back to school, I got some comments of admiration, some of confusion. My best friend sat next to me in math class and when Tyler, my long-term crush, came over to see us, she grabbed each of our hands and said, “Have you seen Maya’s haircut? Isn’t it cute?” He looked at me and, without hesitation, responded, “It’s weird.” I thought maybe I didn’t look pretty enough. Now, I think I looked too gay.

3. Kristen Stewart: The night after my eighth-grade graduation (which practically made me an adult), I curled my sister’s hair for a dance. As I wrapped each hot strand around my finger, she asked me, “Who do you think’s gonna end up being gay?” I didn’t answer for a while and, thinking I didn’t hear her, she clarified, “You know, from Falk? Who’s gonna be gay?” When I told her I didn’t think it mattered, she got defensive. “I was just wondering, god.”

4. Demi Lovato: I called my best friend, Tamar, the night before I started high school. She had moved to D.C. right after graduation, and the only way I could come out to her was through FaceTime. When she picked up, we went through all our hello’s and I miss you’s. “So what did you want to tell me?” I went through my spiel, telling her I wasn’t going to change, and she shouldn’t see me any differently. I told her I was bisexual. She was silent for a moment, then said, “Oh, that’s okay. Is that why you cut your hair short?”

5. Drew Barrymore: My first boyfriend, Andrew was the first person to actually take an interest in me. He told me I was unbelievably cute and, being naïve, I believed him. In our two and a half year relationship, I attempted to bring up my bisexuality with him plenty of times, only to be shut down every time. On a date in November when I knew our relationship would be coming to an end soon, I asked him if he even knew I was bisexual. He said he guess he did and, although I never asked him, I wondered why he never acknowledged it. We broke up two

months later over what he called, “ideological differences.”

6.

Marlon Brando: After a couple years of refusing to do so, I came out to my dad while we were

driving home from school one day. He said he was somewhat taken aback by it because “that didn’t really happen” in his day. I sat in silence for the rest of the ride. What was I supposed to say to that?

Suhail Gharaibeh What Marie Said to Me at the Met, poetry

In 1783, Marie Antoinette posed for a portrait of herself in a chemise dress and straw hat, clothing deemed wildly inappropriate for royalty. The painting was so controversial that it had to be removed from its exhibition at the Louvre. It now lives at the Met in New York City.

That palace is full of hypocrites: gossips, tramps, men who won’t give their wives babies but somehow manage to sleep in every other bed from Paris to Poitiers. And I, the Queen, am a tart, or a liar hoarding wheat, an imp with crinkled tresses stiffened by mutton fat and the poor man’s flour. First, they called me decadent, a glutton, a cocotte in dusty silk and pink taffeta, just rabid for rococo, tiered and tailored like a fat cake, taffy-colored and cloying in my puffed robes and high hair. Then, I wore a frock like a grandmother’s, all solid red velvet with no bows and no trim, and I was “pandering to the people.” Better yet, I’m a graceless rube who took eight years to finally get her husband to sleep with her.

But it wasn’t my fault. Louis is…well, he’s that way.

Well, don’t look so confused! I caught him once, in his apartments, kissing the Baron of Marbot, I swear. He’s always running off somewhere— a count here, a squire there. Oh, honey. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. I know what you must be thinking— what on Earth do the French get up to? They say one thing, do another. But it’s the nature of all people, my love: you will never be the fruit of their desire. So stop trying— I did. I have shed it all; I’ve replaced my crown with a straw hat. Straw! I’ve posed, my face bare as the day I was born. No rouge, no mouche, my hair long and loose, not even so much as a powdered nose.

I’m just wicked, I know! It’s just me, looking younger than ever in my white garden dress, the muslin mist of it sighing around me.

I stare at you from within the frame, my poor arm aching from hours of holding up a rose, a green ribbon.

No Bourbon lilies, no Indian diamonds, no hazelnut oil in my hair.

I want rumors of me to stain the mouths of every Frenchman.

And oh, mon Dieu, will they ever! Élisabeth has outdone herself—this gorgeous painting of me is going straight to the Louvre. For a public exhibition.

That’s right, every beggar and bastard, every barfly and bawd, they’ll all come down to pretty Paris to see me,

Marie, like no king or queen you’ve ever before seen.

Cher, all I want is for this nation to know my name.

Of all people, I know you

can understand.

Judith Beheads Holofernes, poetry

I am waiting in the desert night.

Wind-blown, my skirts ignite.

In the distance, I see the low light of candles, long gold knives with glinting gilt handles.

I want nothing of the feast’s grandiosity.

I am here to prohibit a monstrosity.

While my people feast, you plot their slaughter.

Dawn will bring dead sons, vanished daughters.

So I’ve come to spill blood, to hold a head in my hand.

Inside the army tent, you are peppered with sand; lying on your silk bed, hot with wine, you eat figs from the hands of concubines.

Your body is muscled with coils of war; your arms are pythons thirsty for gore.

It is garish, the dim sight: how fear and lust meet in lamplight.

I have labored, secretive, over this plan.

I have pressed it angrily into my hands, how before I cut, I will admire you, the night pulsing a dampened blue.

The harvest moon of your eye will roll like a slick bead in my palm.

You, stupid with lust and I, plotting, poised in twilight’s calm.

I burst through the drapes, drunk with sin.

You beckon to me; you welcome me in.

The Sweetest Taboo, or the Time I Visited Boystown, creative nonfiction I’d like to be a bad woman, too, / And wear the brave stockings of night-black lace / And strut down the streets with paint on my face.

—Gwendolyn Brooks If my mother ever saw me like this, I think, chattering on the train with my best judies, she would surely keel over dead.

We’re scandalous, sparking with independence—no parents to preach or proscribe. People must be wondering who we are, these strays in Chelsea boots and chic tops—the girl barefaced, the two boys in makeup. Like magpies, we’re noisy without care or cause, shiny with cheap gold.

We step off the train into a gurgling throng of Chicagoans. Our style makes me pompous. I think of us as trendy little sprites, beautiful but ephemeral. Our necks holding our heads as though they’re Fabergé eggs.

We’ve come to visit Boystown, one of the most legendary “gayborhoods” in the nation, a place I would have been barred from visiting on a family trip. I can see my parents now, their lips curling as they glare at two men holding hands or drag queens blotting their lipstick. So often are we bound by those who are supposed to love us. But tonight, I’ve turned myself loose. I will rend their restraints, delight in their disgust.

This power is sweet. It smells of gardenia and smoke. I know I can’t have it always, not even most of the time. But if I can just have it for these few hidden hours, under the fond gazes of pretty boys, under the glow of the rainbow-striped streetlamps, maybe that’s enough. I breathe it all in—Boystown is mine tonight.

Nika Gill Blue Baby, nonfiction Syllables press hard on my skull. I can’t force anything out. So many questions, peeling right off my tongue and adhering to my thumbs like a stubborn stamp. I am back in the stale air of my closet. Bitter, old water squeezes my throat. I stare down at a lump of excuses in an otherwise empty notecard. My mind takes me to Missoula, Montana, the last place you were heard from.

Maybe you’re just roaming, like I do; at night, down the same streets around the same time, seeing the same trash, a broken screen protector here, the same 1968 quarter with a little bit of gum stuck to it sitting near the bus stop on Seventh Avenue. You don’t seem to be resistant to this lifestyle, either.

My mom still hangs onto an unopened gift for you, given from your grandmother. It is encased in a flat blue box with a white glittering bow. I already know what’s inside, too, we all got very similar things that year. She was growing uncreative, and we were ungrateful anyways. But I guess I can never know for sure.

I have a feeling that people are afraid to find you. You’re just trickling down this nondescript highway on your bike, along what I have always imagined to be the outline of your face; your long nose like mine, your jagged teeth, and empty eyes. I somehow feel responsible for your fleeing, despite how I never remember you; I have only heard stories of your mangled passing; empty eyes, no color code to imagine you by, but you are technically still “around.” I figure I will worry enough for everyone else, in my stupid selfish righteousness.

I have reason to believe that my mom is holding back on me. You could have a bounty over your head, you could be hunted; fragile limbs because you forget to eat, mind too fogged with revelations. The same visions you had as a child, I think I have in dreams.

My mom told me once that you were strangled by your umbilical cord, which is very common, but you are still so alien to me. It was the first time I had heard of such a thing. I don’t know how she sees you now, maybe just as aloof as you were in your boyhood, maybe just some figment. You haven’t seen her in decades. You stuck a quarter up your nose when you were seven and had to go to

the ER. She told me this in confidence; she said you had too much noise in your head, trying anything to block it out, as you brace for all the world’s vibrations like a weathervane in some recurring storm. I hope you found your silence.

I have always imagined your spirit swimming in some Montana-shaped fish bowl. Your body is jellied and translucent. I can see your smoker’s lungs, tiny and squirming.

I still try to figure you out. The few pictures scattered around in a photo album are yellowed and curling, losing your likeness, the polarity between your dirty blond, boyish mullet and my mother’s dark auburn hair is all I can truly make out anymore. I sometimes wonder if I was lied to, like they shot you behind a shed and said you’re on a farm somewhere. Maybe Montana is where lost dogs lie.

I’m still lying dormant in this twenty-by-eight foot room, waiting for a response I know I won’t get because I have no address to write on the front of this card, just a birthday (the day before mine,) just an inkling that you might see me if I walk far enough down blaring highways, you might hear me if I scrape by just a little longer. It has been years and I keep expecting you come forth, out of a gutter or jail cell. Tell me you’re feeling, show me empty eyes that see every staggered movement Earth makes. Tell me what year the quarter was from. Write me back soon, at least in a thought.

Pink Moon (A Body As A Moving Portrait), nonfiction That afternoon was caught in some unearthly glow. He drops me off in front of my house, hugs me, and leaves. He never stays this long; I can already feel the impending disappointment. He texts me the next day to ask if I’m coming up to Whiskerville that weekend to visit, and I have no excuse not to go, but I still refuse.

His reply: ‘OK’.

Five minute pause.

‘Going to Skullfest’.

He’s found dead on his friend’s porch later that night.

The cops call my mom and briefly explain. She’s pacing in the dining room. I’m watching the Twilight Zone and eating pasta, then I’m watching her form some unmovable expression I had never witnessed before. She looks tired, almost relieved. She doesn’t blink or flinch, just tells my brothers.

They simply nod.

(Their reactions still tear me to pieces.)

I break into shaking, unstoppable tears. For the first time I am inconsolable. I feel as if I have been training for this, that all the inexplicable crying from years past finally meant something. I knew it was coming, I had felt it.

Their voices float above my head, frantic and ashamed, “What can we do?” They hug me, wringing the wet air out of my lungs. I feel his oxygen return to me, bathing in my bile. I am still trying to salvage those missing cells.

To blame yourself is to take responsibility, and that seemed like the better option to me. I didn’t want people to think he’s at fault, and, as much as it is his fault, I didn’t want to believe it was. I was lying to myself for so long. Living with that guilt is necessary to remind myself that some addictions end in death, as did his. I convinced myself I could cure longing.

Half an hour later I stand still in my basement shower, staring at a daddy longlegs, disgusted by my vulnerability.

That same night, I dream of being in the car with him. Blinking feels like running my eyelashes through lip balm, hot wax, sap. We are speaking of events he could not possibly know, as if he’s here.

I am still lying to myself.

Even a year later, I barely have enough motivation. I can still close my eyes and see a body as a moving portrait, wrinkled tattoos and all, dirty teeth, greasy bandana, leg hair long enough for braiding, though I’ve only tried in dreams.

Makes Me Think of The Piedmont, poetry I don’t live (I inhale.)

The gushing fire hydrant on my block, that same smell, brings me back two years, a musty gazebo by an old salt mine.

Snails climb stubbly legs, ants lift watermelon seeds.

I don’t give (I unveil.)

Crushing tendons on warm plaster, I just want to get there faster.

Shallow crevices in skin around her long, windy eyes, under another bridge, she knows there are days longer than nights.

She knows. She shakes me awake, She meets me in the gloom tonight.

Stars like strawberry sugar tonight.

My pockets are full of cherry pie crumbs and her hands. Hours chasing hours, ivy obsequious under another bridge, a swarm of fruit flies circle a body of air.

Light tears down curtains of clouds.

Shadows streak. Arteries ache.

Wild fruit hangs from wet stems near her desk drawer, dew settles.

I don’t question beauty like that.

Skin yellowing and tightening.

Days too tame lately. Maybe dew that thick is possum spit. Trash animals. I hope.

After I go home, a blue raspberry glaze takes over her soft features.

Flames tighten, lie over her bicep, shade veins in a blessing.

My room captures absolute dark. My lying form, in pillows, stays silent.

Tell me tell me, what you’re after.

I just want to get there faster.

Dominique Green By the tilt of my hand, poetry These hands love to dance, jiving to the steady click of my tongue.

They move fluid as a crystal wave, swift like a drum beat.

These hands convey influence, saying I’m pretty but I’m tough.

Polished glossy, lip popping red.

Pay attention while they strut their stuff.

These hands are not ambidextrous. relying on each other to create perfection.

Calligraphy is not their strong suit.

The cradle of a pencil never quite caressed the paper.

These hands are stylish, hands.

Lovely decorated fingernails, Red polished onto its exterior made to match painted lips.

These hands like to talk.

Every movement is a word, every word mispronounced They stumble over hello’s and goodbyes.

Envelope mother in a hug blow her a kiss.

These hands are colored hands.

Baked until they crack and burst into ash, or scar and blister from all the pain.

These hands are fighting hands.

These hands are giving hands.

These hands hold the callouses that created such a life.

Pay Kish How To: Survive Your Middle School Emo Phase, creative non-fiction Parents don’t understand you? Can’t concentrate in algebra because you’re having dirty thoughts about Brendan Urie again? Is your taste in music far superior compared to your normie peers? Well my friend, looks like you’ve found yourself knee deep in an emo phase.

But don’t worry, this how-to guide will enlighten you with everything you need to do to survive this existential crisis that’s become your life.

1.

Dye your hair.

Dying your hair is a great way to let everyone around you know that you’re not like the others. Your hair will be like a stop light warning everyone that you’re quirky, random, and self-aware.

8.

Listen to screamo music.

Face it, nobody understands you. You’re a walking, talking ball of existentialism, hormones, anxiety, and anger at the world. Why are we here? What’s the point? Is God real? These thoughts go through your head at least once a day, right? Tune them out! Screamo music is both loud enough to drown out your inner mental turmoil and meaningful enough for it to make you feel something deep, deep inside the cold, dry tundra that is your heart.

1.

Become a vegetarian.

With all that pent up anger inside of you, I bet your parents are tired of hearing you bitch and moan every time they ask you to clean your room. You have to take it our on something. Why not the food industry? Once you become aware of the horrors poor animals face every day in order to feed the world, you’ll feel so passionately about the cause that you’ll not only become a vegetarian, but you’ll force feed your ideas about vegetarianism down the throats of whatever poor soul is willing to listen. Double win!

4.

Learn to play guitar.

School just isn’t for you. Learn to play guitar so when your parents ask you what your plans are for later in life, you can reassure them that you’re going to drop out to pursue a career

in music. They’ll be so proud!

5.

Realize that things are going to get better.

Shit may be hard now with your newly discovered individualism, self-awareness, and overall feeling of dread, a byproduct of realizing that death is inevitable so why should anything we do on this god forsaken green Earth matter? But just remember like all good things—a Fall Out Boy concert, pizza on a Friday night, and new band t-shirts from Hot Topic—this, too, shall pass. One day you’re going to wake up and realize that the only way to deal with your misery is to bury it deep inside with your plaid skinny jeans and black hair dye.

Jessica Kunkel To the Teacher that Doubled as my Cool Aunt Marie, creative nonfiction

Dear Miss Mrvos, I know I haven’t written in a while. It’s just been busy. I’m scrambling to stay upright, as though perpetual motion will keep me from toppling under the pressure of adulthood. And when I do stop, I can’t start for hours. I stagnate and recognize I should be cleaning my room or writing a paper or studying for that test tomorrow, but I don’t do anything about it because I would rather sit. I need to rest. I tell myself I will do it when I have more energy, but it should be an if-statement.

I’m sorry I stopped helping you at school. I’m sorry I stopped coming in for the few in-service days to clean up your room with you. You deserved better after buying me lunch, driving me to school when my parents worked early, getting me Wendy’s fries, and buying Frosties for the entire chess club. You deserved better after you gave me a bin of baking supplies because you loved my brownies, and after you bent the rules of the fifth-grade camping trip, so that not only did I get to pick who was in my cabin, but so that my mom, dad, and brother could all come too. You didn’t let other kids bring two family members. I’m sorry I left you behind with the rest of the past, and that I use you as a character reference on job applications without asking. I just know you would say good things.

I won’t forget that your room number was 204, or that you had plants all around your room that you would let us water, or the wooden door that you had to kick the doorstop backwards for it to stay.

You would wear big jewelry and sass the kids that were being bad. You would hatch chickens in the classroom and show us the embryos with the light of an old overhead. You took the babies to your father’s farm when they were too old and smelly for you to keep in the classroom. You would award scientist of the month for outstanding projects and get your students their favorite full-sized candy bar for their birthday. You had saltwater fish that Lauren was convinced she could talk to. We would spend hours in your room, and I didn’t mind. I found my first crush in your room, another kid you took under your wing. I’m sorry you never had kids.

You made me miss my audition for a solo in the school’s holiday vocal show because it was

during lunch on the day we had chess club, and you were giving people lunch detention if they didn’t show up to chess club. I’m sorry that they made you teach third grade English instead of science after my class left. I’m sorry you left. But now, you can teach science, and you don’t have to climb the stairs that would make your weak knees ache.

I want to see you soon. I hope you’re doing well. I hope you’re happy where you are. I hope your dad is okay, I know he was having some health issues there for a little while. I miss you, and I miss the days that we spent together.

Sincerely yours, Jessica

Chelsea Lewis Beyoncé and I Talk about Womanhood, poetry I sit as you press powder into my face, we both sing out your glittery notes.

I tell you, “I’ve never been in love the way you sing it.” You tell me, “Maybe you’re afraid.”

I am woman, growing into woman.

Beyoncé, they say you are above all women, some say God. Girls call you mother.

Beyoncé, do you get tired?

I bathe until I believe I’m glorious.

I live through my hips and hair, but looking in the mirror, I just see a woman. A plain young woman who thinks no one loves from the inside out anymore.

I think about how men want us all to be like you.

Curves busting in sequin bodysuits, streaks of blonde running through our hair, baptized to ashes.

You tell me that I’m beautiful by myself but I’ve already tried to change.

To be prettier, tried to carry myself softer and mean what I say.

I listen to you sing while I whisk around the kitchen. I slice through fruits and vegetables with a knife, leaving the lemons whole, waiting to squeeze them.

You tell me to use those hips to pull them all in, now that I’m grown.

Bathe me until I learn.

I tell you I’m thankful for you yet I want you to become me,

drinking down my sorrow like lemonade.

We grovel at the sight of you claiming you birthed us all.

If I touched you, Beyoncé, would you call me mother?

Hair Salon on Berry Street, poetry I sit in the high chair, face covered in wet curls while the mommas, sistas, aunties gossip, like black women do, hooting and hollering, “girl, did you hear?” and “child, no they didn’t.” I dry, watching and smiling as coconut conditioner runs down my sideburns, listening to aged women.

Sipping on cheap wine, Peaches finishes three women before me, going on about my shrunken curls, telling me I got good hair, how her man got another girl.

They all scream to let him go, no more of those black tears to swallow. I say nothing. She softly tugs at my dry roots while I close my eyes, clean and conditioned.

She parts my scalp straight, the salon schooling us girls to pay no mind to men. How we birth them yet us women make them run further. Too black, we are, their love dry.

I keep to myself, half-listening wondering why we curl into an endless whirlwind, always feeling bad as black women, waiting for a love unconditional.

We watch news, a child gone on 52nd, I can’t cry no more, only feeling my scalp. The girl gets shot during hopscotch. Can’t play while black, can’t breathe. Everyone said, “Lord have mercy.” Women who were mothers called their children. One’s son curled on her lap. The police didn’t know much, my expression dry.

Mariah brushed gel on my hair, now tired and dry.

I’d fallen asleep yet my hair was now in good condition.

She boiled water, dipping my braids, steam in the air curled.

She slicked down my edges before starting another girl.

Everything in the salon was dying down, the laborious women sat as I thanked them, swinging fresh braids, long and black.

I don’t hesitate to pay these black women who I’d seen down, cracked and dry.

Trying to stay afloat, trying to just be women.

This little salon on Berry, beside the brownstone, conditioned by us, growing up in the chairs with plaits since we were girls, to straightening our hair when we got grown, training our curls.

I see us black women, accepting and surviving in the condition.

We talk black in salons and shops, waiting for hair to dry, praising our own curl, passing it down to our girls.

Letter to My Future Husband, creative nonfiction “I have seen that dream all my life.” – Ta’Nehisi Coates Dear You, I don’t know exactly who I’m writing to, hopefully the love of my life. I’m writing you in my seventeenth year where relationships in my generation are an anomaly; none of them sound like how my mom told me they were supposed to go. If you were made for me and you’re reading this, warning, you’re going to hear about my mom a lot. Anyways, I have a few things I’d like to tell you.

I’ve never had a boyfriend before or a first kiss or a date. My family is vicious when it comes to dating.

They are very loving people, but anyone that someone brings home is grilled to the max. My mom as a single mother, spoiled me since I was her baby girl. She never told me no. Maybe she should have because now, whatever I want, I must have whether it’s from someone else or myself. In no way do I ever need anyone, but I imagine that you’ll be a gift to me. I wouldn’t love anyone not made for me but I can’t imagine someone loving me the way I need to be. As a teen, I deal with my friend’s love dramas without having my own. I look at them and sometimes I’m envious, other times I’m glad. I see men only lusting after their “types.” They get to decide what’s considered beautiful amongst us girls, looking on the outside. I’d like to believe that I’m in control but here, I’m not. I went through changes to try and snag one or two but it still wasn’t good enough.

I’ve been left by some of the most important people in my life. My dad left when I was six and though he’s still around, I didn’t have much male guidance early on. My dad was the first man to break my heart and now, growing into a woman, I can’t trust it in the hands of just anyone. My grandma became an angel before I turned seventeen. I can’t deal with more loss. If you can’t handle me, leave before I learn to love you.

I’m still learning to love myself. I’ve been doing makeup since middle school and every day, I spend hours in the mirror until I think I look good. I relish in the moment until I can say that I’m beautiful. I brush through my hair, letting it cascade past my shoulders. I jump and wiggle into my jeans, telling myself that these curves will be appreciated one day. I pose in front of my mirror until I look plain again. You’ll have to reassure me, every so often, remind me that you think I’m beautiful and how you feel about me. I’m a Cancer, I’m overly emotional and I overthink a bunch. I wonder what sign you’ll be, and yes, I believe in the zodiac.

When I’m sad, don’t be offended if I don’t want to talk. I get quiet when I’m upset. Just hold my hand so I know you’re there. When I’m mad at you, make me listen to you and even though I’ll still be mad, I’ll hear you. When I’m at my best, singing loudly to the radio in the car, hold my hands, pray with me, and tell me my smile is beautiful.

I don’t know what to imagine you as. I don’t know what you’ll look like or sound like or how you’ll treat me but if you’re there, it means I’m the one you’ve needed.

I thank you though. You give me hope for love, a real love, and in this moment, I know it’s worth waiting for. I’ll keep on through life living to enlighten myself. I hope, by the time we meet, I love myself fully to love you right. I hope you still believe in opening car doors and giving roses periodically. In advance, I apologize for all the apologies you’ll get, the silent treatments and the attitudes you’ll have to deal with. If you can take it though, I hope you write back soon.

Love, Chelsea

Chyna McClendon Atalanta, poetry I was a baby left on a mountain, forsaken by a father who thought a girl couldn’t

be the ruler of Mt. Olympus.

I was surrounded by monsters you would

only seen in myths, but I feel their breath on my neck.

Hearing the Minotaur growl at the white moon.

Artemis sprouted me from the ground,

feeding me spoons of honey and dates.

Turning me into a huntress that even men fear,

challenging what has been passed down for generations,

my name will be heard.

I ride on the wings of Pegasus,

fighting off Scylla with my copper shield,

turning the Kraken to stone with Medusa’s leaking head,

her snakes slithering in retaliation.

Zeus waits sharpening his lightning bolts.

I wish to be like Artemis, maleficent but graceful.

Feet poised on decaying Hyacinth’s

finding her way,

out of the underworld,

escaping Hades spidery fingers.

Crushing the wings of a Chimera.

Bare knuckles bleeding,

I will break through any chain,

defeat any God that stands in my way.

I am one step closer to immortality.

Gorgon: Medusa, poetry You have cursed me.

Stolen my breath, deflating lungs.

Your divine light no longer guides me, it drives needles into skin.

Causing eternal madness yet I am not immortal.

Goddesses are known for their wisdom and strength, but Athena, you have lied to me.

I was once an enchantress, hair fell in waves of silky corn husk, but deceived by a “noble� God, my humanity drowned in the sea.

Now serpents writhe around my skull, sending their venom into my veins.

My olive tone lost its luster; I am an unripe apple on the forbidden tree.

Gorgon is what they call me now, a beast that turns men to rotting limestone.

My serpents dance around my throat, they salivate at temptation.

I flee to the fields, close my eyes and breathe out the poison.

My sisters nip at my heals.

I submit to my infinite affliction.

When will the snakes stop tainting my ears?

When will I turn to stone?

How to Gain Control in Nine Steps, Creative Nonfiction 2. Arm yourself with knowledge. It is the best to defeat critics. Push yourself to your intellectual potential. Make goals for yourself that no one else can achieve but you. Reach for oblivion 3. With knowledge, no one can hurt you except yourself.

4. Just because you have book smarts doesn’t mean you are street smart. Know how to get home.

That you don’t talk to strangers. Don’t believe someone if they fidget their fingers. They are liars.

5. Being kind comes with a price. People will take everything you have, bury under your ribcage, and take your breath. You give and give, but never take. It against your principals. It pains you to say no, so you crumble with each favor. You tell your mother that you are not spineless, to be your person. You do the opposite. Being selfless is an art. Putting others before yourself is second nature. When you figure out that you wish to be cruel. Feeding others nourishes your soul.

6. Be wary of men that see your kindness. You are too sweet to pass up. Put your head down when walking across streets, don’t lift your neck when they “coo” baby. Your beauty radiates out, do not let out too much. I know you are scared.

7. Others will be jealous of you. Call you things that you are not. Be strong which is hard, because you are made of glass. But reinforced with iron.

8. Be prepared to have talks with your mother. They can range from twice a week to when she just feels in the mood. They consist of pep talks, telling you that you are so smart, but don’t “push” yourself. You have all the tools but are not using them. “I worry about you.”

“Will you be able to say no?” ” I know you and I just want you to be safe.” And my favorite, “Can you handle the pressure?” All in a condescending yet sweet voice. Little does she know you’ve been doing it your whole life. She always says you just need a little “push”. That one will make you roll your eyes. You’ll have a mental conversation about this whole ordeal later, and play it on your head so she can’t bring up those incidents again. Learn from your mistakes.

9. Get ready for change. Embrace it. You are adaptable. It is what makes you knowledgeable. Be ready to be on your own.

2. One day you will be ready and no longer need those pep talks. You will be ready to go out on your

own, and “push� yourself without your mother. You will shine above it all, and that time is soon.

Caroline Molin Mother, poetry It’s midnight, I’m awake, and I’m stuck to green light.

My bed’s warmth, the product of burning blisters.

Mom doesn’t know this; she’s forgotten I’m here.

She’s downstairs, today I told her how I’d taught my eyes to tough out campfire smoke, to share my lungs if she’d ever need them.

I’m burning hours with matches, eyelids peeled open, trying to see the sounds I can’t yet hear.

In these times, a whisper could wake up the neighborhood.

My heart is gasoline green, wicks in the gas tank, craving being lit, smoked like a cigarette, puffed with fog, lips hasty to blow them out like birthday candles.

Nobody kissed me goodnight or shouted or closed the front door loud enough to shake the floor. Mom is alone in bed.

I told Mom this house smelled of hair on fire and I couldn’t stop, drop and roll away.

I find my home in a smoke detector.

Told me to be strong, told me salty tears were better weapons than fear. I watched the words from her lips echo, grow warmer.

I showed her the light, casting shamrock shadows through the dark, I am no longer afraid, I am waiting.

Mom put her hand on my forehead today, said I was green skinned and frozen in flames.

I kept waiting for the light to shriek red.

Hope Schall-Buchanan Who’s Afraid of Dead Things?, poetry The hollow wasp can no longer penetrate, twist its way into idyllic days, and the pain it caused me, I reciprocate.

Once, like oily tar, they would accumulate, blackening the sun, blocking out its rays.

But the hollow wasp can no longer penetrate.

No flakes of fear can its shell create.

It swings back and forth, as if in a daze when the pain it cause me, I reciprocate.

I pour in my relief for it to incubate.

It’s beauty, body like tapered glass, I praise. a body never meant to penetrate.

It knocks against me, trying in vain to agitate, but only losing its six curled legs when the pain it caused me I reciprocate.

Pathetic enough that I can’t commiserate, In front of me, it can no longer blaze.

The hollow wasp can no longer penetrate, and the pain it caused me, I reciprocate.

Ciara Sing A Pop Quiz to Make Myself Even More Confused About Identity, creative non-fiction

True or False: In the South, there’s the “one drop rule,” meaning that a single drop of “black blood” makes a person black.

True or False: When you look at the unbleached manila birth certificate, you can’t deny that the fartoo-neat-signature-for-a-man splotched in black ink is your father, your flesh and blood.

True or False: In court, cases have been known to use the “traceable amount rule” during Jim Crow segregation.

True or False: During a Kwanzaa celebration, you found yourself amongst students that very well could be strangers but never felt safer. Tears brimmed in the corner of your eyes as you fingered the figurine decorated in straw.

True or False: Umajaa is the idea of being centered with one’s self.

True or False: In seventh grade, you were called “tragic mulatto” in an attempt for you to harm yourself.

True or False: You consider yourself a tragic mulatto.

True or False: You buy your hair products in the ebony aisle at Rite-aid with your white mother.

True or False: As your hand pulled the black button of the lighter you thought you could see yourself in the orange flame melting the black wax on top of the wooden Kinara.

True or False: Mental slavery is the state of mind where discerning between liberation and enslavement is twisted.

True or False: You get dismissive when people begin to ask about your family dynamics. You try to fluff out your curls as if the kinkiness can hide your self-consciousness about excessive navel-gazing regarding your racial identity.

True or False: During black history month, your mother used to dress you up as famous black pioneers.

True or False: When you think of your mother you only think of coffee grinds in your hair, baking soda and late night cleaning.

True or False: Your sister use to think you were adopted but you never once questioned her love for you.

True or False: In the U.S., black and white interracial relationships only make up about 23%.

True or False: You’ve never been able to get your haircut at a normal hair salon.

True or False: Race is defined by the principle of “hypodescent,” in which anyone with any known African ancestry was defined by black. This one-drop motivates eugenic fears.

True or False: When you’re sitting at the dining table and your father begins to talk about who you might take to your school dance, you freeze up. You know his unspoken question is what type of boy are you attracted to, even if you’re attracted to boys. You struggle with the answer. You grip your napkin against your flattened-out thigh. You take your time chewing the rice. You should answer correctly.

He doesn’t want you to be attracted to white men because he doesn’t want his grandchildren to ever feel disconnected with their black heritage or him. You mutter you’re going with friends instead.

True or False: You are both the oppressed and the oppressor.

True or False: When you go to the barber on East Ohio Street with your dad, the one with cracked up concrete and a man posted on the corner, the non-regulars question if you’re his daughter. They call you pretty and eye you up when your dad gets turned around.

True or False: Racial healing occurs after a lifetime.

William Thayer Letters to Nostradamus, poetry Nostradame, I have peeled the words from your throat, arranged them as flowers on your lips waiting for that bomb to drop and blast a hole into the face of eternity.

Your voice tastes like winter, like politics and borders vaporized into tumbleweeds.

I have heard the world end in the calculation of drone flights, and the decaying of uranium.

You sound like pinene, Michel, you sound like the sun and battery acid and the way the journalists set themselves on fire in the name of some inevitable violence.

Nostradamus, I can almost hear you in the static of T.V, from behind the wallpaper.

I am ready for your prophecy to come true, I am ready for battery acid and intestines and bile and sunshine.

When you call, I will vomit every word from my back of my throat.

I will sing until the water rises up to meet us, until this side of forever is buried under radioactive mud, the moon pulled down off its orbit and the smog rises up and over like a mother.

Nostradamus, I will call back to you until I am red and raw and ready.

I hope I never hear your voice.

 

Isabella Victoria Flushed, poetry For my cousins In the summers, we tan pink on the beach, chlorine bleached hair in matching headbands, pink.

Thank you for being my sun, for warming me, for turning my icy hands pink.

You are my cheeks, full, and pinched.

Your voice echoes and expands pink.

You are rich and sweet like cranberry sauce in November and the ends of my chocolate brown strands. Pink

like one strip of the sinking sunset, above my toes dancing in sands, pink.

Serena Zets For the Love of God, poetry God did not listen to me/God is not a good listener.

-“I’m not a religious person but” by Chen Chen

I want to ask God if she’s my mother.

In my time on this Earth, I have learned God is not a good listener.

We have been playing an endless game of phone tag.

She has sent my prayers to voicemail, the dialtone of heaven rings in my ears like hymns.

I purse my lips against the phone’s plastic body taking communion, my own personal sacrament.

I’m still waiting for Her to call me back.

I don’t even want an answer, I only want to hear her breathe on the other end of the receiver as I testify.

I imagine her breath sounds like church bells humming in the distance.

I constantly wonder if I am God’s daughter.

When I look in the mirror, I see a refraction of God and wonder if we are cut from the same cosmic cloth.

I notice how similar my lips look to those depicted in holy texts.

My lips flow of sugar, of milk and honey.

They spin water into wine when they speak.

Their syllables coated in holy water, my words baptismal.

I wonder if I am the fruits of God’s labor, if I am an immaculate conception.

I want to be reunited as fluorescent lights form halos around our crowns.

A biblical episode of Maury where I will get to say I’m not a religious person but, God, you are my mother.

Grade 11

Madeline Bain The Ugly Son, playwriting Characters Yuki- 26, hideous, clever Sakura- 25, beautiful, witty Takashi- Yuki’s father, traditional

(Yuki and Takashi are eating dinner. They sit across from each other at a long table)

So how was your day?

It was fine, son.

YUKI TAKASHI

YUKI Mine was good. Lots of research today, so I wasn’t on my feet. By the afternoon I was ready toInteresting.

TAKASHI

YUKI Hey, if you don’t want to hear about my day, at least tell me about yours. I don’t want to eat dinner with you in silence.

I don’t mind silence.

TAKASHI

YUKI I’m a millennial. I need constant stimulation. Visuals, interactions, conversation…

You know who could provide you with that?

Oh, god, Pops, not again! Don’t do this today.

TAKASHI YUKI

TAKASHI I am just saying. You want stimulation? I can show you stimulation. Woman.

YUKI You think I enjoy being alone? Being 28 years old without ever having been in a serious relationship?

When you really think about it, it’s your own fault I’m out of grad school and still living with my father.

You’re the one who gave me this hideous face. This?

(motions to face) Is all your genetics, pal.

No. Your mom was ugly. I am handsome.

TAKASHI

YUKI Mom is going to claw through the grave and drag you down to hell herself if you keep running your mouth.

I state only truths.

TAKASHI

YUKI Yeah, well, I’m ugly, straight up. Don’t matter where it came from.

You need a woman.

TAKASHI

YUKI Whatever, Pops. Such a handsome man as yourself could never understand the prospect of modern dating when you look like this.

You’re so modern? Date over the line.

Over the line? Date online, do you mean?

Many people have found success.

I don’t know if it’s for me.

They can’t see your face over the line.

TAKASHI YUKI TAKASHI YUKI TAKASHI

YUKI True, but I’d have to meet them in person eventually.

(takes a bite of food) What is this, by the way?

Tasty, is it not? Fried balut.

Balut?

TAKASHI YUKI TAKASHI

Boil a live, fertilized duck embryo. Pop into deep fryer. Delicious, chewy, satisfying.

YUKI Nope. Nope, nope, nope. I need a girlfriend. I can’t live with you much longer. That’s nasty, Pops.

That’s some nasty shit.

(pushes plate away) I’m going to set up my profile.

Have a good night, my ugly son.

(sighs and stands up from table) Have a good night, Pops.

TAKASHI YUKI

END SCENE (A simple room. A bed, a chair, and a desk. Yuki sits at the desk, typing at his laptop) YUKI Ok, last items… Height, 6 foot. Smoker, no. Social drinker. Single. Seeking females ages 25-30.

Done!

(profile) Set up a profile picture? Hm…

(typing into Google) Attractive… young… Japanese… male. Copy and paste… Perfect.

(pause) Now, we wait. (stands up from desk, and walks over to bed. YUKI lies down, pulls out a book, and begins to read. In a couple seconds, a chime is heard from the computer) Already!?

(walks back to desk and sits down in front of laptop) A message! From… Sakura? Oh my gosh, she’s beautiful. There’s no way this could ever work out. (stands back and begins to head back to bed, defeated. Changes mind and goes back to desk) It can’t hurt to just give it a try, though. What’s the worst that could happen?

(reading from computer screen) Lives about two hours away, likes to read, studied biology, dog person. We’re so similar!

(typing) Wanna… message… question mark.

(pause) She said yes!

(begins typing furiously) SCENE ENDS (Yuki and Takashi are eating breakfast the next morning. They sit across from each other at the same long table. YUKI is in casual pajamas, while Takashi is dressed nicely) You headin’ out somewhere, Pops?

YUKI

TAKASHI

No. How did you sleep?

YUKI TAKASHI

Fine.

I signed up for match dot com last night.

(showing more interest) Ah, did you?

YUKI TAKASHI

YUKI Yes, actually, I did. And I started talking with this woman, Sakura. She is very pretty and smart. You’d like her.

What did she study in school?

Biology.

TAKASHI YUKI

TAKASHI Like you! You have much in common. But you say she’s beautiful?

YUKI Yes, very. Which means this probably won’t go anywhere. If I met her in person, she’d break up with me immediately.

You like her?

TAKASHI

YUKI Yeah! We talked for hours last night. When this ends, as it inevitably will, I’ll be so sad.

Don’t worry. I will figure out a plan. Just wait.

TAKASHI

END SCENE (YUKI is sitting on the edge of his bed, his cellphone to his ear. On the other side of the stage, SAKURA sits on the edge of her bed, her cellphone to her ear. The sparse decorations in each of their bedrooms are opposite colors, emphasizing the femininity of Sakura and the masculinity of Yuki (i.e. pink versus blue bed sheets). They are in different houses, far away from each other, but are being shown onstage at the same time.)

You said you have two brothers?

Yup. Both older than me. How ‘bout you?

YUKI SAKURA YUKI

It’s just me. Only child.

Only children are good luck, you know.

SAKURA YUKI

(laughs) Growing up, I was under my dad’s watchful eye all the time! Sure didn’t feel like good luck. (laughs) Well, you’re giving me lucky vibes.

SAKURA

YUKI You should take those lucky vibes and buy a lottery ticket.

SAKURA

Maybe I will.

Use my birthday. December 7 , ’89. th

YUKI

SAKURA A Sagittarius! They say that’s the most compatible with Pisces.

YUKI

You a Pisces? (pulls his computer onto his lap from the bed beside him. Opening it, he types something using one hand, holding the phone to his ear with the other hand) March 18 ! th

SAKURA

YUKI (in reference to what he reads on his computer screen)

BS!

(laughs) You’re so full of it. Not only is Pisces not compatible with Sagittarius, it is, in fact, the least compatible.

SAKURA Maybe I don’t actually know about star signs… But it was worth a shot!

YUKI

Solid attempt, Sakura.

Thank you, Yuki.

SAKURA

YUKI Screw star signs anyway. We’re on Earth, right? Sure, we’re incompatible in outer space. I’ll make a note not to take you to dinner on Mars. But here this planet?

Could just be destiny.

Could be.

Or could be a total failure. Maybe I hate you.

Maybe you’re hideous.

How dare you! Maybe you’re hideous!

Would you hate me if I was?

(laughs) I think I’d have to meet you first.

Oh, uh…

SAKURA YUKI SAKURA YUKI SAKURA YUKI SAKURA

YUKI

SAKURA I really don’t live that far. Under the right circumstances, my dear Sagittarius, I might be willing to splurge on a full tank, make the drive, and meet you for coffee.

I’m not such a big coffee drinker.

A bar?

There aren’t any good ones around here.

YUKI SAKURA YUKI

SAKURA Oh… I understand. This isn’t the first time this happened. I come on too strong and scare people away. I’m so sorry. I know we just started talking and all… I just thought maybe this was going some-

where…

Sakura, no! That’s not it at all. It’s just…

Just what?

YUKI SAKURA

YUKI It’s just nothing. You know what? I’d love to meet in person soon.

I’ll message you!

Bye Sakura.

SAKURA YUKI

(long beep is heard, indicating that the call ended) (YUKI falls back onto his bed, excited yet frustrated) (SAKURA falls back onto her bed, excited yet frustrated) (the light on Sakura’s side of the stage goes out, and she exits. Yuki’s side stays lit) (KNOCKING is heard from offstage)

Come in!

(sits up)

(enters) You were talking to the woman.

Yeah, Pops, I was.

You are going to meet her?

YUKI

TAKASHI

YUKI TAKASHI YUKI

Not looking like this. I’ll never find love.

(lays down onto his back, staring at the ceiling) TAKASHI I know just what to do. Ancient Japanese trick.

YUKI Just let me begin the first stage of grief. I gotta eventually accept that this won’t work out. Might as well get denial out of the way. Here, I’ll try it out. “Sakura loves me. I’m attractive and easy on the eyes.” See, Pops? Let me mourn.

TAKASHI

You call me Pops, like I am your father, Takashi. Wrong. I am Japanese trickster deity, Susanoo.

Oh lord.

YUKI

TAKASHI There is no lord. Only Susanoo. Just wait, my ugly son. Invite your woman to meet you here, next Saturday at 6:00 pm. She will stay for dinner. I will cook balut.

YUKI First of all, I want to let you know that I’m very unsupportive of your plan. However, I am also very unsupportive towards living with you for the rest of my life. So dinner on Saturday it is. I’ll let her know.

But what’s your plan? How are you going to convince her not to leave the minute she sees me, Pops?

TAKASHI No Pops, remember? Susanoo. I will tell you plan in morning. Good night, my ugly son.

(turns around and hurries offstage) Night, Pops.

YUKI

END SCENE (The long dining room table is placed to one side of the stage. YUKI and TAKASHI sit at the table. Three places are set. SAKURA knocks on the front door) Go, go! Don’t mess this up, Pops!

(scurries offstage)

(YUKI knocks again)

(from offstage in a booming voice) Halt!

What?

YUKI TAKASHI

SAKURA (turning around from “door” and talking into the empty air)

It is I, Susanoo, the ancient Japanese deity.

Susanoo?

Yes, and I’m cursing you.

A curse? Oh no!

TAKASHI SAKURA TAKASHI SAKURA

Yes. Please do explain.

TAKASHI SAKURA

TAKASHI You have been cursed by the gods. You must make a life-changing choice.

Wow, what are my options?

Have you a lover? (glances at door, thinking about Yuki) You could say that.

SAKURA TAKASHI SAKURA

TAKASHI You must make choice. Your lover. Would you rather him keep his looks or his life?

SAKURA His looks or his life- wait what? What kind of choice is that?

The gods cursed you. You must choose.

TAKASHI

SAKURA I’m clearly supposed to choose life here, but just out of curiosity, what would happen if I chose looks?

Handsome corpse.

TAKASHI

SAKURA Ok, that’s what I thought. Yes, I would like to keep his life.

You are sacrificing his looks?

Sure. I mean, I kind of have to, right?

TAKASHI SAKURA

TAKASHI Know that this is your choice. Your lover will now be a hideous beast.

Is there anything I can do to change this?

SAKURA

TAKASHI No. But remember, your lover is ugly because of your fault. Good day.

SAKURA What the… (looks very confused. Turns back around to face door, and knocks again. KNOCKING sounds are heard) (YUKI finally opens the door) Yuki?

YUKI Sakura! Um, hi! Wow, it’s so nice to meet you. Welcome, come in, come in!

SAKURA Yuki! Hey! Just so you know, there’s a, uh, weird spirit lurking around your front yard.

YUKI A spirit? Ugh, sorry about that. He’s impossible to get rid of. We’ve tried everything.

Bug spray? A roach trap?

Even an exterminator. Cost us a fortune.

SAKURA YUKI

SAKURA Wow, that’s really too bad. ‘Cause he cursed me just now. Real unfortunate curse.

YUKI That’s the problem with him. Always scaring away guests.

SAKURA Susanoo, I think he said his name was? Yeah. Said my lover is destined to become a hideous beast.

Your lover? Who’s your lover?

Shot in the dark, but I’m thinking you.

Sakura, I’m flattered.

YUKI SAKURA YUKI

SAKURA Don’t be! That means you’re destined to become a hideous beast.

YUKI

Hideous? Me? It couldn’t be. (rushes across stage, stopping at random space where there is a figurative mirror) AHHH! I’m ugly!

So it came true?

SAKURA

YUKI What do you mean, “it came true?”? Are you implying that this ugly face is how I naturally look?

No! I’d never.

SAKURA

YUKI Good, because it’s not. You cursed me. Thanks a lot, Sakura.

TAKASHI

(rushes on stage near where table is place with a megaphone in hand)

(quickly throws megaphone under table) Hello, so nice to meet you. I am Yuki’s father, Takashi!

SAKURA How lovely to meet you, too! You seem familiar.

No I do not.

Have I met you before?

TAKASHI SAKURA

TAKASHI No way, no how. Excuse me. I must go put the balut in the oven.

(rushes offstage) Balut? I love balut.

(walks over to table) You do?

SAKURA

YUKI

SAKURA

(laughs) God no. That stuff’s rancid. My dad makes it on holidays sometimes. I don’t even go near it.

(looks down at table) Aw, family pictures!

No! No, don’t look at those!

(tries to grab them)

YUKI

SAKURA (holds up the photo next to Yuki’s face, looking back and forth intently. YUKI looks

ashamed) So weird! These photos of you are from years ago, long before this curse. Yet you look exactly like you do right now!

YUKI Sakura, I’m sorry. I just… I like you so much, and I knew you wouldn’t want to be with me because of my appearance…

SAKURA What are you talking about, Yuki? I’m not accusing you of anything. I just feel so bad!

What? Why?

YUKI

SAKURA Not only did the curse change your current appearance, but it changed all your old photos as well!

Wait, you do know who Susanoo was, right?

YUKI

SAKURA Your entire house is painted white and there’s a bright orange megaphone lying under the table there..

(points to megaphone lying in completely plain sight) C’mon. I can smell that terrible odor wafting from the kitchen. Time for balut.

(SAKURA and YUKI walk off together. SAKURA slips her hand in YUKI’s as they exit) END SCENE

Tess Buchanan Mother Earth: A Bird’s End, fiction 1. The Siesta You kicked her while she slept. You kicked her earth, water, and sky. You kicked her until the skies were the color of the red land and the blood beneath your skin. She was tired, slept through the last ice age and never woke. You got used to the idea of a life, a world, without her. You kicked and kicked and what your foot used to pass through is sold, reforming. Her dreams are full of vengeance. When you dream, you can’t tell your sleep is ending until it ends. In her dreams, she knows. She dreams of drowning but the closer the brown water gets to her lips the more defiant she is. Her collarbones, her chin, lower lip, nose, she blinks. She is submerged. A heartbeat, a breath, and she screams, bubbles erupting from her lungs and her mouth never looked so beautiful. She isn’t drowning. She can’t. Her fingers and palms reach to the surface of the water and they’re blue, not from cold but from life. You kick her once more.

2. The Mezzanine Life bursts open from behind her closed eyes. Light is rampant in her head but she lives in a bubble.

The outside world is silent. She finds peace in transition. Her defiance is channeled through smiles.

Her vengeance is channeled through laughter. She is the birds and your calls awoke her. The earth was red, her hair was red, her feathers are red, her beak is sharp.

3. The Wake She sleeps beside the snow goose. When she wakes the geese murmur, flutter, restless. She hushes them and their beady eyes close. She consumes their fear and feeds it to you. There are circles under her eyes even though life enthralls her, she didn’t want to come back again. She hops on the ripples you made, across the coast with great blue herons trailing her. Her legs are slender like the heron’s. Her laugh is sad. She hops and trips and tumbles and rolls and laughs and the herons cry.

She runs to embrace them but the more she laughs the more they cry—suddenly they understand why she’s here. She crafts their wings into a pair of her own. Her feathers shimmer like the thin layer of sleek air covering the earth. Her wings are chestnut gold and connect the sea to the sky. Her cheeks are blue. This is her migration, resurrection, the end of a life beginning. She uses every pulse of blood in her body to spread her wings over you. She reaches up and her bones snap and the sky’s red fades back to a blue. She throws every pinch of her life into the ocean and onto the land and beneath the Earth’s surface. She cracks the neglected world you made for yourself and its natural state is returned, but she collapses when she is done. She nosedives, spiraling to the ocean and spiraling underwater. When her beak touches the sand at the ocean’s floor, she crashes right through. The earth shatters on impact.

Heat Map, flash fiction

In 1642, the first public school was created in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, requiring children to know how to read and write. Five years later, this became the Massachusetts School Law of 1647, requiring towns to hire teachers. Early education was based off of gender, race, class, and religion. The idea of property tax was rudimentary; colonies were egalitarian, at least for white people.

But still, the public school system in the 1640’s reflected the idea that local communities were responsible for paying for their own education. This is the same public school funding system that is still used as a basis for public education in the United States today.

As the United States developed and changed, the funding for public school stayed the same.

In 1837, Horace Mann created the Board of Education, calling education “the greatest equalizer of the conditions of men.” But education wasn’t equal then—it wasn’t equal for men and women, for white kids and black kids, for rich families and poor families. It still isn’t.

I attend the most well-funded school in my district. When visiting my friends’ schools for performances and weekend events, I see these inequalities. At CAPA, every student is provided a MacBook Air to do work at home and at school. At other schools in the district, administrations are struggling to do simple things like maintain healthy infrastructure and pay for art and language teachers. When I attended a Saturday physics study session at Taylor Allderdice High School a few months ago, the school was cold, with small windows and cracked, browning ceilings. My school, compared to Allderdice, is glamorous. But, if you compare my school to another arts school, Lincoln Park, in a neighboring district, the differences in funding are insurmountable. Their programs delve deeper into so many different arts and intertwine them with professional education, like Pre-Law and Health Science. If any school is taken from the Pittsburgh Public School district and compared to a school in a surrounding suburban district, the differences would be staggering.

If you look at a map of the United States based on spending per student by school district, it looks like a heat map, with radiating waves of red emanating from the southern border of the country, blue and green cool colors tracing around the outside of big cities. If some areas have worse land, less business, and lower property value, their schools will simply receive less funding than a town with more business and opportunity. In 1890, property tax made up 67.9 % of public education revenues. Today, 45% comes from local money, 45% is state money, and 10% comes from federal funding. After World War II, when white families moved to the suburbs and supported public schools there, black families left in the urban cities struggled to fund public schools because of lowered property values.

Even when I was younger, I noticed restrictions on my school and things that differed from my friends’ schools in the suburbs. At their schools, they had resources to pay for school trips to places around the city to learn about the history of Pittsburgh. Because my school, Dilworth Elementary School, couldn’t always afford that, even though it was one of the most well-funded schools in its level, we had unpaid parents and local volunteers come in to teach us. My friend’s dad, a professional chef, would come and teach us how to cook food from my school’s urban garden. A friend of the principal, who worked at the Heinz History Center, came in once a month to teach us Native American history in Pittsburgh. Volunteers from the zoo would come in and teach us about animals around the world and recycling. Although these opportunities were amazing and educational, I still noticed how they differed from my friends’ experiences. My friend in Maryland is provided a fully sponsored trip to somewhere in Europe once in their middle school career and once in their high school career. In my middle school, the Spanish language program was cut because of lack of funding. Schools outside of the city offer their students Chinese, Japanese, German, French, and Italian.

Today, public schools are still funded by property taxes from a community, causing disparity between low-income and high-income districts. Just like so many other laws created 300 years ago, like for immigration and gun control, these laws were created for a different time period. Today, on average, schools spend about $12,000 per child each year. Only 80 districts spend more than $40,000

per student each year, and all of those schools have fewer than 200 students enrolled.

I attended Dilworth from kindergarten to 5th grade. In 4th grade, I was a part of an acting partnership between my school, an inner-city public school, and O’Hara Elementary School, a suburban public school. We did a joint production of The Sword and the Stone. After reading over the play and getting to know the parts, we visited each other’s schools to get to know the students we would be working with. We went to O’Hara first. I remember their library the best. It was two levels, all inside a larger, encompassing structure. The library was central to all the classrooms in the school. It had rows and rows of new computers, couches, books, and study spaces. I was in awe. My library at Dilworth was one level, with stained ceilings and three rows of shelves.

“Why doesn’t our school look like that?” I had asked my mom when I got home.

She remembers the hurt in my eyes. I wasn’t jealous of their school. I didn’t want mine to look like theirs. I simply didn’t understand how an elementary school could look like that.

“I don’t know, Sweetie,” she told me.

“How was it so big?” I asked her.

“It’s just how things happen. It’s not always fair. Remember, there are things that you get, that they don’t get,” she told me.

Difference in funding impacts everything in a child’s education. Children from low-income communities might have more need for guidance counselors, psychologists, and nurses, but their school’s funding might not let their school provide this to them all the time. Funding supplies to children new textbooks, educated teachers, and a healthy infrastructure. Funding decides what a child will learn tomorrow and what they will learn in ten years. Early education impacts everything after it. Because poorer kids are being given a worse education, nothing is done to promote social mobility.

Not only is the public school funding process in the United States unfair to low-income communities, but it also is racially discriminatory to minorities. Public school districts that have less funding because of lower property tax have more minorities, whether it be African-Americans, Hispanics, or any other group of people, than districts with better funding. This funding system, even if unintentional, keeps schools segregated by what they think is revenue, but what is actually is race.

Halfway through my acting partnership, a month after we visited them, O’Hara Elementary School students visited Dilworth. At first, I was ashamed. I didn’t want them to judge our brick playground, our splintering auditorium chairs, or our bland, marble hallways. When they arrived, they piled through the front door into the auditorium, where we were waiting. We divided up into small groups, mixing between the schools. As our groups headed to individual classrooms, the bell rang, signaling a class switch. O’Hara kids observed the younger kids walking to their next class in the halls around us. By the time we got to the classroom the O’Hara kids had the same looks on their faces that we did when we visited their school, except now it was for a different reason.

“There are so many black kids,” I remember one girl whispering.

“I know,” said her friend.

Even as I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed the correlation between segregation of neighborhoods and schools. Every day, I ride the P1 bus, on the east busway, to get to school. If you compare the race of the riders who get on at the Wilkinsburg or Herron Station stops, versus the Negley or East Liberty Stations, to the state of the schools in each of those neighborhoods, the racial divides are very clear. If I didn’t go to school at CAPA, I would attend my home school, Westinghouse 6-12. Westinghouse is 97% black and frequents news for things like violence and drugs. Applying to schools before 6th grade was one of the first times I really recognized the privilege that I had. I realized that so many other students, particularly black students, who live in the same area as me and who have the same home school, didn’t have the same type of money or elementary school education provided to them to develop new skills. The education that I got at my elementary school was a huge contributor to why got into CAPA for cello and writing. But, kids who aren’t given this kind of early education will never have a chance to apply to or attend other schools like that. Starting in elementary school, they already are behind.

One of the biggest court cases regarding United States public education was Brown v Board of Education, in 1954. This court decision stated that having separate schools for black and white children was unconstitutional, based on the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment in the Constitution. This court case overturned the Plessy v Ferguson decision of 1896, which had previously promoted the “separate but equal” doctrine, now deciding that separate institutions were inherently unequal. However, the groundbreaking decision made by the supreme court after Brown v Board of Education did not include any solutions for ending racial segregation in public education.

Racial segregation is still present in schools all over the nation today. Even within schools, kids divide themselves based on race. I remember the friend groups that formed when I was back in middle and elementary school. Almost all of my friends were white up until fourth grade. Even in middle school, you could look across the lunch tables and see specific, defining lines between the white kids and the black kids. Even if it wasn’t being done intentionally, it happened. Racial divisions in society today are still relevant, from the largest scale, like school districts, to the smallest, like middle school lunch tables.

In 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act to give poorer districts more money. However, many parents and districts resisted federal contributions, control, and decisions about public education. Many representatives believed that federal funding of public schools would lead to uncontrollable decisions about curriculum and school standards, which already varied across the nation.

In 1973, a parent of a child at a largely poor, latino school district went to court with the claim that funding that depends on property tax was unfair to poor districts, and used the Equal Protection Clause to justify his argument, the same clause that bolstered Brown v Board of Education twenty years prior. Rodriguez, the father, argued that difference in school funding kept many minority American students from getting an equal education to white students. In the conclusion of the supreme court case, San Antonio Independent School District v Rodriguez, the Supreme Court decided that the funding of public schools based off of property value was not unfair. This decision was a blow to the fight to have federal control of public school funding.

I have been in public schools all my life, yet I still haven’t truly experienced these discrepancies in funding in their full form. From elementary school to high school, I’ve always attended a public magnet school. Compared to other schools in my district, my schools were well funded. Even though my specific school district has less money than districts around it, the funds and money that Pittsburgh and the surrounding area provides to their students are significantly higher than cities all across the United States. Pennsylvania also does a lot more work on providing enough money to schools than a lot of other states. But still, if I was able to notice these funding inequalities in my childhood, which has been generally privileged and lucky, I can hardly imagine going to a school where the impact would be much larger than what I have observed in my life.

There is research that proves if states give money to more low-performing schools, the schools do better. But instead, districts still decide which schools get money based on how well the students perform. Today in America, high-poverty districts spend 15.6% less money per student than low-poverty districts. The amount of money available in high-poverty districts is nowhere near the average amount that it costs to successfully teach students. If children aren’t given the resources to succeed when they begin their education, it will be a constant cycle of deprivation and limited education. This system right now in America leaves no room for improvement.

Jimmy Coblin Things You Don’t Know, fiction After Mathew Burnside 1.

The night you got married there was a body under the bed in your honeymoon suite. You swallowed a spider in your sleep that night.

2.

The last few months before you found out I was gay, Mom and I were both sneaking out every night to see our secret boyfriends. Mine was a bisexual cheerleader from my high school. Mom’s was a lawyer from Tennessee. We ran into each other once, at a restaurant on Craft St. and after hours of screaming, vowed that no matter what, neither of us would ever tell you.

3.

Three hours before your first in a series of many heart attacks, your ex girlfriend from college made a voodoo doll and stuck a pin through the chest.

4.

Deer Hunter is not a sequel to Dear John.

5.

Mom knew you were cheating on her. The only reason she didn’t say anything is because she was cheating on you too.

6.

When Katherine was a teenager and she would lock herself in her room, you assumed she was trying to be rude to us, or at least being secretive, but the truth was she just hadn’t felt safe enough around you to let you see her cry.

7.

For the first few months after you kicked me out, I’d sneak back to the house every day while you were at work for food. Mom knew about it. She used to leave me little notes under the fridge.

8.

Grandma returned every birthday present you ever bought her.

9.

The bus you cursed at for passing you up at Olivander Ave caught fire a few minutes later. It was too crowded for anyone to make it out alive.

10.

When you piled us all into the van and took us to the farm for Katherine’s sixth birthday, the fluffy chick she fell in love would be the future contents of the burrito you served for her ninth. That night, you would also swallow a spider in your sleep.

11.

The old woman you still feel guilty about hitting with your car was taken to the hospital in time. Her son stole another car from your dealership to pay for her medical bills. She lived happily for a good few years after that.

12.

The leader of that group of middle aged, pro-life women who protest outside their church every Wednesday and Thursday, got an abortion a few weeks after you gave her your change.

13.Mom’s favorite soda is Dr. Pepper. Mine was root beer. Katherine’s is orange Fanta. All you ever

bought was Pepsi.

14.

There’s another man in this city who looks almost exactly like you. Mistaken, a group of people you used to beat up in middle school mugged him on his way home from work. You swallowed another spider in your sleep that night.

15.

The woman you fired from the car dealership for “incompetence” (your sorry excuse for feeling uncomfortable that a woman was smarter than you), is a millionaire now, and gives regular speeches about workplace equality.

16.

The lady who flipped you off for cat calling her in the street a couple years ago was actually my then boyfriend, (now husband), in drag. Despite what you think about we make each other very happy.

17.

That ‘gardener’ who was always really close to Grandma and ate Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners with you as a child three years in a row, was actually her boyfriend. She broke up with him because she didn’t think she could keep hiding it from you, and has never been truly happy since.

18.

Your ex spent last night alone, crying in the bath. Your voodoo doll was floating in the soapy water, gradually weighing itself down to the bottom of the tub.

19.

Your picks for senior yearbook elections were all the winners, though none of them have exactly lived up to the potential. Dylan Macanger, class clown, has chronic depression. Holden Mckenzie, nicest guy, is in jail for murdering 17 nurses at free clinics across the country. Emily Warden, most likely to succeed, now works long hours for minimum wage, cleaning sewage tanks. Allison Pick, most popular, has been divorced four times and is currently living alone with no close friends or relatives.

20.

Although the body wasn’t discovered until January ninth, grandma actually died January fourth. She had tried to call you that day, but you didn’t pick up because you didn’t want to deal with her ramblings anymore after spending three days over Christmas with her. You picked up for the telemarketer who was calling for the fifth time advertising his shoe shining kit.

21.

The night mom told you she and Katherine were going to see a Taylor Swift concert, they were actually going to get dinner with me and my fiancé. They both thought he was very sweet. You spent the night alone at home until you fell asleep and another spider crawled in your mouth. Taylor Swift wasn’t in town that night.

22.

Katherine got straight As in high school.

23.

Mom’s lawyer boyfriend represented the woman you cheated on her with in her divorce proceedings.

Without him, she wouldn’t have gotten back custody rights, causing her to leave you so she could spend more time with her kids.

24.

My husband and I were killed last week doing humanitarian work in Haiti. We had been helping the effort to rebuild for over a year at that point, when a house collapsed on us and the ruble caught fire.

We spent the last few minutes of our lives holding each other and would be hailed as heroes by the rest of our team. At the same moment, you were enjoying your annual Thursday lunch taco with beef, mild salsa, cheese, rice, and beans. You didn’t notice you spilled a little of the salsa on your white shirt.

25.

You swallowed another spider in your sleep last night.

Brianna Kline Costa Thou Shalt Not Steal, fiction How’s it feel to be dead. The girls who cut my hair at the salon all want to know. When they think I am about to speak, they crowd close, bodies pressing against the space between us. Well, I begin, but I trail off there, knowing it can’t be put into words. They wait until it becomes clear I won’t speak, then all whine and protest, begging me to let them know, giggling and tucking their long dark hair behind their ears. First of all, I begin again. I’m not dead, I am neither dead nor alive, and that is the beauty of it. They stand completely still, their hair falling around their faces, their mouths ajar, lips parted in a round o. The most tiresome thing, I tell them, is trying to hide from Death. I see her in the corner store, staring at me with dark and empty eyes—no, not eyes, holes, like in skulls, see, Death doesn’t have a face, Death has a skull—and I see her watching me from across the street when I make my way home from the market, and I see her waiting on my back porch at the end of the day. I used to run from her, but now when I get home my feet are too sore, so I sit on the back porch next to her. I ask her if she wants any tea. She tells me with honey, and I tell her, oh so you who pretends to be so evil really is sweet, and she says you can crave sweetness without being sweet, and I say, oh, or maybe I say nothing, but either way Death has moved on to more serious matters. She says, when do you think you’ll be ready, and I looked down ashamed. She says, you must go to trial, stand and be judged, you can’t steal time forever, and I tell her, I know, I know, I’m just not ready yet. The girls at the store, who for many seconds waited in apprehensive silence, now begin to twitch and buzz quietly, their hum growing louder. They ask again. How’s it feel to be dead. I tell them, well, so far it is a waiting. Did it hurt. Not at first, but I hear it hurts more later. For now it just feels as though everything inside me has rotted. Does Death speak Spanish. She speaks it fluently, and the way your mother did. Is it like they told us it would be. At this I hesitate. My mother used to tell me about heaven, I begin, and the cities of gold and the rivers clear as glass and the trees thick with ripe fruit.

I haven’t seen this heaven yet. I stand from the chair and they all hum nervously around me. I tell them, I have to go, Death is waiting for me outside, the woman with the empty face across the street?

I point and they all mutters their oppositions, but I have already left, stepping out into the sun. Are you ready, Death says again, a small smile on her face. Not yet, but soon, I say softly, for the first time looking into her fleshless and hollowed face. The girls hang around the door frame, their hands quivering at their sides. They ask one last time. How’s it feel to be dead. Well, I say again, turning towards them with a small smile, very much like it feels to be alive.

Bruised Girls are Like Rabbits, creative nonfiction

“Mexican, huh?” He leans against the wall to stabilize himself. He reeks of liquor. “Well, hola.”

He laughs, his body swaying and feet stumbling across the title floor. I am pressed into the corner of the kitchen, my fingers tracing the edge of counter. The door to the back porch swings open, gusts of winds sending it careening into the wooden railing with a heavy thud. As night fell, the temperature of the kitchen dropped to a disconcerting chill, and I use my hands to mask my goosebumps, and the way my veins burn through my skin under florescent lights. He stands leaning against the kitchen wall across from me. I stare at the rusted stove burners, blushed with heat.

“Dad, stop.” My friend turns towards me, rolling her eyes and smiling. Her face is apologetic.

Like we are sharing a joke. I smile back at her, but I know my face is tight and pale, and my smile is forced and unconvincing. She doesn’t notice though. She looks through me.

“No, no, see, here’s the thing…” His body falls into the chair behind him. “I don’t mind them in the country, as long as they know their role. That’s the important part.” He leans towards us, and I can feel his hot breath on my face. My cheeks flush in anger and embarrassment. I feel my back pressed until the wall. My eyelashes tremble, and I worry that he can see the gentle tremors of my body, like a rabbit pressed against the age of its cage, the rapid beating of its heart echoing in the silence like a snare drum. He drunkenly turns his bottle upside down, and laughs as beer sloshed against my feet, seeping into my socks and yellowing the white. The stale smell of cheap beer. His teeth yellowed and his face contorted uglily. “Why don’t you get on your knees and clean my floor, sweetheart?”

I was thirteen. It was the age when I stopped wanting to be looked at, when I started straightening my hair every day, so familiar with the sizzle of anti-frizz products as I clamped down, the air thick with the smell of burnt hair; when I started wearing cheap drugstore mascara that smudged and left dark bruises under my eyes, and black specks across my lids. Started becoming conscious of how I smile (never with my teeth, until the braces were off), what angle I stood (pivoted slightly to the right to counter the appearance of hip dips), how I laughed (head back, hand over my mouth to cover my lips).

That night, we set up blankets on her couch and watch horror movies. Her house smells of cigarette smoke, and is littered with crushed beer bottles, and the smell of weed reeks from her older brother’s room, but that was most of our homes. Things didn’t bother us as much; men would yell things out of the window of their car to us when we walked to the convenience store, and we would flip them off or yell things back and run away giggling when they turned the car back around. When men followed us from our bus stops, we would complain to our friends about it, rolling our eyes like the attention of boys and men was the most inconvenient thing in our lives, searching out of our peripheral for any tinge of jealousy in their eyes, but deeper than that, it scared us and it left us uncomfortable in our bodies. We knew that walking down certain streets, our bodies didn’t belong to us anymore, and we were told that we liked this, even by each other.

I hear him when he stumbles through the door. The keys jangling in the lock, the door knob twisting, turned by clumsy fingers. From the living room, we can hear him wiping off his shoes on the mat and opening the fridge for another beer. His vision getting a little more blurred and dizzy. His voice getting a little more slurred. Drinking by himself one room over, legs propped up on the table.

I don’t say a single word throughout the whole encounter. After he speaks, he waits a moment to see if I’ll say anything in my defense. His face is a foot from mine, and I see how it flushes when he bends over, sweat dripping down his temples and plastering greyed curls to the sides of his head.

I imagine how I look in the moment: eyes round and wide, face empty and bovine, my arms thin and freckled, legs veined and pale, incredibly breakable. Like translucent stained glass.

He laughs at my empty and frightened silence, then saunters out of the kitchen. We hear the front door slam, and the engine of the truck rev, and pull away. It is eleven thirty. I lean against the

table and try to cover my shaking.

“Sorry about that.” She turns back towards me, her hair falling over her face, the same mousy brown as her father’s without the gray streaks, her eyes the same deep amber. “Wanna watch another movie?”

He knew that it would make me uncomfortable, and he knew that I would have nothing to say, and in that he got to exert an incredible power over me. A power more freeing and overwhelming that all the gin and vodka in his cupboards. One that I learned men couldn’t resist.

I can’t think about what it means to be Hispanic without thinking about what it means to a girl.

The two are too connected in my mind. That night had as much to do with sex as with race, and more than anything, with power. It’s a beautiful thing to be a woman, and that’s something I learned later, when I grew and saw all the millions of ways women could be beautiful. But’s it’s a terrible thing to be a woman, too, and that’s the first lesson I learned, and the one I can never seem to outrun.

The power is in how we see ourselves. Growing up, I saw Latino women as maids, housekeepers, and if they weren’t the help, they were overtly sexualized. Thick lipped, wide hipped, cinnamon skin, long dark hair, with snippy remarks and little moral compass. These were the images on television. In my life, I had even less inspiration. I had spent my whole childhood after the age of six living in Pittsburgh, and I didn’t know a single Latino woman. The women, in a broader sense, in my life hadn’t felt any more empowered to me. Adolescent girls seemed to be living in a dark and empty abyss of insecurity and feigned happiness. Girls who wore low cut shirts with brightly colored pushup bras, their chests looking raw and almost juvenile. Who constantly pulled the collar up whenever they felt stares. Girls who spent time with boys who scared them. Girls who giggled uncomfortably at jokes at their own expense, because they were pushed into the corner of complying and seeming silly or easy, or being known as obnoxious and rude. Girls who had tried to apply cheap eyeshadow they lifted from the corner store, sloppy and creased. Hands constantly drifting to their eyes, letting hair fall over their face as if wishing they hadn’t worn it in the first place. Mustard yellows that accentuated the sallowness of their skin. Bright blues that accented the dark circles under their eyes. Like bruises.

Now it’s two o’clock. A movie is playing, but I’m not sure which one. I am drifting in and out, the dialogue of the television suspended in my sleep. Thick and fragrant smoke from her brother’s room hangs in the damp air, making my head spin. My friend has fallen asleep, her head tilted to the side, a small line of drool down her chin. I wonder if she is afraid of him. Sometimes she flinches when she heard the door open. The only time a girl looks happy is when she is sleeping.

I go to the kitchen to get a glass of water.

The cabinet is filled with an assortment of cheap plastic cups, rough with scratches. The sink makes a soft clunking noise as the water runs. The bubbles set. I take a sip.

As I walk back to the living room, I feel something cool seep into my sock. It’s the puddle of beer, which has seeped into the floor and left a deep, mahogany stain. I take off the wet and stained sock, wringing it in my hands slightly. I step over the puddle and into the living room.

The volume on the TV is low and persistent. I can hear music playing from somewhere, likely her brother’s room upstairs. I see headlights flash in the windows, and my heart freezes for a moment, thinking that her dad is home, but I hear the car retreat into the dark of the street, and my heart beats slows. As I fold my body under a thinning, frayed blanket that smells of mildew and laundry detergent, I barely have to time to think before I am pulled into a restless sleep. Four or five hours of peace and dark. Four or five hours that I have to look happy.

Miranda Gilbert Not What You Pretend I Am, fiction This is how to love me: acknowledge that I am not what you pretend I am. I am not a delicate flower ripe for picking; I am not a fawn or a dryad; I am not gentle and sweet. I am not shy. There’s a raging chasm between shyness and geniality; I am polite. I am quiet because my ma said if I didn’t have anything nice to say, I shouldn’t say it at all. You romanticize me. You pretend I can do no wrong, that I am perfect in every way. When a man says a woman is beautiful, he’s thinking of himself. I am not pretty. I hide in jackets and sweatpants so men like you don’t look at me. You look at me like I’m a piece of meat. You look at me like you’re hungry. When you say “you’re so pretty”, you mean to say “you’re so pretty next to me.” But I’m attractive without you, too, and you forget that on our date nights. Don’t you know they’re not paying attention to you? They’re paying attention to the sparkling object on your arm, how she charms the venue: stunning. They’re thinking about how useful I am by being gorgeous. What do you think will happen when we grow old? When my stomach sags from bearing children if we have any; when crow’s feet dig wells into the skin around my eyes; when my hair turns silver? What happens then? I’ll still love you. But you won’t. You’ll resent the day that I am no longer a beauty Queen, except you don’t think of me as that. You think of me as a Princess, and you honestly believe you’re my King. You’ll blame me for the bald spots on your head: signs of affection that aren’t poorly constructed love letters. You’ll hate me when I am no longer nubile. How long will you be able to tell me that you love me without a grimace? I am not what you pretend I am. I am not ageless; I am not a fairy that will follow you into the next life; I am not an Indian woman flinging herself onto her husband’s funeral pyre. If you don’t love me now, you never loved me.

Lillian Hosken Sanctuary, fiction Whisper that you need a drink of water as you tiptoe past the pew. The preacher drones like the plane he came in. Make sure the stairs don’t creak. Trace your hand along the basement wall. Feel the ridges in the newly dried plaster.

Slip into the room filled with stained glass sunshine. Find a pew and lay under the stained glass sun. Let your headscarf cushion your head against the polished wood. Look into the light beams of the stained glass window. Remember how little you were seven years ago. You had to rub the dust out of your eyes when the white people who rolled up in rental vans with slabs of wood and hymnals.

The missionaries saved everyone’s souls and left the preacher behind to keep them that way.

But if everyone was saved, why can’t you feel God like they said you would? You went to church. You heard the word. You kneeled down on the floor and clasped your hands so tight the blood rushed away. You sang every song from the hymnals they brought in boxes. You drank in the scripture like water. But even now you are godless.

Your grandmother would tell you stories of the sea, of a mermaid woman with a pet snake and billowing hair. She’d save drowning sailors and children. She could make the ocean rumble with the power of her wrath.

Go back to church. Go to your mother. You don’t go back to church. Instead, you fly like a dove from a cage. You scramble up the wooden steps. Run at the doors and bust them open. Feel the warm air fill your lungs. The doors crash behind you as you run down the dirt road. You hear the door creak and the sound of many footsteps. Adult voices are calling your name. Get to the water before they can catch you.

Sprint barefoot through the bushes and onto the beach. When the shrubs rip your dress run the rest of the way your undergarments. You look like a crazy person, but you’re almost at the water.

The tideline feels cold on your toes but don’t stop running. Inhale the smell of salt. Crash through the waves that slap your knees and explode. Dive into the ocean.

Feel the cool water swirl around your arms. Feel your underclothes billow around you as you propel yourself forward. Now open your eyes. The sting of the saltwater is no sacrifice for the world below. Below, you see God - your god. Volcanic rock billows like long puffs of hair. Moss grows like a snake. Come up for air and then dive even deeper. Turtles swim in groups like the fish. The rocks are scattered with seashells and vibrant crawling creatures. Look at the life she’s created.

Jora Hritz Mother, flash fiction Inspired by City Lights by The White Stripes and Old Woman Painting by Elena Caravela

My mother, in her last days, sat quiet in her rocking chair tucked away by the heater, wrapped in a shawl she had knitted months before.

“I heard you get cold when you begin to die,” she said as she knitted the silky blue yarn. “I don’t want to get cold.”

She sat with a frown on her face, though she always said she never frowned.

“My wrinkles are creating my frown,” she said. “You’ll understand one day. Drink water. if you don’t want a frown, don’t get wrinkles.”

As a child, she would play soft guitar lullabies to me as I fell asleep, singing lyrics on the spot to her made up tunes. She gently stroked each string in melodic patterns. Her callused fingertips added softness to her creation of the soothing sound.

When she yelled, her voice was not as gentle as her guitar playing. Her face would grow stern, and she let no slip of a smile through her lips. She was always serious. She neither told nor laughed at jokes and during social events she stood quietly by my father, speaking few words, giving no more than a nod within a conversation.

I once asked why she never laughed, and in response she gave me an offended look before saying, “Life has given me few reasons to laugh.”

My mother was never the sweet old lady you imagine all aging women to be like. She refused to be taken advantage of because of her age. She’d yell at the teenagers being rowdy in the supermarket and ignore the homeless people asking for spare change. She showed little empathy.

I have seen my mother cry once. The day my father died, she locked herself in her room, refusing to come out when we offered her dinner. We could hear her choked sobs from the other side of the door, but knew better than to insist on consoling her. We once tried coaxing her out of her room only to receive a scream and banging on the door.

“You aren’t taking his death seriously!” she yelled. “Go away! I never want to see you again.”

I was nineteen and still living at home. Having little money to spend, I showed up at my aunt’s house, greeted with little compassion. Her bitterness was no better than my mother’s. Two days later I received a call from my mother. Her tears were gone and she told me to come home.

“I just lost your father. I’m not losing you too,” she said as she hugged me. That was the closest she had ever come to saying “I love you.”

The night before she died, I stood above her as she sat in her rocking chair. I held her veiny hands that she reluctantly placed in mine.

“I’ll miss you,” I said to her.

“You’ll survive,” she responded.

Julianne Jacques Grouchy Old Men, creative nonfiction

It is a proven fact that men get grouchier as they get older. I bet you already knew that, though.

Maybe you didn’t know it was proven, but I think it’s safe to assume we’re all aware of this phenomenon. It’s commonly known as “grumpy old man complex” or “irritable male syndrome.” Some people think it’s caused by testosterone levels falling as men grow older, which can cause a dampening in moods. Toleration and concentration is diminished when testosterone levels dip. Other diseases that are attributed to and common with old age, like diabetes, can cause low testosterone. Some think this stubbornness could also be attributed to societal standards for men. Men aren’t usually encouraged to share their feelings, so when going through things like growing old (and possible midlife crisis) men can become overwhelmed and in turn, grouchy. Additionally, men are expected to be the bread winners in the household, so after retirement, they may not feel as useful anymore.

My dad is 47 years old and 6 foot, but at one point in his life he was two inches taller. He wears blue jeans almost every day and a lot of plain color t-shirts or Harley Davidson clothes. He loves his truck and his motorcycle and is sadly balding. He dyes his hair once every few months to make it look less gray, but he leaves some just to be realistic. He’s a happy man who loves his family, but unfortunately, I think he’s has caught the bug. He’s not even that old, but I swear he is a textbook case of “irritable male syndrome” or IMS.

My dad has had two significant health events in the past couple of years. One was a wasp attack and the other was a faux heart attack. My dad’s syndrome is seen through his complete refusal to take care of himself, a pretty common occurrence.

His first experience was a wasp attack. A wasp attack sounds innocent, and it could have been, if my father wasn’t deathly allergic to wasps. We didn’t know that at the time of course, but we found out soon enough.

My family has a shed in our backyard. It’s surrounded by green grass and is placed in the back corner. It’s pretty ugly. No one really likes to go inside of there. It was home to spiders, ants, centipedes, and as it turns out, wasps, too. My dad was cleaning out our shed that we hadn’t entered all summer when he discovered the wasp’s nest. He went to the store and grabbed some Wasp-B-Gone.

That’s not exactly what it was called, but it sums the product up pretty well. When he came home, my dad beelined towards the shed, Wasp-B-Gone in his clenched fist. He took a stance as only a strong man can and sprayed half the can directly onto the nest, less than two feet away. The wasps weren’t very happy.

Years later, my dad experienced his second health episode. My dad lost a ton of weight in not a ton of time and one night, began complaining of a pain around his heart. My mom is a pharmacist and picked up a good chunk of knowledge about health during her schooling, so she knew exactly what it was. My dad left our dining room table and stomped over to his tan La-Z-Boy reclining chair is our TV room. He reclined all the way back with his hand clenched over his heart. Now, my father can be one to embellish now and then, so we didn’t worry too much at first. After awhile though, my mom knew it was time to take a visit to the hospital.

“Time to go. Morgan, start the car,” she said to my sister.

Some sources cite 70 years old as the turning point for grouchiness. Around this age, men

become aware of their mortality because people around them are dying. Additionally, men have more health problems as they get older. A lot of times, men have no goals or aspirations. By this time, half of their testosterone has deteriorated. While women go through menopause, a series of symptoms happening all at once, men go through Irritable Male Syndrome gradually. Some say their grouchiness could be attributed to sleep problems, less libido, less facial hair, less muscular strength all caused by their old age. In a lot of ways, old men are kind of like teenagers. They are moody. They’re annoyed. They’re confused.

At first, when my dad was stung by one of the wasps, he didn’t hurt too bad. He actually kept spraying. He had taken a firm stance and hadn’t moved at all. After awhile, he realized the spray wasn’t as successful as it was named, so he gave up. That’s when he noticed the pain.

“Huh. Yeah, I think I got stung, you guys,” he yelled at us from across the yard.

“I’m not surprised. You poked the bear, honey. I’ll go get an ice pack,” my mom said, unamused.

He sat down in a camp chair and gradually began complaining more. He had sweat through his “wine is good” shirt and was getting restless. His face began growing three times its size. Maybe not three times, but it was getting there. His eyes were swollen shut, his lips were plump as can be, and his cheeks looked like chipmunk cheeks.

Back at home, a couple years in the future, my dad decided to go to bed as my sister looked for the keys. My mom was sure my father was having a heart attack (probably because he had a death grip the right side of his chest) and yelled at him to leave for the hospital.

He ignored her saying, “no honey, I’m okay! Really! I’m just gonna go to be-OH MY GOD MY HEART- Really it’s nothing! Nothing!”

His case was unconvincing. She followed him upstairs into their bedroom and when my dad got into bed, my mom dragged him by his feet off of it. My sister and I heard the thump. After a couple minutes, my mom gave up and called the paramedics. They arrived within ten minutes. By the time they arrived, my dad was sitting on the old living room couch, annoyed at the dramatization.

My favorite name for this phenomenon is “Men Menopause.” It ultimately is sort of like a depression mostly to the realization of their own mortality. After retirement, there is only death. They might feel like there is no purpose in life. That doesn’t mean we non-old-irratiable-men should be the receiver of their anger, though. The reason why these feelings are turned into grouchiness is most likely because men don’t have a supportive male network of people to discuss their problems with.

They don’t have a group of people to sympathize with one another, unlike women commonly do. Men should start doing water aerobics together, for the sake of everyone around them.

In the backyard, back in time, my mom urged my father into the car one again. “We need to go to the hospital, hun,” she said. “This isn’t normal for wasp bites. You’re probably allergic!”

My dad sat still in his camp chair outside of the back door. He didn’t move.

“No, Anne, I’m fine, really!” he reassured her, utterly unconvincing.

He remained in his chair until my mom finally forced him to go to the urgent care center closest to us. He complained the whole way that it wasn’t that big of a deal.

Once he returned home, he sat back in his camp chair positioned in the bright green grass and informed my sister and I that he is deathly allergic to wasps and bees. We had to go buy a pack of Epi Pens that night and learn how to use them. My dad made me practice on him twice with the fake one so I would know how to do it. It was fun because to use an Epi Pen you have to stab the person in their thigh.

The paramedics all knew my dad from his time on the police force. This was only a couple

years after he retired. He knew all of their first names and told them there was no need to be here. He reluctantly gave up his arm and revealed his large arm veins. The paramedics hooked him up to all the machines they had to. My dad sat there, unamused, as they performed the same medical actions he used to do on other people when he was younger.

“Tom, look at your heart rate. You know this isn’t good,” one of the men said.

“I feel fine, boys, seriously. Go help someone who needs it more.”

“You’re going to the hospital,” my mom said. The paramedics nodded their heads.

My sister and I stayed home while my mom and dad rode in the ambulance together. He had to stay overnight in the hospital because all signs pointed to him having a heart attack. The next morning he took some sort of heart test and passed. Barely. My dad is very proud of this.

“I passed! I told you nothing was wrong!”

We now refer to this event has a faux heart attack, a prime example of my dad avoiding his health.

My dad is no different than a lot of men his age. It’s a common experience. They’re too grouchy to do anything for themselves. It’s like they never grew out of being afraid of the dentist.

Speaking of, I honestly think my dad hasn’t gone to the dentist in at least five years. Seriously. Something about having to go to someone else for your health bothers a lot of men. I guess they’re afraid of not being to care for themselves. Of not being manly men.

Isabella Johnson God’s Country, creative non-fiction

I woke with madness streaming down my cheeks from the nightmare I had just awoken from. I was encompassed by sheets of blackness, swallowing me into a deep sleep as I rested my head back onto the soaked pillow. I felt the thud of my head stir the blankets around me, I stared back at a bare ceiling, reaching my arms into the air, trying to find what I had forgotten. Violent melodies of violin and piano drifted through my thoughts as I lay, wondering of my mother, catching her scent as I wrapped myself in her jacket that laid next to me. I closed my eyes to the silent music that played in the back of my head. Another nightmare startled me awake. Grey light seeped through the cracks in the window shades, filling the room with a gloomy mist of dust and dead skin. I sat up, dangling my feet to the hard carpeted floor, rubbing my small hands against my hollow eyes. I staggered to the door, thumping my way to the steps in the darkness. I walked into the kitchen, it was blanketed with the faint grey light that slipped away from the moon. My brother stood facing the glass door to the back-porch, he looked at my reflection in the glass, half-smiling.

“You ready?” he said.

He had his shoes on, still in his pajama’s, reaching for his jacket resting on the back of the dining room chair. I grabbed an old flannel and slipped into my grandmother’s tennis shoes that laid next to the back door.

He opened the door, the cold air breezing through the heated house, stirring the resting cat who slept on the living room armchair. I could hear our small feet crunching over the frozen grass that Jack Frost had left the night before. Our breath echoed into the cold air as it became heavier with the pace of a jog.

“I’m gonna beat you!” I snapped as I quickened my pace.

We ran past the evergreen trees and into the open field of hills and rocks, trying with all our might to reach our favorite swing that hung from the tops of the trees. A sigh of gratitude escaped from under my lips, I reached the plastic swing that hung low to the ground. Irritated, my brother shuffled to the tire swing that hung 50 feet away. We let the wind invite our hands as we held them to the heavens, reaching for the tops of the branches, to the sky that held an inevitable amount of stars. The air was cold, and the face of the moon was crisp through the tree line. It felt like our own little galaxy. It reminded me of the mornings that came and went throughout the years, I could still hear the laughter in the back of my head, as if I had lived it the day before, and sometimes I would let it drag me into a trance, taking me back to the swings that were long forgotten, remembering my nightmares as they tangled themselves in my golden hair.

I lived on the backstreets of the country in Maine. The air was pure and the breeze was inviting. We had a saying up there, “God’s Country.” That’s what they called it, “God’s Country.” Perhaps it was the trees that separated the houses, the hills that ran over the fields grazed by cows and bulls. I don’t quite know, I never really knew at all, I still don’t know to this day. We had a lot of sayings up in that state. But my favorite was “God’s Country.” Just as well as I knew its origin, I didn’t know why I liked it so much. However, when I lost my train of thought as I looked out the window of the car, I thought of God. I thought of him as a big man that sat above the clouds, that sat above the stars, above the moon, and sometimes I thought of him sitting in my brother and I’s galaxy. I would dream of him, I would dream of trying to find him, I would dream of him telling my life story out of the book he kept by his side (The Book of Life). Sometimes in my dreams I would crawl into God’s lap as he told me my life story, but sometimes I would place my tiny hand and wrap it around his, asking him why my life

was unfair. I never got an answer.

Sometimes if you went out into the fields that held farms and ranches, you could feel the wind violently brushing against your skin, whipping against the shirt covering your back. There were no tall buildings to ease the ocean’s winds from their tides, but even the cities weren’t much of any protection.

I thought that I could find God there, hiding somewhere amongst the cities breezes or amongst the people. I never did find him when I was awake.

The tourists would come and see only what they wanted to see, tour only what they wanted to tour, and swim in what they only wanted to swim in. They didn’t see the camp lakes, the country cows, or the farms. They saw only what they wanted to see. What they didn’t know was that the big cities they visited, what they assumed would be the rest of the state, they didn’t bother to know that only 1.17 percent of that cold country state was urbanized. The rest of it, the rest of the 98.83 percent lived in those rural backroads of God’s Country.

I spent three weekends out of the month with my mother, my father worked from the early hours in the morning into the late afternoons right before supper time. I always used to get up with him at 3 a.m.

There was a silence at that time of morning, and a silence between our love. He would look at me as I sat opposite of him at the kitchen table as he gulped down a bowl of oatmeal. I could hear the tap of his fingernails against the wood. I would mock him, making him smile. He would sigh, brushing the tiredness from his eyes and push the chair back, leaning his body against the wooden floor. He would turn around from the sink, walking towards me as I lifted my hands up to him as he picked me up and carried me to the stairs. I would carry his black cowboy hat to him as he closed the door of his car.

“Thanks baby girl,” he whispered to me.

He would kiss me on the forehead, and press the start button of the car. I would always run back up the stairs to the living room where our bay window resided, and there I would watch him as he honked his horn, and stuck his hand out into the cold dark sky, waving goodbye. I liked to watch him drive down that long driveway, it became special for us to spend that little time in the morning together, I always had a special connection with him. After a few moments of watching the headlights disappear, I would wonder sometimes if God was hidden in my father.

My mother wasn’t like my father. We didn’t share a lot of special moments, and it felt like our love was deaf, invisible at some times. I always admired the passion that streamed between my brother and mother, I always wanted something much like that, to feel the inviting kiss of my mother’s lips on my forehead, and to hear her laugh wildly prancing in the back of my mind. I felt unwanted by her, like a castoff that stood on the second line of things. I tried to make myself noticeable to her, but it seemed that what was broken in our relationship was never going to mend itself.

I listen to her nowadays, I listen to her silence on the other end of the phone, and I try to grab the words that are bearing on her chest, trying to hold onto something of her to remember her by. I took her coat one evening, when God was nowhere to be found, when he was lost in some sort of misery.

I took her coat as I sat on the concrete stairs to my grandmother’s house. The air was bitterly silent, and I felt my chest ripping from the inside out. That was the love my mother mostly gave me, one that left me breathless, broken and bruised, but I still loved her, even with a broken heart that never felt the same.

I remember the days she would take my brother and I to Fort William’s Park, Cape Elizabeth, Maine.

Fort William’s was a place full of mysteries. It had been a former United States Army fort which had operated from 1872 to 1964. Although, the fort had officially closed on Saturday June 30, 1962. It was stretched with old massive guns, and ruins of castle-like structures. It was quiet there, the only sounds came from the families that toured it, and the ocean that hit the walls of coal-stained rocks.

Once it had served as Coastal Defenses for Portland, Maine. Through the second World War, it had been the headquarters of the Harbor Defenses. Yet, those days had passed, and the fort now had been a well known tourist attraction for the families that visited only what they wanted to see. For me, it was a special place. Perhaps it wasn’t the old mysterious stories that catapulted throughout my mind, but it was for the way it felt surreal and inviting. My heart always skipped as I noticed the familiar red gate that guarded the front entrance to the park. My eyes would smile out the window as the ruins of old buildings and the mountainous hills followed the car into the parking lot. As I trailed out of the car and into the soft touch of the grass, my arms swaddled the thoughts of spending my day at my favorite place, with my mother.

From time to time, my brother would circulate through the ruins, through the dark enclosed rooms that served as chambers for soldiers in the war. There were no windows in most of them, just pitch darkness. He often would try to get me to join him, but I was too frightened to be held hostage in a room that reeked of prior death, and the rattling of chains from the dark unlit corners. I often would wonder if my nightmares followed me there, hiding in the dark corners, waiting for me, calling for me. I did try only once to swallow my fear, to work up my courage to cross the room that was subjected to no sunlight. I only crossed half-way when I couldn’t tell if my eyes were still open or not, tears stumbled at my eyes, forming the thought of being left alone in the darkness of an unlit room in the back of my head.

The days always shallowed to an end. The feeling of gratitude and satisfaction was slowly being swept away with the wind. My heart began sinking to the bottom of that grass that felt so nice. In time, the car would drive from the red gated park and back to the mile long driveway of my grandmother’s.

I didn’t want to think of the thought of leaving, of the thought of returning home, without my mother, without my quiet safe place in stow behind me. But it was happening; when the days finally did wrap themselves under the clouds, and the sun had begun to set behind those mountainous hills.

“Please just five more minutes. Just a little longer.” I muttered to my mother, choking back tears as she left me sitting by myself.

I sat on the front steps of my grandmother’s, faint reminders of the day wrapping between my fingers.

Faint memories playing in the back of my head. I would turn and walk back into the house, closing the front door quietly so as not to stir my nightmare that huddled in my room. Eventually, I would slowly creep down the wooden stairs to the basement and open my bedroom door. I never bothered to turn the lights on, but instead I would run to my bed and throw myself under the covers, waiting for my nightmare to creep out of the wall, dragging me into its arms, holding me, sometimes just like God did.

Destiny Perkins MIND YOUR SPIRITS, play-writing DESTINY PERKINS is an eleventh grade literary artist at Pittsburgh CAPA 6-12. She has been published in a 2013 issue of Poetic Power and has one silver key in the Scholastic writing awards. Destiny is a proud member of CAPA’s feminist student union, black student union, and culinary club. Destiny hopes to pursue English in college and create her own student union in the near future.

SYNOPSIS: Ai has fallen in love with a strange man via letters sent to the wrong address. She is ready to marry him but her mother, Hua insists that it is a horrible idea. Desperate, Ai pleads her ancestors for their assistance in uniting her with her mysterious lover. The spirits agree to help Ai but at a cost to Hua. CHARACTERS: AI SHI— A young Asian woman in her early 20’s who’s obsessed with tradition and recovering her roots following the death of her father and grandmother. She has fallen in love with a mysterious man named Han who coincidentally shares her passion for recovering ancient Chinese tradition and culture. She and her mother are on the outs over it, though she still tries to treat her mother with the utmost respect.

HUA SHI— An Asian woman in her early-to-late 40’s. She’s much more modern than her daughter and doesn’t really believe in ancestral spirits or fate etc. She’s much more practical and rational and tries persuade her daughter to adopt some of her ways of thinking. Ai is Hua’s only daughter and her husband died 2 years prior in a car accident and her mother merely a year prior due to cardiac arrest. She and Ai are the last living members of the Shi bloodline PURPLE SPIRIT/TASHI— Tashi Shi was a 12th century elite in her life, renowned for her writing, art, music, and of course, beauty. She married two lords and was rumored to have had affairs with several others. She has a flair for the dramatic and an affinity for romance and compassion. She believes that one should trust their emotions and cherish them. She is the most blunt of the two spirits and does most of the talking.

BLUE SPIRIT/CHEN— Chen Shi was a 15th century military officer and general. He is a quiet and stoic man who heavily values the Confucian values of filial piety. He believes that one should always honor their family before anything else and love is only secondary. Chen has an affinity for playing the flute and traditional drinking songs. Both spirits thrive off the living relying and believing in them. Though they may have been honest in life, death has distorted their motives.

(The stage is divided into two sections: a living room and Ai’s bedroom. Lights come up. A small dining room table and three small chairs sit in the center of half of the stage. HUA, an Asian woman in her mid-to-late forties and her daughter AI, who is in early twenties, work together to clear the table. They talk as they clear the table.)

AI How was work today?

HUA It was fine. I got a couple of obnoxious customers demanding a free meal because they’re newly weds. They had the nerve to come in, order a bunch of food, and eat it all up only to tell Luan that they shouldn’t have to pay because they’re newly weds! And when I told them that I couldn’t afford to give every single newly in love couple a freakin’ buffet for free, do you know what they told me?

AI What did they tell you, Ma? HUA That I don’t believe in the spirit of love. They’re nothing but a couple of freeloaders, that all. I bet they’re ‘newly weds’ every week!

AI Maybe they were really in love.

HUA (Hua will say ‘spirit of the love’ in a mocking tone, sticking her tongue out in disapproval.)

Nah. No one who’s really in love believes in that spirit of the love crap. I was married to your father for 21 years and not once did that spirit of the love crap ever happen to us. We weren’t mesmerized by each other or inseparable. We were practical and affectionate. People who believe that being in love should automatically meld you into one person are either fools or con men, Ai. If a man ever says that he believes in that crap, run! He’s only up to no good.

AI I believe in the spirit of love.

HUA Of course you do. You’ve never been in love.

AI That’s not true, Ma. I’m in love right now.

HUA With who? Have you finally picked up the phone and called Donny Lance? He’s such a nice kid! If I were ten years younger, I might swoop him up for myself.

AI No, it’s not Donny. You already know who I’m in love with.

HUA Honey, I’ve already had a long enough day. Please don’t make it any harder.

AI Mom, I’m sorry but I love him! I’m serious this time. I know in my heart that it’s the real deal.

HUA Ai, you don’t love him.

AI What makes you so sure?

HUA You’ve never met him! You can’t love someone who you’ve never met!

AI Mom, don’t you believe in love in first sight?

HUA Yes, I do but you haven’t even seen this man! What makes you so sure that he isn’t some type of delinquent? Or some nasty sixty year old man sitting in his mother’s basement?

AI I know his mind before I know his face. Honestly, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

HUA You’re being ridiculous!

AI I’m having faith in tradition!

HUA

(Hua rubs her temples, exasperated as she leans against the table.)

Ugh, here we go with the ancestors again.

AI Whether you like it or not, it’s still apart of your culture. They’re still our blood, Mama!

HUA The Ancestors have been dead for generations. The only thing they’re giving out is dirt, not advice.

AI God, sometimes I’m not sure if you remember who you are.

HUA Do you know who you are, Ai? You’re a 10th Generation U.S citizen. No one in our family has even spoken Chinese in over a decade, much less have actually been to China!

AI How would you know? Our family is dead!

(Hua softens and touches Ai’s shoulder tenderly but Ai shakes her hand away as she gathers the remaining plates off of the table. Hua sighs as she takes the plates from Ai, forcing her daughter to face her.)

HUA Ai, I love that you’re prideful in who you are but you take these— fairytales far too seriously. You’re forgetting that the tales of the ancestors are just what they are— stories. I don’t want you to marry some stranger because some 100 year old bone told you to.

AI I’m not marrying him because they told me to, I’m marrying him because I want to. The ancestors brought us together against all the odds and they gave me their blessing. Don’t you see? Everything happens for a reason!

HUA Oh, please! We’re living in 2038. Anyone can send you a private message on a website.

AI But not everyone can just so happen to receive a love letter sent to the wrong address. Written in Mandarin.

HUA Do you know who still sends letters via snail mail, Ai? AI True romantics?

HUA Convicts in prison and stalkers!

AI You’re assuming the worse.

HUA Because apparently you don’t want to think about the bad at all! Do you even know his name?

AI Well, his name was Gregory but he changed it to Han because he wanted to rekindle his connection with his roots.

HUA My, God. Not him, too. Is the new trend with the you young people to be obsessed with the long dead?

AI No. He just understands the importance of understanding your history as much as I do.

HUA Right… and where is he from?

AI Well, obviously he’s Chinese…. But he lives in Toronto.

HUA Toronto? Does he know that you live in Michigan? How do you two even plan to date?

AI Distance won’t matter when we’re married— HUA Marriage? You’re not thinking about marrying him, are you?

AI I am.

(Beat.)

I’ve been meaning to tell you but I knew you were going to get upset— HUA Well of course I’m going to be upset! You’ve only been talking to each other for three months!

AI But I know I love him! Our ancestors never wasted time on courtship, you know. They followed their hearts.

HUA Do you know what else the ancestors needed? Consent between the two families.

AI And? HUA Ai, I do not consent!

AI But I love him!

HUA I don’t care!

AI You can’t do this!

HUA Oh, yes I can! As the only living elder, I forbid you from marrying this stranger.

AI But— HUA If you choose to go against my will, I will have no choice but to disown you from this family. Your lineage and honor will be erased.

AI This isn’t fair! Do you even know what you’ve just done?

HUA Not entirely but if it stops you from making such an idiotic decision, I’ll do it.

(Ai is visibly aggravated but silently clears the table and carries the dishes offstage, her head bowed. Her mother exits and she emerges. She stops center stage and sits with her legs tucked under her, incense and a small stone with her family name painted on it in her hands. She lights the incense as she reads from a printed out sheet of paper.)

AI Um…ancestors of the Shi clan, I beg that you hear my call. I need your guidance and wisdom to steer these troubled times.

(The lights dim and two spotlights, one purple and one blue shine on either side of Ai. The blue light embodies the male spirit while the purple embodies the female.)

BLUE SPIRIT Ah, it’s been a while since we’ve heard the summons of the living.

(We hear what sounds like joints rotating or cracking offstage. The blue spirit grunts.)

What is it that you need, young one?

AI I have devoted myself to recovering your words and your wisdom but I fear that your—our history— is fading.

PURPLE SPIRIT Ah, I’m glad that you’ve become well acquainted with the words of my poetry.

AI Actually, I wasn’t able to recover the literature of our clan. But the common tales and stories I’ve been able to dig up online have brought me this far.

(Beat. We hear a sigh from the Purple Spirit. She sounds exasperated.)

PURPLE SPIRIT Well, I suppose that even the greats are vulnerable to the sands of time.

(The purple spotlight shifts so that it obscures half of Ai’s body. Ai reacts almost as if she’s been touched. She gingerly touches a spot on her cheek as the purple spotlight shifts aways from her. The purple spirit’s tone shifts to that of intrigue.)

But I can tell that this is not what is on your heart.

AI I… I have fallen in love with a man.

PURPLE SPIRIT This is good! You should be rejoicing! Why are you filled with gloom?

AI I have never met this man— (Ai pauses, expecting to be scolded but nothing comes. She inhales and continues.)

But I know in my heart that he is a good man and that we were meant to find each other. But my mother…

BLUE SPIRIT Is he not rich?

PURPLE SPIRIT Wealth has no role in true love.

BLUE SPIRIT Of course it does! How else will he pay her dowry? Support her children? BUY HER FOOD? AI He has a decent job. But my mother still doesn’t approve. She doesn’t believe in the stories you told. She doesn’t believe that you still exist at all!

PURPLE SPIRIT You say that your heart lies with this man. This is a very special thing, Ai. It only happens once in your life. Follow your heart and the rest will come later.

BLUE SPIRIT Mind what your parents tell you and your path shall be clear.

BLUE & PURPLE SPIRIT This is all that we can offer you.

BLUE SPIRIT Make your decision.

PURPLE SPIRIT And return to us next night.

(The purple spotlight shines down on Ai now. She touches her cheek again as if she’s cradling an embrace.)

Go now and rest, Ai. (The purple spotlight disappears. The blue spotlight shines on Ai now. She bows her head.)

BLUE SPIRIT We will offer our guidance when a choice has been made.

(The blue spotlight disappears and a singular white spotlight shines down upon Ai. She blows out the incense.

The lights go out.)

(Lights come up on the living room half of the stage. The stage is sparsely furnished with nice looking modern

living room furniture. Hua sits in a chair, doing paperwork. Ai enters stage left, cradling a box of letters. She sits next to her mother.)

AI Mom? HUA Yes, Ai? AI I know things got pretty… intense last night.

HUA Are you ready to come to your senses?

AI No. I thought it’d be nice if we read some of the letters together. Maybe it would understand how I feel.

(Ai passes her mother a stack of letters. The room set is tinged with p Her mother reluctantly accepts them. Ai peers over Hua shoulders as she reads.)

Oh! That’s the very first one I got from him. He called it ‘A Poem for My Beautiful Sun.’ HUA Who was he calling his sun? You two didn’t even know each other yet.

AI He thought he loved someone else. But then he met me.

HUA And the girl?

AI Well, she’s gone. She’s probably moved on.

HUA How do you know she’s really gone? Or does she write letters to you, too?

AI He told me so.

HUA And you trusted him?

AI Well, yeah. Trust is the foundation of love.

HUA Ai, this is ridiculous. I know that you’re probably lonely and you probably feel a bit lost ever since Mammy died— AI Don’t.

HUA But this isn’t the answer. You shouldn’t be using him to fill the hole your grandmother and father left.

AI I’m not! I genuinely care about him!

HUA Look, if you want to find a good man, I’ll be happy to set you up with some of my friends’ sons.

AI Mom, this has nothing to do with Mammy or Dad! I love him!

HUA How can you be so sure, Ai? What if he’s a bum, huh? What if he’s ugly and awful and penniless? Will you still love him?

AI When he writes to me, I feel a spark inside that I’ve never felt before. I feel at peace. I feel safe!

HUA So he writes well. That’s not love, sweetie. He’s just talented.

AI Do you really think that I am so naive to be captivated by his skill alone?

(Ai digs into the box and shoves a letter into her mother’s lap. Her mother reads it, her expression changing from skepticism to horror. The room is slowly bathed in blue light, fading from faint to vibrant as the scene escalates.)

HUA Ai… you didn’t.

AI I love him, mother. I know it in my heart.

HUA (Still reading a letter, shaking as she starts to panic.)

He’s asking when you’ll be leaving…

(Turning to Ai. Ai looks away, shamefully. Hua waves the letter in the air frantically, her voice raising with concern.)

Ai… You’re not leaving.

AI Mama, I tried to tell you before but you wouldn’t listen to it. I have to go to him. The wedding is will be next month…

HUA (Turning away and staring vacantly forward, her voice flat. The blue light seems to be focused on her particularly.)

You’re not leaving.

AI I didn’t know how else to tell you. I thought that maybe you’d understand…

HUA You’re not leaving.

AI And I know that you said that you’d… disown me if I did but Mama, I can feel it in my heart. He’s the one.

(Hua stands up suddenly, violently. She is visibly furious and her hand is poised to smack Ai. Beat.

She lowers her hand.)

HUA So you’re really going to abandon your family? Your ancestors? For some stranger?

AI I’ve been told to listen to my heart. And my heart says go.

(Ai stands and starts to leave. Her mother grabs her wrist.)

HUA You’re not leaving, Ai. I’m not losing my only daughter to some stranger. You’re all that I have left, Ai! I don’t care if I have to lock you in your room myself! You’re not going through with this!

AI Let go of me!

(Hua pulls Ai offstage as Ai weeps loudly. Lights go down.)

(Lights go up on the other half of the stage. On this half, the stage is decorated with a desk, a bed, and soft implications of a young woman’s bedroom. Ai kneels on the ground in front of the small stone and incense, weeping.

She lights the incense. Two screens are lit on either side of Ai, a blue spotlight illuminating one and a purple spotlight illuminating the other. Behind them, we can see the silhouette of a man and a woman.)

AI

Ancestors, please, I beg you to return to me.

PURPLE & BLUESPIRIT We have never left you, young one.

BLUE SPIRIT Your spirits stay with you always.

AI My mother has locked me in my room. It’s been two days and she only brings me food and water.

PURPLE SPIRIT Such a dramatic turn of events!

AI You make it sound like it’s is a good thing.

PURPLE SPIRIT Well I must admit, I love a good drama. Tell me, Ai, how I can assist in the writing of your next chapter.

AI Please get me out of here!

BLUE SPIRIT Unfortunately, this is where our abilities are limited.

PURPLE SPIRIT Interaction with the physical world is restricted but our influence is great.

AI Then what am I supposed to do? I won’t stop loving Han. I can’t. But if I stay here, my mother will keep me locked in here until I’m old and gray.

(Footsteps are heard offstage.)

Go! Before my mother sees you.

BLUE SPIRIT We will see what we can do. Be patient, young one.

(The screens dim. We hear knocking offstage.)

HUA Ai? Is it alright if I come in?

AI No. Not until you let me out of here.

(We hear the door being unlocked anyway. HUA the stage carrying a tray with two bowls balancing on it.)

HUA Don’t be unreasonable, Ai. This could all be so simple.

AI You’re the one being unreasonable.

HUA Your room is nice. Nice and big. Has a TV and it’s own bathroom, really it’s kinda like a little apartment. I could’ve locked you in the basement.

(Beat as Hua waits for a snicker to rise out of Ai. Ai is not amused.)

I’m doing this for your own good, I promise. You’ll think more clearly once you’ve had some time to yourself.

AI Locking me in here won’t make me love Han any less.

HUA But maybe it’ll make you consider a more rational decision.

(Ai turns away from her mother.)

Please don’t make this harder than it has to be, honey. I only want you to be safe. But I also know that you’re at the age where… you’re desperate for affection. Especially now that we’re on our own now…So I’ve called Donny Lance for you. He’s a nice guy, honest. He’s got a good head on his shoulders and he has a good job. He’s a good

match for you.

AI I won’t see him. Mom, I love Han! I belong with Han! HUA Please, Ai, make a wise decision.

(Beat.

Hua runs her hands through her hair, sighing heavily as she slowly approaches Ai.) Come on, sweetie, you’re still so young! There are so many other young, handsome men out there to fall in love.

When I was 20, I had a throng of lovers before I settled on your father! Don’t risk it all for one guy who might not even be the one.

(Hua sets the tray on her daughter’s bed and moves to embrace her. Ai pulls away. Hua sighs and leaves. We hear the door locking offstage. Ai suddenly turns around violently, fuming. She charges to the middle of the room, her body shaking with anger.)

AI (Screaming) I love Han! I will never stop loving Han! You can’t keep him away from me! I love him! I love him!

(Lights fade to black, Ai still repeating ‘I love him’ over and over. Three beats. Lights come up on the other side of the stage. Hua sits on a sofa, her head buried in her hands. A picture frame with a man’s face in it sits in her lap.)

HUA (Sighing, covering her eyes with her hands.)

Am I doing the right thing or am I just digging myself into a deeper hole?

(She lets out another heavy sigh as she picks up the frame and stares down at it regretfully.)

I only want the best for her, I wish she could see that. What am I supposed to do when she tells me that she going to run off with some man that she’s never even met? As if it were nothing? We raised her better than this, Jon, I know we did! We always told her to never trust strangers, remember that? I thought she knew that that applied to marrying them, too. She’s always been so naive— where does she get that from? I thought that I had it under control. We had it under control. But when you left…

(Hua pauses as she takes a deep breath, picking the frame up and caressing the glass.)

When you died… things started to crumble, Jon. I tried, Jon, I really did. I tried to be her friend, I tried to give her her space, I tried to be the strict mom—- I tried everything, Jon, but she just kept drifting away! But them Mammy died. The last of our family… She was devastated. I lost control of her. She ran so far and so fast, Jon, I couldn’t keep up. And now she talks about hearing spirits telling her to runaway with strange men. I don’t know what to do. If you were here, maybe I’d know… Please, Jon, give me something— anything!

(Hua stares at the photograph half expectantly, half skeptically. Nothing happens. She lays the photograph down onto the couch and sits back down.)

Of course, nothing. Look at me! I’m talking to myself like a crazy person.

(Hua buries her face in her hands again. The lights dim and everything is bathed in a purple spotlight.)

PURPLE SPIRIT Don’t weep, Hua. (Hua looks around, startled.)

HUA Who said that?

PURPLE SPIRIT Don’t be startled, Hua, I am here to help you.

HUA Ai, is that you?

PURPLE SPIRIT My name is Tashi, Hua. I am the sixteenth grandmother of the Shi clan.

HUA (Laughing sadly.)

You’re kidding me, right? Is everyone just obsessed with the dead these days?

(Standing and half-heartedly searches the room for an intruder. She is visibly exasperated.)

Who are you, really? Have you come to rob me of everything I own? Is losing my daughter not enough, huh? Do I have to be broke and penniless, too?

(Hua returns to the center of the stage, throwing up her hands.)

Well come on, show yourself!

(She begins taking off her jewelry and throws it on the table, angrily.)

Take it! Take all of it!

(Hua sits back on the couch, burying her head in her hands once again, weeping. The lights dim as the purple spotlight disappears. TASHI enters the scene, quietly almost gliding across the room. TASHI wears traditional elite garb of 12th century China, preferably in purple. The purple spotlight beams down on her as she makes her way to Hua. She lays a hand on Hua’s cheek.)

TASHI Do not weep, my daughter.

(Hua looks up in awe.)

The hearts in this house are heavy. You want the same things but you’re separated by your own pride.

HUA (Shamefully.)

I just want the best for Ai. She won’t listen to me.

TASHI Ah, but I can see that the love brewing in her heart is true.

HUA But she’s never met him!

TASHI Your heart only calls to you once, Hua. She is old enough now to chase her own heart.

HUA But she’s only 20 years old! What does she know about love?

TASHI It is true that many serpents have mastered the tongue of an aching heart but if the love isn’t true, Hua, I promise that she’ll come back to you.

HUA You don’t understand! She’s the only family that I have left! I can’t lose her, too.

TASHI You must let her go, Hua. HUA I won’t! I’ve already lost my husband and my mother! I won’t lose Ai! TASHI I understand your fear, Hua. But you cannot change Ai’s fate. If you chose to stand in the way, nothing but bad fortune is destined to find you.

HUA So be it, then! Bring it on! Give me your snakes and your lions and your locusts! I am not scared of you! You will have to strike me dead before I ever release my daughter into the hands of some strange man!

TASHI I admire your spirit, Hua, but I fear that I cannot champion you against the wrath of fate.

(Tashi turns to leave. Hua bites her lip, indecisively as Tasha drifts towards the exit. Tashi is at the edge of the set when Hua calls out to her.)

HUA Wait!

(Tashi turns to Hua, emotionless.)

Do you promise she’ll come back to me?

(Lights come up on the Ai in her room. She is sitting at her desk, writing a letter as she sniffles softly. Lights come up on the middle section of the stage on Hua pacing as she shuffles a stack of letters in her hands. Hua shuffles through the letters, opening and reading them idly as Ai writes.)

AI (Writing) Dear Han… I hope that when this letter finds you in good health… I know that I should be writing to you from a train to Toronto…singing my praises of our future together… but today I am locked in my room— imprisoned by my mother… She heavily doubts your sincerity… and has forbidden me to be united with you…She wants me to marry another man even though I insisted… that I am in love with you and only you…But Han— I know in my heart that if you feel what I feel…

(Ai chokes as she starts to tear up but composes herself.)

You’re the only one who can change her mind now!…Prove to my mother that you’re real… and prove to me that my heart… was right when it chose you….No matter what happens, Han, I’ll never stop loving you. Love, Ai. (Ai seals the letter and places it carefully into an envelope. The lights on her side of the stage go down. On the other side of the stage, Hua stops as she open up a letter in a blue envelope. She looks pained as she reads the words on the paper.)

HUA My dearest Ai… You haven’t arrived Toronto yet and I cannot help but fear the worse… Maybe we’ve both come to the same realization… that we’ve rushed into things too quickly… I hate to admit it but I don’t feel the same spark that I used to… And instead this spark has been rekindled by another woman… Ai, you’re a beautiful and thoughtful woman… and I know that someone closer to and better for you awaits… You will find happiness one day… Take care, Ai. Han. (Hua pauses, in shock. She lowers the paper slowly, a photograph tumbling to the ground. Her eyes widen as she realizes what this means.)

Ai! (Hua runs off stage and the lights go down on her side of the stage. The lights come up on Ai as she sits at her desk, turning the letter over in her hands indecisively. The room is suddenly illuminated with purple and blue light as Tashi and CHEN enter the scene. CHEN wears the military uniform of a high ranking officer in 15th century China, preferably in blue. Ai spins around, anxiously. She rushes to the ancestors, bowing at their feet as she suppresses desperate tears.)

AI I have been waiting for you to return for so long! Please, ancestors, tell me that you’ve convinced my mother to be let me be with Han TASHI Rise, young one.

CHEN Our lives are long gone, our time to make decisions have long passed.

TASHI Choices are for the living, we merely act as hands of fate. We offer our wisdom so that you can take the wisest path.

AI (Her tone is frustrated and she’s losing patience. Tashi and Chen are not phased.)

And what would be the wisest path for me? It seems that my path has already been chosen for me.

TASHI You still have time, young Ai. CHEN In my own day, I have faced failure a thousand times. I grazed death and fallen into a pit with doom. Each time,

I believed that my fate had been decided— I would die. And each time, I arose and heard the sweet song of the maidens once more.

AI There is no way out for me.

(Tashi gently approaches Ai and tenderly turns her toward an imaginary window, preferably facing the window.)

TASHI A canary will not see glass in front of them.

CHEN The glass is fragile and will yield to your touch if you choose to control it.

AI (Slowly, tearing up as she looks painfully into the audience.)

Han is waiting…

TASHI Follow your heart beat, Ai. It will never steer you wrong.

(Ai looks to Tasha and Chen, knowingly. She starts to pack her bags. The lights go black.)

(The lights come up on Ai’s empty room, her bed neatly made. The room is tinged with purple light. We hear the singing of a Chinese proverb in the distance offstage and footsteps coming towards the room. Hua bursts into the room, expectantly. She is wearing her pajamas but looks as if she hasn’t slept well in months.)

HUA Ai? (She looks around the empty room and her shoulders drop with disappointment as she realizes no one is there.

She walks over to Ai’s bed and runs her hand tenderly over the comforter before sitting down. She sighs deeply.)

Just the wind again.

(Hua takes Ai’s pillow and strokes it lovingly as she weeps softly. Hua wipes her tears away and rises again, still cradling the pillow.She walks over to Ai’s desk and sits down, running her hands along every crevice in the furniture. She is obviously in mourning. Her fingers run over something taped underneath the desk. Eager at the prospect of finding another clue to her daughter’s whereabouts, she frantically tears the folded up sheet of paper from under the desk. She unfolds the paper and begins to cry again. She looks in a drawer of the desk and removes some incense, a small stone with their family name printed on it, and lighter. Trembling, she takes the stone and incense to the center of the stage. She sits on the floor with her legs tucked under her and lights the incense shakily. She glances at the paper and takes a deep breath.)

HUA I don’t know what I’m doing. If there’s anyone up there, ancestors or not, who can help me, I beg you to hear a humble mother’s plea. My daughter is gone…

(Hua starts to weep again but stops herself. She takes another deep breath. Her voice is strained as she speaks.)

Ai has been gone for two months now. I am begging you… help me… help me find her.

(Two spotlights appear on either side of Hua, one blue and one purple.)

BLUE SPIRIT Ah, it’s been a while since we’ve heard the summons of the living.

(We hear what sounds like joints rotating or cracking offstage. The blue spirit grunts.)

What is it that you need, young one?

FADE TO BLACK. END SCENE. Destiny Perkins Unlucky, flash fiction

My mother named me Fausta, meaning good luck— an ironic curse. My streak started when my parents announced that they were getting a divorce. I was eight. On my eleventh birthday, we moved from the suburbs to the projects. When I was 13, my mother pleaded in our native tongue with me to breakup with Maxxie, a troublemaker who’d never been baptized and smelled like cigarettes.

“Speak English! Speak English!” I yelled. She slapped me. I ran into Maxxie’s open arms. By 15, the cops knew me by name. One night, someone broke into my neighbor’s house and beat her up bad. The cops already knew who to call. My mother was at the trial. I begged her to tell them I was innocent. She said she couldn’t speak English.

I got out of Juvie, 17 and reckless. Mama didn’t want nothin’ to do with me. I started dating Tommy because I needed a place to sleep at night. I loved him, or so I said. Behind his back, I led a caravan of lovers.

On New Year’s Eve, my tia told me that my mother had cancer.

I called my mom and sobbed into the dial tone. Nobody would tell me where she was.

“She doesn’t need you around, Fausta,” they told me. “You’re bad luck.” My caravan grew. Tommy wouldn’t touch me, said he felt another man’s hands on my skin. I begged him to love me for the sake of my dying mother.

I woke up one July morning, alone in my bed, apologies for my loss flooding my answering machine. I stayed on the phone for days, bleeding empty confessionals to people who had never mattered.

“Speak English! Speak English!” they said.

Isabella Johnson God’s Country, creative nonfiction

I woke with madness streaming down my cheeks from the nightmare I had just awoken from. I was encompassed by sheets of blackness, swallowing me into a deep sleep as I rested my head back onto the soaked pillow. I felt the thud of my head stir the blankets around me, I stared back at a bare ceiling, reaching my arms into the air, trying to find what I had forgotten. Violent melodies of violin and piano drifted through my thoughts as I lay, wondering of my mother, catching her scent as I wrapped myself in her jacket that laid next to me. I closed my eyes to the silent music that played in the back of my head. Another nightmare startled me awake. Grey light seeped through the cracks in the window shades, filling the room with a gloomy mist of dust and dead skin. I sat up, dangling my feet to the hard carpeted floor, rubbing my small hands against my hollow eyes. I staggered to the door, thumping my way to the steps in the darkness. I walked into the kitchen, it was blanketed with the faint grey light that slipped away from the moon. My brother stood facing the glass door to the back-porch, he looked at my reflection in the glass, half-smiling.

“You ready?” he said.

He had his shoes on, still in his pajama’s, reaching for his jacket resting on the back of the dining room chair. I grabbed an old flannel and slipped into my grandmother’s tennis shoes that laid next to the back door.

He opened the door, the cold air breezing through the heated house, stirring the resting cat who slept on the living room armchair. I could hear our small feet crunching over the frozen grass that Jack Frost had left the night before. Our breath echoed into the cold air as it became heavier with the pace of a jog.

“I’m gonna beat you!” I snapped as I quickened my pace.

We ran past the evergreen trees and into the open field of hills and rocks, trying with all our might to reach our favorite swing that hung from the tops of the trees. A sigh of gratitude escaped from under my lips, I reached the plastic swing that hung low to the ground. Irritated, my brother shuffled to the tire swing that hung 50 feet away. We let the wind invite our hands as we held them to the heavens, reaching for the tops of the branches, to the sky that held an inevitable amount of stars. The air was cold, and the face of the moon was crisp through the tree line. It felt like our own little galaxy. It reminded me of the mornings that came and went throughout the years, I could still hear the laughter in the back of my head, as if I had lived it the day before, and sometimes I would let it drag me into a trance, taking me back to the swings that were long forgotten, remembering my nightmares as they tangled themselves in my golden hair.

I lived on the backstreets of the country in Maine. The air was pure and the breeze was inviting. We had a saying up there, “God’s Country.” That’s what they called it, “God’s Country.” Perhaps it was the trees that separated the houses, the hills that ran over the fields grazed by cows and bulls. I don’t quite know, I never really knew at all, I still don’t know to this day. We had a lot of sayings up in that state. But my favorite was “God’s Country.” Just as well as I knew its origin, I didn’t know why I liked it so much. However, when I lost my train of thought as I looked out the window of the car, I thought of God. I thought of him as a big man that sat above the clouds, that sat above the stars, above the moon, and sometimes I thought of him sitting in my brother and I’s galaxy. I would dream of him, I would dream of trying to find him, I would dream of him telling my life story out of the book he kept by

his side (The Book of Life). Sometimes in my dreams I would crawl into God’s lap as he told me my life story, but sometimes I would place my tiny hand and wrap it around his, asking him why my life was unfair. I never got an answer.

Sometimes if you went out into the fields that held farms and ranches, you could feel the wind violently brushing against your skin, whipping against the shirt covering your back. There were no tall buildings to ease the ocean’s winds from their tides, but even the cities weren’t much of any protection.

I thought that I could find God there, hiding somewhere amongst the cities breezes or amongst the people. I never did find him when I was awake.

The tourists would come and see only what they wanted to see, tour only what they wanted to tour, and swim in what they only wanted to swim in. They didn’t see the camp lakes, the country cows, or the farms. They saw only what they wanted to see. What they didn’t know was that the big cities they visited, what they assumed would be the rest of the state, they didn’t bother to know that only 1.17 percent of that cold country state was urbanized. The rest of it, the rest of the 98.83 percent lived in those rural backroads of God’s Country.

I spent three weekends out of the month with my mother, my father worked from the early hours in the morning into the late afternoons right before supper time. I always used to get up with him at 3 a.m.

There was a silence at that time of morning, and a silence between our love. He would look at me as I sat opposite of him at the kitchen table as he gulped down a bowl of oatmeal. I could hear the tap of his fingernails against the wood. I would mock him, making him smile. He would sigh, brushing the tiredness from his eyes and push the chair back, leaning his body against the wooden floor. He would turn around from the sink, walking towards me as I lifted my hands up to him as he picked me up and carried me to the stairs. I would carry his black cowboy hat to him as he closed the door of his car.

“Thanks baby girl,” he whispered to me.

He would kiss me on the forehead, and press the start button of the car. I would always run back up the stairs to the living room where our bay window resided, and there I would watch him as he honked his horn, and stuck his hand out into the cold dark sky, waving goodbye. I liked to watch him drive down that long driveway, it became special for us to spend that little time in the morning together, I always had a special connection with him. After a few moments of watching the headlights disappear, I would wonder sometimes if God was hidden in my father.

My mother wasn’t like my father. We didn’t share a lot of special moments, and it felt like our love was deaf, invisible at some times. I always admired the passion that streamed between my brother and mother, I always wanted something much like that, to feel the inviting kiss of my mother’s lips on my forehead, and to hear her laugh wildly prancing in the back of my mind. I felt unwanted by her, like a castoff that stood on the second line of things. I tried to make myself noticeable to her, but it seemed that what was broken in our relationship was never going to mend itself.

I listen to her nowadays, I listen to her silence on the other end of the phone, and I try to grab the words that are bearing on her chest, trying to hold onto something of her to remember her by. I took her coat one evening, when God was nowhere to be found, when he was lost in some sort of misery.

I took her coat as I sat on the concrete stairs to my grandmother’s house. The air was bitterly silent, and I felt my chest ripping from the inside out. That was the love my mother mostly gave me, one that left me breathless, broken and bruised, but I still loved her, even with a broken heart that never felt the same.

I remember the days she would take my brother and I to Fort William’s Park, Cape Elizabeth, Maine.

Fort William’s was a place full of mysteries. It had been a former United States Army fort which had operated from 1872 to 1964. Although, the fort had officially closed on Saturday June 30, 1962. It

was stretched with old massive guns, and ruins of castle-like structures. It was quiet there, the only sounds came from the families that toured it, and the ocean that hit the walls of coal-stained rocks.

Once it had served as Coastal Defenses for Portland, Maine. Through the second World War, it had been the headquarters of the Harbor Defenses. Yet, those days had passed, and the fort now had been a well known tourist attraction for the families that visited only what they wanted to see. For me, it was a special place. Perhaps it wasn’t the old mysterious stories that catapulted throughout my mind, but it was for the way it felt surreal and inviting. My heart always skipped as I noticed the familiar red gate that guarded the front entrance to the park. My eyes would smile out the window as the ruins of old buildings and the mountainous hills followed the car into the parking lot. As I trailed out of the car and into the soft touch of the grass, my arms swaddled the thoughts of spending my day at my favorite place, with my mother.

From time to time, my brother would circulate through the ruins, through the dark enclosed rooms that served as chambers for soldiers in the war. There were no windows in most of them, just pitch darkness. He often would try to get me to join him, but I was too frightened to be held hostage in a room that reeked of prior death, and the rattling of chains from the dark unlit corners. I often would wonder if my nightmares followed me there, hiding in the dark corners, waiting for me, calling for me. I did try only once to swallow my fear, to work up my courage to cross the room that was subjected to no sunlight. I only crossed half-way when I couldn’t tell if my eyes were still open or not, tears stumbled at my eyes, forming the thought of being left alone in the darkness of an unlit room in the back of my head.

The days always shallowed to an end. The feeling of gratitude and satisfaction was slowly being swept away with the wind. My heart began sinking to the bottom of that grass that felt so nice. In time, the car would drive from the red gated park and back to the mile long driveway of my grandmother’s.

I didn’t want to think of the thought of leaving, of the thought of returning home, without my mother, without my quiet safe place in stow behind me. But it was happening; when the days finally did wrap themselves under the clouds, and the sun had begun to set behind those mountainous hills.

“Please just five more minutes. Just a little longer.” I muttered to my mother, choking back tears as she left me sitting by myself.

I sat on the front steps of my grandmother’s, faint reminders of the day wrapping between my fingers.

Faint memories playing in the back of my head. I would turn and walk back into the house, closing the front door quietly so as not to stir my nightmare that huddled in my room. Eventually, I would slowly creep down the wooden stairs to the basement and open my bedroom door. I never bothered to turn the lights on, but instead I would run to my bed and throw myself under the covers, waiting for my nightmare to creep out of the wall, dragging me into its arms, holding me, sometimes just like God did.

Maddie Katarski The Fear of Queer, creative nonfiction Princess Leia is my first celebrity crush. I sit on the shag carpets of my old, red-bricked home as my mom popped a VHS of Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope into the player. I listen to the pitter-patter sounds of popcorn bursting in the microwave. While my parents sit on the couch, I stay on the ground, digging my nails into the carpet, waiting for the girl on the cover to cock her hip and ask Obi Wan Kenobi for help. When I’m listening to the girl speak, I don’t hear Obi Wan Kenobi. I only hear, “You’re my only hope”.

When my parents are sleeping, I pop the VHS back in and turn the television’s volume down enough that my parents can’t hear the words coming from the speakers but loud enough that I can still hear the raspy trickle of Carrie Fisher’s voice when she asks for help. I trace my finger against her cinnamon-bun hair. In this moment, my feelings are innocent. They are not lustful; they are not sinful.

In the same year that I internally discover my six-year-old undying love for Carrie Fisher, there are 242 reported cases of aggravated assault, 448 reported cases of simple assault, and five reported cases of murder against lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals. At six, I am young, ignorant to the abuses faced by lesbian, gay, and bisexual people. For now I will continue staring at Carrie, letting myself indulge in the tingly feelings that come with crushes.

My mom and I are alone in the car coming back from my Pap’s house. The roads are twisted here. In the dead of the night, the car’s lights are the only source of illumination. The trees that line the road twist up, and in my anxious, 12-year old-mind, their branches look as though they’re reaching into our car. During the day, their knotted cores hide squirrels and birds and bugs, but in the night, they twist into faces that grimace at me. They know I’m hiding something that not even I know is hidden yet. My mother’s face grows hollow in the slight dim of the lights coming from the car heading toward us. I bite my lip, feeling nervous guilt well up in my stomach, induced by the knotted faces of the trees and the conversation we just came back from with my Pap. All at once I open my mouth and utter words I have been long reciting in my head, just waiting for the right time for the syllables to bubble out.

“Sometimes I just wish I was gay to piss off Pap,” I say.

My mother’s hollow face doesn’t change. She stares straight into the empty road when she speaks.

“Well are you?” she asks.

“No,” I say.

It’s a compulsory response, something trained by a force that wants to beat any thought beyond heterosexuality so deep within me that I wince at the thought of being anything other than straight. I don’t think about what I’m saying. I just say it.

After Pavlov trained his dogs in 1897, he didn’t know it would offer any insight into psychology. He was a physiologist set on researching the digestive nature of dogs and the role of olfactive sensory in relation to drooling. In terms of classical conditioning, he started with meat powder to induce slobber in the dogs who smelled it. This is called the unconditioned stimulus because the dog doesn’t need to be trained to like the smell of food; dogs naturally like food.

Girls are my meat powder.

Next, he introduced the sound of a bell to call the dogs in. This is called the neutral stimulus because on it’s own, it doesn’t cause any drooling response in the dogs.

Questions like, “Well are you?” are my neutral stimulus.

But Pavlov started noticing something weird happening with his dogs: they would start drooling from the mere sound of the bell with no meat powder introduced—the conditioned response.

I noticed the same thing. When the thought of romantically liking girls is paired with the questioning, curt, impatient, accusatory tone of “Well are you?”, my body is conditioned to respond “No” only by hearing, “Well are you?”. I don’t even have to think about the social repercussions of liking girls. My body is trained to respond in the most acceptable, most normal way it knows.

I’m sitting next to my mother on a hard wooden pew. The smell of frankincense whisks through the room, exacerbated by the thick June air as Father Paul blesses the room. My entire extended family and I are here to celebrate the life of my grandmother who passed away from cancer. St. Mary’s Byzantine Church was the place she had attended the last few years of her life. My whole family had grown to know Father Paul, a stout man whose stomach always stretched passed his waist. His beard was always white while his hair was always youthful and brown. He wore moon-shaped glasses that made his eyes look as though they were reaching towards you.

We start with a hymn.

“Hosts of an-gels on high, give You glo-ry su-preme,” we all sing. It’s typical of Byzantine hymns to be sung in staccato-ed syllables, rising and falling rhythmically in a way that sounds both holy and cultish. Father Paul’s sermons are distinct in the same way: holy or cultish.

He starts by thanking the congregation. Apart from my family who is three generations removed from Poland, the rest of the congregation either wears veils that cover their faces or Babushkas, traditional headscarves worn by many Polish babcias, or grandmothers. Many of the babcias muttering Polish phrases under their breath as Father Paul leads us in Hail Mary. My grandmother was the only person in the family left that could speak Polish. I wish she were here so I could hear what they were saying.

At the head of the altar is a long, white table adorned with doily-like cloths and candles. Behind the table is a golden arch with a ghastly depiction of Jesus on the cross. Tiny marble tears fall down his smoothed out, hollow cheeks as Father Paul continues the sermon. He is the Mona Lisa; his eyes follow me wherever I look. At 13, I start to wonder if I’m the reason Jesus is crying.

“As many of you know, in this holy month that celebrates the birth of John the Baptist, your senators have let you and the whole world down,” Father Paul says.

“Last week, the Supreme Court decided that sodomy is legal in all 50 states,” he says. Father Paul pauses and lets the thick exhale of sodomy sink into the cracks of our lungs before he continues.

“They’ve decided that gay marriage is legal,” he says. “They will all go to hell.”

With the stained glass windows closed, the heat lingers. It dances around our feet, crawling up our legs. It blows up into our bowed heads as all the Polish babcias next to me utter “Amen”.

This sermon is not my Polish babcia. She would not have said “Amen” along with the others.

“I am scared for humanity,” Father Paul says. He blesses us again.

Behind the towering crucifix of Jesus, there is a fiery portrait of hell. In tide pools of lava, Hitler and Osama bin Laden are naked, floating down the stream and moaning in agony. Am I as bad as Hitler and Osama bin Laden?

My freshman year of high school became a renaissance. I lose 20 pounds over the summer between 8th grade and 9th grade, cut my hair down to a boy-length short, come to terms with my being, and I end my six year no-dating dry spell. In my freshman year I hold someone’s hand in a way that I never had before. And people stare at me in a way that I had never felt before.

In the hallways, exchanged whispered are magnified.

One day, a girl meets me in the hall to ask me a question:

“Are you dating Abby?” she asks. Abby is the name of the girl whose hand I hold.

“No,” I say. I run into my next classroom before she can interrogate me further.

My response is another compulsory one, it’s another conditioned response. After enduring years of newscasts worth of reports on violence against LGBT people, I decide it’s better to break Abby’s heart a bit than to risk dying.

The next day Abby and I still hold hands down the hallway, but now my palms are sweatier.

“Why are your hands so slick?” she asks.

“I’m not sure,” I reply. But I am lying. I know why my hands are slick. My hands are sweating as a response to our peers staring at our interlocked fingers: a conditioned response.

Abby drops me off at my biology class before she heads off to chorus. As she lets go of my hands, she tells me she loves me. I don’t say anything back because I am scared.

In April, Omar Mateen goes on a trip to Miami, two hours and six minutes away from Fort Piece, with his father. While they’re strolling on the boardwalk, two men, like any other, kiss. Omar’s father Seddique Mateen tells the FBI that his son looked “very angry” seeing gay men exchange affection.

Homophobia is a tricky thing not rooted in fury or religion but rather apprehension and tension. A study of 159 heterosexual men were exposed to depictions of male-on-male erotic films.

When neurobiologists scanned their brain, they found streams of neurons traveling along the brain’s anger highway, but what the neurobiologist later found out was that cognitive responses to homophobia are rooted in anxiety and fear rather than anger or sadness. Omar is scared.

In Fort Pierce, Florida, Omar Mateen is preparing his attack. He’s thumbing the trigger on his hand gun while his AR-15 is laid out on his lap. His wife, Noor Zahi Salman, brings him snacks while he flips through the channels. His three year old son plays with army trucks and plastic soldiers.

When I hold my girlfriend’s hand down the hall, we get stares. I’m uneasy, nervous, knowing what these kids might do to me. I’ve watched enough television, grown enough at this point to know that being a gay teen in rural Pennsylvania is akin to being covered in blood in a tank of sharks. We are vulnerable here. Exposed to the world and in the growing regime of Trump’s America, it is open season.

Later, in June, Omar Mateen will travel two hours from Fort Pierce to Orlando to erase 49 lives.

One kid in particular likes to follow my queer scent down the hallway. He spits words at me, stepping on the backs of my shoes to see me trip as he calls me things that sink into the fibers of my body so heavy that it’s hard to speak or breathe in those moments. Not only am I exposed. I’m unarmed.

But Omar Mateem isn’t. On June 12, 2016 at 12:00 in the morning he will drive towards the Pulse Nightclub. He will think about those gay men and how scared he was seeing them kiss. At 2:00 he will open fire on a police officer standing outside of Pulse. At 2:09 Pulse will make a status update: “Everyone get out of Pulse and keep running.” He will open fire on an entire room full of Latnix LGBT people. He will kill 49 and injure 53. He will commit the worst mass shooting in recent U.S. history.

After two shootouts with the police and a plead towards the U.S. to stop bombing his home country of Afghanistan, Omar Mateem will be shot dead.

It seems like the whole world cries that night.

As my mom watches the report, I can hear her quieted sobs. Numbers scroll across the T.V.: 49 dead, 53 injured. She cries because she realizes her best friend, my uncle, could have been one of those 49. She cries because she realizes I, her daughter, could have been one of those 49. She’s aware, and she’s scared.

But I’m not thinking about myself in this moment. I’m thinking about Omar Mateen. When they flash his face on the television that night I cry because I am angry. I cry that night because I am

scared. I am still scared.

Apollo Landis Wasteland Garden, fiction

It’s the heavy weight of freshly dampened sand and silt that resuscitates me, the grit grinding between my teeth and the earthy taste in my mouth. I stretch and stretch, hand reaching for the warmth of life, the warmth of the sun, the warmth of my family, because it’s cold and all my hollows are filled with the chilly weight, and eventually my hand bursts from it all with a gritty, winded howl.

Slowly but surely, my aching hands and too-tight skin finds their way back to the surface, my hair in crispy braids. I claw my way out of a shallow grave from under a rock my family used as a trail marker, the desert roses I carved into the clay as a child still there. The sky cries because it mourns for me, mourns for the loss my family has suffered. I’m on my knees, trying to cough out the cactus roots that have replaced the hollow space in my veins, and all that comes out of my dried paper lungs is gypsum dust.

My family said they’d meet me before the pink moon but right now there is no moon at all, nothing but miserable clouds and waterlogged stars peeking through, to let me know they haven’t given up on me yet. I’m not sure how long it’s been, I can’t read the stars under this sky anymore, my memory is faded like windswept clay, and this world feels immense and empty.

I don’t know how my family will find me, when my voice is mineral, and my muscle has already been relinquished to the cacti who blossomed protectively about me, whose roots became the veins buried in my crackling arid skin. I don’t know where my family is, or if they’re alright or long gone, I don’t know if my tribe even remembers my name. I don’t remember it.

All I know to do is to pray and yield to the earth. My time is past, either way. Slowly, yet all at once, I come to terms with this. I won’t ever be face to face with my family again, but that doesn’t mean I won’t see them, and it doesn’t mean I can’t make sure they’ll be able to see me. I pray with what little being I still have, all of it, for the rain to pour. The world hears, and feels my prayer, and the first trickle quickly becomes torrential.

With the sand and silt a peculiar quicksand sludge, I become one with the cacti, and the rest of the desert again, as I am reclaimed into my shallow grave. With all the will my fading spirit can muster, I spread my roots throughout desert silt, germinating as much life as I could, intertwining myself with saguaros and yuccas, primroses and poppies alike.

With all the life I left, I invite, no, persuade the desert to live. So my family can see me again.

So I can see them. Using all my roots…I collected the bones of my beloveds… and made them alive again with me, before the rain can wash them away.

Mohammed Laswad THE FUTURE OF ALIBABA CORPORATIONS, playwriting CHARATERS: Jack -45 Josephine-17 Sun Yi-44 Leah—17 School Secretary-53 SETTING: House/School JACK I’m home.

JOSEPHINE Did you know that fish can drown in water? If there isn’t enough oxygen for them then they die.

Why do you know that?

I’m watching this documentary.

(shakes his head)

JACK JOSEPHINE JACK

Why don’t you go play outside? Hang out with people not the TV. I have Socrates.

Socrates is a fish.

JOSEPHINE JACK JOSPEHINE

And?

JACK At his point, I don’t care. Just keep up with the A’s. Did you get your ACT scores back?

(Josephine throws it as him.)

I got a 36.

Why not 37?

The highest is 36.

JOSEPHINE JACK JOSEPHINE

JACK You really are the daughter of Jack Ma, most successful man in Asia.

Stop talking in 3rd person.

JOSEPHINE

JACK No, I must. My daughter will take over my business.

Keep dreaming.

JOSEPHINE

It is night and Josephine is asleep. Jack is awake on his bed talking to his friend on the phone.

JACK You won’t believe it Sun Yi! Actually you should believe it. My daughter got a 636 on ACT. Very successful person in the future.

Do you mean 36?

Believe me it’s 636.

SUN YI JACK

SUN YI Jack, all you do is add a 600 to everything that has to do with numbers. You’ll say that your water bill is is $800 when it’s only $200. You said your shoes cost $600, but you just took them off your brother.

JACK Sun Yi, I’m gonna fire you if you keep saying that.

No you won’t because I’m all you got buddy.

Yeah, you’re right.

SUN YI JACK

SUN YI Does your daughter do anything active? Clubs? Sports?

JACK Of course not. I don’t want her near those 3.0 GPA imbeciles!

How do you know they’re 3.0 GPA imbeciles?

SUN YI

JACK I have those eyes Sun Yi. The eyes that go beyond the realms of image. I have the eyes to see the person’s GPA. Is that so? What was my GPA?

SUN YI

Sorry, you’re GPA was pretty shit in high school.

What was it?

JACK

SUN YI JACK

3.912 You call that shit?

SUN YI JACK Mine was 5.0

SUN YI More importantly, your daughter. She needs to socialize Jack. Especially if you want her to take over the business.

JACK(hypocritical) Josephine already has Socrates, she socializes with him a lot.

SUN YI Socrates is a fish. Why does your daughter talk to a fish?

JACK Yeah, you’re right. I’ll do something about it. Goodnight.

(Jack hangs up.)

It is the next morning. Josephine is making her breakfast and Jack walks into the kitchen.

Good morning.

Good morning.

JACK JOSPEHINE

You looking forward to today?

Not really.

Whatcha making?

An omelet.

JACK JOSEPHINE JACK JOESPHINE

JACK That’s cool. Anyway, I really want you to start socializing with more people, especially if your already a Junior.

So I can take over the business?

What do you mean?

Never mind, I have to go.

What about the omelet?

JOSEPHINE JACK(shocked) JOESPHINE JACK JOSEPHINE You can have it.

Josephine leaves to go to school. Jack picks up his phone.

JACK Hey Sun Yi, I need you take over for me today. Thanks.

(Jack drives to Josephine’s school. He enters the school.)

JACK Excuse me, I have a daughter named Josephine and I was wondering her lunch time is?

SCHOOL SECRETARY Let’s see… Josephine Ma has lunch at 11:10.

Thank you.

JACK

(Jack waits out in the lobby until the bell rings for lunch. The bell rings for lunch. Jack runs and hides by the cafeteria.)

JACK

Where is she?

(Jack takes another look.)

JACK(pointing)

There she is. By herself?

(A girl approaches Josephine.)

JACK Who is that garbage? 3.1 GPA!!!! Red alert. Red alert.

(Switches to Josephine and that girl.)

JOSPEHINE(smiling) Anything else Leah?

Thanks, I’m fine.

LEAH(nervous)

(Switches back to Jack.)

She usually doesn’t smile like that.

JACK

Lunch is over and everyone is walking out the cafeteria. Jack pulls in Leah before Josephine sees him.

3.1, how’s it going?

JACK(awkward)

LEAH(surprised) That’s just not my name. Why is Jack Ma at my school?

Shhhhh. I wanted to talk to you.

Does Josephine know you’re here?

JACK(whispering) LEAH

JACK That doesn’t matter. I want you to befriend my daughter.

(Leah’s eyes become wide-open.)

Jo..Jos..Josephine’s friend? Me?

LEAH(nervous)

I mean you two seem friendly already.

JACK

(Jack gives Leah a creepy stare.)

Why are you looking at me like that?

LEAH

JACK Your ACT score is 23. Damn, I really shouldn’t ask you to be my daughter’s friend.

LEAH(confused)

How did you…

JACK My daughter needs more friends. I need here to socialize more so that she can take over Alibaba.

LEAH

Why me though?

JACK You’re grades, well they’re shit, but I believe that you can be an exception.

(Short period of silence.)

LEAH I’m flattered, but…

JACK But what. Alibaba’s future is all in your hands. Imagine a world where me and Josephine are living on the streets. Think about it.

It’s just that I can’t.

Ms. 3.1…

It’s Leah.

That doesn’t matter right now.

Mr. Jack Ma, you just don’t understand.

What don’t I understand?

LEAH JACK LEAH JACK LEAH JACK

(Josephine comes up behind Jack and Leah points behind Jack.)

JOSEPHINE She only came to me for Physics help dad. Nothing more.

JACK(surprised) Jo you need to make more friends for our future.

LEAH(scared)

Josephine I’m sorry! I’ll Leave!!

(LEAH tries to run away, but JOSEPHINE grabs her by the neck.)

JOSPEHINE You didn’t plan to keep this a secret from me, right?

LEAH Of course not. Just let me go. I won’t ask for Physics help anymore.

any friends?

JOSEPHINE Why don’t you tell my old man why I don’t have JACK

Josephine let go of her.

LEAH(choking) Because Josephine is absolute. All others are a waste of her time.

JACK You were just smiling with her not even five minutes ago.

That smile was a smirk of condescendence.

JOSEPHINE

(Josephine lets go of Leah. Leah runs away.)

JACK Josephine, if you are to become owner of Alibaba Corporations then you must interact with society!

JOSEPHINE You know what? Screw Alibaba. That’s all you ever talk about.

JACK Alibaba is the reason we’re not on the streets right now! At least have a little appreciation for it!

JOSEPHINE I’m leaving.

(Jack snatches the car keys out of his pocket and leaves the school in a hurry.)

It’s late afternoon. Jack is in the living room of their house and Josephine just walks in.

I’m home.

JOSEPHINE JACK

Alibaba’s future is pending.

I guess Alibaba’s future is screwed.

JOSEPHINE

JACK(to himself) Where did I go wrong? Why can’t she make friends.

Maybe I don’t want friends.

JOSEPHINE JACK

Why not?

They only slow you down.

JOSEPHINE

What about that Leah girl? She seems cool?

She’s my servant.

JACK

JOSEPHINE JACK

You’re what?

JOSEPHINE(creepy) Do you think I could be friends with those lowlife idiots? Especially that idiot girl. No one disobeys me. For I am absolute.

(Josephine slowly walks toward Jack.)

What is the meaning of this?

JACK

JOSEPHINE Don’t you ever come near me again. Is that understood?

(Jack squints.)

Holy shit, her IQ is off the charts!

JACK JOSEPHINE

Is that understood?

JACK(scared)

It’s over 200!

(Jack runs out of the house fear.)

That should knock off his Alibaba madness.

JOSEPHINE

(LENA enters the house.)

LENA(giggling)

He was peeing his pants!

JOSEPHINE(giggling) I know!

LEAH Wow, so this is Jack Ma’s house? Alibaba is legit!

JOSEPHINE Please don’t encourage him. Let me show you around.

LEAH

I think I’m gonna get lost in this place.

It’s fine. Let me show you my fish Socrates.

JOSEPHINE

LEAH You named him after a Greek guy who probably never existed?

JOSEPHINE

It’s a nice name.

(Switches to Jack)

LEAH(laughing) Yeah, for an Einstein.

Someone help me.

(Picks up phone and calls SUN YI.)

JACK

SUN YI What do you want? I’m busy doing your job while you’re stalking your daughter probably.

(Playing video games.)

JACK It’s Josephine, she’s gone crazy. Alibaba is over Sun Yi. Alibaba Corporations is over. We’re not gonna be the #1 internet shopping…

(SUN YI hangs up) JACK Hello…helloo….helllooooooo!!! My life is ruined!!

Katarina Mondor Burning, fiction

There once was a lonely boy who lived with his father. Their house was on the edge of town.

The boy longed to make friends, but his father wanted to keep him isolated. The boy thought his father was like the sea— suffocating.

“I don’t want you making friends, in case one of them should break your heart.”

The boy thought his father was being foolish. Friends are supposed to make you happy, why would they break your heart? His father said that many years before, a woman had broken his heart.

The old sea had been split in two. This was also the response he gave when the boy asked about his mother.

His father would, however, send him into town to pick up groceries once a week. When he went out, the father told him to be back in an hour, and not to talk to strangers.

But the boy would anyways. He would run into town and greet everyone he passed. He was a handsome boy and a good conversationalist, so most people were eager to talk to him. As it turns out, all the years of isolation had made him even friendlier.

One day at the market, the boy stopped to admire the flowers, when he heard the most beautiful laugh. A spark inside him ignited. His ears began burning. He looked up to see the prettiest girl he had ever laid eyes on. She had eyes like fire. He decided he had to go talk to her. As he approached the girl, his tongue was ablaze. He could barely force out the words to start a conversation. But once he started talking to her, he couldn’t stop. She was as interesting to talk to as she was to look at.

The boy knew he had to get home before his father began wondering where he was, but he told the girl he wanted to see her again. She said he could visit her that night.

The boy crept out of the house after his father was asleep and the tides were low. He ran as fast as possible. His legs burned like fire. When he got to the girl’s house, she beckoned him to her room through the window. He climbed a nearby tree and went inside.

They spent the whole night talking about their families and lives. At dawn, he shimmied back down the tree and ran home. This continued every night from then on.

His ears burned every time he heard her talk, and his heart was set ablaze whenever he thought of her. He couldn’t help but smile, even as he did chores. One day, his father confronted him, the tides rising.

“What are you so happy about?”

“I’m not.” The boy frowned.

“Did you stay up late last night? You look tired.” The boy shook his head. “Do you think I haven’t noticed you sneaking out every night?” The boy knew he was caught. But he continued lying anyways.

“I’ve never snuck out.”

“You are going to get yourself hurt. I make rules to protect you, and you disobey me! I’m only trying to help you. If you ever sneak out again, I’ll lock you away in this house forever. Where do you even go?”

“Nowhere! You have to believe me,” the boy shouted.

“I bet you made friends. I knew I shouldn’t have sent you to the market alone! Tell me, is it a girl?”

“You wouldn’t understand.” The boy turned away.

“I wouldn’t understand? You think I’ve never liked a girl before?”

The boy could hold his tongue no longer, it turned into flames in his mouth. “I don’t like her. I love her! She cares about me, in the ways you don’t! She is willing to go anywhere with me. I’ve been burning because of her. I have this flame on my chest because of her. I love her!”

With that, he stormed out of the house, lightning striking above him. He let the wind blow him to the girl’s room where she welcomed him. When he got there, he looked back to see his father following behind him, a tsunami. As his father began climbing the tree after him, the boy stared at the candles on the girl’s nightstand. He realized the only way for them to escape was to succumb to the fire. He took the bedsheets, wrapped them around himself and the girl, and lit the fabric on fire. Everything was silent, except the sound of the fire catching. The father watched as the girl and his son disappeared into the flame. After the sheets finished burning and the fire dissipated, there was no sign that the couple had been there at all. It seemed they had vanished into the flame.

The father walked home, tides receding. Ever since, he’s been lighting candles all around his house, hoping his lost son will emerge from one. Sometimes, if you look closely enough at a burning flame, you can still see the silhouettes of the boy running, the old sea lying at home, and the girl waiting for him in her window.

Jenna Moretti The Little Things, fiction Carol is finally home. She was put in the hospital for pneumonia, which I know she made up in her frilly mind. She’s a healthy 78-year-old who attends every town hall meeting, drawn to that building like a leech to skin, but she makes good tea. She usually brings a pitcher full of Black Rose tea as a way to play the big-shots.

Precious trinkets are displayed like jewels. I’m at her kitchen counter, teacup in hand, shortbread cookies laid out. She asks if I’d like more tea. I say no. She turns anyway reaching for the kettle. I admire how glossy the bone china is.

Carol turns to me, plated sandwich in hand, “Did I take your teacup, my dear?” I release a friendly laugh. She sets down a grilled cheese.

Carol glances in the kitchen sink. “Seems like I’ve lost it again, Beatrice. Excuse me.” I push my purse between my feet, burying the teacup deeper. She goes down the hallway. The kitchen is rimmed with salt and pepper shakers. Her favorite being the sheep. The most valuable being two cats created by someone she met in Switzerland. It’s said she cheated on her husband with him. She constantly denies it. I tuck the cat shakers into my bag.

Carol shuffles into the kitchen, and I make my exit speech. As the door closes, I notice her Christmas wreath. My fingers unhook it from the door. It’ll be perfect for my mother.

Kyla Parker Just Mary, playwriting CHARACTER LIST: AERIN: a fifteen year old girl. She is Harper’s older sister, and she’s very protective of Harper. Fiery personality, which comes in handy at times, but still slightly introverted. She isn’t very fond of the idea of marriage.

HARPER: a thirteen year old girl. She’s Aerin’s younger sister, and she is a very outgoing girl. She has been planning her wedding since the time she could write.

EMMA: a fifteen year old girl. She is Aerin’s best friend and acts like a second big sister to Harper.

Emma is a completely introverted person who never speaks up for herself. She secretly hopes to one day be married to Finn, a guy at school who she is completely in love with.

MARY: the spirit of Bloody Mary. She’s very tired of people conjuring her up just for her to tell them about their husbands. She is fed up, angry, and sassy as hell.

UNKNOWN HUSBAND: Harper’s husband-to-be.

SKELETON: The physical embodiment of the notion that Aerin will die before she gets married.

FINN: The boy from school that Emma is in love with.

GHOUL: An evil spirit.

SCENE 1 (The stage is split down the middle. The right side is the bedroom and the left side is the bathroom. Both are connected by a doorway. The “mirror” in the bathroom is just a square hole in the wall so that the characters can see each other, but the audience gets the illusion that the characters are looking into a mirror. The three girls are sitting on AERIN’s bed talking amongst themselves when the lights come up on the bedroom. There is a candle burning on a small table next to AERIN’s bed.)

What movie should we watch tonight?

AERIN

EMMA What about The Nightmare Before Christmas? It’ll get us in the Halloween spirit. Did you know that’s Finn’s favorite movie?

AERIN

Well you’ve only told me a million times.

Who’s Finn?

Just the boy that Emma’s in loooooove with.

HARPER AERIN

EMMA I mean, yeah…so, The Nightmare Before Christmas?

I wanna watch a scary movie!

Oooh let’s do that!

Aerin you know I hate scary movies.

HARPER AERIN EMMA

HARPER What about The Legend of Bloody Mary? That’s like a really good one.

I don’t know…

I LOVE that movie!

Oooh or we could just do it.

Do what?

Let’s summon Bloody Mary.

WHAT? No. Why would we do that?

How does it work?

EMMA AERIN HARPER EMMA HARPER EMMA AERIN

HARPER So, you go into the bathroom with a candle, and you have to leave the lights like completely off. Then you say her name three times in the mirror so that she’ll appear, and then when she does, she shows you the face of your future husband.

EMMA

That doesn’t sound so bad I guess.

HARPER It’s either that or she shows you a skull, which means you DIE before you get married.

EMMA

Oh… Well that’s boring.

AERIN

HARPER How is a spirit telling you who you’ll get married to boring?

I mean, marriage itself is kinda boring so—

AERIN

HARPER It is not! It’s the most exciting thing in the world. Aerin, you know I’ve been planning mine for forever. I have just about all the details worked out, except the husband part.

AERIN I know, I know. Why’s she called Bloody Mary anyways? Why not something like…I don’t know, Scary Mary? It even rhymes!

HARPER How scared would you be of someone named Scary Mary? That sounds like a children’s cartoon character. She’s called Bloody Mary for a reason.

And that reason is?

AERIN

HARPER Well there are a lot of different theories, but the biggest one is that her original name was Mary Tudor.

She was the daughter of Henry the eighth, and when he died, her little brother became the king, and then when he died, Mary got to be queen. She wanted England to be like entirely Catholic so she had anyone who wouldn’t become Catholic burned at the stake. She killed like over two hundred people that way.

EMMA

Woah.

Heavy.

AERIN

(Beat.)

Alright I’m down.

HARPER

Yay! Okay I can go first.

(HARPER leaps off the bed and grabs the candle from AERIN’s nightstand. She crosses to the bathroom with AERIN and EMMA following behind. When she reaches the door, she turns to them.)

HARPER You guys can’t come in. We gotta do it one by one.

Harper, I don’t know if this is such a good idea.

EMMA

AERIN Maybe Emma’s right Harper. Or maybe I should go in with you.

HARPER Aerin, just because you’re my big sister doesn’t mean you need to protect me all the time. I got this.

(HARPER goes into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her. The lights dim on the bedroom, with AERIN and EMMA sitting in front of the door, facing it. Soft and dim yellow light comes up on the bathroom. Everything that takes place in the bathroom is seen by the audience from the side, so we see the full bodies of both HARPER and MARY as they converse through the “mirror”. HARPER puts the candle on a shelf and begins chanting.)

Bloody Mary…Bloody Mary…Bloody Mary…

HARPER

(GHOUL dressed in a black hood and robe enters from stage left, standing on the exact opposite side of the mirror from HARPER. When he speaks, his voice sounds distorted and ghostly.

HARPER looks stunned.)

Bloody Mary?

HARPER(CONT’D)

GHOUL NO CHILD! I’M MUCH MORE FRIGHTENING THAN THAT MARY WILL EVER BE! NOW, BOW DOWN TO ME AND SUBMIT YOUR SOUL! Uhhh…

NOW! BEFORE I—

HARPER GHOUL

(MARY cuts him off, running in from stage left and tackling him to the ground. HARPER gasps and leans closer to the mirror. MARY continues to beat up GHOUL, until he whimpers and runs off stage.)

MARY

Whew! Glad I got rid of him. And kid, really I prefer to just be called “Mary”. All the talk about me being bloody is EXTRA misleading.

Oh my god it really worked. Who was that?

HARPER

MARY Of course it worked! That was just some ghoul. Every once and awhile one of them gets bored, escapes from the underworld, and tries to take some poor kid’s soul. Now, let’s get this over with already. Bada bing bada boom, here’s your husband.

(MARY makes gun motions with her fingers, pointing them at the mirror. UNKNOWN HUSBAND walks across the stage. HARPER and MARY do not acknowledge his presence. He has conventional good looks and is wearing a blue suit. He pauses center stage, puts his hands on his hips, and poses for one second, then continues walking across and off the stage. HARPER looks excited, and then unenthusiastic.)

Oh, who is he?

HARPER

MARY Hell if I know. You’re the one who’s gonna marry him someday.

Well this is underwhelming…

HARPER

MARY Well of course you don’t recognize him! What, did you think you’d already met your future husband?

You’re, what, twelve?

HARPER Thirteen. I just have been planning my wedding since forever and one of the last details I needed was the husband. I guess I just thought this’d be more exciting.

MARY Well, sorry to bum ya out kid, but I gotta run. I’m supposed to have a drink with the Blair Witch tonight.

HARPER Wait! What color scheme do you like better, grays and blues or purples and black?

MARY Oh honey, for a wedding? Go with grays and blues. Purples and blacks would just be a wreck.

HARPER Okay. And one more thing, I’m really into high-low dresses for the bridesmaids, but what do you think?

MARY Absolutely not. I’d go with floor length if I were you.

HARPER Alright then. My whole wedding is planned to the second. Thanks for the help, and the husband I guess.

Yep, you’re welcome. No problem. Bye now!

MARY

(MARY walks offstage. Lights go down on bathroom as they come up on bedroom. HARPER enters the bedroom looking accomplished, leaving the candle burning in the bathroom. AERIN and EMMA stand up.)

Did it work?

EMMA

HARPER Of course it worked! What, did you think I was lying?

It didn’t work. You’re so full of it.

AERIN

HARPER Nuh-uh! It did too work! I swear! She helped me finalize the details of my future wedding. Oh and get this, an evil ghoul showed up and Bl—I mean Mary freaking fought him off!

AERIN I don’t believe that for a second! If she actually appeared, then who’s your future husband?

HARPER Well, I don’t know! You just get a face, not a name. It was some guy I haven’t met yet.

That’s bull!

Why don’t you go find out for yourself?

You know what? I will.

AERIN HARPER AERIN

(AERIN stomps off to the bathroom. As she’s crossing through the door, lights change. AERIN stands in front of the mirror and begins chanting.)

Bloody Mary…Bloody Mary…Bloody Mary…

AERIN

(MARY enters just as she did the first time. She seems to be increasingly more annoyed this time.)

MARY Is this the same bathroom I was just in? How many of you are there?

Holy crap, Harper wasn’t lying!

AERIN

MARY Yep. I’m real. Surprise. Now, bippity boppity here’s your boo.

(MARY does a twirling motion with her hand, then gestures towards the mirror. SKELETON walks across the stage. It is a man in all black with a skeleton mask on. He pauses at center stage and stares into the audience for a quick second, then continues off stage. AERIN and MARY never acknowledge his presence.)

MARY (CONT’D) Oh god dear I’m so sorry. Well, I guess that’s life. Gotta get back to the bar now, bye!

Wait!

What?

It’s a skull.

It is indeed.

AERIN MARY AERIN MARY

AERIN And the skull just means I die before I get married right? Not, like, that I’m gonna die anytime soon?

Well…yeah I guess you’re right about that.

MARY

AERIN So theoretically I could live to be like ninety-three, I just won’t ever get married.

Yeah that’s right too.

This is perfect!

What?! So you’re not sad about this at all?

MARY AERIN

MARY

AERIN No! I never wanted to get married anyway! This is great!

MARY

Sure, sure. Can I go now? I got Bigfoot waiting on me at Denny’s. We met on Tinder. He seems like a cool dude.

Yeah sure go for it. Thanks Bloody Mary!

It’s just Mary!!

AERIN MARY

(MARY exits. AERIN crosses over to the bedroom as the lights change.)

It worked, didn’t it? I’m not crazy right?

HARPER

AERIN Oh boy, did it work! Guys, I never have to get married.

What do you mean?

It was a skull. I’ll die before I get married.

EMMA AERIN

EMMA Oh my god Aerin no! Why aren’t you, like, crying right now?!

AERIN Chill, Emma! In theory, I could live until I’m like ninety-four and just never have gotten married. It doesn’t mean I’m gonna die right away.

Oh…yeah, I guess that’s true.

Your turn Emma.

EMMA HARPER

EMMA What? No, I can’t. I don’t care about my future husband or whatever, it’s fine. I’m fine.

AERIN Emma! She’s not even scary! It’s not like a ghost movie! You heard Harper. She helped her with her frickin’ wedding plans.

I don’t know guys. I really don’t—

EMMA

HARPER Just go! Besides, maybe you’ll see your beloved Finn in that mirror.

What? You really think so?

Hey, anything’s possible.

Yeah, maybe you’re right!

EMMA AERIN EMMA

(EMMA walks into the bathroom, closing the door behind her. Lights change.)

HARPER Oh, and she likes to be called Mary! Just Mary!

EMMA

Okay…uh…

(EMMA turns around to face the mirror, but stands as far away from it as possible. She begins chanting.)

EMMA (CONT’D) Bloody Mary…Bloody Mary…Bloody Mary…

(MARY enters just as she did before. She is even more annoyed than before.)

MARY Dear GOD how many people are in this house! I suppose you want to see your husband now too?

Um, yes please Blood—I mean Mary.

Well…I’m not gonna show you!

EMMA MARY

EMMA What? Uh, that’s fine, I guess. I’m sorry for bothering you. I’ll— MARY NO! Come on, girl, you at least gotta stand up for yourself!

Oh, I’m sorry.

EMMA

MARY And stop apologizing for things that aren’t your fault!

I’m sor—okay.

Good. You wanna see your husband now?

EMMA MARY

(EMMA steps closer to the mirror.)

EMMA

Yes.

Alakazam, there’s your man.

MARY

(MARY does a pointing motion with her hand towards the mirror. A wave of shock crosses EMMA’s face before she freezes. When she freezes. MARY walks to the center of the stage, does a wink and a twirl, and then walks back to where she was behind the mirror.)

What just happened?

Surprise! I’m your future husband—er—wife.

WHAT?

EMMA MARY EMMA

MARY Jeez kid, I’m just joking with ya! Here’s your real man.

(MARY gestures towards the mirror. FINN, a fifteen year old boy, walks across stage. He pauses at center stage, gives a quick smile to the audience, and then continues on. EMMA and MARY don’t acknowledge his presence. EMMA’s eyes light up as she moves closer to the mirror. She starts to jump up and down.)

Oh. My. God. I’m SO HAPPY! What? You know this kid?

EMMA MARY

EMMA That’s Finn! From school! He’s in my World History class and I am absolutely, one hundred percent in love with him.

MARY Oh, well, that’s great! Things are gonna work out for you.

EMMA They are! They absolutely are! Thank you so much Mary!

Anytime kid. We good?

MARY

So good.

EMMA

(MARY exits. EMMA crosses back to the bedroom. Lights change.)

What happened? What did she say?

I’m gonna marry FINN! Ooooh, Emma’s gonna have a boyfriend.

Maybe soon. We’ll see.

AERIN EMMA HARPER EMMA

(EMMA walks over to the bed with the other two girls following. They all sit together.)

HARPER Guys, I think we should ask her…the question.

Do you mean— THE question?

EMMA AERIN

HARPER Yeah. She seems to know a lot, I mean, she’s been around for hundreds of years. And if she can predict our husbands, maybe she can predict other parts of the future too.

AERIN Are you sure? What if she gives us an answer we don’t like? Isn’t it just better to wonder?

I’d rather know, even if it’s bad.

Yeah, I guess.

Okay. We’ll go in together.

EMMA AERIN HARPER

AERIN Wait, I thought you said we had to go in individually?

HARPER I mean, for the husband thing, yeah. Also it’s just more fun that way. More mysterious. But for this kind of thing I think a group is okay.

Whatever you say.

AERIN

(All three girls cross to the bathroom. Lights change. They stand in front of the mirror and begin to chant in unison.)

EMMA, AERIN, & HARPER Bloody Mary…Bloody Mary…Bloody Mary…

(MARY enters) MARY You three? Again? I already showed you your husbands…and the skull. What could you possibly want?

We sort of have a question for you.

HARPER

MARY Well spit it out so I can get back. I’m having a party and Dracula just showed up! Man is that guy wild.

Okay. We wanted to ask…uh…

Are The 1975 ever going to break up?

Oh my god, I’m not a Magic 8 Ball!

AERIN EMMA MARY

(MARY exits. The three girls look at each other and shrug. They cross back to the bedroom.

Blackout.)

THE END

Annie Ruzanic 24 Things Jackson Will Never Know, fiction 9. Your aunt hated you from the day she saw you. She puts a smile on anyways. She’s jealous that your mom had kids first. Your mother hasn’t explained to her that you were accidental.

10. When you were one, your dad left you in the bath for a few minutes while he had to take a phone call. You almost drowned, but he came back before anything major happened. From that point on, your mom bathed you.

11. The flower garden out back was originally a grave for the family cat, Nelly. Nelly died a few weeks after you were born. Your mom went to pet him one day and she noticed that he wasn’t purring.

Your father buried him with the gardenias.

12. Your room was your parents’ office. There spent countless nights of working overtime at home to make ends meet. When they found out your mom was pregnant, they moved their office into the basement. They wanted you to have your own room, even as an infant.

13. When you were five, your parents decided to have more kids. They didn’t have your little brother until you were ten. They didn’t realize that the age gap would be a big strain on the relationship with your brother.

14. Your baby brother was part of a set of twins. His twin sister was stillborn. Your parents will never tell you that.

15. When your brother went to his “special school,” he missed you more than anyone else in your family. He felt like he lost a part of himself that he couldn’t get back, no matter how many times he apologized for killing your pets.

16. Your old private high school is one of the biggest funders for an anti-LBGTQ+ organization.

17. The boy you liked in 9 grade did like you back. He lied when he said that he thought you were disgusting. He thought that you were amazing.

18. Your father doesn’t regret leaving. He doesn’t think he made a mistake by packing up and never coming back from the business trip he took to Los Angeles.

19. After the big fight, you mom’s boyfriend took her out to dinner and told her he loved her. He kept the lie up for years. He’s now at the point if he can’t tell where he loves her as a lie or for real.

20. The hamster that you had when you were fifteen was a replacement because your original hamster was accidentally killed by you little brother when pushed the hamster ball down the stairs when he was playing with it.

21. When you started to date Donny, your mother wanted to kick you out of the house. She didn’t approve of you. She prayed every night that the Lord would help you get through this “phase,” but when two years passed, she realized that the feelings weren’t going away.

22. The boy you liked in 9 grade was jealous when you and Donny started dating.

23. Your college applications to UCLA and Berkley were thrown out by your mother. She didn’t want you to leave home. When she told you that she did mail them and that everything would be alright, a little part of her died inside because she didn’t want to lie. At the same time, she didn’t want to see you leave.

24. Donny applied to Washington State University and got in. He didn’t tell you. He declined acceptance and went to Rocky Mountain College in Billings, a town thirty minutes away. He didn’t want to end the relationship, but he was sacrificing his happiness for you.

25. Your mom hid your acceptance letter from Colombia. When she read it, she knew she wasn’t going to let you go. She told you that they called her and said that there was a problem with the th

th

Grade 10

application and it would not be reviewed. When you started to cry, she realized she had dug herself a hole that she could never leave.

26. On your first post-high school road trip with Avery, she was going to tell you that her dad left when she was younger. She wanted to tell you about the way he died, the real way he died. Not the story that her mom told everyone.

27. When you were helping Donny pack his things for college, he found a note that you wrote him from your junior year of high school. He placed the piece of notebook paper in an old year book and packed it in one of the suitcases. When he got there, he framed the letter and kept it on his desk. He puts it away whenever you came up to visit. It was his little secret that he loved.

28. Your mom knew how unhappy you were at City College MSU. She told you it was a great school (lie) that she loved it there (also lie) and that you would love it (again, more lies). She never told you about how much she hated it because it was the only school she could afford without asking your father for money.

29. Avery was jealous that you were getting job offers after graduation. She was getting none.

30. Donny cheated on you. He tells himself it was a mistake, but he can’t bring himself to tell you, because it was with the boy from your 9 grade.

31. Your brother will never graduate from high school.

Donny doesn’t love you the way he used to. Whenever he looks at you, a rush of guilt comes over him. He knows he was wrong, but doesn’t fix it. th

Eva Boeglin Jean and Rinea’s Intergalactic Trip to the Milky Way, screenplay

Jean-Paul Morgenstern -- 16 Rinea “Wren” Renpi -- 16 Grant Wyatt -- 16 Jean’s father -- 38 Wren’s mother -- 42 INT. GLASS SHOP -- DAY JEAN and GRANT walk into the glass store and go to inspect the nearby drawers. GRANT pokes JEAN and gestures to WREN by the other side of the store. WREN is smiling to herself as she looks at glass figurines.

GRANT (signing)

Dude, she’s cute.

JEAN (signing)

Shut up, Grant.

WREN approaches the two, a smile on her face. She buys a small glass dove before walking out of the store with it. JEAN and GRANT stare after her before looking back at each other.

INT. CLASSROOM -- DAY A TEACHER stands by the front of the room next to WREN. “Welcome, Rinea!” is written in chalk on the chalkboard in large letters. The TEACHER signs to the class what he is saying.

TEACHER This is your new classmate, Rinea. She was homeschooled up until now, so please be nice.

WREN takes a seat at an empty desk next to JEAN. He stares at her, but looks away once she looks over at him. A student in the class suddenly drops a heavy textbook, and it falls to the floor with a loud THUD. WREN jerks her head over to the sound of the noise, and the whole class stares at her. She hangs her head and stares at her desk.

INT. LUNCHROOM -- DAY

JEAN and GRANT sit at a lunch table by themselves, looking over at WREN. They sign to each other about her, ignoring their lunches. The cafeteria is abnormally quiet, since none of the students speak verbally. The only sound is the clatter of lunch trays, the scooting of chairs, and the scrape of silverware.

GRANT

She can hear, right? Why is she at our school?

JEAN Hell if I know. But she doesn’t seem that bad; I don’t know why nobody’s sitting with her.

WREN is visible in the corner, sitting alone at a table. She has no lunch.

GRANT

Will you quit staring? She’s gonna think you’re weird!

JEAN hesitates for a second, indecision written all over his face. After a moment, he signals to GRANT. JEAN

I think we should sit with her.

GRANT

Are you crazy?! You don’t even know her.

JEAN stands up from the table and walks over to WREN, carrying his lunch with him. After a moment, GRANT follows awkwardly. The two sit down at the table, but WREN doesn’t look up. She’s reading a book, but the cover isn’t visible. JEAN and GRANT look at each other, unsure of what to do. Finally, JEAN taps WREN’s arm. She looks up at them, her gaze almost intimidating. JEAN signs slowly, his hands twitchy with anxiety.

JEAN

Hi, I’m Jean.

WREN

Hello, my name is Wren. Wren Renpi.

WREN is signing too, and seems fluent in sign language. GRANT and JEAN seem startled at first, but quickly recover.

GRANT

And I’m Grant. Are you from around here?

WREN nods her head.

WREN

I was homeschooled for a bit, but I’m from Pittsburgh, yes.

JEAN

Oh, that’s cool.

GRANT

You know this is a school for the deaf, right?

JEAN slaps GRANT’s arm lightly, scolding his friend for the intrusive question. WREN scowls before standing up and walking away. Her book is forgotten on the table. Curiously, JEAN flips it shut and reads the title: ‘Night on the Galactic Railroad.’ He swats the back of GRANT’s head, but not too hard.

GRANT shoots him a look like, “What did I do?” and JEAN rolls his eyes.

INT. ART ROOM -- AFTER SCHOOL JEAN sits at a canvass, looking miserable. On the canvass, a red cat-like creature with a formal outfit is painted. After a moment, he tries to draw a blue cat. But after painting the basic shape, he shakes his head and scribbles over it with black paint. GRANT walks in, completely oblivious to his friend’s poor mood. He rests a hand against JEAN’s shoulder and looks at the canvass. The two sign back and forth.

GRANT

Hmm, looking good. Why’d you scribble all over it?

JEAN

You wouldn’t understand.

GRANT

You wanna come to D&D club with me?

JEAN shakes his head.

JEAN

Go on without me. I have stuff to work on.

GRANT shrugs.

GRANT

Suit yourself.

He walks away. Once he’s at the door, WREN walks past, bumping into him. She quickly bows her head before scurrying past and approaching JEAN. She politely taps his arm to alert him of her presence.

WREN

Hi there.

JEAN

Um, hello. Is there an issue?

WREN

Have you seen my book? I left it at the lunch table earlier.

JEAN digs in his backpack on the floor for a moment before pulling out the book. He hands it to WREN, and she looks relieved. After a moment, he also smiles.

JEAN

Is that what you’re looking for?

WREN smiles back at him, the book gripped in her arms securely. Tucking it under her arm, she signs back at him.

WREN

Yeah, thanks.

She pauses and looks at his painting.

What’s that?

JEAN rips the paper down quickly before crumpling it into a ball. He gets up and throws it in the trash before coming back.

JEAN

It was nothing. Just some dumb doodling.

WREN shoots him a curious look, but doesn’t press the issue. Instead, she sits next to him silently, earbuds in her ears. JEAN watches her with a resigned curiosity. After several moments, he pokes her arm and signs to her.

What’s it like listening to music?

WREN

It’s pretty nice, I guess. I don’t know, it’s hard to explain.

JEAN

Oh…. I wish I could listen to music.

WREN

You can.

JEAN

No I can’t; I’m deaf, remember?

WREN smiles and turns the volume up on her phone as loud as it can go. Taking the earbuds out, she places them in JEAN’s ears. He sits there silently, his eyes narrowed in concentration. After several moments, the two smile at each other.

WREN

Can’t you feel it? The thrum of the base?

JEAN Is that what it is? I can’t really hear it per say, but I feel it. It like vibrates my skin. It’s pretty neat, actually.

WREN

Yeah, it’s the base. When I turn it up like that, you can feel it thrumming through you. Pretty cool, right?

JEAN nods, and the two sit there. After another few seconds, JEAN takes the earbuds out and hands them back to WREN. JEAN I don’t mean to be rude, but why do you go here? I’m pretty sure you can hear.

WREN I’m mute. When I was really little, I got some kind of cancer in my throat. Then I got a complete laryngectomy. Haven’t been able to speak a word since.

JEAN

That’s terrible!

WREN

Better mute than deaf.

She puts her hand to her mouth and chuckles in what could only be a silent laugh.

But yeah, I communicate by signing. Might as well be surrounded by people who know it too.

JEAN looks down at his watch and raises his eyebrows. He puts his bag around his shoulder before looking over at WREN and signing an apology.

JEAN I’m sorry, I have to head home. I’ll see you at school tomorrow.

WREN smiles as she watches JEAN walk out of the room, before looking back at the empty canvas.

INT. JEAN’S HOUSE -- AFTER SCHOOL The moment JEAN walks in, JEAN’S FATHER angrily shoves a chemistry test back at him. A big 25% is written across it in red ink.

JEAN’S FATHER (signing)

What is this?!

JEAN

It’s my test…?

JEAN’S FATHER What have I told you about this?! You need to get better grades!

JEAN

But, Dad, Mrs. S. is impossible to talk to! She’s such a --

JEAN’S FATHER I’m not hearing any excuses! It’s because you were spending all your time drawing instead of studying, right?!

After a moment, JEAN’S FATHER looks away before looking back at his son. His angry mood has dissipated, replaced with a calm sadness.

It’s a numbers game, Jean. It doesn’t matter how good you are, it just matters how lucky. I don’t want to see you wasting your life away hoping for a big break that might never happen. Go do something else for a living; artists are washouts. Now go to your room and do your homework.

JEAN takes the test upstairs, his face unreadable.

INT. JEAN’S MOM’S ROOM -- AFTER SCHOOL JEAN goes quickly through the door, sketchbook in hand. He grabs a pair of earbuds off the counter before walking out.

INT. JEAN’S ROOM -- AFTER SCHOOL JEAN enters his room, and sits on the edge of the bed. He stares at his sketchbook, before grimacing and throwing it across the room. He plugs the earbuds in and turns the volume all the way up, listening to a song with heavy bass. After several seconds of listening to the music, he gets up and grabs the sketchbook before returning to his bed. He flips it open, grabs a pencil off the stand by his bed, and begins to sketch the figure of a girl. It’s only a little bit done before he slams it shut in frustration and tosses it aside. He flips onto his back and rests his arm against his forehead while looking up at the ceiling despondently.

FADE OUT INT. ART ROOM -- DAY JEAN, WREN, and GRANT are all sitting at a table, sketching flowers in front of them. JEAN’s flower, a sunflower, looks exquisitely realistic. WREN’s looks about average, and GRANT’s is little more than a 5-year-old’s scribble. The ART TEACHER walks around the table, looking over at their sketches. He taps JEAN’s shoulder and signs at the boy.

ART TEACHER

Well done.

JEAN dips his head and continues on with his work. After a moment, GRANT taps him on the shoulder. JEAN looks over at GRANT. GRANT (signing)

How’d you get yours to look so nice? Tell me your secret, man!

JEAN shakes his head and signs back.

JEAN

I don’t know. I just draw it, I guess.

GRANT rolls his eyes and gets back to his poor drawing. JEAN flashes a quick look at WREN when he thinks she’s not looking. The sketchbook from earlier is by his side, neatly closed and unmarked on the cover so it looks inconspicuous. GRANT notices the sketchbook, and after looking up at JEAN, grabs it and flips it open to a random page. JEAN sees what GRANT is doing and tries to grab it back.

GRANT throws it on the table, and WREN can see it clearly. The sketch is of a little girl with a bob cut, white dress, and big, black rain boots. To the girl’s right, a tall, black creature wearing a tailcoat and ascot stands looking down at her. WREN looks back up at JEAN. WREN (signing)

What’s this? It looks really cool.

JEAN snatches the sketchbook off the table and quickly puts it in his bag before signing back to her.

JEAN It’s nothing. Just something from this book series I like to read.

WREN

I love a good book! Tell me about it.

JEAN Well, it’s about this girl who was abandoned, and this strange creature that takes care of her. She calls him, “Teacher.” But he can’t touch her, because he’s cursed, and yeah. I dunno. It’s pretty cool.

The book is illustrated, you know. It’s sorta like a comic book.

WREN Maybe you should try drawing one, then. I’m sure you’d be great at it.

JEAN shakes his head.

JEAN I’m not that good at art. Besides, only washouts do art for a living.

WREN

Who told you that?

JEAN

My dad. People. Besides, I’m deaf.

WREN

Being deaf has nothing to do with -JEAN

Just leave it, okay? I need to get back to my flower.

The ART TEACHER walks by, smiling at JEAN and grimacing at GRANT’s piece. GRANT ignores him and continues to draw, though the sketch is not improving. In fact, it looks worse. The moment the

ART TEACHER leaves, WREN taps JEAN’s arm.

WREN

You should come to my house after school today.

JEAN

Why? WREN There’s a really nice art gallery up the street from me. We should go.

JEAN Look, art’s just a hobby. Don’t go making a big deal about it, okay?

WREN fixes him with a pouty look. After several seconds, he sighs.

All right, I’ll go.

WREN smiles before looking down at her mediocre sketch. After a few moments, JEAN looks down at his flower and smiles as well.

INT. BUS -- AFTER SCHOOL WREN and JEAN are sitting next to each other on the bus. Both have earbuds in and are sitting, staring into space. WREN looks over at JEAN and taps his arm, causing him to look over at her.

WREN (signing) Why are you listening to music? Can you even feel the bass with the bus running?

JEAN smiles and signs back to her.

JEAN

Nobody tries to talk to you if you have earbuds in.

The two chuckle silently.

EXT. GALLERY FRONT -- AFTER SCHOOL JEAN and WREN stand by the door, waiting for it to open. Nobody else is there. The neighborhood is noticeably poor.

WREN (signing)

I have something I need to do. I’ll be back in a few minutes.

She walks off, leaving JEAN alone. He stands by the door, feeling self-conscious. Pulling out his sketchbook, he opens it to the page with the sketch of the girl from earlier. By now, it’s starting to become more pronounced. If you squint, it looks a little like WREN. Taking out a pencil, he hesitates, and it remains hovered over the paper. After a moment, he slowly writes, “Rinea ‘Wren’ Morgenstern”

on it before pausing. Flipping the page over, he begins to sketch a small bird -- a wren. A sudden hand rests on the notebook, and JEAN looks up to see WREN smiling down at him.

WREN (signing)

What’s that?

JEAN quickly puts the sketchbook away, his face bright red.

JEAN (signing)

Just a bird.

He grabs his backpack off the ground and the two walk inside.

EXT. FRONT OF WREN’S HOUSE -- Night JEAN and WREN are walking back from the gallery. They stop in front of WREN’s porch, and she smiles at him.

WREN (signing)

Thanks for coming with me.

JEAN gives an over-dramatic bow.

JEAN (signing) T’was nothing, milady.

WREN silently chuckles before signing back to him.

WREN

Well, I’d best go inside. Good night.

JEAN nods before turning away and walking away. The moment he is out of sight, WREN frowns.

Digging in the bushes, she pulls out a piece of official-looking paper. “FORECLOSURE AGREEMENT,” is written across it in big, red lettering. Walking up the steps to her house, she sticks it back onto the door before going inside.

INT. WREN’S KITCHEN -- NIGHT WREN walks into the kitchen, earbuds in her ears. WREN’S MOM is sitting across the room at a table. She is clearly exhausted, and her hair looks ratty. The kitchen is rather filthy. Seeing that her daughter is wearing earbuds, WREN’S MOM signs instead of speaks.

WREN’S MOM

Where were you, sweety?

WREN

(signing) I was at the gallery up the street.

WREN’S MOM I didn’t know you liked art.

WREN I don’t. I went with a boy at my school.

WREN’S MOM Honey, what have I said about dating boys? You know this isn’t a good time.

WREN

It wasn’t a date. He’s just a friend, Mom. WREN’S MOM Just don’t get too attached. There will be plenty of boys once we’re home with your grandparents.

WREN pauses.

WREN

This is home.

WREN’S MOM sighs loudly.

WREN’S MOM I know, I know, Sweety. But you understand that we can’t stay here -- not after your father left. I can’t keep up on payments.

WREN

I know….

WREN’S MOM

Just don’t get attached to that boy, all right?

WREN doesn’t reply. When she turns around, she looks like she’s about to cry as she walks away.

EXT. SCHOOLYARD -- DAY JEAN is sitting on the ground, looking at a cherry blossom tree. In his sketchbook, the tree is drawn with a boy and a girl around it. The boy is looking up at the girl while she looks down at him from the branch she’s sitting on. WREN taps his shoulder, and the two smile at each other. She pulls him to his feet and GRANT appears from outside the shot. The two jog over to him and sign excitedly while they walk.

INT. ICE CREAM SHOP -- DAY JEAN, WREN, and GRANT are all enjoying ice cream at a table. They each have cones: JEAN has vanilla, WREN has strawberry, and GRANT has chocolate. GRANT tries to sign something to JEAN, but ends up dropping his ice cream cone against the table. He looks distraught while JEAN and

WREN silently laugh.

INT. GLASS STORE -- DAY JEAN AND WREN enter the glass store, both looking cheerful. Immediately, WREN hurries over to the glass figurines and points to a figure of a swan. JEAN looks back at her, wearing a very wacky monocle that’s tinted purple. The two laugh.

INT. CLASSROOM -- DAY JEAN and WREN are sitting at their desks and get their tests handed back to them. JEAN massages his forehead while looking at the paper, but WREN grins triumphantly. She holds the test up and shows him the large, “98%” written in red pen. She looks over at JEAN’s test and sees a, “45%.” She flashes him a pitying look as he puts his head down on his desk.

INT. DANCE ROOM -- AFTER SCHOOL JEAN peeks in through the open door to see WREN inside. She’s alone, dancing by herself, a microphone in her hand. She pretends to sing in it, looking like she’s enjoying herself. She looks into the mirror as she pretends to sing, slowly growing sadder until she stops. She looks down at the floor and drops the microphone. JEAN looks at her sadly.

INT. CLASSROOM -- DAY JEAN is sitting at his desk when WREN slams a piece of paper on the surface. He looks up at her grinning face curiously.

JEAN (signing)

What is it?

WREN (signing, excited)

It’s a flyer for a local art contest. The winner gets to have their work shown to a professional artist who lives in France, and gets published in some art magazine. I think you should enter.

JEAN shakes his head and pushes the paper away.

JEAN Forget it. Art isn’t my thing. Some deaf kid can’t win that dumb competition anyway.

WREN

Yes, you can. Stop using your deafness as an excuse for things.

JEAN

I’m not doing that.

WREN Yes, you are. You should be happy that your passion isn’t hindered by your disability.

She pauses for a moment before continuing. Her hand movements are slower, as if she’s unsure she should be saying it.

When I was little, I wanted to be a singer. As you can see, that’s never going to happen. Be glad that you can do what you want, Jean. Not everyone has that pleasure.

JEAN

I just -WREN (angry) What are you afraid of?! Is it your family or something? You need to stop being so chickenshit and start following your dreams.

She storms off angrily before he can say anything. JEAN just looks at her from his desk, his expression unreadable.

INT. LUNCHROOM -- DAY

JEAN is getting his lunch with GRANT. He looks at WREN, but the moment they make eye contact, she looks away. JEAN looks back down at his lunch. GRANT is sitting with him, and he signs at his friend.

GRANT Hey, you want to come to my parents’ business party? I know it’ll be boring and all, but they said I could bring a friend or two, so….

JEAN seems distracted, still looking over at WREN. GRANT elbows his friend and signs again.

You should invite Wren.

JEAN

I can’t do that. She’s mad at me.

GRANT

Dude, just do it. I’m tired of you looking all mopey.

JEAN remains silent and looks over at where WREN is sitting once last time.

INT. CLASSROOM -- DAY JEAN looks over at WREN while they take a test. She doesn’t bother to look back at him and he exhales before going back to his test.

INT. HALLWAY -- DAY WREN is opening her locker. A small slip of paper slips out and flutters to the floor. WREN picks it up and reads it. “Do you want to go to Grant’s parents’ business party with me? It’s this friday. ~Jean.”

JEAN, seemingly having appeared out of nowhere, looks at her expectantly. After a few seconds of silence, WREN finally nods. JEAN smiles widely.

INT. BALLROOM -- NIGHT JEAN walks in awkwardly, dressed in a nice suit. GRANT greets him warmly, also dressed in a fancy tux.

GRANT (signing) Hey, man. Glad you made it.

JEAN smiles and signs back, starting to look at ease.

JEAN Yeah. Wren should be here soon, I think.

GRANT

You think? Don’t you have her number or something?

JEAN shakes his head.

JEAN

Actually, no. I kinda forgot about that.

Before GRANT can say anything, WREN taps JEAN’s shoulder. She is dressed in an ugly gown and looks frumpy. JEAN gapes at her. It is obviously a second-hand wedding dress, but JEAN is too thick-headed to see that.

WREN (signing)

What is it?

JEAN

You look…nice.

WREN smiles awkwardly.

WREN Thank you.

She grasps his hand and drags him deeper in, leaving GRANT by the door. He rolls his eyes before turning around and resuming his task of handing pamphlets to the guests. They take their seats at a dining table while people sit around.

INT. DINING ROOM TABLE -- NIGHT JEAN and WREN sit awkwardly as adults discuss really pointless things. JEAN looks over at WREN hopefully for a translation, but her eyes are glazed over in boredom. GRANT sits next to them, looking uncharacteristically put-out.

INT. DANCE HALL -- NIGHT

JEAN and WREN finally get the chance to talk. JEAN is awkwardly trying to find something to say.

JEAN I…just want to say you look really nice.

WREN

You said that already.

JEAN

O-oh, my bad.

The two stand awkwardly before the DJ puts on a slow song. The lights suddenly change, unnerving JEAN.

What’s happening?

WREN

They’re putting a slow song on.

They look for a way off the dance floor, but GRANT blocks their way. He smiles mischievously at JEAN before winking and walking away. At that point, there are too many people on the dance floor to leave. JEAN begins to panic, and looks at WREN with wide eyes.

JEAN

I don’t know how to dance! I can’t hear the music.

WREN smiles at him.

WREN

Here, I’ll teach you. Just follow my steps.

She grasps his hand and slowly, they dance together. At first, their steps are awkward, but JEAN gradually improves as the song goes on. The two of them are smiling as they pick up the pace a little, dancing together with ease. After several minutes, the song ends, and they seperate.

JEAN looks up at the skylight, seeing the starry sky stretched out above them.

JEAN (signing)

I can’t believe it’s so late! The stars sure look nice.

WREN (smiling)

You know, stars are made of iron.

JEAN

Everyone knows that. It’s a basic unit in chemistry.

WREN

But there’s also iron in your blood.

She runs her hand along his arm -- along the blue veins streaking through the skin.

Iron is forged in dying stars, but it’s in our blood. By continuation, we’re kinda made of stardust.

Whenever I get sad, I just remember that a little piece of the universe is inside me. If I’m made up of the same stuff as stars, then surely I’m not a waste of space, right?

JEAN Huh. Stars are really pretty. I wonder what they look like close up.

WREN

Then let’s go.

JEAN

What?

WREN

Let’s go to the Milky Way and see them for ourselves.

JEAN pauses for a moment before smiling and taking WREN’s hand.

JEAN

It’s a promise then. When we’re older, I mean.

The two begin to dance once more, and the camera tilts upwards to show the stars gleaming above.

FADE OUT INT. BUS -- NIGHT JEAN and WREN are sitting next to each other, both wearing their fancy clothes from the party. The bus is almost deserted, besides a person or two sitting in the back. They’re both smiling as the bus keeps rolling along. Gradually, WREN starts to look sad. The atmosphere in the bus is almost psychedelic, like someone is on drugs. JEAN notices her and taps her arm.

JEAN (signing)

Are you okay?

WREN nods and tries to smile.

At last, the bus slows to a stop and WREN taps JEAN’s arm. She smiles and signs to him.

WREN

Well, this is my stop. I…had a nice time.

JEAN smiles at her as she leaves. About thirty seconds after the bus pulls away from her stop, JEAN looks down to see a book sitting on her chair. It’s the same book as before: ‘Night on the Intergalactic Railroad’. In the middle of the book, a small stub of paper juts out.

EXT. WREN’S FRONT LAWN -- NIGHT It is the next night. JEAN stops in front of WREN’s house, the book clutched in his hand. The house looks empty, and all the lawn ornaments are gone. On the front door, the eviction notice hangs, flapping in the wind. JEAN takes the slip of paper out of the book and unfolds it. Written on the paper is WREN’s handwriting. “Jean, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. One day we’ll see the stars, but I’m afraid this is goodbye for now.” JEAN collapses to the ground, the paper falling to the grass. He opens his mouth and says something. His voice is hoarse and ugly from years of neglect, and holds a raw pain to it.

He can’t pronounce her name entirely right.

JEAN Wremu….

INT. CAR -- DAYBREAK WREN is sitting in her chair looking out the window as the car drives by. Her mother is talking on the phone mutedly while driving. WREN is in the backseat. She breathes against the window and watches it fog up. She writes “Jean” on the window with her finger before watching it fade away.

FADE OUT FADE IN INT. ART GALLERY -- DAY

JEAN is standing in the middle of the gallery, dressed in fine clothes with his hair slicked back.

He looks a little older, about a year or so. Behind him, a massive portrait of a girl -- obviously WREN -- sits on the wall. She is surrounded by the galaxy, looking on in wonder as her second-hand wedding dress billows around her. A river of stardust streaks across the right side of the canvass.

A man approaches JEAN and taps his shoulder. He is dressed finely, and looks to be in his mid 30s.

FINELY-DRESSED MAN (signing)

Jean-Paul Morgenstern?

JEAN

Please, just call me Jean.

FINELY-DRESSED MAN I just wanted to say that this is a wonderful piece. What inspired you to paint “Campanella”?

JEAN Well, I had this friend last year. She got me into this book, and she kinda reminded me of a character in it. And just like that character, she also disappeared. I haven’t forgotten her since.

FINELY-DRESSED MAN Well, you’ve made it to the big leagues. Did you ever think you’d make it to an art gallery in New York while still in high school?

JEAN Not at all. In fact, I wouldn’t have pursued art at all if she hadn’t persuaded me. She saw the talent in

me that I didn’t.

FINELY-DRESSED MAN

Well now that you’ve made it big, what do you want to do?

JEAN

Take a train to the Milky Way. FINELY-DRESSED MAN

Pardon?

JEAN shakes his head.

JEAN

You wouldn’t get it.

THE END

Hazel Shanks Separate Universes, fiction

Kelsey sits on the kitchen island, running her fingers through her hair. We’re home for the holidays. She is out of high school now, living in her own apartment.

I pull a tray of cookies from the oven. We coexist in awkward silence. We haven’t talked for over three months and no longer know how to communicate.

“How’s school?” she asks, finally. We went to the same high school, saw each other every day in the halls. We didn’t speak much then, either.

“It’s fine,” I say. “This year is hard. My grades are bad.” Kelsey snorts at that, in a commiserating way. No one was surprised when she didn’t go on to college.

“You’re just like me,” she says, which prompts a jolt in my stomach.

“I don’t think so,” I say. Kelsey’s silence feels colder now.

I’ve never thought we were similar. We don’t look alike. Kelsey liked high school. I hardly ever saw her when she did live at home.

“I’ve never understood you,” she says. She slips off the island, grabbing the tray out of my hands before I can react. “Let me help you.”

I let her, even though I would rather she weren’t here. I can’t stop thinking about her comparison. School ends soon and I’ll have to face the world, though hopefully not in the same way as Kelsey. It’s a while before we speak again, and until then we move about the kitchen in separate universes.

Giordana Verrengia Raise a Glass to Tara (After Myfanwy Collins), fiction I was not one of the astounding three young women in the family expecting a baby, so I had nothing to announce. I would not raise my hand bashfully at dinner, then bask in the glassy-eyed, trembling-lipped reaction of my father. Besides, he already had grandchildren. Not from me. I would struggle to make it through my cousin Tara’s birthday without tears.

I thought I wanted children, but I had no partner for the endeavor.

Not at all helpful was the fact that my father couldn’t stand to embrace me if I had an announcement to make. He sat all the time, though not by choice, and I grew content with studying his thick, snowy hair, while acknowledging that beneath it, his brain riled from pain and inhibition. I understood by that point. After the accident.

I remember my first grade teacher, whose stomach was marvelously swollen in September. I remember never knowing her. She was gone with a yelp, waddling through the chipped doorway 20 minutes before recess. Months later, upon her return, the children needed to be reminded of her. She still existed, though her voluminous chocolate curls had tarnished to the mangled knot of new motherhood, which I’d perceived as my teacher being just as enthusiastic to teach as we kids were to learn.

My mother felt sorry for my father, though he’d been bellicose when they went through court; though he’d filibustered over the Mercedes while she stood there, calm, firm. And in the end, he’d won. The sedan, that is, until he totaled it, and the latter half of his 60s.

Mum never dwelt on his victories, but she crumbled when he lost. When he sank more than a few feet below the surface where she could scoop him up. She felt all of this, in conjunction with a divorcée’s resentment.

And when I mentioned Tara, whom Mum still calls “her niece,” I couldn’t overlook the upward twitches at the corners of her mouth, nor the mirth that made her irises bloom. I wasn’t offended by her love. Not anymore.

Then Mum produced a Macy’s catalogue in which she’d circled several possibilities for Tara’s birthday. She’s Mum’s niece, after all. Still.

I placed the glossy papers at the bottom of my bag, then piled a makeup case on top. I heard the paper shredding as I pulled the strap over my shoulder and practically ran from my mother’s house.

Then Mum came to me, metallic gift bag in tow, which carried a ring-holder from the catalogue.

While she’d lost out on the sedan, the settlement made employment an embellishment.

“I figured you might not have the time,” Mum said.

I know it must’ve thrilled her to purchase it, letting the sales ladies believe she was buying the fixture because her second daughter finally had use for it, when in fact my life felt stagnant as ever.

On the day of Tara’s party, seated with my father but also without him, mother in mind not heart, my eyes burned as she and her husband clinked their glasses, cheeks growing redder by the second. You, too?

Had Tara wanted a baby as much as me? Or was it another lagniappe of life, like a husband, like the mother’s love offered to Tara from my own Mum’s hand?

Greyson Avery Follower, poetry I knew from the second your raspberry

tongue uttered to me that you were going home it was a lie. I watched

the raspberry rot, shriveled up and dead.

The street lamps of this city see

more than God at these hours. I know where you are, you walked in

ten minutes ago, the rotting stench so strong I could taste it was what

gave you away. Practically see the green fumes wafting off of you against the

vicious fluorescents. From where I stand I watch your eyes grow mold and film

over the sockets. I think my teeth have become chalk. I bite down so

hard they break. I’ve been doing that

more often recently, since my jokes and

jabs at your sides have began grinding down your bones into chalk dust. Have

you found yourself rotten from the inside

out? I can tell. When you open

your mouth, the back of your throat is peeling, I see and I taste

the sickness when you speak.

Ginny Brooks To U.S., poetry On February 14th, I was in school with my friends, just like the students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

I am tired of seeing headlines highlighting death and despair when people are shot, and even more tired of seeing the absence of headlines when people of color are shot.

I am tired of having my stomach sink every time NPR talks voice shiny shock blanket soft, of having my mother wrap me in a safety net hug as soon as I come home.

I shouldn’t have grown up on the songs of starved gunshots soaring through the air.

I am tired of having to think this could have been us.

Tell me why a seven year old boy I love like a brother, who couldn’t even spell the word rifle on his spelling test last month, is old enough to have fired a gun, accidentally shooting his cousin in the leg.

Tell me why when I am putting dinosaur nuggets in the oven for his dinner, I still thank a god I don’t believe in that the bullet did not hit him instead.

Tell me why this heaven headed child, why the students of school shootings, will have to remember these days for the rest of their lives will be stuck relating fireworks, water fights, red rage to trauma when this was preventable.

Maddie Figas Uncle Milton Promised A Frog, Not A Monster, poetry The moment I unwrap him, I’m in love with how plastic he seems. Jelly feet untouched and squirming.

Oprah suggests I paint my nails and try a juice cleanse. I spend my week peeling at polish, seeds hiding under my tongue.

I watch him in the limp aquarium. Swimming almost ripe and ready to stand.

My grandmother warns me my hair is splitting at its ends, that I’m growing too tall for comfort.

Sometimes I catch him on the surface, gulping for a breath or two. His dorsal fin dissolving, feet sprouting from nothing.

At school, I learn to jumprope the way the kickball team likes, with two hops and a smile. I want new lungs.

Last night he broke free, left behind old skin behind so we remember what what he was. I think the pressure was too much.

I buy a bra, and try taking myself apart. Slip scissors across the bottom of my hair. Complete the juice cleanse, loose three pounds. I rearrange.

Marie Kaminski I’ve Survived the Onslaught and Become the Crow, poetry I am the woman in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, standing underneath stained-glass church lights, the priest cawing my name from his beak.

I am of the superstitious kind. Alone, I bring bad luck to your mother—an evil omen to be avoided.

Crow, you weave your nest, seven years of impending doom, into paper shreds and hay. The Catholic Church, my nest, is inescapable and relentless. I envy you, Crow.

Your nest is too high for the church spire to pierce. I shake the priest’s hand, take Saint Hedwig’s name as mine. I had no intention of being here. I was shamed into this.

I regret your attempted extermination like I regret my own. I tried to kill my faith by feeding it insects and small mice.

I wanted to feed it as you feed your fledglings.

You stalk others to find sustenance, steal fish from distracted river otters as I snatch fruit from the forbidden tree.

I pretend to be blind to the holy flame flickering above my head.

Chase away my family like you scare off your mother with your noise. Swoop down and surround your prey like the congregation. Crow, your voice is indistinguishable from your mother’s. I cannot find your song in the church choir but I can find My unwillingness to accept Catholicism has me plucking your feathers to create my own raven wings. I envy the freedom they allow you, Crow.

Hear my shoes step off the altar into your murder.

Thalia King The Evolution of a Tortoise, poetry My mother holds my hand, passes me cotton on a string through the crack in the bathroom stall door. I clench it in my white knuckles, watch as the water turns red, hardens into rock, thick and sticky.

Islands are born from lava, and I am the volcano at night.

I’m thirteen and I’m evolving.

Finches crawl over my skin, my pores their pecking grounds. Shocked by acid, they leave white tracks in my skin.

I poke my face and it erupts, pink and scaly, I am becoming an island iguana.

I’m thirteen and I’m scared.

I’m scared of lava seeping through my shell, not hardening to rock, just enough to leave a stain.

I’m scared of my scales peeking out from under layers of paint, not quite camouflage, the finches pecking.

I’m thirteen and I’m too scared to evolve.

Elizabeth Kuhn Cicadas, poetry hide in shifts of fours.

Four night shifts in a row, years before we stop forgetting you exist.

We remember one hundred and twenty decibel screams. Something tangled in my hair. you’re half deaf. Dad, in the car driving a mile away without us, so the sound cut off.

It didn’t You believe in coming out only when you taste November roots, like my toes in mulch, under the bush in our lawn. Your daughters burry you in under sixty-four-degree soil so we don’t see you for four years, or seventeen before you dig out. You sprout like a weed and swarm the irises with a boot heel.

Your daughters pick your shells off trees, dig membranous wings from under our nails. You cling to the back porch, watch bugs turn branches brown.

Inborn sirens come in overwhelming swarms You don’t hear when the trunk hits the grass.

You don’t pray for the cicadas singing in our ears.

Javin Lee-Lobel Bloodshot, poetry They chase; I’m running away.

I’m running because of what I’ve done, and so I’m being hunted for my decisions.

Red makes, I get up and run away.

Red makes, I breathe breathe breathe heavy.

Red makes, I refuse looking back.

Red makes, I tunnel through vision.

The backstreet rolls back behind me, black with rubbery shadows splattered on regret.

Slashing, unleashing, my machete kicks batter through the brick jungle.

I tunnel through vision.

I can’t see now, but it doesn’t matter; just a smatter of tears in fright.

It’s the shade wetting my eyes—it’s so bright, or the veins getting fatter again as They pump.

I refuse looking back.

Shouldn’t have shouldn’t have shouldn’t have scattered.

I remember that I’m okay as my ’Forces patter on the pavement.

I breathe breathe breathe heavy.

I slip and I shatter all over the asphalt. It’s my fault.

I committed to being stupid. I committed to Them, the chaotic clatter and the target on my back.

I get up and run away.

It all flies by as the red rises in my eyes and I feel stuck inside; my pupils ignore it as the vibe pulses.

The passion, the love or the lust, the DAMN.ing emotions— I’m petrified and angry as hot metal on an anvil.

vision red I was ripe as a strawberry but decay as I dash, my body melting into the people like fire behind me.

I mistook a sunrise for a sunset and now They, the night, approach like hot tar.

Carmine, crimson, cardinal, cinnamon, ruby, rose, rusty, rufous, vermilion.

refuse red I scream back to those closing in behind me—why do you want me dead?

I try to scream back to Them though my voice is split at the seams like hangnails.

No response; I return to the rhythm of my feet.

breathe red They chase as viciously as a consumer’s agony.

As that raw patriot, all-American hate on the holidays.

They are the sexuality of needles born enraged, thawing towards ashes.

run away red The anxiety you feel when you have cold steel dashing at your heels is realer than any other terror.

They are my Fear.

Altitude Sickness, poetry The mountains have dreadlocks knotted and tangled and carved by centuries, natural, thin, silver on wrinkled scalps.

Their bones protrude through their ancient, impenetrable skin.

The trees only coat some of the mountains’ bodies, letting the weathered, cracked skin shine through.

They know to be humble in the eyes of gods.

They let the wind exhale through them, pushing them, tense and uneasy beneath the mountains.

Breathe.

Dorje was in love with the mountains.

He still does.

We were 13.

We explored them that day, far from trails but never far from prayer flags.

A stake pinned atop one hosted many of them, fluttering exotic birds who cackled at our straining as we approached.

They are restless and dry up on that Rocky planet,

far from home but as close as it gets.

Every plant, every animal, every course cliff seems to wheeze and gasp dust and sand.

Breathe.

The hike hurt. My nose bled at the top. We didn’t bring water.

We grinned, though.

There was another cliff behind us, far more interesting then the last.

We continued forward, pushing till we couldn’t, stopping to rest, then pushing again.

Breathe.

Dorje ran halfway up, giggling though his gullet tightened and he couldn’t get enough air.

Breathe.

That’s when the Wind began to scream— get off of my land!

She wasn’t worried about if we did,

she was just calm enough to warn us before she decided to force us.

We chuckled as she picked up, whirling around us.

Breathe.

Then she began to push him.

Prod him to fear, and I remember every second of it.

Breathe.

He was a pawn there on the edge of the cliff balancing while she taunted, while she slapped.

He lost his footing.

Breathe.

He fell.

I wish we hadn’t passed the tree line.

I wish we hadn’t reached for the prayer flags.

I wish we hadn’t challenged the regal mountains.

I wish we hadn’t provoked the Wind.

Breathe

Ilan Magnani The Extinction of a Body, poetry The hair falls first, sinks into barbershop trenches.

Later, the legs, harvested. Covered in concrete khakis. The chin and cheeks, overgrown with thorns and moss.

Uninhabitable. The larynx, heavy with gravel. I search ponds for fish that change their sexes, for lost body parts and sequins. I find emblems of what’s left; discarded tutus, like my eyes, wide and alive.

Feathered with frills, I tell my reflection in the water, I will infest this new body, make it mine. I resuscitate lipstick tubes fossilized in my mother’s old makeup bag. I nearly paint myself back to life, a species halfway rediscovered. I photograph myself to save what still lives here, to conserve sections still breathing, twirling with life, not yet fully gone.

What I Know About Elephants, poetry Grandpa sits in his study as plastic vines grow through his body, spread over the antique carpet like invasive species, liquids slithering through them like sea snakes after an oil spill.

Miniature elephants occupy the room, glass eyes gleaming, trunks raised in triumphant, upward curves like Grandpa’s old saxophone. Its treble notes could charm cobras; he could quiet the heartbeats of crowds to far-off taps, make his bandmates stand so still they’d forget they were breathing.

Here’s what I know about elephants: people shoot them square in the chest for their tusks, for ivory glistening doctor’s-coat white. Grandpa knows what happens to the elephants; how their insides rot like forgotten photo albums, the way they wheeze as their trunks rust. I am five years old. I’ve never seen an elephant, but somehow, I know about the hunters and as I hug him for what I know will be the last time, I hear their senseless bullets, and somewhere inside this strange man’s mouldering skin, a cold thud.

Self Portrait As a Young Girl Who Hangs Her Cats On a Clothesline, poetry I give the kittens a break after they’ve rehearsed their hind-legged walk, pretend primates.

Inside the house, my mother knits, slumped over the kitchen table, lumpy like cold porridge.

She hates the cats. They’re strays, she says.

They’re the uncombed heads of neighborhood boys who walk the streets in shirts without collars.

When she brushes my hair, I imagine her stealing the cats’ fur. When they rest in the backyard, I watch. They dream in futuristic colors.

When she sneaks outside to paint their worlds noir and hold them hostage in silent films, I’ll be waiting in the rose bushes, my knees little animals gnawing on petals and thorns, my eyes restless as magnifying glasses, waiting to see the body beneath them form into something heroic. When my mother goes back inside to finish her chamomile tea, it will feel like the end of a movie that I wouldn’t understand.

Emiliano Siegert-Wilkinson Instinct, poetry I would have screamed at you, I would have pounded at your chest.

I would not have let my words speak but my fists shout.

I think it was a Sunday.

The air sighed contently.

The sun was bright and the sky had a unique shade of blue, like cotton candy and eggshell.

We went to an Eat n’ Park and I think I would have liked it less if it hadn’t been the first time we’d been together alone in weeks.

I got either a cod filet or a cheesesteak, either way it was brown and dry and I ate every bite.

You showed me a joke on your phone about your country’s president and the match’s and timber the people would throw him under.

You got me an Oreo creme pie for the first time and I felt like there was a reason I just hoped it was good.

I should have eaten it at the restaurant.

Just so it wouldn’t taste so cold and my stomach wouldn’t scream at me that something was coming.

Because we got home and the living room was filtered and colorless and her cheeks were pale but her eyes were red.

She called for my brother and I and you told her to let me eat my pie.

I thanked you but it was ice in my mouth and I didn’t know why.

And the words “we’re separating” spilled out A tear had already fallen.

And before you said it’s because you were gay Not because you were unhappy with us (her. and you were with both) I had forgiven you.

I think I had prepared to spare you before I knew.

It’s hard to describe how I felt because the room felt like a freezer and the sunlight

filtered on my arms and left them cold and touch-starved. You hugged me and apologized and my brother smiled at me with rosy cheeks.

You said it was ok to be mad.

I think my screams should have been red not grey and blue.

I think I should have splattered the room in hate, in furious saturation.

I think I should have swallowed my pie the second you bought it just to spite you.

CG Marchl Vomit Attack!, poetry I’m out back this Chinese restaurant leanin’ on the dumpster with a rat.

We’re both wary of new surroundings, the bitter taste of new people, fear of an unreadable menu.

Tonight we take a chance.

He’s chewin’ boric acid, I’m pukin’ stomach acid. Blowin’ up chunks of Pad Thai and spewin’ mucus dumpling soup.

Grains of rodenticide stir into the pothole of bile below him— sweet ’n sour sauce.

All eighteen teeth shown in his grin, chittering at me, ‘You’re weak.’

He doesn’t know I’ve been chowin’ on poison tonight, too. This rat knows my story. Swallowed stress sits in my stomach like white arsenic sits in his.

He saw his father fall from five stories and live. Hell— the look the waitress gave me when I stumbled on my order— I could die, too.

Difference is, I can throw my poison up.

Convulse my muscles till they’re sore, retch and gag till something shoots out, but he can’t, he’s too weak. His death is just beginning. He’s shudderin’, frantically shovin’ dirt down his throat, nothing with nutrients, anything to absorb toxins. He’s chokin’, coughin’ up a smoke cloud. A final tremble, fur moving in stop animation.

His body falls flat. The hair on my forearms stand on its ends.

Part of me has died with him.

Skylar McCormack Eight is My Favorite Number, poetry Eight like the number of candles on my Tinker Bell birthday cake.

As the candles go out so does my spirit.

Eight is the number of times my father will say sorry while I ride shot gun in his car.

Eight is how many schools I had to go to because of my fathers mistakes.

Eight was my favorite number, but I’d do anything to be seven again.

I’ve been to two different schools at this point, and three different houses.

I haven’t even turned nine yet.

I was eight when my father forgot me at the bus stop, I counted the number of birds that surrounded me while I cried and ruined my new pretty blue dress.

Eight is the number of times your father will say sorry while I ride shot gun in his car.

Halloween was the best time of the year.

Free candy for everybody.

I put on my cousins North Moore cheerleading outfit and put my hair up into two high pig tails.

My mom takes pictures of me at the front door and tells me that one day I won’t have to pretend to be a cheerleader.

I sit on the steps waiting for my father to show up, two hours later headlights shine up the driveway.

Eight is the number of times my father will say sorry while I ride shot gun in his car.

It is my annual fishing trip, the only time of the year when my dad thinks he can bond with me.

I sit in front of the house waiting for him to come home.

With my Scooby Doo rod in my left hand and a half empty mountain dew in my right.

My grandma called me in and tells me to wait inside.

I waited for eight hours that night.

I drank eight mountain dews, and cried eight times.

He walked through the door.

When he starts to say sorry, I tell him I want to go home.

Eight is the number of time my father will say sorry while I ride shot gun in his car.

Cassandra Skweres Mama, poetry “those who have taken an ax…”

-Lori McBride I remember when Mama would lay in bed, her sweat stains seeping into the sheets suffocating the mattress beneath her body.

Those cold nights, she’d hold onto the blankets, feet tucked into her chest, shivering.

I’d come in and hold her, falling asleep to her lullabies.

I’d watch her dress. The stains of her tears surrounding her freckles, erasing them, concealing and highlighting her new face.

Her eyes stayed dull.

Later, she’d stumble home with a guy in her arms.

His beard brushing against my mother’s lips, his light blue jeans and t-shirt rubbing against her dress.

I’d watch as they’d stumble to the couch, engulfed in one another. I’d study the man who looked like my father.

In the morning he’d be gone. His disassembled clothes taken and my mother’s remaining on the hardwood floor.

She’d sit up, a blanket wrapped around her skin.

She’d hold her body in her arms, diluted salt falling.

I’d come down the stairs and hold her.

We’d listen to each other breathe until she wanted to get dressed.

I used to be her Hercules. The one to save her and to keep her safe from others.

I’d stop the rain from pouring when all she felt was pain.

Now that I’m older, she’s turned to herself, staying inside that cold body of her’s. Whenever I visit her house, I can still smell the sweat on her mattress.

The Color Red, poetry My father always said, “Redheads hold the power.�

I guess he had lived with my mom for so long that by the time I came around, he just wanted a brunette.

In the mountains of Nepal, Red pandas survive and try to repopulate.

They are an endangered species that thrives on bamboo and plants, climbing trees and sleeping for 2 hour durations.

I guess redheads don’t always hold the power after all.

I take after my mother.

We are both short women.

We envy those with longer legs, the women in magazines, their bodies plastered on the front cover.

Red pandas grow to be 20 to 26 inches, 12 to 20 pounds.

Not everybody can be thin either.

I study photos of my family and notice how every single person is not skinny. To be thin is to be perfect, and no one ever is.

Mirage, poetry I stand in the kitchen, apron around my waist, cooking tuna casserole. The clock in the dining room ticks.

The house is hollow. China dishes stare at me as the food goes cold. When husband comes home, husband wraps his hands around me.

Husband kisses my cheek and eats his food.

Husband goes to bed, lamp shade turns off.

I wish you’d hold me.

I stand in the kitchen, apron around my waist, cooking angel hair spaghetti. The timer screams, food’s ready. I sit at the long mahogany table listening as the grandfather clock ticks. When husband comes home, husband drapes a pearl necklace around my throat.

Husband sits at the table and eats his dinner.

Husband goes to sleep, snores echo in my dreams.

I wish you’d love me more.

I stand in the kitchen, apron around my waist, cooking meatloaf. When husband comes home husband doesn’t come home. The house is a mirage.

My bones tingle as I pack my bags.

The paintings try to reason with me, their words smearing the paint as I slowly descend the wooden staircase.

I can hear my voice crack as I fall to the floor.

My chest aches, my tears soak the cold tiles that leave my skin feeling numb.

I use to wish you were all I needed.

Turns out you weren’t.

You were just the image of what I wanted.

Zaire Smith Last Goodbyes, poetry I arrived to Mercy hospital, the doctor stopped me by the entrance.

His arm pushed me back so I couldn’t go in, I was confused my grandma laid in there waiting for me.

His tan loafers stood in front of the door, his sleeves were rolled back.

I tried to call you, she passed away.

I fell to the floor, goosebumps raised from my legs.

My throat burned like cigarettes ashes smoking from my skin, tears dripped down the lines of my mouth.

I could feel hands hold me up I wish I was the last person she saw before she closed her eyes, I was there alone doctors in and out relieving her pain.

Those drugs slur her words, her body turned purple.

I couldn’t hear my grandma through the room, When I walked in to see her body, she looked like plastic.

Her hazel eyes didn’t light up when I walked in, her caramel skin dulled as you died.

My grandma time was flying away, when I wasn’t paying attention.

I wish I could change everything, but I couldn’t have her anymore.

Emma Steckline Mom and I Try to Rewrite Einstein’s Gravitational Theory, poetry This morning Mom sobbed into dark matter, she saw the universe accelerate and quasars froze to ice. Sister, you were caught in it.

I try to keep you away from black holes that you climb in and out of so much, your fingers red, raw, and almost nothing. I hold you by your tongue so that it doesn’t split and spill neutrinos and photons.

So this doesn’t end in a Big Bang and you’re lost from the multiverse.

You wail into pure energy, vacuums and distorted galaxies stretched infinite.

Mom slumps on me, weeps, I’m so scared.

She has never seen stars self destruct like you.

She fears you are the reincarnation of Challenger.

She fears you will end in flames.

You plead for us to take it away from you.

The kids at school who push you up against walls, call you a lesbian, your hair cut short and say that you have anger issues.

I plead for the universe to slow down.

I want to save you from dark matter sunk deep into your brain. It strains you to overextension.

Until your body is clogged with the unknown manifests of space.

Tara Stenger From Your Engineer, poetry On a wooden shelf in my bedroom sits 27 records written by you, Kurt Cobain.

Nirvana hums through my ears.

By the 27th spin around the record player, you are no longer foreign to me.

On April 9th, 1994, I let my eyes glass over, my head doesn’t bob back and forth to the variation in your voice anymore.

The awestruck goosebumps that once spread across my cucumber skin in clusters of 27 are replaced with chills of terror.

I let the same record spin on repeat, 27 times, hoping to find comfort in your lyrics.

Instead, they only bring me back to the moment I found you. 27 drops of sweat fell from your wire hair as you were sprawled across the floor of your Lake Washington Blvd. home.

I wish I could say that’s not all I remember about you, that those red and orange lights casted across the crowd at your last concert still burn in my retinas, but they don’t, and it’s not fair to you or to me.

I replay all 27 unanswered voicemails you left me, trying to replace the stain in my mind of you lying lifeless.

But no amount of bleach can remove the trail of red embedded in my cauliflower brain.

Aaliyah Thomas Coffin Birth, poetry She sat by twenty brass hair pins, her fingers scraping against the surface, her eyes staring down at twenty little ants nipping at her ankle skin, blue blood knocking against ivory touches.

Crumbs of Gerber cereal pieces, that were never cleaned up attracted them, she wished it bothered her.

She sat in a dim lit room, twenty men in the next room over smoking twenty heavy cigars and twenty pounds of smoke filling her house.

She couldn’t remember what she was doing there.

How long had she been there?

She was too focus on distance images propped up on the window sill.

An ultrasound picture illuminating from the sun peeking in the room.

A pink crib sat across from her, sheets thrown over the railing, the soft melody of the mobile a distant sound now.

Twenty cans of formula were stacked on a changing table.

The drawers below full of baby clothes and below that was binkies and rattle toys, they’d all go unused.

Her lips were sealed with a slip of salvia, a stamp on her cheek, a sincerely tattooed on her skin, tears were the letters to a family not too far away.

Her mother was devastated but her pain was mere teething pains compared to her own.

The feeling of death, suffocating, an umbilical cord around the neck.

Denise Woods Chicken Like, poetry

You left bags on top of a dingy taxi cab, handed the drivers a $20 bill and asked if he could drive you anywhere that wasn’t here.

A letter laid next to me in the spot where I used to roll over and wrap my arms around you.

You were always fascinated with chickens, always telling me how they lost their feathers in pain or when they’re overwhelmed with stress.

You told me I was the cause of your pain.

I was the reason why you had to leave and my unstableness kept you silent.

You lost your love for me, I overwhelmed you with attention, but isn’t that what I was supposed to do?

You said I left you vulnerable, easier for other people to attack you, steal your heart and return it cracked. .

Your heart used to beat for me 300 times a day.

I didn’t know I was loving a chicken.

I wanted to heal what was wounded.

Brought you in and nurtured you in a place of hugs and morning kisses, breakfast on the table every morning.

I tried to spread happiness all over your body like baby oil.

Grade 9

She leaned back against a floral wallpaper, pretty little lambs with pink ribbons jumping at her.

She wondered if her husband would take a break from fake pigeon friends.

Trying to drown himself under the travesty that rocked his life.

She closed her eyes for a moment, pressing her hand against her stomach and let out a settle sob.

She yearned for kicks to bring back her life, for tiny toes to stick from stretched skin.

All she’d get was a death certificate and a marriage that’d never be the same.

Jacob Voelker Ghost Stories, poetry You told me ghost stories when I was just a boy, sitting on your pullout couch watching Disney Channel, chewing the end of my empty High-C plastic straw.

I remember stories of your encounters.

You told me that you are not alone, that there are people just like you who can sense when our ghost is with them just the same.

Some have even been lucky enough to see them. Did you know that?

I wanted to feel them.When I asked you how, you said I will see him someday, and I told you that I was ready now.

You laughed, and you told me I had a long time to go before I was ready to see ghosts.

Patience, you said, and it will come.

Two years later, you came over my house.

I lay in your wrinkled arms and we watched snow collect on the porch outside.

I told you that I still didn’t feel the ghost, and that I was starting to get worried.

You laughed again, and I was starting to think there was something funny about this.

You said that was okay, that it was perfectly normal for a kid my age, that you hadn’t really believed in them yourself until you were thirteen.

Thirteen came and passed. Still no ghosts.

My cheeks grew sideburns, and my chin was starting to see its first signs of adulthood.

You still swore by those stories I’ve long grown out of.

I began to realize that what I think of as a silly childhood fantasy, you live an entire life revolved around.

And now we sit in silence. I think of the words that you’ll never hear, and I pray you never will.

Denise Woods

Chicken Like, Poetry

You left bags on top of a dingy taxi cab, handed the drivers a $20 bill and asked if he could drive you anywhere that wasn’t here.

Ian Aiken Coffee Mug, Poetry To babble in a bubble above, to sunpour and sundip while sunbathing. to fester in the light beneath it. The lack of it, the blackness.

To swirl in the grain, of sand of wood, of air, of light.

Peachpour in the light, reflecting a gleaming skydance, grey smoke over the lip, a windrun into the sky, the atomic mushroom, bold, and gone with the breeze.

Black, Mellow, three festering bubbles, sisters, one little one big, and the inbetween between the two. Lining the edge are the smaller ones, popping and filling themselves.

The windows are open and curtains flutter, flapping wings of a doe, new and blind and weak.

And pushing the does are the wolves, the biting wind.

And they find their prey in everything, and they find their reflections in the cup and they dive and they sink and they die. Until they fly past the does and do it again.

The steam flees from the wolves, falling into the jaws and blending into them, becoming the fur, the jacket, the gripping edge on the pilot.

A chip on the edge, the mark of time lost. taken, consumed by everything and nothing, forgotten until it spreads, and finally time will dress the corpse, and claim the pieces.

Robin Clement Dissection, poetry Flies fresh from the herds, swarm around my head.

I watch the maggots rise, cooking up.

----Judith Beveridge

Formaldehyde in the air, I enter the lab plagued with nausea. It’s the day we all have been dreading, the pig dissection.

My lab partners engage in rock, paper, scissors, to figure out who should cut and who should write.

I plead for it to be out of three, but I still end up the loser.

I trudge to the sink and I freeze; the sight of the tiny creatures makes my chest start to ache.

Tongues protruding from a half open mouth.

Pearly teeth just beginning to erupt.

The eyes sealed shut, never opened.

The remains of umbilical cord.

Just animals who didn’t get to see the sunrise.

Was it for better or worse that they were never born?

Sterile metal rips through skin and muscle, revealing the clockwork of living things.

It feels as if we are playing God, desecrating his creations.

Through rubber gloves I feel slimy guts pulling my hands deeper. We remove the liver, gallbladder, and intestines, stretching out like a jump rope.

We can’t stop until we are left with nothing but a hollow shell, something that could’ve lived but never did. Flesh and bone.

The table across from me pries their pig’s eyes out, stabbing it like a makeshift voodoo doll.

I leave the lab, a knotted ball in my stomach.

I am a hypocrite going home to a dinner of dead animals.

You Are the Moon, poetry January’s breath caresses my cheek the icy tingle like the hand of a rival, a gesture of illusory affection.

The blizzard coats my eyelashes with snowflakes.

Howling wind echoes across the empty street, barely lit by the waning crescent.

Luna, a lonely satellite, recluse of the solar system.

Do you feel all alone?

Her orbit is steady, peaceful, traversing the galaxy in a follow-the-leader pattern.

Sol, Luna’s sister, ultraviolet, is the center, with Mother Earth like a maid to her, catering on her every request.

It’s as if she relies on Sol to be kept in Gravity’s rugged arms.

Sol, the hothead, brings her rays of wrath upon her mother, casting Luna into shadows.

Luna has been walked on, poked and prodded by human hands, yet Sol remains untouchable in her corner of the sky, never fading away when Earth stirs.

Luna hides behind Earth’s ridges and seas, rising when the sky becomes an ink blot on the desk of a poet.

She waits till Earth lays down for her slumber to arise, commanding the ocean, her world-wide army.

Sol is ashamed of Luna’s cowardice, how she runs from the tender touch of the light.

She is ashamed like her mother, her mother who turns a deaf ear to the pleas of her daughter.

You don’t see what you possess, a beauty calm and clear.

Luna’s craters shaded with grey, remind her why her mother prefers her sister, the sunny girl, flaming orange, always there.

Luna is a blemish, just a mound of debris.

She wonders if she was created

to be secluded in the twilight, never seen by human eyes.

The shattered surface, so imperfect, is all that you believe.

She is oblivious to those who gaze into her light, stars taking shelter in their eyes, longing for the night to stay.

(Italicized lines are taken from You Are the Moon by The Hush Sound)

Azriah Crawley Wilted, poetry

On summer days we sat in the sun as it glistened against our skin, warming our bodies when a small breeze would rush over, allowing us to sway in the wind.

The frigid pool water rose up our backs, yet we still absorbed it into our mouths, our noses, and our eyes.

In the fall, our late day swims were replaced with the late night dinners, our caked faces blossoming from the dimly lit table lights.

When winter came, Market Square became our main destination.

Not like it hadn’t been before, but when the icy air rumbled our stems, closer to home was easiest.

In the cold, we wilt, our leaves lacking colors, our petals falling to the ground.

Unlike plastic plants, we cannot be repotted once we die.

When we needed nourishment, it was not given.

When we needed water, too much was given.

You cannot save something that’s been dead from the start.

Madeline Ficca Woods with Zoe, poetry Zoe has burrs all tangled in her matted black fur and I know that I’ll have to pick them out one by one from her coiled and twisted curls.

She chases scents of deer and rabbit. She is hung on their trail, and disappears in the trees and bushes trying to find them.

When I can’t see her anymore I call her name and she comes running, like a blaze of charcoal emerging from a cluster of rangy trees.

She skids on the muddy path overgrown with ferns and thorny bushes.

In the gaps of a thicket, I can see grandmas blue house far down.

I can see the driveway that slithers from the road, to meet her garage.

Leaves rustle, when the clouds whisper to them a story.

The story travels from the pond, up the hills, and like a breeze it weaves its way in-between branches.

Street Music, poetry The resonation of a cello, intertwines the cement columns, and falls into cobblestone cracks.

Accordions exhale and the strings join, metallic reverberation wraps its way around harmonious vibrato.

We walk with the rhythm of Amsterdam, beneath our feet we feel like dancing, but we let the music notes do the dancing.

Crescendos soar to glass stained windows, they dance on the sun, until they fall everywhere.

Alison Harvill Sweet Creature, poetry Summer nights were windless.

Both windows thrown open, to tempt a vacant breeze.

The minutes would drag, house creaking under heat, my parents snoring in the other room. I would lay on my bed, blankets a heap on the floor, chin resting on pillow, staring as the world went to sleep.

Playing the song quietly, directly into my ear, letting the words make waves on my skin.

We don’t know where we’re going but we know where we belong.

Hair pressed against window screen, sky blended from satin strokes of violet, to denim sewn across splattered ink.

But we’re still young, I always think about you and how we don’t speak enough.

If I put my head back, and let the words escape my lips, I would make promises to myself that I wouldn’t keep in the morning.

As I closed my eyes and sang the words softly, the notes carried to the empty street.

Sweet creature, sweet creature.

When I run out of road, you bring me home… you bring me home.

Pineapple Upside Down Cake, poetry Stickysky revealed from dawnturn, applehair flowing in the wind, moondance and startwirl over.

The top a sunrise, golden syrup on a firerun.

Tart, sugary coils wrap around the bottom-up cushion.

Painted on the canvas is candied red and yellow.

A sponge that squishes away from pressure, layered lace and doilies.

Sunflower ringlets surround rose petals, wreaths of cream around a red ornament, apple peels thrown over the shoulder.

Filling mouths is sweet cotton, split at the seam.

Far off vacations to tropics with ocean waves, shakes hands with trees growing in local yards.

Joseph Johns Philips Park, poetry “Sitting on a wall above the gloom.” —Jim Daniels The chilling Autumn air made my fingers numb, the palms of my hands red like the leaves decaying on the frozen ground.

The dead silence was eerie.

Not a single person outside, no cars driving on the crumbled roads.

We were the only ones not indoors, my friend and I. The trees would’ve been bare if not for the frost that covered their dreary bark.

Their leaves faded like distant memories as they laid on the dead grass.

We sat on a wall above the gloom, observing the area. The park appeared foreign to us, seeming more dull than we had remembered, though we had spent our childhood days there when its life was vibrant.

Nothing lasts forever I thought to myself.

We sat, talking about the future and how the world would change someday.

Nothing lasts forever I thought, not even the park.

Dani Jordan Window Fan, poetry “But if, as he unfolds his emerald fan,” by Deborah Chandra We sit in our musty kitchen, feet on the window sill pointed towards our rowdy fan. The propellers make our hair dance, sticky skin dripping, sizzling summer.

The kitchen was our reverend, a worn room bustling with my mother’s velvety smile, washed with a golden gleam dripping in people.

The room bangs like a rusty antique .

People weave in and out of the doughy space as we sit, feet on the window sill pointed towards our rowdy fan.

We melt into our seats, the only cool air in the house beats on our flushed faces.

The fan is a luxury.

It sits in the window used only when the house is fiercely flaming, the walls swallowed in soot.

When the house is filled with blazing bodies, voices filling the neighborhood, flooding out the open windows; we let the fan whizz, its bones creaking, afraid it will sputter out.

My mom streaks in and out of the kitchen, stopping for a moment to put her glazed face up to the air.

My Sister and I, poetry “and this is how we danced: our mothers’ white dresses spilling from our feet,” Ocean Vuong We crept down the stairs into my mother’s room, past her vast bed covered in a lacy quilt a vase of roses sitting on top of a blue book tiptoeing into the closet.

A cave of dresses dangled from the grotto, meters of silk under our rocky hands.

We scurried around the room, our moonshine eyes gleaming in the dark.

We put on amber heels, stuffing them to fit our tiny toes.

The extravagant dresses pouring over our feet.

We pranced around the wooden floor in the night-sky dress, silver lining beaded in blue and black.

We applied the campfire lip stick, over lining our cupids bow.

We could not wait to grow, to fit into the mascara and blush, the elegant life we thought to be adulthood.

When we knew, our mom would be home soon we would slowly remove the heels, shedding the dresses, longing to wear them for a few more moments, we wiped off the caked-on makeup and slowly crept upstairs.

We yearned to creep back and discard our muddied khakis and stained sweatshirts.

We dreamt of one day fitting into the long train, to walk in the black stilettos without falling, to hide behind the closet door separated from reality.

Natalie Kocherzat Self Portrait as a Rubik’s Cube, poetry You are flipping, turning, mindlessly shuffling.

Swirled fingers flicking thoughtfully while you cradle in warm palms, a plethora of hands passing you around. Standing on high shelves, you are within an unobstructed view. Surrounded by slumbering knickknacks, a wayward pen, a full glass The dusk lit room startles awake, a purple lamp illuminating it. Previously silent and unmoving, now tense with the before school rush, and you are there to witness it all.

You could have been weighing down papers, turned into a container for milk, pressed into miniscule plastic molds.

You gaze upon rolled posters, slightly torn, yellowed with age.

A mountain of jackets heaped on an oval chair, prepped for spur of the moment wardrobe changes. You are scrambled constantly, to be solved only minutes later. Memorization key to progress further in skill.

Wrong turns matched with long pauses slowly crescendo in speed, weeding out kinks and mishaps, now fluid. Invent algorithms, learn easiest ways to achieve the end goal, joyous when they finally work, only for the patterns to never be repeated. Each section never turning that same way again. You long for the ease it brought, but slowly accept, slowly forget, slowly move on.

Nadia Laswad In the Rain, poetry The girl and her mother held hands as it rained.

The rumbling thunder was heard from a distance.

And the wind howled as they walked and walked.

The umbrella flew out of their grasp and into the dripclouds.

Rather than shielding themselves, they relished the pitter patter of the rain.

As they sauntered about, the fallwater, touched their cold bare faces.

Focusing on the two of them, the world cleared. Nothing around.

The mother spun her daughter around until they fell flat on the ground.

The mother’s face was covered in thick brown paste.

They both roared in laughter.

Soon, they began running and rolling around in dirty puddles.

Their soaked dresses now muddy dresses.

Amanda Mitchell What’s Hidden in the Sunrise, poetry Glittering, toughened branches drink their dew.

Tiny worlds, drop by drop, tremble On thorns and leaves; they will melt away. –Thomas Kinsella I watch as the twinkling skyline circulates throughout Pittsburgh, climbing over bridges and buildings, then dipping down into the frosty river.

I spend less than a minute on this blue bridge each day, speeding by the sapphire sky, sometimes squeezing in more than a glance when the traffic stacks up, wedged between brake lights and bumpers.

These days have added up quickly, each one spent driving across this bridge, sometimes wanting to take detours, but always getting lead back by the sunrise.

It’s easy to get lost in the ocean waves rippling through the sunrise, and the pattern it holds when it’s stretched across the sky.

Analyzing how the clouds can be checkered or striped, and how the sky be savory or sweet.

Yesterday the sky thrived on turquoise, but today it fed on salmon and rose.

Watching the way cobalt melts to coral, and the stars will begin to stray, and when clouds intertwine with the bridges, making their way through the streets, as the sun peeks through and follows.

Lily Weatherford-Brown Sunday Morning, poetry God oh god, I love to hate you.

We woke up arguing and We ate breakfast arguing And we watched our grandmother’s television Arguing.

God oh god, I love to hate you.

You with that mess of hair stuck to your face curled in a pile. Mama said rats tied your hair in knots while you slept.

You with the split-second clap back and the never-ending questions.

You with those greasy butter yellow teeth.

You who share my metal blue eyes.

God oh god, I love to hate you.

We were supposed to go to my grandmother’s church that morning.

We were ready, my father had brushed his always matted hair so we knew it was the time to be ready.

But you, oh God. Your teeth quaked together, chattered like squirrel talk, but your lips were tight and blue.

You, oh God. You shook violently on the floor like a demon was dragging you to hell by your chin hair.

You, oh God. When I looked into your eyes, glazed over like the eyes of some taxidermy.

Your eyes that Didn’t look like mine anymore.

And I cried, oh God. Mama held you, rocked you softly your lips turned pink again.

Grade 8

She said you were alright now, said you were alright, But I still cried.

God oh God, I love to hate you.

Anika Weber Flowers by the Pond, Poetry “He looked absurd dragging a lily out of a beauty-bright store wrapped in tissue with a petal drooping” - Gerald Stern A boy runs his hand on the dining room table, fingers unfolded over a glass of milk, arms bruised for reasons he could not recall.

He scanned the half-dead mallow flowers in the vase— they curl into themselves, letting the leaves turn brown and wrinkled.

He no longer cares about the appearance of the flowers, or the rotten scent that drift them.

He wants the pure, angelic petals to be more than a handful of supple stems.

He pulled them from the side of a pond and through a dirt path, into the hands of his single mother, that set them up in a clay pots, filled it with water from a plastic bottle.

He wants nothing more than to impress her.

He wants to make her smile and flash her dimples, because she didn’t care about his femininity.

His love of braiding sunny dandelions into her glossed hair, pleading for waxy, rose lipstick and dahlia circles on his cheeks wasn’t an issue.

The dull bouquet decorates the ranch house that smelled like gasoline, and when he realized what his mother went through to raise him, he felt the least he could do is give her a bouquet that would liven the house, even though they would decompose like rats in a ghost town sewer.

Liam Weixel Story, poetry There is a we—Donika Kelly If nothing else, I think, I need to tell them a story.

The children were up early and worked in the field till late and, despite the fact that they are halfway to sleep we both know that I owe them a story.

I reach into my mind.

Search every corner, looking for something to pay my debt to them.

I find little enough for story material.

Little enough that they would like or even understand fully.

I glance at the children, resilient against sleep, somehow winning the fight against their drooping eyes.

I admire the strength these children have already, at five and three.

Puffy eyes, ringed in blue, shake with the effort of staying open.

I am impressed with their stubbornness, and I know that no matter what, they will hear their story.

What can I tell them that they don’t already know?

What does their mother tell them when they ask her?

And in that moment, I know exactly where to start.

Emerson Davis-Martin Stranger, poetry Inspired by Planes in Space, Ruby Onyinyechi Amazne Suspended in water, she floats in space, in time between here there, between who she is and who these people want her to be.

She’s an alien strange land she hovers above earth— No gravity, nothing to ground her but a past she can no longer see no longer grasp.

Her heart scratched, wide open as it bleeds, critics claw at intentions with words that bare teeth, They hiss untruths.

But her mouth, sewn shut.

She grits her teeth behind lips sealed by politics, niceties.

She’s a stranger in this land.

She has to smile, shake hands, hear the stories, understand words... imagine the day that she isn’t floating in this space of in-between, when firmly planted—

roots stretch, towards life.

This new soil beneath her feet.

Shelley Demus Lockdown Blues, poetry Locked up and there’s no escape thunder in my ears and clouds in my eyes.

Doors sealed, patrol in the hall.

I caught up to my lies.

I’m doin’ hard time still got months on my sentence.

Ain’t got no internet, no phone and it’s too late for repentance.

No TV and no games All I got is paper and pencil.

Writing what’s on my mental.

I suppose this’s what I get for the crimes I committed.

Don’t think I did anything wrong, but I apologize for what I omitted.

River Boy, poetry Knees wet with dew, she crouched in morning grass.

Fog surrounded the river, obscuring anything within three miles from view.

A silver pitcher to her left, she gripped the clear container on her right.

A shuffling sound echoed from across the water.

Her stomach soared into her throat.

Her heart plummeted to the soles of her feet.

A boy stood at the edge of the river.

His clothes torn and eyes wide.

No blood in sight.

No cuts nor bruises visible to the naked eye.

He looked to be her age, probably nine or ten.

His eyes were blood shot and his body trembled.

She called out ‘Are you ok’.

Head cocked to the side a frown on her face.

He didn’t answer, he didn’t move, he didn’t acknowledge that she had spoken.

The fog rose around his feet.

The river rushed violently down the way.

He stood stone till.

The fog now hiding everything but his face from view.

He closed his eyes.

She blinked, and he was gone.

The fog dissipated, the river calmed.

No sign of the boy was left.

She ran to tell others of what she saw.

But all they said was ‘A child’s imagination’.

Payton Dosdor Day and Night, poetry The horizon peaks over my golden hair as my eyes shine in the night stars.

I am sitting between keys on a computer and the lines on paper.

I am now staring down, I am normal height but I still stare down.

Looking in the mirror I see myself and who I always wanted to be.

The stars start to pass by but my body is still waiting for the sun.

Searching, poetry Take quick glances What do you see?

It’s the aching bruises that your brother gave you when he wanted to wrestle with you.

It’s the blue never ending rivers and the rocks that you hoped on inside those rivers.

Now look at the others.

It’s the ketchup stains that you got on your shirt at lunch because you were too busy paying attention to your friend.

Take another look.

But look closer this time.

You see the green bowl that your mom gave you to throw up in because you couldn’t make it to the toilet in time Now take one last look.

Look even closer.

But you can’t see anything.

Can you?

You are too close to see anything.

You need to take steps back To see everything, Or you won’t see anything at all.

Molly Figas Differences, poetry “Your mother liked the water cold” your warm breath whispers to me; chilling my spine.

If the world set on fire I’d still be standing here, and you’d be gone.

Why would the world freeze if you’re still here and why do I deserve to leave?

I don’t swim because I don’t like frost in my hair and sand in my toes.

If lava was soft I’d rub it along my legs and through your hands, I’d wrap it around you around me.

Maybe our skin would melt but maybe we would freeze.

You used to tell me I’m not like my mother at all, when she left she took everyone who loved her heart’s and that’s why were different.

If I were gone would I carry your heart, would you carry my soul?

Myamee Harris Cold Cold Blues, poetry I hate the Winter.

The Winter is cold.

I hate the Winter.

The Winter is cold.

There’s not one good thing about it.

The cold is too bold.

I don’t know why Winter comes.

It’s not loved, so there is no point.

I don’t know why Winter comes.

It’s not loved, so there is no point.

Winter us the worst season of all time.

The winter is what I call a saint.

Winter is the worst.

It gives me the chills.

Winter is the worst.

It gives me the chills.

Salt goes on the snow.

Snow fills the hills.

I hate the cold.

The cold loves me.

I hate the cold.

The cold loves me.

I don’t know why though.

I wish me and the cold would agree.

Checkered Floor, poetry Living life to its fullest.

Dancing back and forth with a stranger I just met.

Looking down at the floor, noticing the patterns.

Black and white repeatedly.

Thinking about what it meant.

Maybe it means racism.

Or something else I can’t figure out.

Still dancing I reminisce about the black and white floor.

I never noticed it was little diamonds, or squares.

Looking down at my feet move back and forth, I see the floor moving with me.

I think I’m losing my mind so I forget it.

I try to look like the rest just dancing, but I must look back at the floor.

It seems as if I was looking at my feet, but I know what I’m looking at.

I’m looking at the checked floor I thought so much about.

I’m looking at a floor, the same floor I was trying so hard to think about.

I’m looking at a FLOOR, it’s just a floor.

Know don’t have to worry about the floor, so I just dance the night away on the checkered floor.

Roan Hollander Wooden Oasis, nonfiction

The dock rests onshore in winter, frozen and creaking as wind flushes through its wooden, worn-out skeleton. In spring, the dock is slid across the sand, scraping jutting rocks, and finally, with a breath of relief, it glides into the water. In summer, the dock rocks and jostles, bowing in the swells.

Fish eggs clump on submerged, rusty wheels and waves spurt through splintery, sun-bleached slats.

The motor boat rears its head, straining against the ropes and clips holding it in the boat slip. In fall, the dock floats gently on the mirrored lake. Lacy autumn leaves like fragile boats drift by as it rests, exhausted and relieved from the hard work of summer at Deep Creek.

Summer mornings at the lake, I wake around dawn. Stepping as lightly as I can through the house, I reach the screen door and open it slowly, praying that it creaks quietly for once. I step onto the damp, mossy deck and stumble to grab my tackle, bleary eyed but determined to fish anyway.

Laden with gear, I walk to the shore, managing to stab myself a couple of times with the exposed hooks. I’ve memorized the path, avoiding tree roots sticking out of the soggy soil and the leafy mud coalescing in rivulets on the outskirts of swathes of grass.

The dock grumbles under my footsteps, aroused from a slumber filled with the chirping of crickets and spring peepers and now, being awakened. Gentle ripples emanate from the floats and soft groans whisper in the waking air as the morning tranquility greets me. An ethereal fog hovers just above the lake, pastel hues of a sunrise imbuing the clouds with peach and citrus. Bass leap in the distance; tiny rings of ripples appear on the surface where pumpkinseeds grab gnats who dip too close to the water. The tips of the trees, outlined by the horizon, are flickering candles as the sun rises behind them.

I cast my lure, a gentle plop that barely pierces the lake’s surface. I feel the harsh wiggle of a swimming lure, hear the maraca-like noise of a rattling lure as I patiently reel it in. I seldom catch a fish, though their splashes taunt me in the distance. My heart leaps when I feel a tug only to realize that the lure has hit a weed patch and is covered in weeds.

When the haze lifts and sunlight bathes the inlet, our neighbors’ ski boats shatter the glassy water. They pick me up for a ski, and I relish the feel of my bare, wet feet thudding onto the dock again, its black styrofoam-filled floats gurgling welcomes and hellos in the water as my weight pushes them down. Waves tickle the underside of the dock, lapping at it as I walk to the deck for breakfast, the dock supporting my tired legs with an ancient grand-motherliness. Tiny splinters pock my calloused feet; the slats that precariously stretch from the shore to the dock bow under my footsteps, their sandy undersides just skimming the shallows with crisp plap plaps. …

July sun beats the glistening water, waves like tiny fish squirm and flop on the surface and boats buzz on the lake like flies. I bite into a bagel slathered in cream cheese and topped with thyme-flavored gravlax, salty capers, fresh tomatoes and sweet onions. My feet dangle into the water, gravel-poked, mosquito-bitten, tree-stumped whacked and splintered soles tired from running back and forth between our neighbors’ houses and our own, aghast by my stubbornness when it comes to shoes. A book balances precariously on my knee. In the evening, I’m lured back to that same position to watch the sunset, the water cooling as the sun sinks below the tree tops. Finally dinner nears, and someone calls me up to set the table.

In the early morning, the dock is a serene site to fish. Young afternoon, it’s a place to swish my

feet in the water and eat breakfast. In late afternoon, we swim, attempting dives off the dock despite shallow water, the sediment that billows around us, and our outstretched fingers penetrating the muddy bottom of the lake.

When the sun dips past its peak in the sky, my neighbors, family and I take the boat out for a creamery run, me sitting in the front on the worn, cracked but downy cushions, wind whipping through my hair. The Creamery’s udderly delicious ice cream is smooth and melts on our lips, an array of flavors piled into our home-made waffle cones. Afterwards, the hot sun lulls me to sleep as the boat bobs in the waves.

Come evening, the dock is a place to fish and relax after one last ski for the day. The dock creaks out sighs as the water and sediment settle; crickets and toads begin to fill the woods with a cacophony of sounds. Our bellies full, we tiptoe back onto the dock to light fireworks or simply gaze at stars, tiny glowing orbs in the molten black sky. We shout phrases that echo off the lake and the far shore, always bouncing back to us as we bounce back to the dock.

Myesha Holloway Remix Poem, poetry Look closely, What do you see?

The overhead light cast them in A warm glow, putting her at ease.

Look closely, What do you see?

Taste of abrasive pain Flourishing though my knees As my bones crumble like cookies

Look closely, What do you see?

As the force of my body hit the air as my bed open up its arms to hug me tightly.

Now take one last look.

Look even closer What do you see?

She was told act like a lady, sit up straight, cross your legs.

Madison Lott Friendship, poetry The definition of friendship is not the same for everyone. For some it is what people describe it as, two friends looking out for each other. For others, it means more than that. My definition of friendship is not the normal thing. Not the people you see every day. It’s that one strange girl you see once and only once, before she is lost in time forever. My definition is when you are practicing three-turns and you fall. You wanna cry, but your best friend is there, and he stops the torrent of tears before they even start. Friendship is when you are having fun with someone who cares. When you are beating each other up with large flowers that were never really meant for something like this. Friendship is when you are crying, and no one notices how much the waves of pain and sadness have affected you. The crowd of people just walks by you without a glance. Except one person who struggles against the waves of passerby’s. That person struggles desperately to get to you, even if they know they might fail. They don’t give up though. Eventually they reach you, and you swim through pain and sadness together. Knowing you will always have their shoulder to cry and cling on to. That, is the definition of friendship to me.

Really Me, poetry A friend is someone with whom you dare to be yourself with- Frank Crane It’s funny how we lie to ourselves when we want something to be true. Like in a game of two truths and a lie.

I’m confident.

Or is it all an act? Who really knows. My brain is a tossing turning sea, where you can feel the rocks and pebbles bouncing against your skin.

My head is swimming in the salty waters of Erie beach.

Where my foot prints are etched from many summers.

Skin piercing cold hitting me face and invading my mouth.

Or is it scrambled like the ice after a good skate?

A skate where you and your best friend promise to always protect the other.

The ice scraping on your bare arms when you fall on purpose to feel better.

Your sharp, silver blades clanking against metal as you lift your leg a little too high.

A white boot becoming coal black from dirt, grime and goose poop.

Or the fact that when the ice melts then freezes bumps form that you can glide over with your friends.

Sometimes drag your fingers over them to feel the rough yet soft feeling of the ice.

Let’s not lie, memories are fun.

Bryanna Luster Night Sky, poetry “— At least the moon remains unchanged.” — Thanhha Lai Of all things in the world, that seem to change, the one thing I know for sure stays the same, is the moon in the dark sky at night, that calms the people below.

I search out my window.

I ask why it never changes.

I ask if it did change, would it be good or bad?

In my eyes, some things are fine just the way they are.

I think the moon is fine, high in the sky surrounded by stars.

Neila McElfresh Traditions, flash nonfiction

In 2010 the Pittsburgh Steelers made it to the Super Bowl. My parents bundled my siblings and me up in football gear; Polamalu jerseys and black face paint on our cheeks. Like most game days we drove through frigid air to the Foley’s house, our close friends. My parents never watched football with anybody else, which made it like a tradition.

As we walked through the front door my siblings and I would whip off our coats and kick our snowy shoes onto the ground, then canter up the stairs. From Ceci and Millie’s playroom on the second floor we could here the echoes of laughter and shouting bouncing off of the TV screen in the living room, traveling, quickly, to us. They were all noisy, our parents, but Tricia was the loudest. Her hollering used to phase us, but overtime we learned to ignore all of her commotion. Occasionally the five of us would make our way down the steps, sneaking past the old, leather couch, and to the dining room to fill up plates with cookies and potato chips.

Back upstairs we’d have a feast with everything we had managed to grab, spilling most of our crumbs. The playroom was cramped; there was a small door in the corner that opened into an even smaller room that Millie and Liadan, my sister, liked to hide in. Liadan is older than Millie, but a follower and was always doing whatever Millie did. Ceci and I liked to sit on the blue, fuzzy foldout chair in the center of the room and my brother, Eamonn, would curl up on our laps. The two of us were the oldest and it had always been our job to keep everyone entertained. Our favorite game to play was family; the four of us were orphaned siblings taking care of Eamonn, the baby. He was young, only two, and although he loved to think he was as big as us, deep down he knew that he wasn’t. He would beg to be something else, he liked to play the role of the family pet, and sometimes we went with it and used a doll as the baby instead.

As the sky began to fall into darkness our boredom quickly grew. It had been hours since the football game had kicked off. The whole night we’d sat upstairs, staying out of our parents’ way as they watched the Super Bowl, but now it was our turn to watch TV. We all relied on Ceci to come up with a solution and she did, “We should march down there and make them turn the TV off!”

“Yeah!” the rest of us cried out.

“And if they don’t we’ll just yell at them until they do!” Ceci continued.

“We can chant boo boo football!” Millie exclaimed. She was shaking with excitement, which wasn’t unusual for Millie. She was the craziest of all of us, always fired up about something.

“That’s perfect!” Liadan squealed.

“We have to be quiet so that we can catch them off guard,” I added in. Everyone nodded, and Liadan and Millie giggled.

Ceci looked us all in the eyes. “We’ll march down oldest to youngest, so Neila in the front, then me, Liadan, Millie, and Eamonn you’re in the back. Got it?”

“Got it,” the rest of us whispered, already sensing the pressure.

We grabbed our black and gold Steeler pompoms and got into our line order. We marched down the stairs in unison with our shoulders held high, pushed back as far as they could go. Then, once again, snuck behind the couch and leaned against the wall. Being intrigued by the football game, none of our parents had noticed that we were there, which only made the plan feel more intense.

“3, 2, 1,” we whispered, careful not to blow our cover. The protest began. Our voices were quiet at first, but we grew louder as we went on, feeling increasingly more powerful.

“Boo, boo football! Boo, boo football!”

Everyone on the couch turned their heads towards us and glared.

“Shut up!” the four of them yelled, visibly frustrated. “We’re trying to watch the game!”

“Boo, boo football! Boo, boo football!” Now, we were smiling, and laughing too. “Boo, boo football! Boo, boo football!” The tension was growing, and we could sense it, but still we didn’t stop. We waved our pompoms over our heads and in their faces. We marched around the perimeter of the first floor chanting our hearts out. The more we shouted, the sooner a rhythm formed and it became like a song. We kept on singing.

“That’s enough!” They all finally shouted. My Dad pointed to the stairs silently, but his discreetness said a lot. We got back into our line in the same order as before, and with our shoulders held high and our chests puffed out we marched right back up those steps.

Now we understood; we knew the rule.

Sundays are for football.

Mila McGrosky Denial, poetry Jazz rings out from inside the kitchen.

Her foot mimics the steady beat, her lips buzz among the melodic sax.

The only way she stops the urge to stand up and dance.

Overhead light casts a warm glow, putting her at ease. Screams and shouts project from the window, outside block.

It’s hard to understand, why she can’t play outside.

They smear vibrant colors over their lips, moving slowly, mocking shadows. Earlier her mother had treated her to a gold tube, bubble gum, because she had said red is for older women like me.

She was told act like a lady, sit up straight, cross your legs. She was a lady. A lady who happened to like lipstick, and liked to play rough with the boys. But ladies don’t do that.

Her brother climb trees in nice pants, his tie swings around like a hand on a clock.

Impatiently, she looks at her mother, hands propped against the sides of her face fixing the last bit of hair.

She just wanted to leave this miserable kitchen table. So, that’s exactly what she did.

“The Kitchen Table Series” Carrie Mae Weems

Elizabeth Neel Day Life, poetry The pink and yellow sprouts from the inside out.

Petal after petal.

Layer over layer.

The sand blows in the winds, as the sun anchors down.

The golden brown sunset glistens on the sheen of the petals.

There is no sign of any people.

No sign of any screaming, just the howling of the winds.

The green stem screws itself into the ground preparing for the long night ahead.

The animals all go into their caves, shoot down their holes.

The birds stop their chirping.

The frogs stop their croaking.

Everything is quiet.

Everything will remain quiet for the next eight hours.

After that everything comes to life.

Snakes slither across terrain.

Rabbits hop through bushes.

The hawks flap their wings.

Everything is awake.

They climb the tall mountains that almost reach the sky.

But once the sun anchors down again, they all say goodbye.

Bailee Preston Memories, poetry As I paint on the soft white canvas, I imagine the scribbles I drew Swim around in the colors.

I add more paint, I paint things from my imagination.

Things I am inspired by.

Things from my past and present.

They may seem like only scribbles, Draw onto a canvas.

They may seem meaningless, But to me, They mean everything.

The lines and scribbles Are memories.

They are important to me.

They tell the stories of my childhood.

Every line is a complete thought.

Josephine Reiter Confusion in the Tides, poetry “She whom the moon ruled”

-Adrienne Rich There is confusion here.

The secrets that the water carried in and out of life.

The following is a list she drifts.

They visit here meeting quietly in the dead of night, the early 19th century.

They make plans with the moon as their witness.

They pretend together and play make believe in A world of their own making of the world that they wish to live.

Two sides of the same coin.

They meet in the dead of night on that beach with the tides as their witness.

Grand plans were made on that beach, developed and published secrets were left untold, only to immediately get swept up, with the moon as their witness.

Eyes like rivers, they pour their confusion into the tides their fear and rage, the terrifying day.

They play, they pretend endless running in circles around the truth.

(Wikipedia, ‘Voltron Legendary Defender, list of episodes’ Roan, Wikipedia, ‘Necromantic’ me, Wikipedia ‘temple ru

A Snapshot, poetry

based on UNTITLED by Ruth Asawa One moment of time, frozen.

A woodland of twisting limbs and spiny leaves.

Images, caught in the endless web of time.

A timberland of moments, preserved for all eternity.

This forest will never grow.

Brought to life by human hands, without the creator to breathe life into cold limbs and numbed leaves, it is helpless.

An eternal winter is all we see.

Soft snow drifting down from the unyielding steel sky.

Give nothing up.

Confuse them.

A Gordian knot.

Except only this time, there are too many ends to find the opening.

To many ends to the beginning.

How will you find your way out?

A twisting maze, a labyrinth.

Maybe there’ll be a goblin king at the end.

An appearance of randomness hides the true order within.

You really need to care, for this.

She did.

An artist’s care and compassion shaped these leaves, this ice-cold flora.

Simple things become amazing things.

Meticulous and patient, she waits.

No one needs to understand.

She keeps growing, 8 hours a day.

After 8 hours, we see the product.

Ice cold and unbreakable.

No one had to understand.

Iris Roth-Bamberg Fairy Fail, nonfiction essay

I always believed in magic. If there wasn’t magic then the world was just the world, and in my book, that simply wasn’t fair. I didn’t want to live in a face-value kind of place where a tree was just a tree or de-ja-vu was only that. Hence magic. And for whatever reason, to me the epitome of magic, everything that magic was, somehow culminated in the Tooth Fairy.

And I know what you’re thinking —hahaha, the Tooth Fairy? Everyone knows she’s not real!

But to me the Tooth Fairy was the realest of all those holiday magics. Santa, the Easter Bunny, St. Nikolaus. I can’t tell you when I learned that Santa was a lie, for instance, or that the Easter Bunny was just my parents. But the Tooth Fairy? That I remember vividly.

The first time I lost a tooth my mother made me a tooth pillow. She said that it would be too difficult for the Tooth Fairy to get to my tooth under a pillow and a head so she made a mini pillow with a pocket that was hand embroidered with My Tooth in a stilted imitation of my handwriting. Mom had wanted me to do it myself, but my embroidery was even worse than my unreadable writing, so instead Mom sewed it and I picked out a pretty fairy patterned fabric.

I’m lying in my bed, staring at the window, certain that the Tooth Fairy will enter there. I can see her in my mind’s eye, shining and blue and delicate. It’s midnight, much later than nine, much too late to be up. I can hear the creaks of my parents getting ready for bed, the squeaking of my brother muttering through his dreams.

There is a creak on the steps. I turn onto my stomach, tuck my right arm beneath me and my left hand under my head, fluttering closed my eyes so that I can barely see through my lashes. As natural as a fake sleeper can look. A shadow passes over the light flowing into my room from the hallway and stops. I wait for a parent to whisper good night again, but there is no sound except for more footsteps on wooden floors. It’s my mom, the least stealthy of the family, including my five-year-old brother and dog. You can always tell who it is walking around our house by their footsteps. Mom is slow and heavy and even. Dad is sure and quick. Kai (my brother) is tromping and sounds as though he walks with weights hanging unevenly all over him. I walk light and fast, irregular. Our dog sounds as if he is running from something, skittering and swift.

And for whatever reason, it’s my mother who is sent to not-so-stealthily creep into my room. I can hear her modulated breathing. It sounds like her heart.

Not talking is hard when you want to, but it’s worse when you know you shouldn’t. Nothing is more tempting than that which is forbidden.

But I keep quiet, biting my cheek to ensure silence. Mom walks to my bed, the tree filtered moonlight haloing her in twisted shadows. She leans over, and I wait for my kiss on the forehead, but it doesn’t come. Instead her outstretched arm throws my face into shadow as she reaches across me.

Mentally, I throw my hands up in the air. I want to know what’s going on; I want to know why my mother is reaching for the tooth that I so carefully washed and wrapped up in tissue right before bed.

“Mom?” My voice is scratchy and breaks half way through. It’s surprisingly hard to talk horizontally, especially when your arm is digging into your stomach and you don’t want to move.

“Iris!” It’s part surprise, part question, part reprimand.

“Mom, what are you doing,” I can’t put expression or pitch into my voice with a knuckle shoved against my jugular. Stupid position. I know that I sleep like this often from red knuckle marks on my

cheek and blood gradually seeping back into my stomach. How I manage it is beyond me.

“I’m just…um, I’m just checking on your tooth, Sweetie.” To this day I don’t quite understand how she managed to switch a coin with my tooth while my eyes followed her every move. I guess that’s why the Tooth Fairy only comes at night. “Still there!” Mom gives me a halfhearted smile, kisses me on the cheek, and walks out, the floor groaning up a symphony.

As soon as I hear her deliberate steps on the stairs I extract my arm from under me and feel for my tooth. But instead all I can feel is a round outline. Suddenly panicked, I reach into the small felt pocket and feel the smooth, cold surface of a golden dollar.

There is no way I could’ve missed the Tooth Fairy flying in while Mom was here, and that only leaves one option. It feels like a bucket of ice water has been dumped over my head. The Tooth Fairy wasn’t real. And if the Tooth Fairy wasn’t real, none of the rest could be real either. And at that moment, you could say that I grew up.

Not in an adult sort of way, but like in Peter Pan. I couldn’t fly any more. It felt nice. Nice to understand, even if it meant that magic wasn’t real. It suddenly felt that the tint of my life had turned from rosy to dreary blue, an odd sort on irony if you thought about it.

Even now, when I think of magic, I still wonder if it could be real, but I always dismiss it; though I think that I will always wish and dream.

Claws, poetry She steps lightly through the tunnel, stars swirling, suspended in space, floating in time.

Flames lick and dance, hungry for life.

She is a stranger to this dying land, so scratched open and bleeding.

A wish to save the cruel sun rising, she can feel its burning heat sparkling from death filled embers.

Starved, rocky mountain peaks stare down lifelessly.

Horror, terror, disgust, caught in a moment of dismayed shock.

Rivers flooding into her hair.

The silence, rigid stone tombs, they can’t care any longer.

The earth’s bleeding heart, clawed wide open— shaking hands fluttering hopelessly— no chance at life.

The Earth will not survive what’s coming

Death’s Peak, poetry It is cold on Death Peak, the wind sinking its teeth deep into your heart, the idea of heat a distant dream. You don’t notice the strange shimmer in the sky, or how the stars wink out one by one until Death’s henchmen descend.

You made a mistake climbing that murderous mountain, you should’ve listened to the old wives’ tales. If you go up there, you won’t come back. Death’s Court will eat you alive. But here you are.

And now those stories are coming for you.

You can see clearly now that your body is but a skeleton, bones picked clean, soul hovering above.

What you had thought were just fragments of shadow are now clearly defined birds—ravens and crows, so many that the Murders and Unkindnesses blot out the moon.

The blue-ink sky is spattered with darker blood, wailing spirits floating where the stars once were.

Glistening claws slice into your misty arm, leaving marks where there shouldn’t be any on your ethereal body. These talons, these beaks are made not only to drag one to the land of the dead, but once there to rip and shred and torment.

Despite the tangible scratches that now cover you, wind ripples through your mind, scattering your mist,

your lively hood, for a moment before you again condense. And that, my friend, is the way out.

Morgan Snyder My Friend Shyness, poetry Hog’s hair paint brush dances upon eggshell white canvas. Shades of blue and green swirl. Bordering the celestial, inky black pupil. Glistening, shining in street lamp light.

The strands of bright kiss the surface of your porcelain complexion.

Hay like strands of your sun-kissed hair dance rhythmically with your steps.

Your hips sway to the beat of the music.

I paint because of the box that holds me hostage.

Steals the words out of my mouth.

It consumes me.

Your beauty is unlike any other.

But I am trapped.

With an all too familiar friend.

White-knuckled, I grip the brush handle tighter and continue to paint.

Anticipation Blues, poetry It’s much too soon for the front porch swing.

The ground squelches from melted snow and the trees refuse to bear their bright green leaves.

I yearn for the late nights of summer and their warmth.

Catching fireflies and counting stars in the clear sky above.

I am bound to sit and swing.

To rock back and forth and fill natures peaceful silence with our laughs and giggles.

Silks, poetry Like a blanket, thoughts surround.

Warming the chill inside of me.

The threads of my thoughts are carefully woven into silks. Silks that tell stories of tragedy, loss, and sadness.

My silk is lined with thorns to keep out intruders to shield ideas best left to myself.

Thoughts run wild, bouncing off my focus. Drawing my attention.

I turn to my tattered journal.

Binding barely griping the heavy hearted pages. Pencil spewing strands of bottled up thoughts and emotions.

Hand cramping. Eyes dark with soulless wonder. The sky it holds is vacant.

There is nothingness.

Christina Campbell Curious, poetry

I like to sit on my porch, in the early morning, when you might still be forcing a breath into a clogged, congested snore, when the leaves are waving, confined to their timber, till autumn takes it’s toll on these spring trees, turning them into fall ones. When machines do not file through these streets, when these lives can finally have peace of mind. When these birds filter their way through fogged grass, facing any sound that disturbs them. When the moon waves goodbye as the sun fills the empty space it withdrew, when these ragged animals, empty, but full of hunger, linger through these alleyways, lungeing backwards at the strike of my ongoing steps. When their black,

marble eyes and untamed,

delicately.

Lilly Welling Regret, poetry Tantra by Barbara Chase-Riboud Coiled, spiraling away to the floor, one color stands alone on its base, reflecting your image back at you.

Enough to make you question your posture, your outfit, and your presence.

Staring, judging your standing still.

And you can’t look away, it’ll see that too. You look the piece up and down, frowning at its excellence.

The bold yet stunning height won’t fail to catch your eye. Knots hanging down to the base, but not swinging, they stay perfectly still. It makes you shiver, it’s odd shape, its beauty, and its silence.

It is unbothered by you, yet you’re convinced it is worried for your every move like before.

Regret rushes over your body like the smooth golden paint used to create it. But it wasn’t paint, don’t forget you just assumed, now you’re being swallowed by sharp strands of guilt, for the words you used before.

It’s already too late.

Grade 7

Lena Carson Temper, poetry “Press #1 to languish in English wait time estimated anywhere between death and rebirth” –Steven Kramer Annoying is the best way to describe it.

The peaceful music soured when listened to over and over, waiting for some ignorant person to pick up to phone and speak to you. You’ve been waiting for hours, but they ignore you, and you know it.

You can hear their carefree laughter behind closed doors, you fool, you. But yet, you wait for them as they leave you behind.

Red flashes in your eyes like fireworks. Lips pursed, faux nails tapping impatiently at oak desktops, tall red heels pacing quickly on linoleum floors, you can’t stand it any longer, so hang up— then, bang your head against the wall in fury, heels collapse, nails snap, fireworks explode in your head, listen: you’ll never hear the end of it.

Bella Crapis A Case of Missing Love, poetry “Where did our love go? Where did our love go?”

By Elizabeth Alexander It was gone—like color in winter.

Our love went missing.

I don’t know how, but it was. Gone like it was never there. Those nights in the kitchen, attempting to cook and creating stained marble countertops. We could never be grandparents, or parents. But we could make a mess and laugh about it. The most care-free people in the world. We were cool because we were full of love. Now we stand, looking at each other, with blank expressions. Our eyes no longer holding our stories, you moved out, going to new places with out me. Leaving me curious, hungry to know, how love just goes missing.

Love simply isn’t a person it can’t walk out on two feet.

The person you love can, but you put trust and faith in them, faith that those two feet will be back through the door.

Just know they don’t always come back, love is a ghost choosing when to come and go.

Love isn’t a person.

Delaney DeVault A Dreamer’s Dream, poetry The evening star does not shine;

- William Blake In a sky full of shining stars, I do not shine. Instead I go off into different places that some cannot imagine.

As I close my eyes and move into a different time, where all is peaceful and I can finally rest. Allowing sleep and dreams to take over my body as I rest my eyes from the long day.

Bringing me into an even bigger adventure with everything being different from reality taking me into different places every night.

Jayce Direnna Protest, poetry We marched signs were held high in the air.

We chanted “enough is enough” We knew what we wanted, even if we were children.

I shouldn’t go to school fearful that a shooter will come in, fearful that I could die in a safe place.

As we marched we held our signs high, we weren’t going to isolate our self in the corner and not stand up for what is right.

We need gun control, guns are harmful to the world.

We need to make a change.

The crisp wind slashed us across our faces but we still protested.

We had sorrow in our hearts, for the 17 lives that were taken, for the families who never get to see their child again.

The flames inside of us sparked, as we yelled louder.

Lives are taken every day from guns and we do nothing about it.

When are you going to get gun control?

When it’s your kid with a gun pointed at their head?

We need to make a change, we can’t continue to let innocent lives be taken.

17 children are now up in heaven, there never coming back never seeing their families.

We felt the empathy for those families, our hearts were breaking just like there’s.

We felt solitude in the dark, as if no one wanted to hear our voices because we are kids.

We sprint to catch up with the others, forming a circle we chant.

The sun gleamed down on us, as we chanted.

When the protest ended and we walked back We felt satisfactory, like we did the right thing.

We fought for what we believed in.

What do you believe in?

Ella Engberg The Shotgun Apartment, poetry The city that had taken my sister this time was a heat cloud, it cradled her apartment in sweaty hands. A blast fired at the from door would pass through the back, and you hope no one’s on the fire escape. Shotgun apartment.

8 years old, I came south on a plane to New Orleans, summer of 2013.

I spent one week on a mattress peppered with old battle scars, sleeping under a single sheet that stuck to skin like saran wrap on leftover tuna casserole.

I spent one week under that roof, brown paint easing off the walls, asparagus green coils snaking their way up a fire escape that stank like rust.

A crop of mushrooms under the kitchen sink.

It was jungle here, lazy humidity layering your skin like chocolate syrup slowly consuming a cake. Days were spent with half pound bags of sour patch kids, sticky fingers stained rainbow that moved pieces around a magical game board, dad snoring on the couch. But that place was magic anyway, sneaking out the rickety fire escape, walks in the afternoon sun, rosy dollar store flip flops slapping against asphalt in a rhythmic bliss.

Eating ice cream and barbecue and the palpable taste of heat on your tongue.

Buckland Coffee Cake, poetry Buckland coffee cake left entrails on the steps if you tried to smuggle it to bed so we ate in the kitchen.

Legs and cinnamon poured over countertops.

I was happy to listen, devouring handfuls of sweet bread while they talked the 90s.

It was a crazy old lady’s house, my aunt and her happiness wrinkles, old New York Times pages stuck to the fridge, swimming in the late lake darkness.

The walls were safety, lake beach encircling the calmest paradise of blue. Problems were left down the road, before the creek, with it’s jingling innocence, before the donut shop’s cinnamon aromas, deep and full.

Coffee cake was comfort, a recipe of acceptance when you are isolated.

It cures you from the inside, curling up as to remind you of family, cutting away the artificial and you are simple again.

Nights at the lake house were like this; delicate and fleeting but worth it always, where her dreamworld become the real world, calmness and coffee cake overriding sensibility.

Rain, poetry Book pages struggle between clenched fingers.

This gentle mattress has turned painful beneath me as the day wears on, with soaked shoes and umbrellas piled by the door, there’s no where else to go.

School has let out and it’s already raining.

The steady onomatopoeia of the drops keeps us lazy, a divot on the couch, dense, dusty air in forgotten corners.

Tears slide down window panes, bubbles of dew tracing their way down wobbly tracks.

I sit and watch the pitiful, drooping lilies in the front yard, weighed down by water, watching one of these days drift past me, still; colorful, yet washed out.

There’s no where else to go.

It’s raining, and the day is fading slowly, but if I called, would you answer?

It’s only been a day and I remember us, birthdays and school days, staples, scissors, doodle-drawings that riddle notebook papers.

Giggles and goodbyes to another grade passed.

I can see the sun overcoming, bright and breaking through the clouds.

I will walk through the lonely and damp gate outside, water vapor clouding my inhales, cool, slippery puddles immersing my toes. When I come, will that look of superiority remain, I know you will remember, that sometimes appears? just don’t look at me like that again, get rid of your attitude because I’m not trash.

If you really want me as a friend, show me.

Wonder Woman, poetry She’s a raven in a neon green disguise, around the corner on every pavement turn she’s shrieking at you or the passing cars; migraines claw at your head. Ravens are picking, pestering pests with beady eyes like laser pointers, examining your faults from a mile away.

Maybe she’s more of a parrot, words eternally bubbling from her lips like the soap torrent of an overflowing sink.

If words are currency, she is a rich woman, stealing them from passersby when they are vulnerable, handing them out like spare change.

There is no privacy here. The streets clear of concealment.

A circus of words, juggling acts pushed into traffic; louder then car horns, church bells, a crowd on Pirates game day.

Words a cloudy haze, spinning you until your mind is a blur of her voice.

Words are thrown to me and lay in broken piles by my feet, her disprovals pushing on the toes of my nasty, nasty shoes.

She’s the queen of the block, you can see it all; the way she walks, the way she talks.

You don’t like it? Run over to Rosie, the competition, you don’t belong here.

Run fast, those words can sprint a half marathon.

She’s got an attitude that would melt the sunglasses off any face over pleased with themselves, she knows who’s boss and doesn’t care.

She’s a bird in flight, wings buoyed in the wind, cruising, surveying. Watch out; Thunder’s here, words ready to blow you off your feet.

The world needs more people like this.

Wonder Woman.

Rory Garofalo Timeless and Horrifying Ride, poetry “I kept saying: `Jack, Jack, Jack’ and someone was yelling: `He’s dead, he’s dead.’ All the ride to the hospital I kept bending over him saying: `Jack, Jack, can you hear me, I love you Jack.’ I kept holding the top of his head down, trying to keep the brains in,” she said on Nov. 29, 1963, a week after the president’s assassination.

–Jackie Kennedy Onassis 11:44 am I greet the crowds of Love Field People rampant and alive ready to see Jack We exit off the plane.

Looking at the shining sun on the black car.

Waving to the Americans.

Dallas, humid and warm while the sun bleeds through the sky like a gunshot through flesh.

Jack and Nellie Connaly chatter for a bit.

We pass the Adolphus Hotel 12:30 pm.

BANG BANG BANG Jack tumbles.

He falls back onto the hard and warm black car top.

The once beautiful and whole entity now in chunks.

I reach for the pieces, oozing with red liquid and hair.

The red liquid climbing onto my fingers and staying there My salmon pink suit stained.

The liquids crawling down my skirt and on my knees.

The car keeps slowing down, “Jack, Jack can you hear me” I silently think and mutter.

Through my denial I’m sobbing as I hold him.

My mind racing, how could America do this, How could the country that loved Jack so much do this to him.

12:32 pm but it feels like it’s been hours.

Grace Glowczewski Caged Free, poetry I could already taste the sizzling, steamy frijoles slopping in the pan, thick with grease and folded in sauce.

I could already taste the familiar flavor of soupy rice cooking in the crockpot.

Boiling bubbles jumped, spatula stirring beans held in her hand, my Abulita’s wrinkled face peering into the pan, hoping she could hold the burnt blackness at bay.

Her apron tightly hugged her waist, stained with oily water and food from last night.

Her embroidered sandals, soft and worn, shuffled along the floor like the yellowed pages of her recipe book, prized from Mexico.

Abulita mixed in the corn and peppers, pushing them around in the pan with a wooden spoon, asking me if I could do her a favor, por favor grate her some cheese.

Obediently, I shaved the bar of bright orange queso over the beans in the skillet, scalding smoke scented with pimientos y maíz, the peppers and corn’s aroma pungent.

She piled the rice and beans onto plates, sprinkling cheese on the comida, shaking on spice and flavor, calling me cocinarita, her little cook.

I struggled to stable the plates on my tiny palms, helping my Abulita with her rice and beans.

Athena Iverson Delilah Baby, poetry “I wrap her In the blanket staring for what seems like a long time into her open toothless mouth” —Terrance Hayes, The Same City Delilah baby I can feel the weight of you in my arms.

I can feel my a to z love for you and see how that laugh of yours makes people cry and how that smile pierces my heart because it looks just like his did.

I can feel the sun kissing each one of our toes as we sit overlooking the grand canyon in the kaleidoscope sunset. your spider fingers are wrapped in my hair like a plea to never be left alone your spindle legs are all knobby kneed and pale entwined with mine. baby, he left me not you.

I was a hurricane and he loved you too much to look afraid that one glance and he’d be head over heels reeling out of control like you were the drug and he was the addict. they say everything happens for a reason and you are my reason.

Delilah baby you are the here and the now of forever. the stop sign on the corner is an obstacle for street racers but its a godsend because its just enough of a pause for me to kiss you between the eyes. and I can’t ever finish anything so this story isn’t complete and at the top of the pass where the air is clear enough if we sing loud enough maybe he will hear us and remember who he left behind.

Ireland Kennedy Broken Glass, poetry Some day they’ll go down together they’ll bury them side by side.

To few it’ll be grief, to the law a relief but it’s death for Bonnie and Clyde.

-Bonnie Parker Our lives had escaped the mere and rattling cages of safety and guarantee.

We were locked in a pinfold of our own to the public, unable to escape our past, unable to run away from the law.

My love for Clyde was ambiguous, glamorized by the paparazzi fainting at the heels of their favorite superstars.

Flashing lights, yelling fans, and red carpets.

The only paparazzi we had ached for only came on a down-in-the-dumps Wednesday in 1934.

When our lives were taken from us on the side of a highway in Louisiana, the music of shattering car window glass striking our ears.

If only they had known the real story behind us, the fear and rampage.

If only they had learned about how I had sold my soul to an abusive husband before happily selling it to the devil.

Luca Mastroberardino Snow Flakes, poetry “I see the shadow of a man walking. It must be my father trying to find his way back from the dead.” Robert Louthan The silver white flakes plunged from the sky creating a flattened path of pale flurries.

Your feet crunched threw the snow not trying to make a sound.

The silver moon shined down on the chalky white below, only reflecting off your chilled face frozen in blue.

You looked up as a wind blew by, picking up the snow in front of you and pushing it forward, revealing a set of foot steps of the previous night— as you glanced out your window To see your black hearted father, leave a frozen path behind him, not making a sound.

He glanced up for the last time, looking into your window.

At your room, you ducked down, not wanting to be seen.

You heard the car start and when you popped your head back up, He was gone like a snow flake in the wind.

The Windy City, poetry The city was lost, by the wind which the wind had whirred and

whizzed.

The wind that the map showed no longer.

It was gone so

quick.

A snap of the fingers.

The blue bay by the bottom of the building stood tall, it was shiny unlike the other blue. It had life

unlike other things it had a meaning, a purpose. It was not straight, but instead stood crooked unlike other things in this town. The boats could sail, the kids could swim.

The Windy City they called it, but not a city.

A city was normal, this was dead by the dusk.

A city was regular, this was mighty by the morning.

A city was strong, this was weak so it hid in the wind.

The land was pure, yes it was The land of the dead, at least they thought it was abandoned.

Who is “they”; “they” is the people of the earth, who threw trash onto the land spoiling it of its rich beans and white milk.

The center ground for all the trash.

The wind healed it, stopped it from bleeding.

The city used to be dead, people left,

empty,

vacant.

Known for trash.

But then the wind took it; took it for good.

Then the people came back. Once again, it was alive, but this time it was in the wind.

The wind was its home, and it liked its home.

Sasha Petchal The Fourth, poetry It moved her: the sound of song; the twirling of summer; the soapbox strong, all of it. The loud crowds; the bustling people; the heart beating; the colors bursting.

Hammering down, the rays now strong; her foot past tapping; the band now singing that song; independence in a day with nothing to say.

Just a flip of her oak-brown hair, a twirl on her worn-out shoes, and that is all. On a day so fair, no time to lose, no time to spare.

Let there be great sound, let the summer air swing through the crowd.

Let the dying speech stand strong, let that final beat in the song, be the one to heat her feet; to move her firing heart.

Let this be the start of a never-ending part.

Let this be the day the twirling summer breeze moves through the crowd with nothing to say.

Let this be the day the crowd has nothing to say, just a beat of the heart to let this be the start.

Sebastian Mueller The Case of the Headless Wife, play JUDGE Next case: Murray vs. Stevenson. Are you present?

Yes, Your Honor.

MURRAY and STEVENSON

(MURRAY and STEVENSON both stand up, walk to the desk in front of them down)

and sit

JUDGE This is a case regarding a dispute Murray had with Stevenson, correct?

Yes, Your Honor.

(STEVENSON nods his head)

MURRAY

JUDGE Very well. Murray, please state your account of events.

(MURRAY stands up) MURRAY

(very calmly) Well, it happened last Sunday. I was just minding my own business when the baboon you call Stevenson burst into my house and killed my wife.

JUDGE Jesus Christ, this is a small case court, why haven’t you called the authorities! You only asked for eight dollars of Stevenson!

STEVENSON

Your Honor, if I may interject,

(STEVENSON stands up) I didn’t kill his wife per se, I just kinda, ya know, twisted her head off.

By God, Stevenson, that is killing his wife!

JUDGE MURRAY

Let me speak Stevenson!

(MURRAY slams his hands on the desk) It’s the least you can do after killing my wife! Anyways, I asked for eight dollars because that’s what she was worth!

STEVENSON You can still use her! Just glue her head back on!

MURRAY You still damaged my property and I want compensation!

JUDGE

Order in the court!

(JUDGE slams his gavel on the table and stands up in anger) JUDGE What is this about your property and being worth eight dollars!? That’s hardly the way to treat someone!

MURRAY What do you mean, Your Honor? I picked her up at the store.

JUDGE I couldn’t care less about where you met your wife, you can’t own someone, this isn’t the 1800s.

STEVENSON Glad to see you’re siding with me, Your Honor.

JUDGE I am doing no such thing, idiot, if you’ll excuse my language. You killed his wife, even if he didn’t treat her very well.

STEVENSON I told you, I only twisted her head off, he can still use her!

JUDGE What are you on about! How could you twist off her head!?

(STEVENSON chuckles) STEVENSON It’s pretty easy. I’m surprised you don’t know, to be honest. You just hold her head real tight in your hand and then twist. It’s as simple as that! They’re not made very sturdy.

JUDGE That’s not how it works! People aren’t just made of plastic like that!

Uh, actually, Your Honor, she was.

And how is that!

MURRAY JUDGE

MURRAY Uhh, it’s ‘cause she’s a doll. Ya know, those Barbie dolls.

(JUDGE sits down, flustered)

Oh.

(long pause)

(very calmly) How old are you Murray?

39.

And you, Stevenson?

40.

JUDGE

MURRAY JUDGE STEVENSON

JUDGE Then why in tarnation are you playing with dolls!

(under his breath) You’re never too old to play with dolls.

MURRAY

JUDGE And what’s this bit about breaking into his house, Stevenson?

STEVENSON Doll house, duh.

(JUDGE slams his gavel down on the table) JUDGE Stevenson, buy Murray a new doll or just give him eight dollars.

Ugh, fine.

STEVENSON

JUDGE Court is adjourned.

(MURRAY and STEVENSON leave and JUDGE sits there in awe)

Danielle Pickett Journey Through the Woods, poetry Fallen Autumn leaves crack and cringle underneath my boots.

A stick snaps and sends my head up, looking and searching for the culprit.

Casually continuing on my way, I freeze when I catch the culprit, a doe doing what frightened deer usually do; staying still.

I slowly approach, the doe notices and flees in a panic. A baby deer nearby follows behind.

Casually continuing on my way, a little bird cheerfully chirps. Another bird sings a song in reply. The two hum in harmony together.

Casually continuing on my way, a large grizzly bear blocks my path. I run as fast as I can, never turning back.

I catch my breath once I’ve gotten away.

Casually continuing on my way, a squirrel is scurrying up a tree; flying from branch to branch as I walk closer. Hurrying along the oversized stick branching out Casually continuing on my way, I come upon a small waterfall. Spilling

and splashing into the stream.

Water roars and blocks out other sounds.

Fish bunched and packed tightly together. Toppling and flopping over one another, bright reds and oranges clump together. I kneel down not knowing they would scatter away.

Casually going away, I walk back the way I came. The sun is starting to set in the sky. “I’m done for today,” I say, while covered in dirt and muck from head to toe.

Jack Pitard Hot Dog Vendor, poetry I’m walking down Main street, all of the sweet aromas in the air, the hot dog vendor calling blankly to a passerby.

It has that whole New York feel to it, like a city with cobbled roads and smoking chimneys resting on top of factories, but in modern times. People on street corners, their lips kissing the ends of cigarettes, disgusting, the Palace Theater calling out to street wanderers to go see Black Panther.

I buy a hot dog, the sweet and salty taste of relish on my tongue, satisfied. The vendor’s face gleaming with delight that I am content with his food.

His attitude is like my old friend Ian’s He only wants to do what is best, in a loud-mouth kind of way, seeming to not want to stop talking.

I make a new friend today.

The Other Side of the Universe, short story

The gate creaked as it slowly swung open. I smelled the hard dirt road. Beautiful. Ready for a

day in Frick Park. The air was hot, perfect for swimming. We walked down the path toward the pool, where our fun will begin. Markus and I broke into a run. We turned a corner, and there it was. The pool.

We set our stuff down, and jumped in with a giant splash, like a couple of dolphins. It was nice

and refreshing. Paradise.

“Hey, what’s that?” Markus was pointing over the pool. There was an old fence there, with a

dark cave behind it. It’s gaping maw looked like it wanted to come out and eat me. It was intimidating.

I shivered.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Wanna go check it out?”

“Nah,” Markus replied. “Maybe later. Let’s go into the pool.”

“What?” I sneered. “Are you scared?”

“No! Of course not! I said we can check it out later.”

“Alright,” I sighed.

And so we began our day. We both knew it was going to be much hotter later, so we saved

the pool for then. The cement was so hot, it felt as if we were walking on the sun. We were both very relieved when we got to the shade of the snack bar. We both ordered slushies- I mean, come on. It’s a summer day. You gotta have slushies on a summer day. The perfect refreshment.

And soon, it was time to go into the eerie cave.

We had just finished our slushies, and we could not stop looking at the cave. It brought many

questions to us- what is it doing there? What is inside it? Why is there a fence blocking it off? Our plan was that after we explored it for a bit, we would jump in the pool.

We climbed the fence, a small and effortless task. Immediately, the wind started howling. I

heard it- it was like a train. But I could not feel it. The wind seemed to be whispering to us- telling us to go back. But of course, arrogant and reckless as we were, we headed forward.

“Only five minutes, ok? I still wanna go swimming,” Markus grumbled.

“Toughen up and get over here,” I replied, exasperated. “But fine. Only five minutes.”

Markus reluctantly trudged up to me. And so, we entered the mouth of the cave.

The first thing I noticed was the cold. It was extreme- and quite strange, as it was hot outside,

and as soon as we entered the cave, the temperature dropped by a ton. And then, I felt the wind.

It came at us like a truck, sending us sprawling to the ground. It wasn’t really “speaking,” but

somehow, I could kind of tell that it was telling us that we shouldn’t be here. And this time, I believed it.

“Alright,” I said. “I’m out. That was fun and all, but I think we should get out of here.”

Markus looked relieved as ever. He nodded, and just as I was about to step out of the cave,

it happened. Something I would remember for the rest of my life. Something I never thought would happen, but it happened.

Markus looked still, frozen. And then he was gone. Just like that. How was it possible? I looked

harder, looking for some sign. Maybe it was an illusion. Immediately, I was scared. What had just happened?

My first thought was that I had to go after him. That is what a friend would do. But what would

happen to me? And what would happen to him?

I wanted to go after Markus. But what would happen to me, Carter? That reckless and loud-

mouth boy at school that everybody knows? I don’t want to know. I don’t want to go.

But I had to.

Reluctantly, I took a step forward. Immediately I felt the wind again. My vision was swirling.

I felt weightless and dizzy, and the cave was spinning around me. I couldn’t breath. I felt as if I was floating around in an infinite void. I blacked out.

I woke up on the soft grass. I felt the steady and soft beams of sunlight on my ba ck. I heard

birds singing their cheerful songs in the distance. You would think it was paradise- but there was something wrong about this air. I couldn’t quite place my mind on it- it was just some sort of feeling I had. I opened my eyes. The world was blurry at first- and then my eyes focused. I was lying next to a cornfield, the stocks swaying gently in the light breeze.

Beyond this field was a village. It looked like it came right out of the medieval times- thatched

straw roofs, wood and mud walls.

My first though was no. I can’t do this. I wanted to go back! This was impossible- it was a trick.

An illusion! I began to sob. What was going on? It had all happened so fast! I knew Markus was al-

right- he can’t have gone too far. I had no idea what to do or where to go.

Sighing, I decided to go to the village. After all, there was nowhere else to go.

What become of me?

The village was strangely empty. The wooden shutters on the houses were closed tightly.

There was nobody on the streets. There was no smoke coming form the chimneys. Market stalls were vacant. I began to wonder if this village was abandoned. But then a hand clasped my shoulder.

“What are you doing here?” said a gruff voice. I turned around, startled. There stood a man

that looked like a blacksmith- he was lean and muscular, and had a black beard and a sooty apron.

“You need to get inside. Now!” he said.

“Who- who are you?” I managed to stutter.

“No time to talk. You have to get inside! Now! Come with me.”

He led me to his house on the side of the street. It was a simple, one story hut, much like the

rest of the surrounding dwellings. He opened the wooden door with a creak, pulled me inside, and closed and locked it tightly.

“Where is everybody?” I finally managed to ask. “And where am I?”

“Oh, your not from around here, are you?” he replied in his gruff voice. “You are in the outpost

village of Astoc. You are talking to Derak, a loyal member of the village council.”

“Ok…this is not on Earth, is it?” I inquired.

“Oh…I should have guessed. Your a Beyonder, aren’t you?”

“Whatever that means, I guess so.”

“Well, uh…in that case, I better fill you in. You see, the Time Bolts are about to strike.”

“And what does that mean?”

“I guess I better fill you in a little more. You see, this world is an in-between world. Sort of like

in between reality and dreams. Do you know how some people come into your world, Earth?”

“Uh…yes? The mothers give birth to babies. Duh.”

Derak smiled. “Scientifically, yes. That is what they make you believe, because that is all they

know. But, not all humans were actually born, did you know that? In truth-”

I had to cut him off. “Are you saying that my mother did not give birth to me?”

“No! Of course not. Let me finish. When the Time Bolts strike in this world, people get trans-

ported. They can strike anywhere, once a month. When someone gets hit, they essentially die here, and are transported through time and space onto Earth. They will appear as they were when they were struck by the Bolt. Nobody will notice, though- I don’t really know why, that’s just the way it is.

And also, that is why I said some people. Most people are born on Earth from their mothers, yes.”

I thought about this. How was it possible? Less than ten minutes ago I was enjoying my time in

Frick Park, with Markus…MARKUS! I had to find Markus. “Did another kid come here a few minutes before me?” I asked franticly. “Did you see anyone else come form Earth?”

“Um…no. I’m sorry. When people are transported here, they can appear anywhere.”

This knowledge struck me like a boulder. How was I supposed to find him now? “How do I get

back home?” I asked.

Derak sighed. “The Portal. You can try to get there…but you will surely die.”

“Please!” I pleaded. “I need to rescue Markus and get back home! I don’t belong here.”

“Well…” Derak said, “I guess I do know the way. But it is very dangerous. If you do actually

make it to the cave with the Portal, you will surely be killed by the Guardian.”

This shocked me, in a way- I had never really been in a life-or-death situation before. “What

is the Guardian?”

“A monster. I don’t know what it looks like, but it is dangerous.”

“Ok.”

“Do I have to do this alone?”

Derak thought about this. “No,” he said. “I can give you-”

He was interrupted by sharp cracks outside. I caught a whiff smoke. The lanterns inside the hut

flickered out, and back on again.

Derak’s face looked overcome with relief. “The Time Bolts just struck. You should be safe for

a month. Now, what I was going to say is, I know some accomplished travelers and adventurers that might be able to aid you. Now, meet me at the main entrance to the village in five minutes. I will be there with a group who might be of some help.”

Later, I was at the gate. I was given a short sword. I was joined by a guy with blond hair and

a sturdy build, much like Derak. His name was Mason. There was also a girl, named Aria, who also looked travel-worn and experienced. The both nodded to me, and we exited the village into the wilder-

ness.

Immediately we were challenged. As we ventured into the forest next to the cornfield, growls

could be heard. We all drew out swords. A massive bear-dog jumped out at us. Mason slashed it to the ground with a quick sweep.

“What was that?” I asked.

“A death hound,” Aria replied. “We will run in to lots of those.”

“Ready for the forest?” Mason said, winking.

“Yeah…I guess,” I replied.

And so, we entered the dangerous and mysterious forest. It was dark and gloomy, and strange

laughter could be heard in the distance. It was a little weird, but our footsteps echoed.

“Now,” Aria said, “this world is kind of small. We will not have that far to travel, it will only take

about a day.”

“Great,” I responded, relieved. I was not ready for a long journey.

And we ventured onward.

We ran into other troubles- many more of these “death hounds.” I even killed one. Very proud, I

was at that. But then we ran into some more serious problems.

We came up to a big tree, much bigger than the rest of them. It was massive. I sat down on

one of it’s giant roots, as we had decided it was a good place to stop. Of course, I had forgotten that there was magic in this world, as I was not used to all of this oddity. So when the root that I was sitting on grabbed me and began pulling me up, I was confused, my brain not registering what was going on, until Mason drew his sword.

“Carter!” Aria shouted. She claimed onto a low hanging branch, which then wrapped around

her, dragging her up into the heavy canopy.

“Carter, are your hands still free?” Mason shouted up at me.

“YES!” I shouted down at him.

“Great. Now grab on to this rope, will ya?”

He tossed a coil of rope up at me.

“Ok,” he said. “Now wrap that around the root, and toss some up to Aria, who caught it and

wrapped it around her branch. I saw Mason grab his end of the rope and tie it around the trunk of

another tree. The big tree shuddered and was still.

“That surely confused it,” said Mason. Now get out of there.”

Since the tree was no longer moving, I was able to slide of of the root easily, and hop back

down to the ground. Aria lightly landed after me.

“What was that?” I asked.

“A Pathwatcher tree,” Aria responded “ I didn’t know they still existed, except for-”

“YES!” Mason said. “We are almost there!”

And there was a cry from the branches, and then a thud. A lump of something fell to the

ground.

I walked over to look at it.

“I told you that we shouldn’t have gone in that cave,” Markus said, looking up at me.

“Markus!” I shouted. “We were looking all over for you! How come you decide to just turn up

now?”

“Oh yeah…” Markus giggled. “Well funny story. I was, like, lost in the woods. I had, like, no

idea where I was, but I somehow knew it was nowhere near Earth, or home. So yeah, what was I supposed to do? Call 911?”

I sighed and shook my head. “I’m just relieved we found you, that’s all.” I helped him up, and

he brushed his back off. And we continued onward, toward the Guardian, whatever that was. And it was not long after that when we came to it.

We trudged onward and onward, and the forest grew darker and darker, until we eventually

came to a cavern, almost exactly identical to the one in Frick Park. This one was stranger though- it did not look any different, but it felt different. I didn’t really know why.

“What are we waiting for?” I said, excited. “There is our way home! Let’s go!”

“No, Carter!” Aria said. “We aren’t ready yet.”

“Yeah,” said Mason. “It’s too dangerous.”

“But-but guys…” I said, “I’m still going in there! I wanna get home!”

“Carter,” Markus said, “they are probably right. It is too dangerous. We need a plan.”

“I’m still going in there,” I said, determined.

And so I went into the cave.

A big mistake.

I should have listened.

The wind howled, just like in the cave at Frick park. Only this time it was trying to kill me. It

slammed me hard against the wall of the cave, then flung me up in the air again and rocketed me out of that dreadful cavern. I landed on the grass next to the others.

Aria gasped, and Mason rolled his eyes and ran over to me. “Should have listened, huh?” he

said.

I hurt all over. I had no open cuts, but I was aching really bad. “Yes,” I managed to get out.

Aria turned out to be very useful for information. After all, if it wasn’t for her we wouldn’t have

been able to get through the Guardian and I wound’t have been able to get home with Markus. “The Guardian isn’t a creature,” she said. “It’s more of a force that repels anyone who enters the cave that is not from this world. So if Mason or I were to enter, we would be fine. That being said, it won’t be that helpful as it is you and Markus who need to get home.”

“But guess what we found out?” Mason said. He walked into the cave. As soon as he entered,

it looked as if he was going through some sort of force field- it rippled, and a gap appeared directly where he walked through. It stayed open for about a second, then closed behind him. Mason looked back and smiled. Then he came back through, and the same thing happened.

“You see,” Aria said, “A gap opens for us. So if I or Mason were to go through, you would have

about a second, maybe less, to slip through behind us.”

“It’s risky, though,” Mason added.

I was still achy- I had discovered that I had two broken ribs and a sprained wrist, from landing

on it funny. And the back of my head was hurting really bad- it felt as if a steel plate had been pushed through my brain. A concussion. But despited all that, I managed to wobble to my feet.

“Carter,” Markus warned. “You had better sit down.”

“Markus,” I said. “We have to get home. Don’t you see how close we are? I don’t want to wait

any longer! It has only been a few days, but don’t you miss your family?”

“Well, if you put it that way…”

“Come on. Let’s go.”

“Ok,” Aria said. “Markus, you come directly behind me, and Carter, get behind Mason. We’re

going in.”

We got in line. Aria led Markus through. Markus had literally half a second to leap through after

Aria, before the gap closed. But they had made it.

Seeing this work renewed my confidence. I stepped in behind Mason. He walked through, and

the gap was barely wide enough to fit me. I jump through, and it closed behind me

We were through. I collapsed on the floor- I was feeling worse than ever.

“If you take a few steps further, you will be teleported back across the universe to your home,”

Mason said.

Aria smiled and said, “good luck.”

Markus helped me up, and supported me. Together we walked forward. And we were expe-

riencing the same effects as we did in the cave back at Frick Park- the wind rushing around us, the world spinning. I could still see the blurry figures of Mason and Aria, heading out of the cave, and back to the village.

What happened next…well…I can’t really remember. The next few weeks were a blur. Our par-

ents were extremely worried about us- they had authorities searching everywhere for us, the missing children. I spend a week in the hospital. Markus was fine, and he was able to return to school right away- it was now September and summer break had ended. I spent lots of time talking to my parents.

“Hey mom,” I would say. “You won’t believe where I was last week.”

Amelia Staresinic Beating Against the Walls of Black, poetry “The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched—they must be felt with the heart.”

—Helen Keller The world is fuzzy, snapshots of strangers: mommy, daddy, flashing through the burning in my head.

Brain Fever I hear an old man in a suit say and then the world goes dark again.

When I wake up the burning is gone but everything else is too. I grope my face, rubbing my eyes, they’re open.

But I cannot see. I open my mouth to scream for mommy, daddy, to scream for someone to save me from this world of nothing.

But no sound

comes out.

I scream harder.

Nameless people are touching me with their sweaty hands.

I kick harder.

The rage builds Up as the tears Pour down, And I cling on To the memory Of mama’s sweet voice, a thin lifeline, trying to pull me out of this bottomless pit. But it snaps And I’m falling.

Kicking, screaming, I’m being carried away, but by who?

I’m beating against the walls of black, but I cannot knock them down.

A Shadow Hanging By, poetry We sit in awe on the plaid picnic blanket, leaning back on our little hands and staring into the dark night sky. The park is packed with people, all staying silent in suspense for this moment. All at once, we hear the loud whistle and a boom and babies are bawling and mothers are kissing their shiny heads, telling them to “Wait a little longer, honey.”

Another boom sings deep in my chest.

I watch the colors dance in bursts and streaks against the black as tree roots press into my back and legs. They come up again and again, I like the gold the best because it reminds me of stars in the night, or at least how I imagine they might be, behind the smog and dirt of the city. They are a flash of bright, those stars in the night, and even after the light is gone, the shadow is still hanging by. It drifts in the sky, its swirls a quiet art that no one has time to notice before the the next explosion performs, stealing the stage and the spotlight. Each one is bigger than the last, each thudding inside of me like an extra heartbeat. Then it’s all over.

Such an abrupt stop that everyone is silent.

The silence is loud, it screams with energy, pulsing and bursting at the seams until it’s gone and dogs are barking and people are clapping, picking up their plaid picnic blankets and cooing to their bawling babies, but I am still sitting there, watching the swirly smoke fade into the air.

Flight, dramatic script

SCENE ONE

MRS. PRICE is making dinner in the kitchen. She has set the table in the kitchen and she’s pulling the food out of the oven. She keeps glancing at the clock on the wall and shaking her head. She’s wearing a traditional housewife smock and apron.

Where has that girl gotten to?

MRS. PRICE

(ANNE-MARIE bursts through the door looking very disheveled, with dirty stockings and shoes, and a ripped dress, but very happy and breathless. She is wearing a very worn and dirty aviator’s helmet on her head.)

Anne-Marie Price! This is not a way for a young lady to look! What if the neighbors had seen you! And look at this, another dress that I have to mend!

ANNE-MARIE

(sheepishly) Sorry mother.

(ANNE MARIE seems solemn for a moment and then her eyes immediately light up again.)

But me and James (MRS. PRICE interrupts)

MRS. PRICE James and I.

ANNE-MARIE

(rushed) James and I were at the pond in the woods, and I caught a frog! But I let it go, because it missed it’s family. And then James fell into the pond and I laughed so hard that I fell over!

(ANNE-MARIE says this all in one rambling sentence. MRS. PRICE looks slightly green.)

MRS. PRICE A frog? A frog! Is this how I have raised you? Sit for dinner and don’t ever do anything like play in a pond again! Haven’t I told you enough times?

ANNE-MARIE

(looking downcast) But mother, James is allowed to play in the pond and the mud. His parents let him do anything he wants to!

MRS. PRICE That’s because James is a boy. Girls just can’t do those kinds of things.

ANNE-MARIE

It’s 1937! Girls can do anything!

(MRS. PRICE keeps talking like Anne-Marie hadn’t said anything. The only acknowledgement she gives is the flip of her hand.)

MRS. PRICE Besides, when you play outside with James, you always ruin your dresses. It’s a wonder I even let you play with his kind. His family is catholic, and poor! And no more of that attitude young lady. Do as I say and go sit down for dinner! Oh, and don’t wear hats while we’re eating dinner.

ANNE-MARIE But mother, it’s not a hat, it’s a helmet. If I want to be an aviator, I have to wear this helmet all the time!

(Dramatically) It’s the only way!

MRS. PRICE That’s nonsense. Take it off.

(ANNE-MARIE grumbles, but obeys her mother and takes the hat off. ANNE-MARIE takes a seat at the table. MRS. PRICE puts food down and takes a seat across from ANNE-MARIE. ANNE-MARIE picks up a fork and goes to start eating, but MRS. PRICE gives her a look and she stops.)

MRS. PRICE Aren’t you forgetting something?

(A look of realization passes over ANNE-MARIE’s face and she hastily puts her fork down and grabs on to MRS. PRICE’s hand. They both bow their heads.)

ANNE-MARIE

(Hastily) We thank you lord for the roof above us, the clothes on our backs, and the food in front of us.

Amen.

(In unison)

ANNE-MARIE/MRS. PRICE

(ANNE-MARIE and MRS. PRICE both pick up their forks and start eating)

ANNE-MARIE Today at school, James told me that Amelia Earhart is going to set another record! She’s going to be the first woman to fly solo all the way around the world! I want to do that when I grow up!

(MRS. PRICE looks appalled. She sets down her fork and stares at ANNE-MARIE.)

MRS. PRICE You will do no such thing! They say she may be a communist you know. She is off gallivanting in airplanes rather than raising a family like she should be. No daughter of mine will be following in Amelia Earhart’s footsteps. Think of what your father would say if he were here!

ANNE-MARIE She is not a communist! I think she’s very brave and strong. And father is living in Tennessee with Cousin Alfred. He’s can’t say anything!

(MRS. PRICE huffs) Why can’t girls do that sort of stuff? Who makes these rules and why do we all listen to that person?

MRS. PRICE

(Looking flabbergasted) Well…because…just because that’s the way it is! There are things that are acceptable and there are things that aren’t. And a girl becoming an aviator is not, and that’s final! I’m really helping you by saying no, because then you’ll just run up against someone who says no in a meaner way later, and you won’t be able to get back on your feet.

ANNE-MARIE But that’s not fair!

(MRS. PRICE suddenly gets a sorrowful look on her face.)

MRS. PRICE

(In a softer tone) Well, life’s not always fair. But we have to make the best of it. And the best thing for you to do would just be to get married and have kids. It’s better that way. You’ll see.

ANNE-MARIE That’s not true! You don’t understand me!

(ANNE-MARIE grabs her helmet and runs out of the kitchen and up to her room. For a moment MRS. PRICE looks angry and we think she is going to storm after her, but the look passes and she just sighs and shakes her head.)

MRS. PRICE Oh Fred. I wish you were here. I’m trying to do what’s best for her, but the trouble is, I don’t really know what that might be.

END OF SCENE

Chaynee White Afterparty, poetry The baby shower was over, and aunts, uncles, mothers, and fathers had whined down.

All the russet faces, driving their broken down minivans down Universal street.

The silver rocks crushing under the dense tires, as they pull into our Grandmother’s house.

Red bricks, white roof, gravel walkway.

“Welcome to My House.” plays over the loud clashing of pans, and the spinach casserole out the oven. Curses spilled out of little Grandma’s mouth when it burnt her pug-wrinkle hands.

My cousin, tall and thin, sits on the far end of the beige couch, Tending to what she thought, was “Taz”, a forgotten yorkie.

I’d tell her, “That’s not the dog you looking for.”

And if she’d want to see him, she would have to look 4 feet deep in the ground, behind the shaggy vet’s office.

But my sunken thought was drowned with laughter When she dropped her cake on her black and white pencil skirt.

She tried to save it, But that little yorkie got to it first.

My aunt, at the center of attention. Smiled with her face, piled with makeup.

She riddles us with hints on her precious one’s name.

We pry her for more, but she refuses. She changed her clothes from her stunning fuscia dress, dazzling every eye that it caught. To baggy pants and a torn T-shirt. Her mocha skin settles and her thoughts disappear as she falls into the beige couch. She exhales, long and slow, her eyes half closed.

Reclined.

My sister and I chase each other up the carpet stairs, white icing on our fingers. while the adults sit back on their wooden chairs and complain.

About work, and Charleston, potholes. I wanted to speak my mind About how stressful it was, setting up that baby shower, while everybody says It was marvelous. We were tired but the sugar high kept us up ‘till the Moon hung high and everyone left. Including my Aunt who ordered the two little boys to carry 3 trunks full of gifts everyone was so selfless to give.

My grandma, sister, and I stayed to the after-after party just the three of us.

To eat buttered popcorn, and thick fizzy sodas. To watch countless Horror movies and let your heart skip some beats when That faceless killer shows up. And we giggle under the moonlight.

The Green in My Pockets, poetry

I slipped from the crowd of my neighbors and sister.

Like I would do normally.

Saying something along the lines of, “I have to go to the bathroom.”

Grade 6

What an excuse. I tip-toed up the creaky stairs.

The tile floor leading to Josh’s room. I checked Every possible place where anybody could be.

Not even the cat can know what I was doing.

Josh’s door creaked open, a sigh of relief.

His room was empty. His bed sloppy, his cloths everywhere. The rancid smell of dirt and sweat over flowed my nose. But I’m not here for the dirty clothes, the intoxicacting scent. That clean jar, where did he put it this time? Under his bed, over the table top? I scaned the room, there I saw a clear jar, over his nightstand halfway filled with green.

I tip-toed forward, making my way to the nightstand.

I grasped the green, My eyes shift as I lifted it out of the clear jar with bold Chick-scratch, “Josh.”

I’m not Josh, but Josh will forever know me.

I tip-toe down the stairs, another success I waited for the next time, I toke the green. And this cycle went on for months.

Each time, I forcefully stuffed the green down my pockets, it’s muffled screams telling me to put it back, never seemed to enter my ears.

I was proud, and filthy rich when I came time to go the snack line. My head held high, I felt no remorse, I had no guilt for what I was doing.

Who could blame me? I was filthy rich.

Lady with a fishnet wrapped around her messy bun, snatched the green off me, she tossed me a bag of air, I toke it, without a word. I griped the sides, the satisfying sound of popped air, escapedfrom the bag, leaving salty gold coins at the bottom. The crunch as they salsa danced around, my mouth-the dance floor.

But as all-stars must die, My plan, diseased. Josh, Do you know who caught me?

Who saw me, right in the middle of me taking the green?

It was your father Josh. His bald head glistening in the bright, exposed light bulb, watching helplessly, in bird’s eye view. His eyes, starting deep into my fearful soul, I’m frozen solid. His chocolate hand, tight fully grabbing mind, I felt as if I was dragged down the stairs and thrown in the van.

The faucet turned to its limit. Overflowed, my face with salty tears, My cheeks tender.

Only then did I realized what I had done.

Josh, do you even forgive me? You have no reason to, I stole from you. I’m sorry, I kept your green in my pockets.

Brielle Wiles The Day Everything Changed, poetry No the only tired I was, was tired of giving in —Rosa Parks I was tired, after spending a long day at the Montgomery department store.

Working as a seamstress.

I boarded the bus on Cleveland Avenue.

I sat in the first row of the colored section, next to me sat three other colored women.

A tall white man boarded the bus there were no seats, so the man stood up.

When Mr. James Blake saw that the man standing he told us to move farther back, so he could have a seat.

The three other women moved to the back.

I did not, I didn’t feel I had to there was three seats open.

Coming to the third stop at coat square, Mr. Blake stood up and walked to the middle of the bus Wearing a white shirt with a long black tie and a black pair of slacks.

He told me if I didn’t stand up he would have me arrested I looked him right in the eyes and said you may.

That Thursday at the age of forty-two, I was arrest.

Just like Claudette Colvin That night after I was processed, I got a phone call.

Being able to call my mother was the most reliving thing.

As I picked up the rotary phone and my mother answered she said, are you okay I then talked to my husband Raymond Parks.

That night Mr. Ed Nixon found out that I was in jail, he called Clifford Durr, a white lawyer.

Within that night I was released from jail.

On December 5th, I had a trail I was guilty, of violating segregation laws, given A suspended sentence and given a fine of 14 dollars.

No I was not the first but I was the last.

The things I did on that bus led to things much bigger things Now I can sit anywhere on that bus.

Beatrice Alba The Adventures of Baby Bear, fiction The lock on our door finally broke that day, so Mama Bear and Papa Bear and I went out to find the Locktree.

Our path, the one we always took for whatever reason, was long and twisty, one with leaves strewn over its surface. We weren’t worried about anyone trying to get into our house. After all, no one had ever tried to get in before. Why would they do it now?

It had been a cold night, so frost sprinkled the ground. We knew it was time to hibernate soon.

But the cold didn’t bother us; after all, we were bears.

Mama had just scooped our porridge into our favorite bowls when Papa announced that it was time to leave. “To go where?” I asked.

“The Locktree, of course. Where else do you think we get locks?” scoffed Papa Bear.

Confused, I clambered onto Mama Bear’s back and we set off to the Locktree, a place I had never been before.

The Locktree, it turns out, is a rather secretive place among us bears. Not many other sorts of people know about it. “But Mama,” I said, “if money can’t grow on trees, why can locks?”

“Look, can we just get the lock and stop asking questions for five minutes?” growled Papa Bear. “I understand your curiosity, son, but sometimes there’s something that your parents can’t explain, you see?”

I didn’t, but fell silent. Not much else happened: We picked a lock from the branches of the Locktree, and then walked back towards home.

The door was ajar. “Baby Bear, stay behind me,” warned Mama Bear.

“Mama, I told you not to call me Baby Bear anymore! I’m six now.”

“But you will always be my little baby bear,” she cooed.

Papa Bear snarled at us. “Quiet.”

He stepped into the house. “AARGH!”

“What is it, Papa?” I asked.

“SOMEONE’S BEEN SITTING IN MY CHAIR!” Papa Bear screamed.

“Was it you?”

“NO, BABY BEAR, IT WASN’T!”

“Who was it, then?”

“SOMEONE WHO DOESN’T KNOW HOW TO SIT IN CHAIRS, BECAUSE THE CUSHION IS CROOKED!”

“Oh, dear, someone’s been sitting in mine, too,” added Mama Bear. “It’s crooked, but that’s okay because I don’t get upset over trivial things such as this.”

“MAMA!” I screamed. “Someone sat in mine, too!”

“That’s alright, dear,” she told me, not looking yet. “A little crooked cushion is easily fixed.”

“But, Mama, the cushion’s all the way missing. They sat the seat out of the chair, and now no one can ever sit in it ever again!” I cried a little.

“Oh, grow up,” groaned Papa Bear, quite hypocritically.

“How about we all have some porridge?” said Mama Bear, trying to lighten the mood.

“Okay, Mama,” I piped up. “I like mine just right.”

“I hope mine will still be hot,” grumbled Papa Bear. Then, “AARGH!” he cried again.

“What is it, Papa?” I asked.

“SOMEBODY’S BEEN TASTING MY PORRIDGE!” Papa Bear screamed.

“Was it you?”

“NO, BABY BEAR, IT WASN’T!”

“Who was it, then?”

“PROBABLY THE SAME PERSON AS LAST TIME, BECAUSE THEY LEFT THE SPOON ON THE TABLE, SO CLEARLY, THEY DON’T KNOW HOW TO EAT PORRIDGE OR SIT IN CHAIRS!”

“Oh, my,” frowned Mama Bear. “Someone’s been tasting mine, and they’ve splashed it over the side, but there’s always paper towels!”

“Well, I hope no one ate—MAMA, THEY NOT ONLY TASTED MINE, THEY TASTED ALL OF IT!”

“Don’t worry, dear, you can always have mine.”

“But Mama, I like mine just right.”

“Well, we don’t always get what we want in life,” said Papa Bear. “Like a wife who can actually keep her house non-dysfunctional!”

I yawned.

“Oh, is it time for your nap, Baby Bear?” asked Mama Bear.

“I’m six. I don’t take naps anymore. I’m grown up, like you,” I told her, but collapsed into Mama Bear’s chair. “Ahh! Too hard! Too hard! Not soft! Not soft!” I cried, standing again and trudging up the stairs.

“Besides,” I heard Mama Bear whisper to Papa Bear, not wanting to alarm me, “if someone was here then they probably took a nap.”

Papa Bear followed me, yawning his great big Papa Bear yawn that I always wanted to achieve someday.

I followed Papa Bear to his bedroom. He and Mama Bear had separate bedrooms because Papa Bear snored too much.

He collapsed onto the bed, then bolted out of it. “AARGH!”

“What is it, Papa?” I asked.

“SOMEBODY’S BEEN LYING IN MY BED!” Papa Bear screamed.

“Was it you?”

“NO, BABY BEAR, IT WASN’T!”

“Who was it, then?”

“DEFINITELY THE SAME PERSON AS LAST TIME, BECAUSE THEY PULLED THE COVERS DOWN, SO THEY DON’T KNOW HOW TO BED OR PORRIDGE OR CHAIR!” Papa Bear, turning purple, had lost the ability of correctly inserting verbs into his speech.

Mama Bear pulled the covers up. “There. Now please calm down.”

We walked into her room, afraid of what we would find. “Oh,” said Mama Bear, “it’s just that they pulled the pillow off.” She replaced the pillow, fluffing it up with her large brown paws that I wished to have when I was older. Large, but gentle and delicate at the same time.

Nervous, I peered into my room.

And there she was! The friend I had been waiting for all of these years! The sister that I would have so much fun with! “Oh, thank you, Mama, oh Papa, thank you so much?”

“What?” said Mama, still in the hallway.

“Thank you so much for my little sister! Or is she my big sister?” I mused.

“What?”

“The girl that’s lying in my bed. Will we huddle together on cold winter nights?”

“Baby Bear?!”

“You know! The one you brought along so I could have a sister and we could play together out in the woods with all the smaller wood animals?”

“Baby Bear, we didn’t get you a sister.” Mama Bear stepped into my room. “Papa Bear? You might want to come and see this.”

Everyone was silent as we looked down upon the small thing in my bed. She didn’t look like the kind of person you’d expect to be eating porridge and breaking chairs, but she had porridge on her face and was using the chair cushion as a pillow.

I nudged her cheek with my paw, to see if she was real. Her eyes blinked open. “M-mommy?”

Then she saw us. “MOMMY?!” She practically flew out of the window, as if there were wings on her back. The girl must have taken some sort of aerobics or something, because she landed perfectly with both feet on the ground, like a cat.

And it is in that moment that I remember her, the moment when she jumped, her golden hair streaming out behind and above her, her dress billowing with the wind, just when she started to jump.

I called her Goldilocks.

Single, poetry No one else comes here in November, especially when the sun is rising,

meaning the lake was empty except for the occasional reed on the water.

A duck took a quiet

swim.

When the sun reached behind, he seemed a noble figure in the light.

It passed again. The algae

he pecked at was visible now. It was a soft water-moss: did it know it would die that day?

But we are told that algae does not know things.

The algae had been in that lake

for longer than one would consider, so perhaps it knew

more than even the person who came around occasionally to pick up the trash that other people leave

here, that gives off a gray-blue sort of smell,

but that’s probably just the smell of the trash bag and not the trash. Other ducks were starting to crowd the lake now, and the air suddenly became noisier and

tense.

I gazed again at the lonely algae and the ducks and the air warming

over the lonely lake, and everything felt content.

A Pen of Many Faces, poetry 1. From the perspective of someone antsy to finish words (still at the hot glowing stem of the brain, fiery and disjointed), trying hard to sort them into something understandable, it is merely their usual blue ballpoint pen. Not distinctive except for the two hearts on the clip.

2. To someone waiting for words to come, reaching into nowhere for something, then suddenly seeing it in that old battered pen, which erupts into countless shades of blue, navy, azure, like different shades of sky at different times of day.

3. Someone studying symbolism might ponder more on those two hearts on the clip of the pen. Just the branding name, but it also means to clip the pen close to your heart, they firmly believe.

4. A blind boy in a room where his mother writes a pleading letter to some being for a miracle. Mother uncaps pen, and it sounds like a match striking. The pen and cap are almost inseparable; the boy can tell. He takes his mother’s hand, glad she’s always stayed close to him.

5. A woman, just donated blood, peers at the pen tip. A vein extruding. We used to think that blood was blue until it was exposed to oxygen, but that’s just how it looks through someone’s skin. So maybe the white core of the pen is just how it looks through blue plastic.

6. The woman will forget the blood and put the pen to paper. Over the years, the memory will almost fade. Both pen and woman will shed blood. This is normal.

7. Every person who owned this pen has inputted something into it and taken another thing out again.

Now I take it home, and I smell someone else’s handsoap.

Evan Allen Three Little Bears, fiction Once upon a time there was a little house in the middle of a dense forest and in that house lived three bears. There was a father bear there was a mother and there was a tiny little baby bear. One day at the house came a little girl, or I think it was a girl. All I know is that it had beautiful blonde hair and it was the skinniest person I had ever seen.

Oh and by the way I’m the father bear’s spoon, passed down by many generations of father bears and here I am today. So anyways, one day she just barged into our little house. It was d im in the kitchen, but the living room was lit by sunlight. It must’ve immediately saw the three chairs aligned in the living room because it sat in the masters chair first. I wanted to jump out of my bowl and crack it over the head but I forgot that I was still only a spoon and I didn’t have legs so I just sat there and watched it try out each chair until it came to the poor little baby bear’s chair and sat down. This time it didn’t get up right away, this time it sat there and sat there and surprisingly based on how skinny it was it went right through the bottom of the seat. The poor baby bear, who does this thing think it is. It comes in here unwelcomed and sits out the baby bears seat, oh it’s gonna get it now… “aaaaaaah.”

Oh wait, I’m still a spoon, I can’t talk or stand or walk or beat the stuffing out of an intruder that just broke my sweat little baby bear’s chair. When the master gets home he’s gonna be so mad, but unlike me, he can beat the stuffing out of an intruder. So back to the story, when the thing got up out of the wreck that it had made, it looked up and came to the kitchen. Then I saw her face, she was beautiful. She had perfect teeth and eyebrows, she had the best looking nose ever and her eyes were a bright sapphire blue. But anyway she was getting really close now, so close in fact that I could smell her breath as she bent down to sniff my bowl of porridge. Then suddenly she grabbed my handle and lifted me up toward her mouth. “Put me down you don’t have the right to do this to me, I’m not your spoon,” but once again I was still a spoon and I couldn’t do anything to stop her, so she shoved me into her mouth and ate a bite of my porridge which she spit out immediately all over the walls.

Who does she think she is, she comes here breaks a chair, eats my porridge and spits it all over the walls. Then she takes a bite of mother bears porridge and does the exact same thing. But when she comes to the baby bears porridge, she eats and eats and eats and eats until there is nothing left to eat. Then she goes upstairs, I hear footsteps above me. I could guess that she was trying out each of their beds. I could picture it in my mind, one by one she tries each bed until she finally comes to the baby bears bed where the motion above me seizes. I hear nothing but the ruffle of the covers as she slips her tiny baby under the sheets of the baby bears bed. Then, those sounds of the ruffling covers is taken over by a loud snore. I wait there for a few minutes, observing living room in ruin. I sit there in my slightly emptier bowl of porridge and I wait and wait and wait until I finally hear footsteps outside the door. A few seconds later I see the masters hefty frame appear in the doorway, then the two other bears follow after him. Father bear stops in the living room and observes the chairs.

“SOMEBODY SAT IN MY SEAT, THEY LEFT THE CUSHION CROOKED!” father bear screamed.

“And somebody has sat in my seat too, they left it standing crooked,” the mother bear yelled.

“And somebody sat in my seat, and they sat and sat and sat the bottom right out of it,” squeaked the baby bear in his tiny high-pitched voice.

Then the bears walked over to the kitchen and looked into their bowls of porridge.

“WHAT’S THIS?!” growled the father bear, “SOMEBODY HAS BEEN TASTING MY PORRIDGE!”

bear.

“Somebody has been taking my porridge too,” yelled the mother bear.

“And somebody has been eating my porridge too, and the ate it all up,” squeaked the baby

“If somebody has been then they must still be here,” said the mother bear. So the bears went upstairs to look.

I heard the familiar creak of them going up and down the stairs but that was taken over by…

“SOMEBODY HAS BEEN LAYING IN MY BED, AND LEFT THE COVERS DOWN,” growled the father bear loudly “Somebody has been lying in my bed too and they knocked the pillow down,” said the mother bear.

“Somebody has been lying in my bed,” squeaked the baby bear “and she’s still here.”

“ROOOOOOAAAAAAR!!!!!!!” father bear screamed, “GET OUT OF MY SONS BED!” Then it went silent for a few seconds, until that silence was broken by…

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.” I heard people moving around quickly until the girl came sprinting down the down the stairs with father bear right on her tail. She ran across the kitchen and into the living room only to run straight into the door frame. You see her flop backwards onto the floor and from there I’ll just tell you that it didn’t end well from there. Father bear had come hustling behind and all I heard was CRAAAAAAACK!, and then she was gone. So after that the bears were in peace and the little girl was probably left in pieces, I didn’t know because I looked away. Anyways though, nobody ever came back to the three bears house again. Well, with an exception for the little farm boy that decided to step through our doorways once, but that is another story for another day.

Henry Bard Children of the Letters, poetry The careful

pull on the words that entwine,

to form my name.

I listen to them

roll and bounce and jump. they, like kids,

are full of energy.

If only they were all lively.

If only,

I didn’t have to hear them used

in vein

and listen

to the small children of the letters cry.

Selfishness, poetry To get a glimpse,

of your face I look down.

You treat me like a doll.

You never thought about me.

I am the one who will always be there.

You Forgot, poetry “You had almost forgotten.” – Miller Williams The softness of a thorn bush, or the pain of a pillow.

You had almost forgotten where the stream runs and the trees point.

It is all a blur, that you will never again see.

You will never again, be able to speak, only think.

You will always be full of ideas, but you will never be able to again, see into the minds of the people who love and those who hate. you will be silent forever.

But your mind will be loud.

You had almost forgotten.

I wouldn’t’ve let you forget, but alas it seems that I was too late.

Strike, poetry I was only eight.

I am only twelve.

It happened. the snake slithered closer.

Its fangs, my legs.

I am still afraid.

The snake slithered so, close, I could hear it breathing.

I felt it.

The smooth back and the cold underside.

I was unprepared.

It attacked.

I was incapable of moving it slithered up and down my stomach.

It kept a rhythm.

Then he came in and grabbed it.

I sit in the bathroom curled into a ball, just waiting for it to strike again.

Elena Eiss The Zoo and the Pink Jacket, poetry Anteaters greet newcomers at the front gate. Monkeys eat bananas, they peel them upside down, your hands dig into your pink coat pockets. You think of your dog, how he would try to catch and eat the meerkats. You’ve brought a friend to the zoo with you, her parents had granted her permission and she had greeted you with a hug. Despite the cold March weather, you search for Dip-in Dots ice cream to eat, as you shove the jelly beans into your mouth, that you got somewhere near the kangaroo enclosure. You were going to go to the library, but you decided you would rather like to go to the zoo, munch jellybeans, and look for bird nests in surrounding trees. Twin opal birthstone bracelets glitters as you watch penguins swim through icy waters and wonder why there aren’t any quails at the zoos that you’ve seen. You and your friend run when the lion roars, sing Disney princess songs when you wait in line for lunch.

Tap the glass until the fish moves.

Umbrellas are drawn out when it starts to rain. Like a vulture, dark clouds loom over the spot where you ate watermelon as a snack earlier. You listen to the Xylophone-like sounds of rain that pounds against the windshield, with yodeling the only thing on the car’s old radio.

Zebras still fresh on your mind.

You wonder where your pink jacket is, as it has been with you through many x-ray machines, like that time you left the tin of toy wizards and vampires, that your uncle had gotten you, in your pink pocket. You go back, check by the turtles and cry when you can’t find it. You and your friend slurp smoothies since the rain has cleared up. You rant, saying that you wouldn’t have left it, had you been quicker. You go up to the lost-in-found in a pair, an octopus shiftily looking at you from a tank. This would never have happened, had you used your mind to think. So maybe there is something to learn from this experience, not just that there are no

Natalie Ficca The Artist, poetry The sunrise awakens, buried into distant woodlands.

This pine-tree shakes.

An artist.

He sits perched on where the limbs all meet, plunged in his deepest reveries of when he was still a little boy.

Like a grasshopper in a May meadow, when he was little, he hopped around the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon.

Now the painter is old, His hands stained by the work done before the day end’s.

He desires to paint the most intriguing landscape to be able to call his own, despite living in a land where the grass is always green, and where the lakes are an icy clear.

There is magic in it, The painting.

Wedded forever, Woven into the canvas And gold melted into the paint, Sinking away thought to never been seen again.

But still, The colors bleed through.

A stunning painting, incomprehensible by the human mind.

And so, Like the sad story of Narcissus, The painter sat on his stool And stared into the gold stained canvas, Falling deep in, Trapped forever.

The Clock, Poetry I lived in a villa Where the clock stood high Towering over all of the other homes And shadows the town hall Every morning when the birds and the breeze woke us, I looked out of the window Still on the time of August 3rd 1995 the clock had never ticked for 23 years just sitting there unused but then on the day of my goodbye with a suitcase in hand the gears turned and it ticked one slow ring like a goodbye message, the clock rang shaking me till tears soaked the ground now here I am I don’t live in that town, not many do But whenever I hear of that sound, a slow ring of the bell I think of having to say goodbye

Nina Kellar Amaryllis Flower, poetry I touch your soft red leaves Gently All different colors Red, white, pink, orange, yellow, and green I put my nose down in your petals.

Looks are dramatic, But scent, Only a soft sweet smell like vanilla fingers on your petals smooth like the ocean Delicate bitter taste But truly sweet You pour into your roots and the ground wearing an elegant red and purple dress

Danielle Kohr Afternoon Sun, poetry The gray of the morning has passed and the sun is high over the distant horizon, which seems jagged, whether with trees or hills I know not, for it is so far off that big things and little are mixed.

I soon lost sight and recollection of ghostly fears in the beauty of the scene.

The afternoon sun, soon, began falling upon them and bringing out all the glorious colors of this beautiful range, deep blue and purple in the shadows of the peaks, green and brown where grass and rock mingled, and an endless perspective of jagged rock and pointed crags, till these were themselves lost in the distance, where the snowy peaks rose grandly. As the sun began to sink, we saw now and again the white gleam of falling water.

The sun sank lower behind us, the shadows of the evening began to creep around.

This was emphasized by the fact that the snowy mountaintop held the sunset, and seemed to glow out with delicate cool pink.

As the evening fell it began to get very cold, and the growing twilight seemed to merge into one dark mistiness.

Sometimes, the darkness seemed to be closing down upon us, great masses of grayness.

It produced a peculiarly weird and solemn effect, which carried on the thoughts of earlier in the evening, when the falling sunset threw into strange relief. The ghost-like clouds, which seemed to wind ceaselessly through the valleys, grew dark. There seemed to be some kind of excitement amongst them. Then, through the darkness, I could see a sort of patch of gray light ahead

Just Stop, poetry Dear the human race, Why? Why do you bully me to the point of extinction? Why do you vote me the World’s Ugliest Animal in 2014?

I just don’t get it.

You say I look like J-E-L-L-O, that was never put in the fridge. You say I smell like boggers. You claim I am clumsy, and cant swim.

I think I can swim, I think I am beautiful.

I am strong and gooey. I am pink and proud.

Your words of hatred, your viral videos of me all over the internet need to stop. They don’t effect me. So if you are looking for a reaction, you won’t get one.

When you hunt me to the point of extinction, you will be sorry. There will be no more of my beautiful face. I will slowly fade away.

So please, just stop.

as though there were a cleft in the hills.

The Memories, poetry I smell the fresh, salty sea and feel the cloudy, gray sky, I let my soul and spirit fly.

The balmy breeze kisses my sun-bronzed skin, I let the sea set me free, There couldn’t be a greater destiny.

The current crashes up against my legs, as I reminisce The indefinite, vague memories of midnight roused by the moonlight. I take a solo walk along the same path, admiring the shimmering reflections in the tidal shift with the flood of fun, happy memories from the life I used to live.

Washed away with the drift and erased by pride.

I put my message in a bottle and send it into destiny.

Here, life is different. Time doesn’t move hour to hour, but mood to moment. It creates the rhythm of life.

I walk down the muddy path, past the gushing, rushing shore. The current comes chasing after me with the great summer memories that last forever.

I watch the last bit of glow sink below the land, wanting to touch the pastel colors before it sneaks into the depths of the sea.

The current whispers to me sweeping over my feet, surrounding where I stand. The sight, and the sound as well, evoke calming sensations. The world seems to be painted in a mask of blue I wish the blue would stay as a memory burned forever.

Cassidy Lynch Dawn, nonfiction Dawn is the start. Dawn, the one thing that will never leave, no matter what changes in your life.

Dawn will never leave. Your day could have been horrible and you would go to sleep with a headache, but when you wake up there will be sun leaking from out your windows and for a moment, you will almost forget everything that happened previously. Dawn is the start. Without dawn, there will be no day, a never-ending cycle. Dawn is what breaks that up, dawn is what stops everything and gives you a new beginning. Dawn is the start.

Just stop,poetry Dear the human race, Why? Why do you bully me to the point of extinction? Why do you vote me the World’s Ugliest Animal in 2014?

I just don’t get it.

You say I look like J-E-L-L-O, that was never put in the fridge. You say I smell like boggers. You claim I am clumsy, and cant swim.

I think I can swim, I think I am beautiful.

I am strong and gooey. I am pink and proud.

Your words of hatred, your viral videos of me all over the internet need to stop. They don’t effect me. So if you are looking for a reaction, you won’t get one.

When you hunt me to the point of extinction, you will be sorry. There will be no more of my beautiful face. I will slowly fade away.

So please, just stop.

Sincerley, Blo B. Fish

Lucy Potts How to Have Your Cat NOT Hate You Even Though You May Deserve It (have a loving cat), nonfiction Yes! Your parents have finally agreed to get you a cat. Now that sad and empty feeling inside you has been filled. When you get him, you will want to literally squeeze his guts out. But try to refrain from doing this as it could conclude in two ways. If you want to physically squeeze his guts out, then you will find that you may no longer have a cat. If you are not actually doing it, but you are hugging him, then he will hate you, and may try to escape the first good chance he gets. Instead try to slowly approach him, and if you can get within two feet from him, congrats to you! Now kneel down and reach your hand out to touch the fluffy gray coat he wears. If you have successfully done this, then you clearly have a true talent, but of course, you won’t. He will run away, and you will have the urge to chase him, and most likely will, but if you don’t, you’re one step closer to having this lovely pet be yours.

Parents Have Their Secrets Obviously, your parents are also here and are very excited to have the newest member of your family finally be here. So of course, they will be greeting him and holding him. You will wonder how they can pick up the cat with ease. Eventually, you’ll know when you yourself are a parent, but at the moment it seems that they are literally doing the impossible. After you’ve finally accepted that your parents are magic, it will appear as clear as day that your best intentions are on you picking up this creature. Well they’re not, and they shouldn’t be. You will try to pick up your lovely kitty, and you will find that they will thrash around and meow furiously at you. Then your parents will come over, and tell you off. You’ll say, “But you were picking him up.”

Your mom will reply with the well-known look that states, We’re-the-grown-ups-here-and-we-are-rightso-listen-to-us. You will of course have to reply with come-on-mom-I-can-be-just-as-smart-as-you face. Well, so much for that great idea. Eventually, mom and dad will stop staring at you and you’ll be free to play with kitty. Unfortunately, they have taken the kitty somewhere, and your worst fears will start to come out and take over your mind. What if they’ve taken him back? What if they’ve given him away? Well don’t start now. The cat would not have been taken away so quickly. All you have to do is wait for the night. (before you go to bed) The cat will have found a very comfy place to rest, and all you have to do is find it.

“Kitty, where are you?” you’ll say. “I just want to touch you.”

“What are you doing?” Your very tired father will say. Now try not to panic. He was just about to fall asleep, when he heard, “Here kitty, kitty, kitty.”

“Just looking for the cat.” You’ll say. “Have you seen him?”

Being very tired, he’ll forget the incident earlier, and help you look. Miraculously, it will be you who finds the cat. He’ll be sleeping behind the big, gray armchair, where you and your younger brother had made a fort out of pillows, blankets, and books earlier that week. You’ll squeeze your way through the jumble, and find that the cat was still sleeping. Now is the time to crouch down, and pet him. Try taking two fingers and stroke his cheeks. Take in all this glory, because it will be a while before he lets you do it again.

Schoolwork Comes First You’ll wake to you father shaking and yelling at you to wake up.

“WAKE-UP!! You’re going to be late for school!” he yells.

“What time is it?” You’ll ask. As you start to get your bearings straight, you will realize that you fell asleep in the fort.

“It’s 7:45! Go get dressed! Hurry up!”

As you run upstairs, you’ll see the cat on the steps. You will try to avoid him, but it will be too late. As you fall, you briefly see your brother pushing the cat out of the way. You’ll hit the stairs hard.

“You could’ve really hurt the cat!” your brother screams.

Through tears you’ll yell, “I didn’t mean to!” but you already know it’s too late. This incident has set you back weeks that you didn’t even have.

When you finally arrive at school, you’ll have missed much of math, adding to the pile of homework you have been putting off for days.

“I hope you realize the importance of schoolwork,” Your teacher will say as he hands you a packet of work. “This is due by Monday.”

“Yes sir,” you’ll say reluctantly.

When you finally come home, you’ll want to play with the cat as a way of apologizing. But, when you walk in the door, your parents are standing there, looking very annoyed.

“We got a call from your math teacher. He was very annoyed that you haven’t been doing your homework. He said that if you keep this up, it could result in you having a D. What do you have to say?”

“I’m going to do all my work.” You’ll say.

“No playing with the cat until its done,” This is the worst punishment they could have given.

“But………...”

“That’s final.”

As you storm of to your room, you realize that you don’t want a D. Maybe you could live without the cat for a least a little while. “Better get started,” you say to yourself.

Wait A Little While And The Fruit Will Fall Into Your Hand When you finally get done, you open the door leading into the hallway. There, outside your door, is the cat.

“I’m sorry I almost killed you,” you say, even though he can’t understand. You turn to go back into your room, and he runs in, and jumps on your bed.

“What do you want?” you ask. He lays down on your bed, and you go over. You use the two fingers technique, and he immediately starts purring.

“So now you love me.” You say, but you enjoy it. Things like this you realize that you have to be patient for. They require you taking baby steps.

“Meow!” The cat meows almost in agreement. This is your kitten now.

The Ice Age, fiction Have you ever wondered why the ice age ever existed? Why the temperature just dropped?

Well, allow me to tell you.

Long, long ago, before ordinary animals that we know today existed, before people cared for saving our Earth, the time when dragons were on Earth. People used to love them, and welcomed them into our world.

There was a young man named Honest Earnest. He was called that because the people always thought he was very honest. But in reality, he was quite the opposite. In fact, the worst lie he ever told was what got him killed. But we are not yet there. Earnest was one day walking in the woods, collecting firewood. He bent down to pick up some sticks, when he noticed that the ends were burning. He screamed and dropped the stick, then a large dragon appeared. The creature was alarmed by the screaming, and looked wildly at the man. Ernest said, “Oh my, you’re a…...a……a dragon!” Although dragons were quite common, Earnest had never seen one. “Wow, this is amazing!”

The dragon seemed very nice, so Earnest approached it and touched it. Then, a spark came between the dragon and Earnest. The spark then turned in to a dragon itself, and flew around Earnest. Then, it disappeared. Earnest was shocked. “I feel so much smarter than I was before! I now see that rock for what it truly is! A small piece of nature, trampled on and lived in!” Little did Earnest know, that this was a wiser dragon. If you touch it, you see things as they truly are!

“Woah. Ummmm, I’ll see you tomorrow then dragon!” And with that, Earnest skipped merrily home.

The next day, Earnest went to the dragon. Again, he touched it. And again, the dragon spark appeared, flew around him and disappeared.

“Now, I see that fish pee in water, all day! Phew, now I will never swim in it again!” And with that, he went home.

Every day he came and touched the dragon, and every day the dragon spark appeared, then disappeared. And every day, Earnest saw the world differently in some way. Then, one day the dragon spark appeared and warned him: “Halt! If you touch my dragon again tomorrow, you will see my dragon in a new way, and that would be a terrible path to fall down!” Earnest stared at him for a second, then laughed.

“Do you think a little spark like you can tell me what to do? Ha! You’re a fool. I will touch this dragon tomorrow, and I will be smarter!” And with that, Earnest skipped merrily back to his village, where the people were waiting for him. You see, ever since he came back and told them his new knowledge, they worshiped him and he told them he was their king. But today, they were afraid.

“King Earnest! We have seen the dragon spark of a Wiser Dragon fly above! We are afraid! Have you touched one?” they all cried out.

Now Earnest knew that he was called Honest Earnest, but he was also called a king. He thought that he would rather still have the king title than the honest title.

“Friends! There is no need to be afraid, for I have not touched this mighty dragon, but have slayed it! The spark runs wild, looking for a new dragon to penetrate!” All the people cheered.

The next day, Earnest went up, and touched the dragon. He immediately saw the dragon as a monstrous beast, and ran as fast as he could, back to his village, where he could alert his people.

“My people! There is a new Wiser Dragon in the land, and he has come to kill us!” Then all the villagers ran towards the beast, and swung their swords and shot their arrows. Then they killed the beast.

Then, the dragon spark flew out and cried, “One of our mighty Wiser Dragon brothers has fallen! We must avenge him!” Then millions of dragons flew out, and left this world. All but the dragon spark, who went up to Earnest, and told him “You have betrayed your best friend. You shall die.” And then Earnest dropped to the ground, dead. To the people, the dragon’s leaving seemed as a great accomplishment. But, as the last dragon left, the Earth’s temperature dropped. For without the dragon’s mighty

heat, the world got colder, and that caused the ice age.

The world was never the same again. The dragons were also responsible for global warming. But that is another story for another time.

Where I’m From, poetry I’m from classic fruit salads that show up every Potts celebration.

I’m from the “Kitty baby!” s and the “Puppy dog!” s From the door slams, and the sorries.

From the healthy Pop Tarts and Colorful knitting needles.

I’ve put up with the screams at dinner, the tantrums over church.

I am Jack Potts.

And Barbra, who died too soon.

From the days my father spent on the porch, mourning her.

From a woman whom I never called grandma.

I’m from the homemade blanket, and the messy rooms.

From the holes pierced into my ears, Punched into my heart, Burned into my soul.

From the pets come and gone, and the itchy sweaters never loved.

And the old house, on a nice street, too far from the home I live in now.

Max Schachner Masked by the Forest, poetry “We didn’t say much to each other, listening to voices: the far bark of a dog, from somewhere, thunder, the easy complaint of the porch swing.”

- Jo McDougall I drive up to a small town, Covered by moss and tall grass.

Most of the townsfolk live in barns, Atop the cleared-out hills, which sit beside dirt paths.

And the long drive I take every time, There and back, seems worth it again.

And past the barns, far into the forest, Our little cabin sits, Hidden by the trees, With a long, steep driveway to the top.

I love sitting on the porch, Listening to the silence, held in by a shield of trees.

No Doors, poetry He is running away.

He is starving and had to steal.

He has no home to run back to.

He tries to be nice, he doesn’t like stealing.

His hat is a bouncing atop his head, and his small jacket barely keeps him warm.

He is fast but the police are on his trail.

He doesn’t know what will happen if he is caught, so, he just keeps on running. he just wants a home, with parents, and food.

He wants to live a normal life.

I see him, I know him, and I feel bad for him.

I want to help, to let him in the house of my imagination, But I can’t.

I have a perfect picture of him with the most minute details, But as the picture gets translated to words it blurs, until all I see is the faint outline of him.

The frustration flows through me as I try to save him, Every version of him in my mind is worse than the last, Thinking it will work and then it is all wrong.

Trying again and again.

I feel just like him, With no way to win.

But no way to lose either.

A box with no doors, And then the door opens.

He looks back to the open door, and smiles.

He knows why my imagination wants him. he has a story just like any other character of imagination.

But he is special, he made it to the top.

He got through the thought filter.

I didn’t let him in, he let himself in.

But he isn’t a thief, he is a story teller.

And when he tells his stories, they will always be better than I could ever write.

But I write his stories because I need to, Because without them his life would be unfinished, and as the writer, so would mine.

Helen Shaffer What I’m Made Of, poetry

I am from the X-Wing Lego set, That I mess with When I don’t have something better to do.

I am from the Rick Riordan books, keeping me awake, Scared a minotaur will kidnap me.

I am from the red Dance bag, filled with Dove hairspray, And Up and Up baby wipes.

I am the splintered bench, Propped up in my backyard, In case a snowball fight breaks out.

I am the winding gravel pathway, With flowers growing Out of the cracked bricks.

Mom calls them weeds, I call them masterpieces.

I’m from “Do. Or do not.

There is no try,” And “How when is the next dance competition?”

I’m from the hard work it takes To open a pistachio, I’m from the long time it takes To cook pulled pork.

I’m from North America, from the United States, from Pennsylvania, from Pittsburgh, I’m from the big yellow brick house On a cobblestone road.

Katerina Smotrov Times for the Odd, Poetry It was all very mysterious, The grey of the morning.

As yet to compare with our dark side of twilight, wildest and least known.

There are many odd things to put down, evil things in the world will have full sway.

Must you go? we seemed to dawdle before I left.

I feared to go very far for when the Magyars conquered the country, all was dark.

Wild cries through the blackness.

Painful to see through the tall, black windows.

Let it bring my good-bye.

Danielle Swearingen Everywhere, poetry The different purples swirled together to make one.

Always mixing together to get the right shade.

Lilac purple.

A pastel, with which is used to make art.

It is spread throughout the world, like a painter who spreads color across their canvas with their brush.

It goes from place to place, corner to corner, making somewhere beautiful along the way.

It is everywhere: There it is, on my dress with polka-dots, my multi-colored crayon box.

On the horizon where the sun goes to play hide and seek.

In my hair, the colorful streaks outlining my face.

Everywhere.

Where I’m From, poetry I am from the taste of pierogis, the tick of the clock.

I’m from the tree bark that’s rough and worn.

From the smell of pollen, and MacGyver on the television.

I am from Barbra and Merle, from, Routines! and, Follow your norms and procedures!

I’m from Patrick and Diane, from my friends that are always there for me.

James Sweeney God’s Pastel, poetry “where, torchlight, the kerosene shines. There are no clouds.”

-At The Classics Teacher’s, Elizabeth Macklin A lonely man, on his last legs lost at sea, the sun creates the sky tonight painting little pink gulls leading north all the colors of the pastel pallet, except one– Something had happened in God’s studio, and so there are no clouds, as the rays have burned them away like spears of pure light, holy and terrifying and had the sun taken to its usual self, and not tried, like a pup fetching a stick, to impress the sea, the man would have seen the dark blues and the violent purples of city life.

The bleeding sky, it reminded him of a time in New York, when, having a head-pounding migraine, he had taken a slip from a party and went out to get some fresh air (nothing like the salty tang of his wayward drift) on the balcony. The helicopters puttered around above, police copters, news copters, all focused on Times Square the choppy blades turning the sky into a bloodbath as if in a battle with the heavens themselves of sunrise. He remembered looking down into his drink, the very color red, a full, fleshed color that seemed to be made of blood.

Within the sun, burning bright, is the studio of God, where wax crayons and brushes and sketches and pencils and quills lay forlorn on the desks, and two bits of light-grey, dusty and stormy respectively, the very stuff of the clouds, chalk hid themselves on the floor, soon to be crushed underfoot.

They had made a pointless sacrifice; no one was watching.

He had improvised; the pink had faded too quickly into the red, as if the sun was running from something rather than taking its time, and it was an ugly burgundy color, doing little to reflect his beautiful home’s all-year Christmas decorations, the sun’s light.

On the dark balcony, he had swirled the little bits of cherry and lemon that had given birth to the drink (as well as a few drops of rum) left over from the blender with a toothpick, fiddling around with the smoothie-like substance, hoping to coax out a lighter shade. He went back in for a bit, stopping by the kitchen to add some more crushed ice, but it just allowed the sky to seep like water into an unused basement, slowly but faster when it rains, the grass and the silt allowing passage into the drink even more, reflecting the blades, whirling like summer-birds.

God was mad.

He could have, of course, used the white into pink to make a very light sunrise tint, and used it for his little sky bunnies, but he was reluctant, and God however it seems, does not forget mistakes. Instead, he focused the cloudy shade on the brine swirling ‘round the solitary man, scared of the choppy waves, once again lamenting the loss (he didn’t know their thoughts and feelings) of his grey pieces, scribbling and smoothing until it was nearly gone, he was done, having blunted his white.

At around 4, José nearly fell off the balcony at the sound of a plane puttering across the sky, coming in to land but still whooshing overhead, and, not knowing where he was going, almost died as he stumbled in the dark and got so close to stepping onto the railing-less fire escape. So the tiki torches were lit with matches and kerosene again, burning quickly off a wick dowsed in lighter fluid.

The man contemplated his drink again, after watching José go back in safely.

The fire seemed to burn in the ice cubes and on the sides of the glass, dancing to some tiki’s drum, on an island crowded with people of all kinds moving to an unknown beat.

A flash shook the sky– The man wondered why the clouds had suddenly appeared; he was beginning (despite the fact there was nothing to eat, drink, or talk to besides the ocean) to enjoy this odd sunrise on the sea, with all its bloody glory.

He curled up on his raft, ready to close his eyes, when he noticed his raft, made of plastic bamboo, seemed to be floating above the water, bobbing supernaturally. He couldn’t understand it, it was an inch above the surface of the waves. Suddenly, the waves shattered as if someone had smacked a baseball through the sea, they became glass, and reflected the odd burgundy and a sky without clouds. He shook awake, finding himself staring out on the balcony. His glass was shattered three stories down, still scared of

Matthias Wiezorek Vases and Rosemary, poetry Vases blowing in the wind.

Wobbling but staying in their place, just fine.

Vases with flowers, rosemary too.

The scent of violets runs through the empty house, eerily quiet.

It is slick, with waxy floors and walls, wallpaper ripping off, stairs creaking as they break leaving holes to the basement.

Vases with purple and green, and rosemary.

Necklace, charm latched on, clasp closed, just around a mannequin’s head.

But the necklace is in the air.

Rosemary scented of course.

Souls breath, live without living.

They smell.

They smell rosemary, and see vases, not the flowers.

Vases blow with souls’ breath constantly blowing, and heaving.

The vases are shaking.

The vases will keep shaking, moving, jostled.

Shaken into life.

The vases fly, porcelain soaring through the musty air, springing from the walls as the vases ram themselves into the cracked marble.