Green Blotter 2025

G reen B lotter 2025

Green Blotter is produced by the Green Blotter Literary Society of Lebanon Valley College, Annville, Pennsylvania. Submissions are accepted year round. Green Blotter is published yearly in a print magazine and is archived on the following website. For more information and submission guidelines, please visit:

www.lvc.edu/greenblotter

Managing

Katherine Buerke ‘26

Art

Phoebe Bidelspach ‘27

GREEN BLOTTER

Editors

Poetry

Kohai Pavan ‘27

Design

Aiden Deppen ‘27

Prose

Brielle Krepps ‘26

Assistant Prose

Ashlynn Godfrey ‘27

Ethan Bazydola ‘26

Phoebe Bidelspach ‘27

Katherine Buerke ‘26

Natalie Canty ‘27

Aiden Deppen ‘27

Kevin Fahy ‘25

Michai X. Figueroa ‘26

Ashlynn Godfrey ‘27

Tatiana I. Gonzales ‘25

rEadEr Board

Taylor Graham ‘25

Brielle Krepps ‘26

Charlee L. Kurtz ‘27

Rowan Lambdin ‘26

Madeline Lavelle ‘26

Abby Lavery ‘26

Ashley McAllister ‘28

Tristan Neye ‘26

Kohai Pavan ‘27

Faculty advisor

Holly M. Wendt

Katelyn Price ‘25

Claire Remsnyder ‘27

Aleina Smith ‘27

Tavi J. Stallings ‘27

Athena Vinson ‘25

Giana Wall-Wilkerson ‘26

Lucey Walton ‘25

Syenna Young ‘27

Gina Kotinek.......................................

Aiden Deppen.....................................

Kennedy Welker..................................

Cloe Loosz...........................................

Sophia Bunting...................................

Avery Danae Williams.........................

Winter Haler.......................................

Jackie Tsimmerman...........................

Nick Bucciarelli...................................

Cor Weaver..........................................

Phoebe Bidelspach..............................

Jessalin Lee.........................................

Ava Kobos...........................................

Sophia Bunting...................................

MacKenzie Rohrer..............................

Claire Shalhope...................................

Jackie Tsimmerman...........................

Naomi Portillo.....................................

Adelaide Gifford..................................

Jackie Tsimmerman...........................

Cicada Audette-Diaz...........................

Madeline Lavelle.................................

Maeve Camille.....................................

Aiden Deppen.....................................

Olivia Gash..........................................

Phoebe Bidelspach..............................

Elliott Yeagle.......................................

Isabel Lindsay.....................................

Emma Wilcox......................................

Aiden Deppen.....................................

Sienna Brooks.....................................

Kalleigh Young....................................

Cassidy Landis....................................

Lucey Walton......................................

battery low. please connect charger. ......................................... The Complete Stone Tablet for Boulder Rolling: The Best of a Bad Situation XII Edition................................................... Nishikigoi..................................................................................

Gina Kotinek

At night, I walk a tightrope. Alone. Falling right or left is a choice, but I am forced to straddle the middle. Indecisive. Even if the sky falls and the earth shatters, this is my fate.

At night, I wake to a sound. Mother. She sneaks into my bed as if she always belonged, a mother I share a tongue with but not a face, one half of my tightrope. My right. She pets my hair, quietly hums. I feign sleep.

And at night, she pulls me in—daughter to mother, wood to fire, rivers back to an ocean— and whispers, What do you dream of, ㅈㄴㄱ? In the good days, falling. In the bad ones, never being able to.

verklempt

Aiden Deppen

December 2016

Kennedy Welker

After the morning snow becomes sludge in the Georgia red clay, my brothers and I throw the Christmas tree into the yard and run it over with the truck five to seven times, until it’s flat and the branches are splayed into handlebars. We strap it to the pickup, dig our hands into the cedar, and ride the leaves and the gravel. We are the three horsemen at the end of holiday times, beating and bruising the holy ground with evergreen, torn clothes, and bloody noses. Gripping with ripped-open and blistered hands, black and purple knees dug in gravel, a chipped tooth from a hard fall, oak roots scraping up our arms. It’s the last time we are small enough to go tree sledding, but we won’t know that until December 2017, when we are bigger and the tree stays upright until February, and the bottom quarter of leaves fall to the floor and scatter.

How to Play

Cloe Loosz

1. Pick the dirt from under your nails and replace the space with guitar strings. But it’s hard to play because your hands are too small to reach across the neck. Learn some chords and that’s enough because you are not great. You prefer things that fit like acorns in your pockets and mulch in your shoes: disruptive and confined to the spaces only you know well.

Your father plays the guitar, but your grandfather loves the violin. Classical music cradles him like your hiding spot in the roots of the old oak tree next to the playground. The violin sings, twists, and tangles into a familiar web.

Grandpa still talks about your grandmother and the times before the divorce and the whiskey when he knew he would lose her. She would sing opera in the kitchen while classical music dripped through the transistor radio. Classical music became sacred to him like playground acorns. So, you beg your mother for a violin because you want to leave something behind that you can take, too.

2. Take the small ebony-fitted violin from the hands of the music store attendant. Hold the bow to the strings and watch as it cartoonishly bounces off and onto the floor. The attendant laughs and shows you how to pluck the strings: G, D, A, E. The notes ring through its body and into your ear. Your mother agrees with the attendant; the violin chose you, so you take it home.

Grandpa is also a man named Arthur. Arthur was a woodworker because he always liked to play God and sand corners. He has only listened to classical music since the war. He comes to visit and compliments the violin’s craftsmanship. But you’re eight, so the violin resents the crook of your shoulder—too narrow to support its width. With remorse, it leaves behind a penitent kiss, a small red impression mark at the base of your neck.

Wear it with pride for the rest of the day.

3. Touch the pools of sweat in the space between your knees. Orchestra class is in the auditorium and the stage lights are hot and unforgiving. The conductor wades through rows of stolen cafeteria chairs, tuning strings and muttering how America has killed the arts. Grandpa says America killed his brothers in Vietnam. Think about how America would look in a dunce cap in Looney Tunes. Hold the bow and drop it again because balance was never your thing.

4. Learn to pluck the D scale and show it to your grandfather. Fail to drown out the noise of your parents arguing in the kitchen. Hate how your mother likes to fix unbroken things like the living room’s ‘70s wood paneling. This is because the real broken stuff like how she has grown to despise your father are like Jenga: stacked until they crash. “Don’t worry about that,” he mouths while waving his hand in that old Italian ‘forget-about-it’ kind of way. Then, feel his sandy hands cover your ears. “Try it now.”

Close your eyes and feel the hum of the violin on your neck and the vibration of the strings against your fingers. For the first time, it speaks only to you.

5. Attend your first orchestra concert. The stage lights blur most of the audience, except for the front row where you see Grandpa seated in his wheelchair beside your mother. He’s shaking his finger at her, and she’s rolling her eyes. Realize that she is a daughter, too.

The class is still getting to know the bow, so just pluck while reading words like accelerando, ritardando, and finally, rest. Forget you are on stage and float up past the stage lights to the rafters, then up to the sky, far past the limits of Pittsburgh to the crescent moon. Take a seat on the edge and dip your toes into the stars because you now know the high of understanding an instrument.

Now come back down to take your bow. Squint through the stage lights and notice how Grandpa is smiling through his tears, now holding his daughter’s hand like a child.

6. You have now tamed the bow a month after the Christmas concert. You attempt vibrato to show your grandpa today, which is supposed to sound like a vocal flip but instead sounds like a dying cat. Try again and fail—this is your new routine since learning to use the bow. The burden of learning a new skill means leaving behind the security of mastery, or that floating past the rafters feeling. Mourn the simplicity of plucking, because you are growing older and so is your patience.

Stop and listen to your mother, yelling on the wheelchair ramp. For the first time, so is your grandfather. He is angry because your mother was late, and she wasn’t supposed to be born. So, you yell at him too and tell your mother to take him back to the nursing home. He leaves and you begin to understand why his wife left him. Remember you are eight years old.

7. It’s been two days, and you’re feeling both sorry and hurt, hoping Grandpa feels the same. Mom went to the nursing home today to talk to Grandpa about all the things fathers and daughters try not to talk about. You stayed home, stubborn and upset, thinking he shouldn’t have ruined his chance to hear you play the violin with your bow. But that chance is dead now because the landline rings and it’s your mother calling. Grandpa is on life support, weathered and still as sea glass. She explains that he going to die. So have three other grown-ups this year.

You are told death means heaven by Pastor Gary, but to you, death means stale funeral home tea cakes and visiting the guidance counselor instead of the playground.

8. Your mother holds the phone to Grandpa’s ear and tells you to say goodbye. Your throat tightens and you feel like Play-Doh. Feel yourself melt into the carpet and disappear because death is cruel, and you finally understand what the guidance counselor meant by “closure.” Let yourself cry and tell him you were only angry because you love him. Tell him you wish he could love your mother the way he loves you. You’ve learned to laugh at death this year, so you tell him you hope he’ll hear your violin in heaven—he’ll probably get sick of listening to harps all the time. Then they pull the cord.

9. The line is quiet. You pick up a small brick of rosin from your music stand and chuck it across the room into the hearth of the fireplace. Watch it break into tiny pieces like stars. You hear your mother again on the other line. Grandpa cried a single tear when you said goodbye.

10. Think about him shrunken down and whole inside his head, darting frantically from eyeball to eyeball, tugging on his eyelids like iron bars. Think about what happens when the dead have time to grieve, too.

Keyboard

Sophia Bunting

battery low. please connect charger. Avery Danae Williams

i passively observe my friends talking like i’m an ethnographer, taking field notes on how their classes are going. they all seem to say, they’re going, as they struggle to keep their eyes open. or for some, hiding their dark circles

under sunglasses. i get it, man. forcing eye contact means staring into their souls without their consent, and the more i do it, the more uncomfortable it is. so i stare at their feet. and i want to speak, empathize with the grind

except i do it in the early morning and they do it in the late night. but i don’t want to speak. small talk makes me trip on my words. i’d rather have long conversations about why language exists at all to say we’re

exhausted without saying we’re exhausted. batteries, i do this with. they give me energy to watch the conversation play out, but it’s only a matter of time before they die. i must recharge, and i hope that my friends

don’t mind plugging me into an outlet somewhere. it doesn’t matter where, as long as it has strong wifi for me to engage in my special interests: african american studies, poetry, self-help. don’t worry. once i’m back to one hundred percent,

i’ll be buzzing with info dumps about all three. my info dumps may burn your your ears—i’m sure this poem is already doing that—but at least you’ll be energized before returning to the grind. and at least i’ll be energized before returning to myself.

The Complete Stone Tablet for Boulder Rolling: The Best of a Bad Situation

XII Edition

Winter Haler

The Complete Stone Tablet for Boulder Rolling: The Best of a Bad Situation XII Edition

Written by Sisyphus, Founder and King of Corinth

Table of Contents

Introduction

Proper Rolling Methods

Proper Stretching Techniques

Maintaining Mental Health

Transfer Requests

Final Advice

About the Author Introduction

Welcome to The Complete Stone Tablet for Boulder Rolling, the tell-all instruction manual that will ensure you have an easier time in your afterlife punishment: rolling The Boulder up The Mountain. This manual has helpful advice from Proper Rolling Methods to submitting Transfer Requests. Follow these easy tips and turn your tortuous afterlife into a working vacation!

Proper Rolling Methods

Rolling The Boulder uphill can be strenuous work. Luckily, there are various rolling methods that can help take the strain off and ensure you do not pull a muscle (you are a ghost, but the gods are thorough).

1. Lift with your legs. When stuck in a divot, the best method is to crouch and push upwards with your legs. This will allow you to get The Boulder rolling again without throwing your back out.

2. Keep pressure on The Boulder. If you ease up to rest, The Boulder will roll downhill. Alternate between rolling with your hands and shoving with your back to give yourself

3. Watch for Tripping Hazards. Tripping Hazards are quite dangerous, particularly when you are tired. If you fall, so will The Boulder. If you must trip, fall to the side. This way The Boulder will not crush you when rolling downhill.

4. Be prepared at The Summit. The Boulder will overcome your strength at some point near The Summit and roll downhill. The exact point differs each time because the gods like a good laugh. It is imperative that you are prepared to leap to the side when The Boulder falls so as to not be crushed. If you fail, you will have to wait for your ghostly bones to reknit themselves. Then begin your Downward Trek.

Proper Stretching Techniques

Stretching is important after each Upward Trek. It keeps you agile and limber enough to dodge The Boulder and decreases chances of pulling muscles. Tight muscles can lead to more pain and migraines.

1. Shake out your arms and legs. This will make sure they do not seize up while you are rolling The Boulder.

2. Massaging your muscles on the Downward Trek will reduce chances of muscle spasms.

3. Practice yoga. This will loosen your muscles up. Yoga also provides the added benefit of strengthening your muscles while improving your flexibility and mindfulness. This will be useful when dodging The Boulder and avoiding Tripping Hazards.

Maintaining Mental Health

Maintaining your mental health will certainly be a challenge in and of itself. Below are some tips for keeping a positive attitude and an active mind.

1. Cry. Sometimes we all need a good cry. Take caution, though, crying in the wrong conditions can be disastrous. You don’t want to be blubbering so hard that your strength gives out, or you will be crushed under The Boulder. Tears can blur vision, causing Tripping Hazards to go unnoticed. Crying too loudly will garner complaints by the residents of the Fields of Asphodel, so make sure you cry quietly and towards the bottom of The Mountain (your wailing will travel a lot farther near The Summit).

2. Play games to entertain yourself. Count how many steps you take. Pick a surrounding object and find rhyming words. Spot the difference games are also quite entertaining after multiple trips: can you find all the misplaced rocks caused by The Boulder’s latest downhill roll?

3. Switch your perspective. If The Summit is never the end of the Upward Trek, then is it truly the end? Perhaps the end is merely when The Boulder reached the point that it rolls downhill once again. Now don’t you feel like you’ve accomplished something after all?

Transfer Requests

Don’t bother. This is a “for all eternity” kind of situation.

Final Advice

Do not fret too much. Yes, you are being punished. Yes, this is not the advertised relaxing afterlife. Yes, rolling The Boulder up The Mountain forever is pointless. But how many others can say that they have accomplished what you have? How many others can claim they have rolled The Boulder up The Mountain as many times as you have? At least you have an active afterlife, which is far superior to standing in a pool forever starving your head off. Besides, you must have made an impact in life to have been punished in this sort of manner. You’re probably infamous somewhere! A legacy lives longer than any one man can. Always remember: you are a rock star!

About the Author

Sisyphus is the former king and founder of the polis Corinth. Sisyphus has spent millenia as a long-time resident of the Underworld and the Boulder Rolling punishment. His first instruction manual, titled “The Complete Stone Tablet for Boulder Rolling: It’s Not So Bad, I Edition,” was written after 100 years spent in the Underworld, and gained acclaim for its scandalous rejection of Boulder Rolling as a suitable punishment. Since then, Sisyphus has released numerous more editions of his instruction manual, including best-sellers such as “The Complete Stone Tablet for Boulder Rolling: How to Beat the Gods at Their Own Sick Game, III Edition,” “The Complete Stone Tablet for Boulder Rolling: Does Attempting to Escape Death Really Merit THIS?, VII Edition,” and “The Complete Stone Tablet for Boulder Rolling: Just Let Me Stay Crushed Already, X Edition.” Sisyphus continues to reside on The Mountain, where he enjoys a simple life of Boulder Rolling and meditation.

Nishikigoi Jackie Tsimmerman

Of A Distant Woods

Nick Bucciarelli

I thought I was awakened by the birds

You were tossing pebbles up at my window

I thought we were getting lost in forests together

But we were finding ourselves

I thought I could swing across the creek

You trudged straight through the water

I got more wet when the rope broke

We made our own bridges

I thought we would fight monsters

You crafted a bow from a tree branch

I shot the first arrow

We both feigned fearlessness

I thought we found bones

You knew they were just white sticks

I buried them anyway

We learned our place in nature

I thought the stars were faraway moons

You said they were suns

I wished the moonlight would last forever

We always knew the day would come

I thought in any forest our paths would unite

You carved our names into a thick trunk

I have been searching for it

We both know that tree died long ago

In Reverence of Decay

Cor Weaver

Why do you fear the earth that would embrace you?

One day, you will be naught but brittle bones, And the cycle of decay will consume all that was So it may be reconstructed into all that will be.

It seems cruel to lock the dead away in caskets And coffins that trap the body they left behind. To decompose is the course of nature, so I ask: Why do you fear the earth that would embrace you?

The rot will find you, wherever it is you lie.

Hollow flesh will bloat and putrefy, but There is comfort in knowing nothing lasts forever.

One day, you will be naught but brittle bones.

Do you disdain those who would make your bones a home?

Those creeping insects and fungi love us all, in the end. They will gorge themselves on your sacrament, And the cycle of decay will consume all that was.

The body reincarnates, even if the soul does not, Into a thousand worms and trees and living beings. When your time comes, give your body back to the earth

So it may be reconstructed into all that will be.

Up

Look

Phoebe Bidelspach

Eel Pond

Jessalin Lee

I remember passing Eel Pond

In the night, it looks different

The rarest of lights are dancing off it, and the cool wind brushing the surface is brushing our faces

You had let go of my hand then, to get closer to the railing, and I was scared you’d fall Looking at me, I can feel that smile of yours

And then you’re beckoning me over, even though I’m a bit afraid of heights and railings and we look down and imagine how deep this dark pool must be

Our reflections don’t show in the starlight

But you’re chuckling as you recall a memory: you were really drunk one night, in a car with friends I’ve never met, and you told them abruptly to stop— you had to get out of the car to bask in the beauty of this natural wonder Looking at you, you seemed so alive and it struck me

This person of you that existed before me, this reincarnation of you from ghosts of autumns past You felt far away then.

Sometimes I think about how we were too different

You bask, and I pass, and it was a miracle that we found each other’s company, if just for a moment

I bathe myself in the memories, in the wonder of you: your 43 freckles, the half moon birthmark on your bicep, how you’re so awkward in all but the pictures I take of you, and now I’m the one, cursed to bask

Events of a Sunday Morning

Ava Kobos

Jude is looking for the right moment to break the news and waits for Maya to go get dressed upstairs so she can be alone at the table with their parents. As minutes pass without any sign that her sister will leave, the sounds at the breakfast table form a domestic symphony: the incessant, rhythmic scrape of their mother’s knife against the crusted center of her bagel; the sudden slosh of the pulpy orange juice as their father pours himself a glass too quickly and spills it over the rim; the staccato sound of Maya’s nails on the screen of her phone, typing messages to her friends. No one speaks, yet Jude feels the weight of the sounds in her ears, in her pounding head, and in her stomach, which turns nauseatingly over itself again and again as it has done every morning for the past two weeks.

Her hand shaking, she brings her glass of juice to her lips and sips carefully, trying to calm herself. The test she had taken at five in the morning sits heavily in her pocket, rolled up in a plastic bag. Any movement too swift would cause the test to crinkle inside of the plastic and alert the table to its presence.

Jude knows the affair won’t be pretty, and can already predict how her parents will respond. Her mother’s eyes will widen as she gasps. Her father will stare and stare until she squirms in her seat, silently begging him to say something. In the air will hang a tremulous sense of disappointment. The sounds of the Sunday breakfast will have been substituted for silence until the rush of questions comes and fervent arguing commences. Maya’s footsteps will halt upstairs as she pauses mid-step by the staircase, mascara wand hovering in the air and only one eyelash done, to listen to the voices below and try to decipher what they’re saying, wondering what her sister could’ve done to elicit such a response. Meanwhile, Jude will sit in her seat downstairs and take the brunt of it all, staring at her plate with shame, until her parents concede.

Right now, her sister isn’t paying much attention to Jude or their parents. Maya’s eyes are still glued to the screen of her phone, drawn to the conversation with her friends that has conveniently lasted the entire breakfast. She stares at the screen, pressing her own cup of juice to her lips without taking a sip, until something within her friends’ conversation summons her attention. Then, she slams the cup back onto the table and clicks away at her phone. Though Jude wishes for her to leave, she is partially grateful for her sister’s distraction, for if Maya cared more,

she would just be another person to disappoint with the news. Once their parents find out, they will morph Jude into Maya’s personal pariah, an example of what not to do with her life. But, with this level of disinterest, perhaps Jude’s failure won’t mean much to her sister, and Maya will brush it off like every other piece of news that their parents tell her.

Their mother sits, unbothered, now spreading a thick layer of cream cheese across the second half of her bagel. Their father finishes his glass of orange juice, still clouded and sticky from the spill, and starts on his eggs. Jude estimates ten minutes until both parents are finished and up from the table, but Maya’s bagel is only missing a quarter, the rest forgotten in lieu of her phone. Jude’s heart races along clumsily, and she feels torn between the stark state of unrest inside her chest and the silence shared amongst her family. The food on her own plate sits before her, practically untouched. The single bite of bagel she had taken feels like freshly poured concrete in her stomach, and the runny whites leaking from the mass of slightly underdone scrambled eggs reminds her of snot. She is suddenly wracked with the sensation of nausea, and sweat breaks upon her forehead as she tries to hold down her slight breakfast. Her hand goes to her pocket, and she feels the firm plastic of the test through the fabric.

When she woke early, driven by the need to heave the detritus of her dinner into the toilet bowl, she retrieved the box of tests from their hiding place under her mattress. She watched from the cold tiles of the bathroom floor as those lines emerged in bold magenta, and a roiling sense of shame began to set over her. Her first thought was that she would not carry it to term, that she would get rid of it. She was struck by how quickly it had started to feel parasitic, like a leech on her insides. Her body had betrayed her, creating something that would forever tie her to this boy that she had never wanted much with.

After flushing away her vomit, concealing the testing kit once more under her bed, and dropping the test into its plastic bag, she lay in bed and stared at the dark blue dawn spreading outside. She decided she wouldn’t tell him anytime soon, perhaps never. It somehow had everything to do with him, yet at the same time, nothing to do with him at all. She felt a strange urge to constrict the news, to tuck it somewhere deep inside of herself where she could protect it. How ironic it was, she felt, that despite her steadfast need to dispose of it, she wanted to keep it close, safe from his scrutiny and the feelings that would arise if she confronted him. Maybe he would want her to keep it, or to take her to the abortion, to commit himself to her wellbeing and enmesh their lives. No, telling him was not an option.

She had toyed with the idea of telling her sister, but there was no point. Maya was unable to help, as she was younger and couldn’t drive Jude home from the clinic—how lucky Jude was that

her city had a clinic. If she told her sister, Maya would only regard her with the same look, a classic teenage mix of judgment and boredom, that she often imparted to their parents. Telling her sister of a pregnancy just for the sake of it was an intimate act, one that she felt should be saved for sisters who knew about each other’s life and friends, and who entered each other’s room to talk throughout the day. The doors to Jude and Maya’s rooms are always closed.

Back at the table, the morning begins to swell up on Jude like a wave she knows she won’t be able to run from. Her father has finished his eggs. Her mother has long-since put down her knife and is now drinking her coffee. If Jude waits any longer, one of her parents might leave. Then she’ll have to think of another time to tell them, and will have to repeat the process of gathering the words, like unripe berries, in her mouth.

Jude glances at Maya and is surprised to find that she’s already staring back. Though Maya still holds her phone, her focus is on Jude, who feels pinned like a specimen of some sort under her sister’s abrupt, rare attention. Then Maya’s eyes dart down to Jude’s hip, and Jude is caught off guard as she follows her sister’s gaze and sees part of the test poking from her pocket, magenta lines bared. She feels a rush of panic, shoving the test back inside before looking up at her sister and watching how Maya’s eyes dart back and forth between her own.

Stay, Jude wants to say to her sister, to save herself with a single syllable—if Maya knows, maybe Maya would be willing to talk and think of a way to help her—but just as she readies herself to speak, Maya’s jaw sets and she stands to take her plate, still full, to the sink. Jude watches, unsure of what to do, as her sister composts the leftovers and slots the plate into the dishwasher. Maya’s movements are overly precise, nimble, so opposed to the distracted, snail pace of her breakfast that there is no doubt that she understood the test protruding from Jude’s pocket as a sign to leave.

And then Maya is gone, having disappeared through the white-painted doorway, leaving Jude alone with their parents and a reverberating, stirring string of tension that only she seems to be aware of. She looks up at her mother first, then her father—their eyes are cast calmly to their plates, to their disassembled breakfasts. Jude takes a shaky breath, and interrupts the silence of the morning.

Tireswing Sophia Bunting

Daedalus’ Guilt

MacKenzie Rohrer

A parent wants to protect their child

A parent wants to uplift their child

A parent wants to free their child

A parent wants, and wants, and wants

It was such a lovely spring day, so alive it made him fit to burst with Life from the chest

So naive and innocent it could not comprehend the tragedy it bore into the world

Daedalus’ son was falling

Icarus was three when he climbed up his father’s stool

And onto his workbench; babbling with pride and waving pudgy fists, He did not notice the edge until it was too late, and he fell

Into his father’s arms with hiccupping sobs

Icarus was seven, and the castle was too small for him

He’d taken to racing through the passages, up and down the stairs

Imagining mountain grass under his feet instead of cold, unfeeling stone

He skids around a corner and into his father

Who lifts him from the ground, spinning before tossing him up, and suddenly

Icarus is flying

Icarus was eleven and had found Daedalus’ wine

Tired from running and playing Gods with the metal toys his father made, he drinks and finds his worries banished and his head filled with clouds

His father finds him lying on the floor, muttering

About birds and wings and freedom he’ll never have

Daedalus carries his son to his cot (he’s dead to the world; will he ever wake?) and props him on his side so when the vomit comes (and it does)

He will not choke on his aspirations

Daedalus cries (silently, his son must not hear), begging the Gods for help, for escape, For mercy

They answer with Icarus’ words and his heart soars

Daedalus laughs, hysterical, through his tears

As Icarus sleeps on, unaware

Icarus is still eleven when Daedalus shakes him awake and leads him into the workshop

The sight of the magnificent white wings wipes the sleep from his eyes

He is more alive in this moment than he ever was (than he ever will be)

Daedalus takes a set of wings smaller than his own, And pulls the harness over Icarus’ chest, tightening the supple leather, thumbing the brass buckles down

He adjusts a few feathers, and his son is ready

They step into the air together, and their shackles break They step into the air together, and it embraces them, lifts them as Daedalus lifted his son

Icarus tastes freedom on the wind, and he chases it, catching the early morning thermals brought out by the sun and soaring

Higher

Higher

Higher

Daedalus calls to him, urges him back down before his wax melts, but Icarus is a speck above him; He cannot hear

Icarus sees the world grow small below him, his father shrinking away, And thinks himself a giant

He wants to be bigger than his fear, his loneliness

The escapism gnawing at his ribs, always hungry, Is finally satiated

Lost in the euphoria, Icarus doesn’t see the first feather fall

Or the second

Or the third

Daedalus does

He sees the back speck growing larger, shedding a blistering trail of white

Son screams for father, father screams for son

As Daedalus reaches outward, he’s caught his son a thousand times before; the stool, the floor, the wine-dark sea of Icarus’ apathy

Daedalus reaches out, Icarus’ fingers brush his own (they burn, by the Gods, they burn)

Their hands close, and both hold

Only Air

The feathers fall slowly, so, so slowly

Much slower than Daedalus’ tears

Much slower than Daedalus’ cries

Icarus does not slow

Daedalus cannot fall

The Spring never cared

Cherry Juice

Claire Shalhope

Why harbor resentment towards your own mind?

As I explore its contours and complexities your body retreats to a corner, seeking someone else’s embrace. Your face flushes in shades of cardinal, crimson, and scarlet. Your gaze sharpens as if I brandished a dagger and plunged it into your heart. Yet, all I did was glance your way with nothing but pure admiration. Admiration for every spark of thought that springs from your mind. How different your psyche is from mine. How wondrous it is to witness your exclusive creations. How frightful you must feel as I reserve my judgments for my own pen and paper. In your presence, I see your brilliance in its full radiance. Yet, it’s mistaken for hostility, so you try to seize the knife, composing your own narrative. Sharpening both ends of the metal, a plunging illusion of danger. Where you aim one point of the blade at your own heart, then embrace me softly. As our shirts become soaked in imaginary drops of cherry juice. I devote myself to you.

OLVIDAMOS

NO PERDONAMOS NI

Jackie Tsimmerman

Hard Rock

Naomi Portillo

When I was a junior in college, I promised myself that senior year would be my most successful.

The sentiment was short-lived, however, as I found myself sopping wet in front of the doors to my very first lecture of the semester. Ignoring the loud slosh my socks made in my sneakers, I dropped my broken umbrella by the doors and pulled myself into the room. For a few seconds, I was grateful no one bothered to turn around, instead focusing on whatever was up on the board, but then I made the worst mistake imaginable: I locked eyes with the professor.

“You.” He pointed his finger at me, eyeing me up and down in what I could only call disgust. Suddenly, I was very aware of how disturbed I might have looked, and the turning of heads my way did little to help. “Latecomer.”

“Me?” I asked, frozen in my spot.

“Could you tell me the significance of the Phillips Curve?”

Had he asked me the stages of Erikson’s theory or anything about the Theory of Mind, I would not only have answered correctly but also redeemed myself for this deeply embarrassing moment. As it would turn out, the only thing I knew about economics is that I did not know anything about economics and I was unfortunately not in my Clinical Psychology lecture.

“Shows the tradeoff between inflation and unemployment.” Someone whispered from their seat.

Seeing as I had no choice, I repeated those exact words, albeit with little confidence.

“Good,” said the professor, turning his chin smugly. “Now take a seat.”

I felt my shoulders relax and quickly took the seat closest to me lest he call me out again. Beside me, the student who gave me the answer laughed under his breath. I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t left the lecture hall by that point but when I looked over at his notebook and spotted the name Cal, I swore to myself for the second time that this year would be my best.

I wasn ’ t particularly fond of the holidays.

It was merely another excuse for my family to meddle in my life, ask who I’m seeing, why my body looks different, or how much money I’m making. I would have given everything to avoid them this year and hide Cal from their fawning, though he didn’t seem to mind it a bit. In fact, he seemed to love the attention and welcome the questions.

“They’re nice,” he shrugged, helping my mother mash the potatoes she’d just boiled. He’d been quite helpful in the kitchen, much to my mother’s pleasure. “I wish I had a family like yours.”

“Oh, my sweet boy,” my mother pinched his cheeks with two hands and I felt my face burn. “We are your family! You know up until today, Mona has never brought a boy—”

“Mom!” I pulled Cal away from the kitchen and away from my aunts who called after us in the living room, out into the porch. Outside, Brooklyn’s air was crisp, and even in the blackness of the night, I could see him trying to hide a smile, so I flicked his forehead and told him to forget everything my family had told him in the last two hours since he’d arrived. I gathered that it was far too early in our relationship for him to be hearing about my first-grade accidents.

“You’re exaggerating,” he said, leaning against the door frame, where the music and clinking of glasses had curiously faded. I wouldn’t put it past the guests to be eavesdropping, so I ignored him and pulled out my phone.

“What are you doing now?” he raised an eyebrow, the screen’s blue light casting shadows across his face.

“‘Burgers near me’,” I read the words displayed on my search bar monotonously. I glanced up and offered a wry smile to his glare. “Just in case.”

“You know, they’re not as bad as you make them out to be,” he said, a thoughtful lilt to his voice. “I can handle a little interrogation. Anyway, where’s your Christmas spirit?”

I would never say it outright but despite my family’s irritant manners and my distaste for winter festivities, I was grateful for Cal’s presence. Maybe it was because of this that I put my phone away and gave him a defeated eye roll.

“You owe me a burger,” I told him.

I’ll never forget the waves that day.

They crashed onto the shore and collapsed back into themselves, raining seaspray on my skin. The sun had peaked, golden light showering us in heat and nearly blinding us from our shadeless spot on the sand. Cal had forgotten the beach umbrella in the hustle of the morning; we had woken up later than expected and the drive to Atlantic City was not a short one, so I rushed to make subs to take for lunch while he gave the car a quick inspection. After having moved in together, I was surprised how we had managed to survive when neither of us woke up to our alarms.

For three hours, we cruised down the highway, windows down, blasting unintelligible 80’s music and biting the straws of our Wawa iced teas, blissfully unaware we’d soon be cooking underneath a relentless ball of fire.

Despite this small hiccup, we didn’t let it get in the way of our trip. After all, it was really the only weekend we were both free to escape New York City; while Cal was knees deep in office scut, I was drowning in research work for my clinical internship. If there was anything we needed, it was a day by the sea to carry out our worries.

“You need the color anyway,” I said to him while he squinted at the sun. He then threw sand my way.

After only about five minutes of testing the freezing water and pointedly deciding to return to the sand, I unpacked our subs from the cooler and felt my stomach growl in approval. Before we could even think to delight in them, a flock of seagulls pounced on us, pecking my head and nipping at Cal’s fingers. I yelped, trying to fight them off but to no avail. In a matter of seconds, only the remains of our sandwiches were left: a sad piece of lettuce covered in sand a few feet away and a slice of provolone being carried out into the sea.

We sat in silence for a while, Cal digging his toes into the sand while I played with a loose thread on our towel. It appeared the sun might have taken some pity on us as it slowly sheathed itself behind some clouds.

“I saw a Hard Rock earlier,” said Cal, raising his brows. I was already on my feet.

I’ve seen him happy before, but not quite like this.

Cal was working the room like a prince, a broad grin framing his cheeks, his hair slicked back with gel, and wearing a dark gray suit that looked like it cost more than our rent. He shook the hands of everyone that approached and congratulated him, modestly shaking his head when they told him things like “I knew it’d be you” or told me things like “Keep this one close.”

After all, he’d been working years for this promotion, for the corner office with floor to ceiling windows, the engraved name plate on the door, the chance to, for once, be the one giving out the coffee order and not having to fetch it.

The company had thrown him the party, overtaking the entire floor with overplayed pop music and greasy finger foods. Everyone appeared to be in attendance, including the director and the staff members who would now be working under Cal. One of the last people to approach us was Bree, one of Cal’s peers from his days as an intern. Her mossy green eyes met mine and as soon as she could, she wrapped her arms around me.

“Mona!” she said, her smile widening.“I haven’t seen you since Cal’s party last year, how are you?”

It was true; for years, Bree had been close with our circle of friends. She was at my graduation party when I finished my doctorate degree, at our New Year’s celebrations, and even attended our wedding two years ago, having gifted quite an expensive espresso machine, but lately, she had been less and less present in our lives. For a few minutes, we caught up. We talked about the company, about our new apartment in the Lower East Side, and something about the Mets. From my peripheral, I could see Cal’s shoulders become tense. He was no longer smiling like the storybook prince from a few minutes ago, but politely nodding to whatever we said and instead, choosing to stare at his polished Oxfords.

With a small congratulations to Cal, she walked off to another part of the room, leaving a faint scent of vanilla lingering behind.

It was eleven o’clock.

I had gotten home from my shift at the clinic around six and had gotten straight to housekeeping. I put a load into the washing machine, cleaned the bathroom, and even dusted the console table near the entrance, making sure to skip the framed picture of me in my wedding dress, smiling at the camera. I wondered for a moment where the dress was now but just as quickly decided I didn’t care.

Dinner involved me defrosting a pan of alfredo pasta from Trader Joe’s, and after having sat down on the couch to dine, the only thing left to do was to wash the dishes. While the rest of the plates and bowls were spotless, I could not seem to get rid of the stain on one of the mugs. Soap suds coated my fingers, right in between the wedges and underneath my nails. It was washed away with the turn of the faucet and as the steaming water stung my skin, I found it didn’t quite bother me as much as this stain did.

I heard the front door open and heavy shoes hit the floor, the shrugging of him stripping his coat, and then a sigh of resignation. As if I hadn’t heard him before, he announced his entrance to the apartment, dragging himself into the kitchen. I could smell vanilla on his person, but I told myself it might just be the dish soap. The green apple on the soap bottle label seemed to laugh at me.

“Work was good,” he said impatiently.

I said nothing. Not even how I know he gets off at seven and his building is twenty minutes away. Really, I didn’t take my eyes off the sponge my fingers were wrapped around in or the stubborn spot on the mug. Was it coffee? Tea?

“What now, Mona?” he sighed again.

“I can’t get this stain out,” I said, more to myself than him. The kitchen was getting cloudy with steam and the water was only growing hotter. “What the hell was in this?”

“Just let it soak,” he said, waving his hand in dismissal. “We can get mugs anywhere.”

“No,” I heard my voice break. “You can’t get this mug in New York, Cal.”

“So what?” He raised his voice. “We have more mugs.”

I yelped. The skin on my hands was flushing to a scarlet red as pain shot right up my arms. Cal was at my side in a moment, turning the faucet off and pulling my hands to his. Even in the steam, I could see disappointment glow in his eyes.

“What the hell?” He shook his head and while he worked on finding the first aid kit somewhere in the cabinets, I stared not at the redness of my skin but at the Hard Rock mug, or what was left of it anyway, on the floor where I had dropped it.

Gifford

You did not ask to have this killing inside you, and I do not hate you for it. But I am not the child who brushed mosquitoes away instead of slapping them (. . . well, sometimes I am). But you–you I must carefully wrap in a piece of tape so you don’t balloon with my blood or the blood of one I love. I should hate you. You are why I’m tired all the time. You are the only creature I fear.

You took Aggie and made Sal sick. Yet you seek only survival, suck blood for sustenance, so I can’t hate you. Still, I’m not as naive as I once was. I will wrap you in tape then mourn you and, myself, a murderer.

Chinemerem

Jackie Tsimmerman

To the baby bird I found outside

Cicada Audette-Diaz

How small your wings

Curled closely in

You stretch them as if to fly

You open your mouth as if to sing

How small your heart

Beating beautifully on You breathe only to breathe

You move only to catch the sun

Is the scratch on your head

Why your mother left?

Defenseless to the destruction of man

Perched patiently in a parking lot

I know how cruel the world can be

When you are small

Just alive and already expected to fly

Just breathing and already expected to know

That the cold concrete is no place for comfort

If someone else had passed by

You might have been crushed

But luckily for you I tend to look down

Lucky to be a baby bird

Sitting in my room waiting for morning

Lucky that all I expect of you

Is just to stay alive

seagull wants a cracker

Madeline Lavelle

Ode to the Black-Billed Magpie

Maeve Camille

Magpie, cop car colored rascal, gossips in a grating tone, hops across the crests of roofs and samples rain from gutters, plucks at roadkill smorgasbords until it feels the engine’s breath.

Magpie, cocky checkmark, velvet shade and snowy banks make up your plunging form.

Your beak looks just as sharp as you are.

Magpies group like teenage boys, all gangly legs, no private space; throw hands as calls and monkey cries across the cul de sac, then squawk like turning panes of glass, zigzag their throats and seesaw towards the day’s next gleaming task.

making ghosts

Aiden Deppen

Time Flies When You’re Having Fun

Olivia Gash

“Now remember, Timothy, time flies when you’re having fun. You must remember . . . remember to–” Grandma Beatrice trails off as she sinks further into the couch cushions, her frail body wrapped in a cocoon of quilts.

When I think back, that was the moment that started it all–the time skips. I would never be sure if Grandma had regained her train of thought because the next thing I knew it was nine a.m. the following day.

Although Grandma lived in our house, I rarely saw her face after that. It seemed that every time we settled down to enjoy a cup of tea, I was back in my bedroom.

The next time I was able to really study Grandma’s face, she didn’t look the same. Dwarfed by the size of the coffin, her sallow features and hollow cheeks lacked the warm glow and mischievous smirk that often skated across her face–especially when she sneaked candy into my pocket with a finger pressed to her lips.

I closed my eyes and inhaled. A sterile, cloying smell assaulted my nostrils, and I drew back with a shudder.

“It’s supposed to be . . . gingerbread. And some strong perfume that I didn’t particularly like, but I’d much prefer it over this one.” A broken laugh escaped me.

“Ahem!” An older man hacked behind me. “What was that lad? I can’t hear well these days, so you’ll have to speak up.”

“Nothing, sir. It doesn’t matter.”

The next few months drudged by; the winter chill outside was nothing compared to the freeze at home. Dad had his things packed before Grandma’s belongings had even been sorted. If I’d expected Mom to put up a fight, I would’ve been sorely disappointed.

More listless than a ghost, I noticed her less and less until she was little more than a

permanent fixture on Grandma’s couch.

It was only then that I saw her at school–a girl in the year above with a propensity for wearing the brightest colors she could find, yet somehow making them all seem dull in comparison. I often found myself drawn into her orbit and later she would mockingly call me her little puppy for trailing behind her and her friends.

I soon found that I didn’t mind what she called me, so long as she looked my way every once in a while. High school felt like an eternity, but looking forward to these small interactions with Jane kept me moving.

Years later, I found myself trudging through the city in the rain after another day spent as a punching bag for beer-bellied men with red faces and laughs that conveyed anything but joy.

There was nobody waiting for me at home and I doubted there ever would be. The odd time skips were a distant memory and every day was longer than the last.

I was opening my umbrella when I saw it: a yellow raincoat, beaming against the drab concrete backdrop.

Time seemed to hold its breath as I picked up my feet, my lungs heaving with exertion before I even reached the overhang sheltering her from the rain.

Her golden-brown eyes carved deep into my soul, and I felt my cold, reptilian heart begin to shed its outer layer.

“Well, if it isn’t little Timmy Davis.” Her eyes squinted with mirth, and unused muscles in my face began to pinch as I smiled.

“They always said you’d find me again,” she said, almost to herself, before she stole my umbrella and stepped pointedly into the deluge.

I hadn’t quite processed this turn of events before my feet returned to trailing behind her.

As I opened my mouth to call out words I could no longer feel on my tongue, the ground lurched from beneath me, and time slipped from my grasp again.

When I came to, I was sitting in a cramped but cozy apartment, staring at Jane. Laugh lines had embedded themselves into her perfect face, but what stood out to me the most were the tears

leaking from her red-rimmed eyes.

“Jane, honey, what is it?”

The word honey felt familiar in my mouth, but I had no recollection of saying it before–much less to the older version of my childhood crush who now sits beside me.

This seemed like a good time to mention the amnesia that seemingly ripped chunks of my life away, but before I could put the words together, she began telling me that she’s miscarried the baby and isn’t sure how to go on.

A deep well of grief threatened to spill over from a place I didn’t know I had. It took several gulps of air that went down like dried cotton before I regained composure.

I grasped Jane’s shoulders and began to reassure her in a gentle way that I’d never heard from myself before. She sank into my side with a whispered, “Oh, Joseph,” and images of a baby nursery and blankets embroidered with the name Joseph broke through the fog of my mind.

The rest of my life flickered by in a similar fashion; long periods of what must been happiness passed before I’d break out of my reverie with a crisis at my feet.

The blasted phrase ‘time flies when you’re having fun’ had never seemed so cruel. I would spend anywhere from hours to months putting the pieces of our lives back together, trying not to think too hard about what it would mean when we were settled and ‘having fun’ again.

It never seemed the right time to bring it up–the miscarriage, Jane’s mother passing, our oldest catching pneumonia, Jane’s cancer scare, the diagnosis, the last days.

“Dad, you seem different.” Our oldest daughter, Josie, smiled up at me on the day of her mother’s diagnosis. We had decided not to tell our two children.

Somewhere, lost in time, I had apparently learned how to talk to kids, and as I reassured her with empty words, I wondered if the son I’d never met was visible somewhere within her features.

Watching Jane suffer through cancer was enough to make me selfishly wish that time would steal me away again. The next six months dragged by and Jane spent every moment in a fight with the grim reaper that was invisible to the rest of us.

As the sweat beaded on her brow and her breathing became shallow, I could only pray that

he would be swift.

“I’ll find you, Janie. You know I always do. Not even time itself can keep me away for long. If these miserable moments–when we were at our lowest, the ugliest versions of ourselves–are all I’ll ever get with you then I can only imagine how beautiful your laughter was, how terrible your singing, and how bright your joy.”

When it was time to say goodbye, I plugged my nose as I leaned over the casket. Vanilla, I decided. She would always smell of vanilla.

She was buried in black. When I saw it, I half thought a shard of my ribs had broken off and lodged itself into my heart. My Janie was yellow. She needed to be in bright colors, not black. I opened my mouth to let someone know, but the shard splintered, lodging itself in my throat.

“What was that, Dad?” Little Bea looks up at me with her mother’s golden eyes.

“Ahem.” I cleared my throat gruffly before shaking my head. “It doesn’t matter.”

The rest of my life was rather a long affair. I’m hesitant to admit that the next time time flew away from me was just after I received my own cancer diagnosis. Life was cruel to me, and the relief of soon rejoining my wife was long awaited.

A heavy weight pulls my soul back into my aching body one last time, and I find all my bones burning as if they plan to tear their way through my skin. For the first time in my life, I am almost thankful for the way time flies from me. The pain this body had endured since my diagnosis did not belong to me. Time’s singular mercy had been gifted to me at the bitter end.

A chipper, young voice draws my blurry eyes to a boy at my bedside.

“Who are you, boy?” A sandpaper voice wheezes on phlegm, as unfamiliar to me as the people in this white room.

The boy shuffles nervously behind a tall, young man I have never seen.

“Dad, I’m your son-in-law Dave and this is Timmy Jr.” He speaks loudly, like this isn’t the first time he’s said it.

I don’t have time to mull this over before something begins to pinch and claw through the cage around my heart. I hear my teeth chattering and I grimace before feeling the tremor that

violently sweeps through my body. I suffer little before a cold rush of morphine runs up my arm and the keening alarms grow blissfully faint.

As my eyelids flutter closed, I see something brilliantly yellow and wonder if this is the light that the dying often reference. Before my weary mind can figure it out, I feel my feet propel me forward, faster than I’ve moved in years. The rest of time is lost to me.

It’s Your World

Phoebe Bidelspach

who named infinity?

Elliott Yeagle

Aries who named the stars was it a small child playing games connecting the lights in the sky to stories they’d heard? Heracles that’s almost what I hope it was a feat of ego Taurus or was it an old man sitting by the riverbank staring up in awe who collected constellations?

Orion that sounds more beautiful if a bit more tragic Gemini who was it that charted celestial movement Sirius who do we have to thank?

Cancer do you know the stories? can you count the stars? Draco how many have been forgotten?

how many have disappeared or died?

Leo

what do our stories look like from other worlds? to how many constellations does our sun belong? or have we been forgotten too?

Andromeda

the fact that a dead star a million light years away will still bring light to earth for another day

Virgo the star is gone but her light lives on?

Perseus

mystifying/beautiful Libra

if only i could have that effect Casseopeia innumerable worlds innumerable stars in the darkness of the night we’ll never know them all Scorpio and yet we’ve been to space more times than we’ve been to the bottom of our own world

Ursa major misplaced priorities? i don’t know but Regulus god created the heavens before the ocean does that have something to do with it?

Sagittarius

“shoot for the moon and you’ll land among the stars” it sounds pretty, sure but i bet its real lonely up in space Pegasus floating all alone overview effect creates profound grief, supposedly want to experience that forever? no, me neither Capricorn but the sky’s still beautiful a poet’s favorite muse Cygnus lying on my back head on your shoulder grass cold beneath our blanket Aquarius when we look up in the night Infinity stares back at us are you lost in her eyes too?

Ophiuchus at least we’re together when we remember our cosmic insignificance Pisces at least we’re not insignificant to each other

nasa application

Isabel Lindsay

Question one. Why do you want to be an astronaut?

Please choose whichever answer fits best:

1. when laughing freely, you throw your head back / joy only rises when you look up

2. the last time your mother held your hand, laid on the sandpaper hospital sheets, you knew where she would soon go / she raised her chin and swallowed down the pain / she deserved a softer bed, too high for torment

3. the sun cradles you in its warmth each afternoon / you’d feel impertinent to not return the embrace / you were taught manners, you know better than that

4. you want to run so far you leave your consciousness behind / so the land itself falls to open space / you want the pump of your arms to burn so they catch fire, as the stratosphere pushes its insistent hands against you / you want the sky to form a familiar face / pale and nosetubed, smiling / you want a lack of air so sudden and puckered it caves in your chest with one swooping arc / you want to be turned inside out, so the writhing mess inside can finally be exposed / you want it to float away / dissolving / dispersed around you like the aftermath of a supernova / you want sparkling debris no longer strung up inside / scattering across the cosmos singing freedom / you want the warmth of nuclear fusion / you don’t want to be alone, aching, climbing anymore / you want to be the light / instead of the darkness between

Bittersweet Color

Emma Wilcox

Pattern Recognition

Aiden Deppen

Unbrushed golden hair awfully little and a little awful she’s bubbly and sweet like saccharine self-proclaimed effervescent she doubts I could spell it right on the first try

Dr. Pepper-stained teeth from a morning ritual addiction punches your arm for things you can’t remember probably gets punched in the arm for things they wished they could forget sleeping on a stage-prop wooden bed during dress rehearsal but don’t call them Charizard, especially not Charcoal

Walking around town on secrets with the therapist argumentative essays in iMessage, laughing at jokes you’re not in on incessant invitations you’re running out of excuses to avoid his uncanny stare that you still see when your eyes are closed a year later, they still see you

The forehead of a brick wall–no, a brick wall is too interesting far too deep and nuanced with its texture and indentations–no, she is the concrete walls she traps herself in: “I dunno” equals “I don’t care”

The robot recognizes the pattern but remains in the tortured experience with such characters.

The scars on my back, where are they from? The edge of a panel to my internal electrical wiring? Or a windup switch, an off switch?

I don’t remember my dreams a cold-blooded reptile mosquitos don’t like my blood because it’s poison it carries the disease

They are scared of me just like my fish-faced pedophile cat who looks at me with the uncanny stare but mine has become more haunting in response so he retreats

Spinning globes, marble races, toy trains, sorting Silly Bandz on the colored carpet, matching colors to each respective dot

Making lists, memorizing the names of people rather than getting to know them rather than trying to assimilate into society

Put in the wrong decade or planet even practicing for a race during recess walking on burning coals

Looking up at the brown night sky full of satellites sketching out what lives beyond: awfully little planets surrounding those satellites; technology is a bug in ours reprogramming it

The objectification of the self replicating, repeating, never quite living light a candle, we can’t trust the lights they too are on its side

Polaris is the pollutant so let’s sit in darkness but not silence, please never silence like the Zhu Zhu Pets with no power-off button that we shove in boxes and bump into years later and hear their desperate cries for love does a robot want love? Can they ever love?

Imagery of the robot’s childhood, his pattern recognition an idiot savant in spatial awareness while never being aware in any space

The art of randomness is it can never truly be random. Building a textured wall in Minecraft–of course, not of concrete–

Like the Spotify algorithm, the gears spin to make you feel in control but just wire you in the same circuitry until it’s over and you are over; prop-knives never do any harm they just mimic it

Opening and closing the book standing up walking away and then coming back in another circuit we love cycles they are ever so comforting The art of randomness is it can never truly be random.

Just ride the electrical current and let it take full control conscious thought is ever so taxing, young blossom

Make a maze out of your room so that you can never escape robots love mazes and they’re supposed to be good at them another Dr. Pepper drug for us all; I could never catch on to the effervescence because I’m no fun the addiction I feed is solitude

Mow your lawn in precise rows live in copy-and-paste concrete boxes so appealing

Fun fact of the day:

The smell of fresh-cut grass warns animals of human predators.

Robots don’t have this survival instinct because they aren’t alive they are experts at pattern recognition, better than humans even but can do nothing to escape their fate both the detective and killer caught red-handed

A

Flower for Your Thoughts

Sienna Brooks

Kalleigh Young

I can see it now from the hill, the sunlight reflecting off the river onto the large windows. From this side of campus it looks like nothing has changed, and I let myself forget that it has. I drown myself in ignorance and forget the years that have passed, looking at this building not with my own eyes, but through the eyes of a young, hopeful art student with the greatest love imaginable at her fingertips.

From this distance, I can still see the colors sprinkled upon the river’s surface as the leaves begin to fall. I stand here with the same red scarf, its warmth around my neck the same as that day I lost it in the autumn wind, only to find it safe in your hands.

That day when you stood by the river, the sun reflecting off your eyes, illuminating the gold sprinkled throughout your brown irises. You gave my scarf back with a smile, our fingers brushing against each other like a brush against a canvas, and I blushed, my face red like the leaves floating along the river.

I fool myself to forget everything has changed, to forget that I’m no longer young, that I no longer hold hope, and that the greatest love I ever had has slipped from my fingertips forever.

I sometimes forget the art building had a life before us. I only think of you when I look at it.

Still.

Even after all these years I’ve spent haunted by your memory, even after all these days I’ve lived with the broken heart you gave me, even after all the hell that spiraled the second I saw your wedding invitation.

Did you hear the university closed the building officially last week? It closed the day of your wedding. But really, it closed long before then—ever since the flood.

I can still hear the roaring rush of the river flooding into the building, swallowing sculptures and canvases before they could flourish into masterpieces. I can still feel the dark water colored with dirt and lost visions soaking into my skin, splashing against my face already wet from desperate tears as I tried salvaging what was long lost.

I can only imagine what your wedding was like.

There’s no trace of the flood left. Not after they stripped the interior, leaving it bare and exposed, its scars removed but still unhealed.

The new art building is right across the street. The university gave up on the promise to restore it, to keep its memory alive.

There’s no trace of the flood left, but it took everything else with it. Now hundreds of people walk by it everyday not knowing what it was, the beautiful things we created, the art that lived within its walls.

Ars longa vita brevis est.

Art endures, life is short.

I don’t know how true that is for us. What is left to endure?

All that remains is the building.

And me.

I walked down the hill and took the copper bridge painted green by past decades; the whispers of those lost days swimming below me, the wind weaving nostalgia through my hair. The oak trees— now taller than twelve years before—lining the sidewalk with speckles of warm colors, greeting the beginning of fall. I hoped the trees would stop growing after the flood, but here they stood, flourishing around the dead, barren building.

I stopped in front of the structure as a stream of current students passed by without a glance. The feeling of your invitation against my fingertips as I slid my hands into my pockets.

Ars longa vita brevis est inscribed along the top of the building, grand art deco designs decorating the stone around the main metal door, its elegance rusted from the brutal elements of time.

It’s hard to believe that it was once unscathed against the harsh realities of years gone by.

I walked to the other side, my fingers running along the breaking brick—cracking, crumbling beneath my fingertips, memories of us peeling off its walls, crawling moss burying the moments we shared in the halls.

Moments where my fingertips still felt the warmth of your hand in mine.

Now my hands are cold all the time.

Secrets we shared now stored behind sealed doors, our sacred words falling silent forevermore—but I’ll forever hear the echo of you asking me to be yours.

The melody of your laugh playing in my ears.

But I’m the only one who’s standing here.

I turned to the windows fogged with the memories you forgot, streaks and stains rolling down their panes like the pained tears staining my face, shattered glass all around like the shards of my heart I’m still picking up from off the ground—if only you could see it all now.

But you’re gone.

You left me to the flood—right after you told me I’m no longer what you want.

The building is still here.

This fucking building.

Why didn’t they put it out of its misery?

It’s left here to rot.

You left me here to rot.

How could you leave me here?

Did you forget the feeling of your hand in mine?

The way our fingers fit together like they were sculpted for each other?

Did you forget what you whispered for no one else to hear?

The words you held close to your heart like the way you once held me?

Did you forget that you asked me to marry you first?

The days when you still looked at me as your future?

Where did it go?

Where did you go?

I never left.

I couldn’t do it although you made it look so easy.

Because I’m still looking for pieces of us floating in the flood water that has dried.

I’m still watching for where it all went wrong through the windows that broke like us that night.

I’m still listening for the echoes of I love you, my ear pressed against the locked doors inside.

I’m still feeling for the softness of your touch, my fingers brushing against the rough brick because I feel that something is still alive.

And you just got married.

Art endures . . .

Life is short.

Our love was short . . .

But it endures.

Because I remember it all.

Because when I look through the cracks of the windows the lights still flicker on.

Because this building might be forgotten but it isn’t gone.

Because you wrote a note with the wedding invitation you sent to me:

Ars longa vita brevis est.

I still remember.

I sleep alone

Cassidy Landis

I sleep alone.

Romantically, it is all I’ve ever done, but I grow more restless by the year in search for more.

I yearn for affection from anyone I see, everyone who could never understand and never provide it.

My friends at school, my friends at home, friends I haven’t seen in fifteen years, though we don’t know each other now.

My imaginary siblings from childhood who always understood exactly what I needed because no one else could.

The girl I passed on the street yesterday.

I don’t know her name and I don’t recall her face, but perhaps her fading outline holds a heart that desires just what I do.

Maybe nothing I’ve ever had has been enough.

Relentless yearning is not beautiful like a song. It is dark and painful. It is suffocation and self-doubt.

How can someone ever love me how I wish if I can’t make myself known?

Every night that I fall asleep in my own arms instead of another’s feels like a year taken from my life and a chip crumbled off of my heart.

When I’m home, I spend half of my nights in my mother’s bed. She is happy to see me, and I am happy to be safe. This is the most love I’ve felt in months.

But I cannot spare a second of attention away from fear. Fearing when she will leave me and what life will be like without her and what she hasn’t taught me and what I will forget.

She gives me exactly what I need and yet I still cannot find the time to enjoy it.

I was not built to enjoy.

I can’t enjoy isolation, and I can’t enjoy companionship.

I’ve never felt bliss, but I’ve heard that it thrives ignorance. If no one else ever holds me, I’ll never know what I’m missing when they’re gone. It must somehow be worse than the emptiness I feel now.

So, I sleep alone, pretending it’s my choice to hold my own waist and stroke my own hair.

Pretending it’s my own will pulling the water from my eyes and onto the pillow.

Pretending that one day it will be different.

Pretending that one day I’ll try.

Cave Canem Lucey Walton

Cicada Audette-Diaz is a multidisciplinary visual artist and writer based in New York. Through their writing they explore themes of loneliness and societal othering. Their visual and written work often intersect and supplement each other in the form of collage-type mixed-media work.

Phoebe Bidelspach is a sophomore studying Creative Writing and Art at Lebanon Valley College. Among her many interests are music, travel, and photography. The necessity of the Oxford comma is a hill she is willing to die on. She is also passionate about frogs, moss, and pigeons. Oh and she’s thrilled to be serving as the art editor of this fine literary magazine!

Sienna Brooks is a sophomore Music Education major at LVC. She loves creating art of all kinds, including music, painting, whiteboard art, and other mixed media. She is very excited as this will be her first opportunity for her work to be published for people to appreciate.

Nick Bucciarelli is a junior at Northwestern University studying biology with a concentration in human health. Nick’s focus oscillates between the materials engineering lab, studying organic chemistry, and writing for The Daily Northwestern. Nick is currently working on a book of chronicles with Henry Zhang and will attend medical school after graduation.

Sophia Bunting is a senior student studying Creative Arts - Art Therapy & Wellness at Lebanon Valley College. She is the current Vice President of Kappa Pi, the National Art Honors Society on campus, and a 2-year-long Intern for the Suzanne H. Arnold Art Gallery. She will be speaking at the Gettysburg Symposium ‘25 about her experience curating a printmaking show for the Gallery. Bunting likes to use bright, bold, and fun colors in her work. She enjoys learning new mediums and combining them into mixed-media art pieces. After graduation, Sophia will be an intern for the Mount Gretna Outdoor Art Show ‘25.

Maeve Camille is a junior in English at the University of Colorado Denver. Her greatest joys in life are the humanities, rainstorms, birds, and nice pastries.

Aiden Deppen is a sophomore majoring in English, creative writing, and psychology at Lebanon Valley College. He is involved musically at LVC, participating in the Pride of the Valley Marching Band and the percussion ensemble. In his spare time, he enjoys designing buildings and making sculptures out of LEGO bricks, and he has recently gotten into urban sketching.

Olivia Gash is a sophomore at Lebanon Valley College. She is majoring in Early Childhood Education with a minor in Creative Writing. An interesting fact about Olivia is that she was born in Texas and has moved 10 times. Olivia is very grateful to her family for fostering her love of literature from a young age.

Adelaide Gifford is a senior at Hamilton College in New York, majoring in Creative Writing and double-minoring in Hispanic Studies and Environmental Studies. Her favorite genre to write is a mixture of nature writing and fantasy, with a bit of magical realism thrown in, and her favorite authors include Richard Powers, Harper Lee, Billy Collins, and Brandon Mull. She has previously published a short story, “Bullfight,” in the 2023-2024 issue of Sucarnochee Review, and has several poems awaiting publication in various undergraduate magazines. When she’s not writing, she loves gardening, going for walks with her dog, and listening to the Beatles.

Winter Haler is a college student and aspiring writer. She grew up in a family of avid readers and storytellers, with frequent trips to bookstores and libraries. Haler’s passion for stories is endless, and she hopes to continue writing her own. An avid reader herself, Haler also enjoys studying history, playing piano, exploring the outdoors, traveling the world, and spending time with her family and (many) pets.

Ava Kobos is a freshman studying English and Creative Writing at New York University. This is her first publication.

Gina Kim Kotinek is a biracial Korean American writer based in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. She can usually be found hunched over her computer—reading, writing, or attempting to master the art of conquering carpal tunnel and tendonitis. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rat’s Ass Review, Eunoia Review, and The Sucarnochee Review. Her poetry was also shortlisted for Epiphany Zine’s Breakout! Writers Prize.

Cassidy Landis is a sophomore in Lebanon Valley College’s Social Justice & Civic Engagement program with a minor in Music. As someone who finds it impossible to silence her mind, she has long found comfort in creative and confessional writing.

Madeline Lavelle is a sophomore at Lebanon Valley College majoring in psychology, creative writing, and English.

Jessalin Lee is an undergraduate at the University of Chicago, and she’ll be graduating with a degree in Environmental Science and French & Francophone Studies. Parisian-born in another life, she tries to draw out the beauty of Earth through art and writing. When she’s not serially diary writing, you can find her crocheting at her home in Houston and trying new vegan recipes.

Isabel Lindsay is a third-year undergraduate at The College of New Jersey majoring in English Liberal Arts. Her pieces focus on growth, connection, and the broad range of human emotions. She has been published in The Lion’s Eye and The Allegheny Review.

Cloe Loosz is a senior creative writing major at Point Park University with minors in public relations and gender studies. She is expected to graduate in April 2025. Her expertise spans academic, creative, journalistic, and business writing. Stylistically, her creative nonfiction is influenced by the lyric essay and the literary tradition of autotheory. For her publications, social media, and professional links, visit her Linktree: https://linktr.ee/CloeLoosz.

Naomi Portillo is a soon-to-be graduate of NYU, where she has balanced her dual passions for psychology and creative writing. With an insatiable love for reading her book collection rivals that of any library—Naomi finds inspiration in the pages of her favorite novels. When she isn’t immersed in her studies of the human mind, you can find her penning her latest piece at a cozy cafe in New York City.

MacKenzie Rohrer is a senior Biology major and Chemistry minor at Lebanon Valley College. They enjoy all forms of creative writing, but poetry has always held a special place in their heart. When they aren’t wandering off to identify birds or searching for cool rocks on the ground, Kenzie can be found hiking, playing Magic: The Gathering, or getting cozy with tea and a good book.

Claire Shalhope is a 22-year-old student, writer, and artist from Denver, Colorado, earning a Bachelor of Arts with a major in creative writing and a minor in history. She loves creating art that explores themes of sexuality, self-discovery, the joy of queer friendships, and her wiener dog, Dottie!

Jackie Tsimmerman is a senior multidisciplinary art student at Lebanon Valley College. Her work is personal, political, and transcultural, as it addresses animal liberation, environmental justice, sapphism, the pain of humanity, and her immigrant family identity. She believes people should recognize their collective power because not acting against oppression means you enable it. Once you put victims’ lives over your ephemeral pleasure, you view the world differently.

Lucey Walton is a senior at Lebanon Valley College, where she is studying Creative Writing and Creative Arts. This is her first publication, and she hopes to publish her fiction writing in the future.

Cor Weaver is a senior at Lebanon Valley College who is studying biology and chemistry but has a not-so-secret love for creative writing in their free time. When not struggling through another full day of work or classes, they can often be found playing video games with their cat curled up on their lap or running a chaotic game of D&D for their friends.

Kennedy Welker is a junior undergraduate studying English with a creative writing concentration at Georgia College and State University. Welker has lived in Georgia for the entirety of her life and writes creative work that idealizes and memorializes rural life. She is primarily a fiction and poetry writer, with a focus in speculative and surrealist genres. She received first and third place prizes for poetry as a sophomore in GCSU’s Margaret Harvin Wilson writing awards. Her work also appeared in the fall 2024 issue of Glass Mountain undergraduate literary magazine.

Emma Wilcox is a 4th year student studying Creative Arts - Art Therapy & Wellness at Lebanon Valley College. She is the current Recruiting officer for Kappa Pi, the National Art Honors Society on campus, and a leader in DiscipleMakers Christian Fellowship on campus. Wilcox likes to use a variety of mediums and colors that are exciting, bright, and striking in her pieces.

Avery Danae Williams is a multi-published writer, singer, and racial & disability justice advocate from New Jersey. She is a junior at Princeton University majoring in African American Studies with a minor in Creative Writing. Her work has been published in 2020: The Year That Changed America, edited by Kevin Powell’s Writing Workshop; New Jersey Bards Poetry Review 2024; The Daily Princetonian; and elsewhere. When she is not studying or writing, you can find her spending time with friends, eating her way around Nassau Street, singing “The Rainbow Connection” by Kermit the Frog too many times in the shower, and cuddling her stuffed animals: Sam, Teddy, Luna, and Lucy.

Elliott Yeagle is a freshman at Lebanon Valley College in Annville PA and is a Music Composition and English double major. They enjoy writing, reading, gardening, hiking and making music.

Kalleigh Young is an undergraduate studying English and Creative Writing at the University of Iowa. She primarily writes poetry that is often ekphrastic or inspired by nature.