Elora Cianciolo

On a Day in Merry England

Liam Lesiowski

Flame roared across the fields at day, And smoke had cleansed our lands. The fire warmed my foolish bones, And magic left my hands.

Afar many a beast does stir, And o’er the land they run, Many pipes and drums are sounding, And embers at dusk are flying, In the light of the evening sun.

But the city is always bright

For the flame never got to town, The land where there is no night. For that which took ev’ry man’s sight, The choking smog, the city’s blight, Cannot be pierced by the sunlight That’s quickly setting down.

In the streets there cries the sound of a horn

And men flock to the lights

Lamps shine over as red as morn

Factory walls do they adorn

And workers to work go there forlorn To make such feeble flights.

The heralds sang of the future, Trumpets sounded their dreams They promised food and work for all And o’er the lands their lights did sprawl Twas the coming of machines.

Garfield Emma Costello Wollwage

Driving home tonight, I chose to ride down my favorite street in all of Oak Park. This street runs along a highway about thirty feet down. The view is everything. Whether it be a seemingly silken and woven sunset, a bright and creamy blue sky, or the pitch black and dotted night, the outline of the Chicago scrapers is almost always visible. Thick metal gates rope around this spectacle, and as the 290 is always jam-packed with cars, bright multicolored lights illuminate the underground highway’s walls. Bridges run across these highways to connect the town. I’ve heard kids at school describing where they live as either across the bridge or on the school’s side of it. The highway splits Oak Park, something very simply used at school to make connections with other people. It’s a lovely little phenomenon here. I make it a point to drive down Garfield at night. Watching the cars and trains zoom past from all the way above gives somewhat of a perspective into how enormous this world really is and how truly impactful people have been and can be over time. It’s a motivation, something to lead me to work hard and yet to stop and think more often. Taking perspective from time to time is detrimental for a person’s progression into life, a skill that makes it so much harder to take the simplicities for granted. I find that Garfield does that for me. While driving down Garfield tonight, a couple ran across Euclid Street in front of me to the metal gate. I slowed and watched them race to get to the edge of the street, where they stood and watched the cars drive past. They stood there to take in this magical and hidden light show as I do so often. They took in the resplendent spectacle together. They held hands, united and focused on the world around them, each other’s presence a comforting factor on such a cold night. I wished at that moment that in the future I’d be as fortunate as they were today. I would hope I could leave the warmth and safety of my place of living to stand by the very edge of the street amongst the light hail and freezing chill of January. I would hope to clasp someone’s hand, connected and absolutely encapsulated by the thrill of life. I hope for many moments such as that to come.

Seventh grader

Lee Chaloemtiarana

There was a girl.

Young and ambitious, personality crafted from pages of fiction which she so admired.

She shifts in her seat, anxiously awaiting her turn to read a line of a poem on the whiteboard.

She rereads her essays thrice before submitting. She is terrified.

And so this girl.

Picturing a picket fence with her husband twenty years from now, two kids.

Seven years of schooling and grades so pristine they’d endure monsoons without rusting

Neatly cut lawn supporting a freshly-painted porch. She’ll be perfect.

More perfect than she is now, of course, shivering in her neat black shoes

Yellow cardigan, black dress, barely daring to smile or laugh if it were to crumble her posture.

Carving out a future destined for her by swiping through colleges in the fifth grade.

She is terrified.

Meridian Emma Costello Wollwage

Adhere to the idea of a warm escape, the masquerade of a seemingly affable embrace. Raise your head to the sky, where an enticing pareidolia in the clouds is drawn to portray what once was.

Allow stretch marks to etch down the backs of your thighs like arrows. Markings that can be a guide, A map that indicates the stress your body has undergone. Ingratiate yourself with a pilot.

Allow him to pay for the tickets as you travel from hemisphere to hemisphere,

Searching for that season you so crave, an aspired cure-all. Cease to acclimatize yourself, as chasing after consistent familiarity leaves no room for adaptation. Consistent heat will suffocate, You will welcome it.

Drosera

Ainsley McConnell

He had strayed too far.

He could tell, from the way the scalding gusts of toxic gas pushed harder against his dust-streaked spacesuit, from how the burnished aluminum of his ship faded into a haze of scarlet. He was close — so close — to the point mapped out on the inside of his helmet, marking his location in a tiny dot of white. The plant could feel it too. Its roots pushed against the teflon ties holding it to his back, striving for the dust of its home - the dust that made the engineers back in Florida have to put extra filters in his respirator to keep it from the astronaut’s lungs. They seemed so distant now, the aeronautical engineers who showed him how to manage the ship’s controls lightyears away, his own family resigned to an unfathomable distance. And yet he was close. So close.

A stab of melancholy nearly made him double over as he neared his goal, realization striking harder than even the gathering winds. Once those roots found their home, he would never see it again. The lustrous purple leaves that had sat beside him while he copied the day’s data into spreadsheets would never again lend their color to his monotony. It was selfish, but for a moment he wished he had never came. He wished he had never found that seed sitting in a crater in his tomato garden, never answered its call to his curiosity. Watching the first violet leaf unfurl under the glaring lab lights had been the happiest moment in his life, and yet it had landed him here. Staggering under the blazing skies of a planet that wasn’t his own.

The dust swept across the landscape in lonely trails, whipping past his visor. Above him the sky faded to a dark purple - the planet’s atmosphere wasn’t thick enough to shield it from the looming void of space. There were no stars. Hazy red clouds blotted them out like water on ink, diluting their familiar glow in harsh brushstrokes. In the ship he had spent hours, perhaps even days, in front of the only window looking out into the abyss, trying to find the one dot of light he had looked upon every single day not so long ago. He had refused to believe it was too far for his eyes to see.

If he closed his eyes, focused on the heat permeating his insulated layers, he could pretend that it was summer in Florida. The humidity was high. His daughter’s hair always tangled on those days, and it would take Margaret close to an hour to braid it for school. He could hear her grumbles even from across the stars. “One of these days I’m going to cut it all off.” She would say. Little Lily would squirm around in protest, earning her yet another aggrieved sigh.

“No! No, I like my hair!” She would — His feet stilled. He knew the words, knew the way Lily always argued, but for the life of him, he couldn’t remember the sound of her voice. His brows furrowed. It hadn’t been that long since he’d seen her, had it? Only a few months. And he had been busy the months before that, studying the plant. But he had seen her, right?

He blinked. His shoulders ached with the weight of the plant, the straps digging into his flesh even through the suit. Perhaps he should put it down for a while. Just so that he could rest. It would put him at ease, he thought, to see those purple leaves, a remnant of a life’s dream in a life that lived too far away. Perhaps it would help him remember why he was here.

Distantly, he noticed that the white dot on his helmet had moved past the designated drop point. Some other interface projected on the glass might have been flashing angrily. Maybe something was wrong.

“I should go back,” He said to no one. Or perhaps he was wishing the plant heard, understood, forgave him for his conceitedness. He found his feet wouldn’t turn.

He had strayed too far.

The roots dug into his spine through the plastic. Even through layers of carbon fiber and teflon, the plant’s homesickness bored holes into his bones, filling his lungs with longing. He felt, strangely, that he could hear crying. Layered deep beneath his thoughts and his breath and the wind howling an elegy, someone was grieving.

He blinked. Something cold stole a path down his cheek. Closing his eyes, he tried to manifest that humid morning again.

“One of these days, I’m going to cut it all off,” said Margaret. Her voice seemed quiet. Behind him, a single quiet crack. Something dug harder into his back, pushing painfully against the shoulder muscle. “One of these days, I’m going to cut it all off,” said… someone. Margaret. That was her name, wasn’t it? Why couldn’t he picture her face? His breath was coming faster, the clamor of cascading air drowning out the voices in his head.

“One

of these days, I’m going to —”

The popping of broken plastic was lost in the din of the planet’s winds, yet he could feel that there was now nothing else keeping the plant from leaving him. Only space.

He wouldn’t give it. This he thought with more conviction than his curiosity had ever mustered. Foot dragging in front of aching foot, he pushed against the otherworldly winds. He could no longer tell the difference between the roar of breath dragging through his respirator and the gale’s aberrant howling. It didn’t matter. Every moment more that he could feel the roots on his back, see the brilliant leaves in his periphery, he felt like he was living his entire life’s dream over and over again. He wouldn’t leave it here alone. He couldn’t. He had strayed too far, much too far, to go back now.

And yet, it was never his decision to make. In that way it was foolish to have tried to defy it. In that way he could have expected the weight on his back to grow heavier, pulling, dragging him into the dust. The engineers in Florida were hardly more real than a dream to him as the filters in his suit cracked on impact. He had never had a say in what the plant did, not even under those glaring lab lights far, too far, away.

“One of these days —” said a voice he could no longer recognize, from a place he could hardly recall. But he knew why he was here. He was here to set it free. It was all he had, and yet he would set it free. I’m sorry, he thought, as he carefully took out a pocket knife, placidly sawing through the last of the straps holding it to his back, not quite knowing who he was apologizing to. He wanted to face it. He wanted to see those violet leaves unfurling in a different light, before he had to leave it.

He would never leave it. He needed to leave it. He couldn’t leave it. He had strayed too far. And yet there was nowhere else, no stars with their worlds and the worlds with their own worlds, that he could possibly have strayed from. There was no place in the entire unfathomable universe he would rather be.

Carefully, he undid the final straps and turned to face its splendor. Leaves like the very last moments of a sunset. And in the center - a bud, the color of dawn, the color of the scalding earth beneath his feet. He watched absently as the roots anchored themselves into the dust. He couldn’t help but smile. Who wouldn’t? He was home. Whose cheeks wouldn’t drip with water that had rained and evaporated and rained again millions of times on foreign soil? Whose knees wouldn’t hit the same dust, hoping perhaps, that he too would take root and flower and never see blue skies again? The only colors he knew were the red sky, the red soil, the red unfurling bud, and those transcendent purple leaves. When he looked down at his hand he was happy to find that it too was stained red. The unnatural white of the glove drained away under its spread.

He could hardly even feel the roots puncturing his chest, and yet he was grateful for the connection they provided as he watched the bud bloom. The heat rushing in through the holes — that was love, wasn’t it? Something that makes your heart ache and your mind spin and your insides scream with a message unheard. Petals of sharp scarlet unsheathed in elegant jaws, and it really did look like a sunset. The leaves looked like clouds against the rusted, fading sky. If the moment in the lab was two hydrogen atoms fusing into helium, the sight before him was an entire star, a supernova of incomparable beauty. The astronaut closed his eyes. He inhaled one last breath of hot, humid air through his broken respirator, smiling as the plant took him home.