Castings 2015 by Christian Brothers University

2015

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M R T S E T E D KE O H RA G N A SM A G L E IN N O R D UP M S A N N TIO T IAC LA IR K SO S DE

Staff Judges

Editor

Jana Travis Nicholas Peña Scott Geis Mary Campbell Kristen Prien Vincent O’Neill Brendan Prawdzik Ann Marie Wranovix

Jessica Love

Advisors

CB Publishing and Solutions

Layout & Design LaDarrious Dortch

Printing

Karen B. Golightly Nicholas Peña

Table of Contents ◙ 06 Desolation

◙ 33 Hands

◙ 08 Sandy Hook Yard Sale

◙ 34 Rambunctious

◙ 09 Boot

◙ 35 Brimstone Shoes

◙ 10 Up in Smoke

◙ 36 Stranger

◙ 17 July

◙ 38 Megalomaniac

◙ 18 When It Tangles

◙ 42 Gentlemen Prefer

◙ 19 Skirt

Blondes

◙ 20 Portrait of a Man

◙ 44 Green

◙ 22 Parallels Between

◙ 46 4 a.m. Woods

Muggle Science and

◙ 46 Nature in a Nutshell

Magic

◙ 47 Harpeth Path

◙ 31 Light Shadows

◙ 48 Relapse

◙ 32 Departed

◙ 56 Shiny Objects

◙ 57 42.50

◙ 71 Required Taste

◙ 58 The Day I Got My Own

◙ 72 It’s Smoother Just Ahead

Room

◙ 73 Joint Composition

◙ 59 The Winter’s Wind ◙ 60 Quiet

◙ 74 Our Special Blackberries

◙ 62 Tabula Rasa ◙ 69 One ◙ 70 Disappearing

Poetry

Fine Art

Prose

Digital Art

Desolation Sreenath Shanker

Sandy Hook Yard Sale Jessica Love The tables are full of their children. Ripped jeans lay folded in neat stacks, whispers of fun shouting from each torn thread. Stuffed horses and lions hold each other, remembering the grip of small hands. Sticky books with syrupy pages rest in a pile, words sounded out through their bindings. Empty cups nestle in columns, with smiles pouring out through bite-marked rims saying, “That’s mine.” Backpacks worn with life, cradle each other in perfect rows, while limp sweaters and jackets hang on a line, shivering, wasting warmth. And twenty pairs of tennis shoes stand at the sidewalk, with soles that seem to skip in place.

Boot Morgan Granoski

Up in Smoke Natalie Zaldivar

The cramped kitchen smelt like mold and stagnant cigarette smoke. The yellowed

tile was cold against my feet and the early morning light fell through the broken blinds in splotchy, splintered waves of gray. I stood quiet as the hot water warmed my hands bright pink. I scrubbed the congealed grease from corners of an old Tupperware container. I didn’t hear Nan’s soft shuffle from her bedroom to the couch, but I finished the last of the dishes before she sat down.

“Magpie,” she wheezed. “Get your little ass in here.”

I dropped the dish towel on the counter and walked into the living room. Nan sat

in her usual spot on the couch, cocooned in an orange afghan, her oxygen tank sitting at her feet. She was so small, but the thick wool swaddling her made her seem puffy and swollen. The tubes running up through her nose gleamed blue in the dark living room, and I choked.

“I done told you, Magpie,” Nan hissed. “I can wash my own goddamn dishes. I

appreciate you staying with me, but I don’t need a baby-sitter. I’m seventy-eight years old, Maggie. I can wash my own dishes.”

“I know, Nan.” I grabbed two blankets and a pillow from the floor, folded them and

placed them beneath the coffee table; Nan had a one-bedroom house and I didn’t mind sleeping on the floor most nights.

Nan scooted forward in her seat and reached for her pack of King-size Winston’s.

Her fingers were long and crooked and as the afghan dragged back along her hand, my eyes traced the scribbled veins that seemed to glow through her paper skin.

I grabbed the cigarette pack before Nan could and gently set one in between

her lips before taking my own. “Nan, you’ve got only five left in here.” I threw the pack onto the table and grabbed a lighter. “Think you’ll be okay with that until tomorrow? I’m staying with Chino tonight.” I lit my cigarette and exhaled slowly, letting the smoke singe the tip of tongue.

Nan snatched the cheap lighter from my hand in a flash of white and orange. “Yeah,

I’ll be okay with five.” She lit her cigarette and closed her eyes. Every long, hungry drag from the Winston left her lungs whistling.

“You keep on, Nan. Get them pancake-lungs full of smoke.” I took a drag and stood

up, grabbing my car keys off the table.

“If I wanted to hear shit talk, I’d go sit in the bathroom.” Nan’s laugh was a strangled

breeze.

I slipped my coat on before kissing Nan’s cheek. “I love you, you old hag.”

She let out a soft chuckle and sighed. Her face hardened. “I love you too, Magpie.

And you be careful. You know I don’t like Chino.” *****

The air was biting cold and my chest ached. I parked on the curb and made my

way up Chino’s rickety porch. The mesh part of the screen door was broken and hanging low above the doorknob, and the front door itself had busted locks.

Chino and the guys were huddled in the living room, splitting open plastic-wrapped

bricks with pocketknives and weighing out the powder into eight balls.

“Hey Maggie.” Chino cut his eyes at me for a moment then went back to weighing

the product. “You want to help us weigh out or do you want to make me some sweet plantains?”

I sat on the arm the of couch and kissed Chino’s cheek. The stubble on his face was

uneven and ragged; it looked like thick steel wire sprouting out of his chin. He smelled like warm milk and sweat. “I’ll make you some food.”

Chino’s house was much like Nan’s, in regards that it was small and rotting. The whole

house smelt like damp wood and over-ripened fruit, and the wooden floor in the kitchen was warped because Chino had never fixed the leak in the ceiling. Rain left the kitchen humid and sticky, water dripping off the ceiling in one steady stream.

While I waited for the skillet and the oil to heat up, I grabbed the last of Chino’s

plantains. The skin was tough and green, and they would need at least another week before they were ripe. I massaged them with my fingers and beat them against the counter top until they were soft before slicing them and throwing them into the skillet.

Chino and I had met a few years back, before Nan’s emphysema got bad. He was

a large man, dark-skinned, and quiet. We were friends in high school, but didn’t get close until I started smoking weed. He sold it to me ten bucks cheaper than street price because I wasn’t a regular blanca. Romance was never his thing, but he was soft around me. Called me Nene and let his grimy hand sit on my hip.

The only times he got jumpy were nights like tonight; all of the guys got trigger happy

when new shipments came in. They would sit in the living room all night and package every ounce of it, occasionally dipping their finger into it and rubbing the powder along their gums.

I was never much of a cokehead; uppers and tweakers just weren’t my thing. Chino

loved it, though. When the shipments came in, before breaking the product down, Chino would cut five lines and knock them back, one after the other. Whenever he sneezed, I imagined his septum flying out of his nose, half-rotten, glistening in a pile of blow and blood spewing onto his hands.

That’s why he let me help weigh everything out; I never snorted product.

As the plantains were nearly finished frying, I heard Chino pacing, the boards

creaking under his heavy steps.

“No man. I never seen it like this before. Look at that shit in the light, man. Looks

almost like gold.”

I turned the stove off and put all of the plantains on a plate, cramming one into my

mouth. They tasted bland. Needed salt.

“Yeah yeah yeah, man. We can sell it for thirty extra bucks a hit. Everyone’s going to

want some of this shit.”

I poured the hot oil down the drain and left the skillet in the sink to soak before

grabbing the plate. Because of the water-warped floor, the wood muted any time someone entered the kitchen. I noticed the silence when the living room floorboards stopped squeaking, but I didn’t think he’d walk into the kitchen. I turned around and stepped forward, smashing into Chino. We collided head-on, arms fumbling and the plate shattering on the soft wood. Chino dropped the plastic wrapped brick in his hands as he stumbled backwards and the kitchen glittered thick with gold powder.

“Chino, I-“ my throat swelled shut. I pulled my shirt over my mouth and watched Chino

stare at the ground, before his eyes slowly locked on me.

“I didn’t mean to. It was an accident.”

His fist was hard against my cheek, but when I hit the ground, my hand found a

jagged piece of plate. I scrambled to my feet and as Chino lunged at me, I jammed the piece of plate down until I felt it pop into his muscle. He wailed and grabbed his left calf while I ran out of the house. *****

I slept in my car, parked outside of a twenty-four hour fitness center. My left brow

was split and the thin flesh around my eye was purple and swollen. A pink web of broken capillaries throbbed beneath my eye every time I blinked. The sky was clear and the sunlight was pastel. I opened my glove box, pulled out a velvet drawstring bag and shoved it in my pocket. I started the car and drove home.

I parked halfway down the street. Chino’s black charger wasn’t there. I squinted and

examined the living room window. Looked like someone had thrown a rock through it.

I opened the door. “Nan?”

The sunlight poured in through the busted window, tinting the house gold instead of

grey. Nan was sitting on the couch, nestled into a white fluffy blanket.

“I knew that motherfucker put his hands on you.” The deep wrinkles above her lip

twitched. “Makes me feel good now.” She flicked her hand toward the empty cigarette pack.

“I’m sorry, Nan. I forgot to stop by the gas station.” I took the velvet bag out of my

pocket and tossed it. “You look like a fucking cotton ball.” I chuckled and stooped down, picking up all the glass that would fit in my hands.

I stood and we were quiet for a moment. Her face softened and the ends of her thin

mouth fell. Her eyes glassed over, but she wiped the tears away before they fell. I had only

seen Nan cry once before, when her three-legged Yorkie died. Buford. He’d run out into the street chasing a squirrel. Chino and I had been there. He dug a hole in the backyard while I stood with Nan under my arm, face crumpled inward in a mess of wrinkles and tears. Chino snorted two bumps right after he buried Buford and Nan threatened to beat his ass bloody.

“That shit,” she snarled, “is for deadbeats. Sellin’ it or snortin’ it, it’ll kill you either way.

Get the hell off my property.”

That was four years ago.

I rubbed my temples and winced, the skin beneath my eyes throbbing. “I’m sorry, Nan.

I thought he’d know better than to come here—”

“Go on into the kitchen and get the alcohol. You can’t go no where with your face

all bloody.” Nan’s mouth was a hard line.

The smell had been faint in the living room, but when I walked into the kitchen, the

heavy metallic fumes made my stomach lurch. The glass from the back door had been broken and there was dried blood caked on the tile.

I steadied myself on the counter until my head stopped spinning. I opened the

medicine cabinet and grabbed the alcohol, some bandages, and a rag. There was a bloody knife sitting in the kitchen sink.

“Nan, what happened last night?” My voice cracked as I sat next to her and put the

alcohol on the table.

Nan placed the velvet bag on the coffee table and patted her legs. I laid my

head in her lap and kept my eyes on my feet.

She dipped the rag in alcohol and stroked my cheek. “That spic showed up here

around midnight, making a ruckus and beating on the damn door. He was screaming for

you. ‘Maggie, this. Maggie that.’”

She pressed the rag against my brow and I flinched. “’Maggie ain’t here,’ I told

him. But he kept on and on. Running ‘round the house, breaking windows, trying to see if you were hiding somewhere. So I called your Uncle Henry and told him to get his ass over here.”

She seemed to spit her words. “Chino was getting mad. He started to threaten

me and I wasn’t having that, so I made it into the kitchen and grabbed that knife. Had it in my right hand and, when he punched through the damn window on the kitchen door and opened it, I stabbed the motherfucker.”

She slapped a bandage over my cut and I sat up.

“Henry and his son came, saw him, and handled the rest. I picked up most of

glass. Meant to clean the kitchen up before you got home, but I got tired of wheeling this thing all over the house.” She nudged her oxygen tank as she emptied the velvet bag onto the table: two grams and a peach cigarillo. She split the rillo and poured the guts into an ashtray before licking its edges.

I grabbed the alcohol and rag and put them back in the kitchen. The blood in

the kitchen sink looked like strawberry jam: bright and clotted. I turned the hot water on.

Nan choked, then exhaled. “Magpie, don’t you touch a damn thing. Come out

here.”

I left the water running and stood in the doorway.

“Sit down, Magpie. Come here and smoke this with me.” She coughed hard and

her small frame shook, her feet knocking against her oxygen tank. “I’m seventy-eight years old, damnit. I can do my own dishes. Sit down, Magpie.”

And I did.

July Emily Phillips

When It Tangles Ruthie Hall The click, of my needles sets a cadence for my pulse and weaves into the soft snoring of the dog resting at my feet. Fingering the edge of the roughly textured yarn, I yarn over the needles sticking to the patterns that I had been taught. Knit two, purl two repeat. I feel her hands resting on my shoulders judging my stitches, silently guiding me to do better, be better. Purl two, knit two repeat. The blanket grows. Knitted yarn inches slowly down my legs.

Until it tickles my dogâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s nose. She wakes with a start and runs from the room. I start to rise, but the yarn has twisted around my sleeping feet and I stumble. I feel her pressing me back down. Urging me to finish. I speed up my stitches and in my rush, I drop one. She coughs and leaves the room. I find the elusive stitch and cast off. The clicking has stopped. The blanket is finished. And I am alone.

Skirt Morgan Granoski

Portrait of a Man Anna Liley

Parallels Between Muggle Science and Magic Tiffany Corkran

Like magic has its limits in the wizarding world, science has limits in the Muggle world.

The laws of conservation of energy and matter are two of the physical limits to which Muggles must abide. Though Muggles have a vastly different culture and understanding of the world than wizards, those limits that affect their capabilities to maneuver and manipulate their surroundings are not very different from the restrictions on our own. Furthermore, as clueless as the wizarding world believes Muggles to be, there have been many quite clever Muggles throughout time, including Sir Isaac Newton, who, in addition to his substantial impact on the understanding of the laws of science, dabbled in alchemy, referencing Nicolas Flamel in many of his writings. In this essay, I will review the Five Principle Exceptions of Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfiguration and discuss the parallels with Muggle’s physical laws of science. The Five Principle Exceptions to Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfiguration

The Five Principle Exceptions to Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfiguration are the

understood laws and limits to magic. While the possibilities of magical arts can seem infinite, there are aspects of our world that simply cannot be swayed by even the strongest of incantations. The five exceptions include: food, wealth, health, love, and death.

The first exception states that food cannot be created out of non-food objects.

It can only be summoned if one knows where it is, transformed, or increased in size or multiplied if some is already in one’s possession. Examples include: transporting the food from the Hogwarts kitchen to the Great Hall tables, transforming a cooked chicken and ingredients into chicken salad or casserole, and multiplying dinner rolls. However, Christmas dinner cannot be transfigured from a bar stool. No one is quite sure why this is, but it can be argued that because food—meat and vegetables—comes from living organisms, a witch or wizard cannot simply create it from a non-living organism.

Next, with the exception of Nicolas Flamel’s extraordinary invention of the

Philosopher’s Stone, money and wealth cannot be created or multiplied. If the creation of money or wealth were possible, one would assume there would not be poor and rich wizarding families or a need for witches and wizards to work. In addition, restrictions put in place by Gringotts Bank in the form of charms placed on the vaults and currency they contain make it impossible to summon money from one place to another. However, this is not due to the exception of Gamp’s Law and only due to goblin sorcery. The abundance of precious metals like gold seems to be finite; this set amount may be why they cannot be created or multiplied.

The third exception deals with the realm of magical injuries and ailments. Though

Healers have made great strides in improving the health of wizards, there are some injuries inflicted by forms of magic that are untreatable. These forms include many curses, primarily in the Dark Arts, and inflictions from certain magical beasts and creatures. For example, the curse Sectumsempra, created by the late and great Professor Severus Snape during his adolescence, can be used to sever limbs that cannot be grown back. Also, a soul taken by a Dementor cannot ever be retrieved; neither can Werewolf bites and scratches ever be cured or healed. It is believed that these forms of magic create lasting, incurable harm

due to the deliberate intent to harm with use; for instance, Sectumsempra or Cruciatus Curses (when used repeatedly for long periods of time, victims can irretrievably lose their mind), are types of curses intentionally constructed to harm. This exception is closely related to the fifth exception concerning death.

The last two exceptions may be the least understood of the five: love and death.

Though there are charms and potions that can be used to create extreme infatuation, true love cannot be conjured in another person. Amortensia, the strongest love potion ever brewed, can cause drinkers to experience feelings and actions that resemble love, but the effects will either wear off with time or can be reversed with an antidote. As stated by the great potioneer, Hector Dagworth-Granger, “Powerful infatuations can be induced by the skillful potioneer, but never yet has anyone managed to create the truly unbreakable, eternal, unconditional attachment that alone can be called Love.” Love, in itself, is a powerful form of magic that is widely misunderstood, under appreciated, and polluted by those either unable or unwilling to embrace it. Though not confirmed, it may be due to the unique magic love bears that it cannot be reproduced.

Though many have attempted to find and create spells, incantations, and potions

to bring back the dead, it is impossible. Like in love, there are ways to imitate lost life through magic; however, to truly bring back all the components of life—physical form and function, consciousness, memory, and soul—simply cannot be done. One of the true mysteries of both the magical and Muggle worlds is the unmistakable and irreversible end of life, which no form of magic or Muggle medicine can remedy. Though Flamel was able to produce the Elixir of Life, this potion only elongated his life; therefore, when he and his wife destroyed the Philosopher’s Stone and depleted their stores of the potion, they, too, reached the end of their lives with no way to return. Failed attempts to cheat death are

ample in wizarding history. One is the legend of the Resurrection Stone, which states that, though the second brother was able to bring back his lost love, her presence in the world of the living was but a shadow of her former self and was not permanent. Another is the phenomenon that occurs with Priori Incantatum where nonphysical imprints of a wand’s victims of the Avada Kedavra curse will appear and have been known to maintain an awareness of self. Perhaps most famously, the dark wizard, Voldemort, used the creations of Horcruxes, an extremely dark form of magic which uses pieces of one’s soul torn by the act of murder, to ensure his connection to life. In this last case, though Voldemort was able to return using this magic, he returned physically disfigured by the disfigurement of his soul, and once the other Horcruxes were destroyed, he, too, surrendered to Death. Sir Isaac Newton: His Brush with Magic and Impact on Muggle Science

Sir Isaac Newton is one of the most celebrated Muggle scientists; he studied

many different branches of science, such as: mathematics, optical physics, classical mechanics, and even alchemy, which evolved into the study of chemistry without access to magic. This section will highlight his attempt at alchemy influenced by Nicolas Flamel and his development of three principle laws of motion, which are fundamental to Muggle’s understanding of conservation of energy and matter.

To Muggles, Newton is most known for his scientific findings, most notably his three

laws of motion. However, Newton was also extremely interested in the field of alchemy, noting in his writings the powers of the Philosopher’s Stone. Being a very clever Muggle, he came close to unlocking some secrets of the Stone, but though it would have been impossible for him to achieve his goal without the aid of magic. Memory Charms placed on

him after the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy (ISWS) of 1692 further prevented him from making any progress or convincing colleagues of the Stone’s existence.

One of Newton’s influences in alchemy was the famous Nicolas Flamel. Though

Flamel was a wizard, before the ISWS, Flamel openly fraternized with Muggles. Muggles knew Flamel to be a French scribe who lived from 1330 to 1418. However, after Flamel’s book, Exposition of the Hieroglyphical Figures, was published in 1612 and sold in Muggle bookshops, Muggles correctly suspected that Flamel had achieved immortality with the stone. Their suspicions were confirmed by Muggle sightings of him in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; however, again due to the ISWS, the Muggles who spotted him had their memories altered, so when asked by friends and family, they said they were mistaken. Getting back to Newton, his biggest contributions to science were his Laws of Classical mechanics. Newton’s Laws of Classical Mechanics were the first of its kind to accurately describe the nature of how matter and force interact and were precursors to the laws of the conservation of energy and matter. His three laws state: (1) an object at rest, stays at rest and an object in motion, stays in motion, unless acted on by an external force; (2) the sum of the forces put upon an object can be equated to the mass and acceleration of said object; and (3) for all force put upon an object, there must be an equal force in the opposite direction. Based on these laws of science discovered by Newton and other clever Muggles, the laws of the conservation of energy and matter were determined, though it took the Muggles a century or two to do so. The Laws of the Conservation of Energy and Matter

The laws of the conservation of energy and matter, as stated before, dictate how

matter and energy behave and can be manipulated for Muggles. The laws state that neither energy nor matter can be created or destroyed, can only change form, and must remain constant over time. In other words, both energy and matter must balance out as if on a scale.

To give an example of how this works and how these laws limit Muggles, one can

observe a non-magical fire. In the wizarding world, there are spells that can conjure fire in order to keep the caster warm, but Muggles can only make fire the old fashion way and are bound by the conservation laws. The ingredients for fire are fuel, ignition source, and oxygen. First we can use these ingredients to describe the conservation of matter. In a fire, matter, such as wood used for fuel, is seemingly consumedâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;turning into ash. If we were to record the mass of the wood and the mass of the resulting ash, the ash would weigh considerably less. This seems to violate the law of conservation; however, it does not, and the missing mass can be accounted for. As the wood burns, a chemical change occurs: the wood combines with the oxygen to produce carbon dioxide, a gas that is also exhaled from our lungs, and water vapor. If one could trap the carbon dioxide and water vapor released from the fire, combine it with the ash, it would equal the exact same mass of the wood before the fire. This illustrates how matter is changed, but is not destroyed.

To illustrate the conservation of energy, imagine a cauldron being heated over

the fire. The hot cauldron is used to heat the potion. The heat being transferred from the fire to the cauldron then to the potion shows the transfer of heat energy. The hot cauldron has what Muggles call potential energy. Potential energy is energy that is stored in an object or substance with the potential to do something, like heat energy in a cauldron has the potential to heat a potion once the potion is added. Another type of energy is kinetic energy, which can also be applied to the cauldron example. Muggles understand

that everything in the world is comprised of atoms, and when the cauldron is heated, the individual atoms that make up the cauldron are being heated. When the temperature is increased, the atoms actually start to vibrate; this can be in solids (the cauldron will burn red hot from the intense vibrations while keeping its form), liquids (the potion will start to boil), and gases (the steam that is given off by the potion is comprised of atoms of the potion that vibrate so much so that they separate and move very fast). This displays kinetic energy—or the energy of movement. The process of heating a cauldron to heat a potion is a perfect example of the conservation of energy: the fire is started (potential energy from the ignition source and fuel), the fire heats the cauldron (transfer of potential energy from fire to cauldron), and finally, the cauldron causes the potion to boil (change from potential energy to kinetic energy). Furthermore, the potion, in the Muggle viewpoint, has potential energy because it has the potential to act upon the drinker, of course with magic to help it along. Reflections on the Parallels of Laws of Magic and Science

These laws of conservation of matter and energy can also apply to the wizarding

world—as is apparent with the potions example. In fact, one could see the magical arts as a type of science—magic is a science that must abide by certain laws of nature. It is possible that magic abides by the very same laws that Muggle science follows. I would like to propose a thought experiment. Seemingly, wizards are able to create and destroy matter by either increasing an object’s size, multiplying an object, making an object disappear, etc.; However, perhaps magic has the ability to transform matter from the particles in the air into intentionally different matter. Further, most spells that make objects disappear, cause the object to appear in another place, as in Disapparation

and Apparation. The Five Exceptions to Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfiguration can be seen as more specific, magical stipulations to the laws of nature that apply to all life. The Exceptions concerning food and money display the most apparent parallels; food and money are made of matter, but they specifically cannot be manipulated in the ways discussed earlier. Even in Muggle medicine, diseases like cancer and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) are incurable, which parallels the maladies that cannot be magicked away in our world. Furthermore, the laws of love and death are applicable across the two worlds. It is possible that Muggles do understand the laws of the universe, and that these laws govern all its inhabitants—both wizards and Muggles. The only difference, I believe, is that witches and wizards have an innate ability to manipulate matter and energy that Muggles do not.

However, through my studies and my research on Muggles, I have found incredible

ways they manipulate the world around them without the use of magic. Muggle science and technology has created such inventions as the Internet (a library of sorts that can be accessed through devices called “computers”, “mobile phones”, and “tablets”), rockets with firepower strong enough to send Muggles to the stars (no levitation spells needed), and electricity (a manipulation of charged particles to make light and ultimately run the entire Muggle world, giving life to the devices that they cherish as much as we do our wands). In researching for this essay, I was able to use this Internet to find the information needed about the Muggle laws of science. I found that the Internet contained multitudinous types of information, and using the “search engine” called “Google”, I realized the true expanse of the rich Muggle knowledge and history. Anyone with access to a device connected to the Internet (which Muggles have been able to send to devices wirelessly) can learn about an overwhelming plenitude of topics and ideas. This availability and open access

to knowledge could make Muggles respectable peers of wizard kind. As a Slytherin, this opinion may not be a popular one. However, I look for a day when the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy is repealed and wizards and Muggles can live and learn from one another. It may be a long way away, but when that day comes, the united human race will be capable of anythingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;within the confines of the laws of nature, of course.

Light Shadows Alexis Blum

Departed Janara Harris Mama held my hand tight and forced me to keep up with her pace. My sister and brother marched in front of us thumping each other’s ears and laughing. I caught flashes of grey and jogging people. Their suitcases sounded like skates against the floor. We walked until we reached a carpet marked with purple and yellow scribbles. Mama pulled out her camera and adjusted us in the daylight of the window. We scooted until we fit perfectly inside her viewfinder. Then my brother sat down his bag and bent so Mama could kiss his cheek.

She snapped a picture while my sister squeezed his neck and another at the confusion on my face when he picked me up and kissed me. Then my mother teary-eyed hugged him and said, “Be good,” before pulling me away with her. I glanced back looking for him to be behind us tugging on my sister’s hair or tripping her up, but only she was there. He stayed behind and waved getting smaller and smaller.

Hands Alexis Gillis

Rambunctious Alexis Gillis

Brimstone Shoes Larshay Watson I walked down the harsh pavement scraping my sole on its surface. The rubber hissed as it kissed the sizzling asphalt. Even the gravel crackled in every tread of my sneakers and held fast for the journey. I was in no hurry to reach the end. My inward sole began to sweat and tear as my feet grieved blisters, ripping the fabric from within. Heated sores bled through, emerging as blotches on the tongues. The silver lining of its cloth was thin, and the rubber welts melted in every step until only the laces remained.

Stranger Servando Mireles

Megalomaniac Qiao Lin Oppression

I was born in a place that was the cradle of a civilization that has over 5,000 years

of history and I was quite proud of this. However, just as I was leaving my own cradle, my parents left China for the land of opportunity, the United States. I was only a couple of years old and this new place fascinated and frightened me. There were more cars and the city lights in the distance seemed like terrestrial stars. Only a small group of people around me spoke the same language as me and there were a wide variety of different skin colors that I had never seen before. I did not fit in. It became apparent when I started school. I had to work twice as hard to learn a new language while trying to keep up with the rest of the class. My elementary years passed by with few problems. I was quiet and my intelligence was respected. I had few insults thrown at me by some of my fellow peers, but I ignored them. It was part not knowing what the meanings of the words were and part too busy worrying about not disappointing my parents.

It was in middle school when things started going south. It was the first time I brought

home anything lower than an “A” and my parents were furious.

“What is this?” my mom said as both of my parents came into my room.

“It’s my report card,” I said meekly.

“What is this on it?” My mom’s voice was calm considering her rage.

“It’s a 79,” I said, avoiding eye contact.

“And is that a good grade?” she asked as she raised her voice.

“No.”

My mom and dad were furious. They took a risk and moved to the U.S. for a better

life for me and then worked morning to night to get money to feed and house me and this is how I repaid them. It was a betrayal in their eyes. After my beating, I was deprived of any free time. At school I learned that the name calling I experienced was bullying. In middle school it was more prevalent and I understood it. I was being attacked from both sides. Most of the insults were generic derogatory terms that were directed at Asians. They hurt, but they were not enough to truly anger me.

“You’re a chink.”

“Squinty eyes.”

“Go eat your bowl of rice.”

These were only some the racist insults thrown at me and does not include the terms

“geek,” “nerd,” and “loser.”

One day we were learning about Communism and the fact that China was a

Communist nation came up. One of the tall and preppy, white, blonde-haired kids, who harassed me before, picked up on this and felt it was good enough to use it against me. He called me a “fucking Commie” while wearing his sunglasses indoors and looking down on me with his stupid smug face. Normally this kid’s insult meant nothing, but this term infuriated me. I had lived in the United States for almost ten years and I was well assimilated. I had been taught how great democracy was and how great the United States was for being a democracy. The fact that my native China was Communist troubled me. At that point, I was taught that Communism was a terrible form of government and was generally associated with Stalin, the Soviet Union, North Korea, and other distasteful things in history.

I was bothered by this and my oppressor seemed to pick up on this and continued to call me a “Commie” for most of middle school. His friends joined in and the insults that I normally was able to ignore also began to infuriate me. I didn’t want to go to school and home provided little solace. It was not until I was banned from the only thing that provided me with a haven, video games, did I snap. Liberation

I was trapped. I was fighting a war on two fronts. I was losing on both. Now with my

only haven ripped away from me, I didn’t know how much longer I could hold out. It was during the 8th grade when the public school system believed that we were indoctrinated enough for them to teach more advanced history. I learned of hypocrisy. I learned of failure. I learned that there were fallacies in what we were taught. Democracy no longer seemed to be the ideal to me any longer. A maelstrom of ideas appeared before me. It thrashed about in my head for some time and that was when it happened. My mind was at its calmest in a long time. The storm had passed. There was only one idea left. The reason why they called me a Communist was because they wanted to make it look like Communism was just as bad as democracy so I wouldn’t become a Communist. They feared Communism. They feared the Reds. They feared those godless people to the east. So if they feared me becoming a Communist, then I was obligated to fulfill those fears as vengeance. When it was time for my oppressors to attack me, I lashed out at them. Not with fists, but with words. No longer was I that awkward, quiet Asian kid who sat in the front row of the class by choice. They were disturbed and the feeling I got from that was pure ecstasy. They no longer could attack me with their weapons, because their ammunition had long run dry, but I had weapons known as logic and words stockpiled for years. Only now I knew how

to use them and I gave these bullets purpose. With this moment of clarity, I finally felt strong enough to break out of the shackles of inferiority. The self that was bound inside finally emerged. The me that was locked away in the dark for so many years finally took its first step into the light. I was free. The real “I” was free. Triumph

Victory was mine and now all I had to do was consolidate this. I used the freedom

I gained to reinforce my new found persona. It leaked out everywhere and everything about my life became dyed in red, the color of Communism. I addressed people differently, I was not as quiet, and my interests shifted. Even my wardrobe changed. No longer did I wear bright colors and name brands like some bourgeois scum flaunting his undeserved wealth. All was replaced by bland and dark colors that were fitting of a good proletariat. What I originally saw as bullying became nothing more than a dying gasp from preachers whose faith was proven to be false. They no longer could attack me and if they tried, I was capable of defending myself.

Nothing was sacred. I attacked everything they believed. I attacked their faith, their

habits, and their parents’ ability to raise them. I told them why they were failures. I attacked their very core.

“Your god is false,” these words echoed through the halls. “As Karl Marx said, religion

is the opiate of the masses created by bourgeois to keep them enslaved.”

I sowed the seeds of discord. If religion is the liquid that people drink to quench

their need for purpose, then I poisoned the well. The frustration I felt in the past was now spreading to those who caused it. I felt as if the world was already mine.

No one really questioned me, because even though my grades were not up to

par with an honor student, I was still considered incredibly intelligent. My former oppressors informed a teacher about my behavior in hopes that an adult would be able to stop my madness. This backfired. The teacher saw my fanatical fervor as enthusiasm for the class. On that day, I learned that most adults were easy to manipulate. I took advantage of this, and my grades quickly showed improvement. Seeing this, my parents also eased their pressure.

History has shown that those who fight two front wars almost never win. I, however,

was able to overcome my ordeal and I was able to usher in a new era in my life. It was an era where I did not have to fear anyone or anything. It was the era where I felt I could

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes Alexis Gillis

subjugate the world around me and turn it into a twisted haven from myself. Ascension

No one really knew how far I was going to take this character. I didn’t know. In high

school, it evolved and it manifested into a monstrosity. In high school it became worse and nicknames began to surface. No longer was I called by the name my mother gave me. Even one of my history teachers called me “The Communist.”

“Does anyone know when the Nazis invaded Poland?” my history teacher would ask.

“Does the Communist know?”

“Of course I do,” proud that even the adults have acknowledged what I was.

Somewhere along the line I became “Dictator Quinn” after my name was butchered by a substitute teacher. I was the face of Communism, narcissism, atheism, totalitarianism, sarcasm, and a hint of cynicism all rolled up in a tiny, chubby Asian package. If I were a fruit, I would be bitter and probably toxic as well.

This all culminated in one single event. It was my senior year and those who had

classes with me knew how vocal I was about me being right and you being wrong. The class I had was called “World Governments.” It was a required course for graduation. The first question that was asked in this class was what we believed was the ideal government. The teacher, who had me before in one of her classes, looked at me and I could feel some eyes of my peers shift to me. I slouched back into my chair and leaned to the right and propped my head up with my arm and smirked. That was when I heard the most beautiful sound I could hear at that time. It was sound that would make any siren sound tone-deaf. It was the sound of justice. It was the sound of my victory. It was sound of my ascendancy. It was a sound that you can only hear in the vacuum of space. Silence.

Green Cheyenne Hammonds

4 a.m. Woods Emily Phillips It was quiet. Everything bore a cool-blue cast. I walked further into a thicket surrounded by the soft tussle of dew-laden leaves. Acorns crunched like popcorn under my boots. Small animals scurried towards safety as the sun rose with Cotton candy pinks and purples, the clouds in wisps. Birds chirped lightly and grew confident as light Poured through the brush. “Check your orange,” you whispered. We could only whisper. We had to be quiet. We parted and your footsteps left me. I sat on the ground awaiting my prey.

Nature in a Nutshell Cody Black Solid black fading into a blue sky around the edges. Your attempt to fly is admirable, but resembles a clap, perhaps a standing ovation, a cry to the world for dealing you a bad hand. It’s a game of chance, don’t you understand? The difference is, as I walk on byMy legs are not broken, sweet butterfly.

Harpeth Path Alexis Blum

Relapse Lauren Ervin Hydrocodone 2007

“Why aren’t we having Christmas this year?” I was 14 years old, caught in the web of

thinking like a child, but wanting desperately to be seen as an adult. After all, I’d started shaving my legs four years ago; how much more grown up could I get?

My parents sat in front of me. I looked at them, taking them in individually and as a

unit. Together they looked like my parents, like normal. But when I looked just at my father, I saw the strain of his brow, the melodic throbbing of his cheek as he gritted his teeth. I looked at my mother, noticing her small hands in her lap, the way she kept twisting her wedding ring and avoiding my gaze.

When my father finally spoke, his voice shook. “Mommy and daddy can’t afford

Christmas this year.” I flinched at his childlike vocabulary. “You see, your mother, she, uh—.”

His sentence was cut short by my mother’s sob. Her face was nearly unrecognizable,

transformed by guilt and grief, exposing the broken mask she desperately clung to. She wouldn’t stop saying how sorry she was, her apology a mantra I didn’t understand. She looked like an animal, crazed and ignorant, all primitive feelings with no calculated explanations.

My stomach dropped. Inside of me rose a feeling so great I thought I might throw

up. It was as if something were alive inside me, squeezing my heart and forcing it into my

throat. My chest was tight; I didn’t understand why I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t even know what was wrong. Why was my body one step ahead of my brain?

“There’s no money for Christmas this year,” my father gently broke in, “because we

used the money to bail your mom out of jail. She got arrested for stealing pain pills, using her boss’ DEA number to call in her own prescriptions.”

He continued to explain the situation, but I had stopped listening. Every now and

then a word or phrase would break through my thoughts, words like “drug addict” and “counseling.” I didn’t care. I was too busy keeping a mental tally of whose tears won the race down their respective cheeks: mine or my mother’s. *** 2013 “Hey, wake up! I’m hungry. We should go to Cracker Barrel.” Emily, my cousin, threw a pillow at me. This, coupled with the idea of coffee and bacon, finally made me stronger than the hold of my blankets.

I rose, intending to brush my teeth, only to be intercepted by my father. Emily waited

in my room, reading the energy before I did.

I sat on the couch beside my sister, across from my parents. This was all becoming

far too familiar. My stomach dropped before my father even opened his mouth. I looked at my sister; Nicole was already crying. It seemed, like always, she was in the know already. No one ever told me anything. Dad worried that I would disown my mother.

“So, what do you girls think about moving?” His question hung in the air, sickening in

its forced cheer.

I protested. My sister continued to cry. My mother wouldn’t look away from her lap.

My father sighed. I demanded an explanation, though I didn’t really want to hear the truth;

I was sure I already knew the answer.

And I was right. The foreclosure we were facing was a result of my mother’s continued

drug use. She took the bill money and bought pills. She even slept with her dealer a time or two to settle her debt. Pain pills, it seemed, would always rule my mother. It had been six years and still my mother was drowning us with her, a riptide lurking beneath a calm surface. I didn’t stick around for the end of the conversation. Cracker Barrel beckoned me, and it didn’t mind when I sat quietly crying into my coffee cup. Crank 2010

My sister always had such beautiful eyes. They were a lot like my own, but my sister

was thinner, her face narrower, making her eyes that much more noticeable. They were the color of evergreen trees and smoke, that perfect mix of green and dark blue and gray. In times of passion they clouded, growing darker like the smoke of a forest fire as it consumes all within its path. That was my sister: an inferno embodied.

Nicole had always been the prettier sister. She knew it. She flaunted it. She teased

me about it regularly when we were growing up. But then she had a baby, and she gained weight. And after her little miracle was born, with eyes that shamed even his own mother’s, she took to drinking and smoking weed. Her baby weight was joined by a beer belly and a munchies gut, and she hated herself.

With my blazing sister, there was no such thing as small-scale anything. So instead of

dieting or working out like most people, Nicole came up with her own solution.

She didn’t tell anyone. When she started dropping weight, she just told people she

had stopped drinking sodas and that her body was taking to it really well.

It wasn’t until Nicole came home sobbing one day that we learned the truth. She

was crying because her best friend was going to prison.

Prison, for making meth.

Meth, which my sister helped her make.

My sister: the meth addict.

It seemed counseling was again in order. Her son wasn’t even a year old. *** 2013

“It’s actually really easy, but it is a little dangerous. You just need some pseudoephedrine, some Drain-o, some battery acid, some antifreeze…” My sister’s voice droned on. I sat at my computer, trying to write a paper, trying not to cry. I looked over my shoulder and watched my sister sitting on my bed. She was twitching and wouldn’t stop talking.

Turning back around, I laughed bitterly to myself, a hard, metallic sound. My sister

could recite the recipe for crystal meth, but couldn’t remember to take the trash out in the bathroom? What a waste of that drug fueled energy if it couldn’t help me out a little.

Of course, that wasn’t the real problem. But this problem was easy. It didn’t hurt me

to think about the overflowing trash can, spilling used q-tips and tampon wrappers on the floor, which was sort of sick, considering how dirty that actually was. But no, dirty floors are easily mopped; a dirty world is repaired effortlessly with a vacuum and some Windex. My sister’s world, however, was covered in soot.

I understood why my sister had turned her back on recovery. I could recall with

chilling accuracy the call I’d received early one Saturday morning late in October. I had been irritated that my mother was calling so early, snapping an accusation in the form of a greeting.

And then the phone line shook with the sound of my mother’s rattling cry, sorrow in the

form of snot in her voice, her tears evident even before she spoke.

“Nicole was raped.”

The world darkened; I froze, closing my shell around myself before I could allow the

words to affect me. It was a process I had perfected. There was an increasingly short window of time to hear bad news before feeling its effects, and it was within the veil of this suspended time that I had learned to shut down before another facet of my mask had the chance to crack.

This had been two years ago, though, and while it wasn’t easy to forget, it was easy

to refuse to feel. I wasn’t haunted by these demons; these were my sister’s, exclusively. My sister often woke in the middle of the night with a cry, sure she had seen the figure of a man in her room, certain her attackers were back again. I understood my sister’s fear. When your own best friend offers you to drug dealers as a payment for the debt she cannot repay for her coke habit (for her best friend’s drug of choice at the time was cocaine—expensive to maintain, insufferable not to sate), when all you thought to be true of life and friendship was shaken, it’s easy to forget the logic of a locked door. When that kind of deception chars your life, reason becomes unreasonable, security becomes impossible.

The sound of my sister’s listless chatter brought me back to the present. I looked at

her, this broken girl sitting on my bed, twirling her curly hair in her long sleeved shirt. The shirt made little sense given the heat wave Memphis was suffering at the moment, but I knew it was a shield to cover her scabbed arms more than to protect her from an unwanted chill. It was imperative to hide those marks. Our father still didn’t know. I knew, but couldn’t prove it. Our mother knew, but didn’t care. Drugs were how my mom and sister bonded. They enabled one another, a dynamic duo of deception as they lied to me and my father.

I thought of my three-year-old nephew; that little smile, punctuated by random teeth,

the natural, innocent model that meth addicts adopt as their own given enough use. His laugh was a lullaby in and of itself, and he lit up like the midday sky when his mother walked in the room.

If only she had the same reaction. Instead she chose her other baby, meth, over her

biological son. She was like our mother in that regard. Counseling never worked.

I went back to my homework, bitter in my youth, counting down the days until

graduation and my move out of this toxic home. Anger was easier than forgiveness. Love 2013 My father taught me that addiction comes in many forms. My mother’s weakness was pain pills. My sister’s was meth. My father’s was the deadliest of them all.

He sat on my bedroom floor, legs crossed Indian style in a way indicative of a youth

and innocence so far behind him that it would have been comical if it weren’t so crushing. He wept with his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands. His shoulders shook, but I could do nothing more than stare. His exhaustion rivaled my own; I felt them both at my core. It was late, around two in the morning, and I had been trying to do homework when he knocked, silently entered, and sank to the floor. I tried not to cry with him, knowing it would sap the remaining energy I had.

He turned his face from the floor, looking into my eyes, eyes that mimicked his own.

“I don’t know what else to do. I’ve only been addicted to one thing in my life, and she’s asleep at the other end of the house.”

He dropped his head again, slumped his shoulders until his large front was more

boulder than man. My father, my rock, reduced to a child from the stone cold love of my mother. He threatened to divorce her with every relapse. Every betrayal from her became a new resolve of his to leave this house, this family, to escape and never return.

I didn’t want my parents to divorce, but I knew her mother wasn’t done breaking my

father’s heart. I supported his idea of leaving, fantasized of a peaceful life away from my mother and sister. I imagined the happy home my father and I could make together. But every time he vowed to leave for good, to take me with him, he ended up right where he was now, sitting on my bedroom floor, crying.

His cry was a surrender and an apology all at once. When he finally allowed himself

to break down like this, he was allowing himself to be drawn back into my mother’s world. The apology was unspoken, intended only for me. We would be staying.

I tried to be hard without becoming brittle, lest this endless cycle finally break me.

Love, it seemed, was more dangerous than drugs. Smile 2014

I grew. My 18th birthday had come and went, awarding me a deadbolt lock for

my bedroom door—“Happy birthday, daughter. Maybe now people will stop stealing your shit.”—and the start of my college career. It was there that I continued to learn; it seemed like life wasn’t done teaching me yet.

I learned to wait tables. I learned to smile through the hard days, because if I

didn’t, my bills would go unpaid. People don’t go to a restaurant and care if their server is suffering; they pay for a smile and endless obedience. I learned that early and never forgot. Smiling was the key. Smiling fooled them all, disarming any concern. And eventually,

people stopped worrying about me.

And that’s how I survived. I watched as my family progressively became more

destructive, intervening only when my father or nephew needed me the most. I avoided my sister; I distanced myself from my mother. If I wasn’t around, then they could do no more harm. I became a ghost in my own home, floating in and out whenever I pleased; only the squeak of the front door alerted my late night return. No one asked questions. I went to work. I went out. I went to school. I held myself accountable, maintaining my grades and retaining my scholarships simply because it was what I wanted for myself. My parents didn’t ask about school; it wasn’t until the second semester of my sophomore year that they even asked my major. Mom was too busy fighting the life she had built for herself, haunted by her demons, attacking them only when they manifested in my father. My dad was too busy holding our family together, like double sided tape, only there was dirt and grime coating everything, resisting his hold. He took care of my nephew; I took care of myself. That was all that mattered.

We’re still broken, elements extinguishing each other by our very nature. But I can

survive in all environments, oxygen in the water, wind through the trees, air fueling the fire. I’m a ghost, and I’ll be just fine. You can’t kill what’s already dead.

Shiny Objects Morgan Granoski

$42.50 Ruthie Hall You tell me what you need, supplies to buy your friends. As you grill out, chill out, and drink them under the table. But like my age, I’ve only got forty to fifty. I cross off the food I really need off your growing list. I’ll get your buns, pork, candy, and ice. Baby, I’ll even get your overpriced, piss-taste beer. But I’m gonna get my olives, my tequila, and limes. You have your friends. And I have mine.

The Day I Got My Own Room Claire Rutland I remember the cold, the fan a turbine whir above our sheets, the tv silenced to volume level two because odd numbers made you twitch. The yellow 200 blinked above late-night cartoons buried in static. Your teeth rattled, the glow of your Gameboy glossing your pupils in colorful glaucoma. The blankets smothered the 8-bit musical march; a champion’s tinny ballad. “I always win,” you said. And then, sunlight, a glutted red

plunged through your eyelids. I remember the wood finish smooth beneath my palms. Your hands slept nearby, the callused thumbs folded neatly. Yellow cotton peeked out after mama kissed you. The organ pumped the room, throbbing hymns much too full of sound. At home, I hid in the dip of the mattress still shaped like you, the fan a turbine whir above sheets crushed beneath the silence your cartoons used to fill. I remember the cold.

The Winterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Wind Alexis Blum

Quiet Emily Phillips

Tabula Rasa Claire Rutland

You think, the summer city at three a.m. simmers, steam clouds lidding the bluff and

casting the river’s sweat into slow, torturous boil.

You think, my hand is too slick to have safe keep of the steering wheel, as the other

fumbles with a cigarette, make that a second cigarette, your feet pumping alternate gas and breaks, and it looks like somebody’s wrecked, Jesus Christ, who drives drunk on a Wednesday?

There’s a crumb trail of exhaust pipes peppered from Front Street toward the inner

city, an angry smattering of red break lights heading east. A mental promise to sleep by four is snuffed out, the cooling ash scattering over your arms and fluttering in the sticky breeze.

At three a.m. the city is muzzled, a period of slow burn from the last, lingering bar

goers to the businessmen and the nine to fives, and only the most rabid of creatures bite through. You loathe three a.m. with a fervor that froths at the brim, and in sick karma you’ve become just as much a fixture of downtown this time of night as the homeless men outside Denny’s, bent double with their shirts stretched across the breadth of the cooling units for relief from the throbbing August heat.

It’s pretentious to call these drives cathartic, as insomnia-fueled and spontaneous

as they are. August is sweet on the sleepless nights, as it has been for the past three years. The dial counting days between the present and yet another birthday spins faster now,

hopefully unmarked aside from the scattered phone calls. The thought of it is enough for the ignition of another cigarette, cherry fumes ascending and taking anxiety with them.

You think, I’m too young to sleep this badly, and swallow smoke before your lungs

can cough it up again.

You think, Jeff Buckley wasn’t pulled from the river until days after he died; all swollen

and filled with river weed and other dead things. The skin of his wrists bloomed in lumps like rose petals, gummed to the bone by the fathomless mouths of catfish; the flesh in strips thin as rugged cotton.

Over the counter sleeping meds aren’t a quick way to die, though, not as quick as

it could be. A handful of those things? That’s pure acetaminophen. You’re going to rot your stomach open. You’ll bleed out. You’ll die so slowly.

It’s better to jump, hey, don’t you think you could jump? Slip some stones in your

pocket; you’ll sink to the river floor, down in the muck where they’ll never find you.

If you don’t, you’re going to die slowly; so slowly.

You don’t want to burn like that.

You should suck it up and jump.

Just jump.

Why can’t you jump, instead?

Your car is stopped for a few minutes before a reflection of flashing blue illuminates

the shape of a man approaching, tall and stooping. The set of his shoulders burns Pavlovian fear along the lining of your stomach, flight or fight or flight or fight or—?

The cop’s uniform sears a mental tableau, clean and fresh against the oiled grime

of the walls behind him, stalwart in the curling heat. Your legs evaporate into the leather behind you.

“Morning,” the uniform drawls through the driver’s side cigarette slot. “Traffic’s

detouring. Road’s blocked off. Just follow the cars ahead of you.”

“Has there been an accident?”

His response is delayed, dark eyes cast to the side, hands hovering between his

belt, his chest, his pockets, indecisive. “There was a lady. She jumped.”

The first month of your freshman year of college, you swallow thirty Ambien in a

church parking lot.

“Can you tell me which church it is?”

There’s a voice that carves itself in two again and again; you can hear it over the

phone laying next to your ear. It’s Erin’s voice, you think in a haze. You love Erin. You were going to marry Erin.

You recline the seat, and open the sunroof. It’s a rainy day in fall.

“Claire, talk to me.”

You read once that pills aren’t meant to be swallowed all at once; that if you do it

too fast, you’ll throw them all back up. You think they would look like a mural of baby blue caviar on the wet concrete. You take another one from the open bottle, and curl your tongue around it; savoring the taste like a rosary bead before you swallow it dry, smiling.

“Please don’t do this. Please don’t fucking do this to me.”

An acquaintance of yours was a cop in Frayser for ten years before he switched

departments to a Midtown division. An old black war vet, Vietnam brand; paranoid and twitchy. He spent most of his days sitting in a parking lot on Union, writing parking citations

and traffic tickets, or more rarely, apprehending shoplifters, and answering calls about suicides and jumpers. That was one thing he didn’t learn about in Frayser. “Nobody in Frayser kill theyself,” he said. “Somebody always went and did it for ‘em.”

He told stories about college kids who rented hotel rooms just to perch on the

edges of open windows, trembling hands gripping telephones to wet cheeks as they exhaled goodbyes to whomever it was they loved most.

That, or they drove to church parking lots, to pray to dogma and marble statues,

swallowing pills like the lies they were taught about how life was going to be, swallowing to feel full of something, anything at all. He didn’t understand kids like that, but he felt pity.

“Pity,” he said, “because they don’t know a thing about the real world.”

“How long were you having suicidal thoughts before the incident?”

It’s practically family tradition by the time your drug addict brother trades

nosebleeds for pinebox real estate. Your family is a modern art masterpiece of addicts, mental illness, and suicide, and you find yourself no exception.

Your therapist tells you to write about it, to write about the people you’ve lost, your

spice cabinet of various traumas (“catharsis; it’s cathartic to get it out of your head and onto paper—it’s not healthy to keep those kinds of thing bottled up inside without talking them through.”), but there’s nothing more disenchanting than penning what you are and where you’ve been and realizing for the first time with painful clarity that you’re typical, absolutely uninteresting, another nondescript statistic in the cesspool of people harboring repercussions of childhood trauma.

Your childhood was spent fashioning yourself in the image of the people on the

crumpled jacket inserts of your books— your adolescence was spent realizing you didn’t

have the words like they did; and you grew older.

The therapist in the pleather chair squeaks when she re-crosses her legs. You count

the tears in her pantyhose and the scars on her forearms.

“I don’t know. On and off since my uncle died when I was ten.”

She nibbles on the chewed end of a Bic pen. “Ten? That’s pretty young.”

You think about the first time you wanted to die, ten years old in the car waiting for

your mother to come out of an Exxon; remember the inexplicable impulse to grab the gear shift and tug it to neutral, to roll backwards into oncoming traffic, just to see what would happen.

“This kind of thing runs in my family,” you tell her, and train your eyes out the window. It’s

a rainy day in fall. The counseling room is bleak, and smells of funeral home coffee.

“Exactly how many suicides has your family had?”

Everything is hazy, and you can hear the sound of shuddering glass. There’s a cloud

of light through the driver’s side window, swollen and furious.

“Unlock the door.”

You don’t know how you do it, but the car door swings open, and there’s a large

hand beneath your chin, tilting your face up until you can see a man in a police uniform through the clouds. He’s balding with liver spots and yellow teeth.

“You scared the life out of me, kid. The way you were laying, I thought we’d lost you.”

You don’t know if it’s the rain or something else, but your cheeks are slick. His fingers

make a wet noise against your skin as he jerks your head up again. He reminds you of your father, looking at you with the same furrowed expression, the same angry eyebrows.

“You know, I’ve got a kid your age,” he says. “Freshman in college.”

You hear the passenger door open. Disembodied hands pick up your wallet and

flick it open; scan the labels of the empty pill bottle in the space beneath your glove compartment.

“What’s your name, kid?”

You open your mouth. The words ignite in your throat—evaporating into the rain as

drifts of ash.

A woman cop with purple lipstick passes him your wallet; he reads the name and

hands it back to her.

“What do you think you’re doing out here like this? You ever think of your dad? Bet

he’s worried sick about you, Claire.”

You start to cry; you aren’t sure you ever stopped.

The Peabody is lit in droves of cop cars and civilian vehicles. There’s a horse

carriage, barely visible beyond the metal bodies of dozens of cars; the flurry of people crowding closer, and shrinking away.

You light another cigarette, and you drive.

Your stomach curls at the sight of the cars parked beside the police cars—the

ordinary plain every day cars—at the weight of the people standing with their faces in their hands.

Through the afferent force of nausea, you drive.

You pick up the phone and call your mother at half past three in the morning, for the

first time in weeks.

When she answers, you tell her you love her.

One Servando Mireles

Disappearing Ruthie Hall She slept with her favorite stuffed cat firmly tucked in the crook of her arm to keep the monster away when her room creaked in the night. Firmly tucked in the crook of her arm she tried to make the monster disappear when her door creaked in the night and light from the hall fell on her face. She tried to make him disappear, she curled into a ball as light from the hall fell on her face and she clenched her eyes tight. She curled into a ball to keep the monster away, she clenched her eyes tight and cringed against her favorite stuffed cat.

Required Taste Natalie Zaldivar You left lipstick stains on the rims of all my wineglasses; thought it tasteful to wear a warmed-up red and drink a sparkling bubbly. Every trace of you got rinsed away in the wash. You broke my favorite wineglass; thought it tasteful to wear everything down to a thin, cracked line then smash every trace of you. The shards got rinsed away in the wash and I slept on your side of the bed, clinging to your pillow. Everything was down to a thin, cracked line, then smash; you snuck off every night to shoot back Fireball while I stayed clinging to your floral scented pillowcase. Every night, you returned wearing a different shade of lipstick. You snuck off one night to shoot back bullets and left a warmed-up red, sparkling and bubbly. Every night you returned wearing a different shade of lipstick, but I trashed the stained shards you left behind.

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Smoother Just Ahead Samantha Reeves

Joint Composition Dominick Platt Tuned to the perfect pitch of her instructions, thick piano wires from my limbs strum me along the stage. Taut, yet submissive to my maestroâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s pulls and jerks these steel chords echo clearly through my hollow wooden shell. Act after act I perform for those soft touches, those distant yet intense vibrations which continue to pluck me. My strung smile does not lie, however, her callous commands create easily enjoyable symphonies of which I happily participate in. Yet, once my performance ends she, without fret, places me back in my case until sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ready to play again.

Our Special Blackberries Lauren Hutchinson

The walk to the bush at the end of the road was always intimate between Belle and

me, the genuine sincerity in our conversations and glances. In childhood she was mine and this was us, even though that was then and this is now. Older, our time now is different, but every once and again, there is the time.

She did as she always did today and carried her mother’s brown wicker basket on

her left arm and wore thick black rubber boots, in case of snakes. I grabbed an old ice cream bucket and carried it in my right hand. “Hello Roger,” sang her voice, the voice of the sweetest sound. I couldn’t do anything but smile at her. I grabbed her right hand with my left. We held hands all the way to the bush.

There it stood, the place of our encounters, the blackberry bush. It was a big bush

no doubt, but when we were children, it wasn’t a simple bush but more like a jungle. I would get lost in it trying to find the plumpest sweetest blackberry for my love, my Belle. The rich purple black beauty in those sweet blackberries, but beauty never comes willingly. “Be careful of the thorns, Roger,” I smiled back at her. She knew I couldn’t resist beauty.

I grabbed the blackberries, pressing at them a little to see if they were tender and

plump enough. If they were almost ready to pop, they would go in my bucket, if not, they only needed more time to age their beauty. I didn’t have a quota anyway. I just liked my blackberries with sugar on top, nothing big and fancy. Belle’s mother liked to make blackberry cobbler, a family recipe Belle now kept alive. I looked over at Belle. She was

less picky with her choices. Anything close to ripe went in her basket. I guess she was the same way in picking men. That’s why she was with me.

In the corner of my eye, I noticed Charlene coming. She was a nosey somebody

and was always rude to me, but of course not to Belle. No one was rude to Belle. Everyone loved Belle. She came over and greeted Belle with a kiss and rolled her eyes in my direction. Didn’t she know this was my personal time with Belle? Couldn’t she mosey herself on home until later? Belle and I were busy.

“Gosh, it has been so long Belle. You have to come home more often,” Charlene

whined. Belle might entertain her, but I was busy in examination and had no time for Charlene.

“I know, but with work it is so hard.”

“Yeah, I understand, and how is that handsome Jackson of yours?” Charlene asked,

grinning from ear to ear.

“He is great. He is driving in tonight. Actually I guess it is good you are here. I can

give you both the news together.” I heard the words they were saying, but they were just words and meant nothing to me.

“Roger,” my sweet Belle sang. I looked up, four berries in hand. “Jackson asked me to

marry him. I’m getting married.” She smiled, flashing a large diamond ring.

The words hit me like blizzard and I froze. My body felt cracked from the chill.

Married? My Belle, my sweet serenade. The berries in my hand were now disfigured. The sweet juice leaked out of the creases in my hand. Married? Does this mean more time apart? What did I do wrong?

“Roger sweetie,” my Belle called out as she walked over to me. But I stepped back.

“I will still come home in the summer and blackberry pick with you as if nothing has changed.”

Her words were all I needed, the only reassurance in the world worth the effort. I smiled and wiped the juice onto my blue jeans.

I know about marriage, though. Momma married a man and left me with daddy.

Daddy said it was because momma couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t appreciate me, but Belle does. I know Belle will leave with him, but Belle is my mine and she will be back as she always is to walk to the bush at the end of the road with me as always.

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April 2014 76

Alexis Blum

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