The Reynolds Young Writers Workshop at Denison University - Anthology 2025

IN THE DAYS WHEN THE TIGER SMOKED THE PIPE

Denison University

The Jonathan R. Reynolds Young Writers Workshop JUNE 14 - JUNE 21, 2025

IN THE DAYS WHEN THE TIGER SMOKED THE PIPE 2025

Table of Contents P O E T R Y​

3

Nina Apple​

4

Nidhi Bathla​

5

Olivia Carey​

7

Greta Haroldson​

8

Helen He​

10

Asher Hill​

12

Miah Knight​

14

Harry Moss​

15

Alexander Muñoz​

17

Michelle Nguyen​

19

Adriana Sarraf​

21

Iris Tanner​

23

Emmerson Todd​

24

Jessie Wang​

26

Natalie Weis​

28

Ellie Womack​

29

Josephine Wong​

31

Iris Xiong​

33

Zoya Zamir​

34

N O N F I C T I O N​

36

Asa Ardayfio​

37

Tallulah Conolly-Smith​

38

Catherine Cullen​

40

Kate Diller​

42

Kennedi Lindsey​

44

Ruby Miguel​

46

Vivi Myers​

48

Téa Vu​

50

F I C T I O N​

51

Harper Baillie​

52

Blythe Balock​

54

Clayton Cox​

56

Sophie Etherton​

58

Nazlı Eyigör​

60

Isabel Fogel​

62

S. Fruscella​

64

Cambria Hu​

65

Aubrey Kloepping​

67

Brynn Litus​

69

Sitara Patel​

71

Bella Pettit​

73

Ozette Rice​

75

Molly Rosenberg​

77

AJ Schlang​

79

Noa Spector​

81

Grace Sun​

83

Ashley Thompson​

85

Kate Vasanth​

87

Natalie Vernon​

89

Henry Wade​

91

POETRY

Nina Apple All my Best I hope you’re happier now than ever I hope the breeze hums a jovial melody behind you as you walk past my house I hope the chopped terrain proceeding it reminds you of all you cut down I hope it itches and irritates your skin The same skin that rubbed against mine beneath mounds of blankets on your pull-out couch The same skin with which I developed such platonic familiarity The same skin I yearn to claw at and gouge and gash I hope my ferocity towards you scars you like the permanence of our decay scars me I hope you burn in your lament the same way I burn in indignation I hope it stings and it cracks until I hope it betters and your wounds mend like mine eventually will I hope the black fringed jacket I once borrowed from you remains methodically hung in the back of your closet because it's better to perpetually put something away than let it lounge in its damage and I certainly hope you learned that the hard way.

I hope you think of me in the dead of night as you swiftly pull the covers over your head and wait for the rue to stop consuming you Or will you think of me when you pass by my mother and she flashes you the toothy grin you only ever knew on my face Or am I just a recollection of what once was good, now worn out and desolate I hope you find new and better friends I hope they hate you I hope my booming voice bounces between each barrier of your brain And I hope you acclimate to it because the destruction is irreversible But in the end I hope you learn And I hope your past does not specify the narrowness of your future And I hope you’re never void of my everlasting devotion I hope you’re happier now I hope you’re happier now than ever.

Nidhi Bathla mama said mama told me she created us one egg split into two a twenty five year old girl aged by something besides time mama said that i was different bright was my favorite compliment to hear growing up reading was my favorite thing to do angelina ballerina on the tv junie b jones in my left hand car rides and katy perry every monday morning a lifetime supply of happy hours a pbs kids radio show that never ended mama told me i would probably be okay the only word i paid attention to was probably because i probably wouldn’t be i was scared of living but terrified of anything else i was scared of myself and maybe it’ll stay like that forever me against me until neither side can fight anymore mama put her dreams in my heart and her anxiety in my head created a whole that i am perpetually piecing back together and everything i try to fix everytime i try to fix myself i end up in the same place wondering what’s really meant to be her one egg split into two

became a yolk and an egg white that couldn’t get away from each other no matter how hard we tried i was just a girl without giants to stand on sisters to hold hands with i have everything i need but i’m collapsing inside who am i anyways but someone who thinks too much and acts too little who fears that she will never be aged by anything besides time.

Olivia Carey My Fleeting Home Dinosaurs viciously chomped on fairies as the Florida sun was saying farewell.

My sweaty hands and thighs.

Jean shorts that were too tight.

The polka-dot swimsuit top that I had worn all day.

Those goggles with eyelashes sat beside me.

Ants crawled in between my toes as I sat on the porch, slapping my skin as hard as I could to get them off.

Dirt underneath my fingernails as I placed the dolls down on the chipped wood.

I looked up at the seagulls as they climbed across the sky.

I could hear the wind making the palm leaves brush together.

Waves punched the sand like the sound of a knife going into a coconut shell across the street.

The smell of seaweed scorches my nostrils, intertwining with the plantains and Ropa Vieja coming from the cramped house.

The sound of music on Duval Street makes the ground quiver.

The man who lived in the backyard smelled like cigarettes.

The iguanas, each had names, scurrying past with the mango I had left out.

I wonder where they are.

I wonder if they know where I am.

I am in the car, looking out the window as the sign says its goodbye.

Tears threaten to leave as I watch the island fade from view.

Give me back my ocean, the ants on my feet, and the sweat on my brow.

I wonder if the dinosaurs miss me and if the fairies forgive me.

Greta Haroldson Bjerget (The Mountain) Chest-deep in the silent water of the Øresund, muscles shuddering as my fingernails rake heat into my forearms, I scream into the boundless sky above me and I am limitless.

In my hometown in Tennessee, in the humid, heavy heat and in the dry Southern drawls, there are no words for this.

No words for my eyes burning in the night air, for my hair, turned frigid by the wind, plastered wet across my spine.

No words for the synthesis of awe and insignificance as Moder Jörð stands tall behind me, swollen ankles forged from mud and magma, bellowing a silent galdr out into the distance.

But, in the summers with my mormor, when I lay a reverent hand on the worn rock of the local dysse and think of the people 5,000 years ago who stacked these very stones— when I shake the sour bits of sun-warmed rhubarb into the little green bin filled with fruit and fruit-flies— when I save glass bottles of elderflower juice in the bag beside the door for a few øre— when the ineffability of nature becomes particularly unbearable, I say, “Jeg bliver bjergtaget af bjerget”.

I am bound and freed by the mountain.

Translations (Danish to English): Øresund - the Sound, a body of water between Sweden and Denmark.

Moder Jörð - Mother Earth. Typically written as Moder Jord, but spelled in Old Norse to reflect the name of the Nordic earth goddess Jörð.

Galdr - ritualistic songs of Norse mythology, similar to a hymn or psalm.

Mormor - grandmother.

Dysse - stone burial mounds from the Neolithic period. Øre - the equivalent of cents in Danish currency.

Jeg bliver bjergtaget af bjerget - Literally means ‘I am mountain-taken by the mountain’. Used to convey feelings of rapture for the natural world, regardless of if the subject is a mountain. The use of a mountain as a symbol of awe derives from the very flat land of Denmark and implies an appreciation for Earth’s features that is not limited to one’s homeland.

America First Man has found roadkill, shot it through the head, hung it on his trophy wall.

Helen He 妹妹 (younger sister) once I knelt before the thousand-armed 观音, my forehead brushing against the saffron prayer mat, its woven threads unravelling where a thousand people must too have rested their heads, hearts always hungry, each beat echoing, though Buddha warned attachments are the source of suffering. But the bitter taste of the momordica charantia is the reason I seek it, so I light incense at her golden feet and tell her my only request. my mother’s body swells with life, a soft heartbeat, growing, until a child was born, jade-green birthmarks circling her ankles and wrists.

I held your tiny body against me, brushed feathery ink hair from your squinted eyes, and suddenly my life, divided; the days before you and now. once I must have not known you, though such memories now evade me.

I would rather defy 孟婆 herself than forget the sound of your sweet

laughter and crescent moon eyes. for I swear to you, even 迷魂汤 could not force my soul to forget yours. your 姐姐 (sister) would choose to be reborn into a thousand lifetimes if only at the distant possibility of meeting you once more.

Asher Hill I’ll stop bothering you, these are Therapy Problems Let’s start with the first.

I talk too much, and My voice pierces The air, as I wring it out and Flinch as I hear it echo Back to me, my back Stretches past my limit so I bend it low and one day I know for sure that it will break, Listen, Next, My teeth grind and Yellow, no copper patina just Flakes of skin diced off the apple core, Third, or is it still the second, I discuss if I should veil to Us my aches, or if you could just Tell me why I hate my body, why I get no hips no breasts, no Curves, no symmetry, nor Rest from all the wanting of That space that I need shaped And if it breaks oh well, it’s the fourth Now, but don’t they all blend Together, I start wondering if simple Caring is permitted now I’m Worrying I don’t love you enough, I love you much, too much, and my eyes too Shaded in my skull to See the good, I See the good As wrong And if I don’t it’s Far too much, I see myself as

Far too much, And if it all should fall as Apple skin, teeth-aching rust…

I overshare.

Sorry; I’ll work it out eventually.

Miah Knight sisterhood it’s october and the rain is dropping marbles on the train tracks. we’re (fourteen seventeen eighteen) like it matters, like we aren’t just pieces playing at being whole. the sun is setting. we’re dancing without music: a cliché but it’s joy and i’m on your shoulders beneath water falling like providence or promise. it’s you and me and him — three birds on a wire, my cheeks flushed warm and pressed to your hair. i wonder if i’ll ever stop calling you family. the cold’s soaked past my muscles into mineral where i can hardly feel it (i said that in the last one, i guess i’m anything but numb) and there’s nothing like dancing to keep up your breathing, y’know? our feet disturb puddles and our voices crack the sky into ice and light and i suppose i only ever wanted you to be proud of me. the rain drops marbles on the train tracks and i hope you never put me down. (three birds on a wire, then two, then one and one and)

Harry Moss The Great American Patchwork Quilt

Brown You will never see so many shades as from an airplane Above Colorado, approaching Denver, and below the clouds It’s squares Squares and rectangles and the odd little squiggle And roads, lacerations black and beige Carved with great effort into the flesh that is dirt Teeming with ants, red yellow silver And beetles with great boxy abdomens So much of it So many subdivisions In the middle of a field, a lone tree It is of an older world A relic

Avalanche Ghosts Summer Colorado Summer The trees stand tall and proud in overlapping lines Not a forest but a mob Living But not breathing But giving breath And between these gathered crowds, these great swathes of green Which are narrow up top And wide at the bottom where the mountains meet flat ground and rivers flow There are clearings, varied in size and nature Some are nurseries, where the little children grow out their fuzzy green hair Raising their arms to the sky for the very first time And some are graveyards Filled not with headstones but corpses Brown and weathered Echoes of apocalypse Of snow rushing down, awesome and terrifying Tearing the feet of the crowd from their native dirt And in summer Colorado summer

When the snow is water, the trees grow Side by side with the young and the dead Side by side with avalanche ghosts

Starfall A Colorado sky And the universe is dying Stars blinking out one by one By one By one It’s our fault It is the noxious breath of the steel mouths Coughing up the shit we stuff their stomachs full of The fumes reach up with smoky hands towards all the pretty lights Clenching with force to bruise And choke them And they gasp And sputter And die And fall to earth Where we pick them up And light them up And put the night sky back together Piece by piece City by city Civilization From their dreamless sleep, from the velvety embrace of dark blankets Do we rip the stars And the stars, once dead, will be mounted on boxes Concrete and steel Endowed with life new and false They will be defiled

Alexander Muñoz The Poetic Proposal T’engarland you once with this laurel is The honor to promise you my life's time I wish to crown, and ring you my dear miss It's this sacred field, with no word or rhyme I trust, and acclaim you the only soul Whom knows the value in this gem wonder So let me propose this, our common goal For our spirits fulfill one another To engrave our dreams of ours official Let's present this vein of love interweaved Part forth a promise to the hearts symbol As timeless emblems form this circled wreath With this, anything of mine, will yours be Let church bells sing; to declare I love thee

My Scurvy induced life This brittle vessel sails until bed rest With heartbroken scopes extending amiss The restive scout for the tidal empress I lead rule search to the sapphire abyss I wish for her beacon to enlighten My battered brain, my silent beating heart I'll pour my life, to forecast some Siren The reigning muse to start my sailing thought She's the promised passion I have sense wished The will to flow with life's intimacy The pressured scent of swift air in the midst The desire to drive through intricacy Timely white strands give into wistfulness

I’m cabined to pure paranoia Can my iron will hold water poured stress?

Should I sink despair with euphoria?

I'm left pondering my frozen estate Until I sight the sporadic black swan Stirring my sense as the tides undulate And resolve my watered will to move on At last, I step onto familiar land And resolve my watered will to move on

Michelle Nguyen Morning Alarms that I Hate My phone alarm makes a short, sharp sound in the morning, jarring my soul from my body, compelling my heart to jump.

Yet somehow, it’s the same heat in my cheeks during our hourless calls.

And as I tell jokes that are absolutely never funny, relative silence filling the room, you let out a disgruntled groan to lighten the mood.

Ceaselessly, my heart flutters.

And at the end of my lifetime, once you have long passed, they will tether me to an EKG. A steady, rhythmic beeping.

Until the nurse asks me if I remember you, your voice, the way you step.

And I will say no, but the waves will jump and sputter exactly how you laugh.

Senses Why do we have five senses?

Because there is more than offices, cubicles confining our concerns.

More than mundane patterns, than iteration in infinite cycles.

Because humans are made for more than simple thought.

And medicine, law, business, engineering, they are necessary pursuits.

But to hear, smell, see, touch, taste.

To accurately encapsulate our feelings of beauty, love, is the sustentation of the soul.

Translations of Love I don’t know the Vietnamese word for love.

It is not often used.

With my poor, awfully broken Vietnamese, I cannot recall the word as easily as rice and goodbye.

“Yêu.”

Ah, yes, that is the word.

It’s supposed to be passionate, so intense that the feeling escapes the confines of the letters.

It overtakes the u and bubbles over the e.

Too strong, never spoken.

Our culture is too uncomfortable with affection.

To express love, Vietnamese turn to the knife.

Instead of the heart, we aim for the stomach.

Cutting apples, slicing bread, cooking dishes, acts of service is key But there are rare occasions when another word is spoken.

“Thương.”1 In English, it is supposedly synonymous to love.

But English is one of science, while Vietnamese is one of sentiment, so to translate it means warping it, disorienting it for foreign, unintended eyes.

It is not meant to mean love.

The meaning doesn’t twist over the letters.

It radiates.

The meaning doesn’t hit you in the face.

It is not a slap.

It’s a sort of sacrificial love, the kind that is subtle, slips by without knowing it.

It’s the love that we don’t realize we feel until it’s entirely too late and we are so utterly screwed.

1

Thương (v.): a word for love that implies a deeper, more compassionate, and long lasting form of affection. Subtle and selfless, it is only used for a bond that surpasses anything worldly. It requires responsibilities, because the demanded sacrifices mean the love is endless.

Adriana Sarraf Just Sample the Flavors A crystal container, etched with petals, withholds the lapis jelly.

The lid pops crisply, and expansive blueberry fields are conjured by its aroma With all her allure, she remains restrained, and in desire of her complement A greedy boy spreads eagerly.

Frankenstein and his butter knife, under fluorescent kitchen lights.

Toast, burning fingers slightly, stacked on a plate, and jelly, blushing in blue hues.

Toast coated in blueberry, their rebirth from plain to extraordinary, belittled.

Simply an insolent boy’s breakfast.

By week’s end, he grumbles that “It’s inadequate and insipid.”

His attention renders on a new craving, a new love.

A different jelly adorns the shelf A fruit glistening red on the vine.

The exhilarating and sweet strawberry awaits the ravenous boy,

but the monotony returns.

The jar left half full, leaving the strawberry spoiled.

So, the boy relishes in peach, Then, raspberry, lemon, and fig Just flavors to sample, but never to embrace.

Adulthood begins when…

An apartment’s lock clicks open (A shared beginning of America’s unexpected future) Filled by cookbooks from housewarmings and a blue baby carriage, inhabited by a boy in the bedroom’s corner.

Tippy toes and wide windows assist the toddler’s glimpse of 4 floors below, a “March for Our Lives” protest in D.C. Room temp carrot mush and refrigerator galleries of “mommy, daddy, and me” as baked potatoes.

The first day of kindergarten with a baby boy weeping, grasping mother’s arm.

Crisscrossed on rainbow carpet, he sits, frozen with a gun’s click behind his head.

Iris Tanner Homecoming It’s funny how four hours Feels like a lifetime sliding Off your shoulders.

And the second the car door Opens and the cool air of the mountains spills Into your nose, lungs, soul, You are four years old again, Home in the arms of Appalachia, Mother and muse and ancient seabed.

Back in the melty sweetness of swirl soft-serve Smeared across your face, On the restaurant’s wooden deck Before diving into the Greenbrier, those singing Headwaters so clear you can see your feet Tiptoeing across the pebbles below Back to nights spent in your mama’s lap As girls that might be you one day Sit around a fire and find two women’s dreams made real Up atop a hill in the woods.

Back on walks through the woods in search Of secret waterfalls and wild blackberries That pop on your tongue, tart and warm from Days spent under the same sun as you Back to the screech of tricycle tires that Echo through the opera house, pedals Driven in endless circles by tiny legs and gleaming eyes, the same Blue as your dad stacking chairs along the wall.

Back to summer and sweetness and a piece of yourself That will always be four years old

Emmerson Todd On Letting Go In time mercury flows Through hands that so Desperately cup Cool liquid to parched lips Tongue juts out Laps up less than is lost To the cruel fate that becomes Anything clutched too tight In creviced and calloused fingers Once pure, now grown and sticky With knowledge that healing is a Farce that intends to disguise Cloak and keep what should slip away Like when children crack Temperature gauges on ceramic To drink from the faucet of Medicine itself and Silver jumps, swirls and clings To the folds of young throats Grasping at them until they Dash to their mothers the Songs of health slipping off Metallic tongues And the children of My dreams are dead and I Am the one to blame for I was the one to Hold their youth in my Aging hands and try to Keep them pure But they slipped Through my fingers and Drowned in the puddle at My feet of everything else Time has taken from me

Jelly Blueberry jam on a baby’s Face She will thumb it off and Run To you, the brother, with raspberry Caught on your knees, your Scream Sounding off, cracking canning jars Hidden Below wood indented by foot Falls From shelves scaled to reach berry Goodness Me, won't you be a good boy and Fetch The mulberry compote you were meant to Retrieve For your mother, who asks of you Just this One thing

Jessie Wang When the Wind Came I see her, leaves dancing down from the trees, clouds drifting above the mountain trail.

I hear her, birdsong tingling in my ears, the murmur of a stream by the rocks.

I feel her, the soft pat she leaves on my skin, a coolness trickling through my body.

She was there, guiding each step, as I hiked through stone and sky.

When the wind came, time unraveled, my eyes blurred with the light.

It was the end of the school year, I watched my friends in their graduation gowns, eyes twinkled as they waved goodbye.

The wind swept across the lawn, lifting petals, scattering the sky, parting people, carrying the time.

Though she takes time in her arms, she always brings new life, back in bloom.

Perhaps when she kisses my cheeks again, and I feel the wind once more, I will have quietly grown.

Yet, I would still be me,

feeling that wind, full and free.

I stepped off that mountain path, the hike had ended.

I patted the dust from my pants.

Looking up, ahead was the vast, blue sky.

A gust of wind passed by.

It guided me out of the shadows, into the light.

Natalie Weis Icarus

Stretched like strands of silk Statue turned to flesh warmed by sun Light luminous molten rays of Heat spur into motion of dizzying Heights to tumble into the sea Wings unsealed falling from flight Stillness gathered into electricity as Fire dances brighten the shadow As ice undulates uncoils like the tangle Of headphones as the spin continuous hopeful Life burst into energy green everlasting Stay gold

7th Grade English Teacher “Show not tell” Intensely irritating sometimes you can’t see Like gray eyes the hints still present in A brown-gray combination and you don’t know about That photoshopped picture of you floating around the class That caption reading Devil Teacher with your yearbook Photo manipulated to give you horns, a tail, a pitchfork, And flames around you You wouldn’t like it if I told you though Would you, fortune that “show not tell” is your Motto though you don’t have a penchant for the Dramatic no flair but you wouldn’t like it if I told You though Would you You devil faced teacher You unkind soul Soul reminiscent of a devil Devil teacher You wouldn’t like it if I told you that though Would you

Ellie Womack ALMA MATER the sky is blue but this boy despises sky blue a regal royal blue sings to him like a hymn, a sort of song his acne prone face puckers and falls when darker dignified blues fail because how could hollow-hued sky prevail soon that determined blue will be his and he will wear the chiseled horns atop his crown alongside the fiery cape of sky not yet touched by dawn as time trudges on he will remember this hiss of pride he felt when chosen while crouching under a tough tent in anticipation under rain and snow for that electric moment when true valor will challenge a porcelain-faced enemy, sky with a sugar-laced sneer that rivalry which transcends all reason or hope of reconciliation so we call it treason the deep against the shallow the two waters who never mix and yet they are made of the same stuff the rain of the ages and of all our tears their tears are the salty and true but I cry dark blue because blue cured this boy widened his airways he can’t imagine how the blue’s succor will live long and his daughter will pucker her face at that same sable failure years past the royal blue

past the less important hues his daughter will yearn she will burn it all for that same shade her father would gladly rip the blue from his past and paint it on his daughter’s hands so she could live but it is not his to give the color chooses its canvas

Josephine Wong Amus honeysuckle The drops of sweat rolling down my skin almost make me want to laugh. I’ve been visiting Singapore my whole life –a little Ohio precipitation will not be the thing that does me in. Nevertheless, I feel like I’m five again, back before I was used to the prickly, icky, sticky feeling of humidity. Like I’m five, begging my way into a dress and whining “Mama, do we have to eat outside?”, but then we get out of the taxi.

I feel the heavy air melt away.

The grass is green green green and “Oh, that tree is so. Tall!” and I’m turning to my mother because “Look! That bench is just my size. Like the fairies put it there,

just for me.”

I eye the red bundles on the branch above me, filtering the light that slips past the canopy. Yes, little me would have plucked a handful—or two, and maybe filled her pockets too—as soon as she saw them.

Fairy-blessed, she would have called them. She would have thought them magic lanterns or fairy apples or protections against the monsters, just like in her Lunar New Year storybook.

I can’t help but glance around for signs of fairies–a suspiciously placed leaf, a structure of twigs, a circle of mushrooms. Maybe that moss-covered log is the town hall, and those fungi are the balconies.

And maybe I should grow up already, and maybe fairies aren’t real, and maybe it doesn’t really matter at `​

​

all.

Iris Xiong When the Future Is Real In the moment of a normal day, I am sitting in the classroom staring outside the window. A faint reflection of my face wisps in the glass, rippling like water, silent and cold. Suddenly the teacher’s voice drones into a foghorn, louder in inflection, meaning all the same, and when I begin to listen again it dies quietly, naturally, wood rotting by the second, an intrusive cargo ship aging into an old ark. Still in its movements like I am still at my desk. But the water I rest on does not wait for me to sail. Still because I am trapped– no, not trapped, more heavy, weighed down, prey twitching in a spider’s web of chance, not caught, just wanting to feel each strand of silk, blood red, too delicate and holding the softness of life, too heavy when there are too many lives, manifesting in a million unused keys, surrounding, hanging off of red string, taunting in their ringing, at a breeze, and the metal is rusting wafts of possibility, untold lives and unread stories, the weight of each falling, one by one, finality in coldness hitting pliant water, rippling.

Zoya Zamir My Life as a Bullet I am hard metal packed tightly in the cool slot of a gun to proliferate man’s purpose I am the catalyst for red rivers and vicious destruction And I was made for death and scorching metal in human hearts.

Crumbling bones and lives into dull, silver powder.

Gunpowder.

Gunpowder that will fuel me and induce an even greater massacre.

I have become the toy tossed around by men Played with when they don't get their way And where people’s tongues are pulled and held silent.

My sole purpose is to consecrate the kill.

So I never argued when children cry and hide when they hear my scrapped and screaming wings.

I know the horror I’ve ensued with my sharp slaughter and poisoned penetration of life itself.

I know my harsh steel will always spike fear in innocent hearts, And I may have weeped for them if I, too, had one.

I know I will always take and take, never offering any kindness or solace.

And most of all, I know I will never be able to do anything about the plague I spread.

But let me ask you a question, dear human.

If I am but a tool for death, why should I be guilty?

I ask the man, what use is there in blaming the match for the flame’s fury?

Is it that the man would rather shift the blame than admit the blood on his hands?

I beg an answer.

I must know, am I worth this degradation when I become one with that pour soul before they sift into death?

I know I was the one to pierce the skin and commit the slaughter But when I soared through their body and into their heart, I resigned into death with them.

And I will stay here, forever folded and present with them, Strangely, maybe even morbidly…yet devotedly And that is more than any heartless killer could say.

NONFICTION

Asa Ardayfio Water lilies My older brothers, with mischief dancing in their voices, would dare me to walk down the sloped grass and peer over just where the grass kissed the pond and touch a lily pad. I never understood the beauty under the surface — until I saw the underside of my first lily pad. The saturated green lily pads catch beams of sunlight, as if they were meant to be admired while perching blotchy pastel pink flowers, delicate, like crowns. They huddled in groups lining the pond, floating toward each other, swaying back and forth but never straying.

As a child I would venture out to the large pond overlooking my backyard, strolling across its freshly painted white bridge while tossing bits of white bread at the minnows that would surely be overtaken by the larger, dominant catfish. I would point out the water lilies floating above the murky green waters. I noticed the long wiry stem tethering the pad to the pond floor. I saw the system of cells in rows circling the underside of the pad. The ways that their stems would support them as they navigated the waters allowed them to rest without fear of being led astray by the unpredictable climate or the domineering catfish. I saw microscopic worlds in these pads.

And that night, I didn’t have the words for it, but I understood why I never strayed far. My mothers silent hands that would knowingly hold mine the first day of school, brothers' nudges or shared looks at the dinner table, my fathers’ kind words, anchored just the same.

Tallulah Conolly-Smith For Juan You are why I can’t write. I haven’t written anything for days. And I know it’s because of you, with as much certainty as I know nothing I can write will make you stay.

I remember for your fifteenth birthday we took the F all the way down to Coney Island. It’s difficult to write about. Was it a marvelous day? Yes. But marvelous days were every day, and when I got home, I fell asleep on the couch without washing the sand out of my hair. Writing was not on the brain, because I only write when I’m falling apart, when I need letters and words, and in those brilliant summer months, I felt as though I’d never need anything else ever again. We gave you our best summers, and now you’re taking them with you.

We buried you! We buried you so only your face was peeking out. And then we refused to help you up, pretended that you were suddenly gone, gone and disappeared and six feet under and dead.

When the other guys started sprinkling sand onto your face, creating a little platform of it on your sunglasses, your girlfriend called off the joke and, laughing, helped you up and out.

Your girlfriend. She knew before the rest of us did. She was so good that she let you tell us yourself. She was so good that she pretended that nothing was wrong. Now she tells me that she’s angry, that she hates you for leaving. She keeps that note in her phone case, you know; that blue post-it in which you told her you loved her for the first time. She is so good.

You told me that it all started in rural Mexico, with a color TV. Your grandfather brought it home. It was their only valuable possession, and it was a big deal. Less than a year later, your father fell ill and dropped out of school. He lay bedridden for months. There was no money for doctors; the color TV had sent them into debt. By the time he recovered, he was far too behind in school to ever go back, and so he started working in the fields. He had a first-grade level education, out there in the sun.

And there, you say, began true generational poverty. In my lucky little mind, I picture your father as a young boy, running through the fields on rainy days. He tilts his head back and extends his skinny arms to the sides, welcoming the cool water on his sunburnt skin.

You can really trace it all the way back to a color TV? I’d ask. That’s tragically cinematic. I

could write about it. You told me not to. You didn’t think it was interesting. Your father had a firstgrade level education, and that was alright. Save tragedy for Shakespeare, you said, and save cinema for, I don’t know, the Jurassic Park guy.

You told us stories of your family. Their misfortune sounded almost fictional, so miserable and unlucky, and you’d make jokes out of it. I laughed, because deep down, I didn’t believe you. How was I to believe that so much calamity could bring about such a perfect spirit? And I was, am, a writer, though I may not be one tomorrow. So I saw everything in technicolor fiction.

I should have remembered that precious stones are pulled from the ground, should’ve remembered that before Spring’s arrival, Winter always claws at the city first. Flowers come from ice. Beauty comes from the dirt beneath our feet.

Our group of friends was always cinematic, because we were young and brilliant and saw a Heaven waiting for us above the clouds. And now it’s tragic too, because we are still young and brilliant but there is no Heaven, not anymore; because if we can’t all go together, then we’ll all fall.

We’d been seeking Heaven all this time but we hadn’t realized we were already there until you fell.

There is deep grief where there once was great love. I keep my head down now because I feel like people look at me and know I’m heartbroken. The grief ran through me, all-encompassing, my veins rising like snakes in water, varicose. I am too young for these types of tics. We are too young. You. Are far too young. Or are you? Are we? What has happened to us? Are we no longer young?

This will kill us all. So you have to remember, please. Don’t remember how we died, but how we lived. Remember sitting in the park across from LAMS on the concrete in the handball courts, laughing and sipping Arizona. Remember crowded subway rides. Remember late-night phone calls.

Remember walks home. We were surrounded by love. Remember us please, I know you will.

Goodbye, Juan. Thank you for everything. You are why I can write.

Catherine Cullen The Perfect Potion I am sitting in Emily’s driveway, waiting for my mom to force me to get out of her white, slightly tattered Ford pick-up truck. Everyone always asks me why she has a truck because shouldn’t my dad have one instead? They don’t know she’s a landscaper though, someone who puts her heart and soul into caring for everything, not just nature. She has taught me well. I’m usually excited to try new things, but a playdate with someone I barely know makes the pit in my stomach deepen. Emily is a new student at my school. My second grade class had recently welcomed her, arriving with a huge box of books in her arms with frizzy yet tamed hair, split into two neatly braided pigtails.

I jump out of the truck and open the charcoal colored gate into Emily’s backyard. She’s sitting on the ground, in a position we like to call criss cross applesauce, like she’s been waiting for me.

“Hi,” I whisper with my feet turning inward like I’m pigeon-toed, as I feel my cheeks turn redder than tomatoes.

“Hey,” she says, giving me an insight into the millions of stars and adventures deeply embedded in her hazel brown eyes.

I sit down next to her, and the same idea somehow simultaneously pops into our minds.

“Want to make potion?”

We practically sprint into her shed and grab anything we can find that is liquid. I gather sparkly nail polish and sunscreen in my arms, while Emily goes into the mini refrigerator to find a bottle of water. We meet in the same secluded spot on the ground surrounded by bushes. I feel like myself, like a real kid when I’m with her.

We meticulously measure out each “ingredient” with our hearts. The neon pink and galaxy themed nail polishes that sparkle when hit with just the right amount of sunlight and the slightly orange sunscreen that hasn’t been used in ages are stirred with small sticks we found in the firepit. The sparkle of the nail polish transfers to the glimmer in our eyes. As Emily mixes the potion, I take the aluminium can of sunscreen and start spraying the fence.

“Look, it’s like spray paint,” I tell her giggling.

She joins me, as we run around the back yard spraying lines of sunscreen, like we are decorating a christmas tree with garlands and strings of warm yellow lights. We fall to the ground, out of breath, but our small bodies are filled with laughter and love.

“What in the world,” Emily’s mother shouts as she steps outside.

Her face looks anything but happy; the wrinkles around her frown are prominent. She runs over to where we are lying and tugs Emily by her shirt so she is sitting up. I slowly crawl towards the corner of the yard, but it is no use. I can hear her mother’s harsh words, the scorning, the anger, and the disappointment in her for ruining the manicured, perfect black fence because it is stained with white streaks, but in our eyes, it is beautiful. She leaves Emily in the middle of the yard. I slowly crawl closer to her.

Her body is turned away from me, but it is rising and falling ever so quickly. I gently turn her towards me. The raindrops of tears fall down her cheeks, and her hiccuping in between sobs somehow accentuates her furrowed brow. She needs me. I practically jump as my arms hesitantly wrap around her, but in seconds they become unbreakable chains, an invisible string pulling us together, mending something deep inside our hearts.

Kate Diller Leaking ​

That ceiling is never going to be fixed. Day and night, trash cans, scattered around the studio,

attempt to catch the continuous dripping. I stand among my classmates at the ballet. My eyes reflect the light in the mirror. They are mirrors themselves, paving a never-ending path into my dreams. The strong, rushing river of fiery passion inside of me refuses to slow. But something else has already leaked into me. It has a grip on my left knee and never lets go.

“Okay, let’s do my standard for warm-up jumps,” my teacher says to the class. “Two-infirst-then-two-in-second-then-fifth-then-three-changement-than-eight-entrechat.” He peers through the crowd. I try to hide, but he sees me. “Be smart,” he says. “You really don’t want to hurt that knee any more.” My head bobs of its own accord, as I give him a thumbs-up – but his words cannot leak through the wall I have built around me, cannot drip through my self-created roof. However, the pain can, every now and then, find a crack to slip through.

Our teacher wants us to do the combination twice, to build stamina, he says. But even as I leap into the first jump of the second round, he holds up his hand, and says to me, “I think that’s enough for today.” I stop, in the middle of the studio, full of dancers who are actually dancing, my thoughts jumbled like a puzzle with missing pieces, my cheeks redder than tomatoes. He puts his hand on my shoulder and guides me to the side of the studio, where there is nothing left to do except watch the battered, broken ceiling leak, with a drip, drip, drip…

Why We Dance We dance for ourselves. Who doesn’t want to fly through the air, or turn as if you would never stop? Who doesn’t want to be a popular peasant girl, a swan in the moonlight, or a beautiful princess in her castle? And when a shock of pain flares through us, we ignore it. After all, our dance means more to us than anything.

We dance for each other. We are like sisters, sharing toe tape and lamb’s wool and gel squares, comparing pointe shoe brands, complimenting each other’s leotards and hairstyles. We dance, and applaud each other. We dance, and aim to imitate each other. And when one of us struggles to keep up-when her body holds her back-when there is fire consuming her toes, her legs, her torso-she remembers the fire of love for her art that consumed her soul a long time ago.

We dance for love. What is love? Pain and passion combined, success and failure. Love is the ice on our ankles after a long day in classes and rehearsals. Love is the role we win or lose. Love is our friends, our teachers, and our mentors. We desire success; we crave it. Part of us would do anything to feel the hot spotlight, to feel it send a shower of glory that trickles through our eyelashes and down our face, highlighting our hard-working, sometimes breaking, bodies.

We dance for life. We need our dance. It is the food and sustenance that keeps us alive, the ambrosia of our youth - youth. Youth is what we fear to lose…youth is what we strive to keep…youth is what we desperately hold onto. We see so many lose their youth, so often. We think, that could never happen to me, and yet it does. Still, we keep dancing. We see so many get injured, so often. We think, that could never happen to me, and yet… it does. What do we do? Well, we dance until the end.

Kennedi Lindsey Corkscrews ​

I am sitting in front of the salon mirror in a small beauty shop in the back of the mall. My coily

hair swaddled under a black microfiber towel, droplets of water still trickle down to the salon cape around my neck. I hadn’t seen my natural hair since the last appointment about a month ago. Before the prickly round brush and scorching hair dryer blow out my kinky hair, I see my hair raw and real for a whole three minutes.

In another mirror, I’m scraping a paddle brush over my curly hair, praying the hair will straighten. But only frizzy knots were displayed, and my tears painted the young disheveled mosaic reflected in the mirror. My curls reached the tops of my shoulders, but then I never wore my hair down. In grade school, I wore my hair in a few different styles. A rough slicked back bun, twisted plaits with bubble ponytail holders, or two thick French braids tied with thick elastics. But, I cherished most getting my hair done at the salon.

My mother’s friend owned the shop, and I felt special sitting in his chair; the other women who sat there before looked similar to me, as did the hairdresser. We all used treatments to conceal our hair, cutting, coloring, and straightening, till there was nothing left to cover up. The hairdresser would spend an hour and a half combing out the tangles in my hair, and would never comment about the state of it either. After the treatment, he would always compliment the length of my hair. “I never knew your hair could grow this long,” in a sickly-sweet tone. I visualized the condescension curling off his tongue. But I never cared because I was finally beautiful again, whipping my hair back from the doubts that crept into the corners of my mind.

However, my mother only allowed me to straighten my hair twice a year for Christmas and Easter. Brushing the tangles from my hair, she explained how she wanted me to embrace every ringlet since she hadn’t appreciated hers. I was young, so I just rolled my eyes, but beneath all that was a girl who was too naive to understand.

So now I’m still here, in front of the floor-length mirror, hair still dripping from the towel, beside me are an assortment of hot tools, flat irons, curling wands, and thin and sharp hair scissors, swimming in the refreshing blue disinfectant solution. In a swift lift, my hair is resting on my shoulders, still soaking with water. But the tight corkscrew curls were now depleted, stiff locks of straw in their place, and my mother’s words dissolving in the distance.

Ruby Miguel Lolo’s Fruits “Do you like fruit?”

“Yes, I do,” I tell him, resting the Dodger blue mug on the granite counter of my grandparents’ kitchen, the right corner of my mouth twisting higher into my uneven smile. He shuffles over to me, cutie in hand. I watch as his tanned fingers, wrinkled and speckled by age, pull back the thick skin of the fruit. He places two halves of the small orange onto a paper towel, his hands slightly tremble. I’d never noticed his tremble before. “Thank you, Lolo.”

Lolo. Not pronounced the traditional ‘low-low’ but ‘lu-lu’, a remnant of my older sister’s mispronunciation. She was the first grandchild. I was the last.

My childhood memories live in a technicolor haze. West Covina or Loma Linda, my time was spent picking fruits with Lolo in the backyard.

I’m half a decade younger. The soft pads of my feet, not yet tarnished by hours of passion and pain, scratch against the fake plastic grass. I stand in awe, licking the drippings of my avocado popsicle as my dad and brother harvest guavas from a towering tree. I observe the instrument in use, a long stick with a basket-like attachment. My fingers were sticky with milky green residue. The dry heat of Southern California’s sun beats my back; its warmth is different from Kentucky’s, but I don’t mind the brittle air just yet.

My time with Grandma and Lolo smelled of pungent, freshly fried beef lumpia, their small, crispy shells crunching in my mouth. The sweet juice of a mango dribbled down my arms while my teeth sank into its buttery flesh, pulp and strings weaving between crooked tooth gaps. I inhaled plates of Soup Bone with steamy jasmine rice for dinner, savoring the sour cabbage and the tender meat. I greedily ate avocado popsicles for breakfast. And in the afternoon, it was always time to pick fruit with Lolo. Vibrant citruses and textured skins, selecting the plum I desired or the lemon of my choice. Ripe mangoes, persimmons and pomelos, a chandelier of grape vines in the garden shed, banana clusters hanging over a gazebo.

I’m the baby of the family, number nine, my youth extended by the words and attitudes of aunties and uncles and older cousins. I was spoiled and spoken to through thick, adoring Filipino accents, and their voices were music. Their laughs are a melody, Lolo’s laugh gentle and Grandma’s infectious. They did not sound foreign or unnatural, to me, they were home.

Time doesn’t feel so linear when you’re young. It’s exponential but not fast. Time is subjected to the sidelines, not yet dictating your body or mind. Life was tart and candied, my youth protected and preserved in a crystal coating.

I’m half a decade older now. I feel the weight of age and the passage of seasons. Deadlines and agendas, pressures and apprehension. Days don’t feel jelly and never ending. You and I don’t feel undying. We don’t pick fruits like we used to.

I pull apart the cutie slices, popping its crescent sweetness into my mouth. Its thin film bursts, saporous acidity flooding my tastebuds. You smile, one corner rising higher than the other. You’re bringing me a red apple, then a cluster of wine colored grapes. More cuties, a lemon slice and a dash of honey in my hot green tea. You slice me a banana, freckled brown. I prefer my bananas greener, but that doesn’t cross my mind. You ask me if I like avocados with sugar and lemon juice. Of course, Lolo.

I bite into my spoonful of avocado, its rich smoothness melting against the crystal grains, its nuttiness blending with the lemon’s citrus. Mango.

“Lolo, when will the mangoes be ready to pick?”

Vivi Myers Brothers The Prius is second-hand and affordable, like everything my brother and sister-in-law own. It’s sticky and familiar and has Star Wars paraphernalia hanging from the rear-view mirror. I look down at the aux my younger brother and I so often fought over. My older brother would smile, with a small bit of panic, and tell us to take turns. My sister-in-law would raise her eyebrows, and ask when she would get her turn.

It’s only me and my older brother in the car today. Drew, is his name. When it is only the two of us, there is always a more serious atmosphere in the Prius. We talk of what was mine then with our dad, what was his then with our dad, and what is our now in our respective lives. We are the most similar of our siblings, and there is a certain heaviness in that. We both aim high, we both have anxiety, and both of our brains turn and turn and turn until we can find a solution that works.

But, some days, there are no solutions that work.

He’s sitting in the driver’s seat while I sit on the passenger side, shotgun, my younger brother would call it. The radio isn’t on and I watch the road as intently as he does. The silence is strong and questioning. Was it necessary for it to be filled? Or should we continue to stew in the loneliness of our heads?

“How are you doing, you know, with it?” I ask, glancing up at the rear-view mirror where his blue, blue eyes are focused on the road. They’re as blue as our dad’s, both our sisters’, and our younger brother’s. Mine aren’t blue, they’re hazel. His eyes flick at me, in the mirror.

“It’s hard, I mean, obviously you know that as well as I do. I’ve been seeing a therapist and trying to sort it out. You’ve been seeing one too, right?” His voice is smooth and I can hear the undercurrent of hesitation and carefulness that he always carries in it.

I had been seeing a therapist, one at school. She wasn’t bad, per se, but she wasn’t helping. She asked me questions, and I answered. She didn’t show pity visibly but I looked into her eyes and those can’t lie. She diagnosed me with PTSD and I tried to deny it. I’m not a veteran, I hadn’t grown up in a

broken home with broken glass and pill bottles. But then I couldn’t stop seeing. Seeing the blood, seeing how his eyes weren’t quite that same blue that day in the morgue. Seeing a bike with a wheel spinning and a car, a car of any kind because I had never seen it. Maybe it was a Prius. A Prius covered with the blood of my own, the blood of my br– The Prius came to a gentle halt at a red light. Drew turned his head to face me. It wasn’t just his eyes anymore. It wasn’t just the blue of my brothers anymore. It was Drew.

“Yeah, um, I’m seeing a therapist too,” I say, trying to look away.

“I miss him too,” he says back, a sureness in his voice. “It isn’t fair.”

“Life isn’t fair.”

“That doesn’t make it okay.” He looks at me with such a tender intensity. It’s a similar intensity to that of my younger brother, but there had never been any tenderness in Ross’ eyes. No, there hadn’t ever been anything tender about him.

“His memory grows with us, that’s how I like to think of it.”

I’m tired of words like that, no matter their truth. I want to say something snarky, something that Ross would say. But I look back in the rear-view, back in my older brother’s blue blue eyes and I realize I don’t have time for that. Not when I’m staring at the man who was more of a father to us than our own, and shared a loss as great as my own. I smile at him, a little sad, a little broken. “I’m glad you’re my older brother.”

Téa Vu The Paper Listens ​

To write is to understand. To understand is to love.

​

Imagine them hurling their words of fire at you. Your parents, your friends, your rivals, all the

people who minimize your words. Quick as lightning, they swallow you in their earthquake, drown out your voice, wrap you up in their tornado of control. And me, I can only sit with my mouth dry and throat clenched. It does not matter whether they silenced me or I silenced myself. The glaring issue is that I will never be heard.

The paper will listen. It will soak up my words. Uninterrupted, unjudged, unfazed. It will wait for my sluggishly keen brain. Welcome every backspace smash. Appreciate the time and attention. It will stay right there until I am understood. Until my love has been conveyed. What more could I ask?

But it’s not just about me. It’s about art. You see, what I love, I tear into.

My favorite stories, they don’t just withstand this scrutiny, they thrive under it. They reveal jaw-dropping layers and heart-wrenching complexities and mouth-watering depths. This is my food.

After I partake, the only natural course of action is to write. Only through writing can I explore these oceans: dive deep, challenge my understanding, test my love. Via my stories, I familiarize myself with the characters; I inhabit their minds and bodies and learn all of their facets. Then I use my imagination to fill the gaps. The cycle of consumption and creation; nothing brings me more joy.

Because I love to understand and understanding is a love language whose only medium is the written word. So I will write for as long as love beats in my heart. And someday, I will be understood.

FICTION

Harper Baillie Excerpt from Drawn Quietly The bar crawled with inbreds and elves. The smell of old beer wafted, and boots stuck to the floor. Under the dim light, Aster almost couldn’t see the man sitting in the corner, except for where his long, muscled leg protruded from under the table, leather boots with burned etchings. She passed the other drinkers, head held high with conviction and destination, eyes sweeping each neighboring being.

Wax coated the wrought iron chandeliers, and a general air of clutter filled the small space. Stone was bleached with age, and dirt seemed to radiate off each person she slid gracefully past.

Aster was draped in a long black dragonhide coat, and although covered by a loose leather wrap, her braided hair poked out along the bottom of her spine. She knocked a pint over with her right hand, smirking as the round, oafish man turned to yell at her. The reddening irritation in his eyes dissolved into interest as he took in her face.

Aster’s eyes had always plagued the attention of others. Deep golden mahogany. Their curiosity was typically unreciprocated, although she often found the inherent hostility and predictable temperament of men entertaining. The oaf got up from his barstool, stumbling with intoxication, bits of food lodged in his beard and froth coating his chin.

“Whereabouts you from, m’lady?” he said, struggling to keep his eyes fixed upright with decency.

“Nowhere near here. Go back to your beer.” She replied calmly but certainly. She looked him up and down, any interest fading back to chilled indifference. His, however, did not. He drew himself up slightly, assurance growing.

“Perhaps you’d be needing bearings for the night.” It was not a question.

“I apologize for my lack of interest. I’ve always been capable of finding them if I desired.” She looked at him, the insult in her voice unmistakable. The entitlement in his stance flared, but she didn’t shy away from the chance to cement his inferiority.

“Back to your alcoholism and worthless conversation.” She turned away towards the corner-dwelling man, smiling slightly, fingers twitching in her pockets.

His hand rose just in time to grab her hip, when she struck. A silver dagger sheathed somewhere he hadn’t noticed was thrust into the side of his temple. Blood poured down slowly as she pulled it out, wiping it on his dirt covered clothes. She propped him up where he had sat before, guarded by the noise and stuffiness. Winking at the barman and ordering a drink, she made her way to the back of the room, towards her grinning leather-clad tryst.

Blythe Balock I Can Play The Piano I really can.

I can play a chord chart, if you’d move your hands.

I can find a note after a key change – yes, even with sharps.

And I know you don’t think that I have, but I’ve found middle C. I know about my left hand; I know how to arpeggiate And no matter how many times you ask me, yes, I do use my pedals.

Could I play on Wednesday, this time? Just the song you don’t want The easy one, without the augmentations; I’ll save the better one for you And stick to my mic on Friday.

But in all honesty – and I know you love honesty – I don’t like how ‘please’ tastes anymore; I’ve bitten off enough tiny bites of that fruit, rotted since last August.

And it was, in fact, in August, when I swore off learning the piano; I’ll shamefully admit it was because it reminded me of you and your insufferability.

But now I’m bitter in a different way, In the way that I allow myself to do the things that I used to do in the ‘before’ in the ‘after’.

Or should I call it the ‘new before’?

It doesn’t matter – this is all just over a piano, isn’t it? A couple chords?

And though we fluctuate between laughing, hating, and an unspoken middle, This, I tell you, remains stagnant: I can play the piano.

And even after you come back from music camp and are the first to play in chapel, And persistently insist how I’m wrong and tell me how you can teach me…

I will not ask before taking my seat at the leather bench, because I can.

I wish I could tell you that we don’t need to prove to believe.

Clayton Cox The Fallen Dunes In a world that had been ravaged and ruined, long returned to dust, a bleak and hostile wasteland encompassed most of the globe. The once pristine ocean waters evaporated into the ever-heating atmosphere. The creatures that had lived in these vast waters were forced to evolve or perish. Any intelligent life had migrated to the much more passive climates in the northern regions.

The last remnants of civilization that chose to stay watched on as their great cities fell and became one with the sand. These survivors became like the environment, merciless and cruel, thieves and warmongers rose to power in the chaos. No one remembered what the dunes had been like before. No one cared to remember. If it wasn’t necessary for survival, it was useless. And then Ethan Wyrm, the Yu’Taka, fell from the sky.

A loud thud echoes through the caves as Ethan’s silver boots touch down at the bottom of the cave. He fastens a rock on the rope twice to confirm the pulley is fastened down before he unhooks himself. As he removes the mask from his face, he looks around the large caverns, only illuminated by the sunlight peeking through the small gash Ethan previously dug out. Removing his sun goggles as well, Ethan detaches a torch from his belt. Quickly unclipping a bottle of Duyr, or sunbugs, Ethan stepped out of the circle of sunlight and into the darkness. As Ethan steps out of the circle of light from the small hole in the cave’s ceiling, the darkness completely engulfs his figure. The torch in Ethan’s hand was his only means of seeing his surroundings. His hard boots crunched in the cold sand beneath him.

Large shapes of concrete and brick, misshapen from decades of erosion, support and stabilize the caves hidden under the desert. Ethan’s eyes roam over the cement and brick, but he sees nothing of interest. The small hope to find something, anything to trade with locals was fading, leaving nothing but an empty feeling in his stomach. But then he sees a piece shining in the artificial light, hopefully something valuable. As he rips the shining object from the wall, the entire cavern shifts, and small rocks fall on Ethan’s black sunsteel shoulderpads. Rare finds like this kept Ethan alive, despite the dangers of cave-ins. For the next hour, Ethan found multiple trinkets, jewels, and gemstones.

As Ethan pulls another silver pendant from the sandstone, the walls shift slightly, and sand falls from the now-shaking roof. He shoves the pendant into the bag on his waist and hears a louder rumbling begin, and rocks start falling from the roof. Ethan sighs, looking down the dark cavern that he now knows he won't ever be able to explore. Large chunks of concrete, sand, and brick begin falling around Ethan as he turns around and begins back up the tunnel. By the time Ethan makes it to the pulley, the entire cavern is falling apart. He quickly ties himself to the hook and, with a deep breath, removes the heavy rock from the rope. Ethan shoots up, the line zipping like the sound of bugs in an oasis. He sees the large rock he used to weigh down the mechanism fly past him, disappearing into the dark cave. ​

As Ethan pulled himself from the cave, he saw a sandstorm approaching quickly. The gushing

of wind muffles the sound of the cave below his feet collapsing. A large creature looks over at him as he begins tying his gear onto it. The creature has six heavily armored legs, with a dense shell to protect the body. It groaned and stood up slowly, becoming restless as the sandstorm approached. Ethan quickly mounts the creature and pulls on the reins. The beast moving slowly before accelerating into a gallop.

He saw a rocky formation in the distance. It wasn’t large, but big enough for Ethan to wait out the storm. He pulled the reins and steered the creature towards the sandstone outcrop.

Sophie Etherton The Death of Eristos ​

The golden daylight from the sun slowly dimmed as it sank below the horizon, liquid light

pouring over the desolate landscape in one last desperate effort to renew the land. For centuries, the land of Eristos had flourished, a place known for its lush landscape and vibrant culture. But now, a sickness had come over the land, trees withering, animals dying, water fading away, absorbed into the cracked dirt where only death reigned. The people who inhabited the land had fled their dying villages and left all of their possessions behind in a futile endeavor to escape the affliction, only to perish in the endless, bone-white sand that had replaced what had used to be green and lush. Only a few remnants of the thousands who used to populate the country had reached the last safe haven remaining, an oasis they called “Khanera,” meaning light. Indeed, this sanctuary was a flame burning against the darkness, one last beacon of hope before the sickness consumed everything. I was one of the lucky souls—or would it be unlucky?—who had escaped the clutches of the desert. Perhaps I was fortunate in surviving the initial wave of death, but maybe it would have been easier to have stayed with my mother and sister and let the dust cover me, rather than watching my own end coming from what was simply an illusion of safety. For indeed, Khanera was crumbling too, no matter how hard the survivors tried to pretend that it wasn’t. They said that there was still time, that “we would find a way,” but deep within our hearts, we knew that we were only prolonging the inevitable… There was one last possibility, however. At the beginning of everything, when the creator goddess Oaxtu had breathed out the foundation of what would become Eristos, Her sorrow for what Her creations would suffer manifested in a single, perfect tear leaking from Her eye, falling to earth and bursting into a banyan tree. This tree, called Sebatye, was a promise to Oaxtu’s creations. She swore that as long as the tree stood, as long as it had even a single bud on it, She would not forsake Her world. But the moment that the tree finally fell, She would allow Eristos to be lost to destruction. She vowed to do this because if everything truly reached that point, it would be solely because the people had fallen into darkness and extinguished their own light. And indeed, that was what had happened. The foolish people had been divided, rent

asunder by their desires for power, and fell to fighting, self-proclaimed kings razing villages and destroying families only to be defeated themselves, an endless war which consumed nearly all of us. The war did eventually end, but not because the world came to its senses—no, it was because so many millions had died that there was no one left to fight.

Even though all seems lost, even though the sound of women weeping and the desert wind howling permeate every last corner of Khanera, I still choose to believe that Oaxtu will offer us salvation. I do not believe that it will be easy to attain, or simple, or anything but a challenge requiring for the whole of humanity (or what is left of it) to change their very natures, but that does not scare me. For when I lie beneath these scattered stars, the branches of Sebatye seeming to touch those little pinpricks of light, I can hear music pouring up from the roots, liquid beauty winding into my ears and seeping into my soul. As long as the song of the world persists, how can there not also be hope?

Nazlı Eyigör Azrael… Reads?

Wobbly stairs led downstairs. It was disorienting to move from an exterior space to an interior one. There were not any windows since the shop was beneath the street. Maybe only four people could stand up at the same time, the shop was that small. The walls were bare and some of the bricks were visible underneath the plaster. The place was dimly lit, the only light source the flickering, uncovered, old-fashioned lightbulb.

Something was buzzing, I suppose. It must have been the lightbulb; but how could a lightbulb still function when the glass was broken? And then I heard it, the sinister laugh that could not possibly belong to the sweet old man sitting in the shop. He had one of those wrinkly old faces you would see in ‘smoking kills’ ads –no teeth left and hyperpigmentation around the eyes.

One step into the shop, I was hit by the sour smell of hand-rolled tobacco cigarettes and expired lavender incense. Perhaps, the man was burning the incense to mask the smell of death, but my eyes watered as I approached him. The smell of awaiting Azrael was something I always noticed since that night at the emergency room. I guess there must have also been the smell of the old books, printing ink, and that distinct copper smell that handprints leave on the covers after decades of use.

With a gulp, I tasted my very own blood on my tongue. Did I bite my lip? I could not remember biting anything. I could not feel the pain, lightheaded. With every step, I felt more… free. My fingers were numb and my legs felt the same way they felt that Thursday night when I was sixteen and overdosed on illegal vodka and father’s whiskey. But the guilt and the feeling of saliva pooling in my mouth before the horrible end of vomiting did not follow the gut-wrenching feeling this time.

It was crazy how nobody noticed this shop, the entrance just standing there on the busiest street of Kadıköy. People laughing, eating, drinking and smoking; but nobody was looking at the tiny bookstore that seemed desperately out of place on the street that was just reserved for pubs and takeaway fast food shops. Or perhaps, they chose to ignore the shop. Did everybody know about this shop? Why had my friends not told me about it when I first moved to İstanbul?

I knew what was coming and now understood why the laugh of the sweet old grandpa scratched my ears the same way my old cat would to my arms when I squeezed it to death. Air was squeezing out of my lungs. Oh, but to go surrounded by old books and this sweet scent of lavender and tobacco… I could not panic even if I wanted to. My legs were moving on their own accord, walking closer and closer to the old man.

The man’s grin widened and widened until I could not only see the teeth and the gum but the tendons pulling at his cheeks and the white bone peeking under torn skin as well. Blood dripped down to the ground, evaporating and diffusing as red smoke before it could stain the unpolished hardwood floors. I was too busy staring at the floor where blood pooled just seconds before, I could not see what caused the next sound I heard: A squelchy, raspy, hollow pop. Before I could look up, the cause fell to the floor and rolled over to my feet. White, webbed circle with tendons following closely by. And when it stopped, it flipped upside down, the pupil blankly staring at me.

I opened my mouth to scream but no sound escaped, only one pathetic, shrill wail. I heard the guy laugh and once I mustered enough courage to lift my eyes off the ground, I was met by a completely different face. The face of Azrael winked at me. I knew my life was ending, but I did not even care. Only one thought clouded my brain: ​

Azrael… reads?

Isabel Fogel SUMMERSVILLE, WV You can learn a lot about a place from its name. What is summer but the season of aching? It’s the time when every horizon looks unreachable and every orange sunset stains the world with longing. Summer hurts the way a last meal hurts, the way sensations on your tongue are so much sharper knowing that you’ll soon taste nothing but ash. And Summersville hurts like a confession whispered in the dark, like a secret that would make your mother stop loving you forever, like sitting on a worn wooden pew and knowing that Christ died so that you could be this – this wretched, twisted, beautiful thing.

When Elizabeth Bowman thinks of her hometown, she thinks of fear. She thinks of shaky hands grasping dollar bills at an ancient diner on Main Street. She thinks of a girl, a car, a cloudless sky, the eyes of the town watching them speed down an old Appalachian highway. She thinks of climbing up the trellis of a fine brick house on a humid summer night, slender hands pulling her silently through the window. She thinks of sticky skin against gingham sheets and two racing hearts against each other, pounding so quietly but not quietly enough to escape God’s notice. In other words, when she thinks of her hometown, she thinks of love.

Nowadays, Elizabeth likes to say that you can take the girl out of West Virginia, but you can’t take the West Virginia out of the girl. People can see it on her, and smell it too. They see it in the faded blonde hair caressed by years of soft sunlight, in the firm blue-collar handshake and the easy smile. Her eyes are the same greenish brown as the pond the locals never dared swim in.

For the first few years after she left, Elizabeth had a recurring nightmare: she is trapped in that pond, the one those kids years ago never came back from. There is nothing around her but green leaves and green water. The sky is gone, and she is wrapped up in hazy warm sunshine, and she is drowning. The water tastes as sweet as red earth when it fills her throat and mouth. Somewhere to her right, a brilliant

dragonfly floats lazily over the surface of the water, sparkling in the light of the invisible sun. Her arms are beginning to tire. Her splashing and gasping is so far from any human ear that it might as well be silent.

Elizabeth has not seen her brother Jamie in eighteen years. But when the sandy-haired man comes stumbling through the doorway of a sandwich shop in Manhattan, she recognizes him in an instant.

That swamp in his eyes is the same.

S. Fruscella We Were Trapped Author’s Note: This piece describes the relationship and situation of a pair of cousins living in a small town in Maine for a longer work of mine.

We were a kid sister to an out of place cousin in a tiny town in the endless pine forests of Maine. We were quiet, we were careful, we were alert. We turned off the radio and raced upstairs when the crickety old station wagon pulled into the driveway, when the footsteps of her father or rather my uncle echoed throughout the old wooden house. We hid in my room, locked the door, and climbed past all the clothes into the closet. We shut the door, kept off the lights, and waited, and waited, and waited until finally we gained the courage and pose to walk orderly down the steps and sit at the long wooden table. Uncle, Auntie, Cat, Felix, that was us, in a house with small windows and a dying fire.

Our postures were straight as a whip. Our eyes locked on our plates. Our voices never wavered.

Sometimes we’d be anywhere but home. We ran amongst the towering oaks and mahogany, trunks thick enough to conceal, we swam in haunted lakes where the mud streaked our church clothes, we camped in half demolished cabins where the rain leaked through the Swiss cheese roof, anywhere but town, but home. We waded into rushing streams with little golden slivers of fish, we caught them, we released them, we cooked them over amateur campfires. We were pirates with no ocean, thieves with no jewelry to steal, overachievers with no prospects. We were small. We were determined. We were alive.

We grasped for the sky, for the train tracks, for the bus stop. We strayed far, but were always home before dark, never too far, always in reach of duty and blood.

Every day we saw the sun dip down, orange and ruby streaking the horizon, it pulled us west, it pulled us back home. Then in the morning we’d stray once more, we were pulled back, we’d stray, they’d pull and pull, till they’d drag us over the river rocks and through the woods and we learned to stray closer, we were palatable, we were burdened, we were leashed.

We were trapped.

Cambria Hu It was a Friday

He found his English teacher dead on a Monday.

They turned in their essays on a Friday. Staring at the body on the floor of the classroom, he

mourned the end of individual autonomy.

There was an uproar, of course. Ms. Emma was well-liked, sweet, and endearingly eccentric; the students who still had the capacity to enjoy learning naturally loved her. But not enough, he thought bitterly, not enough to keep her alive, not enough to join her cause. All these silly mourners with no understanding of the cause she died for.

No blood, no sign of blunt force trauma, no sign of choking or suffocating, so the paramedics naturally chalked it up to an untimely heart attack. He knew they couldn’t see the truth and refused to see the facts he saw: she still wore the same petaled blouse from Friday; the stack of papers in the turn-in box remained untouched even though she would have graded them on the weekend; the lights were off as if she died when the sun outside was not still rising; an uncapped red pen and a student’s essay with a shaky line drawn across their name was on her desk. She died on Friday, but the idiots in his class who believe the paramedics heart attack story—which, he is sure they made up because of their confusion—did not understand.

A few hours later, he saw an official statement put out by the school regarding her death in his email inbox. “Heart failure” they called it, citing her “unknown health issues” as their reasoning. He scoffed as he sent the email to trash; nobody understood that she died for a cause, that her cause of death was closer to an honorable suicide—seppuku, his mind supplied—than the failure of her glowing heart. The paper-white camellia on her windowsill slumped over, wilted.

During lunch the students who have had their love of education drained out of them started maliciously whispering.

“Guess we got out of that one,” someone whispered, “My whole essay was written by ChatGPT and I didn’t have time to humanize it before we turned it in.”

Giggles. “Let’s just hope we get this lucky next time. I couldn’t imagine doing my homework without AI,” their friend responded.

He disfigured him with his glare. It was their fault she was dead, and they have no remorse. Idiots, truly, he thought scathingly.

If only they could remember the dead-serious tone she ended class with on Friday. If only they could remember the vibrant, sincere care, in her eyes. If only they listened to her when she repeated, multiple times per project, that she forbade the use of Artificial Intelligence. If only they could remember her words as she finished introducing George Orwell’s 1984.

She said—gaze burning, arms flying wildly—“This dystopia presents a society drained of free thought. Education is what gives you autonomy and the ability to think freely. And that is why I choose to die on this hill fighting the losing battle against you students and your AI. One day, I know I will lose this battle, and you will find me dead.”

Uncoincidentally, they turned in an essay on Friday and the whole class, except for him, was flagged for AI usage. Uncoincidentally, the whole class wrote similar essays with similar structures and similar claims and subclaims—except for him.The words “education gives voice” were faintly erased on her whiteboard.

Her cause of death was simple: she lost her battle. There was no point in protecting individual autonomy anymore, nor the ability to think for oneself.

He didn’t write his next essay.

Aubrey Kloepping My Philodendron is Gone. ​

Not dead, but completely vanished, as if it never existed. In wild confusion, I pour the soil

onto my desk, hoping for a glimpse of the hair-like roots—evidence that it existed. If someone had come into my room and stolen all of my plants, they wouldn’t have been able to uproot it this cleanly without leaving behind pieces of fine roots. And yet there’s nothing in the pot except dirt. There’s nothing in any of my pots. ​

My prized monstera in the corner of my room is an empty white bowl of soil. My pothos plant,

usually cascading down the side of my bookshelf in leafy rivulets, has vanished. Even my favorite plant—my aglaonema that my friend gave me before leaving to be a nomad in Europe—is inexplicably gone, leaving my apartment a cemetery; each pot is a crypt missing its corpse. ​

Shaking, I cup the nearest pot with my small palms, pressing it to my cheek and murmuring.

The world feels strange. The sunlight through my window feels cold and harsh. It lays on my table in stacks. ​

Releasing the ceramic pot onto the desk, I catch a glimpse of Miso’s peach cat bed, a worn

ragged thing with stuffing spilling out of its fissures. It remembers her claws against it. A thick coat of grey fur lines the sides of the cot, but it’s all that remains of her presence now, despite how she usually sleeps there while I sleep, as if watching over me. But there’s a chance she got up before me, or she slept somewhere else around my apartment.

The strange light stains the air, making it foggy; it’s difficult to navigate now but I stumble out of my bedroom, calling her name frantically because I have to find her and hold her small body in my limp arms, please be here, little Miso, please! I check underneath the couch, behind the curtains on the windowsill—everything bears her mark, her storm cloud fur that drifts in the hazy air and presses to the curtains and chokes me on my clothes and skin and in my mouth. I check in the cardboard box she likes to sleep in. I check and check and check, but it’s to no avail; Miso is with the rest of my plants, wherever they are.

​

What kind of thief steals plants and cats? My plants are not valuable—they’re common

houseplants. My wallet remains lying on the kitchen counter, yet the plants near it are all missing—a graveyard of empty pots and useless cat toys. I have to find Miso. ​

Outside my apartment, I bang on my neighbor’s door, the sound echoing down the tiled

hallway, disrupting the stillness. More forcefully the second time. He must not be home. I try the door next to my own. Thud, thud, followed by bitter, stinging silence. Fuck. The third door I try hastily, hardly pausing before trying the next door, and the next, knowing the response that I will be met with and I can hardly breathe—Miso has never been alone outside of her carrier. Maybe whoever robbed my plants accidentally let her out, and she somehow made it outside the apartment building. She might be run over, dead. Her body contorted, splintered bone. Blood coloring her smoky silk fur, darkening it, making it permanently damp. Cars swerving to avoid the mangled body, lamenting how bad her death must’ve been; children gasping in horror at their first glimpse of the gore of death; some ignoring it, running over her again as her body gets pounded into the ground and it becomes impossible to tell where her body ends and the street begins as she is spread so thin against the asphalt. ​

Somehow, nobody on my entire floor is here.

Brynn Litus Watersong The water called to her, a song that drew her to the window in a rainstorm just to watch the droplets chase each other down the glass pane. Sometimes she’d stare at a picture of the sea, longing for the sensation of sand between her toes as each wave caressed them, slowly covering her feet in a layered cocoon of silky stone. She begged her parents to take her there, of course, but they met her plaintive pleading with excuse after excuse, as though rehearsed. It’s too cold today, they told her. The ocean is too strong, and you’re too little. It will sweep you away. So she plastered pictures of waves and windswept beaches to her sky blue walls, only dreaming.

A glass cup, clear and sharp, sat untouched on her desk. The still water within was mesmerizing, each trapped bubble transfixing, and she watched it, unwilling to drink. Then, at last, she lifted the smooth cup to her lips, tasting the sweetness and wetness of that perfect, glistening water as it slipped down her parched throat, pooling with a comforting weight in her stomach. She craved the sensation, hungered for it, but her parents would snatch away the glass before she could refill it, never letting her drink more than one at a time. Her throat stayed warm and wet, but she was parched, starving for water she thought she’d never reach.

Summer came, the sun blistering, pulling every last sweet morsel of water from pavement and parchment. She was drowning, suffocating under the oppressive weight of hot humidity that sapped each fragile drop of strength from her scrawny form. She collapsed into the bathtub, fingers reaching feverishly for the cool handle, sighing as the water squeaked and twisted free, droplets burbling and singing to her as they gushed from the faucet. She watched each drop fall, not even caring when a thin film of water began to slide over the metal rim of the tub, pooling like a lake on the bathroom floor. In it she saw ripples dancing in the sunlight, waves crashing on rocky beaches, their song a siren wailing from far beneath the choppy surface.

She had to obey the water’s song. It was a desire driven deep, a stake into her heart, freeing her blood, like water, to run rushing for the door in the dead of night. Her head pounded with each boom

of thunder. Waves crashed against her skull, desperately needing to be let free. The front door banged open, summer rain pouring down into the hallway, soaking the carpet. As she stepped out, arms outstretched to embrace the falling droplets that cleared her vision, her parents’ cries were drowned in the storm. She ran, raindrops washing away the tears also running, despair trailing down her parents’ faces while pearls of pure joy sprang from her eyes.

Water. It was all around, a call to somewhere far away, in every drumbeat of falling droplets, every lightning flash that illuminated the streams rushing down the street like a river out to the sea. She chased it, herself an echo of that unstoppable river, reaching out for something far in the distance, an ocean she’d only dreamed of. It called, and she was helpless, powerless to stop her feet from following the path laid out in the tracks of the clouds’ tears. Time was meaningless in the rain, nothing mattered but the pounding of her feet echoing the beating heart of the storm and the water that finally embraced her as its own.

A gust of salty wind suddenly whipped her sopping hair from her face, stopping her clumsy advance. Rocks crumbled mere feet from where she stood on the cliffside, waves beating the shoreline far below. It was more magical than any dream, the screaming call of the water becoming a roar in her ears, the thunder of the storm in her heart. The rushing wind as she leapt was her lightning, a split second of pure exhilaration and golden light that made her heart race. She was truly alive for the first time as the sea welcomed her with open arms. The raging of the storm and pounding of the waves were silenced by its soft, cool embrace as it enveloped her in silence. The water called to her, and as the last wave closed over her head, salty sea filling her nostrils, she could finally breathe.

Sitara Patel Thunderstorms ​

March was the first month of spring, still holding onto the icy grudge of harsh winter. The air

was bone-chillingly cold with fog that coiled through the streets. A soft frost crusted the grass. She shivered as a bitter gust of wind snaked its way down her back, hunched over with folded arms riddled with goosebumps.

She slumped on the wet bench, checking her phone. Twenty-one percent battery. Nine minutes. Heavy rain splattered against the bus stop shelter, drowning the sound of rush hour traffic.

She clutched her bag closer, numb fingers tightly gripping the straps.

She heard a thump and looked over to see a boy her age drop his backpack on the other bench, sitting down beside it. He spared her a glance, too quick to be natural, and trained his gaze on the road in front of them. She pursed her lips, checking her phone again. The screen was dappled with large raindrops. Seven minutes. Twenty percent battery. She hit the ‘low power mode’ button with a cold white finger.

She flicked her eyes to the boy. Soaked brunette hair plastered to his pale forehead, familiar dull Atlantic blue eyes. His left leg shook, as though he had too much energy. A small voice reminded her it was a nervous tick of his. His eyes met hers, just for a moment, before he looked back at the road. He showed no signs of making smalltalk. Six minutes. She wiped down the screen with the hem of her shirt.

“Weather sucks, doesn’t it?” She asked, soft voice almost swallowed by the downpour. The boy tore his eyes away from the road, expression unreadable. She always found that annoying about him.

“Yeah, it’s awful,” he replied. “Hopefully it’ll stop soon.” A pang of disappointment struck her. He loved thunderstorms. They had stood in the rain together once, without umbrellas or rain jackets. She waited for more of an answer. She didn’t get one.

“How are you?” She asked. The question felt like a stab. She was the only one keeping the conversation’s heart beating.

“I’m good,” he said. “You?” A sting pricked behind her eyes before they welled with tears. He used to say more, and she used to listen. She loved each and every one of his little, seemingly pointless life updates.

“I’m doing well,” she croaked out, looking away so she wasn’t lying to his face. She cleared her throat, ignoring the lump forming. A silence followed, each second stretching for eons. Four minutes left.

A shadow crossed the stop. She looked up from her lap to see a bus parked at the sign. It wasn’t her bus. A rustle beside her indicated that the boy was leaving. She furrowed her brow.

“Wait!” She blurted. He looked over at her, face impassive as always. But though it might have been her imagination, she thought she saw the slightest hint of wonder. She took a deep breath, ignoring the way his eyes bore into hers like they always had before. “Don’t be a stranger.” He narrowed his eyes at her in confusion.

“Sorry, what?” The bus doors opened with a hiss. He hesitated, looking at her one last time, then turned his back to her and boarded the bus. The doors closed, and that was it. She felt a hot raindrop run down her cheek and onto her lips. It tasted like salt.

“I wish I still knew who you were,” she spoke into the rain. She looked up into the gray sky which wept with her. Then, in a whisper: “And I wish you still knew who I was.”

She checked her phone. One minute. She rose from her seat, stepping into the storm and staring at her bus as it approached. She didn’t mind the way water dripped from her bangs into her eyes, seeping into her cotton clothes. The bus doors opened, and she entered.

She didn’t look behind her.

Bella Pettit Glass Ceiling Limitless Day passes in a frenzy, and yet the world recovers and quiets, all in a month.

Towns are now silent, broken only by the thrum of rare automobile engines or the clatter of bipedal feet on concrete. When those aren’t present, the lively town wilts and dies.

There is no buzzing of pests, no crying of bickering bird families, no skittering of hungry rodents busy rustling through trash. It’s silent.

Silence hangs in the air like a crushing fog at night, when Palia paces through the town square.

A light breeze rustles the towering oak tree in the center, drawing her attention to the noise with a sharp startled snap of her head.

It rustles more, the gale whistling through its branches, singing a mournful tune that grieves the loss of birdsong.

Palia stares up into the tree, her red-rimmed eyes erupting with longing as they flicker from the tree to the path her footprints left behind. Her eyes grow glassy as they trail over a house in the distance, expression shuttering as she twists away to face the tree again.

This is her choice. She’s always known that, long before a voice, worn with age and wisdom and kindness, told her: Limitless Day was named by those who saw the best in your ability, a chance to defy what unsaid rules we once followed. Do it. Defy. Look for limits—for they are as strong as glass—and break them.

Break them, my songbird.

With a smug smile, Palia throws her arms open, letting a tingling sensation envelop her as a bright pink glow beams from her heart.

It feels so natural. Feathers sprout, tickling her sensitive smaller nerves. She hops in place, blinking up at the oak that suddenly swirls upwards like a spire. Her golden wings are cumbersome, but their heavy weight soothes her—they feel like a promise, a promise to take to the skies.

And she’s never one to break a promise.

Later, Palia’s parents would follow the only birdsong in their trees to find her.

“Oh, honey, you can’t be a bird! It’s just not right, for any of us, anymore.”

“Your mother’s right, Pal. Just come along now, we can go home.”

The canary would stare at them, her beady eyes narrowed with shrewd disdain, before flapping her wings and taking off.

And if her singing brings more to join and accept their ancestry—butterflies and deer and crickets and foxes—she’ll keep it to herself, and enjoy the melodies that only true life can bring.

Ozette Rice Ali’s Snow Cone Shop Mary never liked taking her kids to Ali’s Snow Cone Shop. Not because of the half-mile walk there, although she always had to guide her children across the street like a mother duck with her ducklings at the broken light. Mary didn’t want to be the mother duck. She wanted to be a duckling, fuzzy and timid and yellow like butter before it hits the pan and begins to sizzle. It also wasn’t because of the owner, though she never wore her hair in a hairnet and Mary always had to peel long, thick black strands out of her blue raspberry cone and they always clung to the gummy bears like they couldn’t bear to leave them, because that gelatin glow was the only thing keeping them tied to a life of sugary wonder and away from the the rough, grimy pavement. It wasn’t even in the way her kids asked, pulling on the threads hanging off her jean shorts, their fat faces round with hope like she was the sun and they were flowers that had been waiting all winter to bloom, leaving Mary no choice but to oblige. ​

Mary’s first rule for the walk was don’t look down. If she looked down, she was bound to see

the dandelions bursting desperately from cracks in the pavement. And the dandelions would make her think of Jack, her first husband, their wedding ceremony on the Easton Elementary playground in red polos and khaki bottoms, the dandelions in her hair and the fact that he hadn’t wanted to pick them for her and so she’d had to pick them herself, roots and all, the grainy tendrils ready to worm their way into her ears. Jack was gentle like that, not wanting to damage the stems. He didn’t break crayons in two right after using them like the other boys and he always held in his bubble of air for the longest.

And that would make Mary think about how many times she’d been broken in half, how much of that

waxy pigment was on the hands of others, how much of herself was gone to those endless snaps. And then she would probably break down crying amidst those hopeful dandelions and her kids would watch in horror. So, rule number one: don’t look down. ​

The tricky part about the operation was that rule number two was don’t look up. Don’t see the

blue sky still lit with the late glow of summer and definitely don’t find the moon, that big white circle that somehow is always visible before the sun’s gone down completely, that doesn’t know when it’s not wanted. Because if Mary saw the moon, she would think about watching the Thriller music video on the brown comforter of her parent’s bed, the terror she felt when Michael Jackson looked up with yellow eyes like the bright crayons that always got the worst of it, turned into a monster by the sight of the moon. For months after she saw the music video, that image was burned in her mind. When her parents forgot to pick her up after school and she sat criss-cross applesauce on top of the monkey bars and saw that huge white cratered circle in the clear sky, it terrified her. She jumped to the ground and buried her head in wood chips until she was sure she hadn’t been turned into something different, something unnatural and unwanted. ​

If Mary made it through the whole walk there and back with her eyes fixed directly in front of

her, unruffled by the traffic lights or the hairs in her snow cone, she got complacent. But the challenge wasn’t over, because rule number three was to not think too much after she got home. Not when she got in the shower and the hot water pushed the syrup, still sticky and dried on her hands, down her body in bright little streams. Not the way it rid her of sweetness as the syrup trickled sadly down the drain, Technicolor blue against the clear water as she turned into mother duck, elementary divorcee, her head pulled from the wood chips and forced to face the moon.

Molly Rosenberg Sam and Sylvia and Jeremy and Mary Kate and Tommy and Susie We didn’t ever mean to go inside, not really. We spent our first afternoon out of school sprinting down uncharted summer gravel, propelled by adolescent adrenaline and the mosquitoes nipping at our heels. It was the whole group of us: Sam and Sylvia and Jeremy and Mary Kate and Tommy and Susie. So when the sky boiled into a muggy soup and the mosquitoes screeched their battle cries and the houses around us dwindled into fences and then forest, we could do little but pray that the rain wouldn’t come. It did, of course. And it wasn't so bad for a few minutes, drops warm and gentle as they kissed our cheeks. Soon, though, the sky spouted fat teardrops and Sam got all stressed out—as he often did—about ruining his new perm.

We didn’t really even mean to step onto the porch, but that old house which lay tucked in a grove of maple trees, nearly decomposing into the swampy Earth, promised shelter that called out to us like a beacon—or at least it called out to Sam and all of his vanity. Sam ran over the quickest, covering his fresh golden curls like precious treasure, but the sagging awning provided little respite from the summer storm and dirty raindrops still peppered our heads and shoulders. Mary Kate suggested we go inside. Tommy shook his head furiously—that crybaby—but Susie shushed him before his eyes could erupt with fearful tears.

She placed a pale hand on the doorknob, and it squealed in agony, as if to protest our disturbance of its harmonious stillness. The whole building shuddered. Something black and spindly dropped onto Mary Kate’s messy red hair and Susie screamed so loud and so high we thought the house’s cracked glass windows might burst out of their panes then and there. Tommy was quivering by then, literally shaking with fear. Jeremy slapped him on the back and told him that he was being a baby, and he seemed to stiffen after that. We dared Sam to open the door next, but his cheeks flushed a deep shade of pomegranate and he backed up, frightened eyes shielded by his crown of curls. Jeremy chuckled to himself, a false show of bravery, and faced the door with menacing determination, but he, too, remained paralyzed in apprehension. Sylvia, of course, was the one who finally shoved open the decaying passageway.

The inside of the house was dark and warm, with dust particles lurking stubbornly in the small slivers of light they could find. Inside, it smelled of old books and mildew and something else—something terribly frighting and foul. The floorboards cracked heavily under our feet. The floor was moving. We leaned in closer.

The floor was not moving, in fact; it was crawling, with the same thick, spindly creatures that had earlier assaulted Mary Kate. Through the grey light that trickled in from the front entrance, we peered down at what the insects seemed to be encircling. The object on the floor was grey as well, faded with the darkness of its own solitude. We realized then that that object was not something at all, but rather, someone. Fingernails packed with soil and attached to thick purple fingers poked out glaringly, though we could not discern to whom they belonged—the specimen cut off sharply at the wrist. Susie let out another one of those high-pitched screams, and the whole house rattled again.

Sam was the first to leave, to run out into the rain, no matter that perm anymore. We followed him, blood and bile climbing up our throats, and shut the door tight behind us. Sylvia, remarkably calm, suggested we seal the door shut for safety, so we slid a cobweb-clad bench in front of it. A few insects had escaped and were crawling curiously up Mary Kate’s freckled legs as she cried and flailed about.

AJ Schlang Rise ​

Deep in the heart of battle, low in the windswept plains where mist hung heavy and the scent

of death hung heavier, a Nameless Soldier rose. A sea of broken bodies had replaced the green field that had been host to the horror of war. Corpses, all studded with arrows, impaled by lances, riddled with bullets, and burned by explosions, were strewn along the once beautiful landscape and stretched beyond the horizon.

There was no life.

There was no hope.

There was no love.

Still, the dead man rose. Bones creaking, body caked in mud, sweat, blood, and spit, he rose. The silent darkness around him stirred, like water breaking around a head rising to take a ragged breath. Silver fog spun around him as he struggled to pull himself higher and higher. He gritted his teeth, muscles straining with the effort to rise just another inch. Beneath him, death beckoned. That sweet embrace called to him, an easy release into that silent night.

The Nameless Soldier spat through his gritted teeth, rejecting the mercy offered to him and he lifted himself higher. He rose to his knees, then he lifted a foot, then he lifted another. Using a weathered longsword to support his weight, he climbed even higher. He ascended from that void beneath him, letting out a primal howl in defiance. He cursed the darkness at his feet, that primordial force trying to claim his soul. His will.

The bestial roar rung across the empty hills, the noise rolling across the land like thunder. The empty void, the easy night, the sweet release was broken by that indomitable surge of power as the dead man pulled himself to his feet again.

The enveloping mists parted, allowing molten sunlight to spray across the field of devastation.

An updraft of wind surged, as color bled into the land of the broken. The dark void was suddenly filled with bright red blood, camo-green, silver plates of armor and bare-chests decorated in bright warpaint.

They beckoned to the Nameless Soldier’s call, and began rising too.

An army of dead men rose, seeming to soar in the rising sunlight. Some stayed dead, choosing to stay in the night’s embrace. They chose their final rest in the void, sleeping in a pool of warm blood, while others rose, swelling up into that cold jet of wind. Pain welcomed them. The Nameless awoke from their dream into a nightmare, nursing broken bones, cut flesh and crushed limbs. Each one let out their own cry of defiance, wrenching themselves from death and rising in a chorus of savage screams.

Protectors, guardians, warriors, Nameless all. THEY ROSE! In response, an opposition stirred under the horizon, malevolent forces gathering. Each Nameless turned and saw the looming threat approaching. They saw the long shadows cast by the sun, the lust for blood. They also understood their duty, the reason they had risen.

Guns were cocked. War-horses were mounted. Blades were unsheathed.

The Nameless Soldier lifted his rusted longsword as the rest of the warriors rallied behind him.

Millions of banners rose into the air. catching that steady updraft of cold wind. Blade upraised towards the blood-red sun, the Nameless soldier opened his mouth and bellowed. Not a roar of defiance. Not a scream of savage strength.

A battle-cry.

The rest of the Nameless joined in the rally as hundreds of warhorns bellowed their vicious cries.

Together they charged.

Noa Spector Things We Can’t Chase Away Sometimes when I’m afraid, I become reclusive. So much so, that not even God himself can decipher my thoughts; and if not even He can, then how is someone such as myself supposed to live with these pounding horrenities?

Sometimes when my eyelids turn heavy, I become reclusive. I run from the town, from these people who haunt me, follow me, laugh at my drunken words. I stumble through the darkness and find the dilapidation which I call my front door. I grope for the edge of my door and manage to swing my foot above the step that has only a mind to trip me. My poor balance meets the soggy wood where the monsters crawl from below, creeping up my legs and into my mind. I lay there until my eyes are no longer strong enough to hold up my eyelids and I’m staggering in and out; only when I finally find a state of sleep do the horrenities wake me.

Sometimes when my screams deafen her pounds on the door, I become reclusive. Glass bottles shatter on the walls and floors of my house, the rugs covered in glittering shards. Lying with blood dripping from the line across my eyebrow, she finally found me. “I’m sorry,” I say to her as she kisses the line of blood away. She holds me and takes my bottles away and when she asks me I say, “I promise.

I’m sorry,” but in my eyes I know she sees but not sorry enough. It’s when she shuts the door that I run out of my house on steady feet only to stumble home.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I slur when I lean over the toilet with her hand on my back, a touch so light that it’s almost not there. My own voice sounds in my head and I see her face, her beautiful face, twisted and wet and red and pleading to do it for her, that I just need to say I’ll change. My voice tells her how I’m sorry, how I’m so sorry, that I’ll stay home and I’ll drink water and eat food and clean my room, so she gives me a small smile and wipes her eyes and nods; but this time she knows what she saw in my swollen eyes.

When she finally leaves and locks the door behind her, I run. I run after the drop of life I have left. I stumble after her and fall into my car pressing on the gas chasing after the one thing that pushes the horrenities away. But something isn’t right because there’s a bump in the road. And so I get out of

my car and when I see her there on the ground, all I see is I’m not sorry enough in her eyes that stare up at me.

One time when there was finally nothing else, I became reclusive. So much so that even God himself wasn’t able to reach me in my reclusivity. And because even He wasn’t there, nobody was able to hold me back from following her.

Grace Sun The Relapse I stared at my reflection in the mirror – a pale, shrunken face, like a flower drained of all its colour. The flower hung there like a jagged edge of cracked glass, like a broken piece of memory, like a reminder of the time when it was still alive.

When did I die?

Death was not a common occurrence. The death wasn’t literal; it came gradually like a tidal wave. Then the memories became scattered and forgotten. Now, even the act of remembering was something physically straining, something that scorched me on the inside.

Why do you keep doing this if there is so much pain?

I laughed. The hurt was sort of freeing, wasn’t it? Feeling something so intensely made me feel like I was still alive.

The starvation became craving— the craving for life, for any sort of life, for any sort of feeling that was still alive. So close. It was so close. I could take it and nobody would know. A little dose, a temporary high. Maybe just one. One wouldn’t hurt.

Or would it?

I felt my fingers shake. Quiet trembles like white noise; yet loud and howling.

I put on makeup. It was a practised manoeuvre, engraved into the deepest parts of my skin. My hands were robotic, robotic so that they did not shake or tremble. I fell into the familiar patterns of the past— the peach-tinted powder across my face that cleansed my face of scars. Add a bit of pink, add a bit of life. Even if it washes off so easily, at least it would stay for the time being. In this moment I became alive, though only on the surface. This performance was one I could put up with for a while. A new mask, a new me.

The doorbell rang.

“Mariole!” Her voice was so alive it made me want to die.

She pulled me in for a hug, though she was merely hugging a doll. An abandoned doll, tossed

away to the side of the room by a precocious child. A doll no longer loved because she was simply unlovable.

Then her eyes lingered for a moment too long. I felt my hands shake.

“W-what? What is it? Is it my dress? I’m sorry, I didn’t know what to wear…”

“No, no. Not at all. You look beautiful. You look better than ever – two months clean already!”

I tilted my head to the side with the hope of conveying embarrassment or timidness. I was an excellent actor. Why wouldn’t I be? I’ve been doing it for my whole life. She carried on babbling about her wonderful vacation. Her talking was so free, so painless, while every word I spoke felt like vomit, like forcing something out of this already vacant shell.

She was proud of me, I could tell. She’s clapping at me because I had put on a good show. Her words are like echoes, there but not really there. Half there. Specific words popped up here and then, like half-eaten bites of candy. Maybe that was where I was— halfway. Not at the starting line, not at the finishing line. Just stuck there, in the middle. With no clue of where to go.

Why do you resist it? Why do you contain it? Why? Why is there guilt in craving joy?

The guilt was pointless once the act had been committed. I laughed.

Maybe this life wasn’t so much of a hell after all.

Ashley Thompson My Lovely Wife Ryko pulled the bow across his viola, playing a sonata with all of the intensity of a fourth movement. His hands trembled from the performance anxiety he had never quite managed to shake.

A Brahms sonata scratched across the strings with a disturbing hiss, and he winced at the discordant sound it made in his mind. It didn’t make a real sound, after all, it was in his head.

There was no viola and he doubted his scarred hands could hold it even if there was, but Ryko was nothing if not a dreamer and a reckless imagination was the only thing that could save him from the crippling fear of never playing again.

He didn’t know what was worse about the room he was kept in: the lack of sheet music to write down his compositions or the lack of viola to play them on. They were equally tragic lacks to him, although, since he was skeptical of his ability to hold a pen or a viola, the real problem was the burns on his hands. In the front of his mind, as he fantasized while humming a certain sonata, he was holding the instrument and the bow with hands that didn’t shake, arms that didn’t spend lonely nights wrapped around his own knees, a body that didn’t flinch at loud noises.

In the far more realistic back of his mind, he was sitting in a locked room, staring at the wall with his hands flat on the metal bench, wishing the steel would cool the burns on his palms. Oh, the things he’d done to keep the Antimelodics away from the other members of the Secret Society for Composers Invested in Original Symphonies.

He hadn’t been to a meeting in weeks: he’d been taken and most likely presumed dead, and it was the last thing he wanted to think about. How he missed sitting next to Iolanthe as the two of them worked together to decode messages.

The Antimelodics have burned the Sibelius. Hold on to every scrap of the piece you have because the original has been destroyed.

And, at the time, he had smiled because Iolanthe hated Sibelius, but it wasn’t funny anymore, not now when he missed meeting up with a clandestine organization to save the fate of the classical

world. No one thought that one little speech about music being “manipulative” could go so far, but it landed him with burnt hands and a fear of something far worse to come.

A loud crash sounded from the main level of the house, and Ryko’s spirits lifted. Someone had found him, he knew they had this time, or else he’d worked his way up from rock bottom in vain, and not for his wife or for SSCIOS or for musical freedom.

Someone ran down the stairs to the basement and struggled with the door handle. Electric relief filled the air like static. A broken voice screamed curses as the door remained locked from the outside. The woman yelling didn’t have the key. Another crash and the sound of someone stumbling down the stairs came from outside the door.

“What’s going on?” The man who was supposed to be watching him shouted, “What are you trying to do? You can’t take him out the back, you’ll have me to answer to! Who even are–” He let out a heavily muffled shriek before he could finish. The door was kicked in and Iolanthe Arrata stood with an iron grip around the guard’s twisted arm.

She was his music. He didn’t require anything but breath in his lungs to love her.

“What did you do to him? Actually—no—you speak and I’ll stab you,” she warned.

“Who are–” he was cut off by a knife in his heart.

Ryko grinned at Iolanthe, but the corners of his lips tilted into a smirk as he looked down at the guard. “I see you’ve met my lovely wife.”

Kate Vasanth Icy Finger of Death Today I learned what a brinicle is. It was on the Nature Channel at two. Oh, and I ate the pot roast that Cynthia dropped off– it was alright, but you know how the woman likes her chardonnay.

That’s great, Honey. Did she stay? What’d you guys talk about?

She had to go pick up the kids from some summer program for “gifted children” or whatever. I should have sent Peyton away to camp somewhere– I think she’s been kind of… bored. Do you know what a brinicle is?

No, tell me.

Basically, as seawater freezes, it forces out any impurities, so all the salt becomes concentrated in pockets of brine. When the ice cracks, say because of a big wave underneath, or it starts to melt, the brine trickles out. It’s heavier than water, so it sinks, and since the freezing point of saltier water is lower, the brine turns the surrounding sea into an underwater icicle. That’s a brinicle. Oh, and they’re also called “Icy Fingers of Death.” It’s really cool, I think.

Brine-i-cool.

Shut up.

Hey, if you're mean like that, how are you ever going to find another husb-

Anyway, I forgot to tell you, the brinicle doesn’t just freeze seawater– it traps all the starfish and sea urchins and other marine animals that get too close, pulling warmth from their bodies, making them just as cold, then encasing them in a sheet of salty ice until they just… die.

Why don’t the little guys just run away?

They’re too slow, probably. I don’t know. Or it’s like one of those horror movies that staples your throat shut as bile creeps up, but you just can’t look away because it’s so interesting, and you want to see what happens next, even though you know something bad is coming. I’m not sure. The full bottle of red in Cynthia’s “wine roast” took over before I could finish watching.

Well, it sounds really powerful, this brinicle. Strong. I feel kind of bad though. I bet it’s just trying to make friends with the critters, in the only way it knows how.

It’s just ice. And, actually, it’s not strong at all. One little ripple, not even a wave– a ripple, and it loses its anchor to the sea floor, splintering and shooting shards upwards before they melt back into the water and disappear. Until the next brinicle, I guess.

Hey, Ell? You know you’re not an icy finger of death, right?

I miss you.

Natalie Vernon Red Telephone Booth ​

​

There were countless red telephone booths in New Orleans. Each one was no longer

used, with chipping paint and rust growing on the door hinges. It was a miracle that they were still standing up. But one telephone booth, found on the most busy street in all of New Orleans, looked just as perfect as it did one hundred years ago. Its crimson paint was vibrant, like it had been freshly painted. The door opened smoothly without any screeching, like its hinges had been newly oiled. And the lights inside still shone, like the bulbs had been frequently replaced. ​

Alfie had been doing all of those things. He painted the exterior every week, he oiled the door

hinges every month, and he replaced the light bulbs when they burned out. He had been doing maintenance on this telephone booth for twenty years, and nobody in New Orleans ever complained that he was doing the work without having a permit. Not once did they report his unauthorized labor.

They all appreciated that he was making the city—albeit a very small part of the city—a little bit prettier. Everyone in his neighborhood knew him, and would wave as they passed him on the street.

On Saturday and Sunday mornings, Alfie could be found painting the booth in a fresh coat of scarlet red. On the twenty-first afternoon of every month, he could be found oiling the door hinges. And on random nights, he could be found replacing the light bulbs. People only saw him during these times.

They had no idea where he disappeared to during all other hours. ​

Alfie was happy with his routine. Aside from Friday nights, during which his schedule

deviated, Alfie spent every waking moment either at the telephone booth or at the opera. During the hours in which he wasn’t working on the booth, he would sit in the same obscured back-row seat in the same vintage theater, watching the sopranos and tenors sing their magnificent arias. Then he would visit the telephone booth in the dead of night, when there was no chance of being seen by anyone who may frequent the street in the earlier hours. If the booth didn’t need any work, he would stand in there and dial random numbers with the New Orleans area code. If the recipients answered, he would speak to them, asking them questions about their worries or their personal lives. Most would get offended,

and hang up the phone. But on occasion, a kind soul would tell Alfie their troubles, maybe even asking him about his, and Alfie knew that they would be the next donor. ​

On Friday nights, after he had oiled the door hinges, Alfie wouldn’t return to the telephone

booth or the opera house. He had other plans. After he had found his new donor, he would use the White Pages inside the booth to locate the person’s home address. While other directories were outdated, and excluded the plentiful new information born from the digital age, this telephone book was always growing. In the last fifteen years, it had doubled or tripled in size, accounting for every new number, every new address, every new connection.

Later that night, he would find them. He would use whatever methods he needed in order to bring the donor back to his cute 70s cottage, where he would hang them upside-down from his ceiling and wring them dry. Once the pure, untainted blood was thoroughly drained, he would retrieve an empty paint can from his storage closet and pour the substance into it. ​

The next morning, he would return to the telephone booth at 7:25 a.m., carrying his paint can

and a paint roller. Then, he would get to work. ​

Alfie’s methods may have seemed specific, and perhaps unwarranted, but he knew that they

were necessary. The telephone booth needed righteousness. If the blood was tainted, the booth would reject it and begin to oxidize and rust. And that was the last thing Alfie wanted.

Henry Wade Fissile ​

I had thought the war was over. We all did. For ten long years, the stars had been plunged into

bloody chaos unseen for centuries. Plenty of people knew it better than me. I’d only fought in the first half of the War of Survival. It was a fitting name. Life or death for both sides. If we won, freedom could persist. But if they won, there’d be no one left to stop them.

Them. “Empyreans,” we called them. Apparently they were once Humans. Now, not so much.

Their ancestors, they say, had disappeared into deep space, and returned from the heavens under divine blessing to save our little corner of the universe from annihilation. Able to bend the might of collapsed stars, and shielded by their nigh-indestructible forms, they chased back and banished the darkness. We called them saviors.

But as the years wore on, more Empyreans were born of those noble few. And it was them who turned their people from saviors to sinners in order to fulfill a sinister notion they believed with all their hearts- having saved so many lives, having so much power, and being so few in number, how could they not be the ones destined to reign over the cosmos? Of course, we all thought they were blinded. Delusional, even. Slaves to an impossible idea. At least it should have been impossible. Yet planet after planet, star after star; billions bowed, until we fought back. Hope returned to every weary heart when news of one Empyrean’s death in an uprising reached far and wide. It was proven now, clear as day. They could be killed. So began the war.

3899, Cuirass Colony. My classmates and I had just graduated. Instead of chasing jobs or love, we were chasing a thrill. There was an inextinguishable fire in my soul, a blazing fury that I wanted nothing more than to unleash on the tyrants who threatened our way of life. The next year, off we went to the front line. I was most surprised to find that in the military there were more people like menot men or women, but boys and girls. So as the hour of our first battle approached, rumors and stories spread like wildfire. The rankers, no- minions, of the Empyreans, soldiers from across their empire, were no match for us, especially when we stood together with our many allies. With our superior technology and numbers facing a force of disorganized recruits scrounged up from every corner of the

galaxy, we were sure to rout them. The real threat, my comrades would tell me, would come if one of the few Empyreans themselves entered the fight. Then, well… then we’d have to pray.

We fought our first battle on the ocean world of Wynclo. Lashed by sheets of rain and with only bolts of lightning to illuminate the battleground, it was sure to be a rude awakening. Then we learned that the rumors were true. Wynclo’s brainwashed defenders were dispatched with ease. But their masters were not so easily defeated. One of them appeared that night out of the stormy chaos. I never saw them. I only know because no other being could command the power that rent our ranks before me. For a split second, the noises of the pouring rain and speeding laser bolts were cut out. A transient flash of radiant indigo burst forward from somewhere up the way, speeding down the slick avenue. The blast held a deadly beauty– sparkling like crystal in sunshine, or stars against the blackness of space. Its very essence seemed woven of ethereal threads, joined together to compose an immaterial, impossible fabric. It was dazzling, but foreign. Eldritch. Wrong. The thin flash roared past me in the blink of an eye, violently rattling my eardrums and knocking me off my feet. Spitting the murky water of the sidewalk out of my mouth, I heaved myself in my heavy armor to my feet. Where seconds before my compatriots had stood, my eyes now beheld nothing. Hundreds of lives washed away in an instant, swept away by a cosmic tide or harvested like stalks of wheat, simply ceasing to exist. Whatever tears I may have shed are sure to have disappeared in the rain. I did all I could. I ran.

Faculty Jen Luebbers Leonard ’09, Director Amy Butcher Dr. Peter Grandbois Dr. Julia Kolchinsky Alison Stine ’00

Teaching Assistants Cordero Estremera ’23, Head TA Kt Amrine ’24 Elizabeth Koeppen ’27 Maggie Malin ’25 Charlie Stocker ’27 Zoe Ward ’28

MEET THE WRITERS

Nina Apple

Asa Ardayfio

Harper Baillie

Blythe Balock

Nidhi Bathla

Olivia Carey

Tallulah Conolly-Smith

Clayton Cox

Catherine Cullen

Kate Diller

Sophie Etherton

Nazlı Eyigör

Isabel Fogel

Asher Hill

Cambria Hu

Greta Haroldson

Aubrey Kloepping

Helen He

Miah Knight

MEET THE WRITERS

Kennedi Lindsey

Brynn Litus

Ruby Miguel

Alexander Muñoz

Vivi Myers

Michelle Nguyen

Sitara Patel

Bella Pettit

Ozette Rice

Molly Rosenberg

Adriana Sarraf

AJ Schlang

Noa Spector

Grace Sun

Iris Tanner

Ashley Thompson

Emmerson Todd

Kate Vasanth

Natalie Vernon

Téa Vu

MEET THE WRITERS

Henry Wade

Jessie Wang

Josephine Wong

Natalie Weis

Iris Xiong

Ellie Womack

Zoya Zamir

Jonathan R. Reynolds Young Writers Workshop 2025

Happy Writing!

-Piper Pipsqueak Elizabeth Butcher