Issue 11

BOSSIER

ISSUE 11 | SPRING 2022

the dumplings Editor-in-Charge Emily Hardy Creative Director Francesca Donovan Managing Editor Brittany Peng Layout Director Ella Castanier Art Director Maddy Langan Head of Marketing Addison Goodman Head of People Billie Abdullah Mini Issue Director Maddie Wasson Head of Outreach Stephanie Geng

our contributers Alexa Boglitz Alexis Jade Ferguson Anya Gizis Audrey Ledford Billie Abdullah Elena Ergener Ella Castanier Eloise Owen Francesca Donovan Franziska Wild Iman Blackwell Insha Momin Jean-Paul Nguyen Jess Shannon Josephine Wu Lily Yamagata Maddy Langan Madeline Wasson Melanie Donají Miranda Pomroy Neha Malik Olivia Lebo-Planas Rose Dallimore Sabrina Mei Scotia Hille Serena Barish Sheila Cruz-Morales

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Sophia George Stefanie Janowicz Sydney Worrell Tara Petronio Yuge Shao Zahra Wakilzada

Editors Jenny Linares Victoria Chen Sydney Worrell Emma Trone Stephanie Leow Alison Wilkinson Lucia Pieto Gisselle Robles Alex Seitel Caterina Lungu Natalie Chaudhuri Hannah Welsh Amber Nguyen AK Sinha Cosima von Baumbach Tiko Mkheidze Philan Morgan Nayab Shiraz Abigail Eastman Erin Crowder Cynthia Villar Grace Weiand Zahra Wakilzada Mira Parel Ella Kohler Miranda Pomeroy Emily Kim Emily Gorny Vrinda Vyas

Layout Designers Insha Momin Samah Yagoub Ina Quadrio Curzio Neilah Rustemi Nicole Vernot-Jonas Anna Normand Alaina Anderson Shania Fan Sophie Liu Gloria Melidoni Geritza Carrasco Joyce Yang

Marketing Lily Yamagata Ava MacDonald Franziska Mbonglou Serena Barish Anna Cheng Emily Kalyvas Grace Tourtelotte Rani Shah Cecilia Albuquerque Camille Boley

Emily Hardy Sara Amar Meghan Hunt Thea Belle Flanzer Maddy Langan Christine Ji Lexah Caraluzzi Margaret Lin Eric Perez Zoe Moore Yana Gitelman Sylvie Youmna Al-Madani Yasy Celikoyar

Clara Ganz Olivia Valante Bella Carlucci Outreach and Events Sophie Allan Marie Tetsu Kassidy Angelo Elizabeth Smith Pauline Charlot Annika Bjork Maya Komonsky Alex Wang Grace Tourtelotte Resident Creators

Front Cover by Allemai Dagnatchew Back Cover by Maddy Langan & MG Yaeger

2 Masthead 3 Table of Contents 4 Editors’ Letters 5 Issue Playlist 6-7 Alaina Anderson 8-9 Geritza Carrasco 10-11 Jayne Archer 12-13 Ella Castanier 14-15 Lailah Mozaffar 16-17 Gloria Melidoni 18-19 Lailah Mozaffar 20-21 Ina Quadrio-Curzio 22-23 Sophie Liu 24-25 Anna Normand 26-27 Joyce Yang 28-29 Insha Momim 30-31 Insha Momin 32-33 Nicole Vernot-Jones 34-35 Alaina Anderson

36-37 Samah Yagoub 38-39 Nicole Vernot-Jones 40-41 Ina Quadrio-Curzio 42-43 Sophie Liu 44-45 Anna Normand 46-47 Zoë Moore 48-49 Joyce Yang 50-51 Geritza Carrasco 52-53 Bella Carlucci 54-55 Francesca Donovan 56-57 Olivia Valante 58-59 Samah Yagoub 60-61 Ina Quadrio-Curzio 62-63 Ella Castanier 64-65 Ella Castanier 66-67 Ina Quadrio-Curzio 68-69 Lailah Mozaffar 70-71 Ella Castanier

self harm addiction & substance abuse surgery trauma & ableism The opinions expressed in Bossier Magazine do not necessarily stated. All content is submitted freely by individuals and may not express the views of the Bossier Magazine staff.

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System message

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Letters from the editors <3 OK

Editor in Charge

OK

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A Love Letter Dearest Bossier, I was a freshman, perusing Copley lawn when I first saw you. How little I knew back then. Issue 6 caught my eye: bridge arching, moon rising, clouds eclipsing. Initially, it was just harmless curiosity that drew me to the table but my fascination quickly morphed into infatuation. Enamored by the cover, I pawed through your pages. It was love.

How desperately I wanted to hold you. How intimately I longed to know you. How madly I wanted to have you.

As if I could ever possess you, Bossier. As if anyone could ever possess you. For your patience and your acceptance, I can only say thank you. Embedded in your pages there are lessons and stitched into the fabric of those lessons is love. But it is a love far wiser and far purer than I could have given you freshman year.

Thank you for teaching me.

Thank you for your affection. Thank you for your courage.

With Wiser Love,

Emily Hardy 4

Creative Director

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Bossier, darling!!!

You came to me in a moment of need. Spring 2021 (no elaboration necessary). I am someone in constant need of a creative outlet. I can’t sit still, I chew my nails, I stay up all night–needing to use my hands and create something. I reach for water colors, camera film, beads, embroidery string… Bossier, you’ve given me a community and the ultimate outlet for my fast-paced mind. You’ve taught me that I don’t need to be a wreck to create something beautiful (and it’s too easy to give in to this classic suffering artist trope). With a community of lovely individuals and hardwork and happy memories, creativity can still flow.

Through our ups and downs, our busy and slow days, I’ve reaped nothing but the feeling of true accomplishment from the hard work our teams have put in.

One of the greatest lessons, amongst many, I’ve learned from you is this: at a school not necessarily known for its art, creative individuals tend to flock together. We meet each other with open arms and excitement. With one another we thrive.

Thank you for your lessons in patience, community, and creativity. You’ve given me a reason to create and a way to satisfy my hungry mind.

- Francesca Donovan

Issue 11 Playlist

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37 items The Only Heartbreaker — Miski Song From Hell — Peach Tree Rascals she’s all i wanna be — Tate McRae Solo — Angèle Block Your Number — Maude Latour Freaks — Surf Curse Smirnoff Ice — Yung Lean Beggin’ — Måneskin Male Fantasy — Billie Eilish Driving in My Car — Yasmin Nur Don’t Know Why — Norah Jones Feeling Good — Nina Simone Butterfly — Cleo Sol Right Down the Line — Gerry Rafferty Strawberry Blond — Mitski chateau — blackbear Pills N Potions — Nicki Minaj Pears — Weston Estate House Burn Down — King Princess Multiply — Dora Jar Gloria — Larry League, Thouxanbanfauni Break Free — Ariana Grande, Zedd Does Your Mother Know — ABBA Love Will Keep Us Alive — Eagles Ode to a Conversation Stuck in Your Throat — Del Water Gap jealousy — FKA twigs, Rema Criminal — Fiona Apple I’ll Call You Mine — girl in red Danza Kuduro — Don Oman, Lucenzo The Spins — Mac Miller It’s You I’m Thinking Of — Sally Dige ZEZE — Kodak Black, Offset, Travis Scott Space Cadet — Blonde Otter Gravity — Brent Faiyaz, DJ Dahi, Tyler, The Creator Sit Next to Me — Foster The People Utah — French Cassettes The Fall — Rhye

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mobile home by: madeline wasson

and again we make the pilgrimage back, the Great Migration to childhood bedrooms; some mirroring the rings we’ve grown into, others rearranged inside of new walls, many not having changed at all. over the years i’ve packed up mine into boxes and bins and bags, carried it down coasts and across freeways, shoved it into closets and drawers, and with each return tried to mash pieces from miscellaneous puzzles into one conducive shape, when no one’s showed me the picture on the box. perhaps i have to draw it myself. reminiscence, reinvention.

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troll baby by: maddy langan 7

by blood

by Olivia Lebo-Planas

My grandmother died last week. She died in Hawaii, on Oahu a little ways away from Honolulu. She hated it there. She hated leaving Honolulu, the city she had raised her children in, where her husband died, where all of her grandchildren were born, and where she had spent the last several decades. I am told she died happy. She was laughing and even remembered who my dad was when she talked to him on the phone the night before. But in my memories of her, she is angry. I have known her angry, bitter, and cold.

After she died, I called my dad and he told me about when he last visited her. They drove around Honolulu listening to Mexican music. He told me how she seemed full of life again, singing along, remembering every word even though she had long forgotten our faces. I hung up and played her favorite song, “Volver Volver,” the song my dad grew up hearing on the record player and that I in turn grew up hearing on the speaker in our kitchen. I shrank into the passenger seat and cried as my girlfriend drove down the 101 on our way back from LA, her hand on my shoulder.

I want to remember my grandmother fondly, but she was distant. Distant from a life of migrant work, from growing up in a poor Mexican household in Texas, from being brought across the border as a baby and forsaken by her birth parents. She could be cruel and conservative, or blank and tired. Yet I have never hated her. I have only felt pity.

I couldn’t explain why I was crying so uncontrollably over a woman who never tried to know me. But I cried knowing she would never know that I am gay or non-binary. I will never know if she could have learned to love me despite that. I never learned Spanish. I will never be able to speak to her in her native tongue. I will never be able to show her that I will be successful, that I’ve used everything she and my parents have given to me. I cried wondering if she died feeling satisfied with her life and legacy. I cried wondering if she was happy with her life.

I think about how many people are vacationing in Hawaii now as kanaka maoli and locals are ravaged by Covid and can’t access clean water. I think of how my grandmother is dead and we still will not be able to return home to honor her. I feel anger.

I understand her bitterness.

My studies at a Catholic university feel a bit comical. I must act as if my Mexican and Filipino ancestors were not forced to live under this religion. As if queer people have not been persecuted by this religion for centuries. And I feel angry.

I think of my grandfather’s grave in the Punchbowl cemetery in Honolulu, the vase for flowers dirty and grown over. I think of his Japanese mother, left by her parents for marrying a Filipino. I think of my father, younger than I am now, at his funeral.

I am angry.

When grief turns to anger, I think of Audre Lorde. I know that anger comes from love. I am angry because my family deserves so much more. They deserve happiness, relief, safety, kindness. I am angry from the guilt I have for attaining so many things they could not. Angry that the privileges I’ve been given couldn’t be afforded to them. Angry that there is so much pain that goes into progress, into mobility. Angry at war, at poverty, at distance, at her. Angry that time is slow, and justice spans generations.

As I cried into my lap, I reminded myself that I am held. That my family will hug me at the end of this drive, that my girlfriend will wipe my tears from my face, that my friends will speak kindly and softly to me when I need it. Still, I am angry. But it gets easier and easier to remember to feel anger as love.

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breakfast in honolulu

by Olivia Lebo-Planas

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Red by Jayne Archer

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body & pleasure by Miranda Pomroy body & pleasure by Miranda Pomroy body & pleasure by Miranda Pomroy body & pleasure by Miranda Pomroy body & pleasure by Miranda Pomroy body & pleasure by Miranda Pomroy body & pleasure by Miranda Pomroy body & pleasure by Miranda Pomroy body & pleasure by Miranda Pomroy body & pleasure by Miranda Pomroy body & pleasure by Miranda Pomroy body & pleasure by Miranda Pomroy body & pleasure by Miranda Pomroy body & pleasure by Miranda Pomroy body & pleasure by Miranda Pomroy body & pleasure by Miranda Pomroy body & pleasure by Miranda Pomroy body & pleasure by Miranda Pomroy body & pleasure by Miranda Pomroy body & pleasure by Miranda Pomroy body & pleasure by Miranda Pomroy body & pleasure by Miranda Pomroy body & pleasure by Miranda Pomroy body & pleasure by Miranda Pomroy body & pleasure by Miranda Pomroy body & pleasure by Miranda Pomroy body & pleasure by Miranda Pomroy 12

The Feast of Seven Fishes

by Jess Shannon my mother got a nose job in the 80s but her store-bought ski slope makes her face look more like mine than her self-grown aquiline hook i don’t quite understand this because i don’t think nose jobs are genetic but i guess i could be wrong

itz

gl a Bo x e l A e by s u o ’s H ndma

Gra

when i look in the mirror i see my grandmother my mother’s mother but everyone tells me i look more like my dad maybe i am seeing my empty eyes and my square, clenched jaw my permanent frown i think i am seeing the hardened features of three generations of tired women women in marriages of practicality women who spoke loudly with their stares and would never yell in public but would always hold a grudge who straightened their curly hair and plucked their unibrows until the follicles never opened back up women who shaved cartilage in their noses and retrained their voices so that their blue-collar new york roots will never show i have stolen their faces and i fear that i may have accidentally taken their fates because years of being a good daughter crushed their spirit when i was nine year old a pack of razors appeared in my bathroom (men’s razors work better on thicker hair) that same week my mother took me to the back of a nail salon to get my eyebrows waxed a practice that continued biweekly for a decade i was not born with a Roman nose to remove but my mother did once try to trick me into a laser hair salon phosis that my voice undergoes as the N train takes me from 23rd and Ditmars to East 59th i wonder if my granddaughter will wish that she didn’t see my face in the mirror or see her rosy cheeks and mistake it for the bleeding of my history onto her when she sees me in herself i do not want her to see resigned acceptance

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mask-cara

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my

kevin

moreno

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art by lily yamagata

The day she was born it was warm. Her eyes opened, the dirt of the earth now embedded within her skin, her hair, her eyes. She saw her mother, her face young but shrewd in work and pain she didn’t have the words for yet. She would find the words in strawberry fields, her fingerprints marking each one with the evidence she was there, but for now, she was beautiful. She saw her father, and she saw the sun. The warmth from the windows welcomed her to a place she had never been, but would soon come to love, come to hate, come to see. For now, the entirety of the world was her mother's hands, her father's eyes, and the sun above.

Her eyes looked straight ahead of her whole life, only sometimes looking above to something she could feel, but not yet see. Maybe it was the warmth above or maybe it was the light and how it felt on her lashes, or maybe she didn't have the words for it yet.

Her eyes saw the boy she would her entire life, she saw babies flowers bloom from bulbs planted years ago, she saw the sun. The light kissed her eyes and graced her with beautiful sunsets and sunrises. She saw pain and some people she never saw again, but the warmth never left her.

As the years went on and flowers opened and closed with the sun's movement, her eyes began to wander. In front of her was her daughter, beautiful and kind, but also in front of her was her mother, dignified and tired. Her eyes are not in place anymore.

Doctors, family, and priests circle the bed as her eyes drift from side to side spinning in their sockets. The doctors prescribed everything under the sun, but it only made her mind feel dark.

The bulbs once covered in the dirt, ready to bloom at the first sight of summer were now were shapes she barely had the names for. Were they plants? They were plants, she knew that word, plants, plants, plants, plants.

The priests prayed but how do you find god when one eye is on the cross and the other is looking at 1969. 1969, what happened in 1969, something happened, why can’t I remember. Her family exists in different spaces in her head. Her left eye drifts to the right and finds tiny hands, tiny feet, pink blankets, while her right sees faces she's never seen, or maybe she has. Tiny feet, tiny hands, blurry face, and teary eyes, why are the babies crying?

Her eyes spin and whirl through the years and rarely come to a standstill at the present. It’s hard to distinguish the days, let alone the seconds, so she does not try. She asks the doctors when her eyes will stop spinning, they say one day they will be still and her eyes will see together. She asks the priest if prayer will slow her eyes, he says only god knows. She looks for him in dark corners of lost words and memories that she doesn't recognize, maybe the answers, the words will come.

Her right eye is on Christmas, maybe it's Christmas, and her left sees something glow in the hallway of her childhood home, not a figure or a light, nothing you can see, but you can feel it.

She remembers the sun, is it the sun? The word does not matter but in her somber silences she can feel the warmth she felt the day she first saw her mother. She will feel the warmth the next time she sees her mother. She finds solitude in the moments when her eyes find themselves back to each other. When she can see her family, no longer babies, but beautiful and grown and suddenly she is the baby. What can you do when your eyes are finally together, when your mind has finally found the present, but the present has forgotten you.

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Brown Eyes, by Maddy Langan

in which there exists another universe

by Josephine Wu where I love you. In this world, I can dream: honeysuckle / linoleum / hands simply / a severance / of space. Here, girls don’t eat the sun but tongue the gallbladder of the moon, mourn summer’s spear only after cauterizing the hollowed wound. Realize loss of warmth isn’t about temperature but womanhood. In this world,

when I tell you I love you. Lord, a portraiture of light, provisions through larceny. Hold your breath. The streetlight

In this world, I dream you tell me the same.

I dream we are intoxicated by desire rather than wine. I dream that this universe permits a womanless girl to love someone she has never touched. That the only skin

shed is sorrow’s. Tomorrow, I will pretend

today, my mouth merely aches with air.

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In this world, I love you.

Photography by Ella Castanier

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INTERVIEWS SO POETIC I

TELL ME ABOUT

She cares a lot about people and is okay with that...

She’s okay with being more vulnerable.

I feel like people underestimate her.

I remember she kept a journal, and it was open on her desk once.

I probably shouldn’t have been reading it But it was really sad...

It was comforting.

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by Yana

Gitelman

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BROKEN SYSTEMS In the name of peace Which is kept in the cage since birth.

A side for the plate of food Which is never served at my table.

In the name of earth That forbids peace in the neighborhood Where the gown of justice never fits my people.

The heart is protesting for the sore mind Who is puzzled by bloodbaths in every corner.

Shame on the world of broken systems Which swallows too much of humanity Only to vomit broken persons Whose search for glue will end in coffins.

zahra wakilzada

W WE A 26

iman blackwell

BLUEWISH

As the rose colored glasses lift from my Eyes raw and red from flooding tears

insha momin

WE E ARE ARE HUMAN HUMAN

CONFESSION TO A FALSE GOD — holy water cleansing the impure skin — And while fears of the long road alone Mingle with grief for imagined moments, I see you in lead, untouched by Giotto’s brush; A mortal sketch incomplete, Appearing still as art in your own.

The heretics crow and I echo, Armed with ridicule of the insecurities you entrusted in me.

Yet meanwhile I continue my melancholic wander Through galleries of moments in stone, And worship the icon I constructed of you, Cursing myself for sacrilegious words That I shared with non-believers in the streets.

Worthy of the treatment I was shown, I ask for forgiveness.

sydney worrell

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Kwii

A love letter about the color Green

The color of this journal is Green.

My most vulnerable and private thoughts live inside of this Green Journal — right in between these textured covers.

Green is my favorite color and one of my favorite things about this World.

Green is like a smile, while I walk around this Earth. It’s like a smile from my Ancestors.

Green is a reminder that there exists a Melanie that lives in a reality of inner peace, fulfillment, and happiness.

It connects me to that reality — telling me that it is possible.

The color green and all green things Reminds me and connects me to the Land.

It smiles at me and tells me…

That I am the Land.

Engaging in things around this world that reminds you of your ancestors and represents who you are – is an anomaly for Indigenous people.

But Green is Everywhere.

And it tells me… That I am the Land.

It reflects its shades back to me, greets me with inviting and familiar arms – knowing exactly who I am.

I am the descendants, the present, and the future of the original stewards of the Land, of those who loved Green first.

Green velvet couches Dark Green blazers Ever Green IPhone cases The soft forest green blanket sitting on the bottom of my twin XL bed, back in D.C. Sativia, Blue Dream, Indica A couple of Green things that make me feel safe and like me.

Green is Me, I am Green, Green is the Land, Green is Love, Green is my Ancestors, Green is my Soul.

Today My Grandmother taught me how to say Kwii.

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by

´

Lupe, Lupita, Guada.

These are some of the nicknames that roll off my father’s tongue With love and care, he holds my name dear to his heart Not only is it our Lady of Guadalupe’s name but his mothers’ too And his sisters So how do I tell my father that I don’t feel connected to my name anymore?

That maybe I don’t know if I still believe in her?

Her brown skin and dark long hair made me feel like I too was worthy of heaven So how do I tell him that despite my love for her, I can no longer accept the white man’s church?

Colonization and assimilation attempts to constraints And yet my love for her remains

by

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YUCK!!

By Sara Amar

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daydream

ideally, i’m naked. and i’m sitting on a balcony that hangs in the wind over a street

yet here we are, sharing this day,

making my body glow. the wind sends kisses down my spine and whispers in my ear, “all these phenomena are temporary.” smoke swirls into my

to reach me in my tower, the street and it’s people below me. and dance.

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written by madeline wasson

hope. ideally, there is liberation. all these phenomena are temporary.

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journal excerpts, february 2022 by: anonymous “who cares about a memory of someone who doesn’t mean anything to you? but thinking of this one, i feel like i’m cracking in all the places she held me together” “it wasn’t even a bad day, it was a good one, in a lot of ways. but she wasn’t in it.” “i was afraid that the bad feeling was a sign that it wouldn’t work. signs are good because you can see them from any direction, and even worse for the same reason. I was scared, really, of having and creating and living in a home i loved, or scared to lose it.” “i have to resist the urge to tell her that whatever at all she wants to do i wouldn’t be able to say no. i’m working on saying no to things i don’t want, but that’s not it. when it comes from her lips in her voice, i think i’ve always listened. that’s just how it is.” “she knows how bad it was. i just don’t know if she cares. and if even if she cares, what does it matter, really?” “i was afraid that the bad feeling was a sign that it wouldn’t work. signs are good because you can see them from any direction, and even worse for the same reason. I was scared, really, of having and creating and living in a home i loved, or scared to lose it.”

“I want my mom and to go home. But i don’t think either would make me feel better. I want her and to be held. But i don’t think shat she will feel like home to me anymore either. I feel like i lost another anchor.”

“I didn’t want you to change for me. Or is that a lie, also? Don’t we all want people to change a little bit, for us? If you loved me and it didn’t change you, did you love me at all? Isn’t that what love is? All the ways someone transforms with us, and how we transform with them?

“I loved her, and that was even enough. I say that, but i know it’s not true. It’s not that i don’t love her anymore, even though i know i shouldn’t. I still do. But i’ve lost the sense that she cares about me, and now i don’t know how to love her and be happy in the same lifetime. But happiness and love aren’t choices anyway.”

“Love is so short, and forgetting is so long.”

“How long will the forgetting take, if i loved you that much? If i love you this much?”

“It’s easier to make your suffering romantic than to see it for what it is, which is nothing. Pain is still pain when the sun comes through the window.”

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“I saw her last night. I miss her. I wish she missed me.”

cherry by: lily yamagata

adapting by: sabrina mei

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Prism

by Iman Blackwell

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To my

.

A pair of legs dangling, not off of a dock into cool lake water, but over a body of speckled beige. We dragged our feet through the thirsty gravel, or at least I did. The dry dirt sprayed like shrapnel as we swung on dilapidated swings in the back lot of the local elementary school. You were too short back then and too scared to properly swing high enough, and I would grudgingly hop off intermittently to give you a push. Sometimes, I would push you too hard. Older sisters can be cruel, occasionally.

In the summer we had a front row seat to the slow setting of the sun as it bled the sky orange, or some days, a washed out blue and purple. The mosquitoes liked me more than you. In the fall the wind bit our noses and hands and brought the scent of burning leaves and the promise of colder days to come. We didn’t care though–the weak sunshine filtering through the cloud-flecked sky was enough for us at the time.

On lazy weekend afternoons, before we both became terribly busy, we would easily kill a few hours here, just the two of us and the creaking of the swings.

Sitting here now, with the swings sinking a little bit lower under the weight of our older bodies, it feels the same but not the same anymore.

They fixed the swings, the stiff and cracking white seats replaced with newer and smoother black rubber. Now, both of our feet can firmly touch the ground, and the Aeropostale jeans I wore many years ago are worn at the knees and on your legs.

The mosquitoes still swarm around me, but you don’t need me to push you anymore, and now I am the one telling you to slow down. It’s tiring to go fast all the time; you don’t realize it until you’ve blown past a handful of years. My bones are heavy. They want to lie still and crumble away.

Glancing at you next to me, I realize how the childlike softness of your face has stolen away. You have Dad’s mouth and smile–I think–I’m not sure, he doesn’t smile much, and I have Mom’s nose and her anxiety. Tonight the sky is a hazy lavender with dark blue edges and white specks creeping in at the corners, and the warm evening air rests heavily on my shoulders.

I want to open my mouth and tell you about all the things I did wrong, but the words rest in my throat and refuse to climb out. I think I should keep them there and let you find them yourself, in your own muddy footprints or bruised knees. I bite my tongue for fear of spitting bitter poison.

Tonight the evening hugs me like a blanket as I lazily watch the sun do its daily dip beyond the trees. I want to grab fistfuls of the night and shove them into my pockets, but I know that they won’t stay. But for a moment, I can see the ghosts of our past selves, the girls we used to be. A brief and friendly visit, nothing more.

by Christine Ji

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38 photos by Jean-Paul Nguyen

Individuality Complex No Rock Just Pebbles is all about being yourself. As long as you are cooler than literally everyone you’ve ever met. Who cares how many millions of other people have heard this song? We all know you heard it first.

Lesbian Vampyres From Outer Space - Scary Bitches Noid - Yves Tumor I’m so glad I feel this way about you - Insignificant Other Hello Rain - The Softies A Miss of You- Dead Moon He War- Cat Power Meadow- Mamalarky Billie- Pavement Full On Idle- The Amps Phony - By the End of Summer People- Silver Jews Soft stud - Black Belt Eagle Scout Phaedra- Gun Outfit Show Me How You Disappear - Ian Sweet Into the White- Pixies The Leanover - Life Without Buildings Great Minds Think Alike, All Brains Taste The Same - Happyness I Never Want to See You Again- Quasi Rooftop- Lady Lamb playlist by Anya Gizis Listen to NRJP Monday nights from 10:30 PM to Midnight on WGTB georgetownradio.com.

Photos by Eloise Owen

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by Franziska Wild

I woke up knowing only that I had to get it out.

Rushing to the kitchen I grabbed a screwdriver from the toolbox my father gifted me– before I left– and in the cold & blue glow of the refrigerator carved a series of three holes in my sternum. one, two, three– I exhaled.

Suddenly my lungs deflated, and I felt finally uninhabited.

I woke up picturing what the blood would look like, and cracked a smile when I realized that crimson is just a fancy word for red.

I dreamt of carrying a child– the swollen feeling lingered how did Medea feel?

Have you ever seen petroglyphs, carved into black stone, in the flesh?

Yesterday I was thinking, I have learned to worship different saints.

The Bible says: “It is better to live in a desert land Than with a contentious and vexing woman.”

A never-ending drought stands– in opposition to the fertile yet furious.

I erected different alters.

Eve, Medusa, Delilah Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Toni Morrison Joan Jet, Aretha Franklin, Taylor Swift Women who aren’t afraid of the kitchen, because they know the oven is always an option.

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Once, not too long ago, I cried because I couldn’t open a jar.

The fierce foe: a jar of pitted-green olives left me violently sobbing, I stood over the kitchen sink, knuckles white, chest heaving In a day dream, I broke it; Green olives and glass mixing in the sink.

Instead, cradling it tenderly, I simply put it back on the shelf.

she, she lives in venice beach she’s already hasd so much already closer to my goals my dreams she’s already had what i dream of and oh she she’s had a life i’ve only ever wanted

about privilege Retamales

but honey, you you know life; the beauty of it you know how to appreciate. the hardships you know how to handle. your passion must i add an s your passions will take you further than what you’ve dreamt of just wait and see because you, love you live life like there’s no tomorrow no second of it do you take for granted and that, that no money can buy

Artwork by Yuge Shao 43

Eve

by Scotia Hille Sweetly, softly, urgently My body begs me to have a baby The biological clock ticks faster than the one on my left wrist.

“Typhoid! Plague! Fever!” she chides “If not this year, then the next!”

How can I tell my body?

That humanity has bought me enough time For the hair on my head to go gray?

For the skin on my bones to shrivel?

To tell the story of the lives I’ve lived With only the lines on my face?

I can tell her with toxins Humanity bought me this too.

One procedure for 5 years protection, they said, And it felt like freedom at first.

5 whole years.

She remembers when that was a lifetime.

The clock ticks on And her tactics change, pathos and logos: New life greets me at the supermarket Nestled tightly in a car seat, he coos at me and longing stirs But not yet, not now She rages I double over in pain My uterus rings hollow 44

“Famine! Pillage! Beasts of the wood!

If not this year, then next!”

Thus she continues her duties Each moon building a warm welcome center A cocoon of comfort And she, the stilted host.

Month after month we play this game.

Shell-shocked, she reminds me: “Beloved, you are Creator.

You have life at the tips of your fingers.

You are the sun and the soil.”

But I am also the little tree that has just begun to take root.

I am the tiny colt, breaking to my first gallop on unsteady legs.

I am the robin that has just learned to let the wind lift my wings toward sunshine.

Before I knit together a tiny hand, Before I reach down my own to grasp life And pull it into the world, I will let my fingers trail along the path Accustom them to this life This tumultuous body.

Crochet Sweaters

by Elena Ergener

“Two of my wonderful friends from home taught me to crochet one day in the summer of 2021 and within a week I was fully obsessed. I started off simple with a scarf, but I quickly got ambitious and decided to make a sweater after only knowing how to crochet for maybe six days. It was a huge trial and error process–I don’t have much patience for patterns and like to experiment–but one of the most satisfying things I’ve ever done.”

“I’ve never really thought of myself as any kind of real artist, but I’m so proud of what I’ve made and feel like I can finally recognize my creativity in the crochet patterns I make up.

With all of the overwhelming transitions this year testing my confidence, crocheting is the one way that I can relax and really feel like myself.”

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Zoë Moore

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Do you ever look in the mirror, look at a picture, and doubt that’s really you?

Because you aren’t the you you’re looking at. You are the girl who wears cool jeans.

Of course she wears cool jeans.

Because what’s a girl to do when she gets attached to clothing she sees online just as fast as the negative thoughts stick to her self-image, at that disturbing lightning speed?

as

lovable in a quick shop window?

Finally feels, for once, for just one moment, bold and yellow, growing,

li

aL

os-Pl a

n

When her dysmorphic view of herself occasionally turns euphoric when for just one second she detaches from the reality that calls her ugly

by:

O

set on a

on being because all Butter facecovering

burning bright like her eyes world built to burn.

noticed for her clothes she has is a and-body her beautiful mind and heart beating at an ever-quickening pace

and when that isn’t enough to build herself up to be the bitch that doesn’t stutter or stumble when she stands up to the patriarchy that built the bricks 48

that won’t give her just one moment of peace because tearing her down tests

how much those strong soldiers of shoulders can stand.

But her posture sags, as she tries to hide her beautiful belly from the eyes of the world but she accidentally hides herself too.

She is screaming And she is screaming But she can’t bring herself To make a sound Someone, someone, please listen to her.

She is just a poor damsel, she can’t save herself.

But nobody can hear her.

What’s a girl to do then?

So please, compliment her clothes, that make her smile, that she laughs and dances in, that hold the body that holds that mind and heart.

But she can’t, she won’t bring herself to accept it.

She’s a woman in this world after all— Oh, they’re actually the wrong size, have pockets, are my last semblance of something resembling self-esteem.

Because why would someone really compliment her?

They must not have meant it.

And even if they did, they’re just clothes.

It’s not really a compliment to her.

Don’t be silly, don’t smile, they’re just jeans, they’re just her style.

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My body has housed spirits for too long, A unwanted mother of unwanted children I cannot bear (myself) to raise.

I water myself with my tears Only to feel the prickling of a bare Yew Tree deep in my throat.

So I cut my wrist open Over and over again To see if finally, my blood Will plant roses, Only for them to come up Thorned.

My tears remind me that the blood of the bare yew tree Is thicker than my teardrops.

I forgot what happiness tasted like Crying, At the weight of my years I smiled.

Tasting the salty sweat of my eyes On my tongue And knowing that I have not yet forgotten how to taste.

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Maybe I can pretend these weeds Are flowers In a garden too crowded for me to bloom

I am not a victim.

I am not a victim.

There are scars, There are bruises And open wounds.

But they do not speak for me.

Though this voice is dry, starved, and lonely, It can scream for hours.

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WHITE LINES

by Marielle Levitt

numb-eyes and mind wandering dissociating from the company I keep clutching the bottle in my hand the label picked off numb to the prescribed dosage eyes wandering, my mind ignoring time catching sight of the white the lines laid out in perfect form the bottle is replaced with a rolled bill clutching it, my hands unable to let go right then left an almost salty taste on my gums numb- your body immune to the trauma and for a moment in time

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the head rush as you tilt back catching sight of yourself in the mirror on the wall unrecognizable to your younger self reaching out for comfort comfort in the form of a line the euphoria slipping away staring down at the white justifying that it’s not addiction but rather dependance for joy a dependance? you rationalize i rationalize numb- that’s what i am without it mind wandering- desire not necessity i romanticize the white because in a world of trauma

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“Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on.”

- Mary Oliver

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on my bed snac king tting i s on s am m o e s t h g I i n ng in wee oi d n ts, e t m he s a h I a V W hen me ein o And I f ord see the cr w umbs i % . ' * $ ( nary /(0%%D # ,% ( Or + o % $ l e * i % s v ) ing— it ha '( Old L ve a $%& # n ov I think to m unm !" yself, out of place er fallin g n i i s ft i t a — g ov kable sh t r a f ace: e Som er the ! "#$%&'()%*$%+ e str body l t, H ( e # y , an k ing in an open % cas rform this sacred ri $'%-(%#%. ge, perve e p d r t ted carnival ual, ' +# oul ride. ,/%01* y bathroom m m f I sh o ( i t 2 r * n r , 0 3% or w o w hile Ho y in fr s ) s , e a n n t i d C t w h h a anges. e wo cr st be rld go u To l e d r on the m es on ra c u flesh ere masca y e bits (Th t th of m e l y fin h g i t n , t o a T gers— Und the a e r er th b y l e mo er my chest, Liste ep 4"(%5 ther d ov ning de e s #16%'7%8#*, s o o i n T r 9%% g we c s T i g o h d t e l i s t h w o eet cru W hat f my comfor n misp ter, Ha mbs laced b shro e ating sound, ud m y b c e n i a s o m o r v d er, y as ros erfo e s.

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The fa w c d e of n A grief er without one anot pale v e n her. e s in t r a he face ey h t of love, t u B 4"*)%*)%*$@%

by Sylvie Buckalew

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Growing up is worry.

Growing up is worry.

It’s also dancing Growing up is worry. panic about the location of certain important documents exasperation and smiling realizing you’re in control and realizing you’re not car trouble and computer trouble and boy trouble and money trouble and still having crushes nightmares acne and stupid ideas tantrums

All my college friends drink tequila and laugh.

We paint together because they love me and I love them.

And we look back before it’s even through and can barely remember the repetition of things the daily coffee certainly nothing from stats class and the tequila and breakups and hookups

but we remember that time we got lost and the time we traveled 60 and the times we hurt each other and shouting the lyrics to something silly and when someone died

and also commenting on how important natural light is and wearing work-appropriate attire and do you even realize where you’ve been?

How afraid and hurt and ecstatic you are behind your striving and struggling — login information and payslip and parking tickets and the saved Trader Joe’s bags in your junk drawer?

When do you stop to ask who you are?

To grow up is to lose and to win To find you’re addicted, clamoring against smallness, irrelevance, time, and your unreliable memory full of love and insecurity Wondering if other people save pictures of you too, if anyone thinks of you intrusively randomly in the seconds before they fall asleep like where she at now?

And now we are going to work at banks and teach and consult and advocate and go to law school and make money and save the world and destroy it and get married get divorced And have babies travel And get hired and get fired get a broken heart waste all our time And win and succeed And die And be lost

I don’t know when I hopped on this train but I fell asleep as we chugged along and now I see the signs of childhood Vulnerability, innocence, pain, tempestuousness, insecurity, goofiness, imagination, rage, hurt, love Stamped into the faces of businessmen Artists politicians and plumbers Because like them I’m just another Child that’s grown old

a diminished chord sweetly fills the apartment in the afternoon dried flowers and looking at the books I read in high school a sock that has probably been under the dresser ever since and us

growing up even still finding comfort in the clanging my dad makes in the kitchen in the morning because the KLING sound means he is tapping out the coffee filter and the KLANG sound means he is about to brew a cup for you

And here we are in abject wonder and horror Wondering who and what and where is home

I love the genetic composition of my corneas some days maybe the blur lets me dream imagine something that isn’t there transposed on faces and On top of buildings, The unsettled way I have hope and who says astigmatism isn’t the right way to see things

I just wish I had more time with you I’d like to see you grow and pause and look back and realize with me.

I’d like you to hold my hand.

Sitting in the park on an unusually warm day in November: Smoke and pine pollen lingering in halos around the heads of a couple of kids in platform sneakers.

A group of nuns joke amongst themselves.

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Yellow leaves fall like glitter along the periphery.

We spend daylight like pennies, thoughtless but it adds up.

My anger Seethes in me but i cannot speak it It simmers on the back burner Until it boils over Until a year later i'm in the shower And i need to get out because i've written a poem in my Head that is so furious That it demands my attention Now it flows from my pen But i still cannot speak it i cannot speak but i can cry i cry because i am a silly woman A weak woman looking to be comforted By a strong man Is it You? Am I looking for You? The same You that Brought the rage Brought the tears Brought the year of tensed muscles and clenched jaws and pacing around rooms until You Brought the poem.

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i want to be rid of You It is said that boiled water purifies But i am a silly woman Still looking for You to Bring my Salvation

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party by Eloise Owen

more than a number

by Alexa Boglitz

The Downfall of Documentation

by Sophia George I hate that I keep records of my life like this, in neatly printed and clearly legible handwriting in notebooks I still use.

I don’t know how to break it to my old self, how to let her who exists in red pen writing and frantic crossed-out pencil and sultry voice memos down easily. Sometimes I want to scream “you’ve got it all wrong!” but I know that she can’t hear me. She’s a trapped part of me that doesn’t know this version of myself exists, that doesn’t have the capacity to discuss and learn, to receive inforthrough multi-colored ink (I never can keep track of a writing instrument) and second intervals and amp frequencies through my phone’s speakers. laugh, every verbal implication of a smile that I have memorized because I replay these year-old memos over and over again. I hate how wrong she is and how I can’t correct her because she makes me look like a complete fool because I know now that everything she dreamt of was perfectly able to come into fruition--it just never did.

I thought that documenting my life would gradually show the progression of growing up, see me learn from my mistakes and become wiser with each new entry. Isn’t that what diaries were

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meant for? To show your old taste in men that you come to laugh at. To mock the fact that you used to care about popularity and who was invited to which party and how you believed your friend’s house was home to fairies and wizards because she had a basement. Diaries are supposed to be the corresponding concrete evidence of the phenomenon of growing up.

But I don’t. Every time I decide to engage in a trip down memory lane, I’m reminded of my stagnation--not a complete regression but, for sure, a complacency in who I am. I want to stop reading the next lines when I see phrases like “if only I could get to you” and “if only I could see you again” because my present self knows that I already did and it didn’t go as I thought it would have.

Our “reunion” was nothing like I expected. I wonder how you can become a stranger to someone you’ve had so many intimate conversations with. Sometimes, I wonder if that’s just the way with men--their shockingly easy ability to just pick themselves back up together again and forget all that was before. Women can’t. Or maybe they can and it’s just me who can’t. Because I remember you walking of regret, no slight indication whatsoever that you might turn back.

But I ran. I crossed the street when it was still red and trusted British polite society and those funny looking London taxis to not run me over. I trusted my legs even though they weren’t as long as yours and my limited geographic knowledge of these blocks because my ability to get closure depended upon it.

And when I was within reach of touching you, I suddenly hesitated. It’s that moment before you wonder if you should do it at all. When you think, what am I doing? What did I even have left to with you just yet. Just ever. It was the knowledge that I wanted to be near you and never wanted to leave your side. I couldn’t let you go; 2 hours isn’t enough. It seems like nothing ever would be for me.

There’s probably a list I came up with somewhere in these pages about things I shouldn’t forget Which would be every song, because they’re all secretly about you in some way, even if I change the locations and the names. I thought you might have suggested we go up to my hotel room so that I could get my guitar. I always imagined playing them to you. Sometimes I wonder if that’s the only reason why I wrote them. Sometimes I wonder if that’s the only reason why I wanted to be a singer the way. It’s like the only reason why anything at all has come of this is because I wanted you to hear them.

I don’t cry anymore--not like I used to. Undergoing actual physical pain and not just that of the heart will do that. You’re afforded some clarity when the possibility of death comes into the frame, not the simple pathetic concern that a certain boy doesn’t love you back. All of that seems guess that’s a good thing because the old “myself” cried herself to sleep at 3 in the morning and had panic attacks in public parks and gardens and was so mad at a man who bore no responsibility for the unintentional harm he caused.

But as I re-read these old stories, the old me can’t help but come out. Maybe she recognizes herself in these stories and forces a reemergence. And when I let her take over, it’s like a coming home, remembering all those emotions I once felt. And my vision gets a little blurry like it did before, and my pages become just a tad damp and my pen ink starts to smudge and my handwriting gets worse and worse as I scramble to write down every emotion as I recognize how little I’ve grown up, how much I still miss you, and how the only few moments that afforded me optimism in my usually cynical disposition had become tarnished with my knowledge now of how it all ended.

I recognize the irony in writing this now. I recognize the irony in continuing to be a writer, to document my life, when I know I’ll look back at this in the future just as I now look back at my writings from before. And I will have done the same as I always do. And I will have chased down a until the only one I want to speak and the only one I want to hear from the mouths of others is English.

I wonder if I should keep going.

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Time to Flý In my mind I think I have a vision of who I want to be; in my head, I think I see it clearly, the me inside of me.

But place me among people, among influencers that talk, and suddenly it seems so hard to actually walk the walk.

One minute my identity seems clear as a cloudless day, and the next it’s all fogged up, like a rainy, gray Monday.

Because in my mind, I’m a little more alone; in my mind, there’s less judgment to be known.

But reality goes beyond, the mere chambers of my mind, stretches far into a collection, of many minds intertwined; woven together so variably, like the strings of a sweater, or the outstretched branches of trees growing close together.

And with minds intertwined, its impossible not to be swayed, at least slightly, at some point, by the opinions others have conveyed.

Having witnessed the world, and been twisted in confusion, having spent hours in thought, I’ve come to a conclusion.

After all, perfect is the end goal, would you disagree?

To have it all and do it right and hopefully find yourself happy?

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Artwork:

stripped

.

At least that’s what we’re told, the lies that we are fed, what we are conditioned to believe, how we allow ourselves to be led.

But I’d beg to differ, to state a different case: that perfection isn’t what society wants, not what it really wants us to chase.

Instead, it’s the even more elusive state of “perfect imperfection,” a state of humbling subordination, combined cleverly with independent invention.

For we’re “too radical,” if we form a reality that’s all our own, but we’re “just pawns of society,” if we makes ourselves a clone.

“Be enough of this, but not too much of that!”

“Today this is ok, but tomorrow you’ll fall flat.”

It’s impossible to forever balance, without wobbling on society’s slack line, so I suggest we’d be better to take off, and fly into the sunshine.

Because, in the end, the bottom line is this: you and I are works of art, crafted from arrays of colors and textures, intrinsically unique at the very heart; not programmed machines, or carefully structured calculations, but living, breathing beings, whose mere existences are perfections; perfections that grow and change, and are meant to, it is clear, so why submit to the expectations, or to the criticisms we hear?

Thus it definitely won’t be easy, but goodness I need to try, to lovingly embrace the me in me, to jump from the slack line, extend my wings, and finally fly 67

Flashback by: Audrey Ledford

Unexpectedly, I see his face Haunting

His name escapes me But his face is etched Bold print into my memory

Why is he here?

I’m not getting better It seems Will I be haunted by men For the rest of my life

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art by lily yamagata 69

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Planisphere by Tara Petronio