May Featured Pieces
Narcissus Poeticus by Ava Bruni
Author’s Note: This is mirroring the story of Narcissus. In Greek Mythology, Narcissus was cursed to fall in love with his reflection if he ever saw it. One day, he sees it in a shallow pool of water and is so enchanted by his own beauty he stares into his reflection for the rest of his life. When he dies, he turns into a flower, called Narcissus Poeticus (or Poet’s Narcissism). Do you write down your grief, Shallow like a pool of water, And only find your reflection in the words? You’ve never been more than it, What you see on paper, pen in hand. Your words are beauty, Ink spread on paper, Like roots in soil. Echoes in the wind Curse your foolishness, Repeating back the words You’ve grown so fond of, Rearranging, Begging you to hear them in a different way. You spend hours alone, Sculpting the words you’ve already written, The words you will always write Again and again and again. You try to get it right. You try to get it right. You try to get it right. Every stroke, Every space. It has to be perfect. It has to be perfect. It has to be perfect. But all you manage to find is you. Everything you are Condensed into one poem. There’s nothing you love more Than the shallow pools You see yourself in. So you write and write and write. Again and again and again. Stuck on the riverbed Until the words are perfect. And you think you could love what you see, But it’s not perfect. You know it’s not perfect. And it has to be perfect. But it will never be perfect. And it will never love you back. "Ce-ramen-ic", Katelyn Wang
Reflections of a Ghost by Ashley Vadner
A small ghost sits on a garden bench. Soft violets spill up between the slats, cream-colored roses like tiny crowns above his invisible head. Of all the flowers, he wants to be the poppies, glowing red embers along the flagstone path, impossible to be missed by any eye. Do you have to be seen to be real? Through his body, he can see weather-worn wood, and he knows that he is clear as glass-- only glass reflects light, and he reflects nothing. A girl walks into the garden, and she is familiar. Her face is unknown, but he recognizes the honey of her hair and the dimple in her right cheek when she smiles. She is smiling at the flowers, admiring their bold hues and the grace in their arching green stems. The ghost would rather be the smallest leaf than invisible. He wants to be noticed by the girl, or anyone. What is the point, if he is all alone? "Bloom", Katie White
A Study on Butterflies and Other Insects by Ava Bruni
Entomology (noun): The study of insects and their relationship to humans, the environment, and other organisms. *****
We met each other for the first time at the hibiscus tree in the park near my house. You were crying, something your father said. I tried to comfort you, pointing out the colors of the flowers around us and the birds that owned the sky. You just sat there with bloodshot eyes and a blank expression. You talked in whispers, your sentences short and purposeful, pointing out things I'd never thought to see.
I asked you mundane questions—what your name is, where you’re from—the polite things I was taught to ask strangers. You asked me about the universe, the trees, the bugs, the stars. You pointed out spider webs on branches and ants carrying crumbs twice their size. Your family came to town during spring break every year to visit your rich great-aunt. When you described her, I lied to you, saying I knew who she was, but she sounded the same as every older woman in this town. You told me she was one of those beetles that pretended to be a ladybug. I didn't understand what you meant yet. Every year after that, I met you at the hibiscus tree in the park during spring break. We’d sit on the grass until the blue in the sky turned into stars every day during your visit. Your family never noticed you were gone, or maybe they didn’t care. But we’d spend our week in the shade, avoiding the rest of the world. I didn't ask you questions anymore. Anytime I did your face would tense and you would struggle to get the words out. I never asked if you looked forward to meeting me under the tree all year long, waiting for something real to come along and distract you. I knew you enough to know you were. I knew how you would take your bracelet off and twirl it in your hand when you got anxious,and how you’d blush and look down as you talked. I knew you with braces and I knew you without. I knew you when your hair was short, then long, then short again. I saw how your smile changed and faded and broke until it was gone. You used to point at the people who passed us and tell me who they were, naming them all after insects. Wasps and bees were the people in suits, but bees' job was to make honey and wasps were just there to hurt people. Fireflies were the children who were happy and played, and flies were the ones who sat silently as their parents taught them to. You’d give them stories. Some dreamed of flying and others didn’t know how to dream so they stayed stuck in place. You told their stories with such confidence, it made me really believe you. As if any word you spoke was the genuine truth, and who the stranger thought they were was a lie. You put the world under a magnifying glass, grasping at any information you could get about the organisms around us. You never treated me like one of your observations, but I knew you made a version of me up in your mind. Probably a better version, the one I wished I was. I could tell by the way you looked at me and how you tried not to smile when you saw me. How you listened, really listened, when I had something completely ordinary to say. In your mind, the mind that decides who strangers truly are, I was someone you loved. And if you loved me, then I was probably okay. I remember the necklace you gave me with a butterfly pendant and how you said it reminded you of me. My eyes filled with tears when I saw who I was to you. By the end of the week I gave you a bracelet like the one you fidgeted with. In the center was a butterfly bead, so we could be butterflies together. One spring you stopped observing the world and stayed silent. I didn't ask what was wrong because I knew you and I knew you wouldn’t want to talk about it. I filled the silence with everything you used to say. I pointed at the fireflies that played together nearby and the bees that rushed to work. My words weren’t as soft as yours; they didn’t sound believable. You noticed. Halfway through the week you reminded me of something I forgot when I was with you. I was a part of the organisms I seemed to hate so much. There were only ever wasps and flies and beetles, and I was pretending just like them. You spoke in your same whispers as the day I met you. The whispers that meant truth. And I remember telling you that you are just the same as me. You're the one who hates the world that raised you and the way it shaped everything you are. You pretend to be different, special, but every year you come back to this town you hate so much. Just like your father and your father’s father and every father before him. You are stuck, just like me. Yes, I’m pretending, but at least I know it. You didn’t come back to the hibiscus tree after that. I’d see you with your family when you’d come for spring break, but you’d never look in my eyes. It took everything in me not to run up to you and wrap my arms around you and keep every promise I’d ever ever made under our tree. A part of us would always belong to the hibiscus tree and the time we spent together. But we didn't belong to the town with its wasps pretending to be bees and flies pretending to be fireflies and beetles pretending to be ladybugs. They’re always going to want to be more than they are. My life was rooted in this town and so was yours. And as much as we wanted to be butterflies and escape the world we were born into, we’ll always just be moths. Drawn to the light of the promise of becoming more. |
"Muffled Water", Casey Kovarick
Skittles and Friendship by Ashley Vadner
I knew two things about you the day we became best friends. The first was that you only liked red and purple Skittles. You had a pack at lunch and poured the orange, yellow, and green ones into my hands after they’d been picked through, only because I was sitting nearby, and all I had for lunch was a tuna fish sandwich. I stared at the candies cupped in my palms long enough for the colors to begin leaching into my sweaty skin. It was hot that day. Hot enough to cook an egg on a roof, as my dad likes to say. The second thing I knew was that you were a mystery. No one in our second-grade class knew quite what to make of a girl who picked up spiders with her bare hands and seemed unfazed by punishments and snapped crayons on purpose just to try and get a clean break. There was more to you too, but in my seven-year-old eyes, these were the most shocking things. “Aren’t you going to eat them?” you asked me, staring at the Skittles still in my palms. I think that if you hadn’t spoken, they would’ve melted together into one big sticky Skittle pancake. I was so struck by the offering that I would’ve ruined it. But you reminded me to eat them, and I did, one-by-one. You were the only other kid in our class who sat alone at lunch. There was no overlap in our Skittles preferences; we could split a pack with no argument. At our age, that was enough reason for an inseparable friendship. We grew older. The mystery unraveled slowly and then all at once. I’d thought you were fearless, and in some ways, you were. Every roller coaster meant a laugh; none of them were high enough in the sky. Insects were friends, not foes. The dark was fun to dance in. But really, you were just afraid of all of the big things and none of the little ones. We were opposites that way. I screamed at spiders but couldn’t fathom loss enough to fear it. You were always the bolder one. People wondered why a girl like you, who talked back to anyone and everyone, would be friends with a wallflower like me. But really, when it was just the two of us, I was the chatterbox. It made perfect sense to us. You trusted me with your silence, and I trusted you with my words. We were thirteen when the last pieces of your mystery shattered. All at once with seven words. Lying in the dark on my floor, you whispered, “Everyone hates me, don’t they? Don’t they?” And then I knew everything. I finally understood who you were. There’s no way to truly go back from something like that. You can never look at a person the same way again after you know them to their core. I don’t remember what I said. Probably something stupid, like “Of course not.” But I remember what I was thinking: it didn’t really matter if everyone else hated you, because I loved you enough to make up the difference. When you started to slip, I almost wasn’t surprised. Almost. I’d always known you weren’t the easily-satisfied kind of person, and I didn’t mind, because for a while I was enough. But our friendship was like a boulder, unmovable, unshakable, until the day it wasn’t. The first crack was my fault. After that, every new splinter was a joint effort, a chisel in each of our hands, but I’ll never forgive myself for that first crack. You wanted more. You wanted more than me, other people to share laughs and secrets with. And I knew, deep down, that you weren’t leaving me. You were just expanding your attention, the lens of your scope having focused on one star for far too long. There was a whole galaxy out there. I was a dim little star in comparison, and I was no longer enough. But I spiraled. It had always been just us. How was I supposed to share you, just like that? How could you wander away from everything we had? “You’re just trying to prove that you can be liked,” I said. I wanted to snatch the words out of the air the moment I saw the look in your eyes. Because I was right. And sometimes I think you strayed only because I knew every part of you, including the ones you hated. After that, I knew we could never fully go back. Words can be apologized for, and even forgiven, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be forgotten. Every time you looked at me, I saw my words reflected in your eyes. It didn’t take long for everything else to crumble. Our friendship had been inseparable for so many years, and now that one crack had been formed, the rest of our little, bottled-up grievances could spill out. You called me clingy. I recounted every time that you’d skipped class and left me stranded to do a group project alone. You told me that sometimes you didn’t even know what to do with all my words, and I said the same for your silence. Our last texts were sent, the last pack of Skittles shared. I don’t remember what the last words we ever spoke to each other were. Probably a mumbled “See you later.” Now, two years later, when I catch sight of you in the hallway, our eyes meet, then slide away. My chest aches for a moment because I want to know if you are the same girl, or if I am remembering an old, changed version. I know that in some ways, I’ve also changed. I’m hardly afraid of spiders anymore. But still, I want to share a pack of Skittles with you and tell you how you taught me to fear loss. "sick, dead, dying", Hannah Gupta
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