By Edie Vigushin SC ’24, Willa Umansky PZ ’27, Zoe Lusk PZ ’25

entangled in the clear bowl atop my mother’s bureau. Like little metallic fish. z

I kneel before the moon praying to feel small, hoping to see that moon which casts wonder and renders me speechless, instead I see only my bleeding skin reflected back at me. My mind is bloated and salted, ballooning from my body until it blocks out all the light. To feel small is to feel marvel, to feel large is to be blinded by cynicism. Will the dawn forsake me? And if it comes what will the light reveal? e

I know where your window is and now I’ll never walk past the same again, so fuck you. w

The roommate was a middle school teacher, and Isabelle told me that she woke up at five a.m. to paint her nails a different color every day, got to seven coats before she’d take it off and start again on Monday. I sucked on the idea like a piece of hard candy, swirling it around and feeling the edges with my tongue. z 

My mom says I noticed the poignancy of life and death from a young age, and that it’s a blessing. Personally, I think I’m shackled to a chair of doom and destruction. I wish I was cool enough to just be the doom and destruction, or brainlessly happy enough to not let it eat me. w

Big eyes, big nose, big lips, always red. Fingernails too. She wore at least five bracelets on each wrist at a time, and actually ripped her ear lobes in half from wearing too-heavy earrings for too-many years. She moved to clip-ons after that. z

It’s beautiful to love so big, to see potential everywhere. To be cut open and stripped raw. Love becomes violence, weaponized by me, against me, seeping into the craggy openings in my being. I do feel far away from it all but even so it slips from its form until it becomes something loose, translucent, threaded into my skin. e

nothing flows out of me, except texts to my therapist debating the merits of SSRIs. Oh the age old question, to quell the void in my stomach and ruin my sex drive or to let the void grow but sustain myself with the art of an orgasm? I’m sure the founding fathers grappled with queries of the sort. I’m assuming this feeling will go away once I regain purpose in ever sunny SoCal, but New York seems to be bringing out the numbness in my limbs and the hollowness in my chest that I thought I had filled. My fingers on the keys is far too laborious a task for me right now. I’m so weak. Cough. Cough cough. The mere thought of going to the bathroom is too much, let alone the treachery of forcing myself to be creative. w

I don’t know if it’s an insatiable desire from my incandescent 8,000 nerves down under or just an asinine need to please. w

Saudi Arabian wrestler boyfriend (gone pro and rebranded as Italian for the small screen, now known as Manny Faberino, Big Money Manny, I’m not even kidding). z

She spoons Pennies and buttons into my mouth where they fall swiftly through my stomach into the cavern of my uterus. She wants the blanket, she brings dirt into my bed. I want to tell her we can find freedom in each other. e

After her mother died she suggested he join a “Golden Age Club” and he asked, “What for? these activities are for old people; they are not for me.” His favorite food was pudding and his favorite chair rocked. w

The music continues to play, harsh and broken, spilling out into the black night. They stay like that for some time, never touching once, their desire visible between them like a flame that must be stoked. e

stretching the demands of a plaid snowsuit as she poses with my grandfather in front of a snowy background. She told me that, the summer before high school, my grandmother wordlessly began serving her fruit for every meal. Platters of carefully carved grapefruits, bowls of silky and translucent segments of pomelos, small rubies of pomegranate. I imagine her lounging in a one-piece on the scratchy Astroturf of my grandparents’ backyard, spitting seeds, dangling grapes into her mouth. Eating nothing else. Making eyes at the clementine tree across the pool. z

You aren’t even real to me anymore. You’re a mythical figure of pain and carnage that tells a tale so sad that it could make the heart of a heartless man split in two. I wish I could mourn you I wish I could remember you I wish I wish I wish. w

Summer materialized in the city in a moment of brilliant immediacy. All at once the trees are flushed in a gentle sea of greenery, unfurling their beauty as if they’d had the ability to all along. e