"Thalia" 2025-2026

Thalia 2025-2026

EDITORS & STAFF Thalia 2026

Editors: Head Editors: Edythe Cline and Madeline Yorkston Poetry Editor: Olivia Carey Assistant Poetry Editor: Niya Talati Artistic Editors: Claire Kauffman and Sarah Connally Assistant Artistic Editors: Angelina Bwimbo and Raven Russell Fiction Editor: Saaira Gatta Assistant Fiction Editor: Anna Gracia Creative Nonfiction Editor: Anna Willmann Assistant Creative Nonfiction Editor: Ayomide Agboola Playwriting Editor: Dalya Chandler Assistant Playwriting Editor: Marcy Everett Staff: Izzy Bachim, Harmon Baker, Katherine Batton, Saifullah Bhatti, Avery Ewing, Eleanor Hamilton, Asher Heydenburk, Emma Khan, Kerrian Kwofie, Luke Mayfield, Haley Munshi, Victoria Nguyen, Bella Shipman, Sivani Subramanian, Thrisha Sukesh, Madison Walters Faculty Advisor: Danielle Sellers Cover Photo: “Overlooking Japan” by Mackenzie Crain 2

EDITORS’ NOTE Thalia 2026

The publication of Thalia represents a rare and special opportunity to see the wide range of art created by the Trinity Valley School student body. In this way, it is sacred to our community. We would like to thank our editors, who approached such responsibility with both professionalism and zeal.

Humans like to sort things, and this year we have grouped the pieces into seasons. While some of these works have explicit seasonal motifs, others have been assigned in a subjective manner, based on the feelings they evoked from us as readers. Art is delightful because of its ability to elicit varied emotions, so please do not give any special credence to our categorizations.

During the school year, we hosted two themed contests—a Scary Story contest in October and a Valentine’s Day contest in February.

We are especially proud of the fact that these contests enticed new artists to submit; it takes courage to have your work judged by others.

For each contest, we have included the winners and honorable mentions. Also, because there were so many excellent submissions for the Scary Story contest, we dedicated an extra section to them.

A warm thank you to all contributors for sharing their art with us.

It goes without saying that without you, there is no Thalia.

- Edy & Madeline 3

TABLE OF CONTENTS Thalia 2026

Title

Author

Thalia Cover

Mackenzie Crain

Editors & Staff Editors’ Note

Page 1 2

Edy Cline & Madeline Yorkston

Table of Contents

3 4

John Graves Award

8

Falling Into Ascent

Victoria Nguyen

9

Mississippi-Colored Glasses

Olivia Carey

10

Circus Time in Mallory Square, Key West

Olivia Carey

11

Fall

13

My Headphones

Jayden Chandler

14

Homemaker

Claire Kauffman

15

Where the Flies Die

Olivia Carey

15

Porsche

Kaden Kahuda

17

Face Vase

Lucy Johnston

18 4

Sticky Notes

Anna Willmann

18

A Flame For the Mind

Andrew Audi

21

Dragons are Slippery

Angelina Bwimbo

21

Bitterness

Asher Heydenburk

23

Scary Stories

24

Ma, I’m Hungry

Victoria Nguyen

25

Room 212

Alayna Bhaloo

28

The Echo in the Walls

Coco Blackwell

29

Late One Night

Izzy Bachim

33

The Static Hour

Polly Johnston

36

Haunted Forest

Maximilian Scheiderman

36

There are no Ghosts in These Woods

Raven Russell

36

Time

Janie Lesok

42

Winter

45

The Human War

Niya Talati

46

Freedom’s Illusion

Marcy Everett

47

Triple Thinking

Niya Talati

48

Brain

Lucy Johnston

49 5

An Atheist’s Prayer

Jayden Chandler

49

Frost Bite

Mackaylee Crain

50

What Tape Can’t Fix

Polly Johnston

51

Slopes

Beckett Hamilton

52

A Ghost? No. A Wraith.

Raven Russell

52

Eleanor James

Dalya Chandler

53

So Where Are We Going?

Angelina Bwimbo

54

Valentine’s Day

63

What Time Cannot Take

Luke Mayfield

64

How to Flourish a Heart

Angela Zhou

65

Together

Keaton Lisenby

66

Spring

67

Ode to the Henbit Dead-nettle

Marcy Everett

68

Growing Pains

Niya Talati

69

Sparks

Declan Smith

70

Ode to Stains

Olivia Carey

71

Links of Life

Emma Khan

73

someday.

Ayomide Agboola

74 6

Don’t Drink and Drive

Marcy Everett

75

Jury Mania

Angelina Bwimbo

76

That Unknown Distance

MJ Brannon

77

Summer

78

Spectrum at Sea

Libby Bumgardner

79

Distance

Luke Mayfield

79

smoke.

Kate Batton

80

Hidden Cave

Graham Kennedy

81

Puffin

Thomas Danzi

81

Only the Mad Can Stay

Sivani Subramanian

82

Untitled

Keaton Lisenby

85

Where the Wild Things Grow

Marcy Everett

86

Nagaoka, Japan

Mackenzie Crain

90

In the Tidal Zone, Sawyer Key

Olivia Carey & Ms. Sellers

91

Sunrise on the Beach

Avery Kostohryz

92

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Thalia 2026

JOHN GRAVES AWARD This Year’s Judge: Alex Lemon Alex Lemon is the author of five poetry collections: All Us Beautiful Monsters (Milkweed Editions, 2026); The Wish Book (Milkweed Editions, 2014); Fancy Beasts (Milkweed Editions, 2010); Hallelujah Blackout (Milkweed Editions, 2008); and Mosquito (Tin House Books, 2006). He is also the author of two memoirs: Feverland: A Memoir in Shards (Milkweed Editions, 2017) and Happy: A Memoir (Scribner, 2009). Lemon is the editor-at-large at Saturnalia Books, the poetry editor for descant, and a senior prose editor at Tupelo Quarterly. He teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Ashland University and at Texas Christian University.

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John Graves Award Winner Falling Into Ascent Victoria Nguyen An inevitable wanting — not hunger, but tide.

I will come to our city with both hands open, as if the skyline were a throat and I knew how to pray.

My footsteps descend into yours — knowing the earth remembers where it has been pressed before.

Once, I thought I was Daisy, all light and arrival. but born burdened —- Gatsby, I mistook devotion for destiny.

Only a true romantic dares to worship what may never kneel.

Between doubt and ascent, I lurch wantonly.

Could you ever be smitten by a brazen muse, as devoted as me?

9

John Graves Award Honorable Mentions Mississippi-Colored Glasses Olivia Carey It’s hard to think this place is beautiful.

Though I still remember making snowcream scooped fresh from the backyard on winter mornings, the pool parties at Mother Goose Daycare, the red Double Decker buses in the town square, the story time held inside Square Books, Junior, wrapping my scarf around Faulkner’s bronze neck.

Instead I recall the darkness that looms like death and blackberries.

This country, stained in red, white, and blue, belongs to few, their sins tucked away.

If these willows could bellow, I’d ask what stories they would tell, what screams they’d give of slave trade horrors and the blood-soaked fields, of plantations where people still are wed.

If oaks could speak, they’d tell of red and blue Confederate morals hardened from their limbs, their sins buried, fossilized in red clay.

These stories trampled by gentle lies of sweetened tea and heat, and the envy of Scarlet O’Hara and white wraparound porches with rocking chairs and hound dogs, and Confederate statues in the town square,

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and white clapboard churches on every street.

And God. If I were to go back, it wouldn’t be the same.

This place of poetry and failure.

A place where I do not belong.

Circus Time in Mallory Square, Key West Olivia Carey Sitting in the passenger side of a white Volvo, I watch people.

I know, it sounds creepy, but it’s a way to pass time in this country.

Sitting like a queen with legs crossed that could use a shave, I wait as my Mom asks for $20 on 2.

People watching sounds weird, like I’m hiding behind a bush or crazy.

But it's a learned habit I have carried for years.

Visiting Mallory Square, over the years where Bible Bill, Stilt Man, and jugglers, craftspeople who have stunned me before I knew of craziness.

The soul of culture in this county are those that allow themselves to be a memento.

I owe it all to the hefty man walking by with a fresh shave.

My mom and I, jabbing each other, our ethos has long been shaved away when a man with a pigeon hidden in his coat walks by, a yearly inside joke between her and I, we, the only two who appreciate the secret circus in people.

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Beneath the humid palm fronds of this town, its people time and time again proving it is beautifully crazy.

Storm clouds above me are green and angry and crazy with salt-air and seaweed singeing my nostrils, making me crave the perplexity found in only the eyes of the free, of the country with bystanders, like me, who are too afraid to be crazy.

Like window shopping, peering through the glass at people who do not care what others think, like an unedited photo.

Mom returns, makes me pump gas on 2.

I smile to myself, proud of this world gone crazy.

We see the beauty in the strangest people, a voracity for a life that no one craves.

Performing this ritual for years, missing it most on the sand of this coastal country.

We pull back into the veins of the country, like beetles, the heart of America, just us two, leaving the humid land we’ve loved over the years.

Some might say I write about this place too much, crazy to find the strange normal, but it’s the connection I crave, to find the beauty in people.

Just two people going North on the Overseas Highway, who will crave the crazy country till the next year they see it.

12

Fall 13

My Headphones Jayden Chandler My headphones have hinges that close, and sometimes grab my hair, brown thread; taking out bits of me each time I take them off my big dumb head My headphones are stained, orange paint, maybe acrylic or chalk dust; carrying bits of me from when I dreamt of being an artist My headphones are meant to be white, but they have purple on the side; keeping bits of me, an old me, of when my ratty hair was dyed My headphone cushions are worn out, they’re fading and turning dark blue; telling me, ‘you need your music.’

And I know for sure that it’s true With my brown hair in the hinges With my orange paint on the sides With my purple hints on the right and blue cushions Where I am and where I will go Ask my headphones and they will know 14

Homemaker Claire Kauffman

Where the Flies Die Olivia Carey The window is open, but not really.

The mesh screen is a thin fantasy of the Forty-Niners with their sluice boxes, staking claims

15

on air and land that never belonged to them.

They came with dredges and hatred, dust in their mouths and gold between their teeth.

They tore the Maidu people's Sacramento mountains open like wounds.

The Forty-Niners dug deep, and the land mourned, but no one listened.

Maidu means “people” but they were not considered people.

I watch an old fly barred from its habitat, press against the mesh.

Its small, clear wings cracking, a sense of doom rising, its hemolymph runs cold.

Screens were not built to hold dreams, only to filter.

But somehow, they keep out everything that matters.

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And I sit watching it– listening to its black buzzing, a rasping metallic flutter as it's trapped in the veil.

The last of the light filters through that failed frontier.

The gold was never there.

Only the desire with hands too greedy to care whose wings they broke.

The fly wants out.

But I don’t move.

I could let it free.

But I sit behind a screen in a house built on bones.

Porsche Kaden Kahuda

17

Face Vase Lucy Johnston

Sticky Notes Anna Willmann Ten feet of crisp, white butcher paper. That’s all I need. It’s my canvas and I know just what to create. I use it to tell a story, starting in 1675 with King Philip’s War, followed by Pontiac’s Rebellion and the Proclamation Line of 1763, catapulting me straight into the American Revolution.

Sifting through my AP U.S. History AMSCO, I begin stockpiling proper nouns, appropriately arranging them in color-coded variation according to legislation, policy, conflict, court rulings, presidencies. Without delay, my simple sheet of paper transforms into my own personal window 18

into our nation’s past. Sticky note after sticky note, I add both a piece of history and a piece of myself.

For most of my life, this window didn’t exist. I distinctly remember the presidential election of 2016. I was in second grade. My eight-year-old curiosity was suppressed by a strict school policy: no talking about politics. Before I even knew what the word meant, I was taught to stay silent, to treat the subject as improper or off-limits. As a result, I grew up without a clear understanding of politics and the history of our nation. I found myself in the dark. I put on a facade of understanding, acting like I knew everything; I knew nothing.

But APUSH changed that.

I became exposed to politics and history, and a spark of curiosity transformed into a roaring inferno of fascination, driving me to consume all the information I could. I spent countless hours indulging in books, podcasts, and documentaries: Meacham’s American Lion, American Elections: Wicked Game, the “Turning Point” series. I was captivated.

I began to research, write, and publish podcast episodes and social media content, to teach other students important topics of our nation's past, with the hopes of informing others who had been living in the dark like I was. In the classroom, controversial matters were addressed head on, and political discourse was encouraged. I was empowered to become an active participant in politics as I eagerly jumped into and shaped the conversations I’d once been told to avoid. I finally understood both the nation I live in and my role in it. For the first time, history and politics became part of who I am.

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My eyes were fixated on the projector the day we learned about redlining in the 1930s and the “Como Wall” that served as a racial barrier in my city. I was shocked. For the past six years I had taught students at the Como Community Center and had never heard about the wall: six feet tall, ten blocks long of solid concrete topped with barbed wire. Embarrassed, I was determined to learn why this wall had been erased from conversations around me.

I spent the following weeks engaged in my own personal investigation: researching the practice of redlining. Green, blue, yellow, and red maps reminded me of the color-coded timeline on my wall, only these colors weren’t sticky notes, they represented real neighborhoods, real families, real inequality. To pursue deeper understanding, I went to City Hall, met with the mayor, and attended a budget meeting, observing firsthand how history impacts present-day policy.

History is inseparable from who I am, the product of a nation with a complicated and fascinating past, which remained hidden most of my life. Each decision, political figure, and policy has shaped not only our country, but also who I am today. This history is part of all of us; my sticky notes reflect the struggles, achievements, and contradictions that make our history so complex. Learning more about my country has helped me uncover my own identity, instilling in me a curiosity to understand what came before me and a resolve to challenge inequality.

I will continue to make my timeline, to measure more butcher paper, add more sticky notes, until my entire room is filled with glimpses into our country, and pieces of me.

20

A Flame For the Mind Andrew Audi

Dragons are Slippery Angelina Bwimbo A sun dragon with white, gold-tipped feathers sprouting from its head and elbows slithers out of the corner of my vision, smirking with the black slits in its yellow eyes. It’s been fluttering in the back of my mind for years. The dragon was from this book series I read at my old school. The books were in the front of the library on display, close to the door, with other, less magical, early chapter books.

I picked it because the dragons were a mix of pretty and cool. The sun dragon was my favorite. It feels weird that I only read 6 of these books because the time that I was reading them in my memory feels like more than just 6 books. Every week for the library visit, I would cross my fingers, hoping there was a new book with a new dragon and a new dragonrider... new dragon tamer... dragon person? Even though I could

21

see most of the dragons clearly in my mind, I didn’t remember the title.

I guess it slipped my mind.

I didn’t remember it when I moved on to another dragon book series, and I definitely didn’t remember it for the next 5 years until I volunteered at the library. Switching schools and being stuck inside during COVID didn’t really give me a chance to look back at the shelf.

One day, I found it, hidden in the bottom right corner, the series going far past the point where I had stopped about a decade ago. I sifted through the books I’d read and the new books I hadn’t read, with more than 10 new dragon types I had never even thought of before. A ruby dragon with stone-encrusted red spots, a purple thunder dragon with a luscious mane that flowed down its back, and a dragon covered in brown feathers and fluff called the Legendary Dragon. There are so many that I wonder if the author might be running out of ideas by now.

The dragons freeze in my mind, like a deer caught in headlights. That day, I left the library, happy that I had finally put a name to a book cover. And then I forgot. Again. The dragons slipped right out of my ears.

22

Bitterness Asher Heydenburk Bitter like coffee It hates with passion It infects people like a disease Bitterness is a dark, grieving gray cloud, that you can't get rid of It traps you in its clenching fist Everyone looks at you with judgment in their eyes But they don't know that the cloud won't leave Bitterness is loneliness, it locks you away It is a grudge so heavy it's like a barbell It ties you down So you have no escape Bitterness doesn't just hate others It hates itself Like a intricate plan to self sabotage

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Scary Stories 24

Scary Story Contest Winner Ma, I’m Hungry Victoria Nguyen The fire never stayed lit.

Every time I struck the match, the heat radiated for an instant, briefly defrosting my fingertips, before a flurry of icy wind rushed in and smothered it. The sound it made, that sharp hiss, was like the mountain laughing at us. I tried again, my hands shaking, another gust of wind.

Another death of light.

By the sixth try, I could no longer feel my fingertips. The pain had dulled into a strange kind of comfort, the numbness like a lullaby. I pressed my palms together, tried to rub life into them, but my joints refused to move. It felt like my fingers were carved from the same ice surrounding us.

“Ma,” I murmured. “It’s no use, I only have one match left.”

She didn’t answer. I heard her somewhere nearby, breathing slow and shallow under the last wool blanket. I thought she’d already gone.

I leaned back against the tree, my eyelids heavy. The hunger was unbearable at first, but then it softened, fading into an almost peaceful emptiness. I let myself think into that thought. I pressed my shoulders against the snow – soft, weightless. I could feel my heartbeat slowing,

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pulsating faintly beneath layers of ice. I thought of home – of summers where the air smelled of laundry soap and frying oil, of my mother scolding me for leaving the door open, or for running the water for too long. I could almost taste her cooking, though she never really cooked.

Ma was stubborn, too proud to learn “American recipes.” She said food was work, not love, that it didn’t matter if it tasted like home so long as it filled the stomach. She’d boil vegetables until they lost color, eat in silence, and tell me to stop chasing comfort in flavor.

But now up on this mountain, my stomach hollow as I drift into unconsciousness, I swore I could smell something rich. Something human, something loving.

“Wake up,” Ma shook my shoulders. “I found food.”

I thought I was fantasizing, but then she pushed a small tin bowl into my hands. Inside, something warm, thick, salty, and real. My mother had never made anything like this. It was the first time in my life that food made me close my eyes and hum. It was the first time I understood what it meant to be home-cooked.

When I finished, warmth spread through my chest. I could almost feel my fingers again. The fire roared high, fed by something I didn’t get to hear her gather. I stood up.

“Come on, Ma,” I said, my voice shaking. “Let’s go home.”

She didn’t answer.

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But where there should have been legs, there was only air.

A deep creak shuddered overhead, the sound of heavy branches bowing under snow. Before I could move, the air split with a rush. The snow came down in one great sheet, collapsing through the air, smothering everything.

The fire hissed once and died. And now, I was really dying in the dark.

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Honorable Mention Room 212 Alayna Bhaloo The hospital always felt different at night. The lights were too white, like an insect trapped in a jar. Samantha walked through the empty hall, her footsteps against the tile, and the clipboard held tight in her arms.

Every door she passed had a window, and in every one lay a patient, alive or dead.

Samantha was only supposed to be checking the monitors, but something felt off. When she reached room 212, the light above the door flickered. Jeremy Carter said the chart. She frowned as she did not remember Jeremy being here. The door creaked when it was pushed open. The room was dim, only lit by the pale glow of the heart monitor.

Someone was lying in the bed, but the blankets rose and fell too slowly, as if the body beneath them lacked a breathing cycle.

His face was turned away, but she could still see the shape of his jaw.

She said his name softly, “Mr. Carter?” The monitor answered first with a low tone that hummed. Then, it stopped. The line on the screen flattened, and so did the air around her. She blinked, and there was nobody in the bed. The sheets were still warm. She walked toward the door, but something caught her eye: a reflection in the glass of the monitor. A figure stood behind her, watching. When she turned, the room was empty again. Samantha stumbled into the hallway, gasping for breath. She ran. But the hallways kept turning in on themselves, leading her back to the same place: room 212. Now, the 28

light above was glowing red. She did not want to go in, but her hand reached for the knob anyway. There was someone in the bed again.

The man was sitting up this time. His eyes were open and staring straight at Samantha. His glassy eyes reflected the lights in broken pieces. “You left me,” he whispered. “Who are you?” she struggled to say. The man looked at her and tilted his head. “You know me, Samantha.” And suddenly she did. The name on the chart. The accident.

The blood. Jeremy. Her hands began to shake. She remembered the sirens where she had been behind the wheel and the moment his voice stopped mid-sentence. The lights dimmed, and Jeremy's hand reached out toward her, pale and shaking. “You left me,” he said softly. The monitor slowly began to beep again, matching Samantha’s heartbeat.

She felt the floor fold in beneath her as the sound became endless, and chills filled the room.

When the nurses arrived the next morning, room 212 was empty. The monitor still hums quietly, and there are two sets of footprints on the floor: one entering, none leaving.

Honorable Mention The Echo in the Walls Coco Blackwell It’s strange how a house can sound alive when you’re the only one inside it. It started with a whisper—soft, curious, and unmistakably my own name, breathed behind the white plaster. On the first night I swore it was the creaking of an old house; by the fifth I knew I was not alone. I was not a spiritual person. I was brought up to believe in cold, hard facts, none of the heeby-jeeby voodoo the people of New Orleans believed. The whispers in the crumbling building were nothing but old 29 pipes and strong winds, despite what the realtor liked to tell her

impressionable clients. Nothing to see, nothing to hear—besides, spirits were best left alone when haunting a house—is what I would say if I believed in them.

The whispers started two weeks after I moved into my late mother’s home, conveniently when a storm front had begun to plague the city.

The decrepit house creaked and moaned and shuddered on its foundation, barely keeping the old bricks together. The shutters banged open and closed all night, the wind howling frightfully through every room. It was the only noise in the nights for a while—no matter how much tape I used to keep the shutters closed, or how many blankets I put on the walls, the dilapidated mansion still moaned and groaned. The winds were why I brushed off the quiet murmurs or the light scratching I heard occasionally in my bedroom wall. Must be the settling house, I said, or some waterlogged mice taking cover in the warm-ish home.

Nothing an exterminator and some loud music couldn’t fix.

One week after I came to those conclusions, the murmurs began to beg. A crooning, pleading voice began to lull my ears. They asked for bread, water, coins, a hug. Anything one could want, they asked without shame. I refused to listen, but every once in a while an angry, agitated voice pierced through, asking for my ears. If I complied with their requests, the pleading would get quieter. We lived like this for two months, before I got my ears checked. I refused to believe there were any such things as ghosts. My hearing was perfect, and the doctor believed I should seek spiritual support, which was no help.

The voices quieted, for a while. For three weeks after my hearing was tested, the voices lulled, and I almost didn’t recognize the house without the constant whining. Then, like clockwork, they began again.

This time, there was no pleading. I only heard them in the dead of night, whispering my name. I would write in my journal every time it 30

happened: October 1st, 10:08 pm. A low, cackling voice whispered my name three times. October 7th, 11:16 pm. No voices, but the scratching on the walls intensified until stopping sometime around 12:00 am.

October 11th, 12:28 am. I haven’t heard any voices but one. I am starting to realize it might just be one spirit voice that has been making noises all along. October 13th, 1:09 am. I woke up in a sweat hearing nothing, but as I drifted back to sleep I swore I heard my name. October 14th, 2:41 am. The whispers are too loud for sleep. I woke up to hear it singing my name, like a lullaby, just beyond the plaster, but I didn't dare check. The scratches have started again, stopping once I’m fully awake and starting as I drift off to sleep. Rest is sparse.

I stop counting entries there. I was so sleep-deprived that every journal entry from then on was mindless chicken scratch that no person could make out what I was saying; even I don’t remember writing them.

I was all alone in that large, creaky prison, and yet I was never alone. In the middle of the day I could swear I heard the voice, echoing just in the back of my mind. It seemed to move with me in the house, even though that was impossible. Any spirit animal that must have been trapped in the wall couldn’t have moved beyond the bedroom. Its voice still haunted me, though, even when the logical part of my brain believed in physical limitations.

On October 30th, I went to bed at 9:06 pm. Since writing the entries in my journal, time was a well-kept obsession. I woke up, once more in a cold sweat, already dreading the noise I wasn’t hearing. It was 11:07 pm. The scratching was uncomfortably quiet, one had to strain to hear, but it sounded deafening to my finely tuned ears. I drifted back off to sleep at 11:13 pm. I woke up again at 3:33 am to the voice whispering my name. It had been so long now that the voice was familiar, almost soothing. I whispered back. The voice quieted, only soft breathing could 31

be heard behind the plaster. I whispered once more, and the voice erupted more vehemently than ever before, taunting, laughing, whispering, screaming. The sounds filled my bedroom, drowning out the howling winds and the creaky house and the booming thunder. I rushed out of bed, holding the hammer I had kept beside my bed the day I got my hearing checked, slamming it down on the wall opposite me. It punctured deep within the plaster, but the voices still were a ceaseless beat in my head. I ripped apart the wall, using the hammer, my feet, my nails to scratch away the paint and decimate the cage that held the ungodly spirit. I tore it apart until every ounce of strength was ripped from my body, and amidst the debris was terrifying, unearthly, nothing.

The voice wasn’t inside the walls. There was no voice at all.

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Late One Night Izzy Bachim I’ve long had suspicions that my house is haunted. Nothing too concerning ever happens, books I know I placed somewhere else go missing then turn up somewhere else, my dog stares and growls at the darkest corner of my room, the sounds of large crashes downstairs prompt an investigation but with no evidence of anything having fallen.

It's just little, mundane things that whisper in the back of my mind that something is not completely right with this house; easily explained occurrences, but without the prerequisite causes, like my bedroom door shutting on its own. Of course it could be a breeze from a window, but there are no windows open, there aren’t even any windows in this part of the house.

Despite these happenings, life continues on; only occasionally do I really have something to complain about.

October 26th, 2024 2:13 AM I check the time on my phone. 2:13 AM, great, a whole four hours until sunrise, and now I may as well be up for good.

Normally I sleep through the night, waking up ten to fifteen minutes before my alarm, regardless of what time I set it for. But tonight, well this morning, is different, I can feel. A chill runs down my spine, not a normal chill you would get from waking up when your body hasn’t fully raised its temperature in anticipation of the coming day, it's more like the feeling that something, or someone, is watching you.

My mother says the noises I hear at night and the feelings of being watched are just the illusions of a hyperactive mind, she suggested I try 33

some meditation to help me calm down. But whenever I meditate, the noises just become more prominent, almost as if they don't want to be ignored.

Tonight is no different.

I close my eyes in an attempt to force myself to go back to sleep, but this time it isn't a feeling that brings me out of my attempt, it's the sound of footsteps on the stairs.

My mother and sister are always asleep at this hour, and my father isn't even home. It could be a home invader, at which point I should really get up and do something about it; but the house alarm hasn't gone off, nor did I hear any sounds of breaking and entering. Ok, so not an intruder.

The sound is either just my mind playing a really cruel joke on me creating the sounds out of nothing, or it's my mind playing an even crueler joke on me convincing me that ghosts are real. The debate in my mind is doing nothing to help me sleep, so I decide to settle it once and for all. I grab my glasses off of my bedside table (after knocking them off at first and then fumbling in the dark to find them on the ground), open my bedroom door, and step out onto the landing of the second floor overlooking a portion of the first story below.

My traitorous eyes deceive me. Shapes emerge from the shadows of the house, a tall slender figure, a wolf ready to pounce, what looks like a person standing and looking at me. But I blink, and they're all just shadows once more.

Satisfied that there is in fact not a ghost traversing the stairs at nearly 2 AM, I turn to head back to my bed. Then out of the corner of my eye I catch movement in the dark.

That doesn't mean anything, it could be my dog out for a late night stroll, or a car passing outside casting lights into the house. But 34 somewhere deep in my chest, dread engulfs my logic.

I stop and wait.

No other evidence presented itself that night. When I ponder about that night, I come to the conclusion time and time again that sharing a house with a ghost wouldn't be so bad. It's slightly scary to think that an undead entity could be taking up residence in my home, it's even more terrifying to think that I could be making all the symptoms up myself.

The Static Hour Polly Johnston Every night at exactly 2:47 am, the radio in Riley’s room turned on by itself. No music. No voice. Just static, soft, steady, endless static. She tried unplugging it, moving it, even hiding it in the closet. But every night it buzzed back to life. One night, tired of being afraid, she decided to listen. She sat up in bed, heart pounding, and softly whispered “who’s there.” Just for a moment, the static stayed the same. Then it changed, she could hear the faint outline of a voice, as if it were trying to break through. All she could make out were the words “left...behind...” almost too quiet to hear. Riley froze, “Who’s left behind?” she asked into the darkness. The radio hissed, louder this time... “you.” She yanked the plug from the wall, silence flooded the room. She could hear her heart thumping out of her chest. The next morning her mom knocked on her door, but there was no answer. Her bed was empty, her window wide open, and the only sound in the room was the faint buzz of an unplugged radio, whispering one word over and over again.

“Stay” 35

Haunted Forest Maximilian Schneiderman

There are no Ghosts in These Woods Raven Russell The car coughs a cloud of black smoke behind it, obscuring my view through the review mirror as it sputters to a stop. I groan as I get out, unfolding my body and stoutly ignoring the utter pain that the cricks in my back cause, far too stiff and annoying. My car is far too small for me, the rust bucket, but it’s the only thing I can afford with my job as a 36

lab tech.

The parking lot is empty as I begin to walk, the gravel crushing beneath my feet. It’s almost hard to imagine being comforted by this when I was a child. The forest looms large and menacing overhead, tall evergreens filling the air with a green scent of pine, as it always had right after rain. I knew from experience it would not be possible to sit anywhere, the decomposing tree stumps sagging underneath our weight and leaving behind soggy chips of wood all over soaked jeans.

Reed had always let me use his jeans, because as he’d said “I’m not lettin’ my lil sisters get their pretty skirts all covered in chips that scratch their legs.”

I gave him a small glare and he leaned over and put my head on his shoulder, “come now, Bethie, I know you don’t like it when I coddle you but I gotta protect you someways.”

“I’m not a child,” I murmured, “go save your coddling for Rivers, she likes it.”

“Rivers isn’t here. Ma and Pa needed her.” He says, looking around exaggeratedly before finishing with an eye roll.

I scowl again, this time feeling my eyebrows scrunch uncomfortably at the base of my head. “Rivers is five, Ma and Pa don’t need her for anything important and you know that.”

“They’re educating her, she’s gotta learn.”

I slap Reed across the face, his skin quickly flushing red, “Rivers doesn’t need educatin’, she’s the best girl whose ever lived.” “‘Course you’d say that, Maribeth,” Reed pushes himself up from the stump and walks away. A few minutes pass, I bet he’s taken the car and left me out here by my lonesome. Yet he’s left his pair of sweatpants on the log. I give them a glare, but it’s wet and cold and they’re warmer than this stupid skirt, so I strip down and change into them. They’re soft 37

and warm, like a hug, and I’m too tired to move, even as the dancing lights of the forest beckon me.

I pass by the spot against the path where the log really should be, but there is just a small indent where the dirt is darker, a small sapling growing in its place. I grimace, it’s bound not to survive. Not all on its own, with no light from the sun. The urge to stomp on it, put it out of its misery is strong. I give it a small kick and then leave it alone.

Maybe someday it will be a place of rest for another set of siblings. I should know better than to listen to the wind, but I tilt my head all the same. It almost sounds like my brother’s voice. I wonder if he died in that old house, with its darkened windows and family of ghosts. I wonder if he’s still living under my parent’s hands.

I follow down the path some more, because there is nothing better to do. Today was not meant to be the day I came out here, today was not meant to be for anything at all. I suppose it was on a whim, and the shadows dance through the leaves of flittering birch so beautifully I can almost forget the dark voids of the ever taller pines. They suck up all the light, those evergreens. They didn’t used to be this heavy when I was young, though perhaps that was the company.

I hold Reed’s hand with one and Rivers’ with another. Reed has a large black eye, but in the light of the sun everything glitters. Reed holds a picnic basket to his chest until we reach a clearing full of flowers, all white as snow and gleaming in the sun. Butterflies dart between them millions of different shades of orange and yellow, collecting pollen. No shadows can exist in this place. In the woods surrounding, bright lights tempt us forwards but we do not follow. We have each other and that is all we need.

Rivers giggles as she takes a little nibble of a pastry, and I bop her on the nose and Reed smiles. The grass is soft against my lower legs. I 38 stare up at the angry sun.

“Mare!” Reed calls, “you see those lights?”

They dance blue against the edges.

“Yes.” “If you see them, run. Will-o-the-Wisps are tricksters.”

“Like right now?”

“No, no, only if you’re alone. Don’t trust your eyes or ears.”

Reed always calls me a pine tree, an evergreen. He says they live longer and are resilient, I think they’re alone. I look around the empty clearing and up at the quickly fading sun, dead flowers rot into the grass filled space. It doesn’t smell any bit as sweet. This time I follow the flickering lights along the edges. Reed and Rivers aren’t here anymore, but as I get further onto the path it reminds me of the last time I went this far.

Reed says he and Rivers are birch trees, glittering in the sunlight, star pressure. He says they'll fall apart in the slightest storm without each other. I see them off in the distance, chattering away. I’m tired and angry, Ma came at me with the ruler because I burned dinner. My skin is sore and bruised and I want to stop and rest.

Rivers doesn’t, Rivers is perfect with her honey gold hair and her twinkling baby blue eyes. That’s what she was named for, those eyes.

It’s late and dark and the stars shine bright overhead.

She’s mine I suppose, but really she’s Ma and Pa’s. Even if I’m the one that takes care of her and loves her like they should, Ma’s the one that teaches her and Pa gives us the money to go out and buy things so I really can’t argue.

I come to a fork in the road and realize I’ve lost them. I listen hard for Reed’s pretty voice, and River’s light airy one, but I can hear their voices echoing over each other in the woods. I take a step back.

“If you’re ever caught alone,” Reed told me while we were in the pickup, Rivers asleep in the backseat, like he does every time we’re out 39

here, “run.” What did he see when he was alone?

So I turn back along the path and sprint, sprint until I reach the truck and then sprint until I cannot sprint anymore. I never do find my way home.

The birds sing in the trees above me, I come to a fork in the path.

This is the one that made me run away, the one where Rivers and Reed’s voices overlapped in screaming disharmony. I still don’t know which direction to go. I see a shadow out of the corner of my eye, a glimpse of a white-blue figure giggling in a childish tone.

“Rivers?” My voice trembles, even though I don’t assume she would actually be here. She probably went back home to Ma and Pa after I went missing.

“Rivers?” A deep voice calls back to me, vanishing in and out of the shadows and down the left path. “Rivers, did you see where Mare went?”

“Mare-Mare!” the light voice calls, and it must be Rivers. Have they been following me? I note how young Rivers still sounds. I suppose she never got the chance to grow up like I did. Reed was sixteen for such a long time, always the older brother, always old enough to care but never old enough to protect us.

I resent him for that, as I continue to age. Ma got mad at me for that, for aging, once. She said I was trying to leave them; I suppose I was.

I follow the shadows and the light down the right path, but the path very quickly becomes a dead end. Sticks and leaves softly crunch under my feet, the ground still wet from the sky crying its eyes out, even as the sun beats high overhead.

“Reed?” I call out.

“Bethie!” He calls in response, “Mare! We’re sorry for leaving you all alone, where did you go?”

“Reed!” I call out, ducking behind trees searching for the shadowed 40

figure. I can’t seem to find him. I feel like a little kid once again. Damn that! I have a college degree, I’m an adult, I can handle talking to my siblings again. “Reed, where are you?”

Rivers sounds on the verge of tears as she calls for me over and over again. I plunge deeper into the forest, even as the ground becomes soft and my footsteps squish against it. I’m running now. I cannot leave her alone. Everything is always worse when you’re on your own.

Reed tried his best but he was never enough to protect me. I was enough, I was able to protect Rivers. Her voice calls to me from beyond the trees, but I don’t think they’re birches anymore. It’s getting hard to move.

“Rivers?” Reed says softly, and it’s the first time I’ve heard him speak like that, weak and helpless. “Rivers, I don't think she’s out here.”

I pause in my steps.

“But I am. I’m right here.”

“NO!” Rivers calls, “I’m not leaving without her!” I laugh at the irony of that. How many years has it been for them since I left? Five for me, since I’d seen their faces, but time had always been so weird. So maybe less, maybe more.

“I don’t think we can.” Reed says, and suddenly the lights and shadows flickering in my periphery fade away, to the empty noise of a swamp. Frogs croak and hop against the dirty ground and I’m stuck. My chest is being pressed in by dirt, and I’m so far in I can’t move my arms and legs. I struggle but it just pulls me deeper, terrified and pained. Mud fills my lungs as I struggle to breath, coughing and sputtering until I’m all the way under.

41

Time Janie Lesok Tick tick tick. Help me.

The date was October 20th of 2025. It was a crisp fall morning. As I was driving to school I received a phone call. Thinking that it was spam I hung up. Nothing else happened. I thought nothing of it and continued on my way to school. As I was pulling into the parking lot I received a call from my mother. I didn’t accept the call. She called. again. I didn’t answer. Never again would I act that stubborn. It was that very same stubborn nature that would cost me my life.

As I entered the first period something seemed off. Maybe it was the guilt gnawing at me for ignoring my mother’s call. No matter how angry I was, she was still my mother. I told myself that I would call her after class.

When the bell rang, I stepped outside to call my mother. She didn’t answer. I thought to myself that it was probably not a big deal if she wasn't going to even pick up the phone to answer. I headed back inside and tried to focus.

Answer me.

I heard a strange voice in my head. The voice wasn’t real, was it? I heard my phone buzz. The unknown caller. I hung up. The voice got louder. Answer me. It called again. This time, I answered. I was shocked to learn that it was my mother on the phone. Although something was strange about the way she was talking to me. Cold. Flat. Wrong. The 42

phone call ended. I went along with the rest of my day. That is, until a police officer showed up at my front door.

When I answered the front door the officer greeted me nervously. He asked me hurriedly the last time he had seen my mom. I told him that I had seen her earlier that morning. He collapsed. My dad came to the front door hurriedly, his face was hard to read. There was a mix of fear and disappointment. When he saw the officer on the ground, he told me to leave the house. Like I was the one who had made the officer collapse. When I asked my dad why, he couldn’t answer me let alone look me in the eyes. Not knowing what to do I ran. I ran as far as I possibly could. The number called once again. I declined.

That night I had dreamed of a strange man. When the man looked in the mirror I saw my mother’s reflection. The next morning I woke up to the smell of pumpkin pie. Pumpkin pie was my favorite dessert that my mom made me. Then I remembered. I remembered that I was far away from my home. But for some reason I was in my bed in my house. I went downstairs to assess the situation. Standing there perfectly normal were my parents. The mom that was supposedly out of town and the dad who told me to leave. Yes they were standing in front of me. I asked them how I got to my bedroom. They gave me a weird look. They told me that yesterday during school I had fainted and needed to be sent home. Something was off. I just couldn't put my finger on it.

I went to school. People were staring. I shook off the feeling of fear.

Fear that someone was watching me, not just my peers. I went to the bathroom. Hoping to escape from reality I sat down on the floor and got on my phone. But, my fear only heightened. A person was staring 43

at me on the other side of the phone. The figure that I had seen in my dream. The figure that when placed in front of the mirror reassembled my mother. Fear. Terror. Dread. How could I possibly dread something that I wasn't aware of. Manifestation. I looked up. I felt trapped. The only way to escape was the mirror. I stood up and looked at the mirror. The image reflected was frightening yet comforting. Terrifying yet inviting. I looked down at my phone. The date read October 20th of 2025. My mom is calling. This time I answer. Help me. Tick tick tick. Time has disappeared. Nothing is real.

44

Winter 45

The Human War Niya Talati I wonder, when did we forget to love?

We sacrifice appreciating life, and let the beauty of the earth be lost, forgetting that outside our concrete walls are depths of the ocean almost all unknown, entire ecosystems more complex than even human minds. And yet because the human race is blinded by its greed, we find the need to burn it to the ground.

For wealth and power we kill and plunder, all so we can sit on thrones of gold. But when all the gold is used for thrones, we still dig deep for more. When all the silver, gems, and oil have been pulled from their rivers below the earth, then we shall see the scars we’ve carved upon our home.

And even then, the winners will not turn their eyes from the mounds of coin they’ve won with blood.

Instead we turn the gun again, and search for someone else to blame. We preach of love, but kill without remorse. We claim a cause of righteous honor, standing atop a field of death as wealth rewards our violent acts.

And then, when friend and foe have died to keep their gold, the thrones will have no more kings to hold.

So the gold will sit in rooms and vaults, above the rocks from which they were torn. The seas will claim

46

the cities we built ‘til all that’s left is ruins, and we will lie alone in graves of greed.

Freedom’s Illusion Marcy Everett The dancer in the snowglobe, frozen, poised Above the blanket of glittering white her delicate pirouette, motionless as statue ready for the moment that the world turns upside down.

The woman’s pirouette has sprung to life Becoming a resplendent waltz among the brilliant white. The wind leads her twirling, exquisite dance and gently guides snowflakes in a swirling dance similar to her own.

The world is shaking and she dances on with the wind, graceful as the falling snow around her. Even though the snow begins to settle on the ground she dances on.

The wind begins to slow, no longer there to guide her and she dances on. She soars and glides, now barely touching the fallen snow underneath her feet. The feeling of infinite freedom swells beneath her chest.

Then she collides with glass that is her cage.

47

Triple Thinking Niya Talati I wonder if originality exists anymore. I wrote a story once.

Inspiration struck and words spilled onto the page like ink lava pouring out of a volcano a waterfall until an entire story sat in front of me. An poorly planned, unedited, riddled-with-plot-holes story, but a story nonetheless. But then I read it over. I read the magical immersive fantastical many words of my fictional world and they seemed familiar, but not because I’d just written them.

Did I recognize my story because I wasn’t the first to write it?

Maybe I’d seen the very same one on the internet and had simply forgotten where. Maybe someone else had the exact same idea as me, but their version would get published, making mine the plagiarized version. Does it count as plagiarism if I wrote it first? To someone else, it would probably be a pretty good story, but all the ideas about life and all the lessons I tried to convey seemed unoriginal. They seemed to be nothing more than a regurgitation of things I had been told by other smarter people. Whatever the reason, the words were too familiar to be completely original. And I knew all too well the dangers of unoriginal work. After all, how can you have a high school class without a lecture on the importance of citations? So I played it safe.

A ten sentence paragraph was trimmed truncated shortened into two sentences. A long, detailed sentence was cut down to nothing more than a few words. Like a wave washing all texture off a cliffside, I erased my possibly plagiarized ideas until I could be sure the paper held nothing unoriginal.

By the time I finished editing, the page was empty once again.

48

Brain Lucy Johnston

An Atheist’s Prayer Jayden Chandler And if I die before I wake I pray the earth my soul to take And let my corpse finally lie and hear it heave its final sigh Take my bones, no matter how young and put them where they came from Let me return what little I’ve taken stop your crying, stop your shaking, The grass, the trees, the dirt, the sea, lay me where I'm supposed to be and let me go home.

49

Frost Bite Mackaylee Crain

What Tape Can’t Fix Polly Johnston They’ve seen the whole world. They’ve seen new life emerging onto this planet. They’ve seen life being stripped from those who should’ve had more time. The most ordinary accessory holds the memory of a lifetime. Becoming a symbol of remembrance, these glasses and their story were woven into the fabric of each generation. These glasses carry the lives of those who came before. Minor cracks and imperfections began to show. Nothing a little tape can’t fix. They have seen it all, from the magnificent sight of the mountains in Sweden to the enchanting 50

simplicity of a flowing river. They’ve been through 12 houses, each of them becoming home.

The glasses were rarely worn for the purpose of improving vision, but to preserve the feeling of the life around them. The cracks grew larger and the imperfections shining through once more- tape can fix it but can’t hide it. Though they’ve seen all the wonders of the world, the ones deemed priceless were seemingly ordinary. Ordinary life is where real living hides. It’s the late night grocery runs because the soda box in the fridge was empty or the sound of an airtag dinging everyday when keys get lost. It’s where love isn’t one lavish gesture, but rather the arms that stay open through the hard days. The ordinary is something no mountain could replace.

Glasses are meant to enhance vision but these capture moments. Not the moments transparently painted in the mind, but the ones felt in the soul. Maybe not the color of the walls, but the yellow warmth of the cheer after one cousin got into college or the pink smell of roses that were brought home as a surprise. While the faces blurred throughout the delicate pathways of memory, presence never fades.

The glasses now rest on a nightstand draped with a thin layer of dust.

They are damaged beyond what tape can repair. Through the gift of time, they aren’t worn to benefit vision. They are bursting with the joy of the past and can no longer carry recent memories. But put them on again, eyes closed, and allow the memories to echo.

51

Slopes Beckett Hamilton

A Ghost? No. A Wraith.

Raven Russell The thick, dripping black of shadows fill my room. I sit and look down at my bed. A pale body lays there, lips blue and gaping. A small, glowing string, frayed at every edge, connects me to it for one moment, then it snaps. I am pulled forward like a fish on a line, another string worming down my mouth and squirming in my lungs. I fly through walls until I stare at the back of a head, who-? He wears a mask but...

It’s that man. He is unaware of my rage, but not for long... killer of mine.

52

Eleanor James Dalya Chandler the long girl with the braces asked, “have we met before?” “no, i don’t think we have” “well, my name’s eleanor.” the giggles and the sleepovers, the nights we stayed awake, the makeup stains on carpet floor, the insults by mistake. i’m in your family photo book, you’re in mine’s christmas card, i’ll keep you in my life always, especially when it’s hard. i recognize you, now it’s clear, i’ll love you to the end, because i know, in every life, we’ve always been best friends.

53

So Where Are We Going?

Angelina Bwimbo The last of the oranges and pinks of the morning were disappearing over the horizon as light blue blanketed the sky, speckled with small wisps of cloud. An unfinished painting. The wind whistled through the air. The icy air dried out her nostrils, making every deep breath through her nose burn. So instead, she breathed out puffs of small clouds.

“When are we leaving?” Krita asked in her usual dry, nearly monotone voice. Carly was immediately broken out of her trance and swivelled her head towards Krita. “Uuuum, in a few minutes?” Carly answered, “Did you finish putting your stuff in the trunk?”

Her eyebrows scrunched, and her eyes narrowed with some slight annoyance at the question.

“Yes. If I didn’t, then I wouldn’t have asked,” she answered.

“Ok, good. Then, you can go wait in the car, I guess.”

“Okay. Don’t get a cold,” Krita curtly replied as she turned and skittered back to the car. She climbed into the back seat and huddled up in her purple puffer jacket. She buried her head in the neck of her jacket, leaving her big purple curls peaking out of the neck hole.

Carly shifted her gaze to the windshield, newly cleaned for the trip. It reflected a translucent view of the sky behind her, the mostly blue sky dotted with clouds lightly superimposed over the gray insides of the car.

The corners reflected the light from the slowly rising sun. There were still flecks of oranges and pinks on the edges from the retreating morning. The windshield also reflected a darkened, see-through image of her. The bags under her eyes were slightly lighter today. Her wavy twists rolled down her back and her shoulders. Some of her twists were 54 tangled up in her face. Her face was smushed, with her mouth half-

covered by the collar of her dark green coat. After taking some time to move the wayward twists out of her face, she looked behind the windshield.

Char, the one who had been planning to be on this trip since the beginning, sat in the shotgun seat. She was slightly folded into the car seat due to her tall stature. Compared to Krita, she was more accustomed to the cold. Her hazel eyes reflected the scrolling screen of her phone as she stared down at it like a zombie. Carly turned her focus further towards the back of the car. Gari is in the back row with Krita, physically shivering, but seemingly oblivious to it as she rapidly taps on her thighs and hums to a song in her black and red headphones. Carly couldn’t help but shiver in her jacket, even with the insulation from the wavy dark brown twists surrounding her face and her thick coat.

Carly sighed as she walked to the car. “Aight, time to get to it.” Char jolted up from her phone and grinned at Carly when she got into the car.

“You ready?!”, Char asked, beaming with excitement.

“Yep, let’s go.”

Char practically squealed as she started rambling, “Yay! I’m so excited! I’ve never been to Realta before! This’ll be so fun in a group! I haven’t done one of these in so long. I mean, I used to, but then everything just got really busy. But now, we’re here, and we can go on any trips we want to, and we can bring all of our friends! -” “Can you turn on the A/C?!,” Krita crankily requested with a muffled voice from inside her jacket.

“Yep, was already planning on it.” Carly turned on the A/C, “It’ll take a minute, but it’s on.”

“Thank you.”

Carly paused before she lowered her voice to start a whispered conversation with Char while Krita and Gari were still focused on 55 keeping themselves warm.

“Char, why did you even want them to come? It was supposed to be just the two of us.”

“Because...because we’re going to the city! Going in a group is safer, so the more the merrier, right? ” Carly stared at Char with narrowed eyes. Char’s eyes darted towards the window, avoiding Carly’s face.

“Char, are you sure you’re not avoiding something? Again?” Carly whispered.

“Mostlyyy,” Char dragged out, “They both really wanted to come when I told them about it! I don’t think either of them has been before. I don’t think either of them has ever had a chance to go this far out of town. I wanted to give them a chance to do fun stuff outside of town, too.

Besides, if you all go together, then we can all be friends, and then it won’t feel stuck between multiple groups that don’t like each other.”

“Char, Charlie,” Carly started, holding on to Char’s shoulders, “ you barely talk in groups, especially not about yourself. We could have talked and had fun together...alone...without 2 kinda random extra people. You shouldn’t have to be their tour guide the whole trip, or their chaperone.”

“It’ll be okay. I think you’ll like them. Even if you don’t, they don’t actually have to be with us 24/7 during the trip.”

Char sighs.

“I shouldn’t have done that on such short notice. I’ll get them to leave us alone if y’all don’t gel, okay?”

“Okay.”

Carly sighed and looked down at the car floor. The pockets on her side door were full of miscellaneous papers, pennies, and leftover stickers she wanted to put on the car that she didn’t have the time for.

The pockets on Char’s side were emptier, with some slips of paper stuck to the bottom after the first time she tried to deep-clean the car. The few 56

crumbs that had survived the cleaning sparsely dotted the floor. The smell of graham crackers was still vaguely present if someone got close enough to the ground. She pulled herself back into the present as she turned the key and pulled down the gear stick. The car whirred to life.

She slowly pulled out of Carly’s driveway and picked up speed after the car turned out of her neighbourhood.

The car ride was silent for 40 minutes. Krita slowly pulled her head out of her jacket like a turtle coming out of its shell. Char also began to unfold, putting down her phone to look out the window. Gari continued to tap on her legs. The loudest fragments of the songs in Gari’s headphones escaped in sharp bursts while she nodded her head to the rhythm. Krita opened up a book and switched between reading and leaning on the window for quick naps. Carly mainly focused on driving.

Markets, restaurants, and fast food places zoomed past her peripheral vision with all the different families, couples, friend groups, and some people who went alone inside. Small brick mom-and-pop shops for hair and food, with red letter signs, gave way to more well-known clothing stores with colorful logos on uniform exteriors painted over with white and beige. As they got farther from Carly’s neighborhood. When they got to the highways and interstates, most of the buildings were restaurants and fast food places with big neon signs and carefully painted walls with specific themes, desperate for the attention of hungry drivers. They even passed a circle of shops that functioned as an open mall with a little Ferris wheel and carnival booths in the center.

Eventually, blades of green and yellow grass took over the landscape.

Road signs with warnings about crossing deer and rabbits occasionally showed up when they got to forested areas with spiny trees reaching to the skies. On the roads next to flat grasslands, big blue signs showed how far away the next town was.

57 Char glanced back and forth between Carly and the window, and

stayed silent. The air was thick and awkward. No one in the car disliked anyone else. It’s just that Carly didn’t know Gari and Krita that well.

The few classes she shared with Gari and Krita didn’t give her nearly enough time to get to know them. A few days after Carly told Char about the trip, Char told Gari and Krita, and they both wanted to come along. From what she had heard and seen from Krita and Gari, they could both be obnoxious. Gari was always one of the top three loudest people in the room, and she was always ready to argue with someone, whether or not they deserved it. Krita was more of a know-it-all who would take over in any group project involving science. Gari was also one of Char’s first friends when she moved here, and Krita was someone that Char was intrigued by due to her music taste and her lab work outside of school. Carly wasn’t exactly overjoyed when Char told her about the extra 2 people coming along, 3 days before they planned to leave. But it was fine. She totally didn’t want to go on a nice trip with only Char. She totally wanted to have 2 people that she partially knew from school, that she wasn’t really friends with, in her car with full access to any snacks or papers she left in the back seat pockets. Totally fine. Gari decided to break the silence first.

“So...where are we going?” There was another moment of silence before Krita turned to Gari and asked, “Are you serious?”

“I just asked a question.”

“A stupid one. Did you not ask this question beforehand?”

“Look, I just heard Char say road trip, and it sounded fun,” Gari said while she glared at Krita, quickly realising that she had no chance of winning this confrontation.

Carly grimaced. They were going to fight the whole time, and she would be stuck listening to all of it. And then, they would keep fighting for the whole trip because those two have never been able to work 58 together for more than five seconds before they would start arguing.

This would be a bad idea.

Carly's spiral was swiftly cut off when Char jumped in with an answer to Gari’s question. “We’re going to Realta City. We booked a hotel, and we’re gonna explore the city. Sounds like a pretty fun thing for winter break, right?” Krita continued.“Carly got reservations for all of us, so we,” Krita pointed to herself and Gari, “don’t have to pay for ourselves. We can also go on our own when we get there.”

“Why didn’t you come with Friv?” Gari asked.

“He’s sick, and I didn’t wanna be rotting in my bed this weekend. When Char told me about this, it felt like a good opportunity to focus on something else,” she conceded.

“Oh.” That was the most anyone had heard Krita talk that day. That was also more emotional information than Gari was used to getting from Krita.

“Sorry about that,” Gari muttered, leaning back into her corner of the car.

This time, Char was quick to end it.

“Random question. Which is better, cars or trains?”

It was a question that she probably made up on the fly, but everyone practically jumped in their seats to fight for their apparently deeply held beliefs about the state of urban transportation.

“Trains!” Gari yelled.

“Cars!” Carly and Krita shouted.

Krita jumped in to argue first.

“Cars give you the freedom to go out on the road whenever you want!”

Gari countered, “Yeah, but then you have to deal with traffic. Trains have a set time, and no traffic. No train is gonna hit you unless you go into its space.”

“But the subway has so many people!” Krita groaned.

59 “And the road has lotsa of people in big metal boxes that can flatten

you!”, Char added.

Carly couldn’t argue against that, so instead she said, “At least you can play your own music in the car.”

“You can also play your own music on the train. You can use these things called headphones and earbuds.” Gari retorted sarcastically.

“Speaking of music,” Carly interrupted, “what do y’all want? In the car?” Carly paused for a response and then clarified, “Right now. What songs do y’all wanna play?!”

The conversation paused as everyone looked away from each other. As chatty as they all were seconds ago, no one wanted their music taste to be put under scrutiny. Krita looked down at the floor, burying her mouth in her jacket again. Char just dragged out a quiet “um” under her breath.

Gari hopped up from her seat and asked, “Can we play Babymetal? Or we could play 100 Geckos. Any rock music is fine.”

“Oh! I know those!” Char exclaimed, pointing at Gari. “But I was thinking we could play some pop music for good vibes.”

“You were gonna pick pop music over indie? Booo, ya sellout,” Gari said in a joking way as she kicked Char’s seat.

“I mean, pop is literally short for popular music. It’s literally the music that is most likable to a large group of people,” Char said, “The numbers don’t lie! It’s not all horrible!”

“The numbers only prove that it’s made to appeal to the highest amount of people while making them feel the least amount of connection to the music. That’s not a love of the game. That’s a corpo’s love of money.”

“Krita, you got any suggestions?” Char asked, chuckling as Gari playfought.

“None that I would like to share,” Krita answered.

“Cmon, you got nothing?” Gari asked, narrowing her eyes at Krita, “I think some of the dubstep you play in the lab would be some nice 60 headbangers.”

Krita shrank deeper into her jacket and muttered, “I like Vocaloid...and EDM stuff.”

Carly’s ears perked up as she heard that.

She whispered from the driver’s seat, “I like Vocaloid too!”

Krita's eyes lit up as she looked at Carly.

“Oh, sweet, it seems like Vocaloid wins then. What songs are we gonna play?”

“Uh.” Carly trailed off, still not in the mood to play any of her songs since they weren’t exactly the most cheerful or appropriate songs for the moment.

“I don’t have many good songs in mind at the moment that I feel would be fitting for this situation.“ Krita stated.

“How about I just turn on the radio and see what plays?”

No one objects to that, so Carly turns on the radio.

The rest of the car ride goes surprisingly smoothly. Sometimes, everyone chats or complains about the radio’s music selections. The rest of the time, they come up with random questions or talk about school and any restaurants, shops, or tourist attractions they see as they drive by.

A few hours later, Carly shouted, “We’re here!” A big blue building towered in front of them. “I’m gonna go park. Don’t go in without me!”

A few minutes later, she sprinted back to them, her fluffy purple keychain dangling out of her pocket. A floral perfume scent permeated the air as they all entered the lobby and approached the man at the front desk.

“Hello, I booked a room for 2 days,” Char told the hotel receptionist.

“Name?” he asked.

“Carly Werein.”

Keys jingled while the receptionist searched for the right one in the drawers. His hand rose from behind the desk with 4 shiny yellow keys 61

dangling from a circular keychain. “Here are your keys. We hope you enjoy your stay.” Gari ran for the elevator while Krita skittered behind her. Char and Carly walked side-by-side, with Char gazing up at the chandelier dangling over the lobby.

Char turned to Carly and said, “Oh! Maybe we can listen to some Vocaloid songs while we’re out on the town!”

“Only if you show me your playlist.”

“Deal.” Carly thought about it more before she said, “Maybe we can play some of Krita and Gari’s songs too.”

The car ride wasn’t perfect, but it went better than Carly expected. They actually managed to have a conversation, more than one conversation.

And, it was actually fun to talk to them. This wasn’t her usual group of friends, but she still had a good feeling about the next few days. Her suitcase clunked as she walked on the tile floor toward the elevator.

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Valentine’s Day 63

Valentine’s Day Contest Winner What Time Cannot Take Luke Mayfield When age has turned her hair grey and thin, her fingers won’t pick strings the same way.

Once the wrinkles begin to show on our skin, our hearts will be the only parts to stay.

All of these changes will only make me grow fonder.

Seeing her eyes like the sea, I know love’s not true if not felt wholly.

What I want is walks on the beach and late-night drives, yet I still ponder: What if something goes wrong? So, being careful, we go on slowly, knowing that each of us can get hurt. But our laughs won’t age, and neither will our jokes that no one else alive will understand.

Her cold hands on mine, we tighten our bond and turn the page.

Our differences bring us close, as my love continues to expand.

Once time is done, as one we go above.

Risks are worth taking to spend life in love.

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Honorable Mention How to Flourish a Heart Angela Zhou

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Honorable Mention Together Keaton Lisenby

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Spring 67

Ode to the Henbit Dead-nettle Marcy Everett Through each bleak, sleepy late winter’s morning, seeming endless in its frosty blanket of gray; Every chilling gust of wind that makes my eyes water and makes me tighten the folds of my coat.

Through each of these struggles the henbit dead-nettle prevails and paves the path to spring.

Its layers of clover-shaped shields of courage and chlorophyll adorned with curved, spotted spears of magenta and lilac erupt through the snowy fatigue of late winter, bringing promise of long walks smelling of rain and the soft, golden rays of the sun on your back as you plant a new batch of cherry tomatoes.

With the brave henbit dead-nettle to lead, other plants of the spring break through the soil’s ramparts, and the calls of birds and the scent of fresh green grass fill the air. Flowers of all colors bloom, breathing life into small corners of backyards and cracks between the pavement.

Among this new life, my small body clumsily runs, laughing, through the soft grass. I spy the vibrantly purple flowers adorning the henbit dead-nettle, piercing into the hazy afternoon light, and stop to inspect them.

I pluck these vanguards of spring by their stems with chubby fingers from their tall, green barricades

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of grass strategically placed by a metal fencepost.

I cluster them together, each one trained and armed; a bouquet for my mother, whose golden hair shines like the morning’s sunrays beside the defeated blooms.

Growing Pains Niya Talati The trees I used to climb have aged and died.

The loss of you is heavy on my back.

I ask if saying goodbye to midnight snacks and secret laughs is really worth my pride.

The way was clear when you were by my side The paths that seemed straightforward are crossed, and catty conversations filled with frost pour salt on wounds of friendships gone with the tide.

Yet thinking back not everything is gone.

The memories of our carefree days remain; your laugh in the rain still summons me to dance.

We can’t return to picnics on the lawn or playing in the sand, but I won’t stain the joy of you with pains of circumstance.

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Sparks Declan Smith A flame within a stormy night, She stands where crashing waves arise.

Her eyes, twin lanterns, soft and bright, Reflect the stars in velvet skies.

Her laughter hums in secret tones, Like music, only hearts can hear.

She is the warmth that seeps into my bones, A light that draws me ever near.

Adored by all, yet still alone, Her smile could make the shadows blue.

If she could love, I’d make it known— But silent hope is all I do.

What if the spark I keep inside, Could bloom into a burning name?

What if the truth I’ve always tied, Could make her heart ignite the same?

Enchanted by her soul’s design, I’ll wait, however long it takes.

To hold her hand, to call her mine, Would be the risk my whole heart takes.

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Ode to Stains Olivia Carey Looking back, at baby pictures, you marked my clothes and mouth orange from spaghetti as I watched violent shows like Tom and Jerry.

In kindergarten, I waited in the car after a softball game, my nose bleeding, tears running onto my orange jersey while my coach shouted for someone to find her lost wedding ring.

As a young girl, the only way I would leave Florida is if horses would greet me when I came to Texas.

I grew up with muck stuck to the bottom of shoes like gum, sweat and dirt painted onto my jodhpurs.

I can still see faint brown spots across my plaid uniform skirt

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from early morning coffee in my favorite yellow cup.

Drips that spread like wildfire.

I’m sad I won’t see those gray, plaid skirts next year, knowing my they will just end up in a yellow bin when I graduate.

Most times I don’t notice you, until the day is over, stains right in the middle of my chest, Fearing you might draw on my best clothes, like my prized college sweatshirts, my pretty dresses, or my “good” jeans I don’t wear them out.

But, I can’t stay mad at you for long.

Not when I smile at the rings left by tea cups on my brown nightstand.

Not when I mistake the freckles on my arms for ants, or, from pink and blue fingers, who worked masterfully at dying hard-boiled eggs.

Not even when mascara rings my eyes like a raccoon’s, because I know I looked pretty with it on.

And, every time I see a mango, I know to eat them shirtless over the sink, like my mother taught me, soft belly cold on the counter.

Even though it still splatters

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my chin, my lips, my nose, my forearms, I close my eyes, and feel the sun on my skin, even when there is no sun.

There’s nowhere to put the mess.

You make me messy with proof.

Proof that I was not only hungry but that I lived.

Links of Life Emma Khan

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someday.

Ayomide Agboola someday i’ll do it, i’ll take my chances and crawl in the path of uncertainty i’ll climb out of the ditch of loathing of pity. someday i’ll explore the depths of my consciousness, a vault teeming with fervor and angst and guilt and i’ll purge, with every smear of crimson paint and streak of pen. someday i’ll shut the chasm an abyss of anhedonic emptiness a carnality i swore i’d abandon, a void drawing me closer, even closer.

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someday i’ll be a flower a sweet, blooming magnolia with petals of purity, fertile, worthy of love. someday i’ll wake full of vigor, the sky and its golden child swelling with glistening pride once more with which i also look back at my work a cathartic release a potent remedy. someday i’ll do it, i will.

Don’t Drink and Drive Marcy Everett Sunlight filtered through the windows of Mom’s Ford Expedition as we cruised down the highway to somewhere in Arlington. My car sickness prevented me from doing anything but looking out the window 75

and listening to music, so I read billboards to pass the time. They were always in abundance, like ants slowly crawling to our destination alongside us, advertising dentists, casinos, and Buccee’s. My mind wandered to my 6th birthday party last year when my parents put selfrelighting candles on my cake. When I blew them out and they continued to burn, I was certain a witch was nearby, controlling my candles. I spotted a billboard I had seen many times before warning against drinking and driving. This time, however, I took it to heart.

Don’t drink and drive. I promptly scanned the car for anything that could break this law and spotted my mom’s tumbler, which I had watched her pour tea into before we left the house, in the cup holder next to her. I waited. She eventually took a sip, and thank God I was there to remind her that drinking and driving was illegal.

Jury Mania Angelina Bwimbo “Count 1: Guilty!”

“Count 2: Guilty!”

“Count 3: Guilty!”

“Count 4...” It’s been 5 hours. The prosecutor taps his pen on the table while the defense attorney’s head slumps to his desk. The crack of the gavel against the wood echoes in ripples through the courthouse.

The sound block is riddled with dents like bullet holes. 500 counts for 500 men, dead in a month. The witnesses whisper with the widows, sharing sorrows, sharing stories, sharing recipes. Claps in time with the gavel crush the cries of the man in handcuffs. Finally, something new to talk about.

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That Unknown Distance MJ Brannon

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Summer 78

Spectrum at Sea Libby Bumgardner

Distance Luke Mayfield I was wishing the world would stop when you said we should head back.

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smoke.

Kate Batton smoke, rising, growing it had just been light and warmth now it is becoming new changed forever smoke, spinning, twirling relishing in its new form silver, catching light finally free from its glowing cage smoke, flying, flinging high and low, it spreads out dizzying to smell, dazzling to watch smoke, swirling, dissipating it was once light and warmth but now fleeting, so beautiful, and gone so quick.

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Hidden Cave Graham Kennedy

Puffin Thomas Danzi

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Only the Mad Can Stay Sivani Subramanian Title: The Wonderland Files: Personal Case Notes–Transcribed from Dictaphone Filed by: W. Rabbit I’m late.

I sprint down the path, praying I don’t run into a tree. The only thing worse than being late, is being late with a concussion. Finally, I’m at the Mad Hatter’s, hoping I haven’t missed one of his rare moments of lucidity. Manic one moment, depressed the next, and sometimes suddenly lucid—I should have enough to diagnose him any day now.

I burst through the doors, feeling almost dizzy as I spin around, wildly looking for him. The room is dark, but the strobe lights bring each of his wildly colored furniture pieces into stark relief. The whole scene is migraine-inducing. It seems I was too late; the tea party has already begun. I quickly find the Mad Hatter, and as I talk to him, one thing remains clear: he’s thankfully still in the mood to talk.

I sidle up to him, watching as he pours the tea. Suddenly, he turns to me.

“Out with it, my dear long-eared time licker. You usually run quicker than the tea I pour, and yet you stand here.”

As he’s talking, I watch as the tea overflows out of his cup. When he finally looks down, he seems unbothered, just setting the pot down and bringing the overfull cup to his lips, still uncaring as some of the tea sloshes out.

“I’m here to talk—” I start.

“Talk? Talk? What is there to talk about that hasn’t already been whispered by spoons and ignored by teaspoons?”

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“I just wanted to know why you hold these tea parties,” I say, ignoring his outburst.

The Hatter just sighs theatrically and simply says, “That—that question is why I keep these parties going.”

I stay quiet until he elaborates, “If I stop pouring the tea, they start asking why I’m pouring it, and then I have to acknowledge time.”

He leans in, eyes flickering as the lights strobe around us.

“Did you know he left? Time? Just stormed out during one of our little fights. He said I was ‘unreliable,’ whatever that means.”

He frowns as he says, “He never came back, so I never move forward.”

Just as suddenly as he started talking to me, he turns away, leaving me to sit here and puzzle out every word that was just said.

I think he knows he’s losing it. But I suppose he’d rather go mad on his own terms than be sane in someone else’s story.

I really should go. The Cheshire Cat was apparently seen recently, and I can never seem to pin him down long enough to get any real data. He appears and disappears at will, making it harder for me to find him than anyone else here. But while I’m here... I could always observe the March Hare.

Why come back only to get another migraine?

I walk over to the other side of the table, where the March Hare starts explaining the concept of an “unbirthday” to yet another unsuspecting bystander. Before he can launch into song, I stop him.

“Hello, Hare. Mind if I join you?”

He flinches, even though he saw me coming. His anxiety is palpable, rolling off him in waves. He taps his teacup three times on the table before answering me, looking around to make sure no one else is listening.

“Sure,” is all he says.

83 I slide into the seat next to him, saying, “I’m just here to understand.

You’re always so careful, vigilant. I want to know why.”

He laughs nervously before staring at his hands like they’re going to combust any second.

“Something is always about to happen. Always. It’s Wonderland.

Nothing makes sense, so anything could make sense.”

I wait for him to elaborate, but he seems perfectly content to sit there and stare at his hands. I try to get him to keep going.

“It’s calm today, isn’t it?”

He whips his head toward me, making it clear that was entirely the wrong thing to say. He looks around before agitatedly whispering, “Calm days are the worst. You know why? Because they set the trap.

The quiet is bait. Then BOOM—trial, beheading, tap-dancing porcupines.”

Perhaps his “paranoia” isn’t completely unwarranted. It’s alarmingly accurate, making me wonder if it was caused by Wonderland itself.

As we’re talking, I look down at my watch and feel my stomach flip. I was not supposed to have stopped this long. I mutter a quick goodbye as I bound out the door.

I’m late. Again.

I run toward where the Cheshire Cat was last spotted, only to find empty air. He only ever watches—detached from the rest of us. He enjoys watching others spiral but never participates. He’ll provide you with observations but never help. It’s rather paradoxical.

I look down at my watch, realizing it’s too late to even try to go within ten feet of the Queen (she would have my head for even stepping on her grounds at this hour), but too early to try to sleep. I suppose that means the only person left to psychoanalyze is myself. I want to say I’m sane, but who really is here? Technically, no one here is beyond saving, but Wonderland isn’t designed to save people; it’s designed to keep them 84 from realizing they need saving in the first place.

I started this project when Alice disappeared. At least, they say she “disappeared,” but I’m convinced she was able to see. Nobody in Wonderland just wakes up, but Alice did.

Now I watch the clock because it is the only thing that makes sense. I record every detail because maybe then this place will mean something.

Maybe someday I will wake up too.

Untitled Keaton Lisenby

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Where the Wild Things Grow Marcy Everett The playground lies tucked behind a small community center at the end of my street, no more than half a block away from my house. It sits between a basketball court with faded paint and a soccer field with goals that are never in the same places, surrounded by a concrete wall that keeps the woodchips and the memories inside. This is the utopia of towering oak trees and recklessness and blue sky. This is the place of castles and dragons, thrilling adventures and kings and queens. This is the place of cracked pavement and roley-pollies and swinging as high as you can. Here is where the squirrels are no more than streaks of chestnut across the soccer field and the air is filled with the delightful squeals of children and the crisp scent of nostalgia. Here is the place of fallen leaves and racing down the slide and falling in the woodchips. Here is where everything seems smaller when you return.

There’s nothing special about it, really. The grass is patchy and yellowing, the color palette of the playground dull and unexciting, and the water fountain has never worked. But this park had become the foundation of my childhood, the acorns and chipped paint all ingrained in my memories like the notes of a familiar song. Every crack in the sidewalk, every wayward woodchip, every squeak the swing a part of the cadence of this magical yet ordinary park.

Sometimes I wonder what someone who has never been there would see: a sleepy old park, or a dilapidated one, or maybe they wouldn’t think anything of it at all. They don’t know this park. They never played games like "The Floor Is Lava," "Tag," "Hide-and-Seek," or "Squirrels Foraging for Food for the Winter" in this park. I see the park where I put on a talent show, the basketball court where my older sister Abby beat 86

me in every basketball game we played, the field in which I chased squirrels with Cocoa, our Australian Shepherd, the hill Abby and I made dirt tracks with our pink and purple bikes on. My next-door neighbor and I used to collect the grainy, detached turf that fell off the roof of the community center in one specific spot and mix it with mud, leaves, and anything else we could find. We called it special soup. We collected the turf near the old entrance of the community center, where everyone always slid down the green concrete railings, which were as wide as my arm at least. We slid down these railings so frequently that the paint is worn in the middle, where we would slide down, revealing a glimpse of the red paint before the green. This was the color the railings were painted when the community center was a school, in 1927. Sometimes I would look at the worn railings and wonder if the kids who went to school there 90 years ago used to slide down them, too.

Each time we walked down to the park, Abby would challenge me to a race to the end of our street, and each time I would reluctantly accept.

We would fly over the cracked pavement and the familiar part of the sidewalk where the ground seemed to have swelled, causing the cement to break apart in jagged pieces like concrete puzzle pieces that would never quite fit together. We would race past all the dandelions we would normally pick, all the bugs we would normally gawk at, all the way to the end of our street. Each time Abby would beat me, I would be upset, saying that she won every time, and we would fight as our parents caught up and we crossed to the street until we reached the park and all was forgotten.

One of my favorite things about the park is the live oak trees that surround it, like sentinels watching over the unruly kids and their vigilant parents. There is a spread of rapemyrtle trees on the side of the basketball court that have smaller, lighter, and smoother branches. These were the only trees I climbed for a long time, while Abby climbed the 87

rough, towering oak trees with the mockingbirds and mourning doves and blue sky. Eventually, she convinced me to climb one with her. I had climbed the oak trees before, but only the ones with low-hanging branches. She wanted me to climb the second-biggest one in the park, behind the playground, one that I had to use one of the green park benches to even get close to the base of the branches. Nervous, but eager to impress, I tried. She had to help me up the whole way, but when I finally hoisted myself to where the branches began, I felt a sense of accomplishment like no other. Abby encouraged me to climb higher, higher, as high as I could get, until we popped our heads out of the tree canopy. My hands and knees were scraped, I had bark in my eyes, and I had no idea how to get back down, but the blue sky was worth it.

On the rare snow days, the park becomes a magical kingdom of white. No one cared that the snow was only one inch deep, or that the snow wasn’t sticky enough to make a snowman, or that the hill wasn’t big enough to sled on, even if we did have adequate snow. They still went to our neighbor Charlie’s house to ask for his toboggan, and all the kids took turns sliding down the hill while the parents took turns pulling, or used their own laundry baskets and slid down their driveways. On the days when it was so cold that frost patterned the windows like an intricate quilt and the tips of the yellow grass poking through the snow disappeared, the basketball court could be turned into a makeshift ice skating rink, and those who sled down from the hill slide onto the court below. Everything seemed wonderful in the snow; even if you were simply swinging, a familiar activity, it was infinitely more exciting because of the biting cold and the white all around you. When we were done sledding on the thin sheet of snow, sliding around on the icy playground, and attempting to make a snowman, we would walk home to a cup of hearty hot chocolate, and I would wonder how 88 someone could ever become bored of the eternity of white waiting

outside the door.

Covid reminds me of those snow days. You couldn’t really go anywhere or do anything, and suddenly the park became the main event of our days again. Except now, the park was no longer a place of magic and discovery and nostalgia, but a mundane part of the routine. My mom was determined that we get our vitamin D one way or another, so we went to the park daily for months on end. We began running out of things to do, particularly after the third week of going to the park every single day. My little brother Sam, who was around eight at the time, made up a game for us to play that became just about the only thing we did at the park. Abby and I, who were thirteen and eleven, got so bored once that we resorted to naming the tree branches based on their durability and location on the tree. I was too scared to climb with her, so I would just sit at the bottom and watch her climb and name the tree branches for her. I gave them names like sketchy branch, because it looked like it could break off at any second, or swingy branch, because it was fun to swing on. This was the most interesting part of our days, amid the online classes and quarantine. It’s shocking to think of the difference between then and now, the previous magic of the park compared to its simple dullness during covid.

Now, at 16, I haven’t talked to many of my neighbors in years. Now I walk to the end of the street instead of running, and continue on to the park without needing permission from my Mom to cross the street. Now I realize how important this park was to my childhood, my family, my neighbors, and I wonder if anyone else appreciates it as much as I do.

Back then, the most important things to us were whether or not Mom was going to let us watch another episode of Wonder Pets or who got to stir the cheese powder into the milk for the box mac-n-cheese. Now we’re concerned with getting more money, more attention, more clothes, more friends. Now I walk through the park and see the freshly 89

painted basketball court with its brand-new nets and the colorful hopscotch painted on the sidewalk and the new butterfly garden and I wonder if anyone slides down the railings and collects the turf anymore.

Works Cited Clarksons. “Fort Worth Schools.” Wiley G. Clarkson, https://www.clarksons.org/Clarkson/schools.htm. Accesed 30 September 2025.

Creative West. “Thomas Place Tower.” Public Art Archive, 2025, https://publicartarchive.org/art/Thomas-Place-Tower/0ed2bbe5.

Accessed 30 September 2025.

Roberts, John. “Thomas Place Community Center.” Architecture in Fort Worth, 2018, https://www.fortwortharchitecture.com/west/thomaspl.htm.

Accessed 30 September 2025.

Texas A&M Forest Service. “Texas Tree Selector.” Texas Tree Selector, https://texastreeplanting.tamu.edu/viewalltrees.aspx. Accessed 28 October 2025.

Nagaoka, Japan Mackenzie Crain

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In the Tidal Zone, Sawyer Key An intergenerational poem by Olivia Carey and Danielle Sellers Water is memory.

–Yusef Komunyakaa, “Blackbirding on the Hudson” In the calm salt river the moon drives through mangroves a nursery is made for lemon sharks, horseshoe crabs, crocodiles that feed on minnows who flash silver in any given light. A nursery, too, for us, where we dig castles decorated with sand dollars marine snails have drilled to suck the soft bodies out. When the tide runs, the sea sounds like a babbling brook, scampering over green-algaed coral. Brown turtle grass bends with the force of its movement. At low tide, the inch-deep water burns the souls of our feet.

We are careful not to cut them on what used to be animals pressed over eons into jagged limestone now half-buried in the wet sand we squish our toes into.

The algaed rocks tickle. We shriek, wondering what slithers in the periphery out to deeper water.

Spoonbills and egrets step gingerly along the strand, nosing their beaks for water bugs. The tire tracks from a Ridley’s sea turtle heaving itself on shore and the eggs it buries and leaves behind are the only evidence of its arrival.

Stobs of driftwood lay like wooden fences, a layer of defense for the mangroves that dig their roots into now dry land.

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We wait for the tide to turn. First, it swirls around our ankles then calves, the knobs of our knees at different heights.

We want to plunge in, refreshed, covered in the water only our bodies remember, what all of our bodies crave.

Sunrise on the Beach Avery Kostohryz

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