Self-Reflection (fixed)

Self-Reflection

a collaborative zine of writers, artists, and designers

Self-Reflection

3.11.2022

What are you nostalgic for?

What changes have you made to your life or what changes have happened to you?

What are you proud of or not proud of?

What makes you, you?

Table of Contents 1

PART 1 — MOTIVATION

2

AN OBJECT AT REST, TENDS TO STAY AT REST

Jefferson Duan

12

SKETCHBOOK

Grace Park

16

POEM

Ella Rosenblatt Lucy Chen

18

SOMEDAY, MY MIND

Marie Foss Morgan Swartz

20

PLAYLIST

Mars Kim Lucy Chen

22

ONE CAT’S JUSTICE

Lucy Chen Clair Huang Annie Zhao

26

I NEED A HOBBY

Clair Huang

28

SUNFLOWERS

Carrie Mannino Morgan Swartz

30

EGG TITTIE RAINBOW

Kara Peterson

31

THE ENDING

Eugenia Yoh

32

WHAT ADULTHOOD LOOKS LIKE

Martha Benduski Lucy Chen

Self-Reflection 34

PART 2 — NOSTALGIA

36

ODE TO MILWAUKEE

Marie Foss Camryn Cogshell

38

POLAROIDS

Lucy Chen Alec O’Brian

40

LEGO ANARCHY

Clair Huang

42

NEIGHBORHOOD LAYOUT

Ania Lewis

43

GLITCH

Ella Rosenblatt

44

COUGH IT OUT

Bread Lee

52

UNTITLED

Hannah Kim

54

LONGING FOR TOUCH; WAITING FOR LIFE

Marie Foss Morgan Swartz

60

UNTITLED

Hannah Kim

62

I’M SORRY

Sophia Schein Lucy Chen

64

SITTING SHIVA

Carrie Mannino Lucy Chen

66

ART SKETCHES

Lucy Chen Cheryl Kao

80

OUR WORLD IS NOT HELL BUT HOT

Marie Foss Camryn Cogshell

Table of Contents 82

PART 3 — IDENTITY

84

MIRROR TO THE PAST

Kelly Wang Clair Huang Cheryl Kao

94

EPITAPH FOR FAIRY DREAMS and FLANNEL & BINDER

Skylar Rella Morgan Swartz

95

TRANS IS HOLY

Morgan Swartz

96

SELF PORTRAIT AND REFLECTION

Skylar Rella

98

IMPERFECT ANSWER

Lucy Chen Morgan Swartz

104

FOREST HILLS

Skylar Rella Annie Zhao

106

PLANT BOY

Morgan Swartz

108

THE BODY

Ella Rosenblatt Lucy Chen

110

ON ROSES AND THEIR CANKERS

Natalie Snyder Selina Kehuan Wu

Contributors EDITOR

Lucy Chen

WRITERS

Carrie Mannino Ella Rosenblatt Kelly Wang Lucy Chen Martha Benduski Marie Foss Mars Kim Natalie Snyder Skylar Rella Sophia Schein

ARTISTS

Alec O’Brian Ania Lewis Annie Zhao Bread Lee Clair Huang Ella Rosenblatt Eugenia Yoh Grace Park Hannah Kim Jefferson Duan Kara Peterson Lucy Chen Marie Foss Morgan Swartz Skylar Rella

DESIGNERS

Annie Zhao Camryn Cogshell Cheryl Kao Lucy Chen Morgan Swartz Selina Kehuan Wu

A Letter from the Editor Melancholy. That’s how my friend expressed how she felt. The feeling of growing up and graduating and suddenly living a life no longer surrounded by our friends and people we know. It’s been a weird time for us all. With the onslaught of a global pandemic and the beginning of a war in Europe on the news, it’s more than enough to make one feel uneasy.

Self-reflection is something I’ve been doing a lot of recently. After returning home from work each evening I felt sincerely lonely and bored with nothing to do. So I reached out to my friends and asked them to share their thoughts. I am incredibly grateful for everyone who submitted material and for giving me a project that took my mind off things. I love and cherish all the work my friends have made and collected and am proud to show it off. I hope you enjoy.

Lucy Chen

PART 1 —

Motivation

2

3

4

5

6

8

9

11

12

Grace Park

13

14

15

16

the tree is labeled with a metal number 8. i’m mourning the past refusals of uncountable things. every day everything and even itself are now numbered. it’s actually been a while, but i too can write histories: i condense a thousand moments of moments into your single glance here. i too gild with metal for the sake of a condensed few. take the individual as such. take a series as one—it’s easier. take the rhythms of voice and make them into lines, digits, dots, lazy words. my most feral handwriting. nothing must be this dense.

17

ella rosenblatt

Marie Foss

(After Ocean Vuong)

SOMEDAY, MY MIND

The sky is yours if you say it is, but if you only look up, looking down falls much harder.

The most dreadful part of your mind is wherever you pretend shadows don’t exist.

Don’t forget, you saw the darkness before you knew what light was.

But darling, your eyes, they’ve turned the color of dark January mornings.

Your words, at least, are kind to those who deserve love, and you yearn to know them, yet a stranger to your own empty suffering that could never join them.

Don’t look down, bury your consistencies.

Like clouds in spring, your rain produces petals — the flowers your sister picked were soft.

You don’t have to be a vine, just a branch.

The most dreadful part of your mind is where it takes you when you forget to look.

Don’t let it drift into dusk shadows while you cling to something that always falls short.

Self-Refl

Do wh you Ye en w rem wa ah, w e w emb nte e’d ere er d a do jus how nd an t so we yth yo ’d do ing w it f e or fu

그대 두 손 잡아봐도 그대 가셔 그대 이름 야 하니 불러봐도 대답이 없 아무리 나 으니 울어봐도 안아줄 이 내 눈물로 없이 고이 적

flection

w

I fe ou lt ng e ? un .

a playlist curated by Mars Kim

점점 고 이 가 간 게 시 빠르 맞춰 서 더 는 싫어 도 속 지기 뒤쳐

ike l s t i at h w w o n ht k g i t r ’ l be n a o o t s l d ike fee ou l y g s t o n i i N oth w what n n Whe n’t kno el lost o d fe u o t o , Y t hur

One Cat’s

story—Lucy Chen

art—Clair Huang

D a i n t y l e g s g l i d e p a s t m y e ye s a s I watched them like a cougar ready to pounce.

Justice

Spread eagle on the office carpet, intaking the smell of fabric softener and the rust of old sewing machines, I patiently waited till her tail flicked past. She proudly stalked around the room and her tail flicked around trying to b r u s h o f f t h e m a l i c i o u s i n t e n t o f a s i x - ye a r - o l d .

22

I was bored and disinterested with paper and pencil, craving the attention o f s o m e o t h e r l i v i n g b e i n g. I a s k e d m y p a r e n t s t o p l a y w i t h m e , c o m p l a i n e d that I was bored, and they suggested to go play with my toys, doodle, or d o w h a t e ve r e l s e h u m a n c h i l d r e n d o t o e n t e r t a i n t h e m s e l ve s . I n s t e a d w h a t I we n t t o d o w a s g o f i s h i n g. I c a l l e d i t “ f i s h i n g f o r c a t s ” ( t h o u g h i t m i g h t h a ve a s we l l b e e n c a l l e d “ h u n t i n g f o r c a t s ” ) , a n i nve n t e d g a m e w h e r e o n e waits for the precise moment to grab the cat’s tail before it could whip past. I was a pro-fisherman by now and had the advantage of experience - I h a d b e c o m e we l l a d a p t e d t o t h e i r s i l e n t m ove m e n t s . I u s u a l l y g a ve h e r a n advantage, pretending that I couldn’t reach out all the way or that my hand couldn’t grasp tightly around the fuzzy tail. The hair of her calico coat licks the insides of my gently closed hand, as if daring me to.

S t a r i n g s t r a i g h t a t t h e f l u t t e r i n g t a i l , m y e ye s n e ve r s t r a ye d a n d w h e n I k n e w t h e t i m e w a s right, I pounced! I sprang forward, reached, and grabbed the tail. The lady cat dropped all sense of decorum as she screeched and ran in terror, my hand simultaneously closed a r o u n d h e r t a i l , g i v i n g a s h a r p t u g. W i t h a h i s s a n d a “ M E OW ! ” s h e r e a c h e d u p a n d c l a we d o n e long scratch down my right forearm, from the elbow to wrist.

It was now my turn to scream and cry and whine, but instead of for selfd e f e n s e , m y s c r e a m s we r e f o r my parents. Not before long, my mom came rushing in to see what was the matter. No blood, but a two-and-a-halfinch long, red streak traced my white skin, became the main subject matter of a t t e n t i o n . I w a i l e d a s I w a s t h r o w n ove r my mother’s shoulder and brought to the bathroom where water was r u n o ve r m y b a t t l e w o u n d s .

I h i s s e d at t h e c at l at e r a n d v ow e d n e v e r t o t ou c h h e r a g a i n . Upt u r n e d n o s e a n d h e a d tu r n e d aw ay w it h my w ou n d a l re a d y f or g ot t e n , I s t a l k e d p a s t h e r w it h a t r iu mp h a nt “ h mp h ,” a s i f I h a d s om e h ow w on a b att l e ov e r my g re at l on g - t e r m e n e my a n d n e m e s i s . L e g s pu mpi n g up a n d d ow n , I w a l k e d d ow n t h e s t a i r s , a l l 3 4 s t e p s i n ord e r t o g o s it a n d d o o d l e .

24

Sp e e d up t h re e y e a r s l at e r, w h e re I t r y t o t e mpt my d e a r c at w it h a l l s or t s of a f f e c t i on at e c o o s a n d w h i s t l e s i n a n att e mpt t o b e h e r b e s t f r i e n d . A s l i g ht l y w h it i s h s c a r s t i l l app e a r s on my f ore a r m , a re m i n d e r of my c h i l d h o o d a n d a t o k e n of my d e a re s t p e t .

How e v e r, s h e k n e w b e tt e r a n d it w ou l d b e a n ot h e r t h re e y e a r s b e f ore I c ou l d g e t h e r t o s it on my l ap, my c r i m e f i n a l l y f or g i v e n . “B at h ro om t i m e” or t h e t i m e I br u s h my t e e t h at n i g ht b e c a m e ou r b on d i n g m om e nt a s I d a n c e i n f ront of t h e m i r ror a n d v i g orou s l y br u s h my t e e t h i n b e t w e e n p e t t i n g h e r a s s h e l ay s on t h e h a l f - c i rc l e m o on b e n c h n e a r m e . S h e pu r r s s o l ou d l y, t h at t h e n u n e v e n l y, b a l a n c e d b e n c h ro c k s a n d s t a r t l e s h e r.

E a c h y e a r I t r y t o b e m ore c a r i n g f or h e r a n d e v e n i n h e r l a s t f e w m ont h s I p l ay out ou r t re a s u re d re l at i on s h ip.

Now my s c a r i s f a d e d , a n d s h e i s g on e , but e v e r y s u m m e r, t h e c h e r r i e s b l o om i n t h e c or n e r of t h e g a rd e n w h e re Jo s i e l ay s .

25

26

Clair Huang

27

28

SUNFL

WERS Carrie Mannino

Each day, the flowers chose a new sun to worship.

I picked them up from the grocery store, their stems too thick to fit into one wine bottle, so I gave them each a partner and set them out one, two, three across the tiny table.

On bright mornings, they strained for the window grasping at the hint of spring.

In the evening, they tilted their chins to the lamp incandescent in the center of the ceiling, nodding once it was flipped off.

When the sunflowers die, one by one, he takes them away before I wake up the way my father kept my mother from the kitchen when the nest of baby birds fell.

I notice the subtractions the rotten smell of plant stems in the trash.

After the bottles have been washed, we try to grow our own, watch the seeds take root.

art by Marie Foss

29

30

Kara Peterson

31

Eugenia Yoh

What Adulthood Looks Like:

32

Martha Benduski

33

PART 2 —

Nostalgia

Lucy Chen 38

Alec O’Brian 39

Clair Huang

42

Ania Lewis

Ella Rosenblatt

JANUARY 2020 Bread Lee / www.bylee.work Lyrics from “Cough It Out” by The Front Bottoms

THEY DON’T CALL ME “MR. GREENSIDE” FOR NO REASON

IT’S SNOWING RIGHT NOW

I WISH IT WAS SUMMER

BUT WHEN THE SUMMER ROLLS AROUND,

44

WHEN THEY DO, I PAUSE

I WISH I WAS FREEZING

AND COUGH IT OUT

I COUGH IT OUT, I COUGH IT OUT,

ALL THE BRANCHES ON THE TREE AND, OH,

I COUGH IT OUT THAT WE CARVED OUR INITIALS IN I COUGH IT OUT

CAN’T YOU SEE?

SEEM TO BEND AND TAKE THE SHAPE OF THEM

I AM DELUSIONAL WITH LOVE,

I DON’T CARE IF YOU’RE NOT SORRY

AND WITH OR WITHOUT YOUR SUPPORT,

I AM DELUSIONAL WITH LOVE, I AM DELUSIONAL WITH LOVE 45

I WILL CONTINUE

I FORGIVE YOU

WHAT I’M TRYING TO SAY IS: YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT YOU’VE BEEN THROUGH

ALL THE BRANCHES ON THE TREE

‘TIL YOU PAUSE

THAT WE CARVED OUR INITIALS IN

AND COUGH IT OUT

I COUGH IT OUT,

SEEM TO BEND AND TAKE THE SHAPE OF THEM

46

I COUGH IT OUT

I COUGH IT OUT,

I COUGH IT OUT

AND, OH,

CAN’T YOU SEE?

I AM DELUSIONAL WITH LOVE,

I AM DELUSIONAL WITH LOVE

I AM DELUSIONAL WITH LOVE,

I AM DELUSIONAL WITH LOVE,

I AM DELUSIONAL WITH LOVE,

BUT WHATEVER I DID FOR YOU LAST YEAR

47

I AM DELUSIONAL WITH LOVE

I CANNOT DO AGAIN

IT’S GETTING HARDER AND HARDER

NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES I SAY I WON’T,

BUT WHATEVER I DID FOR YOU LAST YEAR

I DEFEND YOU IF I CAN

I CANNOT DO AGAIN

AND HARDER AND HARDER

FOR ME TO CALL YOU “FRIEND”

I LIKE THE IN-BETWEENS

48

I LIKE THE TIME IT TAKES TO GET SOMEWHERE

IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN,

I JUST DON’T CARE

I JUST DON’T CARE, I JUST DON’T CARE, I JUST DON’T CARE WAVE YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR

LIKE YOU JUST DON’T CARE

ALL THE BRANCHES ON THE TREE THAT WE CARVED OUR INITIALS IN

I JUST DON’T CARE

SEEM TO BEND AND TAKE THE SHAPE OF THEM

CAN’T YOU SEE?

AND, OH,

I AM DELUSIONAL

I AM DELUSIONAL WITH LOVE,

I AM DELUSIONAL WITH LOVE,

WITH LOVE

49

BUT WHATEVER I DID FOR YOU LAST YEAR

I CANNOT DO IT AGAIN

I WILL NOT DO IT AGAIN

52

Hannah Kim

53

Longing for Touch,

Wai t i n g for Life;

a personal photographic journal amid the COVID-19 pandemic

Marie Foss

The apartment is my sanctuary. I fill it with me, and it becomes my safety.

The sun fills it with light, and it becomes golden for a few moments in the afternoons. Simple things that look normal and gray in the mornings are suddenly beautiful. I miss those moments when the sun sets.

Sometimes I don’t leave my apartment for five or six days at a time. Here I have my couch, my bed, my laptop—things I shouldn’t spend so long with.

But I have grown attached. At least I can rely on them and I know they’ll be there. They are safe. Seeing friends has become so hard. No one is safe.

55

t s i x time

doesn’t

e

56

Lately the apartment isn’t safe anymore. I have been alone and careful, but it doesn’t matter if the air I inhale is invisibly sick.

I am lonely and she is worried. She and I each wonder, “am I invisibly sick too?”

This worry is a cycle that returns and returns and returns. My bed has become my cage and my refuge. I stay in my room because I am afraid to leave, to open my door and risk an interaction with her. When did friends become suspects?

When did our sanctuary become treacherous water? Fear is so solitary. . .

Maybe shadows are sculptors and interrupters of light. Ghosted imprints, temporary proof of existence and substance. The shadows of me are moments that come and leave with me, reminders that I am here—for a moment, yes, but I was here, or at least a fleeting silhouetted shape of me. Sometimes I pretend it’s really my soul, dark and reaching.

I’ve said it a hundred times this year: time doesn’t exist. Days blur into days and 3:00 pm turns into 11:30pm in what feels like a few hours. Somehow, nine months have passed since I returned to the US last March and the government issued the first quarantine. Five of those months have been spent here, in St Louis.

A year feels like a haze of blurred, stolen moments. All I have to hold onto is myself and drifting memories. I wish I could have this year back. I think a lot of people feel that way.

57

owly s l i p p i n g a

w

a

y

58

I often try to hold onto things that are meant to be temporary. Everything feels temporary now. Sometimes I feel like everything in front of me is just slowly slipping away. I feel temporary, too. I dissociate and it becomes hard to focus. Ephemeral momentum stalls and I am numb. Constantly nostalgic for better times and what this year was meant to look like. Trying to hold onto the good moments when they come.

I am anticipating when I won’t be here or in St. Louis anymore. I look at the places around me now, as I always do, to remember them and look for beauty and light that might give me hope and lift me from my couch and my anxiety. I find it and it lifts me, yet I can’t help but capture the empty loneliness and overwhelming absence in these places and in myself. It feels like two strangers sharing a knowing look, empathetic and connected by shared air and physical space. They and I are vulnerable and cold, catching breaths, longing for touch, waiting for life.

60

Hannah Kim

Hannah Kim 61

I’m sorry that he kissed me. I’m sorry that I kissed him back.

He used to smell like pine trees with his arms around me when we were 16.

But now we’re 20 and our throats burn from cheap vodka we drank in the park next to his parents’ apartment.

“Could we pretend I don’t have a girlfriend?” He was my first love too.

62

SOPHIA SCHEIN

63

SITTING SHIVA

CARRIE MANNINO

The first time I went to a graveyard, my mother taught me to leave rocks.

That’s how we knew there were so many non-Jews visiting the building in the months after the shooting— all the flowers.

64

In astronomy, we learn about escape speed the rate at which a rock must go to leave a mass’s orbit.

I have been told to get more distance it’s too raw right now to squeeze in clean.

65

The escape speed of black holes is faster than the speed of light— there is no distance, no matter how fast rocks go.

I think of this as I check the door, note the exits, remember that each time I flip a coin there is a fifty percent chance it’ll land face down.

66 1

Lucy Chen 67 2

68 1

69 2

70 1

71 2

72 1

73 2

74 1

75 2

76 1

77 2

78 1

2

our world our world is not is hell notbut hell hotbut hot our world is

our world is broken;

thin petals; fickle paradise;

pieces of peace

not hell, but hot.

shattered, our skins,

and fire feels warm but scorches

our flags tattered,

at the touch.

torn. we welose loseand andwe wetake, take,

we long for touch.

traipsing over what was;

we long for

drowning thoughts with closed eyes,

control. we long for

secret lips.

repeating and

fear burns like acid:

change. what we don’t know:

why acid?

we long for You, not

why fear? wine poured down

us.

You are not our

our young throats, sickness

our world is drunk,

or our suffering.

waiting for You are

a sweet caress, velvet dreams,

precious life; may

milk and honey.

the flood

our world is dark and light, waiting and screaming.

wash, rain,

flesh us clean. and flowers You planted, healing open scars like seeds. our world— Your world— we need You. our world is broken, kneeling, praying. our world is 81

here our world waits for milk and honey. our world is broken.

By Marie By Marie Foss Foss

PART 3 —

Identity

Writing By

Photography By

Kellly Wang Clair Huang

Mirror to the Past 85

We were biking along the Keelung River. Her arms were wrapped around my waist and I was paying special attention to my breathing, afraid of her noticing how out of shape I was. Unlike other guys in our grade, I didn’t have time for sports teams. Keeping a balance between studying and working was hard enough. I felt something tickle my cheek. I looked back over my shoulder, and there she was, dark hair that hid bright eyes, Jia. “What are you staring at? I’m tired after shopping, so lend me your shoulder for a little bit,” she said. I nodded and turned my head back around, pedaling a bit slower than before. ***

After school, I head to the local market for groceries, this week’s paycheck in my right pocket. Ever since Mom was hospitalized, I have more responsibilities than just managing Dad’s old supply store.

I said that we should sell it. But even though she was working two cleaning jobs to support us, Mom refused.

The smell of sea salt hits me as I come up to the first stall, run by Uncle Wang, a man in his mid-fifties who greets me with a familiar grin.

“How’s your mother doing?” he mentions as he hands over the clams I requested.

“She wants to go back to work, but the doctor said her lack of sleep is why she fainted in the first place,” I say as I hand him four twenty-dollar notes (80 Taiwanese dollars is equivalent to about 3 US dollars).

86

He chuckles and takes three of the bills. “That’s your mom, as hardworking as the bull she is. You know, your mother and I go way back. I even chased her for a bit in high school,” he says with a reassuring smile. Mom did mention Uncle Wang as a close classmate. I know it isn’t easy being a fisherman so I still try to hand him the last bill. He shakes his head and adamantly refuses. I bow to thank him and start heading to the next stall. “To think his dad would pass away so suddenly...Xiao Lu, that poor kid. He has three little sisters to take care of,” he murmurs to the next customer, thinking I am out of earshot.

Mr. Wu tries to sell me some bok choy and wood ear mushrooms, but I remember how Mom never settles for the market price. “Xiao Lu-ah, they mark the prices high because they know we’ll haggle them back down.” Just when I am feeling proud of my negotiating skills, I hear a sequence of squeals erupt nearby.

As I get closer to the space, fruity and floral scents swirl around me. From young girls to older aunties, the area in front of this stall was packed with females of all ages. They were all pushing to get closer to and talk to the owner, who wore a purple sequined top.

“Yes, everything is forty percent off. Only today. No, you can’t try those earrings on, dear.” Mrs. Tsai’s curt responses seem mismatched by her girlish smile. She holds a simple silver necklace against the collarbone of a potential customer. Trying to get through the crowd, I hear a particular voice, perkier than the others. “Auntie, just one moment. Can my friend see that one on the left? It’s her birthday.”

Wearing our school uniform, four of my classmates are standing there. The youngest daughter of the Wang family points to a crystal green bracelet, while her friend jumps up and down excitedly. Buying jewelry as a present for a friend? Talk about abundance.

I should get out of here. Everyone at school already knows our family hasn’t had the easiest time. I don’t need tomorrow’s gossip to be about the “man of the house doing the grocery shopping.” I duck my head and steer my bike off the main path.

“Hey, guys...isn’t that Xiao Lu?” I pretend not to hear and concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other, pushing my bike along. Quickly. “Hey, wait up!” it doesn’t take long for her to catch up with me. “Hey, are your ears not working or something?”

I didn’t know how to respond. We’ve never spoken

87

one-on-one before at school. Why is she trying to act polite now?

“Oh, um...I guess I didn’t notice you guys.” I mutter.

“I never said I was with anyone else,” Jia says, with one eyebrow raised.

Then she points to my bike basket and laughs, “You’re kind of different, you know. I always wondered what was beneath that turtle shell, but never did I see you as a cook.” I look down, not knowing how to respond and see her clean, white sneakers next to my scuffed boots.

“Well, I told my friends to go ahead without me, are you going to leave a girl alone on the streets?” ***

88

“Honestly, at that time, I thought, ‘What a princess.

I feel bad for the guy who has to take care of her,’” he jokes to me and my cousins. “And that’s how we met,” my great-uncle says, smiling sheepishly.

“Nobody asked.” My great-aunt proceeds to slap him on the arm. My cousins and I laugh and clap to the end of Storytime. Holidays with my relatives wouldn’t be the same without my great-uncle’s storytelling. I stretch my legs and get up to gather the plates of spring rolls, roast duck, and other to-be Lunar New Year leftovers.

Grandma pulls me aside and whispers, “And after that, your great-grandma kept on inviting him and his mom over for dinner. We might have come from different backgrounds but he didn’t have a choice after my sister chose him.” She then moves her hand down to rest on mine. “Kelly-ah. Destiny is a weird thing, so don’t look down on your upbringing.

You’ll become a part of a good family too.”

90

I spot Great-aunt Jia as she heads into the kitchen, a slight pinkness in her cheeks. For just a moment, I can see her without the wrinkles and without the perm. I can see her hair, long and straight, framing a playful smile.

Afterword

92

Growing up, I spent time with my great-aunt and my great-uncle on my father’s side. My great-aunt is my grandma’s younger sister. Since all of my cousins are younger than me, I was the only grandchild in my whole family for about six years. So, they treated me like their own grandchild. I see many aspects of myself in both of their personalities, including my great-uncle’s determination and my great-aunt’s playfulness. I decided to tell their love story. The details about their backgrounds are true. In Taiwan, my great-uncle went through school with many hardships, whereas my grandma’s family was considered well-off. I tried to incorporate as many facts about Taiwan and its culture as I could. One example is using “Uncle” and “Auntie” when addressing someone older who is like family but is not necessary blood-related. My great-uncle and great-aunt grew up in a small town outside of Taipei where everyone knew each other, so titles such as those were an important indicator of family relations. The conversation my grandma and I have in the story is also factual, and I tried to replicate it word for word. My family has struggled financially and is considered to be of low-socioeconomic status, so that’s why she says, “Don’t look down on your upbringing.” I hope that through this story, the reader’s curiosity will grow, that they will want to learn more about their family members and contemplate on how their life is reflected in those stories.

94

Epitaph for Fairy Dreams Skylar Rella I leave out crumbs & small bits of fruit as snacks for my fairy friends, on tiny tables I stole from the center of pizza boxes. One day, the fairies will realize I am not like most humans, magicless & mundane--I am full of fairy dust.

I am still waiting.

Flannel Binder (left) Trans is Holy (below) Morgan Swartz

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Skylar Rella

Skylar Rella 97

*names have been changed for this essay

Imperfect Answer

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aised above the great hurricane of chattering multilinguistic voices, kids beating drums, and the cutting of paper, my friends and I watched everyone from the stairs. We grinned sheepishly at each other with slightly comical, bright red lipsticked mouths and caked-on foundation. Probably only from a distance, would my two fellow dancers and I not look ridiculous in our sparkly blue skirts and crop tops. The thrill of the crowd made me hop from foot to foot in nervous excitement.

We were an interesting trio of tight-knit friends; one an exchange student, born and raised in China, another adopted from China as an infant and raised by White parents, and lastly myself, born to one ABC (American Born Chinese) parent and one white-American. We spent hours together in rehearsal, laughing, sweating together, even showing our tears to each other. The three of us were waiting (not so patiently) to be called backstage before

LUCY CHEN

performing our dance. I still get chills before every performance in anticipation, no matter how long I’ve been dancing and performing in front of an audience.

The Lunar New Year celebration we were performing at included lots of other festivities, so my friends and I were people-watching the crowd when a woman came up to us. She was probably in her 60s or 70s, with a halo of bright blond hair that was turning white, and wearing a fuchsia pink North Face sweater over a pair of “mom” jeans. She asked us, “Could I get a picture of you girls?”

My partners were shy and quiet, so I replied, “Sure.” (What was the harm of a woman who just wanted our picture?)

She fumbled for her phone in a handbag the size of a microwave and pulled out one of those phones I had in my childhood that slides up with a keyboard.

Taking a minute or two, we smiled awkwardly for the camera with arms around each other. She must have seen the

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playbill for the performance, because after finally taking the picture, she specifically addressed me, “Are you Megan Butler?”

The hallway was crowded, so I leaned down to answer the woman and said, “No. That’s Megan,” indicating to my adopted friend on my left.

“Oh,” she said, either a little confused or taken aback with surprise.

The other two names in the playbill were “Wang” and “Chen,” the correspondingly first and fifth most common surnames in China. After a second she said, “You’re very pretty, but you’re not Chinese.”

Caught up in the first part of the statement, I hurriedly replied, “Thank you.”

After complimenting us again on our dance costumes, she put her phone away and walked away. Only later did I realize, why would I say thank you to that?

I tried to think of something else to say as the perfect response.

I scrambled through my brain for a reason why she would make that kind of comment. My mother says that if you don’t have anything nice or helpful to say, don’t say anything at all. Having said it however, what exactly was she saying? Did she mean that Chinese people are pretty and though I was pretty too, I didn’t have the “exotic” look of being Asian? That opens a whole other can of worms in the fact that she is then playing into the fetishization of Asian women, and my friends as a part of it. In that case, I would defend my friends and make a statement against the fetishization of Asians.

But at the same time, she remarks on specifically my looks, maybe as they seem incongruous with the dance costumes we were wearing. Is she then making a statement about how I shouldn’t wear cultural clothing from a race, supposedly other than mine? Though even our costumes were a pop-ifized version of a real ethnic minority’s cultural clothing, full of glitter and tulle, and sparkly trim with an even greater exposed midriff, so already

we weren’t really staying true to any kind of authenticity. I could make a statement about how our dance and costumes weren’t truly authentic Dai folk dance and maybe that would assuage her?

However, I think it was the fact that she assumed I had the European last name of my friends, that shook me the most. It was at this time that it really did hit me that I don’t look Asian. I was frustrated and angry that she had denied my heritage despite my correction that in fact, I did have a Chinese last name. I felt that she might have as well told me that my dad couldn’t be my father and was outraged that she could say something like that so easily with no consequence to herself. I had never felt as if I stood out or was different than my dance friends. I had spent my weekends surrounded by Asian girls my entire life and it was only natural that I had begun to classify myself with them. My dance classes were a sanctuary for me, where I could escape from stress and school. But in that moment afterward, I felt uncomfortable in my own skin and in the group that I was most comforted by.

The rudeness, her bias, her assumptions about my appearance, were not the major problems with her statement. It was the fact that she claimed authority over my identity, and tried to other-ize me from myself.

I wanted to spit and yell and scream my claim of my father’s ancestry as much for myself as I claim my mother’s to be.

And since then I have struggled to do just that.

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n high school, our physics teacher was known to be a gross and disgusting old man, pretending to be liberal-minded.

One day as I sat in the hall chatting with my friend, he uninvitingly came up to me and asked, “Are you one of those people who has a Chinese last name but isn’t actually Chinese since it’s been passed down through marriage weirdly?” Wideeyed at why this man I have never spoken

to one on one has asked me one of the weirdest questions, I reply, “No, my dad is Chinese.” He explains himself that his own name Garcia is Spanish and yet he knows no one in his family with Spanish ancestry.

This statement just swelled in my head the fact that I don’t appear to be Chinese to society. Now looking back though, maybe he was just an old man who was confused about his own racial identity and wanted someone to have solace with.

Through the rest of high school I

began to feel like I could not identify as Chinese anymore, that I should just identify as white because that was how I looked. My dad insisted that I look Chinese to him. But that was easy for him to say. I had smothered my self-identity as Chinese deep within myself and was determined to enter college and life with the identity of a white person.

Then during vacation after my senior year, a young Chinese lady ran up to me as I waited for the subway in

New York. She eagerly started spouting rapid Mandarin of which I could only understand her anxiety, presumably for missing a train. I had to explain that I didn’t speak the language and she replied in slow broken English that she was sorry and hurried away to find someone else.

I suddenly realized that maybe I do look Chinese to those who know to recognize it and my fears and doubts of my heritage suddenly were tossed into turmoil again.

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still entered college knowing I was white-passing for most people.

However, I soon found myself having entered Asian culture clubs and affinity groups. This was a culture I had grown up in and white I had found my confidence.

One day, after a group dance practice a

whole gaggle of people sprawled out on the swiveling chairs below the Subway where the smell of garlic and fake bread seeped into every inch of our clothing. I was still fresh and in awe of all the talented dancers I was sitting around with. I slunk into one of the chairs trying to fit in. One of the juniors, a tall white boy, with arms and legs that sprawled around him like a pile of bones, asked, “Are you mixed race?” I timidly replied that yes, I was half-Chinese.

He had no doubt seen my name in the Facebook group chat we were all a part of.

He replied, “Wow, it’s so cool that you’re mixed.” I grinned in awkward confusion since how was anyone supposed to reply to something like this, especially when you’ve just met. Another person in the group nodded in agreement. “Yeah, I wish I was

mixed,” said the first person. I was stunned.

I probably sat there dumbstruck at the stupidest sentence I had heard. Reflecting back, I hope my mouth didn’t gape at surprise as the conversation rushed on with the energy of overly-caffeinated students leaving me behind.

The last four years of my life had thrown me into a ruckus of inner voices seeking a binary answer to the question of my self-identity. In what way was it cool to have your own identity denied by others?

To have yourself questioned? To not be able to seek complete solace since your cultural lifestyle differed from one group while your visual appearance misaligned from the other. Even in college, I saw people in my Asian cultural group side-eye me as if I didn’t belong. I had girls I lived with tell me I’m white. And while they aren’t wrong, it felt weird to be commented on and discussed like a new organism to be classified. And for the first couple years of college, I sought solace in trying to identify as mixed. I grew immersed in literature and art about mixed people. I learned the term hapa and for a while thought of using it to identify myself. It was the first time in my life where I felt pride in both sides of my family and made a concerted effort to learn about my ancestry on my white-American mother’s side.

Today I’m no longer trying to figure out my identity, I’ve decided it’s not something that can be put plainly into words and written down. It fluctuates and changes; a non-binary answer. I’m learning to gain confidence in this and not dwell on the imperfect answers to odd and haunting questions. To me it no longer matters what the answer is. My favorite author comes to mind, for nothing can be summed up better than in this quote: “I am anything I wish to be. The world cannot choose for me.”

-Frances Hardinge, The Lost Conspiracy

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104 Annie Zhao

Forest Hills This is the hill I will die on:

Skylar Rella

when I grow up, I want to be a pretty fairy & sprout wings to take me far away. Where I’m going, there is no fighting; no we can’t afford it or pack your things & go. Here, there is no reason to leave. I live with my forest creature friends on this hill I will die on. Here, the taller I grow up towards the sky, the deeper my roots dig into soil. Our home is sturdy, unmovable: a beautiful oak with doors that perfectly fit tiny frames. I’m very good at not taking up space.

It’s safe here.

The sun’s warmth is always shining.

Light rays tickle our ears with soothing reassurances: you can count on me.

I sparkle like this when we dance on big leaves, wiggle with worms to celebrate our lives, our bodies.

We love each other as if we’ve never lost anything. Here, there is nothing to lose.

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Ella Rosenblatt The Body

She woke from a time of which she wasn’t aware, except for its edges. The feeling of tired was impossible, wordless like trying to describe a color, or a particular scent, without comparing it to others. And then her mouth tasted like sour, another impossible sensation to describe. She didn’t know how it got that way, but it happened every morning. Or how words got to be so damn inadequate. It happened, and those two words were the only way to say something passed. So this vessel limbered to standing—no real sense of how it got to move—and clambered into the bathroom (a constructed name, which breaks down the second someone doesn’t speak the code, or after reading the script a few times out loud).

This make-believe time called morning. In the room with and without a name, there she found a plastic thing, soft on one end, which could remedy the sour taste. She could see a new image of herself in the mirror there. Iterations. The only truly live action video of her life, which disappears by definition. the plastic object jabbing shapes into her insides, because she was a being made from layers: a mouth, blood, shreds falling all to the eyes that can see. for one, a black-tailed minute in which reflects the most bright of units—units of units, when or if and over the sun rises, it’s all over; then now as it was before a thousand, fois, des fois, no one, knows—wij kunnen niet alles traduire, of or of maar dit is leven; or is it? » combinations « and generating a thousand aperçu && in two glass glances ^ [ ʃəʊ miː ði ˈɛʤɪz ]

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on Roses and their Cankers NATALIE SYNDER

TRYING TO DETERMINE the exact time, whether a moment or a duration, that something is lost rarely bears fruit. I have tried, again and again, to draw out the arc of how my art practice died, but each new point on the timeline disproves the others. My last real studio course was in my junior year of college, but that was after I changed my major from fine arts to design, and that was after I started wearing nicer clothes to class, but that was before the summer of 2020 when I cut out hundreds of images of food from the coupon books mailed weekly to my door and primed a canvas for a large-scale collage but let them molder, unused, and that was before I moved out of my apartment and left three large oil paintings in the basement, unphotographed and unconcerned about their fate.

I still can’t pinpoint exactly how or why I lost it, but the fall of 2019 burns as the point where the inside of my head started to feel different than how it did for the previous five or six years.

That season, roughly confined by October through December, I now consider the beginning of the end.

I was caught unawares. Walking into the semester feeling invincible, I was full of a cocky confidence one acquires in school when they have to work very hard for only four months worth of carefully parceled time. I savored the feeling of having too much to do, felt it was proof that I was taking full advantage of the opportunities offered in school. In fact, it was quite in line with the university culture to treat overburdening one’s schedule as a sport– most passing conversations were edged with a subtle competition to prove how busy one was, at least busier than the other. I predicted the usual flurry of school year dramas, heightened by a weekly schedule that involved four part-time jobs and a low-intensity internship. I foresaw the routine exhaustion, friendships pruned by circumstance, working through the weekends just to stay afloat– I accepted them as the price to pay for being “ambitious”– but I seemed to have been given a free pass. The assignments

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got completed and were generally approved of, the friends were had lunch with, the jobs were juggled, I was seeing someone; I got a standard seven hours of sleep a night– almost unheard of in the art school– despite my attempts to interweave obligations during the week to eliminate any free time. But, despite this relative good fortune, I was shaking apart at the seams, some kind of microorganism whose cell wall had been cut, left to spill its cytoplasm out into the world.

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You might be tempted to chalk it up to stress, but it was unlike any stress reaction I experienced. To set the scene, to try to explain: about once a week I googled “how do you know if you are depressed,” found the results obnoxious in their clinical ambiguity, then berated myself in frustration, resolving to stop wasting my time trying to answer the question if I knew the results would lend no clarity. I sat on my living room couch to read for an art history course and realized, half an hour later, that I was merely looking at the text and had not read anything at all. I walked to the art museum to see a show about Black abstract artists and was so electrified by the prints that I was compelled to leave after only half an hour, hurry the twenty-five minutes back to studio to start a collage, walk fifteen minutes to my apartment and then back to retrieve my source material, then scrapped my plans for the rest of the day to work hunched over in the corner of the printmaking studio for four hours on a one-fourth by one-fourth inch black and white grid collage for which I had no use and no audience. There were blocks of days where I was unable to eat anything until the evening, when I had to force myself out of fear of passing out on a date or while working; the most visceral sense memory from that time was failing to eat a slice of peanut butter toast over the kitchen trash can while trying not to gag. I got a buzzcut for reasons that don’t come into focus; I wanted to be unpalatable to the world.

It was not my hardest semester, nor the saddest, not even the most stressful.

It was just that my standard rules of action and consequence did not bind me as they used to.

See, I was in year seven of art school. For four years, while other American high schoolers were working hard at, I assume, chemistry and debate, my classmates and I split our time between arts and academics in a public school that advertised classical training as its foundation. Our coursework in the visual arts department included charcoal portraits of cardboard boxes carefully turned to demonstrate one and two-point perspective, etchings of the city drawn from the printmaking studio’s windows, cubes of kitsch suspended in epoxy-resin, presented on a bed of salvaged rose petals.

Along with the unusual curriculum, the building itself suggested that we were supposed to live in a world apart from the non-artist population.

The visual arts department was on the top two floors of what used to be a seven-story hotel in midtown Baltimore. There were drains in odd places on the classroom floors where once bathrooms were, the floors were filthy with long-trampled smears of oil paint. Visitors would step off the elevator

and toe around the banks of various art-school waste that formed in the hallways. Unwanted ceramic jugs in the recycling bin, a self portrait missing its eyes peeling off its drawing board, unmatched shoes standing guard by the drawing room door– they could linger for months at a time, eventually becoming part of the architecture of the place. The only soap regularly in the girl’s bathroom were bars stolen from the design studio, alternatively used for washing hands and brushes, depending on how much paint was left on the surface.

Mr. Veale, our drawing teacher and the master of our four years, tried his best to instill in us teens some sense of the artist-as-apprentice lifestyle.

For three hours a day we were in studio classes and expected to spend at least three hours on our art homework every night. School ended at four-fifteen and we had five academic classes, creating an environment where I thought it was perfectly normal to have one hour of free time in the early evenings and then work through until one in the morning for a seven AM wakeup.

On Friday afternoons when I was fifteen, after finishing my final class of the week, I would request the key to the locked printmaking studio, citing some personal item I left in there, or maybe a print I needed to retrieve for a critique. I’d wedge something in the door, return the key, then make prints alone in the cold afternoon light until the security guard made his rounds at six, my limbs thrumming with sweet electricity as I exited the building into the post golden-hour dimness.

Whenever we complained about the pace, Mr. Veale would purse his lips and cite either all the hundreds of talented hopefuls they turned away in favor of our portfolios, or his own art practice, which regularly kept him working until four in the morning, evidenced by his perpetually bloodshot eyes. He tried to light in us a devotion that, in his impatient recurring speeches, sounded vaguely Churchill-esque in their insistence:

you should draw in the library, you should draw on the bus to school, you should draw in the back of the restaurant in your ten minute break, you should draw as your parents get a divorce.

I was highly susceptible to this language of devotion. Maybe if I were born a few states south I would have been handling snakes in some one-room church or, if to a more outspoken family, sending death threats to republican legislators. “You have to do the things you have to do,” Mr. Veale slyly reminded us whenever our talk veered into physics or English classes, “to do the things you want to do.” To me, the thought that anyone would find any of those non-arts classes engaging, to think there were millions of kids going to school everyday with what? world history to look forward to? was frankly absurd.

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Those four years bled into four more at a university art school, which looked a lot like high school, except most of my fellow students didn’t receive the same messaging about the apprentice lifestyle. The bathrooms had real soap and there were no loose shoes, and students expected to have a life outside of their art. My first winter break, I was floored to discover that some of my art school classmates joined sororities. They would drift into studio after their Sunday evening meetings, all wearing similar versions of different sweatshirts inherited from generations past of rushes, trading a currency cashed as Instagram posts and access to Thursday night parties.

Voluntarily taking up with a group so easy to criticize as conformist and insidiously conventional struck me as counter to even the most lenient of artistic mindsets, essentially hopping into bed with every major idea that modern and contemporary art had critiqued in the last century. But mainly I was confused about the time it would eat up– all of those meetings to discuss recruitment and the budget and sisterhood looked like a flagrant misappropriation of time that should be spent picking away at their craft.

For the first time in my life, I actually had feuds with other people in my class.

On a break during critique in my drawing class, a student, probably sleep deprived and looking for reassurance, glibly asked us gathered to buy lunch, “Do you think Professor Guilmet will be pissed at how shitty my craft is on this one?”

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“Well, was it intentional or not?” I responded. “Shut the fuck up,” she muttered underneath her breath as she slid out of the cafe line with her coffee.

That first year, every Saturday morning I was pulled to studio like a hatchling to the ocean, regardless of how the night before passed or what my tasks for the week were. I rose at eight, packed my backpack and my artbox, got a bagel from the half-open dining hall, and walked to studio so I could set up and start working by nine-thirty. The brunch crowd would trickle in around one or two in the afternoon, and by five the studios were crowded.

Sometimes a friend could pry me out in the afternoon for a coffee, but I could only be away for an hour before an overwhelming sense of neglect would pull me back in. I would leave in the late afternoon to avoid the pervasive studio conversations about various professors’ grading techniques and which fraternities threw the best mixers.

That was a clash in identity that I simply could not reconcile as an eighteen year old– why debate the nuances of various greek life reputations?

– why wear pants without pockets to studio?– why join Model U.N.– when none of those things played a role in supporting what mattered most?

MY FIRST WINTER BREAK, I WAS FLOORED to DISCOVER THAT SOME of MY ART SCHOOL CLASSMATES JOINED SORORITIES.

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WHY DEBATE THE NUANCES of VARIOUS GREEK LIFE REPUTATIONS?

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WHY WEAR PANTS WITHOUT POCKETS to STUDIO? WHY JOIN MODEL U.N. WHEN NONE of THOSE THINGS PLAYED a ROLE in SUPPORTING WHAT MATTERED MOST?

But I turned nineteen, and joined a campus club, then twenty, and came to resent the gallery I interned at. I spent an entire semester’s worth of Saturdays in a basement classroom with that club, learning how to counsel our peers through sexual assault; hours that were once automatically marked as critical to the practice were spent learning to explain the differences in Missouri and Illinois’s abortion regulations. Gradually, I had meetings on the weekend to discuss the club’s budget and the new Title IX regulations and then during the week, too, to plan the next year’s training.

Maybe then is when it occurred to me that there is a life worth living outside of art. Studio time started shrinking and shrinking until it was pushed to the latest hours of the day, after all the other tasks were completed. I went to brunch.

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Art does a good job in justifying the sufferings of the everyday. Baked into the lore we inherit in the study of art is that suffering, though not a means to an end, can be formed into something tangible. Yes, most art students learn to eschew the public fascination with the famous cases like van Gogh or Pollock, whose pain is fetishized as the price to pay for talent, but the personal never stays separate from the product. Even as some theorists push back against the schools of psychoanalytic analysis in art history, there is a reason why we preserve the diaries and letters of our artists of interest– we want to know what happened, what led them to what ended up in the museum. This is not to add merit to the glamorous falsity that suffering grosses good art, but to say that it does contribute to the final product.

That brand of assurance is addictive in the teenage years– at least it was for me. At its core, I felt like I could never trust the trappings that make a conventionally contented life– a fulfilling career, community, a family – to bring me happiness. It all looked so unpredictable.

Art is an act of control of the artist’s proximity. You can always be fired, your partner can run off, but art? Art always stays within grasp. After all, you can draw on the bus, in the back of the restaurant, as everything else falls apart.

This was the promise that was never directly spoken to me, but one I accepted all the same: that art is a lifelong practice, that everything I ever did or went through would make sense when it materialized in a piece, in pieces, down the road. Every shitty job, every minor pain, every gulf of disappointment leads to the next step in the most important thing you will ever do. You just have to keep doing it.

The summer when my practice trickled out completely, the summer of 2020, everything was falling apart. Art as control, art as a crutch. I started to embroider the blank spaces of four old library catalog cards, building color across the empty grid fields below where handwritten names from the seventies and eighties stood with their due dates. The thread laced around the edges to create soft borders and the card itself was weakened by the hundreds of puncture marks made by the needle, giving it the delicacy one senses when holding an old, crumpled photograph.

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It never mattered if what I made was seen or distributed by others, but it mattered to me then as I held those cards and knew that their only viewers would be me and visitors to my room and the grandmother who would receive one for Christmas that year. This is the next step, I thought. I tried to make myself feel something for them, to be moved by the concept behind them, but they were just stuff to me.

In the months following the fall of 2019, I called it “the madness” or “the blip” or “the manic semester.” To define it would be the ability to control it, and I desperately wanted some control back after being jerked around by the ghost of some distress for a semester. It was all without reason, I wanted the name to convey. I should have been fine, had no reason not to, but it didn’t feel that way. Something was simply in the air and trying to clarify it was like trying to collar a feral cat– even in its conclusion there was something lost, something trivialized.

But to be fair, I made some of what I consider the most successful pieces in my life that season. The book I bound of David Rakoff’s Rent essay is still the centerpiece of my portfolio. Those one-fourth by one-fourth inch black and white grid collages were nurtured in stolen hours throughout the week, completed with the scheming satisfaction of a child who successfully sneaks candy without their parents knowing. Perhaps that is why this season stands out as the beginning of the end– I felt a renewed connection to my art practice that now feels distinctly like a swan song in its intensity.

When I was eighteen, I assumed I would always be on my way to one studio or the other. I didn’t envision success, or even happiness, but I knew that I would always be mid-project, my free time consumed by the very same pursuit that led my waking hours from when I was fourteen. The idea that I wouldn’t always have a collage in progress would have struck me as an aberration. Even now, part of me recoils as I realize I don’t. It is like waking up one day and realizing you no longer orbit the sun. The light has been gradually dimming the entire time, it must have been, but it is only when you look up to see an empty sky that you realize you are adrift, and have been for some time.

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