Volume 8 Issue 2
Editors: Madeleine C, Jelena C, Ari H, Miles M, Kelsey P, Saturn T, Olivia T, Zina P, Maya P, Sam P
Scrolling – Burke L ’24
Angel – Michael H ’25
How to Be – Zina P ’25
sometimes
i can only see the inside of my head
replaying what they said
remembering what i read
about “How to Be”
that didn’t help me live in the present.
i’m either trapped in the future
or stuck angry at my past self
for not thinking about it sooner
and i wish i had–
there i go again.
The Art of Drowning – Salem W ’26
Alfred – Alex Z ’26
ρής λάμπρη – Lily A ’25
The House on Arbury Lane – Alex E ’25
Thomas Edwards found himself frozen in time, despite the fact that the world outside continued to move forwards. The sun still rose for dawn and fell for dusk. The moon still brought with it the shimmering stars. Life continued, yet for Thomas, it did not. The sun may have been rising, and people may have been out and about laughing and living and loving and being loved, but Thomas was not. He did not breathe or eat or sleep. He was trapped in an ever-changing world that was unwilling to wait for him. Though subtle, it did not take him long to notice this change. Perhaps it was because he was struck by the utter silence permeating from the walls. Maybe it was because of the complete desolation and loneliness, something he had so rarely felt, it took him a moment to even process it. Thomas finally understood his predicament when the stack of notecards containing a tear-stained eulogy fell from his suit jacket’s inner pocket. Rather than clattering to the floor in a mismatched pattern of white paper and black ink writing, the notecards seemed to freeze in midair, like a still image taken just as the fall breeze caught the falling leaves. However, the oranges and browns were all but gone, instead replaced with a pale white devoid of light or life. Looking around, Thomas observed that the notecards were not the only thing to have gained that pale white sheen; instead, the whole house seemed to glow a pale white gray, like the skin of a corpse under its viewing glass. That reminder of the all-too-recent memory brought tears to Thomas’s eyes. He forced himself to swallow through his tightened throat and steady his shaking breath. As the sun disappeared and the moon stood in its place, the house’s rooms began to darken, making them seem even more lifeless. But, through it all, a beacon shined through the thick veil of darkness enveloping the house. Thomas tracked the light to its source, a framed picture on a table in his living room. He snatched the picture and looked at it, letting the blinding light sting his eyes, the pain blurring his vision with tears. He stared at the image, first noticing the beautiful sunset background shining over the subjects of the portrait. In it, Thomas, wearing a great big smile on his face, held a woman in a sparkling white dress in his arms. She was strikingly beautiful, but the feature of hers that stood out the most were her eyes, each their own shimmering sunset. Thomas stared at the photo until his eyes no longer burned under the intensity of the shining picture’s light. He stared and watched as the grinning version of himself grew wrinkles around his eyes and lips, wrinkles you could only get from a lifetime of smiles. He watched as the woman’s hair grew gray, and her frame grew frail, yet the sunsets in her eyes never once turned to night. A whisper came from down the hall, like the rubbing of a long cloth dress, as the one who wore it quietly approached. He looked up excitedly, a twinge of hope making his heart skip a beat. He was met with a dark, empty hallway and a silence so loud his ears began to bleed. This deafening silence, this unbearable silence, this soul-sucking complete and entirely devoid-of-life silence drove Thomas mad. He stared into his abyssal void of a hallway, he saw its vast and infinite greatness, and he could not stand it. With a guttural shriek, he threw the picture against a wall, the frame shattering into a multitude of tiny razor blades. Without hesitation, Thomas ran to the glass pile and thrust his hand into it. He retrieved the picture, now covered in blood oozing from his mangled hand, and began to tear. Thomas tore and tore and tore at the paper until the shreds were too small to hold and fell into an unrecognizable pile. Emotionlessly, he sat in the middle of the living room, allowing the darkness and silence to envelop him like a heavy blanket. He looked back at what he had done, feeling tears well up in his eyes once more as he picked up the shreds. His shaky hands were unable to piece anything together, but he continued, trying and trying and trying to put his broken pieces back together until exhaustion overcame him, and he collapsed on the floor, too tired to even shed a tear.
The decrepit old house on Arbury Lane had remained unoccupied for longer than anyone could remember. Vines had grown over the cracked shingles as the gutters clogged from years of rainstorms. The unkempt grass towered over the neighbors’, and the sidewalk was cracked and overflowing with weeds growing like a cancer, yet, curiously, the house’s interior remained unchanged from how it had been long before it was abandoned. As a matter of fact, things were so neatly and well preserved that it appeared as if no time had passed at all.
At first, absolutely nothing seemed out of place. However, upon closer inspection, one could notice a part of the living room covered in shards of glass. In the middle of it was a picture of an old man with sad eyes. He seemed to be staring off into a sunset as if trying to relive a distant memory. He had wrinkles, yet his eyes and lips remained smooth, likely not even he would have been able to tell when the last time he smiled had been. All that was left was a man trapped in time, with nothing left to comfort him but the dying glow of an ever distant memory.
Darkened Alleyway – Michael H ’25
Metropolis – Sam P ’25
Succulent – Quinn P ’25