pp. 1-50 - Stylus Spring 2023

STYLUS Volume 140, Number 2, Spring, 2023. Founded in 1882. Undergraduate members of the University are invited to submit original works of poetry, prose, and art. Direct correspondence to: Stylus, Room 129, McElroy Commons, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467 or bcstylus@gmail.com. Works under review remain anonymous. Copyright 2023 Stylus Editorial Board, 2022-2023. All rights reserved.

Be Not Afraid

Late on a Monday evening, The Stylus disciples abandoned their coursework and assembled for their weekly meeting in Stokes S117. Upon reading the antepenultimate poem, the ceiling lights flashed thrice, shocking Stylites to the core. “It’s a ghost!” they cried out in fear. But a disembodied voice spoke up at once: “Take courage! It is I. Be not afraid.” But instead of a biblically accurate angel, it was merely the BC custodian who appeared in the doorway, informing us of the building’s imminent closing for the night.

Whalesong

The Stylus loves whales

Whales do not deserve to die Well, *whale wail* Ao-oooh

Stylus v. One Book Called Ulysses

To celebrate the 82nd anniversary of the death of underground, alternative Irish novelist James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (perforated ulcer), Stylites have taken to resuscitating the author by reading each and every reference to Ireland as an obvious allusion to Joyce’s collected works.

“Thin fucking ice. Not everything’s a Joyce reference.” Shush! We haven’t talked about Joyce yet today.

Marathon Monday? More Like

Marathon Sunday!

11 hours

One room

Dwindling numbers

Dwindling faith

Only one way out…

FINISHING (with ice cream)

Bostonese

Sexposition

Sex poem, except it’s not actually a sex poem, it’s just a regular poem, perhaps about ice cream; but it’s not exactly a poem, it’s an exposition. About ice cream. After having read many of what kids nowadays are calling “sexy poems,” The Stylus has become profoundly compelled by the intimation that perhaps all poems are poems written about “ice cream.” And now, an actual poem:

Whine Knight (narr. Holly Branco)

Red frothy and flowing it was

Blood buzzing heat in our hearts

The moscato was gone

Should have arrived earlier

Pump me with that pinot noir

Crimson flowers between teeth

Noir eclipsed by starry nights

Knights in shiny chardonnay

White night wine night

And as Homer coined the “wine-dark sea”

I could see how dark the wine made your cheeks

Warmth and light fill my soul

Bubbly wine that she spits in someone else’s mouth

We we wine with my oui oui baguette

Empty bottles make a cityscape on the countertop

Praise B(arr)achus!

A Visit to the Museum of Natural History

Maternal Waters

I Went to See Van Gogh Just to See You

Piecing Together (Winter Nights since 2019)

Runner’s Flight Asphodel

Man of Egypt

Head of the Stairs at Dawn, with Dad Twenty the excavator

A Scent of Springtime

To the speck of pollen blowing in the wind

I look for

Mariam Chaduneli

Katy Gilmore

Ani Andal

Katy Gilmore

Cecilia Durcan

Victoria Oliviero

Aidan O’Neill

Megan Stevens

Grace Wolski

Henry Troake

Ethan Barrows

Grace McPhee

Max White

Ethan Barrows

Leann Gardner

Megan Stevens

Grace McPhee

Nina Khaghany

Morgan Stumm

Sensory Grief

The Sky Screams “Homesick”

The Mute

The stage is a garden Prayer for 2022

Teaching Preschool with a Mask-On Approach in 2020

Another Night at the Rink Bank Week @ BC

Sally’s Capitalist Empire

Consider it With Me

American Dog Whistle

Rorschach

The sonuvabitch rorschach Death

The Intersection

Nova Brighton

Joe Dionysus

Imagine Mural, Strawberry Fields

Baba Yaga

Car Begging for a Change

Olivia Emerick

Dylan Berry

Morgan Stumm

Sarah Anderson

Thomas MIlutin

Beatriz Pugeda

Max White

Patrick Conlan

Henry Troake

Brian Lynch

Grace McPhee

Ethan Barrows

Morgan Stumm

Ethan Barrows

Taylor Morales

Madeline Mitsch

Beatriz Pugeda

Thomas Milutin

Masha Kruk

Megan Cresitello

To the

From the Brooklyn Heights Promenade

Dad Never Liked Vanilla Like I Did The Understory apartment

Ancestral Disconnect Donnalucata

Two-part confession regarding natural phenomena

When the day is done

Jesse Julian

Megan Cresitello

Omar Shaker

Megan Stevens

Henry Troake

Mariam Chaduneli

Katy Gilmore

Olivia Emerick

Thomas Milutin

Owen Fletcher

Thomas Milutin

Morgan Stumm

Amelia Johnson-Pellegri

Megan Stevens

Max White

Katy Gilmore

Rachel Herschbein

Morgan Santaguida

Thomas Milutin

Megan Stevens

Megan Cresitello

Julianna Markus

Rachel Herschbein

Katy Gilmore

Ethan Barrows

Cecilia Durcan

Lillian Benoit

Megan Cresitello

I just threw out a plastic spoon and now I feel like crying

Serin Hwang

Katy Gilmore

Victoria Oliviero

Serin Hwang

Cecilia Durcan

Liam

Robert

Matthew Kirven

Robert Vollbrecht

Lauren Foster

Andrea Barcenas

John Sexton

Masha Kruk

John O’Hara

John Sexton

Matthew Kirven

Megan Stevens

Morgan Stumm

Caroline Cannon

Morgan Stumm

Matthew Kirven

Morgan Stumm

Megan Stevens

Elizabeth Farrelly

Matthew Kirven

Matthew Kirven

Matthew Kirven

Grace Wolski

Emily Torpey

Megan Stevens

Robert Vollbrecht

Masha Kruk

Grace Wolski

Alicia Wang

Megan Stevens

Maria Piperis

Melanie Cotta

Yingshan Wei

Emily Hiltunen

Lauren Foster

Caroline Clark

Maeve Pinheiro

Matthew

Megan

Masha

Yingshan

Yingshan

Charlotte

Julianna

Julianna

Caroline

Charlotte Caine

Caroline Cannon

John Sexton

Francesca Hsu

Aneesa Wemers

Grace Wolski

Mattew

A Visit to the Museum of Natural History

There are dozens of us in the museum looking up at the monstrously-sized blue whale, a pastel sky held up over our heads. With its gentle mouth and speckled belly, its heart is as large as a worn-in loveseat, so large a child could walk through it like a room.

No one here is afraid of this universe of a living being, not us with our hearts as small as our fists, who break everything we hold in our hands. We just stare, mouths parting and eyes drawn upward, awed by a creature choosing over and over to be kind.

mAriAm ChAduneli

Splendor of the Stars

Liam Walsh

Maternal Waters

Dad told us a story about a girl in Greece, the daughter of a caryatid, a mother who turned to stone just to hold everyone up.

Four years later

I stuck my toes in Pacific sand squealing at tides taller than me, the shells were marble cinnamon buns, frosted pastries frozen in stone, sugar immortalized. I thought of mermaid telephones, crustacean homes, seaside jewelry.

My favorite ocean currency? The mother of pearl like the tip Mom’s violin bow, a shell as a piece of the ocean aside horse hair gifted from the land.

We all have a primal memory of when waters covered the earth. There is safety in nothingness, the warmth of liquid hugging our lungs. The seas— statues pressing the shores, holding humanity. A mother never stops calling her child home.

KAty gilmore

Untitled photography

Robert Vollbrecht

I Went to See Van Gogh Just to See You

In a past life, you were him, And I was the drowning waves.

I know –museums aren’t confessionals reeling in Adam’s apples, But I see boyhood in blue – Eyes of China Sea clemency – In the jacket you gave me Though it wasn’t yours to begin with.

And you –Don’t want to say He reminds you of your grandfather. That would be too much. Instead, he reminds you of you –Easel in you thumb, Eastern ring of stars, Easing your heart.

And there’s –A song I want to sing to you Your fingertips atop brush-waves Above a woven night and silk-threaded trees and a slap-brush town, About blue, about your grandfather, About you Because I failed art class back in high school And my dream has come true.

And I brought –

You here because I was shipwrecked — Because you deserve these

Constellations more than me;

Because you are dreamless –As you say you are.

Until this night.

And I confess –

I confess all my sins to you: I want you. I need you. I miss you. I trust you. I need you once again. And another word too cauterizing to say. How dare you do? How dare you live for me? How dare you save me?

And I thought –

Blue was to cold and cold was to penance, And jackets to lullabies to retribution, And life was too cruel to let us meet again; Lest you drown again;

To let us touch again; Lest you die again;

To let us – “Hold

my hand” you say,

I sully sea strokes once more, But you say “I’m good now.”

And the passed-on jacket brushes my arm

As we pass past-lives without saying goodbye.

Ani AndAl

It was the fourth of July. Or Memorial Day. Or Labor Day. It was some day when the air was warm, perhaps even slightly sticky, and the sky was stealing the blue of the sea, which had seemingly become tinted a murky green. People didn’t seem to mind the seasick shore, coming from all over the Tri-State to enjoy a Jersey beach. We were some of those “people.” My father, little sister, and I piled into Dad’s Volvo, and after just an hour, pulled up to Grandma’s—the large gray house covered in overflowing flower pots of pink and purple petunias just a five-minute walk from Manasquan Beach.

My sister and I likely should have spent a bit more time on the hellos, hugs, and kisses, but at nine and eleven years old, we instead were scrambling through our beach bags and putting on sunscreen before even stepping in the door. I shoved my hand up the back of her shirt and slathered her pale skin with the thick white paste, and she rubbed some across my shoulders, more than likely getting a dollop along the collar of my shirt without my noticing.

Then, we snuck into the pantry, packed snacks together— Cheez-its and Fritos and fruit snacks that would definitely melt in the sun. We changed into bathing suits together, crammed in the little box that was the outdoor shower. We bumped arms, hit prepubescent hips, scraped knees against the walls and each other, and sure, we groaned and complained and told each other to “watch out,” but when it really came down to it, we didn’t mind getting changed together at all. We had our routine. Everything we did, we did together (even if we said we didn’t want to).

My sister, Dad, and I said goodbye to my grandma who sipped her wine (at 10 AM) on the front porch, waving a sunsoaked wrinkled arm at us. Of course, my sister and I bolted. We ran ahead of Dad together as he wheeled the cart of chairs, towels, and beach umbrellas along the bumpy sidewalk. Our flip-flops smacked against the pavement, but I just called, “Keep up, Sarah,” watching her struggle after me. Her blonde hair splayed across her

face as she followed.

At the beach, we were a pair. When she jumped into the ocean, I followed, diving between the waves right behind her. She ran up to the warm sand, far off from the water, and I accompanied her, each of us proving to the other that no, our feet weren’t burning though they absolutely were. When I pulled out the deck of cards, my plan to play Solitaire quickly became a game of Spit between us two. And when men on cruisers with megaphones announced the beach was closing early that day, Sarah jumped on my back, carried my bag, and I walked us both home, where we washed ourselves side by side, trapped in the little shower because we were both too stubborn to take the second turn in it and too tempted to be with each other.

That night, after rinsing the salt from my water-crimped hair, my sister and I put on matching pajama shorts and tank tops. We sat around the living room, waiting for someone to hand us a TV remote, but instead, Grandma suggested we see the holiday’s fireworks. Typically, at the age of eleven, I wasn’t so interested in seeing colorful explosions in the sky, but my sister seemed interested. So, like always—as a pair—we went.

The sky was such a deep blue, it was almost purple, but the fireworks warred against it, threatening the sky with pops of oranges and greens. They sparkled against their dark canvas, and people—the elderly couple tucked into their beach chairs, the children silently digging their feet in the sand, the teenagers laying just a little too close on a blanket—were enjoying, awed by the show splayed out before them.

I felt a tap on my shoulder, turned to see tufts of blonde hair dyed by the shade of night. My sister smiled so wide, then looked to the sea, grabbed my hand. And so, we went. I let her drag me along as she was pulled to the shore, a moth to her flame. Together, with Dad left stranded by the dunes, Sarah and I looked out. Before us, the sky blurred into the sea, save for one glowing spot—a boat with its interior lights on. Sarah let go of my hand to point at it.

I looked down at the dampness beneath my feet. The darkness still filled my gaze, the sand a solid, supportive slab. The waves rolled, tried to reach my toes, but failed. Instead, they left

pockets of puffed, white sea foam, like stars, and I was floating through space. The scene swarmed me, overtook my senses, everything was darkness aside from these spots, these luminaries pocketed into the grainy rocks beneath my feet. Unable to pull my eyes from the ground, I smiled, stretched out a hand; the cool breeze wafting off of the ocean wove between my empty fingers.

I looked up. Sarah wasn’t there. She’d already run back to the soft sand, back to Dad, shoving some kind of shell in his face. I turned back to the blackened horizon line.

A certain longing and a bit of heartbreak settled over me. I desperately wanted to share the moment with her, share the magic like we shared everything else. It was the first time I realized I couldn’t; we couldn’t have every special moment together. The thought that in the next year, I was off to middle school while she remained at William Woodson Elementary crept into my mind and only twisted into the wound. Things would be different. There would be moments that I’d experience, like standing among stars in the sea, that she’d never share. More than that, there were moments she’d have that I’d never fully know.

Warm fingers laced caught mine, and I looked to see my sister, back at my side. Her smile was wide, and with her other hand, she lifted the shell—a sand dollar—so that I could see.

“How’d you find that?” I asked. She told me. And I told her about what I saw, the water and the dark sand and the frothy foam.

If we couldn’t always share our moments, at least we could share our stories.

Matthew Kirven

Piecing Together (Winter Nights since 2019)

There are words I’m meant to be forming— I’m sure of it. I’m in front of a blueberry bush, ripe, bulbous, my mouth waters but my hands and feet are bound in twine. I try to create something. I crochet, embroider, re-stitch each row until my fingers bleed and the thread runs burgundy.

December is a blur of yellowlightredhatsalcoholsnowfallsleepingthroughsunlight. After the blizzard stops I’ll open the window and inhale, I’d like to memorize What that first breath tastes like— icewaterpeppermintwaitingroomforest.

At the witching hour I face the thought I ignore at daybreak— Was I meant to understand that fathers die at seventeen?

I can’t sleep anymore. My body knows something that my thoughts can’t process— that time shouldn’t keep moving without you.

I can’t listen to music anymore without getting jealous— of the writer who can make something with ease, of a world where everything is just a song.

KAty gilmore

Untitled photography

Robert Vollbrecht

Runner's Flight

There’s a breath before beginning. Inhale and look across the water, see the geese overhead with their necks craning forward, onward.

Exhale. Push foot. Pulse heart. Lift-off.

Climb into bed with the wind.

What else is the purpose of sinew and sweat if not this? This movement towards the next bend, next loop, next footfall, stepping in life-sustaining soil.

CeCiliA durCAn

Asphodel

I have a recurring dream: It begins in fields of ashen gray, Like dying heather on a mountainside; I used to dream in color, but it’s all monochromatic now.

Shades wander, Moving as if treading water, And aimlessly listing about. There is always a haggard man with a hand Clamped to his wrinkled forehead.

The man approaches me— He shuffles forward and speaks, These shoes I wear are not my own. I look down to see two feet bound in too-small shoes.

He drawls again:

I took a day to walk in another man’s shoes, and look where it led me.

He does not look at me, but through me towards Fields as dark and ashen as his brow.

He lurches forward—

There is a gaping hole at the back of his head, A dark crevice where light does not exist, A black hole from where misery and regret emanate.

I try to catch his fall, But his body passes right through me and Shatters upon the ground. A pile of bleak bones and curling dust are his remains, Still outfitted by a pair of too-small shoes.

ViCtoriA oliViero

Man of Egypt

i saw a man stuck in the sand ribs crushed bleeding from the lips with a whole pyramid on his back

i could see the intricate work the sanded bricks styled statues obsolete obelisks what a waste of time

he was crippled by another’s desire atlas of a useless heaven the pointed weight of a nameless dream

no longer shining the dull shape sits

eventually his heart will give out

AidAn o'neill

Head of the Stairs at Dawn, with Dad

I remember the sense of sneaky and quiet.

Blinking bleary eyes open in time! Just in time To catch it, freeze a momentary ritual, a blessing.

Tiny beating body, warm knobby arms wrapping play-scraped knees

Cool drape of too-big t-shirt, elbows engulfed.

Frayed collar, faint sting of stolen cologne.

Swirly golden-red wisps smeared off soft cheeks, out of flickering lashes with sticky toddler palm.

Oaky smell of shoeshine, chuff chuff shnnk of horsehair brush Ridges, streaks in polish—a pattern

Sway of untied tie, shirt unbuttoned.

Murmured “looking good?”

megAn SteVenS

Twenty

In this moment, I am truly happy.

I’m making a cake, and it’s the day of my twentieth birthday. I have everything I need—

Funfetti cake mix and bright pink frosting

(I no longer fear the color pink as I did when I was six). The creaky wooden floor bends beneath my feet And we dance to swaying jazz music. The house is full of light and laughter, And I’m not yet crying over the loss of my teenage years. I know you have to leave tonight, but I’m trying to forget that.

I open the presents my friends have gotten me and feel as though I am still seven years old.

Polka-dotted wrapping paper litters the floor by my feet And glitter escapes from the cards sent to me

From relatives I have long forgotten the names of. You bought me a notebook with a bright red cover.

I’m twenty; truly, officially, and totally twenty. That’s fucking rough.

My aunt lovingly tells me it’s now time to “Get my shit together.”

I sigh, taking a moment to inhale, Letting the smell of the baking cake seep through The cracks of the oven.

The ice cream sitting on the counter begins to drip. I put it back in the freezer and get blasted with cool air. I’ll have time later to worry about the future, I decide today is not the day I cry.

Instead, I will sit with you and watch as you lick the frosting knife, Hoping that one day, you won’t have to leave.

grACe WolSKi

the excavator

at this time of the year, two weeks from christmas, the only adornment on the trees are traces of snow and ice from the night before. the chill is present through the glass, winter weather turning the ground hard. seeing is easier than believing what had been hidden behind those trees when leaves still covered them, but i am still far enough away, unable to make out the clearest of details: whether the workers are tall or short, dressed warmly, or unaffected by the cold. i can see their red jackets though, working alongside the yellow excavator as it digs a grave.

henry troAKe

A Scent of Springtime

On that cold February day, I spied a scent of springtime. It floated around me for an instant, the smell of wet pavement on a warm day, yellow sidewalk chalk staining my hands like the golden blood of Duncan. It trailed its finger under my nose and down my cheek, taunting, tantalizing, terribly deceptive in its illusion. I opened my eyes, and behold: snow and salt.

ethAn bArroWS

John Sexton

first spring in boston. after long winter the falling petals coagulate into pink soft carpet, warming cold thin limbs. you remind me of lavender, of california, of the place whence you came. i think there is something kind about the west. there is something kind about you.

grACe mCphee

Denim Jackets colored pencil

Masha Kruk

Dilemma

Ladybug, legs curled shell-side down on desk

…

Drop her in trash can?

Ink drops for eye dots, for body spots, ruby-round

Not like crinkled napkin, crumpled-up paper

Would stand out against banana peel

mAX White

I should call her... photography John O'Hara

To the speck of pollen blowing in the wind

Please, come land on me. Every dust-covered bee’s ignoring me, and the wind so far has been unforgiving; I’m starved.

My stigma’s sticky, leaves green and petals red; are you lost, darling? I can help with that.

I don’t think you understand— If I don’t get you, my bloodline will end. Not really, anyone would do, but we should do this.

ethAn bArroWS

John Sexton

Unseem

It's a blackbird kind of day. The sun feels like limes and salt, and it makes me a little crazy. I want to be a prairie girl, or a shy artist in a seaside cottage, or a spoiled ‘princess’ in the south of France. I want to take a bite out of every apple in the orchard, and I wish for mountains of watermelons so I could eat until I make myself sick, with juice dripping down my cheeks onto linen shorts, even mixing with the dirt between my toes. I want to dash to the river and jump in fully clothed. I want to pop champagne in the grass and cloudwatch without scratching at the legs that carried me through the tall grasses and up the mountainside. I want to sing to that hill, and feel the trees hug me as I hug them. I want a bee sting and ice and ice pops. I want blackberries and blueberries and raspberries, and abandoned attics with dust and sunlight streaming through the windows. I want to throw hay at my companions, and I want to run until I collapse, and then get back up and keep running, without a look back. I want the fire and the stars to whisper the secrets of the universe to me, and I want to gift the Earth the salt of my tears. I wish to be known and unknown, a simple piece of the puzzle but also the most integral cog in the clock. I want the wind to whisper my name, and I want the birds to see me as one of them. God, I wish I was one of them.

leAnn gArdner

I look for wildflowers

I ask them to grow in foreign countries, to sprout up, up between sidewalk cracks, so I can make a game out of springing over them, just clearing the gentle tremble of their heads. I ask them, Whoever called you wild, in the first place? And, What do the bees say, when they visit you? And other dreadfully important questions. I read them my poems, and sometimes I read them my not-poems-just-thoughts-written-down. I am shy when I ask their opinions. Is it too childish? Does it mean something? They are gentle. They tell me, Fill your notebooks, your documents, your margins, your scrap-paper-scribbles.

Give your poems

S p a c e

Give your not-poems-just-thoughts-written-down even more space. Let them hear their own voices, out loud— get used to the sound. And please, write about wildflowers.

megAn SteVenS

Tir na nÓg

Ruddy cheeked boys hold steady their hands in the pockets of the willowy cold of Northeastern winter, dry fingers searching for warmth in the waifish dogbodies of Erin’s great-granddaughters. His eyes are the bluest of Irish blue as he watches me cross into Tír na nÓg over and over, smiling back as he reads me my Last Rites.

Above the Void photography

Matthew Kirven

grACe mCphee

Mr. Torso acrylic on paper

Megan Stevens

Eurydice

Have you forgotten me? From the edge of your bed I watch you disappear pulling on a shirt.

You emerge humming, joined soon by the shrieking of sliding hangers that swallows the sound of my breath.

I am always following you: half-naked, wandering your closet. It feels unfair to look, but I am alone when I shut my eyes.

I wonder if you know I am here, So I listen for desperation in your footsteps as you step further behind the door.

You are in the dark now. I find you in heavy breaths, in belt buckles and purring zippers, In colorless light.

As day calls in through the window

Part of me pulls back into the blackness under the covers to go asleep and forget myself. The other wishes you, come, turn around and sing good morning.

ninA KhAghAny

Wishful Thinking acrylic on canvas

Morgan Stumm

catharsis

slice a thin line down the left side of my abdomen and plunge your hand in, grasp this heart of yours that you’ve nestled between my intestines, wrest it out like one would withdraw money from an old wallet.

i’ve kept it safe there for you. and though you might have preferred the cavity next to my own, my mother’s child has taken up residence there, sinew-snared and screaming, curled around these ribs like a fist.

she clings to me, covered crimson, and sobs, what do you mean this is what it feels like to be loved?

he is good to you, i tell her, because you are, and it is not your fault that the drip stains my vision.

we are all drenched in it, the three of us, and what was once inside is now seeping into your carpet. reach in and yank, pull me apart thread by thread, cry out for me.

hold my hand, and together we can grapple with the fact that there is nothing poetic about the blood that has rusted onto our teeth.

morgAn Stumm

Sensory Grief

With every new gray hair and increased eye prescription; every movie fell asleep to and plate slipped through fingers, I fear the phone ringing at damning hours, and only two feet walking down the aisle. Your bedroom turned museum, and a chair at graduation occupied by wind. The essence of vanilla and jasmine replaced by petrichor and salt. My hair haunted by your hands’ last stroke, and my body gravitating toward your empty bed. But worst of all, traces of coffee and grilled cheese disappearing against the bitter taste of knowing you only witnessed a performance of my happiness.

oliViA emeriCK

The Sky Screams "Homesick"

A muddled Rimrock image rolls around the back of your head: sandstone knocks against the horizon, pushing Big Sky higher and higher.

Your skull, riddled with memories–Do you remember? Your chest pining for sugar beets and rollings hills, patchwork grasses and mountain stills, shattered riverbanks and railroad tracks, faded graffiti and picturesque switchbacks.

From your dorm floor, you seek solace in minutiae, but today the Mass air tastes a little too much like home.

dylAn berry

The Mute

My mother first told me what it meant, a strange and foreign grief in her eyes, prompted by some heritage assignment I’ve long forgotten

My father’s quietude, reflected in a surname passed down through lives and lovers, gene to fruitless gene, body to speechless body

His whims were suddenly crystal clear, as clean-cut as the doodled margins of his yearbook, or his rhythmic writings in a little black note-log

I see him in the way I dance around my psyche, the metaphors I breathe, the words that fail, the molasses-thick mass in the back of my throat

He is with me in visions of abstract, in the way that canvases call me to weave together thoughts incomprehensible and raw

But you and I, we cannot understand each other, for my riddles remain buried under ciphered hues, and all of your truths are in tongues

And I wonder if my ancestors ever felt this lonely, fumbling about for words in a language they never learned to speak

morgAn Stumm