Pinnacle Sequoyah High School Literary Magazine 2020 through 2021 Cover Art by Briana Redner 1 My dear reader, Thank you for picking up this magazine. This project is the culmination of this class's best pieces. Hours were spent on these creations, these extensions of self, and for you to open this magazine and read this message, means so much to us. So go on, and enjoy! --Dominic Lattanzio, Co-Chief Editor This magazine is the result of long, caffeine-filled nights filled with swimming words and splitting headaches. The pieces it contains are the results of the inner emotions of a classroom of writers. Personally, Lit Mag has been a place of growth, a sanctuary, an outlet from the onslaught of the outside world. Looking back on old pieces of mine not only shows me how immensely my writing has grown; it shows me how I have grown. I want to thank Dr. Murphy and this class for both these areas of growth, for offering the timid fourteen-year-old I once was an outlet. So, reader, as you flip through our magazine, be aware that each piece contains a piece of its author. Read them, listen to them, and you will hear each author’s story. Happy reading, Alison Eltz, Co-Chief Editor 2 Table of Contents POETRY--------------------4 PROSE--------------------46 PINNACLE-------------103 SENIOR QUOTES----123 3 POETRY Letter of Expectation-----------------------------------------5 An Ode to a Chosen Family----------------------------------7 Always and Forever Broken----------------------------------9 Cycle of Broken------------------------------------------------11 Solace in the Stars---------------------------------------------13 Searching for Wonderland-----------------------------------15 The Sphear------------------------------------------------------16 Consumption---------------------------------------------------18 October----------------------------------------------------------20 Barbeque--------------------------------------------------------22 Empyrean Emotion-------------------------------------------24 New Vermeer----------------------------------------------------26 The Abysmal Beyond-----------------------------------------28 Eye----------------------------------------------------------------30 Fulfillment------------------------------------------------------32 The Theory of Descent---------------------------------------33 Returned to the Land-----------------------------------------36 Ode to Hot Chocolate-----------------------------------------37 Music--------------------------------------------------------------39 Sparkling Land-------------------------------------------------41 The Prickling of Pride----------------------------------------42 As the Hills Roll into My Mind-----------------------------43 Plastic------------------------------------------------------------44 History-----------------------------------------------------------45 4 Letter of Expectation BY WILL COWART Hollow corpse of a fruitless mind tells tall tales of reality; somewhat sincere apologies conjugate my thoughts which overwhelm me. Drifting through a macrocosm, underlying my conviction towards an astral notion, believing transmutations of my perennial reminiscence. I've been here before, stepping into a pond that my mind seems to warp, but really it stays the same. Starting only to stop again, transcending. Understandably shaken by this seemingly overwhelming thought, I sought after help. Not of a god, not a being from an astral plane, but from the energy my conscious has created in its own reality. Hopelessness is a powerful emotion, filled with all the world's metaphors warped into what we perceive to be true. Dandelions are hyacinths and marigolds even when the reminiscence of nullity sprinkles over the ashes of a dead tree. Forever cycling a standstill life which never transcends. How can an individual break an addiction only cured by another? Minds are plagued and warped Every day creating this false narrative. Let me tell you a story seeming reminiscent of the younger days. A small boy with a brilliant mind, cursed with a true understanding of reality, bearing nothing but the weight of a problematic family and an overwhelming preconceived destiny of failure, which he is expected to upheld. Living a life he’s not meant to transcend. A flower boy with a note of passing, prancing along the dead roses covered in dust of the astral. “Mesmerized by the reminiscent pattern of pain, torture and overwhelming feeling no one could understand. I’ll send my astral body to a place of peace, meant to transcend 5 but never to warp. Goodbye to my world, which is home to your reality. You have pushed me to death, transcending through the space. I warp my thoughts into a fake reality, which mimics an allusion so reminiscent, a simple prosecution can be overwhelming. I’m gone, one with the universe, helping paint the skies with the astral. The astral guides me, warping my imagination of reality. Fleeing a never-ending and overwhelming purgatory of reminiscent thoughts. Forever stuck, forever transcending.” The boy died, forgotten in his seemingly useless life, useless reality. His existence was wasted because he lived up to his families' expectations, ultimately overwhelming him. Now he walks the stars, planting the stones of life, as he dreams of the astral. 6 An Ode to a Chosen Family BY ELLA YAROSHIK I walked a barren life for 40 years, dying. “Don’t be seen! You are as invisible as night,” my mother would say, in all my years of all my life. I never knew what a home was like, mistaking it for a house. I couldn’t crave it, for I never knew the feeling of love. “Don't you wish you were here?” said the taunting sea. The unexpected train took me to the unexpecting sea where the skies were painted in a dashing array of dye of pink, of orange, of red, of blue, of love. The sun was setting, nearing its slumber for the night when I first arrived to the red-bricked house on the cliff, over the never-ending cerulean, that contained such precious life. I always thought that to survive was to live. But now, I could start to see that maybe my quaint and quiet life was a bleak house that would make any one of these magnificent people want to die. Where the grey clouds made the day fading into night unable to be seen, where there was no hope and no love. I never knew that what I needed to survive, no, to thrive, was love. That breathing in the salty air, and feeling the unsheltered sun rays brought me life that I needed a whimsical and mystical knight to save me above the never-ending sea. I never felt like I wanted to, but now I was no longer afraid to die. I was no longer afraid of all the inhabitants of the house. Now I knew that what I wanted more than anything was my house to become a home with these people whom I love more than the day music died. If they accepted me, this was what I wanted my life to be, in the house over the sea. 7 But soon came heartbreak; soon came night. Day came from the restless night. I had to go back, had to leave the red-bricked house. I had to leave the sea. I had to leave my loves. But I knew, my future knew, that I would come back to the essence of my life. For my mind was stained with their cerulean dye. Sure enough, I arrived back at the house over the sea. I left behind the dead sunflowers and went on a journey as a fierce knight. I knew that I found love, that I found my life. 8 Always and Forever Broken BY EMMA VANDINE There is a weight in her chest, like a boulder in place of her heart. She is in constant pain, yet she feels nothing. If you listen closely, you can hear her heart crack instead of beat. She is like a china plate that slowly slipped from the grasps of a loved one and fell to the tiled kitchen floor. Broken and shattered into a million pieces. She is the shards of glass that exploded around the room, while only being a shell of a human. Just skin and bones and a broken soul. Falling apart and breaking more every day. She wishes she could pinch herself and awaken from the nightmare she is living. Awaken from being Always and Forever Broken. 9 Always and Forever Broken by Emma VanDine 10 Cycle of Broken BY EMMA VANDINE This poem is based on the song “Don’t Let It Break Your Heart” by Louis Tomlison. I hid it all away under the bed in a box, a part of me I don't want to remember. And I'm doing better. Am I doing better? Sometimes it all gets so hard. I give everything I have, but it's never enough. The highs are too high, and the lows are too low. It hurts. This life I'm living, this constant cycle of Broken, but even when it tears me apart, I won't let it break my heart. Most days I feel numb, and that hurts more than feeling the intense misery. I was doing better. I know I can't heal by myself, but I push everyone away, so they don't see me like this. I want to be free from the prison that is my mind, free from the pain and suffering I feel. It's tearing me apart, but I can't let it break my heart. I hid it all away. 11 Under the bed in a box, the parts of me that are ugly and broken and sad. But I'll take them out now, and show them to the world. I won't let it kill me, even when it hurts. It won't tear me apart. It won't break my heart, because I AM doing better. Yeah, I'm doing better. 12 Solace in the Stars BY SHAYMA ABDULLAHI Our hidden place in the world would be heavenly, with marbled arches above. Golden skies would delight our vision. The liveliest green shades would join a light, evening breeze. And they would seem to sing to us that we are finally home. So what was once your home is no longer where you are meant to be. And so in melody do our hearts sing, when we gaze at miles of bright stars as they dance and twinkle above, while the moon stays caged by its clouds, silently wishing it could join.