Issue 3 Fall 2023

Tufts Observer ISSUE III

THE CREATIVE ISSUE

table of contents 2. Letters from the Editors

By Neya Krishnan & Veronica Habashy

4. Jesus in a Pool of Milk

By Jo Haggard

6. My Coffee is Cold Now

By Chloe Cheng

15. a room of my own

By Jennifer May

16. Creative Inset

By Aviv Markus

20. तपस्या (Tapasya)

By Nikhita Karra

7. 三叠字—Mandarin Characters Stacked Up 21. Marigolds

By Matilda Yueyang Peng

8.North Hollywood, CA 91607

By Tobias Fu

9. Hollywood, Christmas, 2021

By Eli Marcus

10. Purple Church

By Erin Zhu

11. Drunk Goggles

By Annushka Gupta

12. my new earrings

By Bella Cosimina Bobb

13. the winds that whispered woe

By Annika Pillai

14. Kitty, Your Culture Tides of Black and White

By Anh Ngo

TUFTS OBSERVER

NOVEMBER 6, 2023

By Sacha Waters

22. Orchids

By William Zhuang

24. Summer Storm

By Ruby Goodman

25. sun salutations

By Juanita

26. Midden of Scar Tissue and Growing Pains

By Veronica Habashy

27. Exhibits from the Digital Age

By Neya Krishnan

28. Sphynx Pussy

By Michelle Darling

staff

Editor-in-Chief

Juanita Asapokhai

Editors Emeritus Melanie Litwin Amanda Westlake

Managing Editor Emara Saez

Creative Directors Anastasia Glass Hami Trinh

Feature Editors Ruby Goodman Rohith Raman

News Editor Kara Moquin

Arts & Culture Editors Sophie Fishman Ava Vander Louw

Opinion Editors Lucy Belknap Megan Reimer

Campus Editors Clara Davis Eli Marcus

Poetry and Prose Editors Veronica Habashy Neya Krishnan

Voices Editors Ivi Fung Eden Weissman

Art Directors

Audrey Njo Uma Edulbehram

Creative Inset Lead Aviv Markus

Staff Writers

William Zhuang Layla Kennington

Erin Zhu Leah Cohen Billy Zeng Joyce Fang Seun Adekunle Matilda Peng Bella Cosimina Bobb Spencer Vernier Sacha Waters Anna Farrell

Designers

Madison Clowes Maria Cazzato Aviv Markus Rachel Li Kaya Gorsline Unmani Tewari

Staff Artists

Zed van der Linden Maria Cazzato Phoebe McMahon Mariana Porras Chileta Egonu Stella Omenetto Ava Hudson Annica Grote Elika Wilson

Website Manager Clara Davis

Contributors

Copy Editors

Sofia Valdebenito Emma Castro Madison Greenstein Mia Ivatury Miles Kendrick Anne Li

Annika Pillai Tobias Fu Anushka Gupta Jennifer May Anh Ngo Chloe Cheng Michelle Darling Nikhita Karra Cheyenne Atole Katie Kostak John Bial Paola Ruiz Helena Hu Jo Haggard

Publicity Directors

Treasurer

Lead Copy Editors Ashlie Doucette Alec Rosenthal

Aatiqah Aziz Sofia Valdebenito

William Zhuang

Publicity Team

Emma Itturegui Francesca Gasasira Leah Moradi

Podcast Directors Grace Maisello Noah DeYoung

Podcast Team

Caroline Yang Emily Pham Isaac Ulloa Antonio Tamara Setiadji Erin Guy Soraya Basrai Eden Weissman

Mimesis Each thing we create is an extension of ourselves.

Another arm sprouts from between our eyebrows, behind our knee, behind and below our ear, and takes up space. The sun is reflected on the water. The page flinches then browns like a pear at its collision with the drop of coffee. The rhythm of your footsteps slows down once the rain begins. Art imitates life, basically.

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Dearest Reader, I cannot pinpoint the first time I tried to imitate the world around me through writing. My memories mesh into a single truth: I have always looked outside in wonderment, clinging to letters, then words, sentences, then paragraphs, stories, then finally, poems, as a means of consolidating my questions, joys, and moments of quiet. At least one thousand times a week, you are guaranteed to hear me murmur, “That’s so poetic”—at the very top of the swings at a local playground as I people-watch the tiny bodies below me or at a Thai restaurant in Salem, listening delightedly to Arya as she describes her best friends from India, her eyes full of light, her voice coated in agave.

My first time focusing my whole soul into a poem was in fourth grade when I competed in a school-wide Mother’s Day acrostic poetry competition hosted by Zales Jewelry. The winner would receive a free bracelet to give to their mom. I paid painstaking attention to every letter of my mom’s name, choosing the words that best captured her essence and my adoration—so when I lost, I was crushed. I desperately wanted to give my mom a present I had earned with my words. Instead, I felt like they failed me. I was nine years old and had no money to gift my mom, so I devised a plan to sneak some bills out of my dad’s wallet. Eventually, my guilt overwhelmed me, and I came clean. Instead of the disappointment I expected, mom smiled a knowing smile, held the poem to her heart, and taught me a song: The Loser Song. It had a dance and everything. It was my first of many lessons in learning how to lose while simultaneously appreciating the art I created amidst that loss, art that strove to imitate and observe everyday experiences and everyday people.

In the interest of transparency, I am revealing to you that I did not know what the word mimesis meant before I began working on this issue. Even after choosing our theme, I wondered if the word would be a unifying concept or if it was too niche to attract writers. But as submissions came in, I soon realized that the very act of writing is mimesis. Mimesis is seeing Jesus in a Pool of Milk; it is the process of documenting Marigolds and Orchids and Summer Storms; it is capturing Indian classical dance, and it is the world through Drunk Goggles.

As I write to you now, I am reminded of myself three years ago, nervously perched over my Chromebook in the darkness of my ombre violet bedroom, writing my Why Tufts? essay and gushing over the chance to write for the Tufts Observer. Each time I get to see our magazine in print, in your lovely hands, I am filled with pride. And to each of you who takes the time to read our words, I thank you for allowing me to indulge in my little thoughts and reflections on the world, its writers, and their imitations.

I am so excited to welcome you to Issue 3, Fall 2023, Mimesis. <3

With love, Neya

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OCTOBER 5, 2023

Letters

from the

Editors Dearest Reader, As we approach November, the incoming winter announces herself with her usual unsympathetic dryness and affectionate rouging of noses. As a Californian implant here in this strange land, I am reminded of the way I used to comprehend the arrival of this brutal yet necessary season, which also happens to be the reason I started writing poetry: oranges. To me, the perfect bright sweetness of that citrus of my heart is as good a signal as the idyllic crunching of the leaves strewn about a red-brick paved street. Gary Soto’s poem, “Oranges”, is about winter—“December. / Frost cracking / beneath my steps, my breath / before me, then gone.”

To me, “Oranges” represents what art is supposed to mean: a kind of simple attempt at rendering the lives we partake in, which unfold before us, always simultaneously as if the table of contents was picked at random (unlike this magazine’s!) but also somehow in exactly the right order, as the seasons (just like this magazine).

Joan Didion, another reason why I write, wrote that “The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself.” More often than not, we cannot explain why we write what we write. I am unsure of how appropriate the “letter from the editor” is as a place to get Freudian, but I do think of art kind of like how Freud posits dreams: amalgamations of things we have seen before, never anything completely new. The things we experience and see are the only things that we truly know, and no matter what you are creating—whether it’s a sculpture composed of giant rainbow noses, or a story about whoever lives on Saturn’s rings, or a poem about paying for chocolate with oranges—we are informed by the world immediately surrounding us (or perhaps the worlds we poke our heads out of to spend hours in a Wikipedia hole trying to comprehend). This isn’t to insinuate that everything we do has been done before, but rather to admire the human compulsion to give something to the world, to leave a trace and say this is what I saw and this is what I made. In a similar vein, to absorb each other’s art is a particularly intimate form of sharing ourselves, which I am honored to have facilitated in editing this issue. I do hope you enjoy this surprisingly slim package of multitudinous beings which we have so lovingly amassed for you all. And please, remember to eat your oranges this winter.

Citrically yours, V <3

DESIGN BY HAMI TRINH

NOVEMBER 6, 2023

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Jesus in a Pool of Milk I sit on the toilet with my toes pointed inwards, watching the sink faucet. On the right lever, whose metal is still warm, a droplet of water clings. ~ We met when I was 19, beneath an overhang in Brooklyn.

She came over and asked me for a cigarette.

I said I would t r a d e her one for her name. “ M a r y,” she said, “my name is Mary.”’

We chatted between inhales as rain turned to steam on the hot cement around us.

Warm fog held us in an alcove of transparent walls.

Mar y

4 TUFTS OBSERVER

By Jo Haggard

was from “The Desert” and s a i d her insides w e r e cracked like the a d o b e walls she was raised in. She said that everyone was cracked down there, from the heat or maybe from the fucking boredom. ~ When someone asks me my biggest fear, I usually say death. Because it is human to fear death, and I am trying to trick them. ~ Mary moved to New York when she was 16, by herself. All she had was the money she made playing gigs in dusty bars and 100 bucks she stole from her stepdad. Mary was 22 now, but looked much older, and even with her hollowed eyes, she was quite stunning. She couldn’t have been shorter than six feet. Her bleached hair was so grown out that it hung in two stark colors—black from scalp to shoulder and untoned yellow from shoulder to lower back. Her eyes were dark, slanted upward to match NOVEMBER 6, 2023

her eyebrows, wolflike. She wore what she called her “uniform”: a men’s striped button down, black jeans, and boots with red laces. She said that all of the greats have a uniform, “like Andy Warhol with that stupid fucking wig. Or the Pope.” Mary was a devout Catholic, so she liked to talk about the Pope. She went to church every Sunday and hung a poster of the Virgin Mary next to her bed. Mary didn’t love God in the usual way; she loved him in the way that teenage girls love boy band members.

She used to be what she called “a purplehaired, gender goblin, brainwashed atheist,” but that was before she found God and started snorting ketamine. ~ Many people suffering from mania do not think anything is wrong. ~ Mary and I spent that hot rainy Thursday together. We didn’t really plan to, but when I started walking she just followed, and when she started talking, I started listening and we didn’t stop. It went on like that for a while: I would go to work or school, come home, make dinner. And she would be there. Like a cat that didn’t make much noise, she slinked around doorways and across the tops of couches.

Mary liked to laugh and tell me about how she started doing opioids at 13 and selling them at 14. She’d show me the track marks on her arms like they were gunshot wounds that won her a purple heart.

Mary was a romantic—when I asked about her goals in life, she said they were to love me and only me. Oh, and to make it up to God. For what, I never asked. She liked to make proclamations of love at random. It would hit her, suddenly, that she loved me. And she would wake me up in the middle of the night to tell me she saw the whole universe in my eyes. She would tell me that her whole existence was just a

reflection of me. I would laugh and tell her she was crazy, and she would go back to sleep like nothing happened. ~ I have never felt a fear like finding a piece of hair in my mouth. If I swallow too many, they will band together in tangles and balls in my bloodstream and intestines, blocking me up from the inside. My biggest fear is not knowing it is coming. ~ It took a little over a year for Mary to change. She spent hours on the phone everyday, locked in the bathroom. Sometimes it was completely silent, sometimes she would talk in hushed whispers, and other times she would yell. I could never piece together what she was yelling about, her sentences always incoherent.

Her personality, while always a bit erratic, had become more and more unpredictable. I heard her singing in the living room at two a.m. Some nights, I would go back to sleep, but others I would slip out the doorway and watch her. I watched her spin around like a tornado of limbs. She wouldn’t have stopped for anything; a fire could have burned around her and she would have stayed protected in her spiral of song, till all that was left was ash and a spinning girl. ~ I saw Jesus for the first time in the pool of milk; I spilled it on purpose. He told me that I was a sinner. ~ I never mentioned my observations of her changes; it was not unlike her to fall into phases of oddity. She always said that is why we belonged together, two halves of a whole. I was like a rock face, so smoothed from the crashing of waves that the water now slid off without harm.

Mary was the agitated sea, impossible to tie down, only answering to the cosmic pulls of her own mind. ~ Mental illness is marked by periods of great excitement or euphoria, delusions and overactivity. ~ I found Mary crumpled in the entryway of our apartment more frequently. I would pull her up with my arms around her waist and half-drag her into the livDESIGN BY MADISON CLOWES, ART BY JOHN J. BIAL

ing room, laying her on the couch and taking a wet washcloth to her mascara-caked eyelids and the dried white powder that clung to her nose. I should have been more worried about her.

My friends would ask me if I thought she was seeing someone else on the nights she disappeared. I said she wasn’t, but truthfully, I never really knew, and I guess I never really cared enough to find out. Maybe I found comfort in her adoration, as if the more her insides roared, the harder she clung to my sturdiness. It was powerful to be needed by someone like her, with all of her strength and her spectacle. ~ When I was six, I cut the nail off of my big toe. I didn’t cry when the blood pooled in rivers around my body. Instead, I felt relieved. When my mother asked me why I had done it I was confused. It was obvious: I could no longer handle the feeling of my toenail pushing into my skin, growing up into my foot; I could feel it pushing through my nerves. ~ When I got the phone call, I grabbed my purse to leave as if I was going grocery shopping or to lunch. It was impossible— Mary was infallible, unconquerable.

When they brought me to her, there were scrapes along her face and her lips were tinted blue. Her body lay awkwardly, yet it was peaceful, all of the turmoil sucked out. I stared at her fingers, long with chipped red nail polish, thinking about how they used to run over my lips. Her nose, with its dramatic slant, was turned upward toward the white tiled ceiling. Her striped button-down lay slightly undone, allowing the top part of her chest to peek through. I blinked twice at this body in front of me, then walked away.

The funeral was small. A few of our old friends that we had stopped running into years ago, a priest, and I huddled in a gray cemetery in the outskirts of Brooklyn. I didn’t know where she would have wanted to be

in two places, and New Mexico had never held any good memories for her.

I went home that night and all traces of Mary seemed to have disappeared from the small apartment. I was not sure how or when this had occurred.

But my smoothed-out surface barely blinked an eye as I curled up in the twin bed in the corner of my room.

As sleep threatened me, the hazy images on my covered walls comforted me. They glowed with the hazy yellow light from each cross, and Jesus and Mary watched over me. Nothing had changed. ~ The droplet of water falls to meet the porcelain sink bowl, holding its shape. I think about waiting to see if it will slide into the drain. I get up and wipe, questioning the way it stuck. I forgot I

was thinking of you. buried; she had only ever spent time NOVEMBER 6, 2023 TUFTS OBSERVER 5

my coffee is cold now

By Chloe Cheng A light fog rests on the sidewalk and in between houses, leaving wet kisses on the tops of cars and blades of grass.

As I sit on the porch, moisture gathers on my cheeks and weighs down my eyelashes, like the face of a lover pressed against my own.

As it caresses my skin; it affirms quietly that I am indeed a part of this world.

My atoms will return to the fog someday.

6 TUFTS OBSERVER NOVEMBER 6, 2023

DESIGN BY MADISON CLOWES, ART BY MATILDA PENG

三叠字

By Matilda Yueyang Peng

鑫: Three golds stacked, two on the bottom and one on the top, symbolizing prosperity Full of money and a prosperous future. I bet that’s why you worked so hard. You always left early in the morning, returned late, and sometimes did not return. You must have thought you were working toward a shared prosperity, not knowing how sudden your departure would be. 晶: Three suns stacked, two on the bottom and one on the top, symbolizing crystal brilliance —yet who knows if three suns really equal a bright future? If only I knew you were in imminent darkness, I would not have let you go. I would tape you down to the doctor’s office, the hospital’s bed, where the sun cannot find you, and the time I spent in your arms as you petted me to sleep. 品: Three mouths stacked, two on the bottom and one on the top, symbolizing taste and quality The disaster was foreshadowed, but I could no longer taste its danger. I thought this was one of your regular tricks, that you would recover in no time. But really, you had no time. 森: Three trees stacked, two on the bottom and one on the top, symbolizing a forest Things were torn apart as always, I could not keep them in accordance. You promised me an open studio in the middle of the garden where I could paint, draw, photograph.

But the trees you planted have withered, and you have not fulfilled your promise. 淼: Three waters stacked, two on the bottom and one on the top, symbolizing infinite flood The rain dazzled my eyes and changed my perception like I had entered a kaleidoscope.

You must have worked extremely hard for Lao Tian Ye to bring that rain across the Pacific Ocean just to let me know that you were gone and on your way. 焱: Three fires stacked, two on the bottom and one on the top, symbolizing blaze, cracking of flames People cried and screamed everywhere. Some of them I did not really know. I was wondering how long it would take to burn a person to ashes when they wheeled you into the crematory.

Then I started crying and screaming too, like someone flipped a switch on me. 众: Three persons stacked, two on the bottom and one on the top, symbolizing a crowd I have lost all senses, stunned and blunted. Now there is one less in this family of three.

It’s only you and your mother, and it’s only you and your mother. People kept saying the same thing to me like I could not count how many three minus one is. 磊: Three stones stacked, two on the bottom and one on the top. This is your name And finally, I have to get to you, your name. Now there is no narrow escape.

DESIGN BY KAYA GORSLINE, ART BY HELENA HU DESIGN BY JOHN DOE, ART BY JANE DOE

Mandarin Characters Stacked Up

FEATURE

NOVEMBER 6, 28, 2023 OBSERVER SEPTEMBER 2020TUFTS TUFTS OBSERVER 7 9

North Hollywood, CA 91607

By Tobias Fu for Alfredo G.

Rose-colored boulevards and the endless summer, Morning sun reflected on the bougainvillea, old movie posters, Marilyn Monroe montage.

You said you were going to study Van Gogh next semester at Valley College.

Seven-year-old girl from Chile accidentally shot by police in a mall nearby, Breakfast from the Armenian supermarket, Jewish monks passing the street.

Taking a bus that goes through Beverly Hills to the seaside of Santa Monica, I scattered my past into pieces, buried them on the beach, and then lay on a bench in Ocean Park.

We biked to the supermarket, but your tire went flat, so we had to walk back.

“Bring your love to America, we need more love here,” I heard you say to my 17-year-old self.

I watched the day break and the sun set, endless freeways running through heaven, And I remembered your face teeming with tears, when you cooked dinner and bid me farewell.

America, with dreams I once sought for you.

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NOVEMBER 6, 2023

DESIGN BY AVIV MARKUS, ART BY PAOLA RUIZ

WW

The flower shop on the corner of Franklin and Western closed— permanently, that is.

It must’ve been recently— certainly while I was away.

Its awning has been tagged many times over.

The sign is all black now.

It must’ve happened not too long ago because the bricks that once composed the side wall lie beneath what is now a gaping hole in the world.

No one has recovered them since they sustained that fatal punch.

They sleep scattered and the flowers are gone.

The bricks all scattered, the flowers gone, the day fades against the mountains as the valley holds golden.

The valley is only golden from afar.

It sure is pretty around 4:30 p.m. this time of year; from up this high, that is.

Hollywood, Christmas, 2021

By Eli Marcus

The valley is golden and the mountains behind it a reddish-lavender, laced among a long mauve cloud, the middle peaks peeking in front.

Poesy wanders to the windowsill.

She graces the trim with her graying chin and nods her approval skyward.

She’s too hungry to care.

Someone will feed her around now.

Distant chatter about the whereabouts of the cat— under the bed upstairs— as the door was left cracked and he stays inside.

Always.

If the shop was open I would’ve picked up some tulips or sunflowers.

I only decided this upon discovering the hole in its side through which I saw bricks and bricks and no flowers at all; I only decided this once I knew I couldn’t.

I hate thinking that way.

DESIGN BY KAYA GORSLINE, ART BY CHEYANNE ATOLE DESIGN BY JOHN DOE, ART BY JANE DOE

NOVEMBER 6, 2023 TUFTS OBSERVER SEPTEMBER 28, 2020 TUFTS OBSERVER 9 7

Purple Church

By Erin Zhu

The church sits atop a hill in the center of Evans, tucked behind a slim bed of mountain laurel and dandelions. Crude, purple, and held up by bumpy, asbestos-filled concrete walls, it could be a Vegas brothel or cheap motel were it not for the fat and waxy cross that sits atop its peaked roof.

During breakfast, the people of Evans clasp their hands to say bless this food and the men eat quickly to leave for the steel mill. When they come back, the sulfurous air fills their houses with the stench of spoiled eggs. At dinner, they clasp their hands again to say bless this food and they close their eyes in prayer. At night, the people lift their eyes to the ceiling as they lie in bed, picturing the silent, bulbous cross, breathing in the rot. Please, Lord, they say. On Sundays, they walk up the hill to get on their knees in the purple church and cry.

One spring, one of the local boys is struck by a metal pole in the mill and loses his head. They put him in a casket and heave it up the hill to the church in the morning. Please, Lord, they say. At dusk, they bring it back down the hill to bury him among his own.

And the town remains like this, the steam from the mill billowing into the sky while the newly born are dipped into the water, and the people of Evans go up and down the hill, up and down the hill, up and down the hill.

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DESIGN BY MARIA CAZZATO, ART BY MATILDA PENG

Drunk Goggles

By Anushka Gupta

Like chalk stains on your pant pockets like you plucking pancake crumbs from my brow like you in all wonderment, soapy light shone on gentle hand round my hair as I’m awful kneecaps made of granite like you, eyes of marble reflect my drenching infatuation the contents of six gin and tonics pouring through my teeth like you, curious, a wonder, in fact.

DESIGN BY UNMANI TEWARI, ART BY UNMANI TEWARI

Like you come find me when it’s late and tea gone sorry lukewarm friends risen left imprints of their behinds in our living room cushions and said “go to bed,” “it’s late” but i’ll sip their backwash old-fashioneds and humor you get comfortable like you, unbuckle your belt and in each click, letting my dignity and pride pool at your toes.

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11

my new earrings

By Bella Cosimina Bobb Here is the least painful part— You count down from three, because you want me to know when it will happen.

I keep my eyes open, because I can feel it coming, and I want it to look like I don’t even care.

The first one doesn’t hurt.

I watch my face in the mirror for the Moment of Impact and can’t find it.

—This was the least painful part.

The second one makes my knee twitch like at the doctor’s.

I have to turn away.

You must have seen, thought I was obvious, when it pierced me, with how much I give away. I think I give too much away. I think save some mystery for the inside of you, and even then the needle comes and finds it all out.

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NOVEMBER, 6 2023

DESIGN BY ANASTASIA GLASS, ART BY MATILDA PENG

the winds that whispered woe For as long as I’ve known, the winds have ruefully whispered the cruelty of nature’s brutality. Regrettably, I never listened to them until now.

*** I used to find solace in the birds.

There was something so breathtaking about their pure whimsy. I remember a cluster of toothless beaks, blackbirds, and the way their voices woke me up every morning. The breeze waltzed inside, light on its feet and so gentle I might easily miss it, for the birds were finally chirping a melody so delightful I could not help but dance.

When I was young, the blue jay entranced me. In our backyard forest of blackbirds there was only one blue jay, flying starkly against the night. The winds, barely perceptible, would rustle through the leaves as the blue jay and I exchanged unspoken words in the serene moonlight. The blackbirds of my forest were too sophisticated for the safflower seeds littering the floor—shelled seeds that would cut my feet and attract the squirrels which I sourly despised. No matter how hard I tried to tiptoe slowly around the forest, I always walked out with the jagged cuts of my shortcomings. The squirrels taunted me, eyeing me down haughtily—a visual reminder of my incompetence; and faithfully, every morning, the blue jay would save me, lifting the hard-shelled seeds of my nightmares off the ground.

Of course, I’d grow up and learn more about humankind. But it was that blue jay in my backyard who cleaned up the safflower seeds that were always puncturing the thin soles of my feet: that was my first true friend.

*** In a meadow of dandelions and honey bees basking in the morning sun, I bloomed. The chirps I relished in my youth had morphed into the screaming winds I desperately tried to block out, until one day, the winds grew quiet and DESIGN BY RACHEL LI, ART BY KATIE KOSTAK

all I could hear was the symphony of silence. I spent my days dancing to the songs the same way I used to as the seasons changed. My music shifted, and I was left filling my days with other ventures as the winds howled in my periphery.

*** It was the first season our tree had given us apples. The sharp crunch, the tart sweetness—I had to stock up. Of course I had to stock up! It had been years since I had tried climbing a tree, but for this occasion it was as though the sun had melted my fear. I went up and down, up and down, up and down, until— I saw it. A nest of eggs, a blue jay amidst the center. A baby blue eye, placid, in a hurricane of blackbirds. A draft skimmed by, a gentle cadence to the moment, nature’s soft lullaby. As the sun shined, the apples fell, and the blue jay of my childhood huddled her feathers around her nest of eggs. The warmth of the sun washed over me, as if I had been shivering just moments before.

*** Months later, as spring settled into herself, I once again began my mornings dancing to that blend of voices. The winds whispered over my shoulder as I munched the sweet, sweet honeycrisps.

I would watch the nest from afar. While I slept, I could almost hear the blue jay snacking on safflower seeds, a small gesture I had grown so accustomed to. *** We were due for a storm—it happened every year, but nothing quite like this one. I remember hiding under a blanket, praying for peace as I listened to the winds howl, the pellets of downpour, trees falling and screeches of pain I had never heard before. I didn’t leave home.

The next morning, I was too afraid to rummage through the ruins I witnessed go down the night before. The day after,

By Annika Pillai

the sun had returned, already trying to wash away the chaos of the night before.

The second I left I stepped on a safflower seed, cutting my foot. Still, I trekked through.

I saw a cluster of squirrels at the bottom of the tree, and I knew something was wrong. Cracks of eggshells littered the ground, a tree branch striking the forest floor. I could not will myself to step a foot closer.

The winds were quiet—almost too quiet to hear, but I knew better. I could feel their taunts mocking my naiveté.

They screamed at me to listen, and I cowered away in fear. When they whispered the truth of what was to come, my stomach sank, and I searched high and low, left and right, but there was no blue bird to be found. All I could think about was how nature had betrayed me—treating me to apples and deep golden light, only to wash it away in a single night.

*** The next spring came and the apples lined the tree, but as the squirrels scaled the branches, I could only watch from afar, willing myself to deter them but instead mourning the sweetness that had too quickly given way to bitter truth.

And like clockwork, as every season, the birds would sing, the flowers would bloom, everyone would dance, and yet—all I could hear were the rueful whispers of the winds.

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13

Kitty, Your Culture Tides of Black and White Bleak years you lived in black and white– You held onto your culture like a way back home.

You’ve spent all your focus on holding to your roots, and now you’ve lost who you’ve become.

Kitty, listen to me. Your culture tides of black and white, but remember a thousand shades live within those lines.

So don’t worry, if you prefer the swinging suburban Californian lakes over the twisting tourist Saigon river.

You are a pigment of divergent homes.

So Kitty, don’t hover– but seek beneath the waves, and wash away the pines that are stifling you.

Start a life between these waters, and I promise you’ll meet yourself.

Because always with you is a boat of memories tattooed with the word “gia đình*” in the shape of your skin.

By Anh Ngo

*gia đình: “family” in Vietnamese

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DESIGN BY MARIA CAZZATO, ART BY MATILDA PENG

a room of my own

By Jennifer May in my yellow daffodil pjs on the hotel bathroom floor, rereading the farewell letter she wrote to me a couple of days before; cold linoleum, ochre wallpaper, the radiator sings its steady song. it is here where i find a space for myself. i hear the gentle rhythmic breathing of my sisters in the bedroom, but would prefer to stay here reading, resting in my solitude. along the tub, the shampoo minis are lined up like small coke bottles– i would have made the bath into a bar if i were still a child. would have turned the sink into a sea for all my little dolls, the soap a boat, the spout a slide, the drain a great whirlpool– now i look at my face in the mirror, holding onto a home, a place where i can see her. i live as i dream, alone.

DESIGN BY KAYA GORSLINE, ART BY STELLA OMENETTO

NOVEMBER 6, 2023 TUFTS OBSERVER 15

mimesis mimesis

(Tapasya)

By Nikhita Karra

In Hindi school years ago, I learned this word, was taught its religious associations.What could penance mean to a child? I learned it through Kuchipudi2— Even now, I think of a dance, always; I don’t know why.

I see Shiva3 on a mountain, repenting; a dance for the heavens and the Earth.

My dance.

Mother Earth, my namesake, I beg forgiveness instead of permission.4

Tapasya - a Hindi word meaning penance.

An Indian classical dance form originating from South India, specifically Andhra Pradesh + Telangana.

3 Shiva is a Hindu god known as the god of dance.

4 In Indian classical dance forms, dancers perform a namaskaram to Mother Earth at the beginning and end of their dance practice, asking her permission to let us dance on her and then thanking her at the end.

1 2

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DESIGN BY UNMANI TEWARI, ART BY MARIA WCAZZATO

Marigolds

By Sacha Waters

Does youth spring quickly from the bud, Thirst quenched by a mother’s blood?

And does it bloom before it rots As flowering forget-me-nots?

Does it grow and die between the hills Entwined in weeds and daffodils?

Or sprout in long and crooked lines Through prairie grass and pumpkin vines?

Is it reaped and bundled into sheaves With yellowed stems and cracking leaves?

Bound by wire, spun by spool Tied up and parceled out by rule?

Does youth go quickly as it seems As water rushing down the streams?

Withering as age unfolds As broken stalks of marigolds?

DESIGN BY UNMANI TEWARI, ART BY ADINA GUO

NOVEMBER 6, 2023

TUFTS OBSERVER

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Orchids

By William Zhuang

Other than the fruit flies that vow to buzz right through summer, the living room stays loyal to silence.

The television sits abandoned, suffocating under a screen of ivory dust. The remote has been lost for months. The custom-made calendar Mom ordered on a whim of family portraits with Photoshopped backgrounds hangs crooked on the side wall, still stuck in February 2020. “She’s probably in there,” Mom says lightly, and we tread down the hallway hollowed by darkness.

Behind the closed door at the end of the hall, your murmurs can be vaguely heard, though missing articulation. Strands of the sun seep through the door’s bottom along with the voice. You had begun insisting on shutting the door at all times, as if attempting to preserve the sanctity of the room, pleading for it to stay.

A pause briefly extends, and Mom twists the door handle. Here you are, sitting in front of your makeshift altar, once a bookshelf lined with self-motivating, life-coaching nonfictions. Now, a golden miniature Buddha bathes in incense smoke above apples of tribute that sit until they bruise and deflate.

“We are back, Mom!” She calls out, exhaustion already in her throat. It takes you a few seconds to look over and smile. I bend down to hug you, as you reach up to touch my face. But a hesitation strikes you, leading your hand down my arm, following the limb’s now foreign contours. At last, it settles for my hand, holding on for a while.

“Give me a moment, please, I have to read this scripture a few more times.” You glance at us with soft eyes, before returning your gaze to the altar.

We retreat to the living room, where a plate of washed cherries has sat untouched. I wave away the resilient flies as Mom fills cups with water from the kettle to cool down.

We sit and watch the steam rise, reminded of the feverish humidity of the room, our skin turning sticky. I look at the AC unit in the corner, likewise deserted, and don’t bother to look for the remote. The door finally opens, the movements of your wheelchair closely traced by the wooden floorboard, shrieking under every rotation. I stand up to greet you once more, suddenly struck by the pressure of a child desperate to behave.

One summer, I lost my balance on the playground swing while attempting to ride it on my belly, scraping my right cheek against the pavement. When I ran home— blood dripping down my face coated with dampened dust—I was craving grownup affection. You briefly looked

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up before fixing your gaze back onto the book you were reading. In your hushed voice, you told me I had been five minutes late for dinner before fetching a band-aid. I was shaken down from the pedestal built up by years of chronic coddling, lavishly offered by the rest of my family. Within your sinewy hands that flipped each passing page, your sure pupils glued behind reading glasses, I first learned a love that wasn’t so eager to please.

Now I’m submerged in an abyss I will later understand as loss while you hold the plate of cherries up to me, your hand trembling, “Have some.” You beckon in that same low voice, only now the sharpness has dulled, and the frailty is palpable. I take the plate from you and rest it on the table without eating any, my stomach churning after an oily lunch. But you notice immediately, and raise the cherries once more, “Come on, have some, don’t be so shy!” You smile like the moon, every wrinkle an opalescent scar of time, and press a few into my hand. The dew on the smooth surfaces wets my skin, and the fruits glisten in my palm, a cluster of bloody pearls. I place one on my tongue and bite, letting the rush of syrup overcome me. “Aren’t they sweet?” you ask as I spit out the pit.

You used to come visit us sometimes, but you never liked to stay in our apartment. After dinner, you would thank us for the meal, and quietly put your shoes on. Mom always offered to walk you back to your hotel, but you only let her reach the parking lot before turning her around.

One time, she returned with open floodgates, tears darting down her cheeks like lightning. When I panicked, the worst disasters conceivable crammed in my imagination, she whispered from between my shoulder blades, “Just thinking about what I’ll do when my parents are gone— it’ll happen one day, you know?” I am the son of a mother, but until then I had never thought of her as someone’s daughter, too—yet here before me was a child.

Now I’m watching her stand beside you, a handful of pills cupped in her palm, capsules vibrant as emeralds and rubies. We wished for these jewels, the chemicals within we can’t pretend to understand, to save you, to keep you here with us. So it was not just grief, but crestfallen failure that we felt when your aching body started keeping you up throughout the night; when we’d just be downstairs for lunch, and you’d think we were continents away again. “At least it gives her joy,” Mom likes to say, “to think of us traveling this far for her every single day.” What she doesn’t say lies in the shadow of her words: that we’ve begun to rehearse a life without you. Until that moment comes, we’ll keep trying to save you, pretense or else. The water is cool enough now. Your slender hand tilts back the mug over and over. I watch you swallow each pill, imagining the blooming of orchids.

DESIGN BY AVIV MARKUS, ART BY JENNIFER C. MAY

NOVEMBER 6, 2023

TUFTS OBSERVER 23

Summer Storm

By Ruby Goodman I was explaining the difference between two things to Ella when the rain started and we had to duck into a deli on the corner. I can’t remember what they were, but it’s not important anymore. I lost my train of thought, and instead she started talking about summer storms.

When she was 17, she said, brushing her hands against the Snickers and Milky Ways, her prom date was walking on the dirt path beside the highway, towards her house. It was the hottest day of the year. He told her later that he couldn’t stop thinking about his sweat that whole walk over, the way he could feel it coating his entire body.

As he went on, he started to feel the hair unsticking from the nape of his neck, and then he heard the wind. He took his eyes off the cars and looked up at the clouds. Twenty minutes later he was soaking wet and, holding a damp corsage out to her, he said: “Thank god it rained, I was so sweaty.”

Ten years of friendship, and I’d never known who she’d gone to prom with.

Then she was saying that when she was eight or nine, she woke up one morning to her parents fighting behind their bedroom door. She couldn’t quite catch the words, she said, as she looked through the ice cream in the deli freezer, except— “Wow.” She curled her fingers around the Magnum bar.

“What?”

“No, I kept hearing him say ‘wow,’ it was all I could hear.”

After a while, he left the house so silently that she continued listening behind the door an hour after he was gone. She went to a birthday party in the park in the afternoon. When she arrived she sat away from her friends, on a picnic table, and looked out onto the grass. She saw a man near the baseball fields watching a Little League game. It was her dad, she could tell, even at a distance. Something about his posture gave it away, the way he ran his fingers through the front of his hair.

I noted that this was something she did too.

The sky began to darken, and the birthday party packed up to move indoors. When the rain began, she slipped away from the kids and parents and moved towards the man.

The nearer she got, the less he really resembled her dad—this person was too short, had too much hair. But still, she was sure. She only stopped when he stood up to leave, walking away with his back turned, hood pulled over his head.

She didn’t know why these two memories felt like just one, clenched together in a rain cloud, holding its storm for so long just to be released all at once. Maybe it was only the weather, she said.

I would have done anything for her then, but I just bought her the ice cream and we walked out into the sun again.

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DESIGN BY MADISON CLOWES, ART BY STELLA OMENETTO

sun salutations

By Juanita Asapokhai

Once I scratched a secret into my own palm To get someone else to read it. No shame in my quest for attention of the supernatural kind.

The things the light has done for me: turned a lake into a mirror, skipped off the surface of the water like a stone, and, while glowing like glass, reflected the earth that pitched down around it, wobbly flowers and shifty sticks stretching out from the soil like open hands– light has asked me a question without looking at me, has cast its answer over me like a shawl.

In episodes of wakefulness, I reach for it.

This whole ordeal approaches the romance of the snake and the snake charmer, bound together in the inextricable knot of a song.

Still, I pluck the same worries out of my hair every morning.

Once I saw a black labrador rubbing its back on a mound of snow; its movements were unnatural, and it was just a plastic bag.

Illusion beyond illusion.

DESIGN BY UNMANI TEWARI, ART BY HELENA HU AND UNMANI TEWARI

NOVEMBER 6, 2023

TUFTS OBSERVER

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Midden of Scar Tissue and Growing Pains

By Veronica Habashy

Content Warning: Self-Harm Thawing of a frost that was never there brings the cold affliction of remembering: smell of fig leaves, sheen of that crease where forearm embraces—kisses—briefly freckled bicep, finally understands what it is to miss— to be missing from— Fleshy upper thigh, nearly hip, Bled dry in January.

As I am not so flexible, will never know another part of myself, save for the fingertips which held it taut that morning. I know my hair is not my hair from one year ago, doesn’t wince at the thought of that acidic hot water which I once believed was the only thing that could clean me. My skin today must surely be even younger.

I am often tempted to mourn the blisters which I earned (or so I thought).

Why couldn’t I keep them if I wanted?

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DESIGN BY MARIA CAZZATO, ART BY STELLA OMENETTO

Exhibits from the Digital Age

By Neya Krishnan 2/3/23 My grandma texts me on February 3rd: What ever is available please take that and eat.

Don’t be in empty stomach.

I also wish to feed you Lot Take and care Note to self: Don’t be in empty stomach; live inside a body that is always full.

I skip lunch today anyway.

1/2/22 dum dum red heart emoji snapchats me a photo captioned: My mom has flowers on the table and they smell so good You should get me flowers more often

3/20/23 I giggle and search for florists in Somerville and Medford, On the TV, landing on Nellie’s Wildflowers. There, I gather a bouquet Bomman and Bellie of Black-eyed Susans, the sun in my hands. raise orphan elephants like their own children in the state of Tamil Nadu; Bellie is afraid of tigers / her first husband was ripped apart, turned inside out from belly to blood to nothing. When Bellie lost her daughter, ammu wiped her tears— did you know an elephant’s trunk doubles as a handkerchief?

Bomman says elephants and Gods are the same.

4/20/22 Neya pappa - what are you up to?

(I don’t believe in a God) … Can you talk? Or very busy?

I agree

4/23/22 I’m so sorry mama! I missed this, I’m doing good! Went to party last night :))

(sometimes I worry I am little more than an appendage.

I cling to the party’s corners.

I miss home.)

2012–2015 I used to carve moons into my arms and smash my head against my neon walls so many times craters framed my forehead; I used a purple digital watch to time how long I could stand the pain. The longer, the better.

4/26/23 My grandma texts to say: Very nice to see your message.

I know you are so busy.

No hurry to reply to the message.

When ever you are free send.

Take care of your health. Eat well.

I order dinner from Sugar & Spice today.

I try and live inside a body that is full today.

DESIGN BY RACHEL LI, ART BY MATILDA PENG

NOVEMBER 6, 2023

TUFTS OBSERVER

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A

fte r

Jorg e

Sphynx Pussy Luis Borge

r y Beings, ‘ The Sphinx a i n i g a m I f o k ’ (19 s, The Boo

By Michelle Darling

74 )

IN THE MORNING SOMETIMES, I FIND MY STOMACH DROOPS INTO A SPHYNX HALF, AND MY NEW FEATHERS CRACK THEIR CARBON SHEATH.

I ASKED THE MAN LAYING BESIDE ME:

WHAT HAS FOUR LEGS, TWO LEGS, THREE LEGS, AND THE MORE LEGS IT HAS THE WEAKER IT IS, AND IF YOU DON’T ANSWER, I’LL EAT YOU AND AFTER I’M DONE, I’LL HAVE HAD MY BREAKFAST.

UNREMARKABLY, I DON’T MOVE QUIETLY, INSTEAD I HAVE TO CRAWL AND MY TAIL IS THE LAST TO SLINK OUT OF BED AND IS THE PART OF ME THAT HANGS IN DOORWAYS ALREADY PASSED THROUGH.

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DESIGN BY RACHEL LI, ART BY MICHELLE DARLING

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