Wanting: A Queer Beauty & Burden - OutWrite Newsmagazine (Winter 2022 Volume 2)

Contributors

Editor-In-Chief: Jaden King

Managing Editor: Christopher Ikonomou

Developmental Editor: Ethan L. Stokes

Graphics Editors: Zoë Collins, Jackson Harris

Copy Chief: Bella Hou

Writers: Shaanth Kodialam, Judah Castillo, Emma Blakely, Kristin Haegelin, Jackson Harris

Artists: Chrys Marr, Zoë Collins, Charis Shargel, Stephanie Liu, Christopher Ikonomou, Cole Lopez

Copy Editors: Emma Blakely, Brooke Borders

Layout: Christopher Ikonomou, Giulianna Vicente

Cover Art: Stephanie Liu

Letter From The Editor

Dear Readers,

OutWrite Newsmagazine is happy to welcome you back for a second time this quarter!

After working through the rage, acts of resistance, and aspirations toward renaissance explored in our last issue, OutWrite now addresses what hides behind that effort. What do we want as queer people, and how does that affect us as queer people?

Welcome to — Wanting: A Queer Beauty & Burden

Inextricably linked to queer people, the acts of wanting and its deeper, stronger cousin, yearning present themselves in often conflicting ways within queer culture. It is beautiful to yearn for one’s true love, an ideal society, and one’s true self. However, it can often feel like a burden for the queer community as our wants and desires are constantly defaced and discounted by the reality of the world we live in.

As you navigate this issue, think about the ways wanting and yearning have affected your life.

Perhaps, wanting has taken you to a space that you never before saw yourself thriving, let alone existing, within. Maybe, wanting too much of something and knowing that you could never get it took its toll on you emotionally. Possibly, yearning for meaningful change in the world has led you to act and create that change.

Whatever your relationship to wanting and yearning may be, use this issue to self-reflect on where you have been and where you are going, to evaluate the world around you and your relationship to it, and to fantasize about all the possibilities left ahead of you. With love,

Jaden King (He/They) Editor-in-Chief

Violence in the Shadows of the Binary

Written by Shaanth Kodialam

Illustrated by Christopher Ikonomou

TW: Harassment, Violence, Queerphobia

“Honestly, I just saw something in you that made me insecure about myself, and I took it out on you.”

I remember these words searing into my heart as a boy whom I had gone to middle school and high school with apologized to me during his senior year for harassing me throughout middle school. He had recently decided to come out to most of his social circle, including some of the very people he sat alongside with as he messed with my queer friends and me.

As he says these words to me, I reminisce on the younger me. Uncomfortable. Unaware. Untouched. All of these at the same time. I remember the young version of me who felt an outward tension between my femininity and my surroundings. The person who had yet to take note of every gesture, change in posture, or inflection in my voice indicating that something was out of the ordinary.

This is not a letter to this bully or bullies in general, and this is not an “I’m stronger because of him.” I’m undefined by his actions and men like him. I know I’m stronger in spite of them. This is not about ruminating on being queer and not fitting in. In fact, it is the very opposite. In refusing to fit in as our most outward, shining selves, we cast light upon those who hide in the shadows of the cishet binary, peering at our light and attempting to grasp it without wishing to contribute even a spark.

An experience like this is not limited

to one group of queer people. However, the aura, the presence of feminity as an outwardly flamboyant gay boy (at the time), was enough to attract violence from those in the shadows. In all of this, I find myself not in a position of lacking forgiveness or swelling in anger, but with a feeling of loss, a sense of yearning to retrace a queer, feminine, free childhood safe from the boundaries of the binary. I yearn for a childhood defined by the sun blazing and sky bright, unaware of the approaching overcast of the clouds.

My issue is not that he sought forgiveness or that he felt guilt for a situation that pained me. I don’t feel a sense of resentment for how he treated me because queerness demands reflection, acting as a mirror to display someone’s own hatred, his own hatred. My issue is that he is not the only one. Boys like him used their hatred to attempt to weaponize my own sexuality. Hearing his words, I remember a group of boys who ended up apologizing after trying to frame me for inappropriate sexual content on school laptops in middle school. Those actions do not belong to these men, they belong to queerphobia and they belong in the category of violence. What is so potent about this hatred, so vile about expressive queerness, that some who eventually claim our community are the ones who hurt us the most?

I see men on TV portrayed as deeply homophobic, violent, and angry, yet in these

“I see men on TV portrayed as deeply homophobic, violent, and angry, yet in these series are backstories and explanations so often tying back to these men being in denial of their sexuality.”

series are backstories and explanations so often tying back to these men being in denial of their sexuality. I see their redemption arcs, and I see their vindication. All I can think about is those whom they’ve hurt, those whose struggle was a jagged path instead of linear. Those for whom queerness was seen as a starting point to build from, an unstable, but unique, foundation

and not a destination. I’m not rejecting these men from our community, and I do not want to ignore their pain, their sexuality, or their identity. In fact, to do so would be to replicate the same violence I yearn for us to destroy. Although, I am left with this lingering feeling looming over me that sharing identity is not the same as sharing community, as shown by these men. Queerness in its rawest form cannot explain or justify violence against queer people. The struggles of the binary and queerphobia create this. We are not responsible.

fall instead. For those whom queerness, not just the act of being gay, is an outward default. For those who seek love from men like this, dancing around the violence of their shadows. I yearn for the new shadows that we cast to be intuitively defined, in awe of our queerness instead of in fear of it.

I yearn to be free from the position of storyteller in this cycle. I yearn to see sparks fly in the shadows of the binary that left me falling deep into the abyss, only to be jolted back alive with the blistering reminder that my outward femininity, my outward queerness was a catalyst for violence from my own. I yearn to hope that those who do perpetuate this cycle free themselves from the conflict they feel inside that leads them to inflict this upon people who know their struggle.

My heart sits with those who cannot fall into the softness and stillness of shadows. My heart aches for those who fall into gaps, crevices, and cracks, with rough surfaces breaking their

“I see their redemption arcs, and I see their vindication. All I can think about is those whom they’ve hurt, those whose struggle was a jagged path instead of linear.”

“My heart sits with those who cannot fall into the softness and stillness of shadows. My heart aches for those who fall into gaps, crevices, and cracks, with rough surfaces breaking their fall instead.”

Love Conquers All

by Chrys Marr

Fragile Dandelions

Written by Judah Castillo

Photographed by Zoë Collins

I love you.

The first time I said it, my hands shook, my heart beating as fast as hummingbird wings. I waited for his response, blushing in front of my phone screen. It’d taken me a lot of thinking to muster the courage to say it, and I was scared I’d said it too soon. By that point, we’d been dating for two months, but we’d known each other for eight.

But he said it back with a smile before we hung up one of our weekly calls.

Love always confused me. I don’t remember being anyone’s first choice when it came to the matter. I had a bouquet of love interests, but no one stood out as he did. He was like the early morning sun, his love gently shining over my petals. His smile was re-energizing, his laugh contagious in the best way possible. He reassured me, knowing how easily I wilted.

I was a fragile dandelion, unassuming and delicate. I wasn’t a carnation, lavender, or a rose, yet he looked at me as if I was a garden. Our in-person dates were always my favorite. Earthy green eyes filled with curiosity, pale hands floating over my brown skin like a gentle breeze on a warm California day.

ual” nor “non-binary” proudly on my chest. Like Chicano, these words simply symbolized living in the sexual, gendered, and racialized borderlands (Thank you, Gloria Anzuldúa). Like the borderlands, everything about me often shifted with the seasons, like dandelions that grow from mustard yellow, rays-of-sun-like petals to lunar-like white orbs of fluffy seeds. Many people didn’t understand that I lived within these intersections, that these facets of my identity were non-negotiable but constantly changing. He was the first one to make an effort in understanding, not seeing these constant shifts as a hindrance.

Please stay.

The words linger inside my throat as I stare at him in my doorway. Dandelions threaten to burst from my chest as I bargain with the universe to give me a little bit more time with him. Just one more minute, maybe 30 more seconds.

I’m desperate.

He gives me one last good kiss as I start to wilt, accepting the hard truth that our love will be once again contained through iMessage, FaceTime, Instagram, and occasionally Discord.

Relationships are weird. This one was a gentle surprise, unexpected but welcome. Before I met him, I was sure that I would just be the wild pansexual in college, your one friend that only had bad Tinder hookup stories. But alas, here I was, in a very sweet and endearing relationship with a boy who had stumbled into my life.

I felt weird sometimes saying that our relationship was “queer.” I don’t wear “pansex-

We’d done this dance before. We started our official relationship during the most strict part of the lockdown, having hung out several times prior. But for a while, we’d been seeing each other in person. The first time we went on a real date was in October of 2020, and the last time we saw each other in person was December 17, 2021.

But I was hooked on him like a bee is to honey.

“I had a bouquet of love interests, but no one stood out as he did.”

I miss you. When I wake up in the morning, I feel around for any trace of him. I’ve been staying with my mom as if her house was a giant orange ceramic pot, and I am the lone dandelion living in it. I think she knows I am wilting and allows me to stay a few extra weeks in her home. I dread going back to my apartment, having to accept that he’s no longer nearby.

deleting it.

Yahya Al Noor once wrote, “Hearts disput[ing] distance can connect.” Truthfully, the distance is what I worried about. The physical distance and time zone changes are daunting, but not as much as the emotional distance.

I think this is the source of all yearning: the need to close the emotional distance. This deep-rooted desire to be more than what you are

I wake up to soft “good morning” texts, but it’s not the same as seeing his sleepy smile and playfully arguing about whether or not to get up to make breakfast. I type out “I miss you” on my phone at least five times a day, before quickly

to them, never content for what you are because you feel like you’re not enough. So you write love poems in your note app, send them songs and playlists, write love letters, send memes, watch movies through Teleparty and buy them elaborately thought-out gifts. It’s not yearning for what you don’t have, it’s yearning for what you already have.

So I sit here in my ceramic pot, waiting for my partner to come back, yearning for the early morning sun.

“Like the borderlands, everything about me often shifted with the seasons, like dandelions that grow from mustard yellow, rays-of-sun-like petals to lunar-like white orbs of fluffy seeds.”

Food For Thought

by Zoë Collins

Since checking into work that morning, Lynn had done little besides load up the popcorn machine with fresh kernels and flip through the comic book in her ratty canvas knapsack. It was a Saturday and matinees were always slow in Wallace. At the onset of February in Idaho, with spring still waiting to set in and turn the streets to mushy slush, she had to build up the courage to push through the double doors of the theater into the freezing cold. Yet, someone had to change out the movie posters for the week, even as her breath fogged up her glasses and her huddled body shivered in front of the ticket booth. She shook her head, fumbling with the keys to the poster’s glass case, and finally put up a poster of a fiery, green-eyed actress in a safari outfit with her trembling hands. Banged up pickup trucks and Fords occasionally rattled past on the narrow road, but otherwise, she only heard herself humming bits and pieces of a Hank Williams song.

Lynn liked working at the movie joint, despite the dull tasks of that day. She had stumbled upon the hidden movie theater after school a few months ago and had latched onto it like a castaway to a stray liferaft. There was not much to do but escape this small town, even if for a few hours of the day a few times per week. She was methodical in the way she did her tasks at work, her daily routine feeling so utterly banal that she thought it best to attach an air of seriousness, even sacred rituality, to her Saturday practice.

But lately she had started to think about what it might be like to be the person sitting in the audience with someone at her side, instead of the girl crouching behind the rickety projector. The tiny theater was vacant and lonely at this hour of day, its one showing room silent except for the continuous crackling noise of the speakers. Beyond the 50 velvet seats clustered close together and the walking rail that ran through the center of the room, nothing signified that anything had ever inhabited this room besides spiders and the occasional ghost. Lynn had asked Mr. Dawson, the seventy-year-old owner of the theater, if he had ever advertised that they put on matinee screenings — seeing as she had never seen a soul buy a ticket for Saturday morning — and if, perhaps, they might only open after noon for everyone’s comfort. He

had merely grunted in reply, his glasses slipping further down his nose as he sorted through the change in his pocket and handed her some paperwork to file in the backroom. Lynn had not brought up the question since, seeing that it was not so bad to have the room all to herself.

Instead, she dutifully loaded up the film reels in the back room, if it could truthfully be called that — from her outside perspective, it more closely resembled a spacious broom closet with a projector and a stool — and watched as a cheesy 1940s cowboy movie flickered to life through the carved-out window. She had seen this one a few times (it was one of Mr. Dawson’s favorites), so she took out a small notebook from the set of drawers on the back wall and began to add to a sketch she had started the week before. A girl’s face appeared on the page, features coming together to reveal the image of one of her friends from childhood. She had moved away last year and left Lynn alone in a town she had never come to call a home.

Putting her pencil down after a few minutes, she let her mind wander and began to think about the countless couples she saw cycle through week to week in the back row of the joint. I don’t understand them, she told herself right before each Friday and Saturday evening, I don’t understand. Nothing was as safe as her own company, she believed practically, even boyfriends, and then each night, in the still frigid spring air, the frost would crunch beneath her feet and she would think in the back of her mind an icy thought: I have no choice but to be alone.

“I don’t wanna miss anything.”

Lynn snapped back to reality to see Clark Gable smiling back at her on the screen, wishing that it had not felt as if he was reading subtitles from her mind. She adjusted her bulky winter coveralls, turned the reel’s case over, and saw its title on a piece of tape: “Honky Tonk.” Lynn straightened up on her stool and put her feet back on the bottom rung, as the wood was beginning to cramp up part of her leg. She then pushed her thick-rimmed glasses up her nose to see a silhouette in the front row of the theater. That was unusual. She scooted forward slightly until she was perched on the edge of her seat and saw, without confusion or doubt, that yes, indeed, there was someone sitting in the front row. A girl.

She looked like she was around her age, mid-teens at least and fashionable, judging from the curl of her bob in the shadowy room. Then abruptly, almost as if she could sense Lynn’s stare, the customer stood up and turned around. Though she could only see the girl’s outline in the dark, she could sense that her figure was staring right through the projector at her. Lynn scrambled onto her feet. Was the tape still running? Had she aligned the reel wrong and stopped the movie? She hurriedly found a small flashlight in the toolbox in the corner of the room and reexamined the projector.

“Hello there?” A high voice echoed through the theater and through the projection room walls. Lynn, nearly lost beyond return in her thoughts, picked up her head from where she was focused. The girl is talking to me, she reflected in her head as she scanned the expanse of the empty theater through her tiny window. There was nothing witty or casual to say in return, no smart remark to quip back with.

“Hi?” She responded and smacked her leg in embarrassment.

“I was hoping there was someone back there! Would you like to come watch with me?” The girl paused. “I won’t tell your supervisor.” She was coming closer now, her Mary Janes clicking up the steps, and Lynn squinted to see her in the dark. The girl’s hair was red. She was wearing a gingham dress — one of those new summer shifts in the catalogs that all the girls were dying to buy — and had a white headband neatly placed in her hair. Vaguely in the back of her mind, Lynn wondered how the girl could stand the cold outside in such an outfit. This thought was abruptly interrupted by the strange sense of deja vu that overcame her upon seeing the redhead’s face. The stranger was familiar, recognizable in the way that a celebrity was if you passed by them too fast on the street. It was an uncanny familiarity; it stole her breath away and kept her staring. She could easily have been in one of her classes at school, sitting every day in the same front row spot in History, perfectly off center and a foot away from the teacher’s desk. Even in this room, lit up only by the outlines of cowboys negotiating deals and quarreling, the girl was clearly beautiful. Lynn had a feeling she was clever, not the kind of person who had to try too hard but was already blessed

with a decisive mind, a special kind of thoughtfulness.

Before she fully processed the girl’s request, Lynn leaned her face up to the projection room window and shouted out, “Alright!” Barely containing her excitement, she flung open the door to the theater lobby and went down the long passageway to the main room.

I am doing something, she repeated, I am the captain of my ship. She thought to herself that Mr. Dawson would be very proud of her initiative at this moment. He was always grumbling about her shyness — a kind of weakness that unkind customers could spot right off the bat — and had advised her to greet people as they came in to combat her nerves. Lynn laughed to herself before pushing through the door by the snack bar.

I had better hurry, she ruminated, I don’t want to miss anything.

With this thought, she entered the theater and was greeted with near blindness, the roar of gunshots filling her ears as a shootout took place on screen. Lynn tried not to disturb the movie and tiptoed the few paces to the first row where the redhead had returned to her spot. She sat down with a seat in between them.

“So you work here, then.” The girl leaned over the empty chair.

“Yes, I do,” she began to stumble on her words. “Do you, uh, come here often?”

I should go back to the projector now, Lynn thought, this was difficult and painful and–

“Every Saturday night.”

“Oh, I can understand that.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m not fully sure why we have the Saturday morning shows when no one comes.”

“Really? I think I like the matinee more.” Lynn looked back at the girl. She was smiling at her but not in an unkind or mocking way. Instead, she was waiting. Lynn did not know what to say but shifted her weight around in her chair. “Better company, don’t you think?”

Lynn chuckled. “Yes, definitely.” In front of them, the movie was coming to a close. She would have to get up to make sure the film did not get damaged.

The redhead looked down at her watch quickly. “I better go now actually. I’ll see you

next week then?” Lynn watched as the girl picked up her satchel off the ground and walked back up the aisle. She turned, her strawberry blonde bob flouncing with her, and gave a little salute as she exited the theater.

Lynn smiled to herself; it was a small grin but a hopeful one, a half crescent which only grew as she sat in the flickering glow of the credits. She began to think tiny hopeful thoughts too, scuffing her sneakers on the well worn floor. I wonder if she likes the same films that I do, she mused. I wonder if there are any of her favorites in Mr. Dawson’s collection. I wonder what she’d think if I offered to play it for her. And then there was another thought: I wonder if she’ll come by again.

been here since the early 1930s. It was rare that things changed in this town to the point where they were unrecognizable. There was a romance to the old, crumbling plaster that made up the walls of the bathrooms and storage closets, and she loved the gilded wood trim that decorated the outside of the building. The theater had never been a movie palace — barely anything more than a storefront for the first twenty years of its existence — yet it was just as tremendous and grand as any Hollywood construction when she was allowed to wander inside alone.

Sometimes she would pretend to converse with the original architect of the theater, imagining that he had come back to check up on the place, though he was long gone by now. His fictional appearance varied, one day he was a stout man in rumpled clothes furiously jotting notes on a pad of paper, the next he was tall and stoic with a 5 o’clock shadow.

The redhead returned the next Saturday. At first, pacing outside the front of the theater and looking over the rows and rows of empty seats, it seemed like she might have imagined all the happenings of last week, as good things were not usually apt to last. She had cursed herself throughout the past few days for all she had forgotten to ask in that first, crucial getting-toknow-you moment; how could she have forgotten to ask for a home phone number, a mailing address, even a name. I am not used to such fast friendships, she comforted herself each time such thoughts cropped up, I am learning. There would be a time when she would be grown up and have all these childish things sorted out, when all that would be left to confront was the adult issue of love. Yet, until that far off day, she was left to walk in circles by the snack bar, praying that this would not be like every other matinee before.

At last, finding that it was twenty minutes after start, she reluctantly turned around and headed into the movie theater. She had already set up the projector and begun playing the film, all that was left to do was watch it in the comfort of the audience. There was no one in the theater as per usual, so there’d be no harm in settling down again in the front row.

Lynn walked down the short, narrow hall to the main room and wondered how long this building had been standing — perhaps it had

What do you think of the place? She would ask, gesturing around the hall like a principal giving a tour to the new student at school.

They would look the hall up and down, mulling over odd corners and the slight droop of the ceiling, before replying, I like what you’ve done with the lights. Then, a little pause, not too long but noticeable to someone who is held in suspense and hoping to please, before they would add, Maybe you should give the floor a good cleaning sometime. That much was true, she concurred to herself.

When she finally came through the doorway and stepped onto the carpeted floor, she stopped in her tracks to see the redheaded girl sitting in the same spot as before. How had she missed her walking in? She swore that she’d been at the front door since she started the film at 11. Lynn frantically backed up a few steps and dug her hands into her pockets. Yes, she thought, I’ve still got it. In a stroke of good hospitality earlier, she had taken a pack of gum, a chocolate bar, and a few peppermints from the snack bar and left her spare change by the register. She had wanted to make a decent second impression, knowing that the first time she had been caught quite off guard. Still, she found herself speechless and nearly motionless again, even as she slid into the seat beside the girl.

She was turning the gum packet around and around in her hands now, watching for the

right moment — a break in the action or the moment after a swell of music when the notes echoed past their ears and into the rows behind them. A few minutes later, she turned to her, tapped a finger on the velvet arm of her chair, and put down the silver foil wrapped gift. I can’t bear to look, she thought, I can’t bear to look away. Watch the movie, she willed herself, but she could not help staring as she always did.

The redhead noticed the stick of gum. She met her gaze and smiled a wide, easygoing grin. Lynn noticed that she had dimples in her cheeks.

“Why, thank you so much,” the girl said softly.

And, Lynn found herself suddenly and inexplicably happy, filled with a warm feeling that settled in her stomach and spread through her arms to the tips of her fingers. She thought to herself, I think we might get along if I could just talk to her in this room, where I am welcome and where I have made myself a kind of home and belonging and way to be useful. We could be close—

“I was wondering where you were,” the redhead murmured as she turned to her.

“I didn’t see you come in.” And she hadn’t. Now that she thought deeply about it, the redhead must have slipped by her while she was digging around at the snack bar. Lynn felt her skin flush, feeling deeply ashamed at having neglected her guest. I’ll come a bit earlier next week, she promised herself in her head.

Yet, in the weeks that followed, the same, peculiar phenomenon unfolded. Lynn waited by the ticket booth each Saturday, one hand braced upon the window and her other on her hip, only to find that the girl had already stolen inside without so much as a greeting. She had begun to accept this as routine, something as predictable as the sun rising or the seasons changing.

On the fifth Saturday in a row, while they sat side by side, shoulders almost touching, the movie came to a close and something new happened. As she adjusted the collar of her shirt and watched the final frame of the film on the screen — a silent German horror flick — fade to black, the ever-so mysterious girl turned to Lynn and dropped a note into her lap.

In a loopy, glitter pen cursive it read: ‘MIDNIGHT SCREENING. TONIGHT?’

She looked further down the paper to see a little line of hearts along the bottom. Yet, when Lynn looked up from the note, the girl had already left, the curtains on the movie theater door rustling lightly.

That Saturday night was cold. Winter had crept back in over the course of the day, the sky darkening before dinner and snow banks holding solid along the road. It had taken awhile to scrape the ice off her bedroom windows after dinner, but she could not make any noise when she snuck out at thirty minutes to twelve. As her snow boots clomped down the street, marking out a trail on the sidewalk, she noticed the night was much more beautiful when she had somewhere to be. She imagined someone walking in step behind her, playfully jumping from footprint to footprint in her path. Then, she would turn to the person and they would move to hold her. Two hands on her waist. Her face pressed into the shoulder of someone she knew. It would be so nice, dancing to a tune only they could hear. If she listened closely enough, she could almost hear the sound of crunching snow to the beat of a long forgotten melody. So graceful, so real…

Something touched her side and Lynn jolted up straight. She turned to look behind her slowly, and found that there was nothing to be seen – only an empty street and a cold breeze that had not been there before.

She ran inside the warmth of the movie theater lobby, pulling off her gloves and tossing her coat by the door. Then, she moved into the theater and felt herself entranced by the loud music coming from the room. It was funny; she had not remembered entering the projection room or picking out a reel. Nevertheless, Lynn saw the large opening titles in front of her and a familiar figure in the front row.

Her body slid into the theater chair, still feeling drunk on the night air and the sudden drowsiness that came with the cozy room. She

could barely focus on the film, so it passed quite quickly. Instead, she was mesmerized by a gentle jaw, a pair of beautiful green eyes, and a long neck that reminded her of a sleeping swan.

“This is my favorite part,” the girl said. Above them, a young pilot ran across the tarmac to a woman waiting for him. A tear slid down the redhead’s cheek and she slid her hand over Lynn’s where it rested on the arm of the seat. When Lynn moved to interlace her fingers with the girl, she saw something strange. The hand was translucent and hazy at the edges, moving in and out of focus like a hazy beam of light. She was holding her right now, her hand resting on her wrist, but she could not fully see the lines of her fingertips. As soon as she tried to focus her eyes on any certain part of the girl’s hand, the image grew blurry and faded away till she had to look again. Lynn pulled away in fright and pinched her face. She could feel her heart speeding up, a horrified expression forming on her face. I have to ask, I have to ask, she thought.

“Are you real?” She carefully looked up into a set of moss-colored eyes; they looked so human, so alive.

“I’m whatever you want me to be.” The ghost girl reached out and cupped her chin. As real as she looked, Lynn barely felt a hint of a touch. It was like snow falling on her skin, the lightest sigh. Then, she kissed her deep and warmly. “It’s nice being with you.”

When Lynn finally saw the redheaded girl in her arms, she saw parts of a dozen faces. There were fragments of her first best friend, then the substitute teacher in her English class, the girl next door, and the redheaded heroine of a dozen blockbusters. Pieces of their smiling eyes and pink lips and curved noses came together and separated again like film developing in a dark room.

And the tape in the projection room kept spinning, and the ghost girl of her own creation was in her lap, and Lynn realized she had never been happier. I am not alone, she remembered. I have the movies, I have this room, I have la rousse.

piper&jenny

Written by Emma Blakely

Illustrated by Charis Shargel

Jenny and I met in the early days of middle school, when everyone was all acne and gangly legs, and got on like a gasoline-soaked house gets on with a match. Frankly, it was a nightmare for our parents. My mom, who I know had been quietly worrying about my ability to make friends, was suddenly unable to enter a shared space in our house without me bombarding her with requests to go to Jenny’s house, stories of something funny that Jenny had said at school today, of Jenny’s new puppy that she got last week. She took it in stride, however jarring it must have been, and was lenient about Jenny and I spending nearly all of our free time together throughout middle and high school. We quickly became each other’s everything: she was the Lancelot to my Arthur, the Will Turner to my Jack Sparrow, the Chandler to my Joey. We were Piper and Jenny, the inseparable pair. And honestly, Jenny was the most perfect person I had ever met. She was pretty, extroverted, and charismatic — skills she used more than a few times to get me out of trouble with teachers, mall cops, and, once, the real cops. But most of all, she was a good friend. Despite my less-than-social nature and tendency to piss off the people around me, she always had my back and took me to the many, many parties she got invited to without making me feel like a charity case.

When the years of football games and science fairs ended and it came time to apply for college, Jenny and I applied as a unit to various in-state schools and got into all of them despite the minor disciplinary infractions on my record. The decision for University of Michigan was an easy one; she wanted to be an aerospace engineer, and it had the best aeronautics program in our state, and I was obsessed with the campus.

It had never occurred to Jenny and I to not go to college together, even after my dad gently expressed his worries about us being codependent; we had been a team since day one, and only one slightly awkward conversation about it solidified the fact that neither of us planned on losing that partnership. So we moved into a criminally small dorm room with two twin beds and took on the adventure of college together.

Our friendship went as smoothly as it had during the first five years we had known each other; we stayed up late studying, caffeinating

ourselves to the brink of delirium and binging the movies from our childhood when we were homesick.

I still didn’t get invited to parties, yet somehow attended more in the first couple months of college than my entire high school career thanks to Jenny’s position in one of the campus sororities.

Tonight was a frat party, and Jenny was looking stunning as ever in a tight-fitting mini skirt and crop top. Shit, I could barely keep my eyes off of her as the colored flashing lights bounced off of her curves – there was no way she was going home without some boy candy on her arm. This thought occurred to me with not a small amount of bitterness, thinking about going home to an empty room and spending the rest of my night quietly, trying to banish the thought of her from my mind.

But right now we were here, and Jenny was holding onto my fingers with tastefully ringed hands and pulling me through the crush of bodies. I allowed myself to sink into her presence as she turned towards me and started bumping to the music. Her face was so close to mine that I could smell her perfectly applied lipstick, the waxy scent that I never could stand but somehow didn’t mind when it was on her.

“We need someone for you to dance with!” She yelled into my ear. I felt my mouth go dry but nodded anyway, forcing a smile. I loved Jenny, but we didn’t exactly have the same taste in men. The guys she picked out for me... well, to put it as nicely as I can, they were fucking idiots. I’d ended up back at our dorm before midnight far too many times.

Then she caught Mateo’s eye from across the floor.

They had slept together more than once, a fact I was privy to considering he would walk out of our shared bedroom with messed up hair and a shit-eating grin some mornings after parties like these. On the nights she took him home, I stayed at a different friend’s house or just walked around all night until my feet were killing me and daylight slipped over the horizon like a pat of butter melting on the pancakes we made on Sunday mornings. Anything was better than sitting in the hallway outside our room to hear her scream through the walls, with Mateo’s voice accompanying her like some horrid

discordant harmony. He sounded like a fucking twelve-year-old with how high his voice got. Not only was it annoying and loud as all hell, but it also always made me ache to hear her like that. I think it’s discomfort, but I tried not to hang around long enough to figure it out.

Mateo danced his way over to us from across the room; he looked like an idiot, trying to find a rhythm and failing and saying “excuse me” to every single goddamned person he ran into, which was a lot considering how packed the house was. I don’t understand why she likes him. I mean, he’s cute, I suppose, with black curly hair and smooth tanned skin, but he’s nothing special.

But she did like him at least enough to fuck him, as was evident by the way she started to move through the crowd – much more gracefully than he did, might I add – her posture and facial expression changing as she did so. Following her probably wasn’t the brightest idea I’d had all night, but I was tipsy and didn’t know anyone else at the party. I just wanted to be near Jenny, and I wanted Mateo to fucking go away and that sentiment was enough to make me push through the crowd after her and watch bitterly as they started grinding on each other like animals.

Maybe I had no right to be angry – she was a cute girl in college, not to mention an adult, and she could sleep with whoever the hell she wanted. But watching her smile coyly over her shoulder and his hands graze the softness of her hips and thighs, I felt something boiling in me, eating through my insides and bubbling up in my throat like heartburn.

It finally became too much to bear when she laughed. God, her laugh. The force of that thing in my chest screamed at me to do something, so I stomped up to them as fiercely as I could while navigating through the press of bodies, and all but screamed over the music in her ear, “I’m leaving.”

Even I could hear the malice in my tone, and Jenny’s face fell from the lustful glow she’d had before to confusion and sadness, which immediately made me feel like complete and utter shit. But the awful fire was still burning, and it was just barely enough to get me out the door.

The coldness of outside cooled me down a little, but every time I thought of fucking Mateo touching her like that, I swear I saw steam rising

off of my skin. Maybe it was just because I was an angry drunk when I was stressed – and I was with finals right around the corner – but the thought of them together tonight… it was just too much.

“Piper!”

Jenny had obviously already called my name a couple times, because we were a considerable distance from the house now and she was only a couple paces behind me. And she sounded pissed. But I was in just the right mood for a fight, the type of mood where, on a normal day, I would take myself to the boxing gym, or a skate park with all of those bratty fucking guys, and blow off some steam. But right now Jenny was right in front of me, and she looked like she was ready to scream, so I was ready to scream back.

“What the fuck is your problem?” Her cheeks were flushed from some mixture of alcohol, the cold, and the residual heat of the small house, and her perfectly pink lips were turned down at the corners in a way I would say was very cute if she didn’t look like she was about to rip my head off.

“Why do you even like him?” The words were out before I could stop them.

Her anger was momentarily quelled by confusion. “What do you mean?”

“Mateo,” I said miserably. I kicked at a rock, sending it skittering towards her, but she didn’t kick it back like she usually did when we walked side-by-side on the way to classes or parties. Now we were face-to-face in the cold, a different picture that I don’t think I liked very much.

She threw her hands in the air. “I don’t know, Piper! I like him because he’s hot, and funny, and he has nice hair. What I want to know is why you have this problem with him! Are you jealous or something? I mean, I set you up with guys all the time, but you never seem to like them. So what is it about him in particular?”

“I don’t like seeing you together,” I blurted out.

Her face twisted, and she let out a snort. “So it is jealousy. Well, I’m sorry that you think he’s cute–”

She kept talking after that, but the ringing in my ears drowned her out. I felt my frustration beginning to mount, mixing with confusion in a blend of emotions that could not possibly

lead to anything good. How could she possibly think that I liked Mateo? It was a notion that would never have crossed my mind in a million years, and the fact that she thought it was so was making my brain short-circuit. Maybe it was the lukewarm beer from earlier, but I could not for the life of me find any words that would explain the truth behind my anger. So, in a hazy moment of desperation, I chose something else.

My lips crashed against hers after two wobbly steps forward, my unsteady state making our teeth clack together unpleasantly. As soon as we met, her hands gripped my upper arms so tightly I thought I would lose circulation, and my fingers found their way into her hair, which made it even more awkward when she pulled away.

Her hands were shaking where she brought them up to her lips, touching them with a strange expression on her face. When she spoke, her eyes shone with tears.

“What the fuck was that, Piper?” She said quietly. Her voice broke, and I felt my heart break with it. The times I had seen her hurt lived in my memories as some of the worst experiences in my life and this time, knowing it was my fault made it infinitely more painful.

“Jenny, I–”

“No, is this some kind of joke? Why did you do that?”

It’s not like I had thought out anything that had happened tonight, but this is not how I expected that to go. Maybe drunkenly kissing my best friend of seven years wasn’t the best decision I had ever made, but now it seemed more serious than that. Like, friendship-ending serious. Numbly, I realized that it had started to snow, fat flakes drifting down and landing in her hair and eyelashes. In my hazy, pained state, I swore that in the crystalline shapes I saw memories – play dates, sleepovers, parties, everything we had falling, falling, falling until they dissolved on the pavement. Desperation filled me to the brim as I watched, and when I focused on Jenny’s face again, it was heightened by the sight of her tears falling.

My mouth still burned from where I had kissed her when I spoke haltingly, not knowing what else to do.

“Jenny… I don’t like seeing you with Mateo because, well–” I cleared my throat, finding it difficult to get the words out. “I mean, I like

you. I think I have for a long time now, I just didn’t realize it.” I stopped to gauge her reaction, but she was just standing there. “I mean, I just always hated seeing you with him so much, and I didn’t realize why, well, until now, I guess, and–”

She surged towards me and grabbed the front of my plaid flannel with something I almost thought was violence, like she was rearing back to hit me, but then her lips met mine and every thought I had ever had left my mind at once. This time, her kiss was slow and sweet, and her fingers twisted gently into my shirtfront. I’ll admit, I flailed rather embarrassingly at first, so stricken with shock that my body responded on its own. After a second, I laid my hands on the small of her back, pulling her closer, closer, closer until we were pressed up against each other, sharing warmth in the cold of the night.

This, I realized, was the reason behind the inexplicable ache in my chest that blossomed when she had her first kiss in seventh grade, when she slept in my bed at slumber parties, when her knee touched mine on the couch while we watched movies, when her hair was wet after a shower, anytime I saw her laugh, whenever she pulled me into a hug. This was the reason I had never been able to find solace in the embrace of anyone else, no matter their wit or kindness or good looks – it was Jenny, it had always been Jenny.

She disconnected far too soon for my liking but didn’t pull away completely. We stayed close, our breaths fogging the air between us. I was hyper-aware of the press of her thighs, hips, torso, and chest against mine (which was doing something incredibly not platonic to me), and her hands, which had moved from my shoulders to cup my face.

“Piper,” she breathed, and it was like she was saying it for the first time.

“Jenny,” I replied with a smile that grew so wide I thought it would split my face in half.

“Let’s go home,” she said.

The separation of our bodies wasn’t as painful as I expected it to be, perhaps because I knew they would reconnect once we got back to our too-small dorm room.

She grabbed my hand, and our fingers stayed interlocked as we walked down the sidewalk as Piper and Jenny, the inseparable pair.

Written by Jackson Harris

Illustrated by Chrys Marr

magician you don’t listen all your tricks have worked on me

I’m in a hundred million pieces and we last spoke in my dreams please lead me back inside the gardens where our lives and love have peaked I close my eyes and there is darkness feel your body next me, breathing, slowly. we say we do it for the ruse I hate it that you know me I’m in your shirt you’re in my shoes the one as close as who you miss the most I am afraid I have bad news and when I say it when I break it, darling you are what I’ll lose and I can’t ask you for advice about you whose, poems are in my pockets, against my knees, my rhythm walking dear body calm down

I can feel my heart climbing out it joins our four feet on the front porch we used to run we stand so still now under a veil of all the glory days of magic shows on summer days you want to be a father

I want to be a doctor holding life tightly inside my hands, to be the groove inside the music inside your mind that makes you dance you light my heart on fire until all the veins are flames this is pulling rabbits out of hats out of the illusion we maintain and the words begin to form I’m coming over I’m on my way

I am standing at your doorstep only seconds before I say, you,

who doesn’t ask me for advice about me because you know everything about me you,

who is sleeping in my bed my hand your head

I try and whisper softly you know you’ve always got me that there is no such thing as a hypothetical a random question an accidental fear or doubt

in your own words the friend who is in love with the other will drive themselves crazy if they try to keep it down if you can never be with them completely it will break you, gut you deeply. and you are killing me slowly

I really hate it that you know me, that your mouth isn’t closed you’re saying you didn’t know that I’ve undercut our trust and that I need to go dear body clam down my heart’s on the ground someone is closing the door blur world no sound only two feet on the front porch as my hands are shaking and my lips are sore I tried and I tried you don’t want to see me anymore and you looked sure you looked sure you looked sure. magician, you split me in two: your best friend until the end and the one who’s so in love with you just as close as who I miss the most I am what you lose remove my poems from your pockets, honor the words until they vanish too and maybe notice I became the surgeon still ripping people open paying for a life with the shards of ours that still lay broken a big house a nice car

saltwater pool in the yard a little herb garden a cat and a dog no kids but still we grew you had your own and I had you who, is forever killing me slowly

i don’t know you you don’t know me

Henry and The Fox

by Cole Lopez