Notes From the Underground, Fall 2018

Notes from the Underground: Maclay Upper School’s Journal of Creative Writing Issue 5

Fall 2018

Editorial Staff Editor-in-Chief Assistant Editor-in-Chief Art Editor Assistant Art Editor Fiction Editor Assistant Fiction Editor Nonfiction Editor Assistant Nonfiction Editor Poetry Editor Assistant Poetry Editor Copy Editor Copy Editor Copy Editor Submissions Attendant Submissions Attendant

Anna Kate Daunt Isabel Hutchinson Helen Bradshaw Lucy Smith Holden Crumpler Holly Sims Jainey Coates Lexi O’Rourke Emily Roden Spencer Sundberg Simon Corpuz Lilly Simons Haley Mainwaring Will Daughton Abbey Stejskal

front cover art: Lauren Fleischer, Up to Me back cover art: Jackson Hugill, Underbelly

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On Our Title We take the title of this journal from a novella of the same name

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The novella is an existentialist piece, written before Dostoyevsky’s greatest works and before Existentialism had really taken root in literature. The unnamed narrator is frequently named an anti-hero and is described by the note on the back of the Dover edition as “a profoundly alienated individual in whose brooding self-analysis there is a search for the true and the good in a world of relative values and few absolutes.” The novella opens with the words “I am a sick man.” This is not to say that Dostoyevsky’s novella are about art and darkness but rather that this novella and art confront darkness. The powers that be don’t like this, but art endures and fights on.

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A Note from the Editor I was standing in the front of the classroom with a dry erase marker in my hand and a loose agenda in my head. The other editors were scattered around the room frantically arguing. In an attempt to calm everyone down, I was loudly shouting over everyone and Dr. Beaven was sitting in the corner of the room whispering “shhhhhhhh.� This was our first meeting for Notes from the Underground this year. Arguably, none of us had any idea what we were doing. After the meeting, I remember sitting at home in my room, thinking of all that had transpired. I realized how much we needed to do in order to make this journal a reality.

With all the chaos surrounding it, many anticipated that this would be a rough year for Notes from the Underground. Many were (understandably) reticent of our ability to produce this edition of the literary journal.

Yet here we are. We overcame the obstacles. We obtained the goals we set for ourselves.

However, this journey was far from easy. For instance, last night I was up well past midnight, trying to figure out how to order the numerous submissions we received. To assist my visual mind, I wrote the name, author, and major themes of each submission on a notecard. As I was looming over the display of notecards, arranged as if I were playing a giant game of memory, I looked for underlying themes and motifs connecting each piece. After a period of restlessness, I realized that the pieces contained an underlying theme of defeat. In the past, the literary journal has never shied away from difficult topics. This year in particular, though, many of the submissions confront substantial, yet imperative issues. Although reading these works evokes my own pain, the fact that each contributor not only turned to art as a means of catharsis but also possessed the courage to share it with the world deeply inspired me.

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Like each contributor, I turn to art in times of difficulty, and my life is certainly not short of difficulties. As a student and artist, I understand not only the difficulty of the struggle, but also the mercilessness of the system we are trapped in.

After each hardship I’ve faced, I’ve had to return to the place that offered me the least amount of comfort and solace: school. As if the struggles I face on a daily basis are not enough, I walk into a system where I am defined based on my ability to reach a certain standard of perfection, whether that is through a grade, a standardized test score, or an officer position. Rarely do I ever make decisions out of desire; instead, I am forced to create within the confines of the system, to complete my daily outlined tasks to move out to some “bigger and brighter future” that will somehow be better and will for once, truly fulfill me.

Yet, I know that my search for something truly fulfilling in this lifetime will lead me nowhere. Although this realization is important, it often feels burdensome.

However, consciousness is the only way to be free. As we push the boulder up the hill, we must be aware of the meaninglessness of our everyday struggles.

Although this seems depressing, it provides me hope that Sisyphus and other individuals who possessed this knowledge continued to endure. In order to experience this resilience, they had to have been happy. What gave them happiness despite their daily struggles? What was able to give them hope? Sisyphus awaited his daily descent. Even though there is nothing enthralling about this short journey, he was able to rejoice in his temporary relief.

Out of the many things in my life that give me hope, the journal that you hold in your hands is one of them. The power to write, to destroy barriers, to question reality, and to reach whatever conclusion that needs to be reached – that is power, that is hope. This is our descent. This is why we put so much effort into creating this masterpiece. This is why we put pen to paper. This is why we

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allow ourselves to feel joy and pain and share it with others. Although this may be a temporary escape (all worlds and words fade), I am grateful for this relief.

To the submitters, thank you. As I read the plethora of submissions and grappled with the pain that emerged due to their relevance, I realized the hopefulness in my sorrow. There are others questioning why they push the rock up the hill every day. There are others experiencing loss. There are others undergoing heartbreak. There are others suffering from their personal limitations, mental illnesses, and day to day hardships. Yet, you continue to persevere despite your doubts. You remind me that our individual struggles may appear vastly different on the surface, but we are all united under a common fate. Despite this acknowledgment of futility, we continue to persist, for moments such as this reveal the true beauty of living.

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Table of Contents Suzanne Jamir

Ghost Mother Book 3 Section 7

16

Lilly Simons

Broken Picture Frames

20

Rachael Stockel

Ground Zero

22

Jainey Coates

The One Where Two Mirrors Reflect 24 Each Other

Jordan Jones

Breaking Free

28

Spencer Sundberg

A Story of Becoming

29

Dylan Burhans

We Are Venom

31

Cody Paddack

Screw the Hermit Crab and Silence

36

Ethan Tetreault

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

38

Dylan Burhans

Vnitrni Dialog

43

Mary Allison McCue Enemy

44

Haley Mainwaring

Shades of Me: A Rainbow

46

Madelyn Stout

One Girl’s Journey to Find Herself

51

in a World of Opinions Eljin Rhymes

The Truth between the Color Lines

59

Chandler Downie

September

66

April

68

March

70

January

72

Als Ik in de Spiegel

74

Dylan Burhans

8

Mariam Alvi

Introspective Searching

78

PreAP English I

Inspired by Zora Neale Hurston’s

83

“The Sweat” Haley Mainwaring

The Girl with the Semicolon Tattoo

84

Dylan Burhans

The Struggle

86

Holden Crumpler

Talk of Insanity

89

Spencer Sundberg

Stardust

96

Prophecy Wilson

The Strength I’ve Gained

98

Abbey Stejskal

My Heart

101

Hailey Hobbs

What Death Did to Me

105

Madeleine Roberts

La Riposte Della Figlia Piangente

107

Nahal Suzanne Jamir I Am the Dead Thing Below

109

Holden Crumpler

Soldier’s Homecoming

114

Clara Catherine

She Looked into the Stars

116

Lexi O’Rourke

Wilted

118

Abbey Stejskal

Shadow

122

Anna Kate Daunt

Where I Belong

126

Isabel Hutchinson

Writing through the Pain

128

Victor Oguledo

Found

131

Lunny

Nahal Suzanne Jamir Imaginary Things

133

Dylan Burhans

135

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 9

Jackson Hugill

A Philosophical Upgrade in

137

Inquiries While Sitting on the Tarmac Spencer Sundberg

Sometimes Never

138

Haley Mainwaring

Letting Go

140

Anna Kate Daunt

The Difference between

141

You and Me Lexi O’Rourke

Untitled.

142

Mary Allison McCue Salt Isabel Hutchinson

Addiction

146

Logan Sundberg

Attracting Opposites

148

Haley Mainwaring

Wanderers

149

Jackson Hugill

White Jesus

151

Abby Hugill

Prepositional Poem

156

Kenny Tran

Fortnite

157

Emma Grace Bass

Life Unknown

158

Ryan Daunt

Within the System

160

Dylan Burhans

The Ritual

161

Holden Crumpler

Condemned

164

Simon Corpuz

Trust Me

166

Holly Sims

BTBYCB

167

Dylan Burhans

Dress for Success Killer

172

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Eli Mears

Forest

178

Madeleine Roberts

Le Spectre

179

Madeline Lillie

The Run

182

Drew Daunt

Leave It on the Field.

183

Holden Crumpler

Documents of Time Travel

187

Ellie Casteel

Swimming Pool Age Ten

204

Justine de Saint Mars Cake

205

Holden Crumpler

Homecoming Dance

208

Sarah Halbert

In Love with a Niphilim

210

Haley Mainwaring

Ocean

212

Emily Roden

To Our Mother

213

Braden Foster

Nocturnality

218

Simon Corpuz

All Nighter

219

Eli Mears

Outside Part I

220

Mercy Crapps

Mysterious Month of Crystals

221

Isabella Snider

Snow Man

222

Haley Mainwaring

Maze

224

Logan Sundberg

Human Mind

226

Anna Kate Daunt

Writer’s Block

227

Isabella Snider

Flying, Soaring

233

Holden Crumpler

Requiem of a Horror Writer

235

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Madi Cordle

Communication Essay

242

Ethan Tetreult

A Brief but Passionate Love

250

Letter to the Movies Kenzie Mazziotta

Like Soft Butter

252

Caroline Rose Lunny Existential Is the Poem

253

Haley Mainwaring

Unloved

255

Mark Scott

Leaves

257

Jainey Coates

My Strangely Long Poem

259

Ananda Chatterjee

Are We Far from Dystopia?

266

Dylan Burhans

The Wasteland

268

Isabel Hutchinson

Election Day

271

Ellie Casteel

Man vs. Modernism

275

Lexi O’Rourke

Psychic Imagery

276

John Messer

The World Would Be a

280

Better Place Isabella Snider

A Sunday Morning

281

Jackson Hugill

We Left the Tunnel

283

Jainey Coates

The Boulder is Worth It

285

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For Tony Hoagland

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Self Portrait Part II Helen Bradshaw

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Ghost-Mother, Book 3, Section 7

by Nahal Suzanne Jamir

after H.D.’s Helen in Egypt

He could name The Mother, but the other, he could not name; she was a melted candle, a dried-up piece of meat, a raisin in the

Not Eve, not Snake, but

a hidden child, hidden in a closet (a wardrobe?) or behind an oak tree, or inside of a tree, a tree of

an intimate sorrow, a secret kept even from her—her own mother who was her own self, the innermost.

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Only The Mother could be named, and the other, she was a wailing duck in a pond by a cemetery near a father’s gravestone—in any case, a cause of shame

to sisters.

It was not that she was beautiful/exotic from a land in the middle of many mountains.

True, she stood on the mountains,

brave and then weak—falling sometimes…. as the men warred on and killed themselves; It was not that she was beautiful/exotic

(Sometimes flying in the hot blue above the mountains…)

There were other mothers, in spite of The Other,

as beautiful/different, as young—as brown, as old.

It was not that she was different, from a land

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in the middle of many mountains, a desert filled with hollow men and rats and strange (chanting) songs, a desert she had to leave….

But I stared and stared across the brown sand and the brown skin and the cacti and the shattered glass and the smoldering hatred of her (some my own) until my/her/his/our eyes cleared, the fog in them cleared—

(her foggy eyes exotic and beautiful, but cannot see…. mine not so and still cannot see)

and the naming of things ended and the mountain sank and the two rivers met and the two lovers kissed and the secret of Mother ended and the lights were so far away (candles signifying HOME and a Southern woman’s cross-stitched pillow…not my mother….not Southern) 18

[the twitching, the fastness/slowness that feels like a dirty flame dancing, the feet dancing like, like a bird, like a prayer-bird strung up, like a prayer that feels like a bird, or like the cry of children playing….the children are playing…..what are they saying? what are they?—happy? Please—]

and the two—

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Broken Picture Frames

By Lilly Simons

Sometimes I direct my gaze upon the broken picture frames That capture the essence of light That used to be.

I center my eyes upon the shard of glass That splits between my beaming mother and father.

The busted frame that masks the glee of a young boy that used to be my brother.

The faded image that encompasses the life that I used to have.

Maybe we were on vacation?

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How could we be so happy?

But it doesn’t matter.

It’s sliced by a dagger, cut with a sense of darkness that I can’t explain, It’s shattered by a hatred that I can’t grasp, But then I realize that I am just looking at a simple, inanimate, busted picture frame.

A broken picture frame.

And it is exactly that,

Broken

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Ground Zero

by Rachael Stockel

Happiness. It’s the little things in life that make me happy, like finding the partner of a sock that’s been lonely for months or having my favorite song come on Spotify when it’s raining.

When you’ve experienced so much loss, it’s the little things that get you through.

Obsession. I replay moments from my past obsessively.

How could I have done that better? Said that more eloquently?

Gotten a better grade? Sometimes, I blame you for it. Honestly, I blame you for a lot of things. My anxiety, for instance. My “OCD.” You think I got like this on my own? No. You made this.

You made me doubt myself until I physically couldn’t do anything else.

Anger. Is it spite? Probably. I probably want to show you that I don’t need you. I’m fine on my own. Is that my fault? No. You made this choice.

Survival. Instead of confronting my issues and anxieties and angers and insecurities, I push everything behind me. I keep adding more and more things for me to do. I can’t breathe when I have time to think. I get angry. I get overwhelmed. I can’t relax.

Being busy is my distraction, my disguise.

Acceptance. Frankly, there’s no nice way to say it. You ruined me. I will always be scared. Scared to stop. Scared to let loose. Scared to screw up. Scared to disappoint. Scared to live.

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Sadness. I see them everywhere. I see them everywhere, and yet, where are you? Was I not good enough? Am I not what you wanted? How could someone do this to someone else? I don’t understand.

Reality. I fake a smile. I go on.

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The One Where Two Mirrors Reflect Each Other

By Jainey Coates

You aren’t supposed to talk to yourself in the mirror.

Who does that?

Somebody punch me in the face.

Please.

Just spread me out all over the floor.

I want to be on the floor.

It’s solid there.

And cool.

And jazz plays but only the snails can hear it. They slime-dance like this<><><><><>

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Who do I think I am?

Don’t I know I have everything?

Everything.

I can feel it if I really try.

It’s there.

You aren’t supposed to be able to tickle your own skin.

Something about reflexes.

I don’t know why.

I like other people touching me. It’s like I’m really here.

I guess I’ll just have to take my shoes and rip them off my feet by myself I’ll just have to stand on them.

It isn’t that hard.

Maybe that’s the problem.

Sometimes the grass tickles between my toes and Sometimes I just crush it into the bedrock

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(And sometimes it just tickles too much, and I have to call it a day and put my feet back in their shoes. Was I cursed with über sensitive soles? That’s just another form of flattery)

Does my existence make me the villain of the grassy knoll?

I can’t help but take up space. Trust me, I didn’t choose this.

<If I had my pick, I’d be a snail. Nobody ever blames them>

What kind of person talks to herself in the mirror?

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Trifecta

Lucy Smith

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Breaking Free

by Jordan Jones

Above the noise Under the darkness Past the trauma Away from the chaos Underneath the problem Beyond the fixable Within a broken soul Despite the heart working Without the doctors Without the disease Under lies a girl waiting to be freed

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A Story Of Becoming

By Spencer Sundberg

I was fifteen and sitting in a hospital when I finally realized how lucky I was. Before this specific visit to the hospital, my rare blood disorder, pyruvate kinase deficiency (PKD), was something that embarrassed me. In laymanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s terms, PKD causes my red blood cells to prematurely break down. My low red blood cell count causes anemia, jaundice, enlargement of spleen, and more.

With a mild case like mine, I had not yet required blood transfusions or any surgeries. Even so, my younger self never thought about this. What I thought about was how the jaundice made me look different from everyone else. I thought about how I had to drive to doctors just for them to explain what I already knew, or thought I knew. Quite frankly, before this visit to the hospital, never once had I considered myself lucky.

After driving two hours to my pediatric hematologist in Jacksonville, Florida, I was tired and unamused. My mom was sitting with me in the waiting room when I read the sign Hematology and Oncology Floor. The last time I was at this hospital, I was thirteen and surely unaware that oncology meant the study of cancer. As soon as I read the sign, I looked around and saw a basket of yarn wigs to choose from. A small girl then came up to me wearing a wig. She asked if I wanted to try it on. It was in that moment that I realized how ignorant I had been all this time. This young girl was in the early stages of leukemia, and there I was complaining about having to drive to Jacksonville every couple of years for a doctor appointment. I had always known that other people had more serious afflictions than PKD, but it took the girl standing in front of me to truly recognize life as a lottery that I just happen to be luckier than her in.

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Unknowingly, the little girl illuminated the world around me in way that I had never seen it before.

Not only did my perspective change after this appointment, but I also became more interested in learning about medicine in general. I wanted to learn about leukemia and its treatments. I wanted to know more about how my blood disorder affects the body. I wanted to find others like me and talk to them about their own experiences. After doing some of my own research, I discovered a Facebook page for people with PKD. Because the disorder is so rare, I had never known of anybody else with PKD. I was amazed to find so many members of the Facebook page sharing their stories, many of which included multiple blood transfusions and surgeries. While I again was reminded of how lucky I am, I realized, too, that I was part of a community that could bring awareness to rare disorders like PKD. From that point on, instead of trying to avoid the topic of my blood disorder, I would try to educate people about PKD and other similar disorders. I felt like a representative of an important cause in which I could make a difference.

If I could go back in time, I would thank the little girl who offered me her wig. I would thank her for making me realize what really matters and what I can do to help. This disorder, while it in no way defines me, has helped me discover myself. It has made me realize my passion for pursuing medicine and its ability to change lives. Without PKD, I would have never met the young girl, and, therefore, I would have never realized my own ability to change lives.

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We Are Venom

By Dylan Burhans

Jason Bauer woke up in a cold sweat. He was hyperventilating. He looked around and realized he was in his own apartment, in his own bed. He was confused - the last thing he remembered, he was locked in the cell in that laboratory, the thick, black ooze enveloping his body. He still felt it cling to his flesh as it slowly suffocated him. Jason sat up, disoriented, and placed his head in between his palms. “It was probably just a nightmare,” he thought to himself as he carefully crawled out of bed.

Suddenly, Jason was thrown against the wall, an unseen force pinning him in place, suspended four feet off the ground.

Jason, he heard a voice drawl. “Who’s there?” Jason cried, when his right shoulder started to bubble. A black mass was forming where he felt the bubbling sensation, and he was shocked as the mass started to elongate, until it moved within inches of his eyes.

Sweat started to pour down Jason’s forehead, and he started to hyperventilate again. He froze, petrified, as the mass started to form a head, but not just any head. Jason recognized himself in that black mass. While the eyes were pure white and pointed like a goblin, and the mouth formed grotesque fangs, Jason recognized the cleft chin and the broad jaw, the same as his facial characteristics. The face smiled, showing off its crooked, snake-like teeth.

“What are you?” Jason managed, his voice cracking with terror. I, the head said, meticulously annunciating each word, am Venom.

“What do you want from me?” Jason demanded, his voice still small.

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Oh, Jason, Venom croaked, his methodical, guttural voice pouring over Jason like tar, I need everything from you, and you need everything from me. You see, I can’t survive without you, like how you can’t survive without me.

“I don’t understand,” Jason exclaimed as he tried to control his breathing.

Jason, you’re afraid, Venom continued, I can help with that. In turn, you give me life. If you listen to me, everything will be fine. Do we have a deal?

“Ok,” Jason said, “deal.” Venom reabsorbed himself into Jason’s body, and he was released from the wall. When he landed, his feet gave out from under him, and he collapsed to the floor with a thud. He got up, groaning. “What happens now?” there.

Now, you go about your day. When you need me, I’ll be

So, Jason did as he was told. For the remainder of the morning. Venom didn’t appear. After a few hours, he even started to forget about the encounter. For all he knew, it could have been a night terror or something. He made breakfast, showered, and got dressed. Thankfully, it was Sunday, so he didn’t have to go into work. At around 11:30, Jason was washing his hands after going to the bathroom. As he reached for the sink handle with his right hand, he heard Venom’s voice booming in his head: STOP. He hesitated, “Why, what’s happening?” Venom’s head morphed out of Jason’s body and positioned itself over his right shoulder. Do not touch the spigot, Jason. Use the hand towel.

“Why?” Jason asked.

If you do people will die.

“How? That doesn’t make any sense.”

Trust me, Jason. Your mother, your father, your fiancée.

They will all suffer. First, I will rip their arms and legs off and enjoy them as snacks. Then, I will tear their hearts and lungs out and save them for later.

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Lifeless, their bodies will rot, and it will all be your fault.

“You ******* psychopath! You wouldn’t dare!” Jason barked, when he was hit by a searing pain in his stomach. He hunched over, clutching his gut, gasping for breath. He felt as if his organs were being set on fire. He looked down and saw black ooze was starting to cover his body.

Jason. We can do whatever we want. Let’s go pay your family a visit, shall we? Jason stared to scream as his hands and feet formed claws. Venom’s head started to mold itself around his own. He stood up. He looked in the mirror. He was horrified.

Standing in the reflection wasn’t Jason. It was Venom. But that wasn’t the only thing that scared him. What scared him the most was that he was Venom. What do you say, Jason, shall we introduce your family to me, to Venom?

“NO! Stop, please! I’ll listen!” he begged. Suddenly, the pain ended as quickly as it began. The black ooze was absorbed back into his body. Even Venom’s disgusting head disappeared.

Good, Venom cackled. Now do as I say.

Jason grabbed the clean hand towel and turned off the sink. As he stormed out of the bathroom, he used his left index finger to flip off the light switch.

Use your right middle finger, Jason, Venom commanded.

He paused again, but did as he was told, not wanting to anger Venom and put his family’s lives in danger. Good, Venom giggled, Now you understand.

Jason continued to go about his day. He and his fiancée Jen went out for lunch at Panera. As they were sitting outside, the back of Jason’s right hand brushed against the underside of the table. He instantly felt a tingling sensation where his hand touched the table. Go to the bathroom, Jason. You need to wash your hands RIGHT NOW! Venom screamed inside his head. He sprang from his seat, clutching his hand, as the tingling sensation morphed into a sting pain.

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“Jesus, are you alright?” Jen asked, astonished.

“Yeah, no I’m fine.”

NOW, Jason!

“I’ll be right back.”

“Jason?!” she cried, almost frightened, as he stumbled back and ran inside.

He burst through the door. He scanned the restaurant for the bathroom. His hand was burning now. “******, not now,” he thought. He dashed into the bathroom and locked the door.

He couldn’t breathe. He unzipped his hoodie. Sweat poured through his shirt. He turned the water on. He started washing his hands. Seven pumps of the soap, Jason, Venom demanded.

“But…” DO IT! He did as Venom said. He let the suds coat both hands. He washed under each nail. He washed in between all his fingers. He washed his palms. He washed his wrists. He washed up to his elbows. Ok, Jason, you can stop. You are safe.

“Are you sure?” Jason whimpered.

You can trust me Jason, Venom asserted, his words sweet like honey. His head welled up from Jason’s right shoulder and hovered next to his right ear.

Jason reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his anxiety medication. He took one of the capsules and drank a gulp of water from the sink. “Ok,” Jason said. “I’m ok.”

Good, Venom smiled, Now use your left hand to open the door.

He reached for the door with his left hand, but hesitated.

“You know what? No. I’m done listening to you, Venom. You invaded my life and took me over, and you threatened my family. I’m done with you.”

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What did you say, insect? “**** you!”

No, Jason! You can’t get rid of me! You need me!

“Get the **** out of my head and leave!”

NO! Venom screeched. It was a horrific, primal yell so loud Jason clutched his ears. Black ooze started to leak from his body, but he wasn’t afraid. “Get out!” He yelled. Venom kept shrieking as the black ooze started to dissolve, until finally Venom’s hideous head dissipated.

Jason took a deep breath and walked outside. Jen was paying the check when he sat down. She leaned in, concerned, and whispered, “Was your OCD bothering you?”

“Yeah, but I’m fine now. I don’t think it’ll bother me anytime soon.”

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Screw Hermit Crabs and Silence

by Cody Paddack

I feel a disconnect from the shell in which I live.

I was not created for this, nor do I feel like I can live out my life feeling like this.

Constantly I fear that my shirt is inside out, if that I

forgot to put on anything at all only to be just. Fine.

It sucks. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s annoying. Also extremely unfair, but no one said it would be anything else.

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On bad days this is where I stop. Those thoughts are all I’m left with at the bottom of the chasm.

It gets better though.

Because the longer you swim upstream the River Styx, You either let it consume you Or,,,, you don’t.

*I’d prefer not to*

I’d prefer not to let my worst times be my only ones

Wear your struggles. Wear them like a pin.

Talk to anyone and everyone, friend and foe.

They need it.

Everybody lost somebody too.

Join me in the upstream. We’ll start somewhere.

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Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

by Ethan Tetreault

“Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a common, chronic and long-lasting disorder in which a person has uncontrollable, reoccurring thoughts (obsessions) and behaviors (compulsions) that he or she feels the urge to repeat over and over” (NIMH).

DIDILEAVETHESTOVEONDOILOOKOKAYDOPEOPLEACTUALLYLIKEMEORARETHEYJUSTPRETENDINGAMITHE DUMBONEAREMYPARENTSOKHOWAMIGONNAGETALL OFTHISWORKDONEICANTRAISEMYHANDPEOPLEWILLS TAREATMEAMIGONNAGETAGOODGRADEONTHISIMNO TREADYALLOFMYFRIENDSHIPSARELIESTHEYREGONN AMAKEFUNOFMEBEHINDMYBACKHOWMUCHDOIWEIG HIMGONNALOSEMY NOT GOOD ENOUGH I am in fifth grade. The walls of Mrs. Stanyard’s room are tinted yellow, filling me with a sense of warmth and security. Outside in the endless green, birds chirp. I look over my shoulder and notice people standing in a group and staring at me. [GIRL] is the first person to speak to me: [GIRL]: Hey Ethan, how much do you weigh?

Me: Huh? [GIRL]: I mean, we were wondering.

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[GIRL]: I mean, we were wondering.

Me: What now? Who? [GIRL]: Me and [GUY].

Me: That’s a really weird question to ask honestly.

[GUY]: Seriously, we’ll tell you how much we weigh!

[GIRL]: How about if we pay you five bucks.

Me (lying): I mean, I haven’t even weighed myself in a while guys.

The truth is that I had weighed myself the previous night. In fifth grade, I weighed myself every day, sometimes twice a day. It was both a small and a new school, and, being the Fat Kid, I stood out.

It wasn’t a good feeling. I believe that it was here, at this specific moment, that my disorder started to manifest, when my body image issues became severe, when I started to pick my nails down to the stubs, and, beyond that, when the intrusive thoughts began.

DIDILEAVETHESTOVEONDOILOOKOKAYDOPEOPLEACTUALLYLIKEMEORARETHEYJUSTPRETENDINGAMITHE DUMBONEAREMYPARENTSOKHOWAMIGONNAGETALL OFTHISWORKDONEICANTRAISEMYHANDPEOPLEWILLS TAREATMEAMIGONNAGETAGOODGRADEONTHISIMNO TREADYALLOFMYFRIENDSHIPSARELIESTHEYREGONN AMAKEFUNOFMEBEHINDMYBACKHOWMUCHDOIWEIG HIMGONNALOSEMY HOMEWORKIMGONNAFORGETHOWTODOLONGDIVISIONMYNAILSAREGROWINGBACKFASTICANFINALL YPICKTHEMDOWNWHOCARESIFITHURTSITDISTRACTS MEINEEDTOWIGGLEMYTOESINEEDTOCALLMYMOMAN DMAKESURESHESALIVEICANTTELLANYONEABOUTTHI STHEYREALLGONNAMKEFUNOFMEWHYAMILIKETHIS A

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NEVER GOOD ENOUGH I am in eighth grade. I am studying for midterms over Facetime with one of my best friends of all of my life. We start talking about childhood trauma. I tell her about my life, about my obsessions, compulsions, intrusive thoughts, everything. This is the result:

[FRIEND]: So you seriously think you have OCD? Me: My therapist certainly thinks so.

[FRIEND]: C’mon bro, I’ve known you forever, and you definitely don’t act like you have OCD or whatever.

Me (lying): I mean, yeah, I get what you’re saying. You’re right, I probably don’t.

Implicit in her voice when she said “OCD or whatever”: You’re not like one of those freaks. This specifically hurt me because, in my mind, I knew that I was, in fact, one of those freaks.

DIDILEAVETHESTOVEONDOILOOKOKAYDOPEOPLEACTUALLYLIKEMEORARETHEYJUSTPRETENDINGAMITHE DUMBONEAREMYPARENTSOKHOWAMIGONNAGETALL OFTHISWORKDONEICANTRAISEMYHANDPEOPLEWILLS TAREATMEAMIGONNAGETAGOODGRADEONTHISIMNO TREADYALLOFMYFRIENDSHIPSARELIESTHEYREGONN AMAKEFUNOFMEBEHINDMYBACKHOWMUCHDOIWEIG HIMGONNALOSEMYHOMEWORKIMGONNAFORGETHO WTODOLONGDIVISIONMYNAILSAREGROWINGBACKFA STICANFINALLYPICKTHEMDOWNWHOCARESIFITHURT SITDISTRACTSMEINEEDTOWIGGLEMYTOESINEEDTOC ALLMYMOMANDMAKESURESHESALIVEICANTTELLAN YONEABOUTTHISTHEYREALLGONNAMKEFUNOFMEW HYAMILIKETHISANDWHYWONTANYONETRYTOUNDER STANDICANTLETANYONEUNDERSTANDIDONTWANTPI TYIWANTFREEDOMINEEDFREEDOMFROMTHEBONDSM YOBSESSIONSKEEPMEINATALLHOURSOFTHEDAYINEE DTOSTOPUSINGCOMPULSIONSTOAVOIDMYANXIETIESI NEEDTOGETBETTERBUTICANTBECAUSEICANTTELLAN 40

YONEWHATIFTHEYDONTBELIEVEMEWHATIFTHEYDOUBTMEWHATIFTHEYWORRYWHAT IFTHEYDONTREADTHISHOWCOULDIGETTHISOUTTHER EHOWCANIHAVEAVOICEHOW I NEED A VOICE. It is the period after winter break in tenth grade. I am sitting on the couch in the den of my house, a small and cozy red room, lined with an endless amount if knickknacks and photos. It is the one place in my home where I feel safe from most intrusive thoughts. I am playing on my phone, trying to concentrate on anything other than what is important. My mother gently knocks on the door and lets herself inside the room, making sure to close the door behind her. She has a piece of paper in her hand: Me: Hey ma.

Mother: Hey bud, could I talk to you about something quickly?

Me: Sure, what’s up?

Mother (holding up piece of lined paper with my handwriting all over it): Well, I was just going through your old furniture, and I found this in one of your drawers.

Me (lying): What is it?

Mother: Well, I read it, and it seems to be from a while ago, but, it just… sounds as if you’re saying goodbye to everyone.

Me: Oh. Well, uh, I mean…

Mother (putting paper away): But you’ve moved past that right?

You’re not like, doing that anymore?

Me (lying): Yeah, of course.

Mother: Okay, I’ll just get rid of it for you then.

Me: Okay.

41

It was clear what she was saying: You’re not a selfish, idiotic freak anymore, right? The truth is, I was still a freak. I was still having thoughts about suicide. That specific note is dated back to eighth grade, when my disorder became nearly unbearable. I’ve almost moved past that.

I believe that the main reason things got to be so bad for me (and many others like me, obviously) is that I had no help from anyone, and more than that, nobody even cared to gain an understanding. Telling people that I had this disorder could have result in conversations as unproductive as this: Me: I have OCD. [Anyone]: Oh em gee! You must be so clean and tidy! Y’know, I’m pretty sure I have OCD too! I just CANNOT HANDLE uncompleted patterns.

It is also for this reason that I have told few about this condition—my condition—up until now. By writing this, I feel I am not completely conquering my disorder (as is evidenced by my scratched-up arms and short fingernails), but rather, I am learning to resist it, and beyond that, to use it as energy. It has taken a long time, but I am finally growing beyond.

I have gained a voice against the world and myself.

42

Vnitrni Dialog

by Dylan Burhans

Prosim prestan.

Prosim.

Prosím te.

Ukázal jsi mi vsechny své mi lované.

Mrtvy.

Prosím pomozte mi.

Nekdo.

Kdokoliv.

Videljsem, že moje rodina zemre bezpocetkrát.

Prosím pomozete mi.

Vsechno bude v porádku.

Vsechno bude v porádku.

Vsechno bude v porádku.

Nejvetsí lež, kterou jsem si rekl.

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Enemy

by Mary Allison Mccue

i feel it hanging like a weight from my lungsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; the reflection i see becomes unfamiliar. as i pick at the skin on my face, i am reminded that i am simply a visitor here.

itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s been a while since i have felt good enough to get out of my bed

and walk down the hall. i applaud myself for waking up each morning,

44

standing in front of my parents saying, “look at me! aren’t i doing great? don’t i make you so proud?”

for the past two years

45

Shades of Me: A Rainbow

by Haley Mainwaring

Color Purple I see purple everywhere.

Fire behind my eyes.

Lightning under my feet.

Red and blue Red and blue I help the two colors meet.

Fantasy and reality.

Imagination and realization.

I do not see fake.

I do not see real.

I see a painting of life, brush stroke after brushstroke, texture, detail, space.

In purple.

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Blue Trees Blue Trees.

Green skies.

I do not see the world how you do.

I do not see, I dream.

Imagine a world more beautiful than this.

Less cruel.

Where I am free.

My fantasy is more real than your reality.

Because I made it and it is mine.

It is me.

Sun The color yellow giggles and sings.

Its melody lifts me up and carries me to better places.

I smile and hum along.

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Fire I did not realize you had a match in your hand when I took it.

I was naĂŻve.

I did not see you pour the gasoline around me.

I was blind.

I feel the smoke arising now.

It makes it hard for me to breathe.

Gasping for air, I clutch my throat with shaky hands.

I hear my heart pulsing in my chest.

I picture the orange and red raging within.

It burns.

You set my heart on fire.

And left without so much as a warning.

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Shades I think in colors not words.

Emotions.

They become neon when I see you.

Fade to black and white when you are gone.

Bleed out when you never return.

I am left with pastels.

You took the color from me.

And yet, pastels tell me I am free.

Because while neon is more vibrant, it is also blinding.

49

Flower Power Judy Wang

50

One Girl’s Journey to Find Herself in a World of Opinions

By Madelyn Stout

There are times when I feel pressured and forcefully silenced. One of these times, for example, was the minute I walked into my new high school. No longer was I amongst a sea of blue and green polos with matching plaid kilts.1 Neither was I with people who I knew everything about2; instead, I was just an outsider who thought differently. People always ask me if it was a hard transition from my private, Catholic school to Maclay. The answer is: **** yeah, it was hard. I wouldn’t be who I am today if I didn’t go through such a miserable transition. I ate lunch by myself for two weeks, and I barely spoke to anyone because I was too afraid to get hurt or rejected.3 To be honest, I never really felt like I belonged anywhere or in any group of people. It sucked to see my sister immediately connect with everyone, and it wasn’t until one day when I was in a class4 that I decided enough was enough and that I needed to quit the pity party and get to work.

So, I did. I got out and tried to find who I was and what God wanted me to do, and so I found myself, but instead of finding the meaning of life and a world full of hope and love, I found a world that quite honestly sucks and is completely and utterly 1

Itchy polos and knee-length plaid skirts was the uniform for girls at my old school.

2

I knew everyone and their history, mainly because of all the time I spent growing up with over half of them.

3

This feeling was a result of me being bullied by people who I assumed to be good friends throughout my childhood.

4

My teacher knew who my middle schooler sister was and didn’t even realize my mom had another daughter at Maclay.

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hypocritical.5 In this sham of a hypocritical world6, I find myself questioning a ton of things and just being downright appalled at a lot of other things. You know, some people say that the reason I think the way I do is because I went to a “Catholic” school or that my parents “brainwashed” me. Well, I think those people can shove it where the sun don’t shine. In this journey of selfdiscovery, and of thinking of the ways I am oppressed, I have found that these people don’t have a clue in the world what they are talking about. They don’t know me. They don’t know my story. And they sure as **** don’t know why I think and believe the way I do. It is these same people that try to make me feel ashamed to be myself, ashamed to care for life in any form, ashamed to be modest, ashamed to be religious, ashamed to be politically different and ashamed to go to a prep school. But who are they to tell me who to be, what to think, what to believe and where to be educated? In an era where free speech and individuality is almost worshipped and encouraged, I feel attacked by hypocrites just because I don’t conform to the so-called norms of their millennial society.

Who am I? That’s a question that I still don’t have an answer to, and quite frankly I think it may be a while before I can fully tell you who I am. However, I can tell you what I like and what I am like. For instance, I like books.7 I love sitting and reading an entire novel, fiction or nonfiction8, and losing myself in what I like to refer to as my “mind-palace,” a place where I don’t have to face reality and its horrors. It’s rare to find people who enjoy this activity in an age of technology and social media. I 5

I know what you’re probably thinking, that this sounds like a journey of selfdiscovery not an autoethnography, but to me they are intertwined in a huge knot that can’t be undone.

6

It is in fact a sham, and you can’t convince me otherwise, especially since half the people I know live almost double life.

7

A LOT. My room is probably a fire hazard at this point.

8

I really like nonfiction at times, especially when they use footnotes for some reason (I can’t explain my reasoning on it), hence the use in this paper.

52

also like all the nerd things and the dork things.9 I love to write, draw and do anything that involves imagination and creativity. As for music taste, I believe whole-heartedly that rock is the way to go.10 I love the drums and the guitar. This is yet another difference between me and today’s society. People have made fun of me in the past for being a so-called “dork.” But see the difference between those people and me is that I’m happy with who I am. I don’t seek the approval of others on social media. As for what I am like, well that’s a question that I can also answer easily. Many times, people have called me an old-soul. I guess I just have a maturity level higher than that of my peers.11 I want more out of life, and I want to give more, not just take more. This sets me apart from other teenagers, mainly because I feel like I’m out sitting on the sidelines. It would be a lie if I told you that I fit in. It would be a lie if I told you I was content at times with my life. It would also be a lie if I told you that no one has ridiculed me for who I am. My entire life I’ve never felt like I fit in perfectly with a group, at least not until now. For most of childhood and even adolescence, I was the stereotypical quiet bookworm in the corner that everyone forgot about. This, however, was after I spent time being bullied by little girls who wanted attention. I forgive them for what they did and said to me when we were little. It’s not like they knew everything, and they were just kids. Nevertheless, the experience had lasting effects on what I’m like today. It’s like I’ve been cursed with the super-human power of invisibility. I could, and still can, walk into a room with no one noticing, and to be honest I kind of prefer it that way, yet I do sometimes wish otherwise. I wouldn’t be who I am today if I wasn’t oppressed in that way, and I wouldn’t see the world how I do, as it has allowed me to pull back the veil and see the real world, not the fabricated version.

9

But I’m not Dr. Perry level. Very close, though, just ask me any questions on Doctor Who or Marvel.

10

Surprising isn’t it. The sweet, quiet girl listens to people like Skillet, Fall Out Boy, and other similar bands. Don’t judge, it’s oppressing if you do.

11

I also value traditional values, which is really unlike a lot of my fellow teenagers .

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I am full-heartedly a lover of life. You’re probably wondering what that means. Well, I’ll give you a clue, it has nothing to do with being a daredevil or loving the Earth’s environment.12 I love the human person and its awe-inspiring beauty, mainly because it was made in the likeness and image of God. I believe that all life deserves to thrive, meaning that I am in fact Pro-Life. Yes, I stated it. I survived the monstrosity that is Roe v. Wade. People who have decided to pick a debate with me over it13 cannot sway me toward their point of view, but that doesn’t mean I don’t understand what they are saying. In fact, I do believe that they make good points. For instance, I once had a guy in my grade14 get mad at me because I told him I was pro-life. He told me that because I was Pro-Life that I was not a feminist and that I was against what it meant to be female. I’m not kidding when I say that I sat there dumbfounded by this mass of an idiot. How dare he sit there and tell me that I don’t know what it means to be a woman, especially when he is not one? This situation helped me to see how people see my opinion. We are taught to welcome every idea, yet if it is against certain people’s viewpoints, then it is to be attacked, further proving that the world is hypocritical and stifling.

Modesty is also very hard to find today, especially as stores try to sell young girls on booty shorts and crop tops. Many times, I have found myself looking through the racks in a store to find a cute shirt just for it to look too short and revealing. I dress modestly because I want people to see me, not my body. I want people to see my inner beauty, not my outer beauty. I dress the way I do because I believe that my body is a beautiful thing that doesn’t need to demean itself by wearing revealing clothes.

12

That’s not to say that it isn’t important or worth loving, it’s just not part of my point here.

13

Of which I am always prepared to have and to answer questions because I believe it is good to know all your facts.

14

He does in fact go to Maclay but he no longer speaks to me .

54

This doesn’t mean that I’m ashamed of the way I look, which is what many people have told me. There are also other reasons I dress the way I do. And some are because of normal functions of the body.15 It’s funny how I’ve been ridiculed by other girls my age for it, especially since they can’t take criticisms themselves on fashion. Someone once referred to me as “that Catholic girl”16 and made fun of skirts I wear because, according to her, I looked like I should be part of the Duggar family. I dress more conservatively out of respect for not just myself but also the people around me. As I use modesty to liberate myself from the stereotype of what a teenage girl should wear, I’ve somehow managed to get people to nitpick about how long my dress is or the fact that I wear a sweater to cover up spaghetti straps. There are times that the modern culture of fashion makes me feel shameful to be modest with what I wear.

I choose the church. I go there for God, not for the priests or for validation from my grandma.17 I choose the Church not because I grew up in it but because I was given a choice to decide for myself. I choose the Church not because I grew up in it but because I was given a choice to decide for myself. I drifted for a while, in fact, my entire family started to drift. We went from going all the time to going just on the crucial days. But I found my way back. I went on a trip with my youth group a few years ago to a camp called Covecrest, and it was there that I had one of the most soul-wrenching and amazing experiences of my life.

My point is that I found why I believe there at that camp, surrounded by young people who loved God and the true Church.18 And so, I’ve been going back each summer since. I’ve learned how to navigate not just my faith life but also my life outside in the terrifying world through my experiences at Covecrest.

I finally felt free to love God the way I wanted to, and it was terrific. I was no longer underneath the restrictions of my ultra15

Of which include but are not limited to stress sweat and menstruation.

16

It was said in a real snotty voice one day when I wore a knee length dress.

17

She is extremely religious and frowns upon people not going, so in other terms, she’s next level Catholic.

55

Catholic grandma or the people at my school and church.

Moreover, I was finally given a chance to understand for myself and to seek out answers to questions I was discouraged to ask, especially when our youth group’s new youth minister19 came around. Yet with this new-found freedom, I find it continuously hard to be a Christian in this wretched society. Now that I’m no longer at the beck and call of a Catholic school, I find it hard to be true and to be faithful. There are times where I feel pressured by my classmates to agree with them even if I don’t want to because of my faith. There are also times where I see the double-lives that I mentioned before, as I see many of my fellow Catholics act entirely different when they are at school.20 I think this is because they feel just as oppressed as I do at times, mainly because many people will view them differently afterward. There is irony to be found in this because there are a lot of people out there who preach about being yourself, yet they are likely to be the same people who make you feel like you have to change.

Politics is also among one of my many passions, and its one that I feel the most oppressed by. As a teenage girl, I feel like society expects me to be more liberal and that expectation can be suffocating at times. Instead of leaning left, I lean right, and it is all because of what I think and believe. My family isn’t political, in fact, the only time I can even remember my parents talking about politics while growing up was the 2008 election.

It’s honestly kind of ironic how my parents raised a kid who is super interested in politics.21 All my opinions on specific topics I’ve crafted myself, I don’t need or want anyone to tell me what my opinion should be. I want to find the information for myself and decide for myself what I think is best. For some

18

I spent the majority of my time before having middle-aged and older people telling me what to believe, how to believe, and that I should believe.

19

Chris Ackerman

20

Many of my fellow peers are in fact Catholic, but they hide it or don’t let anyone know

56

reason people aren’t happy with that, aren’t happy with that, contributing to yet22 another way that this world we live in is hypocritical. Because I like the current President and some of the things he has done I, along with other supporters, are continuously told that we are racists or that we should burn in hell. It’s hard to listen to people who say that everyone should have the right to free speech and all that stuff just to go back and try and take that right away from others. Take for example SNL and Hollywood. I won’t touch them anymore even if you give me a ten-foot pole23.

Men and women who I used to consider role models have disgusted me with how they’ve acted and what they’ve said. Hearing those same role models say that because I believe this and that, that I’m somehow a terrible person hit home with me. It made me realize that these people don’t care and that they just want the attention and will cater to people who will agree with everything they say. It’s hard to see the people you admired all your life turn their backs on you and judge you without ever knowing the reason why.

The last and final area of my life where I feel oppression is where I get my education. I don’t mean to say that I’m oppressed at Maclay, what I mean is that it is how other people view me as a Maclay student. People think that because my parents send me to Maclay that they are somehow “rolling in the dough.”

False. Completely and utterly false. My parents have quite literally broken their backs to get to where my family is today. My dad went out and got a new job. My mom decided to go back to work and now works at Maclay. There was even a period in my life where it got hard financially.

I was a little girl, but I still remember it as clear as day.

I’ll never forget the day we had to apply for food stamps. I’ll never forget the day where my sister was diagnosed with epilepsy, and the medical bills from Shands kept appearing in the mailbox.

I’ll never forget the day I found out that the church partially paid for my education. I’ll never forget the day that the bank reclaimed 21

I think they’re shocked themselves to be quite honest.

22

Ironic that this phrase comes from someone who most likely doesn’t believe in God. 23

I wouldn’t even do it if you gave me a pole that could reach the moon and a million dollars.

57

my mom’s car. The recession almost destroyed my family. My family went from having a booming construction business to one that employed two people and barely made enough to get by. So, when people say that I’m a privileged white kid that goes to a fancy school and uses “daddy’s money” for everything it kind of hurts. We are no longer in the situation we were before, but there are times where the memory of it hits hard. The fact that society tells me that because I’m white I’m privileged and racist is hard.

The fact that I go to a wealthier school is even harder at times.

Everyone wears expensive clothes and shoes and owns expensive things. People brag about where they went to dinner and who they saw and how much their parents make, even going to some of my friends’ houses is hard because my house could literally fill a quarter of some of them. There’s this stereotype of Maclay students in the Tallahassee community, and it’s hard for people to view me outside of that, outside of the kids who they think are selfish brats. If I’ve learned anything from the way some of these people have treated me it’s that I don’t take anything for granted anymore, that’s for sure, even if the outsiders think I do.

It’s hard to sit in this chair and write this because I know that you will see me in a different light, which ironically even further alienates me because I will be judged for this. Your opinion and many others opinions of me could very well change if they knew this, but we live in a continuous cycle of judgement, so it’s not surprising. Yet I remind myself that I am no longer seeking validation from others; instead, I am seeking validation from my God, from the only one whose opinion really matters in this temporary reality and whose love is relentless. Because in the end this cycle of oppression won’t matter, and people won’t need to belittle each other to get attention, but until we get to that end, as the band Kansas so famously wrote, “All we are is dust in the wind.”

58

The Truth between the Color Lines

By Eljin Rhymes

“The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic” -John F. Kennedy When Kennedy said these words, he didn’t know he was summarizing the subtext of John Griffin’s famous work investigative journalism, Black Like Me. The truth in the film and book is that being black in the 1950’s, in the deep South, could never be explained to the point that someone from another race would understand. John Howard Griffin, a white journalist, wanted to know the true inhumanities that blacks faced every day, and how different the world was for blacks and for whites. In 1952, Howard underwent his project of becoming a black man by rubbing his body with shoe polish, taking pigmentation pills, and sitting under sun lamps; this transformation took three months to complete. This literary analysis of the movie and the book will discuss why this book matters in America’s society and the impact it had on other countries’ perceptions of America.

Before his revolutionary transformation that would shake America to its core, John Howard Griffin’s life was an average one. He was a middle-aged white man from Mansfield, Texas who was a reporter for the newspaper. Griffin’s passion for understanding the racial injustices that African Americans faced came from a six-year time in his life where he was blind. During this time of blindness, he explained that because of his blindness, there were no color lines for him, so he treated everyone the same, black or 59

white. He asked his boss, Bill Mason, to support his quest to becoming black. Mason was a millionaire who agreed to fund Howard’s expenses towards the treatments that he needed. Accompanying him on his journey was Griffin's wife, Elizabeth Ann Holland. Although she wasn’t racist, she believed that Griffin shouldn’t be the one to pursue the quest of breaking the colored line in the South.

As America’s racial tension worsens with every act that is committed over the issue, this book/film provides a closer look at the lives of both blacks and whites in the South in an earlier time in America, which still applies today. An important scholar on the work of Black Like Me is Hugh Rank. He has written important works over his lifetime that have given credit to his criticism. In his books, Pep Talk: How to A nalyze Political Language, Persuasion Analysis: A Companion to Composition, and Language and Public Policy, he analyzes political and social language and the ways that ethos can be used in rhetoric. In the source, “The Rhetorical Effectiveness of Black Like Me,” he says that the book has and abnormal structure for a journal series. Strikingly, it is divided into three main parts: the preface, the main body, which consists of the reporter experiencing the life of a Negro in New Orleans, and the epilogue, which explicates the consequences of his actions. He specifically dives into the section on how if this experiment was done today, the racism and hate groups that occurred then would still be seen today subliminally. Rank writes "If Griffin were to write a postscript today to Black Like Me he could continue to relate nine more years of harassment by racists and hate groups" (Rank). This is an accurate assumption of what could be said about today’s society as opposed to society 50 years ago. This is yet another example of how today’s society is impacted by the truths that Black Like Me displays for different races in America.

This book was published after World War II, a time when America was looked at as a top country in the world; this also implied that every flaw that was seen by other countries, made the countries’ superiority questioned, especially when it came to racism in the South. One important scholar on the work Black Like Me is the esteemed Hathcock. His contribution to the work Black Like Me is exemplified in "A Spy in the Enemy's Country: Black Like Me as Cold War Narrative.

60

In this source, he states that at this time, America is looked at as a leader by the other countries, but for it to be a successful leader, it must be ridden of internal conflicts like segregation and racism in the South. The experiment that Griffin performed in Black Like Me was a step forward in fixing the problem by getting a real depiction of what it is like to be black in the South during this time. Hathcock notes that "Black Like Me depicted the Deep South as a site of un-American [Otherness], to isolate and diminish its negative ramifications for the U.S image broad"(Hathcock). Here, Hathcock states that during this time in America, the concept of racism is seemingly only isolated in one area in the South, when in fact it is an understood concept in all facets of American society, even in today’s society. This is yet another example of how Black Like Me investigates the truth of racial issues in America.

This question of what it means to be racially “othered” has been argued since the beginning of civilization, but at the time of the publication of this book/film, that argument has been avoided for some time. One important scholar on the work of Black Like Me is the credible Kate Baldwin. Her contribution to the discussion surrounding Black Like Me, Black like Who? Cross-Testing the “Real” Lines of John Howard Griffin’s Black Like Me, is a literary analysis of what it means to be racially different by means of historical fact and present-day events. In this work, she argues that the problem the twentieth-century must face is the problem of the racial difference between blacks and whites, "...appearances speak not of themselves but of preceding generations and the haunting of each subsequent one with..."(Baldwin). This quote from Baldwin explains that racism isn’t something that one is born with. Instead, it is taught from generation to generation, with each developing view harsher than the last. This is yet another example of how being racially different in Black Like Me truly investigates the truth of the black experience in America.

In the film Black Like Me, when Griffin becomes black and moves to New Orleans for his experiment, he meets a shoe shiner named Sterling Williams. In this scene in the film, Griffin goes to a local shoe shiner station to get his shoes shined. Once Griffin sees Williams, he remembers that Williams shined his shoes once when he was a white man in New Orleans for a business trip. During the first interaction, Williams tells Griffin that 61

that he never forgets a face, which foreshadowed this encounter.

After remembering this, Griffin strikes up a conversation with Williams and mentions that Williams shined Griffinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s shoes before as a white man. Slowly but surely realizing this, Williams is flabbergasted by Griffinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s decision. Once Griffin explains his reasons for doing the experiment, Williams takes him under his wing so that he can learn how to live like a true black man. This scene was an accurate representation of finding the truth about blacks and what they had to face in America at the time. This scene shows the difference of worlds between a black man and a white man and how racism keeps them divided always.

In another scene in the novel, Griffin has rented a room for a week in a large house with an African-American family living downstairs. The mother and father of the family are about to leave and go to a club that is popular in the black community on a Saturday night. Griffin is asked by the couple if he wanted to join them, but he refuses as he was exhausted from his day of surviving as a black man. Once they leave, Griffin is left alone, staring at a mirror, a reflection of himself; at this point of the experiment, he no longer sees the middle-aged white man that he was previously, but a bald negro. This psychological truth that Griffin experiences is unlike anything that he could have ever imagined.

Earnest Sharpe Jr. explains this scene perfectly in his literary criticism, "The Man Who Changed His Skin." In this document, he states that Howard's work is a stream of consciousness, and the events that he had experienced personally where vague compared to the psychological feelings that brood in his body after the ordeal is completed. He specifically references and gives a detailed description of how interactions between whites and blacks are only skin deep. Sharpe notes from the novel "...As a look into the mirror, a bald Negro stared back at me from its mottled sheen. I knew I was in hell. Hell could be no more lonely or helpless..." (Griffin 52). With this Griffin realizes that being black in America comes with an enormous amount of hatred (from others and eventually towards oneself), racism, and segregation. This is yet another example of how being racially different in Black Like Me truly investigates the truth of the African-American experience.

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In a critical scene in the film Black Like Me, comes a man by the name of Christophe. Christophe is half Native American and half African American; his mother was half French and Portuguese and his father was half Native American and half African American. With this strange combination, Christophe is still viewed black because of his skin color by whites; this exemplifies the fact that during this time, racism was skin deep, no matter who it was. During this scene, Christophe is ridiculing the other blacks in the restaurant for being ignorant and trying to show that he is superior because of his ethnic background and education. He notices Griffin sitting alone and decides to sit by him because he seemed like he was the only one educated enough to maintain an intelligent conversation. During their conversation, Christophe notices Griffin’s physical features and almost blows his disguise by attempting to guess his heritage. Once he guesses right, Griffin tells him that he is a priest and of his past crimes and hatred for negroes, even though he is one. This scene brings up the ugly truth of black on black racism and violence and displays how racial violence against darker skinned blacks is often perpetrated by lighter skinned blacks. This is yet another example of how being racially different in Black Like Me truly investigates the truth for different races in America.

An important scholar to mention is the esteemed Jay Copp. His greatest contribution to the discussion surrounding Black Like Me is his article, "Still Walking in Another's Shoes."

In this article, Copp writes about the social impact that the book has today on young blacks and whites that want to better understand the oppressive life of an African-American. Griffin stated, "As a Southerner, all the stereotypes I'd been brought up with, the speech patterns that blacks were supposed to have, the appearance, all those delusions had to go out the door" (Griffin). This explained how becoming “black” had given him a clearer view of the deeply oppressive experience of black people in America.

This is another truth that Black Like Me presents about America today.

Of the truth of the black and white experience shown in Black Like Me, Cyprian Lamar Rowe provided the best explanation. Rowe, a social justice activist and leading figure in the African American Catholic community, wrote important works on social injustices. His greatest contribution to Black Like Me was 63

was his article, “America yet to Walk Down Griffin’s Path.” In this article, Rowe writes about the difficulties that AfricanAmericans had to experience. He also argues that Griffin shows the harsh reality of blacks to whites in a compelling, personal manner. He specifically references Black Like Me when he states: “Finally, one of them knows. One of their own has given witness to the horrors of what it is like to be black” (Griffin). This article is the icing on the cake to the argument that those who criticized him, were those who could only experience their whiteness through violence - physical, psych emotional, and spiritual against blacks on every level of human existence.

In conclusion, the racial sublimation that is displayed in Black Like Me summarizes American society today. Black Like Me went from being shunned by society to being idolized as a revolutionary experiment that changed the world in ideology. In fact, it was incorporated into required reading lists for high school and college students in America. Black Like Me will always be a surreal experience for those who come across it because of its bizarre idea of diving into the unknown. Although it intrudes on another culture without permission, his quest was necessary to explain the difference in the worlds of whites and blacks in America.

64

Silenced

Ashlynn Moayad

65

September

by Chandler Downie

liminality – is not a punishment. to hold nothing, arms passage instead of cage, is a blessing seldom sought.

to be no— —man, only a tunnel: dark. safe. only collapsing occasionally. it is a blessing to hide in the shadows.

a blessing, however, isn’t perfection. my gates beg for teeth.

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or freedom. either will do; either will take the sting— —out of the needles

—out of the rips —out of the stitches —out of the –

“female” is liminality reimagined: one must assert her dominance from within the empty spaces.

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April

by Chandler Downie

7 months, 7 days, 7 years. a lovely round number.

sit up straight: head high,

back high, feet high over hips.

up straight. act— smooth, gliding, knees mostly useless. you do not stand for yourself. you stand for another— what? am I not allowed to call it “burden”?

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calves beget calves, calf and foal begotten: begotten. were-gotten. bed-ridden. rotten.

rest, they say, rest rest. rest, they beg, rest rest. stop, theyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;stop, stop. stop.

rest is your cure.

I put the children to sleep.

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March

by Chandler Downie

command? no. request. offer, plea. no true power here.

surrender comes easy— we’ve no other options. why do we always end up here?

I’ve attached weight to my earrings. they please you. they please me.

Repeat. they please me.

I am here because I want to be.

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Repeat.

Repeat.

˳˳˳

___ ˳˳˳

We’re sorry.

The rest of this transmission was lost.

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January

by Chandler Downie

I can feel red lines behind my neck: three vertical. ten horizontal. meaningless tattoos branding my brainstem.

Our relationship could be named â&#x20AC;&#x153;reciprocity,â&#x20AC;? parental Stockholm syndrome, cycles of blame and forgiveness.

How do I forgive you?

You forgive me?

Pain becomes indignation.

I want to laugh at us.

Break the glass and clear the frame.

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But stained-glass leaves evidence— splashes of blue and purple and red— pills and sits and lost memory.

I only doubt myself around you; that’s the fang that wears the tether.

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74

Avery Shaver

Shattered Profile

Als Ik In De Spiegel Kijk

by Dylan burhans

Als ik in de spiegel kijk, Ik zie mijn ergste vijand.

Druipend, valt het bloed van mijn vingertoppen.

Brandend. Prikkelend.

Mijn handen zijn gebarsten

En gedroogd Als ik naar mezelf kijk I k zie mijn ergste vijand.

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Introspective Searching

by Mariam Alvi

I think I was seven. The blaring country music, the colorful lights, and the huge crowd were all a new experience for me. The Zac Brown Band was performing later that night in the Civic Center, and my friends invited me to join them. Second grade Mariam loved trying all new things and encountering different opportunities, even if country was not her favorite music genre. I remember songs such as “Chicken Fried” or “Toes.”

My friends belted out the lyrics from the very deepness of their stomachs, and although I didn’t know every word, I still enjoyed the music just as much as everyone else. The experience was unlike anything I had ever formerly imagined, and I was ecstatic. This would be a night to never forget. Now, I remember walking out of the concert and reflecting on how much fun I had and how different it was than the “normal” music I had previously listened to. But a conversation happened later that evening which changed my perspective on everything. I guarantee no one else from my party remembers this or even thought twice about it; however, I do, and I think I always will.

Walking back to our cars after the “best night of our lives,” someone close to my friend’s parents came up and asked me, “What are you doing here, young girl? You don’t belong in this crowd.” Everyone bent by their sides laughing.

“What? What did he mean by this?” I asked myself repeatedly.

I did not understand. Why was I any different than my friends, Kendall and Emily? We are all the same age. We share the same hobbies. We attend Maclay School. We all grew up in 76

Tallahassee, Florida. So, what was it? I was quiet the rest of the evening. No one mentioned what happened earlier and neither did I. Lying in bed staring at the blades of my fan steadily rotate throughout the night, I thought. I thought for what felt like hours about what that man could have been trying to say. I did not belong. Never had I felt like an outlier or a minority. We all learned in school that everyone holds unique and special qualities, but this manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s connotation seemed different. Although I doubt he meant any harm by what he said, I still think about this night in a harsh way. Additionally, I doubt he knows I ever thought twice about what he told me outside of those short few seconds. But I realized, his prejudice rooted from the color of my skin. I was significantly darker than my friends and their families, but I did not believe that how dark I am meant or decided where I belonged. I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know that skin color affected what role I had to attain in our community. Why canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t I go to the country concert because I have more melanocyte cells than my friends do? Since I cannot change who I am, and I did not decide what body I wanted when I was a newborn, then why?

As a little girl, I never saw it. I never saw the division, the separation. As children, we were all one. Everybody was united and the same. No one tried to label us, and we had no problem residing with each other. Yet somewhere down the road, it all begins to change. Dividing lines are drawn amongst the world. There are no more blurry differences here and there; boundaries are made definite. What changes? At what point in life does someone else get to define who you are as a human?

Why is it in our human nature to separate ourselves? And how do divide ourselves?

Society places item tags on people which decide who they are and what they will like and dislike, their interests.

Sometimes the tags can get mixed up as well. For instance, I have a tag for living in the South, and people in the South are supposed to like country music. However, this is hidden behind the larger tag that represents my skin, and people only pay attention to my biggest label. To the man who told me I did not belong, he only saw my outward appearance. The man and my friends did not realize that what he said was incorrect or 77

seemingly wrong. They found it funny and carried on with their lives because that is our reality. People do not visualize or accept the minor cruel attitudes people hold. It does not matter what your possible variations could include or what stereotypes you defy. People will always see you in a one-sided manner.

Throughout the world, we divide ourselves whether that is in race, gender, nationality, financial situations, or even personality. As a society, we find a sense of community in grouping ourselves together. But does the dividing work as a uniting factor, or one slowly separating ourselves over the years?

Frequently, people use one-sided literature in order to provide themselves with a rational reasoning for their stereotyping and splitting a population into individual containers. These containers have a broad description, and people are simply tossed on based on others’ viewpoints and opinions. In Richard Miller’s essay “The Dark Night of the Soul,” he states, “Like most readers, McCandless surrounded himself with books that reinforced his own beliefs” (Miller 12). Miller describes a character who blindly follows one type of text which ultimately leads to his death. Using this abrupt example, Miller shows how keeping a narrow perspective will lead to bitter ignorance that will hurt all of us. Not allowing varying ideas or views into your own resource of information allows for an unawareness for the world around you; you become part of the greater problem.

Additionally, Miller mentions two boys, Harris and Klebold, the shooters from the 1999 Columbine Shooting. Miller states, “Harris and Klebold, in fact, wrote and produced for all different sorts of media; they read a range of material that supported their beliefs and taught them how to put together their incendiary devices” (Miller 4). The shooters had one agenda and one agenda only; they were not concerned with any other perspective but those that were same as their own. Likewise, Harris and Klebold also “hung out with like-minded individuals and discussed their ideas” (Miller 5). These boys were so closed off in their own container of individuals that they simply couldn’t understand or even acknowledge other opinions. The closemindedness of these boys killed thirteen people, wounded twenty others, and even took the lives of the two teenagers, Harris and Klebold as well. This type of partisan reading and writing follows Paulo Freire’s idea found in his essay, “The Banking Concept of Education,” where information is solely absorbed, 78

and no true knowledge is received. Once again, this forces people to escape their individuality and hide behind the ideas of other people. Freire explains, “this concept is well suited to the purpose of the oppressors, whose tranquility rests on how well people fit the world the oppressors have created, and how little they question it” (Freire 321). Looking at this concept outside of the classroom, these “oppressors” are the same people dividing our society. They decide one person from the next based on the shallowest level of analysis. The athletic boy must reside with the popular niche. The Indian girl must stick to her studying.

The 45-year-old woman must stay out of the workplace. The divisions made by oppressors are ones based off crude bias and stereotypes. These divisions hold no true meaning except the meaning put into them by their creators. At the end of Freire’s essay, he reminds us the importance of being human; he states, The pursuit of full humanity, however, cannot be carried out in isolation or individualism, but only in fellowship and solidarity; therefore it cannot unfold in the antagonistic relations between oppressors and oppressed. No one can be authentically human while he prevents others from being so (Freire 328).

In order to conquer the quest of true humanity, people must support one another rather than follow our oppressors and tear each other down. Both Freire and Miller demonstrate the importance of being open minded and striving for being a human rather than the necrophilic viewpoint on life that our oppressors hold. Not only is it dangerous to use the Banking Concept but also it removes all significance to a bigger picture and goal which all of humanity should hold.

These ideas and concepts generate our divide amongst humanity. Being close-minded, steers people away from learning the truths behind a group of individuals. The Banking Method tells people good from bad and right from wrong to questions that do not have these definite answers. All people deserve to be acknowledged for who they truly are, not what the world simply sees them as. People cannot simply be placed and dropped into containers that we feel suit them. We are all humans. We are all individuals. Society divides itself based on broad information; it never stops to think about what is beyond that superficial shallow layer. Whether society tells us to categorize all Chinese 79

people as freakishly intelligent or to see all Catholics as drastically old fashioned and out of date, these stereotypes divide us.

People are put into extreme groups based on details of their selves that might have little to no importance to them. How is this fair? Or justified? Freire’s concept of the Banking Method is one that makes it simple to remove all empathy for life and to remove any emotions that we might have. Freire writes, “Oppression – overwhelming control – is necrophilic; it is nourished by love of death, not life. The banking concept of education, which serves the interest of the oppression, is also necrophilic” (Freire 322). Rather than connecting with the people around us, our oppressors gain total control and set in place their rules that hold little value for human life. Because of this system our world abides by, there is no room for individuality or difference of opinion. We all become subjects to the oppressors which shove one-sided arguments down our throats.

This summer I constantly asked myself these questions while reading Ta-Nehisi Coates’s profound book about the American viewpoint on the black minority. In a sense, I subjected myself to Freire’s Problem Posing Method by reading a book which holds a different perspective than the ordinary. He writes, But you are a black boy, and you must be responsible for your body in a way that other boys cannot know. In deed, you must be responsible for the worst actions of other black bodies, which somehow will always be as signed to you. And you must be responsible for the bod ies of the powerful – the policeman who cracks you with a nightstick will quickly find his excuse in your furtive movements. (Coates 71) Coates writes to his son about the great divide between the Black and White race. He describes how it does not matter who you are to the general public because at this point and time no one can see past the color of your skin. You will be defined as others choose to label you. You will be put into a division that blocks you off from the rest of the world. One that tells you the rules you must abide by, the religion you must follow, the food you must eat, the personality you must have, and lastly the appearance you must attain. This book, quite earnest in its content, showed me another side to America’s race issue that I was 80

completely unaware of. I had only ever seen the limited, narrow minded information found on TV or CNN’s Instagram which I follow for quick updates. After reading Coates’s work, I held a deeper understanding to the society and world that we reside in; I learned how all of us are part of the overarching problem by ignoring certain perspectives and staying close-minded. Our Banking Method world has established this period of time filled with narrow-minded thinking and narrow-minded people. No one stops for introspective searching. We don’t grow up as children united and then as time continues something changes. We, as humans, just notice the division that lives throughout our society. We easily soak in what we are told and accept it as our reality. But when does this stop? When do we decide to make that initial change?

Now. This time begins now. If people stop to recognize the indifference around them, it is not hard to speak up. It does not have to be much. It doesn’t have to be words either. Maybe if one of the parents had said something after the Zac Brown concert, I wouldn’t have felt so misplaced. Maybe if you included the new kid to your lunch table, he wouldn’t feel so lonely.

It’s small steps. Small steps lead to a bigger goal. Will we ever be able to completely bridge the gap between races, religions, social classes, personality, hobbies, gender, or any other category out there? No, we will not, but by no means does that mean it is not worth the effort. The world needs unity. People need each other just as Freire told us so. Rather than picking apart our differences, let’s work towards breaking down the walls that separate us. Take the lids off our containers and become a community together. Let’s open our minds to the voices of others, others whose opinions differ from our own, yet always question and never blindly follow. Find a sense of peace with diversity, and keep those dividing lines erased.

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Works Consulted Coates, Ta-Nehisi. Between the W orld and Me. Spigel & Grau, 2015.

Freire, Paulo. "The 'Banking' Concept of Education." W ays of Reading, Edited by David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky, 9th ed., Bedford/ St. Martin's, 2011, pp. 318-28.

Miller, Richard. "The Dark Night of the Soul." W riting at the End of the World, Pittsburg University Press, 2005, pp. 1-27.

82

Inspired by Zora Neale Hurston’s Short Story “Sweat”

by PreAP English I

Bullwhip.

Scary and aggressive Moving slowly like a snake down my back.

For the love of God! Help!

On the porch—a snake in a cage.

If only my husband loved me.

83

The Girl with the Semicolon Tattoo

by Haley Mainwaring

I sit in a seat, facing a man named Dolla.

My hands shake in my lap, a combination of excitement and fear over what is to come.

He shaves my wrist with a razor blade.

Dangerous weapon turned tool. Or the other way around.

I wonder what he thinks about my tattoo choice, what anyone thinks.

People always talk about how much tattoos hurt.

No one considers the pain one endured leading up to the decision to get the tattoo.

The artist cleans my wrist with spray.

I feel cold, yet content.

This is right.

J. Cole plays in the background as the imprint of my design gets placed on the right side of my wrist,

84

Next to the stream of green running up my arm.

Proof that I am alive.

Proof that I survived.

I hear the buzzing while I stare up at the lights on the ceiling, trying to focus on my surroundings and not on my soon stamped flesh.

A bee sting, Drawn out and coursing through my veins.

It does not bother me though.

I smile to myself as the outline gets finished.

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s funny how getting this tattoo, in this moment, Is the least amount of pain I have been in in two years.

This tattoo marks where I came.

More importantly, it marks where I will go.

It symbolizes the fact that I will go.

Move past these times.

I will survive.

I did survive.

The man prompts me to look at his finished work.

Art. I gaze at a symbol of strength and hope.

On my wrist, slightly to the right, A semicolon.

85

The Struggle

by Dylan Burhans

John stood in front of the big oak door that led into his family’s house. Panic rose in his chest, and he battled to force it back down. He took deep breaths, inhaling through the nose for a count of seven, and exhaling through the mouth for a count of eleven. He did that six times. John had been dealing with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) for the past six years.

Feeling a slight reprieve, John reached for the doorknob with his right hand, when a obsessive thought invaded his mind.

Use your left hand to open the door, otherwise your mother will be shot. John hesitated, and started to pull his right hand back. He composed himself, whispering, “**** off.” Suddenly, John’s mind was flooded with intrusive thoughts. He saw his mom walking along a sidewalk. A man wearing a dark hoodie stalked towards her. His face was obscured. The man pulled out a gun. She started to scream. The man pulled the trigger. John imagined the gunshot. No, he heard the gunshot. He saw the crimson stain spread on his mom’s shirt. It was like ink dripping in water. It just spread. And spread. And spread. And it was all his fault.

Tears welled in John’s eyes. He knew he had to fight the OCD. Otherwise, it would never leave him alone. However, he couldn’t let his mother die. He grasped the doorknob with his left hand and pushed open the door. It was the middle of the night, so his family was still asleep. The foyer was bathed in a darkness that was pitch black. It was as if the night embodied his deep thoughts. It gave off a macabre yet melancholy aura. John, still trembling, stumbled to his bedroom.

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The door to his room was already open. John crossed the threshold between the hallway and his bedroom, placing his right foot in his room first. The OCD was waiting for him. Enter with your left foot first, or your dad will die in a car crash. “Shut the **** up!” John barked. He ignored the thought and continued into his room. However, he felt something in the pit of his stomach. It was as if some primal terror was rising from the abyss.

Through millions of years of human evolution. John slowly turned around. He felt drawn to the door frame. He froze. The panic returned. Sweat rolled down his forehead. His breathing intensified. He started hyperventilating. The intrusive thoughts came. He saw his dad driving. He heard a car horn.

BBLLAAAAMMM!!! His dad’s head slammed against the steering wheel. The windshield shattered. Glass flew everywhere. The front of his dad’s car crumpled like paper. “No, **** off! Shut the **** up!” John cried. The thoughts worsened. He saw the ambulance rushing to the scene. The sirens blared. His dad was covered in blood. “God ******! God … ****,” John whimpered.

Tears dripped down his face. He walked back outside the room, and re-entered with his left foot first.

John dragged himself over to his bed and laid down. He groped under his pillow until his hand hit something. He clutched the object and took it out. It was a small, leather-bound book.

John’s therapist had suggested that he write down his thoughts, since he was often unable to use words to describe his feelings.

John grabbed a pencil from his desk and flipped the book open to an empty page. Right when the soft graphite pressed against the paper, the OCD attacked him with intrusive thoughts. John saw himself stab the pencil into his thigh. And then into his stomach.

Blood seeped through his shirt. It dripped on his hands. John not only saw himself getting stabbed. He felt it.

John couldn’t help it, he started crying. He tried to stay as quiet as possible to not wake his family. He felt miserable. No, he felt worse than that. He felt alone. Like he was the only one who was ****** up and everyone else was normal. Like he was a freak.

John noticed the ceiling fan out of the corner of his eyes.

It wasn’t moving. He looked down at the belt he was wearing. He looked back up at the fan, an idea forming in his head. He just 87

wanted the pain to go away.

John stood up on his bed. He ripped off his belt and started looping it around the fan. He was about to wrap it around his throat, when he hesitated. He realized something. He realized that it was never about the thoughts. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s about how he responds, and killing himself is not the way.

John unwrapped the belt and threw it down. He stepped off his bed. He knew painful times awaited him; however, he knew that eventually every thing would work out.

88

Talk of Insanity

by Holden Crumpler

Patient Name: Unknown Patient Age: Early to mid 40â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Patient Gender: Male Patient Number: 64983

Psychological Condition: Sociopathy coupled with possible obsessive-compulsive disorder Mental Attributes: High intelligence to the point where regular tests will not show accurate results for IQ; calm even under extremely stressful circumstances; applies unflinching logic to all that he does; unable to be kept around the other patients for their own safety; consistently polite and never vulgar.

Crime: Thirty counts of first-degree murder: the circumstances of each victim's death were different (strangulation, stab wounds, gunshot wounds); some of the bodies found were mutilated. Police tag him in at least ten more, but the cases remain unsolved.

Notes from Previous Physician: Patient will talk as long as you are nice to him. Do not tell him anything personal, he likes to get in your head. Do not, under any circumstances, underestimate him, even when restrained. He is not like the other patients. Get in his head but keep him out of yours.

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"What a load of ****," Tom says reclining back in his office chair. He did not believe a word of it. He knew that the patient was "insane" and that he had killed more than his fair share of people, but this patient was no different from countless other nut jobs he had treated before. Tom McCall knew from twenty years of work at the Rhode Island State Hospital for the Criminally Insane that none of the real crazies ever came here. They were in the middle of practically nowhere in what most people defined as a sleepy little state. He had dealt with them all before and he knew a classic psychopath when he saw their files. Still, as he was walking down one of the whitewashed halls to the examination room, that last line sucked at his brain like a leach sucking blood out of a vain. "Get in his head but keep him out of yours."

"Huh," Tom wondered aloud with some amusement. He pressed the button for entrance into the examination room.

"Hey Tom," said Mike, the man who "ruled the room," as the other doctors said.

"Hey Mike. Have you gotten a look at the patient? What's he like? Does he look as crazy as this chart says he is?” Tom asked sarcastically. Mike's face turned gray and his usually sunny smile vanished.

"I would never go near that freak after what he's done.

Scariest god**** person I have ever met." Mike said this with an ashen voice, but Tom could hardly help but burst out laughing.

"Come on, Mike. These psychopaths are a dime a dozen.

Sure, this one is a little deadlier than most but, deep down, they’re all the same. They act crazy and intimidating but they really are more scared of you."

"Not this one. He's calm, and he recollects what he did without so much as a single twitch. **** Tom, I really didn't want you to take this case. This man is the first one that has gotten me scared since I started working here twenty years ago." "********. This ***hole’s nothing. Just a more than violent crazy. We see them all the time. Once you've seen one, you've seen them all. Now open the door.”

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"Fine. Just, don't say I didn't warn you." Mike pressed the release, and the door slid open. Tom walked in and saw a man he had never seen before. He was wearing a freshly pressed maroon suit and had a serious expression on his face. He regarded Tom with ancient eyes that seemed to tell all that this man had seen, none of which was pleasant.

"Good morning. My name is Doctor Robert Allen. I will be overseeing your session today with Patient 64983. I trust you have read his portfolio?" Allen asked, staring at Tom as if he already knew everything about him. For all Tom knew, Allen already did.

"Yes. I just reviewed it," Tom said.

"Then, let me explain to you the rules. You will address him as Sir. That is the only way he will talk. We know nothing about his actual name, just that he likes to be called Sir. You will not hand him anything. If you have something to show him, you will give it to me to hold while he reads it. You will not make any physical contact with this man. Do you understand these restrictions?"

"Yes, but is all of this really necessary? We have never had a doctor such as yourself here and I think he is in perfectly capable hands." Dr. Robert Allen smiles a smile that, coupled with his eyes, chills Tom to his bones.

"You are Doctor Tom McCall. You have been working at this hospital for eighteen years. I know you think you have seen all there is to see, but, after thirty years as a consulting doctor for mental hospitals all over the nation, I have never seen anything like this. Do you understand? Good. Bring him in."

The door on the other side of the room opened. A man was wheeled in on a contraption that reminded Tom of a dolly used to move heavy objects. The man was wearing a strait jacket with heavy leather belts restraining him to the dolly-like contraption. A muzzle was tightly secured over his mouth. Never in all his years had he seen someone with this number of restraints.

Aside from the restraints, he resembled a perfectly normal man.

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His dark brown hair was neatly combed down, and his prison jumpsuit underneath was neat and tidy. What scared Tom most about the man were his eyes. They were perfectly calm, yet there was something else. The eyes are said to be windows into the soul, but this man's eyes showed very little. There was intelligence as well as slight amusement in his eyes but also something sinister looking lurking in the background.

"Hello, Doctor McCall. No, that sounds to formal. May I call you Tom?" The man, Sir, asked with his voice slightly muffled by the muzzle over his mouth.

"Tom is fine with me, Sir," Tom said.

"Excellent. Now, I have been told that you are going to talk to me. Very well. I will be happy to answer whatever you ask of me and engage in conversations about whatever you want. I will not, however, talk with Robert around. I must ask you to leave. I know it is short notice and that this request makes you uncomfortable, Robert, but I will be on my best behavior. You may leave me restrained. Just as well I cannot speak to two doctors at once. That ruins the point of doctor-patient confidentiality.

Wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t you agree? Being a man who has done this for thirty years, I knew you would. Thank you for understanding Robert.

You may go now."

The man said this last part very quickly and Dr. Allen looked almost confused. He then stood up, looking almost sick, reassured himself that in no way could Sir get out of his restraints, reassured Tom of this fact, and left the room, standing close by the door outside.

"Alright Tom, you may begin whenever you are ready," the man said in a calm, almost soothing voice.

"Very well. How are you doing?"

"Please don't waste my time with the regular ********. I absolutely detest those who try to make idle conversation in order to get into what they believe to be a more comfortable place to bring up a sensitive subject. In order to better our conversation, I will only answer questions that are not completely trivial to the topic at hand. Does that sound agreeable to you, Tom?" 92

Tom studied the man very closely. He was indeed incredibly smart, but he was also manipulative. He was able to get Dr. Allen to do exactly what he wanted. His eyes sparkled with intensity as he observed Tom's studious face.

"Alright," Tom agreed. "Why did you ask to be alone with me? Just by looking at you, I can see that you have something to say, so why not say it in front of others?"

"Hmmm..." He breathed while looking at Tom. "Interesting question. Bravo, Tom. I wanted to tell my story to someone. When you first walked into the room, I knew it had to be you."

"Why me?"

"You are really improving upon your questions. Good work, Tom. I saw you look at me. I know what you see in me.

You see me as an insane monster when really, I am saner than anyone. You wanted to know earlier why I killed those people. I killed them because they were crazy. They were purely demented, and I killed them to save them from themselves. The things the police say on the autopsies that had to do with knife cuts, skinning, as well as all those other foul things they did to themselves.

I merely talked to them."

"Sir, forgive me for being rude, but you killed those people. You did."

"Consider yourself forgiven Tom, but you are wrong. I suppose you could consider that I killed them, but they did all the work themselves. The simple suggestions that I gave them only unlocked their insanity. Once you start talking to people you will be surprised at how they will open everything to you. After you find they have nothing else to hide, they are so easily susceptible to whatever suggestions you slip to them. 'Hang yourself.' 'Take the skin off of your head.' The human mind is a very powerful thing but can be weakened. In some cases, quite quickly. Why don't we see how long yours can last, doctor?â&#x20AC;?

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After saying this, the man leapt out of his restraints. Tom could see where he had cut the straps with the scalpel that Dr. Allen must have slipped him. Tom gave a bloodcurdling shriek and kicked out at the man. He easily evaded the blow and slammed Tom down in his chair. During this split second he tied the straightjacket around Tom, securing him to the chair.

"Now. Let's have some fun."

"Help! Somebody! Anybody! What do you want!" Tom screamed at the man standing before him.

"What I want, is to drive you insane. You needn't worry about anyone bothering us for quite some time. I had a talk with your buddy Mike as well as with Robert previously. They are long gone by now. However, just making you kill yourself simply will not do in this situation. Heavens no!"

"You sadistic ****!â&#x20AC;? Tom shouted.

"I will not physically harm you in any way, Tom. Of that, you can be sure. I am going to make you go insane. People everywhere have called me mad. Now, you will be even more insane than others claim I am. This is what is right. Madness is not simply something that you are but rather something that can be forced.

That's the funny thing about me. I always seem to know exactly what to say to people to drive them over the edge. I call it learning on the job. Before this is over, you will have the same ability as I. Now, let us begin."

Excerpt from a local newspaper: Psychologist Gone Mad â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Kills Two Colleagues and Emaciates Patient Doctor Tom McCall, noted psychologist of the Rhode Island State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, was found in a conference room holding a scalpel and muttering to himself. Mike Jackson, the security door operator for the room, as well as Doctor Robert Allen were found dead outside the room. Both had their 94

throats slit, and one had a scalpel in his hand. A patient was also found in the conference room. Identification of the patient has been rendered impossible, both due to the lack of information in the file found as well as the wounds sustained from Dr. McCall covering his face and chest. When asked what happened, Doctor McCall only shook his head and muttered "He talked to them. He made them do it. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not crazy. He wants everyone crazy. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not crazy."

Dr. McCall, while waiting for transportation to the general hospital, started screaming when the man came out. McCall claimed the man was laughing at him. He started to convulse on the ground until they removed the man on a gurney. As the unidentified patient was being loaded into the ambulance, he regained consciousness and, tuning to McCall, spoke. His exact words were "Do you see now? They think you are mad. They thought I was mad. You were able to handle it. The victims were simply testing my power. You were the real challenge. How does it feel to be like this doctor? They will never know what went on behind those doors.â&#x20AC;? At this point, McCall ran to where the man was and proceeded to bite his throat out. The man laughed until he died. McCall was placed under arrest. He now sits in the county jail, awaiting trial.

This newspaper clipping as well as a document detailing all the events that had transpired were placed into one were placed into an envelope. He carefully omitted everything that went on during his time with the man in the interviewing room.

Tom put the letter into an envelope and sealed it. On the outside he wrote "What do you know of madness?" Tom then called the guard down to his cell. When the guard arrived, Tom told him what had happened in the conference room and gave him the letter. The guard ran down the hall to the trash can and vomited.

When he rushed back, Tom was already dead. Tom was sitting in his chair, with his shirt off, and the pen he used to write the letter was shoved in his throat. When asked what Tom's final words were, the guard would never say. The police chief, however, noticed a change in the behavior of the guard. The change was mostly in his eyes. They now looked calm and intelligent. There was just something about them that put the chief on edge. It was almost as if something was lurking right below the surface. Something sinister and dark and as old as time itself. The chief dismissed it as nothing.

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Stardust

By Spencer Sundberg

What really is existence If not stardust

Merely particles of space Floating in proximity

Floating Waiting Begging

For some greater purpose A direction to go Any fulfillment at all

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A sense that what we are is more than stardust More than particles of space More than what we fear to believe

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The Strength I’ve Gained

by Prophecy Wilson

April 17, 2016 – the first day I seriously considered harming myself. I found out news that, at the time, was the end of the world. I was defeated. I was alone. I was prepared. I was scared. Scared of my thoughts. Scared of the scars that would follow. Scared of what my family would think. After hours of debate between me and my head, I decided against it. I decided I could push past this pain. I went to the school the next day – a smile on my face, showing no signs that I was alone and in severe pain. It would all go away, right?

March 15, 2017 – the first time I felt dissociated with my body.

Laying in pool chairs with my best friends looking out at the beach in Turks and Caicos. I didn’t feel me. I felt outside of myself. I went quiet for a few minutes – not sure of what this feeling was. Was life real? Was I just feeling this way because I was in an unfamiliar place that seemed like a fantasy? I snapped back into reality, still confused, though. I didn’t say anything to my friends; I just pretended everything was okay (as usual). I returned home the next week. I was doing homework, headphones in my ears. I started to shake. I felt dissociated again. I tried to push it away that night, but I couldn’t. I quickly ran downstairs and opened up to my parents about how I was feeling – but ended the conversation by saying I was probably overreacting and that I’ll be fine. It would all go away, right?

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September 9, 2017 – the day my sweet grandma, Gran Jan, passed away. I knew her journey was coming to an end that day. My cousins, aunt, uncle, and entire family visited her at her assisted living home – hoping to hold on to the last moments they had with her. But instead of comforting her and my family, I decided a birthday party was more important than her that day. My sister texted me, “She passed.” I ran outside, and immediately the tears came rushing out. The guilt quickly rushed over me. How could I have been so selfish to not be with her? How could I do that to her? She had mental health issues her entire life and had suppressed them – similar to what I was doing. I felt her pain, and for some reason I didn’t go see her to say goodbye to her and her pain. Maybe I thought I would feel less pain if I didn’t have to witness her taking her last breath. I missed her already. I wiped my tears away and walked back inside. I told all of my friends I was okay with a smile on my face. It would all go away, right?

October 6, 2017 – the first time I had an anxiety attack. It was the day of my junior year homecoming. That day was already stressful as is – 7 a.m. cheer practice, Pre-K pep rally at 8:30 a.m., parade at 1:50, pep rally at 2:20, homecoming pictures at 4:00, homecoming game at 6:30, and homecoming dance at 9:00. As I was waiting in the gym to go to the parade, I started to see silver dots everywhere, and I begin shaking and crying uncontrollably.

What was happening to me? Snap out of it. You’re okay. I hugged my coach and best friend who calmed me down. Anxiety had gotten the best of me that day and many days after, but to me it wasn’t worth going to anyone about it to get help. It would all go away, right?

October 8, 2018 – the day my parents told me they had found a good therapist for me – the day I realized it does not all go away.

I had suppressed my mental health issues for nearly three years, but I finally found the strength to tell my parents about my problems. Senior year hit a lot harder than expected – trusting people I shouldn’t, making irreversible mistakes, doing college applications, working 10-15 hours a week, being Co-Editor-in-Chief of the yearbook and Co-Captain of the cheer team. Everything piled up. Everything hit at once. I couldn’t push it aside any longer.

I’m finally going to get the help I needed all along .

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These past few weeks I have been more vulnerable than ever. I have opened up to my friends and family about my mental health problems. I have admitted that I need help. Three years ago, I never would have thought I would get help. I didn’t think I needed it, and I refused to believe it would help. Every day is a fight to stay alive, but every day is worth that fight. I am a fighter.

I am strong. I am brave. I am me. I refuse to be blind to the light at the end of the tunnel. My eyes are opening, and I am ready.

Although my story is not the worst of them of all, it’s mine. This is my story. This is me. This is the strength I’ve gained.

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My Heart

By Abbey Stejskal

clenched throat stopped lungs burning eyes ragged breath breath like the last time I heard her breathe

harsh, forced, the noise of air blown through a plastic straw I hear her voice I replay her message over and over and over and over and itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s her I crave her voice it hurts to hear but it hurts to not hear she left me one last letter her letter is in her perfect handwriting

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the last line Remember, sweetheart, that I love you so very much!

I want to hear her voice say that I listen to her message

I memorize her voice I try to say it in my head the way she would

my hair no longer wet from my shower but from my tears that fall down my face, graze over my cheek, kiss my ear, and land in my hair I wipe my tears on my blanket I try not to cry

it hurts too much to cry gasping for breath an anxiety attack as I remember her as I remember she is not here as I remember my life before as I remember her eight months ago when she left that message that I keep replaying maybe if I play it enough Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll memorize it maybe if I play it enough Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll never forget her voice

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maybe if I play it enough she’ll come back she’ll stand in front of me she’ll say Remember, sweetheart, that I love you so very much! then it won’t hurt

to live then I can stop wheezing like she did lying in that hospital bed in her room the hospital bed an unwelcome guest in her home the tumor an unwelcome guest in my heart

I don’t keep living on for me I live for others I live for my sister I live for my mom I live for my dad I live for my friends I live for my teachers I live for my heart because if I don’t live then my heart stops beating then who will remember her?

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she is too much to be forgotten or overlooked she is the blood through my veins continuously, tirelessly, she gives me life

in her death she gives me love in my pain I still canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t breathe Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m wheezing and gasping for air but my heart will keep pumping whether I can steal any oxygen or not

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What Death Did to Me

By Hailey Hobbs

I never felt Deathâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s pain until that day, I was ignorant of what grief even was.

But even so, Death was coming full force at me, hurting me where I was most vulnerable.

Death took a loved one straight from me, But Death didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t care.

Death wanted me to hurt, To mourn, To be angry.

And all of those things I was, and more.

Death enjoyed my pain.

Death made me cry for endless months.

I never slept, and I never thought I would again.

Death made me put a guard up.

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I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t trust anyone.

I was scared to be vulnerable.

Death made me fear the future.

I worried about my family.

I wanted to know things would be ok.

Three years later and I still wonder, Why Death would want a fourteen-year-old girl to go through so much pain.

But life is filled with unanswered questions, And why Death did this will always be one of them

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La Riposte Della Figlia Piangente

by Madeleine Roberts

tandem corripuit sese atque inimica refugit…

So long he watched me standing there Shielding my eyes On the top of that marble stair‒ Leaning against a hot urn in the sun The wound still fresh‒ I threw the elegiac flowers and turned to run: There, on that shining marble stair.

How I wish I did not have to leave How I wish I could have stood and grieved How I should be completed

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To watch the dismal scene repeating To prevent my battered soulâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s retreating.

I should think It could not have happened with feigned tenderness

A way he looked in my pained eyes to find, To chain the wily past at the surface of the mind.

I turned away, but now my luckless spirit wanders Through golden memories of many days, So many days, so many hours Me loving him and him offering flowers.

To wonder what might have happened otherwise!

You might have framed me standing there.

Sometimes still this blurry logic haunts The vivid sunshine and the autumn air. .

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I Am the Dead Thing Below

by Nahal Suzanne Jamir

after Oz Perkins1

the birds that I see circling while I drive to nowhere

I drive to be not-with people, now my mother who is dying wants to she says and it’s okay because she’s old she’s been talking about her death papers death rituals death dreams death for her whole life she was born dead a dead thing and she tried to make me one too by telling me by telling the not-yet story of her death and after saying

when I die you’ll spit on my grave

the birds that I see

circling while I drive

I drive to not-be 1

director, I A m the Pretty Thing That Loves in This House (2016) 109

not me I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t feel at home in this body any more my father said my mother says the same thing now my father compared his displacement to three-dimensional geometric figures floating in space colliding not-atoms too big too ever-present and not everywhere

never trust atoms they make up everything except for

the birds that I see

circling while I

which dad jokes werenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t six-feet under

I drive to not-me to unknot me I have place dysmorphia and we talk about body dysmorphia because we are so, so many bodies, dying animals, as my dude Yeats says, all bodies no body

My mother is old and old things die my father was not and should have had no death rituals but his shapes made one up while leaving disappearing into three axes mother, sister, me He made up everything young

everything

up of life after twenty-four

rituals fill space like me like

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too old too

the birds that I see

circling

I wonder if it’s always the same birds always the same dead thing male or female young or old or middle-aged or suicide or lung cancer or the real scare of death or the existential fear of

Waiting to exhale and all that jazz my own death should be jazz hands I lift my hands from my father’s throat neck mouth from my mother’s chest—maybe of cancer cells, that unlike atoms, make up nothing—from the steering wheel to do jazz hands and smile smile like a camel about to spit

We are called camel herders We are brown things from the dessert We are not-people We are not with people We are not-be not me knot not knot knock knock who’s there?

the birds that I see

the rotten brown thing that cannot breathe because it has no place but below but looking up at a circle Who can escape a circle—or draw a perfect one

the birds that I see are not after all, at least, not for mother

cancer

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is not,

I look down from the sky to the road

no place

Elsewhere, my mother is dying and not-dying and maybe at the last moment an atom made up a beautiful lying dream about ruling over the place, an ancient Greek war where one warrior takes on anotherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s armor, where I am

that contained the beauty so a war would be fought over it over place over above about

the birds

I see

a butterfly, swooping like a super-hero, but itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s just science-y, aerodynamics this timeâ&#x20AC;Ś..geometry

wings are like hands and hands shake and jazz like jazz into wings jazz into freedom

I look at the road through the glass through a glass, darkly 112

though I try not to and see a small spot of blood on the windshield and wonder what Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve killed

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Soldier’s Homecoming

by Holden Crumpler

It was a rainy day when he finally came home. He had been through a **** like no other. He knew everyone would be waiting for him. He knew they would all expect the same cheerful person they knew when he left. He knew they would be expecting one more person with him. He knew they would be disappointed.

He had lost his best friend. His friend had a wife. They were planning on starting a family when he got back.

The soldier had a girlfriend. She was so sweet. She would never be able to hear what he had to say. She got sick at horror movies, even when you could almost see the wires on the fake limbs. His other friends would stare at him if he told them. They might see him as a freak. He wouldn’t want to risk it.

As he walked through the airport, he saw them. His girlfriend, his best friend’s wife, a crowd of friends that was merely a faceless mass. They were all smiling. The banner above them read “Happy Homecoming!” They must not have gotten the news.

The soldier cursed under his breath. He had charged enemy positions on missions considered suicidal and helped a man hold his guts in while bullets ripped over his head, yet this was the first time he had trembled in two years. He would have given anything to be back in the desert rather than right here.

They all clapped when they saw him. The clapping ceased almost immediately when they saw, though, the defeated, saddened expression on his face.

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It was his friend’s wife that approached the soldier first.

He saw the tears forming in her eyes as she walked up to him.

When she got to him, he didn’t need to relay the news. She already knew. His friend’s wife collapsed into him, heaving with sobs. He held her tightly as tears slid down his face. He wanted to tell her it would be okay, but he couldn’t bring himself to say that. Instead, he told her that they were going to bring him out if she wanted to see the coffin. She begged him to take her. The soldier gently guided her over to the back of the plane, where cargo was being unloaded. The soldier’s girlfriend followed. When the coffin, draped in the red, white, and blue of the American flag, slid out of the plane, the wife cried even harder on him. He held her close, still. He wrapped his free arm around his girlfriend. She was stuck in a state of shock. The once smiling faces had been lost, replaced by tears.

The soldier took charge. He told everybody thank you and to go home and be with their loved ones. He postponed the party until a later date and everyone left, leaving behind tears and condolences and apologies. He guided his girlfriend to the front seat of their car and his best friend’s wife to the backseat to go home with them; he wouldn’t leave her alone like this. He then saw the sign that was left behind. “Happy Homecoming!” Tears streaked down the soldier’s face. He wiped them away and rolled up the banner, placing it in the back of the car. He took one last distant look at the coffin, as it was being transported from the tarmac to the waiting hearse. He saluted.

He hated that he lived, and his best friend died. He hated that he received this welcome and his friend did not. He sighed.

At least he was home. Welcome home man, he thought. Happy Homecoming. He sighed again as he got in the car with the girls and began the drive home. He would burn the poster later.

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She Looked to the Stars

by Clara Catherine Lunny

She looked to the stars, On a clear night.

She looked to the stars, Millions perfectly freckled across the sky, And rested her arms on the stone wall.

Waves retaliated against its sides, Reflecting the pale moonlight.

Unsure, The Clouds blurred the night sky.

Dark yet familiar, It began.

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“What are you doing?” they whispered.

“I don’t know,” she replied.

“Where are you going?” they yelled.

“I don’t know,” she called back.

“When will it end?” they roared.

She closed her eyes, Pulled the night air into her lungs, And breathed.

Quiet, she opened them once more, The night sky was clear.

Now,

All she feels is the breeze of the wind in her hair, And the chill of the stone against her skin.

Now,

She gazes into the stars.

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Wilted

by Lexi O’Rourke

The other day I couldn’t bring myself to stop staring at the wall, accepting the reality that I couldn’t feel anything; rather, I didn’t have a desire to feel anything. Clouds of people who broken their promises continued to taunt, mock me. The voices wouldn’t stop. Eventually, they turned into faint whispers. Barely able to make out what they were saying, I made up my own ideas of what they were. I constantly twiddled at the tips of my fingers, reminiscing on the black paint that sang to them. I had my headphones tucked inside of my ears, hoping that they would block out the sounds not only of others, but also the ones in my head.

Jeremy Zucker’s “all the kids are depressed” serenades my aching eardrums. The song becomes more relatable as the day continues. ...

Later that day, driving home makes things seem like a simulation. I realized it’s all so systematic: wake up, am depressed, go to school, contemplate my purpose, go home, cry myself to sleep. Every time I drive down this stupid road it’s so repetitive. I think of all the times I’ve ended up crying here, drowning in my sorrows, hoping that one day I’ll feel whole again. …

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I texted my ex-boyfriend and asked him if it was okay for me to come to his house and drop off flowers for his family. His dad was diagnosed with stage four brain cancer and might not make it much longer. He texted back “of course!” like he always did, always so kind and giving. But I know that no matter how many times he texts me like that, he wants to murder the lion that has destroyed his father.

…

I got to the house not really knowing what to expect. I hugged my ex and he told me it was good to see me. I couldn’t say the same because I’d never seen him in that much pain. He’d never really been through anything incredibly difficult, so I’m sure that when his father’s life was put at risk, he didn’t know what to do. I set the flowers down on the table, immersed in used tissues, pill bottles, endless doctor’s notes. His father began to slowly walk out of his bedroom, holding onto his wife for support. Veins sculpted the top of his head where the doctors performed the brain surgery. Overcome with embarrassment, he put on a baseball cap. He couldn’t remember much (mainly short term things), like what he ate last, or what day it was, or when his daughter was getting married. As the mother and I spoke more and more, his father began to stare at the wall, similar to the way I had earlier that day. But this is different. I didn’t want to feel anything; he didn’t have a choice. In this moment, I saw him diminish, staring at the blank slate as if he could imagine what else he would be doing, saying, thinking. Instead, he had no choice, but to blatantly gaze, wanting to feel something. …

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I drove home that day with patches of rose petals in the front seat of my car, resembling the memories that left his brain, the things he wished he couldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve said. His mind was those flowers; nourished with water, sunlight, eventually to rot, and fade. As clichĂŠ as it sounds, I realized that I never really appreciated the moments I have to live, until I saw someone who had no choice but not to. â&#x20AC;Ś Rain tickles my windshield. I try to find the differences in my days now, appreciating the continuity of this life and the ability for me to recognize my existence.

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Las Flores, La Mesa, y El Cielo

Rachel Abbott and Ann Bannerman McFarlain

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Shadow

By Abbey Stejskal

early evening mountain air my weakness I snuck out of the room full of family members I vaguely remembered or had never known theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re all here for you the moment I looked through the window I knew it was maybe 50 out I walked out onto the dewy grass

took off my heels carried them across the field carefully as if they were important things

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my eyes locked onto the horizon I walked until my feet were numb from the cool air and grass blades tickling my feet

the wind whispered your love into my ears

I made it to the top of the hill the wet grass didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t bother me lying in it looking at the sky

you wouldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve loved it maybe you are it did you paint the sky that pink just for me? pinks purples oranges blues yellows colored clouds became halos filling the atmosphere my knees to my chest I sing and worship a God

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who I have to know is taking care of you He is helping you paint the skies shows you how to use light as medium water vapor as canvas

your only audience a seventeen-year-old girl looking up at your masterpiece crying singing wishing missing

tomorrow we let go not really but that’s what we’re told I’m supposed to find closure I won’t there’s a shadow

looming over me I’m cold underneath it the sun choked out

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that’s what missing you is a shadow over me a blanket of cold empty

can’t escape

knowing that they’re all in that room

125

Where I Belong

By Anna Kate Daunt

“Roll on thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll. Man marks the earth with ruin, but his control stops at the shore.” ~Lord Byron I don’t remember the first time I went to the beach. Or the last time I went to the beach, for that matter. My beach trips all kind of clump together in my brain like some incongruous mass of ideality: a world where sunshine never ends, where the days are always longer than the nights, where crystal waters and shimmering skies unite to form a horizon that stretches to infinity.

My grandmother loved the beach, as much, if not more, than I do. She always enjoyed having a little friend to share her love of the ocean.

When I was a baby, we would venture to the beach, where she would sweep my curls into a messy updo, carry me down to the shore, and dangle my feet into the water. I can imagine how her face lit up at my laughs and smiles each time a wave crashed onto my feet.

Every year, we would return to the ocean: swimming, surfing, sunbathing, and forging new salt soaked memories among the sandy beaches we called home.

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However, when I was sixteen-years-old, all this drastically changed. I still remember the night I heard the news. It was a seemingly regular school night in late August; yet my seven siblings and I were sprawled on our living room carpet bawling our eyes out. I couldn’t think or feel; I refused to think or feel. It had just been a couple months ago when my grandmother started acting abnormally. The doctors told her she had a vitamin B12 deficiency. That’s it, they reassured us, a couple injections and she’d be back to normal. Four months and many doctor appointments later, they recounted previous allegations that this was a simple Vitamin B12 deficiency. These past few months, my grandmother had developed a rare degenerative brain disorder that had slowly deteriorated her, from the inside out. My greatest fears of not being in control engulfed me as I witnessed her gradual decline. I was a helpless bystander to the inevitable. Four weeks later, on September 18, 2017, she passed away.

A couple of months ago, I returned to the beach for the first time since her death. As I paraded down to the crystalline waters, surfboard in hand, I reminisced on the times I had enjoyed these waves with my grandmother at my side. Her absence wasn’t right. Nor was surfing that day. When I finally caught a wave, my board nosedived and violently tossed me into the tumultuous current. I struggled underneath the current, petrified. For a couple of seconds, I subconsciously believed I was drowning. Yet, when I finally emerged from the pulsing waters, I exhaled a breath of clarity. Although this was certainly not the first time I had experienced this sensation, the energy, the greater force that overtook me, that current, was scary. Yet, I realized, every time I’ve encountered a current such as this, I’ve come out on top with a new perspective, with a new strength. These waves put me in my place. It’s only in times like these, times when I feel like I’m drowning, am I reminded that a greater force exists. That there is something greater than me, and despite my beliefs of the contrary, something, someone, in control of my life, and that’s a good thing. Sure, if I was in control, my life would be easy, but I would never be able to grow and learn from the obstacles I’ve faced.

Times have been rough, and my journey in this life has been far from easy, but there is more than just me. Like my grandmother before me, I will return to the tides in all stages of my life to remember these truths.

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Writing Through the Pain

by Isabel Hutchinson

For Ansley.

“I want to remember her more than I remember her dying.” – as written in my journal entry from August 29, 2015.

The day is February 8, 2015. It is 6:45 am, and I have not slept in twenty-three hours. I roll out of bed and look in the mirror through the narrow opening in my swollen eyes to find the personification of grief staring back at me: my hair matted, my face puffy, my body aching, and my heart heavy as a stone in my chest. Twenty-four hours earlier, I received news that would change my life forever. To this day, I cannot remember the phone call; I think that some pain runs so deeply that our brains don’t let us remember it. One of my lifelong friends had been killed, ripped from my reality and succumbed to mortality.

I met death far before I was ready, at the age of only fourteen. As a child, I was aware that death existed, but there existed an illusion of it being infinitely far away and a feat that would never come for me. I had the childhood innocence that once existed in us all. I did not know that someone so incredibly alive could become so incredibly dead, just like that.

Through the darkest days of my life, though, I found parts of myself that may have otherwise never arisen. There was a strength in simply having the will to live without her, to exist while she didn’t. For a while, there was no relief to be found, but I was okay 128

with that. Heartbreak seemed necessary to have her still with me.

But time doesn’t stop, and she kept getting farther away.

My therapist told me to try writing, writing to her and writing for me. But I hated English and she was dead and ink on paper wasn’t going to bring her back to me.

I could not have been more wrong. Through Ansley being killed, I discovered the best medicine, a form of resurrection, and a newfound passion, all in the form of marks on paper. Writing saved me at a time when I was incapable of saving myself. In Tim O’Brien’s novel The Things They Carried, he notes that through writing “the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world,” and that is precisely what happened. When my black ink slides across paper or my fingers fall onto these keys, she is here with me again, and she is alive again, and I am okay again. I am able to play God through my words: see her blue eyes, hear her infectious laugh, experience her infinite joy to be alive. Through writing, I steal her back, and I can still feel her soul. Through these words, Ansley is infinite.

I wish that it didn’t take a terrible, gut wrenching, and life changing tragedy for me to discover my deepest passion on this earth. But on this page, I feel powerful, and I feel healed. She is not dead, not to me. I am a vessel where somehow she still exists, and Ansley reminds me every day why my words will never cease to matter. Writing brought her back to me, and now and forevermore, it is the two of us together, writing through the pain.

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Cosmo

Ethan Tetreault

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Found

by Victor Oguledo

shattered quiet Then a piercing cry broke the silence "Fire! I see a fire!"

Another scream jolted us.

"Jews; listen to me," she cried, "Have mercy on me!" Mrs. Schacter continued to scream.

She again received several blows to the head, blows that normally could have been lethal Madness had infected all of us The night seemed endless; only tore us apart

It was nothing compared to her screams, which

There was nothing.

The abyss opening beneath us Pained me even more as I started to breathe.

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wheels on the tracks

I listened to the rhythmic pounding of the We were pulling into our anguish Auschwitz Nobody had ever heard that

name

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Imaginary Things

by Nahal Suzanne Jamir

My mother hates imaginary things. She tells me stories, and when I ask her, “Aren’t those imaginary?”—she tells me imagination in her country is practical. The Persian poets spoke of God. How is God practical? My mother’s stories create her, make her a different mother, a mother who is a young woman in her rightful place. She asks to read my stories and claims I haven’t got it right, that I think I’m too smart.

A picture of my mother. She stands on a lakeshore, looks into the distance. My mother is looking at a man who is not my father. Perhaps, she loves him. Nothing else explains her expression—daring and inviting. Should this man walk on water? Is he her kind of prophet? The sun sublimates. Palm trees shimmer more than water on cloud-white days.

My mother explains there was a picnic on this shore of the river Shatt al-Arab in Abadan, where she went to nursing school right before immigrating to the U.S. At this picnic, a young man, Japanese, flirted with her. He invited her back to his apartment. He was leaving the next day and wanted to get to know her. My mother was smarter than this.

There’s another picture on this shore, the dock this time.

My mother with one raised eyebrow, with her Marilyn Monroe beauty mark. I imagine Cary Grant in black and white. He would suck her beauty mark off with a kiss.

My then mother tells me about a crazy American who was in love with her. He was smart, getting his Ph.D. She was smarter.

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And this American, he was smart-stupid. He won an award for being a racecar driver. He abandoned the Ph.D. Again, my mother got away.

My stories fail.

I tell my mother I love these old pictures because she looks ready to fight. I try to explain to her this American word, sassy. She just rambles about being smart. About Abadan. The Shatt-al Arab was the river between Iran and Iraq, made of two rivers (Euphrates and Tigris), the fine line between this and that.

My mother, me. You could see the other country from the shore. You could see the soldiers and the fight coming. You could see the water, the sun on the water, and the dock. The palm trees. The corn on the cob, so American. Your mother with nothing in her eyes but the vista before her.

There was one fight and then another. A family, too.

You could see it all coming.

Lonely now, my mother tells me sad stories, and I want her to laugh more. To tell me again and again how smart she was. The words come out of her mouth, and I want to slip my tongue in. Nothing intellectual or metaphoric about it—no two rivers merging, no speaking with one tongue. My mother was a goddess, but now she cannot be a myth. She was that American term, a sexpot. Was? Always. In black and white. Now. Technicolor. Like the Wizard of Oz. But not the Scarecrow, for my mother—she was smart. Let’s look at the Tin Man without a heart, the Lion without courage, and the girl who misses home and that happy ending and its return. Does the girl really get to go home?

My father, now dead, was smarter than she. American smart. So am I. This is my story. Should I try again, Mother?

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Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

by Dylan Burhans

Dr. Jekyll leaned over the test tube. The bright blue liquid inside the old test tube caused a pale, gray smoke to billow out the top. Dr. Jekyll added a drop of a new mixture he concocted into the test tube. The liquid turned a dark shade of red, like blood. After two years of hard work, the potion was now complete. All that was left was to test it. Dr. Jekyll cautiously picked up the vial, his hand shaking. He stared at it nervously, then leaned his head back, and poured the liquid down his throat. Suddenly, he was hit with a violent seizure. He fell on the floor, thrashing about. He felt sharp pains all over his body, as if every muscle was lit on fire. His throat hurt most of all. Dr. Jekyll grasped at his neck, foolishly thinking this would alleviate the pain. But it was too much, and he blacked out.

While Dr. Jekyll was unconscious, an intruder rummaged through the lab. The intruder was Mr. Hyde, who was so wretched in appearance and demeanor one could not even call him human. His green skin was stretched across his bones like a ghoul. Shaggy, gray hair stuck matted to his head. His irises were a dark yellow. He continued to search the lab until he found a bottle of alcohol and a Bunsen burner. His eyes lit up with delight as he held up his prizes. He cackled and left the lab.

Outside, in the small town of Southold, Mr. Hyde crept along the sidewalk. It was late at night, so no one was around.

The darkness fell over the atmosphere like a shroud. Mr. Hyde stopped in front of a small tavern. He tore a piece of his coat off, stuck it into the alcohol bottle so part of it stuck out like a fuse.

He turned on the Benson burner, and lit the piece of fabric. He 135

threw the bottle into the windows, and watched the bar catch on fire. He smiled as the flames danced around, the light reflecting off his eyes.

Dr. Jekyllâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s eyes shot open. He sat up. He was still laying on the floor, a pool of vomit underneath him. Groggy, he clutched his forehead. He got up and looked around his lab, the door was left open, which was odd because he always locked it up for the night. He realized the Benson burner was gone, and upon further investigation, saw that the bottle of alcohol he kept in the cabinet was gone as well. He got cleaned up, ignoring the tear in his coat, and stumbled outside. As he walked home, a firetruck sped past him. For some reason, he decided to follow the firetruck, as if he was drawn to it. He followed it all the way to a local bar, which had burned down in the night. He asked a nearby police officer and learned some psychopath threw a molotov cocktail through the window. Three people were killed, five more were injured.

Dr. Jekyll arrived home. He went into the bathroom. He turned the faucet on and started to wash his face with cold water to try and wake up. Suddenly, he was hit with a sharp pain. It spread though his body. Every sinew burned. Dr. Jekyll screamed. He looked in the mirror. He saw himself change. His skin turned green. His hair became gray. His eyes turned yellow.

His skin stretched over his bones. Dr. Jekyll became Mr. Hyde, and Mr. Hyde became Dr. Jekyll, and eventually Dr. Jekyll didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know who he was anymore.

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A Philosophical Upgrade in Inquiries While Sitting on the Tarmac

By Jackson Hugill

Do I close or open my eyes upon take off of my airplane?

If I were going to die, would I want to know or not.

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Sometimes Never

by Spencer Sundberg

Sometimes My chest burns like the devil himself has thrown a torch in my lungs My throat constricts where I can’t even gasp for oxygen My whole entire body screams I can’t b r e a t h e

I say it again I can’t b r e a t h e Why is nobody hearing me right now I said that I can’t b r e a t h e If I have to say it again I will burn from the inside out I will be no more I will have never existed I never was

For Tony Hoagland

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I Love You

Ashlynn Moayad

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Letting Go

by Haley Mainwaring

Sometimes I wonder why I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t let you go, But I look down at my hands: white and strained from holding onto you like my life depended on it.

Like if I were to remove my grasp I would fall and never be able to recover.

I wish I understood that with falling came freedom.

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The Difference between You and Me

By Anna Kate Daunt

Why I hear in two voices: I meant it when I said I love you.

Why I am still hurt: I meant it when I said I love you.

Why I miss you: I meant it when I said I love you.

Why I can grieve you:

I never lied to myself.

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Untitled.

by Lexi Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Rourke

sometimes i go to the spot we used to gaze upon the horizon of berry blue and scarlet blood

singing with one another in harmony among the faint glow of the sun. the sky is lilac

yet we reflect our own colors our own beings separated in a way that a sunset resists. we didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t work

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maybe because the sky blended in a way we never could.

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Salt

by Mary Allison Mccue

i dream about nothing. i used to keep clean, pristine images of you in my dresser drawer. but i’ve long since moved out, and i’ve forgotten what you looked like as you peeled the skin off of your teeth and placed it in my hands.

i keep my head on a string for youspinning in circles, making myself sick.

i’ve wasted all of my time in silence, tracing cold fingertips on ribcages, my hot cheeks pressed against the glass.

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but i have to keep this sorrow separate. pat my tortured thoughts on the head, congratulating myself for not crying on a Monday.

you pick at scabs on your kneecaps while you laugh at me. i watch my languid flesh sink below my cheekbones, revealing that i am nothing but bones.

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Addiction

by Isabel Hutchinson

You had me in your fingertips, Addicted from the first innocent kiss.

Even now, sometimes I wake up in the dead of night

With the shakes and sweats, to remember you’re nowhere in sight.

The thing about being hooked, The high outweighs the pain.

My love for you would’ve crossed oceans, but was overlooked.

I should’ve known you’d drive me insane.

To the boy that was too small to love me, Do you have withdrawals, too? .

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Or am I as alone as I feel, struggling while youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re carefree?

I wish the love left me as quickly as it left you.

I am an addict, twenty months clean.

I guess thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s what I get for falling in love at fifteen.

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Attracting Opposites

by Logan Sundberg

leave you came running back stay you walked away love you gave me pain my words seem to never hold rein .

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Wanderers

by Haley Mainwaring

I feel the world crumble between my fingers like a broken promise.

A sigh.

A thousand thoughts in a single breath, gone unsaid.

I want to convey my inner self with you, expose the raw essence of my being.

But I do not speak, because I do not want it to come out wrong.

False, lies.

I do not want to scare you away.

So I gaze into my soul, then your eyes.

Can you see me?

Do you know me?

I want to be understood by you.

Kindred Spirits.

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Wandering through a fallen place.

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White Jesus

by Jackson Hugill

Yelllllo, you’ve reached white jesus not to be confused with real normal jesus what can I do ya for? (~)

The SunTrust bank by my house.

..

Ive never seen anyone enter it. all its slightly moldy glory.

Never.

And?

I don’t know

rid me of it?

classic.

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And yet, there it’s. In

~ When will I do? .?. *die?

................................................................ ..who are You?

~ Where does the sun shine when Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not there

Who do you think you are?

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~ Please get me to the front of this Zaxbys drive-thru line

*

~ Everything is red. (blood of my) Blood Red. Dark and Hot.

Congratulations.

~ there has to be something for me here what is it

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Why all the questions

~ Why all the sadness, the evil

you tell me

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~

Shall I join you

With that view, your attempts will be fruitless

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Prepositional Poem

by Abigail Hugill

up canvassed against the black sky, the stars , like no worries in the world except below life continues on over peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s frivolous & trivial problems despite peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s predicaments, upon the stars, against the existential nothingness, with no anguish before or after, the stars continue on

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Fortnite

by Kenny Tran

In Tilted Towers Throughout all the loot Inside Trump Tower Around the corner

Over the planks Down the stairs Despite the trap Beyond is a person Before you go Except you get pumped

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Life Unknown

by Emma Grace Bass

often think about life unknown all of the surroundings that i am oblivious to all of the white noise music i hear but will never remember all of the people that i pass by but will never know

all of the solar systems that our small world floats by but will never come into contact with there are so many experiences to be had so much knowledge to be known so many people to befriend so many places to be explored but i will never encounter any

it saddens me to contemplate all that exists around me but i will never see as iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m wasting away in the materialistic nonsense oh how insignificant my worries are compared to the life unknown

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Compartmentalization Alayna Cicchetti

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Within the System

by Ryan Daunt

During the day On the campus After the bell To the pods Through the door In the classroom To my desk Past the teacher With my friends Until the time ends

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The Ritual

by Dylan Burhans

Jack stared at his hands. They were already cracked and dry. He wanted nothing more than to leave the bathroom, ignore the tingling sensation he feels in his hands whenever he feels they are dirty, and move on with his life. However, his OCD compelled him to stand there in front of the faucet.

Jack used his right hand to turn the sink on. Cold water rushed out of the spigot. He soaked both his hands in the frigid water and grabbed the soap. He rubbed against his left palm five times, then against the back of his left hand five times. Next, he rubbed the soap against his right palm five times, but against the back of his right hand four times. He placed the bar back in its holder. Suddenly, the OCD interjected. Rub the bar if soap against the back of your right hand one more time. You donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want to get anyone sick, do you? Droplets of sweat formed on Jackâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s forehead. Panic formed in his stomach. His heart rate quickened. He couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t breathe. Quickly, he snatched up the bar and rubbed it against the back of his right hand one more time.

The panic subsided. His heart rate returned to normal. He was able to breathe again.

After placing the bar back into its holder, Jack resumed his hand washing ritual. He stuck his hands under the faucet so only a small amount of water got on them. He then proceeded to rub his hands together. Suds covered his hands. He made sure to get some of the suds under each fingernail by rubbing each one three times. He washed in between each finger. He washed up past his wrists. His hands started to burn. He wanted to stop. He

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begged the OCD to stop, but the OCD snapped back with, Someone will get sick if you stop washing now. Do you want that on your conscience? Jack thought of the people he could potentially hurt if he didn’t continue with the ritual. The OCD showed him children in the hospital, the elderly dying, his own family succumbing to illness. Tears welled in Jack’s eyes. “Oh God, please make it stop,” he pleaded. Finish the ******* ritual if you want it to stop, the OCD barked. “Shut the **** up!” Jack cried. Finish the ************* ritual, you piece of ****. *******you’re pathetic, the OCD scoffed. “**** me!” Jack yelled. He continued washing his hands. He made sure every square inch of his hands were covered in suds. His hands were searing with pain now.

Jack rinsed his hands. He grabbed a towel and started to blotch the water off. There was still some suds on his wrists, but he just wiped it off, doing his best to ignore the immense pain it caused.

Jack stared at his hands. They were cracked and dry.

Blood seeped through the cracks. He wished he could have been strong enough to leave the bathroom. But he wasn’t. He wanted to feel sad, but instead he felt empty, because he knew that sometime soon he would have to repeat the ritual.

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Mary Allison Mccue

Witness

Condemned

by Holden Crumpler

The condemned man sits in a cell on death row; his hands gripping the bunk with white knuckles. He is nervous. He knows today is the day. The only thing he can hear is the steady beating of his heart; a slow and rhythmic sound perfectly in time with the ticking of the wall clock outside his cell. The sudden opening of the block door startles him but he does not let it show. He hears the steady walking of shoes on the cold tiled floor. He is scared.

He will not let it show, better the guards don't see the fear of an innocent man on his face. He knows he did not murder that little boy but nobody else does. He does not care.

The cell door begins to slowly grind open. His heart rate quickens but his expression does not change. He knows who killed the boy, but no one would believe him when he dropped the warden's name. He would die either way, so he chose to go with dignity.

"Jim, it's time."

The warden. He had some nerve to be the one to bring him to the table. He knew the warden could sense his anger and hate and fear and he was feeding off it. He stood up and walked out. Footsteps now in perfect time with the clock. He continued the clock's ticking in his head after the clock was out of range.

Tick, tick, tick, tick. He was brought into the room where 4 other guards stood and was eased down upon the table. The warden stood over him, the ghost of a smirk on his face.

"Jim Kast, you are hereby sentenced to death by lethal injection by a jury of your peers. Do you have any last words?" He 164

said nothing for a full minute but, right as they were about to jam the needle home, he spoke.

"You won't get the satisfaction warden. One day you’ll get what’s coming to you. I just wish I could be alive to see it. However, I’ll still see it in death. Mark my words, your time will come." The warden gave the signal and the needle pierced his arm. He stared directly at the warden as the medication hit him.

He kept his stare until the life left his eyes, yet they still did not shut. They kept staring in silent and relentless condemnation.

The warden visibly became uncomfortable until the guards told him they needed to move the body. The warden left the room in a hurry. The guards reported he looked unsettled for the rest of the day. He was found the next morning at the bottom of his stairs in a pool of blood. There was a knife shoved through his throat. It had coated the floor with blood. The simple word "Justice" was painted on the wall. There were no fingerprints in the blood or on the knife. No forensic evidence anywhere. The killer could have been careful, but the probability that he or she would have left no sort of evidence is almost impossible.

However, there are those who, when asked about the murder simply say that Jim got his justice. There are those who wonder what they meant, but those who were in the execution room that day know. They saw the look in Jim’s eyes. They knew all too well exactly what happened.

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Trust Me

by Simon Corpuz

Track your schedule, Lest deadlines impact your life Like a ton of bricks.

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BTBYCB

by Holly Sims

September 3, 2007 I saw this thing on the bord today! It sed Be The Best You Can Be! Iznt that cul? I tuld mom and she sed that itz sum thing called insperashunul. It wuz riten in prety blu leters and my techur sed I shuld remember it in the futur. May b I will!

October 7, 2009 I missed 32 of my multiplication questions on my quiz today. I went home and I told dad and now I have too do them for an hour every night before bed. Its really boring and I don’t see why I need too do them so much. I do think I’m getting better with them though. One day I’ll be as fast as he is with them. Like he always tells me, Be the Best You Can Be. I’ll be the best!

November 11, 2011 I took a quiz today in mom’s Science class and I got a D- on it. I told her I read the chapter, and I did, but I just couldn’t remember everything in it. I know she’s disappointed in me because she wrote BTBYCB at the top of my paper with a frowny face in red pen, and she only puts those on my papers when I’ve done really bad. I’ll make it up, though. I had the best score out of the whole grade on my math test, so I just have to do it in science too! I’ll get there. I just need to read a bit longer each night. I’ll get there.

December 13, 2013 I have my Spanish midterm today. It’s not even for the Spanish 167

class I took last semester. My parents wanted me to see if I could move up to the next level of Spanish because they said the Spanish teacher I have right now is wasting my time. I agree with them. I know I can do better than what she’s asking us to do. All I need is to focus and study twice as hard as anybody else in the class. It’ll be fine, though. Mom stayed up almost all night with me to study flash cards of Spanish vocab! She was very persistent that I get them right. If I got one wrong, she’d draw a red X on my hand, and after 30 minutes of studying, she counted up the Xs and said that every X would be another day I’d have to stay home and study after school instead of go sleep over at my friend’s house if I didn’t pass the exam. When she dropped me off this morning, she wouldn’t unlock the car door until she got me to look into her eyes and hear her say “be the best you can be.” Let’s hope I did well! I’d miss my friends.

January 5, 2016 We’re all back in school now. Everybody wanted to see each other’s scores on our exams, but I didn’t want to share mine. I hate seeing my friends roll their eyes at me when I tell them I got a good score. They say things like, “Well, you would get that score, wouldn’t you?” and “I don’t know why I bother asking you that anymore. It always depresses me,” and “You know what? Forget I asked.” I mean, it’s not like they couldn’t also have gotten good scores if they’d studied as much as I had. So what I care about my future? I shouldn’t be shamed for that. Anyway, my mom and dad left me a note in my lunch today that said, “You’re halfway through the year. Keep up the good work, and BTBYCB.” I crumpled it up into my hand before I started eating my food.

Maybe it’s time I made a New Year’s Resolution, something along the lines of, “Make yourself seem more human to at least 5 people!” or “Don’t forget how to talk to people about something other than grades!” I took one bite of my sandwich today and threw the rest out.

February 14, 2017 Today was awful! I had to watch what felt like thousands of couples make googly eyes at each other all day. I swear, some people just yearn to be glued together at the hip, as if one single moment apart would cause them to crumble into a billion dust particles 168

that would scatter through the wind. I wonder what it must feel like, to be able to connect with someone that way; I wonder what is feels like to crave closeness with someone in a way that defies words. Or maybe it doesn’t. Maybe they just don’t have the words to quantify it. I bet if it were me, I would have the words.

Besides, my parents always say, “There will be someone out there for you some day. As long as you just keep being the best you can be, someday someone worthy of your time will realize how special you are, and you’ll be snatched up in a heartbeat.” I doubt it.

March 15, 2018 You know what’s nice? Certainty. I enjoy being so certain about my life right now. I get to watch all these other kids flounder around and struggle, asking themselves what they’re doing wrong. The answer is nothing. They aren’t doing anything wrong.

Just like I’m not doing anything right. Simply by virtue of existing as myself, of having the brain and the talent I have, I am doing everything just right. Some people simply aren’t born with the same advantages as other people.

I know my plan. I know that I am only going to take the SAT and the ACT one more time each so that I can get my scores up into the 99th percentile that they haven’t quite reached yet. I know that I am going to apply Early Decision to Harvard. I know that I am going to get in because I know that both of my parents went there and donate generously there each year. I know that I am going on the pre-med track, and I know that one day I’ll be the best cancer specialist in all of the Northeast, and eventually the United Sates.

And here’s one more thing. I know that I’m the best that I can be.

But I also know that my best has the ability to change. Every time I reach my new “best,” I just move the parameter a little higher.

And when I reach it again, I move it again.

Right now, I feel invincible. I don’t know if I’ll ever stop.

May 23, 2019 Well. It appears I was correct. I took my tests. I filled out my applications. I got into the school I wanted.

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So, if I did all that, why do I feel so empty?

Why do I feel hollow?

Why do I feel like if someone were to reach out their hand and congratulate me on my exceptional work, their hand would simply phase right through me?

Why am I always conscious of my own breathing?

Why does it sound like freight trains barreling through my ears and into my brain?

No matter. Graduation is tomorrow, and I plan on having a good time, for once in my life. Who knows where the night will take me?

Maybe I’ll actually have my first kiss.

Maybe I’ll have more.

Maybe I’ll take shot.

Maybe I’ll do more.

Talk about the best I can be: I’ll be the best anybody has ever SEEN! May 25, 2019 POLICE FIND LOCAL TEEN PRODIGY DEAD IN THE STREET Our very own XXXXX, High School valedictorian, was found dead yesterday on Friday, May 24. It is believed that XXXXX, having just graduated earlier that evening, went out to celebrate with the rest of her class at a nearby graduation party. The police arrived around 3 A.M. to address a public disturbance call in the neighborhood. Chaos ensued as members of the class of 2019 fled the scene. It is believed that XXXXX was found at about 3:45 as police were leaving. They found her body in the middle of the 170

road, curled up with a bottle in her hand. In an official statement by police early this morning, the Chief said, “It appears XXXXX had consumed a lethal amount of alcohol at the party. It is unknown at this time whether she had been in contact with other substances. Our thoughts and prayers are with her family as we proceed with the investigation.” When asked, a peer of XXXXX’s said, “I don’t know you guys. All I heard is that she wondered off early in the night with someone’s vodka, and when she was found, the bottle had a note in it saying, “THIS IS THE BEST I CAN BE YOU PIECES OF ****.” We have yet to confirm that rumor. Her mother had this to say: “I don’t understand why she would have done something like this. She was the smartest, most talented child I’ve ever worked with. I suppose some people just can’t handle the pressure.” Her family is planning a ceremony to be held this upcoming Saturday. XXXXX, you will be missed.

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Dress for Success Killer

by Dylan Burhans

It was a dark and stormy night. The wind howled, snow fell in buckets. It was quiet on the streets of Farmingdale. Too quiet. A young, blonde woman stood on the street corner, her emerald rain coat flapping in the wind. Suddenly, a sense of dread fell upon her. She spun around, expecting some doom. But it was just darkness, and nothing more (if you want to copyright this, FIGHT ME).

A man sauntered along this sidewalk. He swung a diamond-tipped cane in wide circles and sported a tuxedo, a top hat, and a monocle. With his other hand, he twirled his bushy gray mustache. He did a little skip over each crack in the sidewalk.

Skip. Skip. Skip. His eyes fell upon the woman, and he let out a horrible little giggle. He crossed the street and crept up behind the woman. He tapped her on the back of the left shoulder with his cane. The woman spun around, surprised.

“Let’s make a star out of you!” the man cackled. He lifted his cane high into the air. The woman let out a blood-curdling scream, but then man brought down the cane.

This man has been wanted by the police for the last five years. They don’t know his real name, so they call him…

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THE DRESS FOR SUCCESS KILLER

Detective Tony Fulgieri sat at his desk, cigarette in hand.

He blew out a gray plume of smoke and took a sip of his dark coffee. He was half asleep from working on a case late last night.

He rubbed a scar on the right side of his face, from when he took down the Southold Slasher. His partner, Frank Campanella, plopped a thick manilla folder down on the desk. It landed with a loud THUD! Tony sat up, wide awake now. “Son of a *****, another Dress for Success case?” he asked, his voice gravelly. Frank nodded, gloomily. “****” Tony barked, exasperated. “That’s the third one this week.” He picked up the file and started thumbing through the pages. “Let’s see. Name: Toni D’Angelo. Gender: Female. Physical Description: five foot nine, blonde hair, hazel eyes. Hmm… was a student at LIIT.” “Hey, yo Tony, there is nothing ‘lit’ about this, someone died” Frank said, shaking his head in disapproval.

Tony looked up, confused. “What? The Long Island Institute of Technology. It’s one of the greatest schools in the country.

Well, next to MIT. Its main campus is located in Westbury.”

“Oh, right.”

“Let’s go check out the crime scene.”

And the two partners were off, speeding in their Honda Civic to West Famingdale.

They pulled in front of the scene, which was taped off with the yellow police tape, the CSI already investigating. Tony and Frank walked into the taped area and approached the two CSI investigators. “Yo , I’m detective Tony Fulgieri, and this is my partner, Frank Campanella.”

“Yo, I’m Frank Salvadorri, and this here is Tony Rossi.

Listen, I’m working here, so just go do your thing.”

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Tony scanned the crime scene. The body was already in the bag, but she was found in the mannequin display area at the fashion store, Anthony’s. She was no longer in a rain coat, but now she was in a flowing white gown. Her hair was pulled back into a braid, and she had makeup on. On the glass, a message was written in Coral Blue #3 lipstick: Let’s make you a star, Detective!

“He’s targeting me personally. Hmm…Let’s see, she was killed by blunt force trauma to the head” Tony commented.

“Hmm…Strange.”

“What is?” Frank asked.

“This store, Anthony’s, is owned by the Carmine family.”

“So?” “So, each body is found dressed up nicely at a fashion store. Each store has been owned by the Carmine family. That can’t be a coincidence.”

“It’s been five years, and you put this together just now?”

“Shut up. Let’s see, Anthony Carmine, the man who this store is named after, was the most famous fashion designer in the world. One day, his career was ruined after he invented a tie that was in the shape of a duck. After that he disappeared and was presumed dead. But what if he’s still alive?”

“But yo, Tony, that’s just a legend.”

“Don’t worry, I know where to look.”

“You do? How?” ther.”

“Because,” Tony muttered, “Anthony Carmine is my fa-

The two arrived at a large, brick mansion in Oyster Bay. It had a large garden out front, and it faced the Long Island Sound.

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A few sail boats were lazily floating around on the water.

“So, please explain- how is Anthony Carmine your father?”

“Well, obviously he was a fashion designer. He traveled all over the world,” Tony said, his voice softening, “Once his career ended, he wanted me to change names. I didn’t want to, but it’s what he wanted.”

“Oh,” Frank said.

Tony cleared his throat, pulled out his handgun, and pounded his fist on the door. “Open up, dad. I know its you!” No response. “OPEN THE **** UP!” The door swung open. Tony and Frank stalked in. Inside, they found the house was a mess.

The chandelier had fallen, the wallpaper was peeling, the paint was cracked. Cobwebs covered the entire foyer. Dust was everywhere. said.

“There’s no way he was living in here for decades,” Frank

“Yeah, he’s probably not here,” Anthony croaked, disappointed. Suddenly, his eyes fell upon a note that was taped to a nearby column. It read:

Dear Anthony, If you are reading this, then that means I am dead. You must be wondering why I was gone this entire time, and I wanted to say I’m sorry I wasn’t there to watch you grow up. I thought that if I went away, it would make your life better, but now I see I only made it worse. Yes, I am the killer. I did those things. As to my motive, I wanted to get revenge on the people that forced me to leave you. I can’t tell you how sorry I am.

Love, Dad

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Tears welled in Tony’s eyes. The case was finally settled, but it still stung. His dad had been alive for decades without him knowing, and rather than return to him, he decided to become a murderer.

“Yo, Tony. Call’s coming in. There’s been a murder in Huntington.” Tony didn’t have time to mourn. At least not yet.

He had a job to do.

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Snoopy in Van Gogh Mercy Crapps

177

Forest

by Eli Mears

We go to forests and once we walk far enough we listen and look

And we hear nothing except the leaves or the birds but leave to hear more.

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Le Spectre

by Madeline Roberts

Up the stairs with bare feet Cold chipped tile Sliver window Silver frame Round and round Listen Neroâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s playing

Move on Move up

Move on Move up

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Up the stairs with bare feet Cold chipped tile Mind slip Light slit

Higher, hurry Listen Maratâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bathing

Move on Move up Move on Move up

Onto the landing with bare feet Cold chipped tile Grip the brass knob Panting, parting

Lapsing, lower Listen

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The Run

by Madeline Lillie

Under my feet Into the woods Below the trees Up the hill Through the stream Away from people In through my nose Into my lungs Out my mouth Toward the crowd Near the end

Past the others Across the finish

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Falling Falling Floating Floating

Cold cracked tile

Done.

182

Leave It on the Field

By Drew Daunt

Screech! The bus came to a slow stop. Instantly, my drowsy eyes awakened and anxiously peered out the window.

Seeing the uniform, metal bleachers piled one after another, I sat up. Grabbing my bulky bag, I threw it over my shoulder. Soon the bus door opened, and as a team, we stood up and silently walked toward the door. I strolled down the stairs and stepped onto the solid concrete. I felt the crisp December air rush through my lungs, as I breathed in. Our team continued to walk along the narrow sidewalk, until we approached a well-maintained brick building located directly behind the stadium. While walking into the building, each of us held the door open for the other. I entered the room, and, immediately, the odor of sweat overwhelmed my senses. I sat down. Purposefully, our coach avoided the wooden benches; we sat on, and headed toward the front of the room.

Picking up a marker, he accurately diagramed the field on the white board and began to discuss tactics and strategies.

Finally, after he told us our game plan, he quietly stood and looked at each of us individually. The silence was broken when our coach stated, “Remember boys this is a game you will never forget. Very few people get the chance to play in a division one soccer match, let alone in the national championship. Grasp this opportunity with both hands and don’t leave anything on the pitch.” Once he finished speaking, our enthusiasm and eagerness to succeed, shot through the roof. We were ready to win. At last, it was time to take the pitch, and as I walked out, I heard the fans cheering us on. I saw the beautiful stadium, and I felt nerves building up inside. These experiences triggered a memory from my freshman year of high school when I played in the state championship.

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In a straight line, our team, along with the referees and the opposition, walked across the pitch. Stopping at the half waypoint, the vertical line of people emerged into a horizontal line, as players stepped up to recognized by the fans. I felt jittery as kickoff grew closer. Finally, when all the participants of the game were in a line, I glanced toward the other team. I had to stop myself from overthinking their athletic abilities. I looked up toward one of our captains, who looked so poised and composed. Switching my focus, I glared at the crowd and felt their excitement. Trying to keep my composure, I closed my eyes and vividly pictured my game plan. Suddenly, I heard the clamorous voice of the announcer, who was giving details about the match. After he finished talking, our nations anthem played and kick-off was right around the corner. The pre-game announcements finished, and I jogged off the pitch with my team. As I walked off with the team, I grabbed a quick sip of water and tossed it to another player. Finally, the moment came. I felt my stomach turning inside me, and the tension was unlike anything I had ever experienced. My heart pounded inside my chest. Before stepping on the pitch, our team came together and our coach reminded us, “This is our season’s goal! So go out there and achieve our goal!” All of a sudden, a new level of intensity was shared between the us. Aroused with excitement, we came together and recognized our school as loudly as we could, “1-2-3 marauders!” With that, my nervousness disappeared, and I ran onto the field.

I stood in the center of the field and anxiously awaited the inaugural whistle. I heard the crowd loudly chanting in the background to motivate us. My focus turned to the referee, in bright yellow, who was running on the field and setting his clock. Waiting for the game to begin felt like an eternity. At last, “Tweet!” the ref blew the whistle and the game was on. All of my other thoughts instantly vanished, and my sole focus was the game. I played to my best abilities, defending attackers, playing passes and winning air balls. However, both defenses remained unbreakable and the whistle blew for half. Catching my breath, I walked into the locker room.

As I was walking in, I heard many exchanges between players, until it was interrupted; “Smack!” a pack of waters flew 184

on the ground and exploded everywhere. Grabbing our attention, our coach seriously declared, “Who believes that is the most they can give in a championship game! How many of you could say you gave 100% effort.

None of you. We need to go out there and show the opposition we are a new team and bury them!” Shocked, I sat down speechless.

Utter silence filled the locker room. Until finally coach urged, “Okay guys, halftime is over. It is time to show them what we’ve got.” The team and I walked out with a different attitude in the second half. We began the second half strong. Unexpectedly, the ball showed up at my feet. Without hesitation, I turned and passed a defender and dribbled by another one. I picked my head up and to examine my minimal options, but decided to continue to drive to goal. Realizing I had an opportunity for a shot, I wound up to take one. Abruptly, I felt a sharp pain on the back of my ankle, and tumbled face first into the ground. While I was on the ground, I heard the high-pitched noise from the whistle, and, as I looked up, I noticed the ref extending his arm towards their goal. I had won a free kick. Our senior captain took the free kick. The ball passed the goalkeeper, scraped off the post, and rolled into the net. We scored! Excitement rushed through my body. However, this feeling did not last long. The opposition responded fairly quickly with a goal. Again, I continued to battle with everything I had left. Sadly, when overtime was almost over, they scored again.

“Tweet!” The referee blew the whistle to end the game.

Sadness and disappointment were the only emotions I felt. All the pain I experienced during the game vanished. Holding my emotions inside me, I strolled to the bench, sat down, and pressed my cold hands into my face. I was encouraged to stand up by one of my teammates and we physical held each other up as we wept over our defeat. Everything my teammates and I had worked for over this season disappeared in that moment. However, as a group, we circled up and embraced each other. Our coach then said, “As hard as this is and as much as I wanted to succeed, I could not be prouder of you.” Regaining my composure, I walked over with my team to thank our dedicated supporters and to congratulate the opposition. After the game, I repeatedly recalled every second of the match I could have improved on and every second that I could have worked harder. I was not content with .

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losing.

Snapping back to reality, I walked over to the bench and set my bag down. After scanning the stadium, I sat down on the bench, and placed my shin guards expertly underneath my socks.

I recalled the feeling of my last high stakes match. Especially, I remembered the feeling of regret for not savoring every single opportunity. Jogging back on the field, I realized that the key to being successful is to give everything you have and to leave it all on the pitch.

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Documents of Time Travel

by Holden Crumpler

Alright, where to begin? God, I don’t even know. This whole thing is so messed up I got absolutely no idea where to begin. I believe the logical place to begin would be at birth and continue into the younger years and steadily progress on from there. However, as I first met Rick when I started middle school, I do not have much information on his early life. The first memory I have of Mr. Richard Roberts is him coming up to me in the halls of my middle school and shaking my hand and introducing himself. I was taken aback by such a gesture in a culture where this sort of thing was never deemed cool. However, the sincerity of this gesture and the way he shook my hand, firmly with a nononsense attitude, led us to become fast friends. We would often find ourselves in deep and meaningful discussions about what our teenage boy minds thought was incredibly important at the time: cartoons, R-rated movies we saw when we weren’t supposed to, hot girls (both on the screen and off), and other such topics. These conversations continued all throughout middle school and into high school.

High school was a fun time for the both of us. Unlike many students, we had no problems throughout high school. It was all fun and games. We skated through our classes, despite their difficulty, with little to no problems. However, during this time, Rick changed. It wasn’t too noticeable at first, just an offhanded comment here and there. As time went by, however, he started to get a little weird. I think the first time I really noticed this change was the last day of our senior year midterms. We finished and left, driving to lunch to celebrate the start of winter break. Once we sat down, we talked about the midterms and how we thought we did 187

and how much of a jerk our math teacher Ms. Pepper was. We laughed and joked just like we always did: talking about nothing important that somehow meant the world to us. That was when Rick first brought up his concept of time.

“Hey, Ben. Can I ask you a question?” He suddenly became deadly serious.

“Sure man. What’s up?” I asked, concerned at his quick change of expression.

“Have you ever thought about time, Ben?” he asked, an unsettling smile stretching slowly across his face.

“What the **** are you talking about?” I responded with a nervous laugh. It was a weird question, but he asked me so earnestly that I immediately felt a chill go up my spine. There was really nothing out of the ordinary about this question. We would ask each other stuff like that all the time, but this time he just seemed way too serious, which was in stark contrast to his usual joking nature.

“I am talking about time, Ben. What it is, what it means, why it exists. Do you understand?”

“I guess. Are you talking about like when time flies when you’re having fun but moves at a snail’s pace when you’re bored?”

“Yes and no. That is but a portion of what I am talking about. I am talking about time as a construct. I am talking about time as we have known it and why we only know it in that way.

There are so many more interpretations that have more validity, and yet we constantly obsess over the same…*******…one.”

These last few words were punctuated by his fist slamming down on the table.

“Alright, man, take it easy,” I said.

“And that is just the beginning. Time is such an odd object

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and can theoretically be manipulated so easily. Unless my countless hours of research are incorrect, then all the theories spouted about time and time travel have some sort of actual scientific validity. If we were to just rework them and more closely analyze them, I think we could technically create a time machine.”

“A time machine? Like a literal time machine? Really?” I asked skeptically. At first his voice and the eyes were freaking me out, but then they just seemed too serious to be genuine. I laughed a little.

“Yes, really.” Rick said without emotion. “Why do you laugh at what I just told you? I am completely serious ******* it.

We could literally have a working time machine, and here you are just laughing like a moron.” He said this last line with such acidity that it took me aback.

“I’m sorry, man. It just struck me as a little funny for a second. I mean, you’re talking about a concept that science has proven impossible.”

“Not impossible, my friend. Science has only proven that it is not probable. However, I believe I can make it possible, not just in theory but in practice as well.” As Rick said this, the waitress brought us our food. “Good, I’m starving.” As Rick said this, he picked up his burger and dug in. I ate as well, yet the odd conversation that just occurred refused to leave my mind. The day continued along normally with Rick and I hanging around my house. While I soon enough forgot about the odd conversation, it came back to me later that night. I laid in my bed staring up at the ceiling as a million thoughts flew through my head. A time machine; an idea so absurd that it normally would make me want to laugh out loud. However, I just could not comprehend the seriousness which he put behind it out of my head. I fell asleep still turning the events of the day over in my head.

I did not see Rick for the rest of winter break. Mine was uneventful. I basically just sat around the house all day and did nothing. When I got back to school, Rick was the first one to greet me. He gave me his usual handshake and then sat down across from me. He didn’t look too good. He looked tired and his hair looked shaggy. He seemed really excited about something, 189

though.

“Man, I spent this entire break busting my ***,” he said with a laugh.

“Doing what?” I asked, puzzled. We didn’t have any work to do for our classes over winter break, but he certainly looked like he had been busting his ***.

“Learning. I am getting this time travel thing down.”

Again, I felt that same chill crawl up my spine. I honestly could not believe he was still on that. Over the break I had pushed the incident at the restaurant aside by telling myself he had been tired, and he probably just had a momentary lapse of thought.

However, knowing that this newfound obsession is what made him look like this concerned me a great deal.

“Alright, listen. I want to ask you something, but I don’t want you to take it the wrong way.”

“Ask away, man. You know I won’t get upset,” Rick said with a smile.

“Do you actually believe that time travel is possible? Like, for true and for real? I know you say that it’s possible but how can you be sure? Even if you can be sure, how are you going to prove it?” As I was asking these questions, Rick’s facial expression changed. He did not look mad. He looked as though he was deep in thought. He stared off into the distance for quite a bit of time.

“I know it’s real. No one has done it yet, but I know it’s real. When I discover it, I will prove it: I’ll make a time machine.

And that’s just the beginning. Just think about all the legends and monsters of history. They could all be real. What if everything we fear might actually be real?” Again, I almost laughed at Rick, but his words were so serious that I simply could not brush this off and kept my mouth shut. “With all my science classes I have taken and all the extra research I have done, I know I can do it. I will pursue this until I can get it. It will be hard as ****, but diligence will prevail, my friend.”

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Honestly, I could find nothing to say to that. I was really concerned. In my mind, time travel was still impossible. We were all stuck in this time line. The future was infinite, and the past was a conglomeration of facts and “facts.” I had this closed mindset towards all the notions that Rick would talk about. I just thought he was going crazy. Not foaming-at-the-mouth crazy, but just odd. However, again he would pull a surprise out of his hat.

Throughout the rest of our senior year, Rick was constantly obsessed with time travel. This idea seemed to consume him and fill not only his thoughts but his conversations. It was one of the only things he would willingly talk about and loved to discuss it at the drop of a hat. By the end of our senior year, we had gone from being thick as thieves to where I could almost not stand him.

I was incredibly sad to see him become like this and to see this distance grow. I guess people do grow apart over time and sure, you still have the memories, but it still hurts to see them go. I was concerned about Rick at the same time. I was afraid that this obsession was really going to hurt him one day. It made me sadder to see how obsessed he had become with his time travel theories and how much he was losing interest in everything else.

After graduation, we never really saw each other. We were going to the same college, but I was majoring in English while Rick was majoring in science. I honestly forgot about Rick for a while. Summer was pretty much full of working at the local bookstore and trying to do as little as possible before college.

When college rolled around, the work load was intense. All the English classes I was taking were having me do paper after paper.

I do not really know why I never tried to get in contact with Rick again. I was still worried about him. For me, life was going well.

I had a girlfriend, a beautiful girl named Katelynn, who I was spending most of my time with, as she was in all the same classes as I. We were close and did pretty much everything together. It was she who brought me the letter I received from Rick.

It was a simple letter, with only a few words of text. However, it was the simplistic nature of the letter that caught my attention and caused me to pursue this further. It was written on a creased and scrunched scrap of paper in black ink. There were only three words, but they took up the entire front of the page.

“Got it. — Rick” When I turned it over, his address was quickly 191

scribbled across the back. I was very concerned with this letter. I had figured out that Rick was a little off quite a while ago, so this letter served to frighten me quite a bit.

“What is it, Ben?” Katelynn asked me.

“Just a letter from an old friend. I think he wants me to go to his home,” I explained. “I haven’t seen him in forever.”

“Well that could be fun to see him again. Are you going?”

“I think so. I’ll be back in a bit. I think he wants me to come over as soon as possible.”

“Alright. See you later.” I gave Katelynn a kiss and made my way over to Rick’s. Although I felt an urgency because of the letter, I made my way over to Rick’s slowly. There was an ominous feeling that continued to grow as I neared Rick’s address.

When I pulled up to his house, everything seemed normal. The place looked fine and, although it was long, his lawn was still green. Everything looked in place and well kept. However, the door was wide open. There was a note taped to it. “Ben, come in and head to the back room at the far end of the house.”

I slowly made my way through the house. Nothing seemed out of place. When I made it to the back room, I immediately noticed a large black box in the corner of the room. The rectangular box looked about big enough to fit four people in. All around the box, were mounds of papers and notes. There were several files all over the desk in the room. The one that immediately caught my eye was the one labeled “Creatures.” I opened it up and could almost not believe what I was seeing. There were three papers, each marked with a creature across the top of it. The first one was from the old Germanic period.

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Der Ritter (The Knight) 200 BCE Add-on to Germanic Villages Initial time machine trials successful. Tried a later date.

No rhyme or reason to this. Just picked at random. Viewed some aspects of the way of life of these people. Basic history textbooks have got it correct as far as I could tell. I did not spend much time there. There is one instance that sticks out as interesting, if not downright frightening to me. I see the following encounter as proof of a creature of supernatural proportions. As I have looked up this creature, I have found that there have been different incarnations of him that date all the way back to ancient Egypt. There is also proof of him in the Renaissance age as sort of a grim reaper figure. Nowadays, the closest figure I can find like this one is the Slenderman.

In this case, the day in the village started quite normally.

Everyone bustling about their day to day routines. Three of the local children ran off into the woods near the village to play. After a while, I was about to head back. It was my fourth day there and I could not really think of any other reason to stay. I had done my observations, and they were very interesting (see notes on Germanic Village). However, as I was packing up one of my final bags and about to depart on the return pad, two of the children ran back, carrying the third one between them. The child being carried was covered in blood. The children were screaming â&#x20AC;&#x153;Der Ritter! Der Ritter!â&#x20AC;? I looked back in the woods behind them while the other adults dealt with the bleeding child. I then saw it. It was a very large creature, wearing a chest plate with incredibly long arms and legs. Its face was sunken, and the skin was stretched across the skull. It had no eyes, no ears, no nose, and no mouth, yet it looked like there were places where they had once existed.

When it saw me, I can only assume it saw me, it raised one grotesque hand in a motionless wave. I immediately returned through the pad. I was too terrified to stay.

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Cthulhu 652 BCE Add-on to Ancient Greece

My experience in ancient Greece was one to be remembered. All the architecture and the startling culture. I could not understand much of what was being said, for I do not speak Greek, but it was still amazing. The amount of devotion that this people put towards religion. Anything good or bad that happens to them, they attribute not to themselves, but to the gods. Sometimes, I myself even believe that their gods really do control everything. All the stories they tell and the art they create discussing their history and their myths. The monsters and their depictions were what drew me to this the most. The amount of fear these people have in these monsters is amazing. The following is my recollection of the encounter I experienced with the creature that is most commonly known as Cthulhu.

I had spent roughly two weeks in Greece up until the incident. After the following, I immediately returned here. I heard a great commotion in the streets. When I exited my small house to see what was going on, I was immediately met by a large amount of people. I could only understand the word â&#x20AC;&#x153;Krakenâ&#x20AC;? out of the jumbled sentences of everyone screaming at the same time. I ran along with the crowd out onto a large building that overlooked the sea. When I looked out across the ocean, I saw a large portion of it bubbling. Suddenly, a massive shape emerged. It was bigger than anything I had ever seen. Its body had a humanoid shape, but it was completely covered in scales. Its head was one of a squid, and it made loud screeching noises. I could clearly see its defining features despite being over a mile away. The people screamed and shouted. Some fell to their knees and cried while others fled.

I was one of the ones who fled. Right before I returned on the pad, I saw it was already upon the city, smashing massive buildings with its bare fist. I teleported as the ground shook with the pounding of the fists of the creature.

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Mothman 1944 AD Add-on to World War II World War Two: Trench Fighting in Germany. It is the first war scene I have seen. The history textbooks hardly do the brutality of this scene justice. I did not spend very long there, as my life was in constant danger (see WWII: 1944). I now truly find myself sickened by the thought of the battle I witnessed. It was near the German city of Berlin. It was not a recognized battle, so suffices to say that it was not necessarily important enough to recognize, yet it will still haunt me. I was hiding on a hilltop overlooking the entire battle. As I surveyed the area with binoculars, I saw much more than I had bargained for. I saw many men slaughtered where they stood in a hail of gunfire. I saw men fighting each other with knives and brutally murdering each other with whatever they could get their hands on. I saw the constant bombing parties descending upon German posts around Berlin. In the middle of these plains is when I saw the creature. The Mothman.

It was very cloudy. The smoke from the battle below did not help the visibility. At times, both sides were firing at each other blindly, not knowing if they were hitting anyone and not particularly caring. I was observing the planes flying in to bomb Berlin and their flight patterns when I saw it. It was the shape of a man but with massive wings. It was about ten feet in height and a grey color. It flew over the battlefield and over the city. With what little knowledge I had about the supernatural due to my more recent encounters with it, I gleaned that this was the Mothman. Due to this and the fact that it has the reputation of being nonviolent, I decided to stay and keep watching. As it circled Berlin, I could not help but feel a sense of doom about it. This creature would visit places where tragedy was about to strike or had already struck.

As I was observing the planes more closely, I lost sight of Mothman. This put me on edge. Even though he was a nonviolent creature, I still felt a panic at not being able to lay my eyes 195

on him. As I whirled around, I saw him. He was standing right behind me, his wings fluttering in the breeze, his eyes large and red with multiple lenses. He looked even bigger up close. He made no sound. He just stood there and glared down at me. After a few seconds of this, he flew away. I immediately jumped back on the return pad and came back here.

Looking at these notes, I could only feel shock. What the **** was this ****? Had Rick gone off the deep end? Could it have been possible that he had done it? Where was Rick now?

These questions ran around my mind with seemingly no rhyme or reason to them. My breathing began to quicken as I felt the room begin to spin. I sat down in the chair behind the desk. I looked at another folder and saw it labeled Dates Traveled. I opened it up.

There were only four pages in this. However, each page was covered with dates. Did Rick travel to all of these? I began sifting through the other notes surrounding the room. They were all from different parts of history. Almost every major event was recorded here. The sinking of the Titanic, 9/11, the assassinations of Lincoln and Kennedy: every major tragedy in American history was recorded, complete with reactions of those present and paper headlines.

I looked at all the dates once again. I then noticed two sheets of paper underneath those. The first one seemed to be a title page.

History and All That Is Contained within It: A Complete Look at Earthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s History and Greatest Mysteries Good God. So, this is what he was doing. It seemed as though he was making a history book that encompassed the complete history of the world. Jesus Christ, I thought. What the **** is going on with him? I looked at the other page.

2328 AD My first trip into the future. I chose this date because 310 is my lucky number. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m number 310 in my class and the day I got the number was the day I hit my breakthrough for my time machine.

That is why I decided to go 310 years into the future. I will report when I return on the future state of humanity. I cannot help but feel this is a heavy burden. The first recorded 196

account of humanity’s future. I find my head filled with the unimaginable accomplishments the future is bound to hold.

As I continued picking up documents and reading them, the black box in the corner of the room began to shudder. Lights flashed from within and a distinct metallic clanking noise could be heard. I stood up and backed myself as far into the opposite corner of the room as I could. The machine began to smoke slightly as it shuddered even harder. With the sound of a small explosion, it stopped. Then, a figure fell out of the time machine.

It stood up and I almost screamed.

“Rick?” He looked terrified. His eyes were wild and crazed. His hair was solid white. He shook slightly. He was very thin and looked weak. However, despite the way he looked, he still staggered towards me.

“Ben,” he muttered. He extended his arms and grabbed my shoulders. I could not move. “There is nothing Ben. We killed ourselves. Humanity destroyed itself. There was nothing left. The planet itself was about to explode. He said I had to see it. He said not to come back. He said to send you. He wants to talk to you. I am going to the nothingness.” Rick shoved me back as he reached the machine again. He flipped the date forward one year. “There will be nothing but blackness here. Do not explore like I have.

I’ve seen too many terrible things. More than one person should see in a lifetime. Go to the date 2328. He wants to see you. Think of it as a final request. Goodbye, Ben.” “No!” I screamed. It was too late though. Rick hit the button, threw out the return pad, and disappeared for good. I could feel tears stinging my eyes. Rick was dead. He just killed himself.

No one would believe me. How could I go to anyone about this in the first place? What did he mean that someone wanted to see me? What the **** was he talking about? I decided to go. I had to see, and I felt compelled to honor his last request. I can’t explain why, and I’m not going to attempt to do so now.

I ran to the machine and looked at the controls. Simple enough. Set the date and push the button. I flipped the dials until January 1st, 2328 flashed across the screen in red letters and numbers. I breathed in and smashed the button. After another small 197

explosive sound, I opened my eyes. There was nothing but blackness surrounding me. Somehow, I could still see myself.

Then, with a flash and a pop, a figure appeared before me.

I almost laughed out loud. It was a small-scale T-Rex, about the size of me. It had small wings, proportional to the size of its arms.

It was wearing a bowler hat and a bow tie, with small gloves on its hands and shoes on its feet. It looked at me with cold, strangely human eyes.

“Hello Ben. My name is Terry.” I snorted a little bit at the name, and its eyes flashed with annoyance. It had a deep voice that seemed to echo in my mind when he spoke.

“I only appear this way as I have analyzed your subconscious and determined a way to appear that would be less threatening to you. I am the keeper of the time stream. You are, unfortunately, a witness to the end of said time stream. This is when the world ends. Too many people getting too angry and then the bombs ended life and eventually the planet. Your friend, Rick, was one of the reasons this occurred. His constant moving back and forth in the time stream caused riffs in time. This eventually culminated in chaos and the destruction of Earth. Therefore, time travel has not been widely discovered. Rick was not the first to time travel. He was not the first to cause something like this. He will not be the last. It is being fixed but very slowly. You will be the only person who will survive time travel and have memories of it. I must discourage you from making the same mistakes your friend made. He felt the guilt of what he had done. That is why he chose to take his own life. You are the sole human who will survive with the knowledge that time travel is possible.”

I could not make a sound. Suddenly, I blinked, and we were back in Rick’s time machine room. Terry looked at the machine and it destroyed itself in a small explosion of blue light. All the papers flew into the blue fire created by the time machine.

The fire then went out, and it was all gone. Terry turned back to me, nodded, and then turned away.

“Wait!” I shouted. He turned around to face me again.

“Was all of what Rick saw true? Like, was it all real? What should I do now?”

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“It was all real. Rick was not a stable man, but he was able to convey what he saw. As to what you should do, that’s up to you.

Tell Katelynn hello for me.” With that, he disappeared. I could feel the tears streaming down my face and stinging my eyes, making the world around me blurry. I stood in the middle of the now blank room crying for close to twenty minutes.

me.

I then drove back to my place. Katelynn was waiting for

“****. You left about eight hours ago. I was getting worried you two had been arrested by now.” She laughed as I stumbled in the door. I slumped down in my chair. I felt nothing. Everything turned silent. I could hear Katelynn asking me what was wrong, but it was as though I was underwater. She was kneeling in front of me. She then gripped my face in her hands. I took them off and held her hands in mine. I had no idea what to do. She sat in my lap and held me close to her. I wrapped my arms around her and tried to tell her what happened. She could not understand anything I was saying.

“Listen sweetie,” she told me. “It is all okay. Just take a deep breath and start at the beginning. There is no pressure. Everything is fine.” I took a deep, shaky breath and turned to face her.

“I guess it all started with my friend Rick and his aspirations for time travel.” I then launched into the full story. I told her everything that I had seen and everything that had happened to me. There were points in which she almost laughed and there were points where she seemed scared. I knew she wouldn’t believe me. Then I heard a whispered voice in my ear as Katelynn jumped in my arms.

“Everything IS okay. Don’t worry. You interest me. I’ll still be around.” I turned and nodded at Terry as Katelynn tightened her grip on me. He winked and disappeared once again.

“So,” she asked, her voice trembling. “What should we do now? All of this is real. It happened to you. What should we do now?” I had no way to answer her because I had no idea myself.

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“Well, you always wanted a pet,” I said, barely able to to contain my laughter. “Now we have a T-Rex time god.” I laughed until my sides hurt. Katelynn eventually joined with me. The Earth was doomed if we did not keep this secret. We did not care.

It did not even cross our minds. I guess that’s the point. I had to laugh just to keep myself sane. I literally had a secret that, if released, would destroy everything that everyone previously knew to be completely turned on end. I could either tell everyone or keep it to myself; yet neither of those could be considered good options, so what was there to do but laugh.

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Guide to the Creatures 1. The Slenderman 

A being from urban legend, originated from a meme on the internet in 2009



Seen throughout history from Egyptian hieroglyphics to woodcuts in Germany, which was where Der Ritter originated

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Most often seen with a solid white face (no eyes, nose, mouth, or ears) and a simple black suit on; sometimes seen with tentacles sprouting from his back

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Heavily influencing the Creepypasta community

2. Cthulhu 

An old demigod with the head of a squid and a body covered in scales



Very very large and extremely powerful



Able to bring about the end of the world

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Stays in a slumber in a palace under the sea with his army of monsters, waiting for the time in which he will awaken and bring about destruction

3. Mothman 

A creature that appears to be a moth with the body of a man



Usually about ten feet tall with a wingspan of over 15 feet

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Solid grey color with deep red insect eyes



Never overtly attacks anyone

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A harbinger of bad things to come and a visitor of disaster sites 201

4. Terry the T-Rex 

A time god

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Has the ability to manipulate and change time at will

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Keeper of the time stream

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Befriends Ben after Rick dies

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Not much is really known about how he came to exist or why he chose to take the form of a well-dressed T-Rex

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All the Young Dudes Lauren Fleischer

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Swimming Pool: Age Ten

by Ellie Casteel

This summer was scorching. That hot summer sun was seemingly angry at Tallahasseeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s inhabitants for abandoning this town as she beat down with her heat. She scorched the very pavement in anger, especially that under my feet. My little toes lined the brick edge of the pool, patiently waiting to be cooled from their burning place. I stared into the rippling crystal water before me. This was my first-time diving in all alone. Raising my lungs to the surface of my skin, I took a deep gulp of air. I prepared for my dive by placing my pink goggles over my eyes and arranging my arms in a V above my head, right hand stacking over left. Then, my knees bent, launching my body into the pool. The water met my hands first, then parted, allowing my figure to slide underneath its glossy lid. From head to toe the water kissed my skin, until I was fully immersed, fully embraced. My eyes darted open to see the interior of the pool. I was not alone, thousands of water molecules were present to accompany me, yet I pushed them away to swim towards the steps. Before I could swim to the steps, however, I had to come up for air. Using my weak arms, I thrusted upwards.

With my head tilted back, I saw the shimmering surface of the water, constantly shifting. Light seeped through, illuminating my experience. Upon reaching the surface, I took a breath and kicked my legs, so I could float on top. Immense cumulus clouds danced above, watching over me from their lofty place. The clouds and I were the same: a relatively small white object within an expansive blue space. We were both reflecting a carefree spirit: unbothered by the sunâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s devilish rays and moving at a pace chosen by the blue that carried us.

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Cake

by Justine de Saint Mars

It towered so high that mountain of cake.

I am very surprised it was able to bake.

I prepare myself to eat that thing in less than an hour when the timer goes ding.

It piles so high that it breaks through the ceiling.

I look up at it with that

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nauseating feeling.

Finally, I take a bite

then spit it out because it tastes like Vegemite!

The timer is ticking.

The crowd is cheering!

I have to eat this cake now it’s up to me to do it.

I take a forkful of cake and NO! I just can’t do it!

It’s too big to eat not even the biggest man could.

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But I promised the crowd that I would.

I take the tiny fork Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m given

and pick some up.

I hold my nose and tell myself donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t throw up!

I take a bite and run to the kitchen where there is some water.

Never have I tasted a cake that was ever that bitter.

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Homecoming Dance

by Holden Crumpler

It was during the week before homecoming that Eric made his move. It was something many in his grade would have considered brash, yet he did it despite the social circles attempting to prevent him. He asked out a cheerleader. Barbara was her name.

One small step for man, one giant leap for nerd-kind, as he was fond of saying. It took everyone by surprise when she said yes.

He felt happiness well up inside of him. He was excited. He felt like bouncing off the walls. Eric knew it was going to be an amazing night.

As he was getting ready, his mother insisted on aiding him. He rolled his eyes but allowed her to fix his tie and help him put on his coat. He was seventeen and felt embarrassed to have his mother helping him. His father sided with him, saying he was a grown man and could do things for himself. His mother was hearing none of it. She wanted her baby to be ready for his big night. He could feel his heartbeat quicken in his chest at the very thought of what was to come that night. His first high school dance as a junior. When he got in his car, he blared the music and sped off to school, the adrenaline already starting to rush through his veins.

He arrived at school just in time to watch the kickoff for the annual homecoming football game. The team seemed to play with added vigor and higher spirits. By halftime, it was clear they would win. The cheerleaders got the crowd, most of whom were already in their dance clothes, to rise up, singing, dancing, and jumping with an excitement piercing the atmosphere around them. Barbara blew Eric a kiss from the field. She didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have to be near him to see that he had turned as red as a firetruck. She hoped this would be a good time. The cheerleaders then ran off the field, waving and blowing kisses to the crowd.

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The cheerleaders all got ready in the bathroom. They were scrambling in a cloud of hairspray, makeup, and clothes flying all over the place. They had to get ready and it had to be done quickly. When they exited the bathroom, no one could tell about the chaos that took place. They all looked beautiful. It had taken chaos to get them that way. They accepted this as a fact. Eric told her she looked great and they exchanged all the pleasantries one would expect them to relate to one another. As they entered the gym, the dance was already getting into full swing. Couples danced on the floor to the latest songs. It was adrenaline-fueled fun that clouded judgement and threw certain inhibitions out the window.

When the slow dance came, it was like magic. Eric, with his hands on Barbara’s waist, and Barbara, with her hands on Eric’s shoulders, danced like they had never danced before. They were nervous, yes, but they were also in love. They slid together until they were pressed closely. They knew they were in love right there, wrapped up in a tight embrace, and they knew it would last forever. It wouldn’t. It couldn’t. They were young and had their whole lives ahead of them. Maybe they would make a go of it and maybe it works out, but it would still end, as all good things must. However, they will always have that night at the homecoming dance.

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In Love with a Niphilim

by Sarah Halbert

the secrets of the garden are hidden behind the latch of the gate in bright blue petals of an old imported sakura decorating the pebble path back to the alcove its been tucked away by a rounded hedge border and tall shedding oaks, but meticulously maintained in its beauty behind the latch gate, behind the flowers, sunlight dripping lazily through the leaves, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll find my lover, soft gaze, looking like the sky had painted its clouds

and blues across them. a pure patch in the garden that no one but the branches and my words whisper about, sky blue

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chipping at the edges, rough edges, smooth, crystalline pools for eyes. i find myself in them--narcissus, narcissus-over and over again.

godlike, entranced.

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Ocean

by Haley Mainwaring

My mind is empty, But my heart is full.

I feel myself retreating from the world and sinking deeper and deeper into my despair.

The emotions fill up the pit of my soul.

Higher and higher.

I allow myself to soak up the pain, close myself off from air, until I am drowning.

I realize I must resurface.

I cannot survive like this.

I must keep going.

Rejoin the life I have missed.

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To Our Mother

By Emily Roden

The deadly wildfires ripping through California have forced hundreds of thousands of residents to evacuate

Hurricane Michael tore through the southeastern US as one of the most powerful storm in decades, leaving destruction in its wake

Thousands of people are believed to be missing in the towns of Baleroa and Petobo, where rivers of soil swept away entire neighborhoods in the aftermath of a 7.5-magnitude earthquake and ensuing tsunami on September 28.

To our mother –

I hear you.

You are loud.

“Samudra vasane devi parvata stana mandale Vishnupatni namas tubhyam padsparsam ksmasva me” – Hindu Prayer

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I don’t know what to do.

I panic.

I look at my dog and the squirrels and the butterflies crashing into my windshield and they panic too.

Mitakuye oyasin – phrase of the Lakota People

I yell to the wind I stomp on the ground I cry to the ocean I have conversations with the frogs as they

scream at night.

I hear the wail of Mother Earth – “Dirge for the Land of the

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Khanty”

When will people listen?

When will they stop?

When will they care?

Will it be too late?

“Mother Earth is our mother. She's everything. She's life. She brings life, she takes life.” - Rachelle Figueroa of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation Why do we break you?

And litter you?

And fill your skies With what we drill from you, with the bones of those who lived before And died.

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Greed.

It has spoiled us, we have pushed you too far.

Mother, I hear you.

I am sorry.

We will change for you.

We will stop hurting you.

We will.

We will.

We will.

Mother, I hear you

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Lindsay Gray

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Nocturnality

by Braden Foster

On the trees the moonlight shone, Across the sky the stars are ample.

Below the night sky sits a sundial.

Of little use, it creates a time From darkness. This concept, Without bounds, conceives the moment In which night arrives, as the moon rises Above the plentiful stars, reminding creatures Of the night For the wake of nocturnality.

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All Nighter

by Simon Corpuz

A little-known fact: Moonlight hinders all hard work.

Go to sleep now, yâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;all.

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Outside Part I

by Eli Mears

I walk on the grass I run down the road I bike up the street I paddle down the river I made it outside

I climbed up the mountain I ran through the race I biked into the town I made it to the ocean I made it outside.

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Mysterious Month of Crystals

by Mercy Crapps

During the mysterious month of crystals On the blankets of white numbing snow Underneath the clear icicles Through the wiping wind

Past the once green trees On top of the frosted rocks Around the frozen lake Towards the glowing house In front of the vibrant fire After the long day

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Snow Man

By Isabella Snider

I removed the black leather glove from my left hand and held it in my right. I slowly reached out to touch his face.

He was cold to the touch, his face still and pale. In his eyes I searched for something - anything. All I saw were two dark spheres blankly staring back at me. I sighed and put my glove back on. “What are we going to do with you?” I asked him. He did not reply, of course. I hadn’t expected him to.

His red and brown striped scarf lay lazily draped atop his shoulders. I took the ends of it in my hands and adjusted it, wrapping the longer side around his neck once and then straightening it out against his chest. “Better?” I asked. But again, no reply.

I shivered. The oncoming night had made the air even cooler. I said goodbye and headed inside - leaving the snow man for another day.

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Lauren Fantle

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Maze

by Haley Mainwaring

Time flutters around me like butterflies in a garden.

I am present but I am lost in myself, Like a maze, only I cannot find the start or the end, So I retreat further and further into my mind in hopes of finding answers, In hopes of finding myself.

There is beauty in the search.

The thoughts and images of life residing in my head emerge, Uncovered.

But there is pain And loneliness.

I am alone in this place.

My demons come out of the shadows.

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I fight them off by myself.

I am hopelessly isolated, Yet in love with the melancholy.

Potent emotions show me I am alive, And I do feel, even alone, I feel.

But I would like company on this journey.

So I write this, In hopes that someone will stumble into my maze and see my world.

See me.

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The Human Mind

by Logan Sundberg

nothing overthinks more than my human mind that infinitely contemplates that infinitely imagines that infinitely stresses nothing over thinks more than our human minds.

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Writer’s Block

by Anna Kate Daunt

“you’re a good writer!” “thanks! It means a lot” I sit down today My white knuckles typing word after word [backspace] [backspace] (That’s a weird description) I’m just trying to create, to write Something that is readable Something that is right [backspace] [backspace] (what’s up with the rhyming?)

I want to have my own word And artistic contribution Because if I don’t,

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What am I? [backspace] [backspace] (that’s too bleak… I know I’m more than my brain) I put my worth in my ability to create

But what if I have a bad day Need to just be And exist And allow text and art to penetrate me Instead of trying to destroy every barrier Break up time and space Change the lives of millions [backspace] [backspace] (that’s too cliché) Can I just be Or do I need to weave together a masterpiece Recreate creation Be the next (insert name of famous author)

Because if not ill be a poor Broke English major

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[backspace] [backspace] (whats up with the weird indentations?)

The pressure isn’t from everyone else It’s from me

I know I can be the best I can be That satisfies me I like this poem [backspace] [backspace] (I’m so weird) But it doesn’t Because I care more about the fancy medal The hard cover The new book smell Than I care about the used keys of my laptop The whirring of my brain The smell of fresh ink on my fingers.

What is value? What are we worth? What is this worth?

Am I just typing nonsense then deleting it? [backspace] [backspace] (don’t delete it) Can I not think of anything else to do?

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Can I not think of anything else to do?

I want to create, to write to be But I cant think of anything worthy enough to exist Myself

My life My career Every poem I’ve ever written Worthy to exist?

Does it matter?

I don’t want to be useless information [backspace] [backspace] (don’t be hard on yourself, you know you can write) I want to have meaning I want to be read [backspace] [backspace] (you want to be crazy?)

I want to be known

I want to be loved [backspace] [backspace]

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I want to be read I want to be known I want to be loved Read

Known Loved â&#x20AC;Ś

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Ascension

Grace Wells

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Flying, Soaring

By Isabella Snider

Is there even anything good to write about anymore? She wondered. It’s impossible to have an original idea nowadays.

Everything’s been done before. This thought made her head ache deep behind her eyes. She played with the strings of her sweatshirt as she sat at her desk, staring at the blank paper in front of her. Its emptiness taunted her. The sun had risen and set and she was still staring at the same **** piece of paper. Even under her long sleeves and pants, she felt goosebumps on her skin. Her window was cracked open, and the cool fall air drifted into her room, dancing circles around her as she desperately racked her brain for something - anything interesting to write about. She shifted her gaze from the paper to the open window.

What’s the point of writing anyway? She thought to herself as she pulled herself up from her chair. I don’t want to be an author. The crickets’ night song seeped into her ears - got louder and louder and then it was all she could hear. I’m not writing any books anytime soon. She opened the window all the way up and slid one leg off the edge. The breeze outside was soft and comforting despite its chilling nature. If I did write any books it’s not like they’d be New York Times Bestsellers. Another leg out the window, she sat on the sill and kicked her bare feet to the tune of the crickets. Most authors don’t even make good money. Both hands on the sill slowly pushed the rest of her body out the window. She fell slowly, barely moving at all through the air. She spread her arms and legs out wide like a star and her hair flowed freely behind her. The dewy ground grew closer and closer as she fell. She closed her eyes and held her

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breath. Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve I got to say anyways?

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Requiem of a Horror Writer

by Holden Crumpler

It sticks inside my mind swirling, leaving all my thoughts twirling.

No break will ever come to me, no relief will I ever see.

It will consume and devour me whole; it will leave me as a corpse, cold.

It helps and hurts without preference,

never will it leave with reverence.

My perspective is warped, and my thoughts are torn,

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yet still I am as sharp as a thorn.

I am both the weirdo and the writer, constantly having my mind pressed tighter.

I am trapped inside a death grip vice, that tightens with every roll of the dice.

It will feed me, then it will crush me.

It will kill me, but for now it will heal me.

I owe all my success to the dark, that always bites but will never bark.

To the dark that will always help, then send me directly to hell.

To the dark that at the smallest whim kills, and then leaves me to foot the bill.

To the dark that leaves me completely insane, and all other writers look upon with disdain.

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How am I able to write what I do?

It is the darkness that helps, that is who.

I can write the horror and the fear,

yet, for payment, I shed a tear.

Everything scary that I will write, all will come at a very dear price.

It would be comparable to selling a soul, but this demon takes much more of a toll.

I feel my mind breaking with every new thought, there is no safe place in these waters to dock.

Was I this way when I was first born?

Or is this because reality is torn?

What will stop it and what will contain it?

How can I know for I never have fought it.

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This foe is beyond what I can fight, it is all the fears we feel in the night.

It is insanity, the devil, cruelty, and fear,

the incarnation of all of them my dear.

My readers are startled by what I write, and it always comes back to them during the night.

This darkness I constantly must keep fed, otherwise my career and body are dead.

It screams in agony during this time, as I put upon the paper these rhymes.

I hate this darkness, yet I love it too, I have no idea what to do.

I put on a face when I step out,

I really blend in without a doubt.

If they were to see what is lurking below,

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then the fierceness would start to blow.

The darkness would come out and only show death, destruction, and me on death row.

I keep it hidden and I keep it alive, though one day it will leave me to die.

I will be hollow, merely a shell, and my destination will most likely be hell.

However, it is then I will be alright; no longer can the darkness haunt me in life.

I will finally be normal, or as much as I can, for then the darkness will be banned.

I will live the rest of my time happily,

until it returns only to collect me.

When it does, with it I will go,

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into the great and vast unknown.

As a writer I am forever a servant, to this evil sickening serpent.

We all are like this and we all are judged, yet our true spirit cannot be budged.

Call us weird and we will be fine, we all know that with Satan we dine.

It is with these words I attempt to regale, in you the urgency of this tale.

Do not disrespect the darkness within, for it could consume you on a whim.

I urge you not to end up like me, please live your life happily.

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This is for all the poor lost souls, who exist as darkness in human clothes.

The dark will one day suck me dry,

until then, all I can do is try.

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Communication Essay

By Madi Cordle

It’s unfortunate that nobody gets to choose what hurts them, but everybody gets hurt. As humans, our only avenue of true healing is devoting time to the healing process. Talking, crying and laughing with others, learning from others, lifting and being lifted by others until we feel we’re on solid ground— that’s the only path to renewal. To be happy, we have to collect our hurt, sort through it (or don’t, as my dad taught me, drugs are always an option), go through the motions, and rediscover who we are after trauma. We can’t skip ahead, there is no shortcut; “The only way out is through” (Miller 27). My father’s texts, letters, fantastical and futuristic promises, drunk and raging slurs of speech, rabid attempts to prove just how much he will “sacrifice” for his “everything,” skew my perception of proper communication in this world, so different from the communication I accepted as normal before I knew I had the choice not to. His words left bruises in my consciousness that make navigating the intricacies of human interaction—unalienable love and total heartbreak, utmost success and full-fledged failure, humility and confidence, selflessness and self-care—the primary challenge in my life.

“If you ever decide to act like a respectful daughter, then look me up.” “Hopefully Catie [my sister] won’t have the ability to turn her back on her father and have no consideration for how hurtful she is to someone who has made so many sacrifices just to participate in her life.”

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These words from October 17th of last year are difficult for me to type, because they are texts carbon-copied from the last conversation I had with my dad, a conversation I promised myself that I would never read again. Texts are not a conventional writing tool, but they were the most efficient way for my father to convey his point to me, whether I wanted him to or not. He wrote and I read, and though my scars are not visible, they are noticeable and concerning to people who knew me before his words lashed my cheery spirits. His communication with me relentlessly poisons not only my life, but also the lives of all of the people who care about me as they watch me falter under the pressure of depression, stress, and anxiety and commit themselves, their time, their energy, to lifting me up and lessening my load.

I never understood why people devote their lives to writing, to creating stories to print in pages that strangers flip through and set on a shelf to collect dust, but, as evidenced by the impact my father’s words have on me and the people who surround me, writing is a powerful mode of communication and a weapon of great influence, abused by some like my father and appreciated by others like Karl Ove Knausgaard, a genius author whom I’ll talk about later. We have to communicate with other people both to learn from them and to teach them in order to educate ourselves and grow into better people. Education is best acquired when people allow themselves to soak up other people’s knowledge, and train themselves to influence and be influenced by others, as Paulo Freire suggests. Writing our own and reading each other’s transparent, vulnerable, and experienced accounts of living and growth, like Richard Miller writes about, is a prime opportunity for collaboration. It is possible to be a hermit, to live and not be heard, to be and not be seen, but what a pathetic life that is. Whenever one reads or writes, learns and teaches, open and honest communication between all parties involved is key to growth and meaning. What an utmost privilege it is to communicate through reading and writing.

Dictionary.com defines to better oneself as “to improve one’s social standing, financial position, or education.” “To do things (such as improving one’s education) that will make one a

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better or more successful person,” is Merriam-Webster’s version of to better oneself. The Macmillan Dictionary suggests that to better yourself is “To improve your social status by educating yourself.” Three separate, respectable dictionaries agree that education is of great importance in the process of bettering oneself in collaboration and in competition with other people. Acquiring valuable insight, knowledge, and perspective, becoming a better person, requires a mutual exchange of ideas with somebody else.

Paulo Freire, in creating a “liberating education” system that mandates equality between students and teachers who solve problems by finding common ground within the shared human condition, has proven that the pursuit of knowledge is useless without mutual communication. A “problem-posing” education system requires teachers to not only restrain from narrating the learning experience for the students but also to humble themselves to the student’s worthy knowledge and perspective (Freire 216). Freire makes the following statement that summarizes the principals of his method of education and explains the importance of communication in the process of acquiring knowledge: The teacher cannot think for her students, nor can she impose her thoughts on them. Authentic thinking, thinking that is concerned about reality, does not take place in ivory tower isolation, but only in communication. If it is true that thought has meaning only when generated by action upon the world, the subordination of students to teachers becomes impossible. (Freire 220) Freire does not believe that student’s inexperience compared to the teacher makes their thoughts less valuable, so the teacher should not subordinate them by explaining a topic, but instead converse with students about the topic at hand.

Knowledge is only meaningful to a student, teacher, citizen, leader, spouse, or friend when the factual concept is integrated into the experience of the person seeking to understand it and applied to that person’s views of the people around her. The only way to accomplish this sense of a complete “reality” is through communication.

There is a “lack of creativity, transformation, and knowledge in this [education] system” (Freire 216). As a student locked into the system of “banking education,” I’ve experienced 244

the dry learning environment Freire is referring to, but I have to give credit where credit is due. Cheers! To my third-grade teachers, for granting us learning autonomy and fueling our creative juices with frequent games of telephone—the ultimate lesson on the perils of foggy communication and the necessity of obedient collaboration. My favorite telephone game sentence transformation happened in my computer science classroom during free time. The sentence began with something along the lines of “Hannah peels bananas like a monkey,” and epically transformed into something to the tune of “Anna feels bonkers like a donkey.”

Playing the telephone game gave us a chance to practice “problem-posing” education with immediate black-and-white results and unified the class with the freedom to create a result dictated by our own governance, not our teacher’s, while simultaneously dividing us as our creation transformed in the hands of each student (Freire 221). Though we individually contributed to the shifting sentence, the result was our shared “reality,” stemming from our network of communication. We collaborated with each other, mastered the problem and completed the task together, and learned by the grace of our shared creative freedom that a text message, set of instructions, novel, presentation, game, in this case, etc., will never yield productive results without clear and honest communication.

Reading and writing are commonly used as modes of communication, but why are they so successful? Humans by nature tend to lock tight boxes around thoughts and communication that have the potential to set them apart from everybody else.

When most people write, they restrain themselves, write and revise, cut this or that because “goodness knows what a horror it would be if that got out.” On the other hand, writers like Knausgaard or Mary Karr, author of The Liars Club, write dialogue from their soul, something meaningful to themselves and others who relate to their situation. Richard Miller capitalizes on Karr’s ability to impact her readers in his essay “The Dark Night of the Soul.” Karr writes about her confusing and traumatic childhood to find herself and discover the truth about what makes her, her. After uncovering the what’s and why’s behind the hardships that remained scrambled in her mind throughout childhood and well into her adult years, Karr comes to terms with the fact that her mother made her feel unworthy and unloved because she herself felt unworthy and unloved. Karr uses writing as an outlet to come 245

to a place where she values herself as a person with meaning and worth.

Miller includes Karr’s story in his essay to show that the process of writing through trauma helps people like Karr gain “access to the light of the universal” or find happiness in the dark corners their life (Miller 24). Miller’s essay claims that writing and reading are only important if they hold personal importance to the writer or reader. A reader’s receptive abilities and openmindedness compliment a writer’s willingness to surrender fragments from her personal narrative to add substance to writing.

Transparent communication facilitates this connection between total strangers, creating a channel of open-mindedness between readers and writers and an opportunity for learning through other people’s experiences.

Since I was old enough to understand what spite feels like in the form of words, I have been searching for somewhere, some way, to expel my hurt or turn it into something meaningful.

I found unexpected solace in the writings of Karl Ove Knausgaard, specifically in a handout given in AP Language that presents a segment from his pensive book Spring. Here, he attempts to communicate life lessons to his infant daughter. In the process of writing to his daughter, Knausgaard recounts his deeply personal ponderings on the human condition and creation compared to the condition of the world outside human reality. The world of “mute reality” belongs to plants, often animals as well, who are scientifically real, but can never prove it themselves, never have the urge to prove it. The human consciousness is what sets us apart from the rest of nature, and the way we communicate our reality is what sets us apart from each other. I needed somebody to show me that thoughts are not stuck to the skull, that I, along with every other literate human on this planet, am capable of bringing other people to understand and outwardly relate to the turmoil inside of my head.

Knausgaard needed to write Spring to better himself just as much as I needed to read it to better myself. He writes with raw vulnerability in the process of addressing his downfalls as an apology to his daughter and opens himself to the critique of other humans. The risk in being vulnerable is worth taking for Knausgaard, though, in exchange for the quiet peace derived from the 246

ability to successfully communicate his burdensome thoughts and release his inner ruckus into a world of other humans who may understand. I understood. Knausgaard’s paternal advice and apology to his daughter for his downfalls stand for me as a representation of everything I want to hear from my own father. It pains me to think that Knausgaard’s daughter may take her father’s clarity of mind and honest communications for granted, because I’ve always wished for and never had the same from my own father.

To Knausgaard I will be forever grateful for allowing me to adopt him as a sort of literary paternal figure. Knausgaard’s effortless ability bring life water to the dry, fatherless ravines left in me proves that writing is powerful if an author’s communicated message is authentic and honest, as Miller would agree. One question tormented Miller into writing “The Dark Night of the Soul”: Is it possible to produce writing that generates a greater sense of connection to the world and its inhabitants? Of selfunderstanding? Writing that moves out from the mundane, personal tragedies that mark any individual life into the history, the culture, and the lives of the institutions that surround us all?

If only Miller could take my place in the world just long enough to read Knausgaard and feel my relief. It is, Richard Miller. It is possible to learn about yourself and simultaneously help others simply by writing. Knausgaard writes to better understand himself, to give clarity to his daughter, to un-blur the details from his own scuttles with life. I read Knausgaard to feel connected to his grasp on life, which helped me come to terms with my own life. “Thought has meaning only when generated by action upon the world” (Freire 220), and thank God Knausgaard acted on his thoughts and wrote to the world, because his thoughts had ma-

jor meaning for me.

Miller has “doubts” about “what the literate arts might be said to be good for”; I have an answer, so doubt no more, Miller (Miller 6). Reading makes us think more deeply about our own realities, and good writing renews our curiosity in life’s peculiarities. I made a trip to Whole Foods, obviously to get ice cream, 247

but I was not thinking about the cold and creamy birthday cakeflavored goodness on which I was about to feast. I engaged my mind to think like Freire, problem-posing and drawing connections between Knausgaard’s deep, existential thinking and the events that take place in my own life—a total “emo” mindset, as most from my generation call it. Driving home, my thoughts shifted, like a cloud sliding over the sunshine and dulling the color and warmth from the landscape. Nervous and maniacal, I considered how much power I held in my four little left-hand fingers (the ones that move the blinker lever). I knew that I was turning less than a hundred and fifty feet, but I recognized in the moment right before I pushed the blinker down, how impossibly real it is that 6.5 billion people in this great big world have secret ideas and plans for their future and their loved one’s futures that nobody else knows about. Some plan out of adoration, some out of hate, but they plan no less, and their plans remain unannounced to all the rest. In that moment, I was still traveling fifty miles an hour in a straight line, and I knew that in two seconds I was going to be slowing down and turning, and I knew that the person behind me and the person behind her would also be slowing down because of my decision to turn, but the people behind me were not yet aware of the noticeable effect I was about to have on them. The power that I possessed in choosing to communicate or not to communicate my desire to turn was shocking. The fact that a common, minute indication holds the power to cause a fatal car accident or a simple ease to a slower pace makes me tremble. If such a small action can have that much of an impact, that much of a chain reaction on other people, how do the grand schemes of rich, environmentally-aware business men, or the plans of a woman to have a child, or the desires of a terrorist to harm a whole population, or the dreams of a little girl to follow in her father’s footsteps, affect the world? Would their plan’s impacts upon the world change if those people’s desires were voiced—if the people were willing to communicate their plans and hopes for the future without inhibition? According to Freire, their secret plans are meaningless: “only through communication can human life have meaning” (Freire 220).

Knausgaard, Miller, and Freire explain the power of communication in very different, but equally valuable ways. Freire assesses the way in which humans mature intellectually, suggesting that knowledge is only acquired through collaborative 248

pursuit. Miller highlights stories of people who have impacted him and elucidates the necessity of open communication in order to connect with readers through writing. Knausgaard serves as a stellar example of Millerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s conclusions in my essay because of the deep connection I feel to Knausgaardâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s honest writing resulting from my own personal experiences with my father. Knausgaardâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s honest writing provided me with courage to write openly in this essay, exemplifying the chain reaction that communication has the power to inaugurate. As humans communicate with one another, share knowledge, read open-mindedly, write without restraint, and exchange ideas, we become intertwined with one another as equally powerful, like-minded, and well-educated beings. We form a community in which we feel comfortable and discover who we are as individuals in relation to other unique individuals. Since the natural human tendency is to remain independent in thought and action and isolated from others mentally, emotionally, and intellectually, communication through reading and writing, I would argue, is our most important asset in creating true and meaningful human connection.

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A Brief but Passionate Love Letter to the Movies

by Ethan Tetreault

I was not particularly athletic growing up, nor am I now.

That being said, when I was younger, my father did try to get me interested in sports. He enrolled me in youth soccer, basketball, tennis, football, anything that he thought would stick. Of course, nothing ever did.

I saw these attempts to form a connection between me and him as more desperate than anything else, which is part of the reason why I dreaded watching and participating in sports so much as a child. From my point of view, they were sort of obligatory, so I never developed a love for any specific game like my father did for football.

This disconnect between father and son only appeared to grow with time. Put simply, there was no middle ground between us, nothing to connect us: he hated computers, and I was enthralled by their intricacies; he loved biology and oncology, and I was regularly put to sleep by his lectures on telomeres and apoptosis.

This inability to connect with my father had a profound impact on my psychological development. I longed for some kind of connection with him, with what he did, with what he loved. At that point, at the age of seven or eight, all of our efforts seemed to be for naught.

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One warm Saturday in 2010, my father roused me from my slumber. He told me he would take me to a PG-13 movie as long as I didn't tell my mother.

This would be the first visit to the cinema we ever took together. The movie was saw was a matinee showing of Vampires Suck, a horrible parody of the Twilight franchise. We were the only two people in the theater and could laugh as loud as we wanted as a result. For the hour-and-a-half that we sat in the screening room, illuminated by the projector’s glow and delighted by the smell of fresh buttered popcorn, we were finally able to discard our differences and make a connection. We were more brought together than ever.

Over the next eight years, we would make regular weekend trips to the local multiplex. These excursions certainly taught me important lessons I would use later in life, like how to construct a general three-act story, how to frame the main character during an emotional scene, or how to incorporate sound into a scene in order to increase the sense of tension, but most importantly, they taught me how to connect with someone I thought I had nothing in common with.

My dad and I are slowly emerging into the golden sunlight of that afternoon in Florida after sitting through the absolute experience that is Vampires Suck. Both he and I are still laughing. He asks me, “So, bud, wadja think of the movie?”

“Oh my gosh, it was awful.” I loved it.

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Like Soft Butter

By Mackenzie Mazziota

It has always baffled me that every word we need to compose our teeming thoughts is available to us, yet we are constantly left scrambling like flustered fools to find the right words to defend our arguments, or tell our jokes, or complete papers.

We fail to recall the words at our disposal, we ignore the sweet or bitter effect that the words we do use offer to our dialogues.

Words have the ability to seep into our brains like soft butter on warm bread, to drip into every crevice and to drown them in the desired emotion.

They fill our minds with warmth and desire and terror and melancholy as if we really are experiencing such a scenario. That is a beautiful thing. To embrace without experiencing. To feel without being touched. Such little beauty exists in todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s world, and we should savor what remains.

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Existential Is the Poem

by Caroline Rose Lunny

Words, to tell someone I love them, to show them I care, how much one word can share.

Words, to reminisce over the good times, to reckon with the worst, to reveal everything that hurts.

Words,

to share my values, to display my intelligence, to demonstrate my integrity.

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Words, to inspire, to compel, to connect.

Only six hundred and fifty words

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Unloved

by Haley Mainwaring

Ink on paper, Flowing seamlessly.

Bold lettering in detail.

Blotting out imperfections.

Created to be seen.

Seen to be known.

Known to be believed.

And yet, not all will understand.

To some, words are just words.

Ink is just ink.

Paper is meant to be torn up, destroyed.

They will not see what you see.

Beauty.

Identity.

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Though creations are meant to be loved, That is not always the case.

Though God created us and Earth, We do not love this place.

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Leaves

by Mark Scott

Green, Not forever.

Brown, Not forever.

Leaves fall, As do we.

Soon, we will be Not leaves, Not brown, Not green.

We will be Free.

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Jackson Hugill

Scripted

My Strangely Long Poem

By Jainey Coates

It’s always when I’m driving

reality switches from rods and cones to a film reel a shuffle of slick plastic and violet velvet vapor I stretch out my hands on the wheel, and they look different

There’s something inside you. It’s hard to explain. They’re talking about you, boy, but you’re still the same.

(Nightcrawler, Drive, Ryan Gosling, Hot)

it’s glamourous really, to imagine one’s self in a video

Is it a video? Is it a video. Sufjan Stevens. Chalamet combusts the fourth wall in the flick of an eye. Crying into the fire. Acting. Definitely not acting. Acting?

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to imagine my own act being appraised as art (low culture mixed with existential yearning) the road fades into sky fades into strawberry shortcake red wine whipped cream selfishness: to ride with one’s windows down with the bass too loud. I played Multi-Love.

It’s an act.

(And some people are prone to migraines) Maybe doubt creeps out of whatever it is I call myself and seeps into the rest of me

Did I just run someone over?

And I always check for headlights in the all-encompassing dark behind me.

If someone’s there — just being there, being, driving behind me— the terror of being who I knew I was recedes.

Nobody goes for a swim a thousand leagues from shore, at least.

Probably because it’s inconvenient.

Can you imagine taking time off from school to swim a thousand leagues into the sea? I don’t even know how far a league is, let alone take time off school for it.

Nevertheless, it’d be a noble pursuit, I bet.

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Yeah, we all, shine on, like the moon, and the stars, and the sun.

On and on, on and on, on. (“Instant Karma! (We All Shine On), John Lennon, Cool Glasses, Seeing, Makes Me Feel Better, Like Headlights, Can’t You See I’m Trying To Do Something Here).

Anyways, I don’t believe that the person driving behind me would keep on driving after a thing like that.

And that’s why other people are my God Because they see things In this terrible but still good place

Separate occasion.

I sat in the backseat and cried the whole way to the house Big heaving ones that came out like an animal like I do on the way home from dr. old white man and in the shower and when I think about the dark.

That isn’t what a fun girl would do (WWFGD)

Sometimes I feel like an animal in the dark (fun girl would say that, sad girl would too, double entendre, just let me try this out).

But something about poison breaks down the acting facility in our brains

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So, I just cried and told secrets that weren’t mine, but might has well have been.

I claim squatter’s rights I sat with it and lived in it, and you can’t evict me Please don’t evict me This pain is all I know, and it’s all I have

“You’re a good person. I truly believe that. You’ll make a good partner one day, and you’re a good friend already.”

I made him say it.

I paid him with my father’s money, and I made him say it.

And it would have been free if I could listen to anyone else (that’s the thing about pursing higher education — some maladjusted youth may pin her self-worth onto your coat lapel, and there’s nothing you can do about it) And it felt **** good to hear, and I don’t regret it at all.

You drove me home and dropped me off at my door.

We were listening to Bruce Springsteen.

(I hope you know how much good music, music I would to listen

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to as a kid riding in the jeep with my dad, that you’ve ruined for me).

I was being very fun. I could tell that you were enjoying my act, that you were creating a memory to add to this day. Pulling me into some separate future that I’d never see.

I was always so obsessed with that — with how you’d remember it.

The whole day felt like a fake day.

Not in a good way.

Like a day you live specifically to remember in a way that it wasn’t. But I guess it was.

I acted like nothing was wrong like I always did because nobody wants to hook up with a girl who is really sad.

I’m sorry.

Anyways, you said you loved me.

I heard it.

I whispered it back, into your hair, but I didn’t mean it.

(Just years before, I would see myself in my fake future — see what it would feel like for someone to tell me they loved me like that, in between kissing me. It wasn’t a lie then even though I was only telling it to myself. It was a lie now: pressed up against a white pillar on my porch, you smiling at me like you’ve never seen a girl before, you had just graduated that night, why had I had to be in that house with all of your grandparents? And you clinging onto my hips like fruit on a vine, too ripe).

Which made me feel guilty until I realized that you didn’t either.

I know this because you never said it again, even when I asked if 263

you remembered saying it, months later.

All part of the fake day, I guess.

She don’t want to be a man or a woman. She wants to be your love. Multi-love’s got me on my knees. We were one, then become three.

(Multi-Love, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, You Didn’t Like It, It Was My Favorite Song).

Monsanto killed off all the milkweed that the monarchs lay their eggs in, so we planted new ones, and the butterflies came, and the kindergarteners laughed in the garden and said this is good.

And I stood in the doorway because I didn’t want to go.

I said — “I don’t want to go” And you said that I could come back again tomorrow And that was good But tomorrow always ends up being today.

Or maybe it was always today? It’ll always be today?

We’re alive. That’s all that matters.

And I shut the door, but I didn’t want to.

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I know what you’re thinking, Don’t you know this is a tale told by an idiot?

Full of sound and fury?

And signifying nothing?

It is, and I don’t care — I love it.

And I know that this is a fake memory and that I’m acting and the music is hurting your ears but I don’t want to go.

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Are We Far from Dystopia?

by Ananda Chatterjee

It has been a while since Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Ray Bradbury wrote their Dystopian classics; 1984, Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451 respectively. These books, stories if you would like, could be considered the “classic” dystopian novels. As technology has advanced, we can see stark similitudes in today’s world, to the worlds these authors wrote about.

Fahrenheit 451 tells the story of Guy Montag, a fireman, and his personal development, as he is exposed to ideas, people- such as his wife, Mildred, a teenager by the name of Clarisse, and his boss, Beatty. By the way… In this world firemen burn books. As we were reading Fahrenheit 451, my English teacher had taken note to remind us of how Mildred’s addiction to “screens,” is rather homologous to our 4’’ by 5’’ hand held devices (I didn’t say the “p” world). Fahrenheit 451 manifested a future in which we forget the value of reading, and the government authorizes firemen to burn books. As I sit in this massive library, framing my thoughts on this article, while being surrounded by books typing this, I do not see a single person, not even one, reading a book. People are playing Fortnite, or watching YouTube videos. As a matter of fact, that was what I was doing before I started typing it.

We, as people have changed tremendously, but the governing body has also become eerily similar to the likes of 1984.

In this novel, the entity “Big Brother” constantly monitors thelives of citizens, and the “Thought Police” have penetrated the minds of people. Five years ago, Edward Snowden leaked government documents that showed how OUR government, yes the 266

government of, “The United States of America,” monitors our phone calls, has access to our emails, computers, and practically all the network we are connected on. Everything we do is monitored relentlessly whether we like it or not. I do not think even the classic intelligence organizations such as the Gestapo or the KGB had the same level of access to the lives of people, as many governments of today have over the lives of their citizenry.

Finally, perhaps the most #relatable of the three, “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley. Huxley’s work portrays a Utopia in which people are deprived of all things that make life what it is. As far as the people of 2018 are concerned, that is a DYStopia There are no mothers, there are no fathers, there is “Soma”—a drug that makes one freakishly content with the abhorrent, and grisly lives they lead. There are brobdingnagian proportions of physical pleasure, wealth, and drugs in the world that serves to control the masses. It is an ideal “bread and circus scenario.” I do not want to sound like a Quora user (It is a great thing actually,) Our discomfort with politics, laws, policies, people, ideas, and things—if it all goes away… will we really be different from Huxley’s “Brave New World?”

Sure, our world has a lot of issues, but honestly, I wouldn’t want to live in a “perfect” world. The struggle of making the world a better place is something we should strive towards, and I think the result of that--will be better than Soma.

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The Wasteland

by Dylan burhans

This was life now, in the year 2054. The mass consumption of coal and fossil fuels led to an exponential increase of carbon emissions in the early 2000s. This led to the complete meltdown of the Arctic, and the water levels rose drastically.

Cities like Tallahassee and Washington D.C. became dirty coastal towns, while areas like Long Island, Miami, and Great Britain became completely submerged. Millions were displaced from their homes. Millions more were killed in the violent conflicts, as the refugees moved inland to start new lives, with many killing each other to survive. With the United States and Europe falling into civil wars, Russia and North Korea attacked the West. While the U.S. and it’s allies eventually won, billions died in the war. The year is 2054, and the human population has now dwindled to 1 billion people and is diminishing quickly.

Everything is destroyed. There is only the Wasteland.

“Can I get you anything?”

Adam snapped out of his trance and turned his attention to the attendant, who was pushing a cart of hardtack bread.

“Oh. No thank you.”

The attendant shrugged and continued. Adam looked back out the window. He was on his way to visit his mother in Chicago. She was in the hospital after trying to commit suicide by walking outside without her mask on. Because of all the

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horrible air pollution, everyone must wear gas-mask like head ware to survive. When he called his mother shortly before he left, he asked her why she tried to kill herself.

“The world, this is no place to live, no time to be alive,” she croaked. “I remember a time with blue skies, beautiful green foliage, the sun sparkling off the ocean. But that was a long time ago, when we earned it.”

Adam wasn’t sure what she meant, and as he looked out the window, he struggled to find the answer. For all he knew, it was just random **** muttered by a senile old woman, and it didn’t actually have an answer.

He continued to look out the window, which was covered by a thick layer of dust, so it was hard to see everything clearly.

He was able to see the White River, however. All the water was gone, leaving behind steaming piles of mud and sewage. He could smell that putrid smell all the way in the train.

After 15 minutes, the train pulled into Lafayette, about one-third the way from Indianapolis to Chicago. The train picked up a few people, but no one got off, and Adam could see why. A dust storm was blowing in, whipping the shutters on the old wooden buildings. A few farmers wheeled around wagons that carried the few crops that survived the harvest (horses and cows went extinct in 2043, and the mule population is critically endangered). Adam heard a shrill whistle, and the train was off.

As the train continued its journey, Adam looked at the Wasteland. But now he wasn’t just looking. He was admiring.

The train finally pulled into Chicago, when Adam realized his mother was right. This is not the world humans can live in. We had our chance, but we squandered our precious gift, and now we are getting what we deserve. Eventually, humans will die. But Adam wasn’t sad, because in the Wasteland, life will go on.

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Kendall Minter

Election Day

by Isabel Hutchinson

Election dayâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the word alone fills me with anxiety. A kind of PTSD-like reaction, I guess.

Two years ago, in november of 2016, I awoke with excitement and hope - positive that I was about to witness history in the form of our first female president. Finally the MAGA hats and rhetoric at my school can be put to rest, and the dozen Maclay liberals will triumph, I thought. I couldn't wait to see their faces as their beloved narcissict lost the election to a powerful woman (America's worst nightmare).

It never once occured to me that Donald Trump could actually win. In hindsight, this was undoubtedly naive, but I was an idealist and she was ahead in the polls and he was, well him. How could he win?

On November 7th, I stayed home from school - too scared to face Trump's victory in a conservatively dominated school. I did not want to see his ideology uplifted, validated. I did (do) not want to live in a world where Donald Trump is President. I guess I expected too much from America in truly believing that our nation could continue in our march towards progress, flowing seamlessly from our first black president to our first female president.

So here I am, two years later and armed with a vote, yet somehow terrified to have any sliver of hope. I awoke anxious, disheartened, and largely pessimistic. American politics has conditioned me to expect the worst.

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Today of all days, strangely enough, was career day at my high school. And today of all days, the world gave me a gift in the form of three women trying to change the world. It's funny how the world works like that - when all hope is lost, something (or someone) comes along to make you want to believe again. In The Answers, Catherine Lacey writes that her main character "wanted to do something that could never be undone. Something permanent. Some little forever." All three of the bright, empowering women I met today have created some little forever, and they have instilled hope in me on a day where I didn't have any.

I began career day with Sally Bradshaw - mother, wife, owner of Midtown Reader, and former senior advisor to the Jeb Bush campaign in 2016. Mrs. Bradshaw is phenomenal - her intellegence is undeniable. Bradshaw worked for years within the republican party, climbing higher and higher in a continually male-dominated field. When Jeb Bush failed to secure the Republican nomination in 2016, and Donald Trump recieved it, Bradshaw famously left the GOP, simply obeying her morals as a woman and as an American. This feat made the front page on CNN, The New York Times, and many other prominent news sources. Bradshaw was at the apex of her political career, and could have easily continued her ascent into American politics into a white house job. Instead, she sacrificed the career she had always known to avoid supporting a man she morally and ideologically could not believe in. Sally Bradshaw, on a day when I had no hope, showed me that America is capable of crossing party lines to do what is right and change the direction of our nation, because the path we are on is a scary one. Sally Bradshaw gave me hope today.

The next thirty minutes I spent with Judge Stacy Paddack, a larger than life woman who makes everyone she speaks to feel valued and important. Judge Paddack has spent her career in public service - devoting her life to the Department of Justice and Administrative Law. I know Miss Stacy personally, and she treats everyone she comes across with the utmost respect, regardless of whether they deserve it. She is a devoted mother, a loving wife, and our biggest cheerleader at Friday night football games. To hear about her professional life was a new perspective, and I was in awe of the sheer power within her soul - the power to fight for what is right. "Do you have any questions?"

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she asked with warm eyes and a smile on her face, yet the room was silent. Jainey Coates, however, had something to say: Have you ever considered running for office? Judge Paddack smiled. "I never planned to. But in the past few years, I have definitely considered the option," she said. Donald Trump and his administration, in all of its horror, has done one good thing: made people angry enough to take action. This election is record setting in the sheer number of female candidates, and it has often been called the "pink wave". I don't know if these women would have run if our political climate hadn't given them no other choice, showing them that no one will advocate for them besides themselves. We need women in politics, women like Stacy Paddack. Judge Paddack gave me hope today.

I spent the final thirty minutes with Elizabeth Ricci and her husband, two powerful and motivating immigration attorneys.

Immigration is a hot topic in this midterm election - with derogatory rhetoric, demeaning policies, and dehumanizing actions occuring daily towards our global brothers and sisters. "Our business is keeping families together. Under this administration - not easy," said her husband, Neil Rambana, giving voice to what we were all thinking on this important day. Upon seeing the students entering the room, Ricci breathed a sigh of relief as she mumbled It's all women. It was as if this was the moment she had been waiting for. It was a room full of femininity, no testosterone present- a safe place really. This enivornment allowed Ricci to speak frankly with us about the enduring sexism she faces every day: being asked to "speak to the attorney" upon seeing her, clients requesting to see her husband instead of her, and being called the "capital B word", as she put it. "People don't like strong women even strong women don't like strong women. It will continue to be a problem. We've taken some steps backwards recently," she said. We asked her how she deals with it, how she doesn't selfemulate with anger in the face of ignorance, and she gave the ambitious young women in the room three pieces of advice: "Respect yourself", "You're going to have to work harder", and "die before you cry". Ricci was able to be honest about the culture that has discouraged powerful women, and spoke to us as sisters, joined together in this fight. Fight we will. Elizabeth Ricci gave me hope today.

It is now almost 5 oclock on election day, and I am on my couch, eyes glued to CNN, still full of anxiety.

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I don' t know what will happen. I don't know if I can trust America to do the right thing, putting partisanship aside and saving our nation. But these women gave me hope today, on a largely hopeless day. They created a safe place of women who want to see progress - and will stop at nothing to see their dream reach fruition - some little forever.

In conclusion, women are infinitely awesome and continually amaze me, every day. Throughout it all, still we rise.

I have hope, not in this election, but in women.

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Man vs. Modernism

by Ellie Casteel

This morning, as I was driving to The Tallahassee Ballet with watery eyes and a red nose from crying, I witnessed a man fighting modernity. This man sat in an electric wheelchair on the narrow concrete island that divided two roads. He was accompanied by the concrete crosswalk pole. The angry orange hand screamed at him, but he jabbed the shiny metal disc every few seconds, petitioning to cross. Meanwhile, the rain was pouring down relentlessly, and this man had only a measly umbrella to shield himself. The cars rushing past had no care for this struggling soul. They had a green light. Stranded on the man-made island, he was powerless to the will of the traffic light grid. Several minutes passed as I waited across the street in my car. When my light changed, the orange hand facing him became an illuminated walking man, and he ordered his chair forward. I wish I couldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve helped that man. I hope he had a decent day. Through my wet eyes and windshield, I was reminded that we are all struggling. Despite the trials that rain down upon us all, though, we are each pining to make it through

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Psychic Imagery

by Lexi O’Rourke

Somewhere between insomnia and the everlasting scent of lavender mixed with fresh-picked cucumbers, I find serenity in the idea of being alone. Nestled in my furry sheets, immersing me in the warmth that is and of myself, a poetry book, and lilac lights, hanging loosely behind my bed. As you read this, you may be able to smell the lavender, the freshly picked cucumbers, feel yourself coddled in the cotton of bed sheets, imagine the tingling of your fingertips scrolling through the pages of poetry, seeing the lilac lights bloom among the room. This, simply, through the use of words, is an image.

Images, being the tangible and intangible perceptions of certain subject matters, consistently obtain the ability to make us, as human beings, feel something. Within the midst of the media, social norms, and societal pressures, we often forget what it means to remember the meaning of words and how they can impact individuals in ways they cannot fathom. Sharon Olds’s poem “I Go Back to May 1937” and Nick Flynn’s “Cartoon Physics, part 2” both confront the notion of images. The fictional aspect of these poems pertain to Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried because it forces us to question our perception of reality. Similar to O’Brien, Olds and Flynn use fiction to make their audiences find a deeper meaning within words and develop a larger cultural perspective, learning unknown aspects about themselves and the world around them.

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Olds’s “I Go Back to May 1937” uses fiction in order to force her audience to question the meanings behind her abstract ideas. For instance, Olds voices, “the red tiles glinting like bent plates of blood behind his head” (Lines 4-5). Olds creates a pathway for her audience to encounter this necessary fiction of red tiles being like plates of blood in order to deal with the sublime.

The subliminal personality of Olds’s writing compels her readers to stop and reanalyze the written words in order to understand their deeper meaning. These red tiles could be reminiscent of the inevitable aspect of death that we, as humans, will all face. The blood on the bent plates foreshadows an oncoming death, leading the audience to realize that as much as we may feel alive, our lives are going to eventually end. In addition, Olds claims that she wants to take the couple she sees and “bang them together / at the hips like chips of flint” (Lines 27-28). Olds uses this tactic in order to suggest the objectivity of humans and how we are always being controlled. Furthermore, the chips of flint imply the innate yet fragile nature of human beings. No matter how indestructible or defensive we are, there is always an overwhelming power or god or some **** that constricts us. From Olds, we can learn the significance of necessary fictions through her subliminal attitude towards the notions of death and objectivity.

Flynn’s “Cartoon Physics, part 2” proposes necessary fiction through the discussion of his mother killing herself. However, Flynn subtly mentions the death of his mother by stating that she “cut / a hole in the air / & vanished into it” (Lines 1-2). This non-explicit explanation of suicide displays Flynn’s innocence and constant denial for his mother’s absence. Moreover, Flynn suggests suicide as an empty and vacant state in order to portray the benign perspective of youth and how it takes time to develop the acceptance of comprehending death. Additionally, Flynn continues this shy attitude by voicing that “my mother stepped / inside herself and no one / could follow” (Lines 16-17). This blank state in which his mother “stepped” into implies the isolation that suicide feeds to the human soul; suicide forces individuals to become so secluded that they don’t recognize the impact on others, specifically, a young Nick Flynn. Flynn’s writing shows his existing sorrow through his inability to not only physically follow his mother, but also his emotional inability to “follow” her. Flynn displays his psychological calamity due to his mother’s suicide by creating a fictional analysis of her death, portraying the subliminal mind of one who continuously is forced to confront his grief.

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Similar to Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Brien, Olds and Flynn use fiction to portray the subliminal attitude that forces their audiences to question the notion of tangible and intangible aspects of life. The painted images, bent plates of blood, chips of flint, a hole in the air, stepping inside oneself, create a false sense of hope and dreams and fantasy that people are able to lose themselves in in order to find themselves once again. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the purpose of fiction: being able to immerse yourself in the book of myths or legends or tales and totally becoming one with them. Fiction forces you to question what is true and what is not; what is tangible or intangible; what is existence and futility.

And so I continue to sit in the midst of poetry and lilac skies and freshly-picked cucumbers, as I become one with the poems I immerse myself within and you become one with the image I freely and loosely devise

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Tranquility Emily Dudley

The World Would Be a Better Place

by John Messer

The world would be a better place If every person chose to wait And rather than fight give some space So, stop with the saddening hate The world would be a better place

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A Sunday Morning

By Isabella Snider

“Just an orange scone for me and-” she gestured to the empty seat across from her. “He’ll want a black coffee and a chocolate chip muffin.”

The waiter nodded silently and left the table.

She softly hummed to herself as a family of four entered the shop, the bell above the door welcoming them. They chose a booth adjacent to a framed photo of the shop the day that it’d opened. The four seemed wide awake despite being up and about so early in the morning. They chatted and laughed and ordered their breakfast.

She played with her thumbs and mindlessly listened to the bustle of the shop. As she watched groups of people come and go she found herself feeling deep sonder. Each individual that passed by had a whole life of their own. They all had different homes and families and personalities and experiences. It was all so overwhelming to think about and just for a moment, she felt the slightest tinge of jealousy. She felt jealous because she was only one person; one home, one family, one personality, and she had only her experiences. She was only one person with one life.

But then the bell above the door chimed again and in walked her favorite pair of blue-green eyes. And she saw her favorite freckled cheeks.

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The waiter returned with her order just as her favorite smile filled the seat before her. And as her favorite voice said, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Perfect timing. Mmm, looks good. Thanks, hun,â&#x20AC;? That tinge of jealousy vanished more quickly than it had arrived.

She was right where she wanted to be on a Sunday morning; enjoying her orange scone as her favorite person sipped on black coffee and rubbed her hand in between his fingers.

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We Left the Tunnel

by Jackson Hugill

Beauty disappears into darkness Light dissolves into shadow Clarity to blur Love remains

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Croix de Chavaux Cody Paddack

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The Boulder Is Worth It

by Jainey Coates

Sisyphus, a man doomed to roll a boulder up a mountain for all of eternity, knew better than Hamlet what it was to “grunt and sweat under a weary life.” The first time I read Camus’s interpretation of the myth, I found it depressing. I wondered: How could anyone ever be fulfilled by such a pointless endeavor, with such a meaningless existence? Am I Sisyphus? Camus’s final advice, however, has taken longer for me to understand. He tells us to imagine Sisyphus happy, to imagine him enjoying the process of his seemingly-fruitless effort. Sisyphus’s boulder-pushing is, indeed, one of the most banal of endeavors, but within it lies a radical act. He is rejecting his programming by constructing meaning around his seemingly inane existence and allowing himself to enjoy the condition of being alive. I now find this essay inspiring, for I have realized that I must actively search for meaning and beauty in order to find enjoyment in life.

One of the beautiful things I’ve found comfort in recently is the the Beatles’ final concert on the rooftop. I’ve been wondering why I feel so strongly about it for about a week since I stumbled upon it on YouTube. I mean, it’s just a video of a song I’ve heard a million times over the course of my life. What was touching me, I realized, was the proof of meaning inherent in the video.

Somewhere in the granulated pixels was the proof that there are some things that are so beautiful that being the one to share them with the world gives your life true meaning. It was the proof that somebody out there had a meaningful life, and that maybe I could too. Witnessing their performance made me feel like I can do something that will matter.

Over the past couple of years, the thought that nothing I do will ever matter because my mortality will cause me to slip into irrelevant nothingness has been playing on a loop in my head 285

whenever I hit a low point. I’ve recently realized that isn’t true.

It’s like William Faulkner writes in A bsalom! A bsalom!, the existential sojourn of a novel that my English teacher carefully and meticulously unraveled with us last year – “Nothing ever happens once and is finished.” Time doesn’t matter. The Beatles’ performance is almost fifty years old, yet I can watch it whenever I need to. And even after the last star in the universe burns out and there is absolutely nothing left, that moment will still have happened. It will be out there in the space time continuum somewhere, and I think that beauty is enough. It’s hard to watch that video and maintain that nothing matters.

The beauty doesn’t just come from the music, either. It’s in how peaceful and happy and young Paul and John look when they smile at each other in the middle of “Don’t Let Me Down.”

It’s the way they are swaying in what looks like a cool sunrise on the top of a building, the skyline suspending them in mid-air, surrounded by the wires that connect the sound waves to the ears, amplifying beauty. This recording makes me want to believe in myself again, as a dynamic and worthy being. The important thing that the Beatles and all of the rest of us non-Beatles have in common is that we can all do and make things that are beautiful, and if not beautiful, then kind or just or decent or good.

I used to think that because everything was going to end that nothing mattered, but now I think that makes everything matter more. We have to fill the time that we get with as much beauty as we can so that the next time the fabric of the universe explodes, as it probably already has infinitely many times, the tiny, painfully delicate hanging string out there that encapsulates the space-time of humanity will at least have something worthy to contribute to whatever happens next. It is with this realization that I am able to find new meaning and fulfillment in my everyday experience, as I continue to push the boulder and enjoy the ability to do so.

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Contributors, Fall 2018 Rachel Abbott is at Maclay School.

Mariam Alvi is a junior at Maclay School.

Emma Grace Bass is a senior at Maclay School.

Helen Bradshaw is a senior at Maclay School. She gets irrationally cold and is the number one Jeff Goldblum fan.

Dylan Burhans is senior at Maclay School. He was born on Long Island but grew up in Tallahassee; he enjoys swimming and hockey. He draws inspiration from Edgar Allan Poe and Tim Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Brien.

Ellie Casteel is a junior at Maclay School. She is the News Editor of the Andalusian as well as a Corps de Ballet member in the Tallahassee Ballet Company.

Ananda Chatterjee enjoys history, politics, and mathematics.

He participates in Brainbowl, Model UN, and debate. In his free time, you can find Ananda doing all sorts of athletic things such as (but not limited to) - wrestling, boxing, rowing, weightlifting, tennis, cross country, cricket, squash, badminton, brain bowl, soccer, track, hockey, basketball, surfing, car racing, pool, bowling, polo, and water polo.

Jainey Coates enjoys reaching dharma and scream crying and weeping into the void.

Madi Cordle is a junior at Maclay this year. She hopes her readers relate to her writing so that she can help them like Knausgaard helped her. She also wants people to know that she writes out of love for her father, not hate, and prays for his eventual health.

Simon Corpuz is a junior who loves coding, video games, Maclay, and editing . . . in that order.

Mercy Crapps is a freshman at Maclay School.

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Holden Crumpler is currently a senior at Maclay School who is taking Southern Lit, AP Lit, Creative Writing, and is soon to be taking Modern/Postmodern Drama as well. He is obsessed with the works of William Faulkner and will gladly prattle on about that for as long as he can. Currently wallowing in a pit of existential dread, but that is to be expected.

Anna Kate Daunt is a senior at Maclay School in Dr. Beaven’s AP Lit class. On any given day, you can find her talking about her immense love for chemistry and/or microeconomics.

Drew Daunt is a sophomore at Maclay School. He is an all around stud.

Ryan Daunt is fourteen-years-old and a freshman. This is his first year at Maclay School. He enjoys most subjects and activities; especially soccer and playing outside with his friends, siblings, and neighbors.

Justine de Saint Mars is a senior at Maclay School.

Chandler Downie is an incoming freshman at the University of Florida. She was the editor-in-chief of the Maclay Literary Journal until her graduation this past May, and she is excited to continue her involvement with the literary arts in her upcoming college years. Chandler is also a space-loving nerd who can eat meals while watching gory TV and enjoys sharing fun facts.

Please welcome Chandler Downie.

Emily Dudley is a junior at Maclay School.

Lauren Fleischer is a junior at Maclay School.

Braden Foster is a freshman at Maclay School.

Lindsay Grey is a fourteen-year-old aspiring artist and resident night-owl! My personally preferred medium of artwork is digital, but I highly enjoy traditional as well, and have respect for all mediums and styles. My main focus recently—for about the past year, actually—has been how to draw anatomy and people, but some scenery never hurt anybody!

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Sarah Halbert—fish wife, mother, aspiring astronaut, and betrothed to a wonderful anime boy. This genderqueer, bisexual eighteen-year-old found their passion in writing and, through their teenage years, let it flourish. When they aren’t writing, they can usually be found binging episodes of Kitchen Nightmares and texting their boyfriend pictures of cute dogs they see on UF campus.

Hailey Hobbs is a senior at Maclay School.

Abigail Hugill is a ninth grader at Maclay School. She is an avid tennis player and enjoys outdoor activities. She participates in many school associated clubs as well as girl scouts.

She enjoys creative writing because of the outlet it lets her have.

Jackson Hugill is a young person. He has an irrational love for Jeff Goldblum. He is survived by _________.

Isabel Hutchinson is a senior and acts as an editor for Notes from the Underground. She has a passion for reading, writing, and American politics. She hopes her words can put voice to emotions a vast variety of people have, but don’t say.

Madeline Lillie is a freshman at Maclay School.

Caroline Rose Lunny is a senior at Maclay School.

Clara Catherine Lunny is a sophomore at Maclay School.

Haley Mainwaring is a senior at Maclay School. She is an amazing person, a great friend, and a phenomenal poet. She will succeed in life no matter what she chooses to do.

Kenzie Mazziotta is a senior at Maclay School.

Mary Allison McCue is a junior at Maclay School.

Ann Bannerman McFarlain is a junior at Maclay School.

Eli Mears is in the class of 2022 and likes work that involves nature or space. The writing he submitted reflects the former 289

interest (Outside). He joined the Underground because he thought it would be fun to write for a club.

John Messer is a junior at Maclay School.

Kendall Minter a junior at Maclay School.

Ashlynn Moayad is a senior at Maclay School.

Victor Oguledo is a sophomore at Maclay School.

Emily Roden is a senior at Maclay School.

Lexi O’Rourke is a senior at Maclay School. Obsessed with iced coffee and poetry, she is planning to major in English whatever school she goes to.

Cody Paddack is a senior who loves national parks, dogs, and high school humor. Shout out to her friends and Michelle Obama<3 Eljin Rhymes lives a quote by Voltaire which is “Judge of a man by his questions rather then by his answers.” He believes life is a game with infinite levels and our purpose is to play as many of them before our time. Also, he likes mac and cheese.

Madeleine Roberts is a junior who likes Monty Python, ragtime, 80’s REM, and dactylic hexameter.

Mark Scott is a senior at Maclay. He hopes to be vine famous.

Avery Shaver is a sophomore at Maclay. She hears the train run by her house every Thursday.

Lilly Simons sums up her existence up in one word: editing.

Holly Sims is a senior at Maclay this year. She loves reading, writing, and riding her horse, a good boy named Forest. She hopes to graduate this year.

Lucy Smith is a rising senior who enjoys Animal Crossing, Alice Oseman, Novels, and Natalie Prass.

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Isabella Snider is a junior at Maclay School.

Abbey Stejskal is a senior at Maclay School.

Rachael Stockel is a junior at Maclay. She plays tennis and runs cross country and track. One of her favorite hobbies is hiking. Her submission is about someone in her life that has caused her a lot of pain, but also taught her a lot about herself.

He has taught her how life can sometimes hit you with hard stuff, but everyone has difficult things to deal with; we all have pain.

Madelyn Stout is a junior at Maclay. She absolutely loves reading and writing. She is a master of Tsundoku, as well as Sudoku. If you can’t find her, she is either in the library, watching Doctor Who, or working on one of Maclay’s other publications (the Andalusian). She is a fan of all the “nerd” things and she loves to have awesome conversations with awesome people.

Logan Sundberg is a sophomore at Maclay School.

Spencer Sundberg is a senior at Maclay. She adores poetry, hence her position as Assistant Poetry Editor.

Ethan Tetreault is currently a junior with the hope of surviving. He loves writing and hope that people from all backgrounds may connect with his stuff.

Kenny Tran is a freshman at Maclay School.

Judy Wang is a senior at Maclay who loves reading, coding, and dogs. She runs a fan page for her best friend Julia and hopes to pet as many doggos as she can.

Grace Wells is a senior who started drawing in seventh grade as a way to express herself when words failed. She fell in love with art immediately and that passion has only grown throughout the years.

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