Green Blotter 2017 by Lebanon Valley College

Green Blotter 2017

Green Blotter is produced by the Green Blotter Literary Society of Lebanon Valley College, Annville, Pennsylvania. Submissions are accepted from October through February. Green Blotter is published yearly in a print magazine and is archived on the following website. For more information and submission guidelines, please visit: www.lvc.edu/greenblotter

GREEN BLOTTER Art Editor Jackie Chicalese ‘18 Poetry Editor Jess Coughlin ‘17 Prose Editor Sydney Fuhrman ‘18 Design Editor Luke Dougherty ‘18 Communications Editor Paige Bryson ‘20

Reader Board Emily Branson Cheyenne Heckermann Emily Schlusser Rachel-Joy Seifrit Mariah Sensenig Lauren Sigmon Rachael Speck Raeann Walquist Faculty Advisor Sally Clark

CONTENTS Anastasia Nicholas prince of Denmark 1 Austin Shay A Glimpse of a Murmur 3 Leah Gaus The Serendipity of Fortune Cookies 4 Lillian Rose King Two Dashes of Tabasco 11 Cheyenne Heckermann Longwood Garden Red Shrubs 12 R.B. Ejue To Be a Native Linguist 13 Tom Stevens Live. Laugh. Love. 18 Kayla Hodecker Untitled 20 Erin Keating Little Sister 21 Elena Botts music in a language you canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t understand 22 Connor Feeney A Very Faded Green 23 Kasy Long Party of One 30 Austin Shay A Moment of Clarity 31 Kierstin Reichard Counting Time 32 Kayla Hodecker Untitled 33 Emma Fuhs Spooking the Gulls 34 Cheyenne Heckermann Longwood Garden Water Lily 39 Maya Calderwood Benjamin Franklin 40 Deâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Shawn Madkins Revolving oppression 41 Diana Hoffman Waiting for this Moment 42 Amy Owings Sharks 43 Cheyenne Heckerman Brasenose Oxford 48 Katie McMorris Manifesto of the Fallen Cathedrals 49 Cover Art: Cheyenne Heckermann

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Dear Reader, There often exists a distinct connection between the art we produce and how we perceive our world. Our newest edition is no different. There may be no overarching theme, but there are common threads that appear throughout. For example, this collection highlights the beauty of diverse works and experiences. This intercultural and intertextual exploration allows us to engage with the world through unique perspectives. We hope the juxtaposition of these pieces enables readers to reflect upon their own understanding of reality and to foster empathy for all. As reading is a collaborative endeavor between the reader, the artist, and the global community, we encourage you to interact with these works. Thank you for reading, and we hope you enjoy our 2017 edition. Sincerely, The Editors Jess Coughlin ‘17 Jackie Chicalese ‘18 Sydney Fuhrman ‘18

prince of Denmark Anastasia Nicholas

i wandered for forty days in the desert. i am hamlet returned from elsinore; i am the prodigal son. it seems all i am capable of saying is i, i, i, my grandmother is dead, we have a new king claudius. “not my king,” the villains say. i can do whatever i want now, so i will be alone. first i go to the apple orchard. i have never been here in winter: it is desolate, even in this blood-red summer the trees are anemic, translucent; the fruit is nowhere to be found. skeletal arms reach toward the sky, as if to say, “take me, please.” i wander into the road and wait. wait. wait. next we go where we used to go. the same elevator man, his nose to the wall, mumbling about his coloring book and how he can’t stay in the lines. he always used to scare me, so i look away. the farmer takes me to the top floor; i am thinking what a bastard he is, what a bastard he must be.

i took a vow of silence on november eighth and i have largely stuck to it. the farmer gives me money. it changes hands under the assumption that i will spend it on local apples. i am wearing a new coat and i am coughing, standing in the stairwell. the courtiers pass me on their way up. they ask about my lungs, not wanting an answer. next i go to the chapel, out of necessity. King Hamlet is dead: i read my name on a laymanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s grave. my mother took me here when i was young, sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d stand in the field and cry and cry. iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d wait in the car. i think of the apple orchard. the villains emerge to pay their respects and i have never felt so low.

A Glimpse of a Murmur Austin Shay

The Serendipity of Fortune Cookies Leah Gaus The following letters, though never written, are based on real events. Any resemblance to the author’s life and the people she has known is purely intentional. August 23rd, 2014 Dear Conclusion-Jumper: I know my grammatical errors irk you, but that’s not my fault; I was merely the canvas for a factory worker’s prose. It’s also not your classmate’s fault that the escapades of last night have put him in a bad mood, and it’s not your fault that someone called you a freshman last period (unlike them, I respect the fact that you’re a junior). A year and a half from now, neither of you will remember what was said; in fact, he’s completely forgotten about it. You’ll remember the camouflage Cabela’s backpack that leaned against your quilted Kate Spade shopper, the tinge of kindness in his voice overshadowed by stress, and the blue in his eyes that you thought was green the day you met him (for some reason, you thought all Jareds should have green eyes). He didn’t comment on the rainbow button pinned to the strap of your bag. You’ll remember the long days sitting across from each other in AP Language, you noticing the subtle beauty of the five or so watches he owns and him smiling as you explain how fascinating it is that a tiny train runs in circles on yours. Your dad bought it for $10 at the local antique mall and it’s stamped with the Chessie logo, the company your great-uncle used to work for before it became CSX; when you told him this cute little story, he seemed to care. You’re both good people. Neither of you may believe that, but that’s okay. Forgive and forget, Want to learn how to love, start with the one you hate.

December 12th, 2015 Dear Single Eighteen-Year-Old: I may just be one more fortune from one of several Asian restaurants that you go to with your parents every weekend, but to you, I was a prediction. I came close to validating the past five years of searing depression, stumbling identity, and subtle loss – everything that made you strong. I gave you an inkling of hope, a much-needed sign that you wouldn’t be alone for the rest of your life. Seventy more years without love? What a ludicrous thought for a high school senior to have! To you, it wasn’t ludicrous at all. Glad I could help, Lotus are red, lilies are blue, love in bushels will soon come to you. February 18th, 2016 Dear Hopeless Romantic: I see you standing there, in your favorite place, the ten by twenty-five feet space between two sets of doors, between Westerville North High School and the rest of the world. It’s small, comforting, and radiating with warmth; I can understand why you like it. It’s safe. The door shuts behind you, and you peek over your shoulder; the thought of being with him has run through your head, but only in terms of “He deserves someone better than her” or “His laugh always cheers me up.” Small comments on the borderline of your sexuality, testing the waters of something too dangerous. It would be small talk for anyone else, but for both of you, it’s genuine caring. As you walk outside, your best friend asks with raised eyebrows and a hushed voice, “Who was that?” The six-month streak of complaining about being single together is something you’ll cherish. Have faith, An old friend will shed light on a new opportunity.

February 20th, 2016 Dear Prospective Girlfriend: As you increasingly think about nothing but him, don’t forget to stay true to yourself. All you know is that his heart is genuine and his eyes are the most beautiful you’ve ever seen. Cliché? Maybe. But it could be true love. So what if you’ve only ever been attracted to women? Don’t let it pass you by. Talk to your best friend about it, who is conveniently sitting directly across from you as you read my words aloud. It’s just one more lunch period spent at Great Asian, the restaurant next to your high school. Forty-five more minutes to treasure, listening to Luke make fun of the first song on their playlist, the one you’ve loved since you were eight-years-old – “You’re Beautiful” by James Blunt. Just another day, but maybe not. Good luck, Turn on the charm. You’ll be glad you did. March 19th, 2016 Dear First-Time Girlfriend: Today has been tough, I know. The week went by fast, and now your parents are sitting in front of your new (and only) boyfriend, and I’m not going to help. The two five-feet tall Asian lions guarding the doors gave a weak impression of intimidation that replaced your father’s; in a strange, twisted way, they were the cousins of the roaring creatures that sit outside the St. Louis Art Museum. You’ve been thinking about this for the past half hour. At the sight of the waitress, your father halts conversation, as he always does. She refills your parents’ cups of hot tea, the kind that tastes vaguely of sweet jasmine that you can only get in fancy Chinese restaurants. She whisks your dishes away, the ones that held honey chicken and pan fried noodles. More sweet small talk, more fiddling with your hands, more internal sighs. A black tray, a tiny slip of paper, four plastic-wrapped fake-foreign “cookies.” You immediately break into laughter and turn to the wall, unable to breathe; you slip two fingers 6

to your wrist, positive your heartbeat is over 200 beats per minute (you need to learn how to properly count heartbeats, you take note of later). You’ll vaguely remember him putting a hand on your shoulder and asking what it said, and how you responded with, “I can’t read this.” Smiling, he asked if you really couldn’t read it; you’re legally blind and constantly make fun of yourself for it. The heartwarming sound of your dad’s laughter fills your corner of the room, and he’ll tell you the next day how funny he thought this new boy was; you’ll text your boyfriend about that, and he’ll say he was actually being serious. It’s funny how people always think you’re blind with your glasses on. Always honest, Your lover will never wish to leave you. September 16th, 2016 Dear Introvert: This was the fourth time you’ve ordered Wild Bistro to your dorm room for various reasons – quality Chinese food is a blessing, walking takes effort, and half of the hall seems to hate you. You usually don’t eat fortune cookies – there was a brief stint where you thought they made you fat, as if the fortunes didn’t give you high hopes – but this past week was rough. Smiling at my ridiculously cheery statement, I posed while you took a picture and sent it to your boyfriend; you could hear his beautiful laugh as he told you how he was bragging about you to his coworker. When he was asked about the “best thing he’s done in Columbus” for his Office Assistant job, he wrote, “Fell in love.” It doesn’t seem to matter anymore that most of your high school ostracized you for trying to be happy (in their eyes, you orchestrated the most elaborate five-year lie). It’s okay that you didn’t go out tonight, but try tomorrow. Best wishes, Someone is speaking well of you at this very moment!

October 4th, 2016 Dear Dejected Spirit: It wasn’t coincidence that your parents brought your burgundy peacoat this weekend, that I was awkwardly folded in the very bottom of the right pocket, or that you found me the morning you decided to drop your introductory art class. You’ll wonder where I’m from, and I won’t have the vocal cords to tell you, “Upper Peninsula, Michigan, last summer.” That was the day you begged to have Italian food for dinner, only to escape to the restroom and cry while Frank Sinatra serenaded you with “The Best is Yet to Come.” Your eyes glaze over his text messages, short paragraphs your heart refuses to articulate; your mind knows it’s about the past five years. You remember the empty paper towel machine and the unnecessarily strong smell of white grapefruit and oranges. The tears were from your boyfriend, but you’ll never tell him that. Stay strong, Don’t be discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward. October 6th, 2016 Dear Stubborn Writer: I do not appreciate how quickly you dismissed my wisdom. To be slipped into the bottom of a coffee cup is not a feeling many desire. I acknowledge that you came back to visit me weeks later, but I do not forgive your abhorrent behavior. I watch as you listen to your phone vibrate against the desk, palms pressed into your cheeks as you wonder whether or not this is going to work. He never tells you anything, and you tell him everything, and some days you’re able to understand how his parents made him this way and how that’s not his fault. This is not one of those days. “It feels like forced small talk.” Maybe there’s a reason why he never tells you how he feels – because it makes your heart and lungs tense up. “I can’t stop thinking about how you were scared of commitment.” Every ridiculously cute

metaphor, every two hours you spend blowing up his phone, every time you ask to Skype him – he thinks of your past. I know you thought he was never going to hurt you, but they always do. I am aware that you have enough deal breakers to fill two vintage leather suitcases bound for New York City. Learn to think twice, Do not dwell on differences with a loved one – try to compromise. November 1st, 2016 Dear Perpetual Over-Thinker: You took up meditation for a reason. I know it’s been a year since you’ve seen me, but I’m still omnipresent. Do you remember how your uncle put me in your tiny hands, whispering, “Here, this is a good one for you”? Do you remember how your mother asked, “What’s that mean?” and your father explained it to her? You contemplated over what I had to say, reading it three times. They say the third time is the charm, but they’re wrong. Sometimes it’s the tenth, like when you had to retake pre-algebra. Sometimes it’s the first, like when you fell in love. Cereal can wait until morning. There’s only a 5% chance of rain tomorrow; put your umbrella back. See ya later, No problem can stand the assault of sustained thinking. November 15th, 2016 Dear College Freshman: As one of the 38 tiny pieces of paper slipped into your fire-engine red Kate Spade cross-body, I regret to inform you that I feel slightly neglected. I know that you take every fortune you receive seriously, reading with undivided attention and care; I remember how you placed me gingerly inside the finely constructed zipper pocket, intending to remember my words and accidently find them. Lately, I 9

feel as though my sentiment has been forgotten. You spend a lot of your time worrying these days – three papers due tomorrow, two mandatory events this week, an uncertain career ahead of you. Remember what you tell your friends when life becomes too much: “It’s not about the work; it’s about being happy.” Hugs and kisses, Love is the most valuable thing in life. November 18th, 2016 Dear Innate Dreamer: I know you’ve never liked February, but hear me out – at one time, you hated gingerbread, coffee, and life itself. How did that work out? I’ve always hated seeing you despise the fourteenth because it only reminded you of how alone you are, and two days after, watching as you smile and give your parents “alone time” only to think about how you have no one to spend an anniversary with. It’s always perplexed you how no one ever celebrates anniversaries of anything but relationships. That’ll be almost a year with him. I feel your thoughts hover in the air. Eleven and a half months. Almost a year in love. Exactly a year after you started “talking.” The best 365 days of your life. You’re almost afraid to say that out loud because you know how many people would call you dramatic, hopeless, or delusional. How many people already have. But with each and every passing day, you care a little bit less. You’re welcome, Remember three months from this date. Good things are in store for you.

Two Dashes of Tabasco Lillian Rose King Your fingers swill thickly in the egg yolk of your homemade Prairie Oyster, coated with streaks of vinegar and Coke. From our window we glimpse St. Vincentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s oak, habits fluttering from the waking cloister. Your fingers swill thickly in egg yolk, burning pancakes until the skillet smokes, curling through walls, staining our posters, all coated with streaks of vinegar and Coke. I painted boiled shells while you slowly woke, nursing divine punishment the morning of Easter, your fingers swilling thickly in the egg yolk prepared for the feast of when my Lord broke. The watercolor patterns are seeping moisture, so coated with streaks of vinegar and Coke. Alcohol is the lifeblood of us common folk, but your seat is slipping from that coaster. Your fingers swill thickly in egg yolk, coated with streaks of vinegar and Coke.

Longwood Garden Red Shrubs Cheyenne Heckermann 12

To Be a Native Linguist R. B. Ejue Move to your village to live with your grandmother because that is your only option. You were fired from work eight months ago, and your girlfriend broke up with you two weeks back, because she couldn’t cope with your self-pitying, sniveling persona anymore. Her desertion had hit you hard, although you’d denied it at the time, but the moment you found yourself in the bathroom with the razor held close to your wrist, seconds away from opening your veins and spilling your life, you knew you couldn’t ignore the ferocity of your pain anymore, you needed help. You don’t have many friends, and you cannot depend on the few you have. You could not return to your parents’ house because nothing grates you more than appearing as a failure before them. Your father has always told you that he bought his first car at twenty-two, married your mother at twenty-seven, and built his own house at thirty-six. You’re twenty-six now, with no job, car, or lover, and your landlord just kicked you out of his apartment for lagging behind on your payment. Ask your taxi to pull up beside the maize seller at the junction before your village. Get out of the car and step into the dusty, brown road, inhaling the aroma of the corn roasting on the grill. Haggle with the seller until you arrive at what you believe is a fair price, imagining how she’d think you’re being shrewd, when you know that you are too broke to pay more for the corn. Offer the taxi driver some corn when you get back into the car, and feel grateful when he refuses. You need all the roasted corn you can get in order to be able to face your grandmother, whom you haven’t seen in five years. She is old, strange, smelly, yells at you a lot, and then there is the language barrier. She speaks your native dialect most of the time, a language you don’t know because your parents never taught you. They concentrated on improving your knowledge of English, the language of your former colonizers, the diction of the world. You got the idea of staying with your grandmother from your father. In those days, whenever your performance in school was down or you were naughty, he’d threaten to send you to the village to live with your grandmother and start a career in palm wine tapping. So, you’ve always seen your grandmother’s house as the home of failure, the place to go when you’re down and out. Your grandmother is sitting outside the house when the taxi drives into the compound, a trail of 13

dust behind it. She stands up, her hands in the air, letting out a stream of cheerful-sounding words you cannot articulate as she walks towards the car. Her manner tells you that she is happy at your safe arrival, she might be thanking God for journey mercies as well. You know you’re supposed to hug her, but you catch a whiff of her fishy smell and you step back, smiling to her and saying good afternoon in English. She starts greeting you in your language, releasing throngs of words you cannot understand so that you become irritated. All this is unnecessary. You know she can speak English and so you don’t understand why she insists on speaking your language all the time. Lie on your bed that night and think about your life. You don’t know how soon you’d be returning to the city, or if you’d ever get another job, lover, or life. Wonder if you’d survive in the village. Your relationship with your grandmother is nonexistent. She’s just that woman you’re aware of, that old crone related to you by blood, who guards your ancestral plot and visits you in the city from time to time, annoying you with her illiterate, judgmental presence. She’s chatting with her friends in the veranda, and you go to sleep hearing their coarse voices riving through the nighttime air. You’ve thrown away your cell phone, and so you don’t communicate with your parents. This is fine by you, as it saves you from dealing with the perceived causticness of their words. Shut yourself in your room for weeks, limiting the amount of time you spend with your grandmother. Whenever she calls your name, Nsor, groan and contort your face so that she is in no doubt that she is stressing you. But this morning she kills a snake outside your window, a black, slippery creature that makes you want to throw up, just watching its slimy skin change consistency in the sun. Volunteer to accompany her to the farm because you are afraid another snake might come when she is away, and your phobia would prevent you from dealing with it. At the farm, the sun is a blacksmith, pummeling your demeanor into a flat sheet of bitterness and revulsion. There’s no shade you can hide under, and your grandmother hoes the ground with the sort of relentlessness that informs you she’s never felt the need for shade in the farm before. You came along to hoe as well, to weed the grass growing over the yam and cassava mounds on the farm, and you were able to treat just two heaps before blisters broke out on your palms. Decide not to complain to your grandmother who has weeded eight heaps already, and develop a deep hatred of your lazy self. Soon you are unable to stand the sight of her toiling, and so you flee the farm.

Your feet are covered in dust, and every step you take raises up more dust that settles on your trouser legs. This is all your village has going for it. Dirt roads, small farms, and power cuts. It is inconceivable for you to settle down here, and this is one of the reasons you view your move in such an unfavorable light. You are the mouse who has returned to the burrow to die. Take a while to realize that you are lost. You thought that the two right, one left, and another right turn you took would lead you out of the farm, but instead you stand in-between rows and rows of cornstalks that you can’t remember passing on your way in. You try to retrace your steps, but after thirty minutes of walking you haven’t found your grandmother or the mounds you two were working on. A bird flies overhead; it is the only sign of motion in the still world you occupy. What is wrong with you? You can’t even find your way out of a farm. Are you such a loser, or are you a retard? Sit on the ground ready to weep, but then turn to a bush on your left when you hear sounds like the humming of a tune. The owner of the hum soon appears before you. He says, “Erilebo,” and you don’t understand him. You try to introduce yourself and ask for the way out, but he doesn’t understand you, and your exchange is so exhausting that you offer no resistance when he turns and walks away after five minutes. Return to your position on the ground, and this time uncork your heart with no further ado. You feel stupid for so many reasons: graduating with a second-class degree, getting a low paying job, losing the job, your girlfriend, your apartment, dignity and respect in your parents’ eyes. Your grandmother arrives when you begin to heave, carrying a wicker basket on her head, containing your hoes, cutlasses, and metal files. She glances at you and says, “Roasted yam tonight is a nice idea.” You stand up and follow her. It appears she hasn’t noticed your damp eyelids or wet cheeks. That night you learn your first native word, olamu. It is used to denote gratefulness, especially after a good meal. The next morning you tell your grandmother that you would like to learn how to tap palm wine. She’s talking with your father on her cell phone, and you take a moment to consider how difficult it would be for you to hear the man’s voice again. How difficult it would be to talk to him. When she ends the call she tells you that it’s too late to go today. Later in the evening a slim, dark man, with numerous veins comes to the house. He would take you tapping the next morning. It is still dark when he arrives the following day. You hear cocks crowing while you change clothes 15

and go out to meet him. As you walk through the bush, the sky flashes into lighter shades of blue until it is daybreak, and he tells you that there are two ways of tapping palm wine. The feminine way, where you cut down the tree and tap from the bottom, and the masculine way, where you climb to the top and tap from the crown. He wants to know which method interests you. It’s a no-brainer. The first weeks are spent just watching him and learning how to wear the raffia- platted waistband, how to make the right sort of cut on a palm tree, how to mix the palm wine with water to the right consistency, how to store it in gourds, and how to climb the palm trees using only your feet and waistband like you’re in The Matrix. Then one day he says, “Chu,” and then asks you to tap a tree. It’s an old tree, and so he doesn’t mind the risk of you mauling or castrating it. You are halfway up the tree, standing diagonally, the strain on your lower back causing you to pause and consider going down, when you hear your instructor yelling at you to lean way back on the strap to ease the tension on your spine. You obey him, and soon you’re heading back towards the cloudy sky. You reach the top, and you’re able to make the right sort of wound on the tree, attach the calabash to collect the liquid, and return back down. Once you press your feet to the ground, and thank your smiling instructor, you realize that you have been conversing in your native tongue, more or less. A lot of months have gone by. These days you’re always around your grandmother. You sweep the compound with her, go to farm with her, prepare breakfast and dinner with her, while she tells you stories about everything from historical epics about your ancestry to small intimate tales like the fact that your father cried the day you were born. You enjoy listening to these stories, although most times she begins to cough while narrating them, and you have to ignore the little shade of worry that crops up in your mind. You follow her to the market. The rainy season is here now and so the ground is very muddy. You have to fold up the hem of your trousers and try to walk on your toes so that the shoe soles don’t pick up too much mud. You go to the fish sellers and stand back while your grandmother picks up the fish, weighs it in her hands, sets it back down, tries another one, and haggles over the price with the sellers. When she settles on a price for two, she says, “Monami chu,” and you come forward to put it into your basket. That’s when the sellers begin making exclamations like “Your grandson?” “He’s a grown man,” “Monami” “Come closer; let me look at you.” 16

At first you are shy, but then your temperament subsides, and you end up trading pleasantries with the women and giving them a run-through of your life, skipping the unpleasant parts. Soon your grandmother is dragging you away, telling them to go and get their own grandchildren. You two leave the market smiling. Your verbal exchange throughout has been in dialect. Your first calabash of palm wine was an epic failure. It was too sour, the kind that wasps and other wine-friendly insects keep away from. But now you are on your fourth calabash, and while you, your instructor, and your grandmother share cups of booze, your instructor adds a bit of theatre to the way he smacks his lips and says you might yet have a career in palm wine tapping. Your grandmother rebukes him and says you would become a president someday, not a palm wine tapper, and you all laugh. It’s not long after this that your grandmother’s cough intensifies. She starts complaining about her head also. The headache persists for two days, after which she develops a fever. She takes herbs to fight the illness, but after a week you decide that they are not working. Your grandmother – already a slim, light woman – has lost all the little fat she had on her shoulders, under her arms, and in her thighs. Stare at her looking so frail on her bed and be reminded about her mortality for the first time. She is no longer that stock-character whose existence is just a formality. She is a woman you have come to rely on, who has reawakened your belief in the inherent possibilities of life. Fear that she might die. You ask her if you should call your father and alert him of her condition, but she says no. She’s been ill a number of times, and she didn’t need to call your father for treatment. This is what you want to hear, as you’re not ready to abandon the life you’ve created here to return to the city. But that night you stay awake at her bedside, and every time she groans or writhes, you feel the pain like a pincer around your thumb. You take her cell phone and scroll down to your father’s number. You haven’t spoken to him for a long time, and you are nervous about how to begin. But you get an idea. Men of old communicated with foreign powers by means of translators. This is your solution, a personal means of communicating with your father that is indirect enough to blunt the trauma of his words and protect you from the spite and judgment you anticipate. You dial his number and wait. When he picks up you say, “Opa owe.”

Live. Laugh. Love. Tom Stevens They once carved alcoves in their Earthen homes for little Ishtars. Her breasts and feathered wings were stressed in stone relief on the wall in that holy place, overseeing where children were conceived, or not conceived, where meals were made. She grew old. From years of war, wind, rainwater erosion, her perfect form was reduced to soil and rubble. Her principles were scattered across nations, gathered and pieced together by you, “Live. Laugh. Love.” You are a phrase common on trite lips, printed over and over on canvas, in machine-woven floral embroideries then laminated and framed, placed on a shelf in T. J. Maxx. You’re bought by newlyweds who smile at each other and say “Oh that’s nice.” They hang you up in the bedroom. Live Laugh Love. They make love. You reflect their afterglow and for years, you watch their glossy day-to-day.

Live. Laugh. Love. like steps each leading to the next. Notice how distinct the words sound, how similar the muscular movements of the mouth. Live. Laugh. Love. You’re the crux of Christendom, the easy takeaway. I see you in the sanctuary, tattooed under a friend’s breast, on the Internet. You’re the object of Democracy, of John Locke and Che Guevara. You’re a revolutionary, with a cause so subtle, so widely realized, it reaches far beyond the verse of any folk song. No use writing anything more than the plain conviction of our home decor.

Untitled

Kayla Hodecker

Little Sister Erin Keating

You hook your pinky around mine, a promise for another day when the horizon did not blister. But the world owes us nothing. Won’t you take me with you, sailing to the moon? Stick fingers and straw-stack hair, you are a spring child sapling in a world that’s meant for burning. April’s daughter, give us rain enough to quench the sun.

music in a language you canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t understand Elena Botts 22

A Very Faded Green Connor Feeney I had grown accustomed to being on death row. It wasn’t so bad; there was no suspense, and everyone treated you a little better because they knew you were getting a just punishment.

I shuffled into my cell after supper, my unsatisfied stomach lashing out in garbled rage. The

undercooked meatloaf sloshed around; it didn’t make me sick anymore. Nothing did. On my bed was an envelope. I thought it was peculiar since no one had written me in—it’s gotta be seventeen years. Seventeen fucking years. I remember the letter now, my Mom telling me about my Dad. Cardiac arrest. Out of nowhere, my Mom said. She mentioned how difficult it was to write me, how she had considered me dead for many years now, but she felt the urge to reconnect now that Dad was gone.

I cried when I read it. That was back when I had a cellmate: Guatemalan dude named Carlitos. I

cried all night until Carlitos smashed me in the head with his shoe. Must have knocked all the grief out of me because I never wrote my Mom back.

This envelope though—who would write me? I was pretty sure my Mom was either dead or had

sworn never to talk to me again. I wished it was her, reaching out in the final days before my death. I snatched the envelope and tore it. Inside was a letter: Vernon,

My name is Lucinda Stone. This isn’t the first letter I’ve written you, just the first I’ve sent. There

are so many things I’ve imagined saying to you. If you don’t remember me, let me refresh your memory… You killed my husband and son. Do you remember them? Darrien was my husband. You shot him twice while he sat in the car, waiting for me. I was just running into a convenience store to grab some food. We were beginning a long, late-night drive to my sister’s house in Atlanta.

My son, Cameron, was seven. In your statement, you said you didn’t think anyone else was in

the car, and then you looked back and saw him starting to wail. You said you tried to hush him but the gun went off accidentally. You shot him in his face. His casket was closed at the funeral. 23

I want to say so many things to you now. I want to use every cuss word I know. But I won’t. I

figured if I detailed all of this to you, reminded you what you did, humanized my family (your victims) a little, you would feel much worse than any cuss word could ever make you feel.

But I am not writing you to disparage you before the state finally kills you. I am writing you

because of my daughter. She is a beautiful young woman now, and I owe that all to the fact that I decided to take her into the store with me that night. God knows what you would have done to her if she hadn’t cried for me to pick her up. Her name is Melanie; she is 22. She wants to meet you. I tried to stop her, but she is stubborn. Kind-hearted too. Maybe you will find all this out when you meet her tomorrow. I won’t be coming. I’ve made peace. I hope Melanie can, too. Lucinda Stone

I read the letter a few times and then I read it again. Of course I remembered the name of the

husband. I remembered every gory detail of that night. How could I forget with twenty-two years of reflection?

I had trouble sleeping after I read the letter. I tossed and turned, replaying that night in my

head. The husband, Darrien, wasn’t frightened by me at first. He looked me up and down; it seemed like he was trying to remember me from somewhere. I could see the thoughts churning through his mind: Did I go to high school with you? Family friend maybe? When he saw the gun, he stiffened immediately and tried to lock the door before I flung it open. He wasn’t quick enough and I got right in his face; he tried to talk to me like I was some suicidal asshole on a ledge. I didn’t appreciate it. I demanded money; he said he had no cash. I demanded the car; he said he couldn’t do that. He tried to tell me to calm down, and he reached for me. It was a reflex; I didn’t intend to hurt anyone, I just needed some cash.

The bullet went through his ribcage and I watched him, Darrien, struggle to breathe. He tried

to scream, but I had my hand clamped over his mouth. I just couldn’t get him to shut up, so I shot him once more, and he slumped toward the passenger seat. As I frantically wrestled with his seatbelt, trying

to move him to the passenger side, I saw movement in the back seat. It was the kid. Cameron. Fuck, I didn’t want to remember his name. I had suppressed it fairly early into my sentence; it was a relief when I found I couldn’t remember it anymore. I was furious at the letter for bringing it back to my memory.

Cameron. Seven years old. I flipped over in my bed, trying to stop replaying the night. I couldn’t

go any further. Never mind how I only got three miles down the highway before I heard the sirens. Never mind how the chase only lasted ten minutes before I slammed into the divider. Never mind how the baby wailed in the court room, how the wife, Lucinda, made eye contact with me at all times, how the gavel sounded after the jury read the verdict. Never mind all that.

I decided to try and read, to take my mind off the letter. I picked up the tattered collection of

short stories the library had let me keep for my final month. I had gotten close to the librarian; he always recommended new books to me, but I always went for that same collection of stories. I had probably spent more time in the library than the yard my last ten years here. I read through my favorite story until I passed out.

I woke up the next morning, my brain pounding against my temples. I struggled through break-

fast, shoveling the runny eggs down my throat and staring through the wall ahead. Everyone let me eat alone. It was customary to leave a dying man in peace during his last days.

I lay in my cell, tossing the crumpled letter in the air and catching it. Down the hall I heard the

echo of the guard’s boots. Click, click, click, the same piercing click, until it finally stopped outside my cell. He called me to the door. I swung my feet over the side of my bed, stood up, and found my legs to be incredibly unstable. There was a horrible sinking in my stomach, like my insides were collapsing and sucking me inward. I hoped that they would; I hoped I would turn into a black hole. I yearned for the injection.

“Got a visitor, Verne.” I stared at him, I realized my jaw was slack, but I couldn’t muster the

strength to tighten it. “Yeah, I know it’s a shock. I said to Perry, ‘Who the fuck would come to visit Verne?’ I thought maybe it was a priest come to administer your last rites, but no, it’s some young chick.” He started laughing, his grin cracking his stubbly, acne-scarred face. “Wait ‘til you see those 25

fucking tits.”

I snapped at him, “All right, all right! Just open the cell, for chrissake.”

He recoiled a bit and grabbed at his key ring. “Jesus, Verne.” He recovered and started to

chuckle. “Hah! Getting a little testy in your last moments, eh?” I shook off his remark and dropped my head. I stared at the tiled floor as he cuffed me. I never realized it, but the tile at the entrance of my cell was a different color than the rest. The whole hall was checkered pale green and jet-black, except this one tile. This one was white.

I fixated on it until the guard pushed me down the hall. I scuffed my heels all the way down; I

anxiously shifted from leg to leg while I waited for him to unlock each gate. He stopped outside the door to the visitors’ area and motioned for me to go along. I peered through the yellowed windowpane and saw only one person in the room beside the guards. She was a young woman with black hair that shined brilliantly even through the ancient glass. Her emerald eyes appeared dull. She held her sharp-cornered mouth in a fixed frown. She wore a red-and-white striped blouse, unbuttoned at the top. I didn’t let my eyes drift any further downward.

I felt the guard press on my back. I turned and he looked at me, confused. I sighed heavily and

pushed through the door. Her eyes shot up immediately and I saw her face pass through fear, anger, relief, and sadness before settling on a blank expression. I gently lowered myself into the plastic orange chair and grabbed the telephone. We said nothing for a couple of minutes; we just stared at each other, holding the phones to our ears until I broke the silence. “Melinda, right?” “Melanie.” “Oh, yes, forgive me.” Fuck. I could have chosen my words better there.

She brushed my remark off and continued, “Vernon, right?”

“Call me Verne.”

“No, I’ll stick with Vernon.”

“Okay…” The silence persisted for another couple of minutes. I became impatient. I spat, 26

“Listen, Melanie, I only have two more days to live and I’d rather not spend them in a staring contest.”

She spat right back, “Well, excuse me if it’s difficult to find the words!” Her voice broke, and she

had to turn her face from the divider. I could see her eyes start to water. I noticed she didn’t wear eye liner or mascara.

I softened my tone. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have raised my voice.”

She looked back at me and changed her tone as well. “No, no it’s all right. I just wasn’t prepared

for this. I thought I was. I’ve been practicing for this moment since I was twelve years old.”

Christ. Since she was twelve years old, she has been thinking of things to say to me. While I’ve

been locked up, idling my life away, leading a meaningless existence, she has been gathering the courage to confront me. I imagined her ten years ago, staring at herself in the mirror, pretending the reflection was the monster that tore her family apart. The criminal that ruined any chance she had at a normal existence. I felt a weight push down on the back of my head.

She started up again. “It doesn’t matter what I planned to say, Vernon. Honestly, I don’t even

know what I stand to gain by putting myself through this. I just had to see your face. The last thing that my father and brother saw.” Her voice broke again and she blinked hard, but she couldn’t fight the tears from trailing down her cheeks. They continued to stream as I watched, mute.

She hung up the phone and pushed her chair back. As she stood up, legs, hands, head all

shaking, I tapped on the glass. She looked at me, the whites of her eyes rippled with scarlet. I pointed at the phone. She took a deep breath, sat back down and picked it up.

I started, “You may not stand to gain anything from me, Melanie, but I stand to gain a lot from

you. You know, you are the only visitor I have ever gotten. I’m not looking for pity; I’m just saying that maybe there is a reason for that.” I paused for a while, the moments piling on each other as I searched for the words. “I haven’t made peace with what I did. I never will.” I struggled to control my rambling thoughts. “You’ve got your whole life ahead of you, Melanie. Me? Everything’s behind me now.” I grasped for the words. “But… y-your brother … Cameron…” Now I broke down. My face wrinkled in a violent spasm. I tried to speak, but all that came out was a terrible 27

squeal. I dropped the phone and hid my face in my elbow.

I only looked up because her tapping on the glass had grown louder than my sobs. I looked up

at her and she was crying, too. Thick lines of tears rolled over her cheekbones, snot bubbled from one nostril. She looked as pitiful as I felt.

I picked up the phone and heard her through the sniffles. “It’s so different now… to see you as

human. Not just some faceless menace. I wanted to ask you why. I wanted to scream at you and make you realize my grief. But I see the pain you’ve fought with all this time…” She trailed off and looked up, shaking her head. “I don’t know.” She shook her head more. “Thank you, Vernon. It feels so strange to say, but thank you. Thank you for showing me humanity where I least expected to find it.” She hung up the phone and left the room in a hurry. I stared at the door long after she had passed through it, pressure weighing harder and harder against the back of my head, until the guards had to force me to my feet.

Back in my cell, I lay still for a while. In fact, in the last two days of my life, that is mostly what I

did. I lay, ate, lay, ate and then lay and ate again. I lay all night, never sleeping. I tried to read. On the morning of my execution, I made another attempt at reading. I waited hours for the guards to come, staring at pages of wonderful writing. I can’t remember how many hours I had spent reading and re-reading these words, marveling at their beauty. Now, I couldn’t focus long enough to finish a sentence. When the guards finally came, my nerves had cooled and I was ready. I walked to the door in silence. I didn’t try to speak to them and they didn’t try to speak to me. They cuffed me as I stared at the white tile. I realized it wasn’t white, just a very faded green.

I don’t remember much of the preparation for the injection. I was trying to remember all the

details of my favorite story in that tattered book. I must have read it hundreds of times, but as I lay awaiting my death, I could not remember the author or title. All I could remember was the blind man

and the wife, the husband and the churches. And that final line: “It’s really something.”

That line always struck me when I read it. I always hoped to have a moment in my life like the

main character did in the final page of the story. I wished for just one moment to give my life a little meaning. I imagined that moment would come right before the needle went in—all set?

The attendant’s voice cut through my thoughts. She was explaining the process to her assistant.

I looked at the attendant, the needle in her hand, pushing the syringe and squirting liquid from the needle. It shot up and landed on my bare arm. I could feel the liquid dribbling down and caught myself hoping the chemicals wouldn’t burn my skin.

I felt the prick, and I was angry that no one warned me before they jabbed the needle in me. I

stopped being offended as I felt the pressure of the liquid entering my body and realized that I was now dying. I remembered they told me it would take at least ten minutes to kill me.

I thought I would be more calm as I waited to die. I found myself panicking, my heart racing

with fear. Thoughts whirled around in my brain, and fear increased the pressure on the back of my head. I tried to focus on one thought to calm myself down. I kept focusing on that one line. It’s really something.

I repeated the line over and over in my head. Then, I wondered if Melanie had read the story. I

wondered what she was doing that moment. I wondered why my heart was starting to slow. Maybe this was it. That one calming moment, bringing with it a sense of clarity. I awaited the relief of the moment, hoped it would release this pressure on the back of my head.

But the pressure only increased until my vision failed. My eyes were wide open, but I saw noth-

ing. My heartbeat grew weaker and weaker, until I could feel my blood pooling in my veins. As I gasped for air, I heard the attendant say to her assistant, “watching the life leave them…it’s really something, isn’t it?”

Party of One Kasy Long

Water drips from the champagne bottle at Dan and Katrina’s 50th anniversary party. The groom stands alone; the bride ran away in January. It’s February now and the house is out of milk. He doesn’t know which brand she bought, or where she stored the extra cash for groceries. His laundry is pink from his poor knowledge to keep the whites clean. He misses the way she added too much salt in her cooking. The bed sheets don’t smell like her now, raspberry vanilla shampoo and coffee beans. No one sings in the shower. He wishes it was both of them who went.

He cuts the cake at his party, forgetting to make a wish.

A Moment of Clarity Austin Shay 31

Counting Time Kierstin Reichard Please, come sit on the porch with me and smoke a cigarette, so I can study the way your exhales distort the air. I blurt a joke I saved for you just in time to hear the coughing laugh I desire. If we all will die eventually, let me experience your lungs turning black, as you tell me about your new favorite band, and I think about how long I have until I miss this moment. Watch me shiver from the wind while you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t feel a thing but satisfaction as the nicotine fills your lungs, those air pockets I listen to with my head on your chest, when we lay in bed, and I count the time we have left.

Untitled

Kayla Hodecker 33

Spooking the Gulls Emma Fuhs

“Nothing is real. Because humans can time travel, they can manifest as different people at

different times. Do you understand what that means? I’m freaking John Lennon, JFK, and Jesus.” We are stoned and Dwight is this complete idiot. “I can prove it to you,” he says, sucking the joint down to a nub. “If you Wu-Tang this, I’ll prove it.” “No way.” He bats at the fuzzy dice hanging from his rearview mirror. Dwight has a weird aesthetic. It’s like he bought all his stuff from a pawnshop on the outskirts of Reno. “How about you Wu-Tang it and prove it anyway,” I say. Neither of us Wu-Tangs it and he tosses the joint out the window. We’re parked at the end of an undeveloped cul-de-sac near the beach. It’s a good spot to hotbox because the guy who owns the property went bankrupt a few years back, so there’s no chance of a Neighborhood Watch. No curtain-lifting old-lady overlords in this part of town. He starts driving and I ask where we’re going. He holds up three fingers which means I’ll find out in about three minutes. I try to think of what’s three minutes away…we’re either headed to the dump or Wal-Mart. I have a feeling it’ll be the dump because he works there on weekends. Sure enough, he parks near the entrance to the dump and it didn’t even take three minutes to get here. He’s speedy on rural roads.

“So you being John Lennon, JFK, and Jesus has to do with a mountain of actual garbage?”

Dwight doesn’t answer. He reaches over to open my door before opening his. It’s this thing he’s

done ever since we started hooking up last month, and I guess it’s kind of nice.

We walk up a hill toward the shack where people pay to drop off old TVs and stuff. It’s getting

late in the afternoon, but there’s still a line of pickup trucks waiting bumper-to-bumper.

“Dwight,” a scruffy guy says when we reach the shack. “You working today?”

“Nah, just showing my friend around.”

It doesn’t bother me when he calls me his friend. Neither of us is out to anyone other than each

other. I plan on coming out in college, when I’m far away from my parents and grandparents who blame the gays for increased taxes, the destruction of fifties America, and alien invasions.

“Juke Wilkins,” the man says, extending a hand.

“Ian.” Normally I’d include a pleasantry, but normally I’m not stoned and at the dump.

“Is Marjorie here?” Dwight asks.

“Up at the top.” Juke looks at me and raises his eyebrows. “You’re gonna get to see The Show.”

I stare, his cryptic statement like a sucker punch to my brain. I’m still trying to make sense of

what The Show might be when Dwight starts tugging at my T-shirt sleeve.

“Have fun boys,” Juke says.

I wave vaguely in thanks and we continue up the hill.

“You never talk about working here,” I say.

“Not much to talk about. You’ve just gotta live it.”

Dwight often has nothing to say because he believes the only path to understanding is

experience.

“Am I gonna get to live it?”

“Yeah.” Dwight looks over at me and grins. And it’s beautiful, really beautiful, that I can find him

beautiful even when the smell of the dump is all around us.

“And this is somehow going to connect to you being John Lennon--”

“JFK and Jesus. Yeah.” Now that we’re a ways from Juke, he takes my hand and swings it a little.

“It’ll make sense at the top.” 35

At the top, I can see all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Dwight drops my hand because there’s a

woman standing about a dozen yards away, wearing a thick leather glove on one arm. She doesn’t hear us approach.

“That’s Marjorie,” he whispers. “Just wait.”

As we wait, I look down at a swath of half-buried garbage. It’s cut into the hillside the way crops

are grown in mountainous regions. I stare, imagining rice paddies or banana trees in the diapers and broken toys. Years ago I broke my Tonka truck on purpose, just so I wouldn’t have to pretend-play with it anymore. It’s down there somewhere, never decomposing beneath the banana trees.

“Look,” Dwight whispers, pointing at the sky beyond Marjorie.

I look. It seems like Dwight is pointing at nothing, so I squint and try to figure out what I’m

supposed to be seeing. Suddenly, a great bird comes into full view.

It’s a falcon, wings spread wide as it catches the wind and veers sharply to my left, its right.

Marjorie holds out her leather-clad arm and the bird settles onto it, talons digging sharply into the hide.

“Sup, Marj!”

She turns and smiles when she sees Dwight.

“Coming to see The Show on a school night?” She shakes her head. “You never cease to amaze,

Dwight-man.”

Marjorie is easily one hundred years old. Her ghost-gray hair is done up in a bun and she’s

wearing dentures that aren’t fully sealed to her gums. They move a little when she speaks, punctuating each word with a little wet slap.

“I wanted my friend to see it. Marj, this is Ian. He’s a senior like me.”

“Nice to meet you, Ian.”

I smile and nod.

“We’ve got some gulls coming in from the south,” she says. “I was going to have him take on that

lot next.” 36

“Excellent.” Dwight rubs his hands together, something he never does when he’s sober. I wonder

if Marjorie can tell that we’re high. “We’ll stand aside.”

He takes five big steps back and motions for me to do the same. Marjorie turns toward the south

and speaks to the falcon too quietly for me to hear.

“The bird’s name is Herb,” Dwight whispers. “She named it after her dead first husband.”

“Dead first husband?”

“She’s outlived three men so far.”

A few moments later, the great bird takes off from Marjorie’s outstretched arm. He moves

quickly toward the south, where a few seagulls are hovering.

“What’s he doing?” I ask.

“Spooking the gulls. They have a field day picking at the trash, so Herb’s job is to stop them.

Keeps the place clean.” “Really.”

“It seriously works. If it weren’t for Herb, we’d have shit dropped on us at school all the time.

It’d be a freaking war zone.”

Our high school is already a war zone: Humans v. seagulls.

My skepticism disappears when I see Herb dive-bomb a gull. He doesn’t seem to harm it, just

swoops threateningly close and hovers there until it changes course away from the dump. This happens again and again until all of the seagulls are southbound. “Wow.”

“This is The Show,” Dwight says, hushed.

The sky is changing colors, blue bleeding white flaming orange before it meets the horizon.

Below, the neatly packed garbage is darkening, shadows growing longer between the rows of banana trees. I watch Herb slice a halo above the dump, dipping a wing as he wheels around and around.

“So what’s this got to do with proving it?” I ask, keeping my eyes on Herb’s steady flight path. 37

“Close your eyes.”

“Dwight, you--”

“C’mon, Ian. Close them.”

I close my eyes and wait for further instructions. I can’t smell the garbage anymore, the same

way I can’t smell the salt of the ocean because I’ve lived near it my whole life.

“Who are you?” Dwight asks.

“Ian Tolhurst.”

“Yeah, but like, who are you?”

“Um.”

“Who are you?”

“Ian Tolhurst?”

“Are you sure?”

“I dunno.”

“Look up.”

I open my eyes and watch Herb soaring overhead. Marjorie has her arm outstretched, waiting

for him to return. But I don’t see why he would return. I suddenly feel myself join him up there, weightless between two wings. And maybe Dwight hasn’t proven that he’s John Lennon, JFK, and Jesus. But it doesn’t matter, because for now I’m up here and I can see everything.

Longwood Garden Water Lily Cheyenne Heckermann 39

Benjamin Franklin Maya Calderwood 40

Revolving oppression Deâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Shaun Madkins Hiding behind the doors of addiction; Captivating children in the kitchen. Bathing in chemicals, Soaking in impulses, Manufacturing the bald eagle; Into miniature bags of saliva. Separating families like shattered glass; Dismantling communities, shaming their past. Producing chirping deviants, Incarcerating the catalyst of negro reproduction. Polluted tears yank at herbs of injustice, But narcotics scramble the voices of restoration. All while Mama takes another hit, Of the white substance daddy stole, From the neighbor upstairs.

Waiting for this Moment Diana Hoffman 42

Sharks Amy Owings “Why do you walk funny?” A little girl posed this question to Lily on the playground one day, her jump rope hanging loosely at her side. Lily, who had been heading to the water fountain, paused. She usually forgot that she did, until people took opportunities like these to remind her. “I have a leg length discrepancy,” Lily said, the big words tumbling through her small mouth like the marbles she held in her hand. “One leg is shorter than the other.” “Oh,” the little girl said. “Is that because a shark bit off part of your leg? That’s what happened to my cousin.” “A shark?” Lily dropped a marble, then bent down to pick it up. “No. No sharks. I was born with it.” “Oh,” the girl said again. “Too bad.” She returned to jumping rope, and Lily walked away, the girl’s words bouncing around in her head. Too bad. She didn’t notice the school’s new playground assistant, who was hovering near the water fountain. A silver whistle rested against the woman’s crisp red polo shirt, and her name tag was pinned to perfection. “Did you hurt your leg, hun?” the woman asked, her gaze falling to Lily’s leg. “Why are you limping?” “I didn’t hurt it,” Lily snapped, feeling irritated. “It’s just like that. No sharks.”

“Sharks?” The woman’s brow wrinkled, but after seeing the look on the girl’s face she decided to

let it go. “Okay... Sorry, hun.” Lily started walking again, feeling painfully aware of the uneven rhythm of her legs: up-down, up-down. She looked down and saw herself as other people saw her: thin, wiry, like she might break in 43

half. Body moving off-kilter, walking with a lopsided gait. Fixable with surgery, the doctor had said. But not now. Not until the growth plates in the knees are more mature, until one leg’s growth can be frozen while the other catches up. In three years, maybe four. We’ll see. Lily suddenly wished that time would move more quickly. The next day a classmate entered her second-grade classroom with a cast on his arm. Kids crowded around him as he told the harrowing tale of his plunge off the monkey bars. His arm was bent all the way backwards. The bone was sticking out; he saw it with his own two eyes. Lily caught her teacher rolling her eyes, then watched the other kids poking his cast, jostling to be the first to sign it. She got an idea. The little girl came to school the following morning with an elastic bandage wrapped all the way up her short leg. She had grabbed it from the hallway closet and stuffed it in her backpack before her mother could see, then applied it carefully on the back of the bus when no one was looking. She hobbled stiffly to her desk—maybe she wrapped it a bit too tight—and waited for the comments to come pouring in. This time, she wouldn’t just be born with it. She’d have a story to tell. This time, she’d be met with looks of admiration, not pity.

“What happened?” Cara, her blond hair pinned back with flower clips, was the first to notice.

She pointed at Lily’s bandage, and several other kids turned to look.

“Oh, I hurt it on the swing.” Lily tried to look nonchalant. “I did a flip off and landed wrong.”

Cara wasn’t as impressed as Lily was hoping. “My little brother did that. Broke his ankle.”

The other kids turned to her. “Really?”

Lily realized she was losing their attention and grappled to maintain it. “And then I fell into

quicksand, too,” she said loudly, and their eyes turned back to her. “It almost sucked me up. By the time the firefighters got there, only my head was sticking out. They had to dig me out with a bulldozer.” She 44

wasn’t sure where the words were coming from, only that they kept coming.

Everyone’s eyes widened. “A bulldozer?” one boy asked, his eyes gleaming. “That’s cool.”

Lily nodded, warmth spreading into her fingers and cheeks. She knew it was wrong, but she

liked the attention. She liked the feeling that she was worthy of good attention. Her story grew, and with it her feeling of satisfaction. At lunch she told the cafeteria worker that she got hit by a car. At recess her friends’ mouths hung agape as she related the story of saving her family from a burning house. In the afternoon her teacher raised an eyebrow when Lily explained that she was bitten by a shark at the city lake.

“It almost got my whole leg,” Lily said, stretching out her arms to indicate the mammoth size of

the shark. Her teacher’s lips pinched together, and Lily did her best to ignore the tickling feeling in the back of her mind warning her of the suspicion in her teacher’s eyes. The lies were pouring out of her fast and sweet like maple syrup over pancakes, and she found herself unable to stop them. No longer was her limp a source of embarrassment; it was her most prized possession.

After art class Lily’s teacher pulled her aside. “I’d like you to see the nurse,” she said. “The, uh,

bite on your leg may need treatment.”

Lily gulped. She hadn’t considered that she might have to take the bandage off. She figured she’d

leave it on for a few days at least, and then, well . . . she hadn’t gotten much farther than that.

“It’s okay,” she said quickly. “My mom, uh, already took me to see a doctor.”

The teacher held out her hand. “Let’s go,” she said in her don’t-argue voice. Lily took her hand

and didn’t argue.

The teacher directed Lily to a hard black chair in the nurse’s office and then whispered to the

nurse for a few minutes. A sick feeling blossomed in Lily’s stomach.

Then the nurse sat down across from Lily. “Can I show you something?” she asked, and Lily,

taken aback, nodded.

The nurse detached a flesh-colored oval from the inside of her ear and held it out for Lily to see.

“This is my hearing aid. I’ve had it since I was a little girl, because I was born with hearing loss. Were you born with anything special, Lily?”

“No,” Lily said, not sure what she was getting at. “But my mom will give me her special jewelry

when I’m grown up.”

The nurse laughed. “I meant your leg, actually.” She gently tapped Lily on the knee.

“Oh.” Lily understood the question now. “One of my legs is shorter than the other.”

The nurse nodded. “When I was a little girl, the other kids at school had a lot of questions about

my hearing aids. They asked me what they were and why I had them. Sometimes I couldn’t hear what people said to me, and they were mean to me about it. I hated feeling different. I bet you feel that way sometimes too, huh?”

Lily nodded, suddenly feeling as if she might cry. She stared at the tile flooring until the watery

feeling receded from her eyes.

“Will you tell me about it?” the nurse asked, and after a big breath, Lily did. This time, she told

the truth. As she talked the nurse nodded and smiled, and she looked at Lily with understanding, not pity.

When they finished talking, the nurse asked Lily a question. A strange question. “What color

hair do you have, Lily?”

“Brown,” she replied slowly, feeling as if she was being tested in some way.

“Do you ever wish you had a different hair color?”

Lily thought about it. She liked the way that Cara’s hair looked in the sunlight, the way it glowed.

But then she remembered the way her dad ruffled her hair, just like your mother’s, and the way it

looked with her favorite yellow headband.

“Sometimes,” she said finally. “But mostly, no. It’s just the way it is.”

“Exactly,” the nurse said. “It’s a part of who you are. And your leg length discrepancy is a part

of who you are, just like my hearing loss is a part of who I am. Sometimes we don’t always like these things, but it’s just the way it is. And someday, when you’re older, you’ll find you don’t mind it so much.”

And the nurse is right. 20 years later, when Lily has changed her hair color several times and

had multiple surgeries on her leg, which mitigate the discrepancy but fail to entirely erase it, she’ll take pride in the slight limp in her gait. She’ll still notice the eyes that fall to her leg before reaching her face, but she’ll know it’s simple curiosity, not ill intent, that causes people to look. And eventually her uneven gait will become as commonplace as the old memories of the little girl with the bandage.

“Can I take this off now?” Lily asked the nurse, waving the leg with the bandage. It suddenly felt

tight and sticky.

The nurse helped her unravel the bandage. “No more quicksand and sharks, right, Lily?” she

asked, and Lily nodded her head slowly, up and down. She was beginning to think that maybe being born with it wasn’t so bad. After all, she hadn’t considered that other people could be born with things, too.

“When I have surgery someday, will I get a cast that everyone can sign?” she asked. The nurse

laughed. “I’m not sure. But if you do, I’ll be the first to sign it.”

Brasenose Oxford Cheyenne Heckerman

Manifesto of the Fallen Cathedrals Katie McMorris Now, let us baptize the pipe organs in blood and brand our chests with stained glass as we lay to rest in sepulchers not built for us. Let our atonement start in the cracks, withering upwards until the bell towers no longer know how great Thou art. We confess that we are by nature temporary, cursing the architects and pillars that keep looking back. Give us this day one last hymnal, stuffed in the pew with the most cobwebs, so the mice, too, can praise you. And may the ridges of our tongues paint murals with the wine of the Eucharist, in remembrance of us. And after this, after all this, must we still ask for forgiveness?

CONTRIBUTORS Elena Botts grew up in the DC area, lived briefly in Berlin and Johannesburg, and now attends col-

lege in upstate New York. She’s been published in fifty literary magazines over the past few years. She is the winner of four poetry contests, including Word Works Young Poets’. Her poetry has been exhibited at the Greater Reston Art Center and at Arterie Fine Art Gallery. Her published poetry books are we’ll beachcomb for their broken bones (Red Ochre Press), a little luminescence (Allbook-Books) and the reason for rain (Coffeetown Press). Her visual art has won her several awards.

Maya Calderwood is from Hatboro, Pennsylvania and is currently a sophomore Digital Communications and Art & Visual Culture double major at Lebanon Valley College.

R. B. Ejue is a final year student of Computer Science at Madonna University Nigeria and a fiction editor at Red Fez Publications.

Connor Feeney is a senior physical therapy major at Lebanon Valley College and will achieve his

doctorate in May 2019. He was born and raised in Reading, PA. He hopes to continue writing and acting throughout his post-college life. He also hopes to one day run for political office and try to right this country’s wrongs.

Emma Fuhs is an undergraduate student at the University of California, Davis, majoring in English. Her work has appeared in The Writing Disorder and Moonglasses Magazine.

Leah Gaus studies creative and professional writing at Miami University in Ohio. Her poetry and

creative nonfiction has been published in Flip the Page and The Miami Student Magazine. She aspires to stir a sense of possibility within her readers, inspired by the unknown and misunderstood.

Cheyenne K. Heckermann is a senior at Lebanon Valley College who specializes in literature and creative writing. She is a writer, photographer, artist, belly dancer, and all-around creative person.

Kayla Hodecker is a sophomore psychology major at Lebanon Valley College hoping to concentrate in child psychology soon. She is highly interested in photography, especially nature. She is extremely hard working and cares deeply about the people in her life. She loves the summer and being on the beach.

Diana Hoffman is a senior art & art history major specializing in museum studies at Lebanon Valley College and resides in Hershey, PA. Diana curated Con Spirito for the Suzanne H. Arnold Art Gallery of LVC (2016), was associate editor/contributor for Color + Culture (2015), editorial assistant for When the Machine Made Art: The Troubled History of Computer Art (2012), presented at Inquiry, and received a Student-of-Promise Award (2014). She creates abstract art paintings inspired by musical motifs.

Erin Keating is a senior at Roanoke College studying literature and creative writing. Her poetry has appeared in the Allegheny Review, Whurk, and Artemis.

Lillian King is a student at Bowling Green State University studying creative writing and history. She has been previously published in The Copperfield Review and Collision Magazine, among others. Her interests include reading, playing video games, and John Quincy Adams.

Kasy Long is a senior creative writing major at Ohio Northern University. Her work has appeared,

or is forthcoming, in The Sigma Tau Delta Rectangle, Oracle Fine Arts Review, Otoliths, The Sucarnochee Review, Glass Mountain, The Ravens Perch, and Polaris Literary Magazine. In her free time, she watches I Love Lucy, reads Emily Dickinson’s poetry, and dreams about beautiful Lake Chautauqua in western New York. After graduation, she hopes to work in communications for a thriving cultural museum. 52

De’Shaun Madkins is a junior at the University of Dubuque in Dubuque, IA. He started writing

two years ago and began to take his writing seriously in March of last year. Outside of this publication, his work can be found in Tenth Muse, Dubuque Area Writers Guild 2016 anthology Shapes, and in the latest publication of Moldero magazine. His hope is to one day become an international attorney and continue to write in his free time.

Katie McMorris is a senior at Hope College studying Creative Writing and Dance. Her work has appeared in Mosaic, The Rusty Scythe, and Opus.

Anastasia Nicholas is eighteen years old and studying to become a journalist. Her work has previ-

ously appeared in Canvas, Blue Marble Review, Inkwell, Assonance, and Glass Kite Anthology, and her poetry has received statewide awards.

Amy Owings is a senior at Northern Arizona University, where she studies English and journalism.

After graduating, she hopes to work for a magazine or a publishing company while writing novels on the side. She is an intern for a small press publisher called Dreaming Big Publications and occasionally writes freelance articles for local newspapers. When Amy isn’t writing, she’s typically baking cupcakes or forcing other people to look at pictures of her cats. This is her first publication in a literary magazine.

Kierstin Reichard is a junior English major at Lebanon Valley College. Writing poetry and reading

literature have been her greatest passions from a young age. She looks to events in her own life as well as those around her to catch fleeting moments of unique feelings which she tries to capture through her writing. She asks you to feel first and think second.

Austin Shay is a senior at Penn State University studyingÂ English. His work can be found in a variety

of literary magazines. He enjoys spending time with his cat and working on his own literary journal, The Paragon Journal.

Tom Stevens is a creative writing student at UMass Lowell, where he has focused primarily on writing poetry. After graduating this spring, he plans to continue writing.