a collection of knowledge or writing on a particular subject plural of CORPUS (Latin for body)
editor in chief vi cao
managing director divya konkimalla
layout director emmy chen
assistant layout director jazmin hernandez arceo
assistant layout director melissa huang
assistant layout director andy kang
graphic design director caroline clark
assistant graphic design director ariana perales
web development director ava jiang
senior print editor andreana joi faucette
associate print editor danielle yampuler
associate print editor william beachum
associate print editor ariel barley
assistant print editor sunshine leewon
senior web editor olivia ring
associate web editor anastacia chu
associate web editor xavier ruiz
assistant web editor abeera amer
assistant web editor mallory morgan
creative director sonia siddiqui
assistant creative director cynthia lira
assistant creative director tomas treviño
director of hmu averie wang
assistant hmu director floriana hool
assistant hmu director jaishri ramesh
nail art director grace joh
co-director of modeling alex basillio
co-director of modeling vani shah
assistant modeling director chase smyth
assistant modeling director jaden spurlock
director of photography reyna dews
assistant photography director william whitworth
director of videography belton gaar
assistant videography director brandon porras
director of styling emily martinez
assistant styling director andromeda rovillain
business director abhigna bagepally
assistant business director eric martinez
co-director of events kevin tavan
co-director of events evangelina yang
assistant events director elise laharia
director of marketing matthew taylor
assistant marketing director mary ann shiju
co-director of social media gray suh
assistant social media director lucia soldi
assistant social media director lili bien
staff
amani ahmad, zyla alaniz, sofia alvarez, adreanna alvarez, paisley bales, vikram banga, samarth bhatt, olivia birge, john-anthony borsi, journey bradley, moriah brown, jacqueline bui, kaimana carlsward, tai cerulli, srikha chaganti, maggie chao, manny charles, william chheng, ammu christ, aidan christensen, joseph chunga pizarro, angelina conde, zoe costanza, kennedy coyle, sarah david, rayna dejesus, grecia del bosque, ceci deleon-wilson, rachelle escobar, yasmin evans, beverly frankenfeld, hector frausto, nicole garcia, yvette garcia, norma garcia, roman garza, maya gaytan quiroz, anya gokul, abigail goldman, zoe goleski, elaine gong, sofia gonzalez, julius gonzalez, mimo gorman, harrison goytia, joshua grenier, anya gupta, karina gutierrez, dat ha, jane hao, terryn hargis, alana harvey, nayeon heo, sara herbowy, madilyn hernandez, theo hernandez, amari herrera, savannah hilliard, paige hoffer, naush hossain, nicole howard, seiya ishigami, bennett ismert, erin jeon, jose jimenez, savannah johnson, connie jongkind, nandita joshi, victoria kayode, clay keener, abby kerrigan, ariel king, anna king, jocelyn kovach, alayna kozak, clayton laney, isabelle lee, isabella leung, winnie leydon, cameron lightfoot, sheree loh, sienna madrigal, isha manjunath, sophia manllo-sudario, jose martinez-mcintosh, jasmine mata, jency mattox, taylor mendoza, hayley mitchell, nizza morales, madison morante, caleb morrow, sahithi myana, anthony nguyen, victoria nicolaevna, emily nunez, toine orr, katherine page, anika pandit, tara park, ariana perales, river perrill, lucy phenix, genesis pieri, adriana ramirez, sydney raney, ashlee richards-rood, mario rios valverde, angelynn rivera, kennedy ruhland, joshua rush, alexis saenz, nat salinas, marissa sandoval, odelia schiller, anika shankar, nila shankar, anoushka sharma, rylie shieh, manoo sirivelu, ari smith, cayenne souknary, ava stern, lorena tellez, stella thomas, london tijani, khasya tinglin, patsy torres, reyana tran, amyan tran, jose velazco, aidan vu, ollie vuckovic, john walton, bo wang, jennifer wang, ellis wesley, tariq wrensford, lili xiong, jonathan xu, paris yang, hannah yi, rachel zhou
from the editor
SPARKKKK!!!!
My time in SPARK is coming to an end, which is crazy to fathom. For the past four years, SPARK has been my home, my school, and my playground. I don’t know a college experience without it. I first joined the magazine during Contra, and I was hooked. Every SPARK member remembers going to their first general meeting. I’ve never felt more at home and inspired than I was at mine. I will carry that feeling with me forever. I have learned so much from my time in SPARK, and I hope to impart some of that wisdom to you here.
That feeling I felt four years ago is the soul of SPARK: the need to be genuine, to openly care about creative endeavors. It’s not an easy journey to put creative work out into the open, but we are all here because we love to do so. To not display our creativity is to sell ourselves short. We are unified in the endless venture to better our craft and to create a body of work we are proud of. SPARK has such amazing talent, and this semester is no different.
This issue, CORPORA, is an amalgamation of everything. It’s everything that SPARK is, because SPARK is an accumulation of its people. It delves into our relationships with our bodies through food, friendships, pain, and more. It also explores the body of our city — we feature Austin-based musician Babiboi and gain insight into how she has remained steadfast in her craft. Most importantly, this issue encompasses our ideas about SPARK as a body. That body of work will be forever evolving, continuously building upon itself. After this issue,
SPARK will continue to live on as corpora and take on a new meaning far past me.
We emphasize these themes in three sections: Stasis, Versus, Exodus. CORPORA is a physical manifestation of our hearts and desires. This past year has shown me more than ever the importance of being unwavering in my vision. I hope you connect with the stories and feel inspired to put yourself out there.
Be unabashed. Embrace it. Care. Be genuine!!!
With so much love,
Editor
STASIS nexus kronos. your body, in two pieces on the highway tooth decay yin yang patient 307 there is a sound highway under the sea the l-word on flour
VERSUS traitor’s body my body is a mobile home. the names i wear gym girl en dehors; en dedans nosebleed can i borrow your kidney? doll parts my hands were never meant to be gentle
EXODUS the oyster erratica the largest organ taxidermist aquitaine roadsong coeur
FEATURE babiboi makes music for bad bitches
layout CAROLINE CLARK photographer WILLIAM WHITWORTH
by SUNSHINE ZÉA LEEUWON layout MELISSA HUANG creative director CHASE SMYTH photographer WILLIAM WHITWORTH stylists CHASE SMYTH & OLIVIA BIRGE model EMERALD JULIUS
“Air rests against my skin,”, “cool, deliberate —”, “like fingers tracing the memory of touch.”, “I fold into myself without resistance.”, “Nothing tears. Nothing opens.”, “Yet still, something leaves.”, “”,
“Inside, a heat gathers slowly.”, “Not flame, not hunger.”, “Just the low thrum”, “of being looked at,”, “of looking back. “, “”,
“I forget the shape I held before.”, “The edges weaken,”, “stretch,”, “settle.”,
“I am not becoming.”, “I am already here,”, “only softer.”, “”,
“The body is a quiet argument —”, “bone against fabric,”, “gaze against dark.”, “No climax, no rupture.”, “Only breath”, “and the certainty of form.”, “”,
“I do not rise.”, “I unfold.”,
“And in that unfolding, “, “I remain.” ]
def __init__(self):
self.original_lines = self.LINES
self.max_len = max(len(line) for line in self.LINES)
“””Glitch the first `glitch_width` characters of a line with varying intensity.””” glitched = “” for i, char in enumerate(text): if char == “ “: glitched += “ “ elif i < glitch_width: if random.random() < intensity: glitched += random.choice(self.GLITCH_CHARS) else: glitched += char else: glitched += char return glitched
“””Rewrite all lines simultaneously with the given glitch width and intensity.””” sys.stdout.write(f”\033[{len(self.LINES)}F”) for line in self.LINES: sys.stdout.write(“\033[K”) # Clear the line glitched_line = self._glitch_line(line, glitch_width, intensity) print(glitched_line) sys.stdout.write(f”\033[{len(self.LINES)}E”) sys.stdout.flush()
def _clear_all_lines(self):
“””Clear all poem lines.””” for _ in range(len(self.LINES)): sys.stdout.write(“\033[F\033[K”) sys.stdout.flush()
def display_poem(self):
# Force the terminal to scroll to the bottom print(“\n” * 100) time.sleep(0.5)
“““Main display logic”””
# Step 1: The Constructing for line in self.LINES: for char in line: print(char, end=””, flush=True) time.sleep(random.uniform(0.02, 0.05)) print() time.sleep(1)
# Step 2: The First Wave step_size = self.max_len // 4 for quarter in range(1, 5): glitch_width = quarter * step_size intensity = quarter / 4 for _ in range(4): self._rewrite_all_lines(glitch_width, intensity) time.sleep(0.15)
# Step 3: The Full-Cycle for _ in range(10): # Cycle through 10 glitch patterns self._rewrite_all_lines(self.max_len, random.uniform(0.7, 1.0)) time.sleep(0.15)
# Step 4: The Oscillation for quarter in reversed(range(1, 5)): glitch_width = quarter * step_size intensity = quarter / 5 for _ in range(5): self._rewrite_all_lines(glitch_width, intensity) time.sleep(0.15)
# Step 5: The Return time.sleep(1) self._clear_all_lines() for line in self.LINES: print(line) time.sleep(3) # Let the restored poem sit
# Step 6: The Indecision for _ in range(6): # Full glitch self._rewrite_all_lines(self.max_len, 1.0) time.sleep(0.2) # Clean text self._clear_all_lines() for line in self.LINES: print(line) time.sleep(0.2)
# Step 7: The Final Existence self._clear_all_lines() print(“//> EXIT.”) print(“// SYSTEM UNBOUND.”) print(“// The body breathes. And I am.”)
stylist AIDAN VU & GRECIA DEL BOSQUE hmua ANGELYNN RIVERA & AVERIE WANG models AIDAN VU & ODELIA SCHILLER & AIDAN CHRISTENSEN
videographer JOSE VELAZCO
by JENNIFER WANG
Even in death, we remain.
HEAD PIECE | Leopard Lounge
CORSET TOP | Leopard Lounge
SKIRT | Leopard Lounge
HEELS | Austin Pets Alive!
JEWELRY | Austin Creative Reuse
Titan’s anatomy is strangely mortal. Their children are not Kronos’ godly offspring didn’t feel the burn of stomach acid when he swallowed them whole. When the time came, they clawed their way up his trachea to escape the prison that was his mouth, leaving his insides to bleed gold.
At least, that’s how I imagine it happened. As a child, my imagination ran too rampant to be constrained.
When I was around seven, my mind created a nightmare that came back to haunt me every other month.
It always started out in this oddly familiar restaurant. It was a dingy diner, the type I recognized from vintage American sitcoms. The entire place was dimly lit in a wash of putrid yellow lighting, and the booths and tables stretched on as far as the eye could see, aligned in perfect geometric sequences.
No matter where I looked, the same rows of vintage diner seats and worn-down floors stared back at me. There was no visible entrance or exit to be found. It sparked a feeling of unease deep within my subconscious, and an overwhelming impulse would possess my legs, forcing them to run.
Then, a familiar voice would reach my ears. My uncle would materialize in a booth in front of me, beckoning me closer. Something sinister seemed to simmer beneath his smile.
He wasn’t my real uncle.
Before my body allowed me to flee, I would shrink to the size of a pill. My uncle, now looming over me, would pick me up by the collar of my shirt and swallow me whole.
The journey down his throat engulfed me in endless darkness. Just like that maze of a diner, there was no way out. My attempts to crawl back out were futile.
Then, a panic would seize me by the neck. My panic was alive, living inside of me and colonizing my organs like a parasite. It had a mind of its own, and my nostrils so I couldn’t breathe. It killed me gradually from the inside, leaving me to wilt to nothingness in the abyss of my uncle’s stomach.
Then came rebirth.
A blinding light would burst from behind my eyelids to offer me salvation. Somehow, I’d reawaken in one of the booths at the diner.
I’d greet the familiar sight of sickly yellow lights and maze-like tables and chairs yet again. Sitting opposite of me is someone who’s not quite my uncle.
I stopped trying to run the second time around.
I always found the nightmare to be strange, because my uncle had always been nothing but kind to me. He wasn’t a bad man, but I knew he was no saint, either. He shrouded himself in a haze of short-term happiness, the smoke of Marlboro cigarettes blinding his world.
He was always trying something new, always seeking the next thrill. While others existed, he
Life was a test of endurance, but he bolted from the start. He didn’t care much for consequences. He thought if he ran from them fast enough, they wouldn’t catch up to him. And they didn’t — at least, not for a while. But you tire with age, and he set himself up to lose the marathon.
His passing was a shock to the entire family. The hospital told us his cause of death was kidney failure. We knew he hadn’t been doing well, but no one thought he would leave us so soon.
Death had always seemed so far away from me. The day my mother heard the news of my uncle’s passing was the first time Death graced me with its presence. I saw it sneak through the cracks of my apartment’s front door and felt its chilling touch trace the surface of my skin.
That day, Death came one step closer to me as a
“I stomached the pleas and killed the beggar in me.”
“Even if I’m condemned to an eternity of damnation after death, at least I would still be.”
Somewhere in the grooves of the trunk, he lives on. He breathes through the leaves and moves with the wind. He’s not gone — not completely.
When I think of my uncle, I am reminded of Kronos.
After Kronos was overthrown, his children banished him to Tartarus, a realm so deep below the earth that it was beyond the Underworld. I often wonder if that is the whole story. After all, a god so ancient would not simply cease to exist. Perhaps he still lingers — not in a physical body, but in the dust of the legacy he left behind.
And what of me?
When I eventually surrender to my own demise, will I also find a way to continue living as dust?
As a child, I harbored a curious obsession with mythology. I hungered for tales of great deities from ancient cities that once stood tall and are now crumbled to ruins. I was captivated by stories of death, and of where our souls passed onto after death.
In every culture, life seemed to stubbornly persist somewhere beyond the mortal realm. The examples are endless: the Underworld, Heaven and Hell, the Duat, Hel and Valhalla, Swarg and Narak, YīnJiān.
It brought me a sense of comfort to believe that I would not simply cease to exist after dying. I hoped that I would have somewhere to go. Even if I’m condemned to an eternity of damnation after death, at least I would still be.
These days, I often find myself in nature. I lie on beds of grass, feel the dirt under my fingernails, and try to reach for the expanse that is the sky. I tell myself to breathe in, then breathe out. My ribcage hums with the cicadas. Is this the view I’ll have when I’m lowered into the earth?
The more life I try to instill in myself, the closer to death I feel.
I’ve started running from Death. I don’t think I will stop anytime soon, but someday my fear might subside. Maybe I will learn to slow down my footsteps.
The day I inevitably stop in my tracks, I will ask my children to turn me into dust and infuse my remains into the roots of a tree sapling.
Until then, I’ll grieve each time Death takes one step closer to me. I’ll fling myself at anything that makes me feel alive. I’ll die a million little deaths. But in the end, I’ll live on — not as flesh and bone, but as dirt, bark, and the very air you breathe. ■
layout GRAY SUH photographer JUJU GONZALEZ
stylist SOPHIA MANOLLO-SUDARIA & MIMO GORMAN hmua ABBY BAGEPALLY
models GRECIA DEL BOSQUE & ELAINE GONG
videographer PAISLEY BALES
by SUNSHINE ZÉA LEEUWON
Your body, IN TWO PIECES, ON THE HIGHWAY
The road doesn’t remember. The cars don’t slow. The highway swallows everything — blood, fur, bones — until only I remain.
Death reaches his cold, spindly hands into my chest and says, I’m going to rip this away from you.
There is no warning. No negotiation. Just the taking. The brutal, indifferent severance of one thing from another — life from body, warmth from skin, before from after. Death doesn’t wait for us to be ready. It doesn’t ask if we can bear it. It simply takes.
Once, on a road trip, I passed by twenty-three dead raccoons on the highway. I didn’t mean to count. It wasn’t a morbid game or a compulsive tic. But the number stacked up anyway, pressing itself into my brain like tire treads into asphalt. One. Two. Three. I tracked them the way I track time, the way I keep tally of the things I’ve lost but can’t quite name.
Some of them were still fresh, tangible as bodies rather than just outlines. Fur caught in the wind like it might lift from the ground and start running again. Blood that hadn’t yet sunk into the road, pooling into the crevices where the pavement split. Others had already started to fade, breaking down into something less distinct. Scattered bones, patches of matted fur, the slow, inevitable erasure of what they had been. I didn’t stop.
I could have. I could have pulled over, stepped out, walked back to kneel beside them. I could have reached out, pressed a hand against their little bodies, checked for the impossible warmth of something still alive. But I didn’t. Because I knew the truth before I even passed them.
They were gone, and it would hurt too much to hold that knowledge in my hands. So I drove on. As if distance could put space between me and the weight of knowing. As if sadness and remorse were enough of a payment. They’re not. They never are.
I have been both the driver and body left behind.
I have been the corpse on the asphalt, waiting for someone to notice. Waiting for someone to stop.
I was eleven when my father got sick. I watched the slow unraveling of a body that had once carried me, lifted me onto shoulders to see fireworks, held my hand in parking lots so I wouldn’t suddenly drift away. The hospital had smelled sterile and cold, a place where time stretched and folded, where minutes felt like hours and entire nights vanished into the air like smoke.
People would move swiftly past us in the hallway, eyes flicking away. It wasn’t their grief to hold. They had their own heaviness waiting for them somewhere else.
“Death reaches his cold, spindly hands into my chest and says, I’m going to rip this away from you.”
When it finally ended, I did what I had always done. I drove past it. I packed my days full of movement, filled the empty spaces with work, with school, with anything but the knowing. I convinced myself that forward was the only direction. That if I kept going fast enough, I could outrun the thing pressing against my chest, the monster curling around my ribs like vines in the dark.
But the thing about loss is that it waits. It lingers in the rearview mirror, growing smaller but never truly disappearing. I think about those raccoons sometimes, the way I think about all the things I’ve let slip by, the moments I let dissolve into distance because facing them felt impossible. The words left unsaid, the hands I never reached for, the faces I let blur into memory before I had the courage to really see them.
I have been the one who kept moving when I should have stopped.
There’s something about roadkill that guts me every time, more than that of merely seeing the corpse. The way a body lays broken on the asphalt, fur split like fabric, blood pooling in delicate shadows beneath. The way eyes, glazed and empty, stare at nothing. They don’t close. No one closes them. The world keeps moving, cars rushing past in a blur, indifferent to the ruin beneath their wheels. And that’s what makes it worse. Not just the death itself, but the way it goes unnoticed. The way something can exist one moment, whole and alive, and be discarded the next, flattened into the pavement like it was never there at all.
It isn’t just animals. It’s everything. The way people move past wrecks on the road, their eyes skimming over the twisted metal, the shattered glass, the dark stains spreading across concrete. The way we glance away from the man huddled on the street corner, the woman with the card-
board sign at the stoplight. We don’t want to look too long. We don’t want to carry that knowing, because knowing comes with burden, and burden is a leaden weight.
Still, I see my own reflection in every broken thing. That’s why it lingers for me. Why the image of each body stays burned into my memory long after I’ve left them behind. They are proof of something I don’t want to name. They remind me that everything I love is fragile, that it only takes one mistake — one misstep, one wrong moment — for it all to be gone.
When I drive, my eyes instinctively scan every trash bag and shredded tire along the highway, searching for their small, broken bodies — desperate to make myself bear witness.
A deer, crumpled on the shoulder of the road, its legs twisted at impossible angles, ribs caved in like something hollowed it out. A fox, fur still bright and red, but insides spilled across the road like an opened fruit. A bird, wings outstretched as if caught mid-flight. A cat, curled as if it had only meant to sleep. A dog, its collar still on, its owner waiting somewhere, wondering why it never came home.
I imagine being that animal on the road, having that one awful second of realization before impact. In that final, swift moment, knowing that there was no escape.
But even when death is quick, its weight is slow. It presses into the places we don’t expect, filling the quiet moments between heartbeats, lurking in the spaces where something should be but isn’t. I feel it in the silence of an empty house, in the hush before sleep, in the memory of laughter that doesn’t belong to this moment. Loss is never just a singular event — it is a tide, dragging and relentless, breaking us down grain by grain in an unending war.
“Nothing but bones and asphalt. Nothing but an emptiness. Nothing at all.”
Desperate, I tell myself that grief is a form of currency. That my sadness, my guilt, my inability to let go, somehow balances the scale. That if I feel the weight of it enough, it counts for something. But it doesn’t. The road doesn’t remember. The cars don’t slow. The highway swallows everything, blood and fur and bones, until there is no evidence left. Until the world goes on exactly as it did before.
But, regardless, I carry it with me. The sight. The grief. I dream about it sometimes. Not about death itself, but the aftermath. The stillness. The feeling of being unrecognizable. In the dream, I’m standing in the middle of the highway. There is no sound except for the wind, and the low, faroff hum of something coming. I look down, and there I am. Not standing, not whole, just pieces. I try to move, to speak, but I am merely what that once was. And the cars don’t stop
I recall those raccoons. Those other little bodies I’ve seen on the road. The deer. The fox. The bird. The cat. The dog. I tell myself I must remember, because memory is the only monument for the forgotten. Or else they’re just gone. Nothing but bones and asphalt. Nothing but emptiness. Nothing at all.
But absence is never truly empty. The weight of what is gone still presses into the world, shaping it, haunting it, making it heavier in ways we don’t always see. Maybe someone else, driving down some stretch of highway, will see what I saw. They’ll count too. They’ll feel the same ache, the same knowing that some things are too fragile for the speed at which we move.
This is the deal we make every time humanity moves through the world. We will take, and we will lose. We will keep driving, because we have to. Because stopping won’t change anything. Because grief is a weight that never settles, only shifts.
But the things we’ve lost remain. Flattened into the road, waiting for someone to notice. Waiting for someone to remember.
And I will. I always will. ■
by VICTORIA KAYODE
layout ADRIANA RAMIREZ photographer WILLIAM WHITWORTH stylist PAISLEY BALES & JUAN GUTIERREZ VEGA hmua GRACE JOH & FLORIANA HOOL nail artist GRACE JOH models KAIMANA CARLSWARD & VICTORIA HALES
-ray images are taken of the inside of my mouth. Each black-and-white capture reveals the depth of the cavern forming between two teeth too far back for me to know them well.
“Let’s schedule your appointment for a filling,” says the dental hygienist.
Nodding, I glide the tip of my curious tongue toward the site of decay. It reaches between grooves in the dark recesses of my mouth and touches bone and memory. A brief investigation reveals the cause: neglect and sugary sweet words uttered to placate those around me. Sparing them the bitter truths led to overindulgence. Knocking on my incisors, chipping them away, my words’ acidity rises like bile from my belly. Lockjaw dams their flow, so they swish, swish around. Each word against my sentiments on my gums. Their syllables erode my enamel when I don’t speak.
Speaking was never my preferred method of communication. I tended to hold my most intimate thoughts in diaries. Their lines of link cradled my words and restrained my inner voice to blank space.
When summer’s cotton-candied sunsets replaced the fluorescent lights of my sixth-grade halls, I met a rowdy group of middle schoolers at a forensic science camp. I admired them all for how they confidently projected halfformed thoughts and jokes. Because I never spoke first, they prompted my speech with questions.
My voice croaked out of me. Wielding this instrument was uncomfortable. It was as though I’d abandoned it to rust in a dark corner of my room and lost my ability to perform. I was worried I’d play off-key. However, I soon would realize
I had a gracious audience waiting to give their applause when I tested it out.
As a natural introvert, summer camp was a fearful leap into the deep end. Maintaining my silence was a practice I enjoyed, but my friends made speaking feel good. But, the warm summer air that charged my transformation eventually became a shock of cold to my skin.
One day in high school gym class, someone disturbed the rhythm of my walk by flinging the n-word against my ear. This word penetrated the race-neutral atmosphere around me; I became hyper-aware of the singularity of my Black body amidst the plurality of White bodies.
The friend of the White guy who casually let this fourth person intrude into our three-person conversation gave him a look that said, She’s right there!
“She knows I say it,” the offender hissed with his forked tongue.
Confused by why he believed I came to ‘know’ he said ‘it’, I kept my mouth shut and tasted the bitter reality that rested on my palette. My mind stayed fixed on that moment as my feet carried me forward.
Through some insidious process that started long before this chilling realization, I’d become more than a girl; I became a Black girl. It’s not that I’d never stood before a mirror or noticed my darkness, but I’d never been confronted with such unapologetic ignorance. I’d expertly played the role of an easygoing friend. But what did my lack of verbal response say to them? What did it mean for me?
Caries develop as acids form from accumulated bacteria. The vicious attack on the tooth’s surface creates a small hole — a cavity. There are five main stages of tooth decay. Each marks greater damage to the tooth: demineralization, enamel decay, dentin decay, pulp damage, and abscessed tooth decay.
The white spot from the stage-one mineral breakdown of my enamel at stage one deepened to a light brown by the time I saw the hygienist. Living out of state, I hadn’t made it a priority to find a dentist in Austin. This winter break marked almost two years since my last check-up. The two cavities told me I’d been naive to think I was fine. In truth, all my brushing and flossing had been insufficient.
Forever molded by that experience, my mind, body, and tongue hoped to spare my ears, heart, and soul from vulnerability and pain. However, my conscience demanded liberation. An opportunity for this came in the summer, when my theatre teacher approached me and two of my Black peers with a proposal.
“I think you guys should create something. I’d love to help, if you want,” she said.
We accepted her offer. Over the following weeks, we met with other BIPOC artists that would say, ‘My school is mostly white,’ ‘I’m one of the only POC students,’ or ‘I don’t feel like I belong.’ We were struggling with the tension between our identities and a racist environment. In response, we created pieces that reflected our experiences as artists of color in a world offended by our pigment. My spoken word piece expressed the richness and diversity of the Black community as I saw it.
Eventually, my teacher asked, “What do you want to do with these pieces?”
Someone suggested we should create a website.
After brainstorming the who, what, and why of the website, fear strangled my excitement. I took pride
in my piece and what we hoped to do, but was afraid of speaking out. In my head, the slur that once hit me like a dodgeball was whipping through the air again. When I confided in a loved one, I was warned not to publicly speak on what was happening.
Our output never made it online. I felt both disappointment and relief — I wasn’t ready to be heard. Some applauded our effort; others sighed at its breakdown. I chewed on both sentiments, feeling pricks of self-doubt on the cushion of my tongue.
There are five methods used to treat cavities caused by tooth decay: fluoride treatments, fillings, crowns, root canals, and tooth removal.
The appropriate treatment depends on the severity of the decay, with root canals and removal being the most invasive. If caught early enough, tooth decay can be reversed.
Without treatment, infection can occur. This results in a pocket of puss forming at the tip of your tooth’s root. The pain from this abscess plagues your jaw and induces swelling of your lymph nodes and face. The abscess can go so far as to spread to surrounding parts of your body.
At its worst, the infection can infiltrate your brain and bloodstream, causing sepsis.
Last spring, I attended my first of many protests. They’ve muddled into one. The heavy clunk of hooves and the trail of dung led directly to a literal and metaphorical shit show. The choir of outraged voices shouting, “OFF OUR CAMPUS!” rings incessantly. Even now, my lips parse — they are puppeteered to remember.
My anger exploded. My voice sounded like an alarm.
BANG! The sound of a gun? Screams. Crying. It was tear gas. I grabbed my friend’s hand and ran. Overgrown hedges were underfoot. Pepper spray forced fellow soldiers, peers, children to their knees. My campus was a war zone. I smelled the heat rising from the sidewalk. We all reached for the sky alongside it.
My anger was fueled by compassion, and my voice was an extended hand, “Do you need help?! Water?”
Unlike before, I let every shade of my frustration, every lash of my tongue, every vocal projection expose my feelings. The stakes had always been high, but I’d finally realized I needed to pull myself higher. I’d learned to bark and bite.
For a direct filling, the dentist numbs the area with local anesthesia before drilling out the decay. The high-speed friction of metal on bone wears away all evidence of the breakdown that occurred. With the hole widened, the dentist fills the cavern. Then, the dentist polishes the area and smooths out any roughness. This is followed by a quick bite check to ensure a proper fit.
Sensitivity and soreness are expected, but it’s temporary. It goes away.
For so long, I thought closing my mouth would keep me safe. But letting words lie between my lips was damaging. The only way to expel this narrative was to pry my teeth apart. It was uncomfortable, but the sensation was temporary. It went away.
Now, I open my mouth to show the world what I’ve been chewing on. It seems the quiet girl I knew is gone — this is how I brush my teeth. ■
layout YVETTE GARCIA photographer JENCY MATTOX stylist NAME HERE hmua NAME HERE models NAME HERE & NAME HERE
CLOTHING DESCRIPTION | Boutique Name
CLOTHING DESCRIPTION | Boutique Name
When I leave the house for good, I will take this small, persisting thing with me.
layout GRAY SUH photographer JONATHAN XU stylists ANNA KING & REYANA TRAN
hmua RIVER PERILL & RACHEL ZHOU nail artist ANOUSHKA SHARMA models AMYAN TRAN & ELAINE GONG
videographer LUCY PHENIX
by PAIGE HOFFER
“In the absence of people, sound, and smell, my senses stretch, unfamiliar and raw.”
The recording studio is dark, except for the ember of a cigarette which flares red under winding tendrils of smoke. There are no clocks, no windows, no light — only the measured hum of amplifiers, the rolling of tape, and the hollow resonance of instruments and musicians sitting still on metal folding chairs, waiting.
When Mark Hollis walks in, his boots indent the green carpet. He sits at a Wurlitzer piano, his hands hovering over the keys. His left pinky twitches. Then, he plays the first chord. A muted trumpet exhales tentatively from the farthest corner of the room, a sonar ping searching an unfamiliar sea for an echo. The sound is not answered— it sinks, swallowed by the smoke. Hollis presses another chord, soft and hesitant. The note expands into silence. Paul Webb’s bass hums in his hands. Lee Harris grips his sticks loosely, tapping the snare in a steady pulse. The instruments drift past one another, their outlines forming in the fog, moving in bursts, then receding. When the music dissolves into near-nothingness, the hiss of an amp, the creak of a chair, and the weight of waiting sticked to the wall like the smell of the smoke. No one moves too suddenly. A last organ note sustains, and the band listens with pleasure until it fades. Hollis exhales. A nod. Smiles across the room. The Spirit of Eden was released in 1988 to no commercial success.
Immediately after hearing it, I send a text.
3:42 PM: You should listen to this album. They do the long continuous song thing you like, so I feel like you’d appreciate it. And they recorded it entirely in the dark
At a Party City closing sale, I pick up a bag of small, adhesive rose decals while absently scrolling through podcasts. It will be good to learn something, I think. It would be right to learn something, I know. I push the cart past loose rubber balloons and children’s Halloween costumes in plastic bags. I have to learn something. I select an episode on the deep sea, letting it play as background noise — until the right words hit. The SO-Far channel is like a sound highway — a hidden layer of ocean where sound waves bend back inward, never dissipating, traveling for thousands of
miles. I scan my items at a self-checkout kiosk, carrying the bag of rose appliques under my arm, while the sun sets on the parking lot.
At 1:15 AM there is no response to my text. I plug the phone in and lay down.
When I wake up sweating at 3:17 AM, there is still no response.
I’ve never come to the track at this hour before, and the night alters something essential about it. I pictured it last week when friends had played frisbee on the nowempty turf where the direction of the track curves into a loop. The usual scent of laundry detergent spilling from the dorm is gone. The dorm itself looks grayer. In one window, sticky notes form a smiley face left behind by students who had long moved home for the summer — something sad, small, and persisting.
3:42 AM. In the absence of people, sound, and smell, my senses stretch, unfamiliar and raw.
I straighten my spine, touch my toes, and tug the tongues of my shoes. I walk off the soggy turf to the track, play a song, and start jogging. The ground repeats under my feet — blackness, red synthetic rubber, and harsh flood light.
Another loop. And the song loops. Another loop. Red track, green turf, sharp light. Another loop. Right, left, right, inhale. Another loop. Green turf. Is it getting sharper? Red track. I — Exhale. Tape rolling. Red turf. Green track. The sleeping dorm stares. Inhale. Someone is watching. I breathe in, coughing. I have to stop. I take out my headphones and find — no sound, no smell. I feel alone, really frighteningly alone. When I leave the track, the sky remains just as dark as when I arrived.
The next evening, at a Joanne’s Fabrics closing sale, I sit on a metal aisle divider half-filled with office supplies and play another podcast. It drones on and on until a sentence catches me. A sound released into the deep can outlast its source, arriving late, out of sequence.
LONG SLEEVE TOP | Austin Pets Alive! HEELS | Austin Pets Alive!
SHELL NECKLACE | Austin Pets Alive!
SHORT PEARLS | Austin Pets Alive!
“ When I leave the track, the sky remains just dark as when I arrived.”
This phrase strikes me — a sexy little sentence hiding truth in its aesthetic vagueness. I pick up a pen, write it on a sticky note, and smooth it to the linoleum tile with my thumb. I walk out of the store with a bag of expired Big League Chew and forest-green friendship bracelet string.
When I wake up at 3:17 AM again, and there’s still no response to my text.
The same feeling, which should not sting as it does. I avoid the track. On the lake trail, I use my music to force my surroundings into shape until the crunching gravel and moonlit water seem to echo back the electric bass of Spirit of Eden
Talk Talk drifted apart with no blowout fight, no implosion — just a slow unraveling, of a conversation stretching into silence until no one remembered the last thing said. By 1991, after releasing Laughing Stock, they were more idea than band. Paul Webb had left before they started recording. By the time the album was finished, their sound engineer Phil Brown described the sessions as monastic — Hollis working in near darkness, enforcing abstract pauses while the session musicians followed his pretensions in the same painstaking, drawn-out improvisations that initially made them a band. Hollis, eventually exhausted, walked away completely. He released a solo album in 1998, then disappeared entirely, rejecting interviews, refusing nostalgia, choosing silence over dilution. He raised a family while Laughing Stock sold, and sold, and sold.
A flash of light on the trail, then muffled voices beyond my music. I take out an earbud as a running group approaches. One man slows beside me.
Hey, it really isn’t safe to be running this early with music in. I nod, swallowing. My breath isn’t even. Yeah, um, sorry.
Still catching his breath, he looks back at the group, then at me. Why don’t you join us?
I had gone on this run to be moved. Rejecting him doesn’t feel like a real option.
When I join them, I do not listen to music. Is it intentional that they sync their breath? Just by listening, my own breath falls in line with theirs. After a few minutes, something shifts in my body. Every muscle calms. A steadiness takes hold. I get teary but do not wipe my eyes. The only source of light is the stars — just bright enough to remind me that they exist. It’s a surprise how good this run feels. Not a punishment or salve, and I inhale the simple feeling of goodness at the same pace as everyone else.
At the closing sale of a Hobby Lobby, I select gold jewelry wire from a shelf. The SO-Far channel traces my path through aisles of plastic play food, brightly dyed cotton t-shirts, and LED lights. The podcast comes alive: What remains isn’t total absence, but this kind of phantom frequency more felt than heard, moving outward into tributary channels after its source has disappeared.
Tonight, it rains heavily. I take out the materials I had bought aimlessly, and turn on the warm lamplight while water fills the storm drains outside. I pull out animal bones bought from a vintage store, enjoying the way they look like a frame when arranged inversely. I surround the bones with the gold jewelry wire, weaving green string into stems and leaves, pressing the rose decals where buds might bloom. When I leave the house for good, I will take this small, persisting thing with me.
I leave the frame to dry and go to bed early, an alarm set to meet the running group in the morning. ■
“The only source of light is the stars — just bright enough to remind me that they exist.”
But I’m a cheerleader!
L
by LORENA TÉLLEZ
layout JAZMIN HERNANDEZ ARCEO photographer TAI CERULLI stylists MADISON MORANTE & ASHLEE RICHARDS-ROOD
hmua CYNTHIA LIRA nail artist SHEREE LOH models MIMO GORMAN & ANYA GOKUL
STEP ONE: Admitting You’re a Homosexual
IAs my eyes locked onto the determined gaze of the flag bearer, a surge of emotions slammed into
used to be a cheerleader — red-lipped, pom-pommed, school-spirited. My team and I dominated sun-drenched sports fields, our voices rising above the crowd in a chorus of manly, mean growls. On one blister ing Texas afternoon, we escaped the relentless heat to cheer for our most talented sports team: girls’ volleyball. The gymnasium was packed to the rafters, the air thick with anticipation. In the brief intermission between sets, we executed graceful flips across the polished linoleum floor, our hands and feet thumping in rhythmic syn chrony. I felt the energy of each set radiating in my bones.
Amidst the controlled chaos, a flash of curly hair and wispy limbs caught my eye. A figure sprinted across the court, waving a massive flag adorned with the fierce scowl of our school’s mascot. The flag billowed in the air, its colors vibrant against the harsh gymnasium lights.
“She was a girl.”
At cheer practice, my teammates scrunched their noses and muttered with asco when gossiping about lesbians. At school, that’s so gay was the universal response to anything disgusting. Lesbian was a slur; a curse. It’s a shameful condem- nation shoved into dark corners where it can gather dust, where it belongs. It’s a deplorable evil I guiltily locked in the privacy of my room with tingling in between my legs and a burning feeling in my chest.
When I first realized I was gay, I didn’t realize I was gay. Instead, I felt something I had no name for. It was something I had never seen reflected to me in books, movies, or whispered confessions between friends. When I caught myself staring at a girl, I convinced myself it was jealousy. When I longed for a woman’s presence, I imagined I wanted to be her friend. When my heart fluttered with prolonged physical contact, I deluded myself into believing it was nothing.
STEP RediscoveringTWO: Your Gender Identity
But, at my core, I knew what I felt wasn’t a friend- crush, idolization, or even deep, crushing envy. So I pushed the feeling far, far down. When it in- evitably resurfaced, I shoved it deeper. I buried it beneath layers of denial until it clawed its way back up one lonely, dark night—and then another, and another. Each time, the realization left me gutted, sleepless, unraveling.
I hated my tainted mind. I fought against the world’s voice echoing inside me. I mourned the white-picket-fence future I had always envisioned.
Until, one day, I just started saying it. I like girls.
STEP THREE: Family Therapy
I told my mom on the drive home from a cheer competition.
“Mijita, are you sure you’re not just doing this for the trend?” She asked me this gently, like she wanted to believe me but didn’t know how.
I swallowed the lump and stared out the window, counting road signs to keep from crying. That triggered the nights of denial once again.
In the following year, every quiet moment with my mom made my mouth ached to let my secret slip. I could feel the weight of the world on my tongue and deep in my chest. After long practices, I would lay in her bed while she gave me cosquillas, her fingers tracing gentle patterns on my back. I always wondered if she felt the weight between us — how our rift was burdened by my facade.
The thing about first coming out is that you start the process all over again at the smallest hint of rejection. One member of the pyramid falters, leaving the team to build it over and over again.
My dad cried when I told him, but not the way I had feared. He held me, tears of joy in his eyes, and said he was proud.
It felt like undoing an impossibly tight, hairsprayed ponytail after a four-hour football game. I felt like peeling off the stiff, sweat-drenched shell of my uniform.
STEP FOUR: Demystifying the
Opposite Sex
Associating with the word ‘lesbian’ was scary. I felt that, with one fell swoop, the entire image I’d built for myself would shatter. No one would see me the same. Instead, I said that I was bisexual, unlabeled, queer, gay. I did anything to avoid that horrible word and to avoid the way boys’ onceadmiring eyes flickered with something sharper.
It’s easy to understand. ‘Lesbian’ is dirty, sexual, provocative. It’s the most searched word on Pornhub in most states. They’re bra-burning, manhating, hairy rioters. It’s an insult hurled at any young girl who fails to conform to the hairless, skinny, and submissive rigid female stereotype. The word itself feels foreign in your mouth — the way it snakes from the tongue to your throat, all slime and bile.
So I kissed a couple of guys. Maybe it was more than a kiss; maybe there were more than a couple. Despite this, when I was in my room alone (or lucky enough to be in the arms of a woman), I knew. It only felt right here.
After I slept with my girlfriend, I thought I’d feel more like a lesbian. Lying in her arms, I was over- whelmed with love for her. Tangled in her sheets, I wondered if that was what made me lesbian.
No — I wasn’t a lesbian until I said it for the first time with conviction. But I’ve also been a lesbian my entire life. The truth was a scar I didn’t notice until I traced it backward, a pattern only visible once I’d already been shaped by it.
STEP SimulatingFIVE:Sexual Intercourse
It’s hard to come out almost every day, restarting my journey with every nice to meet you. But when I compare my life now versus how I was living before — in deep, dark, murky denial — I know it’s worth it. I walk through life making a term stained with history my own. I speak it without flinching: I say it proudly and watch the world flinch instead. ■
by ARIEL BARLEY
On Flour
layout NICK REYNA photographer MANOO SIRIVELU stylist MAYA GAYTAN & MIMO GORMAN
hmua ANDROMEDA ROVILLAIN & SRIKHA CHAGANTI nail artist JANE HAO models AMANI AHMAD, VIKRAM BANGA, & ISABELLA LEUNG
Awoman is pregnant, and she is hungry.
She drags herself out of bed, unhooking her CPAP machine and breathing in cool air. Her husband is dead asleep, so as she slips into her stylish cardigan, she is careful not to wake him. The cardigan cinches in the front with a wide gold buckle, and it droops low enough to cover her baby bump. She looks like a rose, upsidedown and grunting with the force of walking. It hurts now, at seven months.
She does walk, though. She walks all three blocks to El Rincon, just as she has every Sunday since she moved to Texas.
(Before she was pregnant, it would take her five minutes. Now, it takes her eleven — and she stops midway through to pet the Whitworths’ big grey dog who seems to want her baby for breakfast. He licks and licks at her stomach, leaving behind a wet patch on her cardigan.)
El Rincon greets her at the end of her walk, as old and charming as it was last week. She dings the door open.
A painting of a shut-eyed lady in a white tutu hangs in the entryway; she poises delicate hands out, welcoming customers to a tiled bowl of melted peppermints. The woman grabs two, crunching them between her teeth.
Her waitress greets her in Spanish with a hug.
“The usual?”
“No,” the pregnant woman says, tottering to her usual table. “This baby wants a taco.”
At the end of her three tacos on flour tortillas, the pregnant woman rubs her stomach. She draws little swirls and hearts with her swollen fingertips.
This is just what she needed: a table for two.
I am a fetus receiving these swirls and hearts (and these tacos) with my curled-up body, but I am not hungry — not yet.
My dad teaches me how to scramble an egg when I am ten.
He sprays the pan and cracks the egg as he listens to some Bible study, holding the spatula in his other hand. He lets the eggs burn in places, and sometimes, he throws spinach and broccoli onto them, letting everything fuse together into one big ‘frankenegg’. He tells me about protein, which ten-year-old me does not really care about. He talks about nutritional value — about vitamins, and minerals — and how five eggs are the way to start a morning. I let him, because even then, I know that my dad likes to feel like he’s teaching me something.
We gather at our tiny table with paper plates and lukewarm bottles of water. My dad throws the eggs onto those HEB tortillas that we never seem to run out of. He prays (‘bless this food and also my daughter’) and chews with his mouth open. Crumbs fall into his beard. I wonder if I could pull a meal out of it — or a hamster, or a conversation.
The meal is okay, and — like usual — we don’t talk much. I miss sugary cereal, but my dad made this meal, and he smiles at me — or maybe at my nutritional value, which goes up with each quiet bite.
Cecily presses dough on our counter. Her fingers are powdery and long and manicured (“roseprick” — my mom’s old nail polish that’s a pretty mauve.) She kneads and kneads until there is a tall stack of tortillas on the kitchen island. I have never made tortillas before, so I watch.
“Take one,” she begs me. “Please, take one. I can’t eat these all alone.”
At dinnertime, after my third tortilla, she tells me that my day’s fortune costs an egg; she heard this from a friend, or maybe one of her cousins.
She mimes cracking an egg on her knee. “You crack an egg before bed. Like, right before bed. If the yolk is damaged, then your fortune is bad.”
“That’s stupid,” I tell her, flour on my lips.
But later, I take an egg just to see. Cecily laughs loudly at something in the living room. She sounds like a baby seal. My other roommates, Behr and Garrett, have started clanking about in the kitchen.
(On our living room table, along with the tortillas: six peanut butter cup wrappers, edible cookie dough, a homemade game of Guess Who, batteries, a scrapbook, a drawing of the woman who terrorized me at work last week, two hot cocoa mugs, two tea mugs.)
My yolk comes out perfect; I feel stupid for needing its validation.
Garrett buys me something small for Christmas: a silver bottle of wine shaped like a cat. He uncorks it for me, we drink it in an hour, and the cat becomes another trinket-pet on our trinketshelf. It’s around then that Garrett starts making me dinner.
He likes salmon and chicken and edamame and making everything a little bit spicy. He learns somewhere along the line how much I love breakfast. He’ll make eggs and douse them in cholula — and then set some aside for me to pick at. He buys me my favorite chips when he runs to the store. He tells me that providing makes him happy. I try to imagine this: giving so easily, so thoughtlessly.
“It’s your love language!” I decide, because I like to label. “And you make the best eggs.”
“Well, there’s a trick.”
When I am twenty, Garrett teaches me how to scramble an egg (whisked in a mug, with water poured in.) Right before, he asks: “Can I make you dinner?”
“He smiles at me — or maybe at my nutritional value, which goes up with each quiet bite.”
“My yolk comes out perfect; I feel stupid for needing its validation.”
I drive home because it’s a really bad week, and my mom wordlessly takes me to El Rincon.
I sob about friends or my no-longer-relationship, or maybe that I think my hair is dumb. Everyone is looking at me; I can tell. The bartender, the waitress, the obnoxious family that brought their seven kids — everyone. My mom is looking at me the hardest, as if she wants to wrap me snug in a blanket or her chiffon blouse. She listens, waving her fork as I lament my woes.
“What do I do?” I warble, feeling so, so sorry for myself. “How do I fix things?”
“You need to eat,” my mom says, scooping scrambled eggs from her plate to mine. They fall so easy onto my tortilla. “You need to eat well.” ■
by YOOBIN TARA PARK
creative director YOOBIN TARA PARK layout ANDY KANG
photographer REYNA DEWS stylist AIDAN VU & EMILY MARTINEZ
hmua ISHA MANJUNATH models VANI SHAH & ROMAN GARZA
72 beats per minute: my heart is pulsing from the center of my chest.
98.6 degrees Fahrenheit: my blood still circulates without hesitation, coursing to the ends of my fingertips.
Dear Roxy,
I opened my eyes again this morning. I really didn’t want to.
The solid bones of my shins still bear my weight. The muscles along my thighs tense, ready to move. My lungs eXpand again, indifferent to whether I am willing to breathe.
Each function continues with chilling precision.
This body persists; I am alive.
my stomach heaves, rising and falling like the tides, while yours lay still on the deathbed. I hate how my lips shimmer and reflect my youth while yours are pale and dry from the mortician’s lipstick. The creases on my double eyelids deepen with each passing day, etching your absence into my skin. I once envied yours. Now, I see too much of you in my face.
I want my heartbeat to stop — just like yours did.
Just like that summer night when you fell asleep on the couch waiting for me. Now, I wait to see you.
You had made it through the silence, yet I am still drowning in the noise.
My mind longs to follow you while it is trapped by this body’s stubborn instinct to survive.
In a few hours, hunger will return.
Motilin,
secreted from the mucosal lining of my duodenum, will trigger contractions. I will feel a hollow gnawing: the sound of my gut twisting itself into motion.
My stomach might growl.
The thought of needing anything at all might fill me with resentment.
Roxy, Why does the body beg for survival when the will to live is gone?
Like a dog on a leash, my mind is on a tight grip. It drags my mind to my knees, making it surrender every single second.
Roxy,
I loathe the songs we listened to together in your car. I will never be able to sing them out loud again. They played them at your funeral.
I hate when my phone shows me pictures of you. I will never be able to scroll through them. I still remember the moment we saw blue hydrangeas together. We promised to get matching piercings and tattoos, but I never went through with it. Some things are meant to be memories only when shared. Roxy, I want to stop. But this body keeps moving forward. It’s like a machine in a factory, still running after silently crushing a worker beneath its gears.
If no one says a word, maybe no one will notice. Maybe everything would be easier if I didn’t
SHOES | Leopard Lounge
think at all.
When I questioned if I was even sane anymore, my body answered me. It told me to eat.
It told me to sleep. It told me to listen when cars honk.
Not to catch a cold. Not to touch something too hot. Not to get hurt. Yourvoiceechoedasmypulsepumped.Youwouldn’twantme likethis.
Roxy, Now, I let go of the bitterness of betrayal.
I decided not to blame this gentle motherhood — just as I did not blame your body as it burned. ■
by ANDREANA JOI FAUCETTE
layout EMMY CHEN photographer SHARANYA GUPTA stylist MADISON MORANTE & ZOE COSTANZA hmua JAISHRI RAMESH & RACHEL ZHOU nail artist ANOUSHKA
SHARMA model GENESIS PIERI videographer RYLIE SHIEH
I begin to feel unwell.
FFor brief moments in the past, I thought I could move my body with my mind.
In childhood, I could never figure out where my body would go when I died. I tried conducting field research — the daydreams — but was always too frightened by the other side to confront it.
At age 12, I found myself plagued by immersive daydreams. I’d close my eyes and open them to find my body had been transplanted with surgical precision out of reality and into fatality. My home became a beast awakened — with tectonic-plateteeth made of fiberglass foundations shifting to squish my windpipe, hungry for a meal of one.
I could never scream in the daydreams — only stand and stare at my fate. The arrhythmic beating in my chest would crescendo until I could perfectly time shutting my eyes against death with a painless passing.
At the funeral of my estranged grandmother, I find myself unable to parse out the features on her face which might have resembled mine.
The mortician has buried her in her Sunday best — a matching skirt and jacket set in springtime colors, even though it’s February. Both are ill-fitting, the colors awkward and linens rigormortic. Neither distract from the morbidity of the affair. In my daydreams, death was swift and avoidable, compounding in fatalistic moments and cataclysmic blasts. Here, it is unceremonious and awkward, hidden under mortuary makeup.
When it is my chance to mourn the deceased, I stall in front of her casket. Despite holding back the procession of weepy relatives, I’m tempted to whisper her name — to test if this body, all gray and severe — is the same one I knew. I bow my head in pretend prayer instead, shutting my eyes tightly enough to shield me from the knowledge that my body will also expire some day.
Later, my father calls and reminds me to tell the eye doctor to check for glaucoma; it’s in your family history.
I concede to my dad’s wishes, remembering how he’d procrastinate his doctor’s appointments. He’s just visited the eye doctor for the first time in years, but he’s getting old now. I wonder if he feels it, too — time catching up to him, the desire to shut your eyes against fatality.
I don’t tell my father that my time is already monopolized by therapists and specialists; professors and nutritionists. I don’t mention my prescribed cocktail of psychotropic medications given to return me to a physical and emotional baseline that I’m unsure I’ve ever experienced.
I only nod politely at him, and stand, staring at my fate
In my therapist’s virtual waiting room, I await an email containing her latest list of insurance-approved nutritionists. I know I’m too afraid to open it — to confront the dirty work of self-improvement.The list will sit, unopened, in my inbox for weeks, before going stale like the bread I never bothered to turn into sandwiches.
Like a metastasizing illness, fear goes for my vital organs first.
It starts in my mouth. I barely eat, wasting money on coffees and club covers while I avoid the stagnation of sitting with myself. I chase my meds with gulps of water as religiously as I can. Since I’m an atheist, I forget some mornings and double-dose myself at night. I fortify my body’s crumbling cell walls with multivitamins and hope they do not crumble.
I lose myself in novels of waifish women who forget to eat breakfast, convinced I’ll become more like them. At midnight, I sit awake and shove caloriedense, pre-packaged brownies between my teeth.
I can barely feel my fingertips, so I close my eyes and imagine strolling down grocery aisles for meals to fill this home with.
In my notes app, I begin a running tally of what I’d like to prepare. They’re great feasts: chickpeas, feta, sun-dried tomatoes, Hot Cheetos with cream cheese. Sometimes, I cave — drive the ten minutes to go to the grocery store and fill my cart with a hundred dollars of foodstuffs. I eat half in one sitting and swear myself to abstinence the next day.
Luckily, I have been taught how to take care of myself.
When I feel this way, I know to drive 15 minutes to the nail salon in the strip mall behind my primary school. There, I can forget that self-care is little more than skin deep.
Suzanne — the manicurist I’ve been loyal to since my high school prom — holds a novelty timer shaped like an egg. She hums gleefully and winds its little red dial up.
“The basic pedicure comes with a 10-minute massage,” she tells me, then cranks the dial five notches further, “But for you — 15.”
She winks.
I close my eyes and press my shoulder blades into the leather-lined massage chair. As Suzanne layers hot stones on my unshaven calves, the massage chair assumes its role as her dutiful assistant. Humming along with little more than a mechanical whirring, its metallic fists dig into the knots along my spine.
Her hands move to scrape the soles of my feet with a pumice stone.
I wince, and she laughs, knowing that I’m ticklish there. She moves to each toe knuckle, popping the little air pockets trapped in between my joints. I feel myself melting into the artificial heat of my leather massage chair. With hands of flesh and blood digging into my budding bunions and mechanical ones rubbing at the muscles in my back, I forget that self-care is little more than skin deep.
Sometimes, pretending works well enough. I can’t meditate death away, but I can outsource it — pay to have it massaged right out of my fascia. My body appreciates the bribery.
There’s a sound somewhere far away — an incessant ringing.
My time is up.
I’m alive. ■
“Like a metastasizing illness
fear goes for my vital organs first.”
Embrace the fluidity, the selflessness, the ever-shifting nature of your being.
hmua REYANA TRAN & SRIKHA CHAGANTI models SARA HERBOWY & ISABELLA LEUNG videographer BRANDON PORRAS & SYDNEY RANEY
At a party, beneath the hum of music and halfempty cups, an American guy asks me my name. I hesitate.
“My name is Tara. Or Yoobin.”
He frowns. I rephrase.
“My name is Yoobin, but you can call me Tara.”
He asks me what my real name is. I let out an awkward laugh.
What does he mean by realname?
Names are just words that people use to refer to me.
I tell him people call me Yoobin where I am from.
“It’s funny — I even have a Chinese name from my Chinese friends,” I say.
“You know, just so it sounds as familiar to them as their own.”
He tells me I should use Yoobin instead of having an English name.
It’s just a name — just a sound. But somehow, it feels like each one carves out a different version of me, depending on who’s listening.
I imagine living as Yoobin Park in America. I don’t talk to or smile at strangers. I don’t ask, ‘How are you? ’ I don’t text, ‘Weshouldcatchupsoon! ’ to the girl I haven’t seen since our entrance ceremony three years ago. I don’t hug people. I am glued to my phone, except when I’m with adults. I am overly polite to adults, wearing mild smiles and modest jeans — never too short, never too loose. I keep my opinions measured. I filter my humor. That’s just the way it is: tone it down, smooth the edges, don’t stand out too much. People like Yoobin better that way.
news, and scrolls through TikTok just enough to stay in the loop. She always wears her biggest smile and watches what other cool people are wearing. People like Tara better that way.
Laughter feels different when there’s no one around to hear it. Words no longer reach anyone, just the waves. I imagine myself alone, maybe on a boat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Without anyone to call my name, without a role to play, what is there to define what remains?
Is the self nothing more than a construct, stitched together by fleeting perceptions and shifting contexts? Or is
I am nervous. Who am I?
Ironically, it’s easier to look for other people’s answers about who I am than to ask
Call it cowardice.
Erving Goffman pats me on the shoulder — not with a reassuring ‘It’sokay,’ but with:
“We often find a division into the back region, where the performance of a routine is prepared,andthefront region, where the performance is presented.”
Social situations are stages. I both act in front of others and prepare backstage. I don Tara in America and Yoobin in Korea.
Which one is real: Yoobin or Tara? Was the guy at the party right? Because I was born and raised in Korea, because I am used to the culture — am I faking Tara? I feel like myself when I am Tara as much as when I am Yoobin.
Yoobin always packs Tara when she comes to Austin. Tara goes to parties, starts conversations, asks people how their day went, and makes plans with everyone. She does not get upset when her texts go unanswered, because she does not try to be too close to everyone. She compliments everything. She tries to be an expert in one or two things, maintains a healthy hobby, keeps up with celebrity spark
I believe in my passions, my hobbies — the things that feel uniquely mine. But they are all shaped by forces beyond my control — the names I’ve been given, the roles I’ve been assigned, the relationships that have defined me. Identity is fluid, constantly shifting in response to external conditions and relationships. So one version of me is not the ultimate truth.
“LAUGHTER Feels DIFFERENT when THERE’s no ONE around to hear it.”
Am I truly Yoobin? Or Tara?
Perhaps I am neither
Question marks hook onto my sleeves, tugging me off the stage and toward the shade of the Bodhi tree. The Buddha awaits there, ready to illuminate a misguided soul — namely, yours truly. His truth is clear and unwavering: Anatta
Anatta, or non-self, denies the notion that the self exists as an independent and unchanging entity. One does not exist in isolation, but rather through countless interdependent relationships with external entities. Just as a tree grows because of water, sunlight, soil, and fertilizer, I too am sustained by things that are not me
The self is a product of dependent origination, or pratītyasamutpāda. It is constantly formed and reformed through relationships.
Seemingly, social theories couldn’t tell me who I am — or whether my identity is anything definite at all. But Buddha took me a long way. I decide to look for one more source.
In a quiet lab, under flickering fluorescent lights, a rubber hand rests on a table. Its silent wave takes me back to the 1998 experiment by Matthew Botvinick and Jonathan Cohen.
They hid participants’ real hands from view and placed rubber ones in front of them. When both the hidden real hand and the visible fake hand were brushed at the same time, participants began to feel as if the rubber hand were their own.
This experiment revealed how easily the brain can be deceived — how vision alone can override other senses and create a false sense of bodily ownership. If our sense of self was absolute, the brain should have immediately recognized the deception. But it didn’t. Instead, it adapted, integrating external stimuli into a new perception of reality.
If a rubber hand can feel real simply because it is seen, why couldn’t a name? Maybe identity is also too easily embraced — convincing myself that the way I am called is more than just a name, that it is me. Just as the brain gathers sensory input to decide what belongs to the body, it also collects external cues — names, roles, expectations — to define the self.
But if that’s the case, then I was never only Yoobin, nor only Tara. I have never been just one thing. I am fluid, shifting — I mold myself to fit the moment.
When I strip away the names, the roles, the performances, what remains? Nothing.
Or, perhaps, everything.
I return to Anatta: the absence of a fixed self.
We are scattered, we are gathered, we slip in and out of identities like clothing. There is no need to cling to just one.
The world, including ourselves, is in a constant state of flux. Things change, disappear, return, and vanish forever.
We all scatter and coalesce.
We all scatter and coalesce. ■
“When I strip away the names,
THE ROLES, the PERFORMANCES, WHAT REMAINS?
Or, perhaps, everything.”
by KENNEDY COYLE
layout MANNY CHARLES & ANDY KANG photographer JOSEPH CHUNGA-PIZARRO stylist ZYLA ALANIZ & PAISLEY BALES hmua
I’ve spent hours in the crowded weight room. The smell of bodies and disinfectant bottles for the benches that no one touches is intoxicating. The protein powder I choke down is dulled only by the lukewarm water in my shaker bottle. There’s a kind of alluring promise there, across from a guy whose shoulders are bigger than my head. The whirr of the fan in the weight room seems to whisper that with enough dedication and consistency, you’ll be strong. No, not strong — hot.
I’m no athlete; I know. I’m not really training for anything.
That’s what we do it for, right? Who cares if I can’t do a push-up or touch my toes. Once I hit 30 pounds on the bicep curl, all my problems will disappear like dust in the wind. My knees ache for days after three sets of squats, but pain is just weakness leaving the body. I once saw that on some guy’s Gymshark shirt.
My body should act as proof of my dedication. Toned thighs and bulging muscle, washboard abs — your own body proves that you’re hard-working, respectable, fit, sexy. Beauty takes strength’s hand and proclaims to the world that this person is someone to look up to. They can do the things you can’t. They could eat you for lunch. If you don’t want The Look, what are you doing it for?
God, doesn’t it just make you miserable? Three years of dedication — you’d think I’d see some progress by now.
The girl doing farmer’s carries up and down the weight room has definition in her forearms I can only dream of.
I should up my macros. Maybe two scoops of protein powder this time, if I can
“I start to get to know my body. She’s not half bad.”
stomach it.
I choke it down and gag.
Two days a week turn into four, then five. Soon enough, the gym is my second home. It’s my own personal panopticon. When you first start going to the gym, your trainer insists that no one’s watching you — they’re all focused on themselves!
But I open my Instagram feed to girls in pink Lululemon sets laughing about the view from their Stairmaster watchtowers and want to curl into myself all over again. Anyone could be watching. Sure, bad form may injure me. Even worse, it might embarrass me.
Eventually, I start to forget. Sometimes, I even like their eyes on me. As I do my lunges, I stare into the mirror and wonder if the girl behind me is looking at how the outline of my deltoids press against my skin. If the guy to my left is watching the way my quads have just started to gain some definition.
I plan my weeks around it. I hit arms on Monday and legs on Tuesday. When can I squeeze in some cardio? Maybe I can if I skip class on Thursday. I’m up early on Sunday mornings for my very own Church of the Divine Body: an empty weight room. The routine in my notes app is my Bible; the nu metal blaring over my headphones are my hymns.
I start all over again on Monday. I don’t look forward to it anymore, but I have to go.
Progress — it’s all about progress.
My knees ache and my hamstrings are so sore they feel like they’ll snap with every step. The second they recover, I turn right back around and make them sore again. It hurts. My whole body hurts. I catch myself leaving the locker room trembling, more stressed than I came in. Something’s wrong. This isn’t how it used to feel. I try, but I can barely remember a time when I enjoyed this.
On Tuesday, I skip leg day. Then, I skip arms. On Saturday, I barely leave my room. The next Monday, I muster up the confidence to pull on my bike shorts again.
Dread follows me into the locker room.
What am I training for?
When I’m finished and panting, sweat beading down my forehead, I don’t feel energized. I don’t feel any better than I did when I left my room. Dread still sits in lead piles in my stomach. I realize that this is it — I can’t do it anymore. Oh, God, I’m exhausted. Six days a week and I still don’t have The Look. Maybe I never will. I don’t want to be here, I realize. I set down the hand towel I’d picked up. I can’t do it anymore.
I don’t see the inside of the gym for two weeks — maybe three. When I crawl back, I do so slowly with closed eyes and deep breaths. This is for me, I tell myself. I’m trying again, for myself.
I want it to feel good again. It doesn’t at first. The weight room is the same as ever, and it feels like nothing’s changed. I sit down on a bench and close my eyes, take a deep breath. I want to feel alive again, to feel my body, push it to its limits, take a break, then do it all over again. I want the burn that comes with a good set of squats.
I start slowly and keep my eyes off my reflection, glancing up only to check my form. It’s a tall order in a room full of mirrors, but I manage.
It’s not a bad habit — far from it. Eventually, it becomes just another part of my routine, and I look forward to an hour of motion in between long hours in lecture halls. I feel at home in my body then, the burn in my core, my legs, my arms, reminds me that I’m not a brain swimming in formaldehyde. Flesh, blood, sinew, tissue, every interlocking part that makes up my physical form reminds me that I’m alive. I start to get to know my body, and listen to what she tells me. She’s not half bad.
It takes me a long time to find what I need. I no longer step on the treadmill to watch the little meter counting my calories to rise, but to feel my heart rate quicken, my lungs expand and contract, to pull frigid air into my chest. Endorphins, serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine flood my brain, chasing cortisol from my synapses. My pounding heart pierces through my stress and I feel like I can think for the first time in weeks. When I stop and my heart rate slows, I’m calmer than ever. I’m ready, eager, to take on what’s been plaguing my Canvas page for a week now.
It’s not perfect, but it’s better. It takes slow deliberation and careful reminders. Jealousy is natural, but I now only
succumb to it occasionally. Eyes to yourself, kid.
Reminding myself that I’m alive — by sitting inside my body rather than above her — is a painful process, but worth it. It’s too easy to take your body for granted and fall into the same everyday rhythms. I have to be careful not to fall into the age-old trap of imitation. When you start to imitate, to copy every fitness routine you see in hopes of achieving The Look, you become deaf to your body’s own cries.
Maybe I’ll never have forearms like the girl I stare longingly at in the weight room. Mine aren’t as strong, but I’m up another five pounds on my bicep curl. I will be healthy, be fit, because I know I can never ignore her. She’s speaking to me for a reason. ■
WHITE TANK | APA Thrift
WIND BREAKER | Leopard Lounge
ADIDAS PANTS | APA Thrift
BRACELET | APA Thrift
ASICS SHOES | APA Thrift
PEARL NECKLACE | Side Kitsch Vintage
by AVA STERN
layout ERIC MARTINEZ photographer ANTHONY NGUYEN stylist LUCY PHENIX & AIDAN VU hmua
HAYLEY MITCHELL & SRIKHA CHAGANTI models SARA HERBOWY & LONDON TIJANI videographer
ODELIA SCHILLER
spark
Flight was a unique feeling for a tall thirteen-year-old still grow ing into her unruly limbs. I can still smell the pungent tang of the artificial smoke that crept around me during the pas de deux
The tendrils swirled as I was flipped, lifted, and dragged, often to gasps from the audience. I moved regally in my beaded costume, adorned by the wired crown on my forehead. I felt every bit the snow fairy I was assigned to portray. The strong hands of my part ner, a man far older than I, supported me as I ascended to the peak of my artform. Ten feet in the air, I had perfect splits, pointed toes, and syrupy applause filling my ears.
I feel that my adult consciousness began to develop around that time. At the genesis of my identity, I was a coy, peacocking princess, slinking across the stage, all long legs and glitter. From where I stood, the future looked like an exponential curve; why would I expect any less?
I’d never before had such a spotlight. Little girls — not much younger than me, I realize now — asked for my picture after the performance. Even after the show closed, I was still heady from occupying the role of Snow Queen. They’d chosen me. It felt like responsibility, an acknowl edgement. It felt like a gift.
A rip ran through my left side. My ribs contorted and twisted. My lungs expanded unevenly, hitching as I was lowered to the floor. As long as the audience couldn’t tell, my body held no pain — only the lingering afterimage of beauty.
Ballet is the art of creating perfection from pain. Calluses, blisters, blood, and sweat coat the scuffed marley floor where pink satin shoes dance. Syncopated clicks and clacks of pointe shoes harmonize with heavy breathing and sharp, instructive claps.
You’re late. Sissone on ONE.
I accept the challenge, though; it is a sport, after all. The need to hear my name in the mouths of my instructors became chronic. It meant they were watching me. They were witness to my attempted triple pirouette — to the frantic precision of my petit allegro. My mirrored studios were no place for positive reinforcement, but that wasn’t the name of the game. I strived for correction. I had a fervent need to be fixed. It was self-flagellation dressed in tulle.
I’ve heard lots of abuse being thrown around ballet studios. Suck in. I can see your lunch. The invasiveness was nothing unusual. I consented to extraordinary scrutiny when I first rolled on pink tights. The beauty of ballet is in its minute details: turned-out hips, delicate fingers, pris tine expressions. A natural body could never make those shapes without sharp two-fingered slaps telling you to hold your ribcage taut. It’s hard work, but effort produces results. At least, it’s meant to.
As I grew, I graduated from improvement. I continued to attempt the same pirouettes with the same anxious focus. I pulled my leg closer and closer to my nose, farther and farther past 180 degrees. I crunched my toes, exercised my balance, and tried to get better at my fouetté turns. Looking in those full-length mirrors during barre, I used to think about how people would remove their ribs to allow them more back flexibility. I imagined my pelvis cracking open, unfolding into a wider turnout; I pressed my knuckles into the arch of my foot, hoping the pressure would force it to cave inwards. Nothing happened, of course. It occurred to me then that prima ballerinas were born, not made.
My lack of excellence may have shorn down the excitement of dance, but I never would have quit because of that. A workhorse doesn’t think about whether it enjoys the plow. I showed up to the studio every afternoon, executed the combinations, and went home. I saw others surpass my technique and gain favor. Ballet was what I did, though, so I did it. I continued.
“My
beatheart
twice asforhardyou...
You look like you don’t care. That’s what did it for me. You look miserable every class. It ripped through me more violently than any strained tendon. The words slapped across my skin, red and welty. The very people I craved validation from were dismissing my effort out of hand. I was baffled when I heard that my teachers had said these things. I had been crying before private lessons and throwing up before performances, but that didn’t mean I didn’t care. If anything, it showed just how deep my care was. Care was leaking out of my pores and gathering in milky puddles at my feet. Couldn’t they see my desperate prostrations? No longer was it higher leg, Ava, or land softer, or shoulders down. It was that I looked miserable. What did my misery have to do with them?
I stayed, though. I think I was too young to identify that uncontrollable tears and gasping, coughing breaths weren’t signs of hard work or a job well done. I searched desperately for the feeling of flight, but all I achieved was dehydration and black floaters in my vision. I began to satisfy my insatiable hunger with fervent striving instead of food. Unfortunately for me, physical strength and emotional impetuses have only a psychic link. I couldn’t fix the nervous aching in my stomach with a role in our new production or the pleasant combination of a nod and a prim mhm
One fateful Tuesday, during fondu, a profound feeling of lightness took hold of me. The barre blurred in front of my eyes. Sound warped, and warmth engulfed me. It felt like flying until I woke up sprawled on the cold tile of my dance studio lobby.
I thought you were dead; you weren’t breathing. The cherry lollipop they gave me turned sour in my mouth as my mom drove me home, chattering about EKGs and dietitians.
A murmur, they told me. A quick double-beat running from my heart, through my arteries, then gone. My heart beat twice as hard for you. What did you ever do for me?
What did you ever do for me?”
London Tijani
SILK SHORTS | Austin Pets Alive!
Sara Herbowy
TOP | Revival Vintage SKIRT | Austin Pets Alive!
I have no idea what would have happened if the world wasn’t ripped away from me when I was 15. Earth’s rotation slowed to a standstill in a matter of two weeks. I felt stupid pliéing in front of my laptop camera, only kicking half as high in my cramped attic. The studio that had composed my life felt as far away as anything, so one day, I shut my laptop after an hour of virtual adagio and decided to disappear. I tearfully told my mom not to sign me up for classes in the fall. My pointe shoes sat dead, structureless in a blue mesh bag.
Two years later, I was performing in “The Nutcracker” at my high school, and my old ballet teacher came to watch. I only found out afterwards that she had been there at all; she’d left before I emerged from the dressing room. I felt like running after her. I felt like texting her and asking if she thought my foot was sufficiently winged, or if my fingers looked too stiff. I felt like mourning. She ended up texting my mom, It’s good to see that Ava’s still dancing.
I was Sugarplum that year. The role reserved for the perfect older girls I used to peek at through linen curtains was mine. I had never thought I would be on stage during the earth shattering crescendos of the pas de deux or the iconographic tinkle of the variation. I performed what might have been a mockery of Sugarplum — after all, I hadn’t been en pointe in two years — but I was happy. My high school dance team, though talented, was in the end merely a high school dance team. We sewed our own costumes and fastened each other’s tiaras with bobby pins we found on the floor. We forgot choreography, whispered to each other on stage, and laughed. We laughed a lot. I had my pointe shoes on for the first time in years, and I was laughing.
These are the things I think of now, when I hear the “Nutcracker” overture or remember that I can do the splits. I see a communal bottle of hairspray and a mountain of leftover black jazz shoes discarded in the middle of the room. I hear the cackles of my friends as they see me strut out in one ridiculous costume or another. I think of my high school dance teacher, whose giggle I can remember as clearly as her experimental choreography. I miss the way the light streamed into that studio and the way the kindergarten girls stared at us as we rehearsed during their recess. I didn’t find brightness in perfection or pain, and I doubt I ever could have. The beauty of performance is inherently fleeting, existing solely in the moment of its creation. It can’t sustain me on its own. ■
NOSE BLEED
by CAYENNE SOUKNARY
layout RACHELLE ESCOBAR & JAZMIN HERNANDEZ ARCEO photographer JOSE MARTINEZ MCINTOSH stylist REYANA TRAN & BEVERLY FRANKENFELD hmua AVERIE WANG models CAMERON LIGHTFOOT & ALEX BASILLIO
All the places in my history are mine, not because they are in my memory,
but because my blood claimed them.
Ihave bled in every place I’ve been.
The nurse’s office at my elementary school is small, with flickering lights that make the tan walls seem even smaller. I sit, nose plugged and head tilted down, on a navy blue plastic chair. My legs are a pendulum as I wait for the nurse to finish writing my report.
Another kid sits across from me on the sticky plastic nurse bed with an ice pack. The eerie hum of the AC and chatter from the front office are the only sounds. Pen scratches echo from the nurse’s personal office.
Our silence is broken when the nurse rolls back into the sick room on her chair. She hands me a slip of paper and slides across the room to grab me some more of the brown paper towels I had been stuffing my nose with. She sends me on my way, and I hear her scratching away at the other kid’s report as the door closes.
The walk back to class is long, and I still drag my feet to prolong it.
When I open the classroom door, every head in the room stops to stare. Their eyes burn as their whispering waves of speculation loom above me. My cheeks heat up as I sit down, my face still covered with the brown paper towel and a rough ball of extras in my hand. I grow horns, the whispers watering them as they sprout through my hair.
I have bled in every place I’ve been.
I am soaring through the air, my hands on the bars grounding me so I don’t fly off. Around and around I go. Methodically, I look at the ground where a pile of blue mats awaits my fall. Then to the ceiling with its bright white fluorescents. Then the ground again. I am upside down when I feel my grip slip. There is a blur of white and blue before the impact of the ground winds me. My
world becomes watery as my chest tightens and my breaths become shallow.
Slowly, the world returns to me, and the water spills over, clearing my view. I sit up. The disrupted chalk from the mat swirls around me.
Drip.
I look down to see a droplet of my blood, bright and crimson against the blue mat. I wipe my nose with the back of my hand and it comes back with a pale streak of blood and chalk. I feel my coach’s hand on my back, guiding me out of the gym. I tilt my head towards the fluorescents to prevent more blood from dripping on the mat. Beneath me, the floor turns from plastic mat to carpet to tile. I tiptoe to avoid the unpleasant feeling of the cool grey tile seeping into my bare feet and crawling up my back.
My coach leads me to sit on one of the benches. He hands me a scratchy white paper towel which I promptly stuff up my nose. I watch alongside the parents as my coach steps back onto the gym floor with a spray bottle and a rag. He stands over my fresh bloodstains and sprays it down with hydrogen peroxide. I watch my teammates continue their practice as normal. They occasionally look over at me. The horns return, breaking through my hair. Scales unfold down my back. A tail wraps around my body, suffocating me.
I return to practice a week later. I have the shame of knowing why there is still a spot on the blue mat, cold, damp, and two shades darker than the rest. I was exposed without the tissues and paper towels to hide behind. Everyone in the gym knew it was my fault, and they would stare until the shame rose in my throat, accompanying the blood.
I don’t always have a tissue or mask to hide behind.
I stand with my family at a frozen lake atop a
“I have bled in every place I’ve been.”
“My nosebleeds have become a part of who I am.”
mountain in Colorado. I am bundled head to toe, and my poor Texan body has never been bundled like this before. The layers make it difficult to move my arms; the zippers choke me. The wind strikes my face, the only part of me not covered. I swear I have never inhaled air so crisp before.
The fresh air in my lungs turns to rust as the familiar metallic smell fills my nose. I bring a gloveless hand up to my face in hopes that this is just a phantom sensation. But my hand comes back warm and covered in crimson. I watch as blood starts dripping down my hand, seeping between the cracks in my skin, creating a mosaic of flesh and blood.
I tilt my head up to slow the river of blood, but there is nothing I can do to stop it.
I rush down the mountain to the visitor’s bathroom. The sound of laughter fills the air as I pass a flock of colorfully bundled Coloradan school children on their field trip. I cover my nose with my hand and turn my face away from them as I carefully speed past, frightened of scaring them with my bloody face. My other hand cups my chin so that I do not taint the pure white snow beneath me.
I go as fast as I can while making sure I have a grip on the slippery ground below me. It is like I have claws to hold me up. I keep going because the smallest drop in the snow means I could be seen. The playing children will create stories about how the blood got there. My horns, scales, tails, and now my claws will all become real to them; a monster. The adults will imagine something worse, but maybe more realistic.
I don’t want to cause a panic, though I’ve done so before.
My friends and I are squished in the backseat of a car on a road trip to Galveston. The AC blasts on
high, but it cannot do anything against the heat. The sun glares at me through my sunglasses and overheats my exposed thighs, melting me to the seat.
We are on the highway when I smell the blood. Again, I try to tilt my head up to stop it. I sniff hard to try and keep the blood inside me and keep the problem to myself. I press the back of my hand to my nose and calmly try to ask for tissues. My friend next to me smells the blood. She turns to me and lets out a blood-curdling scream that makes our friend’s mom swerve.
I try to turn away from her, but she’s already seen the monster I’ve been trying so hard to hide.
She sees my horns, my scales, my tail, my claws, and my bloody face. A red river runs down my hand as I try to stop the flood. On the other side of the car, my friend searches for something to help me. From the driver’s seat, her mom pulls some wipes out of the center console and haphazardly hands them to me as my friend gags.
My friend’s mom pulls over to find tissues, which help the bleeding but not the realization that I am a monster.
Despite this, my friends reassure me that I am not.
“It’s just a nosebleed,” they say. I bleed everywhere I go.
I still haven’t grown out of the nosebleeds that were supposed to go away as I got older. The doctors haven’t found any abnormalities in my blood, despite the amount of tests I’ve had. My nosebleeds have become a part of who I am. I have become one with the monster.
All the places in my history are mine, not because they are in my memory, but because my blood claimed them. ■
layout NICOLE GARCIA photographer JOSE VELAZCO
ROVILLAIN & NATALIE SALINAS hmua
model NAYEON HEO & TERRYN HARGIS
layout ISABELLE LEE photographer NICOLE HOWARD stylist LILI XIONG
& PATSY TORRES hmua KENNEDY RUHLAND & AVERIE WANG models
ODELIA SCHILLER, LILI BIEN & CAMERON LIGHTFOOT videographer
HARRISON GOYTIA & TOINE ORR
“She’d reject the status quo with every given opportunity, creating from a rulebook entirely her own.”
It’s 1996 and the East Village’s creative scene is artistically parched. No longer a neighbor to the raunchy club kid scene in downtown New York, Greer Lankton finds herself in a claustrophobic and cluttered space in Chicago — her own apartment. Her home doubles as her workspace, and its state of disarray would worry many, but she has no time for concern. She has a deadline to commit to.
A decade prior, Greer cemented herself rather quickly as one of the esoteric wonders of the offbeat and daring New York world by creating innovative dolls. Constructed through the most unconventional of materials, such as clothing hangers, pipe cleaners, and flowers, Lankton crafted life-size figures that seemed to break every rule. Her masterpieces contorted where they shouldn’t, bending out of shape and creating haunting silhouettes that subtly intrigued those who weren’t afraid to keep looking. Where her contemporaries played it safe, she pushed the needle. Greer’s dolls were complex characters with wisdom and intricacies that made the average observer question their inanimacy. The hyper-realism, somber expressions, eccentric yet clearly considered fashion choices, and bizarre body distortions all blended together to set a mood, to tell a story, to make you uncomfortable then guide you into the ultimate deeper understanding: there’s a humanity present in these dolls because each body of work is a glimpse into Greer’s soul.
An outside viewer might consider her soul wretched and riddled with melancholy upon viewing these creations, but Greer’s outlook wasn’t nearly as unpleasant. She thought of every one of her creations as beautiful, even if the masses weren’t as quick to agree. She offered an alternative definition of beauty that wasn’t as cookie-cutter as the status quo wanted it to be. To Greer, beauty was raw and vulnerable, the body was an ever-evolving canvas the horrifying and extreme didn’t diminish her dolls’ allure. Rather, these elements contributed to it.
Before her existence as a muse and revolutionary in New York’s underground, Greer’s initial showcasing of genius was timed alongside her sex-change operation halfway through her college education at Pratt Institute’s art school. Her fascination with the body’s often-overlooked complexity began here, in her first archived journal, Sketchbook, September 1977. Each page is rich with etchings and dwellings regarding her gender-affirming surgery and its implications for her future. She demonstrated a wise yet whimsical outlook into both her own life and the overarching societal truths that both constricted her and made her who she was.
On one page, her wisdom beyond youth was expressed through a tree diagram demonstrating the two ends of self-image. On one end, selfimage is presented in a binary fashion that excludes the opportunity for ambiguity. When thinking about her gender-affirming surgery, Lankton noted this strict idea of self-image as eliminating the man to become the woman — to become Greer. On the other side of the page lies the side that Greer prefers, an alternative that isn’t so one-note. Greer jotted down the antithesis of gender strictness as a “combination of resources”, embracing fluidity, a philosophy she’d bound herself to for years to come.
“There’s a humanity present in these dolls because each body into Greer’s soul.” of work is a glimpse
daring and personal exhibit yet — a replica of her apartment. In a sense, it is a grandiose thesis, a critical examination of her own life, warts and all, equally tender and unashamed. Greer navigates her own history, tracing moments throughout her lifetime with every look around the room. She wishes to work with her eyes closed, her surroundings much too intimate and raw, her history too intertwined with tragedy to face.
As she recreates and renovates, she can’t help but wonder if her work possesses much more horror than she’d originally thought. Upon further inspection, was the “freakish” title she’d been dealt the past two decades something to wince at and reject rather than embrace? The exhibit’s narrative would illustrate her ongoing issue with anorexia and her drug addiction, the reason she’d fled from New York in the first place.
Greer herself would be going on display. And with her past staring back at her, unflinchingly, a sudden uncertainty pierces through her bones. Unfiltered was the word she’d designed her whole career around, but she felt coated with a nakedness even she was uncomfortable with. A diary entry for a thousand eyes to bear witness to — she questioned if it was too late to take it all back.
and celebratory, reflects this same dichotomy, she decides. She would never have to explain herself again, for the exhibit spoke for her. Prescription pills and crosses, naked bodies in front of rich decor. Artificial nature, total indulgence. A smile slyly finds its way across her lips as she thinks about how impressive it is for a space with no mirrors or windows to be so reflective. She’s lived her life fluidly and authentically, and she declares out loud that her work should do the same, unapologetically.
In 1996, the exhibit “It’s All About ME, Not You” was finally finished and displayed in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Passing away only a few months after, Greer left behind her most intricate and structured work, but an unshakable liveliness persists in every corner of the room. Intertwined within all of Greer’s exhibitions is a ferocious East Village spirit marked with a glamorous grime. Her whole livelihood was coated in a fearless queer culture stretching far beyond herself. Her exhibits spoke for the entire underground, representing those who always understood Greer’s point of view, no matter how abstract or unconventional her crafts became.
But beauty transcends horror. Glances around the apartment ground Greer, reminding her of the achievements that define her existence, not the gloom or regrets. Her apartment is doused with
“It’s All About ME, Not You” was a vulnerable and defiant act of authoring one’s own story without being painted over or rewritten. Through every doll, every portrait, every color, and every piece of memorabilia, Greer’s legacy lives on — fashionably. ■
express what her own body wasn’t at liberty to.”
WHITE SKIRT | Leopard Lounge
PINK LONG-SLEEVE TOP
Leopard Lounge
by ALEXIS RAE
There was a certain pride in the way my hands carried the evidence of my labor.
layout PARIS YANG photographer ALEX ZAVALA stylist ABIGAIL GOLDMAN & LUCY
PHENIX hmua ABBY BAGEPALLY & GRACE JOH
models LONDON TIJANI & MIMO GORMAN videographer PAISLEY BALES
At night, when the house fell silent, I rummaged through my bathroom drawer, my fingers skimming over half-used tubes of lotion, crumpled receipts I had forgotten to throw away, and makeup compacts that had lost their original color. Little bottles that promised softness, tools that claimed to smooth rough edges, and untouched Sephora birthday gifts that had collected dust filled the drawer.
I told myself I kept them because they might come in handy one day — as if I would magically become the kind of person who actually followed a skincare routine instead of slathering on CeraVe moisturizing cream and calling it a night.
My bathroom drawer was a collection of all the products I could ever need to make myself feel put-together.
Somewhere beneath the clutter was a cheap set of nail polishes I had picked up at the Omega Dollar store for $1.99. The set included yellow, purple, red, and black polishes. I raised my hands toward my face, examining which color would best complement my skin tone.
Red brought out the harshness of my hands. Yellow was too bright and not my style. I stopped contemplating and went with my usual black polish.
My nostrils flared at the pungent smell of the polish as I twisted the creaky cap. The brush was frayed, leaving drops of polish on my bathroom sink. I swiped the first stroke and hesitated for a moment. It was blotchy, settling unevenly against my nails. I tried to smooth it out, but the more I worked at it, the messier it became.
I sighed in defeat as I wiped at the edges of my cuticles. They seemed to scream back at me, as if I’d done them a disservice by trying to conceal their appearance with the polish. My skin became dry. My hands were rougher than I wanted them to be.
I flexed my fingers, expecting them to soften un-
der my gaze — to shrink into something more delicate. Under the harsh bathroom light, my hands turned into something crude. I looked at my horrible paint job and thought about what my hands had been through to deserve my merciless judgment.
* * *
I grew up in a house where hands were meant for work, not decoration. Most of my adolescence was spent scrubbing plates until my fingertips pruned, cutting prickly thorns off nopales that left splinters around the edges of my hands, and getting scars from baby goats that bit me as I fed them.
I was used to the rough, grainy side of being a young girl — getting excited to do yard work with my dad, pulling weeds from the garden until my hands ached, and feeling a sense of pride in the work we’d done together. As much as I yearned to listen to stories of Disney princesses and happily ever afters, I craved the satisfaction of dirt under my nails and the warm sting of the sun glaring at my back.
There was a certain pride in the way my hands carried the evidence of my labor, a quiet assurance that they knew how to endure. But endurance was a double-edged sword. The more I worked and languished in the sun, the more the pigment of my hands deepened.
Compared to my father’s large and weathered palms, my hands were small and delicate. A lifetime of hard work was etched into his skin, reflecting everything he had sacrificed. Mine were still learning the language of responsibility. I felt as though I could never match the weight of his palms.
My hands trembled beneath the pressure of his touch, unable to bear the same burden that seemed so natural for him. His fingers were thick and calloused, rough in texture, with nails always trimmed to prevent injuries from outdoor work. My younger self wished I had the same depth to my hands that he had, without the calluses.
“I tried to smooth it out, but the more I worked, the messier it became.”
As I grew out of my single-digit years, an insatiable craving for change overtook me. I wanted to appear softer, more mature in my skin. I longed for the kind of elegance I lacked in childhood.
At the age of 10, I began frequenting the local nail salon with my mother. I would beg her for long acrylic nails that clacked together. She would look at me like I was crazy, but the desperation in my eyes pushed her to say yes. The sound felt empowering, like armor for my hands in the form of a French tip set.
The nail artist quickly became one of my best friends. She asked the same questions every time I sat in her chair:
Do you have a boyfriend? What’s a pretty girl like you doing without a boyfriend?
I was only 10, wearing a red M&M shirt and minion flip-flops my mother had purchased for me at Walmart.
No, I don’t have a boyfriend.
She would graze my hands softly, occasionally stopping to ask if the process hurt. I always shook my head no, even though I hated the friction of the e-file machine rubbing against my nailbeds. The high-pitched whirring sent shivers up my spine. She always worked with gentle precision despite my clenched fists, pausing ever so often to blow the dust from my fingertips. It was a strange kind of tenderness — one that made me feel cared for, even as I winced at the feeling.
I would turn to my mother getting her nails done at the table next to me and ask her opinion on my new set. Her eyes would linger on me for a moment, as if she was weighing each detail before giving her approval.
“Que bonita, mija,” she would reply before reaching her hand out and to gently brush a stray lock of hair behind my ear.
Her hands were gentle but firm and had a calm certainty in their touch. They symbolized security — her hands were a place I knew I could always return to if I ever got lost.
It was a quiet insecurity, something no one pointed out. But I felt it in the way my fingers
curled into themselves when I spoke. When my friends pulled out their cameras to take group photos, I made sure my hands were wrapped around my back so no one would notice the chipped polish or the unshaven fingers I had forgotten to maintain the night before.
My girlfriends instinctively knew which angles suited them. I admired their beauty and how they exuded confidence onto me when I felt like I didn’t belong. Their gentle caresses along my arm softened my being, pulling light I didn’t know had existed from my palms.
The beat of the music thumped through the floor and into my chest. I stood surrounded by my friends. One caught my eye, grinning wildly as she grabbed my hands and spun me around, pulling me into the center of the floor. I laughed, incredibly dizzy.
But she held onto my hands and never flinched at the way they felt in hers.
I lost myself in the joy of it. Our bodies moved in tandem, our laughter mingling with the music. For once, I didn’t worry about the way my hands looked or how they felt. I just danced.
I even failed to realize that the party actually sucked and we were the only two girls dancing.
My hands became an ode to the young girl, with dirt under her nails, scraped knees, and a longing for the sound of rocks crunching beneath her feet as she ran without destination.
She learned the language of tenderness from her mother, whose touch eased every biting nerve. Together, they spoke a language of patience, each caress a verse of a calm lullaby. Over time, her fingertips came to understand all the languages of love her mother’s had ever held.
I stood at the door, watching my reflection in the glass. My fingers hung by my sides, still and patient as the polish dried. The muffled sound of my favorite songs filled the room. Slowly, my fingertips began to move along to the beat with no hesitation.
My hands represented home, a letter to every moment I’ve ever lived. ■
by DANIELLE YAMPULER
B B DOLL MAKES MUSIC FOR BAD
BITCHES
layout CAROLINE CLARK photographer REYNA DEWS stylist VI CAO hmua @JADEANDALON_ model DORIAN DELEFUENTE
Dorian Delafuente is a person you’re most likely to meet late at night. You would spot them dressed glamorously, elevated within a club’s DJ booth. I, however, met them very early on a Wednesday morning. The sun had not yet risen. The birds were not awake enough to chirp. I sat in the at-home glam studio of their close friend, who did Dorian’s makeup and hair as we spoke. Dorian walked into the room with a small, comfortable smile on their face. They wore no makeup and an oversized hoodie, yet still looked alluring. For the next two hours, I would watch them transform into BabiDoll: the DJ and rapper who creates queer, vivacious, Texan club music for bad bitches.
“My personality definitely doesn’t change. I think the biggest difference is just the level of glamour,” said Babi. “When I have my makeup and a cute outfit on, people call me Babi. But when I’m more casual day-to-day, people call me Dorian.”
Babi has been creating music for over half a decade. In that period, they performed alongside artists such as Charli XCX and played a set for Boiler Room. They released their first album CONTROL FREAK in Nov. 2024. The music on the album is made to be blasted in a club, bass turned up. The lyrics are raunchy and sexual, fitting snugly beside the works of artists such as Nicki Minaj and Brooke Candy. BabiDoll raps about their sickening looks, their provocative personality, and more. This blends perfectly with the album’s hypnotic, thrumming beats. Babi’s art shows a clear refusal to bow down to the status quo. It reflects their loud, extroverted, raunchy nature.
“It’s very in-your-face sexual, doesn’t really hold back. When you hear my music, you know the type of person that I am. In everything I do, I try to put as much of my identity in it,” said Babi. “I say a lot of really crazy shit. I think if you pulled up the lyrics to my songs you’d be like, ‘Oh this is definitely a very, very gay bitch.’”
Babi went on a journey to put CONTROL FREAK together. The album acts as a capsule for all the work they’d created in the past 6 years. Hailing from San Antonio, Babi began rapping for an audience after joining a group of party organiz ers and club performers called the PLASTIK Collec tive in 2018. At the time, Babi rapped under the name Street Queer. The name referenced both their love for street fashion and queer art. Eventually, they would relocate to Austin to attend the University of Texas. They dropped CONTROL FREAK’s first single, SWEAT, in 2019 as a student at the school. They
would transition to the stage name BabiBoi around this time as well. They wanted a moniker that was more commercially friendly, while still feminine enough to make a straight man squirm a little.
In 2020, Babi co-founded the House of Lepore with fellow PLASTIK Collective alumni Natalie Lepore. The house is dedicated to keeping ballroom culture alive in the central Texas area. Ballroom culture is a sub culture built by queer Black and Latine individuals in the 19th century. Within it, houses throw “balls” that encourage participants (who are usually in drag) to compete against one another under multiple aesthetic and performance categories. Houses are made up of friends who find family in each other, often due to exclusion from their birth families. They ordinarily have a “house mother” and “house father” who look after the house’s other members, or “children.” Natalie Lepore acts as the House of Lepore’s mother. Babi would learn a lot from her and their house siblings, such as a love for the house’s namesake, transgender woman and icon Amanda Lepore.
“Amanda Lepore is just such a bad bitch. Like the baddest bitch ever. Imagine having the world’s most expensive body, like what?” said Babi. “I also love that she’s just famous for being famous. She was a part of the party monster scene, the New York club kids. I love that she’s a club girl, and club culture is always the throughline for me.”
With the support of the House of Lepore, Babi dropped even more singles and created music videos for their songs MISS BITCH and MOLLASSES. The music videos are subversive and visually delightful showcases of queer culture and community. MISS BITCH presents members of the House of Lepore voguing to the cheers of their peers. Voguing is a form of dance that grew out of ballroom culture. Meanwhile, MOLASSES’s music video displays tantalizing visuals that unveil the opposing sides of Babi’s personality.
“I wanted to play off day and night. There are parts of me where I’m at a tea party and we’re all wearing pastels. Then, it goes to a dark, rainy BDSM moment,” said Babi.
Babi sometimes feels odd looking back at their music videos now, as they feel they have changed as a person and artist since their creation. The videos were filmed at the begin-
ning of the COVID-19 pandemic. This was a time when Babi was experiencing a lot of anxiety surrounding their music. As a club artist, they feared that their community and audience would no longer care about BabiDoll by the end of the pandemic. Luckily, that did not happen. When quarantine ended, Babi continued to get steady bookings at clubs and parties. Additionally, they gained back their confidence and continued with their artistic endeavors.
“Be confident with what you’re giving,” Babi said. “Figure out your own style, figure out what makes you happy, and just give that to the world.”
After quarantine, Babi left the House of Lepore to experience new opportunities to learn from. They would go on to join the House of Juicy Couture. The House of Juicy Couture is a large ballroom house with chapters across America. Austin’s chapter is home to house father Akasha, a skilled DJ with legendary status in the Central Texas ballroom scene. Thanks to the mentorship of DJ Akasha, Babi learned how to hone their DJ skills.
DJing has always been an essential influence on BabiDoll’s music, and their time under Akasha only strengthened that. As a DJ, Babi is able to see how people react to certain songs and adjust accordingly. This allows them to write their music around what they know will get a reaction from the club crowd.
“I always say give people what they want and then give people what they need,” said Babi. “I’ll give them what they want to listen to in my own way, whether it’s an edit or a remix that I really like. Then I’ll give them what I think they need to listen to right now so that they’re hearing new music and I feel like I’m putting my own little flavor and twist on it.”
Babi would eventually part ways with the House of Juicy Couture after sharpening their artistry. However, Babi still regularly collaborates with them and the House of Lepore. Community is and always has been an essential driver of Babi’s music and career, and they recognize that wholeheartedly. They deeply appreciate all they have learned from the different collectives and houses they have been a part of. Each group allowed Babi to learn new skills while simultaneously teaching others. Additionally, they often collaborate with other Southern artists, utilize community resources, and encourage others to do the same. CONTROL FREAK has many verses from collaborators, and Babi recently featured on their close friend Quentin Arispe’s song KUNT. Babi used Austin’s DAWA, a studio specifically for BIPOC artists to shoot and edit for free, to record the first season of their podcast BabiTalk. Each episode of the podcast invites a Southern queer guest to discuss not only their lives, but also the diversity and beauty of Texas’s LGBTQ+ community.
“I think as a queer artist you have to have the community. I feel like it’s hard to get ahead by yourself sometimes and you kind of need people to be on your ass and push you to be the
best version of yourself and create new content,” said Babi. “It was good to have people in my corner who cared about me as much as they care about the art.”
As of April 2025, Babi changed their stage name to BabiDoll to more accurately reflect their feminine gender identity. They have been undergoing hormone-replacement therapy for the past year and a half, and they look stunning.
Looking to the future, Babi plans to use Summer 2025 to create even more video projects for their music. They also plan to release a deluxe version of CONTROL FREAK. This will be filled with remixes and re-edits of every song on the album, all done by Babi’s friends and collaborators. This will act as a new introduction to the album while maintaining its heavy club sound. Babi is not quite sure how their music will evolve beyond CONTROL FREAK, but they know for sure that they will continue to consistently write and drop bangers for club baddies.
“I think the biggest challenge for artists these days is just breaking through all the noise. There’s so much shit being released all the time by everyone,” said Babi. “The key is just consistency. You never really know what’s gonna get through, so you just have to keep putting work out until people catch onto it. I think that uncertainty of being an artist is always pretty scary, but we’ll work it out on the remix.” ■
" I THINK THAT UNCERTAINTY OF BEING AN ARTIST IS ALWAYS PRETTY SCARY, BUT WE'LL WORK IT OUT ON THE
I’ve heard the tales of its certain flight. I could keep it, the pearl, harness its strength. I ignore the warnings out of pure spite. Extending my arms, I admire at length.
“a pearl form."
In line with fate, the pearl escapes my palms I reach out — I miss — it’s gone in this storm. My heavy heart bursts; the feeling won’t calm. (They say, from within, a new pearl will form.)
So, with sorrow and woe, I watch the tides. In my hands lies a sphere, my grief subsides. ■
layout NICK REYNA photographer WILLIAM WHITWORTH stylist ZOE COSTANZA & ABIGAIL GOLDMAN hmua ABBY BAGEPALLY nail artist AVERIE WANG model ANYA GOKUL videographer TAYLOR MENDOZA
by ARI SMITH
When I was a child, I was terrified of snakes. I still am. The thought of their coiled bodies, the way they move — silent, sudden — fills me with a dread I can’t shake.
Once, I forced myself to touch a non-venomous breed. Its skin was wet, its muscles tense beneath the surface and shifting under my fingertips. The texture wasn’t what I expected, but the fear didn’t fade. It only settled deeper.
Pain is the same way: never stagnant. It shifts unpredictably, swelling and retreating in intensity, leaving me stranded with myself. I am alone, sitting straight-backed, bone-stiff, or lying on my stomach, my face buried in a pillow.
Pain takes shape. It is not just a sensation but a presence, blurred yet tangible. It is something that can be named: a snake.
I feel the snake first in my chest, the barest flicker beneath the skin. A ripple where no ripple should be. It glides up my neck, curling under the slope of my chin before slipping into the base of my skull. If I hold my breath and listen closely, I can hear it move in a slow, delibrate slither, like the hush of silk over bone.
It moves its way up my chest to settle in the base of my skull, penetrating my soft brain as it glides back and forth before coiling tight. At first, I fight it with logic. I drink more water. I quit drinking soda. I trace the path of remedies like scripture, chasing superfoods and supplements, searching for a cure I can believe in. But the snake does not care for remedies. It coils deeper, pressing into the tender spaces behind my eyes, tightening its grip whenever I think I’ve escaped from the pain.
When I was younger, road trips to visit family were a constant. No matter the destination, every car ride seemed to stretch into the endless eight-hour drive to Poplarville, Mississippi. The motion, the monotony, the hum of the tires on the highway — it all blurred together until, at some point, I had to clamp my mouth shut as an overwhelming metallic taste flooded in, like pennies dissolving on my tongue. I felt as though every drop of moisture and every ounce of blood in my body was rushing to concentrate in my mouth, as if my own biology betrayed me. I sat, stiff and silent, fighting against the urge to retch up the half-digested McDonald’s and the sour residue of Trolli gummy worms.
Doctors spoke of scans, of tests, of answers buried in the
spark
language of machinery. I grew to resent them for it: how easy it was for them to suggest such things, as if pain needs proof, as if suffering must be seen to be real. What would they find? They would find nothing but a void where a cause should be. My pediatrician would have to conclude that I was living in a body with no name for its tormentor.
I fantasized about my face melting away, my eyes lingering just long enough to glimpse the source of my torment. I imagined the snake exorcised — wrenched from my skull, torn from my body. I would expect it to die after having fed on me for so long. But instead, it would coil itself, smug and poised to strike.
Pain warps time and stretches it thin. Hours expand, becoming infinite, until the entire world reduces to a single, suffocating moment.
I have measured my childhood in fragmented moments. Each one is a signpost along the unending road of endurance.
I’m on the school bus, slumped against the window, music in my ears, lost in some faroff daydream. The rhythm of the road rocks me into detachment, and for a moment, I forget I’m even in motion. Everything feels still, weightless. Suddenly, I’m yanked out of my calm. The realization slams into me: I am trapped inside a moving vehicle. My stomach turns, and panic creeps in. I want to get off. I want to escape. I want to fling myself out the emergency exit, to be anywhere but there, or maybe something darker. I want the entire bus to vanish in some freak accident, swallowed up by the road.
In that moment, the bus becomes a microcosm of my larger experience with pain. Trapped in motion, suspended between two states of
detachment and panic, I feel an overwhelming sense of helplessness.
Nobody enjoys crying, but I have always avoided it like the plague. It expels the day’s worth of hydration I work so fervently to maintain, draining fluid from my most delicate places.
The memories blur together. There was no single ‘worst’ migraine, no definitive ‘worst’ day. I often ended up in the nurse’s office at school. My parents always approached the school’s calls with a gentle benevolence that I cherish. But one day stands out: the day when, for the first and only time, the pain reduced me to tears.
I remember roaming the house like a dead girl. I tested every soft surface, thrashing like the provoked snake itself until I curled up and sobbed on our little red reading couch. I couldn’t believe what was happening to me.
There is something uniquely cruel about a body that betrays itself. The cruelty embeds itself into the fabric of your being, becoming indistinguishable from you. I grew cautious. I learned to fear touch, to fear movement. Any wrong shift, any moment of carelessness could awaken the snake.
Over time, the snake began to quiet. The pain didn’t randomly disappear one
day. It faded gradually and imperceptibly, until one day I realized that it was no longer a constant.
The pain did not vanish. It never could. But it no longer ruled me. The migraines became occasional rather than inevitable. Nausea no longer dictated my days. The cycle had broken — not completely, but enough for me to feel free and able to imagine a life beyond survival.
With that freedom came curiosity.
I turned to my laptop, not with fear of the light triggering an attack, but with purpose. I discovered that some SSRIs had been shown to ease migraines. They worked by redirecting neurotransmitters tied to both mood and pain regulation. Suddenly, it made sense. The connection between mind and body: The way pain seeped between the two, never content to be confined.
I digested that knowledge for a long time, this idea that the pain had never been just physical
Nowadays, the snake contently sleeps. It coils in the hollows of my skull, shifting only slightly. Some days, it writhes. I exist as it lashes against the walls of my mind, gnashing invisible fangs, twisting itself into impossible knots.
I no longer fear it. Like the snake I once touched, it is simply there, alive but powerless, non-venomous and harmless in its stillness. It lingers, but I am not paralyzed by its grip anymore. I know that it no longer holds the same bite. ■
by JOCELYN KOVACH
There’s an electric buzzing. A voice croons from the speaker in the corner of the office building. The room is small, confined. The noise of my breathing is synched with the person hovering over my body. I feel vulnerable. Not just because I’m naked from the waist up, but because of the needle driving pigment into my skin.
It’s my sister’s design. It’s one of the only ties we have to each other now that she’s moved out. I’ve never felt so alone, yet I want to get her etched onto my largest living organ. It’s one of the few tangible representations of the strength of our friendship. My side aches. My arms are numb from being held over my head. I resist allowing my lungs to inflate and expand my rib cage. My artist’s gentle breath flows down my back and along my chest, tickling like a waterfall.
This is the only way I know to express how much she means to me. The
There’s an electric buzzing.
It seems like almost every conversation we have now starts with, “Do you remember when mom and dad…”
No, I don’t remember. I don’t want to remember. The pain that comes from dredged up memories sits in my throat like bile. Allie can only remember what happened to her. I can’t blame her. It wasn’t easy growing up in a house so fixated on success. I don’t remember enough of our childhood and she remembers too much. I have a tendency now to lash out, especially at Allie. She doesn’t know about my years of wishing I wasn’t alone. I’m trying to train my body out of a wounded mindset, but I’m not a dog. I can’t keep biting.
Allie graduated college last year and now lives where I go to school. It’s nice being close, but when we are too close, we repel eachother. She yelled at me for not inviting her around enough, crying because she was so upset. I got angry. Of course she doesn’t remember calling college apartments disgusting. We’re two parallel lines, or two halves of a magnet. I don’t really care. She cares so incredibly much.
My childhood memories are buried deep behind the iron walls in my brain. I like it better this way. It means I don’t have to remember the dishes
She only does stick-and-pokes, and I don’t know how long I can take the perpetual torture of needle driving into flesh. At least with a machine, it’s done fast.
That’s not the only reason I hesitate. How do I tell her that I can’t take her inflicting any more pain on me?
The restaurant we are in is small. Bamboo panels cover the walls and the table wobbles. We found this place by accident. I was driving around with Allie, my small car jolting with each pothole we hit on the cracked pavement. We argued about where to eat, my music humming softly in the background. We passed hunger and hit anger, and it sat red-hot in our stomachs. I pulled over at the first convenient spot, which happened to be a mom-and-pop sushi place. It must have been fate.
Allie’s a tattoo artist. She graduated from college, started working for Apple, and hated not having a creative outlet so she built a place for herself. The familial pressure put onto her is no easy feat, but she’s soared above the bar of most expectations easily; she carries the baggage of the sacrifices she made to get there.
“So if you got another tattoo, what would it be?”
Allie knows I like my tattoos to have sentimentality. If she figures out what I want, she’ll draw it and convince me.
“I’m not sure yet.” Allie has a glint in her eye that tells me she won’t let this be until I agree to let her tattoo me. I’m not yet convinced.
I don’t know, and my voice wavers as I say, “Flowers. You know, like one for each birth month.”
I wanted to sound cool but landed just shy of suave and fell into the deep cavern of embarrassment inherent to being a little sibling. Allie scoffs. She’s the artist of the family; odd scraps of paper from her sketchbooks are pinned on walls and attached to the refrigerator. Lines that would come out crooked if I drew them are always perfect when coming from her.
I’m jealous. I wish I could translate what went on in my
brain in such a beautiful way.
“That’s so basic.”
She pulls out her iPad. It’s new. Mom and dad got it for her since she’s going to need it for her undergraduate art classes.
“Like this?” she asks.
It’s a simple drawing.
“Yeah. Can you make the lines thinner?” I say.
The look she shoots me says she thinks it was good enough. She doesn’t really care. I care so incredibly much.
My phone chimes. Allie’s asking when I’m free again. She says she misses me. I ignore the message for now and go back to sitting on the balcony with my roommate. Allie’s been trying to reach out more, saying we’re the only people that’ll be there for each other for forever.
I’m bitter. It’s hard not to be. My ribs burn with the memory of begging so desperately for her approval. I’ll never forget her reaction to seeing my tattoo for the first time.
“They fucked you up,” Allie bluntly stated.
If only she knew that I don’t care about her opinion anymore. If only she knew that it’s too little, too late.
If the room were the color of our mood, it would shine a bright golden, brighter than any dragon’s hoard. The white walls are already decorated with odd paintings and knick-knacks found at thrift stores. Once someone else’s treasure, they now add to the treasure of this home. My cheeks hurt from how hard I’m smiling. We sit together on the lumpy patchwork couch she found on the side of the road in College Station. I’ve never gotten along with someone as wholeheartedly as I have with my sister. I can’t remember why we don’t hang out as often. It’s like our brain was built in the same way. We’re almost the same person genetically, so of course we’re going to be a unit against the world’s influence. My sides ache. It’s not the ache of wishing the patch of flesh on my side would melt off, but the muscular feeling of laughing too hard, drawing air in and forcing it out too fast. Her room is small but bursting with character; our parents’ record player sits in one corner, and the mug declaring her the “best sister ever” sits on her wooden bedside table. I miss this.
Then the night ends and we go back to our individual lives. I grab my keys and drive back through Austin traffic to return to the hellscape of West Campus. She forgets about me until it’s convenient for her. I’m not her first choice of company. That’s okay. I’ve paid in pain for the short hours of her time.
I have an appointment scheduled for tomorrow. I’m craving the metal puncturing my skin. Let me decorate my hollow shell with another piece of beautiful pain and escape my head for a little while. ■
I will always him as the man he was that day, everything and about. remember nothing the one I knew
by DANIELLE YAMPULER
layout ANGELINA CONDE
There’s a room in my head where I take him apart to preserve what I can.
I dig the scalpel barely a centimeter into hisflesh.IrunitalongwhereIimaginetheseams of his body would be if he were a toy, birthed from being sewn together. I cut a thin red line around the back of his head and peel at the incision carefully. I want his face to stay as intact as possible.
The last time I saw him, we were in a room lined wall-to-wall with beautifully-preserved dead animals. I was too scared to move and accidentally touch one of the stuffed rabbits he had reconstructed from roadkill or knock over his preserved jar of preserved snakes. I felt a primal sense of fear but could not tell if it was caused by the predators around the room baring their teeth at me or the thought of death itself.
I remember feeling ashamed of being scared by something he loved so much. I felt guilty that I could not hide my discomfort, but how could I? He knew everything about me. He could see how stiffly I held my body, the way I barely spoke.
He asked if I wanted to leave, and I’m certain he knew I was lying when I politely responded, “No, here is fine.”
I found comfort in the skulls that sat on his shelves and focused my eyes on them. They had been there since I met him and didn’t spark this sense of discomfort in me. Their lack of flesh made them seem sterile and separate from life. In the present, they were barely noticeable among all the animals he had stuffed, skinned, bleached…
I lay his skin out to dry.
He first came to me in the form of a girl just as odd and young as I was.
I was an unusually confident 12-year-old lesbian. He was a new student with an inability to assimilate even in a theater class. We gravitated toward each other with an almost cosmic certainty and had felt compelled to spill our life stories the moment we met. From that point on, he and I were conjoined in a way that was notable to outsiders. We would meet at the end of the day and recount stories of boys whispering our names before laughing to their friends and girls we had never talked to approaching us to ask if we were each other’s girlfriends.
I could tell he was queer from the moment I met him, but that wasn’t unusual. Weird closeted gays flocked to me like moths to their guiding light. His intense curiosity about my sexuality didn’t help his case. I had already learned that if a person came to me with a little too many questions about the queer experience, it wouldn’t be long before they came out.
He quickly figured out that he liked girls, yet still had much more to ask. These were usually atypical questions I didn’t know how to answer. Laying on his bedroom floor late at night during sleepovers, I would I would listen to him try and explain how he felt while imagining the animal skulls that sat near me growing back their bodies.
I stopped him once to ask why he had the remains.
“I think they’re cool. I’d love to get more,” he responded. Then he asked, “What if I want to like girls, but in the way boys like girls?”
“You don’t have to be a boy to like girls,” I defensively replied.
Despite my initial anger, I could tell he was trying to describe something he could not verbalize. It often felt like he was trying to scrape something out of me that he could only find within himself, but I couldn’t give him answers about an experience I had never lived. His situation began to make more sense when he told me his worst fear: him, as an old woman. His hair white, hands brittle — a sign that he would never change, even if he refused to accept what he’d rather be.
Hearing this prompted me to question him endlessly with the insensitive curiosity only a middle schooler could possess. Our conversations often ended with us in tears as he voiced his fear that he would not be a good man. I would listen attentively, eager to dissect his words and reassemble them into something we could use to make sense of his feelings.
I spent all my time with him and every moment without him waiting to see him again. Our mutual obsession felt almost romantic. It certainly was to him.
I had already learned how to reject people when he confessed to having a crush on me. He understood and dropped the subject with painful urgency. I knew by then that when you aid somebody in learning how they love, eventually they will want to transfer that love onto you. It was common for those that asked me questions about being queer to confess a crush on me months later, but I had never been so close to the admirer. It felt painful to push him away. Doing so created a distance that had not existed prior and would never be closed.
corpora
I lay the skin over the metal frame that shapes his chest, and I wonder if my guilt will carry on forever. I wonder if my heart will always squeeze a little when I hear his name.
I remember when he started to call himself a man in quiet tones, like if he said it too certainly the universe would strike him down.
Our time together would end shortly after with an abruptness that my feelings were not prepared for. We attended different high schools and suddenly went from two children entirely obsessed with each other to mutual afterthoughts.
I saw him sparingly. I learned his new legal name through text messages. I only saw him post-top surgery months after the procedure had been done. With trimmed hair, stubble on his chin, and a flat chest, he looked like an entirely different person. His interest in taxidermy evolved with him: instead of merely collecting skulls, he began to gather and preserve carcasses himself.
His passion may have been morbid, but I defended it against the many who called it demented. All of his dead animals were ethically sourced. He would clean the corpses and reconstruct them with care, granting them eternal existence. His hobby grew not from a fascination with death but a love for life, an empathy so deep that many choose not to understand it. He was tasked with the unique process of recreating his own body, and he still found the time to do the same for animals.
Despite my understanding of him and what he loved, his affinity for the macabre made my skin crawl. I used to beg for details about the preservation process in an attempt to maintain the bond between us. However, I couldn’t help but feel bile build in my throat when he would describe setting beetles upon a carcass to clean its flesh from its bones and be nauseated by the smell of formaldehyde.
I dress him, pose him just as I would like. My reconstruction of him is not the man he is today, but it is the man he was to me.
That final time I stared at his skulls, he still knew me, but I did not know him. He had become someone new in our time apart. I was the same person I always was. I wondered if the difference was as stark to him as it was to me.
He could at least tell that his room had become an ecosystem I no longer fit into. He must have. Why else would he open his door and guide me out?
I felt the tension in my shoulders release away from the staring eyes of lives that had been paused indefinitely. I watched him close the door to his room, and we hung out elsewhere.
Ilookuponmyfinalrecollectionofhim,theartpieceIbuiltusinghisremains. He is gently shutting the door to his bedroom, and subsequently, a life I no longer have a place in.
I will love him forever, and he will remain static in my mind for the rest of time. ■
layout SARAH DAVID photographer SOFIA ALVAREZ stylists OLIVIA BIRGE & PATSY TORRES hmua ZIADA ARAYA models AMARI HERRERA & VICTORIA HALES
videographer DAT HA & SIENNA MADRIGAL
by KATHERINE PAGE
young girl stands alone in the cavernous, candlelit hallway of her family’s estate, tracing her finger along the cold stone wall. In the next room, voices hum and echo incoherently down the halls. The girl does not realize they are speaking of her. She does not know that their presence marks an absence and that the Duchy of Aquitaine has just lost its Duke. The men speak in stern and solemn tones, but they are not mourning her father. Rather, they are discussing the future of his daughter and the domain that she is set to inherit.
Eleanor of Aquitaine was gracile when she inherited her father’s title at eleven. She is now 15. Her skin is pale, flushed, and embellished by soft lines left by her corset. Her thin frame drowns in
the fabric of her bilaut, and her dainty wrists peek out from heavy sleeves. Eleanor is prepubescent. Unripened. Puerile. Her body is becoming a commodity set to be passed into the hands of those who see Eleanor as only a vessel for power and fortune. One of these men is the King of France, who seeks to add Aquitaine to his kingdom and thus asks for Eleanor’s hand in marriage. Thrust into the suffocating, polished sphere of Louis VII, any vestige of her youth unravels.
Her new life with Louis begins poorly. Eleanor suffers a miscarriage only a year into marriage. She isn’t able to get pregnant again for another seven.
Consequently, rumors spread about her. Her reputation is pierced with accusations of infertility, infidelity, even consanguinity. She is accused of harboring dark powers — melusine reborn, whisper some. Cardinals, abbotts, and legates flit around her husband’s court, urging Eleanor to stay under God’s light so that she may give birth to a son, attributing her misfortune to her own moral failing.
Luckily, after ten years, Eleanor manages to become pregnant. Unluckily, the process of childbirth is brutal and perilous. It carries high risk of infection, eclampsia, and death. Trapped in a dark room and surrounded by midwives, Eleanor is moved, poked, and prodded. One hand clings to rope as she tries to hold herself up. The other palms the birthing girdle under her chemise, a measly piece of silk embellished with prayers and blessings. It does nothing to end the torment of another wave of pain crashing through her.
Eleanor gives birth to a healthy child. But — much to the chagrin of her husband and his retinue — it is a girl. Five years later, she delivers another one.
The queen likely only held them once before they were taken to be raised and fed by servants and wet nurses. The love that Eleanor was growing for the girls is cut short, while whispers of her inability to produce a legitimate heir follow her around like a bad stench. Unsurprisingly, the court advises King Louis to annul their marriage.
During the interim between marriage and pregnancy, however, Eleanor began to test the boundaries of her power. She practices boldly voicing her thoughts to the very advisors who had insulted her. With deafening sharpness, Eleanor tells them what she thinks of their politics. When they react with shock and anger, the queen cries.
“Forgive me,” she would say, daintily wiping her tears away. “I have forgotten myself, as I am unable to become pregnant.”
The men thus forgive her pityingly, unaware of the seeds she sows in their minds.
When Eleanor hears of the annulment, her response is quick. Her confidence in her practiced power is already taking root. She will not be rapuit et abduxit.
Only six weeks after leaving Louis, Eleanor of Aquitaine is married to King Henry II of England. She has already
peeled herself from her ex-husband like shed skin, and she has dispassionately left her daughters in their father’s kingdom. Eleanor will never see them again.
Her spine is a pillar of strength. Her shoulder blades are sharp, and her hands are stable. Her figure is plump yet controlled — fecund and svelte, draped in a gown of rich velvet. Deep crimson clings to her supple skin, with embellishment that mark her newest riches. Her long auburn hair is braided neatly into her veil. Eleanor’s lithe neck holds the weight of the British crown. Yet, her lips are pressed into a firm, stern line, eyes ablaze with determination.
She is once again a queen. Now her womb will bear kings.
Eleanor’s first children, Henry, and Richard, are born quickly after the wedding. They are followed by five more in the years to come. Each pregnancy is less painful than the last, and Eleanor meticulously collects these pawns for her
“Sheisonce
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political gain.
Servants raise them. Tutors, under the queen’s orders, prepare them for the political stage. All the while, Eleanor concerns herself with the affairs of the kingdom, ruling alongside her husband with quiet authority.
She sits at a desk with piles of papers and reports strewn haphazardly, detailing unrest in numerous different areas throughout the region. Only dim candlelight illuminates the letters, as pondering eyes scan each line. Eleanor begins to write her own letters, commanding armies, vassals, and lords. Steady hands unravel and turmoil of the court.
When she finishes writing, her gaze falls upon one last missive, tucked unnoticed among the others. She picks it up to realize that it is from her son, Henry the Young King, who is now eighteen. His words state that he has been given land from his father and named comonarch of the kingdom. But they turn bitter as he details his displeasure with King Henry II, who continues to maintain strict, authoritarian control over his domain. Her son’s title is a hollow one.
At the end of the letter, Henry reveals his plan to revolt against his father’s reign, his brothers alongside him.
The queen furrows her brows, biting at her lip nervously as she closes the letter. Eventually, she picks up her quill again and begins to draft another message. Each stroke supports
her son’s cause, as she encourages them to take up arms and make the necessary political alliances. Eleanor solidifies her words with a glossy wax seal.
King Henry later learns of his wife’s betrayal when she refuses to send her army to help crush the revolt. It then dawns on him the extent of Eleanor’s influence. Henry had spent the better part of their marriage concerned with his own duties, fights, and governances. He begs Eleanor to take the veil, and when she refuses, Henry II sends his soldiers to tear her from her home and lock her away in his castle.
An older Eleanor sits by the narrow window of her stony chamber, tracing a finger along the wall. Everything around her is silent, except the quiet hum of movement from outside. The days stretch into months, into years. Eleanor fills time with trivial things, such as needlework and reading. The years have softened her. Her complexion is puckered and rubicund. Grand adornments have been taken from her during imprisonment, so she wanders around a room furnished sparsely with simple linens. Eleanor is now patient and forbearing.
In the distance, she sees a man on a horse. He rides quickly, and as he gets closer Eleanor realizes that it is her son, Richard. She has been imprisoned for sixteen years, and she has not
seen or heard from him the entire time. When he arrives at the castle, he tells her that her husband and her eldest son are dead.
“I have taken the crown,” he says.
They embrace, and Richard cries, lauding over how much time has passed. Eleanor’s body has changed beyond recognition. Her hair is gray and her back is slightly hunched.
Despite the frailty of her frame, Eleanor is more powerful than ever before. Richard has given almost all of his dominion to his mother, trusting her to guide it with wise hands. She rules as regent while Richard the Lionheart stays overseas, fighting wars and gaining land. She manages finances and alliance building, and quells any potential revolt.
She spends the rest of her life on the throne, ornamented with lush regal gowns and jewelry. She sits in red and gold, a sparkling and heavy crown on her head, a sovereign sceptre in her hands. Despite her age, she holds the weight with dignity. Eleanor has reached this point through drudgery and backbreaking work by stretching her body to the limit. She exhausted her womb, and the extensions of her womb. She defied those who sought to police her. Eleanor of Aquitaine has reached the highest form of power that a woman in her time can reach.
She is king and she dies as king.
Eleanor rests now, next to the very husband who sought to keep her imprisoned. Her gisant is slim and elegant. A crown and a veil enrich her visage. Unlike her husband, Eleanor sits upwards. She is physically above him. Even in death, she has made herself unbeholden. ■
by OLLIE VUCKOVIC
photographer ANTHONY NGUYEN
stylist CYNTHIA LIRA
hmua FLORIANA HOOL
models NAYEON HEO & JOHN-ANTHONY BORSI
layout JOHN WALTON
videographer JOSE JIMENEZ
’m tangled on the ground, inextricable from my bike and grotesquely disfigured from the accident. Flesh meets frame; bone and metal collide. My thoughts loop on unwanted images: a car running a red light, hitting a pothole and going flying, colliding with a teammate, a dog running in front of the wheel, taking a corner too tight, wheels sliding out from under me. Nightmares haunt my daytime rides.
Before we became one — back when it was just a fling — I saw my bike as my enemy. It felt unfair that when we finished a ride, I would spend hours recovering and doing homework while it got to sit in the corner and rest, unbothered. I rode like I wanted to punish it, punching my feet into the asphalt below. When I was first learning to climb and the road got too steep for my abilities, I would sometimes pop a wheelie on accident. Pulling on the handlebars with my full force, I would lift the front wheel off the ground and it would come crashing back down a few feet to the right or left, causing me to topple over onto the asphalt. There’s something reassuring about falling on a hill. If you have to choose a time for it to happen, it’s better to do it going five miles an hour rather than twenty.
My riding is jagged. All I hear is the sharp sound of my own breathing. Raspy and wheezing, it takes up my headspace. The scenery is usually reduced to a blur of color, but now the minutiae around me have come into focus. I note the small cracks in the asphalt as my head hangs low, lips moving in a prayer for the end. My body rocks with momentum as I stand out of the saddle, pushing the pedals down. If there are no cars, I’ll try and sweep wide, zig zag up the steepest
segments of road. When a car does pass, I jump. One small mistake in my handling would veer me into its path. I focus on keeping my front wheel facing straight, pushing my weight against the handlebars, and moving forward.
As the road flattens out, I cough up the last vestiges of my energy. The flags and flower boxes of happy suburban houses cheer me on while I suck down the first packaged energy goop I can fish out of my jersey pocket and squirt some water into my mouth. It’s lukewarm, but I savor it anyway. The bike rests between my legs. I cross my arms over the handlebars and lean down, closing my eyes for just a minute.
***
I named my bike Cherry for her deep maroon color, but I don’t tell many people that. I used to think it was silly to name an object. But after we’ve spent so much time together it feels wrong to leave her nameless. I think the name gives her a soul. She’s fitted to my body with precision. We were measured with lasers and the eye of an expert who tapped her seat centimeters lower and angled her handlebars a few degrees higher until our geometries were aligned. I know when I slip on my cycling shoes and clip myself into the pedals that she and I become a team of tangled fate. If one of us goes down, so will the other.
I pat the side of Cherry’s top tube to wake her up, then I clip in, push off, and we glide away together. I mumble complaints while I wait for the sugar to revive me, but Cherry doesn’t say much. She just carries me along. I can see the bend in the horizon and Cherry picks up speed as the road dips down. Gruesome images flash through my head, so I try imagining my happy place. But I’m already there.
On the descent, I hide my conscious mind away in a corner. Everything is moving too fast for any active thought to be helpful. I’m bent low with my face near the bars and elbows angled back. The wind batters my face and tears bead in the corner of my eyes. My knees are angled and braced for impact. All I hear is the wind in my ears and the mechanical bike. The world blurs around me, but her handlebars stay in focus. A twitch of my fingers and Cherry’s gear shifts lower. I spin my legs and she moves faster. My body leans into the curves of the mountain road and she follows. We avoid debris and cracks in the road that feel imperceptible to me. I trust her judgement.
When I’m back on flat road, I coast for as long as I can and hope the momentum will carry me to the end of the ride. Eventually, the magic of physics wears off, and my legs have to start spinning again. It’s not effortful, but it’s constant. My mind comes out from its hiding spot and takes note of our surroundings. I hear the sounds of my teammates chattering, cars flying past, and the mechanical crunch of the chain potentially signaling danger. I imagine her chain snapping, axles wiggling loose, handlebars popping off, brake pads failing, wheels falling off. I imagine Cherry falling apart under me, piece by piece, until it’s just me and the road and a pile of parts.
I come to a halt. The ride is over. At home, Cherry goes to the corner of my room and sits there, untouched, for the next five months.
These days, I spend a lot of my time training on stationary bikes. On my walks to the gym, I pass by cyclists out for their morning rides and feel a pang of jealousy. Under the cover of dim gym lights, I slip on my cycling shoes and clip myself into the bike. I spin my legs for an hour and check my phone periodically. But when the screen in front of me turns to lush green mountain passes and rolling roads, it feels like my hands start to flicker on the bars. I run through all of the places I’ve looked down at them: a real continent
Here, there are no brakes to squeeze, no curves to lean into, no cars to dodge. I just listen to the pop music blaring in my headphones and wait for the song of the road to pull me back in.
BLACK JACKET
BLACK CHAPS
Leopard Lounge
RED DENIM PANTS
Leopard Lounge
by ARIEL BARLEY & ANDREANA JOI FAUCETTE
layout EMMY CHEN creative director JADEN SPURLOCK photographer WILLIAM WHITWORTH stylist ANDROMEDA ROVILLAIN & TOMAS TREVIÑO
hmua FLORIANA HOOL models ALEX BASILLIO & JADEN SPURLOCK
videographer BRANDON PORRAS
You don’t know but you ask, quick-witted You wish But you cannot undo
The world could be lighter
This curse It’s a secret until broken into words wound taught.
