HYPHEN: Winter Reading

H Y P H E N: W I N T E R READING

Credits Directors and Editors: NARA MONTEIRO & JERIKA CADUHADA Graphic Designers: SOPHIA BELYK & TIAN TANG Cover Art: DANNI QIAN

NOURISH text by ELLIE SAK

I am awake, and I am hungry.

-bicycle wheels turningnoodles on the stove like porcupine quills -her apple flower bloomssomewhat irresponsible but no less lovely -power outlets in church pewsfollowing the footsteps -masking tape across the doorframeof corpses not yet buried.

SCAR TISSUE text by DANIELLE-SOLO

A man’s history is woven in the fabric of his skin— thin ropes of tissue knotting back together, frayed ends—forming gentle crests, a finger on the skin of water.

I am tracing your history—a puckering line that, you say, abhors your harsh eyebrow, grasping past the jawline, sloping down the soft flesh of your neck, burying itself at the top of your heart.

You are flinching—turn away— your nose splashing shadow against your pale chest to fill the divide; swelling, rippling, churning beneath my fingers.

Our mouths make no sound.

I am folding away my translucent lines between your fingers.

Remind me again how it feels to touch the silt and rise again as we toss and turn, adrift; supple scarred stomachs pressed together, the whitened bellies of small fish.

LOST AND FOUND

text by AHSIF KHAIR MOHAMMAD Brazen youth, smiling bashfully for who we are.

Proud because it hurts. To be lost and not found.

Digging through the musty lost and found for that hand-me-down sweater that I like.

From my big cousin, always talking about how good it is at ‘home’.

A tupperware in the locker--they laughed at how lunch smelled.

But, “life is no joke”. At least that’s what dad says.

And laugh and live free, do as the teacher says.

It’s funny; born here, yet. I’m not like them.

Born here, not like ‘home’.

I speak English. My first language after all.

Like a pup raised by ducks, quacking along. ///// Laying in bed, bored of belonging I’m found.

It’s time to make a sound, a ruckus most profound.

There is no people, there are only people.

Individuals in a group, you see?

Erase your imaginary lines on the ground.

It takes getting lost to be found.

PASTEL COLOURED DREAMS

text by AHSIF KHAIR MOHAMMAD

How did we get to this place we said we wouldn’t?

To this place we surely knew we shouldn’t.

Eerie and damp is the boneyard of dreams where our palates run grey with monotony and our hands red with the blood of our children.

Remember back old friend to when we could stand on joy itself, when we subsisted on discovery alone.

Every single thing in the sky was a world wonder in our eyes.

Ever encroaching, death fooled us all, took from us those beautiful pastel coloured winds that coloured our youths with lofty love.

Where did those dreams go?

We fought for our lives, ready for the bitter end.

In this we stole ourselves away. And killed our dreams.

Dead before dying.

Who have we become if we are not the children we once were?

Dear friend, come back.

Dance with life, and breathe colour again.

Be wonderstruck, and live with me.

Though I may die, my dreams will always be.

JIGSAW

text by ÉLÉONORE JULIEN for my friends

I am made of Parts Put together by family Ameliorated by friends.

Ripped apart by my experiences Torn by my identities So close to being whole.

Je suis fais de Parties Présente mais intouchable Absente dans le monde.

[Une] recette mélangée Trompée par l’optimisme Illustration imitatrice.

Experte en rassemblement Si près d’être complète.

We are Whole.

Who we are Hopes dreams failures victories Open to adventures.

Like a jigsaw, Every piece worthy of love.

Nous sommes Entiers Entre discussions Nous nous rapprochons.

Trébuchant sur nos obstacles ensemble Impossiblement incroyables.

[L’] être humain Revoit ses compagnons Sûr et certain d’être aimé.

THE PARADOX DISEASE

text by GRACE CAMPBELL

she moves in on a tuesday, flicks the light switch and everything looks different. rotting flesh hanging off her emaciated frame she gives me a toothless smile, asks if I’m jealous “no,” I lie.

I become a pitiful and stinking creature gross with guilt. years later the burning scent of hand sanitizer replaces the vomit and blood bloated bellies and cries of pain I lay naked on a table again. after the second kidney failure I knock on the hardwood of my future coffin she holds my hand as we pick out a funeral dress thrilled when we buy the smallest size.

“I am so proud of you,” she says, her gnarled fingers reaching out to touch my cheek, hitting the cool glass of the mirror.

THE MUSCLE IN ME text by AISHA KHAN

THE MUSCLE IN ME SQUEEZES IT TIGHTENS IT JUMPS IT CRIES IT POURS blood LIKE A KNIFE READY TO SLIP AND CUT AND I mISS AND I hOPE AND I pRAY AND I cRY but this time blood is a blade and it stabs paper to the cover the spine into two my nerves His nerves His purpose His movements my eyes my MUSCLE Jabbed like flesh to the bone

god GIVE HIM heaven I SCREAM AND NO ONE LISTENS I JUMP AND NO ONE SEES THEY SCARE ME AND I LAUGH dishearteningly AFTER MY MUSCLE ACHES I DIED WHEN HE DID MY MUSCLE BROKEN MY MUSCLE pauses my muscle stops stares listens mourns Poor, poor one Book of wonders They ripped its beautiful pages.

And long ago, God ripped out their EYES

inert haze text by SHEHRAZADA PIRACHA

the room is silent and still the world drips with sorry stares at the light on my face and the empty bag at the sight of me alone in the room with your head on my lap with your eyes on my voice without the help of anyone but the empty wine bottle that is not mine but the empty boxes that are not mine they cannot move

mechanics text by SHEHRAZADA PIRACHA

have you ever walked into a gym and seen three hundred ellipticals and three hundred people completely stationary but all moving at once? and wondered what obsession tends to turn skin into metal and brains into computers and blood into wires? the disturbing conflation of production and creation of money and fulfillment of skill and art flourishes into destruction the humming of voices becomes whirring of engines with the pursuit of perfection and an obsession to turn three hundred bodies into three hundred machines

a dictionary a pair of scissors a roll of painter’s tape text by ANGELA SAWYER ripped edges on those forced in missing letter lost on worn tape pieces raised by the ones they buried small lines to connect them all and now i look through the collage of hyphens to try and find what material i’m made of underneath

text by KEYONA GALLUCCI

Sugar-sweet melanin stripped from the same cane that had our backs broken in.

I mix a teaspoon of the cubed brown granules into my tea and sip. I reflect. This context is heated. We glaze over history with artistry; with each white wash our rich brown sugar grows refined, more palatable. As it boils, we sit in silence as it breaks in composition. Every compound broken down and appropriated anew.

Before it burns we anxiously watch it boil over. Undisturbed, it thickens. We put this on a stick and serve it to our young.

I am the middle, the contradiction. My culture was disrupted by my history. As a descendant of the expended and the benefitted, I acknowledge the space I inhabit and the controversy my voice arises. Everyday I live my life I live it as a black womanÍž a double negative in a white-patriarchal society. Everyday I am expected to choose a side and fight for a cause that I did not initiate, but a cause that caused me. The inbred lens to both worlds begs the question of my existence: to being either treacherous, or inevitable?.

I am a contradiction. My privilege is often masked by my blackness. I can appreciate that this is a provocative thought, . Ffor how can one reconcile the colonized and the colonizer? I ask my reflection this daily.

Oak text by MEGAN WHITEHOUSE

Roots force their way through dirt Push down past grainy topsoil Expand through the earth Spread out like tiny antennae Drinking in the water A study trunk climbs Its hardened bark Protects the phloem and xylem within Lobed leaves grow from its bold branches Acorns hang from each tributary of twigs In minute bunches The cluster of coarse caps sits on top Of shiny shells that fall to the ground once a year In a rainfall of the oak’s fruit Insects feast on nodules of emerald leaves Birds perch and squirrels scamper across the intricate pathways; The network of the oak Four square legs rise from the plush carpet Towards the smooth table top Levelled by a belt sander A china cup of medium-roast coffee Leaves behind a dark brown ring A scattering of magazines: Town & Country, New Yorker, Forbes A stained glass bowl sits in the centre Filled with dead flora: dried rose petals, jasmine, fennel seeds Embalmed in oils and fabricated scents Sniffed at by a white British shorthair With a ruby red collar Once a month the table is taken outside into the garden By the owner of the house it sits in Smothered with linseed oil to prevent cracking From the air conditioned room And stained with Ipswich Pine To maintain its natural glow

art by JERIKA CADUHADA

“_” text by KAYLEIGH SHIELD

CW: Mental illness, mention of suicidal ideation.

She has this really alarming habit of chewing her hand when under duress. Well, chew isn’t an accurate word. She gums the corner of the L formed by the pointer and thumb. Her hand was salty and had fruity traces of institutional hand soap.

She had seen several mental health professionals since she was fifteen. At the age of twenty-three, she found herself sitting across from number seven. He was good at affecting care, all smiling and attentive and non-threatening. Her regular psychiatrist was on vacation, and had left her in the charge of a younger colleague. He was trying to look unfazed by her odd habit, and if she wasn’t under so much ‘duress,’ she would have just told him, “heeey man, sorry, I just do this when I feel caught in a bear trap.”

All mental health professionals are required to care about the subject as a particular sentient entity.

They carry the emotional burdens of their patients, enduring each relapse or setback or self-sabotage.

The therapist is Sisyphus, their work is perpetually unfinished. She briefly considers what it would be like to do a job that had no end. She would go even madder than she was now.

This therapist appeared to be the type that legitimately cared, but she had been tricked before. Despite the CBT and the worksheets and the various medications and support systems, she still couldn’t discern when care was legitimate.

He cleared his throat, signalling that he would like to begin their session. She blinked, sitting back in her chair.

“So, what brings you here today? Doctor Thomas’ files indicate that you were”— “Sufficiently medicated?”

“Huh. That isn’t a phrase we use. His notes indicate that you were stable; happy, even.” He looks back down at the chart, and she wonders if good ol’ Dr. Thomas took detailed notes about her life; he had always come across as a doodler.

One hour sessions are the easiest, in her opinion. She has enough time to prattle on and create problems, so that the doctors can never actually suss the real problem out of her. She was a depressive-something who had ‘problems with intimacy.’ She exclusively spoke about her parents, avoiding the actual problems. She didn’t like exposing the deepest parts of herself to anyone, especially not to someone who was paid to do it.

“It says here that you were getting better at asserting boundaries, and that you have made progress in managing your relationship with your mother. Tell me, how are things with her?”

One of the easiest ways to obfuscate is to talk about your mother.

She clears her throat and bites her lip, thinking about the best way to talk about the pain without revealing the source.

“Well, she has…pulled away, that’s all. I am feeling a little hurt, but it’s nothing to write home about.

She has been going to book clubs, a lot of them—she has, what, ten books on the go. She just hasn’t had any time for me lately. Honestly, when I set up this appointment last week, I had really overestimated the profundity of my psychic pain.”

“Irena, you told the nurse of the E.R that you wanted to die.”

She grunts, annoyed. Check.

“Look, I think we all say things we don’t really mean all the time, okay?” She shifts in her seat, looking right at the doctor. She thinks about going into the “both/neither” sense of postmodern meaning, but in her experience, people were uncomfortable with the idea that there could be a hybrid between everything and nothing, answers and the abyss. People did not like to be aware that they were all just constantly weaving and re-weaving reality. That is what was wrong with theory of the simulation; how could a conspiracy theorist know the truth if reality was ruled by a singular force?

She could tell that the therapist was not going to play this game with her. He was nice and all, but she got the distinct sense that he would have her committed if she started threatening the reality of meaning.

She couldn’t technically be called depressed if that word never existed in the first place, but that won’t help her get out of this particular appointment.

“Irena, why did you want to die last Wednesday? Dr. Thomas’ notes from April indicate that you were relatively stable. You and your boyfriend had found a new apartment, you felt optimistic about your studies, you had even published a short piece in a magazine.” He pauses and cocks his head as Irena shrinks in her chair. “I have a really hard time believing that you would be in the ER at 12:04 PM telling a nurse that you want to die unless something happened to you .”

Critical subtext: the sane (or, at least stable) do not declare suicidal intentions to E.R nurses.

“I asked to be euthanized, which is not the same as wanting to kill yourself. You cannot euthanize yourself,” she crosses her arms and shrinks back further.

“So, you asked the nurse if she would murder you? Is that your logic? Because what you are really talking about is assisted suicide—which is still suicide. Technically.” He fidgets a little bit, and she pouts.

“I consider depression to be a palliative condition. I am on a drug that is given to people with terminal illnesses, and I don’t see why my depression shouldn’t be considered such a case,” she flips her hair, and the doctor gives her this “well, now I am awfully concerned” eyebrow-raise-head-tilt.

“Surely, you don’t mean that. Wellbutrin is also given to those who have ADHD or are trying to kick a nicotine habit, and you surely cannot think that you have either condition because you have the same prescription.” He looks at her evenly, and her lips scrunch up. She doesn’t really have a comeback for that one.

“Where was your boyfriend? You two live together, right?”

I found him aesthetically disinteresting, so I broke up with him. No, that wouldn’t go over well.

“I am offended that you would think I am so banal that the loss of a romantic partner would make me seek euthanasia. Do I look like a pedestrian sad person?” She tries to look flat and void of emotion.

Apparently it isn’t working; the doctor has found a new way in, and he tilts his head towards her.

“Have you broken up? It must be—“ “Yes. I made it clear that I was weary of his company. He took the hint and moved out.” She doubles down on becoming a flat void, and notes that if she were the author of a short story, she would transform herself into a black hole and suck in this beige office and concerned doctor and everything,

maybe even the whole world, like Maat, and take them all with her. It could be a really compelling short story about the hybridity of the mother-monster trope in ancient Egyptian myth.

“Are you sure that is the case? I mean, from the notes you two seemed serious.”

“You make him sound like a terminal condition.”

“Was he?”

She grunts in response.

“I haven’t been doing well since May, and in July he finally pulled the plug. Look, I know it’s hard for you… doctors to understand poetry and aesthetics or whatever, but I like my life without him. I really do. It’s more poetic for me to be in solitude. No one to complain about all the black I wear, or to point to the mold in our fridge as if it’s ugly. The apartment is an ecosystem, and it’s like we finally got rid of the apex predator. I can be up all night, I get the whole bed. I can smell however I like, I don’t need to shave. I mean, fuck, I didn’t realize that I had lost my edge until I got it back, you know?”

“Edge?”

“Yes, edge; power, mojo, libido. I can write, read, cook, masturbate, meditate without having to speak to a soul. I was never this into life itself while I was with him.”

“So, he had a…blunting effect?”

“Yeah, totally. He was just an emotional crutch. We had no art, you know? He didn’t even get the Odyssey. He was that clueless. I can’t believe we were accepted into the same English department. He hates reading anything that has any aesthetic substance.”

“Oh, really?”

“What do you mean, really?” her tone descended dangerously in pitch and volume.

The doctor shrugs. “Well, why were you attracted to him in the first place?”

“He wasn’t aggravating three years ago. After that amount of time, you either want to be with that person for the rest of your life or you forget what was so hot about them in the first place… He just stopped caring one day, and so did I.” She looks past the doctor, at his various degrees and licenses.

“So, you mirrored him? That isn’t how you communicate in a relationship.”

“I didn’t want to tell him how I felt, so I didn’t.” She lies, and looks into the beige wall behind the doctor’s head. The truth is that it had never occurred to her that she should be disclosing her feelings about him, to him in the first place.

They sit there in silence. He looks at her with more sympathy than she had received from any of her friends, or her parents. At worst, her friends didn’t like him. At best, her parents thought she was just slumming it up until she met a guy with real priorities, like giving her jewelry that required a lockbox and sending their progeny to private school.

“I should have broken up with him,” she admits, keeping her voice calm and measured. “I got too close to him. I hate being attached because, for me, it is an inflexible bond and terminal state. Now I love him and he isn’t here and we have this lease to figure out, and I feel chained and I just wish that I was free from… all of this.” She looks back at her doctor, who is one of those ones who recognizes when their patient is actually and totally alone. “I wanted to be free, and that’s why I wanted to be

euthanized.”

“You first said that you broke up with him.” God, she almost forgot she was in therapy and then he had to ruin it. She is here to get better, not to debate the relationship between reality and fantasy. In her version, she had ended it in a spiritual ceremony. In reality, she hadn’t bothered to place a ceramic tile under her incense burner, and the scent of copal resin and melted plastic had hung around for days.

He went ballistic, and then silent, and then he told her it was over. Irena liked to maintain that since her actions had kicked it all off, she had been the one to break them apart.

“Look, he broke up with me because I refused to reconcile to his demands. He transferred away from me. He told me that he wanted a fresh start, and that one of our friends had a room in the next town over and one of his old professors worked there and that is was the perfect opportunity to try something different.” The doctor writes this down, and Irena feels emboldened.

“I bet he is seeing someone else. He has to be. He hates being alone—he can’t be alone, even though he denies it. He always has to be fucking someone over. I bet he’ll marry her, and they will have banal children and a generic house and he will have an easy and stable career because, contrary to my parents’ opinions, he really cares about that shit. He doesn’t get art. He sees work as a means to an end, and I am my work. We were impossible.” She looks right at her doctor then, and she wonders how he routinely condenses the metaphysics and aesthetics of “deep interpersonal crisis” and “spiralling into the abyss” into a few words.

“Irena,” he begins gently, keeping the practiced, even tone of healthcare practitioners everywhere, “did you want those things? The house, the kids? With him? Together?”

She pauses, returning her gaze to the floor. She looks into the linoleum, and tries to focus her gaze on the sheen. She thinks about him, visualizing the life she had wanted with him. She thought they could have children, or at least a dog.

But that life had been contingent upon him changing in ways that he was just not able to do. He didn’t get the incense, he didn’t get art; he didn’t get her, and she didn’t get him. They were together because they were afraid to be alone. They were both trying to get out of the spiral, and he was able to see their relationship for what it was first.

“It’s just that, you know, I thought we were special. I thought we were gonna change each other’s minds about commitment and love and stuff. But, the more I think about him, even though I am angry and shrill and sad, he made the right call, in the end.”

She thinks about the first time she realized she loved him. It was just because he had a way of always being there. It wasn’t even intentional, on his part. He would always take her call, or listen to her petty rants. He showed his love, rather than declare it. Well, she thought that is what it was, but she was probably wrong.

“You know, it’s funny—I never appreciated my parents’ relationship, but you know what? At least they shared the same vision.”

“Our surnames didn’t even sound good together. No hyphen would change the fact that we… weren’t the same thing. It was fated.” She pauses, thinking through her next statement: “He doesn’t owe me a thing. I consulted tarot readers, my friends and family, and they all told me that he wasn’t the one and didn’t want to be the one, not really.”

“He haunts my dreams. I can’t sleep, because in his absence, he is there. In both senses of the word, it’s making me mad, because I don’t want to obsess but that is what I do. I can’t not be who I am; and who I am is completely tied up in who he is not. Nothing can bridge that. We were so incompatible that we never even discussed the hyphen.”

“I was blind, and it’s not his fault, he just went with it because he loves me, just not the way I wanted him to; I want to tell him that I love him and owe him so much, but I think about the new girl who may or may not exist and I get so mad that I curse his name. Because I feel one way, and he doesn’t, and that isn’t his fault, but I wish it were different.” She sits in the realization for a minute, as the therapist clears his throat and looks at the time.

The cruelest irony of therapy is that when you feel comfortable enough to speak, the appointment always ends.