ISSUE 4 SPRING 2022

TUFTS O

T R A N S I T I O N S

ERVER ISSUE 4 CLI

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3 LETTERS FROM THE EDITORS

BY MICHELLE SETIAWAN AND WILLIAM ZHUANG

4 EDUCATED

BY AVA DIMOND

6 DANCE OF THE SUN // LA DANSE DU SOLEIL

BY ALIÉNOR RICE

7 COWBOY IN BOSTON

BY CE MALLEY

8 PARASOCIAL

BY MEGHAN SMITH

10 TEN YEARS

BY SABRINA CABARCOS

11 TERMINAL B, LOGAN AIRPORT

BY IAN SMITH

12 THE FRESH PRINCE

BY WESLEY JANSEN

13 ART

BY DANIELA STEINBERG

14 BATHE

BY LAYLA NOOR LANDRUM

15 CODEPENDENCY PROTEIN

BY JULIA GONZALEZ

16 A SUNFLOWER HOUSE OF MY OWN

BY ANONYMOUS

19 INFECTION

BY WILLIAM ZHUANG

20 A FATHER LEAVES HIS SON

BY NEYA KRISHNAN

21 YESTERDAY’S RESIDUE

BY MELANIE LITWIN

22 MARCHING ORDERS

BY TOBIAS BROUCKE

24 THE VISITOR

BY CHEECH

25 I CAN’T WAIT TO WAKE UP TO YOU WORLD

BY ELLA FASCIANO

26 BELLICOSE BODIES / RHYTHMIC REINCARNATIONS

BY PRIYANKA SINHA

28 CROSSWORD

BY TARA STECKLER

STAFF EDITOR IN CHIEF: Aroha Mackay EDITOR EMERITUS: Josie Wagner MANAGING EDITOR: Sabah Lokhandwala CREATIVE DIRECTORS: Bao Lu Julia Steiner FEATURE EDITORS: Edith Philip Melanie Litwin NEWS EDITORS: Gracie Theobald-Williams Silvia Wang ARTS & CULTURE EDITORS: Juanita Asapokhai Sabrina Cabarcos OPINION EDITORS: Priyanka Sinha Meghan Smith CAMPUS EDITORS: Shira Ben-Ami Hanna Bregman POETRY & PROSE EDITORS: Michelle Setiawan William Zhuang VOICES EDITORS: Emara Saez Eden Weissman CREATIVE INSET: Brenna Trollinger ART DIRECTORS: Kate Bowers Misha Mehta MULTIMEDIA DIRECTOR: Unnathy Neltulla

DESIGN BY JULIA STEINER, ART BY DANIELA STEINBERG

MULTIMEDIA TEAM: Jasmine Chang Miela Efraim Pam Melgar PODCAST DIRECTOR: Caitlin Duffy PUBLICITY DIRECTOR: Janie Ingrassia PUBLICITY TEAM: Sophie Fishman Paola Ruiz Millie Todd STAFF WRITERS: Seun Adekunle Leah Cohen Clara Davis Ruby Goodman Layla Kennington Audrey Ledbetter CE Malley Aden Malone Akbota Saudabayeva Eloise Vaughan Williams Anica Zulch DESIGNERS: Emma Davis Uma Edulbehram Meguna Okawa Tara Steckler Miriam Vodosek Ines Wang Michael Yung

PODCAST: Noah DeYoung Julio Dominguez Alexis Enderle Gayatri Kalra Bronwyn Legg Grace Masiello Jaden Shemesh Jillian Yum STAFF ARTISTS: Brigid Cawley Aidan Chang Anna Cornish D Gateño Amanda Lipari Maxson Carina Lo Emmeline Meyers INVESTIGATIVE TEAM: Liani Astacio Hanna Bregman Eden Weissman CONTRIBUTORS: Cheyanne Atole Livia Bednarz Ava Dimond Ella Fasciano Quinn Hoerner Wesley Jansen Neya Krishnan Layla Noor Landrum Aliénor Rice Ian Smith Daniela Steinberg Julia Gonzalez

LEAD COPY EDITOR: Marco Pretell COPY EDITORS: Sophie Fishman Linda Kebichi Eli Marcus Emilia Nathan Jack Rogen Millie Todd Alexandra Ward

TRANSITIONS wincing at the sting of your first papercut, searching for your passport in the airport’s security line, blowing out the candles for your eighteenth birthday, propping open the door of your dorm room as your dad carries boxes inside.

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LETTERS FROM THE EDITORS The soundtrack of my third grade class was a melody accompanied by a belting, “Thrive, don’t survive.” I was malleable then, adaptable and open to any environment that contained me.

“Thrive,” said the man. And I would.

I don’t know when the changing weather became jarring or when leaving my childhood bed started to fill me with melancholy.

Perhaps adaptation was easier with less life lived. My roots had not made their home in a single patch of soil yet, claiming it as mine.

The years have weathered my bark, marking it with jagged grain.

Transition is harder now, shapeless and foggy, bold and distinct.

But these moments are my muses, too. My Netflix page is filled with coming-of-age movies and my bookshelves with stories about loss and love. I remember the sting of rough pavement on soft skin.

I remember the first email I sent to a friend continents away. I remember the smell of a new house as I unboxed my belongings, condensed into packages. Hardship and joy—I have learned to cherish them both.

This issue, transition, is our collective muse; our memories form poetry and prose. As you move from moment to moment, we hope you can take these words with you. As always, thank you for being the audience of our collection of contemplations.

With gratitude, Michelle Setiawan

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I remember going to the US embassy in Beijing for the first time in 2015. In the long line of bodies, sweaty and anxious, I listened as strangers talked about their plans for when their visa would get approved. One of them planned on being a lifeguard, the other a chef. As their conversation exhausted its fuel, they turned over to me, in the polo shirt my mom thought was presentable for the officer, my fingers gripping my folder of financial files I did not quite understand. When I told them I was headed to a boarding school in Boston, one of them simply declared: “But you are twelve!

Is your mom crazy?”

Standing in that lobby, not knowing exactly what an embassy was, I couldn’t help but ask myself, Is my mom crazy? I loved my life at home, for its consistency more than anything: my mom, my nanny, the friends I played hockey with every weekend, the bunk bed I’d had since first grade, the sixty-inch TV, the fruit platter in the living room, always fresh, waiting to be devoured. Why fix something that never seemed broken? Yet, as I found myself in a room of people eager for transition, I saw how the thrill of new beginnings gave their pupils light, the type of shine consistency could never give. So while my mom might have been crazy, I decided I could trust the strangers about to embark on the same journey.

This year marks my seventh in the US. Puberty, two graduations, and a pandemic later, the step I took no longer seems jarring to me, as this life abroad become my new constant. When it comes to daily routine, little inconsistencies still irritate me, like when Kindlevan runs out of chorizo grilled cheeses (my lunch for the past two weeks) and I’m forced to go with the pesto chicken, or when a friend decides to skip our class and I have to drag myself to the SEC alone. Yet I have learned to love every change, big or small, for without them days are destined to blend together into a forgettable blur.

Occasionally, I’d still ask, as an inside joke with myself, Was my mom crazy? She probably was, at least a little bit, sending her twelve-year-old who didn’t know how to fold t-shirts across the world. Still, I only love her for it, looking back at me in that embassy, oblivious of the magic of transition.

Many thanks, William Zhuang

DESIGN BY JULIA STEINER, ART BY QUINN HOERNER

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EDUCATED

By Ava Dimond I’ve seen this campus through all its seasons; I’ve trudged up its hills while bracing against the freezing wind, heard the spring snow crumple weightlessly under my boots, and lounged for hours on its green lawns. My fourth and final September here I wandered under the afternoon sun and basked in the warmth of my memories. My memories formed delicate portals everywhere. I couldn’t help but slip through. Without my consent, every building, street, and tree I glanced at summoned sights and sounds from my time here. Houston Hall made me think of my freshman year with tenderness, gingerly squeaking down the hall in rubber flip flops on my way back from the shower, my hair wrapped in a white towel, taking shots to hype ourselves up before journeying out into the cold in absurd little outfits on a Saturday night. Ginn Library’s carpeted floors stifled my friends and me giggling amongst the somber and silent grad students. The countless embarrassing questions, all the times I smiled and waved at the wrong people, argued about politics over bagels and lox, sat cross-legged in drab meditation rooms and ate schoolsponsored rice at awkward majors events.

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The intimacy of the memories might be alarming if they didn’t feel so sweet in retrospect. The president’s hollow house witnessed me run out of a frat party after a petty heartbreak in January, and watched Melia chase me close behind. I knew I’d made a true friend when, after crying and stomping around in the stupid Massachusetts snow, she observed my drunken tantrum with loving equanimity. Just months later, when the magnolias began to bloom, I found myself swinging in a hammock outside Harleston and gazing at my first love as the maple trees’ shadows dappled his rosy face.

That last September day, I walked slowly. I know this campus like a childhood home, complete with my favorite spots for gossiping (the Sink), for crying (the lawn behind Paige Hall that overlooks Medford), for reading (Lilly Library), for meeting (Miner 112), and for eating (by the Carm windows). My reverie was inspired by nostalgia and intensified by the weather. The breeze blew gentle and cool, and the sun had been taking turns with the clouds all day, reminding me of the winter to come and of the summer I was leaving behind, again and again. The lawn mower’s pattern lingered like a ghost on

the grass, shaved close to the soil. I sniffled with year-round allergies and kept stopping in air-conditioned buildings to grab another tissue. Is home knowing where the tissues are? There was work to be done, and I knew I’d be productive in Ginn, but a heavy thought persisted in my head—this is among the last times. And being outdoors and comfortable in Massachusetts is such a precious thing. That’s one of the first lessons this landscape taught me when I moved here from Florida. The seasons remind me that without the dark months of bitter wind and sunless days, you wouldn’t appreciate the extra light now lingering in your life, wet blooms, or birdsongs.

When I first arrived on campus I felt an intense emotional whiplash when I’d perform a lovable confident version of myself to make friends, while another version of myself retreated to her dorm room to cry because someone had to grieve the life I had lost. Someone had to endure the pain of transition. That’s the word I journaled about the most in those first few weeks— transition. High school did not prepare me to leave it. There was nothing to be done about the fact that my old spots (the marina, the tea shop, the quad), friends (Sonja, Casi, Anna), meals (Chicken Kitchen), teachers (Mr. Cooper, Mr. Erdmann), routines (student government meetings, weekend sleepovers), could never be re-

DESIGN BY MEGUNA OKAWA, ART BY BRIGID CAWLEY

stored in precisely the same way again.

When we returned to Miami from college, it was now a visit.

Today, I sense the cycle of love and loss and change repeating. Everyone is thinking something different when they sigh at the fact of our impending graduation and the start of our twenties. For me, I know the crying jags will increase exponentially in the coming years. I know I will disappoint others and myself as I stumble my way into adulthood and clumsily wield my autonomy. Sure, the practical questions float around—How will I make an ethical living? Who will I live with? Where and how and why will we live together? But the bratty child in me is whining about questions that have no good answers—Why, she pouts, do I always have to leave again and again and again?

Leaving high school for college taught me that, despite feeling certain in the moment, I would never be as happy as I once was in my new life. I will eventually transition from one beautiful story to the next.

College, with its rolling hills and stately libraries, with its brilliant, vulnerable, kind and unkind professors, students, and dining workers, guided me for better or worse through a pandemic and the last daylight hours of my adolescence. It gave me some signposts of a life I love to guide me in the next one. Someone has already devised the rituals we’ll use to honor the transition. I can already imagine my heels sinking into the dewy grass in late May, smiling through tears in the silliest hat I’ll ever wear as congratulations echo through the quad. There will always be a tight-knit

and beloved community out there, with greenery and bumblebees, porch concerts and shawarma shops. A community where people eat meals communally, yelp in delight during game nights, wave hello to the babies in sidewalk strollers, and collaborate on all manner of projects to make the imagined real. Within it, there will always be me, in a bedroom of my own design, surrounded by books, magazine cutouts, poems, photos, experiencing the pleasure of rolling lavender on my wrist before bed in a linen comforter. The dream is real and waiting for me. The seasons will tell me when it’s time to go.

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LA DA

her shimmering limbs dance across the floor, ripple off the sink, sway through cast iron, and hug a tender, golden loaf resting on the table. sit, she tells us. we are entranced as she offers us bread. la mie, encore chaude, fond sur nos langues la croûte, légèrement farinée, croustille entre nos dents. en fermant les paupières nous savourons cet instant ensoleillé, doré, équilibré, infime et infini. opening our eyes, we thank the sun for holding time still she winks before eclipsing herself behind a gauzy cloud. we resume our day, yet, at the corner of our mouths, remain faint traces of smiles and a touch of flour.

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DAN

IL

stay, she murmurs, as she pours her sweet milk into the kitchen, beckoning us.

SOLE

the sun, however, has different plans for us. unabashed, she catches our eye as we reach the threshold.

E SUN

we are in a rush, as always— no time for scattered fragments of sun and light and joy before our day begins.

F O E C TH

NSE

DU

7:53 a.m. the stairs wince as our soles trample down the gray, faded carpet.

By Aliénor Rice

COWBOY IN BOSTON

By CE Malley

I bought my first button up shirt at 18, alone and with my own money, finishing off the last of my first paycheck. This was right after I spent the first part getting my hair cut, going to a men’s barber around the corner from Davis, and only paying $25 for the whole thing. Two hours later, in my shoebox triple, head lighter and a breeze blowing on the tops of my ears, I couldn’t help myself. I shimmied on my jeans, I buttoned up my shirt which didn’t quite fit right around the hips, and I stood in front of my mirror and sobbed, my cheeks red from running all the way home.

Now, I grew up around self-proclaimed cowboys, and something about the smell of unused leather, vape smoke, and boy sweat put me off for a while. I could just never stand the boot-cut-jeaned boys that I made friends with. We lived in the suburbs. Who the hell wears cowboy boots in the suburbs?

I told the barber all of this when he got the clippers out. I just couldn’t stop grinning at him the whole time, and he laughed along with me, but I think he wanted me to stop talking. Something about the way he held the clippers, pulling them out of his holster and brandishing them, told me that he wasn’t too pleased to have me there.

DESIGN AND ART BY MEGUNA OKAWA

And I know I have thick hair, and I still had a lot of it when he whispered to his buddy and laughed, gesticulating with his hips and hands like he was going to swagger towards me, but I think maybe he overcharged me on the hair cut. I wished then, as he was switching guard sizes, that I had actually gone through with taking Spanish in high school, like the real cowboys, so I could have heard what they really thought when I told them I wanted a cut like James Dean. I mean, I would have laughed too.

But I couldn’t tell him how, when I was re-packing my carry-on to fly to Boston, I saw a woman wearing a paisley red shirt, fringed leather chaps, and clunky boots made of real leather stepping off the plane two terminals over. She was broad, square, and had a buzzed head with frown lines etched into her face. And though she was walking with purpose, not looking too closely at anything, she was getting weird looks from every mom and pop in the waiting area, like everyone thought she was some actor about to pull a stunt.

But given that it was 90 degrees out and the grass was dying, and the Texas sky was going on for miles, I couldn’t imagine her anywhere else.

As he started on the front of my hair I wanted to turn to him and say, Would you believe me if I told you she caught me staring and nodded at me? It was real quick, and she didn’t smile, though I wished she had. But it was enough just to see her, a real cowboy in the flesh. And I wanted to apologize for scaring him and his dog when I came into the shop too quickly, buzzing with thoughts of my future, but that’s not really something you bring up while someone has scissors to your ear.

I thanked him for his time after he finished my hair, and I think I annoyed some people later on trying on paisley shirts in the Goodwill dressing room. But I settled on one, rang myself up, and my friends all congratulated me on my new look when I got back. But even with my newly buzzed head, I found myself feeling a void I hadn’t anticipated. I had a hunch going into every single trussed up New England storefront afterwards that it was her missing from the space. I’ve never been one to claim a title without asking first, so I don’t think I’d ever call myself a cowboy. I mean, how would you even broach that topic at a dinner table?

But I am trying to live up to it. Nothing’s as good as wearing a button up and boot-cut jeans.

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PARASOCIAL PARASOCIAL PARASOCIAL (do you copy?)

By Meghan Smith

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my downstairs neighbors keep spoiling patriots games for me. guess their cable is a bit faster than our streaming service their hoots and hollers give away the score, seconds before. otherwise, they are perfectly quiet, perfect neighbors. despite years of dwelling in the same structure, i do not know them except my mild amusement on sundays at their overblown reactions. there is something sickly, half-anemic in living atop each other’s breaths and feet the whole time only grumbling, hello, how are you, doing fine, you, only silently synchronizing taking turns shoveling the snowed-in sidewalk. i’m thinking of you again and when we met, years ago, entwined in newborn adolescent panic. how with eroded hands, rubbed raw i joined you in drowning in a sea of mundane horror, rhythmic, everyday woe; the expected crest and fall of darkness when the sun starts departing swiftly at three on the moors of northern england. i twisted your distant words up within myself: a cancerous kaleidoscope of images radiating from afar replicating themselves under the tongue, in the biochemistry of the brain; a collision worthy of fate’s hand or perhaps a mistake of coincidence. i begged to break my body to squeeze through undersea cables and greet you with my bewitched heart in my mouth! but even then, you wouldn’t have known what to do with the disemboweled, parasocial organ of a stranger. now i will never be able to look out of eyes free of your cataracts, that don’t leave lines in my peripheral where your form displaces the light.

DESIGN BY UMA EDULBEHRAM, ART BY EMMELINE MEYERS

i saw a tweet once about la croix, the seltzer brand, how it tastes like tv static and someone shouting the name of a fruit in another room. raspberry lime! little licks, hints, whispers are filtering in, COME IN, DO YOU COPY? DO YOU COPY? only pixelated visions and garbled fragments of a voice… i feel like a lonely tupperware lost without a lid shoved up in a cupboard somewhere. i see your words replicated, sprawled across the topography of the web, i think, they don’t know you like i do. but i don’t know you either. and there’s a man who always calls around 11 a.m. tuesday, during my radio show to make requests or just to compliment the music. and i always get a little sad when classes end not to see the same strange faces every week; an aching departure in miniature every time a class comes to a close. and sometimes another neighbor washes dishes alongside me we see each other through the windows our hair in messy knots, wearing old dingy sweatshirts we mimic but do not approach. suspended, immobile, webbed in glass i’m hurling my body at the bonds, hoping for a hint of a fissure, seeing nothing. you, they, whoever, all reach in and press on me from one million sides. my teeth are painfully cold stinging from the static and our mouths are full of cotton balls clogging up and drying out the sputum of our throats. everyone wants everyone so bad! (yet in this great tragedy of distance no one can be had.)

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TEN YEARS

grow out of clothes, grow out of shoes, grow out of friends, be kissed for the first time, see someone you love die. ask your mother to hug you, ask your mother to piss off, learn about your sister’s secret life, try to help her get better. grow into new clothes, grow into new shoes, grow into new friends, be kissed every weekend, see a cousin be born. ask your mother to visit you, ask her to stay close, see your sister grow stronger, see her relapse, pray she finds a way to get better.

By Sabrina Cabarcos

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when she does get better you turn around and see ten years behind you.

TERMINAL B, LOGAN AIRPORT When I get through security I start to wander, just to see

just out of reach. My old shadows staining the floors. My footprints buried

where I end up. I grab my hand with the other

under countless others.

I’m at the edge of the terminal now,

lead myself slowly down the halls, past the rows of seats and children running

feeling the rush of ghosts as they materialize into passersby

away from their parents, past the restaurants and the signs

with jobs, families, lives. I study their faces, bathe in the passing winds,

and the kiosks and the numbers.

1 to 38. 38 to 1.

take a deep breath and let it go.

Then I turn and walk away,

I don’t mean to find anything but I do: Here is the table

letting whatever time I have left envelop me, before I move on

outside the Potbelly’s where my parents and I talked

into that thrumming rush of life.

about which college tours I liked best.

Here is the bookstore where I purchased a Donna Tartt book to read over summer break. Here is the gate where I watched with adolescent eyes as the woman’s orange therapy cat curled up under her legs.

I have lived my life countless times; endings producing beginnings producing endings. Small existences, little deaths. But here, where everything is holding its breath, where fluorescent light glimmers off the water bottles where everyone is beautiful, simply because everyone

By Ian Smith

is ten times more beautiful when you know nothing about them— Here, I am teetering on the verge of a new melody. Here, I am standing between two mirrors, watching versions of me fade into jade glass,

DESIGN BY UMA EDULBEHRAM, ART BY LIVIA BEDNARZ (LEFT) AND PHOTO BY JACK ROGEN (RIGHT)

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FEATURE

THE FRESH PRINCE

By Wesley Jansen

The Times tells me the Kremlin is closer to Kyiv.

Look!

The oligarchs who sailed their boats away from Britain because Kyiv is in vogue.

They moved their boats from Britain so their children don’t get teased in their secondary schools when they board.

I see Yellow and Blue on t-shirts and on the windows, never inside.

This winter, blues and yellows are in vogue.

The “seminal global event” of my generation says my professor who preaches my culture.

His tenure telling me to listen, in the West, in his class where I read about the seminal global events of other generations from the textbooks about seminal global events.

These books do not decide anymore.

The new prince of the West makes viral videos in Kyiv.

I only hear the bombs drop in Kyiv when the Times beeps on my phone.

Now, the Times beeps on my phone, it says ‘BREAKING NEWS:’ Will Smith hits Chris Rock at Oscars.

I hear bombs from Instagram and Twitter and Facebook about the Seminal Global Event of my generation, The “moment the Academy will never forget.” After all, the Academy must remember for us because they know we forget easily these days.

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DESIGN BY MIRIAM VODOSEK, ART BY DANIELA STEINBERG

FEATURE

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FEATURE

bathe

by layla noor landrum reverse baptism, solitary rite. breath held, skin uncovered. head first, arched back, eyes closed before i reached the surface. i think it’s best to feel weightless when you can. tasteless water, not bitter, no chemicals—clean, just like i wanted to be, but neither heat nor soap can wash away the undesired touches. after all, blood clots turn into scars, which fade but never leave. all i have to hold onto is that nothing lasts

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here.

FEATURE

codependency protein

By Julia Gonzalez

the first time I ate alone I cried. someone told me to eat in front of a mirror, but when I’ve mirrored everyone my whole life, I’m not sure how else to react when I see myself; except cry. even when I was alone I imagined you were watching me, judging me, loving me, when I picked a song, I picked it for you when I picked my clothes, I imagined you’d see me, squeezed into a shape I wanted you to love. shape shifting there’s so much space that I left for you, and I starved so I wouldn’t fill it. but now I’m eating alone and crying. maybe I’ll eat enough protein today and grow into the spacemaybe the songs I picked for you, the clothes I wore for youwere all picked for me…

I don’t know what song I’d pick if I accepted that you didn’t love me.

I don’t know what I’d wear if I didn’t want you to see it, and maybe I’ll do it anyways; until I recognize myself through my eyes and not yours.

DESIGN BY MIRIAM VODOSEK, ART BY BRIGID CAWLEY (LEFT) AND CHEYANNE ATOLE (RIGHT)

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a sunflower house of my own Anonymous

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1 - flashbacks It was a Saturday and things didn’t feel wrong at first, they felt wrong later, and I didn’t tell anyone.

I got your message I’m in the hospital— it felt like I was there because I was.

I felt them tie ropes around my hands and feet, your hands and feet, and everyone was watching me, watching you.

It was winter and the days were so short, and the depths of darkness so deep. and I remember you telling the insides of my mind that you were so scared, so I was terrified.

All I want is to feel better, I remember saying.

And look at where that brought us—arms and legs outstretched—the perfect position for diving deeper into our madness.

2 - prodromal It started with something small, something like a murmur or a tiny ladybug sitting in a field of grass.

They caught it early, they liked to tell me.

And I should be grateful for that.

Yes, I should be grateful for that.

3 - authority You told me to believe you So I believed you.

You told me that you were the doctor So I believed you.

You told me, we are very different, you and I, So I believed that too.

DESIGN BY BRENNA TROLLINGER, ART BY CHEYANNE ATOLE

4 - diagnosis You are the doctor so I am the patient I sit up so straight, so nicely, and I let you Evaluate me, analyze me, doctor me.

I give you what you want from me, but you do not give it back.

You are the doctor And I am the patient And I am being very patient But they cannot find a box for me.

So I silently resign to that space in between.

5 - treatment Even if you knew how to fix me, I would not let you staring at me with open eyes, monitoring only the top half of my body for illness—for abnormalities.

You sent me away for a while, you didn’t care where I went, you just wanted me gone.

And so I was absent, for a very long time being trapped in the thoughts you placed in my mind.

They said why are you so mad? My madness was leaking out of my skin.

I wanted something real, something other than thick ketchup and plastic spoons and a face full of flashlight and nodrugs-nosugar-nocaffeine-nonicotine Nodrugs except for the ones we give you and I guess I have to thank you because I’ve been sober for three-and-a-half-years

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well, except for the drugs you give me.

Something about this started to feel wrong But there were chains wrapped around my throat So I didn’t say anything.

I never say anything Except for, I want to let go of the things that no longer serve me.

I never told you that they were listening to our conversations, until now, because now it feels important.

And then I was back and you thought I was the same as I was before I left and that was your mistake. They told me that I shouldn’t talk to you, so I believed them.

I wish that I had believed you too.

6 - the dream

8 - confinement

I told you that the whole world felt like a dream but now it feels like nothing and I guess somehow that’s better.

The girls in here are playing with God in the way that they taught us.

Surrender to the higher power, surrender to me, for I have saved you.

In the inpatient unit, I sit by the window for hours because it is June, and if I sit here long enough I can feel the summer sun against my cold skin.

I will never again take warmth for granted.

7 - the leftovers I woke up from a dream and it was already late morning.

Somehow, again, you are on my mind.

Oh how I wish I could talk to you now, to tell you about how I never wanted to hurt you.

I want to tell you that I didn’t mean anything that I said.

But I never told you any of that.

They were always listening to our phone calls.

And I wanted to say, let’s not talk about the important stuff, let’s leave that until I’m back.

But none of that would make sense unless you knew the kind of power they had over me.

The im saving your life kind of power, the you can’t exist without me kind of power, The lock you in an empty room kind of power and the tie up your hands and legs kind of power.

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Graduation is happening on the outside but on the inside, the other girls make me my own diploma with a piece of paper and markers.

My name is misspelled, but I like it better than the real one.

9 - freedom I once said that sunflowers could heal anything— I think I may go live in a sunflower house where everything is yellow and everything is healed.

infection

By William Zhuang Burning and clammy I wake up to my ears oozing Fluid of infection Yellowing the pillowcase Like stray dogs marking territories

Infection

by William Zhuang

I learned about hindsight bias in psych I know I shouldn’t have bought Those pink studs from Claire’s Even if they were on sale I know I should’ve at least Cleaned them before pushing them through

Burning and clammy I wake up to my ears oozing Fluid of infection Now, in the bathroom mirror Yellowing the pillowcase I watch liquid trickle from me Like stray dogs marking territo- Staining the porcelain sink ries Like a bad omen My fingers smell of blood and rust I learned about hindsight bias in When they pull out the culprits pPsych Leaving behind in swollen lobes Two tender voids

There’s an old Chinese saying That goes a truly rotten person Must have pus flowing From their head down to their heels I half-jokingly find solace in Having only gotten halfway My neighbor brews coffee on his balcony Rats are already fighting in the yard Today more than ever I dislike the way they shriek Prophesying that rottenness of mine Always somewhere within Even after blood and pus dry into clots Even after new flesh grows over

DESIGN BY BRENNA TROLLINGER, ART BY LIVIA BEDNARZ

APRIL 18, 2022 TUFTS OBSERVER 19

a father leaves his son

by Neya Krishnan

a father leaves his son with the words ‘i’ll be right back’ as his frame turns into shadows that empty out of the front door. he chooses ‘i’ll be right back,’ because ‘there is a war outside that has turned children to ashes and dotted the streets with crimson and I have to go fight in this war, this pointless war for more red’ is far too much for a four-year-old to understand. a four-year-old who yearns for his dad when he goes to the supermarket for too long. a four-year-old who would cry if he knew ‘i’ll be right back’ was an audacious hope, a sacred prayer, not a promise. so a father leaves his son with ‘i’ll be right back,’ for some words are easier to say than goodbye.

20 TUFTS OBSERVER APRIL 18, 2022

DESIGN BY INES WANG, PHOTOGRAPHY BY JACK ROGEN, ART BY D GATEÑO

i am haunted by sticky memories.

churning through an obsessed mind, they swirl into one another, clinging to the sides like forgotten socks in the dryer.

they melt and morph and merge, distorting into something unrecognizable. inevitably, something small slips out of place, everything cascading with it. the memories fracturing into tiny shards. i can catch my reflection in a few, if the light hits them right. i measure my steps carefully, for fear i will cut myself on their edges.

yet some memories are soft with blurred boundaries. through the cracks, warmth seeps in: a familiar song, the smell of clean sheets, inside jokes. wishes on eyelashes, dandelions, birthday candles. a smile, a kiss, a picnic.

the warmth holds me in a tight embrace, sheltering me for a moment. i write the joy down on little pieces of paper, sealed in a mason jar.

stuck between holding on and letting go,

i am afraid of forgetting.

APRIL 18, 2022 TUFTS OBSERVER 21

MARCHING ORDERS

By Tobias Broucke

The morning comes slower now.

Rain smacks against the blinded shade, bladed night, a moon-glint catches your eye and stops it from falling.

You can only look straight into sunlight when it is on the moon, pausing on its way to you.

Make a pile in the center of your room, put everything you loved yourself for loving but hated yourself for not loving enough: empty notebooks, paintings hidden under sheets, socks blotted with holes from walking— tiny erosions, markers of your journey, carrying in them a moth-path to the moonlight; crumpled dollar bills with bloody presidents and dirty fingerprints, arsenic green, books read and unread, the ones you know you’ll never read and the ones you don’t, apologies to everyone who is yet to be born, sorry-that-it- has-to-be-this-ways, an unmade bed made up of coffee stains, summer’s sweat, your father’s sweatshirt, your new friend’s old guitar, autumn’s glow fading.

A cacophony of words that were spoken to you and you spoke in return, carved across your back sans serif, Helvetica, bold-and-bloody, words you lost to a digital hinterland or the unforgiving passage of time, marked by each crease scraped across your brow; the feeling that your life is just one enormous airplane hangar, each of your vulgar machines shuttered under mildewed and flea-ridden tarps, and you are moving through this room at a languid and accelerating pace.

It is all already there, already happened, you are just wandering, waiting to see what already-happeneds are going to happen to you, next.

A note from your mother before you left your waning-like-the-moon home for the hundredth time, the welling up of your eyes.

Rip off all your clothes, disregard whatever tears you may leave, each of your motions was already cleaving thread from thread, there in the middle-distance.

Lie, finally, naked upon the leviathan sculpture of loss you have made and let yourself sink down into it until you are one object among many.

Settle the dust that floats around you all the time, seeking refuge in the half-light.

Lather yourself with it until you are red-eyed-and-grey-skinned, fill up your pores and let the mites suck out all of the moisture, drying you up so deep that you never piss again.

No more dregs of yesterday! Come closer, my ashen child; Oh darling, shale skin only brings out the color of your eyes.

22 TUFTS OBSERVER APRIL 18, 2022

DESIGN BY EMMA DAVIS, PHOTOS (CENTRAL) BY JACK ROGEN, PHOTO (RIGHT) BY AKBOTA SAUDABAYEVA

APRIL 18, 2022 TUFTS OBSERVER 23

the visitor

By Cheech

Skin is comprised of 1,000,000 tiny doors. each one is unlocked as wind tunnels underneath and flows and floods the epidermis more doors oscillating open and shut a sporadic ee err of hinges latches and swings howls and twirls of tissued traumas and flesh with keys that lock the breeze shut. all is still but a knock knock knock and knock.

24 TUFTS OBSERVER APRIL 18, 2022

DESIGN BY MICHAEL YUNG, ART BY BRIGID CAWLEY

I

E K U A P W T O O T Y T O I U A W W O T ’ R N LD A C

By Ella Fasciano

I think I don’t want to go to sleep because I don’t want to leave this day I don’t want to miss these moments of quiet to the hazy mist of sleeping silently those peepers—I wanted to find comfort in their memory of people and place— but I think they are gone, maybe time really has glided together, and I’ve missed out on listening to the peepers, maybe it is finally hot enough— does the heat put peepers to sleep? they keep peeping I think, but when it seems like you’ve just missed the moments of the world, reality doesn’t really ground you but now the raindrops are tapping on my quiet moment, a peaceful but rapid descent like a steady river from the sky, droplets of cloud, captured light in between the stars there is so much happening in the sky that I don’t want to miss desperately I want to be able to do more, but the peepers are back at least, and I don’t know if it is because my brain is quieter or because the rain has worked them up with splashes, billions of splashes, in their beautiful world dancing water and singing frogs isn’t a bad way to fall asleep

DESIGN BY MICHAEL YUNG, ART BY DANIELA STEINBERG

APRIL 18, 2022 TUFTS OBSERVER 25

FEATURE

bellicose bodies/ rhythmic reincarnations

By Priyanka Sinha I awaken with wars in my mind.

I am nineteen / oblivious, I massage words into my skin like the rose oil my mother slipped in my bag; uncertainty shrouds my mind, I forever ask myself, “Will I?” I am twenty-one / insurrections splinter my most serene memories, innocence is a weak protestor against maturity’s coup I am nineteen / too many people have impunity in my mind, and unwavering kindness feels like a seditious act I am twenty-one / I am branded as an insurgent by my own state, because I refuse to understand how human beings can grow apart I am a woman; I lay between slices of silence and sound, an informant for the secrets of each space I am a woman; I am quieter to others but louder to myself, I gather intelligence on weaknesses within me I am a woman; I prey on the mercurial moods that seduce me out of self-reliance I am a woman; I invert my senses and suddenly some songs feel like blood transfusions; a lifeline Type A type B, but why do you no longer bleed for me?

Where is freedom as our spirits age, Can I get a choice of what survives And what’s a casualty?

Why does such a militarized border exist between adolescence and the rest of my life?

Perhaps I must practice de-escalation…

I send wire transmissions to my innocence, Zealous and jingoistic, massoum, will you negotiate?

Mere massoum, you fear displacement, see, But I so desperately want your imagination to stay.

When you no longer rule, may I still trace constellations between the spots on my face, May they still each name a family member I never knew?

As with every war, mine reaches a truce; Seasons change, winter ruptures, spring remedies, 20 TUFTS TUFTS 26 OBSERVEROBSERVER APRIL 18, 2022 SEPTEMBER 28, 2020

FEATURE

The ones who love me mobilize as allies; They bring strategies that turn the tides towards adulthood— If it’s what’s right for me, Why is nostalgia such a noose on my neck?

When I emerge from war, I am a palimpsest; There’s an interplay between my present and my past, I can channel either when I desire…

Now I can hold the tulip stems of my childhood like knives, Now I can puncture words of self-hatred.

Now “Will I?” becomes “I will,” and I grow up so high that I pluck raindrops from the sky, To quench the insurgents that fought for my innocence, To extract the viscous inertia that hindered harmless dreams, For I was never fighting a war of attrition…

I knead the tensions of time until there are none, I surrender to nothing and harness everything; Rumi verses and sad songs collect under my fingernails, I know how I should live: with my hands constantly reaching for stories, sinking into the flesh of every emotion until my skin wears films of its residue, bearer of pain, protest, pleasure.

When my tapasya appeases my massoum, there are talks of peace; A new world order?

New rituals, who are the deities I worship in a state of moksha?

Solitude, friendship, conversation, I know my cherished incarnations will remain.

Is it a just war, the fight we often have with ourselves to “come of age?”

Can we rationalize the violence of shedding old skin?

Is it like this for you? Tell me, I want to listen.

DESIGN BY JOHN DOE, ART BY JANE DOE DESIGN BY MICHAEL YUNG, ART BY BRIGID CAWLEY

SEPTEMBER 28, 2020 APRIL TUFTS 18, 2022OBSERVER TUFTS OBSERVER 21 27

A N R SIT T

By Tara Steckler

ION

S

28 TUFTS OBSERVER APRIL 18, 2022

DESIGN BY TARA STECKLER, ART BY LIVIA BEDNARZ

APRIL 18, 2022 TUFTS OBSERVER 29

edit or die <3

O

OBSER