Winter 2020
Dear Reader, Too often, we find ourselves fantasizing about the tonights and the tomorrows and forgetting about the present and the now. For this issue, the staff of Fire and Stones urges you to dig your heels in against the flow of traffic, and serendipitously discover a moment of peace and beauty as you flip through the pages of our magazine. We encourage you to pause in this moment, for soon we must all rejoin the fray. Amy Gastright ‘21
Editors Amy Gastright ‘21 Hudson Reynolds ‘20 Communications Director Anna Giardina ‘21 Co-Literary Editors Adrienne Lai ‘21 Louisa Treadway ‘21 Creative Director Lena Weiman ‘21
Staff Lili Abizaid ’20 Ana Bach ‘21 Eva Balistreri ‘21 Lily Bertles ‘22 Charles Bradburn ‘22 Wendy Buendia ‘20 Nyrique Butler ‘22 Elise Hellmann ‘20 Ashlyn Lee ‘20 Victoria Lopez ‘22 Maren Knutson ‘22 Mimi Shea ‘22 Lizzie Sherman ‘22 Carlin Trevisan ‘21 Sophie VandeHei ‘20 Eliza Young ‘22
Printer: Master Print, Newington Virginia © 2020 by Fire and Stones. Authors and artists hold rights to their individual works. Fire & Stones literary and art magazine is published bi-annually in the winter and spring and is distributed to the SSSAS community free of charge. Submissions: All submissions must be emailed to our faculty advisors as an attachment. We only consider material offered for first time publication. Artists and writers can submit 1-3 pieces per issue. Literature entries accepted: short fiction, essays, poetry, plays, and excerpts. We do not have length limits; however, try to keep submissions under 1000 words. Include names on the files: firstinitial_lastname. doc .txt or .pdf permitted. Visual art accepted: photography, illustration, painting, collage, mixed media, cartoon, graphic design, and photographed sculpture. Please submit visual art as high-resolution, jpeg files. Art and literature had to be submitted to our faculty advisors by November 26, 2019. The submissions were reviewed and selected from December 1 through December 8. We have a blind judging process for art and literature. For this issue, in order to ensure an unbiased voting process, each staff member used a digital form. This format ensures that the staff members’ votes cannot be swayed by the votes of other staff members. Permissions: No part of this publication may be produced without permission. All images are copyrighted. The arts and literature can only be reproduced with permission of the artists and authors. For additional information or how to obtain copies please email faculty advisors, Kate Elkins (kelkins@sssas.org) or Jill McElroy (jmcelroy@sssas.org)
Table of Contents Art 4-5 7 9 10 14 16 18 20-21 22 24-25 29
Unstoppable, Lena Weiman ‘21 Afloat, Ashlyn Lee ‘20 22,500 Degrees, Nat Johnson ‘21 The Divide, Wendy Buendia ‘20 Balcony, Andrew Knops ‘20 Chrysalis, Skye Schofield-Saba ‘21 Sheila, Lena Weiman ‘21 I’m Ready for My Closeup, Andrew Knops ‘20 Let Go, Elise Hellmann ‘20 Snow Cats at Midnight, Andrew Knops ‘20 Viewing from Above, Emma Hughes ‘21
Cover, Beacon of Light, Noelia Vargas ‘20 Inside Cover, Salam, Caroline Grace Butler ‘21 Table of Contents, Lollipop, Zach Gunn ‘21 Back Cover, Pull Me Deep, Lena Weiman ‘21
Lollipop —Zach Gunn ‘21
Literature 4 “To speed or not to speed,” Ryan Vuono ‘20 6 “Big, Red, Tent,” Zoe Coval ‘23 8 “The Enchantress,” Amy Gastright ‘21 11-13 “What Do We All Cry For?” Eva Balistreri ‘21 15 “Moments,” Amy Gastright ‘21 17 “Steph Adrien Is-” Steph Adrien ‘21 18-19 “The Garden,” Adrienne Lai ‘21 20 “Invisibility,” Mimi Shea ‘22 23 “Yes,” Amber Dunton ‘23 24-27 “The Labyrinth,” Eva Balistreri ‘21 28-29 “I Hold On,” Grace Mykityshyn ‘22
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To speed or not to speed To speed, or not to speed, that is the question: Whether ‘tis nobler of the driver to suffer The snail’s pace of 25 on Quaker, Or to take arms against an unnecessary limit And by ignoring end it. To speed—to go 35, No faster; and with that extra 10 we’d end The agony and the long commute home That we all are subjected to: ‘tis a fantasy Universally held. To speed, to zoom; To zoom, perchance to boost—ay, there’s the rub: For in that spurn of law what cops may come, When we have brushed off what is no mere suggestion, Must give us tickets—there’s the respect That makes torture of such slow drives. For who would bear the plod and slog of Quaker, Th’wasted fuel, the red light’s pause, The pangs of every “25” sign, the legislation’s mistake, The insolence of the city councilmen, and the pain Of watching those who do speed pass you by, When he himself might his liberation make With a press of the gas? Who would slowness bear, To moan and groan during a sluggish drive, But that the dread of red and blue lights, The piercing siren, whose sound All travellers fear, stops the heart, And makes us rather suffer those speed limits we have Than accelerate to faster ones that we can only imagine? Thus the black and white sign does make prisoners of us all, And thus the native desire for velocity Is shackled with the iron bars of rules, And desires of great swiftness and haste With this regard their natures remain desires And lose the chance to be acted upon. — Ryan Vuono ‘20 Unstoppable — Lena Weiman ‘21
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Big, Red, Tent I’m nothing but a circus act, breathing fire to get your attention trembling on a tightrope to keep you entertained stumbling on oversized shoes trying to keep up with you losing my red nose to become your type painting my face to look different because you don’t like it. I know you’re watching, waiting for me to mess up, but I just keep smiling because I have an audience, and no one can hear me scream in this Big, Red, Tent. — Zoe Coval ‘23
Afloat — Ashlyn Lee ‘20
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The Enchantress It was an icy morning on the creaking decks of The Enchantress. The crew was still asleep in the hull of the old ship, but I found myself beckoned by some voiceless spirit to the bow of the main deck. It was cold, so cold my cheeks burned, and it was early, so early in the morning that the air was that dimmed shade of light, the shade of light that looks like a threadbare curtain over a window. I stood up at the bow where the tapering angle of the wood planks finally came together, right above the bare-breasted woman that blessed the front of the ship. A thin sheet of ice rested atop the water, a delicate, yet intricate, woven blanket placed gingerly on the surface of the sea. I wasn’t sure what drew me there. Perhaps it was the stench of piss and rum belowdecks that roused me and beckoned me out. In my head, there was a fog, a fog that muddled my thoughts and made clear only one single mantra: kom og elske med meg. I could smell that intoxicating refrain through the ice, through the cold, the dark, the deep. Beneath the sheet of bitter-cold, crystalline ice, a figure matching in beauty with the enchantress guiding our ship emerged. A great and terrible beauty whispering to me from far below, her silver skin shining through the dim, singing that mantra: come and be with me, my love. Her song, her chorus, and her curse echoed through all the chasms of my mind. The silver fog thickened, the cold of the ice and air seemed to fade away. My heart felt pulled, as if by a balloon string, to the shimmering creature in the ice, my consciousness screamed through the din en havfrue fra finfolkaheem, a siren from the depths. Kjempe mot sangen hennes. Fight against her song. The chanting boomed ever louder. Around me, the fog shifted and swirled, the only window of clarity led directly into the frozen void. My soul longed for the sea, it begged to pull me asunder, to drown out the noise and fog and be saved by the beauty beneath me. The tugging threatened to shatter me. The song ricocheted louder and louder and louder, and the fog churned and spun around me, and the silver woman beckoned me with kind and open arms, the hues of the water tinting her silver blue. I leaped. And as I fell free through the air, the fog receded, the noise died down, and all that was left was the water-born witch in the ice as I fell towards certain doom. — Amy Gastright ‘21
22,500 Degrees — Nat Johnson ‘21
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What Do We All Cry For? I woke up in a haze that Sunday morning. It was sunny out, and natural light streamed in through my bedroom windows. The weather was nice but average, nothing special. I remember feeling incredibly uncomfortable waking up. I had fallen asleep with my makeup on from the night before, so I could feel clumps of dark, dried eye makeup glued to the corners and creases of my large, blue eyes. My hair was dirty - but not the first-day kind of dirty that you can live with. It had to have been at least the third day, and my thick curls had been up in a bun all night. Short flyaways stood on top of my head in every direction that morning, as if an electric current had been shot right through me. I climbed out of bed and stood up, only to be greeted by a truckload of dizziness and a migraine spiraling right between my eyes. The headache had been there for weeks. I mostly didn’t notice it except in the mornings, and at night when my medicine wore off, and sometimes when I forgot to eat. I didn’t have room in my brain that morning to deal with a headache, so I quickly shoved it aside and in the corner, filing it away in a cabinet in the deep depths of my thoughts. My thoughts are tricky like that sometimes. I like to imagine my brain like a huge gas molecule, and my thoughts are all of the electrons and protons and neutrons shooting around inside of the molecule at extremely high speeds, eventually colliding with each other and the walls of the molecule, bouncing off and starting again. I think a lot for someone who quite often does things without thinking. My mom likes to tell me that I don’t think, and this is not true under any circumstance. I do think, in fact, quite a bit actually. I think about girls and boys and friends and not friends and food and sports and school and others and myself. I think about myself a lot - not that I’m selfish, which I probably am, but I think an unusual amount about things I say or do - or things I haven’t said or done. I’m not entirely sure why this is - in fact, I have thought a lot about that as well. Anyway, I had been thinking probably more than it was healthy to do that morning, so much that I could feel my head begin to implode, causing an aching pain directly under my hairline. It was May, and school was almost over, and finals were coming up, and it seemed like teachers were pounding us with all the work we didn’t do earlier in the year, as if they just wanted us to mentally, physically, and emotionally crumble by the end of the year. My brain was boiling over with dozens of pointless things that the world wanted so badly for me to care about. Most things I heard seemed stupid, and most of the things I was told to do seemed pointless. This made my physical tiredness from lack of sleep and lack of motivation to do most anything required in my life even worse. School, at this time, did not seem like a basic part of life - it was a dreadful chore that I became quite skilled at getting The Divide — Wendy Buendia ‘20
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out of. Self-care did not exist; I simply did not have that type of mental capacity. Sleep came when I had time, which was seldom. I often lacked the energy or motivation to even shower or put on clean clothes in the morning. School was a task that seemed impossible, much less completing my school work on time or at all. I faked a smile and a high-pitched laugh while my body was trapped inside the jail cell that was school. I wanted the world to know I was fine. As far as I was concerned, I was fine - and that was life. I remember I had a big history paper due that Monday. I wasn’t necessarily behind, but I certainly had a good amount still to do. I woke up with the mindset that I would get a quick breakfast and lock myself in my room for the rest of the day to force myself to do something that really did not need to be that big of a deal. I never changed out of my pajamas, something I had been finding myself doing more and more lately. My computer awaited me, sitting propped open on my bed, prepared to scold me for any attempt at further procrastination. I had no choice - today was the day, and it had to be done. Sitting down with a pocket full of notes and resources and everything in between, I could feel the pit in my stomach begin to dig deeper and deeper. I first started chewing on my nails. I picked at the old gel manicure until all that was left was dry, white nail bed and a pile of bright red polish in my trashcan. Then, I started to chew on the inner gum of my right lip. I chewed and chewed until I could feel raw flesh and taste blood inside my mouth. I dug my fingernails deep into the dry skin on my thighs. I pressed and pressed, and when it started to hurt, I pressed some more. I clenched my teeth and closed my eyes and truly felt. I finally released my sweaty palms from their locked position on my thighs. I felt a tingle shoot through that spot as I removed my hand and lightly placed it atop the heavy white duvet comforter that was spread across my bed. I peered down at the dark-red, even purple, crescent moons that were left scowling back at me. They laughed in my face, reminding me that I had fallen to their mousetrap once more. I stood up and felt the weight of my feet and my body on the floor for the first time since breakfast that morning. I felt the stinging in my legs - but it was more of a surface stinging. It didn’t hurt me. I couldn’t let it hurt me. I walked into the bathroom and felt the cold tile on my bare feet. White walls and white sinks and white granite countertops blinded me. Everything seemed so clean. I could not detect a single piece of dirt, a loose strand of hair or water droplets on the ground. Almost like it had never been used before, my bathroom shone clean under the fluorescent lighting. I looked down at my legs and then back up at the wall. The crescent moons had expanded and darkened, and for a moment I pictured my bathroom stained the color of my weak legs. For one second of my life, I saw the red scars stamped onto the perfectly clean walls and granite and sink of my bathroom. They dripped with dark-red ink and stained the new granite counters. For one moment I pictured the worst. I opened my eyes and saw that the walls remained perfectly intact. Before I could do anything to stop it, the warm tears came flooding down my face, bringing with them large chunks of dark eye makeup. They ran down the sides of my nose and into the creases of my lips and I could taste
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the warm saltiness that was my sorrow. They ran down the far sides of my face and lined my cheeks until my skin was satisfactorily moist. I turned on the faucet with a shaky hand and let the water run. Something about that made my tears seem lesser. I stood, and I leaned against the mirror, and I saw myself, and I cried - I cried for the way things were. I cried because things aren’t as bad as they could be, and I knew that, but I still cried. I cried because that day I had broken my own heart, and I knew it would never fully heal. That day I cried for myself because in a world of seven billion people I still somehow managed to feel more alone than ever. I cried for the people who felt alone, and I cried for the people who didn’t feel alone - because in this hell of a world sometimes that can be just as bad. I cried for everything that day. When the tears slowed and my lungs found it easier to work on their own once more, I wiped my eyes softly and turned off the faucet. I looked away from the mirror for the first time since my eyes were dry, and it came to my attention that there was a world outside of my white, granite bathroom. I’m not sure if this brought me pain or relief or anything in between - all I know is that I walked out of my bathroom that day on my own two feet and found a way to wake up the next morning, which is more than some people can say. — Eva Balistreri ‘21
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Moments
Balcony — Andrew Knop ‘20
My first day of university passed as uneventfully as all four years of high school. Like children, we freshman labored through hours of over-zealous smiles and orientations. I could do nothing but watch as students only a few years older wistfully pondered our clueless faces and the boxes in our arms like they knew something we didn’t yet, but we would. Oh, and those cubicle dorms; we organized them desperately, thinking with unrivaled certainty that they were going to stay as spotless and clean as they were then. My name is. I come from. Something interesting about me is. Nobody wanted to stick out, but all of us yearned to be seen. Pick me! Be my friend! People were snatched left and right, pairing off in no particular pattern or order until only the timid souls remained and were imminently branded untouchables. Why did we do that? Did we even have a reason? I was dragged to the side of the tallest girl I’d ever met. A boyish haircut and a skeleton-skinny frame, she had a throaty voice, ragged, a sound like she was about to lose her voice, a sound that emanated strength and confidence. Meghan. Denver. I’m 6’2”. After the sun had set, all of us freshmen seemed to know about a party in some off-campus house, but we weren’t quite sure the occasion or who told us about it in the first place. And so, we went, Meghan and I. We walked across and away from campus, under streetlamps and stars, just two children playing house like we knew what we were doing. We entered the house; the lights were dim at best, and music blared from poorly set up speakers. We tripped over all thirty wires on the ground, and we laughed and we drank and we waved away smoke because we were big kids, and nothing else mattered but now. We didn’t care about each others’ pasts or futures, and I knew hardly a spec about her, but we could be and do and say ‘now’ and it was magnificent. Our new power consumed us. And that was how it was. We were invincible. We could defy all the odds. We could fly. We didn’t live under any grownups’ rules; because we were the grownups now. We feared no future, and we knew no laws and we were everything and nothing was going to stop us from having it all. We came down from that high swiftly but gently as the semester picked up steam and college slapped us in the face. But I never forgot those moments. The moments after I had left home but before reality set in. Whatever I do, whatever mistakes I make or chances I take are going to be my feeble attempts to feel that way again. But I never will. I’ll never be as brilliantly burning, as uncaring and confused, as ignorant, as innocent, as uncaged and newly liberated as I was in those moments. The moments when I was young and old and stupid but knew it all. They were momentary but everlasting, like first kisses, like first times, like first breaths. They were fleeting, and died too soon, and as such will be placed on the highest pedestal of the trophy cabinet in my mind to gather dust and must and moths - regarded frequently with novelty, but never to be touched again. — Amy Gastright ‘21
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Steph Adrien is a tiny speck in a sky full of stars. breathing heavily, panicking, wishing she could run and never stop. dripping with sweat. yelling at someone who doesn’t know it yet. in her own head. a lock with no key. a gated community. a single thundercloud ruining a bright summer day. the first raindrop to fall during a storm. a palpitating heart. a muscle cramp creeping upon the calf of a track star. in a world full of monsters who all have the same face. looking for answers in her holy book. repeating Phillipians 4:13 over and over, taking deep breaths, feeling her chest rise and fall, shaking off the anxious feelings, that have slowly but swiftly crept in. waiting for this day to end. blinded by the sun chasing three little birds across the horizon. thinking of Bob Marley, humming ‘don’t worry about a thing, cause every little thing gonna be alright.’ head held high. allowing her legs to lead her wherever they choose. content regardless of where she ends up. — Steph Adrien ‘21 Chrysalis — Skye Schofield-Saba ‘21
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The Garden In the backyard of my home, a building made of soft, white, cedar wood planks, a castle-cottage upon a hill, there is a majestic garden brimming with rich vegetation. Bright, gleaming, saturated colors leak from the variety of sustenance as the sweet scent of sugar mixed with calcium radiates from within. Strands of pure white grapes and tumultuous, navy blueberries protect a small patch of tart, ruby-red strawberries from roasting in the sun. Spherical, fuzzy, firm peaches cling to branches where they sway endlessly in the careening swish of the wind. Nestled in the soil are condensed knobs of orange, burrowing deeper into the ground as their stalks grow tall, wrestling for room with the roots of long, dainty, spindly herbs. The patches of midnight-sky blackberries and hairy, valentine-pink raspberries accumulate mass and mature with the seasons, growing larger and grander every day with only the burnt-chestnut fence to contain them. There, vines crawl along the grain lines and cracks, swallowing the wood and moving to the ground for more. The strings of plants scatter around the yard, clinging to every surface, spreading to each crevice. One would think that the vines would overwhelm the expanse, making it look cramped and unkempt. However, they have the opposite effect, making the garden seem friendlier and picturesque, as if it was a frame frozen from long ago, immortalized in a postcard. This patch of natural beauty is where I feel the most calm. When life spins out of control, leaving me breathless, wheezing, and gasping as my surroundings swirl into a Van Gogh painting, I find my center sitting there. The sunshine and pervasive aroma of nature’s living specimens diffuse into me, quelling every hurtful word, disappointing action, and general displeasure locked inside my heart. It is for the security of the garden that I flung myself down there one fateful afternoon, when everything seemed to halt. I felt as if I had been sprinting for years, accelerating on pavement trying to fly, investing in every stride, only to lose at the end, to trip on my face and tumble down. Disapproval pumped through my veins while chaotic fear crept from my toes to my hair. It was almost unbearable to be
in the garden, with its pristine composition staring at me while I deteriorated on the ground, my image disintegrating into a sad, lame, boring girl lying alone on the ground. As I wallowed in my confused and disheveled state, I suddenly felt a strong pull on my ankle. I attempted to sit up and see what dared to arouse me from my sorrow, when I noticed that I was pinned to the ground, held by the vines that brought the backyard together. They tugged on my body like I was their puppet, my motions disjointed and partially strung together. Panic filled my throat as I thrashed against my constraints, but the greenery only pulled me closer to the center of the garden, the plot bursting with gifts from the Earth. I was tangled within the unblemished fruits and untainted vegetables, the newest offering ready to be plucked from the stems. I was molded into the scene, that perfect moment fit for a painter to make their masterpiece. The garden had given me what I wanted, fused me with perfection. But stuck, surrounded by the variety of shrubbery, I felt as if this was the end, as if I would stay among the plants as they rotted, as they became the disgusting remains of what once was golden, the washed-up bits of a short brush with fame. And it dawned on me that this was the cost, the consequence, the demand of what I sought out: shining adoration for a season or two followed by the end of relevancy, a short life with a sharp rise but a steeper fall, a melancholy, abrupt existence. And I wanted more. I wanted to matter, to change, to hurt, to love, to fight, to break, to build, to grow, to sleep, to laugh, to cry, to be, to spend moments there in the exceptional garden for eternity, not just one more season. So I rolled over, picked the vines off of my skin, and began to live as I did once long ago. Free of judgment, broken mirrors, unreasonable standards, and persistent doubt, able to flourish anywhere. Life was good, and fewer seasons were spent looking at the garden for reassurance, as I could see myself as it saw me: a zealous girl in her home, right where she belonged. — Adrienne Lai ‘21
Sheila — Lena Weiman ‘21
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Invisibility It’s living your life with a pen and paper as your best friend because you have no one else to trust anymore and they have no choice but to hear you. It’s tripping, falling, bumping into people everywhere you go because they see straight through your crystalline skin. And it’s being ok (and sometimes not) with being alone, because that’s the thing you know best. It’s dotting the ‘i’ in isolation with repetition. Invisibility is truly knowing no one, hopelessly trudging through your minutes, hours, days, weeks, lives without saying a word. And maybe it’s our fault. Maybe we push people away from our boarded up and broken down hearts. But we weren’t the ones who broke them in the first place. We never asked to be invisible. Invisibility is finally finding someone with whom you have an indescribable, kindred-spirit bond and grasping onto them with every ember in your heart because you’re terrified that you’ll never find anything this good again. Invisibility is constant. It is omnipotent. It is unending. It is hoping for some sparkAny spark will doAnd wondering what concrete happiness is. — Mimi Shea ‘22 I’m Ready for My Closeup — Andrew Knops ‘20
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Yes When I was little, my mom would make me take baths, just like in every hygienic family across America, and just like every wide-eyed, happy, smiling child, I said no. Regardless, my mom would plop me into the soapy, bubbly water, filled with millions of colorful bath toys and rubber ducks. After washing my hair with pink, strawberry soap, my very wet mother would say, “It’s time to get out!” My answer would be the same. No. Eventually, I ceased my routine protests. I wonder when I started saying yes. Yes to washing the dishes, yes to clearing the table, yes to showing the new kid around, yes to sports, yes to going to parties, yes to clubs, yes to student council, yes to going out on dates, yes to everything. I wonder if I want any of these things. I wonder if it matters. My parents always say that you should do things for other people and how lucky I am to live the life that I do. You should be grateful. I work hard for you to be able to do that. It wouldn’t be fair if you said no. You should have thought of that before you left your homework for the last minute. You’re smart. This shouldn’t be hard for you. Stop freaking out, it’s just a test. a song. a conversation. a nice guy. Get out of your head. I guess I am lucky, lucky that I don’t have any real problems, that anxiety is treatable, that my parents are better now that they’re apart, that I go to such an amazing school, that I have such great opportunities. I even got a part in the play. Lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky. Now when my mom tells me to go shower, the answer is yes. It doesn’t matter if I washed my hair the day before or if I’m tired beyond caring. I stand under the cold stream of water in a shiny, tiled shower with a glass door, staring at my empty, foggy, bitter ghost of a reflection as the soap swirls down. Let Go — Elise Hellmann ‘20
— Amber Dunton ‘23
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The Labyrinth I am a human and I live on planet Earth. Actually, let me correct myself. I am a human and I am doing my best to simply survive on planet Earth, surrounded by billions of other humans simultaneously doing the exact same thing. I’d like to believe that these are facts: the idea that I am, in fact, human, and do, in fact, live on a massive surface of substance and soil merely by coincidence called Earth. Because of these “facts,” I’d like to also believe that I am alive, but these days you can’t even trust the facts, not that you ever could. I mean, it is a little scary that we must simply assume people are telling us the truth. But, for the sake of my point, and therefore, my ego, let’s just assume for a moment that I am a human and I am alive. What does that make me? What does that make this life that I am living? John Green once wrote, “Damnit, how will I ever get out of this labyrinth of suffering?” Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines labyrinth as “a complicated irregular network of passages or paths in which it is difficult to find one’s way; a maze.” So let’s get back to my original
Snow Cats at Midnight — Andrew Knops ‘20
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question- what does human Eva Balistreri make of this life that I am, or at least I think I am, living? A labyrinth? But why? But why not? My suffering, I presume, does not come from anyone or anything else in this world, because how could it? My pain, my sorrow, my grief. My heart and soul and mind and body feel things that no one will ever be able to call their own. This suffering is mine. My fellow humans undergo the inevitable hell of pain that simply cannot be felt the same way by others. Like a snowflake, our true, untouched emotions hide only in the far corners of our souls. So, once again, let’s just say that the genius John Green was, by some spontaneous chance, right about it all - the labyrinth, suffering, and the entire meaning of life. Green’s intention with his beautiful ability to make the English language come alive has been something I have contemplated since the first time my innocent hands closed the spine of a paperback version of Green’s Looking For Alaska. The labyrinth, while making my head spin out of control with confusion, was something that drew me in like a magnetic field. I didn’t understand it, yet my soul was drawn to his words. John Green writes that “The only way out of this labyrinth of suffering is to forgive.” Forgiveness. The Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines forgive as the action of “ceasing to feel resentment against an offender or one’s enemies.” And so this is when I realized that the only way out of this hellish labyrinth that Green has so easily navigated is to forgive. Forgive. It was as if the labyrinth wouldn’t let me go. I was trapped sitting in his oily hands. He was waiting for me to give him a kiss on the cheek. A goodbye. He was waiting for me to forgive. But forgive what? Myself? I contemplated this for a while. My brain was struggling to keep up with itself something I wasn’t sure was possible until it happened to me. I was confusedsomething that was not a rare occurrence for me, but it was different this time. It wasn’t my brain attempting to understand his words, it was my heart. I didn’t need to understand the labyrinth, I wanted to. And with this, the magnetic field grew even stronger.
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So let’s get back to assuming. Of course, still assuming that I am a human and I am alive, I’d like to also believe that I am not one prone to enemies. Actually, let me correct myself - I’d like to believe that one isn’t really aware of their true enemies until one of two things happens: the first being that the so-called, “enemy” is overcome, leaving one feeling not satisfied with themselves but more so empty inside. The second of the two being that the “enemy” ceases to exist. This second possibility, while it would leave one relieved, would introduce an entire realm of possibilities that modern day society knows as sorrow, which life has proven to be a tremendous enemy within itself. So what is the answer? Who, or what, is my very worst enemy? You see, my problem is not that I can’t seem to find my worst enemy. In fact, that wouldn’t be a problem at all. As I said earlier, I’d like to believe that I am not one prone to enemies. My problem, you see, is that I do have an enemy - the issue is that it is myself. My name is Eva Balistreri, I think I am a human, and I am my own worst enemy. In a sense we all are our own worst enemies. Because at the end of the day, we are the only ones who can feel our own emotions. However, this is why we, as so-called humans, must forgive ourselves. When we make a wrong turn in this maze of a life is the moment we allow ourselves to believe that we are alone in this great, big, scary labyrinth of suffering and laughing and living and all of the in between. We must pause, loosen the choking grip of the labyrinth’s leash, and forgive ourselves. John Green once wrote, “If people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.” I am not a hurricane right now, and that is okay. Hell, I might not even pass as a mid-afternoon shower. I am not sufferingly beautiful and my words cannot bring people to tears. My life is not a mystery and my soul is not clean. But I am here, and whether I really trust what the world tells me or not, I’d like to believe that I am at least surviving. I am no hurricane, but as John Green once wrote, “We all matter - maybe less than a lot, but always more than some.” And so with that, I am not asking you, but I am telling you that I matter. Because I exist, I matter, and I know I have the ability to become a hurricane some day. And so I will leave you by saying that I forgive myself. — Eva Balistreri ‘21
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28 | Fire & Stones
Issue 34
I Hold On The first time I saw you you were so small and blue, I held you tightly because I was all you knew.
And then you only had four years left, I held onto you tightly as my heart filled with regret.
When I first brought you home time seemed to fly, those are the memories that money cannot buy.
Then one day I gave you the keys to my car, but I still held on tightly because I didn’t want you to go too far.
Step by step you slowly learned to move, but I still held on tightly I could only give you so much room.
Then you started dating, I thought he was a tool, but even if he wasn’t no one will ever be good enough for you.
You learned your words and what to say, I tried to make you laugh it was a game we loved to play.
But time after time you chose him and not me, it was a constant struggle to hold you but also set you free.
Soon it was time for you to start school, I held onto you tightly telling you ‘remember the golden rule’.
And soon you would feel the worst pain on earth, he cheated and lied but you learned your worth.
Day by day it went by so fast, elementary school was soon in your past.
Next we took a trip to a campus far away, I held onto you tightly but I knew you wanted to stay.
You got bigger and bigger, it felt so abrupt, I still held you tightly only now I couldn’t pick you up.
You finally hit your senior year, I held onto you tightly because soon you would disappear.
You started at a new school and felt out of place, you denied me as I tried to hold you, that was a slap in the face.
Then one day an acceptance letter came in the mail, I held onto you tightly because you had prevailed.
We talked and talked through all of your hard times, I know it was difficult but eventually the stars aligned.
As you walked across the stage I beamed with pride, you seemed to grow up in the blink of an eye.
And now I watch as you drive away far, but I still hold you tightly only now without my arms. I love you more than you can ever know, and even though you’re now gone you will always be my home. — Grace Mykityshyn ‘22
Viewing from Above — Emma Hughes ‘21
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