Pillars of Salt Winter 2025

our staff

Editor-in-Chief: Natalie London '26

Jr. Editor-in-Chief: Chiara Silveri '27

Performing Arts & Layout Editor: Emerson Cohen '26

Prose/Poetry Editor: Vivianne Arnold '26

Visual Art Editor: Evan Weingarten '26

Performing Arts Editor: Katherine McKillop '27

Prose/Poetry Editor: Clara Lieberstein '28

Prose/Poetry Editor: Melinda Wang '26

Eleanor Bromwich '27

Samara Gottlieb '28

Nina Norwood '29

Beatrice Washburn '27

London Pecano '27

Caroline Muldaur '28

Phoebe Gustafson '27

Hollyn Alpert '29

Juliet Lukas '27

Tyler Reif '29

Vivi Arnold '26

Isley Bonney '26

Sofia Capanna '26

*Emerson Cohen '26

*Quinn Evans-Agard '26

Alex Lafitte '26

*Natalie London '26

Ava McQuade '26

*Oona Seppala '26

Sydney Tilles '26

*Avery Panepinto '27

Abby Lennon '28

*Clara Lieberstein '28

Luella Moshtaghi '28

*Sarah Mzoughi '28

Rowan Schwarz '28

Natalie Subotki '28

*Pillars of Salt Members

Celebrating Dad, Photography - Edie Wyles '27

Summertime - Abigail Lennon '28

Ocean Air, Photography - Edie Wyles '27 ------------------------------------------------------

Hello, Ocean - Hollyn Alpert '29 ------------------------------

My Life no Longer - Quinn Evans-Agard '26 ---------------------

Splitting Pinheads, Painting - Olivia Boehm '26 ---------------

I Tiptoe - Rockwelle Dortch '29 -------------------------------

Spine 2, Photography - Olivia Boehm '26 -----------------------------------------------------

To the Child I Once Was - Dara Alitoro '28

Papa and Me, Oil on canvas - Liv Karp '26 ---------------------

Ur a Liar - Sofia Capanna '26 ---------------------------------

Untold Stories - Luella Moshtaghi '28 -------------------------

Luke, Painting - Olivia Boehm '26 -----------------------------

I-10 - Emerson Cohen '26 ----------------------------------------------------------------------

Holding, Ceramics - Quinn Evans-Agard '26 ---------------------

Fine, I’ll Admit It. - Chiara Silveri '27 ---------------------

drop in, Oil on canvas - Josie White '26 -------------------------------------------------------

Ode to Human Vampirism - Adella Travers '27 -------------------

[Specimen ID: 597US215], Acrylic - Hollyn Alpert '29 ----------

baby, please stand on my shoulders - Nina Norwood '29 ---------

Spine 1, Sculpture - Olivia Boehm '26 ---------------------------------------------------------

To Be Mighty - Alex Laffitte '26 ------------------------------

The Human Experiment - Clara Lieberstein '28 ------------------

Gardenia Who Sees Angels - Sarah Mzoughi '28 ------------------

Pst Pst Pst, Photography - Sarah Mzoughi '28 ------------------------------------------------

Memory Threads of Zelde - Ava McQuade '26 ---------------------

Poem for Hair Straightening - Clara Lieberstein '28 -----------

bliss and ecstasy, Illustration with pencils, markers - Lily Bratman '28 --------------------

Sunshine and Rain - Natalie Subotky '28 -----------------------

Watchful Sky, Photography - Chiara Silveri '27 ----------------

Tranquility, Oil painting - Liv Karp '26 ----------------------

Dear Future Me - Beatrice Washburn '27 -------------------------------------------------------

Hustle Bustle, Photography - Edie Wyles '27 ------------------(here, there) - Natalie London '26 ---------------------------on the way, Photography - Vivianne Arnold '26 -----------------------------------------

Rise - Tea Walker '28 -----------------------------------------

Hope - Avery Panepinto '27 ----------------------------------------------------------------------

Flower Pot, Ceramics - Quinn Evans-Agard '26 ------------------

Not Rocket Science - Sydney Tilles '26 ------------------------

unk Drawer, Mixed media collage - Amanda Argiropoulos '29 --------------------------------Unfolding

Photography- Edie Wyles '27 -------------------------As in: Forever - Phoebe Gustafson '27 -------------------------

Beauty In Shadows, Photography - Edie Wyles '27 ---------------------------------------------All Was to Say - Oona Seppala '26 -----------------------------

I Love You in the Middle of Nowhere - Vivianne Arnold '26 ----Brambles, Photography - Chiara Silveri '27 --------------------

"But Lot’s wife looked back longingly and was turned into a pillar of salt."

Genesis 19:26

Once there was a time where everything was just right

Where everything was perfect

It might not have been perfect for another

But for me it was just what I needed

I remember being surrounded by family every day

I remember fourth of july being a day full of sun and happiness

I remember celebrating birthdays by the beach

I remember vacations to somewhere sunny

I remember a time when everyday was a new adventure

I miss this time of year

A time where some days I might have even forgotten what being stressed ever felt like

And when fall comes

And when the weather is cold

And assignments are due

I wait for this time again

I wait for summer every year again and again

Good morning, Ocean.

What’s it like to be

Scarred with plastics

seen and hidden, burrowing deep into your broken, peeling skin

Tainted with oil a thick, muffling layer of tar that chokes the dawn and obscures the sunlight

Polluted with smoke the rusty mist fogging the sky and tinging the water

Dotted with withered cigarettes the charred edges scattered everywhere, sinking to the bottom Does it hurt you?

Good afternoon, Ocean.

What’s it like to see

The animals that live with you the beings you’ve nurtured killed and hunted and poached for strange, unthinkable reasons that you can’t possibly fathom or control

And be able to do nothing but watch helplessly as blood stains your sun-burnt, wounded surface?

What’s it like to have

The vibrant hues and animated soul slowly drained out of your reefs once a source of life now a place brimming with demise a cruel disruption to the delicate balance of an ecosystem you so carefully created

All in broad daylight, only to be ignored?

Good evening, Ocean.

Do you find calm?

How do you find the calm time and time and time again in the midst of being torn apart in millions of directions all at once Through each harsh, moon-lit night of suffering

Do you find solace in something?

Do you even try to fight back?

Do you conjure raging storms to punish us for what we’ve done to you?

Do you cry yourself to sleep when you realize that you’re dying slowly and the creatures that live within you are dying faster than you could ever imagine?

Goodbye, Ocean. Will I see you tomorrow?

Laying down on the lawn

His yard, my body, My life, his action

Roots beneath me, grabbing;

Roots around my neck

A cord connecting

My life, its life, Both barely started.

Grass stains, Elbows sore on dirt,

Our life, my life, one life?

No white undoing pill

Head sore, Throat sore,

“My choice, my decision, my repercussions”

My screams unheard until I have none left

Tears tear my chest wide open

My eyes, my hands, my body, breeched

My life no longer, now dedicated to its

around my friends.

I tiptoe with my loved ones never fully setting down my feet.   I tiptoe  in class, never raising my hand against my classmates.

I tiptoe until my feet hurt with bruises and scars, still tiptoeing.

I look at the people on the street. how their feet walk with ease while I struggle to stay afoot

I rest my feet on the ground  The first feeling of my sneakers and concrete against my ragged skin just for a second then I go back to tiptoeing.

What happened to the girl I used to know?

What happened to the girl that talked to me on the first day of 6th grade?

What happened to the science class where we would argue about the ladybug in the garden?

What happened to the class where you accidentally threw a pillow at my face and we were both laughing?

You were the first person to ever make me feel like I had someone to talk to.

You were the first person that actually seemed to care about me You made me feel like I had a friend.

I told my parents you were my best friend. You made me feel like a flower and you were the sun. By 7th grade, all of that went away.

The sun vanished and was replaced with rain.

I don’t know what happened, but all of a sudden you started ignoring me.

You started ignoring me when I tried to talk to you, and laughing at me when I said anything, when what I said really wasn’t funny at all. You would always make excuses not to see me. When I would hang out with you, you would invite someone else over so that you wouldn’t have to be alone with me.

You skipped my birthday party because that meant you wouldn’t have to spend hours stuck with me.

You would yell at me whenever I tried to talk to you about how I felt. You made me feel horrible about myself. I would cry alone in my room because of you, wondering what I did wrong.

If you were supposed to be my best friend, why was I suffocating under the weight of your fake niceness and real judgement?

I was the sand right before the waves, trying to go out into the ocean for myself but you were the overpowering current that kept pushing me back. By 8th grade came thunderstorms and the flower died, unable to be brought back to life. Because of you I thought everything was my fault. I left because of you. I feel shame because of you. I hate you.

How can I forgive the things that you did?

How can I forgive you making me feel like the bad guy when it was you all along?

It’s been two years and I still hate you. I’m meeting better people now and none of them would ever do the things you did to me.

I’m becoming a new flower and given more sunlight, but this time a real sunlight that isn’t fake. There isn’t rain anymore. They made me realize what you did isn’t normal. And I’ve heard you’re still doing the same things to other people. I guess you haven’t changed at all.

Be quiet, sweet child.

Nestle your c a l l u s e d hands in the salt bath I prepared for you.

Wash your blistered feet in the b u b b l e bath that pops without your body, to keep it still.

Be quiet, sweet child.

I see you l o o k i n g out of the s p e e d y car, windows down as your tears dry when the wind b r u s h e s your skin roughly and quickly.

Let me give you the hug you never got, my child.

Be quiet, sweet child.

Let me sing slow l u l l a b i e s in your young ears, for you’ve heard too many pindrops. Your eardrums are ready for a sweet voice to soothe them, my child.

Be quiet, sweet child.

Listen to the chirps of the birds that whistle sharply into the crisp O c t o b e r morning and hear the truths you tried to hide, my child. Be quiet, sweet child. Let me r o c k

you to bed as your sobs become faint and your erratic breathing becomes even. My child…

You have no reason to hide, you’re mine now, sweet child

-rest

All I wanted was you.

Because, I don’t know, I was fascinated by you. I’ve never felt like that before.

Cause you were unlike anyone I had ever met. My friends didn’t see it.

“Don’t be scared”-- you held my hand. I exhaled, my feet slipped off the ledge. We flew together.

Every time I jumped, you gave me the bravery to fly. You promised you’d never let go.

Finally, someone I could trust. The sunlight leaped as the beams laced through your hair, the Glistening water sparkled around us and your sweet green eyes were kind.

How I miss the way they looked at me.

“I’ll keep in touch”

“Just promise me you won’t forget about me. Promise.”

“K, I promise.”

“Love you”

“Me and you, forever.”

Nothing lasts forever.

One day I slipped. You dropped my hand. I fell. You watched.

“Please don’t leave me here.” You left anyway.

“Quit calling me.”

“Right now, I have to apologize.”

“Stop coming back.”

“Tell me you forgive me”

“U there?”

….

Very fortunately, I ran into you a few years later. We hated each other.

Xcept we didn’t. Not actually. We told other people we did. It was easier that way.

“You know, we’re gonna get married some day” you laughed and almost kissed me. I have Zero texts from you. You lied. You never loved me. You broke your promise. Again.

They say eyes are the windows to the soul, but I have never known what mine reveal. I have been told my eyes are pretty, Like something worth noticing. So I trace them in dark eyeliner, put shadows along their edges, make them deeper, sharper, more real. Maybe if they stand out, someone will look long enough to see past them. Maybe if they glow just right, I’ll finally catch my own reflection  They will be understood

Eyes have always fascinated me, The way pupils widen in the dark, then shrink when the world is too bright. They hold every unseen thing Writing the narrative of my story

Chapters I have lived, chapters I have lost, Ones I have yet to tell

They say eyes are the windows to the soul, but mine feel more like doors

I don’t know how to open.

Luke Olivia Boehm

I look out of the backseat window to see muted morning light

Shining through the foggy glass,

The tear shaped rain mixing with day

Forming glittering but quickly fleeting

Rainbows that cycle

Through the sky. Carried by the pounding raindrops, they run

Far behind me, they run

Faster and faster away as we speed towards California. The light

Begins to darken as the rainbow’s reds and violets dissipate, the clouds cycling

Back through the sky and across the sun in thin glass

Sheets. As a kid I would trace those fleeting

Raindrops as they dripped down the carseat window even slower than the passing of the days

That felt eternal from the silence of the backseat. It’s funny, actually, how the days

Once passed so slowly, afraid to run

Like they do now, afraid to be so fleeting.

I can’t help but feel like the daylight

Is fragile as the glass

Panes that lined my pink childhood bedroom, cycling

Through day into night as quickly as I left that home in the dark. Some days I wish the cycle

Would linger longer on day,

But you can’t hold the sun up without getting burned so I hide away the thought. Only in glass,

Lamole, Chianti, Italy

Edie Wyles

Though, so I can still see the shadow of it’s shape and run Back through all of the memories I wish would stay just a bit longer before I let them go. And I feel light In the knowledge that maybe some stories aren’t fleeting

Just yet. As we drive further down the endless, not-so-fleeting I-10, I realize that we are soon approaching the cycling Windmills that live high up in the sunlight And capture the radiant energy of day.

I used to think that one drive I would open the car door with a jolt and run

To them, but the solid window glass

Still holds me back. I’m not sure why I loved them so, those windmills. Something about the steel and fiber-glass, About how together like a fleet Of ships they could churn the subtle wind into electricity that would run

Back through my home, through my life, somehow, and cycle Back around before the day

Passed by. They were steady in a world of ephemeral moments and passing light.

But as I look back out at the graying sky, I am reminded that there’s nothing I can do to stop the light from fading at dusk, for it is everfleeting-

And there’s nothing I can do to stop the backseat window glass from shattering, from cycling into the ground again as we reach CaliforniaAll I know is it’s finally time to let the day run by.

“I am an open wound of language to say so little hurts”

Beatriz Miralles de Imperial

I feed my dogs under the table. I’m not ashamed. Unlike cats, they only have one life. If giving them my unseasoned brussel sprouts, my jicama, or my sad string beans brings them so much joy, then why not?

I’ve broken pinky promises, even crossed fingers behind my back. Once, I was a best friend, but now I’m not. I wasn’t a very realistic kid, but then again, who is?

I’ve forgotten to brush my teeth in the morning. Had some gum and got away with it.

I’ve accepted I can’t change things, but I still want to. I imagine looking different, things coming more easily, being lighter, softer.

I once begged my dad for a thumb brace. Showed up to school on Monday “horribly injured” and in “immense pain,” and by Wednesday, that pain had magically subsided.

Who holds you to your promises, to your word, to your values?

You do.

Sometimes things slip through the cracks. Sometimes you forget a comma, and your sentence trails behind you. Sometimes you sleep past your alarm or forget to set it at all. Sometimes you rush out the door, nearly tripping over your own shoelaces. Sometimes, your rhythm falters.

Fine, I’ll admit it. I'm forgetful, clumsy, and flawed, and I can live with it. I can live with the cracks.

Eve bites the apple and knowledge tastes like freedom, like sin, like blood.

inevitable: the fireman opens the book, the prisoner steps out of the cave, the woman yearns for more than a garden.

she wonders what kind of god demands you turn away from the sharp-edged truth as it slices, excruciating, always leaves a scar— knowledge is precious and we pay with our spilled veins. wooden desks, crimson apple: the classroom is my altar.

a little girl sits surrounded by others. she reads her first few words in a halting voice, reluctantly scans the picture-book pages with eyes that will soon reverently devour the forbidden tomes.

poetry is scripture and a beating heart.

turn away turn away turn away. they will order you to press your lips into a smile and pretend it isn’t there: the unquenchable hunger and insatiable thirst.

but god knows there’s a reason you were born with teeth.

[Specimen ID: 597US215]

baby, please stand on my shoulders

i know you can’t see down there

baby, please stand on my shoulders up here there’s light, air

baby please stand on my shoulders quit playing in the dirt

baby, please stand on my shoulders your hands are filthy with earth

baby, please stand on my shoulders there’s no more time to play

baby, please stand on my shoulders i know

i know you’d rather stay

What’s it to be a mighty woman

To not cry the tears that already escape her body

To not bleed through the scars her superiors left

To stand when every bone inside begs to break

To speak when her silence feels safer than the words

To rise through the weight that would crush a lesser soul

To become the architect of her own strength

Because a mighty woman does not exist by the absence of pain but by claiming her own strength through it

In chemistry, we learned That most human substances Are fleeting–

In existence for mere milliseconds as we scramble

To collect arbitrary measurements and plot them on scattered graphs

To stack them up between the rest and compare.

In middle school, we learned Perhaps not officially, but through trial and error

That outliers Are common things.

In chemistry,

We learned that humans are not content with estimates. How harrowingly poetic.

I wonder if she ever saw angels. Her white coat evanesces when scales get tipped,

Gardenia sees them like in the fables. The bright cross on her collar, quickly ripped.

I saw him snatch Calico by her tail Her gran fury of fur swirling, then still. Las Doñas say dogs are why angels fail Barking and biting till they've had their fill.

Dogs who bare their teeth and bite at your heels,

Engulf girls with smoke spice, laughs grand, pounding.

If an angel walked by, they wouldn't feelBe sure your coat doesn't slip off, spilling.

Will the dog ever heel for the angel? Heavenly presence too fine to label.

Violet dusk seeps through leaves on Lindenstraße (linden-stra-suh)

By the shadows that used to hold water

I crouch to pick up threads of your memories— You left them—

A trail of crumbs, relics of your past hungers. Now I collect your past as a gift.

“Who are you and what is your name?” You’ll speak.

I’m sorry I didn’t mean to panic your blood— I’ve just brought something of yours, a gift. But I look down at my gatherings, now bare— The picidaes wrestled the threads from me, My gift unwrapped in cutthroat thievery.

You’ll say you’re not hungry, but press a pfennig in my palm— You tell me to buy zoph bread and remember your star.

A century spins between Grandma and me as woodpeckers drum. The only thread not forgotten: stars sewn on jackets. The threads that are rotten, but the remembrances numb. Threads—Threads—Threads. Worth nothing without a needle with a head

I unwrap the shiny blue plastic of the straightener. It boasts an uncanny sort of cleanliness. I am unnerved.

It claims to turn me into any number of deities. If it can take away any matter from my bubble, I will be satisfied.

I scour the internet for tutorials and find flashy thumbnails that teach me I am the before, and I feel a twisted sense of honor that the algorithm has chosen me to turn into its after, though of course I know it is only to then be the before of a new after, and the plastic machine is ruthless.

My hair is still damp from last night’s rainstorm, and it sizzles as the straightener clenches its ends– I’m doing it wrong, I’m doing it all wrong– and my fingers don’t know yet to stay away from the heat, recoiling in immediate response to the pain–

Do you really mean to tell me no one else feels it?

I push and pull restlessly, strand by strand, taming the ocean of waves. Is it over? I take an obligatory mirror selfie and wonder what I have done.

When I emerge from the mirror bloodied and bruised, surveying the tumbleweed I have conjured up in my trance, rusted and irregulated beyond repair, I reach for the clips to cover it all up.

Even long after I unplug the straightener, forcing it back into its shiny blue coffin, I feel a certain heat radiating from the disappointed metal. Like a threat to melt me since the molding didn’t quite work.

It is only when the water gushes through my scorched and molded hair the next day, when the stubborn waves return and after time get back their bounce, that I can breathe.

I love creating, watching leaves as they unfurl, bear fruit, exchange pollen and sketch blossoms of rhyme and melody. dirt rolls like valleys from my pencil-tip, tumbling onto pages from my lips my teeth my tongue.

I love gazing into rushing rapids of stories. They jump like fish, scales glistening as they fade back to water.

They leave ripples that spread like glass To show a little girl, a young woman- and a foggy looking-glass image of a tall long-haired shadow.

I love how the marching ants carry meanings on their backs, in summers, unending chains, winters spent sheltered within granite.

I love how shapes rush around me, dirt rolling like mountains tumbling onto my lips my teeth my tongue.

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

Mary Oliver

Dearfutureme,

Here’s what you’ve got to remember. A couple of years ago I was sitting in my dad’s car, which I do nearly every redgray morning and every lamplit evening. There I was in my bathing suit, seated on a towel with my sweaty legs and my feet in my flip-flops freezing from the air conditioning that only hit the bottom of the car and my dad’s music blasting through the stereo as we drove the rough mile back from the beach, and beside us on the street was a truck, and in the truck was a little boy with a head of blond hair seated next to his father, and it was one of those nice gray trucks, with a big bed, like one I would like to have – but then the truck drove on, and I thought about that truck all the way home, my sandy wet hair, twisted into braids, and my dad’s music and the cars around us, and that boy and his dad, filling up my consciousness.

I guess around that moment I decided I would not just live in the world, but watch it closely So when autumn falls, so also falls the sweltering days and the freezing evenings, so I shiver and pull my tanned arms about my body as I walk down the lit streets, which are that form of silence that’s filled with human presence, life occasionally slipping through the cracks, in the little boys on their bicycles, the basketballs behind garage doors, the televisions, the radio. When I get to the bus stop I don’t sit down because it’s too cold to sit. And the signs that say “stringlight installations –call or text,” and the garbage cans, and the flashing airplanes, and the dogs. And here on the land of people, my vision’s washed out in headlights and streetlights, but when I look up at the sky, which was so vacant and vast five minutes ago, when every cinema and every synagogue was painted on a poor artist’s canvas on top of

another orange-red painting, now to the west there’s the orange aftermath of the setting sun, and the desperate clouds, but to the east there’s only the blue, the blue, blue, blue that comes all the way from the desert and is now creeping right over me, here shivering at this bus stop in my black skirt and hi-tops, crawling and oppressing the western light. And the bus comes hurtling down Third like the Polar Express or Totoro’s cat bus, and as I step onto the platform I get greeted with a rush of dirty hot air. Inside the bus it’s gray and dusty, but outside my window the city lights rush past, and the illuminated billboards, and the helicopters, and the bus drops me off on another stucco street inside my endless stucco world, right in front of the coffee shop where they’ve started with the pumpkin spice because it’s fall. No matter what happens, you’ve got to remember that.

(here, inhishometurf

hiswheels,tires,&chippedyellow  paint, hisstainedleather,

heechoes donotfearanyoneonthisbus, iambigger  thaneveryone(here)onthisbus, butican echotoo

iamnotafraid ofteengirlswithloose shoelaces (here)nor(there) butifear(here)

hespeaksintoa plasticbox,static-y with otherdriver’svoices storedinside untilweget(there)

ishebiggerthanthe driversinthe plasticbox  ordidhe  capturethem? hecouldfeelbig because tobebig istomake yourselfbig.

so ilookthrough hisglasswindows maybe  icanbebig too, biggerthanhim onmyhometurf, finally there) on the way

I will forever be loud, but too quiet for anyone to actually listen.  My rivers run too rapid, my grass to green My mountains too high, my craters too low.  I am a fascinating contradiction made to confuse.  Why do I feel so untethered? But at the same time so rooted? There are questions I'll never get the answer to, and  There are questions I always know the answer to…

Do you love me? Yes. The answer is always yes… Am I a figment of your imagination cursed to fail,  when you become too obsessed with your… greed? Money? Power? Love?

I don't know what you're obsessed with; it's like you're a shell  of someone who I once loved

Why do you love to hate me and hate to love me?  Why aren't I enough?! I once was...you used to bask in my sun. Drink from my too rapid rivers, run on my too green grass. Maybe I should let myself run dry, make sure you can't take what you want  only what you need… But people never really take what they need…Do they?

Whatever it is wrong with you...or not, I know one thing for sure: I don't need you.

I have lived before you and I will live after you,

I will run my dress flowing in the wind my bare feet meeting the flowers  in a dance my heart will call freedom I will rise like a deer taking its first steps into the world Naive but knowing one thing: My purpose is to exist and that's all I need to do.

Hope.

What a flawed thing

It breaks people apart using false expectations and impossible dreams

It becomes the devil on our shoulders

Hope drives us to blindly follow those who make empty promises

Promises that become shackles, their power: keys they dangle above our heads

The wings of hope are black and heavy

Weighed down by guilt and sorrow

There are thousands of them

Each one sings a different tune

Each one whispers a different lie

Convincing you the water is fine

There are times when hope is the light at the end of the tunnel

But when you emerge from the darkness, you learn that the light that once guided you was from the fires consuming your city

It spreads to unfathomable lengths

Burning without reason or rhyme

There is no pattern, only destruction

Hope fans the flames

It preaches to the choir

It sways the crowd

It brings with it the end of the world, the final note of the greatest maestro

A dark, twisted thing, hope is

A fairytale with no happy ending

An endless lie

Creativity is not rocket science.

No formula or mathematical equation I can memorize

No guidelines or limits, right or wrong

No calculation error to excuse my solution

No defensive shield to hide behind

Nothing to measure and compare.

I’m expected to embrace the discomfort—

Allow my mind to drift, my guard to drop, my words to fill the page

That's genuine creativity; presenting your beautifully authentic self

But…

Authenticity isn’t developed from rumination and self-rejection

Authenticity isn’t censoring myself, before the words hit the page

Or develop into something—

Authenticity isn’t deciphering if my carefully curated prose is worthy enough to share

Not symbolic or profound.

Why can’t I write beautifully?

Like Neruda, Plath, or Frost; writing equations, I can’t begin to express I thought I would thrive

I have a blank page with infinite possibilities, There is no logical reason why I am not succeeding.

Yet there lies the problem— Art is not logical.

It's pure, vulnerable, entirely my own.

Endless manifestations of my insecurities

My ugly, unpolished being I don’t have that beauty inside me.

If only creativity were rocket science.

We walk down the path with uncertain steps,

We change our paths as the years unfold.

The story shifts beneath us,

And what we plan is never a reality.

A person slowly gets quiet in the dark, She sits with her unfolding thoughts. The thinker looks beyond the horizon, Everyone and everything returns to stillness for a while.

We wear our faces though some may deceive us,

Over time the cracks reveal from beneath.

Everyone looks out and doesn’t see ahead,

They saw what was believed to be unseen by society.

People began to come out and visualize, Voices fade into the empty air.

We all are in shock and leave with not a word or sound to be said,

Leaving only a small space where one person stood.

Hope 4 letters, one word

A universe full of meanings

And yet it's defined by

“a feeling of expectation and desire for a particular thing to happen” But hope is more than waiting

its the whisper that the storm will end, the hand that reaches through the dark. The song that puts you to sleep

It's barely there, but it means the most small enough to fit in a breath, vast enough to rebuild a soul.

Hope is the promise we make to ourselves

when everything else has fallen silent and the earth finally falls still that tomorrow still matters, and light will find its way back home.

But maybe that’s the curse of knowing, the burden of our own selves that will question everything. For all of the beauty in our minds

has learned how to measure the stars and forgot how to believe in them. We built equations for every mystery, seeking out everything unknown but no formula could hold the feeling of believing without proof. Hope fades where reason blooms, a thanks to our own intelligence. We dream, we doubt, we calculate, until even hope feels foolish And the beauty of authenticity is outgrown

Geezers

Everything about him is bronze: his hair, in an exponential curve, his skin, scattered with minuscule freckles, his eyes, bright and dancing. His glasses are amber and his shirts blue, though he does not dress himself. We meet frequently, always walking, never speaking. What would it be like, to hold a conversation?

To walk side-by-side?

I am of the opinion that he and I were meant for walking and for speaking. So what’s going on?

I am forged in the quiet, bound by wonder Destroyed and torn, truer surfaces found under

Together we look out; you offer your heavy gift  We get everything we wanted, just before we drift

We were built in the pauses, held by indifference Paper cranes, fragile gains, you mask your belligerence

I am watering the mud where we bury the broken  We thank the words we got to say; we revere those unspoken

Look! you say, leaning out the window. There, in the distance, a cow makes its way along the valley, through the mist we woke up early to drive through, dipping ourselves into this world, clumsy, amateurs with emphasis on ama. Who needs the grace of wind more– this beautiful cow, or wicked me and you, who will stop at IN-N-OUT even before the dewdrops

disappear. I am so happy to be alive in this world with dewdrops, to pull the car over so we can run like the cow in the rollings fields of this beautiful, wicked land enshrouded in mist.

God, give us grace, you ask, dropping to your knees at the top of the mountain, dipping you head to the wet grass, dipping your body as I swirl like Maria and step over the dewdrops Beneath us, almost floating, the cow walks on, gracefully making its way to our car and sniffing. A car! the cow says, and by the time we make it back, she has disappeared into the mist I do not feel wicked,.

I feel, and you feel, as we are, alive– wicked ly happy, here, dipping to bow to you as I hold your door open, as the mist watches our every move. We will disappear into it, smaller than stars, larger than dewdrops, no different from the cow, no less in need of grace.

I take the wrong exit and you give me grace. You scream Wicked at the top of your lungs for an hour, only stopping to say cow!

Look! Over there! And Horses! dipping to bow to them when we pull over so I can take pictures of them drinking the dewdrops hugging you for warmth, and nothing else, in the earlymorning mist and as the cow and time walk on, the mist moves on with grace the dewdrops praying to the wicked grass that is dipping in the wind and under the weight of cows.

I will rise again with you to see the mist and be wicked ly happy, I will give you all the grace you want and join you in dipping to the dewdrops, I will ask for forgiveness, I will live with or without it, I will bow to the cows.

isn't it funny how quickly you forget the little things?

it's always the sweltering heat that comes back up, the twisting halls and concrete tiles and all the broken ones too but if with every small breath i only took in empty air then surely i wouldn't be at grandmother’s home mixing the sugar water in the stained glass light

i choose the big pink spatula even though it weighs down my weak arm and the sugar has long dissolved in the warm sink water because I still prefer to live beyond what is meant for me, believing in the life beyond the backyard windows while phoenix hope isn't lasting, the hummingbird is strong and carries the hope for me as it sips from the red bird feeder, wings buzzing,

but it flutters not like the viscous sugar syrup, it’s more like when everything was brightnot filtered nor fabricated but more like golden sunlightshining off the hummingbird’s wings, mixing with the day sky in rays of fluorescent blue so forward i run, the palms of my hands stretched up above me

grasping for the little bird as it floats gently on speedy wings now hovering just above the skyline just out of reach and it’s leaving for good, i know this now but it isn’t really, because i felt that future-chasing, sugar-sweetened, boundless and shimmering kind of hopethat's the kind of hummingbird this is