UPPER MISSISSIPPI HARVEST

UPPER MISSISSIPPI

HARVEST

A Dedication to our amazing leader

Professor Shannon Olson has been the faculty advisor of the Upper Mississippi Harvest since 2011. As she is retiring this spring, we wanted to take a moment to express our appreciation and gratitude for all that Professor Olson has done for not just the literary magazine, but for the students and student editors of the English Department.

Professor Olson, a published author, creative writing professor at SCSU, advisor, and mentor has helped gain recognition for and put the UMH on the map. If it wasn’t for her, we simply wouldn’t be here today. Her knowledge, leadership, excellent sense of humor, and exceptional ability to engage her students and teach them how to be better writers and editors is invaluable.

It has been said, "A good teacher is like a candle – it consumes itself to light the way for others.” This is Professor Olson. She has given so much of herself to her students over the years, many of which have gone off to fulfill their dreams and are still writing and editing today.

We dedicate this 32nd issue of the Upper Mississippi Harvest to our mentor and teacher, Professor Shannon Olson. Thank you, from the bottom of our hearts, for everything you have done for us over the years. You will be so missed. Here’s to you, Professor, and to hoping you won’t have to press the goat anymore. Enjoy your retirement, you’ve earned it.

-The UMH Head Editors

Chinyin

Oleson

Leanne

Loy

A History of the Upper Mississippi Harvest

Since 1991, students in the English Department have produced the Upper Mississippi Harvest, SCSU’s annual literary and art journal, showcasing students' creative works. The journal itself has gone through many changes over the years, including its name. Starting in 1962, it was known as Parallels, then Sticks and Stones, followed by Wheatsprout and Crosscurrents, until we landed at the Upper Mississippi Harvest in 1991. Since then, we’ve gone from black and white pages to partial color and finally in 2017, due to our editors' volunteer fundraising work, we have been able to publish the journal in full color. Students from across the campus are encouraged to submit their creative pieces in the fall where they are evaluated through blind judging by our student editors. The journal is celebrated every spring during a release party where contributors are invited to read or present their published works.

As we celebrate the 32nd anniversary of the UMH, we want to acknowledge its history. Since 1962, the English Department’s staff and students have published over 60 issues of the literary and art journal and we are thrilled and proud to continue this tradition. Sit back, relax, and we hope you enjoy this year’s Upper Mississippi Harvest.

A Dream

The Fishmonger's Widow

The Trial (Golden Shovel) CJ Laudenbach

Recollection of a 5 am Sestina CJ Laudenbach

The Space Between Hearts

I love(d) you

The Rest of Forever

Oh, to be a toad/elegy to my

I am a Woman...Are you More?

Since a burning world is not simply a theory anymore

Time is Relative

When John and Mary Won

How to Write an Essay

What's

I Always Looked Back

Dette er det verste jeg har sett! (This is the Worst I have Seen!)

A dream

Victoria Faith Wellman

Soft as a sliver of smooth sleek silk on your cheek

I glide in the waters of your sleep

Wrapping you in a velvety cocoon

Comfortingly caring for you

I paint vivid illustrations in your mind

Of walks through the woods

As the sun casts a fiery glow

Slashing through the trees

It sets the world ablaze

I may guide your heart

And take away the dark

Within my depths lurks turbulent thoughts

They churn and bubble as waves of the ocean

These secrets slither sneakily into deeper waters of your mind

Uncovering your worst fears

I beat your mind till these memories are exposed

Then I shall throw them at you

Till your days are done

Peak Austin Saatzer

Time is Relative

Paige Verry

When you have to keep secrets your whole life, you eventually start to keep secrets from yourself. What you are taught and exposed to become core elements of who you are, and sometimes, like the disarray of new and old batteries scattered through the junk drawer, you mix up the things that hold power with the things that don’t.

Mom and Dad are divorced, so when you are old enough to have to decide who you will live with, you move in with Dad, because you think you’ll have more freedom and space there. Mom and Dad live just blocks away from each other in the same neighborhood, so you still see her from time to time.

When you come to find that Dad has political ties to biker gangs, an elaborate timer-operated lighting and sprinkler system powering a weed farm in the spare bedroom, and three unregistered guns with the serial numbers scratched off silently resting under the floorboards of your kitchen, you meet your friends at a centralized location in town instead of being picked up at your house. You say it’s easier than trying to find it by GPS, that you live way out in the sticks where the roads are confusing and there isn't any service. You text this from your wooden daybed in the front-most bedroom of your single wide trailer home that sits right on the outside of town, the double pane windows etched with forty years of seasons and lifetimes on both sides, just a few hundred feet from where you go to school.

You walk to class with headphones in because when they aren't in you can't pretend you're playing a character in a movie where the set will eventually be torn down, everyone will go home to their families and dinner tables, and things will be normal and nice. You try not to think about why you don't have a dinner table or why you never decorate for the holidays.

When you're on a camping trip for a family reunion in the Black Hills and Dad wakes up the campers on both sides with his drunken outburst, you try to look invisible by laying down flat in the shadowed part of the old, wooden picnic table next to the fire pit. You look up at the sky and wonder who is watching, and what the who is thinking.

Dad's girlfriend screams into the night, “I’ve had it! I’m done! I’m taking a police escort to the house when I get back to get my things! We’re done!”

You know what you need to do, call your uncle and tell him to clean out the weed-farm-room before she gets there. Your uncle says, “Don’t worry about a thing, Peanut. I’ll take care of it.” When one of the campers across the way yells out their screen door, “I’m calling the police!” you grab your shoes and run as fast and as far as you can, because you know if they find the drugs and guns in the camper, your dad will go to jail and you will go to foster care. It’s just better if they don't know he has a daughter.

Hours later, you walk back to the campsite where your grandmother tells you the police found Dad in a corner booth at Denny’s, shoeless, having a cup of coffee. You know that he did things this way to mock them, the same way he does when he gets pulled over and the officer asks, “Do you know why I pulled you over?” and he replies, “it depends on how long you’ve been following me.”

In the morning, after you and your grandmother bail Dad out of jail, you and him walk a quarter mile down the dirt road away from the campground to a culvert hidden in the brush, where his paraphernalia is tucked inside between two football-sized rocks. Over the hill you spot the flickering Denny’s sign. You begin to visualize and connect his careful steps through the darkness of the night in your mind like a film. You think he is brilliant. You feel special that he chose you for this recovery mission. You each take half of the baggies and pipes, Dad puts the guns in his backpack, and you stuff the rest in your coat pockets and pants, kick around some gravel and laugh off the night as if it’s already a distant memory.

Women come and go from your life like seasonal decorations in a department store. You create a ranking system for which ones you like least to most. Your favorite is Deb, ten years older than Dad, with her own house on a hill surrounded by flowers and vegetable gardens. Deb is a good influence on your dad — he stops drinking for a time and smokes less weed. Him and Deb come to one of your choir concerts, where dad cries. You use this memory as phantom validation for the next several years of extracurricular performances where you look up into the bleachers and he isn’t there. Dad decides he misses the rum, and Deb is gone.

You survive by getting lost in small things, in the dissociative beauty of the infinite number of paths you can walk from home to town, town to school, school to home. Some alongside the water, some through woodlands and backyards, others past baseball fields and abandoned buildings. You take note of which ones are most hidden, timing them out individually and memorizing the best escape routes in case you ever need them. You notice the way things appear and disappear, trees that hang too low over the road being taken from their roots, and housing complexes erected in what were once flat, empty fields.

Each time you move schools you try on a different personality. You know that no matter where you are, it isn’t permanent, that you can be anyone you want to be even if it doesn’t work, because you will get to try again, you’ll get to be something new. You learn a lot about other people this way, but nothing about yourself. You become the closest thing to a chameleon in human skin.

By the time you’re thirteen, you can shoot the center of a target from fifty yards away, drive a stick shift through a snowstorm, harvest weed plants, tell the time by the sun, know if someone is safe by understanding their eyes, and seven effective human pressure points for self defense; you know how to change a tire, cook chicken cordon bleu, how to ride a motorcycle, how to clean a place in a way that leaves no trace of you, the weight of an ounce with your eyes closed, and that time is relative.

Dad explains that when you’re five, a single summer is about one-twentieth of your life time. Because of this it feels really long and big and full of things. When you’re fifty, one summer's about one two-hundredth of your lifetime, so it feels much shorter and smaller. Dad says appreciate when time feels slow, because it only gets faster and faster as you get older, and at the end of it all, it just feels like footage.

When you near graduating highschool, you feel you’re graduating the end of your life. You’ve spent your childhood surviving, calculating, navigating. You’ve spent no time forming boundaries, figuring out who you are, what you want or where you’re going. You feel naked and fully clothed. You’re afraid of making decisions without approval or oversight. You’re used to following the directions and commands of an “all-knowing person,” and that authoritative all-knowing persons are the only ones you can trust. You sign up to join the Marine Corps. Dad hates this, so he doesn’t talk to you for months. When he finally speaks, he says, “I give the goddamn government half my paycheck, and now I have to give them my daughter too?”

You graduate high school on a Friday in May, and ship out for boot camp on the Monday that follows. By the time you’re eighteen, you can shoot a moving target from five-hundred yards away, fight off the body weight of someone twice your size, carry their dead weight on your shoulders across a football field, run three miles in twenty minutes, properly throw and shelter from a grenade, conceal yourself in any environment, tread water in full uniform for extended periods of time, dig a six foot hole with a tiny shovel and sleep in it, spot all entries and exits of a building in thirty seconds, completely disassemble and reassemble an M-16 service rifle, and survive three days on one meal, four hours of sleep, and sandy canteen water.

When you graduate boot camp, you feel invincible, like there’s nothing left on earth you cannot do. Now you are the closest thing to a chameleon in human skin dressed in camouflage. This is all you have, all you are.

Your first year in contract is hard. Everything you do and know is focused around being trained as a human weapon of mass destruction. You begin to yearn and daydream about a life where you are anything but a tool to be used in times of need. You are called only by your last name. You run through combat training exercises in the darkness of the morning on little sleep through mud-caked pathways, over hills, through the brush around and back and around and back again, sometimes carrying ammo cans, most times carrying people, always wondering if you will ever have to do it for real, in the disembodied fog of war surrounded by projectiles and horror, forever changed by your intimate encounter with mortality.

You’re stationed in Quantico, Virginia, your only means of escaping the mundane military machine are the weekends you can make it thirty miles north to Washington D.C., where you wander down busy sidewalks inhabited by every walk of life, through the night, the rooftop clubs, authentic noodle shops in the basements of skyscrapers, bars tucked away in dimly lit graffiti alley ways, the whole city moving and pulsing like the ocean, everything touching and changing everything else. You find respite in the comforting blanket of a warm buzz, the vibrations of wooden dance floors soaked in the liquid oneness of bodies and stories, being a stranger among strangers all gathered to feel something. You revel in the presence of the unknown, the need to be watchful and careful, the opportunity to use all you’ve learned through the pain you’ve endured.

On a light and warm Friday afternoon before the three-day weekend of the Fourth of July, a guy in your unit just a few years older than you says from across the room, “Where do you even go when you leave here, Verry? Nobody ever sees you in the barracks or the chow hall, it’s like you disappear and reappear. You’re an enigma.”

Your five-year contract feels long and slow, probably because it is about a quarter of your life time. Each time you visit home on the holidays you feel farther and farther removed, like staring at one of those beautifully staged portraits of a family you don't know–the one you’re meant to remove and replace with your own once you’ve bought the frame. When your time in contract finally comes to an end, you pack everything you own into your manual hatchback Ford Focus, and everything you’ve come to learn about the world and yourself into the already muddled file system of your spider-web brain. You take all of the adrenaline in your body and drive twentytwo hours straight across the country back to Minnesota with just four gas stops, three energy drinks, a coffee, and a bag of Sour Patch

Kids. The trees and sky change with each passing state line, and when you arrive home in your mother’s snow-covered driveway, you turn off the ignition, and for just a moment, sit in the silence of the frozen night. Your eyes grace over your dashboard, then up across your windshield. The car begins to feel like a time capsule, all of the things you have experienced in it, all of the things you’ve ever seen outside of the glass flashing across your mind's eye like a flare in the sky. Beaches, riots, funerals, parades, poverty, prestige, marathons, food trucks, monuments, busy streets, empty streets, seasons, desolate planes, mountains and cities made of light. The whole thing feels like a dream, like a movie set that’s been torn down and everyone’s gone home to their families and dinner tables.

You quietly walk inside, careful not to wake your family. For now, you bring only your Dress Blues uniform on a hanger. You hang it up in the back of your otherwise empty closet. You stand there and stare at it for a while until your face feels hot with tears, then you turn off the light and shut the door. Exhausted from a lifetime of sleep deprivation, an eternity of running and changing, a timeless episode of metamorphosis, you crawl into bed and drift off knowing that there is nothing, no one that you must wake up in the early hours of the morning for.

Mount Chimborazo 3

Upper Mississippi Harvest

Hunt - A Modern Folk Tale

Patrick Alderson

Nathaniel’s heart couldn’t stop racing with excitement. He strolled through the woodland, his thick, leather boots protecting him from the rough bite of the brambles and nettles that covered the land. He kept the musty trail sack close to the ground, its damp bottom marking the air perfectly. Nathaniel could smell its contents even now. And despite its horrid stink, a surge of pride fueled by adrenaline coursed through his muscles with every breath. This trail would get the hounds frantic in no time.

Nathaniel laughed to himself haughtily, looking back at the path he’d already cleared for the hunt. He’d had to go deep into the forest to make sure the trail strayed from the country path, but that wasn’t a problem. The deeper the better. The last thing any huntsman wanted was to have their day ruined by the senseless abuse hurled at them by those low-life cowards who drove past their party every year. Didn’t they have anything better to do? Nathaniel still fumed whenever he remembered the year his father had come home, his best vest drenched in what they’d all prayed was water but turned out to be…something else.

Disgust filled his mouth again and Nathaniel spat into the long grass that hissed like an adder with every crunching step. He scoffed and dragged the sack over a long patch of wildflowers, looking back at the indents his footprints made in their broken petals. Checking himself, he stared out from where he’d come from again. The footpath was far out of sight now, lost as Nathaniel had continued to craft his own maze for the hounds.

The growl of cars had long since subsided, muzzled by the twinkling cries of birds, the buzzing of flies, and the low hum of the afternoon wind as it made the fresh leaves dance.

The boy smiled to himself. There was no chance those saboteur idiots would make trouble now. They knew well that once they were out of public sight, that meant they were on private property. Which meant the hunters had every right to enforce the law.

Be it with or without bloody knuckles at the end of it.

Nathaniel snickered.

His father would be delighted with him. He’d always promised that the year Nathaniel turned sixteen, he’d treat him to his first taste of the annual hunt. And while his friends coveted the freedom of a driver's license or buying their own beer, Nathaniel’s desires ignited after the hold of his father’s prized rifle. His father had called him

to his study a week ago, and after sitting his son down beside the mantlepiece where he hung each of the fox tail trophies he collected every year, Christian Mawson allowed Nathaniel’s trembling hands to hold the family treasure.

Strangely, the gun had felt remarkably light in Nathaniel’s hands and he’d tried to look tall as he held it over his shoulder like a child carrying a stuffed animal. His father, the lead horseman of the constituency’s hunting party, had been surprised, but he’d soon burst into a proud stroke of laughter that made Nathaniel’s heart swell with joy.

“There’s a natural if I’ve ever seen one,” his father had bellowed, clapping his son on the back. “Be careful with that though. That isn’t a toy. That rifle has been a worthy partner for more than a decade.” His father’s mustache had curled the way it always did when he remembered the thrill of the hunt. “Since 1998 to be precise. Yes. That was a good year; I caught old Thomas then.”

Old Thomas was the stuffed tod his father kept adorned above the fireplace in his study. It had been fashioned with a small tweed jacket and a little cap above its glass eyes. Nathaniel knew the meaning of the trophy, but he’d always disliked it. Those eyes always seemed to be watching him whenever he crossed the filthy thing.

“Of course,” his father’s voice had lowered, and he’d begun to suck on his pipe. “That was before Mr. Blair made everything so much harder for us.” That name always sounded like poison on Father’s lips. “Before Westminster caved to the bleeding hearts from the city.” His lips smacked on the pipe bitterly. “Apparently we were criminals for protecting our traditions.”

“Rubbish!” Nathaniel had bellowed. He couldn’t help himself. It was no secret what those idiots from the city thought of the hunt. But what did they know? They celebrated Christmas every year, didn’t they? They had no right to judge the countryside for their own traditions. The hunt was a celebration of their culture, a chance for the community to get together and have some fun. The afternoon dinners at The Speckled Hen had been where Nathaniel had met some of his closest friends; they understood the importance of Yorkshire tradition.

And in the end, what did it matter if some red-tailed vermin got disposed of? They did nothing good for the forest. They just existed to steal precious produce from farmers, rifle through litter, and just be a damned nuisance for the land. Why should anyone care if the hounds got a bit of excitement out of them?

Oh well. It wasn’t like it mattered.

After all, the country soon realized that there were ways the hunt could continue. Even if it wasn’t the same, Nathaniel still

dreamed of the day he’d be following behind his father on the trail hunt, whooping and cheering as the hounds got into a frenzy on the thick scent. He could see himself with the army of men, striding atop brutish horses, bursting through the woods in their dazzling coats of red, a storm of power and action, drinking in the elation of the chase. And even if their triggers went untouched, the rifles would still be close at their sides, adorning them like scepters. For a few hours, they could roar with the electricity of being alive.

And if a few foxes were encountered on the trail. Well… it couldn’t be helped, could it? Hounds were hounds after all.

His father had refused to let Nathaniel ride the horses until he said he was properly prepared. But he had allowed Nathaniel the honor of marking the trail this year. That was enough for him. To be part of the hunt, in any way at all. That was enough for him.

Besides, Nathaniel had learned over the years the perfect tips for marking a trail. He knew just where to go to make sure it was the most exciting hunt.

He’d already marked past several old foxholes hidden among the hedgerow, it wouldn’t do any harm to mark a few more.

The quarry, which the hunt traditionally traveled through, was part of the land owned by Mr. Westgate, the owner of the local brewery and a good friend to many of the hunt participants. Every year, though he never took part, he was always giddy to hear the annual report. He was more than happy to uphold the customs of the town and was equally more than happy to call his security on any saboteurs that dared interfere. He’d gotten his own blows in last year when a group of them tried to vandalize the trail with an assortment of other scents. In the ensuing chaos, he’d dragged away a young woman with a bleeding nose by the throat and kicked her off the property himself. He’d treated himself to another drink for that victory.

Nathaniel patted the black riding crop at his side. He knew how to treat those kinds of rats. A part of him, deep and dark in his stomach, itched for the confrontation. If he came home sporting a saboteur’s blood on his knuckles, his father might just offer him a taste of brandy.

But to Hell with the brandy, the hunt was all Nathaniel was thirsty for.

Nathaniel couldn’t help but notice how quiet the forest was. Usually, on a morning there was the dance of birdsong high above the leaves that rooted atop the ancient oak. But today, save for the crunch of his boots or the drag of the trail-soaked sack over the crisp leaves, the quarry was still and silent, like a deer caught in the headlights. Nathaniel knew he would have scared off any wildlife as he invaded their territory, but he couldn’t help but narrow his eyes at the stillness of the forest. Even the whistle of the wind had been swallowed away

by the dense thicket of trees.

Well, that wasn’t quite true. Nathaniel still felt air on his face, so there must have been some kind of breeze. In fact, if he focused just enough he could have sworn he felt it crawl over his cheeks. Hot and damp.

He shivered once then quickly shook his head, grunting as he loosened the collar of his tweed jacket. His mouth tasted dry and unpleasant. He needed to stop wasting time and get on with it.

Ahead, the path upturned on a raggedy hill strewn with flowerless grass, a few rabbit holes sank into its side like dark sores. Nathaniel smiled. Where rabbits were, foxes weren’t too far away. The hounds would have some fun up there. He began to climb the small mound, kneeling to balance himself as he crawled up. He grimaced as his hands touched the dry grass, it scratched against his palms like pins and broke away without any force, making him scramble for another grip. He even had to place his feet into the rabbit holes as if they were rocks on a climbing wall.

Eventually, his hands gripped onto a flat patch of ground and, laughing triumphantly, Nathaniel hauled himself up, grunting as he was suddenly overtaken by a wave of fresh, minty air. He almost felt the brush of shadows wrap around him, though he never felt the safe glow of sunlight disappear as he clambered to his feet, too busy brushing the dirt from his knees.

When he finally looked up, he almost gasped. The land stretching out was a brisk flush of greenery; tall ash trees, flat with the taint of age, stood tall beside a lone weeping willow that brushed the ground gently with its long leaves. Its bark was a sharp chocolate color that sparkled with every emerald glint of its swaying branches.

Beneath it, the ground was bristling with flowers, all a striking red. At first, the boy thought they were poppies, but they didn’t look like any he’d ever seen. Their petals were thin domes, dangling from their stalks as if they were dying under the shadows of the trees. But they couldn’t be dying. Their petals still glistened with their crimson colour as if they’d just bloomed. It was almost like they were sleeping.

Nathaniel wouldn’t have been shocked if they were. Actually, he was more shocked they were alive at all. The whole overgrowth was an impenetrable dome of trees, their branches and leaves entwining so tightly it was as if they were throttling each other.

But they still glimmered so brilliantly. Every leaf pumped with rich green light. How? The sun hadn’t been that strong before he came here, had it? Or had it just been the clouds? He stared at the scene, flourishing like a dazzling viridescent tunnel. They seemed to cover the whole forest.

Most of all, the area looked untouched. Every flower, every blade of grass, even the dirt itself, looked raw with nature.

Instantly, a small smirk came to Nathaniel as he imagined the

hounds raking them all away with their claws. This would be a perfect area to trail through, if this place really was untouched by people that meant wildlife would definitely gather here.

Maybe everyone would come home with a trophy this year. That would definitely make him popular in the country club. He could practically see his father now, his warm hand on his shoulder as he presented him with his very own hunter’s vest. The culmination of all his patience and hard work.

Tightening his grip on the sack, Nathaniel was just about to make his first determined marking over the strange flowers. Then the weeping willow began to move.

Or its leaves did. Nathaniel paused, staring at them curiously. He hadn’t felt a breeze around here. If anything, the air was as unusually thick and warm as it had been just minutes ago. In fact, it might have been warmer. A few drops of sweat had already begun to swell on his forehead.

Wiping his face frantically, Nathaniel took a step forward, his eyes fixed on the weeping willow. It still swayed mildly. Then behind the leaves, something moved. Grass snapped like teeth as something rustled.

Nathaniel’s hand instinctively went to his crop, tight on the end as he felt his heart begin to pace. There was definitely something behind the leaves. Something flashed behind the green, bright and fiery.

Nathaniel rubbed his eyes again, bracing to a halt. His hand lay ready on his crop. He could now see the splintering shadows that lay sheltered in the leaves. Whatever it was, it was big. Not an animal. Was it a person? A saboteur perhaps?

“Come out of there! I see you!” he yelled in a way he knew was threatening, the way father had taught him, “You’re on private property, you-”

Two hands slowly slipped through the leaves, pale as bone, and slowly pulled them apart.

Nathaniel’s hand tensed, then slid off of the crop. Under the shade of the willow, a woman stood, naked. Her skin was as white as ivory, from head to toe, save for the wild forest of ginger hair that cascaded down her face, hiding her eyes. She had thin, pink lips, pressed together in a tight line. But somehow, Nathaniel could tell she was smiling. She was gloriously beautiful.

“I…”

Nathaniel tried to ask one of the many questions that bellowed in his head. But for some reason, his throat was tight and his words came out in an unintelligible stutter. He felt his cheeks surge with warmth.

The woman’s body shivered at a silent breath of air. The weeping

willow leaves limply fell on her shoulders, slowly falling away as she gently shook off their grasp.

Nathaniel’s eyes began to glaze. Light off of every leaf that surrounded him seemed to burst awake and stare straight at him, making his sight blur. A low rumbling came out of his throat, furious with inexplicable desire.

The woman’s smile broadened, and she took a step towards him. Her slender frame seemed to suck in the filters of light that slipped through the overgrowth, gleaming on her like a star.

She padded towards him, bare feet not making a sound. With every step, Nathaniel felt the forest spin. His boots began to tremble and sink into the soft grass. His legs and arms began to swell and tremble with the rising warmth, pumping through his body like his heart was some kind of hammer. He didn’t even notice as the sack fell from his shaking hands and lay limp and forgotten in the grass.

Its smell did nothing to mask the breath of the forest.

The taste of oak, the tang of dew, the cutting aroma of grass, the chatter of paws and the cry of birds barrelled Nathaniel’s senses mercilessly. His stomach had begun to twist again, and sweat had slithered down to sting his eyes. And then came the hazy glow of the woman, blurry as Nathaniel slid to his knees, reaching for his collar once more. It was becoming hard to breathe.

Everything was beginning to slip away. His job, his dreams, not even his father found shape in the mist clouding over his senses.

Soon not even the charge of the hunt blazed in his mind anymore.

It was then that he realized something was wrong.

And as if sensing this, the woman finally let out a laugh. That delicate throat released the barking cackle that Nathaniel knew was a sound no person should ever make.

He wanted to stand.

He wanted to run.

But when his heart screamed at him to move, all he could do was crawl.

His hands, burning at the end of lifeless arms, gripped the grass beneath him, tearing his body around as he fell on hands and knees. There was something thick in his throat, leaking into his airways like sap, making his breath feel like fire with every desperate gasp. Pain bit into his palms as he felt the claws of grass and briar rake his hands as he writhed over the dirt.

Every move was becoming more difficult. His hands buckled under a strangling weight and he was helpless to stop his face from slamming into the ground. He held back a whimper as he pushed himself up again, trying to ignore the tattered gash burning on his cheek. His eyes hazed with a misty blur, whether it was sweat or tears he wasn’t sure.

Then he looked ahead and he knew that he was crying.

The edge of the forest was gone. The path he recognised, the trail he’d made, all replaced by the deep dome of ash trees he knew was still behind him, expanding like a void.

The light behind the leaves didn’t glimmer anymore. All that was left were shadows.

He didn’t dare look back, but he knew he could hear that cackle again, rumbling and growling from every dark crevice, snarling victoriously as it followed its prey.

Like an animal, Nathaniel scrambled across the grass. Gasping and grunting, he muttered wordless pleas. If he’d looked back he might have seen the shape of the woman twist and weave like the shade of fog, he might have noticed a small ginger shape uncurl from behind her back, swaying like a tail, or the glistening fangs protrude behind her lips, or watched her hair brush away to reveal two hungry, amber eyes that looked so much like Old Thomas’.

But by then, the forest had swallowed him whole. ***

The search lasted a week before the party gave up. Every member of the union had done their bit to help find the Mawson boy. They didn’t need the description from the police, everybody in the alliance knew the young man. Behind his screaming, howling father, they’d raked through the forest. It didn’t make sense. No trail marker from the previous hunts could understand where he’d gone. The forest wasn’t that big, there was no reason he couldn’t have found his own way out if he’d gotten lost, and there was no sign of a struggle to be found. There was nothing at all, not even a footprint.

By the time the police and the union had reluctantly accepted the futility of their search, no one had the energy to carry out the hunt that year.

So, as the hunting party laid down their uniforms, as the bloodhounds let out their dissatisfied barks from their cages, and as Christian Mawson buried himself in his study, weeping under the watchful eyes of Old Thomas, the forest floor was unmarked by blood.

Not from any fox anyway.

Deep in the woods, its patch untouched and undisturbed, nobody found the tweed jacket, the dark riding crop, or the leather boots that lay in a small pile underneath the whispering willow.

Over time, they decayed and broke apart, becoming nutrients for the forest. Soon nothing grazed that patch apart from the small, bloody red paw-print that helped the crimson flowers bloom.

Starlit Visage

Angelika Mehes

The Fishmonger’s Widow

Jesse Peterman

The hatted crone laughed and spun a tale: On moon filled nights when tides be swale

Down on the slick and soggy shore

Hidden treasures, yes, but something more Search not for sights, but smell for sounds!

When ye clock ticks witching rounds, Spirits sojourn ’cross timely sands

And corpses find new use for hands.

There be a special songful soul,

From far away in ocean bowl

The music comes ’bout every fall

Creeping forth from half-drowned hall

‘Neath froth and foam, oh frolic free

Down to my hall to dance with me’

Men hear this creeping clarion curse

Stumble forth from taverns, homes, and worse

All gathered next to cauldron’s edge then, Make for hall, aught seen again.

She coughs, snatches kettle from stove, And this be curse of siren’s cove.

The Trial (Golden Shovel)

CJ Laudenbach

“The prisoner who now stands before you / was caught red-handed showing feelings / showing feelings of an almost human nature.”

— Pink Floyd, "The Trial"

The pickpocket kneels in chains before the King of Thieves, head bowed — the purloiner now a prisoner. She was a fool to fish in the pockets of the man who ran the underbelly — simply to see if she could. Now, though, she resolves not to die humbly, and so she stands straight and stares into his eyes. “Before I am to be executed, I would have you remember me as the Thief of Kings.” Instead of a scowl, the face she saw was not one of a cat who caught a canary. The King, who caught her red-handed In his own court, was showing no sign of ill will or hard feelings toward her. A slow grin, a thoughtful twinkle in his eye, still showing no flicker of his intentions with her fate, created faltering feelings in the pit of her stomach. He gestured toward his court of sordid splendor, and finally, the King spoke. “If I were an honest man, I’d have you hanged as a dog. But you and I are almost a reflection, Thief of Kings. I will not condemn a fellow human to death for doing what is in our nature.”

Paper Towns and Security Blankets

Stephanie Shoemaker

The Storm

Madeline Christensen

Warning: Implies Domestic Abuse

Crash!

The strong thunder sounds shake the walls of the house as I’m reading. The storm has been brewing for a few hours now, with no break in sight. I hear the chiming of the grandfather clock, telling me it is already one o’clock in the morning.

Stupid storm. Keeping me awake at this hour. I should be going back to bed with Doug rather than reading in a storm. But it was nice to have some alone time. Yesterday we were out all day together, and everything was okay. But he’s been acting strange the entire day today. I think nothing of it. I decide I want to read one more chapter of my book, so I go to check on him to see if he’s still sleeping.

Crash!

The lights flicker as another crack of thunder roars, and lightning flashes across the room. I jump and feel the goosebumps rising on my arms. I turn the corner from the living room and walk down the long narrow hallway, filled with photos of myself and Doug everywhere we have traveled, to the bedroom’s partially open door. I look to see Doug still sleeping soundly through the mass chaos of the storm outside. I turn to go back to the other room to read.

Margery keeps running, not knowing where he is. She is running out of time and energy. Her hair sticking to her face. Red, swollen eyes block her from watching what is in front of her. Her breath comes out in wheezes, panicking. Keep going, she thinks. He isn’t stopping. Keep going. Margery pleads with her legs to get her out of there. She hears a scream behind her. Almost there. She can see the house now. Just a few yards away. It’s within reach. She reaches for the knob, begging the door to let her in.

“Please! Please help me! He’s coming for me! Help! She shakes the door more and more before…”

CRASH!

I scream and throw the book away from me, the thunder startling me out of my trance. I’m about to get up to find where I threw my book when I hear footsteps.

“What’s the matter, love?” Doug comes into the room, scratching his head.

“Nothing. Just the storm.” I look around quickly, trying to find where the book went.

“Why is this over here?” He picks the book off the floor from where he enters the living room. I bow my head down, hoping to just get my book back and go to bed.

“I got scared, and it came out of my hands.”

“Why didn’t you pick it up right away?” He asks, aggravatedly. I want to roll my eyes but remember that he’s been in a mood all day and decide that it’s better to stay quiet.

“I’m sorry, Doug. It won’t happen again.” I move around the couch and reach out for my book.

“Was that attitude I sensed?” His eyes are boring out of his head, his mouth tight, making the words seem forced. He holds the book out of my reach.

“No, darling. All I was saying is that it was an accident and won’t happen again. Can I have my book, please? I would really like to finish the chapter I’m on and then go to bed. It’s late.” I say to him, trying to be as soothing as possible, so I don’t come off as rude. Last Friday night came to my mind.

Crash!

Doug walks towards the window with my book in his hand. “We talked about this. I will not tolerate this behavior that has become you,” he says, shaking his head, looking out at the storm. Oh no. I try to think of something that can help me, but nothing comes to mind.

“I haven’t done anything wrong! I swear! I was just scared of the storm.” I tried to defend myself. I did nothing wrong. I should have known better than to read that book tonight. I should have just gone to bed. It would have made everything easier.

“It shouldn’t be the storm that you are afraid of,” he threatens, then turns around.

Crash…

Recollection of a 5 am Sestina

CJ Laudenbach

I wake up with a start at exactly 5 am; the thunder of the deep October storm practically shook the foundation of our apartment. I wake with the blankets all in a tangle — I had, at one point, ripped them away from you leaving you shivering in the dark.

You lay facing away from me, I can tell, in the dark during the sort of storm that would wake anyone up at 5 am — except, of course, you. You who couldn’t even be roused by the storm that trapped a tree branch in a tangle of power lines, cutting the light and heat from our apartment.

Tonight, at least, there is light and heat in our apartment (even if, right now, we’re in the cold and dark), and the blankets protect me in a warm embracing tangle, the sort one only feels when you wake up at exactly 5 am because the thunder of the deep October storm woke everyone up — except, of course, you.

I wonder what dreams keep you asleep despite shivering in a cold apartment and despite the thunder of the deep October storm,

I see your outline rise and fall in the dark because it’s 5 am and your mind is deep in an REM infused tangle. My mind is also deep in a tangle as I try to think of the words I want to write down for you: about how it’s 5 am, and we’re together in the bedroom of our very own apartment, and how you’re the one who’s afraid of the dark, and I’m the one who’s afraid of the storm.

If you were awake, you’d turn on a light with a smile and listen to the storm while I hide with my nerves in a tangle. But because it’s me, I quiver in the dark and tuck the blankets around you in the bedroom of our very own apartment. Now it’s ten minutes past 5 am.

I try to match your peace in the dark as I wait out the deep October storm that woke me at exactly 5 am. Our limbs are in a share-the-blankets tangle as I find my sleep beside you in the bedroom of our very own apartment

Restless Evening Carter Swenson

When John and Mary Won the Lottery

Elliana Reickard

Mary sat impatiently in the passenger seat of her new bright yellow convertible, drumming her fingers against her knee. She couldn’t take it anymore. She checked her phone again, but there was still no message from John, just like there hadn’t been a message five minutes ago when she’d last checked. Figured. With his normal work hours, he wouldn’t be back home for a while. But today wasn’t exactly normal. Not for him, not for her, and she couldn’t seem to shake the dread that should have left her thoughts as soon as she left her house for the last time.

“Hey, Mary!” Juniper’s cheery voice cut through Mary’s train of thought. “You know what they say about a watched pot, right?”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. It never boils.” Mary muttered, slipping her phone back into her purse. Already her fingers were itching to check it again, just on the slim chance that John had sent her a message in the ten seconds that’d passed since she’d last looked. She had to find something to occupy her hands in its place. “Do you want me to check your phone? To see if Ozzy texted at all?”

Juniper glanced over at Mary, lowering her sunglasses with a knowing smile. Her long, blond hair flew around her face, somehow never getting in her eyes or on her bright pink lipstick. How did she do that? “Come on Mary! Relax!”

Relax. Why couldn’t she relax?

Logically, she should’ve been calmer than she ever had in her life. She’d wanted to leave her deadbeat husband for years, but always told herself she was waiting for a “good time” to do so. But it was never a “good time”. So for years, she’d put up with his frivolous, self-centered purchases that racked up more and more unpayable bills. She’d put up with working overtime to pay for everything, she’d put up with the insurmountable housework that he never took care of, and she’d even put up with his recent obsession over the media’s new favorite space-traveling billionaire, Sterling Argentum. But she’d finally had enough.

Mary picked at her lavender-colored nail polish, thinking over the events that had transpired in the past week. Buying a lottery ticket with John. Winning over a million dollars. Splitting it in half. John spending all of his to own stock in Sterling Argentum’s company.

When Sterling Argentum’s new “high-speed” energy drink ended up causing thirty-two cases of food poisoning, it tanked his

company’s stocks, and John lost every penny he’d just gotten from their lucky lottery ticket. The major loss put John in major debt, and as usual, he’d decided that Mary would have to use her half of the money to cover it. He didn’t ask her to pay off his debt, Mary noted. He told her.

But with the money Mary had put away in savings, she instead chose to join her best friend Juniper in buying a convertible and heading west. Where? Mary didn’t know, and she suspected that Juniper didn’t know either. What was John going to do when he found out that Mary wouldn’t bail him out this time? That she’d cleaned up one too many of his messes? That she was done?

“Mary.”

The sound of her name jolted her from her thoughts again. “Hm?”

Now Juniper’s expression was serious, a rare sight for her. “Is something wrong?”

A lot was wrong. Mary didn’t even know where to start. Instead of anything she wanted to say, she went for a safe answer instead: “Uhm…can you put on some music?”

“Oh, sure!” Juniper reached for her phone with her right hand, keeping her left hand on the steering wheel. Mary bit back the urge to chastise her. Juniper had learned how to change the music and drive at age fifteen, back when she had her learners permit, and she’d only gotten better at it. Besides, it’s not like Juniper ever listened, anyway. “Oh, I love this song! Is this alright?”

“Whatever you want. I just hate the silence.”

Mary leaned back in her seat as the opening notes of a Journey song played. Juniper’s music taste mostly consisted of 80s hits, but the familiar tune did nothing to distract Mary from her thoughts. She played with a few strands of her short, dark hair, trying to alleviate her stress.

At least one of them could relax. Juniper was practically glowing as she leaned forward, her hair streaming in the wind, light reflecting on her sunglasses to the point where it hurt to look directly at her. She’d never taken a choir class in her life, but she was as confident as a professional when she belted the opening lines, “Here we stand, worlds apart, hearts broken in two, two, two…”

John and Juniper were similar people, yet so different in all the ways that mattered. She had the same lackadaisical, spontaneous behavior as him, but she stayed so considerate and kind. They’d been friends since high school, and Juniper was always the reckless one to Mary’s cautious ways. Mary would never admit it to her friend, but she’d probably been more in love with Juniper more than she ever had been with John. Like she’d tried to find a reflection of Juniper in a man but only succeeded halfway

She’d first met Juniper in their ninth grade English class, where

Juniper was the new girl in town. Mary’s sleepy hometown was closeknit with few outsiders moving in, so when Juniper moved from a bigger city that she described as “totally pretentious,” everyone took notice. Well, it was either that or Juniper’s excitable, feel-good energy that she brought to everything she did. Mary tended to get stressed out by people like that, so despite being seated right behind her in class, she went for a couple days before she talked to Juniper for the first time. Or rather, Juniper talked to her.

Mary could still remember it as if it was yesterday. Their English teacher, Mr. Thompson, stepped out of the class to use the bathroom, and like clockwork, Juniper turned around in her seat and said to Mary, “I bet I know your sign.”

In surprise, Mary could barely stammer, “W-what?”

“You know, your zodiac sign. Well, specifically your star sign, not your moon sign or rising or whatever.” Juniper explained, flicking her hair behind her ear. She didn’t have long hair at the time, the tips barely brushing her shoulders. “You’re a Virgo, right? Like, born between August 23rd and September 23rd?”

Mary nodded wordlessly. She usually went out of her way to avoid people as forthcoming as Juniper, but something about the new girl’s attitude and energy kept Mary cautiously intrigued. And Mary’s birthday was September 9th.

“Yes!” Juniper silently pumped her fist. “I knew it!”

Mary finally found her voice, asking, “How did you do that?”

“I dunno. I don’t believe in astrology or anything, but it’s pretty fun to guess. I’m a Gemini, so that means our signs are compatible.”

Juniper shot Mary a grin. “Which means that we’re pretty compatible!”

“Oh.” Mary couldn’t hide how impressed she was. “That’s cool.”

Mr. Thompson returned to their class then, causing Juniper to turn back around and pretend to be immersed in her book. But just as Mary decided the conversation was over and prepared to get back to work on their reading assignment, Juniper dropped a note on her desk, moving too fast for Mr. Thompson to catch her.

The note simply read: “Do you want to sit together at lunch today ♥?”

Before she could second-guess herself, Mary tapped Juniper’s shoulder, and when the other girl turned around, Mary gave her a thumbs up. And she could’ve sworn that Juniper’s smile brightened up the whole room.

But that was nearly twelve years ago. And so much had changed in the meantime.

Completely oblivious to the predicament taking center stage in Mary’s mind, Juniper continued to sing at the top of her lungs. “Sleepless nights, losing ground, I’m reaching for you, you, you…”

Mary sighed and leaned back against the convertible seat. Her phone was still dead silent, and her thoughts were far too loud.

In twelfth grade, Juniper had invited Mary to attend the county fair with her. Mary had never gone before, and she wasn’t particularly interested in deep-fried food or rides that looked like they could fall apart at any moment, but Juniper’s expression was so pleading that Mary had to agree against her better judgment.

The two girls had walked around for about an hour, Juniper excitedly chattering about anything and everything. She occasionally paused to wave hi to their classmates, as she was friends with pretty much everyone. But she chose to stay with Mary the whole time. Something about that made Mary almost feel guilty, like she was stealing Juniper away from anything else she could’ve done at the fair.

“Oh, a ferris wheel!” Juniper exclaimed, shaking Mary’s shoulder to get her attention and pull her from her train of thought. “That ride’s not so bad, right? Do you want to do that?”

Swallowing her fear of heights, Mary nodded. “Sure. Let’s do it.”

It had to be one of the slowest rides in the entire county fair, but Mary would’ve felt exponentially more guilty if they went the whole night without doing any of the rides, something Juniper had specifically expressed wanting to do. So, when they got to the front of the line, the two girls got into the tiny double-seat and waited for the ride to begin.

It wasn’t nearly as bad as Mary expected, but that could’ve been due to the fact that Juniper was there with her. Juniper’s excitement was catching, and soon enough, Mary wasn’t sitting stiff as a board anymore, going against the advice of anyone else with acrophobia by looking down at the ground far below. The neon lights of the fair booths swam in her vision.

“This is so cool!” Juniper exclaimed, shouting loud enough that the fair-goers on the ground looked up to see where her voice came from. Then she turned to Mary and said in her normal voice, “I’m so glad that we went together.”

She reached for Mary’s hand and held tight.

“Me too.” Mary remembered saying. “I like spending time with you.”

In response, Juniper had shot her a smile, tilting her head slightly as if she knew something that Mary had left unsaid.

Was that a date? Had Juniper asked her on a date? Mary had never been fully sure. Juniper was so charismatic around all of her friends, but something about her interactions with Mary felt . . . different. Not different in a tangible way, but different all the same.

But even now, even as Mary sat in the passenger seat of the convertible that she and Juniper had bought together, that feeling of uncertainty continued to grow. And with that came a second anxiety: the ever-widening gap where their personalities didn’t connect easily. Juniper and Mary had always been so different, and the further they

got from the small town Mary had grown up in, the more she realized for the first time that they might be too different.

“If we can’t go on, to survive the tide, love divides…”

Mary liked to plan meticulously. Juniper liked to jump at any possible opportunity for fun or excitement. Mary wanted to make long-term plans where she could feel like everything was in order. Juniper wanted to leave her options open.

Juniper’s ex-boyfriend Ozzy wasn’t good for her. She’d vented to Mary about him plenty of times, angrily ranting about how Ozzy expected her to settle down in one place for the rest of her life and “act more mature”, whatever that meant. She wanted to travel and explore all that the world had to offer her, and he saw that as a threat to the “traditional” way of life. Now that Juniper had left him, she had all the freedom she could dream of. Still, Juniper had already dropped all of her own plans to stick with Mary, and she’d do it again. And Mary didn’t want to suggest anything that would hold her back.

Mary saw the similarities between Ozzy and her own cautious, rule-following ways. If Juniper stayed with her, she’d end up keeping Juniper from her dreams, just like Ozzy had. She couldn’t do that to someone she cared about, someone she loved.

The plan was simple. Whenever they got to a destination of some sort, Mary would stay there and Juniper would keep going. They’d made this plan when they began their road trip, Juniper enthusiastically telling Mary all the places she wanted to travel to, and Mary feigning her own excitement. Because if Juniper knew how much Mary wanted her to stay, she’d do it in a heartbeat.

“If he ever hurts you, true love won’t desert you…”

At least they had this moment, one moment in time where neither had anything to fear. No terrible partners, no financial worries, no foreboding future. And if Mary could bottle up this moment so that she could relive it any time she wanted, she would.

John would be home sooner than later. Mary fought the urge to take out her phone.

“You know I still love you, though we touched and went our separate ways…”

Mary sighed, leaning back in her seat again and attempting to watch the scenery as it flew past. The dry weeds and asphalt seemed to blend together as tears pooled in her eyes. She wiped her face with her sleeve. Juniper couldn’t see her cry.

The road seemed like it was never going to end, but it eventually would. And Mary didn’t know what she was going to do when they got there.

The Space Between Hearts

Angela Fritz

I will think about you every day

So, my lips will never forget your name.

Today, I thought of the way your eyes crinkle into tiny crescents

Like the moon when you smile a smile so warm

It's as if I could fall into the billowing arms of the sun. I could never settle to be at Aphelion with you, No matter which part of the universe I’ve come from.

And when you doubt what I’ve written here

I will whisper these words

Until they echo between the stars and find you. Even in your deepest of slumbers, You won’t be able to deny my honesty.

And even among the quietest of whispers, I will continue to say your name.

I Always Looked Back

Stephany Luithly

On my first date with my now-husband, we talked about mostly cliché topics, but when we got to the topic of travel, he told me he’d only been on one trip where he took an airplane to and from his destination. I almost did a spit take with the beer I had just taken a drink of. Not because I thought it was funny, I was just surprised by that answer. To be truthful, I wouldn’t be able to count the number of flights I’ve taken in my life. I know I took my first flight as an “unaccompanied minor” when I was seven years old. This was less than a year after we had moved back to Cheyenne while Dad stayed down south.

That first trip was much different than it is now in an airport. It was more than two years before the tragedy of the towers falling in New York happened on September 11, 2001, so there was much less security when getting onto a plane. There was virtually no wait. Imagine going to a sporting event in the city—they quickly look through your bag and you walk under a detector, but that was really it. That day, my brother, Jeremy, Mom, and I walked through the Denver airport quickly until we saw a TCBY frozen yogurt shop.

“Mom! Can we stop?!” I pleaded as if she had already turned it down. But she didn’t say no. She showed what I now recognize as her pretend smile and nodded yes. Jeremy and I were throughthe-roof excited. When we both had gotten our decadent cones, we walked for what felt like forever to some seats. Mom had led us to the gate we’d be flying out of. With unaccompanied minor travelers, it’s required for an adult to present the passengers and sign some paperwork after the passengers have been asked about where they are going and who will be there to pick them up.

“Our dad is gonna be there,” Jeremy matter-of-factly answered. I looked up at Mom as we walked away from the podium, and she was on the verge of crying. Even my seven-year-old self could tell by the way her chin was set a little closer to her lips.

“Why are you sad, Mom?”

She looked down at me and shook her head like she was trying to move the tears out of her eyes like she does with her blonde, sideswept bangs. “I’m just going to miss you guys! Summer is a long time when I don’t get to see you every day.” Jeremy patted Mom’s arm in the most endearing way a nine-year-old can and nodded in understanding. Me on the other hand? I was trying to choke back

the feeling of my throat tightening and my own eyes filling up with tears. I’ve always been the kind to cry when I see other people cry, and I’m sure that was part of it, but I also think that was the first moment I had realized that Mom wouldn’t be coming with us. And if you were to ask anyone who knows me, even today, they would tell you I’m a big fan of Moms.

“Oh honey, don’t cry! You’re gonna make me cry now,” Mom whispered as she leaned down to get to my level. She put her hands on my elbows and squeezed just enough to get me to look at her. “You’re going to have so much fun! You get to go on an airplane with your brother and then you get to go back to Georgia!” She took a breath (I now know it was to choke down the disdain she felt for her ex-husband), and continued quietly, “You get to see your dad.” Just as she finished the sentence, the flight attendant who smelled like too many roses came over to interrupt and said, “You both get to come down with me first before everyone else.” Her tone was straining to sound excited to be the one who was chosen for the job.

“Okay,” Mom spat out, “both of you give me a hug and make sure you call me when you get with your dad. I love you!” She squeezed Jeremy and me like she was trying to imprint the feeling of her arms into our bodies and then stood up and tapped our backs in the direction of the less-than-thrilled woman.

As we walked through the silver door, into the long tube connected to the plane, I looked over my left shoulder and waved to my mom who was very obviously not trying to shake her tears away now. The lady was talking, but I didn’t hear her, I just made eye contact with Jeremy and then looked down at my feet, walking away from Mom toward an airplane cabin, for the first, but definitely not the last time.

The Rest of Forever

Amy Anderson

I am still here; just far off now. Give me time. Give me space. I need to think, to breathe, to rest, to heal. I need to remember who I am, and love myself. I must find where I end, and where you begin. Let me find my way back; to love you, to love us, the rest of forever.

Whispers of Love

Victoria Faith Wellman

Faded light streamed through the windows. I felt the warm rays radiate down gently on my exposed hand, the excess energy seeping into the knit quilt strewn across my body. I felt the rolling mountains and sweeping valleys of the blanket; the familiar fibers brought a certain calm as my fingertips mapped out my fantasy land. Lifting my eyes from my lap I feel a sense of nostalgia as I begin my everyday routine. I always challenge myself to remember where I am before a nurse tells me, since I came to the home, I have only won once.

This victory was a strange occurrence. After my routine fiddling of my blanket, Michael had come in; of all the nurses he was my favorite. Perhaps because his mannerisms resembled that of my grandfather. Many times, on my afternoon strolls I would see him working in the gardens as well; he flourished when there was too much work to do. In the mornings he would come in cheerfully with eyes vibrant hazel, with energetic frenzy he bustled to and fro. Sometimes his routine varied but the greeting was always the same.

“Hello, Ruth, beautiful day today. The sun is up, the birds are singing melodies to each other, it’s about time you join them, don’t you think? By the way could you remind me what day it is today? I seem to have forgotten my watch at home.”

And every day I would grumble about the patronizing childish wiles he tried. I may be losing my memory, but I was not blind. Before he left each day, I always saw him turn and nonchalantly put a watch on his left hand. Then turn, flash a grin, and step into the hallway. But last week was different. After Michael’s usual tactics he asked,

“Could you remind me what day it is today? I seem to have forgotten my watch at home.”

I had an answer for him.

“June 10th, 2017,” I blurted out.

Michael dropped the breakfast tray that he had been carrying. A roll, applesauce, bread, and milk all clattered to the floor with the sound echoing through the dank hallways; frantic and hurried footsteps ensued as roaming doctors and nurses rushed into the room.

“What is wrong?”

“Is any one hurt?”

“What a mess.”

Michael regained his composure and assured everyone all was in order and it was a simple mistake on his part, something about

slipping on the floor. He ushered them out of my room in order for me to retain some level of privacy. A few of the doctors he called to the side and explained the true nature of events. My doctor, Dr. Robinson, strolled over to my bedside with a concealed expression.

“Mrs. Blanchard,” he said. “Today we would like to put you through a different set of exercises than normal. We think your dementia may be leveling off.”

I could barely believe my ears. Leveling off? Did that mean I would be able to go back to my old life? Oh, how I missed the lakeside mansion with its vaulted ceilings, grandiose tapestries, and marbled halls. George, my husband, he was there too, but more importantly I could stroll through my lavish halls once more. Admiring my possessions, silk scarves from Italy, beautiful sundresses from the seaside shops of Barcelona, and jewelry from Russia. Some called me a materialist. I prefer to think of myself as practical.

When you have wealth as George and I, it would be a crime not to spend it; I was simply fueling the economy. He was left with a (hefty) trust fund after his father’s affair. It had gone through the courts and his father won. However, in the eyes of George, he would always be a loser. Rodger, George’s father, had come to tell George he had won and they would never hear from Helen again. George was furious; he said that what Rodger had done was wrong. There were a lot of slamming doors and yelling that day. I stayed in our room. At this time we had a dismal house and I was allowed only modest clothing, but the sound drifted wonderfully through the paper-thin walls.

George never wanted a flashy life. He preferred to leave his affluent upbringing in the past, even though a life of leisure is the one thing I most strongly desired. After his argument with his father, everything changed. Rodger thought he could buy George’s admiration back. He did not succeed with George, but after the first six figure check the memories were erased from my mind. Within a year our life had transformed. I quit my job and a life of country clubs and polo matches filled my time. George wanted to stay working as a doctor. Said it brought him meaning to do something other than waste away on caviar and cocktails. For me though, it was paradise. That is, until my memory started fading. Dementia is what the doctors called it. They were astounded to find it in me. Normally, it only affects the elderly, but there I was, a thirty-five-year-old who could not remember her own name. The disease set in swiftly. Soon I was whisked away to live among the elderly in a nursing home. With this fleeting thought, I was brought back to the present with Doctor Robinson leaning over me waiting for my response.

“Well, that’s wonderful news, Doc. Could this mean I will be going home soon?”

Glancing at Michael with a look of hopefulness, he responded, “Let’s not get our hopes up just yet, but it is promising.”

The remainder of the morning was a blur of tests and questions; it reminded me of high school when you were just drilled to the ground with interrogations. George left work to come and assist. It had not even been twenty-four hours since George had seen me last. He was stalwart as ever and had a love for plain things. Maybe that is why he fell in love with me.

I had come from humble upbringings compared to George’s aristocratic lifestyle. Both my parents were professors at the local community college and made enough to get by, but not enough to get ahead. His parents had made a donation for a new library and all the professors’ families were invited to the ceremony. Of course George was there. He says it was something about the humbling way I held myself that caught his eye. He was a nice enough fellow, but I will say his price tag did have some weight in my decision to make things serious. Before we knew it, we were in love, but with what I am still not sure. Part of me had always longed to feel a deep connection with George and fall in love, but money always wedged itself in and kept us at odds. We would never divorce, though; we were too strong in our Lutheran upbringing.

We had grown apart, but when we got the diagnosis, George had continued his role as my loyal husband forever by my side. I, on the other hand was as selfish as ever; as George and I were waiting for test results I could not help but realize that my thoughts centered on the material things. I longed for a love to be kindled between George and I; not a love of money but the pure and simplistic love found in the storybooks of old. I had my knight in shining armor, but I needed to be his princess. Through it all, he had been there. He knew that I did not cherish our love as deeply as him, but he had stayed and his love never faltered. Dementia had taken so many of my memories but the one thing I could not part with is my new found love for George. Whispers of a love pure and simple tantalized my mind. I truly was happier with a simple life. The cocktails and caviar were fun for a time, but these are illusory and short lived. I wanted something more real than these whispers of love.

Adrenaline hangover

MArguerite

Dette er det verste jeg har sett! (This is the Worst I have Seen!)

Maya Geving

I am five years old. It’s fall but it feels like summer, September but still T-shirt weather. I love Disney princesses, goldfish crackers, and playgrounds. I hate getting dressed in the morning, finishing my plate, and my grandmother’s knitted wool socks. The mornings all start the same. They aren’t early, my mom put me in the afternoon kindergarten class instead of the morning one so we always have lots of time for breakfast and maybe a trip to the playground. Then, I get dressed in my school clothes, usually capri pants and a t-shirt with a butterfly or heart print on it. This morning is no different. I’m eating my usual breakfast of Froot Loops and milk at the kid’s table in our dining room. The room is big, encompassing the whole first story. The kitchen is to the left of the entryway with a large dining table in front of it. My father built it himself. In front of it is a small kids table, and to the right is our large chimney, with a living room with couches and TV behind it.

My mom is annoyed. My sister is two, and she won’t stop screaming. She doesn’t want to get dressed and my mom is losing her temper as she normally does. This was around the same time my sister dumped a whole box of Cheerios onto her head and all over the floor, so my mom is losing her patience from having to deal with the shenanigans of two young children. After breakfast, we stomp outside so that I can catch the school bus. Although my mom has a car, we always walk fifteen minutes to the bus stop. It’s a winding narrow country road in the outskirts of Cloquet, Minnesota. Our house is deep in the native American Fond Du Lac reservation, or “the rez” as my dad calls it. On the way we pass our nearest and only neighbor. My dad says they are two native American brothers. Their house is small and white but has at least fifteen cars in the driveway at all times. I always ask my parents why they have so many cars, but they never give me an answer that makes sense. We also pass many thick oak trees, some have fallen over. If we have extra time, my mom lets me and my sister play on the trees for a while before we continue our trek to the bus stop. It’s windy, and the trees are still green but with specks of orange in them, waiting for just the right time to fall. My wispy hair blows in my face as I scurry to catch up with the others.

My mom says she can’t wait for autumn to start for real. She isn’t from here. She is a Norwegian woman whose semester abroad in the States turned into marriage with an American man, a green card, and raising two kids in a small town close to Duluth. In Norway the autumns are dull and cold, so she loves how the heat stays until October and how the leaves light up in bright shades of red, orange, and yellow. Finally, we reach the end of the driveway where the bus usually picks me up. I gasp in surprise as I realize that our mailbox is barely standing and that our neighbor’s mailbox has been completely destroyed. The pole is laying flat on the ground with the box crushed underneath.

My mother sighs, “Must have been a drunk driver or something.”

I have no idea what that means but it sounds bad.

“Is that the same thing that happened to our trash cans the other day?” I ask.

We had woken up one morning to a large crash and found both our trash cans tipped over, with scraps of food all over the place. “No, that was a black bear,” she says before reminding us to never go outside alone or the bears would eat us, too.

I’m scared of the bears. A few months earlier my dad and I had been sitting on the porch when a bear stumbled into the vegetable garden in front of us. It was pretty far away so we weren’t in any danger, but I was still terrified. My dad looked at it in awe, trying to get me to watch as well but I was too scared to even turn my head around. Another time, my mom, my sister, and I were walking on a trail in Jay Cooke State Park when a bear emerged on the trail a distance in front of us. My sister started screaming and my mom joked that we never had to be afraid of bears when she was there because she was so loud that she’d scare them all away.

The bus winds around the corner and stops right beside us, right in front of the street sign that reads, Twin Lakes Drive. My mom holds my sister in her arms as I climb the steps of the bright yellow school bus. I sit down on one of the green leather seats, rolling my fingers over the rips and scratches in them. I look out the window and see my mom waving goodbye, then lifting my sister’s hand to teach her how to wave too. I wave back before focusing my attention on the yells and laughter of the other kids behind me, the bumpiness of the road, and the way the trees and light poles rushed past me as the bus carried on its way to Washington Elementary School. * * *

Autumn turns into winter. The heat of the fireplace warms up my face as I gaze outwards into our backyard. Large piles of snow

fill the surrounding area. My sister and I begged our dad to make them into hills so we could slide down on our tiny sleds. Soon it will be Christmas and today we are going to do one of my favorite Christmas activities. We’re going to eat rice porridge, a traditional Norwegian dessert at my mom’s friend’s house. One of the most popular Norwegian Christmas traditions is to make a large pot of rice porridge and stir one almond into it. When eating, the lucky receiver of the almond must keep it a secret until after the meal is over. It’s common to sneakily slide your almond under your napkin or behind your bowl and keep eating until everyone is finished. After the proud winner announces their victory, they are rewarded with a marzipan pig.

After our dinner, I am booming with excitement as a bowl of rice porridge is placed in front of me. I have never gotten the almond, except for last year when both my sister and I suspiciously found almonds in our porridge.

“They must have magically appeared,” my mom said. I believed her, but there was an inkling of doubt in my mind. I stir my wooden spoon around in the milky white porridge, mixing the cinnamon and sugar that was on top into the rest of the porridge. I can’t feel anything with my spoon apart from mush. I start eating, taking huge gulps of the porridge that leave a mustache above my lip. I can feel the disappointment creeping in on me. It’s becoming more and more obvious that I didn’t get the almond. I turn around to look at my sister, staring her down in disdain. I think my mom must have put it in her bowl since she’s the youngest. I stare at her round face and chunky blonde bangs, knowing I’d throw a huge tantrum if she got the almond. But she is starting to look disappointed too.

All hope of getting the almond is gone as I devour my last few bites of porridge. My family and my mom’s friend’s family finished their porridge too. I look around in anticipation. My parents are sitting in front of me, wearing their traditional Norwegian knitted sweaters with blue and white yarn forming intricate patterns across the chest area, complete with a red patterned neckline. I’m so happy that they didn’t make me wear mine because I absolutely hate the feeling of rough yarn against my skin. I can’t tell if any of them got the almond until my dad mischievously pulls it out from his napkin. I sigh as he is gifted the yellow marzipan pig that I wanted so badly. To my surprise, he doesn’t seem very happy about it.

“I hate marzipan,” he says before breaking it in two and giving my sister and me a half each.

Winter turns into spring . . . finally. Spring is my birthday month, and I can’t wait to turn six. But that’s in May, and I must survive the dreariness and cold of March and April first. The maple syrup hunts

help though. My dad is a man of many hobbies. In March, making maple syrup from scratch is his most important one. I usually sit in the back of his large green sled all huddled up while we scavenge the forest for maple trees. Once we find one, he takes out a metal cylinder tap and hammers it into the tree. Then he takes out a leftover milk jug and fastens it to the tap, so the maple sap has something to flow into. A few weeks later, when the sun has warmed up the trees enough, we walk through the patches of grass and snow to see how much sap has been collected in the buckets. Sometimes we’re lucky and the jug is almost completely full of sap. Other times only the bottom of the jug contains a tiny bit of sap. Once we collect all the sap, my dad brings it to the large pot we have hoisted on top of our outside fireplace. There, it boils for hours and hours, until the watery sap turns into a golden sugary syrup. My dad usually lets me taste a spoonful of the sugary goodness before pouring it into washed beer bottles to give away as presents or keep at home.

I try to enjoy the spring. I don’t fully grasp that this will be my last spring in Minnesota for a long time. “We’re moving to Norway” is a sentence I’ve heard a lot over the past few months. I like Norway and I miss my grandma and my cousins. But I don’t want to move. I like my elementary school and my friends, our log house in the woods, and our cat which we apparently aren’t bringing. Unfortunately, my parents seem determined to move. It’s April and they have decided we will go on a short trip to Norway to move some of our stuff, then make the big move during the summer. My mom also says that my grandma is sick and that we need to see her.

“Sick like she has a cold?” I ask.

“No, she’s sicker than that,” my mom replies. I don’t understand what she means until we arrived in Norway a few weeks later. My cousin picks us up at the Bergen airport. She’s in her twenties, and I want to be just like her.

“We’re going to see grandma,” she says to me and my sister.

But she doesn’t take us to the countryside and the small white house with red-rimmed windows that I remember my grandma living in. Instead, we arrive at a large hospital with many floors and a weird sterile smell. My cousin leads us through the maze of doors and staircases in the hospital. My mom is holding a blue sweater that she plans to give my grandmother. As we enter the quaint hospital room, I am taken aback by surprise. I barely recognize my grandmother. The person in the hospital bed looks like a ghost of the grandmother that taught me how to bake raisin buns and plant strawberry bushes.

“You’ve gotten so skinny; I got you this sweater but it’s way too big,” my mom exclaims.

My grandma looks tired but happy to see us. I hold her hand while lightly touching the white hospital bracelet.

My grandma has something called cancer. My mom says it

spreads throughout your whole body and makes you very sick. This doesn’t make sense to me. When people get sick, they get better eventually. I thought that was how it worked. But with grandma, it doesn’t seem like she is on the path of recovery. She is still able to come home after a few days, but she only stays in a hospital bed in the living room. We stay in her house, my sister and I sharing the upstairs bedroom that had been my mom’s as a child and my parents taking grandma’s bedroom. My sister and I spend lots of time in the living room playing with the few toys grandma has, while she sleeps or silently watches. I know I can say whatever I want when my parents aren’t around because grandma doesn’t understand English. Grandma is a woman of her generation. She was born towards the end of World War II when food and money were scarce. She believes potatoes are the healthiest food on the planet and would make her children eat them for every meal. Instead of attending high school or college, she earned her education from a traditional “housewife school” and was very proud of it. These establishments were known for teaching Norwegian women how to properly cook and clean for their husbands in the fifties and sixties. She is a homebody, and never visits the United States. Instead, she sends letters and packages with knitted socks and sweaters for my sister and me. When she was healthier, she would spend her time planting flowers in her garden, baking cinnamon and raisin buns, and tanning on her balcony overlooking the forest. She hates messes and likes everything to be neat and orderly. Although she’s only in her sixties, she doesn’t know any English because she went to school before it was taught as a second language in Norway. Due to this, my mom describes her encounters with my dad as limited but still comical. She tells me about one of the first times she brought dad to Norway. Dad decided to make homemade pizza (another one of his hobbies) in her small wooden kitchen. Due to the small proximity of the kitchen, my dad managed to get flour all over the counters and floor as he twisted and kneaded the dough.

My poor neat-freak grandma was horrified by the mess and exclaimed, “Dette er det verste jeg har sett!” one of her most used phrases. It means “this is the worst thing I’ve ever seen!”

My parents leave my sister and I at our aunt’s house for a couple days. They are taking my grandma's red Volvo on the seven-hour trip over the mountain from western Norway to eastern Norway. My dad has a job interview at an international school, and they are looking for a house for us as well. I stay with my aunt but visit grandma every day. My mom told me grandma is good at drawing, so I ask her to draw me a picture. She sits upright in her bed carefully sketching before turning to show me what she has drawn. It’s a tiny orange fox with green grass all around it. I wish I could draw that well.

When my parents come back, we are almost ready to travel back

to Minnesota. Grandma tells my mom that she will try to make it until the summer. I don’t understand what she means. Of course, grandma will be here in the summer, how couldn’t she? We wake up early on our last morning and I walk over to my grandma’s bedside. I whisper “Ha det Mormor,” meaning “goodbye grandma” in Norwegian.

Eleven days later my mom gets the call. I walk into the bathroom with wooden closets and green tiles to find her sitting down on the edge of the bathtub, sobbing. I’ve never seen her this upset before. My mom isn’t religious, but she tells me grandma is in heaven now and that she won’t be waiting for us in Norway when we make the big move. I don’t fully understand what death is. It’s incomprehensible to me that someone can be there one day and be gone the next. All I know is that I miss grandma. * * *

Spring is in full bloom. The patches of snow on our lawn finally melt by the time my birthday comes in mid-May. My mom throws me a big birthday party with the three-layered birthday cake from the grocery store that I really wanted. My kindergarten friends and I play pin-the-tail on the donkey and drink blue raspberry Kool-Aid in my backyard. Later in the month we haul almost all our belongings into the garage and place them on plastic tables. We’re having a garage sale to get rid of most of our stuff before we move.

The days go by quickly. On the last day of kindergarten my classmates write me little notes and drawings wishing me good luck in Norway. Our house starts to feel empty. Our last night in Minnesota is spent at the AmericInn hotel by the highway and we invite all our friends over for a final goodbye. We kids play in the pool while our parents sit at the surrounding tables talking. The goodbyes to my friends don’t seem very final because mom says everyone will visit us in Norway.

I get the window seat in the airplane. I love flying, and I’ve had a passport since I was only a few months old. I look out at the dark sky and white clouds. I don’t understand how the plane can just fly right through the clouds instead of crashing into them. Just like I don’t understand that my home isn’t a pine house in the woods anymore or that I’ll never see grandma again. I don’t understand why my parents chose to start a new life in a new country or why I have to leave all my friends. I am six years old and oblivious to many of the greater dynamics in my life. I look away from the window and down at the little table in front of me. The flight attendant gave me crayons and coloring paper. As I reach my hand out to grab a crayon so I can keep coloring, my hand slips and I end up knocking over a whole box of crayons onto the floor. Some of them roll over towards my mom’s seat. When she notices the mess I made, she exclaims, “Dette er det verste jeg har sett!” and laughs. I laugh too.

The Garden

Mystical growth, Dew painting a dream, Mysteries are kept, mum.

Paige Hoghaug

Virginia Trail

Madison Pierskalla

How to Write an Essay (When You Have ADHD)

-Based

on a True StoryElliana

Reickard

Crack your knuckles, grab a coffee, and take a seat. You’ve got a three-page essay due tomorrow, and you’ve barely started. Good thing it’s only 8 P.M.! All you know is that your topic involves examining a couple chapters from Charles Dickens’ novel, Great Expectations. You’re not sure which chapters, but you wrote it down. Wait, which notebook did you write it in again?

You’ll find your notes after a little digging. It’ll probably be scribbled in the top corner of a page either littered with doodles or haphazardly torn from the notebook it once belonged to and crumpled up at the bottom of your backpack along with dried-out pens and a half-eaten granola bar from a month ago. Don’t worry, you’ll clean out your backpack later. Maybe.

For now, you have a paper to work on.

But you’ve been busy all day, walking miles around campus and going to class! And your legs ache. You can practically hear your favorite mindless phone game calling you. And even though you know that game is a dopamine casino, taking a break couldn’t hurt too much. Promise yourself that you’ll play until you run out of lives, then you’ll start your paper. Try to keep that promise, but know that you’ll probably end up checking Instagram and taking a snack break too.

You glance at the time, and your heart plummets when you realize it’s already 10 PM. When the panic sets in, you immediately open up a Google Doc and put your name on the top, in MLA format of course. Add in the rest of the header, and now you’ve officially started working! You’re so productive today!

But of course, you have to put on the right song first. Open up your music player of choice, click on your favorites playlist, and—no way, your favorite band released a new song yesterday? How did you miss something so important? Give it a listen before you go back to the paper. And maybe a couple more songs. And make a playlist just for this paper.

Finally, you direct your energy into writing a solid introduction to your currently nonexistent paper. You’ve written a whole paragraph. Great job! Sit back in your chair and—hey, when did your room get so dirty? Clothes draped over chairs, cups of water resting on

your windowsill, books tossed erratically onto your bed and desk… and the thick layer of gray on your bedside lamp confirms that you haven’t dusted in ages. No better time than the present!

After the clutter is swept off the floor—and you remember what the linoleum looks like again—you force yourself to sit back down in your swivel chair. You don’t even realize that you’re spinning back and forth, kicking your legs against the desk, until you’re startled by an aggressive pounding on the wall next to you. It’s your dorm neighbor, knocking on the wall to tell you to shut up!

It’s definitely time to start working again.

And right away, you find the task insurmountable. You don’t remember that much about Great Expectations; it just wasn’t all that interesting to you. But you know Charles Dickens. He wrote A Christmas Carol too, and you remember reading that novella a long time ago. It’s one of your favorite Christmas stories. Perfect timing too, since it’s so close to winter break! You have to get your holiday shopping done soon. And you need wrapping paper…maybe you could go to Target after class the next day? You also need to get tissues, so it’d be more convenient to do one big shopping trip.

You shake your head like an Etch-A-Sketch, as if to clear away the unwanted and irrelevant train of thought. Stay focused, you tell yourself.

Your eyelids are starting to sting. Check the clock on your computer and do a double take when you notice that it’s already 3 AM. You have to get this done. You have to. You write and write, filling paragraph after paragraph with quotes from the book and words that sound good at the moment but will probably sound pretentious the next day. As usual, you waited ‘till the last minute, and now you have to deal with the consequences. However long it takes, whatever battle you have to wage against the natural interest-seeking function of your brain, you have to see this paper to the end.

So you do. And then you’re done!

Go ahead and turn in the paper now. Don’t bother thinking about how your professor will see that you submitted it at 5 AM, since you won’t remember if you wait ‘till tomorrow morning, so it’s best to turn it in right away. And you’re used to staying up so late. Most of your papers end up being late-night projects, and each time, you swear to yourself that you’ll do better next time. You never do.

Now turn off the light, get into bed, and get some sleep! You earned it from all your hard work, and you want to be awake for the last day of classes before fall break.

After all, you have a class that starts in three hours!

Lorraine, Lorraine

Marguerite

Ideals based on “Romance”

by Claude McKay Noelle Hansel

To hold you and lay my head on your heart

Familiar comfort and not apart

To quietly breathe out your name, you’re mine. And fly to Alaska on an airline;

To slowly trace letters on your tattoo, And lay kisses on your mole till you knew

Three words exchanged, but not how I want it. Words declared like lovers they don’t permit;

To hear you ask if we are forever? And I answer for any endeavor.

To be the reason your eyes fill with joy

Everything you do (to me) can destroy

It is lovely. I dream of false ideals. Why else? If not for Love’s certain appeals.

I dream of false ideals, but is it love — This sweet fantasy is written above

Ageless Music

Victoria Faith Wellman

It’s been many weeks now since my master has played. During the night the silence sneaks in and does not leave. Trees rustle outside in the forest. The breeze blew through the elegant velvet drapes, bringing fresh air to the rest of the mansion. Rats and mice skitter across the floor. Their feet were the only sound that penetrated the void. I longed for a companion, someone to play the keys of my soul. Oh, how I long to let my song take flight. I called to one of the mice.

“Hello there, why don’t you hop up here and play a tune. What good is a piano if it is never played?”

“I cannot play you,” replied the mouse, “For my paws are too small.”

With that he skittered away into the hole in the wall. I sagged on my legs as the melancholy silence lagged on. My master should have been back by now with the piano tuner. The house felt cold and dismal without the warming light of music. What am I to do? A piano cannot play itself. If it could, the world would be filled with endless songs. As this thought left my mind a breeze blew by me and I heard the beating of wings. An owl perched on my cover. If a mouse cannot play me then maybe an owl can.

“Wise owl, could you lend a piano a helping wing?”

“I wish I could help you, poor piano. My wings are wonderful for flying, however I must confess that playing the piano requires a more stable extremity, for my wings are too flimsy,” replied the owl.

“Oh,” I responded, “I understand and thank you anyway.”

The owl nodded its condolences and flew out the window back the way it came. Soon I was left in the silence that enveloped me before. Oh, how I longed to let my soul sing. With no one to play me, my enchanting songs were caged inside me, only my master held the key. The light sound of paws came from outside. A low creaking noise came from the back door. The intruder cast a long shadow across the wall adjacent to me. Around the corner padded a fox, the scoundrel of the forest.

“My, my, my, isn’t this a lovely home. Oh yes, it is. I could get used to this,” the fox remarked.

“What are you doing in here?” I grumbled, “your place is in the forest.”

“Well, what have we here?” the fox turned and spotted me,

“A piano! oh, but who will play you in this dismal house?”

“My master will be home soon and you will be doomed.”

“Oh, I am cowering in fear,” the fox mockingly shrunk back.

“You will be sorry you ever stepped foot in this house.”

All of a sudden, I heard a light thumping coming towards the door. With that the fox scampered to the open window and hopped down and out into the woods. The door knob turned slowly as I waited in anticipation. With a creak, the door swung open revealing my master, he was home.

“It’s right inside here,” he said, gesturing for someone to follow. In walked the piano tuner. If pianos could burst into spontaneous song, I would have been an orchestra of joy. What a relief, I thought, my voice will be put into song once again.

“How does it look?” asked my master.

“Oh, it should not take too long,” replied the tuner. “This is quite the beautiful piano you have here, how old is it?”

“It’s been in the family for generations. Even if the piano is aged the music never mellows.”

“Mmm, I can believe that,” declared the tuner, “this piece of wood is as trustworthy as an old ship.”

“She has been in the family for some time, I think of her more as a friend than a piano,” stated my master affectionately.

“Well, that wraps it up, it was only slightly out of tune; still good of you to get it checked out.”

“Perfect,” my master walked over and seated himself on my bench as the tuner backed away.

He gently places his hands on my keys, similar to the tender way a father first grasps his newborn child. Once again, my voice was put to song. The notes and cadences flowed through the air as if they had sprouted wings. The music transported me from place to place. Without moving legs, I could only feel through music. The titles of songs illuminated the music’s feel. At first my master played waltzes. The melodies as familiar as the keys in my body. Slow and sensational refrains brought images of rushing streams and grassfilled meadows to mind. Near the end the rhythm rose to a staccato frenzy. The fast-paced tempo imitating the rapid pace time takes. As my master played, time melted away like dew in the morning, into an endless tune, into ageless music.

An Ode to The Cat On The Moon

Patrick Alderson

A speck of thought; that is her den above the raven river, beyond fields of starlight mice and rabbit tracking shooting star trails. She watches men

stare, licks celestial dust from her paws, aware of their thoughts, of their nature, but does not think too much. They are a certainty, they exist. Sheathed claws

do not mean that her weapons fade like dying stars after all. Still, they do not matter. They lie below on the ball of blue and green yarn, just a shade

amongst shades from her watch spot. Nothing important. Unlike her majesty. Her ears have twitched at the last gasps of dying galaxies, her fur has felt the hot

bristle of suns uttering their first summers; distant but plain. She has fished from streams of asteroids, blazed paw-prints in moonlight vapor. She does not need the answer

for her kingdom. The prying eyes of lost kittens mean nothing for her play. Too exhausting in the end. She is content to sit and watch, tail scattering dust

as she yawns and curls down to sleep.

New Note

Fatuma Mohamed

5:24 PM

As I type, I’m walking down a sidewalk two blocks from my home. It’s October, I’m on a walk, and I’m typing on my notes app. Angela, my therapist, said I should go for a walk, and describe what I see. So here I am, an hour before my online therapy session, walking.

I wasn’t going to do this at first. It sounded dumb. I can’t help but think I’m wasting my time out here. But I can’t bear to see her face fall an hour from now when I tell her I didn’t do the dumb exercise.

So, here we go.

It’s cold. The air is thick, and damp. There are pin prick needles of cold air poking my nose. The puffs of white smoke my breath becomes after every exhale is mesmerizing.

I can’t remember the last time I actively inhaled air.

I always preferred the cold. Curling up on the couch with a blanket, and my tablet. Watching the snow fall, and drawing for hours. There’s always music in the background. My voice isn’t great, so I don’t sing along. But I hum. And I whisper the words. Too afraid to break the comforting silence.

It’s been three minutes, but my fingers are already numbing. I’m stumbling over keys getting this down on the page. Thank God for autocorrect.

God. .god.

But then again, maybe not.

I’m purposefully stepping on the leaves that aren’t even blocking my path. I like the crunch they make under my boots. Sometimes though, I’ll step on one I think will be extra crunchy, and it just bends under my shoe. I know there’s a metaphor in there somewhere. But I’m too tired to sort it out.

Or maybe I’m just not as creative as I think I am. Lord, what am I doing out here?

The sun is setting.

I’m not going to be one of those fake deep people that say something like the stars will illuminate my path, or whatever. I do think you meet interesting people in the dark.

And just as I say that, what a coincidence, there are two familiar strangers approaching me. I say familiar because I’ve seen them before, but I’m usually driving by, too sleep deprived to think, and

a scowl flittering my features. I say strangers because, well, I don’t really know them. It’s an old woman, and an old man with their dogs on leashes.

I wish I could name dog breeds. All I can tell you is what I see, and all I see are two black dogs.

Once upon a time, I would have crossed the street. Gone on the grass to avoid them. Not now though. I can’t really tell you why.

We exchanged greetings. The good ol’ American smile, and wave. They seem nice. I think this is the first time they’ve ever actually seen me. I’m a new addition to their world. Even if they’ve always been constant side characters in mine.

Side characters. Wow. How arrogant. Can’t believe I actually typed that. Ew. Wait, let me try again.

—in mine.

That’s better.

Okay. I think I’ve done enough walking. And I officially cannot feel my fingers–thank you Angela. My meeting starts in thirty. Time to turn back.

6:31 PM

Update: Angela’s face didn’t fall.

Austin Saatzer

Summertime Movie Set

Stephany Luithly

The summer before our fourth-grade year, my best friend Jenna came with me to visit my dad in Fayetteville, Georgia. Of course, she wasn’t going to be there for the full three months I would be, but three weeks seemed like a good amount of time for her to go on a vacation with me. My older brother, Jeremy, was going into his sixthgrade year, so it was the first summer we could all stay home during the day while my dad and stepmom went to work.

Our daily routine started with waking up (usually around noon) and then going through the list of chores that were left for us. After that, we would usually eat lunch and then we had the rest of the day to ourselves. One afternoon, we decided that we were going to write and create a murder movie. Well, Jeremy decided to take advantage of the recent news of Jenna’s commercial audition in Colorado being successful in finding her a talent agency. Jenna was excited about his idea to freshen up on her acting chops and me? I was along for the ride because what else was I going to do?

In this production, Jeremy was the murderer who snuck into the house, killed the mother (played by me), and Jenna was the teenage daughter who would find her mother. I admit it’s a little dark for three kids, but it was our plan that day.

The first few scenes went perfectly. Then, things got really interesting. I was playing my part, ketchup for blood and everything, laying on the floor, and Jeremy said to Jenna in his directing voice, “Okay, now you’ll call the police to report it and we’ll go from there.”

Jenna picked up the receiver of the old, only for looks, rotary phone in the kitchen and physically dialed 9-1-1. She spoke into the receiver, even though there was no dial tone on the other end, “Help! My mother’s been murdered!”

“Wait, wait, wait . . . ” Jeremy interrupted, “That wasn’t convincing at all. Let’s try it one more time with a little more scaredness.”

His eleven-year-old brain was moving like Quentin Tarantino’s. So, she followed directions, and picked the phone up once more. The fact that the dial tone wasn’t present made us believe the phone didn’t work at all, but I had a weird feeling in my stomach about her nonchalantly dialing 9-1-1 anyway.

“Jenna . . . I think you can just pretend to dial the numbers. That phone might still end up calling the police.” Jeremy’s irritation at me interrupting was obvious as he side-eyed me.

“Steph… it’s fine. The phone doesn’t work,” she insisted.

“But what if it does and it’s just the ear thing that’s broken?” I knew I’d end up losing the argument—I was the little sister, after all.

So Jenna physically dialed the three numbers a couple more times after I laid back down in my ketchup dead position as the scene was perfected. After several more takes though, I was sick of just being a prop and cleaned the ketchup off and let them keep going. I walked by the front windows and noticed a couple of police cars parked along our lot. It was a corner lot and they were parked on either side of the corner.

“Jeremy! I think the police are here.”

He came to look out the window and rolled his eyes at his younger, paranoid sister and said, “Mind your own business. They’re probably doing something with the neighbors.”

I pushed the nagging gut feeling I had aside and went into my bedroom upstairs to try and find some clothes to change into since my pajamas were now stained with red from my work in the movie. When I walked back downstairs, I looked out the window again, except this time, the gut feeling was more than that. There were four more police cars, facing our house, parked in the street, and all six police officers were perched between their windshield and drivers’ doors with their weapons drawn and ready for whatever would come next.

“Uhm . . . JEREMY, THIS IS DEFINITELY OUR BUSINESS!”

Jeremy and Jenna ran up to the front window and all of us fell completely silent aside from our deep, fear-dripping breaths. The “fight-or-flight” instinct kicked in shortly after, and for me, flight was the move. I ran upstairs to Jeremy’s room to look out his blinds stealthily while Jeremy and Jenna walked out slowly with their arms up. Picture an eleven-year-old and eight-year-old walking out of a house that could be a murder scene, Jeremy in his basketball shorts and oversized t-shirt, and Jenna clad in her matching plaid pajama shorts and tank-top set. My shallow breaths picked up as I watched them talk to a police officer who slowly approached them after putting his weapon back in the holster. A few minutes later, after they had seemingly explained our movie to them, they both walked back into the house with shoulders that were no longer carrying the threat of being shot.

The police just packed up and left. They didn’t come into the house; they didn’t call our parents and explain what had happened and none of the neighbors ever said anything if they ever saw anything. A few years later, Jeremy and I were talking with our dad and his wife about it, and they were shocked to hear this had happened.

“We just figured you didn’t say anything to us to torture us,” I snickered.

“It’s actually kind of concerning that they didn’t come into the house to check that the coast was clear. What if there really was a murder that took place, and you were threatened to walk out there and explain it to them?” My dad’s face was crunched up with worry.

“Well, I guess it’s a good thing there wasn’t, and everyone turned out alright,” Jeremy said with a shrug and a blank face.

Golden Coat

Matthew Bratsch

Your fleece golden coat once Bounced with joy and adventure. You jumped upon The soft couch where we sat. From a Cheerful plea for fun outside. To be awoken at midnight

By your cries for comfort and cuddles. You always watched over the dreary Street, calmly waiting for us while

You rested. Remembering the moment, you, and I Shared on the dock. When we looked out to the lake and pondered What our future would be. Then came the day you left, my heart weak And choking. I thought I could move on and Forget the hole you left. Now my mind wonders, dreaming and weary.

Leaves fall silently, Time is spent in pure color, The wind carries our gentle souls.

Paige Hoghaug

Snow Planting

Jesse Peterman

Mid-January in Shevlin means only one thing: snowsports. I'm four years old, and my parents decide to celebrate by teaching me how to ski. Being old friends of the resort manager, my parents are thrilled to get an opportunity to get a discount on an all day family pass. Standing atop the bunny hill (the easiest run, almost exclusively used for lessons and practice), strapped to skis for the first time and uneasy on my feet, my dad skis backwards in front of me, carefully instructing me in turns, how to stop, and how to avoid getting hurt. My sisters fly past us, followed shortly by my mom, who hasn’t skied since before she was pregnant with Anna (oldest daughter, ten years old). Megan has zero sense of selfpreservation (middle daughter, six years old), and is giving LeAnn a run for her money (mom, thirty-five years old, from Nebraska). Nearing the bottom of the bunny hill, I’m doing so far so good, but lessons are often taught without warning. My dad (Jeff, thirty-six years old, chronic thrill-seeker) looks behind to check on the girls, and I learn that you can have your skis on too wide of an angle. Pivoting forward like a cartoon character, my face impacts the soft powder, knocking up a puff of powder snow as I dig for solid ground. I’m equal parts shocked and confused. Jeff plucks me out of the snow and rights me, doing his best not to laugh at the snow stuck to my eyebrows. I want to cry, give up and do something else, go into the chalet and warm up. But my dad gives me his sage advice.

“It’s just pain, you’ve had it before, it’ll go away.”

Neither of us have any idea how much this will stick, like planting a seed you don’t expect to sprout.

***

Freshman year of high school is always nerve-wracking, doubly so if it’s the first time you’re actually going to school. Up until this point I was home-schooled, and not at all enthusiastic about it. The first semester was a blur of getting used to structured classes and figuring out if I care about friends. We’ve just moved back to Minnesota from Wisconsin and I’m still mourning the loss of my old friends. Winter break is just around the corner, and a class ski trip is being planned. I don’t want to go, but Jeff hears the discount and is immediately on board. However, he needs to go as a parent, so I’m his ticket in. Bribing me with lunch and a new game for my Nintendo DS (digital adrenaline is good enough for me), I agree to go. Standing atop the hill on discount rental equipment, next to my dad, I couldn’t be less cool. My dad, on the other hand, is one of the only parents on the hill as the rest opt to watch from the chalet and gossip.

The first run goes off without a hitch, and we soon are approached by a group from my geography class. Opting to “let me ski with my friends” Jeff disappears down the nearest run, a gray and blue blur compared to the teens and tweens on the hill. His display of sheer speed impresses the group (they’ve got normal parents), and they introduce themselves. The ringleader of the bunch is Cally, a computer whiz with rustic interests. Luke is a little unhinged and just down for whatever, and David is the weird kid with the bowl cut that couldn’t care what people think about him. I round out the quartet and we make for the hill, Cally and David in front, and Luke and I following at a more leisurely pace. One of the seniors on the run takes a jump and doesn’t stick the landing, which just happens to be in front of me. I try to stop and end up in a tangle of limbs and fiberglass, face down in the snow. Trying not to laugh at the absurdity of the situation, I get untangled and try to catch up to my new friends. I’m sore and there’s snow in my gloves, but I’m thrilled to have friends.

Twenty-two isn’t much like how Taylor Swift says it’ll be, but with her encouragement in the air, I’m standing at the top of a hill with friends I’ve not seen since high school. Cally and Luke (I think, honestly this part’s fuzzy) are standing next to me on skis, waiting as I fumble with the bindings on an unfamiliar pair of boots. Normally, I’d be between them as we bombed the nostalgic run, joking as we blur past trees, obstacles, and who knows what else. This time though, I’m on a snowboard, and about to learn why you always see them wearing helmets. This might be my first time on one, but after a few runs down a bunny hill, I’ve gathered enough hubris to try a green circle (it’s the easiest full-sized run). I stand, and we’re off, my friends passing me in short order as I struggle to stay upright. An unexpected lump makes my face meet the snow like I’ve stepped on a banana peel in a cartoon. Thump. The world is spinning as I look at the near-perfect indent of my face in the frosty hillside. I give a hasty thumbs-up to let my buddies know I’m okay, before getting back on my board, a little more careful of invisible bumps. My dad’s wisdom echoes in my head as I feel pins and needles in my leg. It’s just pain, I’ve had it before, it’ll go away.

***

A few runs later, and I’ve once again hit critical mass for hubris. This time we’re on a blue square (medium difficulty), which I’m confident on, you know, like a fool. We’re swooshing down this hill, and I’m dumb enough to try to keep pace with my adrenaline connoisseur friends. Turns out, going fast makes balancing a waxed fiberglass board on an uneven ice sheet more difficult. I’ll never be sure what happens next, but I’m flying through the air, almost in line with the run’s angle, and my face is on a collision course with a rapid series of lumps commonly known as moguls, though I’m sure the proper name will soon be my grave. Impact. My

spine cracks like a glowstick, neon pain spreading through me. I tumble a few times, the moguls making me pinball between them. I obstinately get back up, resolved to keep going. The seeds of determination watered with effort, pushing towards the surface as I make it to the bottom of the run before my back gives out. ***

The next time I go snowboarding is with my dad, and while most of the day is spent flopping onto our sides or eating it trying to get off the lift, we decide we’ve had enough of the slower runs and pool our collective overconfidence into the worst decision of the day: a black diamond run (that’s like the hard or expert level). Standing at the top as we tighten the bindings on our rental boots and boards, I muse to my dad that I’ve almost spent the cost of buying my own set in rentals. He laughs in that single-drawn-out-breath kind of way that you can tell is half-forced, then mumbles something under his breath about Christmas coming up. The black diamond we’ve chosen is ominously named “The Chute” and given what I knew about the run when I’d been on my much more assured skis, should’ve been a clue to what was about to happen. It’s about a third of the way down another milder run when the branch left to The Chute happens, and honestly, I think a better name for the sheer drop they call a run would be “The Cliff” or maybe “Backbreaker Ridge” but these are both names I think of after. My dad is behind as I lean into the sudden drop; I imagine it looked like a looney toon the way I disappeared from his sight. Maybe ten feet down the incredibly steep wall of ice they call a run, my board catches on a groove carved by a previous victim of gravity and I’m once again face to face with the snow. I tumble down the rest of the run, flopping like a pancake in a waterfall, at some point my board comes loose and escapes my impression of a sideload washer-dryer and serenely glides to a stop near the upcoming rescue station. Mercifully, my end-over-end turns into a much more manageable log impression and finally I slide to a rest after the drop flattens back into another run, still a good hundred feet from the chair lift.

As I lay there dazed, dizzy, and battered, my dad slides up on his rental board like it’s a part of his body and helps me up, laughing in that ha-ha-ha-ooh kind of way you associate with watching those slapstick home videos of some unfortunate schmuck. Helmets, I decide, are a good idea. What we aren’t aware of, is the tears in my abdominal wall caused by all of the twisting I’ve been doing. It’s just pain, you’ve had it before, it’ll go away. In this case, only with surgery. Two months later I’m going under for my first surgery, equal parts nervous and tired, and hungrier than I thought I could be at seven in the morning. The surgeon introduces himself, but the anesthesiologist has already started the drip, and I’m out before I hear his name. A full week of recovery is required, and for once I’m thankful I dropped out of community college. It still hurts to do situps or carry anything heavy, but I’m assured that it’s just pain. I’ve had it before, and this time it really will go away. ***

This time, I’m wiser, more protected (see early remarks about helmets), and far, far, more cautious of the hubristic urge to go fast. Now standing at the peak of an unfamiliar black diamond in Lutsen (a pretty large ski resort in northeastern Minnesota), accompanied by the only true adrenaline junkie I’ve ever met: my dad. We share a conspiratorial glance, the overhead punk rock too loud to speak over, and dive down the sheer face. I’m on my single stretch of now familiar fiberglass composite, and the fifty-six-year-old source of my thrill-seeking behaviors on his twin composite strips. The run is wild and unruly, but I’ve earned, through pain and practice, a firm handle on the chaos below my heavy boots. Nearly halfway, I think, when the geriatric speed demon hollers like Goofy before diving out of my sight down a supposed shortcut he claimed to see. Just as I wonder whether or not to follow my foolhardy father’s trail, my mortal enemy strikes. Gravity finds an opening in my defenses in the form of a stealthy sheet of sheer ice and I once again experience my face matching pace with a hill’s angle. Twisting in now apprehensive panic, I imagine I avoid the worst of it as my face carves a deep groove into the mountainside. Tumbling at nearly-terminal speeds, I finally coast to a stop a good hundred feet down the hill. Taking a moment to collect myself, I groan with the knowledge that I’m not even halfway down the run, and it’s going to be a long, grueling ride to the bottom. My head’s spinning and there’s snow in my coat, but all I can think is, “I hope dad waits for me at the lift.”

***

It’s been a rough year since the last time Jeff and I have gotten to go skiing. It’s 2022 and we’re celebrating my twenty-fifth birthday. It’s a strange feeling to think that I’ve already been snowboarding for three years, but as we brace for the chair lift, we smile at each other in a way that says, “Don’t fall, I’ll finish laughing before I help you up.” My grandma, Jeff’s mom, has died since the last time we got to spend any

time on a hill together. She was ninety-two, so it was no real surprise, but seeing him morn alongside his eight living siblings put a weight on the day. At this time, my dad’s fifty-seven. At the top of the hill, we take a selfie to send to the family group chat. The way he smiles here is so real, crow’s feet framing his bright eyes as I steady the camera. Jeff’s been more intentional about making time to talk lately, focusing on family and what’s going to be left when he dies. We used to joke about death all the time, now the jokes don’t land the same way. His brother passed, and two other siblings nearly followed this year, and you’d never know as I look at the photo, checking for imperfections. The photo’s good enough, and I stow my phone. I swear Jeff almost giggles as we finish tightening the boot bindings on our nearly-matching boards. Speed and pain-induced confidence make the first several runs blur by, intermittent with chatting, jokes, and comfortable silence between us.

We stop looking at the hill map and have fun on whatever difficulty run we end up on. We exchange high fives on the flatter parts and race around curves and bends. We break for dinner, the sun long gone by now. We take another selfie before our final set, the white hills and amber lights framing against the black sky behind us. I never send this one to the group chat though, this one’s for me. I’m leaving to study abroad for four months, and I want to keep something for myself. A few runs later and the hill announces it’ll be closing soon. We prep for our last two runs, the last more for getting up the hill to the chalet exit. Jeff takes the lead and I have a sneaking suspicion and an ache in my spine when I see the moguls waiting for their next victim. This time I’ll go a little slower and they won’t get me. Jeff’s not so wise to the idea, and I watch as he gets a little too much air off the top of one. He sticks to the landing a little too well. Flopping hard into the icy hillside, there’s an audible “oof” like a Roblox soundbite. I’m scrambling to make sure he’s okay, but as I approach he’s laughing about the noise he made. All I can do is laugh and offer him a hand up. Jeff winces as he stands, and I know we’re thinking the same thing. It’s just pain, I’ve had it before, it’ll go away. And for now, it has. This summer, I’ll be diagnosed with PTSD and have to reckon with all of the pain I’ve been ignoring; genuinely believing that time can make it go away eventually. Through all these times planting my face into frozen hillsides, something is finally growing. A harvest of persistence and some as-of-yet unknown fruit begins to sprout.

Stolen genius

Jesse Peterman

I drifted in like a candle on a tortoise’s back

For I have come to burgle my own mind

Honeyed words sweet like christmas greetings, The nettle-like sting of wit

Disarming scent of approachability, swept into a bottle

The echo of my silent steps present in the disturbed dust Moving slowly, With deliberate pace, So as not to wake the inhabitants

The silence weighs heavily, Like the phrase "We need to talk"

I must finagle genius from a pedestal too high to reach Simple creativity lying on the floor beside, yet coveted as much

If I am caught, the mind will shine no more Empty cases, shelves, and racks, dusty from disuse Imprints of missing traits, stolen by predecessors

The luminescent snowflakes of discarded ideas drift like dust motes I stand in my unconscious, lost as a map at home

I’ll be up soon, waking as if none of this happened

I’ll be wealthy with all I’ve taken, And leave my self destitute, Ruined and rich

cold Kseniia Maksimova

Time Reeling On

Mina Hakmoun

Snow falling

Flowers wilting

Summer sweltering

And time reeling on

I try to remember

The last time I remembered Myself In constant comparison

A bad seed In rotting soil

Of an unkept garden

Look up at the sky

Do you feel small?

The universe is infinite

And you get to reside here With everything else

With snow falling

Flowers wilting

Summer sweltering

And time reeling on

Dysphoria

Jackson Yates

These shirts cling too tightly to my chest. As I work my way up the garment, Buttoning one at a time.

I feel the weight of dread settling into the yet unbuttoned center of my chest.

“The shirt isn’t the issue”

My brain says on repeat as I slowly lose my breath. Standing there, slowly approaching the next button, The world around me spins,

Like I was in the midst of all the major wars happening simultaneously,

The shots being fired from my eyes, ricocheting off the mirror and back to my chest, to my hips, to my slightly feminine curves.

After two years of reshaping and resculpting.

After two years of rewiring and self-validating.

In that mirror, I see her again.

I'm not sure if I want to run, break the mirror, or shrivel to the ground.

So I do it all at once.

But my feet are still cemented here.

Like a good soldier, I finish buttoning this shirt. This body I try to hide, Screams back at me underneath this flawlessly perfect garment. A shirt I love, and want to wear.

But she’s here,

These shirts cling too tightly to her chest. And underneath can be seen the abnormally large DDs that no man should own.

So I put on another sight coffin to try to make her leave. Maybe if I suffocate her.

Maybe if I break her ribs.

Maybe if I just add another binder.

If I bind her tightly enough she will sink back inside of me, and be erased from existence.

I killed her one year, 11 months and 11 days ago.

I left her dead body on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere.

There were no witnesses.

In the moment it was my decision. I was the only one that needed to see her lose her breath and watch mine begin.

She was venom running through my veins, She was arrows sent with loving kindness from unknowing assailants.

She was the emptiness between lines. She was the aftertaste of liquor on my breath. She was the cloudy dark summer night.

Yet her body is before me now. These shirts cling too tightly.

Sigh (Blue) Stephanie Shoemaker

Poppy Seeds

Fatuma Mohamed

**Trigger Warnings: Suicide, death, descriptions of blood and corpses, bullying, depression

The most impactful moment in Poppy’s life isn’t one of her own. She often wonders how that single day, that single moment could have changed the trajectory of her entire life, and she wasn’t there to experience it. That hasn’t stopped her from picturing the swoosh of air leaving her lungs, and how it sounded when Magnolia’s neck snapped in two.

Had it hurt? Was she already dead before she felt any pain?

Poppy hopes that’s the case. That Magnolia’s death hadn’t been painful. That she left peacefully. But then the cynical part of her snapped back,

It’s selfish. She’s selfish. Let her suffer.

And ever the perfectionist, Poppy corrects herself. Was.

Oh, when had things gone so irreversibly wrong for them?

Poppy had always been a mean kid, but when had the tipping point been? The moment that sealed Magnolia’s fate and led her to this. A part of her liked to think it was their meeting that sealed her fate. And if that were true, did that make it right for her to hate her parents for ever introducing them? She wishes it did. Maybe believing this single moment had been caused by a meeting she’d been too young to stop, too young to even comprehend could pardon her of the crimes she’d committed. Maybe then she’d finally be able to let out the words branded in her throat.

But Poppy is not an idiot, and she knows why this happened and when it turned so terrible.

She wishes it was different, that she was different. If she could rewrite history, even if she’d have to write herself out of the story, she would. For her, she would. And isn’t that a sort of twisted irony?

A hundred and one times she’d shut her eyes and tried to rewrite history, and a hundred and one times, history bared its bleeding gums, snapped its teeth and seared itself into the pages of their story. For Poppy, it had been the end of that chapter; the page had flipped and a new one had begun. For Magnolia, it had been the end.

Her mind had burned the image of an event she hadn’t been there to witness into the back of her eyelids. Each time she blinked, she was there, slapped against school grounds, red pooling into

concrete, falling further and further into the earth's crust, embedding the most fragile parts of her DNA into the ground that had hastily met her body and snapped it in two. She was wearing a smile in the conjuring of an image she had never seen, because even in death Poppy couldn’t imagine a frown on the face of the girl who loved life so dearly and whose life did not love her enough.

It happened on a day like this, where the sun was shining and the clouds had retreated to give the sky a moment to color the world in shades of blue. There will never be another nice day where Poppy is allowed to simply bask in the light. On the good days, she will think of her. On the bad days, she will dream of her. That will be her curse, her repentance to the universe for all she’s done and for all she didn’t do.

The funeral is brief. Five people show up: Poppy, her mother Julie, her brother Kip, Magnolia’s mother Elizabeth, and father Henry. They say goodbye to the body parts they could scrape off the pavement, the rest of her having been power washed off the ground. Henry sobs when he sees what’s left of his daughter, but Poppy knows it’s Elizabeth that will never be able to forget.

Henry’s memories will fade and he will come to accept her death. He will keep the hope of seeing her again alive in every step he takes moving forward. Elizabeth will never forget. She will be haunted by the echoes of what once was, what could have been, and what is. She will smash her face into the very same pavement and smear her own blood into the ground in hopes of understanding why. Reality will be Henry’s salvation and Elizabeth's demise.

Afterwards, the grieving family invites them back to their apartment. Kip offers to help Elizabeth with dinner. Julie and Henry sit in a distilled silence. The couch they occupy is well worn and weathered. Every wrinkle holds a piece of Magnolia’s childhood.

There is a grandfather clock in the corner of the room. Its steady ticking cascades over them. Julie counts every beat with her pointer finger, the ring she refuses to take off twisting around in response. It was always a size too big for her.

“She loved that clock,” Henry whispers.

“I know,” Julie lies. She didn’t know, but she held onto every new piece of information about the girl that is gifted to her. Pretends she knows Magnolia preferred watching sunrises over sunsets, because she found sunsets bittersweet. Or how she frequently brought home injured animals to nurse them back to health. Or how the doctors told them the cause of death was blood loss. That she could have been saved. She clings to these bits and pieces, lets them anchor her and pull her to shore, if only to keep the memory of her from fading too quickly.

In the kitchen, Kip is checking the roast chicken in the oven for

the umpteenth time. Anything to keep himself from going insane. Elizabeth’s monotone chopping of onions echoes off the walls. The blue paint sticking to them does little to diffuse the sound.

Clear Skies, Kip thinks, that’s what the shade is called. When they first moved to this neighborhood, Magnolia’s mother had asked her to pick out a color to paint their brand new kitchen. So, she dragged Poppy down to the local Ikea to stare at paint chips, and wherever Poppy went, Kip went.

The argument that ensued over whether they should pick Clear Skies or Coastal Breeze was a memory Kip held delicately in the palms of his hands.

“Who cares!” Poppy had spat, plucking the two cards off the shelf, and putting them atop one another. “Look, they’re exactly the same.”

“They are not the same,” Magnolia yelled, and then cringed at the volume of her own voice. “Clear Skies is lighter than Coastal Breeze.”

Sliding the cards out of Poppy’s hands, Magnolia turned to Kip, holding the samples out so he couldn’t see the colors or their names.

“Kip, you pick.”

Kip is sure he picked Coastal Breeze. They left the store with two cans of Clear Skies.

The memory used to make him chuckle with fondness. But now, the edges are blurred with grief. He supposes all his memories of Magnolia will be dipped in paint cans of sadness now.

Kip can’t help the wet laugh that escapes him. The chopping stops.

His eyes slide over to Elizabeth and she’s staring straight back at him, her fire truck-colored hair vibrant against her ghostly skin. They lock eyes for one second too long and Kip’s stomach rolls with anticipation. He half fears the knife in Elizbaeth’s hand will end up stuck in his neck, but before he can string together words of crumpled sympathy, she goes back to chopping onions. He releases a breath and goes back to staring at the chicken.

Poppy finds herself at the edge of Magnolia’s room. She can’t stand the smell of her favorite foods burning on the stove or the sound of her mother and Henry’s pathetic attempts at conversation. Only when she is up there, standing in a room that hasn’t changed in the four years Poppy hadn’t been there does she realize. She doesn’t have any pictures of them together.

It’s such a trivial train of thought that she doesn’t really know where it stems from. Thousands of moments, thousands of memories, and not a single photo to indicate they had known each other at all. A lifetime of friendship up until four years ago when Poppy broke the rope tethering them. The one that had been fraying since the summer before their freshman year.

The urge to vomit from the realization is so strong in Poppy. She takes two steps inside before collapsing onto the fluffy white rug beside Magnolia’s bed.

Pink tulips dot her comforter, a collection of stuffed animals splayed atop it. The room smells of sunflowers and honey. A shiny pink lip gloss stands neatly on her white vanity. There are scribbles on the mirror in rosy red lipstick. A shoebox stuffed under her bed. A hair tie tossed to the corner of the room.

Hadn’t this been her goal?

Four years ago, Poppy sat around a lunch table and so proudly mocked the death of a teen at another school district. But today, she is breaking down at the simple fact that she doesn’t have any pictures to place on her bedside table to wistfully stare at in the morning and reminisce over in the evening. How dare she be angry about that? What right did she have to feel sorry, while Magnolia’s parents fell apart—people who loved her more than life and would switch places with her in a heartbeat.

This is supposed to be a good thing. Poppy can move on with the rest of her life. Pretend red hair, brown eyes, and a face dotted with constellations never existed. She can forget her now, she’s done her duty, paid her respects, she can let go.

She can’t.

She knows she can’t. It’s too late. The memories of her smile and voice will disintegrate over the years, wiped away with time, even though she will pretend to remember them. The feeling of having that smile pointed towards her will continue to paint her world in shades of red. Magnolia’s very essence is a tidal wave that will rise and rise until it knocks Poppy down in one fell swoop. Until it wraps a slithering noose of sea foam around her leg and tugs her under. Until she drowns.

She wants to hang up a photo of the girl in the study of her home someday, so when the kids she will eventually love more than anything crawl into her lap and ask who that strange girl is, she could tell them.

She isn’t sure if she would tell them the truth. Maybe someday, when they were old enough and had lived lives of their own and Poppy was old and gray and so very tired of living.

She spent half a decade of her life hating Magnolia, and now she will spend the rest of it missing her.

Mount Chimborazo 4

Ying Zhao

body horror

Carissa Natalia Baconguis

head { how many lozenges can you take before you pass out; the first snow came as a mistake in early october the wind came with a violence like a character who demanded a name the snow arrived like dry flakes of a scalp from a head who didn’t understand what it meant to need knowledge of biology say are you ready for the cold yes i think no that is the problem. you think.

eyes imagine this: / looking directly at the sun / only to find / it was you all along / who must be set on fire /

ears i love this song the one that goes [ . . . ]

sorry that was my language

i mistook

the crinkling of leaves for the rain

nose you tell the doctor / you can’t breathe anymore she says it’s normal / you can’t expect it to adjust that fast just keep breathing / it’s not like you have a choice it’s not like you ever did /

no one says it like you

mouth how long until you forget your own name / the one that’s easier to say / until you have the words / to name this instead / whatever definition can capture you

throat regurgitation is the act of purification: listen to its speech:

i don’t want this:

i never wanted this: what is this: i want to be pure: again: we must: to spit: to vomit: a part of you: to operate: clean: function: process: have you ever asked a body: really ask it:

lungs trying to make peace with expansion:

i will never be at peace with you and your act of breathing

ribs from his plucked rib she was born even the myths tell you something in you is foreign maybe that’s why

limb you’re moving to america when you come back which is to say please come back the word please : pleasant : happy : satisfied : proceed with caution : smile : hold back : don’t go : gently : i can’t follow you there : it has to be you

wrist [ i no longer fear cutters

[ you can forget but bodies remember

[ when will i understand you talk to me what’s going on [ how much of you was carved from the need to survive

spine yeah i’ve got one of those : what did you think like you’re the only one to suffer : don’t make me laugh

hands , my hands , mama / what’s happening to my hands / they’re bleeding

it was just a scratch i don’t know / what i did / it’s the cold , / they don’t know

/ my veins are blue / so blue / they’re bleeding / it was / it was / my keys / tried to grab them / they sliced me / right here / what the fuck / why / what the fuck / fuck you / god fuck

this / i’ll write about you / i’ll fucking write about you / don’t try me /

fuck you / fuck you / fuck you / fuck you / fuck you / fuck you / fuck you / fuck

you / fuck you / fuck you / fuck you / fuck you / fuck you /

fuck you / fuck you / fuck you / fuck you / fuck you / fuck you /

fuck you / fuck you / fuck you / fuck you / fuck you / fuck you /

fuck you / fuck you / fuck you / fuck you / fuck you / fuck you /

fuck you / fuck you / fuck you / fuck you / fuck you / fuck you /

fuck you / fuck you / fuck you / fuck you / fuck you / fuck you /

fuck you / fuck you / fuck you / fuck you / fuck you / fuck / you have to hold it / you have to hold it softly

fingernails mediocre quotes don’t make poetry : did you know that : they

tear you apart : flesh only upon flesh : call it new criticism

stomach { 13 of them , by the way i’m sorry : they were ginger flavored

: stone in my stomach

: a watermelon seed that never grew up only hurt in a minty fresh way

guts you don’t know what i’ve been through : what i’m going through

: i can’t take it anymore

: anyway

skin { it’s not too cold yet { it will get worse here i’ve layered coat over coat in my country you will be stripped bare the way you’ve peeled the skin of my skin of my skin of my skin of my skin of

uterus nothing could prepare you for this / the knowledge / that your body does things / without you / it doesn’t care / if you know / what language / of disgust / it operates in / without you / without you / it knows / how to be domesticated

clit as if you would know anything about what it is like :to be a body engulfed

:to be on fire

:when there is so much more

:left to burn

a catharsis

i’m tired

:left wanting

asshole did they really think they could bring a poet here and ask it to behave

thighs

[ what about yoga have you ever thought about that

[ you have to keep moving there is a

warmth in you let it linger

knees since when have you feared the weight of your falling; since when mama pick me up i’m was the body a means to feel fear a failure

feet what is this pile of brown leaves if i am always looking up / whatever the sky hasn’t swallowed yet / let it spit it into my eyes / i’ll take the scenic route tonight / the one that will kill me / one step forward / always forward / [ . . . ]

Drop Dead Gorgeous Chloe Luther

Trepanation

Henry Koelling

You enter the OR, the incandescent lights are buzzing, you are inspecting a synthetic today. The nurse at the door hands you a clipboard with a ream of papers, you thumb through them: standing abstention, involuntary screaming, paresthesia, recombinant memory, 14 years of service. You look at the nurse, her face is stony, she gestures to the curtain, you pull it back. You have done this before.

You almost vomit immediately. A smell of fear so overpowering as to be present and heavy in the air hits your nostrils as you see the patient. A synth, it has the face of a young man with soft features, it is naked, and red around the eyes, its nose is running, and its skull has been opened. A synth skull is split into four quarter spheres, so when you open the head it looks like a strange red flower. Synth brains are biologically grown from stem cells and fitted with nodes to stimulate thought. You contributed to this research, this is why you are here. You compose yourself.

“Hello?!” the thing says in a panicked voice, “Is someone there? I can’t see!” Its face is twisted in panic and it looks on the verge of tears.

You check the papers again, intermittent blindness. The metal nodes on the brain that clip onto the skull to connect to the nervous system are disconnected (obviously) and the flesh around them is red and angry. If a brain had nerves it would likely feel raw and painful.

“My body h-hurts, a lot, and–" You try to stop listening, something about this feels disturbing. There is no way it should feel anything, its nervous system is disconnected, but– “If there’s someone there,” its eyes are darting blindly around the room, “please fix me.”

You approach the chair the synth is seated in, and lean in for a closer look, it hears you breathing against your mask, and the smell of fear intensifies, but it does not move. You do not speak to the synth unless necessary, your job is to diagnose and fix the problem. This is not a standard patient, it is a machine, and likely property, though it may be emancipated. This is of no concern to you as you examine the terminals on the skull, then on the surface of the brain where you note: one is dented. The damaged terminal has thrown loose a small strand of copper wire, no thicker than a hair. The flesh around this terminal is gravely inflamed.

“Did you hit your head?” you ask the synth.

It sits silent for a moment, you look down at its face and its mouth is agape, facial structures frozen, startled that you had spoken to it.

It finds its voice, “A-ah y-yes, I did, two months ago.”

You look at the papers, the first report of the listed issues is dated in June. Two months ago. The report concerns a sudden feeling of severe dysmorphia, and dread. This seems to have been the start of the issues.

You look at the brain again, sitting there like meat in a pan. The dented terminal leaks blood from the connection port, there’s a deeper problem. You daub up the blood gently with a cotton swab, and signal to the nurse to deploy the scanner. There’s a whirring sound, and a large apparatus descends from the ceiling.

“What is that?!” the synth yells in fear, it’s crying again. “WHAT IS THAT?!” it sobs.

You feel unnerved, it is entering a heightened state of panic when simply opening the brain casing should have limited its capacity for such emotions.

“We are going to perform a deep scan of your brain with this machine,” you say, barely maintaining a steady tone. This response is a manual emotional stabilization measure, you have not used it on a synth in years. “One of the terminals implanted in your parietal lobe is damaged slightly, and is showing signs that there may be deeper damage. This scan will tell us what we need to do in order to repair you.”

It calms down. “Oh… ok… do it then.” it says, mucus is running onto its upper lip from its nose.

You remark silently to yourself that you have never seen a synth in such a volatile state. You look over to the stony-faced nurse. Behind her mask she seems still unmoved, but has raised an eyebrow at the receipt of a request from a synth. She flips a switch on the wall, and the primary scanning module boots up.

As you step over to observe the viewing screen, you squint your eyes slightly against a barrage of color. Then they open wide. Its neurons are firing in a furious staccato, its amygdala is running white hot, and none of the terminals are active. There are zero regulator programs running, all of the peripheral cognisance technology seems to be in total shutdown. Its heart rate is elevated, and its respiration is labored and fast, if this were a human body, it would be gasping for air. You look at the synth, and then at the nurse. The nurse looks back at you, now visibly unnerved, you wave her over. She picks up her clipboard, and comes over, then she drops it.

The scan is human, the synthetic brain is functioning completely unassisted, and is experiencing symptoms indicative of borderline lethal shock. You can also see now why it reports that its body hurts. Neurons corresponding to every inch of its body are receiving pain signals identical to those of severe paresthesia. You are looking at

what, at a glance, is identical to a scan of a transplanted human brain stranded in a vat. In an elevated state of severe pain and panic. With a near lethal contusion to its parietal lobe.

You look at the nurse, she looks at you. You stare at each other for what feels like an hour.

“We have to shut it down,” she says. Her face is like a rock again. The synths eyes widen and a look of pristine terror takes his face. He lets out a piercing, begging scream, “NO, oh my god, don’t, MOM, PLEASE–”

The nurse reaches over and pinches his neck from both sides, deactivating his voice. He continues to scream silently, sobbing and coughing like a toddler, calling for his mother, but making no voice. You will write this off as a complication.

What's On Your Mind

Brandon John

Agitation

Daniel Kuechle

DISCLAIMER

The following documents are the intellectual property of Immersion Techtronics and are kept strictly under level 6 classification. Any individual not designated with an authorization level of 6 or greater is NOT PERMITTED to access the following documents. Any individual with an authorization level of 5 or less in possession of or attempting to access the following documents will be apprehended by security personnel and will be subject to disciplinary action. Such actions may result in appropriate fines (varies by offense), reduction of payment, decrease of classification level, appropriate detainment within company custody (varies by offense), medical inducement of amnestic materials followed by termination of employment, and privately preformed neutralization via any means permitted under current ethical policies. Any and all disciplinary actions are final, nonnegotiable, and effective immediately. In the event of neutralization being necessary, the offender’s highest priority emergency contact will be contacted by a member of ethical staff, will be told a fabricated reason for your absence, and will be appropriately compensated (varies by staff member). For any questions regarding the access of classified documents contact the lead researcher designated to the documents in question. For any questions involving disciplinary action regarding the access of classified documents, contact the company ethics department at 888-444-6969. By signing the mandatory access check, you are agreeing to have read and understood the disclaimer above.

Employee Signature: ____________________ Date: ___/____/______

The following documents are log entries recorded by Dr. Nikolas Tordei’s on their involvement in experiment 1G8-1205.

<Addendum 1G8-1205-1>

<Begin Log> 3/13/2086

Today was the official first steps of experiment 1G8-1205, and I have personally never been more excited for anything in my career.

Last month we found a test subject by the name of Hershel Alquin Walker who has been designated as subject 1205. A male of 32 years of age that was diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic cancer. He agreed to be placed in this experimental procedure on account of the mortality rate of his condition. Experiment 1G8-1205’s objective is to transmit a human consciousness into an artificial body. This artificial body is equipped with hydraulic cybernetics that imitate the shape and function of human arms and legs, highly advanced mechanical digits with dexterity consistent with human hands and fingers, and a network of electroreceptive sensors that serve to artificially recreate a sense of touch. The bodies eyes will be replaced with ocular cameras to recreate the subject’s sense of sight. Built-in microphones on the sides of the cranial cavity will recreate the subject’s sense of hearing. As well as a speaker built into the chest cavity to function as a means for the subject to verbally communicate. As of right now a sense of smell and taste will not be included in the first prototype build due to the lack of necessity they provide for the subject’s situational awareness. These features may be included in future testing. The only part of the original subject that will remain is the brain which will be surgically removed and placed within the artificial body’s cranial cavity. Me and my contemporaries have been planning this procedure for years, and the surgery will take place tomorrow morning. If this is successful, we will truly be behind the precipice of both robotic and medical technology! I am confident that this will be the discovery of the century!

<End Log>

<Addendum 1G8-1205-2>

<Begin Log>

3/15/2086

The procedure was incredibly difficult today. In total, the transplant took approximately 28 hours to complete even with 13 of us working at once. I guess the procedure technically happened yesterday then. Regardless, I believe the transplant was a success. Due to the lack of lungs or a heart the subjects overall health is being monitored via his brainwave activity, though at this time it is relatively inactive due to a medically induced torpor to give his brain tissue a chance to heal and adjust to the transplant. We’re also injecting a steady supply of chemical 1G8 into the subjects cranial cavity in order to supply the brain with ample nutrients without the assistance of a digestive system. The subject's original body is being sent to site omega to conduct further research on pancreatic cancer. It may be my deliriousness, but I can’t help but feel like I mustn’t sleep!

I have never been so energetic over the progress of one of my teams’ projects, the fact that the brain is continuing to function outside of the human body alone is enough to make a man of science giddy like a schoolboy! I believe I must rest though; I must force myself to. My fingers are crossed that the subject will awaken in the next couple of days.

<End Log>

<Addendum 1G8-1205-3>

<Begin Log>

3/18/2086

Eureka! We’ve done it! Subject 1205 regained consciousness early this morning. I don’t think I’ve ever ran out of my office so quickly! His brainwave patterns looked active, however subject 1205 was capable of doing little more than turn his head and slightly and slowly moving his arms, legs, and digits. I believe he is coherent though! Despite his limited motor functions today I could tell based on his brain waves and his head movement that he was reacting to the words being said to him. My god, I can’t shake that we’ve done it! My name is Nikolas Tordei and I’ve just made the breakthrough of a lifetime! Tomorrow morning, we will begin therapeutic sessions with subject 1205 to help him get used to his new body, improve his motor functions, and begin verbal communication exercises.

<End Log>

<Addendum 1G8-1205-4>

<Begin Log >

3/19/2086

Today we officially started therapeutic treatments for subject 1205. His motor functions were incredibly limited and due to his current lack of mobility he was pushed into the facility fitness center via wheelchair. We kept it simple today, the exercises we practiced today was simply arm and finger movement. Though he was rather sluggish in his movements it was a noticeable improvement in speed from yesterday, and I speculate subject 1205 was practicing moving his arms and hands over the course of the night. Unfortunately, speech therapy made little progress today as upon being instructed to do so subject 1205 could not produce any vocalizations, though body language suggests that an attempt was made. I must try to keep my excitement contained, the intellectual capacity of subject 1205 is yet to be determined and I don’t want to overwhelm him. We will continue

our research over the course of this week.

<End Log>

<Addendum 1G81205-4A>

<Dr. Tordei’s notes on physical therapy session 1>

Subject has made progress in moving his arms up and down and left and right albeit at a sluggish speed.

Subject has difficulty moving his shoulders and elbows at the same time.

Subject shows considerable control of the rotation of his wrists albeit at a sluggish speed.

Subject has difficulty moving each of his digits independently (similarly to how many people have difficulties moving their ring and pinky fingers independently).

<Addendum 1G8-1205-5>

<Begin Log>

3/24/2086

Over the course of the week subject 1205 has shown significant improvements to his hand eye coordination. He is now capable of moving his fingers, wrists, elbows, and shoulders completely independently from each other as well as slight movements of his hips, knees, and ankles (it should be noted that the feet of the mechanical body do not have digits but rather an extended semi elastic foot). However, it appears that the speed at which he is capable of moving his limbs has plateaued. As I write this, my team is currently strengthening the subject’s hydraulic components in hopes that the mechanical assistance will enhance his performance. In better news, he spoke today! Our surveillance footage picked up indecipherable audio of him making vocalizations last night. I just about shot through the ceiling when he said hello to me this morning! Though we tried to make the automated voice on the body sound vaguely similar to his original voice the automated voice is computer-generated, so the way he speaks is noticeably different. He was understandable,

nonetheless. After the physical therapy tomorrow, I plan to conduct an interview with him!

<End Log>

<Addendum 1G8-1205-6A>

<Transcript of subject 1205 interview 1>

Dr. Tordei: Good morning subject 1205. How are you feeling today?

Subject 1205: Fine, I think.

Dr. Tordei: Wonderful, today I just need to ask you some questions. Do you remember your name?

Subject 1205: Hershel Alquin Walker.

Dr. Tordei: Good good. Now do you remember your birthday?

Subject 1205: October 11th, 2054.

Dr. Tordei: Correct again. Do yo-.

Subject 1205: Doctor, why can’t I sleep?

Dr. Tordei: I’m sorry, what was that?

Subject 1205: Why can’t I sleep? I can’t even close my eyes. I don’t feel tired, I don't think, but… I’ve been awake ever since the surgery. I can’t smell, or taste, and everything feels cold, and tingly too. It’s like little pins and needles going through me.

Dr. Tordei: Hershel, because of your new body you no longer require sleep, or conventional food. Your brain gets all the rest and nutrients it needs from your injections of chemical 1G8. How long have you been feeling cold?

Subject 1205: As long as I’ve been awake, I think.

Dr. Tordei: Well, the electroreceptors in your new body are supposed to mimic human touch perfectly. We’ll stop this interview here, lets get you to the engineers and get that fixed.

<End Recording>

<Addendum 1G8-1205-6>

<Begin Log>

3/25/2086

I almost forgot how tall the mechanical body was. Due to the strengthening of the hydraulics, subject 1205 was able to walk to the interview room today with the assistance of a cane. Even though his posture was hunched, he still stood about 1.9 meters tall. The interview was cut short today, but it seems that his intellectual capacity has remained mostly unchanged. It seems that he is still getting used to what his new body does and doesn’t require and that he is bothered by not requiring sleep anymore. Though we could schedule regularly induced states of torpor, I fear doing so could damage his brain matter, and I refuse to lose the progress we’ve achieved so far. The subject also complained about the effectiveness of the electroreceptors. I cut the interview short so we could get him to an engineer and have the sensors recalibrated.

<End Log>

<Addendum 1G8-1205-7A>

<Transcript of subject 1205 interview 2>

Dr. Tordei: Good morning, Hershel, how are you feeling today?

Subject 1205: (No vocal communication)

Dr. Tordei: Hershel? Can you hear me?

Subject 1205: (Sits in silence for 6.4 seconds) Tired. Fine, but tired.

Dr. Tordei: Hershel you seem upset, what’s bothering you?

Subject 1205: Nothing. I’m fine. Let’s just start the questions.

Dr. Tordei: Ok um… Do you know who this is? (Doctor Tordei holds up a photograph of famous cartoon character Mickey Mouse.)

Subject 1205: (Sits in silence for 4.2 seconds) I think Mickey, the mouse.

Dr. Tordei: Very good. Now, do you know what this is? (Doctor Tordei holds up a photograph of the Eiffel Tower)

Subject 1205: (Sits in silence for 12.4 seconds) I…I think the Willis tower.

Dr. Tordei: No, Hershel that’s incorrect. (Doctor Tordei looks up from his notepad and notices subject 1205 tightly gripping the edge of the table) Hershel are you alright?

Subject 1205: Yes, I’m fine, I just should’ve known that. I think I went

to France when I was in college.

(It should be noted that at no point in subject 1205’s travel history was a trip to France found on record.)

Dr. Tordei: It’s alright, Hershel. Do you know who this is? (Doctor Tordei holds up a photograph of former United States President George Washington)

Subject 1205: (Mumbles unintelligibly for 15.8 seconds) I don’t know. Why don’t I know? WHY DON’T I KNOW!

(Subject 1205 then stands to his full height of 2.13 meters and slams both of his closed fist into the table with enough force to break the table in two pieces, then grabbing one piece with each hand, throwing them violently against the wall. After which four armed members of security staff enter the room.)

<End Recording>

<Addendum 1G8-1205-7B>

<Security Report 22J>

On 3/26/2086 at approximately 9:54 AM, four members of security personnel responded to a violent outburst in interview room 217 J by subject 1G8-1205. The subject did not comply with security staff and was unable to be restrained for approximately 7 minutes and 44 seconds. The struggle resulted in three members of security personnel receiving minor injuries and leaving one in critical condition. Head of security Ernest Vandermite has ordered a 2-week suspension of testing involving subject 1205.

<End Report>

<Addendum 1G8-1205-7>

<Begin Log> 3/26/2086

Today’s testing was a disaster. I think subject 1205’s intellectual capacity is beginning to decline. I can’t understand why he is so distressed. The chemical 1G8 should be giving his brain enough comfort to artificially imitate sleep and rest, I don’t understand what is going wrong, god damnit! Ernest just ordered a mandatory 2-week suspension on all testing with Hershel. We are still allowed to have behavioral therapy sessions for safety reasons but I fear this gap in testing will leave too much room for error in perfecting this science. Despite all this I made a peculiar observation during the beginning of

Hershel’s outburst. While he was in a state of anger, he demonstrated extreme control of his motor functions. That was the first time I had ever seen him walk unassisted by anything, nonetheless exhibit extreme athleticism. Perhaps there is something about an agitated state that allows Hershel to exude extreme control of his body. As disastrous as today’s testing was, I find myself apprehensive to call this a failure.

<End Log>

<Addendum 1G8-1205-8A>

<Security Report 22K>

On 4/7/2086 at approximately 3:24 AM, two members of security personnel responded to a disturbance in cafeteria area G where subject 1G8-1205 was found breaking mandated subject curfew policy and taking various ingredients from the refrigeration unit and smearing them across his cranial cavity. Upon discovery, subject 1G8-1205 reacted violently fatally injuring both responding members of security personnel. It took approximately 35 minutes and 12 seconds for additional security personnel to apprehend and restrain subject 1G8-1205 resulting in an additional 8 staff members being injured. Head of security Ernest Vandermite has officially ordered an additional four weeks of suspended testing with subject 1G8-1205 as well as a mandatory 15 percent funding reduction until head researcher Dr. Nikolas Tordei implements safety precautions up to par with company security standards.

<End Report>

<Addendum 1G8-1205-8>

<Begin Log>

4/7/2086

My god. I can’t believe he killed 2 people. Ernest just informed me of the even tighter restrictions on testing. As much as I value subject 1205’s health he is a genuine safety hazard to staff in the building. Today I ordered the team to put Subject 1205 into a medically induced torpor so we could install an inhibitor system into the hydraulic system. I can activate or deactivate an inhibitor override whenever it is deemed necessary to do so. Doing this will temporarily disconnect subject 1205’s brain from the artificial nervous system controlling his cybernetic limbs, leaving him locked in place until it is safe to unlock him. I refuse to abandon this project. I can still save this I just need more time! With the inhibitor system we can make sure Hershel never hurts anyone again. I’m leaving the inhibitor system activated

at night for staff safety even though he will most likely awaken while he is restrained. I can only hope that the restriction of movement will calm his emotions and make him more docile.

<End Log>

<Addendum 1G8-1205-9>

<Security Report 22L>

On 4/15/2086 at approximately 11:45 PM security personnel responded to a distress call coming from the office of Dr. Nikolas Tordei. Upon entering the office Dr. Nikolas Tordei was found deceased on the floor. The phrase “All I feel is agitation” was found written in blood on the wall of the office. A separate security team encountered subject 1G8-1205 covered in blood running towards the west exit. Apprehension of subject 1G8-1205 was unsuccessful and resulted in the casualties of 14 staff members and injury of 23 staff members. Subject 1G8-1205 exited the facility at approximately 1:34 AM and has yet to be apprehended by security personnel. Attempts to use Dr. Tordei’s inhibitor system revealed that it was already activated. Medical staff have confirmed that Dr. Tordei’s cause of death was by blunt force trauma, and DNA tests revealed the blood on his office wall to belong to him as well. The facility is to be placed on a code 33 red class scenario until subject 1G8-1205 is neutralized or apprehended.

<End Report>

<Addendum 1G8-1205-9A>

<Transcript of General Ernest Vandermite’s official statement on Subject 1G8-1205>

Attention all staff of Immersion Techtronics. We are currently undergoing a code 33 red class scenario. Please act accordingly to security procedures. It appears that whatever Dr. Tordei’s inhibitor system was supposed to do failed last night. As a result, a subject escaped the facility. This subject is considered to be an extreme danger to the public. It was seen breaking through military grade security obstacles and traveling at an estimated speed of 28 kilometers an hour. According to the notes of Dr. Tordei this subject is dependent on a substance known as chemical 1G8. Considering this thing’s dependency and overall physical capabilities I suspect that it will return to the facility within the next 48 hours. All security personnel are to remain on priority level red. We have a real monster on the loose here.

<End Recording>

Forsaken Valentine

Kaya Inkster

I love(d) you

Paige E. Gerlach

I love you

Well loved . . . past tense

I loved the way you looked at me and the way my name sounded when you said it

I loved the way you hugged me and the way your embrace felt like no other

I loved the way you became a part of me and felt as natural to be with as water

I love you

Love . . . present tense

I love the way you created memories for me and reminded me to stay strong even when I feel I am not

I love the way you picked me up off the ground and showed me all of the beautiful things I could see through your eyes

I love the way you brought peace to my storm and were never too far away to shield me from the lightning or the rain

I love(d) you

Unhappy Birthday to You

Elliana Reickard

Lights bounced along the walls of the restaurant’s party room, reflecting onto the swollen silver balloons blanketing the ceiling. A Top 40 pop song filled the room, drawing half of the people there to the makeshift dance floor. The other half stood around talking or filling their plates with the food from the overindulgent catering table at one end of the room. A cheap banner was strung across one wall, reading ‘Happy Birthday!” in holographic letters.

Voices occasionally cut through the loud music, often talking about trivial subjects like school or the upcoming Homecoming game and subsequent dance. Most of the guests attended the same school and were in the same year—high school seniors.

Only one person sat alone at a table. On top of her long, blond hair sat a tiara, made with genuine crystals and sterling silver roses. She wore the blue dress she’d had fitted last week, and under the party lights, the soft tulle seemed to glow. She sighed, leaning against her hand as she watched her friends from across the room, her glossstained lips pressed together tightly.

She stared down at the blue tablecloth and shiny confetti. Blue was usually her favorite color, but in the dim light, the tablecloth seemed dull and lifeless. The room pulsed with too much sound and energy, giving her the beginning of a headache. And more than anything, she couldn’t ignore the pit building in her stomach, growing larger with every single second she spent at the party.

“Oh, Drew!” a girl called out, drawing the blond girl’s attention. One of her best friends—Lisa—was running up to her, a wrapped present clutched in her hands. She was similarly dressed up in a rose pink dress, her braids pulled up into a bun with a large matching bow. “Happy birthday! Oh my God, you look so pretty! Here, I’ve got your present—”

“Thanks.” Drew forced a smile and took the present from her. “You’re so sweet.”

“Soooo…” another girl—Carly—spoke up. She was another one of Drew’s best friends, and she’d worn a white blouse and long purple skirt to the party, her hair in soft curls down her back. “How’s it feel to be eighteen?”

Drew bit her lip, then internally cursed at herself. Probably smeared her lip gloss. “It’s fine, I guess. Not super exciting.” When both Lisa and Carly’s faces fell, Drew continued with, “I mean, there

isn’t that much I can do now. Vote, I guess.”

“You’re an adult!” Lisa exclaimed. “Isn’t that a big deal?”

An adult. That was the reason everyone looked forward to turning eighteen. And Drew’s parents had been planning her party for months. She was their only child, and they had the money to give her a huge party with everything she could’ve wanted. And at the time, she’d been ecstatic, choosing every decoration, every appetizer, every piece of jewelry she’d wear with the utmost care and precision. She was pretty popular at her highschool too, so she’d been able to invite her whole graduating year and assume that most of them would come.

But now that her birthday had arrived, Drew felt nothing but trepidation as she watched her classmates enjoy her party. Being eighteen was close to being nineteen, then twenty. And once she was twenty, she’d never be a teenager again. Then she’d be twenty-one and so on. Always getting older and moving further and further away from the simple life of being a highschool student. Being an adult carried so much pressure and baggage that Drew didn’t want to mentally prepare herself for.

Even now, talk of picking colleges filtered throughout the party, doing nothing to alleviate Drew’s growing dread. She didn’t know what she wanted to do after highschool, and her friends already had their majors chosen and their college tours scheduled. They were all ready to be adults, and she wasn’t.

The reality that she would never be a kid again had finally sunk in.

“Drew! Your cake!” Carly told her friend, tapping her tulle-covered arm lightly. “You said you helped pick the icing? It looks so good!”

One of the restaurant employees carried a platter bearing the cake into the room and set it down in front of Drew. It was a two-tiered strawberry cake with white icing and blue details, exactly as Drew had described to the baker they’d ordered from. Eighteen lit candles sat on top, slowly melting away.

Drew stared at the candles. Each one of them was a year of her life that was gone forever, a period of time lost to her past. There was no avoiding this day, no postponing the transition to adulthood, no matter how much she wanted to go back.

“Happy birthday to you…” the crowd sang.

Through the flickering candlelight, no one could see that Drew’s eyes had become glossy. They couldn’t even notice that her mascara had started to run. The thought of eating any of her once-desired strawberry cake made her stomach churn, and she hoped vainly that the song would last forever, that she’d never have to confront the reality of her life moving on without her.

“...happy birthday to Drew, happy birthday to you!”

No such luck.

Oh, to be a toad/elegy to my cat

Jesse Peterman

Oh, to be riverbed royalty, Living in a palace of reeds and clay

Oh, to be the lord of wetlands, Who sits secret and silent till end of day

Oh, to be lilypad cavalry, instead of pad-footed mount Ally of currents and deep water

Oh, to be unperturbed oracle, How they care not, colder or hotter

Oh, to be sunset herald, Bearer of the first, and loudest night-song

Oh, to be bane of insects, With eyes so quick and tongue so long

Oh, to be still in wait, instead of curious fool Patient in viewing a single landscape

Oh, to be happy in opulent home, Why would that muddy monolith covet doors left agape

Oh, to be that warted wonder, Domain spanning far and wide, high and low

Oh, to be that wretched creature, Whose beauty so few know

Oh, to be solitary monarch, instead of doted pet Anonymous lifetime, and wild born

Oh, to be a feral courtesan, When finality visits, no family found to mourn

Oh, to be camouflage king, Invisible, donned in well-patterned royal cloak

Oh, to be that blessed voice

What makes such sacred music, that booming, rolling croak

Oh, to be a toad, instead of nine-lived self Wise enough to avoid those hurried lanes, violent wheels

Oh, to be round with caution, not flat like hubris

Where no tires tread, no life careless car steals

DOdgeball

Mikey Formisano

Every spring, my high school puts on a tournament. Every student, every grade, got together to form a six-person team to determine who was the greatest at one thing and one thing only: Dodgeball. The Dodgeball Tournament was life and death at my school. If you won the tournament, you were the talk of the town, the new top dog, the head honcho. Everyone wanted to win. Of course, of course, there are bigger and greater things in this universe. But at Somers High School, winning the Dodgeball Tournament was the ultimate prize.

Front Kick to the Sternum

The first year I played, I was a sophomore, and it was March. I remember twiddling my thumbs in criminal justice class until a tap tap came on my shoulder. Nicholas Carvahlo, the most Italian kid I knew, looked me in the eyes, through the windows of my soul, and said the words that would change my life.

“Wanna join my dodgeball team?”

YES.

But I played it cool. Even though Nick had been my friend for a long time, I had to play it cool. No one wants an eager beaver building their dam.

“Yeah whatever, for sure.”

“Great.”

“What's the team name?” I asked, confidently.

“Front Kick to the Sternum.”

Incredible.

Carv then went on to tell me who else was going to be on our team.

Jason Mirtsopoulos, the future marine biologist and a really good, funny friend who I now miss dearly.

Andrew Lowman, or simply Lowman, the star soccer player, an absolute monster on the pitch who overcame new-kid syndrome and made his transition from private to public school with ease.

Evan Kieltyka, who could do anything. The Swiss army knife of our grade. He dominated basketball and crushed soccer, all while having an award-winning smile. Dude was and still is a beast.

Brian Walter, one of the funniest kids I have ever met. He would eventually go on to become Soundcloud rapper, Trillmatic. My

favorite line of his will forever be, “Climbing the ladder of envy, you gonna fall.”

Like the Avengers, our squad had been assembled under one common goal: winning the Dodgeball Tournament. But before we focused on winning, we decided to first put our efforts on the next phase of our operation: branding. So, we created jerseys. Black shirts, numbers, and names on the back. I chose to take on the alter ego of SAVAGE 99. Savage, after my hero Randy Savage, The Macho Man who formed The Mega Powers with Hulk Hogan. And 99, after one of my favorite football players ever, J.J. Watt.

Written on the front of our jerseys in electric gold was:

FRONT KICK TO THE STERNUM

Under the alphabetic lighting, was a picture of Bruce Lee soaring towards Kareem Abdul Jabbar with a flying kick. It was the greatest shirt I have ever worn. With our team, our jerseys, and our united confidence, there was only one thing left to do. Play.

Arriving at our high school gym felt unwelcoming. Besides us, the only sophomore team was M5GD. And because we were sophomores, we not only became targets, we were simply unfamiliar with the intensity the upper grades were prepared to unleash. This was their last shot to win the cup, they had nothing and everything to lose. We knew that we were in for a war but with Front Kick to the Sternum by my side, I was prepared to die.

The clock struck 4:00 pm and the tournament started. Immediately, everyone was going bananas. The crowd was screaming as whistles were being blown. My school, to remove itself from olden times, used foam balls instead of the large red traditional rubber

balls. I definitely was not complaining about that as getting nailed with one of the old red balls would probably require an ambulance on site. But even with the newer playstyle, it was a madhouse.

After one final game, the announcer called us down from the stands and we got ready for our match. Lining up, we were so jazzed and excited it was unbelievable. If you wanted us to run through a brick wall, we would have with no hesitation. As we got focused, the whistle broke our concentration and we sprinted to the line ready to play. To be honest, I forgot exactly who we played in our first game but I remember we lost. And we lost badly, it was actually almost unbelievable how bad we lost. We didn’t get a single member of the other team out and the game was over in maybe two minutes.

At this point, there was no hope of survival for us but we went out on the court for our second game. Oh, our energy was so high! Like a thirsty man needs water, we needed to win. We had to win, there was no doubt about it. I remember lining up, looking across at my team, my friends, and I just felt this surge of energy. There was no way we were losing that game. Once the whistle started, like freaks we ran to the center to grab our share of foam balls. Now, I know I played down the intensity of the foam balls but still, when thrown by the right person, the balls still hurt. And wouldn't you know it, we were of course, OF COURSE playing the senior baseball team. They were powerhouses, it was so intense. But thank god none of them were accurate, like at all. I guess not everyone can be the star pitcher.

After getting past the intimidation, we were lucky enough to just start striking them out. One by one they all fell until they were all out. And then, we won! Oh, the energy from winning was electric. Front Kick was on a roll and I got my first dodgeball win.

We would eventually go on to win our next four games. And let me tell you, we were cocky as hell. Winning, hi-fiving each other, screaming, we were just having a blast. But even with our late dominance, we were still the very lowest seed of the winners bracket which meant we had to play against the American Snipers. The biggest and baddest senior team that has ever existed. We were incredibly nervous. There was no way we could win. Just no way. But, we were young, still developing. This was a good test for us. Even with all the doubts and insecurities on our minds, we still were confident as could be.

“We can fucking win this guys,” Jason screamed at us.

And when that whistle blew, it was actually not a bad game. Did we lose badly? Yes, but we got two of them out and I will take that forever. Our sophomore year journey had ended. We all looked at each other ready for the next year ahead. Side by side, we could never lose. It was the start of something great.

Pain Train

We broke up.

Front Kick to the Sternum burned to the ground. Lowman and Evan went on to form a team with their varsity soccer team, and Brian Walter just didn’t want to play again. I could not believe what I was hearing. Last year was the last time I would ever kick someone in the sternum.

When the news broke, we were all broken. Carv, Jason, and I knew we had to get together and bring in new members, to form a team of electricity and freedom. That is when Carv came up with the idea (or stole the idea from Always Sunny in Philadelphia, who knows), of Pain Train. We were Pain Train now, and as conductors, we were also insane. It was a good balance of leadership and instability. But, the problem still existed. Who could fill out the remaining roster spots? With new junior teams forming and M5GD getting stronger and stronger, we knew we needed to get guys and get them fast. So, we recruited.

Jake Graham, the Somers Football bloodline. If you asked him ANY question about Somers Football, he would know the answer. Dude was a cheat code!

Rich Molloy, who once pooped in his backpack as a joke in class. I am still unsure why he did that but you know, it got a reaction. Crig, who I honestly do not know much about but he was always a nice guy.

In the end, they were three warriors who would dive on a grenade if you asked them to. A bunch of team players who were full of heart, which is exactly what Pain Train needed. This time around, we didn’t shell out for fancy jerseys like we did the year before. The budget for Pain Train was not the same as Front Kick. Instead, we went the traditional route and used cut off plain white t-shirts. In black sharpie, PAIN TRAIN was written on the front. And in the back of mine, SAVAGE 99.

Arriving at the tournament the second time around felt a little different. We didn’t feel as nervous or scared. No one felt out of place, we all belonged. As we continued to make our way to the gym, we slowly walked towards the bleachers where our hearts broke. Evan and Lowman were wearing new t-shirts, we knew they would. But the names on them were THE AMERICAN SNIPERS. BASTARDS!! How could they do this to Carv, Jason, and I? Apparently, Jack Maher’s brother, Gerald, who was on the original American Sniper team that beat us last year, passed the name down to Jack, who would then poach Evan and Lowman from Front Kick. To this day, I never would get the full details on the betrayal. But now, I had to face the reality that Lowman and Evan were dead to me forever. Pain Train needed to refocus, lock in, and destroy them.

The Pain Train derailed hard. We won one game out of five. I

don’t know how we blew up as we did. Our team was strong, we were good, we had a pizza night at Jake Graham's house the night before! We did everything right. But, we lost and there was just nothing we could do to salvage ourselves. Afterwards, we continued to watch and watch, as The American Snipers and M5GD made the playoffs. I wanted to puke. My worst nightmare was unfolding right in front of me and all I could do was watch. Eventually, the finals would be played and M5GD would hoist up the championship trophy. To be honest, I was super heated and angry. I was being very dramatic because that should have been us! Carv, Jason, and I, then vowed that no matter what, we would have to win the championship next year. There was no other option, we had to win.

Abusement Park

Jason and I got betrayed again. Before I tell you about this betrayal, just know that I think Carv is a good guy. But that senior spring, he was the slimiest snake I had ever known. Carv went on to join M5GD, the reigning champs. First off, M5GD stood for Mach 5 Girthy Dongs. Disgusting. And secondly, the betrayal did not even feel real. When I heard the news, I was shattered. I will never forget texting Carv, hyped about the tournament ahead, and him replying back to me.

(I actually forgot what he said so I am just going to assume he wrote this) “Umm, actually Mike, you wouldn’t believe this! I am a liar and a two-face, so I joined the reigning champions.”

Boy, did this take the wind out of our sails. It was actually one of the most pivotal moments of my life up to that moment. I remember Lowman coming up to Jason and me, rubbing it in our faces being like,

“Oh, you were so mad at us for leaving, now look, Carv left.”

“It’s not about you Lowman!” I yelled back. But, I talked to Jason and we knew that the only way to win was to play. And to play, we needed four more guys.

Our new team was extremely wonky.

Jon Kaufman, one of the most sarcastic and greatest people I have ever met. I still talk to him every single day.

Mike Acosta, a kid who loved basketball so much he would do anything to get on the court and dribble.

Hunter Goldman, who I lost contact with but I hope he is doing awesome. He had a white Jeep with a roof that came off and I always thought he was really cool for that.

Jackson Baumbach. Jackson rocked a bowl cut his entire life. Then, one day he got a new spiked-up look and his whole personality changed. He came out of his shell and was confident as hell. It was awesome.

With our new manager, Michael Cliff, Abusement Park was ready

to ride the rides of the Somers High School Dodgeball Tournament. For the final tournament, we knew we had to get the most fashionable and insane jerseys.

Javaughn offered to make our jerseys. A mad man in nature who is in jail as we speak. He was always ready to make money, no matter the consequences. So, the week before our senior year tournament, Javaughn went to each team and told them, “Five Dollars for Six Jerseys.” As everyone in high school was broke, we all pounced on the idea. However, it was a bad bet. The day of the tournament came, and only three teams were wearing their jerseys. No one else had them. Where the hell was Javaughn?

At this point, everyone was bugging, waiting outside the gym for Javaughn’s handsome face to appear. And then, Javaughn came in, sprinting like Santa Claus, with a huge garbage bag full of jerseys. It was an absolute madhouse trying to get Abusement Park’s jerseys. Black sleeveless shirts with a red ferris wheel on the front. Everyone had their own nicknames but I had SAVAGE 99 for one last time.

Walking into the gym felt different this time as seniors. We were still ready for war, but this time we were having more fun. There was no pressure, no worries, no care, we were playing one last time. I remember walking up to that black baseline one last time. I put my foot on the line and looked to my left and right. My friends were next to me. No matter if I was Front Kick, Pain Train, or Abusement Park, I always had friends alongside me. I looked one last time at Jason and smiled as we both acknowledged the journey Dodgeball brought us on.

The whistle blew and we sprinted to the midline for our final battle. And oh, did we get smoked! We lost every game badly, like so bad. But hey, there was an emotional victory. And in the end, no matter the wins, the losses, the controversies or the battles, I’m just happy I got to play.

Our Rainbow

Mahnoor Majid

Teal was the color of the book I was reading the first time I saw you at age nine

When you walked into homeroom with that trademark mischievous shine

And I felt as if all the stars in the universe had aligned

Green was the color of your startled eyes

When I bumped into you outside the park underneath cloudy skies

Wearing a lilac sweater two sizes too oversized

But polka-dot pink was the color of my dress on our first set of dates

To cafes, the lakes

And late-night skates

Crimson was the color of our first fight

When you hadn’t been forthright

But I guess I could have used words without such bite an’ spite

Gold was the color of the sunflower you gave me when we couldn’t stay angry anymore

The night, your hand on my cheek and our foreheads touching, we whisper-swore

To always stay by each other’s side for evermore

White and charcoal-grey were the colors of the day we took each other's cue

You said “I do,” and I did too

And in celebration a dule of doves overhead flew

Baby blue was the color of our little two-story house

The very first one we bought together as spouse

The papers signed on our third anniversary with nary any doubts

Teal was the color of the signed book, the very one I was reading at age nine, you gave me on the birth of our first baby girl

Whose hair matches yours in curl

And her personality predicted by her birthstone: the mother-ofpearl

At the end, the mosaic of our life together shows our glow Just like every hue of the rainbow

Sushi-Dushi

Mariia Asaula

Eating Your Mistakes

Jesse Peterman

I’m eleven, it’s Tuesday, and I’m begging my mom to take me to the library. The three books from my last visit lay on the table next to me, finished. I live in books at this time. Consuming stories as fast as I can encounter them, the escape from reality is the only thing I’m living for. Library day isn’t until Thursday, and I’m convinced I won’t make it that long in the real world. ***

I’ve been reading lately, about how there's mold growing on the elephant’s foot, the name given to the pseudo-molten reactor core still in the process of total meltdown and the most radioactive thing humanity’s ever made. In one of the most dangerous places in the world, so violently radioactive we have to take pictures with a mirror and the camera around the corner, and it’s still not enough to get more than one shot. In this, humanity's possibly greatest mistake, is a mold growing. Literally living on the elephant’s foot, eating it and the truly inconceivable amount of gamma radiation coming off the thing. There's a goddamn mushroom eating the closest thing we’ve come to solidified death. ***

The real reason the library matters so much, and I’m hiding in books the way I do, is that I’ve just figured out I’m gay. I, the good Christian kid, the one who’s read the Bible front to back at least twice, who goes to church every Sunday, pays attention in Sunday school, and doesn’t even swear, that one, is gay. As a kid I’ve got no way to reconcile these things, or the wisdom to question the nature of doctrine or even why an all-loving god can supposedly hate anyone, so I avoid it, and life in general.

***

When school or the grief that comes with knowing how little teachers are compensated or cared for gets too much, I redesign my dream home. It’s lovely. Right now I’m thinking I want dark stained oak shingles for the siding, that way it ages into a self-petrifying kind of low-maintenance mosaic. Three wings, a living/guest wing, with a glorious master bedroom on half of that second floor, enormous glass ceiling and end wall, for watching northern lights. Furnished

with a few artsy chairs that are actually comfortable, and one of those Alaskan king size beds.

***

I’m fifteen, alone in my front yard on an early June Saturday, and I’m holding in my hands my greatest accomplishment. After the move, uprooted from friends, resigned to be homeschooled again, I’m making fireworks to pass the time. I figure that’s an interesting enough hobby to sound cool. I set down my creation, an emptied soda bottle filled with a bizarre combination of cleaning supplies, metal shavings, and other household items. I feel like an alchemist when I add the last ingredient, shake, and drop the concoction. Stepping back a good ways, my ears covered, the bottle begins to fog with newly-created gas. Several seconds pass. The bottle deforms from the pressure, creaking. Boom. ***

There’s a practice, I read, called microembolization, or the art and science of using fungus to absorb and dispose of dangerous or toxic materials. I think of the mold in Chernobyl, how humanity’s mistakes can be eaten. How just recently a fungus has begun eating microplastics. The earth becomes a fucked-up pizza, a little burnt around the edges, the sauce separated in the oven, making the whole thing a little soggy and somehow too dry. How I’ll eat it anyways, my mistakes nourishing the possibility of doing better next time. How maybe, just maybe, there’s a little mushroom that can eat trauma. ***

I joke to myself that I’ll have seven husbands to cover the costs of my dream home, marrying rich for most of them and once for a green card to some small European country. This, of course, alongside my own enormous wealth from unseating that miserable little English transphobe from the “most successful author” spot. Every time I sit down to write, I tell myself “I’m coming for her” before I start. I want the house to have two more wings, a three-story library with wallmounted reading nooks, and a chandelier I design myself. The third is just for entertaining and leisure, an enormous banquet hall, with fold away table and chairs for dancing room, an in-home theater, complete with that enormous bed-couch-thing I saw on the internet once, to accommodate my hopefully large family structure. ***

Twenty-one is an odd year for me. I’ve just finished my second therapy appointment alone, and I'm driving back home on a

motorcycle I’m splitting the cost of with my dad. I’m still wrestling with what the therapist, who insisted I call her Marnie, told me. All the anxiety, the breakdowns, the random and sudden panic. All of it. Trauma. My family stories aren’t weird, or funny, they’re traumatic events. It’s not only not normal, but very damaging to be hit by a hatchet thrown at you, I guess. Same with the getting run over, or being left at the store for hours as a child. The increasing severity of some of my experiences are just now becoming apparent.

I stand there, in the wake of my attempted firework, looking at a flattened ring of poorly groomed grass. Groomed poorly by yours truly, after all, only a dollar an hour of busywork, not quality. There’s a smoldering lump of plastic and recently fizzing miscellaneous onefuel in the center. No lights, no pretty colors or sparkle. Just a single resounding boom and some leftover junk that I probably shouldn’t clean up without gloves. I pick up baking instead. I decide if I make a mistake, I’d like it to be one I can fix with frosting, or at least eat.

I want the entertainment wing to connect to the library with a three story arboretum, an indoor garden with ceilings high enough to house an adult tree or two. Guests could enjoy dancing and drinks, mingling between the dance floor and the library through my carefully curated greenery. I’ve planned and re-planned this part the most. The centerpiece of this garden will be an artfully grafted citrus tree, with each branch a different variety. Opposite this will be a nutmeg tree, to bring a homey scent to the library end. I’ve thought about how I’ll keep everything in my garden alive and the soil rich, but the thought of using manure or other fertilizer makes my nose wrinkle. A garden’s supposed to smell nice, not like decay. That’s it; I’ll just include a few kinds of mycelium, like that kind found keeping temperate forests alive, acting like a nutrient bank for the plants. Even in my daydreams, mushrooms somehow save the day.

I get home from my ride, putting away my gear, still stuck on Marnie’s revelation. All this time, the pain, everything else, I thought I had to go through something horrible to feel like I’d earned help, like I was too functional to be traumatized. I’m making cookies tonight, and I think I’ve perfected my version of the family chocolate chip cookie recipe. I use too much salt and the flavor’s just off. The whole batch will be eaten by the next day. After all, I can just eat my mistakes.

Twenty-five means my last summer before graduating (if I can manage it) and a long-awaited visit to a clinical psychologist. I’ve been waiting for this appointment for almost four months. Early June, and I’m finally getting the news back. Not ADHD like I’d guessed, but no less difficult. Post-traumatic stress disorder. I guess all of those not-so-funny stories caught up to me in a more concrete way. Mom’s never going to believe it, but she doesn’t really have to, does she? I sit alone in my apartment, holding onto the printed copy of my diagnosis, unsure of what to do next. At the bottom of the page: “. . . psychotherapy with a practitioner who specializes in trauma . . .” “. . . clinical medication assessment . . .” and the final nail in the coffin “. . . all of the above services are deemed medically necessary . . .” what a way to say it. My phone buzzes, an article from a friend about the USDA finally beginning its trials for medical use of psilocybin, the active chemical in magic mushrooms, in treating depression and trauma. We’re both big nerds on weird biology, and I can’t help but hope there really is a mushroom to eat my mistakes.

Peacock

Bryan Gratz

The Rights to Superiority

Daniel Bertch

Introduction: Jonas

My name is Jonas Li; my grandparents immigrated to America from China. My parents are world-renowned scientists in the field of human embryo gene modification, and I was considered their perfect son. I say perfect because I was designed to be genetically superior. I was born late in the first wave of genetic modification on human embryos to create children with ideal characteristics. I am no longer perfect; I am me.

Interview: Jessica and the Issue at Hand

Jessica Weldon walks on stage (a black woman, 5 ft. 10 in., with short hair, wearing a red dress), applause follows. She smiles and says to her audience, "Welcome to this week's episode of Jessica and the Issue at Hand. Today we will hear both sides of the debate on the genetic modification of a human embryo. Mark Velbert, an advocate of government regulation on embryo gene modification, and Aaron Hald, a supporter of embryo gene modification, both renowned and respected in their circles, and considered by both sides of the issue to be experts in the field, come on stage!”

Mark (a man of average build, white, with a black beard and hair) and Aaron (a tall man, white, clean-shaven, and blond hair) walk on stage. Both are in casual wear.

Jessica shakes both their hands, "Thanks for coming." she says to both of them as she does so.

As they all sit down on the stage’s chairs, Jessica says, "First, we will start with a few questions to get the audience familiar with where you two stand on a few things. Mark Velbert and Aaron Hald, can you please state your religious denomination, political leaning, and stance on this particular issue?"

Aaron smiles and says, "I am an atheist."

"I am an atheist as well," Mark responds, then faces Jessica and asks, "What religious denomination are you?"

"Non-denominational Christian," Jessica answers. Mark responds, "I have heard a large portion of Christians are against the genetic modification of embryos. Do you share that stance?"

Jessica answers, "I am not giving away my stance on the issue until after the show. I do not want to influence the dialog to fit with my views. The questions are for you two. Now, how do you both identify politically?"

Aaron responds, "I am a moderate conservative, with an emphasis on capitalist economics and a strong national defense."

Mark responds, "I am a liberal, with a focus on semi-socialist economics and social freedoms."

Jessica finally asks, "So, what are your views on the subject of embryo gene modification? Many liberals and conservatives think it should be regulated, but they often disagree with how, and as Mark mentioned earlier, many Christian groups, as well as a number of other religions, view it as harmful and unnatural. It is also viewed as the solution to many of humanity's problems by transhumanists."

Mark responds first, "I think it creates an unfair advantage not everyone can afford."

Jessica nods to Aaron, who responds, "I think it advances humanity as a whole by having better thinkers, workers, and leaders."

Jessica nods, and then responds, "You both make good points, which we will explore in more detail later, but first, you yourself had your genes modified as an embryo, right Aaron?"

Aaron responds, "Yes, I was designed to be genetically superior to a normal human being."

The story of the perfect child: Jonas

I grew up in a very wealthy family, and I always got good grades. I had a good life, and my parents were very proud of me. I would get good grades; I would be a good son; they would be proud. Rinse and repeat. I would do things that made them proud, and the more I did those things, the more I began to realize I had never done anything to make them disappointed (not like other children with their parents at least).

Interview: Jessica and the Issue at Hand

Jessica asks, with unapologetic bluntness, "So Aaron, do you think you are superior?"

"Yes," Aaron responds, without any of the nervousness you might expect. He then continues, "I have a genius-level IQ, I am in good health, and it is statistically shown that genetically modified children, on average, do almost 50 percent better in school than other children under the same conditions."

Mark responds, "You are ignoring that an average of 87 percent of children who have been genetically modified come from households with above-average income and resources for their child's education."

Aaron asks Mark, "Are you arguing that they are not genetically superior?"

"No," Mark says, "Just that there is more to it than that. You came from wealth, which probably contributed to your success more than special genes."

Aaron asks, "You are from a low-income household, right? But you made it into prominent colleges, are shown to have a geniuslevel IQ, and are a prominent voice in your circles, all through hard work and natural advantages, without any advantage financially."

Mark counters, "If I had to compete with a large percentage of the upper-class population having enhanced genes, I probably would not have made it where I am, and even then, there were many times my success came from luck, and I easily could have failed beyond hope of recovery, no matter how hard I worked."

Disobedience: Jonas

I showed my mom and dad all the high-level jobs being offered to me once I left college; they were very proud of my accomplishments. Of course, they were! I was given a predisposition to be how they wanted me to be and provided an environment to encourage that predisposition. Nearly every significant decision of my life had been theirs! That is at least what I began to think, but what if I was being paranoid?

I was familiar with the science of embryo gene modification. What I was worried about was definitely possible. I did not want to think it was true, but it became an unavoidable thought. I liked art, I liked science, I liked nature, and I liked music considered to be of good quality (sort of like my parents). I did not have any unseemly tastes beyond what most people had. It was like a wish list of good qualities.

I wanted to make a decision of my own, if for no other reason than to prove I could. There were many simple things I wanted to do that my parents would advise restraint in, but not to the point they never wanted me to do them. I had to think of something not only obviously against what my parents would want me to do, but also something I myself would never do under normal circumstances.

I ultimately decided to buy and use some drugs, something most people my age had done at some point in their lives that I had never had the inclination to do. I knew a guy in my class who had a friend who was a drug user. My money paid for discreet customer service.

I rented a motel room in cash to get high in. I took a shot of heroin in the late afternoon and had woken up at night. I lit a joint as I had lain in bed. It was winter, and the snow was slowly falling from the sky. The marijuana calmed my nerves as I watched the snow continue to fall. I stepped out of my room, and felt the cold air against my face,

saw the parking lot’s street lamp shining bright and contrasting the pitch-black sky.

I tried a number of different drugs, my mind wandered, and faded, and expanded, and blurred, and changed, but I was still who I was before, I still had the same goals, the same chances of achieving those goals, and the same reasons for achieving those goals. I still felt that I needed to prove I was a real person.

Interview: Jessica and the Issue at Hand

Jessica looked at both Mark and Aaron as they stared at each other, she knew better than to interrupt authentic debate of this level with pre-recorded questions meant to fill-up time. Her show was popular because she liked to present the sides in a situation with no minced words to appeal to moderates, even though they were her main audience. She always thought the truth in moral questions came from contrasting extremes, but she wasn't sure if it was to show how valid both sides were or how invalid they both were. Conflict makes money either way (she had about the same genus IQ score they bragged about and was just as smart as both of them when it came to her specialty of running her show). They were just returning from a commercial break.

Mark looks at Aaron with disgust and rage, like someone confronting a monster, and says, "If people keep accepting the idea of embryo gene modification, it will create a caste society where the rich are kept rich and in ruling positions by both having superior access to resources and superior genes. It will be extremely improbable most of the poor will ever be able to work their way up! Even if poor people do save up their money to get their kids enhanced, the chances they will make it to anything other than a lower management position are next to nothing, with all the families' money backing the chance. The poor would lose their will to try to make their situation better because it will be so unlikely they will succeed."

Aaron looks at Mark, with the feeling of someone trying to argue with a child, and says, "If embryo gene modification is made illegal, thousands and thousands, perhaps millions, will die and suffer because of genetic defects that could easily have been prevented. Lethal allergies, debilitating disabilities, it will all continue just like it always has. People will suffer just because not everyone can get their suffering relieved: because helping some people and not others isn't fair.

Tell me, is it fair for the child who is forced to live in pain because someone didn't like the idea of him not being in pain? A child who has done nothing to deserve being in such pain?"

Mark responds, "Okay, you make a good point. Embryo gene

modification can have good results in its use, but you must admit, there should be some regulation on this. What about the generations of a family stuck in poverty? What about a parent who ruins their child's life by making them into something that might affect them negatively? A child has no choice what they are modified into. You might say people are trying to make their children “better,” but that is often a very subjective term, and in this case, the subject themselves has no say in the situation."

Aaron looks at Mark with stoic evaluation, and then in an instant he responds, "I don't care! No one has a choice regarding what they are born as. What people do to their children while they aren't even born yet is their right! Who are you to tell someone they can't try to better their child!?"

Downward Spiral: Jonas

I did every drug I could think of, then I had unprotected sex with a number of both male and female prostitutes, I got beat up in several fights. I missed my classes as I did these things. My future slipped away but was still in my grasp. I had gone many nights without sleep.

On my way out of a crack house, I fell down a staircase and broke multiple limbs. I felt real pain, so much so that I could hardly bear it. I called out to the people in the building to get me to a hospital, not knowing if they would take me or not as I began to pass out.

I woke up in a hospital bed to the sound of beeping heart monitors, nurses and doctors giving orders, and people going down the halls. My parents were outside the room crying, and I knew there was no way I would be able to get any of the jobs offered to me earlier. I felt despair, but more than that, I felt a sense of satisfaction. I had made my own decisions, taken my own path. The decisions I made were mine, not theirs.

The doctors tell me I have several STI's, multiple broken bones, and brain damage. I feel a squirming, burning feeling that I can only assume is an addiction to one or more of the drugs I took. I have degenerated beyond any hope of a successful future. I am no longer the perfect son.

Brain Worms

Harmony Oleson

Can you hear them?

They can hear you.

They’re always listening, waiting For you to slip, for you to falter, They never sleep, they only whisper

Late into the night,

Until early morning, if you’ll listen To the droning sound of tiny voices,

Voices that watch you.

Voices that love you.

Voices that revel in your doubt.

Can you hear them? They remember Everything. Every mistake.

Every stare. Every silence.

Are you acting strange?

Do you look weird?

Why are they looking?

Are you speaking oddly?

Did you say something wrong?

Why are they listening why aren’t they listening

why why what’s wrong with you

what did you do what have you done

how dare you how could you

it’s you it’s your fault it’s you you you you They can see you. They can hear you.

They love you, unlike your friends.

Loneliness is safe. You’ll ruin everything

Everything horrible stems from you.

But they still cling to you.

They still whisper to you.

They’ll never leave you.

And you’ll never change.

Let them settle in, listen to them speak.

You are horrible. You are weak.

You aren’t enough. You aren’t worthy

Of anything. You are nothing.

They are familiar. They never change.

They are comforting. They’re always here.

They are Terrifying.

They are fear.

But you know them. You know this feeling.

Knowing is safe. Don’t you want to be safe?

Carter Swenson

Silver Lamp

Lynn Dobmeier

Don’t turn it on, my mother would always tell me whenever I reached for that silver standing floor lamp shoved in the corner of our upstairs living room. It raises our electricity bill. Like I knew anything about how electricity works – or even bills for that matter. That silver standing floor lamp was forbidden. At the time, it was about twice my height. At the top sat a white glass dome that sheltered the light bulb. This was held up by a silver pole that I was able to wrap my fingers around. At the bottom stood a heavy square base with swirls and spirals carved into the metal. It was shoved behind a rocking chair, out of the way, in an attempt to keep me from it.

This never worked.

I would turn this lamp on a lot, despite my mother’s wishes.

I don’t know what drew me to this lamp. But, if I had to venture a guess, I would say it was the soft yellow glow it emitted when it was turned on and all the other lights were off. If I closed the curtains, it almost felt like a sun was in my living room. A new set to play with.

At the time, I was also obsessed with the Oregon Trail. I read a book that was a made-up diary about a girl's life on the trail. It was small with a hard blue cover and pages that were purposely aged to make it look authentic. I would carry this book around with me as if it was my diary.

Sometimes, when only my dad was home, he would go into the basement, leaving me upstairs by myself. When this would happen, I would push around all the living room furniture. I would string blankets across the rocking chair and the couch.

This was my wagon. And in the center of it, stood that silver lamp.

The sun.

I would grab pots and pans from the kitchen to use as my supplies for the trail. I would stack and fold blankets to soften the hard wood floor of my wagon. Working by the fire light of that lamp, I would sit and read my diary.

I was always prepared for two sounds. The garage door opening, letting me know I need to put everything back fast before my mother walked in. Or the creak of the stairs letting me know dad is coming up, in which case I would need to turn off the lamp and hide in my wagon.

Eventually, my mother was tired of getting phone calls from the library about my overdue diary. The library took back my secrets and my collection of journeys on the trail – as well as $5 from my mother.

As for the lamp, it has a new spot to call home.

Tucked away in the basement living room that is never used, behind the now creaky and broken rocker, the lamp stands. Its white glass dome, now a faded and aged yellow. No light bulb to be found. Its cord wrapped around its thin body, no outlet within reach.

Sometimes I forget about it.

But sometimes, I’ll go and turn its little switch, waiting for the sun to make itself known.

Glittering Sorrows

Olivia Fredrickson

The glittering, glistening hula hoop preaches insanity in order to drown out its sorrows. Sorrows that circle and encompass the entire body of the hoop. The words, cyclic in motion, never-ending. How could one even be sane whilst sorrows such as these circulate so rapidly? Sorrows that have been gathered from a short period of time but stain the mind like spilled wine. Preaching to the masses, the sorrow stain spreads, a wine stain too far gone. When will the insanity be enough? When will the sorrows take their last gasp of breath while their lungs become flooded? The sorrows fight for breath, strong and stubborn against insanity. In time, the deafening silence of the insane snuffs out the sorrows, smoke rising from the sea...

Born again, a little less insane, the hoop glistens brighter than before. She levitates up, as the sea foam drips from her curves. Slowly spinning, like a mirrorball, she floats on the stars and liberates herself from sanity and sorrow. Nothing surrounds her but the stars, the elements, and the smell of the basis for life. Her new life has finally begun and no one gets to spin her into sorrow, she gets to CHOOSE. Floating as if she was a silent particle amongst endless atoms she drifts along, liberated and glistening brighter than any aura. Nothing can bring her back but she is constant, she is unabashedly unapologetic about her flight to her final form. She can taste everything. Her feelings, her newfound freedom, everything, and everyone she has left in the glittering dust.

Those Summer Months

Patrick Alderson

You have been dead four months and I carried your son to your grave. His tight hands — trembling — hurt my arm but I cannot protest. His face, red and raw — my shoulder still damp from his tears — cannot shape the smile you

loved. There’s a picture of you, encasing a photograph taken months before that disease marked you, it’s damp from the autumn rain, I wipe it away — grave realization controlling me. It is only your face. Not you. This was not the you that hurt

but continued to smile, to laugh — to show hurt was to show defeat. I still wonder who you were trying to convince. Did you face your distortion, for all those months, laughing, rejecting nature’s grave cruelty out of sanity or comfort, damp

from the medication, but never the one damp facing the storm desperate to hurt us all. Your name is etched, like on your grave stone, in your son's phone, he says it would be killing you to delete it — you would laugh. It was nature that stole months from us — contorting your memory — leaving us to face

the absurdity of a world without you. Your face is no longer beside mine when I wake — only damp pillows, empty sheets and the ache of months I know will pile over into years. It hurts — yes, I remember what you told me before you finally let go, I know us somehow living was of grave

importance to you — and maybe one day that grave will enshrine flowers that bloom with the warm face of a morning sun. But for now, we still feel you. There’s a mist we have to navigate — damp and biting — and we will try, somehow, to not hurt anymore. We want to remember those summer months.

I see you, sheltering me under an umbrella, damp but un-grave, that familiar smile that refused hurt — a light to the approaching months.

Mount Chimborazo 1

Ying Zhao

I

Am a Woman.

Are You ... More?

Lauri Webster

You took a shotgun to my soul. Rent my psyche from my form, Torn in pieces, no longer whole. Biting cold becomes the norm, I am living in a storm.

I beg for help, seek a judiciary, In spite of all my acrimony. Sure, we’ll listen to your testimony Before we start, are you a phony?

There is no help on that bleak shore I’ve washed up onto once more. (And I cry, but not for you; For all the things that I deplore, For my pieces on the floor.)

Instead it’s cries of “Liar, whore! Maybe it was you who started it, or Wanted it, or made him want it more Too much! Could you not find the door?”

“We’ll. Not. Listen. Anymore. You’ve gone too far. Now leave before

We punish you.” And this, all for Telling how a man was violent at the core.

The lesson learned I dare to say, Don’t tell of when a man might play; It is his right to be that way, You’re the one who’s gone astray.

Since a burning world is not simple theory anymore

Carissa Natalia Baconguis

(FILIPINO)

Sapagkat ang pagsunog ng mundo ay hindi na teorya lamang, sapagkat kahit ang hangin ay hindi ligtas sa sakit, sapagkat ang bawat oras ay palapit nang palapit

sa pagsabog, sapagkat ang oras ay magkasingkahulugan sa pansamantala: sinusukat ko ang panahon

sa iyo. paalala ng bawat sugat, gasgas, tampo, at atubili ang ating mortalidad. parehas lang naman ito:

mas madali na rin at kahit sa facebook ay maaring bumili ng tirahan. ang kabaong ay tirahan

ng alaala. gusto kong malibing sa bundok, at ikaw naman gusto mo malapit

sa dagat. nagtatalunan na tayo sa kulay ng kabaong, na para bang ito ang bahay, at pagkatapos,

ang mga bintana, ang pintuan, at kung aso ba o pusa. tumatanda tayo nang hindi tumatanda.

hindi bale, pinag-iisipan ko na ang mundo ay titiklop din sa sarili, at tatabi rin ang taas ng bundok

sa lalim ng dagat. kung mayroon pang lupang maaaring pagtubuan, tutubo ang sinulid

kong damo at gagapang sa iyo, na para bang sasabihin, nakikilala kita kahit

sa kamatayan pa, at nakikilala kita ngayon at lagi; kung ang hangin ay patuloy tayong

sinusunog, makikilala kita sa lahat ng paraan ng kamatayan, at sa bawat punong dahon nasalabid.

ikaw ang sukat ng natitira kong buhay. kung sabihin mo man sa akin kung masyado ba tayong nagmamadali,

sasabihin ko lamang sa iyo kung may maari pa tayong pagmadalian.

ngayon, nasusulyapan kita, umuubo

sa iyong tulog at pinag-iisipan ko kung okay ka lang. sa bawat sunod ng oras, pinag-iisipan ko

kung mayroon pa bang maaaring asahan. kung mananakawan pa ba ako ng sinag.

(ENGLISH TRANSLATION)

Since a burning world is not simply a theory anymore, since not even air is free of illness, since every hour we come closer and closer to an explosion, since time is synonymous to moment: i measure the passage of time through you. every cut, bruise, hesitation, and reluctance, only reminds us of our mortality.

it’s the same: it’s so easy to buy a coffin even on facebook. the coffin is a home

of memories. i want to be buried in the mountains, you want to be buried by the sea. we debate over the color of the coffin, like it could be our house, and later, the windows, the door, a cat or a dog. we grow old without growing old.

don’t worry, i imagine the world turning upside down, and the mountain bends over eventually to the depths of the sea. if there is still soil left, the strings of my grasses will grow and crawl into yours, as if saying, i know who you are even in death, and i know you now and always; if the air continues to burn us, i’ll know you in every moment of death, in every grassroot entangled.

you measure what is left of my life. if you ask me if you think we’re rushing,

i’ll ask you if there’s anything left to rush for. i see you now, coughing in your sleep, and i wonder if you’re alright. as time goes by, i wonder if there’s anything left to hope for. if even light will be stolen from me.

Death of a Son

Noelle Hansel

Shaky hands clutch at the phone

Is this a lifeline or a death sentence?

The darkness creeps back in, where did my Light go?

The Door is closing and the window to my soul is imploding

There is nothing left to blanket my prison of a mind.

Would you lay me in your bed of roses?

I want to feel the wind down in the unseen Forest.

While the sound of my heart echoes in these empty halls

I am drowning, trapped in my own body. I can’t take a breath.

Mother mother, you offer no lasting comfort.

I am no daughter of yours.

Call For Submissions

To be eligible for submissions students should be enrolled in at least one credit during any of the following semesters: the previous spring or summer, or the current fall term.

All submissions should be emailed to: uppermissharvest@stcloudstate.edu

Include your name and title(s) of your work in the body of the email while putting the genre you are submitting to with the subject line of your email. If you are submitting to multiple genres, please send separate emails with your submissions for each one, for example, all poetry pieces should be sent with an email subject heading of Poetry Submissions. If you are submitting fiction as well, send a separate email with the fiction pieces and the subject heading, Fiction Submissions, and so on. Please remove your name and other identifying information from the individual documents, so that only the title is present on each submission. All written pieces should be submitted as a Word file. We do not accept .pdf documents.

Failure to meet any of the guidelines may result in disqualification. We reserve the right to reject submissions. Faculty members enrolled in classes are not eligible for publication.

https://www.stcloudstate.edu/english/student/publications.aspx ***

Our submission deadline for each year is October 31st.

Eligible submissions include:

Poetry: 1 - 5 pieces per person, typed.

Short Fiction or Nonfiction: 1 - 3 pieces per person. Maximum 4,500 words per piece, typed and double-spaced.

Drama (monologues, short script excerpts): 1 - 3 pieces per person. Maximum ten pages per piece. Formatted appropriately.

Photography, Art, or Comics: 1 - 5 pieces per person. Black and white and full-color submissions accepted. Please ensure your submissions are 2400 x 3000 pixels or higher.

Your submitted work must be original and previously unpublished in order to qualify. We do not accept simultaneous submissions.

All submissions must be sent from a St. Cloud State email address to be accepted for submission.

A Letter From Your Head Editors

First and foremost, we would like to thank this year's Harvest contributors for their submissions. Every year is a little different and it’s always exciting for us editors to see the talent that comes from SCSU’s students. We continue to be impressed with your work and the dedication that goes into your craft. Without it, Harvest would not exist. Thank you.

We would also like to thank our fellow editors for their hard work and dedication. Our editors are responsible for a lot more than just editing. They find opportunities for us to market and bring awareness about the UMH to campus and then attend those events outside of our usual meetings. They also give up a portion of their winter break to read through the submissions and are tasked with making very difficult decisions on those submissions. You’ve all done a magnificent job this year. So, thank you for all your hard work.

To our talented and devoted designer, Marguerite Crumley, who has created the journal you hold in your hands. From working with tight deadlines to sharing her expertise we never have to worry about the quality of our journal. Her talent is endless and we are so fortunate to be able to have her in our corner. Thank you, Marg.

A very sincere and grateful thank you to our adviser, Professor Shannon Olson. Her wit, intelligence, and faith in us make creating this journal every year so enjoyable and educational for us all.

To our ever-reliable, kind, and hard-working Molly Mitzel. We pester you quite a bit each year with our printing needs and all things administrative. We sincerely appreciate everything you have done for us no matter how busy you were. Thank you for always greeting us with a smile and enthusiasm to help us out, it means more than you know.

To Dr. Judith Dorn, Co-Chair of St. Cloud State’s English department. Thank you for continuing to support the arts and allowing Harvest to have a home and a community within our university where we can grow and evolve from year to year.

It has been a challenging year but we have met it with laughter, dedication, and an overall desire to present the best journal possible.

We sincerely thank you all and hope you enjoy the 32nd edition of the Upper Mississippi Harvest.

–Chinyin Oleson and Leanne Loy

Meet tHe editorS

Faculty Advisor

Shannon Olson

"I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”

– E.B. White

Head Editors

Chinyin Oleson

"Estragon: I’m like that. Either I forget right away or I never forget."

– Samuel Beckette, Waiting for Godot

Leanne Loy

"Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope."

– Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Designer

Marguerite

“Real courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”

–Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

Editors

Greici Alles

"[...] watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it."

– Roald Dahl

Carissa Natalia Baconguis

“at least one of us is alive / if this is happening / either you are reading / or I am”

Heather Christle, Outnumbered

Michelle Gay Taylor

Let your Dim Light Shine

Soul Asylum

Harmony Oleson

"Being brave doesn't mean you aren't scared. Being brave means you are scared, really scared, badly scared, and you do the right thing anyway."

– Neil Gaiman, Coraline

Meet tHe editorS

Valentine Oleson

St Cloud State University is an affirmative action/equal opportunity educator and employer. This material can be made available in an alternative format. Contact the sponsoring department. St Cloud State University values diversity of all kinds, including but not limited to race, religion, and ethnicity. Member of Minnesota State. Upper Mississippi Harvest is published annually by St. Cloud State University. It is distributed free to SCSU students and staff. All pieces were chosen through blind submission. Names of all authors and artists were hidden until after the final selections were made. Contributors retain all rights to their works.

"What was the point of even having a conversation if words couldn't be trusted?"

–James Dashner, The Death Cure

Jesse Peterman

"To hear, one must be silent."

– Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea

© Upper Mississippi Harvest 2023