The Woman at the Restaurant

By Emily Zielinski

Today I am at a restaurant,
Alone
On a small Greek island,
No warmth besides the beer that rests calmly in my belly
And heavily on my mind.
I am seated at a far table overlooking the sea-
The wild ripples of the waves move in rhythm with my tainted senses
And at once I am one with the Mediterranean.
All the seats are empty,
Save my own
And another right across from me.
My eyes, although wobbly with intoxication, settle on her-
The woman at the restaurant. She is
Alone
As am I, and she looks upon the sea longingly
As if the sea was her lunch companion.
I study her, as if she were mine, and see myself.
I sober up instantly, becoming aware that what I am grasping
Is not trick of the beer, but of the universe,
Of fate.
She is older than me, but her jovial smile is familiar, soft,
And I can’t help but mirror the shape of her lips.
The gentle summer wind blows her dark brown waves off her shoulders
And while I don’t notice, my hair falls the same.
I don’t know her-
Not really, and yet I read her mind all the same-
Aren’t we both just two souls having an affair with the Mediterranean?
Didn’t she invite us both to sit with her, make love with her,
Until we blended into one?
I look away, but notice the woman turns to look at me instead.
I pause in cautious curiosity,
Not daring to meet her gaze.
She walks-no, floats, dances out of the restaurant,
Past me and further away from her lover.
I am left,
Alone
And in awe, in mastery of
The woman at the restaurant

(I finish my drink and float away)

In My Dreams

By Jayanna D’Silva

In my dreams,
you hold my hand,
and show me what the city of Glasgow has to offer.

Your accent melodically travels through my body
I beg you, please never stop talking.

You live in a pretty little part of this scary world
but the architecture looming above me is like reality seeping in from the cracks

Seemingly making me feel invincible,
you show me around your hometown,
vines run up the walls like the veins that run blood through our bodies, and I am reminded that life is
short.

The amount of breaths we can take together is scarce.
I pray that you take the leap before it is too late,
to make my dream a reality.

Eustacia

By Ori C. Li

Gold dust of the mortal world.
That’s what she is.
She is just everything
I could ever want—beauty, grace,
Warmth, freedom, freedom
To feel. An
Angel.
She shows me her wings and the scriptures
Of memory emblazoned
Onto her skin. She tells me
While she is still here, I should know
I am human. We all need
A little something, and
She’s found herself another mother.
If I am jealous of an angel
Maybe I am a devil.
Something that I do often
Is repeat the same story, over
And over, knowing that
What I do is doomed to fail and it is that reassurance
That keeps me going.
I am a lunatic
And she kept me unwound. But
The wind took her, and like all else,
Will take me too.
I miss her.
I wanted to ask her how to fly.

Bridge

By Mairi Travis

Selfishly
I see parts of you as mine now
Selfishly
I read your poetry
And selfishly
I tear out a page and beg my family to let me keep it
Because it made me cry
For the first time
I didn’t cry when I heard you were in the hospital
I didn’t cry when they told me you weren’t gonna make it
I didn’t cry when they told me you were dead
But I cried today
Over your writing
Over a poem you wrote about a breakup
A lovesick poem that had no business affecting me and that I had no business reading
I’ll keep that poem forever now
Put it in my box of secret things I can’t stand to look at
I’ll read it again and again until I’ve memorized your misery
Until our pain is intertwined as one
Until my tear stains cover yours

My cousin got her cat. I got her suicide note.

Manhatten, 23:45

By Reka Moscarelli

I felt a funeral, in my brain,
so you gave me a piece of an
orange
one of your favorite poems
slightly embarrassed I think
but you read in a clear voice
my head on your chest
I felt your heart beat
beat just a few of the
billion it will beat
you think you will drown before a billion
the line on your palm short
but I don’t believe that
I choose
to believe that I will feel your heart
beat a few more of its billion
In fact I hope I am there for
more than a few.

How to Grow a Thought: Lessons from a Tulip

By Hannah Bea Kropp

A response to the quote “Tend to your thoughts with care. They have the power to grow weeds or flowers.” - Cleo Wade

Rest is an undervalued part of growth.
There is a lot that we can learn from a garden and the plants that live there.
A garden is a space where pressure does not work.
It is not a race.
It takes patience and time.
The flower or whatever will grow when it feels like it.
You can not rush it.
It needs to rest.

In the fall, we plant bulbs in the nearly frozen ground.
We let them lie under a blanket of frost and snow for the next few months.
Then come spring time, when
and if they are ready,
they will bloom.

They bloom as a reminder of what rest and care can do.

Take a lesson from a tulip:
- Taking time to grow is okay...in fact...it’s needed
- Get comfortable, find a cozy blanket and just lay for a while
- Only bloom on your schedule

Thoughts can grow in every direction.
They can be messy and complicated
but each have the capability of becoming something beautiful.

Be kind to each individual thought.
Give them love and rest.
It takes work to form them and even more work to develop them into actions.
Deep breaths
Cozy blanket
Time.

Do not skip the rest part of the manual.

The Lapse

By Violet Russell

A lapse of thought,
swallowed in the clockwork
mechanics of the Earth’s core.
Grind your teeth as they grind
their gears, and you are seeing
double vision; everything is colliding,
and corroding, and configuring.
Shadows melt like lava lamp wax
all a-cast in a strange orange glow,
and we are interconnected.
Your face mine, and my face yours,
and I realize I’m alone again because
we were parts, now, we are whole.
Our love is lost as one;
because love is a gift too beautiful to covet.
I prick my finger on this spindle,
and I’m falling into a daze.
I could stay here for eternity.
Between the blinds, I watch the light
slice into warm pieces of toast.
The honey sun is taking a
pilgrimage behind the mountains,
and the clouds are hurrying off
to the farthest corners of the world.
The sky’s muddled with confusion,
thundering, bruised, they exit in unison.
Where were you when the world ended?
Parts again, no longer whole,
but you are missing entirely,
and I am stuck in everything and nothing,
the fragile breaths of the universe.
I don’t know what I am anymore,
Strung up like a puppet.
I can only react to my actors’ artful hands,
but there’s no one left to move me.
No one to make me dance.
No one to remake me into
something resembling human.
My unmaking was always assured,
but I had always wished someone would be
here to witness it.

I was told once that atoms never touch,
and this distance hurts the more you notice it.
Let’s balance the scales again,
it’s easy if you don’t fear the fall
or get light-headed on the way up.
A lapse of thought,
And the hand clicks to midnight,
Fast asleep into oblivion.

Lost in Translation

By Carlos Yu

I wanted to be in on the jokes too I hated asking

questions their mouths misshapen to cavernous

o’s of loss like they’ve seen me typing into Google

Translate I’m trying to resurrect the brown me

I’m trying to remember the world in

color this body filled brown memories contained

in estranged words ang bagyo ang habagat, ang

alaala, ako spectral words pass through me I feel

only inklings of emotion nothing ever lands only

the haunt of remembering the horror

of translation that pale reflection in the

mirror Fil-Am monster of

misremembering Frankenstein stitched

translucent skin green veined

envy even my body begs to know

what was so funny? If only I could have stayed, if only

I could understand, if only I could feel the weight

instead of this wishing this subjunctive suspension

nonexistence marked all over my chest and shoulders

loss scored onto skin I need a sunny day I‘d beg for my

skin to preserve the glow of memory I want to find the

routes of recall. But I don’t know where I am. I can’t

remember.

She Dreamt of a Doe

By Erin Winship

i’m envious of the doe i saw in
the woods
laying on a plush pillow of
grass
in a grove surrounded by
towering trees
the leaves creating beautiful
shade
as she sits in a spot blessed
with sunlight

her ears twitched quickly as i
approached
and when she turned her head
toward me
i held her soft gaze until my
bones felt warm
her chestnut tail fluttered with
every step i took
as fallen twigs cracked under
my light steps

she shifted her body when i got
close enough
to make room for me in her
sunlight
i slowly brought myself down
to the ground
bare knees tickled by the locks
of grass
and i allowed my body to melt
in surrender

she nuzzled her head onto my
back
as she curled her strong body
around mine
i cuddled in close into her soft
white-speckled fur
she held me there as i kissed
her soft fur gently

my pillow is wet with tears

Patterns

By Arianna Delmastro

The fields sprawled
One, then another,
Over the land–
The land made of bones pressed together
And grass that lies to catch unsuspecting feet.
We passed herds of cattle
One, then another,
That belong to farmers whose names are known
To everyone but me.
I’ve never seen so much sky unfurled above me.
We passed down unfamiliar roads
One, then another,
And I found myself unable to read.
Swallows built nests above our heads;
Gently chirring, then less gently, they dove and swooned
One, then another,
Into the rafters.
The silver sun sees me as another speck stippling the plain;
Sees me walk, stumble, right myself–
Sees me to bed
And then up again in the morning,
Hears how my heart beats like every other:
One, then another.