The Current (and Fragile) Emotional State of a 20 Something- Volume 1

THECURRENT (ANDFRAGILE) EMOTIONAL STATEOFA20 SOMETHING*

*SERIOUSLY, IT’S WEIRD.

WELCOME TO THE MOST CONFUSING DECADE OF YOUR LIFE!

Easy does it!

vol.1

A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR IN CHIEF I WASN’T PREPARED FOR HOW HARD MY TWENTIES WERE GOING TO BE. I HOPE THAT THIS ZINE MAKES YOU FEEL LESS ALONE IN THIS EXISTENTIAL PERIOD OF YOUR LIFE. I KNOW IT HAS FOR ME. THANK YOU FOR ALL THE EXTREMELY TALENTED CREATIVES WHO SUBMITTED PIECES- I AM TRULY GRATEFUL FOR YOUR IDEAS AND WORDS.

Contents Self Portrait, Audrey Nguyen- page 4 Rock Conversations, Audrey Nguyen- page 6 Love Letter to a Hot Queer Bitch, Ashley Mezzano- page 8 Taped Together, Yanisha Luckhea- page 10 Beatles Nostaglia, Yasmin Goshen- page 11 Post-grad Apocalypse, Matti Blake- page 12 Twenty Three, Yashaswini Sharma- page 14 My Hair is Going Gray, Fija Dahlia- page 16 The Ongoing Car Ride, Ahmad Morid- page 18

it’s hard for me to start a poem with “I” because the next best thing i can follow myself up with is a blank page and some paper cuts doused in hand sanitizer. do you think snakes hurt when they shed their skin? like i know humans shed their skin everyday too but we can’t feel differences or see changes when it happens. it’s like we do it so much we are numb to it now. new clothes don’t excite me anymore. the mirror bores me. i hate finding hair everywhere in my room daily but can’t tell when a strand is uprooted from my scalp. would it be better to have some kind of indication like how new skin itch on a healing scar? or would that be annoying like armpit hair the day after shaving? butterflies’ transformation is probably the most distinct. i wonder what they do with the cocoon after. does it just hang on the branch like the pierce the veil t-shirt from the 2016 concert i never got to go to? can i spin it into silk slip dresses that make my arms look big? can i tear it apart and make a y2k miniskirt that shows the organs in my lower belly? i envy everyone who is everything i’m not. i want to be everyone who is everything i can’t be.

i want to cut my hair and be grunge and fairy core and get a tattoo and erase the tattoo and be a soft girl and wear big bows and sip overpriced co􏰀ee and be dark academia no light academia and get my shit together and not break down once a week and be chaotic core but with an organized mess on the floor and be a baddie and girl crush and get a tattoo and be a sexually liberated prude and pursue science artistically and do art scientifically and not drool over the “that girl” headphones and have the time to journal in the morning and be outgoing and quiet and be chill but revered. do you know tarantulas eat their old molt the same way i eat my own heart except they don’t throw it up? skincare overwhelms me and i cried in sephora last week. i curse at the dumb 14 year old that found “i’m not like other girl” tumblr and now i don’t know how to do my fucking make up and am too scared to ask. i wish wattpad hasn’t conditioned me to be shy y/n so i can just show my face and not have anxiety attacks. i was 11 when i found erotica in my school’s library and now my perception of love is fuck(ed). i wish i wasn’t numb or bored. i wish the changes had manifested themselves more clearly and like a slap in the face or a boiling stop sign. i wish i didn’t have to go through puberty twice. i wish this was not a midlife crisis.

i don’t know who i am or what I want to be. the very best thing i can follow myself up with is a question mark.

Audrey Nguyen

She/Her, Canada @au.noia

Rock Conversations this is nice in a way i am enthralled by the silence when time stops screaming

my name

i long for this peaceful

disruption where i can be nothing and no one

being in between

rocks and a place

that is no longer hard but melted away walls opening up its

rib

cage

for a deep breath of stillness and sun i am not percieved by anything but the other unconsciousness and

the distant

light not even (within) myself my voice is silent texts on empty dust streams

the

pebble

sound a boulder makes

when it drops to the ground and no one notices the screaming meaningless of it all

so I don’t know - i answer and the wind smiles i want to be happy - i cry and the clouds idle

i need space - i think and space keeps expanding i am - i stop and everything carries on

Audrey Nguyen

She/Her, Canada @au.noia

Immortal Aphrodite, on your intric child of Zeus, weaver of wiles, this Dear Lady, don’t crush my heart with pains and sorrows. But come h you listened. And you came, leaving Then beautiful swift sparrows led from the sky through the middle air whirling their wings into a blur.

Rapidly they came. And you, O Bless a smile on your immortal face, ask why did I call again, and what did for myself in my frenzied heart:“Wh to your love? Sappho, who is doing yo

For even if she flees, soon she shall And if she refuses gifts, soon she sh

feed me

with the servings you no longer give to your favorite ex-partner, who remains your best friend while you still love her.

Woman warrior, tarot reader, star chaser.

I remember those days where vague platitudes could make you love most things.

These days you wonder if there are any kind words said about you.

And you laugh; people pleaser in recovery.

You decide you do not enjoy becoming a myth for another crush to speak into life.

Ashley Mezzano, 28

She/Her Jacksonville, Florida @ashelymezzano on Instagram & Threads

Yanisha Luckhea, 24 She/Her London, UK

TAPED TOGETHER

Pale blue dot, can you see me?

I am within you, a tiny speck of stardust formed a billion years ago. I am energy, neither created nor destroyed, existing infinitely. I am a segment of the orange that you give your lover, friend, sister, painstakingly peeled, removing the fibrous shell that holds me within. I am a wave in the ocean that you swam through as a child, salt stinging in your eyes. I am the perfume that your mother wore, craning your neck as nostalgia brushes past. I live in the glossy pages of an album, scuffed at the edges as the pages were held. I am the tear that you shed when your life was ripped apart, and the hand that you held as you taped it together again. I will never leave you, I exist here, now, everywhere. I will be sunbathing in the crevices of time, reality distorted. I will never leave you. Hold my hand, and see that yours are intertwined.

Greetings from

Earth!

Beatles Nostalgia

By Sh Y NY e/H as C er m in Go sh en

Post--grad

I can’t help but think all the time, big wild swirls of pain and loss and suffering that lurk in every corner I hide in. I do all the things I’m told, take medicine, pick up a benign hobby and still it does not help. I still have nightmares that all my friends are leaving me alone and there is a doctor slicing something out of me before sending me to work a retail job. When the computers all go down at work I cartwheel to the conclusion we are all going to die in some cybernetic apocalypse that I couldn’t comprehend if I tried.

I’m scared of love, most of all. I’m scared of being loved more specifically, a peak behind the curtain of a grotesque sideshow.

I’m full of all this love that I scrape back up inside of me until it bursts out. It is physically exhausting to hold all the love I feel back in fear. I’m an expert bailer, slipping out the back door of someone’s life before they even had a chance to get to know me, let alone love me; worst of all I try to give it to the most undeserving people, because I already know they will throw it in an incinerating trash shoot the minute they can find one. That doesn’t make it hurt any less, of course, just predictable. My life is full of wailing and pleading with god and yet there’s never quite a full release.

Apocalypse I can feel myself getting abrasive to the people around me, asking the same questions on a loop and reconfirming answers to questions I myself already know the answers to. We talk about the same three things at nauseum and the outcome is never helpful to either party.

Matti Blake, 24 she/they Ohio, USA

I think twenty-four is the worst age a person could be, but then again I said the same of twenty-three and twenty-one. I listen to folk music and I watch the deer eat petunias out of my neighbors flower bed and I wonder if this is all there will ever be, a one bedroom apartment and a deep foreboding feeling that never goes away.

Yashaswini Sharma

My Hair is Going Gray.

10 tips on dealing with men’s villianisation of the aging woman!

It’s not a big deal - I know that. “Gray hair is such a look.” Says one friend, when I explain to her why I haven’t cut my hair. “I love my gray hair.” Says another, her dark locks streaked with white strands, and she lifts a section, shows me the light roots, stark against the rest, sprouting from the one spot where she’d struck her head against a stair, back when the guy she was with was nice enough to be worried, but not nice enough to be her boyfriend.

“I think gray hair is sexy.” A guy I’d known my whole life tells me when I explain to him over the phone that I’ve gotten older, that I can see it in my face, that the light roots freak me out. My boyfriend thinks it’s sexy, too.

“It’s not really that gray, anyway.” He’d said after I’d burst from the bathroom, panicking about aging, panicking about looking older, panicking about being a woman instead of a girl. I’d grown frustrated at his response - irritated by his nonchalance.

Don’t you see, I’d thought, that I’m losing my worth?

That aging will ruin me? It doesn’t matter - I know that. Aging is beautiful. It’s a luxury, something some girls never get. Some never feel the weight of womanhood filling the curves in their body, never see the veins begin to age their hands, never watch in the mirror with scrutiny as their cheek drops just slightly.

It’s ridiculous. It’s man made. It’s vain. It’s humiliating, anti-feminist, pathetic, ageist bullshit.

“I get it.” A girl told me, a stranger. “You’re too young to have gray hair.” We’d been at a party, and the music was loud and the lights were blue and low and she had to lean down to say it, her long hair brushing against my cheek as she shouted the words. “I’d be scared, too.” It’s not so much that I’m scared of looking older, I think. It’s not that I mourn the beauty of my sixteen year old face, the sweet youthful glow before the world dampened me. I don’t cry on my birthday because I am scared of getting older, I think. It’s not the fear of lines, of the gray hairs, of the withered hands. I think, really, it’s because I don’t feel my age. I can’t grasp it.

The lines between 20 and 23 and 25 all blurring and spinning into one existence that really, honestly, stopped when I was seventeen. And to see that my body is speeding ahead, to feel the aches and pains of maturity, see the softening of my face, the fat that comes with womanhood and motherhood and adulthood and leaves a childhood behind that really, honestly, never even got a chance.

t’s not the youth that I mourn for, I think. Not really. It’s childhood that I long, ache and plead the world to return to. Girlish fantasies and hopes and dreams I never got to have, because I was made to be a woman before I finished being a girl. And now it’s slipping through my fingers, that little girl that I desperately wanted to be but was disallowed by society. The chance at being young. Life is speeding forward and I’m not getting a chance to accept that it’s come and gone already. “Don’t worry.” My mother says to me, over the phone, far away whenever I ache for her embrace, her comfort, her warmth. “You have a round face. You’ll look young forever.”

Fija Dahlia, 25 she/her @fija_designs on Instagram

"I'm so late”, not knowing where I want to be and what I am. My relief when I saw a car coming towards my way in this hazy cloudy landscape was pure bliss.

It finally stops and I get in the middle seat. As I look towards the driver, I am blinded by a mosaic of intertwined light rays, knotting each other with no beginning and end. I sit quietly, not daring to offend the angel. We drive for what seems like forever, until the car stops. I turn to see the car door opening, revealing a child filled with enthusiasm.

Hey, I 'm Morid!" he says happily.

"Same!" I answer.

He points out that we have the same name and starts laughing.

"You must be really happy judging by your smile."

As I am looking at him, I see something strange. A blindfold? Not over his eyes, but below his chin, hiding whatever was lurking under there. His heart is visible and bleeding profusely, but he doesn't notice. He starts chatting with the entity and for a moment , I thought he owned this vehicle.

“Morid, what does the future hold?” he asks me abruptly.

I sigh, knowing what I have to say.

"There's an ocean of your tears waiting for you down this dried-up river of our life. You will be as close to death as that one time you accidentally stabbed yourself with scissors."

He looks at me dumbfounded- I don't think he heard me. The car stops, and he opens the door . "Goodbye mister, hope the future is great" he says with a big smile on his face.

I don't know what to say to him anymore so I just smile. My first smile in a while to be honest.

I'm once again alone with God. We ride again for hours, and all I can hear is some angelic hymn and the sound of rain hitting the glass window, it's pattering annoying me. Until the car stops again, and the door on my left opens up revealing an adult man.

His face is blurry, and he doesn't even acknowledge me. He sits down and starts chatting with it.

They seem to be having a grand time, but I can't hear anything. This man knows the secrets to everything I want to know, the knowledge I desperately desire, uncertainty kills me so I muster up the courage to ask the man a few questions.

"So, what's the future like" I ask stuttering a few times.

He faces me and starts talking. I can't hear anything. All that enters my ears is static, as if you could hear blurriness.

The drive is more silent than ever now.

"I wish that child came back" I think, because it's true. I miss his innocence and his optimism.

The car stops again and I know the man is going to leave. In desperation, I grab his arm pleading with him to tell me more, but all he does is put his hand on my shoulder to console me, and leaves.

I, once again, have to deal with this loneliness that is enveloping me. The horizon is closing in on me, and the only thing remaining is me and it.

"Where are we going exactly?" I ask after hours of building the question up.

"Your fate is a secret only dangling from my chair, and you will have to live it to find out" it answers. I stand in awe for a few moments and the purity of its voice until I decide to question him again.

"Please, this uncertainty will be the death of me. Just tell me so I can decide whether to continue this road trip," I plead. Without answering, he gets back into the car, waiting for me.

I'm standing at the crossroads, and behind me is the sweet relief I desire. A big cloud hovers above, the angel of death hiding in its creases, and in front of me is the uncertainty I have lived with since I can remember- no yes or no, no right or wrong.

So tell me dear reader- why have I been riding in the car for god knows how long?

Ahamad Morid, 17 any/all

Easy Does It Zine THECURRENT(ANDFRAGILE)EMOTIONAL STATEOFA20SOMETHING*

volume 1