Roars and Whispers Volume XXV 2020

ROARS WHISPERS Providence High School Volume 25 $15.00 per issue roarsandwhispersphs.com @roarsandwhispers 1800 Pineville-Matthews Road Charlotte, NC 28270 Phone: 980-343-5390 Fax: 980-343-3956 Printer: Jostens 2019 Awards CSPA — Gold Medal Ranking and Crown Finalist NSPA — All-American Ranking NCSMA — All-North Carolina and Tar Heel Award 2011 NSPA Hall of Fame Inductee 2018, 2017, 2010 CSPA Gold Crown Winner 2016, 2015, 2014 CSPA Silver Crown Winner 2018, 2017, 2016, 2014, 2007 NSPA Pacemaker Winner 2013, 2011, 2010 Pacemaker Finalist Cover art: Swaying, Bhavana Veeravalli ’20 watercolor and digital

ontents TABLE OF

writing 09 10 12 15 16 18 21 24 27 29 30 32 34 37 39

4 Roars & Whispers

Tidepools Ellie Cotton ’20, poetry Thornwood Charlotte Beck ’20, fiction Neon Placebo Grace Yochem ’20, poetry Vacant Bhavana Veeravalli ’20, poetry Wilt Maggie Christopher ’21, personal narrative Blackberries Abigail Welch ’20, poetry When We Wanted to be Astronauts Ruby Davis ’23, fiction Almost Quitting Time Aiden Kaplan ’21, humor Egg Yolk Diet Ella Rasmussen ’21, poetry Embracing Dyslexia Micah Baldonado ’20, personal narrative In These Trenches Caroline Palermo ’20, poetry The Space of a Hymn Emma Kurtz ’20, poetry An Affinity for Chaos Bhavana Veeravalli ’20, fiction Dandelion Lining Ella Rasmussen ’21, feature Outside Bones Emma Washburn ’22, fiction

41 42 45 46 48 51 52 54 56 59 61 64 67 69 70

Makings of a Gardener Julia Sands ’21, poetry Future’s Hands Diya Bhatt ’22, feature Gentle Palms Always Have Phantom Fingertips Abigail Welch ’20, poetry Not a Saint Ella Rasmussen ’21, review Matthew 15:4 Nneoma Uche ’21, personal narrative Born Again Bhavana Veeravalli ’20, poetry Supercut Ellie Cotton ’20, poetry The Lizard Incident Will Asby ’20, humor Picking Sabrina Mercado ’21, poetry ` Galatista Vasiliki Gkoulgkountina ’20, poetry

Tuesday at the Center of the Universe Emma Washburn ’22, fiction On Loving Something Temporary Charlotte Beck ’20, poetry Occipital Ella Rasmussen ’21, personal narrative Flux Caroline Palermo ’20, poetry Pulling off the Invisibility Cloak Omotayo Fasan ’20, personal narrative

Table of Contents 5

c

CONTINUED

ontents

6 Roars & Whispers

artwork 08 11 12 14 17 19 21 25 26 28 31 33 35 37 38

Beneath Melanie Calabrese ’20, colored pencil Mount Rushmore Diane Choi ’20, photography Prism of Thought Ragen Munavalli ’20, collage Grayscale Trinity Clay ’21, digital Poppies Rachel Spransy ’20, acrylic Alien Betsy Molina ’20, photography Isolation Trinity Clay ’21, digital Business Casual Melanie Calabrese ’20, colored pencil and gold leaf Jellyfish Valerie Coronel ’21, silk Enigma Erin Gabriel ’20, colored pencil Harbinger Rachel Spransy ’20, colored pencil Dance of Cocoons Abigail Welch ’20, photography Tears in Rain Rachel Spransy ’20, collage The Green Turtle Aryianna Ihnatava ’21, watercolor Bioluminescence Abigail Welch ’20, photography

41 43 44 47 48 50 53 54 57 58 60 65 66 68 71

Fleeting Life Ragen Munavalli ’20, acrylic Chiaroscuro Brandon Bell ’22, scratchboard Syzygy Caroline Palermo ’20, digital The Biggest Pile Bhavana Veeravalli ’20, colored pencil and ink Clarinet Ava Johnson ’21, colored pencil Flavors of Ambrosia Lisa Zhang ’22, watercolor Amela Rachel Spransy ’20, acrylic Lucky Ella Rasmussen ’21, colored pencil and pen Connection Melanie Calabrese ’20, scratchboard Society Maddalena Maretto ’20, collage AnnMarie Melanie Calabrese ’20, oil Decorated in Gold Bhavana Veeravalli ’20, scratchboard Slice of Sunshine Anne Dancausse ’22, acrylic L Train Rachel Spransy ’20, colored pencil Local Ella Rasmussen ’21, charcoal

Table of Contents 7

8 Roars & Whispers

tidepools Salt singes my chapped lips as I float up-and-down, up-and-down.

The water is warm only as far as the sun reaches.

We dive down together until our fingertips reach the cold.

We swing back-and-forth, back-and-forth.

Our sun-bleached hair tangles as we fall asleep to the sound of rented bicycles peddling down the concrete neighborhood roads.

The water from our bathing suits drips onto the pavement.

The white sand dollars match the ones on your favorite necklace.

You insist on wearing it even though it unevens your tan.

I have never had to worry about that.

My fair skin only burns.

Salt singes my sunburn as we rub our matching striped towels along our legs before beginning the trek back home.

Our bathing suits never fully dry.

All those humid days blend together, washed up like tidepools and broken seashells buried in the sand.

- Ellie Cotton ’20

Beneath, Melanie Calabrese ’20 colored pencil

Poetry 9

thornwood Charlotte Beck ’20

g

lass is cold against her forehead. doesn’t know, nor does he care. He does Her heart is set on a brick house not notice the forever trees and instead and a backyard and a baby, a safe focuses on the lake’s cold waves. conclusion to a tiring chapter. She will A familiar voice welcomes listeners play her cassettes while she cooks dinner to Chicago’s Finest Rock. The woman for her family. She will laugh with a smiles, reminded of pedicures with her baby and rub a dog’s belly. sisters and the high school boyfriend who As they drive farther into oak trees and made her mixtapes. The man winces at brick roads, she finds comfort in familiar the cycle of radio hospitality. scenes. Muffled laughter bounces off She never doubts he will give her a brick the car as children race to the ice cream house and a backyard to make sure she feels shop decades older than her. Nuns chat safe. She never doubts he will take care outside the church of her family and as the bell rings nurture her children.

The man grabs for dismissal. A He never doubts she triumphant dog is clearing the rainy the woman’s hand carries a ball back days and making tighter, but the hold to his owner on him feel. is empty, cold, weak. the lawn of her The tires hit a childhood home. pothole, leftover The old houses from last year’s and forever trees pass her slowly; she prays winter. The man grabs the woman’s everything will turn out familiar. hand tighter, but the hold is empty, cold, A man sits next to her, one hand weak. No signs of the fiery grasp he will gripping the wheel, the other gripping have on her and three other small children. her hand. His heart is set on bringing No signs of the whiskey he will use to his wife and dog to the beach only ten clear rainy days when she can’t anymore. minutes down the old road. He wants No signs of a baby and a dog that will to feel the sand between his toes. He watch him with hollow eyes as he shoves wants to feel the wind whipping past his her against a refrigerator. ears. He wants to feel. They may go out She smiles, because to her, the grasp to the ice cream shop for lunch, but he means he cares. She’s happy

”

”

10 Roars & Whispers

Mount Rushmore, Diane Choi ’20 photography

Fiction 11

12 Roars & Whispers

Prism of Thought, Ragen Munavalli ’20 collage

Thick pollen sludges into my lungs, and sweet molasses trickles down my throat.

50 mg for anxiety.

70 mg for ADD. 300 mg for depression.

Encircled by dancing imps, the trill of flutes and droning cicadas.

Where did the butterflies go?

The cold is bitter yet friendly.

My constant companion is faithful; something familiar should not be harmful.

My swollen foot drags through the mud; I fall to meet my reflection.

Where did the butterflies go?

The blade grazes my skin.

Let’s talk about your next steps.

I think we should push everything up.

Moving forward is difficult.

You don’t need it anymore?

We’ll reduce your dosage.

Shrink!

I haven’t seen any progress.

I’ll up the dosage.

You’re done; don’t take any more.

My toes sink into the grass beneath my feet and grip the soft earth.

Links cut in two.

My shadow blends with those of the trees.

The imps will not have me.

Snap!

You were misdiagnosed.

Your appointment is at 4.

My lungs and throat are clear.

I hear the wind whistle.

My ankle twists.

My cries stifled by a casing of crystallized caramel.

Short, small, thick, tall mushroom caps cushion my fall.

Whoever put you on this was either stupid or insane.

I stand tall.

Fill out this chart so I know how you feel.

Let’s start with 20 mg.

Does that sound good to you?

My eyes flick to glinting silver. A scythe.

My hand clasps another.

Why don’t you talk? I’ll listen.

Have you skipped any days of your medication?

The music fades.

I break from the chain.

I walk forward.

- Grace Yochem ’20

Poetry 13

Grayscale, Trinity Clay ’21 digital

14 Roars & Whispers

vacant Mother tells you to slowly sip the ginger tea.

She promises it will remedy your ceaseless weariness and return your joy.

The ginger shavings scald your throat and incinerate your voice.

You want to tell her it won’t cure your sickness, that the disease rots your mind, not your body.

But you silently let your lips turn to ash from the steaming cup.

She can’t know it’s pointless to tend to someone that isn’t here.

You check in as a guest to your body.

The crumpled sheets and groaning mattress are the only indications of life.

You feel disgusted with yourself in the middle of the night when only the cesspool of neon Cheetos and acidic Sprite sustain your stay.

You’re ashamed of the hostility you inflict on your bones, your muscles, your heart.

You wish your only worries were if the fireflies will flutter at dusk and when the sharpness of fall will sneak up on you. Sometimes you still feel the exhilarating delight of the last perfect puzzle piece finding its place on a sticky summer afternoon.

Now, you struggle to breathe.

People tell you pain can’t suffocate.

These days, your puzzles sprawl unfinished across your bedroom floor, waiting for the day you’ll learn you can’t become whole if the pieces are lost.

- Bhavana Veeravalli ’20

Poetry 15

wilt

Maggie Christopher ’21

o

n my tenth birthday, I didn’t receive the elaborate science kit or extensive Lego sets I was accustomed to from previous birthdays. There were no shiny balloons above my kitchen chair, and I wasn’t visually assaulted by a banner that overenthusiastically screamed “HAPPY BIRTHDAY!” Instead, a single lilac balloon floated above my chair at the dinner table, and my mom placed a vase with a single red rose beside a plate of steaming waffles. A few years ago, I may have been disappointed by the lack of spectacle, but this year felt different.

I liked the rose and the waffles and the single lilac balloon. I preferred them to the overwhelming party decorations and the saccharine taste of grocery store cake that clung to my tongue and the backs of my teeth. The simpler gifts reminded me of the birthdays my parents threw for each other—an exchange of one or two gifts and maybe a fancy meal, but no fuss. I enjoyed the thought that my mom was starting to recognize me as an adult—an equal. The idea made my heart patter happily in my chest.

I took the rose and hung it upside down above my bed. I liked the way the crimson petals contrasted with my cream-colored walls like a rogue artist splashed a dollop of passion against the simple white. I kept the rose cool and dry to preserve the lovely petals and, with them, the excitement that bloomed in my chest when I reminded myself that I wasn’t a child anymore.

What I didn’t anticipate was that as

the rose dried, the petals shriveled, and the ruby color that I loved so much dulled into a dark maroon. I was careful not to brush against the fragile stem because the slightest disruption could snap the stem and crumble the beautiful petals that looked so nice on my wall. The healthy flower that smelled so sweet grew more somber the longer it went without roots, and I followed suit. As I grew older, I watched my soft curves melt away until I couldn’t recognize the skeleton that stood in the mirror before me. Watching the number on the scale provided that same excitement that I first felt when I turned ten. I set goals for myself, and as the years crept by—11, 12, 13—my weight plummeted—145, 120, 80. I was never satisfied because there was always someone skinnier, always another goal to achieve. Watching my stomach disappear felt better than anything food could offer me. People began to notice my sunken cheeks and raw-boned wrists. But in spite of the concerned glances fired my way, I could never find it in myself to stop. The routine of counting calories was comforting, and the burn in my stomach distracted me from the sad desperation in my mom’s eyes when she began to notice how my clothes hung loosely off my small frame.

I never took down the rose, no matter how much the thin stem reminded me of my flimsy legs that wobbled dangerously whenever I tried to come up the stairs too fast because, despite the flower’s gaunt appearance, it remained intact, and that gave me hope that I would too.

Eventually my mom got tired of seeing my bones protrude like a grotesque appendage, and she began to pay more attention to my meals. She would sit across from me at the dinner table, even after everyone else had left, and watch me resentfully lift my fork to my mouth. I won back my health not by choice, but by necessity, and even then I remained borderline anemic with a B12 deficiency. But despite my low iron and vitamin deprivation, I held myself together and so did the rose, now completely dried, hanging on my wall. Even when I discovered that pharmaceutical companies manufactured pills that could subdue reality for twenty-four hours, I never allowed myself to admit that I was slipping into habits that could pull me from the people I loved. My rose remained whole, and I was determined to stay whole too.

I continued the cycle of rehabilitation and relapse until I met a boy named Mason. He convinced me I was getting better, and so I followed him just about everywhere. He was eighteen, and he made me feel grown up when he walked with me to the gas station near his house and offered me a cigarette.

I needed to prove that I was mature enough for him—that despite my age, I could handle being around adults.

So I invited him over on Halloween.

I saw the headlights of his Uber flash from behind my curtains, and my heart pattered in my chest. I didn’t want this.

I wanted to hide behind the door to my Poppies, Rachel Spransy ’20 acrylic

16 Roars & Whispers

parents’ room and curl up in the blankets beside my mom where I was safe. But my legs carried me to the front door, and I allowed this stranger into my house. I led him to my room and tried to ignore the sensation of my heart clawing my chest. I never wanted this.

Mason rested his hands on my hips and pushed me against my bedroom wall.

My heart pounded against my ribcage—I couldn’t go through with this. I opened my lips to say “stop,” but the word stuck in the back of my throat. He mistook the panic in my eyes for eagerness—or maybe he just didn’t care. My tongue felt dry, and I couldn’t maneuver it to spell out even a feeble “no.” I pushed at his shoulders and shook my head. Mason pulled back enough for me to see his face and the reckless fire in his eyes. I shouldn’t have stopped him. Suddenly his hands weren’t gently caressing my hips but around my throat, and those animal eyes watched as my lungs cried out for air. I clawed at his arms. Black dots compromised my vision until the hand around my neck loosened enough for me to collapse in a heap on the floor.

He was going to get what he came for.

The black dots faded away, and by the time I had fully regained consciousness again, Mason was gone.

I began to sit up when I felt something crunch under my palm. I lifted my hand and discovered a crumbled rose petal. All around me pieces of the dried rose lay scattered on the floor. There was nothing left to hold me together anymore, so I rested my head on the floor beside them

Personal Narrative 17

blackberries The hay seems like it has a mind of its own, tussled like it’s rolled out of bed without a comb or proper shower.

Probably hasn’t had time for breakfast, either.

Juice drips from the blackberry brambles overhead, streams of dye highlighting the fading denim with purple Crayola markers.

Sticky, sticky.

Tendrils of grass stretch from the hay, fingertips waiting to be licked clean by mouths surrounded with animal cracker clouds.

As if the earth is a five-year-old toddler.

I imagine the wind’s voice and the wisdom of the whirring solar system with the humming of my grandma and the click of crochet needles.

The thought fills me with glee; the irony of toddler earth and elderly atmosphere woven together with those needles and that juice.

When I stand on the top of the stack, hay sticks to the back of my jeans, and I wonder if the city will be a teenager when I get home.

- Abigail Welch ’20

18 Roars & Whispers

Alien, Betsy Molina ’20 photography

Poetry 19

Isolation, Trinity Clay ’21 digital

Isolation, Trinity Clay ’21 digital

when we wanted to be

A stronauts continued

22 Roars & Whispers

brown hair is pulled back in a bun, and her amber eyes, that are so full of wonder and intelligence, stare back at me from a pixelated screen.

James walks in, his face the image of hers. “God, Jules.” He reaches for the remote, his long finger on the power button.

“Don’t,” I say. He doesn’t.

He sits next to me. “You can’t keep doing this to yourself.”

“She’s out in the rain somewhere.

What if she’s hurt? Can’t you use that twin telepathy thing to talk to her?”

He chuckles and wipes a tear from his cheek. “Would you feel better if I said she is out there somewhere?

Even if I am lying?”

“Good evening,” my dad says before seeing his daughter’s face and hearing the man giving her height and body measurements. “Turn it off.”

I follow his orders, the screen flicking to black. My father’s cheery expression melts to anger and sadness.

“I—” “Can we not talk about her right now?” His voice is harsh as it booms through the room.

I shift my gaze downward, my sneakers still on the hardwood floor. “I’m sorry.”

He sits next to me and puts his arm across my shoulders. “It’s been hard for all of us, you know. Jessica was such a great sister, but we can’t

just turned five. I remember her laughing when I couldn’t reach the ceiling, even when our mom picked me up. That was before mom left. That was before Jessica performed her disappearing act. That was when we wanted to be astronauts.

I hear the grandfather clock downstairs ticking its way to my insanity. I’m exhausted, but I can’t sleep, each tick of that ancient clock engraving every passing second into my mind.

follows, a pitch-black sky coming into view. White dots are speckled throughout, and various colors and gases paint the surroundings.

“Remember when we wanted to be astronauts?” Jessica’s face is pale and thin, all the color has faded from her once rosy cheeks. She takes my hands in hers and coldness trickles up my arms.

“Yes.” I smile, pushing all fear and sadness to the bottom of my stomach.

”

let it hold us back. We can’t abandon our lives; we can’t put them on hold just because she’s gone.”

James’s knee is bobbing up and down.

“She was so ridiculously smart.” He laughs. “She was so close to college, so close to being up in the sky like she always wanted.”

My dad gets up and walks over to a drawer, pulling out a few stray pieces of construction paper with streaks of colorful ink depicting stars and astronauts. “Remember when Jess and Jules used to draw these?”

I trace my fingers over asymmetrical stars. “She’d come home from school and tell me about how she’d work at NASA one day. And we’d draw these all afternoon.”

My father says he can’t talk about this anymore. I ask him if he’s sure he isn’t just afraid. He pretends he can’t hear me.

Before I know it, it’s nine o’clock, and I’m dragging my feet up the stairs. I pull out some homework, finding myself once again begging for a distraction.

My tears manage an escape, burning down my cheeks. The droplets of water spread the ink into a thousand branches across the snow-white paper. I answer the first question, the pencil quivering in my hand.

I stare up at the glow-in-the-dark stars stuck on my ceiling. I put them up with Jessica nearly ten years ago. I had

My father says he can’t talk about this anymore. I ask him if he’s sure he isn’t just afraid. He pretends he can’t hear me.

”

I crawl out of bed to splash some water onto my face and just maybe reduce my anxiety. The cold water hits, but I still feel like I’m choking. When I lift my eyes, I see Jessica’s face staring back at me.

“Jules.” Her voice is soft and kind, just as I remembered.

“You’re not real,” I say, trying to convince myself I’m either crazy or sleep-deprived.

“Come with me.” She gestures me to follow her into the mirror. For lack of a better idea, I slowly push my fingers through the glass.

It ripples and feels like water around my fingertips. The rest of my body

“Where did you go?”

“We can’t all live forever.”

“Why not?”

“Life is a blur. Wasting it on the everlasting makes it not worth living.”

“Your blur isn’t over.”

Her eyes glaze over and her brow furrows. She sighs and pulls me through the darkness toward a speck of light that gets larger as we fly toward it. As we draw close, a child’s drawing of a star appears.

“We drew this when we wanted to be astronauts,” I say.

She smiles. “And now we finally are ”

Fiction 23

ALMOST

QUITTING TIME Aiden Kaplan ’21

I

check my watch. It’s 7:48.

In twelve minutes I, the fiend of this dish pit, will be released into the world outside this godforsaken restaurant, into a world I can hardly remember.

However, I still must wade through this flood of patrons suffocating me with dishes that build to an unattainable height. It feels as though I have not eaten in days. But I must rush my work now, or I may succumb to the fate of insanity that idleness brings.

The scraping assaults my ears as I remove the dough and sauce at a hellish pace. Steel scrubbers, one after another, fall to ruin under my brutal grip. As they shred across the trays, vile water crawls up my arms, melting my skin into a color not unlike the uneaten pepperoni I toss into the growing bucket of slush.

I fear checking my watch lest time forgot to move. Whether it’s moved or not, time has definitely exacted revenge on my hands, shriveled to resemble emaciated sausages that erupt with calluses and blisters. These blisters match

the ones forming on my waterlogged feet submerged in a swamp of disregarded crusts that float like cadavers on the Styx.

Yet I keep washing at a feverish pace, the brine spitting on my face and through my gritted teeth. The strangely salty flavor only increases my washing fervor; it makes me long for the microwaved Indian food that awaits me after this trial.

The end must be coming, it must.

My locked knees scream for release, but I give them none; they must wait till the end. The starvation drains me. Like a wolf forced to fight even harder to reach my goal, I speed up as if washing faster will persuade the clock to do the same.

The thought to eat the discarded pizza has crossed my mind several times.

I wipe the sweat from under my pristine, red hat, leaving a soapy film across my forehead. I know I shouldn’t, but my legs are too sore, my hunger too great to wait anymore. I check my watch.

It’s 7:50

Business Casual, Melanie Calabrese ’20 colored pencil and gold leaf

24 Roars & Whispers

Humor 25

Jellyfish, Valerie Coronel ’21 silk

Jellyfish, Valerie Coronel ’21 silk

Enigma, Erin Gabriel ’20 colored pencil

28 Roars & Whispers

embracing

d ys l x i a

e

micah baldonado ’20

O

nce upon a time, when a boy with exceptional abilities in mathematics was born, the literature gods thought it would be funny to curse him with dyslexia. That boy was me. In spite of the seemingly insurmountable gap between my reading and math levels, I vowed to persevere and, like Sisyphus, relentlessly push the dyslexia boulder up the hill.

Unlike most dyslexics, I didn’t realize I needed help because my parents usually read to me. I even got the Reading Award in Kindergarten because I could correctly read aloud a list of fifty sight words. Without even looking, I recited the list verbatim and was the only student who ended up getting the award. Memorization masked my inability to read like everyone else. I compensated for something I didn’t even know I had.

Unaware of my reading disability, I resented my parents for every second that I had to practice Hooked on Phonics while my friends played outside, just meters away. The daylong reading ate up my summer and my social life. Once my parents enrolled me in the Kumon math and reading program, I learned that my skill sets were polarized. I began to understand myself as the kid who could manipulate fractions in second grade but who could somehow only barely read at grade level.

As a child with parents who always believed in me, I was never directly told my limitations. I learned them the hard way, through my friends. In middle school my teacher put students in reading groups based on their MAP testing scores. Even after spending twice as long testing, my scores segregated me from my friends who scored grade levels above me. I had to turn to my math MAP scores for comfort.

Studying furiously, I achieved one of the highest math scores in Randolph Middle School, performing at an eleventh-grade

“

Even if I sometimes trip on the way up to the summit, it gets easier every time I do it.

”

level as a seventh grader. However, even as a middle schooler, I knew that reading was a riddle I had to solve.

Tired of wooden shelves of paper judging me silently the moment I glanced away, I started giving attention to the centuries of knowledge stowed away in the comfort of my home. I read philosophy books with my father and psychology books with my mother. I reveled in nonfiction, free from the oppressively long descriptions found in fiction.

Reading became a journey.

I read about dyslexia and discovered more about myself. The dyslexic brain is not necessarily faulty. It’s merely wired differently. This allowed me to accept the implications of my disability, as my creativity and mathematical prowess were part of the dyslexic package. I could think outside the box because that is what I was doing the whole time. While I was still slower than most in reading, I realized that whenever I read, I attained a deep-seated understanding. My friends often asked me to tutor them in calculus and physics because they recognized how easily I could reduce complex ideas and communicate them.

I know my struggle with dyslexia isn’t unique. But that doesn’t make my experience any less valuable. I am endlessly grateful to my parents for helping me overcome my dyslexia. They realized before I did that the boulder I kept rolling up the hill was eroding.

Every time the crushing weight of my reading disability reached the foot of the hill, it got a little smaller. Even if I sometimes trip on the way up to the summit, it gets easier every time I do it. The countless hours spent working double-time on homework opened my mind to new horizons. Now my experience with reading has become something I can embrace, not as a curse, but as a profound blessing

Personal Narrative 29

Trenches in these

The mud is their battle armor, caking their skin beneath the North Sea sun.

Decaying flesh and cigarette smoke have nothing on the scent of fear blazing in the souls of nineteen-year-old boys, all lying to themselves that they aren’t afraid of the Grim Reaper.

Between gunfire and Our Fathers, they hear the runner, the man responsible for delivering the waterlogged messages from one command unit to another.

Young men hear him sliding and falling and cursing and groaning through the thick slime they all once called mud— all to deliver a message that isn’t worth its distance.

They hear whimpering in the late hours from the unlucky few with naked feet lying out at the end of the bunker.

Never has agony been so ruthless in the bones of soldier boys clenching jaws, digging fingernails into bloodstained palms, seeing black-and-white dots cross their vision line as they hobble to their feet, letting out another forgotten scream in the war to end all wars.

30 Roars & Whispers

- Caroline Palermo ’20

Harbinger, Rachel Spransy ’20 colored pencil

Poetry 31

hymn the space of a

The first time I see you, you give me your brownie.

We both know that there is a table full of brownies right behind me, but going back means walking through the gauntlet of tall people knees, and besides, your cheeks are too round for me to say no.

The next time I see you, you have marker all over your hands, and you smile at me so wide I can’t breathe.

You start to laugh, this inescapable stomp of a laugh, and all I can do is stare.

I do not know what love is yet, but this is the first time I feel it.

We grew up slowly and all at once, fighting ghosts in the dark church basement, teaching each other how to make Arnold Palmers and mac ‘n’ cheese, giggling under tables and dancing in high heels too big for our feet.

The day you got your first boyfriend, I cried.

It was as if a piece of us broke and, with a hollow sound of finality, fell to the unforgiving floor.

I know that’s irrational and just me overthinking because you wiped away my tears with your thumbs that same day, and you didn’t need to ask why, but I still think about him sometimes and I think about how I was the only person you would cuddle with and how your shampoo always smelled like home and how your bracelets would jingle when you clapped in excitement and how often you appeared on the backs of my eyelids.

I’m dressed inappropriately for a simpler time, stranded in the woods of my hair, shivering, but then your jacket is wrapped around my shoulders, and I no longer feel the sting of the world.

32 Roars & Whispers

I confess to you on a Thursday night.

You hold my hand and call me silly, and you rub your thumb along my knuckles as you walk away.

Only when I have the words do they leave me.

I laugh at thin air in the night and pretend you don’t exist, or at least that I don’t exist, because it makes it easier to forget.

At some point it becomes okay.

We go to brunch, and you wear your tightest dress, and I hide behind a flower crown (purple hyacinth and pink camellias), and we pretend it never happened.

When I think about the rainbow, it doesn’t mean God’s promise, it means skyscrapers and lipstick and waiting for you, and it means the promises we made to each other before I left; I can still feel the pulse of your heart in my fingertips.

I have no promises left to make because you took them all from me, so I cannot say that when I touch you again I will not kiss you, that when your eyes once again meet mine I will not take your face in my hands, that I don’t want to do either of those things anyway.

It feels too soft for comfort, not seeing you in weeks, like fuzzy carpet between my toes but not real.

In my head you call me your mess, and it feels good; the best still hurts from the inside out, and this time there was nothing you could do.

Everything I do is for the beauty of the earth and the skies and your smile and all that can fit in the space of a hymn and the hope that you’re waiting too.

- Emma Kurtz ’20

Dance of Cocoons, Abigail Welch ’20 photography

Poetry 33

an affinity Bhavana Veeravalli ’20

i

FOR CHAOS

’ve had a fascination with chaos since I was born.

I got my first burn scar making tea with my mom when I was seven. She added ginger shavings and Wagh Bakri tea grains to a bubbling pot of water.

She explained the importance of adding saffron immediately after the pepper, so the milk wouldn’t spoil. But her voice became hazy as the orange stove coils snaked their hands around my attention.

They glowed brighter and brighter the longer I stared. Suddenly the imprint of the coils glowed red on my palm. I knew that the correct response was to shout or cry, but I didn’t. The coils danced across my burned flesh, and my heartbeat synced to its cacophonous rhythm; I wanted my whole body to imbibe heat’s dance. I moved closer to the stove.

I crave red lights.

They dangle on banana hue traffic lines. Alert. Definite. Warning. But I see red lights with a balance scale. If I am not fast enough to stop after the colors change, then I will face the consequence with the metallic interior of my rusted Corolla impaling my ribcage. The scale will dip too far into the realm below to save me. But if I am a light year, an unstoppable force of speed, I will defy the scale. I will tip it over and bend its arms behind its body until it can’t dictate the measure of my risks. The light turns

34 Roars & Whispers

blood red. I press my foot against the pedal, heading into oncoming traffic.

I will become immortal.

After midnight I like to stand on the balcony and watch the moon blanket the apartment complex in a thick fleece of silence. I feel sleep’s sluggish slumber enticing me into warm, wrinkled sheets.

Instead I take out my Fubbles bubble wand and pierce the shining salt sky with translucent orbs. I see my reflection glide across their thin surface. My face is distorted, my body smaller at the base, but I am light. The bubbles clutch the stars higher and higher. I want to become the same way. Unweighted. Boundless.

But I know one too sharp curve, too menacing edge, can destroy the illusory freedom that it hypnotically provides.

I grip the balcony’s metal bars. My knuckles crack like a desert. I hesitate, but as I see my reflection pass on a bubble’s invisible surface, it dissolves.

I swing my legs over.

I end up in the Midwest. The Great Plains house the most destructive forces of nature. Twisters ransack the fields of Oklahoma. I’m parked next to a wheat field, trembling in the hazardous winds.

I know I should drive to safety. If I pass through the tornado’s walls, I will either find peace in the eye or tear apart.

I head into the center of the unforgiving storm

Tears in Rain, Rachel Spransy ’20 collage

Fiction 35

dandelion lining Ella Rasmussen ’21

A

typical art gallery is the epitome of cold silence, critics scrutinizing pieces under the whir of frigid ventilation—unless they’re in the comforting halls of the Charlotte Arts Center managed by UMAR Services, Inc. Voices thaw the ceilings as artists fill their canvases with warm tones. UMAR, founded by the United Methodist Church, uses those voices to incorporate its artists into the community.

UMAR is dedicated to supporting adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). The organization offers housing and vocational training in addition to the art centers—all designed to integrate its members into their communities. The nonprofit strives to give its participants the foundations of a self-sufficient life. Focused on providing both stable jobs and cultural enrichment, they offer classes in everything from singing and performing to culinary arts and horticulture. “They come here for the socialization, for being able to go out into the community and learn new skills,” says Isis Lima, manager of the Charlotte Arts Center. “You’ll hear a lot of them say that they work for UMAR.” The organization walks its fine arts students through the process of creating and selling their art while nurturing their

36 Roars & Whispers

social skills and promoting awareness for IDD. Facilitators in the art centers help visual artists price their pieces appropriately and sell their work at galleries, pop-ups and to other organizations. The artists receive 40% of the sale while the rest goes back into funding the art centers.

Inclusion at galleries like the Charlotte Art League enriches the Charlotte community by sharing work from artists that might otherwise go unrecognized.

Lima hopes to reach far and wide.

UMAR also provides the tools for its participants to forge careers. A few artists own microbusinesses through the organization. Sean’s Topiaries and Creations, which commissions art and plants, and Angie’s Herbs both use UMAR as their platform. Lima hopes to push participants to interact with the community through festivals and venues so that they might establish their own microbusinesses or find local work. Some employers are reluctant to work with them at first, but Lima simply assures these proprietors that the artists’ conditions do not define them.

Participants enjoy development in fields they love while gently teaching their peers the true capabilities and limits of those with IDD. According to Lima, participants manage the burden of “taking away the misconceptions that are out there about mental health and

developmental delays.” At the end of the day, it’s the artists themselves who show their communities that inclusion is natural.

The participants are involved everywhere in Charlotte. Those who specialize in the musical arts visit local senior centers and perform for the residents, inspiring joy wherever they find themselves. Fine arts students also decorate local institutions with their pieces. The McGill Rose Garden, a wedding venue, and the Wing Haven Garden and Bird Sanctuary proudly display several participants’ paintings and topiaries. “The more exposure they have, the less stigma there is,” says Lima. Though many places in the city recognize the UMAR logo, the organization does not define its artists.

UMAR nourishes its participants’ skills and sets the stage, but the artists’ talents are their own. IDD alone does not characterize them, and the association is not the miracle that bestows their voices.

UMAR lays the groundwork for its members to glow. They aren’t exchanging three bold, incriminating letters for four more, and the organization does not take responsibility for their identity. As the lights flicker off and the day draws to a close, the participants hang their dripping canvases to dry, caked in colors of their own design

The Green Turtle, Aryianna Ihnatava ’21 watercolor

Feature 37

38 Roars & Whispers

Bioluminescence, Abigail Welch ’20 photography

outside

B NES emma washburn ’22

T

he Saturday Jeanie died, the antlers disappeared off the stag that hung over the fireplace, a bad omen. I squinted at the place where the bones cracked off the beast. I only dared to peek at the forest through my peripheral vision.

The little girl dragged heavy feet through the frost baked underbrush. The air bit down on her bare fingers and toes, but she felt nothing. The trees surrounding her were increasing in size, the bark scratched off in places far, far above the ground. The little girl’s eyes remained open, staring straight forward. She didn’t blink. A thin layer of ice began to gloss over them.

Jeanie adored the twenty-seven feet of dead grass behind our house. She dragged me outside to show me empty snail shells or abandoned birds’ nests.

After seventeen years of living in these woods, I avoid prolonged exposure to their empty chill. The trees lurk on the edge of the unknown, empty. Jeanie told me about her imaginary friends that called to her from deep in the trees, beckoning her a little deeper, a little farther. She said their voices echoed like cracks over frozen lakes, reaching crooked fingers that halt at the shore. She said they promise to be with her forever.

Those stories sent shivers scratching down my neck. I told her never to listen to them. I told her the forest was

a graveyard for girls like us.

The little girl dragged a heavy bone in both hands. Dried blood rusted the sides. The bone thudded hollow when she rapped it against the trees. If she could move her chapped lips, she’d whistle to the sound that rang in her frostbitten ears.

Singing. She could hear singing.

I heard the voices too, once, but I didn’t have a sister to warn me. I stood where the grass died at the roots of ancient trees, listening: “Come here, child. Come closer. Just a few feet. Come talk to me. Come cry to me. Come to me, dear. We’ll love you forever out here.

We’ll love you. Don’t you want to be loved?”

Ghost stories and superstition never scared me, but I stayed inside from then on. The voices stopped calling out to me eventually.

Pine needles dropped like daggers and stuck to the saturated linen of the little girl’s nightgown. Three long gashes oozed brown, like mud down her skeletal frame. Her vertebrae sat dull and gray where the skin was broken.

She didn’t breathe anymore. She heard a rattling, like the windchimes on the front porch.

Mother and Father won’t let me look at the body. They say it’s too horrible, too sad. Words like trauma and unnecessary appear in How To Deal With Grief pamphlets. It’s not that I want to see the body. I don’t. I want to know what

happened to her, why no one will tell me what happened. Everything I know is carved out of newspapers and whispered rumors.

The little girl’s steps slowed.

I know she was in only a nightgown, barefoot, but Jeanie hated the cold. She dressed in layers, suffocating herself in shirts and scarves and winter jackets until her figure became blurred and comical.

Jeanie hated the taxidermy deer. She refused to go near it, ever. She begged Mother and Father to take it down.

Two antlers were stuck to the sides of the little girl’s head. Her hair was twisted into knots around the sharp edges where she’d cracked them off. They were lopsided. A sharp branch from one of them was stabbed into her head, just above where her ear was starting to crumble. The blood trickled from where she was impaled and began to freeze.

She stopped. The little girl tilted her head up.

The blood from the wound leaked into her ear.

Antlers. When they found her, they said she had antlers.

Two glowing yellow eyes penetrated the darkness and fog. The little girl stared deep into them. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t run.

Slowly, slowly the head of the creature emerged from the barrier of fog. From the jagged antler branches of the beast hung pairs of small antlers, tangled together in knots of human hair.

The little girl did not look up at her demise and the promise of what she had become

Fiction 39

40 Roars & Whispers

gardener

makings of a

Chlorophyll runs through her veins.

Dirt shimmers like polish under woodchip nails just scratching her potential.

Leaves crunch like apples under ladybug printed boots searching the terrain.

The naïve pads of her fingers brush against his, and he stains her skin with oak.

His poison oils are her war paint.

Daffodils weed their way into her joints.

The pain is sewn into her garden, and the leaves deflate.

So she reaches for a rusty shovel and digs up his roots.

- Julia Sands ’21

Fleeting Life, Ragen Munavalli ’20 acrylic

Poetry 41

hands FUTURE’S

DIYA BHATT ’22

poorly designed and can compromise user data; they also encourage technology addiction, which the team focused on as a primary issue. The next step required research and creativity as the students continued research and generated creative solutions to the problems. Every member contributes to this step, but Harrison assigned the task of writing the final action plan to the strongest writer, her daughter Kate. While research is important, Harrison says the biggest driver for her team’s success is the

”

S

urrounded by the hissing of 4-D printers and genetically engineered reptiles, fifth graders brainstorm solutions for the decline in biodiversity. While it seems impossible that young minds can process such complicated topics, participants of the Future Problem Solvers, no matter what their age, are empowered to explore.

Founded by Dr. E. Paul Torrance to spark creativity in the younger generation, Future Problem Solving International (FPS) is a competitive organization that inspires kids to solve real-world problems.

Competitors record possible challenges in a future scenario and narrow them down to one underlying problem. They then brainstorm solutions and develop an action plan that effectively addresses the issue. Hannah Harrison describes the process as similar to the scientific method, an asset for kids as they tackle this year’s topic, gamification.

Harrison coaches several teams, and her most successful group includes four eighth graders who began their journeys four years ago. The team collected research on gamification, specifically the use of game mechanics in non-game contexts like websites and learning platforms. Familiar platforms like Kahoot and Facebook are based on this concept. The team then identified underlying problems with gamification.

For example, gamified apps are often

Harrison says the biggest driver for her team’s success is the diversity in the members’ thinking.

”

diversity in the members’ thinking. “You have to have balance,” she says. “It’s really about the chemistry of the group.”

Participants compete at the state level to advance to the International Competition (IC), which Harrison says is brimming with fun activities to keep the kids engaged. Following the main competition, the kids have a chance to showcase their creativity with a skit describing their action plan. In addition, IC hosts activities like a dance and a scavenger hunt. Harrison explains that the interaction with participants from

around the world offers her kids fresh perspectives on the problem-solving process, builds their communication skills and opens their minds to new ideas. She says that she has seen their proposed solutions emerge a few years later. As a competitor, Harrison proposed a floating device that collects trash as a solution to the problems created by ocean debris, and researchers are currently working on similar ideas: “What we learned about happened, but happened a little faster.”

Although Future Problem Solvers already has a global outreach, Harrison wants to see more expansion within the local community. She is pushing for more funding for teachers to lead clubs since she sees the problemsolving process is crucial to shaping kids’ futures. Harrison believes that Future Problem Solvers played a key role in inspiring her daughter Kate to address issues in the real world. After researching solutions to environmental issues, Kate was inspired to organize several environmental marches within Charlotte. Through expansion in the local community, Harrison believes that this organization can have a similar impact on other kids. “It’s given her the belief that she can make changes and solve problems,” she says. To Harrison and her fellow coaches, one thing is clear: the future is in safe hands

Chiaroscuro, Brandon Bell ’22 scratchboard

42 Roars & Whispers

43

Syzygy, Caroline Palermo ’20 digital

44 Roars & Whispers

I need her to hold me clean because I cannot purify the filth branded into my collarbone in the shape of a crucifix.

I need her to show me I don’t have to spend hours scrubbing away what I feel for her, scratching at the sin blistering my body.

The redder my skin gets, the rawer my shame feels.

At best, I am a fraud, a fake, a phase.

At worst, I don’t have the right to exist.

Guilt is the harsh stench of aloe and cucumber soap, but her sweatshirt smells like gentle freedom, and her palms collect my dust.

Humming, the warm vibrations of her body ease my cellophane bones crumpling into the soft pulp of my organs.

I long to press my hands against her safety net ribs so I know I am not the only one breathing between the bedsheets.

I long for her to rest my ear against her heart and whisper through its rhythm that one day God won’t tell me love is wrong, and I am wrong.

But I am silent because when her gentle palms fade condemnation from my bloodstream, a solitary pulse echoes in my hands, and I don’t know the difference between comfort and uncrossable lines.

My rattling fingers release their grip on her jersey cotton sweatshirt; they want to linger between her butterfly ribs, counting the wings of her sternum flying in cadence to her heart.

She trusts me, and I trust her, but I don’t trust myself with her.

I don’t trust myself not to love her.

Her hands aren’t mine to hold, yet she assures me I will breathe again.

- Abigail Welch ’20

Poetry 45

not a saint ella rasmussen ’21

i

t might be a beautiful day in the neighborhood, but in Marielle Heller’s biographical drama, the only luster comes from nostalgia for Mister Rogers’s red sweater and smile. Heller’s technicolor callbacks to the original show attempt to make A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood another Tom Hanks classic, but the film ultimately struggles to deliver its message—that genuine kindness can triumph over cynicism.

Esquire magazine assigns world-weary journalist Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys) to write a feature article on Fred Rogers (Tom Hanks), host of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Lloyd scrambles to uncover Fred’s true character and flaws, unable to accept that his sweetness is more than a child friendly persona. At the same time, Lloyd’s estranged father (Chris Cooper), who abandoned him after his mother’s death, tries to reconcile with him before he dies. As his father’s health declines and his wife (Susan Kelechi Watson) grows more and more distant, Lloyd discovers that Fred’s altruism is more than skin deep.

Though the film intends to depict the power of human altruism, its underdeveloped characters weaken the delivery. While those close to Rogers repeat that he is not a saint, his flaws never manifest onscreen. In the privacy of his home, playing the piano with his wife, Fred maintains the same soft tone and saintly patience. In the public eye fans adore him wherever he goes, and

46 Roars & Whispers

he never breaks character. Though, in the words of his wife, his kindness is meant to be attainable by anyone, it is so unwavering that it feels like a distant mask. Lloyd, too, suffers from rushed characterization. He never pays for his mistakes. When his wife berates him for abandoning her at the hospital to work on his feature, he explains his feelings until they tearfully hug. In the space of a single scene, she forgives him for deserting his son and dying father, and their instant resolution detracts from the development of his own flaws.

When the reactions from his friends and family are unwarranted and artificial, the film’s insistence that Fred’s kindness changes those around him is ultimately unconvincing.

For a film that intends to tackle cynicism, it mishandles the plot’s darker threads. Lloyd’s struggle with the impending death of his father is supposedly the core conflict, but the movie’s overwhelming focus on Fred eclipses his passing entirely. The screenplay then forgets his death, which is offscreen, by cutting to the show’s set immediately after the funeral. The original Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood takes care to discuss grief in a way that children can understand; ignoring Lloyd’s own loss does not do justice to the real Fred’s lessons on grieving.

The movie’s attempts to handle Fred’s burden, that of bearing his guests’ grief, are also sparse. When Lloyd asks him

how he copes with their hardships and his own troubles, Fred simply smiles and offers no response. The narrative dismisses Fred’s personal grief, and the audience never sees any semblance of the pain that makes him human.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood delivers on one of its promises: nostalgia.

Tom Hanks’s performance of the original show’s opening theme invokes memories of lying on the living room carpet, staring at the wide television screen. Each establishing shot of the environment is a toy model with plastic buildings and a dangling cutout moon straight from Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. A typical drama would include gray angles of city streets, but the film’s stylized transitions are refreshing references to the original show. Still they cannot compensate for the stagnant characters and undeveloped thematic threads. The attention to the Mister Rogers’ classics only cements the promise that the film leaves half-fulfilled: a heartwarming nostalgia trip portraying a down-toearth Fred Rogers through the lens of the journalist he transforms.

It’s a neighborly day for a visual beauty, but ultimately an unsatisfying one. As the lights shine warmly over toy trains and wooden houses of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, the film captures the magic of the host’s personality without a realistic portrayal. Unfortunately, its nostalgia does not overwrite the ground it leaves uncovered The Biggest Pile, Bhavana Veeravalli ’20 colored pencil and ink

Review 47

Matthew 15:4 Nneoma Uche ’21

t

here are three of us kids in the house when I first realize that my life is not my own. We are sitting on the floor, arms by our sides, spines ramrod straight and eyes snapped in rapt attention. No one dares to turn their gaze from my father who, as if possessed by the Holy Spirit itself, recites the gathering prayer.

Saturday mornings begin promptly at nine when the warbling tones of my mother’s voice echo from our parents’ bedroom. She sings the same songs each time: a medley of Nigerian spirituals that glorify God in Igbo. At eleven years old, my grasp of language is tenuous at best. I can pick up on interjections and commands yet falter in everyday conversation. To this day Gbsara m nmin is carved indelibly on my brain: fetch me water.

We stumble into the bedroom, bracing ourselves for another hour of half-understood worship. My father asks the Lord to pour the Blood of Jesus Christ upon us, raising his hands up to the heavens, lifting his prayer on high.

His eyes are closed, hands outstretched.

My mother is the same, lids shut, eyebrows furrowed, a chorus of amens on her lips.

There is a visceral, almost primal urge pleading for me me to do the same: to lift my

arms, to cast my cares unto

48 Roars & Whispers

the Lord, but I ignore it. My brothers stare stoically, lips pressed into thin unfeeling lines, and I choose to copy them.

“As Chukwudi goes to take his ACT, Lord, we ask you to bless him.

Bless him with knowledge, wisdom and understanding. Show your hand at work in his life. Let him not disgrace this family.” My father’s words stir something inside me. My eyes fill inexplicably with tears, and goosebumps crawl up on either side of my arms. I’m eleven now, but in five years, I will be in the same place. I will be preparing for the ACT, preparing for a top score, preparing for a glossy acceptance letter to an Ivy League of my choice, and preparing, above all, to give glory to God and my parents. It clicks for me then. My life is a trust fund.

It is locked away in a safe somewhere, hidden from my eyes and guarded by a key only my father can open (and I guess, logically, Jesus. He is capable of all things. Our omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent God.) When I turn eighteen, it will open. I’ll take my life, and I’ll grasp it between my fingers, and it will be mine, undoubtedly and irrevocably. I’m eleven when I mutter a quick prayer under my breath, begging for my eighteenth birthday to hurry.

Chukwudi scores a 33. It’s an incredible score, and he tells me first. I nearly sprain my ankle jumping in my excitement. What honor! What glory! My

parents brag about him to all their friends.

There’s not a phone call that year that doesn’t begin with my mother’s voice: “Look what my son has done!”

Chinemere lands a 35. My parents aren’t just proud, they’re ecstatic. They shower him in praises. They kiss his face; they buy him anything he asks for.

“Why are you crying?” Chinemere asks, thumbing a calloused finger under my cheek. I grin widely. I grin so widely that my cheeks hurt for hours after I stop.

“I’m just happy. I’m just so, so happy.”

I’m sixteen years old. I’ve studied every practice book I can get my hands on. The clerk at my local Barnes & Noble knows me personally, and we build a sort of clumsy rapport. She waves to me every weekend, watching as I settle down in the back with a hot drink and a bundle of Princeton Reviews under my arm. She tells me she admires my dedication. She tells me that she knows I’ll go far no matter what I score on the test. I can only offer her a weary smile, a whispered thank you. There’s not much else to be said.

When I go to bed, I see math formulas behind my eyes. My fingers twitch to the cadence of a rhythm I’ve known since I was young. Three-six, three-six, threesix. I can’t breathe without thinking about

it. I can’t sleep, can’t eat. The burden of my family’s reputation consumes me.

It eats at me daily, picking pieces from the edges and leaving me tattered and breathless. I am a carcass of a girl.

I’m sixteen when I begin to resent my older brothers. A 35? They left me with no room to fail, no room to breathe.

There’s only a 36 left for me. Eighteen times two.

My brothers are gone now. It’s just me and my parents in the house. Every Saturday morning, my mother sings me awake with her Nigerian spirituals. We gather, we pray. My father asks the Lord to pour the Blood of Jesus Christ upon us. He recites the same prayers. Though our numbers are dwindling, we still count a quorum.

“When two or three are gathered in Your name, You are near.”

This time, when my father stretches his arms up to God, I follow suit. I join in duet with my mother. I profess my faith in the only way I know how: in prayer. I ask the Lord to bless me with knowledge, wisdom and understanding.

I ask Him to show His hand at work in my life, to guide me as I take my test. I ask Him to not let me bring shame upon my family. The childish hope I wished for as an eleven-year-old resurfaces timidly, lifting its head and making itself known, if only for a moment.

Won’t my eighteenth birthday hurry

Clarinet, Ava Johnson ’21 colored pencil

Personal Narrative 49

50 Roars & Whispers

Flavors of Ambrosia, Lisa Zhang ’22 watercolor

born AGAIN Mother always clung to my hands, even when I stood rooted by her side.

She told me that distance brings change and danger looming over the sweetness of my youth.

She nurtured me as a helpless sapling in a forest of evergreens.

She shaded me from creeping branches awaiting my decay.

But buried deep in her cavernous body, I suffocated under her smothering grip.

Finally free from her worrisome eyes I feed my lust for exploration in the tangerine sun, letting the sugary beams saturate my skin.

The land shifts me to a flat, barren desert, empty from the familiarity of home, but Mother’s seeds of love hang in tendrils in the air, and under the hazy, blazing sun, I grow again.

- Bhavana Veeravalli ’20

Poetry 51

THE LIZARD INCIDENT will asby ’20

stole a plastic lizard, and it changed my life forever.

In fourth grade my teacher had a prize box filled with cheap toys and candy and other such things. Usually that kind of thing is aimed at younger students, but for whatever reason it was there. You got to pick something out of the prize box when you answered difficult questions correctly or got a good grade on a quiz. I never bothered trying to make use of the prize box since I figured that the reward wasn’t worth the effort. That changed with the arrival of the lizard. I saw it during math: a green, rather realistic-looking plastic lizard protruding slightly from the box, its tail dangling in the breeze of the air conditioning. As a little kid I used to chase lizards that looked quite a bit like this one around our driveway, trying to catch them. When I caught sight of the lizard, the memories were rekindled, and I found myself really wanting that plastic toy reptile.

I raised my hand dutifully at least twenty times, always to questions I knew I could answer, but it was to no avail; I was not called on once. Before I knew it the day was about to end, and I was flooded with

fury. Desperate times, I decided, called for desperate measures, so I steeled my resolve and made my move. As we lined up preparing to exit the school, I sidled up beside the prize box and snatched the lizard with what I thought was a great deal of ease and inconspicuousness. My delusions were soon brought to a close, however, and after about five seconds of sweet, glorious victory, I was left with the taste of defeat, ashen and bitter. My teacher, with all the subtlety and care of a hurricane, stormed over and dragged me into her office, which I knew wasn’t a good sign. Kids who got sent in there didn’t come out unpunished. The teacher mercilessly and systematically explained that stealing was wrong, that what I had done was wrong, and when I tried to explain that I had been offered no other options, that I was wrong too.

She then produced a form. I was to give it to my parents and return it to her with their signatures.

This, unsurprisingly, was a pretty large setback. I’d been hoping for a sleepover at my friend Will’s house with some other compatriots, but that wouldn’t be happening if my parents

Lucky, Ella Rasmussen ’21 colored pencil and pen

54 Roars & Whispers

grins probably had something to do with our esteem. They periodically spoke to my friends and me in passing, usually some joke about the middle school’s dean that I would only really get two years later or a warning that the cafeteria janitor was in a lousy mood, so we should really save that blackjack game we’d been planning for another day.

Needless to say, I was surprised by their

”

found out about my new criminal record. I was stuck, and all I could do was wait in the courtyard for my parents to come pick me up. The courtyard was where most kids waited, and it was no secret as to why; at this time of year the trees were all ablaze in yellow and orange and crimson red, but they still offered some shade from the bright fall sun. The worn brown bricks were comforting to the soles of one’s shoes, and the general atmosphere was calming, a good way to round off a long day of worksheets, bickering and, in my case, grand theft.

Even the courtyard’s cool brown bricks couldn’t stop my heart as it plummeted straight to the Earth’s molten core, for I knew I was, in the eloquent words of my friend Thomas, “totally screwed.”

My glum reverie was disturbed by two pairs of shoes taking seats on opposite ends of the wooden bench where I awaited the blue minivan that would be acting as my prison bus for the day. I looked up and found, to my shock, a pair of sixth graders, the resident kings of all that was cool. I’m not really sure what specifically it was about them, but their general nonchalance, easy wit and quick

I did, of course, learn a very valuable lesson: fraud pays off when you can get away with it.

”

sudden presence and almost too shocked to answer Edwin’s question.

“What’s the deal, man? You look devastated.”

While it was somewhat humiliating, I reluctantly told them about the events that would later be known colloquially as The Lizard Incident.

After the pair laughed for a moment, Matthew asked if there was anything

the two of them could do.

“I don’t think so. My parents have to sign this form, and—” Matthew cut me off as Edwin smirked.

“They don’t have to sign it, there just has to be a signature that looks like theirs.

Do you happen to have a copy of your dad’s signature anywhere?”

As it happened I did, in the form of some permission slip from a field trip that had been stuffed into the bottom of my bag.

Edwin uncrumpled it carefully as Matthew removed a fancy-looking pen from his bag.

The forgery probably wasn’t all that great in retrospect, but it was apparently good enough. My teacher asked no questions, and my parents were none the wiser until years later, which is another story. This was the first and last time I ever had a signature forged. I did, of course, learn a very valuable lesson: fraud pays off when you can get away with it. I got to go to my friend’s house, my teacher got to satisfy her overzealous sense of justice, my parents got to think their son was well-behaved, and the plastic lizard eventually had the privilege of becoming mine anyways when I legitimately won it a few weeks later. Everybody won, but I won the most

Humor 55

PICKING PICKING PICKING PICKING

picking My mind lights up at the mention of strawberry jam.

I feel the cool metal basket rub against my skin as I impatiently wait in line, the sea of green bursts with red, seconds away from picking.

The cobblestone crunches beneath my feet as I breathe air stagnant with a trace of berry.

I walk over and spot the perfect bush.

And so, I start picking.

The sweat tickles the hairs on our necks; the paralyzing heat swarms us like wasps.

Yet, I still keep picking.

I feel every thorn pricking my prints.

Others sprint to the holy car for air while jealousy and betrayal churn in my gut.

Yet, I still keep picking.

The red orb in a maze of leaves.

The plunk of the berry hitting the basket.

The texture of the ripe and juicy strawberry.

The color so vibrant it could dye wool with one touch.

Yes, I still keep picking.

- Sabrina Mercado ’21

56 Roars & Whispers

Connection, Melanie Calabrese ’20 scratchboard

Poetry 57

58 Roars & Whispers

G GALÁTISTA

A quiet, cool wind swept the scent of rosemary, apricots and honey through the balcony.

The buzzing cicadas echoed against the mountain range.

As the blue and white flag beat angrily against the growing wind, the nostalgic sky dripped with pink, lilac and orange.

I was overcome by a sense of innocent happiness.

The archaic radio atop the small white fridge boomed with voices of Greek stars long forgotten, voices heavy with passion and life.

The blush pink kitchen walls were speckled with framed sentimental photographs, familiar faces I never met, tainted in vintage magenta.

I saw the memories she held of me as an infant.

She caught my gaze and smiled.

In her eyes, the memories of her youth, with a lovely beige, peplum suit and a matching skirt, dark chocolate hair sprayed high, and a thin, humble smile. “µáτια μοu” my sweet eyes, she said as she held my hand in hers.

- Vasiliki Gkoulgkountina ’20 Society, Maddalena Maretto ’20 collage

Poetry 59

60 Roars & Whispers

tuesday at the center

OF THE UNIVERSE emma washburn ’22

I

t’s Tuesday morning, and they’ll be here soon. My feet pitter-patter down the stairs like heavy rain drops and drift all the way to school down the sidewalk, hover cars passing at light speed and making my hair, satchel and baggy shirt float like ghosts behind me while I walk. I duck behind a lamppost before the patrol drone passes. My clothes are out of code, and I am hoping that if no surveillance bots catch me my teachers won’t turn me in either.

They’re more lenient today.

The drone beeps as it surveys the sidewalk for any illegal chalk drawings or wads of outlawed chewing gum. My wrist beeps, a countdown of five minutes carving itself into my skin with harsh, neon green numbers. “God, I hate autosequiturs,” I groan, swinging the satchel higher on my shoulder as I burst into a run toward the school. A flick of panic stirs in my chest as I remember hearing an argument about whether or not autosequiturs record our conversations.

Clearly, it knows and reports our locations since it knows I’m not at school yet. I would’ve skipped otherwise.

First period. Second period. Savior funded, vegan, gluten-free slop for lunch. Third period. Study hall. Fourth period. Assembly and Savior pledge.

Detention and lashings for being late and out of dress code. Back home at five. My

day is numb. Words dance off hologram screens, and numbers melt into puddles of tears. It doesn’t matter that nothing can come into focus. It’s Tuesday afternoon, and they’ll be here soon.

I stand empty in the doorway to my house. I am an astronaut in the vast cosmos of space, fighting against an unseeable, unconquerable, unfeeling universe. There is no one here but me.

For legal and cowardly reasons, Savior refuses to pronounce my parents dead but has the courtesy of allowing me to refuse placement in a foster home. I live in a graveyard, a lonely graveyard, with two stories and a stovetop burner that doesn’t work and a stair that creaks and a wobbly leg on the dining room table.

I shrug off my bag on the kitchen counter, stepping over the meal rations unceremoniously thrown through my mail slot. I flip on the switch to the kitchen, and the incandescent lightbulb flickers on with a sharp hum. Scraps of old calendars and posters still stick to the cracked beige walls where Disciples ripped them off. Savior will provide all we need, we were promised. Promises and promises and promises. Individual expression will cause offense and war and hatred, chips in your arm will tell you everything you need to know, a curfew and stricter law enforcement will cease all crime, eliminating opinionated news sites will

AnnMarie, Melanie Calabrese ’20 oil

Fiction 61

tuesday at the center of the universe continued

prevent bigotry, blah, blah, blah.

I was young when Savior rose to power, young when great politicians’ heads rolled down the steps of the White House and riots and parties filled the streets. They called themselves Savior because oppression and hatred were

only music allowed is Savior sponsored.

I can’t stand the vagueness of it all, the absence of anything remotely unique or personal. Sometimes I’ll hear a hum of an old, forbidden song, or someone will quote a part of a long-gone book, and I’ll remember what we used to

”

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and the path to my rooftop is through my bedroom window.

”

over; ignorance and bias would be incinerated, and everyone was hopeful for our new leaders clothed in pure white with faces shiny and bright.

And now, this. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and the path to my rooftop is through my bedroom window. But not yet. It’s not here yet. I retreat to the desk in my room.

I strike my homework, whipping through math problems and biology questions with a silent stench of fury that chokes my throat with plastic tears. The

62 Roars & Whispers

have. I work in silence, the only sound the clicks of my keyboard.

I look at my autosequitur, where the numbers burn “19:00” into my corneas.

I blink a few times, turning to face the window where the sun stains the clouds with the pink and orange chalk streaks that aren’t allowed on sidewalks anymore.

It’s Tuesday evening, and they’ll be here soon.

If I squint hard enough, the sunset becomes a blur, and I can remember when my parents left. The government

before Savior was really invested in space exploration. My parents were astronauts and the perfect candidates to explore a newly discovered anomaly in space. The journey there should’ve taken five years, then six months of data collection, and then five years to return home. Every two years into the journey, new supplies would be sent in a faster transportation vehicle: oxygen, food and even entertainment.

The government had set up some satellite dish contraption on my roof so I could talk to my parents every night. I was five years old with a robotic nanny and a cheap plastic medal for my courage.

Less than two years later, Savior rose up and destroyed everything.

Savior announced it would terminate all previous government projects to separate itself from the disgusting administration in place. Any military machine was trashed. Any scientific study ended. The supplies for my parents were discarded. When I tried to protest, I was silenced, my robotic caretaker smashed into spare parts, and the

satellite dish disabled. Savior managed to wipe everything involving my parents, disintegrating their names like the chalk dust washed off the street by their bots.

I do the math secretly, tracing the numbers onto my hands with my fingers.

Everything is digital; everything leaves a mark reported to Savior, and I can’t risk them knowing I am still thinking about the people they let die. My parents ran out of oxygen seven years ago.

Every Tuesday, around eight o’clock, you can see the anomaly my parents were going to research. I check my autosequitur and stand. It’s time.

I have to be quiet. Curfew is at seven, but my autosequitur can’t tell that I’m on the roof of my house and not inside it.

Everyone compares the night sky to sleep, but it’s really after the sun sets that the sky wakes up. Constellations form pictures I can’t draw anymore, reciting tales I can’t tell anymore—and there, shining slightly dimmer than the rest, is the grave of my parents. I run my hands

down the rough edges of the rooftop shingles, leaning back to get a better view of the last painting left in all of creation. I hold my breath. If I am quiet enough, I can almost hear the earth breathe.

And I am lying in the center of the universe and staring out at lonely constellations. And I am dreaming about where my parents float, untethered in the vast cosmos. And I am crying, but gravity cannot drag teardrops down my cheeks. And I am closing my eyes, trying to sketch outlines of the last two people I ever knew. And I am falling asleep, knowing what tomorrow will bring and the day after that and the day after that.

And now, I open my eyes to the beep of the morning alarm for school, like I will do every day until the galaxy collapses on itself and wipes everything out for good.

I sigh, looking out the window to the same exact streets and the same cars and the same people doing the same things they do every day now. It’s Tuesday morning, and they’ll be here soon

Fiction 63

66 Roars & Whispers

Ella Rasmussen ’21

OCCIPITAL W

hen I was four years old, I climbed in a tin can and flew to the moon. I packed fire underneath the lid, and it licked the air behind me with a gold tongue.

Like a big dog. Sometimes I could see the stars outside the ribbed windows.

Later on Earth, I tapped out my first sentence on a keyboard. My fingers were soft. Too meaty to move as fast as Mom’s. When I was four years old, I got muddy. I put leaves in my hair, and I touched soft insects with gritty hands. I cried openly, with pink cheeks.

When I was ten years old, I was clean.

I diagrammed sentences with red pens and ran my fingers under faucets over and over and over. Smelled like dish soap and learned about pesticides, commas and fear. I’d known fear before. I knew the way the hall light wavered with imaginary footsteps outside the door, and the fear of haunted houses and snakes in the bathtub and bitter vegetables. This fear was new and circular, frantically chasing me if my nails were dirty. Over the marble sink I washed my hands again. When I was ten years old, my reflection was distorted in the metal faucet, obscured by a film of toothpaste stains.

When I was fourteen years old, I began keeping papers, receipts and thank-you cards in plastic bags. They stacked up

around me in towers, sliding piles of crinkling beige, like the columns of a corn maze. I was horrendous at mazes.

Navigating corridors of deadlines and brain matter, I buried my head in shades of white. Between cramming silences with noise, I bit my nails until the cuticles were bee-stung, like the lips of French ladies in Renaissance paintings.

The walls piled higher with each trip to the store for milk, with each party, with each takeout napkin or barbeque menu that held the residue of moments spent without working. They loomed, stone idols casting long gray shadows over my staggered hours of sleep, each one stolen from beneath their feet, a bowl of fruit or a neighborhood pet escaping from their hinged fingers. When I was fourteen years old, I could not find Ariadne.

When I turned sixteen, I spun a red ball of thread, constructing it out of fibers of meditation tapes, science fiction and dozens of helping hands.

I remembered the tin can, what it felt like to fly and the metal ribbing packed with flames. The thread unfurled across the shifting passageways, and I made my pilgrimage, finding my way by fire. When I turned sixteen, the walls shifted, and I saw starlight

Slice of Sunshine, Anne Dancausse ’22 acrylic

Personal Narrative 67

68 Roars & Whispers

L Train, Rachel Spransy ’20 colored pencil

f

lux

The rain cannot hide the boarded windows, the chipped paint, the homes tainted with graffiti.

Metal gates slump into the ground, no longer strong enough to hide the secrets that stain their walls.

Her fingers tremble as they meet the cool knob.

Silently, she pleads that the gods let her witness where it all went wrong and ease her conscience into a steady resignation.

Petrichor greets her first. It kisses her ivory skin, guiding her back to ripening tomatoes and sugar snaps.

Aged paper stained with Crayola Twistables still hangs on the neglected fridge, awaiting the return of the lost.

Worn leather and running stitches are glazed over in a film of dust. Particles drift off the vellum mementos, and the pages are waterlogged, yet the peace signs and bunny ears captured by Polaroids make up for the ripped pages and shaky calligraphy.

Regret comes easy, but living never has.

- Caroline Palermo ’20

Poetry 69

pulling off the

INVISIBILITY CLOAK Omotayo Fasan ’20

O

pening a new book is like peeking into a wardrobe and finding the land of Narnia where dust bunnies and missing socks reside. Starting a new series is like receiving a letter with my acceptance to Hogwarts. I use books to explore places beyond the boundaries of space and time, but I realized I was stuck visiting the same people and dimensions. None of the heroes I read about in books looked like me. In fact, I had never read a story about a black girl in fantasy until I picked up A Blade So Black by L.L. McKinney. The cover of her book depicted a reimagined Alice from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as a sword-wielding, bisexual black girl.

Black Girl Magic finally came alive in my hands.

If black girls don’t possess power in fiction, there is no hope of gaining control over our reality. I internalized that I was not special enough to have magic. I accepted that only whiteness had a place in fantasy, an ironic notion for a genre that prides itself on making the unreal tangible. This lack of representation manifested itself

70 Roars & Whispers

as a “No Results Found” page on Halloween websites as I searched for magical black girl costumes. While reading the Throne of Glass series, I skimmed through the violent death of Nehemia, the only black female character, to read about the white protagonist Celaena’s reaction to her death instead. I did not even stop to consider how this poor treatment of black women inflicted psychological trauma on my young brain. My favorite authors forgot about me. Stuck on the Island of Lost Toys, I became hungry for the stories about girls with dark skin manipulating water and girls with afros jumping through time and space.

I wanted to be freed from our limited collective imagination.

Confused, I searched for why there was such a profound gap in fantasy stories. I looked for answers but found only disappointment. There are no black vampires in Twilight. The only black character in The Hunger Games became a martyr for a white girl’s cause.

People like me do not exist in fantasy or serve as ornaments. This disturbing

reality plagued my mind until the words of Toni Morrison pulled me out: “It is what you don’t write that frequently gives what you do write its power.”

While fantasy allows authors to explore new realities, it remains tethered to elements of reality. Black girls like me aren’t allowed to be the Chosen One because we don’t get elected president, we aren’t homecoming queens, and we most definitely don’t get to be the hero. Systems of oppression loom over the imagination, so the very demons I use books to run from find me anyway.

I want to believe that this story will have a happy ending. Books like A Blade So Black and Children of Blood and Bone, a Nigerian fantasy novel, give me hope.

Octavia Butler’s novels that center black women in narrative about redefining the human body or interacting with extraterrestrial life provide some solace. I deserve the chance to slay a dragon, become a queen and put my name in the Goblet of Fire. I should have access to fantasy stories. Books are magical, and it’s time to let my Black Girl Magic shine through

Local, Ella Rasmussen ’21 charcoal

Personal Narrative 71

thanks SINCEREST

PATRONS

Dilworth Coffee Plantation The Fox Family Marcia Hamilton McKee Dental Byung Chul Park Manish and Monika Porwal Mr. and Mrs. Charles Ruifrok Jr.

The Sands Family Elena SepĂşlveda Urban Revolution Martial Arts Kurt R. Washburn The Zhang Family

Dish It Out Pottery Studio

Cathy and Chuck Ruifrok

Hannah Magraw Laura and Jon Moore Edward and Miculann Morse Pradeep and Rinshi

Swaim Family Keri and Charles Waddington Camille and Celie Waddington

Ann Aldridge Almeida-Renger Family The Bai Family Anthony and Katrina Britt Mrs. Lorraine Britt Emma Carter Gayatri Chopra Evelyn Chung Carson Crenshaw The Curtis Family Francis Music Studio Nancy and Christophe Genty Madison Gerdes Elizabeth Gray The Hignight Family

Dan and Rebecca Hignight Coach Hignight Mrs. Janet Isenhart Andrea Johnson and Michael Johnson ZoĂŤ Kaperonis Annabel Kaplan George and Kalyn Kingman The Kirkland Family Dana Lin Caroline Macurda Ella Mainwaring Foster McGirt Family Cody F. Miller Wayne and Jamie Osella Stephanie Osmond

The Pennells Dionne and Larry Sands Matt Seaman The Semeniuks Natalie Thulien Krishna Valiveti The Vega Family Erin Washburn Katherine Welch Joy Yochem

Roars and Whispers has served as the voice of Providence Senior High School students for twenty-five years. Each year reveals new talents in our writers, artists and photographers. Each year also presents new challenges we face with the support of our school community.

We thank the students whose verbal and artistic prowess defines the magazine.

We also thank Dr. Harrill and our school administration; Mrs. Leighton and Ms.

Simpson who inspire beautiful artwork; Mrs. Lazo who guides us through the financial labyrinth; Whitney Zydonik at Barnes & Noble Arboretum; Dawn Sigmund at ArtFest of Matthews; Alison Klopp for her invaluable counsel and Jostens for providing the medium for our expression.

Most importantly, we would like to thank Ms. Marva Hutchinson who brings the publication together.

Without her unwavering support, counsel, guidance and dry wit, the magazine (and we as individuals) would not reach and surpass the level of award-winning excellence our community has come to expect.

Though this issue of Roars and Whispers has ended, we know our voices will continue to resonate. Our publication is kept alive by your readership and support, and we are grateful

Bank of America* Bhatt Family Tim and Karin Britt Sophie Connolley Beth and Chris Cotton Chris and Carolyn Cotton Crystal and Bill Crawford

BENEFACTORS Crystal Crawford

CONTRIBUTORS Cayleigh Brown Nancy Connolley Dungar Dev The Gomez Family

FRIENDS

72 Roars & Whispers

Indicates former staff member *Matching grant program