Supermoon

Supermoon Vol. 30, No.1

Libertas

Table of Contents

Nokomis Dbek-Gizes Nadia Horak a love letter to the infinite

Koryn Smith

rake Maren Lawee To Privatize The Moon

Mav Smith

In the City

Nevaeh Angarita

Museum

Andrew Tinaz

First Northern Fall

Sarah Catalano

moon as conductor

Ezra Perrine

Morning Dew

Michael Wieland

Neil Armstrong

Nate Green

The City of Moonlight

Allison Cho

Unorchestrated

Kathryn Helms

Staff

Editor-in-Chief

Audrey Bohlin

Secretaries Elsah James Cole Erickson

Poetry Editors Eliana Burgin (Lead)

Anne Mason Roberts Claire Louise Poston Ezra Perrine

Kathryn Helms

Maple Griffin

Mary Troy

Robin Glass

Savannah Vonesh

Layout Editors Cole Erickson (Lead)

Elsah James

Julia Carey David Montes

Avani Damidi

Letter from the Editor Dearest Readers, The theme Supermoon is one that will not appear for another 80 million years just like the comet and the largest super red owl moon that you’ve ever seen. If you missed all of the recent astrological activity do not worry because this issue has many moons in store for you.

As you read I will leave you with this story - my grandfather was an astronomer, so my mother and myself and my friends in astronomy class have spent many an hour gaping at the stars and we’ve all said “yeah it looks basically like a white ball in the sky.” And yet, we still stop to gawk at this large luminescent magical orb and are inspired. I’m not a huge believer in astrology, but the stars did align, or maybe Mercury was in retrograde, but either way the authors, artists, and editors of this issue have worked hard to reveal the mysteries of our hearts, minds, the universe, and what Davidson students are really thinking.

Since it is almost the spookiest season and the scariest weekend of the whole year (Halloweekend - how am I supposed to find three good costumes?), this issue brings some unearthly kicks as a break from the mid-fall crunch period.

Enjoy our work (and if you don’t then come join our staff - we have cookies).

Best wishes,

Audrey Bohlin, Editor-in-Chief

Editorial Staff / Editor’s Letter

Fiction Editors Clara Oyanguren

Allison Cho

Andrew Tinaz Claire Ireland

Flora Konz

Katlyn Saldarini

Mason Maynard Nate Green

POETRY

Nokomis Dbek-Gizes* tracing the whole Of the world in one Night

flying among the stars With my finger painted with a bright Light losing control Under her gaze i hide crying to koyé As she replies, “there, there, dear” and sheds a tear For me and meshomes, Who is watching over me here their lights’ meeting mere for one Night Nokomis Dbek-Gizes is the Potawatomi word for “the Grandmother Moon” Koyé is the Potawatomi word for “grandmother” affectionately Meshomes is the Potawatomi word for “grandpa” also the word used to describe the ceremonial fire.

Nadia Horak

a love letter to the infinite the center of my heart is thousands of miles away, but your light is perpetually perched on the curls of my hair, resting on my chest as i sleep, or nestled in my coat pocket. moonbeam like a kiss on the cheek. you have watched me every night, whether i drown in a well of tears or laugh in a fountain of them. should i thank you or envy you? while you watch me from above, should i wish i had the same aerial view? i told the stars about you. that the milky way fills your lungs and nebulas spill from your fingertips. that you’re like a rip current, dragging me in further and further each night. just enough light for me to navigate a crowded earth, just enough dark to shield the evil i know is there. i told them i used to believe you followed me when i looked out the window on long car rides. that someday our paths would cross, our fates forever intertwining. the stars don’t know this, but i still believe that. so, meet me. meet me where the world echoes what we’ve known all along. where your world is me, and my world is you. shed light on my soul. pull my spirit to the core of the earth, bringing me closer to you. i will wait forever to be closer to you.

Koryn Smith

To Privatize The Moon and name it after who?

My children will probably never have access to Here I enter. at Consumption and Environmental Abuse. seated right to the father with the same Mother as before cloaked and adorn in your money waged war I will never benefit from.

This is the system I’ve bought into set to destroy the promised benefits I won’t offer you stale phrases to supplement my identity and label me an enemy, of the State.

I, disillusioned and dissatisfied suckling upon maggots ascending the roots, a generation criminalized and disqualified, cut-off access, left alone, to die.

Launching a plight from Earth to Moon and back around the Sun again, trying to retain the Night Sky. Craters deepen to mimic my skull, they speak, “nothing more than exceptional” I am indebted to the system.

Participating in the repression and disappearance of others,

rake both my hands sifted through the mulch i stood barefoot on cold sordid sand smelling of seaweed decaying leaves and dirt alone but for the breeze and the blood dripping from my heel time stretched out before me i thought i must have dreamed this serenity before and as the sun fell over the horizon gleaming on the lake’s surface i felt a wave of innocence roll onto the shore i was simply a child of the earth Maren Lawee

curses on the cusps of the tongue.

Greater Mother, “the scam they’ve sold me,” Low tide comes to unveil me.

Washed up bodies still bloody on these shores.

I am back where it all began.

Geography doesn’t belong to me.

Beneath this glaring bloody Moon, which I do not deserve, I contemplate Surveillance. Exile. Infiltrators. Criminalization.

Armed with this knowledge, I cannot change the outcome.

This is my greatest shame, I cannot protect my Inheritance.

Mav Smith

In the city

Nevaeh Angarita The room never turns black.

Never absorbs you into its deep pit.

Sometimes you ask it to,

Sometimes you beg it to, Clog every corner and crevice Swallow your body whole, And only leave the whites of your dilated eyes.

The tallest skyscrapers Turn on their scarlet red, Warning all the little paper planes to Avoid crashing into their painful places.

The street lights Cast an orange hue Over cracked walkways And the indigo sky smears shades of ink, Never black.

But more than anything, It was the white light Dangling whole and Sirening your gaze.

Never letting you fill your torn open holes, Never letting you retire into your Familiar shadows.

Shadow of the Moon

by Dillon Newman

Museum

By Andrew Tinaz

These streets are more dynamic than the ones I find at home.

Streets which stack, and harsh streets to know their own solidity.

I step on complexes, who refuse to crack at my feet, Refuse to indulge me, saintly, stoic to beat the brain, quietly, streets snuff my heart, while children who pass, leap from part to part, I. I climbed up slate, which grew to stark reflective marble. I dragged my shoes, remind me how to leap. which flung in echoes, and pattered myself past artifacts, When the wretched pour to their drains, and the blessed steep up stairs in those cold autumn afternoons, and works which meant little.

Until, I rested on one, I leap myself a different route, And Lord was this one: to different pace, An art of five figures, little lines, ended similar place.

Outstretched, in the night, towards the moon, praying atop white cliffs.

Still down spikey streets, Still with piercing trees II. A Litany to circular Goddess, who lies large, pagan, as a palm-wide, All resentfully isolated.

And each figure, a finger, pinching for her embrace.

Drawn softer than most other moons.

But once, I leapt a final route.

She dressed the water with ripples, long and blue.

An older, familiar route to stay, I stared so long the marble cracked. who passed by open gates, So long the marble seeped over, and I itched to peek inside.

Faint squeaks in the divet white melted over, Pouring over towards me: suffocating in her cardial beat.

And so I did.

And so I did III. I saw her again, the moon.

When I remember her soft glow, in younger nights, of an electric daze, how she softened those nights, And my room brightens with open shades.

And in the parts on the swings, thrown in the evening towards puffy clouds, And in the day, when the heat kissed my breath to tire from work.

Dressed my skin in sweat, She held me in her gaze.

To cool me, Even as I screamed for her.

IV.

But, i awake from that place, alone, in the heart of the moon, touching painted marble, melted marble cradled me. i cracked upon the ground my head, and blood curled all around, And a couple came through me to rush out.

But i was reluctant when two shoes dragged, And two shoes streaked blood, the sound of four, Beating in that echoing place to an alarm’s wail, With Pupils fell heavy.

But in palm, felt ripped fabric; Felt five fingers outstretched to hold her, a moon, and a moon to, alone, embrace me.

A picket fence to light the gaps, casting streaks cross my face, tearing me a familiar place, And i went home to mom i promise, to mom, i went home.

First Northern Fall

By Sarah Catalano The apples of a frigid autumn command my eye in steely rain; red of a graying world, their scarlet glows essential. Eat, She says, so I tilt my head back, let the apple skins slip on my tongue.

Honor the harvest.

moon as conductor

by Ezra Perrine the theater of clouds plays madly above us but all i think about is kissing you, about your lipstick

I, a child of the hot and melting breath of the sea —She knows She has me now— the stinging citrus of the summer of my birth give way as I enter Her domain of crimson leaves, of sturdy flesh. At the foot of Her skirt, Her vast shoulders in the dark sky, I gather

smeared on my mouth like soil.

with the hoarding squirrels; my mouth becomes Her instrument of shivering consumption.

we see her celestial glow through

i’d lick my lips clean, like pomegranate’s sweet seeds i’d enjoy your center.

the pregnant clouds. the moon wordlessly regards my pathetic lack of devouring you. the thunder hangs above us, holds its breath between lightning strikes. the moon stretches out her translucent arms to command the storm, her wild orchestra, and caresses you so lovingly.

Red Moon

By Audrey Bohlin

PR SE

MORNING DEW Michael Wieland

Sometimes late at night when streetlights would streak the ceiling, an effervescent, opaque glow from the world outside, not seen in the day, would call out for attention. There are some things sleep could not offer the boy; the night in its great depth spared no details and kept him awake. The boy saw that depth, past things and regrets, endings-too-soon, the masks and the things we hide behind, past the presentations of reality. The boy felt a relation to the moon: he was blessed with warmth, but in a sad way that reminded him he could never provide his own.

He only shone when others would share their warmth. The boy thought the moon was like him in this way: although she was stuck with seeing all the shadows, that depth was the finer details of life. So he would go out for a walk in his silence, with his head to the sky. At this time of night, he would try to imagine the stars as a dream instead of the lights of a great odeum; he would try to imagine the trees as simple wood instead of an audience; most of all, he would try to imagine the moon as just a rock, like the ones he kicked as he walked along.

Once in the park, and from the hills crest, it was possible to see the grass glint in the moonlight. The moon wells up water from the blades of grass, a display of sadness for the morning sun. 20 paces down the hill and one was in the field; rather, one would be in the thick grass that grew in the bank between the hill and the field. In this grass, small animals are rustling the stalks of cattails and feather reed. Toads croak out through the thick brush. At this time, a warm summer breeze spreads like butter over the cold air. The boy was lucky enough to observe this great display. The boy knew that if you were in bed, going to sleep, you were alone – the world watches a great swooning symphony in the sky. Tonight was not the night to miss the big performance – the moon shone bright and big.

Up in the sky, so far away and small, the moon drifted around her tiny planet. While she went along, she wondered if the sun could see shadows. All the moon could see at night was shrouded in shadows – she had no light to provide, she could not see all the brilliant things. And the little people on the planet would not want to see her either, they always went away. People did not like to see the shadows, so they slept. Every once in a while, however, there would be someone like her, looking into the sky for some light. She thought she might be solace for a sorry mind. This is how it was, and how it always would be; the moon did not dwell on what could be.

She had always adored the sun – how he could be radiant all the time, lighting and warming the lives of the people on her planet. It was not a bad thing that this was how things were; they would drift, around and around, doing what they have always done. Every once in a while, she would peek around her planet and see him: a reminder of warmth in this cold universe. When the moon saw him, she would always become a little bit brighter. He was a respite from the dark, ornate world she circled – but did he even notice? Did he notice that he lit up her world? But on some lucky nights, the moon would see him in his fullness, his radiant beauty – in turn her world would light up. The critters and trees, the little people and things would notice her and listen to her great symphony. It would be a happy and brighter tune than she usually played, but with a hint of melancholy as nothing gold can stay.

As the boy walked down the hill and around the bank, he wondered if the moon ever saw him. Did she hear the little critters hum like audience members before a play? Did she see the grass crying beads of dew to her sweet song? The boy wondered if the sun saw the dew in the morning and wondered why the grass cried. Did the sun see the shadows, or did he only see everything head-on? Brilliant, yes, but flat. Did he ever get a peek at the hint of night, of regret and sadness that sullied the human soul? Did the sun ever hear the song of the night? Probably not, but it did not bother the boy. The sun had his place and the moon had hers. On a bright night like this, the moon receives the warm embrace of light, and in return, we look into the night and see the skies mirror; slight solace for a sorry mind.

Neil Armstrong Nate Green My father died several weeks ago, and since then I’ve discovered little more pleasure than sitting alone, out in the back yard. And amid the tall grasses, under a night sky half in smog and half in bright sequins, the land and the elms bending toward the creek, the Japanese knotweed strangling out the undergrowth, and the deer wandering in search of vegetation, I stew in a breeze brought up from the Atlantic and halted and collected at the foot of the Appalachians. My wife seldom joins me; neither do the kids. They look across the yard from the house— a three story Victorian painted white and navy blue, an extension, off the side and built in brick, where the rumpus room might be if we were so organized, and an attached two car garage idle with a sedan and a minivan, and you know which car belongs to who, or if you pretend not to know you have much to learn about the world and how it does not conform to what anyone wants it to be, but I like my minivan and my wife likes her sedan—they watch me from the kitchen windows, and the kids are just about the age to sympathize with me without being snarky, and my wife is thinking of her own parents and feeling sorry for herself. Her mother is in the early stages of dementia, and she often takes the thirty minute drive to the suburbs on the other side of town, to a neighborhood that looks much like ours save the school colors— blue and white instead of red and black, which matters only during football season, when the high schoolers come out of their parents’ basements drunk on two beers and ready to make a scene or else feel like a part of something larger than Pittsburgh—she walks past the paintings in the entrance way, through a doorway with no door, into a long, bare hallway, and goes to the kitchen, where her father sits with her mother and tries to make conversation but, these days, fails to.

“What did you think of the movie?” he’ll ask her.

“The one last night? With that actor I like?” she’ll say.

He’ll nod, feel his heart swell.

“Yeah, what’d you think?”

And she’ll look at him for the briefest moment, a glimmer of light in her eyes, an ember soon extinguished by the crushing force of time and the unintelligent design of the human body, and her eyes will go back into their recesses, a muddy color.

She’ll say, “I have to do laundry,” or some other non-sequitur, and he’ll bend his last white hairs toward the kitchen table, smile to himself— he feels better if he smiles—and try again, and again, and again. Sometimes, when the rain comes in heavy clouds, when the day is miserable and quiet and there is nothing to do, he’ll lead her to the covered patio, and the two of them will listen to the pitter-patter of the raindrops on the aluminum roof, jog their memories for ancient stories of an America long lost and less equal, a past that somehow, by coincidence or miracle, always feels brighter, warmer, and easier to those at the end of their lives—it doesn’t matter the place or time, you can always find someone to talk to about the good old days. I wonder, if memory is so sweet and deluded, why aren’t I any happier; most of my life is memory, isn’t it? and I look back fondly, even adoringly, on college days and the long days after, when I met my wife for the first time, saw my daughter stick her head out the womb, and then welcomed my son into the world, him kicking and screaming just as loud as his sister did, she who held my hand in the waiting room and said something so funny I laughed for minutes and minutes, my stomach shaking with nerves and love and humor, my body less mine than my little girl’s—but for the life of me I cannot remember what she said, and I think that maybe it’s better that way. I do not need to know the specifics; I am glad to have had my whole being rocked with joy.

I am not happy, no matter how many bits of gold I pan from the silt of memory, and I spend these long nights staring at the moon and wondering if Neil Armstrong was happy. I’m named for him, and my teachers used to say, “Neil? Neil?” when I wasn’t paying attention, when I was looking out the window and at the squirrels running through the maples growing against the school. Watching them leap from branch to branch, tree to tree, I wondered if Armstrong ever felt the way I did, looking at squirrels dance the short, sappy story of their lives and longing to be in a place emptier, quieter, and more understanding. Maybe he went to the moon in search of some quiet, and maybe on the edge of a small lunar crater, the white moon dust caked onto the soles of his boots, a reflection of the sun in the corner of his helmet, his body lighter than it had ever felt, throwing little rocks as hard as he could toward Earth, knowing someday, long after he was gone, they’d get there, burn up in the atmosphere, and become close to nothing, maybe, just maybe, he found some semblance of peace.

I am looking, from my vantage point on an Adirondack, away from my loved ones, at the same moon that my namesake walked, and it occurs to me that one night, when I am sitting near the forest, the moon will be so large that it will eclipse every other part of my life. It will consume the surrounding stars, sip Andromeda to a puddle, and catapult itself closer to Earth, to me and my family. I will go into a panic, run inside—to the false shelter of suburbia, and gather my wife, Lucy, and our children, Ben and Maggie, around me, and we will pray to a god, any god. And the moon will come through the doors and the windows, crushing the lumber, shattering the glass, and smashing the brick, and we will scream and cry and vow that if we survive, we will cease the endless panning of our memories. We will change! we’ll yell, and the moon will ask us for proof. Quaking, my daughter, the eldest, will rise, and she’ll wipe away Armstrong’s right footprint. My son will grab her hand, pull himself to his feet, and wipe away the left. The moon will bend its white hairs toward the ground, shrink down to its right place in the sky, and let us be.

Tonight, I forego my solitary ritual. Tonight, I play Monopoly with my family. I can see the moon from the window. It is bright. We wink at each other, and we bury my father tomorrow.

The City of Moonlight Allison Cho There is a city on the moon where a high, sharp spire stands solemn against the black sky. Ancient buildings are built with bare iron bars that make the city look fragile. In the beginning of time when the Earth was empty of the living, there was no moonlight. The city would stand in the dark, looking vulnerable, as if built by the shadow. Night pervaded the surface of the city like a permanent mist, and it never left.

That was why no one had ever seen the city. It hid between the nights. Even though it was never seen, the city had always been breathing, standing upon the cold, hard ground, stale and silent.

Since the land of the moon lacked life, few creatures lived in the city. One of those was a left-handed man who lived in the top garret of the spire which was a square of space where the man could barely stretch his legs. He would sleep, eat, think, and live his whole life in that square room because every lifeless creature in the city contempted him for being left-handed. Within the first week of his birth, he turned his head to his left shoulder, and his fate was set to be left-handed. Even when he tried to hide it, creatures would know. It was a mark that was beyond visible.

That’s why he was stuck in the top garret of the spire, the highest of the city, closest to the blue planet called Earth. All day, he would study the bizarre planet that would turn with a great quiver. He would stare into its depth of atmosphere and measure its turn like he measured his heartbeat.

One night, he crept out of his garret and stood on the ground for the first time in what felt like millions of revolutions of the moon.

While he wandered on the white surface of the moon without a sound, he stooped and picked up a pinch of pale soil. It was cold but soft. It would crush between his fingers and turn into dust swallowed by darkness.

He brought a handful back. With drops of his blood, he gave warmth and color to the pale soil and built creatures. It might be because he was left-handed. After all, he was persecuted to understand the depth of the world while nobody else could. It was because he was the only one seeking something beyond while nobody else needed anything in complacency. Or, it might’ve been because he built the creatures out of nothingness that he foresaw no harm. But it was decided beforehand when he was born left-handed. From the beginning, it was set that he would live a different life.

Somehow, his creatures were right-handed. They read peculiarity in their creator’s nature, and together, they destroyed him. These creatures, cold by the pale soil and hot by the blood of the left-handed man, called upon the chaos in the silver city.

Born with anger and cold hearts, the creatures the left-handed man created grew ruthless and fierce. The white flame they lit after their cunning minds learned to start a flame soon swallowed the city. The moon was ablaze, turning into silver light. It stood there shining and silent within the white flame. It didn’t wilt or fall. The changeless solemness of the city frightened the creatures of the left-handed man so much that they flew over the void to hide beneath the atmosphere of the Earth and crawl under the gravity held by the moon. As the moon started to shimmer, the creatures hid in the shadows.

The creatures that hid would call the ones who stayed in the moon’s white flame the angels. But they were actually cold-hearted monsters feeding upon the white dust of the moon. They were the cruel creatures that killed and bled off their creator.

If we look up, we can still find the terrifying face of the silver city flaming forever over us. But the angels in the Silver City, whose absent hearts lack their creator’s blood, will never dare to comprehend what is there to feel – to feel the terror and to crawl in the urge to live. It’s a blessing. They will stand in silence and return to white dust upon the moon. But we who feel, we humans, will continue to breathe with our creator’s blood alive in our veins. We humans killed our left-handed creator on the day we arrived on Earth. It was destined from the day we were created.

Unorchestrated

By Kathryn Helms

Night driving was supposed to be an escape from the world. With the darkness surrounding me, I was able to pretend I didn’t exist, or perhaps that everyone else didn’t exist. There was never a need to hide.

Tonight, though, there was no such safety: the moon was so large and bright it might as well have been the sun. It was a giant, unblinking eye, watching my every movement.

Just like my mother.

My hands gripped the wheel. I glanced at the clock, wondering how long I’d been driving for, but the time didn’t tell me anything. I hadn’t checked my watch when I’d snatched my mother’s keys and stormed away, hopping in her car and pulling out of the driveway with the intention of taking it as far away from home as possible. I didn’t know how I’d get back. I didn’t want to go back.

Not that I knew where else I’d go.

“We can’t be late,” I said nervously as my mother drove me to the Academy, looking perfectly calm.

“Children who are late get black marks on their records, and if you get too many of those, the Orchestrator…” I trailed off. That was the end of what anyone really knew about what the Orchestrator actually did.

Only one thing was certain: you didn’t want to do something they considered wrong.

“You have no need to fear the Orchestrator, dear,” my mother told me warmly. I shook my head vehemently. I knew what we’d learned at the Academy, and I knew that any world where everything was recorded and seen by a certain person meant we must fear that person.

I hadn’t been taught that last part, but it made sense. Besides, it seemed to be everyone else’s conclusion—except, evidently, my mother’s.

“We should go faster,” I insisted.

“We are at the speed limit,” she replied, almost robotically.

“We can’t go just a little faster? I can’t be late.”

“It will be okay. Driving too fast is dangerous,” she said firmly. I knew that, of course. Everyone knew that.

“But the Orchestrator walks among us in civilian clothing,” I recited. “Doesn’t that mean even the attendance clerk could be—” “You do not need to be afraid,” my mother said more sternly, and that was the end of that.

When we arrived at the school, the attendance clerk looked down at me with an almost gleeful reproach.

“I’m afraid the Academy has already begun its lessons.”

“She is only a few minutes late,” my mother said evenly, a stupid show of bravery, and naturally a futile one.

“I’m afraid the Orchestrator does not make exceptions for ‘just a few minutes,’” the attendance clerk replied.

She filed through a drawer until she found my last name, pulled out my perfectly clean record, and grabbed the large black marker out of a cup on her desk.

“You really don’t want to do that,” my mother warned. I wished she would stop. She didn’t have any power here. She was going to get herself in trouble!

“I’m afraid it isn’t your decision.” She looked my mother in the eye as she added a single black mark to the bottom of my record.

Internally, I was screaming at my mother, “Why couldn’t you have driven just a little bit faster?! Why did this have to be the rule we broke?” Of course, I knew the answer. It was far less dangerous to turn up late and receive a black mark than to break the speed limit and end up dead.

The next day, the attendance clerk was gone, replaced with a new one. I never saw her again, even out on the streets of the town. Three years later, I would find out the black mark had also mysteriously disappeared. I was never given any explanation for why I put pressure on the gas pedal, urging the car to go faster. It was funny that cars were made with the ability to go up to two hundred miles per hour, when not a single speed limit in the State permitted anyone to drive faster than fifty.

The needle on the speedometer now pointed to the number eighty.

I was still alive.

The Orchestrator walked among us, dressed in civilian clothing. The person you were speaking to at any moment could be the leader of the State.

How were they meant to know not to cross my mother?

The needle pointed to ninety.

We only had one part of our life that the Orchestrator didn’t oversee, and my heritage robbed me of it. To retreat into my home, where the Orchestrator’s decency permitted a lack of recording devices, was not to hide from the eyes of the State. Not for me. So instead, I retreated into the darkness of the night, only to find the night sky staring back at me with one enormous, watchful eye.

So, in full view of this eye, I stepped harder on the gas pedal. The needle on the speedometer now pointed to the number one hundred.

Twice the maximum speed limit.

I was still alive.

My mother could have driven faster that day, but she didn’t. She knew we wouldn’t die, but it didn’t matter. She wasn’t afraid of the Orchestrator because she— I looked up at the magnificent moon defiantly. In all its brilliance, it was powerless to stop me. It couldn’t reason with me, urging me to think about the implications of my own reckless behavior. It could only observe what it could

not change, and seemed content with this.

With only the attentive moon to keep me company, the minutes had passed by in as much of a blur as the landscape outside my window. Before I knew it, the lights ahead of me were not the natural illumination of this spectacular moon, but rather the colorful warnings that I had reached the border of the State.

Had I really driven that far?

Clearly I had.

“The border of the State,” my Academy teacher said to the class, pointing to the picture projected onto the screen. “It surrounds the peaceful world we live in, keeping anything that could disturb our peace out.”

I couldn’t help but wonder if it was really designed to keep others out or keep us in.

Each layer of the border looked like a laser, extending in all directions. “Though they appear to be projections of light,” she continued, “they are far from harmless.

Anyone who attempts to pass through the border will be incinerated. The border is our protection.”

I raised my hand.

“Yes?” “Can the Orchestrator see beyond the border?” I wondered.

“The Orchestrator does not need to see beyond the border,” the teacher said firmly, “because it is impossible for anything outside of it to penetrate our world and disturb our peace.”

What would happen if I drove through the border?

I didn’t want to go back, not that I knew where I’d go.

The needle now pointed to one hundred and ten.

I wasn’t slowing down. Did that mean I was doing this?

Was I really going to drive into the weaponous perimeter of the State that I despised, the backdrop for all of my good and bad memories?

One hundred and twenty.

I most certainly was.

I glanced up once again at the oppressive beauty of the moon. “Well? What would you do?” I said aloud. My hands were tight around the wheel. The speed of the car was as terrifying as it was exhilarating. “Do you see my mother? What would she do?”

I was driving fast enough that I should have died by now anyway, according to what I’d been taught by the Academy of the State. But so much of that was clearly a lie.

For a moment, I was blinded by the lights.

A moment later, the lights were behind me.

After another moment, I realized I was still alive.

Yet another lie, I thought, a mix of frustration and vindication surrounding it.

I glanced at my rearview mirror. The border was behind me. The lasers were projections of light. They were exactly what they appeared to be.

I let the car slow back down to fifty miles per hour, loosening my grip on the wheel. The blood began to flow back into my numb fingers, and I glanced up at the eye that watched me once again.

What other lies had found their way from the mouth of the Orchestrator to the Academy to our homes?

She’d counted on the sensibility of people to not drive through a deadly barrier. She’d orchestrated a world in which recklessness was all but obsolete.

The concept of recklessness was a strange one indeed, especially now that I’d embraced it. I’d learned that it was dangerous. I’d learned that to be recklesses was to scratch at Death’s door like a dog, begging to be let in.

Then again, I’d learned lots of things.

Under the illuminating light of a magnificent moon, I allowed my foot to lean into the gas pedal once again, pushing the needle on the speedometer as high as it could possibly go until the car was trembling with effort.

I held the wheel calmly with only one of my hands.

Untitled Piece

by Natalie Kenagy

Supermoon