St. Andrew's "Us" Magazine Spring 2026

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Editor’s Note: This magazine emanated from the hearts and minds of the St. Andrew’s class of ‘26. Within these pages you will hear their voices as they offer glimpses into what they have learned about life and the delicate realities of being “human” up to this point in their young lives. The depth of their work is impressive, their willingness to be vulnerable, courageous, their commitment to share themselves as a legacy to this place honorable. This is a class like no other–a class of beautiful individuals whose absence will be felt the moment after they walk across that stage.

Thank you class of ‘26 for who you have been, all you have done.

Editors: Yosmel Amparo Moya

Harrison Aligbe

Lulu Crossley

David Aulisio

Jackson Kelley

Javier Bustos Piña

Joshua Maddaloni

Joachim Ding

Breyden Perez

Andrew Duong

Dioner Restituyo

Jack Gravina

Violet Vandale

Sawyer Guldi

Darby Young

Oneil Johnson

Ceadan Ash

Nick Markham

Dominic Cimini

Daniel Martinez

Bill Frechette

Natasha Ózarek

Alexis Gasparini

Corey Runyan

Peter Jiminez

Jiayuan Sun

Devin Knight

George Zarnadze

Julian Paukert

Jiawei Zhu

Addie Scheffer

Bryce Zhu

Jakeem Stedford Aiko Thangtharnarkeat

Faculty Advisor: Robert

Evan Xue

Tisdale

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Table of Contents

●​ In Plain Sight — Lulu Crossley Theme I: Where Home Remains

●​ “After” — Oneil Johnson

●​ Beach and Dreams — Aiko

●​ Love is Blind and Bliss — Anonymous

Thangtharnarkeat

●​ Artwork by — Breyden Perez ●​ No Title — George Zarnadze ●​ No Title — Yosmel Amparo Moya ●​ Artwork by — Breyden Perez

●​ Stop & Smell The Flowers — Darby Young ●​ Artwork by — Sally Lin

●​ Two More Months — Violet Vandale ●​ The Path Unseen — Breyden Perez

●​ The “used to” — Darby Young ●​ Artwork by — Joshua Maddaloni

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Theme III: Becoming After the Break ●​ The Meadow — Bill Frechette ●​ Fleeting — Anonymous ●​ Where Height Found a Purpose — Alexis Gasparini ●​ The Red-Feathered bird — Julian Paukert ●​ Artwork by — Violet Vandale ●​ Stew of Life — Anonymous ●​ Artwork by — Sally Lin ●​ INEVITABLE — Anonymous ●​ Artwork by — Sally Lin ●​ Shells = Shells — Anonymous

Theme II: What Silence Holds ●​ Sailboat Captain — Joshua Maddaloni ●​ Artwork by — Violet Vandale ●​ Echo of You — Breyden Perez ●​ Don’t Speak — Dioner Restituyo ●​ Bound by Distance — Lulu Crossley ●​ Artwork by — Bogi Bodnar

Finale: ●​ My Constantinople —Jackson Kelley ●​ Artwork by - Jiaye Hu

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Where Home Remains Pieces in this section return to a place, to childhood, to landscapes, and to memories,–– reminders of what students call home.

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Beach and Dreams

by Aiko Thangtharnarkeat

One ocean, two beaches.

This one is brown The other one is golden Both are home in the same sunlight But both waves whisper The same soft sound “You are never really lost when the sea is around” No mangoes here, Just the canned ones, but there’s blueberries still, I am ok I close my eyes I feel the sand.

Home is not a place It’s where I stand.

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By Breyden Perez

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No Title

by George Zarnadze

Mountains rise like stories older than memory, etched into the sky.

Streets carry echoes of footsteps, languages, lives, There is strength here, quiet but firm, like stone that has seen everything and still stands.

Between East and West, it holds its ground without losing itself.

Georgia does not ask to be understood.

It simply exists, deep, rooted, and enduring.

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No Title

by Yosmel Amparo Moya

There’s a certain kind of silence that only exists in memories.

Growing up didn’t feel like something that was happening.

It felt like something far away.

Like a word adults used when they wanted you to go to bed early or stop playing in the dirt.

You never really realized you were already in the middle of it.

There are pieces of it I wish I could hold again Not the big moments, like birthdays or holidays everyone took pictures of, but the small, forgettable ones that somehow became so. The sound of your name being called from across the house.

The feeling of sitting in the backseat, with no idea where you’d end up.

Nostalgia is strange like that. It doesn’t ask for permission.

It sneaks up on you in the middle of a random afternoon a song, a smell, the way the sunlight hits the ground.

And suddenly, You’re not here anymore, you’re there.

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By Breyden Perez

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Stop & Smell The Flowers

by Darby Young

I often find myself nostalgic for the moments I am still in, Soaking up the old memories, While forgetting to make new ones to appreciate I clutch to those temporary moments As if they will become permanent experiences I try to pull myself From the mind I escape to In order to embrace The moments I have yet to hold Instead of cherishing the beautiful imperfectness Of a moment’s reality And perhaps, this is my personal curse This perpetual nostalgia The bittersweet ache of missing a moment So much it hurts And in having such a curse I have not entirely experienced The life I have already lived And I know Someday I will find myself Mad at the younger version of me The version that was foolish enough to believe That a memory can outlast a moment

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By Sally Lin

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Two More Months

by Violet Vandale

march the world starts to turn from its cold still state energy from the sun comes out of hiding flowers sprout, wind blows, rays shine school is draining every last drop that spring break recharged. teachers push, we slow down morning wakeups are harder, falling asleep worse, that nag inside pulling at the strings that remind us, one day we’re not going to walk these halls fold over laughing in class stand at lunch for there was a lack of chairs try to stifle a laugh during a moment of silence two more months until we walk that stage each step remembering a new memory from the past few years holding your diploma, smiling. walking out with the whole grade to toss the caps that commence our next journey grateful for every second and yearning for what's next, but first, two more months.

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By Breyden Perez

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The “used to”

by Darby Young The knot tying me to my past Is now loosening its grip Yet I find myself unable to let go The unbearable thought that The childhood I once wished to cease Irrevocably has The shield of childhood innocence I once carried No longer protects me From the complexities of a world I have yet to explore I once craved The freedom I now fear Strangely, the moment I have so long prepared for Now seems newly terrifying And my thoughts are fixated on the single, unmoving fact That we will soon be no more Our photos will serve as A reminder of a past we once shared Our echoed laughter will become distant, quiet Barely remembered And our lunch table Will belong to a different group of friends They will sit in our seats and share their own stories As we once did in the space we used to call our own Slowly, We will become nothing more than A memory of the past A once happy story of friends Who now must learn how to say goodbye To prepare for a world we wish to claim But, perhaps, this is the point of growing up To grow out To learn how to leave your past behind In order to make space For something new For someone else And only now can we realize that our permanence Never truly was But our temporary existence here Will forever remain sweet in our hearts As “we are” becomes “we used to”

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By Joshua Maddaloni

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Theme II

What Silence Holds These works gather around love, grief, betrayal, distance, and the things people cannot or do not say.

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Sailboat Captain

by Joshua Maddaloni

How do you quantify a man that is gone? Can’t be with grief, though it unites us. Though it is the universal language that every person must learn to speak. No, it is not grief that quantifies a man that is gone. Is it impact? His was the first obituary I wrote, and following its publication, dozens of people he had encountered through 86 years wrote a reflection of a great man.

I never saw him in the hospital.

One friend wrote of the comforting mortem analogy of the marina’s waves lapping at the sunset, and watching him captain his sailboat alone. He is in bliss. As the waves come, his boat is simply pulled into the horizon by the tide until he is small, and then he is no more. No pain, just the grand world breathing him out.

I left his wake early.

I wish he had seen me get accepted into the same college as his mother, who had graduated 100 years earlier. His death turns my mother into a writer, the way it does to his friends. She said she was never much of a writer, but yet she quantifies a man at her funeral speech. Her brother reads a bible verse, and the other is of few words. Only upon his death did I learn how big his life was. He cared about disadvantaged youth getting an education, he preserved historical sites, he helped build a bridge on a wildlife trail. The ebb and flow of the sailboats.

His brother wrote to me, congratulating me, and I don’t know how to make this a conversation not about death.

I wear shirts of his that are much too big for me, even though he was a small man. Maybe only towards the end. I keep watch of cyclists on the road while driving, seeing him in their faces. I sometimes want to tell older men at my coffee job that I miss them, though they do not know who I am.

When he was young, he was plump with cherry cheeks like mine.

I did not want this to be a story about grief.

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By Violet Vandale

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Echo of You

by Breyden Perez

I see you in the stillness, where regret and longing meet, a whisper in the silence, a shadow on the street.

Your laughter echoes my day, your absence my darkest night, I held you close with shattered hands, and dulled the light of what is bright. I follow the path I broke, a map of what could have been, but every path leads back to you, even when distance separates us again. If time were to stay on my side I'd turn the clock to start, but all I have is the echo of you, beating in my heart.

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Don’t Speak

by Dioner Restituyo

don’t speak, words only affirm... lies unraveled My pointer pressed against your lips, don’t speak, I can’t take what flows through the slit between rose heavens, your lips, screaming to lock with mine, don’t speak, Press the fore of your head to mine and feel our temples merge, feel me, insatiable. don’t speak, concerned not by words, Now engulfed in your presence, swimming through the subtle folds of your body I feel you, Words are only reflections of interaction, the shallow presence of communication I feel you, I don’t need words.

Don’t speak.

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Bound by Distance

by Lulu Crossley I hold you close to my heart Unable to speak about you It’s painful not to look at you And even harder when we're apart Walking in the halls We pretend not to notice each other I see you looking at me No communication We smile, we laugh Loving you is a hyper fixation Together we thrive Apart we divide The distance between us deepens In the things we don't confide.

And what we keep in silence Starts to scar inside.

You will stay with me forever.

Forgetting about you, I may never.

Lying to people I'm close to But you're worth it Nobody has a clue If only they knew our whole truth Some won't understand I've accepted that Like falling with nowhere to land Love gives us the strength to stand We crave each other Space feels tragic But being with you feels like magic A rush travels through my body Like lightning through the dark Every glance, every moment leaves a permanent mark If fear could disappear Maybe love would soften into this Something we don't have to brace against, Something we could simply feel. But I still choose you, Always in shadows or in light Even if it were hidden Even if it's not right Because what we have is real No matter what they see And if loving you is wrong, It's still where I will be

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By Bogi Bodnar

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In Plain Sight

by Lulu Crossley

I realized slowly Not in a single breath, But in small moments, As my best friend It was the way you reacted I expected more I kept silent In fear of losing you But every time you mentioned him My entire world turned blue You knew how I felt about him The name I tiptoed around The pain I carried carefully So when I asked, you said no, Maybe for my peace of mind But you knew I'd someday learn the truth A year of questions A year of lies Splitting between While one of us cried You watched me leave the room While you talked on the phone for hours Silent, I was sitting Wishing I had been more admitting.

The truth arrived casually.

As it had never been heavy.

And suddenly every memory shifted Every compliment turned hollow, Every promise left unfinished Losing him was easier than I thought The hardest part was the betrayal It wasn't the fact that you did it But the fact that you lied After a year of not being friends, it’s challenging to remember you Most days, I forget until I can only remember the bad Because how could you lie and still call me your best friend?

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“After”

by Oneil Johnson

Losing someone Isn’t always loud Sometimes it’s just space Where closure used to be They're still alive, But now its different Quieter Colder Trust sometimes shatters But it also thins out Slowly You sit with it Thinking about what changed What went wrong Try not to But you do anyways At first it feels heavy Then it feels normal I guess that’s just healing Not fixing Not getting it back Just learning how to live With what's left

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Love is Blind and Bliss

by Anonymous

The end of every relationship is painful and full of suffering. Of remembrance of what once was and what could have been. 25% of first-time relationships stay together; it's a scary statistic that could hang over someone's first relationship. Though the end of one could be a release for someone, release from the toxic individual you backed during that relationship, or vice versa. Love is blind. When in love, the lesser problem could be glaring to an outsider, but to the person in love, it can go right over their head. Let's look at the story of a man named Ike. Ike's story starts like any other. New environment, new problem, meeting new people. Though one person gave them a shot. This woman was kind to Ike; she gave him what he needed at the time, someone to talk to. Then Ike started to realize maybe it was something more, his heart beat faster when he’s around her. He smiles more, he cares more, and he notices more about her. He's fallen for her. Luckily for Ike, she felt the same way. So, as most do, they go out, they connect more, learn more about each other, their faults, their likes, and dislikes. Ike is growing more and more as a person when with this woman. He thinks to himself, he will beat the 25%, he is the 25%. So, let's see if the test of time holds true to his beliefs. They go through their ups and downs, their hardships and high moments. He loves this woman, but she keeps wanting more; she wants more time. Ike is okay giving it. She wants more money. Ike is okay giving it. She wants even more time. Ike is okay giving it. She wants more gifts. Ike is okay giving it. She keeps asking and asking and asking and asking, but never gives. To any sane individual, they would see the issue, but Love is blind, so Ike doesn't notice. Then someone happens who makes Ike question something about it.

She wants him to move forward with their relationship, though he's not really ready to give that to her. He wants to keep things slow, calm, rush nothing, to preserve that special person to him, the one now only in his life, then...

“I want to break up.”

The cursed 5 word sentence Ike never wanted to hear. What went wrong, what did he not give, what did he do, what did he not try hard enough, what made him not the 25%? Her. The answer was right in front of him; it wasn't him, it was her, but he could see it; his love for her was so strong he couldn't see her as the issue. Though the more he thought about it, the more he came to terms with it. He would leave this relationship a shell of his former self. Destroyed by the woman he once loved, though she kept trying to come back to him for some reason. Trying to feed on the love he once held for her, which was slowly fading away. It took Ike 6 months to cut this woman fully out of his life. It was a slow and painful process. Slowly trying to kill the feeling he once had and knew he could never go back to what he once had, knowing how bad he once had it. He didn't fall for the siren calls she made out for him. Then, when he finally succeeded at cutting her out, he was at peace. He was no longer blind; he could see the brightness of the world and the beauty in it. He was finally free. Though there is another thing love is, love is bliss.

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Theme III

Becoming After the Break The final movement turns toward identity, self-acceptance, wounds, change, and survival.

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The Meadow

by Bill Frechette

There once was a man who lived in an isolated shed in the middle of nowhere. The shed was only about the size of a small dorm room, with a wood stove oven and an ice box for storing food. There was no door, instead there was a shoot that dispensed wood and food daily. The only view to the outside world was a large wooden window with a thick pane of glass. The man had never seen the outside world, only heard the groaning and creaking noises of the structure in which he resided. “The outside world is a chaotic place”, the man used to say to himself, “As long as I stay here, everything will be fine.”

One day, the man awoke to a noise he had never heard before. A click, click, click sound came from the center of the window. Whatever was making the noise looked massive, as if it were trying to smash through the glass. Fearing for his life, the man picked up a piece of wood and slammed it near the window. The massive shadow disappeared, but it returned repeatedly. However, as the thing chipped away at the window, it seemed to grow smaller. At one point, the shadow even looked fluffy. One day, as he was about to scare the shadow away again, the glass had grown so thin that he could make out what the creature truly was. It had a red-crested head with black feathers and a long beak. Yes, this whole time he had been terrified of a woodpecker. With one final peck, the woodpecker thrust its beak into the window, shattering the glass completely. The man stood in complete shock. On the other side of the window lay a vast expanse of meadows filled with flowers of all kinds and colors he had never seen before. As he stepped forward, he crossed the boundary into this beautiful world, leaving the shed behind.

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Fleeting

by Anonymous

My last name already means something just not because of me.

My brothers are stars, and I’m the comparison.

“Not as good,” “Almost there,” “You'll get like them someday.”

But I can play too.

I just don’t get seen the same.

Every time I step on the court, it feels like I’m chasing a version of me that isn’t even mine.

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Where Height Found a Purpose

by Alexis Gasparini

Seen early your different You're too tall.

Too tall for front row pictures, Too tall for borrowed clothes.

Too tall to disappear, When things were hard.

I learned to make myself small Rolling shoulders forward, Big baggy clothes.

Trying to seem smaller, In a world that kept pointing me out One day I was approached and recruited Tryouts were missed shots, Embarrassing athletic abilities.

But the potential was higher, And they took a chance For once I wished I was taller I wasn't picked on I was finally appreciated Every rebound, every point, Finally gave me a validation that i was important Early mornings, Long nights.

Behind the scene efforts, Long cry sessions when failing.

Pushed me to go further in my love.

Coaches that doubted fueled me more, Lost championships, lost opportunities Pushed me further to prove myself.

The more I worked, the more noticed I became.

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The Red-Feathered Bird

by Julian Paukert

Once there was a bird, with feathers red and bold All the other birds had feathers marigold The red feathered bird couldn’t help but feel alone His place in society felt so, so, unknown The bird dove in paint yellow like the sun, His outside changed, and the birds saw him as one The bird was one of them, he felt like he belonged But deep deep down, his self worth he had lost He felt like a lie, an image of deceit He dove into water, himself he tried to clean He came back to life, red as maple leaves He knew he was different, but deep down was at peace

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By Violet Vandale

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Stew of Life

by Anonymous

Cauldron empty then a heavy clang The Mothers ladle shaped the land Water filled with greens and meat Life was stewed, in steady beat Life moved on in balanced flow Give and take in equal grown With the ages it came steady For all the stew was ready Then came fourth a different age More was taken, less repaid Vegetables stripped, carved away Meat devoured, waste left to stay Oil bled dark in the brew Fat congealed, the rot, it grew!

Water boiled and rose in cries Bubbling up before our eyes No one reached to take a bowl No one came to mend the whole The cauldron sat in silent blame And no one looked back from where it came

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By Sally Lin

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INVEVITABLE

by Anonymous

With life there's wounds To fix them We choose They're stitched Those wounds Flowers they bloom To fix our new In time the truth Will always come true

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By Sally Lin

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Shells = Shells

by Anonymous

The sun is high, a bridge and by, distant Calm are waters, disturbed only moon.

Sharks fill it, Yet hidden remain.

Boats bob, ships sink, imagined events entertain.

No words can explain.

Thoughts come racing around my head.

I think of the war ensemble of the dead.

The rattle of guns, the sound of shells.

A final charge, into church bells.

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Finale

The Last Memory The closing piece brings the magazine’s themes together: home as sacred place, memory as inheritance, and departure as both grief and survival.

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My Constantinople

by Jackson Kelley

Heaven and earth heave forth a sigh as Turkic saber cuts through the hallowed streets of Constantinople. As the instruments of modern war tear down her walls and begin destroying the capital of the world. Lo, the body of King Constantine XI: meeting the same fate as the common soldier. A saltire shield of red and white bloodied, broken and abandoned in the streets.

She, the city, was the gateway to the west, the crown jewel of christendom, one to which all others aspired.

She, the city, where all people lived and sang in harmony, where lights were never extinguished, where every building radiated with artistry and expression. A single cannonade shot ended it all.

A world of black clouds and grey skies was ushered in A world where even the Hagia Sophia was stripped of all her sanctity and the Hippodrome of all her noise.

And we, the civilians, who were powerless to prevent her fall, now forever dwell in her rubble, with the understanding that she can never be rebuilt. I, for one, cannot bear the thought of living in the rubble, and thus look forward to a day in May, on which a ship can be boarded to sail off into Bosphorus, never again to return to the saltire grounds.

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By Jiaye Hu