LIT: The YWW Anthology / Session 2 / 2016 by Young Writers Workshop

Abby’s Angels …………………………………….. 1 Something ’Bout Communism ……………..

Defenestrators ……………………………………. 21 Suaves ……………………………………………….. 30 Founding Females ………………………………. 39 Dem Dudists ………………………………………. 49 Mom Jeans ………………………………………… 55 Hardees Cup Squirrel ………………………….

Coven with the Good Hair …………………… 75 Kristiina …………………………………………….. 86 A Nonstop Midnight Train from Georgia to Seattle Populated by 7 Angry Men ……. 92

Priyanka Aiyer

Yes, I believe in God. I believe in snowfall in September, all soft and brimming with notions of warmth. I believe in God as a column of hands. A house with no windows. What the ocean floor sees when nothing is dreaming of it. I believe in God like I believe in French toast and the inevitability of loving. Think of God as summer singing blackberry, blackberry, blackberry. God as the tide that comes back, no matter how many times the shore pushes it away. Say: God as all of the ways we learn to be very tender. Say: God as saviour for dandelions so desperately wishing to be flowers. The only God that I recognise knows without blinking and still looks again. God, like lost photograph. Like undivided longing. God, like the things electricity whispers when the lights are off. Say: God as the warmest, saddest colour. I believe in a God who understands why people jump from bridges. I know that kind of sadness. That motion, terrifying stillness. God knows it too, has to know it too. God is tender like a broken rib, like epiphany in umbrella-less rainstorm. Hello, God. I see you like walking the silken wire of remembering. Hello, you soft familiar stranger. I see you. You eat. You walk. You breathe.

Leyla Ebrahimi

I feel heavily broken. I sit in silent wonder, and stare into blank, desolate space. My breath is hoarse and quick from negotiating with death, begging it to relieve me, begging it to alleviate me. I suck on my fist. The red, agitated flesh glares back at me, pulsing rhythmic tones, which correspond to the beating of my heart. My heart. Your face is vivid; it serves as an aching constant throughout the seemingly endless days, and time is neither rippled nor distorted, it is clear and it is interminable and it is infinite. Weeks pass and you begin to blend with my memories, words, tokens, blurred faces mixing and co existing in one small sector kept dark and hidden in corners of my mind. You are gone but ever so present, whispers of you exist everywhere. I walk down deserted streets, for it is the witching hour. The wind is cruel and bites at my cheeks, the October air stinging like your kisses. I will need to buy a coat soon. It is serene. The night is hushed, apart from the steady click of my shoes meeting rough, irregular pavement. I reach the park, and the dark is inviting but the moon is warmer, revealing the iridescent pond, desolate and beautiful in all of its solitude. I take a seat on the grass, uneasy, apprehensive. I am waiting. When you asked me to meet you here, I was squandered with feeling. Overwhelmed at the thought of you, yet riveted as well. The letter in which you left for me reeked of simply you, and I was homesick for your words, for purely you.

Elizabeth Hou

I love the way her laugh is golden as her small palms, flower fingers reach for my clumsy hands. I love the way she leads me into the restaurant with the peeling turquoise walls and the cobwebbed, dusty windows, and the ceiling fan dotted with dead flies. I love the way she whispers, “Don’t worry” over and over, words blooming, pink tongue behind perfectly yellowing teeth, layered loose dress with those mesmerizing stripes spinning spinning spinning. She tells me to please sit in one of those molding plastic chairs that somehow found their way from a curbside sale into a family-owned taco shop. I follow her in crisp cargo shorts, clean polo, and souvenir-quality straw hat. Sunday afternoon. She listens to me. Do I love her? In the scorching summer heat next to the local motel, do I love her on the outskirts of the dangerous neon city, signs advertising Girls! Girls! Girls! and greasy patrons leaving sticky bars in the almost-morning sunlight? The parking lot is hot and deserted. Do I love the way she tells me with dewy tears in honeysuckle eyes that it was an accident, it was an accident, it was an accident… Do I love the way she tells me about the man who entered her store dunk out of his mind, and do I love the way she hit him with the baseball bat, turning it in her small, soft hands and letting it fall hard on his back again again again because he told her he loved her wanted her speckled shoulders and her loose layered dress and her tulip tongue and her teeth that were like candy to him, and do I love the way she kept hitting, and hitting, and hitting? He was part of the local government. He was sponsored by the state. All she says is sorry. Hurting him would mean hurting us all… A loved one, she calls me. Later, I drink too and I call her and I ask, “Do I love you? Do I love you? Do I love you?” I listen to her because she says I should and also because we are friends. When I knock on her apartment door, there is only the sound of the flies who prey on sweat and the fat chachalaca birds that bark Ah! Ah! Ah! I turn the rusted doorknob. She is probably asleep or in the bathroom. She wanted me to come. I walk, footsteps soft on carpet plush, to her bedroom. The window is open. A blushing breeze pushes the room, ceiling fan slowly spinning even though the switch is off. She is like bluebell bulbs suspended from the blades, dress still turning turning turning... She is my white lily flower. She wanted me to be here. I whisper to her, “Do I love you? Have you hurt me?” The ceiling fan grows darker. Where did this pain in my head come from? She is on the ceiling and she wants me to be here. She loves me. Do I love her? She hurts me. Do I love her? She is gone.

Emma Lanford

New York City after hours Artificial stars for light Freedom gives me all her powers Lets me repossess the night And atop these glass mountains I see my reflection Without any ripples for once I am thriving instead of purely surviving In this chaos I am now amongst Paint my flesh with flashing neon Fill my ears with shifting streets Any danger I control it Let it spark my restless feet Here there’s people with pulses who want me Or at least they want the girl in red She has no ghosts of pasts that could scare her And her eyes can only see what is ahead City lights city walls block out my shadows City nights they are all mine as am I If I tell him that I’m up here Will he drag me by the head? To the wasteland he built me in And abandoned me for dead He can catch me if he can but he can’t I’ve gotten too fast for myself anyway And if he dares to greet me he’ll learn what it means To become predator turned prey City lights city walls block out my shadows City nights they are all mine as am I

Olivia Dimond

[A spotlight picks up on WILL, a worn-down man who looks far older than his early thirties, sitting on a park bench downstage right, speaking into his cell phone] Will -And I’m sorry that I didn’t say anything, but I didn’t think I could look you in the eye, so, like the coward I am, I’m leaving this stupid voicemail instead(He freezes as another spotlight picks up on downstage left, where SOPHIA, a forty-something housewife, stands at a kitchen counter, chopping vegetables) Sophia -Instead of owning up to their mistakes, they’re just trying to sweep everything under the rug, like they didn’t just ruin their(She freezes as another spotlight picks up on upstage right, where CASSIE, a college student, sits on her bed) Cassie -Their marriage is the most toxic thing I’ve ever seen, and I think(She freezes as another spotlight picks up on upstage left, where PETER, an aging man in his eighties, is sitting in a wheelchair) Peter -Think about how far medicine’s come in the past twenty years, and even if(He freezes as a spotlight picks up center stage, where a young set of twins, ZOE and BLAKE, are kneeling, saying their prayers) Zoe If you could tell us where our daddy isBlake We would like it very much. Mommy isZoe Sad. We don’t know what to do, GodBlake God, please help us. (They stop, as if frozen. Suddenly, everyone else comes back to life) Will Sophia Cassie I’m sorry this couldn’t work- I’m sorry I have opinions- I’m sorry they hate each otherPeter I’m sorry I have to leave. (Everybody freezes as all the spotlights go out)

Kara O’Rourke

My hands enveloped yours and soft belly finally making someone warm instead of insulating the cycle of lights on off on off on I clench a thousand apologies in my plastic teeth each time I drop something with which you so entrusted me The paperclips I’m sorry We don’t part often Your love and our adventures sunning my skin, freckle stains You kiss the memories of coffee from Scotland The the green-tea honey grass from last Easter, falling, running after your dog You can smell her silver warmth, too, in my hair You can’t trust me with your phone For all the times it has almost slipped from my shaking hands in public restrooms Beneath the glass, photographs of you, without me Memories contained only in complicated magnets, binary I can’t understand I’m afraid I may smother them away, and yet I wear thin We don’t walk together in school anymore Your hands have grown, anyway and now I can only clutch at your wrist Stay With this touch still I can lean against your shoulder so the girls on the coach bus screwing spikes into their racing shoes can’t see you breathing, existing in spite of their closeness We run In warmups, you hold my hands close and we share sweat I await your finish, always worrying I will be left sitting in the dirt, drinking dew until I am buried waiting I attended every race, every triumph Traced your fingertip scanning the results for your name, photographing your time with a phone you carry in your pants pockets instead My fingerpads wore away from caressing your skin for so long and you folded my hands under with safety pins So thin I no longer keep you warm

Grace Zander

Fell asleep with my pen to the page Never enough sleep for my remains Check to see if my nailbeds aren't blue today You're lucky if you get to see my face Too many papers with my signature Needles always poking holes in my pores Never knowing what tomorrow brings 911 operator knows my name Chain me to a hospital bed Feed me ice and fruit Call my family and let them know It's nothing new 16 years go by so slow when you're asleep 16 years went by so slow for me Love the taste of life in my barely open veins Helps me get back on my feet at least another day 3 months ago my parents thought I was gunna die and 3 months ago I wondered why they seemed surprised A room devoid of any color but Blue white and grey Involuntary torment but mandatory pay Chain me to a hospital bed Feed me ice and fruit Call my family and let them know It's nothing new 16 years go by so slow when you're asleep 16 years went by so slow for me I am not a lifeless soul My body is damaged but whole I am not a lifeless soul My body is damaged but whole

Aaron Baker

EXT. Street - Day BENJI and BECCA walk down a street lined with shops. Benji is talking about their date last night. BENGI wears cheap clothing, but dresses his best with what he has. BECCA wears layers upon layers. The sky is overcast and looks like it may rain at any moment. Benji: I mean money and food are the quickest way to anybody’s heart. Combining both/ is the perfect Becca: True. The only reason I hang out with you is ‘cause you buy me pizza. Benji: Well that’s just rude. Becca: Do you want to stop and get something to eat? Benji: I’m good. Becca: Well I want some nuggs. Benji: Nuggs? Becca: McNuggies. Nuggsters. Nugg-os. / Nuggy-nuggs. Benji: Are you having a / stroke? Becca: Like chicken nuggets. Benji: Becky, nobody calls them nuggs. Becca: Nobody calls me/ ‘Becky’. Benji: I just did. Becca: Well, I just called them / nuggs. Benji: But you also called them ‘nugg-os’ and that’s where I draw the line.

Peri Brimley

It has been two months and twenty-six days since we said our goodbyes, that number splits so well, like two hal ves of an almost rotten peach; It is too big, we are too small. I remember lying in bed, half naked but covered in

you.

Sometimes I still think about that time,

sometimes it still chokes me.

I am three thousand miles away. (I hope it makes you feel something). Think of the way I would sit on your lap as your thumb traced my lips, my cheek, my eyes, my heart, my heart, my heart. The way your bottom lip would catch between my teeth, a hot palm climbing the mountains of my ribcage, falling through the valleys of spine.

I am thinking about falling. Facehittingthefloorteeth crackingscalp splittingblood matted in haircheeksswollenred eyesred eyesred eyesthrownwords, heavy silences,

Kathryn Harlan When Andromeda was thirteen, she found a garter snake in her garden, sunning itself on a half wall, the flowers on the trees throwing dappled shadows over it. She named it Cetus, like the sea monster, blackmailed some school friend into buying a terrarium for it. The artificial orange sand hot against the palm of her hand, the yellow glow of the heat lamp, she had trouble figuring out how to hide that, the kitschy water bowl, fake plastic rock. Her sister, Maryann severed its head. Probably with a kitchen knife. Andromeda couldn’t set the body down for five or ten minutes. She had clenched her jaw hard, her teeth sliding against each other, producing an aching, grinding sound on the inside of her head, and then put on her white lace gloves over the blood stains and gone to her mother’s party to watch her sister dance, lovely and graceful, light as a goddess on her feet. Maryann, like a marionette. When Andromeda was five, she asked her sister the meaning of her name, and Maryann laced her fingers together, tips brushing her chin, and said, “There’s a Greek myth.” And when Andromeda asked her what it was about, she said “A king and a queen had a daughter, and she was beautiful, and when a monster attacked their kingdom, they sacrificed her. They chained her naked to a rock.” And then, Andromeda asked, “And then? Nothing. No one saved her, and she couldn’t save herself, and she died, cold and alone. The monster didn’t eat her. They let her starve, and it was slow.” Andromeda lifted a hand, and held it, hovering in the air, inches from Maryann’s steepled fingers. It quivered, and she stiffened it, a tension that ran all the way up her arm, to her shoulder. “Does it mean anything else?” She asked. Maryann turned away, tired with her. “Look it up.’ When Andromeda was ten, she walked out into the garden, which she liked to walk at night, barefoot, the way the cold ached in her bones, and how the moonlight made her glow white-gold, and found Maryann, sitting on top of a half wall, holding a crystal glass bottle between both knees. They knocked together when she tipped it back and drank. Andromeda knelt in the grass, both knees pressing into the slick mud beneath it, and tangled her fingers in the tops of it, staring. Maryann threw her head back, and the moon skidded off her bright hair and onto her ice carved shoulders. She took the bottle between both hands, lacing them together around the neck of it, and threw it down onto the ground, where it hit the mud with a dissatisfying leaning thud and no shatter. Maryann extended one lovely, long fingered hand, and offered it up towards the moonlight. Then she brought it down hard on the top of the wall. Andromeda watched the scrape of her sister’s flesh, and the blood coming to red life in dots on the outsides of her hands. It went on for some time. Maryann put both her bloody hands in her curled blonde hair, and cried, the sort of crying that is not meant to be seen by anyone else, that wrecks the voice and draws blood or bile up the throat. The king Cepheus had a wife named Cassiopeia, and she had a daughter named Andromeda, and Andromeda was very beautiful. Cassiopeia said, once, more beautiful than the nereids, and Poseidon was jealous, as gods often are, and goddesses. There is no mention of a sister in this story, though the gods, of course, are often siblings. At Poseidon's behest, the monster Cetus came out of the sea to ravage the kingdom. Cepheus and Cassiopeia chained their daughter to a rock, as sacrifice. Perseus saved her, but the question we should be asking is: how long did he take? Once, not long after the snake, Andromeda threatened her sister with a kitchen knife. Her hands shook when she held it. Maryann smiled at her, smiled at her like rotting fruit, and laughed when Andromeda set the knife down on the counter and turned on her heel back towards her room. She sat up waiting that night, all night, until Maryann came in and inched the tip of the knife blade against her scalp, against her long blonde hair that glowed in the moonlight. It didn’t hurt all that much, the knife point. “Mother won’t like it if you cut my hair.” Andromeda said, and Maryann dropped the knife by the side of the bed when she left. “I want you to list for me, please,” Caroline said once, after Maryann was rude at a party, “the things you have done this month that I might turn you out of my house for.” Maryann rolled her shoulders back and held her chin high, the cords of muscle in her neck shivering beneath her delicate skin. She listed, in a voice like the clink of champagne glasses, mischosen words, dropped utensils, accidents in manner, time wasted on a boy or a girl. She didn’t cry. By the time she was done, it must have been twenty minutes, their mother had turned her attention, disinterestedly, back to some papers spread on her desk. Andromeda was trying to read what was on them, peering around Maryann’s shoulder. When Andromeda was five years old, Maryann would hold her by both her wrists, fingers digging into her pulse points. She would haul her to the center of her bed, set atop the white feather coverlet accented with the blue ribbons, and Andromeda would go still and porcelain while her sister brushed her hair. “Look how beautiful you are” Maryann would say, after, carding her fingers through it, but she would never offer Andromeda a mirror. When Andromeda is thirty-three, she receives a phone call informing her her mother is dead, and inviting her, coldly, to the funeral. “You’re not obligated to go.” Says her girlfriend. Her name is not Perseus, and she has done little saving, and more asking of the question “Why can’t you trust me?” but she is warm and likes to kiss Andromeda on the insides of her wrists. They do have a cat named Perseus, white with a black spot near its ear, which chews on the ends of their hair, sometimes. Andromeda doesn’t go, but the funeral is well attended. The newspaper prints a photo, and Andromeda cuts it from the paper, and deliberates on whether or not to throw it away. Maryann’s hair is a sunlit spot amidst the black coats. She stands alone, beautiful, ageless, and proud as a rock bared against the sea.

Emma O’Neill-Dietel

RUTH, a small woman in her late 50s in a slightly rumpled National Parks uniform, stands in the doorway of a historic house. She smiles at TINA, an older woman. RUTH: Welcome to Jones Estate. I’ll be your tour guide today. My name is Ruth. My partner- my co-guide- he works with me- we’re not- partners- like- Well, his name is Richard and he’ll be joining us momentarily. Now, where are you from? TINA: I’m from New York City. I heard this was a sweet out-of-the way spot to visit. RUTH: Well it’s a good thing you stopped by, or else we wouldn’t have a tour this afternoon! It’s funny that you’re from New York City, because Mr. Jones, the man who built this house, he was born there. TINA: It’s a great city. RUTH: Ah, yes, well… It looks like Richard is a bit late, so I’ll just… begin the tour… (RUTH leads TINA through the door into the house) The story of this house begins with Mrs. Marie Jones, Mr. Jones’ mother. Though Mr. Jones never specified it, we believe that he built this house with her in mind. TINA: Hah, if only my kids would do that for me! You have kids? RUTH: Ah, no. I’m… Single. Well anyway, Mr. Jones was certainly not single. He was married to a lovely woman whose portrait you’ll see a little later on the tour. Their wedding was right out on the front lawn, one of my favorite spots to just sit and talk with R- well, with… anyone really! (RICHARD enters. He is dressed in a finely pressed National Park Service uniform. He is in his late sixties and carries himself with confidence.) RICHARD: Why Ruthie, it appears we have a visitor. (RUTH nods over-enthusiastically) Why hello ma’am. I’m Richard Wyse. Pleasure to meet you. RUTH: This is Tina, come all the way from New York City. RICHARD: I love New York! Fantastic place. Well, welcome Tina. Ruthie and I like to consider ourselves the ma and pa of this here house. Welcome to our home. RUTH: Oh, lovely, yes, so true… Well, I was just showing Tina the parlor. Further down the hall here you’ll see some family portraits. (RUTH and RICHARD walk down the hall and come to rest each standing beneath a portrait of Mrs. and Mr. Jones, respectively.) TINA: Why aren’t those beautiful! RUTH: Oh yes. And behind me here we have portraits of Ruth and Richard Jones. Fine couple, madly in love they were, from what we can tell from their letters. TINA: Their names were Ruth and Richard? RUTH: Oh! Oh no! Please excuse me. (RUTH runs out of the house, mortified) RICHARD: Ah, their names were Alexander and Isabelle. Ruthie does tend to get flustered sometimes. Never seen her slip on a fact before though. TINA: But Richard? Might I just say, I think Ruth is quite taken with you. RICHARD: Oh, you don’t mean… Oh! (He starts to smile then runs after RUTH. TINA smiles, satisfied and proud)

Zoe Panas

Walker looks up. The tree branches with their many leaves blot out most of the sky above them, but there are in fact plenty of stars still visible, scattered like pieces in some cosmic game of marbles. “Do you sit out here a lot?” Carson asks. “Are you asking me if I come here often?” Walker replies. It takes an awkward second for his roommate to start laughing. “I guess I am,” Carson says. Walker blinks. Better not to go down that rabbit hole too far; he’s never quite been able to reach Wonderland in conversations such as these. Though the grass tickling his bare legs begs him not to, he starts to stand. “I think we should go back,” Walker says. “I think we should stay,” Carson returns, no hesitation. Walker sits back down. The grass thanks him. After a moment, Carson turns to face him. “Do you like it here? At Franklin Academy, I mean?” “I don’t really have any other choice.” “What about all this?” Carson makes a sweeping gesture, as if he might be able to generalize the complexities of the school grounds in one swing of his arm. But Walker knows what he’s getting at. He shrugs. “I have nothing against nature.” “That implies you have something against this school.” “Everything is the same color.” Walker feels achingly aware of the space that separates his knee from Carson’s. He is quite sure Carson hasn’t noticed how close the two of them are. He thinks about mentioning it. “You say very strange things sometimes, Walker,” Carson says. “Thanks?” “It’s a compliment.” “Thanks.” “You’re welcome.” Carson points at the ground a few feet in front of Walker, where a fuzzy caterpillar inches along through the grass. “Who’s this little guy?” He reaches forward to pick it up, his knee connecting with Walker’s as he does so. And when he pulls back, caterpillar in hand, he doesn’t move his leg away. Walker is frozen, but Carson doesn’t notice, or doesn’t care. “You seem tense,” Carson says. “I’m fine.” Carson leans closer and squints into Walker’s eyes. “No,” he says, “there’s definitely something wrong.” Walker knows he should lean away, but he doesn’t move, can’t move. He allows Carson’s face to remain inches from his own. It’s a dangerous sort of rebellion. “Nothing wrong,” Walker says, his voice tight. “I don’t believe you.” Carson whispers it as if the trees might ignore them. “You don’t even know me.” “Why are you so fucking cliché?” Carson asks, and their kiss bleeds color.

Hannah Ratner

i. Sound loops around my head like a coiled snake, blaring, blaring the swan neck trumpets melded to mouth. ii. I was born to Eve and Adam to a sun made from milky round to mint leaves. on my doorstep; we ran as if God had sculpted our shoulder blades with wings. iii. The saxophone purrs in my veins, I split open like a gourd, spilling blue unbeating hearts I crawl in through my mouth and find my lungs in my throat. iv. I feel the beat of nails on soul and pray to God: She can make me whole again, a child in a garden, mint on my doorstep; I unfurl my shoulders and find only bone.

Hayley Siegel

They entered the kitchen, their barefeet dragging across the checkered linoleum floor as if they didn’t want to be heard. He turned on lights that made the walls appear yellow and sickly and not white any longer. She crossed the room to the enamel refrigerator and pulled out a plastic tub containing two cold chicken thighs, so dehydrated their bones had snapped into a pile of dust lining the bottom of the container. He leaned in behind her and grabbed a half empty bottle of Heinz ketchup from the door. Without turning around, she took the bottle in her other hand and set it alongside the chicken in the center of the formica tabletop. He closed the fridge and went to retrieve a stack of grey paper plates from the counter besides two rotting bananas. He rummaged in a drawer at his hip and took out two plastic forks so old their prongs were flattened. These items he placed next to the food in a row down the center of the table so that their spread formed a wall between them. They talked but said nothing of importance as they sat down across from each other. He reached for a fork and she a plate and then they resumed their observation of the meal. Neither glanced at the chicken. He looked up at the face of the clock hanging on the opposite wall. The hour hand moved to 9, while the minute hand rested on the 6. The face was cut in half. He liked its symmetry but she was a little frightened by it. Soon, she stood up, straightened her apron, and reached for a worn plastic cup from the cupboard above the sink. She filled the cup with cold tap water half-empty and placed it next to his fork. She had been thinking of yesterday as the glass thudded on the table and a small rivulet trickled down like a tear. “Sorry.” She reached across the chicken to wipe the spill with her apron but his hand apprehended her wrist and placed it back on her side of the wall. “No, no. I’ll get a napkin.” “We don’t have any.” “There’s a stack in the garage.” There might have been an old rag in the garage, but he knew that there were no napkins. He still turned to go but the softness of her words surprised him and he stopped. “I’ll get some at Farm Fresh tomorrow. I promise.” He turned back. She had begun to tear the chicken with her fork into leathery strips. As she set the fork besides her empty plate she looked at him not unkindly and pushed the container towards him as if the barbaric cutting of the meat had made it somehow more palatable. He said nothing, only nodded and sat down. No sooner had he resumed his seat, then the doorbell rang. A very large, very rigid cardboard box had been left outside their front door. On the lid was a label made from red tape. Thick black lettering read, “Fragile: Handle with Caution”. It didn’t make any sense, a package being delivered so late in the day, she thought as she stood in the doorway while he lifted the box with both arms and struggled past her into the darkened entryway. “I’ll take it to the kitchen.” She locked the door behind him and followed. He placed the box on the counter besides the bananas and reached into the drawer. He found a dulled bread knife which he used to slit the crack in the packing tape that held together the two flaps of the lid. They sprang open almost convulsively, revealing large reddish mass within. It was a frozen rabbit carcass. She could feel the sacred knot in the caverns of her womb where the baby had once died now burn with shame. He lifted the limp body onto the counter and looked at its pinkish nude frame, its distended muscles and tendons once so vital now helplessly limpid in his hands beneath the electric lights.

Jessica Steves

then re-using ripped-up shirts for bandages. No supplies. No outside contact. No electricity. Rebels are considering holding us for ransom. Will probably not be able to mail this anytime soon.

Dear Neal it’s a damn warzone here (obviously) No clean water, subsisting on the bottled stuff Food is passable, don’t worry about me. Managed to do a lot of good things for people. Am trying not to think about Margaret.

Dear Neal Rebels took watch + old wedding ring I kept in my pocket. I know, I know – don’t get so hung up over Margaret. Too late. If don’t make it out of here, can you tell her I’m sorry that it went wrong between us? They point AKs at our heads when they search us. Scared all the time. Prayed for the first time in 26 years.

Dear Neal The damn warzone™ is spreading, why the fuck isn’t the UN doing something productive??? Treated a little girl for gunshot wounds. A LITTLE GIRL. Her mother would only let the female doctors near her. Shudder to think of why. Have failed in not thinking about Margaret, but so busy that it doesn’t hurt too much. Am coping.

Dear Neal Not much food, got sick on dirty water. Only reason not in prison camp is bc am competent professional doctor (who can perform surgery while enduring severe diarrhea, apparently) Really missing Margaret now, remembering the smell of her hair makes me tear up. Tell her I love her for me.

Dear Neal Have been awake for more than 26 hours, so many people. Running out of supplies bc sheer influx of patients. Stupid dictators and their stupid wars Stupid me for signing up for Doctors Without Borders. What was that song that Margaret liked? (not the jazz one)

Dear Neal They took one of the nurses away and raped her. Heard her scream, she never came back. Even less food and water. Fewer patients, which means fewer uses for us. Trying + failing to not think gloomy thoughts. Wondering when they’ll kill us.

Dear Neal Coffee is god. Did you know that? Am playing the song as I write; knew it would make me cry but played it anyway— stupid. Hurts an unexpected amount when combined with severe sleep deprivation. We’re bribing the locals with cigarettes to get us bandages and antiseptic. What a world we live in.

Dear Neal They filmed the shooting of a British nurse and put it on the internet. Who will be next? Am amazed these postcards haven’t been found and confiscated yet. They have this stupid beach scene on the other side and it’s completely jarring w/ content of messages. I dream of flying.

Dear Neal Dreamed about Margaret and dying last night, which wasn’t fair. First bit of sleep I’d had in three days—why? We’re boiling and

Grace D. Thompson

Every surface in the bathroom felt sticky. Evan let his fingers trail in the icy water offered by the sink. He didn’t touch the porcelain, instead he fixed his eyes on a milky grey stain next to the condom dispenser. Everything in the bathroom was white and smooth. Tiles and sink and toilet, dull white under the dim lightbulb. Someone had abandoned a bottle of Pepsi next to the toilet. There was a chunk missing out of the sink, allowing water to spill and pool on the floor. Some of the water slipped into the drain which croaked hoarsely, some of it soaked through Evan’s sneaker making his toes curl. Overhead, the light hummed and drew him away from reality. Evan blinked and lifted his fingers to his forehead, his touch was frigid and a shiver streaked from his scalp to his heels. He lowered his head so he couldn’t look at himself in the mirror anymore, and watched the drip-drip-drip of his forehead painting the white sink red. Someone banged on the door, Evan jumped. “Hey! Other people need to take a piss too!” Someone yelled from outside, their voice muffled by six inches of concrete Evan straightened and turned toward the door, slowly unclicking the lock. He yanked the door open and faced a man with an inch of stubble on his bony face. His eyes betrayed his shock when he saw Evan, who glowered over long eyelashes. “All yours,” Evan said, leaving the door open as he turned away. “H-Hey, are you alright son?” Evan didn’t answer, just scuffed his way down the sidewalk, damp shoe squeaking, and slid into the passenger seat of an old Honda. “Don’t look like you cleaned up much,” Ezra grunted, flicking cigarette ashes onto Evan’s lap. “Just drive.” Evan growled, swinging his leg up and kicking his sneaker off. “I don’t wanna smell your nasty ass feet.” Ezra reached out to cuff Evan but Evan ducked out of the way and threw his arm up to knock Ezra off of him. “Then roll down the fucking window, drive!” They rode in a silence as heavy as Atlas’ burden. Evan flexed a swollen ankle and pressed down on it with the palm of his hand. “You’re one weird kid.” Ezra scoffed when he leered at Evan and found him tugging on the fleshy cut on his lip. “Don’t that hurt?” “It feels good.” “Don’t feel good when it happens.” “It feels good when I have control over it,” Evan grunted, digging his nail into the cut. Fresh blood beaded on the tip of his finger. Ezra curled his lip in disgust, the car sped up.

Phoebe Yang

It was a long period of waiting. And it still is. Sometimes when silence is full of rebellious language I have to stretch out my soft, wrinkling paws, those tiny curls my body started to grow few years ago, so I can tap and scratch the budding colors, shapes, and memories eager to escape from me. Please stay. I beg. But sometimes I can be cunning. When I notice soft, rustling movements in her room I will anxiously seminate myself into a new, strange shape, dance the dust from my skin madly caress her letters in the corners quietly throw myself on her recently-taken photos and quietly fall silent As if she can hear and will open the drawer. I curl a little bit more and think. Say, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m never shameful of my selfishness. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m shameful of my hopes.

Elaine Fu

1. I gleam and work tenaciously, without falter I have been told I have sharp lips, and have kissed manyLong drinks or quick sips, I know not to hurt, only to help, the aims of the aimer. Usually I sleep, boxed with queer others, 'till called on for myriad of tasks; I am talentedQuick and precise, I glide across the sheets, gently Though quite often the hand that pulls me, Harshes my snapping teeth. 2. I have not cut fabric or the paper of children, In a long time. I worry of my use. Many nights in the cage. 3. I had no need to be anxious, The woman had taken to hands, and ripped barbaric seams, Upset, from shadows, She touches my cool skin, and calms. I pride and open my mouth. Her palms clutch my empty knobs, greeting me with smile I undertook a new, strange task, Sunk into soft and pale--I always do my best, for fear of growing dull, But she polishes me, and sets me on fabric Sets me on bows once again. I only wish she polished off the stains, caught in sinew. 4. Frequently I chew rather than drink, I thirst for linen or silk, Or even to assist paper cranes, But I am loyal. I am precise. I work, Like I always do. In the face of flesh, Make my way through the bones. I feel cracklyShe has, however, promised me a bath. In me, her hands work strong, Together in unison we nod and nod, My jaws stretch agape, like the fangs of a snake.

Ellie Berenson

Liken our love to penitentiary time Sunken in graves, always clocking the light No sweet nothings, we are lisping in lies Lucky little lady, he can hold you tight Blood constrictor, you give and you take Breath constrictor, finger marks to unshake One, two, three, four, over again Breathe in and out, hit me till ten Eloquent angel, fingernails for wings Elegant demon, got her in a cage Victorious viceroy with souls to engage In a game of hide-and-seek that only he can play You walk on thin ice with your head in the sand Suffocating spirituals propelling you to land Beautiful suffering, he got your heart in his hand But everyone has flaws and he is only human So, why don’t you pin me down Handcuffed I heed While you’re the talk of the town So, why can’t you take me now Lock me in your corner Until one day I’m found A damaging tongue but his speech is impaired She’s got a tattooed neck that draws open stares Sweet southern boy, daddy’s got money to share But no manners to spare, a Yankee’s yanking her hair Kisses await those eyeliner tears Lock-lick-latch, drunken bodies adhere Edge of the fangs exude venom and fear Run little lady, you can’t be safe here So, why don’t you pin me down Handcuffed I heed While you’re the talk of the town So, why can’t you take me now Lock me in your corner Until one day I’m found

Joyce Liu Thursday, 14 July 2016 Nicole, I began writing to you in my sketchbook, but my words were being swallowed up by the jagged teeth of painted poppy leaves. Flowers spilled idly across the page, covering the blotchy crimson stain that had once seeped out of the gash in my thumb, while my sentences bled into patches of clover and dead foliage. I had sketched them out in charcoals, but you’ve always been more artistic than I, your drawings intricate, your lines thin and feathery. Before I met you, I knew you as one of many sophomores in Studio Two. This was back when I was a freshman and I had recognized you from your self portrait and the various still lifes you entered into the art show. Art was your outlet, you told me, one Wednesday when we were working on the set for Twelfth Night, during the fall of my sophomore year. It was a crisp day in the beginning of October and your leggings were speckled with gray paint, but you didn’t care. I’m currently at camp right now and it’s only three hours and eleven minutes from home by way of I-95 and through Route 29, in a drowsy southern town with a population of two thousand, two hundred and thirty one. I’m pretty sure you haven’t heard of it before, so the name won’t mean much to you. It’s beautiful here and I know it sounds ungrateful, but I’ve never felt farther from home before, not even when I was nine and my mother left me in Hong Kong with a threadbare understanding of Mandarin Chinese and a pair of grandparents who neither tried nor cared to learn English. There’s a girl here who looks like you, here at this balmy, brick-paved haven for southern belles, except her name reads Cantonese Chinese and the way she wears her hair says Korea. You’ve got the same hooded eyes, but you smoke them out with eyeshadow and she tells me she’s barely ever touched makeup before. We shared a table at the library once and that’s enough to make you “friends”, I guess, so we always wind up saying ‘hi’ whenever we see each other. We don’t, at least not every time, even though we’ve known each other for nine months, just shy of a year. But when we did, you were always the first to greet me with a “Hey Joyce” and a wave, which I’d return with a breathy, clipped “Hi”, taking care to ask how junior year was treating you, how your last chapter test went, and if you were planning to tech for the musical in the spring, even though it was Shrek, but I was careful not to linger long enough to be branded as that Asian girl, the one who only hung around with Asians because she couldn’t relate to mainstream American culture. I’m sorry. I was scared that their perception of “Joyce” would end at straight A’s, AP Calculus, and almond eyes. I had tried everything, traded novels for “fam”, “hey girl”, and “chill” and K-Pop for Meghan Trainor. I had begged my parents to let me take all on-level classes, but everyone still asked me what math class I was going to take next year, where I was from, and where I was from from when I told them Washington, DC. An uber driver told me how wonderful it was “see an Asian face speak with an American voice,” in heavily accented English as he drove me home on the Interstate. I’m sorry. Nicole, I’m writing to you to say sorry, but also to say thank you. Thank you for sneaking cupcakes with me during rehearsal, thank you for introducing me to My Immortal, and thank you for dragging me to Asian Affinity even when I said I didn’t want to go. With love, Joyce

Madeleine Garneau

HALLIE, 17, sits on the side of a purple rock, slowly looking around, slightly mystified and horrified at the same time. HALLIE What the hell where am I? HALLIE sees a young man, 16-ish, with pointy elf like ears and holding a rock walk towards her curiously. HALLIE Who the hell are you? Where am I? The young man looks surprised and chuckles at HALLIE. PIPER I am Piper. Welcome to Amora. Judging by your outfit, HALLIE looks down at her beat up Converse, jeans, and red hoodie. PIPER wears leather pants, a tunic, and a watch. ... you are not from here. Am I correct? HALLIE nods slowly at PIPER, looking dazed. PIPER Well, the curious thing is I can sense your magic. So if you are not Amorian, where did you come from? HALLIE stands up from the rock and sways. PIPER steadies her by her shoulders. HALLIE I'm.. I'm from Brooklyn. Where is Amora and why does it have purple rocks? I've never seen a place like this before. HALLIE looks around her and reaches up to brush her fingers against the glass teardrops hanging from the tree overhead. PIPER We can answer all your questions later. First, I need you to point your fingers at that tree and say " Illuminae". HALLIE What does that word mean? And why can't you answer my questions now? PIPER Please, just try it. I want to see if you can do something. HALLIE Okay. Illuminae. (Pauses) Nothing happened. Will you answer my questions now? PIPER Just try once more. Think serene thoughts, eyes closed, and will it to happen. HALLIE O-o-kay. I'll do your weirdo thing again. (Takes a deep breath, closes eyes) Illuminae! The glass teardrops bloom with color. PIPER looks triumphant and HALLIE looks confused and horrified. HALLIE What the hell... HALLIE's face grows pale. HALLIE faints. Curtains close. Lights go black. End scene.

Madison Wine I hated mirrors. They were the constant reminders that I could never make it. I was too fat and too plain. My nose was large, my eyes small and the color of muddy water. My mousy brown hair laid flat to my head. I wanted to eat, but I knew if I did, the weight would never leave. There was a knock at the door. “Someone’s in here,” I said. “Lacy? It’s Mom.” “Oh. I’ll be out in a second,” I told her. “Okay.” There was a pause. “I need to talk to you.” I rolled my eyes. I already knew what this talk was about. She was worried about my weight, as I was. But while she thought I was too skinny, I knew that I was too fat. I slowly got up and opened the door, smiling at my mom. She didn’t smile back. “Nice to see you too,” I joked. “Lacy, this is serious. You don’t look healthy,” Mom said, her frown deepening. “I know. I still need to lose two pounds, but don’t worry, I’m really close.” “No. You need to gain at least ten pounds. I will force feed you if that’s what it takes. But I will not let it go and trust that you have it under control like I did last time.” “You really had to bring that up?” “You can’t forget about it, Lacy! I don’t want my daughter to die before me!” “I have it under control!” “That’s what you said last time,” Mom said, then pressed her lips together and walked away. I slid to the floor and pressed my palms against my forehead. The dizziness had come back, but it was with a greater force and it was hard to concentrate. I could feel myself start to slip away, and tried to call for my mom, but before she could find me, I fell into darkness. “I will do anything to prevent this from happening again,” a voice promised adamantly. I opened my eyes, but the white room I was in was too bright, so I closed them again. “That means extensive therapy. We will probably keep her on a feeding tube for a couple months as well. She was really close to death this time,” a second voice said, devoid of emotion. At those words, my eyes opened again. I touched the side of my nose. A skinny tube ran inside my nose and down my cheek. Tears welled in my eyes. I had lost control again and it almost cost me my life. “She’s awake,” the doctor told my mom, nodding at my bed. Mom rushed towards me, tears in her eyes. “I’m so sorry,” she wept at my bedside. I cried with her. “I am too,” I said. “I thought I knew what I was doing this time.” Silence. “Mom?” “Hmm?” She asked, wiping her eyes. “Can you bring me something to take my mind off of everything?” “Of course.” Mom walked out and came back a few minutes later with a fashion magazine. I flipped through the pages mindlessly until an advertisement for Gucci caught my eye. The model looked strangely familiar. “Mom? Do you know who this is?” I asked, showing her the picture. She acted surprised by the question. “You don’t know who that is?” Mom gave me a weird look. I shook my head. “Honey, that’s a picture of you.”

Megan Holbrook

Palm trees swaying, summer Arizona heat Skateboards speeding, cheap tricks on eighth street All the pretty girls washing their mouths out with bleach Aloe Vera plant, dying one shelf out of reach Retrograde rotation, I miss it so much Rough and expensive but sad to the touch Boys running on gasoline like bad day blues Aloe Vera plant dreaming, this town stole my youth

Tina Sang

I dream of school reunions. Not just any ordinary reunion. People from my elementary school, with the same people from my eighth grade homeroom, all in one room, milling about as if it’s perfectly normal; a mash of people from different periods of my life blended together in a nonsensical hallucination. People of the past begin intermingling with people of the more recent past. They get to know each other, laughing and sharing jokes, until they socialized enough to address me. “Visit us,” they coax. “We miss you.” And I do. In my dreams I travel back to cluttered middle school classrooms, dingy fifth grade corridors and my elementary school playground. After ninth grade, I find my dreams crowded with people. My life is now crammed with characters from my ever-changing story and at this point I have so many people in my brain that it is going into overdrive. It can’t contain everyone, so they spill into my dreams, coloring the cloud-lined canvases with faces and voices. -Excerpt from “Dream Reunion” I was the one that taught her how to access the application portal. I led her through the steps one at a time, helped her write her resume. So why did I feel my heart sinking like a stone at the news that should’ve been joyous? I couldn’t help it. Truth was, I wanted to keep [my new school] to myself. I wanted to go there and create a new life, without the past plaguing me like a rotting corpse in the closet, stinking up my room. But she brought it anyway. She unceremoniously dumped the corpse into my closet and there it stayed, and I knew, with bitter realization, that I had played a part in putting it there. -Excerpt from “Hair is the Answer” He fell hard. Harder than I anticipated, but what did I expect from a boy whose culture was so different from my own? He didn’t know the casual way of dating in American middle schools, where two kids would just hold hands and text each other and exchange a few stolen kisses. It was wading into the baby pool and splashing around. He dove off the deep end, proclaiming his love for me, and saying how he had never loved someone as much as me. It terrified thirteen year-old me, but I was even more terrified of being “that girl who had never had a boyfriend”. So I continually plunged into the relationship, with no idea what I would find in the murky depths of the water. My friends asked me why I liked him. Compliment after compliment spilled out, and the lie detector embedded in my brain blared through my monologue. I felt like I needed to make up for the guilt festering in my stomach, I felt the need to defend my choices, and defend him. They say you never forget your first love. Does it count if you didn’t love him? He brainwashed me with his deep professions of love. Every time he’d say the three tiny words, I was a parrot who automatically repeated his words. Parrots don’t mean – or even understand – the things they echo, they simply do it out of habit. -Excerpt from “Love’s a Swimming Pool”

Valora McRae

Verse 1: Green walls and a popcorn ceiling Creamy furniture with a retro feeling Twin windows lead to the outside Wooden floors where I sit, terrified The room holds much mystery Many nights I spent makin’ history The hot pink curtains sway in the wind My locks full of hair thinned Chorus: Suffocating in this air, the world is targeting me Roses and bloodlust, I question my sanity I want to live life unafraid Take off the mask and admit to the masquerade Verse 2: Cookies and candy But the only taste on my tongue is brandy My mind could move mountains But my mouth can’t speak Chorus: Suffocating in this air, the world is targeting me Roses and bloodlust, I question my sanity I want to live life unafraid Take off the mask and admit the masquerade

Bridge: Gold jewelry and silver shoes Tryin’ to keep entertained and enthused My life is a light that has hit a fuse People tell me to get help but I refuse

Tiffany Low

My heart is corn ears. I tear it Leaf by leaf Until Nothing is Left But The husk.

I think of a brown bird with white streaks and marble eyes, sitting behind my eyelids: the place where I roll my eyeballs back when my head hits a pillow, or the place where I feel the light. Sometimes, the brown bird sings its broken songs, and when I swallow, it will move down my throat, replaced by the light it incubated. I think of how birds lives in trees, and how the trees lean towards each other, as if companionship was their element of survival. I brush my fingers along their bough, curving with knots and slipping between scars in the bark. I think of how we are all so cracked, how even the feathers of the bird are conjured from hints of shattered porcelain. How I wish life was like a fairytale, because there, a kiss could mend it all. But in reality, lips are cracked too. I think of the cusp of the sloping jawline that ends in a smooth curving valley, where a seed was planted and a pale red tree sprouted,

like cracks in red bricks.

I think of the periwinkles on the sidewalk and wonder how its petals can be so soft and forgiving of my calloused hands. I think of the sunshine that dapples my skin, brushing my eyelids gently as I slept, how much I want to soak it up; just so something can fill up my void. I think of the grass that slip between the cracks of my toes, tugging lightly like squeezing hands, as if to say â&#x20AC;&#x153;you are worthy.â&#x20AC;? I think of sunshine and birdsongs, yet when I open my mouth, the only things that spill out are cracked cries and dark pond water.

Bette Vajda

I’m sitting all alone here A quiet, neutral place The walls are blank and white and grey It’s not a pretty space But it’s alone; the door is locked And I am finally free I’m dead and so I’m finally not what you want me to be I’m lying on my back now The ceiling’s also white But unlike most white ceilings In this one there’s no spite It’s not leering down on me Like the ceiling in my room Which at night is often telling me “You’re gonna meet your doom.” There’s space to walk and twist and dance There’s space to be myself There’s space to laugh and cry and scream There’s space to hurt and space to dream There’s space to flame and melt There’s space; good god, there’s finally space I’m finally alone; And that’s, of course, when I first hear Another lost soul’s moan. He shuffles in right through the wall He sits down next to me He asks me what this place is And I say ‘“purgatory.”

Eliza Hogan

I remember once coming home one stormy afternoon after school with My Brothers and sister to my mother screaming and crying, throwing things of my father’s at the wall. May May, our Nanny trying in vain to stop her. Usually, on days like this we went outside, but today we unfortunately had to wait out the storm. Thunder boomed making a melody to my mother’s shriek filled song. It seemed sometimes that that was the only song I listened to any more. The wind picked up in whoosh noise and it pulled and tried to pick apart our house. When a lightning bolt finally hit the roof. I found myself sobbing in my sister’s lap, my 8 year old cries piercing the air already filled with screams, knowing that the storm outside was much better than the one inside. Soon I was 9 and I had lost some of my baby fat. My hair became longer and I spent my days at school and in the big magnolia tree outside our house. My brother and I would play cops and robbers under the great ever green leaves with our neighbors. It was my escape from the world. We jumped and hollered and climbed and swung from the great branches. Glorified in our youth, happy and shielded from our problems outside of it. We went higher and higher, with each step it seemed, getting farther and farther away from our pain. But then we had to go inside and face the music, we always had to go inside eventually. My father was shunned in our town after the gossip of what He had done had gotten out. The news passed between old wrinkly women in hair salons until it seemed that even the flies knew. My mother was too beloved. His friends did not talk to him anymore. They were all Husbands of My Mothers friends, and sometimes I don’t even blame them. Whenever they saw me or my brothers or sisters with him they gave us a sympathetic look and him a dirty one. I had never felt so naked or vulnerable when I overheard my math teacher talking to some of the other teachers about my parent’s situation and what my father had done. They had just lectured the 4th grade girls about being nice to one another and not gossiping a few weeks ago. It made me angry, how dare they turn my pain into an afternoon chat. But I guess daughters turn into lovers who turn into my mothers. I guess maybe they don’t really change between those things. Maybe people never change, maybe they always keep their ugly habits. I just prayed that I wouldn’t. We spent the summers with our grandparents in Deep South Carolina. They owned a big white house on a pretty island that was only half an hour from the Charleston. We swam in the little creek that led into the bay during the day. The salty water making our scabbed bug bites sting like we were burned from sticking our hands into boiling hot water. The salt sucking out the water from our veins like a bug sucking out rich blood. We filled our stomachs with sticky strawberry ice cream, Oreos, and Doritos (also known as The Diet of Every 10 Year Old during the summer) and swam until our bones ached. We breathed in the distinct Southern smell of plush mud that ran along the banks. Fiddler crabs ran in and out of the crab grass planted in the mud that we would sink thigh deep into when we tried to step into it. My brothers fished off of the dock with rods that were twice as tall as them, using the crabs they caught as bait. At the end of the day my Grandfather would have to drag us inside. We were sad but the dinner that My Grandmother made would more than compensate. Green beans with Hollandaise sauce, creamy mashed potatoes with gravy, fried crispy chicken, and biscuits with honey. We ate it all on the back porch in a matter of minutes. Listening to the crickets chirp and the fish jump in and out of the little pond that was in the back yard. Those were good days, maybe the best days. They reminded me of how good the world could be.

Emma Kelly Nick, 17, comes onstage from stage left, Cara, 16, comes onstage from stage right. They meet in the middle of the stage. Cara has a small box in her hand that she is hiding behind her back. Nick: Hi Cara: Hey NICK: So Cara: Yea Nick: This is how its gonna be from now on? Cara: I mean what did you expect? Nick: Nothing. Actually, totally, absolutely nothing. That's how well I know you, Cara. Cara: Clearly not very well since I brought this back, Nick. Cara holds out the box in her hand to him Nick: What's this for? Cara, that's yours. I know things are never going to be the same but that's special, its for you, no matter how we feel today it was different on that day. Cara: I know, I just figured she might want it. You know, we get to have those moments again, Nick. Some people just hold onto them until their next one-- I'm not one of those people. Nick: Well, if you aren't going to appreciate it, maybe someone will. Cara: then I'm gonna go now- I will see you when I see you. Cara nervously tucks her hair behind her ear and begins to exit stage right, Nick lunges at her and grabs her arm. Nick: Wait, Cara don't go just, um, come sit with me. We can talk. Because I'm sorry, and you love to talk so/ Cara: What's that supposed to mean? You know what, just never mind Nick you Ok just never known when to stop. I mean would we even be having this conversation if you knew when to stop? Nick: I'm better now Cara-- you know this is a two-way street I didn't move on right away/ like you did. Cara: Oh, I moved on right away? At least I didn't move on DURING, Nick. Nick: Well, I told you you liked to talk, you denied it, but look at you now! Cara: Take a look at yourself, Nick, and try and tell me you aren't a different person now. You're lucky that you had someone truly care about you for once in your life because the person you are now? He will never get what we had again. Nick: Look, Cara you will always hold a special place in my heart because of, well, everything, but I'm sorry that you think it's time when it's really not-- just please sit. Cara: I can't, Nick, he's waiting for me outside. Nick: Oh yea, you wouldn't want the gas in his Range Rover to be as wasted as he is. Cara: You know what, just bye Nick. She flips her hair and begins to defiantly walk offstage. She stops suddenly, and turns back to face Nick again. This is what I meant about the change, you know. It makes you kick yourself for ever really caring if this new person was deep inside you all along. At least I only came close to loving you. A car horn beeps loudly twice offstage, and Cara leaves the stage finally. Nick: It's a shame she never opened the locket. I guess the old me could never find a way to say those three words. Nick takes out his phone and dials a number. Hey Sydney? It's me, Nick. I actually can grab dinner tonight. (END)

Hannah Rosman

I have been told that I am very kind. I have been told that I am nice. I have been told that I am just the sweetest person you’ve ever met! That is funny as hell because I have also been told that I have some severe clinical depression. I have been told that I have bipolar ii disorder. It’s not as scary as it sounds. I am merely very unhappy and irritable most of the time. I can still live relatively normally though. I’ve been told that I’m pretty brilliant at “faking it”, but that doesn’t mean I get to be happy. I’ve been told that what I go through must be so hard. They’re all just being kind, but I choose to believe them wholeheartedly, if for no other reason than my egocentricity. I have always cared more for myself than others. I’ve been told that it’s a terrible thing to do. I am always ill though. Not sick, just ill. I am told that I need the care. I’m seriously depressed, stressed out, occasionally having a scary mood swing or two, and constantly in a state of irritability and anger. So maybe I do. Despite the time I’ve had to adjust, I’m still pretty bad at handling these symptoms. The worst part of all, is that the only things I can blame all this on, are the fucked genes my parents gave me. I apparently have chemical imbalances in my brain. Not suffer from, just have. Medication doesn’t work for me, never has. I’ve tried all kinds, Prozac, Wellbutrin, Lamictal, Abilify, each leaving me more hopeless than the last. I’ve been told to have hope. I don’t though. I’ve tried non-medication solutions too. I’ve done therapy, meditation, and many other forms of zen and awareness exercises. The loveliest of all hells. Nothing helps. Under the guise of a solution, I’ve done things such as sleeping for days on end because it will “make me feel better”. But I can’t even fool myself. I know that it is possibly the worst thing I can do to myself. I’m in bed, on my back. I can’t move. I won't open my eyes. I hear nothing but the racing of my mind, “Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck!” I open my eyes and a stream appears from my eyes. I cry for no reason. My tears stream down my face in some kind of unstoppable landslide into my mess of hair. I shiver as I break into an ice-cold sweat. I have been in the same position for five hours. And it’s the middle of the day! I can't move. I want to move. I have to get up, but I can’t. I want to write, or bake, or sing, or go fucking yell at someone. But I can’t. I can never do anything. I hate myself because I feel weak. That is only one of the extremely harmful things I’ve decided to do. I’m a rather unhealthy person, I think. I try to maintain a little sense of humor about it all. I often think I should write a book called “How to Love Depression as Much as it Loves You”. Ha. The first chapter would read “Fuck Hope”. Chapter two might read, “Hate Yourself? We All Do Too!”. Other ideas include “Being a Bitch to Everyone, But Mostly Yourself”, “Hell is Other People is a True Quote”, “Want to Die? Let’s Make That Happen”, “Social Activity is Hell”, “Thoughts on Hell”, “Sleeping Fucks You Up” and I could go on with more. I think is sounds like a great read. I hope that I survive, but I’m sure that I’ll force myself to. I hope that I can be happy, but that is unrealistic. I more hope that I can learn to live with what I have. That I can do. Or I can at least do, one day.

Kate Cobey

The left side of the sea feels more like home than anywhere we’ve actually lived together. It is so familiar that I could learn to navigate the small town on the banks without my eyes, just by tracing the outline of every store and every human from memory. Despite its complexity, I know the sun-dappled pier better than the soft geometry of the rest of the town. I know the sides where fishermen and seagulls squabble over the scraps of a ruined empire and the far end where young artists sit by the brackish sea and paint the same patch of sky in a thousand different ways. It’s always a different person, and yet the position in which they sit is so unbearably familiar that I could swear I’ve seen them before somewhere. Maybe that’s the way we sat together. A week ago, I tried to sketch something beautiful just to get things off my mind. I stared at the artist instead of the sky over the pier and tried to draw the contours of the space between them and the person who isn’t there anymore. Seven days have passed and the lines are still a sketchy approximation of loss. Sharpening them would only give definition to something that has none. Maybe that’s why we react just as strongly to sketches as paintings- our eyes pick out our own memories, our own losses. We find worn things with tragic backstories at markets and buy them even though we know they’re overpriced because there’s someone else’s sentimentality still clinging to them. We hold onto treasured possessions of those we’ve lost just for a brush with something we can remember. I kept your mermaid in a bottle, the grotesque doll-like figure still grasping the sides as if it wants to see me each time I pull it out from storage. I don’t want to see it but I take it out because despite the ratted hair and somewhat disturbing expression it still looks like a child and sometimes in my dreams I can sense it suffocating in there. Speaking of such, there’s a wood carved mermaid above one of the stores on Gilligan Street that reminds me of you, just above the supermarket at the bottom of the hill but just below the tourist traps that locals visit more than any actual tourists. She looks kind of like you did the night before you left, lonesome and beached, right up against the shore where the waves crash. I think of the right side of the ocean and the middle of the ocean and all of the parts of the ocean that we spent our lives together pining after. I’m sure we lived around some of them once because no matter where we went, we kept coming back to the sea to try to rekindle things. The funny thing about the mermaid is that if the upper half is the human one, then by extrapolation a mermaid should have lungs instead of gills and would probably drown. Despite this, the only depiction of mermaids on land is of struggling to throw themselves into the sea, to submerge themselves in icy darkness and never come back. I guess you both have that in common.

Natalie Kahn

Ghost. An empty subway car at midnight, moving swiftly, silently, the world outside dark and motionless, as I am able to sit, to watch it whir past me. The rains abrasively slap the pavement, which quickly recoils. A shuttering, sputtering streetlamp as the clock chimes four oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;clock AM. Ghost. That unfamiliar man who follows me home from school in the park, and all that time I'm saying, Please just let me go, please just leave me alone. The winds, howling like wolves in the dead of night come hunting for me, shatters the brittle glass of my old windowpanes. Ghost. The flicker of the candles, the mist of little wisps of smoke, the myopia of bare bookshelves where the wood is chipping, slanted, nails barely attached to the wall they first pierced. All the nights spent writing novels in the dim light of the ornate chandelier that swings to and fro, to and fro. Ghost. Dancing silhouettes under the weeping crescent moon, swirling figures not bothering to doff their masks in the dying light of the callous stars, even though they are devoid of eyes, devoid of nose, devoid of mouth. Ghost. A lost boy, making music and stumbling through endlessness, who wanders through a renaissance of bright red flames, the fire that burned my only pair of red-rimmed glasses to nothing but dust. trapped in a body. Entangled in my subconscious web of this mess of a city. It's like hell to be alone in winter, I in my drafty apartment, listening to the moaning violin day after day, watching the cars and the people move on with their lives as I sit by and watch, a bluebird with an able soul but broken wings. Take me away, I beg you. Hello, anyone there?

Elizabeth Im

Kathryn Silberstein

fall into empty space, accidental mosaics of broken stained glass windows, fashioned from fresh flowers frozen in place, and from blue skies untouched, and from tree trunks, leaf veins, fish scales, fragments of life floated through our minds between predictable tides of thought, and structured streams of consciousness on the white-capped, nighttime waves of gentle seas: washed up on the gleaming shore of dreams / we donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t remember find themselves as glinting shards of dropped, dead lightbulbs blooming into a sky unpopulated by red-eyes; gleaming stars in lost constellations, the dead souls of dreams that no soul will see for centuries of dreams / worth worry lines and waiting for morning, waking up to tell over the story like moments lit in excited light against a blurry blackboard backdrop of dropping empty-heart bottles of dreams / we donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t remember that become unglinting shards of broken, cold bottles (swept under the couch to never be remembered, swept into the farthest lightless corners of uncharted galaxies) that sail away from their abandoned shore as sole passengers on crumbling boats to nowhere with no one to hear their stories over the crash of white-capped waves.

Jess Calvert

I know to never trust. a tree a willow will billow and whistle and lie about the beauty of things. It keeps me up at night I wonder I wonder about the fireflies and the dead. dandelions with their white tufts of fuzz because I, myself, am not beautiful and I am not trusting so. therefore: everything. a beautiful liar to me, I cannot fathom love---simply because there is none left for the rest of us to take --we wander, aimlessly and write dumb literature: classics in thirty years and I, a cynic and the flowers, cynics swaying and laughing at the nonbeauty of me. and of you and. of the human race that consumes the earth when will we learn to never romanticize life and I guess there are rays of sunshine but not when the sky is black the only light that of lightning strikes, the billowing whistling beautifully lying willow

Rita Elise Martinez | Excerpt: Untitled INT. A HIPSTER-CHIC RESTAURANT KITCHEN - DAY LAUREN, 25 washes dishes and keeps glancing at the busy chefs, especially TARA, 27. Lauren sees Tara wipe her hands and check her phone, and seizes the opportunity to speak to her. LAUREN (slowly) Heyyyy. TARA (looking up, smiling) Hi? Lauren glances at what Tara was cooking. LAUREN You're the one who makes the hazelnut mousse? Your work is like Yelp famous. TARA Oh god, I never check Yelp. LAUREN Pfft, I found a review about me on there. TARA Serious? What was / it... LAUREN Oh I used to be a waiter and I accidentally stepped on soo many people's feet? TARA (laughing) Oh god...! Wow. LAUREN They were like, "the food is great, but some biiiitch stepped on my shoe." TARA (shaking her head) Wow. LAUREN Yeah so I'm Lauren. TARA Charmed.

Carling Ramsdell

We stopped at a creek. I hopped across a few rocks and squatted down on one in the middle of the water, my arms resting on my knees. “Look at the little tadpoles,” I said. Dylan joined me on the rock and stared into the water over my shoulder. He took off his vans and sat down beside me, his toes in the water. “Do you have a boyfriend, Holly?” he asked. “No,” I said. “That’s cool,” he said. I took my shoes off as well, and stepped into the creek. I felt the water around my ankles and the soft mud and smooth rocks beneath my toes. The tadpoles got spooked as I entered their territory and disappeared. “What’re you doing?” Dylan asked. He’d joined me. Rolled up his skinny jeans as much as he could. “Dunno.” I walked down the creek, enjoying the Bunny Woods. The silence. The sunlight through the trees. The sound of birdsong. I ignored Dylan. “Have you ever dated anybody?” Dylan asked. I didn’t answer. I knew what Dylan was doing. At least I thought I did and I was sick of it. “Did you see that?” I asked. “What?” “I thought I saw a leech.” Dylan laughed. “Really?” “Yes.” I was never really an actress, but it seemed to be working. “Let’s go back to Dot’s. I’m covered in mosquito bites.” And we went home. But Dylan didn’t take the hint. Not only did I want to go home, I wanted to go back to being with Dylan in a way that made me comfortable. Friends. I wanted to be his friend. But Dylan never stopped trying. On the fourth of July, he had a party at his house. His band played in the garage while his younger siblings and cousins ran around the yard with bare feet and mouths stained blue and purple from popsicles. Dot and I sat next to each other on the driveway, drawing with chalk. Dot sang along and I tried to stop grimacing and actually smile. It was a fun party. I ate a burger and watched the children wave sparklers. Dylan’s dad sent fireworks into the air and I wondered why I’d hated Dylan the first time I’d seen him. Wondered if I was too rude and distant with him back in the woods. But then we started dating. That is to say, Dylan started dating me.

Lauren Hassan

Grace Brecht

“What are you doing home so late? I thought you said it was just a date.” “Oh! Uh, hey, Mom, didn’t see you there. It was just a date. No, really, I swear.” “Mm-hmm, sure. What’s with your clothes? Hard to believe you’d go on a date in those. A balaclava, combat boots, and a bodysuit in black? When you came in, I nearly had a heart attack. I thought you were a robber, a thief. When I saw it was you, I was filled with relief. But only for a moment, because that doesn’t explain Why you climbed in the house over the windowpane.” “Old habit--I mean, um, no reason, I guess. Look, can I go take a shower? I’m kind of a mess.” “I can see that, and I’d like to know why Your clothes are ripped and you have a black eye.” “I...ran into a wall. Don’t worry, I’m good.” “You’re not telling the truth, and I wish that you would. What’s with the bag that you hold in your hands? The papers poking out, are those floor plans?” “Um, n-no, it’s just...um…” “I know you too well; don’t try to play dumb. Some dollar bills just fell from the bag to the floor. Along with a receipt from the nearby convenience store.” “I...went shopping? Can I please just go?” “Well, as your mother, I have to say...no. You robbed that convenience store, did you not? You’re very quiet now. Uh huh, that’s what I thought.” “Mom, listen, I can explain it--” “Don’t bother; I don’t actually give a shit. Oh, don’t look so surprised. I’ll explain my case. When we moved here, I needed money for this place. I figured, why not rob a store? Good decision, too; I landed a major score. Hey, next time you hit that place, I’m riding shotgun. I’ll give you some tips and show you how it’s done.” “Oh. Uh. Thanks, Mom. So now can I leave?” “Of course, my darling little thief.”

Josh Garay

The probability of a “you” was miniscule. You existed in the back of their minds. You were a thought, a theoretical, a daydream, a “maybe.” “Wouldn’t it be nice to have three kids?” they said when they were on their honeymoon, and again when they moved up in their jobs, and again when they had your brother, and again when they had your sister. They’d planned to have three kids, but it didn’t seem that that idea would ever be realized. Your mother had spent months upon months in doctors offices and clinics, but they kept telling her the same thing, the same thing, that you would never be a “you.” You were an “if,” and you would only ever exist as an “if,” and if you were anything more than an “if,” you might not make it. Then you would just be an “if only.” It wasn’t worth trying. They’d already had your brother, and he was fine, turned out alright. He has an eidetic memory, but he doesn’t use it much. He knew how to read before any other little babies in kindergarten. He liked cars and dinosaurs and planes and soccer and he made too many jokes at all the right times. Then they had Sydney. She came too early. They were scared, and she was too early, but she grew up with puffy cheeks and blonde hair and straight A’s in every class. She was the opposite of Alex, but she was perfect just like him. Then there was “you.” You were perfect, in their heads, of course. They knew exactly what you looked like and acted like and talked like. It would be a lot for you to live up to, but they didn’t care, because you were already a “never was” to them. They’d given up on the concept of a “you.” They stopped going to the doctors and the clinics and started living with the children they had. They were happy. For a month. Then your mother realized that there wasn't any blood running down her thighs, and “you” were a “You.” You were a “maybe,” a “let’s hope,” a “nothing’s gone wrong yet,” a “what do you want to name it?” You were a “Jonathan,” a “Joshua Michael,” a “Samantha Claire,” a “Susanne,” a “definitely not Susanne,” a “we’ll name her after my sister, Darby Lee,” an “I like that name.” You were an “I can feel her kicking,” you were an “oh my god, my water just broke,” you were the sounds of honking horns on the way to the hospital, you were the smell of the peeling white paint, you were the crooked “e” in the “Lehigh Valley Hospital” sign, you were your mother’s heavy breathing, you were the tiny crescent marks she left in your father’s hand, you were crying, you were kicking, you were screaming, you were swaddled, you were nursed, you were watched, you were observed, you were hushed, you were discharged, you ate, you drank, you crawled, you learned, you began to grow up. The possibility of a “you” was miniscule. Yet here you are; most certainly an accident, statistically improbable, yet nonetheless, you live.

Will Baruch RIOT NEWS blares screams and static through Russell’s car radio. He rolls down the window. Outside, a 1976 Cadillac Eldorado cruises by—two rough looking kids in the front, cigs dangling from their mouths. He looks into his side view mirror. Cracked glass hides his bloodshot eyes. The sky is a sunless gray, as gunshots ring rapid through the dying wind. His badge dark silver—Police Department, the city of Oakland, printed on base metal. No sleep last night; too busy chasing leads and suspects. He scratches his throat raw. His headache stings, as cold air punches his pale face. Race riots are making yesterday’s drive-by shooting seem like ancient news. Four people were shot dead. He saw their stiff corpses splayed raw on the sidewalk, their frozen faces of bugeyed panic. It didn’t shake him. He’d seen territorial disputes like this every day. He was used to the dead. He was used to staying up 24/7 cracking the cases no one wanted. He was used to drinking to the point of nausea. He did it for his sanity. He did it to forget the things he saw. He did it to steady the fire in his heart. A reporter shouts, riot police resort to tear gas—subdue the crowd. They’re going crazy— eight killed. Russell hits the radio off and sinks back in his seat. Out the car window, he sees the homeless have gathered around a shivering fire. They skulk under a bridge with threadbare coats over their bony backs; washed out shadows breathing inner city infection. When they die, they’ll be replaced by their children and after that, their children’s children.

They’ll always

have a place. Under the bridge. Russell looks ahead; the roads painted squalid and hopeless, palm trees carved drab and lifeless. He swings his door open and stands up; case files stuck in his head. He removes a mug shot pic from his wallet to look at. Black and white celluloid—an angry man stands in a police lineup—with obscene tats on his face—with messy, forgotten hair—with teeth bent like broken limbs—with eyes haunted by crime

Braeden Rombach

Jeremiah Hagan

Who told you that I was your property By the hands of God I was created By the heels of your feet I find myself faced-down Head bloody with your dna Such pure liquids My head adorned with your crystals Such real crystals My arms wrapped in your cloth Your precious, fine cloth My forehead, cold on the floor, because that’s all I deserve My head stays low for that is what I have become My neck craned to the pavement only to look up to be a symbol To be sign that we are allowed to walk among you but not sit with you at your political lunch tables Maybe its because we cause a lot of drama, lets be honest you knew what would happen if you didn’t give us obama You celebrate my melanin as it is beautiful as if it severs me from you Well may I inform you that all ashes are gray Shall I let you know on this day, if I may, pull you into the world of seething power Hands shaken with authority Meant to handle inferiority Keep your head down nigga you are not a priority Unless we fuck up and kill one of you on camera But that all disappears Behind a veil of blue suits we sit ready to shoot We kill because we can but we refuse to acknowledge that truth Well officer it would behoove you to stop because my own bullet can simply remove you I mean it would only be fair you’ve taken one of my pawn You represent goodness You represent fair act You represent what it means to be noble and to be heartfelt You claim that you only shoot when you have to Well why don’t you step up and be a man And explain that the only reason why you kill all those men, all those black men, is because you can

Chris James

Did you use salt or sugar? Using the wrong one can make all the difference. I'd look at you while you were sleeping sometimes, but only because I felt guilty. You looked at me yesterday, and you asked, "who?" I could not provide an answer. Answers were all that I wanted, but nobody would hand them over for free. So, I made up my own, because I only had ten cents. I would describe myself as a garbage man, but you would most certainly be a teacher. Could you please teach me? I know that I'm difficult, but maybe.. If I paid you? I have two nickels, perhaps that will win you over? Okay, if you said to me what you said to you and to other people, other you's, and other me's, why did anyone come to you? Come to me, please? I can fix things. I'll change everything about the living room you always hated! But not the kitchen, the kitchen is still mine. Can you write down everything we did wrong.. together? No, I always knew that you didn't like sharing. Sharing never came easily to me, but being purposefully vague always did. I screamed at the sky. You were hiding behind fear. Shaking and trembling, your last words were anything but meaningful.

Eric Kim

The roads were paved with opportunity. Coca-Cola signs, coffee shops with dilapidated front doors, and general stores, to me, a businessman at heart, were hidden jewels, pearls waiting to be uncovered by my golden fingers. $20 million subtotal, $18 million after taxes. Sometimes you just won big. What would I do with all this bank I thought, strolling down the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia like a straight up G. I could invest, I could hire people to . . . do things, I could buy almost anything. The thick air beat down the the back of my neck. I imagined it to be money. Everything was money now. A 20% off sign stood in front of a CVS Pharmacy. Fuck that, I didn’t need 20% off. I entered the store, cool air slapping me like the powerballs bouncing about in that glass sphere I remembered oh so much. The counter was littered with scraps of food, hot dogs, chips, and receipts too. He was black, the cashier, probably a student here. I walked up and demanded the 20% off discount be taken off, just for me. He stood there, dumbfounded. I asked again, firmer. After a moment of eyebrow raising, he just shrugged, nodded, and I paid for my drink, 20% on, bitches. This was what it felt like to be rich. The sky was darkening and I was getting tired. After buying out the nearest Starbucks’s stock of coffee beans, I checked my watch: 8:55pm. My car wasn’t too far, just a few blocks down south maybe. But as my arms began straining due to the weight of all these beans, and as the streets seemed darker and longer, as if a giant was pulling at the edge, my eyes began to dart around and my heart beat like machine guns. My footsteps were the only sound echoing throughout, no cars and no other people except the homeless. I looked at one while passing by. He was asleep, his can of coins beside his left foot, barely any in it. My hand went for my wallet. It was the noble thing to do wasn’t it? I had come into all this money; it was the least I could do. Until I heard a tap, tap some distance behind me. My body froze. Straining my ears to listen, I stood still. Silence. I sighed, pulling my wallet out. A couple twenties, some tens, and a bunch of one dollar bills sat stacked, neatly organized and not a corner bent. And then, tap, tap. I shot up, almost dropping my wallet. My feet pushed off the concrete, quickly breaking into a run. Arms flailing, sweat already dripping, my breath caught fire and my heart beat like ten thousand drums. There! My car stood, parked alone, smack middle in the lot. My hand slammed on the door handle. I pulled; it was locked. Shit shit shit, my keys, where were they? Not in my shirt pocket, or jeans, or . . . there they were! Keys jangling from being dragged out of my back pocket, I pressed unlock when I felt a hand grasp my mouth and drag me down to hell.

Alice May

I breathed through my shoulders like so many young girls afraid of stomachs, air never reaching lungs. I realized I lived on salt water, filling from bottom to top, air the shallow reverse, moving from lungs to veinsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;they fell out of my body. Grass grew in through my pores, staying with me long after I stood. This rug under my feet felt criminal. I sewed buttons to my back to remind me of clean, but they always fell off, and my mother was home. This house was ready to let me go, but my feet were glued to her hardwood floor. I broke so much china. I ran and my heels felt the bones in my body, serpents slithered down my spine and cried my tears. I couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t remember the last time I had forgotten so much, but it was springtime and my eyelashes sipped sunlight through straws. Shaving cream lathered from my mouth, and I felt beautiful and afraid. Rabid dogs have nothing left to lose.

Carly Roberts

Sucking is dangerous. The danger of sucking. â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Gertrude Stein 1. I am living above a butcher shop, I wear only silk clothing. this is a poem for men with nervous mothers 2. it started with little deaths, with the animals that were easy to love the cattle that froze in the winter & the hunting dogs that lost their legs 3. once, you filmed yourself kicking a dead deer. you see through the walls, right to the bedroom (I am the outline of something you want) 4. born in a year of bra burning, once, I was left out to thaw on the kitchen counter. we eat for 10 years & you say my limbs feel ugly when I move them.

Devanshi Khetarpal

(1) come to seed this sea in my mouth a desert fleshed inside out reels close its body of water bit to open (2) ripple tonight this sand in the light mapped once to organ to bloom (3) pull the light to colour the body of me a rip of memory bent to water

Kasey Roper

The woman jumped on the train just as the doors slid shut behind her. She swayed, almost fell over, and then righted herself, heels clicking on the strangely floored ground of the metro. There weren’t many people on it, just a younger version of herself from back when she was a college student and stupid; her mother, younger than she should’ve been and with more vibrance than she’d had in years; her ex-boyfriend, Jason, who was making out with her best friend, Tracy; another ex, but this time sitting there, alone and trapped. He looked like a drug addict caught in the dream world, expressionless, but obviously pained… She couldn’t help him. The train raced down the track in the black black tunnel and the woman stood there, just stood there, without purpose or presence. She did not grip the metal pole, did not seek the support it could provide if only she reached out. Nor did she sit down, for that was giving in. The sound of lights passing lured her into another compartment, where she saw her worst self shooting up heroine alone and in tears, black mascara dripping down her face like blood dripped down her own former arm: pain. Clear as the clouds in the sky and equally as dark on a stormy day, except she didn’t change much. She quickly left her to her own devices, not wanting the attention. Not again. The next car was a happy one, full of laughter and games, but everything was murky, nothing quite clear except the overpowering feeling of excitement. She saw her dad, scooping her up and placing her on his shoulders, ecstatic to finally be higher than she could get on her own. She saw her dog, Perry, run up to five year old, kind, her and lick her face. She giggled and then saw— The announcer murmured a stop name and the doors opened and suddenly the woman was pushed off the train by an invisible force. She stood on the platform and stared after the train, racing off down the tracks it had created for itself. No one else got off. Her thoughts had left her behind.

Kaylee Kinninger

A silver ring on my right index finger tells me of a curse, of stories of how she loved. Loved like the wall on the horizon, like the spiral staircase in memories, like swallowed seawater, like rancid wine and too ripe figs, like promises buried under bleached bones. The ring tells me how this too shall be my curse-to feel too heavily, to weigh too much. To empathize with the sinking ship and not the passengers on board. To see the ash when others see flowers. To taste olive oil when others taste sugar. To feel bark when others feel feathers. My curse, my curse is half eaten thoughts and merry go round potential. Always spinning. Never whole. This is how I love.

Purple pulses through their blood, electricity surges through their hair. Touch, lightning bolt or the valley of waists. Taste, tequila rain or Chanel No 5. air--feels like breathing champagne, feels like drinking her kisses. Wonder where all the oxygen went: taken away by hungry hearts. Listen to rum notes and vodka trumpets. Spill lust out of shot glasses. Girls become music boxes and boys turn the key.

Marion Cline

the lines along my palms are what i own, i am not tongue-tied i am angry; lacing this is like tying flower stems, sticking together something like me, or you. i cant feel and my brain flutters and time is an earthquake, in that springtime ended when i skinned my knee and lusted for a woman named Bone Break. i am draining into pinstriped shorts, frothing into churches dotted with fake chandeliers and cicadas for people. i am sorry for the lack of hurt, i need to tell you that im not alright, that the droplet im inside has been violated by sprigs and needles in common places and im racing into oblivion, im falling with a nude throb and flail a strawberry choked brunette purging her way to the ashes of the sea. the light is going out and im a reflection, im living in the glass. it feels like a gasping rosy flesh figure. i am shaking and in the corner, i am half empty with a milkshake and fries from Sheetz, i am pressed down, i am selfish. i am prodding my stomach into somersaults, and my stomach says, “watch out, someone’s coming, you’re folded over and you look stupid, and you're folded over and bruising me, im welting so understand and simmer down.” the lampost quivers like white lips, i bare my soul to the angels that bite and cleanse, i bare my soul.

Michelle Wosinski

Mya Laiche The light pierces my eyes as I try to lift my head. Stinging pain, maybe moving isn’t such a good idea right now. Think, where am I? What happened to me? I try again to lift my head and again pain greets me. Great, just great, I can’t even move. I look around the ceiling, but nothing jumps out to tell me where I am, just that it’s not home. My eyes fall asleep as darkness washes over me, I guess I can figure out where I am later and why I can’t feel anything but fuzziness as the pain melts away. “Are you awake?” Again I try to wake my eyes, but it’s as if they are lead. I try to mumble words, something, but I am trapped inside my body right now. “I hope you are ok, I mean your vitals look fine, but then again it’s just a bunch of lines and beeps, but at least it’s making noise. Never thought I’d have to come in here for you. Why couldn’t you have let things go and played your role instead of causing a ruckus? You know that you can’t go home anymore, right? Not after what you did.” Right, I helped the butler out and then I get punished. See the King, not dad he was never that, the King said that we weren’t allowed to talk to the servants and that we were above them. I never had to worry about being friends with them because they were older until the butler showed up. He was about my age; a boy from Scotland. He snuck aboard one of our carriages when we visited the Scots and in exchange for him living here he is my butler. At first I treated him as such, but over the years we got very close, and then one day-. “Son, what did I say about talking to the servants?” “But King, he’s my age and I have nobody to talk to. I am alone in this castle.” “It doesn’t matter. He is to do whatever you ask, but if you want a friend suffer in silence. We all have a job and your job is to learn how to be King, so when I die our kingdom will stay prosperous.” I gave him a bow and turned to walk away, for I was a Prince and he was a King. Apparently the King still didn’t think I had learned my lesson. I was playing with the butler in the kitchen, sad I never got to know his name. I brought down cards and we were playing some game or other, betting with pastries and laughing and telling stories. Oh, how I miss him. I remember King came down with his bodyguards and had them grab butler’s arms. “I told you son, you must be a prince and a man first, never a commoner and never a child.” I watched as the bodyguards took the butler away and I knelt on the kitchen floor, staring at the butler’s two aces and my king. He had won the game, but I have the king… That was ten years ago, back when I was seventeen, still a little too young to take the throne. It didn’t matter anyway because as long as my King is alive I won’t be in power and after some of the “stunts” I’ve pulled he could give it away to anyone. A tear rolls down my face as I think of him and the disappointment I have caused my family for not conforming. I hear a happy cry as tears stream down my face. I struggle to open my eyes, although I already know who it is. I want to see him. My eyes slowly flutter open and fall on her face, oh, not him. Is She above me? She must be, for I still can’t move. “Prince, you’re alive! Can you speak? Tell me what you want and I will get it. Just say the word, Prince.” I want my butler back, I want my life back, but I can’t. Tears stream down my face as I fully remember why I can’t move, why I am in pain. I sacrificed my body for an elder and the car hit me instead.

Oriana Ullman

Lately I have been thinking: what does it look like for a body to burn down? I have tried it before with matches and books and buildings but I think the body might fight back. It is good at that. Its rooms crawl into each other and have been taught when to scream. The body has lived with ten sisters and no brothers all its life, in a town where neon diner signs flash open when home is closed. It tries to ignore that the rooms of its house are swelling, its mouth too afraid to hold anything in the light.

Caroline Robertson

Cold sweeps through the room An invader Empty neon doom A murky chamber A dusty jersey Abandoned Found unworthy What happened? And I’ve become undefined A girl without a mind And I feel confined Apart from mankind I’m a blind man searching for a life I’m a dead man searching for a sight I’m a broken nail on the windshield of the impure I’m a fly on a perfect manicure And I’ve become undefined A girl without a mind And I feel confined Apart from mankind I’m all alone My thoughts they room My brain is untied Its contents dried It’s paralyzing Tantalizing The world is my shoelace I’m an untied oyster.

Celine Yung

Closter, New Jersey has a population of 8,545, but for me, it’s the extra three that come in the summer to make it 8,548 that makes Closter special from any other small town I’ve ever been to— because the majority of my summers have existed in Closter within the threshold of my grandma’s house, and the summery spirits of my three cousins. Together, with my younger sister, Melinda, we are the five cousins. The five cousins from the oldest to youngest goes like this: Me, Jamie, Audrey, Melinda, and Aerin. I’m older than Jamie by 1 month and 17 days. When we were younger, I was always taller than he was, but being the boy that he is, with every summer, he comes closer to beating me. I think this is the year that he does. Despite the fact that he lives on the opposite side of the globe, Jamie and I have grown up together. Even though I only see him for what used to be several weeks each year, but is now two or three weeks, he’s like a brother to me. Like sun and earth, we come together in the summer like no time has passed. Closter, a relatively unknown town in New Jersey, is Jamie’s phone screen after summer ends, despite all the places his parents have taken him: Switzerland, Indonesia, Italy, and so on. His jet-setting parents don’t understand why he’d rather spend six weeks in Closter than six weeks at one of their exotic locales. But I understand why, I feel it too—the wonderful feeling that you’re nowhere that anyone you know will find you, except for the exact right people who have been there with you all along. My grandma lives on a crescent, a kind of ovular rotary with three tall trees in the middle. The crescent is filled in with grass that always seems to die and lined with black cement. Audrey once fell on that lining—she cried like she always does when she fell, and cried even more when Aunt Teresa dabbed her knee with the special Japanese solution that comes in a white bottle. The crescent is where Audrey and Aerin both learned to bike. It’s where Audrey fell down, Aerin fell down, and Jamie fell down too. Falling off a bike is a rite of passage in my family. There is a white light-post at the foot of the driveway that leads to the crescent, to which, in sixth grade, I tied a piece of blue duct tape so that each time I returned to Closter I could see if it was still there. The blue tape has fallen off, disappearing sometime between eighth and ninth grade. I’m nostalgic like that, tying and taping and writing things to see if they’re still there later. I thought summers in Closter with my cousins at my grandma’s house would always be there. I thought I’d never age past 12, so I could always play on the giant community playground “for children 4 to 12.” I thought cool, bug-filled Wiffle ball games at the Hillside field and basketball on the Hillside court would always fill my summer nights. We’d crackle glow sticks we’d bought at the dollar store and walk around in the dark. We’d perform talent shows and reenact cartoons in the living room and surprise my Aunt Teresa after work by jumping out from behind her car in the Closter parking lot, while she screamed with laughter. I miss the days when my cousins and I would tell each other that we would buy a huge house where we could all live, or a real hotel so we could have real rooms to play “Hotel” in. I miss the days where I could say “I can’t wait for next summer” and mean it, the days where I knew the next summer was going to be the same, and probably even better. I’m going to cry next summer because by then my 17-year-old frame will be just right for my grandma’s long sofa bed and too big for the small town of Closter, New Jersey.

Elizabeth Szanton

Hanna Soulati

Katie Westover Stephen walks down the street, magnifying glass in hand as he scans the ground for ants he will potentially burn with the reflection of the sun. Stephen goes on, he finds strange footprints, three toes and an abnormally large heal. He continues on, and stumbles across a strange probe-like metal staff on the ground, cringing, he decides to ignore it and lifts his magnifying glass only to find a group of strange people surrounding a large craft. Stephen nearly screams in excitement but stops when he is reminded of the tragic fact that they will abduct him if they know that he is there, at least that's what he's been told, and he promised his mother that he would be home for dinner tonight. Stephen, with all of his excitement bottled up inside of him, crouches down and makes his way over to the craft, touches the metal, curious as to how it felt and eager to know if it was cold or warm...it was cold. Stephen wishes with all his might that this craft would disappear and reappear in his room and that the aliens would not come with. His mother told him never to talk to strangers and these beings are strangers. The boy pushes up his glasses and straightens his shirt out as he creeps his way around the craft to get a better look at the creatures. They are nothing like the descriptions or pictures in the books. They are grey with four giant eyes, one pair for both the front and back of their heads and two small mouths under the holes that Stephen assumes are their noses. Other than that, they are all wearing buns on top of their seemingly gigantic heads to keep their strangely long hair out of their faces and are wearing button up shirts, khakis, like Stephen, but no shoes. "Who goes there?" one of the beings say with a strange accent. He doesn't even have to look to know that he's there, Stephen notes. Stephen grows nervous. Not like fighting off a monster nervous, but meeting the president kind of nervous. He straightens his clothes out and walks over to the creatures. "I come in peace.." He drags out the last word, as he has read that you are supposed to say that if you ever encounter an alien. "What are you talking about?" "Peace? You know... like, I'm not going hurt you." "Oh, we know," says one of the lengthy grey men."but we will hurt you. Suddenly, Stephen is grabbed by his arms and legs and thrown into the craft . Fascinated-and also a little sore from the landing, he looks around in awe and mumbles a quiet, "Whoa." followed by a soft "Ouch." There are seemingly infinite things that he has never seen before, not even his "What to do in an Alien Encounter" book. He reaches out to touch a large red button, when his hands are restrained by a strange blue material. It is baby blanket soft. He hadn't expected that. He only expected there to be an epic battle between him and all of the aliens...he would win, obviously."What are these for?" He asks, staring confusedly at the material and laughing as they drag him by his underarms into another room. Wondering if this is where Stephen will be tested on, he suddenly panics. He hadn't studied and has no idea what the tests will be on. Do aliens do math minutes? Spelling tests? Stephen is a straight A student. He's never failed a test in his life and trembles at the thought. "Please don't test me, I haven't studied." Stephen's innocent voice confuses the aliens as they ask themselves why he would feel the need to study before he is tested on.

Kathryn Smith INT. - KITCHEN - NIGHT JOHN stands in the kitchen in his robe, drinking water. MARTIN appears, also in robe. MARTIN John? Why are you up? JOHN I needed something to drink. MARTIN Oh. Well, we need to talk. JOHN Yeah, sure. What's wrong? MARTIN I - I saw beer cans in your trash. Were you drinking? JOHN Yeah, um, last night. It's fine. MARTIN John, we can't just brush this under the rug. This is serious. JOHN Why? There’s nothing wrong with a little drinking. MARTIN That's like saying nothing's wrong with a little heroin. JOHN That's not at all the MARTIN Dammit, John! You nearly died! You have a fucking problem! Pause. Martin embraces John. MARTIN I can't lose you again. I can’t see you being ripped apart by this. I can't. Pause. JOHN I know. I need help. I need help getting help. MARTIN Then I can help. Martin gives John a kiss then they walk back to their room, holding hands.

Erin Shaheen Mica blows out the candles on her sixth birthday cake and wishes she could fly. Her mother buys her a jacket with a sparkly outside and tells her not to get mud on it. Mica puts the hood over her head and says she’s a wizard. She duels her cousin over the dinner table and pretends not to notice when he lets her win. Six years old means that she is NOT a baby no matter what her brother Max says. She runs after him and his legs are a lliiiiiiiiiitle bit longer but she’s just as fast. They are four brown legs and only two shoes kicking up puffs of dust as they race across the yard. “Mica? MIIIIIICA? Where are your shoes?” she took them off so she could run faster, and because she likes the feeling of cool green grass beneath her callused feet. She can’t stay still and she doesn't want to running around before and behind her brother, playing ball with him and his friends when he lets her. And when he doesn't she climbs as high as she can in Mrs. DiMarco’s dogwood tree, until she looks out high above the world, dreaming she’s a bird flying high and fast over the city. Her shirt is lilac because it’s Ana’s favorite color and it was Ana’s before it was Mica’s just like many of the things they own or share. She loves Ana but she likes her brother better because Max doesn't scold her for getting mud on her shorts. He lets her run and jump and be as loud as she wants with him and his friends, though he teases her and calls her a baby if she cries over a scraped knee. But Ana cleans it up and gives her a band aid and says that she’ll be the princess if Mica wants to be the knight. Max is the dragon when he plays with them because he’s the biggest and he has the best roar.

Virginia Dubbs “Would you rather have not loved him?” She asks, a misguided attempt at helping. “There would have to be a world he doesn't exist in for that to happen. Even if he just exists in the dust under our feet or a star floating along millions of miles away, I would surely love him.” (“One day I'll love you, tomorrow probably.”) “The ice-cream man doesn't keep any cotton candy bars anymore. He's the only one that ate them.” (“Let's own a bunch of dogs together.”) “Maybe I'll join him soon, who knows. We can have a bunch of dogs in heaven together. We’ll host a bunch of dinner parties with all our friends, and give everyone a dog at the end of the night.” (“Do you ever look at the stars and wonder?”) “No doubt his soul went to heaven. If Heaven doesn't accept the brightest star among us, we're all doomed.” They met when they were young, still interested in the dirt in the backyard and catching fireflies in the evening. Nathan was reigning kid of the neighborhood; the boss in all the games, directing his loyal followers with a flourish. All the elderly people in the neighborhood knew him as the charming young kid with the wild curls. His mother often tried to tame them, pulling her comb through his hair until she was red in the face. But Nathan’s hair stayed as wild as he did. They got new neighbors in the summer of 95’, eccentric ones with different ideas about marriage and sexuality. The woman of the household was an engineer, crafting small projects in their backyard. Nathan and his family would stare at her through the windows, watching as she built her latest contraption. The man of the household was much less energetic, preferring just to sit on their lawn with their dog. And then they met the son. Nathan thought he was the most weird looking kid to walk the planet, his wide eyes and always grinning face seemed too good to be true. But then, Nathan actually talked to him, learned his name, learned his habits. Isaac. Nathan decided Isaac was going to be his best friend. That was either the best or worst decision of his life.

Ellie Berger

My Grandad died before I was old enough to truly remember him. I get images of him sometimes, I know that he was tall, and I know that he was bald. But I don’t remember his voice or how he acted around my sisters and me. He was sick for most of my life, so if I had memories of him, they would be tainted by dementia. If you Google my grandad’s name, all of his obituaries will come up. They’ll explain how great he was, and how his story is so inspiring. But in all of those stories I don’t see my Grandad. I see a successful business man, a rags to riches story with no relation to me. Obituaries and biographies create a wall between the focus of the piece and the reader. They distance you from the person you so desperately wish you knew. I remember my father telling me to be kind to my mother the day my Grandad died. I was five and just about to go swimming with my friend Hayley, and I didn’t really understand what had happened. At such a young age it’s almost impossible to fathom a concept as complex and obscure as death. And it’s even more difficult to understand the loss of one’s parent. Of course I was kind to my mother, but I didn’t understand why I should be. To me my Grandad was an ancient man who I saw two or three times a year. Before he died he couldn’t remember a thing. Not his work, not the eight languages he’d learned to speak so well, and he didn’t remember my family. My mother has told me that there was one time, just after my younger sister was born, when he asked for the baby. For a split second he remembered that his grandchild had been born, and he remembered my mother. But then he went back to his amnesiac state, succumbing to the dementia that would soon take his life. I don’t remember my Grandad. I don’t remember his sense of humor or his wit. I don’t remember the deep sadness that haunted him for his entire life. But I do know that he was loved by so many people. I know that he made a difference in the small ways that he could. And I know that, despite lack of memory, I miss him.

Anna McLean

A light flickered in the ceiling of the almost empty subway car, which at this late hour only held only two passengers perched on the dirty plastic seats, the train quiet in the 2AM lull. He kept looking at her. Every few seconds he would glance, his eyes darting to her outline and back again, seemingly fascinated by her yet simultaneously frightened. She did not look at him; on the contrary she looked straight ahead, her face impassive, her folded hands resting on the red fabric of her dress. She barely seemed to blink as she stared out the train window at the muddy brown wall of the underground tunnel. He wanted to say something, but he knew she wouldn’t listen. She knew he was there, but she did not want him to speak. For awhile, all you could hear was the squeaking of the wheels on the track. He tried to remember the last time he saw her, but he discovered he could not quite separate it from the haze; his time with her had been a series of similar meetings, of evening hours spent wrapped around each other, planets exiting their orbits to collide, of nights that she spent “working late” so that they could be together. The phone conversation however he could clearly remember, because she never called, not once in almost a year. When his phone lit up with her name, at first he did not realize what it was. He expected a text, but it just kept buzzing, and buzzing, and he had held it in his hand, staring at it, until he realized she must be calling him. He only just picked up in time. Once they had talked, he wished that he hadn’t. She had ended it, citing her husband, her kids, her job; in other words the life she said she would leave for him, but he had always kind of known that might have been a lie. That night his apartment had felt more empty somehow, even though he always lived alone. It was as if it had felt fuller when he had thought that she would be there again. His eyes darted toward her again. She continued to stare out the window at the wall, at the fleeting smears of spray paint, at nothing, really, but certainly not at him. He knew by how she stared so fixedly that she knew he was there, and knew who he was, so he gave up on the pretense that he was not staring at her. She looked lovely, like she always did. Her dark, curly hair was a little longer than he remember it and it had been braided and pulled up into a long ponytail that hung down past her shoulders, and her skin seemed to glow with life even under the harsh fluorescents. She was wearing a wedding ring, he noted. He had never seen her wear her wedding ring. He opened his mouth to speak, but closed it again, unsure of where to start, not knowing what there was left to say but nevertheless convinced that there was something. A light on the far end of the compartment flickered, and then went out. The train shuddered to a stop, wheels screeching. “We are now arriving at Penn Station,” A cool voice announced over the intercom. The woman stood, and without giving him the satisfaction of so much as a glance, she stepped out onto the platform and was gone.

Abigail Sage

A beach somewhere on the East coast. Sunset. NELLE, 18, sits on a rock with a well-worn copy of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None next to her. REESE, 19, appears as if from thin air. She sits next to NELLE.

REESE:

You shouldn’t blame yourself, you know.

NELLE:

Easy for you to say.

REESE:

You’d be surprised.

(REESE chuckles. NELLE’s expression remains grave.) NELLE:

You could have at least left us something. A note, maybe. It’s more, I don’t know... polite that way.

REESE:

Yes, because propriety was my chief concern when I took that sheet and I--

NELLE:

(interrupting) Please stop. I don’t want to hear about it anymore.

(NELLE takes a flat rock and throws it into the water. It sinks.) REESE:

You were always terrible at skipping rocks. I tried to teach you, remember? When we were kids? You never could get it right.

NELLE:

Shut up.

REESE:

That’s all I get from you, isn’t it? No, “hi, good to see you, how’ve you been,” none of that? Come on, Nellie. I missed you too. Ever think about that?

NELLE:

You chose this. I didn’t. I wasn’t the one who--

REESE:

(interrupting) I thought you didn’t want to hear about it anymore.

NELLE:

You know, you’re right. I don’t.

(NELLE takes her book and begins to read. REESE gets up and exits without NELLE’s noticing.) NELLE:

Or maybe I--

(NELLE looks up and sees that REESE is gone. She looks into the distance, bites her lower lip, and returns to her book.)

Christina Weiler

Critics who are twins who are twins who are twins crawl out from underbellies of night clouds and take the place of soul. They stain a dayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s memory with black coffee. Even when stars splash the sky like cream, the face of the mug dims when bitter fingers wrap and seek heat from judgement. Milk and sugar moments are poured into the night from ceramic pitchers. Homemade critics don't take cream with their coffee when they were offered tea. This moment at midnight is wise until it is not. It knows of mortality, of good bones and breaking sounds. It listens to clinking mugs and pouring and presses its ear to bodies sinking slightly in dark roast, ignores the beautiful silver spoon that never stopped stirring through shadows and sun, through morning, noon, and night. As eyelids reach for each other, the moment is greedy. It is blind to natural shine, to the gold embedded in the living, it takes possession of sharp hours, does not adopt accomplishment until the dreams ascend.

Elliot Van Noy There are the accidents. The wounds that shatter skin; the inevitable forces that are bound to leave a declaratory scrape across skin, leaving self consciousness smudged in places I’d never even imagine to be ashamed of. Short dresses that fall right above knees that aren’t knobby enough for the expectations I can’t bear to further alter my body to follow, shorts that reveal scarring on my upper legs that were unpreventable no matter the amount of caution. “Accidents happen,”we’re told. I sit here now and know that it was an accident. The fixation with his head, with his stolen, unoriginal, fucking “art”, and mostly with the constant reminder of what we could’ve become, if I had only followed him into the backroom where the extra paintbrushes are kept, if only he hadn’t splattered his blue and red watercolors all over my skin. It was an accident involving a pretty fucked up ideology of a friendship that was controlled by two blue eyes, a shade that I’ll remember with every glance out into deep, darkened swimming pools. The scar on my left knee came from a rock that’s directly under a willow tree, and I didn’t see it coming and it hurt and it bled in a way I had never I had bled before. Willow trees are the tree of September birthdays according to my mother who knows about things like horoscopes and birthday month trees and the accordance of the stars. When I was seven and sad and feeling overly sorry for myself, my father planted a willow tree right outside my window. “For when you grow up,” he told me. We moved away the following year. I like willow trees much more than I’ve ever like that misplaced, deformed piece of skin. The moments in winter came in slow motion, like running through water, heavy. I was driving into the other lane while placing my head on the steering wheel, smelling of chlorine and feeling my body itch in places I didn’t know could itch. The days melted into my memory only to be awoken by shaking fingers and warm, sweet highs that would disappear like the moon falling from my window. He was there. He was there in the moments he shouldn’t have been; he was there with hands tracing the small of my back at football games I didn’t want to be at, he was showing up at my house at shady purple hours of the morning, tired and high, asking about the prospects of open space and the purpose of lichen. He was there when it was convenient. But mostly he wasn’t. The scar on my right ankle came from a vicious wart that never seemed to die, no matter how many times I performed surgery with tweezers and scissors and in retrospect that definitely wasn’t the smartest way to approach it, but I was twelve and it didn’t matter. Now I know not to dig at warts like a plant being uprooted, and just to wait until a dermatologist decides to freeze it off. Sometimes they don’t complete the job however, so add personal surgery as necessary. Early spring possessed an exhaustion that never left my body. It sank my shoulders into my chest, and swallowed my face with dark, shiny holes; prominent dark blue veins standing out. like delicate strands of thread, stringing my face together, piece by piece. My mother and I found ourselves at a Norman Rockwell exhibit, and I cried in front of Girl at The Mirror, her face cradled in her hands. I cradled my threaded face the same way. Discussions about the literary merit of The Yellow Wallpaper in faded mornings left me staring at the walls too late to notice the haunted, faint buzzing wasn’t the chipping, peeling paint enclosing me. There is nothing so dangerous, so fascinating, to a temperament like yours. Add personal surgery as necessary.

Sophie Falkenheim The coffeehouse is not a good place to meet on this day. It is far too hot, and far too quiet. It is at least ten degrees hotter inside than outside, and all they are serving is lemonade. Nonetheless, Jack gets there early to find the best table. He was up all night. He mops his forehead. He thinks maybe it is good that it’s so hot, because he’d be sweating anyway, and now at least he has an excuse for it. His brother is due any minute. Jack checks his phone, and sips a cold lemonade. Jack is nervous, he’s never met his brother in person; Jack never even knew he had one until after his father’s death, the year before. The blood brothers have only talked briefly over the phone, and decided to meet here. There are so many unanswered questions about his life that are about to be resolved, and Jack is excited, like he is on the cusp of something he cannot even imagine yet. A very tall, broad, and solemn man walks in. Jack immediately knows that this is him, this is Nicholas, this is his brother. Jack gives him a smile and stands up, but Nicholas only gives a curt nod in return, like a business meeting. Jack’s heart plummets immediately. He is already disappointed. He doesn’t know what he expected—a hug? A handshake? A smile? All he wants is for this to work out, for them to be close. He’s got so little family as it is. Jack is horrible at small talk, but Nicholas seems to have no intention of starting things, so Jack begins. This is difficult, of course. What the hell do you say? Jack found Nick, not the other way around, and Jack finds himself thinking that he would really appreciate if Nick treated this as something sacred and brotherly and life-affirming, and not just a courtesy. But he is treating this like it’s a favor, and it is making Jack feel insecure, like maybe how younger brothers are supposed to feel. Nick is older, taller, larger, more handsome, and enigmatic to boot. Jack suddenly wishes that all his life decisions had been different—that he’d done something more manly than get a nursing degree. Something more respectable to his brother. When his new brother lets slip that he used to work as a professional athlete, Jack finds himself getting more and more upset. They really don’t have much in common. Nick checks his watch several times over the next few minutes. Jack still has no clue what his brother’s life is actually like; he invites Nick to his wedding in a spur-of-the-moment rush, not sure if he should invite him to be in the party, or what, because there has never been a designed etiquette for these things, and it throws Jack off further when his brother says no; football season is in Autumn and so is the wedding, and his career—whatever it is he does now that he no longer plays—has to come first. Jack is trying not to give up but maybe this is the best that can be expected from a first interaction. Maybe things will warm up with time. There is also a distinct sensation of guilt that Jack can pinpoint exactly—his father, his hero, abandoned Nick, and was the best of fathers for Jack. Jack is silent for a moment. “This isn’t how I thought it would be. Having a big brother, I mean.” “Well, we’ve only just met.”

Kate Granruth

They really loved him, whoever the man in the coffin was. They were really grieving for him. I was out of place, just watching as a lot of people got up to talk about him. His son stood up and told a story about his tenth birthday party. Dad had rented him a bouncy house, one with plastic turrets and yellow mesh walls. Dad had bandaged his son’s forehead when he flew out through the Velcro slit in the front and skidded along gravel and asphalt. His son talked a lot about bouncing, a lot about sitting on his father’s knee, bouncing, pretending to be on a roller coaster, pretending to be on a motorcycle. He said he was proud to be his son. His son. I traced an eye-shaped notch in the pew with my fingernail as he spoke, going around, around, around. A shiny bald man got up to talk about my Dad’s kind soul, his devotion to his friends, his family. Bald-man read a letter that Dad had written him during a tough time in Baldman’s life. It had a bible passage in it, one about hope, and faith, and love, and all of the other things I lost to my Dad. I remember rolling my palms over the smooth, round edge of the bench, working my sweat into the grain of the shellacked wood, and some woman wearing a headpiece stroking me on the arm. She probably thought I was having a hard time keeping myself contained. That wasn’t it, maybe my body said that, but in that moment I would describe myself as the least contained I have ever been in my life. I remember my mind the threads of my mind twisting and turning into a timeline, a convoluted stream of cigarettes, of living room tornados, of splintered glass and pots. I thought of every memory of him that I had. I think a lot about firetruck sirens, and holes in the drywall. I think about engines, roaring away, tears in the tiles, texts from strangers. It’s not a lot. It’s not a lot of good. I kinda wish that I’d taken notes or something, apparently this guy I called Dad for a few years did a whole bunch of stuff and loved a whole bunch of people. I wasn’t part of that group. I left as soon as the the little farewell speech started, where you’re invited to the reception and whatnot. I walked down Elm for a while, until I got to the drugstore on the corner. I bought the cheapest pack of cigarettes I could find, a lighter that says ‘Light it up, baby,’ and a five pack of Nicorette gum. I wasn’t looking to get addicted. I was looking to connect. I perched myself on the curb, and a few cars whizz through the stop sign. I remember wondering if cigarette boxes came with instructions, the way tampon boxes do. I remember picturing my mother as I flicked the flame up from the lighter, and I remember picturing my father’s lungs as I watched it sizzle for a second. I thought of the way his smoke lingered in me for eleven years as I took the first drag. I feel like you’re supposed to cough when you smoke for the first time. Maybe I did it wrong. I sat there for a long time, thinking about every memory of him that I had. I think a lot about firetruck sirens, and holes in the drywall. I think about engines, roaring away, tears in the tiles, texts from strangers. It’s not a lot. It’s not a lot of good. I sighed through the nicotine tendrils. I ground sparks out of the cigarette, and left the pack abandoned there, a nice new apartment building for the snakes and the butts and the residents of Cigarette City. I never went back to the corner of Elm and Whitney, but the smoke from that one cigarette, the thoughts from that day trailed behind me for years and years, staying ground in me the way the shattered clay pot stayed in the cracks of the hardwood to this day.

Liana Runcie When the sky eats my name I hope you find honey on its cheek I am a part of something now A type of something I could never be when hands could know me Now I drink the world’s sweat It pools in my hands This is how I keep the working from becoming too still Make sure they still have a rhythm in their skin One they can dance to Up here everything is lemonade The kind of sweet you find at the end of the day When the sun can no longer hold itself up And everything turns red Including my lips I open my mouth and a million fireflies fly free I watch them dance with the children They let themselves get caught Knowing they will be let go of soon Be free again, like I am right now Even when you cannot see me When I am just air and dust and shimmer and sky When I am more than just person I remember everything smelled like lavender except you-you kinda smelled like puberty-I probably did too The grass invaded my shirt to scratch me Above us the moon ate dark fractions of the sky but respected stars You tried to point out something about something you didn’t really know about, I thought about letting you get away with it but couldn’t bite my tongue That was my favorite part about me It was summer and warm enough to justify nudity at all times but you still had goose bumps I asked why, You said, “I can’t help it, every part of my being just reaches for you automatically.” instinctually I gagged I remember when you went away how everything became a little darker How the moon got greedy and out shone stars The grass gave me hives Everything smelled like asphalt. Except me, I still smelled like puberty I watched planes fly overhead and blew them kisses I swallowed the necklace you never gave me and it gifted me heartburn I like to think there was more to this story That you come home one day and lay at the base of that hill again That I find you like Mary Magdalene found Christ But I am old enough to know that’s not how this works. I remember the way you left that night. Said, “See ya in the morning,” but the moon is still up The sun has not risen in years

Emma Patterson

Hanna glanced back at her phone. There were two unread messages from Taylor and her thumb hovered above the notification, ready to reply. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Mel lying quietly in the grass. She looked so… not-Mel. It didn’t feel right. “Hey Mel?” “What?” Hanna wriggled closer, tickling Mel’s sides. It wasn’t long before the little girl began giggling. “If you can find a real four-leaf clover, we can stay here for the entire afternoon.” Mel’s eyes widened. “Really? I don’t have to go back and clean my room?” “Nope. I’ll help you do that tomorrow, how ‘bout?” Mel grinned in place of a “thank you” and immediately began searching again. Smiling to herself, Hanna began gently raking her fingers through the weeds, helping Mel look. Maybe with two pairs of eyes, a four-leaf clover would surface faster. Searching was insanely boring. Mel almost gave up several times, but somehow managed to keep going. Whenever she looked up at Hanna, a new surge of resolve rose inside her. Hanna was helping her, actually helping her. Mel couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a moment like this with a babysitter. After about five minutes of mostly silent work, something caught Mel’s eye. It was Hanna’s finger, patiently nudging a particular clover. “You found one!” Then Mel’s face fell. “But does that mean I still have to clean my room? Because it wasn’t me who found it?” “How about let’s change the rules a little bit. If you pick a four-leaf clover, we can stay here today. Does that work for you?” “Yes!” Mel’s hand shot forward and she grabbed not only the clover in question, but also a couple beside it. Laughing, Hanna helped her separate it from its average siblings. “There you go. Your first ever four-leaf clover.” “Is it still lucky even if I didn’t find it myself?” Hanna shrugged. “We changed the rules, remember?” Mel grinned. Edging closer to Hanna, she wrapped one thin arm tightly around her neck. “Not so hard!” Hanna complained, but when Mel refused to let go she didn’t press it. “Hanna? Will you play with me today?” “Of course, if you want me to.” “It really is lucky!” Mel squeezed her clover, then shoved it into her pocket and got clumsily to her feet. “Come on!” Hanna pushed herself into a crouch, kneeling at Mel’s eye level. Still bearing her wide grin, Mel almost took off immediately, but stumbled to a halt after only a couple steps and glanced back at Hanna. Mom’s words echoed in Mel’s memory. Say thank you. She’d always ignored the order before, but maybe it would be good to be nice to Hanna this time, since she was playing with Mel. Mom had always stressed the importance of being nice to people, especially when they were being nice to her. “Thanks. For the four-leaf clover and for playing with me and everything.” “No problem,” Hanna smiled. “Now what are we going to play?” Mel trotted back to her and gave her another quick hug. “You’re the best babysitter ever,” she whispered.

elizabeth valtierra

it’s hard to love yourself when you didn’t see yourself anywhere, it’s harder to love your family when their faces mean illegal everywhere. the sun sets down, and I scrub my accent off with the bad American movie that faded in the background as I bleached my culture, watering it down until suffocation i was only nine when i asked my mom “why wasn’t i born white?” don’t ask me why i hate myself the only time i ever saw myself fully was in the mirrors, in my pictures. when a white tall girl comes out in the tv and says she’s “Mexican” or “Latina” i dipped myself into fading creams because it had a magic to make me look like her. when i heard the “border hopping” jokes and the “migra” jokes, i laughed harder than others because i didn’t want to be known as the sensitive girl when i was ten years old. because when i try to find myself in the tv, in the comics, in the magazines, in the movies; i only saw myself as the butt of the jokes, as a savage, as the poor, as the girl who got pregnant, as the tragedy, as the criminal, as the drunkie, as the whore, as the runaway, as thedon’t ask me why i hate myself. my mother painted me green, white, and red- with my brown skin, she dipped my hair in gold to feel the treasure of my culture, my heritage, she braided flowers into my hair, whispering words that made me felt Mexican. when I turned fourteen, she gave me an old CD of her favorite songs when she was 17, and I discovered they were all American songs, all English songs, by White American Artists, and I realized the damage I had done to myself with the fading cream. don’t ask me why i hate myself.

Ben Lasky

She liked me for who wanted me to be. Using TV screens, and dvd’s to try and ease the creeks between these dreams we sold to each other with some free deceit. please keep the receipt, I know that you’re really not who you try to be, I guess I fell in what I thought was love to a person who’s truth was a lie to me. and I believe shit wasn’t always like this, So much distance between us now I guess, my thoughts finally have enough room to digress and digest, the time spent with you in my head. Maybe I’m fucking crazy man cause I’ve never been with better person. but I gave my heart for love and in return I got sent this synthetic version. fuck it I’m an asshole for making this. cause truth is this ain’t a break up song this a make up song. it’s taken way too long. don’t wanna play or move on I wanna stay with you long, After 1 year with you you’re more of a stranger than ever, We’ve grown to be strangers together. like 2 randomers who take the bus every day and their only conversations is like stating the weather. Every date we have is almost a first date. but we’ve already stolen 2nd and 3rd base. I’ve met you like 9 thousand time now and I found, that I’ve drowned in your eyes so many times now, that I learned how to breathe under water, but i haven’t gone in the pool for a while now Do you remember how those sparks we imagined turned to shit burning brighter than some stars ever lasting, Now all I see is the ashes, a cremated love ain’t no need for a casket. So please just hand me a few matches, I’ve seen this resurrect before like jesus it’s magic. But all I see is the ashes, a cremated love ain’t no need for a casket.

Caleb Tolbert

White. I am blinded by the light that is the dimmed Saint Baptist Hospital room. The strange liquid in my gaping mouth chokes me as I scream for the known. However, the unknown’s power overtakes me. I feel my body manipulated by the sectional applied pressure of whatever keeps me steady in the wrapping air. My eyes see not, yet they see all, swelling with the brilliance of the speckled room. At least that’s what I see behind these dreaded shades; it’s a fuzzy, piercing haze and ruins the comforting darkness I once knew. A gut tossing gulp resonates throughout my shaking body once mom no longer encases me. I’m crying out yet no one returns me. My focus begins to control my mind now. I feel warmth, I feel touch, I feel that which lags behind, dragging across my skin as it pulls it gently; the latex constantly screeches as it crawls across my body. Another swift spin! The landing is different however. This time I’m met by an extra spine which swivels me into a head rest of some sort. Today I call them the strong, trunk like arms of my mother. However, as a child who merely had seconds of life tucked away in my corner, I couldn’t see body parts or fixtures in the room. Instead, I saw feelings, feelings processed by the beautiful mind, still blind to the darkness of the world. Writing this I ask myself which is better, the pure unique mind of a newborn, or the docile, yet somewhat set mind of an elder. Along with these questions come more questions, specifically, is it better to live in purified ignorance, or in hardened wisdom. For how can the wise call themselves wise if they only know good, should not this mean that they are ignorant to evil making them fools to be taught instead of models to be heralded? I am fully aware of the tainted state of my mind every soul wrenching day I fall after miss stepping and swear never to do so again. And what is to say for those, the wise ones, who know not of loss? Simply put, no one is wise for wise ones know both how to enlighten their lesser with knowledge while having the knowledge themselves of how to sympathize. We are individuals, I know not your pain, I know not your strengths. How wise am I then if I begin falling into clichés and mistakes all because I am without the story of your lives? God is wise, so does he laugh at me when I strive to be? When I fall and rise up again is that His putting in motion, or does my free will allow me to surprise God? If that is so, then wisdom is a lie and it’s all a game. It takes us through our 80 some odd years of life, hoping to keep the momentum alive with the motivation that we can reach the social height of wisdom. My friend died yesterday running home from his usual neighborhood route. Was his heart enlarged? Did a sunstroke or seizure strike him dead? And if so, what is to say for his father who watched from the porch as all he had dropped dead like a collapsed chair onto the concrete? Is he a fool for having a doctor who told him his sons’s checkup was 100% normal not a month before today? Am I a fool for not being there with her right now? The girl who cares for everyone but is cared for by few. Am I wise for the words I spoke to her as she sniffled through the phone connecting us in seconds what must be accomplished physically in 8 hours. No. I am not a fool and I am not wise. I am human, and we are all. Wisdom is a lie. Just as the label of fool cannot be placed upon one’s forehead because he knows it is there, one cannot achieve true wisdom because this can only be attained by the combination we as a people. Rested in these arms and tears do not flow – now. I do not know that they will come later on, just as I do not know what hoisted me in the air so long. For now, I shall rest in blissful ignorance of a babe.

Eric Dunham

Through the darkening clouds, one can see the faint hue of the blue sky. She hides, but cannot completely conceal herself. Under the blanket of grey she is playing a simple game with life beneath her, seeing how long it would take for life to cry for her returning. The clouds are her protection if she is ever feeling too blue. They give her the only solace she needs. The sky is an insecure creature. She lives in solitude, the little white and grey tufts of fluff her friends. She seldom speaks with them, in fear they will not understand her. The clouds like the sky’s presence, but do find her worries petty sometimes. They speak to her and each other only in whispers and drizzles. Occasionally, the sky is a joyous blue, the ocean above our heads, its waves rolling over in warmth towards to edge of the horizon. This is when she feels most comfortable with herself, when she needs not to call in the comfort the clouds can offer her. In times such as these, the only companion to talk to is her sun. Sometimes the sun hides behind the clouds too, but if he can bare himself for the world to see, he enjoys the company his sky. They live together and have not yet fought in the many years they have been friends. They enjoy looking at the world spinning beneath them, and talk about why there is more pollution than before, why the mountains are losing the green about which they used to boast, why fields of grass are losing their luster as they are built upon. For them, it’s sad to see their world trampled on. The only world they could feed their whole energy too is almost gone. Animals live in secluded forests only to escape mankind’s spread of disease and destruction. Mankind worships the gods, without realising their lives are in debt to those above them. The sun turns away for those he does not like. Night falls then and the sky, missing her comrade, turns into midnight and violet. She feels dark. The stars find that they themselves are fond of mankind, for when they dance in the night, they only can see quiet peace. Man’s lights turned off reminds them that somewhere, somehow, humans may know they are not the center of the universe, nor even the galaxy or solar system. These hours of peace pass by quickly, and before the stars can really understand they will soon disappear, they do this. The sky turns lighter again and today there are a couple of clouds, sparsely spread throughout the atmosphere. They shield some of the sun, for he is feeling nervous today. He would rather not come out today, but he knows that if he stays forever hidden, the creatures he truly cares about will perish; he cannot face that guilt. So he stays shining and he knows that mankind is taking advantage of him; it brings the clouds around him to tears to see that his efforts are never repaid. The bustling world below complains that it is too hot, while too humid and rainy; their machines pour out their organs into the world. With this, the sky begins to notice the grey clouds billowing up towards her. She calls for the clouds to leave, her voice more frantic than it had ever been before. The sky is not friends with the new clouds that have come to smog up her home.

Jonah Chang

“I have always imagined Virginia as red, a childhood map has branded the color permanently into my brain. I was born near the peak of the state at the turn of the century, in Inova Fairfax Hospital, a tired mass of frosted blue glass piled on red brick piled on frosted blue glass in an attempt to be modern. A typical December day, on the 19th all of Fairfax was stuck in the freezer, dusted with a light topping of snow, the sun barely peeking up from under the covers of a dismal grey sky. The freezing temperatures didn’t stop my parents from driving their aging hand-me-down Mercedes from a cramped Virginia townhouse to an even more cramped hospital room, the gray walls and fake reflective wood of the maternity ward providing no cheer, only a cold industrial shoulder.” “My parents bought a BMW X5, probably after reading a magazine article about its safety ratings. It was a weary conservative gray that easily scuffed, the interior had gray leather that would soon turn black with dirty streaks. The back bumper was almost immediately flecked with a grimy white, a menagerie of bird poop, dust and tiny scratches. My mother soon went back to work. A few months later my father followed. Their new offices didn’t have a view of the ocean or comfy couches, but they also never had to sleep under their desks or substitute coffee for sleep. Then my mother’s belly started growing. Soon she couldn’t sit at her desk. Hey keyboard had to rest on her lap, she squinted to read the monitor on the desk far in front of her. She kept working though. She didn’t start maternity leave until early November, and even then she didn’t stop working. Drafting contracts turned into drafting names, researching cases turned into researching cribs. December 19. 2000. The first day in my first residence, the hospital. I stayed in the hospital through Christmas. My mother celebrated in the maternity ward, still healing from the c-section. She got pot roast from the cafeteria, then begged by dad to run out to the McDonald’s down the street. There was a small fake christmas tree in the corner of the room, I’m not sure where it came from, but the blur of holiday light shows up in dim pictures tucked away into scrapbooks. Other pictures show my mother bending low over me and my brother, our names, our identity, only made through tiny black type printed on a tiny plastic tag looped around a left ankle. Snow still sprinkled down outside the hospital more than a week after I was born. My mother still stayed in the hospital room, tied to her two little wards. Born tiny, around five pounds each, Doctors had insisted we stay. They monitored us, making sure we grew normally, or, in my case, grew at all. It was still cold when we finally left the hospital. The hospital staff dressed us in tiny Christmas hats, fire truck red, topped with a white cotton puff. Christmas was days ago, but the hospital still had the hats, and they thought it was cute when babies wore them, so they gave them out at any excuse. Snow sprinkled down as our parents rushed us out to the car, my father protecting us with his thick fleece jacket as my mother carried us one at a time. Our parents drove us back in the X5. The leather still smelled fresh under the twin car seats flanking the back seats. My father drove, ever a nervous driver, two tiny babies in the backseat only made him more agitated. My mother in the passenger seat, still high on painkillers, probably should of been comforting him, but instead she leaned back around her seat to comfort us as we left the hospital and experienced our first car ride back to the place where we would spend the first years of our lives.”

Victor Liu

The story of my experience of the Peter Liang incident all started as a little highlighted tab in my gmail’s “everything else” section in late January. It intrigued me. For once, the bolded black Arial letters pasted against the pale white inbox spelled out a Chinese last name. Chinese people, or at least the ones that I knew, would never ask a stranger for help. An outstretched hand offering help would be turned away and requests for help would be discreetly delivered with a hushed voice asking for sworn secrecy. The culture, demanding individuals to save face, frowned upon receiving outsider help let alone the signatures to a petition from global strangers. Wondering what kind of shit forced this rarity into circulation, I clicked the link to Change.org, half-expecting to see a disgruntled Asian asking on behalf of a relative to rectify some anti-Asian sentiment committed against their loved one. However, when the last name of the pleadee did not match the last name of his “relative”, I knew the possibility of any blood relation did not exist so I thought that maybe a really good friend, maybe even a best friend, posted the petition. The framing of this petition contrasted the traditional pathos, emotion-evoking template that Change.org petitions religiously followed—this petition kept a largely impersonal and formal tone, a far-cry from Change.org’s usual pity-inducing ones. My tiny arrow cursor on my computer screen instinctively hovered over the large flashy orange “sign” button, transforming into Apple’s famous Mickey Mouse cursor, but despite my classical conditioning to sign every good-hearted petition that I could, I did not immediately sign this one. After a quick Wikipedia search and a scan of the four other articles on Google’s first result page, the issue turned out to be more colorful than the black and white image that the petition painted. Another negligent police officer saw a black man die under his watch, but unlike the blatant hatefilled murders of white cops who killed with purpose, this officer had a Chinese-American background like me and unlike the white cops, killed the black man with his inability to deliver CPR efficiently and an accidentally-discharged ricocheting bullet. Signing the petition would be a blow to the Black Lives Matter movement with another black life taken by the bullet of a policeman yet not signing the petition would mean another time America pushed around the stereotypically-labeled submissive Asians. I don’t think I ever signed the petition that day—Facebook, YouTube or a combination of both probably brought me back to my reality of efficient time-wasting. Months of test-cramming and completing English handouts that would never be collected or graded went by, and I, like many others at school, played the college entrance game, an exciting pastime both entertaining and cut-throat. It had American students all across the country addicted to it, and even some international players joined in on the fun. Needless to say, the unimportant Change.org petition that I once mulled over about in January was nothing more to me than the unaccounted English worksheets in my tattered cardstock folder. Daily school-related activities occupied the bulk of my weekday time and on the weekends it was church and Chinese school. On one April Sunday, just weeks before the much-anticipated Chinese AP test, my Chinese teacher brought up the Peter Liang issue again quite innocently. She asked the seemingly redundant question to a thirty-student sized classroom filled with Chinese boys and girls, “Do you agree with Peter Liang’s acquittal?”

David Tian

I guess this faith be a book Or ironic, a story I am not sure whether scripture or eulogy Whether this broken promise I call three am wake ups Are dried up ink or bandaged pencil sketching I imagine I have yet to read Yet to punish these hollow covers Not ready to sink into paper I sometimes dream chapels of sand Concaving as if to say These chapters are seeping away Pink words are only afraid of bonfire I see why my setting is so clear This faith be book A lonely dialogue spoken by hands Filled with an unfamiliar hear And antagonist I foreshadow to be depression I have not whispered these carvings onto paper Rather bled them More as though to seep my life into permanence Or rather tombstone I am unsure whether my writings are symbols Maybe a hidden Holy spirit waiting in line To be recognized as a miracle Or a forgotten angel Too many parts mistake to be seen as beautiful Metaphoric, but this faith is a book Too bold yet wavering like a halting sunrise I sometimes smell oceans and wonder if my words are actually sea Like I am waiting to be read Or saved Or pushed down so I remain drowning You can smell ash on these metaphors These anecdotes, soft compositions that are screaming This cover is jagged with figuration As if to say my body is but a fragment of what it once was I know this faith is not hope but lust of God Praying he can save the stories Still incomplete inside of me

Max Halbruner

Interior- Kitchen-Day The onion sits on a cutting board, spotlighted by gentle sunlight coming in through the windows. The curtains blow lazily in a soft breeze. A knife comes down and cuts the onion in half. The knife does not cut all the way through. Instead, it only cuts halfway, and gets stuck. Jane What the? Hands pull the thing apart. Inside is a tiny rock monster, reminiscent of The Thing, with its face on its torso. It unrolls from the middle of the onion and looks up. Close up- Jane, a woman with short hair and tattoo sleeves. Jane Don’t you dare call me mama. Rock Mama! Jane Oh shit… Rock Mama! Mama! Jane No! I can’t take care of you! You’re not even supposed to be real! I just tried to cut you in half, don’t you understand? The rock monster sidles over and hugs the woman’s index finger. The scene is adorable. Jane Okay, um, what do I feed you? The rock monster begins eating the rest of the onion. It has some trouble with it, since its mouth is too small for the pieces. Jane cuts the rest of the onion into tiny pieces. It scoops them up with its little rock hands and pops them in its mouth. Jane What’s your name? The rock does not answer Jane You shall be called Dwayne… No that’s too cliche… The thing… No.... You’ll have body issues… We’ll just call you Madison… Yea

Henry Wood

William Faber

Outside a dumpster. WILLIAM This is where I sleep. It's mostly good, except for the smell and the flies and the leeches. It's warm, keeps a roof over my head, keeps my creative juices juicing, all that jazz y'know. He pulls out a cardboard box. WILLIAM I sleep on this. It's pretty comfortable if you can get over the fact that it's not really all that comfortable. I get used to it. He pulls out a banana peel: it has bite marks on it. WILLIAM This has been breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the last few days. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m managing The banana went bad faster than I expected so I just have this, but that's okay because it ruins my appetite for the rest of the day. He goes around to the back of the dumpster. There are spiders and other insects buzzing everywhere. WILLIAM This is my backyard. He points to one of the spiders. WILLIAM That's Dave. Say hi, Dave. (Pause) Dave is a little shy. Our communication is pretty limited but we've developed this sort of symbiotic relationship and it works pretty well. Anyway, let me show you the loft. William jumps into the dumpster. WILLIAM I sit in the loft whenever I want to feel ritzy and upper class. It's comfier than the box but smellier. Everything here's a trade off. You get used to it. (Pause) Anyway, I guess that's everything.