Fleeting Happiness
by Laila Allen
I cry. I cry without prompting. In my happiest moment. The emotions swell, and I feel haunted By the ghost of my sadness.
Under the covers of my bed, Tears down my face, A moment of my past rushes: Why did I talk like that? Why did I say that?
Each moment plays in a loop, Replaying my emotional failures. It invades.
I wish I could forget.
I regret every moment, the tension in the air. Even as I smile and laugh, There’s a pressure on my chest, one that won’t leave. My chest tightens more, I can’t breathe. I try to exhale, sitting on my own. Noise is all around me, and yet I’m not here. I can’t be here.
I focus on my breathing, Unable to write, unable to laugh at a fleeting joke. Black spots start filling the edges of my vision. Looping, starting, stopping. Over and again. The helplessness repeats.
Here,
I am helpless to myself. Helpless to breathe, to think, to move. Maybe that is it. Maybe I am to be alone. Trapped in my darkness.
Maybe, maybe.
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Untitled, Lindsey Harvey Voeller.
REASONS WHY I WILL NEVER RECOVER
by Chloe Marks
1. his hands on his hips
2. his tears down his cheeks
3. my name in his voice
4. my hands in his hair
5. those scarce words soft and slurred
6. those feet kicked up on every surface
7. the way he hangs his head as he sits on the edge of the bed
8. the way he’d swallow his own tongue before saying how he feels
9. the home i will be unable to return to
10. the love i will be unable to bear
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Deimante Bedalyte 7
Smile
by Parker Lewis
Being told to smile at the gas station
I am by myself
A girl
I am not having a good day
An old man
Yells across the parking lot that I need to smile more
That I need to appear happy
Because I’m “too pretty to be sad”
As if that’s even a real thing
I need to smile on his day
To make him feel better
I get in my car
An old man
A stranger
A creep
Yelling at a high school girl to smile
I’m polite
I try to avoid confrontation
As any alone girl does with a strange man
I drive off
Panicked
Crying
Not pretty crying
Can’t catch your breath crying
I go to my mother
I tell her what happened
She is confused
Why is that so bad?
I explain
I explain that I shouldn’t have to make myself look better or happier for someone else to feel Comfortable with who, or rather what, I am
I shouldn’t have to smile for a stranger, happy or not
A strange man should not be talking to me
I shouldn’t have
But I smiled
Then I cried
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Deimante Bedalyte 9
Emotional Support
by Grace DePaul
You sit wagging your tail
Curly warm, white fur
Rolling on your back
Ready for a belly rub
Your head in my palm
Reminding me I’m not alone
Licking away the tears before they reach the ground
I see you wagging your tail
Always there
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Miyajima Fawn, Mika Walters.
The Memories We Leave Behind
by Anna Brasington
I stepped out of the doorframe and onto the porch, the smell of early morning dew filling my nose, the sweet singing of birds echoing in the distance, and the silence of a chilling January breeze cutting through it all. It was emptiness. It was peace. It was her. There she was, climbing out of her car, parked ever so slightly crooked in the front yard, far enough away for her to enjoy the freshness of the morning, yet close enough to the porch so that she could quickly escape the morning chill. That was her. Every morning. She would eagerly climb on the porch while spewing the details of the time since she last saw me. We would sit on the porch and eat breakfast, laughing and talking the whole time. It seemed as if our laughs would echo across the wide yard forever, bouncing off the old wood of the barn and chasing her dog, who always seemed to be running around the yard. Looking back now, I wish I listened closer, paid more attention to her voice, watched in awe as her words painted across her face in every expression she made. Looking back now, those are the only moments I can still share with her, the only moments that have lasted longer than my time with her.
It’s hard to remember her face perfectly, but I am reminded of her in myself every day. She was my aunt, but I could have easily been mistaken for her daughter any day of the week. We shared the same dark hair, wide build, and horrible eyesight. My sister shares her name. It’s the kind of name that rolls smoothly out of your mouth, but it didn’t match her personality. She never connected with her real name. “Rebecca” just wasn’t her; it was too formal, too nice. She preferred “Becky.” It was sharp, like her. It made itself known, like her. Photos now placed on China cabinets and living room shelves show her round face, freckled skin, and wide smile. The photos are all I have left of her, but I don’t mind. The photos show everything a person needs to know of her.
“Can you turn it down?” I asked her annoyedly. The same song had played at least three times since she picked me up from school, we had hardly made it halfway to town.
“I thought you loved this song?” She questioned, glancing into the backseat through her rearview mirror.
I did love this song, but she didn’t need to know that. The only thing I was worried about was our destination. She promised we would go to Barnes and Noble before her doctor’s appointment. In my eight-year-old mind, just thinking about the book I was going to pick out was enough entertainment for the both of us. As we pulled into the parking lot after what seemed like hours, I asked why it was such a big deal that she was going to the doctor. “Oh, it’s just a checkup. Gotta make sure I’m all good, you know?” She said hurriedly.
That was a perfectly normal answer in my eight-year-old brain, so I dropped the topic. We went inside, and I got my book. I don’t know exactly why I remember this or what made it so special, but soon after opening my book I gave myself a paper cut. I saw the dark blood bubble up on my finger and drip onto the pages. In a sort of poetic way, it foreshadows what was to come in my life. The pain dripping onto my story, running into the binding of the book, hidden by other pages, only to be discovered again when someone is truly looking for it.
Winner of the 2024 Candelabra Award for Prose 12
I didn’t recognize the building we went into. All I could see was the large sign above the door, but “Women’s” was the only word I could make out. As we walked inside, I surveyed my surroundings. It was cold and sterile, but somehow inviting. We went to the counter, and she checked herself in. The lady at the desk gave me an almost sympathetic look, like she knew something I didn’t. Not knowing how to respond, I smiled and stepped closer to Becky, who was already walking towards the hard plastic chairs lining the walls. Photos of pregnant women and new mothers hung from the walls. The most obvious reason for this appointment came so clearly to my ingenious eight-year-old brain; she was pregnant. I was elated. I couldn’t wait to celebrate with her when she came out of the exam room. I sat there, bubbling with excitement, barely being able to contain myself. I saw the door to her room open; she stepped out still talking to the man with the dark hair and the white coat. But she wasn’t smiling; she wasn’t in the mood for celebrating. I could already see it from the way she looked at me as she walked across the room. We rode home in silence, no one celebrated.
Soon after her doctor’s visit, I got the second-best news of my life (the first being what I thought was her pregnancy). She was moving in with us! We went through her things in her old house, boxed them all up and made her own room in the basement. I wondered why Becky seemed sad and tired. She had been tired for a few days, but not sad. The sadness only came during hushed conversations where “she can’t hear.” I thought I was the “she,” but I didn’t know why I wasn’t supposed to hear. I just went back to looking at Becky’s jewelry and playing with her cat, Smokey.
Looking back now, I see why I was the only one that was excited about her moving in.
My mother sat me down that night and suddenly every sympathetic look and doctor’s appointment made perfect sense. Cancer. The word pokes and scrapes my mouth as it fights its way out. It pulls at my heart and twists my stomach; it burns my eyes and it makes my chest feel as hard as the plastic chairs of that horrid doctor ’s office. Cancer. I don’t know what it means, but I know it isn’t good. I know it makes people sick, and they don’t always get better. Tears well up in my mother’s eyes as she tells me not to worry too much, that Becky is strong and will beat this. I don’t know how someone can “beat” being sick, but I pray that night that she can. I pray that she gets better, and we go back to playing in the yard. We won’t play in the yard again, but I don’t know that either. It had been three days since Becky moved in. My dad was on shift at the fire department, and my mom was in the shower while our cinnamon rolls were in the oven. I was sitting at the bar in the kitchen working on a puzzle while watching TV. The oven timer went off, seemingly blaring louder than normal. I scooted my puzzle over and hopped off the stool. Something didn’t feel right in the house, but I ignored it. I told my mom that the cinnamon rolls were done, and she told me to go wake Becky up. She seemed to always be sleeping then. I walked down the stairs. Any other morning, I would have run down as fast as I could, but this morning, I walked. As I got closer to the door of Becky’s room, I couldn’t see a light shining through the crack between the door and the floor. I grabbed a pink unicorn flashlight from the couch beside me. It was a funny looking thing, shaped like a unicorn itself with a pink body and purple mane. It neighed and opened its mouth for the light to come on when you squeezed its tail.
Figuring I had to wake her anyway, I turned it on before I opened the door. I didn’t want to scare Becky with the noise. I inched the door forward, my stomach churning for no apparent reason, until I could make out the shape of her bed. She wasn’t in it. I looked down and saw her, lying on the floor. She looked so peaceful, like nothing in the world would ever bother her again. Without saying a word, I went slowly back up the stairs to my mother who was getting dressed.
Winner of the 2024 Candelabra Award for Prose 13
“She was sitting in her chair asleep; she’ll be up in a minute,” I said to my mother. To this day I’m still not sure why I lied, but I did. In the moment, it seemed like the best thing to do. It was like lying would somehow change the reality of the situation.
I walked into the kitchen and got two cinnamon rolls from the pan mom had gotten out of the oven. I pushed them around on my plate and stared at the stupid unicorn flashlight, cursing its annoying noise and too-dim light bulb. It was almost as if I could blame the unicorn for what I saw. I mean, if I hadn’t had the flashlight on the couch, I probably wouldn’t have even opened the door. I would’ve just told my mother that Becky was still asleep, and she would have been the one to find her, not me and the stupid unicorn. After what seemed like hours but was probably only a minute or two, my mother went down the stairs to check on Becky. She told me to eat my breakfast. I didn’t.
“Bring me the house phone!” my mother yelled in a panicked tone up the stairs. I knew what was wrong. I knew what my mother was doing. I knew who she was calling, but she didn’t need to know that. She told me to go back to her bedroom and close the door. I did. She told me not to worry. But I did.
I watched my dad pull into the yard with all the other lights and sirens that had suddenly appeared. He seemed upset but not as upset as I expected him to be. He walked calmly across the yard, no expression on his face. It was almost as if he knew what was going to happen, like he knew how much time she had left. But I didn’t know. No one really knew how fast it would be.
It’s a funny thing, life. It can change faster than anyone could possibly imagine. Life has no regard for the people it affects. It does what it wants, takes what it wants, and leaves behind whoever it wants. Memory is the only thing that has power over the force that is life. Life doesn’t stop for anyone. Life is not something that anyone should waste on trivial things. I didn’t know that then, but I do now.
Winner of the 2024 Candelabra Award for Prose 14
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Untitled, Ameera Thomas.
Girls Get It
by Parker Lewis
When you are a girl, there are certain feelings you are privileged to simply because you are. These are feelings you might not be able to put a label on. But girls know.
So, what does it feel like to be a girl?
Girls know the feeling of a night out with your friends while the music is blasting, and makeup is being shared. There probably isn’t one word that can define this feeling. However, the sharing of makeup, jewelry, and clothes while talking about everything relevant and irrelevant as the room slowly becomes chaotic and messy is one of the best experiences in the world. Girls know.
Girls know that feeling of going shopping just because. Wanting to grab a quick little treat with your closest friend or friends or sister or sisters or mom, going to stores that have everything from seasonal decor to clothing. While you do this, you often pick things up and put them down, not buying as much as you wish you could but having a good time, nonetheless. Girls get it.
Girls know what it’s like to have to deal with the absolute bullshit that is the female menstrual cycle. One day everything is normal, and the next second you have a shooting pain right below your stomach, and you can’t go to sleep without a heating pad. You feel rational but unsure as to why you’re craving certain things. Then within a few days, maybe even hours, everything makes sense. And you just hope you’re not wearing white pants when it does. Girls know.
Girls know how it feels to have a breakdown about hating yourself one second and then thinking you are the most stunning person on the planet the next. You are held to these impossible body standards and societal pressures that are often paradoxical. For example, you have to be thin but not too skinny, and you have to be pretty, but you can’t know you’re pretty, and you can’t be insecure. You’re not allowed to be vain about your appearance, but you should love your body because it’s the only one you have. Guys want a girl with an hourglass shape and some curves, but girls shouldn’t be over a certain weight or have a stomach or cellulite. Guys want girls in a sexual way, and girls shouldn’t be prudish, but if they do anything with a boy, they’re a slut or a whore, and the boy goes unscathed. Girls, unfortunately, get it.
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Girls know that very specific rage that comes when your hair isn’t cooperating. Having a planned hairstyle that is supposed to bring your outfit or look a little more together. So you brush it, and you work it, and it doesn’t work, so you brush it, and you work it, and you get it, but something is off. So, you take it down and you brush it, and you work it, and your arms are getting tired and you’re starting to sweat, and your hair is still pissing you off, and you start to cry, and you still can’t get it. But you don’t stop because you know your hair can do what you want it to. You’ve seen it before, it just won’t. And next thing you know you’re abusing yourself and your hairbrush while screaming at the mirror. Every girl has been there and done that.
Girls understand the feeling of not being able to be outside after sundown, especially alone. Girls, all of us, are taught from a very young age, whether directly through a lesson from your parents, or indirectly through movies and entertainment, that girls, alone girls, are not safe in the dark. You go with a friend, preferably a male friend, preferably an athletic male friend, preferably more than one, preferably in a group, preferably with a flashlight, preferably with a weapon or two, after you’ve taken self-defense classes, and someone not present needs to have your location. Just in case. Just in case you get followed, or stolen, or attacked. Just in case. Girls understand.
Girls know what it’s like to have fun getting dressed up. It is one thing to have your hair, or nails, or make-up done, but to have all three done at the same time, that makes a girl feel another kind of confidence. And if you add in an outfit and an event to show it off, that takes it over the top. That is something a man may never be able to understand. Especially because their appearance doesn’t dictate their worth like it does with women. The girls know exactly what I mean.
Girls know what it’s like to feel passionately upset about something and attempt to get their point across only to be discarded and labeled emotional and therefore invalid. Girls aren’t allowed to be angry because it isn’t seen as real anger. It’s, “just hormones” and you just need to, “calm down,” and then you become enraged because you can’t be upset. If something is wrong, you have to keep it together otherwise no one will even try to hear what you’re saying. Girls get it.
Girls know what it’s like to be told who you should be and how you should look. What it’s like to watch hundreds of ads telling you how you should look and how you should feel. Tampon commercials showing a girl with a smile and no sign of cramps or any other symptoms. Shapewear commercials body shaming girls for having a normal gut or normal thighs or a normal body in general. Bra commercials only showing one type of breast shape and that being the pushed up and perky type that doesn’t happen without extra padding. Makeup commercials showing women with spotless lineless skin, and the ones geared towards older women showing maybe forty-year-olds who either have retouching or Botox because heaven forbid a woman age naturally and still be considered beautiful or attractive. Razor commercials not showing a single girl with body hair on them. Any commercial that has a woman who isn’t supposed to be a mom or a child depicting a woman who is thin, long-legged, and yet curvy in “all the right places”. Girls know.
Girls know what it’s like to try to keep as quiet as possible in the bathroom. Because girls aren’t allowed to have normal bodily functions, even around other women, in fear of being judged or seen as gross. You don’t want others to know you eat or drink, and you don’t want to take too long because that is an instant giveaway to everyone outside the bathroom too. Girls know what I’m talking about.
Girls know what it’s like to have a wine night. To put on a face mask and some pajamas or sweats and maybe music in the background, to prepare a variety of snacks that will be considered dinner but will hardly be a meal. To sip on
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your favorite cheap wine and talk about everything from boys to movies to memories and more. Laughing until your stomach hurts until you’re about to pee yourself. A board or card game is probably played but then quickly falls into chaos and is abandoned.
Videos are made where you are acting silly and carefree. Living in the beauty that it is to be human. Being wine-drunk and completely feminine without a care in the world. Girls get it.
Girls know what it’s like to have to watch a group of old men decide what rights you do and don’t have. Deciding based on beliefs that aren’t your own, just how much of a human you are. To decide what you are worth in the grand scheme of society. To have special laws that specify gender in legislation to make sure we are treated close to but not quite equal. Fighting to be considered a whole person, to get paid equally, to have bodily autonomy and integrity. The constant need to defend your own existence. Girls know.
Girls know. These feelings, these situations, are unique to what it is to be a girl and to experience girlhood. Now this is nowhere near a complete list. But I do believe it to be an important one. The experience of being a girl is unique and, I feel, can only be described through examples. If you tried to describe it with a few adjectives, it would not even remotely do it justice. The feeling of being a girl is something that can only be truly understood through experience. Girls know the feeling.
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Deimante Bedalyte
Float Up
by Melodie Staley
I love long car rides, but the fact that it’s nighttime, along with the tinted side windows, makes it hard to see where we stopped. Looking through the windshield at the headlights, to my horror, I realize it’s not the window tint making it dark. We’re at the bottom of the ocean, and the car is already full of water.
It’s not like I was struggling to breathe, I just wasn’t breathing. No one else looked like they were struggling either. They were just shells, inactive as their hair floated in the seemingly crystal-clear water. The water had shades of a pale yellow-white around the car and the headlights, a sea green brimming the edges of the illumination and hanging at the level of my elbows inside the car, and a cold blue hanging lower, at my ankles, and brimming the green. Farther out was a deep navy blue. And beyond that was an indefinitely expanding darkness.
I was hyper-aware that the water had filled my lungs and that my family members were husks, but the change felt like nothing. I felt a severely underwhelming amount of emotion for a situation like this. It was to the point that I couldn’t tell if this change was gradual or if it happened suddenly. When did the night sky become replaced with the pitilessness of the sea? When did my lungs fill with water? When did my family die? I couldn’t hear anything down here. The lack of senses was dizzying. The weightless bodies of those I knew were confined by seatbelts. I sat and buckled in too.
I noticed the deep blue glare of the radio and the slight glint of the silver dial. I needed some music to stop thinking. I unbuckled and suddenly felt a little buoyant. I leaned over the front seat, dragging my finger over the surface of the radio until I felt the familiar tactile surface of the “on” button, pushing it in to see that it clicked before popping back into place like it usually did as if the water had no effect on it. It played faint static, I fiddled with the volume then flipped through the stations. All of them were scratchy static or much too grounded silence. Eventually, one station started playing. They were all my favorite songs.
My dad would make fun of me for stuttering when I’d ask him to change the radio. I was always scared to ask anyway. The one time I had the confidence to ask and mumbled, I faced his angry shouting at me for being too quiet, and when I repeated myself over and over, louder and louder, he just got madder. I’d burst into tears, and he’d pinch me in the leg, or if I was unlucky, the underside of my upper arm, giving me, “a reason to cry.”
My dad liked some of the songs playing now. I felt a little odd, and suddenly, my music wasn’t my favorite anymore.
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I guided one hand to the elbow rest between the two front seats and the other to the car door. I pulled on the handle and gave a great push to open the door. It displayed the darkness of the sea that engulfed the car. I reeled my hand back, feeling cold from the outside biting at my fingertips.
I then felt around and pressed my fingers to the vibrant but worn-down red button of the clasp of my father ’s seat buckle. I felt the dents, scratches, and smoothed-down surface of the button before pressing on it. I heard the click of it releasing and sliding back into the mechanism in the body of the car. His body became loose, floating and bumping the roof.
I pushed the shell out of the car, watching it glide out the open door in slow motion and float up. Eventually, he’d reach the surface.
I closed the door. I still let the radio play. It was the only station with something on, and I could hear the music just fine, so it was good to block out the silence. I leaned back, pressing my seatbelt back into the clasp. I was content with this. Until I wasn’t.
I was restless, finding myself craning my neck to see in the trunk from the backseat. I twisted in my seatbelt, pushing past my sister’s long hair to shuffle through one of my bags. I got out a notebook and began to draw. The pages weren’t damp. Nothing was. I twisted around to sit back in my seat.
My stepmother would always complain about me moving around like this, telling me to sit still, only in a way layered with swearing and agitation as she bit her nails. I was bothered by the thought. I began to draw long strokes, and they curved, intertwined, and slipped off the page. I even drew scratchy lines.
She would always stare at me through the folding mirror looking pissed. Then she’d tell me to stop drawing so loud, claiming that I was writing so hard it shook the car. I’d bite my lip. I’d instead looked out the window at the darkness, folding my notebook shut over my pen as I plopped it back into the trunk.
She’d have a cigarette lit at this point. The window would roll down, but I could still smell it. Then, when I’d cover my nose with my shirt to breathe from, she’d complain about that too, saying that it wasn’t going to kill me. I saw her visage in the mirror, floating and shrouded in unruly hair. I opened the door, undid her seatbelt, and pushed her out of the car, watching her float up.
I sat in the car with my sister and brother. It was so quiet, and the music was giving me a headache. I became cramped in the backseat, so I took the seat on the driver’s side. I gazed empty out into the depths in front of me. The headlights flickered. I flickered as well.
I leaned into the seat, imagining I was still on the way to the beach on summer break. I remembered how my sister would always feel entitled to take up so much space and lay over me and my brother when she had the middle seat. I felt anger boil under my skin. I began to shout and yell at her, the husk. I don’t know what I was saying, I was just yelling, and for a moment, I was about to reach back and pinch her.
I felt my heart drop. I looked over in the back seat, seeing her mouth agape, her hair settling in strands in and around it. I felt regret. I felt disgusted with myself. I wanted to cry. I crawled onto the center armrest between the two front seats, holding her hands and apologizing, remembering how once upon a time she’d chip the polish off my nails when I let her.
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I unclasped her seatbelt, held her by one of her hands, opened the car door, and gently let her go. I didn’t watch her float up.
I closed the door and sat in the passenger seat, only me and my brother left in the car. I looked at his hair drooping down his face and his hands still clasped around his phone, which was beyond dead. The battery would always run out so quickly because he was always on it. I rolled my eyes, biting my nails as I glared at that box in his hands. I sighed. I complained about how he was always playing on his phone and continued complaining about the likes for what felt like hours.
I felt guilty. No one deserves to be around me. Not like this. I had become a disgusting person. I once again glided back, apologizing. I unfastened the seatbelt, opened the door, and sent him to float up.
I closed the door, sitting alone in the car at the bottom of the ocean, and thought about how I liked car rides. Until I didn’t.
I was drowning now. I could feel my lungs burning. I could feel my heart beating, my skin heating up, the insides of my cheeks chewed up to look white if I opened my mouth, my eyebrows furrowed and wrinkled, and all the built-up fear, disdain, regret, and guilt. I screamed. Until I didn’t.
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Deimante Bedalyte 23
Carter Oviatt 24
25
Carter Oviatt
Carter Oviatt 26
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All Eyes on You, Kacie Kier.
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Joyful, Mika Walters.
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Blaze of Old, Lauren M. Roberts.
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Untitled, Sharya Johnson.
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Untitled, Sharya Johnson.
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Mirror Landscape, Lindsey Harvey Voeller.
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Circles, Lindsey Harvey Voeller.
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Blossom, Gali Amavizca.
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Flores, Gali Amavizca.
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Celebrando a Papa, Gali Amavizca.
Candelabra is open for submissions from November 1 - February 15. We invite students and alumni to submit their best visual art, creative writing, and hybrid works to epushman@limestone.edu.
The magazine is published online each spring on Limestone University’s website. Past print issues from select years are available at the Library. We hope to return to a print publication in the future, while continuing to make literary and artistic work from the Limestone community available to all via the internet. Questions about the magazine, submissions, or permissions may be emailed to epushman@limestone.edu.
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