Agave Review: Spring 2023

Lexington's Domain Skylar Masuda (Pitzer '24)

To the Agave Community, By the time students return to the bitingly cold sixty degree weather of January in Claremont, our arrival is often already tinged with a longing for home. After all, how can the plethora of pasta bars offered

by Claremont dining halls compare to a home-cooked meal? For Agave Review’s 8.5th issue, we have invited the Claremont community to unite in a period of collective contemplation regarding these feelings.

The following edition of Agave Review comes from the minds of talented students from across the seven Claremont Colleges. Through these artistic and literary works, students explored the concept of Dwellings. The definition of dwelling may vary depending on whom you ask: for some it may be a place that they consider home, for others it may be as simple as a physical structure, and for many, dwelling may come in the form of an unshakeable thought. For this publication, we sought out pieces that interrogated and reimagined the idea of dwellings in the face of an ever-fluctuating, uncertain, increasingly depersonalized world. Florence Pun’s “Concrete Waves” captures the inherent austerity of modern architecture through moody black and white photography. AJ Jolish reflects on how home can take on the shape of a person, in her warmly intimate poem “Threshold.” In “From the Floor,” Skylar Masuda abstracts the view from her bedroom floor in soft shades of green. In “Bilter Static Removal Co.” Audrey Gruian presents a dark yet whimsical picture of an unconventional family business.

This Spring semester, the Agave Review staff faced its own fluctuations, with many changes in leadership and membership occurring over winter break. It took a while for the dust to settle, but our team’s own dwelling has finally reformed. That said, the production of this edition has been a simultaneously uneventful and eventful process. And so, it is like this that we return to you now – wide-eyed and bushy-tailed in the Spring of 2024 and very sorry for the delay. This was our bad.

That said, this issue of Agave Review would not have been possible without the admirable efforts of our editorial team – in particular, Willa Frank, Sage Keller, Kate Jones, Emilio Esquivel, and Isabelle Oringer – the guidance of our former Editor-in-Chief Leah Rivera, and the creative initiative taken by Golda Grais and Aidan Ma. Thank you. This issue would not have been possible without all of these individuals’ persistence and dedication. Additionally, we thank all graduating students in Agave for their hard work and hope that they continue to treasure this part of their college experience. We thank all new student editors, fresh to campus and all its particularities, that have decided to adopt Agave into their lives. We thank the reader – you give us purpose! We hope that you enjoy this issue, and whatever it makes you dwell upon.

Cecelia Blum, Scripps '24 & Katie Wang, Pitzer '24 Editors-in-Chief of Agave Review

Masthead Editors Cecelia Blum (Scripps '24) Katie Wang (Pitzer ‘24) Sage Keller (Pitzer ‘25) Kate Jones (Pomona ‘25) Eshanya Agrawal (Pomona '25) Saru Potturi (Pomona ‘24) Charles Becker (Pomona ‘23) Willa Frank (Pomona ‘25) Kevin Xue (Pomona ‘23) Isabelle Oringer (Scripps ‘25) Rachel Pittman (Pomona ‘26) Tara Mukund (Pomona '26) Jake Chang (Pomona ‘26) Barbara Norton (Pomona ‘25) Layout Design Golda Grais (Scripps ‘25) Katie Wang (Pitzer '24) Graphic Design Golda Grais (Scripps '25) Katie Wang (Pitzer '24) Cover Aidan Ma (Pomona '27)

33A, TO SEATTLE Audrey Gruian (Harvey Mudd '26) halfway across the pacific in late july the sight of a newborn sunrise on the horizon filled my eyes to the brim, like i could hear it wailing and taking its first breaths in its mother’s arms. i couldn’t sleep, curse my abnormally long neck, and nina simone at full volume wasn’t helping drown out the growl of the bird’s left wing right under my nose. every few minutes, the horizon learned a new color to paint with. now a kindergartener learning to mix hues. my mother lay, draped over my back, in an odd side slant that could only be topped in discomfort by my hunched-over knees-up window configuration. the elderly woman in 33c had been asleep since takeoff. she was small enough to fit in the low crook of a crusted seat before the counterintuitive “c” shape had a chance to crack her spine clean through. i was slightly jealous. actually very jealous. and then the horizon was on fire, brimming with the sort of passion one would expect from a girl my age. and like any unassuming adult, the pilot steered the shining bird straight into the inferno. someone, at this point, had farted in the belly— and i mean this in the most poetic way possible— casting an extended sleeping spell on all the unlucky passengers of the flight. my father’s slightly inappropriate movie had long since rolled its credits, i could not hear my sister shift impatiently anymore.

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the landscape was then a rainbow. so matured and picturesque and sharing its wealth of beauty with the rest of the sky, how generous. almost started a riot on board, that sea of sleep-deprived paparazzi who knew that any photographic evidence of the majestic view would never live up to that very moment when their retinas remained in rhythm with the rise and fall of the bird’s glide. a child somewhere five rows ahead wakes up and starts unwrapping something crunchy. a booming DING causes a slight shimmy across the cabin, but nothing most can’t recover from. homesickness hits the hardest an hour away, or so i’ve learned. phones are tucked into pockets. breaths and hands are held. the man in the very back prays. the descent begins.

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Morning Camp Chase Wade (Pitzer '26) An hour past our high from dawn Whispers of more arose Over the cliff, sun breaking up the air into prisms like fantasy With your back turned, hand spiraling into a loud wave which I think has been calling me for some time This is just the first opening, of the preliminary second eye that is, the morning coming hard after the big blowout Perhaps this is why I find myself envisioning hope at the first day of work for your gait to never cease Then I catch wind of that sly snake Lucky, lucky me This sight, reverberating in the camp’s summer eddies All of it amazes me simply Your hands dazzle and spin with end times, which you instead coat in sunflower oil licked smooth onto a pure tongue So forgive me for not remembering if the creases above your chin, nicked with stubble had really changed in 4 years or not We are ourselves when eyes close in curtsey as the stars cradle a smoke filled night

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Yes the way I hold you is just my own burning look, glint in the eye of admitting this can work to the leftover ashes in the pit Saying hello and good Morning Camp

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Repulsive Emilio Muscarolas (Pitzer '25)

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Somewhere in Nowhere Chase Wade (Pitzer '26) I recognized it in fragments The work of fresh ink and sweat, new words for a new world As I sat at the influx of sparked incense And who saw me but the streets, cass corridor adjacent The new mirth in hushed halls and celebrations No language to describe, that night so black and Air blew unto me the knowledge we were not alone in this It was home, flashing bodies moving like lighting to the pounding of the djembe As if through each breath They were asking Who are you to stand still?

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Threshold AJ Jolish (Scripps '25) The night before I saw fireflies for the first time Someone asked me when I’d seen fireflies for the first time.

I said I wasn’t sure I had.

At first glimpse I became sure, those little smarts of light, I realized I hadn’t truly believed it was possible.

I was in your hometown, though I hadn’t met you yet, Would meet you four months and two thousand miles later.

Now we joke that everything in our future house that can possibly be stained glass Will be stained glass. Windows, doors, sinks, a claw foot bathtub.

Plus floral wallpaper, loads of colorful tile, a secret passageway if we’re lucky.

I believe it: we’ve been lucky so far.

You are not the first person I ever loved but you were the first person to love me at the same time, which I can tell you right now is a much better deal.

Every time I walk into your room I want to yell honey, I’m home I want to pick you up and carry you over the threshold I want to share clothes, a collection of crochet hooks, a cat, Maybe two cats, let’s go crazy.

In the arena of metaphor, fireflies join grasshoppers, and perhaps tiny emerald green frogs, as symbols of jar-captured beauty the first of a trillion harms a child will enact in its life.

I don’t know if I believe in heaven for anyone but those suffocated lightning bugs, an eternal reward for the lovelier metaphor they’ve given me instead: a field of wild sparks rewriting what I believe can exist in the world How I feel when I look at you and see a house with both our names on the deed.

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Embarcadero Florence Pun (Scripps '23)

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Monkey’s Paw, Rabbit’s Foot, Horseshoe Still Attached AJ Jolish (Scripps '25) I can’t look directly at her, especially now that she’s glowing with the chase. It’s easier when she’s studying, math homework layed out in front of her, chewing on her pencil and furrowing her brow. Then, I give myself leave to let my eyes trace the straight line of her nose, the soft curve where her neck meets her shoulders. Times like these, when she succumbs to her righteous outbursts, I have to take breaks: two seconds looking at her, two seconds looking down. There’s no other word but bewitching. Her eyes look greener when she widens them in passion. Her gestures become sweeping. She’ll grab my arm when she’s about to clinch her argument, as if I could stop hanging on to her every word if I tried.

I could sense she was raised religious the day I met her. She would hate to hear me say that. It’s true that she doesn’t have faith in God the way her parents do, not at all. It’s not what she believes, but how she believes it; the evangelical mindset that there is one right path, that she knows it, and that it is her role to be my liberator.

I’ve often wished I had never told her about my family heirloom.

There’s just the one, and all my life it’s been so easy to keep it quiet. Not so with her. The first night of freshman year, after everyone else we’d been sitting with went to sleep, she moved close to me on the couch and asked me if I had any secrets. I could smell the peppermint gum on her breath. She’d dominated the conversation the entire night, and I had watched her talk about politics like the only thing stopping her from freeing the oppressed peoples of the world was the fact that she had to tell us about it first. At that moment, she was looking at me, waiting for me to speak, the lamplight catching on her nose piercings.

I told her about the monkey’s paw. I showed it to her, and then I regretted it.

Today, as we sprawl on her picnic blanket on the lawn, I can feel my resolve flickering once more. The mid-afternoon sunlight is turning her light brown hair to gold as she reaches out and tugs on one of my hoodie strings.

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“Come on, Eleanor,” she croons. “Let me see it again.”

My fist tightens around the silk pouch in my pocket. “No.” “Wait. Just seeing it doesn’t…activate anything, does it?” She wiggles her eyebrows up and down and fakes a gasp.

“Why would you want to see it if you just want to make fun of it?”

Her head is tilted back, her hair a tousled curtain billowing out behind her. “Call it curiosity.”

“I know you want to try it.”

“What, am I that transparent?”

More teasing. I sigh. “You just have to leave it be. It’s important to my family, and I’m not going to be the one who screws it up.”

She sits up, crossing her legs and looking me straight in the eyes.

“Think about it this way,” she says, her voice slow, like the idea is striking her at just this moment. “If it is real, don’t we have a duty to wield it?”

I frown. She places a hand on my knee. “Hear me out,” she says, but now I can’t. Her hand is on my knee; I hear nothing but the buzzing in my ears. I force myself to breathe manually. Two seconds looking at her, two seconds looking down.

“As individuals, we have such little agency in the world, right? I’m studying engineering so I can try and work in renewable energy, and maybe make a fraction of the impact I want to make. That sucks. Tell me that doesn’t suck.”

“I can’t tell you that doesn’t suck.”

“And according to the story, this thing really can grant wishes.”

“And according to the story,” I interrupt, “we are never supposed to use it.”

“But can we really always follow what we’re supposed to do?

What kind of life is that? Especially if you could do something fantastic.” She clasps her hands together, pleading. “Don’t you want to be fantastic?”

I have no idea what my expression looks like, but it’s panicked enough for her to throw her head back in a belly laugh, breaking eye contact.

“Okay,” she says. “Okay. fine. But in that case, I have to get going. I may or may not be staging a meet-cute with Alyssa.”

This time I do everything in my power to not let all my emotions show on my face. I’ve been tracking how much she mentions Alyssa. This is the first time in a while. Does that mean something? Does this mean something, that she’s offering to stay with me?

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“Wait. I’ll let you do it.”

She pauses halfway through putting on her jean jacket. “What?”

“You can make the wish.” My heartbeat is thrashing against my chest.

My lips feel painfully dry. I fumble in my bag for lip balm.

“Really?” She takes the jacket back off, tosses it aside. “Don’t you want to be the one who wishes?”

The only things I’ve ever been told about the paw were said in short, strained sentences. An old family relic. Carry it everywhere. Don’t show it to anyone. Don’t lose it. Don’t use it.

Despite everything, I’ve never felt anything from the paw but my vague disgust with its gnarled, loam-colored skin.

“What would you wish for?” her voice has dropped to a gravelly whisper. I feel like an ice cube dropped into boiling water. I feel like redhot metal dipped into snow.

“You-” I don’t let myself pause- “should wish.” I thrust the silk pouch towards her. She takes it.

“Eleanor, if you really don’t want me to, I’ll stop trying to poke holes in your spiritual stuff.”

I say nothing.

“But, thank you for trusting me,” she continues. She’s trying and failing to hide the condescension in her voice, but I don’t care. She opens the pouch and places the paw in her hand. It’s revolting, a stain against the smoothness of her skin.

“Now?” she asks.

Yes. Now. I nod once.

“I wish there was true, benevolent justice in the world. I want everyone to get what they deserve.”

A moment hangs in the air. Then she recoils, dropping the paw and almost losing her balance. One hand flies to my mouth, and the other reaches out for her.

“No, don’t worry,” she says, a little out of breath. She plucks the paw from where it lies on the grass and drops it back into the pouch. Her voice is confident as always, but she doesn’t explain her reaction. She tightens the drawstrings.

“There’s supposed to be three wishes,” I stutter.

She shrugs, smiling without showing teeth. “One at a time.”

Time passes. She doesn’t return for the second wish. She doesn’t return my texts. I send them anyway, one after another after another.

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I go on long walks every night that somehow all end up in front of her door. I never knock, and I never see any lights on, and then eventually, I leave.

It’s months before I even see her again, and when I do I wish I hadn’t. She’s sitting on a bench, her knees folded to her chest. She’s thinner now, too thin, and her hair is one big snarl at the base of her neck. Her face is contorted in concentration. For a second after I recognize her and before I approach, I’m tempted to pretend I didn’t see her. No: I walk up to her, faking casual, my thumbs tucked into the straps of my backpack. She looks up at me with dull eyes.

“How have you been?” A stupid thing to say, but I have to say something.

She tucks her forehead into her knees. “It’ll happen.”

“What will?” I have to lean in close to hear her. She smells like old sweat.

“I just have to decide,” she says, her voice muffled.“What everyone deserves. Once I figure it out, it’ll happen. It’ll all happen.”

She repeats the last two words until I take a step back, then another. Her head snaps back up, and this time her eyes are frantic, her mouth hanging open but no sound coming out.

“I don’t understand,” I whisper.

She leaps forward and grabs my shoulder, long nails digging into my skin. “Somebody has to decide,” she mumbles. “And it has to be perfect.”

She blinks, suddenly disoriented, and her grip loosens. I stumble backward, falling hard on the concrete. She looks down at me, her eyes unfocused.

I look away.

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Bilter Static Removal Co. Audrey Gruian (Harvey Mudd '26) The Bilters weren’t a family known for trouble. Little Marla, calm as a mosquito before a storm, received two gold stars weekly, the highest praise possible for children at St. Krasch Learning Academy. Last Thursday, in fact, Mz. Iroh stuck one of the shiny, pointed medallions gingerly beside the makeshift table in Marla’s “This is My Home” diorama. Mz. Iroh had expertly avoided the large, fuzzy ball hanging from the box’s soggy roof. Perhaps it was supposed to be a lamp. Or a flying dog? Mz. Iroh wasn’t quite sure. It looked like a moth. But alas, Little Marla was just seven years old.

The Bilters weren’t a family known for trouble, but composed, curious Jacob Bilter seemed to strain necks in the halls of the Mount Rix School. Those who knew him found the bright purple spike on his head to jarringly juxtapose Jacob’s incredibly reserved persona. Those who didn’t know him unassumingly wished they did.

The Bilters weren’t a family known for trouble, and Mr. and Mrs. Bilter were the most obvious proof one could find that this was the case. By day, they were business partners and entrepreneurs and town do-gooders. By night, their activities took a quiet turn: Mr. with his poetry, and Mrs. with her photography. Nothing suspicious. Not even in the slightest.

The Bilters weren’t a family known for trouble. Their one-story sat perfectly nested between two large pines in a small city just North of a more recognizable name one would hear in airport conversation.

There was indeed an active bee’s nest, a neighborhood black bear with the occasional thirst for adventure, and a mildly conservative neighbor who had a knack for baking bundts and accidentally leaving them out to stale. The garage was well-kept, but not to a distressing, colorcoordinated degree. Little Marla’s Lego sets were strewn across carpets, but in an orderly, strategic fashion. Once Jacob was permitted to keep his paints in the house, the kitchen sink often contained

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cups of crude colored liquid, but they disappeared within a day at most. Beds were made most mornings, breakfast was coffee and toast with butter and jam.

The Bilters did their best to stay out of trouble. They knew their line of work was odd, to put it gently, and every evening around the dinner table stressed the importance of their loyalty to each other.

We are, Mrs. would nightly recite, a healing family. It is important we remember. It is important we tread softly. And each morning, after Little Marla and Jacob walked to the bus stop, that is exactly what Mr. and Mrs. Bilter did.

The Bilters had no company car. They didn’t stick yard signs in front of the porch, and they certainly didn’t give out pamphlets at their childrens’ schools. You see, Mr. had a strong sense. A sixth sense. Well, more of an enhanced sense. He could tell when someone required the couple’s services without uttering a word. This made the Bilters’ job very easy. A quiet slip of a business card into a customer’s hand and Mr. and Mrs. had the next bill paid.

Today was no exception. The customer was named Frawn. James Frawn. An eighty-seven year young child-at-heart who now lived alone in the mansion on the hill. Frawn had been in the automotive industry for fifty-some years before retiring in the mountains with his late wife, Janet. Janet, who the St. Krasch kindergarten class would visit weekly to pick plump tomatoes from her garden. Janet, who always had cookies in the oven and a book on her lap. Janet, who was now dead. And this was the subject of the Bilters’ sudden visit.

Well, not so sudden. The appointment was made four days ago, shortly after Mrs. Frawn’s passing. Older folk often wasted no time in seeking their services, the Bilters noted. And so the 9:35 slot on their refrigerator calendar had been promptly filled. Mrs. grabbed the tools and Mr. took the checklist, paperwork, and such. He was the locator, but preferred not to get his hands dirty. He instead guided Mrs. to the site, where she expertly did what she did best: removal.

Mr. Frawn’s mansion was not unlike those of other customers.

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Homely, and a few too many shadows lurking in forgotten corners or under tables. And right where Mr. Bilter expected, Ludd. Floating close to eye level. Dangerously gray and chirping. A cloud, almost, but more like static suspended where only Mr. Bilter could see. The rooms were damp. Dirty dishes and rather expensive-looking china were beginning to spill out of the sink. This was the exact, frame-by-frame crime scene the Bilters were used to. Exact, except for Mr. Frawn perched rather precariously on the arm of a rusted rocking chair.

Mr. Bilter approached the old man and steadied his hands for paperwork signatures. He pointed above the fireplace mantel. Mrs. Bilter attached a wide head to the tube and delicately swirled the static into a small tank. Mr. pointed to the stairwell. Mrs. used the brush head. Mr. motioned upwards. Mrs. set the tube to “tornado”.

And so on, until the whole house, sans the basement and the attic, had been addressed.

As Mrs. Bilter tucked the last of her instruments into her bag, Mr. Bilter flicked the air where Ludd wafted gently. The point wasn’t to remove all of it, both partners knew this, but just enough to make the air breathable again. Of course, their services didn’t provide guaranteed prosperity for their customers (this was stated quite clearly in the paperwork). All they could do was help. And heal.

The 11:00 slot was a returning customer, a young woman with a jutted chin and six different pairs of black heels. One year, the Bilters visited her all the way in the city twice, which in itself was impressive.

This slightly annoyed Mrs. Bilter, but at least she was getting paid each visit, she told herself. Today marked the eighth time the Bilters stepped through the door of her third floor apartment and were welcomed by the same damp feel that had graced their last visit. As usual, moving boxes lined the walls. Typically they held sweaters and jeans, but this time they were almost exclusively button-ups with flower print and leather jackets. I gave him a go, Becca Mart bluntly stated, but I always knew it wouldn’t work out. She kicked a box gently out of the way.

He would be there tomorrow morning at 8 AM sharp to gather his belongings, she relayed to the Bilters.

Becca Mart always watched the process. Mr. Bilter was wary of

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this, as the paperwork very clearly stated that the customer was not to tell any living breathing soul of the duo’s services unless someone desperately required it. It was all there, in fresh black ink. But still, he moved aside as Ms. Mart stood and click-clacked towards Mrs. Bilter’s fascinating maneuvers. Ms.Mart crossed her arms,leaned against the wall, and kept her eagle eyes trained on Mrs. Bilter until the process was complete. Becca Mart’s appointments were always brief. The Bilters were thanked with handshakes and fresh lemonade, and left the apartment at exactly 11:35 AM. After a brief lunch on the drive back from the city, Mr. and Mrs. Bilter donned their raincoats and waddled up the steps of Ms. Margaret Okeep’s home. Mr. Bilter was having a hard time keeping the paperwork dry, but knew this customer wouldn’t really need it, anyway. Ms. Okeep had been in contact with the Bilters since 2010, and had reserved and canceled some hundred and fifty appointments since that first business card. The Bilters had dreamed of this moment, standing under her ivy-infested porch awning, for over a decade. They almost didn’t recognize the petite, lion-haired woman who answered the door.

Ms. Margaret Okeep was an odd woman. Or so the Bilters thought.

And they suspected Ms. Okeep’s ex-husband, Patrick, had felt the same way. Many late-night, unsolicited, off-duty calls with Ms. Okeep in time revealed the details of the Okeeps’ divorce shortly after the birth of their son Gerald. Patrick had been found in the neighbor’s bedsheets.

Gerald now lived with him in the city. Anywho, Ms. Okeep would recount at this point in her retellings, I quite enjoy being on my own.

You understand? And the Bilters would not, but they sympathetically sighed in agreement.

Without warning, Ms. Margaret Okeep thrust two small teacups into each of the Bilters’ empty hands. She seemed frazzled, but many were during their appointments. The Bilters stepped inside Ms. Okeep’s warm two-story house and almost dashed back out. The stench of the Ludd was unbearable! No wonder poor Ms. Margaret Okeep was going insane, the couple thought to themselves. They shared a look. This was finally happening. And Mr. Bilter got started with the damp paperwork.

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The process was excruciating. At least for one half of the duo. She could’ve made this easier for us, thought Mrs. Bilter as she swapped heads, adjusted tube settings, and swirled her device around the house.

Mr. Bilter, on the other hand, had gotten through the paperwork rapidly, and was quite enjoying finding clumps of Ludd in the most unimaginable places around the house: the toilet seat, the closet, in Gerald’s old room. He bounded up and down the stairs with puppy-like glee as Mrs. sluggishly chased his voice.

The Bilters weren’t a family known for trouble, but they hunted it with bared teeth.

And at night, when Mr. and Mrs. Bilter tucked Little Marla into bed and planted a hesitant kiss on Jacob’s cheek, they returned to their respective workspaces: Him and his poetry, Her and her photos. And sometimes, when Little Marla was awoken by a strange dream and required a glass of milk to return to slumberland, she’d hop down the stairs, peek into each of her parents’ rooms, and admire the sparkling, swirling gray above each of their heads.

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38 Corrosive Emilio Muscarolas (Pitzer '25)

When all else failed Nelia Perry (Pomona '24) Always tie your shoelaces together, it’s harder to lose one than two.

I’ve never lost any shoes never even misplaced them.

Laces or not they sit on the rack they get tucked into the corners of bags But if mom didn’t say it then I’d probably forget.

And my last ditch effort at survival means I need two Shoes for my aching feet, my swollen heels on week long Trips into the mountains. Mountain mama.

She watches over me from behind her shoulder, ten steps ahead Rest step, babe, remember the rest step.

Cracked knuckles bleed and drip onto the muddy path And my nose runs so that each step is accompanied by a sniffle.

Pink nose pink toes wrinkled feet from wet socks from river crossings.

Mountain mama wraps me in her arms at night between our sleeping Bags blows warm air on my neck tapes my wounded feet.

Camp shoes are tied together in the bottom of my bag.

Rest step, babe. Tough feet tough back rough mind.

Rest step, love. Breathe deep move forward.

Rest step, mom. I hold her oxygen bag down city streets And pull out the blood oximeter every few feet.

Pale cheeks pale fingers troubled breaths worried eyes.

Hold hands, breathe deep, Rest step, mom, just a few more feet.

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spring break woo!!

Cecelia Blum (Scripps '24) Granulated souls collide On silver thickets of crashing waves They crash until nightfall, then they subside And hidden in the coast deep in disintegrating caves Are twisted truths in broken enclaves All remains untouched by the sun What he cannot see is all that he saves

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Liberty and Defiance in Whistler’s Reading by Lamplight Willa Frank (Pomona '25) She reads a book we see but do not know. The pool of light surrounds her, unbothered by the angle of the floor and the wall, which meets behind her, creasing the edge of the light-circle. Her face is pressed almost unnaturally near to the book, her nose—small and pointed, curved so that, head on, it would be slightly upturned (only to an elegant extent)—nearly touches the page (two girls walking by me note this, too).

In the etching, it is 1859, and so I imagine this lamp is an oil lamp.

Perhaps it is powered by the long, worldly tours of whalers, and those great creatures of the sea they hauled out of the salt and back to the rapidly industrializing world. Equally likely is kerosene—cheaper and not requiring a multi-year journey. Perhaps, even, she is reading by electric lamplight.2 Maybe the lamp is new, a curious and exciting addition to the household, or perhaps the only the fuel is new. And anyway, what is the lamp doing in this etching?

This is an image of Absorption.3 The young woman is absorbed in her book and we are seeing her without her being aware of us. As I might be absorbed in her, she is absorbed in her book (if I were to be painted now, would I, too, appear unaware?). Her cup of tea is forgotten on the table. Nothing can shake her focus on the words—she is within their world, they hold her tightly. And the lamp? It is here only to illuminate words. This young woman, as with the the teacup, has forgotten about the lamp entirely. She is reading.

It seems a heavy blanket is draped over her lap. The cloth over her shoulders seems heavy as well. Perhaps it is all just her dress, I cannot tell. Given the hour, I assume she is in her nightclothes (briefly 1

Image from the Metropolitan Museum of Art: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/372692 The History of the Kerosene Lamp, 2020, Iowa State University, https://www.museums.iastate.edu/virtual/ blog/2020/04/24/the-history-of-the-kerosene-lamp#:~:text=In%20the%201700's%20and%20early,Glass%20Factory%2C%20Sandwich%2C%20Mass.

3 Harpo’s Bubbles, 2010, Cabinet Magazine, see: Bubble #1https://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/37/koestenbaum.php 1

2

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Reading by Lamplight (1859) James Abbott McNeill Whistler

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I am distracted, thinking of antique “nightclothes” in their white cotton eyeleted intricacy) and thus draw the conclusion that all that drapery is simply a blanket, or some other clothing-object we no longer use, or know the name for. All this speculation matters little; she is draped in fabric, we can see, such that she is comfortable enough to read. The fabric keeps out distractions of cold or drafts. She is cocooned, only such that she may read.

Her fingers are strangely, unnaturally, eerily long and thin. She holds the book open with these fingers, which are pressed together, as if fused or pinched. A ring graces her right ring finger (she is young, not married, then—perhaps this is her parents’ house, she has not left home). It seems small earrings are casting a shadow on her neck. Her hair is pulled back in a loose knot, the details of which are not etched clearly. She is reading the right page, we can tell from following her gaze (how apt we are at following gazes, even in drawings!). She will turn the page soon. She is nearly to the bottom.

I am wondering about the rest of the house, now. I imagine it to be quiet, with creaking floorboards and a light wind outside. Nonetheless she is comfortable, for this is her home. And this being her home, she can forget her surroundings more readily. Perhaps hours ago she told her family she would go right to bed, but long after everyone has settled into sleep, she sits, still, absorbed.

This etching is more precise, smaller, blacker and browner and darker than Whistler’s other etchings around the gallery. I wonder, then, if he knew her, if her contours were familiar to him, as a friend or a muse, and if this familiarity is the cause of the clarity of this etching, as opposed to a street scene, displayed nearby, which is rough and quick.

Recall the title: Reading by Lamplight, not Woman Reading by Lamplight, or even Louisa (for instance) Reading by Lamplight. No, it is a portrait of reading itself. Or not a portrait at all, but a scene. And perhaps the nature of this scene of reading—the fervor of the young woman who has fallen into her book—is the reason for Whistler’s heaviness and precision. The heavy lines scratch the surrounds into deep shadow. Remember: she has forgotten the room around her, and Whistler carefully shows this with that persistently hatched frame of darkness, intensifying the viewer’s attention to the light-circle.

The title is typical of Whistler; many of his works appear to be portraits, but are titled as acts, objects, or effects: The Horoscope (a

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woman bends over the paper, coffee or tea in hand. It is morning.), Needlework (a woman looks straight ahead, the object, the action at question in her lap), The Medici Collar, The Fan, The Velvet Dress, Firelight (Mrs. Joseph Pennell). In this last, Whistler recognizes his tendency to remove subjectivity from his object of fascination. Mrs. Joseph Pennell receives acknowledgement, as it is she who serves as the canvas on which the firelight flickers. At the same time, there remains an intimacy to even those unnamed figures who sport the Medici Collar or the Velvet Dress: the removed subjectivity somehow does not devalue the figure; her face is attended to with care, her hair swept this way or that with precision—she remains alive within the Velvet Dress. Whistler captures these garments, objects, etc., which have snagged his attention as his eye roves over the world (he traveled quite a lot) as embodied. And so he captures reading as embodied by the young woman illumined by lamplight.

It is worth noting that Whistler captures reading one other time, 20 years later in 1879. This time, a lithograph (as opposed to an etching) also of a woman. The sketch is rougher, quicker. She appears to be reading a newspaper. Perhaps Whistler saw her at a café. Her features are difficult to make out, and her surrounds are non-existent.

She seems a stranger to Whistler, but something about her attention to the paper must have again caught his eye—something about her absorption. Either way, Reading is immensely less intimate, though perhaps not in any intentional or comparable way—one seems to be a plein air sketch, the other a concerted effort to illustrate the act of reading. Still, Reading can show us that the lamplight is crucial for the ardor of this image before us: Reading by Lamplight.4 The lamplight allows for a truer, more exact portrait of reading, for it hushes the surrounding world and examines the act alone.

Perhaps like Whistler, something about this young woman reading attracted me, a sticking point on the white wall, waiting for my eye. It seems I am often strung along the walls of a gallery until I reach someone like this—some woman alone. Always I note a performance of a woman’s intellect—reading, writing, even the more usual things depicted like embroidery or piano (which indeed Whistler depicted at other times). I suppose I am drawn to images which show women 4 All works mentioned may be viewed in the online catalogue of the Metropolitan Museum of Art: https://www. metmuseum.org/art/collection/search?q=James+McNeill+Whistler&sortBy=Relevance&pageSize=0&offset=80

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active—not passive wallflowers but beings absorbed in the fury of the world. And is reading (by lamplight) so furious? No, but there is—I note again—an intensity to her reading. She is shrouded not in darkness but in light, remaining in the realm of the waking against the natural rhythms of the house and the landscape.

It is undoubtedly significant that Whistler’s portrait of reading itself features a young woman. Perhaps there is something to the young woman which makes her precisely the right subject to accompany the book—to give life to the book through her mind, her figure, her slightly upturned nose and slender fingers—in a portrait of reading. There is historical precedent for this sort of woman—she is Jane Eyre, she is all the girls who read Jane Eyre cover to cover and over again. She is the girl who takes it upon herself to learn, who reads and reads, desirous of the words alone. All this reading lends her a certain independence. A freedom which the real world denies her.

Still I must address why a portrait of reading is not, almost cannot feature a young man, least of all in 1859. The young man is not one to be kept indoors—his object is conquest, of women, of foreign lands, of the market. He does not have time to read, and if he does, because of course young men do read, it lacks the intensity of the woman. He already possesses the world contained in those words (if he doesn’t, he has the sense that he does). It is 1859, a period of social, political, and industrial upheaval. The young man is at the center, he is master of the upheaval, while the young woman remains at home—her life has not been so changed, yet. The young woman’s knowledge must be sought and claimed by her, must be read in those books alone, in the night. Reading then exists at the very edge of the domestic space—the pages touch the outer, masculine world which would, in a less domestic context dominate her. To read at night by lamplight is her liberty, her freedom, by which she places herself in the fury of the world (I contradict myself: reading is indeed furious, with such high stakes as I have outlined).5 When I am reading into the night, even now so many years later, there is always a sensation of recklessness. I imagine our young woman to feel this too, viscerally. When the house quiets, there is some idea that one should not be reading, and thus the reading is more fervent.

It is not that she is unaware of the time, for rather it is the awareness 5

This line of thinking pays homage to Virginia Woolf in Three Guineas, 1938.

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of night which enables the heady sensation of reckless reading. The deepening of the night sings softly sleep, yet on and on she reads.

Reading by lamplight embodied by the young woman becomes an act of defiance; even in her stillness, she has entered the chaos which plays out upon the landscape of the outside world as it appears, mirrored, on the page.

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The Debt Aliya Earley (Scripps '24) Trigger Warning: Disordered Eating

I don’t know how to write. I was never going to be a writer because being a writer is the opposite of everything I stood for. For years, I tried to pretend I wasn’t writing anything outside of school, as if not telling anyone about my personal writing meant it wasn’t happening. I thought if I ignored it, the writing would just go away.

I don’t know how to do a lot of things. For example, I don’t know how to eat. Most of the food I put in my mouth doesn’t go down, or if it does, it comes right back out a few minutes later. I am trying to get into a residential treatment center over the summer to fix this. I have already been to residential treatment several times, back when I forgot how to live, but it was only after this that I found out I don’t know how to eat. Now I have to go again, but to a different center, for different reasons. I try to explain to my friends that a residential treatment program for eating disorders is really just a big house you stay in until a group of strangers succeeds in teaching you how to eat, but understanding is too complicated, it seems, for people who have never been where I am. I have taken to saying that I am going to eating disorder summer camp because eating disorder classes didn’t work out. Summer camp, they have been to.

I hate that I have to explain, but more than that, I hate that no one cares to understand. They know that I am drinking sixteen meal supplement shakes a week, but I don’t think they consider that I have to be there for each one of those bottles as I hold my nose and force it down my throat. I don’t think they understand scrounging for Amazon boxes to use as makeshift recycling bins because putting the bottles in the one I share with my roommates fills it up in three days. I don’t think they understand that my family is using our savings, but we avoid talking about how much of this money is still left. I was not meant to turn out sick. These savings were meant to be saved, not spent.

My friends don’t understand how much money it costs to be sick.

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My sickness is complicated and not their problem anyway. They can live their whole lives without truly knowing people like me, and so they will. When they do ask, they find that they did not actually want to understand-- not if it was going to take this much effort. And hey, that’s their prerogative, right? It’s not their life, it’s mine.

It’s my life and I still cannot understand. How can a girl forget how to eat? Isn’t this one of the few commonalities in human experience? Isn’t this the most basic tier of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs? And how can a girl eat so little for so long without falling down dead? How can she go so many years skipping meals without a single person noticing? How can she go so many years starving without she, herself, noticing?

I’ll tell you a secret, but only if you promise not to spread it around: she knows how it happened. She knows how she forgot how to eat, but admitting this would mean admitting her guilt. She did this to herself, after all. She taught her body to eat its fat and eat its muscle in her refusal to waste even a sliver of a resource on herself. She learned to be needless, to go without sleep and clean teeth and any moment of peace so that she could be certain she was working harder than any girl could.

Eating three meals a day for fifteen minutes each wastes five hours and fifteen minutes each week. Five hours and fifteen minutes spent not studying and not making money and not cleaning the house. Five hours and fifteen minutes weekly spent not repaying her ancestors and not performing perpetual gratitude for being granted life despite being undeserving of it. After all, no one who is alive deserves it. The girl understood this sooner than she could speak, as her mother before her did, and her mother’s mother in India before that. No one who is alive deserves it. We are all just here to try to pay the debt back.

Now, so many generations later, it cannot even be determined who the debt is to. God, maybe, or the ancestors, or some other vessel, but the trick is that even in the absence of all of these people, the debt would remain. The recipient of the debt has become irrelevant.

When a child is faced with an impossible ultimatum, a sourceless and irreconcilable debt, the child believes she can do the impossible, and then she does. The debt required the girl to defy human biology, so she did. The debt required the girl’s mother to live without her father, so she did. The debt required the mother’s mother to leave her family at the age of five, so she did.

You can try to explain to your friends that the debt is something

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that lives in the pads of your fingers and the soles of your feet, that it has no definition or origin, but it will be unintelligible to people who do not have it baked into their blood. This is part of it-- the debt does not add up. It is real only so long as you do not attempt to expose it.

I was never going to be a writer because writing is about making meaning and not about making money. But it’s not really about the money, is it. That’s just what we say it is. The truth is, writing is not paying back the debt. Writing is warmth and want and exuberance and therefore an affront to everyone who has died so I could live. To want to write is to want to be known, and to want to be known is the biggest vanity of all. I spent my whole life praying to be anything but a writer, praying for this to just be a phase, praying for all my words to simply go away. I spent my childhood trying to prove to myself that I was good at something else, anything else, anything that did not bring me joy, because that would prove that I could live without this.

I was going to be a Materials Science Engineer, actually. I spent two years facilitating science fairs, going to workshops and info sessions and internships. I try to explain to my friends that being a Materials Science Engineer is really just putting magnets in the oven over and over to see whether they still work afterward, but understanding is too complicated, it seems, for people who have never been where I am. I was a good Materials Science Engineer, I want to say. I was going to pay the debt back, I want to say.

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From the Floor Skylar Masuda (Pitzer '24)

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Concrete Waves Florence Pun (Scripps '23)

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aubade — Siena Swift (Pomona '23) sillouhette kissed by the afternoon sun the slope of your nose into the crook of my arm as rain taps gently on the rusted table outside your bedroom window my blue dress with the open back is covered with innumerable black and white hairs the culprit purrs on beside us tucked into your neck and the quiet peace of sleep softens your face, returns it to youth unfurrows your brow smoothes out your stubborn frown i listen to you breathe slowly for a change as calm as the ocean when the wind ebbs until eventually your legs jerk twitching under the timeworn quilt knocking our knees together even asleep, you are running

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The Breach Emilio Muscarolas (Pitzer '25) -- Day 1; 0º off course -I remember a glint. Then, impact. Alarms, lights. Death sounds. A great shudder in the hull of the Ship, a shiver down its spine.

I saw it from the window. The only window on this vessel, etched into the soft curvature of steel, titanium, platinum. It came from somewhere out there -- deep space, between fading galaxies, mined asteroids, and generations of stars. Great meadow of creation, a valley of poppies and exploding things. Distant bombs. Planets, dust. Gods.

It came fast and silent, careening through empty vacuum, some killing seeker, some maker of debris, an echo of violence. The impact was just as quick. A flinch. Vibrational. The Breach, as I named it.

Alarm bleat and cosmic panic filled my cells, orange - red - yellow red - red betraying the location: the Communications Hub. Whatever it was, it had struck deep. An anomaly; the exceptional event I was trained to handle.

CAUSE: Unknown. Possibly remnant of discarded fuel cartridge from past launch. Possibly stratoplex from exploded satellite. Possibly missile.

DAMAGE: Communication no longer functioning. Course possibly offset. Unable to send distress signal. Unable to locate stratonavigation data.

LEVEL: Urgent.

My response was immediate and in line with NavCorp protocol. There was no deviation from what was necessary. I made no mistakes. Yet, for six blurred and visceral hours, I toiled over the machine and its

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breakage, attending to what I thought could be routinely repaired. But the damage is in a state of flux; recombinant destruction impressing itself in a vast labyrinth of disturbing complexity. Changing. Making.

What I remember: blood, wires, metal, tears, a sinking feeling, broken things, melting, a prayer, tools scattered around the motherboard, my reflection in the tempered steel. I was, as of writing, unable to repair the damage.

-- Day 2; 4º off course -In the last dozen hours, I have devoted myself to attempting to repair the Ship, my home. But I am alone in my mission. I should not have been. There are normally four in a mining ship’s crew; I would have been known as the Engineer. No names. Never any names. I thought I could handle being alone. Foolishly, I wanted it. I begged for it, took the expedient contract with hazard pay. All for what? Space to breathe, quiet, rest without three other bodies pressed together in the sleeping pods. Three less shares of the profit. But bodies are good for more than just company.

I was built for this. Engineering: a trait superimposed on my genes, the subscript to my birth, my making. My training is rote in my cells and in my bloodstream lies nothing but what I was made to do -- to fix.

NavCorp born. NavCorp made. And to thank them for this gift of life I operate machinery in line with their protocol. I observe, unsmiling, unfeeling, as violence is wrought against moons and other bodies for their metals, for their profits. Profit. Prophet. Oracle of some distant, nebulous thing. Conceptual body. Corporate entity. I am a corporate entity, corporeal, yet, machinal. But these are useless thoughts. This is what I was made for.

The panic comes in waves. While working, I am almost gone.

Reduced, near fully, to my purpose, my function. I become machine.

Something with a mouth and four limbs with no name, only a serial number, only a mission, only a series of repairs. Then the limits of my body present themselves. A cramping, a knotted tendon, gnawing hunger that cannot be ignored. And the panic returns. I sit with it, breathe through it, measure it in heartbeats, pulses of the constant alarm tone. And when

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I am measured, when I am counted, when I am gathered into myself, I return to the maintenance. I return efficient, effective. I return as my purpose.

STATUS: Course offset by 4º. Without correction, could deviate exponentially. Cannot correct before communication is restored. If repair is not soon, target asteroid possibly not reached within orbital window. Mission at risk of failure.

Somewhere out there, a supergiant the size of 700 solar bodies gently pulls at the trajectory of an asteroid. It obliges. And without resistance, its icy flesh is burned off in a trail of blue-white gore.

-- Day 3; 9º off course -I was so close. I know it. So close to restoring order to this machine.

Order. All I seek, here, all anyone seeks, there and here and the spaces between. The close array of atoms and molecules found only in Chromium, Thallium, Lead. Materials which cannot be degraded or destroyed. Iridium, Osmium, Platinum. Interstellar bounties, just another grid among grids, heated until melted, until mercurial. They are molded, like I am, into engines and fissures and deep, feeling things. Moving parts which move together into gestalt machines with such fluid function they are almost like music. A body of work. Heavy metals are perfect things, built into more-than-perfect things. Stability in entirety. But here they are breaking, unfixable. Malfunctioning in the highest order. Order. This Ship is in a state of anomaly where even solids are betrayed to be gaseous, pondering things.

Other, more essential functions have begun to decline. Propulsion.

Navigation. Hydroponics. It became necessary that I abandon the communications hub. I crawl about the Ship, bare feet to bare metal, blood to oil, blood to blood, seeking the next function to correct.

Command & Data-handling Systems. Cooling Systems. Supply Management Systems. It has taken me far from the Motherboard, the home of the Breach, then back to it. This vessel is a circle. An orbit. A hallway that keeps spinning around a center of gravity so enigmatic, even the Breach cannot unravel it.

In the past sixteen hours, only one has been spent not attending to

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maintenance of function. Most of it was spent eating, closing eyes for a moment, writing this.

STATUS: Navigation - failure. Hydroponics - restored. Propulsion - restored. Command & Data-handling Systems - failure. Cooling restored. Supply Management Systems - restored. Communication - failure. No discernible pattern to malfunction. Mission abandoned, preserving life now priority.

There is a class of Solar System asteroids called Trojans. They share Jupiter’s orbit, trailing in the path of a god, librating about a point 60º behind their master. They are named after ancient warriors, and rightfully so. To be in orbit, to traverse the same ocean again and again and again is to be at war with your own body, your own motion. Like them, I am at war.

-- Day 4; 23º off course -I haven’t slept since the Breach. I can feel the fragments of my ego slipping, and though I hold myself tightly, it feels as though my skin is becoming porous, malleable. Liquid. My hands have spent so long gripping metal, metal tools, metal wiring, metal skin, to be without it is unfamiliar and disturbing. To be among only flesh instills in me a panic akin to the moment of Breach.

I spent little time, before, thinking of how much I know this Ship. I know it more than myself. My Ship: my home, my body. Before the Breach, before all this, I thought of it as some sort of casing -- a metal carapace, unfeeling, which holds in it my humanity as some distant, separate thing. But now, I am unable to determine where my skin ends and the titanium of the Ship begins. I look down at myself, as I repair myself, perceiving not a machine, but another organism, swarming, shallow, rippling. Biotic. Cogs among flesh. I am aware of my position in the Ship as I am aware of the position of my arm at my side as I walk, skin to skin with my Ship body, maneuvering within musculature, ligaments, steel plating.

As I pace beneath wires and tubing I am mesmerized by their vascularity.

The swift flow of electromagnetic currents as energy is transferred,

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retransferred. Pulse.

A restoration of breathable air, reoxygenation as just one of many processes and systems. Breath.

A neural network vast enough to comprehend fifty thousand lightyears of traversable Milky Way, countless asteroids, formless wonders, dark matter. It dreams: plots courses to distant worlds, imagines the ideal conditions for life, predicts the saliency of heavy metals on moons and other bodies. Motherboard -- Brain.

STATUS: Repairs easier now. Can anticipate damage, feel solution.

Flesh body beginning to fail. Hope for survival still present, despite lack of progress in restraining Breach corruption.

For just a moment, here, between repairs, a strange and oppositional thought has entered my awareness. Maybe I don’t want to fix the ship. Maybe these next hours or days of repair are useless. Maybe I am happy here, drifting, off course. Alone, yet altogether not alone. Forever.

Maybe I want the Breach to win. Maybe there is freedom in orbit.

-- Day 5; 48º off course -Those recurring impulses of surrender have infected my mind. They come alongside a buzzing which I cannot locate. An unusual brightness teeming just below the surface of my skin, into my copper wiring. A movement. Paranoia contends with efficiency.

I can no longer consider the Breach as inert. Its spread is like a disease, a mold, a sinking dread pulsing through flesh. It is all those things and more sinister. I fear it moving, thinking. Assessing. Anticipating me, reacting to my reactions. Strategically advancing its corruption.

Observing. Testing.

The buzzing persists. Thoughts of some alien life undulating through the crevices of my home-body, feeding on wires and shadows of life, fill my mind like poison. Like gravity. A black hole tugging gently at my orbit from a distance of light-years. I am an asteroid, swaying between the gravitational mechanisms of planets, stars, and larger

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bodies. Killing bodies. What is the bounty which my form contains that this Breach seeks? Was I a deliberate target?

My opponent teases me. Gives me no moments of rest. Asserts its Breach across my Motherboard, across my scabbed and bruised chest.

It is weight. It is damage. It is delusion. The buzzing grows louder now.

Laughing. Though my body is no longer defined by its limits, I fear it is not enough. Perhaps to have a body is to be damaged, to always be damaged. Forever malfunctioning. A sign on my forehead that reads “Do not enter; Under construction.” Will this be my future? A constant series of repairs blending into a series of formless, worthless thoughts like this? My trajectory wavers. Succumbing may be the ultimate resistance.

STATUS: I have had many homes and none of them Earth. Built in NavCorp manufacturing colony orbiting Neptune. Materials sourced from retrograde satellite of Jupiter, Earth’s moon, rogue asteroid on edge of Solar System. Genetics designed for engineering capacity. Born in test tube on Venus. Training received on military warship, mining colony, moon base.

LOCATION: Unknown. Deep space. Unfathomable mind. Lake Michigan.

DESTINATION: Unsolvable. Profit. Manufacture. Graduate degree in astrophysics.

And yet, weight of three Earths’ gravity and all, the moving part of me trudges to the next malfunction. An Engineer in motion will stay in motion. Callisto, moon of Jupiter, cannot cease her orbit of whim, of fatal design. Fate. My design is fatal. The buzzing crescendos.

-- Day ?; course abandoned -Exhaustion. Energy depletion. Walk turned to limp turned to crawl turned to drag body across the floor. Surrender. Then, a realization: the Breach had won this unrelenting war of attrition. In the aftermath, I no longer consider its wreckage as damage. Malfunction is just a state,

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among many other like states, not altogether different fferent from what I was ff before. I have returned to the Motherboard. Origin of damage. Concept of beginning. Capital letter. It is familiar, there. Cold; hardened. Fleshy; warm. I left my tools behind. Nothing to fix here. It is an invitation to the Breach -- buzzing, taunting, subliminal in its destruction. If it was moving, it would come. I gathered there, measured my human form in its proportion to the Motherboard. I am small. I am larger than myself.

The Breach came slowly. It started as a warmth. A budding light, steadily becoming a surging, swelling tide, rippling across warm steel and cold flesh. Moving both. Moving neither. It came from the floor, from inside me. It emerged, breaking titanium plating as it was born into my vision.

White.

The Breach was a triple helix, rotating around and through itself. It was mercury. It was chrome. It traversed through twenty-two life cycles in the matter of a minute. Liquid and pulsing, it had a digestive quality as it made and remade itself before me. Alive. I touched it. It responded.

Smiled, even. Moved closer into my palm. My grip tightened.

As it made contact with my fingerprints, it began to radically transform, congealing together as if jelly, as if both solid and gaseous. It stiffened ff ffened and constricted, becoming a simple, solid, fixed shape. A spike. A tower. A relief. It sat warm and welcoming in my hand, soft glow lighting my face, lighting the gray metal of my Motherboard, gently tugging at something behind my eyes. Several of my muscles flexed automatically. I knew its purpose: not testing, not destruction. Recruitment. I smiled, readying myself for what I knew was coming, what was always coming. The truth of the Breach.

I remember a glint. Then, impact. A molten spike of pure white plunging behind my left eye and deep into my brain, impaling my skull. Death in the eyes of Paris as the arrow strikes Achilles true. All at once, I was undone. Broken. Repaired. Breached. White hot. My skin and muscles and steel and wires began melting. Fusing. A teeming symbiosis, triple multiplication of body. I screamed, I think.

The entrance to the Motherboard, which quickly became a cavity in the hull of the ship, was sealed off. Darkness, now. Buzzing, here. Brain

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matter physically mingling with circuitry. Body becoming place becoming Breach. Disintegrated. A meteor burning up in Saturn’s atmosphere.

What I remember: blood, wires, metal, tears, a sinking feeling, broken things, melting, a prayer, bodies scattered around the Motherboard, my reflection in the tempered steel. Child of Venus and Neptune and the crawlspaces between. Asteroid.

STATUS: Body gone, consciousness remains. Electrical impulses control limp and vestigial flesh. Magnetic waves operate machinery. A double mind accesses communication data and restores all functioning to the ship. A third thing watches; smiles. Its homes were destroyed by mining ships like this one. Heavy metals scattered like remnants of gods in space-time. Novel purpose emerges in unity of three. None coerced. All damaged.

I am aware of a mistake in my process: I called the Motherboard the brain of this form. But it is not a mind. No. It is a womb. And it is here I will be born. And it is here I will be home.

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