Other People Collection No. 4

Editor’s Note Welcome to Other People Literary Magazine’s fourth issue, Refraction. With pandemic restrictions loosening, Other People returned to campus in 2022 and worked hard to bring together these pieces from the powerful, diverse artistic community at our university. As the academic year draws to a close, we are thrilled to once again showcase UCSD’s wonderful and talented creators in a brand new collection. This blend of prose, poetry, and visual art is just a fraction of the gorgeous work that we received, and the team is honored to share this celebration of creation with you.

Refraction. Like a prism scattering light, or a mirror shattering a reflection, art fractures the self. Truth is divided and scattered through the creative medium as old truths are re-examined and new truths are brought to light.

In this issue, our artists turn towards themselves and the world around them and contemplate their truths. Their work reflects their confrontations with identity, love, and life itself as they piece together fragments into an imperfect but achingly real whole. We chose this theme to highlight the individual and collective truths that each artist brings to the magazine. Our artists proclaim who they are and what they believe through prose and poetry, through color and texture, through light and shadow. We hope that this collection can be its own light reflecting and refracting through our reality.

Our fourth issue owes its existence to many people. We would like to thank our editorial team for their work with our published submissions and our design team for their artistic skill and keen aesthetic eye. We would like to thank our excellent advisor, professor Lily Hoang, for her invaluable guidance, and the venues that hosted our many fundraisers for their hospitality.

And we would like to thank all who submitted work and revealed their truths to us. This year, we received the most submissions that this magazine has ever seen. We are so grateful for everyone who contributes to and supports Other People, and we look forward to continuing our growth alongside the UCSD undergraduate community. As you begin Refraction, we hope that our artists’ truths speak to you and that you resonate with them as you, perhaps, find a facet of yourself within these pages.

— Olivia Hwang, Isaac Kopstein, and Montanna Harling.

Refraction EDITOR IN CHIEF

Montanna Harling

HEAD EDITOR Isaac Kopstein

DESIGN CO-DIRECTORS Caroline Tjoe Kristy Lee

TREASURER Casey Tran

WEB PRODUCER Kevin Jang

EDITORIAL

Emma Niro Jessie Truong Leilani Dewindt Olivia Hwang

Olivia Koutsky Nina Gerardi Suphala Nibhanupudi Zoe Wong

CONTENT

Katie Clemmer Sanjana Dhamankar Nandika Mishra Sophia Donner Paige Johnson Spencer Vossman Ploy Techawatanasuk Violet Ford

DESIGN

Allison Gable Camille Wang

Helen Huang Kevin Phan

SOCIAL MEDIA & PUBLICITY Christopher Chan Melissa Zhuang Monica Sanjuan

1

Make it Make Sense....................................... Paige Johnson // poetry

2

Eclectic Romantic...................................... Albert Miao // digital art

3

Mirror Shards....................................................Vivi Spann // fiction

10

Working in the Big City................................Ziyi // film photography

11

Miswa.............................................. AJ Noelle // creative nonfiction

13

Lil Mugadishu...........................................Famo Musa // photography

14

Wedding Henna.......................................Famo Musa // photography

15

Retreat.........................................Reem Hazboun T ​ aşyakan // poetry

17

Highway..............................................Nicole Trappe // photography

19

Para Mi Hermane................................ Alex King De Cantu // poetry

21

Tsïtsïki.........................................................Guyon Perez // graphite

22

Movement......................................................Vyxz Vasquez // poetry

23

TeaCup................................................... Millie Root // photography

24

Dahlias.......................................... Alex Reinsch-Goldstein // fiction

28

Love Blooms.............................................. Heather Nicosia // acrylic

29

I'm Not Romantic................................. Chayla Jaye Venzon // poetry

31

Roadkill Lottery.............................................. Ishika Rathi // fiction

34

Wet T-issues.................................................. Ruby Tseng // charcoal

35

In a Haze..................................................Guyon Perez // watercolor

36

The Disappearing Act....................................... Emma Niro // fiction

37

Walking Until I'm Not Sad Anymore..............Theo Erickson // fiction

39

shadow girl.............................................. Bri Conlon // photography

40

egret........................................................ Claire McNerney // poetry

Table of Contents cover design by Caroline Tjoe

Make It Make Sense

by Paige Johnson

Make it make sense; become the craft. Wrench it Up by its roots; shake ‘til meaning spills out.

Vomit insight on art—on all, commit.

Shove opinions down throats; smother their shout.

Frame photographers, shot in our image; Deafen singers, tune their voice to our tracks; Chisel sculptors into shapes of our casting; Spray painters, our colors seal up their cracks.

Pick the arch up, the architect teeters; Stifle directors, here’s plastic vision.

Write between lines of writers’ fevers, Our artist’s eye bleeds tears of derision.

We decomposers make ouroboros; we feed off art’s artists feeding off us.

illustrated by Allison Gable 1

REFRACTION | MAKE IT MAKE SENSE

Eclectic Romantic digital art | Albert Miao

REFRACTION | ECLECTIC ROMANTIC

2

r o r r Mi

by Vi

Shards

vi Sp

ann

illustrated

by Helen

Huang

I

’m not supposed to be here.

A box sits on the bookshelf, edges soft with the ghosts of the hands that came before, my mother’s and her mother and grandmother’s before her.

God only knows how many generations have held the box before I ever had the privilege—the responsibility—to see it with my own eyes. Maybe it would tell me if I asked, if words could spill from under its lid like beetles across a forest floor, carrying the dirty secrets of each woman in my line in their sharp pincers. The thought is enough to override my original plan— look, don’t touch—and I stand on my toes to brush my fingers against a worn corner.

But what use do I have for words I don’t understand? What good is there in following the cadence of my ancestors’ Mandarin as a dog follows the tone of its owner’s voice with no regard for the content? I have no real connection to them, not when the extent of my cultural heritage is fumbled words over an unpracticed tongue, the leering echo of my classmates chasing me through the schoolyard as they mock my pronunciation, bamboo leaves whipping across my face and crunching below my sparkly pink velcro sneakers— I tear my hand away, the bookshelf returning to my field of vision. The thoughts from before return, beating out a rhythm of not allowed-not allowed even as I stretch out my arms again. With a little nudging, the wooden box falls into my hand. My eyes dart unbidden to the doorway, but no shadow falls across it.

There’s no time to wait, not when someone could come in at any moment.

I tuck the box into the pocket of my sweatshirt and stuff my hands in after, concealing the corners with the ridges of my knuckles. The metal of its hinges digs into my fingers, but there’s no poke, no zap, no sign that it knows I’m holding it before it’s my turn.

No one stops my journey out of the house, which is all the better when I can barely keep my hands from shaking. It usually takes precisely ten minutes to reach the closest park at my normal pace, but today the need to move outweighs the usual urge to greet the flowering vines that tug at my sleeves on the way between my neighbors’ yards.

The swings and play structure creak with rust, liable to break if anyone tries to put weight on them, but they’re not what draws me here time and REFRACTION | MIRROR SHARDS

4

again. No, the true treasure of this park is the aged willow tree sitting halfway between the playground and the sidewalk. It’s been there for me since the first time I sought refuge under its branches as a child, after a nasty fight with my parents sent me running through the neighborhood looking for a place to sit and sulk.

A new memory claims me when I sit against its trunk, with as little warning as the first— My hands are damp and cold with sweat. She doesn’t seem to care as she clutches them in her own. We’re young and dumb, but I’m not dumb enough to misunderstand the way she leans in like they do in the movies.

Boys can kiss boys and girls can kiss girls, but everyone wants to kiss someone, Hollywood says. I should want this. But her breath wafts across my face, smelling of the green tea mints we pilfered from my house’s junk drawer, and all I can do is giggle even as she opens her eyes to glare at me. I try to ignore the relief that comes when she moves out of my space, but I think she can tell. She lets go of my hands and lies on the grass with her back to me.

It’s not fair to leave things like this when we were supposed to be spending the afternoon together like we always do. I wrack my brain for something to bridge the gap. Something that will get her to smile at me like she’s just bested me at Go Fish for the eighth time in a row.

“I would make a chemistry joke, but all the good ones argon,” I blurt. Not my finest work. It makes me sound like an elementary school science teacher trying to get her rowdy classroom excited for learning about the periodic table. But that sort of attitude might be just what we need right now.

There’s quiet, then she snorts. “That was so stupid.” But she turns back to me, mouth curling up in a smile, and maybe things are still okay.

“I think we should break up,” reads the text I receive later that night, my phone screen lighting up the cavern of blankets I’ve built over my head. “I’m tired of waiting for you to be ready. It feels like you don’t like me as much as I like you.”

“Okay.” I hesitate, then type out a second message. “Sorry.” It’s annoying that I’m the only one apologizing, when it’s not like she even asked before trying to kiss me, but I know I hurt her feelings. I shouldn’t be mad at her for that.

That doesn’t quell the irritation that grows when “seen” pops up under my final message and doesn’t go away. Maybe I should be sad or even heartbroken, but all I can muster is frustration. I did everything I was supposed to, didn’t I—?

The echo of resentment lingers in my chest, even as I feel the next memory dragged out from the recesses of my brain. “Wait!” But my cry goes unheeded as the memory tingles through

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REFRACTION | MIRROR SHARDS

my palms where skin meets wood— “Bet you I can guess what you are.”

He gives me a smarmy look that I want to smack off his stupid face. That’s a thought I should feel bad for having, especially after he offered to drive us to the beach for our third date, but I’m getting sick of listening to the “shoulds” in my life. If I don’t want to kiss girls, I should want to kiss guys, but I’m clearly not doing this rebound thing right because I hardly even want to be around him. He’s been patient—not as patient as she was, but patient nonetheless—but I’m sure he’ll get tired of this waiting game soon.

That’s not what we’re talking about, though, so I keep my thoughts to myself. “What does that mean?” I ask instead, digging my toes into the warm sand. Unable to look at him any longer, I turn my eyes to the water and bite my lip against the tug in my chest that urges me to just walk in and never look back.

“I mean, you’re only half-white, right?”

This can’t be going anywhere good. I don’t want to play this game, especially not with him.

Still, he’s my ride home. Even though I’m certain I could find another way back, I don’t want to deal with the hassle if he turns out to be the kind of person who would abandon someone who pissed him off enough. “Uh-huh.”

My disinterest doesn’t faze him as he looks at me, squinting his eyes and rubbing his chin and overall making too much of a show of thinking it over. I don’t know if I’d prefer him getting it wrong or right. I’d prefer it if he doesn’t guess at all. Eventually, though, he snaps his fingers and dashes those hopes.

“Other half’s Asian,” he continues, and I wonder idly if I can astral project to France if I try hard enough. “Chinese, to be specific.”

As it turns out, I do know which option I prefer. Bitter fury rises in me in a cacophony that’s almost enough to drown out the sound of the waves. How dare he get it right, this boy who tracked me down after my calculus class just to ask me out and who had the gall to take me to the ocean for our third date, as if the charm of the sea can make up for his half-assed, cocky excuse for flirting? Everyone else I’ve ever known has been perfectly happy to rub in the fact that no matter what I do or say, I’ll never be enough to fit in with that half of me.

And now here he is, trying to shove me into that box. The thrumming under my breastbone grows stronger, begging me to leave behind this trainwreck of a conversation and dive under the waves. But I have no control over the fickle temperament of the sea, and I don’t have a death wish.

“I’m right, aren’t I?”

REFRACTION | MIRROR SHARDS

6

I think I hate him. Deep breath in, deep breath out. I nod.

“You know what would be a good prize?” he asks.

There’s no denying what’s coming, like running into a dead end in a horror game as the background music hitches and speeds, the monster only three steps behind. “What,” I say anyway, as if that can stop the monster’s claws from creeping up my back.

“A kiss.” He doesn’t bother waiting for permission before leaning in. Apparently, winning a bet I didn’t even agree to entitles him to stepping all over my bodily autonomy. Who says romance is dead?

The tide crashes against the shore, swallowing the sound of his nose breaking under my fist.

I’m gone before he can recover his wits. Inconvenience be damned, I can get my own ride home, so I pull out my phone and— My heartbeat flutters in my fingers as they brush against the cashier’s, and her eyes crinkle in the corners, her smile like a secret— The edge of the potsticker in my hands is crimped unevenly and ground meat pokes through the corner but I made it, all on my own— Glass, cold against my forehead as I poke and prod and squint at my face in the mirror, cheeks, nose, eyelids— It only takes a flick of my wrist for the box to leave my hand and clatter against the sidewalk, its contents spilling across the concrete. I shouldn’t have done this. Shouldn’t have coveted it before my time, shouldn’t have taken it out of the house, shouldn’t have thrown the damn thing after letting it rifle through my mind like a possum in the trash. I stand, and my knees pop when they straighten.

There’s no magic artifacts among the scattered keepsakes, no spellbooks or crystal balls or cursed amulets. I’m not sure why I expected any in the first place, but it can’t just be the box that’s special, can it?

My hand brushes against paper, a faded ticket for the Chinese opera, and fear-grief-anger seizes my throat. There’s whispering from the wings, one of the soprano’s eyes meeting mine when I turn to look before her gaze skitters away like a terrified mouse. She isn’t quick enough to disguise the pity in her expression, twisting the knife that’s already skewered me.

After a week bedridden with pneumonia and months of vocal exercises and practice working to regain the control I once had, this is what I’m rewarded with. I’m finally allowed to rehearse with everyone else, and my voice betrays me and cracks on a high note I never had

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REFRACTION | MIRROR SHARDS

difficulty reaching before. Our director doesn’t have to say a word for me to know what he’s thinking, and through the blur of my tears, I manage to excuse myself and make my way off the stage. What if this is it? What if I can never sing how I used to? This is what I do best, these people are like my family, I can’t lose this— I jerk my hand back, and my great-grandmother’s memory fades from my mind. The tears stay, stinging at the corners of my eyes until I wipe them away with a sleeve. Her frustration, as familiar as my own, echoes in my chest even as I reach for the small picture frame containing a single pressed white bloom. Despite my rough treatment of the box containing it, the glass of the frame is completely intact. Small mercies.

This one takes hold like lichen on a tree trunk, dread trickling down my spine as the blurry face of a woman swims in my vision, her features ever-shifting. Even though I can’t pin down her face, I know she’s smiling when she presses a small envelope into my hand.

“Just a little keepsake from the ceremony,” she says with a wink. “I’m glad you’re finally settling down with a nice man, dear.”

Her words make my stomach turn, but I muster up a smile and open the envelope. Inside is a pressed white carnation preserved between two sheets of translucent paper, the same kind of flower that stood at attention weeks ago when I walked down the aisle toward what my life had become.

“Thank you.” The words are heavy on my tongue, but not quite as heavy as the weight of the blossom in my hands. I refrain from collapsing into the nearest chair until she leaves, still cradling the flower.

Unlike the rest, my grandmother’s memory fades naturally, leaving the hollowness in my chest as the only sign it was there in the first place. Even after I gather my wits again, I can’t bring myself to touch any of the other keepsakes. These memories aren’t meant for me. Not yet.

Instead, I cover my hands with the sleeves of my sweatshirt and begin putting everything back where it belongs. It isn’t until all of them are tucked safely back into the box that I realize none of the keepsakes belong to my mother. She’s shown me before what memento she intends to give up: a small, worn ballpoint pen. That pen is nowhere to be found, even when I check the grass for anything that might have rolled off the sidewalk. If she hasn’t put it in, that can only mean that she doesn’t plan to hand the box to me anytime soon.

I roll the thought around in my head and find that it doesn’t rankle me the way it might have only a few hours ago. The memories the box dragged to the surface today were too much to handle, the hurt and anger and confusion still as fresh as when I first buried them.

If I can’t face those emotions, how can I face everything I’ve lived through? Everything my

REFRACTION | MIRROR SHARDS

8

ancestors have lived through?

I look down at the box in my hands, as if it might give me the answers to my questions. But in all honesty, I don’t need to consult it to know. The simple answer is that I’m not ready, and maybe that’s okay. This box isn’t my responsibility yet. It won’t be for a while longer. I pick myself up off the ground and put the box back into my sweatshirt pocket.

It’s time to go home.

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REFRACTION | MIRROR SHARDS

Working in the Big City film photography | Ziyi

REFRACTION | WORKING IN THE BIG CITY

10

Dear Mom, You said that when I come home next week, you want to hear about my research. I’m excited to tell you more about it, how it’s coming together, and the amazing professors I’m working with.

But, at the same time, I’m scared. I’m scared you’ll see how much of you is in my work. I’m scared that as I describe the narratives I want to embrace, uncover, and live, you’ll also hear the parts—these burdens that have been passed down to both of us—that I’m rejecting, moving away from, and laying to rest.

You say you want to know me, but when I speak my mind, my ideas enrage you. The blatant rejection hurts.

Other times, I tell you my thoughts and they quiet you.

This, I find equally painful.

In some ways, I’m in the same boat as many of my peers.

A boat, I imagine, that holds many graduate students of color, whose works inevitably or intentionally intersect with their lived experiences and identities. Grad school has a way of isolating you from your friends and family, sending you on a boat drifting away.

As comforting as this well-worn image is, I know no such boat exists. That I’ll never be in the same boat as Julie, and the waters that they endure as a nonbinary person in a patriarchal society. Or as Hero, whose boat navigates belonging through race and disability. Or as Yasmine, who steers strategically and carefully, as they travel without papers.

My boat navigates waters deep with colonial wounds and dead languages and pounded identities and women in the kitchen only with no room for tears. But, across the way, I can see Julie. And Hero. And Yasmine. They are holding lights for me, bringing me home when my boat is breaking, sinking, lost. How badly I wish you could see this, Mom.

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REFRACTION | MISWA

How do I say to you these many truths that I hold?

That under your roof, I only half-lived.

That it took years to unlearn the self-hate, the judgment, the woman-hating, the racism.

That the scars of your teachings live in me as a rejection of my body, of pleasure, of the primal.

That shame is laced into my own shadow.

That you have reclaimed Catholicism, but I have not.

That I would never tell you of the women I have imagined being mothered by.

That I wish you were standing next to my friends, leading me home.

That you are the reason I do this work.

But also, That I hold your pains in me, and you hold my pains in you.

That you are of the adventurers, the heroes, the warriors I read about.

That you persist, like our motherland, no matter how much is stripped, buried, or stolen.

That your heart and honey are not finite.

That your support for me is unending, even if my work kills you.

That you are the reason I do this work.

I hope, one day, we are both able to hold these many truths.

With love, Miswa

Miswa

by AJ Noelle illustrated by Helen Huang

Lil Mugadishu photography | Famo Musa

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REFRACTION | LIL MUGADISHU

Wedding Henna photography | Famo Musa

REFRACTION | WEDDING HENNA

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Retreat

by Reem Hazboun ​Taşyakan illustrated by Allison Gable Riding in silence my thoughts settle on something sweeter. Silhouettes of rising pines, fragrant Phoenician cedars sensed with tightened breath and strained glances.

Reaching the coastal city once enriched by foreign-bound timber and Tyrian purple.

Its jacaranda-lined streets and sunlit stone buildings offer retreat from our lives in Damascus.

Walking along the shore, we see soothsayers and henna hawkers and a pelican chained to a tree stump.

Clipped wings flap as you drop coins in the dish beside it.

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REFRACTION | RETREAT

Breathing in salty air at a café on a cliff, casual conversation eludes us.

All words spoken are sharp.

Looking over the edge into distant waves you say: Days like this end, so let’s keep things light.

Bargaining with locals for selected souvenirs, peeling clementines with fingernails in narrow alleyways, juice dripping, us laughing at the lack of street names, wandering, wondering how we got lost.

Avoiding the topic of marriage plans because we’re keeping things light— and it’s to keep us going, as the day’s sun loses intensity.

Arriving at the ruins of Ugarit, we read time-worn descriptions of age-old inscriptions, climbing up hills along crumbling walls that formerly formed dwellings.

but no one is around for kilometers and still I can’t get you to get close to me despite the trees and waters and sacred lands laden with art and artifacts and temples and tombs and ghosts on ships of sailors who wrote letters to lovers in ancient alphabets.

We stop.

And I reach for you.

But you refuse me since we’re out in the open—

REFRACTION | RETREAT

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Highway photography | Nicole Trappe 17

REFRACTION | HIGHWAY

REFRACTION | HIGHWAY

18

Para mi hermane I still struggle to embrace the reality that my café-con-leche-with-extra-leche-ass self has ancestors in México.

Somewhere in Nuevo León in the place a third of my last name comes from they are there.

Mis antepasades.

Wanted dead and alive by a woman who might never get to meet them.

Due to fear apprehension and not knowing who specifically they are beyond the hazy memories of a man who chose assimilation.

Because for all twenty-three years of my life I have been taught silently that anything less than 100% purity negates my authenticity.

Putting milk in the coffee transmutes it into not-coffee faster than the holiest of padres transubstantiates a cracker into sacred flesh.

I know that I will be branded a gringa for some time.

Maybe my whole life.

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REFRACTION | PARA MI HERMANE

But I want to change that.

I want to know more about the language my mother was barred from as a child than food orders and pleasantries.

Because Spanish was the language of “other people” I had to learn to be content with hearing it as an echo through the cramped halls of an underfunded school instead.

I want to know more about the music that consecrated the quinceañera I never had than an ode to wealthy field workers, set in grainy 2000s cellulose.

Because watching a Los Tigres Del Norte music video in history class doesn’t make up for losing a whole chapter of family scrapbooks.

I want to know more about who I am than the eternally Californian white girl with a spice tolerance.

Because hell, my nose still runs like a waterfall after wolfing down a bolillo con queso y jalapeño.

I know that I could have started all of this long ago, the day hola first left my lips to mingle with the dusty air of an elementary school trailer.

That in certain company, every r I fail to roll will earn me the scorn of a dozen mal ojo.

But acquiescing to that scorn, to every thought of “just be white” that nips at my brain would only be a disservice to the people that have fought and cried and bled to bring me into the world.

So I refuse to stop embracing my history, and I refuse to deny reality any longer. ¡Soy chicana y no lo negaré más!

Tsïtsïki

graphite | Guyon Perez

21

REFRACTION | TSITSIKI

Movement

by Vyxz Vasquez He never lived old enough for me to have my own room, in danger of getting caught by a cousin who forgot to bring her keys or the landlord back from the market— never had just a room with sunlit sheets, naked under the covers, a languid display of taut skin, fingertips hovering, learning how our bodies worked, his eyes fleeing borders of life, as if those exact tentative careful touches before we stretched, our feet cold that our lips stayed locked, have remained in the semi-darkness of this living room, sixteen years after the fact of his death, always in danger of being caught in soft tangle of memory and grief-relief, as clear as his breath on my neck, no one coming back, stuck in the cushions of a sofa I make, believe is his embrace.

illustrated by Kristy Lee REFRACTION | MOVEMENT

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TeaCup photography | Millie Root

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REFRACTION | TEACUP

Dahlias

illustrated by Kristy Lee

by Alex Reinsch-Goldstein

I

never knew my father as a young man. He was nearing fifty when I was born, and even in my earliest memories of him there were streaks of gray in his hair. But I thought it was a perfectly natural thing for a little girl to have an old father, just as I thought it was a perfectly natural thing to have no mother. That was the consequence, I think, of growing up as utterly alone as I did. If I had been born in Mexico City, or even in San Diego, I might have come to understand that my life was not the only kind of life there was.

I remember it was quite a shock to me when my father took me with him to San Luis Rey to buy a pair of horses, and I saw one of the blacksmiths at the mission going along the road with his wife and his daughter. I think the daughter had perhaps seven years to my nine. I tugged at my father’s coat.

REFRACTION | DAHLIAS

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“Papa, look at that girl!” I whispered. Even at that age I was dimly aware that talking about strangers aloud was impolite. “Look at how much smaller she is than her brother and sister!”

“Those are her parents, Maria,” my father said. “She is their daughter.”

“But that man is too young,” I protested, “and her mother—why is she not gone like Mama?”

My father picked me up and carried me in his arms as the blacksmith and his family faded into the distance. “Not all families are the same,” he said. “Some have young papas and others have old ones, like us. Some have mamas and others do not.”

I remember coming home to the rancho on Peñasquito Creek and being tremendously indignant that some girls were allowed mothers while I was not. I asked my father about this probably enough times that he began to tire of it, and each time took me on his knee and said, “Mija, it is the Lord who decides these things. There must be wisdom in what he decides, even if we cannot see it now.”

As I grew older, I recognized that one of the consequences of my father being an old man was that we would probably have less time together than we otherwise might have. My father knew this, I think, but he did not appear to let it bother him. He had been a soldier once when he was younger—that was why he married old—and I think that taught him to look at death more matter-of-factly than I did.

When the year of the dahlias came, I was fifteen and he was almost sixty-three. It had been a very dreary winter, filled with the angriest storms and great gales from the sea. It was just the two of us in the old house, as it had been since Mama died; the presence of the ranch hands in the outbuildings did not seem to drive away the loneliness. But the coming of spring improved things, and at last the rain stopped and the sky turned a more brilliant shade of blue every day. I liked to take strolls up to a hilltop above the rancho where I could see the ocean in the distance, perhaps make out the white sails of a ship drifting up from San Diego. I went to the hilltop on a morning four days before my father’s birthday, and when I came back I found him on the slope behind the house. It was the place where the sea dahlias sprang up. They were my mother’s favorite, and she had raised the patch behind our house like children before I was born. Of all the gifts the earth gave us, the dahlias were the dearest to our hearts. They had a brightness that belonged more to the sun than to the world beneath it. In my life I have never seen anything as yellow as a sea dahlia in springtime. They always bloomed in May, before my father’s birthday.

“Are the dahlias opened up?” I asked.

“They are not,” he said. He seemed rather serious, more so than one would expect from

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REFRACTION | DAHLIAS

idle talk about flowers. But I figured that I was merely being overly attentive, until I found him in the same place the next day with that same stern look on his face.

“What is wrong, Papa?” I asked him.

“The dahlias are not blooming. They should be by now.”

“They will,” I said. “Perhaps they are just a little late.”

“Perhaps.”

“You seem bothered by something,” I said. I had seen the tightness of his jaw, the way his eyes never left the lifeless stalks of the dahlias.

“They always bloom for my birthday.”

“It isn’t your birthday yet. Give it a few days and they will come.”

“Perhaps it is a sign of something,” he said.

“A sign? A sign of what?”

“They always bloom for my birthday,” he sighed. “Perhaps this is the old earth’s way of telling me I shall not have one this year.”

“Shall not have one? Papa, you have a birthday every year...”

“Dead men do not have birthdays,” he said.

I must admit that this unsettled me greatly, even putting aside what happened later. I had never known my father to be a superstitious man. He was pious, but he did not believe in omens. I told myself that the winter had worn on him, that the loneliness had begun to make his mind play cruel tricks. It will pass, I told myself. Summer will come, and light will follow the dahlias back into the world, and we will forget our loneliness.

I found him there again the next morning, with a grimmer face than before.

“Still no dahlias,” he said.

“They will bloom. Give them time,” I said.

“I think I shall die soon, Maria.”

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The words cut through me; I began to feel dizzy. “What? Why?” “The dahlias have told me. I shall not live to see tomorrow.”

“Nonsense, Papa. They are just late in blooming, Papa!”

“I know what is coming, mija. I merely thought I should tell you so that it would not surprise you.”

“Papa, do not talk like this,” I protested, but it was no use. I felt a great weight bearing down on me.

“I am an old man,” he said. “I have been for some time. This is what becomes of old men. I have felt the weakness coming. There is no sense in quarreling with it.”

“Papa, please do not say these things...”

“I am only telling you so it will not surprise you,” he said. “The worst part of grief is the shock of it. Can you understand that, mija? I know that what I say is shocking to you. But I promise you it would be a thousand times worse if I said nothing. I promise you.”

I fished for words, but the line hung there taut and empty. I felt a great helplessness, against the bewilderment that choked my words, against the dahlias, against the world.

“When your mother died, it shocked me all to pieces. I thought we had a whole life together—and then, in an instant, there was nothing. I had not expected it, nothing had foretold it to me. If I had known before, it might have spread out the blow, you see. That is why I am telling you these things, Maria. I hope it does not seem cruel of me.”

When one has lived in the tender embrace of the earth for as long as he had—for that is the only way to live in as remote a place as this—one begins to feel that the earth is the decider of all things. We told the end of winter by the opening of the apple blossoms, the arrival of summer by the browning of the grass on the hills; the earth was our clock, our sundial, our measurement of the thriving and declining of all that we had. I suspect that my father felt that the reticence of the dahlias was merely the earth trying to relay a message to him, as it had for so many other things.

That night, he wrote out his will slowly and carefully and left it on the table in the downstairs hall, together with a necklace of my mother’s that he wished me to have. I did not sleep that night. When I found him dead the next morning, the old tension had fled from his face, as if all our past had gone up in smoke. I turned away, toward the hillside where the dahlias might have grown, and I saw the land awash in sunlight.

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REFRACTION | DAHLIAS

Love Blooms acrylic | Heather Nicosia

REFRACTION | LOVE BLOOMS

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“I’m not sentimental—I’m as romantic as you are. The idea, you know, is that the sentimental person thinks things will last–the romantic person has a desperate confidence that they won’t.”

– F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

by Chayla Jaye Venzon

I'm not romantic The borrowed kisses, familiar touches Sweet words before sleep— The goodbye to an empty bed— Become a faint nostalgia A whisper I’ll always never want to hear Forced laughter, old trophies Late nights in the passenger seat After home games, after store runs Cheap answers from school days, Nine to five weariness that tightens our every breath.

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REFRACTION | I'M NOT ROMANTIC

illustrated by Kevin Phan

When did we get comfortable clutching the heirloom jewelry That stretches between us, Waiting for the wrong sigh To snap what is always restrung?

I look away for one second and the thin strand pulls apart, Bringing the fight we were no strangers to.

I watch the sharpied glass on the windows through my self Broken over, repaired With cheap apathy and apology to apology to apology That tried but never truly satisfied us.

The cycle of jitters overcomes us at every wrong word When your fire comes and throwing sand doesn’t work I must walk into it So the flames don’t lash on another face— Embrace another pile of flesh.

A fire that I once knew as warm, nurturing in its light Has somehow stripped away every sliver of my skin I know that your promises to change Will be realized when Sisyphus finally makes it to the top.

You’ll tinder underneath the brush, Letting the wind take advantage of your docility Until I breathe into a spot of flame, Recreate the suffocation— A fire to remake me as you’ve said To burn off the dead skin, to reveal the fresh pink It’s what’s best for me what’s best for me What is best for me?

I bear every echo and unwanted memory Carrying a box filled with school notebooks, Old pictures, chewed gum As you ask me how my day was Or look at me as I am a silver glass to you And for a second your pride destroys Every notion that our love is normal And will forever bury itself deep into my skin Your skin

REFRACTION | I'M NOT ROMANTIC

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Roadkill Lottery

illustrated by Kevin Phan

by Ishika Rathi Nobody will know who cleaned our dead bird off the road. Nobody ever knows.

It could be Josh this week, driver of Birchwood Humane Society’s truck, caught on the 4:00 AM shift again and making his morning rounds on his way back from Kylle Field. Perhaps he’ll see the blood on the road and wonder if it’s an injured dog. He’ll parallel park between two piles of leaves, look both ways, and lug his prosthetic onto the street to check. Honestly though, knowing him, he’ll run soon as he recognizes the bird.

Or Kelly, who’s been fighting off her wrinkles with that dollar-store, SXS night cream, and who spends every Ceremony telling folks that she’s honestly, really and truly unbothered by the whole dead bird thing. Like anybody, she had her share of kills—and even though she 31

REFRACTION | ROADKILL LOTTERY

isn’t aiming to kill tonight, she wouldn’t mind driving over a wee bird a couple times in the morning. She tells me she once spent a whole week grieving a raccoon she’d drove over. She’d seen it sticking its ass out a trash can, and then…well he’d knocked the whole goddamn thing over didn’t he? And he ran for it—little rascal—and she…well. We know. And it was scarring, sure, ‘cause she was like 17 or something and he was alive when she hit the gas, but now the sad truth is your life doesn’ end when you end one, and it doesn’ make a difference whether you feel bad ‘bout it…and it was just a goddamn raccoon anyway. And this is just a goddamn dead bird, so what’re we stressed for? She’ll ‘accidentally run over’ the already dead bird after the Ceremony. She’ll be fine—she laughs—some carwash will clean its guts off her wheels.

Or David, the kind of bald man who uses Clorox instead of shampoo. He says I’ll see him, swerving through the street in a couple hours because he’s gotta make the early-bird special at that one restaurant, you know the one with those cocktails and mimosas all the young ladies love? He rubs his head and chuckles. Then he chokes. He’s been chugging beers all night but he tells me he’ll be taking a shot at the bird, and he’s gonna make it too—cause he’s been top shot the last three Ceremonies and, drunk as he is, he prides himself on his aim.

Joclyn perhaps, the kind of momma who brings a homecooked entree to every Ceremony but makes her kids cook their own dinners. She says her go-to 7-Eleven is a block from her house, but if I really want that bird gone, she could just get her coffee, two bottles of Budweiser, and Eggos for her kiddos at the 7-Eleven by Kylle Field, and then she could drive back and forth between the two stores a few times so she can…ya know (pass over the bird a couple times). That speedbump ought to sober her up too. And it’s no trouble at all, she really doesn’t mind—it’s just that… well, when she’s done, she won’t check if it’s gone. She gets dreams sometimes, that’s all.

Maybe it’ll be Jase, not-a-minor-anymore Jase. He meets me in the line for food and tells me how this is his first Ceremony, and he thinks it might be best to observe. Just for today. He wipes his hands on his tie-dye tank top and tells me he’d be down to find the bird after, if I come with. We could give the bird a pleasant funeral on our way home—but actually, on second thought, he’s not sure if he’d have the time for that. He might not because he’s busy and he’s got homework, but don’t I worry, he’ll get rid of it for me. Maybe he’ll just throw it in an open gutter—from at least a yard away, mind you, just in case the clown from that movie we watched together at that one party was...you know...there? You never know. These movie ideas come from somewhere. He asks me if I know of the possessed doll chick? Says she’s real.

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Tells me he’ll take me out to the museum sometime.

The Freakers Cleaners, or “Urban Restoration Effort” as they call themselves, might get to the bird and clean the gore from the scene before any of us get there. Kate, ex-URE, tells me she used to pull all nighters to find the Ceremony, back when she thought it was in Birchwood’s best interest to end the Shoot. She laughs. The whole of URE’s probably driving around the city now. She laughs harder. They might find the bird but ain’t no way they’d find us. Josh interrupts and says ‘course they won’t find us. They can’t. They don’t got luck no more. He starts limping towards the birdcage on the other side of the field. David yanks the beer bottle off his mouth and yells across the field that ‘course they don’t got no luck. They left town to read fancy books in fancy libraries at fancy schools and then they come back all big-headed, thinking themselves too fancy and modern to be in the Ceremony, like they’re too good for good old fashioned good luck.

Kelly nudges Kate and laughs. She says we really shouldn’t be stressed about the Freakers because our people always come back our way—she used to be young and thought she didn’t need the Ceremony, but don’t we know we all grow up and know better? Besides, she yells to Jase, it’s almost 2:00 AM, and this shit doesn’ matter. Hand out the slingshots already boy.

Almost everyone knows to shut up when the squawking begins. Jase leans into me. He asks me why Josh is wacking the bird against the steel bars of its cage. He asks me why we break its wings. He asks me what the cannon’s for. He asks me if the bird’s dead yet. He leans past me to watch Josh push the bird down the barrel, and then the cannon’s lit and the bird is a shadow upon the stars. And I think, fuck. Maybe the snow will clean it.

Either way, I shot the bird that night. By Sunday, I am certain it never existed.

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Wet T-issues charcoal | Ruby Tseng

REFRACTION | WET T-ISSUES

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In a Haze watercolor | Guyon Perez

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REFRACTION | IN A HAZE

The Disappearing Act

by Emma Niro illustrated by Allison Gable

T

he Book balances between a place of reality and this intangible otherworld. A world where if you run your thieving fingers through the opening, you come up empty-handed, at a loss for what you were looking for in the first place in the land of Forgotten Fairy Tales. Those who are religious either believe witchcraft is behind the making of It, or view It as a conduit to speak to their prophet. Others deny Its existence, out of fear of the unknown. Dreadful curiosity is what drives the non-believers to crack open Its spine, to read only the lines and not in between, and pass It to the next poor soul who worships the Book. But the believers and the non-believers have something in common: they see what they want to see. In the real world, a world filled with pollution, Angry Birds, and cancer, time is a construct created by humans. In the Book, time changes. It can be yesterday on page 22 and today on page 335.

You can run from today to tomorrow, and tomorrow to Firsunthsday (a day between Friday and Saturday).

Regardless of Its origin, what does matter is that Forgotten Fairy Tales is the drug. No amount of rehab or money or cocaine can cause your eyes to meander off the page, come back to your own reality. Because once you believe, you too become forgotten. Once you understand that Rapunzel is dead, that Tweedledee and Tweedledum are orphans, that Ariel is the true sea witch, you vanish—like you were never born at all. You are no longer a sister, a friend, a husband, a nephew. No one is looking for you because you have become nothing, just a mere splatter covering the S in Snow White. Just another stain that magically appears as the forgotten characters of the Book stare down at the mark of the freshest disappearing act. And whether it is Cinderella’s twin brother that points it out or Captain Hook’s wife or Mulan’s bastard son, they all sigh at the new stain. On closer inspection, a handprint can be seen, maybe an eyeball, sometimes a whole face; it is always shaped into a scream.

REFRACTION | THE DISAPPEARING ACT

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Walking Until I’m Not Sad Anymore

by Theo Erickson illustrated by Helen Huang

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REFRACTION | WALKING UNTIL I'M NOT SAD ANYMORE

I

get dizzy looking up at the tops of eucalyptuses. Tens of birds chatter in a particular patch of trees, rising whoops and wavering chirps. Wounds of bark peel from new skin. Blue sky glares through fragrant leaves. Nearby, the twisted oaks’ branches curl and smoke.

The cold air burns straight through my chest. The eucalyptus trunk is deceptively slender from a distance, and on windy days, I imagine being crushed.

The grass glows after it rains. I want to shove my nose in it and go green in the lungs. I think there’ll be plenty of time to get acquainted when I’m dead. In the summer, the grass is yellow, and trumpets sound a cacophony where the horizon presses against blue sky. When I see yellow dusk on blue water, the world flips. The blinding white glare presses into my eyes until the ground lurches back and my skull connects with oblivion.

Small birds cluster on power lines as the evening dims. They burst upwards in quick flaps, then hold their wings close to the body and fall. Instant by instant, they arc and twist between damp grass and darkening clouds. Underneath my bones, my lungs expand with wet greenery. The birds alight among the leaves of a tall tree and become movements in the half-light.

How can I describe a sunset? I gape at firmaments slowly revealed like organs under ribs. Spots and streaks of clouds bloom pink. My bones fill with air. The world tilts upwards, till I think I could reach the end of the earth and walk off the horizon at the end of Redwood Hill.

The sky blazes. Clouds smolder and my hair ignites. I don’t think there’s anything left to burn but a heart that’s breaking open. The enigma of my breath meets purple twilight and the capillary joins the vein. Tears drip down my face. The only thing that walks back home is a ghost wearing my clothes.

REFRACTION | WALKING UNTIL I'M NOT SAD ANYMORE

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shadow girl photography | Bri Conlon

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REFRACTION | SHADOW GIRL

egret

illustrated by Camille Wang

by Claire McNerney we are lost in the hot sun, brush and dry dirt that all looks similar until you, perched in an arm of a lake forgotten, you, pristine despite the dust, the algal blooms, whiter than the snow you’ll never see, miles and mountains away— you are all poise as we sweat, outstretched wings in the shadowless noon as you take off, showing us home, you command our whole attention without making a sound.

REFRACTION | EGRET

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Continue Reading! check out more works at otherpeoplesd.com

REFRACTION'S WEBSITE-EXCLUSIVE WORKS Kalbelia........................................................................................... Ishika Rathi // poetry WORM..............................................................................Ryan Diego Martinez // fiction

2021-2022 CONTENT WRITER ORIGINALS TAGS: VACCINE, VIGNETTES, SLICE OF LIFE........... Sanjana Dhamankar // nonfiction The Ode to Venture Capitalism.................................... Sophia Donner // fiction screenplay Validation..........................................................................................Violet Ford // fiction Forty Percent Senseless............................................................. Spencer Vossman // poetry Routines.................................................................................. Spencer Vossman // poetry Apathy........................................................................................ Katie Clemmer // poetry Dictionary................................................................................... Katie Clemmer // poetry That's So Valid! .................................................................... Nandika Mishra // nonfiction THE MORTAL ON THE CROSSWALK........................ Sanjana Dhamankar // nonfiction West Coast Elegies.............................................................. Ploy Techawatanasuk // poetry

NEWLY ILLUSTRATED PIECES Daylily...................................................................................... Allison Gable // digital art In the Glass House................................................................ Helen Huang // mixed media