2023 Student Art & Literary Magazine

DEDICATED TO TOM GOTWALS

Your unwavering passion for teaching has enabled generations of students to explore the vast and wondrous world of music. Your encouragement and guidance have helped countless young musicians discover and develop their unique talents, instilling in them the confidence and courage to pursue their dreams.

Your tireless efforts have not only helped build a thriving music program at Suffield but also created a lasting impact on the lives of countless students and colleagues, inspiring them to explore their own potential and embrace the beauty of music. From your work with Suffield’s Guitar Shows, to all your ensembles, to constantly offering our community their LMQs after lunch, we are forever grateful for the music and knowledge you’ve brought to this community.

Written by Tom Dugan, Chair, Performing Arts Department

“Without music, life would be a mistake.”

- Friedrich Nietzsche

Illustration by Stacy Yurkovskaya 23

EXPLORE

Exploration is the key to creativity. When young, we are naturally driven to explore our imagination. Art can be the gateway to tap into this truest form of exploration. As Suffield Academy students, we are encouraged to discover who we are and where our passions lay. The past few years have tested us as a school and a society, forcing us to explore new versions of ourselves and adapt to the ever-changing world around us. Art gives us the means to engage with our inner voice. What we create is a direct reflection of who we are or how we are feeling, and it can connect us all with each other. Art is our universal language.

EDITORS

RHYS BABCOCK

JULIA BAO

CHLOE COFFIN

NATALIE DATZ

CHIDINMA ESIELEM

ELLIE FRISBIE

MORGAN GEISINGER

HELENA LADAH

TONY LUO

MORGAN MAGLIERI

SAUD SHAWWAF

MICHELLE ST. JACQUES

BIFF TRAN

CINDY YEN-TZU TSAI

STACY YURKOVSKAYA

HUGO HARDWICK

BRENDAN MASTELLA

NATE MORRIN

My throat feels tight, The harder I fight

ASTHMA

BY GABBY DIAZ ' 24

The grip around my esophagus

The worse it gets, I have had it for so long You would think

I’d know how to handle

My condition

My state of being

My everlasting tongue-tie

I didn’t overexert myself

I didn’t run, skip, jump or fly

I took my inhaler,

So why is the air choking me with every breath that I take with the pain filling my lungs at a rapid pace, breathe in breathe out take your inhaler again your red and burning up your sweaty your visions blurred your shaky

Shaky?

From the medicine or the adrenaline?!

You can’t hide it

I can feel it

They can see it

Why can’t you just breathe?! “hi”

That’s it.

Soren Nelson ' 26

Sophia Romaniw ' 26

Christian Recinos ' 24

Campbell Hudkinds ' 25

Zoey Bujak ' 25

EVERYTHING

BY ELLA SLATE ' 24

I am a thousand people at once.

I am the walls and the floors and the windows and the ceilings.

I am sorrow and grief and love and joy.

I am reality. I am delusion. I am the notknowing, and I am omnipotence.

I am your skin and your bones and your eyes and your lips. I am your desire, I am your longing, I am your repression, I am your bitten tongue. I am the words you speak and spit and refuse to say. I am everything you will never express. I am everything your mother doesn’t know about you.

I am your broken phone, your lost friends, your baby brother, the sister you don’t talk to.

I am Saturn and the Sun and the Milky Way and the universe. I am Heaven and Earth and Jesus and Mary. I am purgatory. I am Hell. I am the absence of everything. I am a black hole. I am matter and antimatter, gravity and the absence of gravity. I am the atom and the nucleus, the proton and the neutron. I am light and dark, the sun that sets in the West and rises in the East, and the Sun that never rises. I am a hurricane and a tidepool and a spinning ball of anger. I am immortal. I am primordial terror and agony and misery. I am hope. I am ever-changing. I am consumed and allconsuming. I am everything you haven’t lived up to. I am the parties you leave early, the car you drive home into the empty darkness. I am the void. I am solid ground. I am a sinkhole. I am quick sand.

I am your mother, your father, your uncle, and your best friend. I am your dog that ran away, I am the mice that live in your walls. I am the exterminator and the cockroach, I am the cat and the mouse. I am your best friend and your worst enemy, I am the love of your life and the love of your life’s girlfriend. I am the song that played when she walked down the aisle. I am the smashed guitar, the broken string, the scratched record, the wrong key.

I am the worst week of your life. I am the bad nights. I am the calm after the storm, the rebuilding and the rebirth.

I am the hammer that falls. I am everything that comes before.

I am everything. I am love. I am pain. I am fear. I am desperation. I am failure. I am mortality.

I am eternal. I am everything that is thrown across the room, I am everything cherished, I am everything buried and broken and shattered to pieces. I am everything glued together, I am everything forgotten, everything remembered, everything cast aside, everything unnoticed.

But most of all I am very, very lost. And very, very, confused. And so very young. My throat is rusted shut. I wanted to be something fiery, but instead I am something oxidized.

Hanseo Lim '

25 47

THE WOMANIST DIVINE

BY CHASTITY BLAIR ' 24

Unsung, unheard, sometimes unloved

What are the beautiful things that Black women are capable of?

I’ve spoken to y’all about critical race theory

Ignorance in this community

But lemme give you a little history on Black femininity

From the Dahomey to Pauli Murray

Black women have been strategizing to make the lives of all people serene

However, they go unseen

Because some in society are so keen on the downfall of us all

No matter how hard we work there is always someone appalled

No matter how hard we push to progress theres always someone to stall

Because we don’t physically have balls

But thats another story for y’all

Despite all the setbacks and the unnecessary get-back

Generations before us put us on the right track Made the ones proceeding them understand that beautiful is synonymous with Black And I will always thank my mother and grandmother for that

I want to highlight our predecessors

They got spat on, assaulted, abused, died For us to thrive

Because they had to face the ones trying to connive

And demean and derive those instincts that taught them how to survive

Nyah Bailey-Burton

P.

S.

However Black women keep it classy and graceful

Nothing is more powerful than a woman who chooses to say no

Because they have too much on the line

A family to keep combined, an education system to design Just like those in Little Rock Nine Black women are the spine, and continually refining this country on an incline

There will always be people like the men in the Red Pill Community

Knocking down Black women

Therefore, it is a necessity for intersectionality

To recognize the ones especially, disadvantaged by those filled with animosity

But hey, look at Judge Ketanji No matter what comes our way

We instill hope in each other

We are resistors

And this why I love Sister Sister

It doesn›t only represent the Black and Brown community at Suffield

But exemplifies the beauty that was previously concealed

So ethereal, so angelic, so surreal

I have a dream that one day the media, the world, the systemic ideals of society will see Black women as swan princesses

Nubian goddesses

Bold, breathtaking, blissful queens with beauty like gilded bodices

Because Black Girl Magic is more than a hashtag

Its a movement and a promise

And the little Black girl in Nassau, Bahamas Would have loved to hear this.

Neeva Patel '

Ciara Dellea '

OH, DEAR SUNSHINE

In the deepest of my despairYour presence, with all its might, can be felt in the air

Where my tears form ocean sized puddles, you throw pebbles-And leave me with the everlasting ripples

Along the surface of my puddle

The mirage reflection of my soul

The ghostly image of my face

And the dead rose in my hand

Awaits your arrival

Till eternity- If I may- I’ll wait For they say, on any spiritual path

You may persevere and have patience. The falling petals of my rose

Tell me that you love me-

Then the wind blows the petals away

My rose tells me, it’s a little life- and I agree

Oh, dear sunshine stay a little longer

For my love has not come yet- and IHave yet to look him once more in the eyes

And tell him the tales of my sorrows and cries

For he is the only one I need

When hot tears fill my eyes.

BY N. D.

Campbell Hudkins '

Nyah Bailey-Burton '

N.

D.

N. D.

Alanna

COMMENTS

BY DOM BALISE ' 24

TRIGGER WARNING: EATING DISORDER

I know I’m not as skinny as I was then My jawline isn’t as sharp

I’m not the beauty standard anymore

And it’s a little sad

It’s a little more difficult to fit in pants — pants that i could easily slip into before

My body has more fat on it than it did before I’ll look at pictures and videos of myself from before and wish i still looked like that

But what my camera roll doesn’t show is the damage

I was so sick

I would eat so little

I’d be so hungry I would be shaking

I’d constantly be on the verge of passing out I felt like i was in a daze

I couldn’t eat anything “unhealthy” without panicking

I was weak - my muscles were pronounced because there was little fat covering them

Even at that point I thought I wasn’t enough

Wasn’t quite skinny enough

Wasn’t quite fit enough

Wasn’t quite attractive enough

And I would tell myself I had to keep going I would tell myself I didn’t have to workout to stay how I looked — I just had to eat less Family members would comment about the weight I had lost

How much weight have you lost?

You look so much better now!

What’s your secret?

The comments fueled the flames of the issue

I felt as though I had to keep losing weight to be valid

I felt as though what I was putting my body through was beneficial

I wasn’t the chubby kid in the family anymore and that, apparently, was a good thing

They didn’t know how much i hated the comments they would make

Sure, it felt nice that others thought I looked good

But I felt so much pressure to continue living how I was

The worst comment I was given was from my brother — he, too, had lost a good amount of weight

Don’t start eating unhealthy again. You’ve lost a good amount of weight and you look good!

You don’t want to be fat again, do you?

The pressure of staying “skinny” increased by a thousand times when he said this I didn’t want to disappoint him, the rest of my family, or myself by gaining weight

But then sophomore year started

There was what I would’ve considered a lot more unhealthy foods

But I had to eat something

Initially, I had told myself I would solely eat salads with some plain pasta, but I realized how much i wanted to eat good food

I went from eating half of a cup of couscous and an egg to chicken parmesan and potatoes within a month or two

I didn’t feel sick anymore

I could stand up without feeling like I was going to faint

The shakes went away

I started going to the gym and was (and still am) building actual muscle

I could eat a dessert without panicking and trying to deduce how many calories it had

While I am healthier now (in that I don’t feel ill anymore), and have more muscle, I have more fat than I did

When I look in the mirror and see how I look, I remind myself of how horrible I felt when I was lighter

Still, often I find myself wishing I still had the body I did from before

I don’t notice family members saying things about my body anymore

Maybe this means that I’m not skinny enough for them anymore

But I prefer this a thousand times more than them making comments about my weight

Why do other people think they are entitled to make comments about other people’s bodies? Family members, especially Just because you’re related to someone it doesn’t give you a VIP pass to say whatever you want to say about their body

Even if you think you’re giving someone a compliment, often times you’re causing more harm than good

There are a million other things you can say to a person that are not related to their body top normalizing that “good” bodies must be skinny bodies.

Mission

Suffield Academy is a coeducational independent secondary school serving a diverse community of boarding and day students. Our school has a tradition of academic excellence combined with a strong work ethic. A commitment to scholarship and a respect for individual differences guide our teaching and curriculum. We engender among our students a sense of responsibility, and they are challenged to grow in a structured and nurturing environment. The entire academic, athletic, and extracurricular experience prepares our students for a lifetime of learning, leadership, and active citizenship.

Non-Discrimination

Suffield Academy does not discriminate on the basis of sex, race, color, religion, creed, national or ethnic origin, citizenship, physical attributes, disability, age, or sexual orientation. We administer our admissions, financial aid, educational, athletic, extracurricular, and other policies so that each student is equally accorded all the rights, privileges, programs, and facilities made available by the school.