Reluctant Recluse by Amara Sorosiak

Issue 34.0

Editor’s Note

To the Washington College community—

Everything that can be said about change has already been said. There is no original metaphor incoming. Nor is there a lengthy anecdote about all the transformations that this campus has gone through over the mere three years I’ve been a student. College is, by its nature, a transient time. To explicate all of those transitions would be a Sisyphean task.

And while the world at large seems just as metamorphic, some things seem immovable. Among many other systemic issues, gun violence is one that comes to mind. The shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas this past May, in which nineteen children and two teachers were murdered, proved to many people that change is impossible. My fellow students and myself were children when the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School took place. We were the same age as the high school students who were murdered at Parkland. Most of us hadn’t even been born when the Columbine massacre took place. This is a reality we were raised with.

Luckily, the false alarm of shots fired at Smith Hall in July turned out to be just that: a false alarm. Still, when the police told us to stay in our classroom, those of us in Smith 111 followed the procedures that we had been taught since before we learned how to multiply and divide. We turned off the lights, closed the blinds, huddled in the corner where we couldn’t be seen from the door. We texted our loved ones just in case. We stayed silent. We followed the procedures that countless lockdown drills and active shooter drills had ingrained in us, knowing that if there was a real threat, they wouldn’t make any difference.

Maybe you believe that this is the way the world is. That as much as we may try, there’s no breaking the mold in our lifetimes. Maybe you believe that progress is attainable, albeit with extraordinary effort. Either way, belief in the potential for change—no matter how far away or unrecognizable it may be—is necessary in order for us to resist complacency with this cycle of violence and grief.

Change can’t happen without collaboration, and this year’s Collegian staff is comprised of a brilliant group of people who I’m proud to be working with. Our staff issue includes graceful and unflinching poetry, prose, and art from Caryl, Iris, Vee, Sophie, Josh, and Amara. Their pieces recognize beauty and confront truth. I am endlessly grateful to them for their work, as well as to former Editors in Chief Emma Campbell and Justin Nash, who have set the standard for literary leadership at Washington College.

It’s a genuine honor to be among people who make me believe that things can be better. My hope for you all—students, faculty, staff, friends, and family of the Washington College community—is that you surround yourselves with people who can inspire you in the same way.

Sincerely,

Eylie Sasajima

Editor in Chief, Collegian

Table of Contents

Reluctant Recluse by Amara Sorosiak

“Spring begins on the vernal equinox” by Sophie Foster

Little Ladies by Vee Sharp

“Dreams” by Joshua Torrence

Sam’s Birthday, I Don’t Remember by Caryl Townsend

“Nuclear Spring” by Eylie Sasajima

Untitled by Caryl Townsend

“In Hollow Walls” by Amara Sorosiak

Walking Forest by Vee Sharp

“Worm Charming” by Iris Scherr

“Convent of Myself by Eylie Sasajima

“They Made my Coffin Out of Cross” by Iris Scherr

At the Market by Vee Sharp

“The Threshold” by Joshua Torrence

Untitled by Caryl Townsend

“Rehoboth Can be Our Kiss City” by Caryl Townsend

Hands by Vee Sharp

“Beachfront Clockwork” by Sophie Foster

 

By Sophie Foster

Spring begins on the vernal equinox

and this is what I’ll seal as verbal treasure,

recolored by kaleidoscope April air and

sun-changed. This is the celestial equator,

one I’ll know eventually.

Sometimes I’ve patterned girls who carve moonlight

on sidewalk creases, over-traced footprints.

Sometimes I’ve strung words together,

haphazard, glued to brick weight.

Sometimes I am the vernal equinox,

the day of twelve hours of sun,

just as much moon. I can’t honor differently,

less intently; I’ll do it with reverence instead.

I haven’t known flowered soil intimately enough—

never sober, sentient, sensible.

I’ll call everything good, even when it shouldn’t be.

Call it moon-spawned. Call it esteemed.

Call it the vernal equinox. Sometimes.

Sometimes I am the vernal equinox.

Sometimes I’ll remember it.

 

Little Ladies by Vee Sharp

 

By Joshua Torrence

Dreams

the images hum to me

they are torn squares of felt

they are bees

 

there are countless wings making a concert hall out of my ears

and bubbling cauldrons out of my pores i howl into

the night i love

 

you but it’s no more than a vision

the hands that crawl like starfish up

and down the perilous coral of my spine

 

—

There was a time when paleontology called to me. The crust of the earth, its rumors and secrets, how a leaf could still live on in the grooves of a fragile stone. I used to pretend that I was a velociraptor, baring my teeth in closets and basements as if I were hunting in a Cretaceous forest. I would curl my small fingers into claws, imagine them sharp and killing; I would become ancient for an afternoon, a creature from another world. These were the bones that mattered to me, the neck of the brontosaurus, a mammoth’s tar-stained tusks. I thought of the earth as a story; the bones were fragments, the remains of the words.

            Lately, though, I’ve been digging for visions. For what the moon keeps to herself. I wake to the greens and blacks of bills, the tragicomedy of friends and lovelies, the house that isn’t mine. At night, there are only the bees. And the lions, the cranes, the krakens, the like. There are the yous I write to, unblotted by the past because there is no past, only night, only the silence of a vision. In a way, the bones were their own form of a vision—though they were real, they were as far away from me as I was, I couldn’t touch them, I could only close my eyes or pull white linens off mirrors and stare. Lately, I am always at mirrors, prodding the glass. Lately, I do not sleep, I do not recover from what the sun said and what the sun took.

Sleep means messages, means worlds, means feeling. It means lions. They were lying and breathing, bathed in afterthoughts of light, four heaps of the savannah in the middle of a night-jungle I’d painted on my nation of pillows. They were asleep. In their closed mouths were fangs, were secrets. My body was frantic and still. I was in sixth grade when I gazed at these beasts in their mountains of slumber, at the banana tree leaves large as tight-lipped hearts, at the clearing where the grass flashed emerald in false light from a hard, false star. Everything was so awfully peaceful. Everything hurt, although everything was a softness. I witnessed this scene, and when I woke up, I knew what I knew and feared that knowledge. Soon the sleeping lions would wake and roar into my brain’s little night, loosing all I’d hidden, and all I had yet to hide.

 

—

 

I excavate this imagining. It is summer, and I sweat with it, with the sun and the heat and the memories. The cicadas are gone. A crab reigns in the morning sky. All I do is touch at myself, in wonder at my skin; at the blood full of images swarming beneath it. The lions meant something, just like you mean something, just like a word cuts through the meaningless air with a meaning. When I was that young, eleven, and beardless, I had a lot to hide. The boys that would blush into me. The god I struggled to learn from, and his son, for whom I couldn’t help but yearn. Each lion was a secret. Each lion was a boy I wanted to hug. Their maws frightened and fascinated me; to fall in love was to be devoured.

This was the way of my mind and still is. There is a sleep, a life in that sleep, a waking, and an excavation. A vision is a bone. A sleep is a site for shovels, for hands who aren’t afraid to plunge that metal into the earth and learn from what they find there. Not for the history of the world—this digging is for the history of a you, of a me, and out of that us, a future small as a daisy is small, and just as yellow, and just as singular.

One night, in a window my sleep installed in a wall in a house my sleep constructed, a crane with a rainbow in its feathers flew by, calling and calling. I was stunned by its archery. I walked out back to seek that bird, that airborne spectrum, and the yard was sharp with violent greens. My brain planted flowers there, electrified the desolation of the patio with color. Periwinkle snapdragons. Pink roses on fire. Harebell petals blue as skink tongues. The ink of my sleep enlivened these blooms, and yet they were shivering with the ritual of bees, stitching their buzz into the colors’ mouths, making the garden moan. Bees come to me when I can’t breathe. Bees come to me if I sit too still.

A little chirp from the grass pierced through the bees’ loud fervor and caught my ear. On the ground a few steps away, a baby crane nearly just hatched was watching me, and I realized it had fallen from its nest. It was iridescent and helpless. I thought maybe the crane that passed by the window was its mother, searching for her young.

I began to make my way toward the bird, but the bees became incensed. They shuddered and intensified their fervor. The flowers were wilting with their weight. I kept walking toward the little bird, but the bees continued to deepen their anger. I was petrified at that colony, their song, their movement. I knew if I were to try and help the baby crane, they would converge on me, wrap me in blacks and yellows, hot wings and needles. I stopped moving. I left the baby bird in the grass, singing and abandoned, to wake into my own world, my heavy morning.

And what’s the meaning? Should I be creeping through that old and shadowed wood, peeping back and back and back, at myself, my self, my still and breathing body? What is the significance, the beauty, or the purpose? There are questions here, they are doors, they are waves peeling off the ocean’s spine. I sift, I swim through the night’s blues and blacks. I wanted to nurture that bird, I wanted to save it, but whatever the bees were held me to my ground. Bees come to me when I blink back my water. Bees come to me if I’m running from something.

 

—

 

I was dressed in black heels that clicked and clasped my toes into a point, my hair was curly, I had glasses on, I wore a drab plaid dress beneath a drab brown sweater, and people were telling me about the kraken under the post office. Apparently, I was a schoolteacher in this world, and all the children kept coming up to me, wanting me to take care of it. Sometimes, sleep calls for battle. I walked into the post office alone.

            The lights were all out and the blinds were drawn—there was no day in the mailroom. No one was there, only shadows and doors. I opened the one that led to the basement. There was a redness, a heat, rising from that opening. I made my way down the stairs. My hands held a purse, a red purse with a red purpose.

            The kraken was blue and ghastly. Its lair was a lava spring, orange and hellish, it roared at me. I took out a handful of needles from the red purse and ran toward the monster, hissing at it, snarling at it. I stuck them all over its scales, into its black eyes, its arms that moved like a thousand snakes. The beast fell down, perplexed at what the needles did, at the tranquility wafting through its blue and rippling muscles. Its eyes rolled back, it fell down limp. Out of breath and sweaty, I laid down beside it.

            There is something in me that wants to hold. Hold in the sense of a hug, or a hand’s fingers dancing with the fingers of another hand. More often than not, I am alone, and in that solitude, I hold myself. I lie on the couch downstairs, the television still on, everything else dark, my eyes fluttering and ignoring sleep’s pull. I wrap myself in my inadequate arms. I feel the hair on my forearm brushing against the stubble on my chin. Is this my body, or someone else’s? The me in me is miles away from the me outside of me. I. I. I. I hold that letter. I try my best to own it. I attempt to tuck it in, brush back its hair, wish it a slumber fit for kings. I also hurt it when I don’t know I’m hurting it. The slash on my calf my mother points out, the memory of bees, the remnants of a sleepless night still red and angry on my skin. But I still want to hold, to learn how to embrace that body lying alone on the couch.

            When I looked again at the kraken I knocked out with my needles, it had turned into a giant man. He had a long, black beard and long, black hair, and his eyelashes were large as ostrich feathers against his crater-wide cheeks. There were tears running down that skin, and blood, from where I plunged the needles down.

I climbed over the country of his face. I kissed every place that was open, attempting to close, hoping for scarless hills, tigerlilies growing from the pinkening wounds. I may have been almost as big as his nostrils. When I came to his eyelids to kiss away their puncture, he opened them and looked at me. I fell into that green, I woke up to a sun leaking in through the blinds. There I was. I used to be asleep. I used to be a stone. To wake is to remember the body, its capacity for movement.

 

—

           

Dancing is its own form of worship. It is nihilistic, it worships itself, it is itself. When I dance, I don’t know what I’m dancing for. For bliss. For momentary cocoon. For the sake of it. To remember my belly, maybe. I understand that I dance against death, that I move. I move forward, I move into the future of a movement, the leg rising up and unfolding behind me in as high an arabesque as my back will allow. I am a ribbon. I am a red ribbon. I flow, and I flow forward, and sometimes, I flow backward.

            I was onstage somewhere backward of whatever present means. White and purple lights flickered over the skin of my pirouettes. I stopped my movement; I was still. There was no one in the audience but you, and you left, I heard a door click open, flinched when it slammed shut. My costume was a flowing black skirt and nothing else, just strange streaks of charcoal covering my chest. I ran offstage, I left the building. I wanted to find you.

            Outside, there was a lawn, there was a green lawn, and you were on it, lying there, bleeding your blood onto the green green lawn. I remember screaming. I remember running, my black skirt getting in the way of all that awful motion, that awful running toward your dead or dying body. You were a red candle melting, your hair was matted with blood, the sun made you gleam like a freshly painted room. I was crying. I was remembering you.

            You is a word I don’t toss to dogs. I say it and it binds me. It is a planet, it has a persistent and splendorous gravity. You, you, my tongue rises and sets, my mouth draws a circle to make you. You is so large I forget about the me of things. There was no body watching you die, just the sound of sobs, the impenetrable echo of a cry, pouring itself into the vision of your body dying.

            But then you opened your eyes. They were two white stones with small bluegreen ponds drawn on them, the pupils like small beetles within them. They were stones, parting a river of blood.

You stared at my noise. Your stare was hard, and I didn’t know you anymore, even though I knew you to the marrow of your bones. Your eyes were white as bones, they stared at my noise, and when you put a finger to your lips and made a hushing with your tongue and with the bones in your mouth, a meteor plunged into me. You wanted me quiet, you wanted silence, silence. Only you.

There was a new hollowness to what was already hollow. You were there, hushing and alive. And where had I gone? No body, no noise, there was only you and your blood. I was a nothing in my own sleep.

 

—

           

The love doesn’t go. The love is the sun; even in darkness, our bodies know it will return. Only at that final fire will the love go, the love will eat up the world. It will grow red and larger than itself, it will devour even the aquifers, it will swallow itself and cease, unbecoming like a life. Or else another hunk of space rock will fall and fall and fall and, in a moment of fire, obliterate the breathability of the air, undoing all that loves and all that remembers.

I wonder what sound a planet makes when it collides with a red giant star. I bet it’s the sound I make whenever I remember that the love I remember is the love I still feel. In other words, it is silence, the sure and sudden erasure of words and breath.

            Underwater is not without sound, but there is nothing to breathe there, so we cannot speak, there is no audible language between us. Underwater is how I feel in the meantime, before the fire of an ending, before the silence of an after. Underwater is muffled, and there are only shapes there, the shape of a smile, the shape of a you. I am not a fish. I am a person underwater, hoping the inhale was enough for the lungs, reminding myself where the surface lies.

            I was in an empty community pool, and I ripped my head from its waters, I found the surface. There was a youngness to me. I was the child I used to be in this vision. My sight was perfect again. My sight held its breath when I saw the bee right in front of me. It was a fist of yellow, it buzzed at me, it wore a crown on its head.

There’s something about water that vulners and kills whatever unknowing there is in me when my feet are rooted in soil. I was flotsam in the shallows, nowhere to go, watching the royal bee circle me. It had five eyes. It was a queen.

            Clarity means bees. Truth means bees. I saw, and I saw without astigmatism, and in that sight, a bee was there, waiting for me.

I will only rejoice when the love doesn’t sting. I will only pray to god when I prick my finger on the love and do not flounder, do not sink, do not disappear.

 

—

 

In a nighttime world full of moons and black skies, I walked through a lushness. It was a forest. The leaves were wet with rain, as was the mud into which my feet sank. Fruits grew from the trees and hung low, hung in a curious rapture, and they were all red and glistening and beaded with water on their red and glistening skins. I knew there was life in these woods—I saw tropical eyes and tropical shadows, although the air was cold, I remember the air being so cold as if the sun had been gone a while.

            Through the slants of the bark, shrill light flashed in patterns of magentas and hot blues and oranges. I realized there was a rave going on. I was at college, and there was a rave, and I was in my body in this forest under these moons. Somehow, I found my way back to my dorm.

            When I stepped inside, I noticed the fluorescent lights were dim and purple, and that my white socks gleamed in the almost darkness. A woman was waiting for me, she was furious, her teeth were dripping amber as she breathed through a snarl. I asked her what was wrong, and she whispered that my roommate was in big trouble. Something had happened at the rave, something she wouldn’t tell me. The air was heavy and dim and purple.

            He stumbled in. His nose was bleeding. His eyes were a lesson in consciousness, not closed or open, just two opals beating in their sockets. All semester, there’d been few words between us. I would wake and go about my day, and he would wake and go about his. I had no idea who he was, only that he was polite, and that he talked to himself sometimes, conversations here and there about faith and international relations. When he fell into my vision, a bloody mess and barely standing, I felt as if I wanted to know him, and in that desire, I knew every dell in his character, every hillock, every sea. He could’ve done the worst thing, and I would have given him as many diamonds as I had pores.

The woman told him he was expelled. I cried, I pulled myself toward him, I mourned as if the dinosaurs had returned only to perish back to dust and bones. My arms were their own animals, they wrapped around him and held him close. When I kissed him on his cheek, my lips fell on a warmth, a blush of friendship. I couldn’t let him go. I would be lost without him.

 

—

 

At night, through night, a lover means light, means stardust melting into the mattress. No, a lover means more night, the hand that isn’t mine, the breath, the shadow in the sheets. No. I have not visited that part of the world, there are only pictures and postcards. These are not my words, I am parroting, don’t ask of me what I do not know. At night, through night, I kiss my own knuckles. They are callused and large. Bees rest on them as I sleep.

            He came to me one night. Awake, the closest we’d come was the needful bites of each other we’d taken in the backseat of his mother’s car. But he came to me, and sleep kills distance, kills the inhibitions of the day. I took him in my arms, led him to my bed. Cobwebs had grown all around the room, my broken hairs covered the floor. It was so dark. He was all light, and he was all night, and I felt as though he had the ability to make me. To create a me as he found his way into me. A bee emblazoned the room with its buzz.

            Hotness lanced itself through my neck before divinity could find me. A lover is a god, at least when I sleep. I screamed and he was gone and there was only the bee at my throat and there was only me. I was unfucked and fucked, loverless, myself again. I wanted him back, I wanted his bones making music with my bones. But there I was, in between slumbers, pierced by my own cacophony.

 

—

 

It was quiet in this one. I was small. A looseness wiggled in my mouth, and there was a hole in the ceiling, which led to an attic and a jagged wound in the roof. The sky stared down through that wound. Stars were throwing their light at me, crystals singing in the cobalt. There was a tooth turning like a key in my gum. I was as small as a lemon. I was a girl.

My body was lying on a wooden floor. My skin was wrapped in the roughness of a shift, and my feet were bare. As the tooth finally broke into a dance of blood, one of the stars dropped down from the sky and into my bloody, open mouth. The star was also small, as small as the tooth, as small as the hole the tooth left in my gumline.

There was pain, and I cried for Momma. There was blood, and I cried for Daddy. I rose from the floor and spread myself throughout the house, which was smaller than the house I was raised in. My hair clung to my neck in fine, blonde curls, the rooms were quiet as the dust that slept all over the stillness of the house. I was small and a girl and alone.

I walked back to the place where the ceiling split and found a ladder leading into the attic, into the sky. In movements barely my own, my hands grabbed at the rungs and my arms hoisted my body up and my feet followed. I was climbing into the attic, into the sky, and my body was not heavy.

The spider did not shock me. When I reached the attic and saw its legs folded in sleep in the corner of the attic in darkness, I did not panic, not even at its many eyes, its hair, its largeness. It was bigger than god, and I could have fit inside it, but it was asleep, and I yawned with an ancient need that drove me.

I laid down beside it. I burrowed into myself. There was breath. The spider was with me, and I was with the spider, and we were breathing. I felt the fallen star in my stomach. The house creaked in a night wind, and I woke.

 

—

           

Bees, bees, bees. Their yellow arrests the eye, their buzz the ear, their fuzz the fingertips they land upon, their honey a balm for the nose and the tongue. There are bees in my brain. I am in love with them, they terrify me. When they twitch, I feel the tremor in my heart, as if there is a colony in my body, as if that colony is ablaze. When I stumble in that state between awake and asleep, the hypnic jerk in my leg that startles me is a bee, an angry bee on fire. It is trying to get out. It fell one night into my head, a larva white and curled as a bone, as a waxing moon. In my sleep, it transformed, wings happened, now it bangs against my skin in its bloody, lightless flight. This is the nature of dreams. I know they mean well, I know the moon is what transfigured them, but sometimes, I don’t know what to make of them. They feel like the end of the world.

            There is a crater under the Yucatan, the center of which lies beneath the Gulf of Mexico. Sixty-six million years ago, the meteor that made it fell from the sky. A tooth, a bone, a burning hunk of moon. It killed what felt like everything, three quarters of all the breath of earth. And what is sleep but death, dreams the hot memories of whatever after means? I keep calling dreams something other, something to sew sense into them. Bones. Bees. I dig for them, they haunt me. But I am tired of the naming of dreams. Dreams are dreams—the one I had this time took place in that crater under the Yucatan.

            There was an excavation going on. Bones littered the seafloor, remains of megalodons and mosasaurs rendered harmless in their death, exposed in the old sand. I got the sense that everyone I had ever loved was with me at this site of dreams, of apocalypse, of the pulling back of the curtain. There were countless faces, and we were underwater, we swam over sand with the wildernesses of our bodies. The sun was felt in every hidden place. The sun was rain and it poured. There was my mother, my father, my sister, my nana, my friends, my lost loves, anyone I had ever danced with, or laughed with. We were digging for bones together. It was a common anthem in this sea of blue and inexplicable breath.

            The tide felt like the wind, and it blew a witch into our midst. Now here I go again, letting the fancies and the visions take me. Stevie Nicks walked through the water, wrapped in a black shawl that glittered with sequins, her blonde flowing behind her like a separate sea. Her platforms kicked up the sand of the seafloor, and it was like she came in on a cloud.

            She floated to my mother and asked her to dance. My mother declined, so the songstress turned to me and smiled, holding out her hand. I took it, and cello sounds descended upon the excavation site, everyone gathered to watch us waltz. She was so much taller than me, I felt like a child. We swayed together like nurse sharks doing ballet, we were the coils of an anemone, swishing together and electric. The light had rhythm in the shafts that glanced upon us, and I felt the light as I felt the sand, the sand like watery light beneath my feet. We danced, that was what we did. We danced until I tripped, and then we toppled over gracelessly, we fell as if on land, terrestrial, magicless. Everyone laughed, including me, Stevie Nicks did, too. No one could believe that I had fucked this up. Everyone was laughing. Every bubble was a laugh, was a wish that someone had made, and those bubbles floated up to the surface holding light in them, holding love. The sand was soft between my toes.

            When I think of that laughter now, of that otherworldly upwelling of love, I know what dreams are, what they could be, because all those loves of mine in that crater under the Yucatan dream and have dreamt and will dream, just like me. Let me attempt the naming of dreams once more. Dreams—if not bees, if not bones—are desires.

            Desire—what a word. Someone is dreaming of their lover, who has died or will die, they want them to never have left, they want them to still exist, they want them to stay. Desire derives from the Latin de sidere, “from the stars,” we wait for death and long for life, we wait for life and long for death, all of which we blame on the heavens. We keep wading through sand, we are bits of stars sifting through more bits of stars for the whole star, the singular light that started all this. Someone is dreaming of escaping their history. Another is dreaming of looking back, of going back, of making a pillar of their body so that nothing else will change, so that nothing else will die. I believe there is only one common dream; not to find happiness, but to define it.

Once, I dreamt of being small again, when the forest stretched forever, when the sea felt like it was swallowing me, when I curled my fingers into claws and ran throughout the house, pretending I was a dinosaur and quicker than water. I thought I knew what I wanted. I thought I wanted you to love me as much as I loved you. I thought I wanted constancy, security, ownership, something that was mine. I thought love could be quantified. I thought I wanted to share my life.

I do not want to be small again. I want to retain my smallness, all the while growing, I want to at last accept the space I take up and turn my back on what made me. My god, I want to make myself. Nothing means now what it once meant to me.

End. Begin. Dreams are a terror where everything ends, where the bee that did not in reality mistake my head for a hive, did not dive into my ear, did not dig its ugly way into my head, still leaves its awful buzzing echoing down into my throat. Here, the sun is a memory, the moon takes a seat on my tongue. Rational life is killed in those hidden places, in those sleeps full of ripe or rotten fruit, and feelings take the place of life, sensations reign, the brain is doomed. In that calamity, a crater is made. The earth keeps spinning, a new eye on its face. A strange being steps out of the water. I go on. I am left to remember those unrealities; to piece them together, to carry them with me into the dawn. In the end, the dreams and the impressions they leave on the skin are only what I make of them. So, I made this.

—

 

my spine is a coral when i sleep

when starfish crawl upon it like needful hands

it’s a vision no it’s more it’s you

 

i love the night

where pores open into howls and bubbling cauldrons

where wings are cellos that vibrate in my ear

 

the bees are they

here i feel them they tear

me into hums and images pulsing in the dark

 

Sam’s Birthday, I Don’t Remember by Caryl Townsend

 

By Eylie Sasajima

Nuclear Spring

That’s not radioactivity you smell. It’s only ozone. It’s only fertilizer running off, forming soft spots, and ditches, and puddles that last from April to August. Every winter, you forget about thunderstorms. Winter is creaky. Branches freeze and snap. The wind sounds like an old person’s cough. You get used to the dead-leaf-rasp of it all. You hear the first thunderstorm of spring and think a nuclear bomb has gone off over south-central Pennsylvania. There’s the flash. There’s the detonation. Should you hold up your thumb and measure the distance? Don’t be stupid. You’re at ground zero. You’re vaporized along with the raccoon corpses and the nascent corn stalks. If this warm front was the beginning of mutually assured destruction, you wouldn’t live long enough to be glad that you’re finally getting some spring weather. But no one is assuring anyone’s destruction. That’s not World War III overhead, only those clouds that your neighbors make small talk about finally clashing and dying. And are you a little afraid of the lightning? Did it hit too close to home? Did it wake you up at four and light up the sky like it was high noon? You think it’s the end of the world because the world could only end where it began. That’s where the bomb drops, that’s where the meteor hits, that’s where the earth peels open. How could the end be near when you’re at a campsite in West Virginia? In a dorm room? At your grandparents’ house? You were born and raised at ground zero. When you turn on the Channel 8 news in the morning, they won’t be reporting on nuclear fallout. They’ll turn it over to Joe Calhoun with the weather, and he’ll tell you that when the cold front hits next week, you shouldn’t wait for a shockwave or a fireball. And still, you’ll hear thunder on the horizon and pull the duvet over your head. You’ll think: At least I’m home. Where else would I die?

 

Untitled by Caryl Townsend

 

By Amara Sorosiak

In Hollow Walls

Darien tucked new cereal boxes into the cabinet, then creased and folded the empty paper bag width-wise. He began pulling cans out of the next bags and setting aside chips to go in the other cabinet so Melanie didn’t get tempted when reaching for the almonds. Another bag down, so he folded and slid it under the sink alongside the rest, just like his roommates had it set up months ago. He hadn’t disturbed anything.  

They were in the living room—Antonio watching TV with the recliner up, Melanie on the adjacent couch doing work on her iPad. For a moment, even Melanie’s vigorous erasing couldn’t take away from the tranquil image. Darien wished it was him in the recliner instead. Antonio’s eyes began to wander, though, and his body squirmed. Melanie paid him no mind—somewhat unlike her, but Darien was learning just how focused she got with her artwork. 

“Do you hear that?” Antonio asked Melanie. Melanie’s head popped up and looked around. There was this faint tapping sound coming from the ceiling area, which Darien dismissed at first.  

“Paper-fucking-thin, I’m telling you, the Wilsons’ dog might as well be in the living room.”  

“Only you’d get upset over a puppy,” Melanie remarked. “Just turn up the TV or something.”  

He did so, grumbling under his breath about the puppy not being the problem, something about the landlord, before drowning his own voice out in favor of whatever Jack Black movie was on television. That couldn’t have been more tolerable, Darien thought. Melanie resumed her work, as if nothing occurred, until clangs and thuds erupted from the wall behind her. She jerked out of her seat. 

“For fuck’s sake—” Antonio sprung up from the recliner.  

“That wasn’t the dog, was it?” Melanie asked, looking at Antonio. Antonio shut off the TV, revealing scratching from within the metal vents.  

“No, smaller than that…” Antonio stuck his ear between the couch and vent grate. 

Darien continued with the groceries, slowing his motions. He wasn’t one to get involved in his roommates’ antics. He barely knew them after all, only knowing of Antonio through their  friend, Trent, before moving in, and since returning home from service he’s turned over a new leaf; not meddling unless completely necessary. It’s the difference between peace and bloody hands, he’d learned. But he waited to see how this would pan out, sensing it might be an exception to his new rule.  

“Help me move the couch.” Antonio said.  

“What do we need to move the couch for?” Melanie asked.  

“There’s something alive in the vents, Melanie—”  

“So you’re gonna let whatever it is into the living room? Gross!”  

“Well, I don’t want it dying in there, that’ll reek. Now grab the other side.”  

Melanie didn’t budge.  

“You can’t move it yourself? What happened to that weightlifting goal you were so adamant about?” Melanie asked.  

“I don’t know. How’s your Duolingo streak going? ¿Ya puedes hablar español?” 

“El rojo maíz.” Melanie crossed her arms, holding her head up high. 

Antonio inched the couch away from the wall by himself, made more laborious by Melanie returning to her seat. 

“You know I got that RSI in my wrist, man, I can’t be lifting couches,” she added.  

“Maybe if you took a break once in a while, it wouldn’t have happened in the first place.” Antonio said on his way to the kitchen after reaching the vent grate. “Scuse me, Darien.” 

Antonio kneeled to reach the toolkit under the sink, avoiding any pointed edges from the disorganized tools. Darien eyed him, softly closing the cabinet.  

“So, what’s going on?” Darien asked, low.  

“Eh, I don’t know. I think a bird got into the vents or something. I’m gonna take it back outside.”  

Before Darien could motion for Antonio to give him the supplies, Antonio was already headed towards the vent grate with a screwdriver and cardboard box. Soon after unscrewing the grate, Antonio was face-to-face with the enigma in the vents, which the box failed to cover. He let out a screech. Darien still tried to deny what he thought it was. 

“What was that?” Melanie asked, now expressing some concern. She watched a pink, slender tail slip into the crevices of the recliner. “You did not just let a rat in here.” 

“I didn’t know it would—”  

“Ugh, Antonio, why, why, why?!”  

“Okay, calm down, lemme just—” Antonio stared down the recliner from across the room. “I can catch it.”  

“No, you’ll catch a disease or something!” Melanie said. Antonio was adjusting his grip on the screwdriver, positioning the shank downward and grabbing the box. “And I heard they eat their own kind, so why wouldn’t it try to eat you!?”  

Antonio slowly crawled closer to the chair, making it about halfway until Darien interfered, pulling his roommate in the opposite direction. Antonio gave up without a fight. Darien moved on to the chair and kneeled, getting a good look underneath. His hand maneuvered through the recliner’s inner-workings, the rest of his body tense until he spotted the cowering rat. 

“We better not have a rat problem.” Melanie said. “I’ll burn our lovely landlord alive if we do.”  

“I mean it’s one rat. I wouldn’t freak out just yet,” Antonio said.  

“I guess…just for the love of God, I don’t want whatever it has.”  

Darien contemplated how he would tell the two of them, if at all. With gentle fingers he lured the rat towards him—it was Amir, he could tell now. He should have figured, given this one’s craftiness, and his tendency to get lost. He assumed the worst, that he’d have to feed Amir poison, blow him up, to pacify his roommates, and keep any suspicions at bay. Or do so for their own amusement, if they were anything like his fellow soldiers. Realistically, he could never commit such acts; just looking at the way Amir nestled into the palm of his hand solidified that. He extracted Amir from the couch, his grip around the rat too loose for his roommates’ liking, judging by their faces. They watched as Darien examined Amir for any blemishes, the rat not squirming at all, just sniffing the edge of Darien’s palm. 

 “So…you gonna get rid of that thing or keep coddling it?” Melanie asked, her voice getting higher. Darien held Amir up to his face, watching as his nose twitched in the air and down below. He could have a normal day, follow his roommates’ orders, and get rid of Amir, never to be found again and susceptible to all dangers of the outside world, or be the crude force that eliminated him for certain. But he couldn’t endure that kind of guilt, which too often sounded like blasting in his head. He could already feel the spark running up his spine. 

“That’s yours isn’t it…” Antonio said.  

“No—no way,” Melanie said, storming towards Darien, reaching for Amir’s tail, then clawing for it when Darien raised him above his head. “I’m not letting that thing give me a disease, or crawl up my leg while I’m sleeping, or eat the shit in the cabinets. You’re not keeping a fucking rat in the house, you lunatic!” 

Even Melanie seemed taken aback by her words, her face relaxing.  

“Okay, berating him isn’t going to solve the problem.” Antonio said, pulling Melanie away from Darien. “Darien, where have you been keeping that?” 

“He’ll stay out of your way.” Darien said, creeping towards the garage door. Antonio nodded stiffly.  

“We’ll talk about this tomorrow once she calms down.”  

“Yeah right, I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep tonight.” Melanie responded, already halfway down the hall. 

 ※  ※  ※  

 

Darien kept out of sight for the better part of the following morning, laying low in his bedroom. But he paced, as if impatient, somehow hoping it would neutralize the pain in his forearm. He glided the palm of his hand upwards, downwards across it, attempting to rub out the sheen coating his skin, the blood staining it. Rats feed off distress, he understood, so he muffled his groans as best he could—knowing he needed to let something out, but fearing the consequences, like a cacophony of them crashing through the vents, chewing up his body beyond repair, but maybe for the better. Turn him inside out and eliminate this collected exterior he’d been keeping up, already.  

There was a minute yet stern knock at the door. 

“Darien? You okay in there?”  

Darien didn’t have it in him to talk. It felt like his bones were shriveling up, and every one of his pores ached.  

“Y-yeah, I’m fine.” Darien squeaked. His answer must not have been convincing enough, as the doorknob began to turn.  

“Look, I just wanted to talk some more about yesterday,” Antonio said. “Melanie’s out of the house, so now would be a good time, just the two of us.”  

Antonio stepped inside—this was his first time in here. His eyes moved from the blank sheets and walls, with the exception of an American flag, to the solitary dresser with a flattened Neosporin tube on top. Darien stood off to the side, about as still as the air.  

“What’s behind your back?” Antonio asked. 

“Nothing, don’t worry about it.”  

“Too late, I’ve been worried.”  

Darien revealed his arm, the puncture wounds glossed with Neosporin on full display. 

“One of them bit me.”  

“‘One of them’—!?” 

“I was trying to help him get to the bowl, but then he got freaked out—”  

“Darien,” Antonio tried to lend him a reassuring hand, but he swatted it away before retreating from the room into the garage.  

He shouldn’t have let it go this far; he shouldn’t have picked up the first one months ago. It came out of nowhere, where suddenly he was infatuated by how intelligent rats were, their ability to survive in almost any conditions. He wanted their trust, them to coexist with him, and listen. And he’d achieved that, whenever he kneeled before the swarm of ten he’d collected—they’d circle him, travel up his arms and down his back, like he was their sun. The gentle patter of their paws was usually soothing, but today, for once, they weren’t much solace. They reminded him of empty pats on the back, empty words, going from total numbness to unshakable terror in the matter of minutes. And he tried to make his companions a comfort again; checking their daily needs for the day, cleaning their cages as they roamed free, but his mind kept trailing off to desert heat outside of a car park, watching crafty kids play hide-and-seek in the wrong place at the wrong time. His own meek voice. The maniacal laughter of other troops. Humans are too big for their own good, even when they wish to be smaller. 

The door from the house into the garage creaked open, revealing Antonio. Darien moved out of sight, not wanting him to see him like this. The rats scattered as well, some still circling Darien’s feet, crawling on him. His eyes followed each of them.  

“Don’t touch them.” Darien said, preparing a defensive hand.  

“I don’t want to hurt them…or you—” Antonio said.  

“Yes, you do. You both sure wanted to yesterday.”  

“Darien, this doesn’t seem—”  

“I can’t lose them!” 

Darien’s exclamation was enough to startle a few of the rats, causing them to scurry away. For the one or two that did stay, Darien kneeled before them, profusely apologizing under his breath when they met eyes. Unfortunately, he felt Antonio watching.  

“Look, I don’t care about the rats, and Melanie will come around,” Antonio said. “I’ll admit we don’t know each other that well, and Trent told us some awful stuff went down for you overseas, so we’ve been trying to give you space…but I’m afraid you’re letting this consume you. It doesn’t seem healthy.” 

“I could be doing way worse things to myself right now.” Darien said, his voice raw. “You can leave. I’m sorry for eating into your day.”  

“You’re not—” 

There was a knock at the garage door, spooking a few of the rats again. 

“Darien? Are you in there?” Melanie asked.  

“Melanie, can we talk in the house—?” Antonio quickly said.  

“Are you guys both—okay, whatever. I wanted to say I realize I came off harsh yesterday. We can talk this out now if you—” 

She pulled up the garage door. A few of the rats scurried away from the light. Darien scrambled to keep them all contained to one corner and watched them with unwavering eyes.  

“No fucking way…” Melanie continued. 

“Melanie, we’re gonna talk through this. Calmly, right?” Antonio said, meeting her at the entrance.  

“I have stuff stored in here, are you kidding me!?”  

“Melanie, come on…”  

The two kept going at it as Darien rose to his feet, his shadow shielding the rats so, maybe, they would still feel protected, but his roommates continued their fight further into the space. And as a force of habit around them, Darien took a couple steps back, at the expense of Amir’s tail. Amir let out a shriek and navigated towards the light. Darien chased after Amir before he got too far towards the street. He tried to corner him, but to no avail. Amir was at the edge of the driveway, and Darien succeeded in a last-minute dive to catch him, but only for a moment. Amir sunk his teeth into Darien’s hand, the pain enough to undo his grip. It was only an act of self-sabotage, though, as in Amir’s freedom towards the street, a car broke for him too late. 

Darien didn’t approach the body, not wanting to cause alarm. There were crying kids somewhere who had to witness the whole thing. He could hear them but couldn’t find them—where were they? Were they inside? He could’ve sworn there were kids, but no one seemed to care. Were his ears the only ones ringing too? They couldn’t be deceiving him, was anyone else hearing it? It was like half the block had disappeared for good along with Amir, yet it was holding him hostage. Every building was hollow in an instant and he dreaded the consequences, the laughter, the sleepless nights. Darien hoisted himself up, his hand bloody and covered in gravel yet barely real to him—his vision uncanny as well. He couldn’t take his eyes off the road. Maybe he saw a twitch of something, he kept watching to make sure, but pain quickly washed over him. 

Darien felt a hand on his shoulder—Melanie’s. She circled around Darien, blocking his view of Amir. Reaffirming her grip, she turned Darien back towards the house. She might as well have said, “You did good, kid, it’s all for the better.” 

 

Walking Forest by Vee Sharp

 

By Iris Scherr

Worm Charming

The ghost of a train still rattles the tracks.

Tightrope on rumors like a manticore’s tentacle.

I hear the passengers whisper about me

while the tracks continue to shake.

I put my ear against the soil

and pretend I understand what they say.

If worms have five hearts,

I wonder if they could spare one.

I beg them to come out,

and they do during the flood.

How could Noah understand

that they would be dead in the sun?

 

By Eylie Sasajima

convent of myself

on my twentieth birthday, i entered the convent of myself.

thereafter i was my mother, and i was my mother’s daughter,

and i was her sister, and i was the sister of myself.

thereafter i planted myself a garden and forbade myself

from eating its apples, from plucking its flowers,

from coveting the fruits of other gardens.

thereafter i was with the word, and the word was me,

and i spoke the word, and i was with myself.

thereafter i took the veil and my hair grew past my knees,

and when i cut my hair i buried it and prayed to it.

thereafter i tended to the empty tombs of myself,

i awaited the second coming of myself, i sacrificed a lamb

at the altar of myself, i entered a covenant with myself,

i was the beginning of myself, and i was the end.

 

By Iris Scherr

They Made My Coffin Out of Cross

I must be a zombie,

Teeth yellow, nails chipped.

I’ve never been invited in your lobby.

The dead don’t go in. Jesus forgives

Until it comes to apologies for astrology.

I’ve dug my fingers through your chest

And pulled out your heart in flesh,

Which I ate and told you then

I licked the apple I didn’t understand.

Taste of mutton.

They called me a glutton.

 

At the Market by Vee Sharp

 

By Joshua Torrence

The Threshold

The girl did not want to go back to the house. It was cold, and the sky was gray there. That was where the plane would take them after a week of touring California in a borrowed car, just before Christmas break. They were driving to where all the planes were. Her parents sat up front, puzzled by the voice coming from the front of the car, who’d been telling them where to go. Her mother’s hair was a nest of sleep, and strands of it had broken off and remained hanging on the car seat headrest. Her father’s orange-billed baseball cap was skewed off to one side. The voice was a booming thing; the girl pulled her blanket close.

He had always been an Orioles fan. The girl would watch games with him sometimes in their shorehouse by the bay. In silence she would sit while her father shouted futilely at the players on the screen, louder than the deafening volume of the television. Her mother would always lie in the master room upstairs on the bed, a glittering sleep mask pasted over her eyes. The volume and the shouting would wake her up from her long naps, and she would always come storming down the stairs, her painted-red nails digging into her palms. It was always loud at the girl’s house.

She looked out one of the car windows as puzzlement turned to voices raised up front. The voices raised like water. The dark road slowly became water, and the car became their marina boat from back home. She was suddenly hugged by an orange life vest that shone brightly under a heavy hanging moon. She kept her eyes on the moon to stay grounded over troubled waters. She knew its face well. The buckles were tight, but she felt insecure as the boat rocked with the waving of the water. Holding onto the side rail didn’t do her any good—the boat was going too fast, and the water icily sprayed her face from the bottom of the boat as it bounced

over the milky bay. She always wondered every time she stepped on the boat’s deck if she might fall, if she might fall into the whirring things that moved the boat, if they would slice her up into itty bitty pieces. She didn’t want that because it would hurt. But the car was no different. She felt the floor rumble against the road beneath her feet.

She clutched her blanket tighter and turned her head from the window. Her blanket—she couldn’t remember a moment when it wasn’t with her. It was lavender on one side and deep grape on the other, dotted with purple-petaled flowers on the lighter half and connected with thin, green vines. Thick fringes lined the blanket’s edges like the tendrils of a climbing plant. The girl always traced her lips with them in deep thought. She was doing so now as she saw the road zip past her and as she held the blanket close. It was soft and warm like the Pacific beach had been, and there was still sprinkled sand left from where she’d lain it out to sit criss-cross-applesause, watching the ocean at its work.

“Why isn’t she talking? You turn her off or something?” her father asked. The voice had been difficult the whole trip, and they were all tired of it, and the night was all around them, it was all there was. The girl buried her face in the blanket, fine grains of the beach scraping against her eyelids as they locked shut.

“I didn’t turn her off. I don’t know why she isn’t talking to us anymore. Just look at the screen. See the blue line?” Her mother pointed to the intersection. “Follow it.” He shook his head and sped up.

“It’s better when I can hear her. Keep my eyes on the road.”

“Well, you’re just gonna have to deal.” Her mother turned her head around from up front to look at the girl and faintly smiled.

“We’re almost there, love. See, look.” The girl picked up her head from her blanket, and her mother pointed up to a big building of concrete with a flashing light in front of it with big letters that meant something important was there. “We’re gonna turn in, drop off the car, and then fly home.” She turned back around. “I miss our home,” she continued to no one, “and we’ve gotta think about a tree.”

The girl suddenly smiled. A tree. And there would be a lit fireplace that they’d make sure to put out before they went to sleep. With cookies, maybe oatmeal raisin this year. The girl loved oatmeal raisin—those were her favorite—but she would leave some behind on a nice plate with a full glass of milk for the big man in red. The house was always quieter when these things happened, the good things that made her smile, made everyone smile and laugh. There would be no time on the boat because it was too cold for that, and all that would be ringing throughout the house would be Christmas music, not the shouts of some man in black and white throwing red flags and yellow flags, the shouts that made her father shout back. The sun was here, but it would not be there, and she knew she was very far from the house, on another shore, her mother kept saying. The shore they lived on was filled with deep and gucky seaweed waters, and there was a dock there, each wooden leg covered with barnacles. The boat would remain by it, tied up.

“Hey, why are their spikes on the speed bump?” her father said. The girl looked out her window to see things poking out of the black and yellow bumps that sat on guard before the entrance to the big building. She frowned. Those bumps were usually smooth, but now there were these metal spikes, and the car was stuck, and she wanted to open the door, she wanted to get out. Clutching at her blanket, her toes scraped impatiently in her pink jelly flip flops. A car behind them beeped, and her father rolled down the window to stick out his head.

“There’re spikes up, it doesn’t look like I can drive over them!” The girl looked behind her, to see what the person beeping would say back. She remembered that time in the McDonald’s drive-thru, and her father had been beeped at, and he’d gotten out of the car, and she didn’t remember what happened after that. Her teeth scraped together, grinding furiously beneath her sunburned cheeks.

“Just go! You’re supposed to go,” the beeper shouted.

“What a dick,” her father said. “What am I supposed to do, just—”

“He says you’re supposed to go, just go,” her mother said quietly.

There was silence, and then the car lurched toward the entrance. They moved too quickly into the big building that the girl saw was filled with other cars. She covered her ears to keep them from hurting if the tires popped and popped her eardrums with them. Her fingers brushed strands of hair that were pulled up in a small blonde bun atop her head. But no pops were heard, and everything was fine.

“Jesus,” her mother said, “slow down.” The girl looked out the window and saw a pair of sliding doors. She put her little hand on the window. She watched them pass by until she couldn’t see them. Her father was fuming.

The girl crossed her ankles beneath her seat as the air with no speech in it loomed over her like an eye that was looking for her. Her father pulled into a parking space. He twisted the key out of the ignition. There was no sound from anyone, but this was not the quiet the girl liked. And then her father gripped the steering wheel and screamed, as if expelling a glass shard lodged in his throat. The girl looked out her window.

“Who planned this entire trip?” he said, after catching his breath for a moment. “Who was it planned for? You don’t cut me off. You don’t tell me how to drive. I’m tired, and it’s late. You will not cut me off like that.” His mouth barely opened as he spoke, his teeth held tightly together in two sharp white rows.

“Stop. Please, stop,” her mother whispered. The girl kept her eyes on the black car next to theirs. It was very pretty to look at, especially the curves—they were smooth—and she traced them with her finger against the window’s glass. “I—I want to thank you, darling, for planning this trip. Thank you for planning it for me. You’ve always known I wanted to walk the beaches here and see the tar pits and the Hollywood sign, and you gave that to me and more and we had a great time. Thank you,” her mother said. There was silence, and her mother’s breath shook like candlelight in a cold draft. Everyone was very still. The girl’s eyes did not leave the night-cloaked car.

And then her mother put her head in her hands, and the girl could not look, did not want to look. She kept tracing the car’s curves as her mother cried. The car was very pretty. That would’ve been a better car for them to drive. It probably had a booming voice that was clear and smooth, one that would make her father happy and tell him exactly where to go. Her mother was speaking as she sobbed, but the girl smiled because she could barely hear now, with the pretty black car near her, so she kept tracing the black car to stay deaf. She held onto her blanket, and its softness in places without sandiness was kind to the red from the sun on her skin. The beach.

“But don’t you ever hold it over my head,” her mother said. The girl imagined the beach again. “I’ll leave if you do, believe it.” The foamy bubbles sliding gently across the tops of her feet. “We need a tree.” There were seagulls in the sky and they were easy to smile at. “We’re gonna get a tall tree, and we’re gonna get crystal and glass ornaments that are new and beautiful,

and we’re gonna finally decorate the house with lights that we’re gonna buy that I’ve been wanting forever.” She missed her pretty umbrella that had been all her own, small and pink and shading her and blowing steadily in a slight breeze as her parents basked in chairs that were a world away from where she sat. “We need more lights, to cover the house with.” It was like they were dead, and she could not see their eyes beneath their sunglasses, but they were only sleeping because their chests were still moving, and it had confused her because they were quiet even though they were not dead. “We’re going to get them.” She’d liked wearing her sunglasses, the ones that had pink frames and purple shades and were too big for her face. They’d made everything deep purple. They’d made everything new, and she wanted to put them on again.

“Fine. Get your lights. I’m not helping one bit,” her father responded quietly. “Let’s get everything out and head in. We’re gonna be late.” He opened his door, and the prospect of trees and oatmeal cookies and fireplaces no longer made the girl smile. Only the beach was left.

“Wait, do we just leave the car here? I know we have to drop it off somewhere, but—” There was a slam and her mother stopped talking. The only sound was of the girl’s finger, sliding across the windowpane until her father lifted open the trunk. “Okay, love,” her mother said without turning around. “Let’s go.” They got out of the car.

Her parents kept talking as the trunk was emptied, but this time in biting whispers, and the girl could not hear them. She was handed her sequined backpack, which she barely glanced at as the flickering lights of the garage ceiling caught her eye. Slipping on the backpack, the concrete was hard beneath her jelly-shoed feet, a mild breeze brushing past her legs and billowing her white skirt that hung past her knees. The blanket was still clutched in her hands. Cars were lined up all around her in rows, and she had never seen so many like this before. She began to follow them, her feet clomping quietly on the ground.

Looking back, she saw her parents. They were still talking and talking endlessly but not talking to each other. Their heads were peering inside the trunk, their bodies were moving, they had no voices, no faces on their moving bodies. All she heard was her own breathing. She turned back around and kept walking away, and as she neared the end of the line of cars, she saw a big bus moving from her right and slowly pulling up to and stopping at a curb, near where many people covered with bags and suitcases were waiting. They began to rush up to the big bus and pack themselves inside, and the girl started to run.

She caught the doors just as they were pulling closed. She slunk between them into the big bus and saw tall metal poles lining the middle. People were standing and holding onto them, so she held on, too. She thought of the beach, only the beach. Taking off her backpack, she rummaged through it, until she found her purple-tinted sunglasses that were too big for her face. She put them on and stuffed her blanket into the backpack. Then, everyone in the big bus was deep purple, all silent, bracing themselves as the big bus, also purple, swayed with every bump in the road. The night outside was darker than it had been before; so dark. She was alone in this crowd of people that she did not know. She did not know where she was going or how she would find the beach again or why exactly she was here, on this big purple bus with these big purple people, plunging through the deep black night. But the moon was a violet dime. The girl saw it through the window, and it made her smile. She knew its face well.

 

Untitled by Caryl Townsend

 

By Caryl Townsend

Rehoboth Can Be Our Kiss City

after Blondshell’s Kiss City

Mama, I’m adjacent to a lot of love!

- Blondshell

July offers the sweetest hello,

sitting in Richard the white Honda civic,

on VanDyke Avenue, deciding

not to compliment the scar on your eyebrow,

for now

let me begin with your hair,

a slightly sunburnt smile,

something less intimate for an introduction.

Would it have changed anything—

how easy it is?

to lay next to you, the beach almost empty,

except for the highschoolers

climbing the big lifeguard chair, rebellious

in the dark,

they must’ve seen us

too, must’ve known what we know now.

Tell me, do you remember Selene’s sky,

sitting above the water? And

the brightest star, just to the left of your shoulder,

The star! That one,

can it be our home now?

More permanent than the almost star, moving

light, the story of an old woman who

tried to convince you it was a shooting star.

It was likely an airplane, we figured,

from how it carries a slow blinking sadness,

for the wishes that can’t be made.

But I promise I’ll send letters,

tiny packages of flower petals,

and postcards, and poetry books,

whatever I find with any resonance

of summer. I wish to share

some sentimentality I can’t shake,

with you now, co-owner of our bright,

far, new home

viewable only from Dewey Beach sand

between 9:30 and 11:30 p.m.,

both of us a memory, passing,

moving.

 

Hands by Vee Sharp

 

By Sophie Foster

Beachfront Clockwork

Fledgling marine blend in the calendar flood,

earth solidifying around our soft bodies.

Earlier we sank into Crayola hills,

moved light as a gliding summer hymn,

fell steadfast into morning-cool dunes.

It’s the rouge of animation, the blush

of fresh life that keeps us awake.

Our girlhoods fold into seafoam,

awash with aquatic spirit,

drifting out into Atlantic pulls.

Didn’t we crave that stiletto tremble,

that hum of unembellished desire?

Swept upward into sensibility,

now our bare heels sink into sand,

hours somersaulting, sugared carousel.

Twinkling in the budding noon light,

blooming to bloomed and still

witnesses to our own rebirths,

unwilling as we’ll always be,

sapphired by our sprouting.

Dawning dewdrops,

aren’t we good together

and bathed in morning sun?

Aren’t we beautiful?

Aren’t we bright?