The CourantWinter 2008

The CourantWinter 2008

Elise DiBerardino

The Courant

2007-2008 Board

Editors-in-ChiefJessica Cole

Simone Salvo

Poetry Editor Fiction Editor Art Editor Annabel Graham Cora Lewis Louise Ireland

Chapbook Editors Layout Elizabeth Chan Katherine Chen Paul Joo Carolina Marion Charles Shoener

Distribution, Promotion, and PublicityCassie McManus

Faculty AdvisorKate Benson McQuade

Passionate, sleep deprived, constantly deifying the color blue – there are many traits that could define the typical Andover student. Yet, as seniors embarking on our final term, we cannot help but notice one more prevalent and important than the rest: the hunger to make a difference. Whether it is on the field or on the stage, in English class or on the pages of the Phillipian, Andover students try their best to be remembered. And, at a school with a rich history and in its 230th year of existence, who can blame them? Students here all like to believe that their trek through the cobblestones will leave large footprints that will be uniquely appreciated for years to come.

As idealistic, artsy-types ourselves, we are not immune to the lure of being revolutionary. The romantic notion of setting foot on campus as starry-eyed ninth graders and departing as worldly, informed graduates pesters us on a regular basis. But now that we are actually handing over the reins of the Courant to its phenomenal new board members, we realize that the age-old temptation to be a mover and a shaker can overshadow the importance of continuity and the pure enjoyment that comes from being a member of something larger than yourself – whether that something is your family, the Andover community, or an institution such as the Courant literary magazine. The enthusiasm generated by the old and new Courant boards is born out of shared experiences. Together we have learned about space limitations in cyber-space, triumphed over issues of deadlines, and become victorious in the realms of creativity, heart and soul.

Frankly, it has taken much more than the two of us to enact change. Mrs. McQuade, our magnificent faculty advisor, has been positively invaluable to us, as have our superb fellow board members. And, of course, the bulk of the creative work in this publication comes not from our own minds and pens, but from those of our inspiring peers! So, as we look toward the future, we urge you to look around and appreciate the many outside contributors to your success. We are not saying that one person can’t change the world – in fact, we strongly believe in your (and our!) potential to do just that – but we also realize that the best changes are born from a shared history and understanding. Now, enough of our remarks- Go read this magazine and learn about your fellow stu-dents who are well on their way to making a difference through self-expression. For our parts, we couldn’t be more excited about, and more proud of your potential as we pass the torch!

Forever yours,

Jessica and Simone

When you tell me I am amazing, July kisses my cheeks and ears When you tell me that you care what people think, My laugh rings as a weathered wind-chime.I tell you that I couldn’t ever judge you. When you tell me you like me, Long-awaited sunset flares in my eyes.When you tell me you miss me, Familiar Maine sea breeze holds me in its arms.But then you tell me, at four in the morning, That you’re at a party in New York With friends (and strippers?) and booze.

I am planted on the shore with my gilded trident Stuck in the silken, bloodless sands, Rippling with desperate and lonesome fury.My eyes fix on the grey sky and ancient Curses rush past my lips, heralding icy tears.Midnight clouds gather on the horizon,Viciously swept by mighty winds,Imbued with half-hearted vengeance.Something wicked this way comes.

Storms

Dominic DeJesus

When you tell me you cannot be with me,The harsh metal slips from my handAnd falls with me where I kneel, devastated, At the sacred place where finite flirts with endless.That fateful, frigid, wine-dark sea…Am I Damned for good?

Abyss-to-come spasms my throat and aches my ribs; Unarmed, and far worse, guilty of losing sight thatGood things pass, like fair weather,

And bad things pass, like storms.

Non Sequitur

Julian Azaret

‘It’s as if i was like, ‘it rained so hard that julian called me!’

Light threads of rain began to drop down from the dark-ening sky. Emily closed her phone once more and began to walk through them. They caught on her clothing and dragged on her as she walked, but she couldn’t pay them any mind. Her mind was captivated by so many elsewhere’s, dedicated in full to three differ-ent places, seven different people, five different intra-social prob-lems, and one abstract concept; everywhere but the dank suburban sidewalk filled with rain like cobwebs. A few states over some kid closed his phone for the last time. He had been flipping it open and shut for a few minutes, a product of his absent mind. He could hardly notice the car that was pushing him through the dry, remote New England township of Beverly. His body had taken on a slippery quality since his mind had left it and, since the sun had set, he was trapped by the car’s headlights, sliding off to wherever it would push him. It was a clear night in Beverly. By this hour Orion was vertical in the sky slowly drawing his dagger, staring down Scorpio through the earth’s blue green looking glass. The moon was espe-cially bright, and would have bathed the sidewalk in a pale glow if the cloud cover weren’t so thick. The rain began to stick to the sidewalks, forming little pud-

dles. The grass and its soil wouldn’t have the rain and the asphalt couldn’t take it, so it collected in certain areas. The rain that was falling became attracted to these pools of itself and fell more heavily in the air above them. Emily stepped in a puddle. Of course she didn’t realize. Her mind was fragmented and none of its pieces were kept in the wooded corridor of fences and yards. Her body had some trouble extracting its foot from the clinging pool of rainwater, and she lost her stride, tipping slightly and slowly careening into the small patch of wet grass that had snuck through one of the fences after years of struggle. She lay there. Her body couldn’t have many ideas of its own, and her mind was…elsewhere. The grass caressed her face with the sweat of the sky as a gently breeze blew through. A violent wind whipped through the kid’s hair. The car was on the highway now, driving toward the moon, and he was still trapped in its headlights, sliding along wherever it would take him. His mind was only in one place, but since that place was ‘every-where’, it didn’t interact with his body much. Orion brandished his knife through the clear sky, threatening him. The moon caught him in her violent, seductive glare, and her deathly light boxed him in with the car’s headlights. The moon being much more powerful than the headlights of an internal combustion engine, the head-lights could not overpower the push of the moon. He simply slid through the car as it passed on towards the horizon. The moon did not get the chance to start pushing him down the highway in the op-posite direction before becoming extraordinarily bored and directing her attention elsewhere. He was left standing in the travel lane of an empty highway in northern Massachusetts, no longer moving (or, rather, being moved). Suddenly, ‘everywhere’ became ‘the travel lane of an empty highway in northern Massachusetts’, next to a rusting break in the guard rail where a heroin addict hitting a rose bowl of meth had created an exit ramp fifty yards from emergency phone number fifty seven. After a moment, he noticed the crab grass growing in the trail the car had made into the woods on the side of the highway, surrounded by a fine dust. Part of his mind floated off to a dank suburban corridor a few states away, but this time, the other part

stayed with him. The other part stayed so that he could draw his phone from the pocket of his newly ironed slacks and press ‘call’. Emily’s body stared off parallel to the ground through a haze of wet grass. The blades clung to her, adhered by the rain. The puddles were growing in size and depth (the asphalt and soil still refusing to take the rain) and the rain was being sucked out of the sky in a downpour in an attempt to keep up with the electric attrac-tion of the growing pools. She couldn’t get up; her body was too confused to cope with that action without her mind, and her mind was shattered through time and space. Something on her thigh lit up and began to vibrate. Her body swept her eyes towards it. Her mind was ripped through all the places it was, screaming back through all the burning hot connec-tions between all the places and times it had been, and the moment of the present called ‘sticky grass on a suburban sidewalk’. Her consciousness slammed into her body. She reached down, drawing the phone from her pocket and bringing it to her ear. “It rained so hard that I called you.” He said from ‘the travel lane of an empty highway in northern Massachusetts’. Emily giggled. “Does N—” and at that moment, her phone died.

Sophia Lee

Untitled

Blaine Johnson

your tufty red hair reminds me of the glowing embers of a volcanoyou know if you asked me to prom i wouldn’t say no

you’ve got great muscles and a fantastic turn-outif you don’t like me back you’ll make me pout

you might think twelve kisses is overboard, but i disagreebesides, you don’t know me(at all)

i like the way you tuck your jeans into those timbalandsbut you know, you don’t have to wear pantsever

i often see you in the pasta lineand i wish you were minebut you’re not

this poem is longand it sucksi’m sorry

Pink Sky at Night, Sailors’ Delight

Matthew Cranney

(a walk from Hampton to Seabrook)

A fat man sitsIn a red tank-top and red skinAnd a red cup of beer and a fishing rod.Frat boys jeer from their balconiesAt anything that walks and has tits.Little kids at the arcades,Sneaking glances at glass casesFilled with lighters and knives.This isn’t the Cape. These are real people.This is New Hampshire.

I walk across the bridgePink clouds float over trawlers in the bay.The red light blinks on the dome at the nuke.When I was small, I thought it would explodeAnd there would be nowhere to run.

I hear the house before I see itLaughter, fighting, wailingDrinks and food, dogs barkingAn open door.Adults steeped in alcohol

Children pacing with restlessnessFive cars parked on the lawn.

Surfboards and firecrackersSunburns and sticky sodaStaring out at the end of the jettyIf only this could beas endless as the sea.

Elise DiBerardino

Lily Shaffer

Lily Shaffer

Excerpt from ‘Untitled’

Ker-Yu Ong

I know that I shouldn’t have done it, and I honestly don’t know what drove me to do it: the simplest answer that came to mind was that I needed reading material. I crossed our drive way which connected our house from my sister’s house where she lived with her husband. I hated that man, with all his false pretenses. I knew he hated our family, and undoubtedly I did too, but he had no right, as a complete stranger, to criticize us. I hated him: so I crept up the staircase to the bedroom where he and my sister were fast asleep, and opened the cabinet in which I knew he kept his book. He had gone to Amherst for undergrad, and clearly thought his liberal arts education and degree in English and Philosophy elevated him to a level above the rest of us, and his choice of words revealed his belittling view of every member of my family. He had met my sister at Harvard graduate school, and then gone on to get his PhD at Stanford, and he threw these names around as much as he could. He was always writing in his little, black moleskin diary. “He’s keeping track of his thoughts,” my sister would say with an adoring glimmer in her eye, but I knew that he was probably just writing hateful, little notes criticizing each of us. So I grabbed his little, black diary from his cabinet and crept out of the room and back to my side of the house, where I sat on the balcony which was now illuminated in red and orange by the evening sun, and viciously cracked open the spine of his precious book. I will admit that the one other person in this family that I feel the slightest bit of empathy towards is Kate. Kate, that fucker’s darling, little

daughter, who never does and can never do anything wrong. Despite the malice and hate with which he regards Lena, he has unending love and affection for his little one. It is this unexplainable affection that has ruined Kate so terribly, for when she sees how her father mistreats her beloved sister, in comparison to the inexplicable adoration with which she is treated, she cannot help but be overcome with guilt. It is this guilt that has turned Kate against herself. I cannot explain it, but when I see Kate and her gaunt face and sallow skin, I am filled with what I can only describe as a kind of sick contentment. After all, someone has to pay for the way that my beloved Shing is treated, and I guess that person is Kate. I loved it, I absolutely loved it. In my mind, I applauded him for such a great diagnosis. I admit that it is true: I cannot deal with the way my father treats my sister. He has stopped hating Josh and instead turned his hate onto her for marrying Josh. He resents that Josh’s white skin and blue eyes have poisoned our precious family, and I actually find this hilarious because while that side of my father is so protective over this family, the man is oblivious to the fact that, day by day, he himself is tearing us apart. “It is this guilt that has turned Kate against herself.” That was my favorite part. I examined my legs in the brilliant sunlight: I loved that I could see my bones and I loved to watch them fight and strug-gle to push through my translucent skin to bare themselves naked to the world. Thank you, Josh, for giving me a reason for doing this to myself.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ We were all seated around the dinner table, engaging in the usual whirlwind of mealtime chatter as the dishes were passed around; only the head of the table was silent, completely absorbed in the exclusive battle inside his head. Words and laughter escaped our mouths as forkful of foods entered; the conversation was free and incessant, until my father overheard a piece of our conversation and broke his solitary silence to ask, “Who’s Lisa?” His uncanny ability to take our loving and complete family into his hands and completely shatter it proved successful for the second time in the night; my mother, who had now turned ghostly white, turned to my father and said, “I am.” After a brief moment of stunned speech-lessness, my sister immediately resumed talking to try to break the

unnerving silence that had overwhelmed the dining room. There was an unstated but fully acknowledged understanding among us seated around the table that dinner had to end quickly if we wanted to spare our mother’s sanity, and we finished eating soon after. We relocated to the living room where we crowded around the living room table, the Christmas carols played out in the air, when once again my father broke the already fragile spirit in the room. This time, he no longer knew what Christmas was. The mon-strous, glittering tree, standing in the middle of our living room, which bore delicate, glass fruits, seemed to not only baffle but even horrify him. “What is this for?” He asked, and one of us replied that it was how we celebrate Christmas. At one point, he turned to my brother and asked, “Are you Christmas?” The silence that followed cut through me ruthlessly and it was then for the first time that I recognized myself in my brother as we both instinctively reached for our glasses, for we both knew that the liquid bubbling within could transform us into the languid, blissful creatures we so needed to be to survive the night. With the presents parceled out and everyone departed, the house was silent and our first moment of camaraderie played out as my brother and I perched on the high stools in the kitchen, systematically consuming the first few of many shots of vodka that would help us enjoy the rest of the night at the club. The taxi finally arrived and we left our dark and silent home.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I have always told my children that as long as he doesn’t get a formal diagnosis, I will never be tolerant or patient towards him. I will never forgive him for doing this to himself. He isn’t crazy, he’s just deaf, and because he cannot hear, he cannot engage. That was perfect and sound logic, and it satisfied me. I’ll never forget that one weekend when I visited Kate in Melbourne. She had a long weekend off from school, and she took the train into the city where I met her and we drove to lunch. She asked me how things were at home, obviously referring to him. I’m sure I began my response with something along the lines of, “He’s doing the same,” since it always is, when she cut me off and simply said, “You know mum, I just wish he would die.” I don’t remember

what my response to that was, or if I even gave one, but she contin-ued, “If he were to die today, I honestly wouldn’t care.” I remember crying – I haven’t cried in over fifty years, let alone in front of my kids – and she saw me and immediately began apologizing, saying that she didn’t really mean it, but it all meant nothing to me. Her apologies were for me, for making me cry, for making me sad; she wasn’t apologizing for what she had said about him. She hated him then and she still does, and it hurts me every time I think about it because I know that I’ve failed her as a mother. But how exactly, I do not know. After all I’ve done all that I could have for her and I’ve loved her and continue to as much as I can. Maybe I didn’t protect her enough, I let him get to her; it’s a drastic statement to make but maybe I let him ruin her life.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I have gotten used to it, but it used to baffle me that I, a white

man from South Africa, who only entered this household a few years ago, am closer to this family than its own father. Two of his children have been to jail in the past three months – Kate for shoplifting and James for drink-

driving – and John knows nothing about it. Last Spring, Lisa left home for a month and stayed in a hotel in Lawrence, Massachusetts, so that she could be near Kate, who had been hospitalized for kidney failure. Never once did John ask how Kate was doing, or how Lisa was doing, or whether he should go and visit, or whether he should relieve Lisa of some of the burden, or for

once live up to his responsibility as a father.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The dining room was silent except for my mum and dad yelling at each other. I never understand why we invite guests over for dinner when we all know that the night is bound to end in em-barrassment for the family. The iron bars guarding my mind came plummeting down and I stared blankly into space until my mum abruptly jumped up from her seat and left the dining room. The table was silent, except for one of the ladies who attempted to ease the tension in the room with some forced, belittling laughter. I cut her off and stared straight at my father, “Why do you always have to ruin everything?” My brother hit me from under the table and mut-

tered under his breath for me to shut up, but I just yelled back at him, “No, you shut up,” and left the table. I always need to be alone at times like these, so I went into the bathroom down the hallway and locked the door behind me. I sat in the darkness for a while, with my eyes closed, taking deep breaths. Crying, I believe, is the big-gest sign of weakness that anyone can exhibit. I could not and would not cry, not only because of my pride, but because that would mean I was surrendering to him. So I just sat there on the cold marble floor, blocking out all sound with my fingers in my ears, and con-centrated on keeping the tears back. When I finally emerged from the bathroom, I found my sister waiting for me. “Come here, baby, talk to me,” she said, with her arms outstretched, obviously wanting to comfort me, console me, hug me, protect me, do whatever she felt was her duty as an older sister. But I did not need any of that, and I hate how she thinks that I do. “No, I’m fine,” I said, walking right past her and back into the dining hall.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I remember the first time I found out about what Kate was doing to herself: she was off in Thailand for the summer doing another one of her community service jobs to build her resume for college. She was living in some Burmese refugee village and I had somehow managed to find a way to call the village pay phone and talk to her. She came to phone crying, and I didn’t think anything of it as she whined on about the heat and the mosquitoes and how hard everything was and how much she wanted to come home. I remember getting agitated and yelling, “Get over it! You’re in a refu-gee camp, this is how the rest of the world lives!” I remember the sobs and the cries and finally she said the words that would send my next few years crumbling. “I hurt myself so much, mum, and I can’t stop.” Our conversation went dead after that, and we were both calm and quiet. I told myself that I didn’t understand and I made her stick out the last two weeks. She came back at the end of that trip and we never once talk-ed about that phone call. I guess I should have seen it coming: she was never at home, she was always going out to meals with friends and coming home late at night. She came home from Thailand very

thin, and I guess I just thought that it was natural since she’d spent her last month in famine and poverty. Looking back, I don’t know how I could have been so blind – I don’t think that I had a meal with her once that summer. I think that we were at a department store because we were walking up the stairs when she finally collapsed. I remember watch-ing her: it was like the grand puppeteer suddenly decided that it was time to end the show, and all the ropes that were holding her up suddenly fell slack. In a split second, her legs gave way and she crumbled to the ground. Later that evening, I sat by her bed when she woke up, and she said to me, “I told you that I hurt myself. You just didn’t listen.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ These kids have free reign – Kate, who is still not yet of legal age, is out clubbing every weekend and has been for two years. They are rude, ob-noxious, and quite honestly view themselves as masters of the universe. They belong to this sphere of prestigious society where all individuals are acquain-tances. All the kids go to boarding schools, their lives at home so temporary that they fiercely believe in their right to live as passionately and relentlessly as the wish. Their foreign accents help set them apart and above the rest of society who so helplessly crumble at the feet of anyone who represents the western world. Their accents, their clothes, their money represent all that should be revered by the rest of society, and they happily embrace this exalta-tion.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I could tell that his mood had already risen as he put his arm around my shoulder and walked me around the room, introducing me to his friends. I shook so many hands and repeated my name so many times that eventually I reverted to telling them, “You’re not going to remember tonight let alone my name, so just call me James’ sister.” They all just laughed, and I heard one say to my brother, “Well she’s a feisty one, isn’t she?” I sat down on a plush armchair in the corner of the room, waiting and watching, observing my brother as he reveled in the centre of the spotlight. My brother was attrac-tive, I already knew that, but I was still entertained as I watched

those mannequin girls in their glittery, sequined tops and miniskirts crowding around him, with their eyes fixed on him, hanging on to his every word, and their fake laughter filling the air. His arms finally rested on the one sitting on his right side. The position of my body must have caught her eye: I was bent over with the phone to my ear, trying to escape the din in the room so that I could hear the voice on the other end of line, when one of the Barbies touched me on the shoulder and asked, “Hey, are you okay?” The concern was all-too familiar and once again bore ferociously deep into my soul and filled me with rage. Whether or not it was well-meant or sincere was irrelevant to me; the paramount issue was the pity – the most savage and cruel affection that I could be victim to – that resided in the question. I was above her pity; she, with her pale and plastic flesh, had no place to question me and my control. I told her that I was fine, and watched as she turned back to my brother to reiterate her concern to him. He understood though, I knew that he did, and the concern probably irritated him as much as it did me. Felix the Housecat had flown all the way from London to DJ for the night; I could not escape the relentless din that consumed the entire establishment, with the bass beating savagely at my ears; I left my brother on the couch with his girls and wound my way out of the room that they so exclusively reserve for us special folk – the “very important persons” who while their time away amidst music and the booze, for whom money is an irrelevant aspect in our quest to be rescued. My friends stood outside the room waiting, and in a calculated display of my authority I whispered to the bouncer the magic words to which his command crumbled and he stood aside to allow them into our idolized and sacred place. As I reentered the room, I consciously felt the tension within me magically loosen. Maybe it was the booze, the savage beat that Felix was mixing, the adoring and reverent looks of my friends, or a combination of all three, regardless the heat by now had reached unprecedented heights and I finally surrendered to the music: Felix had won and I let his beat enter me and traverse my soul, finding its way into every nook and cranny of my being. I wandered back to my brother, and throwing the final grain of caution to the wind, said,

“Just don’t leave without me.” In a spirit of generosity, bottle after bottle arrived at our table and was gratefully emptied. The madness within each of us grew and in affirmation of our youth and vigor, we embraced and indulged it and were emboldened: all taboos of daily life vanished as our speech became louder and actions increasingly extravagant. It seemed like the answer to all our problems lay in unbounded affection: The room was a giant orgy and every square foot was filled with a pile of bodies, we hugged and danced in a rage, and I could feel deep within myself my soul, and all that had been suppressed, fighting hard to cast itself out into the open world.

Annabel Graham

a priori

Annabel Graham

does Sunset snake through your mindlike a coil of rope, does it wrap aroundyour senses do you know the nine knots of sailing do you knowhow to pick up chicks do you knowhow to get to know mecan you dancecan you smile are you real can I touch your face?

dented metal, broken bottles andshivering giggling girls,the ones who laughed at his funeral, allblack-and-white andsophomoric

what about the treewhat about his sisterWE’LL NEVER DO IT AGAIN buttwo months from now we do. andhe stands severed in the doorwaywinking out at me in the dawn, an aureole, he brands himself onto our skins, he disappears

you’re 18 now go buy some cigarettes butbe careful not to start a forest fire.

Don’t spill any more vodka on the front stepsmake sure you watch your cat he could wind up dead orin a taxidermist’s windowdon’t trust your boyfriend or your daddon’t get attached to your homeyou shouldn’t believe in anything but

hot breath on a butterflyMexican families reuniting in the airporta house in Rustic Canyon with a trampoline andan adopted sister and a missing brother.

Do That!

Victory Marvin

(When I was three and she was two, they knew that she was mentally disabled. And it was real, real bad).

They started putting us away when I was seven and she was six. But they didn’t mean anything by it. When momma forced us two up into the dusty place, it was only as an afterthought - so we wouldn’t have to hear the shouting and the slamming. They didn’t mean any-thing bad by it. But somehow, that made it more bad.

It was dark in the loft. And the spaces were cluttered with things that weren’t used anymore ever - not by anybody. The air was an ocean of fine dust, and inhaling made a tingling-stinging feeling that spurt up my nose and slapped at my eyes. I blinked and sneezed, and tried to hold my breath, but it only made me inhale harder when I had to let go of it.

“Hey! Wait! You can’t do this!” she cried beside me, moisture col-lecting in her eyes.

I looked at her, feeling numb and not caring that she was crying at all. My knees were tucked up to my chest and my arms were crossed around the caps. I stuck my chin inside the crease between my thighs. And next to me, she kept saying it over and over to the

closed door in the middle of the floor. Over and over and over again: “Hey! Wait! You can’t… you can’t – you can’t do that! Hey!!” It became rhythmic.

“They can, you know.” I said finally, feeling the dust settle in fine layers over my tongue when I talked. Her head twitched impercepti-bly, like she’d been electrocuted or cut. “They can do whatever they want. And we can’t stop them because they’re the grownups.”

She fell silent for a long time, her black eyes fixed on the floor-door. Then she said “Hey…” so softly that I could barely hear. She was scowling that ugly, hurt scowl, and the film of salty moisture grew thicker and thicker on her black lashes. “HEY! WAIT!” she screamed with sudden force. The sound of two solid things slam-ming together rose up from below us and thumped against the dusty floor boards. Her cheeks were turning apple red. “YOU CAN’T DO THAT!”

“You can’t blame them for wanting to try again.” I said, swallowing to try and get the dust off my tongue. But it only moved from my mouth into my throat and stuck in clumps around my lungs. “They have a right to it – to trying.”

“WAIT!” She cried, “WAIT! YOU CAN’T-”

I touched my fingertips to her arm. Her skin was falsely soft and powdered with gray particles and mites. Her body snapped hard and stiff, and I knew that she was scared because I’d touched her. It was the way that only a few very, very autistic children got scared at being touched. Her shoulders arched up like church domes, and her face turned into that awful cringe. She tucked her chin down into her chest, and her dull, darkened eyes almost met mine before she let out a long tortured scream.

Below us, another pierced and shook the foundations of the very house, and soon I couldn’t separate the two in my head. I was seven. And I could feel the dust getting stuck between my fingers and in

the cracks of my teeth.

I decided to give up on speaking.

I put my head back between my thighs and my arms around my legs and just listened to the smacking and pounding that was coming from below.

“WAIT! WAIT! YOU CAN’T – YOU- CAN’T – YOU CAN’T-!”

The dust coated me like snow, and as my lungs grew thick with it my limbs got heavier and heavier until they were too heavy to move… and before me I saw only gray.

“DO THAT!”

Bromance

Matthew Cranney

That’s what my sister calls it.Like a good brother he shits on meand gets me in trouble. Whether we’re in the streets of Boston,Or the middle of a dusty airfield.He’s got my back. And I’ve had his.When he cheated on his girlfriend, then repented for his sinsThat was my confusion too. That was my redemption.When his father cheated and got kicked outThat was my family collapsing too.Forgive and be forgiven.

We’ll drive into the night.With the doors off the jeepAnd the music cranking.We installed that subwoofer. We’ll smoke cigars and talk.And convince each otherTo do stupid shitJust for the hell of it. This is the closest thing to brotherhood I know.

Jared Curtis

Now It’s Real

Sara Bakrow

Jessie stood at the podium in her white graduation dress, her thin brown hair gleaming as the bright sun came through the window behind her. When we had voted for our ninth grade gradu-ation speaker, it had been unanimous vote – everyone thought Jessie would be perfect. She delivered her speech perfectly, never faltering or stuttering, not shy in front of the massive crowd. She looked sure of herself, and ready to face the world. If only the world knew what she had faced already, I thought. I remember the first day she came back to school after she started her chemotherapy. There was no hair on her head, and she looked bloated and uncomfortable as she walked into school for the first time in several months, but she was there, and I marveled at her courage. I saw her when she first walked in with her mother, and I knew she feared the amount of things that might have changed in her absence. She wore a colorful bandana around her head, and she looked absolutely exhausted. The chemotherapy was taking a toll on her, and it showed. Her mother, a petite woman, looked posi-tively tiny, like she had shrunken from all the weight that had been dumped on her these past few months. Jessie and I had grown distant over the years, but we never stopped being friends. We always greeted each other in the hallway at school, and the first day of school after summer vacation always found us screeching with joy to see each other, and retelling the sto-ries of our vacation. When we received the email from her mother

telling us, her friends, that Jessie had cancer, the tears welled up in my eyes, and there was nothing I could do to stop them. It wasn’t until we found out about Jessie’s cancer that the disease became real to me. I heard stories about it- the families’ fear, and the painful chemotherapy- but none of it seemed real until I saw what my friend was going through. She missed most of her seventh grade year due to chemo, and when she finally came back, she looked tired and weak, and was not allowed to participate in any physical activates. Although the doctors never deemed the disease fatal, I still feared for my friend’s life; she looked weak and unhealthy, and she was always tired. Be-cause she had stopped coming to school, she was far behind in her classes, and while the rest of us took our finals, she was still trying to catch up on the work she missed. But less then three years after her diagnosis, Jessie gave her speech at our graduation. A varsity soccer and lacrosse player, her hair had grown back, and her friends all voted her ‘most likely to succeed.’ She continued life as if nothing had happened, and it wasn’t until half way through our 8th grade year that we found out that Jessie was still undergoing chemo. Her courage and stamina had helped her achieve a goal impossible for most: not only had she fought the cancer and beat it, she endured the entire ordeal with stride. She never complained about her illness or looked for sympa-thy, and her courage is what I admired most as I watched her during our graduation. Not even cancer could stop Jessie.

Kim Kohn

The money tree didn’t bloom this yearIt didn’t bloom last year either

Or the year before lastOr the year before that . . .

The money tree hasn’t bloomed For a long time

All the other plants bloomedBut this one’s stubborn

I don’t know whyMaybe the dirt isn’t right

Or maybe there isn’t enough waterOr perhaps there isn’t enough sunlight

I think we have to plant a New

Money treeBut the problem is

We don’t have any more seeds.

The Money Tree

Kevin Carey

The moon sat high in the sky. There was humming under-neath the wheels of the car on the road. 12:42 blinked in neon green on the digital clock. It was a long day for the driver and his rookie comrade. They had started patrolling the area at 10 am the day before. Not a thing happened though. There was a concert over in the John-sons’ cornfield and everybody was there. The rural roads were quiet and dark. The car’s headlights colored the road and its yellow dashes. There was occasionally a sign along side, “Deer Crossing” or “60 MPH.” They were in the middle of nowhere, just like the rest of the town.

The driver pressed a button, opening a crackly line to the sta-tion. With slow, clear words he spoke, “five sixty, ten – one.” “Not yet five sixty, disturbance on Firelane One, number three. Screams were reported, we need you to check it out.” The driver muttered under his breath and pressed the button again, “ten – four.” He tapped the brake and easily pulled a u – turn. He shifted his foot to the accelerator and they were on their way. The needle hit 80mph easily and the driver eased off a little. “It is probably nothing.” he thought, “Just another group of kids screwing around.” They were silent the entire ride, like they had been since yes-terday morning; only talking when necessary. They had gotten to the Firelanes. There was a few of them; it didn’t make sense to call them that. They were just another set of roads deep in the woods, hours away from town. The headlights hit a plywood sign, an icing of snow

Good Puppy

Zachary Olenio

along the top of it. “Firelane three” was spray painted crudely in orange letters; drips of excess paint had run down the board, meshing some of the letters together. The rookie looked out the window and read the sign. Another road came up on the right. There was a mass of snow where the sign should be. The driver pulled up and parked so his headlights hit the snow. He opened the door, and stepped out. He was short and round, an ugly sort of man. More like a dwarf than a person. His face had stubble, his eyes had dark crescents. The rest of his body was like his facial hair. His arms and legs were short, fingers round and thick. He had a black boots on his feet, big and disproportioned like the rest of himself. On top of all of this was nothing. His crown was bald. The officer walked to the mound unpleasantly, angry he couldn’t go home yet. With a few swipes of his pudgy hand, the snow was cleared from the beginning of the left half of the sign. It read, “firel,” the officer didn’t feel as though he needed to clear the rest. He probably just didn’t want to. The round mass pushed his fat limbs, finding his way to the open car door. He had to shield his eyes as he crossed in front of the headlights, illuminating his blue uniform and the bulges his girth had forced. His white shirt peaked out from under the dark edges of the issued blue coat. The door had started to bing, annoying the man further as he wiped the snow from his hand on his trousers. The officer got in and turned down the road. He pressed radio button again, “five sixty, ten – seven.” “Ten – four” the woman on the other end replied. Car five sixty rolled down through darkness. The road was narrow, cut into the forest. One vehicle took the full width of the dirt thoroughfare. Brightness from the headlights caught the eyes of a doe in the depths of the forest, its green eyes sparkling. A shack came up on the right a minute or two down the road. “What number, rookie?” The skinny man, caught off guard, put a hand above his eyes to shield the reflections. “Think it’s two.” He squinted. “Yeah, two.” The officer eased his foot onto the accelerator and pushed the car forward, slowly plodding along the dark path. Another place came up on the left. The driver rolled down his window and squinted

through the darkness. He turned into an open section next to a red Chevelle. It was running, purring as it sat crooked in the makeshift driveway. The door was left open. Whoever parked it was cockeyed or was just stopping in. The officer shut off the car and both men got out. The house didn’t have any lights on in it. Maybe the power went out; it was com-mon in these distant parts. The round man pulled a heavy, police issue flashlight from his hip and snapped it on. He inspected the little hovel. It seemed to be built of some wood or another, rotting now from the harsh weather year after year. Little canals textured the planks; termites must have had their way during the fall. The house was decrepit. They walked up onto the little porch, it groaned under the officer’s weight. The round man tapped the door with the butt of his flash light. “Anyone home?” he paused, “A disturbance was reported.” The round man hit the door harder. “It’s the police, open up.” The door screeched open slowly. There was nobody on the other side though. The raps from the flashlight must have nudged it open. The officer drew his pistol and took gentle steps into the dark-ness of the rickety house. The rookie followed. “Anybody home?” the officer repeated as he eased himself into the unknown. “Nope, nope” Replied a little voice playfully The officer stopped, somewhat confused. “It’s the police, show yourself.” He searched the mudroom they found themselves in with the flashlight. “Nope, nope” said the voice again. The officer was annoyed. “Is this Firelane One number three?” “Nope, nope” The officer was walking again, further into the house, letting his flashlight guide him. “Were you screaming earlier?” You could hear a smile in the childish voice now, “Nope, nope.” The two men came to a T. “Is that all you can say little girl?” She sounded a little offended “No.” Her answer came from the left. The round man turned and followed the voice. His flashlight

wandered around the walls. The wallpaper was striped and covered with little fruits and cornucopias. Wainscoting clung to the bottom half of each side. A piece of plaster had fallen from the ceiling and a chunk of white powder was in the middle of the hallway. “Is your mum home?” “Nope, nope” the little voice giggled. “You’re silly.” The rookie was silent still, though she was beginning to annoy him too. The officer, on the other hand, his face was reddening with anger. They both continued down the hallway, the floor squeaking with each step. The fat man came to a closed door. He was muttering again. “Where the hell are you?” Giggles slipped under the door and to the officer’s ears. He forced the weight of his massive hip into the door; slamming it open and sending a shoot of pain through his lower back. He dropped his flashlight and its beam was eaten by the darkness. There was some light in the next room, though. A dull yellow glow from a candle illuminated the voice’s face. The flame danced in her eyes. She giggled, “You found me!” A smile curled both ends of her little mouth. She quickly blew out the candle. “Oops,” she paused, “you lost me.” She giggled again and the patter of bare feet drifted away as she moved to another room. The rookie stepped in now, “Little girl, why are you running?” “Why are you running?” she mocked him in her childish voice and laughed to herself. “You’ll see.” The smile in her voice was even more evident now. The rookie squeezed around the officer, who was blocking the doorway. He was cursing now as he braced his back with an open palm. The younger man, taller than and not as stubby as the officer, followed where the feet had gone. He pulled out his flashlight and quickly found the door the giggles were coming from. There was a window opposite the doorway the rookie entered. The moon’s light embraced the girl. She was in a white nightgown that was stretched tight by her crossed legs. Only her body was silhouetted, but she seemed to be stroking something in the darkness just outside the evening light. She was still giggling her bizarre giggle.

“Little girl, is this Firelane One number three?” “Nope, nope, I already told you, silly,” she said playfully to the rookie. “What is this address then?” he said annoyed “It don’ matter.” The corners of her lips curled again. “We were sent to that address to inspect a disturbance. Why doesn’t it matter?” He was baffled by the demon child. The beam from his flashlight was now trained on her face. “Look around,” this was the most serious she had sounded. The rookie scanned the room with his flashlight. The girl sat on a blood stained mattress. The room had fresh pools of crimson scattered around. Horror struck him. Death had found his nose. The flashlight was shaking now, trained back on the child’s face. It followed her pale arm to what she was petting. He found a beastly dog, mouth open, drooling. Its fangs were poised and an eye was squinting from the blinding light. A purring growl grew from its throat and filled the rookie with fear. Half of the animals face was torn off, revealing the thick skull and eye socket. One of its front paws was skinless as well, making the powerful cords of muscle visible. It got to its feet and walked confidently around the room. The rookie pursued the monster with his light, still shaking. Its unmasked eye was glaring at him. Light reached into the creature’s ribcage through the rotten holes in its abdomen. “Wha… What the hell?” his eyes were wide with fear. “How is it living?” He looked again at the little girl. Her face had a smirk painted on it. Probably because she noticed he lost her pet. The rookie searched the room again with his light. The walls were splashed with red and brown. “Just leave. You don’t want to end up like them.” She pointed to the far corner where a mass of rotting flesh and bones sat. The flashlight moved up from the bottom, casting shadows of the lifeless tis-sue and jagged bone. A fresh, seemingly complete head rested on top, eyes wide open, glittering in the brightness. In the silence, a faint buzz could be heard. The creature had come back to its master and curled up lovingly with her. Its body was cold on her skin. She caressed its face gently and fondled its soggy, decaying ear. The rookie threw up.

not the evangelist [M44019.70.7065]

Annabel Graham

people are wires and Tonight I am losing my time I am wasting my mind I am losing. I am losing

him, him, him

I am waiting forthe tube the plastic

I am waiting for Newthings. do we lie toomuch? We lie because wemust

I am a she, I am she, SHE

can she create? Canshe be the child?she in a blue dress,she in a pink dress,She in the rain.

Tonight, I am you. Tonight I am cold black countertops I am palm trees I am yellow walls I am a knitted sweater I am a knitted mind, a KNOT not notnot likethe ones in your back

scream for me so I don’t have to listen becauseI can’t lie in Midwestern grasswith my ankle tied to yours. Can I becomethe sculptor, the painter, the architect,the agonizer, the bacchant?Will you crown me with a laurel wreath and pledge your loyalty to me?

She is the lion.You are the gingham sheetswhere bad things happened once butnow that’s all over,we are the ecstasyand the field of electric daisies. im, him, him. He.He who knew him MaybeMaybe

No. Yes.

Yes. He who lies there in the grass, in the bed, he whose soul is wrapped around my throat the cornea under a high-power lens

he has a strawberry on his head, a big strawberry. If only he’d been wearing

a helmet.What helmet?Of all people you’d have thought he’d recognizeher.

Her. He.I look at you throughglassyou are the honeybeeI remove your wings and then I try to piece you back together butit’s all wrong you’retoodelicate and your ankle hurts mine. I knew him before the lights dimmed,Before white cinderblock and dimensions andgeometry. Before.

take out my eyes.Peel away my senses take out my eyes.

Now SHE lays screamingat the bottom of the drivewayhis head pouring friendship into the bowl of the burnt canyon,strung with wires and Christmas lights becauseit’s still winter in some parts of the world,just not here.

Jessica Siemer

Late Afternoon

Guy-Karim Puymartin

The blooming shadows were left to run;As the sea folded,

loosely,Over the horizon.The clouds gilded

Came undone.And the sky lost its shingles

Before the setting sun.

Annie Li

Happenstanza

Elise DiBerardino

She couldn’t ignore the magnitude, or rather,The altitude of the view before her eyes.Forgotten mantras rung in her ears- “Don’t look down.”But “Don’t look back” was all she thought.“Anywhere,” she yelled into the wind,Because she though she heard it ask- “Where do you want to go?”

As it were, she knew where she wanted to go.It was a place she felt she ratherCouldn’t articulate. Of course the windUnderstood- it was forcing her to open her eyes.Closing them left her in a world of thoughtAnd closing them sent her spiraling down.

It took courage not to step down.It took resolve to even go,But here she was, and here she thoughtOf forgotten games of Would-You-RatherAnd bottles spinning around in her eyes.She felt free and easy as the wind.

Since those times, she had felt a windOf change- it brought her life crashing downAnd flashing around before her eyes.All she wanted, all she ever wanted was for it to go

Away. After all was said and done, she ratherFancied that high-flying, free-falling thought.

“One more rush,” she thought,“Let me feel one more rush of wind,And I’ll go.” Well, well- would you ratherBe flying high or falling down?She said it again, “I’ll go!”And she didn’t, she wouldn’t, she couldn’t close her eyes.

“Up. Up. Look up.” She had to keep her eyesOff the ground- but now the very thoughtIntrigued her. “Where do you want to go?”“I just want to follow that rush of wind.”“And what if it’s rushing down?”“I think… I think I would rather…

I would rather give it no more thought.”Her open eyes were stinging in the wind,And without looking down, she let go.

Wonder

Annabel Graham

the WonderBread truckeases its way down Route 66 like a block of melting ice creamgloriousred yellow blue spots fresh/ Fresh/ FRESHgone like white gulls, pieces ofballed-up paper, discarded bits of essayon a dark river, i think the current’s going this way, the coppered lichen arches, anchoredto the muddy bottom and we are so

small

part of something BIGGERa shard of glass, butare we? Or is it just about

little Asian girlswho have skinny arms and can yell loud and Be Aggressive andboys who flaunt the transformation of theirvulnerability

shedding their skins like Roan Inish seals, “(I’m) better than you but” I’m an artist, a fraying strip of satin ribbon on thisgreat river with the greatcurrent and the great wind. Me,sun-burnt mind and all, sleeping hot and tangled on vibrating Plexiglasdoes anyone else Wonder whypeople stay in love?

Stereotyped

Matthew Cranney

Irish American:Pig headedIntolerantBelligerentLaw and orderCops and party politiciansDrunk and bumblingWhistling go-luckyStubborn sunnovabitch

Long-haired teenager:A hoodlumAnd a potheadJust another rich Andover kidNo need to take me seriously.I’m just a counter culture bumA wannabe hipsterI’ve had everything handed to me.

I’ve been stereotyped And it’s probably all trueDepending on your point of view.But cut all the bullshitI’m just a guyWho maybe shows up a little lateJust trying to connect with peopleBe helpful to peopleTo love peopleand to be a person

Lily Shaffer

Lily Shaffer

Mr. Gonpo

Sophia Lee

His name is Chemi Gonpo. Mr. Gonpo for short. A shaved head, big eyes, and elf-like ears distinguish this boy from the rest of the children at the orphanage. His dark skin is rough around his jaws and speckles of dirt spill across his face like freckles. The nose of a newborn is gently placed in the middle of his face, still delicate to the touch. Beneath his nostrils, a white-crusted layer of mucus sits, never to be washed away. Every now and then, thin lips hold up a weak smile ready to be broken of its slight happi-ness. He also rarely talks. He possesses the emotions of a rock. If kicked, he won’t cry. If loved, he won’t love back. If talked to, he might nod in agreement and then go back to being completely silent. But when words do find a way out of his mouth, they are quiet and they flow like a river moving further and further away; getting softer and softer. He never shouts with joy or frustration, he just nods. Nodding is what he does best. Most people give up talking to him because of this. But I didn’t. We played together. He showed me his toy collection, a piece of string to play cat’s cradle with and a couple of blocks. We didn’t talk, and we didn’t even look at each other. Our hands made up the conversation. Our fingers were intertwined into the string and when one mistake was made, the other slapped the mistaken hand. It went on like this for hours. I think he liked it. Last night, Mr. Gonpo fell off his bed. “He rolled off from up there and then banged his head on this thing.” The man pointed to the white bar next to the bed. “It’s supposed to keep these kids from falling off but it sure as hell didn’t.” I looked up at the top bunk bed. The white iron was stained with a crusty red-brown. The

white sheets were painted with splattered red. And on the floor, the cement floor, was a puddle of blood. He fell seven feet. His left leg that hung off the edge pulled him down like the weight of an anchor sinking faster and faster towards the ocean floor. His chest slammed into the bed below and his face crashed to the floor. The only sound that could be heard was a quick “thud.” Nobody woke up. Mr. Gonpo didn’t scream. He didn’t yell. He didn’t even sigh in pain. He lay there staring at the dust underneath the bed. “That kid’s crazy. I wouldn’t be surprised if he died and no one cared. Crazy kid, crazy kid.” The man muttered. I walked over to Mr. Gonpo. Every step seemed to echo because of the silence. My feet felt like bags of lead, getting heavier and heavier as I tried to be quieter. He was lying down on the bottom bunk. His back was faced towards me and his head was faced towards the wall. A red wool blanket torn and stitched covered him. It moved steadily up and down in the same rhythm of his deep breaths. I stood over him, wondering what I should do. “You can wake him up.” The old man said with annoyance. “He’s not dead.” I turned around, gave a fake smile, and sat down next to Mr. Gonpo He turned around and looked at me. One of his eyes was com-pletely swollen shut. It was the color of an unripe blueberry; a light purplish blue. The other was wide open, staring at me. His eyes showed no emotion. He just stared. I smiled a weak grin and lay down next to him. I put my hand on his chest and I could feel his breaths getting shorter and quicker. A raspy sound caved into his lungs and mucus swal-lowed coughs came out. It was a painful cycle that I had to bear, lying there next to him. His body seemed so little, and so fragile helplessly resting on the bed. The sounds of the other seventy-nine children outside filled the silence of the room. We just laid there with our eyes closed, resting. When my eyes opened, my right arm was laid out and Mr. Gonpo’s head was gently placed on it. His head was looking down and was faced towards me with his arm on my stomach. I smiled and grabbed his hand. It was cold. I put my hand on his chest and I could no longer feel it moving. I stared at his face. His eyes were closed, his lips were motionless and every-thing was silent. Mr. Gonpo fell into an endless sleep.

The ghost who walks into my dreams, whose face I have never seen

Mercy Bell

his boots carry dust prints and leather laces with metal tips and his hands hold his dead baby, resting in a silver picture frame, and

the clarity of that photo is not lent to his face,

so shadowed by moonlight casting off its heavy beams.

he sits then, beside me on the bed to take off his boots and stroke the worn fabric and gaze at his child so we might sleep

he is so real in his grief

Taryn Wiens

Untitled

Sophia Bernazzani

We met when we were nine years old at a biannual family re-union on the lake. Everyone stays in the Anderson cottage and gets their socks lost in the laundry. Memories are a blur of swimming and waiting for the next installment of Star Wars to be released in theaters. My long hair was completely matted with sand. All of the kids ate chips, popcorn, soda, and little else. I don’t remember much besides the bunkroom. It was a dank little room in the base-ment of the house. Twelve people were able to sleep comfortably. I returned to the lake when I was twelve. I was a bridesmaid in my aunt’s wedding and carried pink flowers. My seventeen-year-old cousin bartended and my aunt danced with a boy ten years her junior. I sat quietly at a table sipping soda water and reading. I had anticipated boredom and poor music selection, brought a book in my purse, and was content. I didn’t complain of sore heels at the end of the night, either. This summer I was fifteen and so was he. He was a grade above me. While my older cousins talked about college admissions and income tax and my younger cousins and brothers talked about video games and football, he and I talked about everything in be-tween the two categories of young adulthood and childhood: books and music, style and identity, and politics and religion. I fervently attacked his music taste, and he admonished my so-called “political apathy.” I appreciated his willingness to communicate openly and honestly. We spent the days and nights together, in a fairly innocent way. We swam in the lake. He built sandcastles, and I dug deep

moats surrounding them. He made us cheese sandwiches one after-noon, and we talked about the death penalty and love. We snuck out at one in the morning for no apparent reason. The moon lit the sand eerily with a pale gray glow, and the gentle waves lapped at our bare feet. We held hands a lot. I liked how warm his were. I was brutally honest, and he told lies. He told me he could “see me, but really see me.” I’m not even sure if I can see myself. We snuck glances at each other and made ungainly conversation. Pre-tended we hadn’t noticed. Neither of us can whistle nor dream in color. And black and white makes everything seem surreal. He distracted me and made me nervous. One night, I wove a necklace out of my pants’ drawstring solely to distract myself from his eyes upon me. I felt a swooping sensation with every touch and every smile. His fingers interlaced in mine made my heart beat pain-fully against my ribs. But these were all feelings I craved. The brush of sheets against my bare legs and his soft lips upon mine prompted me to be alive and lucid, to desperately remember every moment as it passed too soon. Airports are noisy with the reverberations of goodbyes. The blinking fluorescent screens flashed in my eyes, and my throat constricted painfully as I turned to face him. He wrapped him arms around me, and my mind went blank. I kissed him back unfeelingly. Once I returned home, we talked on the telephone a few times. Conversation was fine, but we both sought an explanation. The why’s, how’s, and when’s never escaped our lips; instead, they began to form doubt. He stopped calling, and I stopped waiting. The abruptness stung. The pain flowed from me as I reclined in the bathtub. Every-thing reminded me of him: the ambient music playing upstairs, my wet hair plastered to the back of my neck, my closed eyelids. I shed not one tear, but I slept for a while. When I awoke, the blood had ceased to flow, and my wounds had begun to heal. I am forever altered. I continue to replay in slow motion everything I said, everything he saw, and everything I felt. He was neither my first love nor my first kiss, but after knowing him, things just seemed to make a little more sense, even if only for that brief moment when our knees touched in the car.

Snow

Victoria Wilmarth

If I were snow I would watch the world fall up shooting towards me in slow motion

I would be pure A slight chill amidst my untainted beauty

I would float onto the nose of a child and watch the delight sparkle in eyes like stars appearing in an ink blue sky

If I were snow I would peer curiously at the inside of a cloud and from this vantage point see the wonders of the world

I would be nothing and everything on my own… invisible Yet essential to the soft white blanket Clinging to the threadbare chill of the ground

If I were snow I would be free to imagine falling anywhere falling deeply into an emotion I can’t control

Yes, if I were snow I would fall, No jump into something beyond. me

Lucile Arnold

Sophia Lee

Sophia Lee

Simone Salvo

Untitled

Alexander Moss

Note from the Author: I feel old these days. I feel as if I have lost some necessary part of what once kept me young and blameless. Now my actions inevitably have consequences, and it all becomes very scary. Think back to when you were young, and some unspeakable monstrosity hid in your closet, or under the bed, but always in that ever-reaching darkness. That’s where I believe this generation stands. My genera-tion. At the edge of a dark abyss, its depths holding a terror that even the most imaginative or cynic man could not dream up. And so we tremble a little, and we stand at the edge and wonder what could possibly be waiting. It’s a very humbling experience, and there is not much to do but hide endlessly behind sarcasm and disinterest. I believe mainstream music is the way music was meant to be made. If it pleases the masses, it must be excellent. Now that’s not what you expected to hear, no, after all we must be united in our contrarianism. But it’s what I believe, regardless of whether or not I can stand the stuff. I also always believed in the avoidance of beginning any piece of writing with a definition. After all, as Von-negut said, we must never become boring, and clichés are the first step. But I’ll do it anyway. Why? Because fuck it, that’s why, and fuck Vonnegut, that genius. Catharsis: the discharge of pent-up emotions so as to result in the alleviation of symptoms or the permanent relief of the condi-tion.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Prologue: He had dozed off again, and sat up startled, taking a good look around. He rubbed his eyes, checked his watch, stretched. For once extended his arms and really stretched, the kind of stretch that tightened every muscle of his body. Then he felt better. There was a Time sitting on an otherwise unoccupied table to his left and he picked it up and flipped through. There was nothing there that could really hold his interest. Something about Wal-Mart, a failed car bombing, the upcoming election. Wyatt had never voted before, although he had had four opportunities to do so. He didn’t much care for politics, all the intricacies and middle ground. It inevitably seemed like no one ever really won anything, just delayed the loss a little longer. He set the magazine down where he had found it and sat there pensively for a little while. It was okay in this room. The water cooler bubbled and he glanced up at an amateur watercolor. It was a harbor, overly colorful sailboats dotting the horizon. There was a sunset. It had a calming effect, and Wyatt was aware for the first time that he had been agitated about something. He couldn’t have guessed when it had started – a few hours maybe, a few years –and now only the absence of the anxiety had revealed its existence. Funny how some things work, he thought, and smiled. There were three others in the room with him. There was a woman who looked to be about seventy rummaging through her handbag. A young mother sat with her daughter and talked softly on a cell phone. She looked worried. Wyatt wondered for a moment what the problem might be, then settled down into his chair and closed his eyes. He thought about a variety of things. He thought about his son, predominantly. He dreamt. There was a pool, and a commotion. A man was drowning, there was no doubt, and Wyatt pushed his way through the endless crowd. Then abruptly he was there, at the edge of the water, without even really recalling how he had done it. He swiveled his head and found to his surprise that each pair of eyes were trained on him. Every man, woman and child he had ever known expected him to dive in and save the man, as if that was the only logical conclusion. Then there gasps of shock and dismay, and he was without warning in the pool. He opened his eyes and the thick chlorine clawed mercilessly at them. The man

was struggling; his suit stuck in the drain and his face obscured by bubbles like fierce, globular bees, swarming him and his harried motions. They represented his last frantic breaths. On Wyatt’s way down to the bottom, he all at once felt the burden of a sharp realiza-tion. The victim was him. He would reach the drain and regardless of whether or not he could free the man, he was sure he would be looking at himself, some twisted and distorted version, as if viewed through cracked glass, a microscope even. This was a new feeling. Wyatt was keenly aware he was dreaming, and even more aware of the metaphoric power his dreams held. He reached out and grabbed a hold of a wildly thrashing arm while the other struggled with the suit, at last managing to tear it free. The triumph faded quickly, and he grabbed the now limp sufferer and frantically swam to the sur-face, his air nearly gone and his head on the verge of exploding. The blue was so pure, hauntingly so, and Wyatt wondered whether this was anything like flying. Then the plane was in sight, and he broke it, shattered it more accurately, and sweet oxygen flooded his starv-ing lungs. Nearly blind with adrenaline, Wyatt rummaged through the last of his strength to drag the body up onto the side of the pool. He flipped the man over and with astonishment found himself staring at a complete stranger. Save him, cried the faceless crowd surrounding the scene, save him. But Wyatt could only reply that he couldn’t, that everything was moving too fast, that he had no idea who this was. A harsh voice came from the adjoining room. Mr. Wilford, it said. Mr. Wilford. Wyatt looked up and saw its owner, a heavyset woman with dark brown hair and bad teeth. He glanced at his watch quickly; ten minutes had passed. I know we’ve had you waiting for a while sir, but it’s just going to be a little while longer. How much longer, do you know? His voice ached. I don’t, no. Busy day for Dr. Williams. I know. Wyatt didn’t even know why he had asked. He didn’t have anyplace to be.

Logan Woods, Boston Massachusetts: High School Friend

There’s a day when, like an uplifting of the mist, every-thing seems so wonderfully clear. You can see for miles on that day. You understand, and it all makes such gorgeous sense. Then brusquely it’s gone, and all you can feel -- all that exists in the whole world -- is the empty space where that knowledge should be. That day after? For some people– that’s every day. He was always a strange kid, the kind of kid most people would appreciate for his strangeness. I never got a chance to see if he leveled out, we lost touch, but sitting there together in Philosophy class, I’m sure he knew. The teacher was this excessively British old man with wild hair and thick glasses. He had asked for each member of the class to state whether they believed in a higher power. My grandfather told me once when I was about twenty-five, he said Faith is a pretty useful tool, and unique in that it’s useless if we don’t invest it in something else. That made sense to me then, but me and these kids, these children of the 21st Century; we didn’t know a damn thing about faith. We all thought to ourselves, I’m intelligent, I work hard – I make my own breaks. And I sat there among them and told them that the thought of a god or any sort of higher power was just so illogical, so idiotic, and I felt pretty damn educated, pretty damn superior to all those poor bastards out there suckered into such a ludicrous concept. I felt like such people needed help, that I was the one to give it, to enlighten them, and I still look back on myself with contempt to this day. But never mind about what I thought. What I thought is irrelevant. Wyatt Wilford, he was a good friend of mine back then, now there was a young man whose thoughts were important. He sat there coolly and told us there was, in fact, a God. The instructor was intrigued and asked what it was that made him so sure of himself. Now I could live to be a hundred and fifty and not forget his answer, and I was sure right there that he was heading for something sub-stantial, even while he knew he wasn’t. Wyatt looked our teacher straight in the eye, smiled a wry smile, and looked as bewildered as I had ever seen him. The light filtered clumsily through a window somewhere and cast broken shadows onto his furrowed brow. “Well,” he said, glancing at me, appearing as if he had been asked to prove the existence of the desk he was sitting at. “He’s sitting on either side of me right now – so there’s that.” It was almost completely quiet now in his small slice of heav-

en. The water cooler bubbled again and he momentarily retreated back into his mind. Then he thought better of it and looked at the young mother, her head down, muttering faintly. There was noth-ing sexual in his motives, although she was attractive – just naïve interest in what the distressed phone conversation could be about. His thoughts went to other things. Wyatt glanced at an empty waste paper basket in the corner and frowned. It had been bothering him thoroughly for a while now. It seemed so useless, so impractical, and he searched his pockets for an item that could christen it. His hunt produced nothing but what was always there: a cell phone, a wallet, a crumpled index card. He stuffed all three back into his pocket and shifted his weight. He desperately wanted a smoke, but hadn’t had one in seven years. The mother was off the phone now and her daughter was staring intermittently at Wyatt. It made him distantly uncomfort-able. She stood up now and approached him, and Wyatt felt sud-denly that he was about to be interrogated. All she did was toss something in the trash, however, and his feelings went from panic to vague gratitude. Then, abruptly – My name’s Lila. Hello Lila. Hello. A silence. The girl looked at the ceiling. Arentcha gonna tell me your name now, sir? Hmm? Wyatt was too riveted by her archetypal girlhood to come up with a better response. If people made little girls in factories, he was certain they would look like this. Isn’t that what people do? I told you my name, now you tell me yours. Oh. My name’s Wyatt. It’s nice to meet you Lila. It’s nice to meet you too. Well, anyway, I came over here to say that I’m sorry sir. Sorry for what? Well mister, for whatever’s making you sad. Wyatt looked hard at the tiny pigtailed child in front of him. She meant what she said. She skipped back to her mother and sat down, opening

a children’s book and quickly becoming immersed in it. Wyatt thought briefly of Babar, and that took him to a happier place. Something about children, he thought – brought out the best and worst in people. He looked up smiling and saw the receptionist, and she smiled sadly back. Dr. Williams will see you now, Mr. Wilford. Come this way please. Mr. Wilford stood up and yawned, taking the brief opportunity to point-lessly survey his surroundings once more. The old woman was gone now, had noiselessly departed, and the little girl sat with her both-ered mother and colored some unseen pony or rainbow. He wanted to know what she had thrown in the trash, needed to know, but the receptionist was beckoning him more sternly now, so he instead took a final look at the watercolor and followed her briskly down the hall.

Nathan McIntosh, New York City New York: Neighbor And there it is. The single unalienable fact of humanity. Each one of us is unique, but we ain’t irreplaceable. If there’s one thing you carry to your grave in regards to Wyatt Wilford, let this be it – he was about as big of a sonofabitch as you’ll ever find. Don’t let anyone tell you different, you understand? They’ll try to twist his words and actions into something decent, something profoundly human. They won’t be lying, they’ll honestly believe every word. But they’ll be wrong. Does it really matter what he did to me or to anyone? What matters is that he did it, and that it was downright indefensible. The second you forgive a man like Wyatt, you’re as lost as goddamn Columbus. Something damn amusing about mankind. Doesn’t matter how fucked up a man is or how demented his deeds are, you can count on someone else out there thinkin’ to himself, now there’s a guy I’d invite to my poker game. I’ve heard stories. You would think he was famous, some of the stories get told about him. A friend of his tells me once, on the phone, after I refused to come to Wilford’s funeral, he said to me: Wyatt put his faith in people, and we let him down. Took every ounce of restraint I had not to tell him about what that fucker did to us, to this family, and forgive me, I didn’t have enough not to laugh at him. We’re so lost, we’re so devoid of heroes, and we take every chance we get to turn your average Bill into a fuckin’ seer. I’ll tell ya, the one difference

between Wyatt and every other Bill out there – Wyatt wasn’t no regular guy. He was a bastard, and like I said, don’t let anyone tell you different. He deserved every godforsaken thing that happened to him, and that’s the truth.

He sat down where he was told to; saw the cold room and its cold furnishings. The doctor will be in soon. A faint echo, a hint of regret in her voice. He thought, so this is what life changing experi-ences are like, he said I’m in no rush. He sat alone for a while, thinking about his father, thinking about the fall. Here was one more thing he could share with each. The knowledge of exactly when it would all end. And he sat in silence and pondered what his own personal December 21st might be like. Peaceful, he hoped. The lights hummed. He thought about the last good book he had read, he thought about his old dog, the way she had tilted her head sideways when something confused her. It was cold in this room, or maybe it just looked cold. It seemed harsher than the last had been, more disjointed. Feelings are chameleonic, he muttered to himself, because he liked the way the word sounded. After a few minutes Dr. Williams poked his head in and was un-necessarily jovial. He was mostly bald and had friendly eyes and a nose that was too big for the rest of him. The clipboard he had brought in was visibly empty. Wyatt shook his hand and felt his own hand shake unsteadily and sat there otherwise motion-less, listening. He listened and watched, watched the machina-tions of the bald man’s brain, watched his thought process. It’s alright, Wyatt remarked, breaking the silence in a voice louder than he intended. I know why I’m here. Dr. Williams looked confused for a moment, as if he had been unexpectedly awoken, and then finally defeated. I’m sorry. I’m sorry it had to come so soon. Then there was silence. Wyatt thought maybe he would cry but ultimately he didn’t. All he could really do was mumble. How long? The doctor rallied with his voice while his body slumped.

Probably another fifteen years, twenty if you’re lucky. That’s a long life, Mr. Wilford. I know that – how long before the symptoms are noticeable. It came out like a statement. Less than six months in most cases. He sighed, then continued. Huntington’s is a very troubling disease, almost a quarter of all patients attempt suicide at one point or another – I know. I noticed you have a son. He is 50/50 to inherit this. If he wants, he can be tested at 18. I know. The boy didn’t know Huntington’s ran with the Wilfords, but by then Wyatt was somewhere else, and the doctor’s consoling words were far away.

Hank Carter, Louisville Kentucky: Acquaintance It all passes on – you can try to stop it, but the next gen-eration, all they really amount to is a convoluted mixture of what they came from. Inheritance is a funny thing sometimes. I met his kid once, little boy, couldn’t have been older than eight. This was back a few years mind you, but I remember it like it was m‘own wedding day. This kid with this firm handshake, and he looked me straight in the eye just like they teach ya. Hazel, they were, and shrouded, like there was something hidin’ behind them. Just like Wyatt’s. Exactly like his. And I thought, with eyes like that, there isn’t a thing he couldn’t do. They say eyes are a window to the soul, and I figure people love it when what they’re seeing leaves a little ta’ the imagination. I figure most of the time, if you keep your mouth shut, choose yo’ words, people gonna assume you’re somethin’ special, if you catch ma’ meaning. It was the same way with Wyatt. I don’t mean to be disrespetful – he was a good man. A good hardworking man, soldiering on like that with-out a wife. But if you ask me, I could never quite shake the feeling that he wasn’t quite as much as the sum of his parts. That once you put everything together, once the puzzle was fully assembled, what should have been a glori-ous sight wasn’t quite a picture of nothin’, just a mess of colors and shapes. I consider myself a pretty damned good judge of character, others say the same.

What do I know though? I suppose Wyatt Wilford could have been God on Earth, and a little angel boy walking ‘long side ‘im, and there I would be blabbering on about his faults and such. Judgment of character, good or bad, people tends to forget – all it is, all it’ll ever be, is judgment. There wasn’t much left to do after that. It all seemed delib-erately quick. He got his condolences. He was fairly sure the doctor was a good man, and when he told him as much, the two exchanged awkward smiles and a brief conversation about things that didn’t matter. It felt all right. Then he left and hailed a bright yellow cab on the corner. The driver looked Palestinian, and the dialogue was one sided. Wyatt asked the Paki if he hated Jews. I’m sorry sir, I do not understand. He tipped too much for no particular reason and stepped out into the cold air, taking a few deep breaths, feeling the crisp air in his windpipe, watching the skyscrapers scrape. On the way into his building the doorman said G’day Mr. Wilford and tipped his hat so that the brim nearly covered his welcoming eyes. Wyatt felt thank-ful for that, and he patted Peter the doorman on his shoulder. In the elevator he recalled his dream, and with his key in the lock he finally understood what it had meant. It all made ago-nizing sense, but it was well too late to do anything about it. The door yielded and he flicked the lights on to gently admire his three bedroom fortress. His son was at school, probably learning Calculus or some advancement. He thought, they really are advancement, he said Home sweet home. Wyatt hung his coat up delicately and sat down in the kitchen. A glass of water seemed like a good idea, but instead of that he sat with his face in his hands and wondered about what to do next, totally and utterly forsaken. The boy’s twelve next month, he garbled to himself, that’s a tender age. Wyatt’s brother was a good man though, there was the prized counter argument. He would be a good father figure. So that settled that. There was far less fanfare to the decision than he had anticipated, and Wyatt wondered why such magnificent decisions,

regardless of how shallow they were, turned out to be tantalizingly anti-climactic. That was life, he supposed, in a discarded nutshell. He fished the crumpled three by five note card out of his pocket and left it where he always left notes for his boy, taped to the mirror in the front hall. Then he picked up the phone. The 9 came easy but each of the 1’s tested his will. Wyatt reported a robbery and said please hurry. He had been an actor in high school, but that didn’t matter now. Nothing did. The woman answering the distress calls seemed too calm, and it bothered him, this distinct lack of urgency. But in spite of her nonchalance he grabbed the old Smith and Wesson from the closet, the very same gun his father had used, and making sure to take one last look in the mirror, withdrew to his bedroom. Sam Wilford: Son Some things are always changing, some things never do. But sure as shit lemme tell you: the past, the way things were, that’s the only permanence we got in this world, and you’d do best to hold on to it. You want to know what the note said. They all do. All his friends, the rest of our family. It’s natural, the only thing curiosity ever hurt was the damned cat. You think it matters, right? It’s not some big secret, anyway. I tell anyone who asks despite the fact that it ruins it for them, ruins the mystique, the ever precious notion that what they learn will change them. It said Heaven is understanding. You’ll understand. I love you. Now ask yourself: does that live up to your expectations? Does it say what it was you wanted it to say?

Sangria

Dominic DeJesus

Brilliant persimmon sun, a crown jewel, set into the base of the sky, the heavens painted

in watercolors: whispers of sangria dripping into cerise, stretching into amber. The fiery gem touched

down softly on the urban, black skyline, pouring its gift over trees and

minting coal shadows that samba on pavement.

Slowly, we stopped

holding hands. She pulled me in close to say goodbye, for one more embrace.

Simone Salvo

Taryn Ferguson

where science is stupid

Raya Stantcheva

This is a love poem deliberately trying not to use any words of connoting or denoting “love.”

lolloping like neonate lambson a lilting Libra that lifts rather than weighs. What do you call this?

no need for an instruction manualconstruction manualdestruction manual.(no rebate either)

because to measure the one foot differenceon the vertical axis,four feet forwardon the carrefouris to textbooktize a language thathas no alphabet in the visible light spectrum.

What is the difference between a sphere of jelly anda planet of dormant volcanoes that will occasionallyerupt with tears?

If it were matter, it would be a noble gas, and we would breathe it.

Louise Ireland

One Small Favor

Jimmy Brenner

Will you take it for me?Lock it somewhere safe and swallow down the key.

Can you hold it for me?

Feel it throb in your hands and offer me some sympathy.

Will you steal it from me?I don’t think I can handle this much responsibility.

Can you fix it for me?Spank it as punishment for torturing me.

Will you mend it for me?

Give it the care that a new born baby would need.

Can you calm it for me?Rock it in your arms and tell it a story.

Will you love it for me?Put it next to your heart and keep it company.

Can you keep it for me?I think it’s better off with you, you see.

Simone Salvo

Untitled

Alexander Moss

Cursed is the man With but a set of false white teeth And a pocketful of quarters With which to call someone who gives a shit.

But I suppose we should be fair. After all, impartiality is what This Fine Nation Was founded on.

So go ahead and grin your heart out Mr. Cutty Sark, Heavy On The Rocks, You’re a regular Johnny Appleseed of hate.

A modernized folk hero, Imbued with (more than) a few lovable antiheroic qualities And five o’clock shadow.

Endzones

Taylor Clarke

My birthdays are counted in postseason touchdowns,In endless microwave popcorn bags and beer commercials.I’ve celebrated with tight-ends, quaterbacks, and safetiesIn cakes bearing my name and football logos.

This January, I changed life-long routine.I traded touchdowns for movie reels, with you.I gave up popcorn and two-minute warningsFor your lips and hands in locked rooms.

My birthdays were timed in girlish sleepovers.Loud laughter and stolen, pressured secrets,Bright, young eyes in the dark of basements, three AM.Becoming what we pinky-promised we never would.

And instead, bent, broken, and on my kneesSurrounded by cracked lightbulbs and graffitied cement,Too scared, too close, and I’m just wonderingWhen your hipbones, your arms, your fingers replaced my endzones.

And I’m still wondering when those big, sleepy eyelidsBrought me down, and when that drowsy voiceKilled the better part of me, and where your chlorine-scented skinHid the left side of my heart.

Waiting for the Ambulance

Megan Richards

Phase One: Shock

The police sirens cut through the frostbitten air, sending a wave of shock up my spine, through my arms, down my legs, and forcing the cries of my neighbors present at the scene into the background, becoming almost silent in comparison to the piercing sirens, I had no idea what was going on, I had no idea what to do, but soon I was shoved aside by an angry policeman, a concerned parent, an eager onlooker and with a stern voice, the officer told me to go home because it was not safe out here, but I lived my whole life in this neighborhood, I had seen countless block parties, snowball fights, dodge ball tournaments all on this exact spot.

I had no time to think.I tuned in once again to the blaring sirens and watched my neigh-bor struggling to resist the police’s efforts to drag him out of his house by kicking and dragging his feet against the doorframe and although this horrible scene was too painful to watch, I couldn’t turn away, couldn’t move, until, out of nowhere, he collapsed on his front steps, dragging the police officers down with him who immediately yelled to the remaining officers to call for help, for an ambulance, although at this point my neighbor was motionless and unresponsive to the polices’ efforts to revive him, suffering from a sever drug overdose.

I could not help.I sat on those steps when I was younger, eating freeze-pops and talk-

ing with the boy now collapsed on that exact spot – with the boy now selling drugs and, apparently, using them himself – with the boy being dragged to the hospital and then to jail, most likely – and I ate freeze-pops with him, played on his team during our neighbor-hood games of dodge ball, jumped through the sprinkler in the back yard, before he got caught up with the wrong pastimes, the wrong crowd, the wrong distraction, and before he overdosed, bought drugs, sold drugs, before he lay on the front steps unconscious.

I could no longer see him like he was then.Now all I could see was a helpless boy being dragged towards the flashing lights, towards the hospital, towards jail, and I couldn’t do anything to bring him back to the way he was, all I could do was watch his limp silhouette, a dark shadow against the setting sun, being dragged across his lawn and frantically carried into the ambu-lance.

It was a normal Saturday night except for the fact that my 19-year-old neighbor was now

being driven away in an ambulance.

Phase Two: Confusion3I was weightless. But I needed air. Feeling my core tighten against my collapsed lungs, I made one final push towards that burning sun. I broke through the foamy blue surface and, gasping for breath, expended the rest of my energy propelling myself towards shore, picturing the sun warming my shiv-ering body. Flinging myself against the tightly packed, sun-warmed sand, I rolled over onto my back. Staring at the bright blue sky, covered with white wisps of clouds, I imagined never being able to see this again. I took too many things for granted. 2 Completely submerged under water, I struggled to find my way back to the surface. Tumbling in circles, I couldn’t tell which direction was up and which was down. I couldn’t tell the ocean floor from the surface of the water. I couldn’t find my way through

this clear blue jungle and oxygen was running low. Finally orienting myself, I aimlessly thrashed my arms and legs to propel me out of the water. Breaking through the surface, I gulped in barely one lung-full of air before another wave crashed over my head, sending me back into the strange underwater world I came from. My head hit the ocean floor and I felt the sand slip through my fingers as I tried to push myself back to the surface, once again. My eyes were sting-ing from the salt and sand, but I fought against every instinct in my body to keep them open. “You won’t need your eyes if you’re dead,” I thought to myself. Despite the salt in my eyes and the clouds of seaweed and sand circling around my body, I could vaguely make out the burning sun through this liquid jail cell. 1 As I floated over the waves, serenity poured over me. Lying on my back in the water, I glanced up at the sky which seemed to fade into the blue horizon. Deciding I wanted to be a little more daring, I paddled out further into the ocean, where my toes could barely touch the broken shells at the bottom. I pushed off the ocean floor and swam a few more feet out into the water. Even though my parents told me to stay where I could touch, I was a big girl; I could handle it. A large wave started to build up speed in the distance, growing with every step it took towards the shore. The dangerous white froth began accumulating on the crest of the wave and, strug-gling to swim back to where I could stand, it dragged me into its current. Crash.

Phase Three: PanicMonopoly – Life – Shoots and Ladders – Othello – Skip-it – Cap-

ture the Flag – Scrabble

“Lets play Hide and Seek!” my friend suggested. It was a rainy April morning and we had nothing better to do, anyway. Deciding

I had the advantage because it was, after all, my own house, I agreed. “I’ll be it!” she cried. And with that she started counting.

1. 2. 3. I scrambled out of my room to find the perfect

hiding spot.

4. 5. 6. I flew down the stairs and slipped into the

kitchen. 7. 8. 9.

Running out of time, I flung open the small cabinet under the sink and jumped in. I jammed it close behind me and was

immediately engulfed by darkness.

10.

Ready or not,

Here I come.

I heard her feet patter against my wooden stairs and I held mym breath as

she entered the kitchen. The scraping of chairs against the tile toldme she was checking under the table, but before long, she gave up

hopeand moved to the living room. Exhaling, I decided I could relax. My eyes still hadn’t adjusted to the dark so I cautiously felt around my

crampedhiding spot. I felt a few cold pans and old sponges, but other than

that, it was only me and the four towering walls surrounding me.

Battleship – Candy Land – Simon Says – Checkers – Tag – Domi-noes – Soccer – Catch

Spiders – Monsters – Worms – Guns – Wasps – The Deep End – Ghosts

Although I loved winning hide and seek, I found myself prayingfor my friend to find me. ‘Just open the cabinet,’ my brain screamed

at her. I could feel my pulse beating in my ears and I felt around my

wooden jail cell once more to make sure the walls were still there. Were they

closer than before?

I couldn’t breathe.

The air was running out.

I couldn’t stay in here anymore.

I frantically shoved the door, knowing that I would lose the game but knowing it would save my life. But the door wouldn’t budge. I

wastrapped. The walls seemed to press against me, pushing the remain-

ingair out of my lungs. My legs began to cramp as well. Unable to

change position, I had to simply accept the painful pins and needles crawl-

ingup my legs. Why couldn’t I get out? I tried once again to throw mybody against the door, hoping this time, I would be able to escape.

Germs – Paper Cuts – Big Crowds – Poison Ivy – Fire – The Dentist – Trains

Panic – Danger – Sweat – Closed In – Tremble – Dread

But it didn’t work.

I began to panic.

My eyes became blurry.

My ears started buzzing.

And my friend still hadn’t found me. I could hear her giggling and calling for me to come out, but I couldn’t. I beat my small clenched fists against the door, hoping someone might come to the rescue.I would be stuck in here forever. Maybe I would die here. Would

anyone even notice?

Darkness – Confusion – Anxiety – Terror – Alone

Fear – Fear – Fear – Fear – Fear

I.Can’t.

Breathe.

Fear – Fear – Fear – Fear – Fear

My signal for help worked. Light flooded into my dark hiding spot and my mother’s face appeared in front of me. She gave me her hand and pulled me out of the cabinet.

I was safe.

Phase Four: Helplessness“Nothing tastes as good as being thin feels,” he told me.These words rang in my head. I was sitting at the dinner table with my family. My stomach growled. I was hungry. ‘This is it,’ I told myself. I will be in control this time. I won’t give in. But then the food came. All of this left my head and only began to creep back in after the damage was done. I took my empty plate to the dishwasher. I can’t do it. I can’t ever be thin.We met at my friend’s house. He asked for my number. I asked for his. A few days later he took me out to dinner. An ironic beginning. We hit it off pretty well and continued to go on dates until we were what most other 10th grade girls called “official,” so I called it that too.The gym was my haven. It was safe. I couldn’t eat there. It was a confessional of sorts. The amount of time I spent there showed how much I had sinned. How much I had eaten. I jumped on the treadmill. I changed the setting to high and my feat beat out a steady rhythm against the rubber belt. I ran too fast. I wasn’t ready for it.‘I’m in control,’ I reminded myself. I won’t stop. Soon enough, the lactic acid began accumulating in my legs. It took more and more energy to continue. ‘I’m stronger than this,’ I screamed to myself, but my legs screamed louder. I rolled off the treadmill and sat, de-feated, against the cold cement wall. I lost control.His bright hazel eyes stared into my dull blue ones as he ran his fingers through my hair. ‘If this isn’t love,’ I thought, ‘I can’t imagine what is.’ We had plans to go to the beach, but it was raining, so instead we sat bundled up inside, watching the rain drip down from the roof onto his small living room window. “It’s probably better we couldn’t go to the beach today,” he said casually, “You could stand to lose a few pounds before you put a bathing suit on.”I instinctively threw one arm over my stomach and averted my eyes. I didn’t know what to think. Where to look. What to say back. So I quickly respond-ed with a meek “okay,” hoping this conversation would only be a one time

occurrence. But maybe he was right.Food became the enemy. And if I wanted him to like me, I needed to wage war against it. I needed to look like the girl he thought I was when we met. I needed it more than anything. My life sped by me. And I was too fixated on gaining control to notice. I was too fix-ated on becoming perfect. I was too fixated on helplessly becoming what he wanted me to be. I knew it wasn’t right, but I couldn’t help myself. I was hooked.“I don’t want to waste my time with someone who can’t control herself.”“Do you really think you should eat that?”“When was the last time you went to the gym?”Why couldn’t I be in control? What was wrong with me? I just wanted him to like me. But he didn’t. We broke up, but my fixation on being in control did not leave with him.My two best friends sat on either side of me. The sofa was high off of the ground. My feet didn’t reach the floor, but my hands were anchored soundly in my friends’ hands. “Megan Richards?” an almost obnoxiously sweet voice called out, “My name is Rebecca Mallen, why don’t we step on into my office and chat about your diet?” I stood up, shot a nervous glance at my friends, who each squeezed my hands in support, and followed Re-becca into the office.

Phase Five: UnderstandingThe fear of seeing a childhood friend driven away in the ambulance. The fear of being trapped underwater. The fear of small spaces. The fear of losing control. The fear of having to live up to someone else’s expectations. The fear of not being accepted for who I am.

Shock.

Confusion.

Panic.

Helplessness.

Understanding.

Glowing red lights illuminated the dark sky. Circling across the sub-urban neighborhood, these lights told us that help was on the way.

We all saw it on TV or in the movies or in someone else’s neighborhood. But we never thought we would

see it here. The sleek white vehicle drastically contrasted with the dull

brown tree branches and tan colored houses that defined our street. But,

nonetheless, it was welcomed. The worn, but reliable wheels sped up the street towards us. Although they had seen this

scene play out so many times before, they did not slow down. The red light continued to flash. It saved us.

Although most of the time we don’t need an ambulance to get us through, we find our own flashing lights, emergency doctors,

support team. We find a way to getthrough our fear. We find our friends, our parents, our own

strength. That’s all we’re really doing, anyway.

We’re all justwaiting for the

ambulance.

Caroline Colombo

For a Mother Drowning

Mercy Bell

Long necked and graceful The grey geese fly under her bed. Near black boots, behind photo albums Under the wool blanket. They fly enclosed in glass Towards nowhere, and in silence

Simone Salvo