The Vision 2023

2023

The Vision

Editor-in-Chief: Hudson Warm

Managing Editor: Alex Elwell

Senior Art Director: Brendan Lynch

Media Director: Ava Maughan

Photo Director: Joshua Lee

Literary Editor: Kylie Oh

ank you to Dr. Ellen Ferguson, Christina Wang, and Jason Fairchild for making this publication possible.

Submissions to are voted on by selected student readers who judge each piece without knowledge of the author’s identity. ank you to all members of the Hackley Upper School student body who supported our e orts.

Abigail Beyrich

Abigail Nager

Allison Chin

Angela Croce

Annabel Previdi

Annie Sheikh

Ben Nadorf

Callie Duggan

Cara Minello

Cole Silpe

Fiona Pedraza

Fox Quattrone

Francesca Jones

Gabby Hogrefe

Harper Kelsey

Ian Chung

Isaac Ahn

Jiya Dhakad

Keisha Johnson

Lilo Haidara

Lisenia LaSalle

Malcolm Krolick

Nailah Archer

Nkechi Ude

Reagan Begley

Samantha Reyes

Sarah Barsanti

Sarah Rotenberg

Sophia Kliatchko

Talia Tirschwell

Tommy Troso

Walter Ho man

Willow Quattrone

Zara Haider

Dear Reader,

Thank you for picking up our magazine and trusting us with your time. We are so excited to share this year’s edition with you. is an outlet for creative expression in a multitude of forms. In , the imagination runs free and we are transported to new times, places, and experiences. At times quiet and subtle and at times loud and outspoken, fosters a space away from quotidian stress and academics, where students can be their unequivocal selves.

We feel honored to receive so many outstanding art and writing submissions from an extremely talented student body. It has been such a joy to read through literary works and put them in conversation with visual art. We are proud of the product we have created, and we hope that we can bring a bit of creativity into your day.

We hope our excitement radiates off of the pages; we have had so much fun bonding this year as artists, writers, and Visionaries.

Enjoy the journey.

Hudson Warm & Staff

Ellipsis by Hudson Warm ’23-------------------------------------------------12-15

As the Sea Falls by Fiona Pedraza ’26----------------------------------------42-45

The Best Place by Caroline Didden ’24--------------------------------------48-49

Eyebags by Brendan Lynch ’23-----------------------------------------------64-65

My Dear Procrastination by Talia Tirschwell ’24----------------------------68-69

Massimo Soto ’23,

Massimo Soto ’23 pg. 4-5, 42-45, 50-51, back inside cover

Annabel Hardart ’24 pg. 8, 46, 48 (used with permission)

Cassandra Strand ’24 pg. 10, 72

Ava Maughan ’25 pg. 12-15

Brendan Lynch ’23 pg. 22

Hudson Warm ’23 pg. 53

Olivia Houck ’25 pg. 54

Joseph Reyes ’23 pg. 56

Alex Elwell ’23 pg. 66

Massimo Soto ’23,

Sophie Ryan ’24 pg. 7

Brendan Lynch ’23 pg. 16, 31, 52, 62

Alex Elwell ’23 pg. 18

Ella Chen ’26 pg. 24, 25

Eleanor Neu ’23 pg. 28

Reagan Begley ’24 pg. 32

Gabi Kalapoutis ’23 pg. 34

Colin Mackinnon ’23 pg. 37

Catie O’Rourke ’23 pg. 40

Bella Wasserman ’23 pg. 41, 69

Allison Chin ’24 Cover

Alex Elwell ’23 pg. 21, 64

Hailey Won ’25 pg. 27

Allison Chin ’24 pg. 38, 59, 70

Lucia Butterfield ’25 pg. 61

By Alexandra Elwell ’23

it’s not fair for people to have homes with room after room after room.

a room wants to be filled, feel needed and utilized, included. to walk past it, or not at all, is like ignoring a friend you said you always wanted near. and then they become abused, hoping you still want them, need them, but you don’t and sometimes you do and then they forget briefly that for so long you weren’t kind.

it doesn’t outweigh the times you didn’t nestle yourself in its pillows and allow sleep’s stupor to lull your subconscious in its couch you carefully curated.

it’s mean to leave a room alone when at one point you intended to have this great big house with rooms and rooms to have and visit and use when you please.

but people forget that rooms contain life. we leave life behind when we breathe and think and feel in a space. those wisps of animation settle like dust in the room. you once built it, or had it built, and life was left behind then, too. when you had the intention to include the room in your house, you gave it life. it’s not nice to ignore life when it’s right there. it’s not nice to walk past a smiling sad face and keep you eyes glued on another room, your next destination.

life will always feel, it’s important to remember to feel and to see all the others feeling with you.

Sophie Ryan ’24,

By Fox Quattrone ’25

cornflake leaves beneath the trees

Annabel Hardart ’24,

are they a breakfast for the breeze

Cassandra Strand ’24,

The daisies born in April bloom in May

The babies born take 18 years to grow.

It’s interesting in the peculiar way

That daisies die upon the fall of snow.

For humans are endurant and complex, and daisies give into the test of time.

And hair, like petals, cover up our necks

like angels joint in guarding the divine.

But why are flowers so unlucky then,

If they reflect the beings of our age?

I picked a flower from the lion’s den

And now the lion lives within a cage.

If roses red, and violets blue is true

Then why do people have these feelings too?

By Hudson Warm ’23

The day I rode without training wheels was the first time I remember you telling me you loved me. That day, the Irvine sun pierced down our backs and tears fell from your pores. You were singing along to “Let it Be,” which hummed from your favorite speaker. “Time to take off the training wheels, son.” Each word came with spit, dribbling down your chin. “See what you’re made of.” Bones and skin and mostly water and some other fluids and a little bit of you.

You, on your knees, wrenched off the wheels and laid them in the trunk, beneath a lint-covered blanket and candy wrappers and boxes of tissues

I’d need later. I sat on the triangular seat, paralyzed. You buckled my helmet so tight that when I swallowed, it seemed close to snapping. My hands wrapped, trembling, around the handles.

“I’m right here,” you said. “I won’t let you fall.”

I—eight years old—believed you, and imagined you turned the ground into a trampoline for me.

I believed you, because you could do anything. You could turn me insusceptible to pain; you would never inflict it. I believed you, and I ended up with three bleeding scars like dots in a row on my kneecap: a distorted ellipsis.

You wouldn’t just let me fall. You’d be the one to push me to the ground—proverbial, sometimes literal. And now I have to stand up here and talk about how I miss you, how I wish we could’ve had five more minutes, how there were so many things I wish I could’ve told you.

It’s a small service, and everyone here is selfishly weeping, muffled, into handkerchiefs. I hope you are okay, but not happy. I hope you are safe, but not at peace. I hope you are part of our favorite constellation—the one you used to show me, sagittarius, archer—but not blinking down at me, aiming your arrow and preparing to shoot.

The ellipsis faded some twenty years ago, before I left for college, but there are others still there, constellations you left me with, so deep under my skin that for a long time during the surrogate’s pregnancy, I wondered if my daughter would be born with indentations.

We were at the same abandoned parking lot, but this time there were different pedals at my feet. Brake and accelerate. You were sitting shotgun, and you loved to tell me the name’s origin: back then, the shotgun-armed guard would sit there. (“Back when?” I’d ask. “Just…then.”)Your hat covered your raven hair and cast a shadow upon your eyes, and I wondered if you could see me. “How’s that girl? The pretty one we ran into at Earl’s Groceries the other day?”

Ava Maughan ’25,

“Oh, you mean Calliope?”

“Yeah, her. You said she was in your math class?” You pursed your lips.

“Oh, yeah, Cal’s good.” I placed my water in the cupholder. “I think she’s been working on some history research thing. Why?”

“No, just… girls like boyfriends who can drive.”

I managed a stilted chuckle, realizing you didn’t know me at all, realizing you probably never would. I grasped the wheel and pressed my right foot on the acceleration pedal. You mimed what to do with an invisible wheel in your hands.

“Good, good… you’re doing a good job.” Just good. Your affirmations continued for a little while, but great, amazing, super—they weren’t in your vocabulary. You weren’t looking at me. It was as if you were waiting for me to mess up, as if you wanted me to. “Good, good—stop!” There was another car, silver and gleaming from the sun. Your voice was like a metal spoon falling onto the floor, ringing, clashing, echoing. !

I slammed my foot on the brake and together we lurched forward. Your forehead hit against the metal and began to bleed a bit from the top. Thin red tears slid down. Your face remained a statue—every curve and wrinkle frozen on your face—as you dabbed a tissue on the blood.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “Dad, I’m sorry. Are you okay?”

You were silent, shooting at me with your shotgun and a lethal glare.

My lips began to quiver. “Do you want to take over? Dad? Are you—”

“Accelerate.” You folded the tissue so the blood was hidden and tucked it into the pocket of your jeans. You had already stopped bleeding, and there was nothing left but a faint dab of redness. “Go. Accelerate.”

I nodded, tears blurring my vision. Beyond the window, the sky was veiled in a slight haze. The tears kept coming. The world became blurrier and blurrier before me.

“Drive.” Your voice was like lightning and you were Zeus. Spit bubbled on your bottom lip. “Drive!”

Ava Maughan ’25,

I let my head fall against the leathery wheel, crying, sighing, wishing that another car would come and crash into us, and I’d get hurt or worse, and then finally you could tell me it would all be okay even if it wouldn’t be, and you would be my dad, and maybe you would finally feel something for me.

All I could see was blackness as I shut my eyes against the wheel. Then your hands clawed into my hair, jerked my head upwards. “Fucking sissy. Stop crying.” Your palm was ice against my cheek. The first time you hit me was almost like an accident. “You’ll never be able to drive.”

I can still feel the red mark you left, like phantom pain, stinging extra today. I smile at Sabrina in the rearview mirror. Her black funeral dress doesn’t even look sad on her. She is so good and precious, with hair a majestic auburn that bears no resemblance to yours. Each of her three-hundred-and-eighteen freckles (we counted once) composes my heart.

“Are you okay, Daddy?”

I nod, staring ahead at the same sky you and I used to drive under, over the same bumpy road. You would blame the bumps on me.

“Where is grandpa now?” Sabrina asks. “What happens when you die?”

Javier places a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Sab, honey, let’s not—”

“That’s all right. I wonder the same thing a lot,” I say. There is a red light. “Like, yes, part of me thinks that you suddenly stop existing, and everything turns to black, and the world goes on without you. But if so many people believe in heaven and hell and all that, there’s gotta be some truth to it, you know?”

“So then where is grandpa? Heaven or hell?” She asks the same way she asks whether 7x8 is 56 or 58, or whether my favorite color is orange or blue. Heaven or hell?

“Sab!” Javier shuts her down, but her words conjure up an image of you: your left half charred and red, your right half aglow.

Aglow, like when you pretended to be a sports announcer and made me feel important; charred and red, because I never really liked sports. In flames, because all of your love for me was contained in a hard yellow lacrosse ball, and I was crappy at cradling it close, and even worse at scooping it off the ground, and when you threw it at me, I seldom caught it. I let it fall away. I raced after it and watched it roll farther and farther the more I tried to scoop it up. You said, “two hands, two hands,” but I was so sick and tired. You didn’t deserve both of my hands anymore.

When I was a teenager, I’d check my watch frantically as the sun began to set, wishing the time would pass slower and dreading your stomps through the doorway. You brought the smell of rubble and dirt into our household each night. We were just afloat. I imagined the mystery of your day-to-day, imagined you standing with a crowd of guys, smoking cigarettes and complaining about your wives. It didn’t occur to me until I was well into my twenties that maybe your dad did the same, and maybe you’re not the one to blame. Javier and I met in college and fell in love quickly. You referred to him as my “friend,” if you referred to him at all. You left for the bathroom halfway through our wedding ceremony and didn’t return until the reception. Did you think I wouldn’t notice the empty white chair where my father should have been? Did you think I didn’t see the way Mom grabbed your forearm, but you wriggled from her grip and sidled conspicuously up the aisle? You died in a plane accident. Your death came out of nowhere, which is easier than fading away from disease, slowly descending. You always wanted me to fly, and you died doing it.

Your funeral was a couple of weeks ago, and I should be sadder than I am. Most of the time, I’m simply numb. Sometimes, when I pull up the picture on my phone—the one Mom took of us at high school graduation—I recall the moment so vividly that my head itches from the graduation cap. I feel your hands around my shoulders. And then I think about the other things those hands have done, the bad things.

“Whatcha lookin’ at?” Sab appears at the entryway, holding her blue blankie. Her ponytail hangs messily by the side of her neck.

Ava Maughan ’25,

“Just some work emails.” I close out the picture. “You should be sleeping, Sab. You’ve got school tomorrow.” Through the window, the sky is speckled with faint constellations.

“I know. But everytime I close my eyes I start having this weird dream.” She lays beside me on the couch. “There are snakes all over the ground, biting at my feet.”

“Well that can’t be good.” I pull her into an embrace. “Sleep right here. Maybe if we put our heads together, we’ll have the same dream.”

She giggles. “I don’t know if that’s how it works, Daddy. Besides, I’m not really tired.”

“I am.”

“Can I crack your knuckles?”

“No,” I grumble.

Sabrina wraps her tiny fingers around my index finger and pushes it all the way in until the bone cracks. “Ouch. Don’t do that, Sab.”

She laughs, doing the same with my middle finger.

“Sabrina, please stop.”

Her unruly laughter pierces through my ears. She takes my pinky finger. My pain is somehow so funny to her. Ouch. It’s a reflex; I don’t mean to do it. I jerk my hand out of her grip, and my pinky nail knocks against her lip. My hand begins to shake. Blood trickles from a cut, a line on her top lip. It’s just a little blood, just a small bit.

Her nostrils twitch. I did this. I stare into my palm and see the same wrinkles you had.

Her cries grow, music faded into discord. The blood is gone—she’s licked it off—but it’s there, bright, everywhere, all over her and me.

She stares at me as if I’m the monster under her bed. I’m one of the snakes pecking at her feet.

“I’m so sorry, Sab. I’m so—let me get paper towels.” I am immobile.

Her chest rises and falls quickly. She’s scared of me. Sab backs away from the bed, running for Javier. “Daddy, Daddy.”

Your favorite flowers were dandelions. You always told me it was because they were actually weeds, and you liked that not everyone knew that. Weeds could be beautiful. I plucked all the dandelions I could find this morning and tied them with a satin ribbon. So here are some dandelions. I hope they find you well.

Martin H. Sullivan

6 October 1956

12 June 2021

Son, husband, father

Reading your tombstone, it feels as if the breeze that erects the hairs on my forearms is you, blowing air at me, begging to be noticed above the many with which you share the sky. I can hear you singing Beatles songs, cradling me in your arms—arms that warmed me when I shivered; arms that held me in the air when you sang, “zoom zoom zoom, we’re going to the moon;” arms that “knocked some sense into me;” arms that my own were beginning to replicate last night; arms that my own can never replicate again; arms that didn’t save me when I fell off my bike, when three round scars appeared on my kneecap, like an ellipsis.

Ava Maughan ’25,

By Joshua Lee ’25

Blade held high, feet stamped low, Blows exchanged and lights flaring, For that’s the life of fencing, Emotion of exhilaration, screams of triumph Glistening with sweat and glory, down the steps they go

Up the podium, a medal is received, full of color and bouncing Lights, flashing lights, reflecting off the pupils

Down the steps, towards the ship of journey, There lied the captain of my life. Joy, only joy filled the air.

Then, it stopped

Heavy words, then heavy silence. The captain explained, the passenger cried. Nothing could move.

Down the steps of the ship, up towards the abodeGravity turned sideways,

everything turned heavy, I couldn’t move.

Down

I looked to the metal, the cold, dull metal.

I threw it all down, forever.

Yet, like how a butterfly sprouts from its cocoon, new wings formed A new metal, same captain, a new life.

Down

I looked at the medal, for I finally realized-

I stepped down on my step, and went up with sweat and glory

Brendan Lynch ’23,

By Alex Elwell ’23

the sound of silence, to me, actually just sounds like white noise or a high pitch frequency because i think there is something off with my hearing and a blank wall or the sky

looks like faint television static and never the pure color

and sometimes shapes, too and i think per, my self-diagnosis, that i have synesthesia but it’s true i’m not kidding; sounds weird, right?

By Anonymous

Things that make me anxious Choose a favorite anything

Crickets

Wet socks

Abrupt silence in conversation

Skinned skin

Swollen fingers

Knuckle cracking

Plaque

Black water

Hand dryers

Alex Elwell ’23,

By Caroline Didden ’24

The garden was ready for me to harvest It had borne crops of delicious delight

So I searched for the root that was the largest I pulled the root and it was a carrot with a bite

What animal could have done this secret crime Could it have been a rabbit with a hateful heart? But there was a tall fence the rabbit would have to climb. This was no regular rabbit, it must be smart.

I checked for holes in my tall fence Then I heard a whimper from behind me There sat the rabbit fat and dense I opened the latch it would be set free

The rabbit was now gone and my garden was safe But I made the fence a foot taller just in case

Alex Elwell ’23,

Their wet fluffiness would become a river that wouldn’t stop for a dam.

The sun would heat this river because there would be no clouds in the way. If clouds did not float, then we would float instead.

Brendan Lynch ’23,

Ella Chen ’26 ,

By Alex Elwell ’23

I saw something little. I saw something little through the trees. I saw something little through the trees. It was small but brave. I saw something through the trees. It was you.

By Alex Elwell ’23

good writing is writing with irony so you can’t get criticized. if you never take what they say or what you do seriously, you never get hurt, and if you never get hurt, you always have fun and then suddenly you turn into penny lane in a fur coat with 16 years hanging off your ragged loved-up alpaca trim like cans trailing a “just married” car and you accidentally swallow your cigarette butt when you got lonely and took her advice in a record store in soho with all the other young dudes, kooks, who aren’t even doing it Bowie style.

did you get that one, 4th wall?

Ella Chen ’26,

I.

A soliloquy of ventriloquy or the opposite, with mobile lips and a dry tongue, crackling hips and a paper thumb, a voice that ensnares everyone, a forehead hot and chest numb. Tous les jours beneath sweltering sun, to the grave, flailing, she may succumb.

Her haunting shadow hovers in the embrace of two lovers beneath quilted covers when women become mothers.

Scarlet stains that could have been beneath each cold mistaken sin. Each thrill, each trill of violin, each sip of milk has made her thin. Hollow cage, with faults of kin, in hallways may the rumors spin. The weak will fall; the best will win, the glass will fade her quiet grin, the blade with which she wants to trim her parts reminding her of him.

With his soul to keep, mind to sell, blind whispering, wishing: do not yell. Snuff out the burning orange smell, the sorrow that your throat shall quell, the sorrow where your lovers dwell, concealed in gilded gates of hell.

By Hudson Warm ’23

II.

Here may I spend my wilting days beneath the antique sun king’s rays. The sparkling tower, the livening haze, the garden’s thickets and pathways.

Here pinkies scratched the hardwood door, they traced a globe and spoke of war. Into your silent eyes, his bore as he requested more, more, more

Here mirrors watched and spoke and danced and reflected the hells of france. Manicured trees guarded in lines the château of the best of times.

Hailey Won ’25,

Eleanor Neu ’23,

By Willow Quattrone ’23

But what is a weapon, anyway?

I know they say that the pen can become a weapon in a woman’s hand, but I am just as unsure of weapons now, at seventeen as I was as a child.

They show school children on television and my friends whisper their fears to me at night— I listen but in the darkness I catch a glimpse of the rifle from when I gripped it in my hands two years ago. Is this the Violence they are scared of, or just a weapon prescribed upon my body?

I wonder whether the night I walked to the kitchen knife drawer from my bedroom and hovered there for a moment, whether that was History in the doorframe, prescribing a weapon upon my body, or just the body of my brothers’ dead classmate— which brings me to the difference between and ? I still don’t know

Commitment; I feel sometimes that History is my father’s parents: Divorced by 1980 but committed to haunting me from two ends of the country, Cincinnati and New York closing in on my ribcage like the fabric of a zipping Dress; their joint legal custody is a family heirloom now.

And I wonder if history is just dailiness: the noun that keeps on giving and taking.

Sometimes I pinch the skin of my forearm

To convince myself I am real but The pain feels just like recoil from the gun I shot two years ago in Maine

I want to make an animal out of this pain, Resurrect the one I evicted from that forest. With my squinting eyes and white fingers gripping metal, I have no need for concealed carry laws; This body is weapon enough.

By Harper Kelsey ’24

Your words were “a voice like honey”

And with Carthage being built by bees

I should have recognized this adumbration of our separation

But I have not Dido’s rashness or rage

For you never saw those things in me.

But now, living outside of their disputed color, I reach for those things which you saw And flail

By Anonymous

I.

Petals riddle aisles

Poofy-skirted ballerina, twirl

For me, stem, flowergirl

II. & she withers

Picks her petals (he loves me, he loves me not)

She gives her flower & is damned.

Brendan Lynch ’23,

By Ari Spiegel ’26 Color

some think they are blind to the color

that has separated us for centuries the same color that jobs look for in your very name or lack of I must say making my parents give my siblings and I a name

both white and black, the same color

that gave us price tags as if we were objects in a store

To be bought

To be bargained

To be, forgotten, the same color that so many have died because not just back then but today

This is real. It was real.

Reagan Begley ’24,

Oh stop pretending.

At any second slaves could have been beat and been burned

At any second whole schools and churches and grocery stores could be shot up out of racist anger putting everyone in danger just because we live in this white wanted world white proud, white privileged, white place. So you can’t tell me that racism isn’t real when we look at the very beginning. When we see this being of a tree and look at the very tips of the roots. This is real. It was real.

Merely Pretending

won’t solve the issue that you and I both know is always present.

The fact that in our everyday we see this pretending the mass shootings we see white on black crime and each bullet shot out on assumptions we hear the shouts, the cries and lives being on the line for something as simple as melanin

and yet people still pretend these things don’t happen

And you see we have every right to be, angry We were never overreacting, this is real. it was real.

“I don’t see color”

are you watching a black and white film because there is still color. And pretending that this isn’t real won’t erase the scars they shared won’t erase the history of this very country

So Stop with this pretending bs i have survived your racism before this is real, it was real.

Gabi Kalapoutis ’23,

By Afsana Dhali ’23

The clouds stare back As I look to them, through them For answers to trivialities. Each choked sob trails over my cheeks And into the grass, that wonders Why I’m making a fuss.

My head pounds as every issue Seems monumental, life-ending While the hills cradle me Sighing knowingly. But

My pulse, is slow, and steady Remembering how he made it race. And the branches above Carry the scent of Mom’s perfume Over my skin, and through my hair With the taste of s’mores burnt by my sisters Resting indulgently on my tongue. I roll over and realize I exist, I’m breathing. And that whatever has come to be Will come to pass. And the sun will rise over Saudade.

How easy it is to chide the weak!

To berate those who do no harm

Who hold in their hearts prayers for their oppressors On their tongues caresses for their attackers.

How simple it is to meet the glassy gaze Of the one who accepts and nods along Of the one seeking the embrace of their maker Having been strangled by their lover.

The same who give what they do not have In hopes for that which they will never receive The ones who wish for the health of those Who default to raising their hands.

Their hands frozen in supplication for affection Held out for the crumbs which none will give And pretend they will receive If not from the world then from their maker.

Praise the weak! For they do not speak ill of the evil For they believe that they are the wrongdoers For they pray to be forgiven for crimes they did not commit And sleep with choked tears they forbid to fall.

Colin MacKinnon ’23,

Allison Chin ’24,

By Hudson Warm ’23

& along the red riverbed I find myself & you, resting. Here the day’s toils flee from us in flocks.

In this arid palace I meet you each night. Sometimes I call it your darkened dorm room.

This flesh-on-flesh rhythm becomes routine, the flowers sprout like wishes, one touch and they quiver.

Correction: it happened once, but my mind replays the scene in a routine. Falling, unfolding, opening, unspooling, softening.

In each quotidian silent moment you come for me, kissing my brain with the memory. I don’t know whether it happened, or which parts.

All I know is the world moves on and I do not and it’s lint and limbs and latex and lying there,

I imagine a scream so loud the river-room shakes and plunges into a story I can never truly tell.

But then: the lake deltas like two legs yielding to you—I tremble but can’t speak, & so we dance.

By Alexandra Elwell ’23

As my head sinks into my pillow at night, it is Miles Davis’ lofting lullabillic and trumpet that wafts around my room. His melodies tug at my brain, and my blankets feel all the more comfortable.

It is the record player by my bed, fulfilling its earnest promise to show me what music should sound like, that makes me smile so peacefully, so deeply.

As Penny Lane in Almost Famous wisely says: when you need some consolation, “just go to the record store and visit your friends.” So, when I need it, I go to my record collection in search of some advice or inspiration.

It is when Pink Floyd drags corruption with their mighty and orchestral scenes, David Gilmour pleading to the bricks through the electric record player that illuminates the corner of my room, when I listen and wonder

Am I one of the, “million bright ambassadors of morning?”

Sitting in bed at night, listening closely to my spinning records, I recount the musical elements of a song, the histories of its authors, the story of how and why it was written.

It is when the Rolling Stones shriek with emotion that they are ‘Exiles on Main Street,’ rejection and heartache

bursting through their vocal chords snapping their guitar strings, or when the Beatles swim through my mind with a hug and a pat and tell me that they will always be with me “Here, There, and Everywhere,”

that I know I am home.

It is when I have been given the small compliment, “You know a lot about music!” that I feel most seen, most flattered, and most understood.

Bella Wasserman ’23,

By Fiona Pedraza ’26

The sea was cold.

Florence was used to the grey, the wind, the swallowing - but today, she thought, the sea was much colder than yesterday. She stared into the ocean, creaking the rocking chair her son had made for her. The wind creaked the matching one that had sat empty for years.

Today was a good day to leave, she thought.

Perhaps that thought might have seemed sad to an onlooker. Perhaps the whole scene was. An old woman, rocking alone in her chair with an empty match next to her and a moth-eaten sweater hanging on her limbs, watching as the lonely waves wove their lonely path back and forth between coasts.

But she was used to it, and she had found solace in her loneliness. She had to.

There comes a time in most everyone’s lives when they can feel the end. It is not despair, rather fulfillment. Content. Completion, as though what you have wished for, secretly, quietly, throughout your life has happened.

Florence knew this.

She felt it.

She heard the waves were calling out to her, pulling her into their cold embrace, whispering, it’s time to go.

It had always looked like this when she imagined her last day in her mind. Again, perhaps that seemed depressing, but to her it brought her comfort. Her creaking old home, the same rattling heaters she’d grown up laying her blankets across, the windswept meadows of her childhood, the crashing waves she once danced in below the point, the ghost of Robert holding her hand as he rocked back and forth next to her. But before she let herself go, she thought back.

Florence Clara Duane was born on one of the few sunny days in Marion Cove, Maine. When she came into the world, her father watched on stoically, ready to run for whatever his wife might have called for, and her mother rocked in her arms, thinking about her beautiful daughter and the fact that this was the first time she’d missed church in years.

The first war had ended a few years back, but that had little impact on Marion Cove. It was just the same as it had been in 1914, and 1900, and 1850, and almost every other year. Thus, from her first day, Florence was swept into the gentle, creaking revolution of the port town.

She grew up with the sea, as most children do. Her earliest years in the house on the point were made of soft pockets of time spent with her mother, chubby toes on grainy sand and beach roses entwined in blonde hair. As her father worked at his shop on the main street, the two of them danced on the shore, laughing, as comfortable in the waves as in their home, tumbling through the meadows in an eternally summer-like bliss.

When Florence was two, her sister was born. Though Emmaline was welcome, her arrival unsettled the house. Born in the middle of a week-long storm with a tuft of bright red curls, she cried for two days straight before falling into a deep sleep. It took a while for Florence to get used to another presence in the home. But one day, when Emmaline was just learning to walk, the three went down to the beach. She tumbled into the waves, her little laugh bubbling across the cove, and when she fell, the waves gently pushed her back up. From Florence’s perch on her mothers lap, her small mouth twisted, she decided finally that if the sea could welcome another, she would as well.

Hundreds of days passed like this, until it came time for the girls to go to school. The sisters settled into their father’s cart and bounced down the gravel road, waving goodbye to their mother, who stood with her arms crossed and her eyes soft, watching them disappear from the porch.

Florence learned to love Emmaline more than herself. Her little sister was full of chaos, unmade beds, pruned fingers, freckled skin, and salty hair.

As they grew up, Emmaline’s vibrant red hair faded to blonde. No one knew why, but no one missed it. Florence remembered that there were whispers, something about a red-headed teacher,

Massimo Soto ’23,

exchanged behind closed bedroom doors and followed by slams that shook the house. She did not know what they meant. Eventually, the slams settled into the wood and the house returned to gentle harmony and kisses on the cheek. But all she knew was that the red disrupted the house.

When Florence was seventeen, her small school offered university exams. She remembered distinctly a conversation with Emmaline, who had become her best friend, as they walked home from school one day in late April. The sky was grey and the waves were capped with white. The topic of exams had come up at dinner the other night and had gone nowhere. Her parents exchanged a glance, told her no, and changed the subject.

Emmaline watched Florence watch the sea, her blue eyes spinning with possibility. Placing her hand on her arm, she pointed at the waves. , she said.

And so, the next fall, five months wiser, she embraced her family and boarded an overnight train to New York. , her mother had whispered in her ear before she left.

. She shook those words from her brain and watched the countryside flicker by as the train chugged down the coast. , Emmaline had said. .

For the first four months, Florence adored college. She was not used to being surrounded by hundreds of minds as bright and brighter than her own. But, to her surprise, she welcomed it. New York, too, was overwhelming at first, but she learned to love the noise and chaos and smooth dysfunctionality of it all.

When December came and Florence boarded the train north, she felt something odd in the air. When the waves appeared in the distance, distraught, she tried to listen to them. , she thought.

She sprinted past her father with his reaching arms and her mother with her pitying eyes and past the shoe rack holding three pairs of boots and down the stone path and the steps overgrown with wildflowers and she fell into the icy embrace of the waves.

She couldn’t feel the December cold, the frigid water as it splintered into her heart, the salt streaming down her cheeks into the sea

she couldn’t hear the cries of her parents, the howling of the wind, or the slapping of the waves against her skin

she couldn’t feel Emmaline— , she wailed. , but no one could hear her.

She woke in her bed the next morning, her head feeling like it had been split in two, numb. She cried for two hours before falling asleep until dinner the next day.

Christmas passed. Empty, she kissed her parents goodbye and left for school.

Summer came, and Florence stayed in New York. She couldn’t bear returning home. Talk of another war was brewing, and this excited her classmates.

To her surprise, Florence found herself happy for the first time in seven months. It was early July, and she had met someone. Arthur, a junior at the brother university, was tall, dark haired, and tan, effortlessly vibrant and intelligent.

The two of them spent the summer in a euphoric bliss. Their days were made up morning walks through the botanical gardens, lazy afternoons on the boardwalks, and stolen kisses under lampposts. Oblivious of the oncoming news, detached from the sea, Florence felt herself falling deeply in love. She looked at him and saw her home in his eyes. Emmaline would love you, she thought.

Fall passed and another December came. Florence remembered herself sitting on the bench, waiting for Arthur, her luggage in hands, eager to travel home with the person she imagined herself spending the rest of her life with.

Half an hour passed. Then an hour, then two. She found herself at his dorm room, asking his roommates where he had went.

On the train, it started raining. All of her insides, her hope, having finally been filled after a year of emptiness, were draining once again. she trusted. He would be home by next summer so they could build their life together.

When the war wasn’t over by next June, she returned home, empty again. She sat by the sea and let the little part of her that still held on to him grow again.

A letter came. It was late July. Florence was visiting her sister’s grave on the meadow, staring into the grey sky, her hands gripping the wet grass as if she could feel Emmaline holding on to her. The mail horse disrupted her reveries, and she wouldn’t have moved, if mail were not so uncommon. It must have been something.

This time, she slowly walked to the beach. Her legs barely worked but she forced them to move.

This time, she sat on the stones. Watching the waves. In, out. In, out.

This time, she placed the letter on the waves and watched them carry out to sea. She followed it until it was a speck in the distance, almost as small as England must have been. She followed it until a white cap rose up and up and swallowed it into its embrace.

That night, she sat on the porch, staring at the sea. Home again. Though every part of her could be ripped apart a thousand times, she would always have her home. t, she thought.

Massimo Soto ’23,

Liberty is waves of an ocean. Circular motions cascading through an open sea, approaching the shore. Crashing onto the beach, it reaches with wet arms holding onto the earth for dear life.

The tide by moons that pull attention for better or worse pulls it back Into the endless sea for worse—by force. The arms scrape against grains of sand, eroded by time as they are taken back into the ocean blue— begging, pleading for the mercy of wavelengths, where the oceans clash again.

But one day, in Lituya Bay, The cycle ends another way. An uprising of dreamers With tough, seismic schemers, Devastate systems and shores, Wisdoms and floors.

Seafoam in streets, in houses, in people.

Salt goodbyes, salty eyes, I see the seafoam.

Annabel Hardart ’24,

By Caroline Didden ’24

The best place is not a place where you can physically go, it’s more of a state of mind. It’s the feeling of bliss when you come home and realize you have no homework due the next day. It is when you are too hot in your bed so you flip your pillow onto the other side, and it’s cold. It is the sound of fresh fall leaves crunching under your shoes as you walk down the street.

It is laughing with your friends so hard your stomach hurts and your cheeks burn. The feeling of getting a letter, not on text but in the mail and handwritten. It is getting a genuine, unexpected compliment from a stranger that makes your day. It is that moment when your waiter brings you bread before your meal, and the bread is warm. It’s when the book you have been reading for so long ends on the most perfect, satisfying note.

It is that feeling when you find money in your pocket right when you need it. It’s when the first snow of the season falls and everyone in school rushes to the window in awe. It’s waking up with perfect hair that barely needs brushing, or when two songs you love play back to back on the radio, or watching dogs stick their heads out of fast moving cars. The best place is those small, blissful, awesome moments in life that feel too good to be true.

Annabel Hardart ’24,

Massimo Soto ’23,

By Tommy Troso ’24

The astronaut sings to the stars of galaxies. His tunes are catchy.

As I look upwards, the white clouds above me shift. I want to touch them.

When I walk on grass, I smell the fruits of summer. I like it out here.

The dolphins swim through their plastic-bound living room. Who will save them now?

In the deepest sea, the eels guard the premises; Never go down there.

By Isabella Fauber ’23

The soft amber glow of the tree illuminated the cramped corridor Packed with decorations used year after year, a reminder that nothing has changed A part of me hoped he would knock on the door carrying firewood in one hand. The other hand outstretched to me.

BrendanLynch’23,

My mother’s shrill voice interrupted my thoughts, probably for the best

We both knew he was not coming home, yet we never acknowledged the gaping hole he left in his wake. I started counting calories like I count sheep, vigorously and desperately The therapist explained all the reasons I should stop; I can’t seem to recall even one.

Mother said my clothes fit better. I noticed she wasn’t eating either. It had always been like that, I just never realized. Now it’s what we do to cope. I also started walking a few weeks ago, around the same time Frank Sinatra started playing in every building I walked into. “Go back home”, whispered my subconscious. “It’s broken,” I responded.

Everything reminds me of him, the smell of pine, the book on my nightstand, the blue patagonia.

I’m staring through the window of the toy store we used to visit as soon as the frost began to cover the trees

I used to make a long wish list of things I was sure I needed, I was a good girl after all

I guess I asked for too much.

I can see his tired eyes, his delicate smile, his gentle dimple. I have those same features.

I must look ahead, and not inside

Hudson Warm ’23,

By Afsana Dhali ’23

I didn’t know she was counting. We were just talking after dinner about God knows what, and she said she only had a few months left with me. It’s one thing to laugh it off, but I met her eyes and saw her age 17 years in under a second.

We do a lot more together now. I teach her how to bake, she teaches me how to be resilient. My mom. I make her laugh more, so I don’t forget how it sounds. More pictures, more selfies, so I don’t forget how we have the same smile. Will she be okay? Always off-key, scared of tides and dogs and heights. The months will dwindle to weeks, to days, to seconds, to–

Olivia Houck ’25,

Have you ever seen your mother cry? In a home where emotions need warrants, I’d never seen her shed a tear. The conversation continued. I finally saw the mother in my mom. The dark hoods of her eyes, her tired smiles. The crosshatching of her skin pulled tight when she laughed. She laughs with her heart first. She was holding on to me. Clinging? Holding. Cradling.

I’m no different today than I was 17 years ago. She says so. The beginning of our end, senior year. Will she cry? She holds me differently now. Gentler. What signifies the end? The acceptance letters or the diploma?

Will I be okay?

Joseph Reyes ’23,

By

Anonymous

keep your head down

don’t ignore the sounds

the buzz the ringings

these noises will sound like singing

it’s brick not cold

icicles leak from your runny nose

place your feet outside your hips

take up room- Jesus, don’t lick your lips

the four minute interval between one-tenth and ninety-sixth survive those four minutes— you’ll be a living myth

when you can’t feel your fingers and the cold just lingers take the six ounce coffee cup and be thankful, real new yorker’s don’t give a fuck

Yes, you, sit down for me, hold your neck like that as I sketch you, in rough pencil first. To control your breathing form, like you controlled mine that midnight: thin blue sheets and your hand on me like puppetry.

Now, to tell you—command you—hand higher, jaw tilted. To haunt you like Basil haunts Dorian, like you haunt me. Hold your breath for me, I’ll paint you. I know all we did was run lines—playing lovers we would never be, and who were you on camera versus off ? You, so hurt and haunted by a spirit and a split.

I would love to paint you, creature, in shades of red, your supple antagonism pleasing to the eye and just to the eye. To fall for your flattery again. I would paint you, rigid, knife-sharp, Surrealist-style, I would hang the painting on my green chamber walls, between and my birth certificate. And you would hang there, pleading, powerless, panting, painting, blood dripping from your fingers like Eden’s pomegranate juice, for everyone to know what you’ve done.

For all of my future guests to see as their fingers trace my seams, so I needn’t explain to them my flinching and hesitancy, I’ll paint you in any way I please. And you are redeemed an eternal voyeur.

By Anonymous

i’m in the baggage claim I can’t seem to stop everywhere I look my bag is not i can’t seem to find what belongs what is mine in the baggage claim i go round everyone stares my bag is not found i own not i’m not me

Lucia Butterfield ’25,

Alex Elwell ’23

do you recognize the body you see yourself in when you stand above the pulsing waves of deafening noise, when you lay upon hands that move your body like seagrass, that yearn to snag a touch of their splayed about idol, so you can become a wave yourself seagrass, too?

will you sing for me? will you strum that guitar? pluck the strings of your bass? smash your drums? plead to the gods? shriek to the masses? cry?

will you reach up and snatch the lofty notes above that taunt you in your sleep?

did you write that? you ask and then it is yours

is what music has lent you so fill a balloon with it, let it be pressurized with all that thunders, rains, and swells in your mind, you are you down below and up on high and in the liminal space between

who is that creature?

and you, there, paw at your sniffling nose, your grinding jaw let that cup tip backwards as you look at your cult of domesticity from afar, or just the other cults that sit at your feet and stare up at you or look on at you with sidelong or flitting eyes

Brendan Lynch ’23,

what fills your cup?

where is your baby?

are you sure it is even your balloon-baby?

have you seen Sally, your sitter?

are you a golden god?

what would you do for a case of beer? forget klondike bars

it’s sad - the truth is that you are not immortal that your balloon is but your bow is not

and the stacks on your desk, you’re no scrooge, they remind you that you are not the same as those who hunker in flashing dens that echo with the beats of the bolivian’s marching drums

you could stop, you have the means at least you can but do you want to?

do you want to leave your mottled bed that stinks of feet and unwashed bodies and is broken with crumbs and whatever drink you last spilt? stop scratching for your white nurse

do you see that el diablo is smirking in red in the far corner of the room, redrum

that he is staring at you as you roll about? it’s all for a parade of balloons, isn’t it? and stacks too, more of them coming soon

and you know that your friends will cry and your balloons will soar, keen to avoid any sharp needles, even after the fates snip your string and your bow slowly unties

and even after you wonder if time was ever actually on your side they still cry

and now, as we watch those colorful balloons fly overhead, in a parade of sound, glory, and tragedy fit for the greeks, and rush to tighten their bows, we gaze up and say with a certain reverence, not exempt from dismay:

shine on you crazy diamond come on, you stranger, you legend, you martyr, and shine come on, you painter, you piper, you prisoner, and shine shine on you crazy diamond

By Anonymous

Dear whoever brings sleep,

You asshole. Why is it that the night can blot out the bright sky, the only light originating from the bright white moon and distant twinkling stars, all behind the thick blackout curtains and yet you cannot find me. Wandering to my parents, even my dogs and cat, and yet you meander lazily towards me and my eyelids get heavy, you jump, silently dashing away at the slightest sound. A creak, a mosquito, I don’t even care, but then when the sun punches a bright hole in the blue sky and light pushes through my eyelids you decide to approach me then.

It’s 11:00! I’m in school dammit! Why can’t you just work on a clock! Those nights that I had to push back those times of rest were borne of necessity! Anxiety dancing on my head and shoulders, whose loud voice is only sated by work being finally completed. You’re scared of them too! You know I have to get rid of them. They’re pests (and loud ones too so I get it), but even a trace scares you off ! A remnant, a dusting of anxiety, and yet you cannot settle and let me sleep. What am I supposed to do?

Alex Elwell ’23,

Alexandra Elwell ’23,

By Alexandra Elwell ’23

The night is for disillusionment, to bask in the immense swath of darkness that lay its veil daintily upon the scape to be tossed around as if by a breeze, crumpled then spread flat. bright then dark then bright again is that silk screen scarf folding in the wind sat upon a glass table.

the night is for repetition, and fable.

the night is for when you can blame it on the night and emerge unchanged or changed aplenty.

the night is the obvious metamorphosis into day but also the innocuous bubble of stagnancy’s sanctity. the night blurs and makes you want to dance with a lover to blues in the street as cars murmur at 2:05 or 23:05. the night is romanticism.

the night is a humor.

the night makes you ask, “who, too, is stirring at these odd hours?” and “a car? where are they going to?” and “do you love me?” and “can i love you?” and “is my talent, talent?” and “is there someone in my room?” and

“do i need to start meeting with my therapist again?” and

“are these notes in my journal at night genius or delusion?” and “is genius delusion because i want to be remarkable and remembered?” and “shall we love?” and “are we pregnant?” and “who am i?” and “what is my age and who am i in it?” and “what time is it?”

the night becomes real when a day of rest graciously dips away for a while so the night can come again and experience our awe: glimmering silver luster.

the night is simple, but us romantics keep asking for and needing more.

the night is a consolation and a stark noir and sudden perspiration and the shedding of clothes in the wee hours and bad writing in a blue notebook that is overwrought with wrought-iron worries and none other than delusion, all steeping in disillusionment and 1/16 carat gold anxiety.

By Talia Tirschwell ’24

These past few years with you have brought me through some of the most brilliant and soul-crushing moments of my life. As I navigated the complex maze of the world, you were always there with me, by my side, whispering in my ear. When I could hardly see the end of today, you told me it would be okay, you told me I could do it tomorrow, your voice kept me going. What would I have done without that constant support and presence? What would I have done without that comfort?

But alas, my dear, both you and know where the problems started to emerge. We dove into Thursday evenings and Sunday afternoons side by side, devoted to each other, committed to our promises. I leaned on your voice as you carried me down that path. But as the sun slowly rolled across the sky and slipped off the horizon, as the world darkened to a deep, smoky black, and as the hours slowly began to tick away on my bedside table clock…well, that was when the troubles began.

Your presence would start to annoy me, to agitate me, the way you were constantly hovering at my shoulder. As the night got darker and darker, I would begin to feel quite alone, and I would turn to you, begging for help, begging for that comfort to return. But you -- you betrayed me. You stood there in the corner of my room, chuckling quietly, your easygoing, relaxed pose mocking my panic. As I begged and screamed, you didn’t even lift a finger to help, didn’t even show the faintest signs of pity. You left me alone on those nights, deserted me in the very trap you had led me into. In the moments when I most needed your support, you weren’t there for me. And that really wasn’t okay.

But when you showed up again the next morning, your charm, your allure, your soft, calming voice always managed to pull me back. I fell into the tricks of your sweet, innocent pleas for forgiveness, fell back into your cycle, fell back into our routine. And even as everyone told me that it wasn’t good for me, that you weren’t good for me, that we had to end…I didn’t listen. I stood by your side, as you had by mine, for so, so, long.

Too long, I realize now. It has been too many years of too many nights of too many times that you have left me, betrayed me, stranded me to fend for myself. And it has been too many times that I have forgiven you, that I have let it slide, that I have allowed it to happen again. I love you, and I love us, but this relationship isn’t good for me, and I’ve finally realized that it has to end. I will miss you, your comfort, your promises, and our late nights with all of my heart. But our fights, and your betrayals, and my stress, and our cycle… these are the plagues that must draw us apart.

My dear procrastination, I know with absolute certainty that I will never find another who will make me feel quite the same. Thus I bid you farewell with a heavy heart, wishing you all the best, and hoping that someday, someone will truly love you for all your strengths and weaknesses.

Sincerely, Yours Truly

Step 1: don’t

By Harper Kelsey ’24

Bella Wasserman ’23,

Allison Chin ’24,

By Kylie Oh ’24

Inhale for 4. Hold for 7. Exhale for 8.

In, 4. Hold, 7. Out, 8. 4. 7. 8. She should be asleep.

Yet her mind is loud, restless, awake. It races. Races against the clock, salvaging as much sleep as possible before the alarm. & then she is spinning, thoughts turning inside a stagnant head. Turning in space, propelling her to unconsciousness & then she jolts awake.

Her body betrays her.

The pile of clothes in the corner transforms she shuts her eyes from the girl with black hair in a ghostly dress

staring at her, crouching down from her corner: w a i t i n g.

It’s not real it’s not real it’s— & then she finds herself, with shaking hands, rearranging the mess of clothes.

Her mind betrays her.

By Ava Maughan ’25

She made the glue, She placed the bricks, She designed the bridge The relationship impermanent, the creator left to be forgotten.

By Will Dupont ’25

Delighted

Old people come together and recount Nostalgic time from New York and London and Yawn

Cassandra Strand ’24,

“For Students by Students”

’s mission is to create a platform for students to share their artistic and literary passions with Hackley school’s student body and faculty. We aim to represent grades nine through twelve through a vast array of creative expressions, ranging in artistic areas—paintings, drawings, photography—and literary genres—poetry, ction, non- ction. Literary submissions, maintaining anonymity, are voted on by peer readers and ultimately decided on by editorial team. Artwork is selected by sta with a focus on quality and variety. e Visionaries cra the layout on Adobe InDesign, using Minion Pro font. e magazine is printed with four color process and an aqueous coating.

Hackley School is a member of the Columbia Scholastic Press Association, and is honored to be a recipient of Columbia Scholastic Press Crown Awards.

Massimo Soto ’23,

Hudson Warm

Alex Elwell

Brendan Lynch

Ava Maughan

Joshua Lee

Kylie Oh