Seeds by The Wave Literary and Arts Magazine

Letter From the Editors Dear Reader, Welcome to Seeds! After a year apart, we need to reorient ourselves to what used to be commonplace. Among the cacophony of a campus recently reunited, there is still a silence of stories left unheard. As we begin to reconnect and to share, it is important to embrace this unique time of growth and rebirth as a community. This past year has been uncomfortable, disruptive, and oftentimes confusing. Many of us have sat with uncertainty and faced fears that are unseen yet pervasive. We bore witness to our stories, our personal and shared challenges, and our moments of celebration. Yet, there are probably also moments when we feel as if we were thrown into the deep end without a chance to process and understand how we have changed and grown. It almost feels like waking up and finding bruises on our knees. Where did they come from? How can we help them heal? Growth is often not a straight line, and rebirth is not always as glorious and effortless as we hope it to be. Growth takes grit, the rough scar tissue of healing, and the never-ending process of becoming. Most importantly, growth requires community and connection. We chose the theme Seeds to provide a space to affirm all forms of healing and reflect on new beginnings. We wanted to evoke the sense of infinite possibilities yet also ground ourselves in the everyday journey of becoming the people we hope to be. We are so joyous to share these stories with you and we hope this magazine can inspire you to reflect on your own growth and healing as well. Sent with lots and lots and lots of love, The Wave Team

The Wave Team Director: Jerrica Li Editorial Directors: Jason Zhou Jeanna Shaw Content Design: Alex Lee (Chair) Kathy Zhong Nur Kader Teddy Tsui-Rosen Social Media: Amelia Ao (Chair) Kathy Zhong Teddy Tsui-Rosen Community: Cindy Phan (Chair) Nur Kader (Chair) Linh Vu

Business: Jason Zhou (Chair) Will Hahn Web Experience: Yooni Park (Chair) Editorial Committee: Alex Lee Amelia Ao Benjy Wall-Feng Cindy Phan Ethan Phan Jolin Chan JuHye Mun Kathy Zhong Nur Kader Sharmila Dey Teddy Tsui-Rosen Will Hahn Yooni Park

Table of Contents Boy, Mirror Julia Do ............................................................................................................ 5 Spaceship / Burrito / Eclipse Lara Zeng ...................................................................... 6 Ghost Story Rebecca Xi .............................................................................................. 7-8 Resurface Alex Lee ........................................................................................................... 9 Breathing Underwater Kelly Liu ................................................................................. 10 dance is Vanessa Hu ............................................................................................... 11-13 Dream Homage Maggie Yin ......................................................................................... 14 Chrysalis / Decomposition Catherine Liu ......................................................... 15-16 When Spring Comes Karen Sun ................................................................................. 17 Nature is healing. Ashley Wang ................................................................................. 18 Sliver of Light, Fibers of Life Catherine Yeo ........................................................... 19 Light Alicia Shao .............................................................................................................. 20 Grass Jenny Hong ........................................................................................................... 21 Forever a Work In Progress Julia Bhuiyan .............................................................. 22 Postcards from Home Nur Kader ........................................................................ 23-25

Boy, Mirror Julia Do 5

Spaceship / Burrito / Eclipse Lara Zeng We will all be surprised in our prismacolor eyeglasses rubbed slick in white sunscreen pointing upward the day we realize you are known by more people than you will speak to. This is a little something we call fame. Even though this is a quantity you cannot estimate. This does not make you powerful. This makes you a small bundle in a warm tortilla in aluminum foil in a paper bag headed somewhere dark and by the time you get there you will feel delicious

Ghost Story Rebecca Xi His name is Eric, and he picks you up from your apartment in a red car with plush leather seats that are soft to the touch when you slide in. Gleaming chromium exterior like glossy icing on a donut, or a coat of vermilion red that’s more linseed oil than pigment. “I see I should’ve worn the red dress,” you say after the proper social niceties have been exchanged. “Would’ve matched with the car.”

“I think you’d look stunning no matter what color dress you wear,” he says without taking his eyes off the road, but then again he had given you the expected once-over when you’d first stepped out onto the pavement, clanging the door of your Murray Hill walkup shut behind you. He hadn’t said anything then, but you like that he’s being complimentary now. He doesn’t know that you spent an hour standing in front of your closet considering the sweetheart crimson dress in the corner, the one your mother had bought for you ages ago, the one that really showcases your collarbone and cleavage, but you’d thought red too much for a first date and so you’re wearing a recently attained navy blue romper instead. It’s October and the weather has started to cool, but it’s not so cool yet that you’ll need a jacket where you’ll be going - a classy Flatiron district restaurant that you’re secretly hoping he’ll cover because your budget doesn’t magically expand when you go on a date;

besides, your romper, a cute flowy thing you found in an overpriced thrift shop three blocks away from Washington Square, is long sleeved and has pockets. You rearrange the edges of the romper about your legs, just so, and make sure said pockets aren’t inside out. “Thank you. I like the suit. Grey looks good on you.” “Well, you’ve almost exclusively seen me naked, so.” He winks, and you laugh; you are excited, you realize, anticipatory in a way that’s rare these days. You are looking forward to good food and good conversation with an attractive man you have grown accustomed to seeing mostly in the nude, and if you’d taken a long hot shower beforehand, shaving everywhere except the V between your legs because you’d done it once when you were seventeen and it had itched like crazy for a week and if that happens tonight, then, well, he’s just going to have to take you as you come, well, then, what of it? He is pulling up in front of the restaurant now, and you are talking about your living situation with your roommate Natalka, whom you adore and are forever indebted to - “It’s her apartment, actually - I’ve just crashed for long enough that we’re roommates at this point, we split all the bills” - when the conversation goes on hold because the valet is ready to park the car. You stand on the curb as he hands over the keys and comes over to you, putting his hand on the small of your back to

escort you into the restaurant. Behind you, the engine purrs; the valet drives off. “You’ve got a nice car, by the way,” you say. “Thanks, it’s not mine,” he responds. * Some days, you want to tear yourself apart. You tense and untense and squeeze whatever you can grab, crossing your arms over your body and gripping the grabbable flesh of your sides and you hate it you hate it you hate that you are a fist clenched around the ceaseless thought of who am I what am I what do I do where do I go? But it’s been long enough now that you have a routine now for when you find yourself thinking these thoughts. You take a long shower, scalding, and then you towel your hair and exfoliate your face and rub shea butter into your dry skin and then you pad into the sunroom, leaving oily footprints on the floor that Natalka is too nice to complain about even after nine months of living together, despite the occasional pointed comment she’ll give you about the water bill; and in the corner of the sunroom that is yours due to the heaps of art supplies with six-foot easel as centerpiece you put your pencils and graphites and pastels and paints in your bag you never use the paints, haven’t been able to in a while, but you never leave them behind.

You go outside and take the D train to Grand Street Station and if it’s nice out you sit in the park watching the teenagers in old graphic T’s play pickup and the laborers in stained tank tops smoke cigarettes on the sides and the little old Chinese ladies in clean patterned clothing patter along with small children, their grandchildren you think, their pride and joy, water of the womb. You sit there until it’s time and then you pick up your bag and brush leaves and living things out of your hair and you walk the two minutes to the nondescript door sandwiched between the Chinese bank and the Chinese spa, and you take the three flights up narrow stairs up to Minerva’s, where you can sit and stare at a human body for three hours without saying anything, without thinking beyond the lines and limbs and musculature you are putting onto the page, into your little notebook, steady eyes to steady hand, almost leaving your brain out altogether, and isn’t that lovely? ...

Access the rest of the story here:

Resurface 9

Alex Lee

Breathing Underwater Kelly Liu

dance is Vanessa Hu maybe a winged fingertip in the enfolding of a collarbone with the spurs of some kinetic property, sparking across tales

comets.

(it starts from wherever it starts.) let’s say, the eyes — pools ripe with dreams sacred and weathered. here, the floods decide the spaces between scales in ever-blinking metronome.

then, the hips we hold we are meant for one,

a river stroll as our paces

we collide in nests miss (sing) steps greet

— we sway breathe. that of the waltz, with a friend untimed.

next, the shoulders — ribboned of frayed hem in the raggedy knots (before) (i knew how to thread). they pin stoic peaks against cloudless moon in their first and fifth locus; or they coil like waves, one by one — but always together (knitted) (by the collarbone), shimmying to a wintry expanse shivering to the ecstasy of empty sheet in a tipsy quickstep.

of course, the spine — a stack of undulating tectonic measures (the ears). spiraling down and reaching canopies into the crowns of the roots bowed in storm, it twists as the willow blows, iron-rod in grace shuddering at sparks of bodies between moving time. the feet, oh the feet — callused but truthful, the way in which the metacarpals diagram turquoise throughlines beat into souls we’d walk a thousand times for a wrong reason, just once for a right one. ankle marked with ribbon scars, we anchor to clouds in a miracle of spontaneous navigation and collision. premeditated in our sails, compassless.

and, the hands — fingers shared, unbraiding wound (up) frame. they are the clasp of a sister, the press of a canoe against three-four, the outstretch of peach flesh inward to cup and to care and to craft in lung another seed, a second hour. they are the ones that twine lace across chest cavities and draw mosaics in parthenonic scale, above through beyond but never away, because isn’t a palm the same as a heart anyway? they all crease their gazes, with gasps squeezing open of salt and light — all my mappings, together. singing i don’t know but i was born a geography, knowing

(to dance)

what it is, i do know:

Dream Homage Maggie Yin

Chrysalis / Decomposition Catherine Liu

When Spring Comes Karen Sun

I am a leaf refusing to fall. I am bloodied, bruised, beaten down but I will hold on. No autumn gust will tear me away. But when Winter wills my downfall and I am trampled from branch to ground, let us meet again, on this tree when Spring comes.

Nature is healing. Ashley Wang

Sliver of Light, Fibers of Life Catherine Yeo

Light Alicia Shao

Grass Jenny Hong I spend my days running through the thousands of meadows that lie waiting to be graced by my feet. I pound through patches of succulent green that seem to rise above and drown me like a forest does undergrowth, running until nothing remains of me but a husk, dry like the shell of a pistachio, a paper doll stained with chlorophyll. Maybe I am searching for the kind of green that tastes like stroopwafels over oceans at dusk, long flights home, that smells like postcards and freshly shampooed hair, graham crackers crumbling into sand or a head thrown back in laughter, the kind of green that vibrates at precisely the same frequency as the beating of my heart, the stretch and recoil of my arteries, arteries bearing cells that coast down the stream of life like two lovers in a gondola. I will kneel in the pasture’s bosom until the skin on the nape of my neck blooms like a desert rose, combing through leaf after leaf until their names peel back from my memory like the backing from a postage stamp, until we grow too old to believe in forever, until maybe I will one day realize my own grass is so damn green it must have been the first color to ever cross the mind of God.

Forever A Work in Progress Julia Bhuiyan

Postcards from Home Nur Kader

I. Traveling And even with the world going to pieces, We found a reason to smile. Time lengthened beyond us, the hours rolling like ocean waves. Silence unfolding before us, like what I imagine snow banks to look like. Time only resumed and never stopped when we were apart. Even as I am gone, I will find my way home. Swinging high enough to maybe, just maybe, escape the orbit of my fears Worries melting into the waves lapping my ankles And jump

II. Nostalgia “Hey, didn’t see you there,” she smiled and sunlight filled the room as though silence never laid here. Cake in fridge, vanilla wafting through the air. Tangerines blooming overhead. The air is fragrant. Content and washed in hope. Adrenaline rush, thrilled to be here/ alive. Fiery red roses bursting from my chest. Sunshine content and electric exhilaration at finding a piece I didn’t realize was missing. I forgot I missed you. Sit with me in silence As we watch the sunrise On patches of grass Getting ready in the dark with no words as we button our jackets Sunlight filling my limbs, my eyes closed Remembering how to feel 24

III. Coming Home You held me in your open arms giving a lazy smile. Knowing where I had been the ground beneath us a map without me having to say anything. You looked at me as though it was only natural for me to be here, you betrayed no surprise. Rather than me coming back it was as if I never left. My shoulders lowered and I melted into your touch. Your eyes said this would not be the last time So you’ll keep looking. A quiet confidence The flowers know the sun loves them too 25

Acknowledgements We are extremely grateful for the Asia Center for all their support. Without them, it would have been impossible to even conceive of this issue. Thank you also to our faculty advisor Ju Yon Kim, who has also supported us from the very beginning. Last but not least, we would like to thank Asian Students Arts Project, whose open community allowed the seeds of The Wave to germinate.