Witches Mag, Issue #5: Time

WITCHES MAG

ISSUE #5 SEPTEMBER 2021

ISSUE #5: TIME

CONTENTS

3 manifesta 5 when you find a white hair 8 new listings 9 maría, a bird 13 changes for alyssa 14 main characters 17 littlest apple, big apple, pt. 1 18 right girl, wrong time 20 alone time 21 just one year of love 27 four generations of poinsettias 28 yellow house 37 hadley’s diary 38 thing with the feathers 39 fuck turning the other cheek.

41 free time 42 haiku on time by a pandemic teacher 43 time in a vial 48 when i was 50 glue and coffee 51 great piece about time 52 tattoo trails 57 rituals and the male gaze 58 scenes from an expiring relationship 71 krystal’s diary

72 life on a timeline 75 stephanie’s diary 76 tiny round belly 79 no gods / forgive us our sins 82 time w u 83 takes two to tango 85 littlest apple, big apple, pt. 2 86 her honor 87 (wo)man’s best friend 93 clairvoyant monica and the mystery of major 95 liz’s college essay 96 waiting room 98 i didn’t know it at fifteen 100 developing film 101 jac’s diary 105 38 days 109 world standard time 111 revlon’s unforgettable women 113 on the art of conjugation 115 ang’s 4th birthday 115 i’m still thinking about it 117 littlest apple, big apple, pt. 3 119 opal jewelry & beckoning bread 121 dedication & more info 122 contributors 123 cuckoo // the end

MANIFESTA Witches Mag began as a handwritten idea in the back of an old notebook in October of 2018. It was born after 2 am, when my cup of tea had gone cold, my graduate school assignments had been pushed to the far side of my desk, and my thoughts were racing like I was living through a fever dream. I’d spent the week keeping up with the U.S. senate hearing during which Dr. Christine Blasey Ford bravely shared the story of her sexual assault, and then watching Brett Kavanaugh get confirmed as a Supreme Court justice in spite of Blasey Ford’s testimony. Sick of sulking in my growing disappointment and anger, I felt compelled to do something, to make something that was overtly political and overtly feminist. The results of Dr. Blasey Ford’s testimony had proven to me that women’s stories were not valued like men’s were, even in 2018, and I wanted to work to change this. I decided then that I would begin a publication that centered girls’ and women’s voices.

I scribbled down that Witches Mag would try to create a space for girls and women to discuss sexism and feminism honestly, to write with nuance, to critique our culture, to mess up and teach each other, to admit our hypocrisy, and ultimately, to have our voices, artwork, opinions, stories, and experiences centered, acknowledged, validated, and listened to. With these goals in mind, for each issue of Witches, girls and women are asked to contribute work related to a chosen theme.

The Witches you’re about to meet understand that feminism is messy, uncomfortable, and difficult. It is both personal and political. It’s about challenging a sexist culture, not just making individual, empowered choices. It recognizes the downfalls of the gender binary. It knows that men are negatively affected by patriarchy as well. It requires an intersectional approach to be effective. It is often exhausting and disheartening, but it is ultimately rooted in optimism. Our work in Witches is meant to reflect these values.

This publication does not claim to be representative of what misogyny feels or looks like to every woman and girl. As a young woman who is very white, mostly straight, and relatively middle class, I recognize that mainstream feminist movements have historically marginalized women of color, working-class women, queer women, and transgender women and that I have a responsibility to make space in these pages for girls and women who are different than me. This is an essential element of my understanding of feminism and it consistently shapes the manifestation of my values in the personal, professional, and academic areas of my life. Witches centers the artwork and experiences of girls and women with the goal of challenging existing systems from angles that are actively anti-sexist, anti-racist, and anti-classist. The girls and women in this issue are committed to these ethics, and we are aware of our 3

responsibility to continue learning, challenging, advocating, and growing with each issue. That said, anyone who identifies as a girl or woman and is interested in sharing work that reflects her experiences within a sexist culture is invited and encouraged to join us.

On that pivotal night in October of 2018, my greatest hope was that Witches would foster a community in which girls and women could share their stories, discover commonalities, and learn from how their experiences contradict each other. With the release of our previous issue, Relationships, I started to believe we had done exactly this—and during a time when belonging to a community felt particularly important.

Going forward, my hopes from that first night remain consistent. May we continue to support our fellow Witches, to respect the history of our name, to entertain our readers, to invite and welcome people of all genders to our readership, to teach along the way, to make my parents proud. And may we continue making the anger we harbor as a result of living in a sexist culture feel purposeful and proactive as we take concrete action to build a culture that values girls’ and women’s stories more.

The theme of this issue is Time, and when reading these pages, you’ll find yourself inside of stories about our grandmother’s yellow house by the sea, about the waiting room at Planned Parenthood, about photos of our mother on an undeveloped roll of film. There are tales of mourning in advance—we pay our respects to something with feathers, to a live performance of a Billy Joel song, to Black women who are counted out too soon. Over and over again, we speak of patience—when waiting for a call from the doctor on the day before Christmas, when completing feminine rituals, when we are the right girl but at the wrong time. Yet there is also triumph, mostly in the form of love for ourselves and others—in four generations of poinsettias, in a dream about New York City that comes true, in the growth that can bloom while spending a year alone. Because this is an issue about Time, we’ve included some of our diary entries from years past. They are woven in between our current pieces. In doing so, we hope to validate our younger selves, who may not have had a community like this one with which to share their experiences.

Time was chosen by our contributors and readers more than a year into a global pandemic, and as a result, grief is rich across these pages. We hope that our writing and artwork has honored your most specific memories of loved ones, including thirtyeight days that overlap, a mother worthy of forgiveness, and a cherry Jolly Rancher at the bottom of a purse.

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WHEN YOU FIND A WHITE HAIR you might stand there with bare feet soaking up cold tile, and grow eyes large and incredulous, or else laugh in joy and passage-rite. And there might be a moment of disbelief or confusion: you might text your sister and save the strand in the cover of a book for keeping so she can inspect it when next she comes, to affirm or endorse, to disprove maybe, or perhaps even to bless. And while you’re waiting for her coming, you still sit down next to the reality that death is on its way for you. May I be honest here? It feels like cheating, to find a white hair when you’re still single and childless. These are thoughts about aging hair and imposter syndrome.

The findings of such kinds It seems that erasure of of hair seem always tied to lived experiences comes my kids or the mortgage or no thanks to the spouse. in subtly horrible ways: And I’m just wondering scar cream and cellulite where the room is for all lotion, rigid belts for us folks to gather, those of who are growing whiterolling flesh, disguises us old without the usual for the laugh ridges of impetuses. Or leastways, a late-night belly laughs. lower rate of the usuals.

I’ve lived a semi-conventional life with spurts into non. And the defensive thought rises in me that I’ve earned that hair, though to whom I’m arguing is unclear (which is the great trick of impostering). This hair didn’t come from babies or fixed-year interest rates, but it did come from living, I say to the invisible they who circle around my choices and cast 5

judgment on the state of my savings account.

How I would love to unabashedly say let us all denounce this! But still, I continue to shave my legs just the same.

Who knows when this white one first sprouted? Was it at some moment during my airport strandings and language barrier obstacle courses? Or in the lengthening circles between bureaucratic offices and notarized form scavenger hunts?

Perhaps it was on the particularly harrowing thirty-hour round-trip flight over two days, to attend a funeral for which I was not prepared and wanted to happen even less. It could easily have grown in the New York days, where it’s possible to always pack in one more side hustle, one extra gig, the last two hundred for rent materializing in the scaly hard edges of city survival.

Or perhaps it came from taking on the burdens of Max and Ben, not my children but still very much my own. I can picture B’s face so clearly, eyes soft from crying and pudgy hand holding onto mine, his rocketship nightlight casting shadows in the wrong places. When his world grew out of proportion, or rather he for it, did I not look on in empathy, familiar with the squeeze of transitioning through to the next part, the next season, the next level of living?

When the white hair came is really immaterial, or so say the they w h o i n s i s t t h e b a t t l e n o w i s h a i r w a r d a n d nonnegotiable. Now becomes predatory. It seems that 6

erasure of lived experiences comes in subtly horrible ways: scar cream and cellulite lotion, rigid belts for rolling flesh, disguises for the laugh ridges of late-night belly laughs.

How I would love to unabashedly say let us all denounce this! But still, I continue to shave my legs just the same.

And yet. But then. Or maybe even?

It occurs to me that the gatekeepers of living are largely imagined, or at least misconstrued. And anyway, are white and grey hairs predestined or free will? Who’s to say I don’t grow more life in the middle, dare I suggest even the end?

Instead of unwinding into a fleshy pile of bygone, I’m thinking we have it wrong. I’m thinking we upwind into a higher immersion, a bigger scoop to swallow the moments whizzing around, a brighter hollow for holding time-bound happenings.

Stretching joints and lengthening skin are Openings, darlings. When you find a white hair, answer the Opening.

Tell your sister. Upwind with the sprouting. These are the apertures for ingesting deep living, and they are for you.

B y Ly d i a R e n f ro

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New Listings After a year of COVID-mandated telework, few things dig under your skin as efficiently as the ding of an email notification. This time it isn’t work—it’s Zillow. The house we were “eyeing” has sold.

They are in the other room working after hours—easy to do when the commute is barely the recommended social distance. I call out with the news and we laugh together at the loss of the lavish future we envisioned in this high-dollar home as we ignored our real budget, our real student debt, our real future, our real present, the real weight of societal expectations.

In this light, fleeting, almost mundane moment, a million realities come and go. Time stops and also stretches. We stand together at the precipice, where we’ve been for what feels like eternity. One of us will have to bend, but who? When? How did we get here? We’ve built a whole life together. We’ve built whole careers together—but apart.

Now what?

Is this our real future? Our real present? Who gets to decide?

Me? Them? Our gendered roles?

Society expects me to just bend, give up, follow. But do you?

The laughter fades. Time begins to move at a normal pace.

What is a normal pace anyway?

Zillow loads: “Three new listings in your search!”

By E.N. Smith 8

MARÍA, A BIRD “I want to die young,” she says, her words quick and dancing like the Spanish she speaks. Her dark eyes glitter mischievously even through my laptop screen.

“How young?” I’m meant to be helping her with English grammar but taking a sharp turn from the lesson plan into winding conversations like this isn’t uncommon for us.

“Oh, like, seventy-five, maybe eighty, tops.”

“That’s only twenty more years, right? Stop.”

“I’ve lived enough by then. I don’t want to lose freedom from my body growing old, things like that.”

Feeling useless and isolated during the pandemic, I applied to be an ESL tutor through an organization in the city.

A few months later, here I am, sitting on my floor talking about life and death through a computer screen with María.

María came to the U.S. from Mexico young and alone.

Over the next twenty years she lived between worlds, missing her home while building another. Never married and without children, her dreams are of travel. Freedom. Glittering cities and windswept coasts. When our lesson plans prompt me to ask silly questions like, “If you could be any animal, what would you be?” she’s the kind of woman who immediately answers, “A bird.”

There’s something special about being a young woman and connecting with a woman who has lived so much more; it arises some kind of intrinsic and immediate camaraderie that can’t be explained, only felt. Our conversations fill me up.

“I look at you and you have everything, right?” she says to me once. “You are young, with family and a career for yourself. You are free.”

Her words are jarring to me. I think about them a lot.

It’s a summer evening and the sunlight filters through my window and stretches across these pages beautifully. A 9

golden hour glow. My tea mug is filled and steaming, and I’m propped up against the pillows on my couch while I try to find the words to explain this vague nagging sensation eating me from the inside out. I am craving something, left unfulfilled by a gap I don’t know how to fill.

I don’t feel free.

You have everything, right? You are free. *** Women are scrutinized in impossible ways, our existence pinned down into too much or too little. In relationships I was always too much — too much emotion, too many opinions, not enough chill. Whittle yourself down into something less demanding, I was told.

In life I’m always doing too little. I’m a woman who never could decide on a career path in a society that conflates selfworth with profession. I blame myself usually — I should do more. Haven’t accomplished enough. Not grateful enough for everything I have. Must check more off a bucket list. Prove I’m something. My softness and empathy and creativity aren’t considered skills in this world. Weren’t we always told that to succeed we’d have to change ourselves? Weren’t we always

Women are scrutinized in impossible ways, our existence pinned down into too much or too little. In relationships I was always too much — too much emotion, too many opinions, not enough chill. shown that everything feminine is undervalued and underpaid and simply not enough?

The world we’ve built is harsh. If I didn’t know better, I’d call it unforgiving. We sit behind screens and don’t remember the last time we had enough time off. We don’t watch the sunset and we don’t sit around tables with food and laughter and flowing wine unless we’ve carved out an hour for it a few 10

weeks in advance. We try to monetize every. last. creative. endeavor. We think we’ll be happy when.

We were taught to cage ourselves. We were never taught to ask— how do I live true to myself? *** “Are you happy?” I ask María once.

She pauses and considers the question. Looks me square in the eye.

“Not really, no.”

“Why not?”

“I miss my family, my mother. And I always feel like there is something I should be doing. You know, a kind of reason for being here. I don’t have it.”

We don’t watch the sunset and we don’t sit around tables with food and laughter and flowing wine unless we’ve carved out an hour for it a few weeks in advance.

I look at her and see the bravest woman, full of life, the influence of her story on my own so clear and purposeful. I look at her and see a reflection of myself. I see all of us — the women who push back against how they were told to live, the women who are shaking and afraid but do it differently anyway. The women who find a home within, despite everything trying to keep them from themselves.

We get lost out there trying to make something of ourselves. But what if we could see our entire lives stretching out ahead of us? If time became stretchy and elastic and we could see everything before it happened? Every year we’ll work at a certain job. Going on that trip we always dreamed of, finally. The heartbreak that tears the ground from beneath us and makes our hearts ache every night. Another evening at home with tea and the dishwasher running soothingly in the background. A night out, laughing with friends. Loss and celebration and hope and mundanity. Sleep, and a new day.

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If we saw it all before it happened to us, would we be less afraid? Would we breathe a sigh of relief without the pressure of becoming? Without the pressure of conforming?

Would we live our stories freely as they play out, knowing that every inevitable moment is part of something larger?

But we don’t know what will happen next. There’s a beauty in that mystery if we can get past the fear of it. If we can remember that every second belongs to us and we are free to do what we will with it. If we can forget how society and the people around us make us think we should be living — how do we live as we would if we had no mental handcuffs? What would we do? How would we think and act and speak and love and rage?

Women like María, whether they know it or not, are a compass for women like me. She says she feels like she doesn’t have a reason for being here, yet she keeps living the bravest life I’ve ever heard of. She wants the freedom of a

But what if we could see our entire lives stretching out ahead of us? If time became stretchy and elastic and we could see everything before it happened? bird to soar and travel. She’s made a pact with herself to live as fully as she can now, every single day, so that when she grows old she will know she’s lived enough. She takes up space. She fights to uncage herself and be free.

María shows me that living my story is enough. That no matter what happens, every one of us has a depth that can’t be touched, something strong and resolute in our core that nothing and no one can take from us.

Women like María remind me that we can be free.

By Mel Rie

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CHANGES FOR

: A Growing Up Story

By Alyssa Dill 13

Main Characters

By Leandra Boysen Like many feeling adrift in the midst of global hurt and uncertainty, last year I moved. Amongst the natural progression of picking up your life, your framed moments, your written secrets, your covers and clothes, I found the gems. I found a tiny

old picture I had kept of my grandpa as a toddler in a snowsuit in the Minnesota woods. I found a letter my baby sister wrote to me my freshman year of college, telling me she missed me. And I found the journal I kept in college during and after my most significant romantic relationship.

I took this time capsule to my new home, brushed the dust off, and set it in my nightstand, knowing one day soon I’d come back to relive the words I had written. Many nights came when I thought I might open the cover, but too often decided that I did not have the energy today for that dive.

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A perfect storm of journal prompts, dating woes, and a community of witches finally brought me to take a peek.

Things I found: -At times, a surprising clarity and awareness for a girl arguably still so young -A cringeworthy tendency for the dramatic flair -The unguarded heart that I hope still exists beneath the collected walls and calluses of today -A note to self: “It’s been hard times, love.”

I found myself at times proud of the past Leandra writing these lines and impressed by how much I already understood about life. I found myself at times so sad and disappointed by the things I did not yet see in myself. I filled these pages with hurt and with hope. I filled these pages, more than once, after crumbling on the floor in a wave of tears (I warned you of the dramatic flair). I was searching for things that I am now so grateful I never found. I was setting the stitches for a new life I now wear with grace.

The critical mass of this journal was devoted to one stupid boy and his actions and consequences. My past self, my girl, lost sight of who she was and what she was capable of. However, after these added years, after shifting passions, after new loves and losses and selves, something entirely outside the substance of these pages catches my attention. It occurs to me that we’re meant to encounter pieces of life which whisper the direction of our journey, even if we can’t hear it at the time.

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In this iteration of re-reading, I spotted two quotes I had passed over so quickly before, two quotes so easy to miss when focusing on the wrong character.

The first, eight pages in: “I want to leave people happier than when I found them.”

The second, a scribble on the last free page and four years later, a quote from a friend that I found special enough to record: “You have a great ability to bring people in to you and relate to them and make them feel like they’ve known you for years.”

A whole journal spent on processing the pain inflicted by a boy, bookended by an accomplished dream I never even noticed I had fulfilled. It’s encouraging to know that although my journey has been clouded at times, my true character has been deep in the storyline, centering the focus, always.

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THE LITTLEST APPLE IN THE BIG APPLE PART 1 OF 3

By Savannah Apple 17

RIGHT GIRL, WRONG TIME

By Jeannie McDonald

Is it enough to just try—or does it all go back to timing?

Do we have complete control—or is it all predetermined?

Wiping the mirror clean, I see you for a split second Your strong arms wrapped around me Like a movie, it flickers through my head More than friends with benefits, Not too prude, not too loose “Cool” girl, she’d let me do it, Romanticized version of you

The day we spent in the sun, getting to know each other better Browsing aisles in the antique store, Stay until we both fall asleep

Keep me safe from my nightmares Your name is still stuck on my tongue Look into my eyes and read my mind Breathe you in Hold my hand until the sun shows its face Let your guard down I’ll watch your back, if you watch mine —Take mine with it If you had asked me, I would’ve moved it all for you Like a pen to paper, I’d let you use me

Loud and warm New and fresh Like smoking your first bowl in the pitch-black parking lot, Or that night by the docks with our fingers intertwined

Like the guys before, Stuck in roles I didn’t ask for, Expecting nothing in return, I would’ve changed for you, too

Put the light on, So I can see you look at me Let me see your flaws + i’ll show you mine

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Emotionally six feet apart I dreamt of you in my bed again Why can you only tell me you want me in my sleep?

What are you thinking?

Give me clarity, consistency, You can tell me anything, I’ll keep it close with me

Until I was sore— And full of grief Mourning who we were, Or who I thought I was, A past self, A year inside

Scared, but comfortable Just talk to me I would’ve understood Pleading for vulnerability Trying to keep it clean, But left messy, sticky, complicated

Maybe someday, We’ll cross paths again Recall on the old days When we were young and damaged

I wish I could hate you But we’re too similar Guarded, a multitude of signs Powerless to you, and time Something else has control I can feel it slipping away

Maybe we’ll run into each other, running errands, or getting coffee We’ll make the same sarcastic jokes, no longer afraid of chances

Distance always makes it seem lighter, If it doesn’t weigh it down Trying to break cycles, And old habits Poked and prodded, Dove in deep

Maybe you’ll have a new job, And I’ll be finished with grad school Right place, right time We could give it a fair try

I won’t forget the night we first met Or the first time I really heard you laugh, It replays in my head on loop, haunting me relentlessly But now sometimes, at this time of night, I sigh in relief

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alone time

by claudia sousa 20

Just One Year of Love

By Krystal Olsen

It has been one year. Three hundred and sixty-five days. One year of the lockdown that was supposed to just be two weeks but lasted the entirety of my twenty-fifth year. It lasted this long for me, at least. I am one of the few people in this country who actually stayed home to stop the spread. Maybe it just feels like I am one of the few because I saw so many people on social media continuing to live normal lives. While all of my other friends have been lackadaisical, I have been still.

In 2016, I was diagnosed with celiac disease, which is an autoimmune disease that doesn’t allow my body to digest gluten.

Instead, gluten attacks my body. This I’ve learned to avoid after years of practice, but during the pandemic, I had to be extra cautious about catching COVID, or worse, giving it to someone I know. During the pandemic, I became a full-time nanny who had to navigate keeping children present during online learning while still trying to remain a sane 20-something. The last thing I wanted to do was put the family I worked for at risk by being irresponsible, but my god has it been so mentally draining to be responsible.

While I sat in my room watching a record amount of television, I also watched people vacation all over the country, vacation out of the country, attend illegal house parties, go to bars packed with people, and even go on dates with strangers unmasked. Most of the year, I got angry. I was annoyed at people for being careless, but I was also jealous.

Why did I just waste a year of my twenties while these people selfishly lived on? What did they gain? What did I gain? Was it worth it? I now know that I do not have to live with contributing

The person I was looking for all along was me. It was just me.

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to the guilt of hundreds of thousands of deaths. But I look back on my journal entries from March of 2020 and realize I was in a horrible place mentally. Some of my entries discussed feeling trapped in my apartment and having anxiety any time I left. But most of them had a similar theme—most of them addressed my loneliness.

I have been single for four years now. You can imagine how being single for four years can make you feel like something is wrong with you. I wrote in April: I just don’t understand. What is wrong with me? Why can’t I find someone? My biggest takeaway from my first month in isolation was: I will not survive this alone.

I was so sure that I needed someone’s help. I wanted a savior to scoop me up and plop me on a cloud away from the nightmares.

I survived the year, of course, but ultimately, the person I was looking for all along was me. It was just me. But it was a different version of me: a new and improved me. *** I spent all of March and April of 2020 in my apartment. I wasn’t seeing much of anyone, yet I was battling the crowded spaces of my mind. I could no longer keep busy with trivial plans, work, or activities. The best I could do was the occasional Zoom call, which often left me feeling worse as I hit the Leave Meeting button. I reconnected with old friends over hour-long Facetime calls, but once those people began defrosting their normal lives, mine stayed frozen. New York was hit hard at the beginning of the pandemic, but once spring was ending, they saw some light while California remained dark. I spent the better part of my year watching New York, the place I called home for the first 18 years of my life, outshine Los Angeles, the place I hope to call home for the rest of my life.

I’m having trouble forgiving my friends who acted irresponsibly during the pandemic. In my isolation, I learned how to be okay with my loneliness; as a result, I no longer sacrifice my beliefs and boundaries to spend time with people 22

who don’t align with me just to stay busy, just to fill whatever hole I feel inside me. I decided I would rather continue my existence as a loner than feel the need to live up to others’ superficial expectations.

This was a hard feat to come by. I went to Arizona State University and was in a sorority while I worked in the bar industry. I was constantly surrounded by people. I was also surrounded by judgement and standards that I felt pressured to meet. For years, I didn’t feel good enough. At lightspeed, harsh thoughts ran through my mind: Am I skinny enough? Am I pretty enough? Do these people like me? Can I fit in? Why did I say that?

They must think I’m stupid.

One of the few benefits to being on social media during this time was discovering Therapy TikTok. I watched videos filled with coping tactics and ways of processing grief and trauma.

When I moved to Los Angeles in the fall of 2019, my mother had just passed away. I immersed myself into a new city and a different world while still trying to adjust to a life without my biggest supporter. I’d joke and tell people I was an orphan, as my dad isn’t in my life, but I truly felt abandoned. Losing your mother at a young age is hard enough, but combine that with no other parental figures, plus a global pandemic, and you will find a recipe for complete isolation.

Therapy TikTok taught me that my not feeling good enough and not feeling whole comes from my not receiving sufficient praise or unconditional love as a child. (Ironically, if you asked my siblings, they would argue I received all the praise.) I’ve reflected on how even I, the golden child who seemingly got all the attention, did not ever feel complete love and support from both my parents. I don’t blame them; I know they tried their best.

That’s the thing with broken families—they are run by broken adults who do not love themselves enough to function at their full potential. It’s the main reason I work so hard on myself: because I hope one day I will be able to break that generational 23

curse of parents who aren’t fully committed to raising children properly. I never want my children to have to question their worth because of my inadequacies.

So I learned why I am the way that I am. I learned about children who come from unhealthy backgrounds. I understood why my siblings and I were more likely to adopt alcoholism and addiction. I processed that some of the “normal” things that occurred in my childhood were indeed not normal. I continued to analyze past relationships, and I recognized that they were all toxic because I didn’t know any different. I then moved on to coping and fully processing my trauma and triggers. Why was I quick to become defensive in an argument? Was it because I was raised by a narcissist who constantly manipulated situations to make me think I was always wrong? Was it because I felt the need to prove myself constantly for validation? Was it a result of being gaslighted by the ones I loved? I never learned redemption; I thought the mistakes I had made would define me for life.

Naturally, I thought I was a bad person, which made me believe I didn’t deserve anything good. I developed patterns of selfsabotage and self-loathing. I’d never been taught that it was okay to make mistakes and move forward.

These revelations I had would have never been possible during a normal, busy life. I ignored my trauma for years by working multiple jobs, going to school, and keeping my social calendar packed to the brim. The days I did try to unwind and relax, all these thoughts would flood my mind. I would lie in bed depressed, not understanding what was happening to me, then try again the next day to avoid those thoughts. So, while this past year was obviously the most difficult for everyone to persevere

I forgave my parents. I missed my parents. I recognized that the love I have for them, despite their flaws, doesn’t go anywhere. It sits with me.

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through, I have much to be thankful for as well. For the first time in my life, I was able to watch my own story through the television in my brain and forgive myself. I forgave others, too. I forgave my parents. I missed my parents. I recognized that the love I have for them, despite their flaws, doesn’t go anywhere. It sits with me. The reason I was constantly craving someone to love was because I had so much love to give without realizing I could just give that love to myself. I deserved that love just as much as a partner would deserve my love. I realized I was able to forgive myself for my mistakes and accept that I am better than those who were angry with me thought I was. I could barely fathom that it was possible my father was wrong about me—I truly could amount to something and be successful in my own way. I did not have to live up to the disappointment he bestowed upon me from birth. I could want better for myself and do it. I could survive on my own without parents to guide me or aid me financially. I could move to a new city where I only knew a handful of people and feel content.

I spent the past few years of being single consistently trying to find someone to make me better, but now that I have found a better self on my own, one day I will be ready for a normal, healthy, adult relationship. The kind of relationship where you communicate clearly about everything and listen to each other, which I now understand how to do from listening clearly to myself.

Last summer, I thought I was ready for this new kind of relationship. I met someone who was everything I’d ever wanted in a partner. I tried to force my healing to be complete so we could be together. I thought if I was all better, then I could be ready for this relationship. But as we know, healing doesn’t work like that. I started to revert to my old patterns of accepting a relationship on someone else’s terms, not my own, of doing things for others but never for myself. Eventually though—after a painful rejection from this person—I realized my standards for a 25

partner and for myself are higher than that now. The universe had to break my heart for me to fully grasp this concept, but I’m grateful for the lesson. It was the starting point of a never-ending game.

Since I was forced to face my fear of being alone, I realized that even when isolated, I am lucky to not really be alone. I had many people, although virtually, who supported me nonstop.

Even online strangers who validated my feelings and contributed to my growth. I learned more this year than any prior, mostly

I meditated. I manifested.

I acted on my manifestations and practiced gratitude for them.

because of the new things I did: I started having picnics alone in the park (don’t worry, I kept a knife and pepper spray on me). I began reading books again. I (horribly) cut myself curtain bangs. I laughed about it and rocked them. I spoke to my sister more than I have in the last fifteen years. I called my relatives more. I started a 401(k). I had no idea what I was going to do with myself day to day but learned to just accept that. (I know I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.) I stopped comparing myself to others, and I finally understood that social media is never an accurate depiction of someone’s life. I got into skincare. I spent a lot of money on it but finally found a routine that works for me. I accepted my body for all its squishiness, despite being proud of my muscles and hard work for years prior. I slowed down when driving. (I wasn’t in a rush to get anywhere anymore.) I collected a list of all the places I want to visit post-pandemic. I connected with friends online whom I now consider the people closest to me. I started a Clubhouse chatroom on Thursdays, and anyone was welcome to check in to discuss mental health. I moved in with a normal family and understood how a household is supposed to function. I had the love of two little boys who 26

thought I was the coolest big sister. (Even if no one else cared about me, they did.) I meditated. I manifested. I acted on my manifestations and practiced gratitude for them.

Given the opportunity, I would not change the last year for me. I wish I could save all the lives that were lost, help all the people who lost their careers and themselves. I would go back and try to change the world of course, but in the smaller vision of everything I endured, I also wish I could go back to the beginning and tell myself that I would survive. We are all survivors for powering through this pandemic. This year seems to have lasted an infinite amount of time. I hope we are all able to reflect on this time and understand how valuable our lives are and how much we truly have to offer to this thing we call life.

four generations of poinsettias

photo by k. krusell

contributed by m.e. griffith

27

Yellow House

By Rachel Dean

My grandmother’s yellow house in the South is something of an amalgamation—a physical structure, yes, but also an essence— a place and attitude we deliver ourselves to once or twice a year.

We’ve been going for as long as I can remember, and so I’ve gathered a collection of oddly mundane impressions—the light wood floors and the pineapples sewn on pillows, the coffee cups with their cobalt rims and silver handles. Each time I return, I expect the house and its atmosphere to be different, but nothing has ever changed. The grass outside is still brown, the algae congregating at the lip of the manmade pond.

Time. I am supposed to be thinking about it. The passing of it, the stuck-ness of it, the way it orders my existence like an overbearing parent. But actually, perhaps even fittingly, I don’t need to summon this thinking. It’s always already on my mind.

During the 14-hour car ride to the yellow house, I read a book by an Irish writer, Mark O’Connell, about transhumanism. There is a movement, largely among the rich and privileged, to cure death by technology. To eventually upload consciousness to an operating system, and if this proves impossible, to merge fleshand-blood forms with varying mechanical parts. Many of transhumanism’s loyalists believe that our bodies are apt to betray us, and that at the moment of birth, we begin an inevitable wandering toward our own obliteration. This isn’t untrue, but it’s perhaps a cynical way looking at life—a glass-half-empty sort of reckoning. The finish line is death, yes, but for the lucky, there’s a good amount that comes before it. In any case, O’Connell, in his gonzo-journalist style, makes their idealism about a cyborg utopia sound garish—an affront to what’s natural and normal. I agree, but then I get to the yellow house where my grandmother is dying from cancer and I think: maybe we’re our truest selves when we’re 28

Time. I am supposed to be thinking about it. The passing of it, the stuck-ness of it, the way it orders my existence like an overbearing parent.

trying to avoid mortality.

My grandmother weighs 90 pounds now, and mostly sleeps on the blue and green striped couch on the first floor of the house. She is still sharp—asks me about the book I’m reading, which is my mentor’s newest release, a sprawling novel about a woman who deliberates, in nine different versions of her life, whether or not to have a child. Sometimes I wonder if my grandmother would enjoy a novel like this, one that mulls over questions that were likely never available for her to answer. She had three sons and worked full-time, and the running joke in our family is that she never knew where the boys were once they were old enough to run away from her. I know enough to recognize that this attempt at humor is more or less a commentary on the way she mothered, which is more or less a commentary on who she was. There are a hundred things I could ask her, but everyone says this when a person is nearing the end of their life and the time has been surrendered—I should have said, I should have asked, I should have tried harder to understand.

The night my mother tells me my grandmother has been admitted to the hospital because of a COVID-19 infection, I begin a documentary called My Octopus Teacher. In it, a man who lives in South Africa begins to visit an octopus each day, observing its impressive intelligence, its habits and patterns. He dives without scuba equipment or a breathing apparatus because he prefers the freedom that free-swimming allows. The documentary is a series of gorgeous visuals—the floating forest of ocean seaweed, the shimmering water dappled by sunlight. The octopus eventually dies, of course, and the man is forced to contend with the banality 29

of the ocean’s ecosystem—the way everything turns in on itself with time, a boundless and efficient machine. You don’t start a documentary of this kind without knowing what you’re in for— tears for the beloved creature’s death, tears at the man’s voiceover when he notes that the friendship with the octopus has clarified his understanding of the interconnectedness of all things. I fall asleep after running rounds of anxious thoughts. The next night, I go to dinner with my family. When I sit down at the table, my mother—the first one there—asks me what’s wrong. I’m having a hard time, I say. Then I start crying, and she puts a hand on my back, moves it in small circles between my shoulder blades. By the time the waiter appears and we’re all settled in, my face is still wet, and he begins reciting the specials. We have a really great octopus dish tonight, he says.

I don’t need to summon this thinking.

It’s always already on my mind.

Three years ago, during the interim between my first and second semester of grad school, my boyfriend at the time moved to California for work. A few nights before his departure, I told him the truth: I was tired, I didn’t want to try long distance, I was afraid we’d ruin the good thing we’d built. By good I meant easy, and by easy I meant noncommittal. If we were to stay together, we’d have to reckon with what we were doing, which I still couldn’t name to anyone who asked. It’s serious, right? My friends would say. You say “I love you” to each other, right? I’d shrug at the first question, shake my head at the second. So much time had passed, and yet it felt like we were treading water. When I said this—spoke the words I’d been longing to say—he looked at me sadly over the small corner table where we were sitting, in a dark restaurant outside of town. I took a sip of my wine, touched my hair. I wanted to appear beautiful and removed—like I was above the fool he was making of me, a woman who was suddenly afraid 30

I wanted to appear beautiful and removed—like I was above the fool he was making of me, a woman who was suddenly afraid to be alone.

to be alone. When we finally said goodbye I was a wrecked mess, and drove the whole way home from his house listening to a melodramatic playlist I’d constructed for the very occasion. The following day, my father and I were flying to the South and the yellow house to see my grandmother and spend a week with her.

She’d recently received her cancer diagnosis. It was cold, not the best time to be there. Most days were mild, the sky an appropriate slate gray. I slept in the big bed across from my grandmother’s room, swamped in sheets that smelled of Gain detergent, deleted all my social media, and spent long days laboring after the completion of my thesis. I woke each morning to coffee my father had prepared, and without these markers of reality—homework, texts from my boyfriend, the long commute to and from campus— I began to forget what day it was, how much time had passed since I’d arrived. The yellow house, I sometimes thought, might swallow me whole. I could then become some kind of feminized architecture, a part of the place being visited, rather than the person doing the visiting.

Sitting outside with my grandmother one afternoon this year, she says that so much has changed here since she and her husband—dead twenty years now—first bought the house. It’s funny she says this, because it doesn’t feel to me like anything has changed about the place where we are. As I sit outside, sunning myself, it feels possible to believe that I am still very young, that she is also young, that I am on the beach and bending down to pick up seashells and she is watching me from a short distance away. But then I think about it, really pause, and decide that it’s 31

more like some conjurer has arrived in the night—a magician of time—and struck us all with fast-forwarding spells. I’m 25 now, I don’t agree with my parents’ politics, my brother can’t ever run the dishwasher and so my existence sometimes feels like an eternal elongated act of moving things in and out of the upper and lower racks, my apartment is too expensive, I’ve published nothing. Sometimes I meet myself in my current life as if I’ve been dropped into the present from a more ambiguous past—I’m forced to reorient myself to the moment and to who I’ve become. I don’t like this; it’s a sort of vertigo. I’ll see people out at a bar drinking heavily, hear the ensuing laughter on the street, and feel an alluring call. I’ll watch a film or read a novel where a woman destroys her relationships, burns them down for the sake of excavating her own rage, and wonder why I didn’t keep at it—that self-denial I once considered noble. Then I’ll remember: oh, I am not that person anymore. There is no grief there, not even regret, just a kind of curiosity. It’s better now, my life. Time has passed.

My period arrives the day we depart for the yellow house. For most of the week I’m bleeding profusely, emptying my menstrual cup into the toilet, blood spilling crimson into the bowl. This feels like a strange contrast to what’s happening in the house, which is the slow devolving of my grandmother’s body. Hers is stagnant, and so she’s been instructed by a physical therapist to get exercise, to stand up every hour and walk, to eat foods with fiber and drink more water. Conversely, my body can’t be stilled; it’s

There are a hundred things I could ask her, but everyone says this when a person is nearing the end of their life and the time has been surrendered—I should have said, I should have asked, I should have tried harder to understand.

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churning and processing, I’m bleeding through every pair of underwear I own. I think back to O’Connell’s book, to the transhumanists who want to end these corporal inconveniences.

Surely they’d consider our individual problems—both mine and my grandmother’s—nuisances that should be cured. And yet, that my body submits to a cycle, to an internal construction of time, is a reminder that I’m not powerful, that I own so little of myself. My cramps can double me over, render me immobile. I am struck again and again by the warmth of my blood, which runs down my hand, my forearm, when I maneuver the menstrual cup incorrectly. Sometimes it looks like I’ve slashed my own wrists. I have ridiculous urges to take pictures of the toilet bowl—the clumps and clots of uterine lining—and send the evidence to my boyfriend, M. Say: Look, this is what my body endures. It doesn’t make sense, this desire—it wouldn’t prove anything. He knows, anyway, I complain about it enough, and he’s a patient listener.

But still, I think. I am just a collection of flesh, bones, blood—a simmering organism that submits to time and its accessory processes.

I finish O’Connell’s To Be a Machine; I close the book on all the deranged and genius and sorrowful people trying to resist life’s processes, and I think: I don’t want to be a person so obsessed with mortality that she’s unable to recognize the sand dwindling in the hourglass. But I also understand the appeal of resisting it, of violently working to withhold death’s encroaching promise. I don’t want my grandmother to die. I don’t want to die.

That seems like a simple desire—one that we should have figured out by now. These days, I’ll find myself enjoying something—a particularly good cup of coffee, the sun on my back, the sight of the small purple flowers that pop up near M’s place as the weather warms, and I’ll think: my grandmother is dying, and I don’t deserve to be thinking about anything else. The joy is brief before guilt’s crash. It’s worth noting that I’ve never been immune 33

to this feeling, not even in childhood—my life thus far has been a dogged chase of finding and catching pleasure and then submitting to guilt. On the phone with a friend from grad school, I tell her that I sometimes fixate on death for so long that it makes me nauseous. I didn’t know that, she says. She sounds concerned. I try to explain. I’m worried that everyone I love will be taken away from me. And surely this is a realistic worry, not an irrelevant fear: one day, they all will, or maybe I’ll go first. A few days into the week at the yellow house, while my grandmother sleeps on the couch downstairs, my father looks me straight in the eyes and says: This is a reminder that you should just do what you want to do in life. It doesn’t matter, any of the rest of it. It’s a cliche, right? That this realization arrives when we face a loved one’s mortality. I want to resist my father’s aphorism—I want to say, cruelly—it’s all futile and it doesn’t matter and what’s the point because you’re going to die one day, too, and that will ruin me. But he’s right. Or maybe we’re both right.

To the general impatience of transhumanists everywhere, we have not been able to grant ourselves—via science or religion— immortality here on earth. I think about this often—what life would be like if people weren’t consumed, constantly, with a sense that time was running out. What they might enjoy, what they might discover about themselves. Painting or birdwatching or forest strolls or sunbathing—long, luxurious acts that defy our culture’s call for productivity. But conversely, there’s something I resist about this neat narrative (and all narratives that lack certain nuance). I am not sure I could make sense of a world, or my own place in it, if I knew it was mine to explore forever. Or maybe what I’m saying is a bit more complicated—that I could make sense of it, yes, but I wouldn’t be any better for it. If I were to chart the way my empathy has grown over the years, I imagine a soft line running parallel—that as I grew older I came to reckon with compassion only when I understood my own insignificance 34

and vulnerability. That I was a self-involved child, an insufferable teenager, and up until recently I believed that much of what happened around me, or as a direct result of my impassioned choices, was not my responsibility. When I think about the world’s problems—the flagrant violence of climate change, enduring political upheaval, glaring human rights issues splashed in my morning paper—I wonder if maybe we’d all be better for acknowledging our dire fragility. In fact, the charge toward some infallible future is maybe the worst thing we could do. That we really are confined to corporeal bodies—ones that will betray us when they want to—means we should care about other people, we really should, because that’s maybe the surest way of also saving ourselves.

Sometimes I meet myself in my current life as if I’ve been dropped into the present from a more ambiguous past—I’m forced to reorient myself to the moment and to who I’ve become. It’s a sort of vertigo.

It feels difficult to explain any of this to anyone—the yellow house, my love for my grandmother, the guilt I notice when I remember that I have years ahead of me and she doesn’t. I don’t pretend to think that everyone else is as hung up on death as I am, either, but the worries we think we face alone tend to also be the most seductive to parse out. As a child I was consumed by The Book Thief, a YA novel written by Markus Zusak that featured Death as the ironic narrator of the story. I read and reread it. And despite the fascinating characters, and I loved them so—Liesel, Rudy, Max—I came to love Death the most by the book’s end. I loved Death’s frankness, his funny and smart way of speaking, his complete committal to the task at hand, regardless of the 35

associated sadness. And I loved that Death understood the people he took—he saw them, he didn’t skip over their details. While I don’t believe I should spend my life pursuing immortality like the transhumanists, I’ve decided that I shouldn’t devote myself to funeralizing my own life, either, to being the stoic person who can’t get out of her own way. The person in the corner of the room at the party who—while everyone else gets blitzed and dances stupidly and beautifully in their strong and broken bodies, says, isn’t tomorrow Monday? The barefaced truth of mortality is unchanging, yes, but I don’t have to sacrifice my life to it, either. I don’t have to run from the joy. I think my grandmother would understand that best of all.

the sea by the yellow house

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By Hadley Dion, circa 2006

37

thing with the feathers

by Alexa Mauzy-Lewis “and what if Time doesn’t heal?” I ask the thing with the feathers. “after all these hallucination-plagued nights, I will remain this open wound, festering, rotting, but never scarring?” “what is Time?” she coughed. “nothing more than a road we built, and for what? so you can feel like you are moving? that there is a point A and then a point B? who could care?” “at point A I am the cradle-less child and at point B I am the unmourned corpse,” I cry. she pecks at my toes as I pluck lines of grass from the yard. “maybe,” she sighs, feathers falling from her black plume. pirouetting to the ground, they dust against my bare legs. agitated, I write a name nine times over in the dirt. “either way,” she adds, “when your Time is up and your pulse stops, my children and my grandchildren will feast on your body and for you we will be grateful.”

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Fuck Turning the Other Cheek.

I was very young when I learned that I was not only a woman, but a piece of gum. It was when I was given my first sexual purity talk, at 11 or 12 years old. I remember my youth leader, in faded jeans and a tie-dyed t-shirt, chewing a huge wad of Juicy Fruit. He pulled it out to show us that the gum was irrevocably changed. “Show of hands— how many of you want this chewed up, used piece of gum now?” It was the first time I really remember feeling a hard pit of anger in my stomach. I sat on my hands until they went numb.

Purity culture loves a metaphor. They love to compare a woman’s body to an inanimate object, a thing to be had, a possession to be given, or taken, something that can be broken or damaged.

The metaphors didn’t stop that night. I’ve been compared to a basket of eggs, a crumpled up dollar bill, a chocolate bar. But I am and always have been a woman. And nothing, certainly not a penis, can chew me up or take my chocolate or break my eggs.

But at 11 I didn’t know that. So I bought it. I read my pink Bible and sang in the youth band and hid my body under Bermuda shorts and baggy t-shirts. I learned quickly that my anger wasn’t godly and didn’t have a place in a “clean heart.”

Instead, I learned to turn the other cheek.

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And I got really good at it. Every time I felt myself start to get angry, I would shove it down and turn the other cheek. I did it at 13 when a boy asked me how big my nipples were in front of the entire youth group. At 15 I did it when a senior tricked me into going on a date with him and put his sweaty hand on my thigh for the entire movie. At 16 I turned the other cheek when a performer at a renaissance festival smacked my butt with a frying pan. At 25 I turned the other cheek when a man cornered me inside a Pizza Hut and told me he could smell my pussy. (Over the garlic bread? Not likely.)

I shoved my anger so far down I am still pulling its roots out of my heart, 16 years after the gum incident.

I am a woman who has been angry all my life. A woman who now, at age 28, has so much sexual shame that the only way she can get off is alone with the lights off and her eyes closed. After, I lie on my bed and the sweat cools and my orgasm fades, and I cry.

I cry because I want to slap that man’s smug face and scream, “I DO. I WANT THAT PIECE OF GUM.” And I cry for that little girl who was taught her body was a weapon instead of a gift. And I cry because she believed it.

And I cry because I’m angry.

By Morgan 40

free time

i will not use my free time to catch up and will paint my nails yellow will admire them radiating in the setting sun

by stephanie meuse

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haiku on time by a pandemic teacher

“learning loss” is a result of screen time limits to save mental health

by diandra kalish

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Time in a Vial

By Catherine Berresheim While others were baking sourdough bread and bingeing “Tiger King” episodes, I spent the bulk of 2020 relitigating a divorce settlement, fighting for my rights as a single woman, negotiating the high-risk safety measures needed to prevent contracting COVID, and avoiding arousing more suspicion and jealously in my ex-husband.

I have to admit that the Safer at Home mandate that was issued midMarch to flatten the pandemic curve came as pure relief for me. I was teaching 18 hours: five classes at the community college, and one college credit-bearing course at a local prison. In addition to the usual academic demands of being a full-time professor, I was dealing with some personal challenges as well. My white blood cell count was below normal since recovering from a bad case of pneumonia the previous fall. The state of Tennessee Department of Correction executed one of my students in midFebruary, and I was struggling with that complicated grief. Even though I had not yet been divorced five years, my ex-husband chose this time to take me back to court to petition to end his alimony obligation.

He did this because we I do not want my accidently crossed paths on only accomplishment Groundhog Day walking on my to be my patience in neighborhood greenway. I was there with the guy I’m dating, waiting my life away. who happens to be an old college friend of ours. As we passed on the narrow trail, his girlfriend explained to her teenage daughter, “That’s his ex-wife and his ex-best-friend.” Three weeks later, the court order arrived.

My ex claimed I was living with my boyfriend, and that I didn’t, therefore, need alimony anymore since this man was most likely supporting me. His attorney sent 23 questions, or interrogatories, and a request for production of supporting documents. It ran 30 pages total, fishing for 43

details of my private life. I saw him a few more times that spring on the greenway until I finally stopped going there at all. It was a tremendous violation of privacy. I thought I divorced all of this.

There was an unspoken agreement that I made when I got married in 1985. As a kid who grew up during the second-wave feminist movement (1960s-1980s), I straddled two generational worlds and social constructs: the feminist movement and the June Cleaver stay-at-home moms. An unintended impact of the Equal Rights Amendment of 1972 was women of my generation were expected to be a good homemakers and work outside the house (in our matching pantsuits). The other option was to be your child’s full-time caregiver, make your husband successful first, and wait your turn at a career. If you fulfilled your duty as a woman, you would get your turn to: fill in the blank—earn an MFA, have your own career. But time is fickle and the mere arrangement bred inferiority.

First, I waited my turn at education in favor of my husband’s career.

For 30 years, I hoped. There was always an excuse for why I couldn’t go back to school. Some household maintenance expense, braces, or a work travel plan always took priority. Delay, delay, delay… deny.

When I realized the bargain would never be honored, I went back to school to earn my master’s anyway. Then I waited for the divorce to be over.

Divorce that results in-futuro alimony just extends the patriarchal cultural dynamic. This is a type of support reserved for cases resulting in a “relative economic disadvantage” due to the inequity created by a longterm marriage. This permanent alimony can only be revoked because of death, living with a third party, or remarriage. I learned that because he was paying me the agreed $500.00 a month in alimony, he had the right to request all my financial records, question my visitors, and dictate how many times per week I could have an overnight guest.

The answer is two.

Two nights a week, or the “companionship” could be construed as a live-in arrangement. I learned he could drive by my house to check on 44

these things, and solicit my male ex-military neighbor to spy without any legal repercussions.

When my attorney proved the frivolousness of his petition, the former husband dropped his lawsuit, and then we countersued for the nearly $9,000 cost of attorney fees. I attended the court hearing via phone that October, and I was awarded $7,000 of the full amount.

When that was settled, I thought I would just need to wait for the vaccine, and then life would be more manageable. Life’s predicaments do not stop. *** A “343” number shows on the caller ID glowing white at 2:52 pm the afternoon following my bone marrow biopsy. I know that prefix is from the Vanderbilt complex, so I answer. I also know that on December 23rd, late afternoon before a holiday break, it won’t be good news.

It isn’t.

“Hello, Ms. Berresheim, this is Michelle Chi.” I hate the formality of it. It feels indecent. We chat about how the biopsy went; I say that it wasn’t as bad as I feared. Of course, the drugs helped. She has some preliminary results. The pathologist called her personally to let her know.

Shit.

She’s sorry to have to make this call, rather than telling me in person.

But, because it is COVID times, in-person visits are being avoided because of the recent surge. I understand.

The information comes out piecemeal. Her voice shakes a bit. She doesn’t want to tell me.

“Your bone marrow biopsy showed something called hairy cell. It gets its name because of the way it looks; cells with hair-like projections coming out from it. It is malignant. It is a rare type of blood cancer,” the doctor’s words ricochet their way around through the ear buds, I cry immediately when I hear the word “cancer.”

I see them: long strands, blonde, red, brown, black, like a prettier version of the COVID-19 virus whiplashing around. Tears keep me from 45

answering when she asks if I have any questions. I write the note, “Leukemia/lymphoma.” “Hairy cell, rare,” I write. “Indolent. Incurable, but treatable.” This is not exactly a surprise given the recent infections, but it is still a shock.

I tell her I’m in my lizard brain and I can’t think when she asks again if I have any questions. Will I die? I want to ask, but don’t. She keeps talking to cover the silence, trying to get her rehearsed speech out. She is referring me to an oncologist. There are a couple she’s researched, she hears good things about them both. She has been following my care for a year, can’t she keep treating me, I ask. She is sorry, but she doesn’t treat cancer. She works with benign blood disorders, not messy deadly ones.

She seems to want this call over too.

She offers what she thinks is comforting: “People with hairy cell can live relatively normal life spans.” And isn’t that what we all want—a relatively normal life span? I don’t even feel like I’ve had my own life yet.

Time. I thought I had more time. Now I am really a cliché.

The silence grows too loud, so I oblige. “Well, Merry Christmas?” I say. “Thank you for letting me know.”

My identities as A perfect end to a crap year—2020 mother, friend, and was, indeed, one for the record books. partner clashed with *** I waited well into the New Year to the inevitable label tell people about my diagnosis. I didn’t as “cancer patient,” want to spoil the holidays for others. I the old lady easy to needed time to buffer the news. More ignore, to overlook, selfishly, I also knew their knowing would forever alter our various and to minimize my relationships. My identities as mother, concerns or fears. friend, and partner clashed with the inevitable label as “cancer patient,” the old lady easy to ignore, to overlook, and to minimize my concerns or fears.

I wanted time to absorb the shock.

When I did share, I had some typical responses and some I didn’t 46

anticipate. Sometimes it I cannot find a meaning for was like when I was my suffering that Viktor pregnant, and no one Frankl would approve. saw my face; they addressed my belly instead. Only what’s growing in me now won’t become a happy outcome of gestation. Or worse yet, the person somehow turned the subject to their aunt or father or brother who died with leukemia, or some other form of cancer, and instead, I had to comfort them, feeling guilty for triggering their unresolved grief. They offered solutions: I learned about juicing, and wheat grass, and enemas as cancer cures.

So what if I can have a “relatively normal life span,” but a completely abnormal life circumstance? What good is that? It depends on what you consider living. Chemotherapy in infusion centers with patronizing nurses six hours a week every few months, CT scans, and just one more bone biopsy, doctors appointments, and labs: vials and vials and vials of blood to be tested and sorted into categories that tell how I’m dealing with the poison and the cancer. Each week I await the results, as if my life depends on it—which, of course, it does. All this to navigate the medical industrial complex that feigns at caring, when we all know it makes no difference in their lives how you live or when you die: a holocaust or barbarity. I cannot find a meaning for my suffering that Viktor Frankl would approve.

These years were supposed to be my turn to do the things I’ve waited for: finishing the memoir, falling in love, and being loved, possibly getting married again, returning to Paris. Clichés being hijacked by cancer, the pandemic, the ex-husband. I do not want my only accomplishment to be my patience in waiting my life away.

Nine treatments: five of chemotherapy, given on consecutive days, four biologic targeted infusions given once a week, and two Pfizer vaccines. This is the recipe to buy me more time for times like these.

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WHEN I WAS… When I was a girl made of glass I could not meet my eye in the mirror Shrouded in a cloak of insecurity I sat in my cave and sharpened my edges Jagged, scarring those who held me Working my claws into every oozing wound The lovers I took only wanted to see themselves in me And so they polished and polished Finding only a glimmer of the love they sought While I, bored of being manhandled, decided to dull my light When I was the stone wench I lived in tower ruins Far above a frosted skyline In isolation I trusted Rare suitors trekked for days Just to see the ancient witch They brought with them enchanted melodies Wildflowers and fizzing tonics I accepted kindly and then beg their leave There were no precious gems to mine here Only the erosion of a woman Too young to retire from love Too tired to feign affection From my spire above the mountains I watched civilizations rise and collapse And buried myself in earth Mouth full of worms and mineral When I was a fault line I was disquiet tension Tremors built from my angst

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When I was an earthquake woman I shattered into pieces Fragments of me strewn about the land I cut my hair and weaved a basket with the locks Walking the beach for a hundred years Sifting through sand and salt Finding the shards of a former me I thought the splinters would sting But every piece was a truth And every truth was a chord And when I finished collecting who I had been I was A woman made of music.

A familiar tune I had hummed since birth Except I exited my mother’s womb screaming And so I screamed again And it felt like dawn When I was a rising woman I bathed on the new moon And spoke my gratitude I met my eye in the mirror Whispering incantations of growth I granted myself a love Who doesn’t flinch at my tales of self-destruction Only cradles me with his eyes I am not unscathed Inner battlefields were not kind to me But I am a mosaic, not a mortuary And when I was a mosaic woman I was happy.

BY HADLEY DION 49

GLUE AND COFFEE

I made this piece to express my relationship with recovery and how frustrating it is to have to spend every waking moment recovering from trauma. Most of the time in my life has been dedicated to recovery and to watching over my mental health. This piece was made during a time when it was especially time consuming.

by Noah Hanselman 50

great piece about time I had this great piece about time The philosophic musings of a recent insomniac It got lost to the daylight I had this great piece about time Capitalism, religion, grief, productivity It seemed so profound when I wrote it in my head I had this great piece about time Then my uncle died, I wondered how you grieve someone you never really knew I had this great piece about time But the paperwork of death made me question: What do I have to say about time?

I had this great piece about time Then considered if it was worth it Capitalism has no time for useless writing, right?

I had this great piece about time But then I spent hours thinking Even my deepest grief is wedged into spare moments and shower walls I had this great piece about time Then the toll of existing in a pandemic and burnout hit And I wrote this instead

by alexis schutz

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T AT T O O T R A I L S

By Kennedy Acker It was never our right time.

We met when I was too young. Folding shirts and taking inventory. I was way too excited to be able to spend that night with you. I was in awe of your counting skills. You counted the khakis with one look, and I had to touch every single one. That nonchalant smirk behind your coffee cup as I confirmed the number. Butterflies had never hurt before. I relished in them, so delightfully painful that I dreamt of their cocoons as home.

Time passed. I was older.

I had to touch every single one of your tattoos, too. Trace every line. My fingers rising and lowering again in the trail over your veins. You told me I was going to put myself to sleep.

I wish I didn’t have to fight that sleepiness. I wish I could’ve molded into your body and rested there forever.

I could hear the waves crashing on the shore. The most delicious drowsiness. The moon drenched your face in the most intoxicating light. It was cold out. As cold as your shoulder would be, I would come to learn.

Time passed. We were older.

But I was still young and in a never-ending love. I loved you beyond any other love I had or would have.

But. 52

That dreaded word.

But. I was going to college. You wanted me to have the “full college experience.” “Not to be tied down.” You also blamed the distance.

I didn’t want the college experience. I wanted you. I would’ve fought all of the miles and years for you. The long days and nights would have been no match for me. You underestimated my strength, and I resented you for it.

And I thought you were taking the easy way out. This was the perfect excuse to get rid of me. Me—the girl who felt too much and dove head first into “us.” Thank GOD she’s going to college, right? You were the one that decided. You let me go.

I hung on. And hung on. And hung on and my arms tore and bled until they reached bone. The tendons ripping and curling apart like broken guitar strings. I couldn’t let go. But I “moved on.” Whatever the fuck that means. There really isn’t “moving on” when it comes to my soul and you.

But time still passed. I graduated. You were still on your own. Had you waited for me? Had you actually, truly, genuinely loved me the whole time? Why didn’t you say anything? Say anything at all.

The goddamn time passed. I got married.

This question of requited love would consume me for years.

The confusion running through my veins. The heaviness in my head made my ears ring. I would let it drown me; take me over 53

until my blood stood still. Cold. Black.

So black, that I went looking for you. It had been years and I still couldn’t be without you. I was married and I could not bear it. I went full-on “oh, that crazy bitch.” And I knew it was crazy. Cause what would’ve happened if I did find you? We would run away together into a nonexistent sunset? If only life worked that way. If only no one else would get pummeled by my reckless.

Me—the girl who felt too much and dove head first into “us.”

I looked for you at work. I told my friends that I had heard about this great place with a DJ and a bar. So they came with me. They didn’t know my intentions were insane. I searched for you every hour until I realized that I wasn’t going to find you. Or see you ever again. I was right about that.

So I drank. The gin burned beautifully warm all the way down.

I drank until I felt like I had been set on fire. Until my insides cried out. But was I burning from the liquor? Or from the shards of heart that broke and sank into the pits of me and shredded my intestines to pieces? I’ll never know.

The smoke still fills my chest now, as I write this. It billows through my limbs, down my fingers. I can smell it on my leadgrey fingertips.

I had to leave. I had to get out of there. My feet were sticking to the tequila glossed floor. Everything was spinning. I couldn’t breathe. I screamed to force air back into my lungs. My best friend caught me in the parking lot before I hit my knees.

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I had lost all control at the thought of having to look for you forever. To wander every street for you, even when I know it’s impossible for you to be there. To have to think of you in every song I would hear. To wonder if that old wives’ tale, “When you dream of someone, it means they are thinking of you,” was actually true.

Maybe I’m just praying that it is true. You still invade my dreams nightly.

Lord Huron told me I am haunted by your ghost, and it fucks me up every time he throws it in my face. If pain could be a song, it would be that one. My fingers touch my thumb to the beat.

Pinky-ring-middle-index Pinky-ring-middle-index Over and over until the tears run down to my neck. My shirts have become too salt-filled. Discolored in the shape of droplets.

I try to skip it before I can hear that first lethally harmonized chord.

Time passed…

And still. I can see the bluest eyes staring back at me. I can feel your hands on my neck. What new tattoos could I trace now?

I kept the business card that you wrote your number on. I kept that last voicemail in my phone. I still love you every day.

My precious reader, I’m sorry that I am the villain of my own story. I love my husband, more than you could ever know. I 55

understand that is hard to believe, now that you know all of this. I’m sure you’re pensive.

“Thinking about other men like that is cheating.” “Unfaithful.”

I can hear and feel your thoughts through the page. I know.

Once a cheater, then, I guess. I never was a good person.

I have no defense. Guilty as charged. But there’s a certain hurt

My precious reader, I’m sorry that I am the villain of my own story. I love my husband, more than you could ever know. I understand that is hard to believe, now that you know all of this.

I’m sure you’re pensive. that comes with never knowing what could’ve been if it was ever given a chance. When it was ripped from your trembling hands. Knuckles stained white. The day we ended was my bitter ending. That “me” died that day.

But time passed. Will continue to pass. We’ll always get older.

The years will eventually run out. But the embers that came from my fire for you will stay lit forever, even if the flames eventually dissipate.

The dim orange will brighten a final time when I can let you go, at last, with my dying breath.

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RITUALS AND THE MALE GAZE @feemaleartist 57

Scenes From an Expiring Relationship

By Jaclyn Griffith Time suspends around us in the spring, but I can still hear the clock ticking. Over FaceTime, I cannot stop crying. Bernie Sanders is dropping out of the 2020 presidential race, and my boyfriend is moving to Michigan. I drop my phone in my bed and run to the bathroom. My boyfriend’s digital face plummets into my teal velvet duvet, and I sob until the wind gets knocked out of me. For seven months I have tried to outrun my feelings for him, but my love has finally caught up with me, finally caught up and crushed me into a dirty pile of tissues on my bathroom floor.

Are you okay? he asks when I return to the phone.

Yeah, I’m literally fine, I say. I’m so happy for you. *** We meet for the first time on a rainy Thursday in the fall. We drink pink cocktails on red stools in a bar that sits on aberrant cobblestones. I am a half hour late, and he offers to pay the check.

By the second drink, I am already telling him, You’re applying to way too many grad schools. By the end of the night, he is already telling me, I want to make out with you until my Uber gets here. I lean against a black wrought iron fence and slip my hands inside his leather jacket, where they rest naturally on his waist. I have ninety seconds until a silver Camry pulls up and takes him away from me.

Six weeks and eight dates pass. He listens to my stories on a bench outside an observatory in October wind, at my favorite cafe where I write and drink tea on Monday afternoons, in my passenger seat before work, at a Korean restaurant with no other customers that shuts down the following week.

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The night we face our first disagreement, he asks me to stay over, to talk through my discomfort instead of storming out, but I insist that I have to go. It’s not supposed to be this difficult, I say, unsure if that’s true, as I frantically grab my tights off his bedroom floor and my bobby pins from his nightstand. Sitting on the concrete steps outside his apartment, waiting for an Uber home after midnight, I text my friends: I’m not gonna see the Tinder boy anymore. It’s fine though. It’s not like I was gonna marry him.

The following afternoon, I fall asleep in my car in a Starbucks parking lot in southern Rhode Island. I turn the engine off and let the autumn sun seep through the windows. I miss him.

I send him a text, ask if we can talk things through. I crawl back to his apartment that night carrying my pride and two cans of white wine in my purse. He tells me: I have no desire to be with anyone but you. I tell him: I have never been someone’s girlfriend before. *** When the holiday parties come, he sends me Google Calendar invites. At my sister’s celebration, I am the first one to arrive and the last one to leave, which means I am the most drunk. I lead my boyfriend upstairs and sit down on a piano bench. He stands facing me as I rest my head on his abdomen, feel the cold of his hands behind my neck, the buttons of his collared shirt indenting my forehead. I say: Last year I was the only single person at this whole party. He takes my chin in his hand, leans down and kisses me well.

I say: Last year I wished for you, and now you’re here.

One week later, at his coworker’s holiday party, there is baked brie and hot chocolate and my velvet dress and he will rave about all three of these things for a week. In the kitchen, his best friend throws his arm across my shoulders and asks him: How long have you been waiting to meet a girl like this?

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On Christmas Eve, I am hesitant to invite him out to Long Island, because we are still new, and because I think we will only be temporary. He drives three hours to my parents’ house and eats the lasagna but not the seven fishes. His mom gives him chocolate and wine to bring, tells him never to show up empty-handed, but doesn’t return the invitation.

We kiss on my college campus in the sun, and I ask him how quickly germs die on rocks outside.

In January, I kiss him after a busy week while he is talking about a math problem. I missed you, I say. I have purple hair and a grudge against my college friends. I don’t feel like myself. When Halsey releases Manic, we listen to the album together in my car. He says: So many of these songs remind me of you.

After the holidays, things settle down. We get drinks at the GCB in Providence with his friends, and they talk about the doctorate programs they’re applying to. University of Michigan is his top choice, and as his friends tell him he’s bound to be accepted, I squeeze his knee under the table. I want to get him alone, to stop this conversation in its tracks. None of this information is new to me—he told me about Michigan the day we met, and I’ve been rooting for it ever since. Your first boyfriend isn’t supposed to last forever. *** The scar on the back of his hand, he says, has been there since he was a little kid. I knew the iron might be hot, he explains, so I thought it’d be safer to touch it with the back of my hand than my palm. I pull his arm around me, kiss the scar while lying in his bed. He whispers in my ear: I’m so glad I found you.

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Later, I grab his Android and open up Spotify. Billy Joel is Long Island royalty, I say. He was the first person I ever saw in concert. I’m in the middle of waxing poetic—exhibiting the earnest enthusiasm that I normally become self-conscious of seconds after I finish my sentences. But I am getting used to his reassurances, and they are building my confidence. I love when you tell me all the thoughts racing around your head, he says each time I worry. I have a hard time believing this, nevermind understanding it, because I have spent most of my life trying to escape my own mind. Why would you opt into being a part of all this chaos? I ask, genuinely perplexed by his willingness. He says: I was so bored before I met you.

I turn on “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant” and joke that the song is an artifact from my culture. When this song started during the concert, I went to the bathroom, I reminisce. I was only thirteen, and the song is, like, eight minutes long. I didn’t get to hear it live, and now I regret that every time it comes on. Maybe I always will. *** He tells me he loves me for the first time shortly before Valentine’s Day, after we attend a murder mystery dinner party with his friends. You were the best and most beautiful girl at the whole party, he says, while I’m sitting with the skirt of my 1960s dress draped around his hips. I can’t believe I get to show you off as MY girlfriend. I let him continue, drunkenly drag on and on, until it feels exploitative to do so. Alright, I get it, I say. You’re madly in love with me!

Yeah, I really am.

*** In March, the rejections come: Brown, NYU, MIT, Harvard— everything within driving distance of Providence. But then there is an acceptance: his dream program, halfway across the country, where he is the one and only applicant they want.

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I have known this was our fate since before he ever bit my bottom lip. We still have time, I figure, and things will end organically between us by the fall. No harm, no foul. We seem to be in agreement. Long-distance relationships are nearly impossible to maintain, and we’ve only known each other for a few months. But we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it, we decide.

He maintains an outlook I’d admire as a feminist choice if it were anyone other than my own boyfriend implementing it.

I look forward to having the summer to myself: I’ll sleep around a bit, maybe kiss a few girls like I always said I would. Remember the indifference I felt in the fall? The night I sat out on his front steps without regret? He does not look like what my soulmate will look like, I have always known that. This relationship was never meant to last.

So when he bails on a double date with my friends, I am mad at him, and he shows up with flowers but refuses to admit he did anything wrong. I let it go, sort of, and we have sex on my couch, but I still think he fucked up. There is no reason to lean into the anger, though, and no reason to lean into a sustainable resolution. There are no lessons to be learned here.

When I tell my therapist about the fight, she tries to comfort me. This is something you two could work on together, she advises. He could get better at processing his negative emotions with you as they come, instead of blindsiding you with them later.

I figure: What’s the point? He’s leaving anyway. *** In the spring, we separate for the first six weeks of the pandemic.

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All season, we go on distanced midday walks and drink bubble tea.

Before I get back in my car, I let him grab my ass for a quick second, but that’s as close as I’ll get to him. He seems pleased.

First there are no masks, then there are all the masks. First we must stop touching, then we do nothing but touch each other. On the weekend we are fully reunited, after his roommate moves out of state, I send a text to my best friend: He is everything I’ve ever wanted and nothing like I thought he would be. Meanwhile, he sends a text to his future roommate: When you get a chance, can you send me the measurements of my bedroom there? If all my classes are gonna be online, I definitely need to buy a good desk.

When we leave the house, I clean plastic forks with hand soap in public bathrooms before eating Chipotle. You know, I have OCD, too, I say, but it’s really getting overshadowed by my sister’s. How unfair. On a bench in Rhode Island sun, I read a novel about teenagers at a New England prep school, and he watches families with strollers pass by. Can we adopt a baby to play with until the pandemic is over? he asks. Absolutely not, I say, but when I am bored I tell him: We should get married today. He rolls his eyes. Hear me out, I say. I think we love each other enough at this point. We could probably make it work. I sing to him the rest of the day: Going to the chapel and we’re gonna get married.

Still on the bench, I lie down with my head on his lap, and we decide to stay together until it doesn’t make sense to anymore, even with five states and a 13-hour drive separating us. Finally, and for the first time, I let myself fall in love with him completely. Waking up next to him each morning, I find it hard to remember why I ever doubted him in the first place, why I ever wanted anything else.

Anything more. We kiss on my college campus in the sun, and I ask him how quickly germs die on rocks outside.

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*** This is what most of our days are like before he leaves: We get Chinese takeout and see the dog in the car window, but he doesn’t say hi to my sister. I say: Find us a really good movie to watch while I heat up the food. I make our plates and put them in the microwave, convinced the heat will zap to death any lingering droplets of COVID. Did you buy me more Downeast? Of course he did. And there’s Half Baked in the freezer, too, he says. I tell him: I want to watch a drama, but one without any men in it. Only women. He finds one. Each moment we spend together has an individualized mix of euphoria and the agonizing knowledge that it cannot last.

By the middle of June, our days are numbered, and I cannot stop crying. We eat breakfast burritos in a park and I cry. We drop off coffee for his coworkers and I cry. “Hey There Delilah” comes on the radio and I cry.

I offer a bandaid: In a few years I will be his second wife, after he runs away from me. I will write a book and move into my dream New York City apartment and he will get his PhD and a very civil divorce. I would be a wonderful stepmom and though I don’t want a baby of my own I would love anything with his freckles.

When my crying becomes too much, he goes to his friends’ new apartment to help them unpack and paint. He tells them, I suppose, about all of my tears, and he comes home that night after a change of heart.

It’s a Monday morning, so I am expecting an invitation to eat sandwiches and drink bubble tea outside during his lunch break, but instead I am blindsided on his brown leather couch. He says he thought about it all night, and he realized he wouldn’t be happy in a long-distance relationship. He says he wants children one day and 64

my uncertainty is unsettling. He says he wants someone who is as religious as he is. He says he can’t see how I’d fit into his extended family. At times I think he’s lying, grasping for reasons not to try something scary, but isn’t that what I’ve been doing since the beginning?

I ask him: How long have you known I’m not what you want?

There is one more month until his flight, and I am digging in my heels, determined to make the most of it before we reach our expiration date. I write in my journal: I feel like I’m tied to train tracks, just waiting to get crushed, but I can’t move out of the way. Or, I guess, I don’t really WANT to move, because the train tracks are on a tropical island, and it’s fucking beautiful here. But I still know the train is coming; it’s there every time I look over my shoulder, but why in the world would I want it to speed up? Hell no. I’ll stay chained to this island’s tracks, and I’ll be grateful that the weather is perfect and the water is a crystal clear blue, even if I can only dip my toes in it, rather than dive in like I want to.

I am trying to do The Brave Thing. The Evolved Thing. The StayPresent-And-Be-Mindful Thing. Joy is so fleeting these days—who am I to turn it down? What hubris.

We have sex in an office during a pandemic because we are running out of time. I check boxes off a list I wrote myself because we are running out of time. I waited so long to find something like this, and God only knows when I’ll find someone else who goes down on me like he does. God only knows when I’ll find someone else who will write me lists of the reasons he loves me because he knows I am prone to self-doubt. God only knows when I’ll find someone else who can sense when I’m anxious and gently say to me, across a 65

shiny brown table at a dive bar, You seem more Larry David than usual today.

But I digress—I don’t believe in God, and that’s a dealbreaker for his family. *** We could afford a two-bedroom together, I write in a text, since your classes are all online anyway. If things don’t work out with us, I’ll just move in with my sister. Living in a pandemic makes me suggest things I normally wouldn’t. I never imagined myself wanting to live with my boyfriend of only nine months at twenty-five years old, but the isolating and treacherous landscape of 2020 makes me cling desperately to our partnership.

I am trying to do The Brave Thing.

The Evolved Thing. The Stay-PresentAnd-Be-Mindful Thing. Joy is so fleeting these days—who am I to turn it down? What hubris.

I text him links to apartments in Providence, then call him to apologize for it. He had a plan for his future long before he met me, and while I am living off of unemployment benefits after finishing graduate school during a pandemic, he is less willing to blur his career path because of current events—political or personal ones.

He tells me: You weren’t supposed to go and make me fall in love with you. I am the wrench in his plans, not the plan itself. He maintains an outlook I’d admire as a feminist choice if it were anyone other than my own boyfriend implementing it.

I’d give it all up for you, I say, standing on the sidewalk outside his front door. Why won’t you do the same for me?

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Eventually I am able to understand that his dedication to the plans he has made for his future—which call for success in school and work first, then penciling in a partner when it’s more convenient to do so—have nothing to do with my personal shortcomings. He is thinking only logistically, obsessed with practicality and costbenefit analyses and long-term outcomes—fitting for a man beginning a PhD program in a social science. He was never taught to prioritize personal happiness or romantic love, the way my white, middle-class parents, who were raised on John Hughes movies and the blind optimism of the American Dream, taught me to. As we are breaking up the first time, I tell him: You treat me like a math problem you can solve with a calculator. He admits I’m right, but he doesn’t know how to do anything different. And I cannot change twenty-six years of planning in six summer weeks.

And so I let him nap with his head on my lap while we listen to Stranger in the Alps. I pick up the prep school novel then put it back down. I tell myself: You will want this moment back soon. Stay present. I am not wrong.

I run my fingers through his hair, thick and dark and warm. Our babies would have the very best hair. *** When I invite him to my parents’ house for the Fourth of July, I know it doesn’t make sense to do so, since he is leaving town and we are breaking up the following week. My sisters say they don’t mind if I bring him home and keep pretending for a while longer. It doesn’t feel like pretending to me, though, and I try to explain to my family that the reason he is breaking up with me isn’t that he doesn’t love me enough. They don’t buy it. I un-invite him on the third.

I promise him that I won’t ruin our last week in the same state by 67

crying the whole time. On one of our final days, I think I can pull myself together before going over to his apartment. But when he kisses me at the top of the stairs—standing a few steps above me, a strategy I invented to make up for my being taller than him—I immediately break down. I cry again, then apologize again. I’m so sorry, love. I am always so fucking sorry.

I would be a wonderful stepmom and though I don’t want a baby of my own I would love anything with his freckles.

He says: I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I’m lying on the brown leather couch, my sandals kicked off beside it. He lies on top of me. I just want to spend as much time with you as possible before I leave, he says. Even if you’re crying during it.

He suggests we go outside, get some fresh air and a drink. We walk down to Wickenden Street and get slices of pizza from Fellini. I think I have reached my breaking point—the anticipation of his leaving is so crushing that I can’t stand being tied to this island’s train tracks for even a minute longer. But then suddenly we are stumbling through pandemic-empty Providence together, holding hands and eating pizza, and the moment is so magical and I am so happy and I love him so much that I think: Thank fucking God. I am so glad I didn’t end this even an hour sooner because this one moment, this one memory, is worth all of the anguish, I have no doubt.

I play the song “Cornelia Street” for him and sing each line while wrapped in the red and gold blankets on his bed, shielding myself from the draft of the air conditioner. I hope I never lose you, hope this never ends. I’d never walk Cornelia Street again. I say: You have to 68

really LISTEN to these lyrics. And he does, but then he says the song is too dramatic. Why doesn’t she just grow up and get over it? The train continues barreling toward me, I can see it out of the corner of my eye. I am so angry at him and he thinks it is just because of my loyalty to this particular singer-songwriter, but really it is because of my innate awareness that the hurt she is singing about is right outside his apartment, right out there on Preston Street, just waiting for me to finally step outside and face it. That’s the kind of heartbreak time could never mend. I think: He doesn’t even fucking get it, and I start a fight over it, but it’s not really about the song, of course it isn’t, but I won’t admit that. There is so much to be said, but none of it is worth mentioning.

He apologizes for all the wrong things, I let it go, we have sex. As he falls asleep, I pull his head onto my chest and sing to him: I’d never walk down Preston Street again. *** A relationship does not have to last forever to be good and worth pursuing. An experience can be wonderful even if it doesn’t last forever. Someone can be beautiful and valuable and worthy of your love and no longer in your life. These are the refrains I repeat to myself throughout our relationship, like the Hail Marys I used to recite after confession. I squeeze all the good I can possibly get out of our relationship, like a piece of fruit turned into juice. There is nothing but seeds and rind left by July.

I start grieving my first relationship preemptively, with him, while still in it. After several months, I finish the slow, meandering walk back to my life without him. His flaws become clear to me; I can make a list of them (my friends can name them faster). But how do I stop the doubts that walk down a road not taken? The doubts that come with wondering what could have been if not for such bad 69

timing and location?

There is no other version of reality, of course, but these doubts complicate my decisions when he returns to me in the winter— heart on his sleeve, regret in his chest, a few therapy sessions under his belt.

Maybe the answers are in the doubts, in the questions, I start to think.

Maybe the not-knowing gives me all of the answers I need. Maybe if I don’t try, I’ll regret it forever, like a live performance of an eight-minute song I missed when I was thirteen.

Where is the glory in insisting on indifference, in denying what was once so saccharine back before I drained the juice out of it myself?

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By Krystal Olsen, circa 2003 71

Life on a Timeline

By Bre Taylor My villain origin story is spending two birthdays in quarantine. In March of 2020, I had a lot of baggage. I had just written an incredibly dramatic letter to my coworkers about racism in the workplace, I had just canceled my senior spring break trip to Miami (somehow I think my quarantine alcohol intake still made up for this), my father had just been rushed to the hospital with COVID-19, and I was coming to the realization that I wouldn’t have an in-person college graduation. It’s safe to say, Aries season was a real bitch to me.

Like many of my peers, I pictured my life on a timeline. First big-girl job at 21, a one-bedroom NYC apartment at 23, X amount in savings by 25, engaged by 27, and all the other boxes that I’m sure most of you expected to have checked by 30.

Looking back, none of this was impossible, it just didn’t fit into the life I was creating.

I am a dreamer. No goal is unattainable because my mother told me that I could be anything I wanted to be—and I believed her.

From March until September, for the first time ever, I worked really hard on myself. I took the time to really attain goals outside of a career, outside of money. Similar to Zendaya, I had always defined myself by my occupation or what other people had defined me as: a student, employee, intern. Being surrounded by my friends and family showed me that I had other titles that were just as, if not more, important: a listener, reader, lover. I took the time to really think about what I’d accomplished in 22 years and what I could accomplish in 22 more. I thought of life outside of a timeline: What happens if I’m not in the job I want at 25? What happens if I’m not married by 30? Who am I then? I’m still my mother’s daughter, I still love reading, I still love going to the movies by myself and spending too much on popcorn. In 22 years, I could make all the money in the world, but what would that mean if I didn’t know myself outside of what I could buy?

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These questions scared me. I had worked really hard to intern in a particular industry, to save up to live where I wanted, but the place I learned the most about myself was surrounded by family. While I won’t sit here and say I don’t get those prying societal questions from my aunts about when I’m bringing home a boyfriend and when I plan on getting married, I do think my time at home has brought me so much clarity.

Time doesn’t scare me anymore because it isn’t real. I lived the same day over and over from March to September of 2020, just trying to figure out what was supposed to happen next in my life. I even got a job in a field I knew I’d hate because I was trying to prove to myself that it was silly to hate something I’ve never tried. I don’t regret quitting after 3 months.

Being confined by self-imposed timelines and what other people think I should accomplish by a certain age has often made me feel like I’m behind or not doing enough. But anyone who knows me knows that’s just not true. I have accomplished so much and I deserve to take time, if I so please, to reset.

So I did just that. I took myself (and my work laptop) on a two-week mini-work-vacation a couple of states over and let myself breathe. While I initially planned to visit apartments, I realized within hours of being there that my true purpose was to actually relax. For fourteen days, I went to a bagel shop before eight, went to work from nine to about seven, and did whatever I wanted until I fell asleep. I didn’t feel obligated to journal about my future or compare myself to my LinkedIn feed, and it was amazing. Ten out of ten; I would recommend.

I came back from my trip refreshed. In the words of Cloud from Firefly Lane, I had taken the time to remember that “everything is in front of me.” (Yes, Tully’s mother was awful but that statement was so true.) Too often, we create this bubble of anxiety around our future because we’re so ashamed or remorseful about what we didn’t do in our past, that we don’t take the time to make the most of our present.

I’m not here to tell you to make the most of the present, because I’m sure that’s been on your social timeline since the pandemic started. I’m here to tell you that freeing yourself from 73

the timelines that surround you can make for a more fulfilling and optimistic way of living. I have absolutely no idea what postpandemic me looks like (or if we’ll ever really see an end). What I do know is that we shouldn’t fear time. As women, and I’ll speak specifically as a Black woman, we are constantly told that we’re running out of time. You have to have kids by this time because that clock’s ticking. Dating in your 30s is sad. You have to start using retinol as soon as you hit 20. Insert advice from an “ageless” celebrity who doesn’t eat sugar here.

I won’t get into how I think the anxiety created around time is actually a ploy by the marketing and advertising industry to give people an endless stream of reasons to spend money, but I will say this: We are constantly told that life is short but I encourage you to start remembering that it is the longest commitment you’ll ever have. Longer than the job you hate, longer than those friendships you know should end, longer than the time between when you get to the doctor’s office and when they call your name, longer than your favorite TV show (okay, maybe not longer than “Grey’s Anatomy,” but stay with me).

I’m going to sound like a finance bro, but they really figured it out when it comes to the whole investing your money at a young age and watching it grow thing. You can spend 5 years stressing yourself out about all the opportunities you wish you’d taken.

Then proceed to not take new opportunities and find yourself in a vicious cycle, until you fully hate the life you live. STOP BEING SO HARD ON YOURSELF. And to my Black girls specifically, please stop counting yourself out. This world already has people in it who make that their life’s purpose and you really shouldn’t add to that number.

Back to the investing analogy, invest in yourself now! You are allowed to be a work in progress—anyone who has a problem with that is obviously having a hard time acknowledging that themself. Take the time now to create a life that makes sense for you. Tune out the noise that tells you your dreams are unrealistic.

(Side note, don’t take advice from people you wouldn’t switch lives with. Really adds clarity to your vision.)

As I said in the beginning, time is really funny. Time has a 74

way of making you so scared for tomorrow because of yesterday that today slowly passes by (bro, how many times will I say that?). So, yeah, we’re coming up on the one-year anniversary of me canceling my senior spring break trip but, somehow, the second half of 2021 has me incredibly and (probably naively) optimistic.

“Oh, I hate being this age, which is not even twelve and a half. What’s going to happen when I become a teenager?”

By Stephanie Meuse, 1999 75

Tiny Round Belly

By K. Griffith

On a humid Monday afternoon in June of 2021, after scrolling through mid-size queen TikTok, I log into Zoom for my weekly therapy session. My therapist and I are talking about body image and the hateful inner monologue I can’t seem to silence most days. I tell my therapist (again) about how exhausting it is to listen to the voice in my head, how I want to work to actively stop speaking to myself that way, that if anyone spoke to my 76

sister the way I speak to myself I would beat them up.

My therapist nods her head and tucks her hair behind her ears as she listens.

I tell her about the picture that came up on my Facebook Memories page last week. In the picture, I am seven years old on the day of my tap dance recital. My yellow and black striped pants are lined with sequins and complement my plastic bowler hat. My older sister leans on my back, my mirror image. I am bursting with confidence, my back is arched slightly, my spirit fingers are extended straight in the air, my smile is beaming. I remember seeing this picture for the first time and immediately noticing my tiny, round belly. I remember I thought I was fat.

My therapist adjusts herself in her chair. She asks me, as she often does, what I would say to that sevenyear-old girl if she were standing in front of me today. I shrug, as I often do when she asks me this question, and then take a deep breath and think for a moment.

I would tell her that one day her body is going to travel with her and see the world. I would tell her that her brain is going to learn so many things, including another language. I would tell her that her heart is going to love so many people and she is going to be so loved. I would tell her that her little round belly is going to eat the most delicious food, but nothing will ever be as good as Mommy’s spaghetti. I would tell her that her hands will one day hold the tiny hands of countless students when they need a little extra care to get through their

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Monday Morning Blues. I would tell her that her arms will one day hold her perfect, beautiful niece. I would tell her that her eyes will one day have tiny crow’s feet surrounding them to remind her of all the time she spent smiling and laughing. I would tell her that she will sprain her ankle on the last day of her first year teaching and that salsa dancing in Costa Rica all summer will heal it. I would tell her that her body is the beautiful container for her energy, her soul, her joy, her sadness, her heart—so we should take care of it and be kind to it and embrace every inch of it even when it’s difficult to do so.

“Wow,” I tell my therapist. “That was pretty good, huh?!”

Seven-year-old me would probably be kind of intimidated by this news; she is pretty shy and can’t even go to a sleepover without crying and coming home early.

That’s when I would remind her that all of this would happen exactly when it needed to—that the scariest thing about time, the most unsettling thing about the future, is its unpredictability. Both seven-year-old me and twenty-nine-year-old me would continue to need reminders about the beauty of time, the art of finding joy in the unpredictability, and the thoughtful appreciation of our tiny round bellies.

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NO GODS / FORGIVE US OUR SINS

By Stephanie Meuse Between 11 and 22 maybe, I slowly shed god At 10, he was everywhere, I was Reading my Precious Moments Bible On the stairs of our childhood houses Splitting Triscuits for Eucharists And feeding them to my baby sister Running my fingers over plastic rosaries Dutifully reciting acts of contrition— Confessing and repenting for all my 10-year-old sins I didn’t listen or clean my room, and stole lost things from under the beds of my friends I was wrong, but I was sorry, and I was better Between 11 and 13 it was Playing my own gods Having my own rituals, naming my own penance Nail polish crosses on my belly button Church hymns on my Casio keyboard Potions, spells, any / everything Slowly retributing my childish crimes Slowly wading through my childhood crimes (shedding my childhood, what a crime) Going to church because that’s where the boys were 79

By 17, I guess I was tired of people telling me what my sins were or who god was or where and how to find him "and I feel god in this Chili’s tonight" and I did a little bit Splitting Triscuits for Eucharists On network television And feeding them to my baby sister The internet and in my quiet dark bedrooms In my quiet dark bedrooms I made my own gods but quickly decided they were not gods that I was not good (god could not be sneaking out after dark or taking photos for boys on the internet or birth control, right? or any of the times you fed me peanut butter to mask the smell of alcohol on my breath) So, no gods but quickly decided they were not gods I liked that stuff that I was not good

At 21, and for two years, you manifested my sins SO SELFISH SO SPOILED SO ARGUMENTATIVE god did I ever deserve to be punished But no matter how many acts of contrition 80

no matter how many pleas on my knees There was never any forgiveness and I missed the newness of it, and how clean I used to feel and someone told me I deserved that, and I believed them (is that you god?)

So I left

(maybe God was size 2)

I left.

But you left me too tired, too wrong, too sad to play god anymore Left to my own devices, my rituals led to no good My rituals were running until I couldn’t see straight Not being able to do anything until the house was right Living on seltzers and pretzels like I was just priming my belly Just fasting until god happened (maybe god was size 2) (I honestly by now had no idea) I could have used but was past god then because if god—then not you If god—then not accidentally the wrong person If god—then Hail Mary sorrys If god—then forgiveness but no gods, and so many sorrys to say So many aimless acts of contrition that never get me to the same place, never could get back to the clean slate that was the sorrys and better of 10

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time w u

by omi

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TAKES TWO TO TANGO

By Michelle Budd

Time. A four-letter word that can give a person hope or knock down their every desire. As a thirty-year-old woman (soon to be thirty-one), every life choice that I make is looked at through a magnifying glass of time. It can be related to my career, my health, or my personal life, but for as long as I can remember, men and women have never been placed on the same timeline.

Growing up, I was always told that boys mature later than girls.

It was accepted that “boys will be boys” and that what they did was just a part of their being, but when it came to myself and any girl I knew, the expectations were different. We were expected to be independent, grateful, helpful, and kind, without exceptions. As I got older, the ideology of “boys will be boys” stuck, and we girls started dealing with the norms of life and everything that came with them.

Now, fast forward to age eighteen, to when I was accepted into college, which was the “normal” next chapter of life. I had a few hiccups, but I graduated with both my bachelor’s degree and my master’s degree in five years. And like everyone else, I went through the trials and tribulations of grades, normal growing pains, and extreme heartaches. After a few years of teaching in various locations, my independence grew, and the ability to care for myself rallied on, but that quickly came under scrutiny as I was doing it on my own, without a partner by my side.

After a few moves, a few different jobs, and multiple long-term serious relationships, I find myself being asked at age 30: When are you getting married? and When are you going to have children?

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To which I always respond: When I meet someone who matches what I have to give.

Too quickly are people ready to judge women about their own personal timelines that do not match the societal norm. Women have been taught from an early age that we mature much faster than men, so wouldn’t it only be natural to wait longer to get married and have children, especially if our heterosexual counterparts take longer to mature? The societal “norm” says that you should have your life figured out by 30. In my opinion, that is a myth, and it needs to be seriously debunked. Why is it not understood and accepted that living one specific timeline does not suit every individual? Can we not as individuals be different in not only our goals but when we plan to achieve them? The American education system certainly looks at educating everyone differently, as “every child learns differently,” so why is it not accepted that everyone may have a different timeline after graduation day?

Growing up the way I did, I certainly put my professional goals before anything else. That isn’t saying that I wanted to do it alone, only that I just had not found the right person to achieve those goals with. Over time, what we envision in a partner changes, due to experiences and what we place importance on.

In most cases, people change and grow into better versions of their younger selves, which may not work with what we originally anticipated wanting in a partner. I sometimes sit and wonder if men receive the same amount of judgement and scrutiny as women do about settling down.

Everyone is so ready to remind us women that our clocks are ticking, but ladies and gentlemen, it takes two to tango.

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THE LITTLEST APPLE IN THE BIG APPLE PART 2 OF 3

By Savannah Apple 85

HER HONOR

By Sonja Czekalski

Ruth Bader Ginsberg is timeless. Her passion, her power, and her style will be forever in our hearts, education system, healthcare system, justice system, paychecks, and closets. Her Honor is a collar inspired by and dedicated to the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. The collar is composed of multiple women stitched together. The women are drawn with steel wire as their bones, handmade flax paper as their skin, and my grandmother’s lace as traces of their 86

clothing. Printed on each woman’s skin are pieces of transcript from Supreme Court cases in which RBG fought for justice, equality, and empowerment for the marginalized. These cases include United States v. Virginia (1995), Olmstead v. L.C. (1999), Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. (2007), Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), and Whole Woman’s Health v.

Hellerstedt (2016). Ginsberg’s voice and these monumental cases led to more access to education for women, a leap to close the gender wage gap, better health care for people with disabilities, added protection of abortion rights, and the legalization of same-sex marriage. I wear the triumphs of these court cases on my skin every day as a reminder of her voice, my privilege, and all the work that is left to be done.

Though at times it may feel like marriage equality has been around forever, let Her Honor remind you that this fight has only been “won” for 6 years. Though Roe v. Wade was passed more than 50 years ago, women were still not being granted access to safe abortion care less than 5 years go (and the fight continues today). And though the gender wage gap may be growing smaller, let her honor remind you that we have been advocating for ourselves for more than 150 years.

I wanted to create a collar that Ginsberg could wear as a physical reminder of all the women and marginalized people she continues to serve and save. The collar appears to be fragile in delicate paper and frayed lace, however, it is born of steel. Like our bodies, culture, and feminism, Her Honor will continue to grow and change over time. Though the paper and steel will begin to decay, the court cases will become illegible, and the collar’s shape will lose its form, the rusting, fading, and wilting of the collar will continue to grow into something new.

Her Honor commemorates Ginsberg’s legacy and stands as a symbol for change and growth.

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Like our bodies, culture, and feminism, Her Honor will continue to grow and change over time.

Steel wire, flax paper, my grandmother’s lace, natural dyes, red wine, and thread on plaster bust.

SONJA CZEKALSKI 88

(Wo)man’s Best Friend I ran from the car to the house, excitement flooding through my veins. The breeder was expecting our arrival, so I sprinted through the stranger’s open door ahead of my family. There were four yellow Labrador puppies playing with each other in the kitchen.

They were nibbling on each other’s ears and fighting over toys— ugh, behaving just like my brothers. I turned my head and noticed a fifth puppy, all alone, hiding in the cage. I hesitantly went over to the cage and tried to coax the puppy out. Initially hesitant to trust me, the puppy gave my hand a sniff before kissing it. I picked the puppy up and discovered she was the only girl. She was a little smaller than her siblings and seemed afraid to play with them. I knew that this was the puppy I needed to bring home.

You see, I had four brothers as well and knew how hard it could be to play with them. I showed her to my brothers and my parents, and luckily they all fell in love with her. I went into the house carrying only my joy, but I knew I would leave carrying a new puppy. That day my journey with Sophie began.

On the way home, Sophie sat on my lap and she fell asleep. She looked peaceful and happy. I wanted her to stay like that forever. *** It was my first day of elementary school. I packed my backpack with all of its necessities. I had notebooks, pencils, and erasers. My mom was walking me to the bus stop when I realized I forgot something.

Mom, we have to go back home. Quickly. I forgot to say bye to Sophie. She’s going to miss me while I’m away today. Who is going to play with her?

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My mom and I ran home so I could give Sophie a hug and say goodbye. I didn’t know what she’d do without me. I was always home for her. I picked up my backpack again and I went to school for the first time. *** It was my first day of middle school. My backpack was much heavier now. I still had the necessities, but now I had English, History, and Science books, too. I was meeting a lot of new people, but I couldn’t seem to find any friends. Kids called me anorexic.

Kids called me chipmunk cheeks. Kids avoided me in the hallways.

They thought Crohn’s disease was contagious and that I’d somehow infect them. Even people who I had known for years made fun of me. My shoulders were hunched because of my backpack and despair. Every day I would come home and take my backpack off, throw it in the corner, and then sit down and watch “Gilmore Girls.” Every day my mom would ask how school was and I’d say it was fine. Every day Sophie would come sit down next to me, not asking any questions, but somehow, she would pick up on my sadness and comfort me. *** It was my first day of high school. I woke up early and thought I was the only one awake. My house was dark, and I was scared. I turned my light on and walked down the stairs slowly listening for a murderer that I knew for certain would be hiding in my house. I got to the bottom of the stairs and I found Sophie there. She followed me around as I got ready, helping ease my fear. I knew my dog would keep me safe. I put on my backpack and it was heavier than ever; I had all of the usual school materials, but now I carried gym clothes and my clarinet. I walked out the door to go to my bus stop and Sophie tried to follow me. I gave her a hug and a kiss, and I let her know that I was okay and ready for the day. *** It was October 31st, 2011. Most know it as Halloween, but I know it 90

as Sophie’s birthday. She turned 10. To celebrate I brought her trick-or-treating with me and the friends I had finally made. I didn’t have a backpack with me, but I had a pillowcase and the best pet I could ask for. *** It was May 4th, 2012. It was the day of my junior prom. Someone had actually asked me to a dance—I had a date! I spent the day getting ready. Sophie could sense my excitement; she kept following me around and licking me. She had recently gone blind and kept stepping on the bottom of my dress, but I didn’t care. I had never felt better about myself. I picked up my silver handbag and walked to my door saying goodbye to my parents, and of course Sophie followed. I gave her a hug goodbye and I walked to my date’s car feeling ready to take on the world. *** It was my last day of junior year. I didn’t even bring a backpack to school because I knew it was just extra weight. When I got up for school that day, Sophie wasn’t there to protect me from the murderer. She was sleeping. She hadn’t been too energetic lately.

Even though I didn’t have a backpack, I still felt a weight on my shoulders. My dog, my puppy, my best friend, was sick and I couldn’t help her. *** It was the first Friday of summer vacation. I packed my beach bag with all the beach necessities: a book, a towel, sunblock, lunch, and a bucket. Melissa and I wanted to start off vacation with a perfect girls’ day. We had barely been at the beach for two hours when I got a call from my mom.

Catie, Sophie isn’t going to make it. If you come home now, you’ll be able to say goodbye. Just hurry.

I burst out into tears. Melissa drove me home as fast as she could.

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Even through my disease, the hospitalizations, the bullying, she had never seen me cry. She didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t lift reality off my back. My dog was dying. She wouldn’t be here in a few hours. Medicine worked for me, but it did not work for her.

Why is this happening?

It was 4 o’clock on the first Friday of summer vacation. I had just gotten home, expecting to see Sophie as soon as I walked through the door, but she was not there waiting for me. I ran around the house and finally I found her outside, surrounded by my siblings. I smelled her before I saw her though. She smelled like death; cancer had taken over her body. The vet could not stop the rapid spread. That day she fell asleep in a rose bush, in so much pain that the thorns did not seem to bother her. My brothers and I carried her from the rose bush to the car. She was too weak to walk. I sat down next to her and I cried and told her how great of a dog she was. I said sorry for not always making time for her, I said sorry for not taking her on more walks, I said sorry for not playing more fetch with her, and I said sorry for not sneaking her extra dog treats. On the way to the vet she fell asleep in my lap, and even though she was sick, it was the most at peace I had seen her in a long time. I said bye to her one last time before we brought her in. *** It was 6 o’clock on the first Friday of summer vacation. My dog was gone and I was in my yard crying. My brothers and I had dug a hole. I grabbed my Clarinet from my backpack and played “Taps” while we put Sophie in. I had just realized that she wouldn’t be there on my first day of college. She would not see me graduate or see me on the first day of my first job. She saw how happy I was to have a date to a dance, but she’d never see how happy I’d be to have a partner. She’d never see anything again, she was gone.

By Caterina 92

Clairvoyant Monica and the mystery of major...

For my twenty-seventh birthday, I go for my first and only palm reading. Clairvoyant Monica instructs me to make two wishes in my head.

“Do not share them with me at any point,” she says. “When you’re done, state your full name and turn over your hands to me.”

I make my wishes and I obey. Her immediate remarks, verbatim, are: “Taylor, you’ve been here before. You’ve lived 2 to 3 major lives and a lot of minor ones. And in every one of these lives, you were some kind of healer.” I feel a tingle travel over my extremities.

The wishes I made before surrendering my palms were all too specific. On any other day, I might have wished for Pabllo Vittar to fall in love with me, or for a large sum of money with which I would move to Brazil and buy a property on the coast in Bahia. And yet, effortlessly my wishes came to me: (1) That my school community be protected (2) That everyone in my family be healed This was in August 2019, the month I started graduate school, and a whole eight months before the coronavirus pandemic would sweep the world like wildfire.

For the past 2 years, whether I was teaching in the brick-andmortar classroom, or suspended in online space with my students, I knew deep down that they would be protected by my wishes. When my mother contracted COVID-19 and her cardiac physician managed to get her an antibody transfusion, it felt like a miracle to me. She was healed. *** The time I spent teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic has 93

been illuminating. I realized: the molecules that make up a school are far less dense and far more motivated than stone and steel. Educators, teachers, counselors, healers, peacekeepers, and students, above all, make a school. I am the lucky Spanish teacher of preschool through 5th grade at a small school in Philadelphia. I love my students, their collaborative spirits, their joy, and the stories they tell me. I celebrate their contributions—especially when they speak their minds and hearts. I adore their authenticity and their agility. They inspire me to keep going and to do better against all odds. The full impact of this pandemic on our communities and on the future of education remains to be seen amid the darkness of the unknown. What kind of developmental disparities among children will follow the homeschooling of a nation? How do we innovate safe, ethical, and dignified pathways for every child to do well? How can we as adults connect to the budding identities of children who occupy increasingly transcultural spaces? We must nurture our cultural humilities. We must be willing to unlearn and learn again, infinitely. *** Clairvoyant Monica’s words endure like a puzzle in my mind: “Some kind of healer” and “2 to 3 major lives.” How is major measured?

Every morning I wake up, some days more slowly than others, but always with the mystery of major and the notion of making a positive impact. With whatever Time I am granted, I’ll be out here working to heal myself and the world.

Taylor Stabler, M.Ed. @boi_magia

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Waiting Room

By Lindsay Owen I had chosen the first appointment of the day so I wouldn’t have to be in the waiting room with a lot of other people, plus the chance of the doctor running late that early in the morning was minimal.

Convincing myself my error in judgement could be ripped off like a Band-Aid, I thought my strategy would make the experience quick. The approximated three hours for this appointment would fly by, even if there was a quick sting. My wishful thinking was disrupted by being shuffled from room to room, answering endless questions from the doctors and nurses, getting an ultrasound, completing lab work, swallowing a handful of pills (on an empty stomach), waiting for the medications to kick in, being escorted to the procedure room, listening to the deafening whirring of suction, sitting in the recovery room, crying in the recovering room, and vomiting the pills I had taken earlier. And then it was over.

None of what I had experienced could have prepared me for what I saw driving up to my dad’s home on Fowler Road. Seeing his car in the driveway, I rolled my eyes. I thought: 19 years and he chooses to be there for me today? 6,935 days of knowing me, 3,150 car rides to school, and he waits until I leave for college to take an opportunity to stay home from work to care? Maybe distance really does make the heart grow fonder.

I looked at the clock on the dashboard, the distinct glow of AM glaring back at me. He hadn’t told me he was taking the day off from work. For the first time in my life, I did accurate fast math.

Only 12 hours until it would be socially acceptable to go to sleep.

As if what I just experienced did not give me the right to catch up on some sleep and let my body rest. What were we supposed to do for 12 hours?

For 12 hours, we did not acknowledge my having just come back from Planned Parenthood. For 720 minutes, he did not joke 96

about how many super maxi pads were adding up in the bathroom trash can, or that I should be wrapping them in toilet paper better because “no one should have to see that.” I don’t remember what we ate that day or what we watched on TV. I felt the weight of each hour as the lack of conversation carried on.

And then it was the next day, a Saturday. I woke up to the smell of waffle mix and couldn’t stop myself from crying before shuffling out of my bedroom. Pulling out a chair from the kitchen table, I silently sat down. A white plate appeared with a Mickey Mouse waffle staring up at me, two pieces of turkey bacon next to it.

I silently swallowed back sobs. Feeling twelve years old again: blasting Fearless by Taylor Swift and sitting in the passenger seat of my dad’s CR-V as he drove us to Dairy Queen after a long night of homework and a rough day of middle school. The day before confirmed I was not twelve anymore, not that either of us needed this confirmation. We ate our waffles in silence and when I was finished, I stood up from my creaky wooden chair. Putting my plate in the sink, I turned on the faucet and looked out of the snowy window. I asked my dad, “When did you buy a Mickey waffle maker? Why haven’t you made me these before?” He coughed and cleared his throat. I could feel him look up from his plate, rolling his eyes as he muttered an unintelligible something. The hours didn’t feel as heavy after that.

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I Didn’t Know It At Fifteen

By Erin B. Going into my freshman year of high school, I remember listening to “Fifteen” by Taylor Swift on the bus ride in the morning. I was so excited because I could finally relate to the song, which had been my favorite since I was 8 years old. The entire first verse of the songs talks about walking into high school on the first day of your freshman year, seeing your friends, and hoping that a senior boy will notice you. I walked off the bus and into the doors and awkwardly found my friends and to my surprise, no senior boys noticed me. I didn’t even know which ones were the senior boys.

Throughout my freshman year, I would make it a habit to listen to “Fifteen” every day. I never got sick of it, and it eventually became my theme song. As my freshman year progressed, I struggled with depression. Maybe it was me trying to “figure myself out” in high school or maybe it was some toxic friendships. I still listened to the same Taylor Swift song which made me feel less alone. One line always stuck out to me while I was struggling: “I’ve found time can heal most anything.”

Whenever I had a hard day, like when one of my friends was talking about me behind my back, I would always think about this line, and I always told myself that one day I would finally be able to relate to it. This awkward freshman time period would pass, and I would eventually be healed by the passing of time.

I got through my freshman and sophomore years. Nothing really changed. Then my junior year I met a boy who I fell completely in love with. He made me feel so loved and

“I’ve found time can heal most anything.”

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made me forget about any hardships I went through. I started to think that my time had come and he had healed me. I started to think I could finally relate—finally, time had healed most everything.

One week after Valentine’s Day, he broke my heart.

I thought: time has stopped and it is never going to heal.

My best friend at the time was all I thought I had left. She was consistently there for me and someone I thought would be my best friend for life. My heart was broken and I thought my life was over because of a boy. She listened to me and comforted me through all of it.

Our senior year came around and I completed my college applications, got accepted to my dream school, and prepared to say goodbye to my best friends.

I thought: time has stopped and it is never going to heal.

Then, when it came time for prom, my best friend told me she was dating my ex-boyfriend.

What the fuck.

I graduated high school without my best friend, and I had gone four years trying and failing to relate to my favorite line from “Fifteen.”

I went off to college and for the first time in my life I was on my own. I went through a couple of heartbreaks and had my fair share of shitty friends. Now, as a junior in college, I know who I am. All along I never needed someone to “heal” me. No boyfriend and no best friend could have healed me.

A now 20-year-old me screams the lyric, “I’ve found time can heal most anything,” and for the first time in her life, relates to it.

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developing fil m

by fallon wilson 100

breakdowns. I don't like putting that pressure on my mom. I don't like that I feel like shit. I don't like that I have a pit of anxiety in my stomach. I don't like that I worry all the time. I don't like that I can't figure out my priorities. I don't like that I stopped reading for western civ. I don't like that I can't figure out if it's worth reading for western civ. I don't like that I stopped reading for English. I don't like that I don't want to read for English because it could be useful information but I have no energy to do it. I don't like that my lack of motivation is a symptom of depression. I don't like that being sad relates to my major. I don't like that being sad and anxious makes me think I'll be a terrible social worker but i also think that maybe you have to be a bit crazy to understand crazy people. I hate that I think I'm crazy. I hate the idea that I'll probably be fine in a few days. I hate that I'll either be genuinely fine and this will have been a waste of time or that it will get swept under the rug, waiting to come back out. I hate that I want to rush to Christmas break. I hate that I constantly live in a state of wanting to fast forward instead of enjoying the little things. I hate that I don't know how to enjoy the little things. I hate that I hate myself. I hate myself but I also feel super 101 101

arrogant. How can you hate yourself and be a pompous ass at the same time? Because that's what I'm doing. I think I'm better than every thing that I'm doing but I also feel like a piece of shit and don't deserve any of the opportunities that I'm being given. I feel like an ingrate. I feel like I take things for granted. But am I taking things for granted if I recognize that I'm doing it? I hate that I wish I was writing this in a notebook instead of my phone. I hate that it's 12:35 am and I'm going to be exhausted tomorrow. I hate that I can never fall asleep at night because all of these anxieties run through my head every night. I hate that I feel so, so lonely. I feel empty and I don't know why. I just want vegetable soup and my mom. I just want to go home. I hate people who live close to this school and can go home easily but it's really because I envy the hell out of them. I hate that thanksgiving is so late in the year. I hate that I know I'll be miserable when I get home for too long too. I hate that I'll fight with my sister and my mom will disappoint me. I hate that the most. I hate that I will have homework. I hate that I don't know how to balance school and not. I hate that I can't read anymore because I don't have time and when I do read I get too much anxiety and too many thoughts. I'm unable to sit idly long enough to read. My brain cannot shut up long enough to enjoy a book. I have a cold. I feel like I'm going to puke. I'm lonely. But I don't want to be with anyone here. I have friends that I really like. But I don't want to talk to them. I don't want to talk to a 102 102

counselor. I don't know why not. I obviously believe in counseling. I guess I don't think there's a solution. Because there's nothing wrong? But clearly there is something wrong. I feel like I'm thirteen again. I like to talk about other people's problems, not my own. Not to a stranger. There's nothing wrong with this school but I resent it. I don't know why. I don't know if it's because of money. Or because I don't feel appreciated.

Because I walk past the president and he doesn't even acknowledge my presence. Because there are always better places you could be. Because everything I did in high school with the exception of my SATs counts for nothing. I try to control people and make them more like me. It's a disgusting trait. Again that goes back to my arrogance/self-hatred paradox. I try to change my sister. I try to force my views on people. How do you find the balance between standing up for your beliefs and not try to change people? I feel so guilty all the time. About what I eat. About the homework I don't do. About staying up too late.

About not exercising. About watching too much tv.

Because there is always work that could be done.

About feeling so sorry for myself when in reality nothing is wrong. I just need to shut up and have a good attitude. I genuinely don't believe it's possible for people to fully control their happiness and attitude and outlook. You can control a little bit, but my nature is simply depressing. Maybe I just need to change my birth control. I want to go home. I want to hug my mom and cry into her 103 103

arms. I don't want to talk to anybody about anything. I just want to cry and be held. But I can't. That's the only only only thing I want and I can't have it. I just want to hug my mom and cry.

But that's also pathetic and entitled and spoiled bc I can't wait 3 weeks for thanksgiving and some people have absolutely no one to hug ever. I still feel like I'm going to puke. I don't know if this made me feel better or worse. My throat is killing me. I want to be happy. I just want to be happy.

Why am I not happy? I'm at a great college and I'm doing well in classes and I have pretty good friends. Is it just because I'm homesick? Or just because I'm PMSing? Or just because I'm a psychotic ass hole with self esteem issues? I should take advantage of where I am. So many people don't even finish high school and I'm at a university. College is what you make of it. Nothing is wrong. So why do I feel like shit? Again, maybe this will all blow over and I'll feel better in the morning. I hope so. I feel guilty that I probably got mommy upset. And it's confusing because I feel guilty about venting to her but I wish she was awake so I could text her. Bc I'm lonely. I want vegetable soup and some love. Maybe tomorrow will be better. I pray that tomorrow I'll be okay. Not perfect, but okay.

jaclyn griffith nov 6, 2013 104

38 Days

By Caroline Guerrero How can I make sense of an ending that has been eclipsed by a beginning? Where do I put this joy and sorrow, both wrapped in grief, for who I was and who I am? For what I’ve gained and what I’ve lost? I explained it to my therapist like this: On November 1, 2020, at 3:37 am, I gave birth to my first child—a bright-eyed and curious daughter. On December 6, 2020, I turned 30. Three days later, December 9, 2020 at 10:13 pm, my grandpa, the man who raised me as his own daughter, had died.

For approximately 38 days, two of the most important people in my life existed at the same time. My daughter came into this world as I embraced the harmony and self-trust ushered in by entering in my thirties built upon the intense healing and selfadvocacy I had done in the last few years of my twenties. I was so much more than just a new mother when I welcomed Zara into this world. I was finally and resolutely myself. My grandpa left us just as I was saying goodbye to much of my youth and making peace with difficult parts of my past.

I didn’t cry at his funeral at first. I had known my grandpa was dying. And I attempted to temper my grief by preparing myself (as if I could) by reminding myself that we got an extra ten years with him after he almost passed away in 2009. As the oldest daughter of a single Hispanic-Punjabi mother, my duty was to be steadfast for my grandma, my mom, and my younger siblings.

Being a “strong woman” in my family meant no tears unless behind closed doors. When I called my grandma after he died, 105

she admitted to only crying when alone in her bedroom, because she didn’t want to make everyone else sad.

But I did sob at his funeral. Right before the eulogy that I was to give during our small, masked family mass. The grief I attempted to temper poured out relentlessly and I turned into my brother’s shoulder and repeated over and over, “He never met my daughter, he never met I turned into my brother’s Zara.” An incantation of sorts that I hoped would shoulder and repeated rise him from the dead. over and over, “He never met my daughter, he never Knowing my grandpa was ill, I had made it a point to met Zara.” An incantation travel to see him when I of sorts that I hoped would was 23 weeks pregnant. I melted in his arms when we rise him from the dead. hugged. I wanted him to know how strong I was while being pregnant during a pandemic.

He was just about to lose his leg to the diabetes that ravaged his body. The same disease that ultimately stopped his heart.

In that time when both my daughter and grandpa were here, they both were feeble and helpless. My daughter in the first weeks of her life had trouble latching and developed jaundice. My grandpa lay mostly unconscious in a hospital bed succumbing to an infection brought on by his diabetes. Both were heavily isolated.

Both were considered high-risk.

The day before my grandpa died, my sister held up her phone to his face. Desperate for his acknowledgement—his approval, really— I hoisted my little month-old baby into full view of the screen like 106

a tiny offering. As both laid still with their eyes closed, I said, “Dad, look, it’s Zara! She can’t wait to meet you. It’s your greatgranddaughter. We love you.” But looking back now, what I wish I had said was, “Dad, look, it’s Zara. I want you to hold her. I want you to see my daughter. I need you to see me as I am before you go. We are both so strong. We are going to be ok. Thank you for everything. Please know we love you.”

My grandpa never got to hold my daughter though they both existed on this Earth and in my life for 38 days, 930 hours, 55,836 minutes. There was no transition during that time. The Caroline that my grandpa knew didn’t converge with the only Caroline that Zara has known. Going from the birth of my daughter to the death of my grandpa felt like driving from home to work with no recollection of the drive itself.

My therapist tells me to remember the markers of the drive to stay present during that time. I know that I take the 60 to I-10 West to I-17 until my exit. I like to stay in the inside lanes, because it’s hard for me to get over quickly. I prefer to listen to my “Made For You” Spotify playlists. It only takes me 20 minutes.

I know that both my daughter and I cried hard as I struggled to get her to latch, but that we preserved and soaked up so many moments of love in our first month together. I know that I relished turning 30 and I celebrated with a small lemon Bundt cake. I know that I started to miss my grandpa before he even left, and I can hear the guttural howl my body let out when my mom called to tell me he passed. It was only 38 days.

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Caroline & her grandpa

Caroline & Zara 108

WORLD STANDARD TIME

By Jillian Violet

I created this piece to show the constant changes in beauty standards for women. It is meant to represent how impossible it is to keep up with time because beauty standards change as quickly as a minute passes.

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Throughout history, women have been subjected to judgement based on their physical attributes.

Beauty standards for women have changed exponentially as time has gone by. Many young women torture their body to become what society deems “beautiful.” When researching beauty standards, it becomes clear that this standard of “beauty” is propaganda. What is deemed beautiful in one era is seen as unsatisfactory in another, and it changes every ten years or so. Time has labeled these “superior body types” in hopes of making them seem more important and real, when in reality they are striving to prey on the insecurities of young women and convince them to buy products.

How did these beauty standards come about? Let’s examine the invention of the female razor. The female razor became a product in the U.S. when companies realized how much they could profit by adding women to their target audience. In hopes of expanding their profits, they released advertisements marketing a cleanly shaved woman as being more desirable than those who were not. This is the type of hoax that has been going on for ages. It is quite a sly trick to try to keep women overwhelmed by their insecurities. To keep them focused on something as trivial as beauty standards. Our focus can be much more effective and powerful when channeled into positive and worldly topics. So trash the time label and focus on becoming the most powerful you.

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On the Art of Conjugation When I ran out of animals, I burned my insides on the altar, offering.

The gods I used to worship may have died, but my coaxing always rises, an arpeggio of palilalia, last diminished note of a chord in D minor. Someone has to keep the fires hot. I stoke the coals of girlhood, laying out the bits of me I only knew existed when they were not mine any longer. Here is the first time I discovered I was hollow, pinned like Medusa, my head naked, snakeless. In embers, the duvet cover smokes out its pomegranates, the blood and the vomit. That is what I shed unwillingly every month, full moon rolling out the tide from my thighs. There is the yolk sac of the child I never grew.

My ancestors tell me they were not marched to their deaths in the Syrian desert for this tangled nonsense; from rape, to abortion, to

My ancestors tell me they were not marched to their deaths in the Syrian desert for this tangled nonsense; from rape, to abortion, to fucking the manager.

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fucking the manager. This is a page from my rosewater diaries, charting the decomposition of all the plants I ever kept, cactus to Dieffenbachia. History is to watch things rot. What remains of my father, worm-bitten in a mushy casket, is so small I could cradle him in my palm. I do. He lies on the altar with all the other things I want back. We go to the grave twice, they say, once when you are buried, next when your name evaporates with the morning dew. My mother cried as I dug out weeds from under his tombstone, flicking away the maggots with a spade. I am neither seed nor mulch. Some of my roots are rotting with dead leaves in a crescendo of irreverence: half a gallery conformed to shame, and lies, and forgotten innocence. Voilà, I say, bowing to the ghosts. The past tense loves smoke. It feasts on the meal of my self-made mythologies. You can’t, I shouldn’t have, I’m sorry, it hurts, I wish writhe together on the altar. I barbecue it all, composing a liturgy as I flip a jar filled with childhood bruises and varicose veins. The ghosts applaud wildly, salivating. Sing to me, O Muse, of the rage in stolen pieces. When it all burns, I will carry the ashes to the compost bin and dump them where dead things belong. Tell me, ghosts. How’s that for letting go?

By Nuard Tadevosyan

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Angela Ramos, circa 1999

I’M STILL THINKING ABOUT IT I wanted to be a Time Witch. Simultaneously, I wanted to speed through time and grow up and slow it down so I could have more. We’re often told that more time accumulates value. As a girl, young woman, and aspiring witch, I internalized this with my hair, my nails, and my skin. I obsessed over what could have been, running conversations over and over, thinking the time spent with my head in the past could will it to change, like an elaborate hairdo drawn down to start again in a new pattern that could change everything.

Time is personified as a “cruel mistress” so that we believe we can escape its inevitability. As if it’s something we can fight or avoid. And yet, I still want to be a Time Witch.

BY CAITLIN PECK

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I’M STILL THINKING ABOUT IT 116

CAITLIN PECK

THE LITTLEST APPLE IN THE BIG APPLE PART 3 OF 3 April 28, 2021 You’ve lived in New York almost seven years now. You have made it your home. You have hated it at times—how nothing comes easy, carrying groceries for miles while satisfied that you got most of the things on your list. Subway lines that are always delayed. Being caught in the rain without an umbrella and only your own two feet to get you where you’re going. But when you’re away for too long, its siren song brings you home. A glimpse of the skyline brings you to tears.

You have cried on the train more times than you can count. The subway has become your heartbeat—taking you to places you have never been—trying things you could never have imagined—introducing you to people that would challenge you and compel you to want more. You have fallen in love on the train and fallen out of love on it just as many times. You’ve read page after page on the train, always hungry for more.

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New York will make you fall in love with yourself—in ways you never even knew were possible. In that small town all your differences were compounded and you learned to diminish yourself, your body, your mind. But in New York these things were celebrated, they attracted people, the kind of people that would make your life full. The kind of people that stay up late with you, exchanging secrets. The ones who will drop everything to get a slice of pizza or because you got stood up on a date. The ones who know how much wine to bring depending on if you are celebrating or commiserating.

Did you feel the pull that first time you landed here?

Did you envision the life that you could live here?

Are you proud of yourself, little me?

Because I am proud of you for making the choice to move to the great big beautiful city which has become the center of your universe.

You did it. You made it. And you continue to make yourself proud every single day.

By Savannah Apple 118

Opal Jewelry and Beckoning Bread For Nana

She was old, at least As if that won’t be us tomorrow.

As if life continues on forever and doesn’t snap shut— a screen door while you’re still on the threshold.

She wasn’t in her right mind As if the times she watered tulips or mixed up paint in Styrofoam bowls weren’t consequential, didn’t carry over with her into days emptying out on yellowed linoleum.

She’s at Home now As if I’m not remembering how I always felt peaceful around her, the self-contained pool— timidly gathering brown eggs beside her calm body.

As if I can just continue to go on without her saying my name or giving me orange sherbet.

Did everybody decide to just forget about her oval watch or that exquisite gap in her teeth or especially those navy blue sneakers?

How can they calmly say she’s not suffering anymore 119

when she will no longer print off the list of family birthdays and tape it to the side of the fridge?

And now everyone will share stories of their special bonds and it won’t matter that my birthday is one day before hers because she would bake loaves for anyone who was hungry.

4 cups warm water, 2 packets of yeast, ½ cup of honey, ¼ cup of shortening, 13 cups of flour, 4 tsp of salt, proofed, rested, covered with a warm cloth, baked until gold-tinged brown and thumping-hollow.

She would grease her hands and knead sweetened dough for all empty bellies, waiting each time for the second rise, and it would do us well to remember that.

Maybe I’m panicking because people continue to have babies and the replacements become more important than the originals. I don’t understand how it’s decided when we stop caring.

So what if those last days she was unreachable in her inner world and ate only chocolate for dinner?

I dare to insist her pink Velcro slippers matter.

Let her benediction be golden rod in early evening and a cherry Jolly Rancher at the bottom of a purse.

And a Sunday full of humming.

By Lydia Renfro This poem was originally published in WordCity Monthly in December 2020 120

The fifth issue of Witches is dedicated to Cindy Olender Piro and Denise Ridge Krusell.

Cindy and Denise raised two of the best men I know: my best friend, Joe, and my brother-in-law, Karl, respectively. Both of these women lived feminist lives, made feminist choices, and raised feminist sons and daughters, all without ever explicitly identifying themselves as feminists. Curating an issue about time compelled me to think about definitions and enactments of feminism by the women who came before me, and especially those who helped raise me. I’m grateful to Cindy and Denise for bringing me Joe and Karl, who have been unwaveringly supportive of my journey toward and through feminism over the last fifteen years. Cindy and Denise were indirectly but overwhelmingly influential in my understanding that girls and women deserve to be listened to by the men in their lives. I’m proud to call them honorary Witches, and I hope they are proud of us.

With all my love, time is for Cindy (January 21, 1958 - September 25, 2020) and Denise (October 6, 1955 - July 9, 2019).

- Jac

Follow @witches_mag on Instagram and Twitter for future themes, submission deadlines, release dates and more. To contact us directly, write to witchesmag@gmail.com.

To subscribe and find more information about Witches Mag, visit www.witchesmag.com.

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CONTRIBUTORS sending gratitude & praise to all of these Witches

The cover art for this issue is derived from Caitlin Peck’s submission, “I’m Still Thinking About It,” and it was edited for our cover by graphic designer Alyssa Dill.

editing & layout by

founder of Witches Mag 122

THE END.

Cuckoo

by claudia sousa

OR NOT.

WITCHES MAG ISSUE #5: TIME SEPTEMBER 2021