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SCRAPS OF US WRITERS MAGAZINE

ISSUE ONE AUTHOR - ISABELLA MCCULLOCH

AUTHORS WORDS. . . Hello and a Merry Christmas ! ! I am so overjoyed that you decided to read my magazine. To recap, my name is Isabella Ayr McCulloch and I’m born and raised in Canada. I don’t have any friends or people I know in general that are into poetry and journaling or just writing, so I wanted to show them how supportive the community is by making a literary magazine! For me, this is so fun filled but still scary and new for me. I have never done anything like this before. Making this magazine, I didn't have high hopes for it. Now, I have realized I can do anything I set my mind to. Thank you to everyone who submitted and supported me through this journey of mine! All of the poetry and short stories that were submitted-I read in bed. So I would also like to thank my bed. In all seriousness, I loved each and every one of the pieces submitted. It brought me such comfort to know that others are just like me. So thank you, once again. And enjoy ! WRITERS MAGAZINE

PAGES . . . 1 - Loving an idea 3 - The Choices 4 - Escape 5 - The Deathly Pairs 6 - Sometimes 7 - Ramage 8 - Wishing Well 9 - Happy Birthday, dear bride 10 - My Mother And A Troop Of Ants In Her Head 15 - How Could You 16 - Is This It? 17 - A Legend Of Cold And Fire 20 - Anybody But My Own 21 - Younger Sibling 22 - A Blooming Rose 23 - Write Your Name Here & I’nt

LOVING AN IDEA MG | INDONESIA

You say you love them but you don't know what makes them happy. You say you love them but you don't know what makes them sad. You say you love them but you made fun of their dreams and ideas. You say you love them but you have no idea what kind of stories they would drown in. You have no idea where they would go to rest their tired minds. You have no idea what they do to cope with living. Was it because you were ignorant? Was it because you don't care? Tell me, Do you love them or do you love the version of them you had conjured in your mind? Do you love them or do you love the idea of them? Would you notice if it wasn't them, had someone else replaced them? Or would you be fooled by their outer appearance?

Oblivious to their souls. Just like any other person would. Would you tell them this isn't them? Oblivious how you forced them to be someone else. Don't you think you know them when all you know are illusions. Don't say you love them when all you do is shove them your delusions. Don't say you love them when they have to kill a piece of themselves everyday just to be the person you want them to Do you love them Or do you love your own morbid imaginations?

THE CHOICES MG | INDONESIA Had it stare at you right in the eyes, tell me, Would you be bold enough to choose a devastating reality where only pain thrived, over a glamour of everything you could ever want? You may say you will. You may say reality is always better than a meaningless illusion. But darling, when you feel it, when you see it, when your skin would rather rip away from you than follow you to the land of living, would you still dare to choose reality? Living is hard. Dying is easy. Accepting the truth is hard. Drowning in the lies is easy. Knowing is hard. Blindfolded in ignorance is easy. Remember my words once you reach the crossroad. Choose the path you want the most. It may feel painful, but there are no rainbows without rain. Choose. Hard choices come with sweet returns. Easy choices come with sweet beginnings. Choose. For there was never right or wrong. There were only ever choices.

ESCAPE MG | INDONESIA People are addicted to dreams and illusions, stories and art. Even if they may be fake. Even if sometimes they hurt them more than they help. People always yearn for the impossible, for magic and happiness. Even if they know reality is never that beautiful. Even if they know they were merely fools trying to catch the moon's reflection on a water's surface. People wanted an escape. People wanted salvation. People wanted an end, a goal, a rest. But living was never something you can stop when you willed it. So we danced along the illusions. We drown ourselves in romanizations. Because at least they were there to ease the pain when everything else left. Because at least they provide the easy way when everything else is too hard to manage. Escape. We all just wanted to escape. But can we really? There is always something about being someone else that is so enticing. There is always something about living another life that is so enticing. I wanted it. I needed it. And most likely, I'll never get it.

THE DEATHLY PAIRS MG | INDONESIA

Hope and despair come in pairs. Yearn for one and you'll be burdened with the other. And yet people still hope. Devoutly. Stupidly. Love and heartbreak come in pairs. Yearn for one and you'll be burdened with the other. And yet people still love. Obsessively. Religiously. Drugs and corruption come in pairs. Yearn for one and you'll be burdened with the other. And yet people still get high. Desperately. Miserably. Humans always needed an escape. Something to drown in. Someway to cope. Sometimes, We got lucky and cheated out of the consequences. We hope without feeling despair. We love without feeling heartbreak. We cope without destroying ourselves. But how many of us got lucky? Perhaps a meagre amount. Perhaps none.

SOMETIMES MG | INDONESIA

Sometimes I just wanted to be here, alone, with my dreams. Sometimes I just want to go around the world, admire the view, and talk with people who may never cross paths with me again but nevertheless, left some of their impact on me as they go. Sometimes I just wanted to bury myself in books and be everything I have ever wanted even if only through fiction. For years I have grown, wondering what would happen if only I took a slightly different path. For years I have grown, wondering where I'd be if only I followed a slightly different trail. Sometimes I wanted to be the wind, mindlessly floating. Sometimes I wanted to be the Sun, bright and warm. Sometimes I wanted to be an unknown particle in the air, existing yet not. Why is it that I only have one life? Why is it that I want to be everything and nothing at the same time?

RAMAGE ELISE | SCOTLAND I was five years old and racing against the bravest man in Scotland. He did not stumble, not once, on that dying grass, Little bother given to the sparks of hope that would have a little girl thrive. I heaved and he, he was running for his life on the park grounds, grappling memories of himself, five.

For patches of that same grass had been littered beside the old bar, Set alight by his own hand. The baby bellowed upstairs, and a rebel he had been.

That fire caught his heart, I'm sure Left him to stand shaky at the sight of wind. As he ran then, did he think himself a god? Poor changeling boy. Let him be chained by the weight of it all.

He would pass the goal posts of the dying park, timeless, and laugh, half heart-broken. The race was over. He had won, And I would declare him a god again.

WISHING WELL ELISE | SCOTLAND My drabbles will be legible, one day soon, to a girl I have not met. A perfect girl whose mind reaps the abstract masterpieces meant by these endless Lines of spew.

I hope she finds me, now, impatient, by this wishing well that i call adolescence. To tell me all that jumping into the echoed dreams that lay below leaves us no colder than I am, will be.

That frozen pressure off of stable ground, Is only a rite of passage, That sense of something righteous Wrapped in only my paper mache excuses, Of which flimsy under these stormy skies.

I look down.

and hope she takes the drop of the penny as a sign, Before the copper rain strikes her darling face and the wind changes my mind.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY , DEAR BRIDE ELISE | SCOTLAND A bottle of wine and eighteen candles. That is what he gave me. It was supposed to be nineteen, sure, but a year less spent in this house wouldn't be a crime. It'll make do, I said. Take a swig of pride.

It was time.

I closed my eyes to the Power of prophecy gifted to the measly saint. Sugary sights of candle-lit smiles, He, standing homesick after a day at work, Our crying love in his bare arms. Make a wish, doll.

He blew one, three, all out with a grin.

No. Not again. This was my stupid party. The family laugh between sips of tolerance And I screamed. I can't remember what but

The door slammed shut, surprise birthday girl. His real gift to you? liberty on the rocks.

MY MOTHER AND A TROOP OF ANTS LINGGAR | INDONESIA IN HER HEAD Mother frequently sighed about ants that invaded her head. In the beginning, a troop of ants attacked the dining table to rob sweet bread. No wonder. The bread smelled really good. My mother screamed hysterically in anger finding her masterpiece was ruined. After the incident, I bought insect spray and for temporary the trouble with ants was resolved. However, the peace didn’t last forever. Mother screamed again. More hysteria, more sorrow, more misery. She cried while pointing the backyard. She said a troop of ants was going to taking over our house and making us as the prisoners. “Secure the house certificate! Hurry up!” She forgot that we hadn’t received the certificate as I got this house on credit. It was stored in the locker of a bank. “Then hide the food and everything sweet!” she screamed again. I just pretended to do what she asked. I persuaded her to hide in the bedroom and swallow pumpkin pulp. On the pulp, I sprinkled the mild sedatives. At happier moments, when my mother didn’t cry hysterically, she could talk normally. We talked about weather, prices of living necessities, or celebrity gossip on TV. We talked while snacking the cookies she made. When she was in very good mood, my mother would like to reveal the story about the ants in army uniform and boots that invaded her parents’ house long time ago. “They were gigantic ants, wore army uniform and boots. They cocked a weapon and searched for adult in the village. They searched for the red sign on our doors and secret tattoos in women’s bodies,” she began trembling, “the ants took whatever they wanted. Adult, women, jewelry, food and everything sweet.” When her eyes began looked empty and she began rambling, immediately I put my tea on the table and coaxed her to stop. Usually, if I was late to persuade, she exploded in a terrible crying: “they took everything sweet and left the misery. The evil ants! Demons!”

I knew the history of my mother and her family. She told me piece by piece, but we were always together. I never left her. I brought her when I continued my study in a certain city of Central Java. We lived in a rented small house. She was enthusiastic to see the world outside her kitchen and sewing machine. On Islamic New Year’s Eve, she really liked to go sightseeing, buying cotton candy and egg crust. “I used to buy bipang on the night market,” said mother with bright eyes while staring at the bipang stall. This city was full of entertainment when we lived here. This place never slept but wasn’t really crowded like Jakarta. This was a heaven for culinary lovers. We could watch puppet performance by paying three hundred rupiahs only. Three hundred rupiahs! And there were many empty seats. “How much do they pay the actors, then?” I asked innocently. “They’re the dedicated actors,” my friend answered. On Sundays, we did exercise in Manahan (my mother walked around, enjoyed window shopping). It was a famous sport center in this city. Everybody went there on weekends for doing sport or hunting cheap stuffs on charity fair. My mother was really happy living in this city. But, one day an incident happened. We passed through the military camp and my mother went hysterical again. “Ants! There are ants! Let’s run...! Hide...!” “What’s wrong with your mother, young lady?” asked one of the armies. He was approaching to us. The army made my mother more trembling in fear. She screamed hysterically again. “Ants! Ants! Don’t take my sweetheart daughter...” The commotion provoked more armies to come. Before it got complicated, I called a taxi and we left this place. I heard one of them said, “What an insane woman!”

Someday, I got a job. A professor hired me as his assistant for his research project during the semester break. He sent me to Magetan where I should collect the data from the respondents. Ah, Magetan. It was a district where my mother came from. She was born in a village called Gorang Gareng. I offered her to visit her childhood home on the next weekend. Unexpectedly, she refused. “It’s not my home anymore. We have nothing or nobody there,” she answered while staring at the hotel TV with empty eyes. After the attacking of the troop of ants in boots and the parents disappeared, mother and her seven siblings continued their lives with limping steps. Uncles and aunts looked after the younger children, while the elders found a way to survive by themselves. From her village my mother walked as far as she could. She worked from one occupation to another. She moved from one kampong to another. Then, she settled in a suburb after getting a job as a janitor in a sugar factory. In that place she met my father. “He had a good position in the factory at that time. But, the conspiracy broke his career. It was because he married a communist’s daughter like me.” I could recognize the bitter in my mother’s voice filled with guilty. “If he hadn’t chosen me...” In 1983, my parents moved to Sumatra as transmigration was becoming the primary program of government, The New Order, probably to proof that they were loyal to Suharto regime. Everybody was suspicious on them. On the early morning my parents and other people were leaving with the ship and never came back to Java island. In 1989, I was born as the youngest in the family. I was born as a pujakesuma, an acronym for someone who was Javanese by blood but born in Sumatra. My father became a figure of successful trans migrant. He owned acres of land where trucks of logging came every day.

He cut the trees illegally and he did it bravely, without a fear at all. It wasn’t necessary to be afraid because the armies were standing with him. As I grew up, I wonder how my father could start a connection with the military. But, my mother told me someday, “Your father was a good diplomat. He was a real politician who was clever at butt licking. That’s why he had a good position in the sugar factory back then.” Our life was on the track at the beginning. Father and his military gang were busy to going in and out to the jungle surrounded the village. I remembered, in my childhood, Father often took donkey, rabbit, bird, durian, and honey comb from the forest. I and my siblings were very happy finding those exotic stuffs. “Can I go to the forest too, Father?” I asked someday. “What for? A girl better stays at home,” he said without looking at me. “I want to trap a bird.” “Dinda, you’re so silly. We don’t catch the birds by trapping them. We shot them. With a weapon,” said Bagus, my brother, attaching an imaginary gun to my temple. I screamed in fear. “Also the rabbit and the donkey?” “We’re modern people, Dinda. Why trapping if hunting is more fun and challenging?” asked Father. If my father was busy in the forests, my mother made herself very active in organization called PKK. It was such an organization for fostering family welfare which the members were only married woman. They wore kebaya and konde everytime they held an event such as Kartinian or the village’s anniversary. They looked like the woman in a card for mother and baby or like Ibu Kita Kartini as I sew at school. On ordinary days, mother went to sewing and baking classes with other members. She joined many reproduction counseling. Even she learnt English! At home, when we were having dinner, my mother talk like academician or presenters on TV. One day, the President was going to visit or village. The news shocked the villagers. People were busy repairing the road and putting up the banners. School boys and school girls were trained to march in the school yard. We had to sing national songs and nobody was allowed to dress up like a thug. It meant, the girls should tie the hair and the boys should cut the hair short. We must be in one uniform. Anomaly meant a punishment.

It was unknown idea that my mother was sent as the representative of PKK. She would be on stage when the President wanted a testimonial directly from the citizen about the life of trans migrants. It mustn’t a random sample of villagers. My mother should answer based on the scenario. Everything should be on setting in order to make everybody happy. To make the President happy. The wife of the headman coached my mother for several days. She warned, “Don’t tell him you’re from Madiun, remember. If he asks, tell him you’re from Karanganyar.” “Why?” “Believe me. Just believe me.” On the D-day, my mother played the role gave to her perfectly. She pleased everybody. My father sent big brother Bagus to a state university in Jakarta. We were the first family who sent the children to college. My brother studied in Faculty of Economy and Business. We were very proud, especially my father. “My son would like to be Minister of Economy, or at least the director of a company,” said Father to everybody. However, big brother Bagus started making a fuss with Father when he was in the second year of study. First, he moved to Faculty of Arts without our parents’ permission. Second, suddenly he was being good at criticizing my father’s illegal logging business. He wrote on his letter some terms like ‘grabbing people’s land,’ ‘human right violations,’ ‘proletarian and bourgeois.’ Those sound great to me. But, father asked me to be silent. “Don’t utter the words in front of my military friends,” said Father. “It’s dangerous.” My father also released his annoyance about my brother to my mother. “What a smart ass young boy! He forgot how he can eat and pay his school fee. If I stop my business on logging he can’t have a comfortable life in Jakarta.” Due to his political activity, big brother Bagus got some troubles. Along with several other students, my brother was arrested by armies in 1997. Father should beg a hand from his military gang to release his son. It wasn’t free. We must pay expensive for negotiating. The procedure wan’t that easy. After seven days kidnapped, my brother was released. As I could remember, since that incident, my mother began talking about ants occupying her head.

HOW COULD YOU ISRA SOOFI | PAKISTAN

How could you question the blood on my hands when you watched my heart getting ripped out? How could you not believe my words when you heard my screams late at night? How could you blame me for the wall I built when you watched everything being snatched away for me? How could you, when you stood beside me holding bandages for my scars, tissues for my tears, words for my heavy heart? It didn't matter what they thought of me because I thought you saw right through me.

IS THIS IT? BROOKLYN | BRITISH COLUMBIA

I never thought it would end this way, When my cheeks are flushed by your simple gestures for the last time, as well as my heart fluttering while I look for you, I’m broken-no, maybe I’m put back together I don’t know which one it is, and I don’t which one you caused I’m not glancing at my phone every minute now I’m not even waiting I’m just, here it’s like my feelings were ripped apart from my body and stored in a box that you threw in an ocean I think I might be just tired of waiting for you I hope you find someone with pretty eyes and a nice laugh, some coming of age cliche, and I hope they fill you with the feeling I had felt when I first looked at you I’ll still feel the smallest bit of black coffee in my throat when I’ll look at the pictures of the two of you But I know this is it because, the feeling of bitterness is stronger than the actual care for you.

A LEGEND OF COLD AND FIRE MARYAM MAJID | SCOTLAND Are you warm before a dwindling hearth, hiding from the winter? Good. It is a hard thing to celebrate amidst a season so cold and dark. But let us try. Let me tell you a tale of how it came to be. There was once a time when the snow, now a deep, angelic white, was a dark, angry red. The red of blood, of pain, of passion. Of hearts and their wounds, when the world knew what such things were. The clouds mimicked its hue; the sky was an ever-burning fire. The kind of fire that is now only seen for the briefest of instances with the rise and set of the sun. No one thinks it could once have hailed in flame. But it did. And the rivers became frozen over with blood red ice, and the trees drank the crimson rain, the colours showing through in their bark. Even the sun’s rays – now so yellow and bright and joyful – were once the unsettling scarlet of a siren. And all of this still does not the strangest thing make. That was not the blood-red of burning living with the seasons, tinting the air as they changed.

No, the strangest thing was that, though the world was forever on fire, there was no heat, only cold. Deathly cold. It is not the custom of myths or their deliverers to explain themselves; explanations and meanings are for the receptor to be tormented by. But, in this case, there is nothing to explain. No one knows how the world came to be such a way. And the story of how it changed so much is as twisted and broken as this one. The cold and fire were ruled by two kings. Their land was shared, the chill of the autumns bore the warm burgundies of a tired hearth, and the biting frost of winter was never without the stain of a battle’s blood coating it – like the red sea that parts for no one and holds untold depths. They were brothers – in duty and in soul. Inextricably linked – the cold never without the face of scorching warmth. They held power over the world in its order. But in time the scales of their power became uneven. Imbalanced – by turns to favour the king of winter and the king of the world’s burning red. There were wars, and people found the dark, burning colour a reminder of blood around every corner. It startled them, it ruined them. There was famine, and people could not bear the feeling

of a cold as infinite and unsettling as the dark spaces between stars gnawing away at their thin bones. By turns, they preferred one brother over the other. And the trust between the two was broken. The betrayals they planned separately. That they were the same – that the king of cold and the king of blood both poisoned each other with that slightest touch of magick that burns and chills and shatters – could only have been a mark of the way their fates had been entwined for so long. Their souls the same, even in hatred, in betrayal. And so it was that these brothers were banished far away from their lands to a world beyond. The red was taken from the world, trapped in the few places we find it today. And the cold was banished to the winter with its grey sky and skeletal trees. But each power seeps beyond where it is trapped – the pooling of the striking scarlet after a papercut, the cold winds at the edge of summer, premonitions of the season coming. They ride the air and the hollow places in people’s bones, finding themselves together in the burning sensation of a scar against frozen crystal, the strange coldness of skin under fire.

ANYBODY BUT MY OWN KITTY GRACE | WALES, UK I am hungry hungry hungry all the time I am hungry for something more Something I can never quite grasp but Something other than this I am angry angry angry all day I am angry at everything and nothing I have no place to put it because “That’s not how we do it in this family.” I am dying dying dying every hour I am starved of touch There is no love to revive me No one to desire me I am too Middling For that I am sick sick sick of Me I don’t count as human anymore I have become a gaping chasm of despair and self-inflicted hatred “Why can’t I be anyone else?” I am crying crying crying because To that the heavens replied “That is what you deserve”

YOUNGER SIBLING KITTY GRACE | WALES, UK

The moon is a liar. Her sallow, pallid visage cowers behind Stars and Space and Sibilance and Silence We assume the moon is the victim That it lives in the dull shadow of her younger sister That the moon spends her days bleeding Her cruor not scarlet, but pale silver beams That the moon has beauty the sun can only wish for This is a falsity. The sun has spent her entire life Shining Not for her own pleasure But for the happiness of others Just because the sun obliges by the binds, In which gravity, her mother Chains her in Just because the sun is regarded as loyal and kind Rather than mysterious and intriguing Just because the sun is Not Her older sister Just because the sun is trying so terribly hard To be what you want her to be Does not make her less. It makes her More.

A BLOOMING ROSE SOUMIK SRABONY | RAJSHAI

A dead summer rose blooms on a rainy morning, Remembering how hard it was in the summer noon. With the heat hurting hard, Letting the smell fade and Fading the color away. Away from myself, Away from the mud, Away from the root. Where everything started and everything's falling down, Hoping for the bud that still holds the crown. A crown colors red, maroon, and yellow. A crown colors white, blue, and black...

WRITING YOUR NAME HERE CAIRO EVANS | UTAH

I’m screaming inside No word is as powerful As saying your name

I’NT CAIRO EVANS | UTAH

I can wake up and tolerate the mirror I can dig a hole in my stomach so deep I let the hunger fill me up I’ve learn to love with a distance I know my enemies held me closer I play my little games, I bet on my losing sides I cry tears that drip with the moonbeams I offer laughs with the rays of the clouds I try to give myself a hug My arms pass right through

THE AUTHORS THE AUTHORS THE AUTHORS

MG is an author, freelance book cover designer, content creator, and student who loves cats and magical stories. Her poems have been published in more than 30 literary magazines and she is currently working to get her novels out there too! To know more about her, find her on Instagram - @melifluousgelatoo.writes

Linggar Rimbawati is an author from Indonesia. Her pieces have been published in many local madeia such as Kompas.id, Ceritanet, Tribun Jabar and et cetera. Instagram -@linglingorchade Elise Gavin is a young scottish writer and poet obsessed with anything historical and absurd. When not writing or in research rabbit holes, she is known to dwell in the woods looking for inspiration. Instagram - @Eliseexcerpts

Meet Soofi, a poet on a mission. Through heartfelt verses shared on their blog, they're not just crafting poetry but creating a haven. Soofi aims to connect with those feeling alone, turning words into a source of healing. Join the journey, where community and compassion thrive in every line. Instagram -@soofiwrites_

Maryam is an emerging, Muslim teen writer from Britain who loves writing prose that is deep purple and speaks to the stardust in our blood. You can find her work in the Blue Things Zine, The Expressionist LitMag, The Cathartic Youth LitMag, Teen Ink and (forthcoming) in the Encephalon Journal. She also works as a prose reader for The Expressionist LitMag, where she works with the rest of the editorial team to provide detailed feedback for all submissions. Instagram - @maryammajick

Kitty Grace is a teenage writer from Wales. For Kitty, writing is a way of life, a birthright, an escape. The blood in her veins is not crimson, but the colour of ink.

The amateur teen writer, poet, and artist, Brooklyn. Has made many works including ‘Ceiling Skin’, ‘Float’, and ‘Is This It?’ Living on the west coast of Canada, growing up in an “unofficial small town inside of a city”, she’s been given a lot of inspiration around her everyday life. Her friends, emotions, and home playing into her pieces mostly. Soumik Srabony, from Rajshahi, Bangladesh, is currently pursuing an MA in the Department of English Literature and Language at Varendra University, following the successful completion of a BA. Apart from academic pursuits, Soumik holds a deep passion for crafting poetry and indulging in avid reading. Poetic works by Soumik have been featured in various publications, including: 1. "Spirits Magazine" at Indiana University Northwest 2. Raw Lit Magazine (Photography) 3. Smacked Zine: - Issue VIII: Sun - Issue XI: Music - Issue XIV: Creep - Issue XV 4. Rainbug

Poetry Review: Issue II 5. Writie Poet: Issue IV As an ardent nature lover, Soumik finds joy in appreciating every facet of creation. Approaching life with a unique perspective, kindness and the ability to bring happiness to others hold significant value.

Cairo Evans is a student from Utah. She enjoys making short films and skateboarding.

A big thank you to all authors who sent in their work !

Thank you for reading !

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