Spring Folio 2023

THE FOLIO Spring 2023

Copyright © 2023 Conestoga Literary Magazine Staff

Internal Design © 2023 Hannah Gupta, Jordan Jacoel, Chiho Jing, Casey Kovarick, Emily Zou

Copyright © of each work belongs to the respective author or artist

First edition 2023

All rights reserved. All works are copyright of their respective creators as indicated herein and are reproduced here with permission. The Folio is a public forum for student expression produced by the students of Conestoga High School.

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Cover photo © Eden Liu

Inside cover © Casey Kovarick

Dear Reader,

Dear Reader,

Welcome to the 2023 spring issue of The Folio! And what a year it has been. We’ve seen a rebirth of many activities put on halt over the last few years, and as we find ourselves gathering together once more, everyone has started to feel like themselves again. In our case, The Folio staff was once again able to hold Inkwell—our annual coffeehouse and performance program—to celebrate the many accomplishments of our wonderful community. In the spirit of these new beginnings, we’ve chosen gardens as our theme for this spring issue. It has been lovely to watch our school bloom again, although it has come as a bittersweet reminder to us seniors of how it’s time to leave the garden behind.

These past few years have been chaotic for everyone. Somehow life has been both stuck in a moment and wildly speeding away. For this reason, many of us have found very little time to stop and smell the roses, both literally and figuratively. Our staff hopes this issue is a reminder that love and creativity always shine through, even in our darkest moments, giving us the strength to keep going. Art provides the nourishment every growing garden needs.

The staff who dedicated their time to creating this issue are some of the most brilliant people anyone could ever have the privilege to meet. Their minds have nourished so many thoughtful, heartbreaking, and beautiful pieces. For the seniors, this beauty is hard to give up. To find a place where we are challenged, loved, and allowed to be ourselves is a gift that we can never repay. We have been able to grow through this program, begun to blossom into young adults ready to move on to the next stage of our lives. Still, we bear the marks of the love that allowed us to do so. And that is something that will never leave us.

This program would not be the same without our incredible advisers, Mr. Smith, Mrs. Gately, and Mrs. Wilson. We thank their drive to make The Folio a home for anyone who walks through the door. Without them, there would be no place to grow.

And finally, we thank you readers. You drive us to create, to perform, to be better. Art would mean nothing without the people who find value in it. Now, go on and enjoy the garden we’ve grown.

With Love,

The Editors

Ode to A Paper Swan

Oh, paper swan, I’m sorry that you won’t survive. I’m sorry that you’re just a mimicry of the real thing, too close to it to not know what you’re missing.

Oh, paper swan, the edge of your wing is sharp and bloody; it’s never been your fault. You can only be what you were made to be.

Oh, paper swan, I can unfold you and no one will remember that you had existed. You will be only half a memory in my mind, forgotten in a second.

Oh, paper swan, your beak is slightly crushed already. If temporary was tangible, it could only be you.

Oh, paper swan, I place you in the palm of my hand and your weight is barely noticeable. Your thin neck stretches out, proud and strong, and your wings almost strain to fly.

Anika Kotapally

Perched Photography

Devin Krebs

On Mother Nature

Leyla Yilmaz

Cypress trees line the streets of Istanbul with their prickly leaves standing as straight as Alif, the first letter of the Arabic alphabet, standing tall and giving way to divinity when God’s name is written. Individual leaves expand into snowflake-like patterns, holding the reminder of breathtaking nature and the love it houses. In the concrete city with loud street vendors, bazaars with red and green spices, and the red of the flag hang all over the high buildings, suspended in the exhaust, there are Cypress trees. A reminder of the roots of humanity. Of nature, of gentleness.

My mom brings me to a garden with cypresses and green soil once a week to escape the concrete and waste of the city. It’s good for the soul, she says, and when I caress the green snowflakes of their leaves and lift my hand to smell the whispers of lemon on it, I can feel pieces of my soul lifting and fitting themselves together like a broken puzzle.

My mother tells me how seeds and wood grow in the soil. Nature, the forgiving, gentle source, gives birth to the weeping willows, peonies, and the cypresses. A body pregnant to the fuel of the living and a home to the dead. Gentle, grounding, all-encompassing.

She tells me to take my socks off in the garden, that it’s good for my soul. I stretch my feet on the gentle ground and feel the dead, the living, the life under me in shreds. She gestures for me to walk, says the soil sucks the nerves out of me like a mother would suck out poison from her baby’s arm. Everything comes and returns to the soil, my mother says.

Walking along the soil, I think of how a man once told me that Adam was made from the gentle soil, and Eve was made from harsh bone. I think back to the soul my mom is so determined to heal, trapped within the bone of my body. I think of the screeching sound I hear that comes from it, echoing beneath my bones. That is what I am, I think. I am all bones, clinking against, creaking and smashing into each other, making a careful cage to contain its sin. I must be Eve’s daughter. If I was made of earth, it would suck the poison out of my body.

But I don’t say any of this to my mom standing on the brown of the earth. I walk silently along the cypresses, trying to feel the roots of the earth below. Ancient, breathing.

Saudade

Renkai Luo

For the first time in many years, Rohan sat down and did not feel the need to stand up again. Good Prince Lothric was dead, the king was still prisoner, and the royal capital was alight with as many fires as there were schemes to start them. Rohan had stood guard at the east gate since Lothric was a newborn, when this fledgling nation was at its zenith and its influence stretched far beyond its current, meager borders. He had watched with pride as success fell like raindrops from the sky, as the primitive structures that once speckled this region were reinforced and rebuilt until they shed their shameful husks and stood tall as examples - no, as idols - for all to see.

If ever there was a city that the gods smiled upon, it was that which he had defended for his entire life. The oath he swore to guard its walls was an oath he had planned to keep until age took away both his eyes and petrified both his hands. When pillagers burned the surrounding hamlets and sought to extort the capital, he kept them at bay. When fever swept through the magnificent streets and sent the mourning bells tolling for days on end, he fought through the disease and stood his ground. When the largest horde of invaders anyone had ever seen threatened to destroy this beacon of hope, he rose before dawn each day to ready the defenses.

Rohan came to believe that nothing could pierce into the heart of this greatest city, but what he did not account for was the rot that came from within. Greed and cruelty did more to the walls than any barbarian or plague ever had - there was no better evidence than its current state, a humbled shadow of its former self, its leadership too divided within their own house to address the mounting problems that burned through the progress of years gone by. What he found unbearable was not a decisive defeat, but this slow, poisonous death through a thousand little steps backward.

For the first time in many years, Rohan sat down and did not feel the need to stand up again. He watched from atop the crumbling walls as day slipped into dusk, the chill of a long night already beginning to set in.

Masked Charade

Mixed Media

Peyton Harrill

WINTER BEACH

Archana Nair

Brown eyes, red skies

So many sweet lies

Pink lips, long trips

Pale frozen fingertips

Black hair, salt air

The fire blazing in your stare

Golden skin, beaming grin

You who will always win

Soft sands, gentle hands

You who always understands

Sparkling sea, dancing free

I wish that you could stay with me

Palm trees, sea breeze

You who puts my mind at ease

Nightfall nears, crystal tears

You who rids me of my fears

Starless sky, bitter sigh

I don’t want to say goodbye

Black night, sad sight

How I wish you’d stay tonight

Silent screams, cruel dreams

That come undone at the seams

Birds screech, I beseech

Don’t leave me on this winter beach

Archana Nair

A Year of Rainy Days

It’s been a rainy day today

The sky, a stormy gray

A slight chill in the air

The warmth of your stare

Two cups of tea

One for you and one for me

Your laughter brings me peace

The burdens that I bear decrease

When I’m with you, I don’t feel blue

I like rainy days and how they remind me of you

It’s been a week of rainy days

The gray sky, obscured by haze

The air seems colder

Your head rests on my shoulder

Our hands intertwined

Our feelings, newly defined

Two cups of lukewarm tea

For two days, you didn’t speak to me

I don’t really care if we fight

Because come what may, we’ll be alright

It’s been a month of rainy days

I can feel the sky’s stare, it’s darkened gaze

The air now has a biting chill

I think I might be falling ill

One cold cup of tea

It’s been weeks since you’ve spoken with me

The stinging cold seeps into my skin

The mere thought of you makes my head spin

It’s been a year of rainy days

A year without the sun’s rays

I’ve grown numb to the frigid air

The way you left was just unfair

It’s been months since I’ve seen your face

Felt the warmth of your embrace

It’s been a while since I’ve had tea

It keeps reminding me of how we used to be

I hate rainy days, I really do

I hate that I love them like I still love you

A Chilly Morning on a Mountain Lake Oil paint

Jewel Wallace

ON MOTHERLAND

The ocean has two eyes and they look like my grandfather’s. Hardened, ongoing; all things return to the sea. We spread his ashes in Jersey, in Carolina, where the waves beckon, hands outstretched, reaching for the sky. I stand on its edge, waves over my skin, and think about how home is not a place I ever knew, or could ever return to. How birth is an act of violence and my motherland has blood soaked into her skin. How I don’t have a motherland, but everywhere I tread is red, metallic.

I left the womb with wounds on my skin, and blood, and grief in my bones.

I’ve always loved the way waves make me feel endless, like I’m filling the space between sound and silence. Doesn’t the ocean make us all feel a little hollow? Like someone’s gone and dead, and surely it’s not me, because I’m still here. I can still taste the salt in the air.

I left the womb with Korean eyes, and a million people died so I could arrive, and my grandfather never got to tell me what that means. What it means to be a child of the peninsula, to come from somewhere or someone.

I never got to ask him if the blood in me is tainted because there’s a little white in it. How grief is inherited, and my parents aren’t the starting point. Where does belonging begin or end?

My mother tongue feels foreign to me, but then again, so does every word in my mouth. Love is a language I never learned to speak and so I swallow the salt back into my throat. My country talks about belonging like it’s a birthright, but its hands are stained with blood, the slaughtered, the lost and forgotten and gone. My country is a womb, a knife wound, and when my eyes scan maps for water, all I see is war. And this isn’t even my country, but that is my blood, my inherited blood, seeping into the sand.

As the waves wash it away, I stand on the edge of everything and watch my grandfather return home. Wonder if that’s a place I’ll ever know. I think it must be. These are his eyes, those are his waves. This is his grief, ongoing. All things return to the sea.

A thousand days of sleepless nights, Clinging to a far gone sight. As pale as sky, as dark as ground, Your cold body will soon be found.

It’s taken all your self control, To not slice off your every mole. As tethers strain and wither yet, You’ll die soon, don’t you fret.

You beg and beg and beg and plead, For forgiveness that you will soon need. As red pools on your kitchen floor, None to breathe forevermore.

It’s dark and dark and dark around, Your lungs collapse without a sound. A hiccupped sob breaks from your throat, For all the days you sat and moped.

Early days lead selfish lives, You’ve sacrificed your every pride. There’s nothing left, it’s all to burn, Soon you will have to take your turn.

You’ve loved, you’ve learned, You’ve loved, you’ve lost, For each of these, your spirit crossed. You’ve loved, you’ve stayed, You’ve loved, you’ve changed, Never to be loved again.

Evening Haze

Photography Katie White

CLINGING ONTO SOMETHING

Guinevere Reaume

Istood on the corner of Mullens Drive and Creakar Lane with my pink bicycle propped by my side. I stood there for an hour, just looking at the ashy remains of the once-grand mansion that stood there. I had never been inside the house. In fact, this was the first time I had been able to study it past it’s grey stone walls that shielded it from the regular world. Seeing it now, it was as if a kingdom had collapsed. The reign of this tremendous house, with it’s balconies casting shadows over the little homes below, had finally come to an end. My mother hated the house. To be fair, it was quite a contrast from the others on the street. Our house just 50 feet down the block was probably the size of their kitchen. But now it was gone, and so was all of it’s mysterious enchantment.

What a shame, it was only the skeleton of what once was. The walls were charred to the support beams and the grand spiral staircase collapsed on the ground. Their vast windows shattered into shards of glass that covered the lawn. The chandelier was scattered across a singed carpet, it’s crystals still gleaming. I had dreamed of what it had looked like, and even as it was lying there broken, it was more than I could imagine. I stood there, staring, dreaming of the waltzes and magic nights that took place under that chandelier. Champagne driven conversations with strangers in fancy shoes, or maybe a moment alone in the garden on a summer night. I had always been jealous, seeing sleek black cars drop off ladies in long gowns and gentlemen in their finest suits. They showed off their best pearls and dazzling smiles. I wanted to be them.

But the mysterious fog that always crept through the gates in the early hours of the morning was replaced by dusty ash and broken glass. I realize I'll never hear the conversation and music humming on into the late nights I spent dreaming of being there. The magic and wonder that took me out of my own world is gone. I wonder if those nights were as special for them as they were for me. The nights that I was alive through some odd parasocial fantasy will never exist again. Apparently, the family has another house on the West Coast. They’ll be gone and probably throw the same extravagant parties there. My dream will never become a reality and the magic of the mansion on Mullens Drive and Creakar Lane will only be something I dimly remember as a naïve desire.

Blinding Lights

Acrylic Noor Usmani

I knew two things about you the day we became best friends. The first was that you only liked red and purple Skittles. You had a pack at lunch and poured the orange, yellow, and green ones into my hands after they’d been picked through, only because I was sitting nearby, and all I had for lunch was a tuna fish sandwich. I stared at the candies cupped in my palms long enough for the colors to begin leaching into my sweaty skin. It was hot that day. Hot enough to cook an egg on a roof, as my dad likes to say.

The second thing I knew was that you were a mystery. No one in our second-grade class knew quite what to make of a girl who picked up spiders with her bare hands and seemed unfazed by punishments and snapped crayons on purpose just to try and get a clean break. There was more to you too, but in my seven-year-old eyes, these were the most shocking things.

“Aren’t you going to eat them?” you asked me, staring at the Skittles still in my palms.

I think that if you hadn’t spoken, they would’ve melted together into one big sticky Skittle pancake. I was so struck by the offering that I would’ve ruined it. But you reminded me to eat them, and I did, oneby-one.

You were the only other kid in our class who sat alone at lunch. There was no overlap in our Skittles preferences; we could split a pack with no argument. At our age, that was enough reason for an inseparable friendship.

We grew older. The mystery unraveled slowly and then all at once. I’d thought you were fearless, and in some ways, you were. Every roller coaster meant a laugh; none of them were high enough in the sky. Insects were friends, not foes. The dark was fun to dance in. But really, you were just afraid of all of the big things and none of the little ones. We were opposites that way. I screamed at spiders but couldn’t fathom loss enough to fear it.

You were always the bolder one. People wondered why a girl like you, who talked back to anyone and everyone, would be friends with a wallflower like me. But really, when it was just the two of us, I was the chatterbox. It made perfect sense to us. You trusted me with your silence, and I trusted you with my words.

We were thirteen when the last pieces of your mystery shattered. All at once with seven words. Lying in the dark on my floor, you whispered, “Everyone hates me, don’t they? Don’t they?”

And then I knew everything. I finally understood who you were. There’s no way to truly go back from something like that. You can never look at a person the same way again after you know them to their core.

I don’t remember what I said. Probably something stupid, like “Of course not.” But I remember what I was thinking: it didn’t really matter if everyone else hated you, because I loved you enough to make up the difference.

When you started to slip, I almost wasn’t surprised. Almost. I’d always known you weren’t the easily-satisfied kind of person, and I didn’t mind, because for a while I was enough. But our friendship was like a boulder, unmovable, unshakable, until the day it wasn’t.

The first crack was my fault. After that, every new splinter was a joint effort, a chisel in each of our hands, but I’ll never forgive myself for that first crack.

You wanted more. You wanted more than me, other people to share laughs and secrets with. And I knew, deep down, that you weren’t leaving me. You were just expanding your attention, the lens of your scope having focused on one star for far too long. There was a whole galaxy out there. I was a dim little star in comparison, and I was no longer enough.

But I spiraled. It had always been just us. How was I supposed to share you, just like that? How could you wander away from everything we had?

“You’re just trying to prove that you can be liked,” I said. I wanted to snatch the words out of the air the moment I saw the look in your eyes. Because I was right. And sometimes I think you strayed only because I knew every part of you, including the ones you hated.

After that, I knew we could never fully go back. Words can be apologized for, and even forgiven, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be forgotten. Every time you looked at me, I saw my words reflected in your eyes. It didn’t take long for everything else to crumble. Our friendship had been inseparable for so many years, and now that one crack had been formed, the rest of our little, bottled-up grievances could spill out.

You called me clingy. I recounted every time that you’d skipped class and left me stranded to do a group project alone. You told me that sometimes you didn’t even know what to do with all my words, and I said the same for your silence. Our last texts were sent, the last pack of Skittles shared. I don’t remember what the last words we ever spoke to each other were. Probably a mumbled “See you later.”

Now, two years later, when I catch sight of you in the hallway, our eyes meet, then slide away. My chest aches for a moment because I want to know if you are the same girl, or if I am remembering an old, changed version. I know that in some ways, I’ve also changed. I’m hardly afraid of spiders anymore. But still, I want to share a pack of Skittles with you and tell you how you taught me to fear loss.

Narcissus Poeticus

Ava Bruni

And only find your reflection in the words?

You’ve never been more than it, What you see on paper, pen in hand. Your words are beauty, Ink spread on paper, Like roots in soil.

Echoes in the wind

Curse your foolishness, Repeating back the words

You’ve grown so fond of, Rearranging, Begging you to hear them in a different way. You spend hours alone, Sculpting the words you’ve already written, The words you will always write Again and again and again.

You try to get it right.

You try to get it right.

You try to get it right. Every stroke, Every space.

It has to be perfect. It has to be perfect. It has to be perfect. But all you manage to find is you.

Everything you are

Condensed into one poem.

There’s nothing you love more Than the shallow pools

You see yourself in.

So you write and write and write. Again and again and again.

Stuck on the riverbed

Until the words are perfect. And you think you could love what you see, But it’s not perfect.

You know it’s not perfect. And it has to be perfect.

But it will never be perfect. And it will never love you back.

Author’s Note: This is mirroring the story of Narcissus. In Greek Mythology, Narcissus was cursed to fall in love with his reflection if he ever saw it. One day, he sees it in a shallow pool of water and is so enchanted by his own beauty he stares into his reflection for the rest of his life. When he dies, he turns into a flower, called Narcissus Poeticus (or Poet’s Narcissism).

Blind Dreams

Amy Li

Dreams of a life so perfect, beautiful, and divine Full of days with golden-painted skies Sleeping in meadows of frosty flowers I dream of another life.

I imagine a person with my face, my hair, my eyes. She’s happy, She’s gorgeous, She shines. Everything I wish I were, And everything I’m not.

I wish and wonder, wonder and wish, Without care for tomorrow, Living happily in today’s bliss.

Work can wait, sleep cannot. Dreams are all I have. They sway me and sweep me off my feet, Dancing gracefully to my melodies.

Filled with wonder, filled with hope, I pray I could be her. Diligent, Resilient, And kind If only I would try.

But she’s all I can wish for, And I’m all I ever could be.

Wedding Crystal

Teagan Posey

Every woman in my family receives crystal glasses and decorative dishes starting the Christmas after they get married. Intricate Irish glass, often gifted from a grandmother piece by piece through the years.

My mother likes to joke that her grandmother gave up on her.

That when she was in her mid 20s, still unmarried, she began receiving crystal to use on special occasions, placing it in a cabinet, displayed in the dining room in a house by herself.

By the time my sister and I were born, she had a full set, and her grandmother had passed. a house full of delicate glass and two little girls, both destructive and fragile.

We never remember to use the good crystal on special occasions but there is no love in the life of dishes you never use. So on a Wednesday night in February, we had boxed mac and cheese in Celtic crystal and seltzer in champagne flutes and made the discovery that sometimes beauty is dishwasher safe

The crystal is forgotten on special occasions, forgone for plates that will require no mourning if and when they are dropped by small hands, distracted arms, or uncoordinated fingers. Instead, the crystal lives its delicate, lovely, dishwasher-safe life with mac and cheese on Wednesday nights.

Paper

Young Love

Dobson

It was in the heat of my passion And the breadth of my desire

So dwelt my sin

Hung there - boughs in the Devil’s wood!

Blacker still…

Black as the minister’s coat!

Writhing now…Thriving!

For the devout have heard

The midnight hour

Ring upon their houses of God

Abigail

My father, my father, do you not hear? Songs like a bird’s Songs thou hast not heard? Even as I sing to thee?

Black Bird! Black Bird! Has heard Father! I serenade thee!

Song of the Wretched

And my sorrows do creep

From behind the harmony!

Crying Crow! Does not know! Of a sweeter melody Sweet only As Rosary Pea

To my lips…so melancholy!

The forest, father! She wept with me! Now…on this eve… O’ my expiry!

When sudor sat sickly upon my brow

When knees met earth in Lethargy!

Born in dirt am I father

Born to rot! Born to decay! Born to sing beneath the roots

Upon a quiet day…

Abigail Dobson

*Rosary Pea is a highly toxic plant that produces berries

Chamber of Reflections

*Remake of art by Indonesian artist Nas

Surgery on An ordinAry girl

They cut her open on a cool afternoon in May about 30 minutes after the accident. Usually it wouldn’t have taken so long to begin the surgery on such an urgent case but the driver who hit her ran from the scene, the ambulance was held up by a train passing, and the surgeons were short-staffed due to a flu outbreak. By this point, it was too late.

Her lungs were punctured, her limbs bent in opposite directions, and half of her face was unrecognizable because of the dried blood coating down from the open wound above her left eyebrow, deep enough to see the brain. It took 2 hours for authorities to identify her and alert her parents, but her dad did not believe them until the 3rd hour. Her mom came home from work right away and they broke down together while the dog slept peacefully on his bed, unaware of the gravity of the situation. News spread quickly. It was a small town. She was known.

She was known in the way that she was seen but not thought about. She had friends, yes, but none of them really considered her their best friend. She was on the track team, but she wasn’t very good. She was in the musical, but only in the ensemble. She wasn’t really special in the ways that mattered to people. They mourned quickly. Well, except for her parents.

Sometimes I wonder what the surgeons thought when they took the knife to her skin. Did they, too, think that she was just an ordinary girl? Did they even really care? And what about everyone in that town who knew her? Did anyone really see her, see her the way she so desperately wanted to be seen? When they held the assembly to commemorate her death in school, did anyone shed a tear? I know the answer. But I don’t like it very much.

I wish people knew her the way her mother knew her. A soft-spoken girl who would do anything to make someone smile. Or like her father, a stubborn young woman who always had a plan. Even like her dog, a companion, a comfort, the center of the universe.

She wasn’t special, but she deserved better than passing glances. She was more than just a tragedy, a story to be forgotten. For God’s sake, she was someone. Shouldn’t there be something to be said for that?

I like to imagine when they cut her open it felt like they were cutting open themselves. That it carved into them like stone. Permanent. I want there to be roots in everyone’s hearts that harbor some connection to her. But that isn’t the case. She was simply an ordinary girl who died during surgery on a cool afternoon in May. Nothing more.

Sarah Hegg

sick, dying, dead

Mixed Media

Hannah Gupta

remember you must die

Acrylic

Hannah Gupta

new year’s resolution

Audrey Nguyen

hey, i can’t tell if i still miss you or if i’ve just been wanting you so long that it’s the only thing i know how to do these days. the only thing i’m good for. it’s been months and the paper cuts have yet to close, new year’s being yet another marker of my inability to change. i’ve tried mending myself like patchwork. stitching the pieces together with self-help podcasts, books, hobbies, journaling, and any goddamn thing that’ll convince me i’ve moved on. watch comedy because horror used to be your thing. listen to r&b so you don’t think about that rock playlist you shared. but every time i’ve finished sewing, spent enough evenings swimming in matcha lattes and candle-lit baths, they rip open once again. it’s in the little moments. like passing you in the hall and your cobalt eyes briefly color with longing. so brief i tell myself that i imagined it. or when it gets to be 2 am and there’s nothing else to do but stare at the ceiling fan, wishing i could hear the familiar buzz of your voice against my sheets and the static of poor cell service crackling like a fireplace. it’s in those moments you hit me like mood swings, like a bad habit i thought i overcame. everything that had been tucked in my pocket spiraling uncontrollably. i’m not surprised. growth isn’t linear, as they say, and time moves in revolutions. it’s somewhat pitiful though because i don’t think there was ever a time when i truly did forget. if every action i’ve taken was to spite you, if the glow up was nothing but a facade, when have i ever done something purely for me? how do i, if you’ll always be the thought in the back of my mind? maybe there’s nothing to do but accept it until it no longer dictates my life. maybe i need to recognize that as much as i would like to believe i’ve grown up, i would come running back to you like a child in a heartbeat. maybe then will i become just a teenager again. I’m not sure what you’ll make of this random jumble of words, but i just thought i should let you know that it’s new year’s and i’m still the same person, still making the same mistakes, and still madly in love with you.

Read 12:01 AM

This is How you Commit a Crime

It starts where all good ideas start. Television. Thursday night on Criminal Minds: the cops are investigating the murder of a man who’s been stabbed in the heart by his crazy revenge-seeking wife. You’ll turn off the TV because the situation hits a little too close to home–you have some first hand experience in the field. You try to forget about it. It’s just over-dramatic writing intended to keep the audience wanting more. He left you, kicked you after you had already fallen, took his things and was gone without a second look. Ten years you spent with him, married, dogs, jobs, bank accounts. He said he was in love. He lied. You only found out because the fucker was stupid enough to leave his phone open. Now you’re not loveable anymore and the woman down the street is “everything he’s ever wanted.”

You move on and try to forget, but you can’t. Be-

cause what starts as a figment of your imagination, has now become an idea. It’s terrible and horrible. No good person should be thinking what you’re thinking. But it’s there, and now, your thought has turned into a plan. It’s breathing and it’s born, and you’re cradling it in your hands like a newborn, nursing a sin that shouldn’t be alive.

Now, you’re trying to find the weapon. Something light, easy to conceal. Something like a gun, a pistol that fits in the palm of your hand. A pistol so small, it’s a single round. After that, you’d need to reload and that would take time and effort and your victim could run and tell the cops and then it would be over. One cartridge, one bullet, no hesitation.

You buy the gun at the store that sits between the gas station and the town’s one public bathroom. A place no one would ever go looking. Somewhere no

Vivian Dong

one would remember your face. You pay the guy in cash so he doesn’t track you, you keep your hood down and hope he doesn’t ask questions. He won’t. This is America.

You decide the crime will be committed by the lake off a popular trail. You’ll take your own truck so clean up is quicker. You’ll invite them out for a pleasant Sunday hike, make false amends, pretend all is well. Then you’ll shoot him in the head.

Now comes the hesitation. I won’t judge, we’re all human. Are you prepared to do this? Are you prepared to take a life? Ask yourself that before we move on, because it’s no small feat, I’ll tell you that. You’re going to kill someone’s child, someone’s friend, someone’s long lost love. You’ve just robbed someone of a soulmate. Are you prepared to handle that?

You are. You thought you were his soulmate.

Now you’re driving your old Chevy down a winding road, passing a babbling creek and tall crooked trees. It’s an idyllic day, so perfect a narrator better than myself would call it irony. Your hands at the helm of the wheel, you can feel a bead of sweat trickle down the side of your head. You turn up the AC and hope they won’t notice. They never do, it’s always about him. You chose that pistol because it was supposed to weigh like a feather. You can feel it sitting like a stone, cold in the front pocket of your coat.

You’re standing at the shore of a lake. It’s a pretty lake, the water is clear and blue and the fish swim merrily along in their lazy circles. He’s blabbering about something you don’t really care about, something about making amends and moving forward. You update him on the dogs, and listen to him praise his new boss. You turn to look at them, smiling. It really is a beautiful day.

You’re moving so fast, you don’t even realize what’s happening. One second your finger is anxiously rubbing the handle of an innocent pistol sitting in your innocent pocket. The next, your finger is pulling down on the trigger, and suddenly that innocent pistol just became a murder weapon. That innocent pocket just became the pocket of a criminal. A crack, a scream,

and then a bird’s wings flapping as it flees. You weren’t quite fast enough.

There’s a jagged hole in the center of their chest. Blood oozes out in urgent, desperate, currents and their eyes are opened up the sky, wide and unblinking. You roll their body out to the center of the lake, watching it sink, sink, sink, until it disappears. The merry fish don’t swim within a foot of the body.

Four days later, a hiker will find the body on the opposite shore of the lake. Don’t be surprised they found it, it’s not like you’re an expert at this. They’ll find the gun you half-destroyed buried under a bush. Some bystanders will come forward and say they heard a scream. They’re witnesses now. Your neighbor will come forward, say they saw you with the victim that same day, and tell the police about the muddy Chevy you were driving. The police will come knocking at your door with a warrant for your arrest. You go in peace. There’s nothing left to be done.

You’ll sit in jail for a few months because there’s no one you know to bail you out. They’ll take you to court and you’ll confess because you have nothing left to do. They all ask you, why? Why, why why? You don’t say a word, you let the lawyer do the talking. You stare at the judge silently as you’re sentenced to a lifetime in jail.

Crime is a funny thing. You’re the only one convicted, but look at all these people that conspired your crime. The writer, who wrote that episode of Criminal Minds? He’s not going to jail. The guy who runs the store between the bathrooms and the gas station, the police aren’t banging on his door. And me? The one who’s been telling you what to do this whole time, plotting and directing your every action? You won’t see me in orange anytime either.

And what about your husband? The asshole cheated on you with some other women and ruined everything. If you want to get technical, this whole thing is really his crime.

Call me if you ever get out of prison, okay? It was fun working together.

You turn to look at them, smiling. It really is a beautiful day.

Fluorescent Rings

Photography

Sarah Liu

Blinding Lights

Photography

Jordan Jacoel

It starts as all the others do, In a cozy little life Told it has potential. Believing it, too, Because others of its kind have succeeded And gone on to fulfill their purpose in this life.

Then one day, finally, (it says), it goes off to the place That promises to change you, To reward ambition, To bring you to your fully-formed final self. But then it hesitates, Then it waits too long for an answer That it seeks within its soul. Maybe all it wanted was a little time to breathe. But instead it just drowned (and boiled) And watched as all its friends left on time Took their place in the world, Embarking on the path that they had planned.

And then all it could do was cry. Salty, endless waves flowing through its cage the one it made the journey to itself But nobody notices (they never do).

Then a kindred spirit Pulls it out of its little hell In which it had been forgotten, Dumping it with its peers More experienced, more worldly, more secure. And what can it do? Just pretend.

Lone Overcooked Noodle

Just pretend that it’s the same as all the other ones. Just pray to god that nobody notices. And for all we know, it could be. (It looks the same, no?) But appearances deceive Because once it’s prodded, It gives way

Completely and entirely Giving away Its identity.

Evelyn Yu

INNER WORKINGS OF A GALAXY Digital Hannah Gupta

House of the Sun Photography Ayala Snir

I would assume that

It is difficult to take a hot shower

When you are in the morgue.

Indefinitely in a bone-chilling freezer

Until your time will inevitably come

To be either laid in a wooden box

And placed in a deep hole

Soon to be concealed by permanent bed of dirt

Or tossed into a flaming oven.

And when you open it after baking, Your body will be replaced with ashes

That will be collected by your grieving relatives

And sprinkled around your favorite places

Or displayed eternally in an ern sitting on the mantle.

Either that or tossed in the trash.

I can only hope that my family cares more, Some people care more than others.

But I know

If I was sitting in a morgue freezer right now

Awaiting my autopsy, I would enjoy a hot shower

To wash my hair

And all the germs off my body.

Hot Showers

Instead of scrubbing the morgue freezers clean after every body, A hot shower would get the job done.

I assume they rarely clean the morgue freezers

I could be wrong because like what do I know about morgues?

Close to nothing.

If my autopsy had already been completed,

Would I be ready for my final resting place?

I think I would enjoy getting out of the icy freezer.

The freezer is pretty cool though because it keeps my carcass looking fresh

I demand to look as presentable as possible

At my very own funeral.

It is like a birthday party

Except,I am not really there.

Everyone is sad

Because they are mourning the loss of my life.

Instead of celebrating me being one year older, One year closer to my unavoidable death

They are celebrating my life

On some random day.

A day I would have never picked.

After I would go to a funeral, Not that I went to very many, I would take a long hot shower

To scrub the thought of death off of my flesh. Some are not as lucky

They cannot remove the permanent stench of death

Out of their body

The simple way that I used to be able to.

It is much too late to try and it would simply do nothing for them. It might make it worse.

On the other hand, What is worse than death?

Ada Lavelle

Hot Showers

Hot Showers

Hot Showers

Hot Showers

The Stranger in the Photos is Me

Every family has that one person who will make you awkwardly pose in front of the statue, force you to smile until your face hurts, and take your picture, but not without the gaze of tourists penetrating through you. But that is the end of the embarrassment. That person will then edit, print, and make large and laborious albums of those pictures, which makes the awkwardness worth it.

Years later, when you’re flipping through the album at night, you’ll say, “Oh my god, I remember that!” Remembering turns into rehappening: you feel grateful that you have the chance to unpack those memories and squirm at those stories.

Research says you do not remember your life before the age of four. However, thanks to my mother, the photographer of our family, I have an album of 100 pages with 600 photographs to refer to. These pictures refresh my memory, making the first quadrennial of my life vivid. Now, I know my favorite toys, I know what I ate, who my friends were, and how I dressed for school. I know I loved eating mini goldfish and had a wacky hair day at Goddard School. I know everything.

After a phase from 3rd to 9th grade, where I grew extremely rebellious against my mother’s obsession with taking pictures, I realized it was contagious. My camera roll now has 3000 pictures of not myself, but people and places around me, and I think it is fair to mention this phone is just five months old. But these pictures aren’t random bursts—they are crafted, carefully edited, and positioned according to the Rule of Thirds. It was last

summer that I finally took full custody of my mother’s Olympus camera (who buys an Olympus when you have a Canon? Anyway, that’s beside the point).

As I better understood the art of photography and slowly became a menace to my sister–my dedicated model paid with the promise of ‘no tattling to Mumma’–I began recreating pictures. There is a photograph of me, clutching my sister when I am five and she is two in front of our toy kitchen. I am wearing a floral shirt and my sister, a pink one with no pants (literally, no pants). You can see the fluorescent yellow knobs of our play kitchen, which, at the time, was taller than both of us. But that isn’t the end; the picture lives on. We lived in the same house for 13 years, so I recreated that picture two more times, once when we were ten and seven, and I didn’t know we were going to leave our home by the time we took the next picture, when we were sixteen and thirteen. I’m not sure why I kept recreating that picture; maybe it was to track my sister’s height.

But the hereditary obsession is not just with taking pictures and showing them off. One of my biggest fears is that the people I love will change; change in a way that makes a surge of horror run through my veins. But that’s the beauty of pictures. Even though people in it change, the picture never does. They are like a movie flashed on a wall, hanging in space with no connection to time. It is impossible to step out of them or get back in.

Another reason I take so many pictures is so that when I’m old and alone, in my cozy lit-

Tanisha Agrawal

tle apartment by the sea, I can look back to the time when I went on a trail with my best friend. There is one picture that I cannot stop going back to. It has been plastered on every single social media profile; it has been cropped, rotated, recolored, brightened, and saturated. Ironically, I didn’t pose for this picture. No one asked me to smile for it. It just happened. Perhaps the reason I cannot stop admiring the picture is that it is so utterly representative of me. This is the me-est me you can ever capture. The half-clipped hair with one strand falling out, the black glasses, the Speedo flip flops, the fluorescent synthetic shorts (an emphasis on the thread dropping out and publicly visible), all in contrast with the short red t-shirt. And I am leaning against the wall on one leg. But most importantly, the book. I was reading Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner. Disclaimer: I boast about being a reader but didn’t read this book until this summer, which I believe is a subject of shame. One of the most intriguing parts of this photograph is how the book is floating (credit to my friend for noticing this). But anyway, there I am, always ready with a book in case there is an emergency. That emergency usually refers to waiting. Waiting corrodes my brain. It seeps into my body and stays.

It was a mundane day: July 28th, 10:48 AM. My mother dragged me and my sister to the DMV to get her learner’s license. Not even a driver’s license. Learner’s.

When I examined that photograph to find the “hidden meaning,” it reminded me of the Depression’s most famous picture, “The Migrant Mother,” one which I had analyzed in an 8th grade history class. What that represents is nowhere close to my picture but lies on similar trajectories. It represents the effect of heavy change, something that is not only hard to embrace but also grueling to come to terms with. To understand the lens through which I see my picture, you have to know my story. That’s the downside of photographs that aren’t yours: you don’t know the story behind them.

I have lived in India nearly my whole life until recently, when my family relocated. When I first moved here,, I did not know anyone. I spent most of my time engrossed in books and assembling Ikea furniture. As I assimilated into the world around me, I found myself in a place where I felt

so utterly different. I felt lost but restrained from losing myself. To date, even though I made a lot of friends, I feel different. I often think what no one else is thinking. I stand alone at times, and to be honest, I prefer that. There is a void within me that cannot be understood by anyone. I want to give up that void. I know I can, but I won’t. Because the day I do, I will lose myself, and never meet the old lady by the sea, reminiscing the time she went on a trail with her best friend.

To stand by myself, even when the world around me turns hazy with change, taught me the importance of courage. Courage isn’t always a matter of yes or no. It is the ability to stand rooted in the thought of what tomorrow holds.

the tales of two

The sun loves the moon

At both dawn and noon.

He lends her his light

So she can shine through the night.

The moon misses the sun

But she can do nothing, for night has begun. No other star could ever compare

To her fiery sun and his burning stare.

The sun chases the moon

Like a love-struck loon, But they’re just too far apart.

The distance between them breaks his heart.

The moon, too, wishes to chase the sun. Alas, she knows they can never be one.

The sky and the sea

Are as joyous as can be. When the sky is blue

The sea is too, But the horizon where they meet Is shadowed with deceit.

The sea loves the sky.

You may wonder why She mimics all his hues.

Why, he is her muse.

But deep in their joy, one finds despair.

The sea knows her feelings aren’t all that fair. But she doesn’t know herself anymore

Like she’s lost within the sky forevermore.

The sun and the moon. Apart, both at dawn and noon. Distance drove the sun and moon mad. It didn’t bring them fondness, it just made them sad.

The sky and the sea

Seem happy as can be.

Their closeness brought them both love and doubt; Doubt that the sea can’t live without.

These tales of two They make me blue.

They fill my mind with fear;

Fear for you and me, my dear.

I fear I don’t have the fire of the sun, The drive to chase you even though we may never be one.

I fear I am dependent like the moon

Who can never shine without her sun’s boon.

I fear I am blind, much like the sky;

I fear, in my blindness, your feelings will die;

I fear I may lose myself like the sea; Lose myself in you, and forget about me.

HIGH SCHOOL

I want to tell you a story. A story of love not yet lost. Of forbidden love. Of tantalizing romance, and the ways of a woman. All of you out there who might not be of the age where you know these lifealtering things, I pray you listen and hear what I have to say. It might just make you as happy of a man as I.

It all started one day. The sun rose to an apex over the tree line, cascading ripples of golden glow into the atmosphere. I was walking, as I normally do, when I spotted a sight out of the corner of my eye. I hadn’t even noticed, focused as I was on carrying my groceries back to my house, but there was a woman sitting in the middle of a flowery field to the left of me. Her hair fell in curtains around her, sashaying around her waist, those succulent hips on her petite little frame. They were propped up on one side like a renaissance painting as she faced the opposite direction. I bit my lip. It couldn’t be.

Oh, but it was. My high school sweetheart, ripe for the taking. I couldn’t believe it, imagine my luck! And so soon after Sharen left me? It had to be a sign. I wasn’t going to let this opportunity go to waste. I was going to take what was rightfully mine before it had a chance to escape me. I strode

over, knowing that she would be impressed by the way that I had matured and grown into myself as a man. I stroked one hand through my beard, affording myself a glance at her hips. I wasn’t disgusting, of course, but when presented with a silver platter, one would have to be an idiot to refuse.

As I approached, she spun around in shock. “What are you doing here?”

I broke into a grin at her obvious interest, placing a hand behind my neck to subtly display my raging muscles. Women love nice guys like me, as long as you give them the opportunity to see it. And from her words, it was clear that our meeting was just as extraordinary to her as it was to me. I mean look at her! She was trying to be subtle, the lady that she was, but her nipples were already erect at the sight of me. “Well,” I chuckled, “You know. I decided to move back home recently. I didn’t know you were still around. Would you—”

“This is a school, Harold. You can’t be here.”

Tantalizing, trembling. Her voice brought octaves to shame and soothed the furious storm inside my soul. All I wanted was to wake up every day, lean

”Women love nice guys like me, as long as you give them the opportunity to see it...our meeting was just as extraordinary to her as it was to me.”

SWEETHEARTS

over, kiss those puckered lips, and treat her the way a woman ought to be treated, with reverence and passion. ‘You can’t be here,’ what a tease. But I knew that she knew how this was going to end, so I played along.

“I’d do anything to see you. You know that.” She started backing away, clearly shy after not talking to anyone this attractive for so long. I moved towards her, closing the distance to grab her arm. She made a small noise in the back of her throat, freezing up completely. Her nipples grazed against my chest, still fully erect, so I could tell that she was loving this. See, the true trick to a woman’s heart is through aggression and relentless pursuit. They’re naturally prone to submission, especially when faced with a superior man, so all you have to do is prove to them that you’re capable, and they’ll be bending at the knees to bear your children and start a family. The real trick is picking the right girl: one who won’t run away, and will raise beautiful, successful children to carry on your family name.

And of course, I knew that my high school sweetheart was such a girl. It was evident in the way that she continued to evade me. A high-

quality women wouldn’t let just any man have her. That’s what she was trying to show me by playing hard to get, and the thought filled me with joy. If she was playing up her caution this much while her body showed the exact opposite effect, she was clearly giving all she had to impress me. It was obvious; she was in love with me, too. I leaned down, closing my eyes. She pressed a hand up to my face.

Ah, but for a flower such as her, I would wait a thousand years to taste nectar. And when I finally plucked it, it would be the juiciest, sweetest nectar of any flower in the world. I conceded, smirking. “Alright, alright, but I’ll be back tomorrow for you, my little blossom. And the next day and the next day, forever,” I said, walking backwards in the direction of my parents’ house. She couldn’t even get out a word, just staring at me with her eyes blown wide with wonder.

“You need to go.”

”The real trick is picking the right girl: one who won’t run away, and will raise beautiful, successful children to carry your family name.”

-Teagan Posey

Persephone Photography

Shravani Bankar

-cute love story-

“I like spending time alone with you.”

“Me too.” We sat in silence.

“I love you.”

“How much?”

“I’d give you anything.”

“Like what?” Your eyes wandered.

“I’d give you my whole heart.”

“Would you really?”

“Of course.”

“Show me.” You didn’t move.

“Show me,” I repeated. You finally turned and kissed me hard on the lips. “Thanks,” I whispered as I hugged you. “More?”

“No, it’s my turn.” I let go of you, stood up, pulled out a handgun, and shot you twice in the head. I knelt down to rip off your blood-splattered—but otherwise clean—white shirt so that I could wrap it around your mangled face. A shame you had a pretty face. After retrieving an ax, I slammed it onto your chest. It took a lot of effort just to break through the breastbone and some ribs. But it was worth it. I caught my breath as I saw your heart beat its final beat before I pulled the warm organ out of your broken body with sweat dripping from my hair and blood trickling down my arms. You really would give me your whole heart.

Lily Jiang

Something Blue

Audrey Nguyen

C# G# A#m F# [Verse]

It was in the autumn leaves

Painted like a tapestry

That you made me believe we would change

It was in the sweater cold

That our hearts would burn in gold

And you would hold me close to ease the pain

[Pre-chorus]

Of a frostbite

It’s winter now

And the holidays

Have rolled around

Same old me

Time starts to blur

Waiting for you

Standing right where we were

[Chorus]

‘Cause loving you was violet

It was golden skies

Loving you was indigo

And falling in your hazel eyes

But maybe hate is best now

Hating you feels right

Hating you’s pretending

I’ve moved on with my life

Till I forget what I saw in you

Till all of cuffing season’s through

I’m painting red to cover up a thousand shades of blue

[Verse]

It was in the midnight calls In our whispers through the wall That I’d always seem to fall for you again

In spite of every warning sign

Every restless empty night

I always thought that you’d be mine in the end

[Pre-chorus]

But it’s New Year’s Valentine’s now And I don’t think That missing you’s allowed

And I know you’ve already moved on While I’m grieving what was never mine all along

[Chorus]

But loving you was crimson It was burning skies

Loving you was vertigo And falling in your hazel eyes

Now all I want is peace

No wondering how you’ve been Passing you without a thought Like we’re strangers again

[Outro]

Just wanna forget what I saw in you Want the world to not be tinted blue

I’m painting red with the hopes that someday we can just be purple hues

Swings and Cars

That moment when you realize

That the girl next to you, in the driver’s seat of the car, Has her hands on the wheel and her foot on the pedal When she was once the girl whose hands held the chains of the playground swing next to yours. And something sinks inside of you Because you don’t know how you got here, From metal swing chains to faux-leather steering wheels, From feet kicking up woodchips to feet pressing the gas pedal Of a car you could go anywhere in. You remember feeling like You could go everywhere on the swing, the sky the only limit, Even though you were swinging back and forth in place. But now that you could cross state lines if you wanted to, The mere idea twists your stomach. So you go back to the playground With the girl in the driver’s seat who remembers it too. And even though it is the same flying feeling as before, The swings squeeze your hips, it takes less time to reach the sky, And the world feels somehow smaller.

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Ashley Vadner

to be a Friend

it’s you on my worst days that’s my shoulder and my laughter. it’s you that is my lockbox and safe, where i keep the things i can’t say, can’t even bear bringing into my throat. you, who knows what i’m going to say before i say it, who’s had the same conversation with me a million times and is still not bored of it. you, who remembers who i was when i was the worst version of myself and loves me anyway, in spite, in spite, in spite.

when your sister was born, and you whispered it to me at lunch, like only the most confidential secret, when we made up fake stories about people we didn’t know and you lost your voice telling them to me, when we stayed up until midnight for my sixteenth birthday and never ran out of things to say.

you, who listens to my stupid and useless stories, everything i say when i’m too tired to think all the ones i would never tell anyone else. there’s us, in fifth grade, walking to lunch with our arms linked, and even when we never had to see each other again, there’s us, finding each other in every space in between.

i know what your favorite cat breed is, even when you forget. when i got my first phone, your number was the first one i texted. at some point, the nickname i gave you when we were eight became your only name. there’s us, not speaking for three weeks for some reason or another, and then on the phone for three hours straight.

when you got your license, we got ice cream to celebrate and you couldn’t get out of the parking lot. we sat there, embarrassed and laughing for fifteen minutes. and when we met in first grade, i don’t remember it, but superimposed into every memory i had from before, is the knowledge of you.

i could recognize you a mile away, and our text chain is at the top of my messages, and your face is a dear thing, familiar and precious, i know you, i know you, i know you. your name is a promise, a memory, it is what i’ll remember when there’s nothing else left, what remains solid and safe when nothing else is.

even if we don’t speak for five years, i’ll know you forever, and when we meet again, it’ll be like we never left. i know this as well as i know the unfailing arc of the sun across the sky, the babble of the water down the creek, the shift of the seasons every year.

there at the end, it is only my very best friend, there is you and you and you.

Anika Kotapolly

[Verse One]

I am spring I am summer but I long for the fall and winter nights at home. I am rain, I am heat but I long for the cold, wearing sweaters all day long.

[Chorus]

Fall wants the leaves back, Spring wants the wind back. Winter longs for heat and summer prays for snow someday. The seasons and I we hate everything we are because there’s so much we are not. It’s hard to see the beauty in the rain in March when the snow in December makes us feel alive for once.

[Verse Two]

Trying to find the beauty in my melting skin, and rain washing magma off my ashes. Maybe flowers will grow where I lay and I’ll smile because then I’ll finally be pretty.

[Chorus]

[Bridge]

Flowers eat my skin, lay your roots in my lungs. Flowers weep for me

Weep for them weep for us, and everything we are not.

Flowers growing on our ashes Bodies laid beneath your masses We aren’t beauty, they are beauty We will fall beneath your deciding jury

You are free. We are guilty. We cannot escape the chains you put us in.

[Chorus] [Outro] Seasons change, we can stay the same. We can be anyone we want to–Seasons change, we can stay the same. We can be anyone we want to be.

Sarah Hegg

Starry Night (remake)

Acrylic

Eden Liu

on Grandmothers and dessert

Imagine, if you will, a little six-year-old girl. Her grandmother is visiting, from a hop, a skip, an ocean, a continent away. She hasn’t seen her since she was one, celebrating her first birthday in India. Her grandmother brings with her a million little sweets, and even though she doesn’t know her, this little girl loves her, just a little.

It is 2012, and my grandmother is cooking in the kitchen while my brother cries in the background. Even though I am a picky eater, as my mother often complains, even now, years and years later, I have never not enjoyed her cooking. And so, my grandmother is cooking, and I am the helper, even though I can only just see over the countertops. Today is a catchup day for the kitchen because we are out of ghee and paneer, and so the stove is commandeered in an effort to make it all at once. I watch from behind, standing just on my tiptoes, as my mother is called over to hold one side of the pot as paneer is poured into a cheesecloth, draped over a strainer, and left to drain out the whey in the sink. Because I am six and ever-impatient, I steal a bowl and reach for some paneer, still soft and warm as I hide away with it.

My grandmother loves to cook. Or at least she loves to cook for family, loves to feel useful. When I was six, my brother was three and possibly the worst three-year-old to exist. He was a menace, pouring flour into every nook and cranny he could find, taking fistfuls of rice and making shapes and patterns out of it on the floor. So while my grandmother was in town, she forcibly took charge of the cooking and general household chores, while my mother slept, and studied, and pinned my brother to a bed and forced him to take a nap. And I ran around underfoot, a nuisance who was only slightly, sometimes helpful.

And this, it must be remembered, was the first time I had met my grandmother in five years, and many efforts were made to connect. Unfortunately, these efforts were largely one-sided. This was because my mother, overworked, tired, and doing grad school a second time, had essentially foisted me off onto my grandmother. Now this was nothing explicit, but when you come to your parents’ room a third time to talk about the most important things in the world, obviously, and are turned away, also a third time, you come

Anika Kotapolly

Tempura

i was a gentle human

Hannah Gupta

Come morning light, you will be gone forever, Another idea lost to the spinning sky. Your heartbeat will fade into oblivion, And I will be left here alone.

You are the truest culmination I see, Of every mistake that I have ever made. Just another sin, seared with rage into flesh, By the hands of my restless peers.

But they will never know the pain that I feel, Looking down at you now, so small and so warm, Knowing that in mere seconds, that pulse will fade, An olive pip, ground into dust.

And while I will not cry, or tremble, or mourn, For a moment I will allow myself this: A consideration of what could have been, If you would’ve grown beside me.

I think you would have champagne hair, The type that shines when it falls into a sunbeam. And your eyes would glow with the moon, A beacon of light in this terrible world.

And I think you would be happy. God, I wish this was a time where I could make you happy.

To Something that Will Never Become a Child

Teagan Posey

Womb Oil Paint

Katelyn Wang

A Dream

Anika Kotapally

We are outside and the sky is a painted blue, clouds impressionist imaginings of pink and white and grey. My feet are bare and the grass tickles where its blades press gently into my skin. Somehow I know that here, you will be kinder, here, every burst of happiness won’t be followed by a slow, trickling dread. Your face is open and lovely, and I think that I love you like this, with buttercups waving at your ankles and the sun hitting the half of your face that is turned towards me. My hand tangles in yours as you pull me forward and I let myself believe that, just for a bit, this can be real. After all, I can feel the sun and the grass and the wind as it rushes through this world and I think that this is enough, this version of you that I can love and that can love me, and this version of me that will let it all play out just like I always wanted it to.

We cut a path through a meadow, and there is nothing in our way, nothing to trip me, nothing but the clouds in the sky and the grass under our feet and your hand, always in mine. And when we stop, it is by a small wood, with light turning the leaves golden and birds singing away in the trees. I sit down under the leaves and you join me. It is quiet here, only the sound of our breathing disturbing it. Behind us the forest is bright and lively and I close my eyes for just a second to breathe it in but when I open them it is suddenly creeping away into darkness and every noise has stilled but the sound of our breath and I look to find you but I can’t see you and I turn around in circles, blindly searching, but I know you’re not there and then I blink and we’re sitting again while the forest chirps around us and you pull me up, warm and solid and we smile at each other and why would the world ever be a dark thing when your face is in front of me and your hand is in mine and everywhere you exist is a place I can reach?

We’re off again, then, and as you lead me somewhere new, I turn my head up towards the branches stretching high above our heads. In one of the trees, baby birds are learning to fly and one by one they hop out of the nest and flit into the air. I watch them until they lose their shape among the circles of hazy light in the canopy. The last one teeters over the edge of the nest and drops, lifting itself up for just a second, before hitting the forest floor, dead. And then I blink and it is flying away like its siblings and we are running off again, out of the woods and into the bright and lovely sunlight and why would the bird die anyway when it could live and when it had wings to take it wherever it wanted to go, away from anything that could hurt?

And then we flop down in the grass. The sun is still high in the sky, gentle and non-blinding. You hold my hand and I turn my face towards yours, watching you as you close your eyes and breathe. In profile, your face is lined by light and I think the sun might love you just as much as I do. We stay like that for what feels like forever and then you are pulling me up and behind your shoulder, I see a fox with a dead rabbit in its mouth, moving silent through the undergrowth. But then I blink and it is just the fox alone, slipping into its den, and it doesn’t matter anyway because we are running again and your smile is quicksilver and I only barely catch it and why would the fox need to kill the rabbit when the world is perfect and and the grass is soft and you smile like that at me?

We stop another time by a stream, the exact shade of blue-ish clear that all streams should always be, and let our feet dangle into it, perfectly cool and refreshing. Underneath the rush of water, there is a frog ribbiting, and on the other side of the stream, a bird pecks along the bank for sticks to make her nest. You push me down

6.21 [?] Digital Hannah Gupta

facing and the sun is warm on my face and you are smiling like it is a joke and I remember now that this is a joke and so I pull you into the water too, and we are both smiling and laughing and nothing at all in this world can go wrong now, because you love me here, and I love you too.

GOLDEN STATE GOLDEN STATE GOLDEN STATE GOLDEN STATE GOLDEN STATE GOLDEN STATE GOLDEN STATE GOLDEN STATE GOLDEN STATE GOLDEN STATE GOLDEN STATE GOLDEN STATE GOLDEN STATE GOLDEN STATE

Lily Jiang

On One Sided Conversations

When I talk to my grandmother, I often find myself filling in the gaps of a conversation long past. She asks questions and carries on a topic like any other person would, but she also interrupts me sometimes when I try to respond, laughs at random intervals, or keeps nodding along and making small comments long after I’ve finished speaking and the room has faded into complete silence. I fill in the gaps of a different person each time; first it’s Orville, then Susan, then Dolly. Sometimes, she’ll address me directly. If not, I play a guessing game of my own in the silences.

Does it sound like she’s talking to a sibling or a friend? Someone older or someone younger? It’s fascinating in its own way to hear these bits and pieces of other people who I’ve always heard stories of but never known. It’s amazing how much I can learn just from her reactions to what they say. My grandmother’s older brother tends to cut her off in the middle of her sentences, as does her late husband. The difference between them is that she laughs when interrupted by her husband but gets annoyed when it’s her brother. When she’s more lucid, I ask questions about them, trying to figure out what type of person they were before they died: trying to figure out what it might’ve been like to be on the other side of the conversation.

In that way, all my questions and answers come from the same place. I’ll never really know what I’m missing from these people in her past. People that must have been so important to her, way back when, to put up with those interrupted conversations. To come back into her mind even once they’ve been dead and gone for longer than I’ve been alive. They say Alzheimers turns your mind into static. They still manage to break through that gray, like the first spark of fireworks on the fourth of July: like something beautiful nestled in smoldering ashes. It never lasts, but for just a moment, I know she is happy.

It’s a horrible thing to lose your mind like that. Her body is decaying even faster, and she probably won’t be here nearly as long as I wish she would be. Sometimes, when I think about that fact late at night—so tired that my ceiling starts spinning in circles yet I still can’t bring myself to sleep—I wonder back to the conversations we have. It brings me comfort, to think that in my own final years, when I start to waste away, I might get to talk to her again in my own one-sided conversations.

The Holidays

Audrey Nguyen

It’s the Christmas season. The streets dance with evergreen garlands and twinkling gold lights, dressing even my littered sidewalk in an amber glow. Jazz music hums faintly from a nearby store as the snow falls in rhythm, like the backdrop of some Hallmark movie. The same old plot where the girl walks woefully down the street, her hair and makeup perfectly done despite the biting wind and tears streaming down her face as she realizes she loves him after all. And as much as I hate Hallmark movies, a part of me wishes I was in one anyway. Maybe then, in some perfect world, you would come back home to me. The vibrant scents of cinnamon and freshly baked cookies would waft through my chimney to your frostbitten nose, and you would burst through the door with that stupid smile on your face. We’d throw on the same old horror movie that we always watch, the one where I’d feign fear and grab your hand while you occasionally shrieked just to mess with me. We’d exchange gifts, mine perfectly wrapped and yours covered in duct tape. But it’s been just long enough that I know such a thing won’t happen, and just recent enough that I still foolishly hope. You had wanted to go ice skating after all, and you know I would say yes in a heartbeat.

It’s New Year’s Eve now, December fading into January like tea gone stale. The bag is torn, and the mug is cool to the touch. We haven’t talked in several months now. But it’s the time of resolutions and celebration, shimmering gold and black streamers, and endlessly flowing champagne. Everything seems to sparkle with a glittering hope that tomorrow will somehow fix everything. So I should probably move on too, like my friends say I should. You certainly have. But as much as a glamorous slip dress and red lip boosts my confidence, it feels like nothing more than a ruse. A ruse to trick people,

mostly myself, into believing I’m satisfied when I feel like I’ll do nothing but keep falling back into my old habits and love you in secret. All we ever were was a secret, driving around at midnight and holding hands beneath sweaters whenever anyone else was around. But even though we weren’t dating, you leaving me left it ebbed and flowed like a breakup. Some days missing you, some days not. The ball drops and my heart sinks, more from self-pity than the hope that you would’ve shown up.

Somehow, it’s Valentine’s Day. I’ve finally started getting over you. The vibrant bouquets and tacky candies lining every store still remind me of what could’ve been, but I’m hosting Galentine’s in the hopes that leaning into the clichés will be better than avoiding them. I’ve whipped up a spread of heart-shaped foods and Dollar Store party decorations, and I’ll admit, it’s refreshing, getting dressed up and taking an abundance of Polaroids purely for an aesthetic Instagram post. Of course, a part of me still clings to you, but I think a part of me always will. A part of me will always want you to pull up to my house with a couple boxes of conversation hearts to watch a crappy film and casually smear the pastel dust on each other’s faces.

And I think that’s okay for now. The ache lingers like a cold I can’t quite seem to recover from. But with all the memories I’ve made and will make after you, it no longer consumes me like I once thought it would. There are still times where I wonder if there’s something more I could’ve done, something less. I miss the lustful intimacy, yes, but I grieve for the effortless friendship of before, above all else. But as much as I ponder the what ifs, I think I can finally walk away knowing I was the bigger person. That I was always a ribbon-bound present on Christmas Eve. That I was two glasses of champagne drunk on New Year’s. And that I was a bouquet of roses on Valentine’s Day.

Old Perfume

Audrey Nguyen

ff

I stick my hand into the abyss of the cabinet

An assortment of half-empty jars and glass bottles Dusted in powdered rouge and foundation

Preserved in my naïve attempts to look older than I was

These days I’ve made it a habit to throw on perfume To hastily cover up my exhaustion Nightmare scars and decaying breath Haunting me through the morning

I snag a sample sized vial from the top of the pile Thin enough to fit between fingers like a cigarette And spritz it before the scent catches up to me As I’m in a hurry to make the train

In seconds it blossoms like Amber and crimson on October leaves And the ache that lingered like morning fog Drowns me once again

I don’t have to check the bottle English Pear and Freesia

A slightly musky, androgynous scent With a luxurious undertone I can’t quite place

Maybe that’s why it was your favorite Maybe that’s why it burns

An explosion of scent that floods my senses

Until all I want is to scratch it off my skin

And maybe that’s why I wear Florence instead

A cascade of jasmine droplets in the hopes Spring will come a bit earlier this year

And that my heart won’t linger too long in the cold

Rivendell

A Ballad of Sir Elios

Ethan Loi

His cloak, made with the finest velveteen, And sharpened blade in hand, His eyes shown with a plastic sheen, As they gazed across the land.

Sir Elios wondered what he would spy, As he sat on his equine steed. He heard in the wind, a pleading cry, And then quickly, he took heed.

And with his blade, he struck the foe, But to no effect, he found, And there his pride then turned to woe, As he ran to lands around.

He ran around through distant realms, And to mountain high, he’d flee. For safety, he slept among the elms, In the shadow of a tree.

Sir Elios was a dreamer, And lazy, that he was, An all but mental schemer, That’s what a dreamer does.

Enough for Them

Sarah Hegg

[Verse One]

They said, “follow the rules and you’ll find a life that has meaning to you.” Life that has meaning to them. They said, “follow your dreams and you’ll find a light in the darkness, light that leads to greatness,” Light that leads to you.

[Chorus]

But I must admit, I can’t find where I fit. I don’t know what I love, I don’t know how to love. I followed all your rules, I tried to find my use, I tried to love myself, but you said that wasn’t enough. When will I be enough? When can I be myself?

[Verse Two]

I live day by day but still can’t find the thing that’s my purpose, the thing that will make me not worthless. I live day by day but I can’t see where my path is leading I can’t find my meaning.

[Chorus]

But I must admit, I can’t find where I fit. I don’t know what I love, I don’t know how to love. I followed all your rules, I tried to find my use, I tried to love myself, but you said that wasn’t enough. When will I be enough? When can I be myself?

[Verse Three]

I tried to find a meaning in this life, meaning that isn’t rooted in others desires. I tried to find a reason not to listen to the voices in my head so I could finally be okay.

[Bridge]

I gave you all my flowers in the middle of winter because you said you’d come back and return the favor. It’s still winter and you are nowhere you took all I had and still raised your demand. My garden is empty. You took what made me. You lied and said you're sorry. And I’m supposed to be sorry they didn’t grow in expense so you can come back and take it all again.

[Chorus]

...I’ll never be enough. Never myself.

Believe

Sarah Hegg

[Verse One]

I never thought about the end. Would rather spend my days playing pretend. She was a force that I bowed to, without her I don’t know what to do.

[Pre-Chorus]

She’s swimming through the rivers to the forests in the rain, always liked the pain. She’s miles away but I can’t shake the feeling when she said, “I’ll come back someday.”

[Chorus]

Dreaming, hoping, looking on the horizon. Maybe somewhere she’s thinking the same thing. Over the hills to a new time, I’d believe but I’ve forgotten how to fly. Oh I’d believe, if I knew you’d save me.

I’d believe.

[Verse Two]

And she was crying on her knees. The moment was too big for me. Brown eyes open for the first time, always caught behind the shadow of her mind.

[Pre-Chorus]

She’s chasing up the mountains to the clouds beyond the stars, I’d follow if I could.

She’s miles away but I can’t shake the feeling when she said, “It’s better off this way.”

[Chorus]

Dreaming, hoping, looking on the horizon. Maybe somewhere she’s thinking the same thing. Over the hills to a new time, I’d believe but I’ve forgotten how to fly. Oh I’d believe, if I knew you’d save me. I’d believe.

[Bridge]

Remember the promise, to always be true. I’m not who I once was, but neither are you. Is there still a place for us? Somewhere we can plant our love? Will our paths ever meet again?

[Chorus]

Dreaming, hoping, looking on the horizon. Maybe somewhere she’s thinking the same thing. Over the hills to a new time, I’d believe but I’ve forgotten how to fly. Oh I’d believe, if I knew you’d save me. …I’d believe, oh I’d believe I believe, do you believe? Please believe.

A small ghost sits on a garden bench. Soft violets spill up between the slats, cream-colored roses like tiny crowns above his invisible head.

Of all the flowers, he wants to be the poppies, glowing red embers along the flagstone path, impossible to be missed by any eye. Do you have to be seen to be real?

Through his body, he can see weather-worn wood, and he knows that he is clear as glass-only glass reflects light, and he reflects nothing.

A girl walks into the garden, and she is familiar. Her face is unknown, but he recognizes the honey of her hair and the dimple in her right cheek when she smiles.

She is smiling at the flowers, admiring their bold hues and the grace in their arching green stems. The ghost would rather be the smallest leaf than invisible.

He wants to be noticed by the girl, or anyone. What is the point, if he is all alone?

Reflections of a Ghost Reflections of a Ghost

Ashley Vadner

GHOST RESTAURANT

Wometimes, when people die, their ghosts fly, Fly far away to new and unknown destinations Through the crisp, cold air, Along the horizon of the sky and past the clouds Feeling the buzz of the life around and throughout the Earth.

Sometimes, when people die, their ghosts just sit and deny, They deny truth of their new reality, and cling desperately to the small slivers from their past life, Floating around their house and sitting in the armchairs by the hearth. In the night, they confess their regrets that fuse with the wails of the wind, The whispers of their cries echoing through the pipes.

Sometimes, when people die, their ghosts haunt the ones who wronged them, Deep-pitted resentment in their ghostly hearts.

But over time, they all forget the who’s and the what’s, and live their days as the unalive Watching life grow as small green buds bloom into leaves, Then turn into hues of bronze and red and flutter to the ground.

And like the leaves, they waited for that feeling to be reborn again by going to Ghost Restaurant.

Ghost Restaurant stood on the corner of a particular street,

A place where the spirits of old couples sat side by side, Generations of families broke bread together, And the lonely found company.

From dawn to dusk, the lights of Ghost Restaurant were always lit

And inside, it was filled the spirited cacophony of clinking silverware against porcelain, Bustling waiters as they passed through velvet draped tables, Plumes of smoke in rainbow shades escaping through the chimney, Floating candles and glass chandeliers, Smooth classical music notes filling the air Intermingling with the delicious aroma wafting from the

kitchen doors. Where only one dish was ever prepared, and one dish was only ever ordered.

It was called “Something Alive”

First ordered many years ago by a spirit, Not of a deceased soul, but of one alive. It belonged to a real estate agent, one of the most popular in the area. His days were filled with numbers and mechanical voices,

And not even the green, gleaming cash deposited and tucked away in the safe Could soothe his soul, who wandered around to different places each day, To escape the whispers and hundreds of thoughts, the demands, the expectations pounding in his head. The spirit roamed over the grass fields and through the lone streets, trying to find some purpose, some calm.

And one day, when he finally stepped into Ghost restaurant, The waiter asked his what he wanted to order, And the spirit, with empty sorrow in his eyes, simply replied, “Something Alive”.

It was a peculiar order, one that puzzled the chefs. For it was easy to live, but hard to be alive. But an order was an order, and what more could make a ghost feel more alive than emotions?

The euphoria and the thrill, the heartache and the pain, the love and the joy, the checks of reality that made humans alive and want to live.

The kitchen porters were in charge of gathering the ingredients.

First was some fresh serotonin.

The chef heard lustrous notes coming from the open window, and found a man, playing his violin in the park, a symphony of shrill, sweet notes

And saw the fuchsia pink waves emanating from the crowd of children and adults around him,

Noor Usmani

Brought out a jar, and collected the ribbons of pink.

Second, just a pinch of anxiety. That had to be handled the most carefully. Just a small dip of the jar from an open window Into the high school classroom, murky gray particles filling the jar.

Adrenaline, a teal-colored gas

Leaving a trail behind the roller-coaster cart. Anger, heartbreak and sadness

All collected in trace amounts from a mother’s tears, Which fell behind her child’s locked door.

Emotions which the saucier mixed with a puree, Adding pinches of spices and some thickening. And when it started to bubble slightly over the hot stove, He incorporated the adrenaline, pouring slowly while the other chef whisked rapidly.

The Sous Chef demanded to taste the sauce, while The Entremetier’s steel blade sliced the carrots, Julienned the serotonin into paper thin slices, Chopped the peppers into cubes, onions into dices.

Finally, the Rotisseur worked on the steak

Unwrapped it from the parchment it was steaming in with a mixture of herbs, And marinated it with spices. He placed it in a sizzling iron-cast pan Added a chunk of butter, a solidified piece of love and basted each side of the steak, skin glistening brown.

Presented on a simple white plate. Salad on the side, sauce poured over glistening meat The waiter took out the order and gave it to the soul.

With each bite, the flavor grew And the ghost got déjà vu of the rainy afternoons spent in front of his piano, fingers lightly skipping over the ivory keys of the laughter of his wife during dinner time, family time of the yapping of his Pekinese, and the rush of excitement as he rode his bike down the hill He remembered these emotions, cooked so carefully in the food, with each bite and finally felt alive.

As the real estate agent learned to live, Step by step, savoring his passions. More hungry souls craved a taste, And the more this dish was made, Emotions collected every day

And glided out the kitchen doors on platters of gold

To make the souls of the dead feel something alive

The most popular dish of Ghost restaurant, the story now told.

archways Zion Brown Photography

Crossroads

Audrey Nguyen

You. Me. A rusty school bus packed with band kids. Heading towards what seems like nowhere. Testosterone and sweat drip like crystals on a falling chandelier, and music pulsates in such a way that your bones tremble with every beat. The burning headlights flash, stars on a cosmic highway. It seems as if they could reveal all the dirty secrets blanketed by the twilight roads. Supernova. Everything flowering in flames.

But soon enough the exit ramp gives way to the backroads. Most people have fallen asleep or are staring vacantly out of their respective windows. With no motivation to be comprehensive nor comprehended, words slur to a sputtering halt. Yet you and I are wide awake. I’m all too aware of how the seat creaks with each of our hesitant, syncopated breaths. How, despite the urge to rest my head in the crevice of your shoulder, you wouldn’t want to run the risk of anyone knowing about our situation. I hate to use that word, but what are we really, other than a series of business transactions? Of exchanging relics of romance as currency.

I lean on you anyway because it’s dark and there are knots in my neck. Your heart beats at its consistently irregular pace and your muscles shift beneath your loose sweatshirt. But you never move away, in spite of every signal your body’s giving to do the opposite. For the last couple miles, your hardened fears melt into physical exhaustion, and you lean your head on mine. We sit there in the dark together, staring vacantly out the window with too little and too much on our minds. It seems we always find ourselves here. At the crossroads. Wondering whether we should push our limits or retreat back into the cradle of just friends.

The bus driver grumbles over the intercom that we’ll be arriving in 5 minutes, and everyone rouses with strained limbs. Then someone makes a whistled remark and suddenly 10 pairs of eyes are blazing through us. You jolt up and pretend like nothing happened, embarrassment glazing over your eyes and over your cheeks like a sunburn. And suddenly everything we put together has fallen apart once again. I’ve grown accustomed to this back and forth, your inability to decide. But it hurts the same. Because every time, I think it’s different from the last.

And I can keep reassuring myself that if there’s something to be guilty about, then there’s something you’re afraid of wanting. Right? I can draw it into something metaphorical because how else do I believe you’re worth all the overthinking and assuming? Even if your memory plagues me with nightmares and phantom aches, your shoulder fitting perfectly with my weary head, at least there were a few moments such as these, that justify my distorted fantasies. At least I can point to the moment when everything was bound to either blossom or collapse, you turning around in fear and me still wandering blindly in the dark.

A Study on Butterflies and Other Insects

Ava Bruni

We met each other for the first time at the hibiscus tree in the park near my house. You were crying, something your father said. I tried to comfort you, pointing out the colors of the flowers around us and the birds that owned the sky. You just sat there with bloodshot eyes and a blank expression. You talked in whispers, your sentences short and purposeful, pointing out things I’d never thought to see.

I asked you mundane questions - what your name is, where you’re from - the polite things I was taught to ask strangers. You asked me about the universe, the trees, the bugs, the stars. You pointed out spider webs on branches and ants carrying crumbs twice their size.

Your family came to town during spring break every year to visit your rich great aunt. When you described her, I lied to you, saying I knew who she was, but she sounded the same as every older woman in this town. You told me she was one of those beetles

that pretended to be a ladybug. I didn’t understand what you meant yet.

Every year after that, I met you at the hibiscus tree in the park during spring break. We’d sit on the grass until the blue in the sky turned into stars every day during your visit. Your family never noticed you were gone, or maybe they didn’t care. But we’d spend our week in the shade, avoiding the rest of the world.

I didn’t ask you questions anymore. Anytime I did your face would tense and you would struggle to get the words out. I never asked if you looked forward to meeting me under the tree all year long, waiting for something real to come along and distract you. I knew you enough to know you were.

I knew how you would take your bracelet off and twirl it in your hand when you got anxious,and how you’d blush and look down as you talked. I knew you with braces and I knew you without. I knew you when your hair was short, then long, then short

Entomology (noun): The study of insects and their relationship to humans, the environment, and other organisms.

again. I saw how your smile changed and faded and broke until it was gone.

You used to point at the people who passed us and tell me who they were, naming them all after insects. Wasps and bees were the people in suits, but bees’ job was to make honey and wasps were just there to hurt people. Fireflies were the children who were happy and played, and flies were the ones who sat silently as their parents taught them to. You’d give them stories. Some dreamed of flying and others didn’t know how to dream so they stayed stuck in place.

You told their stories with such confidence, it made me really believe you. As if any word you spoke was the genuine truth, and who the stranger thought they were was a lie. You put the world under a magnifying glass, grasping at any information you could get about the organisms around us.

You never treated me like one of your observations, but I knew you made a version of me up in your mind. Probably a better version, the one I wished I was. I could tell by the way you looked at me and how you tried not to smile when you saw me. How you listened, really listened, when I had something completely ordinary to say. In your mind, the mind that decides who strangers truly are, I was someone you loved. And if you loved me, then I was probably okay.

I remember the necklace you gave me with a butterfly pendant and how you said it reminded you of me. My eyes filled with tears when I saw who I was to you. By the end of the week I gave you a bracelet like the one you fidgeted with. In the center was a butterfly bead, so we could be butterflies together.

One spring you stopped observing the world and stayed silent. I didn’t ask what was wrong because I knew you and I knew you wouldn’t want to talk about it. I filled the silence with everything you used to say. I pointed at the fireflies that played together nearby and the bees that rushed to work. My words weren’t as soft as yours; they didn’t sound believable. You noticed. Halfway through the week you reminded me of something I forgot when I was with you. I was a part of

the organisms I seemed to hate so much. There were only ever wasps and flies and beetles, and I was pretending just like them. You spoke in your same whispers as the day I met you. The whispers that meant truth. And I remember telling you that you are just the same as me. You’re the one who hates the world that raised you and the way it shaped everything you are. You pretend to be different, special, but every year you come back to this town you hate so much. Just like your father and your father’s father and every father before him. You are stuck, just like me. Yes, I’m pretending, but at least I know it.

You didn’t come back to the hibiscus tree after that. I’d see you with your family when you’d come for spring break, but you’d never look in my eyes. It took everything in me not to run up to you and wrap my arms around you and keep every promise I’d ever ever made under our tree.

A part of us would always belong to the hibiscus tree and the time we spent together. But we didn’t belong to the town with its wasps pretending to be bees and flies pretending to be fireflies and beetles pretending to be ladybugs. They’re always going to want to be more than they are. My life was rooted in this town and so was yours. And as much as we wanted to be butterflies and escape the world we were born into, we’ll always just be moths. Drawn to the light of the promise of becoming more.

Melike Leyla

Yilmaz

I am standing on the balcony as I call you, my fingers pressing into the metal of my phone. It’s cold.

I think of you on nights when the cold is so sharp that it collapses against my bones. Hits them with a certain shiver that reminds me of midnights in your room. How we would sit in front of the only open window and breathe the air of each other’s company in silence. We would pretend to stare at the trees that were visible from that small opening–all glorious with branches hugging the stars, not the concrete city we were used to seeing. The sharpness of the air combined with our childlike innocence wiped the exhaust of the city clean.

On those weekends I stayed over, we barely came out of your room. Your turquoise walls–turquoise, because I had decided it was my favorite color and then it was yours too–would engulf us in its bounds. Turquoise, like Agean seas, like the neon highlighters you had, like the dolphin that was in that Barbie movie we watched together. We had also decided dolphins were our favorite animal. Because they are smart, you would say. And I would nod my head in approval. We were smart girls, you know.

Only ten, and we would make your mom buy the poorly written poetry books by a man comparing his girlfriend to a daisy. Beautiful, he would say. Beautiful. I count your eyelashes and study your face. You have the face of the moon. Fragile, dainty. So, so loveable. Beautiful. We were smart girls, but we were still ten, so we would find those words touching, desirable. Taking turns with your turquoise highlighter, we would underline lines we most wanted to be described as when we grew older. Beautiful, we would highlight. Beautiful.

What I knew as beautiful was the smell of gentle lavender soap lingering on our hands after we washed them before dinner. Beautiful was our hair hanging off the mattress as we laid there together and held hands.

Those nights, we would make plans of what our life was going to look like together. In high school, we thought we would go down to Bagdat Street down your house and visit cafes after school. In college, we would be roommates. We were going to adopt a cat, and you would let me

name it Snowflake, as long as you were allowed to name the puppy we would get in return.

Those nights, we would lay under your teddy-bear covers, our hands tightly tucked into each other’s, unable to sleep because of how giddy we got thinking of each other, of us, of our future.

Right before drifting off, we would tell each other things that we were too sad to say in the morning light. You would complain about your siblings and I of my loneliness. I love you, you would say. We will never ever separate. You are never lonely with me. You would hold my hand. I’m here, you would say, gazing into my eyes. I’m here. Do you hear me?

Now I’m standing on the balcony and I ask you how school is going but what I really want to say is–do you remember when we used to wear your long dresses and pretend to be princesses when we were younger? You would tell me to call you Victoria and I would be Theresa, because we thought princesses only had foreign, English names. What I desperately want to tell you is that I read that your name means queen in Arabic. You have always been royalty, adorned with everything beautiful, sitting on your throne. I don’t know what you would say to that. I don’t know if it matters.

I think of you and I think of the cold air and old poetry books and a turquoise future, when we reach the 20 minute mark in our call. It seems we can’t get past that time. The girls who would sneakily talk under covers after bedtime, now standing in silence, listening to the hum of the phone after we talk about our classes and the weather. Something that tastes like tears prickles in my throat.

I quickly tell you goodbye but what I really want to tell you in that cold air is that I miss you. The fact is, I want to say, I’m afraid those younger girls residing in my memory hate us for breaking their promise. The fact is, I want to tell you, I itch to tell you, I feel lonely. And I want you, so desperately, to hold my hand and say I’m here.

Can you hear me? I’m here.

I hang up the phone.

memento of that bay

Photography

Zion Brown

Pazhani Photography

Tashikaa Senthilkumar

םירפתשמ םייחהשכ

רינש הלייא

Ayala Snir

,יב בוט ףוס ףוס

.רזומ הזו

,לבסל יתלגרתה רבכ יכ דדומתהל תוצלאיהל

,ישוק םע

,יביטקלוקה תונלבוסה רסוח םע .לרוגה םע

,תכרעמב תטבחתמ דימת ,החפשמב

.ימצעב

,רזומ הז

.ימצעב רוחבל םואתפ

,תולוקהמ םלעתהל

,תוגאדב םחליהל

,תוכלשההמ רענתהל

.םושנלו

.קומע םושנל

,רזומ הז

ריוואה תא שיגרהל ןמזמ אל דעש תואיר אלממ

רוכע ריווא לש תומישנמ וקחשנ .הדרח אלמו

,תונפדה ךרואל ול לייטמ ןצמחה וישכע

,םייובחה םירומיקה לכ לא עיגמ ,הצוחה הרזח ול באשנו .םירוסיי וא תומחלמ אלל

.שפוחה אוה רתויב רזומה רבדה ךא

,האנהה יקמוע לא ףחסיהל שפוחה ,חונל שפוחה .תויחל שפוחה

Author’s note: The poem explores my feelings as a second-semester senior, transitioning out of the stress of high school and into a more mature and content mindset.

E A G#m B

[Verse I]

We’re those people

Never sure what we are

Meeting halfway seems way too far

For you

We’re those people

A longing stare is all we have

We’re those people

Our paper house bound for collapse

[Pre-chorus]

It’s nuanced

It’s subtle

You’ll never know

That even though we ended ages ago

[Chorus]

It’s like a paper cut

That’ll never close

You rip my heart like

Sweater holes

Snagging on the loose strings

Always left wondering

If this was ever real

‘Cause we still touch

Like we’re lovers babe

Heart on my sleeve

Why do I still wait

For you to make up your mind

Finally cross the fine line

When that’s just a selfish ideal

[Verse II]

You’re that person

Whose name will always make me ache

You’re that person

We’re too young but way too late

Still I’m that person

Who won’t give up on a “maybe”

Standing at the crossroads

Thinking you’ll come home with me

[Chorus]

It’s like a paper cut

That’ll never close

You rip my heart like

Sweater holes

Snagging on the loose strings

Always left wondering

If this was ever real

‘Cause we still touch

Like lovers do

But I guess you were never

Mine to lose

Only in the twilight

Were we just “yours” and “mine”

Commitment wasn’t part of the deal

[Bridge]

It’s unlabeled

It’s curious

It’s everything I thought I’d want

But it’s questions

I can’t ask

It’s expecting

This won’t last

And wondering if you’ll just move on

[Chorus]

Call it a paper cut

From a blunted blade

But in the end

This was the choice I made

Waiting for an answer

When I shoulda known better

That things were well defined

‘Cause we’ve done everything

That lovers do

You just wanted the freedom

To pick and choose

Whether you would leave me

Without feeling guilty

Walk away at any time

No need for a formal goodbye

Audrey Nguyen

Venerable Notre Dame Cathedral

Mixed media

Ada Lavelle

Church in January

Vivian Dong

It is a Sunday morning in January, and I am going to church. Icy gusts blow in through open doors, On the news, they say it’s cold enough to kill. I pull my coat closer to my chest, the one you gave me for my twenty-eighth birthday It still makes me laugh, how all these years later you’re still keeping me warm. Alone in the dark, I sit in the back of the pews, listening to an ancient priest talk about heaven and hell and sinners and saints. With folded hands, I listen in deep silence. Engulfed in this echoing voice, I think about you. They are all praying away their sins, trying to be purified to gold. But I am only praying only for you. Somewhere along the way, you became my religion. You with you golden hands, And your lovely face turned up to the sun. I am not sure when you became my savior, but I do know that I am now your apostle, destined to follow you until the end of time. We used to mock the pious, call them silly for trudging to church in the cold and the rain and believing in imaginary men sitting in the sky. But now, I am sitting in church on a Sunday morning, And I haven’t missed a sermon since you left. I get it now, needing something to believe in. We stand together in shadowy rows, heads bowed in the dark, hands close to our chests. surrounded by believers, I search for something that is true. I pray I’ll be forgiven, that my sins will be washed off, and I’ll be loved once more. Please don’t mock me,

The Father, The Son, and The Holy Goose

Deirdre Cunniffe

“Do geese see God”

Spelled backwards Is still “do geese see God.”

I think it might be off-putting if you were to walk into church on a Sunday, dragging your feet in dress shoes that your mother made you wear, and you sat down next to a goose.

Could a goose perform the Sign of the Cross? Lifting its wing and bowing its head, murmuring The Father, The Son, The Holy Spirit without any meaning.

How do you wish peace upon a goose in the eyes of God when they have no hand to shake awkwardly, while you both wonder how much more time is left in Mass. (about 30 minutes, depending on the speed of the communion).

And when you stand to follow the clergy out of the chapel, placing red hymnals in their spots on the backs of the pews, you both have a set of footsteps. Girl and Goose leaving a house of God perhaps wondering what the other was praying for.

Do geese see God? do Geese see goD?

Everyone’s Dogs are Dying

Deirdre Cunniffe

People say there isn’t much from 17-20 years old. Sure, you’re a legal adult when you turn 18, but that pretty much only opens up opportunities to vote and buy a lighter from a Walgreens. I would disagree. 17-20 is a very specific era of someone’s life. It’s the time when everyone’s dogs are dying.

As we enter 17-20, our beloved family pets, the ones we’ve had our whole lives, or for as long as we can remember, normally turn 15-18. They’re aging and we’re aging. We’re getting ready to start the next chapter of our lives, and they’re getting ready to cross the rainbow bridge. We can’t go with them, and they can’t come with us.

We learned to tie our shoelaces and they learned to sit. They learned to shake hands and we learned times-tables. They learned how to walk on a leash; we learned to jump rope. We all, simultaneously, learned not to eat grass.

We are all moving forward and leaving home and things are changing and the lab across the street that’s been there for years turned 16 the other day and I’m starting to worry. He’s not even mine. When I get my acceptance and rejection letters from colleges, he is there, laying in the sun, and when my mailbox creaks and he looks across the street,, his tail thunks against the pavement and my heart hurts. There is a day when he won’t be there. I probably won’t be there either.

What horrific symbolism. Why must we lose our best friends as some sort of metaphor for the passage of time? I wish I could steal some of the longevity of abstract comparison and give it to the lab across the street.

We are all growing in the physical sense, we are all growing in the metaphorical sense, and everyone’s dogs are dying.

t h e f o o d

The Time Food Saved the Day

Tanisha Agrawal

Crumbling pieces of paper fluttered through the air like birds trapped in a cage. Giddy with summer, I flew down the uneven road in the torrid heat to reach Mariam’s house. The roads seemed to be at peaceful slumber, but the country certainly wasn’t.

It was the day of Eid, the most prosperous and perhaps most significant festival for Muslims. India, my country, has housed several religions for years now. Despite the celebrations these religions offer, ups and downs are an integral part of the country’s history. Religious clashes between the Hindus and Muslims erupted sporadically. The country would transform into a battlefield, with ordinary citizens massacring each other, bloodshed, grief, and hatred all galore. Today was one such wretched day.

Mariam and her family had been our dearest friends for years. We were Hindus; they were Muslims. But that didn’t matter to us. After all, we are liberal. We love everyone. We are loyal to our people over religion. Mhm sure…

Every year, Mariam’s family cordially invited us for Eid celebrations. We watched them pray, gave them Eidis, or gifts, and ate food. The food. The heavenly food. The Biryani, the Cambaabur, the Maamoul. Oh my god. But...the Sheer khurma. The sheer-khoor-maa. Mariam’s mother, Amina, who we lovingly referred to as Amu Aunty, made the best sheer khurma, rich and creamy and elegant dessert made during Eid. The way she ground the nuts, boiled the milk till it turned a golden brown, and garnished them with spices was mesmerizing. The steam would rise, and the smell would waft across the corridors, rooms, and through the walls to reach our nostrils.

That day, amid celebrations and greetings, the news interrupted us by blaring reports of people killing each other and the police being ruthless. It blatantly broadcasted those grieving the dead. Inadvertently, the room was divided. Divided by religion. What came next, I had never expected. Never in my life. I was too naïve and ignorant. One of Mariam’s family members blurted out, “These people are filthy; look how they just kill us.”

And from there began the exchange of comments from both sides: rude, ugly, offensive comments. I felt like I was dropped onto a battlefield, unarmed and vulnerable. I cannot explain more of what happened because it simply does not deserve to be reprinted.

Just as the next bombardment of insults was on the brink of beginning, Amu Aunty appeared from the kitchen, carrying an aroma of sweet, cooked milk with her. In her gentle voice she said, “Sheer khurma is ready.” We looked at each other. Stared at each other. Glared at each other. We slogged through the hallway, tension higher than ever. The distance between everyone was greater than ever. I didn’t know which side was mine. I felt caught in between people being physically repelled by each other.

As we neared the steaming sheer khurma, the heat seemed to subside. Tension alleviated. Our eyes lay on the pot, the pot glistening with brown milk. Poignant eyes met. Smiles broke out. Apologies were exchanged. My father reached for his handkerchief and wiped droplets of sweat from his temples. Mariam’s father let out a sigh.

Everyone settled around the round table. It was was covered by a white sheet embroidered with colorful flowers, almost like a veil on a bride. I stared at my plate. I could see myself in its huge, perfectly round, almost moon-like surface. I looked like a bride. Silver bowls were placed on the circumference with a myriad of food in each of them. Sour, sweet, salty, bitter. You name it and that taste would find its way on your palate. After all, it was the Romance of Ramadan! Placed in the center was a glass bowl, clear like crystal, standing out among all the pearls. I leaned towards it. Wedded to the almonds and dates, the vermicelli submerged in the milk added a punch of flavor to the Sheer khurma. It was scrumptious, satisfying, and serene.

Who would’ve thought that homogenized milk with nuts and vermicelli, a match made in heaven, could weave us back together? Alas, we aren’t handcuffed to history. We don’t have to churn the waters for war. We don’t have to live in a planetarium of crime and hatred. We can live together, especially if there is Amu Aunty’s Sheer khurma.

s a v e d t h e

Author’s note: Sheer khurma is typically creamcolored with vermicelli and toppings like saffron and various nuts.

The Mission

Noor Usmani

The countdown had started.

With that realization, I bolted up. My e-device slipped out of my hand as my heart started to race wildly, thumping hard against my chest. With sweaty palms, I pushed my hair out of my eyes and looked at my associate, seeing my panic and fear reflected in her eyes.

I exhaled deeply once, pushing out all distractions from my brain as I tried to map an escape route, my vision sharpening and focusing on the goal.

5…..

I crouched low, and then sprinted. I ran down the slope, my hand gripping the railing to make sure I didn’t fall down headfirst. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted my associate leaping from one landing to the next. I swerved sharp right, and raced down the hall, sweat trickling down my back.

4….

I stopped with a jolt. My heels dug into the rough ground to prevent me from colliding with the sleeping guard dog, curled up in the entrance of the hall exit. I tiptoed to the dog, and with careful precision, I stepped over the enormous creature, holding onto the wall for balance. I beckoned my associate to follow.

3… Almost there.

I dodged large chairs, ducked under tables and jumped over obstacles littered on the floor.

2..

I heard a loud crash on my right. Heart sinking, I glanced back and saw my associate had fallen, her foot twisted in a jutting angle.

1.

I lunged forward, arms outreached. Time stretched to a stop.

My eyes widened as my fingers slipped past the handle.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

I heard the thundering footsteps of doom coming closer. Fluorescent white light blinded my eyes. My back straightened as I heard a shrill voice.

“What the heck are you guys doing in the kitchen at 2 am?”

The pizza pockets sat desolately in the plate inside of the microwave as my sister and I turned around, cringing in fear.

Red Mush Digital Teagan Posey

Winged Digital Teagan Posey

won-der-land

Amy Li

[ˈwəndərˌland]

noun

1. a land or place full of wonderful things

2. a place that sparks bliss, fleeting moments of child-like curiosity

3. a home for dark secrets and chaos

4. inward tumble of hopelessness

5. the feeling of good friends and meeting an unexpected savior

6. moments of you and I

Bloom Photography

Katie White

The Peacock Mantis Shrimp

o

Colored Pencil

Jessica Joseph

x t

i o

(Mushroom House Tapestry)

a k

Crochet Ava Bruni

Ce-ramen-ic Ceramic Katelyn Wang

THANKSGIVING BLUES

Evelyn Yu

Ilove Thanksgiving cooking videos. Every year, when November rolls around, I spend an indecent amount of time lusting after modernized, stylish iterations of butternut squash and brussels sprouts and cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes.Those beautifully choreographed, sunlit, aspirational “tutorials” on the food channels of left-leaning media conglomerates where extremely talented and realistically beautiful chefs lament the ubiquity of bland and boring Thanksgiving fare while simultaneously unable to conceal their absolute adoration for a holiday largely centered around food. They fill a very specific, turkey-shaped void inside of me.

All I want for my future self, really, is an annual Thanksgiving bash-- a multiday affair of prepping, cleaning, cutting, cooking, stressing, eating. It’s my version of Cinderella’s ball, only the carriage is actually a pumpkin. And with no evil stepmother, the only thing stopping me is… well. It’s complicated.

My family’s never really celebrated Thanksgiving, a fact that still somewhat baffles me. We love food, we love gratitude (as much as one can love such a thing), and my mother, at least, is rather keen on the concept of family. But still, we don’t partake in the annual celebrations.

For one, we’ve never really done Thanksgiving food. After much pleading, my mother agreed to make mashed potatoes and a roast chicken when I was 11, but we never did it again. In fact, I distinctly recall that when I was 12, we had Chinese takeout for Thanksgiving dinner. Supporting local businesses, I guess?

As Chinese immigrants, my parents’ palates haven’t quite become accustomed to the American diet. And they shouldn’t be. Chinese food hits different. Hits better, actually. Peking duck is like turkey’s more fashionable, more mature, more generous second cousin once-removed. The food we choose to eat is also a way of retaining and passing down culture. In so many ways, my parents have assimilated: they only communicate in English at work; they consume American media, be it television or books or movies; they wear American clothes: Wrangler Jeans, Nike shoes, Calvin Klein underwear; they’ve owned a Chrysler Town and Country for longer than I’ve lived. But in this small way, they’ve

stayed the same. They’ve never learned to like bread more than rice, pasta more than dumplings, and they probably never will. Equally, if not more importantly, they’ve given this morsel of culture to me.

In most aspects of my life, I am more Americanized than my parents. Sometimes, I can only think of how odd it must be for them to look at me, and see-- not as most parents do, a sum that is greater than their parts--- but instead, a strange, fun-house mirror distortion of their beliefs and ideas, one that looks more like a country they’d never seen before they were 21 than the one they were born in. But when we eat together, all of that fades away. I know every dish they do, every flavor they love. Even when I was little and my Mandarin was poor, I could say, in a perfect accent, the names of all the most popular Chinese foods.

As I got older, my worldview expanded, and I came to know more of cuisines beyond my own. Friends graciously accepted me into their homes and shared with me cultures their parents had similarly brought overseas and kept close to their hearts and stomachs. But through all this, my home base and frame of reference is still my dearly beloved Chinese food. Through it, my past seeps into my present every day. Even if my mind can’t always remember my distant lineage and history, my tongue always does. So yeah, we don’t do Thanksgiving food in our house, seeing as it’s the peak of American food culture. But nevertheless, my heart will always yearn for it. I know that it’s really not that good. I know that it’ll make me feel tired and lethargic if I eat more than seven grams of it. But I want it. The other facet of Thanksgiving is family. I think it’s very telling that all the videos I’ve watched and all the aspirations I have about Thanksgiving dinner only ever involve having friends over for a celebration. I rarely think of my family in that context. But that’s what Thanksgiving is about, isn’t it? The fourth Thursday in November is for seeing your third cousins and your great-aunts and not quite knowing what to say to them. It’s for smiling awkwardly at uncomfortable comments made by your wellmeaning but somewhat insensitive grandmother. None of that has been true for me. I spend my fourth Thursday in November with the same two people I’ve

Thanksgiving Blues

spent my whole life up until now with. “Family”, to me, has always been an abstract concept. They’re strangers that I share a slightly higher percentage of DNA with, and does that really matter? If I’ve never met them before, what does it matter that they’d be obligated to help me if I had financial troubles?

I’m an only child with two immigrant parents. My sense of family was predestined to be disjointed. The truth is, if both my parents died, my emergency contact would be a girl my age whom I didn’t know until four years ago. I’d have no meaningful next of kin.

But it’s not all bad. Most of the time, truly, I don’t mind. In some ways, it’s more freeing not to have family members expecting something from you that you can’t give. I feel loved; it makes no difference if it’s by two people or two hundred. It’s only really when Thanksgiving comes that I feel a little more alone. But what about that final pillar? The gratitude that supposedly lives in the soul of this holiday–a quintessentially American kind, a gratefulness for the success of the nation based on the direct contributions of those that it destroyed. The first Thanksgiving was celebrated by immigrants. Allegedly, they were celebrating their cooperation with (read: domination of) the native peoples of this land.

I’m not an acutely grateful person; even as a young child, this story didn’t strike me at my core. I’m also not particularly patriotic; I harbor an internal conflict about the past and future of this country that seems emblematic of this generation. But how can I say that I’m not grateful to be here, in America, when my parents, through an implausible journey of fate and devotion, came to this place for a better life? I’m as cynical as the next person, but I’m also just as susceptible to America’s perfume—it

smells like pure, unadulterated potential. The truth is dirtier, messier, more unkind, but the dream, that American one, never stops being beautiful. You have to be in America to access that dream, however corrupted it may be. And I am. I’m here.

The colonizers at the first Thanksgiving were here, too. And I’ll bet they probably felt similarly: vaguely confused and displaced. What they chose to do with that feeling was devastating; they ruined an entire population, shaping the course of history irreparably and unjustly in their favor. They buried their discomfort under the weight of their sins. What will I do with that feeling? I have no clue. Probably not what they did. But I do, oddly enough, have faith that I’ll discover the answer in time. If I’ve learned anything through the course of 15 Thanksgivings, it’s that such a feeling never goes away. I’ll never be from here. I’ll never not be an immigrant’s child. I’ll never see my grandmother during the fall. But I can belong. I can do whatever I want on the third Thursday of November, and whatever I choose will be a reflection of the life I’ve lived, of the matryoshka dolls of lives contained in my history.

A part of me is scared that if I do ever manage to spearhead my own Thanksgiving celebration, I still won’t enjoy it. I know something about the sweet taste of anticipation, and I’m worried that’s what this is. Like Gatsby and his Daisy, maybe I’m only in love with the idea of Thanksgiving dinner. But what if it isn’t? What if it turns out to be everything I dreamed about? Wouldn’t that be worth a shot? Wouldn’t that be beautiful?

“Sometimes, I can only think of how odd it must be for them to look at me, and see--- not as most parents do, a sum that is greater than their parts--- but instead, a strange, fun-house mirror distortion of their beliefs and

what spring rolls have given me

Vivian Dong

My biggest takeaway from last night was those spring rolls. Holy crap those spring rolls were like Jesus’s spring rolls. I’m still thinking about those spring rolls. They were so insanely good. Someone please get me the manufacturer’s number, so I can personally tell them how their spring rolls changed my life.

I don’t think I’ll ever be the same person again after those spring rolls.

I forced my mom to go out for me and find those spring rolls and fingers crossed she does because I simply cannot stop thinking about how good those fucking spring rolls were.

autumn traditions

Photography Gigi Prothero

The Duomo, Florence, Italy

Pen

Lily Jones

Another Ballad of Sir Elios

When Elios, the errant knight, Romped off to town one day, The peasants there were filled with fright, Much to the knight’s dismay.

“Now cease your step and drop your sword-” A voice behind him said. The knight then followed in accord. “-Or else, you’ll lose your head!”

Elios tried to turn dramatically, Quickly face this newfound foe. He soon found himself, erratically, Quickly shifting in the snow.

The stranger raised their sword and yelled: “Stop moving, knave, I say!” Elios told himself, impelled: “It’s reckless now to stay!”

The stranger swung in one, wide arc, The knight would slip and fall, The blade had barely missed its mark. “This isn’t fair at all!”

The knight yelped in tremendous fear, He clutched his sword once more. Elios jumped up like a deer, And appeared as if to war.

The stranger caught up swiftly. They bound with dance-like grace, And threw their fist quite stiffly, Right into his wide-eyed face.

Elios fell onto his back, And for the third time too. He hit the ice and heard a CRACK! His world then turned to blue.

The water underneath the ice sheet, Was more frigid than above, He heard the slowing of his heartbeat, And his hopefulness thereof.

But as he yelled and cried for help, A peasant girl was near. And hearing his repeating yelp, She overcame her fear.

She then dove in right after him, And hastily pulled him out. They nearly lost both life and limb, And now stumbled ‘round about.

They warmed themselves beneath the sun Then each traded their thanks. They simply talked till day was done, And then parted by the banks.

The stranger watched them from afar, And a plot did they contrive. A wicked plot to kill and mar, ‘Cause the knight was still alive.

phosphoresce Shravani Bankar

Photography

Summer Burdens

Sunny Ajitabh

“That was exactly how I felt, following my own Obscure Object. As though I were carrying around a mysterious, unexplained burden or weight.”Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides.

The summer has been unbearably warm, its heat so heavy that it’s forced us down onto our knees in her backyard, struggling under the world’s burdens. I can barely open my eyes beneath the weight of the sun.

She looks the opposite of miserable, though. The sun spreads under her freckles and turns her skin to copper, glinting in the light. Golden rays turn her auburn locks into red flames that flicker down her back. With the way she unintentionally bends the sunlight to do her bidding, I wouldn’t be surprised if she told me she was a creation of Apollo.

She turns to me, letting a strand of fire slip over her ear and across her face. A smile glides over her lips like butter. I thought I was melting before from the heat on my skin, but the way she gazes at me, with those sharp emerald eyes and that languid smile, I realize I’ve only now reached my boiling point. I’m evaporating.

Scratch Apollo. She’s Aphrodite’s incarnate.

“It seriously sucks that you have to go away for the summer,” she murmurs, her voice a golden drawl over me, like honey, sweet and heavy. “I want to take you to my summer house. We could have so much fun.” She leans toward me, and against her lips I see the promise of a secret. Her mouth grazes my ear as she whispers, “My parents won’t be around as often. We could sneak in all the booze we want.” And, as an afterthought, she adds, “Also, boys.”

I laugh, though I can’t find myself sharing the same excitement. I flick some dirt at her playfully, and she squeals in delight. “Your parents are already out most of the time,” I tell her, raising an eyebrow.

She scoffs and takes a sip from the brown bottle in her hand. I watch her do so, mesmerized by her movements. Her lips curve so perfectly around the rim, their pink gloss glistening in the sunlight, and at the sight of them, jealousy devours me.

My insides broil into something acidic and poisonous, raging hatefully at the bottle. I want to be the drink she sips from.

It’s disgusting how desperate I am.

She hands the bottle to me, but I shake my head and she takes it back, placing it at her side. “God,” she scoffs, “you need to loosen up a bit. We’re in high

school. Everyone does it.”

“Maybe you’re just a part of the herd.”

“Herd? Did you just compare me to a cow?”

“Moo.”

Now it’s her turn to throw dirt in my face. Specks of brown fly in the air as she lurches towards me, but the alcohol makes her sluggish. Her body pushes with all its might and her red hair flies, igniting a miniature fire over her head, but I’ve already scuttled several feet away from her before it hits me. She scowls in my direction, and I respond by sticking my tongue out. Groaning, she turns back, hair whipping behind her. I wonder how it doesn’t burn her as it touches down her back again.

For a second, I can only continue smiling at her, my pride swelling with the knowledge that she failed in her attack. But when she doesn’t turn around to face me, when she doesn’t allow me another glimpse of her golden beauty, I suddenly feel as if I’m the one being punished. The mere feet of grass between us has suddenly turned into an ocean, and we’re floating on two different continents, so unbearably far from each other. Even under this heat, without her, I feel only the dread of winter settle in my bones.

My heart aches at the loss, and I scoot myself back over. Immediately, as I come into her vicinity and feel her heat next to mine, summer returns. Her bare shoulder brushes against mine, spreading its warmth to me. Electricity dances between us where we touch, and I feel as though Zeus himself has struck me with a lightning bolt.

Her golden fingers gingerly push her hair away from her face. Once again I am in the glory of her beauty: the overwhelming freckles, the scrutinizing eyes, the arched lips. Being so close to her, I can see that her face isn’t quite symmetrical - an uneven eyebrow dances over her forehead, and I realize that she isn’t as perfect as I thought she was.

Which makes her even more human to me. Even more attainable.

Her eyes bear over my own face, searching across each and every crater of my skin. First my eyes, then my cheeks, even my lips for a fraction of a second. Finally over my dark hair. She smiles again and reaches over clumsily, almost falling over my body. “You have such pretty hair.”

“That’s not what my parents tell me,” I admit.

“It’s usually in my face.”

“Yeah, it is. But it’s still pretty. Like… you don’t really care.” Her fingers push my hair away from my face. A ripple of shock washes over me as I realize how close we are. Merely inches away from crashing into each other. “But you have an even prettier face.”

“I wouldn’t really say that,” I say bashfully, prying my eyes away from her.

“I would. It’s, like… dramatic. In my face. But in a good way.” For a second, I allow her words to soak into my skin. But then she takes another sip from her bottle, and ice conquers my chest, cooling down all my systems. How do I know she means any of this when she’s wasting away in front of my very eyes?

Her fingers detangle from my hair and lay in her lap, but her eyes never leave my face. They continue digging deeper, deeper, looking into my mind, my body, searching for some secret identity. And I let her, raising my eyes so she can get a better look at me, all of me. The eyes are the windows to the soul, after all. And I want to open them wide; I want her to climb in.

She sighs and takes another sip, and a new silence floats over us, its weight familiar around our shoulders. We sit like that for what feels like forever, staring into different suns: her, to the one above us and me, to the one in front of me.

Her eyelids flutter as she blinks the sun away. Her nostrils flare as she absorbs the air around her. Her bottom lip sinks in between her teeth. And I’m paying such close attention to her that even in the silence, each flinch, each movement feels like a sonic boom.

Which is why, when she asks, “Have you ever wondered what it’s like to kiss a girl?” the volume of her question is so loud that I feel myself disintegrating under its sheer impact.

But I know she’s drunk. She would never speak so openly like this, not if she were sober. When she’s like this, she becomes more free, more untethered, no longer in control of her actions. Reckless

It’s one of the things I want to say I hate her for. But I know that would be a lie—I couldn’t hate her if I tried.

So I refrain from complaining, and a nervous warmth bleeds over my cheeks. “I guess.”

She nods, but I can tell from her clouded eyes that she’s barely processing that information. “I’ve always wondered,” she admits, her voice slipping between her lips like velvet, smooth and rich and heavy. “Do you think it’s any different than with a boy?”

I consider her question. “Maybe not,” I admit. “All that should matter is who you’re into. I guess if you’re into girls, you’re going to like kissing girls more.” “Do you care if someone’s into girls?”

Do I care if someone’s into girls? I almost laugh at the irony. If only she knew.

“Not really,” I decide carefully. “It’s love. Why should I care?”

“Interesting,” she murmurs, still staring at me. Her eyes drop down to my lips again, and I can see the gears turning in her head, considering her options.

She tilts her head. She knits her eyebrows. She’s calculating her next move.

“Can I kiss you?”

The abruptness of her question, the pure genuinity of her words strikes me like a whip. She doesn’t offer me any sort of qualifier; she doesn’t say “just for fun” or “just for practice.” She only says “Can I kiss you,” as if there is no shame in doing so, as if this is a normal thing to ask. A flash of light bursts behind my eyes, and warmth blooms in my stomach, hotter than anything this brutal summer can offer.

Can she kiss me?

“Yes,” I beg.

I know I sound desperate. I know I sound needy. But when she looks like that, lips parted and skin glowing and hair flaming, desire takes the reins of my body. My inhibitions are powerless to stop me now.

She begins to lean in, laying her burdens slowly into my arms. Her tan limbs dangle over my neck sloppily. Despite her boldness, though, hesitance lingers in the air. It burns my skin, angers my soul. She’s stalling, scared. Even drunk, her conscience is trying to hold her back, chaining her to her morals.

Come on. What are you waiting for?

Distantly, a bird caws. A car roars past. A child screeches with joy.

Her eyes are still closed, though, and she’s leaning in and she’s waiting and waiting, and I consider initiating it once and for all, but it won’t be the same—it needs to be her. If it’s her, then I’ll know that it’s coming from her heart.

I know what I want from her. I need to know what she wants from me.

We’re a bomb, and each second is ticking down, clicking in my head. I’m closing my eyes, preparing for the explosion.

Finally, finally, her lips brush against mine. It’s a gentle kiss—no, barely even a kiss—but nevertheless it detonates the world around us. The bird cawing, the cars roaring, the children screeching—they all blur into the white noise in the midst of this explosion, and we have only each other to hold onto with all this destruction we’ve caused. We’ve caused the second Big Bang, the second universe. We have enough energy to last us millennia.

Our molecules separate and join again, connecting our bodies together. We are Hermaphroditus and Salmacis, becoming one body, one being, breathing to a single lung, beating to the same heart. I know her. I feel her. I am her.

Just being here together, in each other’s arms,

is a chemical reaction waiting to explode with the right catalyst. Too much could happen in the next few seconds and destroy our entire world. Her brother could jump out of the bushes any second, a camera in hand; her maid could tip-toe into the clearing, her tray of sandwiches shivering in her arms; her mother could spontaneously return home and face the heart attack of her lifetime. The possibilities are endless. If anyone were to find out, we might as well say goodbye to each other right now and never see each other again.

But none of that matters at this moment. We’re living in secret here in her backyard. At least in this small world we have here together, we’re allowed. We’re alive.

At least she’s letting us live for a second.

But when she pulls away, summer recedes from us, giving way to ice cold winds. We are no longer one. We are separate. We are too far.

A dazed smile creeps over her features, and her eyelashes flutter in the golden sunlight. “That was fun. I’m tired now.”

That said, she flops onto the grass. A small pink smile pulls at her lips—is it prideful? flirty? just drunk?—but after a few moments, her breathing becomes steadier, and the smile disappears. Now, there is no remnant of what we’ve done, no souvenir.

And I am alone again, forced to deal with the crushing weight of my desire, the pain of knowing that she may never feel the way I do, may never understand the things she does to me.

The light catches against her hair once more, creating a halo of fire around her head. It burns bright against the green grass. I edge my finger closer, closer, and the flames lick against my fingertips. She is on fire. She is burning me up, turning me to ashes.

She won’t remember our kiss when she wakes up; she won’t remember that any of this ever happened. For the moment, I am her lover, but in a few hours, I will once again be her friend.

So I lie beside her, twirling my scarred fingers into her flaming hair, biting through the scorching heat. If I only have the next few hours to be her lover, even in secret, then I’m going to make the most of it. We can pretend. I can pretend. Just for a little bit.

Oranges

Digital

Jui Bhatia

Meet the Staff

Front Row: Ethan Loi, Leyla Yilmaz, Casey Kovarick, Sunny Ajitabh, Shrivani Banker, Isha Borkar, Ayala Snir, Jessica Joseph, Maira Usmani

Middle Row: Renkai Luo, Sarah Wang, Hannah Gupta, Viabbhawi Vidiyala, Emily Zou, Lily Jiang, Jordan Jacoel, Abigail Dobson, Teagan Posey, Vivian Dong, Anika Kotapolly, Sarah Hegg

Back row: Ada Lavelle, Gigi Prothero, Katelyn Wang, Guinevere Reaume, Chiho Jing, Katie White, Peyton Harrill, Navami Muglurmath, Eden Liu, Anouk Freudenberg, Ava Bruni, Audrey Nguyen, Jewel Walace, Zion Brown, Caden Aldridge, Ashley Vadner

Not Pictured: Deirdre Cunniffe, Somya Krishna, Amy Li, Archana Nair, Tashikaa Senthilkumar

Staff Advisors: Karen Gately, Benjamin Smith, Caitlin Wilson

About the Folio

We are a student-run literary and art magazine from Conestoga High School in Berwyn, Pennsylvania. Although we’ve only been The Folio since 2007, we have collected, compiled, designed, and published student-produced art and literature since 1967. Our staff members are dedicated to furthering their own artistic and literary talents and promoting an interest in the humanities school-wide. The Folio welcomes submissions from all ‘Stoga students. Applications to join The Folio open during course selection in February. More information can be found on our website: stogafolio.weebly.com. You can also find us on Instagram @stogafolio.

The National Scholastic Press Association has rated our publication All American.

The National Council of Teachers has ranked us as a Superior magazine.

The Pennsylvania School Press Association has awarded us their Gold Rating.