Colton Review, Volume 22, Spring 2026

2026

2026

the Editors

Great minds have called creativity a form of time travel or telepathy. How else do art and literature have the power to captivate us with stories which vary in their resemblance to our own lives? This question is what calls many of us to our work at The Colton Review. While the answer remains elusive, our staff chases it further down the rabbit hole with every issue. This year, the creative community that fills our pages wasn’t restricted to finding the resemblance between the lives of creator and audience. Instead, they invited us on an intimate journey to find the resemblance between the lives of their past and present. Their excavation of memories, vulnerabilities, and desires coalesced into an undeniable theme of nostalgia.

We felt awed and inspired by the myriad ways this theme wove itself throughout the submissions we received. Nostalgia haunts survivors of disasters great and small. It tinges the heartbeats of soulmates lost to the apocalypse and hospital room patients awaiting a diagnosis. Nostalgia roosts in childhood bedrooms, internet archives, and sandy toes at sunset. Nostalgia is even capable

of inverting itself, casting brilliant visions of love we’ve yet to receive from family we’ve yet to meet. This year, our writers and artists pushed this theme to its limits: the scope and radiance of their effort makes for a richly satisfying experi ence that we are honored to share with you.

The power of memory to enshrine relationships and achievements is especially relevant this year as we celebrate Meredith’s one hundredth anniversary of our campus here on Hillsborough Street. These buildings, which long predate the inception of The Colton Review upon our commitment to uplifting the voices of women and other marginalized storytellers. It was only fitting that we paid homage to Alice, who has long guided and represented the whimsy and possibility of Meredith College.

Meredith students have always carried a part of Alice with them, but with the 22nd volume of The Colton Review, her words take on additional meaning. Our lives, like Wonderland, are too charmingly bizarre and utterly transformative to

“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”

—Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

let us experience our memories the same way we did in the moment. But that discrepancy, while painful, is a testament to our growth. Nostalgia is yesterday’s self resurfacing to express its admiration for our perseverance and evolution. When we look to the past, it looks back at us, and proclaims the epiphany of our greatness.

This delicate conversation, uniquely suited to be captured by artists and writers, now awaits you in the 2026 volume of The Colton Review. We hope they inspire you to remember that yesterday misses us too, but is prouder than anyone else to see us move forward.

Sincerely,

Katie Avants & Lauren Shaw, co-Editors-in Chief, and The Colton Review Staff

Ceramics Gallery

Embrace, Emma Erb

July 19, 2024, Perla Casiano-Pineda

Adaptation, Ella Amico

Growing Out of the Box series, ASR Rosenzweig

Sands of Time, Aleena Rosenzweig

Like a Moth Drawn to a Flame, Stephanie Flores-Portillo

Do Fashion Designers Wear Fashionable Clothes?,

Perla Casiano-Pineda

The American Dream, Niza Menez-Moreno

Sanctuaries, Emma Erb

The Imposter, Niza Menez-Moreno

Villified Animals Tea Set, Tara McCormick

Untitled, Andie Araya

Chronic Fatigue, Ella Amico

Dichotomy Box, Tara McCormick

The Three Poisonous Sisters, Stephanie Flores-Portillo

Mini Mes, Andie Araya

The Morning Catch, Elizabeth Daughety

Coy, Holly Fischer

Three Who Witness series, Niza Menez-Moreno

Mini Menagerie series, Tara McCormick

Mystique, Holly Fischer

Promiscuity vs. Chastity series, Stephanie Flores-Portillo

Drawing Gallery

Little Fish, Annabelle Gaddy

Moth to a Flame, Grace Massingill

A Seasonal Forest, Cindy Rivera-Flores

A Green Autumn, Cindy Rivera-Flores

He Was Such a Fat Baby, Nayeli Martinez

The Dancers, Andie Araya

Look Look!, Nayeli Martinez

Nature’s Fallen Angel series, Cindy Rivera-Flores

Dancing Queen, Ashleigh Hare

Birch Trees, Liese Devine

Shandy, Annabelle Gaddy

Through the Dusty Glass, Cindy Rivera-Flores

Fibers Gallery

You’re Lucky, Elizabeth Daughety

A Worm’s Guide to Fine Dining, Brennan Grey

Petri Dish, Ella Amico

Freedom, Perla Casiano-Pineda

Siamese Dream, Brennan Grey

The Examination, Charly Thomas

Our Currents Converged, Emma Erb

Graphic Design Gallery

Self-Identity Stationery Suite, Ashleigh Hare

Little Typer Website Design, Ashleigh Hare

Bodoni Broadside Design, Rhaye-Chelle Malcolm

Political Turmoil, Anna Linehan

Right to Read Poster Design, Kim Spangler

Saul Bass Transit Poster, Katelin Craven

Modern Design of the 1950s Museum Exhibition, Ashleigh Hare

Illustration Gallery

Photo Album, Liese Devine

Luck, Annabella Grafton

Eve’s Guilt, Adam’s Remorse, Annabella Grafton

Green Tree Frog Stamp, Brennan Grey

Mixed Media Gallery

Veduta di Rovine 1, Todd Jones

Whispering Grainscapes, Todd Jones

Beyond Sight, Todd Jones

Restoration, Siena Art Institute, Todd Jones

Painting Gallery

First Light, Wesley Sabourin

Things I Wear Every Day, Wesley Sabourin

Lost Sheep, Ashleigh Hare

Hamsters Enjoying a Sweet Feast, Andrea Sindico

Sunrise in a Snowy Forest, Theadora Iversen

Clairose, Annabelle Gaddy

And So We Danced, Grace Thorpe

Flying Fish, Emma Erb

Balancing Rage and Whimsy, Grace Thorpe

A Mother’s Amulet, Carla Marban-Contreras

Ferris Wheel, Annabelle Gaddy

Howdy, Grace Thorpe

El sufrimiento y amor de Jesús, Stephanie Flores-Portillo

Topsy Turvy, Grace Thorpe

Food Love; Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Dessert series, Andrea Sindico

Photography Gallery

CityScape, Katelin Craven

The Goldfinch, Charlotte Claypoole McKinney

Ecology series, Arien Kessler

Transformation series, Charlotte Claypoole McKinney

Rainy Portrait, Theadora Iversen

What You Can’t Have, Caroline Kirby

Hidden Secrets of the Library, Bethany Weatherford

Side-Eyeing Alpaca, Cindy Rivera-Flores

Millie Portrait, Maya Ryba

BLUR, Arianna Vangelder

STOP, Arianna Vangelder

Kiwi, Charlotte Claypoole McKinney

Seashell on Beach Driftwood, Emily Hodges

Empire City series, Faith Holbrook

Beauty in Imperfections series, Emily Hodges

First Gen, Gabriela Carrillo Valencia

St. Patrick’s Cathedral series, Faith Holbrook

Rooted Structures, Sierra Lopez

Models of Nature series, Faith Holbrook

Parts of a Whole series, Katelin Craven

Untitled series, Kinley Copeland

Klamath River Overlook, Emily Hodges

The Intricacy of Life Expressed Through a Leaf,

Emily Hodges The Fledgling

Alligators, Shannon Johnstone

No Climbing, Shannon Johnstone

Accessories, Halona Bryant

Fruit Bats on Display, Shannon Johnstone

A Mother’s Forgiveness series, Faith Holbrook

Autumn’s Snow, Rhaye-Chelle Malcolm

Tower Pine Trees, Gisela Ramirez

Rock Spiral, Theadora Iversen

Blind Spot, Rachel Hince

Printmaking Gallery

Imagination, Liese Devine

Late to the Table, Sophia Bateman

Untitled, Kim Spangler

Sculpture Gallery

Shifting Figures, Elizabeth Daughety

Metal Book, Tara McCormick

Subcurrents, Elizabeth Daughety

Luminating Heart, Carla Marban-Contreras

Twist, Holly Fischer

Unfurl, Ella Amico

Pinned by Expectation, Niza Menez-Moreno

Haw River Totem, Grace Massingill

Mermaid, Perla Casiano-Pineda

Poise, Holly Fischer

10 p.m. on a Wednesday, poetry, Charly Thomas

The House Where Words Go, prose,

Davina Cunningham

Ink Stains, poetry, Grayson Morris

Meteorite, poetry, Gianna Pasquale

For the Girls: The Bloody Truth About the Bridge to Womanhood, prose, R.C. Malcolm

fractured, poetry, Darcy Miller

Scotch Tape, poetry, Noelle Lowery

Girlhood, poetry, Becca Little

Doll (Once Again, Never Again), prose, Lucia Celetti

A Nameless Thing, poetry, Elle Barrow

Butterfly Girl, poetry, Hope Alexander

Letters from a French balcony to the Amalfi

Coast–, poetry, Grayson Morris

Bleeding Heart, prose, Hill Leonard

Untitled, poetry, Julia Moore

Binary and Blood, poetry, Vivianne Gay

Rooted, poetry, Grayson Morris

A Cemetery for a Ghost Town, prose, Cae Bowers

Novel excerpt from How to be the Girl

Who Stays, prose, Elle Barrow

rabbit hearted, poetry, Sadie Elizabeth Tew

Falling, poetry, Cae Bowers

All Branches Come to an End, prose, Phoebe McKinney

Hollowed Out, poetry, Hope Alexander

Buried in Roses, poetry, Gianna Pasquale

My Girl, poetry, Maya Nelson

In Search of What I Lost, prose, Lucia Celetti

Outside my Window, poetry, Charly Thomas

God Can be Found on the Staircase Beside a Science Building, poetry, Carly Casas

Evergreen, poetry, Anonymous

Slow Dancing Wrong, poetry, Lucia Celetti

splash, poetry, Sadie Elizabeth Tew

Mon Amour - Je t’aime, prose, R.C. Malcolm

Olivia, poetry, Katie Avants

The Sweet Nostalgia of a Beach Sunset, poetry, Gianna Pasquale

Shattered Reflections: After Sanai, prose, Davina Cunningham

Art Index

Literature Index

Art Awards and Literature Awards

Design Staff and Literature Staff

WISH TO GO INSIDE”

I do not wish to go inside.“ “

10PMONWEDNESDAY

10 p.m. on a Wednesday by Charly Thomas

The air smells so sweet tonight

Like childhood – an apple festival and hayride

The grasshopper-cicada chorus sings

Interrupted–10 chimes–the church bell rings

I do not wish to go inside

The House Where Words Go

by Davina Cunningham | Award Winner: Honorable Mention, Prose

There is a house at the end of a street that exists on no map. Some nights it appears only as an outline—as if someone drew its borders in a shaky hand and forgot to color them in. Other nights it stands fully realized, with windows that pulse softly as though breathing. This

She enters it only when the real world grows too heavy to carry. The door sighs when she opens it, and the floors creak— not from age but from recognition—the way old friends grimace while smiling when greeting someone who brings both

Inside the house is a room made entirely of paper. Its floor is parchment, the walls are pale notecards pinned to one another, and its ceiling is stitched together from lined notebook sheets yellowed by time. Every surface vibrates faintly of words waiting to be written.

She comes to this house because it is the only place where she can cry without being looked at. The paper absorbs her tears without complaint, curling slightly at the edges as if sympathizing. When she sits at the desk in the center, the chair shivers beneath her. It knows what she’s here to do.

She writes.

At first, the ink flows like breath—slow, trembling, alive. She writes the words she never said, the ones that were caught in her throat so long they fossilized. As she writes them now, the fossils crack open,

She has forgotten their names, but they cling to her sleeves, reminding her. She does not fight them off. This room is the only place where their touch doesn’t frighten her.

A mirror hangs on the far wall—an oddity, considering paper walls shouldn’t be able to support glass. In it, she sees herself crying, though she isn’t crying at all. The reflection does it for her, releasing every tear she never allows to fall in the world beyond this house. She nods at the mirror in gratitude. They have an understanding.

She writes because the demons she has been running from since childhood live under the desk, curled like sleeping animals. Each keystroke, each pen stroke, each spilled sentence keeps them sleeping. Language is the lullaby she learned too young.

Her words matter more than her intentions here. When she writes, the ink does not simply lie flat. It rises from the page like thin silver vines, rearranging itself to correct context and connotation. The story reshapes itself in real time, clarifying meanings she would never have found with her voice alone.

But words can hurt. She knows this intimately. If she writes too sharply, the paper walls bleed. Once, a particularly violent sentence caused an entire wall to crumple inward, whimpering like a wounded animal. She apologized for days.

Still, she writes. Because pain, when shaped and spelled out, becomes something she can hold at arm’s length rather than inside her chest.

Not every day, though.

Some days she stands on the threshold of that paper room and cannot step inside. On those days, the house shifts uneasily, as if unsure whether to exist at all. She fears what might crawl out of her mind if she opens the door. She fears that the unsaid words are unsaid for a reason— that their silence has been protecting her.

And then there are days when the pages are blank, not from fear, but from absence. Those days she sits at the desk and feels as though she has disappeared entirely. The chair remains warm, the paper expectant, but her thoughts drift like ghosts unable to take shape. Writer’s block manifests literally here: pale

marble bricks descend from the ceiling, stacking themselves neatly in front of her until she is walled in by her own inability to articulate. Some days the bricks rise only to her knees; other days they tower over her head.

She hates those days. She loves the house anyway.

Writing is her greatest refuge and her most resented chore. It is simultaneously medicine and poison: the more she uses it to heal, the deeper it cuts. When she writes dreams, they shimmer across the pages like golden fish swimming through water. When she writes nightmares, the ink turns black-blue and smells faintly of smoke.

Tonight, when she returns to the house, she finds the paper room has changed. A new door has appeared at the back. Its frame is ink-dark, its handle shaped like a comma. A single sentence is written across it in handwriting she does not recognize:

THIS IS WHERE YOUR NIGHTMARES GO WHEN YOU GIVE THEM NAMES.

She hesitates.

Then she opens the door.

Inside is a vast, shifting landscape—half dreamscape, half memory—where the nightmares she has written walk freely, no longer chasing her but waiting to be acknowledged. They bow as she enters, as though grateful to finally be seen outside the confines of her mind.

And she understands: writing didn’t create them. It merely gave them form.

Tonight, she steps forward to greet them.

Tomorrow, perhaps, she will write again. Or perhaps she will not.

Either way, the house will wait. The paper will breathe. The mirror will cry in her stead.

And the words—whether spoken, written, or feared—will continue to shape the world she carries inside. T

Ink Stains by Grayson

Morris

It’s like breathing—the words swell in my chest until they fall off my fingertips one by one or all-at-once and the s’s string together until you lose What are you trying to say?

Every stanza sticks to the pages, pressed between how did I ever feel this way… and acceptance.

My muse exists in the mess in the eternal question Of love, and everything it means. So I’ve kissed many lips to give me a reason to waste page after page.

Romance is futile when every lover is a poem, guiding my pen at midnight: If they can’t keep me up, these words will.

So my pen becomes a candle That burns with passion strong enough to scorch the coldest of hearts.

I write to make meaning from stains “ “

I’ll be resurrected from crumpled paper and stolen sticky notes.

Ink spills from my memory, I write to make meaning from the stains.

ceramics

Growing Out of the Box series ceramic

Adaptation | ceramic

Sands of Time | ceramic

Like a Moth Drawn to a Flame ceramic

The American Dream ceramic and wire

Do Fashion Designers Wear Fashionable Clothes? | ceramic

The Imposter ceramic

Ella Amico Chronic Fatigue | ceramic

Unititled | ceramic

The Morning Catch | ceramic

Three Who Witness series | ceramic

Meteorite by Gianna Pasquale

Tonight we’ll fall like meteorites,

Into each other’s worlds.

And when the smoke clears from our eyes, Mine will be one with yours.

the bridge womanhood truth for the girls : the to bloodyabout

For the Girls: The Bloody Truth

About the Bridge to Womanhood

by R.C. Malcolm

Dear readers, what I am about to tell you is a simple story, nothing too deep, or too sad, but it’s not a happy story either. But it’s my story, a story that . . . I should just start telling before I get dramatic with this intro!

Many a time ago, I sat in my classroom, wondering why I was so different from all the other girls. I sat there, within the four wooden walls on an iron chair painted blue, resting my head on the wooden-topped desk staring at my white uniform socks, wondering why we were all the same age, roughly the same height, we all had similar features, some more developed than others, yet I was the only one who never got the chance to ask for an extra pad, or go to the nurse’s office for tea that always seems to cure any illness, in this case tummy aches or cramps as they would say. I sat there in that classroom filled with girls my age who were closer to being a woman than I was, at least that’s what I thought getting your period would mean.

Growing up as a person who’d been bullied, had hard times making friends, and was just overall isolated from the world outside her home, I was tired of being the one who was usually alone. Not having experienced this lifechanging occurrence everyone seemed to relate to had cemented the idea that I was different.

This took place around the time when Mrs. Cunningham was the principal of my high school, so around 2018 or 2019. A school I had never heard of until my GSAT results came out. I took the GSAT examinations in Grade 6 and then enrolled into St. Hugh’s High, the all girls’ school I passed for.

I’ve never enjoyed first days of school. It always meant starting over, and being reminded that I was going to be alone for a while. But that was okay: by the time I graduated primary school, I had embraced my introverted personality and found comfort in books, stories, and adventures written down and captured in pages. Dork Diaries, Nancy Drew, Diary of the Wimpy Kid, all good books I used to distract myself from the loneliness that kept me company. My mother would pray I made a genuine group of friends, which the Lord answered a year or two later, but first I had to at least put a foot out of my shell, a shell I had built over the years and found comfort in. And so I listened out for conversations I could join in on. Boy was that hard.

“You have Panadol? Belly a hurt me,” a student would ask.

“Cramps? Yes, me have Panadol for dat,” another would respond.

I didn’t read much into it until I heard related questions, more often over the span of a few weeks.

“Anybody have a extra pad?” “Smaddy come follow me go the Nurse office, please.” “Check and see if me uniform mess up.”

All these questions and requests made me slowly aware that I had not yet experienced the bloody event. They say curiosity kills the cat; I say, It’s a good thing I’m not a cat. I asked my mom to tell me what she knew, the details they don’t usually spend time on in science/biology classes. Details on why I was the only one amongst my peers that hadn’t gotten it yet. Was the Universe against me? Or was it something medical related? Neither apparently; it just “wasn’t my time.” Cue the eye roll because what do you mean it “wasn’t my time”?! Either way, she did teach me how to put on a pad, what diet I should pursue during or before my period, and she taught me how to track it, but that part I already knew from class. All I had to do was wait for it to show up.

Dear readers, Patience is key to anything! . . . Most things . . . Well, maybe some things, and, well, I learned that the hard way. The school bell rang, signaling the end of class. Time to head over to art, perhaps my last class of the day. We didn’t have fixed schedules where every single day was the same class at the same time. We could have art on Monday at 9 a.m., but on Wednesday it would be at 12 p.m. Anyway, that day I was feeling different, like different than usual, a different type of different. I’d had this feeling since the daily morning devotion, but I shoved

it in my don’t worry about it mental folder. But, oh, was my life about to change, dare I say become different. The 4-minute walk from C Campus to A Campus felt way longer than usual. I honestly don’t remember what we were doing in art class, but I do remember the sudden urge to . . . empty my bladder.

“May I use the bathroom, Miss?” I asked my teacher, raising my hand. A simple nod as confirmation from her, and I was power walking to the restroom. Oh, there was a surprise waiting for me. The answer to my unspoken prayer, the unfortunate beginning of life as a young woman.

I sat on the toilet behind the wooden blue door and glanced down. I went through the different stages of realization at that moment.

1. Oh, what’s this?

2. OMG WHAT IS THIS?!

3. Oh my God, is this what I think it is?

4. Lord have mercy, it is!

5. God man, whyyyyy?

6. Damn it.

I was glad my mother and grandmother had taught me to pack certain things in a little bag and carry it with me everywhere I go. The little things like extra underwear, deodorant, a small bottle of lotion, and at least one pad. The blue tunic of my school uniform was not messed up, but something else was, so after changing and attempting to apply the pad by myself for the first time, I went back to the classroom with a new card in the deck, and I pulled it.

“Miss, my period came. May I go to the nurse’s office?”

I whispered to her. Yes, that’s right, I couldn’t believe I had finally pulled the period card! And the understanding soul that was my art teacher gave me permission and an escort (a fellow

classmate) to go to the Nurse’s room. A short conversation for a not-so-short walk took place.

“First time?” she probably asked.

“Yes . . . ” I replied shyly.

She chuckled in a way that made me rethink just how happy and excited I should feel about this. Then the silence for the rest of the walk seeped in. Anyway, one of my parents picked me up early that day. And . . . that is the extent of my memory. But the story doesn’t end here. Nope. Sit back down, THERE’S MORE!

Dear readers, be careful about what the hell you wish for! I mean . . . sure, now I was able to ask, “Do you have an extra pad?” I was able to relate to my peers, and I didn’t feel out of place. But at what cost? The bullet wounds they call cramps? Fainting for no apparent reason except that I’m just a girl on her cycle? Emptying my guts even if there wasn’t anything to throw up? Every month?! Being unconscious for long periods of time: Exhibit A: Three days of slipping in and out of consciousness on the couch. Appetite changed drastically, cramps clinging to my stomach until that one clot decided to have mercy on me and leave. Basically living in the nearest bathroom,

because I was always there, to the point the toilet became more comfortable than anything! It . . . it was like signing a deal with the devil himself.

Either way, my time indeed came, and suddenly I missed being the odd ball. But at the same time, when someone asked me for an extra pad because they knew I would have one, I was able to talk to others about being on this deathtrap— I mean, period—because I could relate. I even got the chance to make a new friend over a good conversation about women and our menstrual cycles mostly because I was able to understand from first-hand experience how awful it could be. In some crazy way, I was able to step out of my shell, even if it was just a little bit, and embrace high school life.

I guess what I’m trying to say is . . . Be patient, the time will come and when it does . . . ah, you’ll understand. Go with the flow, ladies! Pun intended.

Okay, I’m done now. T

Fractured

fractured by Darcy Miller

the words won’t stay still— STAY STILL. they keep

STOP it listens. it’s in the walls. wait. shh. ignore it. it likes attention. anyway i was saying— wait. what was i . . . . . . ? sorry.

what are you doing? what’s over— don’t look there.

i’m listening always to the— breathing clicking beating breathing clicking beating BREATHING CLICKING BEATING BREATHING CLICKING BEATING BREATH— breathe. are you listening? good. good. stay— here. don’t. move. i need—

inhale. gasp. exhale. gasp. sorry. wait— don’t go— DON’T that won’t happen again i promise.

you’re still here, right?

i never got your name. write it down please. oh. oh no. it’s— it’s w r i g g l i n g away off the page. oh. well. too late. i’m not sorry. it’s just— the lines keep breaking in the wrong places and i keep breaking in the right ones and somewhere in between i keep hearing it: i am you and you are me. so. . . stay.

drawing

Grace Massingill

Moth to a Flame oil pastel

A Seasonal Forest | watercolor

A Green Autumn | watercolor

He Was Such a Fat Baby | graphite

Look Look! | graphite

The Dancers | graphite

Scotch Tape by Noelle Lowery

Through the front door and up the stairs, at the end of a long hallway, is a small room.

Held together by four pale yellow walls, is a place, that is a reflection of me.

My childhood bedroom, adorned with memories: traces of glittery hand-painted butterflies and cartoon posters, empty wine bottles and unfolded laundry.

It is like a trophy of my youth, boxed up in glass.

Stuck over and over with pushpins, those four walls tell a tale of a young girl, who no longer believes in pretend.

A girl who believed in fairytale endings, until her own pins stuck her.

There, in that room lie friendships, forgotten; a collection of souvenirs, each, a recollection of the past:

“ “

A girl believedwhoin fairytale endings, until

her own pins stuck her.

piles of handwritten birthday cards and tattered teddy bears, faded photographs and heirloom jewelry.

That room holds a trace of the beginning of my story.

Held together by command hooks and Scotch tape.

Girlhood by Becca Little

Award Winner: Honorable Mention, Poetry

18

Staying in a hotel for my sister’s tournament, I walk down the hall

In a one-piece swimsuit

My pants slung over my shoulder

To meet the girls at the pool

The halter neck isn’t my favorite

But it’s comfortable

“You look good.”

“I look up and met gazes with a man in his thirties”

A voice from across the room caresses my spine with icy entitlement

I look up and meet the gaze of a man in his thirties

His eyes slink up and down my bare legs

“I’m sixteen,” I lie

And clutch my book closer to my chin high neckline as I glare

His eyes rake over me again. “I said what I said.”

An oily fear drips between my bare shoulder blades

And settles into numbness in my fingers;

I don’t sleep that night.

17

I work at the front desk

One of the collegiate athletes is early so he waits up front

He’s nice

Not quite my type and twenty something

“So where are you playing now?”

He fiddles with trinkets on my desk.

“Travel in Garner and school ball at Holly Springs High, Last year, best year!

The pens stop

Gotta show out, right?”

“So you’re eighteen?”

I look up from my highlighting

His eyes remain locked on the pens

His hand stills next to the wire cup

“Not yet.” I smile a little, discomfort simmering

“Well, I’m not here chasing tail

And softball players are all lesbians anyway.”

He stomps to the warehouse and I sit in the heavy silence

I must’ve said something wrong.

“Not quite my type and twenty something”

Walking into Panera, an older man says he likes the color of my car

I thank him

It’s new and shiny and I am proud of her

A Christmas present from two days ago

My sister and I continue to lunch

The same man walks past our table five times before I can finish my soup

I tap my sister’s knee

“We’re going to wait a little bit, okay, Bingo?”

She nods

She saw him too

She’s only 13

Driving home on the crowded highway

A familiar black car paces us

The man from Panera motions to roll down the window

I lock it and drive faster

My sister turns in her seat to snap a picture of his license plate

I weave in and out of traffic to lose him

Driving an extra 5 miles past home

I keep my eyes glued to the rearview mirror until I’m parked

I keep Bingo safe. This time.

15

In the school library, I’m restickering books in my favorite pair of jeans

I love the library

The kid from science class whistles

“No thanks,” I respond

He and his friend

In unison this time

“Leave me alone.”

Two nonfiction books later, the whistle sounds a third time

The librarian shoos them

They call me no fun

Was it my fault?

I don’t like the library anymore.

14

Stepping off the school bus to go home

Mentally planning out my Ancient Greece project

“The same man walks past our table five times”

My phone dings as my feet hit the pavement

A boy in the class sits on the floor between me and the screen

And scoots back

Until his back is on my chair

Where he wraps his arms around my bare legs

He strokes up and down my calves…

My knees…

My thighs…

All I can think is how I should’ve shaved

I still don’t know how that movie ends

12

A kid who likes to try to one-up me in my homeroom sees me walk in It’s picture day “AwooGAH!”

He drops his bottom jaw and sticks his tongue out

My grandma picked out the purple canvas dress

That goes past my knees and is starched shapeless

My mom tied the bows at my shoulders

I tell him,

“Ew. No.”

He pouts and sulks away

What did I do to let him think I wanted him to say that?

He grabs my arms I freeze; I panic “ “

11

A neighbor is over

He’s 14, but we’re friends

In the movie room, he turns and reaches for me, I always imagined kissing would be like in princess movies

Dancing at a ball

Spinning and dipping

Falling in love and proving it with a peck

But it wasn’t.

He grabs my arms

I freeze; I panic

He thinks he’s doing something right

My shoulders ache

He’s holding me too tight

My lips hurt with the pressure

He’s pushing too hard

I didn’t like him like that

fibers

A Worm’s Guide to Fine Dining embroidery

Freedom | embroidery

Charly Thomas

The Examination

mixed media quilt

Emma Erb

Our Currents Converged | weaving

Doll (Once again, Never again)

by Lucia Celetti

I once was nothing but a pile of fabric. Loose and formless. You couldn’t even tell I was a person; I took up so much space and yet I was empty. It took time, hours of work, but I started to sew myself into something that looked like myself. I cut a body from the fabric, sharp scissors slicing

gled with cutting my head, my hand not steady

done. I gave myself little ears and a neck. I stuffed each of my limbs with synthetic the future, and I sewed myself together with the tedious care of someone eyes and found my favourite color yarn to create my hair. Each edition, each personalization felt like a win, felt like away from who I was.

burn the edges of my hair so it wouldn’t fray. I sewed outfits and accessories so I could play dress up, a closet of mini clothes made of lace and frills and silk. Only the best. I used black thread to sew a smile on my face and it felt right for the first time in my life.

I didn’t expect the abuse of time. Being forgotten out in the rain. Being left in the bottom of a backpack until my body is misshapen and my head is dented and one of my button eyes is missing. Being lost under the bed and found a week later when people finally realize I’m missing. The harsh days, the sharp pull of a seam ripper. It comes for legs first, and I am able to fix the first few stitches, but I am never fast enough. The seams keep coming apart and all I can do is watch as my stuffing pours from where my leg was. As I am slowly taken apart. My other eye is taken and my pretty yarn hair is gone and I am nothing but a pile of fabric, and I can’t find the strength to pick up the needle again. T

A NamelessThing

a nameless thing by Elle Barrow

my stomach swells with a proud, insolent, thing. rigid, unmoving, scornful, she is she rages. she strains against my skin. i’ve known her, but she remains a nameless thing. she knows not who she is but there is one thing that’s painted her unblemished skin— she blooms with rose-laced beauty, destined to love and shatter within me. to yield. she’s fostered and grown to be discarded—dissolved in the acid in my gut. she’s made to be felt, exquisite enough to cradle but not to display. she is angry, and forgotten. she’s a haughty, cadaverous thing. a beautiful thing nonetheless.

girl butterfly

I am not your butterfly to pin me in cool glass and Watch, wait, your prey

I clipped you off my back, cut the cord binding my wings

Moulding my life fresh in my hands, a cocoon farther and farther from you

Where I no longer disappear, so I can grow again and again and again Patience Mistakes

Imperfect

I am not your butterfly to place where you wish and crush me when I don’t go I am on my own side now

I could fall back into a line fixating on you until I disappear but then I’d only die

How much of me do you get to take

The past fades in new life, keeping me alive

I wanted to be more, and I am

No one’s but my own and the hearts I choose

I am not your butterfly

Because I did not pick myself up from the ground to be yours

That decay, shame, rot

I’m on my own side now, pulling off and up from your webs

One I know, but too much spoilage in my heart is what keeps me pinned in that glass, trapped again

Letters from a French balcony to the Amalfi Coast by Grayson Morris

We walked the earth together, I can tell.

Athena placed you behind the right eye of the sphinx, yet you never could answer his riddles three, so you gaze into me searching for answers I never knew I had.

Your eyes contain a dictionary of Every word you’ve ever heard and it’s not until I turn every page that I’ll understand What you make of me.

A breath of smoke canopies my reverie.

letters from a french balcony to the amalficoast

Midnight memories twirl between your ghost and I on the balcony. I can almost see our bare bodies in the moonlight, Inevitably intimate.

You made your mark. Now, I only feel you when merlot stains my lips.

So I’ll swallow the shape of your name to keep a piece of you closer to me than you yourself have been.

Your beauty was revealed to me under autumn leaves with no concept of day or hour or time we quietly balanced the possibilities at hand: passing flower petals behind bushes and communing with koi.

The seasons have changed, yet despite my many journeys I’ve found myself at your autumn altar.

I’ll be waiting between staircases, my dear Where I can study your mind As I hand you mine.

Bleeding Heart by Hill Leonard | Award Winner: Second Place, Prose

Levi was screaming bloody murder on the bakery aisle.

Brenna clung to my arm, hard enough to add another bruise to the mirage of yellow, green, and purple. She pushed her face into my side. Her tears soaked through my shirt. Her head barely reached my ribs.

God, she was so little, I thought.

The screaming grew closer. As Levi rampaged through the coffee, bread, and snack aisle, we slowly backed up into the produce section. There was the occasional lone wilted leaf of a vegetable long since rotted, maybe a sticker from a banana someone had stuck on a shelf.

The lighting of the grocery store flickered, only a few of the fluorescent lights still shining. Without turning my back on the sound of Brenna’s brother, I pushed her behind the deli counter. I had to pull her small fingers off my arm one at a time.

“I need you to stay here, okay?” I asked.

She nodded, wrapping her now free arm around the filthy stuffed bunny that she always carried. Hops, she named it. Its fur was now tinged with grey, the lilac barely visible under the grime. Hops had been everywhere with us. The hospital, the survivor’s zone, fleeing the survivor’s zone, hiding in whatever building we could.

I pressed a kiss to the top of her head, walking towards Levi’s yelling. I closed my eyes for just a moment, shaking out my arms.

I stood next to a table that had once had crates of summer berries, so juicy that rivulets of red, blue, and purple would run down your chin and down your wrists. Now it was just a table with shriveled bugs and spots where berries had turned to spoiled mush.

Levi came running around the corner, head turning every which way until his eyes locked on me. His once brown eyes that had radiated more warmth than the sun were now a disturbing shade of red that matched the blood on his chin. His mouth was open, elongated teeth stained pink, drawing my eye. That same mouth that had kissed

his sister’s wounds. That same mouth that had smirked when I tried to remember jokes my parents had told. That same mouth that had kissed me rough and caring under the silver moon.

There was a long hunting knife strapped to my hip. I had taken it from the survivors’ supplies when a group of monsters had killed their way in. No one noticed when a kid picked up a knife while adults were rushing to form a front line.

My hands shook, from hunger, from fear, from something I couldn’t name.

Excitement?

No, that couldn’t be right.

I drew the knife, holding it near my chest.

walking backwards. I stumbled into another display, the edge hitting against my hip harshly.

Levi began to stalk me like a predator, arms out on either side to snatch up its prey.

The same arms that wrapped around me when nightmares left me shaking and crying.

There was a small squeak and both our heads turned towards the deli counter. Through the glass we could see that Brenna’s eyes were as large as saucers, tears running down her chubby cheeks.

Levi screamed and charged at me.

I darted to the left, feeling his fingers brush against my arm.

My hands shook, from hunger, from fear, from something I couldn’t name. “ “

Don’t think about that. I told myself as I remembered how he traced his fingers up and down my arm when we laid together, “preserving warmth.”

Levi chased me around the fruit display. He smashed his hands down, leaning over as if he could reach me. When he practically threw himself on the display, I tripped over my own feet

My body was moving before my mind could catch up. I tackled Levi to the cold, filthy laminate floor. There was still a lingering warmth coming from his core, but with my head on his chest, I could hear the lack of a heartbeat as

loud as the sirens from the survivors camp that had jerked us from sleep the night the monsters attacked.

For a moment it was just the two of us, cuddled closely, pushing our limbs into each other as if we could merge into one. For a moment it was just me coming home into loving arms. For a moment I let my head burrow into his chest, the bones of

my chin rubbing against his breastbone. I felt his hands settle, one over my hip bone and one between my shoulder blades. His hands fisted into the back of my flannel, the back of his flannel, and a sob blocked my throat.

Levi’s hand continued to tighten on my back and I relaxed into his embrace for a moment. For a moment before he flung me to the side and I went crashing into a shelf. The shelf dug into my back, but all I could feel was the ghost of his touch. The stray boxes of banana bread mix and premade stuffing rained down a moment before the rickety wire shelf toppled over as well.

to look into his burning red eyes. I forced myself to focus on his elongated teeth that ended in points sharper than the blade at my hip. I had to remember that this was not my Levi.

This was a monster.

There was a blur and Levi had me pressed against one of the produce tables. His bruising grip yanked my arm up to his face, and we both noticed the same thing.

I laid dazed for a second before my mind focused back on Brenna. Back to her cowering in a random school’s gym shirt that she wouldn’t grow into for at least another two years that she had picked out at the camp because it was her favorite color, green. Or the way her fingers, with rings of Hello Kitty Band-aids, clutched Hops to her chest.

I rolled out from the display quickly, not caring about all the noise I made. It caused Levi to swing his head over his shoulder. I forced myself

A nasty gash ran down the length of my arm. The edges of the skin were jagged, being pulled this way and that by the shelf before tearing through my skin. Crimson beads created a bracelet fit for Tiffany’s window display. Levi’s pupils exploded, leaving only a ring of the glowing red that marked him as something else.

“

“ Levi’s pupils exploded, leaving only a ring of the glowing red, that marked him as something else.

It’s Levi It’s not Levi

My mouth went dry. Both my and Levi’s tongues darted out to moisten our lips. My breathing was shallow. I was scared to draw too deep a breath and risk breaking the trance we were both in.

I tugged gently, trying to take back my own arm, but it was futile. Levi’s grasp could have dented a steel beam.

And yet it cradled my wrist like it was a precious treasure.

Could my love still be there?

“Levi?” I whispered, placing my free hand on his cheek. His eyes flickered up for a moment, regarding me before focusing back on my wound.

The grip I had on his face tightened as I shook him.

“Levi? Please, I know you don’t want to hurt me. I know you don’t want to hurt Brenna.”

A hiss escaped his crowded mouth and he whipped his head away like my touch had been scalding. He let go of my wrist, but it stayed in the air between us.

Slowly, as a prey being stalked in its final moments, I stepped away from Levi and backed up closer to the deli counter. Brenna jumped up, reattaching herself to my side. Her little head kept turning from her hiding place behind my leg to peeking around at her brother.

My arm ruptured into a million stings, like I had stuck my hand in an anthill. I could feel a warm trail where blood collected and ran down my wrist and dripped off my fingers like rain dripped off gutters during spring showers.

“Lee!” Brenna’s shrill voice echoed throughout the pillaged shelves of the grocery store.

The monster on top of me lifted its head from its meal. It gave the same eyes I used to at a quarter pounder and it hit me-

“It’s not Levi!” I shouted back.

“It’s not Levi,” I said again, and the voice did not feel like my own.

“It’s not Levi,” I sobbed as I shoved the knife up and into its heart. T

graphicdesign

Ashleigh Hare

Self-Identity Stationery Suite graphic design

YPEFACEWHATWASTHET DESIGNED FOR? Bodonidevelopedthis“modern”styleforhis officialpressinParma,Italy. HISTORYSTATEMENT Bodoni’sinfluenceisevidentacrossmod - Klein’serndesign—fromVogue’spagestoCalvin logo.Itencapsulatestimelessele -industry.gance,makingitago-tofontinthefashion Beyondthisrealm,itsclearlinespopularandmodernappealhavealsomadeita design,choiceincontemporarygraphic branding,anddigitalmedia.

BodoniwasbornonFeb.16,1740,inSaluzzo,Piedmont(nowin Italy),thesonofaprinter.Asaboyhebecameanapprenticeat theRomanCatholicchurch’smissionarypressinRome.In1768he becamemanagerofthedukeofParma’sRoyalPress.Heintroduced theBodonitypeface,withmodernletters,in1790.BythenBodoni waswidelyknown;importanttravelersvisitedhispressandcollectorssoughthisbooks.ThedukeofParmagavehimalargerpressand moreindependence,sothathenolongerhadtolimithimselftothe duke’sprojects. BIO OF THE DESIGNER Bodoni

ISUNIQUE ABOUT THE DESIGN OF THE T YPEFACE?

and

strokes,severeverticalaxis,andthin, unbracketedserifs.Influencedby JohnBaskervilleandtheDidotfamily. WhenBodoni

was calledaclassicaldesignbecauseofthe

laterdesignsofthetypefacearecalled aremodernandtheearlierdesignsofit

transitional.

Rhaye-Chelle Malcolm

Bodoni Broadside Design graphic design

Anna Linehan Political Turmoil Poster Design graphic design

Modern Design of the 1950s

Museum Exhibition | graphic design

by Julia Moore

[Content warning: mentions of death, fatal injury, and dead bodies]

Tell no one of radiation

It is both poison and healing

A gleaming green elation

Haunted and revealing

It is both poison and healing

Lesson learned, innocents burned

Haunted and revealing

Mysterious, magical, blurred

Lesson learned, innocents burned

Time, running out of time

Mysterious, magical, blurred

The secrets of science, crime

Time, running out of time

Old photos in the attic

The secrets of science, crime

Victims weeping, dramatic

Untitled memories lost and forgotten

Old photos in the attic

Memories lost and forgotten

Victims weeping, dramatic

While their bones turn rotten

Memories lost and forgotten

Ignore this horrible chapter

While their bones turn rotten

Still they glow, seasons after

BloodBinaryand

Binary and Blood by Vivianne Gay

The blue fluid races through my veins. I don’t look down; I know it’s there, pulsing through synthetic arteries, an electronic heart humming in my chest.

A cycle, that’s all it is— wires twisting in my head, crawling down my forearms.

The cogs spin and jerk, lubricated with smooth, sweet oil.

I learned to whirr instead of breathe. It hurts less than being human— To shed skin for metal.

Why do you look at me like that?

Eyes squinted, palms crushed into themselves. You would look better with grease smeared into the creases of those human hands.

But that would ruin you, wouldn’t it?

Yes, this oil— the very thread of my existence— would corrode the fiber of your being.

Although we are cut from the same cloth, my fabric is stitched with metal embellishments and predicted outcomes, while yours is threaded with meek morality and brittle lies.

RooTed

Rooted by Grayson Morris

Tell me our roots have decayed / so I can dig them up to hold in my hands. / I’ll press the dirt to my chest and plant / the roots in my heart. / Maybe the decay will overcome / my body / until you’re forced to bury yourself / beside me. / It’s then that I’ll love you the most / more than I had when / we were looking at apartments / and debating about bathroom tile. Let us be skeletons / wrapped in each other / let our ribs interlock / and our bones tetris together / to become one archaeological site historians will rave about: / the bones with lines so blurry / you can’t tell where one person ends /and the other begins / I’ll love you the most / then.

Let us be skeletons / wrapped in each other

A A Cemetery For GhostTown

A Cemetery for a Ghost Town by Cae Bowers

There is something about driving through the town you grew up in, blasting the music you learned to love. The old ‘76 gas station sign has turned a new vibrant shade of orange, no longer bleached from years boiling in the sun. There’s a new chain coffee shop in the same parking lot as an old town favorite small business. I got used to passing by cemeteries on the way to school and learning whose spirits walked alongside me. Those names are still there, if coated in dirt, moss, and age. They still wander the streets even when I have moved on. Once a ghost of a town, now booming with color and business. They repaved the streets and painted a shiny new yellow line along the center. For some reason, it feels shallow even though now it is full. Perhaps it has something to do with aging itself. Perceptions change and memories fade, but what feels like a memory still looms in this town.

The brick buildings are the same, only decorated with new signs, having gutted the insides. The bones are the same, the foundation. They have just earned a new skin, a new liveliness, much like I have. I wonder if the town looks at me in the way I look at it: something that is so familiar and so close to home, but also so, so different. I miss the way these streets made me feel. I miss the child who grew up listening to the music their mom put on in the car. I miss the person I was before optimism left my soul and innocence was shredded from my being. I can still come home to visit those names with missing faces who reside in the graveyard in the town I once knew, but I cannot go back to the home within myself. T

Novel Excerpt from

“How to Be the Girl Who Stays”

Novel Excerpt from “How to Be the Girl Who Stays”

by Elle Barrow Award Winner:

First Place, Prose

The lilies made me nauseous.

They were crammed everywhere, in every possible space they could be, bunched in tall vases by the altar, wrapped around the ends of pews in limp white ribbon.

Bullshit, is what it was. She hated lilies. Sure, maybe her hatred for them was irrational, practically unknown to anyone but me, and half-baked at best, but that didn’t matter on a day like this. Daria deserved flowers she actually liked.

Purple azaleas were her favorite. I hated knowing I’d have to get into the habit of saying were because to me, she died the Daria she’d always been, and that girl lived on in my head. Didn’t that make her alive? In some fucked-up phantom memory kind of way?

That idea felt much better than the truth because the truth hadn’t set in fully, somehow.

Three nights ago, my best friend went for a swim in the Briar Quarry. Today, I sat front row at her funeral.

My heart thudded out of my chest as more people cloaked in black poured into the church. They were all coming here to say goodbye to her. I didn’t want to say goodbye. I wasn’t ready.

The service hadn’t started yet and I stared at the casket as if I could will it open. Not because I wanted to see her—God, no—but because I needed proof that this wasn’t some kind of sick joke. That it wasn’t some elaborate, cinematic prank Daria would pull. That she didn’t just disappear like she always said she would.

To my immediate left sat her family. They insisted I sit with them and I didn’t have the heart to tell them I didn’t know if I could bear it.

Her mother, Leanne, sat crushed and curling into her husband, as if she were any farther she’d fall apart. Her father, Will, sat square and stiff in his boxy too-big suit, eyes drifting around the church.

Ever since I got the phone call, time has felt unreal. Every hour without her has been fervent and untraceable. So when the preacher cleared his throat at the podium, shifting on his heels,

drowning in a black velvet robe, I was brought back to reality from my stupid little bubble. The church was now packed and my attention was pulled back to the front, where Daria laid.

“We are gathered here today to celebrate the life of Daria Ann-Louise Baker,” he began, his voice low, chock-full with heaviness. “She was taken from us far too soon. But we take comfort in knowing she is at peace now, resting in the arms of the Lord.”

I swallowed the saliva pooling in my mouth and it scratched all the way down my throat.

The preacher kept going. Something about how we’re never truly gone if we live on in the memories of others. I stopped listening when he said she was at peace now. I would fucking hope so.

I looked down at my hands—my fingernails digging into my palms. All I could think about was the last time she texted me.

Daria: Going for a swim. See you there? :)

And I hadn’t gone. I was tired and she texted me at midnight. It wasn’t unusual for her to be out so late. I figured we had more time.

After his speech about eternal happiness and how heaven has gained a new angel, he invited others to speak. I could’ve said something—stood there for five minutes telling everyone what an amazing person she is, let them wish they had known her the way I did, but I knew the words wouldn’t come out of my mouth. Even if I tried to hook and drag them out.

Every speech was a cookie-cutter rendition of something you would find in a What to Say at a Funeral if you Didn’t Know the Person manual. A lot of she was such a beautiful soul and her laughter was the sweetest sound you’d ever hear.

God, I sound like a lunatic for being angry about something like that. I’m not even sure if anger is the right word. It’s like there’s a jittery buzzing feeling under my skin and it doesn’t burn, but it gets hotter and hotter as more people come up to the podium and speak.

The last person to go was Leanne. The fire under my skin extinguished itself when it was her turn.

“I didn’t want to say goodbye. I wasn’t ready.”

She had a small stack of pink flashcards held between shaky hands that she’d been fiddling with the whole service. Each side of every card was filled with words written with a dark blue gel pen. She took a deep breath before starting.

“I didn’t want to write this and I have so much more I could say about her than what I have today but I’ll come to you all with this,” she started, clearing her throat. “Daria was my first and only child. Everything I know about being a mother, I learned from loving her. Every joy, every terror, every sleepless night, every suspiciously quiet morning. She made me a mom. She made me better.”

She paused again, trying to gather herself.

“When she was six, she found a hurt baby bird in the backyard. She made it a nest in a shoebox and sat with it all night and she named it Fluffy, because its feathers were nothing like she had seen before. And when it died the next morning, she dug a hole in our backyard and gave it a funeral. She made her father and I say something kind about the bird and made sure we meant it.

I WOULD’VE TRADED PLACES WITH HER A THOUSAND TIMES IF I COULD.”

That was who she was. She couldn’t stand to see anything suffer—not even for a second.”

She sniffled, wiped away a tear with the back of her hand, but kept reading.

“She once told me that she didn’t believe heaven was up in the clouds. She said it was something people carry inside them. That if you made someone feel seen—even for just a moment—you were giving them a piece of heaven. And she gave people so many pieces of it. Sometimes I wonder if that’s why she always seemed a little tired. Like maybe she gave too much of herself, heaven, away. Didn’t save any for just her to have.

“She wasn’t perfect. God knows she wasn’t. She could be so stubborn. So loud. So wonderfully impossible. She’d roll her eyes at everything I said and then come crawl into bed with me when she had a bad dream. She’d laugh so hard at her own jokes she couldn’t finish them. She left wet towels on the floor every single day.”

A fragile smile passed over Leanne’s face.

“But she loved hard. She loved her friends like they were family—like they were a limb on her own body.” Her eyes drifted over to me, the faint smile still lingering. “She cared deeply, wildly, endlessly.”

She looked up, eyes glossy and wandering, like she was scanning the room for her daughter’s face.

“She was seventeen,” she said quietly. “Seventeen. That’s supposed to mean you’re just getting started. That there’s still time. That there’s still more.”

Her voice cracked. She didn’t apologize for it.

“I would’ve given her the world. I would’ve traded places with her a thousand times if I could. That’s the curse of loving your child more than anything—you’d do anything to keep them safe, and sometimes . . . you can’t.

“I don’t know how to live in a world without my daughter in it. But I know that Daria would want us to try. To love each other. To take care of our loved ones. To be kind, even when it’s hard.”

SHE CARED DEEPLY, WILDLY, ENDLESSLY.”

She looked down at her last card, then up again, speaking not to the crowd but to someone far beyond it.

“She’s my heart. And I will keep loving her with my whole being until the day I get to see her again.”

Leanne stepped back from the podium. Her husband rose to meet her, wrapping her up like he could hold her together just a little longer.

I’ve always held a special place in my heart for Leanne. My mother and I had never been parallel. She’s headstrong and that gene was passed down to me so when we clashed, which was a lot, it wasn’t pretty. It was like we were both rearing our two terrifying and ugly heads at each other constantly.

Leanne was always there for me when I needed her. She loved how much I loved her daughter, and in turn she loved me like I was her own.

After the speeches were over, an obnoxiously large projector screen came down and played a slideshow of all of Daria’s best moments. Some from when she was in third grade with braces, and an unmistakable glow in her hazel eyes. Some from her junior year, barefoot in her sparkly red prom dress to go with her hair at the time. Another of her in middle school with chipped black nail polish, squinting at the sun, her arm flung around a friend.

Each photo hurt more than the last. She was so there in all of them. Laughing, moving, full of electricity. The kind of presence you didn’t think could ever be snuffed out.

I stared at the screen until my line of sight blurred, until every image of her felt like a punch to the gut. She had been real. She had been alive. She had been mine. And now she was gone.

The final photo faded in slowly—one of her most recent pictures. One I had taken for a photography project. Her smile was soft. Her hair curled slightly at the ends and burning bright blue. She looked right into the camera like she wasn’t afraid of anything.

Then the service was over. Bodies rose from the aisles and hugs were tossed around like candy on Halloween. Leanne finally let go of her husband, turning to set her sights on me. She swallowed

something down before pulling me up from my seat and giving me a hug that felt more like a squeeze than anything else. After at least fifteen seconds, she pulled back, cupping my face in her hands. It was uncanny just how similar they looked to each other. Mothers and daughters would look similar but they simply had the same face: the same smile, same dimples, same high cheekbones, same everything.

“She adored you. She really did,” she said. “Thank you for being kind to her.”

What do you even say to something like that? It was the easiest thing I’ve ever done in my life. I’d been trying so hard to keep it together, to cry on my own time because this wasn’t about me, but seeing the look on Leanne’s face, and looking up to see it again draped with blue hair on the projector, I couldn’t help when the tears started to fall down my face. Leanne shook her head, wiping my tears with her thumbs.

“It’s all going to be okay, sweetheart. It hurts now and it will always hurt a little, but that just means she was such a light worth loving.”

Leanne didn’t let go.

aisles. Long enough for people to sneak glances at us and then glance away.

Eventually, she stepped back again, but her hands stayed on my arms like she wasn’t quite ready to release me.

She pressed a kiss to the top of my head. “Stay close, okay?” she whispered. “Don’t disappear from us. She wouldn’t want that.”

“You’re welcome anytime.” Will followed.

I nodded.

“C’mon, we have one last thing to do,” she said, sniffling. Like she was trying to stay strong even though if anyone should be breaking down, it was her.

She pulled me back into her arms, holding the back of my head the way you would a child. She smelled like lilacs and dryer sheets and the kind of safety that shouldn’t exist in a moment like this. I don’t know how long we stood there. Long enough for the church to start thinning out. For the murmur of voices to rise and spill into the

The last thing to do was walk to the cemetery and lower Daria into the ground. I took a deep breath and walked out of the church with Leanne and Will.

* * *

Driving home without crashing was the least hard thing to do today but it still felt like an impossible task. My hands were locked at ten and two like I was fifteen again driving a car for the first time. The road blurred in and out, street signs and trees warping at the edges. I didn’t even realize I was speeding until the yellow lines in the road started to shiver.

SHE WAS SUCH A LIGHT WORTH LOVING.”

Halfway from the church to my house, I swerved into the Dollar General parking lot and threw the car in park before the engine had stopped. My breath came out in a gasp and then a sob—loud, shaking, ugly. I curled over the steering wheel and let it happen. There was no one around to see. Just me and the sticky June air.

Daria was gone. She was gone even though we had our lives ahead of us. We’d just graduated high school. We were figuring it out one day at a time but now her days were up and I was here by myself. I couldn’t navigate this town without her—that’s why we were going to navigate out of it together.

We were going to go somewhere loud and neon and full of strangers who didn’t already know everything about us. We used to joke that Briarwood would shrivel up without us. That it’d turn to dust like those dead towns you read about in textbooks, where the railroad skipped them and everything faded away.

But Briarwood was still here. Still sleepy and slow, wrapped in Kudzu vines and soaked in humidity so thick it felt like wearing another layer of skin. The same town that never changed, no

matter how many of us tried to outrun it. Where the days moved like molasses, where everyone knew your grandmother’s maiden name and your business as well as you did.

I didn’t know how to navigate Briarwood without her. She was the map. The one who made this place bearable when everything about it made me feel small and stuck and tired.

I wiped my eyes with the sleeve of my dress and stared out the windshield. It was then when a little blonde boy walked out of the Dollar General holding a plastic water gun and a grape Slush Puppie. His mother followed behind him, dressed in light pink athleisure, distracted by her phone, keys jangling.

Life just keeps happening. It always would. Even now. Even without her.

I took a deep breath, started the car again, and pulled out of the lot. For the first time in a long time, I had no idea where I was going next. T

WE WERE

GOING TO GO SOMEWHERE LOUD AND NEON AND FULL OF STRANGERS”

rabbit hearted by Sadie Elizabeth Tew

breath quickened muscles tense hands trembling heightened sense

my heart beats a rhythm i do not own conscience split in prism facets fight for front the mirrored sides are delusions panicked exit plans and cliche expressions palpitations beat my ribs (they must be bruised by now) shallow breath allows for syncopated running rhythm

i hope i hop quick enough and outpace the threat, but the face in front deceives me. the reflections show danger in all directions.

cliche expressions, idioms and the like: if you chase two rabbits you will not catch either one.

Falling by Cae Bowers

I cannot stop myself from falling

At first, it was slowly

But without warning

My descent accelerated

Wailing, kicking, and screaming

Fighting invisible wars

Only able to come to terms with the fact that

Life doesn’t play fair

I cannot stop myself from falling

Rapidly, from the top of the world

The highest mountain

A ball of flame plummeting

Down, down, down

I am falling

And it will destroy me

If I don’t destroy myself first

I cannot stop myself from falling

Like Icarus, eons before

Unable to spread my wings

Encased in fear

I am terrified of the unknown

This wasn’t a part of the plan

I wasn’t supposed to trip

But now, I cannot stop myself from falling

Guilt Ad am’s Remorse

The Sea Serpent

Dancing Trees The Sea Serpent

Serpent illustration

Liese Devine Photo Album | digital

Brennan Grey Green Tree Frog Stamp | digital

All tobranchescome an end

All Branches Come to an End

by Phoebe McKinney

TThe first time I thought about death was in my nana’s front yard.

“A snake got into a bird’s nest. I need your help.” She beckoned me over to her.

So, like the rule-abiding granddaughter I was, I followed. A cool breeze blew through my hair as I approached the towering oak beside her mailbox. To my right stood Nana, a hand on her hip as she pointed upwards with the other.

I squinted my eyes, trying to find this nest. At age six, I’d been told that when a snake eats an animal, it’s visible; the shape morphs the snake, revealing what it has done. Call it morbid curiosity, but for some reason, I wanted to see this snake, to see the proof of what had transpired. But all I could see was a jumble of branches and green leaves.

Nana shook her head. “The snake got one bird, but the other’s in the driveway.”

I remember peeking around the mailbox and fencepost, down the gravel road. About thirty feet away was a little blue lump on the ground below some swaying branches.

I hesitated with each foot stuck to the gravel. My curiosity fled as my stomach tightened. By this age, I knew about death: I’d lost my grandpa as a toddler and my cat in kindergarten, but I’d never seen it, never given it much thought.

I hoped that the bird was alive. That it had escaped the fate of its brother. Maybe it was recovering and taking shallow breaths I couldn’t have seen so far away.

But I was wrong.

I don’t remember picking the bird up or even walking over to it. One moment I was frozen, staring at it from a distance. The next, my hand gripped the plastic handle of a bucket almost the size of me. Without looking, I knew its fragile body lay at the bottom.

How did it get there? Did I pick it up, with shaking hands? Or did Nana’s gloved ones handle it? Did she lay it gently in the bucket, or was it tossed in, forgotten, as I covered both my eyes?

My knuckles turned white around the handle. I stared straight ahead as that same pull to see, to know, took hold of me again. I fought it. With slow steps, I walked towards Nana’s house, to put it where? I didn’t know; I couldn’t remember. I only knew to walk forward.

Nana’s house felt miles away as I forced my eyes to stare at its side window connected to the guest bedroom, but I kept walking as gravel crunched under each step.

As I walked, the bucket knocked into my left leg. I could hear the bird roll from one side to the other. A flash of blue in my peripheral.

“

Nana’s house felt miles away as I forced my eyes to stare at its side window.”

I’m not sure if I’d been told not to look, or if I’d set that rule for myself. Just that Nana was still under that tree, figuring out how to remove the snake as I fought the desire to face what I carried.

Another step forward, the bird rolled back. The next, it rolled forward, like it was helping push me toward the house.

With the next thump against the side of the bucket, I looked down. Couldn’t help it. It was like I needed to confirm it was gone. Maybe I felt responsible for the bird, like I had to make sure its body would be okay.

When I looked down, I saw soft, blue feathers curling inward, like it tried to protect itself one last time.

Perhaps I wondered how the bird had gotten there, rolling around in a bucket held by a clumsy child. I’m sure he tried to escape, to fly from the snake. But maybe he was too young, so he ran. Over branches and past leaves, away from the terror behind him. To where? All branches come to an end. Maybe he slipped and fell. Down, down, down. Air rushed through his blue feathers as the branches above him waved goodbye.

I saw soft, blue feathers curling inward

My eyes snapped back up. Focused on that window, I chose not to look at him anymore.

I’m not sure what happened to that bird. Maybe he was buried or tossed in the woods. All I know is that he was in my hands, and then he wasn’t.

After the bird came the snake. Nana shooed me into her old grey minivan as my grandpa exited the house, a shotgun in hand. I didn’t ask questions as Nana slid the door open, urging me inside.

The ignition was off. The air was stuffy; there was a weight to it. I crouched in the back, hands covering both ears, peeking through the gritty window.

Grandpa lifted the gun to the branches, aiming at the nest I couldn’t find. I waited for what felt like years for him to pull the trigger. The only sound I could hear was my breathing in the stillness of the van.

Finally, he took aim. Fired. I flinched as the bang echoed through the woods.

That day showed me death—its presence wove through the trees, down into that bucket, and seeped through the window of the van—but it hadn’t made me fear it. Not yet at least.

We took this trip every year. I always looked forward to being mermaids in the neighborhood pool and playing Super Mario with our family friends until we bickered over who was lagging behind. We never really spent that much time at the beach.

The second time I thought about death was on the highway. My family was headed to the beach. I was nearly thirteen.

I think it was a clear day, save for some clouds sprinkled around. I was absorbed in my own thoughts about the mystery novel lying on the floorboard under my feet. The threat of motion sickness kept me from reading more.

I looked over at my little brother petting our dog sitting between us. Trees whizzed past as we flew down the road, sunlight warming the truck’s beige interior.

Eventually, the four of us stopped at a Hardee’s for lunch. I was licking the salt of a biscuit off my fingers before we had pulled out of the parking lot.

We were about ten minutes from the house when we approached the same mechanic’s shop like usual. Mom was tapping a beat on the steering wheel when Dad’s yells filled the truck: “Brake! Brake!” I was snapped from my thoughts.

My eyes shot up. For two seconds, I saw us gaining on the truck ahead. My shoulders tensed, eyes closed. Dad’s voice was drowned by the clang of metal dog bowls flying at the windshield.

The first thing I saw was smoke from the airbag that had left a burn on my mom’s arm.

Then I saw the dog cradled in Dad’s arms. His wrist would be sprained for months after.

My brother’s cries echoed through the vehicle.

Besides a scrape on the top of my foot from the metal under the passenger seat, I was fine; my body made it out. We all did. But my mind lingered.

When the friend we were staying with came to pick us up in pairs, my brother and I went first, leaving our parents with the totaled vehicle and flashing blue lights.

My eyes stayed glued to the endless road, to every car, every brake light or lack thereof. My chest constricted. I couldn’t tear my eyes away if I wanted to.

That night I worried about sleep, whether I’d lie awake until morning staring at the underside of the top bunk I’d soon share. Or if I’d be haunted by the shattering of glass. Whether I’d wake up in a cold sweat, heart racing, hair plastered to my forehead.

But I didn’t.

I slept fine that night and the one after that. Not once has that crash stumbled into my dreams. Though sometimes I wish it had, since the nightmares waited for my eyes to open.

The fear took hold of me the day we went back home. My uncle came to pick us up in his truck that mirrored the one we’d left behind. My stomach churned as I grasped the door to the backseat and pulled myself into the vehicle.

I didn’t say a word; I let the knots in my stomach twist in silence.

When we took off down the road, I craned my neck around the seat in front of me, eyes forward on the yellow lines. Each turn, I checked both ways, tense as if my hands were on the wheel.

Eventually my hands loosened, stomach settled, but my gaze never wavered.

For six months everyone was on edge. Mom aggressively braked at every yellow light, my brother didn’t want to go more than ten minutes from home, and my eyes were always fixed on the road.

The day of the crash I crossed paths with death once again, but this time, it was whispering my name.

The third time I thought about death, my heart thundered in my chest on a bed in a cold hospital room.

The hospital room was mostly empty except for my mom fidgeting with her phone in a metal chair.

My eyes didn’t dare look at the monitor flashing each beat per minute. I didn’t need a number to tell me how bad it was; I felt it. I felt it seconds before it began. Like a bow string, it pulled back, ready to fire. When it did, I wanted to sink into myself, to escape the familiar pounding in my chest.

I’d known this beat for years. Learned to push through it from age nine when the beating first appeared as I stood stock still in my friend’s living room. There was no knowing when the heart would race, but if I waited long enough, it would fade away.

This time the beat was different, unrelenting. It stuck around, landing me in that bed. I didn’t know I’d soon be diagnosed with SVT. I didn’t know three letters would come to mean so much.

I didn’t just hear death’s whispers, I heard its screams.” “

I blinked. A nurse stood over me, her sweet tone contrasted with the sharp pain of the needle in my arm. I stared up at the ceiling, trapping curses behind my teeth.

The nurse made small talk as pain traveled through my arm. All I remember discussing was her mom’s birthday which I happened to share with her.

As she drew my blood, I pressed my fingernails into my other hand, leaving a path of crescent moons in my palm.

I blinked again, heart still racing.

Two nurses and a doctor appeared, rushing through instructions as they prepped for something on either side of me.

The words “crash cart” and “just a precaution” filtered through my head before all three left the room to collect their tools.

I waited. The weight of everything hit me. I hadn’t finished high school or left the state. I hadn’t kayaked with my uncle like I’d promised or spent enough time with my nana. I hadn’t seen my little cousins grow up and didn’t get to say goodbye to my brother. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d told any of them “I love you.”

My mind swirled with these thoughts at the rate my heart was going.

I didn’t just hear death’s whispers; I heard its screams.

Before I could stop them, tears fell down my cheeks, darkening the fabric of my shirt.

I don’t want to die.

The nurses and doctor reappeared. A crash cart now sat in the corner, waiting to be of use.

I pictured their plan failing. Would I feel it? Would my heart stop and never resume its beating? Would I feel the shock of the cool metal plates as they brought me back to life? Would they succeed? I wondered if Mom would go home alone that night.

My heart raced a little faster as I anxiously waited for them to inject me with whatever it was that stops a heart. I stared straight ahead at my mom’s face. Her hand rested on my ankle.

One. Two. Three.

I tried to keep my eyes open. Tried to breathe, to think. My body sank into the bed as my heart’s beating slowed.

Everything went silent. Even the beating in my chest.

Then I blinked once more and my vision cleared. I exhaled.

Death’s hands had wrapped around my heart, tried to take me wherever it tends to lurk. Away from all I’ve known and loved. But it failed.

My body had escaped, though sometimes my mind returns to that room.

The most recent time I thought about death was a month ago, sitting at the desk in my childhood bedroom.

It’d been three years since that day in the hospital.

There’d been a few close calls, though nothing compared to that day.

But then my heart began to race one weekend. Seven minutes passed, and it was gone.

A couple weeks later, it happened again: five minutes.

Another fortnight and it was three.

Now it’s a routine: the avoidance of repeating history.

Heart races, grab an ice pack, apply to your neck and breathe. Pace around the room because you can’t stand to be still. Focus on something, anything, but the rising panic. Don’t picture the cold hospital room, the medical bills, the look in Mom’s eyes. Ignore death’s presence hiding in a corner.

So far, this has worked, though I can’t help but wonder when it won’t.

The older I get, the more death appears in my mind. When I see birds on the side of the road, when I watch my mom drive away, when my heart beats just a little too fast.

I wonder if its voice is a warning, telling me it’s close. A reminder to be more careful.

Will I hear that voice when it’s time? Or will I hear nothing but the silence of a shadow waiting to catch me when it’s over? T

The older I get, the more death appears in my mind.” “

mixedmedia

by Hope Alexander |

Award Winner: First Place, Poetry

Heaven is a fed girl

There are no rewards for starving alone in mind and body

Seeing yourself slip away, shrink, and go numb

Light in eyes gone

Heaven is a fed girl

Life is more than being a branch, swaying in the wind and broken

Not planted anywhere

A shadow of self

Heaven is a fed girl

Not hollowed out

Subsistence is survival

So feed

Sometimes I want to bury my face in roses, Lose myself in their soft embrace, Wrap myself in the memory of a long lost May, And dream of your smiling face.

Lose myself in their soft embrace. . . “

My Girl

My Girl by Maya Nelson

Curling ringlets in your bouncing, blond hair

Toddling ‘round the sweeping, weeping willow

Even waking, I can see you play there

Under fronds of leaves that blow to and fro

My girl

Tiny fingers reaching upward, wond’ring, wand’ring

You attempt to grasp a flowing, brown curl

My locks are free, longer, and cascading

A reflection of my image, I gaze at her

My girl

In dreams I see you smiling, laughing, bright

Entranced by floating nothings in the breeze

Until pale beams disturb the silent night

And I awaken. Childless. Without you -

My girl.

In Search

In Search of What I Lost

by Lucia Celetti

In Search Of What I Lost

r/lostmedia • 11d ago

DownTheRabbitHole

[Fully Lost] Best friend from 2014-2025 Relationships Hello! I don’t usually post but I’m looking for something specific and don’t know where else to look. I’m looking for evidence of my best friend’s [22M] and I’s [22NB] friendship. We had been best friends from the years 2014 to 2025, starting in middle school, through high school, college and eventually living together for the last two years (2023–2025). A couple months ago, he cut me off, saying that he had outgrown our relationship and that he didn’t want to have anything to do with me. When it first happened, I was really angry so I wiped all evidence of him from my phone, but now I’m just grasping for anything to prove that we were once friends. I remember him with calico dyed hair, an infectious smile, and kind eyes, but that’s getting fuzzier as days pass. I’m mainly looking for photos, but texts and other mediums are also helpful! If anyone has any idea where I can find evidence that we once meant something to each other, it would be greatly appreciated.

13 6 share

Thelostmediafinder54 • 9d ago | I was able to find some photos of you both together still on his Instagram

Instagram Profile

| 4 Reply … DownTheRabbitHole OP • 4d ago I am sadly blocked so I don’t have access to his instagram -3 Reply … RetroHills • 3d ago | After some digging, I was able to discover that you didn’t throw out the birthday | cards he gave you over the last couple years. They should be under your bed in your | memory box. They’re filled with sweet comments of love, but there is no card for | 2025 | | 3 Reply …

FairyTail_321 • 7d ago | If you go to your parent’s house, there should still be notes and art works from him | all over your walls. You know that his Mom’s house, where he recently moved back | into to avoid living with you again, also has stuff from you all over his walls. Have | you checked there? Do you think he feels the same way you do when he sees them? | | 2 Reply … Somewhereonlyweknow • 2d ago | I would try looking at Snapchat Memories. You’ll probably get a notification | of a picture you guys took together from 5 years ago and you both are happy | and smiling. The memories of the two of you span from 2016–2022 until you | stopped using the app. It will probably hurt to see how happy you used to make | him, knowing that that’s not the case anymore. Have you considered that you | should stop looking? | | -1 Reply … DownTheRabbitHole OP • 1d ago Awesome find! I have tried to stop, but I can’t bring myself to. I know he isn’t my friend anymore, but if all I have left of him is memories, I’ll go insane. It hurts, but I need something to tell me that he once loved me too. -9 Reply …

painting

First Light | acrylic

Wesley Sabourin

Wesley Sabourin

Things I Wear Every Day series acrylic

Things I Wear Every Day series collage

Grace Thorpe

And So We Danced acrylic on canvas with digital lettering

Emma Erb

Flying Fish | oil

Grace Thorpe

Balancing Rage and Whimsy

acrylic on canvas with digital lettering

Food Love: Lunch

Andrea Sindico

Food Love: Dessert

Food Love: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Dessert series | oil

Outside my Window by Charly Thomas

Outside my window

A pond framed by foliage

Rests not far away

I imagine I’ll Sit and read among the reeds Totally tranquil

I almost smell the Grass as dragonflies float just Above the clear green . . .

But for now I look

The thought is more beautiful, There’s peace in a dream

I IMAGINE I’LL SIT AND READ AMONG THE REEDS”

God Can be Found on the Staircase Beside a Science Building by

Carly Casas

It’s the end of class. It’s been a long day. I’m out the door.

Looking forward to the time I have between the back exit with the squeaky metal doors of the Arts and Humanities building I practically live in to the front entrance of my apartment

I decide to be considerate/proper/polite/whatever term you like And take the steps instead of walking through the grass

The steps by the building where all STEM-related classes are held

The hidden steps and sidewalk

Lined with bamboo and branches reaching out towards you

The one that makes you feel like an explorer hacking through the jungle,

But you forgot your machete at home

That one

I’m listening to an audiobook I’m not really interested in When I look down

Beside this overgrown path

Covered in leaves and dirt

With a canopy of branches blocking out the sun above

There is something on the ground

It’s not dirty at all,

A new visitor to this tucked-away part of campus

A little guy with his little hands by his side in a white robe with a blue sash I pick him up in this moment where my anxiety lets me forget that germs are a thing

At first I think it’s an eraser,

But once I flip it towards me, I see a little smiling face behind some brown “hair”

It’s Jesus

A tiny little Jesus, smiling despite having been left on the ground

It’s Jesus with not a speck of dirt on him

It’s Jesus with a little blue sash that reads “Jesus <3 YOU!”

I found God on my walk home! Who would have thought.

My attachment to inanimate objects overtakes me

The poor guy had been left here

Maybe it was a club handout from a Christian organization

Maybe it was God finding a funny way to send me reminders to pray

Maybe it was purposefully left here for me to find.

My attachment to inanimate objects overtakes me” “

Maybe it was some student who wanted to carry a reminder of their God with them

The crow in my brain that has made a habit of collecting trinkets tells me to take Him

But my conscience says otherwise

My Catholic schooling and Catholic parents and Catholic guilt

Tell me to leave him on the wall next to the steps

For someone else to discover a little saving grace

Or find something they had lost.

I leave him standing on the wall at the end of the steps

His smiling little face peering out at those passing by He seems happy

Or at least that’s what I let my brain tell me.

He is there for two days

I pass him twice

A little smile coming over my face when I see his tiny form

Thinking about how funny it is that I’m finally at a school

That doesn’t have Mass every Friday or visits from the Bishop or a prayer each morning

And yet it is here that I literally found God.

The crow in my brain” “

“He’s still there”

By the end of the second day, I’m walking home again

I’m accepting the fact that he may not be there

That his original keeper may have found him or someone else claimed him

But when I make it through the jungle and manage not to fall down the stairs

He’s still there

I couldn’t leave him out for a third day

As poetic as that would be.

And the little crow part of my brain picks him up

And brings him back to my apartment

And now he sits on my bedpost

His smile just as bright as when I found him in the dirt. T

photography

Ecology series

Transformation series

Caroline Kirby What You Can’t Have

Hidden Secrets of the Library

SierraLopezRooted Structures

Faith Holbrook Models of Nature

Untitled series

Evergreen by Anonymous

We know the earth revolves around the sun as surely as the fox pursues the hare, as the river follows the pull of the ocean, as the lover is drawn to their match.

We know the sun breathes life into our world, as plants nourish the animals, as animals sustain us, as we, in turn, give life to one another.

We know the earth cannot wander far from the sun, as a child clings to her mother, as a lock waits for the key that frees it, as the bird returns to its nest.

We know the earth is not alone in its orbit, as others watch and witness, as wolves move together through the dark, as droplets gather and rise into clouds.

We know we are everchanging— as the moth fades against the birch, as elephants are born without tusks, as the world spins, and spins again.

We know we are part of the turning, as hands shape soil and stories, as voices rise against forgetting, as choices ripple through time.

We know we are everchanging

Slow Dancing Wrong by Lucia

Celetti

Slow Dancing WRONG

I’ve been imagining us

Slow dancing to all the wrong songs

It’s often in a field of tall grass

Beneath the stars

In the glow of fireflies and headlights

You’re always in blue and gold

I don’t know what I’m in

I can’t tear my eyes off you long enough to look

The songs are loud and fast

Like my heart as it beats

And as the noise melts through the car stereo

We waltz through the foliage

Laughing and smiling and living in a way I never had before

Not before I met you

I never did like slow love songs

Because they didn’t feel like love to me

Love is not soft or quiet or easy to fade into the back

Love is aggressive and insistent

Impossible to ignore

Like the songs we dance to

Love shakes the very earth I stand on

Like speakers at a concert

Vibrating my bones, echoing in my skull

I guess it makes sense why

I picture you spinning me slowly

As electric guitars and bass and drums

Fill the space between the stars

Love

shakes the very earth I stand on

s sPlA H

splash by Sadie Elizabeth Tew Award Winner: Second Place, Poetry

fountain spray shimmer and spatter blow this way as the wind grows frantic

organic circumference: swell and shrink in the movement as droplets splat and plink

visible white noise

water patters like static on a television screen or a buzzing voice: erratic.

windchimes sing as the rain dances joining in the melody the water song rings: listen to its symphony–

the water song rings

Mon

Amour – Je t‘aime

Mon Amour-Je t’aime

by

R.C. Malcolm

I’m in love with the moon and stars, the colors of the sky at sunrise and sunset, the reflection of the sun on water, the sound of rain, petrichor, the sound of the ocean through a shell, the beauty and sounds of nature.

I’m in love with music. Classical, K-pop, gospel, acapella, instrumentals, music. I’m in love with the sound the guitar makes, the drums’ bass, the violin’s song, and the sound of the saxophone and trumpets.

I am in love with creating music. Gently moving the bow across the strings, touching the keys on a piano, using my voice all to create a lovely assortment of sounds, music. I am in love with the sound of cars, specifically the engine, vroom vroom, if you know what I mean. I’m in love with the models of cars, the exteriors and interiors, underappreciated works of art.

Art, oh how much I love art. I love creating art. Brushstrokes on a painting, an image where each pixel is digitally drawn with care, sculptures of old, paintings that tell a story, charcoal on pages, graphite in a sketchbook, photography—the world through a lens—images and stories captured with watercolors, pastels, markers, ink.

I’m in love with writing, stories, personal essays, poetry, fiction, nonfiction, fantasy—dragons, elves, fairies, kings and queens, that one Duke of the North. I’m in love with reading: books, webtoons, and the Bible—stories of strong people, grace, love, war, and betrayal. J’adore Literature. Especially stories written a long time ago.

Art, oh how much I love art. I love creating art. Brushstrokes on a painting,”

I AM IN LOVE WITH ALL THESE THINGS, BUT MOST OF ALL I AM SO IN LOVE WITH YOU.

”

History—what our world was once like thousands of years ago—fascinating topics. Do I love it? Yes. Ancient stories, mythologies, legends, fables, folklore.

I’m in love with culture—vibrant and beautiful— food, traditional clothing, and places of historical importance. The variety of languages and accents. C’est pourquoi je parle français en peu. The idea of travel, visiting various places, cities, kingdoms of old all around the world, and expanding my horizons.

I’m in love with my country and our culture. Food, music, historical sites, beaches, the people, our dialect, our way of life. Jamaica. The little

island paradise in the West Indies. I am in love with church, praise, worship, community, fellowship. I am in love with family and happiness and unity, even if it’s for a moment. Friends, the real ones, not the temporary semester ones, the “I’ll be there for you even when I’m not there” ones. I love my friends, the ones I can call family.

I am in love with all these things, but most of all I am so in love with you. Oui, toi, Je t’aime <3. You ask me how much I love you? This much mon amour, cette beaucoup! T

OLIVIA

Olivia by Katie Avants

In Hellas south, when the Aegean Sea surrendered swift, a goddess’s gift did grow. Her palm imbued the fruit upon the tree with grace such only the divine bestow. That votive sov’reign spirit wandered west; unlikely aegis heir it did pursue until her emblem namesake passed the test— Athena’s blessing now belongs to you. Your smokey gaze commands all foes must yield; your pearl-tipped fingers bear your patron’s spear. You bled, sweat, pled, and wept to earn her shield.

Above all myths past, rare heroic tier: You walk among us, yet your future gleams with power others only touch in dreams.

print-making

Liese Devine Imagination | linoleum print

Late to the Table | linoleum print

The Sweet Nostalgia of a Beach Sunset

by Gianna Pasquale

Wild and wet after a hard day’s work

Chasing waves, letting them chase us

We sit and think awhile on the driftwood fence

Legs dangling in the breeze

Sand between our wriggling toes

Hair we wouldn’t dare to be seen in

Except here

Where the world meets the sea

Where no one cares

We sit and think

As free as the seagulls soaring over the horizon

With longing etched out in their wings

We breathe in the golden light

As sweet as the last sip of tea in the bottom of the cup

With a tinge of bitter tea leaves

And in this moment

We aren’t a bunch of sandy, silly kids

Trying to outrun the deadlines

That catch us every Monday

We are dream-followers, risk-takers

Life-lovers, sunset-chasers

Who aren’t afraid to feel

The sand between our toes

And let the wind tousle our hair

Who stare fearlessly into the sun

Soft and golden as a drop of honey

That rests on the tips of our tongues

Before dissolving through our entire bodies

THE SWEET NOSTALGIA OF A BEACH SUNSET

“know that I shall rise again”

And yet, as the shadows lengthen

We feel a touch of sadness

As this sweetness slips away with the sun

Sinking slowly beneath the horizon

We cling to this moment

With our sunburnt hands

Fingers wrapped around the roughened rail

Or intertwined with those of a friend

Gazing at the honey sun

With our half-closed eyes

We let its dying rays wash over us

Like a bittersweet lullaby

Comforted by its sweet refrain

“Know that I shall rise again”

So even as the last light disappears from sight

And this moment slips from our fingertips

Our souls still burn bright like starlight

The hopes in our eyes still flicker like fireflies

“

Hope in the eternal sunrise of tomorrow”

Hope that the sweetness of this wild life will outlive the bitterness

Hope that the light will caress our faces once more

Hope in the eternal sunrise of tomorrow

SHATTERED REFLECTIONS: AFTER SANAI

Shattered Reflections: After Sanai

by Davina Cunningham

Glass has always been the language of strength in my life. It gleams, it holds, it endures fire to become what it is meant to be. Formed like diamonds—pressed, melted, and molded—it is said to bring good fortune when broken. But superstition has never comforted me. Glass, once broken, came to signify loss. I used to think of glass as something whole, something untouchable. Until the day it wasn’t.

Sanai Rose was the first girl to ever break my heart. My sister. A child in body, but a mentor and confidant in spirit. At one year old, she was the best friend a girl could ask for: sweet, loving, and filled to the brim with that quiet light children carry before the world teaches them to dim it. She was my star—brighter than the sun—and the best little sister I could ever have asked for. But that’s all I was allowed to see her as. She never had the chance to grow up like the rest of us. Never took another breath past the bullet in her side.

I still see it sometimes—the window shattered, the glint of fractured glass raining down on her hair like snow in morning light. I wonder if she knew. If she had even one heartbeat to realize what

was happening. I have learned, with time, that in my hometown, gang violence and innocence often share the same grave. Bordering the city of Newark, my hometown was labeled the ghetto: a breeding ground of crime and hardship. Waves of homicide and violent crime frequently topped statewide averages, yet no matter how crazy things became . . . it was home. Everything in my neighborhood was as thick as glass—and just as fragile.

The months that followed losing Sanai were stained in grief’s colors: red and gray. Weeks bled together in the haze. I didn’t eat, sleep, or laugh. My mother tried to pull me back into the world, but there was no glue strong enough to seal what had cracked. Once, driving home from the only place that still made me smile—the Uptown library—a car nearly hit us on the Carolina highway. For a heartbeat, I thought I would follow my sister. The bumper took the blow, but nothing ever repaired me.

The funeral remains clearest. The color of her skin—too pale. The stillness in her chest—too final. The silence—unbearable. I remember my tears hitting the polished lid of the coffin, distorting my reflection the way a funhouse mirror

warps what’s real. I hated mirrors after that. I hated glass. How could something I thought was so strong be so easily destroyed?

Before Sanai’s death, our family moved in harmony—laughter overlapping like warm waves, squabbles softening under my stepmother’s calm. Afterward, silence hardened between rooms. The Cunningham-Camachos—our blended constellation of six children—suddenly felt off-balance, orbiting around a missing star. My father folded into structure and quiet. My stepmother clutched everything tighter until it slipped through her fingers. The younger ones, born after Sanai, grew in the shadow of her story. Belle, the new middle child, was tacitly deemed “the next Sanai.” A cruel inheritance. The rest of us learned to speak less, love quieter, pretend better. Every milestone

SHATTERED, YES – BUT GLEAMING STILL”

became a reminder of absence: Birthdays—where she should be laughing. Anniversaries—where her name still lingers in silence. Graduations— where we smile for pictures that will always look as if something is missing. Grief does not end. It loops like a ribbon caught in the wind—twisting, tightening, loosening, never still.

When I left home, I called it freedom. I didn’t know I was renaming escape. I thought distance

could quiet the ghost that followed me. But years later, I learned a softer truth: you can carry the dead with you without drowning. Home is no longer a place, but a memory that breathes inside me. The scratchy chair from that awful morning still grounds me. The mirror no longer feels empty; my reflection looks like survival now. My tears come less often, and sometimes from joy. The fury has cooled into understanding. Despondence has softened into something like peace. And sometimes, when we gather—even if we don’t speak—I feel her there. Not as a ghost, but as warmth. A pulse. A light that flickers between us. That is the closest thing to healing I’ve found.

In some cultures, the breaking of glass is a blessing—a promise of protection or renewal. A shattered plate at a wedding, a champagne bottle against a ship. Each fracture an offering. I think of that now when I smash old windows, when I remember the sound. The sharp inhale of breaking. The release. The way the light danc es through the cracks. My life has become a mosaic of what was and what remains. Shattered, yes—but gleaming still. Because glass, for all its fragility, remembers how to shine after it breaks. T

sculpture

Elizabeth Daughety

Shifting Figures | mixed media

Elizabeth Daughety

Subcurrents | soapstone

Niza Menez-Moreno

Pinned by Expectation | mixed media

Amico, Ella

• Adaptation, ceramics 18

• Chronic Fatigue, ceramics 23

• Petri Dish, fibers 51

• Unfurl, sculpture 149

Araya, Andie

Daughety, Elizabeth

• The Morning Catch, ceramics 25

• Shifting Figures, sculpture 147

• Subcurrents, scultpure 148

• You’re Lucky, fibers 51

• The Dancers, drawing 39

• Mini Mes, ceramics 25

• Untitled, ceramics 23

Bateman, Sophia

• Late to the Table, printmaking 141

Bryant, Halona

• Accessories, photography 128

Casiano-Pineda, Perla

• Do Fashion Designers Wear Fashionable Clothes?, ceramics 20

• Freedom, fibers 52

• July 19, 2024, ceramics 17

• Mermaid, sculpture 151

Copeland, Kinley

• Untitled series, photography 126

Craven, Katelin

• CityScape, photography 116

• Parts of a Whole series, photography 126

• Saul Bass Transit Poster, graphic design 65

Devine, Liese

• Birch Trees, drawing 40

• Imagination, printmaking 140

• Photo Album, illustration 81

Erb, Emma

• Embrace, ceramics 17

• Flying Fish, painting 104

• Our Currents Converged, fibers 53

• Sanctuaries, ceramics 21

Fischer, Holly

• Coy, ceramics 26

• Mystique, ceramics 27

• Poise, sculpture 151

• Twist, sculpture 149

Flores-Portillo, Stephanie

• El sufrimiento y amor de Jesús, painting 107

• Like a Moth Drawn to a Flame, ceramics 19

• Promiscuity vs. Chastity series, ceramics 28

• The Three Poisonous Sisters, ceramics 24

Gaddy, Annabelle

• Clairose, painting 103

• Ferris Wheel, painting 106

• Little Fish, drawing 37

• Shandy, drawing 41

Grafton, Annabella

• Eve’s Guilt, Adam’s Remorse, illustration 82

• Luck, illustration 81

Grey, Brennan

• Green Tree Frog Stamp, illustration 83

• Siamese Dream, fibers 52

• A Worm’s Guide to Fine Dining, fibers 51

Hare, Ashleigh

• Dancing Queen, drawing 40

• Little Typer Website Design series, graphic design 63

• Lost Sheep, painting 102

• Modern Design of the 1950s Museum Exhibition, graphic design 66

• Self-Identity Stationery Suite, graphic design 62

Hince, Rachel

• Blind Spot, photography 131

Hodges, Emily

• Beauty in Imperfections series, photography 122

• The Intricacy of Life Expressed Through a Leaf, photography 127

• Klamath River Overlook, photography 127

• Seashell On Beach Driftwood, photography 121

Holbrook, Faith

• Empire City series, photography

• Models of Nature series, photography

• A Mother’s Forgiveness series, photography

• St. Patrick’s Cathedral series, photography Iversen, Theadora

• Rainy Portrait, photography

• Rock Spiral, photography

• Sunrise in a Snowy Forest, painting

Johnstone, Shannon

• Alligators, photography

• Fruit Bats on Display, photography

• No Climbing, photography Jones, Todd

• Beyond Sight, mixed media

• Restoration, Siena Art Institute, mixed media

• Veduta di Rovine 1, mixed media

• Whispering Grainscapes, mixed media

Kessler, Arien

• Ecology series, photography

Kirby, Caroline

• What You Can’t Have, photography

Linehan, Anna

• Political Turmoil Poster Design, graphic design 64

Lopez, Sierra

• Rooted Structures series, photography 125

Malcolm, Rhaye-Chelle

• Autumn’s Snow, photography 130

Marban-Contreras, Carla

• Luminating Heart, sculpture 148

• A Mother’s Amulet, painting 105

Martinez, Nayeli

• He Was Such a Fat Baby, drawing 39

• Look Look!, drawing 39

Massingill, Grace

• Haw River Totem, sculpture 150

• Moth to a Flame, drawing 38

McCormick, Tara

• Dichotomy Box, ceramics 24

• Metal Book, sculpture 147

• Mini Menagerie series, ceramics 27

• Villified Animals Tea Set, ceramics 22

McKinney, Charlotte Claypoole

• The Fledgling, photography 127

• The Goldfinch, photography 116

• Kiwi, photography 120

• Transformation series, photography 117

Menez-Moreno, Niza

• The American Dream, ceramics 20

• The Imposter, ceramics 22

• Pinned by Expectation, sculpture 150

• Three Who Witness series, ceramics 26

Ramirez, Gisela

• Tower Pine Trees, photography 130

Rivera-Flores, Cindy

• A Green Autumn, drawing 38

• Nature’s Fallen Angel series, drawing 40

• A Seasonal Forest, drawing 38

• Side-Eyeing Alpaca, photography 119

• Through the Dusty Glass, drawing 41

Rosenzweig, ASR

• Growing Out of the Box series, ceramics 18

• Sands of Time, ceramics 19

Ryba, Maya

• Millie Portrait, photography 119

Sabourin, Wesley

• First Light, painting 100

• Things I Wear Every Day, painting 101

Sindico, Andrea

• Food Love; Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Dessert series, painting 108

• Hamsters Enjoying a Sweet Feast, painting 102

Spangler, Kim •

Malcolm, R.C.

• For the Girls: The Bloody Truth About the Bridge to Womanhood, prose 30

• Mon Amour - Je t’aime, prose 136

McKinney, Phoebe

• All Branches Come to an End, prose 84

Miller, Darcy

• fractured, poetry 34

Moore, Julia

• Untitled, poetry 68

Morris, Grayson

• Ink Stains, poetry 14

Nelson, Maya

• My Girl, poetry 96

Pasquale, Gianna

• Buried in Roses, poetry 95

• Letter from a French balcony to the Amalfi Coast–, poetry 57

• Rooted, poetry 70

• Meteorite, poetry 29

• The Sweet Nostalgia of a Beach Sunset, poetry 142

Tew, Sadie Elizabeth

• rabbit hearted, poetry 78

• splash, poetry 134

Thomas, Charly

• 10 p.m. on a Wednesday, poetry 9

• Outside my Window, poetry 110

Awards

BEST IN SHOW

1ST PLACE

Ecology series photography

Arien Kessler

2ND PLACE

Promiscuity vs. Chastity series | ceramic

Stephanie Flores-Portillo

Transformation series photography

Charlotte Claypoole McKinney

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Little Fish | graphite & gouache drawing

Annabelle Gaddy

Photo Album | digital illustration

Liese Devine

Modern Design of the 1950s

Museum Exhibition | graphic design

Ashleigh Hare

Unfurl | soapstone sculpture

Ella Amico

Awards

POETRY Juried by Chanelle Allesandre

Chanelle Allesandre is an experimental electroacoustic musician, écrivaine, and translator. She composes atmospheric soundscapes, writes poetry and prose, co-hosts a radio show on Radio Kapitał, and is a flower rem- edy practitioner. Her poetry has been published both in-print and online in journals such as Diario La Tribuna, Dirt Child, Rabid Oak, The Colton The Four Poets. Her translation of Geneviève Elverum’s full- length poetry collection, Maman Sauvage, is forthcoming.

by Hope Alexander

I know I’ve read a really good poem when I can feel it resound in me, when it makes me pause–this poem did both. The imagery is fresh yet familiar, haunting but embodied. The voice of this piece is direct, clear, weighted and thus in stark contrast to the ethereal, shadowy figure that haunts the poem. I love the push and pull of each of the lines, too: some lines short and restrained, others long and languorous. These paradoxes in the piece work on so many levels–as image, as metaphor, as comparatives, conversation, and to create an incredible tension in the work. In the preface to A Musical Hell, Julio Cortázar writes, “It’s not that I have anything against long verse, it’s just that there is something miraculous about a great brief poem . . .” I couldn’t

the deft and surprising combination of the two which give this piece such a sculptural quality, such dimensionality, as if we are able to transport ourselves into these unique atmospheres. As someone who is acutely attuned to the sonic world, I felt completely engaged with, and delighted by, the choice and placement of the language this poem uses to create a soundscape for each stanza’s image: it almost feels like I’m watching a soundtracked film run across the screen of the page.

HONORABLE MENTION

Girlhood by Becca Little

Wow . . . the sonic effect of this piece! It was so cool to read quietly on the page, and even more fun for me to read aloud to my two cats. Each with image and sound, and it is

This poem is so incredibly relatable, and it made me feel like I was walking down a set of dark stairs, into a basement. There is so much suspense around every corner, and it is this suspense which gives the poem such momentum and gravity. The structure of this poem is perhaps my favorite aspect: I love that each stanza is devoted to the memory of a specific age, and that we as readers are invited to reflect backwards, to look in hindsight, at the strange happenings–the major and minor transgressions–the fears and curiosities and losses through the poem’s reverting timeline.

1ST PLACE

Awards continued . . .

Michele Young-Stone is the author of three novels: Lost in the Beehive (2018), Above Us Only Sky (2015), and The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors (2010). Her novels have been praised by The Boston Globe, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and others. She lives and writes in the Outer Banks of North Carolina with her husband, cat, lizard and dogs.

Novel excerpt from How to be the girl who stays by Elle Barrow

This writer moves easily between scene and internal monologue. The storytelling reads like it was effortless to write which means it wasn’t. There is some experimentation with language and a clear strong effort not to over sentimentalize. The writer uses a nice variety of sentence structure from the first great opening line, “The lilies made me nauseous,” to the telling thought, “I stopped listening when [the reverend] said she was at peace. I fucking hope so.” Through well-crafted scenes, the narrator is a very real living, breathing person— no easy feat.

2ND PLACE

Bleeding Heart by Hill Leonard

was well done, like when the writer used “For a moment…” throughout a paragraph. The details that really made the story successful were details like “pull her small fingers off my arm one at a time,” the “filthy” bunny Hops, the “rickety wire shelf,” how Levi had his “arms out on either side to snatch up his prey,” and, when she tripped over her own feet walking backwards, Brenna reattaching herself to the narrator’s side. This story has so much potential.

HONORABLE MENTION

The House Where Words Go by Davina Cunningham

The wonderful use of details really elevated this horror-genre story. These three siblings could have been on a river rafting trip or at a shopping mall instead of in a grocery store fighting the monster brother Levi. The use of repetition to create tension

In this piece, the personification of writing as a house with many rooms is very successful. The act and refuge of writing are described in a powerful, inventive way. There is a good rhythm to the paragraphs, and I appreciate the active language. The writer is conscious of word choice, and the tone is calming, and just thinking about writing as a house is fun. I thought about the rooms I enter when I write. I also really liked how writing can be a reprieve and a chore all at the same time. Bravo!

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