For the Unseen

It’s not you. Trust me when I say . . . It really isn’t you.

It’s hard to believe, Because you look at her and think I know three things to be true:

1. She has a thigh gap

2. He likes her

3. He doesn’t like me Coincidence? I think not.

If only you had her nose and her cheeks, But not that a**, of course. If only you had controlled yourself then, You stupid girl. You were too forward, weren’t you? You didn’t giggle enough. You didn’t kneel on both knees to the ground, Close enough to see the frayed edges of the carpet, Proffering your packaged and polished self To the altar of Man.

You love that game, The one where you pluck the petals Off the daisy

While guessing whether He loves me, Or He loves me not.

To Him, you are the flower, He might pick the prettiest one While avoiding the thorny rose, Or He might want the one that smells like a summer’s day. But they all die just the same, don’t they? Wilting slowly amongst the others in the bunch. The Collection

No longer connected:

No longer rooted in the ground. What used to be alive is now a part of the aesthetic.

They say a flower dies once its color fades, And its petals fall to the floor. But doesn’t the flower

Die the moment its roots are ripped from the dirt?

It seems to have a radiant blossom And smells like a summer’s day, Well preserved, like a doll. A rabbit shot and killed for sport, Stuffed and cleaned And placed on the shelf.

Pretty, silly girl: Why then do you weep, If you’re still safe from that fate? Is it because you weren’t chosen?

You must think: She’s dead and gone. But at least They saw her. And soon I’ll be dead and gone, And I’ll lie by the brookside Dead just the same.

You are the apple picked from the tree; No worms have infested your body yet. He bites into you And spits you out — you’re too bitter. You’re thrown on the ground, And you turn a lovely shade of brown. You rot.

You are the preserved scroll in the glass box At the gallery. Don’t touch, they say, Only look. She’s hanging on her last thread. Touch her, And she’s ruined.

To go unnoticed is a death sentence. To be seen is to be killed. They will find you eventually.

Nonetheless, your morbid curiosity compels you. You have to know why Nothing works without reason. So, you pat the blush on your sunken cheeks, Spray Daisy by Marc Jacobs on your neck, and apply the bandages to your heels As you walk out the door.

Kate Dickinson ’23

I have heard of the giants, of course. Most everyone has — a story from a cousin of a friend or something. But few have actually seen them. It’s surprising: their size is what makes them so difficult to see. They cannot reach our houses, can barely even see them most of the time. And the houses they presumably have are too big for us to even conceptualize, so we cannot locate them.

The giants are not particularly violent. If one sees you, they will most likely attempt to kill you, but seeing you and killing you are both very hard tasks for them considering how large they are. Only if you are stupid do you get killed.

But food has been scarce, and I’m a dumb teenager. So I leave my home, leave my town, and go out into the plains. They are barren.

I think I see something, smell something, but after hours of walking, I find it is a rock or a stream or an illusion of my hungered mind.

I have just finished my mid-day rest when the ground shakes beneath me. I do not fall, I am too agile and strong still for that, but I start to run. The ground only rumbles when a giant is near.

The ground rumbles again, bigger this time. I spare a glance behind me and see it, hulking and disgusting. They are not like us — they are malformed and featureless. Clumsy and stubby and gross.

It seems to be looking at me with the barely-there eyes it has.

It is holding one of their preferred shields. Something like paper — something like cloth. From the stories, this means it intends to kill me with its . . . one of its sections of meaty, disproportionate legs. Or arms. It is too hard to tell the difference with the giants. The shield is just so they don’t touch me directly.

I am going so fast, faster than I’ve ever moved in my life, even in my games with my siblings, the races in the backyard, or my smaller hunts for food.

It misses me. The one benefit of the giants is that while they are huge, they are slow and dumb which gives me a chance.

But in this plain, I can’t see any civilization. There’s nowhere even to hide, no forest or overhang or anything. Just flat in all directions with the giant covering the sky.

Oh god. I’m going to die here.

I’m going to f***ing die.

I’m never going to see Annabelle again, my parents will never know what happened, Billy will miss me, be confused what happened, oh god, oh god, oh-

Michael Bulter ’25