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Poughkeepsie, NY 12601
Cover Design by Marisa Brown, Anita Cazorla
Interior Layout by Christina Brown, Angelina Ruiz
Cover Image: endless fields, Morgan Chambers, 2025
Opinions expressed in Mosaic do not necessarily reflect the views held by Mosaic staff, students, faculty, or the administration of Marist College.
© Mosaic 2024
Editor-In-Chief
Abby Castonguay
Associate Editor
Riley Mazzocco
Art Editor
Sydney Sailer
Poetry Editor
Gabby Ganoe
Fiction Editor
Lauren Lagasse
Photography Editor
Mary Kirk
Nonfiction Editor
Charlotte Del Vecchio
Design Editors
Christina Brown, Angelina Ruiz
Cover Design Editors
Marisa Brown, Anita Cazorla
Social Media Committee
Margaret Batta, Alexa Gallery, William Haydon, Karina Syrota
Event Planning Committee
Angela Buscemi, Lily Jandrisevits
Mosaic Advisors
Mr. Robert Lynch and Dr. Moira Fitzgibbons
The Mosaic Editorial Board is proud to publish the Fall 2024 edition of Mosaic, a literary and arts magazine showcasing the incredible work of Marist College students.
All Mosaic selections went through a rigorous blind peer-review process in which student section editors evaluated submissions for publication. Thank you to all the students who submitted their work to Mosaic—I encourage each of you to submit again next semester. Our magazine would not exist without your remarkable talent and creativity.
The Mosaic Editorial Board would like to sincerely thank Mr. Robert Lynch for his unwavering support of Mosaic. We would also like to thank Alex Podmaniczky and the entire Digital Publications Center for taking on the enormous task of printing our magazine. Thank you to Dr. Joshua Kotzin, the English Chair, and the entire English Department for helping us find many of the accomplished students featured in this edition of Mosaic. It is incredible to see how this publication continues to bring together creative students from across disciplines through a shared love of art and writing.
I would also like to extend a personal thank you to Dr. Moira Fitzgibbons for her endless dedication to the Mosaic. She is such a joy to work with, and I am so grateful for her positive attitude and sage advice.
Thank you to Riley Mazzocco, the former Mosaic Editor-in-Chief, for entrusting me with this position. Your guidance and enthusiasm throughout this process have been monumental, and I am so grateful for your constant support. I hope I have made you proud.
I would also like to thank the entire Mosaic Editorial Board for their hard work this semester. This publication runs smoothly because of their endless passion and commitment. I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to work with such a wonderful team. It has been an honor to serve as the Editor-in-Chief this fall, and I look forward to the spring as I move into my final semester both on the Mosaic board and as a Marist College student.
And finally, thank you to the readers! This magazine would not be what it is without the support and readership of Marist students, faculty, staff, families, and friends. I hope you enjoy the Fall 2024 edition of Mosaic.
Sincerely, Abby Castonguay
endless fields
The Lobster Shack
Everyone likes to put you in boxes.
Odette
I Remember (My Great Uncle’s House)
Remnant of the Old Country
Sestina for Santorini
The Charcoal Sailor
Vampire
Vain Dust
Trio
Smokey
Dead Fawn on the Interstate
Praeteritus
thirteen
Underwater
Fish Bowl
Rubber Ducks
Yin and Yang
the full moon
Kiaya
Cloverdale Park Apiary
Ode to a Pollinator
Floral Focus
Keeper’s Garden (Inspired by “The Lighthouse’s Tale” by Nickel Creek)
Henry the Heron
lepidoptera
***Feeling Bad
Lightning in Belgrade
Bird Watcher
***Anatomy
Spikey Lady
***Hello Stranger
Hatch
Morgan Chambers
Christina Brown
Ruby McMahon
Bella Loiacono
Nat Fernandes
Leonardo Carini
Lauren Lagasse
Annie Kathaleen Connor
Kyle Esoian
Julia Antonio
Elise Stiefel
Margaret Batta
Jenna Corrado
Bella Loiacono
Julia Antonio
Lizzie Baumgardner
Jenna K. Labadessa
Kait Dugan
Sophia Seriale
Marisa Brown
Morgan Chambers
Jenna Corrado
Sydney Sailer
Emma Denes
Claudia Skretkowicz
Lauren Meier
Melissa Hering
Ashley Demino
Juliann Bianco
Sofia Milojevic
Emma Bradford Dennehy
Jenna K. Labadessa
Ava Kaloz
Charlotte D. Del Vecchio
Jenna Corrado
***= Content may contain themes of abuse, grief, death, suicide, war, mentall illness, and body image.
***The Diary of Mrs. Death
Lost
***Kidnappers
***Flesh
***Decay
Mother
Ode the Betrayed
Screen Time
Ode to the Jury
Awful
***21st Century Quotidian Brothers
Anvers, 18th Arron., Paris
Lacie
Past, Present, Past
Proposal: Little Women
Labyrinth of my Grandfather’s Agony
Frank Sinatra
Dad’s Guitar
The Madonna Inn
Time’s Tide
Military Time
Traces
Master Copy Doni Tondo
Doll House
Flower Frame
***Rene Magritte’s The Lovers Secrets of Mine, To Keep cliffs of moher
far gone isle of skye
***Edna Jean
Modern Ancient
In the Distance
Ever Onward
Seasons of Sentimentality
Madailein
Everything New York Should Know About
Ohio
golden hour drive
Francesca DeRosa
Alexa Gallery
Lilian DeFilippis
Caitlyn Campo
Kendall Pastreich
Miles Byrnes
Francesca DeRosa
Teagan Demler
Jess Ricciardi
Bella Loiacono
Kyle Neblo
Brady Menapace
Lauren Lagasse
Abigail Agostin
Kiki Wiehe
Christina Brown
Sabrina Silvester
Victoria Tate
Marisa Brown
Alexa Gallery
Ava Morizio
Stella Q.
Bella Loiacono
Abigail Agostin
Audrey Hansen
Emma Denes
Lilian DeFilippis
Gabby Ganoe
Morgan Chambers
Liv Myers
Morgan Chambers
Sabrina Silvester
Sarah John
Anonymous
Cayleigh Goberman
Francesca DeRosa
Teagan Demler
Anonymous
Sam Guggino
***Ponyboy
sunset silhouettes
Station Sunset
Stuck at a Traffic Light
***I Believe (or so I say)
Immortal in Marble mythology/2010
Okay, let me try to get this Metro North
Sakura
Dragon Sculpture
***Quicksand route 1
Stillness
Running out of Miles - Ode to Frost Fall on the River
School in the Morning sunset in the piazza
With Love, Arno
Sampaguita
The World’s Embrace
Margaret Batta
Sam Guggino
Lilian DeFilippis
Ava Kaloz
Kendall Pastreich
Abigail Agostin
Margaret Batta
Lily Jandrisevits
Kait Dugan
Stella Q.
Jillian Blaszko
Emily Cavanna
Liv Myers
Sophia Seriale
Lilian DeFilippis
Christina Brown
Jennifer Cabrera
Sam Guggino
Natalie Rosado
Thomas Quinones
Morizio
Ruby McMahon ’ 27 First Place, Nonfiction
You don’t hold your nose above everyone – you look straight on. You see eye to eye, you are both level-headed and level in stature. I have never been able to figure out what it is about you that makes people look through you – never from the same generous lens you grant them – but it has always seemed to me that everyone likes to put you in boxes.
In the short time I have known you I have at least come up with a few possibilities as to why. My first instinct was because you are beautiful. To see you on a cloudless day, the air clean, the involuntary clippings of the lawn aromatizing your walk – people are bound to notice you. They notice what they can see about you, like the way you style your hair and the slight bounce in your head as you hear a song that is a little too sad to be danced over. They notice how you drag your feet, but not as to be confused for laziness, but a coolness that you, yourself, do not recognize. These are the very things a person can gather about you, and maybe there, on that cloudless day, the people who looked just long enough to see you were left wanting to know more. They want you to fit into the cardboard they hold onto for the unknown, and they tape it up, right there, on the sandpaper sidewalk, to put you in. In this box, they label in black, chunky lettering: “COOL GIRL i.e. ON A MISSION.”
The other reason could quite possibly be that you are simply kind. For the hoards you intrigue with your presence, they are all the more rewarded when, come to find out, they find a warmth to you they didn’t know possible from the composed exterior. I could watch for hours seeing you grow to people, and they to you. The way your hands throw themselves recklessly in the air as you start whooping and hollering; the way the air shifts from breezy as you calm a room, to suddenly having no oxygen at all, lungs sucked hollow and dry from laughter with you; the way all sense of science is lost around you – no time, no gravity –because people just long to be near you. The social radiance you bear is a beautiful gift, and yet, one that can be polluted. This box I’m speaking of is the one that is for your goodwill: that as the patient friend you are, you can be used for more than you are able to give.
My final hypothesis, and the one I think may be the truest, is that because you are not an open book, it makes you all the more desirable to discover. I wouldn’t dare to dream to know everything about you – but still, I love to learn. In the gratitude I feel for you sharing the precious details of your existence that you feel safe telling, I feel compelled to know more, and perhaps this is the case with
others. We want to know you, and we want to piece together your story since it’s one we rarely get to hear.
I am scared to put you in boxes, but even more so, I fear that sometimes I do. Maybe this box is one I keep on a high shelf and tucked behind miscellaneous closet items because it's one I am not proud of. It's ragged and worn, its corners bruised with neglect and a thick shell of polythene surrounding it, since I used rolls of duct tape to seal it up and tamper it down. In it, I hold expectations of you that you don’t know of, or dreams that cannot be lived out, three wishes that no genie will grant.
I hate to have it in my possession, and I never wish to put you in it. You don’t deserve to be in such a damp and dark place, and it has never been my right to place you up on that shelf, among my expectations and my misgivings. My job is to understand. My job is to get a step ladder, an x-acto knife, and to release you from the somber dust that lay up there. You are not an object, a possession. You are my now; you are above anything that I could have ever imagined. Everyone likes to put you in boxes, but I certainly never hope to.
Nat Fernandes ’28
First
Place, Fiction
Two thousand miles away from home I remember, a house behind a big blue gate, closed at the front with a lock and key. I remember the flowered tiles on the outside and the brick shingles on the roof. Up the path through the flowered lawn, there is a wooden door with a golden handle, rusted and worn from the years of use. The door frames are big, because in this house lives my Great Uncle, and he is tall (very tall), so much so that they made all his doors taller so he could fit. He is old and his hair is graying, but even with his hunched posture he sprouts over everything like an ivy vine.
And the inside of the one-story house behind the blue gate is like a museum. Every room is decorated as much as it can be, with glass antiques and old furniture adorning every exhibit of the home. Yellow wallpaper peels back at the corners and reveals the older frame of the house, and hanging off it there are paintings of fields and ships and every beauty God has woven into the world. There are no LED lights because that is a modern invention, and instead, each room glows with a warm orange hue like a candle, and it warms the summer air and the breeze through the open windows. On each shelf, there are little angels, glass works, trinkets, and wonders and charm that shine and call upon the children who look. I am warned not to touch but I do anyway, because dammit I am twelve years old, I am practically an adult, and I am too old to be clumsy.
At the end of the hall, there’s one bathroom, and it’s decorated with flowery pink wallpaper and vases, rose-colored towels, and geometric peach tiles. Though I was never much for that color I cannot help but admire it for all its whimsy, its bold statements, and its monochrome idea. Striking, of all places I remember it the most. Outside the rooms, in the yard, there is an arch that gives us shade from the blazing sun, made of leaves that lead to the back. As we walk on the cobbled path and beneath the trees we pass my uncle’s birds, tweeting in its cage and singing songs of slow mornings. Flowers are sprouting between the stones and they click beneath our feet.
My uncle’s little shingled house is nestled in front of what used to be a school, and so when we visit he unlocks a green gate in the back with his keys and lets us loose on the playground, as though we were the school children that once too, enjoyed the school. And it is a generous playground, it could almost be a theme park,
and its size is overwhelming. We don’t know where to start. My cousins and I play hide and seek behind slides and rocking horses that are too small to conceal us, but we don’t care. We run to the basketball court and scrape our knees throwing and blocking the half filled balls. We spin each other on the merry-go-round and we climb up the rock wall that’s too little to really be any challenge. In the back, when our parents aren’t watching us, we sneak to the old school, shadowy and damp and abandoned. We walk up the stairs and slowly creak open whatever unlocked doors we can find. Of course, we never stray too far from the light, never wandering further than the first room we can see, and we make up ghost stories about the children from a time before, and we pick up the old molding toys and giggle in disgust. Maybe, now that I am older, I would have wandered further, we would have explored and laughed together. But when you’re young you’re also a chicken, and so my curiosity remains ablaze.
In a quiet room at a wooden table, I drink a glass of water, and my great-uncle takes some old figures off the shelf to show me, and I look at their faces, smiling and occupied. They water their fake flowers and walk their glass dogs. I spend my time sitting on the hard, striped couch and walk aimlessly, trying to examine whatever I can see, taking in whatever my mind can bear to carry. I remember the warm orange light, and though the details are fuzzy, I remember the shelves and the clear curtains, and the vast green beyond the glass.
My great uncle snickers jokes about my family and my cousins, gives us little candies, and calls us to lunch. In our native tongue he says eu te amo (I love you), and he laughs with a deep, youthful laugh.
In my native tongue, I answer him: eu te amo.
To the piece of the kid I left in that house, looking around every room with wonder, secretly holding a little glass egg in their filthy palms and admiring the paint I say: eu te amo.
To that person, who lies awake in the night and writes, afraid to lose the fading memory, afraid to lose the culture they could only grasp through a plane ride and a visit to a little shingled house, I say: eu te amo.
To that house, though it isn’t really my home, to my home I say: eu te amo.
I remember my Great Uncle’s house.
Leonardo Carini ’25 First
My eyes have seen the land you’ve toiled. The stones by which you’ve slept at night, That form the house you ate and laughed in.
My eyes have seen the ground wherein you sleep. It is wet and damp and filled with our blood And the tears of memories lost beneath time.
Over a sighing ocean I’ve come to find you. Wars have carved empires and broken them Between your last breath and my first.
Can man ever know who will remember him? Or who will seek to find him?
And how little will be left of him?
I have searched for you at the steeple And in the aching trees. You whispered through the poplars, And the tombs groaned as if they wished to say your name.
But time’s sheer has cleaved their tongues, And nothing bears your mark Except the soil you labored and the forests you walked in.
The old houses still bear your family name, And they, with stream, trees, and fields cry out, Bearing witness to the day you were laid in the churchyard.
But I do not speak their tongue. My feet pass over you for a moment Before slipping away from the old country.
But still those bones will raise with new flesh, And our toils will be over. The trees will speak, and I understand.
And the aching ocean will fade away Along with Time’s starry count, Until we are no longer separated.
Quietly, we stare soft into the drink, gleaming rippling pool of silver tears
Joni Mitchell is crying crooning Blue, singing about some cold lost love; reflected in the deep sea, the star strand gets further, further, and further away.
The record finishes and goes away, replaced by calls for yet another drink. The water beats at the cliffs and the strand. The bottle empties when the last dancer tears herself away, and you lose yourself, love, to the deepening hue of the night’s blue.
Santorini becomes eveningtime blue when the Aegean sips the sun away— It’s those blithely silver nights that I love— Dirty martinis, I drink gin you drink vodka, and too much and your new dress tears. Stars gleam like saltwater pearls on a strand.
You look like you’ve stolen glittering strands of angel’s hair and taken Selene’s blue right away from her. You lost a teardrop earring earlier, so you must take away from the sky and take a sip of your drink I don’t know what I’d do without you, love
It’s the quiet after the bar you love where Joni sings and we walk down the strand— Spilling our cocktails moreso than drinking them, and we wade ankle-deep in the blue salt, silver minnows wriggling away, and your eyes may offer up a lone tear.
The lowtide is not bothered by our tear; she’s nestled those drunk with liquor and love for eons, stars watching ships sail away from an island where no one is stranded in the ever-reaching, unending blue— Tomorrow, the churches ask us to drink.
Morningtime comes and we tear from the strand
But love, later, when the air becomes blue the sea pulls us away to get star-drunk.
Annie Kathaleen Connor ’28 Second Place, Art
Kyle Esoian ’25
Second Place, Fiction
Allen Abrams to Shelly Moran, December 16th, 2006
Dear Shelly,
At least I’m assuming this is Shelly. I realized after we met that I forgot to ask for your number, and I beat myself up about it for days, “damn, missed my chance,” I was thinking. So I decided, and I hope you don’t think this is weird, but I asked the receptionist at your work if she knew a way to contact you. She told me she wasn’t allowed to give out any personal information because it’s confidential, which I understood, she was just doing her job. But I knew I had to find a way to reach you, because I wanted, well I want to see you again, so I flipped through Yellow Pages and tried to see if I could contact you that way. You weren’t there. “Shit” I thought. Who is this girl? she isn’t in the Yellow Pages? Some sort of secret FBI agent or something? Haha, but anyways, as a last ditch effort I googled you, and found your Linkedin, of all things, I saw your email in your bio and so I decided to shoot one over.
I’m being completely transparent with you, because I realize that if you were to find this out later, you’d probably think I was a bit of a weirdo or something. I just thought you were beautiful, and wanted to see if maybe you have any interest in going out sometime?
Take care,
Allen Abrams
Shelly Moran to Faith Barker, December 19th, 2006
Faith, I feel conflicted about something, and I want your opinion on it. I got an email from this guy I bumped into at work the other day, basically saying “hey, I remember talking to you the other day, I liked you, and I did everything in my power to contact you.” When we met, I was running in for work, I was a bit late that day (I left my work clothes in the washer), and as I’m running in, I bump into him, his name’s Allen, and I’m pretty sure he works for UPS, he was carrying a bunch of boxes. So anyways, I spill my coffee, he drops the boxes, I’m pissed, but this guy was gorgeous, I mean I couldn’t even comprehend how someone could look like that. Of course we didn’t exchange info, but afterwards, I was pissed about that as well. Three days later, the 16th, I get an email from him saying he looked all over for me, and so now what? How do I respond? Is it weird that he pseudo-stalked me? Or is it even weirder that he also told me in his email? Or is it endearing? He asked me out! I NEED your input.
Love you, S.
Nick Spears to Allen Abrams, December 22nd, 2006
Yo Al,
What’s the word on the girl from the office? You think she’s still pissed at you for spilling her coffee? Probably not the best first impression man, I gotta say. But look, either way, you made the right choice. You reached out and all you can really do now is wait I guess.
Listen, there are a million fish in the sea, so don’t get your head all mixed up with this chick if you think it’s not worth it. However, on the off chance she’s “the one,” as they say, you gotta play your cards close to the chest. Although, that email you sent her, “oh just wanna let you know I stalked you lowkey,” not sure how that’s gonna go over man, and if she hasn’t responded to you yet, frankly, I kinda get why.
You’re relying on charm and good looks for an email back.
But hey, don’t get discouraged, maybe she’ll send something back, hell, maybe she already did, let me know.
If it doesn’t work out, come over, we’ll drink some beer, we’ll play Gears of War, and you can move onto the next.
Godspeed,
Nicky
Faith Barker to Shelly Moran, December 25th, 2006
Shell,
A hot, single guy that’s also super interested in you? Shelly, c’mon. Look, okay I get it, him bending over backwards to contact you may be misconstrued by some as strange, but no one who’s attracted to someone thinks that way. You get an email from an attractive guy claiming he’d do anything to see you again, you’ve gotta bite. There’s no debate. Let’s say he’s some serial killer, which attractive people usually never are anyways, but if he is, he’s not gonna email you asking to see you again, that would be dumb, he’d easily get caught.
Don’t overthink this, sometimes life gives you good karma and brings you something, or in this case, someone special; It’s up to you whether you wanna invite ‘em in or leave ‘em at the door. This guy could be your vampire haha.
Also: Hope you’re having a great Christmas! I’ve got a present for you next time I see you.
Think it over, Faith
Allen Abrams to Nick Spears, December 26th, 2006
Nick,
I haven’t heard yet. I’m assuming she’s probably forgotten about me, and also was creeped out by my email, so whatever I don’t know. I’ll just forget about it I guess. It sucks because, dawg, this girl was something else, like a total knockout, I was like struck by her when I met her. But hey sometimes things don’t work out how you want them to.
If she was interested, she probably would’ve responded to my email by now.
But I digress.
To you, I say: sláinte, let’s drink. I say, out with the old, in with the new; and I say let’s forget about any bullshit in our lives weighing us down. Bring on the new year.
Merry Christmas, Al
Shelly Moran to Faith Barker, December 28th, 2006
Hey F,
I’ve come to the decision, and trust me, it wasn’t easy, but I’ve come to the decision that you’re right. I have to start taking the things that I want. I’m gonna email him. Maybe I’ll invite him to the office party for new year’s? Maybe a little bold, I don’t know, we’ll see.
If he ends up being a serial killer, I want white and pink flowers, and I don’t want an obnoxious headstone, nothing like those millionaires with marble rooms and giant crosses.
Wish me luck, Shell
Shelly Moran to Allen Abrams, December 29th, 2006
Hi Allen,
Yes, this is her. Apologies for taking so long to respond! I was just busy with work and life in general. I appreciate your transparency by the way, it goes a long way these days.
Don’t worry about being creepy, I usually can spot a genuine dude when I see one.
Anyways, I’m having like an office new year’s thing on Saturday, and if you aren’t too busy, maybe we can officially meet there? If that’s too much, or you’re busy, I totally get it, don’t hesitate to decline.
Best,
Shelly
Allen Abrams to Shelly Moran, December 31st, 2018
Hey Shell,
I think you get the message at this point, both physically and metaphorically. 12 years! Can you believe it? It’s been 12 years since our first date. I love you just as much now as I did then, nothing’s changed.
Grace is 8 now. She’s starting to look a lot like you. The older she gets the more of you I see in her. It’s funny how she’s supposed to be changing, like her inner self is supposed to, more and more as time goes by and moves on, but every day she just reminds me of you. That probably makes no sense, you were always the writer, writing makes me nervous.
She asked me the other day if she could see a photo of you. I obliged, even though I was hesitant. I’ve developed a hesitancy to talk about you with others, out of jealousy, mainly because I don’t want to have to share your memory with anyone else. But that’s selfish, I know that. She said she wants to look like you when she’s older, and that made me smile.
I picked up the flowers again, white and pink, like always. I’ll just sit there for a while and leave them for you.
I want you to know that even though my life changes and adapts, new girlfriend, new friends, new people, new places, new furniture for the house, you need to know that I’ll never forget you, or stop thinking about you, or stop loving you. Faith, Nick, will always see things that remind us of you.
“The notion that time heals all wounds is nothing more than a brutal fallacy, as time only stops the bleeding as life moves from high to low to high again.” I’ve always loved your poetry, it helps me get out of a funk.
I love you, don’t forget it.
Second Place, Photography
Elise Stiefel ’26 Second Place,
Nonfiction
“The cows were sold,” my dad says.
It’s an early July morning, the California sun already beating through the windshield. I woke up a mere thirty minutes ago and cannot process what he’s saying.
“The dairy,” he clarifies, realizing his mistake.
“They sold them?” I can’t quite believe what he’s saying.
“Yeah, Grandpa called me this morning. I guess the owner decided to start the process to sell the land.”
We sit quietly with this information. The family dairy has ran for longer than we’ve both been alive, since before my grandpa was even born. And it has finally succumbed to the suburban infection spreading in Winchester.
A week later, we drive down to the dairy. It feels different as soon as we exit the freeway. Hills have been flattened in favor of brand new homes, “starting in the 400s and 500s!” The Winchester Liquor and Market, a wooden building I have never been in, used to make me think I lived in the Wild West. Now, it’s one of the last vestiges of Winchester as the rural town that I grew up in.
Still, the dust is the same. It blows up into the sky behind cars, the sight cracking my lips with memories of playing in it. The valley itself is unchanged, other than the brand new water tower emblazoned with “Welcome to Domenigoni Valley - Established 1879 by Angelo Domenigoni.” It stands as if to ensure the Domenigoni property remains untouched as the endless Inland Empire tract homes encroach on the once isolated valley.
Directly across from the water tower is the dirt road that once meant we were almost home. Seatbelts would be unbuckled, and my dad would sit me on his lap to drive the rest of the way home. It was on drives like these, halfway down the road, when the acrid smell of manure would hit. It always hit hard when coming back, but the adjustment was quick.
Now, there is no smell to assault the nose. The runoff lakes have dried up. The cows are gone.
The metal corrals off the road are empty, and the sign at the corner still bleakly welcomes you to Stiefel Dairy, even though it doesn’t really exist anymore. What good is a dairy that has no cows?
The drive up to my grandfather’s house feels completely new this time. The dairy, once full of activity, now sits idly, cracking in the dry heat. I look at the empty alleyways that used to house giant stacks of hay bales which sustained cows and family debates. The barn my cousins and I would run through during summer is already in disrepair, weeds tearing through the concrete.
Not even my grandpa’s house has remained immune to the dusty death that has settled over the dairy. There’s plenty of cow print decorations, old milk bottles, and photographs of the dairy that pretend everything’s been the same since the nineties, but the only sound when I open the door is the squeak of hinges. I quietly slip off my shoes in the entryway, a habit passed down
Stiefel to Stiefel to keep dairy filth out. I greet my grandpa with a kiss as he pulls out serving utensils for the food my dad brought in. I sit on one of the barstools.
It used to be that you could hear the cows mooing and cousins fighting from this spot in the kitchen. I can basically see myself, legs folded on the counter, helping my grandma whip the egg whites of her famous waffles. But the house only echos this time. As a child, this feature was unique to nighttime, when everyone was asleep in the den after a long night of cheesy iPod games. Now, it’s the most pressing feature of the house.
I try to listen as my grandpa tells my dad about his most recent doctor’s appointment, but I can’t help but stare at the empty corrals. He pulls out the fancy red plates, the ones we only used for Christmas and Thanksgiving, and sets four of them on the counter. The line to make a plate at Thanksgiving dinners of the past would stretch around the whole kitchen, meandering almost all the way back to the formal dining room. Now, I walk straight up, grab a plate, and start piling spaghetti onto it.
My grandpa sits at the kids’ table, or what used to be the kids’ table. Like the dairy, what can it even be called when there’s no kids left? When I was four, my cousins and I designated our spots around the table. I take mine at the head, facing the TV. My mom sits in Ava’s, my dad at Ricquel’s, and my grandpa at Troy’s. It feels sacreligious that my cousins and brothers aren’t here to claim their seats, to force the adults into the dining room. The fan is the only noise as we eat, my grandpa fumbling with its remote. Years ago, he battled Guillain-Barre Syndrome. He recovered, but I remember my grandma saying, “That’s the moment he became an old man,” and I think she was right.
“Has it been weird without the cows?” my dad asks.
“A little. It’s fine, though.” My grandpa remains stoic and factual. Earlier this week, he didn’t even seem upset when he called my aunt, the only one of his kids he’ll cry in front of. “How’s college going, Lulu?” He steers the conversation away from the dairy, and I begin to talk about my semester and my plans for the future.
When the meal finishes, I put my plate in the sink, and we sit in the living room. My grandpa starts some TV show he recorded. My mom wants to leave soon, so I go to the bathroom across from my grandma’s old room. The door is open, and I sneak a glance.
When she died, when the dust first began settling on the dairy, my cousin moved in here. The room is still left how she decorated it, with white and blue furniture that doesn’t quite fill out the room. Before, it was dominated by my grandma’s dark brown bed frame with its purple and red sheets (her three favorite colors). My eyes flicker to find what I remember in my memory. Pictures from her trips of her smiling in front of desert hills. Wooden signs with Hebrew sayings on the walls. Paintings and crafts my cousins and I made during sleepovers. Her old massage chair that my brothers would lift me out of to steal. Shelves and shelves of books with her shaky handwriting. A low table with fifty framed pictures of her grandchildren next to her tortoise. But I can’t find them, and I never will. Her room feels like the cows, something that can never return, that I can never even see a glimpse of again.
My parents and I pile into the car, and I stare out the window. The dust has settled since we drove up, and there’s a new pothole forming on the road next to the barn. In the time we spent at lunch, it seems a new housing development has gone up, inching closer and closer.
Margaret Batta ’ 27 Third Place, Poetry
Spit on the grave and crunch the earth ‘neath your feet. You’re lost in a forest you never knew In the midst of extinction. Thank god they found you.
The storefronts grow dirty with grime In the dreams whispered beneath your pillow. You say you’ll never go back there again, But you build heaven on the dead bodies and bushes born from when you couldn’t talk.
You wanted to be a free man, so you spoke Wishes down windfall that got stuck on the stars. You wondered if the holy spirit felt lonely In a family forever stitched, Yet your window remained open, Curtains fluttering in the wind As you tumbled out of your own mind Exactly to where you feared.
Roses roses roses
All red like the beginning. And you’re back beneath the trees Among the ghosts and the folktales and wonder how a birthright Could be so unwound.
Hush,
Sounds the rain
Accompanied by golden arms Warm and sacred as bloodied lambs wool. Pass through the doorway Crimson and shimmering. you’re in the trio now, Sputtering in the basement With a face bent skyward. Apples of your cheeks turned spectral at the realization: It’s lonelier in the clouds without a broken mind to keep you company.
I get lost on the way home in search of a red light so I can stop and stall to wonder if I am too much or if you’re not enough. I find myself on the interstate, every exit number illegible and unfamiliar. I am very far from home. My tank is almost empty. Guilt blooms inside of me.
Something about me is unwelcoming, but I cannot for the life of me figure out what it is.
I overheat when I sleep next to someone else, but I think skipping you was a mistake. I should have tried to bear it. All of my favorite songs belong to someone else and I think about things that will never matter, things that will eventually consume me. Nothing will ever truly be mine.
The high masts begin to blur into each other and I feel my eyes gloss over. My tongue is dry against my teeth and my hands are slick against the steering wheel.
Summer is coming, I can smell it through the open sunroof that throws my hair across my face in an unsettling way. We will tell each other everything means nothing through small exchanges and I will hope to forget that you are who I have been writing about all year because you have taken up too much of the ink in my pen.
In little ways we are the worst parts of each other. I am too much of everything, and you are not enough of anything, and we will continue to overlap until I can’t stand your face, because that is the misfortune of me. I’d hate to tell you that I’m awful, I’ll let you find out on your own.
The speed of the wheels against the road rumbles in my body, forcing a shiver down my back. I feel sick. I exit the highway, losing any last perception of what it feels like to live in a body and see behind eyes that belong to a face. I am not anywhere.
I slow to the red light, an ache of relief flooding through me as I remove my shaking hands from the wheel. I cannot produce a single thought. I am not anywhere.
There’s a dead fawn resting on the side of the road, the stillness of it sickening. I cannot take my eyes off of it. I feel the blood in my veins. My head aches.
The light turns green, my foot finds the gas pedal as I blink with burning eyes.
It’s well behind me but it won’t leave my head.
I think of who will come to retrieve her as I turn onto my street.
“I don’t understand what you don’t understand.”
My brother, a math whiz at the ripe age of nine, stared at me, fume about to come out of his ears. I was always jealous of his math genius Together, we sat under fluorescent lights with my first grade math workbook opened up on my lap in front of us
The problem at hand was simple 6 + 7, 6 + 7, 6 + 7...
What in God’s name could six plus seven equal I look up at my older brother, and I just shrug “What’s 6 + 6?”
“12.”
“okay so just add one more.” I look down at my book, and back at my brother. I shrug.
“You know what, I’m done helping you.”
He sits back in the uncomfortable 80s-esque leather chair and takes a book out of his backpack. I look back down at my workbook, holding onto my number two pencil tightly 6 + 7, 6 + 7, 6+ 7... I wonder who knows what six plus seven equals
“Do you think I could ask mom?” I say as I shift my focus from my workbook to my brother
“We can’t get to mom. The nurses don’t let little kids back there,” my brother states. He doesn’t even look away from his book.
“But why don’t they?”
“They don’t want us to get sick”
“But why?”
He stops reading for a second and turns his gaze to me.
“I don’t know, just do your homework,” he states as he returns back to his book.
I let out a deep sigh. “I’m not even that little, I’m five years old.” I declare this looking straight ahead with my arms crossed. My brother glances over at me, giving me a sympathetic look.
We come here every single day after school and we sit here. The clock ticks, but time does not move. This is the third month of this new routine. We come here to see dad - or at least so mom can see dad.
Not many people come through this hospital waiting room. Typically, it’s just a five year old, a nine year old, and some janitor lady. I don’t know how old she is. I’m not that good with numbers.
I look back down at my workbook.
6 + 7, 6 + 7, 6 + 7...
I wonder how much longer we have to stay here
As I stare intently at my workbook, I ask aloud without averting my gaze from the equation “How much longer until we can leave?”
My brother rolls his eyes and places his book on his lap.
“I’m not sure, probably a couple more hours.”
“Hm. How long is a couple?”
My brother places his head in his hands. he sighs and picks up his book again, trying with all his might to block out his younger and pestering sister.
My eyes have not left the problem.
6 + 7, 6 + 7, 6 + 7...
I am starting to get a little hungry... and I know exactly where i can get a good snack I place my workbook to the side and move to face my brother. I give him a gentle poke. However, he seemed unprovoked. With a flair for the dramatics, I sprawled across my chair, acting as if I had just been shot dead. My brother lets out another deep sigh. Keeping focus on his book, he asks me “What is the matter?”
I perk up and sit up with my knees on the cushion of the seat.
“I’m hungry.”
“Okay, there’s some crackers in my bag you can have.” He motions towards his backpack. I look at the backpack and then back at my brother.
“How about the bakery in the cafeteria?”
I asked with pleading eyes.
My brother takes a pause from his book and looks at me.
“Neither of us have any money to get anything. Either eat the crackers or wait until mom comes out. It’ll probably be soon anyway.” He returns to his book.
Disappointed, I sulked into my seat. I picked my workbook back up and went back to where I left off.
My brother glances over at me in my slumped state.
“It’s thirteen by the way,” he states I tilt my head towards my brother. “6+7? It equals 13.”
I purse my lips as I glance towards my brother and back at my workbook. I shake my head.
“I don’t think that’s right,” I state. My brother rolls his eyes. He returns to his book.
Once more, I pick up my pencil and focus on the problem. 6 + 7, 6 + 7, 6 + 7... as a five year old sitting in a hospital waiting room for the fifth time in one week, there are some things i know.
i know that the nurses don’t let little kids go behind the big doors where mom is. i know that the hospital bakery has the best double chocolate chip muffins. i know that my brother and i sit in these exact spots every single day after school for a couple of hours every week. i know that my dad has been behind the big doors for a couple months.
i know that the janitor lady has quarters that i can use for the payphone in the lobby to call mom - and that mom will likely not pick up.
i know that my brother means well and that he is just tired.
i know that we won’t be here for much longer and that i could just eat the crackers. however, i don’t think i will ever know what six plus seven equals or why it equals thirteen
Jenna K. Labadessa ’28 Poetry
In the days inbetween this time she will think about being at the bottom of a swimming pool, the water over her head like the roof of a cathedral, spread in such blues, a shade like heaven’s ceiling, the sound of water like blood rushing in her ears. now she is breathing chlorine, which is not like saltwater, which is not like air, which is not like the head throbbing for want of it, the arms outstretched not unlike the pulsing wings of angels, grasping but at what––she only asks herself this question when the silence presses handlike on the seams of her heart and her insides snap apart in the stillness
Kait
’25
Art
sometimes, i stare at the moon and i wonder if i’m looking at the same time as you. a simple comfort, really. knowing that maybe, just maybe, you’re thinking of me too.
it hits me all at once, the chill of a swimming pool we jumped in, and i fell. now, i only see your reflection in the water, a version of you i can only wish for.
past three a.m., we ran and ran. you caught me as we hopped the fence. only a moment, but i knew. you carried me home, as we shared an upstate sky, and i held my breath so the moment didn’t disappear.
i had you in july. one hundred acres in which i could love you without consequences. ninety-two hours of bliss, once in every year, only then can i let myself want. you hid and promised me one and only, one and only. if only, if only, if only that were true.
a look of pain. met you at the wrong time, the stars didn’t align right. what a fool i was, how you blinded me. i curse the sky and scream.
you taught me to be a dreamer, a collector of hearts, you are. i would have followed you anywhere. and when you left, caught a plane back to somewhere i long for everything was a bit colder.
do you hold a war in your mind? pace the room, home at last, but not really. three-thousand miles between us, so why is it, that i can hear your laugh in the wind?
my vacant heart, you yearn and ache, in lonesome nights, you lie awake, where my midnights are your sunrise. so i glance now at that glowing ivory, a marble in the sky, trying to forget you. but i can only think of that night, your eyes, the full moon.
Cloverdale Park Apiary
Sydney Sailer ’25 Poetry
A low hum filters through the air
Interrupts the silence
I am not alone, never have been
Even the clover moves its leaves to listen
At midnight, they’re still at work
The only aid I offer is my attention
It’s a tender burning, honeyed feeling
Seems familiar, yet foreign
I lie close, I want a part of it
Tuck myself in
I am not afraid, never have been
If anything, it’s just a temporary sting
Emma Denes ’25
Photography
Claudia Skretkowicz ’26
Photography
(Inspired by “The Lighthouse’s
Lauren Meier
Poetry
The moon shines On water flowing. Silver rays across Dark, chaotic, Cold waves.
A turning flame. Nobody present.
A lighthouse Awaiting its owner. Abandoned.
Where did he go?
Why is the light on? What do stone walls, Whipped by salt wind, Care of wayward ships?
A garden grows Outside the keeper’s cabin door.
Two stones, wildflowers, And a muddied trail.
A wayward ship
Took one girl here Set off course
Crashing And washing ashore
Oh, what we do for love! What we do when we cannot feel it.
And, so, there is a garden Outside the keeper’s door. Two lovers, One lighthouse, Lit to prevent any more.
Juliann Bianco ’25
Fiction
I felt it the first time I ever crossed the road before we were allowed to by ourselves. Our mother had warned us over and over that we would die in a grisly road accident if we did it, but my friends wanted to play in a tree on Mrs. Lonny’s street. How could I not go? It was late May, and everything was green and bright. It was warm enough that the concrete wasn’t freezing if you slipped and fell. The tree had branches just short enough for us all to reach near the top. How could I not go? It was calling for us.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I could hear my mother.
“Do not cross the road.”
But what is a warning to a warm day, to a tree with new leaves?
“What does “do not eat this apple or you will die” mean to Eve, from a place where there is no such thing as death?”
I was afraid of nothing. Not God, not my mother. At the time, they likely meant the same thing.
The moment she found out and looked at me with that anger, I felt that sickness for the first time. What is guilt to a little girl? What are morals to someone who just wanted to play in a tree? All that I knew was that my mother was angry. And I was suddenly sick. I feel that sickness now. I have felt it from everyone I have wronged since my first gleeful escape to that tree, that I would now learn something horrible.
Thinking about it now, I think kids have the right idea with calling guilt just ‘feeling bad’. Guilt is some big concept, some overarching philosophical nonsense that you have to study morals to really get. Feeling bad is the way real people feel guilt. Your entire body, soul, and being just feel bad. My stomach hurts, and I am breathing heavily, and my hands are very warm. I tug at my earrings, at my hair, at everything I can grab. I pick my fingernails until they are too short to continue, and then go back to tugging at my earrings. Yes, feeling bad is the only way to describe it. I cannot escape it.
The feeling turns me into some kind of animal, or an infant. I am
unable to see what is immediately behind or ahead of me. There is only this moment, and this sickness. When my mother caught me in the tree, I was certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that I would be cast out of my home, of my family.
Of course I wasn’t, and it was all forgotten by breakfast the next day. But the fear in my stomach has been something I can see coming ever since. I was sure my mother was finished raising me then.
I feel that my hands are always warm. I always have some kind of fever. There is a light behind me, and even in my shadow I can see that I am always breathing heavily. I’ve been told that I have the walk of someone who is always being hunted, and is just learning to stand on two feet. My hands are warm. I have some kind of fever. I am in a forest, and my hands are blistered from the ax I carry. I have never been good at getting out a splinter. I am afraid to put it down. I hear sounds behind me, and I turn. I see nothing. I look in all directions, and there are no animals. The stones do not move. I am afraid to disturb the grass and the plants. I stand so very still. The blood is loud in my ears, I cannot hear what is behind me. My hands are empty. They are so warm still, as if I had just been holding something. I have a fever. I was born with one. There is something behind me, I will kill it first. I hear a shout in the woods somewhere. I have never lived near a forest. Our town is all rocks and sea. My hands are missing something. I held something before, something that could cause great damage. My hands are still warm, from what I held and from my fever. I am sick. I walk among the trees, and I will not look down at the forest floor. I know I will see my long hair littering the ground. I know what was in my hand before I lost it.
Sofia Milojevic ’26
Photography
Emma Bradford Dennehy ’25
Jenna K. Labadessa ’28 Poetry
think for a second of the light before dawn, so like snow on dark earth, gray light which seeps and drags across blue, the sky like a wound on hard flesh, pink now, pale skin drawn tight on cloud bone, which is much like the sheep heart you have cut into, white spots on the yellow, i can see the knife in your hands, those hands i have loved. i can watch them plunge the blade deep into the cold surface and draw no blood; yes, it is the muddy light that comes on winter mornings, it is the harshness of the sun as it spreads across the sky, yellow into dull gold, watch, watch, the heart is still beating.
Charlotte D. Del Vecchio ’25 Poetry
Heart aches, muscle breaks, no balm to soothe you. Tender flesh, reset, stiffen as you look away. Sore beneath the surface, magnetic acid builds among the veins that pull you from your skin to that which you cannot return. Tear it away to reveal the bulging masses among your starving arteries. Their exposed bodies cry as you reveal their disease to the world. Stretch them until the break and bleed dry those things which poison the mind. Caress them as they slip and stick among cold fingertips and sweaty palms. Shaking them until they release their last drop and then wait. More will come so you must wait. Wipe and wax the gray waves of nerves, poking each crevice until it heeds your command. Peel back the layers of cartilage and bone and scrape them dry until they lose their frame, unrecognizable to anyone. Change their shape and mold them anew with fresh clay and stone. Pump them with new life and stitch back the skin in steady lines, where they will stay hidden until this skin is pulled once again. Release the memories of your former self and dive into your new reflection. A stranger you must now discover, with a sore chest and an unsteady hand to greet you.
Dear Diary, 12/29/1999
When Death stood before me, I imagined I still had many more years left of my life. I expected Death to be a man. A man with a long drooping black cape and a scythe. But no, Death was the most overlooked being in the world, a being who has struggled throughout time.
Mrs. Death, though married to no one, took me by surprise. I was sitting by the docks, as I always do, with a cigarette between my lips. Today had been an awful day at the paper. Life, it seemed, had been kicking me in the ass. And the boots that were kicking said ass were on the dainty feet of Mrs. Death.
She appeared, with yellow rainboots and her hands clutching a large umbrella donned pink polka dots. Her gray hair was curled, peeking from her burgundy cap, and she smelled of candy. A candy that you eat and then spit out because it is too sweet. She was like a grandmother long forgotten. Her teeth gleamed in the moonlight when she smiled at me and I inhaled sharply at the frightening sight of it. Shadows tethered themselves around her back, shoulders, neck, and feet, frantically convulsing like an octopus’ tentacles disconnected from the rest of the body.
The smell of low tide and oil wrapped around my head when I realized she was not from this world. Fog crept from the water and onto the creaking wood planks of the docks, wrapping itself around us. She was not human.
“W-Who are you?”
“I think you know, dearie.”
Mrs. Death raised her short arms and the fog lifted, creating an immaculate whirlwind. Swiftly zigzagging as it took flight like a pack of doves. A screech left my mouth and my cold cigarette slipped between the gap in the planks.
Mrs. Death laughed, “Oh how I hate the gloom and the drab. London is such a foggy part of the world.” She sat beside me and extended her hand to me, I was hesitant to take it but I did anyway.
“Are you Death?” I whispered, my chest caved in.
She grinned, “Mrs. Death. And you’re Vivian.”
“How did you–” I looked into her gray blank eyes and when she would not release my hand from her grasp, I realized my time was up.
Silence. She just stared at me and I stared at the souls beating off of her back like wings.
I cleared my throat and said, “Are you here to kill me?”
“No. Killing is for humans, dearie.” Mrs. Death smiled wider.
I was so utterly frightened, she looked like truth. She stared at me like she knew me and all of my secrets. I realized that if she was really the Grim Reaper and not some circus magician then Mrs. Death must have experienced the ending of lives–of every human being.
“Do you mind explaining to me what exactly is happening?”
“Everyone always says that they fear death or don’t. But you have no feelings about it.” Mrs. Death said rather quickly, her fingers pressed on my pulse.
“Sure I’ve thought about death in general but I never wondered how I would die…” Such things were no use thinking about. I found it rather interesting that she knew this. But now, I could not help but wonder if I would drown, be murdered, or simply die of old age.
“Hmph.” Much to my disappointment, she seemed dissatisfied with my answer.
Mrs. Death did not say much. She told me things I already knew. I lived my own life, of course, I knew how rough or cowardly I played my cards. And Mrs. Death’s hands felt ashy, lukewarm. Uncomfortableness ached within me as my fingers pressed against her wrinkles.
“You are a writer, yes?” She asked me even though she knew.
At this point, I wondered if this whole thing was an elaborate dream, that I had simply slipped off to bed and made up this grotesquely amazing experience.
“Yes.” I sat a little straighter. “I am.”
Everyone always asked me: what was I living for? Mrs. Death asked me if I lived enough.
And I realized I had not.
“I want you to write me a story.” She told me, “The story of the life of Mrs. Death so that it is not forgotten.”
“And what do I get if I do?” An exclusive on Death sounded foolish. But something almost like pride leaked through the creases of her smile at my response.
“Infamy, dearie. Infamy.”
You see, the trickery that was Mrs. Death is something I’ll never be able to reciprocate. When I flow back and forth, when I visit the docks, when I swat the fog away because I am sick of the gloom and the drab, it will be for an entirely different purpose because Mrs. Death and I are two different infinite beings.
And there will always be only one Mrs. Death.
“Let’s start at the beginning,” I offered. Mrs. Death turned her head slowly and stared at me, wrinkles creasing upwards into a grin. She opened her mouth and said the following: “My life had been unlucky from the start. I was born at a time when all I could do was sit and look pretty. I wasted my natural life doing what I was told: get married, always look nice, have kids, cook, clean, make sure your family is happy, keep your head down, and smile. And then, when I had done everything for everyone, no one did anything for me. I was at Death’s door and to my surprise, Death welcomed me with open
arms and I became it.
“I imagined that it would be so wonderful to have so much power, power that could change the world. But I was wrong because Death changed nothing. Death was final”.
“All of life’s misery was my responsibility. All I could do was watch wasted life be taken–blood, corpses, glassy eyes, clammy skin, maggots, funerals, and the blame. Souls would scream at me as if I had caused their demise. It was human actions that set the course of their life expectancy, whether they died or continued. It was up to them. My presence simply told them whether they failed or succeeded in living a life worth remembering. Humans are wicked and selfish, dearie. When life is on the line, they never care for anyone else but themselves. I’m trapped in the cycle of rotting flesh, going wherever whenever they want. I serve them–their life and what have I ever gotten in return? No one. No one appreciates Death. No one knew Death was a human being like them until now. I want to pry their eyelids open with my fingers and shove my life down their throats. This time I get to scream and they get to watch. Humans are disgustingly miserable animals. I want them to rot. I want them to suffer. I want them to watch someone die in front of them. I hate them. I hate them all. I wish they would die at–”
“Ahem.” I interjected, “Human present.”
“Righhhhht.” Mrs. Death clenched her jaw.
“Anyway,” I force a laugh, drawing a line through her inane monologue, “could you expand more on how you became Death?”
Mrs. Death’s eyes widened and a coy smile slithered on her wrinkled face. She leaned forward, making my skin run cold. “I’m so glad you asked, dearie. Being Death requires nothing. Every 100 years Death takes on a new form, enslaving a new fool. The former Mrs. Death was a sickly thing, she promised me power and immortality, and how foolish I was to accept. She tricked me and you know what the best part was? She only chose me because we wore the same rain boots. All Death needs is one simple similarity to doom you for an eternity of pain.”
She paused for a long while until saying, “I’ll let you in on a little secret, dearie. Today is my 100th anniversary as Death and you know when I was your age, I would sit by these docks.”
“What a peculiar coincidence,” I said jotting down notes, but I realized it too late. Her cold dead eyes darted to mine, and a cruel smile pushed her wrinkles up. And before I could do anything she grabbed my neck. Souls poured out from her mouth and I felt all of life’s misery enter my body as she exclaimed in delight, “A peculiar coincidence, indeed, dearie.”
Yours truly and doomed for all time, Vivan
Lilian DeFilippis ’26 Poetry
Bloodied girl they saw you, Hid you away from the glow of Artemis, Who has done this to you, gentle and fair that you appear?
Blood matted in your hair, Under your nails and flesh between your teeth, Who has done this to you?
Bloodied goddess you start to laugh, Only you know what blood tastes like And you have grown to crave it; They offer their bodies to you willingly And you drain them dry until There is nothing left of the stardust stained red. Left their bodies in the woods, Let the moss cover them And return them to their Mother
So that she might scold them for all they have doneThey have stolen her daughters from under her nose! Born of blood and flesh and horror, They were stolen from her earthly womb And forced upon the mortal Kings and Lords; Goodbye to the golden paintings dipped in blood, Goodbye to the gentle dirt, Goodbye lovely Artemis! Your brother is once again Shining too brightly for you to be seen.
Rust builds up, cracking my chest like thunder across a night sky. I’m trapped inside my own chamber, a slave to who I used to be.
Drowning again and again, unable to pick myself back up. My systems repeat the same warnings, the same symbols, taunting me.
But what use are warnings if I cannot act upon them? What use are my old functions, if the ones I had lived for are now gone?
I feel my sense of self slipping, falling through the cracks of rubble. Will I remember what happened today? Will I be here for tomorrow?
My joints stiffen, scraping and ripping away what little movement I have left. Yet I will not scream, I will not beg, I cannot bring myself to anymore.
I simply will sit here in my state of decay, as the rain seeps into the cracks. Acceptance is all I know now, no more grief, no more anger, no more suffering.
I accept my destiny. I will decay.
You wonder if I will come again
My presence is mold (Mirror mirror) on the wall
I am the rotary telephone up in the attic
I am the dust that does not float toward sunlight
Who (is the most betrayed of them all?) am I to you?
You (know who it is) cannot wipe my mark with your palm
Try to diminish the weight of me and I will always drag you back
Down below in the place that should have your heart, there is a celebration
And all who mourn me
And all who have felt what I have felt
Are there singing my praises
So here’s to the unforgettable me
Who thrives in the crosses that are now yours to bear
And lives in the words that you will never hear
Here’s to me
Who even now exists
In the absence of pictures
Here’s to me
Who dances in your tears when you wonder What you could have done to make me stay
And I hope you kick and scream
Bloody handprints staining the castle halls
I hope you break the glass after pleading and begging
(Mirror mirror on the wall)
I hope you finally realize it’s not you
(Who is the most betrayed of them all?)
The answer is there and the answer you will see I will be right there in your reflection
Because the most betrayed is (me).
Screen Time
Teagan Demler ’27
Art
Look at juror number twelve.
Jess Ricciardi ’25 Poetry
Her left leg vibrates like a freshly plucked guitar string. Her suntanned eyes dart across the room, and back again to her gold-plated watch, illuminating the courtroom when the fluorescent light hit it just right. She’s itching to leave — but then again, so are you.
You shift your gaze to juror number five. Each eyelid is as heavy as a car. Even a world-famous bodybuilder would collapse beneath the weight. Juror five’s head falls and violently jolts back up from time to time. Nobody saw that... right?
And praise the woman sitting next to you, who accidentally stroked your shin, her sanctimonious smile offering you an insincere apology. There’s a gap where her right canine used to be. You start to wonder how she lost it. Maybe it decayed. Maybe it was knocked from its place like your classmate, Jack. He knocked out his front tooth on the nauseatingly vibrant map of the United States painted on the grade school blacktop. Maybe she faceplanted on Texas, just like him, while her tooth rested in Nashville, just a few feet away.
Your wandering eye levitates back to Juror Twelve. Her sinuses ignited in panic. A tree could’ve fallen in the courtroom, and the volume of her thoughts would’ve drowned it out.
Tick.
Meanwhile, her children were lingering in their fragrant cafeteria, like the smells of lunches past. Tock.
“Where’s mom? She’s late.”
Juror Five is now fast asleep, a covert operation. They did not plan to stay awake until three in the morning the night before, consoling their best friend who was crushed by the weight of her long-term partner deserting her. Arguably, that weight was even heavier than Five’s eyelids.
Now, your eyes hover to the judge as he asks you to stand. What an honor for them to finally focus on you.
Kyle Neblo ’25 Poetry
Profits are high, wages suppressed, waters are rising, the land is parched and aflame. And those with the wealth seem the only ones with the right to complain.
When the crises are daily they need no coverup.
Consumption is both the broom and rug, dazzling us with the next thing: Hey! Look, the brand-new iPhone 16!
Pay this fare, or get shot at the turnstile that 2.90 will be collected, or your life in return.
Death is a punchline, per the New York Post headline. When language is sanitized, art and speech get unalived.
Without the courage to name the doer, say kill, murder, or – god forbid – a curse word passive voice is brought to the rescue, editors rejoice!
If we just don’t say it, we can continue to get our sweet little treats in peace. Truth and freedom are subverted, protest is prosecuted, You can’t do that here!
“No!” sayeth our liege. How dare you object?
All this we made for you, and one day it will be yours to run in turn!
Reject it in toto, I beg of you.
This system would sooner strangle us in the cradle than let Hind Rajab go to school.
So, when your words swaddle me in banality
Now’s not the time to talk about this tragedy.
I’m simply not listening. Truly I cannot be bothered. Take the good with the bad!
I’m scrolling through pages of dead children
The gears of democracy turn slowly!
The Times could not be fucked to speak of.
So friends, peers, countrymen, banish your fears!
Down with fascism!
Free Palestine!
Then and only then will there be enough time to fight the next fight fashioned by a world built on false compromise.
Lauren Lagasse ’25 Poetry
A huge woman with crystal skin smiles soft at me— she is selling some skincare product that I want, and I don’t even know what it does but she is shiny and it is French and it can be mine for only thirty euro. No one else pays her any mind— she watches serenely, endlessly beaming. Now, the metro clangs into the station, announces itself, and men and women in long, dark coats stride on and off, shaking out umbrellas. I board— the car is sparse.
Droplets hurdle against the glass, running in rivets and streams and blurring the view. The city is grey today, but Paris is still Paris in the rain and the Sacre-Coeur won’t climb itself.
I expect to be greeted by it when the train shudders to a stop, but it looks like any other street— I follow a couple who look like they know where they’re going, and when the church looms queenly over us, the couple turns and does not look at it. I look at it for a long time. The inside is red and carpeted and cool. Candles flicker— Two wicks share a flame and I set mine down. I paid two euro to do that.
I am not religious—
Leonard Cohen’s “You Want It Darker” is the closest I get— but I feel guilt here. The outside is still damp and grey. Puddles collect in the steps to the roof, and my hands are slick from the rail. At the top, there is another couple, a different couple, and we stay away from each other. The city is so grey today. Grey and cold and Paris, because there is the Eiffel Tower and that’s all I can see. I walk there, and it rains the entire time. When I return to my hostel later that night, I see her again— still smiling, still blonde, still invisible— and I think about how funny it is that I just spent seventy euro at a pharmacy and forgot to buy what she sold me.
The density of her pride prevents anyone from stepping foot Into the world, she created in the absence of love
She will not risk the unveiling of her regret To return to what she so surely left, would make her a fool
Devotion to independence keeps her, head held high, but nostalgia Humms in her ears
The past teases her
Her commitments keep her consciousmind at ease
Her rage is restricted by routine
Going through the motions of life roughly Waves crashing, messily and mercilessly
Wants are out of reach, behind her, breathing down the back of her neck Needs are unclarified, unprescribed, and nearly inexistent
Hands clasp in prayer
Face parallel to the ceiling
Tears collecting, falling at the outer corner of her eyes
Angelic and repentant
Pathetic and prideful
The sun forces her stride forwards The moon illuminates her glances backward
Christina Brown ’27
Sabrina Silvester ’25 Poetry
The clock ticks as the house remains silent. I sit on the couch observing it’s pendulum swinging...the quietness never scared me. I’ve realized that one day our time will be up. Birth & Life & Death. The cycle that is forced upon us and we don’t get a say. I’m a woman of many fears and death is just one on my list. Obsessive thoughts on repeat like my Sufjan Stevens record... This is my Grandfather’s town; I wonder what his opinions on death were or what my mothers were or fathers or sisters or nevermind. At least my strawberry mug gives me comfort. I’ve gotten to enjoy its presence unlike the woman who broke me. I blame the curse of this town for my misfortunes. Is that wrong to do? We’ve been here for generations, three exactly. I’ve never understood the desire to stay here. Why raise a family here when there are a plethora of other places, so many other chances to escape the evil of this town, of my town. On my worst days I feel invisible here like a spirit haunting their Victorian home I know I don’t belong but I stay anyway. It’s believed to be part of the informal curse But I met someone. Again. They give me hope that there’s more to this town & these feelings & the cycle of this life. My life. I start to wonder if my family feels as cemented here as me. So we pray, in the name of my Grandfather’s agony.
Marisa Brown ’27
Alexa Gallery ’27
Poetry
I think about driving past the Madonna Inn
Peering at the decadence through the windows
An exquisite, pink palace, like a frosted cake
Dreamlike in its glamor
Letting my imagination run wild
I remember staring into neighborhood windows
Watching families view I Love Lucy reruns and eat dinner
I fixate on the rotting pumpkins on my neighbor’s doorsteps
The dead Christmas trees on their lawns
I often feel the pressure of all the lives I’ll never live
The passions I’ll never chase
People I’ll never know
My ancestors pull at me
Begging me to make something of my life
But I’ll never visit the Madonna Inn
I’m perpetually viewing it through the car window, watching as it fades away Forever slipping through my outstretched fingers
Ava Morizio ’28
Steven can you cancel my three-o-clock appointment?
Stella Q. ’27 Poetry
I am writing and missing deadlines for our product’s deployment. I’ll follow up later, I won’t let deals pass me by, but It’s 13 at the moment and I work a nine-to-five.
Steven can you cancel my three-o-clock appointment?
I’ve had 20 meetings today and I find it’s quite annoying. I look out of my televised windows and wonder if she still remembers me? How much do my kids know? When climbing the corporate ladder, when you reach the top, there’s nowhere else to go and so it’s still a dead-end job.
Steven can you honor me when I pass away?
My back, it’s really hurting and it’s worsening every day. I’m going out into the real world because this isn’t working. Where they call it conversation instead of more networking. Where it’s not tactical suicide to not know what you’re doing. To see what I’ve spent my entire life accruing.
Steven when I leave you I hope you’ll be alright, because I’m only working a single tonight.
My house is very loud. When I think of what it sounds like as I miss it from my dorm room, I hear my mom’s frustration. I see her struggling to fit the varying sizes of pots into our two cramped drawers to the left of the stove. She’s knelt over, grunting, making sure the entire house hears how much she hates this house. I can hear her unpacking three containers of breadcrumbs, another block of cheese, more than enough packs of Oreos into even more cramped cabinets that are filled with unopened containers of the same things. The cabinets creak with moans of hatred. They used to sing.
This house, with no storage and no space somehow fit a lifetime of light and laughter and dinner parties and total misery and unbridled joy and two older sisters that taught me how and who to be. It stands on its own hill in a small town protected by two strong standing oak trees. They are a runway that open their branches wide when my car pulls up to the front.
But when I think of it now, all I can hear is the slam of another door. The kitchen lights are starting to dim.
--
I used to sit on the deck of my house with my dad every Sunday morning. It’s a small deck with a circle table spray painted lime green that seats us for dinner in the summer. He would bring out two mugs of coffee for us while we waited for my mom to come home with bread rolls from a local bakery (she did this every Sunday). He used to be really fascinated by my adoration for our house. He and my mom had no sentimental connection it, which I always found strange. All of their daughters grew up in the same, basically unchanged house. We’ve undergone very few renovations. There was the occasional paint job and new couch, but the house is still exactly the same.
“I would buy this house from you right now if I could. If I had an enormous crane that could pick it up and bring it anywhere, I wanted, that’s what I would do.” I said this all the time.
“It’s the house, not the town.”
My sister would say “It should be the people, not the house; you get too attached.”
I’d shrug, close my eyes, and listen to the cicadas in the evergreen trees that guarded me from the neighborhood.
My backyard is a home to many but not to me. I spent almost no time out there, but there’s a sea of cardinals, blue jays, jack o’lantern mushrooms, and rabbits that spend their days sprawled out in the tall uncut grass. We have this beautiful land with bushes and trees of every variety, but I’d let the animals reside in their found home because mine is just a few feet away.
My parents have threatened for years to sell. My dad has a dream to move to Morningside Heights and live out his city boy dreams that were stifled by his farm-ridden childhood. My mother, on the other hand, can’t bear the thought of living more than five minutes away from her mother. For her it’s the people, not the house.
“This year,” my dad tells me every year. “It has to be this year.”
--
When I’m away from home, I picture myself sitting in the middle of my living room, on the new purple leather couch. My legs are crossed, and my eyes are closed. The house opens up wide behind me in a warm-up stretch. It brings me into the kind of embrace where everything else falls away. I’m safe. And I’m okay. And there’s a smell I only recognize after being away for a while, but it gives me a kind of heart flutter that only starts flying when I’m able to exhale.
But my mom’s whisper wakes me up. In it she tells me this house doesn’t have space for her latest haul and she craves her escape as much as I want to live inside its walls. The lights dim a little more. I cower in a crevice of the couch.
--
Two summers ago, their threats became imminent. Because I don’t live in the house year round, they think it’s time they seriously consider selling. I didn’t know what to do when they first told me. We don’t understand each other. But one thing I know about my parents is that my attachment would outweigh their craving to escape. Maybe I manipulated them a little, but at the time, the house that saved me was worth saving.
So, I started a project. I couldn’t give my parents more money to afford a house big enough for five that only three lived in. And I couldn’t come up with a good enough reason for them to stay.
I was lonelier than usual that summer. I needed something to do. I dug through my drawers filled with childhood memorabilia to dig up a hobby I could rekindle in the three months I had left here. I found some old children’s books and a watercolor palette. I remember being really invested in painting during the pandemic. I can do something with that, I thought.
I started sketching every room of the house in an eight by ten sketchbook I found in my closet. The kitchen was first—a one-point perspective drawing of the stove and the cabinets near it. I was never much of an artist, but I remember every part of sketching this showed me something about my kitchen I’d never seen before.
If I closed my eyes, my kitchen was under construction. A blank slate. A sculptor was carving the details meticulously into the wood compliments on the left and right of the stove’s upper cave. An architect was picking from his collection of antique tiles, laying each with intention. He laid the granite tile. The roofer added his final touches. They each looked at their work and prayed for the people who will get to live in it and make it theirs. I started on a new perspective. Guests always complement our copper sink, a detail in my house my mother would tell you is actually a curse. It doesn’t clean properly, constantly rusting and forming a forest green crust in the corners. It’s just lived in; I would tell her. It’s disgusting, she’d reply. But it’s ours.
I put our moments into something still. The things we do all the time but set into paint. But to me, they were alive. It was Thanksgiving or it was Christmas Day, or it was a Friday when my sister comes home to visit, or my other sister is crying from a breakup, or my mom just got a promotion. I can bring these moments with me anywhere I wanted.
We do them all the time. We could do them anywhere. At some point, I knew I was hoarding this house for myself. It was selfish. No one spent any time there anymore. The work my imaginary laborers put into my kitchen was going to waste. We let them down. It was time to give my home away to someone who can notice it.
To my parent’s surprise, I gave them my blessing to sell the house this summer. They have yet to put it on the market.
Fiction
He took me to the museum and held my hand.
“Hey,” he whispered in my ear as we looked at a work by an obscure modernist. “What’re you thinking about?”
The painting is of a woman and man, cloth over their faces as they reach for each other in their blinded universe. Their mouths are pressed up on each other, like their kiss is the most important thing in the world.
There’s something uncomfortable about the painting, how both faces are covered and only their bodies remain. Something about the way his dark suit overtakes her colorful dress, like a cloud casting a shadow.
The way he’s devouring her.
They’re both faceless and mindless but all they care about is finding the mouth of the other. You have no idea who they are.
The man doesn’t even have skin.
It seems like they’re both connected at the neck, like if one tried to pull away they’d both die. They’re trapped. I wonder if they can even breathe underneath that cloth.
I don’t tell him this.
Sometimes I say things like that and he just shakes his head and laughs.
Of course you would think that. What an odd one, you are. You’re so strange, my silly girl.
I turn my head, just a bit, to look at him.
“Isn’t it romantic?” he whispers against my cheek. He plants a kiss on my forehead before looking at the painting again.
He doesn’t think about these kinds of things.
He reminds me of a baby; so simple, so simple.
Life is basic to him. There’s love, there’s joy, there’s sadness, there’s anger.
There are no complexities.
He doesn’t understand obsession, manic, grief, rage.
Sometimes I wonder if there are multitudes to him, if there’s a depth I just haven’t seen.
I wonder if there’s darkness.
I wonder if he crawls into bed and hopes to never wake up.
If he spends hours thinking about dying. Maybe he has a hole in his chest. Or maybe he feels like he’s slowly bleeding out, like each day is a knife to the chest draining him dry.
But I don’t think he understands that. He just feels, one thing at a time.
And anyone else who doesn’t is something for him to take apart and fix, to solve.
His love makes me feel broken, like I need to be fixed.
I wear my grief as anger, and I try to twist his love into something ugly. Sometimes I want to grab his shoulders and shake. Why can’t you love me worse? Why can’t you love me the way I deserve?
I believe I really do hate him. His love is strangling me.
It makes my skin crawl, like someone poured chemicals over my body and left me to rot. I think that if I took the time to sit and truly be alone with myself, I’d be able to smell the decomposing flesh.
Sometimes, if I’m feeling particularly nasty, I’ll start a fight with him.
Why can’t you understand me? Why can’t you help me?
I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do.
Just ask, goddamnit.
Okay, what can I do?
Nothing.
“It’s a really pretty painting,” I say.
Gabby Ganoe ’26 Nonfiction
I was born in the height of Summer, amidst 90-degree days and heat lightning. My Mom had been on bed rest for a month beforehand, but I still managed to come out two weeks early. I used to sleep with all my stuffed animals under my arm. I still sleep with one now. I grew up on the side of a swimming pool, with scraped knees and messy hair. My favorite color was pink, but then I hated myself for liking pink. When I was ten, I fell off a ladder and cried at the sight of my own blood. I have two hiding spots, and both of them are at my grandmother’s house during family gatherings. I never went to sleep away camp. The day I learned about bed bugs in class, I refused to go to sleep. My parents didn’t let me watch cartoons. I used to eat shredded salad cheese out of a bowl. I have always been a straight-A student. At the start of seventh grade, I broke the strongest bone in my body. I cry when I see animals on the side of the road. It makes me not want to drive. I used to sit on my porch and blow dandelion seeds into the wind, watching as they drifted up and out of my sight; hitchhikers in the breeze. When I was younger, I always got yelled at for being loud. I am now very good at being quiet. In second grade, they told me I was gifted. I was four years too late to be my grandmother’s favorite. I used to be afraid of thunderstorms, until one day when I decided I wasn’t. Sometimes I don’t feel like I’m related to my family. My doctor made me drink chocolate protein shakes every day in eighth grade. He said I’m underweight. I have never been kissed. A boy asked me out in fourth grade, but only for homework answers; we dated for two years. I have never been able to tell when I’m being lied to. I have lived my life in the same place my family has. I am sedimentary. When I was ten, my father tried to teach me to play golf, but I just don’t have enough patience. Late at night, if it’s too dark to see, I’ll hug myself until I turn blue. When I was fourteen, I forgot how to trust someone. I learned the best place to cry is the shower, and that the worst kind of love is self. My pillow is covered with the parts of me I can’t bear to give away. I have spent so much of my life saying sorry. By now, I don’t know how to stop.
cliffs of moher
Morgan Chambers ’25
Photography
far gone
Liv Myers ’25
Photography
I spent half of my childhood in my Nana’s galley kitchen. The oak cabinets and various white appliances sat surrounded by mint green walls and drawings from her grandchildren on the garage door. The window above the sink looked out into the unused sunroom and the little interior ledge held a row of four connected, ceramic ducks, who waddled happily into the unknown future. “Nana’s Kitchen: where memories are made and grandkids are spoiled!” The sign that would eventually define my childhood hung in the same spot untouched. It hung to the left of the artwork-filled garage door, under the circular, oak colored wood clock in the galley kitchen. The sign hung on a thin metal wire, held up by a singular tac that dug itself into the mint green walls. On the left side of the sign, a small, dark burgundy heart read “Open 24hrs.” The weight of the plaque was supported by its hard working tac. However, the emotional weight that it carried for me would never be able to be held up by just one tac.
Even though I didn’t live at Nana’s house, we still all had assigned seats at the table as if we did actually live there. As you walked through the garage door looking into the galley kitchen, straight ahead was the dining room. It wasn’t really a room though, as it was practically a continuation of the kitchen. The dark wooden, oval table sat six people and remained pushed to the right side of the room. The small box television was tucked into the corner of the dining room, suffocating in between the curio cabinet and the shared wall of the unused sunroom. No one liked to sit at that end of the table, as you would practically have to break your neck in order to see the television. Plus, you’d be so close to the screen anyways that the pixels would all be a blur. Nana always sat on the left side of the table, the side that didn’t lean up against the wall. For the majority of her elder years, she used a walker because of an ongoing situation she had with her hip. I’m sure having the walker felt like an inconvenience at times, but to me it was such an added joy. It was a free ride around the house or a personal seat for me or even her for that matter. So, the left side of the table was the most convenient and accessible spot for her. My “assigned” seat remained next to her, always.
The kitchen was Nana’s favorite spot and most of the time you’d find her sitting on her walker cooking dinner while singing Patsy Cline or baking zucchini bread, a staple in her household. Her kind and charismatic soul would never let you go hungry. Next to the stove there was a radio. Some days it remained on or some days it was turned off. Nana enjoyed singing, not seriously though, but enough where she’d sing to people in times of need. Nana loved to sing “You Are My Sunshine” to me whenever she felt like I needed to know that she loved me. Her soft spoken singing voice would ever so delicately drift throughout the house, which created this feeling of comfort. Everything would be okay because ultimately, Nana was there.
Before I entered elementary school, most of the daycares around the area didn’t work out. Either my parents couldn’t afford them or the staff was just simply mean. So, my grandparents became my built-in babysitters. My mom worked as a bookkeeper, which meant that she was
responsible for recording and maintaining her company’s financial transactions and other related information regarding finance. My dad also worked full time as a store manager, so they had no time to watch me during the day. I was totally okay with that because Nana and I would spend ample time together. We spent our time coloring in various princess coloring books, or even watching the Food Network. Sometimes Nana would feel the need to take note of any recipe that she found desirable. Personally, my most favorite activity was when we’d go into the bathroom and smell the numerous scented soaps that mysteriously sat under the bathroom sink for years. Tropical coconut, sun-ripened strawberry, vanilla bean, aloe & waterlily, you name it and it was probably under that sink.
I was never against the singing; I really have no explanation as to why I got so upset. Nana and Pop-Pop were baseball fans, which meant that their weekdays consisted of dinners at the six-seater wooden table and watching every Yankee game under the sun. Obviously before the actual game starts, the National Anthem is sung by some sort of special guest. Typically, the special guests are physically at the game, however I had my own special guests singing The StarSpangled Banner that day, and that was Nana and Pop-Pop. Perfectly in sync, both of their voices collided together in a delightful harmony. It was almost like a natural instinct for them to start singing, leaving me to wonder if this was a normal weeknight occurrence. I guess that’s what happens when you’re married for fifty-seven years. Something about this bonding moment made five year old me infuriated. I bursted out in a whiplash of anger and yelled “STOP SINGING!” Oh, they didn’t have a care in the world. It was just them, husband and wife, sharing a special moment of vocal embrace. They finished that whole anthem, not missing a single note. “...And the home of the brave!” Holding the last note and mimicking whatever celebrity that was singing that night, Nana and Pop-Pop’s singing quickly turned into a shared sentimental chuckle. The joy of their singing strengthened their relationship but also, fabricated a very angered five year old.
Nana died six years later. Her once love filled home fell cold and silence infested that lively kitchen. I was now eleven years old and it was my first time visiting her house since she had died. Things were gone, moved and missing. I watched my mom as she collected various items and newly inherited belongings to take home with us. I sat in my assigned seat at the table; the child in me wondering when Nana would just come around the corner from the living room and sit next to me like she always did. She never came around the corner.
“This is for you...” my mother said to me. I looked over towards where my mom was standing, disassociated from my surroundings. “...Nana wanted you to have this.” With tears in her eyes, my Mom handed me the sign that forever hung to the left of the artwork-filled garage door, under the circular, oak colored wood clock in the galley kitchen. The rough textured wood plaque, with the slightly chipping paint rested in my hands. I read the plaque once more in my head, realizing its truth. “Nana’s Kitchen: where memories are made and grandkids are spoiled!” I rubbed my pointer finger gently over the words, feeling it’s bumpy material against my skin. Over the years, a thin layer of dust may have collected on the plaque, but the memories embedded within it could never be wiped away, not by anyone.
“Thanks.” I replied.
Across the river, there’s a blinking white light that can’t decide if it should stay on or off. Crickets chirp on the hill below, their melancholic sound filling the night air. I clutch the stone wall beneath me, feel the cold seep into my hands. Knees pressed tightly to my chest, I rock back and forth, squeezing my eyes shut. You beg me to look at you, your voice cracking. Words, once my safety net, now send me spiraling. I can’t bring myself to meet your gaze. The world around me grows fuzzy, distorted. I wipe my eyes, stand, pace. Wrap my arms around me as if to shield myself. Foolish to think anything could protect me from your words. My breaths are jagged, forced, painful. You speak again. My stomach drops out from under me. In the distance, the blinking light suddenly goes out.
Cayleigh Goberman ’26
Francesca DeRosa ’27 Poetry
rows of houses take me back lined with white fences to what it was mailboxes with names like holding the hands to be happy of Mom and Dad
school in the morning gaps in our smiles pumpkin spice scares teeth like rows of houses leaf fights galore growing growing growing growing gaps in our smiles up
footsy in the snow smiles no more. warm cocoa jingle bells, joy, and expectations gaps in our smiles
chrysanthemums itchy eyes
sprinkler showers gaps in our smiles
sunburnt shoulders sticky fingers the hum of the AC gaps in our smiles
take me back take me back to what was to what I was before it all
growing up is the battle most fought yet hardly won
Your accent is the funny one to me, We give you your soy and corn, And don’t eat a Buckeye Unless it’s chocolate and peanut butter.
We have office buildings Just as big as your Empire State Building. Our arts district is thriving, So are our Nepalese and Somalians.
We take it a little slower, We take it quieter, But it does not make us dumb
There are no mountains, There are no ocean waves, But there is a beating heart.
Never bring up A certain Northern state And always cheer for The Crew
Hell is Real, Grandpa’s Cheesebarn, A Picnic Basket office building, And Cuyahoga National Park.
UNESCO Heritage Sight Where my country club used to be, Velvet Ice Cream Factory, And the Erie Canal.
Cows hide from the rain, Amish make the best furniture, Corn should be at your knee by July 4th, Sheetz is a gas station, not something for your bed.
College stadiums will seat around 100k And sell out every single weekend. Everyone in your town will know your name. It’s easy to smell snow and rain.
New York City isn’t the city. It is a city.
The Midwest isn’t just a farm. It’s closer than you think.
Sam Guggino ’26
Photography
You used to be gold. Bright like burst arteries and smiles on sunny days. Your eyes were the branches I was never tall enough to reach As I climbed higher and higher Into the bottom of my own heels Before the blood caught between your teeth and I could feel the weight in your touch
I wonder if you knew that you were my summer days When your hair was still dark As the caverns in your mind. Your silhouette became my anthem: All american at the water’s edge And stained with the green of seafoam kisses; Its edges soft as the petals of blooming begonias Pushing up through cobblestones And kissing the edges of my Converse As I ran away from the sun Into your poison arms.
By the time I catch you
You’re bathed in the blue Of a gunmetal night with blood stained through your T-shirt, hands dry and cracked with bleach like ivy flaking off the vine.
Lashes flutter off your sunburnt face And all I can see is your eyes; Burned black from the murders you wrote. With your starlight hair
And twisted desires raked upon your face.
I kiss you between the bars and taste the lead on your lips
The nectar on your tongue From the daylilies sprouting up Through the cockles of your rotting heart.
You cough up the seeds from the karma you’ve sown And beg for the love earned By an innocent man. But you’re too tarnished to hold too near to my chest and all I can hear is the Beat of a dying boy inside; Frightened of the blood on his hands.
I Believe (or so I say)
Kendall Pastreich ’25 Poetry
I believe in one God, the Father almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, Of all things visible and invisible.
(Or so, I’m supposed to. I say it every time I go to mass, yet I don’t know if I do. I don’t feel a presence when the priest recites the prayers, or when we are scolded for sinning. I understand heaven when the organ plays. When I hear it resonating, when the choir sings praises, harmonies that strike me, architecture that makes me feel small. I’m okay with being small in that moment.)
I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages. (Or so, I’m supposed to. I say it every time I go to mass, yet I don’t know if I do. I don’t see Jesus Christ when the priest recites prayers, or when I hear countless accounts of his suffering. I see Jesus Christ in unrelenting love, acceptance, being who you are, and being that well.)
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets.
(Or so, I’m supposed to. I say it every time I go to mass, yet I don’t know if I do. I don’t see prophets. I don’t see the Holy Spirit, I don’t see the Lord. I don’t see the Father or the Son in the way the prayers are read, man and woman, unintentionally shunning me. Am I a prophet? Could I be a prophet? Could I be adored and glorified, just like God the Father, or the Son?)
I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen.
(Or so, I’m supposed to. I don’t believe in this. I remain silent as the church reads it without me. I feel cold. I mutter my own prayer, for my family, for myself, for everyone I love and for everyone I hate. I speak to myself silently, I light my candles, I kneel at the altar. I pray my own prayer, and I can only hope that I get a response. I hope that God forgives me. Amen.)
Abigail Agostin ’25
Margaret Batta ’27 Poetry
Spiral steps up into oblivion falter as you tend bar. And what is it you see, When you rise above the bottle? The future you didn’t know of The person you never could be or the emptiness of what you desired.
There’s no such thing as a baby So who’s gaze do you see staring back through time? Whose shoes do you beg to return to?
A face without scars. And a name never said. Perfect holidays with holy crosses and candlelit dinners.
There’s a story in you yet, Rewriting and rewriting consuming itself into ecstasy Till you finally find your narrative.
Be kind, rewind and pop in the tape. Second chances end in unbroken eyes and glances into the inferno: a red brick house with an oil lamp out front.
There you are, In the nothingness of maple trees and shoes never tied. Being scared of the dark and crying till your parents get tired.
It doesn’t snow like it used to, except what is the past? What is this thing that lies Beyond tombstones and Neighborly hedge wars? Bite the razor through the chocolate. Learn to never know.
Falling deaf in the arms of A construction crew, Cranes ripping out every inch of you That hurts-Until you get what you want.
You’re clean. You never existed.
Okay, let me try to get this Lily Jandrisevits ’25 Poetry
Okay, let me try to get this right. A bunny hops by as the other person stands alone, a thing, a something hangs from their pocket. See it dangling there. Pathetically limp and slack with extra line
Where it should be pulled nice and– she swallows what seems to be another choppy sip of something thick and bitter by the sight of her puckering cheeks and flushed eyes filled with sloppy brine meant to be absorbed back
into the mess of her quilt-like face. Really, you see her now walking further away from the temples inclined towards eachother in an old embrace. Flies surround the scene, adding some much needed ambiance to the whole mess of it all. Really like
can you believe it? The ache of it all. I could barely stand to remain on the edge of the pool, only allowed to dip a toe in while you can feel the sticky
sweat coating your every contour, inside and out. Trust me, I know. Inside and out,
don’t forget it. Okay. Hop on and away now. Anyway, like, hope to see you soon. Miss you already, scoop it around me. Press right there, that’s it alright. I’ll talk to you soon. I’ll be there soon, really, as soon as you know it.
Sakura Stella Q. ’28 Poetry
What happens when you die?
All else shall come and go. Funerals held in fragile rooms, while the living shift and sway.
I fear the sky might stop. Pause us like a film, silhouette reality, and plague it all with gray.
I’m afraid the storms will come. The storms will never end. This is how the world dies, and how it all began.
The cold stones of a dead throne
Will rumble with titan ire, and ring with cry of bone and wail of ghost.
Engage in total oblivion. evaporate reality, our bodies, it’s host.
Admist a sea of darkness pink light will call your name beside the blossoms of the cherry tree immune to all the shame
humanity will rush for you for all the right that’s left screaming that our savior died a mortal death you forget your godhood, yet I’m loyal and true for we think you are immortal until you die or never do.
blashpemers claim we’re sakura falling off the tree thinking we were special thinking we were free wretches claim we’re sakura falling off the tree thinking we were diamonds buried treasure in the sea
perhaps we’re all just sakura falling off the tree thinking we were special thinking we were free
Jillian Blaszko ’26
Emily Cavanna ’26 Poetry
Never did I think I would relate to quicksand. Now I understand.
A cartoonish slide
Down into some chasm-like Place, hopeless and dark.
Not all at once, just Comically, annoyingly Sinking deeper still.
It is almost worse That way: a slow descend as You grasp what once was.
What you have and want, Right there and yet out of reach. Prisoner to sand.
Prisoner of mind
Sentenced life without parole. Warden’s dumped the key.
Wishing just to sink Down and down and down and down Until the mind stills.
Running out of Miles - Ode to Frost
Lilian DeFilippis ’26 Poetry
In these woods I’ve lost my way
As the world around turns dark and grey; I should not think of stopping here But I am worn and weary from today.
It is the darkest season of the year
Though the stillness no longer strikes a fear Into this old heart that has seen deadly Horrors waiting on the last frontier.
The old version of me -for there are manyWould have been scared of trees this plenty But now I lay in the snow so steep And watch the flakes as me they bury.
These trees lean as if to weep
As I close my heavy eyes to sleep At last in these woods so vast and deep, With no more promises to keep.
Jennifer Cabrera ’26 Poetry
There’s a melancholy quietness
I feel as I go to brush my teeth, creaking on the floorboards past my siblings’ rooms.
I didn’t realize I missed until this house became our temporary home away from home.
I see light leaking from their doors and hear quiet shuffles as we all go about our nightly routineseparate but stitched together by plaster.
Now a feeling I only get once a year the night before Christmas. But here, on a mundane Sunday night in June, a forgotten comfort flickers inside me.
And it feels like we all have school in the morning.
Sam Guggino ’26
Photography
Natalie Rosado ’27
A fragrant scent overtakes the house some nights.
It’s a floral, sweet scent. It’s light, but not subtle, having a very distinct odor that’s most comparable to tea. It was potent enough to irritate a small child, so it wasn’t surprising that Mayari first noticed it when she was five.
Mayari was antsy and restless the first night she sensed it. She was sprawled on the floor on a makeshift bed of sheets and a thin, hot pillow. She looked to her mother, curled up on a twin-size bed in order to share the bed with one of Mayari’s aunts. She looked to the window, the wood panels left open to let cool air and silver moonlight pour in. Mayari reached her hand up, touching the silver light and playing with her shadow against the floor.
And then the scent filled the room.
Mayari’s hand froze in the silver rays as she smelled the air. She sat up, the moonlight shining on her face. The scent grew a little stronger, filling her nostrils, drowning her heart in some basic, innocent emotion as she tried to figure out what the scent was. But what drowned her soul was not fear or anxiety: rather, it was glee. It was joy.
And so, the child giggled.
Then the giggle evolved into a laugh.
A laugh that flooded the room with childish fervor and vanquished the flowery scent as quickly as it had appeared.
Then, her mother woke up, looking down to Mayari with drowsy, spooked confusion. She asked Mayari why she was laughing, but she was just as clueless why.
The scent vanished from the house for a long time, but it lingered in Mayari’s memory, clinging to the fabric of her brain and itching her with the anxiety that she may never find it again. She would come across it sometimes—when she was seven, she caught the mellow, aromatic scent at a wedding, just as one of her aunts walked down the aisle with her baro’t saya dress and white corsage. When she was nine, she caught it again as she crammed into a jeepney with ten relatives to get to the airport. It lingered in the vehicle, staying even as wind rushed through the windows, but no one, aside from Mayari, noticed it. As they arrived at the airport and rushed for their flight, the scent dissipated and Mayari would never catch the scent at random again.
Mayari spent the rest of her childhood in America, and though the scent never followed to the new country, she did learn what the smell was at fourteen.
It was arabian jasmine—sampaguita, a milky, pearlescent flower that’s adored in the Philippines. She found out at the small town farmer’s market with her mother, where one of the vendors sold flowers and happened to have those particular jasmines on sale that season. Mayari approached the vendor, but the closer she got to those white, pearly, bright, ghostly flowers, the
deeper she sunk into a feeling she wasn’t prepared to feel.
Gone was the young eagerness and sincerity of the scent. Instead, Mayari felt something else: an emotion that strangled and choked her, cooling her heart in a way that not ice, not snow, not winter could achieve, but only the lack of warmth of the soul, like feeling alone or missing someone, can accomplish.
So, Mayari stifled a cry. She bit her tongue, Scratched her eyes, But any good mother knows when something is wrong. Her mother pulled her away from the flower stand, much to the confusion of the vendor. “I’m sorry,” she said, before walking away with Mayari, who couldn’t hold back her salty tears. She cried, burying her face into her mother’s shoulder as she held her tight. She cried, letting out emotions she didn’t know she was holding back as they walked through a confused crowd of people. She cried, sobbing for her old home and her old friends and for someone unknown she had never truly met.
Mayari is twenty-three now. She hasn’t seen the flower, or smelled it at random for that matter for those past nine years—but she grew a distaste for the color white and she can’t bring herself to drink jasmine tea. She keeps her hair up and tied into tight buns, her eyes have deepened and had grown larger and more narrow than her mother’s. She had dimples, and smiled plenty, but had signs of combatted acne and a slight slump in her walk. She was like the forgotten, forsaken childhood dream of adulthood turned into a real, living person.
They had scraped up enough money to visit the home country again, and Mayari couldn’t have been more ecstatic. Though it was just Mayari, her mother, two cousins and an uncle, she didn’t feel alone with only a few familiar roots. Old family friends that haven’t been seen for years still welcomed them entirely, some quiet street vendors they knew were still working and gave them snacks for free, and some cousins from Mayari’s other half came to visit, too.
But while they were inspired by the great Spanish cathedrals, Mayari wasn’t fulfilled. They were warmed by the blue beaches, but inside—Mayari still felt cold. They were in the city they once lived in, but not where they once lived. Mayari just wanted to see home before the trip would conclude.
Mayari would have gone alone, but her mother insisted on going, too. The two of them took a taxi to the outskirts of the city, where the old stone house that she shared with ten other relatives rested under an infinitely orange sky. It was slightly overgrown now, with scattered vines and leaves beginning to crawl up the stone block walls of the first floor, and grass that hasn’t been cut in at least two months. From what Mayari had heard from locals, the house is never anyone’s home for long: the last homeowners left about half a year ago.
“Let’s not stay long, May,” her mother started. “It’s getting very late.”
“I know, Ma, I know. Just a few minutes.”
Mayari approached the house while her mother stayed behind, giving the taxi driver a few pesos to stay for a bit. As Mayari drew closer, the floral, sweet, tea-like scent of sampaguita started to fill her nostrils, stinging her sinuses. It was just as mellow as she had remembered, and
her heart stopped, frozen with a myriad of emotions. Joy, heartache, anger, grief, all drowned her at the same time, growing stronger with the scent as Mayari crept closer.
Mayari went up the front steps, the wood creaking in a way that almost sounded like a laugh, or maybe a cry. The wind was whistling, whispering, right by her ears, talking to her in an incoherent breeze that sounded blissful, or maybe wistful. The wind carried the fragrant scent to her mother and the taxi: her mother’s back straightened and she was suddenly on high alert.
The door didn’t creak as Mayari pushed it open. Despite looking derelict from the outside, the inside was bright, the lamps on and glowing warm and orange. The smell of sampaguita was still strong, but walking down to the kitchen, Mayari could hear laughs being shared and the cast iron sizzling with oil and vinegar. The paint on the walls was more vibrant than she could remember, the organization of furniture was slightly different, and there were fewer photos hanging on the walls. It was home but not her home, or at least, not a version of her home that she could remember.
There was an unfamiliar voice laughing in the kitchen, too. It was an adult’s, but it was light, matching some unknown, frivolous demeanor. It was masculine, but it was bright, overflowing with warm love that echoed through the house. Mayari went to the kitchen, but saw nobody.
The voice echoed from the living room, and Mayari walked over, but there was still nobody. The unknown voice became the only voice, and Mayari could feel her eyes grow moist and salty.
“Dad?” she whispered, her voice strained.
The scent grew stronger, and her heart felt warm and cold.
“I always wanted to meet you,” she said.
The air cooled in solemn agreement.
For a brief moment, Mayari felt complete, like the forsaken childhood dream rekindled. In those few seconds, Mayari took one deep breath, high on the sampaguita’s fragrance and the feeling of not being lost. In those few seconds, Mayari wished she could just freeze time. Suddenly, a warm feeling, a real feeling. Mayari’s mother grabbed her arm and pulled her out and away from the house.
“DAD!” Mayari cried, the jasmine scent growing weaker. Her mother was crying, too, and Mayari was too weak with emotional turmoil to fight back. She watched the house shrink away, and as tears ran down her face, the house seemed to be crying, too.
Ava Morizio ’28
