US
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
Lulu Crossley
Jackson Kelley
Joshua Maddaloni
Breyden Perez
Dioner Restituyo
Violet Vandale
Darby Young
Ceadan Ash
Dominic Cimini
Bill Frechette
Alexis Gasparini
Peter Jiminez
Devin Knight
Julian Paukert
Addie Scheffer
Jakeem Stedford
Aiko Thangtharnarkeat
Evan Xue
Harrison Aligbe
David Aulisio
Javier Bustos Piña
Joachim Ding
Andrew Duong
Jack Gravina
Sawyer Guldi
Oneil Johnson
Nick Markham
Daniel Martinez
Natasha Ózarek
Corey Runyan
Jiayuan Sun
George Zarnadze
Jiawei Zhu
Bryce Zhu
Faculty Advisor: Robert Tisdale
TableofContents
ThemeI:WhereHomeRemains
● BeachandDreams Aiko Thangtharnarkeat
● Artworkby BreydenPerez
● NoTitle—GeorgeZarnadze
● NoTitle YosmelAmparoMoya
● Artworkby BreydenPerez
● Stop&SmellTheFlowers Darby Young
● Artworkby SallyLin
● TwoMoreMonths VioletVandale
● ThePathUnseen BreydenPerez
● The“usedto” DarbyYoung
● Artworkby JoshuaMaddaloni
● InPlainSight LuluCrossley
● “After” OneilJohnson
● LoveisBlindandBliss Anonymous
ThemeIII:BecomingAftertheBreak
● TheMeadow BillFrechette
● Fleeting Anonymous
● WhereHeightFoundaPurpose Alexis Gasparini
● TheRed-Featheredbird JulianPaukert
● Artworkby VioletVandale
● StewofLife Anonymous
● Artworkby SallyLin
● INEVITABLE Anonymous
● Artworkby SallyLin
● Shells=Shells Anonymous
ThemeII:WhatSilenceHolds
● SailboatCaptain JoshuaMaddaloni
● Artworkby VioletVandale
● EchoofYou BreydenPerez
● Don’tSpeak DionerRestituyo
● BoundbyDistance LuluCrossley
● Artworkby BogiBodnar
Finale:
● MyConstantinople JacksonKelley
● Artworkby-JiayeHu
Where Home Remains
Pieces in this section return to a place, to childhood, to landscapes, and to memories,–– reminders of what students call home
Beach and Dreams
byAikoThangtharnarkeat
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.
ByBreydenPerez
No Title
byGeorgeZarnadze
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.
No Title
byYosmelAmparoMoya
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
ByBreydenPerez
Stop & Smell The Flowers
byDarbyYoung
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
BySallyLin
Two More Months
byVioletVandale
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
ByBreydenPerez
The “used to”
byDarbyYoung
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”
ByJoshuaMaddaloni
ThemeII
What Silence Holds
These works gather around love, grief, betrayal, distance, and the things people cannot or do not say.
Sailboat Captain
byJoshuaMaddaloni
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.
Echo of You
byBreydenPerez
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.
Don’t Speak
byDionerRestituyo
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
Bound by Distance
byLuluCrossley
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
In Plain Sight
byLuluCrossley
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?
“After”
byOneilJohnson
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
Love is Blind and Bliss
byAnonymous
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.
ThemeIII
Becoming After the Break
The final movement turns toward identity, self-acceptance, wounds, change, and survival
The Meadow
byBillFrechette
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.
Fleeting byAnonymous
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.
Where Height Found a Purpose
byAlexisGasparini
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.
The Red-Feathered Bird
byJulianPaukert
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
By Violet Vandale
Stew of Life
byAnonymous
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
BySallyLin
INVEVITABLE
byAnonymous
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
BySallyLin
Shells = Shells byAnonymous
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
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.
My Constantinople
byJacksonKelley
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
ByJiayeHu