Wordsworth Magazine Winter 2018

Equinox

WORDSWORTH m a g a z i n e

w o r d s w o r t h

Staff...

Faith Ahola Grace Korthuis Hailey Burdick Isaac Wooten Jaden Lindsey Jody Bault Adams, Advisor Jaelen Sandoval Jamie Norris Abby Steinke Lecette Burke Angelo Luna Ayrton Yamaguchi Lucy Otto Maia Combs Bre Jones Marilyn Ingalls Cassady White Melayna CamDaniel Conway pos Delaney Hoots Micky McCafElla Thompson ferty

Kate Bias, Co-Editor Mady Martin, Co-Editor Tina Starks, Co-Editor

Murphy Bradshaw Nathan Keldsen Nora VanRees Dare Poling Riley Lecocq Rosemary Smith Ruby Landolt Ryan Desemple Samuel Edmundson (Eddy) Sarah Cowell-Wellborne Sophia Le Remy Wilcox Truly Rylander Vivi Winkley

[editor’s letter] Hello again readers!

We are extremely excited to introduce you to the winter 2018 issue: “Equinox”. The spring equinox is the day that the cold, snowy winter gives way to spring. Within this issue, you will be transported into a boat filled with rowers, then into a pumpkin patch where you are surrounded by millions of different shades of orange, then finally to a rainy day that you spend reminiscing about nights filled with lightning bugs and a past love.

Every writer, both new and old, has grown in their writing over the winter, and we are eager to see what spring, the season of growth, will hold for our spring issue of Wordsworth.

As always, we would like to give a huge thank you to Mrs. Adams and the Wordsworth staff for their hard work and support. Wordsworth would not be where it is today without their hard work!

Thank you for your continued support, Wordsworth Staff

It is with pleasure that we present the winter 2018 issue of Wordsworth:

EQUINOX

Ok C. Ok 1 The Climb 2 Rowing 3 Nighttime Symphony 4 The Incomprehensible Novella Page 1 4 Rhythm 4 Alternate 5 Age 6 Take Me Across the Valley 7 Past memories, future thoughts 7 In the End 10 .p.o.e.m. 11 Swan Song 12 Open Flame 13 Your Average Love Poem 14 -all of our edens are different 15 crisp fall night 16 See 16 Sixteen 18 Year 20 Cageless 21 Water Lilies 22 Some Shade of Burgundy 23 Strangers on Street Corners 23 Rainbow 24 Happiness 25 CRU$H1NG 27 if the sun were to set 28 how the clouds moved on 30 Feel Again 32 Summer’s Courtesies 33 Ethereal 34 A Little Something of My Own 35 i miss you 36 Rowan Tree 38 ‘Merica 40 Verbified Tongue Tied 41 Bubble Wrap Crown 42 Star Formed Love 43 I Am From 44 This is Life 45 Place Poem 46 Luck 47 Bubble 47 The things I carry 48 A Haiku 49 Brightest Thing in the Sky 50

Al m ar e (t o

th e sea)

c o n t e n t s

Abby Steinke Adelaide Waite Adelaide Waite Allie Mikalatos Angelo Luna

Angelo Luna Athy (Athena) Kuhner Athy (Athena) Kuhner Bea

Chloe Huebner Cora Beeson .damaged. .poet.

Daniel Conway Darus Poling Darus Poling EMKR

gabby miles Gina Keqja Grace Ellen Korthuis Jaden Lindsey Julia Koeb Kaya Dunn

Lecette B Lecette B Maria Vara Mortiz Mubarik Alfablondi murphy m b murphy m b Nora VanRees Nora VanRees

r.w. r.w. rain.a Rowan Laurenza T. Corkill Truly Rylander

v.v v.v

Locke Landis Anonymous

Anonymous Anonymous Anonymous Anonymous Anonymous Anonymous

d

o f

poetry -

U n t it l e

t a b l e

prose -

P a ti e n

c

Burbs 4: A Smooth Criminal 53 Untitled 57 The Crown 58 Swing 62 Best Friends 63 Walking Stories 64 Gleaming Mirrors 66 Middle of Winter 69 Unaware 72 The Forest 76 I’d Say This Is A Better Way Of Choosing a Successor, But Someone Still Dies, So It Really Isn’t 78 Tom’s Blue Visions of Johanna 88 Going Up 88 denny’s at 4am 91 untitled 94 The Peculiar & Perplexing Adventures of Cynthia Petunia Jones 96 An Escape 97 Give 98 Untitled 99 Friend zoned...again 101 The Inexplicable Disappearance of Simone Chadwick 103 I Fall to My Doom 111 Betsy’s Blues 112 The Golden Bird 118 Covered in Roses 120 e Start Our Car 122 Battle of the Art Forms 124 It’s All In Your Head 128 Untitled 131 Seasons 132 Lit Mag = Illuminati? 133 Henry 134

A Blo s

fK

n o wle d

g

e

Library o

r

Patience 8 A Blossom in the Sun 39 A Flower On the Shore 56 Blue Trombone 68 Library of Knowledge 90 Winterstone 102 & cover Untitled 116 Al mare (to the sea) 135

on the Sho

Daniel Conway Delaney H Delaney H Ethan Waddle FlyingWolf25 FlyingWolf25 Katie Stevenson Truly Rylander

s

om

visual art -

e

Abbi Doddridge Alex Goff

Alex Goff Andy Winner Angelina Iefimchuk Ashley Jones Bre Jones Bre Jones Cora Beeson Ella Vires EMKR

Grace Ellen Korthuis Heidi Williams

Jamie Norris Jamie Norris m.m Maia Elisabeth Mia Veljacic Micky S. McCafferty Mimee A.V. Nate Dawg and Lisa Sparks Rosemary Smith Rosemary Smith Samuel Edmundson (Eddy) T. Corkill Taylor Jo Tina Starks Zoe Sobczak Anonymous Anonymous Anonymous Anonymous

POETRY 10

[Ok C. Ok] Slightly stumbling on what seems a simple question your bright eyes bounce between mine.

You are Nervous But Not Showing It and I have to answer, “You are all or nothing and I can’t”.

I see Defeat but your thin lips decide to smile and your eyes finally focus on Creating Space.

I can breathe but you stop.

I can’t be your Reason to Stop.

I can’t be Yours.

And I can’t just be your friend.

Abby Steinke

1

Adelaide Waite 2

[The Climb]

My legs shake, My arms quake.

I slowly lower myself down the cliff face.

Even when I want to stop, I don’t.

Even when I want to drop, I don’t.

Even when I feel like giving up, I don’t.

I know if I stop I won’t Get back up.

So I slowly lower myself down the cliff face.

My legs shake, My arms quake.

Adelaide Waite

[Rowing] The following poem was inspired by The Boys in the Boat

by Daniel James Brown

The rhythmic back and forth movement of the rowing benches, The synchronized breathing of the rowers.

Every rower pulling in the exact same way.

Pulling not only for themselves but, For the others in their boat, Their crew.

People call it a “swing”.

It is very hard to find, And almost impossible to keep for long.

When it happens it’s magical.

The crew becomes one thing, Perfectly synchronized, Totally in balance with each other, The boat, The wind, and the water.

When it happens crews find it easier to row.

The pain fades away.

Most crews never find it.

Those who do, Never forget.

3

[Nighttime Symphony] Allie Mikalatos

[The Incomprehensible Novella Page 1]

Angelo Luna

earth’s perfume wafts through frogs cricket the song of rain grass whistles like six hundred paper cranes taking flight

He ascribes to the page Phrase Upon phrase That Mystically choreographed symbolism That means nothing To the right eyes

[Rythm]

4

Angelo Luna

Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye. The reaper comes before the fall, make sure you’re ready, sight and all. I pray the lord my soul to keep, that if I die, I shall stay asleep. Waking memories do no harm, until silenced by a ghostly alarm.

You follow him until they’re passed, and he turns around to meet your gaze at last.

[Alternate] This is a place of a Hundred Woods.

Though the starry nights aren’t as vibrant, as swirled, They are still there amongst similar sideways waysides, The buildings, reflecting the world around them in both color and form.

Here, a prince gives a gentle kiss to a frog, Not for his own princess, but for the smell of rain, He runs around innocently in the dress of the belle of the ball Not out of wishes to be female, but out of the unawareness of gender roles.

And I? I hold this lavender in the palm of my hand, In hopes his limitations remain the size of a thumb.

Affirmatively, alternatively, I let him remain princess of his fairytale, I love him as a brother, caring for him like a mother.

Athy (Athena Kuhner)

5

[Age] Athy (Athena) Kuhner It is cotton candy pink and silky blue, With splotches of every other color, It smells of sugar, slime, and fluff, And those stains of food, mud, and markers, It feels like sand, slipping, sifting, through your fingers, Water cupped in the hand and held by the heart, It sounds like giggles, bubbles, popping balloons, Stomping, clapping, pretending, whispering.

Now this is neon, bright, flashing on and off, Whatever that color is might be there, none of your business!

Here, it’s bubblegum, sulfur, steam, paper, Ink, forbidden fruits like smoke and wine, It feels like glass, clear, smooth, and edged, Fragile, going from a complete piece to a million shards, Listen to screams and sobs, laughing, hip hop, Click clack, tick tock, wrong clock, sleep-walk Desaturated. Grays and blacks of smoke, Little color left, in geometrical shapes.

Yet there’s a scent of flowers, spices, soap, An incense of metal, plastic, velvet.

When picked up, it’s a clay that’s almost dry, Barely moldable, perhaps about to crumble, who knows.

Simmering still, sizzling, typing, boiling, Crackling, chuckles fade into silence.

6

[Take Me Across the Valley] Take me across the valley To where prairie grass grows tall And where red yellow sun-setting rays Shine upon them all Take me across the sea The salty splashing waves A raw wooden boat And all the time in the world Take me across the mountain tops Where we can touch their autumn peaks And all our fears and all our doubts We’ll leave sprawling across the bottom Take me across the sky To see our sun-setting valley Our salty seas, our mountain tops Take me across sky

Bea

[Past memories, future thoughts] Chloe Huebner A bond I thought we could never break.

I realize now what’s at stake.

I feel no reason to take revenge.

I only wonder what it could have been.

Feeling alone and blue, life sucks without you.

7

Daniel Conway 8

[Patience]

9

[In the End] Cora Beeson Sky and a sea of grass I found myself in this place Waiting And wanting The day had drifted by Slow and fast The sun once shown Unyielding Casting tiring heat Now light falls behind trees A wind rustles individual petals on each wildflower

Their distinct, sometimes articulate, other times soft Personalities

I am alone, but still impressioned by people who have graced my life.

It would be freedom to drift just like Alone in the endless night the wind Under the silver moon To move again Dirt curling in my hair, sinking To let go under my fingertips To release myself The people are gone Instead the earth pulls me But not the memories To the ground with its gravity And I lie there With the weight of the human burden, thoughts twisting in my head We are here on earth To cry To suffer To learn Grow and die People have left With their words Their emotions

10

[.p.o.e.m.]

Suck it in Suck it--wait .in. ~Puff~ Some smoke--poof Twice or thrice Swig it--clink .again.

Four or five times You never gon’ win Stare at the monster above the sink under the lights Tell him he’s still beautiful Tell him you still love him Tell him you gon’ feed him One day Just deceive him You never gon’ win Take your chances, prisoner behind this cracked portrait of a broken man. gulp Watch your whole life slowly... f a l l -A p a r t.damaged. .poet.

11

[Swan Song] Daniel Conway We profess upon epitaphs A solemn song of swans Feathers mark the air surrounding Forever leaving its mark upon steadfast matter Surviving in such a world is akin to an Opus Clawing through melodic motif after motif The sounds of faces beholding you The sounds of faces abhorring you An action dictates an outcome The butterfly affects the surrounding The caterpillar knows not of its impending power We know not of our impending doom A world like this demands things insurmountable Irony clashes with fate Usually they accept each other and unite A firebright, out of sight, hate We adorn eulogy with power The words wash over us in awe-fulness However, when our own time in this world expires What is it to us?

12

[ Open Flame ] Darus Poling

You don’t listen to me.

You don’t care what I’m going through.

Every time I open my mouth I feel I am spitting lies.

You never believe me.

You ignore every other word– Only getting half of the story– Ignore my cries for help.

You ask what will help me, But you never like my answer.

You’re convinced that you’re the only one who can.

Getting help from you– It’s like trying to snuff a fire with wood; You’re only going to make it worse.

So please, for my sake and yours, Let me go search for a fire extinguisher Or at least some water Rather than kindling.

13

[Your Average Love Poem] Ginger locks and bright blue irises plague my every thought.

They are the one who holds my brass heart in their palm: Able to crumple and destroy it should they wish, But I trust them enough to know that they won’t.

Nothing in their oceanic eyes suggests the capability of a riptide; It’s all smooth sailing and clear skies when our hands connect.

Sure, storms have come and gone, but they are mere swells; This boat is sturdy, she can withstand the howling wind.

I imagine that this type of love poem gets old and annoying, Too serious, always somehow leading to the ocean.

Don’t worry, I hate it too, and it’s over half of what I write.

But where are all of the funny love stories to laugh at and relate to?

The ones about embarrassing moments and stupid childish activities?

Where are the ballads describing that thing in their teeth, Or how you picked it out for them without asking like a weirdo?

I want to make one of these kinds of love poems, but how?

Do I start with the time they spilled six drinks in two hours at a party, Or with that time we had a pillow fight and laughed like little kids?

Should I end it with their messy eating or their habit of saying “I’m sorry” in threes?

Writing a realistic relationship is taxing and too complicated When would be a good time to mention all of the failed kisses?

We tried to “Lady and the Tramp” a gummy worm, but they bit both of my lips instead, They started playing “Careless Whisper” during a kiss. I collapsed from laughing.

Many times one of us has missed our mark, or turned away without realizing.

Unconditional love is much more than the good days.

It’s all of the quirks, the argument, the health scares, 14

Bad habits that you wish they didn’t have so you talk to them.

It’s a lot of just talking about your concerns. No yelling, just talking.

Love is the willingness to change for someone else.

True love is not expecting them to do the same for you.

Darus Poling

[-all of our edens are different] EMKR to see the sky without craning to the heavens to travel to another world and never leave the ground the lily pads blur as focus is lost all while the pinks and blushes of the flowers are vibrant and bring detail back the switches hang and sway in the breeze leaves barely flutter while the humming insects and the silhouettes of fish under the surface tell me there is no better fantasy than this of here and now

15

[crisp fall night]

gabby miles

A crisp fall night A stroll along a street lit up by the dull bulbs of the lights The colors warm like a fire, the breeze cool like ice Huddled close to him as we walk along On a crisp fall night

Your smile stretched half a mile And again I say ‘I’m alright’

See...

As you breathe As I slowly leave You reach out Your hand so young .... just like mine Your small crown tattoo visible in the light 16

[ See ]

See...

As you mention her name Your eyebrows rise Taller than the Empire State Building

Gina Keqja

See...

As I looked Right into your eyes They didn’t seem to shine But they seemed to fade As if a ghost ran by.

But darlin, when my hand was out for you, You didn’t reach.

See...

You will read this poem... my dear.

But not soon enough For I will have moved on But remember you for life.

See...

I’ve heard you’re looking for me But you’re lost See...

I am with you Every step of the way For when your heart beats That’s me.

Remember me with joy and smile As I remember you But if you remember me with sadness and tears Then best forget me at all.

17

[Sixteen] Song Lyrics When this freezing in your chest Can’t stand to fade You learn to resent the Winter And wish the cold away Once you’ve told yourself To dismiss the present It’s December of next year And you’re wondering where the time went You curse the stagnance But it’s all you’re holding onto Can't Go back, can’t grow up And you don’t want to start anew But time has never been so kind With each breath you’re more More than you ever imagined More than you wanted to be before Everybody’s saying that they’ve got to leave Time to get out of this place So you nod and run faster Begging “get me out of these days” But early in the morning When the streets are filled with fog You’ll see you’re 16 once And it doesn’t last very long Everyone’s in their heads It’s not just you You’re not alone in your shocking world There are other electric people too 18

You want to feel alright And you’re dying to be immune But you stand the risk of making a heart That wilts all too soon The weakness of your youth Is in a soul demanding to be felt And the courage stems from Allowing yourself to melt So here you are falling in love With songs that tear you apart And open skies drenched in stars Wondering how you came to be so full of heart Everybody’s saying that they’ve got to leave Time to get out of this place So you nod and run faster Begging “get me out of these days” But in the sun stained afternoon When the air reeks of epilogues You’ll see you’re 16 once And it doesn’t last very long The truth is you can run But afterwards you’ll wish You could take the hands of time And shove them back again But late at night With your favorite song You’ll know you’re 16 once And it doesn’t last very long Grace Ellen Korthuis 19

[Year]

dsey

Jaden Lin

When the threaded snowflakes flutter onto my flushed face I will have realized noticed The time, vanishing before us, Tumbling away Away with leaves of a toughened oak.

Yesterday I was a mock fool, and tomorrow my feet will quake like a stallion and soon stars will collide and spear our hearts and time will have left. twirling a parting ribbon dance with the flakes and my breath and my thoughts.

20

[Cageless] As I fly like a gracious dove in the sky I see the stars all sparkling around me And as I swing they dance unlike any other star Almost foreign, as if I was on another planet This is where I am free, my spirit won’t leave me now No longer are there bars holding me back I could even defy gravity My rebellious nature, like a lion escaped from his cage With my hair as free as the wind And my feet as bare as my chin As I swing through the stars I hang on like death to a dying elder If I let go, I die But if I go back my spirit dies instead The delicious taste of freedom Won’t be shaken by death, no All the stars will dance with me For I made it to the moon

Julia Koeb

21

[Water Lilies] Kaya Dunn We used to go down to the pond When the lilies were in bloom.

Our footprints in the late spring mud.

Homemade fishing rods in hand, With worms we’d dug up that morning.

We’d barrel down to the shore And laugh, scream, play.

Our youthful joy Radiated through the ripples Of the rocks we’d throw After giving up on the fish.

We’d spend hours there.

Hours turned to days.

Days turned to years.

Years turned to summers.

Summers became scarce as time went on.

Now when I sit at the shore Of the same pond, I reminisce.

But all I see is dead lilies.

Dried untouched mud.

The screaming silence.

Why didn’t we come back when we could?

22

[Some Shade of Burgundy] Lecette B. I want to drown in shallow words Set out to rot and liquor like wine Approach me with fear of intoxication As your skin prunes and wrinkles Dehydrating that prim, porcelain picture Replacing it with broad statements and seductive undertones The aftertaste is one to get used to As you pause to catch your breath You realize it was never taken away Not the first, not the last time To wake up regretting the day dream Distracted by those pretty punctuations When you saw the lack of anything real or probable But the glass was offered So you took a sip Just now considering the contract Signed by your new list of sins Please don’t be sorry.

[Strangers On Street Corners ] Lecette B. A bus is where I met her Six years Five boyfriends Four hair colors Three apartments Two cars And one lie later A bus is where I left her 23

[Rainbow] Maria Vara

Let all the sorrow Cry inside your bare heart Ladders of gold would descend Bringing light whose blood Has spilled in vain

24

[Happiness] ‘Sitting alone is no fun.

Being left to your own devices because no one has the time or energy-’ You sigh reading the words you write.

So angsty.

It’s as if that’s all you spew on to the page.

You voice as much and your friend responds quickly with, “There’s no such thing as happy poetry. That’s like, an oxymoron or something.”

You laugh.

Because expressing happiness is somehow...

More difficult Harder to put into words In fact You had been in the car with your dad Talking and joking And he had something that made you laugh and smile Ending with a sort of smile while biting your tongue as it stuck out And you had all your things Heavy on you But your expression was still in place As you faced the school and made your way to go in Someone says to you “You look happy.”

With a smile on their face.

And you just kind of laugh and yeah, you guess you are And wow You’re happy 25

You feel light Airy That smile isn’t forced It isn’t sarcastic or habit or malicious or smug It’s joyful It’s playful It’s Happiness Happiness is much harder for you to put into words than say Your sadness Your loneliness Your guilt Your anger Your wrath Your soul crushing emptiness But maybe It’s something you should try to do more It’s good to get out the aggression The confusion The puzzlement The feeling of being lost But there is more to life And sometimes You don’t –didn’t– realise And sometimes You do

Mortiz

26

[CRU$H1NG]

[Hook] And you’re always on my mind (mind) I can’t read the time (time) I’m looking at your eyes (eyes) You give me butterflies (butterflies)

Mubarik Alfablondi

[Verse 1] Real talk I’ve been blown by your beauty I’ve been blown by your ways Blowing bubbles hoping this will fade.

Nah this ain’t a phase Thinking of clever days to hang But I’m hungover guessing Hate the word rejection But it keeps pressing my buttons.

I don’t want to press my luck But I’m back to square one ...And I’m stuck

[Verse 2] When you go my heart dies When you go my heart sighs You’re my sunrise to my sunset Cause I need to forget these feelings of being stuck These are feelings of a crush.

The beauty is in the eye of the beholder And I’m such a loner I hate when you say you’re not beautiful Cause any guy is would be lucky if suitable to have you I hope I have that chance too [Hook] And you’re always on my mind (mind) I can’t read the time (time) I’m looking at your eyes (eyes) You give me butterflies (butterflies) 27

[if the sun were to set] we are starting where this ends where the stars walk backwards and you walk the same way

(oh what a world). this is soon to be innocent it still refuses to want it still watches as you turn to go

(so let the poets struggle to describe your heart) perhaps you already have. these words aren’t for me not like you think they are they aren’t for the sky or the sea nor the stage and all its players. they are yours

(and they won’t ever really be yours) but you still hold them in your red hands

(and I’m sorry I couldn’t change them).

I’ll take it all back every word for myself every sunday morning when the world is behind you.

28

and I’ll keep it all where I cannot keep you underneath grown out grass and a smile that isn’t mine but feels something close. we are starting where this ends between the wind and the very young ones

(never mind a world with its villains or heroes) you are both and you are neither

(and you never seem to mind). we are starting where you don’t get it

(the end) and it doesn’t hurt where it should and it doesn’t look perfect from so close. we are just lost verses ones you didn’t think to learn words caught between understanding and always remembering to look back at you. please remind me how it ends for the sun always sets and listens before dark

(and as it goes and it doesn’t stop going) I will listen to you. murphy m b 29

[how the clouds moved on] I used to wonder what every small thing would feel like if it didn’t ache and only spelled in cursive. and now it can be said that those little words (the ones I didn’t think about before showing you) are ones that you don’t mind. not more than you would mind if I never looked at you from where I was and not more than you would mind if I stopped looking. because now I know that some things are too small and they don’t always make perfect shapes that fit between spaces I never knew. there isn’t any place where things feel real and where sounds are golden where we are the same—or just alike. it reminds of every time that I feel a knock inside of me that rings in patterns for hours until I am no longer nervous to answer. and it’s easy to regret answering when I am always met with a lack of bravery that tempts to turn into something more 30

but always stays the same. you never said anything not with ache or pride or truth and now I understand that you weren’t ever planning to (it is okay to be underneath rose colored skies and to feel like things are good when they are not because when I think about it and when I remember you I would like to recall that it was better than it is now) murphy m b

31

[Feel Again] Nora VanRees Time stops, Cradled within her brittle hands, Holding on to everlasting memories That ache from a life edged in bitter sorrow.

She takes in every moment, Though her view is fogged and clouded From a life of hopelessness.

She wishes, Her downturned dusty rose lips muttering, Her voice blending with the sweetness of the rain.

For she longs for the hurt to disappear As her burning tears could melt away the Heavy residue left on her skin.

All the lies that she’s breathed into her torn and tattered lungs All the words that said everything would be fine The mouth that say love is a lie That everything stays the same And that words hurt more than they heal.

For she has learned within her life That you can never get too close Without your tears carrying the ones you love away into a pool of your shattered Well being.

She longs for the sweetness, But her burned heart has bathed In the torment of her own thoughts.

She is like the rain, Longing for love but is constantly pushed away.

She hangs in the air held By puppet strings Of false expectations.

32

She is who is constantly plunged by her thoughts down into deep waters that suffocate her in the burning depth of her Bitterness She wishes, Her downturned dusty rose lips muttering, Her voice blending with the sweetness of the rain To feel again.

[Summer’s Courtesies] Nora VanRees let me kiss your cheeks with my ocean lips and caress your jaw with my russet cream light. for it is only I, who breathes my sun kissed breath up your spine after spring’s gentle showers. for it is only I, who guides your inky nights with luminescent fireflies, released from a jar I save for you. for it is only I, who rides the mango crimson tides across the cerulean waves. it’s ok. you’re with me now.

33

[Ethereal]

Let us drape ourselves in soft silvery fabrics Admire antique Victorian vases before we smash them against a wall Lay in dappled sunlight and share stories with mosquitoes who Only linger long enough to mark our skin with over-the-counter love bites Here ‘fear’ will be just a four letter word We’ll spend all morning planting fields of flowers and All afternoon watching them grow Let us lay down in the cool dirt and Liken ourselves to the Earth after a rainfall Utterly cleansed and purified If only Instead of swaying in the solar winds we find ourselves Shivering in an unmade bed Wishing desperately to be loved eternally by everything from the Grass beneath our feet to the stars in neighboring solar systems And yet we are here Shakily writing the words “I am ethereal” On the backs of our hands and knowing that come tomorrow Nothing will have changed r.w.

34

[A Little Something of My Own] r.w.

A few years ago I spent the night Wrapped up in covers, Struggling to sleep When my brother walked past my door And the strangest thought Burst to the forefront of my mind So I closed my eyes and welcomed it He has no idea what I’m doing in here No idea at all I could be creating a lush, Green forest With my bare hands and No one would know.

For as long as I wanted, Or at least as long as I was able, I could build it as Tall, Bright, And green As I desired, And it would be mine.

When I opened my eyes, The forest was so vivid in my mind that I had to take a few moments to breathe, And then I began planting. . . I live alone now My home is completely overgrown Vines have encased my backyard, Sunflowers burst from my chimney I spend every morning planting herbs, And every afternoon watching them grow Despite the pine needles in my couch cushions I am content Surrounded by dappled sunlight And the smell of Earth and growth.

35

[i

u] o y s mis

rain .a

you have eyes like a forest, green mixing with brown in this perfect sort of way that i fall into. i am captivated by them, dancing in their soil and running my fingers through the tall grass and low leaves. long, dark lashes like reed silhouettes rest on your cheek as your laugh fills the coffee scented air. it’s a gentle sound. it’s a perfect sound. we need to be quiet, but our silence speaks. there’s something unspoken that we can’t hear but it’s screaming at everyone else. you have hair like a beach, and i love to let the grains fall through my hands. it’s soft and your head is warm against my palm as i mess with the light strands my heart pounds and i sip my coffee you have tea, white citrus with lemonade i tease you and you roll your eyes you unknowingly tug at my brain i watch your movements closely your stance your hands your eyes to make sure you really are okay your gaze darts behind me 36

i follow it jealousy forms in my stomach for just the moment i think you’re looking at that girl who’s prettier than me taller thinner but then you let out a laugh and say ‘look at those birds!’ and i settle because i know i worried for nothing something about these halls aren’t the same without seeing your face in them there’s a sullen look to them i can’t stand to be there or look there without you but i’m really just being silly it’s not like you died but i can’t help it i miss you and your stupid grin and the way you think talk smile i miss you

37

[Rowan Tree] Close to nature climbing high Reading a book time will fly Leaves as green as a sparkling toad Watching birds glide across the road Leaves fall across the land All for maple trees to stand Colors shine like a peacock Bark cold and hard like a rock Smelling fresh air drift across the sky Hearing birds chirping I must know why Feeling the cold hard bark hold so strong Makes me wonder if I was wrong Branches long and hold swings Endures neighbors and holiday things This tree relates to me Its protection for me is only free

Rowan Laurenza

38

[A Blossom in the Sun] Delaney H

39

[‘Merica] I live on the West side of America Living in America.

The little ones trained on their ABC’s and hysteria Looking to our words pouring out of our mouths like jewels from a golden chalice Blood red rubies, black pearls, perfect smoking-tea green emeralds, and 27-karat diamonds Older ones given the choice to identify…

Cut-throats and thieves, With bombs up their sleeves Or A white man with a gun Claiming that his duty to protect home is done.

I live on the East side of America.

Living in America, Where we choose pride over character.

Celebrities laying lip gloss as they watch their numbers How many likes is my life worth?

Feed yourself of my life’s work.

Those standing behind podiums, smiling with teeth.

Turning lies into fairy dust, Choosing to never satiate their growing lust.

Make no mistake, I’ve subjected myself to prison, But it’s made from my own religion.

It’s so easy…

When everyone rejects and expects you to listen to them.

I live in America.

Welcome to our narcissism, We are united under our indifference.

T. Corkill 40

Harpsichorded herbivore Albanian peace corps Paul Murphy’s playing chess Eddie Murphy’s careless Mushu Waterloo, Napoleon’s in cobalt blue Dumbledore’s pheonix, Einstein is a genius

Truly Rylander

[ Ve r b i f i e d To n g u e T i e ]

Istanbul Budapest, Dracula in Bucharest.

Smile like you made a wish Eat out of a golden dish Cows moo, green goo, Han Solo’s gun, pew pew Violin playing Bach Matthew Broderick Ladyhawke Tales of Greece, golden fleece John McClane’s not police Rapunzel’s in a tower tall Matilda by Roald Dahl Overreach on a beach, James and the Giant Peach Ralph’s stuck on an island Time for him to meet his end.

41

[Bubble Wrap Crown] I wore a crown made of bubble wrap Placed upon my head years ago to protect my fragile skull I never took it off But as I grew up, I noticed less and less people with the bubble wrap crown Which wasn’t fair to me Why should I be protected when others aren’t?

Why was I so lucky?

So I opened myself up to them, those who struggled to stay safe Trying to offer protection But instead of helping them Pop Pop Pop Went my bubble wrap crown I have a bad habit of popping my bubble wrap crown The pop pop pop is so tempting, captivating, bewitching Pop Pop Pop Went my bubble wrap crown I tried to help, but I had nothing to give I opened myself up and all of the bad was stuffed right in Then it happened Pop Pop Pop All of the bubbles in my bubble wrap crown Something in my own life It popped them all Not all at once, but not one by one either I couldn’t speak I couldn’t focus I couldn’t function 42

Everything hurt more than I ever thought it could And for the first time, I felt deathly afraid I felt alone So so alone No one was there to offer me protection No one offered to help me No one offered to do what I had tried to do So I grabbed my dead bubble wrap crown on my head And tore it off Then I saved myself v.v

[Star Formed Love] Her eyes were made of stars Somewhere in the world, someone else had those same stars They never knew it would be another who would hold them Miles apart, they didn’t know each other They may never But maybe, just maybe Fate would be on their side They would finally see the stars that reflected their own They would watch as the other’s eyes shone with love and happiness Finally, they would have someone who understood and listened Their worlds, which seemed so lonely and isolated Would burst with newfound colors They would listen and talk about their loves, their joy They wouldn’t get enough of those shining stars Until it was all they saw v.v 43

[I Am From] Locke Landis I am from the 20 sided dice and the late night Dungeons and Dragons games.

From the tall fir trees of the first logging cut that surround the reservoir.

I am from rough hard working hands that work on cars and build houses in the summer.

I am from calluses on my fingertips from the cherry red Ibanez guitar hanging in my room.

I’m from the three L’s of my initials, and the Landis brothers.

I am from good work ethics and “you can do whatever you put your mind to”.

From the clear crisp rhythms that I can make with my feet and the black leather shoes I don twice a week to make those sounds.

I am from the rock and roll records that spin on the turntable From sitting in a corner during lunch playing cards with my friends.

I’m from checking my Instagram messages from the newest jokes of the next month.

I am from in the garage with the cars that brought my family together.

44

[Thi

s

is

Spreads out wings, finally leaving the nest, Saying farewell and good-bye.

I’m falling, falling, falling, fly Soaring overhead Far, far away from where I’ve begun For I will not return until my journey is done.

Life

]

Anonymous

Now I’m living, This is living, This is life.

Over the meadows of green, green, grass Over lakes and rivers, that look like glass.

Through the clouds that I once was afraid to touch.

This is wonderful, It’s a little too much.

Now I’m living, This is living, This is life.

Now back home, I’m on my way.

To a land of winter, For there I stay.

I’ve had my fun, I’ve had my games, But now it’s time, It’s time for a change.

This is life.

45

[Place Poem] Anonymous I take in the thought of standing upon a pumpkin patch, and stare at the beautiful wonderful view I find a small pumpkin and call it hue I stare at the trees leaves and squash to find mostly oranges yellows and reds I look at the pumpkins and think of the experience I'm happy I didn't miss Every other year we come here, and I certainly hope it's not the last As I stare at the trees, leaves, and squash I suddenly seem to forget my number one worry and fear I stand still, take in the scent of the garden grounds, home to the orange squash I can almost taste a sweet, fresh pumpkin pie, made from a pumpkin that has grown in this land I touch a bumpy, discolored pumpkin, that reminds me of a scaled white dragon I take in the thought of standing upon a pumpkin patch, and stare at the beautiful wonderful view

46

[Luck] Rely on luck.

Something I’d never do is Take chances without it.

I wouldn’t dare work hard.

When my chances are slim, I Flip a coin, You should never waste the day with work– I don’t.

Look for four leaf clovers, when you go outside.

You’ll never see me Without a lucky charm You’re better off So, When my luck runs out, I’ll have to start from the bottom.

(Now read from bottom to top) Anonymous

[Bubble] Tiny rainbows trapped in glass domes Drifting in the wind, trying to get to the clouds Drip, drip, drip, drip Their five second life span comes to an end Pop. Anonymous 47

[The things I carry] Anonymous The memories of a toxic friendship.

A place where my opinions didn’t matter.

A place where insults that hit harder than most, were said. and the joy I felt when she was finally cut from my life.

These are the things I carry.

Being in a group chat with her.

Being absolutely powerless as she said horrible things to my best friend.

“You will never amount to anything with your art!” she’d spit.

I wanted to tell her she was wrong!

But she’d never listen to what I said.

These are the things I carry.

My friend moving to Virginia The tears shed on the day she got on that plane.

Learning to get used to the silence in places where her laughter filled the air.

These are the things I carry.

When she came home to visit.

I was so excited to finally see her again.

See her face, hear her stupid jokes.

She ditched me, for the girl who deemed my ideas stupid.

These are the things I carry.

48

Months later, after not even a single word.

She tried to reach out to me, Pretending that nothing happened.

Assuming that I wouldn’t be upset about what happened.

These are the things I carry.

The memories keep me going, to remember what could’ve been.

They keep me grateful for where I have gotten, and where I have yet to go.

These are the things I carry.

[A Haiku] Anonymous I could keel over And die at any moment Suddenly dies—gasp.

49

[Brightest Thing in the Sky] Darling, Your chapter here Has ended, But soon starts another.

I will say goodbye As you leave this world, As you fly above the clouds.

You will be welcomed Into space, And sleep among The most brilliant stars.

And when I look up, On a clear winter night, I will see you above me, Watching over me, Dreaming of when we were Together.

You are the brightest thing In the sky, Filled with the happiness Of a good life, And the knowledge Of being loved.

Yes, tears will fall, But you never will.

Anonymous

50

51

PROSE 52

The girl stood at the [The Burbs 4:A front window of her house, a blank stare upon her grim face. S m o o t h C r i m i n a l ] Her once young and glowing Abbi Doddridge features were now dull with the horrors she had experienced over the past year. Psycho neighbors trying to bake her into a pie...New, actually decent neighbors, with odd morals regarding turkey bone powder and kidnapping pets. Who knew what would happen next?

That’s why she was overcome with a horrible sensation when she saw the moving truck pull up to that dreaded house.

It seemed like just yesterday that the crazy black market woman was arrested, her son sent back home to Ethiopia...which kind of sucked—he was really cute.

The whole neighborhood had grown quiet as everyone attempted to sneak a peek at the new neighbors. Everyone was hoping that maybe these ones would be different from the rest.

“Hmm, Rob’s Smoothies, very interesting. Our neighbors always seem to have a taste for the culinary arts.” The girl jumped at her mother’s voice.

She hadn’t realized that her mother was also staring out the window behind her, watching the moving trucks. Her eyes narrowed as she examined the bright orange house. The girl only looked upon her mother in confusion at the random comment. As her mother notices this she let out a little laugh, stroking her daughter’s hair.

“The red truck in their driveway, it says Rob’s Smoothies.

It’s a smoothie cart downtown, quite nice actually.” Her mother placed a kiss on her forehead before leaving the room.

After seeing the truck that her mom had pointed out, the girl noticed a frail old lady attempting to pull a large cooler out of the back of the truck. Looking around, she saw no one in sight other than the old woman, and the little bit of sympathy the girl had left felt bad for her. Letting out a small sigh the girl decided to go help her.

53

The girl walked out of the house and down the street to where the lady stood in her driveway, staring inquisitively at the large cooler. Her gaze only left the white container when she heard the girl approaching.

“Do you need any help?” the girl questioned, trying to be as polite as possible.

A large smile spread across the lady’s aged face. “I would love that dear. Could you carry this into the garage for me?” She gestured with a shaking hand towards the large bodysized cooler.

She couldn’t help but notice the old lady’s thick accent.

It seemed to be of a Liechtenstein descent. She only knew this because of her world language class last year.

“Of course!”

The girl slid the heavy cooler out of the truck, almost losing her balance. She followed the old lady into the garage, setting down the cooler next to another one that was almost identical to it.

“I would’ve asked my son to do it, but he had to leave for work. Have you ever heard of Rob’s Smoothies?” the lady questioned, smiling at the girl.

“Yeah, I haven’t been, but my mom says it’s good.”

“Well when you come I’ll have to treat you, I’ll make you my speciality,” she winked gently, laughing to herself.

After that day the two formed one of those sweet old lady teenager bonds, like in the sad dramas where the old person ends up dying... just let that sink in. Every day the girl would go down to the smoothie cart and buy a smoothie, then help out with whatever Rob and the old lady needed.

Today is just another one of those days. The girl is sitting at one of the tables in front of the smoothie cart talking with the old lady. Rob flips over the closed sign, which is quite odd since it is only noon.

“What are you doing, Rob?” the old lady questions, breaking away from her conversation with the girl.

54

“We’re out of the secret ingredient,” Rob groans, shutting the roll-up door on the smoothie cart.

The old lady gives Rob a stern look, jabbing a finger at him. “We are no Mafia, it is not locked in a safe in the middle of the Licechtenstein mountains! Go home and get it!”

Rob and the old lady start to slip into their native language as the two argue. The girl can’t help but to awkwardly sit there and watch, having no idea what they are saying. Suddenly an idea comes to her.

“I can go home and get it!” the girl interjects, standing up from her seat.

Rob and the old lady stop arguing, turning to look at the girl. For a while they exchange very secretive stares, as if having a conversation with their eyes. The old lady nods, shaking her hands towards the girl in a gesture telling her to go and do it.

The girl hops onto her bike before taking off down the busy intersection to her neighborhood. After about ten minutes, she screeches to a stop in front of the bright orange house of horrors. No matter how much she loves the old lady, that house is still be a bad memory for her.

She steps off her bike and starts to dramatically walk to the front door like in one of those high quality action movies, and proceeds to faceplant after tripping over their cat. She jumps to her feet and walks into the house, which is unlocked due to the old ladies overtrusting nature.

Remembering the other day when Rob was packing ingredients, she heads the cupboard under the microwave. Upon opening the cabinet, she finds a large black jar with the words “secret ingredient” printed onto the label. The girl can’t help but notice that the label is peeling off to reveal a different one underneath. Out of curiosity, she carefully pulls the new label off the jar. Her jaw drops at the words that are revealed.

Not believing the label, she decides to open the jar and see for herself. As she takes off the lid, a blood curdling scream leaves her mouth. She drops the jar to the ground, shattering it to little pieces and revealing...

Tune in next time to see what happens next!

55

[A Flower on the Shore] 56

Delaney H

Untitled Limply, through the brown and white halls, sterile, yet rotting, the stench strangling. Oh, it has left, and once again I am locked in the rooms, confined to the chairs of mental pain, forcing brains, to slowly fall apart. Never again it seems, will I fly, unburdened and free. Nevermore will laughter and sun fill my ears. Alas, I am chained in my cold second home, tortured for hours, school reams unspoken, only given rest to eat crusty stale food. My muse, my light, alone in this dark. May you dream‌ and Rest In Peace ‌ my weekend...

Alex Goff

57

[The Crown] This is an a single story from a collection about the bloodstained path of a royal crown, as told from the point of view of the crown.

Please enjoy.

“Shut your yapper! The cathedral is a place of quiet study!”

“Oh, it’s you. I didn’t know, I swear I…”

“Ms. Hownens, you know I couldn’t ever find you an annoyance. Your voice itself is the most serene music…”

The women was already to the door. “No. I think you’re a nice person but I’ve told you, no!”

“Nice person” was a bit rich. For years, the man I sat upon had tried again and again to claim her hand, and force her into marriage. Threats had failed as soon as cheap flattery, and the only thing more creative than the king’s attempts at a forced marriage was the women’s ways of avoiding them.

False diseases, forged letters from past ladies, and broken signatures had all been used. The king searched for her, calling again and again, poetry so beautiful it seemed to hang in the air.

She wasn’t fooled. She had seen the monthly executions, brief madness spasms, and the way previous loves had been treated.

Probably the most shocking thing about the forged letters were that the authors were all dead, having tripped and fallen off a roof, plunged into a river in their carriages, or suffered from some other unfortunate accident once it was shown they were unable to produce an heir. I myself looked for her, curious as to where she had hidden herself from the roaming ruler. An upper chandelier in the preaching hall was swinging slightly. Curious.

Its lights shone brightly, illuminating its chain and giving a clear path to a hatch. Clever again.

“Where is she! Where does she go!” the king raved, 58

threatening to pull his hair out. I fell off, rolling as the king grabbed a picture and threw it, the glass fracturing into thousands of shards. His study was torn apart. “I have everything.

I own everything. What else does she want?” His boot cracked the floorboard next to me. More crashes sounded. Later, the king picked me up. His study was in ruins. Collecting himself, he exited the room.

“Butler! Butler get down here!”

“Of course, sir.”

“Fetch my carriage—I must have everything, and that includes that ungrateful maid! Niceties are over. I am the best person for her, and if she is too blind to see it, I will force her to!” he said, whispering the last half under his breath.

“Maid!” he said quietly, to the meek little women entering the room. “Fetch me my team of huntsman, and tell them to bring my dogs.”

The woods were quiet. From our hiding spot, we could see the woman from the cathedral slowly spinning her hunting knife. Breathing quietly, she danced from shadow to shadow, before throwing her knife, spinning end over end into a hare feeding on a bush. Falling over, it lay there dead. Her head cocked to one side, she heard an odd sound: dogs whining.

Slowly getting up, she took her knife out of the dead hare.

Then, instead of placing it on her belt with the rest of her rabbit game, she threw it behind with all her strength, yelling, “Go!”

Instantly, the dogs in our concealed position ran forward after the hare, too well trained to leave such a prize. The figure ran to a tall oak and climbed it, out of the dogs’ reach.

“Those hounds are the king’s, clear as day. I know you’re there. Leave the shadows.”

“Oh, my muse,” the king sang softly. “I’m afraid beauty such as yours would scald my eyes, like the sun rising from the endless sea.”

“Why would you bring those hounds to attack me, if you find me so beautiful?”

“If thee hounds of wrath attacked you, and you were 59

saved by myself, I…”

“You meant to set your hounds on me, and then “save” me from them!”

“Oh maiden, please…”

“You don’t even want me to be your bride! You just want an heir!”

(She was one hundred percent true about that, I can assure you.)

“Never will I marry such a sick twisted old… old Rat! And I would quite frankly rather die!”

“Fine, if that’s your wish. You could have had everything with me.”

“Except everything that matters,” she replied.

“Good for you. Remember that in death.” He nodded at the trees. “Huntsman, shoot her.”

Unfortunately for the king, behind the maiden’s back, a rabbit corpse was being slashed with a knife repeatedly. “I’ll meet you there”, she said with relish, chucking the mangled corpse at the king, the purple dress quickly becoming a dark red.

“You witch!” he yelled, his hands waving. “What does it matter, you’re dead.” Taking a crossbow from his belt, he aimed it at the tree. “All that did was ensure your death by my hand!

Look at yourself, you have no weapons! You’re trapped! And soon to be dead!”

“Look behind you,” she replied coolly.

The king stopped suddenly, turning towards the sound of growls. The dogs, always kept half starved, had had a delicious rabbit. Sadly, it was a small one, and there were six of them. But look, a giant red rabbit was right in front of them, almost 6 feet tall. Their noses quivering, they leapt at the king, his cries quickly drowned out by barking and tearing. A couple minutes later, the dogs, now loyal to the woman who had fed them, sat obediently while she climbed down. All that was left was a few scraps of cloth and me—a small crown. The huntsman, not daring to make a move for fear of the dogs, slunk away.

60

Taking the crown, the maiden picked me up, like many before her enchanted by my luster. Then, unexpectedly, she dropped me back into the blood stained wraps.

“There,” she spoke savagely. “May you rest with everything you ever wanted.”

Turning, she walked away, into the tree line with her new pack of dogs. She was one of only seven humans I have respect for.

Of course, a huntsman came back around later, plucked and pocketed me. Interestingly, his throat was slit two days later, and I passed to my next owner. Something similar would have undoubtedly happened to the woman. Let that be a lesson, reader. Sometimes, it’s best to live simple, and happy. And this next guy, well, he certainly learned that lesson. Lot of good it did him, for by the time he did, he was dead.

Alex Goff

61

[Swing]

Green rubber coated chains wobble from their own weight, gently guiding the hollow plastic its bound to back and forth. During isolated hours, it would quiver under a large head with blonde curls sprouting out of it, attached to a clumsy body that doesn’t quite suit her yet. Those wide eyes would groom the marshy pools down the hill for boys, with large sweeping nets, to climb the black metal fence. They’d scrape their bony knees on dry grass that turned into mush where the salamanders swam.

Beyond the fences, where trees encircled the hills and the sinking puddles and the green yards with balconies hanging over their heads, the branches would spiral upwards and climb the skies. Their pointed tops would wave away the heavy clouds that dared to weep.

In those hours broken notes may pass through the gap between two very prominent large teeth, songs that sounded more like a whistle or a hum. The melody would carry itself to the edge of the small world and die before it could tumble over the barrier built by bark and leaves.

There were days when those light-up shoes couldn’t kick high enough, legs raising dust into the air as they bent back into the gravel and found themselves floating above the murky water. Those feet squashing boys like bugs.

Swinging used to be simple. Flying was just as easy as landing, and landing didn’t mean crashing. It only meant feeling grounded even when the path ahead of you curved downwards.

Andy Winner

62

[Best Friends] Angelina Iefimchuk

Emma

“Did she actually just say that?” I asked Emily.

She nodded, frowning. The most popular girl at school just invited me for a sleepover!

Emily sighed, and I realized she was not invited. I looked in the direction of Olivia, who was talking to someone else now, and back at my best friend. The bell rang, and I went to class.

Emily

I came home angry. Angry at Olivia for not inviting me.

Angry at Emma for saying that she would come. Angry at myself for... Suddenly, the phone rang. I groaned and quickly picked it up.

“What?!” I asked.

“Whoa, whoa, its me, Emma!”

“And?” I asked.

“And, I want to invite you for a sleepover today!” she said excitedly.

I paused. “I thought you were going to Olivia’s sleepover today.”

“Nah. Best friends are more important!”

63

[Walking Stories] Ashley Jones

It was so easy to step into other’s shoes, at least for me.

Today I tromped around in a pair of old yellow Chucks.

The owner was a bright kid, at least they were when they got the shoes. Now they are a young adult, who probably grew out of the shoes. The kid loved these shoes though, they’ve scrubbed them clean, refusing to let the color hide behind dirt.

The day before, my feet had been clad in some vintage pink and orange Nike shoes.

They belonged to a sporty girl. She’d run everywhere, except away of course. She’d have been friends with yellow sneaker boy.

I can’t help myself as my yellow Chucks plod towards the familiar concrete path. I didn’t bat an eye at the loud bell clanking against the glass door. The clerk waved, having seen me more often than her boss. We’d become close, especially because we’re pretty close in age.

I heard her laugh as I waved without stopping my determined stride.

“Anything new?” My voice chimed in the nearly-empty thrift store as I made my way to the shoe section. My eyes gleaming light as they gazed at the items filling the dull store with colorful memories.

“None that you haven’t seen, but I’m sure you’ll find something that interests you. Have at it!” She giggled as I twirled and slid to face her on the slick linoleum and threw her a smile.

“Thanks!” I piped as I swung my body to face the shoe section again.

There it was. A treasure chest of lives before mine. Stories and memories in sizes ranging from too small, too big and just right for me. It was fun piecing together each shoe’s story.

As my eyes slid over the treasures, they stopped and back-tracked. The rough leather was spotted with mud and the soles were caked in it, but it wasn’t torn or ripped. They were 64

worn from use, and were obviously well loved. I slid them from their spot on the overflowing shelves and tried them on. The boots hugged my ankles as I pulled the laces tight and the sides danced across my foot as I kicked my leg back and forth. A little big, but it felt fine.

I loved them.

I loved the roughed up leather, and the solid thump of the sole when I stood. I loved the long laces, and the little mud spots dotting them like little freckles. I loved their story.

Turning towards the checkout after changing back to my yellow Chucks, I placed my newest find onto the counter, satisfied.

“Who’s this?” my friend queried. I had told her about my interest in memories and my collection of them, of used shoes. I always came up with a name that I felt belonged to the original owner, and their story along with it.

“Say hello to Eric, the loving dad and husband. He likes to hike.” This name fit perfectly for these shoes.

“Hi Eric, I’m Lisa. I believe we’ll see each other often.” Her smile was big, and her eyes seemed to shine as they glanced from the shoes to me. “Right Reed?”

“I promise.” The words slipped from my mouth, which was stuck with its stupid grin as she smiled back. I paid for my shoes and made a plan to talk with her soon.

I kept my promise.

65

[Gleaming Mirrors] Bre Jones The following is an unfinished piece, but it might one day be turned into a novel.

Please, don’t take her away from me! She’s my baby, mine!

Every night for two months those words wake me from my deep slumber. Along with the screaming of an infant being ripped from her mother’s arms. Haunting me in the ungodly hours of morning. Each time, I find my body pooled in sweat and tears on a makeshift cot under a scratchy buttercup yellow patchwork blanket. My vision is swimming with images of a mother clutching her newborn infant wrapped haphazardly in a wide pink blanket too big for the child. The mother is curled tightly on the floor, yet gentle enough so that her infant can easily be held. I can feel the mother’s rapid heartbeat against my own, frantic in some situation long forgotten. And I can see her eyes wide, watching for something. But what is she watching for?

“Madison.”

I jolt upright in my cot, shock locking up my spine temporarily. In the low lights I can see the figure of my caretaker staring at me, her glasses glinting softly. Often she comes in here to wake me up in the morning to help start making breakfast or do some monumental chore. (After all I am the oldest in this orphanage).

But today her voice sounds a bit panicked. “Come downstairs, please. There are some people that want to meet you.”

She turns on her heels and leaves through the open door, fluorescent lights streaming from outside. Then she closes the door, and there’s no sound.

Standing on my feet, I blindly step around the room, arms outstretched. I just need to reach my wooden wardrobe. Stumbling into it, I open the gaping door, the wood rough beneath my fingertips. It’s aged very poorly from lack of care and mis66

use. Why didn’t I turn on a light? It would have been much easier than running into the wardrobe. Yet I forgot, as always.

Maybe I should just sleep by the light switch and hope for the best.

Then some bright light flickers on with great intensity.

Looking up, I see the light bulb is turned off. Right next to the light bulb is a pure ball of light illuminating through the through this darkness. Should I be worried about it? Probably. But then again, not really. My attention going back to my wardrobe, I find the dresses that are on the big side. Naturally I pick out a pale purple dress that rests at my calves. The bow on the waist droops slightly, sad with age. Nevertheless I go back to my cot, changing into the dress. Pacing restlessly around the room I find a forgotten standing mirror in the farthest corner, covered by a thin white sheet. (How have I never seen this before?)

Without thinking I pull off the thin sheet. For a few seconds, it dances in midair, then touches the floor gradually. I gasp and take steps back, horror filling my brain like sea water in a tiny freshwater pond. Half of the glass in the tall white ivory mirror is missing. Cracked right in the middle. And the glass that’s still there is broken beyond all repair. In the tiny remaining fragments I see my own broken up reflection, a girl with a thin oval face framed by thick mocha curls. Her eyes looking like diamonds reflecting in light, though showing tiny flecks of red just beside the pupils. Then turning to a more sapphire color. Did I just imagine that? I’ve never had those eyes before. Maybe not enough sleep? I did spend most of last night cleaning up after naughty little toddlers who can’t clean up after themselves.

More and more I look at the mirror, entranced by the refracting light. The images keep changing. From the young woman carrying a newborn child in my worst and most recurring nightmare, to a towering man with my face, his eyes like diamonds and crimson in color. Then they turn to a more sapphire color. Who are these people? I’ve seen that man before, but I don’t know where. And then to top it off I see the gaping mouth of a cave. Within is nothing but complete blackness, even darker than my makeshift bedroom. It gives off a much 67

more negative feeling, unlike the two figures who give off a more comforting feeling. I feel like I want to tear something apart… or someone apart. A group of monotonous whispers echo off the walls.

You are one of us. A race far greater than Mortals. Everlasting with powers beyond measure. Come to us and be our future leader, it is your destiny.

“Madison,” I hear my caretaker calling, her voice hoarse and distraught. “These people have been patiently waiting, they have a schedule to keep.”

Then the light suddenly goes out.

[Blue Trombone] Ethan Waddle

68

[Middle of Winter]

Bre Jones

The following is an unfinished piece of work that could potentially become part of a novel in the future.

Outside there’s a storm, and it’s coming my way.

It’s been two weeks since the storm started brewing.

Dad had left for some business trip far away two days before, leaving this area in unpredictable weather. Being Jack Frost gave him some weather responsibilities during winter. (Yes he’s real, because if he didn’t exist neither would I). My older brothers and sister tried to slow the storm down enough with their ice powers. But they’re not strong enough, and I’m not old enough to have powers. So we’re all stuck, along with Mom, in our log cabin home while hoping for Dad to come home and fix everything. (If there’s going to be anything left to fix). For now we have to wait out the high winds and below-freezing temperatures to see what happens.

I stare out the lightly frosted front window as more snow dances down from dense gray clouds. This scene looks beautiful despite the danger as snow dusts the already covered forest grounds. The danger was mostly for my mom, who’s not used to the cold. She somehow survives on burning wooden logs in a large red brick fireplace. And soon, the stock of wood will cease to exist. So she will either freeze after a given amount of time or my siblings or I will need to get more.

“Jackie Daphne Frost,” my mother calls from the kitchen, which my older brothers and I nicknamed her ‘element’.

She’s always in there, using her magic to cook up food around the clock for no particular reason. And honestly she’s as nice as Mrs. Claus. When she’s not angry, of course.

“There’s cake. Come eat some before it gets cold.” Huh. I thought she’d wait for Dad to come back before having 69

cake. Guess not. Turning, I face the red brick fireplace by the kitchen door. Red-orange and white-tipped flames reach the top of the fireplace. Smoke billows out in small white puffs every so often. Moving into the kitchen, Mom is standing in her favorite icy blue and pastel pink apron. Her long fiery red hair is pulled back into a loose ponytail. All around, magic is cleaning up a huge mess that’s covering most of the walls and tile flooring. She’s smiling as she does every day, even though Dad’s not here with us. (He’s still alive, not dead, just somewhere else on this world).

“Don’t look so blue, Jackie. If you keep looking at that window, time will never speed up. Your father will come home, in time.”

I guess. But not fast enough. “I know,” I say.

She guides me to a chair at the wooden table we’ve had for ages now. It’s so old that scratches can be seen from when all my older brothers and older sister were little and I was little.

Five plates have been spread around with forks and knives at each place setting. In the middle of the table is a large plated cake. This particular cake must be at least three layers, iced with white frosting (though having some blue accents). Sugar snowflakes have been sprinkled haphazardly across the cake’s surface. To me it seems fairly funny that during a snow storm she makes a snow themed cake. (I don’t think she would say the same thing).

“But I miss him. He’s been gone so long.”

I feel a hand plant itself on my head. With her other free hand, she grabs a knife to cut the cake into five sizable pieces.

She serves me the largest piece, revealing the cake type to be vanilla. The most superior type of cake. Not too dry and plenty sweet without having to overcompensate. (It’s also Dad’s favorite cake, he would have loved to eat this particular one).

“I bet he misses you too,” she replies, taking off her apron.

She places it on her chair which is right next to Dad’s. Next to the head of the table.

I remember when he sat there. He told jokes while eating dinner after someone (most likely me) had fallen down 70

the first of two polished wooden staircases. We would laugh off whatever came our way like it was no big deal. Because we had each other to fall back on.

“You are both his spitting image and youngest child. The gift in the middle of chaos.”

I know I was born during a rift between my father and maternal grandfather. But no one’s ever told me the whole story. Don’t know if I’ll ever get to know. (Though it can be implied that Grandpa had been mad that neither of my brothers had inherited his magic powers through Mom).

“Grandpa Magus was very pleased. For he thought that one grandchild shall inherit the dual abilities from both Legendary Families. One of Ice and One of Magic. Creating the first truly powerful child. Though he was slightly disappointed you are a girl.”

(Of course he is, not that I care).

71

[Unaware] Cora Beeson Ari wants to coil everything up, tight and secure, and lock it inside of herself. Just like her hair, it’s packed neatly in a bun, smoothly containing every wispy strand of what would be wild auburn hair much too bold for the extent that she wants to be noticed. It is something she can control.

The compartment of the subway car is full. Full of hot breath leaving 26 mouths. Full of clammy hands clinging to paint chipped handles, greasy metal bars and poles, or their individual electronic devices. Full of conversations, or the absence of talking consumed by the clickity clacking of the fragile metal tracks the entire car is hitched to, beneath.

A baby is crying.

A man is obnoxiously laughing.

A shoe smashes her toe.

She’s going home to her sad brick apartment with a single bulb for her kitchen light, after an interview. The lady at the big company she applied for didn’t like her shoes, didn’t like her avoidance of eye contact, and didn’t like her resume. Although Ari couldn’t point out these things specifically about how her job interview went, she knew that the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach as she descended the 20 floors down from the lady’s office was there for a reason.

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale… Suddenly her breath consumes all of her attention, but the more she focuses on it, the inhales become only in’s, and the exhales only ex’s, and her breath is fluttering so light and quick that it seems to be on edge of taking flight.

She tries to gather herself. She stares at her freshly painted red nails; her left pinky is already chipped. She scowls at them, releasing a sharp sigh.

She tries again. She squeezes her eyes shut. Thoughts follow her in this darkness, haunting her. ‘How am I ever going to pay off my student loans if I don’t get this job? There is no way I’ll 72

fit the image of responsible and independent to my parents, they will never be proud of me. There is no way anyone will fall in love with me, I’m a 26 year-old still without a job after college.’

Her teeth sink, hard, into her bottom lip, until she tastes blood, which mixes with the color of her crusty lipstick. ‘My life is falling apart,’ echo the words in her head. She just wants to shut out the pain. She wishes that everything would stop: stop snowballing, stop plummeting. She wishes she didn’t ruin everything.

She opens her eyes, now noticing she had dug one of her squeaky black shoes so violently into the floor that she had broken the heel. She looks around at the other passengers, with a nervous blush on her face. Everyone has been unaware of her this whole time, but she didn’t see it that way.

To her, it isn’t just the shoe that’s broken--she is.

Something inside of her decides she can’t move, when the subway finally reaches her stop. She lets the world rush by, instead. Slowly, the other people leave. By now, it has been after dark for a while, she doesn’t remember how long. Slowly, the subway car becomes empty. Slowly, her blinks grow longer and longer, until…

“Hey.” She doesn’t remember falling asleep.

“Hey, are you alright?” a hand touches her shoulder. She winces, bringing her hand to her head. Her vision has gone fuzzy.

“Does your head hurt? Hey, well, the subway is closed for the night, they’ve reached the last stop. We have to get off now,” says a male voice, she could tell that much. He helps her up to standing, and they leave the station.

“Can you speak?”

“Uh, yeah, sorry,” she mutters, finally getting a good look at him. He’s short, or maybe she’s too tall, but he carries himself upright and openly, with confidence. His clear eyes 73

gleam straight into her’s, where she finds a friendliness and concern.

“Can I find you a taxi?”

“Oh, um,” Ari frowned. “I’m not too far, I can walk.” In truth, she doesn’t know where she is, and taxis mean money.

“It’s dark and late, I should walk you home.”

“I don’t know you,” she says with some consciousness.

“Ah, that’s true. My name’s Aaron, you’re under no obligation to tell me yours, but you didn’t seem very stable earlier so I think I should walk at least part way with you.” She doesn’t argue, mainly because she’s tired, but also because she rarely says no to people.

They walk for a long time, Aaron never complaining about the distance, but just letting her talk. She has a lot of her heart to pour out, after keeping it locked for so long. They finally near her cramped street, and she stops.

“Just so you know, I think you’re going to be alright, everything gets better. You can do everything you’ve ever thought of doing, I don’t think it’s too late,” Aaron tells her, cracking a supportive grin. For a moment, Ari will never know how long, they simply stared at each other in the dark, sharing words that didn’t need to be spoken to be understood.

“My name’s Ariel, by the way, but I go by Ari,” she says, leaving him with that token.

They both smile, say goodbyes, and part. When Ari opens her apartment door, she hits the button on the answering machine, and it blurts out a message, “We regret to inform you—”. She deletes the message, bites her lip and sighs, sinking to the bottom of the door frame. A grumble takes hold of her throat, and she reaches to slam the light switch.

Nothing. She forgot to pay the electric bill. Then, she chooses to do something she hasn’t done since she was five, something her mom would call her a brat for doing.

She screams.

And she keeps screaming.

She lets the floodgates release every internalized emotion 74

of her childhood and young adulthood, she lets every anxious worry she has never spoken fly from her mouth.

She’s letting herself be free.

She decides that she will apply for a job at the local gallery tomorrow, even though her parents wouldn’t think it’s a practical occupation. She decides that tomorrow she will go about her day with the openness and friendliness that Aaron had shown her tonight. She tells herself that even though she wants everything to finally go right tomorrow, that doesn’t mean she can control it. She won’t be locking herself away, anymore.

Heck, she kicks off her pointy shoes, picks at her red pinky nail even more, and unravels her hair from its tight knot. It had been hurting her head anyways. She goes into her bathroom and smears away her makeup, and then awes at the beautiful girl staring back in the mirror. She smiles, then laughs. She will begin living for herself, and that will be worth so much more than living for someone else. She won’t be afraid anymore, of loving every unique piece of what made her Ari.

75

[The Forest] Ella Vires

The green pine trees of what I thought to be a normal forest grew denser as I made my way through the dirt path. I could hear soft giggles. Like the laughter of a child on a warm spring day. The dirt trail got smaller with every foot I walked.

The giggles grew louder. A blur of purple and pink flew past me.

At least, I thought it did. I passed it off as my overactive imagination and continued on.

I needed to get out of this forest. On the other side awaited my beloved. She and I were going to escape from the judging eyes of our villages to live out our lives on an isolated farm. You see, I had a terrible fall as a child, I had climbed to the top of an oak tree and then I fell directly onto a pile of branches. I got several gashes on my face that turned into nasty scars.

Nobody thought she should be with me, as beautiful as she was, so they had taken to throwing fruit at me. The other men who had desired her had made several threats. It was no longer safe for either of us.The sun was already beginning to set, the sky was painted a soft hue of orange, but my path was only getting darker. I was trying to keep away my fears by picturing her eyes, but I’m only human. Another blob of color whizzed past, then another, then another.

Within a few moments I was surrounded. Pink, purple, blue, they all flew past me. The eyes. Hundred maybe thousands of them stared at me. What I thought was just my imagination turned into a reality, a terrifying reality. But what were they?

“W-what are you?” I tried to stammer out.

One, whose silhouette seemed to be larger than the rest, flew forward. It had a small human-like body, intricately laced wings, and teeth as sharp as knives.

“Pitiful human, of course you haven’t heard of us!” it 76

spat. Then it retreated back to the rest.

That’s when I realized. They were fairies.

They were still, then all at once they charged forward.

Groups took hold of my arms and legs, pulling me this way and that way. The others lay on top of my chest. Surprisingly strong for their size, they had me pinned to the ground.

“I must say, we are terribly sorry for this, but we must do what we must do,” one who sat upon my chest said.

Suddenly, I felt myself floating. The ones on my chest flew to my back and were carrying me that way, their fingers feeling like millions of tiny needles. The ones holding my limbs couldn’t agree on a pathway, and I was being pulled in a million different directions at once. I could feel myself getting farther and farther from my beloved. I tried screaming her name, but inside I knew I was alone. There was no escape for me, I had to accept my fate.

77

[I’d Say This Is A Better Way Of Choosing a Successor, But Someone Still Dies, So It Really Isn’t ] EMKR

Do not follow me. Do not attempt to aid or defend me.

I thank you for your care. You have shown me how to live and feel. Now I feel that we need to part ways. Do not follow me.

Do not follow me. In her neat handwriting, it seemed as if Hilde had lost the depth and emotions that she had been trying so hard to cultivate. And due to the fact that her belongings were gone, it also seemed that she was missing.

Do you think she went home?, signed the King.

No, replied the Queen, we would have known if she was returning to her mother’s kingdom. She reached over and took his hand. They stood there for a moment or two in a quiet trance, thinking and wondering.

I don’t know if I could take that grief again. The Queen exhaled shakily, and turned to her husband, sighing again. Hilde is one of us as much as she was.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Panting as he climbed the seemingly endless stairs, Castiel turned and groaned with annoyance and frustration as he saw that the closest exit was still two flights up. After traveling between planets and navigating through the Eoccilon asteroid field with no real idea of where he was headed, Castiel was beginning to lose hope. Just because he was royalty didn’t mean that acquiring information came easy, and his short stature of 5’1” didn’t make him seem any more intimidating. It was only after saying he knew the Matriarch of the Valkyries that he learned where the Eos Stadium was.

It was located just off the Howling Expanse, but still close enough that it was hidden amongst the other bits of space debris that were tied in by the gravity and strong whistling winds. The stadium itself looked as if it had broken off a larger piece of debris, perhaps it had, but it would have been so 78

long ago that the only beings who would have remembered its creation were those that dwelled in the inner regions of the Expanse, and they had never been known to leave the eye of their whirling storm of a home for any reason.

He was barely halfway up the next flight of stairs when–

Bang! Bang! And then a second later: Bang!

Castiel paused, and sweat started to turn cold as his heart seemed to both slow and quicken at the same time. With newfound speed he charged up the remaining steps and after a few tries, he burst through the doors at the top level of the stadium; and as he stopped to catch his balance, his eyes widened as he saw what lay below his feet.

It was almost that feeling one gets when they look down from a high point and the ground seems to zoom away from them. Rows of seats blurred into each other after a yard or two, and everything was a grim shade of jet, with the exception of an oval of taupe somewhere close to the center. The sky above was a somber grey. The clouds floating aimlessly throughout the Expanse had stopped their rain, leaving the air and ground moist and the steps through the seats slippery and treacherous. If you paid close enough attention, you also might have seen one figure at an end of the oval and two others higher up, amongst the sea of chairs.

At first Castiel only saw the two figures in the seats, for one had an ghostly white cloak draped onto the chair in front of them which stood out in the dark mass. And as he inspected further and saw the person lying motionless on the dirt, his breath hitched, and the rest of the world was forgotten.

As he stumbled his way down the stairs, fresh tears spilled out of his eyes and he hurriedly wiped them away and continued to rush down. He let out a few sobs here and there, and paused once to catch his breath and clear his vision. As he started to travel again, he got a few steps down before he lost his footing, and pitched forward.

He landed hard on his face, and as he raised himself onto his hands and knees, he felt a hot liquid trailing down his face.

79

As he took in what had happened, his composure fell away completely and for a minute or two straight, he cried. He cried for his sister, for his body, for those who had loved yet lied to him and those he had loved yet lied to. The tears rolled off his face and mixed with the small puddle of blood forming beneath him.

He cried for the fact that he loved too easily and that some people never felt that kind of love from anyone. He sobbed knowing that two people he cared about had both died so soon, and for the fact that he felt responsible for so many things besides their fates.

As Castiel hiccuped shakily, it slowly dawned on him that he felt lighter than he had in a long while. Tears still dripped from his chin and rolled out the corners of his eyes, but he managed to get up and brush off his knees, ignoring the spots of dark red bleeding through the fabric of his pants. He managed to slowly limp down the remaining stairs while ignoring his aching back, shins, and forearms.

He lost his balance a few feet away from the body in the dirt, so he crawled and pulled his weight over to the person. If he hadn’t been so out of it already, he might have let out a cry of surprise at what he saw. It was Hilde.

Her already scarred face was even more deformed, with fresh cuts that were definitely deep enough to be permanent.

As Castiel took in the rest of her, he noted that her joints were the most afflicted parts of her body. The seamless uniform that the Valkyries all wore had been slashed and torn to ribbons at her shoulders, elbows, knees, and hips. Her body was similarly torn, and at least two of her joints were twisted in unnatural ways. The ground was dotted and splattered with rusty red, and the dirt under Hilde was turning that same sickening shade.

Tears started to form again as Castiel swallowed back the instinct to gag. The stench of blood stung his raw and bleeding nose as bile rose in his throat. He pulled himself into a sitting position and brushed off his hands. Leaning over to look at her wounds, a thought struck him suddenly like a lone star appearing in an empty expanse of space.

None of her injuries seemed to have been caused by a 80

bullet.

Castiel’s eyes widened, and as he reached over to take her pulse his own started to beat faster. His thoughts were racing, and he had to stop himself as his vision swam. He sat trembling for a few seconds, and when his vision had cleared he leaned over for a second attempt.

His fingers felt numb, and when he first pressed them to her carotid artery he couldn’t feel a beat. He clenched his teeth and wanted to scream at whatever reason fate had for hating him, until he felt a pulse beating weakly beneath his fingertips.

Buhm, buhm, buhm, buhm, buhm, buhm, buhm.

Anger turned into happiness, which gave way to relief, which in turn melted into a bubbling warmth that spread throughout his muscles and eased the tension in his body. And as the tension bled away, so did the adrenaline. Castiel slumped tiredly and curled up next to Hilde, taking her hand as he faded into unconsciousness, watching her chest rise and fall ever so slowly. And as they lay side by side in that ghostly arena, far away in some region of space, the stars of the Cosmos formation glowed and twinkled into being cluster by cluster, meaning that for once in a rare while everything was right in existence.

81

[Tom’s Blue Visions of Johanna] Grace Ellen Korthuis

In the part of New York where the buildings don’t scrape the sky, a boy was sitting at his kitchen table with locks of curly brown hair falling across his forehead and into his seaweed-colored eyes eating Cheerios from a red ceramic bowl. When Tom finished his breakfast he slid down the narrow hall from the kitchen to the front entrance and slipped out the door without a word to his parents who sat in their respective offices inside closed doors on opposite sides of the entryway. From the pocket of his dad’s green army jacket that he wore like a souvenir, Tom pulled a pair of dark blue earbuds and an old ipod. He paused on the concrete porch between the two white wooden pillars framing the strawberry-red door. Tom dragged his thumb across the white circular control pad and selected his daily walkto-school album which he ritually chose the night prior.

He walked down the concrete path from his porch to the stark white sidewalk ahead and turned sharply, chords ringing in his ears and silver sunlight flitting across the grass sketched with frost in every neighbor’s front lawn.

The sky was wearing fog like a forgiving cloak today, with pockets to let the sun through. As Tom walked, he passed each driveway leading to square single-story houses with brightly colored trim. Half of the doors opened as he walked by, and in place of their solid colors stood teenage boys and teenage girls— rainy day women wearing waterproof jackets as though they couldn’t see that the sun was shining this morning, and men tangled up in blue sweaters, blue eyes, and blue skies. It was a canon of familiar faces and Winter coats and blonde on blonde on blonde as the procession formed a staggered curving line behind Tom. Because it was an unspoken and unconsciously acknowledged truth that he’d lead them to school where they didn’t want to go, and if it didn’t work out he’d be the first to know because he was always the first to arrive each morning and the last to enter the building.

When they got to school, Johanna with the longest and blondest hair hung back. She had her earbuds in too and stood at the edge of the front lawn of their high school. She 82

wasn’t facing the entrance; she looked instead at the cracked silver frost and the not-yet-consecrated sunlight, and her head moved up and down slightly to a beat that Tom felt he knew but couldn’t possibly place. Tom was the one who listened to music every morning before school and stood outside the doors waiting. This was an invasion to his isolation. His ritual was interrupted by this girl. He knew her only by sight. She was delicate like a mirror: taboo if broken, and reflecting the scene she beheld.

Something’s happening here, and I don’t know what it is, Tom pondered, gaze fixed on her blonde ocean, her turquoise eyes, her long floral dress.

“Everybody’s gone but me and you,” he said, after a short while. “And I can’t be the last to leave.”

She turned to him. Neither of them removed their earbuds. “Why is that?” she asked. She didn’t sound like a mirror then. Her words were full of something tangible. His eyes in hers were seaweed in the south Atlantic Ocean. They were Winter in Summer.

“I like to be alone in the mornings,” Tom said. He hadn’t told anyone that before, not because it was a secret but because people didn’t ask. “Just for a moment at least.”

“I guess that’s fair,” Johanna shrugged, turning away from him. “But so do I.”

Neither of them moved. Tom’s shifting feet made faint crunching sounds in the grass and Johanna’s warm breaths left temporary imprints in the air in front of her. They stood there for the length of time it took Johanna to finish to her song, at which point she opened her phone, paused the music, removed her earbuds, took a deep breath through parted and chapped pink lips, and waving goodbye to Tom, turned around and strode towards the school’s front doors.

Tom turned slightly, so that the sun illuminated half his face and the other half watched Johanna leave. He let her pass and he went last.

That day at school Tom wrote poems in his language arts class and Johanna wrote stories. He ate a turkey sandwich for lunch in the hallway with his friends, laughing and holding 83

a guitar that had never been in tune. She ate strawberries and blackberries from one container and grilled salmon from another at a table in the cafeteria with four other girls and three boys, smiling and making quiet jokes that no one heard.

That night, two streets down from the white house with the strawberry-red door, Johanna sat on her mattress in a swathe of green and blue blankets with the lights turned off and the curtains spread open like eyelids. She stared out the window with her face a breath away from the cold glass, gazing at the sky’s deep blue iris and black pupil dotted with stars.

Johanna was ‘in a mood’ that night, as her parents liked to say. She was sad somewhere past the summer dresses and the blonde hair and the blue eyes. She was sad somewhere deep inside, past the lightly tanned skin and the pink flesh and the fragile bones. It was the kind of sad that came from cold places and cold faces. Johanna couldn’t stand anything cold. So she wrote stories about warm things and spoke them aloud in her warmest voice when she was alone with her warm blankets.

She stared out at the rain that had finally started to fall after a day of chills and fierce sun. The freewheeling cars sped by on the street outside her window and she wondered where they’d been. And all she wanted was for someone to step out of one of the moving vehicles and press their rain-streaked face against the glass of her window. She wished there was something they could do or say to make her feel alright. But if she kept looking they’d be gone, and it was no use to sit and wonder why. The truth, she feared, was that her heart was haunted in the heat and the cold. Most of all, Johanna worried that she was alone, and that summer and winter and highways and girls and boys couldn’t change that. And somewhere outside her shelter from the storm, the answers to her questions were blowing in the wind.

And so Johanna lived in her stories and in the music that sounded from the turntable on her dresser. Because the right songs never let you feel anything less than connected. The right songs, Johanna found, were like warm stories: they weren’t 84

about the instruments or the vocals, the notes or the chords, the lyrics or the verses. The right songs told you, in some combination of sounds that didn’t make sense separately, that you weren’t the only girl in the world.

When Robert Zimmerman, the artist that composed many of Tom’s morning albums, the artist that Johanna loved to and bled to and cried to, died, Tom wept his own blues and Johanna’s visions evaporated.

Johanna was in her bedroom when she heard, looking at the news on her laptop. She read the headline in a trance, because Robert Zimmerman was the most human person she could think of. His passing was so inevitable that it felt surreal.

Johanna didn’t care how it had happened. She cared that this manifestation of her own humanity, this artist that she held so close to her soul, was no more. So Johanna set down her laptop, fell against her bed, drowning in blankets, and put on her favorite record— the one that began with changing times and ended with a restless farewell.

Tom heard the news the following morning when he traipsed downstairs and took a box of cheerios from the cupboard by the stove and a carton of milk from the fridge. Sitting on the counter beside his red ceramic cereal bowl was a copy of that morning’s newspaper. There, plastered on the front cover, was the man that Tom recognized as perhaps the greatest artist in the world. And somewhere in the headline the word ‘dead’ burned itself into Tom’s memory like hot tongs. Being a boy of routine, there was nothing Tom could do except finish his breakfast, sling his backpack over his shoulders— the left and then the right— and walk down the narrow hallway to the strawberry-red door. Somewhere behind him, his mother yelled ‘good morning’ from her office, and Tom had never felt so alone.

That morning Tom chose his favorite album from his collection, and he revisited the same sidewalks that he crossed every morning with the same dredging footsteps. And somewhere in the distance, the cars on the highway thrummed their engines and the sound was like light a synth behind the rain’s 85

light percussion. Tom wanted to be angry, he wanted to turn around and go back home, or maybe stand at the edge of the highway and scream until someone left their car and wrapped their arms around him and told him that it could be okay. But Tom was set in his ways, and his feet trod the same path they always had without his acknowledgement or choice. Inside, Tom’s gravity was failing and negativity couldn’t pull him through.

When he got to school with the procession of rainy day women and blue-eyed boys following behind, Tom stood in the same part of the lawn he always did. The grass had shed its frosty coat this morning. The sun was shrouded in grey watercolor clouds. And Tom stood there, looking out across the leaden landscape with his earbuds in and his caliginous hair falling across his eyes. Beside him, Johanna appeared. She didn’t speak to him, not at first. The two of them just stood there, side by side. The air between them was charged with something resembling fury, but after a moment it dissolved, leaving behind the raw fragments of sadness that bled from closed wounds. Johanna’s face remained free of forehead wrinkles, drooping lips, and creased eyes, but tears slipped from her windows of blue summer sky to her rose garden cheeks. And the soundless tears didn’t stop coming.

“Oh god,” Tom said, and his voice crumbled behind his teeth, coming out like a fractured prayer. “Am I here all alone?”

Johanna’s silent tears fell like the softest of rains, and Tom’s tears escaped his eyes like glass slicing across his cheek.

In that moment he wished for nothing more than a melody so plain that could hold him from going insane, that could ease him and cool him and cease the pain. But the melody man had died, and his songs were all that remained. Could that be enough?

Tom wondered. Could that be enough?

Johanna stood there stranded, though she did her best to deny it. She looked at Tom standing next to her: little boy lost who took himself so seriously. She wondered how they could stand here together and still feel so hopelessly alone. Two lost teenagers side by side in a world that begged for change, while 86

her conscience exploded and the harmonicas played the skeleton keys and the rain, and these visions of Johanna were all that remained.

Somewhere above, Robert Zimmerman shook his head, looking down, and said in a voice of gravel that he was not, and had never been, their love. It was the music not the man, Robert thought, though he knew they couldn’t hear him.

Looking at Tom, Johanna realized that it wasn’t enough to stand like this— naked under un-knowing eyes— because it’s for yourself and your friends that your stories are sung. She didn’t know him, not really. But maybe it was better to be linked together than to be alone together. It was just high school, Johanna thought to herself. All of it, just high school. And soon they’d walk through those doors, whether they wanted to or not, and soon after that they’d exit them for the last time and go off to be alone somewhere else with some other people— unless something changed. Unless the melodies and the stories and the poems could live on past the changing times, and they could learn to stand together and not just side-by-side. Because if you spend your days telling yourself that you are all alone, and that’s it, then maybe you are. But when the hard rains are going to fall, Summer needs Winter.

So Johanna did the only thing she knew how to do: find the warmth. She took a step closer to Tom and he pulled out his blue earbuds. She handed him one of her white ones and he took it without speaking, slipping it into his ear. Then she twisted her thin arm around his waist and he leaned his head on her shoulder, shaking with sobs. Two unfamiliar children mourning for the loss of the one thing they felt could understand them, gathered round from wherever they roamed and admitted that the waters around them had grown. They accepted it that soon they’d be drenched to the bone. And if their time to them was worth saving then they better start swimming or they’d sink like a stone, for the times they are a-changin.

The allusions riddled throughout this story are credited to Bob Dylan’s many album titles, song titles, and song lyrics.

87

[Going Up] Heidi Williams

Pulling down the faded yellow tent flap, I gazed into a world split between darkness and sunlight. The air was cold and crisp as squirrels and chipmunks scampered across the ground in search of a morning nibble, the pitter-patter of their tiny feet drowned out by the roar of the waterfall above our campsite. It was the middle of August, and the Siouxon Creek flowed along swiftly, its water as cold as ice.

Once the last morsels of oatmeal had been consumed, the water filter had been filled and refilled, and the food that hadn’t been packed for our lunch was safely in a bag tied high up in a tree, we split ways and headed west for the fork in the creek one mile downstream. We had planned this destination the evening before when my sister and I had discovered the the excitement and awe of creek, and had lobbied to travel along it to the fork, where we would then all hike up the trail to the Cougar Creek Waterfall.

The sun lit up the sky as my sister and I leaped from rock to rock, stumbling along the bank of the creek. One hundred feet above us, our parents strode along the trail. The wind rushed in my face, blowing my hair back. My bare feet danced along the bank and rocks, zigzagging across the creek. The water wasn’t deep, maybe three feet in some places, but the rocks midstream were slippery so you had to be careful where you stepped. We danced along carelessly, without a worry in the world, unaware of what lay ahead.

But soon we heard a roar; ahead of us a waterfall loomed. It was a small waterfall, but a waterfall nonetheless. To the right, a small mossy cliff seemed to provide a perfect descent. To the left, a slippery rock sloped up towards a bigger mossy rock. From there, the climb down looked easy. We stood to the left, but the right side of the creek seemed a safer crossing. However the creek was deep here, and the current quick. The only way to go was forward. Towards the slimy pine covered rock.

Tentatively, my sister stepped forward. I followed close be88

hind. Step by step, we made our way to the sloping rock. I stumbled fowared, and reached up for something to trap onto, but there were were no handholds to be found. Blindly, I slid my hand along the rock above me, up and down, side to side, but it was like trying to find a divot on a slab of marble. Finally, I pushed my hand down against the rock, and slid myself forward. Slowly, ever so slowly, we bear-crawl shimmied our way forward over slime and leafy debris, beside a waterfall in the middle of Gifford Pinchot National Forest.

Then from next to me I heard a gasp. I looked to my left, and saw that my sister had lost her footing. My sudden sideways glance caused my balance to teeter, and I leaned in close to the rock to try to stabilize myself, but I was too late. I let out a shrill scream as I slid backwards; tears stung in my eyes, and my sister’s urgent words exploded in my ears: “We need to go back! We have to go back!”

But back was a long ways away, and our parents worried cries could be heard faintly from above us. And so with little hesitation, my sister pulled me up from where I sat, my bottom half on dry rock, half in creek water, and we began to climb up. Over logs and dead trees, through shrubs and dense thickets of brush. The mossy twig-littered forest floor crawled with insects and worms as we made our ascent. We pushed our way passed long, mossy tree limbs, over decaying logs, and around mounds of dirt and twigs and leafs that smelled of petrichor.

It felt like an eternity before I pushed my way out of the forest, onto the trail, and into my mother’s arms.

89

90

FlyingWolf25

[Library of Knowledge]

Jamie Norris

[denny’s at 4am]

You don’t know how exactly you ended up here. Here, of all places, caught in between the moon and the lights of the city. See, that’s the thing, nobody ever ends up in a Denny’s parking lot at 4 am intentionally.

Perhaps it was all a blur, a disarrayed set of coinciding events that doesn’t really matter anyway.

Maybe you found it after a night of walking the city blocks of a world that doesn’t care about you, or after a night drinking and lounging in a hot tub at an apartment that isn’t yours. Perhaps. All that matters, is that you ended up there.

And when you do, you’ll find a place uniquely its own: a misunderstood phenomena of displaced people, long forgotten. You’ll find a place of blurred city lights and the smell of coffee stains on worn booths with red and green cushions you swear look like the wallpaper in your grandmother’s living room.

In the shadowy lot you’ll bathe in yellow and red neon light under the stars, and stay suspended, because time doesn’t move the same here. It’s different, here.

Here, the sound of clinking glasses and the gentle hum of a dishwasher are a comfort from the outside world that never seemed to care enough. A refuge for the displaced.

Here is electric blue eyes gazing at you from the booth in the corner.

Here is the faint music of Patti Labelle playing on a lostand-found jukebox, and the faded colors of a lost world that was so far away from the one you’d only just begun to discover.

Your eye catches the small things; the important things, like the old man sitting at the silver bar, gazing longingly at an even older diamond wedding ring, seemingly lost back in time, 91

for a love death took from him.

Or the round waitress with strong hands and arched brows that takes your order. You asked for coffee, black. She nodded, flashed a tired smile and walked behind the bar. While the coffee brewed, she thumbed the photograph of her brown-eyed son in her apron pocket silently, wishing she could go back to change the wasted years and wasted tears to something better, among other things best left unsaid.

Then there’s the golden blond mystery in the corner with the haughty eyes and stray glances from across the room. They pull you in, and when you see him, every old 80’s love song starts to make sense. No words are said, but they don’t need to be.

He was like the perfect missing piece of your otherwise empty box of lost-and-found items, a life only worth dreaming about at 4am.

You didn’t notice the waitress brought you your coffee, and it’s already gone cold, but you don’t really care. You just sit and watch.

And as the ambiguity of the night and time draws you in, Denny’s at 4am makes you fall in love with people who haven’t felt love in a long time.

It makes you fall in love with a man’s old Aerosmith shirt tied around his waist, and the shy girl in the bright pink rain boots, slouching with an unlit cigarette in between her fingers.

Your mother always told you that the worst thing you could ever do was to fall in love. Yet here you are, making that same mistake over and over again. And you can’t bring yourself to stop. Maybe it’s the Denny’s magic, or the fluorescent lights, or the darkness outside, but that doesn’t really matter either.

It’s an unspoken connection: a symbiotic relationship of the 92

wanderers caught in between. They need you, and you need them too.

You found the magic in between dirty napkins and cracked coffee mugs and “Always Open” signs. You found the refuge for the forgotten people and you became one of them too.

The waitress brings you your check, and you tip her a crumpled twenty for your three dollar coffee.

You silently say goodbye to the stormy man in the corner, and the cigarette lady, and the man cursing time.

You leave because you’ve found more than you ever intended to there, in the eyes of strangers and vagabonds. Of broken hearts and addictions. Of lost loves and faded colors, caught in between the moon and the lights of the city.

You leave, because nobody ever really ends up in a Denny’s parking lot at 4am intentionally, and now it’s time to go home.

93

Jamie Norris

untitled

It feels like a fever dream, vivid and dream-like yet inherently good, like a memory from the past or an unrealistic fantasy. The lights all seemingly blend together in shadows of pastel pinks and blues that reflect the light from the shooting stars hanging from the ceiling and the tinsel of the entryway.

Adolescent bodies litter the the dusty gym floor in clusters, clad in poofy, sparkling satin and corduroy. There’s a girl, and a boy, at the center of the gym, entranced and taken with the way the light rains down on them like snow, and the electric vibrations of the music through the floor. They’re hesitant to touch at first, nervous energy and excitement hanging thick in the air. He’s about her age, only slightly taller, and much more lanky. He’s got curly brown hair and wide eyes that capture her green ones, both equally as hesitant due to age and suspicion. It’s dark, but somehow she can still make out the way his hands fidget nervously underneath his slightlytoo-big suit jacket as he slowly reaches for her hand. She lets him take it, putting her other on his shoulder. She bites her chapped lips, stained with pink lipstick she borrowed from her mother, and gives him a nervous smile. He swallows hard.

She fixates instead of his eyes on the crooked, baby blue suit tie he has on that curves slightly to the right. She bites the urge to fix it, and he stresses about how clammy his hands probably are against hers. The music of Cyndi Lauper sends the hairs on their arms standing straight, and he searches for something, anything to say to her.

He clears his throat nervously.

“I like your...dress. It’s very...blue,” he chokes out.

Her face turns pink and she just stares at him for a 94

moment.

“Thanks,” she breathes through a toothy smile, her hoop earrings dangling slowly as their feet shuffle on the gym floor. He notices she’s got some lipstick on her teeth but avoids fixating his eyes on it, instead focusing on the feeling of her hand in his and how much it made his pulse race.

He knew he couldn’t be her Jake Ryan waiting across the street by his 1938 Porsche 944 with an automatic gearbox or her “boombox on the shoulder” helpless romantic kind of dreamboat she had probably dreamt about in the movies. He was just...him, insignificant, painfully melo-ordinary. And somehow, in this moment, under all those pastel lights and Dollar Tree stars he worried that the way she nervously averted his eyes and bit her rosy, chapped lips was a sign that he would never be enough for her.

But as the song started to end, and the magic that drew them together slowly started to unwind, their hands linger together as though it were their last time meeting, and she impulsively brings her lips to his, softly yet briefly before they part ways.

He stands stunned, now his turn to glow red, stuck in the middle of the gym floor, caught in the middle of the fever dream, one without expectations or lack of innocence, one he was lucky to never have to wake up from.

95

[ The Peculiar & Perplexing Adventures of Cynthia Petunia Jones ]

“See now Sir, it- it all happened so fast, before I knew it he was on the ground and I was hitting him with my umbrella.”

Cynthia Petunia Jones shifts in the cold metal chair the officer had provided, twisting a once sunshine yellow, now worn, coffee stained handkerchief between fidgety hands.

The officer, a stoic middle aged man, who Cynthia concurs must have been a sail boat captain in another life, looks down at her, obviously perplexed by how a petite woman such as herself could take down a 6’2 purse thief with nothing more than a frog printed umbrella.

“Well, alrighty ma’am, thank you for your cooperation,” he says continuing to look her up and down.

“No thank you, Officer…” she squints to look at his name tag, during the tussle with the thief her bright red horn rimmed glasses had disappeared. “Officer Reynolds, thank you for keeping our Manhattan streets safe!”

Reaching into her purse, embroidered with Monet’s “Water Lilies” and pulls out a ‘You’re a Star!’ star-shaped sticker, and hands it to the man, now staring down at the crinkled sticker placed in his hand.

“I know it’s not much, but the kids at the library love them! I also have a heart shaped one that says ‘Great Work!”

If you would rather have that one. I think the gold star compliments your uniform though.”

And with that, she let out a dry cackle that can only be described as the Cynthia Petunia Jones laugh, and struts past the criminals and officers and the broken door of the break room that keeps the stale donuts from the night before, right out onto the dead leaves and cracked sidewalks of the Lower East Side. m.m 96

[An Escape]

We were in our patchy pale-blue canoe. I forget how late we were out there on the water. It seemed like hours with the way the sun slowly slipped behind the tall wild pines and the moon came creeping up the same path in the sky. The light steadily draining from the still water surrounding us, leaving us with only the dancing reflection of the moon and stars on the waves to be our guide. Yet, in my eyes it was only minutes, less perhaps.

We said nothing for a long time, she and I, but she sang to me. Her voice carried like a siren over the lake, but a lullaby only meant for me to hear. It was one I had never heard before.

There was something innocent about the song, although that could have been the softness of her voice making it seem just so. And the way she looked up at the trees and the stars with her blue and yellow eyes, while singing effortlessly while we sailed, only contributed to how enchanting she already was.

There was a sudden sudden pause to the song. She stopped at a note where you could tell there were still more to come, but instead of continuing, she flicked her head towards me.

With no expression she said, “let’s go there.” and pointed to a small beach under a tree that had half fallen over and was now resting on another. I nodded, steered us in, and we climbed out silently on to the cold but comforting sand. She took my hand, looked at me once more with starry night eyes, and we walked out into the lake, clothes and all. The water was nowhere near soothing but we still said nothing. Eventually, she couldn’t step further without swallowing water instead of air.

We stopped, and stared out at the stillness once more before we turned to lay with our bellies up, suspended by the water and our ears being filled with nothing but the distant rhythms of waves against the shore far away. Laying there, floating, looking out at the sky that filled our vision with constellations, I didn’t move a bit. Neither did she. This was all that we needed.

Maia Elisabeth

97

[ Give ] Mia Veljacic

The woman sat alone on the bench. Travelers came and went getting on and off their trains, but she was a constant in the ever moving chaos. Dressed in raggedy clothes and holding a cardboard sign, she begged for even one penny. No one took notice of her, no one spared her a second glance.

One night Rosanna got off the 9:30 train. She wore a waitressing uniform and moved like she was bone tired. She had almost passed the elderly beggar when she stopped and looked at her. Reaching for her purse, Rosanna smiled and took out the $28 she had earned working the extra shift, the $28 that she needed to pay the rent, the $28 that was going to buy her and her 4 year old, Ali, dinner. Dropping a dollar into the woman’s outstretched hands, she closed her purse and went on her way. That night the beggar ate dinner for the first time in 6 months.

That night Rosanna didn’t eat dinner, but it wasn’t the first time, and well, the other woman needed it more. No matter what, always give more to someone who has less.

98

Untitled

Micky S. McCafferty

A cascading bombardment of neon colored artillery shells assault my vision. Sweat covered bodies toss me between each other as I shakily make my way to the counter at the bar. I turn to my left and see a woman, maybe 25 at most, wearing an upper thigh-length tight black dress.

It still had remnants of the tag on the neck line and was unaffected by the fading of color or any wear of the fabric.

Her hair was a dark brown and fell to her rib cage as it was thrown over her right shoulder. She lazily swirled the rum and coke between her hands with the bright green and orange straws, as if anyone drank a goddamn rum and coke with a straw anyways. It was then I noticed her left ring finger. Both of her hands were skinny and worn, but that finger had a noticeable ridge down near the bone.

The slight callous that had formed near the base of the finger had begun to be rubbed away over time, removing the previously-defined line. I wonder how long she had been separated from her husband or wife. Or if slipping off her ring and cheating on her significant other had merely become a pastime. Whatever it was, I decide I want no part in the mess that is this woman and should just order my drink. Unfortunately she did not decide the same.

“Hey,” she says in a cocktail form of whisper and shout, trying her best to gain my attention amongst the incessant blaring of club music. “What’s your name?”

“Evander,” I say, not returning the same effort to be heard.

“What?”

“Evander.”

“Evan?”

“Sure.” I figure it is as close as she needs to be for this interaction.

99

“Do you want to get out of here?” she says as I think she leans in slightly, I couldn’t tell or care from the corner of my peripheral vision.

“I think I’m good, but you have a good night.” I neglect ordering a drink like I intended in favor of removing myself from the situation. As I turn away and begin to enter back into the dance floor, I feel a sudden grab upon my left wrist. The hand is slender and I feel the worn calloused finger. I turn back to the woman.

“Listen, I’m just not looking for-” I’m cut off by her gaze. It has shifted. Her eyes were filled with sincere panic as she slowly mouths “Help me.”

100

[Friend zoned...again] Mimee A.V. If I had that courage to walk up to you and say what I think that I like you. That I like the way you are genuine and always try to laugh when I say something funny even if you don’t think it’s funny. How I like the way you smile at me secretly when someone says something only you and I get and how you compliment things I do and create even if you haven’t seen them. I like the way you listen to music crazily, like no one’s watching.

I like how you’re an honorable guy and you are always honest.

I crack up at how funny you are how you make light of your situations. I like how crazily you dance and I like how you’re so sweet. It hurts to know you like her because you’re so perfect together. You said that you and her share things in common and that was like a slap to the face because I know how much we have in common and it’s more than you and her. She’s so sweet and I can’t hate her but it just hurts. I’m usually not this romantic or sappy but I have to find a way to let this out. I guess I just have to keep being your friend. I’ll keep your secrets and laugh with you and cry with you.

101

[Winterstone]

FlyingWolf25 102

[The Inexplicable Disappearance of Simone Chadwick] Nate Dawg and Lisa Sparks

Detective Carver had never seen such a perfect neighborhood.

The Cape Cod-esque houses lining Greenridge lane winked at each other as their spotless windows caught the drowsy sun’s feebly growing light. Their lawns, each exactly the same size and shape, sparkled from the dew gowns that each Tidy Turf stalk wore. In several of the yards, robin mothers anxiously hopped about on their grocery runs for worms. On some driveways and curbs, cars groomed to pedigree appearances shone and awaited passengers. It was right from a real estate ad.

Carver looked across the identical gables and litter-less streets with growing doubt. He had been to many neighborhoods in search of missing people. Some kept his hand always hovering near his holster—the reeking musk of marijuana and duly painted homes closed tight. Others were ordinary, a single house and its residents spoiling an otherwise average reputation. Kidnappers didn’t like making their whereabouts known, and runaways tended to flee to havens where they could face the enormity of their decisions in safety.

This place was more than ordinary, however. Everything about it indicated a well-balanced community of cooperation and mutual respect for their environment. No ill-kept yards or glutted gutters to spoil the image of cleanliness and responsibility. No towering fences to send unease to passing walkers.

Nothing, really, that would indicate an abductor.

Carver turned his attention back to the house, and checked the gold-plated number beside the door. 3036. Same digits as the last three times he had checked. He couldn’t help it—the houses along the row were a monotonous blur of white-washed walls and a glittering olive yard. A single different number was difficult to catch. Everything was so similar here; so much so that Carver couldn’t help but feel a tingle of unease at 103

the base of his gut. A foolish thought, of course.

The door knob rattled. A red-wood sized, middle-aged man with tucked shirt and smart black pants cheerfully swung open the green door.

“Why hello, sir! How may I help you today?” The man boomed from somewhere high above the detective’s head.

Carver was so startled by the prompt and enthusiastic greeting that he failed to answer for a moment, and craned his head dumbly at the wide grin shining from above. Then, he shook off his surprise. It was quite hard not to smile back at the man, despite the gravity of the situation that brought Carver here. He gave off such an aura of friendliness and geniality that his mouth traitorously kept trying to curl at the corners. It was difficult to maintain his ordinary, uncompromising-detective’s expression.

“Hello, sir. I am Detective Carver. There’s been a missing person by the name of Simone Chadwick.” He held up one of the posters for the giant to see. The man leaned in close, taking in the bleached hair twisted into a tight bun, the sad upturned brow shadowing pale brown eyes, and well defined cheeks.

“She was last seen on a jog, three days ago. She passed through this neighborhood the night she disappeared.”

He pursed his lips, and then leaned back, casting a shadow over the detective.

“I dunno what to tell you detective,” said the man, maintaining the unnervingly friendly grin on his face. “I haven’t seen her.”

Carver kept his gaze on the man’s face, searching for any sign of facetiousness. But as hard as he looked, the unsettling smile covered any red flags. Of course, Detective Carver wasn’t as intimidating to the dauntingly large man as he was to your average neighborhood criminal.

“Thank you for your time sir,” he said, resting the poster down to his knees. “Have a nice day.”

104

“You too! Enjoy the beautiful weather!” The man replied, gesturing to the pale blue clouds in the mostly clear sky. A truly bizarre occurrence, considering the winter season hadn’t even quite transitioned to spring. Detective Carver took only one more second to glance at the man before rolling up the cleanly laminated paper and continuing onto the next row of houses.

The man however, was not the only one with a lack of answers. Every plainly dressed, law abiding, and well-kept resident had the same response, and the same off-puttingly happy attitude. They were certainly all different—being fat and skinny, middle-aged and barely into adulthood, quick witted and low key. He spoke to one man lovingly applying polish to his red Toyota Corolla, and spoke briefly to a mother hustling her child out for soccer practice. Even absorbed, however, they all greeted him with the same patience and kindness, and he never felt at all unwelcome for his questioning. It was the last place on Earth to suspect a kidnapping or a disappearance.

The end of the day found Carver as ill-tempered as the residents were positive. All afternoon searching, and not one clue to reward his efforts. He seriously doubted whether he should be looking here at all. The jogger probably disappeared leaving the neighborhood, or perhaps it wasn’t an accident at all! There was nothing of the woman’s known demeanor or habits to indicate she was unhappy or wished to run away. Yet, one could never know. Regardless, the whole case was proving itself to be one of his least favorites— those of the long and drawn out kind.

He struggled to keep his foul mood from showing as he knocked on the door to house 902. He had a few more on the block left to do, and he would have interviewed everyone in the neighborhood. More than likely, though, they weren’t going to yield any further answers.

As with the many doors preceding hers, he was greeted promptly with a smile. A woman who appeared to have walked out of a “Murder She Wrote” episode greeted him—perfect from the gleam of her Crest-White smile to the sculpted Grecian shape of her body.

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“Hello ma’am,” Carver groaned in as enthusiastic a tone he could muster. As if he hadn’t recited the words fifty times already. “I am Detective Carver. There’s been a missing person by the name of Simone Chadwick. She was last seen on a jog, three days ago. She passed through this neighborhood the night she disappeared.”

As had all of those who had preceded her, the woman leaned in to study the picture. Though unlike them, her eyes lingered on the details, slowly fastening on every word. A frown sullied her cheerful complexion, and her eyebrows knitted themselves together in concentration. Carter felt a spark of hope.

“Do you recognize this woman, ma’am?” Carver asked.

The woman continued to stare at the poster, ruminating over its contents. Then slowly she leaned back. Her lip threaded itself between her teeth and she worried it for a few more seconds.

“Yes, I do believe I’ve seen her,” she finally said. “You say she was passing through the neighborhood? When was it?”

With each of the woman’s inquiries, Carver felt the old detective’s thrill warming in his gut. Now he had something to go on! A mystery was no fun when one doesn’t have a single clue. Now, he could see a hint wriggling in this woman’s memory.

“Her family says she left her house at about 5:30 in the afternoon,” he replied, taking note of her fixation with the poster. “Why do you ask?”

“Would you like to come inside?” she said with a serious tone, and handed back the poster. She proceeded to calmly move out of the way, gesturing towards the open doorway. Detective Carver entered the house with a nod, the fresh smell of disinfectant spray wafting through the air. As the woman closed the door behind him, Carver took a few steps into the foyer.

“May I have your name?” he asked nonchalantly, using the time to examine the area around him.

“Dianne. Dianne Monies,” she replied, setting her heels next to a pair of clean running shoes.

With another few steps, the scent of bleach made its 106

way into the open room, a smell so strong it made his eyes water.

“Cleaning?” Detective Carver asked, wiping his eyes with his sleeve.

“Laundry,” she replied, leading him into the kitchen.

“How about I make some drinks while I tell you about it?”

Detective Carver contemplated the question for a second, slightly suspicious of the woman’s strange behavior.

“That would be great, thank you.”

Dianne began to boil some water on the stove, preparing the Goji Berry Mint tea bags in an organized manner. As she stirred the pot with a wooden ladle, Carver searched the room for any oddities.

“Do you enjoy jogging?” He asked, recalling the running shoes.

“I don’t run,” she replied, grabbing two mugs from the cabinet. “Why do you ask?”

Taken aback by the reply, Detective Carver let out a confused grunt.

“Small talk.”

As she set the white ceramic mug in front of him, Carver noticed the peculiar scent again. Not everything was beginning to show as it seemed. With a moment of silence, Detective Carver made up his mind.

“So, should we get some dates and possible times?”

Dianne asked, taking a sip from her scalding tea. “Or should we—“

With a swift movement, Carver knocked the cup and all of its contents onto the tile floor. The loud shattering of ceramic on ceramic caused Dianne to start from her chair.

“My apologies, I’ll help you clean up,” Carver offered.

“It’s the least I can do.”

“No it’s fine, I’ve got it.” She replied, walking over to get a mop. “But could you grab me a dustpan from the washroom?

It’s right down the hall to the left.”

Content with his distraction, he started his way down the evenly beige colored hallway. Growing more pungent by the 107

second, the strong bleach odor quickly followed. Where was that smell coming from?

Four doors—two on each side of the hallway. The hall was too short to know from exactly which the scent wafted from. He paused for a moment, hesitantly studying his choices.

Then, he rushed to the back, and chose the door to his right. It swung open without a creak, and he slipped in.

It was a bedroom straight from a perfume commercial. A bed made tighter than a nun’s humor, a spotless white dresser, and a bathroom too clean to be actually used. The smell was the only odd thing, and only made the otherwise perfectness creepy.

Carver couldn’t delay--he was supposed to be getting a dustpan. He quickly turned to the large closet, and after a moment’s self-consciousness, slid the doors open.

It was oddly empty. There were two coats and a single dress from which the price tag still dangled. Beneath them was a pair of heels, and sneakers. Both didn’t look used, and the sneakers were still stuffed with paper. The top of the closet was tidily filled with boxes of varying sizes and shapes.

Carver was considering going through a few of these when he caught sight of a small container on the floor. It was of no great size, and the dark cardboard blended with the shadows of the corner it was hidden in. About the size of a toaster box, and in the back of the closet where the eyes didn’t tend to wander.

Carver dropped to his knees, and slid the box from its shadowy hiding place. It wasn’t very heavy, but there was definitely something in there. He gave it a small shake, and heard something soft smack against the inside.

He slid his fingers under the lid.

“Detective?”

Carver almost dropped the box. He immediately swung around, dropping the box onto the bed behind him. As if that would hide the evidence of his snooping. Diane stood in the doorway, studying him. She was leaning on her broom, gaze inscrutable and unreadable.

108

“You won’t find any dustpans in there,” she said.

Carver instantly moved to the door, and she slid out of the way so he could slide past. She was only an inch or two taller than him, but it felt as if she loomed above as he passed. Like a dragon, surveying its prey.

“Terribly sorry,” Carver said. “You told me to look in the back hall, and I assumed the dustpan would be in the closet.”

“I said the door at the left, but that’s irrelevant.”

Carver felt the hair at the back of his neck raise, and his fingertips go cold. He glanced back at Diane. She still leaned on her broom, expression unreadable. There was a long moment of silence. Then, unexpectedly, she broke into a smile.

“We all make mistakes. Even detectives. Isn’t that right, Mr. Carver?”

Carver smiled with all the enthusiasm of a hangman.

“That’s very true, Ms. Monies. We all make mistakes.” He hurried back into the living room.

Carver didn’t stay much longer. He sat awkwardly asking Diane very non-confrontational questions before he couldn’t stand the act anymore. He made an excuse about needing to interview more people, and then left the house in a hurry— ever aware of Dianne’s eyes locked onto the back of his neck.

He wasn’t afraid, or at least not terrified. Not yet. Was Dianne a murderer? A kidnapper? A thief? Was Simone left alone and crippled among one of these perfect alleys, dying among the happy, flawless neighbors? Or was she a corpse marring the place’s reputation now, rotting among the organic papayas and fat free milk of one of these people’s dumpsters? There was of course the chance that this was all coincidence, and that Dianne was innocent who for some odd reason happened to own a pair of very nice, expensive running shoes.

Yet Carver was convinced from the women’s intentness in looking at Simone’s picture, and the damn smell that something was awry. He only had to keep his suspicions under wrap.

If Dianne really was the criminal he expected, she would fly the coop. Birds don’t stay long when the cat comes to call.

So, he had to force a smile and feign interest (a skill in 109

which he was getting a deal of practice at) when a blue Toyota Corolla pulled up into the neighboring house’s driveway. A man in a sharp suit just one bowtie short of a tuxedo stepped out of the vehicle, and rushed to the passenger’s side. With a flourish, he opened the door to admit a gorgeous woman in an elegant blue gown. She giggled at his chivalry, and the man grinned stupidly in response. It took less than a few seconds for them to fall into each other’s arms and begin the most passionate, disgusting kiss Carter had ever seen. Like two golden retrievers with the hots for each other.

With Diane’s eyes hot on his neck, Carver smiled at the oblivious pair, and strolled nonchalantly into the street.

“How’s the anniversary going?” he heard Diane call out to the couple. He didn’t stay long to hear the response. Just hurried down the road.

Something was wrong. This wasn’t just some kidnapping case, he felt. Something horrible had happened to Simone Chadwick. And Diane Monies was right in the center of it all.

As Carver was hustling his way back to where his car was parked, a short school bus came gliding towards him down the street. He wouldn’t have paid it any mind, as it passed by with no suspicion, if not for a glimpse of something odd in his peripheral vision. He glanced behind him in time to see the bus turning towards a small empty lot between houses. The bus bumped over the curb, then backed up so that it faced the way it had come. The vehicle then proceeded to make its way back the way it had come. As it passed, Carver could see no student silhouettes in the bus’s tinted windows.

Something is very wrong with this neighborhood, Carver thought, and this time couldn’t help breaking into a jog to his car. Something very, very wrong.

To be continued in the Inexplicable Disapearence of Simone Chadwick, Part 2

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[I Fall to My Doom] Rosemary Smith

There is a light at the end of the tunnel and it’s getting closer at 128 miles per hour. “God,” I think to myself, “is that you?” As I plummet towards certain death, I reflect over my life. It had been good, if not short, and I feel as though I would be able to find a certain amount of peace with my passing. Maybe I would be reincarnated into a pygmy goat.

If that was my fate then death might not be so bad. I’m sure my parents would be sad, but with 5 other kids in the house, it might actually be a relief to have one taken off their hands.

I wonder what sort of gravestone I’ll have? Hopefully not too expensive. Something modest, probably, with my last words engraved “AaaAaAaaaA”. Just as my soul and body are saying their adieus and preparing to depart, a sudden jolt and a “clickity clack clack” end the free fall, and I feel myself pressed back in the seat as the roller coaster tilts out of its dive. As we ascend into the heavens, I can’t help but slump backwards in relief that all my limbs remain connected, and that my life had, in fact, not ended. Clouds begin to pass beneath my car and I can’t help but think how beautiful they are and— Oh great heavens above, where’s the track gone? As we reach the pinnacle of the mountainous ridge, I clasp my hands together and whisper the first honest prayer I’ve said in a long time.

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[Betsy’s Blues] Rosemary Smith Betsy Bon lived in a house identical to the hundreds of others in her town. The windows were geometrically perfect, the chimney stuck out at an angle, the door smiled at passersby, and the walkway wound round some flowers in a friendly sort of fashion. You could have passed this house every day for your entire life and never even noticed it. The only thing that could differentiate it was its peculiar blue color pallet. The door, if you had stopped to look, was the color of the forget-me-nots in the garden. The house itself matched the sky. And if you had ever leaned in closely, you could tell that even the rectangular windows were sporting a blue tint.

Beyond the tinted windows, happy flowers, and colorful door sat the little girl called Betsy. Her spoon was resting in a bowl of blue, spherical cereal. A smile sat on her face as she cheerily shoved its contents from the bowl into her mouth.

In the cupboards just beyond her were rows upon rows of various oceanicly colored foods, and at least two pounds of blue food dye. A sickly looking woman stood there, in the pantry, eyes scanning for any hint of color as she held a small container and paint brush in her hand.

“Betsy, I’m going out to the store,” called Bonnie Bon, Betsy’s mother, “We’re low on blueberries. Take care!”

Betsy nodded and shoved another bit of cereal into her mouth in response. When she was much younger, Betsy had thrown her food against the walls. She would yell and scream and flail if anything was put near her. At first her poor mother couldn’t figure out what the problem was, but at the threat of starving her daughter, she had to try. She gave her gluten free, dairy free, soy free, nut free, vegan, vegetarian, and any other dietary restrictions she could think of. Sometimes Betsy would eat the food, but mostly she would not. It seemed not to be discriminatory of nutritional value at all. It seemed random. But after about a week, the code was cracked, and what a ridiculous answer she had found beneath her Sher112

lock Holmes worthy investigation. Betsy Bon would only eat the color blue. Over time, her mother, grandmother, teachers, and friends had all tried to convince her to eat food of any other hue or value, but even with her eyes closed she claimed that she could taste the other colors tainting her food. To her, red, yellow, and green tasted like the underside of a tractor that had just mown through a cow pasture, and all the other colors of the rainbow were just as bad!

When her mother arrived back at home that Saturday evening, she was shocked to find not a chipper chick waiting to greet her, but a sickly Betsy lying in bed and moaning. She dropped her groceries and ran to the bedside, her shaking hand shooting upwards to lightly touch the forehead. She stood up for a moment, puzzled. Looking at her daughter’s pale face, she pressed a hand against her own forehead. Then she ran for a real thermometer, and that too read normal. Obviously something was wrong here. She snapped to her motherly senses and called the next door neighbor, Doctor Beige, to inspect the shivering blue lump.

“I can’t seem to find anything wrong with the child,” said the doctor, scratching his head, “from her toes to her nose, she’s fit as a fiddle. Can’t medicate anything for that.”

“Are you telling me to simply ignore my only child when she’s so obviously ill?” Her hands were shaking almost as much as Betsy.

“What are you talking about?” asked Betsy in a hoarse whisper. Doctor Beige held up a silent hand as he dialed a number on his phone. A few moments later he hung up and said that he had sent for a psychiatrist.

The psychiatrist came knocking just an hour later. He too had a set of tests for poor Betsy to endure. She moaned, but complied when he wanted her to look at funny blobs, or asked her a bunch of questions about her childhood. The psychiatrist flipped through his notes and muttered to himself. With only a hefty bill and a few notes, he claimed that she was in perfect mental condition for her age, so he called a neurologist to see if the problem was more specialized.

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The neurologist came the that evening and Betsy’s room became a circus of white lab coats. The neurologist called a sociologist, and the sociologist texted an orthodontist. After poking around her mouth a bit, the orthodontist called a otolaryngologist, who arrived late. The otolaryngologist declared Betsy’s tongue in perfect working condition. He then called an acupuncturist, thinking that any problem could be solved with needles, but when the acupuncturist arrived, it was made very clear by Betsy with her screams and tears that she would not be receiving any acupuncture today. Grumbling and carefully putting several sharp metal rods back in his bag, the acupuncturist decided to call his wife, who was a florist. The florist looked vaguely confused as she was crammed into the room of various bustling PhDs, and had Betsy sniff flowers and finger paint a lumpy giraffe.

Amidst this chaos the door opened once more. This time it was not a psychiatrist or a neurologist, not a otolaryngologist, acupuncturist, or any form of florist. In fact, this person was not any type of doctor. She was a color specialist. The lab coats silenced themselves and looked at one another; the florist looked at her bundle of blue flowers. Who had called her?

“Thanks for coming, Jane”, said Bonny, walking to the door. They shook hands and murmurs spread throughout the room. After inspecting her from afar, Jane pushed her way through gawking doctors and quietly opened a small briefcase on Betsy’s bed, aware that all eyes were on her. From her case she pulled various paint chips and colorful files.

For the next hour and a half, Betsy was subjected to many more tests from the color specialist. These examinations weren’t like the other doctors’ poking and prodding however; in fact, it much resembled a game. They were both smiling and laughing on the bed, and Betsy had forgotten completely that just moments ago she had been a medical mystery. They played color match with different tiles, memory games, and at one point they even borrowed the florist’s finger paints and started painting rainbows on the wall!

At the end of the examination, the color specialist took out 114

a small sheet of paper and wrote a prescription. “I’ve seen people like this before with the same illness. I’m afraid to say that she’s contracted a rather intense case of the blues.”

“The blues,” her mother inquired, “as in feeling sad?”

“Oh, no. The blues are fairly common. It generally starts around this age, and if it isn’t treated early on can become quite serious.” Jane handed the little slip of paper to Bonny and began repacking her briefcase. “Well, I’d best be off now. I hear on the other side of town there is a boy who will eat nothing but red food. Ta ta!” And with that she slipped out the door, leaving a room full of white coats and dropped jaws.

Bonnie looked at the note and smiled to herself. The other doctors craned to see what could have been written in it. In it was a prescription for rainbows.

After that day, the Bon household changed quite a bit.

Betsy hadn’t been entirely convinced at first, and threw a few fits, but with the courage given to her by the expert, Bonnie was able to struggle through and give Betsy the treatment she needed. The house was painted in various shades of reds and greens, and other flowers were planted in the garden. The regular blue cereal was replaced with a new brand of Color-Os and the blue food dye was donated to the nearest cake shop.

They couldn’t change the tinted windows, but a little bit of blue never hurt anyone.

Almost a year had passed since that day, and Betsy and Bonnie Bon were living out their lives through the full color spectrum, experiencing the same rainbow of life as anyone else.

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Untitled

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Katie Stevenson

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[The Golden Bird] Samuel Edmundson (Eddy)

Grandma Jane used to tell us of a golden bird. She told us deep in the forest a bird of shimmering gilded feathers perched itself on the highest branch of the tallest tree. She told us that this golden bird, if one could find it, would grant three wishes; but there were rules to these wishes. One could be used only to change the past, another could be used only to change the present, and the last could only be used to change the future but in whatever way the person desired.

When I was a boy like you, me and your uncle Luke would wake up early in the morning, when the sun had just risen, and sneak out into the woods to look for the golden bird.

We spent an entire summer that way. We would wake up, head off into the forest, and be back before Grandma Jane had finished making breakfast. We ended that summer having turned every rock and climbed every tree in that forest, yet we still didn’t find the bird.

I remember one morning in the following fall however, one which we woke up particularly early on, we heard a bird song we’ve never heard before. Luke and I chased that song as if our fates depended on it. We ran and ran and ran until we couldn’t run anymore. Eventually we came across a flowing river winding its way through the forest. At that point the song was the loudest I ever did hear it.

Luke was ahead of me already when we were running, so when I got the river, he was already halfway across the rocks. The river was violent beneath him but he still hopped from rock to rock with his eyes fixated to the other side.

That’s when I saw it: the golden bird. It was perched on the tallest branch of the highest tree on the other side of the river. I ran to the water’s edge but the rushing torrent of the river scared me back.

I called out to Luke, but as I did, he slipped from the 118

rock he stood on. The golden bird stopped singing and the river took Luke away from me.

I ran back to grandma Jane with tears in my eyes. When I brought her and Grandpa to the river, it was calm. That once tall tree that nested that golden bird was now just a stump.

To this day I still curse that bird, but there’s not a morning that I don’t go out to look for it. If I could only find it, then Luke...

Luke would be back. Luke would be back and we could be kids again. Spending our mornings in the forest and our evenings listening to Grandma’s stories.

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[Covered In Roses] T. Corkill

“We’ll be covered in roses,” she had spoken it like a death wish on her lips, with a wildness in her heart and fire in her eyes.

It was a full moon, the darkness turned to swirls of rich purple and deep blue melding together into a mural of blackness that stretched across the sky. The forest was quiet, the crackling of wood burning filled the emptiness and a sharp breeze brought goosebumps to his skin, barely rustling the fall leaves around him. He liked to imagine it was her, whispering into his ear about what adventures a night like this could bring.

Stepping closer, he could smell the burning pine from the fire, smoke pluming upwards like a great statue. People would see it for miles and miles, wondering what could have caused such a great flame to scar the night—exactly how she would have wanted it. They had come to help, bringing twigs and sticks, logs and branches twice the size of a person—but they kept their distance. Giving him thoughts rather than words, practiced movements instead of flowers.

When the fire had started, so had the rain. People had been afraid the heat wouldn’t be strong enough to keep the flames alive and yet the heat seemed to grow, the fire lashing out at the water falling from the sky until it stopped. He could almost laugh at the fact; nothing had ever stopped her before.

It still matter of fact couldn’t. But the fire raged on, drowning everything it could see in swaths of red and orange and yellow.

The same fire reflected in her eyes that day, so hot you thought getting anywhere near it would burn, yet it danced and enticed him forward—to experience the same raging heat from the inside out.

Sometimes it was a safe heat of a brick fireplace that had years of practice lulling you to sleep after the horrors of the day, but there was always that blue spark in the background.

Wildfire waiting to be unleashed, scorching flames that would cover the Earth and burn everything to the ground. It was what called out to the world. The harsh desert sands that worn her 120

heart to compassion and frigid obsidian mountains that sought to harden her soul to justice. Grassland winds that taught her to soar, to run with the horses; to jump, to scream, to live. Rivers and streams that softened her voice to listen for things in the silence and perfections. Oceans that broke her and sent back pieces. Storms that brought fear and stupidity and selflessness.

The lake had turned into molten gold, the wax candles were nothing more than puddles against the flames that consumed the boat, the tiny fires little pins of light in the water. It was like they had trapped the sun for themselves—letting their selfishness plunder the sky.

He could hear her laugh, so rich with life that his breath caught every time it came to him. He could see her dancing against the flames, her silhouette cascading across the ground; standing proud and tall. He could see the excitement in her eyes as she gazed up at the stars and told him of all the adventures they would go on.

There had been no roses to see or throw in the wake of the wooden structure save for the few an out of town merchant had in his stall, and he put those into the boat. Barely having enough to make a small bundle for her—not enough to cover her properly. Instead, sending her away with all the wrath and glory the world could hold; but now she was free, racing the stars across the night sky. The restrictions put on her once mortal body gone.

Walking away the transcendent glow of the fire touched the faces of people too hesitant to get any closer. Scared of the wildfire still inside her. Smiling, he knew she would have loved it. No roses and all.

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trigger warning: violent content

[Start Our Car] Taylor Jo You adore the sensation of your overworked junker awakening and beginning to maneuver a familiar landscape. Your exhausted tires tread over every sunken survey of the land, feeling every groove and turn the road throws at them. Our body feels grounded and secure, yet a chaos behind your brain gives our heart a dark sense of reality, feels like we’re hurling inside a metal monster. Mildew madness masked by a fruity migraine engulf my thoughts, you can feel our heartbeat through your bones. We never liked driving alone even when the muffled stereo deluge our theories. My grip tightens around your vessel's tiller. Shaky hands molding to its shape, very aware of your self-destructive tendencies. You imagine your wheel 30 degrees to the right; mowing down a lane of pedestrians gives us a peaceful psychotic worry.

Something about the power to take a life is very intriguing I guess. Our eyes constantly scan. Eyeing. Looking for any flaws in the falsely perfect world. You remember to check mirrors, hands glued to 10 and 2, and seat belt check. An anxiety ridden frenzy, the fear of hurting others consumes us.

Her footprints never touch the ground, hovering over the pavement in a tornado of playfulness and perpetual laughter. Free from the anxiety, free from the stress. I'll bet her hands will never tremor, her mind will never be full of worrisome thoughts. Her smile blinds even those who will never meet her, just her presence alone makes strangers self-conscious, wanting her to only see their best sides. Childish in nature, never looking before she crosses the street. Always bounding, skipping, running. Chasing for tomorrow. She is the embodiment of cheesy music. Her soul is free. We envy that.

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My internal monologue is interrupted by a siren grabbing my careful surveillance. Like a prisoner to my device all my attention is directed to the source of the reverberation. My shaky hands fumble, glancing up at the road every so often.

We swear it was only for a second. You swear you thought you were paying close attention. That day your wheel didn't need to be tilted 30 degrees to the right to do damage. Our fears were confirmed. All that scanning, for nothing. She never looks before crossing the street and our fallen glances were inevitably not enough. You heard her bones break. Really, snap like the crunch of leaves under a trodden path. She heard her bones burst. Her lungs deflate. Her feet will finally crumple to the ground. She is is no longer chasing. And you are no longer worried. In a sadistic sense, we are finally free.

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[Battle of the Artforms]

Tina Starks

The time was inevitable. The tension suckled on fiercely hidden and guarded awe and hours spent of dedication to their own devices. First there had been labels, then cliques, then rifts.

Those rifts had shaken—crumbled and frayed at their tips as congeniality plummeted to the Unknown below. No one quite knew when the last semblance of tolerance fell away. Yet, one day it was realized that there must be something done to resolve their differences. Unfortunately, the result was the Battle of the Arts.

They stood on all sides of the Durst, factions united beneath the banner of their craft. The novelists sharpened their quills to razor points as poets prepared quick mires of stanzas so profound and rich that any unworthy mind would be paralyzed in one wing. The actors crouched at the base of the stage, warming up their voices to project and shatter ear drums while the physical students inspired general unease by the wildness of their movement and the stomp of their feet. The dancers tied rings to their pony tails and readied their core with crunch after vicious crunch between the seats, and the ensemble whispered head to head their plan. The painters lazily twirled pottery-fired blades between their chalky fingers from the other wing. The photographers painstakingly perfected the blinding flashes of their cameras. The animators scribbled hard with their noses to the light boards, producing paper after paper for throwing. In the back of the Durst, the MIA students twirled lassoes of cords and practiced throwing their floppy disks into their green screens. Crowding all of the stage in their great terrifying ranks, the musicians rolled in tubas and basses in which to jam prisoners and busily collected rosin dust to choke their victims.

The vocalists stood patiently behind them, ready to stampede their rivals with numbers and song. The Recording Arts RATS staggered down the aisles with armfuls of headphones to force upon their opponent’s ears and usher forth insanity with ex-

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pertly crafted sounds.

For a moment, the combatants all studied each other.

Each group burst with talent and potential—filled with brilliant stars and growing sensations and every single person brimming with brilliant minds. Distaste curled their lips as they stared down the other banners, and the air was so thick with their loyalty that it was a wonder no one choked on it. The stage was set, the pen poised, and the music queued.

Then, from somewhere in the MIA crowd, a camera chimed in recording. With the noise, the artists all raised their voices in bloodlust and charged.

The ground shook. The atmosphere was vaporized by hundreds of blasting trumpets, thundering tap shoes, and screamed soliloquies. Blood was to be shed that day. Blood and paint and animation papers.

Suddenly, mere moments before the first contact would be made between the armies, the lights went out.

The battle cries turned to shouts and cries of confusion. No one knew quite what was happening. Who was in the booth? Who could it be? No one could even tell who was who— one army sounded exactly like another when everyone was afraid. One panicked inquisition could not be identified from another, and the quick, fearful breathing from all was a single wheezing bellow.

Then, all at once the lights returned.

Everyone shied away at the blaze of the spot light. Then, once everyone could see again, they were startled anew.

However, it was no longer just the armies.

There was a collective gasp as everyone saw the Techie ninjas. Robed in black and collared in lanyards bursting with keys, they crouched in a mass circle between the great armies.

In their hands they held drills and hammers and at their hips radios buzzed.

“Now that’s a blackout!” Charles exclaimed, having appeared from nowhere in the Booth.

Alongside Charles, the Yearbook students sprawled with 125

their cameras and notepads. Teachers now sat in the empty seats, arms crossed. Several of the poor dancers who had been crunching yelped in surprise as they discovered a person had materialized beside them. The small tribe of student athletes had come out of hiding and now peered fearlessly from the catwalk above.

And surrounding every army stood the Multi-Focusers.

One girl stood in third position, a pen for her poems nestled behind an ear. Another boy leaned on his trombone, a mask dangling around his neck. Still another kid leaned on a camera stabilizer ring, headphones crooked on his head and clay dusting his hands.

Whispers broke out among the armies. They eyed the Multi-Focusers warily, drawing closer to their fellows. No one disliked the Multi-Focusers. It was just difficult to accept someone into their fold that so obviously belonged to another. No one knew quite what to do.

The dancing-poet gracefully slid forward. Doug stood at her side, hands to his hips and staring down the armies with disappointment.

“What are you doing?” the Multi-Focuser girl demanded.

There was silence from the art forms.

The Multi-Focuser shook her head. “You all are not just art forms. VSAA isn’t about being one art form or another.” She swept her hand over all their heads. “It’s about art. Art itself.

We learn everything so we can appreciate it. Not to be against each other.”

“All of these people,” she said, indicating the new arrivals, “are not just their art forms. We are more than just our art form classes. We are artists. And academics.”

From the catwalk above, Mr. Duke yelled, “And athletes!”

The Multi-Focuser paused, shooting him an upward glance. Then she shrugged. “Sure. That too.”

A long silence followed. The armies studied each other, and the Multi-Focusers stared at the armies, and the teachers studied everyone.

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Then, one of the Dancers stepped towards the MIA students. Instantly, they shied away, suspicious. Then, after a few long moments of continual staring, a documentary student stepped forward. They took each other’s hands, and gave them a shake.

It was as if a balloon of tension had been popped. Suddenly, all the armies broke and flowed happily together. Voices were raised in friendship as the different art forms mingled and soon the banners which they had stood beneath were trampled under many happy feet. Doug walked among the throng, giving everyone high-fives. The Multi-Focusers were quickly swept into the mass, and sensing the problem had passed, the techies slipped through the throng back to their esteemed leader.

A half-hour later, when everyone had settled their differences and crowded, laughing, back to their classes, two lone figures stumped into the Durst. Dan and Donna looked at each other, then looked at the mess of discarded art stuff and trampled banners. Then, they rolled their eyes and groaned. “Artists.�

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[It’s

All I n Yo ur H ead] Zoe Sobczak

I woke in the middle of the night, heart pounding, drenched in sweat. Everything was silent, too silent. I couldn’t even hear the familiar, ever-present hum of wiring and electronics that normally comforted me. My mouth was as dry as the air in the Dust Bowl, and tasted like it too.

Slowly, I maneuvered myself out of bed, and padded to the door. I could feel adrenaline start to make its way through my veins, putting all my senses on high alert. My ears picked up every little sound, and my eyes darted around the black room, making sure that I didn’t hit anything. I had no idea what I was scared about, but the darkness of my room seemed to encroach upon my space. There were things with teeth, things that were hungry, hungry for me, but I was so thirsty. I debated internally, and then decided to go downstairs for water instead of drinking from the bathroom sink, because the bathroom creeped me out.

I eased open the door, and slid one foot out of the doorway. As I made my way into the hall, one hand stayed on the wall, just in case. The bumpy texture reminded me that I wasn’t all alone in a wall-less chasm of death.

Just as I was gaining confidence, my hand abruptly came into contact with something hard, and I started, mouthing a curse word. It hurt. Hard, cold, like scales off of some ferocious dragon, drooling for humans. My imagination took flight, and I heard a breath, saw a claw, felt a breeze brush over my skin, raising goosebumps down my neck.

I reached my hand out again, determined to banish the waking nightmares. It was round, smooth, just the banister, marking the beginning of the stairway, but my taut muscles would not relax. I shivered, and rubbed my hand. It was already 128

getting sore, and I could feel a bruise starting to form.

“Calm down, Emery.” I whispered, trying to stop my shaking. “It’s all right. Nothing is hiding in the dark. Nothing at all.

Calm down, calm down, calm down…” My voice seemed abnormally loud in the darkness, the whispers echoing, bouncing off the thin, tight walls. Hair brushed my cheeks, light enough that I could see it in the near-black. My hands fidgeted, twisting strands between my fingers, a nervous habit I needed to get rid of.

The stairs creaked. Was it someone else? Just me, making my way down? The dragon, the toothful thing, something else? Most of my brain knew that nothing was there, but a part wasn’t convinced. That part refused to be caged, running rampant in my mind and fueling the fears I tried so hard to suppress. I wasn’t afraid of the dark, but what hid in it, the things my imagination created. My body trembled, and I scurried down the rest of the stairs, stopping only when I felt my bare foot touch the cold hardwood. It seemed to be frozen, icy and slick.

The dark space that I knew was the kitchen loomed ahead, and for a moment, my hand stretched towards the light switch.

I hovered it there, considering. If I turned it on, I wouldn’t be able to see for a few seconds after I turned it off. Losing a sense didn’t really seem like a good idea, so my minimal sight was placed over my fear, and I withdrew my hand. The kitchen rose in front me, lightless and foreboding. I crept inside, and immediately smacked into a chair. I almost jumped out of my skin, and righted myself. My arms shifted to a position in front of my face, ready for anything else that that could leap out at me. However, I did not account for a Lego brick on the floor, and my foot landed squarely on it. I leapt back, and grabbed my foot, rubbing the place that had hit the brick, then placed it back on the floor. I slid my foot forward, feeling for the brick.

My toe touched the edge of it, and I reached down and lifted it.

The counter felt like it should be nearby, and it was, right within my reach. I placed the brick there, and reached for the water pitcher and my glass. My fingertips swept across the side of the glass, and I grasped it, lifting the water pitcher in my other 129

hand. The sound of water pouring filled my ears, and the sound of my throat swallowing was even louder.

My thirst quenched, I started to make my way up the stairs, and then halted. Something moved in the shadows of the landing. I froze, like a deer in the headlights, caught in the space between reality and the terrors of my mind. The thing shifted, showing a flash of moonlight, reflecting off an eye. Or maybe a weapon, like a knife, or teeth, or claws, or scales, or… My body refused to move, and then I pulled myself down to earth and straightened my spine, standing tall.

“There is nothing in the dark. You’re fine. Stop being a baby,” I said, and marched up the stairs, not stopping once.

I fell into bed, asleep almost before my head hit the pillow, but when I woke up, it felt like there was a gap in my memory.

As hard as I tried, I couldn’t remember what I had forgotten, why my glass was half full of water, why I had a slight bruise on my hand, like I had rammed it into something hard in the middle of the night.

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Untitled Anonymous Author’s Note: this piece is based off of an old Pathfinder adventure I played a few years ago. The characters and dungeon are the same, but some of the rooms in the dungeon were left out to avoid a super-long story.

Leucosia crouched on the head of a tall statue of some ancient warrior, half-covered in shadow. She gazed up lazily at the cavern ceiling, unaware of the dragon, and also of the girl sneaking out from behind her.

When she saw the girl, Leucosia fell from her perch. She screeched and she tumbled, and she landed on the girl hiding in the heavy shadows. They bounced apart with a light oof, and Leucosia skidded into a green wall cloaked in vines. It bounced back behind her, ending her fall. Leucosia shakily pushed herself back up, dusted off her dark coffee leggings, and glared over at the black shape behind her.

The girl, whose name was Ellesbeth, was still lying on the ground. She glared up at the ceiling of the cave as she slowly stood up. Quietly, she brushed the dust off her thick, raven-black hoodie and walked over to the tangled wall of dusty moss and vines. “Have you not realized what’s behind here?” she questioned.

Leucosia shook her head. “I was kinda busy, falling off fivefoot statues of old, dead men.” She stopped. “And who’re you? I don’t think I’ve seen you before, have I?” Ellesbeth sighed, and pointed to herself. “Ellesbeth,” she said with a tired voice. “And you’re Leucosia, the girl who still hasn’t realized what’s behind the wall.” She stepped over to where Leucosia stood, and gestured to her sword. “You’ll be

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wanting that.� Before the other girl could protest, Elllesbeth pulled aside the curtain of leaves.

Behind the false wall, another cavern opened wide. It seemed to be the size of a small house, rounded near the corners. The many cracks in the slate-green walls were thrown into shadow by a large fountain with an engraved base. Its golden waters glowed and weighed down the air with a thick honeyed scent.

When Ellesbeth saw it, she quickly reached into the pockets of her hoodie and fished out a gold coin. Leucosia began to open her mouth, but Ellesbeth threw it into the fountain before she could protest. As soon as the coin sank into the waters, the light flew out of the fountain, soared across the room and into the girl. For a moment, Ellesbeth radiated light, and then her glow blinked out. She stared for a moment. “What is wrong with this place?�

[Seasons] Anonymous And as colors faded and a dove-white quilt covered the lands, armies began to retreat. Long ago, some disagreement had risen, and the world caught fire with it. Tides were set ablaze, earth quaked and crumbled. Mountains fell. Forests were burnt to piles of ashes. And as the winds gazed serenely on, they calmed. Waves shrunk, rock grew strong again, and fires flickered and died out. A chilled blanket of crystalline frost covered them, and now they sleep.

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[Lit Mag = Illuminati?]

LIT MAGlit and mag are 3 letters each.

You know what else is made up of 3? A triangle! Lit mag meets on the third day of the week– Three sides on a triangle. There’s an I in the middle of the world lit.

There’s an eye in the middle of the illuminati symbol. There are 3 issues of lit mag this year, 3 sides of a triangle.

I’m on to something...

Anonymous

Editors Note: The members of Lit Mag can neither confirm nor deny our possible involvement with the Illuminati.

133

[Henry]

When the sweet heat mixed with the large drops of gentle rain, he told me he loved me for the very first time. We stood together without an umbrella, me watching the rain kiss the sidewalk and him watching the drops kiss my hair.

A year passed and we ran around the soft grass, illuminated by the moon and the dancing lights around us in the air.

Together, our flimsy plastic cups caught the fireflies and our heads tilted the same way as we watched them fly away, back to their loved ones.

I saw my first shooting star that summer. I almost missed it as I watched his blue eyes search the endless sky. The wind entangled our hair as we lay on the cold ground listening to the quiet sounds of our breath as the star flashed above us. I couldn’t think of a wish.

The sun rose for the last time that summer while I twirled and splashed in the water. On the sand, laughter escaped his lips before he went silent in awe and I turned away from him just in time to see the rays find the waves as the sky was wrapped in brilliant pink. We stayed at the beach as the sky turned from pink to blue to gold to black.

Months passed and the summer rain was back. This time, thunder boomed and trapped us in and we quietly counted the seconds in between flashes of light: bursts of anger accompanied by static energy. The rain was always our favorite. It wasn’t anymore.

The lightning bugs danced without us and the shooting stars still flew by followed by pink sunrises I chose to ignore.

The calm rain returned eventually, kissing the sidewalk around me but I stood alone with an umbrella opened shielding me from the drops.

Anonymous 134

[Al mare (to the sea)]

Truly Rylander 135

Cover Art by FlyingWolf25 Wordsworth Literary Magazine Winter 2018