2017 Mirage

Soomin Mah

Mirage 2017 Dana Hall School

Dedicated to Alice Holstein

Ye Ri Lee

Alice Holstein came to Dana Hall after teaching in other schools and working in publishing. At Dana she found the right combination of teaching literature and writing to make this place a home away from home. For over two decades, students in her classes have critiqued their stories, polished their essays, and considered what mattered in novels she knew they needed to read. And there were also the individuals she tutored, helping them with the intricacies of expression. Many of the students, whether from classes or tutoring, have stayed in touch, those far away celebrating when she and her family travel around the world to visit. Alice expertly navigated the demands of being both a teacher and a Dana parent as her daughters joined the Dana community. For years, there were long weekends when Alice and the editors of the Hallmanac did the last-minute editing to get the newspaper ready for printing and distribution. While doing all this, she has continued her craft as a writer. Her incisive humor and her appreciation of the stories that people tell each other have made being in her company a gift.

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Dana Hall

TABLE OF CONTENTS Amsterdam Ye Ri Lee ’17 Cover Books Soomin Mah ’17 1 Santa Monica Ye Ri Lee ’17 2 Afternoon Effie Li ’17

4 Melted Brittney Smith ’19 5 The Climb Nadia Myers ’17 5 Afternoon Repose Grace Dunne ’17

6 The Tree Emma Benkert ’17 7 Nightmare Catcher Yifan Xu ’17 7 Childproof Christiana Thorbecke ’17 8 Lost in Eye Echo Chen ’20 10 I Am From the Sun

Nadia Bacchus ’18 11 Before I Lost Her Christiana Thorbecke ’17 12 Strange Helen Jiang ’17 13 Red Snow

Alexandra Novakoff ’17 14 Farmhouse Grace Dunne ’17 15 Syria Amera Youssef ’17 16 The Blanket Hee Won Lee ’18 17 How We Seek Happiness Yanan Dai ’20 18 My Uncomfortable Comfort Zone

Amera Youssef ’17 18 Zero Degrees Grace Wang ’19 18 Rey del Sol Jacqueline Hayre-Pérez ’17 19 Ibraham Ellena Chen ’19 20 A Cloud Called Home Anna Kalvelage ’19 21 Mujeres con Niños Jacqueline Hayre-Pérez ’17 22 Poisonous Questions Anna Kalvelage ’19 23 Puppet Soomin Mah ’17 24 Self-Portraits Nicole Ribakoff ’20, Maya Darville ’20 Anna Dzhitenov ’20, Charlene Huang ’19 25 The Thinking Bench Alexandra Novakoff ’17 26 Intersection Grace Wang ’19 27 Desire to Belong Wendy Gomez ’17 28 Comfort Zone Soomin Mah ’17 28 Survival Amera Youssef ’17 29 Reflected Truth

Julia Ran ’19 30 Japanese Tea Cups Yifan Xu ’17 31 Unseen Sasha Megie ’17 32 Ghost Town Saaniya Desai ’19 32 A-Zow Evonne Lao ’17 33 Into the Past Sofi Lin ’18 34 Uncle Jack Spencer Babcock ’17 35 Censored Michelle Ma ’18 36 Definition of Fine Emma Benkert ’17 37 The Cold Blue Blanket Libby Frambes ’17 38 Tinfoil Sophia Diaz-Zhang ’18 39 What You Need to Cook the Perfect Chicken Pot Pie Yifan Xu ’17 40 Colors in Hand Cindy Chongvimansin ’17 41 Red Rain Boots Spencer Babcock ’17 42 Her Stare Jurnee Peltier ’19 43 Tourist Sasha Megie ’17 44 Hindsight Anna Park ’18 Back Cover

Mirage 2017

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Effie Li

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Dana Hall

Brittney Smith

THE CLIMB Nadia Myers A magnificent tower erupts From this land of the free.

Its shadow kills our crops.

Its drainage poisons our water.

But its inhabitants live in paradise.

From the top, they toss down a rope.

They shout: “Climb up; you can make it!”

And then we all grab on, And we try to climb.

We push.

We fight.

We use each other.

We dream of winning And they can only hope We don’t wake up.

Mirage 2017

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Grace Dunne

THE TREE Emma Benkert It is so hard to believe that you have forgotten me.

Light as a leaf I have blown onto the ground, waiting to die.

You must be so strong, but is it strength or fatuity?

Why do you leave me like the branches broken on our tree?

Where we used to just sit still and love each other by and by.

It is so hard to believe that you have forgotten me.

Are you content with knowing that you have chopped the tree, and now my own leaves wilt with no life or love inside.

You must be so strong, but is it strength or fatuity?

Oh those nights that you considered only a summer spree.

They meant so much more to me since my tears haven’t dried.

It is so hard to believe that you have forgotten me.

I walk around broken with only your faint memory, which has now become a ghost of my past life, love, and side.

You must be so strong, but is it strength or fatuity?

I miss the ghost, the man that gave me my eyes, but now I have learned from the pain that it was all lies, it is so hard to believe that you have forgotten me.

You must be so strong, but is it strength or fatuity?

Yifan Xu Mirage 2017

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CHILDPROOF Christiana Thorbecke

The snow sticks to the window screen as it falls in feathery waves. The sky is white, deep; staring up into it from beneath my eyelashes, it’s like looking into the bottom of a well. I stick my hand behind my back and rub my shoulder blade, poking at the tendons with my fingers.

I don’t notice the red-rimmed track marks that crawl out from beneath my skin until I feel the slickness of the blood as it drips down and stains my camisole. Blood sticks beneath my fingernails. Specks of it get caught in my teeth when I suck them clean.

The air is stale, full of the aftermath of life, carrying in it notes of extinguished autumn. The room is sparse, coated in dust, dressed in the dim light of the afternoon. Faded patches decorate the wallpaper, ghosts of where framed pictures once hung. My mother used to buy gaudy gold frames and photo albums defaced by straggles of butterflies struggling to fly, despite the glitter weighing down their wings. She thought it made the house look more habitable, classy—a trait my father’s salary would never support. Still, my mother dreamed. She used to stand by the window, and in the winter, she’d watch the snowflakes pile up on the glass, blurring the streets and the people who roamed them.

She used to say that they looked like paper cutouts, being blown about in the wind.

Now, I take her place.

When I get up from the stool, my belly swells, and I feel it churning inside. I think of it as equipment, the sac holding a makeshift piece of flesh and blood, DNA, placenta, all bound to me by a cord with the consistency of coagulated glue. I think of my father when I think of it moving around—dreaming inside of me—and of what he will say.

I found out two days after Elsie passed away.

I move to the kitchen to cut slices of bread.

My mother likes the brown bread from a family-owned bakery across the highway, and I drive out and get it for her sometimes, when I have the energy. I put cheese and leftover shreds of chicken I peeled from the rotisserie carcass sitting in the fridge between the slices.

I separate the fatty pieces of skin and tuck it behind my teeth, suck on the cold flesh. Salt stings the sores embedded into the undersides of my cheeks, wounds I accrued from grinding the insides of my mouth in the minutes before I fall into sleep.

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Dana Hall

I take the sandwich upstairs, each step sending a pulsating spasm through my legs, to where my mother is waiting. Balancing the plate on one hand, I put my ear to the door, and listen for the waves of soft breathing. I hope my mother is asleep, so she won’t see me. My camisole strains over my abdomen, and the second she sees it, Mama will know, and the news will be the final bullet that kills her.

Leaning my shoulder into the door, I gently pad across the floor. Her figure moves under the blankets, large mounds of flesh that roll around her body and escape her clothes. Nothing fits Mama quite right; she either hides behind sack cloth or explodes out of a pair of jeans. As I place the plate among the others, she moves again, turning her body so that her head faces the ceiling. Her opened eyes trace the water stains from when the bathroom leaked last September.

She follows the spirals resembling spiders that converge into fractured limbs leaping towards their own death.

As I turn to go, the woman speaks. “Aria, quit stomping all over the house. I’m trying to sleep.” I nod, a movement that escapes her narrowed field of vision.

The dishes in the sink have piled up, clumsily stacked over each other like a car wreck. Patches reminiscent of dust bunnies have formed a layer of soft clover over the plates, lined the cracks creeping over the bowls. I roll up my sleeves, my belly leaning into the counter, and turn on the faucet. The water gushes forth, a torrent of unadulterated whiteness. The water particles hit the dishes and bounce into the air, soaking my stomach. I peel up my shirt until it covers just my breasts, letting the expanse of my stomach jolt forward and breathe. Then I begin with the dishes. I pick one up and scrape at the mold with my overgrown fingernails.

I upturn the container of Dove, but the empty bottle refuses me even a finger length’s worth of detergent. It crackles when it hits the ground.

I attack the dishes, working my fingers against the mold until the water scalds my hands, turns my skin into sketches of purple, blue, pink. They look like something out of a Picasso portrait.

His hands take me from behind, gripping firmly on my shoulders. “Slow down, little girl. You need a sponge for that, and some soap.”

My body clenches up and I drop the dish. It hits the ground, in slow motion, scatters into pieces

and creates a mosaic over the floor. I turn to him, my eyes sinking into my face.

“Someone’s got to do it.”

“I’ll help you, then.”

“No, I want to do it.”

“Aria, think of the baby. Have you even told your father yet?”

The man before me is summer air tinged with gasoline. He’s a hand to hold in the dark, the boy who followed into my room after I kissed him goodnight when he took me home from the movies. We watched “The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete,” and he held me as I cried afterwards. Both times. The first, in the dark room of the theater, and the second on a bed without sheets.

“I’m waiting for a good time.” I push him aside. His skin is like a struck match when it flutters against mine.

“Now.” He’s self-assured. Out to get what he wants.

He succeeds. Every time. I’m living proof of that.

“Mama’s sick. She can’t be bothered with this.”

As I turn away, he grabs hold of my wrist and gives it a squeeze. “Tell them. Tonight. Or I will.”

Holding me, he stares into my eyes, his thumbs creating ponds in my wrists.

I knock him off. The dishes need me. I wait until the sound of the front door hitting the stead assaults my ears before I walk to the bathroom, every footfall in the floorboards an admission of guilt.

The small room is dim. Smudges, remnants of toothpaste and other signs of neglect, speckle my face as I try to avoid my eyes in the mirror. I push on the corner of the mirror until I hear the click of the door as it swings open, revealing a selection of orange bottles imprinted with the name of the girl they failed to save. I take one down and examine it, roll it across my fingers. 20 mg of Fluoxetine.

It was cheaper than paying for therapy once a week. That’s what my mother thought. I push my thumb on the cap and turn it, fooling the childproof lock. Cradling an oval pill in the palm of my hand, I smack it against my lips, feel it push down my throat like a stale crust of bread. I want to know what she felt like. In those last few months. When she said she could feel them working in her brain, connecting the synapses in a way that made life tolerable; I wanted to experience the chemical interactions, see how she saw the world in those last days.

I lock the door before filling the tub with water.

The whiteness splashes against the bracken sides, making

the tub look dirtier than it is. Taking off my clothes, I stare at the figure in the mirror that I guess is my body. The whirlpools of flesh that make up my elbows, the long green lines snacking over my stomach. I wonder if the stripes will fade afterwards, sink back into my skin. Kind of like a henna tattoo, something that marks you for a time before disappearing. Like it never even happened.

I wonder if I will be scarred forever. I probably deserve it.

I speak to it as I lower myself into the lukewarm water. “You are a bastard child, you know. You have nothing.

A fifteen-year-old mother, a no-good for a father. What will you make of yourself ?”

I sing the words into the air dripping with perspiration. Closing my eyes, I lower myself into the water, until it hovers at my chin. Feeling my stomach beneath the soap suds, I listen to my heart beat in my ears, loud as gunshots.

I’ve decided her fate for her. This thing growing from my flesh, climbing out of something between my bad judgement and another person’s decision. I soak until the air becomes the consistency of gently whipped cream, and I think one more breath will suffocate my lungs. Water clings to the mirror, making a thousand miniature magnifying glasses whose reflections bend my body into something grotesque as I ease myself out of the tub. I pull on a thin robe. The fabric feels like pavement against my skin.

My footsteps leave imprints on the ground, coated in water droplets the size of rice grains. My mother’s eyes open, welcoming the flood of dark light that drips in as I come towards her. I go for the windows, spreading the curtains wide, allowing shards of dying sunlight to throw patches on the bedsheets.

“Mama,” I say, moving to stand before her at the foot of the bed. Her eyes are dark coins, staring through me, as though they belong to a blind person.

I untie my robe and let it drop to the ground, where it becomes a pool around my ankles. Goosebumps break over my skin.

I see my future drowning in her dampening eyes.

Mirage 2017

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Echo Chen

I AM FROM THE SUN Nadia Bacchus I am from the sun. There is no question about that.

I am from mosquitos buzzing in my ear, sipping on me like a glass of lemonade as I sit under the night sky.

I am from the swaying trees, I am from the creek and the river.

I am from the dirt, sand, and rock just as much as I am from the breeze.

I am from barefoot on the road in both ninety-degree weather and nineteen-degree weather.

I am from the jungles, Amazon and Concrete.

I am from the hearty hummingbird and the pestilent pigeon.

I am from the mosque, and I am from the temple as well.

I am from Bob Marley, I am from the Bee Gees, I am from Babla and Kanchan.

I am from the smell of simmering salt fish and bake wafting in through my bedroom door from the kitchen on a Saturday morning.

I am from rice boiling in the pot, I am from hot tea in an old mug, I am from the roti, curry, and doubles, always in full stock on the refrigerator shelf.

I am from hassa fish and fried plantain.

I am from guava, mangoes, genip, and soursop.

I am from baigan and bhaji.

I am from the pointer broom and the tava, I am from sweeping the kitchen floor and doing the laundry perfectly since age seven.

I am from responsibility and ability.

I am from sit properly and speak properly.

I am from never, and I mean never, trust a boy to take care of you.

I am from men will not do you any justice on this Earth that you cannot do for yourself.

I am from women of immense strength, I am from you must know better, and you will know better.

Although I am from knowing better, I am from not knowing best.

I am from hurt and heartbreak.

I am from believing that a boy just might be able to care for me.

But I am from resilience just as much.

I am from the creek, the bodegas, the tea, the banana trees, the concrete sidewalks, the dirt roads, the reggae, the R&B. I am from the sun. My caramel skin shines just as bright. There is no question about that.

Mirage 2017

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BEFORE I LOST HER Christiana Thorbecke Each night after I put my sister to sleep, the kids, playing dodgeball outside in the dark with dry hands, made a racket on the pavement, as though trying to break some unsaid rule. I remember their eyes growing wide in the dark and shining like keys, eyes that darted around, as if looking for something lost.

My sister hated me, I could see it in her eyes.

I never let her play outside after dinner, worried she’d get lost out there in the dark with the raggedy kids who wore, on dirty strings around their necks, keys and stayed up all night to watch the sun break over the horizon, leaving behind smudges like pairs of hands.

Every night before dinner I made her clasp her hands and pray, insisting she close her eyes.

She had a tendency to break out of formation, mid-prayer, looking lost like a little girl, her face white as piano keys; I told her she wasn’t like other kids.

In our neighborhood, the kids broke stuff, and lit cigarettes with trembling hands looking to violence to find the keys to mucking through life with wide eyes that always look lost.

I didn’t want her to know how easy it is to break.

In the mornings I would break— eggs to make an omelet for her. The kids shuffled outside the window, like lost birds. They skipped school and talked with their hands pushing each other down until from their eyes tears sprang. Their eyes shone through the tears like keys.

My little sister never forgave me for hiding house keys, for thinking that she would break if she ever escaped the view of my eyes and for telling her that she wasn’t like other kids and for never letting her talk with her hands.

I was horrified at the idea of her becoming lost.

She was, like keys, something that could be lost.

Her hands used to tremble so badly I thought they would break.

She wasn’t like other kids. Secrets consumed her eyes.

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Dana Hall

Helen Jiang

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RED SNOW Alexandra Novakoff

It was very rare that a person with my condition was allowed to take things from home and bring them to the hospital. Luckily for me, my mother bribed the redheaded nurse at the front desk to let me keep the snow globe my brother gave me as a gift.

The doctor leads me to my room at the end of a narrow hall: Room 33. He tells me that’s where I will be living for the next ten months or so, until the doctors agree to release me. The same redheaded nurse from the front desk lays a pile of white sheets on my mattress, smiles politely, and leaves me to my lonesome. I sit down on my bed. There isn’t much to see except the blank white walls, a high up window and a bedside table. I take my snow globe out of my bag, and I place it on the bedside table.

At lunch every day, I whisper to the other patients about the special thing in my room. When lunch ends, I go to my room and pick up the snow globe. I shake it back and forth until the snow inside whirls around the people within. I like to sit and look at the little world inside of the globe. It is so perfect in there. The snowflakes are the purest shade of white. There’s a young girl in the snow globe; she wears a red cap and gloves. I named the girl Alice when I first got her. Alice is holding her brother Nathan’s hand. He is only two. They’re walking towards the ice rink on the pond in the center of their town. Nathan and Alice love each other very much.

I start to notice as time goes on that Alice’s face is changing, sort of like when my brother lost all of his hair and his smile got turned upside down. I used to think Alice looked at her brother in awe, but now she is frowning. Alice has become very sad and I think it is my fault. I shake the globe around and around, hoping for her smile to reappear. I know she doesn’t like the place I took her to and neither do I.

Sometimes my room gets so white that I imagine this is what heaven looks like. I whisper to my brother in the sky and ask him if this is what he saw when the angels took him away. I miss my brother and at night I dream that I am Alice and he is Nathan. We play together and he makes the prettiest angels in the snow. I always wake up angry and grab my globe. I tap on the glass as hard as I can because I’m trying to get Alice and Nathan to notice me, but they never look up.

When I met with the doctors I told them I want to live in a snow globe. They looked at me with blank stares and scribbled down words on their yellow notepads. I tell them all about Alice and Nathan and how Alice is mad at Nathan right now because she doesn’t want him to leave her to go off to play with the other kids. I know what Alice is feeling. Nobody likes to feel abandoned when someone she loves leaves her behind. That’s how I felt when my brother left. I hated him for leaving me in a world without him.

Weeks have gone by, and I still want to be inside of the snow globe, playing with Alice and Nathan. I take the snow globe and I smash it against the ground. It shatters into pieces and the snowflakes float around in the clear liquid on the ground. Alice and Nathan are still holding hands. I place them in my palm. They tell me that if I want to come inside the globe to play with them I need to do something. Alice hands me a shard of glass and the pair watches on as blood trickles down my wrist. A smile finally appears on Alice’s face once again, and I’m getting really cold. My fingers are tingling and my sight is beginning to blur. I can tell it is working. Snowflakes begin to fall on the ground and turn red as they hit the floor. The snow chills my face and takes my breath away.

I start to see a small hand reach out towards me. I can’t make out whose hand it is, though. The snow pours down on me harder than I knew it could. I am stuck in a blizzard. I grab onto the hand and hear a familiar giggle. It’s my brother’s laugh. I know why he left me now. He went to be in the snow globe first, to see if it was nice enough for me to come and join him.

I wear a red coat and hold the hand of my brother. When I peer out of the glass, the only thing I can make out is my mother’s figure. She stands to look at us, tears pouring down her swollen face. She’s dressed in all black and I wonder why she won’t come inside and play with us.

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Dana Hall

Grace Dunne Mirage 2017

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Amera Youssef

THE BLANKET Hee Won Lee I am from the warmth of a roasted summer potato, Harvested from the hot air and humid July monsoons Of my grandparent’s farm, miles outside of Seoul; Cooked in the burning campfire in front of their house Under the dark sky filled with infinite twinkling stars.

I am from a kawaii hamster doll Whose ears are broken with opened seams And body is covered with burnt orange fleece.

Her eyes are dark but reflective and bright, As if she quietly communicates with me.

I am from the 100 Days tradition, Where my relatives gather and watch me Sitting and drooling before a table, About to pick items to determine my future: A pencil, a dollar bill, a rice cake, a microphone, A camera, a ring, and a soccer ball.

I pick up the pencil and the money: wealth and intelligence.

Some roar with bliss While the others throw up their hands.

I am from a small dark closet, Containing books of Crayon Shinchan and the scent of mothballs.

If my hamster doll and warm blue blanket lie on my lap, I feel like a queen on a throne.

I am from bedtime stories, The tender voice of my mom, The warmth from under my blankets, The sweet scent of hot chocolate going cold.

Mirage 2017

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HOW WE SEEK HAPPINESS

Inspired by Vern Rutsala, “How We Get By” Yanan Dai By reading and writing, by stepping out of the comfort zone, by redemption and forgiveness, by money or power, by love and support, by cherishing every single day, by passion and affection, by vision and delusion, by dreaming and working, by keeping an open mind, by chocolate and ice cream, by learning and growing, by meeting and greeting, by determination and resolution, by surprise and certainty, by religion and belief, by name and fame, by remembrance and reminiscence—oh yes, by remembrance and reminiscence.

MY UNCOMFORTABLE COMFORT ZONE Amera Youssef

Grace Wang

I’m here but am not really here; the walls around me welcome me as they trap me. I walk around, only to feel the constant judgment of the room casting its tension upon me as if blaming me for its abandonment. The balcony that once fostered my childhood now seems to crumble and turn its back at the sight of me. As I walk up the stairs, each step hiding from me under the years of dust, I turn the corner and come face to face with it. I open the squeaking red chipped door that gives me a sneak peak of my childhood. My room was the one place that sheltered me when I was alone, yet I had the nerve to pack up and leave it without saying goodbye.

Here I am, visiting it nine years later. It doesn’t feel the same. The little bed I used to hide under and read my books in the dark in now seems like a fairy tale. As I walk deeper into the room, I am sucked back into my adolescent years. As I run my hands across the deep scaring carvings on the wall, inch by inch, tracing my growth, I feel as if I am breaching the privacy of a stranger. There was a time where this room alone felt like the universe; now it’s just a room in a stranger’s house. I’m a stranger at my own home. Or is this home the stranger to me?

Jacqueline Hayre-Pérez

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Mirage 2017

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Ellena Chen

A CLOUD CALLED HOME Anna Kalvelage

This disconsolate, but vivacious amplitude has made her invisible.

A place where she could walk to the cafe at the corner where everyone knew her sweet little name because she only ever paid in dollar coins.

These decrepit stairs have never creaked to announce: “She is present.”

A place where they loved to hear her speak.

To them, her voice was something beautiful because it was different from the rest; just like her.

These treacherous halls echo abounding voices; but not her own.

She no longer speaks; this place has made her silent.

If she was a bird, that would be her cage.

Outside in the rain, alone, she escapes the place that has kept her trapped.

A place where she loved to lie in the grass, and gaze at the towering palms, as well as the clouds.

But when she saw the clouds, she did not wish for home; she was already there.

Looking up at the sky, she spies a cloud midst the rain.

It is visible because it differs from the rest.

It is smaller, but brighter; the sun lurks just behind it.

But here, when she picks a rose she bleeds; and it hurts.

She cannot walk to the cafe; it is oceans away.

Here she does not speak, because they do not care to hear her voice.

It is different, and that bothers them; just like her.

It reminds her of a place she pronounced as “home.”

A place where she would pluck a rose from the garden and cut her hand; but it would not hurt, and she would not mind.

There are no palm trees, and when she spies a pretty cloud, she cries because she longs for home.

Mirage 2017

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Dana Hall

Jacqueline Hayre-Pérez

POISONOUS QUESTIONS Anna Kalvelage Snow White would have never met the prince if she had never taken a bite of the poison apple.

The poison apple would not exist if the evil queen did not exist.

What if you didn’t exist?

Would I be miserable and lonely?

Would I be happy, at first?

What if when you first smiled at me I had never smiled back?

Would you hate me?

Would you have stayed here?

What if I could hear things that others could not?

Would that make me crazy?

Would my ears always be sore?

What if I could soar through the sky?

Would I fly alone?

Would I fall for someone else?

What if I hadn’t fallen in love with you?

Would you have fallen in love with me?

Would I still feel empty now that you’re gone?

What if I had gone to see you after you left?

Would we still recognize each other?

Would I still love you?

Oh, if only I had gone to see you.

But I never went to see you, and I still love you.

Just like Snow White was poisoned by the evil queen I was poisoned by you. (now read from the bottom up)

Mirage 2017

23

PUPPET Soomin Mah Side to side, I move left and right as you guide I look and see myself leave myself behind But you push me, forcing me to glide I look at the strings on my arms as you wind You control my little mouth as you play with me You make me sing, “Look what I’ve got!

They’re all better than yours! I’m better than thee.”

But you smile, because you know I’m not.

I smile back real big and I look up to see you, But you simply ignore me and move through.

Behind the tunnel you’ve pushed me into one more time, I see nothing else but my endless, incurable scars And you know these won’t go away anytime But you keep me behind these hard, hard bars Keeping me behind this rich, rich disguise Where I’m under my golden cape and my shining mask But you know they’re nothing but a device That I keep to hide away from my real self, unmasked.

You bring me to the audience, and now I see some light “It’s time for me to shine,” I murmur quietly without fright.

I look down at the audience and give them a big smile With an unsatisfied triumph and a handful of diamonds But only some of them would look back at me for a while Then they’d leave me behind, while you’d make me climbing Up the hills, to go beyond their standards and your expectations.

But, I wonder, should I continue to climb if they don’t care?

I wonder, should I still let myself conceal my complexion?

I wonder, will I be able to heal my scars, and not fall in despair?

I wonder, if this utterly perfect and golden mask you’ve given me, Would set me free from these strings on me and finally let me be?

But no, I realize, I’ll never ever get to be free without you and this mask I already lost my face from the dark tunnel you’ve pushed me through And I made the choice to lose myself, to forget those times without this mask Those times when I didn’t try so hard to meet your standards, to be you.

At this point from now on, never will I ever find my true self again Because I’m too scared to go back from where I’ve started And lose the attention I have been desperately wanting to gain Because you have completely let myself in horror, from myself departed From back then when you’d remind me of how ugly I was, How weird I acted, how poor I looked, and how miserable I was.

And now, you’re reminding me once again, how insecure I am.

You’ve said it more than a hundred times, and you say it again. Bam. I realize them. You really didn’t have to pin-point them, because I know my unattractive self.

I feel the pain from the scars you’ve given me, but I put on my mask and conceal myself.

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Dana Hall

Maya Darville

Charlene Huang

Anna Dzhitenov

Nicole Ribakoff

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Mirage 2017

THE THINKING BENCH Alexandra Novakoff

I will wait on the bench that is beginning to weather, that pierced me with a splinter just last week. A bench like this is more uncomfortable than one would think. It is not just a bench. It is like a monument. When the old wood creaks and shakes, anyone could notice the decay beneath them and wait for the bench to fall, which it never will.

One will be calm until after one leaves the bench: one will sit aimlessly in the park, serene and unaware of the history of people who sat and engraved the wood on the bench, engulfed in thought and systematically running their fingers across its surface. One believes this bench will always be in the same spot, that “refuge” is a bench that the bench never agreed to be.

You’ve no doubt sat on one of those benches as a child. Perhaps to rest, or maybe your mother sent you there to think about your actions. I know that my mother used to send me to the bench at the park down the street, the thinking bench, that’s what she called it. I remember sitting there watching the children play in the fields as their mothers stood and watched. I remember the time would come when the kids would be called home for dinner, and I remember sitting there waiting for my mother to call me home (she never did).

I used to have this dream as a kid in which my mother came to the park, her violet apron tied tight around her stomach. She extended her arms out, as I ran towards the cushioning embrace of her warm chest. We would walk home and the cherry blossom trees would be shedding their dull pink petals. They would swirl in the sky as they whooshed through the air’s calm breeze.

In real life, my mother never came to get me from the thinking bench. In real life, I would wait until the sun disappeared from the sky and the cold cast its stinging frost upon my little nose. I’d go home and dinner would not be waiting for me. I would hear my mother in her bedroom giggling and the whispers of a man’s voice, a man who wasn’t my father. I used to think it was the television making the whispers and causing my mom to laugh. I believed this until one night I got so cold that I left the park early and saw a tall man in a dark coat leaving my house.

“That was a salesman from town,” I can remember my mom telling me, “those damn salespeople. They just don’t know when enough is enough!”

My mom wasn’t scary; she just wasn’t warm. She used to tell me that I had a cashew for a brain and that my feet made me look like “some duck from down the pond!” She used to tell me I was the reason she drank and that’s why she needed me to “go on down to the thinking bench.”

I hated that bench at first until I discovered that I could use little sticks to carve drawings into the wood. From that day on I couldn’t wait until my mom sent me to the park so that I could go back to working on my masterpiece.

I loved my mom. One day she let me lick the cake batter off of the spoon she’d been using. My mom made about a dozen cakes that day. My kitchen floor was covered in frosting, and my mother’s violet apron was coated in flour. This was the day my father was supposed to come home from his business trip, except he never came, and my mom threw every cake away before I even got a slice.

I was older now, and my mom had been drinking from the stash she kept in the back of the cupboard. I dropped my glass of milk on the floor, and my mother threw her cigarette at me.

“You goddamn moron!” she shouted. “God must’ve really had it out for me when he gave me your defective ass.”

I remember standing there in the puddle of spilled milk as it seeped between my toes.

“The biggest regret of my life is having a goddamn kid. You were one hell of a mistake.”

My mother’s words pierced me like a knife.

I can still taste the salt from the tears that poured down my face that morning. I remember running through the streets towards the park, where I knew my bench would be waiting for me. Out of breath, I reached the park, only to see that my bench was gone.

I will never forget the feeling of helplessness that overcame me as I stood there where the bench used to be.

All that remained were four deep markings in the grass. The bench I had sat on since before I could remember had disappeared. I remember feeling an overwhelming sense of anger for a while. But then, I remember that anger turning into sadness and then that sadness turning into loneliness.

The day of my mother’s funeral, my father finally showed up. He wore his expensive black suit the day they buried my mother. I remember the car ride in the black Lincoln to the cemetery with my grandmother and father. The eerie silence within the vehicle wasn’t blurred out by the radio that day. I remember the driver opening the door for me and my grandmother brushing my hair to the side as we walked to my mother’s grave.

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Dana Hall

I had never been to a cemetery before, and I remember having the picture of an old black and white horror film in the back of my mind. However, the cemetery we buried my mom at was anything but haunted. Just beyond her grave, there was a wooden bench. The wooden bench looked identical to the thinking bench I used to sit on every day.

I remember running up to the bench, scouring the wood for the engravings I had made as a child, only to find nothing there.

There is a bench where my mother rests, but the bench is not my own. It is someone else’s.

Grace Wang

DESIRE TO BELONG Wendy Gomez I veil my situation with a cloak of whiteness.

Secluded from the world, I stay Safe.

--Hidden-I get to temporarily forget.

As I venture to take the veil away, attacked with a buzzing noise, Restlessness permeates.

--And--

--I give my best-But he still looks down upon me and says, “We do not want you.”

He makes us doubt our worth and our right to belong.

With building walls.

Soomin Mah

Fear crawls through my being like a craving demon, slowly taking ownership.

He drags me down and starts a low whisper in my ear, saying, “You are dirt and don’t belong.”

He works my hands until they are callused.

I harvest, cook, clean, and nurture.

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Amera Youssef Mirage 2017

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Julia Ran

JAPANESE TEA CUPS Yifan Xu My mother went to Japan, and brought back three ceramic cups.

She laid them on the lame, old table that has trembled too many times under iron fists.

Well, damn, Father exclaimed.

The damned Japanese do make fine things.

They are stringent, they put craftsmanship into everything, answered Mother. They try too hard to survive on a barren island. They are pushed to extremes.

Extremes, I thought, has a beautiful, wonderful meaning.

It is a perfection, written in the white ceramic rim, in the smooth and rolling curves that bear no trace of the maker’s crusted hands.

Perfection dusted on the shelf, living the soothing life tea cups are meant to live, till the day the shelves are knocked down and I put my books, my diaries, my pictures, my childhood into a truck.

Why, mother— Some things are never meant to be held together, like a pragmatist and a poet, like a woman and a man.

My mother went to the living room, and brought back three ceramic cups.

She laid them in my lap and said, perhaps you can find a use for them.

Mirage 2017

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UNSEEN Sasha Megie

Saaniya Desai

I woke to three messages from the guy I used to love. He wanted me to know That everything he promised wasn’t a lie.

He loved me, but needed time to grow.

I had to suffer cause he’s immature.

I want to reply but I don’t know what to say.

I’ve been alone so long I’m just not sure.

He mustn’t know my pain or else he’d stay.

I mean he’s been my homie, he’s fixed my heart, He’s seen my solemn soul, and accepted it all.

He’s been gone so long I’ve fallen apart.

But I couldn’t text back cause I knew I would fall Right back in love with the thought of him Even though our chances at love are so slim.

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Evonne Lao Mirage 2017

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Sofi Lin

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Dana Hall

UNCLE JACK Spencer Babcock You shouldn’t give a first grader a cigar and teach her how to mold her lips perfectly to the tart paper The “o” she makes in music class every time an “ooh” leaves her lips makes her remember and want once again the bitterwood taste, the flameless maturity, and you.

You shouldn’t give a first grader a cigar when she wakes up at 5am to join you for breakfast She’ll always put peanut butter on English muffins and ask for her steak medium rare, thanks to you.

You shouldn’t give a first grader a cigar as you teach her to ride a bike A mundane task now as she speeds down to the beach even though a row in the store takes her back to pink streamers, her aunt in the car too sick to help, and you.

You shouldn’t give a first grader a cigar And talk about good memories and heaven as you watch her fiddle with the foreign paper, her eyes drawn to the ground.

You shouldn’t give a first grader a present whenever you visit; You shouldn’t make bets with her you know you’ll lose just because it makes her happy; You shouldn’t come all the way up here for her birthday; You shouldn’t mail her family old photos of the lake house.

You shouldn’t ask her parents not to tell her when you learn you aren’t feeling well; You shouldn’t leave within three days and never say your goodbye.

You shouldn’t give a first grader a cigar because now that you can’t, who else will?

Mirage 2017

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Michelle Ma

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Dana Hall

DEFINITION OF FINE Emma Benkert fine (fīn) noun 1. obsolete: end, conclusion 2. a compromise of a fictitious suit used as a form of conveyance of lands 3. a sum imposed as punishment for an offense: The motorist had to pay a fine for speeding. 4. a forfeiture or penalty paid to an injured party in a civil action adj. 5. of high quality 6. excellent, first-class 7. of a thread, filament, thin hair 8. very small particles found in mining 9. in a satisfactory matter 10. to clarify (beer or wine) by causing the precipitation of sediment during production 11. make or become thinner 12. that boy who sits two seats in front of you in Economics class 13. the sound your mother makes when she calls you on a Sunday evening after you just finished a three hour lab and you tell her you will not make it home for Easter because of the amount of work you have 14. a venereal disease 15. a European man who smells like champagne and regret that you will meet in Spain while studying abroad 16. the baby carrots yuppies buy at the farmer’s market that have no pesticides and are sold for a price of $10 per pound 17. your prom dress from junior year 18. looking at pictures of you at prom from junior year when you are an adult 19. the time the racist cop pulled over your friend for doing nothing wrong, only for looking “different” 20. eating your first bite of gelato and feeling the cream pour down your throat 21. meeting The Regret you previously mentioned and going out to dinner with him at an overly expensive restaurant near your school 22. when The Regret forgot to bring his credit card and you had to pay for the $200 meal where he graciously insisted you order “whatever you like” even though each entree is $50 23. choosing to still see The Regret time to time and having the same instance happen again but because you like him, continuing to ignore it 24. dating The Regret for a long period of time before learning he runs an underground adult movie distribution from Germany and when he said he was going window-shopping, it wasn’t the shopping you were thinking of 25. learning that Regret stole thousands of dollars from you off your credit card, creating debt from money you do not have 26. calling your mom about what to do when you feel so alone in a foreign land 27. leaving a tearful and lengthy voicemail at your mom’s apartment in Boston 28. waiting for days on end for her to call you back because you are getting sick of feeling like an idiot for not speaking the same tongue and feeling like an idiot for going on the first date with Regret 29. reading a newspaper and seeing that Regret got arrested in Milan for assaulting a restaurant owner after trying to sneak out of a restaurant without paying 30. laughing over Regret’s idiocracy, finally not laughing over yourself 31. getting hungry from reading and going to the fridge 32. at the fridge getting a call from your mother’s number, but it is not your mother, but someone who tells you that you must come home 33. going home, returning to your past, a life you left because it was only fine, and repeating the phrase to yourself on the time-warping plane: it will all be fine.

Mirage 2017

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THE COLD BLUE BLANKET Libby Frambes A cold blue blanket swaddles our world.

His calm and content flow, disfigures the true essence underneath unaware that below, a secret world mirrors our own where the vibrant fish are swallowed by the waves, and those rainbows of life forms thrive underneath.

Her beauty is endlessly concealed by the darkness of his sea.

His steady unchanging current drags the life of the sea along.

Schools, mastering the art of riding the waves divergently, and false individuality obscures the journey already underway.

Every fish, every entity carried along as if by choice— when a single fish falls off the current unaware, the consistency of the life set out for her has been halted.

Thrashing towards the surface, fighting to keep her head afloat.

A struggle concludes in a breach of the water— the insignificance of the colorful fish is no match, his smothering blanket folds over again, sinking her further into the muffled silence of the dark, leaving behind nothing but a ripple on the brink as quickly as it appeared. The ripples diffuse and sink back into the cold blue blanket of the sea.

A single ripple evaporates without a trace but maybe when enough fish fall off of the current We can make a new wave.

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Dana Hall

Sophia Diaz-Zhang

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Mirage 2017

WHAT YOU NEED TO COOK THE PERFECT CHICKEN POT PIE Yifan Xu What you need to cook the perfect chicken pot pie: 1. chicken breast 2. flour 3. celery, carrots, and onions, diced 4. frozen green peas—why not fresh ones? I’ve never seen fresh green peas sold at a food market. Perhaps green peas, like the tunas severed from the waves and the milk extracted from a calf ’s mother’s breast, begin their metamorphosis to dirt the instant life is cut off. They wear not the mask of immortality, revealing only the brutish fragility of existence. We need not our dinners to remind us of the imminence of doom, I suppose.

5. I overthought that. According to Google, frozen peas taste sweeter than fresh ones, since sugar in green peas turns into starch swiftly following being picked.

6. I wonder how green peas tasted before refrigeration technologies were advanced. Did a little farm girl, finishing a day’s labor in the corn field, casually pluck them off their stems and toss them into her wicker basket? Maybe she tasted one or two grains, with her fingers, before she served it to her family. Did blue collared men, packed into a sooty dining common, still smelling of oils and machines, gobble down their starchy pea stew without tasting it? If I were to bring them here today and invite them to sip my green pea stew, would they be astonished over its unbound sweetness, or would they tell me that it’s not how it’s supposed to taste, how it used to be—the way my grandmother disapproved of my noodles, with the deepening furrows above waning eyes.

7. She couldn’t have communicated with me any other way. The dialect she spoke was like an ancient scripture: each fragment seemed as familiar as the color of my bedroom curtain, yet the meaning remained as cryptic as a distant star. I know I spoke it once, when I wore open-crotch pants, when my mother was so sick that she had to beg her countryside mother to take care of her daughter. I want to remember, a tone, a tune, anything at all. But all I know is the cracking sound of the chair that my grandmother once sat on, watching over me as I fed the chicken grains from a dried calabash half. I learned about her through faded photographs, the same way I learned about World War I soldiers and poppies that bled from field to field.

8. Only white flowers grew over her; tiny, five-petaled blossoms I could not name. They made the erect stone seem too grey and too artificial. That was the first day I saw her name, ingrained in an alabaster slab. The gold trimmed characters resembled nothing of her—nothing I couldn’t read, understand, and readily dismiss; but they were all that remained. The written is the official, the remembered. The spoken gets carried away by a gust of wind, forever slipping through the fingers of probing hands. But perhaps there are things the wind didn’t pick up, things she’d left behind, windows that allow me to see through the mist of time.

9. She hated green peas, my mother once told me. Because when everyone starved, her son had stolen green peas from the neighbor and she slapped him for that. He fell to the floor. He never stood up. I wonder if anyone could hate a vegetable as much. I wonder how green peas could be hated so much.

10. The perfect chicken pot pie, then, should not involve green peas. Nor carrots, nor onions, nor celery, nor flour. Nor chicken.

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Dana Hall

Cindy Chongvinmasin

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Mirage 2017

RED RAIN BOOTS Spencer Babcock

It was going to pour tonight.

My red rain boots, a muddled grey from this weekend, hidden under the bench in the front porch, impressing mud and pebble outlines into the smooth, white plywood surface, desperately needed to be washed, but I was too unwilling to do so. My mother sat on her couch like a raven on its perch, belonging, within the grander scheme of our farm, perfectly at home.

The chair, a plush piece of inheritance, checkered red and ivory, its seams unraveling one by one each time she pressed herself into its warm embrace, was her greatest treasure on the entire estate. I never bothered her when she sank into that hypnotic realm of comfort and nostalgia, when she froze in my time, cascading into the past while sitting in the present.

My canvas backpack laid on its back, carelessly tossed in the corner of my room, the contents of its stomach spewed around the floor not like an obstacle course made for a mouse, nor of the manner in which a child proudly proceeds to dump their Halloween haul in the most inconvenient of places. No, my life was too insignificant to attach such great meaning to such simple gestures. Things had, in the course of one year—a millisecond to God but a lifetime of 365-day cyclical hell of never-ending, ever-slowing groupings of moons and suns to me—fallen apart. The woman I used to think was strong and empowering lost her will to go on, to tend to the townhouse we had in the city, to follow the stream of other forty-year old, single business executives as they trickled down to the financial district, to put on makeup and get dressed and see me off to school every single morning and greet me with a warm dinner every other

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night. She had been flooded with a desire to make it all go away. So she went away.

For two weeks, I had gone through the motions for the first time as a singular unit. I woke every morning, upon the sound of my alarm, crashing out of a sound sleep, drowsily coming to, wishing, willing, her to be downstairs, cooking scrambled eggs and pancakes, humming along as she interchangeably drank her coffee and ate half the food as she cooked it, knowing how foolish it was to want this. For two weeks, I passed the barren kitchen, the cold granite a host only to a singular piece of paper, a piece of paper I had refused to look at since the first day she left but failed to find the courage to throw away. The lights were always off; the stove remained unlit; I came home to the memorial of a battlefield. A bitter silence always wafted through the air when what should be there was jazz, smooth jazz that escaped from the sound system like a Godly revelation, reaching my ears, my brain, disintegrating the thoughts of stress and anger that clouded my mind by evening, like it had since I was little.

Then, she came to bring me to the farm. I remember how hard it rained that day, the cats and dogs almost able to be outlined in the haze that harsh waterfall creates. She greeted the mess of water, mud, and sweat I had become on my walk home with a sandwich and a smoothie, the leather strap from her car keys hanging out of her shirt pocket, her face bright and happy, because she wasn’t with me, I immediately thought. She handed me the keys, her complexion still glowing from the relief that carelessness carries with it to the weary.

Dana Hall

And somehow, over the course of a year, a time with words being left unspoken, expressions masking pain and smiles turning thoughts into ghosts of the past and future, we stayed here, in her new home, in my new prison. Every day, she sits perched on that chair, contemplating some troubles, yet never resolving them; always, she returns, whether out of true determination or utter boredom, to look for answers. She doesn’t sing, doesn’t laugh anymore. Our words are polite exchanges of instruction.

I eat my meals alone, watch the sun alone, go explore alone. She sits on that large checkered lounge, her toes gently tracing the red and ivory stripes, cataloguing every intersection they come across. And still, there is no music.

The storm has finally arrived. I pack my canvas bag, carefully tiptoeing around the crime scene, shoving necessities my suitcase was unworthy and unwilling to house into the thing, feeding the stomach new comforts, closing the zipper to avoid further chaos. I walk downstairs, grab the car keys, fold the money left on the counter, place the musty green bills into the back pocket of my favorite worn-down jeans, simultaneously inspecting the patch of denim for any holes. Without saying goodbye, I grab an umbrella. My red rain boots, a muddled grey from this weekend, hidden under the bench in the front porch earlier this morning, no longer impressing mud and pebble outlines into the smooth, white plywood surface, are waiting for me by the door.

I slip them on, unhinge the umbrella catch, and let the storm bring the red back to life.

Jurnee Peltier

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Mirage 2017

STAFF PAGE Art Editors: Literary Editors: Design Editor:

Yifan Xu Katherine Brady Ye Ri Lee Jacqueline Hayre-PĂŠrez Molly Madden Michelle Ma

Staff:

Spencer Babcock Emma Benkert Echo Chen Cindy Chongvimansin Caroline Cohen Yanan Dai Caroline Ellis Ida Jia Helen Jiang Caroline Johnson Saki Omote Anna Park Julia Stento Christiana Thorbecke Saraly Vargas

Faculty Advisors:

Julia Bucci Mary Ann McQuillan Printed by Watson Printing, Wellesley, MA

Sasha Megie

Editor-in-Chief:

MIRAGE 2017