A mechanical structure that supplies a driving force to its constituent moving parts; the act of giving, imparting, or setting in mtion an action.
editor in chief vi cao
managing director divya konkimalla
layout director ava jiang
assistant layout director jazmin hernandez arceo
assistant layout director emmy chen
graphic design director caroline clark
assistant graphic design director lucy leydon
web development director ava jiang
senior print editor andreana joi faucette
associate print editor anjali krishna
associate print editor ella rous
associate print editor paige hoffer
assistant print editor danielle yampuler
senior web editor katlynn fox senior web editor olivia ring
assistant web editor anastacia chu
assistant web editor xavier ruiz
assistant web editor emily nuñez
creative director sonia siddiqui
assistant creative director cynthia lira
co-director of hmu averie wang
assistant hmu director floriana hool
assistant hmu director jaishri ramesh
co-director of modeling alex basillio
co-director of modeling vani shah
assistant modeling director chase smyth
assistant modeling director jaden spurlock
co-director of photography liv martinez
co-director of photography isabelle milford
assistant photography director reyna dews
director of videography belton gaar
assistant videography director brandon porras
director of styling emily martinez
assistant styling director mimo gorman
assistant styling director tomas trevino
spatial styling director ashley nguyen
business director abhigna bagepally
assistant business director sophia amstalden
co-director of events kevin tavan
co-director of events evangelina yang
assistant events director miguel serna
director of marketing ana catalina márquez
assistant marketing director matthew taylor
co-director of social media lea boal
co-director of social media eric martinez
assistant social media director ruth par
staff
amani ahmad, zyla alaniz, adreanna alvarez, sofia alvarez, abeera amer, kimberly andrade, ziada araya, shreya ayelasomayajula, fisayo babatunde, ritika banepali, vikram banga, ariel barley, evelyn barnard, jo battey, william beachum, lili bien, joseph blashka, oluyemisi bolarin, john-anthony borsi, kaimana carlsward, tai cerulli, srikha chaganti, ammu christ, joseph chunga pizarro, angelina conde, fiona condron, maggie cook, aidan crowl, thomas cruz, christopher davila, virg de hoyos, amara ego, myka escaran, dakota evans, diana farmer, darius fripp, gibby fuentes, kenia gallegos, yvette garcia, daniella garcia, roman garza, maya gaytan-quiroz, shreya goel, anya gokul, zoe goleski, elaine gong, julius gonzalez, sofia gonzalez, phia gonzalez, joshua grenier, sabina guardado, clarissa guo, karina gutierrez, jane hao, kyra heflin, nayeon heo, sara herbowy, madilyn hernandez, amari herrera, savannah hilliard, audrey hoff, nicole howard, melissa huang, jordyn jackson, asiyah jilani, jose jimenez, grace joh, emerald julius, andy kang, abby kerrigan, yubin kim, elise laharia, eliza lawrence, jenni le, isabelle lee, sunny leeuwon, isabella leung, winnie leydon, angelina liu, lauren logan, dillon luong, kani manickavasakam, isha manjunath, sophia manllosudario, elizabeth martinez, maya martinez, olivia martinez, jasmine mata, taylor mendoza, andres menendez, nizza morales, madison morante, esme moreno, mallory morgan, caleb morrow, van nguyen, victoria nicolaevna, criss novikoff, sophia oliver, tasmuna omar, toine orr, katherine page, audrey park, nicholas peasley, angel peña, ariana perales, river perrill, nick reyna, angelynn rivera, isabella rogoff, cat roland, chloe romero, kennedy ruhland, joshua rush, nat salinas, marissa sandoval, odelia schiller, anoushka sharma, rylie shieh, mary shiju, adalae simpao, lucia soldi, sachi sooda, ava stern, melissa strangis, gray suh, sameeha syed, anum tayyab, brian thai, stella thomas, london tijani, khasya tinglin, patsy torres, amyan tran, anh tran, reyana tran, sarahi vasquez, josemanuel vazquez, adesuwa viadex, aidan vu, ruby walker, ellis wesley, anayla wilson, melat woldu, lili xiong, danny yoo
from the editor
I’m not sure how to start this. How to encapsulate all of my feelings for this issue and the people involved into words. This role is unlike anything else I have ever done. It was overwhelming, but also so gratifying.
In my core — and I believe in everybody’s core — is the desire to create. Getting the opportunity to oversee SPARK, a place that gives space for people to create without inhibition, is something I will always be grateful for. Having the time and space to be creative is a sentiment I hold dear, especially here. SPARK is home to so many talented individuals with such creative ideas that I can only aspire to. To be able to create is such a sacred thing, and to be able to do that with a supportive community is what makes SPARK such a special place to me.
My time this semester has been filled with so much joy as I’ve seen everybody’s visions come to life. There is something so special about prioritizing our role as students while also making space to indulge in our wildest fantasies and imaginations with our peers. Seeing teams come together and create lasting connections never fails to fill me with pride. I have made countless friends here, and all I want is to preserve that environment for everybody else — whether you’re a freshman who wants to try styling for the first time or a graphic designer trying to build your portfolio. SPARK brings people of all different stages in their creative journey together and sparks lifelong connections and community.
I’m so proud of all the staff that have wholly dedicated themselves to the art of creating beautiful things. It’s an art and a talent we must not take for granted. Without you all, there would be no SPARK. I also couldn’t have done any of this without my most wonderful, gorgeous, amazing managing director, Divya. She has been my rock and is the reason why this semester has run so smoothly.
This issue explores the concept of returning to your roots, exploring your origins, and breaking them down. We’ve encapsulated these ideas within three chapters: Survive, Escape, and Create. We feature Austin drag performer, Brigitte Bandit, who embodies this message. This concept has produced amazing visuals and is one that I value deeply. MOTOR is one of a kind, and I invite you to think on these topics, explore the magazine, and enjoy the read.
With so much love,
Editor in Chief
SURVIVE she forgot, she remembered goodnight cowboy asphalt dirt the devil soliloquies.
ESCAPE flesh or freedom, mind or fight jersey #irl you will be buried here naïve physics propagation celestial bodies sophia, montana the revival
LEYDON
Reach towards what has never truly been yours.
SHE FORGOT, SHE REMEMBERED // GOODNIGHT COWBOY // ASPHALT // DIRT // THE DEVIL // SOLILOQUIES.
She Forgot,
layout CAROLINE CLARK creative director CAROLINE CLARK photographer NICOLE HOWARD stylist AIDAN VU hmua ANGELYNN RIVERA & JAISHRI RAMESH models GRACE JOH & JOSEMANUEL VASQUEZ
She Remembered
Dispatch, we’ve got eyes on the suspect.
Female, late thirties. Dark hair, hollowed eyes. There’s something in her mouth. Blotted with rot, black holes dottingher gums. Scars of neglect — cavities deep enough to puncture her heart. She clings to a wheel of a car that isn’t hers. She can’t remember where the night started, but she knows how it will end.
738, engage pursuit.
She’s running from that dull ache in her mouth. Staring into the rearview mirror — lights flashing behind her — all she sees are the gaps in her smile. They form a map of things that have disappeared, spaces where her mother used to be.
Subject increasing speed, heading south.
She remembers her uncle crossing this road once. He said they were chasing him. You could see it in his eyes — torment crawling just beneath the surface. He got sick. His mother told him to pray, but he didn’t know how. God never spoke back. So he ran into the lights until his body hit metal and pavement. She sees his stain on the road. She knows she will share his fate.
Suspect may be armed. Proceed with caution.
Armed? She felt weaker than ever — trailing her neglect down the highway. Her mother might be lost somewhere too, chasing something. Her children were home, waiting like she had been twenty years before. She cared, but it didn’t stop the sickness. Didn’t stop the fever.
738, suspect veering off — exit ramp approaching.
The road stretches farther than she thought it would. They lefther so far away. In the sirens, she hears her mother singing her to sleep with hot tea. The fever persists, screeching behind her eyes.
HEELS | Revival Vintage
DRESS | Austin Pets Alive!
PEARL NECKLACE | Revival Vintage
DARK BEADED NECKLACE | Austin Pets Alive!
BLACK TULLE | Aidan Vu
We have a possible collision, subject approaching other vehicles.
Her kids are in the backseat — somewhere in the rearview of her memory. Sick like her uncle. Sick like her. She tries to pray for them, too. But she’s forgotten those words her mother had spoken, brushing her hair the night before she left.Hands on the wheel, knuckles white, she catches the scent of her mother’s tea in the rubber burning beneath her.
Suspect accelerating, clear traffic.
She’s reaching the edge. The slow, quiet collapse of a life neglected. No one told her about survival. She’s improvising.
Collision reported. Subject’s vehicle has hit the median. Requesting EMS.
It went black. The rot in her teeth wasn’t her doing. It seeped through years of the unsaid and undone. She never learned to brush. She never learned to pray. She never learned the name of the hot tea that kept her heart warm.
EMS en route. Condition of suspect
She knew they would open her chest and find that the rot had consumed her.
738, subject stable but unresponsive.
They’ll try to drag her out of the wreck. But under this pile of metal, she can finally remember. She hears that sweet song. Her mother is right there. Her kids are waiting safely at home. The tea spills down her
FI was forever chasing the unattainable. We all were.
SQX XQS
Where is my Marlboro Man? Where is his shiny gun? Where is my happy ending? Where have all the cowboys gone?Paula Cole
On a sun-scorching Sunday in the summer of 1996, Paula Cole wanders the acreage aimlessly in search of something, or someone, to save her. Drenched in sweat, her damp sundress clinging uncomfortably to her arms and knees, she sees a brawny silhouette in the distance. After all these years of scouring the terrain for something to call her own, her cowboy has finaly appeared.
She inches closer and closer, though sand seems to seep into her aching bones and dust now smothers her throat. Just when the silhouette is within striking distance, only an outstretched arm away from paradise, it’s gone — man turned mirage.
It’s these mirages that yank me further from myself. Stepping out of my comfort zone initially seemed appealing, but the journey ends up exactly how it began — an aimless wander to nowhere in particular.
Every man I’ve ever desired has been a mirage. The closer I get to unraveling the mystery of them, the more likely I am to be disappointed when my perception of them dissipates in my fingers.Though I’d like to think these mirages are mine and mine alone, I know there’s a bigger force at hand. What I desire has always had a specific blueprint, a blurry outline that has only become clear when I take a step back.
I’ve always found myself drawn to the raw and rugged men depicted in Brokeback Mountain and Moonlight. Hardened by the lives they live and possessing some kind of dulled sparkle, I found comfort in the hypermasculine. My real crushes, the ones projected in cafeteria seats in front of me rather than the big screen, have reflected this same pattern of men: The Cowboy.
The Cowboy is the Boy-Next-Door and American Dream all wrapped up in one brawny ranch hand with dirt under their fingernailsand leather boots accompanied by a satisfying click-clack. But there’s factors that transcend beyond the physical. The cowboys possess a calmness I could only dream of replicating, a swagger that appears annoyingly natural, an awareness of the attraction they draw in that would enrage me if only I wasn’t so hopelessly desiring them as well.
But the common denominator of the desire was the knowledge that deep down, the desire never felt like it was my own. It was a curated attraction, the mold I felt was designed for me to fall for - some kind of robotic, dutiful lust that left me feeling even emptier after the inevitable rejection hit.
The assembly line starts within my own community.
We’ve retreated to the tight corners, dimly lit corridors far out of reach from the heteronormative culture that aimed to swallow us whole. In spite of being the overwhelming minority in everyday life, a hierarchy has sprung up in nearly every male queer space I’ve been a part of.
To be queer has meant being an active participant in a competition I didn’t know had started. It’s a blend of camaraderie and envy, of community and divisiveness. Obsessive beauty standards, the drive to have the most obscure taste in media and the arts, and social climbing all blend together to create a twisted web of elitism. Mediocrity isn’t an option; it’s not a social scene for the faint of heart or those deemed deplorable the non-whites, plus size, and hyper-feminine. Despite this, I’ve built my existence around what the collective desires, forever morphing and contorting to get as close to perfect as possible.
It dawned on me that the spaces my younger self flung towards for a sense of comfort were now poison in their own way. I grew uneasy at not being what the collective was attracted to, failing to see anyone like me be desired.
A community with beauty standards rooted in whiteness and hypermasculinity forced those who didn’t yield to the status quo into the periphery. Exclusion seeped into the veins of a people who once relied on inclusivity, an alarming contradiction to witness firsthand.Though I found “perfect” in the men I’d chase to no avail, as their pedestal rose to new heights, all I could do was gaze longingly from below. Below was the place I found myself most often; I was sinking amidst the ranks of my queer peers. Looking into the mirror, my reflection spelled out the antithesis of everything the community deemed desirable.
Where The Cowboy began, my sense of self slipped away. Now it was me who was the mirage. The cowboy, the idealized version of what the gay community wanted what I wanted needed to be interrogated.
Where had my desire taken me? What had this yearning for nothing in particular resulted in besides a bruised ego and a mirror’s reflection I winced at? Had any of it been productive, or had I been too late in recognizing that what was once a dream had crescendoed to a nightmare in my deepest slumbers?
I wade out to the sand where Paula’s frail body resides. I lay a piece of cold cloth against her face, brush offher sundress, and findmyself clinging on to her as if we were one. Finally, after gathering the courage to stand back up again, we leave, making a point to not look back at the mirage that stung us so deeply.
Say our goodbyes, say our goodbyes. - Paula Cole ■
F
V
V
"Where had my desire taken me?"
“I CAN FEEL THE CEMENT PULSING.”
MMy city has known me my whole life, but it has never said a word to me. I want to know what it has seen. I wish it would tell me what it thought. I wish it would say anything at all.
The city is Gaia, a cruel mother who births the monsters I must face. These monsters bloom from the flesh of my city, the concrete and asphalt from which Houston is made. They are the men who scream at me, who follow me down sidewalks and roads — the ones who stare at me with odd smiles warping their faces.
I see him remolded, over and over, in the shape of people who view me iinto an “it” rather than an “I.” They’re all made from the stuffthat seeps into the concrete and spews back out. Broken glass shards from beer bottles, cigarette ash tapped offinto the street, murky flood water, all eventually make their way into the asphalt. Then they are conceived into an entirely different body with, as far as I’m concerned, the exact same soul.
When they are not there, I can feel the cement pulsing. The sidewalks and roads feel warm to the touch, a living organism, always ready to pull the next monster from its womb.
Once, it birthed a dingy red sports car with a man at its wheel.
His car slowed down until it matched my pace on the cracked sidewalk. I was one small stretch of asphalt from my home, but I knew I could not escape this. He initiated the dance and I responded in turn, our moves well practiced. I had never met him before and I knew everything about him.
“You should get into my car,” he said. It was more of a demand than a question.
The car continuously let out a low growl, a predator. I walked quickly and did my best not to make eye contact.
“C’mon,” he prodded. “I can take you anywhere you want to go.”
Traffic moved around his car like it was a pothole. The sidewalk held its breath beneath me. I hoped that it was worrying for me, but maybe it was only trying not to laugh.
“I’m alright,” I responded. “I’m 16.”
“That’s okay, baby. Just get in.”
I said nothing and walked faster. It was a useless move. The sidewalk opened up and he parked right between where I was and where I needed to go. He begged me to get in. I couldn’t walk around his car — I had no clue
if he would ram right through me if given the option. I could imagine droplets like rubies on the pavement, my body mangled by tires. I wasn’t sure if this man saw much difference between touching and disfiguring.
I looked at him. He was screaming. He looked like the man who chased me through a parking lot when I was fourteen, and only left after I hid behind a car. He looked like the man who put his arms around my best friend and me so he could grope her non-existent chest when we were twelve. He looked like so many people, and I couldn’t piece his face together anymore. It looked melted, deformed. I think my staring unnerved him. He went silent, scoffed, and drove away.
I saw myself, lying still and bloody in the road. The sidewalk refused to swallow her and instead implanted her in my mind. For the remainder of the walk, I saw my gore as clearly as I would have had she gotten up, cracked her limbs back into place, and walked me home herself. The pavement watched me stumble and lent no help. It never has.
These types of people are someone new molded from something very old, older than the city itself. I couldn’t walk down the street of my home without a scream from a car or a comment from someone. They did not care who I was, how I looked. It didn’t matter how I changed or carried myself. What I wore only frequency of the comments.
The asphalt below our feet breathed softly, like it was resting.
We came across two beautiful girls. After a moment of talking to them, we realized they were freshman in high school. We had assumed they were our age and suddenly saw them in a new light. They wore outfits as revealing as our own. I felt a fear for them that I couldn’t quite identify just then. After they left, my friend and I found an empty patch of road to sink to.
The asphalt was damp, the way Houston always is. We could feel the wetness through our thin clothing. We tried to talk, but every topic felt trivial and tapered offinto silence. During an especially long pause, I watched my dget with the fabric of her short skirt. She took a deep breath, then looked into my eyes.
“They were only, like, fifteen,” she said, and I understood.
They will always findsomething to say, miniskirt or cargo pants. It made me angry as a high-schooler when my mom would tell me to cover up — my clothing felt inconsequential because they would act just the same. I refused to understand her. I saw her worry as a way to stifle my creativity, to make the world just a bit more against me.
This changed the summer after my freshman year of college. My friend and I were back in town, and we went to an all-ages show in a dilapidated bar. We chose to stay in the parking lot with the vendors and the smokers, the bands inside too loud. It was dark, and the air smelled like tobacco. The faint thrumming of guitar interspersed with the occasional crashes of a cymbal could be heard.
I knew they would receive attention no matter what they wore, but if I could get them to become prey for one less man born from sediment, then I would’ve
“I feel scared for them. It feels stupid, I want them to cover up. I want them to be able to dress however they’d like, but I also want them to cover up and never be anywhere that anyone can see them ever again,” I said.
“Yeah. Like, we may be in danger too, but we can deal with it,” she said.
“They probably also can. They shouldn’t have to,” I responded.
“We shouldn’t have to, either.”
I giggle at this, and she joins in. It devolves into hystericaldrunk-girl laughs, then sobs. Our worry was spilling out onto the tarmac. We wanted to save the unsavable. I felt the cruel eyes of the concrete that raised me, that watched me grow up. I questioned it in the same way I question God: why would an all-powerful, all-seeing being not just fucking help me?
“ My city h a s knownme m y whole
Eventually, we calmed down. A man walked up to us, sat down, tried to make small talk. He had stubble on his chin, and he looked too old to be there. He flirtedwith me, but subtly enough that I couldn’t shut him down immediately. If I did that, he could call me a rude bitch. My friend showed me her phone screen: she called an Uber for us. He asked for my number. I told him I wasn’t interested. He grumbled and walked away, then our car arrived. We left.
“I know you’re eighteen and legal and all. But I feel like he didn’t check and wouldn’t have cared had you not been,” she said, and I vehemently agreed.
The next day, his face was all over the social media of my scene friends, informing everyone that he was a known pedophile and not to be trusted. I felt guilt for feeling satisfied that we were correct about him. I was glad he talked to me, and not those girls.
But there is no saving them — or me. To be “saved” is only to delay an inevitable understanding of what will always be true. I could dress up or down. I could hide behind cars and hold onto the pepper spray in my pocket. I could walk as quickly as I wanted, but the real damage would be done regardless: I would never feel safe in my home. The truth is that the city which had raised me was not for me: the pavement did its bidding and those it birthed were its pawns. I could grow up in one place my whole life and it will never belong to me, to those girls.
It will forever stay silent, holding its breath when I need it most. It will allow me to go wherever I need, as long as it can torment me along the way. My city has known me my whole life, and it will never do a thing for me.
In the end, I could only outgrow it. Once you begin to look like a woman instead of a girl, the pavement becomes disinterested. It stops spitting out nearly as many men at you. You cannot help those it goes after next. I know this. Regardless, I still wish to lay down and put my ear to the pavement, to beg it to have something to say. I can imagine the breathing of the stone against my body, up and down.
I could spend the rest of my life asking the concrete to explain itself. My home will stay as silent as ever. ■
DIRT
by KATHERINE PAGE
layout NICK REYNA photographer MAYA MARTINEZ stylists AIDAN CROWL & SOPHIA MANLLO-SUDARIO hmua ANGELYNN
RIVERA nail artist RUBY WALKER models JORDYN JACKSON & VICTORIA HALES
“THE DIRT BUILDS AT MY FEET, DARK AND INKY.”
Against a backdrop of ochre-colored terrain, it sits there. Its hands are mired. Its lips are encrusted with muddied profanities. I wait quietly as it once again presses a handful of earth into its mouth, and the loamy fith spreads across its tongue. We’ve been sitting here for hours. It swallows and looks in my direction, smiling: the divine dirt-eater.
A couple of years ago, I read the book When God Was a Woman by Merlin Stone. This was my firstencounter with the concept of dirt-eating. Stone discusses ancient deities and fertility gods that guided the cycles of life, of birth and rebirth, of purity. She paints a picture of these deities taking the sins of their devotees and washing them clean. By eating the dirt of their disciples, the divine would purify them. Rebirth them. Stone helped me to understand dirteating for what it was: a process of purification. A freeing process that wiped the slate clean.
I quickly became obsessed with the divine dirt-eater and intoxicated by the idea of being purified so easily.
For as long as I can remember, I have struggled to make friends. I have spent most of my life fltting through different people, hoping that someone would stick. I wanted to find someone who understood me and my place in the world. So far, this has not happened, and I have realized the I am the common denominator. Part of it is just unluckiness.
I always seem to findpeople who view the world as more utopian than I do, but it is also my own vitriolic nature. Not only do I view the world through a bitter lens, but I view other people this way, too.
If someone fails to text me back, tells the same annoying joke over and over, or raises their voice ever so slightly, I avoid them. The dirt builds at my feet, dark and inky.
I see myself doing these trenchant things, and I imagine dragging myself back to the dirt-eater’s feet. My dirt is splayed out in front of them. The sludge trickles along the ground and pools at my feet. I don’t know what to do with it. The divine dirt-eater gives me an expectant look. I explain how impossible everything feels and how my dirt outweighs my purity everytime; it’s too much to stomach. I ask them to take it from me. I ask them to eat it and bury it deep within themself so that I may finally view the world the way everyone else seems to. The dirt-eater stares back at me, unblinking. Their muddy lips refuse to part.
The dirt-eater doesn’t seem to want to make this easy for me. My fruitless attempts to beg them to purify me start to eat away at me. The image of the dirt-eater sitting there, refusing to do the one thing they were meant to do, becomes representative of my resentment towards my resentment.
I decide that if they won’t help me, I will help myself. I will eat my own dirt. I will purify myself.
This act is harder than I imagined. The divine dirt-eater made it look so simple. I, unfortunately, have to put conscious effort into eating my own dirt. The only way I can think to do it is to try my best to be as agreeable as possible. My dirt is my disagreeableness, after all.
I study with classmates that I don’t like, get coffee with the guy I find insufferable, and buy food for acquaintances even though I don’t want to. I make sure I text people back. I try to remember people’s favorite things. I even go out of my way to not shit-talk, although it is my favorite thing to do. I desperately try to finda friend who will stick by altering my worldview to fit theirs.
No matter how hard I tried, nothing worked. I fell back into my old ways. I avoided people, I stopped texting, and I shittalked. I found things to hate about everything around me. No matter what or who it was, if it existed, I found some kind of flw, and I ran the other way. I started to become exhausted with how hard I was trying, and how quickly I was failing. My act of dirt-eating was futile. I was doing it wrong somehow.
I returned to the dirt-eater that lives in my mind. I asked them again why they would not help me. Their lips looked muddier. The crescents of their nails were streaked with ochre that ran all the way up to their knuckles. The image taunted me. My lips looked the same and my hands were just as sordid as I continued to shovel more earth down my throat. I asked them what they were doing so right that I was doing so wrong. There was no answer.
I started to see it as a matter of material. When the divine did it, the dirt went away. When I did it, I was just filling myself with more dirt. My composition was all wrong. I gave up.
One night in the middle of summer, my friend and I decided to have a late night dinner. This was the point at which I had decided to salvage what I already had instead of chasing more. I tried to accept that the divine dirt-eater would never digest my sins. My friend and I had become dizzy from wine and cigarettes. We sat in the dark, illuminated by the moon and whispered against the flurry of cicadas. She was telling me about all she had done since we last saw each other.
“I STARTED TO SEE IT AS A MATTER OF MATERIAL. WHEN THE DIVINE DID IT, THE DIRT WENT AWAY.”
“I WAS JUST FILLING MYSELF WITH MORE DIRT. MY COMPOSITION WAS ALL WRONG.”
“I’m going to tell you a secret,” she said to me. She giggled. “It’s bad, but I feel okay telling you. You’re the only friend I don’t virtue signal to.”
My friend splayed her dirt out on the table, and we began eating it along with our meals. With every morsel of warm earth, I saw her feel less and less guilty. I ,too, was satisfied.
I see myself with the divine dirt-eater for the finaltime. They look the same as they always do. Pure. Taunting. Filthy.
But for the firsttime, I am not exalting this deity. The saffon stains that line their face and cake their forearms no longer eat away at me. The looming shadows no longer hint at something else. They are dim, and the look on the god’s face is disinterested. Nothing means anything more than what it is. I am simply in front of something fithy and grotesque.
The deity looks at me. It looks at my hands and my mouth. The same grime is encrusted under my nails. The same tawny blemishes are rubbed deep into my pores. The deity finaly looks amused for once, gazing at something just as fithy and as grotesque as itself.
The fictitious air around us is thick, the earth beneath us unmoving. I want to speak and tell them my new philosophies. I have done what you would never do for me. I want them to understand that I findthem obsolete. The dirt is no longer just my own. I want them to feel foolish for what they were doing. Purificationis unsustainable. I want to throw all of my fith in their face. Instead, I leave.
There is a dirt-eater somewhere, and it looks very much like me. ■
“THERE IS A DIRT-EATER SOMEWHERE, AND IT LOOKS VERY MUCH LIKE ME.”
by DILLON LUONG
layout YVETTE GARCIA photographer KYRA HEFLIN
model JOSEMANUEL VAZQUEZ hmua JOSHUA GRENIER
MIRROR BROKEN, I STILL MYSELF. BREATHING. ME.
THE MIRROR WAS BROKEN, YET I COULD SEE MYSELF BREATHING BESIDE ME.
by DILLON LUONG layout YVETTE GARCIA & JAZMIN HERNANDEZ ARCEO
our memory is a maze, full of hallway into turn into turn into turn. There are always two doors.
The house is washed out, everything is white: the corners, the countertops, the crop-dust marble tile. This place lulls you like a mirage and you melt into the hot room, falling to the tile floor. You are looking for something cool to the touch — something real.
You look up and see yourself sitting beside you on the other bed, staring right back. You are an identical twin. You are my identical twin. I am you.
At first,I didn’t know if you were real. I was just a kid. That house was placeless, and you were the imaginary friend that belonged to it. It was our mother’s house, hazy and without personality. She grew up a mixed kid after the Vietnam War. This meant that in her own country, she was nicknamed The Devil — an embodiment of what white men had done to Vietnam’s dignity — and was orphaned and ostracized to the States. She became a single mother without a culture. We became a family without precedent, so you and I were never complete — in limbo.
I know I am real; I remember my mother’s house. I remember staring into speckled, popcorn walls as Saturday cartoons beat on deaf eardrums. The world was muffled as my senses suffocated with asthma. All would be quiet until I heard wheezing to my left, and I would turn, and see you again. You were a reminder that my voice and breath were being used by someone else. My ability to cry out and to live was someone else’s right, and I remember how you would steal the act of existence from me. I did not have a place or being. Yet, you were somehow both.
In elementary school, I learned that siblings imitated each other. This was how you took parts of me, and I knew I had to findmyself anew, and anew, and anew. I had to be more than the empty foundations laid upon us, more than everything you took to fillthat void; I had to be more than even myself, or else I would have nothing.
Our mother’s house crumpled up like balls of paper. Her house was all she owned. I was standing within everything her life amounted to; her entire self was written on those paper walls. I couldn’t discern each crinkle without a culture. My mother was scattered across the house like ashes. Sometimes, I’d look for her – where I started and ended –and the hallways always led me back where I began, and you were still there. We’d scribble crayon all over the house
hoping to chart the sameness that kept us in circles. But all we’d see were a madman’s scrawls, trying to prove he wasn’t talking to himself.
You were my reflection, and we lived in a house of mirrors. I was everything and everything was me; I was meaning, and if you mimicked my every movement, I, too, was creation. I sought an epiphany, deriving meaning from itself, but everything I tried had already been done on the other side of the glass. This was how I found hell: by searching for divinity.
All I found was endless insecurity and fault in what I saw because I was only human. Being a twin meant that you were the weakness and sin I had to excise — an enemy and a means to an end. If I was in some indeterminate hell, and my mother was evil incarnate, then when you stood across from me, mirroring my countenance and contemplations, what did that make you? I began to claw at my face wishing I looked like anything but you. I knew you wanted to become me.
When we entered middle school, our mother spoke of becoming important — someone with power, money, and everything they wanted. She wanted more for us than she ever had, so we competed for everything. You were a doppelganger trying to take over my life. We shared the same interests, the same friends, and the same grades. There was an expectation: if I didn’t reach the finishline first,I would be trapped in the sameness that haunted me. I didn’t know where this would end, and looking over at you was like cheating on myself. Our mother wanted us to become something; I only wanted to become someone
If you were me, then I was the narrator watching my own predictable story. You made my mistakes, and I learned while watching from the outside in. Having a twin means seeing your reflection, and watching it move on its own; I couldn’t tell if it gave me more or less control of my identity. I wasn’t a person. I was I, and you were you. Everything you did was my road not taken and, suddenly, the mirror between us became a kaleidoscope of who I was, wasn’t, and will be.
You were a cuckoo, implanted in my nest and chasing me to be me first.Our mother never compared us to others, only to each other, like she could only support one of us. We had no excuses. We were the same person. All of my faults were splayed out in front of me. In you. I hated you. You were here to prove that I couldn’t beat even my own expectations, that I was a shadow of someone else. I couldn’t fathom making my own decisions, knowing that someone knew them before I did. I couldn’t trust myself or my perspective on the world
“sometIMES i’d reach out to feel it, and i couldn’t tell iF it was really me. but I could feel a heartbeat, and it matched mine.”
because whenever I looked at what you were doing, it was always wrong. I would cry for help, begging to escape the house, but I’d only get back my echoes. Within that labyrinth, I could not find even myself
Then one day, strange old men speaking strange languages, claiming to be our family, took us away. Every two weeks we were pulled out and pushed into a new door.
My father’s family home was like the back of an antique store, crammed with endless china and porcelain pottery. If my mother’s house was mute, this place resounded like a crash. There were glossy, crackling checkerboard tiles, and rippling blue ceilings striking high into the heavens — a thunderstorm below you, and an ocean rolling above me.
This place was full of memories I did not have. There was history I was not a part of, and a garage full of a culture I had never seen before. This place remembers, and when I came here I was reminded of everything I wasn’t. I knew this when my family spoke behind closed doors about how different we were. We were given expectations that broke the seams of our small world, scolded for not knowing Viet, Vietnam, and who I really am. Nobody believed in my limbo. This asylum believed I was a problem because I couldn’t be understood.
I was scared here. Language and culture caked the air like dust on the furniture. This place was a coffinand I was buried alive by the weight of history. When we were here, I’d turn to you. You were always there, every waking moment, and I asked what you would do if you were in my shoes.
There’s a security and surrealism in seeing yourself outside of your own body. Sometimes I’d reach out to feel it, and I couldn’t tell if it was really me. But I could feel a heartbeat, and it matched mine.
I knew I was made up of many different parts because I could see it in the jigsaw of my brother. I belonged in many different places because I was perpetually split between two. My family endlessly spoke of their greatness, and how I had fallen and shattered; I was just one part of a whole, unable to put myself back together again.
I was back on the tile floor, looking for something real — a way to live. I’d look up and see you on the other bed, staring right back. You are my identical. You are me. You were my witness, and that meant you contained truth.
Your existence confirmedI was real; if you bled and I didn’t, then I simply wouldn’t be human. If I was scolded, so were you, and we would cry the same way. It meant that at least one other person felt the wrongness of our world. Our shared pain became what we had most in common, and it gave us a place to fall back on. We finaly belonged somewhere, within our tormented bodies and minds, and we both knew.
I have no personal hell. Someone always made the same mistakes as me, someone who knew how angry and contorted I felt. If blood is thicker than water, then you were my entire family. You were everything I ever had.
I once asked you, “Who are you?” ■
The nature of acting has always been external. Performance is a spectacle — based entirely on perception.
layout ANGELINA CONDE photographer LIV MARTINEZ stylist SOPHIA AMSTALDEN hmua ANDROMEDA ROVILLAIN nail artist GRACE JOH model ALEX BASILLIO
by OLIVIA RING
HEADDRESS | Sophia Amstalden
Act I
“Acting is the most personal of our crafts. The make-up of a human being — his physical, mental and emotional habits — influence his acting to a much greater extent than commonly recognized.” - Lee Strasberg .
A black and white documentary projects onto the screen. I sit in class, struggling to keep my eyes open.
ACTINGISINTERNAL , The Method preaches.
On the screen, middle-aged men, who have long since died, drone on about authenticity in performance. Draw from your own memories, return to the emotions that you haven’t buried.
This doesn’t always work for me, though. I’m indecisive. It’s my biggest flw. I’m unable to live in the moment, too consumed with what to say, do, feel next. I can’t choose one memory. Which evokes the right emotion? The most authentic emotion? Is there ever only one?
There are aspects of the method that work, I agree, but the larger interpretation of The Method as an internal movement doesn’t. Acting is about everything but you. You’re a moving part in the telling of a larger narrative.
Theoretical interpretation implies that there is only one feeling to recall, but you never feel just one emotion in any given moment. The most realistic performance is the one that elicits humanity in its most authentic form.
The way you play a character is so fundamentally interlaced with your own self. In a sense, me and the characters I’m playing are one in the same.
To completely, genuinely embody a character, you have to maintain a part of yourself inside of them. Your own sense of humor, your awkward laugh, the way you wring your hands when you’re nervous — these can belong to your characters, they can make them feel real.
My work as a performer is to elevate the story, to make sure it is told as honestly as possible. My tether to my character is the firststep along the way.
Act II.
I hold a script in my hands — an ease settles in.
I’m comfortable with Shakespeare. The character sits in my chest, lifting me up with a confidence I only feel when I’m on stage.
Across from me, people I’ve only spoken to through prose watch me intently.
We barely know one another. We spend nine hours in the same room together every week going through complete emotional journeys through the characters we’re playing. Yet I feel like I don’t know them at all.
Maybe they’ll never see me beyond the guise of my character. Maybe we’ll be confined to an eternty of only knowing a persona grounded in pretense.
Though, I see their subtleties — their idiosyncrasies. The way they quirk their mouth up after they deliver a quip, the way another delivers a certain line in the same cadence each time we run the scene.
It’s small, but it feels vital.
There, a crack begins to form. Between the character and the actor — a scene partner and a friend. It’s a healthy break, a necessary line.
We bond through the hours spent in a classroom running the same scenes a myriad of different ways. During short breaks, we talk about our classes, our walks to rehearsal, what we ate for dinner. Afterward, we catch a movie and indulge in the early stages of friendship.
It’s an oddly intimate process, developing two separate relationships with someone — the on-stage and the off.You know your scene partners on two separate planes: as the character and as themselves. You need to know both for it to work in the show. Creating a realistic dynamic, reacting to them the way you’d react to your real friend or mother or brother, that’s the foundation of your performance. Once you’re familiar with them, reacting to them becomes second nature.
I find t easier to connect with people that way — through playing somebody else.
Act III
I was once told,
The audience feels like they know you on a personal level. Theymayhavenevermetyou,butthey’veseenyou(asthe character) go on a complete emotional journey. In a way, they do know you.
At 13, the thought confused me. How could someone feel like they knew me if we had never spoken?
But,
The audience has always informed my performance. Their energy bleeds into my own. It motivates me. The act of performing for them gives me a sense of purpose, of being.
I am my truest self when I’m playing somebody else. There’s an inherent gratification, a driving passion, in seeing the realization of months and months of effort come to fruition right in front of you.
The audience doesn’t know me, but they’ve seen a glimpse inside of me — a window into myself that is visible through the character. It’s a pane that nobody else will ever see. No two performances are the same. No two audiences will ever see the same part of me. That’s what makes live performance special, it’s why being a stage actor is so fulfilling.Our connection is ephemeral, intangible — but it’s integral to the art.
I feel them. I can sense the tension — see their reactions, though enshrouded in the darkness of the house.
They’ve seen me live an entire life in two hours – and I lived that life for them. You give a piece of yourself to the character, they know that part of you like no one else does. The character becomes different by the audience’s own perceptions; it is their story now. I’m just the vehicle. I give the story to them, and it becomes theirs to take.
After the curtain closes, when I’m taking my finalbows, for a split second, they see me. They see my gratitude, the beads of sweat falling down my face. My makeup has smeared; strands of my hair are falling out. I’ve never looked more like myself. I no longer have to convince them that I am somebody else. But they no longer need to be convinced. Those lines, for them, have already blurred. To the audience, the character and I are now intertwined.
The nature of acting has always been external. Performance is a spectacle — based entirely on perception. ■
layout
EMMY CHEN creative director VANI SHAH photographer LIV MARTINEZ stylist EMILY MARTINEZ hmua
ZIADA ARAYA & VANI SHAH models SABINA GUARDADO, MADILYN HERNANDEZ, & ALEX BASILLIO
Martinez
Leopard Lounge
My jersey didn’t fit and I knew that I didn’t belong in it.
layout CAROLINE CLARK photographer CHRISTOPHER DAVILA videographer
Baseball masquerades as a team sport, promising that everyone gets to wear the same jersey. The jersey is a prize — it’s a hallmark of belonging on a team whose only goal is to win.
The team’s success rests upon the sum of its individual performance. The game requires you to understand that your individual achievement allows you to be supported by your team, and anything less than that leaves you vulnerable. If you detract from the sum, you are then asked to take offyour jersey. I learned the stakes of this game very quickly.
I spent most of my early days “playing” baseball: not playing baseball at all and staying in the dugout. My parents wouldn’t be disappointed if I stayed on the sidelines and waited. They would simply be waiting for me to start. People still supported me when they were able to root for me — when they were able to feel like a part of my journey. That support was lost when they watched me fail and realized that I wasn’t who they believed I could be. My jersey was washed and placed neatly on my bedside, untouched by the shame that would stain it.
Waiting for the game to start felt so repetitive. I would feel the spit shooting out of the raspy throat of my friend’s dad as he read offthe lineup for the day. I would focus on the wall of chest hair on the lip of his stomach that peeked out. To distract myself, I would relish in the stiffnessof the seat below me and settle into the delight of observing. I would watch the other kids get yelled at by their parents while I only had to rearrange bats in the dugout.
I treated most of my early childhood this way. I refused to play the game because I knew that I would be disappointed if I tried and I failed. There were rules of socializing that I didn’t understand how to follow and I didn’t understand how to win.
Eventually, the loneliness of sitting in the dugout became too much to handle. In the sixth grade, I decided that I should start playing the game.
I firstplayed as an infielder. When you play in the field, you have no control. All of my power was held in the unwashed fingersof other insecure boys. I would let my cleats settle into the dirt around me, lock myself into place, and hope that no one would notice that I didn’t know what I was doing. The lack of control made the scene of the game feel so much more grating. I could hear the sounds of my coach’s sunflower seeds swimming around in his mouth —
the gnawing and locking and cracking — more than I could hear the sound of my own breath. I could feel the tightness of my own pants, the chafingof my thighs becoming a constant reminder of my shame. I could smell that my jersey hadn’t been washed for a month because my mom hadn’t been around much. I was so uncomfortable. My jersey didn’t fit and I knew that I didn’t belong in it.
I watched each opposing player step up to the plate, hoping that I would not be given the chance to prove myself. I didn’t want to be known.
In baseball, if a player messes up in the field, that mistake can all be traced back to you — you can’t bullshit your way out of it. That mistake — the one time you turned your head the wrong way or took the wrong step — becomes an open invitation for your teammates to ridicule you. This pressure to avoid any opportunity for shame became the driving force of how I played the game. I would attempt to talk to others — try to match the pace of their words and the harshness of their jokes — but they always knew that I was wearing a jersey that wasn’t mine.
The key to their acceptance was your knowledge of the rules of the game: saying sorry, feeling comfortable, wanting less. Any deviance from those rules was shameful. To avoid that shame, that sickening feeling of unsafety, I would lock my feet into the dirt and hope that I wouldn’t be noticed. If it failed, I’d apologize, and hope that my dad believed in me less that day. Baseball, then, felt visceral in my subservience to the game.
I remember the day that I understood that the game wasn’t going to help me. As I was getting ready for a doubleheader at Kenning Park, I painstakingly slid into my baseball pants. I looked around for my jersey, wondering if my mom had forgotten to wash it. Sprinting around my house and landing in the basement, I saw my jersey on the floor with a giant rip on the left shoulder. It looked chewed up and spat out, ripped apart by a force that wanted it to be ruined. All of the jerseys that came before it felt tied into its fabric. I had tried to fit into this jersey for so long that the structure of its being couldn’t handle my attempts to reinvent it. It felt so obvious — such a literal metaphor. I understood then that I wasn’t meant to play the game this way.
It was time for me to control the game I was playing, and I determined that I wanted to try to be a pitcher.
Being a pitcher requires you to understand exactly how the game is played and for you to exercise that power by stealing it from others. After spending so many years observing and understanding what it felt like to be powerless, I was angry enough to know the power of pretending. I started to apply what I had learned. I stitched the fabric of the armor I would create for myself: a new version of this jersey.
I would step up onto the mound and feel the weight of the leather in my unwashed hands. I had been given strategies to win the game: fastballs, curveballs, and compliments. I had ways to understand who I was supposed to be and when — conversation tricks that made people gravitate towards me. But the tricks were more an exercise in maintenance. The real power was stepping onto the mound and knowing that I got to control how I want other people to play the game. The look of confusion in the opponent’s eyes was soaked in the knowledge that they wanted to know me. If I used the right devices and applied the right strategies, then I would finaly be understood.
It became lonely after a while — not enough to distract me.
Perfectly curating how my jersey looked and how other people saw it became a form of ecstacy. I got to play as an individual and know that I controlled how my team saw me. Because I had control, I got to determine the rules of how I wanted to play.
I quit playing baseball shortly after. When you understand how frail the game is, it starts to lose its appeal. I realized that the process of constantly attempting to stitch yourself into something new is exhausting.
I don’t need to wear that stupid fucking jersey. ■
“Baseball, then, felt visceral in my subservience to the game.”
A girl watching a movie and a man who plays make beliEve
in infatuation and fascination with a woman for her drive never viewing them as risks.“.
B WITHOUT EVEN TRYING
y the time I decide what movie to watch, my dinner is cold. Every single platform has ads now, so I’m barely in the mood. A tad bored and ready to hole up in my room, I aimlessly scroll through my roommates’ 17 platforms and grasp onto a seeming-classic from 2007 I’ve never heard of it before:
“Watching the Detectives.”
The movie opens with a black-and-white scene, which, embarrassingly, makes me want to turn it off.But then Neil, played by Cillian Murphy, smiles and I blush hard. I keep the movie on and start poking at my cold food.
The main character, Neil, is a man who plays make-believe, and it’s frowned upon by society. He is the owner of a failing video store, getting beat out by big-brand stores. The movie forces watchers to ask, “Why would anyone be like Neil? You should be a real man and live in the real
Soon, my food is forgotten when Violet walks into Neil’s video store. It’s a dingy, garbage green-colored room, brightened with a blunt, short-haired woman in a warm purple top. She looks cool without even trying. She doesn’t look at every man she meets as a prospective love interest or potentially a character she could be entertained I don’t need that. She has friends; she’s exotic, curious, and free. She wears long black shorts which my mom would’ve forced me to wear growing up, but it makes her look surprisingly pleasant and desirable to Neil. Neil is just like me. She exudes dence and flirtiness.Without. Even. Trying. Neil and
“. “. “
Now Lucy does generally fit an American body beauty standard herself, but that wouldn’t crack the top ten things I would use to describe her. She has a belly laugh and findshumor in tricks, not only around Halloween. She moves far away from the standard of what’s socially acceptable, but she embraces it. She oozes herself: playful, unserious, and purely intriguing.
Violet makes me want to play make-believe in a way that’s fun and takes things a little too far, like my own humor. In one instance, Violet decides to have her friends pretend to be detectives break into the big brand video store. However, the scene turns dramatic when Neil begins to get riled up. He is on the verge of a breakdown when the three of them erupt in laughter. She is playful and loud and shows me that oozing my own character is fun and doesn’t have to be feared. Being fun and wearing slightly ugly clothes is clearly not a bad thing. Violet is living proof that having fun in life is clearly not a bad thing.
Forget money, responsibility, commitments, MEN, and just live. There doesn’t have to be standards. I don’t have to findentertainment in movies; I can findit in life by living it. I can take risks without viewing them as risks, just like Violet.
I want to play basketball and slam dunk without a thought about my tight shoes, my loose pants, my skin-tight shirt, or my boobs.
Nothing of this is jealousy. I don’t want to be Lucy Liu as Violet. It’s admiration for her view on life and her view on risks or a lack thereof. This is what people call being and getting inspired. I yearn to have icing on my life, not just the cake. I want to be able to scheme something as big as a casino robbing scene just like Violet.
The movie closes in a classic car-on-the-road montage, and I get closure. I can be Violet. I can now be the person who enacts change and sporadicity rather than the person who follows. I am no longer Neil.
Instead of my usual, anxiety-ridden sleep, I fall asleep with an excitement to see myself in Violet, and Violet in me. I think if we could plausibly hang out, we would complement each other.
As soon as I awake, I start spewing about the movie I watched last night to my mother, but she doesn’t want to hear it. She’s missing out though. She is never going to know Violet the way I know her now. I know the person I want to be. I know the energy I want to have.
Violet is much more than a character. She walks through my mind everyday, telling me — screaming at me to get offmy couch and do anything else, without viewing everything as a risk. ■
by SUNSHINE ZÉA LEEUWON layout AVA JIANG
ou stare at the countertop, your fingers resting on the edge of an old mason jar, its surface sticky from whatever had been left inside for too long. The room feels smaller than it used to, suffocating under the weight of the dust coating the tops of cabinets, the windowsills, and the space beneath your fingernails. The house itself has become your prison. Its walls are intact, its roof still standing, but its unrelenting decay holds you in place.
You don’t look at your mother because if you do, you’ll see the same emptiness in her eyes that you’ve come to resent. There’s no love in this request, just the monotony of survival. You could leave here, you’ve thought about it countless times, but there’s something about this place that pulls you back. An obligation so deep that it feels like part of your skin — it sinks into your bones like the dust sinks into the floorboards, the way dust settles, inevitable but soft.
You pick up the jar, feeling the cool glass against your palm. Once, it held freshly canned peaches, picked under the summer sun. You had canned them yourself, your grandmother standing beside you at the sink, weathered hands guiding yours.
You’ll want to know how to do this someday, she’d said, voice soft but certain. You had hated the chore, the sticky sweetness that clung to everything. You had hated the way the kitchen grew unbearably hot from the boiling water, and how your fingers would wrinkle after plunging in jar after jar. But in this moment, you miss the way her hands were so sure of themselves. That steadiness has been gone for years.
The water runs cold, and you rinse the jar. It clinks, hitting the side of the drying rack. The kitchen is silent now except for the steady hum of the fridge — worn, yellow, even older than you are. It stands in stark contrast to the Thanksgiving you spent here when the house was a little fuller — your siblings around the table, your father carving the turkey
with the same serrated knife he’d sharpened for over 20 years. It was a hollow holiday, one you’d returned to out of obligation rather than warmth. That year, your father had smiled, but it felt strained, a practiced expression that never reached his eyes — like he was trying to hold onto a version of the family that no longer existed.
You don’t come back enough, he’d said, the words carrying a quiet accusation.
You’d nodded, even though you knew it wasn’t true. You returned as often as you could bear.
Footsteps slow and deliberate, you leave the kitchen, moving in the direction of the living room, where the musty air is thick with the scent of old wood and forgotten memories. The carpet is worn, the edges frayed from years of neglect, and you can almost hear the sound of your mother’s vacuum cleaner, that old whirring beast that choked on its dust more often than cleared it.
Your eyes fall on the piano, its keys yellowed with age. It hasn’t been played in years, but you remember those long afternoons sitting on the bench, your legs too short to reach the pedals, while your mother stood behind you, her voice sharp with impatience.
Again, from the top, she’d say as your young fingers fumbled over the notes. You hated that piano, hated playing, hated the way the music never sounded right, no matter how many hours you spent practicing. But it wasn’t about the music. It was about her. You wanted to make her proud, to earn her approval, but the more you played, the further away that approval seemed, merely a mirage in an endless desert.
It wasn’t always like this. There was a time when your mother’s presence felt like a comfort, her hands guiding yours over the keys with a gentle patience that seemed unbreakable. She used to laugh when you hit the wrong notes, reminding you that perfection wasn’t the goal. Somewhere along the way, that warmth vanished, replaced by a rigidity that seeped into every corner of the house. Maybe it was the gradual erosion that small disappointments caused grades that weren’t high enough, decisions she never understood, dreams she couldn’t see a place for. Her criticism became sharper, her patience thinner, until those afternoons at the piano felt like trials rather than lessons.
You wondered if she saw herself in you — if your failures felt like a reflection of her own. The distance grew, and with it, the silence between you two. It’s a silence that still lingers, heavy as you stand in this room, wishing the old piano could bridge the gap that years of misunderstandings had carved between you. You stop in front of the piano now, resting a hand on its smooth surface. The old wood is cool beneath your fingers, but it feels hollow — a reminder that even the things meant to bring you together have become symbols of everything that’s fallen apart.
The lid remains unopened. It feels too heavy, not because of its weight, but because of the memories inside — the ones that press down onto your chest until you can barely breathe. It calls to you, but you turn away, toward the hallway, where the light grows ever dimmer and the air thickens like a dense fog of memories.
In the hallway, there’s an old coat rack, still standing, though it leans slightly to one side. A single coat hangs on it — your father’s, the same one he wore the day he left.
Family comes first, he used to say — words that felt like a promise.
But then he left, without warning, for reasons you were too young to understand — something about needing space, a break from the weight of everything. When he returned, it was as if a shadow had settled over him. The warmth that once filled the house seemed to disappear, replaced by a silence that seeped into every room. His presence became oppressive. Even when he stood right beside you, his absence lingered, a reminder of the time he chose to be away.
You reach out, your hand hovering just above the worn fabric of his coat, but you don’t touch it. Some things are better left alone.
You make your way upstairs, the wooden steps creaking
beneath your weight. At the end of the hall is your childhood bedroom, the door slightly ajar. You haven’t stepped inside in years, though it’s been waiting for you, its untouched and forgotten insides beckoning your presence.
Inside, the room is just as you left it. The bed is neatly made, the quilt your grandmother sewed still folded at the foot. You cross the room to the dresser to brush your fingers against the faded wood. There’s a box on top, small and unassuming, but you know what’s inside. Letters. Dozens of them. Some are drafts that you never found the courage to send, and others are to yourself— scribbled confessions and apologies meant for their eyes but kept hidden in this box. You wrote them in moments when your heart felt too heavy, when you thought that maybe, just maybe, the right words could fix everything left broken. But in the end, the words stayed sealed inside, too raw to share, too fragile to risk rejection. It seemed safer to let them fade in the dark, where no one could judge the feelings that spilled out.
You open the box now, pulling out one letter, the paper yellowed and fragile. The words are smudged, but you remember what you wrote: I’m sorry I’m not what you wanted me to be. You were sixteen when you wrote that, sitting at this very desk, staring out the window at a world that felt just out of reach. Back then, you thought the apology might close the gap between you and your parents, might soften their eyes when they looked at you. But deep down, you knew even then that some ravines can’t be crossed, no matter how many words you pour into them.
The letter goes back in the box. You close it carefully, the lid soft against the wood. The room seems to shrink around you, the air thick with everything left unsaid. You linger by the window, watching the light fade behind the trees, shadows stretching across the floor. It’s quieter here than you remember, but the silence wraps around you, familiar in its embrace.
The house holds you, but not the way a home would. It binds you, invisible threads woven through years of expectation, duty, and the quiet pull of obligation. There is no warmth here — not anymore — but still, you return. It’s not because you want to, but because something deeper compels you.
Family returns, even when there’s nothing left to return to.
■
Avoiding one another has become something akin to a love language or an intuition. Can we overcome the science of missed connections?
by ELLA ROUS
layout CHLOE ROMERO photographer JULIUS GONZALEZ stylists CHLOE ROMERO & ANGEL PEÑA hmua AVERIE WANG & ABHIGNA BAGEPALLY models CAT ROLAND & AIDAN VU
Crossing the street onto campus, watch yourself from above. You hesitate, bob, and weave. You make unwanted eye contact, eyes flckering away deferentially, and make the slightest adjustments to your footfalls to avoid the paths of others. With your phone out and open to Google Calendar, iMessage, or Instagram, you might just barely avoid walking straight into a tree or a rack of bikes (hey, it happens.)
Picture a waterslide. It loop-deloops, arcing into the sky, and curves back down to track a path parallel to the ground before shooting its gleeful rider into the pool at its base.
What path does the rider take? Do they fly up into the sky, completing a skywriter’s perfect “o”? Or do they go forward, then down?
Naïve physics is a kind of common knowledge: things come down after they go up, and a ball can’t go through the fence unless one or the other isn’t a solid object. We use it every day of our lives. It’s how we make trajectory adjustments. It’s why we don’t go around bumping into one another and falling to the ground any time we enter another’s vicinity.
Recently, I’ve been hesitating on Speedway, waiting for a biker or a couple clutching hands to make the decision: around? In which direction? Stop, go?
Who’s gonna swerve: you or me?
When my brother studied abroad, he went to bars alone and made conversation with interesting people from all over the world. I worked up the courage to go out to dinner alone once in Spain and sat hunched over my tacos (I know — tacos in Spain), listening to the middle-aged men at the bar laugh and drink and banter in a language I barely knew, three customers and the cook alike. Friends, or just met? I wouldn’t know. I texted DJ, set down and picked up my phone, looked at my reflection in the mirror in front of me. I was skinny enough then to fit into a denim pencil skirt I can’t fit over my thighs anymore.
I was proud of myself for doing it, but relieved to escape across the street back to my apartment. How the hell did my brother do it?
How did he convince people he was worth their limited time, energy, and attention?
More than that — how did he convince himself?
DJ and I were already tipsy when we got offthe 7 at Duval Center.
Quaint and placid, Duval Center is just an intersection on Duval St. in Hyde Park, the neighborhood that mostly houses grad students and young couples. It sports a gas station on one corner where DJ and I once withdrew $200 when my cards were stolen, a cute but pricey grocery store, Quack’s Bakery, that sells breakfast pastries 2 for 1 after 5 PM, Antonelli’s
cheese shop, and a crop of restaurants that are nice enough for someone in their early 20s could feel sufficiently sophisticated taking their girlfriend to.
Ordering cocktails just as expensive as the meals themselves was enough to make DJ and I feel sophisticated. We took the bus so we could drink freely, and, feeling loose and friendly we lingered a little too long at the counter, making conversation with the pierced guy manning it. Looking down at the register, he paused.
“Do you guys live in the neighborhood?”
DJ and I looked at each other.
“Yeah, pretty much,” I said. He smiled. “I’ll give you the neighborhood discount.”
While we ate, he came over to us and left a scrap of paper on the table.
“That’s my Instagram,” he said.
When we came in again weeks later, he remembered us.
The experiments psychologists run to understand naïve physics largely involve babies. We put on a magic show for infants, and when the world doesn’t work the way they anticipate — the ball doesn’t fall down or disappears, or a solid passes through another solid — they startle, which we know by timing the length of their gaze. This gives us reason to believe that at least some kinds of physics are innate.
Children form complicated societies of fraternity and disdain. They are more susceptible than anyone to in-bias and outbias. At some point, every child has been at the wrong end of a faux pas, and by adolescence, every child knows what keeps them in and what leaves them out. Eventually, we become quick to look for exits in a conversation and neglect to thank our bus drivers. It is easier, even intuitive, to avoid.
Nobody will appreciate your attempt to socialize on the
( )bus on their way home from work, and most hope their Uber drivers are the silent type. Civilized society seems to require some tactical ignorance of one another. When somebody breaks the naïve physics of social interaction that we have come to feel are intrinsic: we startle, we gossip, we call people eccentric or quirky and roll our eyes at each other when nobody’s watching.
We’re like babies watching a magic show. It’s starting to be too much. Something has to change.
The woman behind me in line waiting to board our fligt asked where I’d gotten my coffee. As though the coffee was merely a pretense for beginning the conversation, she started to talk. She was leaving her daughter, son-in-law, and first grandchid in Austin.
“I’ve been here for ten days,” she told me. “And I really don’t want to leave.”
I laughed.
“I wouldn’t either, if I were you!”
I have a big soft spot for babies.
Already pulling out her phone, she asked, “Do you want to see?”
I helped her navigate to the photos app — technology was not her strong suit — and she swiped through photos of a very cute baby, some with the presence of a tired-looking but glowing mom or dad.
My heart clenched. “Will you be able to see them soon?”
“I’ll be back for Christmas,” she confirmed.
God, I want to meet strangers more, I want to laugh loudly and long. I don’t like feeling like every reply in a conversation is geared toward ending it. I want new grandmothers to see me in the airport and tell me how they’re feeling.
“small talk is the love language of humanity.”
It doesn’t even have to be me. I can just watch; I can be quiet and still, I can bear witness to some humanity.
The last days of spring break at my Spanish university found me sitting, again, at the Austin airport, teary-eyed from leaving a grieving DJ in Austin. I hadn’t been able to be there for the funeral, and I wouldn’t be there for the months of pain to come. Miserable, I sat down at my gate with my big stupid backpack near an older man with a thick crop of graying hair.
Pointing at me, he asked, “Greatest group ever?”
Nonplussed, I looked down.
“I’m so sorry,” I laughed, the weight of tears sticky on my bottom lashes. “This is my boyfriend’s sweatshirt, but I’m sure he would think so.”
The middle-aged man sitting next to him, who had moments earlier asked to sit next to the grayhaired man and borrow his charger, had looked up and was already shaking his head.
“The Stones? Not the greatest group ever.”
As they began to bicker playfully about music, I sat, head down, and listened.
The younger man made a case for the Beach Boys.
The other said, “It’s good to have an open mind, but man, close it sometimes!”
The conversation gave way to talk about their lives. One of them was a sous chef. The other was
moving to manage a basketball team in Italy.
“I’ve done things with basketball that have never been done before,” he said.
When they parted ways, they clapped one another on the back and wished each other well. I sat, eyes wide, a baby whose idea of the world has been altered in some small but important way. The ache in my heart pulsed, as though reminding me that I had been sad, though momentarily distracted from my own private world of tragedy.
Lately, every small moment between strangers has been striking me as disproportionately significant. A girl on the bus making exaggerated, confused eye contact with me when the driver pulled over at the wrong stop; a woman with her dog saying, before a word had been spoken, “You can pet him!”
Nothing earth shattering — just the small, mundane windows into people as complex and joyful and intricate as I. Avoidance might be the naïve physics of civilized society, but small talk is the love language of humanity.
I am trying to be brave: trying to make eye contact, linger in conversations, go to socials, be open to the flckers of gorgeousness behind the eyes of every person I come across.
Maybe it’s not realistic. Maybe it’s evolutionary, innate, unconscious. But why not try and break some laws today? ■
i watched as wounds turned to earth, where healing hovered just out of reach, leaving only the field of scars.
by AIDAN VU
layout GRAY SUH photographer KENIA GALLEGOS videographer JOSE JIMENEZ stylist LILI XIONG, MYK ESCARAN, & EMILY MARTINEZ set stylist ADREANNA ALVAREZ hmua ZIADA ARAYA, GRACE JOH, & DAKOTA EVANS nail artist GRACE JOH models AIDAN CROWL, SACHI SOODA, & ANDRES MENENDEZ
spark
n u n s e t t l i ng
“It felt like a slow, clumsy waltz with the past, an acceptance of the beautiful chaos I had once wanted to escape so much. “
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“They whispered secrets of transience and forgotten
layout AVA JIANG photographer REYNA DEWS stylist BRIGITTE BANDIT hmua BRIGITTE BANDIT model BRIGITTE BANDIT
by KATLYNN FOX
“R“Redneck Woman” by Gretchen Wilson is blaring through the speakers at Coconut Club, a well-known LGBTQ+ club in downtown Austin. It was early February 2023 and despite the winter temperature, Bridgette Bandit performed in denim cutoffs,a red tie-front bandana top, and high-heeled cow print boots. She looked like Southern royalty. Her hair was done up as close to God as possible, and her belt was star-studded — as glamorous as she was.
She owned the crowd, feeding offof them as she fed them — literally, as she poured a can of Miller Lite on her chest and swung its remnants into the open mouths of her awed, loyal audience.
She sang, “Let me get a big ‘hell yeah,’
Coco Cxnts. In fact, it’s her favorite song to perform.
“I think it’s just so fun and stupid to reclaim what it means to be a queer Texan, or what it means to be country as a queer person,” Bandit said.
*
Bandit is an icon. Born and raised in Austin, she began performing at local drag shows six years ago and is now an award-winning Queen and activist. She was featured in The Chronicle’s “Best of Austinlist as the city’s best drag performer.
“Winning Best of Austin by The Austin Chronicle was like, ‘oh shit!’ People know who I am. They recognize me. They voted for me,” Bandit said.
She wishes she could go back and tell her 26-yearold self, who just started drag, that she won it.
“The Austin drag community is so different from the rest of Texas,” Bandit said. “I don’t think I would have found the kind of success that I found here in Austin anywhere else.”
I call Bandit at 1 p.m. on a Thursday in November.
testifying at the state Capitol in vibrant wigs and bright lipstick. Before she was a drag artist, she was a student sitting in Gividen’s government class at Austin Community College as a psychology major.
“I had reached out to him initially because I was just grateful for the people who created me,” Bandit said. “Now we stay connected. He’s even been to some of my shows.”
She goes over her foundation with a setting powder.
Bandit is a fiercely outspoken, bold person. She has testified in front of Texas legislators to oppose drag bans, spoken at the 2024 Texas Democratic Convention, and currently serves as Austin’s LGBTQ+ commissioner.
“I grew up Christian, going to private Catholic school, so I never really imagined that one day I would be a full-time drag queen figting the government,” Bandit said. “That was not on my radar at all.”
She’s putting black eyeliner on her right eye.
Bandit said she’s grateful for the progressive and inclusive community that she’s surrounded by. As a non-binary, assigned-female-at-birth (AFAB) drag performer, Bandit said she had to figt to create space for herself to be taken seriously.
“Whenever I started dragging, you could probably count the number of AFAB drag performers on one hand, and now there’s so many of them,” Bandit said.
Despite her personal experience with the drag scene in Austin evolving to be more inclusive, the political climate surrounding Texas drag continues to be threatened. Senate Bill 12, which aimed to restrict “sexually oriented performances,” was declared federally unconstitutional by U.S. District Judge David Hittner in 2023. However, conservative politicians in Texas still use their platforms to target drag performers. Governor Greg Abbott took to social media in March of 2024 to praise the president of West Texas A&M University for canceling a drag show on campus, writing that Texas “universities are to educate our students, not indoctrinate them.”
“Whenever we think of a more broad spectrum of the way that people see drag, it’s become less accepted,” Bandit said. “Now, it’s scary to just walk down the street in full drag.”
Bandit garnered significant attention the firsttime she testified before the Texas Senate in March 2023 — six months before SB 12 was declared unconstitutional. She walked up to the podium like she was marching into battle, her armor was a sparkly hot pink ball gown, a matching pink wig, and an immeasurable strength. As we talk, I can tell she is the embodiment of determination. She speaks with purpose and understanding of the world at large. She is not naive, only optimistic.
“The firsttime I went to testify, I really thought better [of] our government and the people who are making these laws,” Bandit said. “I really thought that they just did not understand.”
Bandit spent hours collaborating with her friends and community to draft corresponding testimonies. They weaved their stories and arguments into one another, creating a web of support and reassurance. They waited hours to speak. After hearing those in support of the drag ban, all but three legislators reportedly left the room.
“Then I realized: Oh, my God, these people actually don’t give a fuck; these people do not care about us.”
Instead of following suit, though she thought about it, Bandit drew strength from her community. She leaned on her drag daughter, Lawrie Bird, and stayed. Her testimony went viral online, gaining thousands of views, likes, and comments. The engagement was overwhelming. Despite initially feeling discouraged, the response made Bandit realize that her influence spanned far beyond her physical presence.
“They might not have wanted to listen to me, but the rest of the world wants to listen,” Bandit said. “They’re not going to hear the end of it. They’re going to know exactly who Brigitte Bandit is and what she said, especially when they’re trying to draft this bill.”
She begins painting her left eyelid with the same black eyeliner.
Things were different the second time she testified.
Bandit wore a white dress this time. Its bodice had the Texas flagpainted over it, along with the names of each child killed at Robb Elementary School in 2022 and the Allen Premium Outlets in 2023.
The back of the dress read:
“PROTECT TEXAS KIDS DEFEND OUR KIDS FROM GUN VIOLENCE RESTRICT GUNS NOT DRAG”
“I didn’t expect to get escorted out by the police,” Bandit said. “That was not a part of the plan, but I think that is a part of what made it go viral.”
After waiting at the Capitol for 13 hours to speak, Bandit was forcibly removed from the podium for exceeding the allotted time to testify by 15 seconds. According to Bandit, the censorship at the Capitol was astounding — people were also escorted out by police if they teared up or became emotional at any point during their testimony.
Nearly three million social media views later, visibility is still the focus in her efforts to protect and figt for LGBTQ+ rights.
“I think it’s important that they see us,” Bandit said. “They want us to hide in our dark nightclubs, where queer people have historically found each other because we haven’t been accepted in society.”
Clips of Bandit’s performances and testimonies circle the internet daily, gaining traction from fans and attackers alike. As criticism mounts, I ask how she copes with the scrutiny.
Her answer? Unplugging and being in nature.
“I like to smoke a bowl and walk my dog around my neighborhood,” Bandit said.
Despite running low on creativity, Bandit findssolidarity in the community that surrounds her — online and IRL.
“I feel bad for people who follow me right now — I’m sorry,” Brigitte apologized. “I don’t feel fun.”
She hopes to bring a sense of joy to others in time, citing the importance of showing up when uncertainty strikes. She is still performing full-time. We bid farewell to one another as she finishes drawing on her left eye lid.
Though the future of Texas drag is unclear as the queer community is under fie, patrons still gather at Coconut Club every Saturday for the weekly show. Even through times of doubt and fear, there is an unwavering light: human connection. There are still parties, performances, drag brunches, communities of love and support. There is still hope.
“Right now, I’ve just been feeling just the weight of it, and trying not to feel hopeless. There always needs to be hope. Don’t lose hope.” ■
If fate cannot be shaped by human hands, it must be written in the stars.
layout ISABELLE LEE graphics AMYAN TRAN photographer JOSH RUSH video JOSEPH CHUNGA PIZARRO & ANTOINE ORR stylists MADISON MORANTE & ANGEL PEÑA set stylist
Ancient Romans saw heavenly processes as symbols of divine decision-making. Whether the moon and sun were gods themselves, or whether they represented their workings, there was no doubt they were the difference between life and death. The absence of Apollo’s chariot wilted the plants, froze the streams; his twin, Diana, gracefully replaced him each night, guiding stumbling figures below her.
Iterations of this celestial story have been traced throughout the entirety of human history — great expanses invariably piquing the imagination. Sea gods wrangle serpents in unseeable, murky depths as Zeus hurls thunderbolts into the horizon. Today, though this Earthly mysticism has dimmed with modernity, the unkn contains more than a glimpse of that magic.
Straddling North America lies a mountain range rife with the stateliness that spurs this kind of ideation. A sixteen-year-old girl had been completely consumed by her weeks in the Rockies. The old men mountains dwarfed her with their majesty, forming an Eden in which she was pleasantly insignificant. A sensation of smallness wrapped its warm arms around her; nothing could harm her, she felt, buried as she was in this valley.
When she received a crisp, corporate envelope atop Anchor Mountain, she felt suddenly infringed upon by humanity. Her dirt-encrusted fingernails sullied the eggshell paper as she popped her thumb under the flap. This envelope, this symbol of modern bureaucracy should not exist in her world of ridges and cracked branches.
The girl’s mother had written the letter, describing in detail the things that needed to be done by the fall. She hadn’t left tightly wound highways and cookie-cutter roofs as far behind as she might have hoped. She still had to sing in front of everyone at her sister’s bat mitzvah; she still had to finda homecoming date. She was a sixteen-year-old girl, and she was starting her
junior year of high school in two weeks.
My inner world, if too self-contained, can become a new frontier — impossible to navigate. Neurons spit at each other a trillion times a second, my thoughts boiling over through my eyes and mouth.
Look up, I tell myself, See something magnificent.
I reframe myself in my true context by staring into the face of the abyss. It’s an attraction to that ancient unknown. Mystery envelops me as it wipes me clean. I wonder about the boundaries of the known universe and their never-ending expansion. While I do that, I lose myself; I float.
I am not alone in experiencing smallness as spirituality. Humanity was born with an itch for the gargantuan, for the ultra-powerful, for what is religion if not the search for something bigger than ourselves? It’s a comfort to erase ourselves for the sake of something incomprehensible. If fate cannot be shaped by human hands, it must be written in the stars.
Three years after the girl opened that letter, she sat with a new group of friends, each ignoring the sensation of grass tickling their bare skin and bugs nibbling at their contentment. The moon glowed bright above them, inspiring the girl below to howl, her mouth forming a perfect ‘o.’
The moon told me to, she said.
They felt especially 19 at this moment, sitting and smoking at an outdoor concert, the cosmos spinning with them at the nexus. Here they lounged, some of them falling in love, others in love with living. A boy, face luminous, turned to the girl sitting next to him. But she wasn’t looking back. She was looking up.
The world of celestial bodies lacks consciousness, but it isn’t without significance. There is no end to the emotion inherent to the universe. These giants live and die like us, I’ve learned, but they are governed by their own rules.
“It’s a comfort to erase ourselves for the
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Gravity and electromagnetism play God. No one oversees the birth of a star; there is no one there to hesitate, to say impenetrable inspires the most awe understand it. These things rule themselves, a trait I wish I could claim as my own.
The girl contemplated these things as she watched the moon on that balmy night. She filed that impossible sublimity with empathy, imagining a sky that somehow cared. It’s seen her before. It’s seen her a million times over. It keeps her and her whole world alive, consciously or not.
Her internal trembling quiets as she mulls this over. She lets her fingersintertwine with those of that boy next to her. Why not? Nothing existed at that moment except for her, her people, her feelings, her music. The sky will not fall if she brushes her thumb across his calloused palm, not even if she kisses him.
Let your heart still, child. I will be here through your fear.
Two minutes of totality. A couple months after that night on the lawn, the moon would pass in front of the sun, winking it out like a lightbulb. For weeks leading up to the celestial event, the girl has been preparing, stressing about where to obtain protective sunglasses.
“Fuck, it’s going to be cloudy.”
This only happens every hundred years, every six months, or maybe it’s never come to Austin before. Wherever the scientific truth lies, the profundity is clear: this is happening right here, right now, in front of her eyes. Our eternal source of life, the interminable father of our solar system will die, then be resurrected. She could reasonably never see such a thing again for as long as she lives. Though it will happen millions upon millions of times again, her existence will overlap it only today.
The moon creeps in, teasing the expectant creatures down below. Blackness, more bluish-gray, engulfs them. The crowd cheers. Tears fall to the darkened ground as the girl removes her glasses. For two minutes, she exists amidst a miracle. She understands why religious painters depicted deities with bright coronas; this is her crowned God, revealed only for a moment.
Big things cradle me. They smooth back my hair and smile softly into my face. They tell me: you cannot move me. You cannot shift stars. Natural processes maintain our order, so you can drop your shoulders. We created the material from which you are composed. Your energy can be neither created nor destroyed; you will return to us someday. Breathe and let your oxygen rejoin its brothers. If you forget, simply look up. We will be here. ■
THERE
IS NO END INHERENT TO
TO THE EMOTION THE UNIVERSE . ”
Life is waitng for weekends, you’d told your little sister once. So on these Austin weekends, there’s nothing to do other than everything.
layout KENIA GALLEGOS & JAZMIN HERNANDEZ ARCEO photographer JULIUS GONZALEZ videographer PHIA GONZALEZ stylists JUAN GUTIERREZ
models DIANA FARMER & JOHN-ANTHONY BORSI
It’s 1:43 a.m. in Austin and you’ve borrowed your girlfriend’s new Miata. It’s red and you’re drunk and you love her. But somehow — you asked her for her keys to pick up a friend and she handed them over — you’re not sure. She laughed the way she would when she was drunk — full-bodied, head tilted up with joy. You steadied her softly before
You’re drunk, but you still think you can drive.
Gearing up to turn at the red, your eyes catch on the tennis courts to your left. Your gaze lingers a few seconds too long. In your sudden daze, your foot suddenly slips offthe brakes and the car jumps forward. You stop yourself jerkily and try to think about anything other than tennis.
A twinge of guilt had shot through your stomach at her all-consuming trust in you. You kissed her on the lips and grabbed the keys dangling from her hand to get away from that ache in your body, from her undeniable
So now you’re going 60 mph through West Campus and you couldn’t imagine a cop pulling you over or someone twisting into your lane at just the wrong time. Drake is on — “You Broke My Heart” — and the top is down. You’re thinking as much as you’re feeling the alcohol in your blood, and that line you did earlier is hitting as hard as the wind smacking your face. It feels like a caress, all of it, from the bass thumping in your seat to the stop sign waiting ten feet in front of you.
You blow past it. You couldn’t have stopped if you tried.
It’s a beautiful October night in Austin. The weather, hot with a licking breeze, had spurred your impromptu weekend trip from the polite quietness of College Station. You tell yourself that enough nights out in Austin, however, can unstick you from the trap of a slow life.
Sitting back into the driver’s seat, you catch traces of your girlfriend’s jasmine perfume, heady like a fogged-up bathroom mirror. In just these moments you’ve been apart, you miss her. You aren’t sure if you’re allowed to miss her, though, driving her car although you know you shouldn’t be, running from your past and inevitable future. As much as you love her, you don’t know how to be in love. You don’t know how to let her depend on you. You only know you wouldn’t want to be without her.
You catch a glimpse of yourself in the rearview mirror — eyes half-shut, hair blown back to reveal your forehead — and it makes you want to throw up. Hands are on the wheel, you’re veering inches into the left lane. In the mirror, you see another car approaching and quickly straighten out. With your eyes newly focused on the road, your antsy fingers shae with restlessness.
Yash gave you a look when you took the keys. You’d talked to him, your best friend of four years, just two weeks ago about your relationship for the first time.
I know I love her, I think. But it’s just work. How can I love something that’s work? Drunk, he nodded along.
If you love her, that’s what matters. Make it work.
He carelessly used that confession, threw that delicate moment of substance-shrouded insecurity against you during some banal roommate argument. You don’t know why, but you’d thrown back much worse: telling him he wouldn’t get into medical school, that his youthful naivete belied eventual failure. Immediately, you regretted it. You knew who you sounded like when you yelled.
You glance again at the courts, trying to push tennis, your casual cruelty with Yash, and your waiting girlfriend from your mind.
Think of anything else, otherwise you’re lost in the memory you’ve been trying to forget —
You findyourself burning up, feverish, cooking in the Texas heat radiating from the hardcourt underfoot. You wonder whether you’ll come out of the oven a fully formed man in Galveston, Wichita Falls, or whatever rural corner of Texas this amateur tennis career takes you to.
You know you’re better than your competitor on the other side of the court, but you’ve already given away the last three points. You backhand down the line after his serve, moving back to anticipate the next move. His arm extends just enough to pop the ball over the net and this is an easy shot, a winner — but you slap it out of bounds.
Your dad’s eyes burn holes into you through the chainlink fence.
You recounted the story to a friend a few years later, about when your dad hit you — the firstand only time he laid hands on you. You couldn’t recall the exact words in Telegu, but you remember your cheek aflame
“It feels like a caress, all of it.”
“fate finds you behind the wheel once again.”
and the gist of what he called you:
Underconfident
He always knew best how to make it hurt, to pinpoint your failure. You never could figue out how to make that helpful in a match. That particular skill only came to you years after you’d quit tennis, about a year after your dad died.
In that argument with Yash, you saw your father in yourself for the firsttime — identifying chinks in his armor and findingjust where to land the kill shot. In the cooling ashes of your anger, you hear the insults you destroyed your best friend’s heart with. You hear that they were spoken in your father’s voice.
Fingers tapping at the wheel to a frantic beat, you can’t wait any longer for the light to turn green. You put your foot on the gas and go, letting wind from the open roof cool the sweat at the nape of your neck. The breeze blows away the scent of her perfume.
You wonder how many hearts you’ll break — of those you love and those who love you back — before you self-destruct. So here you are, watching yourself become that which made you, taunting fate to put you out of your misery. You can’t stop yourself from inevitable self-destruction any more than you can slow down the car before you go —
Offa speed-bump, flying just one second like plane turbulence, like sunsets from the house in India, like kissing her on the lips for the first time.
Does anything get better than this? Of course it does. There are drugs, but then there is love but then there is you.
The car hits the ground again and you miss it. You want to do it again — to fly. That’s all that has worked for you. You can’t imagine living when this isn’t your priority, when you don’t trudge through the week until Thursday night so it can all go up in the air again. Life is waiting for weekends, you’d told your little sister once. So on these weekends, there’s nothing to do other than everything.
You think you’re in control until you’re not. You think you’re not spinning out until you are. As much as you’re in control at this moment, of this car, there doesn’t seem to be a chance you could actually shape the trajectory of your life.
You love your girlfriend but you’re driving her car and there’s a red light in front of you. You can’t stop yourself from pushing your foot down all the way on the gas and going.
Before the crash, your mind flipsbetween what was and what could have been, more and more rapidly until neither is nothing, until something is nothing.
But that night in Austin, you parked the car — parallel — and tucked the keys into your girlfriend’s back pocket.
How was the drive? she asked.
You blinked at the banality of her question, wrapping your arms around her waist as you came down from the adrenaline rush.
I’m glad we came this weekend. I needed to escape.
Five years after you escape the crash, you drive through a barely-there town called Sophia, Montana. Here, they pay enough money for you to exert minimal effort into your tedious office job.
In the end, life doesn’t take you to Austin or New York City, as you’d wished. It entraps you in another deadend like College Station, where you exchange country charm for icy mountaintops.
Even here, where the phone service fails everywhere and the sun sets at 4 p.m., your fate haunts you. Even after you’ve chased your girlfriend away, fate chases you.
This time, you’re not speeding.
This time, you’re sober.
Fate finds ou behind the wheel once again.
It’s in Sophia, Montana that you’re sober and you total the car. ■
the
Rev
It’s everywhere. It’s gliding past you on a skateboard as a teenager dons long blue satin robes with his scuffed Converse peeking out from the bottom
by ANASTACIA BARBIE CHU layout MELISSA HUANG
“Made in China” tags riddle garbage dump sites.
When young girls examine their tattered clothing and spot labels stating “Made in China,” they murmur to themselves “Ah, that must explain the poor quality.”
Unsalvageable for second-hand use, these hapless pieces of clothing — created from the relentless cycle of fleeting fads and online overconsumption — are cast aside and tossed to the only place left for them: landfills.
Yet it wasn’t always like this:
During the golden epoch of the Tang dynasty, the Silk Road flourished and reached its zenith. Merchants from far and wide traversed the sacred trade path stetching across a myriad of realms, kingdoms, and principalities. As exotic spices and fabrics were exchanged from the ancient hubs of Arabia to East Asia, wool, linen, and silk became à la mode. Clad in long robes, Chinese women wore amalgamations of soft pastels that swished with hues of pale jade, blush pink, and cyan. Silk, on the other hand, caressed one’s skin with a smoothness found only in the gentle whispers of a spring breeze; as such, only a select few were bestowed with the esteemed privilege and honor of wearing such a material — individuals chosen by the Mandate of Heaven.
As daylight peered into the sleeping chambers of Empress Wu Zetian, basking her with morning warmth, the empress’s ladies in waiting would prepare her finestdamasks, chiffons, and satin. Beginning her day with a promenade in the palace gardens, the fabrics draped upon her body were decorated with delicately embroidered floral medallions that grazed past the petals of their fellow chrysanthemums, peonies, and white lotuses. Her robes glistened gold under the gentle caress of the sun’s rays, while the silk cascaded over her like the gentle ripples of a lake — fabrics that were an ode to the breathtaking artistry of generations of past Chinese dynasties. Even her hair was an elaborate masterpiece, piled high into loops and waves, adorned with hairpins nestled perfectly into the crevices of the princess’ long hair that was as soft as the silk draping around her body.
For nearly a millennium, fashion in China had been
a breathing, changing movement, evolving in each dynasty into an art form more intricate and flamboyat than before. But as foreign powers infitrated China, they latched onto the nation’s people and resources like parasites, exploiting Chinese labor and sailing home with ships laden with riches and goods. In return, they offered a gift the natives simply could not refuse: opium.
Chaos ensued. Warlords clashed, vying for political control, leaving the people distraught and desolate as the unruly hand of the aristocracy and bourgeois continued to oppress the working and peasant classes.
Then came Mao and his principles: Equality. Collectivism. Practicality. These values epitomized the Mao Suit, a uniform definedby its straight cut, high collar, and four pockets. A symbol of stability during the cultural upheaval of the once-great Middle Kingdom, men and women alike wore this Maoist version of the Ming Dynasty mandarin jacket, donning “Mao Caps” to complement these symbols of Chinese communism and promote nationalist sentiments. Inspired by the very suits worn by the Communist Party’s leader, gone were the days of tailoring and artisan craftsmanship; clothing was now made up of a mere four pockets, fivejacket buttons, and three cuff buttons — simplified to ensure proper unified class and order,
The mid-20th century was an era of renewal as citizens rejoiced under the leadership of Mao Zhe Dong and enjoyed the proletariat utopia they had fought so long for— until a famine struck —. Thirty million people starved to death as the Chinese economy plummeted to unprecedented lows, reducing the nation to one of the poorest in the world. The government needed a plan to economically liberate itself, and soon. Through massive industrialization initiatives, the economy quickly began to rehabilitate itself, and now China dominates multiple sources of production across an array of industries, from technology to textiles and apparel. But during the last fivedecades in this time of recovery, another ugly beast had come rearing its head as a result of mass production and overindulgence: fast fashion. As this phenomenon egregiously dominated the market, many Chinese consumers turned toward Western brands for their buying pleasure instead, associating these foreign labels’ clothing with higherquality materials and more distinctive designs.
“Clad in long robes, an amalgamation of soft pastels that swished with hues of pale jade, blush pink, and cyan.”
MADE IN CHINA MADE IN CHINA MADE IN CHINA MADE IN
MADE IN CHINA MADE IN CHINA MADE IN CHINA MADE IN
“Insteadthe youtharefinding sustenance in styles that celebrate their own heritage, embracing emerging Chinese designer brands that masterfully blend the beauty of ancient Chinese and contemporary fashion.”
However, after decades of consuming a diet of Western advertisements – billboards filed with European models with light skin and lighter hair, wearing garments that highlight designers who leverage Chinese industrial labor – the Chinese youth have found a new form of nourishment. No longer do these youth clamor over the designs of Occidental fashion giants such as Louis Vuitton and Dior, whose claims of being completely “Made in Italy,” or “Made in France,” often mask a deeper truth: the outsourcing of both materials and craftsmanship to Chinese factories. Instead, the youth are findingsustenance in styles that celebrate their own heritage, embracing emerging Chinese designer brands that masterfully blend the beauty of ancient Chinese and contemporary fashion.
Half a decade ago, oversized polyester puffer jackets with garish “designer” logos and limited-edition American sneakers were at the forefront of various Chinese fashion aficionados’ minds. While many continue to wear modern streetwear, they are now also integrating traditional Chinese styles of clothing into their outfits donning Hanfu and Gipaos as well as their favorite trainers and denim designed by local Chinese artists.
Through this melding of influences from multiple eras of Chinese fashion and culture, the Chinese Youth has created a whole new movement: Guo Chao, otherwise known as China Chic.
It’s everywhere. It’s gliding past you on a skateboard as a teenager dons long blue satin robes with his scuffed converses peaking out from the bottom, and it’s sitting at a cafe reading the news on their Hello Kitty case-covered phone while wearing a Cheongsam,
a traditional Chinese shirt with a mandarin collar and an asymmetric opening in the front, that matches their bright orange sneakers.
These individuals are redefiningfashion on their own terms. Departing from far-away capitals like Paris or New York for fashion inspiration, they’re drawing from the artistry of their ancestors and their own cities. By mixing traditional elements with modern styles to create a unique narrative that celebrates cultural heritage, Chinese designers are also increasingly channeling influences from the past to shape their current collections. Visionaries like Guo Pei and Xiong Ying mesh the ancient and modern aspects of China together through their fashion designs, harkening back to styles that were once in vogue during ancient epochs to craft masterpieces that revolutionize the fashion scene. During an interview at Beijing Fashion Week in 2022 for her Autumn/Winter Collection, Xiong Ying expressed that she findsendless inspiration and creativity in her own culture, which is intrinsic to the essence of fashion. She remarked, “I take my designs and contemporary aesthetics as a way to showcase Chinese culture. My exploration of this will never stop.”
This shift is not merely about clothing; it embodies a renewed awareness of national identity and cultural pride, inspiring a trend that extends into makeup, interior design, urban planning, art, and performance. By prioritizing homegrown designers and local craftsmanship over imported brands, today’s Chinese are redefiningthe phrase “Made in China” with a positive connotation. This renaissance is not just a resurgence of Chinese cultural aestheticism, it’s a statement: “We are Chinese and we are proud.” ■
“This renaissance is not just a resurgence of Chinese cultural aestheticism, it’s a statement:
‘We are Chinese and we are proud.’”
graphic by LUCY LEYDON
MARCH 23RD // LYNCHIAN // A LITTLE LONGER HERE WITH YOU // CANDY NECKLACES // SOUTHERN COMFORT // HAMARTIA // LAS CHICAS DEL PARAÍSO // SYNERGY // POST-MORTEM
March 23rd
It was at that moment that I got so scared that the people I love would get hurt, I realized I wasn’t ready to grow up.
by WILLIAM BEACHUM
layout JAZMIN HERNANDEZ ARCEO creative director MIMO GORMAN photographer TAI CERULLI stylist CYNTHIA LIRA hmua ZOE GOLESKI models ANYA GOKUL & ROMAN GARZA
The thing I remember most about March 23, 2021 is the feeling I had when I decided I wasn’t ready.
There was a house party thrown by a girl I barely knew. It’s my second real house party. It was the first one where I knew most of the people there, so I decide to go and choose memories over safety. My plan was to stay sober for the night so I could control how the night went. I didn’t know the importance of the date just yet.
I dreaded that night. I thought it would be the night where all of the adult things that happened in high school movies started happening. The night that would forever taint the way movie nights were run and sleepover agendas were managed.The night where I had to grow up and start doing all of the things that adults are supposed to do when they have fun.
Everytime I see a case of White Claws pulled from under a table or smell beer on one of my friend’s flannels, the memory of this night pinches at my spine.
Sometimes, it’s comforting to remember. I pull out my phone and try to recover that night.
Text Message: 9:59 P.M.
Hey, have fun tonight. Remember to be safe. We’ll be waiting for you when you come home.
(Mom, sitting down to watch reruns of The Middle, excited I’m trying to be an adult.)
Text Message: 10:31 P.M.
Can you come help take care of Sara with me? She’s already throwing up lol
(Ellie, the host of the party, waiting to get drunk so she doesn’t have to pace herself.)
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Text Message: 10:52 P.M.
Hey you’re sober right?
Yea what’s up
(Me, slowly realizing what the rest of high school is going to look like.)
Do you mind checking on Chloe? She’s been upstairs for a while and she seems pretty upset.
(Ellie, fighting the urge to text her mom.)
Sure
(Me, knowing I’m not ready for any of this.)
Text Message in Group Chat: 11:37 P.M.
Has anyone seen Chloe? She said she went for a walk but she’s gone lol.
(Ellie, drunk off her ass because she hasn’t eaten in three days.)
Missed Call: 11:52 P.M.
(Chloe’s girlfriend, Aliyah, terrified her parents will have to figure out who they really are)
Text Message: 11:53 P.M.
Hey, I can’t find Chloe, come downstairs when you can
(Aliyah, 11:58 P.M, helpless)
This is the text I remember. I smell Sara’s vomit behind the couch. The stench takes any sweetness away from the feeling of Chloe lying in my arms.
Chloe was drunk. So laughably, scarily drunk. If she had any more, she’d be hospitalized. She had had a sip of something here or there at a grad party but, she had never felt a release like this.
The rest of my friends were drunk and useless by now. They stumbled past the door of the room I’m in. They walked with a sense of desperation but they laughed innocently.
It was at that moment that I got so scared that the people I love would get hurt, I realized that I wasn’t ready to grow up.
The only thing I knew what to do was hold onto what
Text Message: 12:17 A.M.
Hey are you still with chloe i need help
(Ellie, understanding less and less)
Text Message: 12:28 A.M.
???
(Ellie, knowing less and less)
Missed Call: 12:42 A.M.
(Ellie, realizing she shouldn’t have trusted a stranger)
I continued to hold Chloe. I let the phone ring
. Some people need to be held close and know that it’s okay to try to figure out who they are. They need to be able to explore what it means to them to try to be more than a child.
I was young enough to know that I wasn’t ready to grow up. I had grown up enough to know that other people didn’t know that they weren’t ready to grow up.
Text Message: 2:03 A.M.
We said 1:30.
(Mom, readjusting her sleep schedule)
Missed Call: 2:16 A.M.
(Mom, imagining the worst.)
Missed Call: 2:18 A.M. (Mom, investigating the worst.)
Voicemail: 2:30 A.M.
“I’m heading to bed now. I hope you’re okay. Call me as soon as you’re up.”
(Mom, hoping she trusts her son enough.)
Text Message: 9:51 A.M
What happened last night?
(Chloe, held in her innocence) ■
Lynchian
by ANGELINA LIU
Despite the credits rolling, I can’t seem to leave.
STELLA THOMAS & TOMAS TREVINO hmua FIONA CONDRON & ANDROMEDA ROVILLAIN nail
artist ANOUSHKA SHARMA models CAT ROLAND, VIKRAM BANGA & ROMAN GARZA
RED SHIRT | Austin Pets Alive!
GREEN SHIRT | Austin Pets Alive!
MAROON BLAZER | Austin Pets Alive!
MAGENTA PANTS| Austin Pets Alive!
“I didn’t know this is what they were doing with it — figues.”
Before we can ask another question, her tinted window rolls back up and she slowly accelerates back down the street. I look into my parents’ faces and my sister lets out a nervous laugh. Our previous jokes suddenly pale in comparison to the gravity of the situation.
Again, my father is the firstto speak. He tells us the interaction meant nothing and that we should forget about it — we have a long day of train rides through fall foliage planned ahead. He doesn’t want to hear any more complaints or questions.
This interaction is one I can’t shake as I ride a train through the West Virginian countryside. I converse with my mother and sister about the woman and the scratches on my bedpost. We section ourselves offfrom my father, who sits alone on the opposite side of the train. He completely disregards the mystery presented about the house — the complete opposite of what Jeffey Beaumont, the young Lynchian protagonist, chooses to do.
Despite this difference, Beaumont shares a striking resemblance to my father in our respective storylines. Despite being the leaders of their situations, both my father and Jeffey are easily the most vanilla characters. By blatantly ignoring the history behind the home, despite the pleas of my mother, sister, and I to leave or to learn more, my father allowed the unknown to consume and potentially endanger us.
Jeffey, similarly written as one who commands situations, is easily entranced by Dorothy Vallens. He believes he is in control, the one tasked to save her from Frank Booth. However, Vallens is the one to force Beaumont to strip at knifepoint. She is the one who controls her desires, making sexual advances towards an unconsenting Beaumont. There is a sense of delusion to be shared between Beaumont and my father, one that is difficult for men to discern with the oblivion that they inherently possess.
Booth sexually assaults Vallens, yet he is the one who crawls back to her feet, worshiping her body and calling her “mommy”. He appears to hold every aspect of control in this situation, yet when he sees Beaumont and Vallens in a forbidden relationship, he spins out of control which allows Beaumont to deliver the final blow to his head. Blue Velvet, despite its disturbing nature, transcends female and male archetypes. It frees the feminine character to be an individual who possesses her own desires and will, and who is capable of manipulating the situation without blatantly possessing the upper hand.
Arriving at the vacation house, I didn’t understand Blue Velvet’s violent and seemingly random nature; I labeled it as blatant pornography of the highest caliber. However, through my experiences in the house and Vallens’ performance, the filmproved that the men that seemingly control the narrative are easily misled as to who truly wields power.
My sister, mother, and I load the car and tell my father we’re leaving — with or without him. We knew this would upset him, but we disliked the idea that he controlled our narrative.
I leave the Lynchian town both physically and mentally, feeling the carsickness grow in each bend and turn on the worn road. ■
"By
blatantly ignoring the history behind the home, despite the pleas of my mother, sister and I to leave or learn more, my father has allowed the unknown to consume and potentially endanger us."
PINK RUFFLE BLOUSE
Mmm-mmm, I want to linger Mmm-mmm, a little longer Mmm-mmm, a little longer here with you.
by PAIGE HOFFER
layout KAILI OCHOA photographer TAI CERULLI stylists ESME MORENO-BERNACKI & MIMO GORMAN hmua RIVER PERILL, KENNEDY RUHLAND & JOSHUA GRENIER
Though it now happens frequently, I am still surprised when I find queer moments hidden like pieces of old, spilled glitter found across exaggerated distances in my memory — scattered in dirt outside my house, wedged in the cracks of the sidewalk, caked in my hair and stuck under my nails. Memories from when I knew something, but buried it.
Before I saw myself as gay, I had to leave a lecture hall when a professor discussed the moment of clarity in her own queerness when the wool sleeve of her friend’s cardigan exposed her wrist as she laughed, how this mundane moment pulled her from reality and deeper into a desire to tell the truth.
The truth: she wanted to do anything besides continue on like the world wasn’t altered by her friend’s wrist. It didn’t matter how she did this. Trace the wrist, leave the room, scream. There had to be some change within her to match the intensity of the moment, or at least call attention to the altered world. Time slowed enough to draw out the warped importance of certain details — the warm halo radiating from the kitchen light, the depth of deep black eyes, the coalescent fuzzy light of two unmoving, burning stars suspended in the deep black.
This made sense to me, but I could not reconcile these feelings with what I knew about queerness.
I learned about lesbians from my outed friend, whispers in middle school locker rooms, and the don’t ask, but do tell speculations on the relationships of my volleyball coach by parents. Being gay, I knew, meant having a public-facing image built in secret that you had no power to shape.
So, the solution: I wasn’t gay. Or maybe, that turning point mentioned in the lecture would happen to me. I’d get a girlfriend and wouldn’t have to explain what I thought to anyone else; it would just be accepted. The concept of coming out without a girlfriend seemed painfully embarrassing to me.
I had tried it one time before. Through waves of tears, I cried to my friend Simi that I might be
umm... well… different…I didn’t really know before college, modeled after a Degrassi episode.
Going to college did not magically produce a girlfriend. In fact, everything I understood to be true about being gay was at least 10 years out of date according to the experiences of my peers. The queer people I met never viewed a clichéd, tearful coming out as a prerequisite to unlocking their identity. My peers dated girls in highschool; they had explosive friend-breakups that ended in confused kisses; they used hook-up apps; they referenced lesbian influencers and read Adrienne Rich on the toilet.
I took my feelings of misalignment as a sign I wasn’t actually gay, or that the gay part of me wasn’t as real as it was for others.
More than having one moment of clarity like my professor mentioned, I became jaded by how often my experiences with the specific men I chose to date were slightly wrong.
This past summer, I stopped dating. I lived at home, away from Austin. On a Friday night, I watched old home videos and was struck by one in particular. My dad zooms in: on me in a boat, holding the hand of a girl at summer camp, hair braided with blue glitter. The video revived the exact sounds and colors of a crush.
Abby was my bar partner on the war canoe team.
The entire 250-person girls’ camp viewed war canoe with a strange reverence. The most athletic girls tried out for one of two rivaling teams of 12 girls.
We had to weigh in to try out. Once you made the team, you were sworn to many secrecies. The details of practices were meant to be kept entirely private, even from your best friends, although there were physical signs of how well the two boats were doing.
The higher on your arm your bruises were, the more weight you were pulling in the boat; if you bruised on your forehead,
you were a good bow; if you lost your voice, you were a good stern; if you showed up to your next activity in wet clothes, it meant your team was enduring a rough patch. Everyone in the camp understood these signs.
Like older girls did, one night, Abby invited me to her cabin to practice dry sweeping ahead of tryouts. We both straddled her trunk like the bar of the canoe and used brooms as mock paddles. Another girl called commands like the stern of the boat.
Paddles Up, One Two Paddles Ready, One Two Stroke!
We pushed our torsos forward at the same time and pressed our weight against each other as we guided the brooms backward against ceramic red clay tiles in unified, liquid motions. We were told to sync our breathing. Mine was faster.
You’re off tempo. ry without the brooms. Here.
She linked our arms so that there was no space between our shoulders as we modeled the way our backs should move in practice. When the mock-practice was done, I balanced on the wooden door frame underneath scattered, stubborn stars, and reflected that stubbornness as I extended my goodnight, see you tomorrow, promise we’ll walk in together
She said, okay, I promise.
There’s a song we sang at camp:
Mmm-mmm, I want to linger Mmm-mmm, a little longer Mmm-mmm, a little longer here with you.
Many heady, summer nights stretched out this way, sitting in the open door under stagnant stars with our drooping eyelids and half-untied shoelaces. I felt like those stars, emitting light as long as the night would allow.
Mmm-mmm, it’s such a perfect night Mmm-mmm, it doesn’t seem quite right Mmm-mmm, that this should be my last with you
As the bald cypress branches sank lower, they swung the
Guadalupe River into stillness. Buzzing cicadas lulled into a hazy thrum of white noise, and the marriage of our daily routine with the motions of the Texas Hill Country — never rushed, never wrong — allowed me to sleep through the night.
I wonder now if camp had instilled in me answers to questions before I knew how to ask them; patches of spilled glitter. The more I see them, the more I see the ways I found queer places and people unknowingly.
Though I loved camp, I stopped going because of something like volleyball summer workouts. If I had stayed, I would have gone from camping to counseling, like most campers did. Last fall, I called on a whim to see if they still were taking applications, and they were. I didn’t apply.
Writing this, I reached out to an old camp friend who put me in contact with her roommate, a counselor from when I was at camp.
I meet Rebecca on a fall morning in a sun-soaked, woodenpaneled coffee shop. Like being at camp, the tiding of the sun breaking through the window with our conversation makes me feel a familiar sense of harmony with my environment — never rushed, never wrong. On this slow morning, she expands the webs of hidden connections between people I knew in the past. Another girl on the team had a crush on her bar partner; two girls who were on the other team are now dating; one of my old counselors has a girlfriend; Rebecca had a brief romance with another counselor.
She tells me about the flood of people who approached her as one of the firstopenly out counselors. She shows me a thankful message she received from a mom of a camper. The mom shares that she and other counselors from the ‘90s found solace in each other when they came out. Now, campers and counselors can be queer at camp. When that notion was challenged by the camp, Rebecca and some of the campers and counselors replaced the American flag with the LGBT flag as the sun ose on the Guadalupe.
When we finishtalking, I meet Rebecca’s girlfriend who is working at a table outside. I pet their dog, whom they are training to be less anxious in big places. They leave together so Rebecca can write at home, and a week later she sends me one of her books. I think: I am happy a life like that exists. And then, without questioning it: I can picture it for myself.
■
by AMARA EGO
layout EMMY CHEN photographer NATALIE SALINAS video ANGELINA CONDE & ANTOINE ORR stylist CYNTHIA LIRA, ESME MORENO-BERNACKI & MADISON MORANTE set stylist ASHLEY NGUYEN hmua GRACE JOH, ANDROMEDA ROVILLAIN & FLORIANA HOOL nail artist GRACE JOH & ANOUSHKA SHARMA models SARA HERBOWY, JORDYN JACKSON & NAYEON HEO
NECKLACE LIKE JUST THAT CANDY , THOSE MEMORIES — STICKY,
ALWAYS HOLD A SWEETNESS OF THEIR OWN. ”
ucked away in the back of my drawer, I spotted a withered relic — fraying string, sunbleached beads, sticky to the touch — and I knew instantly what it was. A candy necklace, faded but unmistakable, caught my eye like a forgotten memory waiting to resurface. Without thinking, I pulled it over my head, feeling the tightness against my skin. The beads clung to me uncomfortably, as if summer itself had returned with its relentless heat, sticky and sweet like the remnants of something I once adored. I pressed my thumb against the beads, trying to smooth their shape, but the more I did, the more the sugary residue blended with my sweat, turning my small effort into a bittersweet reminder of a simpler joy.
It took me back to when that tightness wasn’t there, when the candy necklace hung loosely around my neck during endless summer days. I can still see it clearly: dashing through sprinklers, laughter fillingthe air as the sun kissed our damp faces. My necklace, half-eaten, cracked sweetly between my teeth as we raced, slippery feet sprinting across
the wet grass. Back then, the stickiness was part of the fun, a badge of honor from a day well spent. We ran, giggling and breathless, time stretching endlessly before us as if summer might never end.
But now, standing here, even the warmth of the sun couldn’t mask the wrongness I felt. That version of summer — of myself — had slipped away. When I took the necklace off,it was faded, cracked, its magic long gone. I turned it over in my hands, searching for some spark of that youthful charm. The beads stuck to my fingers,their sweetness more of a burden than a treat. I used to love the way these necklaces were both a snack and a piece of jewelry, but now they were only a reminder of the distance between me and those carefree days.
I went to slip it back on my neck, this time more carefully — but the string snapped, and the beads scattered across the floor, bouncing away as they tried to escape my grasp. As a child, I would have chased after them, crawling under tables and laughing as I gathered every last one. Now I just stood spark
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DRESS | Leopard Lounge
SHOES | Leopard Lounge
PINK TOP | APA
BRA | Esmé
BLOOMERS | Grace
BELT FABRIC | Cynthia lira
SOCKS | Cynthia Lira
SHOES | APA
GREEN SHRUG | Cynthia Lira
YELLOW BELT | Revival
FLORAL DRESS | Leopard Lounge
YELLOW WEDGES | Leopard Lounge
PINK LACE SHIRT | Leopard Lounge
FRIENDSHIPS EVOLVE
there, watching them roll out of reach. The act strikingly resembled those friendships that had once been so close but had slowly unraveled over time. No dramatic falling out, just the natural drift of our lives pulling us apart — each bead a piece of our shared past slipping through my fingers
I thought of us back then — sprawled out on the living room floor during sleepovers, the aroma of popcorn, exchanging whispers under the soft glow of fairy lights. We’d drape blankets over furniture, creating forts of safety, our candy necklaces gleaming in the dim light. Those moments felt eternal, like we could stay suspended in that warmth forever. But as the beads rolled away from me now, I saw how fragile it all had been — our promises of lifelong friendship, our shared dreams.
We had imagined it all: graduations, weddings, the milestones we swore we’d witness together. But life had other plans. One by one, they moved on — new states, new friends, new chapters. And I, too, became consumed by my studies. Sometimes I see glimpses of their lives — photos of their newborns, hiking trails I can’t pronounce — and I wonder if they ever think of me, of the promises we made. Do they remember the candy necklaces, those symbols of our bond?
I crouched down to gather the beads. They were chipped and dull, like the fragments of those friendships I still held onto, despite knowing they no longer fit. There’s comfort in that, though — in knowing those memories shaped me, even if they’re imperfect now. I smiled at the thought of us, back when everything felt unbreakable.
Looking back, I realize those promises weren’t meant to last forever. Friendships evolve, much like the necklaces we once wore. They break, fade, stretch thin — but that doesn’t make them any less meaningful. I think about those old friendships not with sadness but with gratitude for how they helped me grow. There’s a quiet peace in accepting that things change, that we can cherish what was while making room for what’s to come.
I realize now that the beauty isn’t in trying to hold on too tightly, to force things to remain the same. It’s in letting go, in embracing the changes as they come. Just like that candy necklace, those memories — sticky, messy, imperfect — will always hold a sweetness of their own. And though the pieces may no longer fit together like they once did, they still matter. They still linger.
And maybe, in the end, that’s enough. Even in their brokenness, those moments still shimmer with the beauty of what they once were. And the sweetness — the memory of a summer long gone — stays with me, a reminder that some things, though fleeting, remain precious all the same. ■
ou rub your lips together like she did,” my mother told me. “Like you’re thinking too hard about something.”
She was Betty Louise, but everyone called her Red. Red hair, red fingertips,and rosy red lips. She served freshly sliced tomatoes with every meal — no matter what was on the menu.
Red was born in 1927, the Year of the Rabbit. She was married to an action photographer who infamously laid on the ground at the Texas Rodeo and let bulls trample him for the perfect shot. Red divorced him when he became a pastor in the Baptist church. She then married a man 12 years younger than her.
Red adopted my grandmother in the late ‘50s and raised my mother 16 years later after my grandmother got pregnant at 15.
She died at 73, years before my birth, with gray hair, red fingertips,and pale pink lips. Red was a strong spirit that didn’t quite haunt my house but resided there nonetheless. Her presence loomed like strong perfume on a silky blouse, with notes of magnolia grandiflora.
“You sigh the same way she did,” my mother told me. “Like you have the weight of the world on your shoulders.”
Maybe I did. It certainly felt like it sometimes.
I think my mother pointed out the parallels between Red and me to keep Red alive. My big sighs and pondering gestures kept Red’s lips rosy and cheeks colorful. I know the similarities we share are proof that Red existed in the firstplace. A thin piece of white lace tied Red to me, attached right in the middle of each of our chests. No biological ties or genetic sameness, just lace and legacy.
The only reprieve from the tugging feeling in the soft part
of my chest comes when I lay to rest at night. I hang my head, letting the water left over from the shower drip offthe ringlets of my drenched curls. I crawl on my hands and knees into my bed and wrap my tired body in Red’s old quilt: a simple, clean design with no patches or scraps sewn together. Just a daffodil yellow fabric with scalloped edges and threads fraying in the soft, worn parts. It has ornate stitching that almost looks floral. I run my hands along the textured surface as I wrap myself in her embrace each night. Her presence lulls me to sleep. I feel the phantom scratches of her long, almond-shaped nails on my back, winding in soothing circles.
I yawn like a dog and stretch like a cat with the weight of the world on its shoulders.
My mom is the kind of person who keeps things — reminders of people — tucked away, just like the watch and the quilt. I often wonder why she does this, because out of sight never really equates to out of mind. She keeps Red’s sewing kit tucked in the back of her closet. I used to sneak in and slip an old thimble onto my finge, amazed by all the trinkets left behind.
Maybe she didn’t need to see the objects to feel the weight of their presence. Perhaps simply knowing that the quilt was under her roof gave my mother some sense of security, like the feeling she had as a little girl eating sliced tomatoes and accompanying Red to the beauty salon for her weekly treatments.
I hope she findscomfort in knowing that the quilt is in nightly use, swaddling me like a child.
I stole the quilt about six months ago. I had fished the forgotten fabric out of my mother’s linen closet at the beginning of summer. I was getting ready to cart my belongings back to the city so I could start my new job for the summer.
“You’re slowly taking everything that used to belong to her,” she said.
I couldn’t tell if there was sadness or acceptance in her voice — perhaps both.
When she says everything, she’s talking about the watch. I swiped Red’s old wristwatch from my mom’s jewelry box last summer. Amidst a few dainty gold and silver pieces, I picked Red’s out of a lineup, almost like it was a test. It was a thin gold band with a rectangle watch face and a busted old battery. The small and large hands couldn’t quite keep up with the constant passing of time — something we seemed to have in common. My mother nodded her head slightly when I grabbed it with greedy hands.
I finaly close my eyes now, rubbing my lips together as I sigh a real big sigh.
It’s fall now, and when I dream I findmyself drifting back to autumn many years prior, which, in Texas, didn’t feel much like autumn at all. I suppose it’s quite fitting: things aren’t always what they seem; the sweltering weather was just more proof. Grief wasn’t always sad; sometimes it was confusing. Similarities weren’t always inherited like belongings; sometimes they just appeared.
When I think of fall, I always end up at the State Fair, dreaming of it for weeks — of funnel cakes and Ferris wheels. Going to the fairgrounds was a bit less glamorous in reality. I recall dragging my feet in the blazing heat and looking for a place to rest after only a few short strides.
My family and I would stumble out of the treacherous late-September sun and into air-conditioned convention centers, though the temperature was set at a nearly unbearable 77 F. We’d make our way past
vendors selling cowboy hats and bubble wands (southern delicacies) and into the exhibits. My eyes widened instantly. I found myself face-to-face with patchwork quilts twice as long as my own body — no, three times as long, perhaps. Colors and patterns were stitched together with the utmost care. They were showcased proudly, with graceful posture. Blue ribbons donned the best of the best, prized ponies of the highest pedigree.
I always preferred the patchwork kind, the ones that looked like storyboards with different images stitched together. Patches show the silhouette of a horse by itself, and then one being ridden by a cowboy with spurs on his boots, horseshoes peppered in between them. A simple story, but beautiful nonetheless.
I imagined the kind of person who made them. I always pictured an old woman in a rocking chair with big wire glasses like Red had and wrinkly hands that are still nimble. She rocks and sways and hums as she sews. She links her life together with scraps of discarded cloth, fingersraw and bleeding, thimbles strewn across the floor. A drop of blood
from her calloused hand falls on the yellow fabric. She sighs and keeps going. She’s such a clear figue in my head that I feel like I know her.
People have been quilting for centuries, creating collective histories through pictures on patches. They pass down their life’s work to their families, the warmth and care preserved for generations. The earliest evidence of quilting is traced back to ancient Egypt, and its history winds through endless generations and regions. Tucked away in the British Museum is an ivory carving of the firstrecorded quilt. Worn by the First King of the Egyptian Dynasty, the 12th-century quilted mantel cover is now preserved in hard stone instead of soft cloth. It’s peered at by tourists who aimlessly glide by the countless exhibits. They have no idea that the carving carries more weight than just the ivory stone.
Six centuries later, southern women were picking up thread in the south. Women began sharing their craft, gathering to create one beautiful mosaic. A quilt for a new marriage, one for an unborn child, another just to stay warm through the unforgiving winter. A thin piece of thread tied them
all together, right at the chest. They would hold court around the cloth, sharing their lives and their spewed thoughts, immortalized in the stitches. I wonder if the people who inherited the quilts can still hear their faint whispers.
When I wake up, I findthat I’ve shed the yellow quilt in the middle of the night to escape its overwhelming warmth. I reach my hand out to roam over my bedside table. I nearly knock over the glass of water from the night before onto the ground. I pass my fingertipsswiftly over the gold wristwatch in search of my glasses. I yawn
like a dog and stretch like a cat under the frayed scallops on the bedding.
And so I think if I could sew, I would add a patch onto Red’s quilt. Maybe I would use a scrap from one of my worn-out shirts, a scrap of a shirt I’ve collected from my travels — maybe the one that says I <3 Paris, or a memento from my time at school. I would add a piece of my heart; I would add on to her story. When it was time, I’d give it away to my daughter, too. I would teach her that we can’t take things with us; we can only find comfort in them for just a little while. ■
ham rtia A
by ANDREANA JOI FAUCETTE
At the end of the day, I’m left hungry, and my story aches for its conclusion.
layout ERIC MARTINEZ photographer SOFIA ALVAREZ videographer THOMAS CRUZ
stylists REY TRAN & EMILY MARTINEZ set styling EVANGELINA YANG hmua JAISHRI
RAMESH & ISHA MANJUNATH models VANI SHAH & EMERALD JULIUS
“ I
CAN ONLY HOPE THAT MY
H
EART DOES NOT
When I was born, the doctors told my mother I had a hole in my heart.
It wasn’t anything serious, just enough to warrant a few tests. It caused my heart to murmur — to beat too fast for my little baby body to handle. My pediatrician told her it would go away with time, that infants’ bodies are surprisingly plastic, and that I would patch the hole up all by myself as I grew.
At twenty-one, I’m not sure this is true. My heartbeat hounds me when I run or walk, when I breathe too fast or cry too hard, but most of all when I feel too much, which is all of the time.
At twenty-one, I’ve begun to wonder whether that infantsized hole in my heart ever mended itself, or if it’s only grown larger with age, ripping at the seams with every heartache.
Seven years ago, I began writing everything down, convinced this was how I would discover the beauty — or meaning, or something of the sort — in these feelings that threaten to rip the breath from my lungs and tear me apart from the inside out. It ruined me when I let it fester, so I let the feelings pass through ink or graphite, drawing endless spirals when words wouldn’t come to mind
It’s an obsessive search; I’ll observe every detail and afford the wrong words to all of it. I lose myself in the blurred lines between what is real life and art — what is truth, what is beautiful, is muddled in the eye of the beholder. Frustrated that I may never win the game that is writing, I keep my hand close to my chest, committing these rules to memory.
The nasty truth behind all of the pristinely polished prose is a girl who has fallen apart too many times to be put back together. So I perpetually chase a conclusion to my story, a forever-goal that remains elusive as a lighthouse on the horizon. Once I had written it down, I felt I would experience it and feel whole again — mended — in mind, then in heart. But as I swam towards it, it only retreated further from me.
I grab hold of every fragmented feeling, writing it down in midnight-black ballpoint ink onto whatever paper is within my reach: the reverse of a two-week-old boarding pass, a napkin marred by the ring of condensation from last night’s drink, my favorite notepad, but —
It’s still not enough. At the end of the day, I’m left hungry, and my story aches for its conclusion.
So I continue saying yes to dates, dinners, impromptu summers spent across the equator in order to write about them.
I assure myself that as long as I’m writing, the story itself — this vague, amorphous thing that I project my life unto — will remain my object of obsession. This fate is better than the alternative, which renders the thousands of dollars I’ve spent on fligts useless.
That summer — the one that marked my twenty-firstbirthday — I began to notice my Texan accent. It stuck to the roof of my mouth, thick like peanut butter
between slices of Wonder Bread. With the false-prophet confidence its languid pace and wide vowels afforded me, I wandered around Panama City streets into coffee shops and crowded hotel bars, observing strangers kissing and crying. I searched for some universality in their experience; hoped that my pen and paper might render me partially invisible to them; hoped they would remain oblivious to their role in my quest for meaning.
In doing so, I findmyself transformed into someone I never thought I would become: a writer, one who works herself to the bone turning my real life into something that feels like beauty on paper. I work furiously, driving myself mad and knowing that once I am done, there is no finae that awaits me. Still, I findthis pursuit maddening, more addicting than anything I’ve known.
A Southwest Airlines fligt — a Boeing 737 — brings me back to my roots. As I depart the plane, I feel heavy — weighed down by collections of words joined together with no real throughline of beauty to make them make sense.
I unstuffmy life from its previous home — two suitcases and a backpack and I begin findingdiscarded pieces of paper lodged in the pockets of my leather jackets, tucked in between the pages of paperback books, nestled in between glass perfume bottles.
With each real memory I findtangled into half-truths
EAUTY PASS THROUGH ME”
WANT TIF TO BE “ I ENOUGH BEAU U L TO HAVE B
written on scraps of paper, I see myself shifting, leaning into the role of my story’s own unreliable narrator. I attempt to reconcile my real life with the beautiful version that I’ve constructed. I know that I’m cleaving my life into two by doing so, but it’s addicting — the feeling of believing you have a winning hand.
The truth appears far less romantic: I’m running from the pain of mundanity as it chases me down, sticking itself to me with barbie-pink chewing gum and withered washi tape. I can only hope that my heart does not give out on me before it is too late.
I search relentlessly for a winning hand, a conclusion — anything. I rifle through my purse where a litany of greasy fortune cookie papers swim. In the small space left below my fortune from one cookie, I’d squeezed in some thoughts in black ink. All together, it nonsensically reads:
‘Trust your intuition and your sweet tooth. Both are right!’
The world didn’t stop spinning.
Reading the two together post-mortem, I can interpret nothing — neither meaning nor beauty.
This is how you know you have a losing hand. This is how you know when to fold. The thing is: I won’t.
There’s no other option. When — if — I finaly get it right, I must let this story go, and my life will exist in two halves.
There’s the real experience, and there’s the one I have constructed, ripe with carefully-curated charm.
The pride I have for this final,perfected version is rivaled only by my disappointment in knowing that no record will exist of my own agency in it — my careful lies and meanders around the truth.
In the aftermath, I am no longer the writer — I’m simply someone who wishes to be one. I become little more than a name below a story, a nod to the person who paid enough attention to write things down. This is not who I want to be — I want to be beautiful enough to have beauty pass through me.
The story that I’m telling — the one that I am living — becomes one of yearning in perpetuity, of constantly decanting myself onto a sheet of paper. This is what drives the story — the one that has yet to exist — forward. This is my inherent error, the inescapable quality that pushes my story towards its inevitable, tragic end, but —
Maybe, like that itsy-bitsy hole in my heart, I’ll grow out of this.
Maybe things have gotten better, but analyzing such progress when you’re so busy living and saying yes and feeling so much gets boring.
So I leave the question for another day and keep on writing. ■
by SABINA ROSA GUARDADO
layout SOPHIA OLIVER photographer ADALAE SIMPAO videographer TAYLOR MENDOZA stylists JORDYN JACKSON, REY TRAN & MAYA GAYTÁN-QUIROZ set stylists RITIKA BANEPALI hmuas RIVER PERILL, REYANA TRAN & ANOUSHKA SHARMA models AMANI AHMAD, ZIADA ARAYA & AMARI HERRERA
My grandmother tells this story from the dinner table. She says it is an honor to tell it, so it must be told right. Now I share this story for her. Aquí está, tal como está destinado.
In 1945, El Paraíso sat like cooled lava at the foot of the Guazapa volcano in northern El Salvador. This town, full of bean and corn farmers, laid dormant for many years, crawling with the ghosts of Spanish conquest. Fathers knew only the rhythm of hooves on wet grass as their music. Mothers had forgotten the songs they sang in their youth. El Paraíso had but one fading symbol of life left in its hardened earth: the beloved church.
With every wet season, the ceiling inched closer to the pews. The packed floor sat damp underfoot, marked by Sunday’s footsteps. It appeared as though the humble building which had risen from the earth as a gift for the people now decided to slink back to its origin. The Father wouldn’t have minded, if not for the sag in the cross-beams that prophesied a small disaster at mass. The rotting wood, marked by years of neglect, would not last more than a few days.
He walked to town, knowing the family suited to his cause. It was a low, hot hour — a time when he could expect little movement on the roads. The residents of El Paraíso treasured any idle moment, tempered by lives consumed with subsistence. But there was one house that remained astir with energy.
Inside this house on the edge of the cornfields lived seven sisters given the name Guardado. The Father found them in a frenzy, bickering harmlessly over who would slaughter that night’s chicken. His figue filed the doorframe, haloed by the afternoon glow. In a low, prophetic voice, he called the eldest to the doorway.
“Isabel, necesito la ayuda de tus hermanas.”
At these words, the wind brushed a silence into the room, tickling the ear of their mother across the wall, testing the strength of her sleep. He spoke plainly, though endearment shone in his eyes.
“La iglesia está cayendo, hermanas. ¿Puedes revivirlo?
¿Y traer algo de vida a esta tierra?”
“Por supuesto, Padre. Estamos aquí para el pueblo. Siempre,” Isabel’s chest blushed with purpose, playing her part as she was meant to.
Gloria, the youngest, watched the faces of her sisters carefully, waiting for some sign of action.
She tugged at her sister’s skirt. “Rosa, ¿qué está pasando? ¿Qué dijo el Padre?”
She wanted badly to understand – she could sense the importance of the Father’s words.
Isabel turned to her sisters, heart fillingwith a foreign confidence. She understood something deeper in the Father’s mission. She saw how the shoulders of her neighbors had begun to stiffen — how their eyes longed for more than dirt and corn. She had witnessed her hearty sisters grow from the rich, ashen soil of Guazapa. How now, after years of hardship, they moved wearily, chained to a land that was barely their own.
“Hermanas, esta iglesia es nuestra. Y este pueblo también. Tenemos que protegerlos.”
Even in their youth, the sisters carried discipline in their hearts. Amelia’s palms were calloused and cracked from tending to the family garden. Bessie walked with a limp from a machete accident while farming for banana leaves. Dilma’s spine ached from hours scrubbing family linens on small washboards in the frigid river. They served each other with absolute devotion, but even with the toil of one thousand lives, the sisters remained bound to the earth underneath them.
With the rise of the next sun, the sisters began their work. Isabel sewed her heart into dancing skirts ripped from bed sheets and stitched from rags. Rosa, caught in the middle of her sisters’ chaos, bickered endlessly with her young siblings over which songs would sound sweetest. They recited Lenca hymns and mestizo folk songs woven with history and power. Bessie and Sofiatightened their set of tambores and rinsed their flutes in the river. Dilma and Gloria snuck away with the golden parchment their father used to take score of his cornstalks and drew more signs and flers than there were chickens in El Paraíso.
That night, word of the sisters’ plans spread quickly, rolling across corn stalks from one house to the next. The sisters felt the hum of the town from the soles of their sandals up to their hands joint in prayer around the dinner table. They bowed modestly, hoping for quick rest and good health. In the pitch black, they pretended to sleep just like their restless neighbors.
The next afternoon’s air hovered attentively over El Paraíso. The sisters approached the church slowly, drawn to action, ready to bind their people together for one precious moment. Wet wood rejected thin white paint as it peeled down the church’s facade. The middle sisters, well disciplined by faith, were almost afraid to gaze upon the building. It looked so big even as it sunk slowly into the soft dirt.
The second oldest, Amelia, whispered nervously over Isabel’s shoulder, “Hermana, me asusta.”
Her sister looked back at her with eyes of molten earth. They flckered with something deeper than life.
“Esta es nuestra determinación, no tengas miedo.”
As the sun began to sink, the townspeople flowed through the winding roads. They spilled out onto the church lawn, making space for their neighbors, hovering in a haze of curiosity. Gloria weaved through the crowd, collecting precious coins from wrinkled hands in the folds of her skirt.
The sisters’ stage of milk crates and curtains made from bedsheets radiated under the low sun. Hyperactive boys climbed high in the trees as witnesses to this moment that would mark the ground forever. Tens of bodies sat, thrumming with energy, below the church’s withered face. The earth vibrated with the volcanoes that rose up above the white cross. Amelia peeked from behind the curtain and watched as her neighbors’ eyes began to glow like Isabel’s.
When the air settled and the town’s whispers ceased, Bessie began to play a rhythm on the tambores. Each hit echoed offof her rough hands and slid into the chests of the onlookers.
Her sisters poured onto the stage, feet pounding out an ancient tempo. Their movements came from their blood — predestined at birth. They learned their lyrics in the womb, repeated by every parent to every child to be solidified in memory before memory was known. Their skirts rippled across the earth and stirred the heart of El Paraíso.
The beat of their land was embedded in the body, not the mind. The bass of the drums clenched the hearts of the people and compelled them to their feet. El Paraíso danced deep into the night, glowing like molten rock at the foot of the volcano, waking the earth below.
The town repaired the church with the charities collected that night. But it was the relief of the sisters’ music that healed something in El Paraíso. Its simmering spirit awoke after many idle years, humming with the solid earth beneath Guazapa.
The next year, the Father moved onto his next station in western El Salvador, helping clean the mass graves of a peasant slaughter. Decades later, many of the townspeople were assassinated in the civil war. The chaos left the church demolished. El Paraíso’s dirt is still stained red from those years, but Guazapa’s rumble continues to echo the beat of the sisters’ dance.
The sisters carried that night in their blood for generations, forever connected to the boiling earth of Guazapa. When the sun lays low, and the grass sits wet in the evening, they still see the faces of their lost neighbors shining back at them.
Guazapa glows in my grandmother’s eyes when she fiishes the story. Every year, she remembers less from her distant land, but that evening rumble remains in the soles of her feet as strongly as the day she danced. ■
WE ARE MORE THAN CARICATURES OR CHARACTERS,
layout ANDY KANG photographer KIMBERLY ANDRADE
stylists VI CAO, ANDROMEDA ROVILLAIN & ESHA BAJAJ
hmua AVERIE WANG models BRIAN THAI, EMERALD OKWUEZE, VIRG DE HOYOS & FISAYO BABATUNDE
by ASIYAH JILANI
FACELESS DANCERS OR NAMELESS PASSERSBY.
London, 18th Century
The sun has only started dipping low, its warmth slowly fading into night’s biting chill, when he starts on his way to the building on Russell Street. The white marble decoration greets him as it has every time he rounds the corner to the entrance. When he strides into the entryway, a few heads turn. Most customers, however, are familiar enough with the sound of his steps to not pay much mind to them.
He heads to the counter and makes his request before turning to scan the premises. Amidst the low-hanging decor and gold-framed portraits dancing across the walls huddles a growing group, familiar and new faces alike. When he turns back, he’s handed a mug of coffee, hot and heavy in the clutches of his palm.
He joins the group at the center. The men are gesturing at the topic at hand: a book sprawled across the wooden surface of the table. It’s flippedopen to reveal a chapter title and clumps of words for the customers to dissect and discuss.
Many inhabit Button’s Coffee House during these late hours;
the overwhelming majority are bound by their passion for literature. Outside, their eccentric ideas are dimmed by rigid work rules. The curious are silenced by those who don’t have time to answer. Here, creativity runs wild. Ego and intellect are unleashed, sparking heated debates and intense conversations.
Joseph Addison spends most of his nights at Button’s. Lately, his pieces have been gaining traction. Most hours in his day are dedicated to perfecting his personal essays. Yet in these moments, in this candlelit coffee coven, he lets go of his pencil and brings only his voice. Some visitors, like him, are local literary celebrities seeking a place to mingle with like-minded peers. Others are hardly familiar with the craft, drawn to Button’s as it provides an opportunity to step into the literary world.
They don’t know it yet, but their acts of discussing and debating will give way to a force beyond each of them. This trading of insights is building a catalyst for a nationwide movement.
Coffeehouses offered more than a setting to purchase a drink and unwind from the workday. One entered as not just a customer but as a scientist or creative, eccentric or intellect, listener or debater. Discussion stirred so powerfully that King
motor
Charles II attempted to ban coffeehouses, fearing they would lead to upheaval against the monarchy. The combining and clashing of varied ideas gave way to newfound solutions, a microcosm of the Enlightenment that would take over the nation.
Such a pattern has often surfaced throughout history. In the Song dynasty of China, teahouses sprouted as a way for workers of various occupations to find mutual understanding over a hot drink. During the Enlightenment, women created their own social sphere within salons to trade philosophical insights. It’s not the quality of commodities or the charm of decoration that makes these spaces so prized; it’s the act of gathering: the meeting, the mingling that these places serve as backdrops for.
In various scenes throughout time, scattered in crevices of the globe, community spaces have given birth to newfound innovation and solutions.
Austin, 2024
My days are characterized by movement and motion; I jump from purpose to pleasure, activity to excitement. Early mornings on campus are spent seated in a secluded corner of a building, my lounge for the hours until class starts. The second I shove earbuds in my ears, my world is limited to the soft beats of my study playlist and my cluttered computer screen sporting too many tabs of homework assignments.
back into a lifetime of schedule and structure. Every action serves my own interest, a method I tell myself is for the best.
Weekends come and the rush of early mornings transforms into the buzz of late-night activity. I dust my eyelids with glitter and call up the same rotation of people to dip downtown with me. Nights stretch late, and I findmyself spending hours moving between purposes: catching 20 minutes of music at a party, giggling with my friends in their cars, ducking into late-night corner stores. I exhaust the city of every resource it holds, except for one glaring aspect: the people.
I stop for coffee on Sunday, but it’s for the sole purpose of energizing and recharging before I waltz
When the barista hands me my drink, I take it and sit at the nearest table. I place the drink down too close to another’s belongings and am met with a glare from the owner: a student typing away at an essay on my left. She gathers her computer and scone into her hands and gets up to move away. I never get to hear her name. I never findout what her essay is about or what inspired it, for it already feels futile to ask. She might have so much to say, yet I won’t get to hear a word of it.
It’s a confusing juxtaposition. I exist in a world where communication and information live at my fingertips, et isolation plagues me more than ever.
I have never shied away from new voices. I spend hours carding through articles or watching video essays for the sake of new takeaways. I love doing diving deep into global poetry forums, sifting through various worldviews. I’ll gladly search far for brilliance — so why do I ignore the potential of those who live next door to me?
My sense of disconnection is only exacerbated when Ramadan comes around. Most evenings, I make my way to the mosque only to join in for a few prayers before I grab my belongings and hurry back home. I may pass girls perched on the wooden staircase outside, but I don’t stop to think about what they might have to offer me if only I gave them the chance.
Every person I pass by has lived a different life than mine; every person has an insight to offer that I haven’t heard before. So why do I run from the chance to explore them?
The last week of Ramadan is when the annual interfaith Iftar takes place. As the flyers announce, students of any belief system, or lack thereof, are invited to this community dinner at the mosque. By sunset on the day of, I findmyself making my way there, if only for the promise of free food and my
“I EXHAUST THE CITY OF EVERY RESOURCE IT HOLDS, EXCEPT FOR ONE GLARING ASPECT: THE PEOPLE.”
mom’s requests to visit the mosque more.
Yet when I’m handed the styrofoam box containing my meal, I wonder if there’s any harm in staying a little longer.
I spot a mismatched group lingering at the end of the table: the ones who came without company. They all look as out-of-place as I feel. In a splitsecond decision, I decide to sit at the last empty chair in their area.
An awkward moment passes. I segue into conversation by asking the strangers what brought them to this event. The girl sitting next to me mentions her interest in learning about different belief systems. She elaborates on her troubled attachment to her faith, and I explain my tumultuous journey with my own. Warmth slides through me at the mutual understanding, and a larger sense of awe stems from her unique story. The others chorus in, and soon our conversation is racing at high speeds, twisting through topics. The girl across from me is a geology major who came here for a break from the stress of exams. the one seated to my left wants to findmembers for her service movement. I speak, I listen, and I learn
When I head back home, my stomach is satisfied and my mind is rejuvenated. I feel revved up with new fuel and thirsty with curiosity to learn more.
There is always discomfort in immersing ourselves in the unfamiliar. Engaging in discussion with those we’ve never met before means laying our own opinions bare for dissection and debate. But in the same way adventurers findthrill in wandering down unexplored paths, conversations with unfamiliar people offer the exciting discovery of knowledge we’ve never faced before.
Decades ago, coffee houses in London brought forth the opportunity for information exchange and non-traditional learning, factors in the nationwide knowledge explosion known as the Enlightenment. When we disregard community spaces nowadays, we lose out on this opportunity for ideas to run free and intertwine, forming the basis for revolution, for collective change, for progress and power.
We are more than caricatures or characters, faceless dancers or nameless passersby. We are the innovators of today: the scientists and creatives, eccentrics and intellects, listeners and debaters. Treasure troves of inspiration still remain tucked into every corner of our cities, housed in the minds of everyone who resides within. It’s time to go out and discover them.
■
by ANDREANNA JOI FAUCETTE layout AVA JIANG
by night-light, you occupy the sleep-shaped spaces in my brain.
I won’t figt –I indulge fantasy’s futility. so, I’m a prophet: I dream of you.
they’re visions, an amalgam of twin-tilted-teeth: incisors impacted at analogous angles.
because I haven’t held a funeral — given you a eulogy, that before I fall asleep at night
in moments when my breath slips from uneven to steady and true,
I can feel you — one-hundred-something pounds, sinew and heart and bone.
for a few inhales longer, I stay awake, if only to remember being with you again.
I’ve been writing, but not much poetry thinking about the requests I’d like to make. since our time is limited, don’t speak to me in our other tongue, please
between fitful dreamless nights, I write so as not to beg you to fill the cld impression left in my bed.
instead, I light a kettle by my bedside to simmer, to shake, to boil inside its bones of stainless steel. its whistle-tone melodies guide me to heaven. maybe that’s where you’re from, mi angelita.
I’ve never known how to say goodbye the right way at funerals, I’m awkward.
I remember to stand, to stare at the body, to wait — search for traces of life, parts of a heart kept from me see if maybe
something’s still breathing, beating in there.
I’m in mourning-black but my pills are white, summer sunrise yellow ocean- and true-blue
as my shadow slenders until you no longer recognize it as mine. ■
