CANVAS Volume 25

TITLE | AUTHOR

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Dear Reader, In the last couple years, we have witnessed incalcuable loss. We have felt scared and angry and alone, and we have sought comfort through both new and familiar means in an attempt to ease our anxieties, even if only for a little while. We have taken up new hobbies or rediscovered old ones, we have connected with far-away friends in unexpected ways, and many of us—like those featured in this magazine—have turned to art as a much-needed place of community.

American poet Richard Siken wrote, “If the dead are watching, I want them to see us writing, dancing, singing, painting. I want them to see that we still reach out to reach other.”

In each of the works featured in the 2022 CANVAS Creative Arts Magazine, the artists are reaching out to us, and I hope you, dear reader, reach back.

Madison Cox

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STAFF AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Madison Cox ASSOCIATE EDITOR Audrey Waite SELECTION COMMITTEE Hanh Bui Madison Cox Maggie Ison Hope Meierkort Deacon Pettiford Reilly Smith Mia Terek Heidi Thompson Audrey Waite DESIGN STAFF Madison Cox Audrey Waite COVER ART “Commute” by Susanna Herrman PUBLISHER World Arts Inc. SPECIAL THANKS Julian Thomason The 113th Indiana Memorial Union Board of Directors

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TABLE OF CONTENTS (alphabetical order by last name) Haley Arsenault Angel Wing...............................................................................................42 Death by Chocolate.................................................................................88 Jacobus Marthinus Barnard We Are All Written in Ink.....................................................................44 The Citrus Kiss of Astronomy.................................................................70 The Infinitive Alpenglow of a Dimdream Reflection...........................85 Katie Bernfeld Next Question..........................................................................................54 Phoebe Bradley Phases of Grief..........................................................................................55 Camille Brinson Time Trials................................................................................................76 Sym Cloyd You...............................................................................................................1 Later...........................................................................................................33 Madison Cox the last letter i’ll ever write you...............................................................36 Wasted Hours (Before We Knew)...........................................................58 in the light of the twenty-third hour.......................................................77 needing & getting.....................................................................................92 Abi Diaz We’re Worker Bees..................................................................................40 Identity......................................................................................................51 Ritu Gangadhara Nightingale.............................................................................................19 a difficult respite.......................................................................................39 Unfinished Gardens.................................................................................67 Torrey Gleason Atlantis......................................................................................................57 Emma Harden Act Three..................................................................................................22 Volcano Day..............................................................................................69 Susanna Herrman A Confusing Space with a Yellow Rose..................................................10 Reflections with Domino Game.............................................................32 Mirrored Sunset.......................................................................................41 iii

Susanna Herrman (cont.)

Commute..................................................................................................72 Living Room at Night...............................................................................80 Payton Klaer A Different Point of View..........................................................................7 Aspen Lara Dog Days....................................................................................................6 Hope Meierkort haunted house...........................................................................................11 Humanness...............................................................................................16 Double Blind.............................................................................................25 The Love Language of Museums............................................................47 Embody.....................................................................................................81 5 a.m...........................................................................................................87 Sofia Melgarejo If Time Stops............................................................................................64 Yellow Tightropes....................................................................................75 The New Evolution..................................................................................96 Abigail Miller Strangers...................................................................................................66 Reese Myers Transit.......................................................................................................91 Bruna Kalil Othero Granddaughters.......................................................................................20 dead woman..............................................................................................28 Instructions to organize chaos................................................................49 automatic woman.....................................................................................56 Ivy Piedra results inconclusive...................................................................................31 of mountains.............................................................................................94 Ben Ring Great Sand Dunes.....................................................................................21 Urban Sunrise............................................................................................82 Sangre de Cristo Mountains....................................................................95 Snowy Schoolhouse...............................................................................100 Diptanshu Rao Memento Mori..........................................................................................53 iv

Max Senter The Fan Is Still On.....................................................................................4 Worship Me..............................................................................................37 Divine Feminine.......................................................................................73 We Are God.............................................................................................83 Ava Slowey Peeled........................................................................................................27 Lydia Stern Unfocused................................................................................................30 Living Up to My Full Potential...............................................................35 The Art of Creating.................................................................................48 Picassoesque Self Portrait.......................................................................50 Sydney Weber The 28th Fire Brigade..............................................................................68 Makkenzi Welds Daisy..........................................................................................................17 Fiona Young Mother of the Eyes...................................................................................12 Two Parts of a Whole...............................................................................26 Whale Falls...............................................................................................93 We Were Jealous of the Ships.................................................................97

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Every edition, CANVAS selects one written and one visual work for our Editors’ Choice Awards. This award recognizes the high level of craft and creativity with which these artists represent their respective fields, and thanks them for sharing their exceptional work.

For this issue, we are proud to honor Bruna Kalil Othero’s “dead woman” and Lydia Stern’s “Living Up to My Full Potential” as the Editors’ Choice winners for the 2022 CANVAS Magazine.

Thank you for your contributions, Madison Cox and Audrey Waite

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It’s been awhile since we last spoke. I never imagined that I’d ever be able to write this. but here I am there are a million things i’ve wanted to say to you over the years but as you stand here the words feel like i’m gargling peroxide my mouth is fizzing and it tastes disgusting so i spit it out You taught me how to be small. how to be the needle in the hay sack the back of an earring, the clasp of a necklace I learned how to make every emotion explode and rupture inside. create tsunamis internally until the water runs cold. flood entire neighborhoods, flip houses upside down, while still maintaining a smile you called me a million names except my own and before i thought it was sweet now I realize that my name was something too personalized and individual to me so you had to take that too held my hand through the fire but got upset that i was burning i morphed myself a million times to fit into your world but i wasn’t enough so you tried to morph me. like clay. with your words. your hands.

I will never forget the time you hit me. when you yanked my arm. or pushed me off.

I have tried to put myself into your shoes a million times but they were too small.

You | Sym Cloyd

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because you are a monster.

I have spent the last few years of my life hating myself.

Hating my body and my mind.

I called myself stupid after making the smallest mistakes.

You turned everyone you knew against me once you realized that I wasn’t going to give into your abuse and for years i genuinely thought that you ruined me. that you took every good part of me away and locked in a safe. but she is still here. I am still here. I am different but I am not broken. you never ruined me. You made me stronger.

Eventually the water stopped. I rebuilt the walls of each house of the town.

Flipped the houses back, and used the water to make a beach. the hot sun hitting my face, glowing. a bright yellow sundress on my body, my toes in the sand the hot sun hitting the nape of my neck the best thing that happened right after we broke up was that i cut my hair, you told me that i would look bad with short hair but i as i sit in the sand i can feel the air on my scalp and i believe that this feeling is what they write songs about in cheesy movies and as I look over at you.

I want you to know that I forgive you.

I forgive you for every bad thing you ever did to me without you i wouldn’t have been able to make this beach, to make this water 2

You | Sym Cloyd

used the same body you called weak to turn this shit around made beauty out of this pain, turned it into art so another broken girl with a fizzy mouth can come and see what i built see that it’s possible that it takes time and effort but it is possible and I know that eats you up inside. that I’m happy, and making a name for myself. and once the sun sets at night, just know, that you will be the last thing on my mind

You | Sym Cloyd

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delightfully painful no it’s not a delight i’m finding no peace within this ache i can feel the marks on my face from where you scratched me still red, still raw they sting i can still feel the ghost of your hands tugging at my hair forcing my head back just to spit in my mouth i do not want any piece of you to be a part of my body but your remnants stay there anyway sometimes i remember it when i’m lying awake at night sometimes it even creeps into my dreams, turning my sound slumber into one of rigid restlessness if you were here maybe i would say something but probably not fearing your iron fist and words that are sharpened like daggers i don’t wish for the blade to be plunged into my chest again not if i can avoid it maybe i do have self-preservation after all but just this once if you were here— but you aren’t whisked away, nothing but a whisper that i can only hear when my eyes are squeezed tight and the fan is turned off racking my brain for what sort of punishment this may be for did i do something bad again? i can’t think of anything other than my own associations would you say that is still fair? should the present never be considered in accordance with the past?

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The Fan Is Still On | Max Senter

you’re a ghost to me but even then not quite ghosts will make a noise, a creak or a whimper there’s nothing but radio silence here part of me wishes to bash my head into the stereo until it shatters into a million pieces would you visit me then? probably not. it’s best not hope.

The Fan Is Still On | Max Senter

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Dog Days | Aspen Lara

My entire history started in a store. A place where every day was the same. I would sit on the top shelf and watch kids run through the aisles with their parents. They would pick out the new toys that came in big boxes or the electric cars they could drive down the sidewalk. But I stayed sitting on my shelf. It was okay. I didn’t complain. I knew my time would come one day.

And it did.

A little girl came into the store and picked me out from where I sat.

Her parents asked if she was sure and she eagerly said yes. And my new life was underway. When I got home, she played with me for hours. We had tea parties and jumped on the trampoline in the back yard and went for car rides.

I sat with other toys and watched over as she took naps.

She started going to school. She’d run into her room to grab me to help with her reading or writing or math every day. I didn’t see her as often but that was okay. I’d get to see her before and after school. Soon she started to have friends over. They would bring their toys too and we would all play together. They would build pillow forts and play hide-and-seek with me. We would watch movies and laugh until her parents came in the room saying it was time for bed.

She was growing up and slowly stopped running to get me every day. I’d still sit on her bed and watch her work at her desk. Every so often she would watch a movie with me. If she had a bad day we’d hug it out until she felt better.

Soon enough, every day was the same. I would watch her get up early in the morning, get dressed, turn off the light, and shut the door behind her.

I wouldn’t move. I would sit on the top of the shelf waiting for the door to open again. But, I took it upon myself each day to guard the room. If one of the dogs pushed the door open, I would make sure they didn’t destroy anything. If her mom came in to clean or pick up, I would make sure she didn’t put her treasures in strange places. I could see the sun outside her window, and I would watch it move through the sky. That was when I knew she would be returning.

Most days she would come back into her room when the sun was low in the sky. She would sit down at her desk and pull out notebooks, pencils, and a computer. She would write for hours while watching videos. Sometimes they were of strange people playing video games. Other times it was a step-by-step on how to do homework. I could understand what was happening for a while, but once they started talking about derivatives, I was lost.

Once a week she wouldn’t come back until the sun was down. She was A Different Point of View | Payton Klaer

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always tired on those days, almost immediately going to bed. Over the weekends she would stay up late. Sometimes other people would sleepover in her room. There were two girls who she would have over more than the others.

They would stay up late playing games and talking. They’d sometimes laugh so hard that she would get texts saying ‘be quiet.’

One day she came home and didn’t leave again. She was very happy that day, saying to her friends that she was excited about a two-week break. But after that two-week period came and went, she was still at home. And things got worse. She would sleep late into the day and stay up hours past sunset.

Sometimes she would talk to people on her computer. None of her friends came over to visit though. I could hear her family upstairs every day. Her dad never went on his work trips. Her mom never went to the store. The whole family was in the house together for months. It was something about not wanting to get sick.

After seven months of living in her room, she went back to her old schedule. Her school opened up again (even though she had to cover her nose and mouth). She got to take classes she loved and see her friends every day again.

They stayed the night and were louder than ever before. I could tell that they all were happy again.

One day, boxes were brought into her room. She started with her clothes.

Shirts and pants were folded and packed away. Sweatshirts were wrapped around glass objects. Books were spread out into different bags and suitcases so the boxes wouldn’t be so heavy. She moved to her shelves and started picking through trinkets and pictures, but she left me on my top shelf.

And soon, she was gone. The room felt much more empty without her in it. The walls were close to bare and her things were mostly gone. All that was left she said was ‘too childish to bring.’ Occasionally, her mom would come in and move things around. She would wipe the dust off of the shelves. Sometimes her sister walked into her closet and would take a shirt or two. At the end of the day, she wouldn’t walk through the door. A month after she disappeared I had lost hope. I had nothing to look forward to. My task of looking over her things had ended.

Five months later the door opened. And she walked through.

A large suitcase was dragged into her room. I watched her sigh and fall over onto her bed with a smile. Her mom came in and asked how school was going. She said it was good. They talked like this for a while before they both went upstairs for dinner.

I watched as she put up winter decorations. Felt was placed on her 8

A Different Point of View | Payton Klaer

shelves to look like snow. A small tree sat in the corner with small ornaments littering the branches. It looked cold outside but it was warm in her room.

Three weeks had come and gone so quickly. Then she started to pack everything away again. She had to cram her new presents into the suitcase.

As she reached for the last opened present, she looked at me. Right at me. I watched a smile sneak onto her face. She walked to my side of the room and picked me up. I had been on that shelf for years, but now she held me as she had done so long ago as a little girl. Her soft hands were warm and made me feel loved all over again. Then, she placed me inside the suitcase and zipped it closed.

For a long time, I wondered what was happening. She wouldn’t be giving me away, right? There was no way she’d put me in the suitcase with all of her new things if she wanted to give me away. But what if I had been wrong?

What if these weren’t new presents next to me. What if they were old and I’d never see her again?

No. She wouldn’t do that to me.

I didn’t know how much time passed, but the suitcase was opened. Light flooded my eyes, and all I could think was, “where are we?” It was a small room - one I had never seen before. It was smaller than the last one I sat in.

Two beds were here along with matching desks and wardrobes. The posters and trinkets from her old room were scattered around this new room. A window overlooked a street and trees. We were much higher here than at home.

The wall had a college pennant hanging from a hook. Was this where she had disappeared to for so long, weeks and months at a time?

It took me a few weeks to get adjusted. She would come and go at strange times. Her schedule was more relaxed than it had been before, and new people visited her room. They didn’t play games as much as her old friends. These friends just sat. They all talked for hours, but I could tell she was happy.

She seemed more like herself here with this new life. A day didn’t go by that she was upset or felt lonely. She was surrounded by people she loved all the time. They were all so different but also the same.

This was a whole new beginning for me. She brought me to school with her. And now, I had a new purpose. I would help her through her new life, and we would do this together­—I knew we could.

A Different Point of View | Payton Klaer

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A Confusing Space with a Yellow Rose | Susanna Herrman

my brain has begun to crack from the burden of wasted thoughts. cast into unknown darkness, they lay heavy along the walls and rot quietly (but nothing ever dies in total silence). the apparent stench of death intimidates my most trivial thoughts into submission, as the line between purpose and pointless drags thin. they float between the walls of my mind, unable to ever touch ground. tucked inside private rooms, the thoughts worth remembering hold secret meetings in the dark, discussing their existence and the when-why-how of it all. they make sure to whisper so as not to wake me up.

haunted house | Hope Meierkort

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Legs brushing against each other sound like whispered laughter. Ray pulls me from the living room and the creaking floorboards even though I told him it wasn’t time for her to come out.

“It’s still here,” he says, jogging up the winding staircase away from the tour of the now haunted house. “But it can’t be,” I reply breathless. “I cleared out all your stuff months ago.” It was still a bit of a dig for Ray. After weeks of him going back on promises I took matters into my own hands and left his stacks of cardboard boxes and trash bags on the sagging porch, wet from constant rainfall.

“You never liked guns in the house, so I hid it.” Ray trips over his limp foot as we walked into the bedroom, stiffening away from my help. His car accident years ago still lingered, the scathing metal scratch turning into an inverted rainbow on his leg.

The room is much cleaner without the lingering smell of must and weed, his piles of flannels and magazines scattered on the floor like a collage of college dorms. I couldn’t stand the mess because of the bugs. Mostly carpet beetles, ants, an occasional wingless cockroach. A million eyes watching our every move. The whole house still smells of citrus since none of them ever liked it.

“I’m not even going to begin to unpack that.” I stop behind Ray as he looks at the dream catcher hanging adjacent to the still-made bed. I had gotten it from my grandma when she passed and kept it up even though its frayed webbing hadn’t caught anything in years.

“I’m here to help you, Bev, remember?”

“Well, it’s not like a gun is going to help the situation.” My hands start to shake as he dug through the closet and finally lifted a baseboard. Ray was still convinced it was some wackjob that was messing with me in the house rather than, well, something paranormal.

“You need to be able to defend yourself if there is anyone else here.” Ray looks to my eyes but is focused on the purple lines set underneath. They used to be my favorite feature. As a shared family feature, they slanted down like a sideways teardrop. “You scared me, calling me crying like that.”

“I know,” I say.

Part of me still wonders if it is real. Her pale face peeking from door frames, the wet footprints in the living room carpet. But I could tell Ray had heard it too. As we sit stiffly in the plastic-covered loveseat when he first came in, the silences dragging further and further out, breathing settles in the walls, the doors creak in slow openings. Everything in this house rots, the 12

Mother of the Eyes | Fiona Young

woodturning soft and supple when it used to hold everything together. I feared I was next. Women always feel older, our biological clocks always ticking.

“Please, just stay the night.” My voice sounds more shrill than I intended.

Because at night, bugs can also wander. If I stay up late enough, I can sometimes catch them by my feet like phantoms. They are always lurking, hard to see, and feed on you when given the chance. Their dirty bodies drag across you, some legs limp because there is already more than enough to get the job done.

“If you stay, you’ll see it and if you won’t, then I won’t have to either.”

“Have you been sleeping?” Ray asks. He runs his fingers over his grey patches of five-o’clock shadow.

“Why?” “That can affect what you see.”

“So that just made me see that lady?” She looked like my grandmother when she died—her body. I can’t get the image of her mouth open out of my head. An empty black hole. Her skin waxed and yellow. It settles in me like that itch when you put on a new sweater. I used to think that you could make peace with people being gone once they were actually gone.

“Maybe,” he says.

Ray agrees to sleep in the red lumpy chair in the corner, so his eyes are on the door, but until then, we sat on the bed talking, yawning, scattering our breath. I tell him about how I started to volunteer at the hospital but leave out one of the nurses telling me how to do CPR the right way. How the patient’s ribs will snap, their entire chest bruises, sternum bends. That you can fully feel their heart under stretched skin with just your palms.

“Wait. I have something,” I say, reaching for the nightstand drawer.

“Prosecco?” He asks. I nod. When we open it, it’s bubbly like champagne.

“Don’t read too much into it. I always liked this kind of wine.” It was dry and brut but was still so sweet.

“Well, it’s my favorite,” he says.

“You didn’t even know what it was until I showed you.” I take a swig of the bottle and hand it to him.

“At that Italian place by your mom’s?”

“Yeah. It was one of our first dates.” I yawn.

“You got the carbonara,” Ray says.

“How did you remember that?” I ask, but he just shrugs.

“Wait, be quiet for a second,” Ray whispers. “I hear something like that Mother of the Eyes | Fiona Young

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breathing again.”

“Let’s go look.” Jumping, we both go up to the door. Our feet plaster to the shaggy carpet, our mouths close. Wood creaks, pipes rattle, the house is loud with age. But there are indistinguishable steps that stop outside the doorway, the brush and scrape of flesh on tile. Ray grips his gun harder and takes a few steps.

“Don’t go.” My arm goes right to the hollow part between his chest. I could feel a dull beat of his heart through his strong arches of uncracked bones. We both hold our breaths when the footsteps stop, but I couldn’t help but think of the skin under the thin veil of his sweater, the patches of now greying hair sprouting like tufts of grass in a desert. Ray walks to it anyway, holding the handle of the .45 tightly in his hands, peaking over the opening door.

The first time I saw anything was a week after Ray left. My doorknob turned as if someone was trying to get in. It juggled faster and faster until it just stopped, and everything went quiet. Now every time I close my eyes, I see crawlers, squirmers, legs slithering, beady eyes. And her. A pale, towering dress, brown curls cascading down her shoulders like mine, some of her wet hair sticking to her forehead. Her eyes are closed, her black mouth hanging open in a perpetual ‘o.’ It was real, but it couldn’t be. Isn’t that exactly what a ghost is?

“No one,” he breathes. But I know to wait. I know better than to stand with my back against the hall, unlike Ray. He smiles at me with his lips closed, holding the door handle like a parent who’s just said goodnight. The gold knob dulls to a light grey under his tight grip, not reflective enough to capture the outline behind him. Yet his smile wavers anyway, and he whips around to look for her.

“Come in here and close the fucking door,” I say, though I know it’s no use.

But after an interlude of silence, Ray sighs. “I don’t see anything.”

“You,” I squint my eyes, “don’t?”

“No,” he says, dragging out the vowel, like he isn’t entirely sure. “It must have been the wind.” He laughs. The wine had stained his teeth a slight yellow.

Maybe it was the wind or the wood swelling from the damp fall. Or maybe whatever it is is like the bugs; crawling up from the drains or cracks—no particular reason to be here but to feed. I thought of how Ray haunted the same halls. I couldn’t scrub the bedroom walls to clear his uneven brush14

Mother of the Eyes | Fiona Young

strokes or completely sand away the dents he made in the stairwell from the sharp toes of his boots. The dream catcher sways. Rain flows down the cracked walls like rolling sand, tiger stripes, a line of ripples. And she, it, will groan further up in the hall. Her muffled voice cracking and shifting through the rotting wood.

Mother of the Eyes | Fiona Young

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Humanness | Hope Meierkort

It was the most important thing he had from her, but his mother couldn’t have known that. He never spoke to his mother outside of what’s for dinner.

Now it was gone. She was gone. Jonah felt heat in his chest like someone had turned a flamethrower on and pointed it at him. It was a not a good heat though, not the warmth you feel from your blanket or from the hug you share with your favorite people. It was just a deep burning rising in his now hollow chest.

He stared blankly at his mother, trying to figure out if he should even try talking to her or just walk away. He struggled with what he wanted to say and do. He knew there’s no way she could know yet, but at the same time, he was too sad to even be angry with her. He should’ve told her she was gone and never coming back.

She was the one closest to him, the one that knew him best. They were best friends. The stereotypical pair of besties. The shy gay boy and the loud outgoing girl. Two peas in a pod. Salt and pepper. You name it, that’s who they were. She was the first person he came out to and quite frankly the only one. She never pushed him to tell her or anyone but was so glad that he told her. To her it meant he was finally learning to love himself.

Jonah’s mother looked at him in disbelief. It was just an old, dried flower.

Practically dead and not at all pressed properly. It didn’t seem he wanted it. It was just sitting there on his desk, sad and begging to be thrown out. Its leaves were no longer a vibrant green but dark gray like pavement after the rain.

Its petals were past the point of drooping but frozen in place. If she hadn’t known what an alive daisy looked like she wouldn’t have been able to tell the petals were once the color of an angel’s wings. She threw the very dead flower away without any thought. Why was her son now looking at her as though she had killed their puppy?

The dried now-discarded daisy was the last flower he had given Daisy before she left. She had kept it while they were together but before she left, she handed it back. He hadn’t even thought anything of it when she handed it back. He thought it was nothing more than a gift from a friend. One of those symbolic friend gifts that they would tell their kids about. That’s exactly what Daisy had thought of it too. Nothing more and nothing less. She too thought that this flower would survive the ages with them. But now Daisy wouldn’t have kids. A random drunk driver took that from her.

His mother sliced the thick silence with her overly cheery voice. Jonah usually loved that voice but now he wished she would use some sort of maternal instinct and pick up that he wanted her to leave him alone.

Daisy | Makkenzi Welds

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“Honey, why do you look like that, it was a dead flower?”

The word “dead” hit hard. She was gone.

"Why did you throw it out?”

His voice was low and cold. It turned the already tense atmosphere icy.

Jonah’s mother swore she felt the chill from his voice.

“It was a dead flower and nothing more Jonah. I was doing some light cleaning and tossed it.”

Do I tell her she’s gone, he wondered, or do I leave it alone? She would find out eventually even without him telling her. She damn near ran the neighborhood and the school’s PTA. “Okay, whatever. Can you leave now?”

His reply was as icy as the first. He didn’t care at all. He wanted his mother to leave his room.

“Excuse me, who do you think you are responding to in that tone?”

His mother was now furious. Why was he being so dramatic about a dead flower?

There was no reply.

She stepped closer to him and asked again, this time there was no cheer in her voice.

Jonah was too numb to it all to even notice. He turned slowly and walked to his bed and sat.

Enraged, his mother demanded an answer.

With a loud sigh he barely whispered- “She’s gone, Mom, and she’s not coming back.”

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Daisy | Makkenzi Welds

Nightingale | Ritu Gangadhara

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I will be a woman with hammertoes.

Can’t escape it.

Varices wrinkles arthritis wait for me in the corner. There the calendar didn’t arrive yet the new millennium revolutions didn’t arrive yet. Here I remain late while testifying the slow imperceptible birth of another body inside mine. Can’t escape it. Don’t want to. I cast spells to pass the time. I put in frames the ones long gone. Botox is not an option & permanency our riot.

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Granddaughters | Bruna Kalil Othero

Great Sand Dunes | Ben Ring

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It was the third act, the candles round the orchestra pit had burned down to their drip pans, and Hermia was dying on stage.

In the dark corners of her vision Ottilie could see ushers striking matches against their boxes, the tiny flames like a solemn procession on Christmas Eve, before the bells. They would light the oil lamps soon, and the audience would slowly be drawn from the dream of the stage into the dark evening world, waking to the night and the fire. They’d stand, legs shaking from the blood, and stagger out where they would laugh and chatter and round up the high-whinnying horses with the ribbons in their tails and run all the way home, buoyed by the performance. The next day they’d struggle to recall the details of so-and-so doing this-and-that and did you see who fell on the stage?

Well isn’t that a shame, a shame, such a shame…

Ottilie always lost herself in the performances, or at least the very best ones. To see a play was to fall asleep, and she would dream a dream beyond her consciousness. The first time she saw Carmen, the lights had blinded her so brightly when she awoke that she thought of the sun outside her window, and was astonished to find herself in the Royal Theater instead. Even when she didn’t dream, she acted that she did, watching the play rapturously as her mind wandered.

Her mind wandered too when her grandfather would slip into his waking dreams. There was no play to enchant him away from verisimilitude, only brief reprieves between the coughing fits and pains of consumption. And yet, when she’d feed him water from a flask, his pretty, glassy eyes would stare up at the ceiling as though he were the one watching Hermia die, and she’d pretend to watch him dream even while her mind galloped away from her like the palomino horses with the ribbons in their tails, over park and over pale…

She’d been pulling on the buttons of her glossy gold coat, a fine dupioni, when her grandfather had died. He had pulled in his last breath like the rattle of an orchestra before the finale, but the music had never followed. She’d sat there plucking at the buttons in anticipation until she finally called for her father. They’d lined up the horses outside the manor, their coats shaggy with the winter air because her father had never bothered to travel to Spain, and their tails had no ribbons. Instead, they had donned them with limp yellow carnations, and the horses had danced back and forth with impatience as they brought out the coffin, now filled. All the way down to the plot, the horses had danced back and forth, nostrils puffing smoke like chimneys in the Ton, like fog over the far out green that lay dead before them.

The body smelled like burnt wax, a reminder of the candles that had 22

Act Three | Emma Harden

burned beside his bedside. Ottilie had suggested to her father that they use perfume, formaldehyde, ethanol, anything. Perhaps the oil from the pomegranate seeds that her grandfather had been so fond of. When he still breathed he would have them brought in from the Mediterranean, and the juice would stain his fingers red as he pulled out the arils for Ottilie to eat.

But the pomegranates were in Spain and her father had never bothered to travel to Spain, so her grandfather smelled like burnt wax and blown out fire instead.

The doctor had recommended that they go, she knew. He had looked at her grandfather looking at the ceiling and informed them that it would be better to go to Spain, because it had worked for others and it might work for them too. To Spain, her father had said, and leave England?

At least through the winter, the doctor had suggested. Leave England for the winter and stay through the summer. The warm, dry air would help the coughing. Perhaps Seville, the doctor had said, perhaps Granada. Her father had thanked the doctor, sent him on his way, and then they had stayed in England through the winter. By the time Parliament was out of session her grandfather was long dead, and it was Ottilie who now spent her days dreaming off into space.

Why stay in England through the winter? Hadn’t the doctor said to go?

What of Seville? What of Granada? Ottilie often found it hard to focus when she would think of Spain.

She would think of Spain often, too. She dreamed of it. She’d dream of Granada with its ancient buildings and its rolling greenery, and its mountain ranges with clouds sticking to the mountaintops like foam, like frothed spit from the mouth of God. The sharp spires of the Royal Chapel and the pools of the Alhambra Palace. She’d think of Seville, its wide skies, where the sun had nowhere to hide. Her grandfather had told her the yellow sun had nowhere to hide. People would walk on the paved brick streets and would feel the sun on their skin, and they had nowhere to hide. Ottilie could only dream of the heat, because the heat was in Spain and her father had never taken her to Spain because her father had never bothered to travel to Spain.

Even now, when Hermia was dying on stage, she dreamed of Spain. To all the world she seemed lost in the dream of the play, when she was really dreaming of stained glass and pomegranates in the warm, dry sun. Dew drops on their flesh drunk up by the thirsty air, which pulled moisture from her grandfather’s lungs. She wondered if her father dreamed of Spain.

Hermia was dying on stage, so the dream was almost over. And the lampAct Three | Emma Harden

23

lighters would light the oil lamps and the whole auditorium would rouse from its docile state, given guidance only by the weak flickering flames and the dim figures that held them aloft. Soon she’d go and gallop all the way home, over dew-ridden park and thick sage underbrush, shivering in the dark. Her horses with their yellow ribbons would gallop with her, out far into the night. Past the moon and into the sun. She’d wake up with the warm dawn.

But the horses had not yet come, the lights were not yet lit, and Hermia was dying on stage.

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Act Three | Emma Harden

Double Blind | Hope Meierkort

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1.

You consume me like Melted ice on your tongue.

Slowly turning into something else.

The seasons of fall and winter Falling behind as your lips become extensions of mine.

Where did one start and the other end?

I wonder if we’re all just different forms of one another.

A stream of flowing water waiting for those lost drops.

Your hands, your eyes dip into mine Like I imagine the droplets from burdened leaves; Green and pale in the dappled sunlight Fall with sound.

Like heaving breaths or trailing footsteps That wouldn’t dare dive in.

2.

The idea of soulmates gives me a reason to grasp empty air Trailing my fingers down my neck Wondering if you would do the same if you were here.

Are the hours, minutes, years wasted without you?

I wonder this as my heart keeps beating effortlessly.

A dull pain suspended between the beats of a bloodied drum.

How am I expected to go on living when a piece of me is missing?

Or maybe I’m meant to grow until I find you.

A sapling wilted, the ground a heap of dry dirt cracked in anticipation of your summer rain.

That will be flowing, flowing until the sky becomes bruised and flushed with grey.

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Two Parts of a Whole | Fiona Young

Peeled | Ava Slowey

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sir I would like to place an order yes an order sir I would like a dead woman please and what is your preference sir sir my preference is indifferent as long as it is a woman and it is dead with very pulverized bones many meters below the ground yes sir great we have lots of options here you can see our stock of women dead dead as fuck but are they really dead yes sir dead as a doornail deader than this you can’t find anywhere else in the city only here in this gorgeous bookstore specialized in women dead dead as fuck great sir I appreciate your service I will take this one and this one and this one here too sir do you want a fresh one this just got here well I thought this was still alive yes sir it is still alive but she is on her last legs and we as visionaries entrepreneurs always aware of the market tendencies already bought her rights and we are selling it to special special clients like you sir well but it is risky she may not die imagine what others would think of me reading a woman still alive oh no an alive woman I get chills only thinking yes sir but you see this is an investment if you buy now a semi-dead woman soon she will be dead & will worth more yes it is true I did not think of that yes it is true sir and moreover you do not have 28

dead woman | Bruna Kalil Othero

to read her now just wait until she dies and when her body is very cold very nestled safely under the ground you will be able to surrender to the delight of her texts her memory sir so how about you enjoy the sale yes I will thank you so much I will recommend your elegant establishment to all my friends you know sir I have lots of friends they are all poets they write they are super smart naturally sir you can send them a discount coupon great they love dead women love to dance over their graves love to put words in their mouths love to jerk off with their young & naked photos love naturally sir there is nothing more exciting more inspiring than a dead woman youngling & buck naked it is all here in my card the information dead women for sale we have all kinds dead dead as fuck dead as a doornail thank you sir good to know excellent to know dead woman is great dead woman is grand dead woman is not only better than a woman about to die in my elegant reader’s hands

dead woman | Bruna Kalil Othero

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30

Unfocused | Lydia Stern

most days i am a conjoined twin two arms, two legs, and two heads i’m not sure if she is also me, but that doesn’t mean i can’t hear her. and sure, her thoughts may not be mine, but equally terrifying and unavoidable they sear through my skull just the same they say mastery requires over 10,000 hours of experience, and yet even after years of observing myself as if i am both the unpaid intern and the petri dish i still never feel qualified enough to share my internal findings and who am i to make the final call on the statistical significance of my observations? for i am painfully aware my study has confounding variables and who am i to try and differentiate her from me? after all ­­— my second head, she seems to have far more identity than i will ever have.

results inconclusive | Ivy Piedra

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Reflections with Domino Game | Susanna Herrman

I sat down and tried to write myself a love poem and I couldn’t couldn’t compare myself to the rain against the window on an april day couldn’t draw tattoos on my arm with a ballpoint pen couldn’t tell myself that the sun rises everyday knowing i’d be there to wake up to it that the moon wishes i’d give it so much as a glance that my smile, when it reaches the corners of my eyes, is one of the wonders of the universe I tried to make the tiny things i do seem beautiful to romanticize every little detail I don’t doubt for a second that i turn heads that the curves of my hips match my smile just in just the right way. that i light up a room but living in this body makes you hate it living with this mind is something i wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy i have convinced myself that every person in my life will leave you could give someone all you have and they will only see you as a mere moment that i am a mere accessory in someone’s life a distant memory i am trying to write myself a love poem because i believe that nobody else will Later | Sym Cloyd

33

nobody will stick around long enough i am too hard i am too much and as i sit here and try to write this love poem and i look at myself in the mirror i realize that this is all meaningless

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Later | Sym Cloyd

Living Up to My Full Potential

35

this is a series of acknowledgements of the things we did and didn’t do

and their catalogues collecting dust

of the eyelash wishes i wasted

on your laugh and your hands and your mouth of all the stupid little love stories i wrote before ever having one for myself this is a series of confessions

that i prayed for every traffic light to turn red just to

steal a few more moments with you that i have always been a sputtering, floundering, helpless romantic

that you are the only love i have ever wanted to keep

and i no longer have that luxury this is a series of incriminations for the words i said drunk and sober yet desperate

and terrified all the same

for the times i made myself sick trying to swallow

rotted infatuations

for the things i held onto so tightly that they shattered this is a series of lamentations of the places and people we will never be together crossed out but never erased

of all my spent sentiments

that i will never get back of all the ways i will try and fail to convince myself one day it will hurt less this is a series of rememberances

of gratitudes and platitudes and apologies and eulogies little words that will never reach you to salve me

or absolve me

but that i still hope might

nonetheless.

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the last letter i’ll ever write you | Madison Cox

it feels as though everyday i’m writing of you and the pain you create do i mean you? or is it simply the collection of all of the yous put together? is it one or is it many? you feign interest ask me about my day and for a moment i believe you care longer than a moment, really longer than I'd care to admit you give me a drop of water, and i sort through it as if i have the entire ocean to examine i didn't know that healing was actually quite lonely on an island, stranded knowing that learning how to build a fire is necessary but desperately wishing that the person who taught you what a flame was could just be there showing you grace showing you the most genuine and truthful love i could muster pulling inside the depths of my body, just to give away everything inside to you place your hand inside my ribcage tug at my heart a little bit more and it's all yours in return i get nothing your empty stares and dry messages looking at me as though i’m someone you knew a lifetime ago

Worship Me | Max Senter

37

it guts me rips me to pieces my body in shreds on the floor i tried to show you in every way possible, but what am i supposed to do when you don't even answer the phone? you don't even have a phone at all. unreachable. unchanging. telling me you think i'm pretty just because you need to get off. isn't that the same thing as love? being wanted? being desired? so what if i have to be half dressed to do it? it's what i wanted isn't it? my body is a temple. you'll worship me, regard me as all things holy, and leave, only coming back when desperation sinks in, and no one else will answer your prayers.

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Worship Me | Max Senter

a difficult respite | Ritu Gangadhara

39

I lick your cloying honeycomb leaves gooey, golden residue on lips Tea sips wash away, And sweeten.

I’m the bee, buzzing I roam to find home not the hive you now inhabit, but the one I strive to revive, Our relinquished colony.

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We’re worker bees | Abi Diaz

Mirrored Sunset | Susanna Herrman

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Time was measured by the streetlights I was always too scared of the dark A short hamper ride away is where my house sat But every morning it was to grandmother’s house I go Spoiled, spirited, and sassy Being small was sweaty work, my skin always sensitive and tan from the sun I followed my Mimi around her gardens like a little duckling She was always a comfort to me; sizzling pepsi and soft soil was her perfume Once a day she sang our song to the creaking rhythm of her rocking chair I was her Angel wing Then, one day I became a liar My world became constrained, the gardens I ran through as a child grew vines of ivy that wrapped me up like chains, that touched my skin and left behind a rash that never went away.

I fight with myself to this day about freedom My childhood was a six-foot-deep hole, I could see the blue sky and envy the birds flying above but my nails were never quite long enough to pull myself out I was forced to live in a burning home, on a knife's edge I looked like a heavenly child, but I held hate like the devil I hurt and ached with no voice to yell out. My mouth stayed clenched shut.

I hold my shaky hands and chapped lips close to me Wearing them like a second skin, my fear grew a soul inside me Until I couldn’t eat, my cheeks hollow and my eyes lost their summer swamp glow Another body grew to fit inside mine Burning hot to scream at the top of my lungs To break windows, weep for my lost self, And baptize this entity from my body 42

Angel Wing | Haley Arsenault

It hurt to breathe air I had a right to No tears could be summoned from my body I felt cheated, And too empathetic for any child of my age My reflection in the mirror today is steady and solid My silhouette is whole and colorful But my hands still tremble, and I want to run more than I wish to stay I often wonder if that hate is buried inside of me, or if I lost it along the way Denial is a noun I am well versed in I still lie, especially to myself I still fear, it’s a core strength of mine And I nurture the unforgivable rash that prickles my body My years weigh tons They balance on my bones, and creak my knees Temples are filled with needles My chest heavy with the ghosts of my life I am a purple and yellow bruise still, but there is strength in pain And a soft humanity in the ache

Angel Wing | Haley Arsenault

43

An inkwell is overturned on the desk, black spilling, staining,

creating you.

A clean canvas.

Wit hands drag themselves along this endlessness, disturbing, rippling into existence a fine white line.

They press and the line thickens; lifts and it lightens;

skips and it dashes;

spins and it swirls.

All for Your solo dance.

The white follows wit, lines capturing you, finally holding your silhouette,

finally finding form.

Oh little picture, euneirophrenic is your waking heart,

your shape here on this canvas.

My sweet darling.

You don't deserve to sit here alone, lost with cecity,

empty with isolation,

nor plagued with black lungs.

44

We Are All Written in Ink | Jacobus Marthinus Barnard

New worlds inhabited by nefelibata rise from pen, scribbling, racing, complementing the misery-entwined creativity.

This is for you.

Yet, the little picture still suffers, crying out in a void of black and white, still scared and learning.

Wit stands aloof, questioning this image, before leaving the desk to return a small wooden box.

A new palette.

Emotion begins bubbling, melting a desk of ink-leaden canopy, the little picture emerging from the black, latching onto the box.

Eyes open, the walls fall apart to reveal novelty;

her first light and shadow,

her first colors, Her first ever smile.

Yet the little picture still suffers, pain muffled by the beautiful glares of colors, merely alone now in a world.

Simply, with no one to share.

Confined to dimensional nightmares she rests, waiting in the background, unmoving,

still as an art piece with no soul.

My little heartsore.

Wit, why did you bring me here?

I’m art all alone.

We Are All Written in Ink | Jacobus Marthinus Barnard

45

A pained face tearing, Wit left the desk, mourning this sad art, and looked in the mirror.

A reflection.

Mirthing, Wit is overcome, and begins ripping, lifting, running, until they place the mirror over the canvas.

The little picture looks up, crying, then laughing, as she stares back at art.

Her own picture.

Not a reflection, but her own interpretation,

a piece of art all her own.

Where have you been? my other half.

I’ve always been here.

You just had to know where to look.

46

We Are All Written in Ink | Jacobus Marthinus Barnard

individual glass panels protect valued art from wandering touch without diminishing its lasting effect on tangled souls who feel too much the story before us, layered bold with strokes of paint from days behind, reinforces our shared life’s mold and paints us in brighter design where, in the hush of the gallery with fluorescent lights flickering above, you lace our fingers with the delicacy of a brushstroke heavy with love

the love language of museums | Hope Meierkort

47

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The Art of Creating | Lydia Stern

to write a sonnet, one ought to curate words for shape and content while they fuck. [okay, voyering is inaccurate but don’t worry if you run out of luck] sonnets ask for commitment of the mind cuz they are monogamous and jealous. [it’s instauring a fire on the wind it’s an explosion of coke and mentos] one must have a notebook for sonnets, rhyme words of one syllable, synonymous. [cuz metric and rhyme are cousins in line patrons on alcoholics anonymous] finally, discard the tips, take a bow. [well, I believe I wrote a sonnet now]

Instructions to organize chaos | Bruna Kalil Othero

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50

Picassoesque Self Portrait | Lydia Stern

‘Who are you?’

‘What are you?’

‘Where are you from?’

People expect the answer they want.

Name.

Ethnicity.

Nationality.

They want what’s painless what’s facile what they see what they expect the anticipated answers in their heads a single word for inherently complex questions.

I want to respond with silence, with a glare, with a scream, with a fist. with the hardships of my ancestors, with the richness of my childhood, with the names of all my family and why each of them matters, with all the pain of their lives and the complexity of their existence, by telling them not to box me into a small answer that will keep them from ever truly knowing me, ever understanding who I am. to lecture them on trying to define me, on asking the questions that are clearly loaded with these stupid shallow responses I refuse to give!

Identity | Abi Diaz

51

My manners kick in, ‘Name’ ‘Ethnicity’ ‘Nationality’ They smile and nod. knew the answers. filled in the blanks.

They miss the pain behind my eyes, and as they turn, they miss my tears fall.

They will never know me.

I will never tell, I will ask.

‘Who are you?’

‘What are you?’

‘Where are you from?’

52

Identity | Abi Diaz

Memento Mori | Diptanshu Rao

53

The words tumble in my head like lotto balls, organizing themselves into the perfect answer, the moneyball.

Clear my throat, once, twice.

My voice won’t catch, it won’t scratch, I won’t have to re-clear it once I start speaking.

I study the question I’ve decided to answer.

I can’t mess it up, I know all the words.

I picked the verb I could conjugate flawlessly, the sentence is short, simple.

My sneaker toe flutters into the linoleum as Senor surveys the room. I avert my gaze, the foot taps increasing as my heart does.

Don’t pick me yet, I haven’t practiced my answer enough.

Everything lingers in the air for a second that feels an eternity, and I should raise my hand NOW. Someone else raises their hand.

Senor nods, and she flawlessly delivers the answer.

Next question.

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Next Question | Katie Bernfeld

Phases of Grief | Phoebe Bradley

55

to be an automatic woman to wash dishes clothes children like those who tighten a drill in a ‘20s factory gears cogs pollution the planet is ruined to be an automatic woman to give pussy with closed eyes like those who give a smarmy good morning to the unbearable boss and still fake an orgasm in the end and the oscar goes to to be an automatic woman to fool yourself believing that your husband cares about you the same amount you care about him you were vomiting in a fucking toilet on your honeymoon and he lying in bed still hard-on asking from far if everything was okay if you could pick up where you left off to be an automatic woman to do mental lists sometimes on paper I need to go to the supermarket to buy eggs bread tampons if I ask him he won’t buy forget it scratch it pick up the children in school continuously avoid obstacles yeah I am still single you know how it is the father is gone no I don’t know yes you do no I don’t have emotional issues yes you do every woman needs a man arrive home wanting to die but still make dinner serve keep shut to be an automatic woman back up when you want to step on always put others first oh fuck it I’m gonna travel hurry put that shit in airplane mode

56

automatic woman | Bruna Kalil Othero

Atlantis | Torrey Gleason

57

It was a strange feeling, knowing that the world was going to end.

Strange counting down to the exact date when everything you know would cease to exist, strange knowing that all you could do was sit there and watch it happen.

There weren’t many days left now, each one gradually crossed out. The calendar felt heavy with the weight of its wasted days.

Everything was so hot. And bright. Little could be done to darken the sky outside. All anyone had left was not enough time.

The days felt too long and too short. Alex wasn’t sure if he wanted more or less of them. What to do with all this time?

So he sat. And he moped. And he wasted more days until there were hardly any left.

Too many wasted days.

And what was there to do? Everyone had been advised long ago not to go outside. All he could do was sit and wait and watch the world burn.

Daniel hated seeing Alex like this. Even before all of this was happening, he hated seeing Alex sit around and mope out of pure helplessness.

Of course, that’s what they were. That’s all that everyone left was. No one was coming to save them. There was no salvation, no rescue — there were no miracles.

Before all this happened, Daniel would stand in the doorway and muse at Alex as he got lost in the streets below, peering at the world moving from their bedroom window. Now, the orange in the sky only grew brighter with each passing day. Not a soul in the world touched those streets anymore.

No one rushed to their cars because they were running late for work. No one walked their dogs on early mornings before the sun rose and burned the white sidewalks.

Daniel moved from his usual spot in the doorway and sat next to Alex on their bed. The air was thick and heavy all around them.

They sat quietly for a while; neither could tell how long.

The earth still turned and the sun still set, allowing them a few hours of peaceful night before returning to the burning light. All they had were candles to lessen the darkness.

Alex remembered the candles, the ones that sat on the rim of the bathtub for when he had a long day, the ones that sat on the nightstand in the bedroom for anniversary celebrations, the ones that sat on the coffee table in the living room for when they just wanted something a little softer than their normal lights. The different scents mixed together into an overwhelming 58

Wasted Hours (Before We Knew) | Madison Cox

wave of memories that washed over them. Toasted marshmallow and apple cinnamon and pine forest and everything else that had come to smell like home.

They lit a few candles in the living room and ate dinner out of cans. The only sound was their spoons scraping against the ribbed insides of the metal.

Their throats were dry when they went to sleep, curtains drawn closed and covers thrown to the edge of the bed. There weren’t even crickets to sing them to sleep.

— Daniel woke up hot and sticky, the sheets clinging to his skin.

Today was the last day. Deep down, Daniel still hoped for a way out; Alex hoped it wouldn’t hurt. Daniel rolled over and shook Alex’s shoulder lightly.

Alex arched his back off the bed, yawning as he stretched. He looked at Daniel and blinked a few times. Daniel stretched himself over and placed a small kiss on the corner of Alex’s lips, feeling them curve under his own.

They both knew this was the end, but for now, they would pretend. Just for these few early-morning moments, where everything still felt hazy and dreamlike, they prayed for the world to let them pretend it wasn’t all over soon. For once, the sheets didn’t feel like fire on their backs. They lay still for a moment, letting themselves just soak in each other’s comfort.

Today was something they’d agreed on longer ago than either really wanted to remember. The remembering hurt, but this mattered more than the ache.

Alex stood from the bed and walked to their closet; Daniel sat up and followed with his eyes as Alex moved. He sat back down at the foot of the bed with a large cardboard box at his feet. Daniel moved down, sitting next to Alex.

Inside were a dozen different photo albums of various sizes, some more lived-in than others. Other photographs were strewn around in the box.

This was everything they ever were, all manageably contained in a box full of photographs. It was strange to see their younger selves mixed around with their older selves, as if the two were able to coexist for even one instant in the universe. Alex felt heavy knowing that he’d never see their wrinkly grays mixed in.

Looking through the box, he felt cheated. Of all the time they’d already had together, they couldn’t have just a little bit more? They couldn’t have the old and grey, too? Daniel would’ve said it was selfish to say those kinds of things — that he should think about all the people who will never get a Wasted Hours (Before We Knew) | Madison Cox

59

chance to come close to what they had, or the people being cut so much shorter than they were — so Alex didn’t say them at all. He figured Daniel was right anyway; he always was. Besides, he wasn’t going to start that fiight.

Not today. Not anymore.

Now sitting with the boxes strewn before them, Daniel wasn’t sure looking through their old life was the best idea. He looked at their old pictures, their old smiles and their old friends and their old days, and his throat felt tight. There were so many more days they could’ve had, and now they were gone. Wasted like all the days that will never be crossed off the calendar.

Daniel clenched his jaw. He wasn’t going to admit to Alex that he was right.

But maybe now’s not the time to be leaving things unsaid.

“I get it now,” Daniel spoke softly.

“Get what?” Alex asked.

“Being angry.”

Even now, Alex knew. He pulled the photographs in Daniel’s hands away, putting them into the box before wrapping his arms tightly around Daniel’s shoulders, which heaved under Alex’s touch, his arms tightly around Alex’s waist. He sobbed and thought about all of those days he would never be able to remember again.

Everything was still too hot.

Both mumbled an apology into the other’s ears for making each other feel this way.

“Can we go sit in the living room?” Daniel asked quietly.

“We can go wherever you want.”

Alex stood from the bed and carefully tugged Daniel behind him into the living room. They sat quietly together on the couch, staring into the matte black of the television screen. Even in this unbearable heat, they couldn’t resist to touch. Shoulders leaned into each other, knees bumped in quiet reminders, toes tapping over each other’s like the little game they used to play at restaurants.

They lay together on the couch, skin uncomfortably hot between them but both too scared for it to matter. The sky grew darker behind the curtains.

Dinner was just the same as it had been since the beginning of the end.

Alex hated the sound of their spoons scraping inside the cans.

There was practically no time at all now.

Daniel walked their empty cans into the kitchen and threw them in the garbage, piled in with the rest of the empty cans from the end of the world.

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Wasted Hours (Before We Knew) | Madison Cox

“Do you want the candles in the bedroom?” Daniel asked quietly, nodding toward the set of two on the coffee table.

Alex nodded and picked up the candles as Daniel went into the kitchen, pulling the matchbox out of a drawer. The box was empty, panic flashing across his face as he dug through the drawer for loose matches. He finally found one, stuck in the edges of the drawer.

The very last match.

He followed Alex into their bedroom. Alex sat the candles down on his bedside table and took the match, striking it on the wooden surface before lighting them. Daniel held out the other set that resided on his own bedside table to Alex for him to light.

The match flickered out as the last candle was lit.

Alex lay down slowly on the bed, as if so not to disturb the silence occupying the room. He perched himself up on his elbows and looked up at Daniel with his tired eyes. Daniel lay down next to him, holding his arms open. Alex filled in the gap they made over Daniel’s chest, listening to Daniel’s heart pressed against his ear. Their chests rose and fell as they reveled in this calmness, this stillness of the world.

“So this is the way the world ends,” Alex mumbled into Daniel’s chest.

“Really hot?” Daniel smirked. He felt Alex chuckle against him.

They needed this. Needed the laughter and the smiles and what was left of the good that would be lost in the fire.

“Absolutely scorching,” Alex smiled.

“I guess that’s my fault.”

“Oh shut up,” Alex lifted his head from Daniel’s chest and gave him that same silly I-can’t-be-mad-at-you grin they both missed more than they ever realized.

“You didn’t deny it,” Daniel beamed.

“I’ve never been one to deny the truth,” Alex grinned, resting his hands under his chin and laying back down against Daniel’s chest.

They laughed with each other, falling back into their old flirtatious habits that had been abandoned too long ago. Silence consumed them quickly, the only sound returning to their synchronized breaths. It was easier to think about the breathing than anything else.

“Daniel,” Alex began, his soft voice reverberating in Daniel’s rib cage, “do you think we wasted too much time?”

His voice sounded like it hurt, and it did. The answers weighed heavy in Daniel’s throat. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.

Wasted Hours (Before We Knew) | Madison Cox

61

He took a deep breath, raising Alex’s head as it rested on his chest, before he spoke. “I don’t think anything’s wasted, as long as it’s with you.”

“But we could’ve had so much more,” Alex turned his head to look up at Daniel. “Could’ve said so much more, been so much more.”

“I think we were just enough.”

“I can’t believe we wasted so much time just waiting for each other.”

“I don’t think we should spend this time worrying about all the time we don’t have anymore.”

The room fell silent once again. Alex raised his head from Daniel’s chest and shifted into his usual side of the bed, laying on his shoulder. Daniel shifted closer, placing a hand softly against Alex’s cheek. Alex moved a hand over Daniel’s waist.

“Is there… is there anything you never said to me?” Alex asked hesitantly.

Daniel thought for a few moments, eyes darting all over Alex’s red face like they were looking for things to say.

“I always thought you looked really good in the color pink,” Daniel blushed.

Alex rolled his eyes and smiled: “Oh that doesn’t count!”

“Yes it does!” Daniel said. The two laughed for a moment before being consumed by another silence.

Daniel closed his eyes, turning onto his back. “In all the time we’ve spent together, I don’t think there’s a single word I haven’t said to y- really, Alex?” he looked over and laughed, noticing the quiet sniffles coming from Alex’s side of the bed.

“That was hardly even one sentence! What did you expect me to say?”

Daniel asked, smiling sadly. “Don’t make me cry, too.”

Alex’s voice bubbled and cracked as he spoke: “Sometimes, I feel like I’ve known you my entire life. Before we ever even knew each other. I feel like we existed here just to have each other.”

“Maybe we did,” Daniel replied quietly.

Daniel rolled back onto his shoulder, moving his hand back to Alex’s tearstreaked face. He rubbed his thumb over the apple of Alex’s cheek, dragging the tear tracks across his skin with it.

“Would you change any of it?” Alex said quietly.

Daniel grinned, his own tears catching in the curve of his lip. “Not a single second.”

“Not even the bad stuff?”

“Not even the bad stuff.”

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Wasted Hours (Before We Knew) | Madison Cox

The two looked at each other in silence for a few minutes, sniffling and giggling at themselves; they couldn’t help but feel silly for just staring at each other while they cried, even now.

“Daniel?” Alex whispered.

“Alex?”

“I’m scared.”

“That’s okay, I’m here,” Daniel grinned, pulling Alex closer so that their chests were together, their heartbeats pounding against the other’s. The tips of their noses brushed together.

They shared one last whisper of “I love you” and one last kiss goodnight.

If they dreamt that night, they would never get to tell each other about the crazy dreams they had, or the bad ones, or the nice ones.

What a waste of all of those dreams.

Neither of them moved from where they lay, keeping their noses pressed together, legs tangled into each other’s, warm hands on warmer skin, their soft breathing the only sound.

Wasted Hours (Before We Knew) | Madison Cox

63

There is simply one thing I would do It is written in the stars: I would take Your delicate, wrinkled hand In mine.

If I leap Towards your fire The intrinsic movement Of your ashes Call me to run to you, As if the rest of the world, Beauty, touch, and mind, Were planes that fly Toward those clouds of yours created for me.

But then, As time begins to warp into place I shall forget you little by little If one day I wake up without you Do not crawl back into my mind, For you have already forgotten too.

Though I may miss you, The wind of your fire Rushes through my bones, And you decide To strand me in the sky Of the world you look down upon, Remember That on that day I too Will dance through Your impalpable ash To return to the ground.

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If Time Stops | Sofia Melgarejo

But If one day You choose to find me Through enigmatic time, With undeniable tenderness, If each day a flower Crawls up your tomb to see me, My darling, Your fire continues to burn, And I will run to you.

I will remain in your clouds, For as long as I live, With you.

If Time Stops | Sofia Melgarejo

65

We are strangers.

That is how we started, so that is how we will end.

It matters not that I have seen the intricate details of your soul, or traced my fingers down your spine when you were lying next to me in your bedlegs intertwined and your body pressed close against mine.

It matters not that I know what your breath sounds like when you’re sleeping, or when you twitch just enough to squeeze in a little bit closer to me as you flutter in and out of sleep.

Never mind that I have traced the lines of your palm and connected the dots between your freckles so many times that I could do it again from memory.

Forget the way that my neck lays perfectly in the crevice between your neck and shoulder blade, like our bodies were carved out intentionally to fit our own mold.

It no longer matters how our strides sync up when we walk next to each other or how you pull me close to you as we approach a crosswalk and you see oncoming traffic.

Despite all of this, you are foreign to me.

If you read our story back to front, it would read the same.

Because where we started as strangers, we end there too.

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Strangers | Abigail Miller

Unfinished Gardens | Ritu Gangadhara

67

How did we let it get this far?

Where the fire’s so bright That I can’t see you anymore We must have fanned the flames A million small ways But now the smoke burns my lungs And I don’t want to breathe in ash.

What do you say?

Will you grab the other fire extinguisher?

I’m holding mine But this blaze goes out faster When we both start spraying And so I’m praying That we can find some common ground again, No matter how scorched it might be now. ~ The flames have died down But a haze still hangs Will you grab a broom While I clear the air, Sweep the ashes out While I flap a sheet?

Will you try to try again with me? ~ I can see you now, across the gulf There’s only a foot of stone Jutting out the side Where we once had a road.

The rest was wood, and flared up bright Do you want to start rebuilding Our burnt bridges?

I’ll start from my side And hope you start from yours ‘Til eventually, there’s no sides anymore Just one overpass, Passing over what would divide us Just one long bridge that we’ve rebuilt From flame-proof stone this time.

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The 28th Fire Brigade | Sydney Weber

From her burns the smoke of ten thousand fires Escaping into the night and racing over hills The ash eclipsing the sun Swallowing the earth and the sky and I My flesh smoked like meat My ribs braised for her perusal Skull bleached so that she may Mount me on her finest mantel Lured in by the lights like a Speck of life led to an anglerfish Deep out of the dark like Jesus’s star Like an apparition The specter of a thousand suns Glimmering through her own ruse The smile of Vesuvius Tearing apart the heart of Pompeii This is how I fell in love

Volcano Day | Emma Harden

69

His heart was in question. Not for the first time either.

It was the last dance of the night and all courage he once thought he had was naught. There she was, standing there in a starlight gown, shimmering with the flashing lights as if she herself was the center of the room — and most certainly the center of the young man’s current distress.

He arrived with her to the dance, them being thrown together by sheer luck and a bit of friendly mischevy. Yet even through the photos and awkward blushes he remains frozen now.

Who is she looking at? He wonders. It should have been of no surprise to his rigid, shaking self when she turned away from the room itself. She was not only the aesthetic, she herself was the infinity, a question no one could understand except with more questions. This space girl, tethered by no one.

Before he could react, he realized that it was over, that her leaving was not her ditching him, or anyone else, but her ditching the dance. He had to ask.

He ran as swiftly as slick socks and crowded bodies would let him.

So narrow minded he was that he forgot he was supposed to take her home. What a fool. He still had time.

Calming down, he acted proper for a change and collected himself and his things, making sure to give all the right nods and quick smiles to departing friends and peers.

He wanted to take her hand, but he decided opening the car door was more paced. She of course did not give notice to his nervous chattering, half in wonder at her own thoughts and partly exhausted from the long night.

They were driving now, up familiar streets and sceneries that looked otherworldly at such a late hour.

It was still quite a while till her house. Should he ask her now? No. A rejection now would be much too awkward. In her driveway then? That would be ideal, rejection or acceptance be damned; it gave him time afterwards to process or react without an awful amount of recoil.

But no. He forgot to fill up his car in all the rush. What a fool.

He made conversation, to himself or with her he’s not sure, apologizing for the detour. It would only take a minute.

He pulled in, nearly jumping out the car as he jumbled into the AM PM, placing down crinkled cash for the clerk to sort out. Should he get her something here? That would be perfect; unconventional, but perfect. He settled on grabbing her favorite sweet — a small bag of orange slices.

When he came back, she was standing outside, still gorgeous in that 70

The Citrus Kiss of Astronomy | Jacobus Marthinus Barnard

dress. She was putting in the nozzle and stretching tired legs.

She smiled at the small gift he presented in his hands. Her gentle hand reached down and popped a slice in her mouth. His gesture was appreciated with the squint of her starry eyes.

Now was the time. When they were the only ones here.

Somewhat knowingly, she waited for him to say the thing that was on his mind all night.

And he said it all — his feelings for her, the joy in his heart at her presence, the oddly connected memories they shared, and what he hoped could be more.

She said no.

But then he was met with a sudden kiss. It was short and just messy enough that the taste of her citrus smeared-chapstick still lingered on the corners of his mouth, many moments after the fact.

She told him no. But she also said that she couldn’t. It wasn’t in her nature.

After all, she is a space girl. Tethered by none.

The feeling was sweet, like the scent of gasoline spilled under tin roofs, but bitter, with the nostalgic feeling of falling out of trees and tasting blood upon the crash.

He didn’t get the ending he wanted, but he was okay with that.

The Citrus Kiss of Astronomy | Jacobus Marthinus Barnard

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Commute | Susanna Herrmann

hand on the steering wheel gripping tight, tighter than usual, knuckles white the feeling before the crash, knowing what's next but dreading the outcome if only fate was kinder maybe she is and we just haven't seen her true intentions i am the spirit and the spirit is me feeling the presence of something larger wrapped all the way around in every breath, every step, every thought connectedness to mother earth because i am her and she is me and we are all going to be dirt one day many imitate but only few stop to feel what she gives us and how we should be grateful i love mother earth and she loves me looking at the moon i love her too in all her beauty, even on the nights where i can't see her shine i feel her there because i am her and she is me the sun and it's warmth the sun and it's light i love her, and i am her and she is me i am everyone and everyone is me i am everything and everything is me there is no limit a universe far too vast and infinite to begin to understand so i don't attempt to there is no need to decode or ponder or drive myself mad looking for the answers i receive the answers i seek and if i don’t then they aren’t for me sometimes it’s my turn to drive and sometimes someone else must take the wheel Divine Feminine | Max Senter

73

listening to the inner voice, letting her speak, listening to her wisdom an intelligent guide, i heed her warnings and find a sense of beauty in it all everything is interconnected and wonderful all working in harmony the world is more beautiful than we give her credit for it's all a very long winded way of saying what i really want to say: i trust in the universe because i am her and she is me and together we are one

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Divine Feminine | Max Senter

You dance on two yellow tightropes.

Airbags explode through the echo of blue and red lights.

11:57 p.m., grounded by the pavement, you dance on two yellow tightropes.

Headlights on the wrong side of the road.

Terror drowned out by the echo of blue and red lights.

Vision blurs, and metal clashes as you dance on two yellow tightropes.

A night filled with red solo cupsdrowns out the echo of blue and red lights.

Screeching tires and shattered glass, all because you danced on two yellow tightropes.

Blue and red lights echo through the night.

Yellow Tightropes | Sofia Melgarejo

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76

Time Trials | Camille Brinson

i. you sit with some space still between you, and the gap is filled with lightning strikes. the bolts poke into your sides and run through your entire body. all you share in this moment is the air you breathe and the occasional brushing of pinky fingers in the static-y space where your hands rest; you wonder how the slightest of contact can sing your entire body electric. sometimes he flinches his hand away quickly, but sometimes you do the same. sometimes you both share a small giggle at the accidental touches; sometimes you don’t. ii. everything is surrounded by haze, filtered by the alcohol you maybe had a bit too much of, but it’s alright because he’s got you; he’d never even let a mosquito try to steal any of that patchy, pink warmth out of your cheeks. he’s watching you giggle and stumble over your words and letting you poke at his nose and admit how cute you think it is. he gives you a soft smile that you won’t remember, but you won’t be able to forget the feeling of his pores under your fingertips, face pinking up soberly at the thought of your own slurred utterances.

in the light of the twenty-third hour | Madison Cox

77

iii. he kisses you for the first time on the sidewalk in front of your apartment, the hood of his raincoat tickling the sides of your face because neither of you tried getting away from the rain. you feel each drop as it soaks into your hair and mourn the absence of his hands where they cradled the back of your jaw. he says goodnight and goes back to his car, but he doesn’t drive away just yet; instead, he watches you walk up to the door and only leaves when you close it behind you. you bring a hand to your lips and run your fingers over the skin, trying to memorize the feeling of his own. iv. the empty streets belong to you, and static continues to flow in currents between your touches, but neither of you shy away from it anymore. you’d both much rather let your hands stick to each other, drawn tight and close together like magnets. you’d let him take you anywhere he wanted as long as it meant your fingers got to stay entwined in the spaces between his. he kisses you against brick wall exteriors, and the fabric of your jacket sticks to them; it wants the two of you to stay here with nothing between you but chapstick.

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in the light of the twenty-third hour | Madison Cox

v. he tells you he loves you in his car parked on the same street outside your apartment where those same lips touched yours first. his eyes are pretty in a new way, with a glint of something raw and hopeful and just a little bit scared; you wonder how it’s possible for you to have never noticed it before now. you try moving your mouth to repeat him, but your lips stutter on themselves. usually, it’s much easier for them to work, and you both know that all too well. he knows you like the back of his own hand, and he leans across the center console; you feel the curve of his grin on yours and laugh into each other’s mouths when your teeth touch. vi. everything is quiet so that all you hear is each other. you mumble all of the secrets of the universe against the shell of his ear and still feel the currents of his touch as he drags his fingertips in figure-eights up and down your arm. the weights of your bodies become one as they dip into the mattress; space and time bend themselves for you. here, all the clocks stop running. everything pauses for you. the orange-yellow glow of street lamps pokes lines through the gaps in the blinds, drawing stripes across your bodies. in the light of the twenty-third hour, he is beautiful, and he is yours.

in the light of the twenty-third hour | Madison Cox

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Living Room at Night | Susanna Herrman

our kisses linger like sacred words in his morning coffee breath I devour them with ferocious desire and he blushes a warm velvet delicious poetry

embody | Hope Meierkort

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Urban Sunrise | Ben Ring

the world works in mysterious ways sometimes i wonder if it's divine intervention or simply God playing a cruel joke on me just to remind me how impossibly small i am how egoistical to believe my pain is simply the creation of God and out of all living beings he’s focusing solely on me maybe i don't mean it maybe it's easier to have someone to blame maybe i’m not all that different in the end sometimes i do think the world revolves around me a combination of my own grandeur and that of my family i am my father's daughter after all bearing the same burdens sharing the same curse my blood is his and sometimes that makes me sick my blood is his and sometimes that makes me proud my blood is his and his blood is mine and it's a startling realization wondering if there's anything of my own my body is not mine, it’s a combination of parts and pieces from my creators my personality is not mine either, simply a character created from the mannerisms of people who aren't me taking the most likable parts of others and making them my own by definition, that makes me the best doesn't it? a sum of all the greatest parts?

We Are God | Max Senter

83

maybe this isn't the fault of God. or maybe i am god himself is that really such an insane possibility? better yet, maybe we're all God. we're all just combinations of other people's stories anyway

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We Are God | Max Senter

A young boy sat still with his face pressed against the cold tasteless glass of a porthole. He stared outward at a world no one else would dare try to capture, determined to fill his journal with everything he could perceive.

No one knew why he was doing this, and they did not believe the boy when he answered that the sky spoke to him. They did not believe that the clouds could speak.

How wrong they were.

The boy listened closely against this small lighthouse aperture. Stuck in this tower, he had already read every book and enjoyed every fantasy. He poured himself into all these fictions to escape his captivity, faced with the reality of being stuck inside. He wanted more freedom.

So, he turned to the clouds.

They always had a story to tell; some they have been aching to share for a long time. Their tales were shaped by the winds that traveled through the lives of every person on earth. These winds which traveled through the open doors of every home and song.

The boy knew science, and in all its understood mysteries, it was not the floating of watery wisps that defined the magic surrounding the clouds. Their true sorcery existed in their ability to bring the honest reflections and chronicles of what occurred here on Earth from oceans far away, taking life from one land and sharing that history in another.

The child wrote fervently, enraptured by whatever he saw from his place by the small window.

He did this every day. He listened to the sky at high noon, when he could see the calm winds morphing the clouds into a photograph of an epic’s climax. He listened even when the winds were high and thunderous, the invisible shaping whole new worlds for an ever-changing second. He recorded these tales.

But the young thinker did not do this at night, else he would be distracted by the stars. He understood that the clouds loathe the stars that lorde above them.

They screamed, “The stars never change! Why do you keep worshipping them so? You lament over deaf beings. Open your eyes to what is right here!

Look and see that we have everything. Look and see that we listen to you.”

The boy listened and allowed the gift of imagination to consume him in an unfamiliar and uncomfortable bareness, exposing his mind’s eye. What he saw in the clouds were scenes of himself, exaggerated as they may be.

After all, the purpose of the sky was to reflect.

The Infinitive Alpenglow of a Dimdream Reflection | Jacobus Marthinus Barnard

85

He was not scared because the clouds carried reassuring whispers. “Do not be afraid to think. We will help you.”

His favorite time to write, raw with hand and mind, came when the sun sank to meet his eyes. When the clouds were drawn with the most definitive shadows and infinitive details, a translucence that captured the purest of scenes — the day’s alpenglow.

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The Infinitive Alpenglow of a Dimdream Reflection | Jacobus Marthinus Barnard

5 a.m. | Hope Meierkort

87

The train was coming.

Everyone could feel the heat of it in their bones; hell was surely rolling into town like low-lying thunder on a humid dusky night.

The fate of this town was decided as soon as the men, women, and children settled this dust pot out of desperation and basic human greed.

The nails holding each and every store and house together were sewn in by the blood of innocence and the sweat of sinners.

We all came to the West looking for something better. Looking for money, gold, freedom, a lawless existence.

But we got more than we bargained for. The railroad was finished and with it came the Wild West's end. A train was coming.

Coming into our town looking to sweep up our lost souls with it.

Gold doesn't mean one damn thing in the face of death. The devil cares not for man's desires or material bargains. He wants his payment in life and he's surely gonna get paid in full when the train comes to collect.

My dear sweet Maudlin was fixing up the end for us. Right on our cast iron stove in the one room shack we call home.

The moment we got wind that our town was next we headed down to the corner store and purchased ingredients for our last earthly delight.

Some might say we were taking the yellow belly way out, but from where I stand, it was a mercy most in this town wouldn't afford themselves.

Not that any of them didn't deserve what was coming for them. After all, the people are the reason for their own stunted lives.

Just earlier this mornin' when I got the sordid news from the little yeller boy, he was screamin’ mighty hard about the fate of the town before ours.

He said, “It’s a comin’ at midnight! She’ll steam into town with her fires raging! Not a human in sight of her! Like hell on a train,” the boy hollered with such conviction. Most of the townspeople that were within earshot stopped to take in the news. Many emotions shadowed the haggard faces of the working class.

Most of us realized that fate had finally broken our time glass and there was no running anymore.

No amount of begging on our knees, jewels, or good etiquette would save us now. We had done peed in the coffee.

The first low whistle blow pulled me from my thoughts.

Maudlin’s head whipped up from where she was baking to gaze with wide eyes out the little kitchen window.

The temperature had taken to rising a little with each passing minute.

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Death by Chocolate | Haley Arsenault

When I was a boy, my Gran would say that if you counted the seconds between thunder claps you could tell how many miles a storm was from your home.

I thought vaguely that maybe the same method could be applied to the train’s tune.

“You don't think it's here already, do you Edgar?" Her soft, docile voice spoke up and I breathed it in quietly.

Soaking up the last of Maudlin. It reminded me of regrets, and what man doesn't die with plenty of those?

But she was never one of them.

Maudlin was scared, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't shaking in my boots a little too.

But there was nothing to be done now.

She turned from the stove with a small rounded cake and two dingy forks in hand.

Setting the small dish on the table, the mud-colored homemade icing’s contours from the sweep of a knife glistened in the candlelight. The chocolate cake was our last meal.

She took the seat in front of me and we both sat in silence with our thoughts.

I reached across the wooded surface to clasp her hand in mine as my other went to grasp a fork. She squeezed back.

The first bite was hesitant as I was almost too ashamed. I took the cake into my mouth, savouring the luxury, swallowing the relief.

Another whistle blow. Very close this time.

Her hand tightened on mine, our skin going ghostly from the vice grips.

A heightening in the air was thick as the blood pumped faster in our veins.

Fear is a twisted bitch.

A few more bites and I knew in my alcohol-crippled gut that it was time to don our Sunday bests and walk to the tracks.

I stood up, laying my fork down gently. Pulling Maudlin alongside me, we went to the chest and found our clean casket wear. We both were slow getting dressed; some small part of me hung on to the seconds and willed them to slow even more so we never had to leave the comfort of our home.

We stood staring at one another, dressed and nowhere near ready, but no one is ever ready for death.

She held such an ache in her spring water eyes, I could only kiss her forehead in reply. No words could ever soothe.

Death by Chocolate | Haley Arsenault

89

People walked out of their homes as another whistle blew, us among the mass. The quiet almost brought a chill to the air and my hair stood on end.

The church to our backs I said a silent prayer as we trudged through invisible quicksand.

We stood lined up, all facing the wooden and iron pattern embedded upon the ground.

The heat was a visible wave in the air, an entity of immense mass that seemed even hotter than the sun on our worst days.

We could melt together, surely.

The tracks shook and groaned and the head of a black engine came into our view. The line tensed as we stood shoulder to shoulder. Some cries could be heard, low murmuring from those who wanted their last words spoken now. Collectively, as the train drew near, so did a heat that clogged lungs.

We all attempted to inhale oxygen that was swallowed up from the air as our chests heaved frantically.

Sparks of fire flowed from the windows and engine room up towards the sky in streaking licks of solid heat. Children screamed like murder.

It was here. I never knew what to expect from a death, but as the train swished down the tracks, it was faster than I’d ever seen a vessel that big go.

It slid past the first of the line. It seemed as though an invisible force rushed through their bodies and made dust of them. Time went at a snail’s pace and the molecules that made each of us separated like blowing ash from a pipe.

They became the very dirt we all once dreamed and wished upon.

As the line went up in fantastic fireflies the rest of us waiting felt our shoes fuse us into submission. There was certainly no running. Our cake was of no use, we would die by the light of a burning train.

It is whispered that death takes on many forms, but the only certainty is we will all meet him. Earlier this day I had been sure our last earthly delight would be our last gift to our human forms, a close to well-lived lives.

And now I had one more regret to set on my libra scale as the trains presence finally caught up to me and suddenly the chill snapped my skin and ground my bones, but peace was all I knew as we washed away with the wind.

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Death by Chocolate | Haley Arsenault

Transit | Reese Myers

91

it becomes increasingly more difficult not to convince myself that things fall together only to fall apart. please, let me hold onto you just a little bit longer. how do i stop it all from slipping between my fingers? i build the sandcastles, and the waves pull them into the sea. how do i keep a grip on something as weak and precious as you or you? tell me, how do i make this stop hurting? how do i make things stay? how do i make them come back? i am standing at the cliff ’s edge, watching the waves fall away from the shore only to return again.

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needing & getting | Madison Cox

When whales get too old, they cannot come back up for air. They sink to the bottom of the ocean.

The back window glows red from the brake light. I hold my foot down even though the car is in park.

Wind carries the scent of the end of fall. Of fires and rust and snow.

Like slick, sweaty hands on metal.

When I left, the pumpkin on our porch had popped like a swollen zit.

And it forced me to picture her wrinkles, her sagging breast. At her end she made me think of just how animal we are.

Her mouth just for eating, her words turned to sounds.

But I remember more than that.

I remember her frail piano fingers, the fresh towels.

The scent of soap and laundry detergent and steel.

The kitchen, our games of Skip-Bo. Her white permed hair, the clanging dishes.

The sound of the sink running, the suds of soap on my hands.

The places I would set things aside to do them later.

Her orange pot full of vegetable soup, The salt placed just for me.

Her magnolia tree, Her screen door screeching as it shut.

When humans touch, it's skin to bone to soul. Hands hold hands steady, legs push against the ground not to fall.

It must be scary, drowning in a place you have always been able to breathe.

No one knows what sits at the bottom of the sea. Only that it is Gone.

Whale Falls | Fiona Young

93

they say you will be grateful you will look back on this and be proud of yourself your resilience will move mountains they say it builds character it is a testament give thanks and praise for it made you stronger i ask, what am i preparing for what unholy event is coming that i might need this strength? your affirming words are not graceful but foreboding i do not wish to be warned about my future i do not wish to look forward to my peril i do not wish myself or others more pain i wish for joy. for soft hands and smiling strangers i deserve the mountains you ask me to move move where? why? i do not wish for the anticipation of war, but of peace i say, do not be proud of my trauma no more proud than i am, at least thank me for my existence, and promise me you too are working so that no child has to bear the weight of the cross that they did not ask for nor bow to a god as suffocating as the tears he has allegedly bestowed let children be children let adults be soft let me close my eyes and let me rest against my mountain 94

of mountains | Ivy Piedra

Sangre de Cristo Mountains | Ben Ring

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The New Evolution | Sofia Melgarejo

I was peeling the burn to its bottom layers, the ones that weren't white and raw but a deep spotted red. It wasn't leaking anymore; the cold froze that small 'o' on my hand shut, stinging my bones, begging every nerve to give up.

Building and building, so all I could do was wheeze. Levi was waiting behind the thin door that slammed too easily, so I stifled my sobs and ignored his light knocking. I wasn't going out, not after the crash, the biting cold.

"Shawn?" Levi's thuds were more frenzied now. Maybe the few people in the gas station started turning their heads. "You okay in there, man?"

"Obviously not." The fluorescent bathroom light cast a dingy yellow on the smudges of spit and fingers, concealing the deep-set lines under my puffy eyes. The car, Dottie, was still out there, being slowly buried under the Michigan snow, all our belongings still inside her trunk. "You can stop knocking now; I'm talking."

"I called your mom." My eyes pull to the corner overflowing with paper towels, at the cockroach trap shifting.

"Why would you do that?" I turned the faucet on again, biting my chapped lips, dancing to the pain. My torso was still shaking from the cold like I was some deranged belly dancer.

"The car isn't yours. Well, not technically." I could hear something scrape against the other side. "I know this isn't what we planned." He sighed, I sighed, the bathroom fan grumbled. We had made our way through northern Michigan because ferries and ships at the port could still leave, even in the winter. It could stay running until the entire harbor freezes over. It was a half-assed plan, but it was all we had. We would go to Mackinac Island.

We were young, and they needed snow shovelers, maids, assistants. Hardly anyone stays on the island during the winter, so there were plenty of places to sneak into.

"Don't feed me that shit. There is no plan now."

"Come on, let me in." He knocked again, softer.

"I can't." I had to keep wiping my eyes. But I unlocked the door anyway.

It took a few seconds for Levi to try the handle again.

I see him in the mirror first, his eyes wide, his mouth gaped open like he was confused. He shuts the door quickly behind him, not assessing the damage until after. I had somehow forgotten his hat. It was ridiculous—green and neon orange against his perfect dark skin.

“This place is fucking disgusting,” he says. It barely had room for the sink, and the once white walls were stained a spotted grey. “Did you make that smell?” He finally smiled when I laughed.

We Were Jealous of the Ships | Fiona Young

97

"Let me see it." I went to hand my phone to him, to show him the message about the funeral. "Not that, your hand." He had only seen it in bandages before.

"That's not what hurts," I whisper, tremoring up to my elbows.

"Yes, it fucking is." But Levi knows what I really mean, that it's not all that hurts. "I saw it bleeding on the snow." After the car stopped and I ran out, his footprints chased mine in a long winding 'z' to the gas pumps. Mud had mixed with the snow in a grey slurry. My foot cut into it like a butter knife, spraying my legs in a curt splat. Someone would probably look at all that and wonder what happened, but the fresh snow had probably already buried it.

Levi grazed the skin around the jagged wound, the skin on the edge of being raw, and slowly lowered his mouth to it. Most people would think of mouths as warm, but his lips were cold because they were covered in his spit.

'O' was the shape of my dad's wedding ring. He gave it to me years after the divorce. He always gave me stuff like that. Anything I asked about that he didn't need. I set it on the stovetop, waiting for the flames to melt it. I thought maybe I would drink it from the pan, the metal cooling into the indents in my throat. Instead, I pulled it out with tongs and branded my hand, holding it there till I couldn't, and then a little longer.

He died, but I told myself it didn't matter how. After knowing, my mom just got into bed tired. It's the funniest thing to me now. How normal it was.

"Tings happen," she said, her accent always making it without the 'h.'

"No one's going to want to drive with all that snow to get it anyway," I say. I stared down at the trash again, at the now lifeless body of the roach.

Bugs can lose their heads, not have brains, but they crawl and feed and fuck anyway.

“Right,” he says.

“That’s my dad’s car. He said I would get it someday. He said he was looking for an upgrade anyway.”

“He was.” I don’t like simple statements, except when Levi says them.

“He was right to. That thing’s a piece of shit,” I say. “Sputtering and groaning and sliding before things even got bad out there.”

“You weren’t the one driving,” Levi jabbed at my ribs. “You were too busy messing with that pen.” I wanted to stab it in the skin in the middle of the ‘o’, but it was too tender. Instead, I jabbed it just below it, ink and blood only seeping out if I squeezed my skin hard enough. I don’t like the pain turning into a dull ache because that’s the final stage.

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We Were Jealous of the Ships | Fiona Young

I take Levi's arm, his puffer jacket rustling against itself, and wrap it around my waist. He could feel my ribs rising and rising and falling. His other is still resting on my arm, so I leave it there. My arm is freckled like my dad's, wiry hair light brown rather than grey. I used to think that any age looks final, but even blatant statements change, like ice slicing and foaming against a moving ship.

"How much more time do you think we have before someone else blows their bowels out?" I ask.

"Enough." Levi lowers his face to mine to be gentle. It isn't rough like our first kiss. He sets his lips on one cheek, the other, my forehead, and my mouth. He didn't stop when I began to pull away, a knee-jerk reaction for someone like me. He only stops when the handle jiggles and the door tugged.

"Be right out," we chant together, ready for our walk of shame, his head held high, mine to the speckled tiles, the paper towels just like we had rehearsed.

We Were Jealous of the Ships | Fiona Young

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100 Snowy Schoolhouse | Ben Ring

CONTRIBUTOR BIOS (alphabetical order by last name) Haley Arsenault is a current sophomore at Indiana University. She is a double major in English and anthropology. Her hometown is Solsberry, and she works in a local library. She enjoys spending time with her Shih Tzu, Evie, and reading while bathing in the sunlight.

Jacobus Marthinus Barnard is a South African immigrant who journeyed across the world for a better life. He now finds success as a second-year Honors student at Indiana University, majoring in biology and minoring in chemistry and medical sciences, with the goal of becoming a doctor.

Beyond the physical study of life, Jacobus finds deep enjoyment in crafting works that capture the brilliance and beauty of a human moment.

Katie Bernfeld is a freshman from Evansville, Indiana. In between studying toward a degree in journalism, she enjoys watching the lively family of squirrels on campus and finding the best cup of coffee on campus. She plans to earn a certificate in Indiana University’s Liberal Arts and Management Program and continue to build an education toward filmmaking, writing, and storytelling.

Phoebe Bradley is from Noblesville, Indiana, and graduated from Noblesville High School class of 2021. She was awarded the Aubrey Peters Scholarship at the end of her senior year for her craftsmanship of one of her pieces in her senior portfolio. After completing drawing, painting, photography, and art history courses at Noblesville High School, Phoebe continues her art career at Indiana University. She is majoring in fashion design and exploring minors in illustration and apparel merchandising.

She’s excited to expand her creative and artistic skills and explore future opportunities at IU through the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design.

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Camille Brinson is a freshman from Nashville, Tennessee, and is in the Hamilton Lugar School of International Studies. She is currently majoring in international studies and Korean. One of her favorite hobbies is photography and she especially enjoys shooting on film. She hopes to be able to continue to pursue film independently throughout her time at Indiana University.

Sym Cloyd (she/they) is a freshman at Indiana University. She is pursuing a major in English with a concentration in creative writing and a double minor in theatre/drama and gender studies. She has been writing for years and has received recognition for her poetry by the Indianapolis Public Library two years in a row, performed her poetry at numerous events, and was a featured student writer in the ‘Black Lit’ exhibit in the Cook Center. She serves as the library coordinator at the LGBTQ+ Culture Center where she does many programs and activities. She is also going to be published in Ryder Magazine in an April edition.

Madison Cox is a junior majoring in English with a creative writing concentration and a certificate in journalism at Indiana Univeristy. Originally from the swamplands of Mississippi, Madison can now most often be found in the Indiana Memorial Union, where she currently serves as director of the 113th Union Board’s Canvas Creative Arts committee.

Ritu Gangadhara is a junior at Indiana University on the premed track.

She is from Columbus, Indiana, and is double majoring in neuroscience and psychology with minors in chemistry and history. In her free time, she enjoys creating art using ink, watercolor, oil, and other mediums. She especially enjoys portraiture and has had her work featured in anthologies and showcases. She is also interested in sustainable fashion, as she enjoys thrifting, sewing, and upcycling clothes. On campus, she is involved in MAPS (Minority Association of Premedical Students), IU Student Government, Hobby Hopping Art Club, HHart Core Committee, SUCCEED Student Advisory Council, and social psychology research.

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Torrey Gleason is a second-year Graphic Design MFA student at Indiana University. She is from Cary, Illinois, and graduated from Southeast Missouri State University with a Studio Art BFA. In her series of travel posters, inspired by art deco and art nouveau, she depicts “lost cities” of legendary or mythological importance from various global cultures and time periods. The work addresses the way narratives are created and altered over time, and how these changes are reflected in visual language and national identity.

Emma Harden was born in Columbus, Indiana, where she studied illustration and writing from a young age. While living in a community that was very dedicated to the arts, she worked on a myriad of art installations and public service projects, often in association with the town’s architecture.

These surroundings, as well as her involvement in theater, directly influenced her writing which is primarily set in the genre of theater fiction.

She has participated in numerous arts competitions, including the Purdue Writing Awards, where she won first place in the high school division.

She is currently studying English in the Creative Writing concentration at Indiana University as a freshman. In her free time, she enjoys oil painting and dreaming up new stories to tell.

Susanna Herrman is originally from Bloomington, Indiana. She left after high school to live and work in Germany before studying philosophy at Georgetown. After graduating she worked briefly at National Portrait Gallery in D.C. and then for a photographer in California before moving back to Bloomington for her MFA in Graphic Design, which she wraps up in May of 2022. She enjoys using many mediums, including experimental photography, watercolor and oil painting, and colored pencil.

Payton Klaer is a freshman at Indiana University. She is from Edwardsburg, Michigan, and is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in English (creative writing) along with a certificate in new media and interactive storytelling in the hopes of getting on the narrative team for video games. She loves to write and play narrative video games in her free time.

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Aspen Lara is a junior studying informatics (digital art cognate) with minors in computer science and human-computer interaction. She was born in Valparaiso, Indiana, where she first began creating art and cultivating her love for drawing. Aspen is currently the Vice Web Designer of HHart and was very happy to be able to put some of her work in the 2022 HHart showcase and help plan the show itself. She has a passion for multimedia and design, which has heavily influenced the direction of her art, making it more geared towards utilizing digital tools to create artwork.

Hope Meierkort is a sophomore studio arts major studying photography at Indiana University. When not behind the camera, she explores her artistic voice through her mixed media projects, typography, connection to nature, and enjoyment of tea flavors with amusing names. She hopes to blend her creative passions into a rewarding career in the arts. Hope also enjoys writing as an introspective hobby. Her fixation on words developed at a young age and lives on in the hours she spends frantically searching for the perfect word for her poetry and creative nonfiction pieces. Through telling imagery and often existential language, she aims to capture the beautiful, abstract complexities of being human.

Sofia Melgarejo is a freshman at Indiana University pursuing a double major in management through the Kelley School of Business and cinema & media studies through the Media School. She grew up in Miami, Florida. and made the far move to Bloomington, Indiana, to attend IU! Sofia is a part of the IUDM Public Relations Committee and enjoys creative writing and drawing in her free time. After graduating IU, she intends to go to law school and become an entertainment lawyer.

Abigail Miller is a junior at Indiana University studying political science and law and public policy. Abigail is a part of the PACE (Political and Civic Engagement) program and is involved in College Democrats at IU, Women in Government, and College Democrats of Indiana. She is passionate about women’s rights, criminal justice reform, and voters’ rights.

When she is not studying legislative policy, you can find her working for a political campaign or investing time in a government internship. Abigail plans to work in Congress after graduating in December of 2022 and hopes to run for federal office in the future.

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Reese Myers is a junior double majoring in accounting and finance at Indiana University, originally from San Jose, California. He currently serves as the director of the Union Board Films & Entertainment committee.

He’s glad a photograph he took in Lisbon when he was 12 still has some artistic merit.

Bruna Kalil Othero is a Brazilian writer, performer, teacher, and researcher. PhD student in Portuguese (Indiana University) and Master of Arts in Brazilian literature (UFMG - Brazil), she researched the erotic-pornographic literature of Hilda Hilst and is currently studying Brazilian national identity in contemporary literature in her dissertation. She is the author of poetry books Oswald pede a Tarsila que lave suas cuecas (2019, Ministry of Culture award), Oswald le pide a Tarsila que le lave los calzones (2021, translation by Paula Abramo and published in Mexico), Anticorpo (2017), Poétiquase (2015), and fiction artist-book Carne (2019), and she organized two essay anthologies about Brazilian women writers. Her unpublished book Tinha um Pedro no meio do caminho received an award by the Special Secretary of Culture in Brazil (2019).

Ivy Piedra is a sophomore at Indiana University currently majoring in philosophy with main interests in the arts and how the mind works and processes our surroundings. They were born in Marietta, Georgia, but later moved to Carmel, Indiana, and now live full-time in Bloomington.

Writing has always been a strong outlet for them, and what they relied on in times of physical decline. Ivy is a Hispanic member of the LGBT and disabled communities. A passionate mental health, disability, and minority advocate, Ivy encourages those around them to find safe ways to release the heavier, pent-up emotions that those identities can carry.

Diptanshu Rao is a junior at Indiana University and serves as the current president of the 113th Indiana Memorial Union Board. He is from Mumbai, India, and pursuing two Bachelors of Science in Finance and Accounting with a minor in Japanese. While at IU, he is also involved in Alpha Kappa Psi, a professional business fraternity, and the Investment Banking Workshop at Kelley.

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Ben Ring is a sophomore at Indina University, pursuing a B.S. in Biology on a medical track and a minor in Spanish. He is currently working towards his goal of become an emergency physician. He is from Carmel, Indiana, and has been a Hoosier all his life. Ben’s interests and hobbies include being an avid movie-goer, an amateur photographer, and a lover of all things nature and travel. Through his position with Union Board at IU, Ben is furthering his love for travel as director of the Out & About committee, specializing in providing off-campus programming to students.

Max Senter is a sophomore studying television, digital, and film production. They’re from Westfield, Indiana, and are a part of other organizations such as Queer Student Union and Independent Council which both have roots in local philanthropic work. They’re the guitarist for local band SYZYGY which is working on releasing music soon. In their free time, they like to work on anything creative, ranging from poetry to painting to making short films. They’re always looking for new projects to be a part of and love to express themselves through art.

Ava Slowey is a sophomore at Indiana University studying informatics with a cognate in molecular biology. She is also minoring in creative technologies in art and design. She enjoys drawing with ink and is currently learning how to use charcoal. Outside of art, she also enjoys spending time with her friends and family. She also likes to listen to music and pet puppies at the Humane Society. In the future, she hopes to incorporate her love of the arts with her interest in computing.

Lydia Stern is currently a senior at Indiana University and is pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting and majoring in art history while also minoring in music. Originally from Kewaskum, Wisconsin, Lydia hopes to escape the Midwest and travel abroad after graduation.

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Abby Thomas, who writes under the name Abi Diaz, is a junior at Indiana University from Indianapolis. She is majoring in English with a concentration in creative writing and minoring in international studies. Her favorite poets are Langston Hughes, Sonia Sanchez, and Emily Dickinson.

After graduation, she plans on attaining a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing or poetry.

Sydney Weber is a junior studying linguistics and Spanish. She is from both Clarkston and East Lansing, Michigan, and lives in west Texas when not at Indiana University. She enjoys travelling, hiking, and baking, and is heavily involved with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and HighRock Church. Sydney loves writing short stories and poetry, and her work has been presented in school-related publications/showcases since high school. She has received awards or honorable mentions from the Michigan Interscholastic Press Association, the Jack London Foundation, the Charles M. Crupi Memorial Poetry Contest, and AARP of Michigan.

Sydney is also a Distinguished Pol-IU-Glot, having studied Spanish and German while in college.

Makkenzi Welds is a sophomore studying economics and Chinese in hopes of becoming a commercial pilot. She enjoys watching tv series such as Attack on Titan and Friends or The Nanny. One of her favourite pastimes is watching The Great British Baking Show and then FaceTiming her mum to talk about who is going home. She loves baking and cooking and plans to create a recipe portfolio outside of Pinterest one day. Her favourite thing to bake is chocolate chip cookies. Makkenzi hates the winter and much prefers warm weather. During the warmer months she enjoys taking walks and photographing the scenic routes. Her interest in aviation came from her love of travelling and culture. As a food and boba enthusiast, she hopes to travel the world someday to expand her knowledge on food and culture.

Fiona Young is a junior studying English (creative writing) at Indiana University. She is interested in experimenting with poetry, fiction, and prose, often with a focus on visceral experiences with a focus on the body and the emotional charges of life. She is originally from El Paso, Texas, and travels there often. When not writing, she enjoys hiking, going to concerts, and hanging out with her friends and four cats. She hopes to grow as a writer and pursue a creative career. She also strives to have her works, or even a novel, published one day.

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For 25 years, Canvas has served as the Indiana Memorial Union Board’s flagship creative arts committee and a platform for student artists at Indiana University - Bloomington. Through diverse programming focused on creative perspectives, Canvas aims to educate, entertain, and foster an artistic community on campus.

The CANVAS Creative Arts Magazine is published annually by Union Board.

Each published work is the property of the authors or artists and may not be reproduced without their permission. The views represented in CANVAS are not necessarily those of Canvas, Union Board, the Indiana Memorial Union, Indiana University, or the Board of Trustees.

For more information about Union Board and the Canvas Creative Arts Committee, visit unionboard.iu.edu, follow @iuunionboard on social media, or email canvas@indiana.edu to get involved and stay up to date with our events.

Submissions for the CANVAS Magazine are open year-round to all students attending Indiana University - Bloomington. To submit to future editions, please visit unionboard.iu.edu/canvas.