The SunLit Spring 2021

the sunlit

SPRING 2021 connection and introspection

poetry•prose•art•photography

on the cover: photography by Liv Hume

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Claire Kovac

EDITORS Claudia Sherman Rachel Levin Mia Hanssens Maddie Landon Olivia Landon Cristina Marban Dorys Cardenas Minya Pertel Paige Prodonovich Indigo Craane

Copyright 2021 the SunLit magazine. All rights reserved.

SPRING 2021

the sunlit poetry•prose•art•photography

issue theme: connection and introspection

the student-run literary + arts magazine of santa monica high school SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA

EDITOR’S NOTE: Welcome to the second issue of the SunLit! The theme of this issue is Connection and Introspection. These two concepts, and the intersection between them, is something that this pandemic has lead many of us to contemplate: how do we connect when we are far apart? who are we when others’ perceptions of us are stripped away?

I have to admit, when we first put out the call for submissions for this issue, I was a bit apprehensive. Would anyone, I wondered, have the capacity to be creative in this chaotic year?

But I had forgotten one thing. Art, whether visual or written word, is a way for us to process the changing world around us. It’s a channel for us to express our emotions, and a pathway to places we can escape to.

And so, I need not have worried. We received an outpouring of submissions: stories and snapshots of the way this year has made us rethink ourselves and rethink the ways we’re linked to others -- the ways we’ve explored connection and introspection.

This issue illuminates two distinct ways that we’ve processed the pandemic. Some pieces are ethereal, created to forge worlds we can escape to that are far away from all that has held us down in this year.

Others depict the raw emotions of this year: fear, loneliness, despair, loss, yearning, hope and even elation at the prospect of connecting again.

Both forms of expression illustrate that the pandemic has in no way stifled creativity. Instead, the ways we create have grown because of it.

And just as creativity expanded in new ways this year, so did the SunLit. Our editing staff grew, and we welcomed seven new members.

I’m incredibly impressed with the initiative, creative ideas, work ethic, and collaboration of our staff. We also expanded by launching our website, growing our social media presence and transitioning to relying on staff members more: in addition to spreading the word, selecting submissions and editing, we introduced teams of layout editors, publicity managers and proofreaders.

We would like to sincerely thank everyone who submitted, and our readers. The SunLit is our way of connecting with you, and we hope it inspires introspection.

—Claire Kovac, Editor-in-Chief

contents AUTHORS 3, 39 Minya Pertel A Bird Fill and Empty

2 Nadia Goosby 5, 11, 40 Sofia Yaron

7 Roger Gawne Grieving and Grit: This Year in a Nutshell 10, 29 Rachel Rothschild Beckoning Call Joe 15 Joy Johnson Signals 16 Mattan Benisty The World Is Quiet Here 16 Katy Broderick Dreams 19, 36 Rachel Levin The Lighthouse Keeper Moving Day 26 Mia Hanssens Sweater Weather 31 Sierra Yee The Boy and the Graveyard 45 Maya Williams I Didn’t Know 46 Sophie Salem Dear Sophie

6 Minya Pertel 12 Rubani Chugh 14 Eve Brock 17 Claire Kovac 18 Liv Hume 24 Cassidy Chen 25 Emily Plukas 27 Claudia Sherman 28, 41 Ava Guerra 30 Lana Pollack 37 Julia Lim 38 Millie Weill 41 Aaron Smollins 41 Maddie Landon 43 Mia Hanssens 44 Helen Tramble

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4, 42 Delaney O’Dea Scrawl #11 Eyes: A Sonnet

ARTISTS

NADIA GOOSBY graphite

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a bird

MINYA PERTEL It is nearly morning, yet I am still awake.

A darkness saturates the walls within my house and embraces my skin, cold and still.

Windows, doors, eyes closed, but my ears stay open to hear a single bird singing outside my window.

In a tall tree, it sings night and day with no end.

Why does it sing?

I yearn to be like the bird who sings night and day, despite the dark, and the windows and eyes closed. the sunlit

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scrawl #11 DELANEY O’DEA

Do you remember that day?

That day we stole the sun And conquered the night That day we awakened our souls With petrichor and exhilaration And destroyed our entire worlds With laughter and spite I remember the day When my pen became my sword When I captured time And made it my slave When I sailed that sea of Hatred and psaltery And hid all reason Where only God could find it I remember when we abandoned All anguish and fear and truth When we flew to the grinning moon Only to steep ourselves in stardust When we hunted Death, Drunk on ideas, And drowned justice Until it could not be preserved Shattering the gates of reality Storming the palace of faith Battling what was left of All goodness and agony 4

Waging war on chaos Purging all order Do you remember how it felt?

All anger and joy released All glory and terror revealed And that haunting melody That killed me with Unspeakable horror and unutterable ecstasy

If God or Satan had Handed me its lethal poison I would’ve drunk it just the same Blessed and cursed, we were, Sanctified and damned We had created and destroyed With the glimmer of an eye And we had no regrets We could run far away Cloaked in sacred darkness and Robed in angelic brilliance The howling breaths of Boreas Would deliver us And we could forever bask In the eternal indigo And forever bathe In the perpetual midnight.

SOFIA YARON collage

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MINYA PERTEL oil paint

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grieving and grit: this year in a nutshell ROGER GAWNE Every day they record those who’ve died of this virus But when all’s said and done, will they go back and count every soul it’s taken from us?

Those who could not get treatment for other ailments Those who could not stay safe Those who lost everything and all hope, like you did When we find our next normal, will they determine how many this pandemic has really killed?

Can the rest of us hang on long enough to find out?

Somehow, day after day, I dragged myself out of bed, commuting to my computer Joining classes and calls meetings upon meetings upon meetings Staring at the screen, trying- often failingto will myself to keep trudging on, trying to ignore how pointless it all felt Thirty calculus problems? Newton’s laws? Sightreading?

What did it matter?

My head was full of a fog so thick I could barely read in my own language Pero mi profesora me dijo que leyera y explicara “Cómo domar una lengua salvaje” The title felt like it might’ve held meaning once

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Like something that perhaps I could’ve almost related to as fiery and rapid-spoken as I was. As I’d been.

But now I was silent, eyes dull I guess even my “wild” tongue could be tamed All it took was losing you.

But I kept moving, somehow, through the drudgery and depression, always coming back to that night.

You’d not been dead two weeks When I stepped out on a clear night walking to the marina; after all, you were a sailor Not here, but all the oceans are one, and they say we are too, so I came seeking connection.

My attention was caught by the burning moon ablaze with orange fire I remembered from your eyes, from your passion and your joy Struck, I snuck onto a dock and sat.

Between myself, the still water, the open sky & stars, the flaming moon, I told you everything.

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How I cared for you, how I missed you, how sorry I was, how hurt we all were.

I confided my fears- COVID, sure, but mostly my own trials confessing how close I’d come to following you My uncertainties as to if I wouldn’t as to why and how I would carry on

As I spoke, my tongue freed itself and off of it rolled the thick fog, rolling out of my head and onto the water And in the mist aglow with the moon’s embers I found something

An equanimity and a purpose For though your voice did not appear out of the ripples of the tide That night or any since I could still follow the guidance you left me and for once, I could think clearly That night, I swore to you and to myself That though I may not know how to get through this I would figure it out, for both of us And that I would do everything in my powerThat I had no choice but to excel, To honor your memory, for your sake and for my own

Sure enough, I have clawed successes and joy out of this year as have we all.

I will never, can never, call this year a “blessing in disguise” After what it’s taken from those of us who remain Nevertheless, it is a time of transformation and somehow, some way, we will pull ourselves and our world into something that you would be proud of. That is deserving of your memory. the sunlit

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beckoning RACHEL ROTHSCHILD

Wind tumbles beyond my window, the howling ringing in my ears.

I am moved to listen, to stand, wanting to be a witness no longer.

The howling noise ringing in my ears leads my prance across the cold stone.

Wanting to be a witness no longer, I join the dance.

Leading my prance across the cold stone, the rhythmic whispers guide me.

I join the dance, turning with the ferocious wind.

The rhythmic whispers guide me, first opening the clouds, and then the sky.

Turning with the ferocious wind, I become a symphony.

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SOFIA YARON digital drawing

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RUBANI CHUGH

“hope for the future in the eyes of the young” the sunlit

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EVE BROCK

colored pencils, markers, and pens

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signals

JOY JOHNSON

the spinning the constant, unbearable spinning the pounding the chaotic, uncomforting pounding the changes the irreversible, unforgivable changes when will it stop? the spinning and pounding and crying and pain it repeats, repeats, repeats, repeats does it lead me home? i want to go home here it spins and pounds and breaks and bleeds where is home? i can’t be here they’re here this is not my home they create the spinning and pounding and breaking and bleeding they’re my abusers they took me and sold my sanity for their “changes” i want to go home here is hurt that leaves a stain i don’t want to become them or be a part of their “changes” i spin and think, the pounding still hits, trying to find my way home but alas their “changes” ruined it all

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the world is quiet here MATTAN BENISTY

TimeIs of the essenceIt spins and it spinsLikeThe life in these wordsThat flow as we beginTimeShouldn’t be wastedFor that is a sinFinallyIt’s time for my life to begin

dreams

KATY BRODERICK You’ve always known me And you’ve always seen me But yet you’ve never known me Nor seen me You grew with hope And I grew with velocity Yet this wasn’t a speedy journey You came to this city Seeking desires you never knew Yet I knew 16

CLAIRE KOVAC ARTIST STATEMENT Through the lens of my camera I played with seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary: viewing the connection to what I see everyday as magical instead of mundane.

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LIV HUME

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the lighthouse keeper RACHEL LEVIN

“I have worked in this lighthouse for fifty years,” the lighthouse keeper declared to Gallery. Gallery stared back at him with wide, illuminated eyes, and did not blink. The lighthouse keeper saw the stare of Gallery, his lean black cat, and knew he understood. It was twelve noon. “I have worked here for fifty years but they say I am no longer needed.”

The lighthouse in question was striped red and white on the outside, as was regulation, but in the watch room where the keeper spent most of his time, it was a menagerie of photos and drawings and personality. Beneath the decoration there was metal, and chipping paint, once black and then silver and then white. The keeper had not known the man who first painted the walls black, but the keeper himself had done the silver layer and then the white. This was where he stood as he grumbled to his cat, who slinked along the lantern room ladder. the sunlit

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“My whole damn life has been this tower!”

His hand balled into a fist like the curved walls of the room.

But on those walls he saw the photos of his family, and a fist became a weary sigh.

He ran a calloused hand through his thick beard, lifted a frame from its hook, and held it in his hand, careful not to crush the glass. The photo framed was of the keeper’s son and daughter hugged in his wife’s arms, now far away from him. “Where will I hang these photos now?” He gently placed the photo in the cardboard box by his feet.

“Where will I go in the morning, after the bacon is fried and the eggs are poached? Who will I play cards with, if not the sailors docked for the day in the harbor?”

The keeper removed another photo, this time taken thirty years ago, of his first cat.

He looked out the window and away from the memories, only to find a still, undisturbed river in his view.

“Ah, but how long has it been since a boat has been docked?

We are no major port.”

Gallery blinked, now on the railing of the deck.

“Perhaps I’m living in a fantasy, eh? Foolin’ myself, I am.” The keeper ran a hand along the lantern ladder. “This lighthouse is only iron and stone.”

That night, after every bit of the lighthouse keeper had been swept from his lighthouse, and he had gone back to his home, Gallery sat above the lantern and below the ceiling. It was usually as hot as the sun in that crevice, but as the lantern was switched off with no one to wield it, it was a perfect spot for watching.

The cat’s eyes were two large moons as they took in the restless purple water of the river.

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It was the witching hour.

The lighthouse keeper, asleep in his home, would never know about the lone dinghy beating its way through low tide, rudder gripped by a struggling fisherman whose coat was blown to the vengeful wind, and who was looking for a light he would never find. Instead the fisherman would find the jagged The cat’s eyes edges of a cliff, and a glimpse of his were two large late grandmother. moons as they But Gallery saw it all.

The fishing sites had long been took in the licked clean by barges with milerestless purple long nets and the sea painted black water of the by smog-bellowing factories, and so the fisherman had needed to sail out river into the deep ocean to find a catch.

He was an old timer, had been around when the shoe factory downtown was still in operation and music was shanties crooned in pubs and not through a wire and wave. He had been there when the lighthouse keeper would be out in his tower every night, watching for sailors who watched for him.

Those days, the fisherman knew that the lighthouse keeper would be there with his lighthouse light, and that he would kiss his wife and not the rocks each night. But now the keeper had lost his certainty. He had been told he was not needed and the new boats all had their own lights, and now the old waters weren’t good for fishing. So the fisherman met his doom.

And Gallery saw this all, and thought of his keeper, and mourned in the way that cats do, looking up and trying to drink the moon. the sunlit

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Early the next morning, the lighthouse keeper got a call.

He had a rotary telephone still, and the metal circle zipped around and around as he scrambled out of bed for a loud and ringing alarm.

“Hello?” he said to the glossy black metal. It reflected bright eyes in lined, cracked skin.

“Is this the lighthouse keeper?” asked a young voice on the other side.

“It is.”

“Your lighthouse is empty, and it needs you.”

“I was told it did not,” said the lighthouse keeper, this time tired instead of angry. He could hear the young voice smile.

“We were wrong.”

That night the lighthouse was filled once again with the keeper’s things. He had eaten his eggs and bacon in the morning, walked down the cobblestone path in the afternoon, and climbed the ladder to the lantern room in the evening. He now patted the light, whose glass was not yet warm, and went to turn it on.

“I wonder what changed their mind?” the keeper asked the river, and Gallery heard, his big round eyes staring at the water as well. It was nine at night. Stuck between two rocks on the river’s bank was a strip of white fabric, waving wildly in the wind.

He shook his head. “No matter, they finally got their heads on straight. This lighthouse is vital to the working of the harbor.”

Deep down, the lighthouse keeper doubted this, thought

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perhaps it was just a story he told himself. But he also thought, as did his cat, that he was meant to work it for the rest of his life.

This lighthouse is not just iron and stone, thought the cat, whose name was Gallery. He leaped off the railing and darted between the lighthouse keeper’s legs as the man began to whistle a jolly sea shanty at the moon. It is you, and you will turn on your light and the boats will see you, and you will matter to them.

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CASSIDY CHEN

CASSIDY CHEN

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EMILY PLUKAS

acrylic paint, charcoal, and colored pencil

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sweater weather MIA HANSSENS

I walk along this rocky coast I snatch daffodils along my way And dip my feet in rocky pools Fish flicker around my toes My reflection runs through the waves I swing my pack across my back My sweater sticks to me, in the winter storm I breathe in the sweet salt; watch the dancing of the seals Squint through the rain, run across the bridge Of rocks. Toward the lighthouse on the hill The trees bow toward the land The ghosts growl at the sea The western wind hugs me She cradles me in her chilling clutches Throwing me through the torrents Down deep below the bay Where the dreamers sleep the night away.

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CLAUDIA SHERMAN oil paint

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AVA GUERRA acrylic paint

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call joe

RACHEL ROTHSCHILD Inspired by “How I Get My Ideas” by Dean Young If you need to know, call Joe who stocks up and supplies even though it leaves him behind.

Call Joe, who everyone loves the people person, the popular one, who saves and stores pockets in his mind to be drawn upon.

His friends often call Joe, their perfect Joe who readies his tone and grins too wide.

Joe, who is never home, relies on his vices lifting him from dips, tending to him, putting him to bed so nice.

If you need to know, call Joe who lost himself in the darkness he sinks into so low waiting for his next friend on the line.

They call Joe, who delivers his script to the fervent friend on the other line.

Call Joe, but they never stand by his side because they are busy, too busy for it to cross their minds. the sunlit

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LANA POLLACK alcohol markers

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the boy and the graveyard SIERRA YEE

Long, long ago, when pixies still glittered in the treetops and unicorns roamed free, when dryads still danced barefooted upon the forest floor, and giants had not yet hidden themselves away from the world, there was a forest.

In this forest, there was a town called Amaranth. This town of Amaranth had once bustled with trade from all corners of the world. The cries of merchants hawking their goods, the sound of too many street performers competing for the same stage, the laughter of children, and chatter of adults had each day come together in a glorious symphony. People came and went with the wind, each from different walks of life. Weary travelers, aspiring magicians, the odd high fae, and even those from beyond the forest, were commonplace. Exotic spices, sweet perfumes, and above all the smell of life scented the fresh forest air.

That was before. Before they had attacked the forest, clearing the ancient trees in the name of progress. Burning the sunlit

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away their wizened branches and cutting down even those that had been older than the civilization itself, sparing hardly a thought for what they were destroying. The forest, of course, had retaliated. Where there were once open trails, now lay wide gorges, dense forests, dark caves, and all manner of unpleasant deterrents. The border trees grew close together, dense and impenetrable, and wove themselves through with deadly sharp thistles. Rivers shifted, boulders moved, and the landmarks that once marked the paths connecting the Town with the outside world disappeared. The journey to any one of their neighboring villages became twice as treacherous. One dared not stray too far from the outskirts of the town to gather firewood and those who did rarely ever returned.

Before there was life. Now, the air smelled of rot and there was nothing left. Nothing remained but ghosts and a mere shadow of what the town had once been. Nothing but a dying city and the people unfortunate enough to be dying with it.

One such person was Aleksander Nikofiev. At the age of sixteen, he was not quite old enough to remember Amaranth in its glory days, but old enough that he remembered it had once been something more. Just enough, that The setting he knew something was missing. Just sun stretched enough, so that when dared to fetch ball that had been lost to the forest the shadows the earlier that evening, he had said yes of the trees to satiate his hunger for that which he never knew, if only temporarily. into Night was falling. Mist clung low to wicked claws the ground. The setting sun stretched the shadows of the trees into wicked claws. A storm was brew32

ing in the distance. The autumn chill bit at his nose and chapped his fingers. Alek had ventured past the city limits and in doing so, he had all but signed his own death warrant. He had ventured past the city limits and into the Lost Village, or so it was called. The part of the town that had slowly but surely began to be reclaimed by the forest. Vines grew out of every window and vegetation consumed entire buildings until there was nothing left but rubble. He had ventured past the city limits, into the Lost Village, and had yet to find the thrice-cursed ball. He considered turning back and going home to dinner. He would have to do his brother’s chores for a week and sacrifice his pride, but he was having pasta that night, a rarity ever since trade from Eadalit had been cut off.

A sharp, excited squeal of laughter cut off his train of thought. With shaking hands, he drew his knife. His father had gifted him for his twelfth birthday. It was a genuine ritual dagger from the far West, or so his father claimed. Slowly, Alek made his way towards the source of the sound, praying it wasn’t one of ten thousand terrible creatures that surely inhabited the forest.

A young girl, no more than seven years old, twirled alone in the abandoned churchyard cemetery, to music he couldn’t hear.

She wore a white dress and her pale skin had a curious pallor to it, something that he couldn’t quite place. A crown of bloodred roses lay atop her ink-black hair. He lowered the knife and considered his options. Option one: approach the unsettling child he found dancing alone in an abandoned graveyard. Option two: go back home, eat some pasta, and do his best to forget the whole affair. He was leaning towards the pasta. Before he could decide, the girl whirled around to face him.

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She fixed him with milky, unfocused eyes, smiling broadly.

“Are you a new friend?” she asked hopefully. “It’s been so long since I’ve made a new friend!”

Alek stumbled backward into a crumbling statue of Sankt Yusaf. Surely that hadn’t been there before, he thought absently as his mind raced.

“Um, uh, no. I was just leaving actually,” he stammered.

She tilted her head to the side, studying him with wide, childish eyes.

“Yes,” she agreed finally. “You probably should go. I don’t think they like you very much.”

There was an indescribable shift in the atmosphere. The Gooseflesh temperature plummeted. His heartbeat soared. Gooseflesh prickled his prickled his arms as he got the feeling something arms as he got was watching him. Many somethings, the feeling none of them good. He realized what the pale, sallow shade of her skin resomething was minded him of. Something long dead.

“I would run if I were you,” she watching him advised serenely.

Alek ran. The space between where he was and the edge of the graveyard seemed to multiply with each step he took. The ground tilted beneath his feet. His head spun. The gravestones trapped him in an inescapable maze of bones and marble.

The girl blinked at him. Crimson tears dripped from her eyes, leaving pink trails on her youthfully round cheeks and splattering, like blood, on her dress. The smile had not dropped from her face.

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“I thought I told you to run. It’s too late now. They’re here,” she sing-songed, sounding oddly delighted. Her voice reverberated in his skull. The girl returned to dancing, spinning in and out of overgrown gravestones, skipping between ruined statues of weeping angels, singing to herself.

All around the cobbler’s bench The monkey chased the weasel, The monkey killed the cobbler’s wife Pop! Goes the weasel.

He screamed.

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moving day RACHEL LEVIN

there’s a river to the north that i walk beside and there’s a dock out by that river that hasn’t been used since 1955 you see, ever since i was little i used to think it was haunted by ghosts but now i know it’s just for boats if you walk a little farther there’s a train car parked in gravel no one goes in it’s there to show the history of rivers and the history of cities and a freight-car’s end we used to look inside its window for a glimpse into a past but its mystery stays vast

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i think i tried too hard to make it something it was not i think nostalgia makes us stupid brings back the past that we forgot but when you really stop to think i think it’s raining pretty hard in California in New York strangely it is not there was a plane with sterile air and sixty seats lined up there was a ringing in my ears when my eardrums popped there was a world i ought to see and i couldn’t pass up the opportunity but there was no river down the street

JULIA LIM

ARTIST STATEMENT

“This photo represents the strong blood-related connection between mother and daughter, with each of them walking on the same foot, under a shared umbrella on a cold and rainy day in Portland, Maine.”

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MILLIE WEILL “drenched”

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fill and empty MINYA PERTEL

I can hear the water running From the bathtub in the room next door.

I can hear the pipes fill And empty Into its deep basin A sanctuary where skin Washes and seeps Into welcoming waters, Flowing steadily from A rusted spout.

Moving into the room, Across cold tiles, The water welcomes me.

It carries me Beneath its glassed surface, Wrapping around me In a tight embrace.

It warms my feet And my legs And my chest As it travels up and up, Reaching toward my head; It covers me.

My body curls and stretches Along the curved and tiled White walls -

It searches for comfort In this cold and tiled room, Where I twist into a ball And hide from the world.

I am small, I am nothing, I will disappear down the drain.

Down and down I flow, Slowly, In a flood of mud And waste, Until I reach the sea Where I can rest.

Beneath an old, wise shell I will rest at last.

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SOFIA YARON

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AARON SMOLLINS

“yoshi”

MADDIE LANDON watercolor

AVA GUERRA acrylic paint

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eyes: a sonnet DELANEY O’DEA

I have seen those dark eyes reach into my soul My heart is full of ecstasy; my mind is pale and stunned With each look and word and breath I am now whole Yet I fear to utter even one word; if they know I shall be shunned With thunder and wild winds and bright shining stars And ravens and lilies and yonder great glittering sea I have not been entrapped with fetters, nor with bars You are my saving grace, the one to unlock, the key And still I wonder if I am wrong; still I fear that all is false For I have seen what has occurred when one has hope Yet I know that if anything, those eyes are no farce Those eyes that strive to kill me with desire shall also make me cope Now I have no fear; now I dread no evil Though you are my death, you are still my retrieval.

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MIA HANSSENS

mixed-media collage

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HELEN TRAMBLE

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i didn’t know MAYA WILLIAMS

I saw you last night.

It had been a while, yet you looked exactly the same.

You were making that face, the one that seemed to hide your feelings from everyone else.

But I always knew.

You made that face before telling us you were leaving.

(How long had you known?)

I wish I had gotten a do-over of that last day.

I never did get to say goodbye.

I didn’t know everything would change.

How could I?

I miss you every minute, of every hour, of every day.

But it’s not just you that I miss.

I miss who I am around you.

My genuine smiles and awkward laughs; feeling like I could stay in that moment for the rest of eternity, and that would be okay.

I can’t wait to hug you again, and smile with you, and do everything we used to do, or even everything that we didn’t.

But I can’t see you today.

Or tomorrow.

Or the day after that.

Just know that I’m waiting.

For you.

For me.

For us.

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dear sophie SOPHIE SALEM

Dear Sophie, It’s me, Sophie. Well, I mean inside Sophie, not outside Sophie. Meaning I’m you and your thoughts. Your psyche, pretty much. Anyway, I think it’s time we have a conversation. It’s been ten months in an endless loop, and not once have we sat back and truly thought about ourselves and how we’ve changed. I mean seriously, nearly a year in quarantine can really change a person. Remember when we used to go out to the movies and walk the Third Street Promenade with friends? We’d stop for a burger at Johnny Rockets, grab too much candy at It’Sugar and browse the shelves at Urban Outfitters. Oh the old days when we could go maskless in large crowds. Wait, do you remember when we could jump on a plane and travel the globe merely to jump into the icy Copenhagen Harbour? We were undoubtedly different back 46

then. Isn’t it funny how much more spoiled, less confident and more afraid we were?

At first, the idea of staying in our pajamas all day was great, wasn’t it? Rolling out of bed at 8:57AM to log on to the first zoom of the day right in your own home - how cool is that? Then something happened: months went by and the quarantine boredom really started to get to us. It was almost like we were grieving. It was the loss of a loved one! First the denial - this was not really happening was it? It was a nightmare and we’d wake up soon enough! Then I remember the anger - we raged at the world, the wrapper that wouldn’t open easily, our families, friends and every little thing became a flashpoint! I could kill! The anger soon turned into a hankering for change. Something needed to be different!

So, we came up with the brilliant idea to dye our hair. More excited than ever, we picked up the blonde dye from CVS and headed into the shower to transform into a whole different person. Thirty minutes of hair dying passed and it was horrific. I mean absolutely dreadful. Remember how our hair turned red? How does that even happen?

The third stage of grief; negotiation. Do you remember when we started to bargain? We promised to be good if only the virus went away and restaurants opened up again. We even made a pact to volunteer, help little old ladies across the road, and pick up trash on the streets. Anything! We were so hopeful that the pact would be accepted. It wasn’t!

Life got boring. Like seriously dull and monotonous. We tried to get outside, but it was almost like a magnet was pulling as back to our bed and refusing to let us leave. Soon enough, the loneliness hit like a truck driving at 100 miles the sunlit

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per hour. Being social was a challenge, and it became impossible to get ready in the morning. Paralyzed by fear, our numerous attempts to connect with friends ended in failure.

Just like old memories, friends began to fade away.

5 months into it, we woke up to sadness and melancholy. It was not our fault! “Why are we having to pay for this virus? Why is this happening? Is it politics, mismanagement, stupid doctors? I want it to go away! Where are our friends? Why is it so quiet out there? Why are we prisoners in our own home?” We questioned everything and every day felt like groundhog day. We were bound to wake up soon enough! Inevitably, we dyed our hair once again. The loneliness was real, the sadness sunk in, and this was our way of coping. Quite honestly, all this hair dye has been giving me headaches. Can you find a different way to manage your feelings next time? Maybe try something more normal like; painting, baking or exploring nature?

November 17, 2020 at 2:31 PM and 17 seconds - a switch flipped in us! No more melancholy - we had to go on! With a powerful resolve to make things right again, we knew we needed to find something else to take the place of these dark, somber thoughts. Never did I think we would get to this point, but we chose to focus on style and substance.

Rather than wearing sweatpants, we made the switch to jeans. From solid colored t-shirts, we started wearing graphic and colorful tees. It was almost as if a whole new person had emerged. From basic, as the kids call it, we developed more of a vintage or tomboy fashion style. Just like that, there was a new found spirit that grew in our heart.

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Whew, 2021, new year, new president, new perspective.

Do you feel it too? Things are beginning to change for the better. With a lot more effort than usual, we’ve made new friends. Friends that are loyal, and trustworthy, making us a better person. The social animal within us needs to be nourished now. We have come full circle. In just ten long months, we have lost friends, gained new ones, changed our hair, our style, and our whole personality. Life is different now, and the Sophie back in March wouldn’t have even recognized us now.

There’s no doubt that life has been confusing. Yes, I know we’ve felt alone, but we do have each other. We go through everything together and it has made me think: the spoiled, unconfident, fearful creature we were is no longer.

As awful as this experience has been, it has transformed us into a self-reliant, appreciative and fearless person. We are undaunted, eager to not only see but to impact and alter the future and chart a new trajectory into the world to come! We will appreciate every farmers market, every crowd, every loud noise. Yeah - it’s gonna be great! Hey future, watch out!

We are coming for you!

Sincerely,

Sophie’s Psyche

the sunlit

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NOW ACCEPTING SUBMISSIONS FOR ISSUE 3 We publish poetry, short stories, photographs, drawings, and paintings.

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