Penchant 5.4

THE

PENCHANT

THE GOLDEN RETRIEVER by francis luo “like the tree in the forest that falls when nobody else is around”

VOYAGER

Irvington High School’s Creative Writing Club is a student-run, interest-based club dedicated to providing a welcoming environment for writers of all kinds to convene and share their ideas outside of an academic setting. Members get a taste of publication through submitting to The Penchant, our online literary magazine. Meanwhile, monthly prompts, in-club competitions, and major writing contests are provided to allow members to explore the implications of writing, improve on their own techniques, and receive feedback from their fellow peers. Overall, our collective mission is to enable the students of Irvington to write what they wish and have their voices heard.

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Photo Credits: Cover Photo by Ricardo Rocha on Unsplash 1| Photo by Hendrik Kuterman on Unsplash 2| Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash 3| Photo by Raphel Jose on Unsplash 4| Photo by Clément M. on Unsplash 5| Photo by Michał Mancewicz on Unsplash 8| Photo by Jens Rademacher on Unsplash 9| Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash 11| Photo by J Lee on Unsplash 13| Photo by Dmitry Kovalchuk on Unsplash (middle) 13| Photo by Lukasz Szmigiel on Unsplash (right) To learn more about us, visit our social media: Facebook: @penchantlitmag Instagram: @the_penchant Issuu: @penchantlitmag To see our submission guidelines, click on the “Submit To” tab on the menu bar, or follow us on Facebook @penchantlitmag.

the penchant Irvington | creative writing club EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Janice Park CONTENT EDITORS Yale Han Nichelle Wong LAYOUT EDITORS Roland Zhang Helen Yuan

CONTENT Ella Kwon Daniel Wang Anousha Sannat Jorge Palacios Sophie Mo Francis Luo

LAYOUT Sophie Leung Khloe Fong Daniel Wang Mandy Liu Sophie Mo

11

june 2022

TABLE OF

CONTENTS

9 14

voyager

4

1 8

Featured

Prose

Poetry

7| The Golden Retriever

1| Jejune by Isabel Lai and Sophie Mo 3| Hurricanes and Fireworks by Nichelle Wong 9| The Great Grim Reaper and The Even Greater Soup by Anonymous Soup :)

7| The Golden Retriever by Francis Luo

By Francis Luo “like the tree in the forest that falls when nobody else is around”

Photo/Art Khloe Fong, 14

PROSE

JEJUNE by isabel lai and sophie mo Sunbeams beat onto the quilted blanket, clasping onto it like a medal brooch on a velvet robe.

The waves lap harshly against the wooden boat and spritz its mist across his face. Herald tastes the flavor of the sea salt against the tip of his tongue and hears the creaking of the boat being cradled in the hands of the ocean. Drunk on sleep, his mind dips in and out of consciousness, meshing into the silky waters. When his eyes open again, it is night, and the day has succumbed to the hold of darkness prevailing at the corners of the world. The fluorescent lamp bobs up and down—a comforting presence in the solemn darkness. Herald crosses his legs on the wooden planks, taking up the mellow light in one hand with a precarious tilt to the vessel. A thump knocks against the floor of the boat, tipping him across the mahogany boards. He tips over, frigid water stabbing his skin with a thousand needles. He sinks.

1|The penchant||JUNE 2022

Lets the currents drag him down, toward the ocean floor twenty thousand leagues under the surface.

His limbs are strangely heavy, seemingly made of lead and carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. Black presses against his vision with the threat of asphyxiation, yet he does not struggle in the midst of the treacherous heart of the sea. It is then, with a tightness and burning to his throat and lungs, that a luminescent glow descends upon his vision. It starts warmly, as all things are in his life, a gentle brightness in the depths of the ocean. Then, it turns into something visceral. Sharp, fatal, deadly. A piercing white that stabs like the talons of a monster into the shadows and creases of his clothing. There are jaws before Herald knows it, pointed fangs in his watery vision. Bites down with a screech of metallic substance, swallowing him whole in a flurry of violent bubbles, and

the next thing he knows, he’s falling from the sky.

Falling into the cush embrace of fleeting cotton, three thousand five hundred sixty eight feet in the air.

Faint rouge tinges the edges of the clouds, and Herald gladly rushes through their wispy ends, bathing in its lush, silky tendrils. They melt in his embrace, like an angel cake withering away on his tongue. The cool wind brushes his face and comforts him, a sign he is still alive.

Floating between riffs of consciousness, his wings extend, reaching to the boundless limit of the sky.

Adrenaline pumps through his veins, coursing through his lithe body. A glimpse of a shimmering scale enters his peripheral vision. And so he dives,

bitter winds piercing his feathers with blunt force. His heart rate spikes as the gravity weighs him down. The sky sucks the whirlwinds out of him, tossing and tumbling the air into a tornado. The air around him explodes. He sputters and grapples in the drafts, wrestling to regain his composure. Yet he strains and strains until he plummets, a blinding thunder striking his falling figure. And with the blinding wrath of the gods, he descends into the dark pit of the Underworld and into a river that bit into his skin with a thousand serrated teeth. Midnight strikes with the echo of a grandfather clock far, far away as something pulls him from the malicious waters. It drags his body back onto the surface of a boat. His head snaps backward on a wooden plank, sending blossoms of pain blooming across his skull.

Herald squints momentarily, dazzled by the spectacle. He fixates onto the glowing dot in the heavens, slowly forming a crescent moon.

When he finally looks around, all he is surrounded by is

mahogany boards on which he fell and nothing else but the silent thump of his heartbeat.

by nichelle wong

PROSE

HURRICANES AND

FIREWORKS

She’s lost in the spiral.

The storm is about to surge,

and I don’t know how to stop it.

3|The penchant||JUNE 2022

“Do you ever feel,” Jamie says, and pauses on the comma.

“Like a plastic bag?” I prompt. “Drifting through the wind, wanting to start again?”

She grins, exhaling half a chuckle. Mission accomplished. “No, no,” she says, interrupted by my “Do you ever feel, feel so paper thin?”

I pause expectantly, my spork held out as a microphone.

“Fine.” She shakes her head.

“Like a house of cards, one blow from caving in.”

Tilting towards her is natural, like second nature. “Do you ever feel, already buried deep, six feet under screams but no one seems to hear a thing?” we chorus. A few underclassmen sitting nearby turn and give us weird looks.

I take a dramatically deep breath, readying for the high note.

“You just gotta IGNIII—” “No, no, Ann, please no.” But she’s laughing, and the dark, furrowed look from before has faded.

I beam back. It’s impossible not to, when Jamie’s happy. I’d frame her laughter if I could. Sometimes, I want to photograph her this way, her eyes bright, her hair flung back over her shoulders. I want to keep her in a locket, pressed close to my heart.

But it’s selfish. I know what she wants me to ask. “Anyway. You were saying?”

“As I was saying,” she says, rolling her eyes, “do you ever feel—no, don’t start—like…like, I don’t know, you’re just, tired? Of being tired all the time?”

She bites her lip, and the look comes back into her eyes. It’s like watching a storm build. A sprinkle of phrases here, a downpour there. I tilt my head, testing the weather.

“Tired all the time? Do you mean sleepy tired, or…?”

Jamie’s face twists. Her mouth shrinks back into her face, but I can see the struggle in her eyes to remain clear. “Not really, but yeah, sleepy tired. I guess I’m probably just tired.”

Something in her voice tips me off. A sort of rough, dragging

edge. She doesn’t want to drop the subject.

I’m not sure how to explain it. I tried, to her brother and her mom when they were trying to understand, but it’s something that comes with hearing her voice day in, day out. I know her ins and outs the way she knows mine. I’ve heard the way it fluctuates when she’s had a good day, when swim practice went well, when she’s not sure how to begin an essay or a hard conversation.

“What time did you sleep last night?”

Wrong question. Her hands twist against each other, and she pulls back a little. “I think around 12?”

“That’s pretty early. For you,” I rib, and she cracks a smile. With two little brothers in kindergarten, my bedtime is 11pm on the dot.

“Something else, then.”

“Mmm.” She bites her lip.

“Tired of being here. Being myself.

Breathing.” She stops. “I don’t mean I want to do anything serious. It’s just, I get tired of it all sometimes. The way my mind is, you know?”

The storm is gathering, and I can tell she’s spiraling. A pit opens in my stomach. I put my arm around her and try to ignore the soft lavender scent, the urge to bury my face into her shirt. Now is not the time.

“Yeah, I know,” I say.

She frowns like she’s bitten something citric. “Um, I don’t know if this is true, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. Do you remember Paper Towns?”

Oh. Yeah, I remember. The first time we went to the movie theaters without our parents, together. When we were thirteen.

We’d both chosen the book for a book report in English, for different teachers, and we’d thought it was so funny we’d picked the same one. And then the movie came out and Jamie said we had to go watch it, so we did.

I remember watching Margo stick her head out of that window, as Q drove her around, and thinking of Jamie. I wanted to do that, just drive around at night together when we

were in high school or grown-ups and knew how to drive. The actress was pretty, but Jamie was prettier. The colors from the screen lit up her face in the shadows of the theater. My thirteen-year old heart thudding faster, constricting, a feeling exhilarating and somehow familiar.

Pulse dancing under my skin the way it never quite did with the boys in our grade.

Focus. This isn’t about you.

“Yeah, I remember Paper Towns.

Good movie.” I pull away from her and busy my hands peeling a mandarin orange.

“Right, the movie,” she says distractedly. “I meant the book, though.”

My chest tightens. “Oh, yeah.

I liked the book too.”

“Do you remember the ending scene? The one where he talks about people seeing each other through the cracks in their vessels?

Like how, I think, the places we’re broken allow us to connect with each other?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Jamie really

liked that metaphor, even though I don’t think we understood it back then. She had memorized the whole ending word for word.

“Yeah. I told you, right, how I used to try to line up my cracks with other people’s so I could understand them better? But lately, I’ve been thinking the opposite is true, too.”

She averts her gaze and fidgets with her hoodie strings. “I mean, I know you’ve gone through hard stuff, but you’re not, like—” She sighs.

“You’re not broken like me.”

“You’re not broken,” I say instantly. “I thought we talked about this? You’re not something that needs to be fixed. You’re whole.”

“I know, I know.” She waves a hand in defense. “But for the sake of the metaphor. You don’t have a, I don’t know, whatever makes my mind work so badly. So can you really understand it, is what I’m trying to say? Can you really understand how I feel?”

“Jamie…”

“Can anyone, really? Like my mom, and my dad. They love me, but JUNE 2022||The penchant|4

PROSE

The spiral is the arms of a hurricane,

encircling everything.

And I am the eye.

5|The penchant||JUNE 2022

they don’t know how this feels. And I feel bad saying this, because I know you guys want to get it, but what if you can’t?

“And like in the future, what if I date someone, and he, I mean whoever I guess, doesn’t get it? Or they think I’m too much?”

I wince as a line from Dove Cameron’s “Boyfriend” floats into my mind unbidden: I could be a better boyfriend than him. I push it away, hoping Jamie doesn’t notice. Her eyes are trained on a weird stain on the table. She’s lost in the spiral. The storm is about to surge, and I don’t know how to stop it.

“And like, I know people will say, ‘oh, don’t date someone who can’t handle you at your worst,’ but at the same time it’s their life too, right?

Like if it were me, I wouldn’t want to date someone who’s always sad or complaining or venting, like I am, and.” She stops.

Her eyes skitter across the table, around the courtyard, and then back to me. The spiral is the arms of a hurricane, encircling everything. And I am the eye.

“Hey,” I say, setting down the orange, the peel long shredded to bits. “Hey, Jamie. Look at me.

Breathe.”

She shakes her head. “But what if it doesn’t help? What if I can’t stop thinking? I can’t stop thinking and thinking and thinking and it keeps going around and around. It’s like in The Good Place, you know, fork in a garbage disposal grinder.”

She laughs, but it sounds more like a choke.

“Look at me,” I say as calmly as I can. “Just breathe. Remember?

Count of 4 in, hold, count of 4 out.”

Thoughts of my own are surging, thoughts like I feel so helpless and I’m so bad at this and I have no idea what I’m doing and it hurts so bad to see her hurt, I wish she didn’t hurt, I wish I could take away all her hurt.

“I’m sorry,” Jamie says, every nervous tic playing out. Her eyes are flickering everywhere, hands strangling each other, leg vibrating against the bench. “I’m sorry, I’m spiraling again, I’m sorry.”

WONG

You’re not something that needs to be fixed.

You’re whole.

“Jamie, it’s fine. Jamie. You don’t have to apologize. Jamie,” I say, and wrap my arms around her shoulders, and hold her.

She’s trembling. I can feel her strained breaths against me. In for a count of 4, hold for a count of 4, out for a count of 4, hold for a count of 4.

“It’s okay,” I murmur over and over, “it’s okay. I’m here for you.

I promise. You don’t have to apologize. I’m here for you.”

After a while, her breathing slows. I move away carefully, keeping my hands on her shoulders. “How are you feeling now?”

“Better,” she says. “I—thank you, Ann. Really. I’m just—I’m, yeah.

Thank you.”

“Any time,” I say. “Do you want to talk about it more, or should we discuss something else?”

She heaves a breath. “More.”

“Okay,” I say, pausing as I think about everything she’s said.

“Okay. I want you to know that you’re not broken. Having these thoughts, feeling this way doesn’t make you broken.”

“Okay,” she says.

“I’m—okay.”

“But I get what you mean,” I add quickly. “About worrying whether or not anyone could ever get it. And I think…hmm. I think it’s true, that we won’t always get exactly how you feel. But like John Green says, our shared experiences connect us.

“I may not feel like you all the time, but I’ve felt anxious and nervous before. And I’m really trying to understand, I’m just—” I break off.

“Sorry, I just feel so helpless knowing it hurts you so much and I can’t, like, stop it or something.”

“You don’t have to stop it,” she says. “I don’t want you to feel like it’s your responsibility. Like I am.

You’re a great friend. Thank you. For being here. It’s not your fault.”

“Thank you. And yeah, same to you. It’s not your fault, either.”

“Did you just use my own reasoning against me?”

I nudge her. “See, you know it, deep down. You know how to talk to yourself.”

“Hey, don’t start up with the whole ‘treat yourself like your best friend’ thing. I’m so tired of hearing that.” She rolls her eyes. The smile is starting to creep back in.

“Alright. Well, treat yourself like your really close acquaintance who you’ve known since third grade who’s super great just happens to give really good advice.”

“Are you seriously—” She closes her eyes and then opens them.

“Wow, okay fine. You deserve that.

You do give really good advice.”

“Thank you, thank you. May I impart another great pearl of wisdom?” I grin wickedly.

“Y…es?”

“It’s like we’re, you know, fireworks,” I say, doing finger guns.

“Like how—” “I am leaving you.”

“—we’re all tiny lights, traveling up on our own through the darkness. But when we explode, uh, we…”

“You really didn’t think this through, did you?” “...I wasn’t done yet! We light up the night! Like the Fourth of July, you know? And we do it together. Not just one single firework, but all of us.

Maybe that’s our journey, you kno—hey, wait, wait, wait, where are you going?”

“You’re the worst,” Jamie says, walking back to me. She takes my hand. “Actually, I take that back.

You’re the best.”

At that exact moment, the lunch bell decides to go off. We startle, and then she laughs, and then I laugh, and then it devolves into chaos.

“Hey, you’re the best, you know?” Jamie says after we’ve caught our breath. She smiles, close-lipped.

Her hand lingers before she pulls away.

Oh. Fireworks, huh.

JUNE 2022||The penchant|6

POETRY

I.

Golden figures, mirages of light

Arctic wastelands, blizza rds rage, ships hurry through an op ening in the ice like ants carrying cargo, weaving quickly—quietly— desperately through mazes of icebergs , aching to get home safely .

A groan sounds from the frozen hull of The Golden Retriever.

It floats strong and prou d, painted blazing gold by he r loyal crew.

And the crewmates scram ble belowdecks and on deck s knowing ghost tales of sh ipwrecks that they all had shared before.

The grind of steel on ice was heard by crew and cook and cap tain as well and radio signals pierced the air with SOSes, calls for help.

It was too late, and all the other ships pa ssed by, unseen, visages blocked by flurry ing snow, ships’ horns jammed by wind-blown snow, gold paint obscured by lay ers of snow.

The Golden Retriever, lik e the tree in the forest that falls when nobody els e is around, sank when no other ship was around.

The crew’s farewells and cap’s last words resound, resound, resou nd, resound as skies clear up, in that deep dark blue of night, and stars shine mournfully bright.

By day, no trace of wreck remains save single part of broken hull that floats between the wh ite ice floes.

Its swirling golden letter s state “The Golden Retriever.”

II. Golden figures, mirages of light dance across pieces of arc tic ice.

They swirl and twirl and spin within and form before your eyes only to disappear again.

Remnants of another tim e, they sit beneath a softer sky than today’s frontier of satellites

7|The penchant||JUNE 2022

and space stations and telescopes, a sky which still had some sen se of wonder.

Some are mournful, some are cross, each united in their loss, but some find joy and try to purge the memories and leave old lives behind.

Scattered thoughts emotions thrown to the wind scattered people scattered ghosts all bound and tethered to the same pole.

Wisdom you will never ne ed, specious quotes feigning meaning, stupid thoughts and dreams, desires; you can find them all.

Amongst the golden peop le, you can find them all.

Tales of yesterday do no t matter any less, or any more, than the tales of today or the tales that make tom orrow among the golden people.

They aren’t the wise men and women from stories who will gu ide you on the path you seek, but rat her they go about their busin ess.

You go about yours.

They know what they need to know, and that they are ghosts

you know what you need to know, and does it matt er “real” ?

and you are

Do these golden people kn ow any more than you do?

by francis luo

THE GOLDEN RET

RIEVER

III. July 25, 2013 Scientists have found remn ants of a mysterious cargo ship 12 0 miles off the coast near Nuuk, Greenland. Th e ship, The Golden Retriever, has unknown origins, but crews are working on salvaging anything possible.

Records appear to match those of an unnamed vesse l which went missing in th e winter of 1914. Curious ly, there have not been any sh ipwrecks in the area since then. Local fishing crews attribute this good fortune to a phenomenon they call th e “golden blessing.” Furth er information on the salva ge attempts will be provide d as researchers continue their work.

End of broadcast.

JUNE 2022||The penchant|8

PROSE

THE GREAT

GRIM REAPER AND

THE EVEN

GREATER SOUP The snow fell heavy that night, but the cold did not bother him. Neither did the fact that his body was soaked from head to toe. Nothing bothered him more than the thought of warm soup and bread set on the dinner table he had sat at every night. But never again. Not after today.

Zachariah heaved a sigh.

Had the soup gone cold and the bread gone hard? Has she started to question where he has gone?

He did not know and he did not like that. She was the reason that he lived, living in the back of his mind, like oxygen that kept him going, but he had become her cause of worry. But there was nothing else that he could do other than sit in the freshly red snow as the light in the sky got stifled out by the mountain range

9|The penchant||JUNE 2022

far far away. So, sit he did. He sat and listened to the faint voices that called his name, unable to answer. He was getting increasingly annoyed at the sudden loss of voice that it hadn’t dawned on him that he, Zachariah, was dead. In fact, it was not until the great grim reaper in all their greatness came and stood upon that red patch of snow he realized that he, Zachariah, was dead.

---------------------------------------“You are dead,” said the great grim reaper in the voice of whatever a grim reaper sounded like.

He squinted at the grim reaper, unsure what he was supposed to respond or if he even was supposed to respond at all.

After quite a while of no afterlife

by anonymous soup :) madness, as he had been told, he decided that he might as well worry about being dead later.

“Well it’s awfully wasteful to let such good soup go cold,” said Zachariah. He had not forgotten about the soup, but it wasn’t unreasonable. She did make very good soup with the handpicked mushrooms, potatoes, and cream from their friends down at the farm.

“You are dead,” said the great grim reaper again.

“Well it’s awfully wasteful to let such good soup go cold,” replied Zachariah again. And he would have said it again if it was not for the great “no soup” coming from the grim reaper.

Zachariah paused. He did not think that the conversation would stop, in fact, he did not JUNE 2022||The penchant|10

PROSE

think warm soup was a bad distraction from being very much dead.

“You don’t understand, Mister. The soup is indeed very good when it isn’t cold,” said he with a slight tilt of the head.

“No soup,” said the great grim reaper once again.

And so the conversation went on as such even after Zachariah lost count of how many reasons of why her soup is good or if he was just repeating the same reasons over and over again.

---------------------------------------“No,” said the great grim reaper. Zachariah sat still in the grass waiting for the word “soup” in all its greatness, but it never came.

“Oh,” said Zachariah. It was only then he realized the red snow had been replaced with bright green grass accented with her favorite flowers. It may have taken somewhere between a minute and two eternities for him to figure out that it was indeed spring. During the long fight about warm soup, he had not realized the slow (or fast) passing of time. Little by little, he stood up onto what were now just ghostly shells of what used to be his feet. He did not know what they were, yet he found that he no longer cared.

Zachariah took an imaginary breath of the lively forest air, momentarily forgetting the presence of the ever so great grim reaper who seemed to dislike the morning light. He then stretched down to pick one of her favorite flowers, blooming among the abundance of wild mushrooms that she had always picked for soup. He remembered her laughter and smile as she dragged him so deep into the forest every spring. The grim reaper looked into Zachariah, into his deep desire for all things living, his thoughts, his joy, his grief, and said nothing.

11|The penchant||JUNE 2022

“No soup,” said the great grim reaper once again.

“No,” said the great grim reaper

SOUP :)

“There was no one

and everyone”

---------------------------------------It was late spring now and mushroom harvest was in its prime. Laughter filled the air as young couples ran by before they were all gone with the mushrooms. None of these people seemed to see the two ghostly figures in the woods, nor did the two ghostly figures see any people. Zachariah looked around frantically for any sight of her, but there was none. There was no one he could see or recognize. There was no one and everyone at the same time. With the blink of an eye, the couples were gone, only with the faint memory of them ever being there.

---------------------------------------It was summer then and the summer sun did not shy behind the mountain ranges.

Zachariah opened his mouth to speak but was interrupted by a great “no soup” once again. But this time, it was followed by another great “watch.” And so he did. The couples came back once more, now bringing children with them. They harvested potatoes from the great potato farm in the east and walked down towards the village to get milk. Zachariah felt overwhelmed. In the brief moments where people flashed by his sight, he could catch a glimpse of none before it was all cold in the forest again and the leaves were about to fall.

---------------------------------------“Well, I don’t see how they do that. How can they collect all the things for the good soup in one day?” puzzled Zachariah. He either refused to believe he was dead or had simply forgotten. But for the sake of all her mushroom soup, it did not matter.

“Time,” said the great grim reaper.

“Yes, of course,” replied Zachariah. “Good soup cannot be made in a day.”

“Time,” said the grim reaper again.

“I know that for a fact,” Zachariah went on. “She said good soup is a harvest of all seasons. A timely masterpiece!” He did not understand what he said, for the words were and always would be hers.

“Yes,” said the great grim reaper in all their greatness. The great “yes” shook Zachariah for he did not expect the grim reaper to agree. More importantly, he did not expect the grim reaper to agree with her, the lively soul that had been with him for an awfully long time and never lost its sparkle.

“Well,” he started. He did not know what to say but he did not like the awkward silence either.

Yet they stood in silence as their surroundings turned from a golden red to a pale white. It was winter again for what seemed like the millionth time, and the snow JUNE 2022||The penchant|12

PROSE under his feet was now white and fresh. Another winter had come.

The winter bells struck as the winter snow flew. The smell of fresh mushroom soup arose from the cabin so deep in the woods that Zachariah couldn’t help but run towards it. He knew the road all too well. It was the road he had seemed to run for all of the twenty-four years he had lived.

The smell of the spring mushrooms. The harvest of the summer potatoes and the milk used to churn well into the fall before the good cream was to be.

Now it was winter and all was dead except the warm soup that had transcended all sense of seasons.

The soup sat silently on the table by the window as it always did. It was the same bowl, same fragrance, same soup. Her soup. But she wasn’t there and neither were the things on the wall, the pictures, nor the people.

No one there was anyone who he recognized or knew. But the soup was the same, for he knew the smell by heart. Good old mushroom soup. Zachariah reached out one hand to touch the bowl as if to confirm its existence.

Or to confirm his existence in some sense. Instantly, he pulled his hand back because the soup was still very warm with the life it held. He knew the warmth all too well: warm enough to touch for a second, yet much too warm to hold for long. And for a moment, it felt as if she was still there.

“Oh,” he said in surprise.

----------------------------------------

you “You are dead,” said the great grim reaper in their great grim reaper voice. Zachariah found himself out in the snow again, the red patch still growing beneath his feet. It was winter, that winter. He felt as if he had gotten so much older and yet he had not grown at all. Everything

13|The penchant||JUNE 2022

was back where it started.

Everything he had seen were now just memories. Faint voices echoed through the forest, this time calling for someone he did not recognize. “You are dead,” said the great grim reaper once more in the voice of whatever a grim reaper sounded like.

dead

are

He was indeed dead, for time was no longer a concept. The seasons snapped by in instances and the soup stayed warm forever. There was no sense of hurry and no sense of waiting.

Really, there no sense of anything.

Time was what made life special.

It was the everyday race that kept one going before the unforeseen day when Time inevitably runs out. There was no longer the race to get the freshest mushrooms or the best milk for the cream. No race to get home soon enough for warm soup either. And for the first time it dawned on him that he, Zachariah, was truly dead.

“Well I guess I must let the warm soup wait now,” he said, as there was nothing left to rush in this newfound timeless space. He was dead and Time was left for the living.

Fin.

the soup stayed Time

warm

was left for the living

forever

ART

“Otterly Fun”

VOYAGER

“Floating Through Life”

by khloe fong