Pendulum | Fall 2015

Pendulum fall 2015

P E N D U L U M THE LITERARY AND ARTS JOURNAL OF PHILLIPS EXETER ACADEMY

Fall 2015

PENDULUM BOARD EDITORS-IN-CHIEF Alex Zhang and Carissa Chen MANAGING EDITORS Annie Ning and Brandon Liu WRITING EDITORS Emma Dyer and Joonho Jo ART EDITORS Ally Grounds and Ivy Tran LAYOUT EDITOR Rex Tercek ASSOCIATES Annee Reach and Willa Canfield Katie Lee and Margaret Bolan

TABLE OF CONTENTS POETRY Concourse, Sonnet, Sycamore Lane Notebook - Annie Ning Mother Eye - Carissa Chen Echoes - Alex Zhang Gravitas - Ellie Ward Youth Berry Tea - Cadence Crowley Grease Stains (Daddy) - Ariel Kim Untitled - Teddy Scott

1-2 3 4 5 6 6 7

ART

Wendi Yan Grace Huang Katherine Lee Alex Zhang Ally Grounds Heather Nelson Carissa Chen Ivy Tran Ivy Hong Jasmine Lee

8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15-16 17 18

WRITING A Flower In Her Hair - Meghan Chou Turtle Soup - Kevin Zhen Lamplight - Ariel Kim How To Avoid Getting Bullied In Middle School - Joonho Jo Untitled - Hannah Piette The Corner At The Start Of East 14th Street - Majestic Terhune Buzz Tap Buzz Tap Buzz - Sara Michaels Your Sonder And Mine - Anishta Khan The Simultaneity of Instants - Eleanor Mallett Untitled - Julie Chung Cold - Zoha Qamar ’15 Cover Art: Alex Zhang

18-20 21-23 23-24 24 25 25-26 27-28 29-30 30 30-31 31-32

Annie Ning v Poetry Concourse Cruising metal down B-26 and United Airlines’ gate closing and last call for name obscured and lost in suitcases and sodas crackling by the fountain and found a dime and damn, she’s— last call and racing metal now

I always hold my breath when taking flight.

The airplane’s rumble times itself against the blinkers, Blazing our path towards air. And the heart lurches, tracing its way through rocky mountain crests and canyons; I can’t help but raise both hands for the thrill Of that delicate descent towards home.

Sonnet The sky was bare with terracotta fire When father looked and saw another face That stared out from the glass. He shuddered cold, Then turned, and lit another cigarette.

And plastic forks are littered on the lawn, The take-out from last night is soaked in dew, A tribute to the land he used to grow— My father is a lucky man, I’m told.

My father takes his tea: two ginseng roots Pulled straight from soil, each hand gnarled and thin Like his own, they wilt in foreign water: Both go in that melting pot to boil.

He knows that rising steam where roots turn cold Or doesn’t know, or where he sees himself.

1

Syacamore Lane Notebook Mom shelters the rabbits with a cardboard tent.

Out past the lawn, fireflies dot the night like stars.

I remember the humming of wasps and days spent Chasing, knees covered in bird-shaped scars.

Out past dawn, fireflies still dot the sky like stars.

We clasp flashlights close and are sent To chase (knees covered) birds and shapes and cars That we never catch, but stay content.

We clasp flashlights close and are sent Home crying over things that are too far To ever catch. But stay there, content In the scent of dad and his morning cigars.

Home is crying over things that are too far Gone: I remember the humming of wasps and days spent In the scent of mourning and dad’s cigars.

Mom’s a shelter. Even the rabbits have a cardboard tent.

2

Carissa Chen v Poetry Mother Eye In your mother’s eye, it must have been an eternal drought.

Mosquitos on a soft rabbit’s carcass, the American sun as the hung, unforgiving pupil in the sky’s blue eye.

She rips the kumquat skin as if prying ribs from lungs, our American radio buzzing, buzzing words that fit bones in your mouth.

We always swallow, we always speak infested English, her tongue hung.

You were never to touch stepfather’s kumquats, peeled with mother’s sore thumb. The language of our home was acid and blood, your mother’s cut lip, the lemons we ate until blisters stabbed our tongues. At night, your legs split open over the bath basin, stepfather’s white hands in the faucet, cherry stains on porcelain plates, the last twist of the knife.

Father opened your skin until the blood became rain from the sky, we screamed until the radio broke, and you woke, mistaking the sky for a pregnant womb with water broke, and if you close your eyes, it’s as if the gaps between your bones where his stabbed holes spit pits in the dirt, the gaps between your god’s black blood and your pink bust are plugged with a million rose budsIf we close our eyes, trust me, in our minds even horizons meet.

3

Alex Zhang v Poetry Echoes I’ll go, but only if you take me back: the rain and those woods, but all I hear is rustling and a sound like my ear pressed to a conch.

The trees tell stories: they whisper, but we call them silent.

There are echoes from your chasms where your lungs blight your heart.

In the river are bodies that shout our names, but we push them down with oars.

Push down inside until we forget how to float.

I used to think words could drift, that they always found the surface.

I learned only of stones.

4

Ellie Ward v Poetry Gravitas How rarely it is that we pause ourselves to observe what happens around us.

The golden glow of sky at dusk over this glass bridge; the simple clack-and-creak of the wood and metal lattice beneath, and on the metal there are names of others who walked here, like we walk, and maybe stopped, like I am stopping, or maybe not.

From above the rail I see branches – summer green – jutting from the garden with its hidden pathway. The cobbled street runs below, centuries old, with this century’s dotted lines superimposed like a city’s blueprint. I can imagine these very leaves falling onto this very avenue in autumn, as they have done for years; I know that though I will not be here to see green turn to brown and drift down it will happen anyway, as nature so often does.

And in this moment I do not know that a friend has died, and even when I do hear I do not know it.

To me she will always be in the present tense – though I never knew her – but now I walk, in the present moment, and life is unpaused.

5

Cadence Crowley v Poetry Youth Berry Tea From white porcelain, swollen bellied and sweating droplets like translucent pearls over the engrossed spout, she pours warm water, which curls and bows into a brassy pot set on a small hotplate in the unkempt corner of her room.

The plate is silent in both color and sound and leaves no disturbance in the water but for the gradual, persistent heat which bleeds into the still pot, making no objection but for the rising bubbles, whom even still cause little disturbance aside from the ring, clinging to the edge of the brassy pot.

And after a few minutes, when the water is no longer like velvet to the touch but would now prick at the skin, does she lift the brass and tip it into her porcelain teapot, swallowing the steamy, bubbly water. She covers the top and lets it seep, herbal leaves saturating until finally she lets the tea spill from that engrossed spout, rosy like sweet berries into our cold, heavy mugs.

Ariel Kim v Poetry Grease Stains (Daddy) At the garage, I find a pair of pliers, the clang of metal, the pungent odor of diesel and tires. Everything is dirty, splattered, as if Pollock dropped by. Breathing in, I think of Daddy’s strong hands, the scars on his arms from being burnt by his passion, stout legs sprawled as he lies beneath the car and scrutinizes like a doctor with his patient. The dish soap in our sink will never scrub away the grease stains, a new layer added every day, grime running down his roughened cheek, his face splitting into a grin that only I get to see.

6

Teddy Scott v Poetry Untitled i.

I always wanted my hair to be long enough So that it could poke me in the eye.

Nolen Rockefeller’s golden $48 haircut from Paul Mole tumbled down Like the perfect child actor purging, head bent over The pristine porcelain toilet, while he shudders and gasps. ii.

I always wanted my hair to be shorter but I was scared to ask my Italian barber who came every fourth Tuesday and brought Homemade wine for my parents and brought Cotton Candy lollipops for me which stained My tongue blue. The barber who gave me my first Haircut. The barber who my parents told me to pray for When he had his first major heart attack. The barber who cut my hair for the last time Before his second major heart attack. iii.

I always wanted my brother to change. People asked me Why we were so different and why he was Quiet.

People asked why he had never outgrown His overgrown bowl cut. iv.

I asked if I had outgrown him.

7

Wendi Yan v Painting

8

Grace Huang v Painting

9

Katherine Lee v Painting

10

Alex Zhang v Photography

11

Ally Grounds v Drawing

12

Heather Nelson v Drawing

13

Ivy Tran v Painting

14

Ivy Tran v Fashion

15

Ivy Hong v Ceramics

16

Jasmine Lee v Painting

17

Meghan Chou v Fiction

A Flower In Her Hair Addy: My neighbor’s ice cream truck blares outside my window. “Property of ” signs plastered across the truck advertise his name in bold letters: EDDIE WOODS or the man who plays “Turkey in the Straw” at two in the morning to mask the sound of him fucking his own son, Sam. Sam Woods is nineteen and afraid to sleep in his own bed. Even after graduating from Toy Story themed sheets to a pseudo-mature, monochromatic comforter, he still breaks apart his bed frame every night to sleep on the floor. “Why not leave it dismantled?” I’ve asked him.

Together, we have one complete set of parents. I am short one father, and baby brother, although Tommy can’t be considered my baby brother anymore. Next week, he “turns ten.”

I’ve already filled his paper boat with a fake fifth-grade diploma. Back when my mother adamantly believed my father was just MIA, she loaded an origami boat with mementos as a prayer. We lit the boat on fire and set it free—burning across the lake.

But then my father’s coffin—adorned with an American flag—was loaded out of a plane.

And Tommy coughed up blood creeping with cancer cells.

Now my mother sits in her bed and stares out the window. If I checked, the mattress would have an imprint of her ass. I place a cup of tea on the nightstand and drag her to the toilet. She refuses to unhook her fingers from my shirt: her nails pull threads loose and stretch my drooping neckline. I loosen the elastic on her sweatpants so they fall down, obeying the laws of gravity. My mother wishes she could join them on the ground—in the ground. Shoving her onto the seat, I distract myself from the steady drip of her piss and the fact that I will have to wipe her.

“I’m so tired,” she whispers.

So tired of living, I know,” I snap back. “You’ve been telling me this for years.”

When she first started complaining about living, I used to poison her. I tried adding extra supplements to her pill organizer, but too many vitamins never killed someone. I tried sticking erasers under her pillow to create a nuisance, but discomfort doesn’t lead to death, and I even poured a capful of nail polish remover into her toothpaste. The morning of that stunt, my mother ran into the kitchen vomiting and cursing. At least she left her room that day. She traded her bed for the cold rim of the toilet bowl. I listened through the night for the repeated flush, hoping that it would cease and I had saved my mother the responsibility of offing herself.

Sam: Addy dashes through the overpowering sprinklers that water the strip of grass between our houses. I installed them last summer while Eddie repainted the truck. One pink line, an inch of white space, followed by a bold lime-green band.That’s how you attract little children, an artform Eddie has mastered. As I drove each sprinkler head into the dirt, I imagined the ground as his face. The excess water squirting was his blood. One day, I’ll shove him off.

“How’s it going?” Addy vaults through the window into shotgun. She pounds the roof of the car and I switch into reverse. Exhaust, from the time I spent idling in the driveway, clouds 18

the rear window.

“I don’t know,” I mutter. When I woke up, my father was on top of me, our mingled sweat acting as an adhesive to fasten his overflowing belly to my back. “Didn’t sleep much so I might crash this car.You ready to die today?” She shrugs and reaches into the backseat.

“Good morning, Eddie,” she calls as his booze blanket clatters to the ground. She lifts one of his arms, releasing an odor worse than a public restroom full of unflushed toilets.

“Just leave him there,” I insist.

We pull into the store’s parking lot as Eddie begins to snore. Although Addy and I no longer work here, we stop by each morning to check the locks. After tugging at the front door and jiggling the doorknob, I check the mailbox to the side. A bulging envelope, from Mr. Li’s lawyer, props the box open. A note stapled to the manila reads: Mr. Li left you kids the store. Interested? I hide the contracts in the inner pocket of my jacket and hop back into my car.

“Anything special?” Addy asks. I shake my head and hand her a fistful of condolence letters. “He’s been dead two weeks and they’re still sending letters?” she vents, pausing to jab Eddie’s cheek with the corner of one. He continues to snore, rattling the windshield wiper.

We tear through the colorful cards, skimming through inappropriate puns and sappy, generic messages. I read one over her shoulder that addresses Mr. Li’s nonexistent widow.

“We should burn them.” I step outside again and trudge around the back of the store. A pond festers next to the dumpster; a pile of dying lilypads and plastic grocery bags. I wandered here four years ago, searching for my mother. Kicking the empty soda cans in frustration, I popped one up and into Mr. Li’s face. And, to repay him for the cost of three stitches, I started working at his store. For the rest of my high school career, I stacked soup cans into paper grocery bags as Addy sent one after the other careening down the conveyor belt.

“Where ‘ya going?” Addy yells out the sunroof. Her head pops out, cut off at the chin like a pillory. I motion for her to join me and snatch a chair from the stoop. The wooden planks echo as she sprints towards me and then, as she jumps to avoid the firepit, a moment of silence. “Old Li was here when I was grieving for my mum.”

“Your mother’s still alive, Addy.” I carve my name into the dirt with a stick, scraping back and forth to deepen the lines.

“She’s as good as dead,” Addy retorts. “Anyways, I wanted to give her soul the same sendoff as my father: a paper boat with mementos. But I couldn’t fold the fucking boat. I was littering crumpled up algebra papers that at best resembled wedges of cheese and he just came up and said: fold in half, half again, corners...squish the bottom and pull the sides out.” She creases a sympathy card in half, then half again—following the phantom instructions of Mr. Li. The paper boat measures less than six inches lengthwise. A chicken-scratched message, We will miss Mr. Lee, misspelled with two e’s instead of an i, broadcasted on the triangle in the middle. Addy drops her clerk ID into the base of the boat. I dig out my wallet and slide the plastic card free from the compartment where most people keep photos of their loved ones.

“What were the mementos?” I ask, balancing on the edge of the three-legged chair.

“A lavender blossom, like the ones she used to braid into my hair, and a note: I’d rather wear flowers in my hair, than diamonds around my neck. It’s a quote by my mother’s favorite writer, Emma Goldman. Mum use to read her anarchistic writings to me when I was little.” Addy lights the card on fire and flicks the ship away from the shore. “Should we say something?”

“Rest in peace with our loved ones,” I whisper, imagining my mother and Mr. Li meeting in heaven. Addy nods and mouths Cynthia—her mother’s name.

19

I wave goodnight to Addy through my bedroom window, watching as she feeds Cynthia melatonin pills and tucks her in for the night. We tried to overdose once on those pills, but our throats closed off and the capsules broke down like cotton balls in our mouths. Eddie was furious when I forgot to wash the kitchen sink free of our stringy spit and the half-chewed up capsules. I collapse onto the floor, the lawyer’s papers still hidden in my pocket. When I wake up, Eddie is inside of me and dead.

Addy: There’s a steady knocking on the door.The same sound the chalkboard makes as it bangs against the windshield of Eddie’s truck. Boom. Boom. I open the door and Sam is on his knees.

“I killed him,” Sam murmurs, his eyes unfocused. I step out of the doorway and pick his hands up from the ground.There are no signs of blood.There is no murderous look in his gaze.

“Who did you kill?” I press him. Is one of us still dreaming?

“Eddie. I killed Eddie.” Only then do I notice his pants are still unzipped.The button dangles, having been undone in a hurry, and the unfortunate odor of Eddie’s beer-ridden sweat clings to Sam’s body. A new bruise on his collarbone and the way Sam balances his body, to avoid sitting on his heels, confirms Eddie’s last act.“He was screwing me while I was sleeping,” Sam continues,“and I woke up and he was dead.”

“He had a heart attack,” I assure him.

Sam hands me an envelope with our names on it. I untwist the metal seal and pull out two contracts, held together by a fat binder clip.The salutation addresses us as“the future owners.”

“We rule this place!” Sam shouts, sitting in the Royal Buggy—our nickname for the cart we fill with customers lazily misplaced items—like on a throne. Learning that the cause of Eddie’s death was a cardiac arrest did little to lessen Sam’s guilt. He ran the ice cream business, living in the same vehicle Eddie first molested him in, until the truck was seized by the bank.

Our meetings with the lawyers were interrupted by Sam’s drunken shouts, eyes bloodshot and breath foul. Whenever I visited my father and Tommy’s graves, I walked by Eddie’s headstone: polished and adorned with flowers, all weeds plucked away from the base.

For my mother and I, the funeral led to a sudden return of her fascination with gardening. As I curled her hand around her toothbrush one morning, she asked to see her old garden patch. Only a miniature American flag grew within the fenced-in area for years. Mother rabbits and their babies hopped over the trampled barrier. Birds pecked at the few remaining plants and the field of stinkweed. When my father served overseas, we would plant English lavenders to countdown the time until his homecoming. From seedling to bushy blossom, we endured the dreaded two year tours. Tommy and I watered the clay pots with a repurposed tomato paste can. We decorated the outside of the can with a tally of the number of weeks since our father’s departure—slashing tick marks until the day we saw his face, dead or alive.

“I have an idea,” I announce. Using a strip from the the receipt roll, I fold a boat and douse the poor construction with beer. “For Eddie, may this help you burn faster in hell.” Sam lurches out of the cart laughing and I join him. He stands stronger, shoulders looser. Perhaps, this dose of youthful insanity, free of logic and burdens, will shake him from his sadness.

The customers in the deli line turn to stare at the laughter, that can only be described as a guffaw, from two teenagers standing in the middle of the store: slapping our knees and rearing back our heads. They shrug and scoot their carts through the check-out line that we used to command. Sam makes a bogus announcement over the intercom and I sneak a lavender blossom from a bouquet and tuck it into my hair.

20

Kevin Zhen v Memoir

Turtle Soup A needle-shaped snout emerged and snapped at the bait, sending ripples in all directions. My father yanked the silver fishing rod, forcing the tip to bend and a curved, brown shell to rise above the surface of the water. Every reel sent the turtle spinning. It splashed with its fins while its head shook side to side, as if begging not to be pulled from its home. Dad rushed to the shore of the lake, squatted down and summoned me with a waving hand. “Grab the net sai lou!”

I waddled over, gripping the net with one hand and the white plastic bucket with the other.

With one fluid motion, Dad clasped the handle of the net, swept it under the soft-shelled turtle, and placed the entire net with the turtle into the bucket. Still squatting, he turned to me, offering a wide grin. “Are you strong enough to carry it to the house?” he asked. I nodded, flexing my bicep.

Back at home, my father whistled a Chinese tune as he boiled a pot of water.The bucket rested outside on our stone patio, and every so often, it would tip, as the turtle thrashed inside.There was an eerie rhythm in the house. Larger and larger bubbles gurgled in the pot while the bucket scratched the ground as it shifted. My father’s string of high notes reverberated through the kitchen.

He decided it was time: ambling towards the patio, he carried the steaming pot of water in one hand and a butcher’s cleaver in the other.When he reached the bucket, he placed the pot beside him and squatted.The turtle thrashed one last time, a futile attempt for mercy, before my father lifted and flipped the plastic container. Stunned from the impact of its shell onto the patio floor, the creature lay wide-eyed and fearful.And then my father poured: steam enveloped him as the hot water collided with the shell, the turtle popped its pointed snout out of surprise, and finally, silhouetted in white vapor and the growing darkness of the evening, he snatched the cleaver off the ground, lifted the blade, and with an executioner’s precision, removed the turtle’s neck, all the while whistling his anthem of death.

I remembered fleeing to the bathroom. I remembered pulling down the toilet seat cover, sitting on it, and squeezing my knees with my forearms so that my chin would rest in the gap between them.

Rocking and swaying from side to side, I tried to convince myself that small movements would still my thoughts. But whenever I closed my eyes, I would reimagine the thwacking of the cleaver onto the patio and the quiet oozing of blood from the stump that used to be the turtle’s head, and I would wearily wonder how anyone could be so comfortable killing another living being.

My father found me collapsed on the tiled bathroom floor after twenty minutes. “Sai lou! Come take a look at the turtle soup!” He marched towards the kitchen, and I followed him to the stove. It was a thick soup, more like a stew really, and I studied the rotations of my father’s wrist as he stirred the pot with a wooden spoon. Every so often, he would lift the spoon, revealing generous chunks of dripping turtle meat, all the while smiling.

After gazing into the pot, I distanced myself from the kitchen and walked back to the patio. I appreciated the stillness there: a crimson stain about a foot in diameter was pressed into the area where the turtle had been slain while leather-colored shards from its shell decorated the flat stones. Off to the side of the scene was the white, plastic bucket that I had carried. I peered inside. Blood, bones and organs filled the bucket halfway. In the center of the bucket lay a pink triangular solid, about the size of a half-dollar coin—the turtle’s heart, still beating. Using the delicate tips of all ten fingers, I scooped the heart into the palm of my right hand, succumbing to the small movements from its periodic expansions and contractions, until I was sick of its touch and threw it back into the bucket. ****** 21

A few days after the turtle’s death, my father got sick. “It was the soup,” my mother claimed when I asked about his illness. “That lake is filled with all types of chemicals and bacteria. It’s only natural that he got sick,” she’d repeat as she chopped bulbs of garlic, cracked eggs, and seasoned meat— ingredients that would be transformed into a traditional Chinese dinner. Back then, they were always competing, and her careful selection of ingredients and cooking techniques seemed to say that she was better than him in even the most basic forms.Your mother’s food is tastier, her fingers would boast as she sprinkled salt and pepper into a wok.Your mother’s food is healthier, the raw whole chicken from Whole Foods would say as it sat on the kitchen counter. “Real Buddhists don’t eat soft-shelled turtles, anyways,” my mother muttered in Cantonese as she fiddled with the heat on the stove, even though no one in our family was Buddhist. “They don’t eat meat at all,” she continued. “And anyways, those soft-shelled turtles—they’re nasty animals.”

During the few days that my father was sick, I’d always check on him even though my mother told me not to. He’d lie in bed in the same position, arms by his sides, legs straight, as if he were a snoring soldier at attention.Two comforters smothered him as he slept, causing droplets of sweat to trickle down his temples and onto the small towel on his pillow. Sometimes, I would crawl into his bed and wrap my legs around his leg and my arms around his arm, even though his bones stabbed me when I hugged his limbs.There were times when we were intertwined so perfectly that I swore we could never be separated.When we were that close, I’d admire the little movements. He’d inhale briefly through his nostrils, and exhale through his mouth: long, pronounced breaths that sounded like sighing. His strong lungs would expand, pushing the heavy comforters up and up and down. It was impossible to know how long we rested together, since the curtains—two thick sheets that blocked even the powerful Florida sunshine—were always drawn. Eventually, though, the warmth from my father’s body would fester into a burning discomfort, driving me away. Each time I left, I would kiss him on the forehead, and when my nostrils came close to his face, the scent of his natural oils, heat and sweat would rise up and greet me.

The decision to go fishing had been spontaneous. It was Sunday, my father’s only day of rest.

I was seven years old, but he decided it was time: he prepared bait from leftover meat in the fridge, he snatched two old fishing rods from the dustiest closet in the house, and he shouted at me to grab a white, plastic bucket. Once we got to the lake, we spent the afternoon chitchatting in between periods of silence. He told me a story: “We used to go swimming in the river on our way back from school and when our underwear was wet, we’d place them on our heads so they’d be dry when we were back at the village...” He taught me how to tie a hook to a fishing line. He told me another story: “One time, in China, I skipped breakfast for two months in order to buy a backpack...” He tossed pieces of stale bread into the river, attracting ducks (“everyone deserves to eat,” he’d say). He started a third story: “I used to steal books from our school to read them back home in my bed, under the covers...” He scratched his head. After he felt he had said enough, and the clouds and water agreed with him by coming to a heavenly stillness, we stood side by side, the same distance apart as we were in the beginning, but many times closer.Then, my father whispered, “One day I’ll bring you to the ocean, sai lou.The fish are always hungry out there.” And that was the last comment he made before a pointed snout protruded from the calm surface of the water and the soft-shelled turtle snapped at the bait.

It took many years for me to fully understand the significance of that turtle and the events of that day, from my father’s perspective. From the start, fishing had never been about capturing a vulnerable animal and killing it, but rather about creating an ethnic dish that reminded Dad of his childhood. He did not interpret the decapitation of the turtle as a brutal act, but rather a practical one, since efficiency was so highly valued in the village he was raised in. And although my initial memory of that day is one 22

smeared with various physical discomforts—guts, death and heat—it is now clear that the day my dad cooked turtle soup will always be a magical one, because ultimately, it was a day driven by love and a simple desire for my father to be with me.

I never tried the turtle soup, but I regret it. I laugh at the thought of what would have happened: the two of us under two comforters, sweating, yet still warm and cozy, lying peacefully in bed while my mother yells at us for being so foolish.

Ariel Kim v Memoir Lamplight “Shake off this downy sleep, death’s counterfeit, and look on death itself.”

– Macbeth;Act 2, Scene 3 I remember my grandfather’s cough. A hacking cough that left him hunched over the kitchen sink, spitting out gobs of yellow mucus. I remember the gargle that always followed. I remember the crinkle of plastic, of my grandmother tearing open another packet of pills.

I remember watching from the doorway as my grandfather sank into a kitchen chair.A shudder ran through his thin body. I remember how the small lamp in the corner cast a soft glow on his weathered face. My grandmother sat down next to him, leaning her head against his shoulder.They began whispering to each other.

Noticing me, my grandfather held out a wrinkled hand for me to take. I remember his long fingers gently wrapped around my stubby ones, lifting me onto his bony thighs. My grandmother clucked her tongue, but my grandfather just smiled his toothless smile. He stroked my hair, and I let his raspy voice lull me to sleep.

I don’t remember what woke me up that night, four years later.

My whole body jerked, arms flailing and head snapping back. It was like someone had forgotten to catch me at the end of a trust fall. I whimpered.

I kicked my pink comforter to the bottom of the bed. Clutching Piglet to my tummy, I stumbled across the carpet and crept downstairs. From the kitchen doorway, a soft glow eased through the dark of the house. I followed it.

In the kitchen, the oven clock flickered. 12:43 A.M. 23 MAY 2006.

I looked to the small lamp in the corner. Just outside of its light, Mommy slumped in a kitchen chair. She was on the phone.The shadows covered her face, and I watched her left hand twisting, twisting, twisting the telephone cord.

I tiptoed across the cold wooden floor. My hand nudged her thigh. “Mommy?”

“No!” she shrieked. I jumped back, squeezing Piglet closer. Mommy never shouted, not when I pushedTommy off of the couch or when Daddy burned the pancakes.

But this time her voice got louder and louder. “No! He can’t – Dad can’t be dead. No. Not without saying goodbye. Not like this.”

Silence.Then she hiccupped, whispering, “Goodnight, Mom. I love you.”And the phone slipped from her hand. She dropped her head onto the table, tangling her fingers in her curly hair.

“Mommy?” I pushed Piglet against her face. “Mommy, what’s wrong?”

She blinked, and I reached up to touch her cheek. It was wet.And sticky.

“Mommy, why are you crying?”

“Oh, sweetheart…” Lifting me into her lap, she murmured, “Grandpa left us tonight.”

23

“Grandpa? Mommy’s daddy? Mommy’s daddy is gone?” I remembered when he went back to Korea with Grandma. He gave Mommy a hug, patted the top of my head.Then he shuffled away, leaning on Grandma’s arm.

“Yes, he’s gone.” She began to rock us. Back and forth and back and forth.

“Gone where?” I twisted in her arms, wrapping mine around her soft middle. My nose nuzzled into her neck, breathing in her lavender lotion. Pulling at a thread on her thin nightgown, I mumbled, “Mommy, where’s Grandpa?”

Joonho Jo v Memoir

How to Avoid Getting Bullied in Middle School Remember, don’t wear any shirts to school besides the ones that flaunt the large Nike or Adidas sign in the dead center because they usually don’t tease you about those brands; don’t wear Sperry boat shoes or slippers or Cole Hann formal shoes (even if they’re really expensive), just wear the Hyperdunk 2012’s (but not the pink ones because they’re gonna call those “gay”); make sure you spray on some Calvin Klein cologne (Armani Exchange is fine too) every day, but not too much because then, you’re “trying too hard;” match the cologne with your Axe deodorant, preferably the “Men’s Cool Breeze” type (both the girls and they “dig” that); wear the boxers with the Lucky Brand flowers but not the ones with the colorful flowers just in case they share the locker room with you and call it and you, “homosexual”; brush your hair each morning so that it looks casual—not too dirty, not too fancy and shower or make sure that you smell nice, but again, not too nice; in class, make jokes and get in trouble and have the teacher yell at you, but only some of the time; you are allowed to “try hard” in school but make sure you don’t get all A’s—try for mainly B’s; make sure you sit next to them and crack jokes that are funny (make certain that they’re funny); make sure that you don’t get in a group with the weird kid group, comprised of the girl with the bad lisp and the “midget” boy with the torn shoes, because they notice all of that; don’t ask questions that are too smart, or too dumb; learn to gossip about the “slutty” girl sitting in front of you with them and tease her when she turns around; learn to kick the chair of the “fat” boy next to you, multiple times; learn to talk back to the teacher, but you don’t have to do this too much, just a bit; make sure that you make visits to the principal’s office every few months so that you don’t seem like a goody two-shoes; flirt with the pretty girls, even if you don’t like them, but only when they’re around (flirting can be anything from smacking their butts to saying “hey”); when you’re flirting, raise your eyebrows a bit, and tilt your mouth into a small smile (it helps if you cut your hair like Justin Bieber, but not so like Justin Bieber’s that they know you were trying to copy him); curse—but curse the right amount; say things like “dope,” “ratchet,” and “sexy” in front of them (of course, in context (I hope you know what the right context is.)); don’t be too nice or too mean, but if you were to be one, be too mean; lift so that you’re not ashamed to wear a sleeveless shirt to school, or to parties, but not so much that you look like a bodybuilder (abs and biceps are important); on the weekends, go to bar mitzvah’s and bat mitzvah’s and grind on the pretty girls (loosen a button each time you dance with one); do whatever it takes to get invited to these parties and remember to arrive fashionably ten minutes late; do whatever you can to do prove that you belong with them, even if you don’t think you do (don’t think that); and do whatever their leader tells you to do, even if it involves getting high or drunk as f***; and of course, most importantly, don’t be yourself because they will tear you apart for doing that.

Do you want me to repeat that?

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Hannah Piette v Memoir There are hushed places lying around. The damp courtyard of clip clop footsteps, the shed covered in branches homely after the rain, the clambering hill of sand, the paths along the windy cliffs of chalk, the yurts in the woods, or the slow dirt road that bumped in the dark that first night in Spain.

They zoom and flash when I think of them sitting there alone.

That spot where we camped for two nights, underneath a curved cliff in the dried out Utah canyons; I see it now as if through a security camera, fish eyed along the edges, and there is a whoosh through one slender branch, the silence of a dust ball rolling through the remnants of a soft rock of dirt crushed and whiffling.

There was a kilometer of lily pads in the Windex lakes of the Algonquin Park in Ontario and I pushed them to the ground with my canoe paddle.We slept on a sweet, flirting island in the center of the welling water. I canoed solo into the center of the lake away from the island to fill up our bottles with the cleaner water that wasn’t dirtied by the muddy banks. I dipped into the lake for a swim, my hiking boots weighing me down.There is no way I could distinguish the island on a map, but I can see it floating now the way it looked as I tread water with my nose under the surface, ripping around in the breeze and growing wild, petite blueberries.

My mother and I circle around the pit stop strip malls of Las Banos looking for an ATM because they don’t take cards and my dad is stalling the waitress.We check the liquor store and the wobbling cashier winks beneath his sunglasses and the skin on his neck is thin and red. My eyes meet those of a sunken woman with black bangs and a nibbled grey hoody. She is pacing outside the gas station and she hisses at me and follows me into the mini-mart. I rush to the bathroom and slink into the stall.We continue our drive up the highway 5 to San Francisco, yet it is all certainly still there, the parking lot with its steaming mirages and automated trunk doors closing by themselves.

I wonder how they are all doing, how they look in October, or June, if the water level has risen or if the concrete faded after the summer, if any new pines have grown, been cut down, if the floorboards have molded, the path paved.Are the lawns mowed, the stone polished?They are all there swinging through the air and shifting up and down, absolutely silent and sitting alertly, but settling comfortably into themselves with each heaving gust.

Majestic Terhune v Memoir

The Corner at the Start of East 14th Street The thing about East 14th Street is that somehow everyone knew about everyone else without even having to take one step out the front door. Bill lived in the house with the sunken roof and claimed that work was for a corrupt government and therefore swore to never work a day in his life. Marty and Angel lived in the house with the tree. I wasn’t supposed to talk to them.

My step-brother lived in the green house with his girlfriend and his son, but I wasn’t supposed to talk to them either.

Another thing about East 14th Street is that most things in it have a mucky sort of fog around them. It was the place where the grass grew in no direction in particular, all the men wore five o’clock shadows, and whenever a tornado rolled through town, the sky melted into a bruised green hue. This street was deep, dark, and heavy, and I ran down it dressed in a pink skirt and bright pigtails.

Jami, my older step-sister had been in charge of watching me while I was at my dad’s for 25

the weekend. While we were in the middle of watching That’s So Raven her phone wailed out a second-long shriek, indicating she had received a text message. She responded in a flurry of clicks as her thumbs pounded against the keyboard. Another shriek.

She had pitched her cellphone into the ground and sprang up, green camo pajama pants and all, and bolted for the kitchen, screaming about how she needed to be somewhere. When I tried to follow, Jami had screamed about how she needed to be somewhere without someone like me. She sprinted from room to room and eventually out the front door, opening it so far that it banged against the wall and widened a hole that had started growing two summers ago. My step-sister had left, and she had left without me. So I followed.

I found her outside of a wilted, off-white house on the corner of the block. For years its only decoration was a FOR SALE sign. The home loomed as a monument to the time when it wasn’t too big, too ambitious for East 14th Street. Though three weeks early, Christmas lights lined the porch and windows. A blowup Santa tilted left and right, left and right, waving at me. A minivan with a license plate that read PRNCESS rested on the driveway and Jami was currently in the process of tearing eggs out of a carton and launching them at the car.The eggs floated through the air as if they were wayward snowballs.

“You abandoned me.” I stood on my tiptoes in an attempt to even out our heights.

Jami ran her fingers over an egg shell. “You should have stayed at my house,” she glanced at my meet, “You don’t understand anything here. Leave. No one loves you.”

“But why are you throwing eggs at that car?” I reached for the carton and she pulled it away. “That’s not a nice thing to do.”

Her mouth opened as if she were about to reply, but the crunch of wheels against torn up asphalt quieted her. We both peered at the head of East 14th Street to see what kind of car was headed our way. Navy blue sedans, I chanted to myself, navy blue sedans are the cars you have to be especially careful around. Jami hunched her body over the eggs and I huddled closer to her. She linked an arm around my shoulder.

The car, Nate Finch’s rusted orange and missing two doors, passed us. Jami detached her arm and pushed me away. Her eyes narrowed. “At least she has a car. She’s probably from West Des Moines or something.” I bit my bottom lip. My mom lived in West Des Moines.

My step-sister grabbed another egg and hurled it at the minivan. Moments later another splattering of yolk joined it. She worked like a slingshot. In the first step she wound up, pulling her arm back. Jami was methodical, fluid, and wholly avoiding me.

I lunged toward her and knocked the carton out of her hand. It hit the sidewalk and a milky yellow liquid oozed into the cracks, but a couple eggs were still intact. Before Jami could shove me aside, I took one egg and smashed it into her face.The insides dripped down from her forehead and pooled around the curve of her nose piercing. A piece of the shell dangled in her hair.

Her lips pursed and nose scrunched and eyebrows pulled together as if all of Jami’s features were gathering together for one grand explosion. She took one deep breath, preparing to repeat the scream from earlier. But she didn’t scream. She laughed instead.

Jami collected me into a hug. “Thought you were too scared of breaking a nail to do that.” she said. “Maybe you’re starting to learn how to live on the East Side.”

“I am!” I swore.

My step-sister rolled her eyes and, wearing our egg shells and pigtails, we walked back to our home.

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Sara Michaels v Fiction

Buzz Tap Buzz Tap Buzz The stone was cold under the soles of her feet. She propped herself by the familiar edge of the crimson colored duvet. Her fingers were intertwined between the spirals of her favorite notebook.

The edges had turned crusty after years of being soaked by tears. Her father quietly knocked on the door once before letting himself in. He was wearing her favorite dragonfly patterned Sunday tie. He joined his daughter by the side of the bed, crouched down, with his legs tucked behind his back.The silence grew comfortable.

“What’s wrong, Josie?” He asked.

“Nothing,” Josie lied, and smiled in his direction. Her father’s fingers tapped her back twice.

“Let’s go to church then,” he smiled back.

“I’ve had an epiphany,” Josie interjected.

“Is that right?” He asked. “And what’s your epiphany.”

“I like this.” Josie pointed to herself and held her notebook close. “You know, I’m in love. I’m in love with the sadness. It’s comforting because I can finally feel something. Being happy, it seems too fake. I don’t like being happy, Daddy.” Her eyes traced her father’s face for approval, but saw nothing.

A blank expression.

“Up until this point,” she continued. “I had never accepted myself, you can read my notebook.”

She laid it at her father’s side. “And I think that’s what I’m supposed to do now. Right, Daddy? I’m supposed to accept myself.”

“Sure,” he looked uncomfortable, but Josie pretended not to notice.

“When I have my daughter, I’ll call her Annie, and she’ll frown when I tap her, because this is beautiful, and some stupid tap isn’t going to make to take it away. Sadness is beautiful,” she kissed her father’s cheek.Tears ran down the sides of her face, and the salty water tasted like poison in her mouth.

“I’m beautiful,” the words felt like sandpaper rubbing against her throat. “I’m beautiful.”

“You’re beautiful, Josie, but not like this,” he whispered, as he tapped her pudgy thigh—tap, tap. * * * The man chased her down a dark ally. Her panting echoed off the wooden walls and trashcans.The ringing in the base of her ears grew louder and transformed into tingles that spiraled in and out of her head.The man was standing directly in front of her,smiling.The scar running down the side of his cheek ripped in half as his smirk grew larger. He ran at her with his head over his shoulders. She squeezed her eyes shut and clenched her fists.

“This isn’t real,” she told herself. “This is fake.”

She tapped her thigh, one – two – three, one – two – three. “This isn’t real, this is fake.”

The hallucinations were beautiful. They drew the pictures hidden deep within her head.

Dreams made her unique, and all she ever wanted to be was different. She fell in love with her mental illness. She fell in love with sleepless nights, drenched beds, and screams.

She closed her eyes.

The man kept running, his body against hers, he pushed her into a wall and scaled up the ladder.The pounding in her heart grew louder.

“Let me in, Annie!”

She closed her eyes tighter and ran after the man.They were on a roof, thirty feet above the ground. He 27

smiled as he peered over the edge; looking down made her stomach turn.

“Annie, you open this door right now.”

She screamed out, pleading him not to jump. He waved goodbye, his four fingers moving in and out of his palm, he stepped off the edge.Annie cupped her hands over her ears as she waited for the thud. But when it didn’t come, she peered over the roof, and saw nothing but the wings of a baby dragonfly.

“Annie,” her mother was shaking her awake. “Annie!”

“What, Mom?” Annie snapped back into reality. She pushed her mother’s fingers away after the third tap and played with the scar on her cheek.

“Stop it!” Her mother screamed and slapped her hand. “This isn’t beautiful.”

“Why, Mom? Why, Josie? You gave it to me,” Annie laughed, made a face at her, and tapped herself -- tap, tap, tap.

* * * The room smelled of stale lavender, my eyes were directed to the fluorescent lights that shone on the plastic bed and sink.The cabinets were filled with little brown envelopes and tubs of medication. Outside, the snow struggled to cling onto New England’s March grass.The nurse’s hands were dainty, they reminded me of the fingers of my dead grandmother, Josie. She looked angry.

“What’s wrong, dear?” she asked me.

“I’m sick, I have a stuffy nose, and my throat hurts. Oh,” I paused and rubbed my chest. “I have this cold sensation in my heart.”

“That’s weird, I’ve never heard that before.”

It started with tears, and then I shook and hyperventilated. My pulse reached 104, and I felt invisible hands choking my neck. I was extremely light headed, and on the verge of passing out.With each breath I struggled to take, the coldness in my heart transformed into heat, spiraling in and out of my chest.

“Breathe, dear.”The nurse was rubbing my back. My fingers struggled to hold the paper bag over my mouth. “Breathe, it’s going to be ok.”

Three weeks later, after sleepless nights and absences accumulated, my mother arrived. Her hair was ruffled and uneven on the sides. Dark circles ingrained into the crevasses under her eyes. I had never seen my mother so sad in my life.

“I gave it to you,” she tapped my thigh four times—tap, tap, tap, tap. “Your great grandfather gave it to grandma, who gave it to me, and I gave it to you. It’s genetic, you know? Mental illness. It’s passed down. My mother always tapped me,” she laughed. “It’s supposed to cure you. Now, I never believed in that, but Grandma, she was superstitious, so I guess she passed that to me too.

“I went about this so wrong last time, so I want you to go about it right.” She traced my body.

“You are beautiful, but what’s up here,” she touched my head. “This isn’t beautiful.”

“I stopped sleeping, Mommy,” I muttered. “I’m so exhausted. I am so scared to go to class. I spend all my time alone, and do nothing but stare at the blank wall across my room. I do nothing but cry, Mommy.”

“Sweet heart,” my mother hugged my hand. “You will get through this. I want you to know that you’re not broken because you’re sad. It’s ok to be sad.”

“Here,” she handed me a necklace with a dragonfly charm. “It’s supposed to mean power, poise, and defeat self created illusions. For you,” she kissed my cheek. “May you be the last tap in our family.”

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Anishta Khan v Fiction

Your Sonder, And Mine ‘Sonder, noun.

Briefly, “the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.” Originally from the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, which has a lot more beautiful neologism definitions like this you might enjoy.’

I sit inside the reeking taxi, as the rain poured down. Dhaka is experiencing the year’s first sweet shower. I hum a tune with the rain pellets, satisfied - the math test has gone well, but the dance examination needs to go well too. I need to go see my grandmother, I haven’t visited her in weeks, oh and my old friend was supposed to drop by tonight. We haven’t talked in ages, wouldn’t it be awkward? My grandfather’s death is still bothering me but I don’t know if I want to talk about it with anyone. I don’t know if I’m being a good older sister either. My mom needs me to help her out with the party she’s putting together for her friend’s birthday. Am I complaining too much? But this one’s not about me.

This one’s about that man in the blue work shirt under the red umbrella standing near the bus stop, waiting to go home. His kids are excited about his arrival, they have to tell him about the good marks in school and the spider their mother freaked out about in the kitchen today. His wife made her famous chicken tikka curry because her husband called her beautiful, for the first time, this very day, ten years ago. The man with the umbrella forgot about this not-so-special occasion, but he was still happy, and impatient to go home.

He is happy with his small wage, small apartment, and welcoming family. And he really needed that bus to come.

This one is about the other older man in a sleek midnight blue Raymond suit, who is not so happy with his five bank accounts, expanding multinational business and marble-white mansion. He sits securely in the back seat of his sparkling Lexus, and lowers the tinted window. He lights his cigarette and lets out a long puff. His children are in an entirely different time zone, ‘educating’ themselves. He wishes education wasn’t this expensive.

Not money-wise of course, there’s so much to spend. Time-wise. Where was her bored young wife tonight? Work weighs down the bags underneath his eyes. But he can’t just stop now. Bonaparte didn’t stop till the end either.

This is about the girl in the ragged Mickey Mouse t-shirt and hand-me-down shorts.

She doesn’t give a damn about the rain because the roses she’s selling will wrinkle if she waits till tomorrow. She is the brave warrior, conquering all the puddles and traffic. She earned her medal, with her first sale, smile beaming like all battles were won. And maybe all battles were really won. Maybe because she knew life’s little secret – smelling the roses through thick and thin was the way to go. Or maybe she just earned what she needed to survive the night, under the tin shed, slowly falling asleep to the highway’s monotonous lullaby.

This is also about the man behind the wheel of the yellow Corolla, driving for days to educate his son, make his first cement home. This is about his back pains and frequent grunts, his wife’s occasional sweet-talk calls and his shy smile that follows. His expectation of everyone noticing the new shirt he bought and complimenting him about it, and his tired eyes trying to find some horizon, something to resemble his village, in this stencil-lined city 29

of drenched cars and dreams.

This can also be about the hyper toddler crossing the street with his mother, like today is his happiest day, or about the old beggar who just gave up on life, or the banker cursing at Dhaka’s traffic because he was late for a meeting, or the policeman who vows everyday that that day would be his last as a traffic police officer, and the rain that falls without mercy on them all. This can be about all the other people, if we just looked for them. *Side-note: The author lived in Dhaka, Bangladesh, for her entire life. This image is only half accurate because Dhaka, like every other place in the world, can also be full of life and colors too. Maybe just not on this rainy day.

Eleanor Mallett v Memoir

The Simultaneity of Instants Cranking up a stick of cherry Chapstick in preparation for my National History Day Finals performance, my grandmother coughs 487 miles away and pats her cat on the head, forgetting who that nice black man is on TV. He, Mr. President, a bit down the road from College Park, Maryland where I stand, sits; hands clasped on the oval office’s ancient desk and gives an address to a cameraman about his intentions in travelling to Israel next week.

Meanwhile a family in the Bronx huddles around a small box TV and wonders why Israel deserves more attention than the empty paper plates they have no opportunity to use.

Outside a vagabond is spit on.

I smack my lips, take a deep breath and step into the spotlight of 300 national spectators while a father of three pleads for his job back over a bus station payphone in Las Vegas.

Rain badgers the streets outside. In Sacramento, the young daughter of a movie star plays dress up with other giggling girls in her mother’s walk in closet while a Celia DeMarro dreams of a life where she could have these things. Mr. Obama says not a word as he crosses the corridor to his bedroom, has he done the right thing time and time again? It is so easy, he ponders, to screw up when everyone is watching you and all of a sudden degrade to a worthless no one. His greatest fear. I feel my voice fly through the auditorium, filling every empty space, lifting every uninterested head, aspiring for stardom. My father walks through my grandmother’s door and after a confused scowl, she asks who he is.

Julie Chung v Memoir

Untitled

It was the summer after my junior year. My mom, sister, and I parked our car across the street and all looked out the window. The house we saw was “rustic,” at best: the expansive backyard was a matted carpet of dead weeds, and a rusty chain-link fence filled in by blotches of ivy encompassed the property’s perimeter. The house itself was a minimalistic bungalow, covered in dirt. “Here we are. Back at the Chungalow,” my sister said.

The Chungalow, a charming portmanteau of “bungalow” and our surname “Chung,” was a bit of an outlier in our Los Angeles neighborhood. If you drive down White Oak Avenue, you will notice that each house has a pool, a two-car garage, and a sycamore tree lined with crisp white bark--that is, until you reach the Chungalow. Instead, the Chungalow, 30

only slightly bigger than these garages, has an unruly cedar tree with a mountain of brown needles at its base. Even the cement curb that runs along these houses abruptly ends and flattens out into a neglected slope of stony tarmac.

I spent my best years in the Chungalow. In my halcyon days, I went on adventures that entailed long treks through my backyard, the “Chungle.” The first rain of winter always transformed the Chungle’s carpet of dead plants into a verdant field of weeds. The first year we moved in, I ran out into the yard and pointed my stubby fingers at the new greenery shouting, “Baby plants growing out of nowhere! It’s magical!”

That following year, I began digging through the never-shrinking pile of cedar needles. One day, while perusing the pile, I found an old piece of carpet embedded in the ground. I ran back into the house to tell my mom, “Look! I found a piece of treasure in the yard!” She looked at the dirty piece of beige carpet in my hands and cringed.

While my parents were always concerned that my sister and I did not have a nice enough home, I always enjoyed finding new things to play with in the Chungalow. I learned how to make delicious treats in the toaster when our oven was too outdated to work. When the only bathroom in the house stopped functioning, I discovered the joys in attacking my sister with a hose while washing my hair in the Chungle. However, while my childhood eyes could always find the magic hidden in the Chungalow, my friends could not imagine living in its “ramshackle” conditions.

We finally moved out of the Chungalow when I went to boarding school in tenth grade.When I went to New England, my mountain of brown cedar needles was replaced by fiery fall foliage. My small wooden bungalow was replaced by daunting brick buildings. The only pieces of dirty carpet I found were in my friends’ uncleaned dorm rooms. Instead of a verdant field in the winter, everything turned white under ten feet of snow.

While I welcomed the change, I struggled to blend in, as if scratchy brown cedar needles and dirty bits of carpet were woven into the fabric of my identity. As I sat around the wooden Harkness table in U.S. History class making points about the mercantilism of America’s endeavors in Guatemala, I looked at the people around me. There were students with legacy ties, students wearing Vineyard Vines—and then there was me. As a full financial aid, first-generation college student at an elite institution, I was an outlier. However, my differences set me apart to shape my experiences and worldviews; they added a “hidden magic” to a background many people considered unfortunate. I was and forever will be the Chungalow. But what is so wrong about that?

Across the street, my mom, sister, and I looked at the Chungalow under the shade of a crisp white sycamore. “Here we are, back at the Chungalow,” my sister said.

“We’re home,” I added.

Zoha Qamar (Class of 2015) v Prose

Cold

There is a cold that is so crude and so bold that its presence is permanence. It’s not a silky sweep that combs your curls then dissolves in the distance. It’s a seed full of greed – blooming, blossoming – then a weed with a creed to boil, bubble, burst, bleed.

There is a cold that is so chilling it tricks you into thrilling. You buckle in, fastened, forward – flapped in the face, slapped in the chase, trapped in the race. There is no still, no stop.You shoot up, up, up, wait for the drop. But the secret is that it never arrives, though 31

you spend the rest of your days, hunched in a daze; lost in maze that doesn’t even have any ways except up, up, up, higher, higher. Pausing, praying, panting for a fall that won’t ever fathom at all.

There is a cold that is so frigid and rigid it isn’t a sickness or a feeling or a way to describe what is the outside. It is the inside – so freezing, so seizing that once you are there, there are you. There is you. There is you. There – so crushing, so rushing. It feels tired and wasted, copy and pasted – but it’s born new every dawn, in fact the darkest kind of spawn – relentless even in radiance, sly yet surrounding, all slithering and simultaneous.

There is a cold that is so sealing yet unreeling. Lost and locked, yet you feel the fourth dimension. Find the fifth. See the sixth, savor the seventh, engrave the nth. Engrave. En grave. “it’s all in your head.” is a lie and a half. it is my head, my head is it. but it’s too my body and my brain, my pretty and my pain. my heart, head, and hands; my sits, runs, and stands.

There is a cold that is so frozen it is not chosen. You do not pick and select, analyze then detect. En grave.You. No choice, no voice. just do. just you fashion your fears. model your madness. sculpt your sorrow. and you will wake up and trace twin tears tomorrow.

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