25 minute read
Glass by VERB
BENDER, 2017
GLASS
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Hoping for sunny skies And getting gloomy grays
by verb
Hushed whispers and Glass shards on the floor Exploding with all the Screams kept bottled up
Little children unsure Of their own reflections Delicate features marred By cracks in the mirror
Every spiteful word inked On a canvas of skin and Bruises that blossom in Shades of red and blue
Pounding on doors and Footsteps walking away Dreams of faraway lands And knights in rusty armor
Eyes glazed over and Slurred speech spitting The most painful words Like they’re nothing at all
Crowds of people and No one to come home to Hoping for sunny skies And getting gloomy grays
Exhausted by their troubles Enveloped in their silence They burrow into the covers And close their weary eyes
CHECK THE TIME
TYSON, 2017
by sadhana chari
11:30 p.m. Cars honk and street lights shine onto the cold and rainy city of New York. Rain has seeped into the dirt, making it a slushy mess. People briskly walk down the sidewalk, eager to get back home from another tiring day at work. Customers flee with all they can carry as shops begin to close down. Everything is loud, noisy, and dirty. Perfect. In the middle of all this is a slender young woman carrying her umbrella and walking down the sidewalk. She wears a long black trench coat and a black beanie to cover up her dirty blonde hair. She walks along with everyone else, but without purpose, drifting aimlessly through crowds. She looks up at the sky instead of down at the ground. Then, she stops. She takes a deep breath in, feeling the briny, sticky air encompassing her. She breathes out. Perfect. Someone passing by hastily shoves her. “Move,” they tell her, and she obliges. She slips out of the crowded sidewalks and into a dark alleyway,sinking onto the ground and resting her back against one of the alley’s walls. Above her, the rain has slowed down to a drizzle. She looks at her watch, tuning out everything but its familiar ticking. Time pushes forward and it becomes 11:59 pm. Perfect. Seconds pass by as the woman continues to rest. Everything goes still. The wind stops rustling and the woman’s watch stops ticking. Silence. Then, a person enters the alley. Tall and thin, his face is unmistakable even in the dark. A face as familiar to her as her own - and she loathes it with everything in her. The world is no longer perfect. The woman looks up at his looming figure. “You came,” she whispers, her face impassive. “Of course I did. Why wouldn’t I?” he murmurs, tilting his head to examine her closer. He kneels to meet her gaze. “Did you bring it?” he asks her. She simply nods. Then, from the depths of her trench coat, she takes out a watch similar to the one she wears on her wrist. It has a gold wristband and thin hands that indicate seconds, minutes, and hours. There are no numbers; only a steady tick that announces each passing second. The watch rests in her outstretched palm. The man eagerly grabs it and silently clasps it on his wrist. A beat passes. Nothing happens. “A fake again? You can’t hide it forever,” he chides her, his eyes flashing with annoyance. He gives her back the watch and she puts it back into her coat. “Sooner or later, you’ll have to give it,” he instructs her, just as he has thousands of times before. She leans in close to him, a twinkle entering her eyes. “We’ll see about that,” she replies with a tiny smirk. “We’ll see about that the next time you come here.” The man sighs and says nothing. Slowly, he stands up. He turns around and she can no longer see his face. “I’ll be back, you know,” he announces. Then, he fades into nothing. Tick. Tick. Tick. Her watch begins to move again. Cars are honking and people are arriving at their homes. The sounds are somehow dimmer than they were before. She stands up and looks down at her watch. 12:01 am. Perfect. “I know,” she says as she walks out of the alley. Perfect.
Everything is
loud, noisy,
dirty. Perfect.
I AM
by sachi huilgol
HUDSON, 2018
I stepped onto the bus at 10:00 PM. It was the last bus to leave. I ran to catch it—my feet hurt from the stiletto heels I decided to wear to work today. Why did I want to look good today? Why today, of all days? Or maybe it’s yesterday. Because right now, at 12:00 AM, it is technically Thursday, March 5th. Does it count as yesterday if I didn’t sleep between today and yesterday? Or have I not slept at all today...and yesterday as well? Does sleep divide days, or are the days determined by the numbers on the watch I wear on my left hand, 2 inches above my wrist? Is it still yesterday for someone whose watch is two minutes behind? Do they even realize that their time is wrong? Is my time wrong? Are my tomorrows different from everyone else’s? Am I living in the past, experiencing things a half-second after the rest of the world? What have I missed in all the seconds I’ve left behind? Or perhaps time has nothing to do with all of the things I’ve missed. Everyone else has already left. It’s just me and the bus driver. Me, the bus driver, and my thoughts. But if these are my thoughts, is it just my thoughts and the bus driver? Am I my mind or my body? Am I my person or my soul? What makes a person? Am I just a brain, using my body as a vessel to move around and experience the world? Am I using this bus to move around and experience the world? Is my brain using my body, which in turn uses the bus, which in turn uses the driver, who is also using the bus? Who even am I? I know my name, but does that really define me? What about all the others who share my name? What makes them any different from me? Experiences, of course. Am I a sum of my experiences? Am I more than them? Am I less? What qualifies as an experience? An experience of the brain, or of the body? A choice by the brain, or by the body? Is it my brain that forced my body into making the wrong choices? What is it like to know who you are? I thought I did. I thought I had it all figured out. I had such a nice apartment. It was a cozy place, with a kitchen, bedroom, and sitting room. I made sure it always looked like the cover of a furniture magazine. Everything was always so coordinated. Everything matched. All the colors were pleasing to the eye. I was in complete control of it. It was my pride and joy. I must have have spent at least two hours a day cleaning, rearranging, cleaning again, adjusting a pillow, replacing the sheets, vacuuming, wiping the tables, cleaning, dusting the vases, cleaning...I loved to clean. I was clean with everything. My hair was always cut in a straight line exactly at my shoulders. My clothes were always ironed, starched, completely wrinkle-free. My shoes were shined to perfection. My skin was always clear, and I would scrub my face until it was raw to ensure that not a single blemish could ever surface. My makeup was always perfect. When I cooked, I would scrub every dish until even the most stubborn grease was completely eradicated. I would scrub the counters until they shined. And then I would scrub the stovetop. And the microwave. And everything else in the house, until I was sure that I was safe and clean. I wish that I had been cleaner with her. I wish that things hadn’t gotten so messy. I wish she hadn’t broken that vase before slamming the door shut, ruining my perfect carpet with shards of glass that stung my hands as I scooped them up. I wish she hadn’t broken that vase, the one that held the flowers she had gotten
me the day before. They were roses. They, too, stung my hands as I scooped them up. My hands haven’t stopped bleeding yet. Neither has my heart. I... I need to wash them once I get off. I need to clean them. I need to clean me. Or do I need to clean her? What does clean even mean? Were we ever clean? She was my world. My project. My unfinished masterpiece. She told me it was love, and I believed her. I didn’t realize that love meant loose ends. I didn’t realize that love meant imperfections, and fights, and not being able to fix things. To fix people. She wasn’t perfect. Not by a long shot. But she could have been. I could have made her perfect. I could have smoothed out her dents, buffed out her scratches, scrubbed the dirt from her skins. I could have straightened out her messy curls. I could have scrubbed the blackheads from her nose. I could have dressed her in a sharp outfit and made her me. But she didn’t let me. She told me that she liked her disorganized, cluttered existence. And I did not believe her. I laughed, even. Because who could love that? wild roses she gave me and stormed out of my perfect house and almost destroyed my perfect door on the way out. And then, in the fury of her chaos, her beat-up, dented Mitsubishi collided with a delivery truck at an intersection as she ran the red light. The cuts on my hands bleed. So does she. It’s 12:20 now. Twenty minutes into a new day. I suppose I cannot deny that tomorrow has finally arrived. And my perfect, shoulder-length hair is ruffled and tangled where my head rested on the tattered bus seat, and my clothes have more wrinkles than I can count, and I have black smudges around my eyes from where I rubbed them to wipe away my tears. A small, painful pimple has begun to form on my forehead because I have been wearing the same makeup for over twelve hours now. My shoes are dirty from my haste to catch the nearest bus. I’m pretty far from perfect. So is she. My entire life has been overturned over the course of a night. Or, a night and a morning? I don’t know anymore. I don’t know many things. But I do know one thing. And that’s the fact that today, perfect doesn’t matter. Clean doesn’t matter. My masterpiece
She thought I could. She thought I did. And when she found out I didn’t, she decided to try and make me like her. And she smashed and shattered my perfect vase with the perfectly trimmed and arranged
GONZALEZ, 2017
doesn’t matter. All that matters is the hospital that the bus is stopped outside of, and that she is inside. Sleep doesn’t divide the days. The clock doesn’t divide the days. The only one who decides the start of my new day is me. And today, I choose to start over.
JUST A MINUTE
by anonymous
Midnight. The clock reads 12:00 AM, and the world is sound asleep. Save for a girl who stands alone in her bedroom, perfectly awake. She is wearing a backpack with her name– Moira– embroidered on one pocket. The backpack is heavy with clothes, toiletries, some food, and a yellowed photograph carefully tucked into a flap. Moira sinks onto her bed, feeling dizzy. How did this happen? This is not really a question– Moira, of course, knows the answer. Do you really want to run away? From everything you’ve ever known? This she is not so sure about. Moira slides the old photograph out of her backpack and looks down at it. Three happy faces smile back: a man, a woman, and their daughter. Moira slides a thumb over the blonde-haired woman’s face and pretends that it has vanished, wiped away by her finger just like that. Moira pictures her mother, worn down by a lifetime of folding clothes and cooking meals. And then her mother, dead. One rainy day, years ago, Moira had discovered a stack of physics textbooks under the kitchen sink, well-hidden by pots and pans. Crouching on the cold linoleum floor, Moira thumbed through the tattered pages, running her small fingers over the neat, narrow notes in the margins. She flipped to the back cover, where a careful log of owners had been kept. But only the last entry mattered: the textbook, Property Of Stanford University, had belonged to Moira’s mother. Moira swiftly replaced the textbooks with her thick volumes of children’s tales, abandoning Cinderella and Peter Pan to catch drips from the faucet pipes. Whenever her mother left the house, Moira flipped through the textbooks, marveling at their contents. When her mother returned, she would carefully stow away the textbooks in her clothes drawer: How otherworldly, how dangerous the textbooks seemed among her drab cardigans and sweatshirts! Yet Moira never told her mother about her discovery. Her mother had so many secrets, Moira thought, why couldn’t she have some of her own? What perplexed her was how these textbooks had been haplessly thrown under the kitchen sink, seemingly abandoned–like Moira’s toys from toddlerhood, lined up neatly on her bookshelf, growing gray with age. Moira thought it a waste: her mother could’ve been a physicist, a professor, someone big. How could she be content being just a housewife? Be patient, Moira told herself. She would wait, and it would come. One day, her mother would lay down her iron and ask where her old physics textbooks had vanished to. Or she would say, I can’t cook tonight. I need to study for an interview. Moira watched, waited, and began to grow impatient. At times, she decided to interfere: Moira asked her mother to help her with physics homework (“Go ask your father. Can’t you see I’m busy cooking dinner?”). She asked her mother to take her to museums (“Perhaps your father could take you on a weekend.”). It was fruitless and disappointing and infuriating. Why couldn’t her mother see what she had wasted? And whether consciously or not, Moira knew that time was slipping away, like memories from the minds of the old. Her mother was always slightly ill in some way or another, so the doctor’s call was inevitable. It was followed quickly by the tests, the tubes and needles, and the pills, thirteen of them every day, swallowed dutifully by Moira’s mother. The yellow smell of sickness that stained the walls and refused to
be washed out. Every day that passed was another day that Moira’s mother sank deeper into her grave. Deeper and deeper, as her mother’s beautiful face grew sallow. Moira desperately hoped for a miracle for her mother, but eventually-- she did not remember exactly when-- even hoping seemed impossible. On the last day, it was midnight when Moira heard the sirens. Spinning red lights, like the tip of a quivering flame, like the color of blood. The paramedics were a gust of wind, carrying away Moira’s ashen mother as they left. Just like that, her mother was taken. Moira straightens and realizes that the old photograph she is holding is covered in big, wet splotches. She ignores them and shoves the photograph back into her backpack. Before she leaves, she glances at the digital clock glowing red in the darkness. 12:01 AM. Moira walks out her bedroom door, past her mother’s old room, past her father’s bedroom. She pauses at the family photo on the living room wall, giving it a brief glance. Three happy faces smile back: a man, a woman, and their daughter. She flees from them, stopping only when she reaches the front door. Moira puts her hand on the cold doorknob and turns.
One minute, she was there; the next, she was not.
Moira cried in silence that night, hot tears sliding down her face. She did not know if they were from grief or anger or regret. Moira could not stand the stifling quiet and faint smell of sickness that hung in the air after her mother’s death. She could not stand the memories of the bathroom cabinet, filled with medication. Nor could she stand the lingering smell of smoke from the textbooks she had burned in the fireplace. (Their ashes, she noticed, seemed the same as her mother’s after she had been cremated.)
She doesn’t look back.
Moira felt as if she was being suffocated, but by the smoke in her own body.
SESANI, 2020
DAYDREAM
NIGHT TRAIN
When the little boy opens his eyes, a veil of gray encompasses his body, draping over his legs and arms and face. Where is he? Where is his mother? Where is his father? He attempts to open his mouth, but his mouth is dry, and his throat sore. Arm outstretched, the boy gropes around the space next to his bed for the glass of water that is usually placed on his nightstand, waiting for those moments in the night when he would wake up thirsty. But where is it? The boy turns on his side, causing the bed to groan beneath his weight, the springs squeaking under pressure. Before he is able to ease himself onto his side, an impromptu string of violent coughs rack his small body, making his shoulders shake and tremble with each heave of a breath. “Easy, there. Easy,” said a voice, scratchy and old like sandpaper. Two cold hands place themselves on the small of the boy’s back and his shoulder, assisting him in sitting upright. His fit of coughing ceases, but there’s a metallic taste lingering at the base of his throat. A glass of water is set before him in the palest hand the boy has ever seen. He gratefully takes it and sips, the frigid water sliding down his throat, allowing the words to unstick from the walls in his throat. The pale hand returns and takes back the empty glass, and the boy rubs his eyes, tilting his head up to meet the face of the person. The boy blinks once, twice, rubs his eyes, then stares back at the figure in front of him. This person clearly doesn’t have a face, for there are no eyes, nose, nor mouth.
by sophia mo
There’s only a dark hood cast over their head, ebony black, blending into the darkness of the room behind it. In the place of its face is a mass of charcoal, empty and gaping. “Who are you?’ The boy dares ask without an ounce of fear; instead, with innocence. “Where’s mommy?” The figure takes the boy’s hand in its own, beckoning him to stand on his feet. The boy complies, his gaze glued to it while he stands on quaking legs. “Your mother will be here very soon. Don’t worry, young one,” the figure replies in a low voice, hollow and deep. The boy nods, though he understands little. “What’s the time, then?” There’s a pause before the figure replies, “11:00.” “What’s your name?” The boy asks again. This time, the figure does not reply. It merely leads the boy across the room and to the door, halting in front of it. “Go ahead,” it urges, “open the door.” The boy grabs the knob without thinking twice and turns it. Instantly, a yellow bumblebee envelops his body, running its fingers through the roots of his hair and across the boy’s cheeks, hugging him. It’s a blissful, pleasant feeling, and it leaves the boy giddy and warm. It is only when the light dissipates, does the boy acknowledge the massive train rolling to a stop in front of him. It’s made up of butter yellow from the lights within and pearl clouds that
adorn the bottom of the train, covering up its wheels entirely. Silver clouds erupt from the top, barely noticeable against the onyx black of the backdrop. The train lets out an ear-deafening ‘choo,’ and the boy giggles, tugging the figure along with him. “Train! Train!” he calls against the blaring horns, bouncing on the balls of his feet as a group of pebble gray outlines flood in from all sides. “Come on!” The figure doesn’t persist when the boy shoves past the gray blobs and to the front of the train doors. He clambers up in a flurry, his short legs straining to get him up the stairs. The seats in the train are plush, colored a garnet red while lanterns hang from the sides of the hickory walls, dying them a rust hue. Poles of coin silver protrude from the ground, accompanied by dangling metal straphangers. The boy and the figure take a seat next to a gray blob just as the rest of the silver outlines come pouring into the train like a mob, filling every space and cranny. They’re silent, however, when the train starts, lurching forward. The boy doesn’t mind it at all; he’s always preferred silence above all when he is in a crowded area. “Hey,” the boy tugs at the figure’s sleeve, pouting slightly, “what time is it?” The figure turns toward him, staring down into the boy’s eyes when he replies, “11:10.” The boy blows a raspberry, folding his arms across his chest, evidently bored out of his mind.
BANTERSNAPS, 2020
“Where are we going?” he inquires, barely a minute away from his last question. The figure doesn’t respond, its hands placed on its lap. “Hey, why won’t you talk to me? It’s really boring on this train.” After a while of relentless questions, the boy ultimately gives up, sliding down in his seat. The first stop comes after a tunnel, and the scenery has changed. The sky is now a deep violet, strokes of midnight blue and black inching away from the horizon, ascending into the sky as if it’s being chased away by the purple. The gray outlines in front of the boy begin to move amongst themselves. With the sound of the opening doors, some of them filter out onto the station platform while others stay dormant. “Is it our stop?’ The boy’s legs itch to stand up and stretch, but the figure places a chilling hand on his shoulder, restricting him from moving. “No.” The boy huffs, exasperated. With another blare of the horn, the train rolls away from the station, leaving the gray outlines which had disembarked earlier. “Where do they go?” The boy whispers to the figure, pointing at the gray blobs. “No one knows,” says the figure. And that was all.
____________
The next time they are about to arrive at a station, the boy has fallen asleep and was only awoken by a light shaking on his shoulder. His eyes crack open, and he lets out a yawn, stretching his arms and squeezing the sleep out of his muscles. “Where are we?” he proceeds to ask. And once again, the figure seated next to him says nothing depicting their location, but merely the phrase, “Look at the ceiling.” The boy trails his eyes up toward the ceiling and, ohIt’s clear. There’s no more metal roof, no more opaque ceiling. The sky above him is vast and impossible, and the sight of it steals his breath away, knocking it clear from his lungs. Above him lays a magenta and mauve colored sky, brushstrokes of occasional rose and strawberry streaking across the purples, blending in in swirls and dabs of it here and there. Dark navy eats at the corners of the never-ending skies, mixing in at the edges. As if a fairy had spilled her pouch of glitter onto the vast purples and blues and pinks, stardust coats the sky, sprinkled all over the place like a thousand diamonds. They twinkle and glimmer, saying, “look at me, look at me.” The more the boy takes in, the wider his smile becomes, broader and fuller until it reaches the tips of his ears. Everything is so elegant and beautiful, and he’s never seen such a thing in his life. The train’s horn blares again, this time sending something scattering over the glimmer of stardust. A frog, the boy thinks to himself, as a creature of moss darts across the view, sending ripples across the scenery. It distorts the stardust, but they stay, unyielding to the force. In the presence of the frog came two large golden fire-colored fish, their mouths gaping open while they swim hastily past the train. They leave behind chiffon bubbles that rise to the sky and disappear. “There was a frog! A frog!” The boy nearly yells, his heart fluttering like a hummingbird’s wings while the exhilaration builds upon exhilaration in his chest to the point where he thinks he’s about to explode of euphoria. The figure gives a slight nod of acknowledgment. “Is there more?” There’s a moment of hesitancy. “Perhaps,” it mused, “That is, if you would like to see more.” The boy nods so fast his head nearly pops off, but his brain is loud with all the memories and thoughts and colors that he could care less. The train screeches to a stop at the next station. Doors open, people step out, the sky changes again. This time, it’s like the break of dawn, the rising pumpkin orange and rosy pink shades languidly eating away at the remaining dark swabs of black and blue in the sky.
The boy hums to himself, the world filled with color around him; his mind sings of those hues and shades, of the giant goldfish and the frog, of the clouds lining the train and the smoke pouring from its top. “Hey,” the boy says again, his eyes staring into the infinite sky above him, “what time is it?” Another moment of hesitancy, until a soft sigh, so light the boy almost couldn’t hear it. “11:40.” The boy smiles, then hums once more, kicking his legs out in front of him and swinging them. The figure doesn’t speak again.
____________
The moment the boy wakes up for the second time, they’re on water, and something is piercing into his eyes, blinding him and forcing him awake. “Where are we?” he asks again. The figure stays still next to him, unmoving. “Beneath you,” it says, its voice mundane and monotone. The boy, startled, looks at the ground of the train and, ohThe ground is transparent, just like the roof had done before. Beneath him is clear, pristine maya blue water, untouched in the slightest as the train glides over it smoothly. The boy presses his face against the glass of the train’s windows and drinks it all in, absorbing every one the features in the scene. Limitless water spreads out in every direction, meeting the thin line of the horizon until it stops. The sky is an impossible carolina blue, and the only thing to be seen is clouds. The water reflects the sky, and maybe the sky reflects the water, too, but they are a clear reflection of one another, and the thought of it makes the boy’s head dizzy. He takes a seat again, only to be hit with a ray of lemon yellow. He yelps, shooting up in his chair as he blinks to rid of the light imprinted against his eyelids. The boy rubs his eyes, squinting out into the distance, and there, he sees a candy cane lighthouse, candy apple red streaks, and white lines intertwining together up to the top of the tower, where a blinding yellow light erupts from the peak. The moment is serene, and the boy relaxes subconsciously, his shoulders falling, and his eyelids drooping slightly. “What time is it?” he manages to mutter out once more just as they arrive at the station, and the remaining gray outlines start spilling out like rivulets of water. “11:56.” The boy asks no more, darkness consuming his vision and eventually devouring his consciousness, leaving him in peaceful oblivion.
____________
The third and last time when the boy wakes up, everything is dark around him except for the soft pineapple glow of the lanterns across the walls. There are no more of the gray blobs remaining in the train when it rolls to a stop; the engines stop rumbling shortly after their arrival. “Where are we?” the boy yawns, eyes bleary and weary with sleep. The figure stands up for the first time since they embarked on the ride, pulling the boy up along with him. “Home,” it says, turning right to the doors that open with a whoosh of air. Outside is raven black, boundless and unending, just darkness waiting to eat them both up for supper. The figure steps out of the train first, but the boy can’t make himself move, his feet grounded to the edge of the train doors. “Why am I here?” He dares ask, throat bobbing as he swallows, at the edge of tears that prickle his eyes like needles. The figure doesn’t speak, but it does stretch out its pale hand for the boy to take once more. The boy lets out a shaky breath before he opens his mouth. “What time is it?” he asks for the final time, stepping down the short staircase and into the jet black scenery. The figure responds with ease this time. “12:01.” The boy takes its hand, and the black of the night swallows them whole.
