Reaching

for the Sky

Cassie Halford Photography

Class of 2023

the bird creature something sits upon the silver bridge i gave them the future, like they asked. the expecting parents came at morning praying a bundle of joy’d come at last, but cried to find i’d still be mourning. the preacher asked me with a laugh to send a good word to the man in the blue sky. i spoke on his behalf, but only to him downstairs, whose grin could melt even a pure heart of gold. the fie on the hill was then ample, the fools deemed that i alone controlled all malice that reigned and did trample their every waking moment. they threw me out, stabbed me with pitchforks, rakes and knives, and on bloody wings i fle to a pleasant point. Father said the “takes” would always be greater than what i gave the weak flesh h’d tempted in paradise an easy task, since all their minds crave is to be like us. that is their simple vice, coveting what their father did not bestow upon them: godhood, the power to stray from death. so my gift i brought, hopeful they would no longer cower at the thought of catastrophic doom. but i could not see them a good beyond, nor could i promise sadness and gloom would disappear, ever, for man’s bond to sin is strong. then i understood with a flash: the habinger of evil would be me. to them, i am no good. so fin, then. i’ll bring them upheaval. with my red eyes, i will prophesize oncoming ruin near, far, and wide. no, i will never apologize. i hold no pity, still— i’m dry-eyed. no remorse will fill y heaving chest for i must now take fligt once more: there are people needing to be blest, and tragedy waiting to happen galore.

Nuance

Turning on his heels, as infrequent as this was, he began to walk away. But she insisted.

Her rushing footsteps, thudding across the splintering plywood flors, echoed within the vacant space beneath the belly wrap. She says,

He pivots around, tarnished copper eyes in their fied menace, and rears his hand back, quick to jolt it forward— she does not flinch

The sneaking glint of the disappears hastily. Metastasizing, the dull red gleam of defeat overwhelms his stained white cotton shirt. His hand sinks slowly, lightly reading the wound.

Caught in the inaudible rhythm of deafening silence and sprightly pulses, we stand in stone fitures afraid to move.

Some sound escapes his crooked, pursed lips and my sister tiptoes through the carnage to retrieve a white t-shirt.

She shakily slips surrender into his carmine fingetips and he retreats colorlessly into the night.

Jerney Harms Class of 2023

Nazi

No, I never stained the nape of my neck with SS bolts in black ink. And I never broke into a home and stomped the little gray and white cat into a flt, red-collared pelt.

I never let a man die— I don’t care what she says. We were never on a ride home, rain pummeling the pavement in ivory droves when we saw the vehicle overturned, lights panicking, peeking from the ditch. We didn’t pull over and tug and tug and tug at the seat belt. Certainly, I did not leave that man, voice calling and cracking and gurgling. I didn’t dial the police and anonymously mention a drowning man, Mildale Road, Pride.

I did not get away with secondhand murder or cheating in a shotgun marriage or leaving a child starving with my namesake. Never did I pick at my skin or pinch the septum of my nose nearly raw.

No, I never. But my friends call me Nazi.

Aquarium

Emma Foster

Color Pencil

Class of 2025