Katherine Wong

Leland Quarterly | Fall 2021

Katherine Wong

We haven’t spoken in a week and two days. Our conversations had taken the shape of a phone line of six-thousand miles, stretching across a gaping Pacific partition. They ran cold after straining several months—the frayed end of a string, unable to glide through the thin opening of a sewing needle. It’s bittersweet, I think: the low-pitched sigh of a hung-up phone call.

Three weeks before graduation, I take a stray thread out of our shared sweater and begin to pull. That is my first mistake. A confession that comes several years late, and now, I pick up clocks from the ground to make up for lost time. Your backyard is a valley beneath a possibility-filled sky, saturated with grass and a freshwater stream of pinky swears. I embrace the dip of the basin, the dip of your hips. The thread on this spool is running out.

When you leave, the airport has the smell of newly-bought clothes—both alien and artificial against my skin. There is a certain plasticity to your promise (we won’t grow apart, call me everyday, okay?) and a simmering guilt that knows it can’t be kept. You disappear into the jetbridge; I dig my hands deep into the pockets of my jeans and watch our futures diverge in the form of tunnels splitting from the terminal.

I create myself a continental quilt | Katherine Wong

A year has passed. I hear about you through mutual acquaintances stuck since high school and fragments through an LCD screen. I’m crocheting the unfinished sleeve of a quilted cardigan—patching together the pieces of a you unfamiliar to me. In our past lives, we shared jackets like family. In our current lives, your zip-up is still crumpled in the back of my closet, burrowed like a desert tortoise deep in its catacombs.

There’s a hole in the elbow of my longsleeve, so I follow the standard procedures to fix it. Flip the shirt inside out, and weave the needle across the broken seam in a simple running stitch. In and out, up and down. Like waves repeatedly reaching and retreating along the California coastline, like oscillating soundwaves across a phone wire, like how your name still surfaces in conversations as a buoy amidst the sea’s white foam. It’s therapeutic. I mend the error, and along the way, sport broken skin and bleeding cuts as a souvenir.

Above: I tiptoe across a stretched-out tightrope. Beneath: the mountainous topographyoftempestwavessitsimpatiently. Each step is another hem. The cavity never completely closes, but I loop the needle and knot it anyways. Pull, and snip. The stitch is finished.

Leland Quarterly | Fall 2021

Kamilah Arteaga (poetry) is a Latinx undergraduate student from the East Bay at Stanford University majoring in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity and minoring in Creative Writing, Poetry.

M. B. (fiction) is a first year student, interested in international relations and symbolic systems. He enjoys watching refreshingly depressing movies to give his life meaning.

Hannah Broderick (fiction) resides in Honolulu, Hawaii with her partner. She is a senior majoring in English with passions for fashion, photography, and the art of tea. While at Stanford, Hannah worked at the Stanford Daily, the Bowes Art and Architecture Library, and for Gaieties. She absolutely loved her undergraduate experience.

Maria Correa (visual art) is a Cuban raised in Miami who is unhealthily obsessed with pasta and the vibes during Christmas time, who is deeply passionate about climate justice and feminism, and who can dance salsa and recite all of Taylor Swift’s “Evermore.”

Annabelle Davis (fiction) is a sophomore studying a little bit of everything. This story is a love letter to all the rooms she’s shared and all of the ridiculous, loving, beautiful people she’s shared them with.

Connor Lane (poetry) is a 5th year Senior from Raleigh, North Carolina, and has had the honor of being rejected from all sorts of esteemed literary publications in the past (including LQ). He will show you pictures of his dog, Cody, both prompted and unprompted.

Emma Perkins (poetry) is studying Human Biology and Creative Writing. She’s obsessed with the scrutiny and scope of poem-writing, she likes driving for DoorDash, and she is currently testing the waters of stand-up comedy.

Leland Quarterly | Fall 2021

Justin Portela (fiction) is an English major from New Jersey.

Ximena Sanchez Martinez (visual art) is a first-generation student studying biology and CSRE. The butterfly is a significant symbol in her artwork helping her express her emotions and journey as a first-generation student. She has included the butterfly in her artwork since high school and hopes to continue making art during the academic year!

Cassie Shaw (poetry) Within Rm 302 is Cassie: the skater with knee problems from riding goofy, the amiable redhead surrounded by a “scrapyard” of taped sketches, a fridge of fruit she’s swiped from dining halls, and a polaroid wall of visitors who come to her door. She prides herself in serving tea and inquiring strangers about their deepest secrets and idiosyncrasies.

Annabelle Wang (poetry) is a junior studying Symbolic Systems with a focus on Natural Language and a minor in Creative Writing. Poetry is a newfound interest of hers, and she looks forward to exploring it further.

Katherine Wong (poetry) (she/her) is a queer Taiwanese storyteller from Southern California who loves exploring ways to express herself through words and melodies. In her free time, she enjoys walking her dog and curating hyper-specific Spotify playlists.

Cathy Yang (visual art) is a coterm student studying art practice and CS. When she’s not painting or coding, she’s probably petting cats.

Sarah Yao (visual art) is a freshman from San Ramon, California. She is studying Management Science & Engineering but is interested in keeping art an integral part of her personal and career life. She also really likes her Macs (Fleetwood, Miller, & Cheese).

Leland Quarterly | Fall 2021

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Leland Quarterly | Fall 2021 Mindscape by Kristie Park

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