The Mill
Fall 2012
Editorial Board Chief Editor: Lindsay Vreeland Art Editors: Fiction Editors: Poetry Editors: Laura DeLucia Michael Beers Savannah Frelin Mary Persichilli Laura DeLucia David Hartford Felicia Preece Vanessa Gardner Terry Kindig Lindsay Vreeland Alysha Hill Mary Persichilli Sara Strasser Felicia Preece Lindsay Vreeland Lindsay Vreeland Ryan Wolfslayer
Media Specialists: Alysha Hill Mary Persichilli Felicia Preece Sara Strasser
Layout by Lindsay Vreeland
“All Seeing Eye” by Claire Frisk Cover Art Contest Winner: “House of Blues” -Patrick Cook Fiction Contest Winner: “News” -Morag Hastie Poetry Contest Winner: “Breathing Room” -Elizabeth Anderson
Dear Reader, Let me begin by expressing my excitement for this Fall 2012 edition of The Mill Magazine. Yes, there were a few kinks along the way, but this is my first semester as Chief Editor and my third semester as a staff member, and I am still impressed by the work submitted each semester. It has been an electric semester full of new staff members, new technology, and new contributors. I’m thrilled to be a part of this magazine, giving writers the opportunity to be published and read their work in a supportive community. It’s an incredible honor to be a part of that. This semester we also opened submissions to creative non-fiction, which opened the door to those who may have an interesting personal story to tell. Thank you, reader, for continuing to pick up copies of The Mill and supporting this community of writers and artists. The results can be incredible when students, faculty, and staff come together for art’s sake. Thank you to my staff members, for being a consistent stream of positive attitudes and helpfulness. And thank you to the faculty members who have made this magazine continue to happen. Look for our Spring 2013 issue! And, as always, long live The Mill. Best, Lindsay Vreeland Chief Editor– The Mill Magazine
Mission Statement
The Mill is a literary journal that publishes poetry, short fiction, and art by University of Toledo students in an attempt to strengthen ties and voices in the literary community at the university. It is edited and produced once per academic semester. We consider all submissions for the writing contest and publication. Two pieces are awarded top honors in this publication-one fiction and one poetry. All submissions were evaluated based on established criteria. The Mill editorial staff made the final decision on the contest winner. For more information regarding the editorial board, past issues, or general inquiries find us at our website, Themillmag.weebly.com, or on Facebook. After initial publication via print and online, all Copyright reverts back to the author/artist. 2
Table of Contents Morag Hastie News *
4
Elizabeth Anderson Breathing Room * The Color of Freedom
6 7
Patrick Cook Conviction Guardian Angel Retired Ideas
8 9 12
Stacy Cruzado AIDS Pride
13 14
Weslie Detwiler Confirmation The Old Victorian House on Fire
15 16
Lanette Duckett Tulips on a Moonlit Night
17
Sam Fetters Bridgetown Burnt Out
18 19
Zach Fishel A Note on Suicide A Poem Not About Running
20 21
Aneta Golubitskaya Nature Exhausted
22
Alex Lemle My Grandma’s Hands
23
Thomas Teknipp Night Sky Up High
24
Jasmine Townsend Mr. Sandman
25
Chelsea Vogelbacher Ache
26
Morrison Wilson Commuting My Room
27 28
* Contest Winner 3
Morag Hastie
Fiction Contest Winner
News "Hey, Jenny! Jenny! Did you see this?" He sat upright in bed propped up by four methodically stacked pillows, the newspaper held neatly with both hands. His bedside table was regimental in its tidiness adorned with only three items: a square, graphite-grey metal alarm clock; "Marketing for Scientists" by Marc J. Kuchner with a tan leather bookmark perfectly aligned to the spine; and a cream-faced watch with a black leather strap placed precisely parallel, two inches from the table edge nearest the bed. "See what?" her reply was heavily muffled by the en-suite bathroom's door and the loud hissing of the running tap. "This, here, on page three!" No response came from behind the shut door. “Right here. I can’t believe it.” Still silence but he barreled on reading aloud from the article. “On Monday afternoon, classes at Whiteford Elementary School, in Sylvania, were interrupted when the whole school was evacuated after receiving a bomb threat. The threat came in the form of an anonymous phone call to the office of Principal Tyburski. The police department promptly arrived at the school to assist in the evacuation and was able to verify that there was no bomb on the school premises. The call was traced to the home of a forth grader, who is believed to attend the school. Can you believe that! Jenny? Jenny, you listening to me?” “Yeah, yeah. Yeah, its crazy!” “What’s taking so long in there?” “I’ll be out in a minute!” The buzz of her electric toothbrush started up. -----§---In the bathroom Jenny stood with her eyes locked on her reflection as it slowly steamed over from the bottom upwards. One hand was gripping the edge of the sink while the other clenched her toothbrush. The hot tap was still running at high volume, the flow of the water so fast it pooled in the bottom of the sink before it could escape down the drain. A pink cardboard box, ripped open and face down, sat between the sink’s taps. Resting on top of it was the long, slim plastic stick of a pregnancy test. Jenny released her breath and slowly, deliberately moved her gaze down to the stick. One line was visible on the tiny display. Not pregnant. She closed her eyes tight for just a moment and swayed on her heals. Letting go of the sink with her right hand she delved into the pocket of her green and red, polka dot robe and retrieved her cell phone. Deftly she typed an abrupt text message, ‘Not pregnant. It’s OK’, and punched send. Immediately she went back into the send messages folder, rapidly deleted the message she had just written, and then stuffed the phone back into its pocket. With swift, nimble motions she slid the stick back into its box, folded the flaps of cardboard back on themselves to trap the stick inside, and then jammed the box and its contents into the bowels of the sink’s cabinet behind a box of tampons. 4
Fiction Contest Winner
Morag Hastie
“Seriously Jenny, everything alright?” his tone was more irritated than concerned. She stuck the toothbrush into her mouth and muttered an unintelligible reply. -----§---“You heard it, right? The thing about the bomb threat?” he accosted her as she appeared from the bathroom. “I told you I heard it.” “Kids today! And right here in Sylvania! Who would have thought?” “Yes, its crazy,” she threw her robe on to the top of a mixed up pile of clean and dirty clothes sitting on the armchair on her side of the room and slid under the covers. “Get the light would you?” he asked. Twisting around she pushed the haphazard stack of books blocking her path to the lamp switch and thrust the room into darkness. He guided his arm under her head as she curled onto her side to face him. Crooking his arm around her back he settled his hand on her hip as she let her head nestle on his shoulder while pulling the duvet up to cover his bare chest. “Night, love” he breathed into her hair. “Night.”
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Elizabeth Anderson Breathing Room In the forest and fields, I breathe like a newborn. My lungs crack and expand, fill with the sweet scents of hay, goldenrod, mallow, wood-rot, and I think: I will suffocate in the city. After all, that is where they say, Out, damned spot—damned speck of pollen! They choke on life, apparently. I do not. I choke on Clorox, but this morning I am acres away. Warblers sing in the branches, and the trees inhale as I exhale: A strange chorus of breathing and birdsong. And stars that shy away from streetlights like frightened horses hum over meadows like bees. People ask how I can stand the silence. The fog curling off the hillsides. The shifting of leaves with the sound of an ocean. They do not understand. True silence is in the gravel and smog, the cement, the blacktop, the grating discord of the city streets— where there is nothing left to breathe.
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Poetry Contest Winner
Elizabeth Anderson The Color of Freedom She’s sitting on a cot in a cold, white box. Everything here is white – even her own hands, pale and spidery, which rest on her white coverlet as she stares out the window at the world of color she once knew. She sighs. Here, every day is colorless and the same. A knock sounds at the door. She waits. The orderlies always knock, as if it matters, but they come in whether she wants them to or not. Sure enough, the door clicks open, but the voice that says hello is unfamiliar, so she looks. A man stands in the doorway, smiling at her. He’s not very tall, and his hair is so ravendark, his eyes such a bright blue, that he could be her brother. But he isn’t. He’s a stranger. He tells a joke, but it’s lame and she doesn’t laugh. Grinning, he shrugs and admits that it was no good. An unwilling smile creeps across her face. It grows wider as he tells another joke, less lame. Then he reaches into his pocket and produces four balls, dazzling her with color. All the colors that for the past month have only existed outside her window light up the room: Tree green, sky blue, red as the petunias growing in the window boxes, gold like the dandelions and the sun and her lost freedom. The man begins to juggle slowly, only the green and blue balls. They swing into the air in a graceful arc, lazy at first, then faster. The green and blue blur together in an oceanic whirl. The woman watches, entranced, as he adds the red ball and tosses the balls higher and faster. Faster and faster and faster still, so fast that she doesn’t see when he adds the last ball, just sees the flash of gold like the color of freedom. She watches for a long time, until finally he pulls a goofy face and sends the balls tumbling down on his head. She knows it was planned, but she can’t help it: She starts to laugh. The man’s face splits into a gap-toothed grin. He joins in, adding explosions of deep belly laughter to her long, merry peals. They laugh for a long, long time, the first time she’s laughed in years, it feels like. Finally he picks up the colored balls, tips them into her lap, and bows, sweeping an imaginary hat from his head. Then he says goodbye and heads on to the next patient. She smiles down at the colors in her lap, tree green, sky blue, petunia red, and gold, the color of freedom, until an orderly enters and asks, How do you feel today? Good, she replies, surprised; how else should I feel? The orderly says: …the cancer. And suddenly she’s back in a white box, four cold walls and a metal cot, because she remembers.
7
Patrick Cook Conviction The moth flickers like the flame that guides it, Free and cool with it’s secluded siren in sight, thinking his journey's end as far away as the misty circle of the full autumn moon. Until the Big Brown Bat drops from the sky like a ripened apple drops from a tree, his white scythes reap the fluttering fall harvest. The moth was too focused on the light, to learn what lurks in the dark.
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Patrick Cook Guardian Angel Michelle, laying in the middle of the street, limbs twisted in ways impossible even to Yogi Masters, was not in pain. The doctors would later say that this was because of the intense pain being overridden by her mind in order for her to not suffer from the femur folded into thirds like Michelle's coming piles of medical bills. Her brown flats had been thrown from her feet and lay side by side at the curb, waiting for her to step right back into them. “It was an accident,” she said to the paramedics, “I think my heel broke and I fell into the street.” The paramedics shook their heads in unison, pity for the girl's confusion. They smiled as they said in harmony, “Of course. Everything's going to be okay now. Don't you worry.” They were cutting off her leopard print tights as she stared at the ceiling, thinking about all those times she got pissed off at having to stop for ambulances at green lights. She would push the gas pedal hard afterward, a passive protest against having to wait. “I have to get to class! Some old bastard croaking from eating too many double cheeseburgers. Good riddance.” She would post her complaints to Facebook, while driving with a half of a hand. Outside of the ambulance Michelle heard a man's voice, crying in penance. A man crying. She wrinkled her nose even as the hand of an unseen paramedic staunched the flow from the gash on her face with a wad of gauze, pulling her golden curls out of the way. “Anything happen to whoever hit me?” she asked. One of the paramedics, a heavyset woman with wisps of gray hair, said “He'll probably have nightmares of you walking out in front of him for years.” “So nothing then. Too bad.” Michelle said, noticing just how grotesque the little mole on the woman's cheek really was before it became too difficult for her to keep her eyes open.
Two days later Michelle woke up in a hospital bed, bound in place by a neck brace and a few pieces of black metal sticking out of her arms and legs to hold the fragments of bone together. She didn't know how long it was until the nurse made his rounds, but she supposed if she had to be in the hospital he was the nurse to have. She could see his arms filling the sleeves of his blue scrubs and the perfect shadow of a dark beard on his feline face. “Hello there.” She coughed out. She noticed the tube running into her nose that ran down her throat and an oxygen nose-piece taking up the remaining real estate. 9
Patrick Cook He smiled, “Oh, you're awake. The doctors had to do a bit of work for you sleeping beauty, but you should be back on your feet in a couple months. What's your pain, on a scale of one to ten, ten being unbearable?” She tried to say seven and all that came out was a puff of air. “Seven?” he said for her. He reached down beside her bed and she felt him put something in her right hand. “This is your morphine pump. If you feel pain, push the button. It won't let you overdose, so you push it as often as you need to. I'm going to go tell your family that you're awake.” Michelle watched until he walked out of sight, which wasn't very far since she couldn't lift her head. She tried to think through the morphine haze, how was her family here? Maybe they flew to California after being devastated by hearing that she, their beautiful, successful, daughter had been hit by some careless driver. Her brother would have tears in his eyes as he left High School in the middle of Algebra. Her dad would be outraged and anxious at the same time. Maybe they would bring a lawyer. She tried to imagine her mother's reaction, but all Michelle could see was her own face on her mother's sagging body through the morphine cloud. She gave up when a potbellied balding man shuffled around the corner, eyes bloodshot from tears. “I'm so sorry,” he sobbed “I wish I could have done something to stop this.” The attractive nurse seemed to think this man was her family, and she was too tired to say otherwise. The nurse slid the curtain half-closed to give them a superficial privacy. The bald man stopped his crying and sat up straight. Michelle saw him pull something from his shirt pocket as he sat down on the edge of her bed, making it shake her bound and broken legs. She heard the bed groan under his weight, as though he was much heavier than he looked. “It really is too bad that I had to do it, but it was out of my control. I tried to argue in your favor, saying that a work of art was a work of art, and it didn't matter what the inside was like if the surface looked good. But He wouldn't listen. Said it was time.” She clenched her fist, pushing down on her morphine pump. Her eyelids started to close, and she stopped caring about who this guy was. She started to think of her family, and then driving to school, and then she had the farthest hint of anxiety as she remembered the time she was late on an exam day. “No, don't go anywhere yet. I'm talking to you.” He grabbed the stabilizer bar protruding from her thigh and shook her whole body. Her eyes widened and she wheezed as pain drove into her mind over the morphine. Michelle's eyes narrowed as she gave her strange and only visitor a look of seething hatred. As her mind refocused she saw an odd glow above his head and heard a flapping like the wings of pigeons being chased away by a child. 10
Patrick Cook She tried to ask him who he was, but the words wouldn't come out. Her throat was raw and dry from the stomach tube rubbing her throat and the dry oxygen being blown into her nose. His eyebrows raised as he watched her struggle. “You shouldn't be afraid just because you don't know me. You can just call me your guardian angel. You fell in front of the car I was driving. Well, technically you were pushed, but it was really your own fault.” He smiled and let out a low laugh that could have been mistaken for a growling dog. Michelle tried to slide backwards, but her limbs just flailed like she was trying to keep from drowning. He climbed on top of her and held her down, not bothering to notice the way that he crushed her bruised body. She wheezed again as he forced her to be still, feeling something cold in his right hand pressed against her wrist. “Calm down child, I'm not going to hurt you anymore than you already have.” He placed his hand over his heart as if pledging allegiance. “I already did what I needed to do. What did I do, you may ask?” He turned his palm towards her, and she finally saw that he was palming a small mirror. Someone nasty was looking back at her, a large red gash sewn together on the right side of the girl's face running from her hairline to her jaw, and a wad of gauze over the eye that it intersected. She squirmed as she recognized the girl's hair was golden, the girl's remaining eye was blue, and the girl's split lip had some remains of Michelle's favorite hue of red lipstick. She started to flail harder against the stranger's incredible weight, but he seemed not to notice. After he was sure she had seen what he wanted, he lifted off of her and floated to a standing position at the foot of her bed, and again she heard the rustle of wings. He turned away from her, saying over his shoulder, “I'm sorry, but I had to make the outside as ugly as the inside. It seems like a waste, but you know as well as I do that He knows best.” Again she heard his growling laugh as he walked around the edge of the curtain and left her there, tears cleaning the street grime from her cheeks.
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Partrick Cook Retired Ideas I was visiting my grandmother in the nursing home, recovering from a hip replacement. I watched her, and didn’t say anything. I stood among octogenarians, hands in my pockets, Afraid that showing signs of life was something like showing off. To just stand without a walker, no cataracts clouding my eyes, have a head of hair with color, they gave me looks, like I was juggling torches. Regardless, these people had hundreds of years of experience between them. They were volumes of encyclopedias, shelved because they're outdated. They sit forgotten by their families, forgetting their brothers and sisters aren’t alive. Living records of wars and fights for equality. They watched days before television, when a family was poor but didn’t care as long as they had food. I took out my cell phone to check the time, just like my grandfather did with his pocketwatch. Someday it will be my time.
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Stacey Cruzado AIDS I wasn’t going to tell my wife about Janice, upstairs in apartment 6 who left her panties in my briefcase every Tuesday. Or Nick, the lawyer with a loft in upper Manhattan who spent more time listening to George Michael than his kids. And I never got a chance to tell Janice how I used to do her the same way I did Nick from behind, over his marble counter right after the coke. But I’m not Magic, and as I lay here too weak to move my wife holds my hand as our son tugs on her knee-length skirt, and I don’t have to say anything.
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Stacey Cruzado Pride A long braid dripped down my back from under my Lion King baseball cap—which was pink, with a teal rim. Juice stains from lunch painted my lips cherry everyday in first grade. Mom said our neighbors were “fucking assholes” and walk home the other way to avoid them at all costs—but I hated walking, as much as I learned to hate the police. I don’t know why that day I decided to be brave, like the lion I wore on my cap—which years later turned into one of Brandon’s Latin King prison tattoos. My Pocahontas lunch box dangled from unwashed hands, swinging back and forth as I went against my mother’s rules. I could hear it coming—Spanish swearing and the hit. Standing on their porch waiting for their son: a lady who looked like Farrah Fawcett was embraced by a tall man in a suit, were my neighbors, like a 50’s sitcom. Jonathon, not Jon, knocked me to the ground calling me a name that wasn’t my own. I thought about telling my brother how he pushed me—but Brandon would have killed him. “Mommy, what does it mean if you’re a Spic?” I asked—tensing up prepared for the belt. Instead, she held me under her chin and said, “Mija, tu eres Boricua and proud.”
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Weslie Detwiler Confirmation the road to Jerusalem was lined with wildflowers the day Mary sang her song of solitude like tall-standing fields of Sorghum her judges stood waiting with their sneers and white scorecards: 7, 10, 9 but they themselves had sinned. plumes of dust rose from the heavy stones that fell from their fingertips to the dry, packed earth and soles of feet caked with dirt. but while white robes aired in the pristine light of day in their heads they stoned her dead and left the door open behind them.
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Weslie Detwiler The Old Victorian House on Fire it was a Wednesday unremembered when the dog cried out - terror of the town! and the tall kitchen window poured, like a pitcher overflowing, black smoke into the sky. the flood of heat rose above the animal’s gnarled paws and filled its lungs to pass through closing throat and yellowed canines. and the lady of the house with her wooden cane and sideways limp called wildly to her three boys and begged the burning gas stove to hold its own. the flood of neighbors who had heard her lament poured into the street and stretched their hoses to the house and their arms to its cast-outs. but the flames licked at the house and licked at their souls like the beast with fangs of plaque and malice. and the flames leapt into their hearts and reflected in their eyes while Their Father below instilled in them no fear of fire.
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Lanette Duckett Tulips on a Moonlit Night Tulips sprout from winter graves Rise against green ribbon waves In silent bay Beneath blue moon of May Purple petals layered tight Kiss windy breathe tonight Suckle dewdrop drips From satin lips As Weeping willow weeps Spring seeps into buds in bloom asleep.
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Sam Fetters Bridgetown I pay two dollars for a cup of brown coffee and the right to sit still for a few hours. It’s one way to spend a middle class afternoon when you can’t remember who you are.
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Sam Fetters Burnt Out I’m from a place where kids don’t look both ways before crossing the street. I’m from a place where all my friends have accidental babies. I’m from a place where dads don’t wear shirts— even in the winter. I’m from a place where skateboard-blast angst turns to quiet buttoned-up grief turns to a hospital bed in the living room. I’m from a place where most days nothing makes sense.
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Zach Fishel A Note on Suicide I want to hang moth eaten. Our hearts lost in origami folds A mountain overlooks the horizon and butterflies sweat .
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Zach Fishel A Poem Not About Running The women I love the most despise poetry like an indifferent bum waiting for traffic to clear, sleet bouncing from his head and his lungs exhausting themselves like chimneys somewhere in central Pennsylvania. The first Christmas we spent together was the only time I’ve played fetch with an aging Labrador, hot saliva on soggy tennis balls and the rage of our fingers not locked but pocketed. When I failed out of college my professor told me one day I’d be something and now I’m balding as I practice my dance lessons just to get your laugh drunk in a honkytonk. If we were windows the sky would have handprints. Your breath must be a flower shop where only the brave can grow. I’ve only ever beat you at horseshoes and drinking. The way you would lay down in the aisles of bookstores just to read made me want to start a family, one meal at a time. Boiling sassafras roots for tea was the best I could do. One day the way I’ve liked you more than Montana will dismantle like every handwritten note your mother’s left about making coffee, and it will rain and rain and rain when I’m on the highway back to you despising the bum waiting for traffic to clear.
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Aneta Golubitskaya Nature Exhausted Nature exhausted from oppressive heat, Flowers and leaves long for refreshing rain, Hot air curtains each house, every street This summer day brings tiredness and pain. Birds did not sing their joyful songs, Grass on the meadow lost its nature color Burned down of an overheating wind Seems air was full up with the only prayer And suddenly thunder burst out, Flesh lightning, and sky splits for parts, Wild rain begin to pour in torrents Wash out heat of stuffy nights. Moisture cools down thirsty nature, Covered blue sky with rainy clouds, Fill up environment with a gladness Rain plays chill jazz with cheerful sounds. So tears relieve my wounded soul From any trouble – big or small
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Alex Lemle ‘Til Death do us Part Walls painted white, Checkered tiles on the floor. Her heart beats faster As the key opens the door She’s not ready for him; He came home too soon. She’s in for another bad night; Another night locked in a room. “’Til death do us part” Means nothing anymore When he comes home drunk And treats her like a whore The night is darkest Just before the dawn. Everything will get better for her; The pain will soon be gone. The memory remains Of the bruises and the pain Inflicted on a woman Too afraid to take a stand.
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Thomas Teknipp Night Sky Up High As we look upon the empty space above we wonder If there is anyone looking down on us. At times life can give too much to ponder Yet that is no need to fuss. As we recycle our forefathers air They are constantly watching Their past future heir. We gaze upon stars, re-watching Every flicker; Our elders can see us blink With questions; we continue to work They keep silent and wink While suppressing secrets with a crescent smirk.
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Jasmine Townsend Mr. Sandman Lydia sat on the window sill of her apartment, looking at the street seven stories below. It crawled with life, with those bags of flesh and bone, driving and walking and texting. Lydia wondered how many had been swindled by the Sandman. She had seen him on campus a couple days ago between classes, standing at a table with a tri-board, promising passers-by the best sleep of their lives. She must have felt sorry for him. She’d had ten minutes before class and decided to humor him. There was a stiffness in the way she moved now that worsened each morning. Every day she got up, she felt parts of her were missing, parts she’d never get back. And each night, as she drifted off to sleep, she felt tingling all over that intensified the deeper she dozed. It was like an army of bustling ants that grew in numbers each time she counted another sheep, devouring her bit by microscopic bit. The tingling didn’t stop, she noticed, until the moment she woke up. Lydia stretched her leg out on the sill, scrunching up her face as she felt her bones pop and muscles squirm under her skin. She tried to wiggle her toes; they, like her fingers, were growing colder and bluer each morning. “The best sleep you ever had!” the Sandman had told her that day on campus. “Thirty day trial or your money back guaranteed.” Lydia had smiled at him. She’d never liked taking pills, but he had a variety of forms for the stuff, all fruit flavored – chewable tablets, syrups, gummies. Plus, he was cute. “You have exams. You have projects,” he continued. “Now Fall Break’s coming up and you need a good night’s rest.” The bag of gummies she bought from him sat on the table next to her bed. She picked them because they tasted better than pills, and they were more colorful. Growing up, she’d eaten anything in gummy form – bears, worms, fruit snacks, vitamins. It was better than chocolate. After eating so many, it was too late before she realized. Sliding off of the sill and heading to the bathroom was a chore – her limbs felt lighter, but only because of the muscle loss. Soon, she wouldn’t be able to move at all. Bones alone can’t move themselves. Lydia didn’t feel her feet on the floor or the night gown against her skin. Although it was terrifying at first, she was growing accustomed to the numbness. What she could never get used to, however, was breaking the initial stiffness each morning. Her subconscious tried to protect her by labeling it “sleep paralysis.” More like rigor mortis, she thought. “So how do I know this works?” She’d kept smiling at him, eyes locked on his. He’d pointed at the name of the brand – Mr. Sandman – glued in big, gold letters against a blue white background meant to simulate a sky. “Oh, you’ll feel it in the morning, or my name isn’t Mr. Sandman.” 25
Chelsea Vogelbacher Ache Smoke trails out in ribbons, softly Carrying me, spiraling away Into the dark night sky, far away from here. Nothing and no one Can keep the loneliness down tonight It aches, screams, cries out Demands“Let me be free� -and I, I take another puff of my cigarette and wish that I had the key.
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Morrison Wilson Commuting if i look at my nails (cajun shrimp red that matches the bus interior) i can see the reflection of passing buildings and light posts when i ride the metro i look around and try to guess which of my fellow passengers are drug addicts sometimes i think they know what i’m doing one time there was a one-eyed chihuahua he definitely knew something was up one of the trams came off the tracks yesterday i will walk i walked and my new suede shoes got soaked
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Morrison Wilson My Room my room is littered with scraps of paper carefully refolded candy bar wrappers grocery store receipts abandoned fortune cookie fortunes flyers from homeless people i accidentally made eye contact with used subway tickets boarding passes business cards for bad restaurants freestyle mondays 2nd year anniversary dan deacon at the meet factory schiele and klimpt at the leopold apologetic notes from food-stealing roommates i am afraid to throw them away because they might mean something to me in 5 years my room is also full of gnats they mean nothing to me they started in the kitchen, at the trashcan migrated to the sink and then the makeshift bookshelf pantry i don’t know what it is they like in my bedroom unless it’s the piles of hair that accumulate on the floor of a room shared by two girls sometimes the paper and the gnats don’t seem so different except that i'm not afraid to get rid of the gnats they can burn in hell last night one was in my ear
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