Editor-in-Chief
Miles Kendrick
Editor Emeritus
Ashlie Doucette
Managing Editors
Caroline Lloyd-Jones
Sofia Valdebenito
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Madison Clowes
Rachel Li
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Anna Farrell
Mia Ivatury
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Wellesley Papagni
Chloe Thurmgreene
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Siena Cohen
Talia Tepper
Opinion Editors
Lucie Babcock
Ela Nalbantoglu
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Henry Estes Kerrera Jackson
Poetry and Prose Editors
Demilade Ajibola
Peaches Wright
Voices Editors
Devon Chang
Veronica Habashy
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Max Greenstein
Elanor Kinderman
Art Directors
Maria Sokolowski
Leila Toubia
Staff Writers
Abilene Adelman
Samira Amin
Emma Castro
Ishana Dasgupta
Eylul Karakaya
Emilia Ferreira
Elanor Kinderman
Jason Lee
Nina Nehra
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Andrea Li
Laxmi McCulloch
Copy Editors
Abilene Adelman
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Whitney Turner
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Sophia Caro
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Andie Cabochan
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Vina Le Madoka Sho
Treasurer
Andrea Li
I think this theme might be my favourite I’ve worked on so far because of the breadth of its connotations. Your roots are your home, what ground you, what dictates the colours in which you see the world. But they can also pin you down, muzzle you, be a hand clamped over your mouth as you try desperately to let out what is truly within. Your roots can be many, many things, but they always have to be a part of you.
As an international student, the concept of my roots is a very murky one — a blur of passports, airplanes, accents and a very stubborn affinity for grilled meats. As I learn more and more about the delicate art form of personhood, I have realized that there is very little that can shake you when you have strong roots. The problem, I think, is figuring out how to grow them.
Working on this issue, I have so enjoyed following what feels like our very talented writers’ attempts to do just that. Constructed in this amalgamation of beautiful works is the essence of the human spirit — stubbornly carving out meaning in an otherwise meaningless world. And I encourage you, as you read this, to always continue to do the same.
Rooting for you, always
There I was in the passenger seat, staring at a yellow school bus in the rain and realizing that I’d grown up.
After my family moved into the city, I started riding Steve’s bus. We never knew Steve’s last name, only that he had a mustache, didn’t talk much, and always, always, wore a brown leather hat. 27B smelled strange on rainy days, like old leaves and soggy laundry, but we loved how Steve let us walk around with our seatbelts off, yelling at us but never with any threat behind it. So, those of us on 27B never complained; we adored our crappy school bus, gum stuck to the seats and all. Indeed, Steve’s bus saw every thing—green and blue Jolly Ranchers, hearts on the foggy glass, and a chapter book still missing from the library.
I tell you all this about 27B to say that the funny thing about roots—where you come from—is that you never know where you’re laying them down until you’re staring at a yellow bus, realizing you know exactly what it smells like inside. That’s exactly what happened to me, driving in my own car and peering into the windows, remembering the man with no last name who holds roots from my childhood, roots I had forgotten about.
Before that, if you’d asked me about my roots, I’d have told you about my mom’s face, who I find staring back at me in the mirror nowadays, or the way my dad thinly slants every letter in his handwriting. I’d have told you about fresh snow, Hunter rain boots with fleece sleeves, or my grandmother’s incredibly fantastic fingernails. I’d have told you all of these clearly obvious things that inform who I am and where I came from, but 27B would not have come to mind. Maybe because it all felt habitual, riding that bus. Maybe because, for whatever reason, I let it fall to the back of my mind. Nevertheless, that school bus created a tug in my chest with the reminder that I’ve grown older.
In considering this conundrum, I’ve realized that roots, in their most literal sense, are so much bigger than the tree itself, spanning acres past each trunk and existing within an ecosystem of highways— stretching and twisting. Within myself, I’ve lost track of where my roots have been growing. I suppose they find themselves in unexpected places, like winding around the wheel of a particular
With this in mind, I ask you to consider where you come from, who you are, your roots, with the expectation that you’ll never fully grasp them. I don’t think I’ll ever gather up each one, or put my finger on each vein of my existence, but I hope that over time I’ll continue to encounter new reminders of them in my pursuit of growing up. Most importantly, I hope you find a piece in this issue that is reminiscent of who you are. I hope you are reminded of your roots. I hope you will be greeted with a piece of yourself you’ve forgotten.
Finally, to Steve and 27B, thank you for holding this root of mine. I wonder if you’d remember my face, and I’d like to know your last name.
With gratitude,
By Elanor Kinderman
I was raised to believe in roots, running deep into the ground.
( If there’s anything we love, it’s tradition debutantes and ballroom dancing and confirmation and abstinence-only sex education. )
I was raised to believe that everyone stays, that no one can live uprooted.
No matter where I go, conversation runs back to when if I am going home.
How long does it take for a place to fold you in?
If I leave you, when will I stop saying your name?
I used to believe we were an inseparable creature, but somewhere between Birmingham and Boston I tore myself out of you, left your half of my body in an airport bathroom.
( I could not hold your memory. )
I used to believe we were an inseparable creature,
but there is a dogwood tree outside my window.
( It does not remind me of you. )
I will do anything, just to prove a point.
My girlfriend can’t swallow pills, and recently I learned that I don’t have an internal monologue, so I swallow a cherry tomato in front of her, try and turn my insides into something beautiful she can see. I hope a vine grows out of my ears, reminiscent of what my father used to threaten would happen when I was young And I always, always, accidentally swallowed the evil, black watermelon seeds. I have learned there is nothing special about going home, alive. There is something special about speeding home, with the windows down, ALIVE!
With the windows down, I let the roots and stems swallow my insides whole. I do not think about my mistakes, about the words I don’t say because I can’t pronounce them. With the windows down, music in the air, and a Solanum lycopersicum jungle in my stomach, there is something special about going home.
There is something important that You need to know, now: that I am not just stubborn, not just trying to prove my point, because I swear, this tomato is not just a tomato. It is an infestation, a welcome one, a sign from God that my insides can keep knotting themselves back together, just in time to gently cradle the Earth and all her lovely, small parts.
By Abilene Adelman
By Max Greenstein
situate me in good light measure twice, now begin:
Just a pinch of champaca flowers cardamom
swallow it down with coffee paint it across my collarbone let it settle in newfound resonance
Stir in red cedar
patchouli
spray it on the yellow tulips i picked for you back in May
wood morphs to flesh what will be will be real.
Her neighbor’s yard promises a feast: golden plums in the afternoon sun, hanging low over blackcurrant and gooseberry bushes.
By Anna Rylandsholm
On our bellies: we sneak like field mice under the fence, wildflowers tickling our noses with their sweetness. We hide under the foliage of the plum tree, gazing up at its sprawling branches, grinning as though a breeze might shake a plum loose and let it fall perfectly between our lips.
Impatient: I hop up and pluck two round plums, their branches singing as I cut them free. Sunniva whispers ligg lavt! Afraid that Gunn Helen might spy us, her little fruit thieves, and throw acorns at us again.
I push one plum to Sunniva’s mouth, the other to mine, and we bite deep into their flesh, soft as summer, giggling when the juice spritzes onto our tunics.
We spend the evening gorging on the garden, gathering fistfuls of berries, our chins and fingers colored purple with indulgence. We wipe our hands in our hair and bees dance in halos around us, twin angels, kissing the fruit from our heads.
How could we ever let ripe fruit die on its branches?
By Peaches Wright
I tilt my head— he’s hunched on a small step stool, cheek resting softly against the flesh of his palm, wedged between stacks N & ‘P’
like he used to call me in freshman physics, saccharine teasing;
Now there’s an indent in his collarbone for the tip of my nose.
Large shelves on either side, he looks overgrown or woven with the stacks like a banyan trunk, but he looks at me and grins like when he was fifteen and my cheeks grow pink, steeped in the fondness of loving him again and again like the movements of a wind-up toy or folding silk pocket squares for his jacket.
If I squint my eyes— this library will grow like an oak tree, stacks stretching like limbs until I stand in his father’s kitchen, with mason jars of quail eggs, tinned anchovies & dried apricots.
I’ll open each cabinet and finally he’ll topple from the top shelf, sprout open like a pop-up book and unfold himself in my lap, saying that tomorrow will smell of pine trees & the salty ocean of San Francisco— Just as they did yesterday and again and again.
hugs, like folding dough around pork and chive, coming from cousins who feel like sisters. my aunts and uncles fight for the oven. this kitchen, intimate as ever. the next generation has begun to arrive, more mouths to feed and more cooks on their feet.
we sit, elbows touch and elbows rest on the hardwood table that holds wine stains and the laughter of my grandfather. cheers to drinking up conversation— hungry to catch up and hungry to eat. we will never be as
By Claire Ng Stromseth
patient, as the steamed fish that has spent twelve hours marinating. my mom carves out the fish cheek, tender hands on tender flesh, reserved for me like her mom did for her— a bearer of good fortune, and who am I to question luck? a “bow family overload,” we call it, filled to the brim and ready to give it all back
By Michaela Loughran
Lately I’ve been
Rooting around
The tunnels of my brain
In search of echoes of You
Your last breath was six months ago:
A devastating blow
To my brain, my heart
Debilitating, selfishly
Because Your brain and heart
Could no longer nourish mine
Our very first encounter
Already fades and blurs
In my mind’s eye.
You wore a radiant yellow top —
Your favorite color —
And eyeliner bordered Your bright blue eyes,
Meeting mine across the room
And pulling me towards You
Like a whirlpool.
I was in Your grip, that is for certain.
And You must have given me
That wide Texan smile and told me you liked my earrings.
But the pattern on your shirt
Begins to blur.
Was it flowers?
Was it birds?
I squint till my forehead creases
Till my head hurts
Till my heart hurts
Till the silent tears start to come.
I want no part of you to fade
Because alive in memory
Means nothing If the memories that once bloomed
So bright and beautiful
Become victims of
The erratic climate
Of my mind
The weekend I flew out
Exists only in snippets:
Playing pool,
Swimming in hot San Antonio air,
Standing side by side, serenaded
By our favorite songstress
Her voice more melancholy than usual,
But never a full conversation.
I remember You getting drunk
And saying You would tell me a secret
You only mention
When you’re drunk. my brain stretches and contorts itself
Attempting to recall Your words
Like they’re sacred —
Because they are —
Only to yelp and collapse
From this strenuous effort,
This rooting and rooting around
To no avail. my brain eventually forfeits, succumbing to sleep
When I wake again, I think of how Your father told me Your remains Would be used to plant Flowers and trees: Beautiful new life from a Beautiful life ended. And reality is relative So I root around mine Looking for signs. Once I saw You In three dozen sunflowers A golden yellow hue — Your favorite color — And spoke sacred words to them
As if they were You. You were with me In that Steadfastmoment, and supportive, Alive and rooted, Rooting for me
I had once feared the rain, Thinking I would be Woeful weather’s Next victim, But now I simply imagine You are the roots and soil
Grounding me: A born-again sunflower
By Sam Stearns
After the storm there were more than a few days of grayness. We had no TV, no school, no trips to the supermarket or the laundromat. For a while we weren’t even allowed outside, and when we were we barely recognized what we saw. Everything was submerged in water; powerlines and streetlights were struck in half; cars had flipped and buildings had caved in and trees lay on their sides with their roots in the air. It looked like the end of the world.
It wasn’t, of course. Life went on— days turned into weeks. Through my bedroom window I could see people emerging from their houses, using makeshift boats to traverse the flooded streets, rowing with sticks and shovels. Granny started living with us, since her house had been destroyed. Eventually Mom made it to the grocery store. The food was cold and canned, but I knew we were lucky to have it.
The first speck of color came when Mom finally decided she’d had enough of me moping around the house, and told me I could spend my hours playing outside with my friends. So we gathered in our local park: Luke, my first friend from pre-school; Elijah, who was short and real funny; Sabine, who weeks before the storm I’d asked to be my girl-friend, even though I hadn’t really known what that meant. The four of us seemed to be the only kids whose parents had allowed them to leave the house—I guess at the time that didn’t ring any alarms. It was Elijah, I think, who’d first had the idea to roof-jump. In our town, most of the houses were close enough that you could probably cross at least twenty of them consecutively with little effort. Of course, before the storm, it had never seemed feasible because of how tall the houses were. Instead we climbed trees and jungle gyms. But with all the water, the threat of falling seemed gone, and anyways, there were no adults around to tell us off.
We spent hours up there—sprinting, jumping, crossing streets using half-submerged cars and sideways trees. To tell the truth, I don’t think we really understood what we saw. The storm had hurt people, we knew that—but hurt to us just meant a
skinned knee or a busted lip. From the tallest rooftops we could see helicopters in the distance, buzzing across the flooded landscape like dragonflies on a pond. People sat on their roofs, holding each other, hands stretched towards the sky. Sometimes they were taken away on stretchers; sometimes they just sat like that for hours.
I wasn’t home very often after that. Partly because being out with Sabine and Elijah and Luke was so much fun, partly because the house smelled like cigarettes once Granny was around. And partly because when I was home, all I heard were Mom and Granny’s conversations.
It’s not enough. They’re not doing enough. They would leave the room to have their more serious talks, but I could still hear them. We’re stranded out here. Fucking stranded. Sometimes they’d make calls. They’d sit on the couch, hunched around the phone. I never knew who was on the other end. Is there anything you can do? We need food. Clean water. Anything? Jesus Christ. I’d sit at the dining table and just listen. Staring at the floor. We need to get out of Louisiana.
One day Sabine and I went off on our own. I remember wanting to talk to her about this girl-friend business. I packed a sandwich made of the last bit of meat in the house that hadn’t gone bad, and we found a tall slanted roof in the southern part of town. You could see for miles. I remember this day well.
Am I your girl-friend now?
I wasn’t quite sure what to say to this. I told her I didn’t know what it meant. Love, she told me. It means love. And I told her I wasn’t quite sure on that either. She said she thought it meant we were supposed to kiss, so we did. I gave her half of my sandwich and we watched some of the older kids in the distance. They had a new game: jumping into the water where it was deeper. They’d go from the roofs like us, or they’d stack old milk crates into huge towers. For a while we just sat there, watching them. Their perfect form.
I think my dad wants to leave town.
I was glad she’d said it first, and not me. I told her I’d heard my mom say the same thing. She asked me if I thought they were serious about it, and I told her I didn’t know. I told her I was happy here. But I
didn’t look at her, I just stared down at my shoes. We kissed again.
We told Luke and Elijah about the older kids and their game. It took a couple of days for us to gather up the courage to approach them. We thought they’d scorn us, since we were so much younger than them, but they didn’t. If anything, they seemed happy to have us around. They talked infrequently and smoked heavily. After a while we started smoking too—it was only natural. The nicotine tasted bad, but it had this buzz to it that was nice.
I could tell Mom didn’t like having Granny around for so long. After a while, their conversations led to arguments, to shouting matches. This is no way to raise a kid. It’s dangerous out there. Getting worse all the time. I could hear them from anywhere in the house, sometimes. Even in my room with the door shut and my head wedged between pillows. You know what? This is why we don’t live with you. You’re so fucking overbearing. Mostly they would end with Mom slamming the door to her room, and Granny on the couch, smoke curling viciously from her lips. Eventually she’d go upstairs to try and comfort Mom. I’d steal a couple cigarettes to take to the older kids.
One day Luke took me to his house. He’d mentioned to the others that his parents had a CD player with a good speaker, and everyone clamored for him to bring it. I’d been over to his place countless times before the storm, but that day, it was unrecognizable. The whole first floor was flooded: broken windows and books scattered and his toys floating in knee-deep dirty water. Luke danced through the wreckage with ease, kicking up water everywhere, laughing.
Come on upstairs, that’s where the CD thingy is.
I carefully maneuvered onto the staircase. There was nobody else home. I asked him where everybody else was.
I dunno.
He swung around a corner and grabbed the speaker triumphantly: a little grey machine.
When we brought the speaker back to the others, it was like another burst of color had washed over everything. Someone had brought folding chairsand racks of beer, and
We listened to Marvin Gaye and Mi- chael Jackson. I didn’t know most of the songs by name, but they all had a place deep in my subconscious. Probably thanks to Mom.
Sabine showed me how to cannonball. It was different than just straight jumping in. With your legs tucked and your arms wrapped around you, you sank, really sank, and for a second, in the murky darkness of the water, you felt like the whole world had died all around you. Like you’d died. Then shooting back into the light of the setting sun—the funk and the euphoric screams—climbing out of the water onto the earth, alive again, tasting the beautiful air, hugging the solid ground. We kept jumping until our skin had wrinkled and our hair was matted with mud.
The sunset lasted an eternity that evening. Maybe I remember it so clearly because it was such a good day, or maybe it’s just because it was the last one. I don’t know. It could also be because that night, Sabine and I went off again. We kissed a little, but that got dull, so instead we trudged around until we found a dry hill to sit on.
You can see the stars now. So much clearer.
I looked up and saw that she was right. So many more little white dots in the sea of blackness. The sky was so huge it was hard to fathom.
It’s cause there’s no light pollution anymore. Cause the power’s down in New Orleans.
She held my hand real tight and tucked her head into my shoulder as we stared up, and I felt a rush of warmth.
This, I decided, was what the whole girl-friend thing was about, this was love.
My house was silent when I got back that night. Granny asleep on the couch; cigarette butts in the ashtray. next day I woke up to Mom shouting at me. I remember packing all my clothes into a suitcase in a daze, piling into someone’s car. The water was finally receding, I remember that, but beneath it everything was destroyed. The sidewalks. The gardens. Trash everywhere—whole homes reduced to rubble. It was so early and I was so tired that I don’t think I registered anything until I saw a sign that said Welcome to Texas. When that clicked I felt a sharp tug at my chest, like that feeling you get at the drop of a roller coaster. We’d left, I realized, we’d really left. I remember wanting to cry so bad but I kept my mouth shut because Mom looked so stressed. All I could do was ask her where we were going. I remember what she said, I remember it clear as day. We’re flying south. Like the birds. When birds can’t live somewhere anymore they fly south. I knew about migration, I’d learned all about it in school. I knew that migration happened with the seasons. The birds went south, but they came back, they always came back. For some reason I didn’t ask if we were coming back.
We went south, deep into Texas. -
Some days, when dusk settles in and the feeling creeps over me again, I like to go driving. There’s this perfect route where you can see the whole city and the coast and the mountains in your periphery. Mostly I go alone.
Today I am with a woman who has long pale hair. She is next to me in the pas senger’s seat, and she is high on something, and I am very sober. Her eyes are shut tight and her arms are up and her perfect form is silhouetted against the ruined sun. I guess I should feel something, like adrenaline, or at least arousal, but I’m stuck inside my own mind. I’m thinking of Sabine and Luke and Elijah, and Louisiana—how I never tried to contact any of them—I never tried to go back. I couldn’t. I don’t
know why. They appear to me now as this woman does: silhouettes, empty outlines of people against an impossible brightness. I’m sorry.
I don’t like to reminisce. I don’t do it on purpose. But sometimes you just can’t help it. It doesn’t take much—an image, or a scent, or a song, and then it hits. Hits like a line of cocaine, a real pure hit straight to the brain. A short rush. Then nausea. Sickness. Despair. A shudder, and then I’m right back in Louisiana, afloat in the muddy flood water, or else on a rooftop watching someone far away die. After the hurricane we moved to Texas. There was no help for us at home, and Mom was convinced that once the insurance money came in, we could start a new life. But it was torture for me in those new schools. Nobody understood me like Sabine and Elijah and Luke. I couldn’t talk to anyone the way I talked to them. After a while I couldn’t even talk to Mom.
I want to vomit. I want to be asleep, or else dead. I want to kick down on the brakes and turn to this woman and scream at her. I want to lose her on the side of the highway. I want to. I want to. But I can’t. I will drive this woman home and let her do whatever she’s been planning on doing all along. The ruined sun will sink beneath the earth and be born again. The birds will fly south, and I will think about how Sabine loved me. My car will tear down the high-
l tBy Demi Ajibola
a quiet ode to the lovers left behind. fractured souls, shards of shattered dreamscapes scattering the floor, deadly. crystalline.
through is the only way out— small, so small, slices through soft soles, and skin disfiguring.
a glass pressed to the face: your father’s strong jaw, taut your mother’s kind eyes, dulled, turned away from the monster in the mirror.
a corpse rubbed raw stinging, with the fear that this is all you ever were.
but come, press your forehead to mine and let these hoarse voices breathe life into aching ribs. let sorrow water, let palms touch, clasp, lovers anew of the joy in an exhale. let sun warm pallid skin, let autumn breeze fill lungs, let a furious blaze burn away the lingering traces of the past and somewhere amidst a series of sundays in the space between a twirling, golden leaf and a laugh, unexpected burst forth from behind chapped lips let me stitch my guts back in with the red thread between us.
The light that speckled through the trees in the morning when you still had it — that carefree effervescence, that charming naivete, that intrepid tenacity — coursing through your pulsing, innocent heart as you stumbled along the uneven sidewalk and clutched your mother’s faintly wrinkled palm. The incandescent haze of the amber sunlight, the whisper of the morning breeze that pierced through your velvety skin in a sacred, ephemeral way.
By Nora Bitar
But it’s obsolete. Lost now — to the roads, to your fleshy, calloused hands, to the charcoal skies of an unfamiliar city, to the shade of your tangled hair. Soul-tumbling, heart lurching, deep-seated, supernatural dread that smothers you, then dries you up as you sit in purgatory, bleached and waiting for the light that speckled through the trees in the morning when you still had it.
Let me sit among the vines, just for a moment.
Let me kick up the sweet dust where the rocks turn to sand.
Let me steal a grape, as is tradition— full, saturated with California sun, hanging patiently to be turned to wine.
Let me breathe the warmth I feel here— the late August in front of me, and all the ones that came before.
Let me walk gently through the overgrowth, the rows I used to peek between careless and barefoot, dodging ant hills and sanded porcelain.
Let me pause where my rose bush used to stand.
Let me feel the love of the woman that planted it for me.
Let me see the changes around me— gradual and uneasing.
By Sophie Carpenter
Let me accept what feels impossible, yet comes and goes with the Delta winds.
To show up to work with a wrinkled button-down and wrong-fitting pants hiding the rosy raised plateaus of mosquito bites I got from practicing my cartwheels in the yard
ByBlythe Elderd
Where between eating beach chips gritty with sand grains embedded in my molars and walking barefoot on too-hot concrete napping in the angle of my mother’s shadow fingers crossed against a sunburn pink around the lines of last year’s favorite bikini did I have to learn to be careful
When with mud and grass abstracted onto shins and clothes interwoven with planks of wood cheek pressed to a seam between floorboards feeling the vibrations of canine footsteps breath stirring flecks of dust as murmurs drift in from two rooms away did I outgrow my favorite pants
Double-digits catch up to me button snagged fly down running out the door
I am rooted in chaos
Swept away, disjointed, torn apart between two ships passing by.
My branches go deep into water
Buried beneath the weight of all things above
My roots aren’t grounded in soil and the freezing tide uncoils me.
By Ela Nalbantoglu
The shivers down my spine remind me of fingernails tracing my back
Fleeting moments turn into entangled messes and I’m home.
I feel water levels rising
It’s getting colder and lovelier.
I grow rooted deeper and deeper and deeper in.
Everything’s entrenched, intertwined, and freezing.
The cold isn’t numbing I feel more alive than ever.
My roots are all-consuming
They feed on large waves that sink ships Alive as I am, they swallow me up and I I stay forever deep within straits.
How does this work again?
I hear a faint murmur somewhere in the background, the memory of voice. It’s been so long since I’ve spoken, I almost forgot I could do it at all. Inhale, exhale, swallow, choke down the weight of congealed silence until it no longer feels like an anvil compressed to the size of a lump in my throat.
I feel the trees shift—a leaf brushes against my ankle, stirred by the wind. I jump.
pressure until she has no choice but to release, scream into the void, and send a gale rushing down to the human world.
The leaves are just starting to turn, and I don’t want to be here anymore. I can feel the malaise creeping up my spine, brushing up against my skin, rooting me to the roof and wrapping its tendrils tighter and tighter and tighter and tighter and—
I gasp.
I’ve been staring for so long, trying to muster up the courage to do something, anything, just not nothing. I stare out at the skyline sparkling in front of me and feel the trees whispering behind my back, maybe commenting on my cowardice. I’ve been on this roof for an hour, standing so still I might as well have become rooted to the ground and sprouted translucent leaves myself. It’s intoxicating, looking out at the edge of everything like this; it’s like I’ve reached the border of the known universe, and every rule I have is broken. Where do I go from here?
The wind howls and screeches—I can almost picture a petulant wind deity, hair all curly like in the ancient Greek statues, screwing up her face and building
I feel the rot writhing around and firing off neurons in my brain, forcing me to consider what it would feel like to stand up on the railing—the rot forces me to imagine the grittiness of the brutalist concrete chafing against my palms as I push myself up and survey the view that unfolds itself in layers in front of me; lower roof leading to buildings with dark windows leading to the expanse of the world beyond it, cloaked by the velvety night sky.
The rot is like that. Nowhere, and then everywhere at once, suddenly all-encompassing and all important until you can’t even remember what it was like to wake up without feeling its saccharine stench in your nose every morning, slowing down your brain and making your eyelids impossibly heavy. It starts
By Mallika Sinha
deep, where the light can’t reach, and then makes its way up.
I can’t put a finger on it, on what it is or how it’s consumed me, but I know it’s there, interrupting every day and every night. I feel it every dusk that I spend gazing out the window, watching the sun slide slowly across the horizon and splash drips of red and orange across feathery clouds as it goes. I’m inevitably aware of it as I bury my face in my scratchy pillowcase, knowing that I’ve wasted yet another beautiful day.
I blink as cold air rushes against my face, feel tears welling up in my eyes, tears of anger. There should be no rot, no decay, no end. Why does it have to be like this?
My backside buzzes. I reluctantly slip my near-frozen fingers into my back pocket and fish out my phone, wincing as I almost cut myself on the jagged edge of my shattered screen protector. I let the white light wash over my face, recoiling from the brightness after hours of surveying the dark. It’s a text from my friend.
HUGE rat in common room. soooo big!!!
Come see it rn. We’re gonna name him something stupid
HURRY!!!!!
My eyes must be reflecting the light from my phone screen—I imagine them glowing in the darkness. I think of putting my phone away, of going back to staring out into nothingness. The rot seems to have slithered its way around my leg. Roots have erupted from the slabs of concrete I’m standing on, hugging my feet too tightly and keeping them rooted firmly to the ground. I need to move. I need to pick up my feet and get away from this place before I crumble into the earth.
just a little bit further from the edge of the roof.
I can do this. I take another step, faster this time, and feel the rot weakening, realizing that pure fear won’t keep me caged any longer.
I can’t defeat the rot. Not right now, at least. But I can chip away at it, one rotten branch at a time. It’s not much, but it’s the only way that I can see. One step at a time, one day at a time.
I hesitate, then try to lift my foot up. Just an inch. Just a little bit. I feel the gears in my head whirring furiously as I gingerly lift my heel up, then bring my toe up with it. I almost giggle in disbelief. I take a full step away from where I was. Only an inch, but backwards nonetheless,
I haven’t laughed, but I can feel a smile starting to tug at my mouth.
I turn fully away from the railing. The trees rustle noisily, and the wind is faster than ever. But I don’t turn back around. I have a rat to name, and I can’t let it get away.
It’s Autumn. Which means it’s my favorite season. It makes me smile.
You spray your fall fragrance on the nape of your neck. An unusual spot that I don’t mind because the warm scent of clove welcomes me into your embrace.
Your duck boots are seven strides ahead of me. On the trail I rush to catch up with you. The crescendo of crunching leaves alerts you of my arrival. You smile.
We lie. Intertwined not just in each other, but in the long blades of unmowed grass. Together we look up at the leaves maturing from the color of my eyes, to the color of your hair.
Our spoons compete with one another, fighting for the final bite. You win. Maple soft serve clings to your lips just as I do. I win.
I curl up in your shoulder after a long day, tracing letters into your chest. I hug you, tighter than your beautiful brown sweater ever could. The rough, scratchy wool on the surface does not match what you feel beneath.
It’s Winter. Which means Autumn is over. It left me behind. You did not.
By Matthew O’Connor
laststoponthegreenline?