C A T C H
Vol 53 Issue
1
CATCH
Volume 53 Issue 1
CATCH MAGAZINE Fall 2020
Letter From The Editor Howdy folks, How wonderful, the book is finally here! Before you is the first edition of the 53rd volume of Catch Magazine. This book has taken some time to get here and it’s worth celebrating. Through everything, Catch is such a great rock for us to lack back on every year, and discover something new. Opposite to the page is someone who is deserving of something good, something worth taking a moment to enjoy. It is a pleasure to be taking part in such a wonderful project, even if you are just making space for it in your head and heart. So, editor’s orders, please allow for yourself to breathe, maybe get something to drink (I am always partial to caffeinated drinks but your favorite beverage will work perfectly), and read some superb and strange things, look at some interesting art, and let yourself be tickled pink. Catch would like to thank our advisor Cyn Fitch and the department members Gina Franco, Chad Simpson, Nick Regiacorte, Emily Anderson, Monica Berlin, Roya Biggie, Sherwood Kiraly, Beth Marzoni, Barbara Tannert-Smith, Robert Smith. Thank you to Brent Pflederer and the Premiere Printing Group, Missy Kratz, and all of the people that helped along the way. Thank you Sam for creating the first audio publishing of Catch. Catch is elated to keep publishing and remain a part of a community that loves art and words so passionately, we are honored. I can’t wait to see you in spring, the sun will feel so warm and the prairie will glow in the light. I hope you are all well, I love you, Veronica Sefic Editor-in-Chief
Awards 2019 2016 2014 2009 2008 2005 2004 2003 1985 1983
International Pacemaker Award Finalist Associated Collegiate Press - Minneapolis, MN International Pacemaker Award Finalist Associated Collegiate Press - Minneapolis, MN National Program Director’s Prize Association of Writers and Writing Programs - Fairfax, VA International Pacemaker Award Finalist Associated Collegiate Press - Minneapolis, MN International Pacemaker Award Associated Collegiate Press - Minneapolis, MN International Pacemaker Award Associated Collegiate Press - Minneapolis, MN International Pacemaker Award Finalist Associated Collegiate Press - Minneapolis, MN National Program Director’s Prize- Literary Magazine AWP Program Director’s Prize - Fairfax, VA National Program Director’s Prize- Literary Magazine AWP Program Director’s Prize - Fairfax, VA National Program Director’s Prize- Literary Magazine Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines- New York, NY
Staff Editor In Cheif Veronica Sefic
Art
Design Phelix Venters-Sefic Sadie Cheney Shae Salts
Analytical Non-Fiction Kaitlyn Cashdollar
Public Relations Shae Salts Poetry Lily Lauver Matrice Young Drama Sebastiano Masi
B.P. , Brianna Perry
Fiction Aditi Parikh Sam Lisec Music Lily Gates Journalisum Sadie Cheney Creative Non-Fiction Carlos Claudio
Contents Poetry 15 Firefly in a Meltdown Garden - Kenna Bell 16 Trench Coat - Kenna Bell
17 MANIFESTO OF AFRO-ABSURD - Kewalnam Christ 19 Wasp on a Lake - Emma E. Watkins 20 An Eleven Year Old Gives God an Ultimatium Jaime Lam 21 A Flag Bakes Cookies in the Kitchen, Meanwhile a Daughter Stays Forever Fifteen - Jaime Lam 23 Surf Permit Renewal Policies - Laim Wholihan 24 In Brazoria County - Rachel Sullivan 26 Little Miss Yvette - Jaime Lam 27 The Mermaid and the Nudist - Christa Vander Wyst 29 THE HUMAN BRAIN IS A HOLOGRAM WITH NOTHING TO DO. - Kewalnam Christ 30 FNOoI eEAYTON - Christa Vander Wyst 31 God is brought into the poem - James Cook 32 Jane Doe - James Cook 33 CHARLIE BROWN BLUES - Kewalnam Christ 34 Quarter Life Catastrophe - Jaime Lam
Drama 38 The Talk - Julia Porter 40 Morgan’s Journal - Kaitlyn Agress 64 To Be Shared - Shae Gabriel
Analytical Non-Fiction 76 War Torn - Jia Self 79 Have Some Cake and Eat It Too - Jia Self 82 The Patriarchal Paradox of Gender in Pan’s Labyrinth Aditi Parikh 86 Doubling in Lincoln in the Bardo - Elizabeth George
Fiction 92 Linda - Ashley Pearson 94 Indebted - Lily Lauver 97 The Untitles Fan Applauds the Grace of Epithet Franziska Hofhansel 98 Gracie - Zoe Pearson 102 The Pleiades - John Muth 108 Hand-Backs - Sarah Lohman
Art 118 Untitled - Sydney Gillette 119 Yellow Jacket - Sydney Gillette 120 Plantfeed - Sydney Gillette 121 Sweater - Wilder Myslivy 122 Pushing - Kaitlyn Pepper 123 A Collage of Childhood Femininity - Zoe C Pearce 124 Storm - Payton Shaw 125 I Pretty U Ugly - Phelix Venters- Sefic 126 Self fulfilling prophecy - Glen Malast 127 There’s Something In The Water - Zach Farmer 128 Cogitation - Sydney Gillette 129 Beheading - Phelix Venters- Sefic 130 Women’s Work: Bombe - Michelle Dudley 131 Solar - Sydney Gillette
Music 135 i-80 - Milo Camaya 135 Golden Gate - Milo Camaya 137 Hottest Month of Summer (from Orange EP) - Ellie Baird
137 Fair (from Orange EP) - Ellie Baird 138 Crystals - Olive Colangelo, Fay Swift
Contents Journalisum 146 What To Do If You Were The Asshole - Elleri Scriver 148 The Whale in the Room - Soleil Smith, Phelix Venters-Sefic 151 The Computer Powered Experience - Samuel Lisec
Creative Non-Fiction 154 Donnie Sleeps With Rats - Sarah Carter 157 Almanac of the Time, of Us, In It: a glossasy - Abigail Breslin, Jaelon M. Brooks, Kailin Cutliff, Alex Davis, Lily Gates, Nora Glowacki, Shannon Hall, Marcus Harris, Jaime Lam, Archi Nokrek, Einar Pieler, Lua Powers, Isaiah Simon, Sophie Swan 178 i.e. - Jaime Lam 181 Period Piece - Katie Carlson 183 Little Black Box - Jia Self 186 West Main, Winter Street, 206 West Main Jaime Lam 187 I Remember - Archi Nokrek 189 Tensile Strength - Liam Wholihan 191 They Can Scrape My Fungus Off of My Dead Body Sarah Carter 194 Beldangi Rain - Sailesh Dahal 196 Wreck - Jaime Lam
POETRY
FIREFLY IN A MELTOWN GARDEN Kenna Bell
After a few days of digging, my shovel squanders a living frog and we watch it die, limbs not even twitching, too blunt to feel the pain of its own death. One day we will break through to it. For now we lift wide eyes from that demanding depth, knowing proximity still makes us accountable to it. Meanwhile we drop the shovel and make our way back to the lake, back to knowing, as rain reverses itself into itself. So maybe some old and tired imagination dips through and out of here, too, sulking away from that accidental jerk and speckled flesh. Follow the tired story, its heat, a glimpse of dust and settled history, quiet turns and wasteland trails where trees reach out and into their ruins, more beautiful ruins, so far down from that flower in the cemetery and the Wood-Sorrel star and the path we had demolished for ourselves, the fire so hastily drowned, that still and twinkling eye.
Poetry - 15
TRENCH COAT Kenna Bell
If it had been more like a castle, some built-up Rules about defense and opulence from ditch-clawing Caves, then maybe We would have seen it for what it was: a moat And not the back seat or the bed being bad or Being nothing, doesn’t matter What you do as long as it goes away. Like coaxed-out Handfuls of imaginary dirt that could Melt, then maybe Thrown into rooms or magnificent empires, the knights Would find you soft beneath shields of metal, It wouldn’t matter, just bleed A winding torrent, some inundation, ask it to be anything But a ride to somewhere else
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A MANIFESTO OF AFRO-ABSURD Kewlnam Christ
The socio-politico-cultural movement described as Surrealism depicts the universal human quest in maladroit juxtapositions of loneliness, revulsion, madness, non-reality, angst, and euphoria within an ambiguous, incongruous, and albeit symbolically paradoxical framework. Surrealism is not merely fantastical or bizarre melting clocks without time, African villages turned on its side, or bowler hats, but a vanquishing of death, or at least the fear of it. It is the sanguine face we wear in response to life by incomprehension; resigned to an existence without Biblical meaning. The word first appeared in 1917, in the literature of French poet Guillaume Apollinaire who used it to describe his own work ‘The Breasts of Tiresias’. He believed Surrealism and all of its discomfiting awareness meant the fruits of the human condition freed from the task of imitating the human condition. Surrealism was born out of the spirit of Dada, it emerged in Europe during the tenuous-turbulent years of WWI leading up to WWII. It crosses borders seamlessly between animate and inanimate, conscious and subconscious. However, Freud himself disparaged this ideology. He acknowledged that Surrealist artists were producing great works, but wholeheartedly believed that ego and conscious laid foliage along the passage. So the art continued, but the movement of the bizarre, the irrational, oftentimes hyper-attentive and hallucinatory lost its vigor and momentum. Later, in 1974 Amiri Baraka coined the radical-racial plurality of Afro-surrealism. D. Scot Miller penned the manifesto in 2009 with permission by Baraka, in it he asserted the Afrosurreal rejected the quiet servitude that characterizes existing for African Americans...” It is the Future-Past, present-day realism, and the everyday lived experience, it is Samuel R. Delany’s 1974 Dhalgren, Toni Morri-
son’s Beloved, Arthur Jafa and “the alien familiar,” Kanye West Yeezus, Beyonce & Jay going Apeshit in the louvre, “Get Out” and “Atlanta”, “Sorry to Bother You,” Prince’s Purple revolution, Bob Kaufman, Jean-Michel, Ralph Ellison’s 1952 classic novel Invisible Man, African and African-Caribbean artists André Breton and Aimé Césaire, René Ménil’s Antillanité movement, Kool Keith’s Dr. Octagonecologyst! This is Afro-Surreal! Afro-Surreal postulates the internal black experience beyond the rational mind, striving to manifest with this visible world. Afro-Surrealists recognize the concept of “symbolic immortality,” that we might be freed from the tyranny of the mundane, of logic, and that we might discover truths more real than reality. Afro-surrealism is the juxtapositions of untamed thought, cymbals of deeper experience between the primal Dionysian and the plastic intellectual Apollonian, the Dionysian speaks to the emotional mind, while the Apollonian speaks to the rational mind. Afro-Surrealists build distinctive worlds ruled by unfiltered, unapologetic blackness. This is Afro-Surreal! While Afrofuturism refers to free expression of black subjectivity, the unearthing and sometimes reconstruction of buried African history, a contemporary genre of Black diasporic writers, artisans, musicians, theorists, and philosophers that blend Afro-culture, sci fi, magical realism, technology, and traditional African myths & mysticisms. It is the language of rebellion taking many forms, both posthuman and technological, an intersectional lens through which we view futures or alternate realities, where worlds exist without European colonialism or pseudo-Western Enlightenment. Reimagining new forms of temporality at the intersection of time, memory, and love, while seeking to reclaim black identity. Afrofuturism is a reaction to European Poetry - 17
expression, and the global status quo, it wrestles with political, economic, social, and technological inequalities. The term derives from a 1994 essay “Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyberculture” by Mark Dery, an author, critic, and essayist. Dery used the term to define “speculative fiction that treats African-American themes and addresses African-American concerns in the context of 20th-century technoculture — and more generally, African-American signification that appropriates images of technology and a prosthetically enhanced future.” That describes W.E.B DuBois, Ralph Ellison, Octavia Butler, Martin Delany, Charles Chesnutt, Nnedi Okorafor, Edward Johnson, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, Outkast, Erykah Badu, Solange, Sun Ra, George Clinton and his band Parliament and again Prince. A MANIFESTO OF AFRO-ABSURD Behold the wildly unreasonable, illogical, or inappropriate! You shall see unknown wonders! 1. We recognize the confrontation be tween the Afro-Absurdist’s need and the unreasonable silence of the world. 2. We must liberate ourselves from the inertia resulting from centuries of Euro centric Dominance and Normalization, and the cold brick cynical insincerity of America’s antonymous bastard children. 3. We shall not despair in the face of mis ery or atrocity, we shall not theorize it’s ridiculousness. 4. We propose a pragmatic compromise between two similar notions; Afro-futur ism and Afro- Surrealism, speaking to the tourist and purist within both simul taneously. 5. Afro-Absurdists acknowledge the Buddhistized between the black experi ence and its meaning. Afro-Absurdists are aware—of their own dissonance as if observing from afar. 6. Afro-Absurdists are caught with-in the empirical and aphoristic self-aware ness of paradoxical ambition and identity. We embrace the ambiguous, the fluid, the dandy, the post-racial, the ironic, the 18 - Poetry
sincere, naive, knowingness, relativism, and truth. 7. Afro-Absurdists respond to political propaganda with nonsense, cultivating lunacy and hysteria when audience tries to find faith in reason while address ing the disillusionment of our generation in relation to all current and future events. Afro-Absurdists revel in the ephemeral and illusory inherent in race while understanding the impersonal cosmos renders race meaningless and insignificant. 8. Afro-Absurdists are intersexed with the Afro-Futurists, Afro-Surrealists, Afro-Asiatic, Afro- Cuban, African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, the birth of the civil rights movement, the Black Dadaists, the LGBTQ commu nity, anti-war, feminist, environmental, free speech, while weaponizing subver sion and hybridization as a form of dis obedience, and relishing in the absurd as visitations from God. 9. Afro-Absurdists are agnostic and reject the quiet servitude of collapsed icons, borderline misotheistic. We believe in the democratization of entropic dissemblance. Afro-Absurdists are God Killers. 10. Afro-Absurdists reimagine existing structures, we turn within for direction, we are our own OG’s.
You’re against us, if you’re not against who we’re against. If you’re with them, you’re against us. If you follow them, you’re against us. If we’re too weird for you, you’re against us.
WASP ON A LAKE Emma E. Watkins
She was told to love the wasp that stung her for it did not know what it had done yet the bee had to have known because he did it again many times over and over again She was told to love the wasp that stung her for it did not know what it had done yet the wasp had to have known because he did it again many times over and over again
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AN ELEVEN YEAR OLD GIVES GOD AN ULTIMATUM Jaime Lam
The house was suffocating to our dear girl Bella. She would part our knees through the front door to launch out to feel freedom bursting through her coat. The way her hair caught sunlight, the way her body could kick up wind because of how she loved to run—to be free—to finally be able to: breathe. When Kendall carried laundry out, that’s when she’d sneak away, It’s not that she didn’t love us; we took her off the streets. One day she caught the ajar chance to slip out after him. I fleeted close behind, as I was taught to catch and watched as a truck came streaking in, turning my Bella baby’s skull into a baseball with a headlight at so many miles. How her body rolled, how Mom flashed after my brother to save him from the sight, and didn’t notice I stood statue on the porch to witness as it drove away. She shoved me inside and I laid in my bed to pray. I gave god an ultimatum, a choice for him to make. I made it with my eyes open, because closed I saw her soul being hit out into the field for the home run.
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A FLAG BAKES COOKIES IN THE KITCHEN, MEANWHILE A DAUGHTER STAYS FOREVER FIFTEEN Jaime Lam
—After “A Bronzville Mother Loiters in Mississippi, Meanwhile a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon” by Gwendolyn Brooks She’s always had a heroic hope for a Soldier, who drank violence in the name of righteousness. How they shot down to save the innocent and came back without the bloodstains, as to keep her house all clean. So many years spent in her lonesome home —where her babies could be babies— and no Soldier to defend them, against the world’s ebb and flow. So when the Soldier saw Our small-town Mother, through his polished scope she was quick to powder up her nose, and sweep the divorce under bed, and tuck away her three young children. He would always take to top because he liked her underneath him. The Soldier had no trouble marking to claim his place. In fact he had a glint, in his smile like a polished gun to take down those who dare invade. Soldier knew a battlefield, and loved to build a family there. So enthralled to not be lonely she didn’t witness how he boarded up the windows? and kept the key for himself alone? How guns became a way of living with them, and a silent battle began to brew. The ring he bought her like he bought her
began to strangle up her finger, but what of the home she did not own? A divorced Mother—she was—no longer, what hell it would be for her to turn back. She was stunned to the smoke as he began to march to Dictator, and suddenly her womb became his territory. More of her home belonged to him. More of her family belonged to him. More of her body belonged to him, more of her life belonged to him. A battle began between the Soldier and her babybrown-eyed daughter, as she did not favor his orders. Our Mother felt her swollen self could promise a peace treaty, but the seed of himself he planted grew daily, and he felt there was no room for a challenge to his authority; especially from the daughter, of an Enemy. The Soldier encroached against Our Mother, capturing her hips from behind, a demand to swallow up her mind as he seemed to sense her doubts. Catching shells of herself, inside his eye, he held captive. She asked her reflection if she could escape. But how Our swollen Mother felt no place to turn. The wrinkle catching by her eye, the grays she felt she had to dye, but he looked at her like treasure?—but her daughter— Trapping her words inside his lips, siphoned out her thoughts to take her silence as permission, and she decided Poetry - 21
that perhaps? there would not be bloodshed? Since he stole her words, he armed himself with teeth to grow a home into a warzone. Their walls already tended to bleed, but Our Mother tried not to see, so Mother’s love was lost. The declaration of war beat up against the windows. She tried not to see how his eyes twinkled like shell casings. He did not see the baby-brown eyes. She tried not to see how he thought her daughter was no longer her daughter but Enemy. The way her freckles now looked like shrapnel remains? and her small size, like a pocket grenade? Our Mother grew fearful of what he would do, if she went to war for her. “A Traitor!” His sentencing would siren. He’d claim the unborn child were too. Boot them all out to fend for themselves, in the name of his blood-shedding country. Her daughter was no longer her daughter, but Enemy. A hand to shield her ticking womb, she bit the bullet and called Time to fend for herself. The Mother left Our Enemy to fight her own battles, alone in a house full of family. Perhaps too young to be enlisted. Perhaps she grew too quiet. Hell fought out all, inside her young head, but she had no one to listen. She kept her battle plans silently, for enticing company, until one day she didn’t. The Mother and Our Enemy both sealed their lips. The only thing they shared these past months be Silence. The Mother picking a side to keep the peace. More of a flag than a mother, and Our Enemy fought her way out to win. The flag did not hear as Our Enemy descended into the trenches, breaking the silence to shoot hell to all sorts of pieces, 22 - Poetry
inside, her fifteen-year old head: Dead, and left the world to fend for themselves, all lonesome.
SURF PERMIT RENEWAL POLICIES Laim Wholihan
As usual, Dewey Beach has filled our footprints from last summer. Whole coast has undone our truck’s tire tracks like nothing, but you know how that goes: how the breakers’ foam misses parting to your ankles but how that’s nothing special. Still, I wanna show you the floor mats before I shake the sand out of ‘em, wanna tell you how today’s spectacle was neither of us finding a fishing weight in the pickup truck. Dad & I forgot the tackle kit, me mostly. I assumed our toolboxes would guarantee us the usual redundancy. That splaying their contents along the tailgate would find us an appropriate weight to slump the arc of a fishing line, blend it into the water light enough that the rod’s bending would point to horizon. But nothing volunteered into our palms from behind the backseat cushions, among two unclipped tool belts, power drills in milk crates, or six open toolboxes packed for work tomorrow. At least the lures & bait are for appearances. A taut fishing rod’s just part of keeping our summer surf permit, our permission from Delaware Fish & Wildlife to lower the tire pressure & park unbothered wherever the flood-tide relents on any given day, to swim every length of Rehoboth as we fit it into a beach umbrella’s shadow, or however far that & two beach chairs claims. S’all ours, long as the coast
patrol thinks we’re trying to catch something & we’ve paid our surf tags up to date. You know the beach’d patience us both as long as we could need to find a suitable weight, but the only thing waiting for us on our side of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge’s shadow is a work day, & we drove here to swim. Maybe you’ll think dad impatient, but the day’s sweating down his neck too much to not swaddle a spare crowbar with revolutions of slack, fishing line tightened palm whiteningly so, & laugh from under his work: this shit’s for big fish. He smirks me the crowbar & says swim it out. Line’s uncastable with this much heavy, but nothin’ll wash back this way, we’ll look plenty taut to anyone watching. So I tiptoe our crowbar through breakers knocking my chest, asking if I still have ribs beneath, if I’ve grown anything between my lungs & the ocean yet. From the shore, Dad waves me out til I’ve got world up to my chin & what’s left of the distance between me & the horizon nudging salt up my bottom lip.
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IN BRAZORIA COUNTRY Rachel Sullivan
A target, a bow, an arrow to my ear. Nana to the side, brother in the pool. Grandpére keeps me steady, hand on my shoulder. The arrow goes wide and we laugh and laugh. * Lake Jackson Texas — Small town drawl Small town church Small town doctor * Swamp land Swamp air Brown creek Green tint High trees Low moss * “Did you know these roads, They used to be made of oyster shells?” Oyster Creek ran by their house — still Runs by the house but it’s not theirs — The shells, ground up, Became gravel for the roads The old roads, the ones That my mom walked. “That bathtub is too heavy to move; The creek put it there when it was higher.” Oyster creek ran by their house — Carried one half of a porcelain tub there — Stubborn, marking a time capsule So many steps away, now Dig. For the memories, The ones my mom gave us. 24 - Poetry
“See, when it rains, the creek rises And if it gets past that tree, it’s overflowing its banks.” Oyster Creek ran by their house — Too close by their house sometimes — When the hurricanes came they Worried about their Garden, pool, yard: the one That my mom grew up in. * The creek waters the grass, trees, bushes Everything In Lake Jackson is green — Including my grandfather’s grave. * My Nana always loved bravery’s adrenaline But Grandpére was always a doctor. “Laughter is the best medicine” His stern straight face almost hid the secret: There might be salt in the sugar tin. * This is obvious: cancer is cruel. It steals your energy, your health, your hair. But the cruelest act was Not the way he aged in months For every day. The cruelest was that after he said my name, he paused, he— who had wielded language like an artist paint— because he could not find the sounds for what he would have said. The cruelest act was that
cancer stole his words. * The 6 am death: My dad, the green couch. I have never seen tears on his cheeks until now, Unashamed in his sorrow. He says what is obvious; I cannot think to reply. We sit, silent, mirroring. until my sister wakes and Dad holds our inherited tears. * The news is a thud at your chest: Freeze for a moment Look down at the arrow Stuck through your lung. Huh. Blood starts to spill onto shaking hands. Time Moves Too Slow And then catches up with a snap. The pain slams into you. Drop to your knees, wonder why you are not crying. Sit with this pain Until you know it will never end and Until you understand he’s not coming back and Until tears mix with the blood. *
There were so many pillows. I could hear Grandpere making coffee in the mornings. So I knew it was time to run down And help cut the fruit for breakfast Before we took coffee and pills to Nana. Grandpere always made sure Nana remembered her pills. Now she has a case with labelled days. I’m not sure what happened to the veil of wooden beads. The blanket is in her new house, I think. The plates we’d put the fruit on are mine. The cowboy room was freedom and pillows In a world of pencils and pebbles. * She touches his picture in the front room Speaks of Heaven and how dare he be happy there without her. Speaks of her friends and how dare they ask her to be happy without him. She tells his stories like they’re as clear as the Houston sky Whispers, “He’s my husband, my best friend, my boyfriend. I can cover this house with his face if I want to I can love him all I want to.” * Sand still in my hair from the morning beach I wish I tanned like my sister But Robin Hood daydreams distract me I wait for my turn—impatient Sand still in my hair from the morning beach.
Creek oozes to sea Burnt winds press paintbrush flowers Pencil trees scrape sky *
In the air thick with boiled water from the Gulf, Arrows still fly easy. My aim is amateur But one strikes the soft backyard target In the air thick with boiled water from the Gulf.
I always got the cowboy room. Once I was old enough to have my own, I mean. It was upstairs to the left. There was a veil of wooden beads Hanging over the bathroom doorway. The blanket was white and red;
My Grandpére keeps me steady; Nana keeps an eye on my brother by the pool I call her name and she cheers my success I notch another arrow My Grandpére keeps me steady. D.C al Fine Poetry - 25
LITTLE MISS YVETTE Jaime Lam
-After Erika Meitner
My sister ten years outgrown me, changing our diapers, watching us in the ugly orange house on the corner. My brother and I were the toddlers out of four children; we would scale to the top of the stair’s wooden railing. Our sister would scream at us to get down. Her fingers would arch like a birthing spine to flick the back of our ears; as our nurse mother set out from sunrise to aching afternoons to finally lay down. In the sunroom, behind an old beaten chair unattended, my brother shoved a pencil into a light socket. I remember my mother’s slack, relaxed face while I looked at the remnants of black marks on his palms and feet be wiped clean by a wet rag. Once, I fed my brother balmex like it was pudding, when he wasn’t choking on food or earrings. He would light matches in the bathroom and drop them into the toilet for my sister to discover. After years of watching our mother work with five blown discs in her back, my sister swore: “never children.”
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THE MERMAID AND THE NUDIST Christa Vander Wyst
—After John McCarthy i. [Crayfish Hunting] I used to bike around Gurnee with the neighborhood boys and my sister. I don’t think they wanted me along but moms have a way of insisting, demanding really, that everyone be included. “But not the weird kids, they’re . . .weird.” On a trail at the park two doors down from my house, we took a sharp left, so sharp that the trail cut a hole in my left eyeball and inserted gems into my retina, transforming it into a kaleidoscope. A stream of water trailed down from an unknown source, a sheet of pristine glass luring me to water. Stop! Shouted the oldest boy. If you stick your hand in too far, the crayfish will get you. Let them be my sirens, I wanted to tell him, though, at the time I had no idea what a siren was—or a crayfish. From further up the stream we saw a girl, scarcely clothed, painting murals in the water. When she saw us she fled, startled, and I imagined she jumped into the stream, sprouted
a tail and befriended the crayfish. If I were to go back to that spot now, take that sharp left, the trail would smear my eyes with dirt, the sirens would yank me into the water, let the crayfish devour me. Before they took that last bite they’d thrust me to the surface, make me see the space the way it truly was— crushed beer bottles, condom wrappers, one of those couches people kick to the curb, a toilet sitting back behind the shrubbery—a mermaid’s throne. Now I know she was homeless. ii. [In the Drainage Ditch] Her name was Brittany and she’d grow up to be among the popular girls. But this was fourth grade and no one cared what you looked like as long as you weren’t deformed. And you would know if you were deformed because kids don’t know how to not stare. Brittany’s mom picked me up for a playdate on a brisk January afternoon, drove us to the local sledding hill which laughed in our faces, pinched our cheeks, sent us Poetry - 27
back to the car, playdate over. I know a place. It was somewhere behind the house being strangled by vines, a drainage ditch the neighborhood boys shifted gears for before cutting through a stranger’s lawn. She’d put up a no trespassing sign a few weeks later. But this was then and then was now and so we sled down the drainage ditch whose deformities lay under the white-out, we ran back up the hill, and if we uncovered any grass we didn’t see it. Switching sides to a steeper slope, my eye caught sight of movement. A girl in the window of the house, naked, curled up in a ball, staring out at us until a car door slammed shut, two men climbed out— to this day I can’t remember the shape of the car or the statures of the men or the color of the house. But I can remember the vines, the white ground, the boot tracks, the stranger’s patio lights, the girl’s bob, how her torso retreated from the window when it heard the slam, and even in movement was mesmerizing.
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THE HUMAN BRAIN IS A HOLOGRAM WITH NOTHING TO DO Kewalnam Christ
There is this god, who, not unlike my alcoholic father, prophesizes a lot about love, yet loves to punish. Call him Buddha, Call him Krishna, Call him Yahweh, Zorastor, Jesus, Muhammed, America, Money, or the Sound ofEye. I don’t care, It’s all the same shit, as a man resembles another, fly, a flower...etc.. I lament my status as a mote and beam. I am more than a phantasy in God’s nascent eye! I am more than a man on his knees with both hands up. I am the light dancing on a thimble, all light, no shadow. I just need something strong enough to deliver me from myself and lead me not into confusion. When again never stops happening in this fecund silence: When there isn’t enough of me in the lives of others to exist here. In which case, how does the saying go? Better to ask forgiveness than to interpret religious prose. Either way, Christian guilt finds us all after a while. We destroy and build, and destroy again. And sometimes we’re profoundly immoral and wicked. But fuck it, we recognize our demons by name. Sometimes we love unconditionally. Sometimes we hate with passion and lack reason. Such is the prerogative of God. Whether you believe in Christ above or not, We all wanna believe someone died for our sins, Since the hells we’ve built on earth will rot, And in death we shall all look to the heavens.
Poetry - 29
FNOoI eEAYTON Christa Vander Wyst
After a car accident, no one tells you that you’ll become a raisin in the bottom of a trail mix bag. What I mean is isolated on the median, an entire side of your van t-boned. And not the good T-Bone from that Clifford book my family lost for two years in a little pocket behind the passenger seat of our silver Honda. No, I’m talking about the kind of t-bone that’s so spicy your dad drives five miles to Kwik Trip to pick up a gallon or two of milk. At that same gas station my driving instructor spent half the lesson ordering me through the car wash; I watched the mechanical brushes lather us in white foam, felt trapped in that car, any minute the brushes might spin too hard, a drill breaking the glass into a deconstructed mosaic. Looking back on that moment I felt trapped in many places: that hill in Hartland with the curve that came out of nowhere and the chipmunk I ran over—at least it wasn’t a deer or a body—the drop-off in front of school where moms honked at me for going too slow, or maybe I wasn’t in the right lane, turning right on red I never knew when I could go, would rather wait it out than be torn to pieces like that frog I dissected in Biology that was so shredded my teacher made me promise I would never become a surgeon, every time I approached an intersection and had to turn left, which arrow to follow. Spoiler alert, I picked the wrong one, and it is not fun crying in the back of a cop car or 30 - Poetry
realizing that you could have killed two innocent people, and having your mom’s ex-friend call her because somehow she heard it from her daughter who heard it at school, and even though they’re not on speaking terms, accidents have a funny way of bringing people together, and I’d never seen my sister yell at me for a reason that wasn’t about her clothes or me invading her personal space, space for me to grow into an M&M that people acknowledge and grab from the bag and hide from the sun and strap in to the passenger seat, telling you to try again when the time is right and if that time never comes, then that time never comes.
GOD IS BROUGHT INTO THE POEM James Cook
Show God the seat you made for him the light brown arm chair by the fire and bring him his drink. You always thought God would be a whiskey man but when you ask what He’d like He politely requests an appletini. God is brought into the poem under the assumption that He will want to talk about theology History And creation. But once he is settled with his cocktail (With an extra twist of green apple to garnish) all he’ll talk about is the latest celebrity gossip and his love for The Westminster Dog Show. By his sixth ‘tini, you regret bringing God into the poem. Your head starts to nod as He goes on and on about the complexity the sheer majesty of the chihuahua.
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JANE DOE James Cook
I once held a human skull in my hand. Not a real one, but who’s counting? At Jamestown they 3D printed the skull of a teenage girl to place next to her real skull in a glass case under a sign advertising information about The Starving Time, her display littered with the pieces of her they found in a garbage pile–leg bone, knee cap, a bit of a finger– buried under a house years after her death. I remember the cool air of the warehouse Jamestown uses as their archive, a stark relief from the melting point heat of the James River outside, and the archivist, an old woman whose name I want to remember as Sherry or Carol or maybe even Anne, though it’s not important, walking us along the aisles– tables crammed with half-examined objects– broken pots, pipe stems, building building building to Jane. SherryCarolAnne was so proud lifting the delicate recreation of the skull of a girl now called Jane (and maybe she was then, too) lifting and showing us at length each cut and divot, pointing to every piece of evidence they have that this girl was butchered and her face eaten like a Starving Time Delicacy. I mean, I still feel it sometimes, the hacking she must have felt and wonder at the idea of carving divots into my jawbone. Would the knife sing out a prayer? Reassure she was already dead when it happened? She was a servant, they know, because she ate 32 - Poetry
the heavy gout-causing foods of her upper-class employers but showed no signs of lead poisoning from pewter plates. They think no one noticed her go missing because everyone was going missing and so was food and heat and hope. At Jamestown, there was only one documented case of cannibalism: a confession extracted under duress, the culprit hung from his thumbs until, screaming, he admitted to powdering his wife– think layers of smoke and salt, think beef jerky, think his wife–. His house had a full larder, a stocked pantry, one of the few in the fort that did. The account was from John Smith, detailing the hunger, the need for food and money from the king. But he was a liar. So just babble, probably. Just John Smith and Jane Doe and babble.
CHARLIE BROWN BLUES Kewalnam Christ
I am a God with heads of dogs, one eye, two faces, a cigarette between index and middle fingers; and my hands which are made of the past, but can’t touch it. Surrounding me are strained faces, feeling fatigued, tired, depressed, without inspiration, without animation, without meaning, shame-bearing, chronically fuming, volatile, stuck, uncreative. I mean two people. I mean and I. I mean and we. I mean theology is a blind man’s joke. I was living through a breakdown and didn’t know it, if God manned up and showed himself we wouldn’t have beef. I saw myself splashed across a steel trap, always dying too young, I wanted escape. On my altar of adorned idols crowned with the anti-self, & that shadow self, a reflection asked who I was. I don’t remember my childhood before a certain year. I miss the tiniest pleasures from a kingdom I can’t recall. I wrestle acceptance and sometimes forget, the melancholic, tree sap ooze of time. I abandoned Yeshua in his youth, I grieve at grievances foregone, My sin resides in fending off sorrow, I too want to kill people sometimes, There was a time when I feared nothing. Now I fear returning to that time. I’ve seen myself as another...as all others...an all roles, all bodies, all beings.. compressed, crazed. I’ve both suffered and caused pain, but owe not a soul any apologies. All losses are restored as incantations. The name of this spell is the word AMEN. Don’t catch the butterfly, listen to it sing.
Poetry - 33
QUARTER LIFE CATASTROPHE Jaime Lam
At the age of twenty, I decided I was an orphan— sometimes, all a girl needs is a mother, and sometimes, a mother alone doesn’t cut it— I would scrape my body against late-night traffic just to hear anyone gently coo “sweetheart.” Yesterday, my therapist told me to pretend my mother’s dead, told me sometimes women make babies to make babies obligated to love them in all their loneliness. Once, I celebrated Anti-Mother’s Day with a girl who was also, but we still felt the same. Sometimes, living is hard, if it comes down to saying “I love you,” or laying down on dotted lines, I’ll learn to love the stickiness of tar, the smell of tires, the tread imprinting my spine and won’t it all feel more like a home.
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Poetry - 35
DRAMA
THE TALK Julia Porter
(A boy is holding a controller playing a video game. Beat. His mother enters awkwardly.)
MOM Hey champ! Watcha doing there? BOY Kicking this guy’s butt! (Mom awkwardly laughs.) BOY And then breaking into a military base while shooting every living thing in my way! MOM: (Mom nervously laughs) Well... (Mom moves the controller aside.) MOM Actually I wanted to chat with you for a bit. BOY Aww mom! MOM Your 13th birthday was a few weeks ago, and we have to have the talk. (Boy stiffens.) BOY Uhh, mom, I already know about this… MOM No, you don’t know about this… You’re becoming a man. This is a big step for you, and men need to 38 - Drama
learn these things. BOY Mom! It legally has to be taught at school! I learned about this when I was in 6th grade! MOM Pretty soon things are going to start changingBOY Mom, times have changed! I don’t need you to teach me this! I’m fine! MOM I know this is a personal question, but have you noticed any hair growing in weird places? BOY Oh my god mom. MOM Nevermind, we’ll come back to that one later. (Mom pulls out a children’s book. The audience can’t see the cover. Boy looks away.) BOY Please stop. MOM I even checked out a book from the library, we’re going to read it together, okay? (Boy doesn’t respond and continues to shun her.)
MOM: Okay. And if you have any questions, you can ask me anything.
BOY You’re joking.
BOY I know about this, I promise.
MOM No son, this is a long and valued tradition in your ancestry. We wanted to tell you now, before it’s too late.
MOM Son, your father and I are werewolves. (Beat) BOY What?!
(Boy looks confused.) BOY Too late for what?
MOM It’s true. We were talking about when to break this to you, but I feel like now is a good time-
MOM Well, tonight will be your first full moon as a 13 year old, and that’s when we find out if you are a werewolf too.
BOY What are you talking about?! Stop joking!
BOY What happens if I’m not one?
(Mom sighs and opens the book. The cover is a cartoon werewolf and a full moon.)
(Mom has a tense yet awkward look on her face.)
MOM Page 1. Werewolves are a type of fictional animal, well that’s not trueBOY Where’s dad?! MOM (Putting away the book) I know it’s hard to believe, but we’re your parents and only want what’s best for you. Our family has a long history with being half human. I’m a werewolf, uncle Jack’s a werewolf, Nanna’s a werewolf-
MOM Bad things will happen… BOY Well what happens if I am, a-a werewolf? MOM Even worse. BOY I think I’m going to puke. MOM ...Honey, do you remember our dog?
BOY But Nanna sits in a wheelchair!
BOY Maxy?!
MOM Not under a full moon. I once saw her chomp that thing, straight into two! Speaking of, I should call her about those murder charges…
(Mom makes a tense/awkward sigh) MOM Yeah, he never ran away… Drama - 39
(Boy looks horrified)
family?
MOM Tried to though. Boy did he try, put up a good fight too. And that’s why we can’t get a hamster.
(Mom looks disappointed and strict. Beat.)
(Beat. Boy starts to make a high pitched screeching noise) MOM If you are a werewolf, you’ll continue the family tradition! We’ll all be so proud of you! ...But soon afterwards we’ll have to fight for dominance. BOY What?! MOM But I believe in you! You’ll have to go through both your father and me, but hey, I did it when I was your age! Your father did too! BOY I have to kill you?! MOM Not necessarily, breaking both legs usually shows enough strength to let you go, but who can say, it’s hard to think straight when you’re in there. BOY Why-why haven’t I seen you yet? Like-like that? MOM Oh, we leave to ravage on the streets. We try to be very quiet so as not to disturb you.
MOM Timothy Richard Thornton the Third! This is a sacred family tradition. For generations we werewolves have been fighting to prove ourselves, and you’re just suggesting to let it all go just because you’re afraid of a little blood?! BOY YES! (Mom angrily sighs) MOM I didn’t say those things when I was your age. Your father didn’t say those things at your age. Nanna didn’t, uncle Jack didn’t, cousin Sarah didn’t, Grandpa Norman didn’t, aunt Stacy didn’t, cousin Terry didn’tBOY Cousin Terry? The one with the missing leg from the... (Long pause) tractor incident? MOM (Beat) You can figure that one out by yourself. (Boy scampers away from Mom) MOM No, honey, do you have any more questions?
BOY Why-why haven’t you attacked me yet?!
BOY This is a lot to take in…
MOM Werewolves take pity on younger ones and wait for them to turn 13. It’s going to be a big night for you!
MOM It is, and I’m proud of you, even if you are a coward. Okay, I’ll let you get back to your game box now. Dinner will be ready soon. Love you dear!
BOY Mom! There are ways to prevent this. You-you could cage yourself, or-or run far away from here! It doesn’t have to be like this! Can’t we still be a 40 - Drama
(She exits, leaving Boy looking horrified, he stares at his game in shock.) End.
MORGAN’S JOURNAL Kaitlyn Agress
INT. HOSPITAL LOBBY. NIGHT. RAIN FALLING AGAINST THE WINDOWS MARCUS runs through the door, his coat soaked and hair stuck to his face. He is a graduate student visiting home for the holidays, wearing jeans and a worn t-shirt and a jacket under his coat. Marcus stuffs his phone into his pocket and runs to the front desk and tries to get NURSE 1’s attention. MARCUS Ma’am? Ma’am? NURSE 1 Hold on, sir. (Over her shoulder) Mike? Can you check on 22 B and make sure she hasn’t wet the bed again? (To Marcus) Sorry. How can I help you? MARCUS My name is Marcus Vamoll, and I got a call that my sister is here. NURSE 1 What’s her name, sir? MARCUS Morgan Vamoll. V-a-m-o-l-l. NURSE 1 Ah, okay. Yes, she’s in our system. She came in from the ER, but she’s in surgery right now. MARCUS Surgery? Is it, I mean, how bad is it? NURSE 1 I’m not able to say, sir. I can have someone take you
to her room so you can wait for her. MARCUS I’d like that, yes, please. CUT TO: INT. HOSPITAL ROOM. NIGHT. There isn’t a bed in the room, but monitors and oxygen are ready for the patient to arrive. There is a backpack on one of the chairs, open and soaked. Marcus enters with NURSE 2. NURSE 2 We got her name from the license in her bag, but we couldn’t get in contact with the parents. There was a notebook that had some extra numbers to call. I’m guessing that’s how you got the call? MARCUS Yeah, yeah, I’m her brother. NURSE 2 I see. MARCUS Can you tell me what happened? NURSE 2 She was in a car accident, sir. That’s all I know for now. All the doctors who were with her when she came in are still with her in surgery. MARCUS How bad is it? How long has she been, has she been... Drama - 41
INT. HOSPITAL LOBBY. NIGHT. RAIN FALLING AGAINST THE WINDOWS
a backpack on one of the chairs, open and soaked. Marcus enters with NURSE 2.
MARCUS runs through the door, his coat soaked and hair stuck to his face. He is a graduate student visiting home for the holidays, wearing jeans and a worn t-shirt and a jacket under his coat. Marcus stuffs his phone into his pocket and runs to the front desk and tries to get NURSE 1’s attention.
NURSE 2 We got her name from the license in her bag, but we couldn’t get in contact with the parents. There was a notebook that had some extra numbers to call. I’m guessing that’s how you got the call?
MARCUS Ma’am? Ma’am? NURSE 1 Hold on, sir. (Over her shoulder) Mike? Can you check on 22 B and make sure she hasn’t wet the bed again? (To Marcus) Sorry. How can I help you? MARCUS My name is Marcus Vamoll, and I got a call that my sister is here. NURSE 1 What’s her name, sir?
MARCUS Yeah, yeah, I’m her brother. NURSE 2 I see. MARCUS Can you tell me what happened? NURSE 2 She was in a car accident, sir. That’s all I know for now. All the doctors who were with her when she came in are still with her in surgery.
MARCUS Morgan Vamoll. V-a-m-o-l-l.
MARCUS How bad is it? How long has she been, has she been... NURSE 2
NURSE 1 Ah, okay. Yes, she’s in our system. She came in from the ER, but she’s in surgery right now.
Just under an hour now, sir. They had to get all of the X-rays and scans before they took her in so they could know what they needed to fix in the operation.
MARCUS Surgery? Is it, I mean, how bad is it?
MARCUS Do you know how long it will take?
NURSE 1 I’m not able to say, sir. I can have someone take you to her room so you can wait for her.
NURSE 2 No, sir, but I can find out more about her case for you.
MARCUS I’d like that, yes, please.
MARCUS Yes, please, thank you. CUT TO:
INT. HOSPITAL ROOM. NIGHT. There isn’t a bed in the room, but monitors and oxygen are ready for the patient to arrive. There is 42 - Drama
Nurse 2 exits. Marcus sits down and tries to soak in everything. He looks around the room and notices that Morgan’s backpack is open, and there are papers everywhere. He pulls them out along with a lost cover from a worn out journal.
MARCUS Oh my God. Marcus stands up and places the shattered journal on the chair. He paces frantically before he pulls out his phone and makes a call. MARCUS Dad, get out of the meeting right now. Morgan’s in the hospital, damn it, and it’s bad. I’m calling again in five minutes, and if you don’t pick up the phone, I’m calling your secretary and telling her to drag you here. Marcus hangs up and makes another call. MARCUS Shit! Mom, you and dad need to pick up the damn phone! Morgan is hurt, and she’s in surgery! Get down here. They already tried to reach you! He hangs up and scrolls to one last name on his screen. KATHERINE, his other sister, a junior in college studying engineering. He dials her number and puts the phone to his ear. It rings three times. KATHERINE (PHONE) Shit! Ah, here we, okay. Marcus, make it fast. I’m driving. MARCUS You’re on the way? KATHERINE (PHONE) Yeah, I am. Was that all you wanted? MARCUS Yeah. Mom and Dad didn’t pick up. KATHERINE (PHONE) Shocked. I’ve got to hang up, okay? MARCUS Okay. Get here safe. Katherine hangs up, and the phone clicks. Marcus takes the phone away from his ear, and he squats
awkwardly, placing his hands to his forehead. MARCUS Mor. Oh my God, Mor. Marcus gets up and paces around the room again, and he looks everywhere, including at the clock on the wall and the various monitors. CUT TO: INT. MORGAN’S HOSPITAL ROOM. NIGHT. The clock shows that it is twenty minutes later. Marcus is sitting in the chair next to Morgan’s backpack holding on to her journal. Nurse 2 is standing in front of him with Morgan’s file open in his hands. NURSE 2 She had two open fractures in her left tibia, and the breaks have damaged the blood vessels in the bone and surrounding tissue. She also has three broken ribs and a collapsed lung, and a comminuted pelvic fracture. The doctors are also concerned about possible head trauma caused by the impact. However, she doesn’t appear to have any spinal injuries. They think her backpack cushioned the blow. MARCUS So, they have to repair all the broken bones and fix the damage that the broken bones did to the rest of her body? NURSE 2 Well, the internal injuries are likely not just from broken bones. In sudden collisions or accidents, the organs hit each other because of the impact. MARCUS Okay. Okay, thank you. NURSE 2 We’ll let you know if there are any updates. MARCUS Thank you. Really, thank you so much.
Drama - 43
NURSE 2 Of course, sir. Nurse 2 leaves the room. Marcus is alone. He contemplates sending a text to Katherine, but he doesn’t. He looks down at the journal pages and tries to sort through them, but almost all of them fall out and spread out over the floor. The pages are water-stained, and several contain loose sketches of nature, animals, and people. The page left in Marcus’ hand has the date of 12/9 and the subject ONE TIME!!!! FADE TO: INT. MORGAN’S HOUSE. DAY MORGAN is standing in the kitchen, her backpack on her shoulder and her journal in her hand. She’s a junior in high school right now, wearing a neat red blouse with flecks of light green paint on the front. Her mother, EVELYN, stands across from her, angry. EVELYN Your father and I have told you over and over again to be careful in that class! We spend good money on your clothes, and we don’t want to see you ruin them! MORGAN Mom, they turned the heat on really high in the art room, and I took my sweatshirt off for one secondEVELYN I don’t care, Morgan. We have told youMORGAN Mom, I got paint on one shirt. And it’s been years since IEVELYN Morgan, don’t interrupt me! MORGAN Mom, I just-
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EVELYN I mean it, young lady. When your father and I tell you to do something, you do it. What would happen if someone from the company saw you like this? If it happens again, you will not be taking any more of those classes. MORGAN What? Mom, it was one time! EVELYN You heard me, Morgan. MORGAN You can’t be serious! I need that class! EVELYN Oh, be realistic, Morgan. You do not need that class. When are you going to be painting when you get into the real world? Morgan slams her backpack into a chair, angry for the first time in years. MORGAN IT WAS ONE TIME!! Morgan runs out of the kitchen and up the stairs into her room. Evelyn crosses her arms and steams as Morgan’s door slams shut. CUT TO INT. MORGAN’S BEDROOM. NIGHT. Morgan is sitting on her bed, writing furiously in her journal. There is one lamp on in the room, illuminating several drawings on the wall of items in nature. She’s been crying. She shuts her journal and puts it on her nightstand, then turns and faces the window on her bed, breathing shakily. Marcus knocks from the other side of the door. MARCUS (OS) (from the other side of the door) Morgan! Come play video games!
MORGAN I can’t... I, uh, I have homework.
MARCUS Uh, I meant the school.
MARCUS (OS) It’s Friday night. Screw homework.
MORGAN ...oh.
MORGAN I don’t want to play games, Marcus. I’m kind of tired.
MARCUS Besides, paint shouldn’t be too hard to wash-
Marcus tests the doorknob to see if it’s locked. When it isn’t, he pushes the door open and comes in. Morgan groans and turns so she’s facing away from him, burying her face in a pillow. MARCUS Mom and Dad left for that corporate dinner party or whatever it is you were trying to avoid them. You can come downstairs. MORGAN (muffled) I’m not avoiding anything.
MORGAN Acrylic paint never washes out. MARCUS Seriously? MORGAN Seriously. And this is a nice shirt. MARCUS Still just a shirt. What was the painting? MORGAN What?
MARCUS Right, that’s why you’ve been up here all afternoon.
MARCUS What were you painting when that happened?
MORGAN (muffled) I just didn’t want to get into another fight.
MORGAN Jörmungander. (pronunciation: Yor- mun-gon-dur)
MARCUS I believe you. I’ve never heard you scream like that. Morgan doesn’t respond. She grips some of her blankets tightly in her fists and digs her face further into the pillow. MARCUS (CONT) You’re not going to be pulled out of your art class when you’re acing it and they know you love it. Morgan turns so she’s laying on her back, crossing her arms over her stomach. MORGAN Mom and Dad don’t care what I want.
MARCUS Huh? Was that English? MORGAN It’s the big snake that Thor fights in Norse mythology. MARCUS Oh. So, were you listening to “Holiday” or something when you were working on that? MORGAN (groaning) Just because the band is called “Green Day” does not mean that all of their songs are green, Marcus! “Holiday” is a red song.
Drama - 45
MARCUS Okay, okay, sorry. You feel better?
MARCUS It’s Morgan’s journal. It fell apart in her bag, and when I picked it up...
MORGAN Maybe a little. MARCUS Cool. Then let’s go downstairs. I need your help fighting off the skeleton boss in Labyrinth of Monsters. MORGAN Did Katherine not want to help you? MARCUS She’s getting pizza, and you’re better than her at this game. Morgan sits up and smiles weakly.
MARCUS I didn’t know what it was, Katherine! Brief silence before Katherine bends down and helps Marcus to pick up the pages. MARCUS (CONT) Did the nurses tell you what was wrong? KATHERINE When I came in, yeah.
MORGAN I’m telling her you said that. MARCUS Not my fault if she doesn’t know it. Let’s go. Morgan gets up off the bed and grabs a hoodie from a chair piled high with clothes. She pulls it over her head, and she and Marcus leave together. FADE TO: INT. MORGAN’S HOSPITAL ROOM. NIGHT Marcus gets off the chair as he tries to pick up the pages of the journal up off the floor. He looks at some of the dates to try and put them in order, but Morgan didn’t use years in her entries. He shakes his head and keeps picking up the pages. As he does, Katherine appears in the doorway. Like Marcus before, her hair and jacket are soaked. Marcus looks up, thinking she’s another nurse. MARCUS Oh, oh, you’re here. KATHERINE I had trouble finding parking, and I ran into one of the nurses in the hallway. What happened here, what are you picking up? 46 - Drama
KATHERINE Why did you take her journal out of her bag in the first place?
MARCUS Good. I didn’t want to have to explain it to you. KATHERINE I didn’t understand all of it, I just didn’t want toMARCUS Shit, Kat, don’t make meKATHERINE What’s an open fracture? Marcus doesn’t respond right away, looking down at the pages and ignoring her. KATHERINE (CONT) It’s our baby sister, Marcus. I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t her, and if you give me that stupid excuseMARCUS Katherine, you don’t want me to tell you. KATHERINE Marcus, it’s Morgan. I don’t care what it is. I want to know. MARCUS It’s a break where the bone goes through the skin.
Katherine gags and freezes for a second. Marcus makes a gesture with his hand to say “I told you!” and Katherine smacks his hand.
EVELYN (CONT) career, and she’ll stop.
KATHERINE Let’s just get this picked up.
KATHERINE Yeah, maybe the first time. Nothing’s guaranteed after that.
MARCUS I didn’t realize she was writing this for so long.
MORGAN Are Marcus and Dad waiting for us at the airport?
KATHERINE Did you read any of it?
EVELYN What was that, honey?
MARCUS No! Come on, Kat, I’m not Grandma.
MORGAN Are Marcus and Dad waiting for us?
KATHERINE I’m just saying, this was how she coped with, well, you know, all of it.
EVELYN Yes, they’re already there. Your father had to meet some clients before the flight.
MARCUS Did she talk with you about it?
MORGAN So, why are we-
Katherine doesn’t respond right away, looking at one of the drawings that has been smudged by the rain water. The sketch is of two dragons, a mother and a baby.
KATHERINE Ah, it’s my bad, Mom. I didn’t tell her that I had a final this afternoon.
KATHERINE A little. FADE TO: INT/EXT. EVELYN’S CARE. DAY. Morgan leans her head against the car window as Katherine and Evelyn talk in the front seats. There are several bags in the seat next to Morgan, and a backpack is at her feet. All of the women are dressed in business-like clothes. Nice pants and sweaters or blouses. KATHERINE I just don’t want everything Grandma talks about to be how I need to find a guy while I’m studying. EVELYN All you need to say is that it’s preparation for your
MORGAN Ooooh. Was it hard? KATHERINE Not really, but I spent a week studying for it, so, you know. MORGAN A whole week? EVELYN That’s what happens in college, Morgan. KATHERINE Unless you’re smart. Morgan tightens her grip on the hem of her sweater and leans against the window again. Katherine looks at her and notices Morgan’s expression. She looks sympathetically toward her sister without Morgan noticing. Evelyn looks in the rear view mirror and Drama - 47
sees Morgan’s expression as well. EVELYN Don’t worry, honey, we’ll be sure to get you some extra tutoring before you apply to college, and before you retake that test. That’ll make things easier for you. Morgan groans and squeezes her eyes shut. Katherine speaks up before their mother gets the chance to comment. KATHERINE You pick everything up fast anyway. It only took me a week to study because I had to relearn so much material. Morgan doesn’t respond and the conversation ends. They drive the rest of the way in silence. CUT TO: INT. AIRPORT. NIGHT. Katherine and Morgan wait for their mother outside the bathroom with their luggage. Katherine takes the opportunity to clear the air. KATHERINE How are you holding up there, Mor? Morgan bites her lip and looks at the bathroom door, hesitating. KATHERINE Come on, seriously, are you okay? MORGAN (sighing) It’s just, it’s been hard since you and Marcus went off to school. Before their conversation can continue, Evelyn comes out of the bathroom. Morgan looks down and fidgets with the hem of her sweater. EVELYN Morgan, don’t pick at your clothes. It will ruin them 48 - Drama
EVELYN (CONT) faster, and you don’t want someone to see you with torn clothes. Now, let’s see where your brother and father are. Shall we? They grab their luggage and walk through the crowded airport until they reach their terminal. Marcus and Amos, their father wait. Amos wears a well-pressed suit, and Marcus wears dress pants and a polo shirt. Marcus walks over and gives Morgan a hug. MARCUS How’re you doing, Mor? MORGAN (quietly) Fine. CUT TO: INT. GRANDPARENT’S HOUSE-MORGAN AND KATHERINE’S ROOM. NIGHT. Morgan is drawing in her journal, a horse in a field with thunderclouds rolling in. Her colored pencils are spread out over her bed. There are two beds in the room, and Morgan occupies one of them, headphones in her ears. Katherine walks in and goes to get something out of her suitcase, and she notices Morgan. She leaves her suitcase and goes over to the bed. KATHERINE Grandma was asking about where you were, and I told her you felt a little off color from the flight. Morgan doesn’t respond, doesn’t look up. Her hand shakes a little as she grips her journal. KATHERINE Fifteen hours in the air, she understood, but you’ll have to come down for dinner if you don’t want Grandma up here with all kinds of herbal remedies. MORGAN Mm-hm.
KATHERINE What’s wrong? MORGAN Nothing. Katherine sits down next to her. Morgan pulls out her headphones, which are quietly playing “Blue Lips” by Regina Spektor. Morgan waits a moment before she keeps drawing. KATHERINE Nothing doesn’t look like this on you. MORGAN We’re on vacation. I don’t want anyone to worry about it. KATHERINE I don’t think you want to be stewing in whatever this is while we’re dealing with jet lag. Morgan bites her lip and puts the journal off to the side and hunches her shoulders. MORGAN I got my ACT score back last week. KATHERINE Oh? How’d you do? MORGAN Twenty-seven. KATHERINE That’s a great score. Why do you look upset about that? MORGAN Because nobody who goes to Mom and Dad’s college got below thirty. You got thirty-one, Marcus got thirty-twoKATHERINE Wait, is this the test that Mom was talking about on the car ride? Morgan, those things are utterly pointless.
MORGAN They said I have to retake it because I need to have the option open because it might help meKATHERINE Well, you don’t have to do anything. Ignore that, and tell Mom and Dad that those scores rarely if ever factor into admissions. Your essay, your grades, extracurriculars, they matter way more. MORGAN It doesn’t matter, Kat. They’ll make me retake it until I get a score that’s actually worth something. KATHERINE Morgan, youMORGAN That’s what they’re going to do. You were just smart enough to not have to try more than once. Morgan gets up and walks out of the room, leaving her journal behind. Katherine looks at the page and shakes her head. FADE TO: INT. MORGAN’S HOSPITAL ROOM. NIGHT. Marcus and Katherine are trying to sort through the journal pages, but eventually, Katherine holds her hand out for the pages in Marcus’ hands. KATHERINE We’re not going to put these in order unless we read them, and we’re not doing that. MARCUS I just don’t want her to wake up and have this important thing to her be destroyed. KATHERINE She’ll be coming out of surgery after a car accident, Marcus. I think she’ll be a little distracted. Marcus gives up and hands her the pages. Katherine takes them and places them within the cover, and she puts the broken journal back in the backpack. Marcus takes out his phone and starts making calls Drama - 49
again. Katherine tries looking through the rest of the backpack to see if anything else was damaged. Marcus makes multiple calls in a row to his father’s secretary, but she repeatedly hangs up on him. KATHERINE Everything in here’s so wet, I can barely tell what it is. MARCUS Is there anything really surprising in there? KATHERINE Just a lot of notebooks, no wait. One notebook and two sketchbooks. Maybe she was heading to a library? MARCUS Going to the library on a Friday night in the pouring rain instead of doing something she likes? Why can I believe that? KATHERINE Her finals are coming up, Marcus. She told me last week. Marcus gets hung up on again and tries his father’s number again. MARCUS All the more reason to take it easy. KATHERINE Morgan? MARCUS I meant she should, not she was going to. Damn it Dad, pick up the fucking phone. KATHERINE You remember that he’s on a flight to the UK, right? MARCUS Oh, shit. I’m so stupid; I completely forgot. KATHERINE You’re not stupid. Try Mom. 50 - Drama
Katherine notices a paper stuck in one of the side pockets of Morgan’s backpack. KATHERINE (CONT.) What’s-oh. MARCUS What? What is that? KATHERINE It’s a list of songs she wanted to use during her final painting project. MARCUS That’s it? KATHERINE Yes, that’s it. Nurse 2 enters the room again, and Marcus smacks Katherine’s arm to get her attention. Katherine puts the scrap of paper in her pocket without thinking. NURSE 2 I’m sorry if I’m interrupting you, but there is an update to Morgan’s case. KATHERINE Did something go wrong? NURSE 2 Well, several of the broken bones caused damage to blood vessels and surrounding tissue, so she had lost a lot of blood, but the team was able to get her stable. KATHERINE So, she’s doing okay? NURSE 2 They’re making steady progress in repairing her leg, yes, but the operation is liable to take several hours, if you need to call family. MARCUS Thank you, sir. We appreciate it so much.
NURSE 2 I can see if we can get some cots set up here so you can sleep? MARCUS That’s generous, but I don’t think we’d be able to. NURSE 2 Ah, right. I’m sorry. I’ll leave you to make calls, if you need. KATHERINE Thank you. Nurse 2 leaves the room. Marcus takes his phone out of his pocket and fiddles with it while Katherine paces. The only sounds are distant phone calls and the clock ticking on the wall. Marcus looks up at Katherine after a while. MARCUS Do you think she was tryingKATHERINE NO. Why would you even ask that? MARCUS You were closer to her campus; you saw her more! KATHERINE She didn’t always tell meSuddenly, Evelyn bursts into the room wearing stiletto heels and a stiff grey pantsuit, awkwardly shaking out an umbrella and shrugging off her soaked coat. Katherine stops pacing. Marcus just stares at his mother. Evelyn pants and looks between her oldest children. EVELYN Do either of you know what’s happened with your sister? Neither of the two respond right away. Evelyn marches across the room and places her coat and purse down on one of the chairs across from Marcus, tucking her bangs behind her ear and smoothing her bun.
MARCUS You’re here. You were coming? EVELYN Don’t act so surprised, Marcus. It’s insulting. Now, do either of you know what’s happening with Morgan? KATHERINE I think he meant to ask why you didn’t just say that over the phone. EVELYN I was driving, and my phone was off. Tell me what’s going on with Morgan. Marcus and Katherine look to each other, silently arguing who was going to tell her. Katherine loses the argument, rolls her eyes, and crosses her arms as Evelyn smooths her clothes out. KATHERINE She was involved in a car accident, she has a lot of broken bones, and they’ve taken her into surgery. EVELYN How long do they think it will take? KATHERINE Hours. EVELYN How many? KATHERINE We don’t know, exactly. EVELYN They didn’t tell you? MARCUS They’re not sure themselves, Mom. It’s a car accident injury; they don’t know everything until they see it. EVELYN Well, I want a timetable to give your father when he lands. I’m finding a nurse. Drama - 51
Evelyn speeds out of the room. Marcus and Katherine look worriedly between one another. MARCUS You know something? KATHERINE What is it?
eyes. Marcus takes it from her, and he swallows thickly. CUT TO: INT. MORGAN’S ROOM. DAY.
KATHERINE I can’t read Mom’s mind, and I stopped trying when I was sixteen.
Morgan is standing at an easel she usually keeps in her closet, painting a scene of a wolf on ice under the Northern Lights. she wears a worn, paint splattered t-shirt over old leggings. Her hair is down, and there are some blobs of purple in the strands. She’s comfortable for the first time. She’s listening to a specific playlist without headphones, and each time she uses a different color, she changes the song, sometimes cycling through the songs until it matches the color she needs. The greys are more orchestral with very few lyrics, but they’re also typically fast paced. The purples are either fast and lively songs that are easy to dance to or slightly regal sounding, with many high pitches. The blues are soothing and quiet but filled with deeper notes. Greens are calmer and relatively slow with long held notes. Morgan rubs her nose with her hand, not realizing there’s paint on her wrist. She wipes blue over her lip without realizing it. Katherine walks by the door, sees the paint over Morgan’s lip and laughs. Morgan stops her music and looks up.
MARCUS She’s going to be angry.
MORGAN What? What’s up?
KATHERINE She’s scared, Marcus. Not mad.
KATHERINE You’ve got a blue half-stache, Mor.
MARCUS You know that. Do you think Morgan will?
Morgan picks up her phone and turns it to selfie mode on the camera. She sees the paint and laughs. She tosses her phone to Katherine.
MARCUS I can’t remember any time recently when Morgan smiled around Mom or Dad. KATHERINE I don’t remember her smiling recently at all. Katherine moves Morgan’s backpack onto the floor between her legs and sits next to her brother. Marcus leans forward and puts his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. Katherine rubs her forehead. MARCUS She’s gonna be angry with her, isn’t she?
Katherine doesn’t respond. They sit together, waiting for their mother to return. Katherine looks absently around the room, and she notices there is a journal page they missed near the oxygen tank and monitors. She gets up and picks up the page. It’s older than the others, the first entry that Morgan ever had in the journal. The paragraph is smudged by water stains, but there are many silly doodles of suns, flowers, and cats on the margins. Katherine folds the paper down and looks away, tears in her 52 - Drama
MORGAN Take a picture! KATHERINE Strike a pose! Morgan makes a funny face and poses dramatically. Katherine takes the picture and gives the phone back.
KATHERINE You’d better post that. Morgan deflates as she takes the phone back. MORGAN I can’t. You know that. CUT TO: INT. MORGAN’S BEDROOM. NIGHT. Morgan has two math books in front of her along with multiple notebooks that messily have Pre-calculus notes scribbled all over them. She looks between the books, her notebooks, and eventually just lets out a half scream half wail and falls onto her bed. She’s gulping air and crying in an ugly way, not able to stop herself. She reaches out and grabs a soft stuffed wolf on her bed and hugs it to her chest tightly. CUT TO:
Katherine nods. Marcus covers his face. Katherine sighs and leans back against the wall, exhausted. Before they can say anything else, Katherine’s phone rings. An unknown number displays, but Katherine picks up anyway, not really thinking. KATHERINE Hello? ...Jasmine? Hang on. Katherine walks out of the room as Evelyn walks back in. Marcus looks away from his mother as she goes back to her purse and takes out a stylus that she dropped from her phone and starts tapping on her phone quickly. EVELYN Did anyone ask about billing before I got here? Please tell me no. MARCUS (angrily and forcefully) No.
INT. MORGAN’S HOSPITAL ROOM. NIGHT
Evelyn stops looking at her phone. She gives Marcus a tense look.
Marcus and Katherine stare at the journal page holding back tears.
EVELYN What are you angry at?
KATHERINE Tell me she’s going to make it.
MARCUS I’m not angry.
MARCUS I’m not a doctor, Katherine. I don’t know everything about medicine.
EVELYN Marcus, you’re angry, and I’ve got enough to worry about tonight.
KATHERINE You chose to study it.
MARCUS Then you don’t want me to be angry.
MARCUS I’m studying to research and make drugs! It’s not the same; I don’t know if she’ll make it!
EVELYN Whatever is going on, Marcus just spit it out so we can deal with it.
KATHERINE Okay, I’m sorry! Stop shouting!
MARCUS Fine. Why aren’t you in her corner?
MARCUS ...I was shouting?
Brief silence. Evelyn is confused.
Drama - 53
MARCUS (CONT) Why aren’t you in her corner? You were in mine and Kat’s. EVELYN What are you getting at? MARCUS I’m getting at Morgan! I tell you I don’t want to run the company, you say it’s fine because I want to go into bio-med. Kat tells you she doesn’t want to run the company, but that’s fine because she wants to be an engineer. Morgan tells you she doesn’t want to run the company, and you say she just hasn’t made up her mind yet?
MARCUS We don’t know that for sure, Mom. She was on her own at college; we don’t know what she wasn’t telling us. EVELYN You’re guessing that she was suicidal based off of information you don’t have? Marcus, you can’t do that. Not with anyone, and especially not with your sister! Do you have any idea how scary it is to hear that? MARCUS I know what happened to her after you and Dad had conversations with her.
EVELYN What does this have to do with right now?
EVELYN Stop right there-
MARCUS Do you think she can’t tell? So you think she doesn’t realize you don’t want her to do this? Do you think she’s not smart enough to realize why you put this pressure on her?
MARCUS She was so scared to fail at anything that if she struggled at all, she panicked. She had to hide how much she loved her artwork because you were going to say something about how it didn’t look good in front of the company. Me and Kat, you could brag about. She knew you weren’t doing that with her.
EVELYN Stop right there, young man! MARCUS I’m fucking twenty-four, Mom! EVELYN Marcus, why does any of this matter right now?
EVELYN That is so wrong to say, and such a gross assumption! We were able to brag about her plenty! Morgan can hear colors; how many people could say that?
MARCUS Because I’m scared that she jumped in front of that car!
MARCUS So, the only thing you bragged about with her was something she didn’t control? Something she didn’t decide?
Evelyn stares at him in shock, dropping her phone, and the noise makes her jump, and she squats down to pick up the phone. Marcus realizes that he’s begun crying, and he sits back down in his chair wiping his eyes hastily.
EVELYN You should be studying to be a lawyer if you’re so skilled at twisting words. That was not the only good thing we said about Morgan. How could you possibly think that?
EVELYN You, how could you, no! No, Morgan wouldn’t do that. She wasn’t, she showed no signs of that!
MARCUS If she got below a B plus in any subject, you put her in tutoring for hours after school, and you pushed her to try and get her to apply to your college!
54 - Drama
EVELYN It was a safety school! We were trying to prepare her for a good future!
MORGAN I don’t know what to say. It was one extra assignment. I don’t know what happened.
MARCUS Whose future? Yours or hers?
JASMINE How much did you already have to do?
Evelyn is about to say something else when Katherine comes back in, phone in hand and tears on her cheeks. Marcus stands up immediately, terrified.
MORGAN Not much more than last weekend. Most of my classes were letting up because of our final projects.
MARCUS Oh no. Is Morgan, did something happen?
JASMINE Well, maybe you had too much to do last weekend, too.
EVELYN What did they say, Katherine? Katherine shakes her head and sticks her phone in her pocket, wiping her tears away. KATHERINE That was Jasmine, Morgan’s roommate. She told me what happened. FADE TO: INT. MORGAN & JASMINE’S DORM. DAY. Morgan is laying on her bed clutching her stuffed wolf, calming down from a panic attack. She has a wad of tissues in her fist and is sniffling sporadically. JASMINE sits in Morgan’s chair, wearing a tight t-shirt and jeans, occasionally showing her waist. Her hair is tied back, she has vibrant makeup, and she wears large hoop earrings. She is supremely confident in herself. Jasmine holds a box of tissues, offering her roommate more. Morgan shakes her head, and she puts the box down. Jasmine looks over everything at Morgan’s desk, which is messy and disorganized. There are post-it notes on the desk saying “Call Mom,” “Call Dad-tell him not transferring,” “Call Dad about internship” and things of the like. Most refer to her father. Jasmine leans back in the chair and looks straight at Morgan. JASMINE You wanna talk about it?
Morgan shakes her head against her pillow lightly without thinking. Jasmine notices. She crosses her arms and sighs. JASMINE You have how much homework to do along with (counts post-its) six calls from your parents about where you’re going to school. Not mentioning all the stuff you’ve got for finals. MORGAN It’s no more than anyone else has to deal with. JASMINE No more? Six calls about where you’re going to school, and asking you to transfer, oh sorry, that one’s about an internship. We don’t even have to declare a major until the end of next year, so why the hell are you worrying about an internship right now? And I don’t think these were here even last week! MORGAN Three of them were. JASMINE Three in one week is still a lot, girl. MORGAN They’re just worriedJASMINE Worried is calling you once a week and asking if Drama - 55
JASMINE (CONT) you’re eating healthy and that you’re keeping up with all your classes. This isn’t worried; this is obsessive. Freaky. No wonder you’re so tense all the time. MORGAN Jasmine, it’s complicated. They, they created their company from scratch. Put themselves in debt and struggled for years to build it, and they had to work their asses off to keep it afloat when the dot com bubble burstJASMINE That does not mean they get toMORGAN Jasmine, it really isn’t that simple. Sometimes, they didn’t-
Morgan takes her words to heart. She lays on her back and runs her fingers over the stuffed wolf’s back. Jasmine stands up and puts a hand on Morgan’s shoulder. JASMINE (CONT) You know what? We need to get out of this room. It’s what, five? Morgan checks her phone. MORGAN Crap, I have a club meeting. JASMINE What club? MORGAN Animation.
JASMINE It is simple! They don’t get to use their-
JASMINE Oh, yeah, Erica’s in that one, too. When’s it end?
MORGAN Let me finish! They didn’t always eat meals in order to keep everything working. They don’t want me to ever struggle like that, and they know that a job there could be easier--
MORGAN Six, usually.
JASMINE Morgan! It’s not easier if the thought of working there is part of what sends you spiraling into a panic attack. Morgan can’t think of an argue against that. She bites her lip and crumples the tissues in her fist further. JASMINE (CONT) Listen. My mom had to build something from the ground up, too. She’s a psychiatrist, had four kids, single mom, made her own practice. There were nights she would only sleep four hours or less. She’s rightfully proud of what she made. But she’s never used her struggles as an excuse to control us. This isn’t okay, you’re not okay, and it’s okay for you to say that to your mom and dad. 56 - Drama
Morgan gets off her bed and looks at her backpack. She takes out her textbooks and puts in a sketchbook. She forgets to take out any of her notebooks. Jasmine passes her a hoodie, and she goes to grab Morgan’s coat as Morgan zips up her backpack. JASMINE Which building? MORGAN AM Cen. JASMINE Kay, so I’ll meet you there, and we’ll go out with some friends to get some real food instead of that dining hall shit. MORGAN Jasmine, you don’t have toJASMINE Ah-ah-ah! We need to get you off this campus, and
JASMINE (CONT) we’re going to have a fun time. I’ll ask Max where the best restaurants are, and then we’re going. MORGAN Are you sure? JASMINE Don’t worry, girl. You don’t know how desperate I am to get a good burger. CUT TO: EXT. COLLEGE TOWN SIDEWALK. NIGHT-DRIZZLING. Jasmine and Morgan are walking back to campus after a good meal, and their friends WILL, ERICA, and MAX. They’re not really close yet, but they’re well on the way to being lifelong friends. Morgan has a small smile on her face. She’s the only one wearing a backpack. Max is trying awkwardly to cover as many of his friends as he can with his umbrella. He’s the only one who brought one. WILL Come on, Dad, it’s not raining too bad yet. We’re fine. MAX Well, just in case! Erica runs out of his reach and starts dramatically singing “Singing in the Rain.” ERICA Singin’ in the rain! Just singing’ in the rain! What a glorious feelinJASMINE Sing out, Louise! Everyone laughs. Morgan is now the only one close enough for Max to cover with the umbrella. Will slows down so he can walk closer to her. They lock eyes briefly, then both give a little smile to each other. Morgan looks away first, and Will turns his attention back to the rest of their friends.
MORGAN You should try out for some of the musicals, Erica. WILL (With a pointed look at Erica) Thank you! Thank you, that’s what I said! ERICA (Rolling her eyes at Will) I don’t wanna be an actress! People will say I’m just copying my sister. JASMINE Well, someone’s gotta hear that voice. ERICA Who says I can’t keep it all to myself? MAX Fuck no! Display the angelic gloriousness to all the world! WILL We are all so lost! Saintly Erica, give us our deliverance! ERICA Fuck all of you but Morgan! She walks over, shoves in between Will and Morgan and links arms with Morgan, pulling her away in front of the group. Will tries to grab at Morgan’s hand, but he only grazes her fingers. Jasmine and Max laugh behind them. They all catch up at the crosswalk and wait for the light to turn. In the distance, there is a car coming closer and closer, but none of the group members notice. JASMINE I was going to make a Phantom of the Opera joke, but I decided against it when you swore at us. ERICA Bitch, I can’t be Christine. Do you know how shredded my voice would be? MORGAN I think I heard somewhere that Christine’s actress Drama - 57
MORGAN (CONT) has to record some notes and lip sync them in performances because if she had to sing that high every performance, she’d lose her voice so fast. MAX Shit, really?
his hands, and Erica shrugs while Jasmine laughs. Everyone starts walking. Morgan steps in a puddle. She pauses briefly to shake out her shoe feebly, putting some distance between her and her friends. The car is much closer now, almost at the crosswalk. The driver is looking at his phone. Will turns and sees that he’s not slowing down.
WILL I’d believe it.
WILL Morgan! Move!
JASMINE Eh, maybe you could be the phantom instead.
Morgan looks up and sees the car too late. The driver looks up from his phone too late. The car collides with her, sending her flying. Everyone screams. Max drops his umbrella. Will runs into the street with Jasmine. Erica fumbles for her phone. Morgan lands one the street and lays sprawled out on the asphalt, now bleeding and gasping for air.
WILL Oooo, gay phantom? I’d be down. MAX Well, we know what Will’s senior project will be. ERICA So long as you get someone else to play it, I’ll support your efforts. WILL Cool. Hey, Morgan! Mind drawing out the set for me? MORGAN (Laughing) Why do you need me to draw it? If you’re just switching the gender. WILL Naw, I got a whole new vision in my head, and I’ll need your help and expert hand bringing it to light. JASMINE The fuck is taking this light so long? ERICA Eh, fuck it, let’s just go. MAX No, no, no wait! Erica sprints across the street. The second she makes it across, the light changes. Will throws up 58 - Drama
FADE TO: INT. MORGAN’S HOSPITAL ROOM. NIGHT. Marcus takes a sigh of relief. He sits down as Evelyn crosses her arms loosely and closes her eyes. Katherine wipes her eyes one last time and sticks her hands in her pockets. MARCUS She didn’t jump. KATHERINE I told you she didn’t! MARCUS I didn’t know for sure, Katherine. EVELYN Are her friends hurt at all? Were they trying to get over here? KATHERINE They went to campus safety, I think. They’re pretty shaken, and I don’t know if any of them have a car. EVELYN Well, I’d like their numbers if you have them. I want to thank them for being there.
KATHERINE I only have Jasmine’s, and I don’t know if she’d want me giving that out, Mom.
Morgan looks around and sees her siblings standing next to her. The doctor is still standing next to Morgan, so Evelyn can’t move.
Evelyn nods understandingly, walks in a small circle, then turns back to Katherine.
MORGAN Guys? Guys, I think I lost track of the cat.
EVELYN Was your sister having any kind of conversations with you? About anything, Katherine? Anything at all?
Marcus and Katherine snicker. The doctor smiles and backs away, nodding to Evelyn respectfully. Evelyn walks up to her daughter’s side.
KATHERINE She was stressed, anxious. She didn’t like to talk a lot, make me worry. EVELYN Oh. Awkward silence falls over the room. They all sit down and look anywhere but at each other. After a few moments, Evelyn realizes she should call her husband, and she puts the phone to her ear. CUT TO: INT. MORGAN’S HOSPITAL ROOM. DAY-MORNING. Morgan is brought into the room by nurses and the DOCTOR who was in charge of her surgery. The doctor talks to them about what happened (under music-we don’t need to hear it). There were some complications, mainly due to loss of blood, but Morgan came through. The doctor stays and helps Morgan to wake up from the anesthesia. Marcus grabs Morgan’s hand and Katherine gently strokes her sister’s hair. Evelyn has to stand back so the doctor can work. She doesn’t want to. Morgan wakes up, still groggy and disoriented. MORGAN What’s going on? DOCTOR You’re coming out of the anesthesia from surgery, Morgan. You’re going to be fine.
MARCUS What’d the cat look like, Mor? Maybe we can help find it. MORGAN It had dragon wings. I think it’s gone. EVELYN Morgan, honey? MORGAN Mom? EVELYN Honey, are you in pain? Do you need anything at all? MORGAN I feel kind of fuzzy. My hands feel weird. EVELYN But no pain? MORGAN Mmmmm, I don’t think, no. Mom, did you see a cat anywhere? EVELYN No, honey, I didn’t see a cat. Can you tell me one more thing? Do you know when your school’s campus life office opens? Marcus and Katherine share a confused look, but they don’t interrupt. MORGAN Do you think they know where the cat is? Drama - 59
EVELYN Well, I can ask, but do you know when they open?
MORGAN Can I have my journal?
MORGAN Ummm, nine? No, nine-thirty.
MARCUS Your, um, your journal fell apart, Mor. In your bag.
MARCUS Mom, why does this matter right now?
MORGAN Oh. Oh, yeah, I think I was on the last page.
EVELYN Because I want to make sure that Morgan has all of the extensions and materials she needs in order to pass her classes after she makes a full recovery.
EVELYN Well, we’ll have to get you a new one.
MORGAN Is something wrong with my classes? EVELYN No, no. We’re just going to make sure that you don’t have anything to worry about while you get better.
MORGAN One with a cat dragon? EVELYN That will probably be hard to find, but we’ll look. MARCUS And if we can’t find one, we’ll make it.
MORGAN I can stay in my classes?
KATHERINE Maybe that’s where the cat went.
EVELYN Yes, of course you can, sweetheart. We’re just going to make sure that you don’t have to worry about any of that while you stay here. You only need to focus on getting well.
Morgan smiles, then falls asleep again. Everyone stands around her, just making sure that she’s still breathing. The monitor beeps, and Evelyn keeps her hand on Morgan’s shoulder while Katherine and Marcus stand on Morgan’s other side and stay near her.
KATHERINE Some schools have policies for stuff like this. Like, they’ll automatically pass a student. EVELYN Well, I’ll have to check about that. The last thing she needs right now is to focus on is her finals. MORGAN I was going to paint Persephone for my final. With her big doggie. KATHERINE Well, that sounds like it would be really interesting. MARCUS Want us to write it down so you don’t forget after the painkillers? 60 - Drama
FADE TO: INT. MORGAN’S HOSPITAL ROOM. DAY Morgan is awake and sitting up in bed. She’s far more aware, and has her journal pages in her hand, trying to sort through them. Marcus is asleep in his chair, but Katherine has pulled hers close to the bed so she can sit next to her sister. Evelyn is on the phone with family members outside the room. MORGAN Have you ever gone back to your old essays and stories from like middle school and just been overwhelmed by the cringe?
KATHERINE I do that with my freshman year essays. MORGAN Yeah, I’m feeling that in my whole body right now. I can’t believe I wrote half of this stuff. KATHERINE I’m sure it’s not that bad. You were in high school when you wrote a lot of it, right? MORGAN I’m not sure that’s much better. Oh, forget it, this is a lost cause.
EVELYN (CONT) going to head to your school and see if I can talk to someone about what needs to happen next. Do you need anything from your dorm room? MORGAN Were my sketchbooks in my backpack? KATHERINE Yeah, they were. MORGAN Oh. I guess I’ll need new ones.
She lets the pages fall in her lap and leans her head back. Katherine looks surprised.
EVELYN I can see if they have one in your bookstore for you. Do you not need anything, then, Morgan?
KATHERINE Really? Are you sure? We were a little worried you would be upset.
MORGAN Can I have my wolf? And...and maybe my brush? I think my hair is turning into Medusa’s.
MORGAN I mean, I still remember the important stuff, right? And I can write about it again if I want.
KATHERINE No, it’s not, well, okay, yeah it’s pretty tangled.
KATHERINE You’re a lot calmer than I thought you’d be. MORGAN Well, they’ve given me painkillers. They both laugh lightly. Evelyn comes back into the room and puts her phone back into her purse. Katherine stops laughing, but Morgan keeps a smile on her face. EVELYN Okay, that was the last call, and it sounds like your grandmother wants to try and send you scones in the mail. MORGAN Really? I like her scones. Which ones? EVELYN I don’t think you’d like them very much after they’ve been shipped across the Atlantic, sweetie. Now, I am
Evelyn chuckles as she puts on her coat and takes her purse on her arm. EVELYN Your stuffed wolf and your hairbrush. I think that can be arranged. I’ll get you some of your pajamas, too; how about that? Evelyn walks over to the bed and gives Morgan a kiss, nods to Katherine, and prepares to leave. EVELYN (CONT) Tell your brother where I am if he wakes up, please. MORGAN Not it! KATHERINE (Laughing) Will do, Mom. Evelyn leaves. A few minutes later, Will and Jasmine come rushing in. They run to the side of Drama - 61
Morgan’s bed, Will slightly ahead of Jasmine. The footsteps wake up Marcus, but he doesn’t move right away.
JASMINE Will brought you something to eat, girl. Something real special.
WILL Oh my God! Oh my God, you’re not dead!
WILL Shut up! I just, well, I couldn’t sleep last night, so I made a bunch of these.
JASMINE Do NOT scare us like that again, holy shit! MORGAN Guys, guys, my brother is sleeping! MARCUS No, he’s not. WILL Oh, shit, man, I’m sorry. JASMINE WE’RE sorry. MARCUS Don’t worry about it. I get it. We were pretty scared, too. Kat, what time is it? Katherine checks her phone. KATHERINE Um, ten. MARCUS Okay, I need coffee. Either of you two want something? MORGAN No... wait! Do they have jello?
He places a small paper bag on the table next to Morgan’s bed. Morgan sits up and opens the bag, tearing it a little. MORGAN Muffins! WILL Yeah, my mom taught me how to bake when I was little, and I’m a-uh-a big stress eater. It’s a curse. JASMINE Clearly. He practically had to lock these up so he wouldn’t eat them. Katherine looks between Will and Morgan, knowing exactly what’s going on. She stands up and stretches. Morgan has already started eating one of the muffins, dropping crumbs all over her chin. KATHERINE I’ve got to go to the bathroom, Mor. I’ll be right back. Thanks for stopping by, guys. It means a lot to us. MORGAN (mouth full) Okay.
KATHERINE I was about to say, there is no way you aren’t hungry.
Katherine gives Will a wink as she walks out. Jasmine notices and laughs loudly, and Will gives her a slight elbow to the side. Morgan doesn’t care, she’s just eating.
MARCUS I’ll see if they have some. Be right back.
WILL Was that your brother and sister?
Marcus pats Morgan on the arm, then leaves the room.
MORGAN Yeah, Marcus and Katherine. Kat. They’re pretty tired, though.
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WILL I think all of us are. Erica and Max passed out way before the Lyft picked us up. JASMINE You’re especially tired, right? You’ve got all these bags of drugs around you. How long have you actually been awake? MORGAN I don’t really know. I wasn’t paying attention. JASMINE Well, you don’t need to. WILL You’re not in a lot of pain, then? You’re okay? MORGAN Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay. Don’t worry, Will. Marcus comes back in with a coffee and a dish of red jello for Morgan. He sees the muffin crumbs and the bag on the table and chuckles. MARCUS Careful, man. Don’t get her hopes up for the food here. JASMINE We’ll just have to keep bringing her stuff. MORGAN (starting to eat her jello) I won’t complain! WILL I only have so much I can bake. MARCUS Were you guys there with her when the accident happened? Are you all okay? No one else hurt?
MARCUS Join the club. MORGAN I’m the only problematic one, Marcus. MARCUS You are not problematic! MORGAN (giggling and waving her spoon around) Yeah I am! I’m a little devil incarnate. The snake in the garden. MARCUS Fine, you’re a little devil. You in pain at all? MORGAN No. I’m okay. CUT TO: INT. MORGAN’S HOSPITAL ROOM. DAY-AFTERNOON. Evelyn comes back into the room with a bag of supplies. Marcus and Katherine are both sleeping in chairs, and Will and Jasmine have gone back to their college. Morgan has fallen asleep again. Evelyn places the bag down next to the bed. She takes out Morgan’s stuffed wolf and places it next to Morgan’s hand. She also takes out a new journal with a blue cover and an Egyptian style cat in gold details and places it on the table next to Morgan, then places a fresh box of colored pencils and pens next to the new journal. She pulls up a chair and sits next to her daughter. END.
WILL No, we’re fine. Just really tired. JASMINE Thanks for asking, dude. But yeah, we’re just tired. Drama - 63
TO BE SHARED Shae Gabriel
Trigger Warnings: Addiction, self-harm, suicide Character List: TOBY: A nonbinary person in their mid-thirties, a timid demeanor, a recovering addict with past suicidal tendencies; Joel’s best friend since high school JOEL: A man in his mid-thirties, more relaxed and at ease, a theater major with a good job and a comfortable life; Toby’s best friend from high school PAST TOBY: Teenage-Toby, in the throes of mental illness and plagued by poor coping mechanisms PAST JOEL: Teenage-Joel, ranging from hopeful to tired to sheer exhaustion, trying his best, but realizing it’s not enough Setting: Toby’s new apartment, currently in a state of being unpacked. There are boxes piled everywhere in various states of being sorted through. The stage is in a general state of controlled chaos. Optional props: a coffee table, an old couch, spare furnishings most likely bought from Goodwill on a struggling adult’s salary. Dedications: To every Toby out there wondering if recovery is possible. It is. -----TOBY, a person in their mid-twenties, nervously paces the floor. The stage is scattered with moving boxes. There is a knock off stage, and TOBY jerks forward as if to open the door before stepping back nervously and smoothing down their pants.
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TOBY Come in! JOEL enters. JOEL is also in his mid-twenties and is dressed for cold weather (i.e., a winter coat, scarf, and knit hat). TOBY stands there awkwardly, unsure how to approach. JOEL God... I can’t believe it’s really you... TOBY and JOEL stare at each other for a moment, drinking in the appearance of the other. The silence soon becomes awkward between the two. TOBY Sorry, come in, come in... (Beat) JOEL You look... (relieved)you look good. TOBY I feel... good. Better. (Beat.Then, fussing)Seriously, though, come on in. I’ve got coffee on and everything. JOEL Good, it’s freezing out there. TOBY (Laughs) You say that whenever it’s below 70 degrees outside. Remind me why you moved north again? JOEL For the sparkly company, of course. And, you know,
the college degree that put me twenty-three years into debt. How are you not cold? No offense, but your heating is shit. TOBY You forget this is actually moving south for me. Indiana’s got nothing on Ontario. Anyways, the rent’s not too bad; it makes up for the shit heating in the long run. JOEL You always were the crazy one, you know that? TOBY (Beat.) Sorry about all of this--unpacking’s been a bitch. I have no idea where to start. JOEL Sounds like a problem to solve over dinner and a six-pack. TOBY I’ll buy. Do you want to get pizza? JOEL From // Sharpino’s? TOBY // Sharpino’s?
TOBY I’ll just... go order that pizza. TOBY leaves. JOEL sits down and begins going through the boxes and pulling out random objects. Some objects cause a soft smile; others cause brief flashes of pain. He is holding a stack of old yearbooks when TOBY comes back. TOBY God, is that— JOEL —our old yearbook? Yeah... JOEL starts flipping through the book, stopping when a certificate falls out from between the pages. It says “Oakland Southwest Quizbowl Competition / 4th Place”. TOBY picks it up, their fingers lingering over the lettering. TOBY Mr. Murphy was somad we didn’t do better at that competition. [Mimicking an older man’s voice]You kids have to take this seriously! This is about knowledge! Honor! You have to earn the right to be a part of this prestigious quiz bowl team!
TOBY / Pineapple on pizza is a classic and non-negotiable.
TOBY and JOEL laugh. JOEL Don’t remind me, he could lecture even longer than my mom. I can’t believe you still have this. Next you’re going to tell me you still have one of your old forensics uniforms buried somewhere in here. TOBY sits down next to JOEL and begins digging around in the boxes. He pulls out a stack of old notebooks.
JOEL Blasphemy! JOEL moves to throw an arm around TOBY’S shoulder, but TOBY flinches away before they can stop themselves. He tries to pass it off with an awkward smile, but JOEL’S laugh has died in his throat.
TOBY God, probably. I haven’t unpacked some of these boxes since we left for college. There’s definitely some of my old poetry bullshit buried in there. Christ, I forgot I was this sentimental... JOEL: Don’t worry, I’ll do you one better; I still have the script from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
(Beat. Both laugh.) JOEL Sure, so long as you don’t want to order /pineapple pizza!
Drama - 65
TOBY God, sophomore year... You made a great Lysander.
PAST TOBY Come on, Joel; it’s time to celebrate!
JOEL And you made a great Peaseblossom.
PAST JOEL Don’t I know it.
TOBY I think you mean terrible. Remind me to never do that again. Actors are the w orst.
PAST JOEL cracks open a beer.
JOEL You were in forensics! You werean actor! TOBY (Laughs) I was a poet, dipshit. I stayed the fuck away from the dramatic interp kids. I remained firmly in my corner of poetry with the occasional informational speakers, thank you very much. JOEL Ah, yes, poet. How could I forget? TOBY Yeah, I was running the professional slam circuit up in Toronto before...well, before a lot of things. JOEL (Hesitantly) You know you can talk about it, if you want. (Beat. The doorbell rings.) TOBY That must be the pizza... I’ll just... TOBY leaves stage right, throwing a glance back to JOEL. JOEL thumbs over their old yearbook wistfully. He stops on a page and pulls out a program from their graduation. JOEL looks and freezes in his position. PAST TOBY enters stage left. They are younger, noticeably lighter, and grinning as they drag PAST JOEL onstage by his free hand, PAST JOEL, less rigid than his older incarnate, holds a six-pack of beer in his other hand. 66 - Drama
PAST JOEL God, can you really believe it’s over? PAST TOBY opens a can, as well. PAST TOBY (Emphatically) Yes. PAST JOEL and PAST TOBY clink cans. PAST JOEL takes a long drink. Both will drink throughout the scene, PAST JOEL more than PAST TOBY. PAST TOBY It only took forever. PAST JOEL Nah, only four years and part of our soul. PAST TOBY Most of our souls. PAST JOEL The rest we sold to Chamberlain University in Downers Grove. PAST TOBY Ah yes, our corner of the middle of nowhere, Illinois. ...I can’t wait to leave. I can’t wait to not come back to this shit-hole again. PAST JOEL I know. Just think about it. No parents. PAST TOBY Some privacy. PAST TOBY /And no problems!
PAST JOEL /And no problems! PAST TOBY and PAST JOEL clink beer cans again, taking long swigs. PAST TOBY, abruptly finishes drinking and begins worrying at their bottom lip. They rub their hand over their wrist, concealed by their sleeves. PAST JOEL notices and throws his arm around PAST TOBY, pulling them close. PAST TOBY lays their head on PAST JOEL’S shoulder. PAST JOEL Hey, no problems, remember? That’s our plan. PAST TOBY (Quietly) But I don’t... PAST JOEL We’ll get away from here and we’ll be just fine, Tob. Just fine. PAST TOBY pulls away, gesturing nervously with their hands. PAST TOBY But what if I can’t? What if I’m actually crazy, Joel? Like crazy crazy. Doesn’t-get-better crazy. (Mounting panic.) What if leaving doesn’t fix it, what if I can’t fix it, what if-- PAST JOEL Hey, hey, hey. Look at me. Look at me. PAST JOEL reaches out and grabs PAST TOBY’S wrist gently, pulling TOBY closer to himself and looking into their eyes. PAST JOEL You’re gonna be fine. I’m not going to leave you. We’re b othgonna to be just fine, and I’m going to be right here. PAST TOBY Promise?
PAST JOEL Promise. PAST JOEL and PAST TOBY rest their foreheads against each other, dangerously close to kissing but not quite closing that distance. PAST TOBY pulls away as their phone starts buzzing. PAST TOBY ( looking at phone) Mom. She wants me home soon. PAST JOEL One more summer, Toby. And then we’ll be on our own. PAST TOBY I know, I just... I wish I could stay a little longer. PAST JOEL I know. PAST JOEL squeezes PAST TOBY’S hand reassuringly and smiles. PAST JOEL Two more months. PAST TOBY Two more months. PAST JOEL Then it’ll just be you and me. PAST TOBY Against the world? PAST JOEL You and me. After a moment, PAST TOBY stands up and walks off stage left. PAST JOEL exits stage right. Once they’re gone, JOEL unfreezes and stands up. He starts poking through more boxes. TOBY returns, stage right, pizza box in hand. TOBY I come bearing pizza. Drama - 67
JOEL Got anything to drink? TOBY Yeah, there’s some Diet Coke in the fridge. JOEL Any beer? TOBY ...no, actually. I don’t, uh, drink. Anymore. JOEL New meds? TOBY That and I’ve just been trying to stay sober. I went to some AA meetings; with, well, with everything going on, it just seemed like a good idea. JOEL And was it? I mean, a good idea? TOBY Yeah, helped me figure some stuff out--even if all the religious stuff was, you know, less than ideal, but... JOEL Yeah, I get that. One of my, uh, boyfriends ended up going through the program. There is a beat of awkward silence. TOBY tries to smile convincingly, but it only half works. TOBY That’s... good. Where, uh, did you two meet? JOEL Uh, at my last job actually. Starbucks--I know it sounds lame, but I made it to manager, and the healthcare was actually decent, and--anyway. Maddox worked there, too, while he was in between jobs. When rent was up on my apartment, he was looking for a new roommate, and it kind of just went from there.
68 - Drama
TOBY Are you two still together? JOEL Not now. We lasted for a little over a year, but things got, well, complicated. I got a new job and ended up being more in love with my work than him by the time it was all said and done. We’re still friends, though; he actually comes to a lot of Open Curtain’s productions. TOBY Open Curtain? JOEL Yeah, I’m the production manager and I teach some directing classes when they offer them. TOBY And here everyone said you’d never put that degree to good use. JOEL Yep, turns out liberal arts degrees do get you jobs. Who knew? TOBY Hey, I’m the one with a creative writing degree. Even you theatre kids had better chances than me. They both laugh awkwardly. JOEL: (Beat.) ...so, how’s AA actually treating you? TOBY That’s kind of why I asked you here today... (Beat.) You know, with the twelve steps and all that. I always ended up stuck on nine... JOEL Making amends? TOBY There was only one person I ever really needed to apologize to, and, well, the idea of picking up the
TOBY (CONT.) phone was just too hard for a really long time now.
JOEL This is the third time this week.
JOEL ...what changed?
TOBY I know, I know, I just, I tried and then I got out the door, and then it was loudand then--
TOBY I missed you. I missed feeling like a someone who actually managed to leave high school, who wouldn’t-- wouldn’t be stuck in the same body as the person that I used to be. I wanted to feel like I could be someone better. I wanted... I wanted to be someone better. And I couldn’t do that, not without apologizing for the person I was. TOBY is looking at JOEL in a painfully earnest way. JOEL shakes his head, backing away. JOEL ( weakly, trying to joke but failing) You don’t need to apologize. TOBY Yes. Yes, I do. Joel... JOEL Just give me a minute, okay? I just... (quietly) Fuck. JOEL walks off stage quickly. TOBY takes a couple obvious deep breaths and sits in front of a box. They watch the door. PAST TOBY enters from stage left. They look a little older than previous. PAST TOBY is wearing PJ pants and a t-shirt that leaves their wrists exposed, showing a wealth of self-inflicted scars. PAST JOEL comes home wearing his backpack and every-day clothing. He looks upset. JOEL I thought you--didn’t you--How was class today? TOBY I was...I tried, and--
PAST JOEL: (sighs) And then you didn’t. (Beat.) Did you email your teachers at least? PAST TOBY looks down, a guilty silence hanging in the air. PAST JOEL You can’t do this, Toby! You’re already on academic probation, even Dean Foster’s worried about you! PAST TOBY ...how did you know that? PAST JOEL You left your email up on the computer and I just-- I saw the dean’s name and got worried. And even if I hadn’t, / he’s been emailing me too. PAST TOBY / You had no right to look at my emails! And he has no right emailing you about my problems! I’m taking care of it, Joel, don’t you trust me? PAST JOEL: Of course I trust you, but this isn’t taking care of it! You haven’t been taking your meds, you haven’t been going to your appointments, and I’m scared, Toby. I’m fucking scared,is that what you want to hear? PAST TOBY Of course I don’t want to hear that, but what do you want me to do? / I’m trying my best. PAST JOEL I know! I just think that-- that maybe you / need to talk to someone. (Beat.) You know...? Drama - 69
PAST TOBY gestures helplessly at PAST JOEL, looking a little betrayed. PAST JOEL (CONT) Maybe your best isn’t- (Beat.) I mean, obviously, this isn’t... PAST TOBY I thought you said my best would always be good enough. PAST JOEL I know-- it is! I just--I think that maybe you need to get some help. (Beat.) Some real help. PAST TOBY Why do you keep trying to get rid of me? PAST JOEL I’m not trying to get rid of you-PAST TOBY “Go to class, Toby.” “Get dinner, Toby.” “Have you been to therapy, Toby?” // “Go to the gym, Toby.” “Go to the looney bin, Toby.” I’m not crazy! /// Stop thinking that! PAST JOEL // I just want you to take care of yourself. /// I never said that! PAST TOBY / Yes, you did! Yes, you did, Joel! Beat. PAST JOEL: (quietly) Don’t you want to get better? PAST TOBY Of course I want to get better; I’m trying to get better, I just... PAST JOEL 70 - Drama
What? You just what? (Beat.) I think we both need some help. PAST TOBY Joel, you promised. You promised you’d never leave me. PAST JOEL: I’m not leaving. That’s not what I said. // You’re not listening to me! PAST TOBY // Yes you did, Joel! You think I’m crazy, you want to leave, /// I’m not fucking worth it, am I? PAST JOEL ///Stop it! Stop putting words in my mouth! (fear mounting) Of course I think you’re worth it! You’re worth everything. But watching you throw that all away, watching you hurt //-- I don’t know what you want from me! PAST TOBY //Shut up! Just stop talking for a second! PAST TOBY and pAST JOEL both fall silent. PAST TOBY I just want you to stay! PAST JOEL I can’t stay if you don’t want to even be here, Toby! You need help! PAST TOBY And you sound just like my mother! Silence. PAST TOBY is holding themself filled with anger and PAST JOEL is just staring at them, bewildered, lost, and irreversibly wounded. PAST JOEL I don’t... PAST TOBY Joel, wait, that’s not what I / meant.
PAST JOEL No? (Beat.) I can’t-- I can’t do this anymore. PAST JOEL leaves. PAST TOBY watches him go, finally realizing what they’ve said. Their face crumples. After a moment PAST TOBY leaves too. TOBY unfreezes and keeps shuffling through the boxes, sorting things, and generally keeping themself busy. After a moment, JOEL reenters. He looks awkward, holding himself carefully, like an intruder who’s been caught. JOEL ...Sorry TOBY Don’t worry about it; it’s fine. I know this is... probably a lot. JOEL Yeah, but...I chose to be here, Toby. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. TOBY ...When I called, you didn’t have to pick up the phone. (Beat.) Why did you? JOEL (aighs, then laughs awkwardly) That’s a loaded question. (Beat.) I guess...I guess I missed you, too. I’m glad you’re okay, Toby. I’m really glad.
TOBY Past or not, I-- You didn’t deserve that. JOEL I’m the one who left, Toby. If anyone didn’t deserve that, it was you. TOBY I was hurting you. JOEL You were hurting yourself, too. TOBY But that never should have been an excuse. You did your best, Joel. You did your best day in and day out, and you never gave up on me. Not even at the end. JOEL I left. I think I’d call that giving up. TOBY No, that was you giving in. And you had to, or else I would have managed to destroy both of us. You gave me everything, and I’m sorry. (deep breathe) I’m sorry for putting too much pressure on you. I’m sorry for expecting you to take care of me when you should have been taking care of yourself. I’m sorry for the worry, for the long nights, for the ways I hurt you. ...You didn’t deserve that. JOEL ...maybe it’s not about deserve or didn’t deserve. Neither of us deserved any of the shit we went through.
TOBY I never got to thank you for helping me at the beginning. Instead... instead, I just ruined it. Can I apologize, Joel? Please. I owe that to you more than anyone else.
TOBY takes off their jacket. JOEL stops in surprise, taking a look at his friend’s arms. There are still the past self-harm scars, but not there are two, long scars run from forearm to wrist from TOBY’S past suicide attempt. TOBY notices JOEL’S look and smiles sadly.
JOEL It’s okay; you really don’t. It’s in the past.
TOBY It got worse before it got better. Drama - 71
JOEL ...Toby... TOBY You can ask, Joel. JOEL Do you want to tell me? TOBY My therapist says talking about it is good for me. I spent too long bottling it up and never letting it out unless it was for performance or, well... ( glances at their wrists) ...yeah. JOEL When? TOBY About a year ago, May. My manager found me, poor guy. Got me to the hospital just in time, though apparently I coded twice. JOEL ...Jesus, Toby. Just.... Jesus... TOBY Yeah, I ended up admitted for three weeks and then one of my friends--well, associates, really--Casey-helped me out. I ended up living with her while she helped me look into programs. Found a pretty good one and ended up, well, here. Went through a few psychiatrists and even more therapists. And like, the twelve steps and everything, obviously. And then between me, my doctor, and my social worker, we ended up working it all out. With my new job, I finally got enough money saved up to move in here, and--well--here I am. TOBY shrugs helplessly. JOEL You could have called me. TOBY Joel--It had been three years. I couldn’t do that to you again. But--if you want-- I’m sorry for that, too. 72 - Drama
I’m sorry for the four years of silence when you didn’t know where I was at or how I was doing. Or if I was… (Beat.) Do you think you can forgive me? JOEL Of course, Toby. Of course I can forgive you. JOEL reaches for TOBY. He runs his fingers gently down TOBY’S long scar in an apology before grasping TOBY’S hand and squeezing it reassuringly. TOBY squeezes back with a smile. TOBY Thank you. JOEL and TOBY hug each other and rest in the embrace. Lights go dim, but the pair can still be seen. PAST TOBY and PAST JOEL re-enter from opposite sides of the stage. Spotlights on the pair, who are facing away from each other, completely unaware of the other’s presence on the stage. PAST TOBY is pacing nervously and pulls out their phone, dialing a number and raising it to their ear. PAST JOEL’S phone starts ringing. He looks at the phone, surprised, before picking up hurriedly. PAST JOEL ...Toby? PAST TOBY ...Hi Joel... PAST JOEL ...Hi... Beat. PAST TOBY I’m sorry-- this was a mistake-- I’ll-PAST JOEL (hurriedly) Toby! Toby, no. No. How are you? ( more softly) How are you?
PAST TOBY I’m... I’m getting better. I’m getting better, Joel. PAST JOEL That’s good, Toby. That’s... that’s good. (Beat.) I’m glad. They lapse into small talk and awkward conversation that is acting out, not said verbally, almost as if someone had pressed mute on TOBY and JOEL’S voices. This goes on for a few moments, up to the director’s discretion, before they begin speaking aloud again. PAST TOBY ...I’d really like to see you again, if I can. I know things... PAST JOEL I’d like to see you too, Toby. I really would. Lights dim on PAST TOBY and PAST JOEL. Lights come up on TOBY and JOEL, still hugging. Blackout. End.
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ANALYTICAL NON- FICTION
WAR TORN Jia Self
In both Apollonius of Rhodes’ Argonautica and Euripides’ Medea, Medea is forced to make decisions that challenge two of her core values, pride and honor. Medea’s pride manifests itself when she is concerned about her actions being right or just. Medea’s honor, expressed by her duty to her family, is often in conflict with her hubris because her pride drives her to act for her own betterment, rather than her family’s. Medea’s pride allows her to reclaim some of the agency that her family holds over her due to gender and familial roles in society. For instance, in Argonautica Medea must decide whether or not to help Jason obtain the golden fleece belonging to her father, King Aeëtes. This act of rebellion would indulge her desire to marry Jason, but society dictates that it should be her prerogative to protect her father’s treasure, thereby remaining loyal to her family. In Medea, moreover, Medea struggles to choose whether or not destroying Jason’s lineage and furthering her vendetta against him is justified and worth the consequences such an act of violence would entail. Medea’s pride inclines her to exact an eternal punishment on Jason, whereas her honor as a mother longs to protect her children. In both instances, Medea’s internal struggle between pride and honor causes both emotional and physical hesitations to the actions she has committed herself to taking. These hesitations emphasize the degree to which Medea is prioritizing one over the other. The first account of Medea’s internal struggle between her pride and honor occurs in Apollonius’ Argonautica. As a part of the gods’ plans to help Jason obtain the golden fleece, Medea is struck by one of Eros’ arrows and consequently falls madly in love with him. With the fear of Jason perishing in King Aeëtes’ trials, Medea becomes overwhelmed with the desire to help Jason. 76 - Anayltical Nonfiction
However, Medea is also ashamed of her feelings and how potent they are because she believes that “maidenhood and the palace of [her] parents/ should be [her] lone concerns,” which is proper for a young woman of noble status to do at the time (Apollonius 3.845-846). In an attempt to quell her spirits, she resolves to offer her assistance to her sister, Chalciope, the mother of one of the Argonauts, Argus. Yet, every time Medea left her chamber, “her feet conveyed her here,/ there, nowhere, since, whenever she emerged,/ the shame within her turned her steps around,” but “fierce longing turned her back and urged her onward” whenever she reentered her chamber (Apollonius 3.860-864). However great Medea’s desire to help Jason grows, her anxiety about acting against her father grows along with it. Medea is caught in limbo as she is unable to choose, emotionally and physically, between Jason and her parents. This sentiment is heightened as Chalciope expresses a fear that “[Medea] would dread their father’s deadly anger” (Apollonius 3.813). By describing Aeëtes’ anger as “deadly” it is heavily implied that the sisters may face death if they are caught in an act of treason. Similarly, Medea, in a dream, chose Jason over her parents, and as a result “infinite resentment gripped them” and they “howled in rage” (Apollonius 3.835-836). Here it is affirmed that Medea fears the anger and disappointment of her parents. The duty to her family continuously reminds Medea not to let her pride get the best of her. This conflict of interests results in Medea being physically unable to carry out her plan, which emphasizes the extent to which Medea is debating her options since it is a physical representation of both of her emotional commitments. She is literally and metaphorically walking the line between helping Jason or her father. In this case, the honor Medea has
to her family is warring against the pride of Medea winning Jason’s heart. In addition to her familial pride, the fear of being looked down upon by society also contributes to Medea’s internal struggles. The Argonautica first explores this side of Medea when she tries to confess her feelings to her sister. As Medea cries and preemptively mourns Jason’s death her “virgin modesty/ restrained her, though she ached to tell her tale./ At one time words were rising to her tongue’s tip/ and at another sinking in her breast” (Apollonius 3.903-906). In a similar manner to Medea being unable to cross the courtyard to see her sister, Medea’s emotional indecision has caused her to be physically unable to speak the truth. By voicing her true feelings aloud, Medea will be admitting that her infatuation with Jason is more important than her loyalty to her family; her pride will win. Moreover, Medea’s honor causes her to feel ashamed of her love for Jason because her society dictates that she should prioritize her family above the love of a stranger. This shame presents itself when Medea worries about what people would say if, after she saves Jason from her father’s trials, she kills herself because of him: “She loved that foreigner so much it killed her./ By giving way to lust, she has disgraced/ her house and home” (Apollonius 3.1046-1048). If Medea helps Jason, she is certain that she will be shamed for loving him more than her family. Such an outcome is especially undesirable because Medea’s pride will be ruined as the news travels and people mock her. Additionally, Apollonius has previously described Medea’s weeping like that of a “widow” whilst “worrying that women/ will mock and scorn her” (Apollonius 3.877-878). The fear of being publicly shamed causes Medea to reevaluate the strength of her pride and desire to help Jason. Medea’s internal struggle would have continued if it were not for divine intervention: “Hera redirected her intentions./ No longer did Medea waver, no, she yearned for sunrise, burned to meet the stranger/ face-to-face, and offer him the drug” (Apollonius 3.1074-1077). Hera’s intervention shows how conflicted Medea was, and how she was unable to choose between her family and Jason by her own free will. As well as in the Argonautica, Medea must choose between Jason and her family in Euripides’
Medea. Medea is no longer infatuated with Jason, but quite the opposite. Since he refuted his oath and marriage to Medea in order to take another wife, Medea has sworn to exact vengeance upon him: “the children [Medea] bore him/ [he will] never see alive again; [he will] never have/ a child with his new bride: the wretched woman/ must die from [Medea’s] poison, a wretched death” (Euripides 803-806). By killing off Jason’s children and his new wife, Medea is ruining his hopes of continuing his lineage and fulfilling his dreams of being a king. Since Jason no longer cares about Medea and refuses her pleas, the only way for her to truly hurt him is to hurt those he does care about, their children. Although she seems fully prepared to kill her sons, Medea hesitates when the time comes for her to do the deed. As she takes her children aside and speaks to them for the last time, Medea gazes upon their faces, causing her to lose her resolve. Then, she exclaims: ‘“Let me say goodbye to plans/ I made before! [I will] take my sons from here./ Why must I hurt their father with their pain and so give myself double their suffering?/ I will not. Goodbye to those plans!” (Euripides 1044-1048). Medea’s maternal instincts take over, and she realizes that by killing her sons, she will be hurting herself just as much as she is hurting Jason. In a similar way to her deciding between Jason and her family in the Argonautica, both choices having consequences. Medea realizes that by acting on her pride and killing her children she will be hurting herself as well as Jason, and if she does not kill her children and her duty to them as a mother wins out, she will not be able to take them with her into exile. Upon this realization, Medea tries to talk herself out of killing them: “[what is] happening to me? Do I want to be mocked while my enemies go unpunished? I must steel myself … [Do not] do this, you, my strong spirit. Leave them be, miserable heart; spare these children” (Euripides 1049-1057). Her monologue gives insight into her internal struggle, which emphasizes how much her pride influences her actions since she inevitably chooses to kill her sons. Moreover, as seen in the Argonautica, Medea still values how people view her. She does not want to be mocked, neither over her love for Jason nor her inability to exact justice, so she begins to steel herself against her maternal instincts. However, Medea’s love for her children Anayltical Nonficition - 77
takes over and speaks out against her pride, begging ANALYTICAL her to spare the lives of her sons. Medea’s internal struggle seems to split Medea’s personality in half as both sides come out and try to persuade her. She is again caught in an emotional turmoil that prevents her from carrying out any actions, either to save or to kill her sons. Realizing that her nerve is slipping, Medea further exclaims that “[she] can no longer look at them;/ [she is] overcome by what [she] must suffer./ [She understands] the ruin [she is] about to cause,/ and yet [her] spirit is stronger than [her] plans” (Euripides 1076-1079). The meaning of these last few lines has been debated. Some think that Medea has recommitted herself to killing her children, and others think that Medea is still doubting her plans. Since these lines are questioned even in modern-day, it emphasizes how Medea struggles with choosing between her pride and honor since Medea’s maternal spirit is stronger than she realized, making it harder to satisfy her pride. Additionally, in contrast with the Argonautica, there is no sign of the gods’ will to guide Medea to one outcome or another. Only Medea can make the decision, making it even more pressing since Hera had to help persuade Medea’s pride to choose Jason. As aforementioned in both the Argonautica and Medea, Medea’s desire not to be seen as weak or looked down upon drives her actions in favor of her hubris. Since women are considered to be inferior to men, Medea tries to distance herself from her maternal instincts in order for her to exact her vengeance and act according to her pride. Indeed, Medea states: “let no one think me weak, worthless, or docile./ Let me be thought the opposite of these:/ harsh with my enemies, gentle with my friends./ Such people live lives of great renown” (Euripides 807-810). Medea wishes to be known for her strength and resilience, which is akin to how men and heroes are often described. Her pride does not want her to be associated with the stereotypical weakness of women. In fact, when it is stated that “if [Glauce’s] like other women” then she will accept Jason’s children as her own, it separates Medea from “other women” because she does not plan on taking her children with her into exile (Euripides 945). The ultimate example of Medea distancing herself from the roles of a woman is when she decides to kill her children. After declaring her intentions, the Chorus, the only 78 - Anayltical Nonfiction
ones who have sided with her against Jason, turn
NON-FICTION against her and admit that they “want to help [her],
at the same time/ upholding humanity’s laws: [they] forbid this act” (Euripides 811-813). The Chorus of Corinthian women‘21 support Medea’s desire to act AUTHOR against Jason, but they draw the line at killing children, the ultimate betrayal of a mother. In response to Medea’s proclamation of death, the Chorus states that she “will be the most desolate of women,” to which Medea replies “so be it” (Euripides 818-819). Unlike before in the Argonautica when she feared being mocked by other women, Medea no longer cares about how other women view her as long as she is able to exact her vengeance. This is the final signifier that Medea’s hubris has overcome her duty to protect her family because she is determined to carry out her plans no matter the cost. To conclude, throughout Medea’s character arc, she struggles between acting to further her pride or her familial honor. Deciding between Jason and her family has been such a struggle that Medea’s emotionally conflicted state has manifested as physical impediments to her plans. Whether it be being unable to walk, talk, or having the two sides of herself act independently of themselves, Medea’s pride strongly encourages her to act; however, the conflicts arise when her honor and shame try to stop her. Once Medea has resolved herself, she decides to act on her pride because her desire to be seen as a powerful woman is greater than the duty she feels to her family.
Works Cited Apollonius, et al. Jason and the Argonauts. Penguin Books, 2014. Lefkowitz, Mary R., et al. The Greek Plays: Sixteen Plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. The Modern Library, 2017.
HAVE SOME CAKE AND EAT IT TOO Jia Self
The increased sexualization of culture has negatively impacted the way young girls view their sexual agency. Rosalind Gill’s thesis Beyond the ‘Sexualization of Culture’ Thesis: An International Analysis of ‘Sixpacks,’ ‘Midriffs’ and ‘Hot Lesbians’ in Advertising and Melanie Martinez’s song “Strawberry Shortcake” both demonstrate how young women are targeted by sexualized culture to look and act a specific way in order to attract male attention, which harms young women’s conceptions of their agency. Gill analyzes how the “midriff” model used by advertisers popularizes a narrow beauty standard, which subsequently empowers only the few women who fit the model’s description (Gill 148). Martinez’s song follows the protagonist, Crybaby, who struggles with differentiating between sexual objectification and sexual subjectification. The song also addresses how advertisements aimed at older women affect young girls. In contrast to Gill and Martinez, Brian McNair’s Porno? Chic! argues that the sexualization of culture is a “vehicle for progressive sex-political change” (McNair 12). McNair claims that more exposure to sexualized culture sparks sexual liberalism. While this may be true in some cases, Gill and Martinez show how the benefits of sexualized culture primarily apply to women who fit into the “midriff” model, which allows them to be sexual subjects rather than objects (Gill 148). For women who do not fit within the model, society turns their attempts at subjectification into objectification. Gill’s thesis and Martinez’s song both show how young women feel pressure to fit within the narrow beauty standards advertisers use to model the ‘ideal’ woman. Gill describes the new “midriff” model advertisers use to appeal to women: “a young, attractive, heterosexual woman who knowingly
and deliberately plays with her sexual power” (Gill 148). Gill goes on to say that this woman embodies a “new, confident, powerful, sexy femininity”. This model seems to emphasize women’s agency and empowers them by mitigating the need for men’s approval. Although this model embraces women’s ability to use their sexuality as power, it also accentuates how “empowerment is tied to possession of a slim and alluring young body, whose power is the ability to attract male attention” (Gill 149). By claiming not to care about male attention, the women in the advertisements end up receiving the attention they wanted to begin with. Additionally, advertisers make it clear that only a select number of women can fit into this model. Women who are of a different body type, age, race, or sexual orientation are excluded from the empowering model of “midriff advertising” (Gill 150). However, McNair claims that “commodification [of sexuality] ... can be the agent of social progress” (McNair 13). Society’s increasing exposure to cultural sexualization generates progressive ideas about sexual liberalism. Therefore, women’s exposure to the “midriff” model, even though the model is limiting, may still encourage women who do not fit the model’s definition of ‘sexy’ to take more control of their sexuality (Gill 148). Martinez’s song, however, opens with a young Crybaby feeling the pressure to confine to advertisers’ version of beauty: “Feeling unsure of my naked body/ Stand back, watch it taking shape/ Wondering why I don’t look like Barbie/ They say boys like girls with a tiny waist” (Martinez 1-4). A small waist, which is depicted in the “midriff” model, has been popularized to indicate sexual appeal, so when Crybaby sees that she is not developing one, she questions her ability to attract boys’ attention (Gill 148). The narrow beauty definition does not Anayltical Nonficition - 79
accommodate body positivity for every body type. ANALYTICAL Although social progress, as McNair suggests, has been made due to popular culture’s advancements to embrace the beauty of every individual, children have an even harder time interpreting how their differing bodies can be seen as beautiful when their toys, such as Barbies, only show one body type. Moreover, Crybaby thinking of her body in terms of what boys are shown to find attractive shows that societal pressure to emulate the “midriff” model reaches not just adult women, but young girls as well (Gill 148). With advertisers reacting to and prompting sexualization of culture, feminist theories such as sexual subjectification versus sexual objectification have been debated. The “midriff” model, created in response to feminism, views women as “sexual subjects” who have the freedom to choose whether or not to present themselves in an objectified manner (Gill 148). Sexual subjectification emphasizes women’s agency over their sexuality; they are free to utilize their sexuality for their own benefits. The “midriff” model suggests that women’s sexuality is closely tied to their physical appearance (Gill 148). In fact, that is the primary attribute discussed in relation to women’s empowerment: “Feminist theory erects a false dichotomy ... women with brains and beauty are not allowed to use both” (McNair 97). Martinez shows this viewpoint in her song: “People all around me watching closely/ Cause it’s how I look and not what I think” (Martinez 16-17). Stereotypical beauties, particularly the dumb blonde, are not seen as being smart; this portrayal makes it harder for women to be seen for more than just their physical appearance. Moreover, the advertisements showing Gill’s “midriff” model picture women scantily glad (Gill 148). Women in their everyday lives are slutshamed for wearing clothes that reveal too much skin, so even when they try to take control of their sexuality by dressing similarly to advertisements, they are subjected to judgment by society. Society then pressures young women, who are not in advertisements, to dress and act a certain way to avoid negative judgement. Martinez uses school uniforms as an example: “Got boys acting like they ain’t seen skin before/ Got sent home to change cause my skirt is too short” (Martinez 8-9). In the song, Crybaby is trying to act like the women in advertisements 80 - Anayltical Nonfiction
who objectify themselves to garner male attention.
NON-FICTION However, she is criticized by her school for having a
skirt that does not follow the dress code. In this way, Crybaby’s attempts at being a sexual subject cause her to be AUTHOR a victim of sexual ‘21 objectification by society. Therefore, the narrow beauty standards of the “midriff” model, while claiming to embrace women’s sexual agency, ultimately objectify the women who do not fit within these standards (Gill 148). Furthermore, Gill’s thesis and Martinez’s song both portray sexual objectification as being inherently harmful to feminism because it dehumanizes women and takes away their agency. Objectivity, according to Gill, classifies women as “passive, mute objects of an assumed male gaze” (Gill 148). McNair, on the other hand, advocates for objectification by claiming that sexual objectification is something that some “might choose to embrace as part of a ‘healthy’ and well-adjusted individuality” (McNair 63). Indeed, Martinez’s song has an example of Crybaby knowingly using her sexuality to attract a boy’s attention: “Mikey’s eyes seem to be glued to her chest/ So, I’m stuffing my bra so that mine look the best” (Martinez 18-19). Since she is willingly using her sexuality to get attention, this may be interpreted as a sign of her sexual agency. However, since Crybaby is still a young girl, society dictates that it is not age-appropriate for her to be utilizing her sexuality to gain a boy’s attention. This sentiment is seen in the previous example when Crybaby is criticized for wearing a skirt that disobeys the school’s dress code. Although sexual objectification as McNair mentions is not inherently harmful because women’s choice to present themselves as sexual objects is a form of empowerment, the “midriff” model only empowers the few women who fit its mold (Gill 148). The women who do not fit within the “midriff” model are unable to turn sexual objectification into subjectification and are thus victims to society’s negative judgments. To conclude, Melanie Martinez’s song “Strawberry Shortcake” outlines the negative impacts of the sexualization of culture, particularly the “midriff” model analyzed by Gill, has on young women (Gill 148). The narrow beauty standards defined by the “midriff” model cause young women to critique their bodies even though the model itself is not inclusive of other body types. Moreover, the sexual subjectiv-
ity the model claims to promote is not inclusive of every woman. When women and young girls who do not fit within the model try to emulate the sexual agency of the advertisements, it leads to sexual objectification. For instance, McNair’s argument that sexual objectivity may be beneficial for some women is not applicable to young girls for which society dictates that it is inappropriate for them to utilize their sexuality for male attention.
Bibliography Gill, Rosalind. Beyond the “Sexualization of Culture” Thesis: An Intersectional Anal ysis of “Sixpacks,” “Midriffs” and “Hot Lesbians” in Advertising. Open Univer sity, https://moodle.knox.edu/pluginfile. php/173638/mod_resource/content/1/ Gill2009.pdf. Martinez, Melanie. “Strawberry Shortcake.” AZLyrics, https://www.azlyrics.com/ lyrics/melaniemartinez/strawberryshort cake.html Accessed 3 Nov. 2019. McNair, Brian. Porno? Chic! Routledge, 2013. Anayltical Nonficition - 81
THE PATRIARCHAL PARADOX OF GENDER IN PAN’S LABRINTH Aditi Parikh
The fantastical realm Guillermo del Toro creates in Pan’s Labyrinth sheds light on the implications of gender on the perception of monstrosity. In this essay, I will compare Captain Vidal’s stereotypical masculinity with the spectrum of gender identities embodied by other characters in the film (both human and monster) in order to reveal that the patriarchy thrives, but is also made vulnerable, by its adherence to extreme identities. Monster theorist Jeffrey Jerome Cohen argues, “The difficult project of constructing and maintaining gender identities elicits an array of anxious responses throughout culture” (Cohen 9). Similarly, the film utilizes a vast range of characters that lie at various points along the gender spectrum. Through this essay, I will attempt to analyze how these distinctions as typified by the patriarchy make it easier for them to be labeled monsters. First, I will explore the impact of hypermasculinity epitomized by Vidal, followed by the ambiguity of the monsters representing each of the three challenges. These analyses will be countered through the differing forms of femininity present in the film, and the death of women as a catalyst for the progress of the established social order. This exploration allows one to comprehend the relative influences of gendered societal classifications on the sustenance as well as the eventual dismantling of the patriarchy. According to film studies Professor Laura Hubner, among the film’s themes, “Gender seems less important than a universal understanding of humankind” (Hubner 54). However, the role of gender in the film should not be minimized because as Hubner herself argues, the film’s very nature is founded in its attempt to provide a “Voice for female sexuality” (Hubner 51). Captain Vidal, Ofelia’s stepfather, per82 - Anayltical Nonfiction
forms the consistent role of silencing and eradicating the aforementioned form of self-expression. Thus, I will commence by discussing how “Pan’s Labyrinth sanitizes history by transferring all the cruelty onto the stepfather” (Hubner 54). Captain Vidal is depicted as the symbol of evil, the alpha male, and the misogynist who pollutes things by sheer contact. The wide range of suffering he inflicts on those around him fits into the hypermasculine category highlighted by Literature Professor Dana Oswald. According to her, hypermasculine monsters, “Exceed the boundaries of civilized masculinity in their appetite for food, sex and violence” (Oswald 347). These qualities are significantly satisfied in the portrayal of Vidal. He murders innocent people without flinching, evident in the macabre killing of the farmer’s son. He believes that “the only decent way to die” is in combat elevating the atmosphere of hypermasculinity radiating from him (del Toro). Additionally, he limits access to food and exploits this to augment his own power. This is epitomized in the banquet scene in the film which shows the privileged participating in immoral excesses of food, while the civilians starve outside. Furthermore, the importance of the food store to the plot of the film demonstrates the patriarchy’s over-reliance on the control of the means of production and sustenance. Vidal’s compulsive daily routine makes him seem inhuman, because of the mechanical nature of these constantly repeated actions. The above characteristics make it extremely easy for Vidal to be categorized as the primary monster in the film, since they all relate to the expected characteristics of his extreme gender identity. Moreover, as religious studies lecturer David Frankfurter states, “The overall picture of transgression” where “an articulated scenario of cannibalism, sexual perversity and moral
inversion makes clear the degree of difference” between the self and the other (aka Vidal) further increases the viewers’ proclivity for classifying him as evil (Frankfurter 151). Vidal’s thirst for blood and food is complemented by the threat he poses to women, exemplifying the importance of the death of women in the continuation of the patriarchy. The underlying sexual debauchery evident in his treatment of Mercedes is starkly evident in his dialogue: “If you had asked for it, I would have given it to you” he says while deliberately taking off his clothes as he prepares to torture her (del Toro). This creates a fear in my mind as a viewer of the possible sexual violations he might be planning to commit. Moreover, Vidal possesses no sense of fatherhood for Ofelia who he threatened time and again primarily due to her gender. This is juxtaposed to the manner in which he mythologizes his father; Vidal wished to transcend his humanity like his father before him by becoming a similar glorious figure for his own son. This is significantly emblematic of the functioning of the patriarchy and the generational transmission of power from man to man. Finally, in his orders to the Doctor, it becomes evident that he had little to no concern for the life of his wife: Carmen. He would have been willing to sacrifice her in a heartbeat if it meant that his son could be alive. The preceding points make it evident that Vidal poses a threat to every single woman in the film, regardless of the type of femininity they personify, whether they are traditional, modern, or even a little girl. As a result, Vidal can easily be classified as a stand-in for the patriarchy. His overdependence on his superior self-proclaimed status as the patriarch is evident in his assertion that the guerrilla warriors have the “mistaken belief that we’re all equal” (del Toro). Therefore, it can be derived that the patriarchy depends on hypermasculine personalities such as Vidal to ensure its complete control over other sections of society. However, this also makes it immensely easy for the remainder of society to classify these individuals in power as monstrous due to the extreme nature of their identity. Oswald writes, “It is a primary function of monsters to challenge and confirm the boundaries of the societies that create and ‘encounter’ them” (Oswald 343); the three ambiguous monsters representing Ofelia’s
challenges and the defenseless majority blurring established frontiers will thus be discussed next. The Pale Man is the perfect paradigm of the monstrous perversions highlighted by Frankfurter. In his lair were visible a large number of images of him preying on and killing children, along with a pile of his young victims’ shoes. His nudity and indulgence in excessive food displayed through the blood-red feast directly tie into the tableaux. However, his gender remains uncertain due to his lack of genitalia, despite his name referring to him as a ‘man’. Next, the Faun leaves the Underworld and invades Ofelia’s home and her private space, blurring the separation between the human and mystical world. This represents a violation of clear distinctions while also symbolizing the actions of the patriarchy in relation to women. His manliness is further supplemented by his voice and bodily characteristics. Incongruously, however, the faun’s head ontologically resembles the fallopian tubes and uterus of a woman giving him female characteristics. Furthermore, Ofelia equated the baby to the Toad encroaching upon the tree of life. This was a symbolic representation of her mother who was being deprived of the essence of life leading to her slow death and decay. The Toad appeared to be a giant stomach covered by skin, which strangely deflates, showing how Ofelia’s childish mind viewed pregnancy. Yet, determining the definitive gender of the Toad proves elusive. Cohen’s assertion, “They are disturbing hybrids whose externally incoherent bodies resist attempts to include them in any systematic structuration” is corroborated through the above discussion of the creatures (Cohen 6). Through the aforementioned exploration, it is evident that all these monsters would be categorized as ‘Gender-Benders’ that “exist somewhere between categories” by Oswald’s classifications (Oswald 355). Their designation as “harbingers of category crisis” would make them the ideal primary monsters in the film (Cohen 6). Moreover, Ofelia’s encounters with these three creatures mark significant turning points in the plot, as well as her character arc. They inspire her final transformation and irreversible loss of innocence. Since they all seemed to be extensions of Vidal himself, it raises the question of why they are not viewed as the principal antagonist. It seems that the ambiguity of their gender considerably Anayltical Nonficition - 83
prevents them from being deemed as the main contenders in immorality and wickedness to Ofelia. This leads me to conclude that masculinity in excess is by default viewed as more monstrous than ambiguity due to its capability to reinforce and cultivate the patriarchy in an incomparable manner. As the creatures were the imaginative creations of Ofelia’s mind, they delineate her greatest fears and obstacles. They also reflect her own personality in terms of the representation of her gendered ambiguity; Ofelia’s “awe surrounding female body [is evident] in the uterine imagery of [her] fantasy world” (Hubner 57). She foreshadows her own death by telling Mercedes that she never wants to become an adult woman or have a child, demonstrating her desire to be gender-bending. Moreover, Ofelia is often seen showing visible distaste for her brother while also possessing a protective maternal instinct for him, symbolically represented through her nurturing of the mandrake. This further confuses her definitive gender identity as an ambiguous female who is reluctant yet is embracing motherhood. The vitality of this anxiety and fear of womanhood in the tale is epitomized by how Ofelia is shot in her stomach by Vidal, exactly where her womb would be, symbolically representing her first period. The film thus employs the use of Ofelia’s own ambivalence about becoming a woman and correspondingly a mother to underscore the recurrent theme of the terror of femininity and the threat it can be perceived as by all individuals in the patriarchy. The insecurity the existence of women causes due to its deviation from the masculine standard drives the patriarchy to commit horrendous acts through the means of its hypermasculine or hyperfeminine adherents, furthering their image as ‘monsters’. In terms of womanhood, Mercedes and Carmen were Ofelia’s only two depicted exemplars in the film. They both wish to protect Ofelia but they go about it in different ways. Carmen’s only distinctive, repeated characteristic addresses her physical beauty and she represents the archetypal, submissive, docile ideal of hyper-femininity, whereby the woman’s primary role seems to be as a baby-making machine. She willingly sacrifices her agency and demonstrates that women can uphold oppressive values of the patriarchy and even benefit 84 - Anayltical Nonfiction
from them. In contrast, Mercedes epitomizes modernity; she is an unmarried working woman actively resisting fascism and by extension the patriarchy. She represents what threatens Vidal the most, due to her ambiguous, gender-bending nature, epitomized AUTHOR ‘21 by her grand proclamation that, “[Vidal] won’t be the first pig I’ve gutted” (del Toro). However, she is as much of a mother to Ofelia as Carmen is, evident through her dialogue: “I can’t take you, my child” (del Toro). Carmen obeys Vidal and still dies, while Mercedes disobeys and eventually triumphs, creating a specific desire in the mind of Ofelia for her future-self. Ofelia sees Carmen’s death as a consequence of her motherhood and patriarchal femininity and aligns herself completely towards Mercedes. However, Ofelia fails to realize that she is too young to attempt to become the type of gender-bending character that Mercedes is, culminating in her murder by Vidal and symbolically the patriarchy. This further demonstrates the over-reliance of the patriarchy on the murder of all women augmenting the ease of classifying its supporters as monstrous. Through this essay, it becomes evident that the patriarchy relies on the extremities of the gender spectrum and its implications to ensure its survival. However, it also reveals that this inevitably leads to the passive disintegration of the social order due to the appearance of the actions of extreme identities as more extensively monstrous. Ambiguous monstrosity does not contribute to the brutality necessitated by the absolute control of the patriarchy and thus goes relatively unnoticed. Further, intermediate feminine identities are perceived as non-threatening in terms of monstrosity, since their murders are encouraged by the patriarchy. This investigation highlights the intrinsically self-destructive nature of the control administered by the patriarchy as an inevitable outcome of the monstrous actions committed by the extreme gender identities vital to the preservation and prosperity of the system.
Works Cited Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. “Monster Culture (Seven Theses).” Monster Theory, Reading Culture, edited by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, U of Minnesota P, 1996, pp. 3–25. Del Toro, Guillermo, director. Pan’s Labyrinth, New Line Cinema. 2006. Frankfurter, David. Evil Incarnate: Rumors of Demonic Conspiracy and Ritual Abuse in History. Princeton UP, 2006. Hubner, Laura. “Pan’s Labyrinth, Fear and the Fairy Tale.” Fear Itself: Reasoning the Unreasonable, edited by Stephen Hessel and Michèle Huppert, Rodopi, 2010, pp. 45–62. Oswald, Dana. “Monstrous Gender: Geographies of Ambiguity.” Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous, edited by Asa Simon Mittman and Peter J.Dendle, Routledge, 2013, pp. 343–363. Anayltical Nonficition - 85
DOUBLING IN LINCOLN IN THE BARDO Elizabeth George
In his 1919 essay “The Uncanny”, Sigmund Freud (relying heavily on the work of Otto Rank) famously asserts that, for human beings who have passed the primitive narcissistic stage, “the ‘double’ reverses its aspect. From having been an assurance of immortality, it becomes the uncanny harbinger of death” (Freud 235). Two years shy of a century later, George Sanders’ Lincoln in the Bardo appears as a joyful challenge to this theory. For instance, there is nothing at all discomforting about the moment when Saunders, through an excerpt from the work of the fictitious “insider” Tyron Philian, imagines President Lincoln regarding his son Willie as “a small mirror of himself, as it were, to whom he could speak frankly, openly, and confidingly” (Saunders 49). An additional reason to weep with Lincoln for his loss, perhaps, but at no point is it suggested that the “doubling” of Lincoln in his son is a source of anxiety for him, or any more of a reminder of the “temporariness” of life than the death of one’s child would naturally be. Rather, having his own son for a friend and confidante had been a delight for Saunders’ Lincoln. It seems to me that Saunders uses this dynamic to illustrate or prepare us to accept one of the smaller but no less fascinating arguments this novel makes once its ghostly characters learn that they can, in essence, become “doubles” of one another by entering one another’s manifestations: perhaps finding our “double” in someone else, far from being uncanny or bringing us to morbid thoughts about our impending death, allows us to have a sense of unity with others via shared perspectives, while yet affirming our own individuality. In Chapter XLIV, when roger bevins iii1
follows his friend hans vollman into the body of Lincoln, the latter states, “And the three of us were one” (Saunders 146). The ghosts can sense, see, smell, think with, and even exert some influence over the president—the presence of young bevins causes Lincoln to experience “a mild thought-swerve back to a scene of his own (wild) youth” (Saunders 147). The two ghosts witness Lincoln’s attempts to remember the way Willie Lincoln had looked and laughed, as well as the moment where the staggering cost of the Civil War, even in its early stages, finally hits him. Eventually, the ghosts hatch a plan to try to “will” Lincoln into returning to his son’s crypt. Throughout these scenes, the two ghosts think and converse among themselves as distinct individuals, yet sometimes slip from speaking in terms of “us”–– as in themselves––and “you”––as in Lincoln––to an “our” or “us” that implicates all three of them. For instance: “We ran one hand roughly over our face, as if attempting to suppress a notion just arising” or “The notion washed over us” (Saunders 150, 151; emphasis mine). This sense of slipping into another’s identity so as to become one with the other culminates in Chapter LV. After bevins and vollman tumble out of Lincoln, whom they succeed in persuading to return to his son’s crypt, bevins observes that, “Because we were as yet intermingled with one another, traces of Mr. Vollman naturally began arising in my mind and traces of me naturally began arising in his” (Saunders 171). The pair spends the next chapter marveling over what an “intensely pleasurable” experience it is to empathize with one another in the most literal sense possible: vollman sees, “as if for the first time,” the beauty of the world that bevins
1 Though the names of the ghosts are rendered according to traditional rules of capitalization when they address one another, the names most often appear in all-lowercase below their narration, denoting their diminished state of being. 86 - Anayltical Nonfiction
is always soliloquizing about, discovers what it is to desire a man, and “relives” bevins’ final moments on the floor of his kitchen; meanwhile bevins gets to feel and/or view vollman’s fondness for his young widow Anna, his fantasies of a future with her, his love for his former occupation and “That fading final panicked instant” after the center-beam in vollman’s workspace falls and knocks his head in (Saunders 171-172). Still, all of these memories shared, even the painful ones, bring the friends intense pleasure—so much so that upon bevins’ exit from him, vollman describes being “immediately filled with longing for him and his associated phenomena” (Saunders 173). And not for a moment are vollman or bevins unsettled by the experience. They are not reminded of that discarded belief from primitive times in having multiples of themselves as a means of securing immunity from existential threats. And while they certainly have every right to be weirded out by the fact that the other man/manifestation knows essentially everything about them, the case is quite the opposite. Their becoming “doubles” of one another by internalizing and possessing one another’s perceptions of their former lives is nothing but a joyful, unifying event. This pleasure is multiplied when, in Chapter LXXVII, bevins, vollman, the reverend everly thomas, and eventually almost all of the ghosts from both sides of the segregated cemetery enter the President—and one another—en masse. They do this in order to persuade the president to come close enough to Willie Lincoln that Willie’s ghost may enter his father and be convinced to give himself over to the “matterlightblooming phenomenon,” freeing him from the cemetery. bevins seems to sigh to himself, “What a pleasure. What a pleasure it was, being in there. Together. United in common purpose. In there together, yet also within one another, thereby receiving glimpses of one another’s minds, and glimpses, also, of Mr. Lincoln’s mind. How good it felt, doing this together!” (Saunders 253). The goodness of this experience is described in the next few pages as bevins, vollman, and the reverend thomas take turns narrating. Page 254 contains a discussion of one particular “refreshment”: the laying aside of all self-centered preoccupations with staying in the bardo-like space of the cemetery, the rehearsal of their own limited narratives of the one failure or
regret that allows them to do so, and the necessary loneliness that such an afterlife entails. Yet, oddly enough, after a certain point it is no longer scenes from one another’s lives that they continue recalling, but the rest of their own lives that return to them. They then find themselves “being restored somewhat to [their] natural fullness” (Saunders 256). The various deformities and exaggerations symbolizing the regrets and failures of that former life disappear (or reappear, perhaps, in the case of vollman’s clothes), and after finally helping Willie Lincoln enter his father––only for him to shatter their illusions by announcing that all of them are not just “sick” but dead––most of the ghosts are content to give themselves up to the matterlightblooming phenomenon. Here, the doubling and multiplying that occurs does not terrify the ghosts by recalling primordial superstitions or strategies for self-preservation—in fact, it does the exact opposite, causing them to forget their mission of self-preservation in the interest of achieving a common goal. In coming together as one mind, becoming the sum of over one hundred fifty lives, each ghost gains (or regains?) a fuller knowledge of themselves as individuals. Needless to say, Lincoln in the Bardo has exciting implications for the countless real people who read it. For one, I’m sure the anti-Freudians out there will never tire of seeing such gleeful rebuttals to that man’s theories. And—without getting too metaphysical here—George Saunders may also be suggesting that a reader’s ability to see, hear, and think with other individuals (fictional or otherwise) on any level may afford them, too, a similar sense of oneness with others. A shared sentiment, having once seen the same landmark or read the same book, even some similarity in appearance may be all it takes to allow one person to (imaginatively, of course) enter the perspective of another. And in doing so, we may at once find ourselves drawn delightfully into the lives and minds of others, while yet feeling our own individual experiences, perceptions, and very personhood affirmed.
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Works Cited Freud, Sigmund. “The Uncanny.” The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Translated by James Strachey, vol. xvii, The Hogarth Press, 1955, pp.219-252, https://uncan ny.la.utexas.edu/wp-content/up loads/2016/04/freud-uncanny _001.pdf Saunders, George. Lincoln in the Bardo. Random House, 2017. 88 - Anayltical Nonfiction
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FICTION
LINDA Ashley Pearson
You pull into the parking lot of the nursing home and park your navy blue Chevy Suburban in the nearest parking spot. You look into the backseat by instinct, despite having just dropped your daughter off at dance practice. Your therapist says alone times like this should be ‘you’ time. You should get your nails done at the local nail parlour or read a Courtney Milan book in a hammock (or whatever other suburban mothers do). Instead you take your keys out of the ignition, fluff your hair, walk inside, grab your guest badge at the check in at the nurses’ station.You are on a first name basis with them. One of the nurses, a young twenty-something-year-old named Sarah, asks how your daughter is doing and cracks a joke about her dancing skills. Another nurse compliments your ruby red lipstick. The nurses try to brighten your day. You prefer the small talk over the looks of sympathy they used to give you when you first started visiting. You open a door (down the hall, to the right, down the hall, to the left). It smells like piss inside. It almost always does. You sit down in a worn chair by the bed, in front of the window, and fidget with your badge. After a couple minutes of silence, you look into a pair of empty eyes. The pupils are static, unmoving, like those of a doll. But then they blink once, twice, three times. A rapid set of blinks, like when a baby doll with long, lush, black eyelashes gets shaken by a child. The eyes are flawed too, out of order from one too many violent shakes. The eyes are either in rapid motion or completely still, no in-between. You want to do something, anything, to fix the problem. You want to repair the eyes with a little bit of glue and thin, needle-nosed pliers. But it feels like your hands are tied behind your back and 92 - Fiction
your tools have been lost to time. You take a deep breath and ask, “How are you doing today, Mom?” Her wrinkled hand reaches out and touches yours, strokes it gently, even though the act should be the other way around. The skin of her hand is thin, constantly becoming more translucent with time. The veins swirl under the skin like a macabre marble cake. It reminds you of parchment paper and the many figures of speech taught in high school classrooms meaning frail or eggshell. But all you can think about is how pale the hand is. How still. How ashen. One wrong move and everything (head, shoulder, knees, and toes) could come crashing down. You remember how colorful your mother used to be. She loved to paint her nails a different color every week. She loved to match her nail polish with her lipstick, her clothes, and sometimes her eyeshadow too. You used to hate the smell of nail polish remover. Her home used to stink of it. Yet, it is times like these, where you find yourself missing the pungent smell. “I know you,” your mom says. You have come to believe it is the mouth, not the brain, that speaks. It couldn’t be the hippocampus or any of the lobes. Or the neurons, which are mostly broken anyway. Though the voice sounds like your mother, you think maybe the brainstem is speaking. The doctors told you at the time of diagnosis that it would be the last area of the brain to be affected. After the brainstem goes, everything (and eyes and ears and mouth and nose) shuts down. You don’t know if all of the internal organs shut off at once, like automatic lighting, or if it’s more of a flickering affair with each shutting off one at a time.
You don’t think you want to know. After a long pause you ask, “You do?” You know you disassociated there for a second, and for all you know she could have called you a no-good whore or a silly, stupid bitch. Yet, you hate how desperate you come off. Your voice raises a little too enthusiastically. There’s a tinge of glee to it. You think of how hopeful you are that she knows you. How pathetic you are that you think she knows you. “You are Linda.” The mouth repeats, “Linda, Linda, Linda...” It repeats, until the eyes go blurry and the air stiffens. You do not know ‘Linda.’ You never have. Maybe Linda was an old friend or distant family member. Who knows? For all you know, Linda could have been a cashier at a grocery store she met in 1995. The adult brain weighs around three pounds. The brain stem measures about three inches. You cannot see a neuron with the human eye. You are XXX pounds, X’X high, and visible to the human eye. And still you are beaten by something tiny and miniscule. She doesn’t know you. She hasn’t known you in years. Like the weakling you think you are. You remove your hand from hers and twiddle your thumbs. Twiddle dee. Tweedle doo. You look at the birds in front of you, chirping joyfully outside the window beside her bed. You think of their little brains, impossibly small. You think of their lobes and their neurons and their happiness. A human can live without a brain for a long period of time. Up to twelve years you’ve heard. You are not sure how much longer you can handle this. Twelve years is a long time. Twelve years to act on climate change. Twelve more years to observe the birds in front of you. Twelve years to get your nails done at the nail parlour and read every Courtney Milan book three times over. You remember when your mother first moved to this place. You remember when you first started to visit her. It was like visiting her at her home, except the white ranch style home two blocks from your house was now a small room tucked away in a corner of a nursing home. You would drink coffee with her, talk about the weather, and watch the
birds outside together. You would show her pictures of her granddaughter. You would joke around and deep inside the back of your mind, you hope you can do this again. You wish you could travel back in time and have a coffee with your mother instead of alone at a Starbucks at four in the afternoon. You think about reaching out and removing the brain stem yourself, ending it all, but even a beheaded chicken can survive for 18 months (you remember his name was Mike). It’s easy to miss the brain stem with an axe. And you are no farmer nor practicing physician. Sadist, maybe (but your therapist says this is all par for the course). When a chicken gets its head cut off, it can still ‘crow.’ It gurgles through the back of its throat. When your mother loses her mind, she can still ‘talk.’ She gurgles through the brain stem. After
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INDEBTED Lily Lauver
The outdoor electrical sockets weren’t working, so there Ned was, on his knees again for Marion. The dog, overfed, sat in the lawn and watched him work. The dog was like a baby still, even though he was sixteen. How babies float in themselves and don’t even have kneecaps yet—the dog floated in his fat body and his joints were strange curves instead of angles. “We’ll do anything for her, won’t we Ern?” said Ned over his shoulder. He was scared of the electrical sockets because he wasn’t sure that they weren’t still live. He wore his heavy leather gloves, which at least gave him a reason to wear them. He’d bought them years ago in a phase of wanting to be a falconer, bought the gloves and a small leather mask to fit over a falcon’s head, but he never got the falcon, never tried. It confused him: did he catch one, did he buy an egg? Elsie’d come to love the bathroom of her mother’s house since she’d stopped living there. Since she stopped living there, her mother painted the bathroom cool gray, even the shelves, the doors, and everything felt that way. Cool, blended together, clean. Maybe she liked the cleanliness most, and she remembered that saying: ‘Cleanliness is lost to godliness,’ was that it? Maybe she liked the walls for their evenness. And then the splotch of blood, and her recent exhaustion made more sense. The arguing. How much could she blame on her period? Other than the migraines, which were easily identifiable, she hated never knowing how much sway it had on the emotional stuff. And her mother was not the kind of mother she could ask about birth control, even if it were only to stop her bleeding. No, she could not field the litany of follow-up questions. Elsie rinsed her hands and dug through the plastic 94 - Fiction
box of medicines in the closet. She came up with ibuprofen and took four. She heard probably-Ned, her mother’s boyfriend, letting himself in the front door. The bathroom was quiet and the shower dripped, dripped. She closed her eyes, turned around, looked out of a plastic-wrap pane in the frosted window. Some things, the antique panes, were hard to replace. She heard Ned and her mother pull stools out from the kitchen table and soon the sound of cherry pits being spit into a metal bowl. But they weren’t speaking—they found little to talk about these days. “Is that an E dward I hear?” Elsie called loudly from the staircase. She liked calling Ned by his full name to make him uncomfortable or to preserve some awkward formality between them. He would not be spitting out cherry pits in front of her, she knew this. “Sure is, sure is—” “—we’re in the kitchen.” Something about being grateful for her interrupting in their tone—their heightened pitches, their speaking over each other. Grateful for something other than sucking at cherry pits and looking at the walls and noting where the paint could be touched up, where the cabinets had been eaten at by the dog. “Marion here had just been telling me about your essay prize up at school. Turns out those people do have a sense of taste, huh?” Ned was talking about Elsie’s history paper prize. He taught history up at the middle school and obsessed over her history minor, asked in detail about everything she was reading and had the last word on all of it. Really she majored in environmental studies and liked those classes better, but Ned pretended other-
wise or forgot about that. “And when are you going to let your mother read this essay, so she can let me read this essay?” “Oh, I’m not so sure. It’s one I’m still—I don’t know, I just submitted it at the deadline how it was.” “Still cooking. I know thatfeeling.” Ned had a funny way of talking, transgressing formalness as if he’d known Elsie all her life, or that he knew all about her. It occurred to Elsie then, filling a glass with cloudy tap water, that he probably did know all about her from her mother. Not from talking about her together—Mom wasn’t like that—but from guessing how Marion’s daughter must be like. She was very much a product of her mother, Elsie knew this. “We already know it’s going to be amazing. Why can’t your momma get a sneak peek?” Marion made her eyes all big. “Sometime I’ll show you. This summer, I’ll show you this summer.” Elsie had no intention of showing her mother the essay—mostly because she knew she’d show Ned. And, really, she hated the essay now. Hated to think that the judging panel had read it and that she thought she could write it and sound original. Winning the prize, thinking of all the readers who had to decipher whatever it was she’d been trying to say, made her face hot and melty-feeling. She popped a cherry in her mouth. She wished she’d stayed in her room. But it didn’t matter. Now Ned and her mom looked out the back window and her mom complained about the azaleas never blooming this spring at all and how the neighbors’ azaleas were brilliant, how the neighbors paid to have their gardens manicured and that’s why their azaleas survived and hers didn’t, and why try to compete with a neighborhood they could hardly afford. “I don’t mean to sound how I sound, Ned. You know I’m grateful. It’s just—I don’t know. It’s just a hard spring.” And it was a hard spring. Otherwise, Elsie wouldn’t have come home after the school year ended. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be a new urn on the mantel. Maybe Marion would have made it so the garden could bloom, and maybe Ned wouldn’t
be checking up on them like he was. Before Elsie turned the landing, she looked back at the urn. She admired it for its shapeliness, for how it resembled a fruit, for it being r ed and not pewter or ivory or c harcoal, and that Lady fit inside of it. Was it last night that she had opened the urn to peek at her ashes and nearly dropped the thing? “Sorry, she’s just that way. Just leaves sometimes.” Marion knotted a stem in her hands. “In silences. Our silences aren’t comfortable anymore.” “Don’t apologize. It’s normal. I remember not wanting to move for days when I lost my dog.” “There’s still Ernie.” “I know. No, I know. But you know how they were. I don’t know, Marion. Those two. Here, I’m going to check the breaker again. I think it’s a circuit issue after all.” Elsie closed the door to her mother’s guest room and the downstairs sounds of Ned shuffling to the garage, a can opening, hushed as if she’d thrown a quilt over everything. Those two and their bustle— always fixing, always looking for something to fix. The guest room had been Elsie’s bedroom for a long time, but now she just thought of it as a guest room and nothing else and without a past. It smelled of fresh paint, and her mother was obsessed with those candles without wicks that are heated on heatpads and then disseminate through the whole house, and she’d put one in the guest room sometime that morning while Elsie slept. The label said R iviera Roost in loopy cursive. That her mother put this wax thing in her room made Elsie want to cry. Or maybe it was that the hot waxy smell in the air clung to her face and eyeballs that made her want to cry. She unplugged the heatpad from the wall. There was something etymological in how the window cast amber light onto her stomach. Everything felt like waiting for dust to settle lately. Waiting for dust to settle in amber. But the spider plant was putting out little spider plants at the ends of its stems. And at least, looking into the road, Elsie could see the little neighbors playing with a hose.
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At least warmer, and the azaleas weren’t blooming but the viburnum had, speckles of it, and the whole summer stretching out now in one large gap ahead. Some days when Elsie was small—while Marion made oatmeal over the stove before school and to get Elsie to stay in one place—Marion would set out a bowl of cornstarch and water on the kitchen table. Elsie couldn’t squeeze it without opening her hands to nothing left. Just when it felt like a rubber ball, something shifted, and it broke over her hands, rushing over the edges of her outstretched fingers. Sometimes she felt her cheeks warm with splotchy guilt as if she’d broken the secret organism herself. There was a part of her that knew this was out of her control; there was part of her that didn’t.
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THE UNTITLED FAN APPLAUDS THE GRACE OF EPITHET Franziska Hofhansel
I am all out of wine you see with nothing to do but walk across the country and I am stopped now in Blackbird, Delaware, having just left San Bernardino, California, and before that Bangor, Maine, and I have walked all over this night, I have seen berries growing and a Rubik’s cube giving birth to a German shepherd and once or twice a man stopped me on this road to tell me he was very lost, and had I seen his pregnant Rubik’s cube, he was worried sick for the poor dear, and I have seen a woman with the wildest farmer’s tan you ever did see burying a paint chip, it was her mother she said, leukemia, and the treatment too expensive and I almost said to her something about sunscreen, I almost gave her my sunscreen, I almost said G ood luck, I almost said I almost drowned the other day in a puddle, my teeth came out the other night in a dream I feared was a metaphor for something unholy and I stopped by the church that morning to beg for salvation, I said I will do anything, I will give up sex, liquor, take my makeup off before bed, I will be good, Lord, I will be good again, and don’t you know the good Lord never wrote me back, never came to me in a dream, don’t you know I am 49 next week and think I look damn good so forget abstinence, only my teeth came out in another dream and I woke to all the lamps in my house doing cartwheels, We won’t forgive you, they said, we won’t forget how you refused to dance, how you murdered us all for your own peace and we won’t forgive your laughter, your unabashed hunger in the face of things, and I have been walking ever since and when I see a silo I fall in love and do not forget to dance and still on occasion I hunger for things only I have been walking so very long, I think I am owed another chance, I think when I get out of here I will do things differently, yes, scratch the golf ball with my hooves, tell the man he owes me, gallop across the country in the night dressed like a movie star like I’m in love, like I’ve been loved before, like there is someone waiting for me up there in the velvet black only he wants me here, right now, so long as I come home to him eventually. Fiction - 97
GRACIE Zoe Pearce
She was seventy-two and nearly divorced. She had lived in the same house with the same man for a little more than fifty years now. She had two sons who had children of their own but she had never felt like a mother. It was much easier to be a grandmother she had found. A granddaughter could waste her entire afternoon in the blink of an eye. However, these days, she was always waiting for visitors. Time seemed to drag on and on in a haze of cleaning, solitaire, and cooking in the days leading up to her divorce. She did puzzles too sometimes. She mowed the lawn, raked the leaves, and shoveled snow from the drive. The rooms, all sensibly decorated, were dusted every so often. She read romance novels and murder mysteries. She gathered laundry, carried it to the basement, washed it, carried it upstairs, dried it, and folded it. These were things she did. She had cooked all his meals for as long as she had been his wife, and she didn’t know how to stop, so she would continue on like this until she wasn’t his wife anymore. “So…when’s the official court date?” Gracie was standing at the bathroom vanity that was a museum of beauty items from the ’50s to the ’90s, which was about the time she had stopped worrying about all that. Her granddaughter sat in the chair beside her. She rolled Abbey’s damp hair into curlers. “Next month. The 14th. It’s a Wednesday,” Gracie replied. “Middle of the week,” Abbey said. “Sure is.” Gracie rolled the last section of Abbey’s hair, then looked in the mirror at her masterpiece. They met eyes through the reflection. She wished her granddaughter had more hair, thick hair, long hair, like Rapunzel, so she could stand there all day, 98 - Fiction
curling. Abbey smiled and suddenly looked so much like her mother. “We look so funny! Like aliens or something,” Abbey giggled. “Maybe you. I look like I’m preparing for them with all my tinfoil. How much longer does this stuff stay in?” Abbey glanced at the little clock on the vanity. “It should be ready in just a bit. I’ll get the water going.” Gracie didn’t know just when she had stopped being the one to get the water going, or when she had started being the one waiting while someone else got the water going, but she was used to it by now. She was old to her children. She didn’t feel it. She did but not really. Sometimes she thought this was because she hadn’t lived, so how could she be old? Certainly, she looked old. There was no denying that. But that was what the tinfoil was all about. “Okay, I think it’s warm enough. Ready?” Gracie laughed, “It’s a little too late for that now. I don’t really have a choice anymore, do I?” Abbey was pressing her lips together to hide her smile, shaking her head. Gracie stepped into the shower. She was in an old nightgown, a faded green color. Cross-legged, she sat in the tub, leaning back slightly. With the handheld showerhead in one hand, Abbey removed the tinfoil from Gracie’s hair with the other. She closed her eyes when she felt the warm water in her hair, slowly soaking into her scalp. The touch of Abbey’s fingers running through her hair opened her eyes again. “Did that hurt?” Abbey pulled her hand
back as if she had dropped a glass vase on the floor. “No, no. It’s nice.” As Abbey continued to rinse her hair, Gracie watched the tinted water run down the drain, and thought about a time when their roles had been reversed. Abbey had always been an independent child, which was why they got along so well, but Gracie suspected she was a lonely child. She was perfectly capable of entertaining herself, but welcomed the company with a bright smile. Whenever she visited, Gracie never shooed her away. Abbey grew older, like Gracie. It was inevitable. She wasn’t around as much, and then not at all, except for holidays. A part of Gracie envied Abbey of the very thing she wished for her: a full life. When Gracie had asked for her help with the dye, Abbey came at once. This made Gracie’s heart soar because she knew Abbey had her own matters with which to deal. When Abbey finished rinsing the dye away, she opened a bottle of conditioner. Rubbing it between her hands, she paused before massaging it into Gracie’s hair. “It smells better than I remember,” Abbey said. “Rose oil and bergamot. You used to hold the bottle while I washed your hair and take giant sniffs, you loved it so much.” At this Abbey chuckles, “I did, didn’t I? What a strange child.” “You just knew what you liked.” “Well, I hope you like your hair,” Abbey patted Gracie’s hair with a towel. “Because I love it.” She helped Gracie to her feet. Her nightgown was wet down the back and on her bottom but it only made her feel giddy. Like a teenager at a sleepover when the parents aren’t home. She didn’t care about the track of water she left from the tub to the vanity. All she cared about was purple. Purple had always been her favorite color since she was a girl. And now purple was her hair. Or rather lilac, Abbey had called it. “Gran?” Gracie had been quiet for a while without realizing it. “I mean, it’s at least better than looking like an alien conspiracy theorist, right?” Abbey offered.
“It’s like I’ve got my head in a purple cloud!” Gracie beamed at herself in the mirror, feeling almost like this woman looking back at her with purple hair was someone else, someone she would want to know but was too nervous to walk up to, which was silly because this woman was beaming at her. At the oddity of it all, she laughed. Abbey sighed with relief next to her. After they took turns drying each other’s hair, and Gracie removed Abbey’s curlers, they played around with the nail polish and perfume before heading downstairs to the kitchen. In the hallway on the way to the stairs, Abbey stopped at a photo. Gracie peered at it too, though they both had seen it numerous times. Younger Gracie stood alone on a beach. The ocean was splashing around her knees. It was black and white. “You’re my age in this, aren’t you?” “Mhmm. The only time I’ve been to the coast, only time I left the state actually. Myrtle Beach.” “We should go on a trip. You and me,” Abbey said. “I’d like that.” She wasn’t sure how serious the notion was, but she appreciated the thought. “You’re going to have to do something with your newfound freedom.” Was it freedom she would have now? She hadn’t been thinking of it like that. It was simply that she didn’t want to spend her dying years in the company of a man who didn’t love her, and didn’t love life, and didn’t want to love anything except his work. She had married him after her high school graduation. He had just come back from his time in the army, though they had begun their courtship before he had left. Their marriage had been frightening, and then extremely boring. By now, she had forgiven him for everything in the beginning. She knew him now, and he was anything but frightening. He was simply a rock in her way. Call that freedom or call it whatever you wanted. She had made up her mind about it. No matter how many times he called her crazy for it, she knew it was the most sound thing she had ever done. It was the first decision she had made about her own life. Gracie didn’t respond, and silence surrounded them into the dining room. Though neither
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seemed bothered by it. Abbey didn’t follow her into the kitchen, instead, she sat at the piano bench. While Gracie prepared ingredients, Abbey plucked away at keys. Again, Gracie was transported to another time. She was sure that if she were to walk back into the dining room, she would find Abbey a child again. A wrong cord would be struck, and Abbey would start the piece over again, determined to get it right just once. Gracie would wait until the fourth or fifth restart before leaving the kitchen and sitting down next to Abbey, guiding her hands and watching patiently as the girl’s small hands stretched to reach fourths. Sometimes Gracie would sing along to help her keep the tempo. It was the only time she ever sang with an audience. But now, Abbey’s hands could reach all the keys easily and years of practicing the same song over and over had proved fruitful as the notes of “Moon River” drifted into the kitchen. It mingled with the smell of flour and fresh dough between her fingers. Then Abbey started singing. It was a short song, but it seemed to continue on after Abbey had finished. As Gracie kneaded the dough, she found that it had become sticky. This sensation brought her back to her body, back to the kitchen. And she could feel her face again, as it leaked tears. She could barely recognize them. It had been that long since she knew them, since she knew what it felt like to cry. Was it crying? Shouldn’t there have been more of an aural experience? This was just tears running down her face, coming from some place she hadn’t remembered existed within herself, and dripping off her chin into the dough she was bent over. The lid thudded softly over the piano keys and hardwood floor creaked as Abbey finally made her way to the kitchen. Gracie wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand quickly, and put on a smile when she saw Abbey. “I didn’t think you remembered that one,” Gracie said. “It’s just the only song I ever learned how to play.” Abbey nudged Gracie, joining her at the counter. “You’ve got flour on your face.” She looked down at the dough while Gracie took a towel to her face. “The dough needs the flour, not your face,
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Gran.” Gracie pulled a stool from under the counter and sat while Abbey took over the kneading. “Look at us,” she said with a chuckle. “You with lilac hair and me kneading bread. Who’d have thought?” Gracie watched her knead the dough a little longer, it had absorbed her tears with each fold and push, then scraped it off the counter into the dutch oven she had been gifted for a birthday or anniversary, and placed it in to bake. The last thing they did together before Abbey had to leave, was hug each other. They took their time about it. Abbey had always said her grandmother didn’t hug, she swallowed you. Though this time Abbey seemed to be content lost in the folds of Gracie’s sweater. “Thanks for coming to see me.” Abbey pulled back and looked at her grandmother. “Of course, Gran. I’ll try to call more often.” Gracie patted her on the back, releasing her. “Don’t put yourself out. You know I love you.” Abbey clung to Gracie’s sleeves, not yet turning away. She didn’t understand the look her granddaughter gave her, a searching look, seeking something like wisdom from her. What wisdom did she have to give her granddaughter that Abbey hadn’t learned already by herself? Despite this, Abbey seemed to have found what she was looking for because she smiled and let go. “I love you too, Gran.” The bread would still be warm when he got home that night. She had left it on the table for him. There were slices already cut, waiting on a plate. Gracie thought about this while upstairs, packing her most essential items into a suitcase. Her purple hair was done up the way she used to do it before she had any children. He wouldn’t notice the quiet of the house at first. He’d simply shuffle in, remove his coat, set down his keys, then look around. There he’d be with his shaven face, the nick on his neck, his poorly tied tie, the shirt buttons she had sewn back on countless times, the pants she
had hemmed, and the scuffed shoes. His eyes would dart all around the room, struck by her absence. But nothing could disrupt his sense of normalcy. So he would finish hanging up his coat. They’d performed their parts in this dance for so long, she knew his role as much as she knew her own. “This supper then?” he would grumble to himself, gesturing to the bread. When no one answered him, he’d take a seat, the plate of bread in front of him. Staring at the plate, he’d be wary. Something wasn’t right in his world, hadn’t been right since Gracie had told him what she wanted. “Grace...You’re getting your divorce, there’s no need to poison me,” he’d say to her empty chair. But with no answer, he’d sit back in his chair, his brows drawn forward. Gracie thought about his face now. It had looked the way it did for so long now that she was almost convinced it had always been that way, except that she did remember a time when it was smooth, relaxed. A long time ago. Briefly, she wondered if his face would be stuck this way until he died. He would look down at the bread with the same expression he had always given her, something between annoyance and confusion. Then he’d pick it up and take a bite. It would be chewy, the way homemade bread is when fresh out of the oven. His lips would smack as he ate in that way that she hadn’t noticed on their first date but now could never forget. Finally, he would swallow. He would swallow her tears along with it. An old, tired tension left her body. She clicked the locks into place on her suitcase. Surprisingly, she found that it wasn’t too heavy. In fact, it seemed to be the lightest thing she’d ever carried as she made one last look around the house. She felt like a tourist this time, seeing the inside of someone else’s life. Finally, she made it to the door and passed over the threshold leaving the warm bread behind.
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THE PLEIADES John Muth
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HAND-BACKS Sarah Lohman
The sky was billowing today like a grand bedsheet, gray and full of holes he hadn’t noticed before. His skin hurt from the wind and the storm, but it was too early to go inside. His cigarette had a good few seconds left in it, barely withstanding the breath and spit of whoever breathed the weather into the sky. He could hear, even over the drumming throws of thunder, the shouts from inside that signaled to all that the dinner rush was about to start. He breathed out, teeth sticking together in the cold, and thought, perhaps with grief, that the rush wouldn’t happen. Not in this weather. “Get in here, Lewis. Party of ten being seated.” “In a second.” “Come now or Eric will kick my ass, and it’ll be your fault.” He laughed, barely holding the paper between his teeth for a second longer before dropping it limply and grinding it under his shoe. The kitchen was a hotbox of steam and something clear that welled unsuspecting eyes with tears. Shouts and swears bounced from all walls in equal frequencies and volumes, each voice akin to a lead pellet down the drain of Lewis’s ear. A myriad of smells mated across surfaces cleaned with soap, staining countertops with smears of pocketbooks and linen. Lewis rejoined the others with a dirtied apron around his hips and a fresh hairnet for the dinner rush. It swept over him like it did every slow night: in balls of herbs and swaths of butter that melted like wax. It would be easy to say that Lewis hated his job—the monotony in conjunction with those surprise burns through his last unblemished uniform would find a home under even the best-laid 108 - Fiction
skins—but that would barely scrape the surface. It might also give kitchen work more emotion than it warranted. Or, as Lewis might tell you, it would fill in more rot than a corpse could carry. He might say something like that to mean that his job wasn’t worth hating: that it was just a step towards whatever was next. Preparing the appetizer plates, Lewis let out a hiss and a swear as his knife grazed the edge of his knuckles, reopening one of the many slits across his hands and arms. He dropped his knife and went to rinse the wound. Once it was clean, he returned to the plate like a pendulum until the next injury sent him swinging back to the sink. He felt that this motion was similar to that of his body in the stomach of the bus that drove his route between home and his various jobs. It always seemed to be the same driver each time he got on, regardless of the nondescript clientele; those same salt-and-pepper needles splaying out from that rubbered chin, same loose skin that wobbled with every shift and dip of the road. Same bandage spread across his nose. His shoes welled with a gulp of puddle water, socks soaking through. Lewis made a face and adjusted the straps on his backpack. The grayed corners of the building stood, barely distinguishable from the screen of the slate sky just across the street. It looked so sad when Lewis came home. At least the light in the entryway didn’t flicker anymore. A dead bulb was better than a dying one, he thought. Blue light poured in from outside, each fleck sourced from the moon or maybe from the depressed city, and it married with the warm hall light to shroud Lewis in green before he locked the door. He dropped his backpack onto the linoleum, the
thin material shifting jaggedly beneath the weight of the clothes inside. Tearing open the fridge, he could hear the whir of the fan, offset again by something he had probably asked his sister not to do, but he decided not to say anything beyond a sigh as he took the takeout that she might have intended for him. Maybe it had been for breakfast. He dug into it with his least dirty fork. His apartment looked the same as it always did; a thick layer of dust quilted the fake wood, pathways carved through by plows from the fridge to the couch to the toilet to the hall. Pre-corpse plants begged to be set free on the vent beside the window, and that damn clock was wrong again mere feet above. When did it begin to spin as it pleased? It ran for a while at the right speed, but each night when Lewis returned home, it would be hours ahead or behind as if it’d never heard of time. His sister kept bugging him to get a new one, but, really, he couldn’t be bothered. He had a watch. There was a fishbowl on the table beside the couch, each side of it backed by paperbacks with the exception of one that faced the television. Inside floated the body of what had recently been a goldfish. Lewis almost never looked at it; he imagined it sometimes though, and might have convinced himself that the fish still swam in his periphery. He sank down into his sofa with a familiar oily huff. The television set, barely held steady by half of a cinder block and some ancient engineering textbooks, buzzed with shrill advocacies for ugly decorations and gadgets that only new mommies would want to display on their ripe new countertops. Oil soaked into the cut across his palm and he squirmed. The door slammed, and Lewis listened to stumbling footsteps approaching him with sickening click-clicks. “You look like absolute shit,” his sister said. A bowl of dust littered the air when she sat beside him. “You smell like absolute shit,” he replied lamely. Her voice should have been heavier than his—saturated with booze and all—but it wasn’t. She was light and floating, and she snorted at him,
wiping a band of sweat from her brow. “Such is the life of a young person in the city, Lew.” She wiped the sweat on his jeans. “I thought you were supposed to be a psychologist or something.” “I’ll be a psychologist when I graduate from that stupid place.” “‘That ‘stupid place’ is expensive.” “I have loans.” “No, I have loans.” Lewis’s sister said nothing. She got up, stretched, and went to bed. He did too. The bottoms of his feet, licked with debris, met chilled sheets, and Lewis could feel his skin crawl like ants over his muscles. A whining ache pricked up through his pores from deep within his muscles, the only evidence that he had moved at any point from staring up at the blank slate of sagging plaster above. He winced, rolled onto his side, and thought about sleeping. Lewis woke up the next morning to the muffled squeal of his sister’s eight o’clock alarm. —Unruly ash curls crimped under a plastic headband, the hard combs offered a consistent and unpleasant pressure along Lewis’s scalp. He thought about the feeling as he prodded the check-out screen and asked how much gratuity a woman on the phone wanted to add to her check. She waved her hand dismissively, making a face of irritation, which he took to mean fifteen percent. He lowered his eyes and handed her a receipt. He scratched his head. Trading stations with a coworker, he began wrapping pastries in brown wax paper. He didn’t think about anything as he slid his nail along the folds to crease them. The paper caught on a flake of dead skin at his cuticle. He paused after quickly finishing a few, and looking down at his thumb, wondered if he had cut himself, but must have imagined it. They looked worse than usual though, his hands, as he spread them flat over the counter. His veins looked like yarn. The clock chimed at the half hour. As Lewis raised his head to look, the edges of his vision fragmented with some gentle buzz. He wondered
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why the cafe bothered to have a clock if it didn’t have any numbers. He decided that he hated modernism and went to punch out. His shift at the bar started in forty-five minutes. He thought about going home later that evening. “Leaving already?” Lewis observed the eyes of his supervisor and shrugged. “It’s five till.” The supervisor’s eyes met with the lines on the clock, and Lewis thought about asking if he’d picked out the stupid thing. He abstained. He went into the break room to gather his backpack from his locker and change from one uniform into the next. Lewis zipped his hoodie up and looked down to check his watch against the “clock” on the wall. They did not match. His shift at the bar felt like it didn’t happen. All he could think about was his smoke break, his second smoke break, and the end of his shift after both. “Lew,” someone called out to him from the kitchen door. He grunted in response, shielding his cigarette from the unrelenting wind. He sucked in shallowly, like breathing through a straw. “Eric says we’re overstaffed for the night. You can go if you want. Or I can. Your call.” Lewis thought about his rent briefly. Then he thought about more important things. He thought again about going home, but it was bigger now, like an unfurling well of blue fantasy. He saw it with bulging walls and drapes that looped into keyholes like his mother’s. He saw it in a house in a different city. What he saw spread thin; water over the inside of a drying bottle, broken apart in webs. He saw his broken clock. “Would you mind if I stayed?” His coworker sighed and nodded, rubbing the back of his neck. It looked like he regretted giving the option. Lewis thought about his coworker’s rent. He worked until midnight before returning home. The sky looked like a stain as he waited for the bus. Lewis woke up the next morning to the muffled squeal of his sister’s eight o’clock alarm. —Meals that Lewis shared with his sister were few 110 - Fiction
and far between these days. The abundance of time that existed after nightfall was too saturated with busy work, pencil shavings, and evening shifts to even consider sharing a frozen pizza. “Hey, Eric called. The bar’s closed tonight. Flooded. I’m making a pizza. You should come home.” Lewis came back to find the door unlocked and the kitchen warm. Tubes glowed orange above a bubbling white surface, and he thought that it looked too much like skin. He blamed Monsanto. “You want wine?” He peeled open the fridge and let his gaze dart over its limited contents. “I thought we didn’t have any,” his sister replied, tapping the green ferrule of her pencil against a plastic glass from the dollar store. “What’s this then?” He asked, grabbing a blackened bottle by its neck to show her. She looked blankly at him for a minute and then huffed. “Pour me some.” Lewis snorted. He stared out the bare window beyond the table and let whatever was in the bottle trickle into the cup. He licked the rim blankly. It was bourbon. His sister made a retching sound. “Where did you even get this?” “I didn’t get it.” “Well, it wasn’t me, so you must have,” she made a noise like she would spit and pushed the cup towards the center of the table. “Tastes like the shit dad used to drink.” “Probably is.” The oven chimed, and though Lewis was still standing, his sister got up from her work to tend to the pizza. His eyes fell down to her notebook. Her handwriting looked the same as it did in fourth grade. The numbers and letters blurred together in thick graphite strips and eraser shavings. He didn’t remember what she was studying. “What’s this for?” He asked, taking up her now abandoned sippy cup. “Ab psych. Why?” She set the pizza on the table. “Curious. I’m guessing it’s unethical for you to self diagnose during the class?” “Fuck off,” she took a bite of the pizza, letting threads of cheese float down from her mouth. “When I get my license, I can diagnose you with
whatever shit you’ve got for brains.” “With the license I paid for?” She scoffed, sending him a smile that he didn’t see. She held a piece of the pie up to him and Lewis took it. He folded it in half and shoved it in his mouth, letting the plastic cheese slick over the roof of his mouth. They were silent for a few moments, the two of them scarfing food down like they hadn’t eaten since the last time they’d shared a cheap pizza like this one. “You done?” His sister asked through the second to last piece. Lewis nodded and watched her take it, shoving it almost blindly into her mouth like a baby to its own fist. —Lewis had woken up that morning to the muffled squeal of his sister’s eight o’clock alarm, and he’d had a long day. The grayed corners of the building, each of whom seldom finds the division between themselves and the night sky in the usual darkness, were alight with a haze of green. Fingers spread from the flat roof up into the sky, each tip bleeding into smoke and cloud. Lewis stared up from the bus stop across the street, his hand folded loosely around the strap of his backpack. The light was on in his window. It grayed as he stared and flickered with the ring of some siren that swung from the ceiling in red blares. He was getting a headache. He looked down at the wet street. He thought of the clock and the cuts and the balsamic vinaigrette. He thought of his sister’s fogged face from this morning when she’d told him about using the last of their milk. Dry cereal between his teeth. Blood. He turned away, facing into the blank lot of trees that backed the sidewalk. Someone called his name behind him, and a hot hand planted on his back. His sister was crying and wearing pajamas. Flakes of orange floated and turned white beside her naked feet. There was a hole in her shirt, and he couldn’t tell if it had been there before. It was black around the edges. He decided it was new. “You’re okay?”
“Your fish is still inside.” Lewis swore. He dropped his backpack onto the ground, and breaking his arm out of his sister’s binding grip, he tore across the street to the building. Something wet smeared across his eyes, and he wiped it on the back of his hand, paying little mind to it as he tucked the lower half of his face into the collar of his tee shirt. Pressing his fingers against the fabric to hold it in place, he dug into the hollows beneath his eyes. He thought his lungs should ache, but they did not as he plunged forward through the brown air. The door to each apartment stood open, each a funnel for what bodies and ash-laden critters remained alive in their bellies. He moved on, the patch of skin on the back of his neck searing from the heat that barrelled down the stairs. Stepping through his open door, he could hear a child crying above him. He closed the door without thinking about it. It was quiet. The fire started here, he thought. He knew that it smelled like cardboard and wax and the flimsy plastic of grocery bags, and he knew those smells belonged to him though he could not explain why. Recycling went out every morning, and the landlord said no candles. He couldn’t remember ever going grocery shopping. The rainwater on his clothes grew warm. His eyes stung, and he blinked. Lewis gripped the doorway as he threw himself into the living room; his body felt heavy as if sunk waist-deep in molasses. He tripped before making it to the couch. He knocked his temple against the coffee table while crawling to the sidebar. He stared for a few moments at the green water, the body of his fish suspended stagnant in the center of the bowl a mere inch or two from the bottom. He thought about why it wasn’t resting there. Something soapy folded around the animal like a shell as its scales peeled away, each shimmering as it floated to the surface to meet with heavy strands of flesh and fin. Dropping his shirt from his face, Lewis took the bowl in both of his hands and stared into it. He watched as the water held the fish’s body like a Fiction - 111
clot, water lurching from the sides of the bowl and onto the floor. The air was hot now; the glass was still cool. Getting to his feet, Lewis let the bowl fall through his hands to the scratched wood. It soaked his shoes. The room looked greener. Lewis cried. “Sorry.” Heavier and heavier, Lewis made his way back outside. The knob burned his palm. Some mix of sting and sad drew a sob from his mouth, cheeks growing red with regret and fear of what else he might have left alone to rot. How often, he wondered, were his eyes willingly oblivious to the world’s outright rot? He didn’t know. Maybe things have changed.
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Untitled Sydney Gillette Yellow Jacket Sydney Gillette Plantfeed Sydney Gillette Sweater Wilder Myslivy Pushing Kaitlyn Pepper A Collage of Childhood Femininity Zoe Pearce Storm Payton Shaw I Pretty U Ugly Phelix Venters- Sefic Self fulfilling prophecy Glen Malast There’s Something In The Water Zach Farmer Cogitation Sydney Gillette Beheading Phelix Venters- Sefic Women’s Work: Bombe Michelle Dudley Solar Sydney Gillette
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MUSIC
Milo Camaya
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i-80
Golden Gate
Check out Milo’s work on bandcamp
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Ellie Baird
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Hottest Month of Summer
Fair
Check out Ellie’s work on bandcamp
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CRYSTALS Olive Colangelo, Fay Swift
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JOURNALISM
You Are Stinky :-)
WHAT TO DO IF YOU WERE THE ASSHOLE Elleri Scriver Hi Pillowtalk, I just went through a breakup, and I’m the asshole. I know I messed up big time, and I know I deserve the consequences. I’m not trying to win them back or anything, but what do I do? Can I apologize, or do I just shut up and move on? How do I forgive myself, if I even should? Congratulations! You’re a human being. You make mistakes. That’s normal, and it’s alright. The part that sucks about making mistakes is the part where you hurt people. Even for people who are detached from those emotions, or don’t really care about the person they hurt, the social and cognitive toll of hurting someone else still stings. For example, cheating on someone you hate might still bother you, because it pulls your moral compass, impulse control, social group acceptance and insecurities into the limelight. So, yeah, it blows to be the asshole, even if it’s pretty normal. As for what to do, I have a few suggestions: First, be critical. Don’t insult yourself, don’t belittle yourself, but critique yourself. Where did you go wrong? Why? What were the other stressors in your life that could have caused this? What were you feeling? What active and passive decisions got you to where you are, and why did you choose them? Write this stuff down, or draw it out. Make a flowchart. Process it however you can, and then show your therapist (if you have one) for some extra credit. (If you don’t have a therapist, try to move that up on your list of priorities. Counseling services are free at Knox, and desperately needed by assholes like us.) Next, take those critiques, and try to identify any specific decisions or processes that seem to be trends in your life. Circle them. Identify your big insecuri146 - Journalism
ties: what would you hate the most if someone did that to you? Identify the insecurities of your close loved ones, excluding your ex-partner: who might you need to reassure, or be careful and considerate around? Okay, now take all those little things you’ve circled and all the decisions you’ve made and all the stressors and influences and conversations involved, and figure out what you did right. Despite everything, what did you do okay at? Where did you draw the line for acceptable behavior? This is important. This has to do with your relationship with your own values. Think: why were these values so important that you upheld them under stress? Why were other values less important? Were the ones you left in the dust things you were taught, but never shown (maintaining boundaries, for example)? Were the values that had been a part of a belief system you’ve left behind? Are they still important to your personal understanding of morality, and if they are, how are you going to reincorporate them as actions? Now that you know what you did right and wrong and why, you can start to consider what to do next time. How are you going to take steps to avoid being the asshole? What do you need to work on in your relationships, in your sense of values, in your decision-making? When you’re isolating yourself due to stress, what’s your escape route, how are you going to communicate that with others? Only at this point can you start thinking about a genuine apology. But first, apologize to yourself. Say, “Dear self, I love and respect you. I understand what you did wrong, and I recognize your efforts to rectify that in the future. Your goodness is not dependent on your mistakes, but on your commitment not to repeat those mistakes. I’m trusting you to follow through on the commitments you’ve made to do better, and to consistently own these mistakes and accept their consequences.”
Then, identify the people around you who have supported you through this. Thank them, recognize your mistakes and reassure them that you’re working on yourself. Tell them how they can help, what they can do to help you check yourself as you continue to grow. Consult the people who know the situation. Would a direct apology be helpful to your ex’s comfort and growth? If they’ve blocked you, don’t try to apologize. If they’ve told you not to talk to them, don’t try to apologize. Don’t post your apology on Twitter for everyone to see and retweet. Don’t send a Tumblr anon. If you think it’s a good idea, text them and say something like, “I understand if you don’t want to talk to me, and I won’t say anything more if you don’t respond. I’ve done a lot of critical thinking about my behavior and you deserve a real apology regarding my decisions, if you want one. I won’t ask for forgiveness, or sympathy, or offer an excuse; but I hurt you, and that was wrong. Let me know if you want to hear it.” As for the apology, be genuine. Don’t give explanations: clearly and succinctly admit fault in your decision-making. Explain the steps you’re taking to grow. Don’t ask anything of them, or even mention the word “forgive.” Thank them for listening. Then, move on. And get a therapist.
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THE WHALE IN THE ROOM Soleil Smith, Phelix Venters-Sefic
FOREWORD: Across the board, one narrative remains the same for many students, faculty, and staff: there’s a lot of uncertainty about what’s going on financially at Knox. The deliberation on costs of operation, decisions of payment, and choices on what to cut are often held behind often closed doors. Many of us aren’t afforded a seat at the table of what parts of our school are financed and how. This report has been created in an effort to cut a pathway for you to do just that. We hope that this information gives for many a platform to understand not only the health of our school and its image, but where it falls in relation to neighboring liberal arts colleges. The next few pages contain information compiled through tax information, school records, and public survey data to illustrate the best picture possible of our school. We will focus on and explain the timeline between 2000 and 2016 to address the progress of factors like total expenses, total revenue, tuition, and many more. We will also provide comprehensive definitions for each of these variables and what that looks like on our campus. However, this is only part one of a two-part series on gaining clarity. We hope that our efforts go fully into providing you the knowledge to tackle injustice on campus as well as support in the coming years. Thank you. Soleil Smith, Co-Chair of the Knox College YDSA
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TUITION DISCOUNT: Although many schools utilize other factors to gauge school health, an aspect that has become a more favored indicator is tuition dependency, how much revenue is generated through student tuition alone. Using tuition money to keep the school running prevents schools like Knox from putting money towards their endowment. A factor like tuition dependency implies that a school which is considered tuition dependent is one that has less financial flexibility when it comes to funding large projects or regular programs. This also makes them much more financially vulnerable in circumstances of economic hardship. For the purpose of this study, we relied on the common benchmark that a school that has a tuition make up of 60% or more of its revenue is tuition dependent. After compiling the data of both the total tuition revenue and grand total revenue, we found a substantial trend. Figure 1 indicates that, of the 17 years tracked in our data (see Appendix for additional information and tables), 11 are tuition dependent years–65% of the time between 2000 and 2016. Of note, 2016 saw the largest proportion, with a dependency of 82% while 2005 saw the smallest proportion, with a dependency of 50%. Comparing with what we know about other schools, we can zero in on the years 2008–the Great Recession–and 2014–six years after the economic downturn. In 2008 the average liberal arts college saw a tuition dependency of 50.4% while Knox saw a tuition dependency of 78.5% and in 2014 the average went down to 35.6% while Knox descended to 58.6% (two points below Tuition Dependent). This is important to consider when weighed alongside tuition discount–the amount that a school actually expects students to pay yearly.
ably, a dip occurs in revenue during the financial crisis in 2008 while expenses remain the same. However, as time has progressed both expenses and revenue have risen quite substantially. We then see a paralleled dip with both revenue and expenses at about 2014 that continues until 2016, where expenses begins to rise yet again. In the near future we hope to gain more insights into why exactly this might be happening and what this could mean for Knox in the future. If a school is already dependent upon however much tuition it’s bringing in, the amount of tuition it plans to actually charge matters that much more. This is why tuition discount is an important consideration; it gives us a window into not only the financial circumstances of the students but the precarity of the dependency as well. This is a value derived from how much financial aid cuts down the cost of the actual tuition. As the narrative follows, Knox has a high tuition discount, often hovering between 40-50% up until 2014 and seeing a major jump to 61% in 2016. The implication here is that Knox has either become less competitive in applicants or the body of applicants has become less financially secure (both of which appear likely). The implication here is that Knox has either become less competitive in applicants or the body of applicants has become less financially secure (both of which appear likely). This sudden jump in 2014 makes sense when one considers that the 2008 financial crisis would demonstrate a sort of delay in financial insecurity among students trying to attend college, likely not becoming fully apparent until four-six years later. So if this is only a portion of what makes up Knox’s revenue, what are the other factors? And how well does this stack up against the many costs of actually running a school? To know, a breakdown of revenue and expenses are in order.
FACTORS OF REVENUE: Net Tuition and Fees: The amount charged to students to attend the school and its activities Contributions: Gifts and donations from various persons or corporations Federal Grants and Contracts: Money granted to the school for support via the federal government Investment Return: Money gained from various business and industry investments Auxiliary Enterprises: Money obtained through smaller scale businesses run through the school, i.e the dining hall, bookstore, and residence halls Non-restricted net assets: The amount of total assets (cash and other moneyed property owned by the school or invested into it) that don’t have a specified use minus total liabilities (debt, pensions, and other year long and longer term money owed to outside bodies) Miscellaneous: Other incoming money that doesn’t fall under any of these categories (i.e. grant revenue).
REVENUE AND EXPENSES: As demonstrated in the graph, Knox has done a good job in the past decade of keeping revenue well above all the school’s many expenses. UnderstandJournalism - 149
FACTORS OF EXPENSES: Academic Support: The cost of institutions or programs on campus that provide cushions for students, i.e. the Center for Teaching and Learning. Athletics: The cost of paying for athletics expenses like coach pay, equipment, and travel. Student Services: The cost of paying for services that take care of student life and comfort, i.e counseling. Auxiliary Enterprises: Money obtained through smaller scale businesses run through the school, i.e the dining hall, bookstore, and residence halls Institutional Support: The cost of equipment, technology, and resources necessary to running the school i.e. the Information Technologies (I.T.) and the Business Office Operations and Maintenance: The cost of maintaining the general grounds and facilities of the campus, i.e grounds or security
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APPENDIX: 1. We utilized Adobe InDesign to put together this publication visually and aesthetically. 2. All of the information found inside this publication regarding Knoc College was obtained from 990 Tax Forms available to the public through the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). 3. We utalized R Statistics Software t both analyze the data and develope graphs regarding Expenses, Revenue, Tuition Dependency, and Tuition Discount. 4. We ran a correlation between both tuition revenue and total revenue as well as tuition revenue and fees to recognise what aspects of the tax forms to run multiple regressions of. a. we observed that tuition and fee revenue has a moderately significant influence on revenue. b. We also observed that financial aid has a weakly significant influence on revenue.
THE COMPUTER POWERED EXPERIENCE Samuel Lisec
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CREATIVE NON-FICTION
DONNIE SLEEPS WITH RATS Sarah Carter Donnie didn’t have a bedroom. He lived in the basement. They said, “Donnie sleeps with the rats.” A mattress on the floor, unmade with a blue blanket, and above it, a flag: a coiled snake and the words, “DON’T TREAD ON ME.” Like the other girls, I never went down to Donnie’s room—except once to call him up. Lucy told me the boys went down there to do “serious drugs.” The drugs had to be more serious than cocaine; that was done in the living room, the bedrooms, the dining room, the kitchen. They said crack was just cocaine with baking soda added for flavor. They said, “Why do crack when you could just do cocaine?” They liked to smoke their coke. They took snowcaps, cigarettes dipped in white powder, on the front porch. Donnie said he got a headrush; the internet said 70% of the cocaine is lost when you snowcap, that it’s just an expensive way to numb your mouth. If you want to numb your mouth, just take a gummy. Donnie didn’t show emotions—the bags under his eyes grew deeper as his pupils grew larger. His eyes bulged out of their sockets. When I met Donnie, I thought he was forty with stubbly, pock-marked cheeks and yellow, bleach-fried hair. He was nineteen—two years older than me. The house was located right underneath an on-ramp to one of Denver’s biggest highways, and sitting on the front porch, smoking cigarettes, we watched the cars go by. Inside the front door was the living room with a flat-screen TV that we mostly used for blaring music. Through a doorway was a small dining room with a bookshelf filled with vinyl records and the futon Brett slept on for two months after he got kicked out of his parents’ house during our senior year of high school. The small kitchen was always dirty with used glasses and empty Evan Williams bottles, which we kept for throwing at the concrete wall of the on-ramp. The house’s 154 - Creative Non-Fiction
one bathroom could only be accessed through the main floor bedrooms, which were sometimes lived in and sometimes not. It wasn’t anything special, but everything that happened there—the noise, the activity, the drinks, the lines, the people constantly coming and going—made it a home for all of us. There were guns everywhere: one on the living room table, one under the couch. One in Donnie’s waistband. Handguns, weighted, but the safety on. In the corner of the dining room, behind the little round table, leaned a large rifle case. When I asked Lucy, Brett’s girlfriend, she said, “That’s Donnie’s business.” One day the rifle case was gone. When I asked, Lucy said, “Donnie was holding it for someone.” Somebody else said he sold it. I didn’t see the rifle case anymore. Sometime later, we were spread out on the living room couches when one of Donnie’s friends burst through the front door. “There’s a hobo in the alleyway,” he said. “He’s trying to start a fire. I told him he had to leave, but he wouldn’t.” Donnie sprung up and tucked his shirt behind the pistol in his pants. Charged, he ran out of the house, ready to show the guy that he had tried to get warm behind the wrong house. When Donnie came back, he was high on aggression and adrenaline. “Cut some more fucking lines,” he said. Donnie was from Michigan. I never knew how he ended up 1,000 miles from home at nineteen, why he didn’t go to college, when he started doing cocaine. He might have had a sister. Donnie’s tattoos told me more about him then he ever did. During the summer that I knew him, he got a tattoo of the Rolling Stones mouth with a glinting gold tooth. That was how I learned Donnie loved the Rolling Stones.
He also loved cars: working on them, driving them, taking pictures with them. He talked, sometimes, about becoming a mechanic. I didn’t know anything about cars, so when he talked about cars, I nodded thoughtfully and forgot what he said immediately. He started to get really into weed. He smoked out of a large bong on the front porch. It was strange to see him stoned after watching him on stimulants for the past few months; he grew quiet and sad and sometimes angry, but not his usual hyper-angry—just angry. Once, Donnie got so stoned that he sat on the wooden bench on the porch and pretended he was driving a car for half an hour, pressing an imaginary pedal and steering an imaginary wheel, all the while making revving noises with his mouth like a child. Sometimes I felt sorry for Donnie, but I didn’t know why. I didn’t know why he was so sad and so angry at the world and at girls and at, I guessed, himself—all I knew was that he was trying to escape. I could sense Donnie’s sadness in his silence and in the way he changed his hair color from black to bleach-blonde and back again every few weeks. One night in August, a group of us went to a show at our usual venue, but Donnie was late. Brett and Lucy said they hadn’t seen him, that an old friend of his had visited him the previous night. When Donnie arrived, he had a headache and looked a little grey. He said he’d smoked meth the night before. I asked him how it was and all he said was, “It made my head hurt.” I pictured him on his messy blue mattress on the floor in the cold, fluorescent basement, sitting with his knees to his chest and clutching his head. Then, other times, it was hard to sympathize with Donnie because of my creeping suspicion that he was a Nazi. He denied being a Nazi because Brett, his best friend, was Jewish. But he resisted the PC movement at a time when political correctness was becoming important. He liked making jokes. I remember one:
“Have you seen my friend Kyle? Blonde hair, blue eyes, about this tall…” and then he would extend his hand from his chest to shoulder height in front of him. I didn’t get it at first. I asked him to repeat it while the guys cracked up and Donnie said, “Kyle, this tall”—then I saw it: the Heil Hitler salute. Some of his favorite songs were by Johnny Rebel, a white supremacist—at least, they were his favorite to play. I think it was because of the shock factor. One time, I was driving my car, Donnie in the passenger seat and the guys in the backseat, and Donnie played Johnny Rebel through the stereo. It took me a minute to catch on to the lyrics because I was paying attention to driving, but when I heard them, I said, “No. Not in my car,” as Donnie and the others laughed, at the song and at my discomfort. I often felt that I was the moderator, as a hard left-leaning liberal. I felt a sense of purpose when I said things like, “Reel it in, boys,” some strange pride at stopping Donnie from saying something that I knew would be offensive. Donnie was subtle, though. It can be hard to spot a Nazi; they don’t all brand themselves with swastikas or wear military clothing or walk around shouting racial slurs. They might wear skinny jeans and band t-shirts and studded jackets like the rest of us, and have tattoos of the Rolling Stones. They might whisper their racist comments in a crowded room, as a joke, a joke that they claim they don’t mean. This was in 2016: Donald Trump was running against Hillary Clinton in the presidential race. Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, was gunned down by a Muslim terrorist who killed 49 civilians and injured 53 more. The murders by police officers of two black men, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, were caught on camera. Days later, police officers protecting two different peaceful protests were shot and killed by angry snipers. The water crisis began in Flint, Michigan, where lead seeped into the town’s water supply after the local government switched the town’s water supply. An Afghan-born U.S. citizen detonated a bomb in New York that
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injured 29 people. ISIS claimed responsibility for bombings in the Brussels airport and subway that killed 32 people. It was a violent time to be alive, and an even more violent time to be a minority. It was a good time for America to embrace political correctness. It was a good time for America to not be racist. But in the face of the violence of 2016, Donnie was angry. He was angry at ISIS for bombing places and at Muslims in America for shooting up places and giving a bad name to assault rifles; and angry at Mexicans for entering the country illegally when it was not just possible, but easy to enter the country legally and gain citizenship; and angry at the Black Lives Matter movement that he blamed for the deaths of the cops at the peaceful protests. He was angry at Democrats for trying to take away guns and for being soft on immigrants and Muslims, and he was angry at the American political system that promoted Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump as viable presidential candidates. Donnie grew angrier and sadder and more stoned. He decided to go back to Michigan. I found out that his parents had a farm, or something. He didn’t have a plan for what he would do once he got to Michigan, just like he hadn’t had a plan for what he would have done if he’d stayed in Denver, and I wondered if he’d had a plan when he first came to Denver and if what he’d been doing until now had been a part of that plan. I guessed it wasn’t, or he wouldn’t be leaving. I’d never really thought of Donnie having parents—or, I thought of them as mythical beings in the far away land of Michigan, where Nazi babies were born. But then his parents were at the house on Donnie’s last night, helping him pack. His mom folded up his messy blue blankets, then came upstairs and said, “You would not believe the amount of rat shit I shook out of those things.” Donnie’s dad and I sat on the porch with Lucy. We talked under the little porch light and smoked cigarettes and swatted away the last August mosquitoes on one of the last warm nights of summer. We talked about our astonishment at the rise in 156 - Creative Non-Fiction
terrorist attacks and shootings lately. Donnie’s dad talked about his time in the military and his steadfast belief in the right of every American to bear arms. Lucy talked about her abusive mother and her search for a new place to live. I talked about my fears of moving to the Midwest and starting college soon, so Donnie’s dad talked about the Midwest, and we all talked about change and new things. Donnie’s dad was a peaceful man, and we talked peacefully, and we peacefully left out a lot of things, like Lucy’s black eye that she was hiding under makeup; or how it was that Lucy and I knew Donnie and what we usually did when we hung out; or Donnie’s love of Johnny Rebel; or his recent usage of meth and marijuana, which I think was what really pushed him to go back home, and not his very regular and normalized usage of cocaine; and we didn’t talk about mine or Lucy’s affinity for cocaine; in fact, cocaine didn’t come up at all in the conversation; and we didn’t talk about a lot of things, choosing instead to share a peaceful night on Donnie’s porch, talking about what we had in common. That was Donnie’s last night in Denver. When we said goodbye, Donnie’s dad wrapped Lucy and me in a big hug. I waved goodbye to Donnie across a room full of people. Then I walked away from Donnie, the last time I would ever see him. I marveled at how narrowly he, in his short life, avoided disaster.
ALMANAS OF THE TIME, OF US, IN IT: A GLOSSARY a collabrative piece by sixteen people Airborne On August 6, 1945, the bomber Enola Gay took off from Tinian Island. Its destination: the skies right above Hiroshima. That flight carried the fate of the world at that time. The twelve men aboard knowingly and unknowingly were the carriers of airborne death. No, death is too weak a word. Massacre? Carnage? No word in the English dictionary seems to be able to carry the weight of what happened—an entire city gone, obliterated in a matter of seconds. Just one sentence was uttered during the flight back to base. My God. What have we done? Alone (English [ ə-’lōn]) Meaning “unaccompanied, without companions, solitary,” origins from Middle English of ‘allone.’ The meaning of this word has always been stagnant. The word is as alone as we are. Alone in our houses. Alone in the world. When we leave our houses, we are met with a wall of masks. The loneliness of missed facial expressions and missed holidays and memories with our families and friends. Only accompanied by the sounds of the TV. The desolation engulfs us, suffocates us, until our thoughts turn to nothing. Animal Crossing Having seen a recent increase in popularity, due to excellent timing, Animal Crossing has been around for a while—starting in 2001, first only in Japan and now enjoyed worldwide. The March 20, 2020 release of the latest installment allowed players an abundance of island hours and the company of friends. See “New Horizons” elsewhere. Apology Google “how to apologize,” and you’ll find it takes anywhere between three and seven steps. People seem to disagree, but five emerges as a general rule of thumb. Apparently, there are five “apology lan-
guages.” Psychology Today recommends five “ingredients” for an effective apology and then provides a link to another article titled “How to Test Your Empathy.” The Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkley does better. Their advice is simple: acknowledge the offense, provide an explanation, express remorse, make amends. Generally, we think of an apology as a speech-act, but what of the language of the body? Poet Layli Long Soldier writes, when offered an apology I watch each movement the shoulders high or folding, tilt of the head both eyes down or straight through me, I listen for cracks in knuck les or in the word choice, what is it that I want? To feel and mind you I feel from the senses— Generally, “I’m sorry” isn’t enough—except perhaps in Spanish: lo siento means “I feel it.” But in English, well, here’s the Oxford English Dictionary: something which, as it were, merely appears to apologize for the absence of what ought to have been there; a poor substitute. Ash 1. The powdery residue of matter that remains after burning. a. The embers of ecosystems, homes, and carcasses of animals who couldn’t survive in smoke. i. “The school is gone, the bar’s gone, the laundromat’s gone, the general store’s gone.” –John Sykes. ii. “A fire you might’ve seen that was going to be okay over time is not okay anymore . . . the climate has changed.” –Jay Inslee iii. “. . . the fire is a sentient be ing. It feels like it’s coming to get us.” –Sulari Gentill Creative Non-Fiction - 157
iv. “When you think about nearly three billion native animals being in the path of the fires, it is absolutely huge—it’s a difficult number to comprehend.” –Chris Dickman v. “Smoke so thick and choking it filled the birth suite. What future does this child— born on New Year’s Day of 2020—face? Will it be as hellish as it seems in the dark hours this morning?” –Steve Robson b. The debris of Target sacrificed to a cause. i. “I haven’t been able to watch the part where he asks for his mom, though I’ve read about it. . . to hear my son scream for me in pain, but to not be able to help him? To not come to his aid?” –Kym berly Hartfield ii. “Many were looted repeat edly over consecutive nights. Other properties— like gas stations, restaurants, even parked cars—was set on fire, with much of it complete ly destroyed.” –Brad Polumbo 2. The remains of something destroyed; ruins. a. The cremations of memories lost to a gunshot. i. “What are you following me for?” –Trayvon Martin, age 17. ii. “I can’t breathe.” –George Floyd, age 46. iii. “I don’t have a gun, stop shooting!” –Michael Brown, age 18. iv. “It’s not real.” –John Craw ford, age 22. v. “Please don’t let me die.” –
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Kimani Gray, age 16. b. The desecrated family after an un plugged ventilator leaves them short of air. i. “Love you.” –Madhvi Aya, age 61. ii. “I love you guys with all my heart and you’ve given me the best life I could have ever asked for.” –Jon Coelho, age 32. iii. “We were able to Zoom her. It was one of the hardest things to see my mother with all these tubes coming from her mouth and chest.” –Chavez Montoya iv. “My father thought he was doing the right thing and he was shortly thereafter in the hospital fighting for his life. His government failed him and is failing us.” –Kristin Urquiza v. “. . .so much loss now, on so many different levels, that even very seasoned therapists are saying ‘I don’t know how to do this.’” –Marilyn Jacob Bail 1. |bāl| (British also bale). To scoop water out of a ship or boat. Sometimes with uckets. See also “NAACP.” See also “Eject” or “Abandon,” elsewhere. 2. See also “Bail Bonds.” See “Chauvin posts…” See “Unbelievable.” Bleach Wipe Deriving from old English of the word ‘blæcan.’ Used for the removal of germs on bathroom or kitchen services. In 2020, the wipes were used to keep the virus at bay. They were used on surfaces such as tables, doorknobs, handles, light switches, phones, keyboards, clothes, etc. After a while, the bleach wipe disappeared. Many recipes started to
appear on the internet: 1. Mix 5 TB of bleach to 1 gallon of water. 2. Submerge your paper towels complete ly into the diluted bleach for 5 minutes to allow the cloths to soak up the solution. 3. Mix the ingredients in an airtight container. 4. Use. 5. Repeat. Broke 1. Past (and archaic past participle) of break. a. The shattered empathy of humanity. i. “My father was left to die alone, at home, without help. We were simply abandoned. No one deserves an end like that.” –Riccardo Munda. ii. “. . . the mortality rate is so low. Do we have to shut down the entire country for this?” –Dan Patrick iii. “They are dying. . . it is what it is.” –Donald Trump iv. “Working in health care is so rewarding. It makes me feel so happy when I know I’ve made a difference in someone else’s life.” –Breonna Taylor v. “Even in being a prosecutor, I’d never quite seen that many bullets in one apartment.” – Lonita Baker vi. “. . .they don’t even have warrants to go into houses and that’s what they are doing. They’re breaking into people’s homes, pulling them out of t heir houses in front of kids and in front of family.” –Ricar do Reyes 2. Having completely run out of money. a. The devastation money brings to those
who do not have it.
i. “Everyone is grieving right now . . . They lost a loved one and then they’re going to worry about covering the cost of the burial? I think it’s too much.” –Sufian Nabhan ii. “Pinching every penny is how we’re getting through. We want to get back to work, but are also very afraid of what’s going to hap pen when we get back to work.” –Andrea Grabow iii. “We have our mortgage, and then we have all of our utilities. . . Food is one of the last things on our list.” –Jessi ca Traxler iv. “Poverty is also likely to rise disproportionately among children, a special concern because brain science shows that early deprivation can leave lifelong scars.” –Jason DeParle
Carrier A person who may have a disease and not know it. It may not affect the person that has it, but the person can still spread it to others. The person could never know that they are a carrier, but that doesn’t take away their responsibility. [Comfort, The] To distract us from the news, we read The Comfort of Strangers, a novel (turned movie) by Ian McEwan. It (the movie) is erotic and full of wonderful linen suits. A sort of reverse Venus In Furs, if you will, the story follows Colin and Mary, a puerile English couple visiting Venice. They get lost one night and encounter Robert and Caroline, an older couple brought to life by Helen Mirren and Christopher Walken. Enter sadomasochism. It ends with a pained, paralyzed, and absolutely perfect Natasha Richardson (Mary) watching as Robert and Caro-
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line murder Colin (Rupert Everett, also heavenly). Which, if you ask me, seems like a terrible way to end a vacation. See also the news. See “Hospital Ship.” See also “September 11, 2001.” Community 1. On the south side of the Chicago area, during the protests over the shooting of an unarmed Black man named George Floyd, many people were angry and tired of being witness to police brutality and not seeing police receive any jail time for their wrongful actions towards minorities. Many of Chicago’s born and raised are parents of mixed babies and GenZers desperate for change. They decided to protest and use their voice to get their message across about police reform. Some did let their anger get the best of them, deciding to destroy buildings and commit other crimes. Riots started throughout Chicago. However, the small, Black-owned businesses in urban communities were affected the most. Destroying their companies only puts them in more debt. I remember when crimes occurred downtown and how fast police and political officials were to completely shut off the downtown area from the public. I remember when crimes occurred in Black communities and police took extended amounts of time to arrive at the scene. I observed the difference in assertion when it came to protecting minority communities in the city and protecting white communities in Chicago. 2. On Independence Day, I hated everything this country was built on. I watched TikTok after TikTok of members of the Sioux nation being arrested and thrown out of their own street by police to clear a path for the Trump rally. The Indigenous people, a fierceness in their eyes, the power of hundreds of years in their voices, arms linked to try and keep the whiteness from invading their sacred lands. Fury billowed in me as they were ripped from the Black Hills, trying to protect the Six Grandfathers Mountain, carved with the faces of those who wished them dead.
On Independence Day, others celebrated. I read a friend’s post about how “Americans won the war, fair and simple. You can’t make me feel bad about the birth of our country.” People drank beer in their backyards, watched their kids chase fireflies with the sky lighting up in an array of colors. Some half-ass watched Trump deliver a speech about independence and freedom at Mount Rushmore, a monument adorned with the “greatest Americans that ever lived.” Co-morbidity 1. The simultaneous presence of two chronic diseases or conditions in a patient; 2. the simultaneous presence of a colossal presidential race during a colossal national health crisis; 3. the simultaneous presence of a suppressed and intensifying pandemic during a suppressed and intensifying planetary collapse; 4. the simultaneous presence of extreme growth of wealth for those who already have far too much and the extreme loss of wealth for those who already have far too little; 5. the simultaneous presence of a revolution rising up from a system that’s swiftly caving in. Covfefe (Kaw-fei-fee): Noun I. Six minutes after midnight on May 31, 2017, the 45th President of the United States tweeted, “despite the constant negative press ‘covfefe.’” The tweet was deleted six hours later, but it immediately became an internet meme1. II. In regard to 2020: A. Upon the emergence of the novel virus Covid-19, some groups took to nicknaming the disease the “Covfefe vi rus.” This is believed in part due to the high degree of mocking directed toward the president within said groups and “covfefe’s” reminiscence to the word “cough” (a signature symptom of the Coronavirus, Covid-19, being excessive coughing). 1. It is in good practice to say
1 Meme: A cultural element or behavioral trait whose transmission and consequent persistence in a population, although occurring by non-genetic means (esp. imitation), is considered as analogous to the inheritance of a gene.
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the word with a grinning face, without mock ing. To say it skillfully, one imagines staring the great petulant orb of Covid-19 in the face, puts on a laughing smile, and says “coooooovfefe!”
Curve 1. In geometry, a curve is a line that deviates. A consistent line. An inconsistent line. 2. We watched as a nation rose, eyes tracing the arch of death mounting in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles. The rising numbers chased Wuhan and Italy until the United States loomed over the world with lost lives. Nurses, doctors, EMTs, ‘heroes’ thrown in front of the world to try and shove their sacrifices down onto the wave to drop the death count. So many bodies. 3. There was no curve in the bullet that killed Breonna Taylor. 4. We watched as a justice system failed to straighten out those in desperate need of justice. While families inhaled the climbing numbers of those struggling to breathe, the mountain of last moments done via Zoom call, the desperation of hospitals to flatten the goodbye’s, we failed to care for the bullet’s linear shot that stole the life of Breonna Taylor. Breonna Taylor, an ER technician at two hospitals. Breonna Taylor, a Black woman who loved to sing. Breonna Taylor, asleep in her home. Breonna Taylor, 26. Deal: Verb (Roman numerals: Oxford’s definition) I. To divide, distribute, share. Mainly transitive. II. “Deal’s” significance to 2020: A. A variety of things have been dealt in 2020 that have brought forth into the consciousness of most Americans a sense of the state of things. Unemployment checks have been dealt, meals have been dealt, and people dream of the day that the vaccines will be dealt. Outside of it all lay the unquantifiable number of things that have not been dealt, yet were
altogether necessary. B. Many things have also gone without being dealt, or rather dealt with. Powerful individuals taken to symptoms of lunacy and proponents of the extremes of tribal psychology in its, perhaps, most toxic and contagious forms. Again, and again, and again, and again, people, families, and workers all at the personal level keep from dealing with necessary precautions to avoid the discomfort of facing the prospect of refraining from family gatherings and simple pleasures.
Debt As of now, the U.S. is over $27 trillion in debt. By 2021, the total government debt will surpass the U.S. economy’s size and production. The cases of personal financial debt, unemployment rate, and bankruptcy are rapidly increasing as we slip into another recession. The health of our country’s economy is plummeting with the health of its citizens. Or debt, what we owe to each other and to ourselves to take responsibility. Doom scroll “Health professionals have advised that excessive doomscrolling can negatively impact existing mental health issues.” Now I understand why I stayed away from Twitter for so long. I don’t think we were made to be able to metabolize such an intensity of turmoil in such rapid and repetitive succession. These days, it’s dizzying to see the goings-on of our seemingly collapsing world. Every next headline could tear the Earth asunder—“Covid deaths now greater than American death toll in Vietnam War,” “Whistle Blower Alleges ‘Medical Neglect’ and ‘Forced Sterilization’ in ICE Centers,” “Genocide by police on Nigerian protestors,” “Forced hysterectomies in Muslim internment camps in China,” “California Wildfires Worst in History of the State,” “Biodiversity Loss: The End of Life on Earth.” It’s no wonder kids these days seem like we’re going mad. We’ve been siphoned the weight of the world to carry. We are shouldering the responsibility of human fate. We
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are witnessing the transformation of a generation into a revolution. Epicenter The center point of the start of an earthquake, the city erupting in body counts and broken lungs, or the bloodshed to be the center of a revolution and hashtags. See Wuhan, China. See New York City, New York. See Minneapolis, Minnesota. Epidemiology A word I hadn’t heard until March of 2020. A word I have heard nonstop since March of 2020. Apparently, a branch of medicine. Apparently, the study and control of diseases. Apparently, words like this can slip past our vocabulary until they become painfully relevant. Essential: Adjective (Roman numerals: Oxford’s definition) I. More generally: something belonging to the essence of a thing; an indispensable element or adjunct; also, in a weaker sense, a chief or leading point. Originally only in plural; in later use, occasionally singular. II. a. Constituting, or forming part of, the essence of anything; belonging to a thing by virtue of its essence; necessarily implied in its definition; indispensably entering into its composition. III. d. Dependent on the intrinsic character or condition of anything, not on extraneous circumstances. Of diseases: Idiopathic2. essential merit (Theology) = ‘merit of condignity’3, the merit belonging to good works in proportion to their intrinsic excellence; so essential reward. IV. In regard to 2020: A. Essential refers to, specifically, the services, workers, goods, and supply chains that are required for the
homeostatic existence of society (i.e. restaurants, semi-truck routes, waste management, hospitals, grocery stores, farmers, teachers, etc.). Essential work ers are those workers within those indus tries. 1. It is worth noting that said essential workers were/are expected to go to work despite lockdown or ders. Many individuals from these groups were/are given the label of “hero” in regard to the degree of necessity their job holds. a) Note: (1) The sociological compar ison of essential workers to heroes is reminiscent of the more archaic definition given in entry “III” above. This reminiscence is a telltale sign of the sense of both desperation and survival that many groups were/are con fronted with during the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic. Face This year, the year of the face in the absence of a face. What will happen when we see people’s lips again? Their mouths? When we can touch our own? Someone else’s? When I look at a group photo of a time before 2020, I flinch at the faces. If I watch a movie from a different year and see a crowd cheering at a baseball game, my brain hiccups trying to remember that it is not now, but before. There are people I’ve met this year, people who I may never get to know by the way
2 Idiopathic: relating to or denoting any disease or condition which arises spontaneously or for which the cause is unknown.: “idiopathic epilepsy” (e.g. The way Covid-19 spontaneously arose in Wuhan, China; though it is safe to assume it was through transmission between an animal and human. See “Zoonosis”). 3 1 obsolete: merit, worthiness. 2: merit described in scholastic theology as earned in distinction from that which is given: merit acquired by works performed in a state of grace—distinguished from congruity.
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their nose curves, freckles across their cheeks, or the softness of their jawline. Instead, I will only recall them by their eyes, the color of cloth around their features, their hair. Wandering around campus, I’ve come across people I’ve known for well over a year but cannot recognize at a glance. There’s a classic internet myth that says our brains never truly forget a face. Who will my mind give me in my dreams? Will my subconscious manifest full lips for the girl I see in a cafeteria line? What about the student sitting at a desk in the computer lab, brows furrowed—will they only be eyes? Think: the face is now foreign. False Negative False negatives and false positives have been frequent, are common, but false-negative cases put many more people at risk. Since many people refuse to wear face masks when they receive negative results and many places of business do not enforce it, the virus still gets passed around. Because we are always students of language, we remember that a double negative means a positive. We can’t stop remembering this. Fauci, Dr. 1. The nation’s top infectious disease official, described as one of the most trusted medical figures in the United States. A. Do you trust Dr. Fauci? 1. “He’s the go to guy. He had been straight with us from the beginning.” – Farrel, Gloria 2. “No, way too close to Gates, too many mistakes.” – Morris, Shirley 3. “Stay strong Dr. Fauci. The truth is far more important than the ego of the so-called individual in charge.” – Moyer, Sue 4. “Not for awhile.” “He is not interested in the welfare of American citizens.”
– Lee, Connie 5. “Listen to and follow the advice of scientists like Dr. Fauci. This is NOT about pol itics! It’s about health and safety.” – Young, Karen 6. “Trust him as much as the local weatherman.” – Gookins, Todd 7. “Love Fauci!!! He’s a true professional in every sense of the word!” – Kuenzler, Christine 8. “Fauci doesn’t treat sick patients! He’s not [on] the front lines so how can you trust his word against real-world doctors?” – Galan, Diana 9. “Feel so sorry for him but behind him 100 percent!” – Cortez, Mary 10. “I trust him to change his opinion every day.” – Clarke, Art II. A household name. A. Advises the public: 1. Cautions against hosting large gatherings and dinners during the holidays. 2. Insists on wearing masks, and insists further that masks alone won’t stop the virus. B. Epicenter of celebrity drama. 1. “So, Dr. Fauci influences Trump’s Covid policy the way we do: by staring at the TV in horror and saying, that’s gotta be a problem.” –Stephen Colbert 2. “People are tired of hearing Fauci and these idiots, all these idiots who got it wrong.” –Donald Trump C. A government official, working as a member of a presidential task force. It’s
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safe to say he is more than a scientist or a doctor. He’s a figurehead watched by the public, and his decisions have had and will have a significant impact on the future condition of the country. 1. Dr. Fauci Just Said the Four Words you’ve Been Waiting to Hear: “This out break will end.” Food Bank See also “Hunger,” everywhere. See also “Need,” everywhere. See also “what other choice do we have?” Furlough With Covid-19 on the rise in the country, many colleges and universities began to furlough their students, their employees. Being in a small town surrounded by nothing, here we wondered if we would be next. When the email arrived, the news broke, we knew. We would not be returning for a while. Some days, we thought of it as a layoff. Some days, we thought of the time as a grace period. Most days, we tried to remember we weren’t the only ones afraid. Most days, we tried to remember we were lucky. Ghost town 1. There are only thirty-four K-Marts left in the United States. Appliances sold off and groceries went to rot. I can’t say whether or not K-Mart was a staple among American superstores; I never really knew what it was. There is a K-Mart skeleton right off the exit I take to get to my receptionist job at a high-end hair salon; the stoplight always holds me there. Each time I sit and watch that K-Mart, I wonder which kid spent their last time hiding between winter coats and scaring their mom, who was the last person to glide through those sliding doors. I have spent a decent portion of this pandemic counting my lasts. The last time I sat in a restaurant, the last time I hugged somebody without hesitation, the last time I wandered the aisles of a store without the pressure of being in and out as soon as possible. Now, as I see this K-Mart, these mom and pop
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places, restaurants, boutiques, parks and recreation centers, I wonder who left their lasts there. 2. After we were all banished from the college and sent home, I ate at my uncle’s Chinese restaurant, First Wok, once a week. I remember seeing his sapped face and the dead quiet of the business he’d owned longer than I had even lived. It was strange seeing him at the register; he was usually rushing around in the back, steaming dumplings, making stir fry. “Doing okay? Getting enough orders?” I’d ask each week. Not meeting my eyes, he nodded and gave me a family discount anyway. I started ordering delivery using my husband’s last name. Herd Whole crowds of people rushed into the stores. Toilet paper and hand sanitizer were the prime targets, flying off of the shelves faster than the factories could produce. The masses anxiously waited in miles-long lines, barely six feet apart and itching to storm past frazzled teenage workers to finally just get inside. When they were finally granted access, they immediately charged the aisles, pounding their feet against the linoleum floors to reach the dwindling displays just a little quicker. Signs lay bent and pushed to the side as ravenous hands stuck themselves in openings between heads and under armpits in order to grab the last remnants of something that vaguely resembled saleable merchandise, growls and frustration echoing throughout the store. Home It was the longest I’d been in Colorado since I was sixteen. Between living in Germany and leaving for college, I hadn’t gotten more than a couple of months in at a time with my mountains, but suddenly I was home for two ripened seasons and fell in love again with the way Colorado blossoms in the warmth of the sun. Every day awakening with the blue Rockies lifting up the sky. Finding rapture in the meditation of long drives behind the steering wheel in my old Ford Expedition with my hands trailing the wind out the windows. Dancing to Santana in the kitchen with my mama while we’re
cooking dinner and curling up cozy with her in the laughter of evenings when it’s just the two of us. I didn’t realize how badly my heart had been aching for sweet time like this. Hospital My Grandma, pushing seventy, had minimally invasive surgery around March 10th. My dad had already planned for me to visit her in the hospital as soon as I returned home from college. He saw the email that I would have an extended spring break and reassured me to pack for a “normal spring break.” At the hospital on March 15th, we were told that guests can only have about five visitors in a room. I stepped in, surrounded by my grandparents, uncles, and aunts. Grandma extended her arm from her bed; I reluctantly held it as I didn’t want to seem scared. My aunts told me later they had refused to touch her. Everyone knew how to ask me how school was going, how to say Grandma was recovering well, how to joke about hospital food. The news was on a small TV at the front of her bed, headline after headline, shutdown after shutdown, footage of grocery stores, seas of carts stacked with food and toiletries, numbers of infections slowly creeping up. No one knew what to say about this. A nurse informed us there will now only be one visitor allowed in a room and swiftly urged us to go to the cafeteria or elsewhere. Every patient room was slowly closing its doors; doctors began anxiously walking a little faster. Every hallway had a TV, and every TV had a new headline. The walk out of the hospital with my dad was like a descent down a tunnel collapsing in on itself. My Grandma, thankfully, is still healthy. She was discharged right as the hospital had banned all visitors, making more room in the ICU, bracing for the impact that had finally hit. “I” A pronoun, first-person singular. A speaker. A narrator. A statement. Or, alternately, a filler that can only be filled if another person sees you as a person, if you see yourself as a person, as the subject
of a sentence. Illness If experiencing any of these symptoms, call emergency services immediately: - Coughs strong enough to shake your whole body. - Lungs so stuffed with cotton that you barely have enough room to get a breath in. - Pressure in your sinuses thick enough to make your skull want to crack. - Hot and cold flashes that have you wearing shorts beneath ten thousand blankets. - Your taste buds forget your favorite food and you can’t smell your shampoo. - Skin so tender that just shifting your weight pulls groans from your body. - Fatigue that sucks the life from each and every cell while you’re alone in a hospital bed behind a plastic sheet and isolated from every living person, your only company the drone of a TV and the fear of the disease living inside of you. Immunity A natural safeguard against things that may hurt you, like diseases. (Or like words.) An illness that doesn’t affect you because of natural antibodies that your body builds up. Exemption from an entire way of living, or obligation, or punishment. Justice Ginsburg, Ruth Bader AKA “Notorious RBG.” Ginsburg argued cases for gender equality and sex discrimination before the Supreme Court in the 1970s, winning five out of the six she argued. She was appointed as a justice to the Supreme Court on June 22, 1993, during Bill Clinton’s presidency and remained a prominent justice for twenty-seven years until her death on September 18, 2020. Ginsburg ruled by representing objectivity with a graceful pithiness to affirm the practice of “no hints, no previews, no forecasts” before a Su-
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preme Court hearing. She was respected as a legal, cultural, and feminist icon, and her legend receives the same honor. Transcending the realms beyond politics, Ginsburg wrote books, became the muse of some artists, and was the subject of everything from coloring books to tattoos, cementing herself in pop culture. Ginsburg was a representative of equality and diversity in representation, opportunity, and success. She was pivotal in politics and society, in life and posthumously. Days before she passed away, she stated that she wanted to live long enough for a new president to be elected. Ginsburg passed away during the Trump administration, allowing the president to appoint a conservative justice to push the Supreme Court further in a conservative favor, changing from 5–4 to 6–3 in favor of the conservative party4. Knee 1. The joint between the thigh and the lower leg in humans. a. A piece of the body that became a political statement to beg for peace. i. “Kaepernick, who hasn’t played in the NFL since 2016, first took a knee on the foot ball field during the playing of the national anthem in 2016 to protest police brutality.” –Deena Zaru ii. “Several players from the Baltimore Ravens, Carolina Panthers, Seattle Seahawks, Chicago Bears, Detroit Lions and Minnesota Vikings took a knee during the anthem.” –Michael Middlehurt- Schwartz 2. Hit (someone) with one’s knee. a. A piece of the body that became a political weapon to oppress. i. “If the players stood proudly for our Flag and Anthem, and it is all shown on broadcast, maybe ratings could come
back? Otherwise worse!” –Donald Trump ii. “Mr. Chauvin kept his knee planted even as the man, George Floyd, told all four officers involved in his arrest that he could not breathe.” –Niel MacFarquhar, Tim Arango, and Manny Fernandez.
Kneel 1. A position in which the human body is supported on one or both knees. 2. A silent-peaceful act of protest, but one that was still too loud. 3. A way to pray. 4. A form of proposal, often of marriage. Lake Street (E.) Located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. A street stretching for miles overflowing with proud diversity and intense cultural history spanning generations. A street built by a diverse group of people who worked hard to make it a place of acceptance and community and are proud of what it stands for. A street that burned in protest for justice for George Floyd, a Black man killed mercilessly at the hands of the Minneapolis Police, a force meant to protect citizens from harm. Brightly-colored murals and graffiti rose off of the sides of sturdy brick buildings—“No Justice No Peace,” “Justice,” “BLM,” and “Love”— the families living inside plastering their windows with signs of support to those rumbling through the streets. But as the marching carried on, the murals watched as their businesses turned to rubble and ash, their beloved street crumbling beneath the surges of violence as peaceful protests morphed into brutal riots. There’s an incredible irony when citizens don’t feel safe anymore around “protective” officers from a corrupt organization; they start to protect each other instead. Filling backpacks with extra water bottles and thermoses of milk to remedy pepper spray and tear gas attacks, shielding those most
4 On October 27th, Amy Coney Barrett became the 103rd associate justice of the Supreme Court, confirming the Republican majority of the Court. She was confirmed in the dark of night by the Trump administration, shortly before the presidential election.
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vulnerable with their own bare bodies, giving any first aid they can to staunch rubber bullet wounds. No time to catch their breath until they’re on the streets again, signs raised as their strained but powerful voices carry over the fires and the helmets and the sirens into the heavy night air for as many weeks as it takes for justice to be served and equality exists for all. Lewis, John: Noun, figure I. B. February 21, 1940, Alabama. D. July 17, 2020, Atlanta, GA A. A well-known voice within the Civil Rights Movement. Having himself been an avid proponent of the philosophy of nonviolence while attending Fisk College in Nashville, Lewis found pas sionate refuge in Martin Luther King’s message of racial justice. 1. Lewis was involved in a variety of sit-ins and demonstrations in the South. Most notably: The Freedom Rides5 and Selma to Montgomery voting rights march6. B. Lewis served on the Atlanta city council before being elected to Con gress in 1986. He rose in Democratic Party ranks to senior chief deputy whip and became known as “the conscience of the Congress.” Lewis was also a critically acclaimed author. His graphic novel trilogy March won a national book award. II. John Lewis’ significance to 2020: A. Having been suffering from stage 4 pancreatic cancer, John Lewis passed away in Atlanta, Georgia on July 17,
2020. B. This event is monumentally notable in terms of 2020. Being a renowned civil rights leader, Lewis’ death in the midst of the pandemic brought new focus to an already existing wave of protest within the U.S.: The Fight for Racial Justice and Black Lives Matter. 1. The 45th president, while not making distinct open claims, repeatedly failed/fails to condemn white supremacist hate crimes, most frequently directed toward people of color and minority groups, and police killings, specifically those involving unarmed Black men. a) This repeated failure to condemn such violence on the part of 45 invoked the unrest, rage, and action of a great many groups ( Black Lives Matter, Antifa, Democratic Socialists of Ameri ca, Access Living, etc.) 2. John Lewis’ death “fanned the flames” with both his notable history and his funer- al. At said funeral, former President Obama spoke and gave political charge to his statements regarding those people in power at the time
5 The Freedom Rides: Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated Southern United States in 1961 and subsequent years to challenge the non-enforcement of the United States Supreme Court decisions Morgan v. Virginia (1946) and Boynton v. Virginia (1960), which ruled that segregated public buses were unconstitutional. 6 Selma to Montgomery voting rights march: The Selma to Montgomery marches were three protest marches held in 1965 along the 54-mile (87 km) highway from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital of Montgomery. The marches were organized by nonviolent activists to demonstrate the desire of African-American citizens to exercise their constitutional right to vote in defiance of segregationist repression; they were part of a broader voting rights movement underway in Selma and throughout the American South.
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(the president was not named).
Mask Implemented by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in order to reduce the number of Covid-19 cases. People inhaling and exhaling breaths while talking in each other’s faces is a sure way to get Covid-19, so why would we not protect ourselves by wearing masks? Many people argue that being forced to wear a mask is a violation of their human rights. On September 16, 2020, in Fort Lauderdale, there were even “Anti-Mask Protests,” where a group of people walked around Target trying to convince people to violate the mask policy. On top of their attempts at persuasion, they were putting others at risk by not wearing masks. In that whole situation, all I could think about was how it was more important for many people to protest about violating their rights of choosing not to wear face masks but not protest over violating the human rights of a minority individual whose life was taken senselessly by police officers. Not protesting the right to live, which all humans should be guaranteed in this country. How to help each other understand that wearing a mask protects themselves and others from contracting the deadly virus. It has nothing to do with a violation of their human rights; it is an expression of our human right. See also: 1. A covering for all or part of the face, worn as a disguise or to amuse or terrify other people. a. The polarizing reactions in America, caused by one person. i. “It’s going to disappear. One day—it’s like a miracle—it will disappear.” –Donald Trump ii. “The C.D.C. is advising the use of nonmedical cloth face . . it’s voluntary. You don’t have to do it.” –Donald Trump iii. “I beat this crazy, horrible China virus. It seems like I;m immune.” –Donald Trump 2. A covering made of fiber or gauze and fitting over
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the nose and mouth to protect. a. Deciding between science and selfishness. i. “A surgical mask won’t protect you from contracting SARS-CoV-2. However, it can help prevent you from transmitting the virus to oth- ers.” –Jill Seladi-Schulman ii. “But for you to get on the bus, and cough several times without covering up your mouth, and you know we’re in the middle of a pan demic, that lets me know that some folks don’t care.” –Jason Hargrove, age 50. 3. Conceal something from view. a. The narrative we’re supposed to trust. i. “They are taken care of nicely there. But you know, yeah, they are not with parents, it’s sad. But when they come here alone with coyotes or illegally, you know, you need to do something.” –Melania Trump ii. “We have reached out to DHS and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and they have assured us that they . . . are firmly committed to the safety and welfare of all those in their custody.” –Austin Scott Metaphor Speaking in tongues. Mute Button Depending on who you are, your goals, and your attitude to virtual meetings, the mute button can serve as an annoying hindrance or a useful tool. The device makes it hard to participate openly; in the interest of minimizing background noise, usually the teacher or leader is the only one whose mic is
always on. To raise your hand and unmute takes a couple of seconds, which is enough time to second guess yourself and stay quiet, to be interrupted by someone else, or for the leader to move on without you. For someone who thrives in open conversations and collaborative environments, such a practice acts as a muffle that confines inquiry and expression. The mute button makes it easy to function without being noticed. If you need to be “doing” something in order to focus, something that produces lots of noise like tapping your desk, humming, or making coffee, you can now easily do so without bothering others. To those who are just not interested, maybe today is not your day: muting is your accomplice in escape! Feel free to have a conversation with your roommate, listen to music, or play games on your computer. Combined with the camera off button, your opportunities are endless. Scroll through Instagram, binge your favorite show, or take a nap if you’re feeling bold. Sometimes, the mute works as an externally asserted mechanism for simulating civil dialogue. For those who like to talk over others, who have no interest in listening, who crave attention (or whose lives depend on it), or who simply do not know how to wait their turn, perhaps a temporary muting is called for. We can mute others. We can ask others to unmute. These days, mostly, we go mute. Are stunned silent. NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund Defend. Educate. Empower. These three words depict everything that America’s first and foremost civil and human rights law firm stands for. NAACP is the abbreviation for National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. LDF was established in 1940, which is 80 years from now. Yet it was there to abolish the Jim Crow doctrine “separate but equal”—a doctrine that made discrimination legally sanctioned. Less than a century ago, racism was legally sanctioned. Let’s let that sink in. Before is a part of now. Jim Crow is no longer here. But racism still very much is. In an ideal world, we wouldn’t need LDF. But in this bleak, cruel world, LDF stands for hope in war.
Normal, the New 1. A couple of years ago, a large portion of social media was singing a song titled “mask off.” By the time I arrived at college, the song was well established as a gem of the past, the days of hearing it being a normal occurrence long gone. We could use a revision. Now, normal is “mask on.” Now, normal is wondering who you are talking to, seeing. 2. Now, normal is empty shelves at the market. Empty parking lots. Empty buildings. Now, normal is alone. 3. Masks, hand sanitizer, six feet, social distancing, disinfectant wipes, touch starved, rectangle classrooms, maximum capacity, death count, ventilators. 4. Avoiding any public space for the sake of health and, in many cases, sanity (the social anxiety can be crippling in these situations). Only ordering out if one doesn’t feel like cooking. Nerves over even going on a walk in the park. Nerves over opening a door. Nerves. 5. Panic at the sound of a cough, a sneeze. Panic at the sight of a bare face. Panic at the news. Panic. Open A sign posted in a window when a store is not closed. What a door does. What our arms someday might be again. What our hearts might also. See “Metaphor.” See “Quiet.” Panda-cam The webcams capture the giant panda enclosure at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo & Conservation Biology Institute, compensating for the facility shutdown by documenting the early weeks of a newborn cub. The giant panda, Mei Xiang, gave birth on August 21, 2020, at 6:35 p.m. and is caring for her newborn attentively. Mei Xiang’s behavior is monitored by keepers who check that she is nursing the cub and cradling it close to keep the cub warm. The small confinement depicted through the panda-cam replicates the den-like shelter sought after by a panda with a newborn. She still has access to her regular enclosure where she can eat, drink, urinate, and defecate, although this will be curbed as Mei Xiang dedicates her time to her cub rather
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than consuming, eating as little as once a month. We check the panda-cam often. We sometimes stare so long, time becomes no time. We can’t believe how small the cub is, how big it will grow, how rare a giant panda is, and how miraculous—in this time—the panda took, became, is. We’re making a note not to forget to keep an eye on the weather. In the months ahead, if there is snow at the National Zoo, we would like to bear witness to that, too. Paralysis In medicine, paralysis is the loss of use in the muscles, ranging from a single muscle to the entire body, that can be attributed to a neurological source or disease. When the inflammatory processes of the body go into overdrive in an attempt to reach homeostasis, the immune system can become paralyzed. The coronavirus has caused paralysis in some severe cases due to inflammation, but many physicians focus on the physical symptoms rather than the neurological. In the brain, Covid-19 can cause strokes and seizures, even in young people, which can cause temporary or permanent paralysis and damage the brain and the body. Even to those who are not sick, we have become confined to our bodies as the world seems to stop around us, immobile and helpless as we wait to see what happens next. PPE Masks: N95, disposable mask, birthed from Etsy mask, the mask made by your aunt’s friend at work that she bought for you for five dollars and those five dollars went to breast cancer awareness month, mask (clay), mask (theatrics), mask (your emotions), this too is passing. Eye protection: goggles (lab), goggles (swim), glasses (eye), glasses (glassware), pink eye medication, cucumber slices, sunglasses, eyepatches (argh!). Gowns: surgical (gowns), ball (gowns). Gloves: latex, leather, ski and snowboard, goalie, gardening, look but don’t touch. Quiet 1) If a tree falls in a forest, who will come to help it up?
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2) March muted the world. Shutters took over windows and cars stayed in driveways as scientists encouraged us to put on our masks, stay inside, and stay away from others. Schools closed, moving to remote learning, and, suddenly, bright faces became little boxes on a screen as we struggled to remember the scents of our lives. Roads, stores, sidewalks, restaurants empty as the country shut down for an invisible enemy. Parks closed, swing sets straining against caution tape as the wind slowly pushed them back and forth like it missed the chaos of children. For months, we stayed inside, trying to adapt to this new “normal” and watching the days pass by in front of us outside of our windows. The environment took advantage of our silence, letting the noise from machines and vehicles and the hum of human existence die down a few decibels to let the natural frequency of the earth find its harmony again. The canals cleared in Venice, silt stirred by boats settling back down to the bottom, small schools of fish even returning to waters they once called home. The skies made way for more stars and the still quiet of night, coaxing various wildlife out of their hideaways and into the world that we created, giving them room to explore the world humans changed so much. 3) Of course, quiet is the absence of sound and, of course, there is never actually a complete absence of sound in the world. I don’t seem to notice what sounds there have been less of, but what sounds are taking their place. Our TV remote broke at the start of the summer. My mother kept broadcasting networks on from the time I woke up to the time I went to bed. If not the news, old reruns of cowboy movies my mom likes. No kids outside playing that I could usually hear from the thin apartment walls. Once in a while, someone yells in the distance. I hear an ambulance wailing down the street, later there’s another, a screaming and shouting ambulance. Every day, I hear the creak of the apartment floor my family moves across every day. The black-and-white bang of a sheriff’s pistol in a ghost town. A newscaster’s voice announces 1,000 more people are dead at 7 pm. Something was set on fire and another Black body was found somewhere. I
hear footsteps outside, actively trying to avoid each other as they pass. Another ambulance and as I ride my bike to work. Cars stop for it quickly and take their time to leave, and there is less sound again. A disposable mask scuffles across the pavement like a tumbleweed; there is no triumphant music in the background. And, of course, another ambulance.
by simply saying, “It takes a whole lot of oxygen to talk.”
4) Meaning “freedom from disturbance or conflict; stillness, calm.” The definition deriving from the 13th century. When the quiet was calm. Today, in a state of consumerism, the quiet drives us mad. We are used to the loud traffic surrounding us, the concerts of roaring music, the yelling of conversations between friends, etc. The world around us has become so loud. During Covid, the world never seemed so quiet. The animals seemed to be my only friends. I awoke to the sound of birds chirping outside of my window. The sound of the crickets at night overwhelmed me as the night traffic had ceased. The sounds of nothing were constantly surrounding me. Engulfing me in a state of idleness.
America wasn’t. America was great again.
5) “I can’t breathe I can’t breathe I can’t breathe I can’t breathe I can’t breathe I can’t breathe I can’t breathe I can’t breathe I can’t breathe I can’t breathe I can’t breathe I can’t breathe I can’t breathe I can’t breathe I can’t breathe I can’t breathe Please, I can’t breathe. Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them.” Finally, Chauvin acknowledged Floyd’s struggle
To talk. He wanted Floyd to be quiet. He wanted America to be quiet. He expected America to be quiet.
Remote 1. Leaving school for spring break, thinking it will just be a week or so until you see your friends again, your teachers, your classrooms. a. Learning from home instead of going into class every day. b. Logging into Zoom at your designated time, turning your mic and camera off, and mentally logging off of school for the day. c. Leaving the pair of scissors that you brought to work, your good pair of scissors, and not seeing them again because now you can’t go back. 2. Sitting in the office in the middle of drafting an email when all of a sudden, your boss is telling you that the state is shutting down. a. Taking whatever of your office supplies you can carry so that you can get the work done at home now. b. Still logging into Zoom, but not really feeling like you’re actually getting any thing done. c. Wearing a nice shirt and pajama bot toms, slippers tucked onto your feet while you sit in a meeting. 3. How far away our former lives. How far away we are. Routine Staying at home (hopefully) is routine. Boredom might feel routine, spending more time with family and loved ones may be routine, and so might working from home. Routine might be that final piece completing your sanity puzzle, that simple thing you look forward to that helps everything to fit in place.
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Routine could be that cup of coffee you make in your Keurig at 8 o’clock in the morning. It could be listening to that one song you can’t get out of your head that helps you fall asleep. It could be taking the same route on a daily walk simply because you adore the look of that patch of hydrangeas soaking up the sun on your neighbor’s lawn. The human mind craves routine. We become comfortable with patterns, patterns that may disorient us if disrupted or absent. Routines are powerful in that way. We develop a sort of dependence on them. They shape our identities, for ourselves and others. They can grant meaning to our lives and also threaten to take that meaning away just as quickly. Sanitize We went wearing masks and gloves. We tried desperately not to need to touch our phones. We spent hours wiping down every single container, washing every piece of produce, cleaning the credit cards, scrubbing our hands twice over after everything we touch. Latex yellowing our hands with sweat. And still the itching feeling of needing to wash all the clothes I wore. I can say with confidence that I never want to go grocery shopping again. Shelter Or: protect, shield, cover, shade, save, safeguard, wrap. Or: accommodate, bestow, billet, board, bunk, encamp, quarter, room, take in, bed (down). As a verb, shelter is generally transitive—to be or provide—and rarely of a personal agent; rather, chiefly of a thing. As a noun, shelter is generally considered among our top three priorities and the foundation from which to develop higher human motivations. So: nest, burrow, asylum, bolt-hole, harbor, haven, refuge, retreat, sanctuary, mooring, port, abode, diggings, domicile, dwelling, habitation, house, lodging, lodgment, residence, rest, roof, cloister, closet, covert, den, hideaway, hideout, lair, fastness, fort, fortress, redoubt, stronghold, lean-to, lee. So: air-raid, animal, bivouac, blast, bus, emergency, fallout, homeless, refugee, rock, transitional, women’s. Often transferred and often figurative. Of obscure origin. Often temporary and often
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makeshift. So: tarp, debris, dugout, snow cave, juniper tree. Or the state of security. In a wider sense, anything serving as a place of refuge from the weather. Think: the shelter-belt (of trees) like a wind-break or the wood left standing in which saplings might grow. Think: space like a pause, from which we might glance at a future. So often our objective: a stay that might screen, might afford some protection. Add in place and it becomes protocol invoked in an emergency or in the face of imminent threat. Add in place and you get a policy of public safety, originally and chiefly used in the U.S. and formed by conversion. Spread Butter. Jelly. Laughter. Sickness. Anger. Fear. Kindness. Ignorance. Rumors. Hope. Substances, ideas, feelings, concepts, expand and cover more surface area. We don’t need physical proximity to spread things. Messages. Announcements. Videos. Propaganda. Social Media. Articles. Memes. Fake News. All delivered to millions of people at a time. We can’t help but spread things even in isolation. Hatred. Love. Prejudice. Acceptance. Life. Death. Meaning. Emptiness. We spread every day. Stimulus 1. At home, disheartened at not being able to attend school normally. However, out of the blue, some schools that received a relief grant from the government gave money to their students. To those students, this counted as a stimulus since they were not eligible for the official one. 2. When our classes turned remote, I couldn’t work. My job was in Galesburg, and I lived two hours away. Honestly, I did think about making the drive, but the idea of working in a grocery store without medical insurance terrified me. I didn’t qualify for unemployment since I was the one relocated, and they wouldn’t lay me off. The stimulus bill in March sounded like a godsend; I felt like I could breathe again. Until I realized I wouldn’t see a dime. The money the college sent me saved us this summer,
and I desperately wish that was an exaggeration. But the money runs out, as it always does, and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to clinging to articles after articles about a second stimulus check, looking for hope. I’m one bad situation away from being in the red. My bills didn’t decrease, rent is still in full, my car still needs an oil change and tires rotated, and somehow, I need to eat. Somehow, it’s only been months. It may soon be years. Supply Chain If there is something not broken right now, we wish it would reveal itself. See “Empty Store Shelves.” See “Covid-19 Test Kit.” See “Toilet Paper.” See “Bleach Wipes.” See “PPE.” See “Food Bank.” See “Mask.” See “Hand Sanitizer.” Search “Unemployment Office,” local or state or federal. See also “Hunger,” elsewhere. Task Force In 1941, this phrase was primarily used to describe the military. Today, the task force bases its expertise in disease and virus prevention to keep the American people safe. The evidence-based medicine is denied by our current President. The facts and statistics are constantly rejected until bodies pile up. Today, on October 15, 2020, there have been 216,872 deaths in America. These Americans have become just a number, a statistic. As the task force rallies and cries out for the victims, the opposing side continues to deny. The numbers will continue to rise, along with the bodies. Temperature On average, the human body temperature is 98.6°F. On average, I now know my own body temperature is about 98.8°F. I also now know that waking up with a slight headache isn’t a fever as much as I’ll anxiously convince myself it is. There are also many different types of thermometers: for mouths, armpits, butts, handhelds, and sometimes, it’s enough to just ask, “Do you feel a fever?” I wake up every morning and stop abruptly to think about how my body feels. I think about how hot 98.8 degrees already is. I think about this summer and I think about how the Arctic had its first 100°F day. I think
about almost every year since 2010, on average, how a new heat record has been broken. Every day knowing tomorrow it could always get hotter. What is my own body in all that? What are any of our bodies in all that? Them Third-person plural. Not me. Not you. Not one of us. Separate. Different. Excluded. What we overheard: “Stay away from them”; “Get this Coronavirus chink away from me”; “You will catch the virus from them”; “You’re infected, China boy; you need to get off the train.” What we recognize: how Asians were treated in America during the pandemic in 2020, another year of another resurgence of more xenophobia. Time Something non-existent. Something created to be taken away. To measure and be measured by. Something blurred, as in we no longer know what day it is. Together with or in proximity to another person or people. In the oddest possible way, in spite of not being even legally allowed to be near people, there is this odd sense of solidarity that had us all tied together in the past months. We were all together in our loneliness. We were all together in our hopelessness. We were all together in turning our microphones and cameras off for our daily lecture-time naps. We were all together learning new terms like “sus” and “I did garbage” and “cyan is clean” in an online multiplayer game called Among Us. We were all together in learning to bake bread to prevent being alone with our thoughts. We were all together laughing in hopeless exasperation at people who refused to wear a mask. We were all together to raise our voices against injustice against fellow human beings, even during a pandemic. Eight months ago, no one thought we could survive for eight months like this. But we have. We’ve gotten this far. We’ll make it. Together.
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We keep telling ourselves that. Tulsa, OK Greenwood was known as the “Black Wall Street” due to the nearly 10,000 African Americans who lived there and the thriving Black-owned businesses located within the neighborhood. The riots started when a story came out about a Black teenager named Dick Rowland, who entered an elevator; a white woman (Sarah Page), who was the elevator operator, yelled “rape,” and the teenager ran off the elevator. Once this story got out into the white neighborhoods of Oklahoma, they wanted Dick Rowland dead. Dick Rowland, who was already in custody, but that was not enough for the white mob. They took to violence. A white mob attacked the predominantly Black Greenwood neighborhood in Tulsa. The mob attacked homes and businesses. It was one of the worst race massacres in the history of this country. In Greenwood, destroyed: Black businesses, homes, and innocent people. In Greenwood, in Tulsa from May 31, 1921, to June 1, 1921. And in 2020, again. Hundreds of years of oppression cannot be fixed overnight, but there could be better efforts put forth to eliminate any discrimination against Black people. Urgent (Roman numerals: Oxford’s definition) I. Pressing, impelling; demanding or calling for prompt action; marked or characterized by urgency. (Frequently from c1800.) A. The state of 2020 carries with it an eternal sense of urgency directly con trasted with the sense that nothing is urgent. While some sit in the “center of the storm” (i.e. nurses, doctors, other essential workers), others are cast into an excessively tense limbo. Some report time passing differently and their conception of self-care and worldview breaking down. B. Things urgently needed: 1. Food for the hungry. 2. Healthcare.
3. Honesty over lies. 4. Education on history: racial, governmental, and societal. 5. Secure elections. 6. Some respect for life and humanity7.
USPS The last bastion of democracy in this country, barely standing on its own now. Severely hobbled, facing ruin, it is worth noting that in addition to all the other mail brought to doors and boxes all over the country, in any weather, postal employees deliver approximately 1.2 billion prescription medications per year. See “WPA murals.” See “Architecture.” See “Pounds of Mail.” See “Kindness.” Victory Garden Of course, even amid the wildfires and even though it was early September, of course, it was going to snow in Colorado before the summer was over. Mom and I moved all our potted plants inside and harvested the entire garden even though I didn’t think everything was done growing yet. Bushels of basil in a small basin of water in the kitchen, baskets for the red and the green tomatoes, the still-ripening ghost pepper in water above the sink. Most importantly, we had to deal with the pumpkin plant. It had, several times, tried to overrun the garden; so abundant were its coiling vines and blooming flowers. We only had one pumpkin yet, but it was already absolutely huge. Mom and I were laughing as she filmed me rolling it down the sidewalk and into the garage where it would be sheltered from the storm. The pumpkin plant was called “Cinderella’s Carriage,” and we named our pumpkin Gus. Viral 1. The definition of viral is when information, in multiple different forms, is shared rapidly throughout the internet. In 2020, the uprise in Covid-19 went viral as it spread across the globe both online and offline. Covid-19 was viral. 2. I watched all of the racist moments posted on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. Articles like
7 This means wearing a mask. Staying home. Checking up on yourself and then others. Being patient when your mistakes are corrected (oops, the mask was forgotten this time). Caring. See “Food Bank.”
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“White Woman Screams Slurs at Jogging Asian Woman,” “Elderly Asian Woman Set on Fire,” “Caught on Video! CEO Yells at Asian Family.” Videos of white people following Asian Americans, ordering them to leave the country, blaming them for the world being put to a standstill. Memes about the “China plague” or “kung flu.” We Pronoun. First-person plural. In English, we can mean “you and I;” “me and you;” “all of us;” or, more broadly, “we, the people.” A small hard fact: we, the people, are lonely. Also: we miss everything, everyone. Web, World Wide The Internet: An invisible network of little pathways linked to roads linked to superhighways that somehow connect anyone at any location in the world to information, or even another person, in a matter of seconds. Twitter. Instagram. Google News. Pinterest. Any social media or application can be yours instantly. This power is especially useful for spreading and learning information. As a child of the internet, I practically live there, spending this past summer scrolling for hours down my Instagram feed, Tumblr dashboard, and TikTok for-you page, accidentally memorizing every new viral song due to sheer exposure. TikTok specifically has become the app of the year, millions of people flocking to this platform, itching to share their voices and create supportive communities around every topic imaginable: Straight TikTok, Gay Tiktok, Alt TikTok, Frog TikTok, Hamilton TikTok, to name a few. There’s also Social Justice TikTok. A side determined on educating and raising awareness for social and racial justice issues, the most notable being Black Lives Matter spurred by the brutal murder of George Floyd this past summer. Another issue TikTok activism draws us to are the forced hysterectomies done to ICE detainees at the border, the children locked in cages away from their families, and the neglect leading to many of them catching the virus. This side of TikTok also allows the world to learn of the injustices done to the Indig-
enous Americans, the disregard for their land, the missing women, and how the American government avoids giving them any aid in regards to the virus. They have worked, and are still working, tirelessly to spread the word about petitions, protest safety, updates on court cases, encouraging donations, and just educating as many people as possible about the blatant racism plaguing our world and how we can help eradicate it. Weather A change over time depending on seasons. Something that defines what type of clothes we wear. Think bare skin. Think layers. Think hoodie. Think mask, now. Or weather as a cycle. Think how soon it will be winter again. Think indoors. Or spring someday. Think April, snow coating the Midwest. Think of Mississippi, uprooted in April by starving tornadoes. Or summer again. The Sahara Desert dust swelled into the atmosphere, bleeding out in the June sky. Or another kind of season: fires in Australia, fires in California, fires in Colorado. Think oceans. Think a typhoon called Goni, carving out a name in 2020 in a year of so many names. WHO The World Health Organization has our public health in its best interests. Who? Everyone. They state their main objective as “the attainment by all peoples of the highest level of possible health.” They have worked oh so hard to bring us the latest health and safety news in ways us simple folk can comprehend. They have a website for this in which they graciously bestow general advice, news, guidance, global updates, and myth busters (my personal favorite). Brought to you by WHO, here are some misconceptions about the Coronavirus that might be worth clearing up: people of all ages can contract the virus. Antibiotics cannot prevent or treat Covid-19, and there are currently no medicines that can either. The virus cannot be spread through mosquito bites. Eating garlic, as healthy and versatile of an ingredient it is, does not prevent Covid-19.
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Works Progress Administration (also known as The WPA) \səm,THiNG ment too last\ To weld America back together, building projects for hospitals, roads, libraries, bridges, schools, and art—Federal, state, local. Possibly one of the greatest ideas America has ever had. We paid artists to make beautiful, informative, and enriching works of art; paid writers to tell the tales of our land; paid people of all races and classes. To renovate our public infrastructure. And funded it with real money. Nearly a hundred years since we’ve tried to mend America by giving the people a chance, and maybe we’re due for another try. See “State Guides.” See National Endowment for the Arts. See National Endowment for the Humanities. See your local post office. See sewer grates, bronze plaques stamped on bridges. See bridges. X Also known as “Let x equal” (with an appropriate nod to Professor C. Simpson). Or, in mathematical terms, “the letter ‘x’ is often used in algebra to mean a value that is not yet known.” It is called a “variable” or sometimes an “unknown.” Apparently, we can work out its value if we try. So, X represents the unknown that can be known, some figure to be figured. Or X as in “405 error code.” In the familiar, “405 Method is not allowed” signals a frequent, disappointing misfire of the internet and often feels like a diagnosis. X is not a metaphor, but it sure does wear the costume well. “You”
“Did you hear?” “Have you been watching the news?”
“I hope this email finds you well”
“How have you been?” “Okay... just trying to stay on top of things”
“What do you think about the riots?” “You’re going to vote, right? Do you know how to vote by mail?”
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“I just feel so bad for you and your family”
“When are you moving?” “When are you coming home?” “I don’t know” “I don’t know”
“Has school been okay for you? “Is anything the same?” “I’m making the most of it” “Absolutely nothing is the same”
“I miss you” “I miss you, too” “I’d love to hang out when... you know… all this is over” “I’ll be looking forward to it” Whenever that is. Zoom 1. Zoom Video Communications, Inc. is an American communications technology company founded in 2011. It provides online video and hat services through a peer software platform and is used for teleconferencing, telecommuting, distance education, and other social situations. Nine years later, it is the reluctant chosen one in a new virtual world. 2. Professors ending classes with an accidental slip of a finger, a cat’s tails flicking passed the camera during History, dogs barking profusely in a tutoring session, telling the best character analysis ever told with a muted microphone, turning into a black rectangle when your significant other brings you McDonald’s, internet lagging a reply into cryptic internet chaos, internet unstable, mental health unstable, human connection unstable. Zoonosis n.: A disease that can be transmitted naturally from animals to humans. The Coronavirus has been sourced in Wuhan, China, and is believed to have been transmitted from animals, though it has not yet been scientifically verified exactly from which animal. The virus infects the natural host (bats), transmits to the intermediate hosts (pigs,
cats, monkeys, goats, horses, snakes, dogs, and fishes), and then infects people, and then human-to-human transmission. In cases of post-zoonosis, the virus can directly infect a human without natural and intermediate hosts. The virus targets primarily the respiratory and gastrointestinal tract in humans and other animals, including birds and mammals, demonstrating the proximity of humans to other species in the animal kingdom. From one animal to another to 49.3 million8 people around the world, demonstrating our proximity to each other. All of us.
8
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ie Jaime Lam —Dedicated to Alexis Miller and Bailey Williams I remember when October was my favorite month. I remember how the summers weren’t always so sticky and when a kid could be a kid. I remember your mother walking by, your little brother sitting in a stroller, his blue eyes, and you by the swing set. How small you were, how pale, arms white and frail as bone, hair black and curled. I remember meeting your mother for the first and only time: running up the steps of your porch, knocking. She gently opened the door, looking young, looking sincere. I remember when you started seventh grade because you brought life to the back of the bus to and from Plymouth. I don’t think you ever sat down, always standing, laughing, spit-fire jokes in every direction. Curls flying in the wind, kicking at your hair, body bouncing whenever we hit a pothole. You noticed neither. Your best friend Bailey— quiet—sat beside you. You spoke a thousand words in a bus ride. I remember this brightness in your bronze eyes, full of vivacity. You were never afraid of anything, never hesitated to launch off a joke if the timing was right, humor beyond your years and beyond the rest of us. I told you I never thought anyone could actually be a stand-up comedian, but you, I truly believed, could make it. I remember how you always kept a smile. I remember you leading your outsider band of seventh graders, dubbing them each a silly nickname, giving me an honorary one. There was a brokenness in each of you—absent fathers, shitty mothers—I felt was mine to try and mend. I remember hanging out with all of you at Old Settlers on the bench of one of the carnival games, talking, joking. Your flat-billed hat, tipped to the side. So little, so light, you climbed onto my back and I carried you around, the feather you were. “How much for that ride?” a grown man, a 178- Creative Non-Fiction
complete stranger, had commented. Fast as a whip, you shot off, “Fourteen-million dollars!” in a Dr. Evil accent. I remember nothing scared you. I remember the next year, you told me your mom was getting married, so you had to move to Bowen. Only twenty minutes away, but it made all the difference. Different bus, different house, different town, same school. I told you to visit all the time, and I said, “You’ll always be a Plymouth Kid.” I remember you became quiet. I remember you didn’t smile anymore. I remember you stopped making silly faces when you saw me in the halls. I remember you alone, silent, drawing at a table in the cafeteria. I asked, “Are you doing okay?” I remember you looked up at me with flat eyes and said, “Yeah, I’m fine.” I remember you holding yourself at the spring picnic, sitting beside your best friend, without words, fighting the wind that shoved your hair in your face. I remember giving you a note glued to scrapbook paper at the end of the year, a tradition I started for people I cared about. Yours was longer than most: a list of all the things I wanted to say to you but didn’t know how. Compliments, thoughts, memories, and how you could always come to me if you needed anything. I slipped it in front of you at breakfast before running off. I remember staring at posters on the bulletin board in the hallway—seeing them but not seeing them—thinking about you and your friends about to jump into freshman year. My senior year was ending; my heart was breaking. I told Mrs. Hogan-Hurt to look out for you, the girl who used to be so vibrant. I wouldn’t be able to see you get ready for homecoming, dress up for Halloween, congratulate you on getting your license. I wouldn’t get to see you grow up. What if you needed something? What if an upper-classman bothered you?
Who would take care of you, watch out for you? I remember my best friend being committed to the adolescent ward. I called every day from college. One phone call, someone said, “You know that one girl, Lexie? She’s here. I joked with her, said ‘what, you miss me so much you had to come in here, too?’” I remember writing your name on my palm in black ink so I’d remember to check on you. I remember you opened my message and never replied. I remember October 24th. Cloudy, muggy, leaves dropping, cold enough to wear a cardigan for the poetry reading. I had written a poem, A Letter to a Girl Who is Not Broken. I was going to send you a recording just in case it could reach you. Riding a high from the performance, my friends and I went to Sonic—of all places—in celebration. I remember the dead chill of autumn air, the cheap plastic coating of outside seating etched designs into my thighs, the taste of vending-machine ice, the lurking of a stray cat coming for night-time scraps, when my husband called and said, “It’s important.” I remember walking away from everyone, the sharpness of the cement wall against my back, digging into my skin. I remember how dark the streets were, the harshness of overhead lights, sounds of traffic drowning out his voice, beams of headlights that blurred. I remembered scraping my body down to the sidewalk when he said your name. I remember hoping it was someone else. Not you—a different Alexis. Not you—the girl I cared about. I remember thinking they were wrong. They just needed to give you a little bit, time and medicine. They could take you to the hospital and fix you. I remember the drive back to my dorm, quiet crying, not talking, looking out the window to focus on passing lights because I couldn’t look at anyone, couldn’t believe it. I remember bursting into my dorm, my things clattering around me as I sat at my desk to call someone who would know how you did it, if it was real, how did it happen, and if you were really
gone. I remember so heavy—the answers. Choke of air. I remember reaching out to everyone I could—desperate—to try and help someone where I didn’t help you. I remember forcing myself to go to class the next day, to buildings, to doorways, angrily amazed the world hadn’t stopped. Staring at people laughing, pissed they could laugh, eat a bagel, drink coffee, make plans for the weekend. I remember sitting in the risers for choir, life continuing around me, when someone asked, “Are you okay?” In all of the clutter of noise, all I could do was hold up an open palm. I didn’t sing for weeks. I remember being filled everywhere I went, ready to pour out at any second. I remember friending everyone who posted on your Facebook wall, people misspelling your name with only an ‘i’ at the end. I scrolled for hours, clinging to pictures of you, videos of you laughing, saving them to my phone so I could always have them. I remember Mrs. Hogan-Hurt left the visitation simpering because all of the pictures around your closed casket were of when you were twelve and younger, like the past three years of your life hadn’t even existed. I remember the day of your funeral. I didn’t—couldn’t—go. I knew if I went, I’d have dropped out of college. I know that in my bones. I would have stood there, looking at the wilting faces of your friends as they lowered you to the ground, and know I failed to help you when you needed someone most. I remember at the spring poetry reading, I performed a poem about you, thinking it was the right thing to do, and that night, wanting to die. I went on a drive at one in the morning into the middle of nowhere, tormented, crying, distracted, talking to you, saying “I get it, Lexie, I get it—” and almost got hit by a semi. I remember in those short seconds I took to back my car out of the road to save myself,
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I thought I could hear you breathe out, “No, you don’t.” I remember being so upset at everyone for moving on. When the first year passed, I wanted to hurt everyone who could smile that day. I fought with my husband, so angry. So hateful. How dare all of them. I remember constantly staring at your pictures, crying until two in the morning, memorizing details of your face, trying to recollect every moment I had with you. I remember a time when I couldn’t think about you without crying. I’d be driving, remembering the seventh-grader who told jokes on the bus and forget. Traffic would disappear in my blurry vision. I remember how light you were. I remember they buried you just a few days before your sixteenth birthday. I remember when it rained, thinking, she’ll never see rain again. I remember when October was only October. I remember crying every time I thought of you and no one knowing what to do. I remember asking my professor after a voice lesson what she thought happened to people after they died. I could only see you trapped in time. You: friction, static, agony, repeating those last moments over and over for eternity. I remember crying when the first snowflakes dropped, thinking about how you must be so cold. If I held Bailey tight enough, I could shove the broken pieces of our lives back together again. If I came back to the halls I wish you still wandered, I would sit down with Mrs. Hogan-Hurt and hear all I never knew. She would tell me how you walked home from the bus stop with another kid before stopping in front of your house. “Today’s the day.” She would tell me the boy asked, “Day for what?” She would tell me you replied, “You’ll see.”
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She would tell me how you came home and started to make cookies with your mom in the kitchen before asking permission to go to the bathroom. How you went to the basement, took one of your step-dad’s guns, and made the day the day we’ll never forget. How your mother made your little brother go downstairs to see what the noise was. How they called a helicopter for you but turned it around because there was no one left to save.
PERIOD PIECE Katie Carlson Step One: PMS. That’s right. Premenstrual Symptoms. Before your period even begins, you’re in pain. You feel bloated and start cramping for a few days before your starting date. Your boobs swell and your bras don’t fit right. They’re sore and hurt for no reason, and all you can do is wait until the swelling goes down during the last few days of that infamous time of the month. Step Two: Cramps. They can start a few days before your period, but they won’t ever hit you like they do the first morning. The first morning is always the worst. You wake up feeling as though you’re being strangled from the inside. It hurts to move. You are stuck in one position before the cramps let up just enough to let you stumble out of bed, gulp down painkillers, and find your heating pad. Then, you race to return to your bed and put the pad in place before the cramps grow worse yet again. You spend an hour sweating under your blankets, keeping the cramps at bay with a little square of warm fabric that is never hot enough somehow, until the ibuprofen finally kicks in and you’re able to get ready for the day, which you spend counting down the hours until you can take more pills. Because the pain never goes away. No, the painkillers never kill anything. They simply dull the pain to a soft throbbing, enough for you to move without whimpering. You suffer like this for three days. Sometimes, the cramps will be so bad that anything you try to eat comes right back up. You survive on broth and Sprite until the cramps go away. Your stomach just won’t be able to take anything else. You miss your first hour U.S. History class for two days in a row every month of your sophomore year until you’re used to it enough to make yourself go. Step Three: Blood. Be hyper-aware of the fact that for the next seven days, you will be constantly bleeding. Avoid wearing anything white as well as any dresses or skirts. Dark pants, just in case you leak. No one can see the stains. Feel the fear of leaving stains everywhere. Your bedsheets. Your desk in 8th-grade history class. Restrooms.
Bathmats. Showers. You are constantly aware of every surface you could possibly get blood on and wipe it clean whether you left something behind or not. You always smell like blood no matter how many showers you take or how much perfume you wear. You count down the time not only until you can take more pills but also until you need to change your pad or tampon. Be ready to rush a bathroom break between classes, walking in late because you need to cross campus and you are nowhere near your dorm. Give up time from your sliver of a lunch break at work to rush to the bathroom. Your break is barely enough time to choke down food, let alone try to squeeze in a bathroom break. You always have to choose. No pad can last eight hours. Be glad your uniform includes black pants in case you ever leak. Hate the fact that while you’re on your period, you not only smell like milk from all the ice cream splattered across your chest as usual but also there is an odd mixture of iron, as well. Cancel any plans to go swimming. Ever since sophomore year, when blood ran down your legs in the middle of swim practice and spread all over the deck, you’ve been too terrified to even try swimming on your period again. You had to awkwardly hide in the bathroom stall while seven other girls yelled over each other in an attempt to teach you how to put a tampon in. You were too mortified to accomplish it and spent the rest of the practice doing sit-ups on the side of the pool. Ever since, you have carefully scheduled any visit to the pool around your period. On the off times you were caught, you refused to step foot in the water, choosing instead to sunbathe and feel like an asshole for ignoring your cousin’s pleas to go down the waterslide with them. You cannot risk it. Feel like a ticking time bomb, waiting to burst. Feel disgusted. Feel repulsed by your own body, by something you cannot control. Feel the difference when you get out of bed in the morning. Sit in your own blood. Step Four: Weight. Watch yourself gain full pounds every time. Your water retention is up Creative Non-Fiction - 181
and your jeans don’t button as well as they did last week. Your bras don’t fit. Your shirts are a little tight. Your hips are wider now. Feel uncomfortable in all the outfits that usually made you feel good. Feel like everyone noticed how your clothes fit differently now. Feel your self-esteem plummet. It is a source of anxiety for you. Feel like you look pregnant. The image in the mirror scares you. Step Five: Feel. Feel your emotions slipping out of your control. Feel angry, sad, irritated, like a ticking time bomb. The smallest thing can set you off. Someone walking too slow in front of you. A sad commercial on YouTube. A compliment. Feel like you are going insane. You struggle to manage your own emotions. You cry to yourself in your room because you’re tired and losing sleep from cramps and migraines. Everything hurts, and despite the fact that you’ve dealt with this for years and you should be perfectly fine, it is fresh agony every single time. Feel the embarrassment from the very first time when you were twelve and the middle school play was about to begin, but you needed a pad and had to ask your theater teacher. She sent you up to her room with the key, but you couldn’t find it in the cabinet she described, so you ran to the bathroom instead and stuffed toilet paper in your underwear. Remember the time you were thirteen, didn’t bring enough pads to school with you, and leaked so badly you smeared blood all over your seat. You carefully cleaned it up with tissues and hoped no one noticed. Remember the year your cramps were so bad you missed your first class once a month, without fail. Remember the make-up work and the awkward explanations. Remember the excuses you had planned out because you’re not allowed to talk about what’s really wrong. You’re never allowed. You’re always sick or tired or anything else. Anything but the truth. Step Six: Hide. Hide your pain. Hide an event that adds up to seven years of your life. It never happens. It doesn’t exist. You only talk about it in hushed conversations in the bathroom when your mom is trying to teach you how to use a tampon but scared you into never using one ever again. Feel scandalous when you talk about it with your friends. It is the forbidden conversation; therefore, it
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is all the more fun. The only time it’s ever mentioned in school is the special day boys wait in the hallway while the girls get lessons on periods and breast cancer. You knew about the so-called changes in your body. You weren’t prepared for the pain. Not even on those special days will the side effects be mentioned. Even then, it’s too late. By then, everyone is 16. Some can start at 8. All have learned how to suffer through the pain by then, one way or another. This is the forbidden topic. This is something the world hides. Something that happens to over half the population, that is out of their control and is completely natural, is shamed and treated as an embarrassing secret. No one can know what you go through. It remains a secret because men don’t want to talk about it. Men don’t want to know. You can’t mention it around your dad. He thinks it’s too gross of a topic. Grosser than all the potty humor and the sex jokes and his own stupid dick jokes. No, your pain is much more disgusting than any of those things. You are the problem for bringing it up. Step Seven: Suck it up. The world doesn’t stop for your periods. The world keeps going amongst the sleepless nights, the days without food, and the constant pain. Your emotions must be under control at all times, period or no, lest the suffering you endure is used against you to discredit your own experiences. You are simply on your period. Therefore, you are irrational. You are wrong. You cannot take off of work, or miss school, or show any sign that anything is different. You must march on. Medicate if you need to. Explain to your parents why you need birth control to find some semblance of a way to diminish the pain so you can wake up with only a little pain and eat with only a little nausea. Keep moving. No matter how many times you throw up, leak, bloat, bleed, or lose sleep, you have no room to complain. Now, pop some pills and get back to work.
LITTLE BLACK BOX Jia Self We all have at least one little memento we can’t bring ourselves to give up. For her, it was a phone number she could never stomach to write down for fear it would make everything too real. It became a mantra despite her mother’s insistence that no one uses landlines anymore. It was even more so when she saw the numerous “Jackson Robert Edwards” in the yellow pages, all of whom lived in DeSoto, all of whom carried a piece of her seventh-grade heart. For him, it was a playlist labeled Alt 02, which would occasionally be the soundtrack to his sleepless nights. The Cab fulfilled all that middle school angst he could never quite harmonize with, no matter how much “Black Parade” he quoted. It was all for the best. He had an affinity for classical music, whose melodies came naturally to his dancing fingers and leisurely vibrato. Now, he listened to “Tomorrow” in hopes of a better today. Better yet was the exchange of their fourth-grade name tags, personally decorated and laminated to ward off any fading the years might bring, never to be reunited with their original owners again. She never did say when her family was moving to Texas, just dropped hints too subtle, then up and left one day. Goodbyes were never her strong suit, so it’s hard to blame her. Her friend wouldn’t have listened anyway. But every time she drove by that house on Tomahawk Road with too many cars in the driveway, she thought of her fourth-grade friend with her amazing monkey bars skills and the ability to hold her breath for what seemed like minutes at a time—“Lungs,” they called her. Even after she finally let “Isabella Mitchell” go, she would always wonder what happened to “Dalia Linan.” But all the miles between them would never change the fact that they were meant to be, in some time or another. A little black box proved this even more to the protagonists of our story.
Their favorite lost token came about from
the fear of forever’s permanence and the audacity only youth had to stand against anyone who would question their forever, even themselves (as if they could lay claim to Time’s fickleness). Who knew a measly 99 cent ad in the paper, long forgotten and thrown out by now, would lead to one such memento? The adults certainly didn’t when they manufactured the product, although it’s nice to think that the advertising team still remembered young love and childhood innocence. Perhaps they were inspired by an old photo of Art Chrisenger kissing Sophie’s grandmother, Eva Mae Matthews, for the first time all those years ago on a rickety porch swing in a little old town in Iowa, whose name no one remembered. It was a nice sentiment, wasn’t it? Nevertheless, it’s more likely to have stemmed from the adults’ childish determination to carry on Art’s memories after he’d long stopped sending Sophie emails about the little old town’s little old news and asking about her grandmother, wondering if she remembered that kiss on the rickety porch swing. Grown now, Sophie often thought of Art Chrisenger and her grandmother when she sat on a rickety porch swing of her own, looking over her old designs for a little black picture box where the photo of Art and Eva Mae would live on in its own, small yet mighty, never insignificant, forever. It would be a nice sentiment, our protagonists thought as they discussed the possibilities of their forever and which memories they wanted on the highlight reel. “I haven’t the heart,” he’d say about opening it, a little black box gently cradled in the palm of his hand, two, maybe three years later. He never was good at setting boundaries for himself when it came to her, but this one managed to stick, even in the moment when she gave it to him. No, he could never bear to watch those six years of memories come alive in front of him. Pictures he’d already filed away somewhere in the Creative Non-Fiction - 183
depths of his mind, hidden so well from himself that he can’t quite make out a clear image. Chalked it up to time ruining the resolution quality. Pictures, which flooded her Instagram account for all to see, in vivid clarity if you can look past the Abu Dhabi filter. One needn’t scroll back very far as she tagged them all #tbt. No, why open it? Why tempt Fate? It was a literal Pandora’s box, after all. Despite his newly proclaimed acting career, this was a part he refused to play. For who would choose to be Epimetheus when Prometheus was right all along? Either way, he would still end up suffering no matter what role he chose. Might as well open the box, right? No harm in sneaking a peek? Her enthusiasm was infectious, at least in her eyes. All that talk and now she could finally deliver on the promise she kept making, only to break again. Yes, cut out the ad, pin it to the fridge right next to this quarter’s report card and crayon drawing of her father; that way, she’ll never forget. Excitement oozing, a secret she couldn’t keep for long: “Here, open it!” A little black box, designed with care, to absorb all of the spectrums of their love: a perfect home for their forever. Hold the box up to your eye. Look through the lens. Click the small button, cleverly hidden on the side. Behold the rose-colored world we live in! Or rather, the world he would have lived in if he dared look beyond the inevitable darkening of the daylight she cast, as he had too many times before. But what’s one more? she would think. One more sunrise with me, and it’ll be the best one yet, I promise. Red sky at night, sailor’s delight, red sky in morning, sailor take warning. What a strange saying to come to mind. He didn’t know anything about sailing or reading the signs for a good day’s voyage. Nor was he observant enough to pinpoint red among the shades of boysenberry, plum, magenta, jam, and mulberry on the rare occasion when he was awake at daybreak. Yet the thought still captured his mind as twilight crept across the horizon, midnight resting on his soul. Lying in the middle of things, which
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path would he pick? To bleed into the morning, a beautiful beginning of the end, which would undoubtedly persist so long as they were Facebook friends (or even strangers, I suppose)? Or to fade to a color much richer, to that which he didn’t yet know and may never? It’s complicated after all, seeing red. It’s hard to say if one path really would fade to pink or revert to black. Or if they would all compete and blend together in one abstract painting even Sam Francis couldn’t turn into art despite its spitting resemblance to Big Red. Perhaps, he asked himself which path was the one less traveled by and if it would really make all the difference? Did he dare trust Robert Frost? Poets were the best liars, after all, even when telling the truth. The decision would be far easier if he could fashion himself a cloud of silver respite. No, her shades of pink, rose, rouge, or blush could never be light enough to hide the fact that she painted them crimson when they fought, scarlet when she walked out on him, and garnet when she expected him to crawl back as he did. Currant, like he did. Merlot, like he was. Red flag flourishing, sailor ignoring. Besides, he didn’t need to open that little black box to know what she’d prescribed him. There are only so many memories she could cram into the minuscule film cartridge. The only question was, which six memories did she cherry-pick to sum up all they were, all they would be? Which six memories had she chosen to come alive before his eyes? Which six memories had she chosen to encapsulate their forever? No, he hadn’t the courage to bear it: them, on film. White teeth, white lies, white light at the end of the tunnel. White to reflect all of the memories absorbed by that little black box. So classic, so ironic, so narcissistic it couldn’t be forgotten, even when it was tucked inside the old Converse shoebox, which he dedicated to her. Those classic black Converse, dirt splattered, worn soles, with a hole in the side of the left one’s ankle from when he jumped her fence to avoid the hostile glare of her father, where did they go? Oh, that’s right, his mother threw them out
while Spring cleaning when he was off at college, something she’d been waiting to do since they broke up two, three years ago. But that Converse shoebox still remained, sitting in the farthest right corner on the highest shelf in his closet. A shelf so high his 5’9 frame needed a step ladder to reach. Not that 5’9 was anything to write home about as his friends, who stood at a proud 6’0, liked to remind him. Yes, there it sat, unopened, untouched, lost to the dust guardians and cobwebs ever since the fateful day when that little black box became his. The only light that reached it was the bright, August sun from all those years ago when she took him shoe shopping before their freshman year began. “New school, new year, new shoes,” she told him as she dragged him into the store. “See, they’re perfect,” she said as he strutted up the aisle for her, too cocky for his own good. You’re perfect, he thought as he leaned in, gently brushing aside her long hair to cup her cheek as he kissed her for the first time. New school, new year, new shoes, new girl, so said his sentimentality, which refused to let him move on from Chicago’s blazing August heat. Leave the past in the past so long as it’s still within reach, it begged him. Their sparks still ignited some embers no matter how dull the light had grown.
the reins go even though she felt him pulling further and further away. Colors bleeding until light was dark and dark was too bright to see anything out of grayscale. All this around and around was dizzying, so he’d keep that little black box on the highest shelf of his closet until one day someone would come along to paint his wine-red sky a clear, silver-blue.
What did it mean? What did it say? Talk is talk is talk, and he’d heard enough for this evening. Fret not; he would still strain to listen to her soft voice over the echoing of his shoes on her hardwood floors as he headed toward the door. After all, she couldn’t have made him such a prime shade if he wasn’t already. It was for this reason that she was certain he would open it and relive their forever, even if it wasn’t tonight. Did he have the strength to open that little black box? Perhaps. Best not to find out. It was her last gift, his last chance to start anew, and yet she kept taking him for a spin. Ignorant bliss taunting him around every bend because he knew he’d never get back all those times he jaywalked across the city to be by her side. Excuses pouring out at every junction because she couldn’t bear to let
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WEST MAIN, WINTER STREET, 206 WEST MAIN Jaime Lam Whenever I think about my rustic, cottage-like fantasy home, I picture endless windows where I idle, eating, writing, reading, thinking. There’s a strong magic I find liberating (and maybe a little addicting): the sun hitting glass just right to make radiant beams, the taste of a breeze mingled with scents of grass and petrichor, and how they’re dreamy all the way down to nightfall. A teenager, I wander the streets at night and glimpse the yellowed glow of a light left on. The whole street is asleep, but the light leaves a little reminder that there’s so much more underneath—life, and whether or not I know who resides, I know at least there’s a vibrancy inside. My mother used to be a window person, too. The brightest memory I have was in our first house, sharing the same vast yard with my great-grandmother. We were a little above ankle-biters, my brothers and I playing on a hill beside the house when we were suddenly drizzled with rain. I remember a sudden cloudburst in a cloudless sky. We circled around in confusion, then turned at the chiming of our mother’s laughter. She stood, a warm outline in front of the kitchen window, a sink nozzle snug in her soft hand, beaming at us before sending down another mist. A memory I still tuck underneath my pillow every now and then. How she shined at us. How she grumbled at us for always closing the curtains. She would get home from work, smelling of antiseptic, hand pressed against her aching spine to hold her back upright, and she’d drag out a sigh at the shadowed living room. She’d chuck her gaudy, clunky purse onto a table before marching to the window to toss the curtains back. The house was overrun with flimsy, white-lace curtains, ones that gave us “privacy” but still had light trickle through in flowery detail. She couldn’t resist an opportunity to let the sun into our lives. I can’t remember open windows during winter. Curtains were more of a luxury. Money turned to ash in her palms, so natural light was a 186 - Creative Non-Fiction
must, not a present. The only curtains in the house were in her bedroom, a place we weren’t very welcome. The divorce left her drained of color and her eyes blue. Unfortunately, a new house didn’t mean home. Things had started to change, change her. Here, she carried to bed the memory of holding her grandmother in her arms one very last time, telling her “It’s okay. You can go. It’s okay.” Here, this front door she was thrown up against, my siblings and I huddled together, locked in her dark room. The TV light shadowed across our faces, my father threatening to burn the house down with all of us in it. After our grandmother donated her body to science (she wanted to help everyone, even in death), we moved into her hollowed-out home. Despite still having small hands, we found the strength to lift windows. My sister washed the curtains and reveled at how white they looked. I scrubbed the glass free of our dog’s nose etchings. My brothers knotted the drapes even when they’d rather play video games. If light was going to find its way into the house, it fell to our shoulders. In her bedroom, my mother didn’t think curtains. She nailed thick blankets to the window frames. She shoved furniture to keep the fabric pinned in place—not even a trickle could seep through. I try to trace the exact moment she stopped wanting to be alive.
I REMEMBER Archi Nokrek I remember being three and tiny. My hair trimmed really short, my mouth still sticky from the ice cream I never finished, both my pinkies lodged gently between Mum’s soft hands and Dad’s even bigger hands. I remember our favorite family activity at that time. My parents lifted me up in perfect synchrony and swung me. I went up and down and wee! It felt like flying. I remember being naive enough to believe I could fly. I remember that one time, I made a rather decent drawing of an aquarium and thought that Picasso would be proud, if not envious. My father barely glanced at it and said the colors don’t go well together. Try harder. I remember the heavy, strangled feeling of having to try hard at everything in life. To laugh. To love. To be loved. I remember the warm, yellow afternoons when you could see every single dust particle sparkling in the sunlight. I would desperately try to catch them with my little fists so that I could gift Mum the gold-like dust, hoping that would make her smile. For a long stretch there, she stopped smiling. It broke my heart. I remember it like it was yesterday. I wish I didn’t. I wish I could wash it off, or drink it off, or die it off. How can one forget the vivid image of blood pouring out of her mother’s forehead like burning, blooming poppies? Knowing that her father caused it? Knowing that he had no remorse? Knowing that it wasn’t the first time? I remember feeling small. So terribly small, so terribly terrified.
I remember the day Mum walked out. It was also the day my father hit me for the first time. She carried only her ancient Toshiba laptop in one hand and me in the other. I was six. We rented a studio apartment with murky grey floors and cracked walls. The air hung too low and too heavy. But we lit peony candles, and all my drawings made their way onto the fridge. There were colors all around—colors that didn’t go well perfectly, but beautiful, nevertheless. Mum had started smiling again. I remember the phone calls that came pouring in and wondering why these seemingly intelligent adults think being in pain is better than being alone. I remember holding Mum’s pinky a little too tight as a way of silently letting her know that she is not alone anyway. I remember stubbornly writing Mum’s name in every form with the option of writing just the father’s name. I remember the countless times I have yelled at authorities about how wrong that is. I remember being exhausted. Just last year, someone very close to my heart gave birth to a girl. She is a single mother. A strong, strong mother. On the table beside them lay the brightly colored form that celebrated the birth of that little girl. I numbly read the section that said, “Father’s Name.” Just that. Nothing more. I cut that bit out with a pen and wrote “Mother’s.” It felt like a minuscule victory in a gigantic war that had been going on for too long.
I remember the divorce.
I remember growing up watching my mother in awe. I remember her strength and her courage. I look over to her now, and nothing has changed, really. There are glitters of silver now in her sea of jet-black hair. There are new wrinkles at the edges of her smile. But in her eyes lies the Creative Non-Fiction - 187
same sparkling determination of a woman who built a new life, a better life, for her and her daughter, all by herself. There were many hard days in the middle, but the sparkle never dulled. Not even for a moment. I remember finally understanding that not all loves in the world looked like Mum and Dad’s. That wasn’t love at all. Love in its purest, most unadulterated form, was what my mother felt for me. What every mother feels for their child. And that is the most beautiful thing this world has to offer. That gave me hope.
I remember all the bittersweet days.
I remember all the days that were too bitter to swallow, to live through. I remember growing up and growing strong through it all. I was told by a very wise woman once that the only way to fight life is to become tougher than it is. I live by that. I remember the day I got my first ever college acceptance letter and Mum crying loud, happy tears.
I remember feeling like I could fly again.
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TENSILE STRENGTH Liam Wholihan Commercially speaking, the warranties on storm doors from Home Depot and the like are good for at least ten years. If the glass breaks or the frame buckles, you’re covered. Not that they do. My father installed both the storm doors we’ve had on our house, and the second one’s lasted twenty years so far. In his forty years or so with houses and my twelve with him, we’ve never replaced one with damages listed in the pamphlet of what’s included in a “Limited Lifetime Guarantee.” It’s the accessories that give first, never the frame or the glass. Of the ones we’ve replaced, most were handling your typical suburban stressors just fine: ten years of grocery hips, stray impacts from a children’s soccer ball, a family dog standing himself up against the glass. Most times the doorstop button stops catching, the deadbolt starts to stick, the weather stripping has frayed enough that there’s a draft, or the silver finish handle takes a jiggle and some shoulder to close all the way. Nothing really shatters. By the time most people are bothered enough to repair, they’ve repainted the house and are ready to replace. Figure if something’s starting to give, the rest will follow. Always sounded stupid to me, but I just install them. Dad guesses the one we’re replacing today is probably twelve years old, or eight and just never been cleaned, but he didn’t take much time to look last time he was here. We’re in one of those built-to-order neighborhoods, and we’re working on a few townhouses for the owner so they’re up to HOA code for inspections next month. Our truck parks like a sore thumb, and I unload while my dad talks to the tenant on the porch. Weather strip’s been reduced to half mold and half frayed insulation, clumping like a dead caterpillar. Doorstop button’s given out too. I let the tenant know while my dad takes the old storm door down. She’s busy not-gaping at how he peels off the front of her house like a sticker off a piece of fruit. She says she never minded the old storm door, leaning away from the noise of the screw gun, she’s moving out anyway. I smile and tell her we’ll be done in a few hours.
Whole uninstall takes less than five minutes, and other than the occasional spell of helpfulness when I’m called to fetch the drill bit index, a wedge, this screw or that one, I run myself out of work pretty quick. After a youth of building houses, storm doors are simple enough for my father. I’m stuck on the lawn with the old door, half-wishing for something to sweat over. Day’ll get longer if I think about the two jobs after this one, and thinking about the heat’s a beginner’s mistake. Like any good assistant, I fidget, awaiting relevance in what shade I can make stooped on a toolbox. Someone pointed out that I trace the scars on my wrists when I’m waiting. Probably a girlfriend. They’re too light to spot if you’re not looking for them, too thin for anyone to notice when they shake my hand. No more than an inch each, just an upside-down grin at the base of my right wrist, and two parallel raised lines of my left, like empty veins going the wrong way. Whenever I asked my mother what they were, why they didn’t grow like the rest of me, her answer was dutiful. I was learning to walk, probably trying to follow dad to work when I crashed through the storm door. Says she wrapped my wrists in kitchen rags and sat with me on the living room floor, watching Teletubbies until my father came home. At dinner once, when I was maybe ten, I called them scars. She corrected me, asked who’d told me that. She insisted, I’d been too young, so the doctors had to use surgical glue. What’s left wasn’t scar tissue, just glue. Made enough sense to me; I could hardly imagine a two-year-old keeping stitches in. A few years before I ran away for the first time, I asked how exactly I managed to break the door, and she’d shrug, say she wasn’t in the room. When I pushed on it, she wouldn’t look at me. My father tells the story mostly the same. He was on his way to teach one of his evening classes. Halfway up the block, he realized he’d forgotten a pair of keys he’d needed and came back, had no idea when he pulled into the driveway. He would’ve Creative Non-Fiction - 189
heard me crying if he’d turned off the engine, but he was just gonna be in and out. He found me in the wreckage of the rest of the storm door, sitting, wailing, and bleeding onto the concrete porch. He saw me, scooped me up as gently as he could, drove me to the Holy Cross Hospital, and called to cancel class from the waiting room. On the way home from work once, I asked what my mother was doing when he found me. Says she was sitting in the kitchen, about ten feet behind me, watching. He never mentions anything else, and I don’t push him on it. We don’t speak to her anymore, but still, he goes out of his way not to “talk bad” about her. I hear him trying to keep us out of the middle in how he says, “She’s your mother and she loves you very much.” In the time between the divorce and my brother learning to speak, we’d come home from her house with bruises up and down our arms, at the bases of our necks. We were too young for him to ask what had happened. Most times, after a weekend with our mother, we’d both come home sick from school. We didn’t tell him we were sick, or that we’d be coming home, but breakfast was always ready when we got to the door. We’d stand there in the doorway, waiting for him to tell us to walk back to school, and he’d wave us into the kitchen and turn the radio off. “Your breakfast is gonna get cold.” After he’d cleaned up, he’d sit and eat with us. “School today?” I think he put breakfast on the stove when he saw us walking across the school parking lot from the kitchen window, the same window we’d spot our mom’s car from when she picked us up later. We’d walk down through the woods to his house, wearing the same clothes as the last time we saw him. He could probably tell for sure once we got to the backyard gate and he could see our hair hadn’t been washed. When he knew he wouldn’t be home, he’d leave the side door unlocked. I think he was sorry when, on my eighth birthday, he said, “You’re a man now,” and gave me his copy of the consent order and custody agreement to read for myself. Right now, though, he’s troubleshooting on the front lawn. New storm door’s all put together, but the gold finish handle’s missing some pieces. The instruction book says to open bags “G” and
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“H” for the appropriate parts, but they weren’t in the box. Dad had me check six times while he was on hold with the “Oops-Free!” phone number from the replacement door owner’s manual. He’s worse at sitting still than I am and tries to find something else to fix on the front of the house while he waits for a customer service rep. When the hold music clicks off, he’s stooped on the front steps, phone at his feet on speaker while he wipes his face with his shirt. The hold music stops and he snatches the phone up, pacing. “Why would I wait three weeks for the part when I could just go back, get the part from another door, and you just keep that one as the return?” I can tell when the guy on the other line starts going to his script by the rising of my father’s chest, the intake of breath. “Maybe you’re not hearing me, I can’t leave a job without putting a door back up.” He hangs up on the customer service rep mid-excuse and waves for me to pack things up. “Load up the new door, I’ll put the old one back up, I’ll replace it tomorrow.” He’d rather get to the next job than get angry over this one. He leans half-forward, hands on his hips as he exhales as if looking hard enough at the new door’s packaging will summon the missing pieces. I work around him and repackage the replacement door before he finally sighs and goes to put the old door back up. Takes maybe ten minutes. I’m sliding the repackaged door into the bed of the truck, taking care not to bang it against the toolboxes or ladders. My dad’s tearing off his knee pads as he walks by me and pats my shoulder. “Let’s go big guy, just jam it back there. You’d have to really try to break one of those things.”
THEY CAN SCRAPE MY FUNGUS OF MY DEAD BODY Sarah Carter
I once crushed the ring finger on my right hand in a door. I was in fifth grade. I should say, the ring finger on my right hand got crushed in a door. I use the passive voice because it was nobody’s fault; but I will say, my older brother and his best friend were chasing me down a hallway in a fun game of tag, but nobody was actually doing the tagging, so I guess we were just playing a fun game of chase. Anyway, I tried to hide in the bathroom, but I was quickly found. One thing led to another and the seven-foottall, solid-wooden door, with the letters W.C. on it, signifying the water closet, that is characteristic of South African homes built in the mid-1900s, shut with my finger in the doorframe. Here I will be vague. We did not realize the seriousness of the injury. Perhaps I didn’t complain enough. Anyway, the finger just would not heal properly. A week or so later, the doctor finally had to remove the fingernail. When my finger still did not stop hurting after three shots of local anesthetic, the doctor realized that the very last bone in my finger, above the very top knuckle, was shattered into many tiny pieces. After a very painful day in the doctor’s office, and then a trip to the hospital that night after the bandage adhered itself to my nail bed, the finger was finally left to heal, wrapped snugly in a fabric finger condom. However, as the nail grew out, a fungus started growing underneath it. I was given a fungal cream, which I put on every day. That was eleven years ago. The nail grew out to be a healthy-looking nail. I believe the bone healed fully, too, because my fingertip is not misshapen, just a little puffy. However, the fungus lives on under my nail. I haven’t mentioned the fungus to any doctors. After each medical visit, I tell myself that I forgot. Secretly, though, the fungus is mine: my very own fungus. I think it’s cute. I don’t do science. I don’t know much about fungi. But I think of it as a little
mushroom-like organism that lives under the nail of the ring finger of my right hand. I have an extra bone in each of my feet. You can see and feel them—that’s my party trick. People freak out. It is not actually an “extra” bone—we humans all used to have them, but then we evolved not to have them. I didn’t. It happens sometimes. I don’t know where I got them. Nobody in my family has an extra bone in each of their feet. We didn’t know about them for years. We found out when I reached puberty and began to grow, during the time I was playing sports that were very hard on my ankles. At the end of the day, the arches of my feet would ache. We thought it was growing pains. I bought cushiony insoles from the drugstore. One day I was standing in the driveway of my house, holding bags of groceries to bring inside. I was standing there, waiting, and then I wasn’t. I fell without reason—my feet, my knees, my legs collapsed. My mom took me to a podiatrist, who found the culprit instantly upon inspecting my bare feet: the protrusions right above my arches that I had always thought were a normal part of my ankles. The fact that they were extra bones was really pretty good news. The problem could likely be fixed with orthotics—insoles that would support the arches in my feet which were being weighed down by the bones. The day held bad news, too, though. The podiatrist asked if I had gotten my first period yet. When I said I had, she told me that once a woman has her first period, her feet are done growing. I was okay with that—my feet were a women’s size 7.5, the same size as my mom’s. But then she delivered the big blow. She said that I was also most likely done growing height-wise. I was devastated. Devastated. I was twelve years old and 163 cm tall—5 feet 4 inches— and my mom was 5 feet 7 inches. I thought I still Creative Non-Fiction - 191
had many years and centimetres left for growing. I grew indignant. I was determined to keep growing. I had never really wanted to be tall, but once I knew that I couldn’t, it was the only thing I wanted. I measured my height regularly against our kitchen door frame. But she was right. That was nine years ago. I’m still 163 centimetres tall, and I still remember the pain of knowing that I would always be shorter than average. I still carry that pain, because that knowledge was revealed to me in an instant. Most people have their whole lives to get used to their height. They still always have hope that they could grow more, even when they know that they won’t because they’re past puberty, or their whole family is short, or they haven’t grown a bit in one whole year. Still, they could. But I couldn’t. On my next visit, when I picked up my new orthotics that I would wear every day for the rest of my life, the podiatrist told me that if the pain continued, I could have the bones surgically removed. The surgery would be painful, and I wouldn’t be able to walk for weeks afterwards, but it was possible. I was offended by the suggestion. To remove my extra bones would be to remove one of the integral parts of me. To remove my special extra bones would be to alter the very structure of my body. To remove my very special extra bones would be to remove one of the very things that made me, me. I never said any of that, or that I believe that my very special and unique extra bones, that humans all used to have but evolved not to because they didn’t need them, tie me in a very special and unique way to the predecessors of our human race. I have ancient bones in my feet. I have ancient threads in my DNA. And no doctor will touch my feet with a scalpel no matter how many expensive pairs of orthotics I have to buy every few years, or how many foot massages I have to give myself at the end of a long day, or how many times I have to remind myself how to stand in order not to fall over. They are my bones.
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I had a tooth 3D printed for me once. I went to the dentist for a routine teeth cleaning, but it turned out not to be so routine. I had had a filling in one of my top right molars. It had been there for years. I don’t remember when it was put in, but it had been done by a dentist in the country in which I was raised. I don’t think he was a very good dentist. The filling he put in was too big, and it created a shelf between that molar and the adjoining one. There, bacteria festered. By the time I went to the American dentist, which was many years later—I did not like going to the dentist, so I very rarely did it—the cavity had bored right to the center of my tooth. There was no choice. The dentist had to remove everything below the cavity. I would get a replacement tooth. I was impressed by the technology. I sat in the very regular dentist’s chair as a dental assistant waved a wand inside my mouth. A scan of my teeth appeared on a screen, from which a tooth would be created out of porcelain by a 3D printer within an hour or so. That gave the dentist time to work. She injected my gums with local anesthetic, which thoroughly numbed my mouth. Then, she scraped away my tooth using a small, round, rotating device. The whole thing was quite fast and very modern. It did hurt, but not very much because of the anesthetic. After less than half an hour, she was done. The anesthetic made me physically numb, and I was extremely emotional. I was left alone in the room as my porcelain tooth finished printing. I ran my tongue across my teeth. I ran my tongue across where my tooth had been. There was a hole – in my mouth – in my teeth. I asked the dental assistant to get my mom, who was in the waiting room. She came in and I began to cry to her, “They took my tooth. They took my tooth.” My mom joked, “How strong was that medicine they gave you?” But I mourned my tooth. I grieved its loss. All that remained was a smooth stump, a nub of a molar in the top right corner of
my mouth. The dentist came in with my new tooth. It was small and smooth, and with ease, she affixed it to the nub. But I was not appeased. The porcelain was smoother than my weathered molar and it felt foreign on my tongue. It looked perfect—you could not tell by looking at me that it was there at all. But if you come here, put your finger in my mouth, slide your nail down the back of my tooth, you can feel a line between the porcelain and the root. This was four years ago. I still remember acutely the drop of my stomach when the dentist removed her tools from my mouth, proud, and I felt the hole. And yet I still wish I hadn’t gotten the porcelain tooth. I miss how I felt, right after my insides sank, when I realized my tooth was gone, really gone, and I began to cry. Now, I long to run my tongue over my teeth and feel that hole, the hole that is still the hole in my teeth.
They can scrape my fungus off of my dead body.
These stories all came to me in the shower one day, in the way that stories come to you that you have known all your life, randomly and without reason—other than the reason that I was putting soap on my naked body, this pulsing, pulsating, throbbing, funny thing. And I scrubbed my foot with a hard sponge and the pressure activated the ache that I feel when I touch my extra bones and I remembered finding out I had them and I held that memory in my achy, extra bones. And I rinsed the soap off of my hands and out from under my nails and I saw the fungus, the slightly yellow-brown squishy substance like a ball of earwax underneath the nail of the ring finger on my right hand, and I thought of the fragmented bone that healed, fortified, making my finger slightly puffier than before. The finger and the nail are still tender, sometimes, and it’s probably from the fungus, just as my feet ache from my ancient bones, but I will die before I let them remove these special, secret parts of me. I know now how it feels to have the fabric of my person altered through my artificial tooth, and I will die before I once again stop honoring this bleeding, breaking, breathing thing.
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BELDANGI RAIN Sailesh Dahal Every so often when I am in search of inspiration, or in need of some humility, or perhaps on an evening stroll across the park, alone with my thoughts, only the wind sailing by, or when I’m about to board a plane, or in the warm, snug embrace of a loved one, or whatever it is that takes men to their contemplative nature, I am taken— sometimes in part, sometimes in whole—to that crisp, breezy morning where the skies were dark with approaching rain, and the cool air whistled as it passed through the gaps of our bamboo walls. I peeked through a gap and saw a tin, rickety van outside. It was the only van I would ever travel in during the first ten years of my life. I rubbed my eyes and rose from the rocky bed my grandfather had carved for me with his own hands. When I stepped outside, I could hear the soft voice of my mother as she spoke with Babita, our neighbor. I realized that I had awakened late. If it were any other day, I would’ve received, as I often did for my childhood mischief, a good beating from my mother. Every morning, shortly after the rooster crowed, I waited in line to retrieve water from a distant well, a vital part of my daily chores. But this day was different. I wouldn’t need to wait for water any longer. My mother shifted her attention from Babita Auntie and cast a smile in my direction. Many thoughts lurked behind the curve of her lips. I remember her gaze, soft and dear. I nodded in return. My mother had finished loading our luggage, which, packed thoughtfully over the past month, carried our toothbrushes, clothes, old photos and memories, a holy relic, and—sealed in a small pouch—our entire life savings. My father was having a conversation with the driver when Babita Auntie approached me with one of my childhood delights: a piece of bread and a cup of Chai Masala. I told her dhanyabad. I looked into her brown eyes. Her pupils 194 - Creative Non-Fiction
were dilated, her eyelids puffy. I could see tears building in them, only blinks away from flooding. She wrapped her arms around me and spoke, “You’re welcome, son. This will be the last one I’ll make for you.” I knew she would miss me—I used to get water for her family, too. I had built quite a reputation for myself as the local water boy. I took pride in it. People would return the favor with slices of bread, but the Chaicame only on very special occasions. My family waited for me inside the van as I bid farewell to my neighbors and friends. And when I finally climbed inside, the driver introduced himself and gave my family a white bag with two folders in it, one with the U.N.H.C.R. logo on top and the second with the I.O.M’s. Without much knowledge of its meaning or significance, the bag was something a child of my age would often hear about in the conversations of the elders. And with the consequent fame and chitchat the plastic bag had earned amongst my circle of friends, it had inspired—for the very first time—an unfamiliar light of hope in our dim, adolescent hearts. It was a passport to dream, so to speak. Now that the bag was close, next to me, on my father’s lap, I sat cozily in the back seat of the van—which was to take my family and me to the airport. Our life in Beldangi, a refugee camp in Nepal, was about to end. We were going to America. The skies roared. Lightning struck. A thousand drops of rain drummed on the tin roof of the van. I listened. It is a sound I miss dearly. The Beldangi rain, unlike rain elsewhere, fell with tumult and pride. And I listened quietly, to every one of its patters, the sound of wind swaying its fall, the noise of it piercing through the wind. And as the driver started the engine, I turned around and took one
last glance back. I saw my house. I saw its weak walls, its fragile roof made out of hay. The holy Tulasiplant we had groomed, and the papaya tree sheltering our yard as always. The driver slowly pressed the gas pedal, and our neighbors—our friends—walked mutely behind us, knowing this would be the last time we would ever see each other. Looking at their faces, I wondered what they were thinking. How would they remember me: as their water boy, or as someone close to them? Finally, they stopped walking, yet they still waved. Hours later, our tin-roofed van was replaced by a sleek, modern jet. A Boeing-747, that was to take us from Kathmandu to Dubai before flying us to New York. The plane accelerated; its wings trailed to increase lift. Its wheels tucked in. It levitated. We sliced through the air, quickly gaining height. I had never been in an airplane before, and I marveled as we headed toward the clouds. Staring out the oval window of the plane, I wondered if we would come across any gods flying in their golden chariots, as depicted in the B hagavad-Gita. What were the chances we would come across one of the thousands of gods of our religion? I waited for the deities. Our aircraft rumbled. As we hit turbulence, the skies growled louder. Lightning intensified, then calmed, only to strike harder again. Time passed, but they didn’t come. So I began to question. Are we not high enough? I had been good all my life, hadn’t I? Did the gods even exist? The celestial beings remained silent. I thought of my grandfather, his thick gray mustache, his jolly paunch on which I used to lie on, how he used to narrate the great epic before I went to bed—causing me, with each passing second, to fall asleep. When the glowing medallion in the sky appeared the next day, we were flying over Dubai. I had entered another world, like the ones I had seen only in postcards, or in the newspapers with
which we covered the gaps in our bamboo walls. I stared in awe, considering what human civilization had achieved outside of the camps—how far we had come, how far wehad been left behind. Nervous and naive and just out of a refugee camp, I thought about simpler things. I thought about home. How was Babita Auntie faring? Who fetched the water today? Who fed the animals? Did anyone bother to water our Tulasi plant? My grandfather used to tell me the leaf of a Tulasi plant soaked in Ganga Jal(Holy Water) could cure anything. Gullible as I was, I had believed him. I’d hated much of the life we were leaving behind; survival in the Camps was a battle we—all one hundred thousand of us living on less than twenty-five cents per day—couldn’t always win. But as I now speak from a better place, careful not to let romanticism elude me, I am grateful for those ten years I spent in Nepal. I’d seen and lived many things there, experienced a certain kind of joy: a joy of giving. A slice of bread tasted better than anything as it was given and received with gratitude. The glass of water we stood in long lines to procure quenched our thirst differently, in a more satisfying way. Every experience, no matter how bad it seems, holds within it a lesson of some kind. I had heard that from the Buddha, but I learned it truly during those early years of my life.
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WRECK Jaime Lam We left your gravel driveway in Augusta, Illinois around seven in the morning for Nebraska. It was supposed to be six, but you weren’t home or ready. I wasn’t upset. At the time, I forgave you for anything. At the time, I thought you were someone else. Remember after closing night of the musical, we climbed the basketball hoop in the dark to talk about life where no one could bother us. We spent hours painting on the stage. The nights that drifted into mornings, curled up outside your window to see the sky pink. The time you blared my stereo so our sentences were swallowed by music, and you sang The Front Bottoms lyric “I hate everyone but you,” changing the last word to my name. My sister Fallan said she wasn’t coming to my graduation, and you held me like I mattered. Remember when I left for college in Iowa and we cried in your driveway trying to say goodbye. You reassured me we were soul sisters, bonded by our brokenness, but I still hated leaving you behind. I texted, called you, came by whenever I could, but we both knew it was different. We had a magic when we walked with our arms locked and pinkies intertwined, but separate, we started to disintegrate around the edges. Remember after my first year and how much we changed. My time away had taught me how to hate, but not you. Never you. But it didn’t escape me that you’d swapped out painting for weaving lies with long-lashed eyes. I watched as you braided, unbraided your hair, admiring yourself in the mirror, aware of just how beautiful you were. I tried not to think about how my birthday passed and I didn’t hear a word from you. That the few times you called were when you’d lied to your boyfriend James, cussed out James, flirted with another boy to infuriate James, broken up with James, and needed me to fix it. Looking at you admiring your pretty features in reflections, announcing casually you invited a middle-aged drug dealer over, swapping out pajamas for sexier ones, and twirling 196 - Creative Non-Fiction
your hair to have him buy you this and that, I didn’t recognize you. There were more than miles forming between us; we were going in different directions. Weekend over, we lingered in the beat-up van that drank gasoline like we thought all cars did. I remember the jaggedness of your cheekbones, how you’d grown sharp when I tried to soften. I told you, “I still love you, and I’ll be there for you no matter what.” You were changing, and I was taking the backseat. I told you I would always be in your corner. “You have to let me make mistakes,” you smiled at me. We talked in spurts, but I mostly wrote letters. Letters for when you were sad, letters for when you were blistering, if you were hurt, in case you needed me but didn’t want to talk, so you’d still be able to have my love for you traveling across state-lines at your fingertips. Maybe it was in good heart, but what if it wasn’t? How you crushed up two boys in a matter of months sat in my stomach like motion sickness. How you dragged your nails down your back to try and convince James into thinking we’d had sex. How you told him Garret was no one to worry about until Garret was someone to worry about. How you left Garret when his freshness wore off. How you were charmed by a drug dealer who bought you pretty things. How you looked at me when I told you to stay away from him. How you looked at me when you said you would. You said you were taking a break from boys and working on you. I was growing—classes, marriage, new friends, road trips, and music. When I texted and you wouldn’t reply, I thought you were writing poetry, drawing until three a.m., or becoming yourself again, and I was proud. Remember when Lexie took her life with a bullet to her head, and the only person I called was you. I thought you were the only one who would be soft with me—my soul sister. Sitting at the top of an empty stairwell, I drowned in memories
of the fifteen-year-old girl and hiccupped to you, “I can’t believe she’s gone—she feels so alive in my head. Every time I close my eyes—I see her laughing, telling jokes. I don’t want her to be gone.” “Jaime . . . I’m gonna go to bed.” The call ended; I was alone in every sense, and that should’ve been the end of us. Remember months later when you did the unimaginable. Your dad texted me you were in the hospital. I couldn’t rest. Sporadic texts weren’t enough. I drove two hours to see you for fifteen minutes. “Why did you do it?” “It’s so hard, Jaime. Life is so hard.” I pressed my hand to your chest. “This needs to keep going. Please, I don’t want to lose you.” Your brother said your heart stopped twice. That you snapped. Couldn’t remember who even came by your bedside. Your father said you ripped the IV out of your arm and ran around the hospital. Tried to escape. They slipped warning wristbands on you while you slept. I told nurses this wasn’t you, not who you were, you weren’t you, you were sweet, kind, and didn’t mean anything cruel you said. You slipped your FALL RISK band onto my wrist. “It’s a keepsake, for when I’m dead,” you giggled. How young you looked when they put you in a wheelchair to take you to the ward. Arms hugging your legs, eyes red from crying while you mewed, “I don’t want to go.” They wouldn’t take the flowers I bought you. The book of poetry. I didn’t leave the hospital for hours for a chance they’d let me see you. I begged nurses, all of our memories dripping down my chin. I thought I was doing the right thing, letting you grow on your own to let you come back to me, but I should have come closer. The night drive back to Iowa, I cried so much I missed my exit. Ran over a dead carcass. Felt like I couldn’t breathe. I’d wake up, the memory of you crying in the hospital bed like ice. I wrote so many poems. I drove back to your house in Augusta and taped them all over your
walls. Wrote notes about how much I loved you and planted them around your room. In your trash can, I found your cup, dried-out pills stuck to the bottom. When you were released, you didn’t remember me visiting. There were so many drugs in your system that all the words we shared were lost to the depths of your memory but were ingrained in mine, and I loved you more than I ever did. Remember after months of lying, you came clean. You told me you’d fallen for him. How you road-tripped to Kansas City, Missouri, how the city lights at a distance look like stars, how he bought you whatever you wanted, how he was going to divorce his wife, how counting meth money for a drug dealer made you feel powerful, and how part of you loved hearing how he hurt people. “I know you don’t like him, but if you love me, then you would support me.” The guilt of leaving you waited for me every time I closed my eyes. I’d chosen to give you space, and it led me to sit on your hospital bed. So, I held harder. Any lie you’d given me was my fault only, and I hoped you would forgive me. As much as I hated him, I couldn’t risk losing you. I constantly asked if you were okay, if you’d eaten, did you schedule your new therapy appointment, take your medicine, were you safe. Even as months went by, I was dedicated. I didn’t want it to happen again. I didn’t want to fail you like I failed Lexie. I wanted you to know someone loved you far beyond anything and you were not alone. When I wanted to die and all I received from you was a dial tone, I didn’t even think to be upset with you. On the brink of getting my associate’s, I applied to local colleges to be nearby in case you needed a place to stay. When your father forgot your birthday, I came over that morning with a brownie cake topped with hand-cut strawberry hearts, bought you five birthday presents, and chose to forget you failed to remember mine for a second year. I ignored the anxiety of you pressuring me into drinking, shoving a bottle into my hands. “Please, Jaime? Come on. It’s my birthday!” Because you could do no wrong. I didn’t trust your boyfriend, hated your second secret boyfriend, but I didn’t want to drive you away, so I listened and tried to gently guide you away from
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it all, away from them. I bought us tickets to The Front Bottoms and drove us six hours to Nebraska without a thought. For half the trip, you did your makeup. You cut a shirt in half and slid on a miniskirt in the passenger seat while you asked for advice on your illicit love life, advice you weren’t really going to take. The whole drive, I listened and spoke when spoken to. In my heart, I had become your person, your sister, your mother, your best friend, and I existed to take care of you. My car anxiety sat high the whole drive. Semis, GPS directions, the six lanes full of people rushing to get somewhere. When we crossed the Iowa border into Omaha, the only place you wanted to go was the Westroads Mall. For a few hours, we walked around, pinkies locked, thumbing through stores that were too expensive to look at. I ignored catty comments leaking out from you about the makeup I wore, about your father not giving you enough money, about not wanting to leave to beat traffic. I listened to the comment that mattered: “Can you believe that we’re here, walking like we did in Augusta?” And for about twenty more minutes, we were still those broken-home teenage girls with dreams in their rib cages, hope with every breath before we came crashing down. On the way to the concert, I missed a turn and you yelled at me. Called me a bitch. “I’m sorry, I’m being a brat right now,” you remarked. You started to paint your nails again; I started to unravel. I gripped the steering wheel, unable to rip my eyes from rush hour even as cars began to blur. “I just don’t get it. This is all for you.” When we got to the Sokol Auditorium, you were nervous. On edge, anticipating a wreck I didn’t realize was approaching. “Bitch” kept punching me in my chest, spinning around my head the whole opening show until the impact began to gradually unearth realizations, little by little. “Did you ever watch the video of my voice recital?” I asked in a crowd of strangers. “I . . . I don’t remember. I don’t think so.” “My poetry reading?”
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You bit your lip. “I remember the one with train tracks.” “That was three years ago.” When you were a different girl. Softly, I still loved you; I spoke, “I’m realizing I’m more invested in this friendship than you are.” “I need to go to the bathroom,” you interjected. “Be right back.” Too many songs went by before I realized you weren’t. I spent at least an hour stretched out, holding the empty space you left. I thought you lost me in the crowd. Then, I thought you trained up to the front because you’d wanted “to see them sweat.” Still, I spent half the concert looking for you. Waited by the doors to see you drift out. Talked to security, panicked that something happened. I went outside to see if you somehow had passed me. “So, did you enjoy the concert?” Flew out your mouth when I found you posed perfectly against the brick wall outside, foot kicked up and arms crossed. “You seemed mad at me, so I thought you’d enjoy the concert more if you were alone.” “You were out here the whole time?” “Yeah, I thought about going to the car, but you had the key, and I thought about going to the bar down the street—I had your knife, I was fine.” The dryness of your tone was crystal to me despite the mass of people-static chatter and traffic. “I was worried, I was looking for you—but that’s it, isn’t it?” Any empathy in me broke. “You wanted me to worry about you.” Caught, your nonchalance sped into panic, defensiveness. When I wasn’t groveling, guilt pulsing, asking if you were okay? You backpedaled and told as many lies you could in a pinch of seconds, not even noticing they didn’t match up. You just hoped one of them would stick. As you fumbled, I realized I’d been had. The past two years soured as all of the ugliness hit me straight on, and I understood that loving you harder wouldn’t ever bring my best friend back. The girl who wore a thrift-store-prom dress and all of her jewelry to her first homecoming. The girl who loved acting like a grandmother, hunched back with a crotchety voice. The girl with ADHD who held still for me so I could draw her in
the early a.m. The girl I had an Anti-Mother’s day with. The girl who sat in my sister’s vacant seat at my graduation. The girl who wouldn’t try to make me feel guilty for being hurt when you were trying to hurt me. I drove you home. Six hours, in the middle of the night, through the whole state of Iowa without a word between us. I blared The Front Bottoms CD to stay awake, staring at the moon as I retraced the drive that had started out as an adventure. The highways were dead, unending. I thought about the time I called with a pill bottle in my hand and death on my mind—you didn’t pick up. When I called about Lexie, the lies, the manipulation, my birthdays, how stupid I was. I kept the car chilled so I wouldn’t fall asleep, but when you curled up to rest, I still turned on your heated seat because I still couldn’t blame you for the wreckage. You were just a broken girl. We made it back to Augusta at dawn, back to the house where we sat on rooftops, where we shared secrets until five a.m., where you almost died, and where I finally would leave you. “I’m mad at myself. I loved the girl I knew so much that I didn’t realize you’d killed her.” Driving away, I finally broke down and mourned the loss of the girl I had tried desperately to save.
Creative Non-Fiction - 199
Editors Notes Brianna Perry Africana Studies, Studio Art 2021 Chicago, IL Carlos Claudio Undecided 2023 Milwaukee, WI Give me a story that stays on my mind for the years to come. I dare you. Lily Gates English major, biology and education minors Albuquerque, NM Lily Lauver Creative Writing & English Literature majors 2021 Pittsburgh, PA Matrice Young Creative Writing Major, Educational Studies and Africana Studies minors 2021 Chicago, IL Ever crave the memory of a taste, but can’t remember what the food was? (I think it was a Starbucks cheese Danish.) Phelix Venters-Sefic Art, Secondary Education 2021 Denver, CO Check out the bottom right corner on the journalism divider page ;-) Sadie Cheney Gender Women Studies Major, Journalism and Dance Minors 2021 Denver, CO shout out to archie and coffee for the serotonin
Samuel Lisec Creative Writing, Philosophy 2021 Chicago, IL Sebastiano Masi Creative Writing, Theater 2021 Chicago, IL Ends up in the void way too often for his own good. Shae Gabriel Creative Writing, German, Theatre 2021 Overland Park, KS I drown my sorrows in coffee and vaguely healthy coping mechanisms. Veronica Sefic Creative Writing, Gender Women Studies 2021 Denver, CO I am so in love with a truly terrible chihuahua.
Contributors Notes Aditi Parikh Creative Writing and Political Science 2022 Mumbai, India Archi Nokrek Creative Writing (hopefully) 2024 Dhaka, Bangladesh Archi Nokrek is a freshman. She hasn’t stepped foot on campus yet but she absolutely can’t wait to sit on a grass field with her multiculturally diverse group of friends. In her free time, you will see her yelling at misogynists, interacting with people in exchange for food, whining about deadlines and not actually doing any work. Her biggest fear is having her five feet self be mistaken for a toddler and be yeeted out of college Ashley Pearson Double major in Creative Writing and Biochemistry 2023 Monmouth, IL Ashley Pearson is a Korean-American fiction writer, poet, and unfinished Google Docs connoisseur. Her work focuses on small town musings, lengthy metaphors, and social commentary on the world around her. This is her first time being published. She would like to thank her parents, dog, friends, and professors for supporting her. Christa Vander Wyst Creative Writing Minor, Psychology Minor, Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies Pewaukee, WI The library basement is an excellent place to have a Nerf Gun battle. But you didn’t hear that from me. Elizabeth George Creative Writing 2022 Springfield, IL “Thank you thank you thank you!” - jasper randall
E. Elizabeth Watkins Creative Writing 2022 Indian Head Park, IL Many thanks to myself, because I’ve never given her credit for how far she’s come. Glen Malast Environmental Studies 2021 St. Louis, MO I would like to express my thanks to the editors and staff of catch. Thank you for making a beautiful edition every term! Jaime Lam-Wright Creative Writing and English Plymouth, IL You deserve to be happy. Everyone is a work in progress and can grow. Eat food, because your body needs it. Drink water, because we are just high maintenance plants. Be kind to yourself in your mind. Treat yourself like you would a friend. You deserve the same love you give others. Jia Self Classical Languages Major 2023 Kansas City, MO John R Muth Creative Writing 2020 Galesburg, IL “Education is classist.” - Emily Anderson. Use your privilege! Julia Porter Creative Writing(maybe?) 2024 Boise, ID Thanks for reading my piece! I hope it makes you laugh :)
Contributors Notes Katie Carlson Creative Writing 2022 Bloomington, IL The menstruation cycle adds up to seven years of a person’s life. These seven years are not only suffered in silence, but viewed as repulsive and disgusting. My aim for this piece is to not only bring periods to the forefront of society, but also reveal the strength of those who push through that time of the month with a smile on their face. Kaitlyn Agress Classics and Creative Writing double major 2020 Crystal Lake, IL Writers at Knox are part of the reason I have faith in the power of fiction and know the reasons I should keep writing. Many thanks to all who continue the tradition. Kaitlyn Pepper Theatre 2022 O’Fallon, MO I’d like to thank JT for always encouraging me to try new things and never give up on my art! Liam Wholihan Creative Writing & Psychology 2020 Silver Spring, MD Beautiful book, isn’t it? Check out the colophon. Michelle Dudley Computer Science 2020 Sunnyvale, CA Milo Camaya Education 2021 Evanston, IL
Olive Colangelo & Fay Swift Environmental Science (for both of us!) 2021 Lombard, IL & Houston, TX We totally forgot we submitted to this. Oops! Payton Shaw Double Major in Education and Studio Art 2021 Colo, IA In memory of all of those lost during hurricane season. Sailesh Dahal Computer Science 2021 Aurora, CO Shae Gabriel 2021 Overland Park, KS To Megan Molloy and the rest of my Knox family who made Toby and Joel possible. And an extra thank you to those who taught me to start putting myself first. Sarah Carter Creative writing, minors in education and religious studies 2020 Rockford, IL Thank you first to the editors and contributors of Catch magazine for making this edi- tion happen despite the circumstances, and to the professors and students of the Knox College creative writing program. My writing group, thank you for getting me through this year, and Gil, thank you for following me to Rockford. Sarah Lohmann Creative Writing & Asian Studies 2021 St. Louis, MO
Contributors Notes Sydney Gillette Studio Art, Environmental Studies 2023 Oak Park, IL Thank you for appreciating all forms of incredible art. Wilder Myslivy Undecided 2024 Lawrence, KS Thank you for supporting the arts through the pandemic. Zachary Farmer Theatre 2022 Houston, TX Zoe C Pearce Creative Writing, Film minor 2020 Elizabeth, IL This is my escape. I’m gone.
Contributors Notes Abigail Breslin International Relations major 2022 Galesburg, IL Jaelon M. Brooks Integrative Business Management major, Journalism minor 2022 Chicago, IL Kailin Cutliff Psychology major. 2022 Galesburg, IL Alex Davis Creative Writing major, Religious Studies minor 2021 Sterling, IL Lily Gates English Literature major 2022 Albuquerque, NM Nora Glowacki English Literature major 2022 Pingree Grove, IL Shannon Hall Creative Writing major 2023 Prospect Heights, IL Marcus Harris Undecided 2023 Chicago IL
Jaime Lam Creative Writing and English Literature majors 2021 Plymouth, IL Archi Nokrek Hopeful Creative Writing major 2024 Dhaka, Bangladesh Einar Pieler Music and AnSo majors 2021 Crystal Lake, IL Lua Powers AnSo major 2023 Oak Park, IL Isaiah Simon Psychology major 2023 New Orleans, LA Sophie Swan Creative Conservation major 2023 Denver, CO “Almanac of This Time, of Us, In It: a Glossary” was our attempt at grappling with definition and of reckoning with all the ways we sometimes learn some of the most important lessons of making art, of being alive, when we are looking elsewhere or when we don’t know exactly what we are doing.
COLOPHON Catch is printed on 70# Natural Vellum Cougar Opaque Text The art pages are printed on 70# White Smooth Cougar Opaque Text The cover is printed on Gold Curious Particles Cover The title font is Kefa The sub-title font is Bangla MN The body text is Cochin Printed and bound by Premir Print Group
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