Atrium Winter 2024

Winter 2024

TRUE FLORIDA STORIES

AT R I U M Welcome to the fourth annual print issue of Atrium, a narrative nonfiction magazine produced by University of Florida students.

Our mission is simple: to tell true Florida stories. Our focus is on issues important and unique to the Sunshine State. Our hope is that through the prose, photography and poetry on our pages, we are able to share the voices of those who have not always been heard.

Atrium is named after the open space in Weimer Hall, home of the College of Journalism and Communications at the University of Florida. The atrium allows the Florida sun to shine in, bringing light into the heart of our building. Similarly, we hope our namesake magazine will help illuminate the heart of our state.

Happy reading!

The Atrium team

SPECIAL THANKS Atrium would not be possible without the support of the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications.

Special thanks to Michael and Linda Connelly for their generous gift that promotes narrative nonfiction at UF; Department of Journalism Chair Ted Spiker, without whom Atrium would be but a dream; CJC Dean Hub Brown; and CJC Executive Director of External Relations Randy Bennett.

Funding for Atrium comes from the Michael and Linda Connelly Fund for Narrative Nonfiction; the Harold A. (Hal) Herman Endowment Fund; and the Department of Journalism Magazine Fund.

cover by MATTHEW CUPELLI and DELIA ROSE SAUER

CONTENTS ESSAYS

3 into the off season 5 Heading Máté Imre sex talk 9 The Ginger Koehler other side of the scale 13 The Brooke Davidson Sticky notes Lauren Brensel

POETRY

15 16 Mamá Vivienne Serret de mi guardia 18 Ángel Vivienne Serret poetry 19 Pop-up Staff

NE 8th Ave by NE 9th St Brooke Davidson

FEATURES & SPECIAL PROJECTS

20 the beast 24 Taming Alissa Gary connection 30 Lost Matthew Cupelli scales that guard the springs 36 The Kylie Williams life and death of a Florida abortion clinic 42 The Siena Duncan is where the hound is 52 Home Anna Edlund you want to try some pickles?

58 Do Alissa Gary of rest 64 Roots Kate Becker in motion 70 Words Luena Rodriguez-Feo Vileira Florida lost 77 What Staff 80 Memoir Delaney Starling Preserved in smoke and stone Delia Rose Sauer

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S T A F F Editor-in-Chief Matthew Cupelli Managing Editors Lauren Brensel Luena Rodriguez-Feo Vileira Design Editor Diego Perdomo Multimedia Editor Delia Rose Sauer Marketing Director Delaney Starling Social Media Director Anna Edlund Layout Designers Katherine Batteese Kate Becker Mackenzie Bukens Alissa Gary Zarin Ismail Eva Lu Emma Riutort Jack Vincent Lindee Walker Illustrators Tina Dörr-Kapczynski Eva Lu Delia Rose Sauer Photographers Anna Edlund Alissa Gary Autumn Johnstone Kat Tran Jack Vincent Advisers Cindy Spence Natalie van Hoose Ted Spiker Founder Moni Basu Tr u e F l o r i d a S t o r i e s | A T R I U M

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The theme that chose us introduction by LUENA RODRIGUEZ-FEO VILEIRA illustration by DELIA ROSE SAUER

IT STARTED at the editors’ meeting.

Huddled together on stiff plastic chairs, our eyes growing weary, we let the discussion drift toward an inescapable question.

What would’ve been different, we wondered, without the days lost to the storms?

We were among the lucky ones: Our casualties consisted of working hours and the week’s momentum, not our childhood photos and homes. For most of us, that is.

But a loss of any size still leaves a hole, threatening to sink you in thoughts of what once was, what could’ve been. No number of warnings — Category 4 hurricane alerts or signs that Grandma is getting older, sicker — eases these unwelcome goodbyes. As much as Florida gives, with its streams of sticky, sunny days perfect for memory-making, it also takes.

This issue, our stories grapple with losses of many kinds: of people and possessions, of athletic passions and reproductive rights. At a glance, we seem to have only our memories to cling to, on days now clouded by the shadow of what once existed.

But loss can also remind us of all that remains — of what we can make of it.

In the face of loss lies proof of our renewal: a young adult’s new, unplugged community; a bus driver’s dance floor dreams; a mermaid’s conservation mission. In this issue, we explore loss as an experience of the past, present and future folded together. Some stories begin at the point of impact; others follow the life continued afterward.

The question posed by loss isn’t “What would’ve been different?” but rather, “What now?”

These stories are our answer.

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Sticky notes essay by LAUREN BRENSEL illustration by DELIA ROSE SAUER

WE STAND in a semi-circle in

silence. Then, empty promises: My mom will admit that your pea soup is better than hers. My cousin will vote for your preferred candidate for president.

I think, but don’t say (because that would be embarrassing): I’ll play mahjong with you, even though the tiles are confusing, and I hate feeling stupid. I’ll learn to drive, just like you wanted, even though I’m petrified I’ll accidentally hit someone.

At this point, I’ll do anything if you wake up.

Nothing.

My mind wanders.

I’m 9, and my hand is gripping a fabric marker, scribbling “Camp Brensel” in messy block letters on my version of our matching tees.

My palms, sweaty and sore from holding the marker so tight, fumble to get the shirt on. I dash toward the bathroom mirror, eager to admire my masterpiece.

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d esi g n b y JAC K V IN CEN T

Finding something to hold on to

It is the ugliest shirt I’ve ever seen.

Balloons and rainbows and — puppies? I think these were supposed to be puppies, but I’m not even sure. Each drawing bleeds into the next. I sneak a glimpse at my sister’s design: dainty cursive with perfectly placed lilies. Story of my life.

My shirt is objectively the ugliest, yes, but I wear it with pride. At the science museum and the movies and the park, it’s my token of gratitude to you for getting me out of the hellhole that is the YMCA in Florida’s July heat. And, sometimes my cousin would attend camp days, and his shirt was actually objectively the ugliest, so whatever.

The author (left) and her sister Sarah Brensel greet their grandma after their first day of school on Aug. 22, 2007.

(Courtesy of Lauren Brensel)

Grandma’s Camp Brensel was dedicated to the kids, and I liked calling the shots. My first order of business: building my own dollhouse. We rummage through the garage, my eyes glazing over towers of art supplies. How a woman could store so many popsicle sticks is beyond me. We land on pastel-pink shoeboxes and glue and get to work.

You start painting a miniature, cardboard chaise lounge. I hesitate.

Art makes me uneasy. If it isn’t perfect, why try at all? Eventually, I join in. The methodical swishing of the brush bristles calms me down.

It’s quiet, the hum of the AC lulling us into the craft. I’m only a kid, but I know deep down moments like these don’t come often.

But then we bicker about what color the interior should be, and I’m sorry, Grandma, but Perfect Plum Purple is perfectly putrid.

You’re always so stubborn, even now. Someone jokes you’re doing this on purpose.

I’m 12 and partially embarrassed I still sometimes sleep over at my grandma’s house. We gorge on Judge Judy reruns and popcorn. Judy’s rulings, just like yours, are always right,

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HE T R O F F O E V LO

GOD

and that helps ease my mind. The schedule rarely goes off routine.

7 p.m. Dinner 8 p.m. Boggle 8:30 p.m. Boggle interruption — Pop sings showtunes over us until you beg him to stop.

9 p.m. Family gossip before bed 10:30 p.m. proceeds as scheduled, but is not always a given.

The door squeaks, signaling my favorite part of the night. I pretend to sleep as you deposit a small bowl of chocolates on the nightstand.

“Sleepover secrets,” you whisper. I smile in the dark and think: Life can be simple and sweet.

Your eyes flutter back and forth. I think it’s working! OK, let’s see.

I’m 14, and Wait, no — I’m 15, and high school is, well, a lot. But I find time for Tuesday’s dinner and movie. This week, it’s “Little Women.”

My heart swells during Laurie’s monologue to Jo. In the dark theater, I look to you for your reaction. Surely, you’re feeling this, too.

You’re asleep. Rare, but understandable. You ask if I’d be OK skipping dinner on the way home.

I remember you’re getting older.

Still nothing. God, why won’t you wake up?

I’m newly 17 and have made the adult decision to spend my birthday with friends. The buzz of my phone pulls me into a moral dilemma: You’re calling, but dinner just arrived. It would be rude for me to excuse myself now, right?

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I wonder if I still have that voicemail. I should look in case — I’m still 17, and if teenage ignorance wasn’t a hindrance, now a pandemic impedes our relationship.

I see you once. From afar. …

Still 17. Your voice is garbled on the phone, small even. We catch up.

My mom cries in her room. Your nurse is on the other line. I tell you I won a reporting award from our local paper. You tell me to stick with this whole journalism thing.

I will.

We make plans over the phone for when you’re home. You and Pop are nearing 60 years of marriage.

I promise to do your makeup for your vow renewals. I’m thinking a smoky eye and glossy, nude lip.

I’m 17 and standing over you, your goddamn eyes still closed. I rack my brain for something else.

Remember when we hosted the whole family for dinner?

My breathing quickens, my sniffling escalates.

You printed menus, I took

orders. We made the biggest mess in your kitchen.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, give me something. You are the most stubborn person in the entire world, and now I’m mad at you — I’m actually mad at my grandma while she is in a coma. That’s just great.

What is all this for?

As a kid, I thought your grip on my memories — my life — was Gorilla Glue grade. I never feared forgetting you. I can still feel the heat blistering my skin the summer of Camp Brensel. I can hear your artificial valve tick, tick, ticking in your chest.

But what if, when you leave, the glue wears off ? All I’ll have are sticky notes. Short, sweet synopses of you that could be plucked away at any time.

I’m 21, and I revisit one anecdote often.

I’m 10, 11, 12, 13 — doesn’t matter — and we’re sitting down for family dinner. You ask the age-old question: “What was the best part of everyone’s day?” I roll my eyes. I hate when you ask us that, even though it happens every time we eat together.

I’m 21, and suddenly, I don’t hate that question anymore. I try my hardest to view life like family dinner — to find the positive.

My answer today is that I have the world’s ugliest summer camp T-shirt, aside from my cousin’s.

And it took two years, but I got my driver’s license. And I have a pretty durable collection of sticky notes.

They’ve held on this long, at least.

Heading into the off season

d esi g n b y D I E GO P ERDO M O

I grew up with hockey. Then hockey outgrew me. essay by MÁTÉ IMRE photos by AUTUMN JOHNSTONE illustrations by EVA LU and DELIA ROSE SAUER

IT WASN’T MUCH, just an

Máté Imre glides across the ice in his old hockey uniform at the Community First Igloo in Jacksonville, Fla., on Oct. 14, 2024. (Autumn Johnstone/Atrium Magazine)

empty stretch of asphalt in front of our house. But to my brother and me, it might as well have been Madison Square Garden. We weren’t just playing street hockey — we were in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final.

The summer sun beat down on us as we dripped with sweat, casting long shadows across the road. The rays, in our minds, were the bright lights of an arena shining onto us. The score was tied, and it was up to us to decide who would be lifting the Cup. With seconds left, I called out the play-by-play as my brother and I passed the ball around in a play we’d made up just minutes before. The intensity built with each imaginary tick of the clock.

“Five, four…”

We rushed toward the empty goal, weaving around each other as the scrape of our hockey sticks against the road echoed off our neighbors’ houses.

“Three, two…”

One last move, just enough time to get a shot off. The ball smacked against the stick and flew.

“One…” The ball hit bar down, smacking the bottom of the goal post and ricocheting into the back of the net.

Our arms rose in the air to celebrate what might have been our 15th Stanley Cup win that afternoon.

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Given to Máté and the other seniors of the West Manatee Hockey Club, a puck capped off the final year of youth hockey.

...

WHERE OTHERS may imagine the frozen ponds of northern states or historic old rinks, that wasn’t our reality in Florida. We were carving out our place, despite the unbearable heat and humidity, in a state home to beaches instead of frozen lakes. Each time we stepped out onto the ice, it reminded us we were a part of something different — something that, at first glance, didn’t seem like it belonged.

My love for the sport began with my dad. He’d share stories with me of how he and his friends would play hockey on the frozen lake of City Park in the heart of Budapest, Hungary, near where he grew up.

He always wished he started the sport sooner. If he had, maybe he could have pursued it seriously and played for an actual team.

Instead, he passed his dream on to me.

Watching from the sidelines, my dad saw my love for the sport, even in the early days before the ice, when the rink was just our driveway. He signed me up for any clinics, camps and practices he could find, nurturing my passion.

My garage is still stained with black streaks of pucks and sticks from the summer he paid a local prodigy to coach me.

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...

AS WE STOOD outside the frozen sheet of ice, chirps flew back and forth between our teams, unable to contain our trash talk before the game even started. Playing for the Florida Alliance, a team representing the entire state, we faced off against groups from the traditional hockey powerhouses: New England, Minnesota, Michigan and Canada.

Our opponents for this game, like most, ridiculed where we came from.

The second the puck dropped, we came out flying, snagging a quick, cushy lead that left the other team scrambling. Their coach called a timeout in the first period, a move typically used as an excuse to tear into players.

As both teams huddled around their respective benches, a mere 20 feet from each other, their coach’s anger echoed throughout the rink before our coach could even draw up the next play.

“What the f--- are you guys doing?

These guys are from f---ing Florida!”

Our whole team glanced at one another, as the space between us filled with misty clouds as we exhaled into the cold air, each face donning a smile.

Nobody needed to say a word.

We knew we weren’t just winning a game. We were showing them that

Florida hockey had arrived.

The moment was backed by a trend in numbers. In the 1998-99 season, USA Hockey reported 5,606 players registered in Florida. By 2023-24, that number totaled 21,199. Just seven states held more players than ours.

In the years leading up to my time with the Florida Alliance at 16, I saw an influx of snowbirds from northern states, with many becoming coaches, teammates and opponents.

Florida hockey went from niche to normal. High school teams boomed.

Leagues organized by the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Florida Panthers brought an explosion of local players across the state. Their regular season successes, with three Stanley Cup wins between them since 2020, certainly helped grow the game.

The Florida Panthers Scholastic Hockey League boasts 14 teams in South Florida and the Lightning High School Hockey League hosts 21 in the Tampa area.

These leagues offered reduced fees, creating a greater chance for kids like me to pick up a stick and pass around a puck for the first time. More rinks opened up and better coaches came down, some of them former NHL-ers. These new

players were heavily recruited and consistently in the national spotlight.

It wasn’t just about the game anymore; it was about being part of a growing movement that, slowly but surely, was putting Florida on the hockey map.

...

I ENTERED my final season of youth hockey on the U18, only to witness the talent of the younger guys firsthand.

That season, we scrimmaged against the prodigies, teams stacked with younger players who got resources and exposure during their formative years that our generation had missed — kids with real hockey futures.

At first, we figured we’d have the upper hand. We were older, bigger and more experienced.

But they were fast — faster than we expected — and their passes were crisp and controlled, like they’d been playing together for years. They made us look like amateurs, deking around us, running plays we’d never seen and beating us to every loose puck.

We could barely survive. We ditched our game plan for a new tactic: bully them with brute

physicality. It still wasn’t enough.

By the end of the scrimmage, the scoreboard didn’t matter. The loss solidified my belief about the future of hockey and my place in it — or rather, out of it.

My coaches believed I could continue after high school in the North American Hockey League, but I’d be up against players like these, who had D1 offers from legendary college hockey teams in Boston and Michigan. Their skills, work ethic and hockey IQ made it evident even then they would go on to be drafted in the NHL, positioning themselves as some of the best prospects in the country.

No matter how much I wished I could write a different story, I felt like I’d only be delaying the inevitable.

I’d grown as a player over the course of my years in the sport, but

In his fourth year of college club hockey, Máté received a laminated puck after his first goal wearing the Gator jersey.

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...

Florida hockey had grown faster.

AS THE YEAR went on and reality crept in, my father knew how I felt. Still, he’d conjure up ideas to prolong my hockey career.

He suggested that I move to Hungary, live with my grandparents and play the required number of league games to ultimately try my luck on the Hungarian national team.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t find the idea enticing. I’d be

playing the game I loved with a jersey I’d be proud to wear.

I’m certain my father still saw how much I cared for the game and how much I wasn’t ready to give it up just yet.

But the thought of leaving everything else was too much.

I couldn’t “maybe” commit to a dream that seemed so far away.

After a few conversations, he understood I wanted to put my future first. I wanted to go to college.

I started club hockey my sophomore year at the University of Central Florida. The intensity wasn’t the same, but I remained connected to the sport I’d known for 15 years of my life. In a way, it freed me from the pressure and constant sense of expectation.

I transferred to the University of Florida, eager to continue playing on a team filled with great talent and players who shared my passion. I played during my senior year, taking in each moment of competition with

...

the knowledge that this chapter of my life would soon close.

IN THE THIRD PERIOD, I came out of the penalty box and immediately raced the defenseman for a loose puck, hoping to get in alone for a breakaway.

Before either of us were close, I felt the stick push against my back, launching me offbalance toward the boards.

It happened so fast. Too fast for me to register anything but a pop in my right shoulder. I stayed down on the ice, unable to move the muscle. With each short inhale came sharp pain in my chest.

I made my way to the bench, trying to convince my coaches, my teammates and myself that it was OK to keep me in the game.

All it took was one more shift for me to realize I was only hurting my team.

I sat during the dying minutes

of the game, watching the scoreboard count down to zero.

The buzzer sounded, and I joined the handshake, using my left, before skating off the ice.

Máté teams up with random players during an open skate, turning a casual session into a battle on the ice. (Autumn Johnstone/Atrium Magazine)

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the SEX talk

d esi g n b y MAC K E NZI E B U KEN S

Talking about sex terrified me. Now it’s liberating. essay by GINGER KOEHLER illustrations by DELIA ROSE SAUER

I SIT AT A McAlister’s

Deli, crying my eyes out.

Tears make my PB&J soggy. My mom has just explained to me that, when I start becoming a woman, I will bleed and cramp each month.

“Don’t ever tell me anything like that ever again,” I say. I’m 9, and I am furious about the life of pain that surely awaits me.

For once, my mom does what I ask. She never tells me anything like that again. She opted me out of sex ed classes — though even if she hadn’t, I wouldn’t have learned much. The Florida Department of Education only requires schools to teach health lessons that, aside from being medically inaccurate, promote abstinence until marriage and fearmonger about deadly sexually transmitted infections.

Without a proper resource to rely on for sex ed, I joined the countless kids

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in Florida who have been left in the dark.

It’s ironic that my adult life has been spent trying to reverse the impacts of this system.

In seventh grade, in my hot pink and neon green bedroom, I muster the courage to first confront my mom about S-E-X. After I’d

asked what it was at my BFF’s sleepover, and everyone went quiet, I needed to know for sure.

My mom starts: “When a man and woman love each other…” She confirms my worst fears.

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When I mention my “sexpertise,” I become a bit of a confessional booth.

Only at 17 do I dare to speak on the subject again, though now it feels less nasty and more exciting. My ragtag group of girl friends is having another “Just Dance” night at my childhood home. Rasputin has worn us out, and we eat a DiGiorno pizza and sit around my twin bed when someone brings it up.

This time, I’m not afraid.

This time, I have a lifetime of questions bursting at the seams.

And for the first time, I say the word: sex. Not as a whisper, not while fighting back giggles, but plainly, firmly say it out loud.

Half of us have done the deed and the other half haven’t had their first kiss, but none of us has ever had a candid conversation about it until now.

Suddenly, it’s the summer of sex. We talk about it constantly, go to Spencer’s to buy little pink vibrators and have our first experiences with sexuality. Talking about sex is a high, the kind that my friends enjoy recreationally.

But I quickly become hooked.

Unlike my peers, I fall in love with the subject, not just the act.

I’m obsessed with learning more about why people do what they do and why it impacts us so deeply.

When my senior year of high school starts, I decide to spend the

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year researching my hometown’s need for sex ed. When I find that over 90% of parents and students in my county — across parties, genders and religions — want comprehensive sex education, it hits me: This could be my career.

My research landed me a spot at the University of Florida, where I study journalism and the theories and politics of sexuality. Between delivering educational presentations, publishing over 30 articles and never failing to find myself in an unabashed sex talk, I’ve immersed myself in all things S-E-X. When it comes to sex ed, I haven’t just seen the light — I’ve gotten others out of the dark, too.

“You’re the sex girl, right?” people ask me regularly. It brings a smile to my face, even though it definitely makes me sound like a prostitute to bystanders.

When I mention my “sexpertise,” I become a bit of a confessional booth. People take it as an invitation to open up, often with stories they’ve never shared before. Sometimes I feel like I’m standing in the splash zone of a flood of pent-up questions.

“Hey Ging, can I ask a weird question?” texts my old friend, who had pledged a fraternity the previous month.

I haven’t just seen the light — I’ve gotten others out of the dark, too.

“I love weird questions,” I reply.

He recounts his sexual escapades through sorority row, his voice hinting at a sense of pride. But then his volume quiets: “Will you come with me to get an STI test?” He knows it’s the responsible thing to do, and he’s embarrassed he hasn’t yet, but he’s scared. He has no idea how they work, where to get them, or how much they cost. He’s desperate to be safe but too uninformed to take action.

A few months ago, during my shift at an adult store (my career’s version of gaining hands-on experience), a greatgrandma struts in. We instantly click.

“I just want to talk to my grandbabies about pleasure,” she tells me, as we sit across from one another on the store’s leopard-print couch. “They’re grown. I’m grown.

But nobody wants to talk with grandma about getting it on.”

We spend the next hour sharing stories and laughing, enough for me to figure her smile lines had been etched from decades of joy.

As closing time nears, she hands me a $5 bill. I try to refuse.

“Nope,” she says. “I have never had such an open conversation in my life. I’m going to come back to see you again.”

The confessions keep coming: “We have to buy all new sex toys because the silicone on ours is ripping,” a woman says to me in between

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smacks of her gum at the adult store’s register. “We can’t figure out why.”

I solve their mystery pretty quickly after she reveals they were boiling their toys to clean them. A wet washcloth will do.

“Is it normal for a guy to choke you out when you hook up?” my sorority sister asks me over lunch one day, as if the question were about the ethics of putting pineapple on pizza. “I don’t know if I’m being dramatic, but I never expected him to grab my throat.”

The question crushes me because of how normalized violence in the dating scene has become.

“No,” I explain to her. “No, that is not normal.”

“I’m a sex addict,” one man swiftly proclaims to me after introducing himself at a house party. “I broke up with my boyfriend two weeks ago, and I haven’t been with anyone yet, but it’s been hard.” He walks away before I can respond.

“I just got divorced, and my kids have moved out now,” an older woman whispers to me in the back of the adult store, even though nobody else is around. “And I’ve never had an orgasm,” she adds. I find her a pretty pink vibrator to take home. The next day, she backs me into a corner and tells me she doesn’t know how to turn it on.

Two friends talk to me in the same week about sexually exploitative

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relationships with their bosses. Both women reveal how their employers drove them far away from home and made advances. Each woman treated the situation differently. One called HR on him. The other fell into a tumultuous relationship with him.

Both recount their circumstances to me with neutral expressions, but it isn’t hard to see their pain. Neither knows how to make it better.

I see myself in everyone I talk to: people who are ready to open up

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but haven’t been given the chance; people whose lives would have been less confusing, less painful, if they were taught to understand their bodies and desires.

Maybe, if we just said the word — “sex!” — a little louder, and a little more often, it wouldn’t be so intimidating.

We are desperate, as a society, to talk about this enormous and intimate part of our lives. Yet we barely do. If we talked about the weather and what

we had for lunch and how satisfying that orgasm was, perhaps people wouldn’t feel so frustrated and alone.

Maybe if we taught sex ed like we do math and reading, we would have a basic understanding of topics like consent.

Maybe it’s time we proudly share experiences in the pursuit of knowledge, safety and pleasure.

Maybe it’s time we talk about sex.

d esi g n b y JAC K V IN CEN T

The other side of the scale

Measuring my worth but weighed down by comparisons essay by BROOKE DAVIDSON illustrations by EVA LU

“HAS YOUR MOM BEEN FEEDING YOU?” Surrounded by the white walls and paper-lined tables of an exam room, I was puzzled by the pediatrician’s question.

“Of course,” I responded, realizing this question had prompted her to close the door.

The scale blinked. Double digits again. The spot where the third digit should have been was as blank as the look on the pediatrician’s face. She saw only a number, not the story behind it, which started 21 years ago.

My siblings and I were born at 27 weeks, so the Davidson triplets celebrate birthdays in January instead of April. The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit was all we knew for the first three months of our lives, and our life expectancy wasn’t high.

My sister, brother and I weighed only 2 pounds each at birth, missing out on the body fat babies pack on in the third trimester. I’ve always been the smallest triplet, and my brother and sister overcame this struggle earlier than I could. For years,

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the plot point comparing my height to my weight was off the charts — but in the wrong direction. While most teens worry about gaining weight, society expected me to.

Every woman can find something wrong with her body, something to be insecure about. If you’re not overweight, people think it is OK to talk about it. But the attention made me feel abnormal, and as I grew up, comments I once viewed as positive started to sound vindictive.

“Go get another plate, Brooke,” a friend would tell me at lunchtime, even though my portion was identical to others around the high school cafeteria table. “You need to eat more.” I could sense the jealousy under the surface: Let’s all look at Brooke. Let’s point her out so we can feel right in our own bodies, however they may be.

But what about how I felt about myself ?

After a teammate scoffed it didn’t fit me, I rolled up my green lacrosse skirt, twisting it back into place every time the referee blew the whistle. I had to find excuses not to donate blood for the National Honor Society, as I didn’t meet the weight requirements.

One summer toward the end of high school, a friend invited my sister and me to swim in her backyard pool. We changed into our bathing suits, only to step outside to unexpected scrutiny.

“Great,” our host said. “I guess I’ll just go kill myself.”

My stomach sank. All I could manage was an awkward laugh.

I couldn’t help how my body looked, just as she couldn’t change her own in that moment.

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feel obligated to shield others from their insecurities and ignore my own.

I never wanted to become the cause or reminder of an internal battle, especially for someone I was close to.

I acknowledge I’m extremely lucky to be this healthy after my life-threatening beginning, and this impacts the way I see the world today.

I’m thankful. But luck doesn’t account for the emotional tug-of-war that leaves my self-perception frayed, even

as I’m guiltily grateful to be thin in an envious society.

When I’m alone, I can look in the mirror for hours if there are catchy songs playing in the background, posing and lip-synching like I’m the main character in a 2000s movie. It’s when other people are present that insecurity creeps up behind me and pulls me onto the sidelines. Whether I’m trying to see if I have the correct form in a group workout at the gym or putting makeup on with friends before a function, it’s difficult to lock eyes with my reflection. Personal doubt descends like a layer of

condensation, clouding the mirror.

This is my version of survivor’s guilt, which has kept me from accepting me for me. I strive to be what society wants but not bring attention to myself. I need to blend in but also live up to modern standards.

During my first semester of college, the TA of my psychology course taught us anyone born before 32 weeks has a physical or learning disability. No qualifiers like “may have” or “could have” softened her PowerPoint slide. I thought of raising my hand to testify, like I was some sort of witness. Was I the exception? Was it nothing short of a miracle I, along with my brother and sister, had defied those odds?

This became the catalyst of my introspection: remembering the “why” behind why I am underweight. Yes, it’s unnatural — but it’s also a reminder of where I’ve come from, of what I’ve overcome. I can’t base how I feel about myself on others’ attitudes toward me. I’ve learned I need to accept what is regular for me, no matter what side of the scale that’s on.

Society’s fixation on weight is hypocritical. For most people, if they wanted to be “healthy,” they’d lose weight. For people like me, I’d have to gain it. Your perception of health shouldn’t have to revolve around a number, a statistic comparing you to someone else’s average.

During my checkup before heading to college, I saw something that would leave most people unfazed. But as a graduate of months in the NICU, I smiled, knowing my body was developing along its own timeline.

The scale beeped. Three digits.

NE 8th Ave by NE 9th St*

d esi g n b y E MMA RU ITO RT

*One of Florida’s first modern roundabouts, built in 1992

poem by BROOKE DAVIDSON illustration by MATTHEW CUPELLI

RIGHT foot pulses. The red sign becomes my start and stop, an upside-down triangle beckoning into the circle. I enter, begin the counterclockwise dance between thousands of pounds and brains rebooting behind the wheel.

The single lane leaves no room for error.

Tucked in a northeast neighborhood, firebush flowers survive in the center of the roundabout, their red blooms zipped shut like its history.

Tourists’ cameras click in Gainesville’s historic district while the roundabout remains quiet, three blocks away.

One-way arrows render my curious eyes immobile. Yet it isn’t that special anyway.

An unassuming gaze, a singular, faded brown pupil.

Will you too break its stare?

Another fingerprint. No matter how hard it’s pressed into the mold of those I meet, the mark always fades.

I’m not that special anyway.

But I won’t leave you in my blind spot if you promise to accept me for mine.

I urge you to yield to doodles of spray paint, sugarcoating the bright yellow warning sign underneath those black licorice swirls.

Northeast Eighth Avenue

by Northeast Ninth Street, pedestrians view you from all angles, an invitation laid out in weathered red brick, nothing to hide except your unspoken claim to fame.

Circle back. Look again.

You’re worth remembering, and I am, too.

Do I leave your mind as fast as you exit the roundabout, an everyday encounter with no story?

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Mamá

d esi g n b y D I E GO P E RDO M O

poem and illustration by VIVIENNE SERRET

I’LL NEVER FORGET the day you told me

I was the better version of you.

Still, you taught me all the ways to tell a daughter you loathed her in several languages, even though you spoke only one.

Your words cut deeper than the swords I wear on my shoulder, a tarot card tattoo, homage to you.

In Guantánamo, when you and Abuela were down to just one cup of rice, you, Cuban girl, dreamed of a house covered in red roses.

At 19, you landed at the height of a blizzard in Detroit, hoping to smell those flowers.

But you never did and now that garden adorns my collarbone.

We moved to Hialeah — walking down Okeechobee on the weekends, you’d buy me guarapo juice, and you’d always ask if I knew who I was.

I sipped, hoping by the time I finished my drink I’d have an answer.

But all I could say was I don’t know, Mama.

Because you and Abuela would straighten my hair to make me look like Hannah Montana.

I know what you mean now — look Americana.

Because when you came here, mixed woman, with your olive skin and curly black hair, men would touch your locks, and women would look at you like you were an animal.

You didn’t want the gringo people to think I was an animal, but Mama, you still kept me in a cage, and I don’t know how to live outside of one.

In high school, I did mock trial during the day and drama club at night.

Sometimes when the light would shine just right, Mama, I’d see you in the audience.

I never felt more like myself than when I was playing

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someone else.

But how could I tell you?

Nathaly and I took her silver Camry to the mall, where all we could do was look.

I’d run into my mock-trial friends, buying the sweets I could never afford.

This empty stomach was always full of guilt.

I’d see them in class — I was still playing a part.

The part where I was “Americana con dinero.”

But with the holes in my shoes and the Goodwill tag on my shirt, Mama, they could always tell.

An invisible leash grips my neck.

Like a dog, I look sad and widen my eyes, begging others to let me out, but if it’s ever opened, I hesitate and crawl back in.

How do I manage to bark so loudly at others with a muzzle?

Still unhappy with these frizzy curls, crying when I pull out the flat iron, wincing when I smell my own hair burning.

Just like how Abuela doesn’t smoke anymore, but always smells like cigarettes, some stains are forever, and I feel like it’s my 600th day in a shelter.

A poor little pitbull, always the last choice.

Looking in the mirror, I see only what people want me to be.

Mama, I’ve looked through your sepia Polaroids, your 14th birthday, a cake hardly bigger than a muffin.

Two candles burning, barely illuminating your frilly dress.

You wear a frown.

Who were you before I started to call you Mom? I’ve covered this skin in tattoos and scars only to live a life of button-ups and turtlenecks.

I’ve altered my voice to say yes instead of no because it’s what you said would get me far.

You used to tell me poor people don’t always get hand-me-downs.

But you handed over the same pain your mother did.

I’d rather keep it like a collar, forever bound to my neck, than hang it in my daughter’s closet.

Mama, I just want to walk down Okeechobee, let the breeze cool the sweat that drips behind my curls.

And when you ask me who I am, I want to say that I am me and mean it.

Instead, all I can do is thirst for guarapo juice to heal me again, and hope that I have an answer by the time I finish.

d esi g n b y D I E GO P E R DO M O

Ángel de mi guardia poem and illustration by VIVIENNE SERRET

I’VE ALWAYS been scared of the dark, and Mama, you knew that.

So you’d light a eucalyptus candle and sing for me: Los pollitos dicen pio pio pio, Cuando tienen hambre, Cuando tienen frío.

When that didn’t work, you’d help me say a prayer: Ángel de mi guardia, Dulce compañía, No me dejes sola, Ni de noche ni de día.

You weren’t religious.

Still, you’d tuck me in, wrap me in my cow-print blanket and tell me it would be okay.

And as you’d turn in your pink satin robe, illuminated by the smoke of your eucalyptus candle, your black curls hugging your shoulders, I would think to myself: My mother looks like an angel.

I became too old for nursery rhymes and Latina prayers, but you’d remind me that monsters didn’t always come out in the dark.

They weren’t creatures with long limbs and sharp teeth.

Sometimes they looked just like me.

Not because I was a monster, but because you’d tell me I was too beautiful.

Tápate, vienen tus tíos. Cover yourself.

And even though la pobreza kept us humble, you couldn’t say the same for other people.

I still whisper el Ángel de mi guardia when I struggle, but in my dreams she isn’t a white figure with wings.

She’s a Cuban woman with green eyes and olive skin who sings “Azucar” by Celia Cruz at 7 a.m. as she fixes me café con leche before I run to the bus.

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You cried out to the moon in Guantánamo after your father died.

Did your mother sing the same song to you?

Did you picture a guardian angel that looked like him?

Mom, I think you are my guardian angel because even when I find myself crying in the dark, afraid of what I’ll see in the mirror, or even wallowing over heartache, the first person I call out to isn’t God, but you.

Pop-up poetry

d esi g n b y AT R I U M STAF F

This semester, our writers continued an Atrium tradition: pop-up poetry.

We snagged fascinated passersby, interviewed them briefly and wrote poems on a topic of their choice. Some explored friendship and self-determination; others spoke of hope and cosmic bodies. As our pen ink colored the pages, warmth filled our connections. illustrations by TINA DÖRR-KAPCZYNSKI

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Preserved in smoke and stone

story and illustrations by DELIA ROSE SAUER photos courtesy of JOHN CIPRIANI

Historians and volunteers keep the true history of a 459-year-old city alive

J

ohn Cipriani’s shoulders barely jump when the cannon finally goes off in a puff of smoke. The sound of its fire is familiar to the 82-year-old, who has the composure of a captain.

The iron cannon fits a 6-pound cannonball about the size of a baseball.

As it begins to smoke, spectators cover their ears before the blast.

In the age of the Spanish militia, a soldado would use 3 pounds of gunpowder strong enough to

make the cannonball reach the St. Augustine lighthouse, hazy in the distance. For the safety of downtown St. Augustine, modern-day soldado reenactors only use half a pound.

With the shout of “Fire!” the cannon explodes. The cannonball falls into the water as tourists cheer.

It’s the first of four demonstrations on a cloudy Saturday morning.

The picturesque vision of St. Augustine is what draws visitors in. Horse-drawn carriages enchant

tourists as the sound of clopping hooves echoes throughout downtown St. Augustine. The old houses and cobblestone roads eventually lead them to the Castillo de San Marcos, or Fort Marion, a 17thcentury fort erected by the Spanish to protect the military colony.

But tourists often miss out on St. Augustine’s rich, extensive history amid the old stones and wooden drawbridges.

Completed in 1695, the Castillo In the darkness of the night, two soldado reenactors light the fuses of iron cannons at the Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine, Fla. (Courtesy of John Cipriani)

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d esi g n b y D I E GO P ERDO M O

“The best part is dressing up as a soldier and firing cannons and muskets,” Cipriani says with a smile. protected St. Augustine more effectively than the nine rotted, wooden forts built when the city was first founded in 1565. The Castillo is built of coquina, a type of sedimentary rock made up of layers of tiny shells strong enough to absorb the impact of cannonballs like a sponge. The walls gave the fortress its impenetrable reputation.

Now, visitors are advised not to lean on the heavily textured walls in case they deteriorate further.

During the 18th-century War of the Spanish Succession, the English destroyed St. Augustine, but the Castillo survived. It continues to persevere, preserving the history of Spanish colonial Florida within its corroding walls.

Cipriani has volunteered with the National Park Service for 28 years, spending three hours a day at the Castillo.

During the week, he sports a khaki uniform. On the weekends, he looks like a man from another era, dressed in a Spanish captain’s uniform.

His wool-lined blue coat and linen shirt make him stand out in a sea of sneakers and sunglasses.

“The best part is dressing up as a soldier and firing cannons and muskets,” Cipriani says with a smile.

Born and raised in Massachusetts, Cipriani wanted to escape the cold and landed in South Florida.

He traveled to St. Augustine often, even visiting during his honeymoon when admission for the fort cost around 25 or 50 cents.

He remembers sitting close to a fire in the fort’s guardroom on a rainy day. He wondered what it would’ve been like to be a Spanish soldier, and now, that’s exactly who he is.

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Cipriani looks like a character from a picture book to the children who marvel at him. Their parents urge them to approach the stern-looking captain, and a lucky few receive a doubloon from him. The golden coin has rough edges

and stamped impressions of Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella.

The children inspect it thoroughly.

The child who receives a doubloon is now part of the Spanish army for the rest of eternity, Cipiani jokes.

Some visitors stay for 10 to 15 minutes. But in their rush, they miss

engravings of colonists from the American Revolution and Seminole, Cheyenne, Apache and other Indigenous prisoners. Captivated by the powerful iron cannons, they ignore the faded Spanish coat of arms painted onto the walls of the Castillo.

Cipriani likes the visitors who spend hours in the fort. “They have all kinds of good questions,” he says.

He volunteers to help educate others, especially children, because he worries that people are either learning incorrect information about the city or no information at all.

“All you can do is hope you can give them the right information about the real history,” he says, “and let that blend over into the touristy history.”

Tourists walk past Flagler College, a private university in the heart of downtown, and see sunset-orange rooftops and oxidized copper fountains. Tour guides describe how the ornate university building was originally the Hotel Ponce de León, a luxury resort built in 1888.

Visitors may not learn that the walls and towers belong to the nation’s first major poured-in-place concrete building. While tourists line up outside and fan themselves in the sweltering Florida heat, they’re also stepping foot into one of the first electrified buildings in the U.S. With the kiss of the Matanzas River breeze, it’s easy to focus on the city’s beauty and overlook the reminders of colonial control. But to understand St. Augustine, visitors must explore a history deeper than tourist pamphlets and ghost tours.

Many tourists visit the Castillo de San Marcos, for example, unaware

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It’s gone from “being a small Southern town to being a tourist mecca,” he says. that the city was home to a second fort on its northern border, Fort Mose, or the Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose.

Past the arch called the “Walkway to Freedom,” the site is a haven surrounded by buzzing mosquitoes, towering trees and swamps — a reminder of the sanctuary it once was. In 1738, it was the first legally sanctioned free Black settlement in the country.

Before the fort was abandoned and lost to the marshes, it was the home to a free Black militia led by former slave Captain Francisco Menéndez. In the face of enslavement by the British, the community of Fort Mose was forced to flee to Cuba.

Now, Fort Mose is a National Historic

Landmark and part of Florida’s Black Heritage Trail.

To ensure the stories of the oldest city in the country aren’t lost, historian Charles Tingley does what he can. Tingley, 72, began visiting St. Augustine when he was a young child. Back then, the tour guides for the Oldest House Museum Complex and Gardens — the oldest dwelling in St. Augustine that acts as the site of the St. Augustine Historical Society — dressed in “somebody’s vision of what a Spanish woman should look like,” Tingley recalls.

Black lace veils made them look like witches to 4-year-old Tingley.

Now he works as the research historian at the Oldest House. He

Soldados gather at the edge of the Castillo as a cannon goes off. The smoke fills the air as the cannonball goes flying. (Courtesy of John Cipriani)

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began volunteering after 1978 and was hired as a librarian in 1994.

In 2000, Tingley was approached by a sculptor who wanted to create a sculpture of her greatgrandfather, Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith, for the Historical Society’s research library garden, located in his childhood home.

She also made a sculpture for someone she referred to as Alex for the garden.

Tingley had no idea who this “Alex” was, so he dove headfirst into exploring why he was also getting a statue.

Alex was Edmund Kirby Smith’s enslaved manservant. After his emancipation, he became Alexander H. Darnes, M.D., the first Black physician in Jacksonville.

He battled in court for his right to vote in 1875 and helped during the smallpox epidemic and yellow fever epidemics in the 1880s in Jacksonville.

Tingley says Darnes was an invisible man. His achievements were written out of history books, barely even mentioned in footnotes. Tingley, who wrote a comprehensive article on Darnes’ life, deems it one of his greatest research projects, as it gave him a chance to bring light to a monumental figure in Florida’s history.

While tourists flock to see places like the Castillo, tourist traps open up to benefit from the already booming industry, pushing St. Augustine’s true history aside.

Tingley describes the

An aerial shot of the Castillo de San Marcos. To capture the entire fort, Cipriani had to take the photo from a crane. (Courtesy of John Cipriani)

local tourism industry as a remora fish: “They’re feeding on the scraps,” he says.

Places like the now-defunct Tragedy in U.S. History Museum, which included morbid curiosities such as Lee Harvey Oswald’s bedroom furniture, took advantage of the tourist economy while having nothing to do with St. Augustine.

St. Augustine has changed significantly in Tingley’s lifetime. It’s gone from “being a small Southern town to being a tourist mecca,” he says.

But now, there is more of an effort to keep all of its history accessible — the good, the bad and the ugly.

“If you’ve gone to the Fountain of Youth 30 years ago,” Tingley says, “you wouldn’t recognize what’s in there now.” The park, home to a spring rumored to have the secret to immortality, now has more exhibits centering on the Timucua people indigenous to North Florida. It reminds visitors that the land they’re on — the village of Chief Seloy — belonged to the Timucua, the soil of their livelihoods and culture.

The Castillo has invited speakers from the Cheyenne and Arapaho

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Tribes to share the stories of Indigenous prisoners held at the fort. Over 230 Seminoles who refused to abandon their homeland in the face of the Indian Removal Act were imprisoned in 1837. Cheyenne, Kiowa, Comanche, Arapaho and Caddo warriors were incarcerated from 1875 to 1878 after American settlers forced them into confinement after the Red River War. The people who work at the Castillo de San Marcos are doing all they can to push St. Augustine’s real history into the limelight. Cipriani learns something new from other park rangers every day, who in turn learn from living descendants and activists who challenge one-sided histories.

Every weekend, Cipriani dons his captain’s coat and calls cannon drills to keep the real story of St. Augustine alive.

And, in doing so, he says he refers back to an old saying: “If you don’t know your history, you’ll repeat it.”

John waves from the helm of a ship dressed as a Spanish soldier. He values the conversations he gets to have with tourists who are eager to learn more about St. Augustine’s true history.

(Courtesy of John Cipriani)

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story and photos by ALISSA GARY

design by ZARIN ISMAIL

Taming the Beast WHY RIDERS GET BACK ON THE BULL

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E A bull bucks during the bull riding competition at the Silver Spurs Rodeo in Kissimmee, Fla., on Oct. 5, 2024.

(Alissa Gary/Atrium Magazine)

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IGHT SECONDS. That’s how long Bronc Platt needs to stay on K-00 Buckshot, the nearly 2,000-pound bull he’s straddling. Brown-furred and whitehorned, the bull reels, its back arching into a U-shape and curling into a frown. Only two of its legs are ever on the ground at the same time. Spit flies in jagged patterns from its mouth.

The bull’s only objective?

Get Platt off its back, now.

“Eight seconds is actually a lifetime,” Platt said.

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He grips the rope wrapped around the bull with just one arm, in accordance with the sport’s rules, and stretches the other arm toward the ceiling. When the bull bucks, Platt squeezes his center and moves with it, desperate to stay square on its back. But at 7.19 seconds, just short of the eight-second buzzer, K-00 Buckshot sent Platt pummeling arms-first toward the soft brown dirt on the rodeo floor.

At least this time, he didn’t break anything in the fall.

Platt, 35, knows the danger of bull riding. During a rodeo just five months earlier, a bull stepped on and crushed his lower stomach,

breaking bones in his back and neck.

But this danger, as much as the excitement, is what makes bull riding popular. Though riders understand the risks of the sport, they keep getting back on the animals’ backs because, as Platt put it, riding is addicting. Athletes seek to conquer the bull — and, more importantly, to conquer the fear of losing to it.

“It’s better than any high, I reckon,” Platt said.

Like other rodeo sports, this one has influences from 19th century Mexican farm workers, who challenged each other to charreadas, offhand contests in lassoing or horseback riding. The sport was late

A rider falls sideways off a bull at the Silver Spurs Rodeo’s “Boots, Bulls and Barrels” event. (Alissa Gary/Atrium Magazine)

A saddle bronc rider cowers beneath the horse after being bucked off during the “Boots, Bulls and Barrels” event. (Alissa Gary/Atrium Magazine)

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finding an audience, only picking up steam through the mid-1900s.

Now, rodeo culture is inextricably tied to the rural American South and West, leaving an indent on the landscape in Kissimmee, Florida, too. The Silver Spurs Rodeo, where Platt rode K-00 Buckshot, calls itself the largest east of the Mississippi.

The sport has a simple objective: Stay on the bull for eight seconds, and you qualify for judging. A panel of judges then evaluates the ride, giving up to 50 points to the rider and 50 to the bull.

Hanging on for eight seconds is not easy. Even those who have ridden since childhood, Platt said, struggle to do it. If riders fall off the bull unsafely, they risk getting caught under the animal’s hooves and suffering major injuries.

When a bull trampled Platt in May, he was in recovery for nine weeks before returning to the arena. Now, he wears a white helmet with metal grates and a heavy leather vest while riding.

“He pinched me like a lawn chair,” Platt said. “He folded me in half, and I knew I was hurt, but I toughed it out pretty good.”

Other rodeo events, including one where athletes attempt to ride a bucking horse, also have high injury rates. But bull riding is the most perilous of them all, according to researchers at the University of Oklahoma. Bull riding caused the highest percentage of injuries from the 2,100 rodeo athletes who were studied.

There could be even more rodeo injuries than those recorded, the researchers wrote. Rodeo athletes tend to have high pain tolerance and opt to “shake off ” their wounds rather than seek treatment for them.

Platt, too, prides himself on his toughness. “If you don’t mind it, it don’t matter,” he says about the pain. “Mind over matter.”

When Platt gets hurt, he avoids the hospital, allowing the injury to heal itself — or until the pain becomes unbearable. He’s wary of medical care.

(A close call with opioid addiction

Bronc Platt, 35, Cheyenne Costello, 36, and their daughter Hazie Platt, 4, stand outside their home in Citra, Fla. (Alissa Gary/Atrium Magazine)

following a bull riding accident means he rejects most painkillers today.) In 2017, he woke up in an ambulance with puffy eyes and a shattered nose, and he saw, through blurred vision, a bald, sweaty EMT standing over him.

“Oh my god,” Platt recalls the medic saying. “You’re alive!”

At a rodeo in Inverness, a bull kicked him on the side of his head, knocking him unconscious and leaving his ears ringing for months.

At the time, Platt blamed his helmet for weighing him down, pulling him toward the bull’s hooves. So, the day he returned to competition, he traded the helmet for a soft cowboy hat.

Professional Bull Riders, the sport’s leading league, has required helmets since 2013. But certain riders who are “grandfathered in” can skirt the rule, opting to wear hats instead. Platt has gone back and forth, settling eventually on a helmet after his 4-year-old daughter, Hazie Platt, begged him to wear one.

Hazie and her mom, Cheyenne Costello, cheer from the rodeo bleachers as Platt wraps his rope

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around the bull. Costello recently invested in a digital camera to take photos of the riders, but she said photos of Platt always turn out blurry.

When it’s his turn to ride, her nerves keep her from holding the camera still.

“I get just as much of an adrenaline rush when he’s riding as he does,” Costello, 36, said. “My heart beats. I sweat. I shake. I get real nervous.”

A thin, brunette woman with hazel eyes and a sharp jawline, she knew when she started dating Platt five years ago that he rode bulls. She, too, grew up with rodeo in upstate New York — and even competed in barrel racing — so she understood rodeo was more a lifestyle than a hobby.

In marrying Platt, Costello signed on to the anxiety that her husband might not make it home that night.

She’s the one who packs Platt’s bags and ensures his entrance fees are paid from their home in Citra, Florida. At competitions, she takes the role of team mom: Hungry riders swarm around her snack bag, and she volunteers to remove stitches and clean wounds

when they can’t see a doctor. She’s seen other bull riders’ girlfriends come and go, she said, unable to keep up with the demands of the job.

“It’s really mentally straining,” Costello said. “Way more than anybody could really understand.”

TWO HOURS BEFORE Platt came barreling out on K-00 Buckshot’s back, Jason Ragar and Dee Ragar took their front-row seats at the Silver Spurs Arena, where the rodeo took place. About 7,500 people this year attended the smaller of Silver Spurs’ events — a bull riding, barrel racing and saddle bronc showcase held in October.

The Ragars live in nearby Clermont, just west of Orlando. They’ve watched, with time, developers creep onto rural lands they called home. Kissimmee,

“MIND OVER MATTER.”

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home to the rodeo arena, is more known today for its proximity to Disney World than for its agriculture.

Like most cities in Florida, Kissimmee hosts a flat maze of suburban neighborhoods and paved roads. Hotels are packed densely into the city’s western corner, hoping to attract theme park tourists. But on the opposite end lie neighborhoods that are less crowded, where vast parcels of land are more common. There, nestled within a larger events fairground, stands the nearly 34,000-squarefoot Silver Spurs Arena.

For the Ragars, the rodeo is a microcosm of how things used to be.

“It’s a lost entertainment,” Dee, 53, said. Country music poured from the arena speakers as she paused.

Silver Spurs, too, prides itself on its rural past. Its slogan reads “tradition rides on.” A promotional video, complete with black-and-white footage of vast 1940s agricultural lands, tells the inspirational story of a sport fighting to stay alive in a world that wanted it dead. “Life was simple back then,” the video says.

“Oranges and cattle were king. It would be decades before a mouse named Mickey came to town.”

The rodeo reminds its fans that they’re not alone in their yearning for the past.

Jason, 55, is a rodeo regular whose favorite event is bull riding. He knows riders get injured all the time, but there’s something inherently exciting about watching other people put themselves in danger.

“It’s a throwback to more primitive times,” he said, “like almost gladiatorial.”

That night at the Silver Spurs Rodeo, the top prize went to Hagen

A bull rider hangs onto the bull at the Silver Spurs Rodeo. (Alissa Gary/Atrium Magazine)

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“It’s not just a weekend sport.

It’s our life.”

Meeks, a 21-year-old bull rider from Polk City, Florida. The fringes on his teal-green chaps bounced as he rode, clashing with the bull’s milkywhite fur. He was one of only two riders in the preliminary round who clung on long enough for judging, so he earned a spot in the finals.

When the eight-second buzzer finally sounded, it signaled time for his dismount. He needed to stay calm. “Look for a place to get off,” he said, “and just commit to that.”

He leaned his weight to the right, letting himself slide off the stillbucking animal and on to all fours in the dirt. As he scrambled to his feet, he pumped his fist in the air — he just secured another championship.

Meeks’ father took him to his first rodeo at 8 years old. It was then that Meeks decided he’d become a professional bull rider.

Thirteen years later, he was finally riding in Professional Bull Riders competitions and, in September, won nearly $5,000 for placing second in Charlottesville, Virginia.

“Nothing else matters more than just getting the job done,” Meeks said.

“The adrenaline and the blood rush — it’s like an addiction other than drugs.”

Amateur rodeos hand out a couple hundred dollars’ worth of prize money, but only the winners earn enough to cover their competition entrance fees. Professional Bull Riders, by comparison, represent the highest echelon of athletes in their sport, winning hundreds of thousands of dollars across their careers. Joining the Professional Bull Riders league means making a living, Meeks said.

BRONC PLATT doesn’t ride in the professional league. Money has

been tight. He and Costello once counted $13 worth of pennies to afford gas home from a rodeo in Georgia.

His career, he said, is a gamble: With each ride, he could win or lose it all.

“They don’t pay the same,” he said of local competitions, “but they still buck the same.”

Costello cleans horse stalls and breeds dogs and chickens, the profits of which are their family’s sole consistent income. If Platt wins a rodeo, that’s added to their budget, too. Often, the money gets reinvested in competition registration fees.

Skipping a competition is not an option for Platt. He straddled his first bull at 3 years old, following in the footsteps of his father. His fate was sealed from the day he was born: How could a child named Bronc not go into rodeo sport?

Some bull riders, including Platt, feel as though their sport and livelihoods are disappearing, even though rodeos across the country still draw massive crowds. Platt blames it partially on a lack of training facilities where younger athletes can practice.

But he also feels like there aren’t enough of him — people who love the sport enough to overlook its flaws and who can inspire the next generation.

“It’s not just a weekend sport,” Costello said. “It’s our life.”

No number of bones shattered or money lost can separate bull riders from their sport. They become addicted at a young age to the adrenaline of conquering the animal. Bigger arenas and heavier bulls motivate riders to climb back on, even if they risk a career-ending crash. They cling on to their dreams, desperate not to fall off, through those eight grueling seconds. Then, finally, a buzzer.

With his arms crossed, Bronc Platt returns to the edge of the Silver Spurs Rodeo arena after being bucked off. He was disqualified for slapping his free arm onto the bull – a violation of the sport’s rules. (Alissa Gary/ Atrium Magazine)

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eán Killingsworth strolled into an AT&T store ready to change the world.

He wanted a flip phone, confusing a handful of Orlando, Florida, employees who had to retrieve a SIM card from a sister store. Once they set up his device, they weren’t sure how to connect it to a data plan. They didn’t even know if it was compatible with a data plan.

It was 2018. No one wanted flip phones anymore.

Especially not 16-year-olds.

Seán hated the time he wasted on Instagram. Snapchat brought on a hum of anxiety. He’d turn his notifications off. He’d sleep with his phone in another room. He’d delete an app only to reinstall it a few months later. He grew more frustrated with himself for not being able to break the cycle.

“I wasn’t in control of my phone,” he said. “My phone was in control of me.”

The time he spent dawdling on social media prohibited him from actually living his life. To make

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friends, he thought, he needed to exist completely in the real world.

So he bought a flip phone, trading in one issue for another.

Seán returned to his high school campus, back straight, head up, eager to smile at whomever he made eye contact with. But as the days went by, he rarely met anyone’s gaze.

No one wanted to talk. On the few occasions he struck up conversations, Seán didn’t have a Snapchat or Instagram account to stay in contact.

He realized how difficult it had become to meet new people. Even in high school, an environment specifically meant to encourage connection, most students turned to the dull comfort of smartphones.

Researchers have coined a term for when cell phone use prohibits meaningful interpersonal connection: phubbing. When one person is ready for connection, but another is preoccupied with their phone, it can cause disappointment and a feeling of rejection.

After a year of alienation, Seán was drowning in a sea of missed connections.

Talking with his mom one night, he began crying.

He didn’t find value in existing digitally. But without his smartphone, he didn’t seem to exist in the real world either.

Seán processed his feelings on a sheet of composition notebook paper. Drawing a broken smartphone, he wrote “Disconnect” in stark, bold letters.

He scribbled through tears, wishing his classmates could put their phones down.

Seán drew a flip phone. Under it, he wrote “Reconnect.”

My lone memory of flip phones took place when I was five years old.

My dad and I were bored in church.

He opened Pong and passed me the phone. I bounced a white pixel

-years the 6 the h keep r rt fo o w le s illing onsib in Seán K doodles resp e safe m a n s t’ old n e ls a m in .” ve he Orig zine) ect Mo a Reconn lder titled “T g a a fo trium M a manil w Cupelli/A e (Matth

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between the sides of the screen for five minutes before my mom reprimanded us in a hushed tone. I resumed my attempt to pay attention to Mass.

I’ve been medicating boredom with consumption ever since.

I would sit for hours after school, dumbfounded by the sheer amount of content at my fingertips. With my parent’s iPad propped up in my lap, I would search absurd combinations of terms into YouTube just to see what would come up.

Then, I’d watch everything.

Thankfully, I didn’t need encouragement to get outside. My upbringing was still colored by chasing tussock moths and climbing strangler figs. But I am one of the lucky ones.

Millennials, born between 1981 and 1996, are the last generation to recall a smartphone-free childhood. The memories of Gen Z are illuminated

by LED screens; in fact, we were almost labeled the iGeneration.

Nearly half of respondents in a 2022 survey indicated they were addicted to their digital devices. In a 2022 poll, 81% of respondents aged 18 to 29 self-reported that they were using their smartphones too much.

A 2021 report found that the average teenager spent more than eight hours each day looking at screens.

One of the reasons we are so glued to our screens is because of shifting cultural norms. It’s become taboo to initiate conversations with strangers — why risk rejection or awkwardness when it’s safer to stay on your phone?

Smartphones are designed to be addictive. Our generation’s neurochemistry has been tremendously altered by Silicon Valley elite, some of whom send their children to Montessori schools with limited screen exposure.

While it’s finally caught the attention of American legislators, it’s not a new issue for us. We are a generation thinking in terms of what’s sharable, grappling with a novel anxiety to record and post our lives rather than authentically live them.

We delete, we reinstall. We detox, we relapse. We post, we scroll, we consume.

Feeling helpless is common for Gen Z, and we know smartphones play a key role.

But what can be done when smartphones have cemented themselves as a staple of 21st century life?

It was early fall in 2016, and excitement grew as the van packed with college students left Blacksburg, Virginia.

Without smartphones, the 20 Seán demonstrates locking away his iPhone 14 in a Yondr pouch, which Reconnect chapters formerly used at club meetings.(Matthew Cupelli/ Atrium Magazine)

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student volunteers couldn’t Google their destination. Crammed into the back of a van, they were left to speculate — and most importantly, talk. That was Laurie Fritsch’s idea.

Laurie, the assistant director of a wellness department at Virginia Tech, urged her students to take advantage of the opportunity to play games and genuinely interact with one another as they drove into New River Gorge National Park and Preserve for three hours of whitewater rafting.

It was a team retreat, she reminded them: “We need to know each other.”

Her job was to ensure students made healthy decisions. Often, that focused on topics like substance use and physical health. But recently, she’d become skeptical of screens.

Even on field trips, she noticed students always seemed to default to their phones. They’d retreat like turtles into the online world at the slightest indication of discomfort. Once phones were out, Laurie said, students rarely reemerged from their shells.

So, for one day, she banned them.

She wanted 20 adolescents to experience the simple joy of time outdoors in good company.

Conversations erupted in the white van. Senseless banter and crude jokes filled the vehicle as they amused their way into West Virginia. After rafting, Laurie noticed the same pattern.

When nudged, students quickly got over their phone-separation anxiety, and the initial awkwardness was replaced with earnest discussion.

Once Laurie parked the van back at Virginia Tech, one student remarked how nice it was to disconnect for the day, which prompted a chorus of agreement.

They chimed in with all sorts of adjectives: freeing, different, relaxing.

Laurie, somewhat confused, reminded them of their agency.

She said they could ignore their phones whenever they chose.

They looked at her like she was crazy.

Seán calls it the social wasteland — when you look up from your phone, ready to branch out and meet someone new, and your opportunities for connection have already been thwarted. The social wasteland is what you see when you look out onto a crowd of strangers, and no one looks back.

In his senior year of high school, he formed a club where, he said, “the people you’re trying to interact with

are actually capable of paying attention to you.” Anyone could join. The only stipulation was members were required to lock their smartphones away in custom magnetic bags.

He named it the Reconnect Movement.

The first collegiate chapter of Reconnect began at Rollins College in Winter Park. The club got 90 sign-ups within two weeks of its announcement, Seán said. Soon, he opened a chapter at the University of Central Florida, followed by the University of Florida.

Then Laurie reached out.

After her trip to West Virginia, her feeling that smartphones were harming young adults solidified. She saw that students were unhappy but helpless, searching for an excuse to put their devices down. So, she developed a curriculum to target digital wellness, aiming to give students that reason.

Boxes in dining halls dared students to stash their phones during mealtimes. Thoughtful conversationstarting cards circulated in public spaces throughout

A flyer Seán made in his senior year of high school to promote one of the first Reconnect Movement events. Expressing creativity through arts and crafts remains a hallmark of Reconnect meetings.

(Matthew Cupelli/Atrium Magazine

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Seán looks at the drawings his distraught 16-year-old self made at his dining room table in 2018. (Matthew Cupelli/ Atrium Magazine)

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campus. Mindfulness challenges enticed students with goodies.

But she knew not every school had the resources to plan, fund and execute elaborate anti-smartphone initiatives. Student organizations like the Reconnect Movement, she thought, could help fill the void.

Laurie invited Seán to speak at a conference on college students’ digital well-being.

He now advocates for safe social media policies in Washington, D.C., juggles speaking gigs at Harvard and James Madison Universities and meets with Reconnect chapters at colleges across Florida. Seán attended college in Orlando but dropped out to focus on the Reconnect Movement. He works full-time for his family’s cleaning company to keep his apartment lights on.

Per club rules, Seán locked away his black iPhone 14 in a gray sleeve called a Yondr Pouch.

It had been nearly three years since Seán graduated high school, and today was a big day for the University of Florida’s Reconnect chapter. It had survived its first semester, and members were

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about to elect new leadership.

The pouch by his side, Seán joined the student members sitting atop a mosaic of Bohemian rugs in a campus park. Their idle chatter about buying turntables and trading records filled the afternoon air, paying no attention to the devices they’d trained themselves to ignore.

The former president, Eva Wolpert, stood and thanked everyone for a successful semester. Before she conducted elections, she spoke about the importance of preserving phone-free spaces — a tone that many echoed in their speeches.

With new officers selected, a guest led a group yoga session to release any lingering anxiety. Seán moved through the poses but couldn’t quiet his thoughts. Instead, he thought about how to organize the new leadership and his growing community. This was still a new reality for the 22-year-old digital wellness leader.

Once, he had no social group.

While he blamed his seclusion on smartphones, Seán knows that they’re here to stay.

He used to wonder what one person could do to resist such a hollow existence. Now, with his iPhone tucked away, he felt encouraged by how many others wanted to do the same.

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Title

The scales that guard the

story by [NAME] photos by [NAME]

springs One mermaid’s journey toward environmental preservation story by KYLIE WILLIAMS photos by KAT TRAN

Lilly Stark loves to spend their free days at the springs. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, they’ve been to over 40 springs. (Kat Tran/Atrium Magazine)

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B

eneath the crystal-clear water of Alexander Springs, the edge of a fin flits among rippling eelgrass and tiny minnows. Warm Florida sunlight beams through the surface, illuminating beaded jewelry, blond hair and a mermaid tail the same blue-green as the water.

Swimmers and sunbathers stare and whisper among themselves at the wonder in the spring. One woman snaps pictures on her phone, and a young boy cranes his neck to peek over the plastic inner tube he’s floating on.

The mermaid surfaces with a splash of their tail and a friendly smile, seemingly unbothered by the many pairs of eyes glued to their movements.

As a professional performer, Lilly Stark is used to a little attention.

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Stark’s artistic flair shines through their “mer-sona.” Their mermaid top is handmade, using beads Stark found in a national park. (Kat Tran/Atrium Magazine)

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Under their “mer-sona” as the Key Lime Mermaid, Stark, 28, is often found working Pensacola resort pools and beach sandbars. But each month, they also voluntarily swim at state springs to encourage tourists and Florida locals to protect the imperiled ecosystems. While most environmental activists aren’t donning a shell bra and a 30-pound tail, Stark’s method of story-driven education has proved successful.

With the onlookers under their thrall, Stark’s real work begins. They swim among people in the water and call out to observers on shore, ensuring the audience is respecting nearby wildlife, disposing of trash correctly and wearing environmentally safe sunscreen. They keep their words lighthearted and whimsical, making jokes and splashing spectators.

“This spring here is really clear and nice,” Stark says. “I bet you guys are helping take care of the springs.”

Stark put on their first mermaid tail — pre-owned and rainbowpatterned — during the COVID-19 pandemic. They were using the extra time afforded by lockdown to explore Florida’s springs and pursue their lifelong hobby of freediving when they discovered that some divers dressed up as mermaids.

“I was hooked ever since then,” they said.

During pool shows, the Key Lime Mermaid is an entertainer, decked out in glittery makeup and gaudy wigs.

But at the springs, their usual caliber of flamboyance is diminished; about a year into mermaiding, Stark realized that excess glitter sheds into the water, every strand of artificial hair or painted scale a piece of microplastic. Now, it’s important to Stark that everything they wear in the springs, from their emerald eyeshadow down to the adhesive holding their mermaid bra together, is environmentally friendly.

Swimming at the springs doesn’t feel like work to Stark. It’s free from the pressure of entertaining and full of the joy that comes from teaching people about the environment they love —

the environment that’s in danger.

Many of Florida’s springs have been overpumped for agriculture and commercial water-bottling, leaving their water levels dangerously low.

Infestations of algae blooms from excess nutrient pollution cloud the water and suffocate native wildlife.

Even Alexander, a pool in the heart of Ocala National Forest, still shows signs of human-driven damage, despite it being one of the few springs that isn’t considered impaired.

The entrance to the water, once a carpet of lily pads and grass, is now muddy. The eelgrass gently swaying at the spring bottom has been partially slashed by swimmers and divers.

At first, Stark was frustrated that people were uneducated about the springs and contributed to their

degradation. But they noticed people in what they call the “tourist mindset” didn’t always respond well to state park employees or officials telling them what not to do. So, instead, Stark took on the role of a friendly educator.

They swim with springs visitors, showing them hidden caves and native wildlife. They tell stories and pose for photos, enthusiastically chattering about their love of the springs. And they notice obstinate tourists listen a little bit longer to the Key Lime Mermaid than they would to an official, pausing to consider their harmful behaviors.

“Usually there’s a big divide between local people in Florida and the tourist,” Stark said. “Having the tail on can kind of bridge that gap.”

Part of Stark’s enthusiasm for

Florida’s ecosystems stems from their tree-hugging childhood. They grew up in Nome, North Dakota, population 50. In a town with more dogs than people, Stark had few opportunities to connect with nature and spent a lot of time shoveling snow, less-than-ideal options for someone who hates the cold.

As a child, Stark refused to leave their mountain of blankets on frigid mornings unless their mom first warmed their clothes over the radiator.

They would excitedly wait for the day North Dakota’s short summers kicked in — the day it would hit 70 degrees, when they could swim with their dad.

Stark’s dad, Tim Stark, was a railroad conductor who spent most of his time working. But on the rare summer days he was home,

“Usually there’s a big divide between local people in Florida and the tourist,” Stark said.

“Having the tail on can kind of bridge that gap.”

As Stark left the chilly water of Alexander Springs, they’re praised by onlookers on Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2024, in Lake County, Fla. (Kat Tran/Atrium Magazine)

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he taught Stark to free-dive.

In the above-ground pool, the pair would take a deep breath of cool air, then let their lungs deflate as their bodies relaxed. The cold water enveloped them, sinking four feet down to the bottom. Tim made funny faces at Lilly, imitating the Creature from the Black Lagoon while Lilly giggled in a stream of bubbles. They played underwater rock-paper-

scissors; their lungs began to ache.

When they couldn’t hold their breath any longer, they pushed up hard from the bottom of the pool, erupting above the surface. Then they’d do the whole thing again and again.

Stark swims down to the bottom of the water now, flipping their tail over to stare at the surface. The sun leaves a glinting, translucent reflection on the spring, creating

a mosaic of stained glass. A sense of serenity falls over Stark in these moments, when there’s nothing to focus on but their own held breath.

After spending a decade in Florida, Stark’s awe for the state’s natural environments has only grown. They fear humans have encroached too far into the springs, but throwing on a tail and educating people about the treasured waters is how they’ve

“It felt like going into a tropical oasis,” Stark said.

“Like a dream fairy-tale Neverland kind of place.”

One of Stark’s favorite activities is to seek out hidden coves and secret spots in the springs. Showing tourists the best places for photos becomes an opportunity for Stark to educate them about the springs.

(Kat Tran/Atrium Magazine)

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discovered they can make a difference.

“I feel like every time you put on a tail,” Stark said, “it’s your responsibility to help conserve these environments that we want to go in and enjoy and feel beautiful in.”

After swimming for hours in Alexander Springs, Stark’s lips turn blue. Goosebumps erupt over their arms. It’s time to go home.

On the bank, they peel off their

water-logged tail, shivering in purple leggings and eyeliner that’s somehow still perfectly intact.

As they pack their tail into a blue foldable cart, Stark perks up when they overhear a park ranger talking to another visitor about a nearby spring they haven’t heard of.

The Key Lime Mermaid, tailless, walks over with a smile, already searching for their next adventure.

To see Stark free dive in Alexander Springs, scan the QR code!

Stark’s free diving skills come in handy when performing as a mermaid. They can dive over 30 feet and hold their breath for nearly two minutes.

Stark’s free diving skills come in handy when performing as a mermaid. They can dive over 30 feet and hold their breath for nearly two minutes.

(Kat Tran/Atrium Magazine)

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Fifty years after the first abortion clinic opened in a small college town, the women remember where they came from and where they are now. story by SIENA DUNCAN photos by ALISSA GARY illustrations by DELIA ROSE SAUER

Personal assistant Abby Palmer (left), and counselor Erica Merchant (right), sit together on a couch at the Gainesville Women’s Health Center in the 1990s. (Courtesy of Amy Ottinger)

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d esi g n b y D I E GO P ERDO M O

In 1974,

Pam Smith knocked on a warm wooden door gleaming in the Florida sun. She wore a long skirt and a wrinkled peasant blouse, plus a few more obvious markers of a hippie during the decade: Birkenstocks and no bra (she hardly ever wore a bra). The morning breeze ruffled her long, stick-straight brown hair parted down the middle as another woman, older than her, answered the door. The older woman squinted, her eyes adjusting to the bright light.

“I want to work here,” Pam said.

“Oh, that’s wonderful,” the older woman replied. “But we don’t have any jobs.”

“I don’t care,” Pam told her. “I just want to be part of this.”

The woman gestured to the symbol on the door: a circle and a crossbow that symbolized Venus, the Roman goddess of fertility. It was a scientific marker for females and a harbinger of liberation, of pride — especially at the turn of the decade, when Jane Roe won a landmark court case.

The woman thought for a moment.

“Well, three days from now, we’re going to have an evening where we’re all going to take a look at our cervixes. Have you ever done that?”

Pam shook her head.

“That’s OK. Just come on and join us. You’re welcome to show up then.”

Pam nodded, waving goodbye as the door closed. The boiling springtime sun reflected off the pavement in waves, and the heat threatened to overwhelm her as she thought about what could come next. Pam’s home was Gainesville, Florida, the small town cupping the state’s flagship of higher education, the University of Florida. She graduated with a degree in anthropology that took her 11 years and two kids to finish, and she didn’t know what she was going to do next. But a local building’s sign had called to her, shining in blocky handwritten letters: The Gainesville Women’s Health Center, coming soon.

It would be the first abortion clinic in Gainesville, and one of the first

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in the state since Roe v. Wade.

But even as women flocked to protest for the Equal Rights Amendment, striked for better wages and formalized the women’s movement with committees and conferences, the clinic would never grow larger than a single location.

Now, 50 years after its doors opened, abortion on demand is no longer a notion of the future; it is a thing of the past.

Restrictive abortion statutes have become common in Florida and other red states since the Supreme Court reversed the Roe v. Wade precedent in 2022. Just like after Roe, many

searching for answers. She’d often attempt to connect them with priests she knew in New York, who could get the women to surgeons. The journey was a pilgrimage to a mecca where abortion was legalized — health officials estimated about twice as many out-of-state travelers received abortions in New York than actual residents. In total, nearly 400,000 abortions were carried out in two years. Hawaii, Washington and Alaska passed similar laws, but travel from the east coast was far more expensive, and the laws required people to live in-state for a period of time.

New York was the only option.

cheered and many despaired — but for the opposite reasons this time.

The overturning unleashed new and old fights across the country. In the midst of protesters beating Bibles and counter protesters screaming for women’s rights, Florida asked voters whether they want to reverse its six-week abortion ban with a constitutional amendment.

After two years of fierce debate, 42.8% voted for history to repeat itself, for better or for worse. The amendment needed a supermajority vote to pass. The current sixweek ban on abortion stands.

The issue has transformed since Pam knocked on that door 50 years ago — for her, for the women who came after her and for me.

Byllye worked at Gainesville’s Shands Hospital, the university-run medical facility. It was the largest healthcare option for many of the rural counties surrounding the city and still is today. She directed many women to make it to New York. But there came a day when one sat in front of Byllye and shook her head — a Black woman like herself. She couldn’t afford the travel, she said.

Byllye told her she was sorry, but she couldn’t help her at Shands.

The woman nodded and left.

A few weeks later, she learned the woman died from a selfinduced abortion, Byllye said.

Her face was frozen in Byllye’s mind for a long time afterward. She was there when Byllye read that Norma McCorvey, known to the world as Jane Roe, took her civil case against Texas statutes banning abortion all the way to the Supreme Court. She was there when the world announced that Roe had won. She was there when the Alachua County Medical Society denied Planned Parenthood a clinic location in Gainesville, and still,

It would be the first abortion clinic in Gainesville and one of the first in the state since Roe v. Wade.

BYLLYE

Before Roe v. Wade’s ruling, Florida employed a total ban on abortion, with little exception. Nurses like Byllye Avery struggled when pregnant women came into hospitals with wringing hands and desperate eyes,

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Erica Merchant at an antiabortion rights rally holds up signs affirming abortion as legal.

(Courtesy of Amy Ottinger)

Erica Merchant, who spent most of her college years volunteering and working at the Gainesville Women’s Health Center, sits in her Gainesville home on Oct. 29, 2024. (Alissa Gary/ Atrium Magazine)

Byllye had to send women on the road to find care.

After the Roe v. Wade ruling, Byllye sat down with her fellow nurses and decided that they wouldn’t tell another woman no.

They would start an abortion clinic in the city.

“We didn’t ask permission,” Byllye says, her voice warming.

“We just did it.”

They rented out a vacant building made of faded brick. Doctors’ offices at the time were typically a drab gray, with few decorations on the walls and starklooking metal chairs in the waiting rooms. Given the

chance to design an office of their own, the women took it upon themselves to give the building a makeover.

They laid down sea-blue shag carpeting over the cold tile in the waiting room.

They bought couches and chairs and coffee tables from JCPenney. They spread paintings and tapestries over the walls. They painted those walls brighter. They bought lamps to spread warm light across the waiting and recovery rooms — an especially important touch, considering abortions would occur at night a few days a week to allow working women a

chance for discretion. And instead of hospital beds, they bought recliners.

To get the money for the machines as well as the decor, the women maxed out their lines of credit with the hospital’s credit union — $2,000 per employee, worth around $13,000 today. Byllye bought the couch and chairs in the waiting room from her own pocket. The patient gowns were handmade, stitched with care. It was about the women, Byllye said. It was always about the women.

Byllye opened the clinic’s door for Pam in the spring of 1974. It was ready.

After the Roe v. Wade ruling, Byllye sat down with her fellow nurses and decided that they wouldn’t tell another woman no.

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PAM

Pam was hired after a month of front office volunteer work. She answered phone calls and helped women fill out paperwork for about a year, then she moved to the counseling department, where she heard patients’ stories and walked them through their options at the clinic for at least half an hour. In the beginning, abortion days were usually Friday and Saturday nights, while “well woman care” (contraceptive and menstrual health counseling) was offered three nights a week. Pam and Byllye said it was one of the first places to focus entirely on women’s health in Gainesville.

“By far, the response was just being so thankful that

Patricia Lassiter, one of the nurses at the Gainesville Women’s Health Center, playfully holds a speculum up to Dr. George Buchanan at the clinic in Gainesville, Fla., in the 1990s.

(Courtesy of Amy Ottinger)

they were being respected and considered equals,” Pam says. “We were the only clinic in our area for quite a long time.”

Pam quickly became the head of counseling, where she saw many kinds of women arrive at the clinic’s doorstep. Lots of college girls, frustrated that a condom broke or birth control failed them.

Women in expensive, widelapel blazers with pressed and primped hair, biting the inside of their cheeks

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with their legs crossed.

Black women of all ages from the east side of town for sickle cell tests, which Byllye advocated for, the younger ones in JimiHendrix-style jean jackets combing out their afros.

But by far, the clinic’s most common customer was the rural woman, who would sometimes drive hours once she realized Medicaid would cover the cost.

The stories were always different. Sometimes it would be a high school

girl, complaining that her parents were making her have an abortion when she really wanted to keep the baby.

“Oh, no, no,” Pam would say. “Nobody can make you get an abortion.

That really is the law.”

She’d explain that there was no right answer. It was important to her that those girls understood they had a real choice.

Most common above all were the women (or the parents of young girls) who

— regardless of age or race or religion or wealth — said that they didn’t believe in abortion. That they would never step foot in this clinic again. That women should not be killing their own children. But their situation was special, their daughter was special, and it was an absolute necessity and, please, will you book them an appointment?

“That was one of my harder experiences, actually,” Pam says. “I would look around at

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the other women there and think, do you really believe your daughter’s more special than these other women? Everybody’s got an individual story. Everybody’s got a reason why.”

Regardless, it was Pam’s job to bond with the women she counseled. She would hold their hands through the procedures and explain everything as it was happening, and then she would lead them into the recovery room. She thought it was so beautiful, watching them lean back into the recliners with a sense of faint relief on their faces.

She stayed at the clinic for a decade, eventually becoming executive director.

But soon, the founders, including Byllye, left. It didn’t feel like it used to anymore. Abortion-ondemand was becoming the norm. For the women around them filtering into the open positions, it wasn’t a rebellion, a fight.

It was a day job. Quietly, Pam packed up, too, and moved on to other things.

That was before the protests.

AMY AND ERICA AND EMMA AND GEORGE

It was the early ’90s, and there was a bleeding woman on the operating table. Her limbs spasmed back and forth as Amy

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Ottinger, fresh from San Francisco, attempted to hold her still while Dr. George Buchanan tried to finish her abortion. Scarlet drops sprayed across the front of Amy’s shirt.

Outside, the anti-abortion movement had begun to mobilize — the bleeding woman had walked in the back door because of the throngs near the front. The Handbook on Abortion, a novel with graphic depictions of aborted fetuses considered the “Bible of the pro-life movement,” had moved into the mainstream across the country. The images were plastered onto homemade signs outside the Gainesville Women’s Health Center, where the counter protesters also rotated between two other abortion clinics that opened in the city: All Women’s Health and Bread and Roses. The protests still persist; I’ve driven past them on these college town roads.

Emma Caplan, all of 5 years old, was the daughter of one of the clinic’s nurses.

Her father and his friends, members of Veterans for Peace, would watch the protesters and shield women approaching the clinic for procedures. She would skip rope in front of the protesters to block their path leading up to the clinic, cheekily smiling from ear to ear, curly hair bouncing. Despite

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their screaming and their signs, she said she was never afraid of them.

Sometimes they were young men, some of them religious leaders.

Sometimes college students.

Most often, they were older women, hunched over and clutching their rosary beads, praying the patients understood what they were about to do.

Back inside, the woman on the table was having a seizure. She was allergic to the lidocaine — a fact she concealed from Amy and the other employees — that was injected into the cervix during an abortion. But once the procedure began, it couldn’t stop. George had to make sure all of the fetal matter was removed.

Amy had to make sure the woman held still. After many minutes of sweat and fear and more blood, they

managed to complete the procedure and stabilize the woman. It succeeded by a thread. If the woman had told them about her allergy, none of it would have happened. They would’ve had to turn her away because there was no substitute for the lidocaine.

She knew, Amy remembers, the choice she was making.

The clinic now performed abortions on Tuesdays up to the second trimester, and on Fridays well into the second trimester, thanks to George’s added expertise. He became the clinic’s medical director in the late 1980s right after finishing OB-GYN residency. As a Black man performing abortions in the South, many of the clinic employees worried for him. He still rode his bicycle straight through the protests on the way to

work. Eventually, after a few instances of different abortion doctors getting shot in the 1990s, his coworkers convinced him to let them pick him up at a predetermined location before work. He begrudgingly hid under blankets in the back seat.

As a man raised by his grandmother, George was serious about the women and his work. He attended to all aspects of female healthcare, from checkups to examinations to surgical procedures to help babies arrive healthy. Once, someone asked him how he could fight to save a premature baby at 24 weeks, and then arrive the next night for an abortion at 24 weeks.

“The woman is my patient,” he said, “and I do what she wants.”

His words stuck with the women at the clinic. Many of them repeated it back to me, including Erica Merchant, who was a counselor, like Pam had been decades earlier.

Erica found the clinic for the work and stayed for the community within the wood-paneled walls and shagcarpeted floors. On the nights when George was late (and he often was), the counselors would sit and chat with the women, taking their minds off of the impending procedure by laughing together about the mundane cycles of their lives. She was able to look into the eyes of the patients and see the worry melt away when she

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“The woman is my patient,” DR. GEORGE BUCHANAN said, “and I do what she wants.” set up each step to get them closer to an abortion. George’s mantra — I do what she wants — echoed in her mind as she considered a life in healthcare.

“What really matters when you’re doing this work with other people?

Do you really matter? No,” Erica says.

“Other people matter. Who they are, and what they need, and what they think, and their opinions, and their experience. That’s what really matters.”

It’s what made her want to be a nurse. Ironically, that’s why she had to step away from work at the clinic — the full-time counselor job was incompatible with nursing school at UF.

1997

The clinic workers stopped for a number of reasons. They weren’t treating the same number of people because of advances in birth control science and condom effectiveness. And the women who did need services called the new chains of medical

facilities, like Planned Parenthood or All Women’s Health, that had effective marketing strategies. This was fine, wonderful even, the women reasoned, but it also meant the small flow of income offered to clinic employees was going to trickle. As is, they were often paid minimum wage. And when a woman expressed concern about paying for a procedure, administration would almost always have the fees quietly waived, and the facility would pay for it out of pocket. They squeezed by for a couple decades, but times were changing.

Erica was a nurse in the psychology field in 1997. She picked up a phone call, pursed her lips, nodded, hung up. She glanced at her husband.

“The clinic is closing,” she said.

“I thought the clinic already closed,” he replied.

It was as if the other person on the phone had told her someone in her family had died.

She held her breath for a few moments and then called back.

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“Is there going to be a party?”

They had thrown parties for everything: birthdays, anniversaries, announcements, even parties for women they’d grown close to while waiting for abortions.

Those celebrations were sewn into Erica’s memory of the clinic.

“Well, I don’t think there’s a party planned,” the person replied.

Oh Jesus, Erica thought, hanging up again. What the f---.

2024

Fifty years after Pam knocked on the door, I sat with Erica outside a Gainesville coffee shop, her round glasses reflecting the evening sun. Her eyes, a sharp gray-blue, cut through the glass, highlighted by her red curls.

Since the phone call, the clinic has been cemented as a thing of the past.

Roe v. Wade was overturned. Sleeping bans on abortion, tied up in legal troubles since the 1970s, awakened with a roar, breaking their bonds and unfurling across the country — eight-week bans, 10-week bans, 15-week bans. The ball was back in the state’s courts. Florida still has a six-week abortion ban on the books.

I listened to Erica speak about memories of the clinic. Inside jokes and poignant statements from patients, her recollection crystal clear. She meandered into Ron DeSantis and the Supreme Court justices and third-wave feminism, and then she stopped. She looked at me with those piercing eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I apologize to you.”

I tilted my head, puzzled.

“Listen, this is our fault. We

have to get it back for you,” she continues. “We need to get our asses back in the game. We’re just pissing away everything. Women my age, in our 50s, pissing it away, because we think we have it all.”

I realized that Erica blames herself when she watches the news about the fresh debates on abortion. She stares at the screen and assumes the burden. I never pictured these women like that until now. I had imagined it must feel frustrating, seeing something you believed in so deeply be stripped away, but I had not imagined frustration with yourself.

She told me about her four nieces.

How she constantly apologizes to them, too. How the guilt follows her everywhere. It was complacency, she tells me. She and the others got what they wanted, they reaped the fruits of the 1970s laborers and relaxed. They shouldn’t have done that. They should’ve kept fighting.

I didn’t know if I should agree with her or comfort her. My mother is her age, and I’ve never seen her as a complacent woman.

“Mama,” I tell her over the phone one day. “It’s strange hearing this from these women.”

I describe Erica’s apology and her eyes. I tell her about Amy, who was angry that the women in her life let the country get this way, and I tell her about Emma, who watched the abortion debate swing to the other side of the pendulum over the course of her youth and called it complacency.

There is a small pause.

“Yeah,” my mother says, her voice floating in a tone I haven’t heard before. “Yeah. We let it go.”

Erica calls herself a radical feminist. But she carries guilt for not continuing to fight for the rights that are being taken away.

(Alissa Gary/Atrium Magazine)

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What’s

The Atlantic sojourner

Mascot for cruelty

story by SOPHIA ABOLFATHI

story by SARAH HENRY

One of the world’s most well-studied whale species is also among the most endangered. Dive into the story of Squilla, a North Atlantic right whale and her growing calf’s mysterious disappearance.

Photo courtesy of New England Aquarium Right Whale Catalog

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Decades before today’s plush Albert and Alberta mascots graced the University of Florida, the school was represented by live alligators that were abused and kept in captivity. Discover the true history of the Florida Gators, prying open the relationship between man and beast.

Photo courtesy of University of Florida George A. Smathers Libraries

@ATRIUM_MAGAZINE

online?

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Squirrel salvation audio story by LAUREN BRENSEL “It was him or the squirrels:” Gainesville animal rehabber Becky Goodman wonders how we can learn about humans through the eyes of squirrels. Though she treats and releases these fuzzy critters back into the Florida wild, her pet squirrel Penny is always by her side.

Not perfect but his best audio story by MARIA AVLONITIS Navigating single fatherhood and the physical demands of being a mechanic, Zechariah Blanchard knows both occupations require substantial amounts of effort. Making enough money for his three children means leaving his dream of being an aerospace engineer behind. Listen to the clinking of metalwork in this story, and be sure to view the photo gallery.

More than just a good hair day audio story by DELIA ROSE SAUER Amid the sounds of snipping scissors and buzzing razors, Avin Posen found their true identity through a genderaffirming haircut. Posen, now a hairstylist at the Goldenrod Parlor in Gainesville, does the same for others in a state where gender-affirming healthcare is constantly under attack. In this audio story, Posen’s work impacts and inspires their clients and, in turn, themself.

COMPANY/ATRIUM-MAGAZINE

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ATRIUMMAGAZINE

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d esi g n b y D I E GO P E R D O MO a nd L I ND E E WALKER

Home is where the hound is photo story by ANNA EDLUND

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eyond the gates of GRACE Marketplace, a homeless shelter in Gainesville, the afternoon sun casts long shadows onto the cement. Shelter guests crowd the pavement under covered areas, seeking relief from the Florida heat. A man and a woman break into laughter as their puppy nudges her wet nose against them and sprints off across the concrete. Nearby, another guest pulls her dog into an embrace. They cling to each other for comfort after a long day.

About 25% of the day guests at GRACE are pet owners. They curl up with their dogs for warmth at night and ensure their pets have something to eat before they consider their own grumbling stomachs.

These animals may be homeless, but they’re loved.

Jacob Schaffer, the animal welfare manager at GRACE, provides the dogs food, shelter and lots of extra care. If an owner can’t afford dog food or needs help taking their dog on walks, Schaffer is there to lend a helping hand and give back to a community he understands. His desire to help is rooted in his past, having experienced homelessness himself with a dog by his side.

Powerful companionship exists between the unhoused and the dogs they call family. Every kiss and snuggle holds a truth: Love knows no boundaries, in even the toughest of circumstances.

Katy, a guest at GRACE, hugs her beloved dog, Skye, who she rescued two years ago. She recalls how she injured her back after lifting Skye to safety when someone attempted to poison her pup. She has no regrets: “I would give up my legs for her to walk. She rescued me right back.”

(Anna Edlund/Atrium Magazine)

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Shorty

Marshmellow

Jackson

Barbie

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Charlie

Leo

Laura

Denali

Prince Munch

Julien is a social butterfly who serves as a companion to many people and animals at GRACE. He chases after his friend’s dog Daisy as they play together on the grass. “I don’t really live for myself, so when I know that there’s another being that’s excited to see me, even if I’m sad, it’s like … hell f---ing yeah,” Julien said.

(Anna Edlund/Atrium Magazine)

Jacob Schaffer, the animal welfare manager, lets out Shorty for his afternoon workout. “I have seen homeless people who take care of their dogs better than my neighbors down the street take care of theirs, and they have a house. I don’t think it’s a homeless or non-homeless issue — I think it’s an issue of the person themselves,” Jacob said.

(Anna Edlund/Atrium Magazine)

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Christy, a guest at GRACE, beams with joy as she embraces her two puppies. The dogs, Prince Munch and Princess Bella, wriggle in her arms as they compete for their owner’s affection. (Anna Edlund/Atrium Magazine)

Kay says that her chihuahua Shorty and her American pitbull terrier Marshmellow make up her world. She takes a moment to snuggle with Shorty.

“I have lupus, and it has destroyed bone and muscle. I also am a breast cancer survivor, and I have lymphoma,” Kay said. “I can’t walk far distances but I can walk with them, they get me out of the chair.” (Anna Edlund/Atrium Magazine)

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Amanda and her chihuahua, Divine Grace, have been inseparable since she rescued her at six weeks old. Amanda holds Divine Grace to her chest, replicating how they fall asleep together every night. “I went to rehab for a few days, and it’s hard to sleep when I don’t have her, cause she’s not an at-your-feet dog, she’s got to be at your chest,” Amanda said.

(Anna Edlund/Atrium Magazine)

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Do you want to try some pickles?

Turning talent into business story and photos by ALISSA GARY

Fish stands in the back kitchen at Crafty Bastards Restaurant next to jars of pickled carrots, broccoli and cucumbers on Feb. 29, 2024. (Alissa Gary/Atrium Magazine)

S

ome pucker their lips and scrunch their noses. Others take the shot stone-faced, smacking their mouths to absorb the aftertaste.

No customer at Grove Street Farmers Market could pass Elijah “Fish” Gurman’s booth without being heckled into taking a shot of diced pickles.

The 34-year-old owner of Proud Pickles stood at the helm of his farmers market booth with about 70 sample cups at his fingertips.

Each of the 10 coolers he brought to the market was filled with plastic containers of pickles.

“You wanna try some pickles?”

Fish yelled at the nearest passersby,

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more statement than question.

They shook their heads and smiled at first, politely declining the invitation. But Fish waved them over until they shuffled toward the booth.

He calls the method aggressive generosity — “like a clingy ex,” he said as he handed the customers a sample cup of white pickled cauliflower.

“I have a lot of people who tell me they don’t like pickles,” Fish said. “They’re all full of shit.”

He’s worked in restaurants since he was 13, cooking his way through big cities and Michelin-star restaurants.

But the blight of fast-paced kitchens and the big egos running them led him to return to his hometown of Gainesville to focus on something

simpler: cucumbers, garlic and vinegar.

His small-business story is not unusual. Just last year, 600,000 Floridians filed business applications with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — the third-highest rate in the country. Fish said grinding for success is “fairly common.”

“But then again,” he added, “maybe I’m just downplaying how awesome I am.”

His company, Proud Pickles, was a pandemic-era effort to make rent. In 2020, when a restaurant he worked at temporarily closed, he gathered what he knew about fermentation and started designing recipes.

More than 50 pickle flavors and vegetable combinations make

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up his menu. It’s meant to have something for everybody — there’s classic dill but also radishes with bean sprouts, ginger with pineapple and green papaya with scallions.

Fish keeps at least one container of each flavor available at any time, he said, just in case somebody wants to buy it. But the menu is too broad for even Fish to manage inside the back kitchen of Crafty Bastards, the northwest Gainesville restaurant in which he operates.

On a Monday at 8:30 a.m., a few brown curls peeked out from beneath Fish’s green pickle-themed beanie as he bent over a cutting board. He slid a radish against a mandoline, the millimeter-thick circlets emerging in an orderly stack, his fingers a second away from getting caught in the blade.

His hands moved by muscle memory from over a decade in food service.

The radish joined diced onions, bean sprouts and thyme in a plastic container. He covered them in pickle brine and made his way to a walk-in refrigerator hidden behind a display fridge. Fish’s radish mixture settled on top of a set of

containers labeled “Rad Sprouts.”

“It seems a little chaotic,” he said, “but there’s a system of some sort.”

But the hundreds of pickles aren’t enough to make ends meet.

Fish spends afternoons in the same restaurant bartending, serving and marketing for the pub. He runs a bounce house company with his brothers on the weekends. Altogether, a usual workday for Fish runs from dawn to dusk, seven days a week.

Florida has the fourth-highest ratio of restaurant cooks to other professions in the nation, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s about one cook in every 77 people.

Cooks in Florida make about $16.30 an hour, just about matching the national average. Yet, it’s about $6 short of sustaining a single adult without children, according to estimates collected by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Fish recommends nobody go into food service today.

So why hasn’t he left the business?

“Because I’m dumb,” he said.

“I just enjoy what I’m doing.”

His father was a general manager at

Applebee’s and other chain restaurants, so it was natural for him to follow the food path, he said. He took his first restaurant job just before high school.

After graduating from Eastside High School’s culinary arts program, he moved to Miami in 2007 to attend a culinary school that has since closed its South Florida campus. He and his younger brother shared an apartment and worked at the same restaurant, a South Beach hotel and bar called Eden.

Four years and a bachelor’s degree later, he thought about leaving Miami to pursue his longtime dream of moving to New York City.

Only two weeks passed between Fish’s first mention of moving to the city and when he left, said Joseph Gurman, his younger brother and roommate. That summer in 2012, Fish packed his life into his car and said goodbye to his brother.

“If he says he’s going to do something, he’s going to do it,” Joseph, 32, said. “I just didn’t expect it to happen so early.”

Spring was turning to summer in New York City. Fish’s white Jeep

A row of packaged classic dill pickles.

(Alissa Gary/Atrium Magazine)

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Fish pours vinegar and salt brine into a jar of classic dill pickles.

(Alissa Gary/Atrium Magazine)

Cherokee, which he said was “hanging on by a thread,” successfully made the 24-hour drive up from Miami. He had a job lined up at a high-end restaurant thanks to a friend of a friend. But only when he parked in Jersey City, he said, did he realize he had nowhere to live, so he resorted to sleeping in the car. It took two days to find an apartment.

Fish worked at about seven restaurants during the seven years he lived in New York, most of which were fine dining spots in the city. His first was at Aureole, a Michelin-star restaurant in the middle of Times Square.

It was rare for Fish to take a night off. When he twisted his ankle at an after-hours soccer game, he hopped down the stairs to the kitchen instead of missing work. Hot oil regularly dripped from the pans he pulled out

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of the oven, littering his arms in raw, blistering burns.

“I wore them as a sense of pride for a long time,” he said.

But as he grew older, Fish said he felt like his bosses didn’t care about his well-being, certainly not to the same degree that he cared about their restaurants. The fast-paced New York scene had started to wear him down.

At his brothers’ urging, Fish moved back to Gainesville in 2019.

He hesitated at first.

Having learned so much about fine dining in the big city, he told his brothers that returning to Gainesville felt like being a big fish in a small pond — prompting them to mockingly call him Big Fish.

The nickname stuck.

Fish took a front-of-house job at Crafty Bastards upon moving home.

Gainesville’s food scene, Fish said, is less intense than New York’s, but its product is just as high in quality.

Thinking through decisions wasn’t Fish’s forte until later adulthood, he admitted. He wasn’t nervous about moving to Miami, nor to New York, nor about starting Proud Pickles. But as the company has gotten more popular, he’s looking to expand: He just bought a friend’s trailer, which he’s transforming into a mobile pickle-selling unit.

He’s more worried for the

future than he’s ever been.

“With the dreams of bigger things, and bigger projects and bigger responsibilities,” he said, “comes the knowledge that I’m not that person.”

But three weeks later, he clarified: That’s just the “insecure bullshit” talking. He knows he can achieve his Proud Pickles dreams, starting by better managing his money. It just doesn’t happen overnight.

Fish is also happier than he’s ever been. If he had to define success — though he doesn’t think much about it, he said — it would be by his happiness.

“It’s not a monetary thing,” he said.

“It’s like, ‘What do I get out of this?’”

He recently joined a team to develop a new food accessibility program in the historically Black Porters neighborhood. The issue of food waste became close to Fish’s heart after he opened Proud Pickles.

Throwing away food is like throwing away money and time, he said.

“Don’t get rid of the juice,” he told a customer at Grove Street Farmers Market as they bought a pint of spicy dills. “The whole jar is meant to be used up.”

With each pickle jar he sold, Fish reminded customers that pickle juice can be repurposed as salad dressing or meat seasoning. He saves each radish tip in a plastic container for salad, and his menu features a piña colada horchata made from pineapple skins that would have otherwise ended up in the landfill.

Chase Kilpatrick has been working at the Proud Pickles stand for five months. In his short pickle tenure, the 17-year-old has also

Elijah “Fish” Gurman reaches for a towel on the storage racks in the back kitchen at Crafty Bastards Restaurant. The towels act like oven mitts to carry a pot of boiling pickle brine comprised of vinegar, salt and sugar. (Alissa Gary/Atrium Magazine)

“i have a lot of people who tell me they don’t like pickles.” “they’re all full of shit.” learned to appreciate all parts of the vegetable. He preached the value of making pickles from discarded cauliflower leaves, Fish nodding approvingly from the sidelines.

Pickle juice dribbled down Chase’s arm as he refilled the four sample cups wedged between his fingers and handed them out in the rain.

“I end up showering, and I still smell like pickles,” he said. “It’s good for me, bad for my mother.”

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In a profession where Fish so often felt overworked and undervalued by superiors, he sought to do the opposite for Chase. He thanked the teen for handling a last-minute customer.

“If someone treats you well,” Fish said, “you should treat them well back.”

A personality test once told Fish he was a nurturing person. In the back kitchen of Crafty Bastards, he weighed a tub of salt before dumping it into a pot of pickle brine big

enough to fit a toddler. His anklehigh socks were mismatched. A pen stuck out from behind his ear.

Lots of people like to cook. Yet few start every day at 8 a.m. and finish past 10 p.m., just to serve their hard work on a platter to strangers.

Fish grabbed a freshly made jar of dill pickles and glanced at its label. He knows there’s a demand for quality products. It’s just a matter of creating them.

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Who are

WE? Our story began in 2021, when then-University of Florida professor Moni Basu wanted to amplify Florida’s underrepresented voices. She recruited journalism students to combine their reporting experience with literary writing techniques to explore life in the Sunshine State. Basu pioneered the values we still hold today: in-depth narrative nonfiction storytelling told through beautiful writing and reporting.

Atrium was born.

We published our inaugural issue in 2021, artfully introducing audiences to the lives, longings and struggles of their Florida neighbors. Since then, we’ve published an annual print edition and year-round reported stories, personal essays, photo essays, audio features and poetry on our website, atriummag.org.

Atrium Magazine consistently wins awards from major organizations — including the Florida chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication — for its original, captivating and true Florida stories.

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Top row: Delaney Starling, Lauren Brensel, Delia Rose Sauer and Luena Rodriguez-Feo Vileira Bottom row: Diego Perdomo and Matthew Cupelli

Join us!

Do you have a true Florida story to tell?

Atrium magazine wants to hear from you.

Atrium is always looking for writers, designers, illustrators and photographers who are eager to bring Florida’s stories to life.

If you’ve dreamed of seeing your work on the pages of a magazine, reach out. Whether you have a quick thought or a lengthy pitch, we’re waiting to hear from you. There’s room for your voice on our pages.

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Roots of Rest Conservation cemeteries provide a deeply personal, nature-connected approach to death story by KATE BECKER photos by KATE BECKER and ELISE PLUNK

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d esi g n b y D I E GO P ERDO M O A sign directs visitors to the Prairie Creek Conservation Cemetery on Aug. 14, 2024, in Gainesville, Fla. (Kate Becker/Atrium Magazine)

Jose Enrique Vasquez’s grave is decorated with a cross. His marker reads 8.21.1950 10.13.2023. (Elise Plunk/Atrium Magazine)

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sprinkle of droplets lands with a splat, splat, splat, signaling the start of Florida’s rainy season. The scent of sod floats through the damp air as dragonflies dive for cover and blades of grass sway and tangle, gusts of wind whisk through curly clumps of moss hanging from oak trees.

April Zee, 25, navigates a gravel path between an open

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meadow and a thick forest.

She steps off the path into tall grasses where scattered mounds of dirt peek up at her from the ground.

On one pile of upturned soil, adorned with wilting flowers, a small, round disk reads “Jose Enrique Vasquez, Aug. 21, 1950 to Oct. 13, 2023.”

It’s a grave.

Without seeing the flash of the brass marker, it’s hard to tell the vast,

leaf-covered grounds double as a graveyard. But as assistant director of the Prairie Creek Conservation Cemetery, Zee knows that’s the goal of green burial sites like this one.

In Florida, this resting place is one of three certified conservation cemeteries, burying bodies with a focus on environmental sustainability.

To do so, cemeteries such as Prairie Creek — now comprising 25 acres in a 90-acre Gainesville woodland — entomb the deceased in biodegradable containers and permit only natural mementos, like flowers or rocks, in place of traditional gravestones.

They also prohibit the use of embalming fluids like formaldehyde so

that decomposition occurs unhindered.

Zee’s brown, weathered boots create a jarring crunch as she cuts through the meadow.

At the cemetery, she works with three others to weed sweet gum trees and use grass to plug patches of dirt — the result of previous cattle farms overgrazing the land. The team’s work is an effort to restore the area back to its natural state, where about 1,100 people currently rest for eternity.

Prairie Creek staff must balance their stewardship of the land, including being mindful of the graveyard’s future, while delicately navigating the emotional task of comforting grievers.

An April morning finds Zee and a few

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A large oak tree surrounded by graves stands tall off the main path of cemetery on March 26, 2024. (Kate Becker/Atrium Magazine)

The demand for sustainable burials is growing. While McKay’s spot is reserved, the cemetery will one day run out of space for others. volunteers deep in the dense forest, preparing a dig site for a funeral procession and burial scheduled later that week. Laying down a wooden template for the size of the grave, they begin digging into the loam.

Metal shovels slice into the dirt that will be placed atop the person buried here two days later. Roots crunch and crack as volunteer Monelle McKay, 60, clips them away to create a smooth rectangle 42 inches deep.

McKay lost her husband in January, well after she started volunteering at Prairie Creek. She knew she wanted to be buried here and, because of that, he did, too. She remembers Larry McKay’s burial with both contentment and a sense of healing.

Monelle McKay’s family and friends knew they’d be unable to use caskets, headstones or store-bought flower arrangements, abiding by the cemetery’s guidelines. Her neighbor crafted a flower bouquet without any floral foam, weaving each flower together. Her sister quilted a blanket in which they laid Larry to rest. Monelle marked the grave with a large piece of driftwood — a makeshift headstone Larry found on St. George Island years prior.

“When I saw it — oh my God, it was beautiful,” McKay says. “When they took his body from the

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funeral home onto the procession cart, two eagles flew overhead. It was really, really special.”

Zee says it was one of the most memorable burials she has been a part of.

Using a tarp to cover the fully hollowed gravesite, she and her team collect their tools and walk out of the forest, the sun a little lower than before.

They’re tired and ready to head home.

McKay lingers, walking over to a sunny spot in the tall grass where Larry lies. About 10 feet away, a white marker pokes straight up like the grass. One day, McKay plans to be buried exactly where she stands, close to her husband.

The demand for sustainable burials is growing. While McKay’s spot is reserved, the cemetery will one day run out of space for others. Once it does, Prairie Creek may move to a new site for green burials somewhere else in the state. Zee says she expects that, at that point, the land will be turned over to the Alachua Conservation Trust, which will continue to maintain the land as a memorial park.

By August, the mornings grow so hot that Zee’s T-shirt — her second of the day — is soaked within the first two hours of daylight. The olive green fabric clings to her body like Saran wrap as she inspects each grave, pausing to read

Thomas Niemi, a worker at the cemetery, reveals the grave marker of Kathleen Ann Cantwell, a founder of the cemetery, on Aug. 14, 2024. (Kate Becker/Atrium Magazine)

“I leave almost every day feeling kind of energized, which is surprising with the kind of work we do out here.” the names of the deceased aloud to keep their memory alive.

“Hello, Kathleen,” she says, as she kneels at a grave flatter than the others. She brushes leaves away from the brass marker.

Kathleen Cantwell, who died in 2010, was a founder of Prairie Creek and the first to be buried in the cemetery. Her cat, Pogie, lies buried at her feet.

“You don’t know if anyone’s said ‘Hello,’ to them in the past year or two,” Zee says.

Walking back to the staff golf cart, she inks a check mark next to Cantwell’s name.

“It’s an honest day’s work if I’ve ever heard of

one,” she says. “It’s just so cool for me to see the relief of everyone that comes out here. It’s not that you are just burying someone naturally — you are creating a whole new experience for people.”

Zee studied forest resources and conservation at the University of Florida before beginning a research career. But as someone who enjoys interacting with people, she wanted a more hands-on job.

Here, she aids families and friends mourning the loss of their loved ones. It’s an emotional process.

Just weeks prior, she walked a family through the cemetery as they selected a burial site for their deceased

AN AMERICAN HISTORY OF PRESERVING BODIES Conventional cemetery practices in the U.S. originated during the Civil War. The bodies of dead soldiers often took a long time to arrive home, so embalmers preserved, restored and sterilized them with chemicals. The goal was to reduce the need for a hasty burial, allowing time for funeral processions and reducing the risk of disease.

Still in use today, the chemicals that are most effective for preservation are the most toxic. Formaldehyde is the main substance used for embalming bodies. According to researchers, the chemical renders human tissue unusable to the bacteria that would naturally break it down into fertile soil. Formaldehyde and other embalming chemicals can also leach into the ground during this process, polluting it.

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relative. The silence was palpable. She chose to stay quiet, too, letting them take their surroundings in, mentioning the beauty of the trees that day.

One of the family members who had spoken the least chimed in to agree. Soon, more of the family felt comfortable speaking with Zee until the group broke finally into laughter.

Zee lights up thinking about it now, and her speech quickens.

“I leave almost every day feeling kind of energized, which is surprising with the kind of work we do out here,” she says. “I think it’s the innate goodness that makes it easy to want to come back.”

A slight chill fills the air, heralding one of the first cold days of fall.

The sound of jazz fills the cemetery as families sit in lawn chairs near loved ones’ graves, enjoying the rare lack of Florida heat. Some work with volunteers and staff to finish digging holes for the various native trees and shrubs waiting to be planted. The greenery will serve as living memorials for those who have passed and reintroduce species that used to be in the ecosystem.

The event is nearly over when a car pulls up. Two women, one holding a baby, emerge.

Despite their late arrival, Zee drives them to the grave they’re looking to visit: a sunny spot of the forest where the older woman’s husband lies. They clear space in the soil for her chosen plants, an azalea bush and a silver buckthorn tree, while Zee carries the infant.

The child, a baby girl, is just beginning to grow hair on her head. Zee looks at her as laughter carries from the families eating and chatting, adorning the graves of those she helped bury months before.

Something shifts in Zee: She is overcome by the full cycle of life unfolding in front of her.

The woman kneels to plant an azalea bush on her late husband’s grave. It will bloom with bright pink flowers in late February.

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April Zee hollows out a gravesite for a burial later in the week on April 22, 2024.

(Kate Becker/Atrium Magazine)

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Words in

story by LUENA RODRIGUEZ-FEO VILEIRA illustration by DELIA ROSE SAUER photos by JACK VINCENT

Motion

When the bus stops, the show starts

E

nter a person, 29 (though they stopped counting after 25), in navy bottoms and a beige polo shirt. They sit in the front-left corner of a bus on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, steering the wheel for eight to 10 hours a day. In their role as a bus driver, they have many scene partners but few lines, confined to pleasantries with the passengers rounding the stops. Good morning. Have a nice day.

As passengers board, this driver assesses them for an extra beat, searching for hints of the person, the personality behind the student ID. What book are you reading? Is that an anime graphic tee? In lieu of a detail to compliment

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— a sample of conversation for anyone willing to bite — they welcome passengers with a wide grin, unfettered by the glorious gap between their own front teeth.

This smile is the first thing you notice about Sahire Mavis when the bus’s smudged two-panel doors part like heaven’s gate. Once you board, you’re free to join the menagerie of strangers riding along with eyes glazed over, lips pressed together and earbuds in, equally preoccupied with where they need to be.

Here, our minds return to their solitary containers, a fishbowl swimming with the details of our days — thoughts that cloud how, if at all, we see through to one another. The haze follows us

off the bus and into the day’s routine, making it easy to be served (whatever you picked up for lunch) and shipped (with two-day delivery for your online order) and shuttled (via Uber tonight) by a faceless figure. The further we sink into this role of recipient, accepting actions without actors, the less our urge to be curious of one another, to dip into conversation together, to say thank you and mean it.

“It’s actually quite interesting,” Sahire reflects, “how quiet a bus can be

d esi g n b y D I E GO P ERDO M O

Sahire Mavis joins Danscompany performers as they rehearse the choreography of Cinderella on Nov. 3, 2024, in Gainesville, Fla. (Jack Vincent/Atrium Magazine)

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when it’s filled with people.”

Sahire drives for Gainesville’s Regional Transit System (RTS), serving North Central Florida’s most populated city, home to the state’s flagship university. Depending on the day, Sahire transports students living minutes from the University of Florida’s campus and Gainesville locals alike, covering a 6-mile route. In the nine months before Sahire was hired, RTS bused almost 4 million passengers.

And yet, silence. On the shared commute, few bother to say anything.

Perhaps some passengers require respite from the day’s relentless studying, speaking, serving,

sacrificing and screen time. Perhaps others are mesmerized by the uninterrupted opportunity to scroll through their Instagram feed.

Pause your music, sit close and listen. (Does it carry to the back?

Sahire isn’t sure.) Layered over the low drum of the engine, a hum of Sahire’s own. Perhaps hum is too modest. They admit to vocal warmups and songs alike, managing to muffle full-blown musical theater. Now you hear two sources of energy: the one that keeps the bus going and the one that drives Sahire.

The bus driver’s corner is Sahire’s transient stage, where they rehearse for the making of their life.

ACT ONE.

Sahire is born and raised mostly in Florida. They’re searching for their voice in adolescence, and they find it in spoken word poetry.

When the creative arts keep calling, they answer. They join their high school’s hip hop dance team, then transfer to a performing arts school to train in vocals.

They move to Gainesville in the fall of 2016 and major in musical theater at Santa Fe College. They’re two classes away from getting their associate degree in 2019, but life interrupts, and they never finish.

ACT TWO.

Now it’s the summer of 2023, and Sahire fills the time with a new career plan: become a medical assistant; move to Los Angeles, California.

For now, Sahire is still in Gainesville, and they could use more income. They’re riding the bus and glazing over the interior ads and — Hey, they’re hiring. Why not? Both their parents drove school buses in Jacksonville. The pay, $16.97 an hour, is decent enough. They’ve never dreamed of being a bus driver, but they need a roof over their head and food for themself and their two dogs to be able to dream at all.

So, they accept the intermission.

The creative arts, by way of necessity, take a backseat. But Sahire can never truly close the curtain on their craft.

Sometime between the first stop on Sahire’s route and the loop back around again and again, creativity shoots out from the crevices of their mind like the plants sprouting unexpectedly between cracks in the Sahire and Danscompany dancer Nyla Mottlau, 15, practice their routine together. “Here I am at my later 20s, and I’m really just kind of getting into the crux of [ballet],” Sahire said.

(Jack Vincent/Atrium Magazine)

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The bus driver’s corner is Sahire’s transient stage, where they rehearse for the making of their life. sidewalk. Their best ideas, in fact, come at work. Story material, character developments, poetry sections and ending lines — never too much to distract from driving but enough for Sahire to pocket some joy for the ride.

Like Sahire, the passengers on their bus retain traces of the outside world when they board, packing along their pleasures and pains, the matters of their lives.

This context is constructed perpetually offstage from Sahire, who knows they are bound to a revolving door of travelers by nothing but a briefly shared moment in time.

Sahire recounts, a few weeks ago, a student was crying on the

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bus. No one was checking on him.

He gets off the bus but not before

Sahire can tell him, “I don’t know what’s going on, but I hope it gets better.” The student replies, “Thank you. I just found out my dad died.”

“I know my words really didn’t mean much in comparison to what he was dealing with,” Sahire says, “but it helps.”` Sahire still remembers what it felt like in college, charting the course of your personhood while steering between family and career, treading unsteadily along what seems like the only path to the rest of your life. The growing pains of young adulthood, Sahire calls these, intensified

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by the absence of stable community, relationships and support.

“We grow up in whatever dynamic we are raised in because we had no choice,” they say. “Now you’re in a situation where you have nothing but choices to make.”

What kind of person do you want to be? What kind of individuals do you want to be surrounded by?

Sahire answers these questions for themself: “I know that I drive a bus, but I don’t see myself as a bus driver,” they say. “I am so many other things.”

Sahire won’t identify as a writer or a singer, despite a passion for both. No, they don’t just do the arts. They are in love with them. It’s not a job Sahire can clock out of. It’s a perpetual state of being, one that draws them deeper into admiration, learning, yearning.

Ideas don’t just sit in Sahire’s head.

Ideas find a home in the folders on their phone and laptop, or between the pages of the brown, faux-leather journal they keep on them, always with a pen. Sahire doesn’t identify with their mom’s Christian faith anymore but still clings to a couple lines of scripture, remembered as her advice: Write the vision. Make it plain.

And they do, with a catalog of short stories, a poetry collection in the works and the early outlines of a fantasy adventure manga. (That last one will take more than just writing. To complete it, Sahire is teaching themself how to draw.)

“How can I connect more with the craft?” Sahire asks. The craft, Sahire’s code for any creative art, finds its way back to them through dance.

Enter an artistic director. Picture her in the right place (choreographing Cinderella, a full-length ballet) with the right job (with the performing group Danscompany) at the right time (in need of dancers). In 2023, the show was turning 30, and JeriLynn Rapczak was turning 40.

For as long as the show has been

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around, Jeri-Lynn has been with the studio producing it, since her first dance class there as a child.

She hears about Sahire in July from a Santa Fe dance professor who choreographs for Danscompany and remembers them from the college’s spring shows.

“They’d be great for Danscompany,” the choreographer tells Jeri-Lynn.

She takes Sahire’s number.

Cut to an invitation: “Join us for the studio’s summer intensive, Sahire.” The offer is a warmup to the company’s people as much as its performance style.

Jeri-Lynn doesn’t know it, but ballet was always Sahire’s favorite dance class in college (even if they were never the best with all those French terms, between the sissonne, the changement de pieds and the

piqué). Years have passed since then, and Sahire’s body, softer and weaker, isn’t in the shape it used to be.

But Jeri-Lynn can tell Sahire has a foundation in dance from their posture, their sense of presence at the bar. Even better, Sahire is eager to learn. Oh, this person is going to be awesome. Go ahead and skip the process of auditioning, then. The guys at the studio would love to take Sahire under their wing anyway, adopting them into a lineage traced not by blood but from coach to dancer. Sahire will play a royal guard.

Rehearsals start in September.

In December, the cast pours into the studio for Cinderella’s full run through, a three-hour rehearsal. Seated at the front of the room, Sahire gets their first chance to watch the entire show. Standing at the back, looking

through the mirror’s reflection, JeriLynn takes the chance to watch Sahire.

Not their feet or their body but their face.

Jeri-Lynn remembers the sequence of Sahire’s expressions, eyes and mouth pulled into pure excitement.

Like watching a child open a present for the first time, she thinks.

At the last dress rehearsal for Cinderella, Sahire stands on stage to do what they do before any performance, drawing soft inhales, taking a moment to be present.

“I felt like I was breathing for the first time,” Sahire realizes. “It was a lifeline that I needed.”

They decide then to end the intermission. They will, by whatever means, make a livelihood from the arts.

When Cinderella is through, Jeri-Lynn knows Sahire’s time with

the studio can’t be, no, shouldn’t be over. I just feel like they’re a cool person. I want to be friends. In casual conversation, she learns of Sahire’s love for poetry; Sahire learns of her vision for the studio’s next performance. “I have all these ideas,” she says. “Let’s collaborate.”

By January, an offer: “Join Danscompany for our concert in spring. Let’s incorporate spoken word poetry in a dance number.”

The two work from a shared Google Docs, then a series of in-person talks to develop the writing they’ll include. Jeri-Lynn ends up with 3 minutes and 17 seconds of Sahire’s voice across seven different audio files, reading lines of her writing, lines of Sahire’s and excerpts from “On the Road” by Jack Kerouac.

“Imagine the life of a chameleon,

changing colors, blending in,” Sahire begins in the recording. “I liken it to changing of clothes.”

ACT THREE.

Enter a person, off the bus and out of uniform. Inside Danscompany studio, Sahire chats with fellow dancers, lips parted in a smile, blending easy laughter with questions about proper technique. I can’t fear being good at it if I want to be good at it.

They run through the choreography repeatedly, panting less each time.

In March, after a work shift, Sahire arrives at the studio for the second-to-last rehearsal. They trade their stiff polyester polo for a casual tank top, revealing tattoos of a Hakuna Matata symbol on their outer bicep and a musical note on their forearm — details their passengers rarely see. Finally, Sahire’s body and mind can breathe.

At a glance, Sahire’s dark clothing seems like the only feature they share with the dancers seated among them.

In the sea of beige bodies in black leotards and tight ponytails, Sahire’s head, hairless and deep bronze, breaks the surface. But after Jeri-Lynn greets the group, “Happy Saturday!” and Sahire cheers the loudest reply, the dancers rise together in a single tide.

Sahire, no longer distinguishable, becomes one with them.

The day of the recital, Sahire wakes at a little past 7 a.m. The show is scheduled for 1 p.m., then again at 7 p.m. Nuts, fruit and a veggie sandwich, if necessary, will hold them until then. They spend the hour before showtime squeezing between dancers backstage, carried by waves of chaos as much as ecstasy.

Sahire answers these questions for themself: “I know that I drive a bus, but I don’t see myself as a bus driver,” they say.

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So, they accept the intermission. The creative arts, by way of necessity, take a backseat. But Sahire can never truly close the curtain on their craft.

When Sahire hits the stage for their first number (a Star Wars inspired hip-hop routine called “Death Star Twerk Team”), panic blooms in their chest. I think I forgot the steps. Then Sahire blinks from behind their Darth Vader mask, and their body reminds them they don’t have to think; they find their presence in the beat.

Once the curtains close, a voiceover rings through the speakers, signaling the start of a new number. Sahire, reading spoken word poetry in a thick transatlantic accent, is barely recognizable. For the remainder of the spring concert, the sound of Sahire introduces each routine.

After the 1 p.m. show finishes, a dancer’s mom asks, “Is that you `on the recording? Do you write?”

Sahire says, “Yes,” and the look on

her face suggests to them, I had no idea. When the 7 p.m. show comes, Sahire remembers this — all that the audience doesn’t know. That’s my voice. Gratitude rushes from their ears and fills their lungs.

Here is the first craft that spoke to Sahire, who was charmed by a love of words into a love of the arts.

Here is their writing, translated into the medium of dance, a language Sahire is still learning.

On the show’s program reads their first credit as an author: Writer..........................Sahire Mavis Spoken Word..............Sahire Mavis “Writing is the friend that hasn’t left me,” Sahire says.

Two days after the performance comes a call from Jeri-Lynn: “Work with me again.” She wants

to revamp the narrative theme for the next spring concert together, as writers. It can be even better. I want Sahire to help me make it better.

Exit a bus driver. Enter a creative who, yes, happens to drive a bus.

They sit in a familiar location but in a different role, on the bus as a passenger in this scene. They’re riding the route that takes them home, back to feed their dogs and their dreams.

Sahire pulls the cord to signal their stop.

“Thank you,” Sahire says to the driver before stepping off, the twopanel doors closing behind them.

Sahire will reprise their role in the 2024 production of Cinderella.

Today, they are working in the medical field and no longer drive for Gainesville’s Regional Transit System.

Writer...........................Sahire Mavis Spoken Word...........

Word................Sahire Mavis Sahire outstretches their limbs. “There's something about ballet, for me,” they said. “I think it's just about the movement and the dance of it all that just speaks to humanity.” (Jack Vincent/Atrium Magazine)

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d esi g n b y ZAR I N IS M AIL

introduction by LAUREN BRENSEL illustrations by DELIA ROSE SAUER

Floridians know storms.

Or, we like to think we do.

WE HOPE NOT to be the statistic this time, trusting that our safe brushes with destruction in the past are a sign we will be shielded from the storms of the future. But, as the intensity of the hurricanes we face increases, so does the likelihood we lose it all.

After the storms subside, Floridians grapple for years

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with what to make of houses, businesses and schools in shambles. And to outsiders, the destruction of a property isn’t as devastating without knowing — feeling — what was inside.

That’s why, in this issue, Atrium Magazine reporters sought to capture that feeling.

They featured valuable items that were battered, engulfed and

scattered in the five most recent catastrophic hurricanes, dating back to Hurricane Michael in 2018. They found that loss goes beyond a paint job or roofing. Loss is the heirlooms and yellowing pictures — the shared experiences — inside a place that render it a home.

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Lessons in faith PANAMA CITY BEACH — In 2018, 12-year-old Estella McGinity was ready for her first day back to school. At least, that’s what the seventh grader assured her family.

How could she complain about having to adapt when so many others were forced to restart? Even so, it was hard to think positively that morning as she feared the outright unknown. The uncertainty she’d seen permeate Panama City Beach in the weeks prior finally reached her.

She never imagined the school she attended since first grade would be reduced to pieces of junk waiting to be replaced. But she couldn’t let these thoughts pervade her mind.

She wasn’t a victim. To distract herself, Estella played on her phone as her mom drove into the car line.

She stood in front of The Church at the Beach, a flat, beige building

story by BRUNA ARNAES

adorned with a large cross. She searched for the courage to step inside — to explore her new “school.” This was where all her questions would be answered. The lobby was big, but she couldn’t analyze it closely because she was directed to a main room and instructed to sit on a wooden pew. While waiting for the morning assembly to start, she looked around.

A captain’s treasure SARASOTA — With his two small dogs and rabbits, Simon Williamsen, 41, watched water rise and rise in front of his sliding patio doors, wondering when the glass would give out.

The night Hurricane Helene hit, Williamsen chose which items from his home, nestled on a saltwater canal, he wanted to salvage. Furniture sloshed and banged in the wreckage as he looked for his treasures.

He’d collected it all: shells and corals, driftwood and lobster carcasses.

Despite spending two decades as a boat captain, he remembers exactly where and when he acquired the items. They’re so meaningful he can still feel the wind, see the catch of the day in his hands and smell the ocean.

He picked out three shark jaws

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and a fish carcass to keep. He would soon be picking wet drywall from his damaged home.

Despite temporarily living in a hotel, Williamsen is set on rebuilding his house and his life. He leans on the support of his church, his faith and his treasures, intending to “keep going one day at a time, put this thing back together … and take some people fishing soon.”

The room held familiar faces.

For the first time that day, Estella felt at peace. Her old campus symbolized many core memories. But the people around her now symbolized consistency. Hurricane Michael may have taken their school, but it only fortified the bond among students.

story by VALENTINA SANDOVAL

Pin-pointing destruction FORT MYERS — Many odds and ends circulated in 22-year-old Roan Borghi’s childhood bedroom over the years: Polaroids, Percy Jackson books, a Pink Floyd album and push pins on a map plotting where he’d traveled — except he hadn’t ventured far from his stilt house on the water in North Fort Myers.

And, of course, there was the cork board that hung above his big, blue wooden desk. There, he displayed concert tickets and cards from loved ones. It was a shrine to some of the most meaningful moments in his formative years. It was an ode to finding the sacred in the mundane.

The cork board is no longer located at his childhood safe haven; thanks to Hurricane Ian, that room doesn’t exist anymore — at least, not in the same way. After storm surges flooded the first floor of their

Dock days FORT MYERS — Pastel pinks and oranges from the sky reflected on the soft waves of the ocean. Seated on a lounge chair on the dock at his home, Mark Fuchs, 24, cast his fishing rod far into the deep water. A smoky scent wafted above — Mark’s older brother was flipping burgers on the grill. His younger brother, meanwhile, kept himself busy with eager thoughts

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home, swallowing nearly a decade’s worth of Roan’s memorabilia, the Borghis gutted and refurbished the space into a guest room.

When he visits home, he sleeps in territory that would be foreign to his younger self. But when he

story by PRISTINE THAI

returns to his apartment in Gainesville, there’s still one piece of adolescence waiting for him: the board. It hangs above Roan’s desk today.

New room. New city. Same memories, in spite of it all.

story by LARA BARON of catching a great white shark.

For as long as they could remember, the men fished for sharks on their dock.

The dock’s gentle swaying brings a peacefulness. The brothers once rested there for hours, patiently waiting for that familiar tug on the line.

Now, their laughter from these dock days is nothing but a distant sound.

The destruction came, ironically, in waves.

Though Hurricane Helene’s murky water swallowed the dock whole, it survived. That was, until Hurricane Milton. All that remains now is severed wood and Mark’s admiration of the ocean, hoping he can one day, again, catch what lies below.

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MEMOIR

by DELANEY STARLING

PARADISE LOST A reflection on luck, loss and childhood in the wake of Hurricane Helene ST. PETERSBURG has been in the direct path of more hurricanes than I can count. I’ve watched, eyes glued to The Weather Channel, the path of certain destruction zero in on my home, then veer toward someone else’s.

I was lucky, and I knew it.

The phrase “I live where you vacation” was the mantra of St. Pete’s youth. No matter how bad life got, I could hold on to my good fortune of growing up in a place with pristine beaches, the best fried grouper and an endless supply of cloudless days. But luck doesn’t last forever. On Sept. 25, I had all the luck in the world.

That changed overnight.

The morning after Hurricane Helene tore through the Gulf of Mexico, my mom called to tell me impossible things.

“We got 4 feet of seawater in the house,” she said. “Everything on the first floor is destroyed.”

My childhood photos,

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waterlogged, drifted aimlessly around my bedroom, the little girl in the pictures unaware of the devastation facing her grown-up self. I envied her.

My next thought was for my second home, a place steps from the Gulf that I frequented when luck was inexhaustible. We called the secluded, lush patch “The Garden.” Nearly every weekend after I turned 15, my friends and I would follow the footpath made by teenagers before us, soft sand squeaking with every step of our tanned feet, on a pilgrimage to the mecca of renegade experimentation.

To tourists, this sacred space might have looked like little more than a cluster of tropical flora. But The Garden meant everything to us and thousands of other teens who called St. Pete home, shielding us from authority figures.

Walking through the archway formed by a low-hanging sea grape, we

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(COURTESY OF DELANEY STARLING)

reached our refuge. The smell of Australian Gold tanning lotion and lingering traces of past joints made my blood move faster and colors seem brighter. We always sat in the same spot near the rocks that kept our teenage Eden from being swept away into the Gulf.

We spent our days in The Garden doing whatever our parents forbade. The music could always be louder; we could always have one more drink. Basking under the afternoon sun, we were steeped in a feeling of naive immortality that I only noticed once it left.

Our freckles could never become skin cancer. We would be friends forever.

The last time I went to The Garden was shortly before Helene, the storm that would bury it under two feet of sand and strip its sea grapes bare.

I went alone just before sunset. I wanted to visit my memories. Looking across the water, waiting for the sky and ocean to become one in the last slivers of light, I had a distinct feeling our luck was about to run out. The sea would swallow us, and it would have every right.

Tell me a story — Illuminate, speak the truth.

And I will be strong haiku by MONI BASU | illustration by DELIA ROSE SAUER

TRUE FLORIDA STORIES