The Apprentice WRITER

Volume 35 $3

apprentice writer : 1 The submission period runs from January 1st to March 15th, 2018. editor: Introduction Glen Retief Welcome. The Apprentice Writer Susquehanna’s Creative Writing major Selection editors: annually features the best writing and now enrolls over 170 undergraduate Amy Anderson, Alyssa Coleman, photography from entries we receive students. The Writers Institute also hosts each year from secondary schols Creative Writing Day once a year, a day Morgan Green throughout the United States. of readings and workshops, giving high Final Selection Editor: school students the opportunity to Emily Gilman Every September, we send printed experience creative writing in college. Print & Design Editor: copies as a public service by The Daily Sydney Curran Item in Sunbury, PA to nearly 3,000 If you are interested in learning more Web Content Manager: schools. about the Creative Writing major and programs related to writing sponsored Matthew Dooley For full submission guidelines for the by the Writers Institute, see the back Special thanks to: 2018 edition of The Apprentice Writer, page or go to www.susqu.edu/writers. Codie Nevil Sauers please visit www.apprenticewriter.com Table of Contents PROSE 30 liGhts in the vault ~ Joseph Christensen 31 the Guillotine’s final words ~ Celeste Wu 7 Memento Mori ~ Jimin Han 31 the sun’s ode to the Moon ~ Elizabeth Winkler 12 Driving from Ashkelon 32 reason enouGh ~ Willow Quindley to Tel Aviv ~ Dan Rudiak 33 vaGaBond BondinG ~ Andrei Bucaloui 12 Charlie ~ William Jasey Roberts 33 huntress ~ Meagan R. Thomas 18 My Fourteen Days of Color ~ Allison Jung 34 the next to the last day 20 A Cry for Help ~ Naomi Jeanpierre Before thursday ~ Dominick Leskiw 22 Amelia ~ Alena Marcinkoski 34 tea ~ Alyssa Chen 24 Stars ~ Jackson Eagan 35 view of a 19th century photograph ~ Elizabeth Winkler 26 Afterlife ~ Sydney Peng 35 casual reMarks ~ Meagan R. Thomas 27 Love, Tuesday ~ Gwendolyn West 37 poetry winner: letters to noBody, 31 Scoops ~ Nicholas Kassoy written at MidniGht ~ Alyssa Chen 36 Prose Winner: Texts from Spain ~ Betsy Zaubler 44 My luck is inherited ~ Jenny Li 38 The Houseguest ~ Mairead Kilgallon 46 trapped: in the national transit BuildinG, 45 Namesake ~ Brian Murray oil city, pa ~ Catherine Buchanan 46 Salt ~ Nicholas Lasinsky 49 innocence ~ Ebelechiyem Okafor 48 A Street or Passage Closed at 51 MiGration ~ Cindy Song One end ~ Nara Benoit Kornhauser 51 equations ~ Isobel Daniels 50 On Fear and Illusion ~ Sean Wolfe 52 starBucks on talcottville road ~ Abigail Howard 54 BaBy flaMe ~ Isabella Gonzalez 52 Genius ~ David Reynoso 55 to Be huMan ~ Jessica Xu 61 Four Thirty ~ Lauren Ellis 56 faMily Movie ~ Erin Chang 63 If you Meet Her, Tell Her She’s 57 surnaMe x ~ Edward Moreta Jr. Beautiful ~ Grace Morrissey 64 Under the African Sun ~ Jenny Li 58 Glass ceilinG ~ Ella Fasciano 66 Sunny ~ Young Se Choi 59 capturinG the MoMent ~ Haemaru Chung 68 The Bicycle ~ Sydney Vincent 60 a house tour or siMply the next 71 Never Quite Enough ~ Callie Gonsalves pillow over ~ Piety Exley 74 Annie Dillard’s “A Writer in the World” And Trusting 60 when it’s over ~ Erin Chang My Own Voice ~ Anna Osborne 63 waterMelon deliGht ~ Alder Flecker 66 thorns on Bare skin ~ Brianna Caridi POETRY 67 antisocial ~ Jessica McKenzie 3 Penitentiary ~ Jeremy Hsiao 68 steMs ~ Ilana Sabban 3 Atlas ~ Jade Cruz 75 the sinGle to the dozen ~ Badriah Moussa 4 Paper Cranes ~ Meagan R. Thomas 4 I am the Lord, Your Shepard ~ Kelechi Nwankwoala PHOTOGRAPHY 5 New York Winters ~ Chloe Burns 6 Grandma’s House ~ Mariam Trichas Cover: A Mother’s Love Never Grows Old ~ Sarah Ryu, Leonia, NJ 11 Antiquity ~ Eva Erickson 6 Bridge of Stone ~ Erin Mahoney 11 Little Lullabies ~ Isabella Gonzalez 17 Morning Sahara ~ Michelle Mulé 16 Laughable ~ Badriah Moussa 25 jump! ~ Charlyn Sunico 17 His Stories of the Seas ~ Taylor Burgin 49 Onwards ~ Victoria Maung 19 It’s Just Rain ~ Elosia Sablan 53 Endurance ~ Haemaru Chung 19 Deteriorate ~ Gizela Maksym 54 Sweet Treat ~ Abbi Dehmey 21 Dwelling ~ Elizabeth Anne Zupancic 55 Sunlight ~ Michelle Mulé 23 Honeysuckle ~ Emily Tian 56 De Los Ojos Del Niño ~ Emma Gallagher 25 Snow ~ Tazein Shah 58 Endless Spiral ~ Mariam Trichas 26 Intuition ~ Jeremy Hsiao 59 Cry for Freedom ~ Haemaru Chung

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I saw yet another captive garage, titled RHYTHMS. Penitentiary dipped in marbles of black, Those who left would one day white return Jeremy Hsiao and everything in between to admire the minds of Walnut, CA shooting stars through the prisoners in drug-induced sky. comas People stare at each cell There were those who death hidden in tar pits for minutes stood in tangibility lounging outside. and all they saw were things as sculptures. to marvel. deformed yet perfect I saw painting prisoners frenzied radio transmissions trapped behind clear bars 3D printed with no interior to preserve the aura of a except light. portrait. Those were the ones I admired Within a frame, I could watch most, flashes of a life the ‘escapees’ still rooted to through torn, paused VHS the spot tapes with a glistening streak in their fragmented and placed layer many eyes upon layer down through their esophagus to form a jumbled, into the lungs and the heart mismatched, puzzle that beats no one would have to ask. forced together incorrectly. in the self portrait from the Everyone would just know. Every day, people would look It’s not hard to suspect, at the prisoners and say really, what all he carries. “What does he mean to you?” Some say it’s the stress of Life is too short so many classes. Others to wonder about the things Atlas believe that matter to others Jade Cruz parents are the problem. There are even rumors that yet they still ask. Tyrone, PA If stumped, visitors read their he once went head on into labels and titles With constellations on his a lost battle and hasn’t as a guide, a broken GPS. skin been the same since. One such painting stood and bruises on his hands, Perhaps all gleaming through white he takes heavy footsteps of it is true. Or it could strokes moving forward despite all all be completely wrong. drawn in door frames, he carries in his arms. But personally I believe I and the prisoner meant He looks sort of frail, but know what keeps his arms nothing at all, mostly tired. No one is full. It is clear to me that disappearing back into ignorant enough to call him he holds nothing less than synchronous lines weak. Nor is anyone naive the sky itself, and we that still beckoned to me with enough to ask what he is ought to be in awe of its oddly shaped, dark gray carrying. If people could the heavy, enduring fingers see with more than their footsteps yet pushed away with a palm eyes, of Atlas. of glass. I moved on.

apprentice writer : 3 I am the Lord, Paper Cranes Your Shepherd Meagan R. Thomas Kelechi Nwankwoala Coventry, CT New Rochelle, NY The grey city is masked by an aging day of mottled umber After four days of deliberation, the jury found former smog. Oklahoma City Police Department Officer Daniel The sky looms, Holtzclaw guilty of multiple counts of rape and sexual threatening thunder. assault. On Dec. 10, Holtzclaw, who has been on trial since November 2, was accused of targeting black Asphalt arteries clog with lazy women in the community he patrolled. All 13 women traffic. testified against Holtzclaw in the trail. Eyeless strangers rush the ash i am just a woman sidewalks. and the gospel of today Steel wires cross the sky is that i am something to be conquered on rusted bolts and creaking poles. The smell of electricity is blind now. i am high and hospitalized, careening and crashing off PCP As the day goes darker, HE a cold breeze whistles through the is Policeman, Hero of the streets, and hollow city, Respected in OKC carrying tantalizing insinuations HE of rain just wanted to talk but body language betrays to wash away the grime. bodily functions Someone brave glances up to see HE said “you know you got these warrants” and thousands of paper cranes somehow my body just knows something perching on the telephone lines, i silently watching, know that this is much more than a search waiting. HE took me to Dead Man’s curve The breeze stirs their pale wings; HE they incline their wedged heads is here to Protect and Serve with yours. peering up The first drops break on their i think pointed tails i was wrong to have thought my body a temple and your unmasked face. my eyes were watching god The sky fills with rain but he forced me still and soggy paper, saying “you know this is better than county, right?” washing the earth through i just gasped the night. the whole time i am staring straight into the night i am still losing my voice in that alleyway forever i am still that girl with The damp dawn bathes the city her arms outstretched in rose gold and amber. and her mind More lift their heads with you, reaching far back to the big safety of before looking past bare wires This to newborn sky. I have seen the devil. I have walked the valley. The cranes are gone. I am not broken. You do not ask after them; I must speak. you know no one will understand. Perhaps they were finally able to fly away.

4 : susquehanna university New York Winters Chloe Burns Hawthorne, NY

i’ve lived seventeen new icicles falling as godly i curl up under the old york winters. daggers from the roof, pine in my backyard and the sky always splits and all savage and sleep in the snow, freezes the air around me - beautiful burrowing as if to i lace boots up to my hibernate away my hours knees and pull i’m crowned with icicles until the thaw. cardigans tigher and all my diamonds melt i wake with blue lips and around myself in sunlight. white fingertips, i feel the first pangs i’m pale like the frost and bleached as a skeleton in of frost the sharpest, my blood is lazy in the the winter sun and still like daggers in my side winter, as a corpse; circulating thickly under i was born on the very wool and leather gloves, i’ve lived seventeen new crest of springtime, the barely reaching the tips of york winters and always - pinnacle of fast beauty; my fingers the harbor curls i was always fading, a against itself, changeling child, a i’m a lonely corpse in a retreating from the maladjusted mortal; mausoleum, bones are docks i was all pale eyes and hair, rattling the arctic wind, all the barnacles curl all stolen light and flushed iced over in the night up and sleep, cheeks; dreaming of the sun i was the cherry blossom every winter i hear all the flowers shiver tree blooming in the yard, frost on my window, in their beds just past its prime; always begging to be the bulbs sometimes the only snow i knew was let in, to coil around forget to wake, too the soft caress of petals in my mirror entombed to the soft wind frost on my lips, in my remember what they hair, always whispering were waiting for i’ve lived seventeen new darkly to itself clouds huddle across york winters. the sky, hurried by they were all savagely springtime sometimes the whistler’s song beautiful - visits me icicles snapping the she kisses my eyelids, curls the sun burns cold fire, as limbs of the cherry her well-heeled fingers close as it will ever be, blossom tree through my nerves, but the angle is off - icicles curdling in the leaves defeated, a winged i cannot catch it in my eyes gutters and gushing Nike fleeing Greece, out as crystal shards the very picture of defeat;

apprentice writer : 5 Bridge of Stone Erin Mahoney Wexford, PA

in her kitchen. When I open the piece of paper that says ‘Grandma’s Grandma’s House It’s funny because memories House’ in ten years, will I recall Mariam Trichas are so much more than that. the scent of pine needles that Basking Ridge, NJ More than a scrap of paper I smelled as I approached the It seems odd. ripped entryway to her home? Odd that memories could be out of a journal. The smell of freshly baked stored in a stained glass box Yet, I continue to collect them in apple pie which gently with an ornately beaded green a box. enveloped me in its warmth cover, the side of the box As if, by doing this, they will and comfort as I stepped containing a hairline crack, never be erased from my into her kitchen? enduring years of being memory. The hot chocolate, which handed down from one The details, the emotions, that provided much needed generation to the next. make them so special. soothing relief from a stressful So worthy of being added to day, sweeping away my Odd that as if by holding one this box. worries as it washed down my slightly crumpled piece of throat, it’s warmth overtaking paper with the words Over time, will I forget the way me? ‘Grandma’s House’ scrawled the sunlight hit her face, across it in black making her shine as if she were Or will I just remember sharpie, I could be an angel? Grandma’s House. transported to that time and Will I remember the place. unbalanced smile that caused Holding the wooden beads of her left cheek to crease more her necklace while we talked than her night?

6 : susquehanna university “The suspect is already wanted for waiting in the lobby. Is it okay if I let Memento Mori several cases of homicide, and au- him up to your room?” recited the Jimin Han thorities have recently charged the voice. suspected serial killer with three fur- Seoul, South Korea ther counts of murder. He is currently A clump of uncertainty clogged Death, be not proud, though some at large, and the NYPD has identified my throat. I took the receiver from have called thee the suspect as...” the TV raged on and my ears for a moment and hesitated. Mighty and dreadful, for thou on, apparently about an infamous se- I looked out to the darkness outside art not so rial killer who had been on the run for my veranda window. - Holy Sonnet 10 by John Donne quite some time now. Damn me, how idle had I been, musing so delightedly “Bring him in,” I muttered. 1. 2016.4.18. in the veranda through such shock- ing news? I smiled, for I knew another, A visitor, at this time of day, in this The weather was red. The weather perhaps a more powerful serial killer. incredibly banal setting - coming to was red and the air tasted of wine. I see me. Strange, I thought, as I turned inhaled a good dose of the sunset’s His name is Mori. No one knew his on the faucet to splash my face with musty breath, losing myself in a soft name, save for me. How did I know some cold water. Then it struck me hike along the trails of memory. Nos- so well? I caught a glance of the psy- - Mori - it had to be him. It all made talgia shifted like leaves, its move- chopath when he took my daughter, sense now: the weather, the news ment divine yet somber. One scene his face concealed in the shadows report, the eerie heaviness that had in particular has replayed a hundred yet undoubtedly etched with a ma- seemed to be suffocating the life out times over now, but with every play niacal calm, on that day in that grimy of both artificial setting of my apart- back, it seemed to be losing its light. hospital. Mori preyed on the fear of ment as well as the natural scenery The scene has been so bright at first, people, engraving his claws into the that surrounded it. Everything had gleaming with brilliance of the stars. consciousness of anyone who dared come together to stand at attention Now, it was withered and weathered expose the tiniest sliver of vulnerabil- in anticipation of Death. I couldn’t re- like a worn-out cassette. It end was ity. “I could be next”, he would make sist surrendering a dry chuckle, both nearing. people ponder frantically, and indeed at the thought that these events had it could just as easily be them who purposefully coincided and that I had Waking from the spell dusk had cast ends up winding up on Mori’s men- only now realized it. It’s finally time, on me I put out my cigarette. The doc- tal cutting table as his next victim. I declared. But you see, as much as I tor would be outraged if she figured He was more than just a murderer. knew about Mori, I had never seen out I was smuggling smokes into the He was a symbol; a symbol of Death. him clearly before - no one has. All I hospital again. She always berated Ironically, he was far from the stereo- have is that shattered glimpse of him me, like a steely schoolteacher scold- typical, grotesque butcher-execution- when he killed my daughter, cool and ing her child, that smoking was pro- er. No beheadings; no autopsies; no composed as can be. But sometimes hibited in the building. I would merely messages on walls painted in blood; the quickest of flashes can have last- respond with a good-natured laugh no traces of violence whatsoever, not ing effects, for I cannot forget the and put the fire out. But the last time I even a single scar on the victims. He domineering physical eminence of got caught smoking, after my daugh- killed so...naturally. Fear served as his the man; draped in a charcoal cape, ter’s Death, she did not say anything. sly accomplice - Fear was the one that tall, powerful in his stride. She just took out her own cigarette got his hands dirty, not Mori. Fear and kneeled down next to me. Just would paralyze the victims, setting A knock. like that, our sighs clouded the grim the stage; all Mori would have to do hallway of the hospital staircase. But is calmly walk up and gaze upon his “I don’t quite see the need for a today, it’s just me and my half-burnt incapacitated target, subjugating his knock, Mori. The door never is locked.” cigarette, side-by-side, gazing at the prize into a cold, limp statue. My voice reeked of artificial placid- sunset, except that there hasn’t been ity, my hands busily reaching for the a sun in the sky to go down and up My train of thought was interrupted white silk robe dangling in the dresser. again. I don’t think the sun has ever by a phone call. The door creaked. And after what felt risen since that day. had been two lifetimes, there he was. “Mr. Leto, you’ve got a mailman Mori, my hell, my heaven, my damna-

apprentice writer : 7 tion, my messiah. My Mori. What an Yes, he had taken notice of Stella’s The doctor shifted her gaze to Stel- odd, fickle thing fate was, for there I peculiar habits. Ever since she was la, meeting her with a distressed look. was, face-to-face with the killer of my born, she had not spoken to him but “But you work, don’t you, Mr. Leto?” daughter. I indeed was paralyzed, not in short grunts. That’s why he had tak- she asked him. awed but rather dumbfounded at the en his daughter, Stella, to the hospital. sight of a petty youth in his twenties He was not totally unprepared, but “Yes, I do work.” This was only par- whose obsidian suit was clearly unfit the word “autism” sent a clear blow to tially true. He would work here and for his shoulders, with no sign what- his head and erased all thinking. there, from time to time. He was only soever of any physical dominance to able to work when work gave him be found. I froze. Where was the fear? Mr. Leto put down his cigarette. “So permission. Currently he was em- To my surprise, Mori just stood there, now what? Is there a cure? Or is she ployed at a construction site, earning locking his hollow eyes onto mine. going to be like that for her whole fifteen dollars an hour. If the construc- Silence started groping me from my life?” Mr. Leto asked as he took off tion were to be completed, he would thighs, eerily climbing up to my neck his plastic, thick-rimmed glasses and have to look for another temporary and making her way down again to gingerly rubbed his temples, as he job. That would mean another two molest my chins with her fingers. I was always did whenever he was anxious. to three weeks of nervous calls and starting to gag when Mori strangled Next to the doctor, Stella was showing curt replies. Until a new position was the silence with his flagrant whisper. a profound interest in the ballpoint secured, he and Stella would have to pen clipped to the upper left pocket survive on two minimal, ungratifying “Stella - she has your eyes.” of her gown. The little angel finally meals a day. Breakfast would consist gathered up the courage to take it out of the French fries from the most in- And with Mori’s words, I was blown and fiddle with it. expensive, $3.49 value meal from the into a familiar, but unpleasant hospital McDonald’s down the street, saving room. It was the room where Stella’s “That’s not how I like to put it, but the burgers for slow, piece-by-piece life had begun - but mine had ended. yes, there is no cure yet, only different consumption throughout the remain- therapies and programs to help her der of the day. “Was it the microwaved 2. 2007.8.22. blend in. Plus, I have to warn you that dinners that made my wife ran away?” she is naturally more prone, due to Yes, it was indeed his lack of a stable “She has your eyes,” the doctor her condition, to disorders or ailments job and perpetual financial shortcom- trembled through her words as she that affect the brain, such as tumors ings that finally pushed his wife to searched for the correct words to gen- or brain cancer. You see, patients who abandon them. tly articulate her diagnosis Mr. Leto’s have been diagnosed with autism daughter, Stella, with autism. spectrum disorder (ASD) have a high- Mr. Leto, or Friedrich Wilhelm Leto er portion of cancer-promoting muta- to be exact, was born on October “She’s such an angel, Mr. Leto. She’s tions in their brain,” the doctor said as 15th, 1980. He hadn’t always been such a sweet little girl.” The doctor she prodded the pen from Stella’s tiny poor, for his father had been a priest stroked Stella’s blonde hair. Mr. Leto hand, instead replacing it with a lolli- at a small church in the Bronx and didn’t look back, instead remaining pop. “She’s just fragile, Mr. Leto. That’s brought home a steady, if not un- stiffly fixed in his stance with his head why she needs extra care,” Mr. Leto spectacular, income for the family. turned, gazing out onto the lawn. The turned away, freeing him from the However, following his father’s Death smoke from his cigarette hazed the shackles of the truth. “By the way, did at age five, his family was thrust into cloudless sky. you come here alone? Does your work poverty. Friedrich had to work ever or stay at home?” She pulled out her since, being allocated into the gloom- “Smoking is prohibited in this build- small handbook. “If she stays at home, ier quarters of the city. He met his wife ing, sir,” said the doctor crossly. “And it’d serve you guys well for me to give at the restaurant at which he used to on your daughter, as you have no- her some instructions. work, and the two weaved out a deli- ticed, she is clearly different from oth- cate love story that could just as well er children. She doesn’t talk; she won’t “Well, I’m a single parent.” The doc- belong in the theaters. She likewise cry like other two-year-olds would; tor looked up, her glasses perched on came from a humble background, a she seems aloof. That’s because au- her nose. “We’re divorced. I mean...she poverty-stricken, single-parent fam- tism basically isolates her from the ran away.” Mr. Leto couldn’t seem to ily. The couple completed each other; rest of the world,” she added. look her in the eyes. they provided each other with the

8 : susquehanna university love that had been devoid in their “Told my boss about Stella’s birth- birthday party - to raise her spirits. childhoods. So they wed, though they day. My boss let me go this time, That night, Friedrich sunk into a could only afford the paperwork, not but not without some prodding and sleepless pool of thought, lying in the ceremony. pleading,” Friedrich proclaimed over bed with one hand under his head, a spoonful of cake. He made his way the other around Stella’s shoulders, But alas, it wasn’t long before Fried- to the kitchen, grabbing a glass full accompanied by Stella’s gentle snor- rich soon learned the harsh realities of cold water, and sat next to Stella. ing. A good day, another day that was of marriage, even in ones that began “Would you mind staying until 6 to- now slowly nearing its end only to with the most modest hopes of hap- morrow?” He took a sip. “I’ll need to bring on a new set of struggles comes piness. Marriages without a proper put in some more time tomorrow.” the next morning. Again he had man- wedding usually end early. And Stella “Sure, but I have to leave exactly at aged to survive, scratch and claw his was his wife’s parting gift. She was all 6. I have to get to another babysitting way to cling on. He wasn’t sure if he that Friedrich had left of his family. job,” replied the nanny. was grateful for the fact that he still had life, or rueful for everything with “In that case, you might want to “That will be fine,” said Friedrich. which life had burdened him. “Just hire somebody to take care of Stella. “Thanks.” give me a reason,” he pleaded in his You see, she needs that care,” said the mind. “If you don’t love me, just give doctor. “No, just give me the instruc- “What about Stella?” She asked. me a reason.” He sighed, for he knew tions. I’ll be the one taking care of her,” it was going to be just another des- Friedrich said. “I’ll just have to rush my way home,” perate appeal in a long list of unan- he shrugged. swered prayers. Snapping himself out 3. 2014. 4. 17. of hypnosis with a yawn, Friedrich Stella’s 9th birthday party was lav- turned to face Stella, stroking her hair. Friedrich was met with an outburst ish and extraordinary. Stella, Fried- It was soothing to see her sleep. Her of noise and a soft thump as if some- rich, and the daytime nanny had been shell-pink lips were delicately pursed thing had made a plush crash land- gathered around the dining table. together, and a soft, furry track in the ing on his hips. Looking around, he Friedrich brought in the small cake groove of her upper lip led way to was met with that cherubic, innocent around noon, after barely securing an her reticent nose. It was a pity that he face of his daughter, painted with that afternoon off from the church where could not see her eyes while she was precious expression that only he got he worked as a janitor. How good it sleeping. Stella’s eyes held the depths to witness every day. At the doorway, was to see his daughter under the of the stars, so deep and full that he stood the nanny who looked after warm glaze of the sun! It had been would always find shelter there, even Stella, also laughing at the pleas- only a few months now, that he was during the darkest of nights. Maybe ant surprise. His plan to surprise his able to hire a nanny. Finally, he could Stella was God’s way of saying sorry. daughter with an unexpected party work without having to leave Stella Too drowsy to think any longer, Fried- was unsuccessful, but nevertheless, alone at home. Although his finan- rich closed his eyes and slipped into a he was granted a rare chance to be cial situation had improved slightly, deep slumber... with his girl while she was awake. He Stella’s health issues still presented swiftly took out of the fridge straw- a long-term, unexpected source of Then it was morning. Friedrich berry shortcake, an aberration from expenditure. The doctor was insist- showered, grabbed some toast and the cheap white cakes they had every ing that Stella’s increasingly frequent water, and carefully left the apart- year. bouts of shaky hands and dizziness ment, trying hard not to wake Stella were a sign of an imminent brain up. Then he set out to the church, “Happy Birthday, Stella.” Friedrich disease. As a result, Stella had been where he worked as a janitor. He kissed Stella’s forehead as she blew forced to undergo arduous check-ups changed into his ash-gray uniform out the candles. Stella beamed silent- at the hospital. The payments were a and set forth to another tedious rou- ly, being occupied with the adorn- problem, but what hurt Friedrich the tine of sweeping and mopping the ments on her cheap birthday hat. “So most was seeing his daughter get eat- floor. you’re home early today, Mr. Leto,” en up and spit out again and again by commented the daytime nanny as cold machines, the life drained out of 4. 2014. 4. 18. she took his coat and hung it on the her time after time. That’s why he had The clock nervously chirped 5 dry, cracked wall next to the door. tried so dearly to be on time for her o’clock, imploring Friedrich to hasten

apprentice writer : 9 his pace. He looked up. Even when he trickled down my nose. The teardrop was mopping the floors of the church, The pins that supported Friedrich’s marred into a sob, halting our conver- his mind was fixed on the modest, legs seemed to have slid away, for he sation. messy floors of his apartment. In an collapsed, knee-first on to the ground. “You’re different from others. Im- hour’s time, the nanny would set off His head dangled from his neck, and posters think they know so much to her next workplace. “Would Stella two hands rolled into a rocky fist. about life and Death and give illustri- be okay?” He thought. He desperately No nurses, doctors, and patients ap- ous speeches. But that is ridiculous, hoped that the nanny would be sen- proached him. But instead, they de- foolish - it’s like a blind man trying to sible enough to put Stella to sleep voted a tad more focus to what they describe a landscape. They’ve never before she left the house. Regardless, were originally doing. Nurses tended lived in the ghettos, scratching away he would bolt down to the apartment to their patients, with a more shrill for minimum wage, all with an autis- as soon as the clock hit 6. Somewhat voice and bigger actions, while doc- tic girl attached to him. They’re aloof, relieved, he went back to soaking the tors furiously scribbled through their arrogant, and abstract - a pity. What soggy sponge in the half-spilled wa- clipboards. And patients and their disgusts me the most is when they ter, not being able to do much else families started to share aggressive say that people should not give up saves for waiting for the clock to do its hugs. on their lives, for after a storm comes work. a rainbow, as light always follows the And the day after her ninth birth- darkness,” Mori scowled. But then a shrill ring pierced his day, Stella died on a cold, desolate right thigh, and jolted upward to hospital bed. Yes, Stella was murdered “Nonsense! Who says life should be clutch his heart. It was a phone call. - murdered by a lad called Death. virtuous and Death blasphemous? Life is servitude. People claim themselves “Hello?” answered Friedrich. It was 5. 2016. 4. 18. to be superior, but they are chained the nanny. His face got grimmer and to money, to health, to church, to grimmer as she informed him, over “I don’t care if she has my eyes. I time, and ultimately, to Death. Then discontinued sobs, that a severe don’t want to know how beautiful she why worship servitude and desecrate stroke had hit Stella, and that she had is, Mori,” the paralysis loosened as the emancipation?” Mori was bellowing at been rushed to the hospital. intense beating in my heart freed my the top of his lungs now. “But you see, limbs. “You dare speak her name, after Death is liberation. Death is escape. So many thoughts flooded into his what you did to her?” I couldn’t resist Death is a choice.” He calmed himself head that his head became blank. blurting out loud. down and kneeled to stroke my hair. Ironically, as his head went blank, his “And you, I respect you because you body started to clear. He darted out “You know that wasn’t me, Fried- know it. And because you have the of the church, without giving it a sec- rich.” Mori’s voice carried an excep- guts and wisdom to make that choice.” ond glance, and sprang to where his tional softness, and I loathed how it daughter was. He shouldn’t have left soothed me. It was indirect contrast Abruptly, he sprang to his feet, Stella alone in this world, though he to his outward appearance, which rushed to the veranda door, and thrust knew it was nobody’s fault. Her time was quite abominable. it open. Then he waved at me, as if he had come. wanted me to come join him in the al- “Look, I know what you had to go ready-murky night sky. I stood up re- The Stella that was lying in front through. I know what it feels like to luctantly, cautiously taking step after of Friedrich now was nothing like his be abandoned, to be cornered into a step towards Mori. Above our heads, little girl, his angel, and his world. Her position where you can’t do even the a brilliant yellow dotted the vast pal- face was pale; her lips twitched; her slightest thing to fight back. You suf- ate of navy-blue. Mori and I draped eyes flipped, and a barren glare had fer not for some greater good or rea- us over the handrails and stared at replaced her starry gaze. Her hands son, but you suffer just for the sake of the spectacle in silence. Another trail were tightly clenched into rock-firm suffering.” Mori slowly approached, of tears trickled out from my closed fists. She gave an occasional fit, shud- his glance firmly fixed upon me. I col- eyes. Finally, someone spoke to me. dering the little life she had left into lapsed on to my bed. He was right; he Mori spoke to me. Mori was doing thin air. Friedrich turned away from was absolutely right. I tried to pro- something that no one, not even my her bed and raised his chin to cess his words in my head, but my father, my mother, my wife, nor my wipe his tears. attention was diverted as a teardrop Stella could do.

10 : susquehanna university I’ve brought you mail,” the mailman is what hits a person first, and is usu- “Friedrich,” he murmured. murmured, both irritation and fatigue ally never wrong. What the mailman noticeable in his voice. “You weren’t smelled in this room was Death. Yes, “Friedrich,” I turned to look at him. answering, so I wondered if...” He the room reeked of the stale traces of stopped in mid-speech to locate the a fresh Death. “I see Stella over there,” he pointed source of the eerie silence. at a particularly bright star in the sky. The wide-open veranda door Indeed, their Stella was, her twinkle ‘Mr. Leto?” there was curiosity in his seemed to testify his bold specula- waving down at me. voice. tion. Indeed, when the mailman stag- gered out the door and managed the “Sprout, my damned wings, sprout!” “Mr. Leto...?” now there was a tinge courage to glance down, he found of fear. himself staring into the red, lifeless “Fly. Fly. Fly. Let me soar once more.” body of Friedrich Leto. “Let me soar once more.” Of course, he had delivered mail to a mental hospital before and there- fore was not alien to such atmo- My last words echoed in silence, as sphere, but he preferred not to revisit I spread my wings and soared up into any place like that. Something was the star-lit sky. One short sleep past, I wrong. The mailman could sense it in woke eternally. the hodgepodge of tattered clothes that were scattered over the bed and 6. 2016. 4. 18. the stained, tangled blankets strewn across the floor. His footsteps echoed The door creaked open as the mail- in the air with hollow resonance. There man tiptoed into the hospital room of was an absence of life in the room that Mr. Leto. He had been standing there, clogged his breath, a creeping feeling waiting for Mr. Leto’s reply, when the of suffocation that he himself could door wasn’t even locked! also fall victim to it. And the smell. “I’m sorry to trespass, Mr. Leto, but That smell. You see, the sense of smell Little Lullablies Isabella Gonzalez Livingston, NJ

Antiquity A sunset concert transitions to starry night Eva Erickson because who would dare to break a holy East Amherst, NY matrimony between the ears and the voice? The man sings of blurriness and isolation as something about this old town he bashed the black and white keys. He spreads thorns in housewife smiles his soul like thick amethyst jam on whole wheat tumble through cornfield down toast. The rhythm drumming their hearts tells them that in some cases, words can speak louder than no one talks about the dark side actions. of the light As unsteady, patched couch acting as a nest. shadows enveloping ground to We promise to part once the Calibri credits sky roll down, yet someone refuses to press pause. crowding out the night I can’t promise it’s not me. What can I say? Dozing off on a beating heart is too big an breath fogged up windowpane opportunity to pass up. i can’t tell moon what i’m The moon watching over me as I glide on the whispering saltwater like a stage diva. If I squint my eyes ink splotch on cotton stain tight enough, I can make out a rocky reflection. The painting lionizes me, contrary to the mirror’s there’s cracks in your smile insults. The crest of the sea tickles my neck and shut, bolt door tight whispers, “You’re here. That’s all I want.” come now, dear, stay a while.

apprentice writer : 11 In his peripherals, Charlie noticed a Driving from large red truck skidding down the street. Charlie It swung too far onto the left side of the Ashkelon William Jasey Roberts road, and then quickly tried to correct it- to Christiansburg, VA self, sending the front end into a spiral, screeching until its left side slammed into Tel Aviv Rubbing his temples, a young man of a light post. Smoke began to plume out of Dan Rudiak around nineteen stumbled unto a brick the front hood. Tenafly, NJ curb. He pushed his way into a conve- “Oh. Oh shit.” Charlie said, looking back nience store, nodding at the store clerk at the store clerk, who was leaning over The sky had never seen such before trudging to the back of the aisles. the front desk on his palms to see what surprise and splendor as it The young man grabbed a bottle of Ty- was going on. Charlie looked back at the held lenol, breaking the plastic around the cap wreck, seeing that the airbag had de- Two dancers meeting at mid- with his fingernails and quickly unscrew- point, mindful of their mea- ployed, inflating to an almost cartoonish surements. ing the bottle. He emptied a few pills into extent. Parts of the bag were pushing out Their flames of fume and vile his hand, and then grabbed an energy of the car window. plume pushed and pushed as drink from the cooler to down the tablets Charlie put his energy drink on the They executed the can can, with. sidewalk, breaking out into a run to the cha cha, and conga with ease. The clerk at the front of the store craned truck, feeling the bottle of pills shaking in Arcing forward as a foreword, his neck so he could see over the aisles. his pocket as he ran. He looked both ways one furiously dropped The young man swished the drink back as he ran across the street, seeing no oth- Into a spiral and fought to and forth in his mouth before he finally er cars in sight. The airbag was appearing spare the people from the swallowed it, waving hello at the clerk as to increase in size, pushing itself into the flaming, he walked back. back of the car. Concave con posing as a great “Is there anything else I can get for As he approached the truck, Charlie re- phenomenon. you?” The clerk asked, carefully scanning alized that it was no airbag. I watched its twirls and whirls the already-open energy drink. of gust as a must. A hulking mass of fat was growing, Of course the con’s course “No, thank you.” The young man said, growing, growing. Expanding, putting would be the innocent, and scratching the top of his forehead. spider-web cracks in the windshield un- Lord knows “You got a headache?” til it finally shattered. He watched as the How to assess the devastation The young man looked up at the clerk. truck’s suspension began to sag, and as and the downpour of war. “Yeah, I just studied for, like, eight hours.” the side doors finally gave way to the lay- Lore tore through both of The clerk nodded, proceeding to scan ers and layers of cellulite and skin. them. the pill bottle. Charlie took a step backward, finally A story of sacrifice seized a “Also, I’ve gotten migraines since I was a switching direction and sprinting back nation. kid.” The young man added on at the end, to the convenience store. He pushed the A story of resistance seized a uncomfortably drumming the front desk front door open, looking at the store clerk. world. with his fingertips. “You need to call an ambulance. There’s Wrongs do not equate to The clerk printed out a receipt, handing something really wrong with that guy out rights but here the dancers it to the young man. Had flown past their wrongs, there.” kited their rights, collided. “Sorry man, school’s tough. If you could “What do you me-” The clerk started, I watched and caught my sign that little slip at the bottom for me, but then trailed off. escaping breath to the afteref- that’d be great.” The clerk said, digging Charlie felt himself begin to unbuckle, fect of this show. around in the register for the young man’s his legs turning to cottage cheese. He fell Dust loomed, daunting me. change. onto the ground, his skin wriggling upon To one storyteller, a terror was The young man scrambled around in impact with the linoleum. He felt his body an object close in a rear view his pockets, finally finding a click pen. He quickly begin to lose shape, expanding mirror, yet signed Charlie W. on the receipt with a down and out. The sides of his fat began Other storytellers spoke differ- tired flourish, handing it back to the store to cut into the doorframe, eventually ently. clerk. squeezing so parts of him were sticking Indifferent, their cause paused. “Ok,” the clerk said, “you have a nice out both sides of the door. They poised up, looking de- night, alright?” Charlie still had his vision, though it was stroyed. “Yeah, thanks.” Charlie said, taking an- blurred and unfocused, he could still see They blamed. They sang. It other swig of the energy drink and grab- rang in my head. in a general direction. He could still hear. bing the pill bottle as he opened the front And so Charlie the blob witnessed the door. clerk’s transformation, too.

12 : susquehanna university The clerk formed a more droopy, bul- looked at her tiredly. This was the first lie was still pushing into the sides of the bous shape. The clerk’s face bulged, los- normal human being Charlie had seen in doorframe, although he was noticeably ing all recognizable facial features in the months. smaller. enlarging mass. His clothes ripped apart She looks like Diane from Cheers, Char- The clerk looked around for a second, and he continued growing until layers of lie thought vaguely. and people quickly arrived through the fat were flowing over the front register. “Listen to me.” The woman said, glanc- hole in the convenience store window, Charlie’s initial thoughts were panicked ing back and forth at Charlie and the clerk. wrapping the clerk in a towel and giving and afraid: “The both of you. I’ve figured it out. You Charlie earnest glances. Charlie never saw What do I do? need to think about being a human again. the store clerk again. What is this? And it’s the only thing that you need to After that, Charlie was fuelled by his Will I be stuck like this forever? think about.” loneliness. Will I ever see my family again? I wonder if she has a boyfriend. Charlie What kept Charlie from losing track I have a midterm I have to take tomor- thought. of his thoughts was the young woman. row and if this makes me miss it I’m going “It might take a while. Like, a few days. She’d reappear day after day, giving him to be really pissed off. But you need to focus. Keep all of your words of encouragement. Charlie ended up missing his midterm. energy on that one thought, and you’ll go One day, when Charlie’s mass was form- Charlie missed a few midterms, actu- back to normal.” ing the vague, lumpy shape of a human, ally. Charlie tried to remember if he had a she brought a fresh set of clothes, lay- The power in the store eventually went girlfriend, but quickly got a headache. ing them in front of him. She set a pair of out, flickered back on for a few days, and The young woman stayed for a few sneakers on top of them. then went out again, making the nights more minutes, talking to the both of “These are for you when you become unbearably dark. Charlie could some- them, Charlie couldn’t lock onto anything a human again. Not if, when. You’re go- times hear the howling of coyotes in the she was saying. Her voice was distorted ing to do it tomorrow, and I’m going to be distance, making his creamy flesh quiver. and distant, like she was trying to talk to there with you the entire time.” A few weeks after that, the gallon him through a toilet paper roll. Her words were cloudier than ever, but jugs of milk they kept in the back went She left after that, and Charlie went Charlie didn’t need to understand them. sour, wafting its way over to Charlie. He back to trying to say his alphabet back- He now had only one thing on his mind, thought about moving out of the way of wards. The farthest he ever got was Q be- one pure unadulterated purpose. the stench, trying to roll somewhere else, fore he had to start over again. Turning into a monster was easy. Turn- somewhere where he could look at some- The young woman came back the day ing out of one was jolting and uncomfort- thing else. But an overwhelming sense after that. able. of futility had placed itself in the back of Charlie hadn’t noticed until she point- He felt his eyes slide out of his skull Charlie’s mind, constantly reminding him ed it out, but the swelling mass that was and into their normal position, he felt that there would be no point to moving, once the store clerk had gone down a bit. his mouth open, skin that had grown be- even if he could move. The clerk’s fat had receded back behind tween his lips tearing away. He used his Charlie’s panicked thoughts were grad- the register again. lungs for the first time in months, the oxy- ually replaced with cynicism and apathy, The young woman focused on Charlie, gen burning his throat. His muscles and often having conversations with himself a sense of urgency in her voice. bones locked back into place, and the about pop culture or really anything that “I know it’s hard, thinking only about shroud that had covered his brain for so he found interesting. He accepted the fact one thing. But it’s something you need long was finally lifted. that this was his life now, the frame of a to train yourself to do. You’ll get into this He looked up, the young woman stand- convenience store door cutting into his mindset, this rhythm of thinking, and ing there with a crowd of other people. body, getting more and more sore as they from then on, it’s the only way you’ll be And Charlie was lying on his stomach, days went on. able to think. You need to think about the naked. And one day, months after the night people you’re doing this for, and most im- “Could you, uh, hand me those clothes Charlie turned into blob Charlie, a brick portantly, you need to think about your- over there?” slammed through the convenience store self.” She handed him the pair of sweatpants window. The young woman’s words struck a from the pile, A young woman, maybe only a few chord in the mounds of flesh that had “Could you turn away, please?” years older than Charlie, carefully slipped once been Charlie. He was filled with a The crowd of people looked at each her way through the hole in the window, sudden warmth, his heart grew three siz- other, and then slowly turned around. The stepping over the broken glass in her ten- es, that sort of thing. woman smiled and turned with them. nis shoes. Her shirt still had the tag on it, It was a slow process that was continu- Charlie quickly stood up and slid the and the shoes were plasticky and relative- ously halted by dread and self-hatred. The sweatpants on. ly scuff-free. clerk had turned completely back to nor- “Are we good?” She asked. She ran into the view of Charlie, who mal within a few days. By that point, Char- “Maybe let me get the shirt on too.”

apprentice writer : 13 Charlie said, grabbing it off the floor. been a storm in years. The realtor offered He turned and walked down the hall to When the woman turned around, Char- them a sizable suburban three-bedroom, Sissy’s room, turning the door knob. lie was leaning against the door, trying to two-bathroom residence. Sissy was sitting in a chair, staring at a put his sneakers on. They made their life there. Alyssa had white wall in silence. “Do they fit alright?” She asked. the baby, Charlie finished school and “Hey, bud, it’s time for dinner.” “Yeah, yeah. They’re good.” Charlie said, went to work at a local construction firm Sissy turned and looked at him, smiling wincing. as the bookkeeper. after a quick moment of confusion. “Ok.” “Are you sure?” Alyssa wanted a girl more than any- They both went back into the dining “Yup. Snug as a rug.” thing, already planning on the name Ce- room, where Alyssa had already sat down The young woman hugged him. “I knew cilia. She was going to call her “Sissy” for and begun to eat. Charlie thought about you could do it.” short. how right he was about the rice. He need- “What was that?” Charlie asked, looking Things never really worked out the way ed something to give it a little bit more at the crowd in front of him. she wanted them to. After a few more flavor. “We don’t know, but it happened to months, Christopher was born. “Honey, do we have any soy sauce?” everyone.” She said. “We’ve all reformed, The name was Charlie’s idea. Alyssa looked up, taking a minute to we’ve gotten better. We helped each oth- “We can still call him Sissy.” Charlie said finish chewing her food. “No, I threw it er.” as the doctor handed the baby to Alyssa. away. We need to cut down on sodium.” “What- What’s your name?” “The kids at school are going to kick the Charlie clicked his tongue and then “Oh- uh, Alyssa.” shit out of him.” nodded, clanking his fork against his plate Charlie smiled at her, starting to feel a “He can always change it back to Chris.” when he tried to get another bite. sudden trembling in his arm. Sissy was holding his fork like a shovel, He looked down at it. It was starting to attempting to scoop a piece of chicken bubble and expand, and he was losing fo- Charlie pulled one of the blind shades over and over again, but continuously cus of where he could move it. down, looking across the street at the having it roll off, his father watching him Charlie’s heart rate began to raise, and Selick residence. Matty Selick, someone do this. he cover his arm with his other hand Charlie had gone to school with, was be- “Let me get that for you.” Charlie said, “What’s going on?” He asked. ing removed from his front yard. The re- plucking the piece of chicken with his fork “Well, that’s the other thing.” Alyssa moval crew slid his flippery body on top and holding it out for Sissy to eat. The boy said. “You have to keep thinking about it. of a forklift, attempting to load Matty into ate it whole. Or else you’ll turn into one of those things the back of a garbage truck. The job end- Alyssa glared at Charlie. “You can’t do again.” ed up taking three people, one to oper- that with him. He needs to learn how to Charlie looked down at the shoes that ate the forklift, and two more to hold the do things on his own without losing fo- made his toes bend backwards, wonder- edges of fat that were attempting to flop cus.” ing where they could possibly take him off of it. After a beat, Charlie said “Is that why we from here. Charlie felt his hand begin to lose its make him stare at a wall all day?” Charlie and Alyssa did their research shape, so he quickly closed the blind and “The school recommends we do it. when they moved into a new neighbor- thought about how much he loved being They need a clean slate to work with so hood. It was at that time that Alyssa was able to see with his own eyes and breathe they can work on his attention skills.” pregnant with the baby, and the doctor with his own lungs. “I like the wall.” Sissy said, still chewing had warned her and Charlie to avoid any “Charlie, dinner’s ready,” his wife called his chicken. mental fatigue, on the chance that she’d from the dining room. Alyssa looked at Charlie. Charlie looked lose her focus. Charlie turned and walked away from at his rice. Thinking about staying a human was the door, tentatively glancing back at the “Matty Selick’s getting removed from a second nature to Alyssa; she never blind shades and thinking about the time his home with a forklift.” showed any sign of struggling with it. back in school when Matty got caught “Who’s that?” She could watch movies, listen to music, giving out free cigarettes to students who “A guy from high school. A friend.” exercise, and even read books with that pledged to vote him student council. “I mean, hopefully they can get him the thought constantly humming in the back His wife had made Asian chicken in the help he needs.” of her head: stay human, stay human. oven and put some rice in the cooker they Charlie nodded. “Well, it’s just that- I She’d even admitted to Charlie about had gotten as an anniversary gift. Heap- don’t know- I think it was wrong- what going for hours without thinking about it ing some onto his plate, he noticed that they were doing to him.” and not seeing so much as a ripple in her it looked dry, almost wishing she’d fried it “What do you mean?” skin. in a pan. “They just looked like they were dis- Their neighborhood was nice, very low “Can you get Sissy?” turbing him, you know? It’s not like he lost people-to-blob ratios, and it received lit- Charlie was just setting his plate down control at work or in the bathroom or any- tle rainfall, to the point that there hadn’t as she said it. “Oh, um, yeah.” thing, he just did it in his front yard when

14 : susquehanna university he was taking out the trash. He seemed peeling away in the sunlight. He looked to help him, Charlie.’ Why can’t we help fine there. Selick was never a happy guy; like a giant raisin. him? Like when you helped me when we he had all kinds of loss in his life, and I al- “Can you just put him in the trunk?” met?” ways thought the only way he could be Charlie asked the removal crew, putting a “Charlie, that was before we had sys- happy was if he lived simply. But when hand to his forehead. tems in place. Systems designed to reha- they removed him, it didn’t look natural.” The supervising crew member handed bilitate the debilitated. He needs profes- Alyssa did a half-smile. “We still have Charlie a clipboard. “You need to sign this sional care.” procedures for that kind of thing, honey. form stating that you took possession of Charlie raised his voice. “Do you know This is what we pay taxes for, this is what your daughter after this incident.” what they do to people in those facilities?” we teach our kids.” “It’s a boy.” Charlie said. “Oh god!” Alyssa shouted, running her Sissy picked up another piece of chick- The crew member looked at him. “Par- hands through her hair, tugging at the en and popped it in his mouth. “Where do don?” roots. they take the people who turn into mon- “It’s my son. He’s not a girl.” “They leave you there. They lock you sters?” “The- uh, school told me the kid’s name in a cell- as if you could move at all- and Alyssa and Charlie looked at him. was Sissy.” they leave you there. There’s a queue of “It doesn’t matter as long as you don’t “Nevermind.” Charlie said, signing the thousands of people they have to treat, turn into one,” Alyssa said, leaning in close document. they do it one at a time, and you’re al- to her son, “so make sure you never, ever The crew member took the clipboard ways signed as last on the list. It could be give up, okay? Never.” back from him, taking a quick look at the years- decades, even- before we see our “Ok.” Sissy said, his face like a statue. other workers loading Sissy into Charlie’s son again.” Charlie stayed at home for his job. He car. “One more thing.” He said, grabbing “But it works, Charlie! It works! People found himself not leaving the house near- a small pamphlet from his back pocket. come back completely fixed and never ly as much as he used to, and when he did “This is always an option if, you know, you have another incident again. We could leave the house, it was primarily to pick have trouble turning him back.” live our lives with our son, and never have Sissy up from school. It was for one of the rehabilitation facili- to worry about becoming one of those His job consisted of long hours sitting at ties. things again.” home and going over paperwork, memo- The worker handed it to him. “You aren’t “Why is that so bad? What are you so rizing people’s names without losing his obligated to take the kid to it because he’s afraid of?” focus, and quickly stopping the bubbling a minor, but it’s still an option for you. And Alyssa looked at him, incredulous. when he did. personally, as a parent myself, I think it “What aren’t you afraid of?” Alyssa was pressuring him for another would be the best thing for him.” Charlie peered at Sissy, whose swelling kid. He understood why she wanted it, but Charlie looked at the pamphlet. “Thank hadn’t gone down at all. Sissy didn’t know making the first one was hard enough for you.” (or maybe didn’t even care) to try. him. He almost lost control and crushed It took Charlie half an hour to get Sissy “I’m not afraid of living. I’m not afraid of her a few times. out of the trunk and roll him through the turning into a monster again or of losing He expected something different from driveway. Pieces of gravel and dirt clung you or of my sodium intake or of any shit getting Sissy, like having a kid would to the bloated mass. Charlie was remind- like that. I’m just not afraid anymore.” make his life easier somehow. He knew ed of when he built snowmen as a kid. Alyssa said nothing. having a kid was demanding, but when The front door was just wide enough Charlie continued. “I was thinking the Alyssa was pregnant with Sissy, Charlie to squeeze Sissy through. Charlie wanted other day, when they took Matty and always thought the stress would be help- to roll him into his room, but was com- loaded him into a garbage truck. I was ful. Cathartic, in a way. Having a kid would pletely out of breath before he left the thinking: What’s even the point of living take his mind off things. kitchen. Charlie felt his own arm start to in fear of becoming this thing, when be- He got a call from the school one day. expand, so he quickly staggered into the ing the thing itself isn’t nearly as bad as “Mr. Walker?” living room and laid down on the couch. thinking about it all the time?” “Yes, that’s me.” He looked over at the side of Sissy’s blob, At that moment, Charlie felt his one “I’m Madison Connolly, the principal at only a little bit visible from the edge of the chin sag and turn into several. He clutched Simmerson Elementary.” kitchen. desperately at his gullet, but his arms “Is everything okay?” “I’m so sorry, buddy.” He said. started to turn to paste and drop down “Yes, everything’s fine. We just need you “We have to take him.” Alyssa said, pac- to his hips. The seams of his shirt were to come pick up your son.” ing around the room and taking frantic beginning to rip. Charlie fell to his knees, Sissy’s blob was a bit more flaky, and a glances at the blob sitting in their kitchen. quickly losing the capacity of his lungs. lot smaller than Charlie’s, but it was still “It’s the only way we can help.” He thought about all of those long heavy. When Charlie arrived at the school, Charlie sat at the kitchen table, glaring nights he spent in the convenience store, they were forklifting his son out into the at her. “I keep hearing that word; help. ‘We quickly getting a hold of himself. parking lot, tiny flecks of his pale skin have to help him, Charlie,’ ‘It’s the only way He regained control of his arms, push-

apprentice writer : 15 ing himself back up onto his feet; his face a shroud of apathy was thrown over his Charlie watched them take his son. and chest swelling back down to normal brain was: Alyssa put her head in her hands, rub- size. Wow, look how big I’m getting. bing her eyes over and over again. Alyssa gaped at him. “Does this happen It took the removal crew seven days to When she finally looked up, everything often?” get Charlie out of the hallway. They dis- was significantly darker. For a moment, “No.” Charlie said, looking at his arm. cussed with Alyssa the idea of bulldozing she thought a cloud was passing above After a pause, Alyssa said “Maybe you the house to try to get an easier way to her head. should both go there.” Charlie and the kid. She kindly declined. The blob pushed itself out of the ditch, “Oh my god.” The best solution they had was bring- blocking out the sun and towering over “No, seriously. This could help the both ing in a tub of grease and lathering up the power lines. A flock of birds broke its of you.” shovels with it, trying to dig him out. The path in order to avoid it. Charlie turned away from her, begin- process was long and grueling, but they The blob rolled down the street where ning to push Sissy out of the kitchen and eventually got him out of the hall and the truck had gone with a certain deter- down the hall. There seemed to be a slight through the kitchen. They then quickly mination, its flesh sticking and unsticking imperfection in the hallway; it had a small rolled the kid’s blob out the same way. itself from the pavement. incline that caused Sissy to roll backwards The hallway walls were stained black with Alyssa watched, her mouth open, feel- whenever Charlie stopped to catch his grease and skid marks from the shovels. ing uncomfortable, terrified, and for the breath. Alyssa watched as they loaded Sissy first time in a while, just a little bit happy. Alyssa followed behind him. “Stop, into a garbage truck, already most of the Charlie! Stop it!” way full with the blobs of other people. Charlie ignored her, his muscles aching One of the workers gestured at Char- and his brain pumping against his skull. lie. “This is the biggest one I’ve ever seen. “You need help. You need serious help. There’s no way we can fit him into this You and your son.” Alyssa yelled, gesturing truck.” at Charlie and the blob. “Just push him into that ditch over Charlie finally got Sissy to the end of there. We’ll send a truck for him over the the hall, putting him in a position where weekend.” The supervising worker said. he couldn’t possibly roll away. He turned The workers forced the behemoth into to look at his wife, who was hunched over an irrigation ditch, their chests heaving with a look of desperation on her face. after their work was done. They walked “Why did you keep coming to see me? back over to the truck, shutting the back At the convenience store.” and grabbing onto the railing on the side Alyssa squinted at him. “What?” as it started to pull away. “Why did you come every day to talk to me?” “You were tired, and after the clerk guy Laughable left, you were alone. I knew you couldn’t Badriah Moussa stay there forever.” Pottstown, PA “So then why did we get married?” “What?” “Why did we get married, buy a house, It’s almost laughable, and have a kid together if our relationship how a single action can set forth a whirl began and ended in that store?” A whirl that spins and “Because we loved each other.” rolls and Charlie lost control at that point. tumbles and It was instantaneous, like someone shakes you up had hooked him up to a helium tank. He within it. It’s almost laughable, was bigger than he had ever been in the how it takes your breath away. convenience store, the sides of his body How it leaves you shaking and pushing into the walls. He expanded out- gasping and ward, a tidal wave of flabby, watery fat crying. that almost crushed Alyssa, who was run- It’s almost laughable. ning back down the hallway. But not quite. For the first time in 25 years, Charlie turned into a blob again. The last thought Charlie had before

16 : susquehanna university Morning Sahara Michelle Mulé Greenwich, CT

black jade He will return with dusk on his His Stories of the Seas of freshwater mussel-shells shoulders Taylor Burgin to bring home to me, and the new lines the sun drew Miami, FL alongside stories of sails against across his skin. the chill of dawn. How he loved his secluded waters My father will set out to his reverie at day break, And he knows I’ll ask on a motor boat strung with the he’d long for blue bays. of the shell white foam water and sun that surfaces buoyantly on the together. And I know father’s hands will world withdrawn return sunned and salted. calling him home, he will have novels. He lowers to wade through

apprentice writer : 17 sion about the cardiovascular system “Naomi, the truth is I went to the and the wonders of good seafood. same high school as you.” My Fourteen Days of Color Reminiscing our obsession with tuna “You mean—wait, what high school Allison Jung and sushi, I chose a notable fish market did I go to?” San Diego, CA as our first stop. “You don’t know? We were good “Where are you from?” I asked. friends back in high school.” I tried to I. “Down by Osaka.” obscure the sudden loneliness that I awoke to the laughter of children Of course. I knew you attended col- seized control of my body. outside as they capered down the street lege there, so why did I bother to ask? It “I don’t remember. I just can’t. I’m with a new liveliness that I couldn’t see likely wasn’t out of amiability; I guess I sorry Yuri.” Your long legs strode into before. A flower petal tinted with baby needed to feel like we weren’t strangers the horizon, and once again I was left pink tumbled through my window. The who just met. alone. cherry blossoms are coming. I heard someone behind me mention that tomorrow is full bloom. IX. II. After graduation, you left for college The following morning, I perfected V. in Osaka while I continued my studies a delicate swirl on top of my latte. I In honor of full bloom, I brought you in Tokyo. We kept in touch for a couple glanced out my window and was greet- to the famed Imperial Palace—even years, but time acted as an insuperable ed with the rapid transformation of though we had to face the horrific barrier. We learned that no text mes- buds into puffy flowers. A taxi stopped crowds. We rented a boat and paddled sage or reunion could return our friend- in front of the apartment next door. A across a moat to admire the flowers ship to what it once was. woman tiptoed out, her lush jet-black from the comfort of a river. I helplessly hair cascading down her back. Naomi, glimpsed at my reflection in the pris- X. is that you? tine water. Do I really look that differ- I apologized for not telling you from ent? It’s only been five years. the start and building the foundation III. of our new friendship off of some white I awkwardly approached your door, VI. lies. You shook your head and handed hoping that the glimpse I captured of We ventured into the bustling street me a piece of paper. Written in frantic you was real and not just another illu- market, where the mixed aroma of ta- scribbles, it said I have retrograde am- sion in my mind. I knocked on your door koyaki and dango wafted around every nesia. gently, but my heart pounded an inces- corner. I needed to know more about The room had photo albums scat- sant rhythm as the door slowly opened. you. tered everywhere; one of them was You grew out your hair, yet your eyes “When did you leave Tokyo?” I asked. open and displayed a column filled still harbored the same bliss that I no- “After graduating high school.” with pictures of us. The picture mocked ticed back in ninth grade. “What brings you back?” us, reminding us that we can never “Hi, can I help you?” you said. “I’m just visiting my cousin.” go back in time—that what we had is I tried to find a sign of familiarity or Your shoulders immediately tensed, gone, and it may never come back. surprise on you face but nothing spe- and your voice displayed a strained I sat beside you and held your hand, cial. I’m a stranger to you. shallowness that only I would notice. but your fingers ceaselessly trembled. “Uh—welcome! I’m Yuri.” I tried to You’re lying to me. “I forgot a lot of stuff that happened conceal the upsetting desolation grow- before the accident,” you mumbled ing in my heart. “I live right next door, VII. staring at the photos, “we really were and I was wondering if you want me to I’m going to tell you the truth of why best friends.” show you around sometime?” I so readily knocked on your door that Why would I say that? one day. If you really don’t remember XI. “Naomi,” you said shaking my hand. me, I’ll sound like a crazy woman, but I The children outside no longer ex- “I haven’t been in Tokyo since high need an answer. hibited a vivacious exterior, and the school, so that’d be great!” petal that dropped through my window Maybe I just couldn’t help it. VIII. was as dull as the side of an overused There were slight hints that full eraser. IV. bloom has reached its end: color was Early the next morning, my door- I met you back in the first week of fading. Petals vanished—slowly at first bell rang. Your sister stood there with ninth grade. Chance brought us togeth- but faster each day that elapsed. an indescribable hollowness inside er, setting us up as biology partners. I was unsure of how to approach you. her. Upon seeing me, she gasped and You asked me for a piece of paper, so I decided to just go for it, but I couldn’t forced a slight smile to her lips. my first impression of you was an un- help brainstorming every possible way “Violet,” I stuttered. “It’s been a while.” prepared annoyance, but time changed the conversation could end—would it I invited her in, but a tense silence fell everything. We bonded over our confu- be tears or delight? upon us as we played with our fingers,

18 : susquehanna university struggling to find the right thing to say. “What happened?” I blurted out. “I’m just going to be straightforward.” Violet hesitated as a look of sorrow It’s Just Rain panned across her face. “Two months Eloisa Sablan ago, Naomi was in a car accident. She Livingston, NJ suffered from brain damage, which re- sulted in retrograde amnesia. I brought Tales my father heard from his grandmother embed themselves her to Tokyo to live with our cousin within his melody as innocence comes with cries in the dead next door. There’s a doctor here that of night from an infant who fears the clap of thunder. might be able to help.” Beads of water formed around her Skin of his bottom lip tastes like salt and blood as he realizes lonesome brown eyes. What started the inevitability of mistakes that the fates seal as a serene bay evolved into a roaring with carelessness and jinxed broken dreams. storm. All we wanted was for the storm to cease—for the bay to be found My father sang this melody along with the again. thud of the rain killing me softly with “We’re seeing the doctor tomorrow,” his song strumming my pain Violet said, “I really hope that every- with his fingers telling my whole life with his words. thing will be okay.” Settle back now, it’s just rain. XII. The day will come when you can’t cover You and Violet stopped by the fol- up what you’ve done. lowing night. I peered at your face, at- tempting to obtain even the slightest hint; however, there was nothing for side in Japan, you happened to stay in me to see because your face was com- the apartment right next door to me. pletely drained of emotion. I’m thankful that chance gave me an Deteriorate “The doctor said it’s too hard to pre- opportunity to see you again, though Gizela Maksym dict. Maybe she won’t remember,” Vio- I still despise chance for waiting five West Islip, NY let said. years to hand me back the vibrant col- “For how long? Isn’t amnesia tempo- ors I desperately needed and stealing I need a drug rary?” them back after fourteen days. Why To break me down “It’s difficult to say. Maybe she’ll re- can’t time be on my side for once? So I can sleep and not worry about call certain events over the next several Right before you left, I gave you my the weight of my bones in the hours or the next few days, but what if new phone number, and you handed morning. the hours become days, and the days me yours, but we never contacted each And not the cough of a life running out. become weeks? What if months and other again. Maybe it was for all the Not the love in a box, years pass, and she still can’t remem- right reasons. ber?” She lowered your voice to where and not the pain in another. it was barely audible. “What if it’s for- To walk on feet that are not sad ever?” of not being elsewhere, Forever. That’s such a strong word— and to blink through eyes so firm, so immutable. which see only black and white. I need a drug that lets the mind XIII. dull away, You decided to fly back to Osaka and makes the rain fall. with Violet tomorrow. Not a trace of When my hair will get wer me remained with you. All you have and I can finally cry. left is less than two weeks of memories, To help release the burdens half of them unpleasant. Every tear we of what my hands have done; cried—whether it was joy or sorrow— what my pulse has allowed. and every laugh we shared is gone. Per- I need a drug haps memories weren’t as memorable to release each breath as I thought. and watch me age XIV. forever. Out of the millions of places to re-

apprentice writer : 19 of her mind. She was training for the Olym- Aileen stood at a street corner for her in- pics. If she couldn’t even go through prac- coming bus. The wheels of the bus whined A Cry for Help tice on an empty stomach, she had no busi- to a stop. The space was congested with Naomi Jeanpierre ness being here. people, so she picked a seat in the back. Miami, FL She allowed her coach’s words to churn in Every snip, every trim she made in her her head. The sky blushed an ashen gray as rain- diet was a careful dance that had strict rules drops landed on blades of grass, staining to adhere. An apple for breakfast, 95 calo- He was right. When the last time she kept Aileen’s track suit. She heard the faint sound ries. She made sure to take a morning run track of her breathing or felt the exhilara- of thunder rumbling over her haggard she burned off the excess fat, so the bulge tion of being the first to finish practice? Ai- breath, a certain sign of the bad weather in her stomach didn’t show, so she didn’t leen couldn’t remember. Perhaps it began soon to come. Brown wisps of hair tickled have to bear through their judgmental last year, when she began this new “diet”. her cheek and she tucked the rogue strands stares and idle gossip. Nothing could dis- behind her ear to glare at the rain clouds. tract her from the wind on her cheeks or the The first time she did it, her stomach The steady droplets of rain slapping her tug of ribbon against her chest as she ran was unfamiliar with the feeling of being skin mingled with beads of sweat from her towards the finish line. empty and made little growls throughout interrupted run. The softs thuds of cleats the day. After bearing mocking stares from against the ground trickled to a halt as the “Look, Coach Jones”, she began. “I’m fine her other teammates, Aileen made sure to other runners were drawn inside the rest- with running with a little rain.” bring Pepsi, the diet kind of course, so her ing area to escape the rain. Some breathed stomach wouldn’t tell her secret. Her legs sighs of relief, thanking the gods for the bad “It would be a safety hazard to run into ran beneath her in a blur. Over the sound of weather halting their running practice. Ai- the wet grass.” He said matter-of-factly. “You her haggard breath she heard Coach Jones leen was left standing in the field, a lonely wouldn’t want an injury right before the try- praise her for beating her past record. She speck of brown against the jade terrain. outs, do you? By the way, that’s exactly what felt so fast, so in control, running off the I need to talk to you about.” He adjusted the high of endorphins and the envious looks Aileen cursed under breath as she heard clipboard in his hands. “Your running times.” of the other runners. All this in exchange for the short, shrill sound of the whistle ring snipping a little bit of her meals. over the slight rumbling of the sky, an- “What about them?” nouncing the end of practice. She couldn’t So she did it again. The list of safe foods stop now. Her muscles screamed with ex- “You’re getting slower, that’s what. At seemed to grow smaller and compact every haustion. Her heartbeat was faster than a first I thought it was a fluke, but look at day. Aileen counted the calories as meticu- moth fluttering wildly against a flame. She your times from the beginning of the year lously as she the counted the days off her felt her stomach gave a painful twinge, the to now. You’ve gained two, almost three full calendar to the Olympic tryouts. Any edge type of pang that came after running non- minutes in your time.” she could get in the competition, she invit- stop with an empty stomach. Her bottle of ed with open arms. diet Pepsi was in her bag, she reminded Aileen flinched at his words. herself, so her stomach wouldn’t murmur Her first time collapsing on the running her secret. Through the rain, she could see “Your form is sloppy, your breathing is all track, she assured the Coach that was just the faint silhouette of someone beckoning over the place, and you’re somehow slower an ankle sprain. She couldn’t understand her over. than you were before.” He made a tsk, tsk, why her body was suddenly deteriorat- tsk. “At this rate, you can’t even beat a turtle ing, where this constant ache in her logs Coach Jones was a portly man with in a race, much less try out for the Olympics.” came from, or why she felt so weak. Aileen stringy ginger hair that seemed to stick out thought she was sticking to her diet to a T, in all directions and a tremendous beer gut. She let his words churn in her head as he so obviously it meant she needed to restrict At first glance, one wouldn’t assume he was continued talking. “Look, this is the Olym- herself. A little snip here; no dinner after 7 once an Olympic athlete, much less a run- pics, the real deal. You know this field is P.M. A small trim there; eat energy bars in ning coach, but he carried himself with an competitive as hell. I know I promised to the morning to avoid losing weight. Any air of self-confidence that came with ex- put a good word for you, but you need to lulls on her running times only meant that perience. Carrying a clipboard in one hand shape up.” He tucked his clipboard in his she needed to try harder. and a stop watch in the other, he regarded arms. “Come back tomorrow with a clear her critically as she made her way over to mind and get ready for the morning drill.” She tugged a yellow string to alert the him. driver to stop the bus here, and got off. Ai- Aileen didn’t feel her feet walk towards leen checked her watch. 6:30 P.M. Her mom Rain wasn’t going to stop her from train- the locker rooms to get her things. Coach should be waiting for her to make dinner. As ing. She spent too many hours running on Jones shouted at her retreating figure “and she walked in, she heard the familiar greet- the track field until her legs collapsed from take care of yourself! You’re looking a bit ing from her mother in that casual tone of exhaustion, as if she became immune to worse for wear!” hers, so Aileen replied back, taking pains to the burn of her muscles. Her stomach gave keep the sadness from her voice. She be- the familiar painful lurch and she pushed She walked into the locker room to col- gan to make pasta, one of the few dishes the thoughts of hunger into the soft fringes lect her things, and took out her umbrella. she knew how to make. After some time

20 : susquehanna university passed, Aileen was busy setting the plates sounded cold even to her own ears. leave before her mother woke up, to avoid when her mother came to the dining room. speaking to her, so she didn’t have to see Her footsteps fell silent against the car- the sadness in her mother’s eyes. “How did practice go?” Her mother asked. pet, but the slamming of her door reverber- ated against the walls. She just didn’t un- Her bus came on time as per usual and Aileen gritted her teeth. “It went fine derstand, didn’t get it. Aileen didn’t expect she arrived to the training facility for her mom. So, uh, I made dinner. Pasta with her to. morning run. She noticed that her skin felt meatballs.” was pale and clammy, and beads of sweat Eventually, Aileen crept down the stairs were breaking out like weeds. Her legs trem- She passed out the dishes as they sat to see of her mother was there. The lights bled like a leaf quivering in the wind. Aileen down to eat. Aileen checked her time were dimmed down and not a sound dis- stumbled into the locker rooms to change phone. 7:10. It’d too late to eat this, she turbed the silence, so it was safe to assume into her track suit. As she opened her bag, realized. Maybe just one or two bites so she was in bed. She went inside the dining the note slipped out. Slightly creased and Mom doesn’t get suspicious. Her mother room to find that her plate was still there, adorned with wrinkles, she picked it up and watched Aileen poke the food she made untouched and surprisingly warm. Her glanced over the words again. herself with the fork. mother must have reheated it for her. On a closer look, she saw note was left under- Aileen couldn’t do this anymore. Her “’Leen, that’s not enough to keep a bird neath the bowl. Honey, I’m so sorry for what body was deteriorating right in front of her. alive. You used to love pasta, what hap- I said, the note read. I just want you to know She made her decision. pened?” you can come to me for anything. You’re still my little girl. She dialed the number she should have Aileen remembered when her mom was called in the beginning. “Hey mom, I have first teaching her how to cook, how excited Aileen didn’t notice she was crying until something to tell you…” she was to start creating things in the kitch- she saw a tear stain the edges of the note. en. Back when food and I were on speaking She crumbled the note and put it in her Little by little, Aileen slowly started to get terms, Aileen thinks. back pocket. It was too close to lose focus better. When they sit down to eat, Aileen now. She couldn’t let anyone stand in her doesn’t hesitate to talk about her day as she “Well, maybe I already ate at the gym,” way, not even her own mother. Remember- makes an effort to place more on her plate she says. ing the reason why she came downstairs, and her mother gives a reassuring smile. She she picked up the bowl of pasta her mother keeps tabs on her teammates and stifles the She could feel her mother’s eyes narrow left for her. Giving one final sigh she threw pang of jealousy when they get qualified at her face, and felt them linger at her gaunt the rest in the trash. for the Olympics. Aileen tells herself she’s cheeks. happy for them until she almost believes it, Morning came sooner than Aileen liked, but not really. These days her smiles don’t “’Leen, I’m your mother, I can tell that but she reminded herself of practice. She feel forced and when she laughs, it’s the real you’re lying. Are you eating properly?” needed to show Coach Jones that she was kind. The type of laugh that comes from the more than enough for the Olympics. Feel- center of stomach Aileen knows that she is Aileen’s heartbeat stuttered. “Of course I ing light-headed and slightly woozy as she far from okay, but right now this is enough. do! I’m a vegetarian. What-are you trying to stumbled down stairs, and she hoped the say something?” feeling would go away. Aileen needed to

Her brow crinkled in concern. “Don’t pretend like you don’t know what I’m talk- ing about. Sometimes, you’d skip breakfast completely and train.” Dwelling Elizabeth Anne Zupancic “Well, maybe I’m not hungry in the morn- Le Claire, Iowa ing.” Aileen crossed her arms. “I thought training for the Olympics was the exact rea- and here we have lain for eternities; you like me best son why I’m here. Please enlighten me on dimly lit christmas lights are when i am artless and how that’s a bad thing. Look, thanks for the strewn above us, and i like you best when you are concern, but I’m fine.” articles of unkempt clothing are mine. strewn around us. time whirls between our body “As your mother, it’s my job to-“ you hum fairness into my neck parts, just beneath my jaw. interwoven, nimble, and acrobatic, “I said I’m fine.” Aileen snapped. the moon looks down towards us but we don’t try and catch it, and prays, we only watch, Aileen dropped her fork at her plate i look up towards you and we laugh as we pass it and got up from the table. “I don’t need to and i pray. back and forth. take this, I’m going to my room.” Her voice

apprentice writer : 21 cards. The bell chimed through the loud speaker, and I craned my neck to see what I pretended to throw a bouquet of roses Amelia she had written. A bold sharpie smiley face in her direction. Alena Marcinkoski covered her card. “Do you like me?” She remained stand- Lancaster, PA In history class the next day, she pro- ing with her back to me. ceeded in singing her own rendition of She sat behind me in Ms. Wilbur’s geom- the “Star Spangled Banner,” strumming a I laughed and made a face. etry class with a pair of clunky headphones ukulele. She presented her pet tarantula pulled over her raven hair. I openly stared in biology, sending even the boldest of “I like you.” at this strange newcomer. Her dark hair jocks screeching into the hallway. To Carrie was tied back into a bun at the nape of her Funkle’s dismay, she tried out for the cheer She was never one to hold back an opin- neck, and polka dot tights peeked from squad and made the cut. ion. beneath her long, yellow dress. Before I could turn around, her green eyes flickered Talk of the new girl had spread like wild- “You don’t know anything about me.” upwards. The corners of her mouth tugged fire around the school. Our days consisted into a smile, revealing a dimple in her right of guessing what move she’d make next. “Sure I do.” cheek. I spun around self consciously, but Several theories floated around saying her felt a light tap on my shoulder. parents were undercover spies from Russia “Oh really? I want specifics.” or maybe mad scientists or my personal “I like your hair,” she said, pointing up favorite, aliens. She was mysterious, unbri- She spun herself around to face me. Her at the fiery red that sprouted in every di- dled. No one quite knew what to make of green eyes bore into me like a laser, peel- rection. “It’s beautiful.” I felt my face burn- her. Our grey worlds had never been sprin- ing back my skin to reveal what lay inside. ing up to match my red locks. Her curious kled with so much color. She was odd, yes, She held up three fingers and wiggled gaze looked me up and down as if I were but somehow this made her even more them in the air. “You always wipe the mayo the most interesting person she’d ever laid wonderful. off your sandwich before eating it. You use eyes on. the trophy case as a mirror to brush your We formed a mutual bond by saying hair right before Elizabeth Crane passes Breaking the awkward silence, Ms. Wil- hello in the hallways. Our conversations you in the hallway.” bur ambled through the doorway with never went beyond small talk, but I felt her her large rump, nearly knocking over Anna eyes on my back, watching me. “That’s two.” I crossed my arms self-con- Milson’s carefully stacked pile of books. sciously. The class roared, but we were soon qui- Flyers began popping up on the school eted at the sight of our principal. His hag- bulletin boards advertising auditions for Grinning, she put her finger to her gard face looked like he’d already been the school play, Romeo and Juliet. At the mouth and tapped her rosy lips, but her thrown through a wash cycle of a whole first sight of one of these posters, Amelia face grew serious. “You never say exactly school year. He waved at us and directed gripped my hand and dragged me to the what’s on your mind because you don’t his attention towards someone behind auditorium. With our fingers still inter- want to disappoint anyone or make a fool me. Her. She leapt up like a spring, slipped twined, she led me onto the dark stage. of yourself.” the headphones off, and skipped to the She closed her eyes, and raised her arms to front of the room. The girls giggled, and an invisible audience. I was caught off guard from her previ- the boys gestured at the bizarre girl, but ous comical observations. “I didn’t know she didn’t seem to notice. “You know we could get caught out anyone noticed that.” here,” I warned. “We have a new student,” he mumbled. “I did.” “Please join me in welcoming Amelia Nel- “Hit the lights,” she said dramatically, son.” ignoring my advice. I was sure we were A speedy click-clacking of high heels breaking many rules, but I did as she com- sounded backstage. The solemn mood Amelia, it suited her. Her cheeks were manded. Flicking on several switches, the broke. We screamed and ran for our lives, burnt pink with excitement, and her eyes stage burst into life. She inhaled deeply tearing down the carpeted aisle. gleamed in delight. Her child-like, thin and cleared her throat before taking a step frame contrasted against the other girls forward. “Well, do not swear. Although I It was unannounced, unforeseen. We who sat gossiping with one joy in thee, I have no joy of this contract were suddenly a thing. No one knew what tonight: It is too rash, too unadvised, too to make of us. What was a nobody like me another and texting with lightning-fast sudden…” She gazed at her pretend crowd doing with the girl who was rumored to be fingers. She sauntered back to her desk, before continuing. “Too like the lightning, the illegitimate daughter of Matthew Mc- daring to throw a wink in my direction. which doth cease to be ere one can say “It Conaughey? I couldn’t even answer that lightens.” Sweet good night…” Her words question. She never dressed the same. Her Our first assignment in Mr. Forbes’s Eng- blended into a melody. The stage lights getup ranged from long Amish dresses to lish class was to fill out a note card saying cast a halo around her hair. Holding the hippie bell-bottom jeans. I, on the other what we did over the summer and what hem of her skirt in one hand, she crossed hand, was nothing but a Joe ordinary. We our plans were for the future. With crinkled one leg behind the other and bowed in a held hands in the hallway, laughing like foreheads, everyone bent over their blank deep curtsy. high school idiots in love. We were barely

22 : susquehanna university emerald eyes twinkled with that familiar accepted by our nonconformist class- ing sky. “Death must be a beautiful thing. mischief. Her raven hair was swept back mates, but accepted nonetheless, at least No one telling you what to do. Every day behind petite ears revealing glittering dia- for the time being. you can lie beneath the grass and just… mond studs. The bruises seemed to have listen. Would you still remember me if I disappeared by magic. Almost by fate, the Our classmates were constantly trying died?” DJ announced a slow song and couples to find something wrong with Amelia, and began pairing off. they finally got their lucky break. One day, I found this to be an odd question but she came into school caked in makeup. nodded anyway to answer her. She let me take the lead as we walked to The tables turned automatically. She had the center of the dance floor. Placing my always been talked about, but now people She sighed in relief. “I’m tired of people hands on her slender waist, we first began started calling her things- the weirdo, the trying to change me.” to sway in rhythm with the music. Then the freak, the fake. She only smiled at the in- real Amelia emerged: the girl who brought sults, but I was ashamed of her. I was quick Lying back down, she picked a lone dan- in her pet tarantula, the girl who perfectly to hide in the hallways, hastily ignoring her delion and blew on it, sending the seeds quoted Shakespeare in front of an invis- looks for support. drifting in every direction. She laughed. ible audience. We threw in some touches “See that’s what I want to be. Free. With no of disco, some hints of tango, twirling and She slowly disappeared into the back- one chasing after me.” spinning until our dizzy heads began to ground, fading into the beige lockers and scream. I laughed until I felt the rivers rush- sea of students. Her crazy wardrobe trans- We were positioned right beneath a part ing through my eyes. All eyes were on her. formed into jeans and sweaters. She was of the canopy where light peaked through. The Bard of Avon himself would have said now one of us, a Wispy clouds drifted dreamily across the that the world was her stage for the night. gap like a silent film. We lay there for hours With her face glowing with life, she had ev- clone. She stopped smiling, stopped while I said very little, and she rambled on eryone in the palm of her hand once again. singing. I tried to catch her eye, but to no about stories from her childhood. Whether avail. Her seemingly undying spirit had they were true or not, I never knew. As hip-hop music began to pulse from been defeated by animals. the speakers, she leaned up and whispered The sky darkened, and we parted ways. in my ear, “I hope you find someone that As I walked home from my bus stop, I loves you as much as I did. I think I’ll go be found myself staring into the dense for- The clearing became our daily meeting with the dandelion seeds now.” She placed est. The trees beckoned with outstretched place. Some days we never said a word, a kiss on my cheek and disappeared into arms. I was overtaken by an impulse, and and other days we would share tales about the massive crowd. It was impossible to my feet carried me over a beaten path that the past and our wishes for the future. One run after her. Finally escaping the hoards curved deep into the woods. At the end time she explained each cut and bruise on of students, I broke free into the lobby. A of the trail, I came to a clearing where one her body in gruesome detail. The one on deafening rain pounded outside, and she enormous oak tree stood in the center. She her forehead had come from the time her was gone. was lying beneath its massive branches, father came home stumbling drunk and eyes closed. thrown a bottle at her head. Laceration Amelia never reappeared in our little scars were from his leather belt. She kept town. A search party was sent out to look I approached, careful not to wake her, some of them a secret, saying that no one for her, but I knew they wouldn’t turn up but she had already sensed my presence. should know where they had come from. with anything. Rumors still floated around our gray halls. Some said she had run off to “I guess you found me.” She sat up and She showed up even less to school, but be an actress or perhaps a singer. Others motioned for me to sit down. I always found her in the clearing. When said she had joined the circus to become teachers questioned her bruises, she made an acrobat. I knew one thing was for cer- “Can we talk?” up excuses. “I fell off my bike,” she said. “I tain. Nothing and no one could hold her tripped down the stairs.” back. “Shhh,” she placed a finger to her lips. “Listen.” Except for the occasional bird Only I knew the truth, or at least part of Sometimes I go to her clearing under- song, the area was quiet. The makeup had it. neath that giant oak tree, and I gaze up rubbed off. Underneath, dark, ugly purple to the sky. I can hear her quoting Shake- tinged with yellow tattooed her arms. Her Several weeks later, it was prom. The stu- speare perfectly in her delicate voice. I still tears left trails revealing black and blue un- dent body was packed tight into the gym- see her on that lighted der her eyes. She saw I noticed. nasium with little room to move around. Tiny lights were strung about, sending a stage as she curtsied to the invisible au- “He likes his alcohol,” she stated. warm glow throughout the room. A net of dience. The lights bounced off her hair, il- rainbow balloons snaked across the high luminating it so I said nothing. ceiling to be cut loose at the end of the night. I went with my friends, but for a mo- “You know I’ve made these crazy plans ment I thought of her in a long dress, her in my head to kill him. He beats my mom head resting upon my shoulder. and my little sister and me. He deserves to die, but I can never do it.” She lay back I felt a tap on my back. Turning around, down and stared up at the slowly darken- I found myself staring at an angel. Her

apprentice writer : 23 in response, then stood there thoughtfully from beyond the heavens. Some would say Stars for a moment. that there isn’t one. That we’re alone to find Jackson Eagan “Hope…” he whispered to himself. “I one for ourselves. So, if we can’t find the could conjure up some Peaceful if you point, then how do we have hope?” Shiremanstown, PA want. It’ll cost a little extra but…” “I don’t know.” Dana mumbled to herself, Dana wrapped her coat around her tight- “Peaceful? You can’t make Hope?” feeling defeated. ly, took a deep breath, and stepped into the “Sure, I could try to make Hope, it’s as “Tell you what… look at the sky. What do alley. She knew for a fact that hundreds of simple as mixing Determination with Lucki- you see?” people came through the alley every day, ness, but Determination is extremely vola- Dana gazed up at the night sky. She but it seemed unsettlingly lonely and bare. tile, and I’m not sure it’d be safe to do with- couldn’t see much; the smog and smoke She could see one light, at the end of the out better equipment.” from the big city and the light pollution alley, however. Nervous, she picked up the “What if I took Determination and Lucki- from all the buildings made the stars dim pace and rushed toward it. ness separately?” Dana asked, not sure if it and sparse. She longed to see what the sky “Hello?” she called. No reply. She stepped was a stupid question. The man laughed. would look like from somewhere out in the over to the source of the light, a little shop “Afraid we can’t do that, miss. Not al- country. She’d never been out of the pol- built into the side of the alley. Inside the lowed to sell pure Luckiness anymore after luted city. “Stars?” shop, Dana could see lines of little bottles those gamblers collapsed the economy “Stars. We can’t see all the stars in the uni- holding vividly colored, sparkling liquids. across the sea a while back. It’s against the verse, but we know they’re there. They’re Each one is labelled with a single word; law.” Dana thought for a moment. amazing! The galaxies, the supernovas, all things like Sadness, Fear, Trust, Surprise, An- “Well, do you know any other shops that spinning and rotating around each other in ger. might actually have Hope?” perfect clockwork. But why are they there? “Hello?” she repeated, leaning over the “I’ve only even seen a bottle of Hope What is their point?” Dana couldn’t answer. counter to see if anyone was hiding inside. once in my life! Tell you what: I’ll point you “They just keep shining. They just keep go- She noticed a small door hidden inside in the right direction to where you might be ing. I think that they’re there, shining in the the shop. She stood there for a moment able to find some Hope. But you’ve got to sky every night, as symbols of hope. They’re considering her options. She sighed and tell me why you need to find it so badly!” like a show put on in the heavens for us to climbed over the counter into the shop. “I-I...please...I just…” Dana covered her see that this world is beautiful, that some- She knocked on the small door. After a few face to hide the tears. “Please, sir…” She one up there cares enough about you to minutes of just standing there, she realized sighed. “This world… look, I’ve not found put this universe in place for you to admire. that there was probably no one there. She much hope in the world, alright! The news, That’s where you can find hope. In the stars.” turned around and browsed the bottles. the hatred, I’m just… sick of it. I thought Dana smiled. “Trust, Anger, Sadness, another Sadness, that since I cannot find hope, I would just, “Thank you, sir. It seems you’ve given Sadness, Sadness, Sadness, Anticipation…” buy it. I have no reason to even try finding me Hope after all!” Dana wrapped her coat she whispered to herself, “Where is it?” Sud- hope in this world. There isn’t any.” around her tightly, took a deep breath, and denly, the door swung open violently, and The man smiled and said softly, “True stepped out of the alley. a little old man stepped out, swinging a hope doesn’t come from a bottle, my dear. broom in her face. Trust me, I talk from experience when I say “What the- who are you? What are you this, there is a better way. Sure, this world The Guillontine’s Final doing in my shop!” He screeched. has its problems, as all worlds do, but it isn’t healthy to just look at the bad and let it Words “I’m sorry sir! I just was looking for…” Celeste Wu “I see, well, if you want some of my dominate over your life. Hopelessness is the goods, you’ll need to pay for them. And…” cruelest disease any one person can face. Exeter, NH He pushed her back outside the counter to It’s like a-” the man gazed up at the stars twinkling in the cold night sky, barely vis- The infestation of sin, the shop. “You need to stand out here. Now, Gouges your judgment from what can I help you with, my dear?” ible through the dark smog of the city, “It’s like a black hole. It’s spawned by what we sockets, Deveins your conscience “I need Hope.” She answered with- from flesh. You plead for help- out hesitation. The man rubbed his chin describe are dying hopes, then it just grows and grows, devouring every part of our life. I can hear it all: thoughtfully. Your heart, your teeth, your breath. “Hope? That’s a rare one. Let’s see.” The It gets stronger every time we think about giving up. It’s encouraged by our failures You must be exhilarated. man checked his wares in search for a rare A swoop of steel. bottle of Hope. “Hmm, I don’t know if I have and our nightmares. Without rest it’ll attack us, covering our eyes and hiding the won- Rainy days are the best days. any Hope. How about Joy or Happiness? I Your blood does not stain. think I have a couple bottles of Happiness in ders of the world around us. Tell me, miss, what do you believe the point is?” It only trickles down my shin, the back. Happiness is my most popular and it tickles. product. People just keep buying it, think- “The point?” “The point of existence. The point of why Please spare me your teasing touch, ing it’s the secret to true happiness. Here’s a For the flooding sunset little hint miss; artificial Happiness is noth- we’re here. The point of what we’re sup- Never casts its dying rays on me. ing like the real deal.” The man laughed and posed to do and the point of carrying on.” It’s on the tip of my tongue, pulled out a bottle of green liquid marked, Dana stared down at her feet. “I don’t But I can never spell death. “Happiness” Dana shook her head. k now.” So please embrace me if I end you. “You’re sure you don’t have Hope? That’s “Exactly! No one really does. Some would So please kiss me if I kill you. all I really need.” The man raised his eyebrow tell you that the point comes from some- So please spare me a thank-you. thing else, something we can’t explain,

24 : susquehanna university Snow Tazein Shah Valley Stream, NY

Snow falling from heaven. Just like love slowly arrives. It falls in soft flakes, Slowly covering the Earth. In an inescapable blanket. Though some complain, Others open their arms wide for the arrival. Children smile and play. Two people meet under the white snow plain Innocent Love. A young man shovels snow away, Worried for his home. One man clears the snow, To prevent ice. Scared of Love. A person walks across the heaven on Earth, To pick up someone special. Another runs, Hoping not to miss the train. Awaiting Love. One man cries, As he picks up the dead flowers on the road. Covered in a layer of frost. A young child cries as the cold numbs her feet. Yet doesn’t leave. Harsh Love. jump! A family, Charlyn Sunico Plays in the snow. Forgetting their pains. Yonkers, NY A young boy admits love, To a young angel wandering heaven. They hold hands, And forget everything.

apprentice writer : 25 “Such a pity,” people say when apart by shrapnel. they see the display, and they don’t Afterlife notice her smile clench up tight like Of course she’s kind. Of course Sydney Peng a fist. “It’s amazing,” people whis- she’s selfless. What need does she New Providence, NJ per when she’s out of earshot, “how have of food or cloth or coin? What strong need does she have of stamps, with- There’s a ghost living in the town. out people to write to, without peo- she is. How kind and generous.” ple to receive her letters? She’s lovely and kind and moth- And some of it is awe and some of erly, and everyone knows her by it is suspicion, and all of it is missing It’s not hard to be selfless, she’s name: Marion Murray, the Angel the point entirely. learned, especially when there’s of 34 Rutherford Street. Look for nothing worth keeping. the house in robin’s-egg-blue, pale It’s not so much that she’s tough like a washed-out painting, where or strong; it’s that she’s evanescent. So she gathers up her good deeds the fence is white as china and the Nothing hurts her because nothing and hopes there’s something else mailbox is glossier than a banker’s touches her. She turns more ethe- waiting that will make this kindness shoe. The stoop is always warmed real with every passing day as she worth it. She stays chained to her by the sun, and the welcome mat is starves to feed someone else, until house, parceling out the last bits of starched flat by footsteps. Her hands her blue veins sketch signatures in herself for a few smiles; each one are as soft as the pastries on her her paper-pale skin. Her skin turns of hers is forged from sepia pho- counter, her voice is as sweet as the pallid, her hair turns wispy, and her tographs and rosy memories. The candy she slips into pockets, and her eyes turn lustrous like a pall of un- people see her as a seraph, but to eyes are as bright as the shiny pen- shed tears as she gives and gives her, they’re the ferry fare for heav- nies she presses into palms. and gives. en, bought and paid with soothing murmurs, comforting hugs, and il- Mrs. Miller borrows her quilts; Mr. The people around her complain licit sweets. Henshaw takes her pies and hobbles of lack. She, on the other hand, back down the stairway in shame; suffers from surplus. There are too She’s given up on this life. She only Mrs. Wendell slips in and steals away many medals, too many telegrams, hopes that her nickname of “Angel” with ration books. She smiles and too many clothes hanging in the means something after the end. tells them not to bother, not to wor- closet that don’t belong to anyone ry. The children cluster around her anymore. Too many fathers gunned porch somedays asking for lemon- down in the trenches, husbands ade, and she adds sugar cubes with bombed from the sky, sons sliced a librarian’s shush and a clever cat smile. She sneaks them chocolates before turning back to her pies or Intuition dishes, humming in her dress of pink Jeremy Hsiao and cream and periwinkle. Walnut, CA

A flag drapes over the mantelpiece Ideas like mountains across the horizon an entangle of synapses make patterns in lace. of the fireplace, but there is no fire. Common sense cuts corners, jumping fences, The hearth never burns anymore, bending programmed rules. but that’s only partially because of Realities break like the horizon into vague clouds up above. the lack of fuel. The only ashes it Wind whispers, and holds are either indelibly scorched guide my path senses like into the sides or kept in urns, next birds ride. to a pair of medals for bravery and a Facts die instinct digging graves, photograph of two smiling men. each thought turned a tombstone.

26 : susquehanna university “I don’t know. I’ll think about it I’d wake my parents while going some more and call you back.” downstairs. I put on my slippers and Love, Tuesday walked down to the kitchen to get Gwendolyn West “Okay well you’ve only got tomor- what I needed for my pack. I grabbed row to think about it.” She said back. a box of energy bars, a can of corn, Center Barnstead, NH “Goodnight, Ruby.” and a package of Oreos. I figured this would be okay until I could find “I. Am. Not. Going.” I managed “Goodnight.” I replied. I loved that a store when I snuck out. I grabbed to get that out firmly before tears my friends called me Ruby. My real twenty five dollars from my purse poured down my face. name’s Tuesday, but because of the and sunscreen and headed quietly restaurant Ruby Tuesday’s, Alexander back to my room. As I was about to “No, Tuesday. You are coming with Cooper thought it would be funny to walk up the stairs, I saw my dad’s us to England no matter what. I don’t start calling me Ruby in fifth grade. compass sitting on the little end care anymore what your input is, From then on, it stuck and I’ve gone table. I looked at it for a moment, re- your father and I have decided this by Ruby. I think it suits me better. membering the time he took me hik- is what we want to do. You’ll make ing and we got lost, so he used that new friends, and you can send let- I layed down on my bed, thoughts compass to help find our way back to ters over here to stay in touch with rambling through my head. Ques- the trail. I grabbed it and continued your old ones,” my mother explained. tions of all sorts stormed my brain, up the stairs. Her voice was strong willed and so but I didn’t know how to answer were her decisions. I knew there was them just yet. I made the finishing touch on my no getting out of this one. I stormed hiking bag by strapping my sleeping up to my room to call my best friend, You know that moment when bag to the top of it. I hid it in my clos- Caroline. I sat down on my sky-blue you’re laying in bed and you have a et for the time being and fell back comforter and dialed her number. revelation about whatever you were onto my bed. I layed there, I thought worried about before? Well, that’s about the decision I just made. I de- “Hello? Ruby?” Caroline said when what happened to me just then. I cided that if I was going to do this, she picked up the phone. was thinking about what I could there would be no doubts. So with do when, or if rather, I ran away. I that, I pulled the covers up over me “Oh Caroline, it’s bad.” I said. She’s thought about what I’m good at. Hik- and let the night consume me and quick to answer. ing. Climbing. Adventuring. Those my thoughts. were the first thoughts that popped “Are they going to make you go?” into my head. I remembered that I woke up the next morning with a The worriedness increased and the there was an Appalachian Trail base hint of sadness lingering in my brain. hope faded from her voice. checkpoint only a few minutes away I didn’t want to say any goodbye to from my house. Right then, I knew my friends, but it would either be a “Yes. But I can’t, Care. I have a life that was what I’d do. I’d hike and hike ‘goodbye, I’m leaving the country’ or here. I can’t just give that up. Be- and hike, and maybe along the way ‘goodbye, I’m going on a spontane- sides, I’m seventeen, I’ll be done with I’d find myself and the solution to my ous hiking trip to get away and find school soon anyway.” problems along the way. The idea felt myself.’ The second option sounded like a cool summer breeze, the kind better to me. “Well… I don’t know what to say. I that you don’t see coming but gives don’t want you to leave, but it’s not you excited chills when you feel it. When I walked into my high school, like you can just run away, they’re I was greeted by Caroline and Eva, your parents.” As soon as the words I got out of my comfy bed and my two best friends. Caroline had came out of her mouth, my brain ex- stood in the middle of my room. her brunette hair pinned up nicely, ploded with a million ideas. What would I take? I made a mental and was wearing a white shirt and checklist of all of the things I’d need. jeans with a burgundy sweater over “Care, what if I did.” Backpack. Sleeping bag. Water bot- all of it. Eva had her red hair straight- tles. Food. Extra warm clothes. Lots of ened and a pair of jeans shorts with a “What? Run away? When would socks. I grabbed the hiking backpack green crocheted top. I smiled when you do that? How would you do my mom got for me last summer I saw them. I knew that this would that?” Her voice was filled with curi- when I went to hiking camp. I stuffed only be farewell for a little while, but osity and suspicion. some of my warm clothes in the bot- it felt like I was saying goodbye forev- tom, then socks, then an extra jacket er. I figured I’d only tell Eva and Care “I… I don’t know. I could do it, that could stand rain. I put in a head- where I was going, and not anyone though. I could leave before they lamp and a flashlight I had on my else. If I told anyone else, they might leave for England.” I thought aloud. night stand; I’d seen too many horror tell my parents where I am, and that’s Caroline didn’t say anything. movies where the battery died in a exactly what I’m steering away from. flashlight and they had no back up. After a few seconds, she replied “Okay Ruby, you’ll never guess with, “I guess you could, but where I glanced at my clock and realized what Henry Peterson said to me this the heck would you go?” that it was 11:17, so if I wasn’t quiet morning!” Eva exclaimed; she was

apprentice writer : 27 always talking about her crushes. Al- Caroline. Her face was streaked with about my age, and very tired. There’s though, I couldn’t answer this right tears. We’ve been best friends ever nowhere else to sit, so I decide to go now. I needed to tell her. since first grade, and she’s always sit next to him. been there for me. This seemed like “I bet it was something amazing, it was taking a worse toll on her than I simply say, “Hi.” He looks up from but I need to tell you guys some- on me. his map and into my eyes. thing important! Like, on a scale from there’s-no-more-straws-left-for- “Oh, Care. Don’t cry! You’ll make He replies with, “Hey.” He looks at the-coffee to Beyoncé having twins, me!” I said as I embraced her. She my hiking bag and asks, “How far it’s Vampire Diaries season eight isn’t sobbed into my shoulder, and a have you hiked?” actually happening.” I said, trying not few tears fell from my eyes as well. to laugh after my last sentence. I pulled back to look at her. “I’m go- “I’m just starting here, actually. ing to be fine Caroline. Don’t worry, How about you?” I ask. “Woah, okay that’s pretty impor- really.” I hugged her and Eva again, tant. What’s up?” Caroline ques- and we all cried. Eva, tears of worry “I’ve only hiked five miles, so I tioned. for a new friend, but a close one. Car- didn’t start too long ago.” He replies. oline, tears for her best friend who’ll “Oh, I’m sorry. What’s your name?” “Okay, so you know how I’m sup- be leaving her for the first time in posed to be moving to England ten years. And me, tears of longing. “Oh, I’m Tuesday, but most of my soon? Well, I’m not. I’m… um… well, Longing for this day to be a regular friends call me Ruby.” I say. I’m running away. I know it sounds one like the others, not one where crazy, but I’m going to go to that Ap- we try to go though it normally even “And why’s that?” He asks with a palachian Trail base a few minutes though it is far from it. grin on his face and curiosity in his from here and just… hike. I’m going eyes. to hike for as long as I can, or at least I look at the clock. It’s four in the until my parents find me. I need to morning, and my parents will be “Well, my friend Alex thought it get away from here. Get away from leaving for England in seven hours. would be funny to call me Ruby be- my England-bound parents. All those I slip on my hiking boots and pull cause of the restaurant Ruby Tues- years of girl scouts and living with a the straps of my hiking bag over day’s.” I explained. “What’s your dad who’s basically a survivalist has my shoulders. I walk down the hall- name?” taught me enough about the out- way quietly heading for the kitchen. doors and how to be safe, so I’ll be I stop in front of my parent’s room. “Max.” He says, running his hand fine.” I told them. They looked at me The door is open, and I can see them through his blonde hair. I notice his blankly; I couldn’t read their faces. sleeping peacefully. Tears fill my eyes, navy blue sweatshirt has a big sun on Eva looked at Caroline, her eyes now but I can’t let them fall. it. filled with unbelievability. Caroline looked at me and smiled. I need to be stronger than this. I “I like your sweatshirt.” I compli- keep walking down the stairs and get ment him. He blushes and says Caroline’s only words were, “Do it.” to the kitchen. I grab a piece of paper thanks. He’s tall, taller then me by far, Eva looked at me next, also smiling. I from the To-Do list on the fridge. I and has a muscular build. He’s wear- could tell it was fake though. I knew grab a pen and write: ing dark green pants and a brown she didn’t really support this deci- hiking shoes. sion, but I couldn’t let my choices be Dear Mom and Dad, swayed by her opinion. “Well, where are you headed to? By now, you’ve probably realized Because I’m just hiking up the trail. “So, today will kind of be my last I’m not in bed, or at school. I’m kind of on a spontaneous hiking day. But you guys can’t tell anyone. I’ve left. I’m okay, and I left because trip to kind of find myself. I know it Not even my parents. I need to do I wanted to. I need to do sounds stupid, but I love it out here.” this for myself.” I said firmly. They this for me. I can’t go to England, He looks at the trees, then back at both agreed just as the first period I’m sorry. I love you, and I me. Something about him really in- bell rang. We walked to Pre-Calc to- promise I’ll be okay. trigues me. He doesn’t seem like gether, savoring every moment of most of the jerks that I go to school my last day. Love, with. At the end of seventh period, Eva, Tuesday “No, it doesn’t sound stupid at all,” Caroline, and I all met at my car in the I reassure him. “I’m actually doing school parking lot. I hugged Eva first. I leave the note on the kitchen ta- the same thing. My parents want to “Please be safe, Ruby. We love you ble and slip out the front door. move to England to satisfy their ad- too much that we wouldn’t be able venturous souls, but I’d rather stay to bear it if something happened to When I get to the trail base, it’s here.” you.” She pushed a piece of red hair 4:27am and there is only one other out of her face and adjusted her top. person here. He’s sitting on a wood “So… you’re here. ‘Finding your- I promised her I would, and turned to bench and looking at a map. He looks self.’” He puts an emphasis on ‘finding

28 : susquehanna university yourself.’ I nod and look away. I notice too. I think and smile to myself. “But why?” He groans. He puts his a few little pink flowers growing be- head down onto his arm. All I can see sides the bench. We’ve been hiking for four days, is his blonde morning hair curls. and have only stopped at a store “I know I just met you and all, but once. I found out that his full name is “Because, today is another day.” we seem to have the same thing go- Maxon Walsh, he’s from North Caro- I reply. He sits up and blinks a few ing for us, and it might be nice to lina, and he gets his green eyes from times. have someone to talk to, so maybe his mom. He works out three times you’d want to hike with me?” I ask a week, because four is too many. “The sun is bright today, Tues. I’m cautiously. Inside, I’m really hoping His favorite color is blue and he has going to be so slow and hot all day.” he’ll say yes. a dog named Cat because in fourth He laughs. grade he thought that’d be funny. “I’d love to hike with you, Tuesday.” “Well, you can’t be slow unless you He smiles at me and we get up to “Hey, you all set?” He asks after ten get up.” I grab his arm and pull up. He start our journey to find ourselves. minutes. stands up and grabs his pack. “We’ve been hiking for so long, “Yeah, let’s go.” I stand up to join “Okay then, let’s get going.” We Max. Can’t we take a break? I tug at him in the middle of the trail. The cool put away all of our things we took his arm with a fake desperation. breeze feels so nice; it’s a reminder out to sleep and start on the trail. We that it’s the beginning of summer. hike upwards a bit, and it gets steep. He laughs. “Of course we can.” He June is such a nice time. It would’ve There’s lots of jagged rocks, but I start looks at me and then to a rock a few been worse if I went to England with climbing. Max is close behind, ready feet ahead of us. We walk to the rock my parents a few days ago. Max and I to catch me if I fall. When I reach the and sit down. I pull my water bottle have been trying to keep a top, the view is amazing. There’s oth- out of my pack and drink. I catch him er mountains in the distance, and I staring at me. low profile. I told him to call me can see every tree on the mountains Ruby because the news would have and hills in front of me. It’s stunning. “What?” I ask, squinting at him. me as a missing girl named Tuesday, Max stands behind me. so if anyone else who’s hiking hears “Nothing.” He says as he smiles and him call me Tuesday, they might re- “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” He suggests. looks at the sky. port a sighting of me. Although, Max won’t call me Ruby unless someone “It’s… breathtaking.” I reply. He “How old are you?” I ask. He looks is walking right passed us because asks me if I want to sit. I do. back at me. he thinks Tuesday sounds prettier. “You know, hiking with you has “Eighteen. You?” He replies. “So,” I say, trying to make conversa- been great.” He says, looking into my tion, even though I know it isn’t dif- hazel eyes. “Seventeen,” I say back. “So you’re ficult to with Max. going to college soon then?” “I agree, and I’ll miss it when it’s He smiles. “So,” We’re walking on a over.” I say. He looks sad, but there’s “Yeah, my senior of high school I pretty flat part of the trail, so he grabs something else that I can’t read. got into a ton of schools for writing, my hand. I close my fingers around but my parents are very insistent on the back of his hand. This is first time Unexpectedly, he leans in and kiss- me going to medical school. So, I told he’s held my hand, but it feels so es me. I kiss him back, because this them that I was going to school for natural. Over the past few days we’ve may be one of our last days together. writing, and that I was going to take learned so much about each other, It feels so right, just the two of us. The the summer before college started to and our personalities go together sounds of nature chime in the back- go hike and ‘find myself’.” He explains. like the fit of his hand in mine. ground, and the rest of the world fades away. He pulls away and smiles. “That’s sounds fun, going to school It seems like we’ve been walking for writing, I mean.” I say. My atten- for a long time, but it’s only been “This might sound crazy, but what tion shifts, and I spot a pink flower ten minutes. We continue to walk to- if I went to a college near where you that’s growing in the dirt on the side gether, just enjoying the silence that live? I mean, I got accepted to the of the trail. I walk over to look at it. speaks the words that we aren’t say- University of Virginia, so I could go to ing. school there and we could see each “Max, look.” I call, pointing at the other. I don’t know, what do you flower. I wake up on the ground. Not the think.?” He asks. I can see the glint of most comfortable bed. Max is a few hope in eyes. “Very pretty. I wonder if they are feet away from me, so I walk over to all along the trail.” He ponders. He wake him up. The sun is incredibly “I… I think that’d be great! That looks down at the ground and makes bright today, and my skin isn’t taking college isn’t too far from where I live circles with his shoe. So he saw the it well. I tap Max’s shoulder. anyway.” I reply. He smiles and kisses flowers at the beginning of the trail “Max, get up.” I say. me again. I smile under his lips.

apprentice writer : 29 After what seems like forever, I look can tell that they don’t really care for at him and say, “We should get going Tuesday. I’m giving a short speech again.” near the end of the service, and I can Lights feel the butterflies in my stomach. “Probably.” He replies. I can tell he They’re the happiest things here. in didn’t want that moment to end, and the neither did I. When it’s my turn to go up, I walk my way to the podium. I clear my Vault throat, take a deep breath, and start. Joseph Christensen I stand up, but my foot catches on “Tuesday was a good friend of mine Bellevue, WA a rock. My back is facing the view we that passed away at a very… unex- (I) were looking at, so my balance shifts pected time. The days that I spent Gaza was hewn from dried fire towards the edge of the cliff. Before I with her, she filled my life with hap- can realize it, I’m falling off the edge piness and joy that I hadn’t felt in a Crackling with the voice of an backwards. Max calls my name and long time. She made me a better per- elegant youth I stretch my arm as far as I can. His son because of it. Now, I know that Poised to take the stage fingertips brush mine, but it isn’t if she were here, she’d slap my arm And win a future with sandy enough. Air rushes around me and I and tell me I was being too sensitive, marbles can’t hear anything. I look down; it’s but I can only express my feelings for His beaches smell of corpses now a clear shot to the bottom. I’m fall- her that way. She meant a lot to me, And we ponder who’s buried ing faster and faster and faster until it and I will never be the same without underneath just… stops. I open my eyes and look her. If I could go back to that day and Assessing the value of hasty braids up. I can see that there’s sharp rocks change it all hold her on that moun- Behind boarded windows in a all around me. I can see Max. He’s tain for as long as I could, I would. I powdery light screaming my name, but I can’t say miss her so much, I can’t fit all of my anything. I can’t feel anything, I can’t feelings into one speech. So Tuesday, hear anything, I can’t move anything. I at least hope you can hear me say I And suddenly, I can’t see anything. love you, because I never got to tell (II) There’s only blackness. you when you were here.” Four old men rock in a worn, tin boat I straighten my tie and walk out- I let out a sigh as I step down from “Borrowed from a friend,” they side. Tuesday’s parents wait for me the podium. The grief inside my heart assure us just beyond the porch. Her mom’s weighs me down as I step through Four skeletons sun themselves face is stained with tears, but she the aisle. I walk outside, because I Lounging in beauty squeezed from tries to hide it with a smile. Even her need fresh air more than I need to plastic tubes lips are tinged with sorrow. Her fa- hear other people talk. I look over at “Western style,” they inform us ther stands tall, and his fingers shake. a pot of flowers sitting on the ground You can see the sadness in his eyes next to me. It’s filled with the same Four boys play soccer even as he smiles at me when I reach pink flowers that Tuesday pointed With a gaunt ball coated in gritty them. Even though I never really out to me on the trail. I pick a few out fantasies knew these people before I had to and put the in my pocket. This is how Looking toward the sea tell them their daughter died, I feel a she’ll say goodbye. “Piss off,” they tell us strong connection to them. My par- ents came for my support, but they only make small talk with the other (III) members of Tuesday’s family. At the stainless-steel hospital We find pale teeth tend to All I can think about is her face. Swim through thick bravado Her laugh. The way she hiked the trails with a smile every day. I talk to Informing us of their pain other members of her family and her With each bite of vanilla pudding friends, but their words are just back- At the end of the row, number 3-6-5 ground noise to my mind’s thoughts. Has a laugh like crunching gravel I can hear her say my name, and how He likes to wave a little square one day she told me, “Today is anoth- To tell us it’s a plane ticket; he’s er day.” Although it is, it isn’t the same leaving without her. My heart feels empty. With a face like a tired galaxy, eyes missing, he’ll never see Everyone gathers in the church His Cracker Jack paper -- he’s a for her service. I take a seat with my grand prize winner family in the middle of the pews, but I wish I didn’t have to sit with them. I

30 : susquehanna university looked into her eyes and almost felt complete, but there was that Scoops sliver of artificial berry flavoring The Sun’s Ode to Nicholas Kassoy and red dye number 2 that kept the gap from closing up. The Moon Glen Rock, NJ The bartender asked the twenty- one-year-old boy if he was done Elizabeth Winkler The boy ordered his first scoop with the beer. He said no, although Riverside, CT of ice cream at the age of three the bottle was clearly empty. For and four months. Of course, he had a few moments he looked at his Our schedules just don’t line tried ice cream before that day, but face in the curved reflection of the up. it had been ordered by his parents green bottle. He took a breath. A Her job’s at night, mine lasts request for an Irish coffee. “Vanilla all day, on account of his inability to string and she rises as I sink into our words into coherent commands. At okay with you?” asked the bartend- bed; the age of three and four months, er. The boy nodded. under covers of deep blue that the boy chose vanilla. And vanilla He was two cartons into the two shimmer with her light, was all he ordered for four years. hundredth breakup, believing he sheets scattered with comets His parents would sometimes ask knew for sure that love was dead at and asteroids, him about other flavors. Choco- the wise old age of thirty-two. The a pillow studded with other late? No. Strawberry? No. Butter menthol-like chill of mint choco- stars who share her company. Pecan? Mint Chocolate Chip? No. late chip soothed the fire that was Then he would smile and politely surging throughout his body. Soon She dresses silently, ask for vanilla. enough it was put out. to give me my rest, I know, At seven the man behind the tiptoeing from closet to The boy of forty with his wife of dresser, mirror, counter demurred at the request her face shimmering with of the boy dressed all in black as it five days sat with his dad on the powder: had changed to chocolate. His dad porch of his childhood home. eons old dust stolen from a passed the dripping cone from the They talked about the home they shooting star. counter down to the boy’s hands wanted to buy, the kids they were That adventure’s date is with a sense of relief tinged with going to have, and the vacations forgotten now, but dates and nostalgia. It had been his mom’s they wanted to go on. The wife did times don’t matter; favorite. He wished his mom wasn’t most of the talking. all our moments, the gone. He wanted to share it with important ones, are pressed her. That was the only time the boy The single boy of forty-one held into my memory, folded up tried chocolate. on tightly to the roller coaster at and packed with lavender the boardwalk. His friends also on sachets. At eight, during the boy and his the ride screamed with delight as One favorite: dad’s trip to the beach, he discov- they prayed to escape with intact the first time I saw her. ered a new flavor by the name of spines. The boy felt a rush of joy as Eyes played peek-a-boo raspberry ripple. It was a love at they climbed the highest peak of behind mountains first sight pairing. Yet when the the ride with a newfound knowl- on the opposite side of Earth, boy and his dad returned from the edge of the years he had yet to as her face was painted beach house to their empty home, face. He was hungry. They were out in green-blue shadow. the boy didn’t want any other of raspberry ripple. flavor that was offered to him. So it The best beloved: was a long time before he had any Fifty. His dad was a good man. All my heart pulsed through my more ice cream at all. the boy could do was keep himself ribcage, together. The second time wasn’t deep breath forced it to slow; The thirteenth bat mitzvah during any better than the first. The mem- anticipation sped new moon, bers of the community dressed in every second ticked us closer. his thirteenth year tempted him Worries tugged my nerves: with cups of the frozen treat strung all back offered their apologies. At what if I were to burn her or across a table shrouded in red fab- the somber reception they pro- if Earth held her heart in orbit? ric. The newly-turned man of the vided vanilla. The man cried. What if we really are hour asked the boy why he wasn’t different as eating any of the dessert, and so A man of fifty-five should not -ex night and day? the not-yet-man politely took a perience a heart attack and yet this cup - chocolate - and spooned a one did. Too much saturated fat, I remember her approach, scoop into his mouth. Thirty sec- said the doctors. They checked the heart beating in my throat; onds later he was in the luxury, records. Ran in the family. her soft, cool glow erasing all marble-tiled bathroom, dirtying my fears. his suit pants by kneeling with his I remember how she leaned in first mouth hovering directly above the and how her craters brushed toilet. my fire: Seven years later the boy and his how my rays danced as my first girlfriend split a strawberry lips turned silver. shake. It almost was like it wasn’t ice cream at all, but a thoroughly- stretched lie of a fruit product. He

apprentice writer : 31 Growing, bubbling, erupting in silent room. waves. Reasons Enough Loud and unwavering. He’s here for good. Echoing with every good morning Willow Quindley He’s not going back. I love you and door held open for Alton, NH He’s the new favorite. me. He is replacing me, the How is he so unrequitedly nice? Confusion clouds. used-to-be baby. So perfect? Who’s that in mommy’s arms, Why did those traits miss me and making mommy smile and daddy The forgotten go to him? cry? The invisible The abandoned baby. Confliction tangles in my mind, Lumpy and blue. The used-to-be baby that is now like a relentless knot, only Oval shaped. Tufts of blond peach less a baby and more a young girl, becoming further coiled with fuzz protrude in wispy bundles waging wars with her parents, each tug. atop a pale round thing from a directing glares at a blue-eyed Burden-some. fold in the blanket. boy but what for? Jealousy is found in the form of a A title I don’t want, My lower lip wavers. ten-year-old boy. But a title I can’t release. Who’s that bundled in mommy’s I am fiercely relying on mommy arms reeking of antiseptic silent, Eyes the hue of a cloudless sky, and daddy’s approval, their unresponsive to the coos of bright, happy, captivating. attention, their praise. mommy and daddy, unmoving, Freckles dotting his nose so kind Yet I am desperately seeking hardly talented. and patient. independence. So why are they entranced by him when I can talk and walk and Daddy’s pride. Sighs escape mommy and daddy, dance and ride a bike when the Mommy’s happiness. you are draining, she remarks. most he can do is cry cry cry? The favorite. Why must you always be the center of attention? Excitement rushes through my They can’t help but wander away Daddy wonders. veins from me, so rude and impatient, mommy is empty-handed. Did Daddy’s disappointment. If only they realized I don’t mean you bring him back to the Mommy’s frustration. to be that way, that I would hospital? The least liked. change if I could. Disappointment leaks as mommy If only they realized maybe it’s laughs, Confusion floods inside me. their fault too, for using up all No, he’s only sleeping. Where did I go wrong? their energy to focus all on him. How did I become so lost? But I wasn’t joking. What did I do to steer my parents If only they realized maybe I Jealousy is found in the form of a so off-course away from me, and wouldn’t be so draining, or newborn baby. towards him? seeking attention If only they used some of their Eyes the hue of a cloudless sky, When had my parents become energy on me too. bright, happy, captivating. the judge and I, the competitor, They can’t help but wander, away in a race against my brother, But, in reality, how can I complain from me the used-to-be baby, fighting for mommy and daddy’s when he’s done nothing? daddy’s little girl. affection? How can I dislike him when he’s Mommy’s mini-me. never given me a reason to? When had I begun capsizing To the new baby, daddy’s little under the pressure, drowning in Is it reason enough to hold a man. pursuit to please them? To be the silent fury, a brewing hostility Mommy’s favorite. daughter they always wanted? every time he speaks? Neglect lingers between each Lost beneath the waves, Or is it reason enough when teddy straggling to catch up to my those cloudless eyes and freckled bear thrown into new baby’s crib. brother, the only champion in grin of a ten-year-old boy only Maybe mommy and daddy won’t their eyes. remind me of a baby who want captured mommy and daddy a hurt baby and he’ll have to go Neediness claws at my skin. with the very same blue eyes and back, I am bleeding and scarring, bubbling grin? back to the hospital or wherever becoming torn apart, desperate he came from. for their love needing their praise. As long as it’s back, so I can have Aching for their acceptance. mommy and daddy all to myself. Only for it to be given away, Worry festers in my throat like a handed so easily to him. For he can laugh do no wrong in their eye as I I can’t hold back. continue to bleed. Frustration is the drop of a pin in a

32 : susquehanna university books” Vagabond “Then why are you tramping around tonight?” Huntress Bonding “I prefer trees and running Meagan R. Thomas Andrei Bucaloui brooks. Coventry, CT Danville, PA I wrote and studied as much as Under the streetlamp were two I could vagabonds, Like busy honey bees that buzz Alone in the wood, Dirt smeared across their I tried working harder, but got She listens for life. pensive scowls, depressed Drawing deep breaths, each I had lost touch with who I was. The only response puff forming new bonds I couldn’t stand the drab life I Is her own heartbeat. Carrying them higher than hoot had led She is used to silence. owls So I quit to find myself again The nighttime air caressed their To smile, to enjoy my life, She could be one of the toughened cheeks To gaze at empty skies and see trees; Whispering in tired, deaf ears, heaven” Their shadows are the Bittersweet stories of what Enough was said, the same, could have been impression was made And all are as still Howling, haunting, hurtful Both men lay silent in the night As life can be. years. Both pondered past, future, Harmful tales are sadistic whips present She contemplates the that beat, Silence lasted till morning’s light object Till spines are sore and black “Pal, what you had said last in her hands. and blue night touched me” Its pale curves catch the Their bodies, limbs, their He brushed the sand off of his remaining light saddened souls, eyes Begging to God for life anew “I left my wife a week ago today” As she bends it, “Hey there my main man” Both men had strength enough Using disguised strength sighed the man supine, to rise To string it tightly. Stretching out his crackly back “What happened my man? “Ain’t it pretty? The way those Betray you did she?” The tension in her hands stars sparkle!” “I left because I’m dying a slow Serves as a snapping The sky above them was pitch death. reminder black I’m unhappy and feel it’s Of how easily her tool “It, it sure is” agreed the other consequence. Could be made a one I ran but now I’m out of breath” weapon. Who saw nothing but cloudy “Let’s go my friend, to heaven skies let’s travel Power in hand, Confused, asked he “What’s Our starless skies will have to do. She flicks the bowstring, your story my man?” Focus and find your own bright Letting the vibrations Rising smoke reddened their light disrupt the air around sad eyes If only this cruel drab world her. The man supine got up on his knew elbows The men got up and gathered Leaves rustle indignantly; Drew deep, blew out thick all their things She acknowledges them, smoke, then coughed They flicked their cigarettes to And removes the string. His mean looking head hell between hunched shoulders Embarking in opposite She does not need to “I won’t tell you, you’ll think directions be a hunter tonight. I’m soft” Their bright lights would treat “My friend, please do, I’m them well. At least, curious to know, Howling wind scattered the With whom I am spending wispy smoke Alone in the wood, tonight.” Of cigarettes consumed and She is able to choose. He sat up and faced his tossed inquisitor Of the subtle whispers heard by “I often read and loved to write” deaf ears “So surely you are educated, Of bridges made, but never right?” crossed of. “College degree - published two

apprentice writer : 33 anything: That’s not what I Tea mean. I meant, do you drink The Next to the Last coffee instead of tea? Day Before Thursday Alyssa Chen Do you visit Italy and the Pine Brook, NJ markets and does your throat Dominick Leskiw close up a little when you try Ho-Ho-Kus, NJ Green, oolong, jasmine, to ask for bread, or milk, or lavender, Red: The essence of water, the tongue of this a culture in one burning you drove me home and language dry and grainy in waterfall. your mouth? pulled into my driveway The first time I drank it, it then said you would scorched a line of flames down I listened to French make a into my stomach, drew all the scene if I didn’t get out electro-swing for a month. moisture from my mouth and Caravan Palace and Ravel and but I held your hand throat. tighter and you Debussy also, Edith Piaf, squeezed right back I I played only Chaminade on I pushed the tiny cup away my flute. know you were feeling and frowned. bothered by the world “No,” I stated plaintively. I read novels set in Paris, that day I have My mother looked at me, a sixth sense that lets me drank the wines of the exasperated, and called the countryside from the dark know when people are waiter. bothered or upset recesses of a wine cabinet in Kěbù kěyi gěi wo men yī bēi our living room, prepared or angry or disappointed bīng shui? or even when café au lait in the old Could you get us a glass of ice coffeepot my parents they say they’re fine and water? really they’re fed up and brought with them when they came here. don’t want to do anything When I tell them I cannot but sit in someone’s Genetics is all that ties me to handle spicy food, my friends China, I insisted. driveway count joke, “Aren’t you Asian?” backwards to the minute I laugh, saying I guess I’m not they pulled I wandered for hours in only good at being Asian. one section of an art in because they don’t My laughter, though, stings want to go back home museum, forever stuck in the my tongue a little like the dreams of Monet, Renoir, and face an agitated numbing taste of má là sauce. brother and Morisot, I haven’t spoken Chinese in Enchanted by the promise each loud mother and no three years. father except the little stroke of paint held. picture of him in their The first time I enjoyed tea When I open the gates to wallet was a cup of English Breakfast so I said can we just sit my family’s pantry for served with creamy milk and breakfast, I realize my here a little longer a luxurious amount of sugar. just one more song or two destination is not a It tasted nothing like my first kingdom of baguettes or and you tell me that the cup - It was tame, it was man on the stereo is croissants or sugar cubes mellow, and it was sweet. or coffee beans. singing about loneliness I told my father about it. He and that you’re feeling chuckled. loneliness that I enter a pantry filled with thousand-year eggs and you feel like you’re not That’s the way the British special or different dried cloud ear, rice make it, he said. I must have noodles, looked at him strangely, I don’t want to leave and because he added, If you like Tea leaves because I’m afraid of it, just drink it that way. forgetting I once asked an Italian friend My mother reached for you don’t think anyone what it’s like to be Italian. will remember you I say the Cheerios that lay He said, “You know what it’s sideways in the back, and someone will someone like. It’s like being any other will someone will spooned the rings of human being.” wheat into my small, eager mouth. I protest, but I do not say

34 : susquehanna university from the voices of white-clad View of a women chanting at every ceiling aside with the words in hopes of shattering the glass “bleeding our of her 19th Century you’ll find the rebellious blues wherever” on live Photograph and the angry oranges the television, Elizabeth Winkler corners of forbidden pleasures tinted forest green you’ll hear and someone my age Riverside, CT the fluid rushing of knowledge denied insurance for beneath your skin and you’ll period-controlling Seen only through a glossy veil a exist for yourself in a world birth-control testosterone-fueled lens I seem to shaped like equality because they don’t identify glow beautiful delicate and as female. useless We look out from behind Dare to grab at the barrier learn the translucent divider I pay hundreds, to glare at the camera even as knowing all they’d have a tax on necessary hygiene they say smile! to do is stare a little products Seek out the textures in the folds unladylike and then because they aren’t of their eyelids that say if you necessary for you. show skin you’re a slut and if you They might see the don’t you’re a prude sit still! they textures of To you, your words are say cross your ankles! don’t your future too. insignificant. slouch! A single pebble. Captured in black and white Still I can’t forget this. my stare unnerves them lower It’s a pebble at the bottom your eyes! be ladylike! of an ocean of blood We learn in the classroom with that crusts the mouths no books from empty desks and of those who just want silent boards Is this all the water. education they think we deserve? Casual remarks like yours I search for color within the Casual Remarks make anyone with a uterus monochrome our time tells us suffer we are Meagan R. Thomas alone, and silently. Sit still and cross your ankles and Coventry, CT fold your hands and don’t dare I won’t be silent anymore. slouch and lower your eyes “Can we just forget this Let me speak for those with Be ladylike conversation ever happened?” periods, That’s all you’re capable of when I see how you avert your eyes because my heart bleeds as they pretend to peer past the when I tell you the truth: well as my uterus. sheen on the picture all they see I am tired, because I am Let me speak for everyone is black and white the half smile cramped. who learned to breathe made of folded hands and Half the population bleeds through the pain instead criss-crossed ankles that’s all they for almost twelve weeks a year, of talking through it. want to see yet you say, But we have more knowledge “Can we just forget this And you may dismiss my than their empty classroom conversation ever happened?” anger as pre-menstrual could ever hope to provide I won’t forget that. whining, Looking out from our I can’t. but it’s an anger deeper and two-dimensional prison we see I add your words to the ash in redder rainbows of emotion peeping my memories. than my body ever was or from behind colorless eyelids will be. below tightly shut mouths that Next to them, No one should ever be forego speech because heaven belittled for bleeding. forbid we have opinions I get a zero in P.E. class No one should ever have to Pulling apart the inked rectangle because I can’t stand up. say they’ve decided we belong in “I’m fine” I bend time forward to a I can’t go to the bathroom; because their pain is too childhood of finger-painted my “girl probelms” make me shameful to speak of. colors where pink and blue bleed on my chair. I won’t forget that, aren’t stamped across our skin and now, as we emerge shrieking into life I see a powerful woman cast neither will you. I find a future built of moving pictures whose brightness pulses

apprentice writer : 35 OUTSTANDING PROSE

all the stars died? If they all died please text back? and we didn’t even know it? Texts from Spain Delivered Delivered Betsy Zaubler I took a Flamenco class the other day. Montclair, NJ I hope I’m not texting you too much. The teacher said I was good, and she I’m trying not to text you too much. I has this friend in Sevilla, so I’m on the Remember when you showed me Las just have a lot to say. But if you don’t train and I’m going to learn how to Meninas for the first time? Well, I saw it hear from me for a few weeks it’s dance Flamenco. Remember when that today. I guess I didn’t need to tell you cause I’m going off the grid for a artist came to talk to us our sophomore that, but I thought you’d want to know. little. Nothing major, just some year and we had just started dating? Hope the internship is going well. hiking in the Pyrenes. So yeah, I And she kept telling me you were a Oh and this is Lucy. I got a Spanish guess I’ll give you the space you keeper because how often do you find number. wanted. a guy who’s an art history major? And then we went back to your dorm room, Delivered Delivered and you made me ramen and it was one of those cliché college moments? I’ve I wish you could’ve seen Las Meninas. You’re not going to believe me, but I been think a lot about that. But this isn’t Pictures don’t do it justice. But anyways, went hiking every day for the past college. And I can’t just walk into your I’m heading to Barcelona tomorrow, week. I can’t believe I didn’t want to dorm. And I can’t talk to you whenever I and I thought you’d want to know come on this trip. I wish I didn’t have have a problem because you aren’t here because you always told me you really to leave. and you never liked listening anyway. I wanted to go to Barcelona, so I’ll bring get that if you want space I need to give you back something, if you want. So Delivered you space. But three years isn’t yeah, text back. Or not, whatever works. something I’m ready to let go of. So just Sorry I’m not texting you as much. tell me where you’re at, okay? Delivered Well maybe that’s a good thing, I don’t know. But anyways, I went to Figueres Delivered I went to the Reina Sofia today but the today, and I saw the Dali museum. Guernica was too crowded. So I waited And I felt like it would never end, like it I know I just texted, and you probably in a cafe until the museum was about to would go on forever. And I’m dizzy just think I’m crazy. You probably think I close, and oh my God, Andrew. I’ve thinking about how I kept going have no friends, and I have nothing to written hundreds of papers on it and I around in circles, like I was trapped in do, so I’m just texting you all the time. kept thinking about how we had that this massive circle and everyone else But I have friends. A lot actually. And I’m night class, and how Professor Grayson in the museum seemed to know how really happy. I honestly don’t think I’ve turned off the lights and it was so dark to get out of it but me. I’m texting too ever been this happy. And then I just we couldn’t remember who was sitting much, aren’t I? get sad when I think about you, and next us. And then first all you could see how I almost didn’t come because I was the white and then claws coming Delivered was scared of what could happen in out of the door and then the faces. The two months of being away. And how faces. I’m sitting in Park Güell. I come here many other things I did or didn’t do almost every day now, and I look out because of you. And I stayed out late Delivered and can see almost all of Barcelona. again last night, and there was this And the sun is setting so everything man sitting on the street playing I was supposed to go to France today. I looks red. I know I need to stop texting Flamenco and it was so stereotypically decided to stay in Spain. you. I keep picking up the phone to Spain, and I just sat and listened, and text you. There’s something about the everything was quiet and still. Do you Delivered distance and the time. You were always know what that feels like? I hope you so distant. can find what that feels like. I went out till 4:00 a.m. And I’m walking back to my hostel by myself. And I’m Delivered Delivered lost. And I found this postcard on the street. And it was blank. But I don’t have So I’m just trying to figure out where I’m staying in Spain. I don’t know how a stamp. So I thought I’d text you and we stand. I’ve been here for almost much longer I’ll be here. tell you about it because that was the two months and I’m coming home in next best option. And there aren’t any next week, and I’m not sure if you want Delivered stars in the sky. No moon. No nothing. me to come to New York. I’m just trying And isn’t that sad? Wouldn’t it be sad if to figure out what you want. Can you

36 : susquehanna university OUTSTANDING POETRY

to catch the water I am wondering if consciousness is Letters to in the crevices of polka-dot polyester really worth to show you that some stay on. the broken teeth and the chapped Nobody, But I know better now - lips. I watch droplets line up on the green You bought me a record Written at thorns, from that shop we always passed in each a small globe of the same image our flights to our “people” Midnight of the rose that droops in front of and I reminded you that I owned no them, record player. Alyssa Chen each world falling off the thorns one Listen to it, you said, Pine Brook, NJ by one. spinning, scratching the surface with The air of rose and fairy blood is cold your fingernails. I. and damp in the center of my palm. LIsten. You left a coffee stain on my A drop sprays from the white stream I did. armchair, the one I loved to sit on as below, When I bought a brand new record a kid and I catch it between trembling player from Amazon and played your marvel at the shiny legs, the spotless, fingertips. record, silky sheen. I see what you mean now. I listened for the sounds of your You told me to ask God what sin felt If only you could come back to me - scratching fingernails that never like, when you touched my face with I would hold the droplet in the sun came. your chewed-up mint gum for you to see, Instead, in their place were long and caressed my ink-soaked pages for I know you’d never look in the breaks, between your hands. shadows. sudden and forever, it seemed. What kind of milkshake do they serve When have you gone - have you in paradise? You ask, become IV. pointing to a bright cloud in the night a moth, the very essence of your If you cannot come to me after sky that no one else obsession extinguishing your own our whole life together, seems to see. And I collapse into the light? I will breathe softly through your grass, cross-legged and cross-hearted. How many clocks must I disassemble lungs. If you sing Hallelujah to me in your to stop time? If standing under the same light as voice of soft asphalt, According to the theory of relatively, you, walking through the same night, hardening as the deserts cool, the speed of light is constant does not help me understand your upon this hatrack I shall hang my and time is relative depending on pale hair sunshined jaket and the notes you how fast you travel; or your bloodshot eyes, gave me - A, C, B flat If I throw this raindrop fast enough I will speak softly into your mouth. the scales of dragons that ran down into the past, We lay under the sky, the whole mass your spine. What are you? would you be able to catch it? of clouds and the universe whispering I often wonder why my melody struck Or perhaps, I will throw it forward, above us. your fancy. so that it will reach us where we are Long ago, I wanted you as a mystery Perhaps you should’ve used speakers together again, to unravel, so I can hear what you’re hearing, where we can hold it between our as a beautiful wrapping, a gift only but right now your ears are plugged clasped hands and revealed by the rip of a child’s fingers. into the soft knobs of your throw ourselves into the light as one. And here we are, me trying once more headphones, and you smile and to peel off your gold veneer, wave at me, gesturing your love III. eager nails on the surface of the metal for a symphony I cannot even hear. I found a fluorescent bird mask of a lottery ticket. Sometimes, I look into the mirror and in the jar where we used to keep I stop myself, and place the ticket into gaze into my own eyes. pennies, an equally gold frame, Such strange, brown eyes. I have the ones that disappeared one by one so that if I do not find the winning never seen them before. as the sun faded from our dreams numbers, Strange, beautiful. and all we were left with was this I will still have a piece of paper to Your hands slipped into my sleeves small apartment prove my love for you. just as I pulled my hands away, and the maps we used as posters to The sky has turned a sickly yellow and now they rest on the inside of this cover the cracks in the walls now, and I am not even sure black velvet on my arms. and the remnants of dog food and I can bring myself to pulling the ticket cocktails and tissues. from my pocket II. Do you remember when we were so for you to see. If you had told me that day that caught in that net, So all theire is left for me to do raindrops always end up in the the world of fish who kept swimming is wrap you in my own paper flowing rivers, round and round, and kiss your heavy soul I would have pulled out my umbrella drowning forever in their own words? until I feel the heart of a flightless It took us long to escape, but now sparrow underneath.

apprentice writer : 37 liked to think of himself as “building” enter his straight-edged house and them. It made him feel unique and life. He was met with an odd, but not The Houseguest special, like he was different from the entirely absurd result. On his thresh- Mairead Kilgallon other biographers, no matter how old stood a frighteningly thin girl of Bedford Hills, NY successful they were, that he had seventeen or eighteen, though Ezra some deep understanding that was could not be wholly sure, who had Ezra was a man of lines and edges. lost on them. sweat and dirt smeared on her still The straight kind, regarding each. noticeably pretty face. Her brown, This was evident in all aspects of his Ezra enjoyed biographies as read- chin-length hair had a few twigs life, from his sharp features to the ing material as well as for building, stuck in it, and strands were plas- strict geometry of his living space. because he liked how real they were. tered to her forehead with sweat. His house, if one could call it that, He liked being someone else, not in The clothes she wore seemed to was a small place that required little the fatuous way of those who read have been nice sometime recently, thought to navigate. Ever since he fiction, who long to experience and but were now as dirt-smeared as first moved in, Ezra had found that know things that could not and her skin. Little scratches and bruises maneuvering through the rooms would not exist, but in a way that littered her arms, face, and neck, and was like following instructions that connected him to the real world, to her pants were ripped at both knees, he had been told but since forgot, what was true and what the reality leaking dribbles of blood down her that were returning to him, triggered was in times he knew only as history. shins. She was breathing heavily, by the sudden familiarity of the When he was building he would turning her head to look into the space around him. sometimes pretend to write an au- woods on the edge of Ezra’s property tobiography, sometimes so enthusi- too often, her blue eyes too wide Ezra was a man who knew what he astically that he began writing in the and too desperate. needed, and always had through first person. If this ever happened, he his many decades of life. There were might take a crossword/walk break Ezra knew he should feel apprehen- once times when it was hard to a little early. This writing process sive, he should shut out this stranger acquire what he knew he needed, would go on for most of the day, and the possible outcomes to this but those times were mostly gone, only stopping for a small lunch, until day she presented that he would not as they seemed to be when one he felt it was time to eat one more be able to predict. But as he took in advances in age. In his rectangular meal before bed. He would stand up her odd appearance in an elongated cupboards with chipped off-white from his computer after saving the moment, something caught his at- paint coating them, lay the things day’s progress, pour himself a glass tention: her rings. They glittered on he needed: his food (always at least of water to drink while he prepared her dirty, scratched fingers, at least two-thirds organic, the chemicals his two-thirds organic food, turn the fifteen of them. Some were silver, used in factories these days could be radio on to the weather, sit down some gold, others with intricate pat- especially harmful to someone his for a small dinner, wash the dishes, terns or small stones set in them. Out age), his cups for the perfectly good brush his teeth again, change into of all the strange things that his girl tap water, his towels (he preferred nightclothes, then read a biography was made up of, those were what white ones; white had always been for about twenty minutes before made Ezra reconsider. He wanted the color he associated with cleanli- turning of the light with a click! and to know those rings. He wanted to ness), his dishes that were pleasing beginning to fall asleep. know their wearer. Maybe they could circles and not chipped, his extra give him a real life to fall into, an- toothbrush and paste because he Ezra did not like being interrupted other biography that he would make did not like to go to the store when- during this routine. In fact, he did into an autobiography, if only for a ever he ran out, and, of course, all not like being interrupted at all. little while. So, when the girl gasped, of his clothes and shoes and jackets Those were some of the few things “Inside!”, he stepped aside and let and hats and belts, which were in the that annoyed the mild-mannered her stumble into his small, angular cupboards in his bedroom. man of straight lines and routines house without a word. and biographies. So, naturally, Ezra was also a man of routine, Ezra felt annoyed when there was Ezra felt calmer than he should have which is common for someone of a too-loud banging on his door been, even as the girl nearly crashed his age with a liking for straight lines twenty-two minutes before his headlong into his writing desk, nar- and full inventory. In the morning he second crossword/walk break from rowly avoiding toppling the tower of would wake, take his clothes from the building of a biography on J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings books perched the chipped off-white cupboard Tolkien, a man whose life Ezra en- on it. He did not react when she drawer in his bedroom, shower if it joyed researching. Swallowing down frantically yanked the curtains over was a Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or his annoyance, which any respect- his square windows, instead focus- Sunday, dress, brush his teeth, make able man of straight lines ought to ing on counting her rings. He could a small breakfast, and then sit at his do, he saved his notes and rose from not be sure, but there seemed to computer with a cup of herbal or his chair. The door was not far from eighteen in total, two on each finger black tea. During the day he would his seat, so he did not feel compelled and one on each of her thumbs. As research or continue to write what- to hurry, even as there was another the girl peered behind the newly ever biography he was building at obnoxiously loud bang from whom- drawn curtains, Ezra felt the urge to the moment in two-hour bursts ever was outside. introduce himself. “My name is Ezra,” broken up by crossword puzzles or a he said, sounding much too quiet. quick stroll outside, sometimes both Ezra’s door did not have a little He flinched at his own words and simultaneously. window on the top, so he opened it straightened his striped shirt. The more slowly than usual to make sure girl started, as if she had forgotten Ezra, instead of writing biographies, no one questionable was seeking to she was not alone, that this straight-

38 : susquehanna university edged, biographical house was not with poor nanny-choosing skills, so odd stillness. Adele had passed out hers, and she let go of the curtains many times as a boy Ezra had gone while very suddenly. to the hospital, treated to lessons in Ezra was calming himself down. Pan- medicine by nurses that respected ic threatened to engulf him again, Ezra noticed how her shoulders his mother and thought he was cute. but he forced himself to look hard at were slumped in something like He had always hoped a day would the girl’s face, then muttered, “You defeat, but for some reason he did come when he would be able to will die if I don’t help. I should help, not believe that was the right word. put these skills to use, but as he had I must help, I will help. I will save How could someone with twigs in fallen into his routine lifestyle, and your life.” Somewhat surprisingly, her hair and a pretty face covered his mother had died, and the nurses this small encouragement worked. with dirt and eighteen shiny rings be maybe retired or stopped being The tremor in his hands died down defeated? It did not seem like a likely nurses, this hope had been more of enough that he trusted his hand to situation to him. He felt the urge an interesting “what if” to consider stitch Adele back together, and his to comfort her, but did not think it than anything else. Now, he felt an mind cleared enough that he trusted would be well-received. She seemed almost child-like giddiness that he his own judgement while tending to skittish and wary of him, seeming to knew did not suit the situation as he her injury. be at war with herself over whether rushed into the bathroom to retrieve she should respond to Ezra’s in- his first-aid kit and Adele began to Ezra had never been more thankful troduction of himself. Finally, her insist, “No hospital! Please, no hos- for his apparent lack of squeamish- unlikely slump of defeat deepened pital!” He did not see it as his place ness than he was then, which actu- and she turned up the corners of to question her. That thought made ally was not saying much, since he her dry lips into something that was him feel like a doctor. had long since forgotten that he was not a smile. “Thanks for letting me not squeamish. Facing things that in, Mr. Ezra. Um, my name is...Adele. Ezra used the scissors in his kit to made most people uncomfortable My name’s Adele.” She said all of this cut a square in Adele’s bloodstained and nauseous was not a part of Ezra’s very quickly. shirt, revealing a what looked like an routine. However, this day was not inch-long stab wound, but he was very routine at all. Ezra had a feeling that Adele’s name too out of practice to be sure. He was not really Adele, but from the had only ever seen photos of violent Ezra pinched the opening of the sad look on her face when she had wounds, but he had experienced wound closed with a couple fingers said it, he decided not to ask for stitching, so he was reasonably of his right hand, then began to more information. Adele was quiet, confident. He wiped away the blood stitch with his dominant left hand. her breathing still labored. Ezra was around the edges after applying He tried to recall every time he had desperate to fill the silence, so he pressure to stop the heavy bleed- seen his mother do this, including asked if she was okay. She began to ing, further staining his clean white the few occasions when she had nod, but seemed to think better of it towel, then uttered a warning that been stitching him up. He felt the and drew one of her ring-ornament- came out shakier than he intended urge to run a hand over his face, to ed hands out from under her jacket before dousing the wound in alco- trace the faint scar that ran from the with a hiss. Blood stained her palm hol. Adele’s fingernails created im- bottom of his nose to the corner of and tinged her rings a dark red. It pressions in the wooden armrests of his mouth. An accident, of course, took Ezra a moment to process what the straight-edged chair she sat on, from when he was younger and he was seeing, but when he did, he a low groan escaping her through much less straight-edged, involving exploded into a flurry of movement. clenched teeth. a glass bottle of Coca-Cola and his He felt strangely detached from his friend George’s limited knowledge limbs, which were reaching out and Ezra found himself muttering “Okay, of pyrotechnics. His mother had gently guiding Adele to a chair, help- okay, it’s okay, we’re okay” to himself numbed the wound with a special ing her shrug off her jacket to reveal on repeat as he fished around in the paste and then sewed him back the blooming red stain on the girl’s first-aid kit for the needle and stitch- together, but she was unable to save left side, holding the back of her ing thread. This confused him, as did some damaged nerves. He had a head to make her look at him and the fact that his hands were shaking lopsided smile that he was not smil- keep from passing out. even more violently than the gravely ing as often as other times in his life, wounded girl’s. Ezra was generally a but it did emerge when he thought Ezra had not been in this much of a calm, collected man. His hands did of that day. hurry in quite a while, and he was not shake. How could someone with dimly aware of this as he chanted shaking hands create the straight Ezra returned his focus to the task at “Eyes open!” at Adele over and over, lines and edges that made up his hand. He had not even completed grabbing one of his white towels life, or reliably type on a keyboard the first stitch. He breathed in deep he associated with cleanliness and while building a biography? Ezra and pictured his mother standing pressing it against her wound. He took a moment to still his hands and beside him, helping guide his hand. was also dimly aware that he tech- his mind, attempting to focus on his This calmed him because it was the nically had no obligation to this breathing like his mother had told first time he had imagined his moth- stranger, that he did not have to get him to do whenever he was stressed. er clearly in a long time, years even. blood all over his white towels or in- He squeezed his hands in and out Despite his predicament, it made terrupt his daily routine, yet he was, of fists, trying to ignore the fact that him almost happy. Almost, because and it actually felt very natural. He they were smeared with blood; the there were too many sad memories wondered if that made him a good sight unnerved him. tied up with the happy ones, as it is person. with every loved one who dies. Ezra threaded the sterile needle, and This calming emotion of almost- Ezra’s mother had been a doctor as he was doing so, he noticed an happiness steadied Ezra’s hand and

apprentice writer : 39 mind as he put Adele back together, of history, little biographies, shining held it up to the light, inspecting sewing in threads of life and health prettily on your finger, a story known the rusty flecks and splotches in the to keep death from wriggling inside only to you and those you choose to material, wondering if he could save her too early. He carefully stitched tell. the color. That was a problem for for half an hour, at least, movements later, he thought, tossing the shirt much slower than his mother’s, but Ezra thought then that he wanted to aside. It lay askew, crumpled and just as controlled. Once he finished, be the one Adele chose to tell. When crooked atop the straight sheets of bandaged the imperfect but func- he had seen her rings he had been his bedding. tional stitches, he washed his hands interested. He had been curious. and tools of Adele’s blood and He enjoyed curiosity, to an extent. Ezra turned away and rifled through stowed the first aid kit away, and That was why he liked biographies. his neatly organized drawers, wiping then he decided he would attempt He could be curious, then informed away clean creases and wrinkling to move the sleeping girl to the quickly through words printed on his folded blue and/or white shirts. small sofa near his writing desk. He pages. It was a full-circle kind of feel- He decided against another white would have put her in his bed and ing, to be curious about someone, button-down, selecting one of the slept on the sofa himself, but he did learn and build their biography, then few dark gray t-shirts he owned. not trust his aged body to reliably publish it so others could experience He pulled the flimsy fabric over his carry her without possibly furthering their own curiosity. Ezra wondered head and switched out his bloodied the girl’s injuries. what Adele’s biography would be khaki pants for a clean black pair. He like. It would include how she got replaced his socks as well, just for Ezra thought the distance between her rings—all at a time, each on the sake of completing the change. the chair Adele had passed out in their own, from loved ones, from His hands still felt sticky, so he and the sofa was something he shops, finding them on the street. washed them again, this time with could handle carrying her for, but he It would include him, he realized, more soap. He splashed some of the did not want to take any chances. So, the man who took her in when she water on his face, which felt wonder- his method became one of pulling was running from something. It ful after producing that unwanted and shifting. Slowly, he dragged the would include the something she sweat. Drops ran down his neck, and chair the girl was sitting on along- was running from, and why it scared he stuck his head under the faucet, side the sofa, then carefully depos- her. It would include why her cheeks enjoying the shocking cold of the ited her on the cushions. Ezra tapped looked hollow and her ribs showed tap water as it soaked his silver hair. his brow afterward and was slightly through her bloodstained shirt. surprised to find it beaded with Ezra remained like that for a few mo- sweat. He wiped it off with his sleeve. Ezra lingered on that observation ments, letting the jet of water drown He hated sweat. and concluded that his non-routine out his thoughts. This, he thought, task now was to make food for his would be a blank space in his bi- Ezra took a seat in the recently va- new guest. He did not have any ography. He sometimes wondered cated, bloodstained chair and looked experience with being stabbed, but about what someone was doing in hard at the sleeping girl. Would she he supposed a little nutrition could the wordless half-page in between even survive? He did not know how not hurt. He checked on Adele’s chapters, or in the little symbol that much blood she had lost before breathing, which was shallow but signified a line break. He normally blowing through his door like the there, and then shuffled into the assumed it was just insignificant wind, like the devil was at her heels. kitchen, barely ten feet from his writ- facts about a regular person’s life, Then again, why did he care? Why ing desk. He opened the cupboard, one that did not need to be recorded should he care? He owed this girl running his thumb over its straight because everyone already knew whose name was probably not Adele edge as he inspected the contents. what that was like. But now, as he nothing, yet to help her he remem- He settled on warming up canned stood hunched over with his head bered happy and sad things about chicken noodle soup. He knew of its in his rectangular, straight-edged his mother, he got bloodstains on “magical” properties for sick children, sink, he thought of this blank space his clean white towels and straight- and how big was the difference, re- as one that, rather than being too edged chair, he even started sweat- ally, between being sick and recover- mundane and commonplace, could ing. What did he owe her? ing from a stabbing? not be explained by any biographer’s words. Ezra noticed then that his brow was Ezra opened the can and slopped furrowed. He immediately relaxed the contents into a pot over a flame Ezra’s head jerked upward when he his face. Mariana had constantly told the same blue color as a stone heard a thump from the kitchen/ him that drawing his eyebrows to- on one of Adele’s rings. He stared living room, and he bit back a very gether in his “bulldog face” gave him intently at the heating soup until non-routine curse as his skull collid- frown lines. He only started listening slow, greasy bubbles formed and ed with the metal faucet. Pain rico- after she died, as it is with much ad- popped with heaves on the surface cheted down his spine, quickly fall- vice, followed out of a kind of shame. and steam rose with a warm, salty ing into rhythm with the throb of his After relaxing his brow and thinking smell. He snuck himself a bite or two, pulse. Rubbing the soon-to-be lump, about Mariana for a moment, he telling himself that he was testing Ezra straightened and made his way looked back at Adele, or whatever the heat, though there was no one toward the source of the startling her true name was. Her breaths were who would judge him. After turning noise. When he rounded the corner, shallow, her ring-adorned hands off the blue flame, Ezra checked on he stopped in his tracks. There was glinting as they rested on her stom- Adele once more before going into a thrashing blanket on the ground ach. Ezra wondered if all eighteen his room. He had just remembered next to the empty sofa, small grunts of them held a story. He liked the about the bloodstains on his bright of pain coming from beneath it. He idea of that, keeping little pockets white shirt. He unbuttoned it and caught a glimpse of a ring-adorned

40 : susquehanna university hand shoot out from under the blan- like his mother. Like he was helping kept furrowing deeper. He thought ket before it ripped the fabric away, someone be healthy, guarding them of Mariana. His brow relaxed, but exposing wild, static-mussed brown against pain and death. He liked that then tensed again as the thought of hair framing a panicked face. Adele feeling. All the sweating and brow- not-really-Adele sitting on the sofa kicked the blanket off her legs and furrowing that had occurred felt like behind him. She seemed confused shot to her feet, nearly slipping on it was worth it, if he made this girl all and sad. Even though it was not part the rectangular pillow she had taken right again. He decided that, at least of his routine, Ezra still knew what down with her. for now, he would be a doctor. His it was like to feel like that. He won- mother. A person who makes things dered what his mother would do. Ezra was frozen in place. Adele’s blue all right again. What the doctor version of himself eyes met his with an intensity that would do. Adele clearly did not want felt like a bucket of ice water was be- Ezra, or now Dr. Ezra, tested the heat to discuss who or what had hurt her, ing dumped over his already damp of the soup before pouring it into and he knew that doctors should not head. He saw her wince and clutch two bowls. He made sure Adele’s had press their patients for information her side after moving so sharply, but more in it, because that was what a they did not want to share. she stayed on her feet. Ezra wiped doctor would do. He opened one of droplets from his brow before they the straight-edged drawers and took Ezra finished drying out the bowls could fall into his eyes. Adele in- two soup spoons from their desig- and put them back in their rectan- spected her wound, the haphazard nated soup spoon compartment, gular cupboards with the chipping life-stitches holding her skin togeth- which he plopped into their respec- white paint and decided that if he er. Her gaze shot from the stitches tive bowls before making his way to could not have a conversation with to the stunned man and back again, Adele. She looked more comfortable this ring-ornamented girl, then some of the ferocity gone from it. than Ezra would have expected. She he would tell a story. A biography. leaned her back against the armrest Hopefully, if he spoke of the events Ezra still hadn’t moved when not-re- and her legs were laid out straight of others’ lives for long enough, ally-named-Adele cleared her throat in front of her. She started to move Adele would feel compelled to share and croaked, “Well, um, good job.” them aside to make room for Ezra, the events of hers. Maybe she would Ezra blinked. “On the stitches, I mean. but he waved the courtesy away in even tell him about her rings. That Oh, and thanks. That was really, um, a doctorly fashion. Instead, he sat in would make him feel very appreci- nice of you…” She trailed off and the bloodstained wooden chair that ated. winced, from her own words or from Adele had initially collapsed in. As pain, Ezra could not tell. He was not he did so, Adele seemed to real- Ezra sat back on the bloodstained entirely sure how to respond; inter- ize that she had been moved, and wooden chair facing Adele and acting with frustrated teenagers with began another ramble of gratitude, cleared his throat. “I write biogra- lots of rings was unfathomably far which Ezra dismissed with another phies,” he said, gesturing to the stack from his routine. Rather than make serene smile that he was proud of. of Tolkien books that were still pre- more of a fool of himself by stand- “No thanks necessary,” he said. Adele cariously perched on his desk. Adele ing frozen in place, he gave Adele a smiled, and Ezra felt appreciated, blinked several times, then raised small smile and trotted over to the which was absolutely not part of her eyebrows with interest. “Well, stove, where the soup was cooling to his routine, but not necessarily bad, actually, I like to call it building…” and edible temperature. either. And so he told Adele the story of the author J.R.R. Tolkien, one of the most Ezra kept his back to the girl by his Ezra waited for Adele to begin slurp- legendary fantasy writers in history, sofa as his said in a measured voice, ing the soup before he lifted his complete with gesticulation and “I made soup. Are you hungry? I--” spoon to his lips. There was a stretch dramatic pauses. It was so splendidly he cut himself off before he started of silence as both of them ate, and non-routine to speak a biography, to rambling. There was silence from Ezra’s toes curled against it in his shape the story as he said it. behind him for a few agonizing mo- newly changed socks. Adele was ments and he turned the flame back the one to break it. “Did anyone, or, Ezra spoke of how the remarkable on to keep the soup warm. Then um, anything come to the door after man had invented several languages there came a quiet noise of assent, me?” from his teens and created a writing followed by a thud and a grunt. Ezra tried to stop his brow from fur- group at Oxford while he was pro- rowing at this, but he could not help fessor that included writers like C.S. Ezra turned sharply to see that Adele it. “No, not that I saw. Why?” He no- Lewis and Owen Barfield. He built had attempted to step forward and ticed the muscles working in Adele’s the life of the man who had built a her leg had not given her any sup- jaw, and remembered the stab fantastical place called Middle Earth, port. She gripped the arm of the sofa wound. “Is someone chasing you?” and Ezra felt a certain pride to be do- and hauled herself back upright. He She just frowned in response and ing so, like he was also contributing could see the muscles in her cheek murmured something like “kind of” to the legendary works of Tolkien. strain as she ground her teeth. Be- into her soup. Confused, he pushed Adele looked both surprised and fore he quite knew he was doing it, for more, but all she disclosed were fascinated as the biography rose up Ezra pointed the wooden spoon he more vague answers and long slurps around them. Once Ezra had gotten held at the sofa and said, “Sit. Doc- of soup. past the first half of Tolkien’s life, she tor’s orders.” curled up on the couch, drooping Ezra, once both of them had fin- eyes still watching him. By the time Ezra knew he was not a doctor, but it ished, silently took his and Adele’s Tolkien died in 1973, her breathing occurred to him that Adele did not. bowls to the sink and rinsed them had slowed and evened out. As she sighed and settled onto the out. His toes were starting to curl sofa, Ezra smiled to himself. He felt again with the silence, and his brow Ezra remained in his seat for a mo-

apprentice writer : 41 ment, wondering at the slight ring photograph. He wiped the rest of Adele for information even though the sudden silence had. How long the dust from the frame and placed he was bursting with curiosity, fre- had he talked? Darkness pressed it back on his dresser. Then, he quently asking how she was feeling, in from outside his straight-edged concluded his non-routine day in a checking on her wound regularly. window. He ran his finger along the very non-routine way: leaving his The cut itself was not as deep has he sill. The corner was very sharp. He bloodstained and sweaty clothes on had feared, and was angled in such stopped his brow from furrowing. A the floor and throwing himself on a way that it had missed nicking contented sigh came from the sofa. top of the covers, disregarding the any vital organs. He told her more Ezra retrieved a thick, rectangular biography on his bed waiting to be than once “you are very lucky” in his blanket from his small closet in the reopened and not even bothering to doctor voice, but didn’t fail to notice house’s one bedroom and laid it over turn off the light with its customary how she seemed to droop as if a Adele’s prone form. He studied the click. None of these deviations from great weight laid on her shoulders narrow sofa, and knew that a real his routine occurred to him at the when she thought he was not look- doctor would valiantly carry her to time, when all he could think of was ing. the one bedroom and let her sleep sleep. in the most optimal comfort, while Ezra spent the day tending to Adele suffering stiffness and sore muscles Ezra woke as light filtered through and doing crossword puzzles on his from the couch or floor. However, he his straight-edged windows, illumi- bloodstained chair. He found her reevaluated the distance between nating the small rooms of his small some of Mariana’s old blouses and Adele and the bed, and was more house-if-you-could-call-it-a-house. trousers and showed her the shower, than certain he would not be able to He rose and made his bed with mini- but warned her not to get water manage the trip. Besides, mum effort, then stumbled to the on the stitches. The clothes were Adele was smaller than him, and had bathroom to wash his face and brush loose on her thin frame, but she was already burrowed sleepily into the his teeth, not bothering to take a thankful all the same. They stayed in routinely untouched cushions. whole shower. He changed into a long, comfortable silence for hours, one of his two pairs of comfortable one that did not make Ezra’s toes Ezra felt happy as he shifted his denim trousers and an undershirt. curl or force either of them to blurt gaze from the girl on the couch to He had a feeling he would not be out any words they would regret. His his bedroom. It was a satisfied kind going for a walk that day. He consid- curiosity grew, but he satisfied him- of happy, something he felt for ered this, and then eyed the maga- self with thinking up a story behind himself more than anyone else. He zines filled with crossword puzzles each of Adele’s rings. There were wondered if that made him unlike a on his bedside table. Perhaps both so many, but he had a feeling that doctor in any way, or more like one. he and his new houseguest could each one held a long, important tale, He wished his mother was there for benefit from something to occupy each worthy of its own biography. him to ask. He had not wished that their minds. He grabbed two maga- He wondered about how they were in a while. Another brow-furrow was zines and ambled into the kitchen/ made, if they had owners previous narrowly avoided. He kept a hand on living room. to Adele, what secrets they could his forehead when he ambled to his divulge if they could only speak. He small, straight-edged dresser after Ezra was pleased to see that Adele hoped that Adele would tell him brushing his teeth, which had felt was still asleep. It seemed very doc- about herself, why she came to him strangely routine. He plucked from torly to wake up before one’s patient, and who had hurt her, but he also it one of the two framed pictures showing the devotion required knew that as her doctor (for now), it that were blanketed with a thin film for healing. Ezra felt faintly like a was not polite to pry into her busi- of dust. The one he held was of his child playing hospital, feeling good ness. family, if one could call it that. The about himself for something that is only subjects in the foreground were not real, something that is not his Ezra and Adele soon established a Ezra, thirteen at the time, and his true life. But then he thought of the new routine. Ezra’s curiosity never mother. She had her small, warm events of the previous day. Surely he died down, but he learned to sup- smile spread across her face, doing behaved like a real doctor then. He press it in hopes that Adele would wonders to light up her otherwise had saved someone, and he should become comfortable enough to tell plain face. damn right be proud about it. him on her own time. Days passed, and Ezra rose in the mornings, only Ezra ran his thumb over the glass Ezra blinked as he reached for showering if Adele was still asleep, protecting the picture, cutting a bowls to make cereal for two in. He then making cereal or bowls of smudged path through the dust. He never usually cursed, not even in this organic fruit and yogurt for two after liked seeing his mother’s hair before thoughts. A rustle came from the making sure Adele had no allergies. it became shot through with silver. sofa. Ezra looked over to see Adele After washing the dishes, he would Her hand appeared to be resting on pushing herself into a sitting posi- check on Adele’s wound and redress young Ezra’s shoulder, but a memory tion, holding her side and grimacing. it if necessary, then retrieve the came to him of a strong grip to He wondered if she cursed. When crossword puzzle magazines and put keep him from running off before Adele attempted to stand, Ezra them alongside the stack of Tolkien the picture was snapped. The im- rushed over as quickly as his aged books that he had noticed Adele patience was evident on his pudgy form would allow and insisted that eyeing and then spend the day face through his lack of a smile and she remain seated, that she needed halfheartedly editing his first draft refusal to look at the camera lens. rest, all the authoritative doctor of the Tolkien biography or doing voice that he was getting better at. crosswords, discreetly trying to beat Ezra felt the corners of his mouth As the day went on, Ezra used the Adele. She was brilliant at the word turn up, and hoped that his smile doctor voice more and more along games; she finished them quicker looked like his mother’s in the with a doctor attitude, not pushing even then Mariana had, and Ezra

42 : susquehanna university had always regarded his wife as the Ezra watched the light of the sunset just occurred. Adele was nowhere to master of the crossword. He went glint off her rings as she pushed the be seen. He looked at the door and to the store every once in awhile to thin curtain to the side, then turned contemplated her order. She had resupply on food and magazines, his attention back to tidying up his been firm, so she must have had a but for the most part stopped going medical supplies. He packed up reason, but nevertheless Ezra found on his walks. the little first-aid kit and disposed himself reaching for the knob. Before of the stitches with a silent word of he knew it the door was swinging Ezra was happy with his new routine. gratitude. His cold hands warmed shut behind him and he was walking It let him be a doctor, have some in the warm water from the faucet, briskly toward the woods. friendly crossword competition, and as he dried his hands on a white and made him think of his mother rag, he saw Adele’s eyes narrow Ezra did not get very far, however, and Mariana. He smiled more and and she moved sharply toward the before he noticed the glimmer of furrowed his brow less. He had not door. When her hand closed on the a ring-bearing hand attached to a sweat since that first day when he doorknob, Ezra blurted, “What’s out tired, determined-looking Adele was stitching up Adele’s wound, but there?” emerging from the shadows. She he did not think he would mind if caught sight of him and made a he had. Adele did not talk much, but Ezra’s self-control had been admi- noise of exasperation at him dis- looked out the window often. Many rable to this point, but now he just obeying her command. “What was times Ezra had glanced over and could not stop himself. He found that? The sound and the light–” seen her slumped under that invisi- that he was even slightly worried Adele cut Ezra off with a pained ble weight, guilt making her features that Adele might leave. The girl look. He pulled open the door for sag. In those moments his curiosity started, like she had forgotten Ezra her and she stepped inside with a peaked, but his many years of living was there. “Hopefully nothing,” she nod of thanks. Ezra had a strange had given him enough willpower to said slowly. “Probably something.” sense of deja vu. He shut the door stay silent. She pulled open the door and with a click and turned back to stepped across the threshold, the Adele, knowing how questioning Ezra routinely checked on Adele’s paused and, without turning her his expression was and still wonder- stitches, dressing and redressing the head, commanded, “Stay here.” Then ing if abandoning Doctor Ezra was wound enough that he eventually she was gone, the door swinging a mistake. Adele looked at her feet, had to go out to the store and buy shut behind her. and the sink, at the books on the more medical supplies. The man at floor. She squirmed, which surprised the register had given him a look of Ezra did not move. He had heard him. He had not thought her to be trepidation, but also of respect, and something new in Adele’s voice just a squirmer. He almost blurted that Ezra felt more like a doctor every day. then, an authority that he did know thought aloud, but managed to stop More days passed, and the stack of existed. She seemed, in that mo- the words before he made her more completed crosswords grew larger, ment, like a real leader. He wanted to uncomfortable. and the bloodstains on the chair ask her about leading, and about her grew dryer, and Adele’s gazes out rings (which he had dutifully kept Ezra felt the silence in the room the window grew more anxious. The quiet about) when she came back. grow tenser with each second, and days turned into a week, and the one If she came back. He hoped that his toes curled in their socks again. week turned into two. Ezra finally de- the back of Adele’s head and a “stay Finally, Adele spoke. “I can’t tell you. cided that it was time for the stitches here” was not the last he saw of the Not everything...or, well, anything. It to come out. Her wound had healed girl; there was so much he wanted to would be too dangerous, it’s better nicely; it was not as severe as he had ask. Doctor Ezra, the one who always that you don’t know. I’m still incred- initially feared. He suspected that respected the privacy of his patients, ibly grateful, though, don’t get me Adele’s exhaustion had come from was disappearing, replaced by the wrong. I don’t know how I could ever stress, fatigue, and malnourishment nosier, real Ezra. He wanted to quiz repay you. I have to leave now, but more than anything else. her relentlessly, to learn everything you’ve been so kind to me. Thank about her. He wondered what her you so much for that.” Ezra was quite pleased with himself real name was. Not Adele, for sure. when he snipped the black thread Maybe something more traditional, Ezra felt an almost crushing disap- that he so painstakingly sewed and less musical. It would help if he knew pointment at her words. He also felt knitted two weeks before. He felt her parents. He wondered what their pride, of course, but he could not compelled to say a word of thanks names were, if she even had any. Her help but look at her rings sadly. He to the stitches, for so reliably keep- story was like a rag that he wanted pulled his gaze back up to Adele’s ing Adele’s body put together, to wring out until there was nothing and found her scrutinizing him with away from the drowsiness of blood left. He was sick of Doctor Ezra. He her bright blue eyes that were so loss and the burn of infection. He wondered if that made him a bad desperate two weeks before. “I am refrained from doing so, however, person. just happy I could help you, Adele,” content with the comfortable silence he forced out. At the mention of he and the girl shared. As soon as Ezra broke from his frozen state probably-not-her-real-name, Adele the stitches were out, Adele’s de- when a blinding flash came through grimaced and looked down at her meanor changed. It was subtle, but the window. It was followed shortly hands. Then she blinked several Ezra detected the shift in her posture by a boom that rocked the if-you- times, and a small, melancholy smile from defeated to determined. She could-call-it-a-house and finally top- spread across her face. She gingerly thanked him quietly and then darted pled the pile of Tolkien books on the pulled a thin ring of gold that looked to the window, casting her glare into desk. He rushed to the window and almost woven off her thumb. Adele the woods surrounding Ezra’s little scanned the trees, which were still rubbed it on her t-shirt and it glinted residence. trembling from whatever blast had in the light.

apprentice writer : 43 feet are bound Ezra’s eyes widened. The ring was My Luck by the ways of the new country. beautiful, simple and elegant. Some- Not believing in luck, thing Mariana would have liked. is Inherited I never had any use for it. Adele, once she had finished shining it, offered the ring to him. “I know it’s Jenny Li Never turning over the cooked fish not much, but…” Ezra nearly jumped on the plate, with joy when he took it from Adele’s Los Angeles, CA for fear their boats would capsize palm. Such a small thing, but with a next time the men went fishing, fantastic story, no doubt. He looked A girl born in the year of the dragon is Dà nǎinai pricked herself back up at Adele and opened his intellectual and excitable, with a fish bone mouth to let all his questions pour but sometimes, Sucking the pain out of her finger, out, but she beat him to it. “This was may be too unrealistic or fiery. she prayed that a gift,” she said, looking at the ring Her lucky numbers are one, seven, pǐ jí tài lái -- Things at the worst will fondly, “from the real Adele.” and six and mend. Words died in Ezra’s throat. He she should, blinked at her, his suspicion finally always, Never cutting noodles, confirmed. He looked back at the beware the east. to increase longevity, ring. What did the real Adele look Dà nǎinai choked like? Where was she now? How had Dà nǎinai was born on tears, she gotten this ring? youngest of three daughters -- eating bitterness -- to parents who farmed taro and leeks, a Chinese saying that suggests Ezra closed his hand around the ring, on the east side of Zhongshan Road the ability to endure. now his gift from the fake Adele. His in Shinan District brows furrowed, but he did not stop top of a hill Never cutting a pear in half for him, them. He did not want to think of in the center of the old German-built she did not know why the pair Adele as fake Adele. part of the city. was broken. Great-grandmother grew up on jiǎozi Ezra held the ring tightly in his fist minced pork and cilantro dumplings, Never pointing at the moon while he watched Adele gather her food staple of Qingdao, post siege of nor sweeping on New Year’s Day, things, mostly Mariana’s old clothes Tsingtao, Dà nǎinai died at 89. that he had told her she could keep. said to bring fair skin and a gentle He remained still by the door as she disposition In the individualistic west, shrugged on a jacket, her expres- I believe that my name and sion more determined than he had I was born personality ever seen it. Ready for departure, far away from the black stone tower came first, she stopped in front of him. “Just and the newspaper-imprinted walls. and my zodiac sign, second. one more thing,” Ezra said before he The first pink bundle Still, Dà nǎinai mocks me could stop himself. “What is your real in decades -- in returned astronomy tests with name?” Fake Adele blinked. She took welcomed by parents whose slash markings in a deep breath, then let it out. She demands for perfection made in lucky red pursed her lips. were sweetened by figs and taro yet, I know my luck is running out cakes, as I stash the test under my bed and Ezra leaned forward in anticipation. in individual crinkling wrappers, hope that no one asks “Lena,” she said, little more than a labeled in Chinese, whisper. “My friends call me Lena.” characters I couldn’t read about my grades or my eccentricity or my tendency toward the Ezra grinned. “That is a nice name.” When of marrying age, (fifteen unrealistic He stepped out from in front of the summers) --a dragon’s personality door. “Good luck.” Qingdao women turn to the speeding across the sky -- or the Lena stepped forward and hugged matchmaker, scantron sheet with my no. 2 pencil him. A surprised laugh bubbled out a respectable elder in the town -- with divine power of Ezra and he hugged her back. who consults the stars and dates -- in fact I do Then she pulled away, rubbed her to predict the fate of the couple, not think they are faults of my eyes, and set off briskly, making for and a suitable match is forged character. the woods. Ezra watched until she disappeared. He looked down at the Dà nǎinai married in the northwest of It does not make a difference ring in his hand, and slipped it onto Qingdao, if I’ve only enough appetite for his smallest finger. A little biography, a bouquet of bleeding-heart vine half a pear. just a name and a legacy. A legacy in her hands, modesty My luck is inherited, that, it seemed, he was responsible in her eye. my luck is an old family curse. for now. His mother and Mariana would be proud. He closed the door Fifteen for me and turned back into his little home, brings no chrysanthemum and peony eyes catching on the books strewn patterened silk, no golden threaded across the floor, pages lying open pheonix, and inviting. He smiled. great-grandmother’s symbols of wealth and good luck cannot be inherited by those whose

44 : susquehanna university His face was pouty and hollow, with his hand. thinning black hair on his head. He Namesake avoided looking at his son and eventu- He didn’t like his mother’s house that ally his son avoided being seen. Clark much. It was too big and too alone. All Brian Murray remembered smooth, continuous the paint on the walls was chipping. Rhinebeck, NY nights when he would sneak to the From the outside it looked rusty. It had bannister and watch him absently been her parent’s house before they stare at the television. His father felt as left for warmth. In a storm the grass real to him as the static that lit up his rolled in waves and the old house A black-haired young man stood face. looked like a ship in the mist. behind the window in his unlit house. In large and terrible thunderstorms like His mother drove him places. She took He ate what his mother could afford, this one the grass rolled in deep waves him to little activities for wives like her. and didn’t get strong. and the old house creaked under the Scrapbooking and sewing. Anything, wind like a lonely little ship in the mist. she thought, to not let them be alone. When he could, Clark tried to go to the He was named Clark Edwards, after his Her hands shook when she threaded jungle too. They put him on a bus full father. Clark was lean and of average the needle and nervously looked at the of sober faces. Afterwards they told height, though his left shoulder sat others. Sometimes when she pulled him he would drive a truck for them. lower than his right. He shifted the up her sleeves tight bruises ached on One night they all trained in the desert. crutch under his arm and thought of her wrists. Clark sat in the big chair and They had heavy packs and clothes and his old home in the town and the big looked at the other wives. He imagined shoved themselves into the truck, four storms in his memory. His father would their husbands in the jungle with little and him. He was going to drive them pull up the garage door, lay down a round scars on their shoulders. from the camp to a belltower a few chair and watch the raindrops fall like miles away and he had to drive with- bombs. He remembered the peace of When his father drove him places, out lights or he would fail. The air was the rain and the shattered branches it was always to his office outside of cold in the desert and he thought of that were embedded in the yard the town. It was after they lived in differ- the big storm at home. He heard the day after. ent houses. On the way some people lightning and the warm rain, and imag- in cars and on the street waved and ined his father sitting in the garage His father had not been gone long, but smiled and let him through. Those who watching the drops fall. to see his name and imagine the past didn’t know him respected his work felt like guidance, like ancient wisdom. in the town. In the office was a large They told him when he was in the Clark kept his eyes on the dark plains leather couch that Clark would lay hospital that there was a bomb on the of grass, shining in the wet moonlight. on and kick his feet in the air, watch- road and it went off. It drove the dark He felt the weight of the house behind ing the clock. There were newspapers car into the desert and killed one of him as if carried all the rooms on his there, old words and names that told the men. They told Clark his leg was back. In the dark he reached for his of storms and the jungle and ancient crushed by the engine. After two father’s heart. wisdom. weeks they gave him a crutch. When the letter came, they sent him home. His father had never lived in that house Sometime in the summer a woman but Clark saw signs of him everywhere. spat at his father’s feet. She was blonde The lot was empty. A brown pit carved There were old photographs, obses- and short and her feet made a click with wood slats where his father’s sively kept checkbooks, and grease on the sidewalk. He didn’t know why, house once stood. The storm seemed gloves and tools. Chiefly among the re- but his father moved towards her and to come for his father, no one else. The minders of him was Clark’s own name. there was a sound like lighting. She fell ground was still wet in the town, and He was proud sometimes to have it. and came up with a bruise. His father little winds still kicked up the leaves. It held in it the legacy of a good man put his hand at Clark’s back and gently He went to his mother, who was weep- who worked silently, provided silently, kept him walking. It was the only time ing, and wept further at the sight of his and was, for all his love and all his he could remember being touched by limping namesake. strength, as indifferent as the rain. him. She died shortly after, and left the big Another constant reminder of Clark’s It was cloudy that day and when they creaking house to him. Now when the father was his mother. She had gone came home his father spent a while storms came he stood at the window around the same time as his father, downstairs. He came up with plod- dreaming of names. He watched the but her echoes lingered in the house. ding footsteps and a different voice. raindrops fall mutely on the waves of She had carried the air of him all their His father made him go to bed when grass as the wind made the house be- separated life. The grace in her walk, the sun was still up. He spoke in flow- hind him creak. He ached for his father. the quiet in her voice, and her delicate ing, wrong words and the rain started His memory of him now was played touch were all in response to his father. outside. Somewhere in the night his out, worn thin. If only he could find He wondered if his mother changed mother came. She dragged him out of him, pull to the bottom of his heart his father way he changed her. the house, into the rain, and put him and know the meaning, completely in her car. It was the first time he rode and utterly, of his name. Clark reached His father was in the jungle when he in the front and the seat was too big out to the dark window, watching the was young. He came back when his for him to see the drops on the glass. rain. Wondering if he did right. Waiting son was seven and hid behind his He rolled down the window and stuck for his father to walk out of the storm mother’s leg. The boy was afraid of his his little arm out. The cold air and rain towards the lonely little ship in the tired eyes and the round scar on his cooled his bruised wrist. His mother mist. shoulder. He was tall and stocky and yelled at him for letting the inside get stronger than the boy could imagine. wet, and nearly closed the window on

apprentice writer : 45 rently engaging in one of its most abhor- And for another, it runs into each of your rently boring functions. Drinking. Drink- cells, until they are clear and plump and Salt ing plain water. Can you imagine a more ready to burst. And that’s pretty darn im- Nicholas Lasinsky tedious task? There is no evisceration, portant. It’s hot; you’re thirsty. Yes, but Summerhill, PA no slicing or grinding nor chopping nor that sentence lacks excitement, transla- chomping nor chewing. Just a simple, tor, a string of words without prose. I’m I’m going to try and translate stains basic pose, meant to gently guide liquid certain your mouth would understand on a paper into a world. Well, actually, down your throat in the same manner a that reflection; clear things are no fun. you’ll be doing the brunt of the work. security guard mumbles, “Move along”. And what of your ears? What do your Sorry. But I’ll try to do my best to pro- Your mouth is not content. And there ears detect? To be honest, not much. vide good instructions. is more. Tea, coffee, sugary fizz; these This is because they are weak. There is beverages have a personality. They are one noise dominating this scene. And Let’s begin with your eyes. They are unique. They are identifiable, they are your ears cannot overcome it. wet with salt. Your world hazes and quiv- variable. But simple water has nothing. What can you see now? Has your own ers. But through the glassy sheen you No action, no personality. Water only has sweat still stayed your vision? No. For- can see green. A sea of green, light and necessity. Which of course is why your tunately your hot hands have rubbed then dark. mouth is processing it in the first place. away the sweat for you. How consider- What of your hands? They are clenched For one, it composes the latter portion ate. And now you can see the green tight, grasping vainly at a smooth bar. of the “salty liquid” which beguiles you. sea a bit more clearly. Or perhaps it is a They too are slicked with salt. And your skin is warm. The ridges and val- leys crisscrossing your hands are full, Trapped: brimming with heat. Your skin is being pelted by rays of betas and gammas and In the National Transit alphas. And other things. Flecks of dust, tiny shreds of paper, dead cells, a warm Building, Oil City, PA wind. Songs from the nearby radio tow- er sneak by your atoms. Apologies, lov- Catherine Buchanan ing declarations, fear, joy. An exchange Clarion, PA of mutual ignorance. Your skin doesn’t Looking out from the old iron steps care that it is harboring these outbursts blunt smoldering in hand of the world. And the waves don’t care smoke floating into the scene that, at that moment, their medium is a of dreamed city blocks living, breathing, sentient human being. torn down to dirt and slushed snow. Your skin and the waves do not wave, and part ways. Your skin will only notice Steam sifting up from the grates that it is warm, and you listen to it. In the dumpster sleeping in the alleyway that obtuse way, you identify the source leading to the small step of the heat. Il faut chaude. The clouds where they play their country music have wisped away, leaving you alone on till the sun gives out on them a green sea, with skin tightening into canyons, pelted by waves. Eyes closed, And what of your nose? What can that fire escape creaks like New York, little knob of yours detect? Overwhelm- lanes and lights of London, ingly, it’s the smell of juiced life. A blend and elevator of Paris of dirt, salt, and green. But if your skin useless now. is simply ignorant, your nose is utterly unwilling to experience the wider world. The rushing of the river, It languishes, snugly on your face, pro- of the Hudson, truding yet willing to accept that this of the Thames, blend of dirty green salt is an adequate of the Seine, representation of your surroundings. freezes up. But how wrong it is. If only your nose would aspire to more, your world could Ghosts of dried up oilers be much deeper. But I’m afraid you’ll be cry and cough into the night, stuck with this nose. And stuck with this trapping me description of a nose, translator. Set in in their abandoned vaults its ways. Smelling dirty, salty green until falling asleep to hoarse whispers. something very obvious-else will catch its attention. What of your mouth? Well yours is cur-

46 : susquehanna university green pond. Because your greenscape now you have to guess. What is that bearing, perhaps they can be directed is fenced in by trees on its right perim- smell? There. It’s the smell of onions. downwards to provide you with more eter. The trees stare down at you draped Onions? Out here on a hot day like this? information about the vessel you’re in bark, with notches and furrows filled You’re confused. That’s okay. It’s just the moving. Or perhaps not. Because the with heat. But you can’t miss the for- smell of wild rants. But the smell is inter- military of your left eye scrambles. It est for the trees; there is no forest, only esting, and different, and you dwell on it seems that the jelly glob in your socket trees. Trees that pinch off your green for a while. Where does the smell of on- has been invaded by an unknown en- pond from someone else’s. And to the ions take you? To the cream kitchen, and emy. Maybe if the jelly glob had been left of your pond, well, there lays a true a knife so sharp it slips through bone? a country, an outcry would have been forest; a jungle. A plaster and brick jun- To a pale steaming room, and plates of heard. There would have been prayer gle with tangled vines of wire. Old metal white pierogi rolling out of the ovens? services, mourning, promises of action. sparkwire, with every right to ignite, Or perhaps to a decaying marketplace, But it is not a nation. Nobody grieves for placed besides rotting timber yearn- peeling and flaking but determined to the thousands of cells which are crushed ing to burn. The jungle is coated in the sell you a basket of bulbous onions any- as this unidentified projectile rams into red flaking, sharp crystalline diamonds way? Can you feel the small onions in them, each split with an inaudible pop. of rust. Everything is anchored in the your hot hands, slipping out of a rim of No cell mothers dress in black. Your DNA jungle floor: black pavement, smoking thin skin? Can you see the knife on the does not weep when its progeny fails. out a puss of tar and fume. I hope you’re table, yearning to burn? Do the onions But you do. Your inner defenses decide proud of your surroundings. splinter? Do your eyes grow wet with to send in tears to flush the invader out. Your hands are trembling. Yes, they’re salt? You are in pain by this point. Something still hot. But the new development is the As incredibly boring as drinking wa- has gotten deep into your eye. As a con- tremble. And yet of course, they can only ter can be, at least it was something. At sequence, you are unable to see what notice their most basic tremble. Subtle least the security guard could do some- the vessel you are pushing is exactly. shakings are sifting through the earth, thing vaguely official, instead of just sit- Your eye is filling, as wet salts flood over and up into your fingertips. A child tot- ting on his ass. Well, your mouth is now what is now a mass graveyard. Your right ters forwards. Glaciers heave and cleave sitting on its ass. Without water to guz- eye now sees the turmoil of the left. Ap- under the weight of the sun, plunging zle, your mouth is left to its own devices. parently your right eye is skilled at ac- into cold salty water. A man topples in And this is not a good thing. All it can tive listening and empathy, because it the heat of day, blood pouring from a do is produce a cocktail of disappoint- now scrambles its defenses too for no gashed throat, delicate white powder ment. Saliva, bacteria, and food bits real reason at all, flooding with tears frosting his nostrils. Each event sending which managed to escape thus far. Nor- as well. Your eyes are now flushed and ripples throughout the world into your malcy, malady, and failure. Your mouth’s gushing, overrun with their own defens- hands. And do they bother to notice? Of sole occupation is the movement of es. You are finding it quite hard at this course not. They can only focus on the your tongue. This is done partly out of point to see or do anything at all. The present and most pressing stimulus of sheer boredom, and partly because if intruder has not been removed, and so shaking. Your slick, sweaty palms strug- the tongue doesn’t intervene, the lan- the spicket spouts on, and your eyes fill gle against that quivering bar, gripping guishing foodstuffs and microbiology to the brim. to push the machine forwards. will combine and ferment, and add to Your hands are still hot and trem- How’s your nose doing? Much the the cocktail of disappointment. bling. And the bar that your fingers are same. Salty green dirt. Relentless. Your And we’re back to the ears. Hearing wrapped around is so smooth. Now your nose is tuning all other fragrance out. that one seminal sound. That sound cer- hands are falling through air. They are Trying to be inconspicuous. Stepping tainly is sonorous. And unimpressive. It stretched out in front of you. They realize into the shadows, making itself unno- is a dull roar, caused by the very same only that. And at this point, you should ticeable. Unfortunately for your nose, machine which your palms are currently expect nothing more. Your hands don’t being unnoticeable tends to be a dif- struggling to propel forwards. The roar care that the air through which they are ficult endeavor when you’re stuck on a is a byproduct of smoke and oil, along presently tumbling likely (in some small face. with acidic liquid that looks like water quantity) helped to fuel the thought So what about your mouth? Well as in- but smells like brain damage. Spinning process of Ghangis Khan. Of course credibly. Wait. Your nose has got some- blades add to the roar, creating the they don’t stop to ponder if this air was thing. Something that doesn’t smell juiced life beneath your feet. Massacring once parted by Shakespeare’s quill. like a seaside garden. You suddenly re- with a monotony that is perhaps inap- Their weak, thin, veined skin prevents member that you possess that knobby propriate. But your flabby ears have to them from noticing the beautiful play- nose, and that it serves a purpose. And strain to even catch the dull roar. Per- ground which they are now disturbing. it’s got something new for you. What is haps if they would perk up, really show A playground where Nitrogens whiz and that smell? Your nose does all that it can some motivation, your ears would know dance with boisterous oxygens, plenty to send the smell up to your brain. The that they really weren’t hearing a dull of (or perhaps too much) Carbon diox- sooner the nose can get rid of this un- roar. It’s more of an obnoxious buzz- ide floating free, and everyone marvel- necessary attention, the better. What is ing drone, sending ripples across many ing at the shy Krypton. And perhaps, if that smell? You can’t quite pin it down. ponds. But your ears aren’t known for your hands had been more astute, they Of course, your nose was too meek to their motivation. would have noticed that not only were send up a guess with the stimulus. So Now that your eyes have gotten their they plummeting through air, but that

apprentice writer : 47 your whole body was falling, thanks to time. They arrive, and they stop the car. clumsy feet and eyes filled to the brim. They take the key out of the ignition. liked me as much as I liked him. You The security guard has accidentally They open the door and step out of the smell like the damp pavement near left a terrorist with a bomb into the car. the curb and I could never tell if that building. Your mouth is falling through When they walk around back, they was comforting or suffocating, like the playground as well, just as unaware can see you lying there on the ground, fingers padding lightly across my of it. And then. Bang. Contact heavy. head wry. Your water bottle has splashed pulse, calculating the rate at which Instead of letting in a terrorist, it may open on the nearby blacktop. Blood and I sleep and worry. Forgive me for be that the security guard has acciden- salt and water mix and mingle on the the extrapolations, and forgive me for the contradictions; I’m human tally shot himself in the foot. Or perhaps grass. and I miss you, but then again I your mouth has grown so bored, it has haven’t seen you in a month. The resorted to chewing itself. Your teeth The lawnmower is still running. Your last time was when you kissed me have descended and popped millions grandchild can see that you are not and promised never to lie. I walked more cells. moving. Do they kneel? Do they scream? home elated, singing so it echoed Tongues generally have a difficult Do their eyes grow wet with salt? off buildings and shone at people time preventing the creation of alcohol behind me. Do you remember when when they are chopped in half, flop- I had to go home the first night we ping in their own puddles of pain. And realized that time could fly? It was now comes the flood. Who knew that before I knew you like I know the something as organic and essential to route from my bed to my parents’ in life as blood tastes like metal? Well, your the dark. You made me stand in the mouth does now. middle of the cul de sac and look Things are going poorly, translator. up at the day-old-breadcrumb stars, As your ears fell, they did not hear said some cheesy thing genuinely, at anything out of the ordinary. They re- least I thought it might be genuine, mained mostly muffled under the dete- kissed my neck and still asked me to rioration of a lifetime. They never really dance once I told you I had to leave. had a chance to excel, translator. But I think you thought I was poetic even they could not miss the sound of A Street or Passage because I’d say the Earth is curved the ground. to fit the concave of your head like First came a distinct thud. Then, al- Closed at One End a pillow, or your voice is natural like boughs reaching down to shade most exactly at the same time, a wet Nara Benoit Kornhauser our heads or it’s fine Darling, Dear- New York, NY snap. And finally, the fainter noise of est, Love (anything but your name) your teeth gleefully popping cells, the Remember when you told your en- you’re the only one for me. I’ve sound like a butcher cleaving meat. tire family about a poem I wrote, like moved past rhyming cadences and Your skin is damaged. Ripped apart you were advertising me, it was your infatuation. I thought that was okay, in some places. Even your hands notice right; or the first time I showed you I’m genuine with my poems about that. something I wrote and you said it was death or coffee or my relationship Your eyes are beginning to close. Not poetic and yes, you got the reference to with my mother. Cul de sacs cut via any preference of their own. If they death, then didn’t ask how my rela- themselves off halfway. I didn’t want had their way, the invader would be de- tionship with my mother was. I sop up the advertisement to your family at stroyed, or they would die trying. But coffee rings from the red countertop the breakfast table over Italian roast the choice is not theirs. Your brain has with bread (bread is useful, but only and Vegemite on toast because I decreed, and the order is moving fast: if it has the texture of memory foam). didn’t want to share. Poetry is self- “A total shutdown is necessary, to as- The rings are still there, just dewy and ish, Love, and I don’t know if love sess the damage. We assure you that this covered in flour. I’m almost anxious to can be defined that easily. You ask coma will not last long. Please bear with see you. I’d call you a coward but I don’t me to look at the Earth as if what want to start a scene or break down in us. This is merely a damage assessment I’m examining, this damaged wood, Washington Square. I might see you isn’t enough in itself. We dance. technique. We need to investigate some nesting with her on the bench where things.” You wrap your arm under my back I first met you, spreading your fingers to dip me, so my head falls loose Unfortunately, the order is road- through her hair until you make a hem blocked at the base of the head. As your to the sky. I now walk past the spot of knots, bunched up like a casting where I noticed wet bread crumbs eyes close, the salty liquid squeezes and net. I wonder if you care enough about and loose flour suspended in the sky dribbles out over the brim, and com- writing to read anything I could ever every morning. You’ll spend the first pletes its job. As the tears wash away, publish, or if you’re insightful enough few days of break by the beach with they carry with them a single eyelash. to figure out if the eyebrows or elbows your family. I regret promising that The little lady who started this war. or nonexistent freckles I mention are I would show up to your birthday Your grandchild has come to visit you. yours, or if the compression in my party, no matter what happened, They are concerned for you. It’s a hot sternum is from what you did. I wonder after you left. Despite your knitting day. You are old. It’s best to be safe and if you told your mother, if your parents knots in new hair, I know you’d break check up on you. They drive for a long still call me “splendid,” if your dog ever your neck just to see those stars.

48 : susquehanna university Innocence Ebelechiyem Okafor New Bedford, MA

A little girl was told But was told that if she drenched All she got were bees herself in honey Vicious ugly hordes of bees And put flowers on her neck Who stung her in places she couldn’t see The butterflies would fly around her sweet smell And left pain inside of her that wouldn’t go away And hummingbirds would sing Now ugly as a gnat, she ran away and hid to her like she was the sun. And no one has looked for her ever since. So she covered her skin with honey and Put flowers around her waist

Onwards Victoria Maung Ho-Ho-Kus, NJ

apprentice writer : 49 ing me to retreat under my oped pictures, I panic as I see covers. It was also with me an ominous shadow stand- On Fear and Illusion when I stood on the balcony ing right behind me. I tell my Sean Wolfe of the twentieth story New parents, but they don’t see it York apartment I lived in as a and dismiss me. Nanticoke, PA child. The porch is more slanted When I come back to con- than I remember, and the It kept me from going too sciousness, clammy, my face windows that aren’t broken close to the edge; it kept me wet with tears, I recognize are overgrown with ivy. The out of danger. At times like immediately that I am in the door creaks open and closed this it was almost a guardian living room. I’m holding an with the wind, and the shut- angel. open scrapbook in my hands, ters of the windows on the and by the dim light of the second floor are broken and When I walk into the house, moon I see that the page has strewn around the lawn, I sway wildly and grab at the photo of my birthday all which appears to have not the door frame. Everything those years ago. I recognize been well kept, if at all. I stare appears to be in the same myself, my smiling relatives, up at the attic window, and condition that it was in be- and, behind me, a dark shad- for a moment, I think I see a fore I left, although the rav- ow. So, it really happened. shadow crossing the remain- ages of time have certainly ing glass. Maybe it’s a bat, I taken their toll. The counter When I was 7, my parents wonder. Or something worse. has what I think was once a and I moved out to the coun- I reflect upon Fear, and, feel- loaf of bread, although now try, where Fear manifested it- ing nauseated, I pause for it’s little more than a brick of self in a plethora of new and just a moment at the thresh- mold. appalling ways. The sounds old before pushing open the of the country were as alien to door. The drawers hang open, me as another planet might and I see cooking parapher- have been: shouting, howl- When I was younger, I al- nalia, forks with tines rusted ing, chirping, and croaking ways thought of Fear as a from age, tarnished silver in a wild nightly symphony; being that was constantly spoons, and blunt, damaged the strange creaks of the old following me, lurking in the knives. I find myself opening barn and even older house shadows under my bed or the refrigerator, then gag- plagued my imagination. in my closet, tapping on my ging (patient intubated) as window or door to keep me the smell of rancid food hits Even as an adult, the mere near and in its grasp, forever me. A glass milk bottle lies thought of returning to that a step behind me as I moved on its side. Half of its con- wretched location sickened through my everyday life, al- tents have spilled through me to the very fiber of my most like a starved, stray dog a crack, pooled on the shelf being, filled me with an in- begging zealously for food. below, and solidified into a terminable dread. fine dust. I imagined it as a tall, skel- The accident. Speedome- etal figure in a long, black I shudder, then my eyes ter: 70 miles per hour. Time: cloak that covered all of its wander to the top shelf of 12:52. “Nobody Home” by face except for its evil, yel- the refrigerator, and I see a Pink Floyd is the song on low eyes and lipless grin, al- cake without a trace of decay. the radio. Bright lights. most like the Grim Reaper. Homemade. Chocolate icing. Screeching of tires. Brakes Although I grew up in a very Piping, beautifully crafted. lock up. “Tragic Accident, urbane apartment, modern- Then my head hits the floor. Many Killed’ is the headline ized and metallic, with door As I slip from consciousness, in the local newspapers the hinges that never squeaked I can hear them singing. next day. and floorboards that never shifted, and although in the It’s my 9th birthday. A Half an hour later, I’m city, the only looming shad- small crowd gathers around climbing the stairs to the sec- ows were the familiar sky- me, beaming, as my mother, ond floor. I find them to be scrapers. also smiling, brings out the smaller than I remember, but cake. My father is holding more than that, they seem Fear was with me every the camera and taking a pic- tainted. That’s how the entire night, grabbing at my heart ture. Later, he’s cutting the downstairs has felt, and how with its cold claws, forc- cake. Looking at the devel- I think the whole

50 : susquehanna university house will feel. the beeping of my alarm clock had awakened me. I I tremble as I walk up the stumble out of my bed, and Migration stairs, feeling like a convict feel a strange sense of dread, Cindy Song walking to the gallows to like I am being watched. be hanged. When I get to When I glance at my reflec- Rockville, MD the top, I’m in a windowless tion in the mirror, I shriek Nothing quite sounds the same after the hallway, and it’s as if all light with horror. Standing behind swans leave. The lake does not easily forget, ceases to exist. I can’t see me is an all too familiar skele- bubbling anything, and I’m not sure tal face, with black robes and underneath starved weeds and moldy paint. that I want to. a murderous grin. I swing You & Tina never liked those damn birds, wildly at the mirror, almost white necks blindly with terror, smashing September 22, 4:02 PM: stretched thin as the Marlboros rolling around Patient is comatose. it to the floor. A strange black the floor of your car. I’d snap them. Feel the smoke billows out and envel- bones & I keep my left hand on the ops me. When I wake up, I am feathers crushed under my fingers.Nothing wall, and soon it slides into in the hospital, struggling quite says rebirth like your handpicked rocks a doorway. I grope blindly while a kindly, elderly nurse that go until I find the handle, then gently picks glass out of my I twist it to push the door bleeding, mangled hand. skip, skip, skip across the water. The ripples open. It resists, but eventu- make me think like a cygnet embryo - born in ally it opens, and my face is I grasp subconsciously God’s hand flooded by a bright light (pu- at my scarred hand while only to find the world shattering apart first pil contracts normally, no standing in front of the mir- thing. Tian says the swans go wherever it sign of brain death), but it ror. The all too familiar skel- snows, but I quickly disappears. etal face with those same say they fly wherever Liberty cracks the sky As I brush the cobwebs out black robes and that same open. of the door frame, “This is my evil smile leers ominously room,” involuntarily leaves behind me. I pull my hand my gaping mouth (patient back and bring it forward as may be attempting commu- quickly as I can, but I am im- Equations nication). mobilized by Fear. It relishes Isobel Daniels that I am again fully under its The bed is in the corner control. Something happens Ashford, CT across from the window and (patient appears fully lucid, The equation for the speed of light next to the closet, which attempting communication). has been proven to be e = mc². is slightly ajar, clothes still I feel myself breaking free of The quadratic formula is known to be [-b ± (√b² - 4ac)]/2a. hanging on their hangers Fear’s grasp. My hand rock- The Pythagorean Theorem states and sitting folded neatly on ets forward and shatters the that in a right triangle, a² + b² = c². shelves. On the top shelf, mirror into a million pieces, Facts are clean and easy to work above the old and once again I am uncon- with. scious. Facts compose many aspects of the Pokemon cards and the human life. tattered shoebox containing Time of death: December Facts cannot be debated or person- my long-forgotten rock col- 21, 11:21 AM. ally interpreted or misconstrued. lection, is the worn red cap Fact: one of the most basic tenets of that was always with me on The porch is more slanted humanity is love. my many summertime con- than I remember, and the The “equation” for love is: Love /lǝv/ quests. Seeing the cap gives windows that aren’t broken noun. a feeling of strong or con- me a strong feeling of nos- are overgrown with ivy. stant affection for a person. Or it can be: a feeling of deep ro- talgia, although it’s quickly mantic attachment to someone. replaced with a sense of Or: one word that frees us of all the dread. I slide my hand along weight and pain of life. the wall, and hit the ancient Or simply: sexual passion or desire. mirror. Instantly, I am trans- Words are not facts. ported back to another time, Words have different meanings, in this room... person by person. Language is inefficient. It seems that no sooner Fact: I love you anway. than my head hit the pillow,

apprentice writer : 51 fame and fortune. will be recognized for the hard work The world sees geniuses as rare. they put in to achieve their goals. Genius They see geniuses as someone who Geniuses can be measured in many is one of a kind. They see geniuses more ways than how smart you are. David Reynoso as naturally gifted, and with abilities You don’t need to be able to split an Cortlandt Manor, NY unique to them. atom, or create your own theories in- Genius- “A person who is exception- Geniuses are at the highest point of volving space and time. What you do ally intelligent or creative, either gen- intellectual status. Some geniuses are need is to affect the world in a positive erally or in some particular respect.” Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, or way. (Genius) Geniuses are commonly re- Neil Degrasse Tyson. They are referred A genius is one who finds their true ferred to as someone who is really to as geniuses because of their minds, passion in life, what they are truly smart. and because they are so much smarter good at, and work to achieve their The valedictorian in your class is than the common man. goals. This does not come in just indi- probably a “genius.” Many geniuses But what is the true measure of a vidual accomplishments. grow up to be scientists, doctors, or genius? Should it only be based on A genius is never greedy nor self- other successful jobs. A common as- academic prowess? Or is there more ish. Albert Einstein is considered a ge- sumption of what makes a genius in- to becoming a genius? Also, does a ge- nius because of what he contributed cludes maintaing straight As and to nius have to be rare or hard to come to the scientific community. If he had retain knowledge like a sponge. I see by? Is there such thing as a “common kept everything he had discovered to geniuses as much more. genius?” himself and had not shared any of his A genius is someone who found So far, the world sees geniuses only knowledge, he would not be consid- their natural God-given talent, and has by its strict definition. The world thinks ered a genius. worked to become great using that that geniuses have to be one in a mil- A genius gives what they have to talent. Albert Einstein was a genius, lion, and that the only measure of a help others as well as themselves. but so is a world renowned chef, and genius is their accomplishments from Chuck Feeney, co-founder of Duty so is Tom Brady or Michael Phelps. using their brain power. Free Shoppers, has donated over four Geniuses don’t have to be extremely But there is much more to the word billion dollars to disadvantaged chil- intellectual, they are those who find “genius” that even Merriam Webster dren and public health initiatives. what they are naturally good at and can’t quite define. Soon, the world will He has also done this as anony- become great. This can work on small- realize that everyone has the potential mously as he could, and did not want er levels, and doesn’t have to result in to become a genius, and more people any fame from doing this. Feeney does “I always said if I were to ever It was of a face with no Starbucks on get a tattoo it would be a meaning puppet on my hand.” Only for laughs Talcottville “I got it right before I retired.” Road He tells this story every time “Forty years.” I see him here. Abigail Howard Medium coffee, cream and I chuckled as he formed his Manchester, CT sugar hand He centers his coffee cup to make it talk “So I was an English teacher And lifts it up and down He doesn’t know I’ve heard for 40 years.” Down and up. it all before. His leg twitches I sit beside him And I wonder how many times While his eyes are locked into Again. it has been told. a book of modern theories Looking back down into his Twitching his pen book Looking up whenever Back and forth someone walks through the Forth and back “It’s a funny story actually.” door He writes on each page of his I clutch my latte. book. One seat in from the left “I was an English teacher for Two seats in from the right Looks up and smiles 40 years.” Scratches his head “It’s a funny story actually” And tells me the story about His spot never changes the tattoo on his left hand again

52 : susquehanna university Endurance Haemaru Chung New York, NY

not own a house or a car, and takes ered a genius? motivation to work hard, and the good the subway when traveling New York If a teacher is good at his or her job, soul to positively impact the lives of City(Lubin). and knows how to connect with stu- those around them are destined to be This man is truly a genius, because dents and really inspire them to work a genius by my definition. not only has he achieved the goals he hard and succeed in school and in Dictionaries, and most people in set for himself and made a fortune, life outside of school, shouldn’t that the world, see the word genius differ- but he is also extremely generous and teacher be considered a genius? ently than I do. They see it as intellec- does not look for fame from his char- This logic works in many more tual prowess, normally in the science ity. He impacts the lives of so many places other than teaching. For ex- realm. out of the good of his heart, and those ample, if a priest delivers sermons I see geniuses as much more. They who do know his name know him as a during mass that move his listeners are people who spend their time, great man, a true genius. and impact their lives in a positive money, and effort to making the world The measurements of a genius go way, shouldn’t he be considered a a better place, and contributing to the even further. Although a person’s genius? community in any way they can. monetary status can usually show By this definition, a definition that Whether it is from donating to char- signs of being a genius, it isn’t the only dives far deeper than the simple one ity, or helping underprivileged youth, measure. found in dictionaries, geniuses are or any other way possible, a genius A genius finds what they are good found on every street and around ev- uses his ability to help society in a pos- at and uses that talent to influence ery corner. itive way. the lives of many. In this meaning of a Everybody has the potential to be- genius, shouldn’t a teacher be consid- come one, and anyone who has the

apprentice writer : 53 Sweet Treat Abbi Dehmey Elizabethtown, PA

You aren’t a lone warrior from the the cigarette. I felt her venom stain Baby Flame ghetto, into my Isabella Gonzalez she’ll continue, removing the pale foundation. Livingston, NJ cigarette from her polished lips. Her mother was You aren’t a grieving daughter, You aren’t a starving child a retail she’ll squeak, twirling the from Africa, clerk in Fortunoff who took obsidian steering she’ll speak, looking me over on as many wheel in a hard right. Stopped on with her neighborhood chores as possible. the curb, rearview mirror as I suffocate Poverty was we watch the swift cars pass on in tears with a lurking predator hunting in the silence. the ruby scarf her mother had knit murky woods, She’s too far deep to reach for me the but she always managed to protect another smoke, year prior. She puffs out the her young. even if she wanted to; too far gone smoke burning You aren’t abused from all those to know in her lungs into the white painted around you, that we share the same lament world. she’ll stress, suffocating the baby flame of I lend her my scarf.

54 : susquehanna university i throw them far, we she strips her skin away and watch them roll across mountains her flesh is crimson with To Be Human and oceans highways of blue, Jessica Xu watch them roll off the universe. her bones glazed with melted silver. Metairie, LA she peels her armor off, when she opens her chest layers of them, all melded into each there is a child in the core of she tells me to other her heart, smiling watch her as she bleeds herself out. knives of words embedded in the beaming with forgotten wonder. waterfalls begin to surge metal. she touches me on my breast, her down her eyes her fingers of milk withdraw mouth begins to move holding galaxies and pieces of the remaining her heart. shards of grey lodged in her skin who have you locked away? she places my hand on the boulders creating bloody craters and pits. she carries: she tells me she can breathe again. masses of suffering and regret. i catch her breaths in my hand, i lift them from her back, let them sink into my pores and into the cracking of my bones breaking my blood. the air

Sunlight Michelle Mulé Greenwich, CT

apprentice writer : 55 De Los Ojos del Ñino Emma Gallagher Greenwich, CT

shut, to bite his plump bottom I want to remind him the TV lip. remote is still clutched in our Family Movie His glasses father’s hand. To warn him Erin Chang have slipped down to the tip of of the moment Livingston, NJ his nose - to come, when suddenly, the he doesn’t notice. His chin is tilted wooden floorboards My mom’s heart thumps - high, stop convulsing, and the pale loud in my ear - shoulders walls cease their trembling. the side of my head crushed thrown back as he sits on the My mom’s arms freeze around me against couch, - her chest. knowing she has stopped She tries to lead me away, but I it will only anger our father even breathing. My father stares at his refuse more. empty hand. to move. Stupid boy. My brother’s glasses have shat- I cannot take my eyes away from I want to tell him to uncross his tered, the softness legs broken shards of my brother’s face - his skin and unclench at his feet. His smooth, unblem- unblemished his fists. To get up from the couch ished and smooth, the painting of a and face is streaked tortured artist. go hug with red. And his beautiful mouth I want to tell him to keep his our father sorry. But, if anything is beautiful mouth else, curved into a terrible O.

56 : susquehanna university in Mississippi, a list of things to buy, he exits, Surname X a black boy on errands for his family’s and they both walk under the Edward Moreta Jr. supper. same street light, in opposite Dorchester, MA Kind white woman, auburn hair, directions. blue-ass eyes, helps him The teenager smiles as he passes “And may God always protect you.” checkout, he smiles. And says the man, His father closes the wood door, his thanks. who looks down. And his girlfriend the door between all Maybe he should have never said hears the rest, the scuffle, the plead, holiness and hipsterness imagined. thanks, the guilt, the response, the gun, His father’s strict religion and they say he whistled, the exoneration, the riots of his 13-year-old whish-whirr of the wind, “thugs”, I feel threatened, son’s love of hip-hop, the creak of the front door opening, America, I feel threatened, R&B, poster of Tupac posing the white woman’s fear how could you not feel threatened, in Poetic Justic. affecting her senses, I feel threatened. The prayer echoes in his room, his mom, back in Chicago, America only idolizes you when you fan waving back and forth, feels a pang in her heart, begins die a rhythmic whirr to cry. or sweeps you under an whisking him to sleep. The creak of a cotton-gin, American-sized rug. The boy humming a song of love, his vessel back home. He is in a scuffle, love not his, not once He can only see through he can see the beginning only whispers of love one eye, his other eye static, middle and end of the scuffle, something to whisk, one half of his body asleep with pushes teenager out walks through wiry vines, the tightness of the scuffle, no one is there, until the sun so hot, making the of the rope. Two men black boy, cotton plants sweat. He sees a one cackles next to him, black thug, black women, even he pale white man, wearing a black hat, You flirted with my wife, himself patrolling like an army man. The and for killing your sorry-ass, I in the middle of the scuffle, whip around his neck like a won’t even see time, and he felt even Barack Obama holding a birth snake, swinging side to side, the blow on certificate is in the middle of the beckoning. his other eye. But he floats, turns scuffle, the man’s whisper in his ear, his head, Black Jesus in the scuffle, like a man describing his horrible sees everyone he knows, being always ends sin of pride. tied to cotton gins, the same. The man’s whole hand fit around his preacher father knocked out Father said, remember where you his neck, with a bible, come from, whip brushing his upper back, Uncle Tom watching on top but what is home for a man who like alcohol before a shot, of chains, doesn’t know brushing to slicing, no pain to pain. entertainment. Uncle Tom his true last name? Get to work animal. Beside him smacks his hand over the black boy, He awakes, shudders, needs to ask a man rubs his own back, hand deep into the boy’s afro, this question the line-like foreign script telling a wave of disgust. and no one will have the answer, red story. The cotton turns black, Tears of skittles, red, blue, green, not his preacher father, not his the man with the script the tears of the nation for a school teacher, not history, turns, falls towards the boy, blood TV-version not the philosopher, not Tupac, not frothing in his mouth. of a chewed-up black boy. love and justice, not the dead The boy runs, runs from He walks in the light of street black boy the army man lamps, in with a round bullet hole in his back runs from the damned plantation, his grey hoodie. He speaks lying covered on his side, runs from the to his girlfriend, asks when he can Why do people kill black boys? man who will forever have see her, those deep marks in his back, runs to pulls up his hood, a cold wind. a grocery store A man parks his SUV, he watches,

apprentice writer : 57 Endless Spiral Miriam Trichas Basking ridge, NJ

sighing at the sun for my dreams Glass Ceiling there were no limitations And their expectation for my downfall. Ella Fasciano I saw people trying hard, I wondered why I was down here while Lebanon, NJ and fighting for what is right, above silhouettes of animals ran in circles and being good human beings, and never looked down I saw the clouds and I thought it was all like that. I was unsure why they would snarl and bite I looked into the sun for as long I even felt that first rain. and not come together at least move to as I could before it burned I danced in the tiny droplets that clung to my the side and stop blocking the sun When the pain cleared, I looked back up flushed cheeks and hung onto my dress And so I walked The pages that became my knowledge so that I had to spin harder and faster I read and became informed in my dreams were illuminated from the sweet sun above to make it flow And then I In the warmth I sat, sounding out words I brought my face to that sun that lent its With the books that told me stories of syllable by syllable rainbow spotlights to me and stuck out my women that were my whole world Out loud the words of others flooded my tongue to share in the flow of the world started piling and stepping mind with images of the world triumphantly I danced in the rain for many years And when I looked up I could only see the I sounded out the speeches of history, Until one day it stopped. sky of women who showed me the world I looked up and saw my flowing world leave And when the sun was burning my eyes and in a new light me behind to ponder why I had to look away It was so bright. Why I saw my world holding up From my perch of knowledge, My first taste of the outside world was on its head, and of finding myself, a beautiful place so that the dull pain could be passed off as I saw a girl In every direction I smiled for the future a mere headache, and I waved her over In the time of sounding out syllables and a barrier between my illumination To change the tides of the world.

58 : susquehanna university Capturing the Moment Haemaru Chung New York, NY

The clouds drift idly above Of the leaves swaying gently The perfect image ephemeral The afternoon heat is It adjusts its position The bird leans forward sweltering delicately slightly Time appears to suspend Now sitting in plain view And his wings flap in a burst itself and Tilting its head towards the sky of motion An overwhelming wave of Proud, nonchalant and Falling leaves quiver as the lethargy is settling carefree bird streaks past A blue jay sits on a fragile The coal-black eyes exude a Leaving behind an afterimage branch stern, noble air of swirling blue feathers Of a small tree nearby While the golden afternoon The radiant blues of the bird sunlight Standing out from its dull Showers the blue jay green surroundings Like a blanket of sunshine resting As it rests in the cool shade over the feathers

Cry for Freedom Haemaru Chung New York, NY

apprentice writer : 59 “oh yes, that time is in there. and the time we tied daisies together and i crowned you queen of the june heatwave, empress of the waterslide.” A House Tour or “i still had long hair back then.” “it’s been a while, my peach.” Simply the Next “we waited for so long.” Pillow Over “oh, all that is in the closet as well.” vi. Piety Exley i show you where i keep the fuel for my smile and my oceans of Canandaigua, NY love (next to the umbrellas and rain boots, respectively) just as i. the sun is coming up. the hound in my shadow is illuminated. “thank you for letting me in,” you say, the last of the “he won’t bite unless prodded,” i assure you; you continue to sunshine piercing your dirty ice eyes. point and i fear you will melt into a pile of sugar. “behind his teeth, “thank you for being,” i counter, your pianist fingers he keeps the things i’ve forgotten for good reason.” brushing against my trembling poet’s. i consider debris and damage control as i present you with where i live. “do i have one too?” you ask, twisting to check your rear. ii. “we all do. the alzheimer ones are much bigger and follow their hosts around much more loosely.” i smile at him. he bares his a couch and two lamps, muted green carpet over teeth. i take your hand and this time, as you leave, i keep the hardwood floor, blankets, tissues. “this is the living room, door ajar. where i share love and other floods with those i care deeply for.” arms outstretched, i spin in a circle. “i know this room well,” you say. i consider the way the couch sags in the middle so our hips touch without us meaning to do so. “i know you do.” When It’s Over Erin Chang iii. Livingston, NJ passing from hardwood to tile flooring like a breeze from I sit in a chair beside Mom, gently cradling her hand. Her eyes outside, i say: “this is the kitchen.” i shove all my fantasies to are closed and her breathing is steady. Her bare head peeks the back of the cabinets. “this is where i treat myself,” i add out above the blankets, vulnerable and exposed. A doctor while placing the jar of cocoa in front of kissing her over the comes in and quietly ejects the needle taped to her arm. As car’s faux leather console. she rolls the IV bag out, I look at my dad and we share a silent “why is it so barren?” you ask, hand floating above the smile. countertops. i frown and open the fridge. “it’s not, see? here is the milk, there is the honey.” Dad catches me at the bottom of the slide. incredulous, you pick up both and study them. “this is just the day we spent on the pier, knees touching, and this is a hot bowl of noodles with eggs, tomato, and bok choy when you sat in that mostly empty classroom and felt safe enough to be listened to.” Mom wraps her arm around me. We sit on the couch, watching TV. Hawaii-Five 0 is on. I lean into her - she is warm, i turn away. “put those back before they spoil.” soft. iv. Grandma picks off a tomato from the bush and hands it to me. It is red and plump and sweet when I bite into it - I ask for i pull a bad test score, an awkward conversation, and my another. favorite t-shirt, donning a new stain, from the washer and throw the dripping pile into the dryer. “the laundry room hot chocolate on Christmas Eve - is where i clean the bad things.” you stand in the doorway. there isn’t room for much in the laundry room, not more The wig is gone. And so is the cap. Mom is humming, making than a few bad things, and definitely not you, sunshine girl. pancakes. She flips me a smile as I sit down at the table. The “fermented experiences can taste sour or sweet, depends color has returned to her face. on which detergent you use.” I think of leeks. v. The night is cold, but Grandma’s apartment is warm, tight “where do you keep regrets?” “in that locked closet over there, behind the bad dreams.” with so many people. Dad is by the window, playing cards “is there where you keep the time you didn’t kiss me?” with Grandpa. Mom and I help Grandma with dinner in the “probably, but be more specific.” kitchen. Their hands skillfully dice tomatoes and bok choy, “on the futon in the loft. we weren’t looking at each other and I whisk eggs. The noodles are boiling on the stovetop. and then we were and then...nothing.”

60 : susquehanna university perfection, eager to learn Bach and achieved scholarships to the Ivy the works of the greats, melodies Leagues. But somehow she took a Four Thirty swirling in my mind. I loved the pi- liking to me, the sweet, doe-eyed Lauren Ellis ano; but I loved the fact that I could little girl, quiet and polite. She al- Upper Saddle River, NJ play it even more. There was noth- ways liked me, but in the end she ing like captivating a silent room grew weary and we both knew my with the drops of noise produced time was up. Some days with her From ages eight through four- by the light hammering of the were worse than others; this was teen, Mondays were the worst strings or the anxious clash of the a fact that troubled me to no end, days of my life. It was not school I crescendo leading up to the finale; brought about the racing heart as- dreaded (if anything I prayed for it either way it was beautiful. sociated with the passing time on to belonger); it was what followed. Mondays before three in the after- Every day after school, I was pet- At the ripe age of eight, I some- noon. rified to be driven off to the big how ended up in Mrs. Gordon’s brown wooden house in the mass house, my mom proudly leading The days always began with the of trees off the winding hill. The me inside. My curious eyes swept sleek black Acura purring into her house itself instilled anxiety in me, around this new interior until they driveway and my exit. I would as- standing tall and modernly chic fell upon a lithe older woman with cend the back porch steps slowly, with an elaborate garden and a short teased hair, who was sweet softly; I felt as though I would pool I was always envious of. How- and lovely until I sat beside her at bother her if I was too loud, scared ever, the person waiting inside for the piano bench and suddenly the to disrupt her mood. I would slide me, watching the ticking second hospitality turned to determina- the glass door open wide; some hand of her massive grandfather tion. This woman played the piano days she would be in the kitchen, clock upon my arrival, was un- amazingly, and I am not sure if I re- others not, so I would wait, my doubtedly worse. I am not saying alized this at the time, but I even- music books stacked high in my by any means that this woman was tually would. One afternoon I had arms.“Lauren, hello! Come in, come a bad woman, buther strict mind- slowly slid open the back door and in, don’t just stand there.” Mrs. Gor- set was something new to me sat myself in her kitchen, await- don’s face appeared as the wood- that I failed to grasp; my tenden- ing my lesson. This was one of the en door slid open with its usual cies and unwillingness to practice days she was so lost in her music gravelly tone. Her slim hands beck- would cause her great annoyance that the time just eluded her. I be- oned me through the door with and would bring to me the earliest gan to lose myself too, hearing the their usual kind impatience and I notion of true disappointment. swellings of terribly intense mu- forced a smile, clutching my books sic pounding through the closed to my chest like a lifeline. My shoes The piano was always some- wooden door that lead back to her, sat limply by the door, pale light thing beautiful to me, especially where her fingers flew across the spilling through the glass. My sock- the Steinway piano, similar to the terrain of rocky keys. The piano was clad feet slid through the door and one that stood in Mrs. Gordon’s an integral part of her as far as I was followed Mrs. Gordon to the bench spacious living room, the sleek concerned. black wood and the paneled .“How are you?” she questioned slant supported by a thin stick, At home, I had a piano of my me delicately, placing a hand on glossy and majestic. The instru- own, a stout brown one that sat my shoulder. She was always very ment was something beautiful in in the eloquently decorated room motherly in this sense. itself, standing lonely and tall, not we do not use anymore. The piano in need of the rest of an orchestra was the focus of that room; it was I smiled again, this time respond- to accompany it to make it sound also the place I had smiled in pride ing, “Good! How about you?” divine. I cannot quite remember and cried in frustration. Lessons how it first called upon me, but I were always Monday, 3:45 sharp, She swept the books from my was always slightly daunted by it, which meant weekends were the hands, placing them in the alcove yet it enthralled me; I possessed time I would collect myself and next to the music desk. She sat in an amount of desire to slide my venture into the piano room and her usual seat alongside the cush- fingers to where I knew they be- play for an hour each day, scales ioned bench, but not on it. That longed. When I was young, my feet and chords and lullabies, knowing was my seat. I sat quickly, not want- would dangle off the cushioned that this was not enough practice ing her impatience to take hold. bench, the pedals below so far out to appease the teacher, but I was of reach. I eventually grew into the young; these drawn out periods “Fine, the usual.” Her laugh float- seat, feet able to exact pressure were meant for the sole purpose ed through the air. I smiled, yet upon the golden metal beneath of exercising my stubborn fingers, again. me. In the beginning my fingers which became trite due to the would dance slowly, hesitantly, repetition every week, at least in “Want to start with scales?” I across the white expanse, venture my opinion. Lessons were either nodded, knowing this was rhe- off to an accidental black step, good or bad depending on Mrs. torical; I placed my fingers in their then return to their rightful course Gordon’s mood, because I would designated positions and man- in time to correct myself, hopefully never live up to her expectations. I aged to lightly stumble through quick enough to evade the watch- was unlike the rest of her students, the scales and variations that were ful eye of my teacher. With age, I ruthless and cutthroat, the ones meantto be my warm ups at home. grew lazy,yet still strived toward who attended competitions and Her expectation for me was low; I

apprentice writer : 61 knew my capabilities, as did she. I did not want her pity. My chest box, blowing my nose quietly and She smiled and sat up straighter. swole with alarm and my mind in dragging the white tissue beneath “Good, good. Now which triplets a state of inquietude; what had my eyes. Shame pushed me to come next?” I even done wrong? This was so slump; I threw away the tissue and stupid, the petty tears in my eyes. inhaled deeply, begging the tears I counted up the steps, fingers Stop! Go away! I pleaded in my to recede permanently. waltzing daintily over the blacks head but it did not help. and whites coming to a hesitant “Sorry,” I said, knowing it would pause on the note that should “I just-” she cut herself off with have no impact, but feeling the have been correct. Her lips pursed a disbelieving shake of her head. I need to say it anyway. slightly-I was experienced, I should could feel my heart stop. know better, should know this by She did not respond. I knew she now-and I pushed on, unsure of She flicked my hands off the wouldn’t. myself. She always had the abil- keys like eraser shavings strewn ity to do that, to make me ques- on a desk. I tucked my hands into At 4:30 I was released, shoving tion my decisions. I tried to do the my lap, eyes following their down- my shoes onto my feet and strug- triplets and her frown deepened. I ward trajectory, knowing that her gling not to bolt right out the braced myself, knowing what fol- hands belonged on the keys, not door. I clomped down the wooden lowed was never good. mine. Another frustrated sigh. porch stairs and into the driveway. “You should know this by now.” The The days were beginning to elon- “Do you know what’s wrong words. gate, the sun still luminous in the with this?” I did not, but my heart afternoon sky and the trees be- was beating wildly, knowing I “I know,” I said quietly. ginning to come into bloom once was done. This was a common again. My babysitter was absent occurrence. Only shecould send “We went over this last week! I from the driveway, so I sat silently my heart off in an erratic rhythm don’t understand!” Another sigh. on the elevated tiles along the as- when I was this age; nothing else Another turn of my stomach. I was phalt. It was lonely, but peaceful, scared me other than her. My par- ready to leave, I just wanted to go my peripheral vision bombarded ents would laugh when I said that home. I let my eyes flick up to the with thegreen of the leaves that I no longer enjoyed lessons and clock; we were only seven minutes were everywhere. I didn’t feel quite my teacher was frightening. They in. Hot tears burned in my eyes and as awful then. I tilted my wrist up, liked Mrs. Gordon, said she was I hated this. Yell at me now, I don’t the face of my watch glinting, once nice, something on which I did not care anymore. Except I did. I always again grateful to see 4:31 disagree, but she could snap at did. My feet danced with uncertain- any moment, her patience for me ty under me. The pit in my stomach a taut wire and at the slight move- grew with each passing second; it ment of my hand she would crack. had existed there before I had even stepped into this house. The tears Honeysuckle I kept my eyes focused on my had finally pushed over, which an- hands, forced mute. She could noyed and embarrassed me to no Emily Tian twist my words and use them as end. My hand flew up to my face, North Potomac, MD an excuse to fly off into a destruc- quickly swiping under my eye. A tive criticism. I let my head shake, gasp bubbled in my throat, and it Femininity. Scraping yolk softly, a small twist, hair lightly choked me, but I had to repress it. from marrow. Throat warbles brushing my arms. That was when She still did not take any notice to rainwater, ankles like I heard the clipped exhale, the my actions, so caught up in her dis- silk-swallowed flags. A vessel warning siren. I took a slow inhale, appointment that she was unable forcing myself to look at her. Her to be distracted by anything else. fat with hunchback eyelashes. hands were braced in her lap, and She was in the process of sullenly Pollen, as in small suns, and her eyes were widened, staring me explaining the triplets and finger its rawboned gravity. down incredulously. How could placement to me once again,she Bleached white, seeding saffron, you not know this by now? After ev- did not fail to remind me, when no thorns -- a Pacifist. erything I’ve taught you? she heard my small gasp as I strug- Refuses flesh and Andromeda. gled to intake air without sobbing. I was consumed by fear; it took Another sigh. And then: electricity. hold of me in its maw and swal- Peeling back veins like lowed me whole. I tried to coax .“Crying isn’t going to help, you corn husks, hewing sinews myself into a calmer state, it was know.” She looked tired. Her head from static ambrosia, just a lesson, it was just a lesson, turned to focus on something be- last august, yellow fever. but I could feel the tears forcing hind me and gestured outward Paper tendrils of trembling their way to the forefront, my over- with her hand. “Grab a tissue and cursive splinter into achieving self wounded. Young stop crying.” streams. Kerosene ripens me had no threshold for tears; it did not take much to trigger them. I bit my lip, stifling a sob, embar- (cremates) sweet. Charring yolk, I held my breath, praying to God rassment coursing through my coughs nectar and smoke. they would dissipate, knowing veins like fire. I gasped again and they were a sign of weakness and raced up and over to the tissue

62 : susquehanna university over. If You Meet Her, Each little ribbon of hair Watermelon Delight Tell Her She’s was reaching to escape Alder Flecker the sparkly blue Spencer, NY Beautiful headband. She had the Grace Morrissey thickest hair, it went right I’m eating watermelon and I’m Allendale, NJ along with her coffee-col- savoring the flavor ored skin. Her hair Wendy Wallace White says How do you explain the made her seem happy. Watermelon is good for the way the world corrupts soul children? Bouncy and free. I’m munching on it, it makes me feel happy I will leave you with two Curls that always Watermelon is making me as things. This very memory managed to get in her joyful as a puppy with atoy and a question. face, but made her smile It’s a far superior snack than seem brighter. cookies or chips How do you teach a child And much healthier too self-love, when you have “What! Madison are you It’s my favorite snack by far forgotten yourself? crazy I love your hair. Your In my opinion, no other fruit Do with them what you hair is fun. My hair is too can rival it must. plain. I wish I had your hair!” I coaxed. In that As I eat, I wonder Is this locally grown? I held her in my arms. Mois- moment, I wanted nothing more than for Is this organic? ture gathered where our Or is this silver of red and skin touched. The after- her to want her hair. noon sun was green fruit jammed with bearing down on us, the “No,” she said again GMOs?” kind of sun that, on a quieter now with a sigh. Gosh, Mr. Carver would be regular day, would make “I don’t want it. I want proud skin sparkle. yours. Pretty.” That I’m actually considering where my food comes from Today it simply Before I could argue It’s seriously funny that I can highlighted one thing. anymore, she had pushed apply school to fruit She was black and I was herself out of my grasp, But alas, the background of white. Her tiny fingers running to join the other my magnificant fruit isn’t a reached up pulling at my kids. dealbreaker hair. It was pulled back Whenever I eat watermelon, I into a ponytail today, She was there. Six years’ cherish the moment long, straight and blonde. old. Sitting with me. To me, Summertime is Why did she hate her hair. watermelon time With a smile, she Who did that to her. On bright sunny days with murmers, “I wish I had I couldn’t bring myself to exhausting heat, your hair. It’s pretty.” do anything but watch Nothing beats eating water- her. melon Stuttering, how do you She was beautiful. Everywhere. I thank you watermelon for respond to that. “What do your existence you mean your hair is so She had no idea. Without you, what would I eat, beautiful” a pear? Your only blemish is the stains “No,” she remarks you’ve given my shirts reaching to touch her But all is forgiven because you own. “My hair is a bore.” always brighten my day Today, just like every Tuesday, her hair was loosely pulled back into a bun. With dark chocolate curls sprouting from all

apprentice writer : 63 sent us out with. He cupped the orange, civil rights and The Pan-Africanist Congress slowly stood up, and started peeling it, all and spoke of Nelson Mandela with admira- Under the African Sun the while continuing to cast a long shadow tion in his voice. Jenny Li over Delize and me. That morning, I had overslept and missed Los Angeles, CA The orange peels floated down from the my regular bus. Delize and Abrahem had The Population Registration Act of 1950 man’s hands, fluttering away in the slight left before, and I was a little nervous about restricted the movement of people in dusty wind like coarse feathers. The offi- traveling on my own. As I stepped off the South Africa and was used to show that a cer stepped onto the blanket that Mother bus and walked toward our school, I saw person was approved to reside, move, or had laid on the ground—a stark brick-red Abrahem and two other older boys being even work in areas that were set out for the tattoo on the folded blue. I could see tears detained by the police. It must have been white South Africans, which meant that the forming in Delize’s eyes. the third time that the police had caught colored South Africans had to carry pass- him without his identification card—just books at all times. It was very unpopular In the corner of my eye, I saw Mother last week, his lips had been swollen and among the people of African descent, who in the doorway. She stopped for a second red, and his right cheek was bandaged often called it the Dom pass (stupid book) as she saw the officer, and then hesitantly tight. Seeing him humiliated made me furi- because it undermined their intelligence, walked towards us. The man kept his eyes ous. Reacting ahead of my common sense and unquestionably, their rights. The Pop- on Delize and me, took another orange, and even fear, my feet almost steered me ulation Registration Act was formally re- and casually walked off. Mother didn’t ask in the policeman’s direction, but I couldn’t. pealed in 1991. me any questions, just took my hand and ushered me inside. That night, I lay awake I considered leaving my identification well past the hour Father came home from document at home. I wanted to be as brave work and listened to my parents whisper in as Abrahem, and I couldn’t stop thinking Sharpeville, July 23, 1952 hushed voices. about the students from my school who risked so much to do what they believed The bright cobalt sky gradually dimmed in. in color as it neared the ground, almost blending into the rolling fertile hills. I Sharpeville, September 12, 1959 played in the road with Delize wearing a button down floral dress under my favorite, I grabbed the newspaper from the I had told my father that I was stay- and now slightly dusty, chalky-pink cardi- wastebasket on the way home from school. ing with Delize. Careful not to be seen by gan. Our hands were stained red from the The big bold letters of the first page only any officers, I cautiously walked down the dust, and as I reached to wipe them down enumerated the violence happening across street, and took a sharp left. Clutching my on my cardigan, I saw a police officer. From South Africa. I didn’t need the reminder. passbook, I glanced around to make sure I the quiet, pattering way he walked, to his My childhood naiveté and incredulity had was not being watched and quietly tapped shaven, light, and unblemished skin, to the recently turned into fear and rage as I wit- the signal on the door. absence of dust and mud on his clothes, nessed numerous friends being taken by he clearly was not one of us. Delize and I the police and beaten for not having their The door opened and I was let into a crouched together, half in fear and half in papers. The looks and bruises on their faces packed room of men and women gathered awe. were enough to keep me quiet and do as I uncomfortably. The small space was hot was told. and filled to capacity. We all stood around We rarely interacted with white men. silently, waiting. When the voice rose from Some of the mothers in the neighborhood, Though the Population Registration Act the end of the room, I didn’t immediately like Nella one block over, were maids in had been around since I could remember, know it was Mandela speaking. I scarcely white neighborhoods and regularly shared it wasn’t until I started attending secondary had a moment to get excited at the reality their worlds with the whites, but we as chil- school outside of our town that I had seen of my situation – he was here, in front of dren did not have many opportunities to what it could do. It was my first year trav- me – before some of the men near him be- have that experience. Maybe eling outside of our town without my par- gan speaking. I craned my neck to see bet- ents and though they worried and insisted ter above the shoulders of two tall young that is why I swallowed hard when the that I go with Delize and her older brother men in front of me. man’s shadow loomed over me. There was Abrahem, I had never really had any trou- something instinctual about the fear that ble. I carried my passbook and stuck to my “I have an idea,” a man I did not know be- Delize and I felt. known route, and so did Delize. Abrahem gan, “but it is very risky.” was different. We stared at the man as he slowly walked He raised his ripped, olive-colored pass- towards us and gravitated even closer to He was just a few years older than us, but book into the air, his forehead beaded in each other. He stopped in front of the blan- seemed so much more grown-up. He was sweat and his hand trembling. ket and crouched down. While looking me always reading something and discussing squarely in the face, the man reached to- topics Delize and I didn’t know anything “This,” he gestured to his passbook, “is ward me; I squirmed. His hands wrapped about. Even our teachers took notice of what they force us to carry. It states that we around one of the oranges my mother had Abrahem’s ideas. He often talked about are not allowed to be in places that our an-

64 : susquehanna university cestors lived in and owned. It undermines hands. The people chanted and spit at the dela’s words that “courage was not the ab- us, treating us like we are stupid and uned- police, and some threw their ID cards into sence of fear, but the triumph over it,” that I ucated, relying on a piece of paper to know a burning pile of smoking booklets, others understood what I had felt. where we can and cannot go.” punching their closed fists into the air. The heat of the sun and the smoke of the burn- Someone else – one of Abrahem’s ing paper assaulted my eyes and mouth, friends—interrupted, eager to make an im- and I struggled to hold back a cough, Cape Town, February 11, 1990 pression on Mandela, it seemed, “We can though no one would have heard or no- all leave them at home and overwhelm the ticed me in the increasingly violent com- The man that stepped out of the car police! That way—” motion between the people and the police. looked nothing like that flushed, deter- I could see the nervous mined man I remembered from thirty “No,” the first man cut him off, “It has to years ago. Mandela, with the help of the be bigger and send a message. I say we eyes underneath caps of the policemen crowd around him, shuffled a few steps as must burn them,” he paused, “in front of the who gripped their guns without much con- he stared at his old home, which had been police headquarters.” viction. I could see their pleading glances noticeably preserved and cleaned for his towards each other, the chain-linked fence return. separating them from the angry mob shook violently under the strong hands of The energy and pride from the crowd Sharpeville, December 16, 1959 the gold-miners, the factory workers, and around him seemed to fill him up. As he the farmers. I still remember that rattling. opened his mouth, it seemed as if the I had been looking forward to the an- whole South Africa was holding its breath, nual conference of the African National Suddenly, the door of the police station waiting for their leader to speak again. Congress for months. With Abrahem, I swung open, and the Chief walked out. was learning more and more about the He signaled with his hand, and the police- “Today, the majority of South Africans, different civil rights campaigns through- men took steps backward. Another signal, black and white, recognize that apartheid out South Africa. The last few months had and they raised their guns. My gaze froze has no future. It has to be ended by our been a whirlwind of secret meetings, free- on the red dirt underneath my feet, yet in decisive mass action. We have waited too dom marches, and late nights of discussion my mind, I saw him nod, and as if right on long for our freedom.” at Abrahem and Delize’s house. Izwe Iethu cue, they fired. One of the first fallen was and Awaphele amapasti rotated through Abrahem. The fierce intent in the eyes of the peo- my mind like popular rock songs, stuck ple around me spoke of the feelings of there until I found myself doodling the The shooting continued. Then there was excitement and pride, but also feelings of words onto my school books. another man on the ground, and the third anguish and suffering, that enveloped this was a woman, whose scream was heard historical event. I let myself gaze across For many weeks, I had heard my friends underneath the sound of gunfire. Panic the glare of sun and dip into my childhood chant for their freedom and watched them quickly took over the anger and the crowd memories. It had been a while since I’ve be swarmed by the police. It was only my clumsily fled through the red dust. Later I thought about Abrahem. My memories mother and father who stood between me would read that 69 people were killed that of our games and neighborhood antics and the protests. They were afraid of me afternoon, most of them shot in the back as would unexpectedly be overtaken by the being hurt and had kept me at home, but they tried to flee. image of Abrahem’s surprised and pained I still found myself humming the chants face and the crack and hollow whine of about abolishing the passes. I strongly be- The fear that had paralyzed me now gun shots. The tug at my hand brought me lieved that South Africa was our land, too, turned into adrenaline that powered my back into the present moment and, still in a and I heard voices saying 1960 as the year legs to get me home. Out of breath and daze, I lowered my eyes inquiringly toward of tackling the pass. I could feel that some- shaking, I burst into the front door and the source of the welcome intrusion that thing big was coming. ran right into my father. With one look, he brought me back from the painful mem- immediately knew where I had been. He ory. Looking into my young son’s eyes, I grabbed my arms with his large hands as recognized innocence not marred by cru- if to shake me, as if he were angry, but he elty and unfairness. He blinked and looked Sharpeville, March 21, 1960 simply held me in place. I read in his eyes around at Mandela and his chanting sup- anger and fear and something else I had porters. Following his gaze, I watched the Intricate lace-like shadows sprouted off never seen before. Under his gaze I felt sun hover softly around the upraised fists the magnificent tree, the centerpiece of ashamed and guilty. I went to sleep that of the crowd. our settlement. The hazy afternoon was night thinking of Abrahem and the shadow punctuated by the angry shouting of the of brittle hairs, black and gray on my fa- It took years for Apartheid to be officially men and women surrounding the chained ther’s unshaven neck. dismantled. On April 27, 1994, the first link fence of the police department. I nes- elections with racially diverse candidates tled myself behind the tree, watching the That night, the fear I had held inside and voting rights extended to all citizens flicker of the Zippo lighters that danced parted to reveal a new-to-me wish to be were held. Nelson Mandela became the around the edges of their identification a part of something bigger than myself. It first black president of South Africa. documents, held open by dark sweaty wasn’t until years later when I read Man-

apprentice writer : 65 brownstone town house and checked her Chinese startups to record breaking IPO’s. Sunny watch. 7:55 AM. Good timing as usual. J.T. Stanley & Co. recalled Mr. Wells back Young Se Choi She walked up the stairs and rang the to New York City and promoted him to bell. A few minutes stretched out, almost President of the firm. Mr. and Mrs. Wells Livingston, NJ on the cusp of discomfort, when the along with Colin were led by the real Upper Eastside. Carnegie Hill. This was the door creaked open to reveal Mrs. Wells, a estate agent into the beautiful sandstone New York City she had always dreamed of. woman in her late thirties wearing a loose home on 143 E. 88th Street. They agreed Woody Allen’s New York City. Perfect for gray turtleneck and trumpet-like black to buy it on the spot. Ashley Wells was taking an afternoon stroll on an Autumn pants that accentuated her long neck and born ten months later. And a few years afternoon New York City. Sinatra’s glamor- legs respectively. would pass before Sunny found herself ous New York City. underneath the chandelier of the Wells “You must be Sunny.” home in a trance. Not her New York City though. Hers was 40 minutes by bus along Astoria Boule- “Yes ma’am.” “Sunny, you’ll have to start upstairs.” vard in Flushing, Queens amongst the karaoke rooms, Korean barbeque restau- Inside, a chandelier at the center of the “Yes, ma’am.” rants and Soju dens. It was time to get room cast a warm light that rippled out- back to reality now Sunny. Back to 143 E. wards. On each end, a spiraling staircase Sunny barely caught herself in the midst 88th Street. climbed up the walls like ivy. As Sunny of her fantastic imaginings. She followed tilted her head to look up, up, and up at Mrs. Wells up the spiraling stairs. 139. 141. 143. Sunny faced the lovely the ceiling, she heard the sexy George Gershwin clarinet followed by the climax “There are five bedrooms and three bath- of horns and cymbals. This would be rooms. Once you finish up here, you can Thorns on Bare Skin the only time in her life when reality far move downstairs.” exceeded movie make believe. On the Brianna Caridi table, there was a series of family pic- “Yes, ma’am.” Pittsburgh, PA tures in minimalist wooden frames. She couldn’t digest each one, but the black With Mrs. Wells gone, Sunny resumed I lay on the verandah as he paints me and white photo of a younger Mrs. Wells her journey into the Wells’ world. First my cigarette smoke swirls around my with a head full of hair Mr. Wells posing up was little Ashley’s room. Plush white neck almost choking me he chuckles with their young son and infant daughter bed. Stuffed animals littered throughout. absentmindedly and says “how old are filled Sunny’s heart with an unexplainable Drawings on the wall. Ones with zig zag you anyway?” romance. rainbow crayon marks. Others with hand I squint and look onward at the neon paint. And still more with black chalk. lights; he answers for me “maybe I don’t Her mind shot off into a hundred different Sunny imagined a lively pre-schooler with want to know” possibilities. She finally settled on one. a predisposition for turning anything and I hear the soft brush strokes as he stares Mr. Jordan Wells, President of J.T. Stanley everything into works of art, especially at my outstretched body. he confesses that he’s never been very good at & Co., the most prominent Wall Street her food. Like the time she smeared egg painting. I tell him he’s trying too hard firm in the country, met Amanda Leitner yolk on the wall in a Mark Rothko-ish he chuckles again and I’m not sure why. while they both attended Yale University. fashion. I’m fairly sure that he knows something She was studying anthropology and he I don’t. I can tell by the look in his economics. The two of them connected Colin’s room exuded less innocence, but bloodshot eyes; half-moons under his in a study group at the Sterling Library clearly he was a boy on the precipice of eyes haunt me. “take off your shirt” through their mutual interest in Chinese manhood. A faint smell of bodyspray I pause for a moment, seeing nothing culture. Upon graduation, Mr. Wells began could be traced to every item in the room. but the deep purple of the sky and work as an analyst. Ms. Leitner continued A yankees cap hanging on the mirror. A his coffee complexion her anthropological studies at Columbia. Yale banner with the motto “Lux et veri- “maybe I should tell you how old I am” They married a few years later at the Yale tas” on the wall. Kanye West staring down “maybe I don’t care anymore” Club in Manhattan. Mr. Wells was soon from the ceiling. A closet full of collectible he’s in front of me now thereafter offered a position at the Shang- basketball shoes maintained in ziplock I am in a field of roses hai branch. Mrs. Wells believed it was the bags. But still remnants of his younger self no, sunflowers chance of a lifetime. She could not believe remained: a handmade Christmas card I am running through them fast that she and her husband could actual- made out of construction paper, a Curious they hurt me ize their college pipe dreams. During the George doll and a photo of young Colin in they are roses second year abroad, Mrs. Wells gave birth his church choir attire. Sunny I feel the thorns to Colin Wells. Family success mirrored my shirt is on the ground work success as Mr. Wells led a number of imagined a shy, but quietly confident

66 : susquehanna university middle schooler who did not know exactly how to react to the adoration of Emily and Suri. He avoided them by Antisocial shooting one hundred free throws a day at the gym. Jessica McKenzie Baldwinsville, NY The master bedroom did not look as if it needed much cleaning. The bed was I want to shatter the glass spectrum made. No clothes strewn about. The By simply windows brought in a soft early afternoon Tapping my finger to the atmosphere light. Sunny held in the desire to plop herself onto that bed that looked so cush I want to see more than my brain offers and welcoming. She peeked into the Colors closet. A dizzying array of shoes, coats, bags and shirts. To be in the closet like I have never seen before this was dangerous, but Sunny could not help but check out at least one rack of I want gravity to be optional clothes. She did not have the guts to actu- The Earth neon in space ally try anything on, but she did place one Buzzing with creative minds red sweater in front of her. Perfect for that afternoon stroll she had thought of taking Love unheard of once work ended. Hate unheard of Food and sleep unheard of Only lovely thoughts of vacationing in the Hamptons and dancing at Christmas charity balls filled Sunny’s mind as she I want to live as one of the creatures scrubbed away at an already emmaculate Lying on my back as I swim with the earth toilet bowl. The first day of work meant My senses activated having to make an extra good impres- sion. A small amount of sweat began to I want to touch every square inch of the planet in a matter of seconds form on her brow. She wiped it away with Or bounce across the planets her sleeve. As she did so, she caught her And make a trampoline out of the solar system reflection in the mirror. It was the first time all day since her morning shower I want to meet humans that she had had a chance to see herself. Touch a thousand lives The image brought the harmonious world If only for a moment of the Wells to a crash. Sunny felt a pang of horror. She looked so worn out. In con- trast to the gold plated faucet and ivory I want to play catch with my friends sink, she appeared so dull. The imaginings Using clouds from earlier in the day felt so far. This was And we’ll glow in the dark not her New York City after all. Her New York City was not even New York City. It There would be no numbers was Flushing, Queens. Of time, of temperature, or money None of that would exist She had been a foreigner in this new land for a long time now, but she understood I want to blend for the first time what it meant to be a In a city of millions of people stranger. Or in woods, extending a hundred miles

Invisible

But bright.

apprentice writer : 67 and expecting a child, the French covering his dark black and gray Military did not accept his enlist- hair. The Bicycle ment to fight because of his age and his skill in engineering. How- That same day, Sergeant Major Sydney Vincent ever, Jonas was led to work with Jacque Delacroix rode on a train Lehighton, PA the military in Paris to help repair to a secluded military air base in planes and install engines for the Paris, France. As he walked across When Jonas La Belle was twelve men fighting on the Front. the base to the air hangars, many years old and his brother, Hugo, heads turned to study the man’s ten, they constructed a bicycle out On a brisk autumn morning in stature and seeming power. He of old parts found at the back of 1918, a large man by the name of arrived at one out of the seventy- their father’s convenience store. Sergeant Major Jacque Delacroix eight air hangars to find Jonas On the metal, the boys painted rode to the small town of Saint under the wing of a Breguet 14 their names to claim the bicycle as Jean De Cole on a motorcycle no aircraft. their own. bigger than himself. “Mr. Jonas La Belle?” the Sergeant And each day, the two boys would He approached the small door of Major cleared his throat and re- quarrel about who would get a house with a red roof and light moved his hat once again. to ride the bicycle to and from stonewalls. On the door was paint- school. The fresh dew on the ed in cursive the name “La Belle.” Jonas rose and saluted the man. leaves of the trees and grass dur- The Sergeant Major knocked on Sergeant Major Jacque Delacroix ing the spring mornings to school the door gently. nodded and Jonas wiped some of would bring the boys peace and the oil and ash off of his face with security. Jonas and Hugo’s parents ap- a tattered towel. peared at the door as the Sergeant The fall mornings would bring Major removed his hat and said “Private Hugo La Belle. He was whirlwinds of deceased leaves softly, “Hugo La Belle was an excel- your younger brother, correct?” into the air as the bicycle whipped lent young man. He was a skilled “Yes, sir. Is he in trouble? Is he passed them. And on the warm fighter, and it was an honor to lead alright?” summer nights, before the sun him in this war. I am sorry. He will disappeared, the boys would take be greatly missed.” The Sergeant Major brought his endless rides on the bicycle, the large hand to Jonas’ shoulder. warm air and smell of blooming A single teardrop fell from the Jonas’ lip began to quiver as he flowers filling their bodies. Sergeant Major’s eye. He nodded gripped the towel in his hand at the couple and handed them tighter. Jonas was a very smart and shy Hugo’s uniform. He then placed young boy, often refusing to meet his hat back on top of his head, “Hugo was a wonderful man, sol- eyes with others. Engineering had always fascinated him, as did the new advancements of the military inventions European and Ameri- Stems can scientists were creating. Illana Saban However, Hugo was the complete North Miami, FL opposite. Hugo was smart but not as bright as his older brother. Hugo was rebellious, social, and My sorrow leaps, outgoing. He was fearless but yet following my heart’s calls Freely we move - loyal and honest. Together, the of pirouettes in their very all. my twirling toes boys made a bond strong enough and the infant rose, to last a lifetime. An agile stem partakes in the mayhem. our limbs nimble, As the years went by, the bicycle Together we move, an exquisite symbol grew older with each passing day of weightlessness and so did the boys. The year 1914 the rain’s patter our beat, and poise came, as did the First World War. allowing the throbs of our heart The youngest of the brothers, who to be our rhythmic art. A final staccato hit, was now twenty years old, was the last fluid swerve drafted and sent to fight the Cen- Its pleated petals unlatch, ends in a gentle curve. tral Powers on the Western Front. as does the clasp of my drowning dolor. As for Jonas, whom was married to a young lady named Gabrielle

68 : susquehanna university dier, and friend. He fought with respectfully and expressed his ter no matter what.’ such bravery and strength. He condolences to them once more. was humble and kind. He was for- “I tell you that story and say- giving and determined. He was Most of the town attended the ing today because even though an honorable man. Unfortunately, service of Hugo La Belle on that Hugo has passed on, we have a nest of machine guns shot him sunny day in autumn. Jonas and been blessed with this beautiful, down during the Battle of Saint- Hugo’s parents stayed quiet the autumn day and Gabrielle and I Mihiel while he was protecting a whole time while Jonas had to have been gifted with another friend of his. present his eulogy at the end of child on the way after our miscar- the service. riage. But I disagree on one thing. Many men were killed in that I don’t think these blessings are battle. It took us a while to iden- Next to Jonas and Hugo’s parents the universe’s way of telling us tify the men who were killed but stood Gabrielle silently in the that everything will be alright or your brother was among them. I pew, rubbing her stomach, which things will get better. I believe it hope you know that he died as a contained a child, expected very is Hugo’s way of telling us that great man and nothing less. I am soon. Jonas took his spot at the everything will get better and sorry for your loss. I’m sure he was altar and began his eulogy. that he is with us every step of a wonderful brother and friend. the way. I gave your parents his uniform. “When Hugo and I were little, we I saved this for you. Just a small made a bicycle out of old parts we “To this day, our bicycle stands in thing to remember Hugo by.” found in the back of our father’s the shed of our parents house. So, convenience store. in honor of Hugo, I will ride the The Sergeant Major pulled a We spent hours upon hours per- bicycle once more down La Fer- chain with two small medallions fecting that hand made bicycle in rieres, onto Grand Pre, across the out of his pocket and handed it the summer between the school La Cole, and finish on Le Bourg to Jonas. Engraved in the metal years. tonight. And I hope that on my was this: journey, Hugo will be right beside I remember we used to fight me that whole time to ride our LA BELLE, HUGO and fight on who would ride bicycle once more, just like when PRIVATE the bicycle into town to pick up we were children in the summer. 2210 groceries or packages or just ride Thank you.” FRANCE around. One night in the summer a few years later, after a whole day Everyone in the church remained And on the second medallion, of riding the bicycle down La Fer- silent. Every eye was filled with the text was this: rieres, onto Grand Pre, across the tears including Jonas’. La Cole, and finishing on Le Bourg, SAINT JEAN we laid down in the field behind After the service, Hugo’s body DE COLE, to our house on La Ferrieres. We was taken to the cemetery and FRANCE watched the sunset and gazed at buried under a green willow tree the stars that took the place of the on the far side of the lot. Hugo “Thank you, Sergeant. I am sure clouds in the sky. I, to this day, still had always wanted to be buried that was very difficult for you. If remember the words Hugo said to under a willow tree because they you can find time to attend the me that night. symbolized life, strength, growth service, I am sure Hugo and our and harmony, according to the family would greatly appreciate He said, ‘I remember reading books he had read. it. Good day, sir. Thank you once somewhere that when a star dies, again.” Jonas told the Sergeant two are created in its place. I think After the burial, everyone was with the utmost respect, tears it was in one of Papa’s books. invited to the La Belle’s house on welling in his eyes as his hand Anyway, at first, I only looked at La Ferrieres for dinner. gripping the towel with great that saying literally. But now that force. I am a little bit older, I see what Once the day’s events were The Sergeant Major nodded, it means. It means that when concluded, Jonas made his way placed his hat on his head and someone we love dies or leaves to the shed in the backyard of his exited the hangar. Jonas stood us, good things happen or are parents’ house and removed the there and let the tears stream created after. Like the time my pet old, rusted bicycle. Even though down his face. toad Jeremy died. That same day, the bicycle had seen better days, A week later, four men arrived in I aced my mathematics test and it was still as sturdy as ever. a black horse-drawn hearse at Mama made my favorite dinner, Saint Jean De Cole. One of the beef stew. Even though Jeremy Jonas gazed at the side of the bi- men was Sergeant Major Jacque died, good things still happened. cycle and ran his hands down the Delacroix. He wore a black uni- I guess it’s the universe’s way of painted letters of his and Hugo’s form with a black hat to match. saying that everything is going to names on the metal. He led the He greeted Jonas and his parents be alright. That things will get bet- machine down the driveway and

apprentice writer : 69 past the gates at the entrance. “Good run, Hugo. Good run.” Jonas growing old at the small house in whispered and smiled. Saint Jean De Cole. The children Next, he stopped the bicycle in visited with their children to the the middle of the La Ferrieres, house and nothing made the positive that the traffic was done Years passed by. Gabrielle gave couple happier. And every once for the day. Jonas mounted and birth to two beautiful twin boys in awhile, Jonas would take out loosened his tie. He looked to his named Franklin Nicholas and the old, rusting bicycle and take it left and watched as the sun set George Allan. for a ride. The bicycle never failed under the horizon. To his right, under his aging body. stars began to form in the sky. A year later, a little girl named Lillian Jonas took a deep breath and Rose came into the family’s world. When Gabrielle turned seventy grabbed Hugo’s medallions out But in time, Jonas’ parents passed years old, she became sick. Jonas from under his dress shirt. and he inherited their small, quaint spent days and nights by her side, house in Saint Jean De Cole. The praying that she would get well “Alright, Hugo. One more run.” couple raised the children in Jonas’ soon. However, nothing hap- Jonas whispered to himself as childhood home. pened. Nothing changed. he held his brother’s medallions firmly in his right hand. At times, it pained Jonas to walk On July 12, 1964, Gabrielle Anne past his and Hugo’s old room in Emile La Belle passed away. She He let go of the medallions. Then, which Franklin and George now was buried in her hometown Jonas pushed off the ground and shared. Memories of late night hor- of Bordeaux, France. Franklin, the bicycle gathered speed. It still ror stories, days pretending they George, Lillian, their spouses, and rode like a dream with only a few were pirates or knights, and early their children attended the ser- squeaks here and there. Jonas morning pranks flooded Jonas’ vice. They tried to comfort their fa- raced down La Ferrieres and mind. ther but his heart was too broken. onto Grand Pre. The cool autumn A few days after the service, the air swept through his hair and Almost everyday, just at sunset, family left the city and Jonas went shirt. The medallions chimed an Jonas would go and visit Hugo’s back to the house all alone. unusual but sweet song in the tombstone, sometimes alone, other breeze. His heart returned to times with one of his children or his That evening, Jonas, at seventy- that of a child’s and it raced in his wife. They would sit in silence under two years old, took out the bicycle chest. Jonas smiled and laughed the willow tree. and rode it down La Ferrieres, as he came close to the bridge onto Grand Pre, across the La Cole, over the La Cole. When the Second World War came and finished on Le Bourg once around, Franklin and George were more. And that night, at exactly He heard the familiar rushes of sent off to fight while Lillian was midnight, Jonas Christopher La the water become near and as he given a job in a factory just outside Belle took his final breath. Jonas’ crossed the bridge, small droplets of town to help make artillery for children, their spouses, and the of water sprayed across Jonas’ the military. grandchildren arrived in Saint face from the river below. Finally, Jean De Cole. The afternoon of the as the ride came to an end, Jonas Luckily, the boys came back un- next week, Franklin, George, and slowly put pressure on the brakes harmed after the war was complete. Lillian buried their father next to and came to a stop at the end of Soon enough, the two boys married his brother under the willow tree. Le Bourg. lovely women. Franklin married a preacher’s daughter named Anna- That night, right before the twins Jonas dismounted the bicycle bel and George married a military and Lillian went to bed in the and stayed silent as his heart officer’s daughter named Willa. The small house with their spouses slowed. He then turned the bi- boys moved out of the small house and children, they made their way cycle around and began to walk on La Ferrieres and went on with to the crippling shed, removed the the machine back up to his child- their lives. old bicycle, and walked it down hood home. When he returned to the green willow. They rested to the home, it was completely A few months later, Lillian decided the bicycle against the trunk of dark outside and the lights in the to travel to America to receive an the tree and made their way back home were dimmed. education she could not receive at home. home. While in America, Lillian met Jonas brought the bicycle back a Southern gentleman named Park- To this day, the bicycle still rests into the shed and locked the er and fell in love with him. After upon the trunk and at the bottom door. He gazed up at the sky full Lillian finished her studies, the two of the bicycle, every spring, two of stars and saw in the distance married and gave birth to a little girl flowers blossom, one blue and one star, brighter than any other, in which they named Emma. one green. hanging over the spot where the two boys had laid on that one Countless seasons passed as Jo- summer night years back. nas and Gabrielle spent their days

70 : susquehanna university her dashboard. “Tell her I’m sorry,” she settled on working at a it read, “but sooner is here.” desolate bar called “Sadie’s” that was frequented by men look- Never Quite At first, they thought the ac- ing to escape their wives and Enough cident had been just that — an women willing to turn tricks for unfortunate mistake, a crash. spare change. It was here, at this Callie Gonsalves But between the note and the charming Southern-California Salem, NH amount of alcohol in her blood, establishment, that Mara met my we all knew it was intentional. father. I hadn’t spoken a single word to She’d drunk two bottles of her He was thirty-eight to her nine- my mother in over eight months. newest obsession, some sort of teen, recently divorced, and Not that I needed to. Mara had vodka, or maybe she’d moved on more than willing to leave a never been the nurturing type; to whiskey by then. Regardless, large tip for work well done — in even when I was a baby, she’d it was enough to convince her to short, he was all she had ever been more likely to be found hold her foot down on the gas dreamed of. Their relationship nursing a beer bottle than a baby and not stop until she had suc- moved in that swift, albeit sleepy, bottle. But, deep down inside, I cessfully swerved off the road way that California has, and soon still hoped that she would one and wrapped her car around a enough, I was conceived. My day come to her senses and re- tree. She was dead on impact, father wanted me even less than gret throwing me away. Regret all the EMTs said. Nothing they my mother, and he left as soon the choices she made that bene- could do. These kinds of things as he could: no note, no good- fitted her directly rather than her were no one’s fault, really. I knew bye. Mara would never admit it, only daughter. Regret that she that was a lie. but she was just a toy to him, an had never loved me. easy way to pass the time. But, But my mother had just died, so still, I was the one who made him When I was a child, I used to I was in no place to confront this leave, and she never forgave me dream about a perfect couple police officer. Instead, I nodded, for that. that were my real parents. They’d ever the compliant one. How somehow gotten separated from could I not be, growing up as I She’d been expecting a son and me at the hospital where I was did? With a mother like mine, had settled on the name “Co- born, and I had ended up with there wasn’t much of a choice. rey” after her father. I guess she my mother. They had spent every hoped that naming me after day since that horrible incident Immature, irresponsible, and her father, a man who had been trying to find me, and when plagued with a tendency to flee married for twenty-seven years, they finally did, they would be from the slightest hint of bore- as opposed to my father, a man so relieved with me for forgiving dom. Opposed to being chained who had divorced his wife and them. They would take me away, down and unwilling to grow up. left his girlfriend and unborn and I would never have to see or The last thing Mara Byrne had child, would give me a fighting think about my mother again. ever wanted was a baby. chance to be a good person. In effort to help my real parents But her plan backfired; I left, locate me, one day at the grocery She was one of many deluded, too, didn’t I? Anyway, ever the store I told the checkout girl that starstruck people who were inconvenience, I was born a girl. Mara wasn’t actually my mother. determined to live a life of impor- Since my mother was already She called the police and, upon tance. Mara left her parents the expecting a Corey, she figured their arrival, my mother yelled at night of her eighteenth birthday, the easiest thing to do would be me until I cried. When I tried ex- a simple “Good-bye, I love you. replacing the “-ey” with an “-ie” plaining about my real parents to I’ll be sure to call” scribbled on and having a Corie. the police officers, Mara was livid. a spare piece of paper from the family’s junk drawer. She was I suppose my mother tried to “I don’t know where all these determined to be a model (most love me for the first few months, ideas come from, but I am her models are between 5’8” and but having a newborn interfered mother. I have her birth certifi- 5’11”; at barely 5’4” she had no with her work, and there was no cate right at home, if you need to chance), or a singer (her lungs more rich man to rely on. Our see it.” were filled with cigarette ash that money dwindled until she could erupted out of her each time her afford only a one-way ticket to They didn’t need to. During the mouth opened, and even her Williams, Arizona. To her parents. car ride home, she told me that humming sounded like an old car I was damn lucky to even have engine struggling up a hill), or Though she denied it to her a mother, that she wouldn’t be an actress (her best performance grave, we all know that she’d had around forever. I said I hoped that was when she was telling one every intention of leaving me day would come sooner rather of her many boyfriends that she there. than later. never loved him, never needed him, was glad to see him go). Williams served as the place of They found her suicide note Eventually, my mother realized broken dreams to Mara. She’d left scribbled on a crumpled up that she wouldn’t survive on her there hoping to become some- napkin from Dunkin Donuts like own without a steady income, one, that coveted and elusive an afterthought, the ink from the so, until she could become the someone: loved by many, envied Sharpie bleeding through onto next big model/singer/actress, by all. But she remained as she

apprentice writer : 71 had departed, off the map and here, it’s you who has to leave.” continued her rampage toward irrelevant. On top of her lack in the kitchen. She grabbed a set title, she now had a plus-one; I “And what, abandon my daugh- of car keys and brought her stuff was, and remain to be, the obvi- ter?” outside. I was safe. I thought I ous mark of a girl who’s gone and was safe. gotten herself “in trouble.” “She’s no more your daughter than you are mine. You don’t love My cries of terror and sadness I was only months old when we her. Just go, run off again. Leave over the whole situation covered arrived in Arizona, so the story of her like you left us.” the slam of the screen door at our temporary stay in Williams the front of the house, covered has been pieced together frag- My mother was left speechless. her footsteps. We only noticed ment by fragment by my moth- Of course, everything my grand- her once she began to pack my er’s extremely biased memory. mother said was true. Mara had things into a bag. never cared about me, and she According to Mara, they wanted was the most selfish person I had “Mara, honey, please calm down nothing to do with her (conve- ever met. The only reason I had and take a minute to think about niently, she did say “her,” not “us.” been included in the conversa- this, okay? We love having Corie Either they had no problem with tion was Mara’s desperate hope here, she can stay here as long as taking me in and raising me, or at invoking sympathy. As soon as you need her to, there’s no real she forgot I was even there, ea- the possibility that I stay and she reason to take her wi-” ger to take on the role of victim leave presented itself, she knew as a solo. Both are possible, but she would have to take me just to “Come on, Corrie.” my money’s on the latter). They spite them. I was begging, pleading with her allowed us to stay in Mara’s child- to let me stay, shrieking “no” over hood bedroom, and they took Mara pushed past my grand- and over until her only thought on the responsibility of raising a mother and started storming was to make me stop. Mara baby, hoping to get it right this down the hallway toward my wrenched me out of my grand- time around. Mara fell quickly bedroom (by this point, I had mother’s arms and onto my feet into old habits, nights that completely inhabited her old where I promptly collapsed. My should have been spent work- room. For the few nights that she pathetic little bag, stuffed with ing or taking care of me spent spent home, Mara had taken to mis-matched socks, clothes long instead with men just passing sleeping in the basement. “More outgrown, and broken crayons through, looking for something privacy,” she said). I had enough took up one of her hands. The to pass the time until they could common sense to jump onto my other tangled itself in my hair return to their real lives. bed, pretend I hadn’t heard. She with a vice grip and began drag- opened my door with enough ging me away from the only I grew a little older each day, force to crack the plaster where it safety I had ever known. I could and by the time I turned four hit the wall. She didn’t even look faintly hear my grandmother my grandparents had lost their at me, instead began yanking yelling “Corie,” but whether that patience with Mara. I hadn’t yet drawers and closet doors open, was for me or my grandfather, I’ll come down for breakfast, but throwing my things into a pile at never know. had taken the liberty of dressing the center of the room. all by myself; pink tutu falling We spent the day driving, not down my bony hips, white lace “Mommy, what are you doing?” even stopping to rest for the socks staining with each step I night. Mara just wanted to get as took, and long, blonde hair still “Let’s go, Corie. Get packing.” far away from Williams as pos- a tangled mess from sleeping. I sible as quickly as possible. I was knelt by the crack under my door “But I don’t want to leave.” crumpled up in the backseat, and listened the best that I could. clutching a little stuffed lion that I remember that I was worried, She finally looked at me. She had been gifted to me on my that I could hear Mara crying, grabbed either side of my face birthday two years prior. It was screaming. and forced my eyes to hers. the only toy I had managed to grab in my mother’s desperate “How can you be so selfish? “Pack your things. Now.” escape. Corie’s still just a baby, we have nowhere to go” she said. She stormed out of the room, Happy birthday to me. left me crying in bed. My grand- Somewhere, a door slammed. I mother came in, tried to comfort We moved to the land of “Excelsi- didn’t know it yet, but my grand- me, promised that I wasn’t going or,” to Broadway and opportunity, father, the original Corey, had just anywhere. They wouldn’t let her to the noises that never cease stormed out and into the back- take me away. She promised me. and the city that never sleeps. yard. He was demolishing the Surely, Mara could make it there. swingset he had built for Mara Mara came back, the suitcase so long ago, the same one that I and duffel bag she was carry- Unfortunately for her, New York loved now. ing knocking into the furniture, was much of the same. She’d breaking picture frames and be gone most nights, unwill- “Selfish? We’re the selfish ones? vases. Ruining their home. She ing to find a job until we could You don’t give a damn about that saw the untouched pile of stuff no longer afford rent. The only kid, you never have. She can stay on the floor and, rolling her eyes, difference, apart from the loca-

72 : susquehanna university tion, was that I was now alone. I Of course, things never work out She stared at me, equal parts think we stayed there until I was the way we plan. I did escape amused and confused. nine, then on to Chicago until Mara; she didn’t know where I I was twelve. She drifted from had gone or why, and she now “Mara? That’s new.” place to place, city to city, drag- had no way to contact me. I did ging me along with her like a start going to college, the thirty “I don’t want you here, I’ve never prisoner. There were times when mile commute more than worth wanted you here. And you sure she would be gone for days and this final uprooting of my life. as hell wouldn’t have been in- I, ashamedly, hoped that she And my grandmother did wel- vited if I’d known that you would would stay gone. She would come me back; Corey had died act like this,” I said. I tried snatch- sometimes drink for days on six years earlier. Regardless, she ing the invitation out of her end, starting one morning when was happy to have me stay with hands, but she held it out of my she felt a little depressed and her. And for a few months, every- reach. A child, still, incapable of not stopping until something, thing was fine. Until my grand- learning from her mistakes. Inca- or, more often, someone, came mother started to get sick. pable of caring about anyone but along to make her feel a little bet- herself. ter for a while. There were days Lung cancer. It was terminal. when everything got too much Within two months, she had died. “Is that meant to hurt me?” for her and she would snap and hit me, or haul me up and down I was left alone to make funeral “Leave.” hallways, flights of stairs, even arrangements, meaning I was pavement by my hair (when I was the one tasked with the choice of “I don’t think so, little one. You eleven I decided this had gone inviting Mara or not. I didn’t think know, I can’t understand why on for too long and, with a pair of that she knew about her father’s you’ve always hated me when safety-scissors I stolen from one passing, let alone her mother’s. I’ve done nothing but love you.” of my classrooms, hacked away And, despite all the pain she had at my hair until it barely reached caused me, I knew I would have “You are selfish, and pathetic my neck. Not even that stopped wanted to know if she died. So and-” her). I sent a letter, hoping she had stayed at our previous address, “Well it takes one to know one, Around the time we left New or at least that the new tenants doesn’t it?” She was walking York, my grandparents stopped would forward her mail. There away, leaving again. contacting me altogether. I real- was no reply. “What the hell is that supposed ized that the only person I could to mean?” depend on to get me away from The day of the funeral was blis- my mother was myself. So, I tering, and I could feel myself She stopped, turned, retraced did. The night of my eighteenth melting in my black dress. The her steps until her breath invad- birthday I took a duffel bag that funeral conductor and I were the ed mine, making the stench of I found in my mother’s room and only ones there. The day was si- alcohol impossible to ignore. forcefully filled it with the few lent, not even a wind to interrupt belongings I managed to acquire. the service. And then, Mara. “You and I,” she whispered. “We’re Some clothes, a toothbrush, my just the same.” stuffed lion from a lifetime ago, She came charging into the cem- and all the money I had saved etery, yellow dress, red lips, bare I stared at her. Mara started to up from working when Mara was feet. She was clearly under the move away. out on her “errands” that lasted influence of something, shriek- for days, even weeks, on end; the ing and toppling over, crying for “No we’re not,” I called, causing years spent babysitting, waitress- her mother. A thirty-eight year her to look back at me. “If I were ing, and administering movie old trying, and failing, to disguise anything like you, I’d kill myself.” tickets to people who, during the herself as eighteen. She was piti- day, avoided me like the plague, ful and repulsive, breathtaking “Right,” she said, walking away. finally paid off. I had saved close and unsightly. She was nodding her head, al- to thirty-two thousand dollars, ready a million miles away. concealed in an envelope that I know I said that I hadn’t spoken had a perpetual home in the to her in over eight months, and I know I shouldn’t have said it. bulky, inconspicuous sleeve of a to that day, it was true. But at the I know I should’ve stopped her winter jacket of mine. Thirty-two funeral, I just couldn’t refrain. from getting in the car. But, just thousand dollars for myself, hid- like when I was a child, a part den from Mara’s greed. Enough “Leave,” I said, walking over to of me was hoping she wouldn’t to pay for a car and the gas her, trying to save both her and return. money to Arizona. my image. And she didn’t. I was going to go back to my “I don’t think so,” she slurred, grandparents, back to my home. holding up a crumpled piece of I had already applied and got ac- paper, “I got invited. Personally. cepted to Coconino Community Personally invited to the party.” College. Tuition was affordable. Even if it weren’t, escaping my “Mara, leave. Now.” mother was priceless.

apprentice writer : 73 vert to, about your fascination with some- knot in my stomach, yellow-blonde hair a thing no one else understands? Because it blanket in front of my eyes. Annie Dillard’s “A Writer is up to you. There is something you find In The World” and interesting, for a reason hard to explain But here’s what was different: I was mad, because you have never written it on any awkward as hell, neurotic as hell, but I Trusting my Own Voice page, there you begin” (Dillard 105). wrote like mad. I exploded into journals, Anna Osborne notes, sometimes four times a day. I did Dillard says exactly what still draws me what Dillard says to do: “Write as if you Richmond, VA to writing. It’s the power of the individual were dying. At the same time, assume you I have tried to type something on Google perspective and what it can bring. write for an audience solely consisting Docs at least five times. Each time it’s For years of my life, I have been afraid to of terminal patients...What could you say deleted by that lovely voice in my head: acknowledge what I think and feel. I’d be to a dying person that would not enrage “That’s shit, Anna. Complete shit.” So bad spit out from the depths of a deep mon- by its triviality?” (Dillard 106). These ill- that I will be dethroned from being the ster, threatening to kill me with thoughts nesses told me I would die before I even “Queen of the personal essay”. But, I’m of slashing myself in the shower, rage so tried to die. I was breaking apart on the here still, writing. Not just for the dead- deep I wanted to throw people at walls, inside. The lack of sleep, the thoughts, line, but for Annie Dillard’s “A Writer in the searching online frantically for medicine the people, the expectations. It was life, World”, which I’ve just finished reading so I would stop hyperventilating, only but I was a “terminal patient” - sick, crip- for a third time. This time, out loud with to collapse on my bed and read Vogue pling, entirely unfit to face the world like a blue pen, underlining, starring, writing, for hours. I was spit out on the shores of a normal person. I was often “enraged” scratching out, and underlining again. spring, shaking, angry, losing 14 pounds at myself and the people around me. My in 4 months to get my life “on track” from disorders, my illnesses, were nothing but Annie Dillard is not one to shy away from the chocolate peanut butter binges of “triviality”. I was denied medicine the anything. She writes freely about wea- winter. I was so afraid of my mind and its first time I asked. The reasons I gave were sels, frogs, sharks, and shouting “Swedish power I told no one the full story, until I dismissed by “Every teenage girl has prob- meatballs!” at cows. She writes, and writes, collapsed crying in front of a jigsaw puzzle lems with their body”, “Binge eating is and writes. There’s no doubt that she’s and a therapist was called. I had sheets much better than being on drugs”, “You’re smart. But she scared me. She’d reel me in, and sheets of paper with my “idiosyncratic very successful.” leading me to underline quotes, annotate, thoughts”, the ideas “hard to explain”, and then have me lost again on the next the lies of my brain, the obsessions I So, I wrote a 50 page book. About a girl page. I was susceptible to writing her off thought were “wrong” that I never showed like me, binge eating, depressed, and as “too much” or “too smart” for me. this therapist. I could handle it myself. I suicidal, with a massive personality crush/ I’m not a Dillard thinker. I don’t ponder stopped seeing her after four sessions. obsession on her teacher she sometimes frog guts the right way, if at all. I’m not But I was wrong. I could not handle it thinks hates her. The majority of that book mindful or transcendental. I literally sit myself sophomore year. I tried to cure is exaggerated, but her thought patterns with my head against pillows and walls, myself by reading the words of others are not. They came from me. I actually pleading with myself, “why, why, why?” who had been in pain like mine. It worked, wrote consistently, 500 words per day, but about something I said 2 years ago, or sometimes. But there was still that sinking it was harder than I thought it would be. what I will say in the future. I look up defi- realization that none of these people were Writing isn’t like breathing when it’s a 50- nitions of words at least three times to be me. I began to doubt myself more and page story about some of your deepest sure I am right, sickened by the twisting of more. I told myself I didn’t have an illness. pain. my stomach that I’m doing this in the first place. I cry when I scratch my mother’s car Instead, I was defective. Annie Dillard agrees. “The most demand- not only because I scratched it, but that it It took months before I could tell anyone ing part of living a lifetime as an artist will reaffirm my friends’ supposed opinion I had a problem. I was terrified to ask for is the strict discipline of forcing oneself that I am a stupid, white, privileged WASP. help face-to-face, so I sent an email to to work steadfastly along the nerve of It is such a task for me to get up from my my guidance counselor. I wrote down one’s own most intimate sensitivity” (Dil- desk and close my eyes for six minutes, those “idiosyncratic” thoughts, thoughts lard 106). I was given the opportunity to to bring myself into the present. To stop I told myself “no one else” understands, write a 50 page “novel” about anything thinking that this person will hate me if thoughts I had “never written before on I wanted. If I was going to write about a they knew how pathetic I was. any page” that I had showed to anyone. girl in this insane situation with a brain I got an email back with the address of a like mine, I had better do it right. I could Then, I read “A Writer in the World” and therapist. There, I began. hardly believe I was doing what I was underlined eight ideas on the first page, I kept seeing this therapist. I kept seeing doing, writing a story with a teacher I starring, starring, starring. I thought, on her when I fell deeper down junior year actually had a personality crush on. I the first page, “There it is. There’s the into a mental health crisis. Before I knew blushed as I wrote my “own most intimate epiphany. What I’ve been thinking for so what was happening I withdrew like mad. sensitivity”. The binge scenes were hard long, unraveled.” Finally, something we I splashed water on my face between to write. I had to comb through years of truly, definitively agree on. She writes: classes to lessen the stinging pink of my my past. I placed my head back to ninth “Why do you never find anything written cheeks. I walked down the hallway with grade, when I had no idea how to talk to about that idiosyncratic thought you ad- invisible hands around my throat and a my parents and spent hours

74 : susquehanna university alone in my room. emotions: from gratitude, to anger, to sad- because I spent months in such a state of ness, to shame, over months of therapy. isolation. I was not enthused by anything But I did what I needed to do. I “forced I knew there were so many things, after that formerly interested me, and every myself” to finish this book with a “strict what had happened, that weren’t “under- word that came out of my mouth came discipline”. I wrote about those violent stood”. After six years of suffering and a from a foreigner, an apparition. I “opened thoughts that threatened me like a time grand explosion, I was finally on a path to the safe” of who I was, and just found bomb, about the teacher who wouldn’t true recovery. My illnesses were finally be- “ashes”, fragments of a person, of who I leave my head, about the past that haunt- ing treated as they deserved to be treated. was, or who I was supposed to be. ed me daily and threatened to consume It was hard. It’s still hard. I had moments I’m learning, through my own writing, the me. It was, in some ways, cathartic. I was where I felt everything and nothing at writing of others, the passage of time, also able to see what would happen to a once, screaming in my car until my lungs and that old, nagging, vicious voice in my girl if she kept everything to herself. She were sore the next day. I was allowed to head that I’ve learned to dull, the “That’s would explode. scream. I was allowed to cry. But I did not complete shit Anna” voice, to trust my give up. own. The true voice. The one that got me I reached my boiling point several times Reality became easier to bear. It’s a help, the one that tells me to forgive my- in the winter. I was put on medication mystery, and I am often confused, but as self and others, and the one that tells me and immediately taken off as soon as I I analyzed, as I talked, as I processed the life is a gift everyone deserves. Annie Dil- had specific plans to commit suicide. They specificity of the situations, I began to see lard’s A Writer in the World was not there didn’t go away when the Lexapro was my strength, and the strength of these for me in the past. But it is there for me as out of my system. My parents received situations in my life. a blueprint for the present and the future. endless phone calls from guidance In all of her essays, Dillard begs the reader counselors, therapists, and psychiatrists. I When I was in this pain I used to hate to pay attention to what she’s learned. Not sometimes had days where I was posi- those sayings about needing the rain to only that, but to pay attention because tive it would be my last. I heard my own make the rainbow. I don’t want anyone to life matters. And so does the individual screams, saw my own blood. suffer the pain that I did. But people do. perspective and voice. All we have in life And without it, I would be a very different is ourselves. Each person deserves to see But my illnesses affected my ability to person. I wouldn’t be as aware of myself, how important their voice is. communicate. I would be so embarrassed my emotions, and their consequences. I and scared about how people would react wouldn’t have the drive that I do to share that I would wait to tell them weeks, or my story and show others there is hope. even months later, long after the specific But, I’m still me, and me is afraid. Afraid urge was gone. I also doubted myself con- of what I’ve done, what will happen, etc, stantly, speaking mostly in ambivalence. I etc. I’m afraid to reveal things, do things, wasn’t even sure if I wanted to get better. fearing the thoughts of others. I was afraid My parents had no clue what to do with to write this paper, but I wrote it. I was me. They thought any kind of hospital- afraid to tell people I was sick, but I did The Single ization would disrupt my schooling. I it. I’m afraid to tell others my story, but to was often desperate to go. I could barely I will do it. Annie Dillard also describes concentrate in class, and I often had late this importance of the human voice: “The the Dozen notes from frequent shut-aways in the impulse to keep to yourself what you’ve Badriah Moussa guidance counselor’s office. I missed learned is not only shameful; it is destruc- Pottstown, PA school and called hotlines. My wrists felt tive. Anything you do not give freely and A Bouquet of roses, “funny” all the time, as if they were burst- abundantly becomes lost to you. You can be ing out of their skin, reminding me to open your safe and find ashes” (Dillard slash them. 115). Admired from But I made it. After all of that, I’m here. For years, I concealed what I “learned” out Near, I’m here for a number of reasons: I took of shame. Whether it was the distorted and my medicine every day, without fail. I did perceptions my brain created, my ideas everything to get 8, or at least 7, hours of about life, or an answer to a question, I hid Admired from sleep. I dropped out of ITGS HL. I listened them out of fear of rejection and inad- Afar. to music. I had supportive friends. I told equacy. But because of my battles with myself I deserved life. I looked in the mir- mental illness and the pain they caused, I Without a single, ror and told my depression, “You’re lying.” now realize how “destructive” it is to keep No bouquet would be there. I also talked about it. I did what Annie Dil- things hidden. It not only exacerbates lard says to do: “Push it. Examine all things symptoms, but it becomes harder and But not a word of Praise intensely and relentlessly...Do not leave it, harder to become healthy again. is there do not course over it as if it were under- I’ve undergone depression without given to a single. stood, but instead follow it down until you support and did everything a distorted, For a dozen, see it in the mystery of its own specificity cracked mind can do to become healthy Outshines the one and strength” (Dillard 144). I expressed my again. But I had a really difficult time

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Susquehanna University’s Writers magazine featuring work from Graduate Programs: Creative Writing Institute provides students with the undergraduate writers from across majors have received fellowships or opportunity to receive the country, a nonfiction magazine, assistantships to such outstanding nationally-recognized and a magazine of fiction and graduate writing programs as Iowa, undergraduate training in all forms poetry from Susquehanna student Columbia, Johns Hopkins, Indiana, of creative writing through its writers. Washington, Arizona, Creative Writing Major. Students Massachusetts, Pittsburgh, Houston, work closely in fiction, poetry, and Endowed Writing Prizes and Boston University, Ohio State, creative nonfiction with faculty Scholarships: Writing scholarships of UNC - Greensboro, George Mason, who are the widely-published $5,000 per year are available to Rutgers, and The New School. authors. Small workshops and incoming Creative Writing majors one-on-one instruction are based on the quality of their The Publishing and Editing major, enriched by the following writing portfolios. Prizes of as our partner program at the university, programs: much as $1000 are awarded to teaches students technological and students chosen each year on the practical job skills for workig in print and The Visiting Writers Series: Six basis of work published in our digital media. Students are able to writers visit campus each year student magazines and in senior showcase what they learned by working (One of them for a week-long portfolios. on one of our four magazines. residency). Recent visitors have included, Kazim Ali, Honor Moore, Internships: Susquehanna’s If you woul d like to know more about Eula Biss, Lydia Davis, Nick Flynn, Lia Creative Writing Majors have had any of the programs for high school stu- Purpura, George Saunders, and recent internships with national dents or receive information about Lauren Slater. magazines, advertising agencies, the Creative Writing major at professional Susquehanna, see our website www. The Susquehanna Review, Essay, writing organizations, nonprofit susqu.edu/writers or contact Dr. Glen and RiverCraft: Three distinct foundations, newspapers, public Retief, Director, by e-mail at retief@ magazines are edited and relations firms, radio stations, susqu.edu or by telephone at 570- produced by students—a national churches, businesses, and schools. 372-4035.

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