2 AM

By Ori C. Li

I’m cradled up in your arms, glasses
Pressed against your sweater.
I don’t see anything.
I just know this is good.
And when people can tell me
These things without speaking
To me, the whole world is righted.
My life as a house of cards
Is forever frozen, stable.
These moments are quiet.
Whatever it is you smell like,
I want to remember it.
I like it a lot.
I like you a lot.
And I will write this down,
As a letter, send it across the clouds
To the moon, somehow, echoing
Across the sky. I will brand
Every falling leaf with the same message
That we are walking on galaxy.
Here we are.
This is us.

How to Spend an Evening Alone (Together)

By Caroline Schwartzbeck

Step 1: Open the door. Drop your bag and kick off your high heels. It doesn’t matter where they land. Turn on the overhead light, if only to prevent you from tripping over the clutter as you walk to the stairs.

(When you open the door, you’re greeted with warm light and a hug. You both embrace it for two, three, four seconds until he pulls away. Following suit, you put your bag on the couch so there’s room for you to take his hand.)

Step 2: Go to your room. Shrug off your work clothes and replace them with last night’s PJs, still stinking of sweat and sadness. Look at the unkempt bed and try to convince yourself to make it up. Fail in the end, of course.

(You shed your professional shell like a butterfly sheds its cocoon. His eyes glimmer as you spread your wings. You don’t think you look like all that in loose pants and an old band T-shirt, but he reassures you that he’d find you the most beautiful girl in the world even if you were dressed in rags.)

Step 3: Shuffle through your pantry until you find the instant mac and cheese—your third batch this week, if you’re counting right. Pour the water, set the timer, and stick it in the microwave for three minutes. Three whole minutes. Let the hum of the appliance become a monotonous backdrop for your sudden realization that you are now alone with your thoughts with no distractions for two minutes and fifty-nine, no, fifty-eight seconds. Try not to think about him. Think about anything but him. Fail at that, too.

(You chop, he stirs, the two of you fall into perfect tandem as you always do. Light pours in from the overhead light as well as the big window over the sink, and the music on his speaker joins the sizzling of the pan to create a cacophony of noise. He joins the chorus, too, shouting “Watch this!” as he tries to flip something in the pan like the chefs do in the movies. It lands on the floor with a sad flop, but you’re both laughing too hard to mourn it.)

Step 4: Pull up a table in front of the TV. Turn it on. Crank the volume all the way up. Pick the sports channel, then remember that the Bulls were his favorite team and switch to some action movie which goes straight to ads, so switch to 24-hour news and keep it there. It won’t make you feel better, but maybe, if you’re lucky, it’ll make you feel something else.

(He insists on using your grandmother’s china even though it’s nothing but a Tuesday afternoon. When you take your first bite, you realize you forgot how good his cooking is. He tells you to give yourself some more credit, that you did half the work and a good half at that. You’re not sure how to respond to that.)

Step 5: Don’t shower, because then there will be nothing but you and your dreaded thoughts and water dripping down your shoulders. Don’t even bother getting up to throw out the empty mac and cheese cup. The TV is your anchor, its constant flow of information shielding you from what’s out there. Don’t take something like that for granted.

(It feels like your shower is the only time you spend apart from him all night. Attached at the hip, his aunt said when she came to visit last year. The quiet is nice in some ways—it gives you time to think about what groceries you’ll need to pick up soon, when you’ll have time to do your laundry next. But that doesn’t deny the joy you feel when you shuffle out into the hall to see him lounging in bed, or how quickly you rush to fill the spot next to him.)

Step 6: Take it for granted. This quarter’s school board elections aren’t that interesting anyway. Go back to your room even though yes, it’s only nine o’clock and yes, you’re not even that tired yet. His ghost may haunt every square foot of this house, but with luck he won’t infiltrate your dreams tonight. Yes—get under the covers, turn out the lights, and wait for sweet unconsciousness to wash over you. When it doesn’t come as quick as you’d hoped, keep your eyes wide open so he’s not there when you close them. Fail at that, and catch just a glimpse of him. Realize too late that that’s enough to bring tears to your eyes, so many tears, and let them out. Maybe only through their release will you be free.

(You stay up talking until you’re both yawning every two seconds. Finally, when you start dozing off in the middle of a sentence, he lifts you off your feet and carries you upstairs. Nestle under the covers together, his arms around your chest, holding you close. You can feel his warmth, beckoning you to sleep like a crackling fire. He falls asleep first, his soft breath touching your hair, and you could swear he utters your name even in sleep. Maybe you’re in his dreams tonight, you hope as the whirring of the fan lulls you into slumber and you close your eyes, joining him.)

Garden #2

By Sam Ferland

I keep chasing the squirrel who took
Things from my grandfathers wire-mesh-caged-garden

He slipped under a narrow path he dug
under the wooden base

I feel the sweat start to dampen my socks
as I evade the numerous roots on the ground

After hours of chasing the squirrel
he finally barrels around a tree to the top

I demand him to tell me the secret and
he says ‘why don’t you just go take a peek, the cage is see through’

Why haven’t I done that?
Or why haven’t I just went and asked my grandfather

Serpent

By Gracie Healey

As I am now, I may never be again;
And how wonderful it is to be such an unattainable mystery.
Forever a sum of my parts, I wander-
Not quite aimlessly-
Through jet streams and city lights and tracks for trains of thought;
Existing.
I shed a skin under each set of eyes that I catch in the hopes that I may become
A dinner conversation,
A memory,
A dream,
Immortalized within the grey matter of somebody else’s mind-
The retina’s of somebody else’s eyes-
Swimming,
Just as they are to me.
Existing.

Untitled

By Nate Armstrong

Garden #6

By Sam Ferland

There is someone towards the back,
amidst the rain.
Their lengthy hair is soaked;
presumably they’re a woman.
No umbrella, no bike,
no car, no face.
Just the back of the head and the posture,
kneeling before the rusty, metallic cross.
Deserted from the other gravestones,
but it’s dispatching has no purpose.
Unlike the woman,
who’s purpose seems like it should be explicit.
But it is nowhere to be found.
It’s just the non-existent shade (because it’s cloudy),
that is being thrown on her by the trees.
The lack of animals that perpetuate the
sound of the rain hitting off the granite.
However for her the rain is hitting off the cross and none
of it seems to be a bother to her.

Points Made Fast Asleep

By Jacqueline Modugno

There is something beyond the organic
And only when we realize, do we shrink from the sky
[We collapse into ourselves]
Drawing up blankets
To shield from the ether

[Questions that ring without answer]

So now I ask:

Who [on Earth]
decided that a star should have 5 points?
Two photonic arms
Two legs
And a head
Unimaginable fuel condensed to human form
Everything that escapes us, compressed

And he lets gravity take him
[When work threatens what luminescence is left]
And she entertains the thought of embraces
[to outshine reminders of death]
And their breathing falls in line with the minute hand
But they all fall asleep

With

Their

Arms

Outstretched

And all the sheets are out of reach
When entropy pulls them out of bounds
To the chasms of air-conditioned-smooth
-hardwood floors
That sinking, inky plane where they sleep now

Yes, if you were there, you’d hear light breathe
With its arms outstretched,
And no concern of quantity
[Yesterday’s wine]
[has already worn off]
[Tomorrow’s coffee]
[is not enough]
For where it sleeps, there is no need
To idle on interests in store
But even in that latent plane
Where the limitless succeeds, again and again

It is somehow, always,
asking
for
more
I called out into my room, asking What is it all for

But 4:00 am blinked in no response
And there was only a glass of water to reassure
And I drank and I drank
Until I was full
I drank as if each sip could stretch time
But the waterline reached the bottom
[Sparked existentialism sequestered]
And I returned to the darkness as if it were mine

And now,
I’d like to rest in watered-down salt
And let the brine take back
every. single. molecule.

That animates my form
Be the echinoderm looking up
[Allow the spears of light cast down from the atmosphere
to be my emerging galaxy]
from that restful ocean floor

And

I

Want To

Be

A Star

We all become one, eventually

We all become one, for sure.

The Wizard of Oz

By Reka Moscarelli

Communitea

By Rebekah Roth Ramos

Piggyback Crossing in November

By Anson Wang

This country exhausts me early into the afternoons but
I don’t mind it. Even those predicaments that produce
shame, being a foreigner among a people I blend into.
In time I will learn to coexist with the seasonal gloom. I
had thought I was beyond feeling apologetic, but these
encounters with strangers who don’t need to notice,
yet still do, mean I can probably learn to start letting the
shame in.

I visualize the semester’s end. I couldn’t yesterday. The
construction of the shifting present is a beautiful thing,
I marvel at it like I do clouds from an airplane window.
Their assembly something pleasantly shocking to
behold.

I don’t dream of you enough, and I’m so afraid of taking
you for granted. That my arrogance will reveal an undis-
covered closet of flaws from my blindspot. And that by
then, it would already be too late.

Last semester I had a beautiful dream that I couldn’t
make sense of until recently. I dreamt that we were in
conflict, lying together in that bed, the sun and moon
clocking in and out of the room while days passed.
Something you had said was bothering me; I still don’t
know what could’ve wound me up like that, and when I
went to reach for your arm, you pulled away.

Further and away the dream took us. I think that’s the
best way to characterize a dream. How there is never a
setting, just the motion itself. The happening.

It was a winding road now, and we were high up, but
the walls of the vessel wouldn’t allow us to see past the
brim of what encapsulated us. All that could be seen
was the sky. We were going fast, I thought.

Before I could log the scene, it shifted again, and you
were on my back. This time the motion was trudging
from my boots, up, uphill on that bridge overlooking the
highway. I clutched at your legs wrapping around my
torso tightly as the cement blocks under my feet rear-
ranged themselves, contorting in all directions. Purple
flowers bloomed to the right as cars whizzed past our
coordinates below. The tension had changed, some-
how, because you were crying, and so was I, digging
my nails into the undersides of your thighs. Details of
the turmoil were lost in the discord, but I think we were
fighting to keep walking, to keep moving forward, up.

I woke up next to you, in a cold sweat. Dawn light
reflecting off your blinds, turning the entire room gray.
Clothes strewn on the floor. My shoes tucked by the
side of the door, next to your shelf.

I am trying to return to that room. I am trying to return
there.