CALIGINOSITY

Navia-Ayauna Erbst

Coming Out

Clara Wodny

I’ve felt it growing, for a while now that thing that lives inside of me it tells me its been there forever, not a secret, more like hidden treasure meant to be searched for, waiting to be discovered the voice gets impatient says its tired of being unacknowledged and dismissed, wearied from cowering in the darkest corners, forced to rationalize itself as surely being something else the more it manifests in reality the more I see its fingerprints on memory it can’t be left, for much longer bouncing off all the clutter inside dying to be recognized

I try to set it free, to admit my mind isn’t just playing tricks on me but how do you prove the existence of something you were raised not to believe? perhaps the answer lies behind a few sips of wine in the company of living proof that “the thing” isn’t something to be despised so, I let it out for the very first time into the air, no longer confined as the weight lifts, begins to climb I wonder, if I chose the right time “yeah” you say, as you turn to my eyes

“I could tell” now your smile sends a tingle through my spine all it takes is that one time giving me courage to go out and find all of the things that say they are mine still afraid, no longer naive deciding- it is up to only me allowing myself to fully be every part of what I now believe.

Something That’s Nothing

Sam Nelson

“I’ve loved you since we were kids” I whisper

To the eggs you made for my birthday While you’re in the other room Grabbing the salt

“I don’t know anyone who sees the world like you do” I yell

But you can’t hear over the music of the concert we’re at

“I am glad we’re friends” I say honestly

As I shake your lover’s hand

“I don’t want to be with you” I say to myself

Because you don’t want to be with me.

After the Accident Kitri Lindberg

There is a headlight shining into my stomach, Watching my guts spin around like The rinse cycle, The small banana of my pancreas a lemon sized heart And the squeeze of a liver, Turning left onto a burnt road, Turning right on the glossy shoulder, Sometimes I turn the music down seeing with my ears, Praying to the moon, Spinning when he sings about love.

But,

I want it to be loud young and fast, Burning cigarettes out the windowandquickly Making art with a full backseat and pink cupcakes on the floor, Following the wrong people all the way home. Burning tires into the gravel you under my waistband Your hand as full and gasping as the neon blue LEDs. Wrapping our jackets like Surrogate seatbelts

Unraveling hands like spools of calloused thread.

Instead,

I swallow the black ice

I see myself in the rearview mirror And find a stranger, I narrow my eyes Because the light is too blinding I widen them when the night is consuming me again

Heart, Brains, and Lungs

Rachel Heinrich

Pruning

Audrey Fashimpaur

Ariadne (An Excerpt from Abandoned Women)

Navia-Ayauna Erbst

988

Maggie Bruck

988 visit save.org yesterday, the day before, the day before, the same as past: a pattern i could not restore. the young one’s pain that soon would pass. –i push her for an answer again, what hurts you? she’s almost out of breath to lie to me once more. it don’t. today’s a new day she says. let’s push on. we push on.

- was there something more i could have said, was there something more i could have done? what a sorry thing, the human head; what a sorrow day when it has won. she was fine yesterday, comforting me; convinced that my worries were in vain. i asked her once more to say that she’s alright she does… she’s always alright when i ask. and life pushed on but one day, life pulls