Editor’s Note
The end of an era…
For two years, we have been co-editors-in-chief, running point on every meeting, writing notes for every issue. Yet here we are fumbling against the deadline, waiting for some kind of magic to strike our keys. Awe is a fickle thing, easy to find in the universe but harder to extract from ourselves.
As editors of Blacklight, we have experienced several moments of awe over the past couple of years. From becoming our own RSO, returning to campus and print issues, to hosting our first open mics and release parties. The creative community of our board, submitting writers and artists, photographers and models, have breathed wonder into the world. Releasing each issue has been like catching lightning in a bottle.
For our spring issue, we asked you to pull from the memories that inspire you. First loves, last snowfalls, house parties, the winding road home. You listened. You wrote and you painted and you instilled in us the awe we had hoped you might discover in our prompt. We are lucky to be ending our tenure on the moments that left you breathless - those powerful forces that heal and haunt and push us to pen and paper.
Thank you to all our contributors for making this publication possible. We dedicate this issue to the Blacklight editors before us, who welcomed us into their collective, and to our incoming board members, who will continue sourcing awe from every theme.
Your Outgoing Editors,
Simone Gulliver & Tomás Miriti Pacheco
3
When they dance
Sarah Hopkins
Two slow dance in the park
Softly spinning
With untethered feet
Not a glance is shared
As they interlace
Balancing on the grass
The stars whisper you are drifting
The plants say move with the earth
The tides tell her keep the rhythm of the sky
The night dances
She glides through the steps
Until they pause
The pair sigh
Her breath and the breeze
Before the tempo starts again
4
Chicago Snow
Inioluwa Aloba
the white specks find home on my eyelashes and though the chill is violent causing the teeth around to raise quick sharp, shuddering curses i feel it wrap around; A scarf on my neck
A blanket to my hands my vision, is unnecessary in this moment. movement is but a trick to draw me away from the ecstasy of this day! and though i raise stares and concerning looks i revel in this peace the coolness that has tamed A fire within me i make this moment my home
A while longer before responsibility forces my hand into my pocket and my legs onto icy roads. days will come where obligation will rest on my head where the white specks will melt faster, stranger to my face and my hands familiar to the pockets and I will raise my teeth to curse with quick sharp shuddering curses, angry with myself for a time for resting, for a moment, for allowing my fire to be quenched and feel the comfort of the cold
5
6
I thought a lot about my body as a kid. I wanted to split her through the seams and step out, skinless flesh meeting air for the first time; it would be euphoric. My skin was a bone and after years of being swallowed inside her I let her swindle me and burst me. But something occurred, big to some, small to me, that made me think that as the body loved me, I should, I will love her back. This is an ode to my body; this is an ode to my death (but much like how my body has found it fit to break her own rules it will not be in ode form).
Setting: The Pediatric Ward of Bellevue Hospital on the night of September 22nd, 2022.
Context: An MS diagnosis
Part I: Death.
I always thought I was going to die young and never was it a burdening thought. When I found out I just might, I didn’t think much of it. So what if I die at 51 instead of 75, 42 instead of 63, 30 when everyone I love lives til 80. So what if millions of years of life supersedes me. I come from women who hide knives in couches just in case the outside world comes in to kill us at any moment, always on edge, always fighting. I come from men who never sit still, who clutter their lives with tools, weapons, people, one big puppet that resembles a Chucky doll, the more things that exist in front of them the more you have to surpass to harm them. Any early death was just that, a manifestation of destiny.
It would be a spectacle, my death. I imagined my head impaled on a spike, eyes open and glaring, and even in death I would assert some dominance. The violence of my death would be of my own volition, an assertion that I have the agency to die loudly and openly and visibly. But I suppose that this works too. A silent implosion. It makes sense, I always wanted to eat me, not because I think I’d taste particularly good but we, myself and I both know we acquired cannibalistic tendencies from our grandfather. Though women often eat their babies our men eat ours. I cried about it once but now I’m beginning to think MS is only ancestral consumption, starting from the days where my people weren’t allowed access to their own bodies, eating yourself was liberation in its own right.
Amina Washington
7
Part II: Body
I’m trying to define how I was feeling, how I am now, if only partially, feeling and the only word that comes to mind is carnivorous or cannibalistic, if that’s a better word for it, sickly, maybe, but in the way that leads to gnawing on a limb to the bone and staring intently at the flesh until it grows back. But no, it never grows back, it scabs, itching red and brown blood. I’m feeling like I need rain in my ears and a knife in my hand but to avoid its outward jabs at passersby I’ll turn it inward and carve fine filets out of my stomach. It’ll feel good for the moment, the sting, the way my body heats up like I’ve taken a shot of tequila. It’ll feel so good that when the pain begins to set in, I’ll hardly notice. I won’t notice. But once I’m eating away at it, raw and wet in my hands and the taste isn’t sweet on my tongue, I’ll remember that it’s me. I haven’t had meat since 2nd grade, why did I think my body could process something as rich as myself. The flesh will settle in the pit of my stomach fighting back at me, a rejected organ. That’s what I feel, Hannibal isolated and sick by his own meat, plump and ready for harvesting. I wish I had better words. Explanative words the dictionary can describe: sad, sick, anxious, angry, excited, loose, free. In theory those all function, but it is the mix of all of them that makes you a cannibal. I hold my hand over my mouth to keep from throwing myself into the steaming concrete. I’ll spill through the cracks in my fingers, stain my shift an oxidized yellow-orange-green shade, the chunks solidifying on my pant legs. The cruel reality of a carnivore whose stomach is a pump not a suction; chunks everywhere: me on carpet, me on the concrete: me between my fingers: me in my hands: me in my stomach: me everywhere but my body. I find I always return to flesh, gooey as it is, what I feel I feel through the body, the mind comparatively is a shallow organ. It’s not a metaphor. Ceci n’est pas une pipe. It’s a boring tale of flesh consuming flesh.
Part III: Awe
That’s what the body does, eats you slowly to keep you alive. And that night I heard it, my lymphocytes gnawing on my myelin sheaths, and it sounded like church bells. There are five holes in my brain at this very moment and those T cells hummed in delight as they worked on the sixth. It was a cacophony of wind instruments and the distinct strum of a bass in the back of my head as my defense against the outside world had decided that I, instead, was its final and greatest enemy. I’m not mad at my body, I should be, but I think it’s funny the way the only thing the body is meant to do is keep you from dying too soon and it can’t even do that. The body loves destructively, and mesmerized by the fact alone on that odd Thursday afternoon I smiled, and I slept.
8
Tori
Harris
I am in awe every time I see you,
Every year, you get older. I do too, though sometimes when you look at me with your eyes sparkling silver and lips stretching thin over a blinding smile, I feel awkward and small and twelve again, like I was when I first laid eyes on you. But every year you get older and you grow a little further into the woman I know you will be. Perhaps you’re not there yet, perhaps you feel you will never get there. But you will. You inch closer to it every time I see you.
I am in awe every time I see you.
All my friends told me not to fall in love with you. You’re too unpredictable, just like the plains we grew up on– bright and cheerful until the sky turns black and the grass turns a pale brown-yellow-white. I always thought that if tornadoes were given names, no name would be more fitting for their dark whiplash-winds than McKenna. You’re very much like them. The only constant about you is that there is no constant, everyone around you always standing upon shaking, shivering ground. Except for, of course, the wind, which has been there longer than the grass has graced the earth and will be there far after, whipping around everyone you know with a sharpness that takes your breath away. In fact, there is nothing not sharp about you. You are simply sharp wit and sharp teeth and sharp hip bones sticking out like uncovered knives against my wandering palms, ready to wound at any moment. Yet every time you walked in a room, I still couldn’t help thinking:
I am in awe every time I see you.
My friends told me not to fall in love because I would cut myself, turn into a flayed mess and bleed out as you look on with your steel-sharp eyes. But if you are the plains, I am the lone tree that stubbornly clings to the loose, grainy dirt. There are other places I could inhabit, easy, but I do not. I face the wind and the whirling dust clouds, the black of storms and the gold of the sky, and I shout to the world that I love you, I love you, I love you. So, so much. And–
McKenna
11
I am in awe every time I see you.
…And I did end up bleeding. I was not good enough for you. I still am not good enough for you. Tornadoes are here and gone in half an instant, picking up and clearing out and moving on and on and on. But a tree can only stand tall or be uprooted with the storm. I tried doing both, and you ripped my heart ragged with your jagged edges, getting a stark scarlet mess all over the color-bleached grass. It hurt, but I understand. Besides, no manner of excuses can cover up the truth: you, storm McKenna, deserve someone with the fire and fury to match you, someone more than a scraggly tree, crooked and half-bald of leaves most of the year. But as I smoothed my hands over your gold-spun hair and down your sticky-outy ribs, pressing kisses to split lips and over stark tendons in your neck, know I felt nothing but love. Love and awe for the storm I had managed to feel, to see, to understand on a level deeper than one I understand my own body on.
I am in awe every time I see you.
You will do great things, I know it as sure as I know the sun will rise in the east and set in the west. I hope you embrace the storm and the blades you were given, and sharpen them as often as possible. I hope you take your fire and fury and spread across the world. That is my one wish for you, darling, that you will one day take the world like a black storm unfolding in the space between the sun and the soil and rage across it like a tornado. Some may cower and hide. I will simply watch in awe, as I always have and always will.
12
13 Defne Özus
Pink Sonnet Kelly Hui
Somewhere in that ungentle night of her I burst match-fire and swear we kiss doors Open, thinking what we owe each other. Her, the debt of her, always wanting more–we swallow hours whole and halve ourselves we quick as want and fierce as joy tonight the dark undoing violence as we fell and her body staying here, memory-bright.
The arc of history has led to this: eating persimmons in the dark with care, just two unhurried mouths without weakness wielding the moonlight as she combs my hair.
And if she’s gone by the sun-poor morning, then all the birds will sing soft in mourning.
14
50,000 leagues under a house party
Cameron Drake and Jayda Hart
There is no distinct inception
When I find myself in positions like these
(Fine tuning to answers ((457 hertz at 33.8573° N and 84.0199° W)):
Back? Leaned
Drink? In hand
Feet? One planted; one against the wall (33% of my life has been translating God into an iPhone notes section)
I find them in my surroundings
When I step back, relax, and take in I comprehend everyone’s lives at once
I find myself questioning the experience Are they to be found here? And then I look…
four walls, tall ceilings and 2 bull’s-eye windows
My world shifted last Tuesday at 6:43 PM
We cannot pinpoint the start
In the bated breath during each beer pong shot When expectation and ecstasy collide to create Experience
I find them in the watching
In the understanding that we have been staring at you for more seconds than deemed socially necessary and wondering what to do
I met someone who found God in
a. fibonacci sequences,
b. 10,000 feet below sea level,
c. 47 lightyears left from the Sahara Desert
Sometimes I think I almost get it
(Falling off the edge of a mountain)
((Falling into the couch at a party))
(((Falling into the breadth of universe nestled into the cushion’s crack)))
17
I find them in silence
In those moments where the only sounds I hear is the blood rushing past my ears and everything else is just Still
There must be more out there
More than tRNA or Hydrogen Molecules or Centripetal Force
More than car crashes or heart breaks or forgetting someone’s name
Those moments where we’re all waiting to see when the silence will be broken… by what… by who
I planned a trip to the moon for winter break
Packed a bag of oxygen for the road and some freeze dried raspberries
Directions written on a crumpled $2 bill in my back pocket
My awe comes in seeing experiences bloom
In those moments where she’s blushing and he’s laughing and they’re drinking and everyone experiences (for one brief moment) together
We’re orbiting into something
Every moment, every domino fall
I’m here
I’m here
I’m here
There must be (a) reason
The Universe demands it
Hold your breath and count to 3
I’m subatomic (like a fly on the wall)
Submerged
I keep my eyes open underwater
18
19
20 Urunna Anyanwu
Neem
Nadia Sultana my muscles are beginning to cramp and a thousand pins and needles poke and prod at my feet i would move them you see but your hand is resting on my knee and how silly would it be if i startled you awake now when i have spent the past hour in a balancing act between the train’s tremors and your soft breaths so my muscles are beginning to cramp and i try not to move even though your hair is starting to tickle my neck and the weight of your head on my shoulder is digging into my collar bone but i can’t stop glancing over at you and the crescent of your eyelashes like outstretched rays of sunlight my god how long are they and the faint pockmarks across your cheeks and the concave curve of your nose and the space between your parted lips then your hand moves from my knee up to my arm and this time you grip it tight in you i thought it was funny how my breath caught in my throat at the same time your exhale up.
21
maybe I should look away i’ve been staring but r sleep and i wish i could tell you right away that came out like a sacred zephyr without waking you
22
Berlin Golshan Mahmoodi
Alight! From dysphoric routine and wander
Through pink alleys, joints cracking with curious steps to take in a city of smog and concrete. Map spaces of safety with cold feet and release the blue chill of melancholy trapped in bones
Broken and repaired by the women who see you. Naked under loving gaze, your body is a question No one cares to ask. They have the answers you seek in dreams you have yet to voice, they speak in tongues and hips and hair, unfurling wings of white to reveal truth and beauty and bodies
Broken and repaired by people who see them. Clothed in vibrant joy, hands grasping mine pull me into the light, into their utopia of glitter and hope
23
24
25
Tomás Miriti Pacheco
The darkest January on record/ every morning/the sky draped over your shoulders/ like smoking in the movies/a memory in another room/give me a blanket/ I’ll take the couch/or the floor/might not get up all day/like the sun/either way it’s your pick/the shows you watch/ or the sky on a missing channel/ that’s all they’re selling us/the sun brand new on a leather jacket/the glow/ heat blooming black from an open oven/ something to keep warm/the cool/ the opposite of a supernova
Bros.
26
27
28
The Meaning of Life
Josh Nkhata
I’ve been searching for it for quite a while.
When I was 9 I found it in the back of a JC Penny I asked my mom, “Can we buy it?” And she said, “No, honey, we have The Meaning of Life at home.” And I stomped my feet. I didn’t like The Meaning of Life we had at home. It was the sugar-free kind and had an aspartame aftertaste. Not to mention, the cover of the box had a man with holes in his hands which I thought was rather odd. Sadly, by the time I had enough quarters in my piggy bank to buy it myself, the product had been recalled for widespread health issues.
When I was 15, I saw an ad for a different Meaning of Life on the right-hand column of a PDF converter website it made me install a google chrome extension which brought me to hyperlink which brought me to an IOS app download which, encrypted inside, had a series of code, both Morse and computational. But, upon deciphering the code, I realized it had been falsely advertised and only contained the Meaning of Death (which I learned was to keep the casket industry afloat).
Even last week, I swear I saw the Meaning of Life roll down 53rd street and drop into a gutter. I desperately screamed at a man to catch it for me, But, having no eyes, or ears, or face, or faith, or hope, or time for my shenanigans, he proved no help at all.
29
All of this considered, you can imagine my utter shock this morning when I looked into your eyes. and.
There it was. Yes. Somehow. There it was.
Like a strange bout of pink eye or cataracts, the pulsing answer to cosmic irrelevance and galactic indifference was right next to your iris
It had always been there. It had always been you.
30
