Perception Magazine Fall 2015

ON

Fall

2015

Fall 2015

VOLUME XVI _ ISSUE 26 Syracuse University

Perception is a free literary and arts magazine published once during each academic semester by undergraduate students at Syracuse University.

Address editorial correspondence to perception.syr@gmail.com.

We hope to anger, to unleash, to exalt, to yield, to inspire. We hope we can share what we deem necessary to existence, art, love and words, with those who haven’t been touched yet.

Perception is now accepting submissions for the Spring 2016 issue.

Send visionary pieces of writing and art to perception.syr@gmail.com.

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Dear

Perceivers,

I’m going to be honest. My first semester at Syracuse University, I had never heard of Perception Magazine. It was not until second semester that I happened to pick up a copy in Schine and found myself enthralled by the writing and art of my fellow students. I knew then I wanted to become a main member of this organization, and began submitting, reading, and editing until I landed where I am today. This is my first semester as editorin-chief, and so I hope you notice and appreciate the positive changes we have made to Perception.

Writing and art are such powerful forms of self-expression. My freshmen year, depression hit me hard. But it was through writing and journaling that I learned to handle my emotions and better understand my thoughts and feelings. Every author and artist in this magazine is essentially giving you an inside look at the thoughts inside their minds. And that is pretty brave.

“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.”

—Mary Oliver Perception is not afraid to publish work that sparks conversation surrounding tough topics. On the other hand, we are not all serious and do of course like to laugh now and again. We hope you enjoy the variety of pieces in our Fall 2015 edition.

Sincerely,

Sarah Peck Editor-in-Chief

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THE INSIDERS

Sarah Peck

Edior-in-Chief

Yat Sze Austin Cheng Chief Designer

Katherine Fletcher

Assistant to Editor-in-Chief

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Nittika Mehra Managing Editor

Natalli Amato

Assistant Managing Editor

Victoria Amoroso

Designer & Co-Director of Communications

Allison Leung

Christopher Rivera

Designer

Co-Director of Communications

Thomas Beckley-Forest

Karli Ann Gasteiger

Head Editor

Outreach Coordinator

Editors

Sara Biru, Naomi Duttweiler, Amanda Gibbs, Gina Reitenauer

Readers

Natalli Amato, Thomas Beckley-Forest, Katherine Fletcher, Karli Ann Gasteiger, Amanda Gibs, Gabrielle Hughes, Korey Lane, Hairol Ma, Emily Markowski, Sarah Martinez, Kellie Miller, Ashley Mixson, Skyler Murry, Carol Pelz, Jennifer Rasnovski, Emera Riley, Brittany Rodriguez, Elizabeth Tarangelo, Tobi Thompson

Advertisers

Sami Albert, Natalli Amato, Thomas Beckley-Forest, Naomi Duttweiller, Melanie Judson, Aaliyah Lambert, Allison Leung, Hairol Ma, Nittika Mehra, Carol Pelz, Christopher Rivera

Treasurer Carol Pelz

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THE CONTRIBUTORS Writing Jessica Fricker Erica Wright Cristina Colón

10 Domestic Abuse Poem 11 University, A Moment?

12 Our Love 123 Questions for one of the Lost Generation 14 This Means War Hailey Simpler 96 The Project 16 More Siara Ramirez Elaina Kristine Hughes Crockett 18 the epitaph of a poet 108 Anthropology 21 Dear You Maiya Lewis 22 Untitled Naomi Duttweiler 24 Inhale Amanda Gibbs 26 Towns Sawyer Cresap 112 The Heart is a Neighborhood and You Live Too Many Doors Down 27 Duck Island Jacob Gedetsis 115 Starving art 28 Barely a Blink Natalli Amato 31 The Broken Fairy’s Tales Mary Hill Young 32 Hospitals Hairol Ma 117 32,000 Feet 35 La Casa (The Home) Christopher Rivera 146 “Guapo” [Handsome] 36 summer Katherine Fletcher 120 DEPRESSION IS A BAD TENANT 38 我地 [My Land/We] Yat Sze Austin Cheng 128 冥王星 [Pluto] 42 Awkward Christina Tavera 44 Supernova Maizy Ludden 113 dark sun 46 mirrors Korey Lane 50 Birthday Presents for Ugly Girls Emera Riley 52 Certain Carol Pelz 6 | Perception

Frieda Projansky Dylan Carroll Forrest Thomas Florsheim Kirstyn Lia Ross Molly Bolan Carly Elizabeth Benson Christine Nicole Bader Thomas Beckley-Forest Grace Crummett Sara Biru Arick William Wade Lixiao Shan Amaada Thibodeau Tiara Lowery Lauren Hannah Emma Viebig Danielle Bertolini Farrel Greenwald Brenner Brandon Strouse Karli Gasteiger Lynn Shui

54 Consonants 55 Spare Parts 132 Da Capo 56 Pinball & Poker 63 The Corner of Langston and Rue 66 Tuesday Afternoon 68 Quebecian Kilos 70 Rereading You 71 You Say 80 The Green Hotel 134 Sidewalk 86 Collecting 87 Nostalgia 88 Grass 138 Last Words 92 Keke -a used name 94 Home 101 .:how fate works:.

145 Five Poetic Senses 102 You Do 137 The Late Shift 104 Unfortunate 107 Untitled 124 Une Pipe 127 red solo cup garden 141 detached 142 Lessons Learned the Hard (Candy) Way 148 Behind the Server’s Smile

Cover Art Front Cover Art by

Darcy Feeley - Eve

Inside Cover Art by

Yat Sze Austin Cheng

Back Cover Art by

Sawyer Lily Cresap - Euclid Avenue

Back Inside Cover Art by

Melanie Judson - Syracuse, New York

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Art Souradeep Sinha Sawyer Lily Cresap Aaliyah Lambert Kelly Veshia Yat Sze Austin Cheng Hailey Simpler Darcy Feeley

Samantha Nicole Albert Kirstyn Lia Ross Sagnik Basumallik Melanie Judson Alex Aronson Nittika Mehra Allison Leung Michelle Velasquez

Center Spread In order of appearance

Natalli Amato Ahmed Hmeedat Yat Sze Austin Cheng Tanvi Marina Rao Aaliyah Lambert Allison Leung Yat Sze Austin Cheng Annika Grace Hoiem

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9 Fading Angel 133 Ramp No Religion 15 Open Double, Morning Light 17 Untitled 20 Bare 25 Losing Color 25 Untitled 136 Untitled 30 Refraction 45 Lock 103 What 126 Infestation 144 Virus 53 BlackRoadr 106 Skate Deck 116 Money Eyes 62 Untitled 93 Untitled 95 Alpha Cement Factory 109 Wanderlust 110 Cool Paisley 114 Untitled 122 Spiritual Existence

Many Thanks to

Sarah Harwell The ETS & WRT Departments Vicki Risa Smith Melanie Ann Stopyra The Student Association All of the Professors who encouraged their students to submit

Fading Angel Souradeep Sinha

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Domestic Abuse Poem Jessica Fricker

I stare at myself in the mirror, as I think how this could be.

I didn’t mean to make you mad. Are you still annoyed with me?

I know I should probably leave, but I care and want to help you.

I know it’s not your fault that you don’t think before you do.

If you had, you wouldn’t have swung. You love me so you didn’t mean it.

And you apologized right away, and it only hurt a little bit.

You care about me, and wouldn’t want to see me cry.

Because every time I do, you beg me not to say goodbye.

And I promise that I won’t, and I promise that I’ll stay, Because we love each other forever, like you always say.

As I get ready for work, I cover up the black and blue, And I wear long sleeves to hide the marks that are made by you.

Because no one needs to know what happens between you and me.

It’s our business not theirs, and they need to let us be.

The neighbors make things worse, when they call and knock on the door.

Because it just makes you more upset, and their knocking you ignore.

Eventually you answer and tell them that everything is okay, But not until you send me to bed, tell me not to move and stay.

And as you talk to them, I cry a little. But I eventually close my eyes.

And I pray that when I wake up it’s all a dream and just a lie.

But I know that’s not the case, it’s a routine we’ve settled into to.

But if I leave you now, who will stay and help you?

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University, A Moment?

Erica Wright

University why do you loom in the dark corners Of dorm rooms?

University why do you taunt with your sharp Corners and grey walls?

University I need you to stop stalking me.

I wish you would stop whispering whenever I leave a classroom.

University you’re too fucking loud.

And I’m so tired of your words of pity.

You talk of students as if they never hear you.

You talk of parents as if they comprehend you.

But University we live too far down to know you.

We speak far too cheap to sit next to you.

University get over yourself.

You stand among campus throwing your critical Looks about as if you deserve to.

You stand for words of equality and art yet you Exercise sinful hungers each and every semester.

So who are we, University?

Are we the black sheep of your dreamy society?

Are we the broken pieces of your well-oiled machine?

Or do we remind you of the passions you hide in your Endless libraries?

Are we the hopes you stuffed deep into the desks of your Admissions Offices?

Because to be real University, I feel like I’m so much better Than you.

I feel like I’ve proven your cold-sweated fears wrong.

I feel like an honest-to-God genius strolling through your stuffy Lecture halls.

And that’s fucking rich coming from a pretentious University Student.

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Our Love More

Our love was Your apartment When we first began It was immaculate Everything in place Nothing out of shape All the books on your shelf Organized alphabetically When eight or nine months had gone You decided it was alright To leave the dishes On the sink To leave your pants On the bedside And to put Anna Karenina Next to War & Peace When two years were on our back The windows were nebulous The floor was black The tables were gray Your clothes were the tiles Our pictures were the stars On our broken ceiling And The Sun Also Rises Had been replaced by Dark Places When the final five came We weren't prepared For the storm It was.

There was no longer a ceiling The windows were smashed The floor was cracking

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Sawyer Lily Cresap

Open Double, Morning Light

And the tables were turned My shirt was an uncentered frame My hair was the fern on the corner My skin was the wallpaper And Tender is the Night Was next to A Farewell to Arms

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This Means War Hailey Simpler

We always played war. Whether it was a Nerf battle or a stealth mission, it was never boys against girls or red shirts versus blue. It was always us against the rest of them. We would double team the best of our friends.

Enemy fortresses in the neighbor’s back yard were routinely ambushed.

The area’s stray pit bull was our watchdog and the car port — our bunker.

Our combat tactics were calculated down to a science, a sibling strategy so secure that we never had a reason to leave the company of one another.

I suppose we always played war because we had been warriors since day one.

He fought his way into this world with the cord wrapped around his neck three times. Tiny fingers cold and blue, the nurses rushed him into a separate room and swept the door closed behind them.

My mother tells me that David is the reason she believes in God. “He wasn’t supposed to live.”

I was two years old when my father trudged into the waiting room, lifted me out of the chair, and carried me outside. I don’t remember any of this, but my dad tells me the story every once in awhile.

“Your baby brother might be a little too fragile to live here. He might be better off in heaven where he’ll be safe.”

And, after that, we walked inside to find my grandmother crying, “He made it.”

He was two years old when he had his first episode.

My mother had planned to leave us with our aunt for a few hours. As soon as the door closed behind her, anxiety paralyzing David’s heart, he collapsed.

It would happen on eight more occasions within two years, each time a little bit scarier than the last.

I would sit in the waiting room with my grandmother for hours at a time occupied only with blank pages and magic markers, waiting to see my baby brother again.

When it was time to take him home, I would pull him behind me in the hospital’s red wagon, flaunting him to strangers as I walked by.

“This is my baby brother, David. He’s a little bit high main-ten-

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ance.”

He was in seventh grade the day he burst through my bedroom door with his heart newly relocated to his sleeve. “I love her.”

I told him he was out of his mind.

“I love her.”

I told him he could not possibly know that yet.

“I love her.”

I gave up.

It was that year when the deterioration of our parents’ relationship finally reached its fatality. We were forced onto the front lines, unprepared to do anything but stand there, arms linked, eyes squeezed shut.

When our mother left, dodging a few bullets became withstanding rapid fire. Our father was an anxious wreck, and we no longer had a mediator.

“He’s just tired,” I would assure David after every one of our dad’s irritated outbursts. “It’s not your fault.” He wouldn’t look convinced.

It took a year, but we built our bulletproof forcefield around the walls of our bedrooms. We’d sit in the floor, music playing as loud as a tendollar speaker would go, suddenly indestructible. I imagined us suiting up for combat once again, smearing on our war paint.

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When I was 14 I made the type of friend that your parents warn you about She made me intake so much just to spit it all out, and when I was done, her echoing laugh made my throat burn as if I had done something wrong, she was the worst lesson I ever had to learn And her name was Mia When I was 15 I met a man on the street who took everything I ever had as if I was America and he was Chris For the first time in my life Something burned harder than the feeling of everything I swallowed coming up and harder than a shot of vodka going down And still to this day I don’t know if it was that an unwanted disease was infecting me or if it was that the disease wasn’t allowing me to use the only thing I ever felt I had control of, my words And when I was 16 I swallowed my words along with more pills than they could have ever prescribed and accepted I’d be dead within the hour, I gave myself permanent tattoos without a pen or ink That resembled the edges of a shattered piece of glass that I broke when Mia stopped being my friend And the only thing I saw through my tears were my bones trying to break out of their cage in the reflection And when I was 17 I learned you couldn’t make homes out of human beings I tried so hard to make a boy make up for all of the love I didn’t have for myself I tried to find a solution to my sleepless nights in a boy who made me want to sleep forever But I thought that was okay, because in bed when we were stuck between the sheets he didn’t complain about my bones sticking into his ribcage, in fact he didn’t complain at all Because I was giving him what any dog would want, a bone and he was biting me and throwing me around just so he could have a good game of fetch

Siara Ramirez

More

Aaliyah Lambert

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I am 19 and I know that there is more to me I am more than an eating disorder Or a woman who is blamed for her rape for being out of order I am more than a bottle of pills or the hills that I have carved on my wrist I am more than a boy who made me bite down so hard on my tongue as I speak I still taste the blood in my mouth But I am more

the epitaph of a poet Elaina Kristine Hughes Crockett

my body is a mass of words and song. here I lay, back pressed against soaked grass, believing atrophy can be beautiful my skin once solace, I will welcome the day when it has sunken in and paper thin fragments remain, leave an autopsy made up of an unfinished sentence a hint of prose exposed and open like a casket of an elegy, lexicon for anyone to pass by, find my disrepair welcoming enough to eulogize in poems of their own I pray the pathologist will examine me slowly, pinch the skin trace the veins, drag her fingers searching for an exit wound and be not surprised when they leave trails of faded ink, (smear the pigment in my skin) could piece together the parts of me without definition could roadmap the synapse of child and woman perfect the compromise, for I am always fighting with which heart to follow which voice to use. keep record of the stories I sometimes feel too young to inherit from the ones who have come before me to pass on to the ones who will come after.

I don’t know how much poet, how much enchantress finds comfort from the rain, but all cliche of broken hearts aside, and annotations that the writer must attribute rain to tears (because it was only a matter of time until even the sky is full of too much blue and wants someone to hold her, embrace her too) I yearn for the slap on asphalt. man recreates the sound with falling sand, pebbles in a rain machine think of themselves as innovative. play God and mimic his creativity and trees rejoice with open fingers wide, and the worst thing about walking in the rain is not that you are drenched in secrets millions of years old who never grow tired of the ups and downs, ebbs and flows of life

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say as they pellet to the ground, welcome their temporary demise “this is nothing new,” no the worst thing about walking in the rain is ignoring what can only be interpreted as pity on other people’s faces as they think you are so dismissive not to check weather reports, forget the dances for a lifetime of harvest, of not having anything to catch fallaway drops, no you’ve chosen to walk and accept all that the earth has given you be the open palms, tongue even, heavy clothes leave imprints on your skin I wish I could be that open. be honest enough to admit that I want so badly for love to deluge, my face and hair and skin wet, like potter’s clay underneath hands more artistic than mine. for someone to make me believe love is the thing that engulfs and drowns the skillful swimmer, the restless warrior. or even those who believe they are disqualified for reasons unknown. my fear is not that the rain will wash away evidence for it has done this since the beginning of time. I lay, my back against soaked grass, decomposing slowly unaware, only knowing that one day, I will know nothing. my fear is that when my ribcage is butterfly cut open, forcibly exposing vulnerability to find my cause of death the only thing left behind will be carved into bone an unfinished sentence fragments, the makings of a poem, and sleepless nights with only one name the beginning and end of a failed masterpiece, when every other single word known to man couldn’t do it justice will have said too little. could have said too much.

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Bare

Kelly Veshia

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Dear You Maiya Lewis

I scratched out letters to you Etched them in my skin I’m sorry that I didn’t use English And that I didn’t have a pen I had no use for paper When I could just use my pain Did you even read them?

I bet you think that I’m insane I wrote out my feelings for you I made tally marks I still have them you see They’re faint now, not as dark I scratched out letters to you Etched them in my skin My body was my paper Your knife was my pen

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Untitled

Naomi Duttweiler My dad: It’s Roscoe, Dad. We came to visit you.

Hi Grandpa. I speak loudly so he can hear me across the hospital room and the gaping hole that dementia has drilled through his brain.

My dad: Do you know who that is?

No. [that single crushing syllable] Who is that?

He asks quietly, ashamed that he doesn’t recognize someone he should, someone who sat on his lap and was scared to touch his age spots and loved his overstuffed blue recliner and took his faithful birthday calls for granted.

I bite my lip. I never used to cry this much.

He’s gone five days later. The body, that is. His mind left weeks ago.

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Yat Sze Austin Cheng

Inhale

Amanda Gibbs Everything about him is a cigarette. His voice, smoky and guttural. His eyes, sea glass under the sunset. His words, knocking me out in circles. Shaky hands wrapped in tired skin. Dragging my tongue across my teeth and moments feel like years. Blushes are roses that are given to me in dozens.

Hollow nights like knives in my back morph into flowers that grow in the deepest parts of my skull.

Everything about him is a cigarette. My own personal brand of nicotine. I don’t how to feel without it burning. A wave of violent desire, a dull ache in my bones. Blood swells in my throat and I learn to breathe through the warmth. I hear his voice in my head, hear every gritty word that he pulls up from deep in his gut. Like a dream, he kisses every bloody knuckle on my fingers as if this is divine absolution.

Everything about him is a cigarette. Looking at him feels like wildfire, but looking away feels like something much worse. Charting pale-green veins like roads on a map and I don’t mind getting lost. Tracing patterns of ink on pale skin and I find a portrait underneath my fingers. My very own Mona Lisa. Drenched in warmth, he washes the blood out of my hair with hands of magic. Blood circles the drain and I blink. Roses settle in my chest.

Everything about him is a cigarette. Goosebumps floating upon my skin and I feel so cold, but everything is warm with him. Everything is aflame.

He is no hero and I am no damsel, just a vivid mess of ink and pale skin and shoulder blades and chaos and violence. Every second feels like flames licking my skin, but we smile into the heat. This fire could melt the ink on his skin, but he doesn’t mind. He says please.

Everything about him is a cigarette. A need that burns deep in my throat.

Something savory and wild. Every inhale holy and sacrificial. Lips red and lips angry, but lips warm and lips open: I can’t help but breathe deeply when he’s near. Both vulgar and beautiful, there’s no use in remembering what life was like before cigarettes came and took my breath away.

Everything about him is a cigarette, and I would just like one inhale.

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Losing Color Kelly Veshia

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Towns

Sawyer Cresap When we die I hope we become towns.

We’d have streets, buildings, and bridges.

Piping stretching out like veins and a downtown heartbeat with a theater and a few good movies on the marquee.

People would come from all across the county to visit us.

Some having lived in us for generations, their children and their children’s children proudly proclaiming us home, While others just pass through for a night, for a few moments at a time en route to some other town.

We’d be side by side, you and I. with our own high schools and post offices police forces and sentimental histories hung on display in mahogany museums.

Well, maybe our histories would be shared, they always were.

Our sports teams might be rivals mine always blaming the referee for the game point call.

Maybe we’d fight over whom the dump belonged to, you never did take out the trash, even when it was clearly your turn.

Maybe we’d share festivals in the summertime, grandparents, children, newlyweds all dancing to the same songs.

And they’re be fireworks at night shouting over the same sky.

If you and I died and became towns we’d never be able to escape each other but I think that’d be okay.

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Duck Island Jacob Gedetsis

Sometimes I get distracted , I think it’s only natural light does wonders for a workspace I think it’s my anxiety or my constant consumption of talking heads, taking up precious brains space filled with news of drunken celebrities, murder at 29th street and of course the gentrification of Duck Island, or maybe it’s my ADHD my 6th grade teacher Ms. Noble had a crooked nose and a handsome mouth that puckered when she wrote cursive on the board told me to tell my parents to get me tested, I think I told them but they were very busy people, distracted by medical bills, work, cleaning for guests we never had, and the talking heads filling their precious brain space with news of drunken celebrities, murder at 29th street and of course the gentrification of Duck Island But mostly, I think I like it this way Saying sorry to strangers in the grocery lines when I see a word I once saw in a beauty magazine while waiting to get my hair cut, two on the sides, scissor cut on top just like my Dad and my dad’s dad, and my dad’s dad’s dad who shot John Wilkes Booth or something like that his name was definitely John Anyways, I don’t think I will take Ms. Noble’s advice even if she did have a crooked nose and a handsome mouth

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Barely a Blink Natalli Amato

The morning sun’s rays tickle the lake’s surface.

It hasn’t yet awakened but a little girl has and she’s in love with the way the water looks when it’s calm enough to fade into the skyline and her mother promises to take her swimming.

She perches on the rock wall separating the lake from land.

In her sweet Coppertone-kid’s heart she knows she sees a mermaid for she believes in magic.

Her eyes flutter shut Barely a blink.

The afternoon sun pulses heat.

Waves strive to keep time with the rhythm of a family’s warm conversation and the musical laughter coming from a girl wandering around the space between childhood’s safe sidewalks and the back roads of adolescence.

She’s in love with the way the water looks when it shimmers like shattered diamonds and she’s jumping off the boat.

She thinks she saw a mermaid for there was a time when she believed in magic.

Now she reasons it’s only a fish.

She squints, eyelids touch, Barely a blink.

The evening sun descends slowly, seeping into the water’s ripples so seamlessly that a teenage girl takes a picture since beauties like these are unspeakable, just like the secrets of a summer girl’s heart.

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She’s in love with the way the sky comes alive with color when the boys next door offer her foolish grins and a taste of adventure.

She doesn’t doubt that she may see a mermaid for a summer night’s breeze is so intoxicating the only explanation is magic.

She averts her eyes from the neon sunlight, eyelids touch, Barely a blink.

Pieces of the sun scatter across the night sky, constellations pinned up like pictures over the inky water for a sleepless woman to admire.

She’s in love with the way the lapping waves whisper about memories she made with people she treasured and stories they’ve since buried in the sand.

She rests on the crumbling wall and everything rushes back to herevery sandcastle and seashell, midnight swim and stolen kiss, each moment she felt just as vast and brilliant as the water itself.

Tonight she hears a distant splash.

She knows it must be a mermaid.

After a life on the lake she finds it impossible not to believe in Magic.

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Refraction Hailey Simpler

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The Broken Fairy’s Tales Mary Hill Young

I believe in fairy tales The twisted beauty of right and wrong All covered in a silken veil Of tangled prose and dragon’s scales That brilliant and bittersweet Hidden in a rhyming gale The harsh black points of coffin nails Pounded through the old oak tree Bound in scarlet ribbons Whole and hale Winding up the hills and dales Treasured in an old wood box Hidden beneath your childhood stairs Forgotten as the years grow long Lost, till comes along A bright new face With wonder strong To with play, and polish, and hold dear These shiny, broken, fairies’ tales.

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Hospitals Hairol Ma

I hate hospitals. I don’t think I’ve even been to hospitals all that much, but what I really hate is the smell. It’s a combination of rubbing alcohol and something else I can’t really put in words.

I’m sitting in the waiting room, waiting for one of those hospital ladies to let me into the children’s wing. Some kids are romping around at a little play station near me with foam puzzle blocks, trying to build a fort out of what was obviously never meant to be anything other than a floor mat.

Today is an important day because it’s my friend Ellie’s birthday.

I don’t really know what you bring to people on their birthdays because I haven’t quite gotten the chance to attend lots of birthday parties and stuff, but I couldn’t bring something easy like cake either. Ellie is allergic to a lot of stuff, I think. So I went simple and just bought a bunch of Hello Kitty balloons. She always liked Hello Kitty. Except I’m kind of regretting my decision now, because I think I look pretty damn idiotic right now in the middle of the waiting room with five Hello Kitty balloons straining against the ceiling.

I called ahead to the hospital to let them know I’d be coming at exactly 3:30. 3:30 is the perfect time because you’re too late to be invited to stay for lunch, and it’s far too early for dinner. So after you talk a little bit you can say something like, “Oh, so sorry, but I’ve got a dinner to go to!” Not that I don’t want to spend time with Ellie- she’s fantastic. I just get queasy around all those machines and tubes and needles and stuff. And doctors give me the heebie jeebies.

None of the front desk ladies have called me up yet, and it’s already 3:34. Four minutes of my perfectly executed plan gone. I hate it when this kind of stuff happens- when you plan something perfectly and meticulously I mean, and the other end fucks it all up. But it’s okay because I usually don’t have any dinner plans with anyone. I’m just scared of dinner plans happening.

I’m rubbish when it comes to conversations so I wrote down all the things I could talk about with Ellie. I haven’t seen her in quite a bit and I think it’ll be kind of awkward. I didn’t really write down conversation starters- I was trying to, at first, basic things like “So what kind of food do they give you here?” but I ended up just writing about all the shit we did when we were littler. Except I don’t really know if I should talk about this stuff—will she get sad? Or will she feel happy and kind of nostalgic? It’s

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always hard to tell with girls- they end up crying over stupid shit, like some detergent commercial with a dead dog.

One of the front desk ladies calls out my name. She’s kinda pudgy and she’s wearing a pink shirt with elephants and cats on them.

The wide double doors open for me and I feel a blast of that hospital smell hit me. God, I swear they keep it in some concentrated form and just spray it around everywhere just to make sure everyone is a bit more depressed than they already are.

The entire place is really bright and happy and sanitized with soft music playing in the background, just enough sound to drown out all the beeping machines. The front desk lady leads me down a hallway of lots and lots of rooms. The curtains are pulled at most windows, or the lights are off.

Ellie’s room is the last room on the left. There’s a huge Elmo sticker pasted onto her door that reads, “Happy Birthday Ellie!” I stop walking. All of a sudden I don’t really feel like going in anymore. I mean, it’s not Ellie—I know she’s fantastic. We used to play hopscotch together outside of Mr. Murphy’s lawn and tie up his pug, and he’d come running out with a can of bug repellent. Then Ellie and her mom would both ask me to stay for dinner, and we’d eat pot roast and spaghetti with meatballs.

“Well? Aren’t you gonna go in?” The front desk lady has stopped next to me. Up close she’s got a lot more wrinkles.

Ellie always put her hair in two braids. On Saturdays we would bike to Pike’s Place to get ice cream. I wonder if she gets to eat ice cream here.

“She’s sleeping, so you’ve got to be quiet.” The front desk lady slides open the glass door and pushes me in.

The entire room is filled with balloons. Balloons that say Happy Birthday, balloons that say Get Well Soon, balloons with dogs on them, and some little fucker even got her balloons with some Disney princess printed on it. The room is small and lots of machines are in the corner next to the bed. Lots of fruit baskets with chocolate and bananas and other stuff are on the ground. There’s another chair in the corner but no one is in it, so I sit down.

She is wearing a pink beanie and her body, save a hand, is tucked completely into the sheets. Lots of tubes emerge from a spot on her arm and hook up to a few machines. Machines with green squiggly lines, machines that beep every few seconds, machines that probably know when she’s gotta take a dump and when she needs to eat dinner.

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Her eyes are closed and she is breathing softly. Her skin is so white it looks almost transparent—as if I can see all the twisted blood vessels and the bruises underneath her skin, the slow beat of her paperthin chest, her half dead heart.

Something about Ellie really breaks me. All those machines, machines and medicines, machines and shots, machines and beeps and tubes and cords and IVs and morphine, inanimate objects attempting to feed life into a body. Spoon-feed a bit of God.

I look at the piece of paper with all the conversation starters in my pocket. Except they’re all memories- little pockets of time that are over and done.

I know I don’t have any dinner plans and it’s only been a few minutes since I walked in but I can’t feel help but feel like someone just fucked me over on the other end. It’s kind of a hard feeling to describe, but it’s cold and lonely.

I push the door shut behind me and walk past the nurses and the white beds in little rooms, past the large double doors. The kids are gone and the foam puzzle pieces lie in a scattered mess on the ground.

Outside the air is clean and fresh, but I still smell rubbing alcohol on my sleeve. I check my watch. It is only 3:45. In the confusion I realize those damn Hello Kitty balloons are still clutched in my hand. They bob up and down from my fist, tightly inflated, big enough to cover the fucking sun, full of nothing.

I unravel my fingers and the balloons drift up and up, until they are but a small speck in a vast blue sky.

34 | Perception

La Casa (The Home) Christopher Rivera

Just to be home. One last time without the yelling.

To open my eyes and see a smile upon those I love.

To know the evil has gone. To know our struggle is over and at an end.

To say the demon hadn't won. To wave away the fog. To hold the hands of those so dear.

To emanate a state of pure belief. Stars crossing side by side. Our dreams and wishes finally realized.

Mom. Dad. Son. Green covered regret, it hangs upon the foundations of a house that has fallen into ruin. The very house of childlike memories. The house of terror I once called it. It truly never stood the same. Its shape forever changing.

Animalistic, Intrinsic, Artistic, it would take on any attribute of the one falling from its grace. Mom. Dad. Son. Sister.

Her suffering still holds the pillars in place. The root of the tree. She was the first to leave, home, casa, regret. Son. Following in his sister's footsteps.

He carried the planks and set them down upon the pillars. His pain carried forth the labor to which the house was grateful. He still carries the burden of holding down the fortifications and suffering through the ramifications.

Dad. His terrible influence still seeps through the soil. He feeds off his daughter’s grotesque and growing remorse. His rugged hands keep his son at bay from reuniting with her most holy. His footsteps mark the ground.

His impurity has destroyed the shrubbery. His presence still lingers. He has nowhere else to go. No one wants him. His home is wherever his family suffered most. Mother, her soul still entrapped. It shelters home and casa from the rain. She saw her children fall before her eyes to the devil. She let him into the house, la casa. She will forever blame herself until the house is destroyed. Until her son is set free. Until the devil remembers that she will never leave. He's stuck with her and she's sworn that she'll make him weep.

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summer

Katherine Fletcher we just needed to survive the summer. screw heatwave and no AC, try heartbreak and no way out. you were on the front end of angry, an open wound mouth full of “fuck him” and “fuck me”. i was a classic crime scene: you should have seen how much caution tape they wrapped around my chalk outline heart. we were rubberneckers at each other’s accidents, creeping past danger but never stopping the car. we were surviving. it never felt wrong to hit the blunt more often than we hit the bricks, and hitting the wall fell somewhere in the middle. a few shattered picture frames ain’t got nothing on us. i’m all about survival, but don’t toss me out of an airplane with a parachute of reassurances just to cut my strings in a text message. that unforgiving summer heat probably could have killed us, so i guess we balanced our prescription with our side effects: i got you and some kind of happy, but you can’t call your doctor about baggage. pulling answers out of you started like picking clovers but turned to pulling teeth, and i’m more interested in

36 | Perception

putting my heart in my mouth than straightening myself out. i’ll wait for you in parking lots that you swore you’d never go back to until it’s just me and the dying sun and a lit cigarette, and you can watch from the front porch when the fall winds put the three of us out

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我地

Ngo5 Dei6 (Cantonese)

原曲 外面的世界 原唱 齊秦

原作 齊秦 原詞 齊秦

鄭逸思

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YD4n-yBzwN8 （主歌一） 靜靜在燈火背後 山清水秀 都非永久 漸漸在轉角街口 我已驀然 像遠方浪遊

Verse 1

（副歌一） 慢慢地玷污我空氣 默默地堅守我園地 路漫漫但我決意紮根這福地 他遠走他國丟低泡影希冀

Chorus 1

（主歌二） 夢內夢外煙花璀璨後 他只盼 舉家蜂擁撤走 若大限已對我揮手 今天我 抱有此刻都夠

Verse 2

（主歌一改） 靜靜在燈火背後 青磚木頭 都將拆走 漸漸在轉角街口 摩天大樓 像漫畫虛構

Verse 1b

（副歌二） 慢慢地滲透我空氣 默默地堅守我場地 路漫漫但我決志紮根這土地 一點點感覺拼湊往昔憶記

Chorus 2

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zing6 zing6 zoi6 dang1 fo2 bui3 hau6 saan1 cing1 seoi2 sau3 / doi1 fei1 wing5 gau2 zim6 zim5 zoi6 zyun3 gok3 gaai1 hau2 ngo5 ji5 mak6 jin4 / zoeng6 jyun5 fong1 long6 jau4

maan6 maan6 dei6 dim3 wu1 ngo5 hung1 hei3 mak6 mak6 dei6 gin1 sau2 ngo5 jyun4 dei6 lou6 maan6 maan6 daan6 ngo5 kyut3 ji3 zaat3 gan1 ze2 fuk1 dei6 taa1 jyun5 zau2 taa1 gwok3 diu1 dai1 paau3 jing2 hei1 kei3

mung6 noi6 mung6 ngoi6 jin1 faa1 ceoi1 caan3 hau6 taa1 zi2 paan3 / geoi2 gaa1 fung1 jung2 cit3 zau2 joek6 daai6 haan6 ji5 deoi3 ngo5 fai1 sau2 gam1 tin1 ngo5 / pou5 jau5 ci2 hak1 doi1 gau3

zing6 zing6 zoi6 dang1 fo2 bui3 hau6 cing1 zyun1 muk6 tau4 / doi1 zoeng1 caak3 zau2 zim6 zim5 zoi6 zyun3 gok3 gaai1 hau2 mo1 tin1 daai6 lau4 / zoeng6 maan6 waa2 heoi1kau3

maan6 maan6 dei6 sam3 tau3 ngo5 hung1 hei3 mak6 mak6 dei6 gin1 sau2 ngo5 coeng4 dei6 lou6 maan6 maan6 daan6 ngo5 kyut3 zi3 zaat3 gan1 ze2 tou2 dei6 jat1 dim2 dim2 gam2 gok3 ping1 cau3 wong5 sik1 jik1 gei3

My Land/We Yat Sze Austin Cheng

Original song: "The Outside World" (Wai Mian De Shi Jie; in Mandarin) Singer: Chyi Chin Composed and Original Lyrics by: Chui Chin

Verse 1 Quietly behind the lights of the city, Clear mountains and delicate water, both are not permanent.

Gradually at the corner of the streets, All of a sudden to me, I am like wandering somewhere far away already.

Chorus 1 Slowly staining my air; Silently defending my area.

The road is long but I've decided to root on this favoured land.

He flees to another country, abandoning the bubble of hope.

Verse 2 Inside and outside the dream, after the resplendent fireworks, He only expects, to retreat the whole family in stampede.

If the great deadline1 has waved at me already, Today I, am content to embrace this moment and hold on.

Verse 1b Quietly behind the lights of the city, Blue bricks and woods, both will be demolished.

Gradually at the corner of the streets, Skyscrapers, are as fictional as comics.

Chorus 2 Slowly infiltrating my air; Silently defending my place.

The road is long but I've determined to root on this land; Bits of sentiments piece the memories of the past together.

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（主歌二改） 夢內夢外煙花璀璨後 他淺笑 我一朝總要走 若大限已對我招手 今天我 立誓自己解咒

Verse 2b

（副歌三） 慢慢地漂染我心理 默默地死守我場地 路漫漫但我決志紮根這福地 一點點感覺搭建理想希冀

Chorus 3

（主歌三） 日日夜夜獅子山背後 去或留 揭起瘡疤缺口 任大限笑笑再招手 今天我 立誓勇敢逆流

Verse 3

即使你 獨在異鄉淚流

zik1 si3 nei5 / duk6 zoi6 ji6 heong1 leoi6 lau4

mung6 noi6 mung6 ngoi6 jin1 faa1 ceoi1 caan3 hau6 taa1 cin2 siu3 / ngo5 jat1 ziu1 zung2 jiu3 zau2 joek6 daai6 haan6 ji5 deoi3 ngo5 ziu1 sau2 gam1 tin1 ngo5 / lap6 sai6 zi6 gei2 gaai2 zau3

maan6 maan6 dei6 piu3 jim5 ngo5 sam1 lei5 mak6 mak6 dei6 sei2 sau2 ngo5 coeng4 dei6 lou6 maan6 maan6 daan6 ngo5 kyut3 zi3 zaat3 gan1 ze2 fuk1 dei6 jat1 dim2 dim2 gam2 gok3 daap3 gin3 lei5 soeng2 hei1 kei3

jat6 jat6 je6 je6 si1 zi2 saan1 bui3 hau6 heoi3 waak6 lau4 / kit3 hei2 cong1 baa1 kyut3 hau2 jam6 daai6 haan6 siu3 siu3 zoi3 ziu1 sau2 gam1 tin1 ngo5 / lap6 sai6 jung5 gam2 jik6 lau4

Epilogue

fact. Today when big problems are happening in Hong Kong with great disasters coming up, there

T h e s e l f- o p t i o n p i e c e fo r a l y r i c s - w r i t i ng are still many people wanting to flee. Every time I competition. The title comes from the theme of come home, there is always an additional layer of a creative summer camp I joined in 2014. The strangeness, pushing her and me away from each pun " 我

地 (ngo5 dei6)" is really interesting: with other. Perhaps there are deadlines for everything

characters literally meaning the characters mean here, perhaps all Hongkongers need some sense "I/my" and "land", it is not a meaningful word in of security, but I still wish to use my own hands to proper written Chinese; but in Cantonese the daily defend our land. With simple arrangement, simple spoken language, the whole word means "we", as melody, I hope to bring straight into the heart a opposed to " 你 哋 (nei5 dei6, plural you)", " 佢 哋 strong interrogation. (keoi5 dei6, they)" and " 人 哋 (jan4 dei6, the others, or sometimes me)". Especially after choosing to Notes major in Geography this year, I feel that there is 1. 大限 : Literally it means "the great limit", "the great an unbreakable complex between a man and a deadline", but more commonly and figuratively it homeland. As an overseas student, I am particularly means "death". into these questions about the Self and the Others, 2. 獅子山 : The Lion Rock is a famous mountain in and to stay or to leave. Taking "My Land/We" as the Kowloon Peninsula of Hong Kong. Due to a popular title, I hope to dig out the unique yet remaining song and TV series in the 1970s, the term "Spirits of mentality of "borrowed place, borrowed time" of the Lion Rock" represents a collective character of Hongkongers, and then force us to face this cruel Hongkongers, including qualities such as diligence

40 | Perception

Verse 2b Inside and outside the dream, after the resplendent fireworks, He laughs lightly, saying that I'm gonna leave one day.

If the great deadline has beckond to me already, Today I, swear to break the incantation myself.

Chorus 3 Slowly bleaching and dyeing my mind; Silently defending my place to death.

The road is long but I've determined to root on this favoured land; Bits of sentiments build up the hope of ideal.

Verse 3 Behind days and nights talking about the Lion Rock2, To leave of to stay, this is the question that unveils the scar and the crack.

No matter the great deadline smiles and beckons again, Today I, swear to go against the flow bravely.

Even you, alone in foreign land with tear sliding down. and flexibility. However this term starts to be 後記 detested by youngsters, as the older generation like using it as a platitude to criticize the young 填詞比賽自選曲目之作。「我地．人地」是 and give themselves honour. Particularly under 上年暑假參加文藝復興夏令營時的主題。一

today's economic condition, it is harder to rise 直覺得「我地」二字好有趣，雙關次餘其實 in the society only by working hard, many young 饒有深意。尤其今年選擇主修地理之後，更 people think this terms is outdated. In the middle 覺人跟地，總有一跟脫不了的鄉土情結。身 of the 2014 Umbrella Revolution, some protesters 為負笈外國的一員，對這種自身與他者、留

climbed up the Lion Rock and hung a huge banner, 守與離開這些問題更有特殊感覺。以「我地」 with the slogan "I want real universal suffrage" on 為題，我希望嘗試挖出香港人獨有的、還殘 it, to remind the original aspiration of the whole 餘的「借來的地方、借來的時間」心態，然

occupation. Here the use of Lion Rock criticizes 後逼使大家面對這黑暗的事實。時至今日， some people, while being proud about the "Spirits 香港大難當前，竟還有不少聲音亟欲遠走高

of the Lion Rock" and mentioning it a lot, they never 飛。每趟回來，這個城市總又多了一層陌生， really treat Hong Kong as a home that they would 將我跟她各自推開。也許此地一切都有個限 not abandon.

期，也許所有香港人都欠缺了一些安全感， 但是我仍希望我能用自己雙手去捍衛我們的 地方。簡單的編曲、簡單的旋律，我希望帶 來直入心坎的詰問。

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Awkward

Christina Tavera awkward,

just plain awkward, so fucking weird with those god awful meditation beads.

So you meditate. and meditate. breathe in, breathe out. don’t eat anything with a face, not really sure why. for the environment or for the animals? neither. people don’t even need causes anymore. what’s mine? well shit I have no idea. can a I be a cause? or am I just the cause of something else?

I’m fighting for happiness. that’s my cause.

Things that are better than my sex life: 1. love, because there is a difference between fucking and passion.

Emotions aren’t a good look in self control.

Maybe if I didn’t have emotions, I’d have self control, and maybe then I wouldn’t seem so god damn neurotic.

We teach people to have ambition, this usually applies to careers, never really to love or happiness.

Risk something for love and it’s horrifying.

Risk something for a better job and it’s worth it.

I guess that makes my ex a job.

Self worth is determined by the people.

How they feel about you is almost more important than how you feel about yourself.

I lost value when I lost him.

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At least that’s how I felt.

My dad always told me that Jesus loved me.

I don’t know who this Jesus guy is, but I’m guessing he had a cause.

How am I supposed to find happiness through something I don’t trust?

Faith.

Through the ambulance window, I saw her face flashing by me for the last time.

I guess that’s when I had faith.

Not in Jesus, or god, or heaven.

From what I know, she fought it.

She slipped away 3 times.

My dad told her it was ok, he got it.

She fell asleep.

Goodbyes are hard.

She never really said it.

Maybe I’ll see her later.

Hopefully, I’ll see her later.

That’s faith.

I’m not broken, just a little battered.

What’s a person without damage?

Civilian.

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Supernova Maizy Ludden

Sometimes she felt the scream Before it surfaced, Sometimes it wrenched open her lips Before she noticed it crawling, Slithering up her throat with no warning.

On the lucky days she managed to escape, Clutching her stomach in feigned illness, The incandescent bathroom lights would greet her, Like a curious interrogator the bathroom door Pressed its graffiti against her trembling nose, And her slender fingers braced against the plastic dividers, Stealing their frail support in her moment of need.

When the lock gave some semblance of privacy, Her head would fly back, The white porcelain pressing into her spine As a silent monster uncoiled from her heaving chest, Echoing off faded, tiled walls Not sound waves but fury, A supernova of despair, seeping, flooding Mirrors shattering into brown-stained sinks A constellation born across the floor.

There are no mirrors in the bathroom now, But if there were they would reflect her eyes Burning like newborn stars From the darkness.

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Lock

Darcy Feeley

Linger here | 45

mirrors Korey Lane

Open mouth, finger down, wiggle. Repeat. It’s how she’d finally fixed all her problems.

She’d always avoided mirrors. She heard the whispers at the lunch tables; she didn’t need to see it for herself. Her pimply face, thunder thighs, frizzy hair—they haunted her. She’d never been called pretty or beautiful, but instead words like “cute” or “interesting” seemed to follow her around, billowing in the breeze along with the flowy dresses she wore to hide her flabby body.

She’d tried everything. Diets, running, appetite suppressants. Nothing worked. She stayed flabby, and her skin stayed covered in zits. She was sick of the mean girls, sick of the boys who avoided her glance, sick of the teachers who so clearly pitied her. Sick of it all. So, the summer before her freshman year at college, Katrina decided to do something about it.

Throwing up everything you ate wasn’t as hard as people made it out to be.

Katrina soon discovered that, along with some strong prescription meds, becoming bulimic had its up-sides. She saw pounds being shed rapidly, her skin cleared up and she began a love affair with mirrors. In short, Katrina was ready for college.

She had been nervous about getting a random roommate; girls had never really been nice to her. But then again, no one had. Katrina had just finished setting up her side of the room in her long-debated color scheme of navy and salmon when there was a light knock on the door.

“Hi, I’m Kim,” said a petite blonde with the biggest blue eyes Katrina had ever seen. “You must be my roommate!”

Katrina was a little reserved at first, Kim reminded her all too much of the cruel girls in High School, of her fat, her skin, her friendless self. But then she glanced in the full-lengthed mirror she’d just hung on her closet door and remembered she wasn’t that girl anymore. So, she smiled.

“Hey, yeah, I’m Katrina. Nice to meet you!” She helped Kim bring her suitcases and boxes into the room and then sat on her bed, taking it all in.

“So, where are you from?” Kim asked, smiling as she began to unpack, and Katrina noticed just exactly how white her teeth were, and how slim her waistline was.

“Austin,” Katrina replied, her fingers curled up at the sight of Kim’s beautiful clothes, her perfect bedding.

“Oh, wow, so cool!” Kim responded while putting her size two clothes on

46 | Perception

the hanger. “I’ve always wanted to go to Texas.”

Forty-five minutes later and Katrina had learned that Kim was from South Carolina, had two older sisters, a golden retriever, and her own BMW. “It’s a 2009, so not new or anything like that, but it drives!” Kim had laughed when she revealed the fact to Katrina. At this point, Katrina’s blood was boiling. Kim was just like every girl in her High School who had tormented her. Had made her life miserable, had forced her to hate herself.

A knock on the door interrupted her thoughts.

“Hey ladies!” Two boys, both insanely attractive, were at Katrina’s door.

“Kim, you didn’t tell me your roommate was hot too,” one of the boys smiled and came to sit next to Katrina on her bed.

“I hadn’t met her yet!” Kim giggled. “Katrina, this is Garrett,” she said motioning to the boy who was only a few feet away from Kim, sitting at her desk. “And that,” she pointed to the one next to Katrina, “is Julian. I just met them when I was unloading my car.”

“Yeah, such a sick ride!” Garrett said, causing Kim to smile shyly.

“Seriously, when are you gonna take us for a ride in that baby?” Julian asked.

“Maybe tomorrow,” Kim said coyly.

“You girls wanna hit up some parties tonight? Maybe help some fellas get into some frats?” Garrett asked hopefully.

“I’m so in!” Kim replied giddily. “Katrina?”

Katrina looked around at the three other people in the room. More than had ever been in her room back home. And two were boys, and they were talking to her and calling her hot.

“Of course! Let’s do it.”

*

*

*

*

*

*

Bathroom. That was the first thing Katrina thought when the boys left. She needed a bathroom. However, with Kim already planning coordinating outfits and talking hair and makeup, that seemed to be too far-fetched an idea. But finally, after it was decided Kim would wear a dress and Katrina would go for skinny jeans with a slinky top and heels, she finally managed to sneak away to her sanctuary.

Katrina hadn’t accounted for communal bathrooms. When she went into the girls bathroom there were four other girls in there, using the bathroom, touching up makeup. Making it impossible for her to do what she needed to do. So she decided to take her time. She washed her hands, slowly

Linger here | 47

dried them off. Touched up her eye shadow. Starred in the mirror for approximately two minutes as other girls slowly filed out. Finally, finally, she was alone. She ran into the third stall, took her cardigan off, set it on the floor and kneeled before her altar.

Open mouth, finger down, wiggle. Repeat. It usually took no more than two times to get the bile to come up, but because Katrina was nervous, today it took three. When she’d finally released it all, she stood up, flushed the toilet, picked up her cardigan and walked to the sinks. She splashed her face, reassembled her cardigan and gave herself one last smile before leaving. * * * * * * Katrina had never been to a party. How could she? She was ostracized in High School. So walking into the frat house, music pounding, red cups being held in the air while hips swayed and strangers’ lips met, Katrina looked a bit like a deer in the headlights. Everything she did, every step she took felt wrong and awkward. Seeing all the other girls looking so beautiful and perfect and thin in their little bra tops caused Katrina to fold her arms across her stomach and suck in as much as she could.

“If you’re trying to look skinnier, put one hand on your hip and tilt a little bit,” Kim whispered into her ear. Katrina just looked at her, her mouth agape. “Oh, please, don’t try to hide it,” Kim continued.

Katrina’s pulse pounded, did Kim know?

“Hide what?” Katrina asked, with a small smile.

“Oh, you know, every girl wishes they were skinnier. We all do it, but Katrina, you are so skinny. Like seriously, when you were changing, I saw your rib cage.”

Katrina’s face reddened. “Oh, yeah, well you know, different body types and all,” she said, and then quickly walked towards Julian who handed her a red cup.

“Thirsty?” Julian asked as Katrina downed the cheap beer. She simply smiled and handed it back to him, a silent plea for more. He disappeared for thirty seconds and came back with more. Katrina downed it again, threw the cup on the ground and grabbed Julian’s hand.

“Let’s dance,” she said, and led him towards the ‘dance floor’ where other couples were grinding and shaking and, to her right, dry-humping.

She loved the feeling of Julian’s hands around her waist, his breath tickling her ear as his lips moved across her jawline. Before she knew it their lips

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had met, and her first kiss disappeared behind her. * * * * * * She awoke in a strange room. It didn’t take long for her to realize a kiss wasn’t the only ‘first’ she’d crossed off her list last night. Slowly she began to piece it all together. The beers, the kiss, the drunken pizza, the bed, the shaky hand opening the condom.

The pizza.

She quietly escaped the room and ran down the hallway towards her porcelain throne. She had nothing but Julian’s t shirt to pad her knees, so she was naked as her finger slid down. The bile was hot coming up, and it landed with splashes that annihilated her face. She finished, flushed, redressed and went to the sink.

As the cool water cascaded down her hands and pooled into the bowl she made with her palms, Katrina smiled. She splashed her face, and her skin glistened—beautiful. She dried off her hands and lifted the oversized t shirt to see herself. Her stomach wasn’t flat, it was caved in. Her ribcage protruded out and she ran her hand down it. Her skin gave out with goose bumps and pleasure overcame her body.

She’d won. All those girls at her High School, the ones who’d snickered at her inability to run a ten-minute mile in P.E., she’d gotten the advantage now. She was thin, beautiful, perfect. And no one could stop her.

She turned, and her mind flashed to the girls at the party last night. The ones with the perfect bodies in the tiny tops. She then inspected her own again. She stopped smiling, retreated back to the toilet.

Open mouth, finger down, wiggle. Repeat.

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Birthday Presents for Ugly Girls Emera Riley

suspend your disbelief for pretty women, please skin is yellow fucking swan, i hate geese there is nothing in your head except for paint balls and bowling pins except for fish nets and motion sickness your daddy bought you a book and your mother left you her face and that is enough, most nights that is enough and so we grow old but don't roll your pant legs up please don't eat those peaches medici’s and painted church ceilings they are all abandoned now, stopped going to Sunday schools i've stopped praying for you, jesus, i've stopped praying there is three cuts on my knuckles but i've stopped looking for you at night, i've stopped searching and my mother's face and my daddy's book why can't it just be enough?

and so pretty girls get prettier and my parents are getting older don't you dare pretend like it doesn't matter my sister calls me at night she calls me and she cries and she doesn't have my mother's face she doesn't have my mother's face and it isn't enough, jesus christ she doesn't even pray and so we grow old with a hole in our chest where our hearts should have been, we grow old and my brothers shed their skins and run to Argentina they don't have my daddy's face either and when will it finally be enough?

50 | Perception

and so you stop calling you stop calling and i stop praying and it is just a book, jesus christ it is just a book, his lips on my mouth and hands on my ribcage you are particularly unattractive but i just stutter, pulse jumping this is my poison and the pills and the pot and the booze and the midnight calls and the jail cell cuffs and the night wanderings and the cyst in my wrist and the pain that i grew by smashing it into place and holding it there and the kingbed, curled up lost like a bomb it felt like a bomb had torn us open

and he bought me a book, and it wasn't enough it was never enough

it was just a book

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Certain Carol Pelz

I’ve always had a thing for carnivals, my first love. I guess you could call me a fair junkie. I get my high from buttery fried dough, the harsh whip of the tilt or whirl, and looking down from the ferris wheel at night, the stars hovering over me and the lemonade soaked backdrop. I survey the current scene. The sky looks like rain but the food definitely looks promising. Hot nacho cheese, yellow crispy corn chips, and sweet, sweet lemonade, shaken, not stirred to wash it down. Perfection.

As I consider the prospects, screams pull me back to reality. I have to look up to the overcast sky to see the origin of the cries. I shudder as I stare up at the ride that raises you up and drops you before you even realize how high you are. I rode this ride with you once, and now it makes me want to scream for a different reason. My stomach drops, as if I was at the top of the ride and was now plummeting to the bottom, fists clenched and legs tensing up as I fall. The memory overtakes me right there in the middle of the fair, the twinkling lights not even able to hold me at that moment.

It was a perfect day. Strolling carelessly through the fair, hand in hand, with no place we had to be. It may have been the crappy local fair the next town over, but it was still unsurpassed to me. “Rides?” you ask me with a half crooked smile and mysterious glint in your indigo eyes. I squeeze your hand and feel a smile creeping up on my lips. You know I would never say no to rides, and so it began. Seven hours of head whipping, stomach jolting, playful screams, which sometimes were a little more real than I would ever admit to you.

Seven hours later and I threw up in the parking lot. The warm breeze blew across my face as I leaned against your vehicle, which was currently a beat up blue truck with rust on the sides, cursing myself for going on all those rides, knees weak as I try to control the nausea that is trying to take over, and is winning. I look over to see you laughing quietly to yourself, peeking over at me in a way that makes my stomach tingle. You love me as I stand here, slumped against your truck, dirt covering my flipflopped feet, a stain from nachos on my shirt, trying not to throw up.

I went home clutching the stuffed animal you paid the Carney twenty dollars for after way too many unsuccessful attempts to win it fairly.

The one thought on my mind before I went to bed was I couldn’t wait to go to the fair with you next year. I thought it was for certain. It wasn’t.

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Linger here | 53

Samantha Nicole Albert

BlackRoadr

Consonants Frieda Projansky

Sometimes I feel my Own articulation leaves From the tip of my tongue To gag me.

I never thought I’d be the One reduced to material, I haven’t even written for a while so Put me in your fucking coda.

I wonder do you count me as rings On my own trachea or do you Number your mentions By my past personas.

I constantly have a sore throat.

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Spare Parts Dylan Carroll

Well I was just twenty-two high school love letters. Ten callused fingertips.

Palms scarred and rebuilt with newer tissue. I was yearbook signatures from cute girls who smiled like the rain and spoke softly in echoing gymnasiums. Shaky kneecaps. Eyes fermented and hazy; pupils drunk and falling, retinas slurring colors across faces as if people were abstract paintings. I was crashing vertebrae and a spine that stood like a melting willow. Lungs grimacing from the sharpness of frigid air. A heart bruised and aching in the back corner of my rib cage. I am not whole anymore.

You looked at me with eyes wider than camera lenses and shaking like bubbles under the ice of a frozen pond. You raised your wrists to my chest and salted them with tablespoons of tears. You covered your stomach, hid loose skin beneath palms, shaded in the broken parts of yourself with black pages and hoped no one would ever see. But you see I was just a collection of broken guitar strings and crumpled up pages of empty lines. I was quoted sentences and a collage of still-life moments breathing in my mind.

You see, my first heart never made it. It’s okay that yours didn’t either.

We are all spare parts, pieces of our past and new pieces of our future. No one is made of the same shields that they walked out into the world with.

Sometimes we bloom like purple ballooning orchids and sometimes our petals are ripped off in a storm, or a breeze, or just from the weight of all this time. We grow again. We are all spare parts, makeshift stories and elaborately crafted constructions. My first heart never made it. It’s okay if my second one doesn’t either. We are all spare parts, mosaics of ourselves and the world around us and always blossoming into something new.

Always growing into something unseen.

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Pinball & Poker Forrest Thomas Florsheim

The two got in the elevator. One of those small boxes that is like a refrigerator but instead of food it holds awkward tension inside. The scrawny, tall, twenty-something-year-old with hair that should have been cut three weeks ago stood by the buttons while the older man with a Napoleonic build and mustache that was thick with intimidation stood in the opposite corner.

1). Stand in the corner by the buttons wishing I had licked the Cheetos dust off my fingers before we had gotten inside the elevator. 2). Too late now, trapped inside with girlfriend’s dad, Dick W. Perry. Dick W. Perry was also interviewing me for the job. Why did Stephaney even suggest that her father should hire me when I first met him? Dick W. Perry works in some sort of finance and my major in college was finger painting. 3). Now it’s just the third time I am in Dick W. Perry’s presence and all I can think about is the Cheetos dust on his fingers.

“Which floor, Dick?”

Probably breathing too heavily.

“You can call me Mr. Perry, Norman; we are going up to the 82nd floor.”

Holy shit. The 82nd floor, that was at least 70 more floors than my apartment building. Did I forget to turn off the stove before I left? Too late now. Cheetos are not a nutritious breakfast. Take my sweaty hands out of my pocket and push the 82nd button leaving a stain of artificially orange Cheetos dust caked on the elevator’s interface.

“So, uh, you like sports?”

That was such a dumb question. That’s one of those questions you ask your new cabin mate, Albert, when you go to sleep away camp for the first time. You and Albert discover your incessant love for Ping-Pong and then become best friends for the next two weeks. You don’t see Albert for 12 years until you run into him in the dairy section of the grocery store when you are both back at home for Thanksgiving. The two of you reminisce fondly on your youthful jubilance and then become sad realizing adulthood wasn’t as joyful as your time spent at sleep away camp. I don’t see me and Dick W. Perry developing a similar relationship.

“What?” asked Mr. Perry.

“You know, sports, baseball, basketball, foot-“ “Yes, I know what sports are, Norman, it is just a weird question. But if you have to know, I am fond of horse racing and chess.”

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Chess isn’t really a sport but we are only on the 21st floor and I would rather have the elevator cables break than get into an argument with Dick W. Perry about the athletic and competitive legitimacy of chess for 68 more floors. Would a 21-story free fall kill us? I read once that if you jump right before a free falling elevator makes impact, you’ll survive the fall. It would be really hard to get the timing right but it couldn’t hurt to try if the situation arose.

“Ah, horse racing. My uncle used to bring me to the local dog racing tack back when we lived in Florida.”

What the shit, that was a terrible thing to say. That’s like asking if someone likes Coca-Cola and responding by saying you enjoy that off brand stuff called Go Cola Extra.

“Dog racing, I thought that was illegal,” Mr. Perry said “Everywhere except Florida.”

Perfect, just reaching the 45th floor and we were now discussing the legality of dog racing. Maybe bring up that I don’t believe in God or that the Republicans are tearing this country apart and that there should be a more equal distribution of wealth.

“So Norm, have you and Stephaney had sex?” Mr. Perry shamelessly asked.

“What?”

“Have you had sex with my daughter?”

“Is this part of the job interview?”

“The job interview started when you shook my hand.”

Norman has a weak grip and had Cheetos dust on his fingers when he shook my hand. Norman is 0 for 1. Norman doesn’t know how to properly tie a tie. 0 for 2. Norman probably doesn’t know how to tie his shoes. Does the mailroom have any openings? I’ll ask Rueben next time he delivers the mail. Hopefully the elevator cables break before we reach the 82nd floor so I don’t have to hire Norman. It’s bullshit that if you try jumping the second before impact in a free falling elevator that you will survive. You’ll die just like everyone else in the elevator but as a blindly optimistic fool.

“Mr. Perry, I am not quite sure how to answer that question.”

Good. Making Norman sweat. Elevators are like saunas. We really should get a sauna.

“Let me frame it for you. On the one hand if you’re sleeping with my daughter I will be upset. Upset in the way a 54 year-old, conservative American gets when he finds out someone is sleeping with his daughter.

But on the other hand, if you aren’t getting it in, I will probably think less of you.”

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Who picks the elevator music in this building? They have excellent taste.

Maybe it’s Eddie. Would the janitor pick the music for the elevator?

Next time I see Eddie I’ll ask him to burn a CD for me. Good god this is good. Eddie has a brilliant ear for music. The melody is so simple and intrinsically unobtrusive, as if it were composed by a psychologist who sought to make the most relaxing music. It underpins the nature of an elevator ride but fundamentally depresses any anxiety that may surface by the idea of escalating higher and higher with only the concrete bedding of the basement to catch the fall. It is the soundtrack of the American work force.

“Which one will get me the job?”

“Excuse me, Norman? Forgive me. I became lost in the brilliance of this music. Fantastic isn’t it?”

I’m really that bland? I’m less interesting than elevator music. Watching poker tournaments on TV is more thrilling than having a conversation with me. And not the early rounds where rookies try to pull fast moves and go all in on a bluff, I am talking about the quarterfinals when the old-timers play it safe hoping to get to the finals. I really shouldn’t watch so much competitive poker. While we are on the subject of it, less porn wouldn’t be a bad thing. That stuff’s good though.

“Norman, are you getting off?”

“What?”

“Are you getting off the elevator, this is our stop,” Dick said blankly.

“Oh sorry, yes, of course.”

Hallelujah. Kind of.

“This way to my office, Norman.”

Out of the elevator and into the office. Quiet around here. Wow. Where is everyone? Maybe it’s Sunday. No, poker is on tonight, today is Tuesday.

Why are there so many empty offices? Empty offices filled with games.

Billiards, Galactic Pinball, Iceball, Death Race, Super Shot Basketball, more than one can count. Spooky. This is where I die. Dick W. Perry is a serial killer who murders his daughter’s boyfriends in the abandoned penthouse office space of a skyscraper. I don’t even have a will to leave behind. In case of emergency: give the toaster to Doug, roller skates to Chris, my stamp collection to Kyle, and my student loan bills to my parents. I want to be cremated and spread across the Grand Canyon. That would be grand.

“Have a seat, Norm,” Dick said.

“Your office has a great view, Mr. Perry.”

“Yes. Yes it does. Whenever I look out, it reminds me I stand high above this

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city,” Dick said, barely peeking his head over his desk.

Bogus. You don’t stand high above anything, at least physically. When you go to amusement parks, do you meet the park’s height requirement to ride the roller coasters? Probably not.

“So Norm, into the formalities of the interview. What’s your past work experience?”

“Well, I recently left my job writing astrological journalism.”

“What sort of journalism?”

“Astrological. I was writing fortunes for cookies at a Chinese restaurant.”

Norm may be far too overqualified for this job. Norm is 0 for 3. Norm cannot stop looking at my forehead. 0 for 4. Is there something on my forehead?

“Mr. Perry, what’s up with all the arcade and carnival games around here?

And why is it so desolate?”

“We run a pretty small operation. It’s just me, Rueben and Eddie.

Norm, do you even know what business we run here at Perry & Sons?”

“Finance?”

HA. Finance is a funny word. It almost sounds like an STD. Syphilis’ estranged second cousin. Both are such beautiful words in their pronunciation. Sy-phil-is. Fi-nan-ce. They roll off the tongue like a slippery piece of shrimp. But they have such morbid meanings. One, a chronic bacterial disease that spreads through society infecting those least expecting and the other, well, pretty much the same. That syphilis scare back in the 80s was a drag, around the same time I caught finance.

“Finance. I suppose you could use the word finance to accurately describe my profession. I deal in a very narrow field of finance.

In basic terms, exchange rate management. Figure exchange rate to be more specific. One U.S. dollar is the equivalent to 91 Japanese Yen. Family entertainment centers operate under a similar bureaucracy. 1 Pizza Time gold token can be exchanged for 15 Adventure Thrill Zone brass coins. The ball pit at Quest Fun Park is 3 quest tokens or 1 Splash World dollar. It’s all very complex and involves genius-level mathematical comprehension. In my own words, we at Perry & Sons ensure that the sound economics of family entertainment will continue to tick like a well-oiled watch.”

Gosh. Rock-solid pitch, Dick. Rock solid. Remember that one for the next board meeting. Looking at the stats: Norm is 0 for 4, Dick 1 for 1.

“That sounds real important. I guess I never thought about the logistics behind family entertainment.”

Should I bring up the math class I took in college? Well, half a

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math class. Everyone who failed the midterm dropped it, that was definitely the smart thing to do.

“You’re probably wondering what position you could play at Perry & Sons.”

Need someone to shine your shoes? Get you coffee? Stand on their shoulders at a concert so you can see the stage? I am your guy.

“Do you have an internship position open?”

“I’m conducting the interview, Norm. I am the one asking the questi-shoons. Quues-ss-suns. Muush-hrooms. Fphu-uuque.”

Panic. Check. Heart attack? Maybe. Stroke? Definitely. Dick W. Perry lying facedown on desk. Not moving. Dick Dead? Hopefully. Junior high school gym class. CPR certification unit. 40 chest compressions and 3 rescue breaths or 30 chest compressions and 2 rescue breaths? Jackie Johnson was in that class, total babe. Wait, if Dick is dead, I don’t have to work for Dick. The world would be a better place without Dick. Dick is, Dick is such a dick. If I save his life I definitely get the job. If I get job I will probably suffer from a heart attack after three weeks. If I don’t get a heart attack, I will live everyday wishing for one working under Dick. Haven’t had to make a decision this hard since choosing between Cookies N’ Cream and Rocky Road. Rocky Road it is. Dick, I’m coming on you. What. Dick I’m coming for you.

Excuse me waiter, I’ll take the check. Waiter’s face looks like a lemon. Waiter’s face is a lemon. Waiter is a stupid lemon face. Table is made out of licorice. Take a bite out of the restaurant’s table, is that socially acceptable? Who cares, this is the best fucking licorice I’ve ever had.

Everyone is staring at me. My entire high school class is at the lemon-faced waiter’s restaurant. Hey, try eating the table. It’s made out of licorice.

Roll Dick W. Perry onto the floor. Still unconscious. Let’s try 35 chest compressions and 3.5 rescue breaths. Maybe no rescue breaths. 1, 2, 3, 4, stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive, ah, ah, ah, ah, stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive. Come on Dick, stay in there. Oh god, rescue breaths. Now me and Mrs. Perry can be Eskimo brothers. Lips trembling. Oh god.

Fall off chair onto the floor. BAM. Floor is warm and soft. The chairs in this restaurant are so fragile. They are made out of licorice.

Everything is made out of licorice, even the hand of the stupid lemon-faced waiter who is punching me now. Hey, stop punching me lemon-face.

Cock chin back, slide mouth open, just like on the dummies we practiced on in gym class. Oh god. His lips are so dry and that mustache is so itchy. Women are definitely right about the unpleasant nature of kissing a mustache. Exert breath into Dick’s mouth while placing more attention

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on avoiding his tongue with my tongue. Dick’s eyes open. I saved Dick’s life.

Damn.

Why is lemon-face tickling my mustache? Feels nice, nice in the way a scalp massage feels nice. Utter relaxation. Body is numb but lips are warm. Lips are warm and moist and not from the licorice. Why are lips so moist? Open eyes to check. No longer in lemon-face’s restaurant, on floor of my office. Why am I on the floor? Body aching. Why is Norm leaning over me? Slight headache creeping up. Why is he kissing me? Wish I could hit the snooze button and fall back into deep sleep. Why am I making eye contact with Norm? Norm has nice eyes. Why are Norm’s eyes so nice? This is very perplexing.

Making curiously strong eye contact with Dick while leaning over him, my mouth still glued to his. His breath is so warm. Oh god.

“What the hell are you doing?!” Dick yelled.

The hell if I know.

“I’m so sorry, Mr. Perry. You were having a heart attack, or a stroke, I’m not really sure but I saved your life.”

“You didn’t save my life! I am a narcoleptic, you idiot.”

“What?”

“I have narcolepsy. It’s a very challenging disorder.”

“I really am sorry. If I had known-“

“Get out of my office.”

“Did I get the job?”

“Get out of my office.”

Maybe the elevators cables will break on the way down.

Hopefully.

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Kirstyn Lia Ross

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The Corner of Langston and Rue Kirstyn Lia Ross

It is nearly midnight when the number 17 bus stops at the corner of Langston and Rue. A single passenger departs—female, of average build and dressed smartly—her crisp linen blouse tucked neatly into a navy pencil skirt.

A notebook threatens to fall from her sagging purse. There is a coffee stain on her sleeve.

She pauses for a moment, pulling her dark hair into a haphazard high-knot, before setting off into the night.

She has been working late again.

In yet another show of incompetence, the imbecile she refers to as “boss” (amongst many other names) had required her to stay late for the third time this week—A punishment for refusing his unwanted sexual advances, and for which she was sure she would receive not one penny of overtime.

She pushes away the memory.

She desperately needs the job—primarily to finance the “cozy” one bedroom on the tenth floor of an un-air-conditioned building.

Her mind wanders to the perfectly manicured lawns of the planned community in which she’d spent her youth. Like many of the kids in her neighborhood, most of the events of her childhood had been shaped, largely, by her parent’s pursuit of “stuff” , and acquisition of “things.”

Upon finishing her education, she had stricken out, perhaps a too eagerly, in search of adventure, or meaning, or something like that…the months of struggle and financial distress that followed had significantly blurred her recollection of that idealistic outlook, and her sheltered upbringing had done little to prepare her for these alien circumstances—but her tight budget mandated the discomfort.

The partially dilapidated, aforementioned building looms in the distance, atop a hill, no more than 8 blocks from the bus stop—though she is separated from her destination by what her landlord refers to as an “up and coming neighborhood.”

She fidgets with the top button of her blouse, recalling the recent headlines of a local paper.

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It reports that since April, there have been 12 break-ins, 15 robberies—two of which were armed—and a string of sexual assaults.

She walks faster, attempting to force this information to the margins of her mind.

A bottle breaks in the adjacent alleyway—she turns, startled and expecting danger. Instead she watches a boy fling a stinking bag of garbage into an oversized dumpster. He kicks at a stray cat, which howls and hisses in retort. A voice calls summons the boy inside, and the alley is silent again.

Seven blocks to go.

Up ahead, two drunks argue in front of a liquor store over a lottery ticket.

The men swear violently and viciously insult each other’s mothers. One man grabs the second by the shirt. The second hastily reaches into his pocket. She rushes across to the adjacent sidewalk—but when she looks back, the drunks have forgotten their dispute, as drunk often do, and are clapping each other on the back—stumbling off towards the neighborhood bar.

Just six more blocks.

Foreign chatter floats from above. Somewhere, rock blasts from a stereo.

A car pulls down the road, hangs a left, and disappears into the city, leaving a trail of exhaust in its wake.

She begins to relax, soothed by the steady rhythm that her heeled shoes play on the concrete.

Tap-ta-tap-ta-tap ta…

She hums a soft tune in response.

At the halfway point, she stops for a cigarette. She takes a drag and exhales—then continues.

Tap-ta-tap-ta—tap-tap- taaa-tap-tap-taaa…

An icy chill runs through her body, as she realizes that her footsteps no longer sing a solo.

She peers over her shoulder. A man in a dark, hooded sweatshirt stands not twenty feet behind her.

She picks up the pace— and so does he.

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By block three, despite her efforts to maintain a distance, he is gaining on her quickly.

He has a much longer stride; she wears her most uncomfortable shoes.

As she rounds block two she can hear his labored breath as he struggles to catch up to her. “HEY!,” he calls out—she breaks into a sprint.

“TAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAP,” her shoes cry out into the night.

Her muscles strain in agony—she pushes on.

A heel snaps in the sidewalk’s crack—she pushes on.

She can see the door, only a few strides away—almost close enough to grab!

Hide behind its autolocking doors and…an…

A hand grasps her shoulder from behind.

Her body stiffens involuntarily—a shriek of dismay presses through her lips as she submits to his grip, she submits to her fate…

“Miss! You dropped your notebook.”

“OH!—Oh, thanks.”

He smiles shyly and steps back. She watches him turn on his heel, walk down the sidewalk and disappear into the darkness.

She steadies her breath, breathes a sigh of relief—slips the key into the lock and disappears through the door.

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Tuesday Afternoon Molly Bolan

I absolutely hated our blue Pacifica. When all six of us crammed ourselves in, my sister and I always ended up in the back seats, the tops of our heads jammed up against the ceiling and our legs tucked into wherever we could find space for them. But on that Tuesday afternoon, our brothers were away, and we took their seats right behind our parents. There were bigger windows up there, ones that weren’t as tinted as the ones in the back, allowing the warm light to splash in and fill the spaces between us.

I leaned my head against the glass and watched the lush landscape zip by. Soft harmonies drifted out of the radio, gently wrapping each of us up in a comfortable security. After a moment, I tilted my chin up to feel the sun on my face and counted the clouds. Eventually our short journey would come to an end. Eventually we would take Exit 5, drive through Concord for a little bit, get lost for a little bit, look at the map for a little bit. Eventually we would park our blue Pacifica in the big lot across from the horribly bland building that was our destination. Eventually we would have to leave the security of the car to go inside and meet the people who were saving my dad’s life.

I stopped counting clouds and listened to the voice that was dancing out of the speakers. It was the sweetest song I had ever heard. A happy song.

A gentle song. A love song. The sounds of guitar were braided with that of piano as a man sang for the woman who was to bear his son.

“People smile and tell me I’m the lucky one,” he said, “And we’ve just begun.”

The sun continued to pour into our blue Pacifica, reflecting off my mom’s wedding ring. I didn’t realize it, but sometime during the opening chords, my parents’ hands had found each other. The small, shiny stones of the ring winked at me. I liked the way it looked, my Dad’s smooth, white hand woven in with my mom’s freckled and tanned one, the whole thing garnished with those winking rocks.

They know this song, they love this song. Their entwined hands swayed gently in time to the rhythm as my dad softly sings along with the man.

“And now I smile and face the girl that shares my name,” they said in unison.

I thought that perhaps I recognized the song. Somewhere, sometime, it had been the soundtrack to some moment, but I couldn’t grasp the hazy memory. I could only vaguely recall the melody.

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But there in the back seat of the Pacifica I despised, the song mattered very much to me. My sister and I watched as our parents glowed.

Then the final lines of the final chorus came.

“Even though we ain’t got money, I’m so in love with you, honey.”

A sweet song. A happy song.

“And in the morning, when I rise, you bring a tear of joy to my eyes.” My parents looked at each other, and they smiled, both seeming much younger as they sat drenched in that warm afternoon light. In that moment, the world was vibrant.

“And you tell me everything is going to be alright.”

Quite suddenly, I wanted to cry, but I didn’t. We had just arrived at the cancer treatment center. It was time to get out of the car.

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Quebecian Kilos Carly Elizabeth Benson

They’ve listened to the ping of tears Crashing through our photographs And the Crushing of my heart in your fist An ordinary cracker to top your soup.

Unimportant.

They’ve watched the blood That once felt royal in our veins Move out of their waterborne home In forms of jumping whales and Cries, Landing on palace ruins.

They’ve passed by me in a tower Still standing among Crumbled stairs Waiting for the architect Who can build back the steps To a place with you.

But, They’ve pulled me gently with hooked index fingers Safely to the meadow Where I half expected your Curls among the grass blades But I knew not to look more than an accidental glance.

You were a satellite Rounding the sun three times Being pulled back into me As the red sank below the meadow.

Or was this just convenience?

Maybe I do or will never know.

But, I do know that our lips Press against walls of hearts And that our hands cannot be still In fear of missing an inch of skin

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And that eyes are no longer for the looking Of tangible things with you.

But, The Curls growing from your head Are thickets of steel wool, not hair.

I am not blind to your strange wiriness Because you have choked me with it before.

I know that my warmer strands Composed of passionate imperfection Can make a fireplace among the coldest nights Or The house burn down when we combine.

I have lain on the carpet with you Cradling our fire recklessly Like the whispering logs before us.

I have stuck my hand in the blue flame In denial of my ability to reduce to ashes.

But here you are, telling me you Love me.

Telling this to the burn marks you branded me with Wide brown eyes through tall grass blades Steel wool ready to catch flame Your hand adjusting your grip on my heart Asking me to lay by the fire in the dark, ‌again.

I love you.

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Rereading You Carly Elizabeth Benson

I thought I shoved you between The books with words too faded to read With winter coats of dust and insects Eating away their forgotten pages.

I thought I barricaded you there With Harry Potter chairs Stacked to cover your face.

C.S. Lewis watching you with soldier eyes Cheshire grinning to pounce at your escape.

I thought I had forgotten you Your face in another country Border walls like force fields I stayed away.

But we were still on the same continent And I am confident That I might still sleepwalk to you.

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You Say

Christine Nicole Bader You're all the same. Nice guy You say. Repeat it To me. I'm a nice guy You say. Your glazed eyes Let me get you a drink You say. I think you need To relax, baby, come with me This way. But you're not all The same, you say. Just want To get you alone. I know You don't mean "no," you say.

You stop with your words, Instead, talk with your hands And then, move me to a bed Where you, talk with your hands Again, and I tell you again, again To stop, I say. I don't like your hands That way. Let me go, I say.

You're a nice guy, you say But you don't listen to a word I say.

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The Green Hotel Thomas Beckley-Forest

The sharp night wind, not so bad a few minutes ago, had really gotten inside Mary’s jacket. It chilled her whole frame, biting at the bare skin of her hands and face. Fifteen minutes ago he’d sent that text. “Be there in a few.”He was always late. Should she text him to hurry up? Hand slipping into jacket pocket, the phone’s slab of circuits warming her hand a bit. Still too cold.

No. Evan would be here soon, and it wasn’t worth being a nag. Mary always cringed somewhere deep whenever she talked long enough to see his eyes glaze over, as if she wasn’t saying anything particularly unique. The worst part was, he’d never just ignore her straight up. He’d look over with that thinly attentive expression, head cocked in thin interest…playing his role until some other obligation took him away again.

As if her company was such a prison, holding him until he could escape to those other, infinitely more exciting areas of his life, free to be himself and spend his time in a more fulfilling fashion. That’s what was always on his mind she knew, each time after they’d fucked and spent the required amount of time lying aimlessly on her bed after it. Infuriation at the unfairness of it would sometimes flash red before her eyes. After all she’d done for him, the way she’d laid herself in front of him like a prize, telling him how deeply and terrifyingly she loved him, how she’d taken him back at the drop of a hat both times he’d almost walked away. Still, he took her for granted. Always, she was taken for granted. By everyone. Then humiliated rage would subside into an empty nausea as the days dragged her on through meetings and classwork, all the distracting little minutia of life that dulls strong emotion.

Now if he would just show up, they could relax, have a decent night—then she could end this spiral of thought, dismiss the sick suspicion that every hurried lunch and tired fuck would be their last.

Evan had leapt up when Mary mentioned she’d like to smoke tonight. The suggestion popped through their fatigued Friday night small-talk like an electric pulse. He was transported back in time to the amber-tinted days

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they’d spent stoned on hillsides last fall just fooling around, humming old rock songs and pretending they were alone in the world.

It’d been shaping up to be one of those nights—where they sat around her place watching TV, enjoying it okay but misunderstanding each other in all those small, unsettling ways that added up into a yawning chasm of uncertainty every time they had to say goodbye.

He’d rushed from her place over to the dealer’s apartment, standing back impatiently while some cute and totally wired chick measured out the bud with an old scale. Forking over cash, he’d shoved the bag in the lining of his jacket and finally darted over to his place to grab the dusty old bowl that had lain unused for months.

They could stand to blow off some steam. Lately their life together had seemed a rocky cycle of sudden seething fights, many rounds of angry texts and arguments invariably ending in sleepless 4 a.m. contemplations, the future pressing hateful down on wherever Evan lay, his nerves shot to hell.

Times like that made you think long and hard about making a change. Not that he didn’t think those types of thoughts every day, wading precariously through the sea of jarringly attractive women on campus. After all, he was only human.

As he now finally approached Mary under the lamppost where she stood, Evan saw she was fidgeting uncomfortably in its dim light.

“Little cold?” he asked, small smile teasing through his mouth.

“Yeah, you took long enough,” she retorted, sharply but not viciously so.

Evan felt the slightest lifting in his chest. Maybe tonight would turn out well. He leaned into her, enfolding her in his arms. “Let’s get you warmed up, you poor, poor girl.” After acquiescing to his goofy embrace for a moment she brushed him off, a thin mask of mock-derision sneered across her face. “You’re so weeiiiird.”

He chuckled. “Are you ready?”

She widened her eyes at him, stamping her foot in an indignant manner that ended up cute. “Yes! I’ve been waiting so. damn. long!”

Shrugging off her brusqueness, Evan turned towards the ridge of trees

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lurking beyond the edge of the dorm parking lot where they stood.

Unsteadily they navigated the steep slope down into the cemetery, staggering and stumbling here and there.

Down among the scattered tombstones they looked for a place to sit, finally settling on a particularly solid squat one with KENNEDY emblazoned across the rock.

Evan pulled out the glass bowl, placing it precariously in the crack of space between his knees. Crumbling the green chunks clumsily between his fingers and stuffing them into the piece until it was full to overflowing, he felt a building wave of excitement. “This is just such an adventure,” he remarked with a flippant grin.

“Oh, yeah,” Mary muttered, rolling her eyes, though she was smiling too, and an anticipatory tension had gathered in the air around her as well.

It was ready. Evan brought the glass tube to his lips and cranked the lighter with his right thumb, letting hot flame lick over the pile of buds. Smoke flowed in thickly, tickling down his throat and searing deep into the bottom of his lungs. When he could hold it in no longer, he let it all go huffing out, choking and coughing. Rasping for breath, he handed the operation over to Mary, who watched him with one eyebrow raised. “You okay?”

“Yeah I’m fine, I’m fine,” coughing, hacking. “Just sucked it all up too fast.”

“If you say so,” Mary murmured.

Warmth was rushing up through Evan’s fingers and arms, from his shoulders into his neck. His head was swimming, little eddies bursting gently up into the stream of his brainwaves. Oh, wow. “How about you?” he muttered.

“I’m just thinking...” she paused, gathering her thoughts. Then she lowered her face to the piece, attempting to light it unsuccessfully. Evan reached over and did the honors, and she took it all deep, not coughing at all when she released it in a billowing cloud that drifted up towards the dark violet of the starless sky. “When we do this, smoke in the graveyard, we get away from everything real.” She paused again, searching for the words. She looked at him for a moment, then back at the sky. “I love smoking with you, but it’s just a brief escape. Like checking into a hotel.”

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She started laughing and Evan turned to her, bemused. Suddenly he was struck by how the side of her face caught the soft moonlight, how it singed the long strands of her hair heavenly white. It was really breathtaking, how beautiful she could be, he always seemed to forget— As if from a cracked vase, memories spilled unbidden across Evan’s mind— hot sunlight on his skin as they slid contentedly down a quiet avenue in the convertible she’d somehow borrowed for a day last summer, guitar riffs winding lazily out of the car’s radio—the crowded basement where they met so many months ago, Mary shyly gushing over a band she’d seen the week before, words dripping tentatively from her lips as half-interested, pretty grey eyes sized him up—that sweet, hopeful glimmer of a smile that had let him back into her life in January, when he’d thought they were done and he’d blown it for good—the rain gently flecking their faces with water as they waited for the bus home on a gray Manhattan morning, Etta James’ voice pouring through the pair of headphones they were sharing, looking down at her and feeling as though his heart would burst from sudden senseless happiness— A dull ache rose suddenly and tightly in his chest, almost choking him with emotion. His jaw clenched as he regarded her anew, a fierce burst of tenderness burning behind his eyes. He was a moron to run around, wondering what other lives he might still live. Here was all he needed, the one who’d bared her soul to him, who’d suffered dutifully through all the agonizing of his rambling, inconstant mind, who’d taken him back time and time again.

He reached out and touched her shoulder, lightly as she turned towards him, understanding. And he kissed her like so many times before, melting slow then moving closer—and suddenly they were horizontal in each other’s arms, rolling gently into the dewy grass.

For a second Evan surfaced, smirking at her eyes. Getting a little smile in return, he dipped back down into the rhythm of lips, the taste of her tongue smooth but tanging exquisitely through his mouth— Blinded to everything like that, how did he hear it? That rustling through the long-dead leaves at the bottom of the hill, the low gasoline purr—they

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were not alone in the graveyard. They suddenly jerked up and away from each other, echoing the false alarms of an earlier era spent fooling around in parents’ houses. A car was making its way along the base, the dark and white paint unmistakable—cops!!! Wasn’t this place supposed to be closed at this time of the night?

On their feet again, Evan stuffing the bowl and drugs in his jacket.

Scrambling desperately up the hill—and Evan realized he was laughing, chuckling helplessly as they neared the edge of the ridge, and Mary was as well, in one of those flights of pure sweet laughter that were pretty rare from her, but a wonderful sound nonetheless.

They’d cleared the trees and Evan reached out, taking her hand and pulling her along as they kept a decent pace over blacktop and onto sidewalk, more out of sheer giddy momentum than any sense of self-preservation at this point.

Finally they slowed, Evan doubling up and wheezing in an exaggerated mock-pant, and Mary breathlessly exclaiming something he didn’t catch.

They both looked at each other and laughed again, for no reason at all. An instinct prompted Evan to lean in, playfully brushing her nose with his lips.

Though she always squirmed away when he tried that, she’d once told him she secretly liked it, and that was as good as a blank check to him.

This time she didn’t squirm away.

“I love you.”

He blinked at the cold gravity that crashed hammer-like behind those three short words, and missed only one beat before replying.

“I love you too. You know that.”

A tight little nod. That wouldn’t do, and Evan took her soft little face in his hands and kissed her, thawing the ice he could sense threatening to solidify between them again. “Let’s go get warm.”

Down sidewalks, through doors and up staircases they went, rushing briskly towards their destination—and when they were home alone in her room they fell together into a private universe of flushed skin and

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white sheets—those precious moments where he knew exactly what he wanted, slipping into the familiar rhythms of the body he knew better than any other. A blast of heat washed over them, mercifully short-circuiting the internal clocks that owned his days with their anxious ticking, their needling questions.

Afterwards they lay tangled on her bed, soaking in that brief respite. Mary nuzzled into the crook of his neck, cheeks glowing, happy to have anchored him down another night. They began to move slowly towards exhausted sleep, turning off her lamps and curling together under the covers. But as Evan felt the girl pressed against him fade from consciousness, he found himself alone and restless in the dark, his only company a single white pinprick of light blaring from her laptop on the desk.

Is this it? All there is?

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Collecting Grace Crummett

I was told that open wounds don’t heal invisible and sometimes the summer is redder than autumn. I know how you like to go back to those alley cat crouching cigarette burning stoned to the ceiling 1 a.m nights.

And fresh doughnuts, or fruit in the mud.

I will too, but if you’re asking which way I’m pulling, I’m not.

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Nostalgia Sara Biru

I wake up and the past lingers like a ghost Morning dew forms on the grass Yesterday disintegrates behind me So, all I have is where I stand now.

Stifle the ancient versions of myself And The past exists to haunt Sometimes beautiful, But always tinged with melancholy Faces and streets I once knew The present annihilates I dream in Technicolor Sometimes I feel the past And I’m a ghost too

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Grass

Arick William Wade What is that?

My little brother spoke I coughed as he walked up behind me Damn.

Thought I had about twenty minutes to spare What is that?

He asked again I shook my head not wanting to answer Yet knew he had to know Before the world told him instead The embers of the grass were still lit as I spoke It makes me feel good I said.

It made me feel more than that, I thought The deceleration of my heartbeat The slowing of my worries Everything was good.

The euphoria of having innocence in my life once more Yet knowing each day gets colder And here I am a day older Knowing all the innocence is gone in this world.

Except for the pair of royal blue eyes gazing at me Royalty.

That is how my parents look at him He, like every kid, is the hope and the future What every parent dreams of their kids Can be too much for them.

They can crack.

They can crumble.

How do I tell him?

That this is the way I live each day My bloodshot eyes from a mixture of smoke and tears

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I close them so they can dissolve.

Yet his questioning won’t So here I go It makes me feel good It makes me feel bad It makes me feel worth something It makes me feel worthless It makes me feel passionate It makes me feel cold.

Why though?

He said looking scared now Like the brother he once knew is gone And a monster is in his place instead Filled with self-loathing and pity Yet he still stood there Sitting next to me on the step Curious not about what was in my hand But the sorrow that was buried deep down Deeper than the hole that he and I once dug in the front yard Do you remember that?

I try to change the subject He is young but not that young His stubborn youth won’t give up So I open myself.

Putting bad things in your body Can sometimes be good for your soul.

Not for your body, but for your soul.

Where there was once a hole Is covered up with patches of duct tape and drywall Does that make anything sense at all?

Is that why you’ve been different since you left school?

Your soul is bad.

I was taken aback

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No it’s not.

Putting a bad thing inside you still makes it bad.

My 4th grade teacher said bad things change a person That explains your soul.

It’s sad.

It needs good How can we get it to be good again?

I laughed.

If I knew the answer I wouldn’t be holding a roach right now Yet the blues eyes looked at him and wanted to find a way how His eyes left my sight as he ran from the steps to inside.

What did I do?

My eyes were more bloodshot than ever Was he scared of me?

My heart and head dropped My eyes closed Yet I held onto the grass still.

It is the only thing I can hold these days Though this is the price I pay My soul is gone I am an enigma Waiting for each day to end as it begins.

I open my eyes to see the royal blue eyes The royalty that can help my family Not the slob on the steps Yet, he still stood there.

His patience inspired me.

He kept staring at me His mouth not speaking But his body was He opened up his small arms And tried to wrap them around me

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He kept trying But the length was too much for him He kept trying.

What is going on?

I want to put my arms around you I want to hug you so your soul feels something.

It isn’t working though.

I can’t do it!

He cried.

The tears fell on my sweatshirt My tears fell on his hair.

The soul I thought I lost Was just in another better place now.

A place where it is of much better use.

I extinguished the flame.

I had my chance.

Now here’s his.

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Keke -a used name Lixiao Shan

In China, a child’s last name is the same as their father’s last name. Their first names are determined by parents or grandparents. For me, I used to be called Keke, a name my grandfather gave me, but something happened and my mom changed my name to Lixiao.

When I was around five years old, I often got colds, which caused a continuous cough. Usually, I could not stop coughing unless I was injected with antibiotics for a week. My mom worried deeply about me. She took me to almost every hospital in our city but still there was no answer as to why I could not stop coughing when I had a cold. At that time, there was a medicine advertisement on TV: a little girl pronouncing keke, which was also the name of the cough syrup. Finally, my grandma began to suspect whether it was my name or not that caused my situation. She persuaded my mom to change my name because she thought the pronunciation of my name was similar to the sound of a cough, which was bad luck. Eventually, convinced by my grandma, my mom changed my name to Lixiao. To my family’s surprise, once my name was changed, I truly stopped coughing.

From that time on, I have never ever got such a serious cough. Even now, I couldn’t believe that a name has such a huge power. But who knows? Some things just can’t be explained by science.

[1] *osmanthus is a kind of flower in China. It blooms in a specific time in Spring every year.

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Sagnik Basumallik

Home

Amanda Thibodeau An orange orb rose out of the darkness from behind the mountains. Its light shone across the valley bringing life to the land, caring for the creatures that inhabited it. The light hit the top of one of the mountains where there lay a bed of sticks and straw wrapped tightly together into a cocoon. In this cocoon lay a creature who was awakened by the orb's light. It blinked its eyes, shook out its feathers, and gave a small squawk. Morning had come once again and it was time to gather some food.

The little creature rose and took flight. A light morning breeze ruffled its brown feathers as it soared through the air, and the light of the orb made its golden beak glisten. It traveled toward the river that ran through the evergreen forest just on the outskirts of the valley. The river roared and gushed over the black rocks that took root just beneath it and jutted through its clear surface. The creature could smell the pine of the forest and saw some other animals sipping from the river, a mother and child with brown fur and white spots. Another approached from behind a tree, this one with horns. It was probably the father.

The little creature continued on, following the flow of the river in search of its early morning meal. It found it just a little ways away where there was a small school of salmon swimming along. The creature tucked in its wings and began the dive down to catch one. The wind blew into its face with a strong force so that it had to squint its eyes on the way. It dove towards the water, and its beak plunged in, closing around the squishy scaly flesh of a fish. Then its powerful wings flapped and pulled the little creature up back into the air and over the trees. The creature flew south where it knew there was a nice place to sit and eat while the orb's light would shine down and bathe it in waves of warmth. But as it flew, it heard a noise, a loud thumping, banging noise. And, suddenly, the forest was falling underneath it. Gigantic sticks that had once served as homes for many other creatures and that had once dominated the land were falling, leaving behind a barren, dusty place; devoid of life. Large yellow machines were tearing up the earth, a slimy oozing black liquid spurting forth from them, poisoning the soil. The creature dropped the fish, and as it fell, the creature let out a cry for the place it had once called home.

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Melanie Judson

Alpha Cement Factory

The Project Hailey Simpler

The scientist poured a glass of wine and sat six feet across from him at the table. The distance from end to end of the dining room — from him to her, repelled them even further apart. The charge was negative to negative: a surgeon and a scientist. Their eyes bounced around the room to anything but each other, catching only refractions of physicality tinted red through their drinks. The chandelier hanging from the ceiling was the only hope of connection, extending its glass arms out to each of them and begging for conversation. The window remained cracked open as it had been all day, the lukewarm evening air gently breezing throughout the house. Like the chandelier and its failed attempts, the air was the only warmth there, its fingers embracing the atmosphere, thawing icy flesh and stone expression.

A vase stuffed full of colorful wildflowers was placed precisely at the center of the table, perfectly positioned to block each of their view of the other.

They did not mind.

The scientist stood suddenly, gathering her dinner plate and wine glass before making her way to clear the surgeon’s. She caught his attention for the first time that night.

“How was she today?” the scientist asked her husband. One elderly woman had been struggling to recover for the past few weeks. The surgeon followed her into the kitchen.

“Stable,” he assured her. He did not mention the woman’s aching, he did not mention her death wish or will’s revision but his wife already knew by the surgeon’s sigh and fiddling fingers. “How’s the project coming along?” He felt an obligation to ask.

“Slowly but surely.” She answered more for herself than for her husband. The project was rather old; she and her partner had been working at it for a few years. It was physics integrated with some engineering. Her partner did all the engineering while she waited for a string of theories and explanations to emerge from the chaos that was her mind. The seconds before her partner would test it she’d allow herself a spark of optimism, an ounce of hope, which so far had only been smothered by disappointment.

Just when she thought they’d finally finished, some circuit would malfunction or a tiny number left unaccounted for would surface.

The surgeon and the scientist laid themselves in bed, each of their faces attracted to opposite walls. The surgeon reached over to the nightstand to select a sound to occupy the hours: white noise. The scientist

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preferred drifting off to sleep entranced in the quiet rising and falling of human chests but she didn’t care to disturb the necessary peace.

Subconsciously synchronizing each of her breaths with the surgeon’s, she did what she always had and allowed her mind to wander to the project. She considered previous trials and errors as well as the next steps for progress. She wondered how long she could experiment before it drove her completely insane. The scientist’s head was silenced only in slumber. ~

The surgeon continued his repairing and patching of the foreign bodies that housed various dysfunctional organs. His greatest efforts were exerted into his work and he was disappointed by lost patients, but he had learned within his first years better than allowing attachment. His wife had her physics projects and he had this. The patients were patients – skin, bones, life systems and the substances they produced. They were bodies that malfunctioned as anything could and sometimes they’d go beyond rescue.

The old woman who had been in recovery – her name was Eileen – was different. The surgeon found himself looking forward to her company and visiting her during his lunch breaks. He liked listening to the woman’s stories on days she felt well enough to tell them; her eyes would light up when he expressed even the slightest interest. Eileen was not any longer his business, but he wanted her to be. He couldn’t think of another person’s presence by which he had been more completely absorbed.

“How is your wife?” Eileen would ask. His wife would always commence the conversation. Eileen’s genuine interest reminded him of the scientist’s.

“She’s alright,” he would reply. Sometimes he would believe himself.

Eileen would lock eyes with him. Her expression would not be either doubtful or trusting; she’d become an unreadable face simply carrying an empty conversation with which the surgeon seemed to be comfortable. “And how have you been?” she’d continue.

“Good.” The surgeon’s responses were ingrained routine that he projected robotically, but sometimes he would find himself hoping she’d ask him the questions again.

Then Eileen would tie some small talk back to a nineteen-fifties scene of someone embarrassing himself or herself and the surgeon would laugh not from his throat but from his chest until tears would stream down

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his cheeks, warming and softening his cold, gray face into lively shades of pink. One of the days, however, she wouldn’t tell him a story. She wanted his.

“Tell me about your wife,” she insisted curiously.

“What about her?” the surgeon asked. Her job? The color of her hair? Her favorite movie?

“Come on, I’m tired of telling you my stupid stories and you don’t mention her much at all. You avoid the topic, actually. Tell me why you fell in love with her and why you still love her. I want to know why you made her your wife and why you’ve both stuck around for so long.”

He thought for awhile. “Well, she’s a physicist—a brilliant one,” he explained. “We teach each other things. She’s the only person I’ve met that has no background in medical terminology yet still has the intelligence to completely comprehend the things I explain to her.”

Eileen smirked. “So she’s smart. Lots of people are smart. Tell me something about her.”

The surgeon stared through Eileen to the wall behind her where memories of his scientist were projected, flickering through time with scenes and slides shuffled and unorganized. Realizing that the compilation’s explanation would verbalize as a scatterbrained listing of insignificant recollection, he told Eileen, “I can’t explain it – her.”

He wanted to answer her questions. Her childlike curiosity would be impossible to deflate.

“You’re no fun,” she teased. “But just do me a favor. Remember that she is there.” Her tone shifted. “You’re a busy guy, I know, so do not hesitate speak out every thought that comes to your mind within your time around her.” Her gaze dropped to her toes poking up under the blanket. “I had one of those. After fifty six years with him, I began noticing a loss of connection. In attempt to make up for it I started a list.”

The surgeon was once again absorbed by one of Eileen’s stories, but this one was vastly different from her others.

Eileen continued. “I started a list for every little thing he would do that made me smile. I listed every one of his chivalrous gestures and peculiar habits and crazy antics. I wrote down the date of every day he brought home flowers and I documented his exact words every time he presented them to me.” She looked back up at the surgeon. “Of course he didn’t know any of this. I was waiting until I had a significant list to give him for, I don’t know, an anniversary or birthday or something.” She picked at the loose threads on the edge of the bed sheet. “I think you can guess the

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ending.”

The surgeon admitted, “I don’t even know that I could make such a list. I mean, not that I don’t love her. I married her. Of course I love her. I run a hundred miles an hour twenty four-seven. I’m always so tired.”

He stood up to leave her room. His lunch break was over. ~

The scientist arrived to work during that same week to find her partner already there, sitting in a rolling computer chair pulled up to the table. Staring down at her hands resting atop it, she appeared contemplative. “What do you think of this?” her partner asked.

The scientist tried to remain hopeful. “I think it’s worth experimenting a little while longer.”

Her partner’s attitude of surrender, which had been apparent for months, was beginning to discourage her. “Alright,” she said. With each of her cynical statements, the project became more difficult to keep afloat.

It was a two person task that she knew could not be carried out on her own. The scientist refused to reveal her doubts. “What do you think?”

Her partner did not respond.

If she were to quit, the scientist would be forced to, as well. The scientist added, “You know what, never mind. If we haven’t figured it out by now, we aren’t going to.” She hoped that the drastic shift in outlook for dramatic effect would at least guilt her partner, if nothing else.

Her partner found her voice. “No. Years of work only to walk away?”

The scientist had received the reaction she initially intended, but on a whim she added, “It’s a waste of time, effort, and money if we are going nowhere.”

The words that escaped her mouth felt as though they were someone else’s.

She thought it was even worse that she believed them. ~

Five o’clock approached and both the scientist and the surgeon left work hurriedly.

The surgeon considered Eileen’s words. He wanted to leave himself enough time to buy flowers to set out on the dining room table before the scientist arrived home.

Their usual repetitive cycle was only briefly broken when she noticed the roses at dinner. The scientist smiled, thanked him, and then

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jumped back into her routine. There were no hugs or kisses or memories reemerging. There was only a mass-produced vase on a table stuffed full of roses identical to millions of others gifted by other people in similar situations that very same day.

“I’m going to take a shower,” the scientist declared after cleaning up from dinner. She made it into the bathroom without a comment by the surgeon, but was then interrupted by knocking on the door. Covering herself with a towel, the scientist opened it.

The surgeon was gripping the flowers from the dining room in his bare hand. His arm was extended out to her in offering of the roses, which apparently had already begun wilting in the store. The thorns were jagged and completely exposed, but the surgeon did not appear phased. His face was as flushed as it had been with Eileen, but this time it was not with laughter.

“I want to fix it, Cady,” he exhaled.

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.:how fate works:.

Tiara Lowery

forgiving you was an option that i had never considered. instead, i ventured far, far away one thousand seven hundred and eight miles to be exact and sought to partake in my own path away from you to forgive myself and to tread. while on this path, both wide & narrow with its highs & lows, i looked towards books and ventured within those pages. i couldn't tell you how many miles away i was because i myself don't know. these books nurtured me and explained to me things that you are too much of a coward to notice, to understand, to atone for. but as it stands, it's probably best this way. because all of my trifles, trials, and tribulations have led me to this singular happiness and maybe that's just how fate works.

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You Do

Lauren Hannah The serpent in me and the hound in you waltz dangerously, traversing beer laden tables, Giving away nothing and smiling like constellations, uncomfortable in my lipstick and My fear and your cigarettes and my make-believe claws and your tempered brooding.

I know that you know that, and we lucid dreamed an immutable accident.

Us being a rare, flowerless thing that almost was, smoking in the wake of lustful Once, Absurdity that I have become, a pocketed zip tie of memory and string of mind – Daisy Buchanan to you in the pool, spilling into me the senseless absurd and divine, Your pale and changing arms collecting rain as I watch from so close.

For you it starts with a season, with rolling water, a tap on the shoulder, just a moment That takes the shape of some helpless affliction that takes the shape of me, And we pass crystals of sand and blind sketches and tired, rusted things in my eyes on yours.

I know you read me and I read yours too and I believe that this hour will burst open, And out will pour a hundred more forbidden, harlequin worlds when you know that I know What it means to be saved by a love that crawled forward one hundred years, That it might be any time of night, that I and you might not be time at all, That you and I were not so much content as slowly burning down one another, And staring into the bowl of rose petals that you saw in me that I saw in life, And you were crumbling rocks over Moher, and I said that was ok, insane but I knew you were, you knew I was, I was what you knew I and you were, we were, And like that old soul in both of us that howled colors I never imagined you imagined, I was pulling my hair, your red and copper and you missing that I miss that.

I know you do.

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Darcy Feeley

What

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Unfortunate Emma Viebig

OH! How unfortunate we are!

With our Cable, Dish, and Direct TV. No, the ones who truly suffer are you and me.

Wait…America’s not the only nation of this world?

We…what is it called, share this earth?

Oh, that’s right, I forgot, how silly of me!

Of the hundreds of miles those bare feet walk In a forgotten nation, Just to fetch one pail of dirty, unhealthy water.

Yet, here I suffer, because my parents won’t buy me bottled water, They make me fill my own with…ugh...tap.

Oh, wait…I forgot again.

About the thousands of sick souls on this earth, Praying for a cure, a miracle of some kind.

Oh, you mean that thing we have called a doctor?

Access to medical treatment?

But of course, there’s ALWAYS traffic on the way every time I go.

It’s like God hates me or something…

Oh, and don’t even get me started on my food supply.

I walk into my kitchen, open the fridge, and all I find are Some measly tubs of yogurt, dried out carrots, mushy strawberries—lettuce for salad—EW! Ugh, okay, let me check the cabinet… mmmm...peanuts—no, Lay’s—no, Chips Ahoy—no, Cheez-its—no, Balance Bar—no, fruit bar—no, popcorn—no! apple, banana, mac ‘n cheese, NO NO NO! Why isn’t there any freakin pudding?!

Mooom, there’s literally nothing to eat!

But then that voice…that tiny, tiny voice—no no no!

That one that makes me sound like a…

Spoiled person Comes into my head.

“What about the children, whose over-expanded bellies Rumble and ache from starvation,

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Because their everyday challenge is to simply find a scrap of bread To share between 5 people?”

“You’re so ungrateful!” the voice says, Like…not even!

“You have everything, while they have nothing.”

Wake up.

Look around.

Make no sound— You are BLESSED with what you have.

While their everyday challenge is to find food and shelter…

Your new challenge is to simply get over your damn First world problems.

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Skate Deck

Samantha Nicole Albert 106 | Perception

Untitled

Danielle Bertolini We poured kerosene on each other, laughing like lost children.

But we soon realized that we had forgotten the match.

So, we stood there, doused in our unignited passions, smelling like kerosene on the eight o’clock bus.

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Anthropology

Elaina Kristine Hughes Crockett over Middle Eastern tea he tried to kill the white noise and heavy silence between us. the raindrops against the glass almost felt romantic or childish because I watched them, waiting to see which raindrops fell the fastest while he ran his fingers through his hair. tasted like vanilla chai he spoke to me over hushed tones. told me I knew it was over but it was fun while it lasted leg resting against mine under the table he said I am young and have the rest of my life ahead of me. the ten years between us was too much to swallow even if I was still an adult and my tea needed more time to brew. in fact, he’d be sucking the life out of me his hand running up and down my thigh my exposed arm and he didn’t want to be my first and take me from myself so he ordered for me that day. new york city was getting boring he wanted more out of the universe the city the chuck taylors he always wore even in bed late at night watching dave chapelle and def jam poetry he is the reason I started writing with line breaks he told me about his last girlfriend how he wrote letters on the bathroom mirror in smudgy pencil stains, “be beautiful, don’t seek it,” so she never forgot how good she looked to him. when I came I was just a student looking for someone to mentor my poetry didn’t mean to open old wounds maybe I looked like her I wasn’t trying to. he taught me how to make mango tomato salad with vinegar and salt and pepper how to decipher island accents how to make the chai tea. he likes it green. he is doing this new thing where he only eats raw foods and fish his hair smells like coconut oil and shea butter his skin smooth against mine when he leaned over me explaining villanelles and African diaspora today it is raining he wants me to look at him in the eye while he breaks the silence and I don’t want to let him go he says I will find love again not in him but someone my age who understands me the way I wander through Central Park in the forests and rooftops watching God like Janie did he says I will find love in a tea shop in downtown Manhattan

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the way he did the night I came to workshop with nothing but an empty notebook and a head full of poetry.

Wanderlust Alex Aronson

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Cool Paisley Nittika Mehra

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dark sun Maizey Ludden

Sometimes I catch myself staring at you, The corner of your mouth turned upwards in its customary smile.

I wonder if you can feel my blue eyes Weighing on yours, their impenetrable brown.

And then your gaze shifts, Eyebrows lifted, you cross your arms and laugh, The sound bright like falling leaves, Dancing in the space too wide between us.

In those moments I wonder, Can you read my thoughts?

If you could, You would know how I hunger for your words, Mind ticking always like a faltering machine, Struggling to come up with some witty arrow To throw back at your always-ready shield.

I thought I hated you, Your ever-confident step and rapier tauntsSo why is it that I lean towards you Like a plant towards sunlight?

You're the darkest sun I've ever known.

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The Heart is a Neighborhood and You Live Too Many Doors Down Sawyer Cresap

I woke up this morning and didn’t expect to miss you hell I haven’t thought of you in weeks and I was glad for that.

I went running today at 5 AM through the town where i was born it was the only place I felt at home until I met you this morning i laced up my yellow sneaks the ones we bought together and didn’t imagine your face once as I meandered through the streets I didn’t think about how special you used to be to me. today I ran and I stopped to watch the sunrise and I felt whole without you by my side for the first time in forever. And I felt at peace I made tracks across the world today and the whole place felt like magic the way it only can on a Friday in July I stopped running back at my doorstep and saw my laces were untied the entire time but it didn’t matter because i was home I sat on the first step of my front porch and stared at the houses lining the road and wondering how they could even exist when I wasn’t watching making certain they were there. life goes on without my knowing it and I thought yours must be going on too

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for the first time in too long a time I thought of you, and I was okay.

Standing on bare feet and bare toes getting up to go inside and begin again I remembered you as you were and not as you became I wondered if you liked the book I recommended and I thought life is beautiful

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Allison Leung

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Starving art Jacob Gedetsis

There’s a lot of talk of the starving artist closet –sized city apartments on West 25th filled with dried paint, black canvas, cigarette butts, overdue library books But no one talks about those starved for art The Armani suits walking down E. 9th on their way to a job that lives up to the Campbell family name the residents of Hingetown taking extra shifts at the steel mill to make rent 200 bucks for rusty water and chipped paint The people who have never seen/can’t afford the $500 painting in the local gallery the strokes of lavender and red, the little girl crying in front of the most photographed barn in America It was made for them One day I will buy every Rembrandt, Pollack, every mistake and halffinished self-portrait from the starving artists on West 25th One day I will hold a funeral for the sterile museums and white art galleries I will feed the poor with shades of lavender and red

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Money Eyes

Samantha Nicole Albert

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32,000 Feet Hairol Ma

He had been flying overseas quite often lately. He packed simply—the same small suitcase with two changes of clothing and his toothbrush, his laptop and some company papers in a briefcase he carried in the other hand. He wore the same smart black suit that fit his cell phone clip nicely on his hip. He wore the same suit to the funerals and to meetings with his clients.

This time it was his aunt on his mother’s side. He hadn’t seen her very many times, but he recalled her as a slightly chubby woman who always slipped him a few pieces of peanut candy when he visited her in Kowloon. She would rattle off to his mother in fast-paced Cantonese dialect that sounded like a string of shapeless sounds. He tried to remember her name, but he could only recall the type of cancer it was, in small, black type on his bright screen. Stage four. Metastatic.

Not that it bothered him very much. The only names he needed to remember were those of his clients. He had their respective company names down pat, but he had always been terrible with the names of actual people. They failed to stick in his mind. He would mix one corporate David up with his sweaty gym classmate from over twenty years back in high school.

The flight attendant was making her usual announcements, describing the safety features of the plane. The flight to Hong Kong would be eleven hours.

He turned his attention to the woman seated next to him. She was another one of those perky secretary types, black hair pulled back into a tight bun and a nice-looking skirt. She was wearing a pair of Swarovski earrings, and her gaze was focused on the small iPad on her lap.

“I see you looking at me,” she said in a clipped voice. There was something strikingly familiar about the sounds that were held before they were released into words. She turned.

“It’s been awhile, hasn’t it?”

He remembered now—she was the Japanese exchange student he had met while studying abroad in Stockholm for a summer. He had spent many afternoons with her sitting underneath the shade of a large tree outside of a local coffee shop. She had always liked to order a little pink cake with white frosting each time.

The plane was beginning its climb now, and he was free to study

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her face under the loud screaming of the engine. She hadn’t aged much, but there was something about her profile that put an unsettling sense of nostalgia and almost grief in his heart. He felt as inexplicably drawn to her as he had been twenty years ago. He turned to the window so he could stop staring at her. The sprawling city disappeared into a filter of white clouds, then nothingness.

“32,000 feet up in the air,” she said with a little sigh. “Makes you wonder how we’ve come so far, right? I bet when you were a little baby you never thought you’d be 32,000 feet up in the air. It was probably something more like, oh my god, I’m hungry as fuck and I gotta take a shit!” She laughed loudly to herself. “Do you fly often?”

“I have been, lately,” he said into the window. There was nothing 32,000 feet in the air.

“What for? I work for the corporate machine. They squeeze the blood out of me. Sure wish I was seventeen again, eating cakes under a big tree in Stockholm.”

“I’m going to a funeral, then meeting with a client. We’re introducing a new range of software chips that you can slip under the skin of your pet, and it’ll spit out the hunger leve-”

“Whose funeral?” She spoke in an offhand voice.

“Some aunt,” he replied nonchalantly.

“I wonder where the dead go?” She leaned over and stared out the window. “Maybe they’re 32,000 feet up in the air, just like us. Would that make us dead or alive?”

He turned to face her once more, and felt the breath sucked out from his lips.

“You know, my mother died while we were in Stockholm,” she said slowly. “The cancer popped up randomly. Surprise, bye! I’m taking this one with me! Or maybe it had been growing inside for a very long time, and she’d never noticed it. Just small signs, I’d imagine. Until one day something triggered something deep inside of her, and she realized something was wrong.”

He didn’t feel like talking to her anymore. He looked out into the blue 32,000 feet up in the air and saw a blank white space. There were no clouds and no dead people, but no one was alive anymore either. He closed his eyes and he was outside of the plane, in a fathomless white space with nowhere to go, nothing but a Boeing 737 floating above him, in empty white.

“John? You okay?”

The name sounded familiar. He opened his eyes and saw the

118 | Perception

black-haired woman.

“Take care of yourself, okay? Go to your funeral or whatnot. Do your software thing. But you shouldn’t spend too much time flying. 32,000 feet up is a lonely place to be.”

“There’s plenty of other people here on this plane.”

“But they’re all strangers. I’m a stranger, aren’t I?”

He stared at her for a long time. Shiny black hair, Swarovski earrings.

“Yes,” he admitted. “You are.”

She let out a little sad smile then, and suddenly the plane dropped away beneath him, and he saw nothing but a vast white expanse below him. He was hurtling at such a speed that every thought was wrenched out of him, but he couldn’t see any ground in sight. He opened his mouth to say his name, but all that came out was an insubstantial bubble of spit and regret, and as he closed his eyes, he saw the well madeup faces of the dead people that were once alive.

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DEPRESSION IS A BAD TENANT Katherine Fletcher

“She gets me. She likes poetry and thinks I am Good; our brains work the same way, and she understands where I am with myself.”

I’d love to fight this thing out of me. I’d love to get rid of whatever this thing in me is. I can feel where it started, deep down inside me, in a dark pit somewhere in my stomach. It screams bloody murder so loudly that the echoes off my lower back hurt something fierce: more than bony elbows during playground football, but less than twisting the knife. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. This thing is smarter than me, more cunning and more resourceful. I thought I could lock it away and feed it blood and alcohol. But it used my ribs as a ladder right to my heart. Maybe it wasn’t the warmest place to set up camp and it wasn’t the safest place to be, but it provided shelter from the cold and it was empty. It’s hard to chase something out of you when it’s kicking and baring its teeth and screaming about squatters’ rights. You can’t burn bridges with your demons when they’re still living inside you, so you learn to live with them. And I’ve learned to live with them. I pick up clothes that they leave draped over the secondhand furniture. I leave out water and aspirin after a bad night.

I bring them antiseptic so they don’t have to keep licking their wounds. I try to be a good landlord for them, but sometimes I want to hit the ceilings in the lower chambers of my heart just to get the noisy upstairs neighbors to stop banging on the walls for once. Because I want them out. It would be so easy to invite you into my head and my heart if less of me was taken up by the worst parts of this. I want to leave the doors to myself unlocked in the foolish hope that one day I’ll come back to myself and find that you’re waiting for me, that you’ve made yourself at home in me. I’ve been trying to leave myself open for you without letting out too much of me.

I’m scared of these dark parts in me, and I don’t know if I can survive the look in your eyes when you meet the worst of me. And it’s not like I can take all this love I’m not using on myself and use it on something else, on someone else, on you. I can’t take my saved up ragged love and put it in you like crumpled dollar bills into a vending machine. Even though you’ve got an “out of order” sign taped to you, I’m still standing there offering you these crumpled dollar bills and this ragged love. I can’t imagine I look inviting, holding a bleeding heart out at you with one hand while beating back the worst parts of me with the other. But this is all I have to give

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anybody right now. I have bad-tenant depression and ragged love and a bleeding heart and understanding. I have so much understanding. Neither of us is great with our hands or our words or our mouths, but we can still understand. I don’t have you fully figured out and I don’t have myself fully figured out either, but it might be nice to hold your hand as we walk along in this terrible darkness together. I think I’d like to hold your hand in this darkness.

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Spiritual Existence Michelle Velasquez

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Questions for one of the Lost Generation Cristina Colรณn

See the light On the shadows As a reflection Of your soul What do you fear, Hemingway?

I fear the sun The sun and its power To corrupt My darkness What's your heart like, Ernest?

Does it stand still In the ribcage Of your sorrows?

What do your eyes see now?

I see silence from above As the crowd gasps For the descending matter On this Wednesday afternoon.

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Une Pipe

Danielle Bertolini I should have known it was bad when I had my mid-life crisis at nineteen.

All of the other girls were getting boyfriends, and I was getting tattoos.

Faces, always faces. Sometimes they were people: people I knew, celebrities, beautiful faces on the street. Other times they were more abstract: animals, gargoyles, mythical beings. I became an oddity unto myself, a circus freak whose eyes would glaze me over from the full-length mirror of my bedroom. Hours were spent in the radioactive glow of my parlor, pen in hand, never moving, only thinking. The ink was in my veins, it never touched the paper. To do that, I would have to bleed. And I hated blood.

To others, I was a banality. Who hadn’t seen this before? The desperate girl starving for attention, wanting strangers’ eyes to trace her skin, yearning to be an outcast— to feel like she had an extraordinary place in an ordinary world. Probably a Satanist. Or a lesbian.

For the record, I was neither. Actually, I didn’t really belong to any group.

Maybe I was an outcast, but I certainly wasn’t yearning to be so. But, no matter, I was never alone.

On my twenty-second birthday, the faces started talking to me. It started out as a quiet hum, like the barely audible whirring of a generator. I thought little of it. Pressure imbalance in the eardrums, my doctor said, probably from the altitude; it would go away as soon as I adjusted. Next, the bees. It felt as though I was swarmed by them. Thousands of tiny melodic voices screaming at me, indistinguishable, yet somehow separate. I stopped sleeping. It didn’t bother me, not really; I was just enthralled.

It was around this time that my father lost his sanity. He had been on the edge for years, leaning over that precarious cliff known as reality, tempting someone to give him a little push. I blame the nurses. They never let him use the adult scissors. They gave him these vomit-green plastic ones, the kind you give to kindergarteners. I’d go insane, too, if I couldn’t use scissors.

He had the kind, granite eyes of my mother— he had stolen them upon her death. I felt her presence in his gaze. Assuming, of course, that she had gone crazy, too. “Hi, Charlotte,” he said. He remembered me. “How’s your brother doing these days?” I paused. Still an alcoholic, I thought.

“Still an alcoholic.”

“Sorry to hear it.”

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So far, so good. “And your mother?” Damn it. I took a breath, steadying myself, but before I could respond—“do you hear that?” he stammered, imploring the room with his eyes. “What?” I said nervously, thinking of the swarm that had followed me into the room.

“Ceci n’est pas une pipe.”

“Huh?” “Ceci n’est pas une pipe.”

“Magritte? Are you speaking of Magritte? Father?” But he had already floated away.

I examined my left forearm. A particularly attractive boyish face smiled up at me, frozen in naïve curiosity. If only, I thought. I knew not the end of that sentence, but “if only” continued to echo in my head.

“BE!” my father yelled at once, and for a moment I thought he knew of the hive living beneath my skin, but the buzzing had stopped. My head whipped around to see Father slouched over in his chair, drooling with the heavy dregs of sleep.

“BE!” I heard again. I knew then that it wasn’t my father. This was why the buzzing had stopped. The explosion came in a wave of sound that physically propelled me backwards. My skin was screaming with a thousand voices, vocal chords burning with strain and urgency. For a moment, I was suspended in a blinding deafness; there was pain, but no recognition. It was only when one voice broke through the wall that all were finally heard.

I ran into the street, unmindful of the bright and gritty afternoon traffic.

My teeth hurt at the sound, and I blinked back tears as I tried to find my way. People looked concerned. Well, some of them, nonetheless. There was a blonde soccer-mom type, one hand on her purse and the other in a protective embrace of her unfortunate child. Two construction workers, both white, both male, one sprouting a poorly developing goatee. A priest.

A family. A few dogs, some on leashes, some not. An elderly couple. And children. So many children. They were climbing out of the cracks in the walls. They were pushing through cars and crowds. They were sprouting from the sidewalk. And my ears were bleeding and all the eyes were staring at me and I started thinking about how we are all wearing faces on our sleeves and most of them don’t make sense but all of them all of them are yelling something yelling to be free or to be heard and we pretend like they aren’t there but they are and we pretend like other people don’t see them don’t notice them but they do but they ignore them and instead try to quiet their own skin the skin that never felt quite comfortable was always too tight or not tight enough full of anguish and fear and self-doubt but how

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can you doubt when you never really knew who you were to begin with?

Breathe. And who am I? Breathe.

And does anybody even care?

Breathe.

Breathe.

Breathe.

Infestation Darcy Feeley 126 | Perception

red solo cup garden Farrell Greenwald Brenner

In the red solo cup garden a lily quietly blooms her plastic petals bent p a t i e n t through the smoky night speckled with Dew Drops Lite The shoelace ivy, impish, creeps to peekaboo with a galloping laugh which trips over itself laughter which tumbles over grapes in a waterfall laughter that knows it’s out too late (the air is crispest at two, chewiest at three) The Ghosts of Guinness Past shards of iridescent glass they have been sown and in one week’s time shall sprout anew And though the gnomes may scowl (there are deadlines, pulled taught, approaching) they preside with some granite pride over the red solo cup garden

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冥王星

Ming5 Wong4 Sing1 (Cantonese)

鄭逸思

原曲 彩虹 / 原唱 周杰倫 / 原作 周杰倫 / 原詞 周杰倫

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxZvXPTBC0A （主歌一） 慢慢慢萬里來回過 無奈捉得緊的從來亦非我 在無垠維度裏廝磨 就算一心一意也未清楚

Verse 1

（主歌二） 為個個亦從來未嫌多 無論盡力盡快都不吝嗇過 故事原來文字裏蹉跎 連那引子無人曾動筆寫過

Verse 2

（導歌一） 人間中嬉笑散了沒有那種緣 留不低飄渺心意在原地轉圈 過去破損 散落滿天埋怨 卻未看穿 千億里有多遠

Pre-Chorus 1

（副歌一） 我沒有哭 任星海淹沒我 我是廢土 輕輕的隱匿一個 我沒有好 在這漆黑內無人明解我 在軌跡上歲月漸磨

Chorus 1

（主歌二改） 曾共度日夜秒分繁多 情份認定認可知己是懂我

Verse 2b

月球原來形貌有幾何 盲目一廂無人曾入我心窩

jyut6 kau4 jyun4 loi4 jing4 maau6 jau5 gei2 ho4

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maan6 maan6 maan6 maan6 lei5 loi4 wui4 gwo3 mou4 noi6 zuk3 dak1 gan2 dik1 cung4 loi4 jik6 fei1 ngo5 zoi6 mou4 ngan4 wai4 dou6 leoi5 si1 mo4 zau6 syun3 jat1 sam1 jat1 ji3 jaa5 mei6 cing1 co2

wai6 go3 go3 jik6 cung4 loi4 mei6 jim4 do1 mou4 leon6 zeon6 lik6 zeon6 faai3 dou1 bat1 leon6 sik1 gwo3 gu3 si6 jyun4 loi4 man4 zi6 leoi5 co1 to4 lin4 naa5 jan5 zi2 mou4 jan4 cang4 dung6 bat1 se2 gwo3

jan4 gaan1 zung1 hei1 siu3 saan3 liu5 mut6 jau5 naa5 zung2 jyun4 lau4 bat1 dai1 piu1 miu5 sam1 ji3 zoi6 jyun4 dei6 zyun3 hyun1 gwo3 heoi3 po3 syun2 / saan3 lok6 mun5 tin1 maai4 jyun3 koek3 mei6 hon3 cyun1 / cin1 jik1 lei5 jau5 do1 jyun5

ngo5 mut6 jau5 huk1 / jam6 sing1 hoi2 jim1 mut6 ngo5 ngo5 si6 fai3 tou2 / hing1 hing1 dik1 jan2 nik1 jat1 go3 ngo5 mut6 jau5 hou2 / zoi6 ze2 cat1 hak1 noi6 mou4 jan4 ming4 gaai2 ngo5 zoi6 gwai2 zik1 soeng6 seoi3 jyut6 zim6 mo4

cang4 gung6 dou6 jat6 je6 miu5 fan1 faan4 do1 cing4 fan6 jing6 ding6 jing6 ho2 zi1 gei2 si6 dung2 ngo5

maang4 muk6 jat1 soeng1 mou4 jan4 cang4 jap6 ngo5 sam1 wo1

Pluto

Yat Sze Austin Cheng Original song: "Rainbow" (Cai Hong; in Mandarin) Singer: Jay Chou / Composed and Original Lyrics by: Jay Chou Verse 1 Slowly, slowly, slowly back and forth across thousands of miles already, But that has never been me who could catch firmly.

Wearing down in infinite dimensions, No matter how focused and loyal I am, it's never clear to anyone Verse 2 Never complained to contribute too much for everyone, Never been stingy to try as best and as fast as I can.

However the story is in fact idled away in words, Even the introduction, no one has picked up the pen to start writing it.

Pre-Chorus 1 In the mortal world those joyful moments vanished away, there's no such fate for affinity; I can leave no aerial regards but revolve myself in the same area.

The past is torn, scattered all over the sky with grumbles; But never realize, how far thousands of billions of miles are.

Chorus 1 I do not cry, let the ocean of stars drown me.

I'm a wasteland, hiding myself alone lightly.

I have nothing good, in this darkness no one understands me, On this orbit, time is idled away gradually.

Verse 2b Have spent many days and nights, seconds and minutes together, According to affection it is determined and approved that my bosom friend

understands me in my soul.

However the Moon has in fact phases with various shapes and faces, Blind and wishful thinking, no one has entered my heart.

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（導歌一改） 塵星間嬉笑散了沒有那種緣

Pre-Chrous 1b

留不低丁點心意在原地轉圈 再見永久 世事再不能勸 對望已經 千億里那麼遠

lau4 bat1 dai1 ding1 dim2 sam1 ji3 zoi6 jyun4 dei6 zyun3 hyun1

（副歌一：重覆） 我沒有哭 任星海淹沒我 我是廢土 輕輕的隱匿一個 我沒有好 在這漆黑內無人明解我 在軌跡上歲月漸磨

Chorus 1 (Repeated)

（說唱一） 萬個圈 億個圈 獨自在轉永沒完 圈與圈與圈太短 望不到很遠 這個世界世界卻叫你情我願 幾多心中的酸酸 都要停轉

Rap 1

（說唱二） 幾個圈 幾個圈 等不到幾遠 都破損 都破損 望不到心軟 要自轉 再自轉 永夜裏空轉

Rap 2

（副歌二） 我沒有哭 任星海淹沒我 我是廢土 孤單的隱匿一個 我沒有好 在這星空內無人明解我 內心眼淚化入銀河

Chorus 2

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can4 sing1 gaan1 hei1 siu3 saan3 liu5 mut6 jau5 naa5 zung2 jyun4

zoi3 gin3 wing5 gau2 / sai3 si6 zoi3 bat1 nang4 hyun3 deoi3 mong6 ji5 ging1 / cin1 jik1 lei5 naa5 mo1 jyun5

ngo5 mut6 jau5 huk1 / jam6 sing1 hoi2 jim1 mut6 ngo5 ngo5 si6 fai3 tou2 / hing1 hing1 dik1 jan2 nik1 jat1 go3 ngo5 mut6 jau5 hou2 / zoi6 ze2 cat1 hak1 noi6 mou4 jan4 ming4 gaai2 ngo5 zoi6 gwai2 zik1 soeng6 seoi3 jyut6 zim6 mo4

maan6 go3 hyun1 / jik1 go3 hyun1 / duk6 zi6 zoi6 zyun3 wing5 mut6 jyun4 hyun1 jyu5 hyun1 jyu5 hyun1 taai3 dyun2 / mong6 bat1 dou3 han2 jyun5 ze2 go3 sai3 gaai3 sai3 gaai3 koek3 giu3 nei5 cing4 ngo5 jyun6 gei2 do1 sam1 zung1 dik1 syun1 syun1 / dou1 jiu3 ting4 zyun2

gei2 go3 hyun1 / gei2 go3 hyun1 / dang2 bat1 dou3 gei2 jyun5 do1 po3 syun2 / do1 po3 syun2 / mong6 bat1 dou3 sam1 jyun5 jiu3 zi6 zyun3 / jiu3 zi6 zyun3 / wing5 je6 leoi5 hung1 zyun3

ngo5 mut6 jau5 huk1 / jam6 sing1 hoi2 jim1 mut6 ngo5 ngo5 si6 fai3 tou2 / gu1 daan1 dik1 jan2 nik1 jat1 go3 ngo5 mut6 jau5 hou2 / zoi6 ze2 sing1 hung1 noi6 mou4 jan4 ming4 gaai2 ngo5 noi6 sam1 ngaan5 leoi6 faa3 jap6 ngan4 ho4

Pre-Chorus 1b Among the stars and dust those joyful moments vanished away, there's no such

fate for affinity; I can leave no tiny bits of regards but revolve myself in the same area.

Goodbye to permanence, there's nothing to speak to change the fact; Looking at each other, it's like as far as thousands of billions of miles already.

Chorus 1 (Repeated) I do not cry, let the ocean of stars drown me.

I'm a wasteland, hiding myself alone lightly.

I have nothing good, in this darkness no one understands me, On this orbit, time is idled away gradually.

Rap 1 Millions of loops, billions of loops, no ends to revolving alone.

Too short for the loop and loop and loop, cannot see through very far.

But this world asks agreement from both you and me, No matter how many sore in my heart, they all have to stop.

Rap 2 Just some loops, just some loops, cannot wait for long; It's all torn, it's all torn, cannot expect/see the softheartedness.

Have to spin, have to spin, revolve with emptiness in the eternal night without purpose.

Chorus 2 I do not cry, let the ocean of stars drown me.

I'm a wasteland, hiding myself alone on my own.

I have nothing good, in this starry sky no one understands me, My tears inside have all dissolved into the Milky Way.

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Da Capo Dylan Carroll

I want to write music on your skin. We’ll keep our measures in treble clef and let our goosebumps tremble to the rhythm of our breathing. There’s this sweet sound in your lips that resonates like slide guitar. So move with me, baby. Tonight we’ll write sheets of music on each other’s bodies for so long that the tune will be stuck in our head for days. Count the beats between the bars; we’ll harmonize on every fourth. The silent beats are for you to savor when you inhale. I want to write pages of music on your skin. I’ll write scales up and down your thighs. I’ll kiss the notes in different octaves until you have heard every pitch of your pulse racing. We’ll sing through different keys and meet somewhere in the middle. There’s a melody in the sheets and I just want you to feel it between your bones. You sigh falsetto and I’ll moan bass. We’ll bite our lips like familiar reeds and vibrate the wind out of our lungs at frequencies only we can hear. So will you dance with me? Dance with me and we’ll write music up and down our sweatshaken bodies until we reach the coda. And when we do I’ll ink a da capo over your heart. You sigh falsetto and I’ll moan bass. Will you dance with me? We’ll shiver onto each other’s measures and before we reach the coda I’ll pencil in a da capo over your heart. You sigh falsetto and I’ll moan bass.

Will you dance with me? We’ll trace our symphonies between the freckles and the spasms in our skin and before we reach the coda I’ll pencil a da capo over your heart. You sigh falsetto and I’ll moan bass.

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Ramp No Religion Souradeep Sinha

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Sidewalk

Thomas Beckley-Forest

The young man shielded his eyes from the sun as he trudged down the street with a heaviness of step that betrayed the sick feeling growing in the pit of his stomach as he neared his destination. Some morbid force was propelling him back to that place, a place now steeped in the dread that the human mind cultivates when marked by trauma. Maybe it was a final attempt at attaining some vestige of closure, or some urge to pay his respects before he left this town for what he hoped was forever.

The man dropped his hand and finally gazed at the scene before him, a stretch of grimy sidewalk sandwiched between an old black lamppost and a dusty brownstone stoop. He recalled a night years ago, when, at least to his young mind, a certain dark glamour had clung to the shadows, and the lamppost cast a dim glow over the assorted characters arrayed under it. He recalled the image with razor-sharp clarity as he mounted the first step of the stoop and surveyed the tableau just as he had that night long ago. He had been younger then, high off the thrill of twilight's risk and whatever other substances on the night's illicit menu, rowdy voices and plotting whispers filling his ears with drunken boasts and muttered schemes.

But now the sun shone brightly, its rays bleaching the area and illuminating all of its ugly details, from the peeling skin of the lamppost to the layers of grime ground into the pavement and the bits of garbage strewn about carelessly. The young man's eyes settled on a dark stain on the pavement and he could not suppress a shudder. The stain had faded somewhat, but he knew the memory of its origin would never fade from his mind. He recalled the moment on that shaded night years ago when the world had changed. The snarl of a vehicle and a short series of harsh militant *pops* shattering the night, sending him into a blinding terror that only subsided into a gut-wrenching desperation, as he got his bearings and realized what had happened. It was cold desperation with no available relief, the kind that stretches out over the following days and weeks and months, a hateful companion who brings the sickening guilt and regret crashing down every day without fail, making the concept of a less awful world seem like a distant and moronic childhood fantasy. The pain subsides eventually, once the human mind has muddled through the grieving process and accepted that the only direction it is capable of is forward.

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The young man tasted the salt of a single tear that had slipped down his face and quickly wiped it away. He knelt down, focusing on a tiny shrine near the foot of the brownstone stoop. It was just a laughably small picture frame and a few wilting flowers, easy for passerby to overlook. The man laid down the single rose in his hand beside the photographed face, the features of whom bore strong similarity to his own, and walked away.

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Yat Sze Austin Cheng 136 | Perception

The Late Shift Lauren Hannah

I only take the late shift.

After the bell tower on the corner strikes midnight And the lights dim; just a little bit Casting trembling shadows on the worn counter tops The room is hushed as the last gleam fades on the red plastic benches Fluorescent, flickering, green signs lining the greasy glass windows The sounds of today washed out the door, tumbled along with the tides When they rolled back into the harbor Coffee fills the air, smells of insomnia And here come the night souls The ones in muted suits; Tired men, saturated with their daily routines And having stashed away the coals of impractical desire in their sleeves Men who would be artists and poets in another life; Who walk like they carry weights around their waists, each imprisoned Each imagining he is the next Harrison Bergeron, bursting forth, Burning, a cigarette, burning to the beat of a reformed reality Slow waves of smoke and ash descending from those cigarettes Between their lips Heads down Hands folded Under the table Lids closed And dreaming.

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Last Words

Arick William Wade

The aroma of the combination of pizza and french-fries overwhelmed my senses as I walked into the pizza shop. A lot has overwhelmed me since I came back from my freshman year of college to my hometown. It’s ironic in a way because this town never changes. The roads look the same. The home looks the same. The recently “renovated” pet store, the one store in a town besides a gas station, isn’t renovated at all. Everything is the same damn thing in this town. I can always expect the light on Farm Road to turn yellow at 11:05 p.m. and I have half a second to decide whether to slam on the brakes or speed through. I always run it because no one is ever out in this town at eleven at night. The busiest times are always the times when people are eagerly getting out of this town on their way to their jobs at businesses across the state. Few, if any, actually work in this town. Why would they? This town sucks the life out of you. It gives you motivation. Motivation to leave. Yet few ever do. They are either stuck, or smart enough to figure out there is no future here.

I didn’t plan on going into the pizza shop, but the new paint job on the roof, changed from an ugly mustard yellow to a lively green to please the eyes of the customer, caught my eye because the food certainly doesn’t. Another thing that pleased my eyes was a classmate of mine who works there. Her name is Juliette. Her rich brown hair was always the same length anytime I saw her. I don’t know if she trimmed it every other day or she was a superior human being that could keep her hair at a certain length at all times. I think the latter because she was the Valedictorian of our class, and one of the few to realize how much better she was than this town. She worked to get into a great school in upstate New York studying Public Health and Biology. Her caring personality translated over to the pizza shack, as she would greet everyone with a greeting that would melt your heart. I smiled to myself as I walked in despite the nauseating smell of onion rings frying in the back fryer, knowing at least I could drop in and say hello. But I knew I wouldn’t see her.

Juliette passed away three months ago at college. Drug overdose.

The one thing that can take a person out of this town without them making a decision is death. No other event can cause a life to change in a matter of seconds. Everyone goes through their own battles and everyone has their scars, but usually scars are noticeable. Not hers. She was so headstrong and full of herself that she never admitted she had a problem. I thought walking

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into the shop she once worked at would help, but the smell kept reminding me of her. Not that she smelled of pizza and onion rings, but the vivid memories of her. I said goodbye to her as I left the store last December during winter break, but I didn’t think it would be the last goodbye. I pictured the last goodbye to be never. A person never envisions a last goodbye because no one thinks of death, but once death happens, that sole thought consumes a person. It can drive a person crazy. I say that because I think it is driving me crazy.

I walked to the counter and saw flyers and pamphlets scattered across the table, landscaping job opportunities and a new one I hadn’t seen before. A drug awareness pamphlet. Last time I was in here, there was a drunk-driving pamphlet after the star quarterback died in a car accident.

As I scanned through the pamphlet, I saw a bullet point titled “Noticeable Signs of Drug Use.” Under that, I scanned and saw a few that stood out to me. Pale. Baggy eyes. All reminded me of my last encounter with her.

“How are you?” I said to her as I was grabbing the pizza to go.

“I am great. You know just working all day in the town of my dreams!” She said in her normal sarcastic tone. The early weeks of winter sure made her turn pale, I thought at the time.

“Yeah I’m ready to get outta here. The town is just nothing compared to what college is like.”

“When I graduate, I’m never coming back here. Oh, here’s your pizza, have a good night. It was great seeing you again,” she said in a sincere voice.

“I’ll see you around. The town is small enough.” I said as I walked out the door.

The last words I said. I reminisce on each and final syllable I spoke to her that day, and wonder now in hindsight how I had no idea. How strong was she that she didn’t succumb to the addiction publicly? Did she die alone? Was she in regret? Or rejoice? I came here looking for answers, but here I am more lost than ever.

I sat in the one empty booth in the corner and closed my eyes.

Not to cry, but just to remember her face. To remember the good in her. To remember her laugh. To remember the yellow and white-striped shirt she would wear. To remember her strength even in her darkest hour. Yet, I had to do more. I had to honor her memory.

I opened my eyes and it was December again. The snow was falling and my windshield was slowly getting covered by specs of snow.

Juliette was in the back and there I was buying my pizza yet again. I am

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watching myself this time. Now, I see the pale and baggy eyes in her facial expression. The fidgety look she has every other minute or so. How badly I want to say something different than just “see you around.” Yet, I can’t speak as I see this final exchange between two old friends. And in a way, I feel content from this. She didn’t plan to die, just as no one plans to live forever. A person’s final words to someone can be anything. It doesn’t have to be special, but instead the memory of their whole life can keep a person sane and not have a two-second exchange drive them insane.

I came in the pizza shop looking for those last words again, but I couldn’t find them. Instead, I found everything else I forgot about her. The snorting laugh. The brown eyes that pierced me each time I saw them. The more I thought of her, the memory of those last words slowly faded and so did the pizza shop. The pizza shop that I thought held so many answers instead was now just a shop. The shop that consumed my mind last week as I drove past it refusing to go in, and here I am. The shop where I had my deepest regret is now gone. I got out of the booth and didn’t look who was working at the cash register now, because to me it will always be Juliette in this place. I stepped out of the pizza shop, refusing to look back at what is now a mere memory. I looked forward and saw the future. I saw Juliette in the distance. I saw the highway through the trees of my town, hidden, but not lost, and hopped in my car and drove out of sight.

Just like Juliette, I got out of this town.

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detached

Brandon Strouse connections made through reflections cause ties at intersections knowledge gained the more i know get scared and start neglecting i'm sorry that i do this truth is i feel useless cause when it comes to love i can't prove it so that takes some faith and mine ain't so great i’ve been hurt but what's worse is when i tried again only shallow dirt i unearthed i'm not the victim i'm part of the problem put myself in the middle then try to solve em that's the best way ain't it though treat a girl like a queen still easy to let her go is there something wrong with that i think that might be the fact the proof of nothing sacred in the scratches on my back

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Lessons Learned the Hard (Candy) Way Karli Gasteiger

There was this one time in a Kinney Drugs Store when I couldn’t have been more than a week shy of turning five (or maybe six). I was one of those defiant, stubborn little assholes that most five or six-year-olds are.

I wanted my first taste of hard candy – “grown-up candy”, the non-chewy variety – that was always so deliciously denied to me.

The denial was indeed delicious, as it only made me want it more. “No”, my mother would spout off, half firmly and half vexed, at her wits end. “You’ll choke on it.”

The bag of candies sat unassumingly, indifferently, in the top part of the cart meant to seat toddlers, and I babysat that bag with an attentive eye all the way down what could have been Aisle 4, or just as easily Aisle 8 - I didn’t bother to know or care; down we went through aisles 10, 11, 13…Checkout.

Finally. I studied the cashier’s every movement – what bag the candies were put in, whether they were placed at the very top or in the bottom, everything. I was obsessed with getting my hands and tongue all over them.

After the arduous checkout procedure, my mom had to go pick up a prescription at the pharmacy counter. Now impatient as ever, I went into tugging-on-shirt-and-whiny-jumping-up-and-down-badgering mode. “Pleeease? Come on Mommy. Pretty Please?” I would. Not. Relent. I think my mother had finally had it when she turned around abruptly, yet somewhat sympathetically, and placed a single coveted candy in my greedy, sweaty little palm. She looked me straight in the eye and planted the seed that begged to be dug up and re-planted elsewhere, just because I could.

“Whatever you do, just DON’T swallow it.”

It was a dare.

Because, you see, I was that type of five-year-old that liked taking a yard when given an inch. I was such an ungrateful, devious little bastard that I made a habit out of breaking any sort of societal norms placed upon me and always executed the exact opposite of whatever, just because. So now was no different. I zealously peeled off the cellophane barrier and popped the sweet, and to this day I can’t remember its flavor; whether it was cherry, lemon, or Jalapeno Habanero, I cannot ever know, because I swallowed that sucker immediately. Consummate. Complete. Choate…

Choking.

And that was all it took. The novelty of finally consuming the forbidden quickly subsided into succumbing to the act’s painful

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consequences. Why? Because I was completely and totally delinquent about it, naturally.

That was the day I realized my esophagus was more of a garbage disposal than a garbage chute– I could feel the rough edges grinding into my throat and being sucked down, way too slowly, and inside it was very, very loud but on the outside I couldn’t make a sound. To five-year-old me, this felt like dying. Or a really horrible time-out.

Panicked looks abounded, incredulous yet suspecting all at once. Mainly, there were these very distinct, fearful, “should-I-do-CPR” type looks so characteristic of panicked people in the presence of a choking person.

I can’t even remember hearing anything, just… those expressions on peoples’ faces. Complete strangers’ concerned, ludicrous faces. In fact, one saw me before my mom did, and tried some kind of advance, like a lurch towards me, a sort of swooping in to save the day, but I promptly pushed them off and away – because in my head I knew I should never EVER take candy from strangers, let alone allow them to help me cough some up.

And I’m starting to get grabbed. From behind. I hope it’s not a stranger, was all I could think.

And people are running about like lunatic headless chickens. And I have a front-row seat, struggling in slow-mo.

And then it happens.

The tightness is gone and the candy is too. Just… vanished. “You swallowed it!” My mom gasps. And I can’t tell if she is incredulously stating the credulous obvious, or genuinely surprised at the fact it actually went down and not up again, no Heimlich required. I honestly to this day can’t tell if this was a pointless, belated chide or a legitimate manifesto of awe.

Probably an equivocal combination of both.

And so, that was my swan song with hard candies until I was probably twelve or so – whatever age one is deemed mature enough to handle sucking on a couple of Werther’s Originals. Because that day I ascertained just how much a propensity I have for biting off more than I can chew (or swallow) and watching, feeling, it all go down.

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Virus

Darcy Feeley 144 | Perception

Five Poetic Senses Tiara Lowery

How long will it be before you are just a mere poem to me?

A melancholic melody for my eyes and no longer your soothing songs upon my ears, The burn and biting pain of the words from my paper rather than feeling the ginger touch from your own two hands, Tasting pure bitterness on the rear of my tongue from lines that pushed and shoved their way back there unlike the sweetness once devoured from your lips, The stench of foul, putrid stanzas swirling about the atmosphere, contrasting the light, minty conversations we once had, Seeing the anguish of words between spaces and commas and your familiar figure fading away, like Gaussian blur upon a silhouette, contrary to your once, approaching shape with your smiling eyes and your nonexistent cares.

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“Guapo”

Christopher Rivera Sólo la idea de tu amistad, a veces me lleva a las lágrimas.

Ojalá pudiera expresar todo lo que siento por ti por la hora diaria.

El tiempo pasa rápido aún cuando mis ojos se calleron sobre ti y el mundo se puso lento.

Yo no era capaz de ponerse al día como me quedé con el mismo tempo. ¿Pero porqué no puedes alcanzar a través de todo el mundo ... y complacerme? ¿La forma en que tu lo hiciste hace tanto tiempo? Dos meses no, cinco meses atrás.

El reloj avanza hacia adelante pero mi mano se lanza hacia atras.

No puedo mirarme en el espejo.

Me recuerdo mucho de lo que yo quiero, y lo que no puedo darse el lujo de tener.

Para permitir que las olas me abrazan cuando yo cierro mis ojos. El aroma de ese aire de mar de Barcelona.

Esa sensación de euforia todavía no se a ido sin embargo aquí estoy sufriendo en las tundras de invierno.

En un país plagado de odio y un destino que sólo va a conducir a debates más destructivos.

Yo estaba en paz, o al menos, que yo como la vida que había vivido se tuvo en cuenta.

Se ha demostrado ser deficiente y sin embargo, esa experiencia que tuve, Llenaba tantos espacios abiertos. Se contesto muchas preguntas.

Di un paso en ese avión. Tanto lamento visible en mi cara. Me encontré con el tiempo.

Era el momento de decir adiós.

Aquí estoy.

Sentado en una habitación.

Mi sueño Americano.

Pensé que tenía todo.

Hasta que mis ojos habían caído sobre ti.

Ya yo no estoy en España pero todavía te puedo oír.

Guapo. Mi Rey.

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“Handsome” (Translation) Just the thought of your friendship at times brings me to tears.

I wish I could just convey all of what I feel for you by the daily hour.

Time moves fast yet when my eyes fell upon you the world went slow.

I wasn’t able to catch up as I stuck to the same tempo.

Why can’t you reach out across the world…and indulge me?

The way you did not so long ago? two months no, five months back.

The clock ticks forward yet my hand is cast aback.

I can’t look at myself in the mirror.

I remind myself too much of what I desire and what I luxuries I can’t have.

To let the waves embrace me as I close my eyes. The smell of that Barcelona sea air.

That sense of euphoria has yet to depart and yet here I suffer up in the winter tundra.

In a country plagued with hate and a fate that’ll only lead to more destructive debates.

I was at peace, or at least, I thought I was as the life I had lived was taken into account.

It was shown to be lacking and yet that experience I had, It filled so many open spaces. It answered so many questions.

I stepped on that plane. So much regret visible on my face. I caught up with time.

It was time to say goodbye.

Here I am.

Sitting in a room.

My all American dream.

I thought I had it all.

Until my eyes had fallen upon you.

I’m no longer in Spain but I can still hear you.

Handsome. My king.

“In Honor of my host-mom in Spain and someone special who I won’t name.”

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Behind the Server’s Smile Lynn Chui

I’m about to dive into an atmosphere of expensive tastes under control but cheap emotions dicating cries for more in synchronized, weightless partnerships between customer and businessman.

I’m 30 and I’ve just been free-falling desiring rebirth but I am swimming still headlong into Korea, where a sprinkling of my youthful passion still lies in open mouths, behind closed doors, in full stomachs, and in empty promises.

Noah’s Ark brought beats without the salvation poetry flying from my pen I ask when will the time come where 7:15 no long bring with it nicotine and a shady dimepiece but peace instead kinda miss my mom, but I love the states of apathy drowning in the depths only wanting to float in freedom head above murky water champion of my own flow controller of my own desires but perhaps purification of the soul won’t ever come if I am still scared of silence.

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