Vibrato 2015

VIBRATO Volume 50 | 2015

The Hockaday School

VIBRATO

dear reader

All art is a window to the soul of the artist. As you read this magazine, feel the emotion of the artists coming through, the vision of the photographers, the message of the authors.

Following this path, you might find something unexpected—like looking into a clear, crisp pool of water expecting to see the bottom, and instead seeing your own reflection. Let yourself be transparent, dear reader, and let those around you see you as you are.

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The Hockaday School

11600 Welch Road DALLAS, TX 75229 214.363.6311

VIBRATO hockaday.

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LITERATURE

contents

8 11 12 14 18 23 24 30 32 37 39 44 49 51 53 59 61 69 70 73 75 79 81 85 89 90 93 96 99

Loving Artwork | Audrey Black Kindling | Julia Teeter Envy | Callie Smith Purple Ink | MaryFrances Dagher Woodspun Spur | Isabel Jacobson XXXVII | Katie Mimini Tea Party | Ellea Lamb Song of Multiculturalism | Dorothy Zhang July in Albania | Katie Mimini Ode to Tea | Lauren Kim Smoke on the Water | Kathryn Banks Confesi贸n | Lily Ramirez Lypophrenia | MaryFrances Dagher Elucidation | Lauren Kim Into the Looking | Glass Jane Gu Cosmic Musings | Lauren Kim Adolescence | Jane Gu Zero Draft? | Katie Mimini Visions from Confinement | Isabel Jacobson The Thing About Speed Limits | Ellea Lamb July | Victoria Almanza Skating | Julia Teeter Silk or Velvet? | Katie Mimini Fragments | Kathryn Banks ? | Lakshmi Uppalapati Canvas | Lauren Kim Keepaway | Julia Teeter Slipping | Kathryn Banks Atrophy | Jennifer Davis

ART

8 13 15 22 25 36 42 46 50 52 60 68 70 72 80 83 84 86 90 97 101

Sunset Nicole Klein Face of a Statue Nicole Klein Reclining Figure Stejara Dinulescu To Play With One’s Food Katie Miller I Swing for Myself Katie Miller Warmth in Cool Colors Annabelle Folsom The Bridge Meredith Burke America MacKenzie Capetillo Luminescence Wendy Ho Brain Surgery Stejara Dinulescu The Dragonfly Meredith Burke Cirque Dreams Sydney Thomas Landscape Stejara Dinulescu Sunset City Miranda Helm Realistic Man Katie Miller

PHOTOGRAPHY

10 18 20 26 29 30 32 34 44 48 58 62 64 67 74

Ridges Sarah Chan Dawn Teal Cohen Oso and Pacaya Volcano Nina LaBarba Fish Charlotte Toomey Bulbs Sarah Chan Color Blocks Sarah Chan Linea di Vestiti Mary Kate Korinek La Celebración Sarah Chan Cathedral Azani Creeks Golden Gate Fog Ahona Mukherjee Aurora Borealis Ahona Mukherjee Emerald Sea Vicky Su Morning Fishing on the Pier Nina LaBarba Cityscape Nishali Malik Leadville Trailer Park Nicole Klein

Sir Ian Katie Miller Sushi Nicole Klein Natura Morta Claire Noble Tangled Emotion Katie Miller Mêr Elinor Sachs Circus Katie Miller

Opening page triangle illustrations by Wendy Ho Inside cover line art by Nicole Klein

Loving Artwork Audrey Black

in the sooty color of your eyelashes is a story scribbled on the back of a napkin in a busy restaurant in the hollow of your cheekbones is a melody that echoes in the back of my mind weeks after hearing it in the smirk that curls across your face is the final notes of an orchestra in the glint in your eyes is the slightest hint of light through prismatic stained glass window in the bubble of your laughter is the first slash of bright paint on a blank canvas

Sunset

| Nicole Klein |

Oil Paint

Ridges

| Sarah Chan |

Photography

Kindling Julia Teeter

It was one of those days when the heat hangs solid in the air, when even the wind burns with inexplicable fervor.

Callie Smith Spindly green vines, barren of leaves crept around my lungs, slacking and tautening at random. The vines cozied themselves inside of me three hundred and twenty five days ago. Wheezing and uncertain, my lungs managed to keep rising and deflating for quite some time, like a little kid who can’t quite blow up the balloon at his own birthday party.

Milky blue cheeks and eyelids peeled back to expose the full roundness of his little eyes, he watches everyone else inflate (with ease) plump, round globes, and he gives up. Just like I did, and just like you will.

Face of a Statue

| Nicole Klein |

Oil Paint

Purple ink

MaryFrances Dagher

F

oreword: I became a writer by mistake. Admittedly and unapologetically, I am passive aggressive. Due to past intentional unwillingness to share my words, I took to writing. I bled my thoughts in purple ink. By some “natural force of the universe” that I secretly believe in, I picked up my favorite pen, put it to the first page of a blank journal, and I’m yet to permanently put it down—I can’t. My mother claims she’s “proud that I’ve found a creative outlet that can be used for the greater good.” I have no idea what that means, but I’m sure I’ll know in due time.

This morning, I woke up in a cold sweat; truly, I did. I awoke with the fear that I would forget what your face looks like when you’re holding back laughter. I worry I’ll forget the scent of your house. The incense your mother always burned, which is completely incongruous to your family’s personality. And now, I’m thinking about exactly how I’m going to remember the smell of your house; what words will be the right ones to write to trigger the exact smell of it months from now, when it won’t come back. I can’t even remember the name of the scent—your mom told me multiple times. Your dad never liked it, I could tell. “For chrissakes, what’s wrong with Glade,” he would mutter. It drove you and your sisters crazy, you would all sneeze and sneeze and your mother protested senselessly, “it’s ----,” I can’t remember the name.

I never consider the importance a name holds until I can’t remember it. I ran into a friend from elementary school at a restaurant a year or two ago, she was wearing this god-awful, jaundice colored sweater. You see, I remember her awful sweater years after the fact, but I couldn’t remember her name in that moment. As she approached me, I panicked. I mentally

Reclining Figure | Stejara Dinulescu

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Oil Stick

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| erugiF gninilceR

shuffled through all the names in my tiny fourth grade class of thirty-two students. I called her Kaley. Her name was not Kaley—her grandmother informed me within seconds of my error. Her name was Lucy; Lucy with the jaundice colored sweater that didn’t complement her strawberry blonde hair. Jaundice colored sweaters make great subject matter; I do remember writing about that atrocious thing. I was just a kid when we were friends, so maybe that’s a good enough excuse for not having remembered her name. But I can’t remember the name of that incense your mother tortures you with, and that might actually be suffocating me, the not knowing.

Your dad brought home a Tibetan incense burner for the house one time, just because. You two are similar in that way, you do things just because. Whether it be rolling down the windows in ninety degree weather even though the air conditioning is blasting, or wearing Chaco’s with socks. This Tibetan incense burner fit in your house like Marilyn would playing the Virgin Mary in a film adaptation of the passion of the Christ.

It was a nice gesture, we all agreed. I’ve tried to put that face into words a million and one times, but I’m still looking for the right ones to capture it. I struggle to move away from describing just your nose. Your very large nose crinkles up, and your lips press together very tightly in attempts to hold back your outbursts. Your efforts were always in vain. Much like my efforts to remember the name of that incense, or my search for the right words to describe that face, and the exact words to describe that scent— I’m still on a quest for both, and as they come to me they’ll be scribbled in purple ink as per usual

.

Woodspun Spur PART I

Isabel Jacobson

In the midnight of the forest, the trees stretch so thick that their branches meld together and the ground is completely shielded from the sky so that you are guided in this shadowy world only by instinct.

This trunk runs round further than I can wrap my hands, but even this stretching hug has potential, because someone told me that if you press your ear against the rough trunk of the tree you can hear its heartbeat, but only if you listen, softly.

There are no nymphs here: just this ancient, steady heart, and its reassuring beat.

Dawn | Teal Cohen

|

Photography

PART II

Daylight breaks and a sliver of cornflower sweeps across the mountains that scratch the sky.

Then, swiftly swiftly swiftly the jaw of morning unhinges: birds sweep down from the fir canopy, the pines bow and part, the mountains tremble, and a massive chariot tumbles through the breaks between the peaks.

The rough pikes leave wispy trails of stuffing where the sky was split open.

There, the Catchers climb to the summits and, by the glittering moonlight, unfurl their massive webs over the sleepy villages and farms nestled in the nooks below, and tangle the stars in their nets.

This is the only place— where they can reach into the skyand pluck stars that God nailed into constellations.

I see all from my perch on the mountain top.

Although I may not be fast nor cunning, my movements are gentle, and my arms reach up up up to tickle the underbelly of the sky.

I am the great beast to which all of the forest answers.

My roots run deep.

They channel through the packed earth and drive cracks deep into the bedrock.

I feel my sisters around me.

Our fingers interlock under the raw earth.

Oso and Pacaya Volcano | Nina LaBarba

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Photography

To Play With One’s Food | Katie Miller

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Ink

XXXVII

Katie Mimini Harold was the kind of guy who talked to his plants as he watered them. “Drink up, Betsy,” he said as he sprinkled the ficus, grazing his fingers over its waxy leaves. He was a peculiar guy, Harold—he had specifics for everything. He brushed his top teeth thirty-six times, eighteen forward and eighteen back, but his bottom teeth only twenty-eight times. He kept his arms and legs close to him at all times, never losing control, never letting himself slip for a minute—until finally, it happened. For the first time in his thirty-seven years, he lost control—the ficus shattered.

Tea Party Ellea Lamb

Dionysius invited me to tea once.

I asked for Earl Grey, But instead he gave me wine.

We drank it in teacups—cyan ceramic, “Painted by some river nymph,” he said.

Truthfully, I’d never had a penchant for wine, I sipped it just to be polite (One must mind her manners in the presence of a god) But he must have added a splash of ambrosia—it tasted so good I drained three more cups.

In my drunken state, I could hardly distinguish the god from his chair, But by 4 o’clock I could have sworn a leopard took his seat.

Extra-Long Title Goes Here Please Julia Teeter

Solo odis quo que voluptaquo berovid errorem faccae. Et untint ea eatem duntotam ant rest ducimagnis perum volorepel es voluptaque sim del ipsa nos quatectia qui blabore ex ea prepta quis et imil magni corerci se pero con pellaut quaessimus ulparcius qui sus es am doluptatem sam etum quis voluptae porempore sit eaque cuptatem site nectis exerum rem delesto bea distiunt elluptate voluptaquid ea vendic te voluptatus aut prepelique qui saepro officto corrorernat optae pellit que eum faceatur? Quid quo optas idellitae pe conse offic testibusci repreic te nos doluptatis eat venist illoreh enihil illaccusa imi, sa sunt molorum quam est, offici ut prestotatis mod molorit, conem quiduci mendam, totatiae doluptatus quae re ilias etur, quunt laborio con eum nempe ne nonet vellesti sitis evel ipienis que perions erumquam ea sequod maxim alic to cone nos alibuscillit que volescia praeper ererio intur, option nossime nditem hariore serspe si volestiatur? Ommoluptatum untia nonsequos sed que nonsendae nisi

I Swing for Myself

| Katie Miller |

Colored Pencil

Fish

| Charlotte Toomey |

Photography

Bulbs

| Sarah Chan |

Photography

Song of Multiculturalism Dorothy Zhang

I honor variety, and cherish variety, And what I seek you may seek, For some things residing in me as well reside in you.

I travel and welcome new home, Eyes open and widen in great surprise discovering a plate of rice cakes.

My culture, every gene of my body, came from this cake, this grain, Left here with unknowns put here by strangers a plenty, and this dormitory the mysterious, I, now seventeen years old in flourishing curiosity commence, Wishing to learn not by proxy.

Family and China in mind, Standing back a moment appreciated for the way they are, and never deserted, I strive for you and them, I prepare to respect at every difference, Exploration without stop with exciting experiences.

Color Blocks

| Sarah Chan |

Photography

Linea di Vestiti

| Mary Kate Korinek |

Photography

July in Albania Katie Mimini

T

he feeling of déjà vu is a sickening one—neurons misfiring like a memory you never had, a feeling in the pit of the stomach that pulses like “I’ve been here before.” If you went to a place before your memory started to form, did you ever really go there?

If I visit the place I was born (to which I haven’t returned since), and I remember it, is it a real memory, or is it déjà vu? If I walk down its steep stone steps, waist-high in grass that’s parted like the Red Sea, do I remember not to trip on the jagged last step?

If I almost step on a baby chicken—if one was a chick and ten was an adult, he clocked in at about three—before it clucks out of my way, could I have been a poor farmer in the countryside of Albania in another life?

Sunlight reflecting in the beads of sweat rolling down my face, I stood bright and heated; with a taste like brick in my mouth, I crossed my hands behind my back and inclined my head. High trees in the distance, shrubs and grass and bushes near foot; gigantic mountains unusually close like the hazy shimmer of planets through a telescope; crystal lake like swimming in a postcard.

It was my grandmother’s house in the country, the west of Albania, with very much untouched nature and very little running water and indoor plumbing. As we arrived, I counted maybe one hundred houses nestled in the side of the cut-open mountain, sometimes losing count as the truck in which I sat vibrated on the unpaved road.

I continued through the shallow front yard and passed through the

wooden gate to a small field, almost like a meadow, sprinkled with wildflowers that could have been weeds. My sister was eleven years old when we left Albania—compared to my one and a half years— and she walked ahead of me with a sense of direction. It oddly mirrored our positions in real life: my sister with confidence, purpose, chilled extroversion, ease of navigation through our culture; myself, on the other hand, lagging behind, a foreigner in a familiar place, ten years younger and chasing her footsteps.

Her heels sank into the grass like grappling hooks as she walked; she kicked them off midstride and rushed toward a tree on the other side of the field. She returned with her hands open in front of her, filled with small green spheres she called plums.

Since I was very young, not a day had gone by in my house without someone in my family eating a fruit and lamenting how much better it would have tasted “back home.” I never really understood the logic behind this—did

July in Albania Katie Mimini

La Celebración | Sarah Chan |

they think that with each fruit they tried, they would get closer to the taste of the homeland? That this next fruit might be the chosen one, the apple they had been waiting for, the peach that finally met their standards, the watermelon that rocketed them back to playing cards on the bank in 1969, spitting seeds into the Shkumbin River?

I took a plum, a small one, out of her hand—“You don’t have to wash it because it came straight from the tree, and there’s nothing impure about a tree,” she

Photography

said—and bit into it. Immediately my mouth felt like cotton, tongue dried out like sandpaper by the sour and bitter taste. Of course it tasted nothing like American plums, commercialized and purple and plump, but it tasted like I was meant to eat it.

While bits of conversation in Albanian languished over the fence, I turned back with my sister, hand in hand. As I narrowly avoided trampling a chicken and stumbling on the jagged bottom step, the sun pulsated overhead

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Warmth in Cool Colors

| Annabelle Folsom |

Acrylic Paint

Ode to Tea Lauren Kim

You demonstrated how to make tea “properly” As you strained the citrus infused water from its bowl Of herby particulates, leaving a sea Of the shadowy, caffeinated water that feeds your soul.

Next you showed me your timber tea cabinet And your porcelain Italian cups.

I watched you surrender yourself to habit, To the sound of a copper kettle as its steam shot up.

When you told me your heart was forbidden I took to merely observing you and your ritual.

I searched voraciously for what you kept hidden, Surreptitiously hoping for a miracle: That you may discover in me what you find in that delicacy— Specialty, consistency, and security.

SMOKE ON THE WATER Kathryn Banks

M

y childhood was not a well-managed one. I roamed the Houston streets freely, accompanied by a few boys from school. They weren’t friends of mine, exactly, just kids I knew.

I don’t think I had any friends. Those former children have all died now, Houston never was an easy city, but back then we were young, alive, and full of possibility. One night we found a gas can, full to the brim. They wanted to burn tires out behind the auto shop, but I was the one with the matches, and I wanted to try something.

Houston has an extensive canal system—you need one in a former swamp—and there was one that ran in the median between two ways of a major street. At 2 a.m., however, the dim streetlights shone down on a lifeless desert of cracked pavement, broken only by a few plastic-bag tumbleweeds and the thin reflective line of the winding, concrete-lined canal.

We brought the gas to the edge of the canal, it took two of us at a time, and we traded off at intervals, arguing about where we were going, why we were going there, and how long one or another of us had been carrying. When we arrived, I took out a pocketknife that I had filched from my older brother a week ago. I pushed the plastic jug right to the concrete edge and stabbed a hole near the base. The gasoline flowed sluggishly down the sloped cement edge and into the running water, forming a thin, growing sheen on the surface. The boys started to complain about wasting the precious gas, but I had grown fast, and I had beaten them all in small scuffles at one point or another, so they left me alone.

I sat on the lip of the canal, my legs dangling over the edge, heels beating irregularly on the concrete. The boys got bored and went off to kick a can around between them, and still I waited, watching the water grow iridescent under the streetlights, until the canal looked like stained glass stretching as far as I could see. The acrid smell made me cough a little, but I was used to such things, living in the city. It took about half an hour for the gas to run out, I think, and when it was done I gave a sharp whistle to get the other kids’ attention. They did not turn from their game, and so I ignored them. I needed to hurry. I quickly took out a match, struck it on the rough canal wall, and touched it to the wet trail left on the cement. The flames caught and ran down the path, crackling. I threw another match into the water for good measure, and suddenly the thin layer of gasoline was flaming in earnest, the fire spreading quickly down the canal, licking up eagerly into the sky, searching for things to burn, to consume.

The boys stopped their game and came to watch, open-mouthed as the gas burned off. We stood there, transfixed by the swirling red-orange tongues of flame filling the canal. I think it took about five minutes, but it was probably faster. A siren started in the distance, police or firefighters, I still don’t know, and it broke us out of our collective trance. We ran like rabbits, bolting with wide eyes. We ran together until we reached the Swirls | Miranda Helm

The Bridge

| Meredith Burke |

Linoleum Print

alley behind the Red Lobster, bent over, panting, with our hands on our knees. As we recovered from our panicked flight, the red light of the sign shone down on us, bathing us in a mockery of firelight.

I straightened up, still breathing hard, and I looked around at the group. No one would meet my eyes. The boys avoided my gaze, and avoided me in general after that night. I didn’t care. It had been worth it. The sight of the flames blazing down the canal had been worth it. It had filled me with a sense of power, lit a flame within me, if you will, and I felt that I had to do something to keep that flame alive. Suddenly, I believed in my own power.

Writing, I think, is like this.

Writing is sending flame into the dark, writing is power. Sometimes, writing is tearing through the night, sure that the sirens are catching up to you. Yet, writing is worth it. If I could go back, I wouldn’t change a thing. I would still set that canal aflame. I had the tools, and something itched under my skin, urging me to follow through. I had to set that fire, and for a few minutes, I was powerful. People looked up from their lives and saw something that I had done. Good writing, like fire, can give a small girl power over a city. And I have to write, to keep that particular flame alight

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Confesión |

Lily Ramirez

Your body is a church sagrado fiery like the one that burned down when I was ten only God knows if it was the lightning or a candle or a person that wished to destroy it do you remember when my father like me, seventeen, trekked the desert barren pockets dusty face You said to him if it doesn’t work out you can always come home go home They say your rosaries and broken bread are not wanted here I wish I could carry you there like the river that moved the stones away from the fields of maize I dream of dropping you in the baptismal font an offering then you rise as mighty and great as your prayers Divine murmurs God speaks with you you smile a little eyes brown like gleaming pews that remind me to be gentle when I interrupt the reigning tranquility it is night, abue your trembling hand caresses my face la bendición de Dios carves a poem in the shape of a cross in the gesture heaven and earth collide mother of God pray for us sinner, beginner, winner, and you do I look at you tears in both our eyes your worn blue shawl inviting and forgiving —wrathful— Your body is a church

Cathedral

| Azani Creeks |

Photography

America | MacKenzie Capetillo

|

Acrylic Paint

Lypophrenia

MaryFrances Dagher

Golden Gate Fog

| Ahona Mukherjee |

Photography

She entered this world in a yellow cab, 1988.

Luminescence

| Wendy Ho |

Digital

Elucidation Lauren Kim

With fur coats and bony shoulders, Armed with cigarettes and harp songs, We made our way on a cavalcade of war painted horses Across an abandoned land While singing illuminated chants of nature and resurrection.

We are phantoms of our former selves, Free from vehicles of slime and dirt.

Our souls fly alongside the birds Who soar over the Pacific coastline of a diamond state.

Our ancestors have seen hardships, So here we live in ignorance.

We are inept.

We can only look forward with apprehension, Ashamed of our insatiable eyes and hearts, Of our stomachs that are never full.

Title Goes Here Julia Teeter

Brain Surgery

| Stejara Dinulescu |

Oil Paint

INTO THE LOOKING

GLASS JANE GU

H

e woke up on the same side of the bed that he always did, at the same time he always did. The first hints of sunrise peeked out from the curtain of the night as he dragged his own covers off. Sluggishly, he raised his toothbrush to his mouth, topped with a dollop of his minty toothpaste in an attempt to get rid of the flat flavor in his mouth.

Monday mornings always tasted like the first piece of bread. He wanted to live more like the way his toothpaste tasted, sharp with excitement and fresh like a newly-invented word.

Instead, he left for work on the 7:13 A.M. bus in the shoes that he’d worn for the past eighteen years. He moved to sit down on the aisle seat in the fourth row, where he’d sat every day since his first day on the bus, but he stopped short. Another man rested in his seat. His hair was slicked back with the same volume of hair gel, his suit—like his own—was attached only at the second button, and his shoes were identical, even to the one-day-old stain of spilled coffee. His mind spun as he remained standing, grabbing onto the ledge while losing grip on his coherence, wondering if the confusion would pass by before his stop did.

The bus reached his stop, and he stepped down. He treaded towards his office as he heard footsteps behind him. Glancing over his shoulder, he recognized the figure from the bus. He walked faster. The footsteps’ pace quickened. He thrust his legs farther with each step, pushing his stride into a half-jog until he could finally grasp the handle on the building’s doors. By then, no one was behind him.

It’s just any other day, he thought to himself. Anyone could have been behind him, could have wanted to sit in that bus seat.

It didn’t have his name on it. It might as well have, but it didn’t.

His hands began to shake as he brought them against his suit, attempting to dust off traces of lint as if they were the shadows of the strange figure from the bus. He waved to his coworker, who was sitting in his cubicle and already processing the weekly projects. His colleague didn’t wave back. He looked around to see if anyone else noticed, but everyone remained staring at their own computers, too preoccupied with typing little black digits in the white screens. Slumping into his cubicle, he cradled

his head in his arms. It’s normal to be ignored, he guessed. It was, after all, a Monday morning.

His fingers ached from another tedious morning of plugging in numbers. When he glanced at his watch to see it was time for his lunch break, he immediately exhaled his relief. With a coffee cup in one hand and a lunch bag in the other, he strolled through the office halls, humming his favorite childhood tune.

The melody was instantly caught in his throat when he heard someone else in the hallway whistle the same song. He looked up to meet a stranger’s face, an eerily familiar one, but he couldn’t quite match it to anyone he knew. Maybe it was someone he saw on the street once. He shrugged and sat down at an empty table, towards the window, gazing at the cityscape that he faced every day. Reaching to open his bag, he caught a glimpse of the man seated at the table next to him, peering out the window, just as he was. The man, like the one in the hallway, seemed so familiar, but he couldn’t identify why. He stood on the brink of epiphany—he could taste the idea on the tip of his tongue.

But it wasn’t a distinct taste. It tasted just like everything else, like another Monday morning. Sighing in defeat, he opened his lunch bag and took a bite out of his sandwich. He grimaced.

He’d forgotten to put any meat or cheese inside; it was just two slices of bread.

He threw it away and headed towards the bathroom. He needed to brush his teeth again. After opening the restroom door, he stepped towards the sink to wash his hands, scrubbing them 13 times on each side—nothing ever seemed clean enough for him. The day was saturated with an inexplicable muddiness.

“Hey, watch where you’re going!” He jumped in response, half-terrified and half-disoriented, just after brushing against someone’s shoulder. Ready to apologize, he glanced up, his eyes reaching the man’s face. He looked exactly like the man who sat staring out the window, exactly like the man who passed by in the hallway, exactly like the man who followed him to the building, exactly like the man who sat in his bus seat. His mouth dropped open, and the rest of his body stopped, paralyzed in the middle of the bathroom.

“What a pervert,” the man muttered as he shoved his way out of the door, not looking back once. The door swung shut, and he was left alone, staring at the now-empty space where the other man was standing. How could they all look completely identical?

Why were they acting like he was? Who were they? Questions clouded his mind, and he collapsed onto the sink in an attempt to discover a way out of his daze. He just needed to wash his face, to rinse off the condensed confusion fogging his rationality.

Or maybe he needed that minty taste to refresh his thoughts. He leaned his head against the mirror and balanced his body with two hands on either sides of the sink. His toothpaste dropped to the floor, a dab of the paste dripping out. The water kept running, but he couldn’t move. Suddenly, he understood why they all looked so familiar. The face in the mirror was the same one he had been encountering the entire day.

The water tapped a beat, drumming him to get back to work, or at least to shut off the sink. He reached his arm out to turn off the water, but his limb would not move. He glanced back up at the mirror, and his expression had remained exactly the same as it was when he first looked up. He needed to move. He needed to do something. His mind was racing, his thoughts jumbling into incomprehensible tangles, and his body would have been shaking if not for his total inability to move.

The bathroom door creaked open, and someone walked into a stall. The newcomer’s appearance was, too, exactly like the others’. He wanted to scream, to yell, to beg for help—but no sound escaped him. The newcomer exited the stall, walking towards the same sink where he stood until their legs, their arms, their chest, their head, reflected each other exactly. The newcomer reached out to wash his hands, and the other man duplicated his movements without any thoughts passing through his own mind. The newcomer turned off the faucet and strolled out the door. When the other man mirrored his actions and headed towards the door, he found instead that he could not leave the room. He was trapped behind a glass wall, unable to move unless someone else walked in, stuck in a sandwich of replication. He found, however, that he could still make out some distinct characteristic in his mouth. It tasted like bread

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Cosmic Musings |

Lauren Kim

I.

In a pocket of space Matter spins down To a gaping Vacuum of oblivion.

II.

I’m not sure I want to believe That there exists a force That can collapse mass And crush it beyond actuality.

III.

It’s important to note that some black holes have nondestructive intentions.

They can be wormholes, shortcuts to other parts of the universe Where you may find planets where it rains chocolate milk from clouds of whipped cream.

IV.

Warning: If you approach a black hole with hope of escape, You may face

abrupt C

O

L

L

A

P

S

E

Abnormal radioactivity, And perilous encounters with alien matter

Aurora Borealis

| Ahona Mukherjee |

Photography

The Dragonfly | Meredith Burke

|

Etching

Adolescence

Into dreams I could not dream, Into hopes I could not hope.

I

“Try harder,” she said.

I Felt my head Swelling, Swirling, Stopping.

Jane Gu

My fingers brushed across my mouth and its Saccharine memories: I still remember you And the tangy lemonade Off the tip of your tongue.

Your whispers of sweet nothings, Sweet somethings, Made the night close off, As blurs of orange and pink and red Peeked out from behind the stars.

Nothing could taste that sweet again.

II It felt like a fever that lasted for years.

Whole acres of me were on fire, Burning anxiety, apprehension, anticipation, Guilt.

The darkness gave no comfort, No cover from the bright flames Of unrelenting expectations, Imminent, inevitable failure.

The night offered no blanket That could shroud the disappointment.

Tears could not quench this fire.

My mother’s hand covered my forehead As it burned wildfires into the thoughts I could not think,

I threw up in the sink.

III I spent too many hours Watching Disney movies, Staring in awe at the oh-so-lucky princesses Who got all that they could wish for: A pair of legs, A night at the ball, A faceless man covered in royalty.

He appeared as a ray of light, Shining sanguinity As he held out his hands One with a glass slipper, The other open— With a “happily ever after” brighter than his smile.

But whoever said that two Is better than one Never tried to hold the infinite With their bare hands, Never tried to wrap their head In holiday gift paper, In Happy Birthday!s, In celebrating their self-sufficiency.

Even in my daydreams, I would walk away.

Blue

Lakshmi Uppalapati It was the first Sunday after Sister died. Ma and Pa were getting ready for church while I sat on the porch’s rickety wooden steps. Cousin Mary Beth would soon yell at me for soiling her pretty white frock, but I didn’t care. If I had to lose Sister, she could deal with a dirty dress. When I look back at that autumn morning, I want to yell at myself. It was the last Sunday before the world turned black and white—the last Sunday before winter came. Instead of jumping into piles of leaves, I sat on those cursed faded steps, thinking about Sister’s annoying laugh. Lord knows her laugh was the worst thing I had ever heard, but I would happily trade that high-pitched cackle for the empty body that lay six feet under the dirt. Unfortunately, even when she was here, we heard less and less of her. I remember two Christmases ago we built a snowman from the bright, white snow, dressing it in Ma’s old winter coat. But, last Christmas, Sister stayed in her room and didn’t even come down for Pa’s waffles and honey. Right before she died, she stopped singing me that one song about a Nightingale and would disappear into the night. Then, around midnight, the light would turn on downstairs, and Pa would be yelling, and Ma would be crying, and I would never ask questions because I knew I was supposed to be asleep.

Sometimes, I thought it had to do with the bloody rags that she left under her bed, but MeMaw always told me it was something that happened to girls when they became women. I didn’t believe her. Not even Ma had those faded lines on her legs.

Emerald Sea

| Vicky Su |

Photography

Morning Fishing on the Pier | Nina LaBarba

|

Photography

Cityscape | Nishali Malik |

Photography

Zero Draft?

Katie Mimini

Cirque Dreams

| Sydney Thomas |

Acrylic Paint, Colored Pencil

There’s a Freudian concept called free association, used along with dream interpretation and other dubious methods in the field of psychoanalysis. It’s kind of like doing a word association game, kind of like writing a streamof-consciousness novel, all kind of like writing a zero draft for an essay.

Get your thoughts down, censor nothing, write everything you can, jumping from topic to topic to topic until suddenly you’re deep inside your psyche, deep into what’s important to you, as Freud says, deep into the real subject of your paper. You don’t have to unearth new memories you didn’t think you had, a shaking revelation in your therapist’s chaise.

The idea is that when given the complete freedom to move about your thoughts, you will naturally end up at the concepts most important to you. The thought reminds me of a dandelion carried in the wind. If I don’t know where to start, should I just start?

Freud used the following analogy to clarify the concept: “Act as though, for instance, you were a traveler sitting next to the window of a railway carriage and describing to someone inside the carriage the changing views which you see outside.”

If I start with “pain,” start small—I stubbed my toe, I hit my leg against the corner of a table.

Physical pain, I cut my finger while peeling a kiwi. Now I see a rainforest, saturated green like a kiwi, tropical. Wet leaves goes to trees, to wood—a splinter.

A splinter: I helped my father move a table, now I stare at my finger in the light. I tried to squeeze my finger, but it just made it worse. What a familiar scenario.

Sometimes you just can’t help things. I can’t help getting a splinter from a table, even though I touched it for less than twenty seconds and the wood was smooth, not jagged. I can’t help falling asleep in front of my computer, slack-jawed as my unfinished homework glows, with an unprecedented ten hours of sleep the night before. I can’t help when I almost finish the batter for a cake and find out we have one egg too few. I can’t help being stuck between my parents, the wedge between two families, ageold dispute. Sometimes you’re just stuck—like a splinter.

I feel kind of trapped, in rope like a cocoon. Sometimes it feels like all the aspects of my life surround me constantly, floating and waiting to constrict, rings encasing me like Saturn. Imagine the body of Saturn existing without rings, escaping—what an impossible prospect, like a person without entrapments, entanglements, responsibilities.

I guess this means we have reached deep into my psyche— what is very important to me, how I feel. If you’re inside my carriage and I tell you that this is what I see outside, can you understand my view of the world?

Visions From Confinement Isabel Jacobson

A tangled mass of clouds slinks low over the land Like a silent panther stalking his prey— But not at as fluid as a panther; Rather, tumbling and tripping—a clumsy assassin— The clash of metal, the sour smell of stinging steel, Fingers rasp over rippled rust.

Now they dance over soft tufts of wheat that whisper in the wind I drown in concealed ponds of gargled dreams Like unsuspecting pigeons sucked into pools of tar Their ultimate downfall the desire for pure water, roped in by the deceiving allure Of the iridescent pool of dark.

Now—Poseidon’s horses gallop along the edge of the sea,

Casting shadows across the sinking moon, waves breaking where the hooves touch— My face splinters into fragments, my vision fades, My limbs scream but I am forced to take every kick, every beat.

In my head a violent cacophony—fire roars, a wolf howls, a trumpet blares— An ivory maiden singing above me, swathed in creamy silk and glistening in the silvery moonlight, Her crisp voice twists into a scream, her delicate face breaks:

Fangs sharpen, angry red lines break in her eyes, her hair hisses and ripples, I open my mouth but already my toes and fingers are tingling and Hardening as I am trapped in a coffin of stone Can I move? I feel my feet crumbling Under a shrinking sky, a tangled mass of clouds crackling over the land.

Landscape

| Stejara Dinulescu |

Encaustic Wax, Ink, Oil, Graphite

Sunset City

| Miranda Helm |

Watercolor

The Thing About Speed Limits Ellea Lamb

I have never been a rule breaker, But my eyes dart to the neon numbers on my Honda’s dashboard.

Electric streaks outline the dreaded numbers: 10:59 My converse clad foot bounces nervously on the gas pedal.

Because when it is 10:59 And curfew is 11, The speed limit can’t help but seem more like a suggestion.

Leadville Trailer Park

|

Nicole Klein

|

P hotography

July | Victoria Almanza

H

umid July nights feel like a thing of the past, but I know from experience that they pop up every once in a while.

Wild affairs, those nights used to be, screaming and laughter that floated on the stale, salty air and entered in and out of the house with every open and closed door. Our neighbors used to turn their lights on in passive aggressive manners, but my uncle Frank threw a beer bottle over the fence one night when I was thirteen, hoping to hit a window, and instead it clanked and taunted the concrete fiercely. We didn’t have any more problems after that.

I used to hate these nights because my mother would drink too much and say too much, and all the women with nice nails and fat bellies would laugh with their mouths gaped, so ugly, and so out of sync. Not like the way mothers should laugh. Hordes of little kids would run in and out of my room playing silly games, with silly names that I never bothered to learn. Radio stations that would never stay put.

But years go by, and I began to enjoy watching the sun set from the shallow end of my pool, the hazed background talking that blurred into each hour, into each can of beer. The chlorine that shot into my nose every time I jumped into the water. The squeals from five year olds with linked arms trying to go down the slide together, crashing into the long blades of dead grass.

I like to think my little sister grew up happy. I like to think her childhood was much louder than mine.

And the people, all the people that walked in and out of my house. I can’t imagine I knew them all. But they all knew me, and they knew that the party started at noon, and they knew to come around back, and they knew to bring enchiladas and rice but not meat because my step-dad would take care of that. But they never knew what time to leave and often times I’d fall asleep to the married sounds of train whistles and the cacophonous festivities of middle-aged people with nothing but time.

Oh those July nights, sweat mixed with alcohol and the comfort of knowing that for one night, it was just too loud to remember reality.

My father didn’t understand, still doesn’t understand, why there were so many parties, one after the other after the other. He is a man of gentle conversation and listening to Johnny Cash with a cold Bud Light in his hand and sandals that are a vacation from his shiny, black work shoes, and this is what he likes to do on July nights when the air is thick and the water still feels nice on the skin. He lives so far away now, not five minutes away like he used to, and I’ve tried to make myself a person of simple delights. Cream-colored women who judge quickly and speak softly, who have pale hair and still say grace at dinner, who don’t swear or throw bottles at neighbor’s windows, I’ve tried to fall in love with them like he did.

Panting and scratched up, I remember climbing the thick trunk of a tree that did not live in my front yard I was younger, maybe twelve or so. Damp hair whipped around my face; I was running from a boy with a flashlight, squealing. Well, we were all squealing. Voices hoarse. We weren’t being watched, but that’s just how we liked it.

It was a Saturday. It is because of these memories that I cannot be okay with easy words and nights that end early; believe me, I’ve tried. Even though they happen less often now, I need July nights to help me get through September mornings

.

I keep l o o k i n g back

SKATING |

Julia Teeter

We glide, feet carving music notes, constellations, into the ice.

I keep l o o k i n g back to make sure she’s still there because ghosts— they have a way of disappearing.

Realistic Man | Katie Miller

|

Graphite, Charcoal

Silk or Velvet?

Katie Mimini

I

t seemed to him that walking into a black hole would be rather like sticking one’s arm into a ring of black silk. But he wondered as he fell asleep at night, what if it was like velvet, constricting and pulling, the ripple of gravity itching like fabric pressed tight against the skin?

He realized, of course, that one didn’t just walk through a black hole: it was an entity, supermassive, all-crunching and undefeatable. But, damn it, he just wanted to know what was inside. Would it be an insurmountable blackness, like when his eyes would shoot open in the middle of the night, pupils dilating around the dark? Or would it be more of a swirling mess of stars, blue and white lights streaking above his head as he entered?

He saw himself moving through it like a tunnel, feeling the walls with his hands as he walked, exiting to a parallel universe on the other side. His wife’s hands gently stroked his hair as he awoke. “I could tell you were dreaming about it again,” she said.

Over the years, he had developed an obsession. How could this thing exist whose gravity was so strong that light could not escape it, a hole ripped in the space of stars, warping the Milky Way around it? How could they be so devoid—just a huge, empty abyss hole-punched into space—but at the same time so thick? Books told him that a sufficiently compact mass, such as that that results from the collapse of a massive star, can form a black hole. After that it continues to absorb the mass of its surroundings, growing and growing and becoming supermassive. The books were clinical in their description, surgical in their precision of word choice, but he had never heard of something so romantic. Matter falling into a black hole emits an extreme radiation, a burst of light—one of the brightest phenomena in the universe.

He drew hundreds of pictures, the pages of his notebooks filled with depictions of space bent around a black hole, circular formations like pouring stars down a drain. But drawings and illustrations were like Plato’s shadows, and he was one of the prisoners in the cave. He shoved the sketchbook off the table, sending the pages showering across the floor, like leaves sinking from trees in a storm. Elbows weakly resting on the desk, he cradled his head in his hands. “I’ll see it for myself one day,” he whispered, soft whimpers diffusing into the empty room. Then, he would find himself complete.

In the storm, he found calm in his family. When he lay awake sobbing some nights, fuming other nights, longing for the stars, his wife reached out to rest her hand on his chest—a soothing weight. When his papers covered the floor and his hands shook in anger, his son guided him to bed, carefully dodging the litter. Then, he would recover.

As he studied in his office, poring over the latest articles, his son

knocked on the door and came in. He stood in front of his father’s desk and asked, “Daddy, why do you love black holes so much?” He laughed and pulled his son into his lap, kissing his cheek as if that were a question that could truly be answered. Smiling, he replied: “Everyone loves a good mystery, my son.”

No matter how much he learned, he never neglected his family. He wasn’t the scholar who stayed locked in his basement, a hermit wearing glasses with lenses a half-inch thick. He ate dinner with his wife and son, talking of the cosmos and of human curiosity. Every evening his wife would say, as she passed the lasagna, or broccoli, or casserole, “Did you learn anything new today, honey?” He held her hand under the table and thought about what he would do without her.

He had a job: he was a pencil pusher, and it was irrelevant. His mind careened over night skies—he wondered: with the lack of sun, in space was it constant night, or was there just no concept of night and day, eternal ever-stretching blackness?—and he stared blankly at his computer screen.

One day he woke up and he was fifty years old. Periodically, he stared at the liver spots on the backs of his hands as he waited for his new telescope to arrive, a present from himself. Suddenly he realized that his life was passing him by—articles and books had gone stale. There wasn’t enough new information—he had read everything there was, everything that had been discovered.

He dreamt of a river, a quiet one, ripples softly colliding with the bank.

Overhead, there was no sun or moon but the sky was full of stars. He awoke to his wife crying gingerly against his shoulder. “Please don’t go,” she whispered to him, tucking her head under his arm. He held her tightly to him and said nothing.

“Ladies and gentlemen, today is a day that will go down in history.

This is the apex of scientific achievement, and it is the apex of human bravery. These men and women today give up their lives for curiosity, for the purpose of learning, to go and go boldly to those places that cannot be explored. Today, ladies and gentlemen, we begin to understand the core of our universe as we know it. Today we venture to the center of the Milky Way: a super massive black hole, 4.3 million times the mass of the sun.” He gestured from his podium towards the massive space shuttle heaving to his right: Chronos XI. Inside the ship, the man sat in a cushioned seat that pointed at the sky, acclimating to the zero gravity. He stopped listening and thought about the event horizon, the threshold past which movement in any direction moves one closer to the center of the black hole. In other words, it was the point of no return: once the ship penetrated the event horizon, no change of heart, no sudden panic or longing, no sudden remembrance of regret would allow the ship to escape. He opened his hands and imagined the face of his wife on his right hand, and the face of his son on the left. Passing through the event horizon and into the black hole, the ship would be crushed, infinitely small, infinitesimal—but where did it go? He closed his hands into fists and yelled, “Where does everything go?! What’s in there?!” He repeated it like a mantra, rocking back and forth with his face in his hands. It was over for him, he knew; he closed his eyes and stretched his hand into the black silk, grasping

.

Sir Ian | Katie Miller

|

Graphite, Charcoal

Sushi | Nicole Klein

|

Oil Paint Print

Fragments

Kathyrn Banks It was all going too slowly. The shattered glass crawled across my vision like iridescent beetles, and I only dimly felt the pain of my head hitting the steering wheel. I shut my eyes. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. In a car crash, things are supposed to happen quickly. I’m supposed to be able to swear on the Holy Bible and truthfully, tearfully say that, “I don’t remember. It all happened so fast.”

But it isn’t happening fast, and I know that every detail is going to be stamped into my brain, each fragment of glass caught and pressed like a dried flower in a scrapbook.

Natura Morta | Claire Noble |

Mono Print

?

Lakshmi Uppalapati Yesterday, I wondered about today.

Today, I wonder about tomorrow.

Tomorrow, I will wonder for eternity Because, sometimes, life gets in the way of living, And, I just need Siri to tell me what plane is flying overhead Or where I’ll be three years from now?

Two?

One? Six months?

Can’t she give me something more than, “I’m not sure I understand?”

You know Siri, I’m not sure I understand either— I don’t understand why the Earth rotates from west to east,

Why love is as acceptable in a sentence about my

Favorite drink

As it is in one about my mother Or why we call ourselves the human race (Who wins?).

Each question only leads to more: I asked Google why the sky’s blue

And why it saddens me that each person I pass on the

Highway has a life story—

One that I’ll never know.

But, in response, all I get is another question asking what I meant.

I don’t even know what I meant.

Did I tell him I was horrible to save him from heartbreak,

Or was it to entertain my naïve inhibitions?

In a world plagued with wars, We are left contemplating our last lunch and Pleading Bing for the surface area of Jupiter.

We are left using tomorrow to wonder about yesterday.

Canvas

Lauren Kim The sky is a pacifying ivory with blue and grey undertones, My simple and omniscient canvas of possibility.

Upon it I paint the field where we made rainwater mud cakes, Where we felt like the primary inhabitants of earth.

The first night sky and the inexplicable, icky feelings of lust and lost Bewildered us.

I attempt to bring the night back, painting First the fire with flames like regal wolves dancing to a trumpet song.

Second, the swing that dangled over the pond of koi.

Third, the color of my soul that evening: red, human, and real.

But no creation of mine can compare to the visceral Sensations and scenes of October first.

I have no choice but to put down my paintbrush And search for something new.

Tangled Emotion

| Katie Miller |

Charcoal, Watercolor

KEEPAWAY Julia Teeter

EXT. A GRASSY PARK - DAY RYAN, 17, earnest, and JACK, 17, easy-going, sit side-by-side on top of a picnic table.

They eat M&Ms out of a family-sized bag.

Ryan picks up the bag and shakes it.

The few remaining M&Ms make a HOLLOW RATTLE. Ryan sets the bag back down on the table between them.

Jack glances at the bag, then at Ryan.

Jack snatches up the bag and stuffs a few into his mouth.

RYAN Hey! Put ’em back!

Ryan reaches for the bag.

Jack grins and scoots away from Ryan, holding the M&Ms over his head.

Ryan grabs at the bag, but can’t reach it.

Seriously man!

RYAN

Jack holds the bag even further away from Ryan and laughs tauntingly.

JACK Oh—did you want some of these?

Ryan scowls and launches himself across Jack’s body, reaching for the M&Ms. Ryan’s shoulder rams into Jack’s side.

Jack winces and clutches his side. He drops the bag onto the table and groans in pain.

M&Ms spill out of the bag and roll across the ground. Ryan watches Jack, puzzled.

RYAN I’m sorry, man. I wasn’t trying to hurt you or anything.

Jack takes a few stilted breaths through his teeth.

After a long moment, Jack straightens and gives Ryan a strained smile.

JACK Don’t worry about it, I just, uh, it’s nothing. What time is it?

Ryan looks at his watch 4:45.

RYAN

JACK I gotta head home.

He stands, stuffs his hands in his pockets, and walks away.

EXT. RYAN’S BACKYARD - EVENING Ryan sits, leaning against a tree and wearing headphones.

He’s balancing a textbook on his knees and copying down notes into a spiral notebook.

A pair of shoes appears at the edge of Ryan’s vision.

Ryan looks up: Jack is standing directly in front of him.

Jack’s clothes are wrinkled and his eyes are bloodshot.

There’s a LARGE BRUISE starting to swell on his cheekbone, and a long gash spreads across his forehead.

Ryan yanks off his headphones, shoves his books to the side, and jumps to his feet.

RYAN What happened to you?

Jack lifts his hand to the bruise on his cheek.

His fingers tremble.

JACK I forgot to take out the trash.

What?

RYAN

JACK Dad told me to take it out before he came home from work. But—he came home early. I hadn’t taken it out yet. So he just...

Jack reaches up carefully and touches the gash on his forehead.

The tips of his fingers come away red with blood.

Jack bends his head and focuses intently on the blood. Ryan looks at Jack with wide, frantic eyes.

RYAN Okay, well, um... Okay. I have a band-aid, do you want a band-aid?

Without waiting for an answer, Ryan reaches for his backpack and retrieves the band-aid.

He holds it out to Jack.

The band-aid is Scooby-Doo themed and about an eighth of the size of the long cut on Jack’s forehead.

Jack slowly reaches out and takes it.

Thanks.

JACK

He makes no move to put the band-aid on.

RYAN

Yeah, um, that’s not gonna help.

Sorry.

Ryan looks wildly around the yard and spots his cell phone.

RYAN

We can call someone...I can call my

parents, or drive you to the

hospital, or maybe the the police?

Or...

Ryan trails off as he sees Jack’s blank, unresponsive stare.

RYAN I just—okay, we don’t have to call

anyone right now. You can stay here

tonight, and we’ll...we’ll figure it out.

Ryan takes a few steps towards Jack, lifting his hands.

Jack looks at Ryan’s hands with wide, fearful eyes.

Ryan pulls Jack into a tight hug.

FADE OUT.

Slipping

Kathryn Banks The sea depths, I know, are bruised black-blue pinpricked with lights of deadly nightmare creatures scattered and dotted with them like stars!

The vault of the sky inverse is the sea and the stars are closer, but so much sharper sharper and full of teeth.

MĂŞr | Elinor Sachs

|

Oil Paint

ATROPHY Jennifer Davis

Circus | Katie Miller

|

Marker

T

he most important concept to remember when speaking of you is that energy is never created, nor destroyed.

You were born in the middle of a Texas July; a messy pile of obsolete wooden bones haphazardly coated with cellophane like skin. I met you in the third grade, where you were already living in a quasi-animated state of reality spent stepping on and off of scales, soon to exist only in a state of permanent handicap; day after day spent lying your way in and out of low thread count hospital sheets and monitored showers. Your sixteenth birthday brought a 13.5 BMI and a stay in the “Isolation Room”—I know because you had already been sedated when I arrived for visitation.

I remember visiting the next day. The bone on the outer side of your left wrist threatened to poke a hole into your hospital band with its saw teeth, and your vertebrae poked out of your white shirt spitefully.

The drive that day took longer than usual, the watery runoff on the highway slowing everyone down. That’s how I first knew something was wrong, because of the cars that seemed to slip on the freeway, and all of the tired people with all of the tired faces behind the wheels. The curves felt like death wishes and the sky kept threatening to spread open wider and wider, until it cracked so largely that the stars almost funneled onto that uneven grey pavement.

I don’t know if you remember

the time that the stars poured into the window cracks. I know that you don’t remember it like I do. Winter had the trees spilled over the country roads like rotting corpses, and the blasé grey sky had the sun tucked into a box and hidden under the sidewalk. This was before you got admitted this time around—some parts of you still lived. The way that everything else hung uncomfortably, like it was all out of place, somehow mimicked your disappearing skin.

And even though everything felt barren that day, the stars were rich in the nighttime. Your voice still had weight when you dizzily traced the constellations.

When I arrived into the unit today, your head was hung dejectedly over a cup of Ensure.

A blonde nurse rubbed your shoulder blade while you cried, and I swear to God that she had a cut on her palm. I dragged a chair across the floors, and I don’t know if the legs made a sound.

Your gasps of air were gravely, as if someone had drained all of the water in your body and replaced it with dirt. You were dehydrated to the highest degree, but you still couldn’t find it within yourself to take my electrolyte adept palm creases and re-saturate.

I think it took twelve minutes for you to meet my eyes that day. And when you did, the once stormy blues looked as if your clear saline drip fluid had replaced them. They scratched the solidifying air as you looked up. The words that followed were empty and shocked everyone and everything in the room: “Get out.”

You told me to get out in the summer of sophomore year. You were drunk, and so was the world.

I didn’t listen to you; no, instead, I held back your hair for a few more hours and you emptied the contents of your body cavity into the porcelain toilet. And in the morning, we pretended it didn’t ever happen.

I should’ve pretended like it didn’t happen that day. I should’ve blocked out your words, boiled them down into anguish and pain, watered them with forgiveness, and tossed them in the trash with your film covered Ensure.

Instead, I left the unit that afternoon, found a Denny’s down the street, and cried into a cup of black coffee until evening hushed all emotions.

That night, I slept for sixteen hours. You went into cardiac arrest during my second hour of sleep, and were pronounced dead in the third. I woke up to feel nothing; I fell asleep the next night feeling nothing, and slept soundly, feeling absolutely nothing. The walls grew closer to me than any friend ever had— I distinctly remember a desperate wish of burying underneath the plaster.

Waking up sounded like a dissonant symphony of IV drips and Morphine alarms, and I couldn’t sleep with the constant feeling of a food tube being shoved down my throat. But, that was you, not me, right?

It took me all of that time to realize that you were crying for help the entire time; the disappearance of your skin and bones just reflected the pieces

you believed the world stole from you, pieces you could never get back. “The disease”, as we grew to call it, took aesthetic pieces of you and vaporized them into the atmosphere (as they say, energy is never created nor destroyed) so that your tapestry of atoms is now bonded to everything around me, an intoxicating concoction of air to fill in the spaces between life and not-life. And even constantly under the influence, I can’t forget you, how you could sound off in trills and in fugues, and even though there’s no physical vessel left to house your bones I can still see you as some sort of phi phenomenon, perpetually hiding underneath your own makeshift brand of reality.

And then it hit me that the only piece left of you at the time of your death was a fiery anger, one that I will never be able to scrub from the synapses of my brain. All of those other pieces of you (the light ones) chipped away and I cannot be sure who held the chisel, but I know that there must be the pieces somewhere and maybe even everywhere. I think I might find you soon, not because I want to but because I need to, as your absence has emptied my insides to the point where they feel like a cracked bottle of bourbon, a dry bottle of vodka. I need to find you before more pieces of myself chip away, just like they did you, before they decompose in the stratosphere and some nonfortuitous person adapts my veins of anthrax and battery acid, or my tendons that your disintegration so completely eroded

.

Many Thanks To

colophon

Mrs. Rosenthal, from the bottoms of our hearts. We have no idea where we would be without your insight, your dedication, your hours and weeks of hard work, and your never-ending patience.

You always look out for us and go out of your way to help us, coming in early and staying to work late, and you’ve saved our skin more than a few times.

Dr. Cranfill for giving up your free period to help us review. We are very thankful for your often tie-breaking opinion and your enlightening input.

Ms. Wargo, Mrs. Murphree, Mr. Ashton, and Ms. Jones for your continued support and faciliation of our creativity.

Melanie Hamil at Impact Graphics and Printing for always being so available and helpful whenever we needed you. This magazine would not be possible without your keeping our ideas grounded.

Lovely AP Art students for tolerating our frantic texts and emails about titles and media.

Vibrato is a magazine that exhibits the art, photography and literature of Hockaday’s Upper School student body. Each piece is an original work by the student. Together, our staff members closely review and carefully select the pieces to include in the publication, design the spreads, and distribute the magazine. As you begin to grasp the purposes of our artists and authors, we hope you learn more about yourself as well.

We remember: “Is Callie here today? No, she still has a concussion.” “Is there any...reason for doing this?” “Oh I see, you’re trying to be cute.” “I’ll make you 0.25!” “Bonding time?!”

“What a disaster!” Addie’s alarm clock video, finding quotes about transparency, crystal-headshot-new.jpg, the pen is mightier than the sword, an incredibly long walk through Washington D.C. with scared sophomores, finally getting shades.

The text of this issue is set in Forum 10pt. Variances in size are used for titles of literary pieces, art and photography as well as names of authors and artists. The main titles of the magazine are set in Nihon with variances in size depending on location.

The magazine was designed using Adobe InDesign CS6. The 108page book is printed on Polar Bear Velvet Book 100#. The cover and divider pages are printed on Topkote 130# , 6/6 + Soft Touch with a black foil stamp. Translucent pages are digitally printed on Glama Natural Translucent, 4/4. All parts of the magazine were printed by Impact Graphics and Printing in Dallas, Texas.

Inspired by the work of Emeric Thibierge.

Katie Julia “never says anything funny” “Dennis Too Fancy” Mimini Teeter Co-Editor-in-Chief

Co-Editor-in-Chief

Jane “Gu-d looking” Gu

MaryFrances “just think of something” Dagher

Communications Editor

Managing Editor

Vicky “photog expert” Su

Mary Kate “more fun last year” Korinek

Callie “is she here today?”

Smith

Cameron “debbie downer” Todd

Staff

Art Editor

Literature Editor

Photography Editor

Shannon “typewriter” Anderson

Teal “my dad is a photographer” Cohen

Addie “the floorboards groin” Walker

Assistant Art Editor

Assistant Photo Editor

Assistant Literature Editor

Ellea “I don’t understand” Lamb

Sarah “are you in this class?”

Chan

Payton “lil sis” Hart

Neha “steel city pops” Kapoor

Assistant Managing Editor

Staff

Staff

Staff

Sarah “y’all I figured it out!!”

Mathew

Sara “man killer” Taylor

Amanda “-Killian” Yang

Staff

Staff

Staff

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