BRIO Fall 2023 // In my Room, I Issue

/BREE-oh/,noun

Vivacity, spirit, an individual energy.

The discipline of Comparative Literature is based on the assumption that the study of single texts and cultures is enriched by a knowledge of the texts and cultures surrounding them. It views literature from a broad and inclusive perspective in which philosophy, anthropology, history, language, and literary theory come together, and where the visual arts, theater, and modern media suggest crucial comparisons. This journal aspires to embody those ideas.

Brio is a student-founded publication that combines literary criticism with fictive works and visual art. In an effort to represent the wide spectrum of discourses that serve as the foundation of comparative study, the journal accepts submissions from any source and in any language. *

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CONTENTS A Note From the Editor-in-Chief HOME by Harriett Vetkamp One Poem by Joseph Brodsky Two Poems, Hands, Snake, Absence and Eyes by Briggs Negron Colors Dictionary by Salma Abrego //quiz// Four Poems by Divya Mehrish Excerpt from Theatre, by William Somerset Maugham Excerpt from My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh Internal Monologue by Inés Menéndez Lost and Found & Fallen by Charlotte Wu Five Urdu Couplets by Anand Kumar The Bed and The Inventory by Michelle Reilly Excerpt from Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov Impressions of Home by Meghana Maddali One Poem by Antonella Zanatti (Samantha Williams) (Joseph Donaldson) *

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Note from the Editor Sick of the hospice, sick of fetid incense rising from vapid whiteness in the curtains towards the tall crucifix, bored of the empty wall, the dying and sly man sets an old back upright and drags it, less to warm his rottenness than to see sunlight on the stones, to press white hairs and the bones of his thin face to the windows a beautiful bright ray would suntan.

And the mouth, feverish, as avid of azure blue as when, in youth, it went to breathe its treasure, a virgin skin, long gone! befouls the lukewarm golden panes with a long bitter kiss.

He lives a drunk, forgetting the horror of holy oils, tisanes, the clock and the inflicted bed, the cough; and when evening bleeds among the tiles, his eye, on the horizon gorged with light, sees golden galleys, beautiful as swans, asleep on a fragrant, purple river, rocking the wildcat lightning of their lines in a grand indifference charged with memory!

So, seized by disgust for the man of obdurate soul sprawled in happiness, where his appetites only are fed, who persists in searching this filth to offer it to the woman nursing his little ones,

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I flee, and I cling to all cross-panes where a man can show life the cold shoulder, and, blessed in their glass, washed by eternal dews, gilded by the chaste morning of the Infinite in their mirror I see myself an angel! and I die, I love — if the windowpane be art, or the mystical — to be reborn, wearing my dream for a diadem, in a prior sky where Beauty flourishes!

But here-below is master: its obsessive fear comes even in this safe house to make me sick, and the impure vomit of Stupidity compels me to hold my nose before the blue.

Is there a means, o Self well-versed in bitterness, to smash the crystal insulted by the monster and to fly, with my two wings featherless — at the risk of falling till the end of eternity?

THE WINDOWS

by Stephan Mallarmé LM

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COMING HOME

by Harriet Vetkamp Seeing a place upon return from the outside changes it. It shifts the chemistry, brightens various colors, and dulls others. The place is at once familiar and exotic. The rolling hills and warm musk of sun spilling over ferns and red clover: these are the things you remember, the things that settle back into your body, breath by breath, filling every pore. The pride you hold in knowing each nook and cranny of a place. It arrives.

You know the best shore for a starlit swim in the night and the spaces from which to watch the world fall asleep. You gaze from the space between yearning to be a child once again and the dreamy thrill of one day having your own. Your sense of wonder comes to rest in the landscape around you.

Arriving from the city, what used to be emptiness now contains small universes: rain-soaked dirt lanes remind you of a foreign countryside you have yet to visit, and wild green grapes show the passing of time.

Why is it that returning holds this magic? Home becomes shimmery with memories we might have left years before. Returning can create a passage through time. You swim in the same mountain stream and come home to the same hidden pond, gazing at the tadpoles wriggling amid reflected clouds. You are yet a child again, sipping mango nectar with wide-eyed abandon. But you are also a guardian: a keeper of the lost sunsets and lost time. You are making up for being swept up in the trees of life as a teenage dancer. Now, you see the forest. It takes your breath away.

Your coming home creates room for a new perspective. Optics at its finest.

But it can also erase, creating room to be something new. Coming back to a space full of ghosts can cause breaks. Pieces of a home that you held onto, their sepia-toned shimmers popping up Proust-style, these are held to the gavel. Because returning changes history, or changes the continuing story of a land that’s been sealed up in a mind too full of everything.

You notice the ghosts several weeks after touching back down on the soil of your raising, and they frighten you into the shadows of winter, of burying snow you thought you’d melted in the New York Spring sunshine.

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And you melt into this rain for brief moments. Moments inside which you wonder why your roots are always changing, spreading and tearing up.

Why can’t they stay, set and steady, so you can land on pillowed ground.

But wait, you think, are these pieces of home ones that pass through time?

You have returned to the same place, but you came from an elsewhere.

Perhaps an elsewhere that opened you up to a lack of longing. Maybe you slowly learned, dancing through a new space you call your own and bumping into souls who make you laugh with your whole body, that the souls who force you to leave them behind, the ones who past-tense were yours, are not the time-travelers. These new laughing people usher in sunshine; they reflect your want of those who paint your conversations with golden yellow. While the others are flickering cinematic filaments of your past needs, no longer worthy, turning to black and white. So when you feel that longing for the broken monochrome ghosts, you breathe it in… And then breathe it out. You are letting go of something. Something that filled you in the sepia-tone, but no longer. A place allows you to choose the collection of who you hold onto, how you decide to be. You realize this, and the clouds part, or the rain pours down; you dance in both.

You allow yourself to inhale beauty not at a racing sprint but with a love almost meditative, as if you are trying to soak everything into your body at once. It is a first for you, this peace in returning, and you bask in it. You will appreciate the traditions and see only a beautiful resting place. Somewhere to land softly for just a while. Somewhere to run through meadows and peek into woodland mountains, water washing your skin clean before returning to the rush. There is no acceleration of time, just space to ponder and rediscover. As you peer out a plane window, the fluffy, green mountains roll into view, and you are home.

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LEAVING HOME Yet at some point once again, these green mountains become the rear view. Leaving the history of this first home still hurts; it feels like missed moments - as, out the window, fields turn to graffitied lots and winding creeks become buildings you can’t see the top of. Like somehow, the minutes that you should have been bathing in the comfort slipped Where did they go? And how do you weigh moving forward, letting the regret slip off your back? In leaving, my heart holds melancholy. A nostalgia that tastes of sorrow and melodramatic longing for moments of childhood. Even when the train flies from an old home to the new, there is something I feel left behind. A what if that is at times hard to swallow.

But leaving also slips me into a chasm where the time linking past and possible is now. Leaving home strikes a spark of giddy excitement for the days and days and years. For coming loves, spring daffodils that will bloom, and morning meandering where the air is crystal and spiked with cedar or salt. There is clarity, buzzing organs, and racing flitting thoughts.

Time speeds up and I am hurtled into a new space and new time. Catapulted from safety into the potential.

As I sit, my legs tucked up on the seat, the leaving weaves a vast blanket of space for my mind to whirl, sorting images of a life whisking away.

Amid the whirling, I reflect and look forward, piecing together a narrative in substitute of roots. In my moments of history and future, the silt of the unknown settles into the what could be. And I begin to love the past and the possibility held in a heart split between pavement and the forest.

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WHAT IS HOME How is home defined? Is it an absolute? Is it your favorite smell or a cozy bed, wrapped in soft memories? As a child, home meant being rooted as a daughter, a sister. Moving from rocky mountains to sandy shores meant the three faces I moved with were the ones I felt safe around. Home was a house we flew back to from weeks away. The green mountains we returned to. It was my clothes folded in neat piles and a permanent marker scribbling my name on the bedpost. Home was potato soup and classical music, my breath freezing and my toes stuck between the fuzzy seat in front of me. I grew, my knees squished in the tiny Toyota seats. I learned to drive, and the truck swept by snow disappeared forever.

Home became steady, so many years back from the North. And my heart longed to slowly settle. Because home is known. Home is, yes, I’ve been here before, and I have a place to return to. Those rain-soaked dirt lanes were my moment of eternity. But what about when I leave? Gone for more than weeks. While returning brings peace, it is a limbo in-between two absolutes. Home is no longer permanent, and it is no longer only blood since my family lies far past miles of concrete and acres of woods.

Four pairs of arms wrap around me when I step off the plane, a city of lights still in my eyes. But what is home when I no longer need a place to go to escape, a place to recover? I soaked in the summer sun and healed, but through the Fall, I learned a separate place to be whole. I sat in a foreign chair, the rain falling, but I couldn’t hear it. Instead, there was the blur of sirens and laughter from beyond my door, and yet my heart didn’t ache for the pitter-patter of the woods. When I am there, I run through them, breathing in the cold, clean air, but when I can’t see the sky, my heart still beats. I can sleep in the city and watch the sunrise between slivery cracks. Its shine on my face becomes more precious, and each breath of dewy air from my history more full of sweetness. Of memories. I sit in a concrete room with no windows, closing my eyes to describe the rich smell of ferns, wafting through dappled light. One world holds my past, always comfortable and always steady, yet now it pauses with a lack of what to do. It is a frozen moment, where the honking of cars and rushing

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footsteps holds notes of the future.

I move and run and breathe in the possibility that the new is now history, too. How can it be? I’m returning to and leaving from two places, yet at home in both. The need blossoms for a singular definition of roots, but are we made of one facet? I am not simply from the woods, though I would call them home.

Home is the cool evening air whipping through my wisps of loose hair as I fly around banked turns, my bike humming under me, thighs burning. It is nighttime smells of camping and the last crisp moments of dusk echoing of loons and guitar chords. Yet now, when I say “home” I also mean the candle-lit apartment where I cook for Ella Fitsgerald and stumble to bed at four a.m. Is home the collection of stop signs, gold leafy afternoons, and the first sip of foamy sweetness that begins to form a history? That begins to form my places. The new ones to return to. Two collections of home. Maybe it is where your soul can be restored. In rushing humming humanity or lightning bugs and stars. Somewhere to love and not need to get away from. Change terrifies me, so maybe home is the place I feel safe with the change. Somewhere I can inhale and breathe out. Refilter the air I breathe. Somewhere to revel in fear and the uncomfortable, knowing I am here and that here is ok.

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‘Don’t leave your room…’

by Joseph Brodsky Don’t leave your room. This is better left undone.

You’ve got cheap smokes, so why should you need the sun?

Nothing makes sense outside, happiness least of all.

You may go to the loo but avoid the hall.

Don’t leave your room. Don’t think of calling a taxi.

Space consists of the hall and ends at the door; its axis bends when the meter’s on. If your tootsie comes in – before she starts blabbing, undressing – throw her out of the door.

Don’t leave your room. Pretend a cold in the head.

What could be more exciting than wallpaper, chair and bed?

Why leave a room to which you will come back later, unchanged at best, more probably mutilated?

Don’t leave your room. There might be a jazzy number on the radio. Nude but for shoes and coat, dance a samba.

Cabbage smell in the hall fills every nook and cranny.

You wrote so many words; one more would be one too many.

Don’t ever leave your room. Let nobody but the room know what you look like. Incognito ergo sum, as substance informed its form when it felt despair.

Don’t leave the room! You know, it’s not France out there.

Don’t be an imbecile! Be what the others couldn’t be.

Don’t leave the room! Let furniture keep you company, vanish, merge with the wall, barricade your iris from the chronos, the eros, the cosmos, the virus.

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Samantha Williams

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Pebbles

By Briggs Negron

I once loved you desperately but now all i see Is the outline of an empty man a chameleon in place of that wishful silhouette

your words are like fallen snow soft and shimmery until i feel the sting of bitter cold curling through my clothes and i jolt awake

bed infested with lice bed bugs and dirt the itchiness hurts with the pain of absence so i pick the lice from my scalp and toss them away in the bucket i made

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¿Wepa? ¡Wepa! Her hips sashay to la clave, The drums pulsate roaring like a heartbeat, Rhythm pumps her blood she must obey, To be in New York is so very sweet, ¡Wepa! She hears phantom croaks at night, The coquí lodged inside both her eardrums, “Soy de aquí, como el coquí” right?

No, what she does she must do she swiftly becomes, ¿Wepa? Yes, she sends them to the white school, Silence the coquí chirping in her brain, Of languages, there is no room for two, Feign until coquí is a mere bloodstain, She wonders if El Cuco’s below bed, And in the night he might devour her head.

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Hands I see You in the calloused veins of my mother’s hands, pumping blood through her body as she works to chop vegetables and beef on the oak wood cutting board. Sitting in the kitchen with my hands splayed across the cool marble table, I marveled at the speed and precision of her chop, at the care and obvious experience inherent in every stroke of her worn hands. She never uses recipes, just her mind and her steady fingers as she sprinkles goya seasoning or spices on every creation. Each step of the way, I watch her lift a single finger to her mouth, tasting the flavors with a smacking of her lips, scrunching her dark brown eyebrows, and deciding to add more onions or yuca. Whatever flavor that she knows will make the dish even richer, she adds.

Away from college for the weekend, I could feel the drool pooling in the underside of my mouth, leaking slowly out of the corner as I smelt these familiar foods after so much time. Especially food cooked with my mother’s love. Food cooked with You. I watch her steady, subtle movements. A flick of her wrist. A pinch of her fingertips. She loves to cook solely so she can see us eat her food, see us smile wider and light up our eyes with the tastes of our ancestral island captured in every small bite. If I really listened, I could hear the quiet croaks of the coqui frog, singing its song Co-quí, co-quí gently through the warm tropical breeze, emanating from the tips of my mother’s fingers. As she folds the creases of the empanadas, I hear the swish of the trees and the sound of the ocean crashing against the beach. I hear the birds flying overhead. The sun blanketed me, absorbing into the pores of my skin.

As she finishes cooking, she leans over the table and smiles at me, hands outstretched with a dish of tostones, empanadas, and mofongo piled high atop the plate. She placed it in front of me, handing me a fork and knife and a glass of lemonade, my favorite.

“Here you go, honey. Besos. You know you always get a good meal when you come home” “Thanks mami, I love you” I replied sing-songily, diving into the beautiful dish. Even as I ate, I could see her hands working away, wiping the kitchen counter. The muscles near her veins flexed with every push, and I smiled through my chewing.

I could see You, Love, in her hands.

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Snake His bicep looked so big to me then, in proportion to myself. Muscles rippled up his side, concentrated in his arms. He had been cultivating his sleeve for years now, and now the left side of his torso was characterized by the menacing snake that wrapped all the way up and around his left arm, the head firmly planted near the base of his hand on his forearm, flexing as he holds the cloth of my shirt in his fist.

He didn’t like that I refused to respect his new wife. I had told him, Respect needs to be earned. No, he didn’t like that at all.

His other hand gripped so tightly around my right shoulder I tried to squirm, tried to wriggle away. But he was too strong. His muscles flexed menacingly, and he screamed with the devil in his eyes. They were brown, but with every word I could see them flicker a crimson red, squinted and dangerous. I couldn’t hear his words anymore really, they were faded and muffled like they were underwater, a mere background noise.

But with every flex and clench of his muscles I found myself drawn back to the situation, to the head of the snake drawn on his arm. It haunted me, and no matter how hard I tried to escape its beady red eyes, I couldn’t.

Its head was scaly, its eyes bloody and vicious. Its mouth hung agape, as if it was waiting for the opportunity to consume its next meal, the red tongue flickered out mid hiss. Sometimes, in these moments, when he would get angry, time would slow and I would focus on the snake’s head, imagining it rising from his rough olive skin, scales emerging from skin. It would blink, study me for a handful of seconds, flick its tongue and lunge at the open skin of my neck, near my collarbone. With a vicious strike, its venomous fangs would sink into my flesh, poisoning my blood stream with its toxins as it delights in the taste of human flesh. Feeding off the draining of my life.

They say a life flashed before a person’s eyes in those brief moments before death. For me, I wondered in those handful of seconds, if the snake thought about sparing me. If he looked at me and saw some sort of kinship, if he wanted to leave me be. If, maybe, buried under layers of flesh and bone and scales and unfeeling reptile blood, You were hidden. I hoped, with fangs sucking blood from my neck.

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Absence It was too cold on this day, too cold for a kid to be stuck outside in the cold. My beige pants were a muddy shade of dark brown from the snow pile I was sitting on, my gloves had long ago proved incapable of defending against the cold, and my nose was starting to turn purple with the constant attack of the frigid air. Kids ambled around me, grunting a brief hello to their parents and getting into bright blue or red or white minivans. I could see my best friend Daniel across the way getting into his mom’s blue Honda Civic, in which he would change clothes for his weekly soccer practice around the corner at Larz Anderson Park. Shoving my hands underneath my armpits for warmth, I watched my breath escape from my lips into the wind, turning into a fog that dissipated into the icy air.

“Honey? Do you need a ride?” Said an older voice behind me.

I turned around to see the face of my classmate’s mother, Isak’s mom.

His mom was always nice to me, giving me cookies that crunched on the outside and melted on the inside.

“Hi Ms. Shapiro! I’m all right, thank you though” I replied, pulling the corners of my lips into that polite smile reserved specifically for adults. She peered back at me with a tight smile, and her eyes shone with a familiar look, one I knew all too well. People try to cover it behind their eyes with the widest and most friendly smile, a smile where they try to show every one of their pearly whites. But it’s too many teeth and too happy to be real, it’s a smile that makes me feel lesser than.

“You sure honey? It’s no problem” Suddenly I didn’t like being called honey, I didn’t like the bright white shine of her teeth and the smoothness of her perfect porcelain skin.

I just wanted to be alone and sit on the stoop of my school, in the cold wet snow and cry.

“I’m all set, my dad’s pulling up soon” I replied coolly, looking away from the stare of her pitied eyes. She eventually retreated, and I looked out at the row of cars coming to pick up their children. He was definitely in there. He was on his way. I just had to wait.

But as I thought that, I knew the truth. As much as I hated it, I knew the truth. He wasn’t coming. And I was alone. Utterly alone.

I cracked. I buried my hands in my wet gloved hands and sobbed into the fabric. I felt Your absence so poignantly I couldn’t breathe.

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I took short wavering breaths and could barely see what was in front of me. Nothing was left. I could feel You, in the heaviness of Your absence.

On that day, I felt the absence of You so heavily it broke me.

Eyes She is across from me, brown eyes so soft and so beautiful. She holds my hand, thumb drawing figure eights on the back of my hand.

Featherlight, she kisses my cheeks and my forehead and holds my head in place with the palm of her hands on my neck and chin. Her eyes, her brown eyes sparkle in the light of the afternoon sun and she says something so funny I cough, and as revenge I tackle her to the grass. Our bodies are pressed against each other, breaths mingling into one as I lean down slowly, until our lips brush and we are kissing and it’s like fireworks in my brain and in my stomach. We are there for longer than I can remember, running our hands through each other’s hair and over each other’s bodies, as if we both know that this moment is fleeting and that we have to make a map of each other to remember what we each looked like. After we stopped, she looked up at me with those eyes, those eyes again, and I tried to see You in her eyes. I wanted to see You in her eyes, like I’ve wanted to see You in the eyes of every person I’ve been with.

People that I have really cared about. But I have never been able to. You aren’t there. You are absent. Now, You sit deep within the cavity of my chest, lodged under layers of flesh and bone, restricted by the chains of my agony. I think about You so often my head spins in circles, and not a day goes by when I don’t yearn for You to let Yourself free from inside me and let Yourself sing Your tearful truth. But You are locked inside, locked so tight that every time I have tried to access You I can only feel the pressure of frustration inside my skull, the pressure of my own shortcomings. No matter how hard I might try, staring into those beautiful brown doe eyes all I could see was my own pain reflected back in her shiny black irises.

“What are you thinking about?” she asks below me, hands brushing my abdomen under my shirt.

I shake my head, smiling weakly, “nothing” and lean in for another kiss.

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Samantha Williams

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From Theatre

by William Somerset Maugham You act when there’s a party here. You act to the servants, you act to Father, you act to me. To me you act the part of the fond, indulgent, celebrated mother. You don’t exist, you’re only the innumerable parts you’ve played. I’ve often wondered if there was ever a you or if you were never anything more than a vehicle for all these other people that you’ve pretended to be. When I’ve seen you go into an empty room I’ve sometimes wanted to open the door suddenly, but I’ve been afraid to in case I found nobody there.

My Year of Rest and Relaxation

By Ottessa Moshfegh Sleep felt productive. Something was getting sorted out. I knew in my heart—this was, perhaps, the only thing my heart knew back then—that when I’d slept enough, I’d be okay. I’d be renewed, reborn. I would be a whole new person, every one of my cells regenerated enough times that the old cells were just distant, foggy memories. My past life would be but a dream, and I could start over without regrets, bolstered by the bliss and serenity that I would have accumulated in my year of rest and relaxation.

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Colors Dictionary

by Salma Abrego Red is 1 Running the pacer in fourth grade. The metallic taste of exhaustion is discovered here. I’m still eight years old, so my legs are still young and wanna keep going, but the nasty iron flavor makes you wanna stop and pass out.

2 Liking someone is the color of hearts glowing. Feelings flicker as I try to make them out. Chirps of “he likes me” “she likes me” “he likes me not,” “she likes me not” swing around me. Some never find out the answer, just stained with devastation, which is why this color is insufferably red.

3 Tobi, my mom’s car, is red. His rear bumper is my favorite tint of unchained red. He has survived every fender bender, whoopsie-daisy, oopsie, and yikes; and, even so, my lovely soldier has never failed me and keeps pushing through route seven.

4 I was born red! I came out fighting with a temper of a red hot chili pepper similar to my father’s nature. Oh god! My poor mother!

5 My insecurities are also red. The acne on my face, the brittleness of my hair, the stubbiness of my thighs.

6 Everytime I see my mom’s feet. This burning red hot anger grows in me. They’re covered in blisters, calluses and burns to remind her of her years of working any cooking and cleaning job she could to put food on the table and keep the lights on. My mom has given everything for the

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American dream. Her feet, her youth, her time, and her life to be a part of this country, even when it breaks her.

Orange is 1 The tanniness of the loud sun on a six AM work day is orange.

The betrayal of leaving bed, my safe haven feels disgustingly orange.

2 Unstable yucky allergies in the spring sting of orange. The blurry eyes and snot-bursting noses is enough to humble my spring shine.

3 Being five years old feels like you’re living in a big, fat orange.

The hopeful youthfulness beams gold. Everything feels possible at this age.

4 Missing my eight-thirty morning doctor appointments reeks of a moldy orange. Old habits never corrected. So much failed potential lies in these unpaid executions.

5 Before I learned to drive, I used to bike everywhere. Even at night, after I was done hanging out with my friends. I would bike the trail to my house, which is known to us as “the deer trail,” because of all the deer that are usually around the path. As I peddled home, I would feel the whoosh of deers running in herds to wherever they were going. I believe that the specks of orange that were there to watch over me was the reason why I got home safe. The first time that this happened was in sixth grade. I was spooked by the tires of my bike vibrating which terrified me, but I couldn’t stop. My mom wanted me home an hour ago, I needed to get back before she realized I wasn’t in my bed. Snoozing off. So, I just biked faster. It’s an illuminating feeling to have this kind of first hand alignment with nature.

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Yellow is 1 Biking around my neighborhood. Never gets old. The rusty 7/11 is where it’s always been. Even though the monkey bars and the signs at the park have been painted, it still has the same feel as it did when I was a kid kicking my legs to go higher on the swing. Parks are yellow, they remind me of the child in me.

2 Waking up in my childhood bed with my childhood dog by my side. She can’t believe I’m finally home with her. She has no idea that I’ll be leaving college the next morning, but at this moment, it doesn’t matter.

3 The sweat of an athlete is the color of expired mustard. I never got the point of sports and whenever someone starts talking about “last night’s game,” I run as far as I can to get away from the yucky musty smell of horseradish and relish.

Green is 1 My childhood in El Salvador will always be remembered in green, which is funny to think about, because of all the danger around at the time. Yet, I truly can’t seem to remember anything about that time except the liberating massive, endless evergreen field of mi pueblo San Vicente.

2 First block Science class in the eighth grade. I have no idea where any of those people are today, but I still laugh at some of the jokes told at this lab table.

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3 Healthy friendships and romantic relationships are green. I used to categorize them as different colors, like red, purple, or yellow; but no, I was wrong, these types of love are greedy, transactional, and useless.

Green love is growth, adjacent to the idea of a green thumb. The kind of love that makes you eat peas, drink water, and jog. A love that makes you better.

4 Learning a new skill makes me feel brand new. This feeling is like a minty flavor. Weird, but fresh and clean, and ready for the new day to start.

Blue is 1 The feeling of missing my childhood room. The room I destroyed with posters, emo drawings, braggy award certificates, and the psychotic number of stickers on my mirror. My painted door with juvenile cartoons.

My pink curtains didn’t match the patchy dark blue walls, but I loved it this way. The subtle hue of light that had comforted me my whole youth.

So, when I came back for Thanksgiving, I was heartbroken to no longer find my room, but a repainted replica of it with the posters taken down.

No more blue chipped walls, but an intruding, shiny pink box. The room isn’t mine anymore with my uncle sleeping in it -- it feels foreign. So now, every time I go back home, I curl up on our brown couch in the basement that has been here from before I was born.

2 Passing by my neighborhood feels gut-wrenching, especially when I pass old friends’ houses. It’s been years since we had a conversation but I still remember where their mom keeps the spoons.

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3 The hope of a dream is blue. So close at times, yet always so far.

Thrashing and hustling for a dream is a sea of blue. The waves can give you peace or turmoil, just depending on the way of the wave.

Joseph Donaldson

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Tell Us Eight Things about Your Room, We Will Tell You Which Literary Work You Are

1. What is on your bed stand/beside your bed?

A. A book I was reading before falling asleep; B. Some quarters, one earring, maybe some gum, and a few other things; C. A glass of water with lemon in it, already prepped for the morning; D. My phone, how trivial.

2. What type of decor is on your wall?

A. Pictures of my friends and/or family, love being surrounded by them; B. Curated posters and cut-outs! Gotta bring the 2000s back; C. Sticky notes and calendars are what keeps me in one piece (and my room, evidently); D. Nothing (much).

3. Does your room have a window?

A. Yes, and it’s always wide open, welcoming the sun, and some plants on the sill!

B. Yes, but I keep it closed with a curtain, hate the morning heat; C. Yes, but I don’t care about it much, besides it faces an alley and gets no natural light; D. No. I live in a windowless void.

4. What can you see from your window?

A. Dogs in the park, people jogging around the body of water, birds on the trees; B. There is a highway/train trucks, very hypnotizing; C. View on another residential building, some skyscrapers; D. I think I mentioned I don’t have a window, or did I?

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5. What lights do you usually turn on?

A. Sun is my main source of light during the day and then the big light during the night; B. Some LED lights, some candles, fairy lights, mushroom lamps, everything but big light!

C. The light of my laptop :) D. Usually out all day then go straight to bed, so wouldn’t notice.

6. What is your favorite thing to do in your room?

A. Blast music out loud; B. Daydream and journal, watch movies; C. A quick relaxing stretch while my favorite podcast is playing; D. SLEEP. 7. Do you eat in your room?

A. Prefer eating in the kitchen, but can bring some snacks from time to time; B. Duh, that’s my favorite thing to do in my room, didn’t I say that?

C. Nope, studies show it’s better to separate the places where you rest, eat, and work; D. No, usually eat out.

8. Be honest, are you messy??

A. No! Unless some dusty spots, cat hair, and some stuff on the floors count; B. Yes, but it’s mostly “clothes” messy rather than “food/gross” kind of messy; C. No, cleaning my room is the way of meditating for me; D. Yes, indeed.

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Answers Mostly A — (post-)Modernist Prose Much like Clarissa in Mrs Dalloway, you love a good party! When playing host, your friends notice all the small things in your space. Whether it’s the flickering glow of scented candles, the endless posters adorning the walls, or the trinkets collected from various journeys, every element is carefully chosen. To you, the details are not just decorations, but threads that weave a tapestry of connection and joy, for all that gather within.

After all, life’s moments are made richer when shared with those we love.

But beware! There is life beyond curated aesthetics and dinner parties. Expose yourself to the appalling streets of late winter — or, before you know it, you’ll find yourself waking up a monstrous vermin.

Mostly B — Fantastic Tale Your room is messy and littered with random objects. Something always gets lost, something is always found. Like Hermann from Alexandr Pushkin’s The Queen of Spades, you suspect that your room is subject to extraordinary force, that there might be someone (the past? guilt?) haunting you. Though, it might just be your imagination. Or just like Alice, a random notebook lying in the left corner under your table can teleport you into the wonderland of Summer 2022 when you decided to start a writer’s journal to keep track of your ideas for the next poem…or a debut novel… or a screenplay…or….

Mostly C— A Play in Five Acts We probably have a picture of your room pinned in our room inspo board: organized drawers, books stacked alphabetically, made bed — clean room = clear mind. We wouldn’t be surprised if you were the “mom” of your friend group: it is the comfortable and grounded presence that makes you a very reliable friend. Although your room follows the predictable cadence of a Five-Act Play, like A Midsummer Night’s Dream, it is replete with poetic restlessness and magic.

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Mostly D — Epic Poem You are barely at home to the point where it always looks like you just moved in. Regardless, why stay in this pencil case, when there is so much to be done? Coffee with a friend, business lunch, six-hour study session, workout, walk in the park, poem by the river, private conversation with Krishna, wrestling match with Isis’s Calf, labyrinth of King Minos — the list is endless, and yet, you manage complete all the tasks before you get home. This room is not a permanent home, but, rather, a stop on your bigger journey.

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Elegiac

By Divya Mehrish In my dream there is a sound like shadow.

Migrating dusk. Inky blackberries tangle into forests, our hands, clotting like dialogue.

The smell of roasting trees spools into sunset but today I swoon in the light and know nothing but the weight of this moment.

I whisper into perspiring windows, in wisps, in blood music.

The wound here congeals: molasses on hot lips We wait, pursed, for the haunt of mourning.

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Sans I mispronounce my body as if the architecture of the spine were soft, as if this poem could start here, in the space between open lips, even though it resists a title.

To be means to exist with a name. To be means to have a body worth defining.

Full of cold faith, a poem is an entity of quiet hunger, an origin story saturated with home.

Half-woman, half-artist, I am creating the thing that has created me.

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Ghazal to Womanhood I dig for salvation in the crater of womb— pelvis pounding temple empty of God, swallowed in unbroken womb.

Born from body to birth body into body, tucked into womb.

Seed implanted in desiccated soil, fruit sinks head into walls of womb.

Unfurling skin, I drape shield over cage of ribs, curving stone.

I hide from the gravedigger’s shovel, spurning earth, refusing to enwomb.

My spine crinkles against leaf—the same blood oozes through our veins: larva crystallizes into chrysalis, not ready to cocoon. Choking in womb, I remember waves were once my home, water osmosing through temples as salt seeped into bone. Are you ready to become ocean, weave flesh—loom into womb?

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father, once son My father’s fingers swallow the wood as they massage chunks of tomato oozing bubbled blood into the skin of unpeeled onions, crinkling like the newspaper he buries his dark nose into each morning, festooned with little brown bindis. My father does not know how to cook anything save his own body—thick with lassi, mother’s milk, fermented. Cow’s breast blending with thighs of chicken, choked with cardamom. Animals forget how to walk when far from home. My father lifts spoon to mouth and wraps lips around hot metal marred by the taste of Indian blood. He kisses the congeries of his memory. Little brown boy on step stool, bare chest burnt by red sun.

Mother of no daughters grinding nutmeg against stone, recipes against bone.

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The Derivative of Being In chemistry class / I could never understand why Celsius trumps / Fahrenheit but not quite Kelvin / There is a point / at which molecules stop / moving and life / ceases to exist / There is a point / at which warm becomes cold / and silence hits / in the form of equilibrium / I am still seeking / this perfect / balance / Water boils and freezes / at multiples of ten / and each spider web spirals / logarithmically and snowflakes / are fractal curves / Our planet is nothing / more / than a mathematical textbook that has lost / track / of its units and chapters / It is hardcover / and it explodes / proofs and / rules and / equations and / symmetrical memory / at the swollen periphery / of our vision / As a child / I used to beg / for God to come down / from on high / and tell me / why / the earth is grounded in math / why / not history / or literature / or Latin / why / must our world / make sense / why / must our lives / exist in accordance / with numbers / why / must the sky / hold meaning / between / each inky fold / of sunless clouds / why / must there exist / patterned logic / to each breath / we take / why / must there exist / patterned logic / to our tired / tireless / existence / why / must even this poem / be an entity / of reason / why / can’t this poem / simply exist / in the absence of rationality / why / am I writing / this poem / some sense / some judgment / is driving me / why / can’t I just be / writing for the sake / of putting pen to paper / why / can’t I just be / why / is my very blood defined / by the pattern of flowing / by the pattern / of gravity / by the pattern / of up and down / by the pattern / of rhythmic pumping / why / is there a musical hum / to the language / of my body / this poem is writing / itself / but why / am I letting / go / I just want to /

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write a poem / that evades / sense / I just want / my body / to make / no sense / I just want / my body / to be empty / of meaning / I just want / to make no / sense / at all / Tell me / if I pull out / each stitch / of the math / knotted into /my bones / will I still be able / to ind home / in the repetitive / symmetry / of this planet / Tell me / what am I / if I don’t / belong here /

Samantha Williams

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Samantha Williams

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Internal Monologue

by Inés Menéndez

In my mind This past Monday, November 2nd, 2020—the day before election —a day when stress and tension about the future of our country felt suffocatingly intense, I joined a video call with my teachers who were leading workshops on healing and reflection. One exercise in particular was really fun—drawing a map of my neighborhood. I started with my building, followed by Fort Tryon Park, and then my favorite spot in the park. Although my map is made up of real places in my neighborhood, nobody other than I could understand it, because the geography and scale are all off. The playground, my apartment building, 187th street, and the park are the biggest. The park has no real boundary or limit, because these are the places I find myself most; while a bit smaller than those are the supermarket, the pizza place, and the Indian restaurant; and even smaller, I drew the schoolyard, the Ginkgo tree on Fort Washington, the pharmacy, and a grilled cheese in place of the diner.

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Safety at home My mental wellbeing is another aspect of my safety that has been recently threatened. The idea of a “safe space” has been something looming large over me during this time. I now attend classes for school and other extracurriculars in my bedroom—and have the ability to join calls to anywhere and at any time. This newfound formality of a space where I regularly sleep, dress, and live—routines that are personal and that require privacy—has forced me to find another space where I can be alone. It can be uncomfortable to feel like every day, people are looking into my room, into my space—seeing all of the books on my shelves, the posters on my walls, my messy desk, and my unmade bed.

Honestly, it feels weird to be uncomfortable in my own bedroom.

I always have some sense that I have something to do–a class to join, an assignment to finish. Recently I have been trying to make my room more comfortable and functional, so it becomes a space for productivity but also rest and stillness. Even though I have decluttered, even though I

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repainted the walls from a somewhat chaotic shade of orange to a more peaceful blue, even though I rearranged everything so that half of my room is my desk and books, and the other half is my bed and window, and even though I have done everything I can to convince myself that this setup helps me at all, sometimes I feel like I can’t be inside of this room anymore or I’ll go crazy. There is only so much to do, only so many things I can stand to look at for hours on end.

In the past few months, this feeling has been the most prominent, more than anything physically threatening. In the past few months, my room has gone from the refuge from the chaos to both the refuge and the chaos—a totally disorderly mix of both. I write this as I lay sprawled out on my bed, the least effective way for me to get any work done.

On my playlist Earlier in the year, in French class, we had to write poems. My group wrote about things that we have been doing during quarantine. One was “écouter de la musique et mes chansons préférées pour me sentir heureux,” which means that we listen to music and our favorite songs to feel happy. I have found a new appreciation for music in the past few months, and I have begun to understand how healing it can be.

I create strong associations between music, place, people, and time. Sometimes when I listen to a song I can feel the same way I felt a year ago, or I am able to picture the person who shared the song with me.

I associate one playlist with rides on the school bus—songs I only listened to on the way to school and back.

I have music that I associate with March 2020, a few songs that I played on repeat for hours on end one night. I have songs that I associate with time journaling, four or five songs which I looped as I would come up with ideas, paint, and create. I also have music that I associate with the park—some songs with working out, some with the Cloisters, and some for watching the sunset. All of these songs echo the same effortless feeling as that of the summer air on your face. They’re calm and wonderful.

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In the park After the initial month or two of only going out to the supermarket, the first family outings we were able to have during “quarantine” were to Fort Tryon Park. I don’t think I’ve ever spent so much time there before. It has become somewhere I routinely go to hang out, exercise, read, or simply sit and breathe. My space for months on end was my bedroom, and when I was able to go out, anywhere else. The park just happened to be the most accessible. I could be alone and be released from the confines of my walls, a freedom I craved since mid-March. Early on, I discovered a spot that has been my favorite place to go, no matter how I’m feeling. Just behind the Cloisters, there sits a rock that overlooks a small parking lot and, further below, the Hudson River. I watch people and cars pass like a timelapse. My music makes this spot some days, and some days I prefer to just listen to the wind and the birds.

Last time I went, strings and acoustic guitar from my maximum-volume headphones filled the air around my head. A few months ago I was there, alone with my notebook and pen. Nobody bothers me, I don’t bother anybody. This place is safe, I scribbled as I looked down to the ground 12 feet away. The only danger is dangling my feet over the edge.

This place is safe, I don’t have to worry. I am present here. The cool air brushes my knees, my shoulders, then my cheeks. I’m wearing a tank top and shorts on a curiously warm November day. I’m listening to Nightmares, by Easy Life, and the harps sound nice. I like this spot because I get the longest light, being higher up than those driving or walking below me. Golden plays. “Golden, as I open my eyes...” I notice how the branches on the trees seem to reach outward towards the sun, who is ducking down faster than the trees or I would like. I’m still listening to my own music, but I feel the bass thump from a passing car. It feels as if I am eternal, that everyone around me is just passing by. My spot is this rock, this part of the sky and river and air. Everything I can see is my spot and my comfort.

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Lost and Found

by Charlotte Wu I grew up in a town where everyone knew the next person. This meant that our identities, our reputations, above all else, were our most sacred possessions. So, when I moved alone to New York City for school, it was to be lost, not to be found. The first night I peered out of the Manhattan apartment I was sharing with two other girls, I saw countless other windows flickering ember light — “sky cupboards” I remember thinking.

As disorienting and overwhelming as that experience was, it felt like I had taken my first breath, and for once in my life, I was a secret. That was two years ago.

I now miss the open space and the promise of quiet I took for granted before. Everything here is constantly speaking. The subways sputter and screech. The cars devolve into a ceaseless string of honking.

And people around me buzz with the hope and anxieties of their Herculean dreams. People here are chasers, and they tell me all about it. All this noise leaves me foggy in the head, looking for some north star, anything, to guide me through the motions.

Today as I walk out of my apartment door, it is like something clicks, and I become so suddenly acutely aware that the noise is unavoidable here. This realization makes me sad. But moments later as I descend the staircase, I decide to try something new: perhaps I’ll find quiet within.

I walk through the dappled sunlight with my hands by my sides.

Thoughts of the day and from the week run through my mind, demanding to be heard. But slowly, with every step and every breath, I feel a quiet overcome me.

I notice a mother holding hands with her daughter a few steps ahead, both giddy and laughing at some unknown spectacle. A stroller rolls by me with a woman talking on the phone pushing it forward. Families all around buzz with the tranquil joy that often accompanies spring days like this.

As I turn a corner, a dog barrels towards me, its owner running to catch up. The dog nestles its wet nose into my leg, and I laugh, bending down to rub its soft head warm from the sun.

“Claud, come on’mon,” the owner says to his dog and turns to look at me with an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry, he gets a bit overexcited

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sometimes.”

“No, you’re all good. He’s adorable. I love dogs,” I say, which earns me a smile.

“Have a nice day.” I watch them walk away and continue forward.

New York City isn’t always beautiful, with all its rodents, vermin, and black trash bags. But on days like this, when tulips line the pavement, and the birds sing their soulful songs, I am almost convinced it is. This beauty inspires a certain stillness within me that I do not expect and reminds me of an experience years ago. I had walked into an art museum with my mother, and standing before a landscape painting, seeing the gentle slopes and swoons of its iridescent colors, I could not help but bow before it, rooted to the spot, momentarily suspended in time. So, like before, I savor every last bit of stillness before fixing my eyes forward.

From a distance, I peep at a young man holding a bouquet of flowers, looking around shyly. I see a girl with a long floral dress approach, and grin so bright, the luster of the sun is momentarily dimmed in comparison.

Perhaps these glimmers of beauty, whether it be the towering skyscrapers, proof of the grandeur of human civilization, or an earnest smile from a stranger, can inspire all the stillness, all the quiet I need. As I am tucked back into my “sky cupboard”, suspended in the air with the hundreds of other inhabitants, I am lost, but I have found the promise of quiet that I so seek.

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Fallen Fall here is checkered tablecloths Dumps of cinnamon And the buzz of family reunion But fall back home Means slower footsteps Raised eyes, And golden leaves framing every step In this state of fall, I am fallen, am golden

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/ Separation

by Anand Kumar

Translator’s Note Sher: a form of Urdu (Rekhta) poetry similar to couplet originated in Arabia, later evolving in Persian and South-Asian literature.

The stylistic feature is of quick yet subtle communication of lived but unrealized intangible ideas of gravitas drawn from everyday life. The sher builds the reader’s expectancy in one direction in the first three phrases of the four-phrase two-line sher. Nonetheless, the meaning including the first three phrases is flipped with the subtle introduction of the fourth phrase.

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1.

Letters against letters I added up, to utter your name.

Have you found anyone toiling so hard before?

2.

That wound you left me with was half-inflicted, Let me join you in finishing it off.

3.

In this disenchanted world, Where was the scope of strife?

The pre-requisite was: To either have a friend or a foe.

And I had none.

4.

Years I toiled to forget you.

Yes! Those moments were precious, But they all went in vain.

5.

I shall meet on the day of resurrection.

Until then, these years of separation, I ascribe to you.

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Inventory

by Michelle Reilly The best parts of my bedroom aren’t mine: Rhyen’s fingerprints christen the corners of the turquoise table slab beneath A case of matches from Sophia, which I’ll use for the lone Montecristo Aaron left on the windowsill beside Tucker’s jar of Finnish seashells (“I won’t need these – I’ll live there one day”, he’d said) Cris gifted me my Indian patchwork mirror, it reflects The Alaskan flag patch from a lady whose Ram van broke down in Juneau; I positioned it to hide the logo of the cheap record player my father sent me - it scratched up my former pen pal’s Carole King disc but that’s alright because She sent me another one of Al Green, and last night I got lost in the falsetto drinking Peppermint tea shipped from my ex’s mother in Matching teacups I found at an estate sale in my childhood home Some spilled on Santana’s copy of The Vegetarian by Han Kang, which took the blow for Aurelie’s dear little napkin letter I’ll never manage to move Barefoot on the hardwood floor, grapefruit grin trumps bruised bone Of my 14x15 abode, You see, You were You are Its soul

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The Bed

By Michelle Reilly All that was missing was a bed.

A human-sized hole in the center of the room.

My mother pressed a button; Four days later, as my friends organized my clothes by pile, type, and ex, the mailman knocked on the door.

It was a cardboard box no larger than a milk crate, and my friends (they’ve always been nifty with these kinds of things) had it assembled within minutes.

We were silent as the memory foam rose. I had no idea who’d come to lay there, or how little I’d remember.

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Hero of Our Time

by Mikhail Lermontov “I sat at home until evening, and shut myself in my room. A lackey came to call me to the Princess Ligovsky—I ordered him to tell them I was ill.

Two o’clock at night . . . I cannot sleep . . . But I must fall asleep, so that tomorrow my hand won’t shake. However, at six paces, it is hard to miss.

Ah! Mr. Grushnitsky! You won’t succeed in your hoax . . . We will swap roles. Now it is I who shall look for the symptoms of secret fear on your pale face. Why did you set yourself these fateful six paces? You think that I will offer you my forehead without a struggle . . . but we are casting lots! . . . But then . . . then . . . what if his luck outweighs mine . . . if my star has at last betrayed me? . . . It would be no surprise: it has faithfully served my whims for so long, there is no more constancy in the heavens than on earth. So? If I die, then I die! The loss to the world won’t be great.

Yes, and I’m fairly bored with myself already. I am like a man who is yawning at a ball, whose reason for not going home to bed[…]”

Samantha Williams

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re: a few impressions of home

by Meghana Maddali “I want to go home,” a phrase that persists, an echo in my head. I turn to it for comfort when I’m all alone. I repeat the words over and over again until they lose their shape. Reiterations strip the sentence imprisoned in my mind of its form. The meaning that’s left is entirely amorphous, a fleeting figure that I can’t yet grasp: what I thought the phrase had meant is not what it actually means.

Maybe, if I show you some of these things, I can help you understand that home is … the gold necklace around my neck.

I forget that I’m wearing it until I unclasp it before I go to bed. I bring my hands to the back of my neck to feel for where the necklace ends. I move my fingers along the figaro chain cast in gold in search of the clasp. The chain cascades into itself, into my fingers. There’s a ghastly depression around my neck where the necklace had once been. I feel the pendant’s presence on my chest, but its face, with its sharp edges, cuts into the palm of my hand.

Its face is supposed to protect me. It was the week before I was set to leave for school when my mom had noticed that my mind was somewhere else, not where she was. She had brought it up to me, and I dismissed it with a shallow smile.

The night before my flight back, I was lying in bed, restless, forcing myself to accept the fact that I was going to leave again, that I had to leave, when I heard a knock on my door.

My mom came in, her hands behind her back. I turned on the light and she urged me to get up. She threaded the chain through the bale and clasped it around my neck. She straightened the pendant’s face. Lord Ganesha, the remover of obstacles, assumed his place upon my sternum.

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I’d like to imagine that a grandmother I’ve never met had once clasped the same necklace around my mom’s neck, that she straightened the pendant in the same meticulous way that my mom had done to me. But the pendant was gifted to my mom by a distant aunt, months after the wake of her mother, my grandmother.

When I straighten the pendant now, I’m brought back to this moment shared with my mom under the yellow fluorescent lighting of a childhood bedroom; both of us waiting, impatiently, for the past to fold into itself, to bury itself in the future, like a tangled-up necklace, all-crushed, in the hollow of a hand.

I try to untangle the necklace. I try to mirror my mom’s meticulousness, but, in the process, the pendant falls from the chain, face-flat, onto the floor. I pick it up and place it on a new desk in a new room that, for a split-second, resembles a moment of time so far from where I am now — for a mere second, I’m back home. … my bed at sunset.

A pink glow fills a room that I moved into a month ago. I shut the bedroom door and leave my bag on the floor. I’m about to sit down at my desk, but I gravitate towards the bed instead. The fading gold — the setting sun — paints the plastered walls with hues of orange. I lie down, overcome with tiredness. My mind mirrors the sun’s transition: into darkness, I go.

Home is the waning light that blankets me when I’m shivering, cold, and all alone in the looming darkness. … the resonance of my brother’s laughter.

My parents sit across from us, my brother next to me, and between us —a kitchen table, a generational wedge of wood.

I ask my brother about computer processing units and semiconductors. I compare the CPU to the brain. “Isn’t it narcissistic of us to create things

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that resemble ourselves?”

He laughs in waves, a staccato of sorts in his usual baritone pitch. It’s this laugh that turns my parents’ heads, pulling them away from their heated conversation, to us.

Mirth shakes the table after my brother asks me to reiterate my question to our parents. The wobbly kitchen table that divides us disappears for a brief moment.

I treat his laughter like a mental voicemail message. I replay the sound again and again. I forward and rewind the noise. I follow the troughs and crests of his murmuring laugh.

His laugh, this moment, exists in a past, in a home we’ve all moved on from. The last time I visited my parents, the kitchen looked the same, virtually indistinguishable from the one in my memories. But, the counters were cleared of loose sheets of homework and the breakfast nook, with its salmon sofa, was missing its characteristic crumbs. The scene was undisturbed, almost austere.

My brother and I, far from each other, were far removed from our younger selves who would disrupt the silence of the kitchen with our dumb jokes and raucous laughs.

The kitchen, last time I visited, looked the same, but my brother wasn’t there, laughing at a dumb witticism of mine. My parents weren’t there, laughing with him, with us; they had retreated upstairs, leaving me in the kitchen, alone, in a memory of what had been and what could not be.

There’s no return for any of us; but, sometimes, when I play the soundbite just right, I’m transported back to that salmon sofa where I’m sitting next to my brother at a wobbly wooden kitchen table. … a Friday morning.

On a given Friday morning, I’m sitting across from a friend at a flimsy table in the cafe down my street. It began with a one-time plan to meet

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there two months ago; but now, at the very end of the school week, one of us will usually find the other sitting at that same table.

It’s a tacit agreement between both of us to show up early in the morning, regardless of the weather or our respective moods. Even during moments when we don’t think we’ll make it, we’ll still find ourselves there, sitting across from each other at that shaky coffee shop table.

For the two hours we spend there, we don’t talk much. We work quietly.

The quiet between us muffles the chaos of the café: the drawn-out coffee orders and worries of impatient customers are hushed by our silence. The shaky table we return to is a refuge from language, from the spoken word; between us, only at that table, there exists a rare stillness absent elsewhere.

My brief walk there, all the way down to the cafe’s absurdly long line, is familiar. The order at the register for an overpriced oat milk cappuccino, the small talk steeped in niceties shared with the barista, and even the pounding music that drowns out the sounds of the first date happening right next to us are all a little too familiar — it’s a makeshift home only open on Friday mornings. …a Lil Wayne song.

“How to Love,” a song I sang with a friend at the end of my sophomore year.

We were both incredibly annoyed with each other. I intentionally ignored her texts, and her. I rendered her non-existent and she did the same to me.

And yet, her presence was still palpable. Mentions of her name would haunt conversations I’d have with mutual friends.

The tension between us slowly dissipated over a month, a long long month that did not seem to have an end. But when the end did come, it broke into a song. Lil Wayne’s quavery voice infiltrated the forced silence between us.

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“You had a lot of moments that didn’t last forever / Now you in a corner tryna put it together” We had run into each other and into a friend of ours who was bent on showing us a music video that none of us, but him, had seen. He played the song on the patio we all found ourselves on. I remember how windy it was; the metal chairs were inching away and the patio umbrellas blowing over. She and I looked at each other; our hair, all crazy, all over our respective faces. Appearances disheveled, both of us belted the song, betraying our lack of perfect pitch. I smiled at her for the first time in what felt like ages.

Home is where we met again, right in the middle of a one-hit wonder’s hit song. … a treasured note from a friend.

In cursive letters, scrawled across the center of the page, she answers the question she had asked: What is home? You are home.

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The Nest

by Antonella Zanatti To keep life in means to battle the immobility of starvation, invite energy with unrelentless gratitude, and contest resistance.

To keep life in means to harbor trust in the system. This bold conductor nests life.

It urges you to nurture this space, And reminds you: if you depart in flight, return to protect what keeps you whole.

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Polina Belova, editor, is a junior studying Comparative Literature and Computer Science, she doesn’t believe in impostor syndrome and wishes her future self to not spend all her money in that authentic Cop Copine store in Paris.

Lola Bosa, editor, is a junior majoring in English Literature and minoring in Creative Writing. In her spare time, she likes to reorganize her bookshelf, do the Wordle when she remembers, and listen to sad music.

Nikky Lu, editor, is a junior in Philosophy and Computer Science with a minor in math. She thinks about concepts while riding bikes on different continents.

Ruhi Malipatlolla, editor, is a junior in International Relations with concentrations in Philosophy. She loves to read, ceramics, and coffee.

Jingchen Peng, graduated from CAS Philosophy in 2023 Fall and is pursuing a law degree. He focuses on poetry and short stories as a Creative Writing minor. He likes MTG, jazz, and exploring vocals.

Veronica Shirokova, editor, is in her second year studying International Relations with a regional specialization in Russia and Eastern Europe. She loves to read and drink coffee — preferably simultaneously — and take very long walks.

Lana Marshania, Editor-in-Chief, is a senior in Comparative Literature, with concentrations in Russian Literature and Media Studies. Currently, most of her waking life and sanity is dedicated to her senior thesis, which explores the nature of the novel in the age of disintegration.

Alien illustrations by Lou Valade, Gallatin class of 2024.

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