Samantha Nochimson

Noodle Bowls

Linocut print on cloth

Vi Kreifels

“I EAT THE RASPBERRIES OFF OF MY FINGERS SO THEY FEEL LOVED”

Acrylic on canvas, 24x30 inches

Maria Cecconello

Saudade

My best friend splits me a peach with her thumb as a parting gift, sits me In the bathtub and washes my hair, Divides it into two braids and I sleep with damp skin, Coddles me to sleep one last time.

Know my love is a bird splattered across a windshield, Hollow bones splintered and shattered But she lets me talk and talk over song bridges and party games, Finds beauty even where most everything is ugly and twisted and fragile

Drove us around the sunlit late afternoon before I left Past the landfill that used to be our school and the tidepool that used to be ocean, Sea withdrawing with warming

She walks around my room after I go and splits my things up in boxes Stakes claim on records and lace trims and coalesced nail polish

I listen to the song she loves, that she first showed to me On my living room floor while we tore into yellowtail and cuttlefish Then rewatch the movie that makes her cry every time, Makes her think of endings and tenderness

I cry in my college library like I’m watching it with her, She watches it alone in a different hemisphere.

At home we’d sleep in the same bed

Open windows letting in the bugs and the moist summer air Here, with my boots I sweep in the cold and crushed leaves, mud, ice Spend my time in cold brick hallways and spiral staircases, Unwinding every pattern I’ve fallen into

The word for this feeling only exists in our language and That makes it all hurt more, somehow.

We migrate apart under changing weather

Patchwork of songs on the radio that we loved at thirteen

Words now blurry and scattered

Sprout into different trees in separate states

The couch where we loved and laughed and cried collects

Dust at the crossroads down the street, Home is a building up in smoke

All my memories are buried in debris, makeshift stages and bleachers that don’t exist Soot clings to my skin like a souvenir

Shiny rental offices and artisanal coffee shops grow tall over a carcass

Nothing but concrete the grasslands we grew up in

Georgianna Besse

SIMPLE MATTER OF DEATH Micron and ink pens