Ophelia Fills out a Housing Jada Veasey Complaint Form

Ophelia Fills out a Housing Complaint

Form Jada Veasey

Dear Ophelia,

We regret to inform you that your recent change of roommate request has been denied.

Your insistence that your current roommate, Hamlet, has been acting “hellish lately” is simply not a significant enough grievance to grant you a change of roommate. Hamlet’s comment that you should “get thee to a nunnery” is also not a significant enough grievance to grant you a change of roommate. Hamlet’s “creepy skull décor” is another irrelevant detail that does not help your case.

In order for your request to be granted, you would need to prove that Hamlet has broken one of our residence life policies. If at any point you find that Hamlet is breaking policies, please contact your RA for further assistance.

Sincerely,

The University of Wittenberg Residence Life Team

Funerals Abbie Ring

“Funerals aren’t for the dead they’re for the living.” But what do we gain from twelve minutes?

Surrounded by people we barely know pretending to pay attention

having to keep up a front instead of having our space forced to meet head-on with reality.

Harried made to think it’s good that we are not buried.

This shit is too heavy to hold I have to put it down. Let me pretned for a while at least.

Denial is easy, comfortable. The mind can fall backwards into past.

Sleep is easy too blissful darkness until reality catches up.

Dreams hold power make you relive situations you didn’t know you remembered.

I wish I knew how to grieve how to let go all funerals do is remind me that I can’t.

Using gallows humor to cope “Too soon?” It’s been fifteen years.

They say, “it gets better” but when? Time doesn’t heal. You just get used to the pain.

Growing up in an atmosphere of death normalizes the concept. Life ends deal with it, kid.

Use drugs and alcohol to take the edge off for a bit until you sober up again.

A vicious cycle escape is temporary the only way out is six feet under.

Hands Taylor Wright

They are one of the most important parts of our bodies, the hands. They help pick things up, they feed us, they do every minute task we need during the day. Whether it be cleaning, cooking, or counting, our fingers bounce from one thing to the next, much like our minds bounce from one idea to the next. They control our lives. They only contain the palm and the fingers, yet there is so much to be said about them and they say so much about a person. A thumbs up says good game, the pointer finger of a mother scolds her child. The middle finger an angry adult gives as they’re cut off in traffic. A ring on the fourth finger, to symbolize the unity of two people, and a pinky promise shared between best friends. They say hands tell the story of a person’s life.

The small, chubby fingers of a newborn can put a smile on anyone’s face. Fingers covered in slobber from an infant discovering their hands for the first time. The messy finger prints of a toddler learning to paint. Fingernails with dirt caked underneath them that decorates a seven-year old’s fingers and illustrates their imagination. The clammy, sweaty feeling of a student’s palms before they give their speech in front of their language arts class. The hands of a recent graduate, holding their diploma with their class ring sparkling from the flash of the graduation photographer. A ring on the third finger means they have found someone they care about so deeply they have committed their life to them. Rough calluses depict the hard work that an individual endures throughout the day. Fingernails bitten to nubs represent the anxiety that someone can’t cope with or addiction to an unfortunate habit. Wrinkles show off the years of life and knowledge someone has under their

belt. Painted, manicured nails illustrate the elegance and attention to detail someone wants to portray in their hectic life. These details make up each and every person’s story.

Hands are more than just a body part, but more a personality trait. They only make up around one percent of our body, yet they tell so many stories in a person’s life. Each hand contains twenty-seven bones, fifty-four bones in all, yet tell a countless amount of details about each individual. The hands are so much more than just bones, skin, tendons, and veins, but instead an essay of our lives. They not only tell a story by showing where we came from and what we have been through, but they’re also our most versatile tool. Our hands can be illustrators, writers, mechanics, musicians, secretaries, artists, anything we put our mind to. They can communicate how we feel, where we want to go, and when our time is up. They can hold our world inside them.

Two Years Paige Toomer

Two years. That’s my time limit, the time when I need to know what I’m doing with my life, my career? The answer to the constant question, “What are you doing after school?”

Why is it a need to know?! My teeth grind with the same, “I don’t really know.” It’s exhausting, the effort, the constant, “I don’t know.” Why can’t you all just go bother someone else.

I am tired. Tired of hearing on repeat, “Oh, well you have a couple years still to go” or “Really, what would you even do with that?” Would me knowing satisfy your need to know?

Does it matter? Would you be happy if I knew? If I wanted to be a doctor or climb a ladder. Tell me, please, what I can do to satisfy you and your mind on that matter.

What would you say if I told you— I wanted to be a writer? If I wanted to create art with words? Would you cheer me on or just respond in the oh typical— “No seriously, what are you doing after school?”

There is no time limit, the two years will come and go. I will have decided what to do five hundred different times, each with completely different goals. But when the time comes that I find out what I want to do—I’ll be sure to update YOU!

Light Orlando Clark

Fear not the unknown because the unknown is change— and change is the only certainty we will ever see. Fearing the unknown is like fearing the dark.

Why do we fear the dark? Is it because darkness is the absence of light? Is that a bad thing? What if I tell you that a flower can bloom in a dark room? Aren’t we all flowers? Were we not once in the dark room of our mother’s womb and here we are grown, former seeds now fully bloomed?

Wasn’t everything in the universe once desolate and formless? Wasn’t it once all engulfed in darkness? Now we have flora, fauna, skies and seas. Even the very sun that emits rays that shine so bright— doesn’t it reside in a place that is as dark as night?

Darkness should not be feared. Darkness should be revered.

Because if perception is key— we have to change the way we look at what we see. Change is the unknown, the unknown is darkness. Darkness is merely an opportunity.

Darkness is not the absence of light. Darkness is simply the origin of light.

Passerby Cassandra Gillmore

Driving down the highway is almost a peaceful downtime for me. It is a time to sit with my music and my thoughts. I am able to think about everything or nothing, plan out my day, create a shopping list, or do whatever else I want. That is, if it is a normal day. However, on this sunny, fall day, I drove by a car accident. It seems like such a normal thing that people see daily and pay no attention to at all. I did not know the people. I did not have any connection to the car accident at all, but I felt something as I drove on by.

There was a little boy, maybe around the age of four, standing there among the wreckage. Time seemed to stand still as I passed by the scene. The young boy held a teddy bear in one hand, its feet getting dirty from the gravel while it dangled on the ground. He watched my car silently as I slowly drove by with tear-filled eyes. There was also a man. He must have been hurt in the crash because he was on a stretcher being rolled away from the car. I don’t know what his relationship was to the little boy with his thumb in his mouth, but I watched as his unconscious body was lifted into the ambulance by a team of paramedics.

I remember being in that little boy’s shoes. Watching as someone you loved gets wheeled away from you. Standing there helpless because you are simply a child who can do nothing but watch. Using all your strength to keep standing when all you want to do is collapse and be taken away with them. Holding back tears because you are not the one who is physically hurt, but it feels as though you are falling apart.

Eight years ago, it was my dad being wheeled away. My

brother and I were the children left there helpless and alone while he was taken by the paramedics. There was nothing we could do to help him. Nothing we could say that would change the outcome. I remember riding in the back seat of my aunt’s van while it followed the ambulance. The whole ride there I thought everyone was overreacting. Papa was going to be fine. I was unbelievably confident he was going to be ok. That everything was going to be alright.

I was wrong.

We sat in that hospital waiting room for what felt like hours; surrounded by family yet feeling so alone. Our pastor came, which had the opposite of a calming effect. The couches were somehow more comfortable than the silence in the tiny room. There were too many bright lights for the dim feeling hanging over us. They took my mom out of the room. I knew in that moment it was something bad.

They had her break the news to us. My dad had a heart attack. There was nothing they could do. He was gone before the ambulance even arrived. We all cried, holding each other like we were worried someone else could be taken away.

We were eventually given the chance to say goodbye to him, even though he was already gone. Normally the hospital made me feel sick, but somehow on the walk to see him, I felt fine. You would think that the emotions of a twelveyear-old girl who just witnessed her father die in front of her would be at their peak.

You’d be wrong.

Entering the room, I felt numb. Nothing. Like a bystander watching. This was not my life.

Then I saw him.

My heart sank in my chest. Seeing the lifeless body of the man who raised me; the only man that I always trusted to be there. I stood there waiting for him to pull off a miraculous recovery. I hoped that the feeling would just go away. I still wait for that feeling to go away. Oh how I prayed that night when I got home, that the man from the accident was alright. That he was going to live. I had a rocky relationship God after my father, but I needed him now more than ever. I could not stomach the idea of that little boy feeling the weight of his heart in his chest. The man had to get better. He simply had to. Not for his sake, but for the sake of the young boy who would have to grow up way too quick, if he had witnessed this man’s death.

The amount of trauma and therapy he would have to endure. The nights he will want to give up, simply because it is easier than continuing. The nights he will ask God why it was not him who was taken from the world too soon. The dinners that would be silent because that was Dad’s favorite meal. The mornings without the smell of coffee, because he was the only one who drank it. Not having him around for your first heartbreak. Not having him around to teach you to drive. The thoughts of not having him there for your graduation, your wedding, for your kids’ birth. Not having him every day for the rest of your life.

I keep searching the papers to find out what happened. I watch the news every night, hoping to see a story of a miracle. Nothing appears. I have no clue what happened to that man, or the little boy with the tear-stained face. Honestly, I don’t know what I would do if I did know the truth. What could I do? Make an appearance at the funeral to grieve the man I never met? Give the little boy a hug, even though he doesn’t know me? Cry hopelessly because I happened to drive by a random car accident? I just couldn’t do that.

I guess I will just have to go on living, like I always do.