Inscriptions 2014 Literary Magazine

inscriptions 2014

5800 West 107th Street Overland Park, KS 66207 Phone: 913.993.7500 www.smsd.org

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literary magazine

You!

by Arionna Washington

You were new

You were toxic

Every time that cursed four

A freshly polished door

Became sick with all the

lettered, single syllabled

screaming for me to turn the

poison spewing from that

sound came to my mind more

knob

black hole that already

came along

You were special

consumed my heart

Noticeable, everyone wanted

I reacted

More

you

Didn’t know what to do

More meaning

You were quiet

Stay and love you?

More emotion

Hearing a single drop of sweat

You?

You were upset I reacted

pound the counter after your

The one who didn’t want me

But can you blame me?

BIG game

You! The one who tells lies

You were new

You were funny

Right into my eyes

I turned the knob

I got to know you

Said you would never!

I could see our future

You were confusing

The way you did in her past

You are toxic

ACT’ing, pretending

lives

We are close to home

You were distant

Shame on

Gates open

I tried to figure out what was

You!

Goodbye to us!

happening to us

I love you!

Escape by Michelle Chan

Starlight

by Kate Larberg When I think of my favorite memory I think of my Dad and I, watching the stars.

The sky was white with dots of blue.

That memory is the most beautiful picture you’ve ever seen.

I loved to lay out and just watch.

Then we came home, to lights, to cars, to the city.

I looked up with my Dad, and what we found was a solid blue sky.

Our stars were gone.

I missed our sky.

The sky that I wanted to see every night.

I missed our memory, our little slice of heaven.

I will go back and when my Dad comes we will see that beautiful sky.

We will know that sky like the backs of our hands.

Then we will just sit and admire all that was created for us to see.

Untitled by Hannah Dixon

Silence

by Emily Niederbremer

Silence is a weapon Silence says it all Silence speaks a thousand words Silence answers when you call.

Even when surrounded Silence fills the cracks If you step in the darkness Silence will attack.

The Silence plans our demise To be with us forever Because in the end When all is dead He comes with open arms.

The Silence is very powerful With the strength to end it all But one simple thing can stop this beast And stop that tragic fall.

Silence is not a virtue Silence is not the best Death travels with Silence in tow To stay with the ones at rest.

Words are the ones that can help us Words are the things that can heal But speaking up and being heard There’s nothing else to fear.

Untitled by Hannah Dixon

Ripples

by Sarah Wheeler

Everything you do, somebody watches.

Everything you say, somebody hears.

Somewhere, somehow it makes an impact, Whether it be ripples or waves.

They might take it with them the rest of the year.

They might take it only a day.

But when they see or hear it somewhere,

It travels throughout their brain.

So make good choices, somebody watches.

So say nice things, somebody hears.

Though you may think it is not important, It may be important to somebody’s ears.

The xx by Leorah Addadi

Shadow

by Mona Jahani

A harsh reality is that People change But that’s not always a bad thing It shows the timeline of who we are And every day The person we were the day before Becomes a shadow of ourselves And sometimes we can’t help But fall in love with shadows Rather than the person moving forward It’s easy to say you love someone And even easier to get angry When they are no longer The person from your memories It’s easy to be frustrated Wanting them to act as they did before And you act recklessly Under the label of In love But you’re not in love with them You’re in love with their shadow And it’s too easy to forget that

Teenage Runaways by Jenna Fackrell

Isolation

by Arionna Washington

I’m just trying to reach enlightenment To be one with myself and God To truly understand why I’m here Why I can do the things I do Love the why I do Possess the talents I do Why I don’t belong anywhere but with myself Here I am free!

Free to love, hate, envy Without being judged Here I can sing in my highest octave Without being annoying Shout to the Lord how happy I am For this place and this everlasting friendship He provides here I am so grateful for this place Where I frolic in the fields without being a cliché Where everyone is an original one I feel like I’ve eaten the apple Now condemned by knowledge to a life of solitude But the real question is, Do I mind?

Untitled by Jenna Fackrell

C

Beauty

ontrary to popular belief, I have felt pain. I have been punched. I have been kicked. I have been struck. I have been tackled. I have been burned. I have been mocked. I have been ridiculed. I have been forced to see things I desire pass away before my eyes before I had even received a gratuitous chance to truly appreciate them. I have been torn down by the terrible realization that I will never be able to appreciate some of the most beautiful things in this world because of my silly mistakes. Beauty, and my inability to see, to feel, to hear, to grasp, or even to taste it, has left me immobile.

Whether it be a beautiful girl, a handsome man, a majestic building, a noble hamlet, a bursting sunrise, a dampening sunset, a blissful time, or a terrible lack of thereof, we have all felt the pain of beauty. Our inability to truly appreciate each and every aspect of it leaves us crippled. It seems that the more beautiful something is, the more painful it is to watch to be dangled in front of you, only to be snatched away even by the very beautiful thing itself.

America, the great country with its blessed tenets, gracious morals, and strong courage, would never allow something like this to happen. Yet, we do this all the time. We sit in the lap of luxury and force others to watch in need our spacious skies, our amber waves of grain, our purple mountain majesties, and our fruited plains. America the Beautiful causes pain to those in need, for they can never obtain. Only watch. Such is the struggle with all beauty.

We are forced to cover, to want, to need, to beg for the smallest taste of your eternal bliss.

You are beautiful. That is why you cause pain.

You sit there mocking me. Your spacious rising. Your amber rolls of grain.

Your red tantalizing majesty. Your golden plains. Oh, how they taunt me so!

You force me to sit and watch in need of you, never being satisfied. You make me bleed for you and your appetite is never quenched.

Finally, after all this torturous time of waiting and watching and staring, I cannot bear it. You could be stolen by another. I could lose you forever, I cannot have that. So, what do I do?

I take you. I grab you up and I plant my mouth on you and you BURN ME. YOU TAKE MY SOUL, MY HOPES, MY DREAMS, EVERYTHING I AM AND YOU BURN IT ALL ASUNDER! YOU STAB ME IN MY MOUTH WITH YOUR FIERY TONGUE AND YOU BURN ME. What’s worse is that you curse me. I may never recover from the damage you have done to me. I am scorched, marked by a beauty so great I will never be able to use that terrible adjective on anything ever again for they will never compare.

“Our inability to truly appreciate each and every aspect of it leaves us crippled.”

I should have known. I should have waited. I should have let you cool. I’m sorry. I couldn’t take it.

Those people, in their ivory towers, don’t understand what I’ve been through.

Those people, in their mansions above, don’t get the beautiful pain you cause.

Those people, in their thrones on high, don’t know what has happened to me.

Those people, in their “all-encompassing knowledge,” don’t see what I know.

Those people, in their naivety, have claimed, “Pizza fixes everything!”

Well, how is pizza supposed to fix what pizza has done to me?

by James Naylor

Untitled by Julia Rose

Hopeful

by Cinthia Reyes

You believe, entirely dedicating your soul to believing the possibility of a “perhaps” The value of a “maybe” is beyond comprehension And in that slight chance

you hold on to

Hope Wishing upon stars and dreaming of a reality you’d like to see Because the reality that is the most likely to happen is Not enough.

“There has to be more than this simple possibility,” you think But chance is everywhere…

Aren’t there risks to ALL decisions we make?

The Life of a Flower

by Emma Adcox

You gave it to me as a gesture of endearmentA single white camellia, signifying love and adoration.

Set in a vase, half full, on the windowsill; The longevity of its beauty momentarily captured and conserved.

As time passed, beauty faded.

Signs of wilting beginning to show, White lightly stained by brown.

Despite its faltering appearance, it still meant a lot to me, But only because it was from you.

Fallen brown-turned petals and leaves, Littering the base of the vase which remained half empty.

Its murky water more full of life than the flower.

Little of the camellia remained, So I threw it out But only because it was from you.

Skulls

by Kate Smith

Pressure by Jenna Fackrell

by Kendall McCoy

Dream-MARES

Thoughts are changing like leaves falling from the trees

TELL ME DO YOU FEEL THE BREEZE

The words are “My LIfe” somebody tell me what it means

SEE I HAVE THESE DREAMS WHERE I’M DESTINED TO BE A KING

But then I have ones that cause me to believe I’m going crazy

LIKE HAVE YOU EVER WOKE UP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT

Not out of fright, but ‘cause you know something’s not right

I GUESS IT WOULD BE ALRIGHT IF IT ONLY HAPPENED TWICE

But it seems like every other night

I WAS TOLD LIFE IS A GAMBLE DON’T BE AFRAID TO ROLL THE DICE

So what if I crap out

WHEN YOU’RE LOST IN YOUR SOUL YOU CAN’T REALLY PULL A MAP OUT

I grew up to the saying the best I could do was a crackhouse

BUT THAT WAS BACK THEN AND THERE’S NO LOOKING BACK NOW

Now it’s just another shade added to my background

NOW I’M LOOKING FORWARD TO I DON’T KNOW

But I know I’ll never back down

SO ASK ME IF I’M CRAZY “HELL YEAH HANDS DOWN”

Trying to reach my dreams and the crown is almost in my hands NOW

Mirror rorriM

by Cinthia Reyes

When I close my eyes I see her Truthful, full of beauty, youth.

The soft breeze caressing her rosy cheeks and her mind still embracing innocence.

A child from my memory Her eyes fix upon my own, When I look into the mirror How much time has passed her smile is radiant unlike my empty soul I want to tell her I want her to know: the mistakes she must avoid and remind her of those to cherish But she is just a memory a reflection from my past

Michelle Cha Untitled by Michelle Chan

Drawing by Arionna Washington

Untitled

by Cinthia Reyes

Memories failed to recollect parts of my life My emotions tangled in grief My thoughts unsettled, ran across the fields of confusion lost again.

to think that perhaps I could find it. the true meaning behind my existence. for all I know, I could be a dream I could be a figment of someone’s imagination.

What is reality?

What is the truth?

Mood Swings I rode around a roller coaster of feelings.

Hitting constant highs and lows.

Desperately wanting to get off This ride is too confusing, too exhausting Much so that the end is unknown Memories become twisted and wicked Now I see the world from a different view life is not black and white but rather a distortion of images flashbacks: lurked in our minds And the more valuable ones stored in the safety of our Hearts And while on this ride I’ve lost myself to my own empty cold heart Intertwining with a selfish perspective

by Cinthia Reyes

by Michelle Chan

Strangeling

Organ Donor

by Emily Wilkinson

She stole my heart With I, her living organ donor.

Convincing me the knife she sliced with Felt as warm as the kisses afterward.

Harvesting the love that guided her scalpel, Hollowing the body I once adored, Taking trophies wherever she wanted.

New homes in formaldehyde jars.

Dismembered, Disillusioned, Disappointed she hadn’t stolen something less valuable, Feet that weren’t strong enough to kick harder, Ears rejecting the voice of reason, Cheeks blushing in the anguish of what I thought love meant, Nails clawing my body whose destruction came at her whim.

And lips unable to speak of nights spent biting open the scars she left me,

Yearning for the amorous aftertaste of violence I was on my knees crawling back to.

No escape, nowhere to run to.

No one would love me when butchery was all I knew.

I believed anything And she was stealing everything.

Cutting out my eyes so I wouldn’t see anyone else, Severing my hands so they’d only hold hers, Reducing her greatest trophy to raw meat Carrying pulse without purpose The carver’s knife she called love, The rope she called fidelity, Used, abused, reused against the one she called liar, Waste, Heartless, I tasted her lies with an amputated tongue.

Never did I break that kidney thief’s heart, But she’ll have mine to keep her company.

After all, I’d rather be heartless than be hers.

The Epiphany

by Rachel Dukes

This is the place where my life came together A moment in time when everything became better The subliminal subconscious making its debut An epiphany of spirit in which I withdrew This is the place of an impactive revelation A simple experience to shape my imagination With the wind blowing cold and the loudspeakers blaring I took in a deep breath, continuously staring This is real and it’s finally here An unbelievable accomplishment finally made clear This is the place where fantasy met reality An easily bypassed moment of circumstantial totality These moments had passed and I’d grown older Creating a future with I its beholder This is the place where I had become so thankful In all the noise that suddenly seemed so tranquil This is the place where realness set in That every second counts in this life I live

Untitled by Hannah Dixon

Sign

by Evan Lavender

Untitled by Arionna Washington

MY DEAR FRIEND

by Cinthia Reyes My dear friend, your smile became stronger

than my anxiety pills your hugs more potent

than my depression medication constantly fighting against the “terrible creatures of the night” - there you are

to keep me safe you radiate happiness and your lips sing melodies of strength and courage Not once, when I’ve fallen have you left me alone -in the vast fields of solitude

I am no longer there I’m becoming who I want to be Someone you will be proud of for that

I will love you

Indefinitely.

T

Facsimile

hey say that when you make an original, you should always have a backup. In case something goes wrong, the original gets damaged or lost, you always have a second. Normally, the backup is your savior. When you go running to class the next morning and discover that you left your paper on the printer at home, and then discover that, lo and behold, you decided to send a copy of the original to the teacher who printed it out, then, yeah, having the backup just saved your grade from plummeting so deep down into the darkness of failure that you don’t see it again until spring.

However, it can, in some cases, be a horrible mistake.

I should probably tell you a few things.

There was once this legend that said when the Earth was created for the first time, God was so pleased with what he had done that he didn’t want anything to happen to it. So he made a copy of the world.

Now, I’m not talking about a full-sized planet that existed half-way across the universe. Basically, he made a globe that was an exact copy of the world and its entire splendor.

Sounds pretty cool, right? So what’s the catch? This wasn’t just a copy. This was the Earth, in small size.

Whatever happened to the world, whatever we did to it, the globe would reflect that change. What God didn’t realize was that it worked both ways. If something happened to that globe, if it got run over by a car or burned in a house-fire, then boom, there goes the world.

So, after God had made his little globe, he decided, for whatever reason, to trust it to an angel.

God gave the globe to Lucifer. Lucifer treasured this gift dearly. Kept it with him at all times. However, Lucifer disobeyed his father and fell. And sometime while he was hurling towards the earth, the globe slipped from his grip and was lost.

Now, I upon hearing this, just like any modern day teenager, thought this was a load of bologna. So I laughed, said ‘good story’ and was done with it.

But the story wasn’t done with me.

About five years ago, I began having these dreams. They weren’t exactly nightmares, but they weren’t exactly good dreams either. It was just...arguing. I heard a lot of this and that, and honestly didn’t pay that much attention to them. But then it continued. Every single night, over and over, I had to listen to these two men arguing. But apparently, that wasn’t enough, because then, they started arguing during the day too. And not just with themselves anymore. Now they were trying to get me to start taking sides.

“Jenny,” one of them would say, “Don’t you think that-” “No, of course she doesn’t think that!” the other would yell. “She’d side with me!”

Of course, at first, I thought I was going crazy, and just did what anyone would do: ignore it. But it kept going. So then, I started to wonder, and even sometimes would find myself muttering to these two men, telling them who was right and who was wrong and so forth.

They liked that, I think. Of course then my mother started getting worried. I didn’t want her to think any

less of me, or, God forbid, lock me up somewhere, so I stopped talking to the men outside of an occasional shut up to get them to be quiet.

Now, the voices had just begun to get normal when the rest started happening. I started seeing things.

Weird, abnormal things in the corner of my eye. A woman clad in all black, crying on a street corner, a dog chasing its tail and disappearing when I looked again. But worst of all was the boy dressed in dark gray clothes that seemed to be from the 1500s who seemed to follow me. But whenever I turned around to confront him, he wasn’t there.

This all continued for maybe two, three years. These dark figures who followed and appeared around me scared me at first, and then slowly, slowly, I began to pity them. Wonder what and who they were. So when I cut myself off from the world to try to find answers, nobody could figure out why. My psychologists were confused and, frankly, scared because they’d ask me questions and all I’d do was sit there and stare at them, or maybe out a window if I thought that it’d be more interesting. I didn’t need to talk to anybody, not when I had the voices.

But then, one day, the voices, went silent. I just woke up from the deepest sleep I’d had in a year, and they were gone. Nothing, no sign of them. So I went downstairs, poured myself a bowl, and then sat, and ate my Lucky Charms.

As I went back for seconds, there was a sound so loud and sharp, that I yelped and dropped the box. My mom came running downstairs, her eyes wide and worried.

And then I heard them. The three words which were the start of everything that followed.

It is found.

by Anonymous

The Stranger in Me

by Rachel Dukes If I look long enough in the mirror I see The hidden half, the stranger in me.

She resides in a world quite close to mine Yet, undeniably composed of an opposite design An evil twin one would call The antithesis we find attached to us all She reeks of stale regret and envy Regret driven from the sorrow within thee Enduring a universe so parallel to reality Such absence of idealism discourages her morality Hair black as night, eyes blue as the ocean She is icy cold and rigid in motion The twin glares back at me, animosity filling her soul Such Interminable malice, rancor and hostility to uphold Is she really that evil or is it a disguise?

Drowning in her own sorrows, shielding these lies An existence utterly absent of loves divine She replaces the emptiness with jealousy she finds Although my polar opposite, this I promise to you She brings forth the concealed humanity we all find when due Yes, she is my hidden half, the stranger I endure But the ounce of freedom from those seeking imperfections cure

Beauty & the Beast, by Kate Smith

Something Blue

by Angelo Prado There is nothing like life.

It lets in and lets out.

People enter stage right, express their deepest thoughts and die by the next act.

You can’t give up because that’s selfish but sometimes you can’t hold on.

You Need Help, the people you let in leave and eventually the door has so many locks you can’t find the keys.

The heart breaks and the mind travels.

Innocence is forgotten.

You lose so much and when you stop giving all of yourself to society, they tell you you’re off.

Unnatural.

So you fall deeper into the affair Life has with Time.

There’s nothing worse than forgetting yourself.

You’re more than one person.

You change for everyone and eventually there’s no real you.

I propose we change.

Back To Our Selves.

Fix someone.

Sometimes you live in your brokeness.

Life.

Stop.

Will you make it?

Who knows?

Everyone is too scared to come and fix you.

So you stay broken, afraid to give up and be selfish.

No one tells you how to be normal, so you live with different “normal’s” and one day you are told that those “normal’s” are wrong.

Open your eyes to change more than just your life.

Fix the wretched machine of Society.

Don’t let fear control you.

Say something nice.

It could change a life.

Lift someone from that cliff they are slowly falling from.

Lonely people really aren’t lonely because they like it.

So You Change.

If you can try, Stay.

Stare at life and claim its name as yours.

Love.

Don’t forget the people that stayed.

Nothing lasts forever but some things are infinite.

You can’t start by smiling.

Start with tears and work up.

You are not strange.

but people will replace them.

The ground is solid until it isn’t.

People are fragile.

Give a hug, they are the metaphorical representation of Duct tape.

You will fall in love and your heart will break.

Repeatedly.

The small things are small.

Stop asking why it happened whether you know why or not.

Stop Feeling Hurt.

Unique.

Glorify uniqueness because few people are.

Dream.

But don’t give up.

Stand up and face the world.

Fight.

The only thing worth it is love.

Love yourself.

Don’t hate your mind or your thoughts.

Forget the keys.

Tear the keys.

Tear the locks off.

People Will Leave,

Pain is merely electrical impulses to the brain.

Start or breath slower.

Watch a flower bloom.

You can lose a lot and gain a little.

Drink coffee black and bitter.

When you’re old and changed the lives of more than a hundred people add a little sugar.

Have something blue for good luck.

Money is abstract and unreliable.

Also necessary.

Love what you do and do what you love.

But ultimately there is nothing like life.

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Editor-in-Chief Adviser

Julie Fales

Staff Members Angelo Prado Emma Adcox Kate Larberg Hannah Dixon Michelle Chan Jenna Fackrell Leorah Addadi Katie Imes Anna Trofimoff

Cover photo by Julia Rose

Julia Rose