Human Nature
My work has for the last few months, been inspired by, and evolving around, man as a creation of nature. This piece was inspired by the similarities that we share with nature. Like forests, humans too have secrets hidden behind a mere facade. Beasts thrive within us ,but so do flowers. Here, forests are made to represent the dynamic nature of the unconscious human mind. Just as nature appears to be simple, so do we. However, there lies an often forgotten chaos in the cosmos.
Rhea Bhatnagar is a high school student studying at Delhi Private School, Sharjah. She is a passionate feminist and animal rights advocate who likes to spend her free time volunteering at local cat shelters.
Who I Used to Be
“I’m gay,” I said.
Adam’s smile faltered as we continued to walk down the street. “Wait, you mean bisexual, right?”
I frowned slightly. “Nope, I meant what I said.”
There was an awkward pause between us, the first of many. The air was thick and the palm trees swayed slightly. The sun was blinding.
Adam broke the silence first. “Oh, well I’ve never had a gay friend before. I guess you’re the first. Yeah, I’m completely fine with the gay thing.” (Important note from the author: he was not completely fine with the gay thing.)
It was only a few days after our first real conversation when I heard the rumors that he liked me. It started with the freshman class that he was a part of. Then, it spread to the sophomore class I was in at the time. It wasn’t long until seniors would wave at me in the hallways then whisper to each other.
At first, the rumors were laughable. I had come out to some friends and family back in my home state only a couple of months ago with nothing but positive reactions. They accepted me, but I’m not sure I was too accepting of myself.
When I was 14, I was uncomfortable being gay. It was unexplored territory. I lived in a small town in California where That Word was a vile insult used daily. Hate crimes weren’t unheard of and a lot of students and teachers alike wouldn’t even say That Word aloud. Many students were still proud of their identity, but I was not one of them.
It wasn’t long before I fell back into my old heterosexual habits.
In August, Adam and I went from being friends to being boyfriend and girlfriend. It was safe and familiar. From the outside, it also had a great effect on my life. My stepmom was ecstatic when I told her about Adam over the phone. My mom was wildly confused at first, but grew to tolerate him. At school, I went from eating alone at lunch to eating with Adam at a different table everyday. The staff and students alike gushed at what a cute couple we made.
Focusing on Adam himself, he wasn’t a bad guy at all. He was tall and looked like a younger version of Usher. He was a classy gentleman, always wearing a sweater vest and loafers and holding the door open for me. He even drove a cherry red moped to and from school. His family was well off and his dad owned a business that sold custom hoverboards. (Trust me, the whole custom hoverboard thing was the epitome of coolness when I was in tenth grade.)
Adam and I had a golden relationship until both of our true colors began to show.
It was November. I sat at lunch with Adam and a table of his friends, and the one sitting across from us was talking about his weekend. I wasn’t listening though. A girl was walking towards the main office. She was a student in the school’s alternative program and only came on campus once every few weeks. She was stunning. The makeup she had on made her skin glow and she walked in a way that radiated confidence, one high heeled foot in front of the other. Her long hair flew behind her and into the sunlight, making it look like auburn with a golden undertone.
I didn’t get to admire much more because Adam’s friend threw a balled up napkin at me.
“Are you just gonna let Adam check her out,” he asked as he gestured at the golden-haired girl I had been in the middle of checking out myself. “I’d be angry if I were you.”
“Sorry, she was cute,” Adam mumbled as he bit into a chicken sandwich.
I wasn’t angry at all but I wanted to look normal to his friends so I put on a straight face.
“So you think she’s cute, huh,” I said indignantly with my hand on my hip to top it all off. The table went quiet.
“God, you’re so insecure!” Adam threw down his chicken sandwich so hard the top bun bounced off. He walked away to play football with his friends. I desperately wanted to call out to him or anybody, “No, I’m just very gay!”
Yet I remained silent with the rest of the table.
The year went by and soon it was January. My relationship with Adam was doing fantastic because we had an unspoken deal. I would ignore the obvious fact that he was cheating on me and he would let me continue enjoying the popularity that came with dating him.
It was “twin day” at school and he had brought me one of his sweater vests to wear. It was blue and beige with a crisp white dress shirt underneath. I paired it with black pants and oxfords to match him. My hair was slicked back into a bun and I didn’t have time that morning to put any makeup on. I also didn’t have the time to change into my normal clothes before I went home and had to go to the store with my mom.
I felt uncomfortable being in public and not looking as feminine as I usually did. As I walked up the street, I made eye contact with a girl waiting for the bus. Her blonde hair was in a ponytail and she was also dressed in men’s clothes. A backpack sat on the bench next to her covered in various pins and patches. She smiled at me and I put my head down, feeling strange in my sweater vest.
When my mom and I got in the store, she said something that surprised me.
“Did you see that girl checking you out as she was waiting for the bus,” my mom asked as she picked up a can of beans.
“Mom! She wasn’t looking at me like that. Was she?”
“She definitely was,” my mom said. “But nevermind, forget I said anything.”
I was in shock. I don’t quite know why the idea of a girl checking me out felt so revolutionary. I simply had never thought about that being able to happen. I suppose I had always viewed my sexual orientation like a one sided mirror, as if no other girl could see me glancing from the other side. I realized that just like Adam looked at me and pursued me, I could do that too.
I realized I didn’t have to settle for dating a guy.
I immediately knew I needed to break up with Adam, but I didn’t know how.
Two months later, I no longer needed to worry how. Adam opened the door for me one last time and sat me down on a bench. He couldn’t say the words aloud so he typed the message on his phone and slid it over for me to read.
I think we should break up.
I quickly put my head down on the lunch table and covered my face with my hands.
“I know you’re going to miss me,” Adam said sadly. “I know how hard this is.”
He continued to comfort me until the bell rang for first period. Once he was out of sight, I put my head up and let myself smile. I had been smiling since the moment I saw the message and just didn’t want Adam to see. I was happy to be free from the relationship I felt pressured to be in from the beginning.
Admittedly, I cried in a bathroom stall five minutes later. I didn’t miss him, but I knew I would miss the safety of being in a straight relationship. I was scared. Would my friends choose sides? Would I have to eat alone again? Who would help me deal with what was beyond my one sided mirror? Who would hold that door open for me?
It’s been two years since that day at the lunch table. I can’t say I haven’t struggled with my identity, but I can proudly say I haven’t dated an Usher lookalike who sells hoverboards since then. Even on the worst of days, I know who I really am.
I no longer exist in a space where I need a boy to hold the door open for me in the name of chivalry.
I open the door for myself nowadays.
Yasmine Duncan is an emerging young writer from the Pittsburgh area.
Composing Constellations
You crush a firefly between fingers.
See? Still glows.
I know it does, I know.
I don’t look.
The clouds are suspended
around our faces.
My eyes water,
smoke induces my tears
I swear
I want to leave
this state of mind
To string necklace
from gum wrappers in your pockets,
Hold a hand while
we compose constellations
Because we never spot the real ones
Though I’ll never confess
I would rearrange the stars
until my fingers glow yellow
for your smile.
I want to know your whisper
from the wind’s,
Because still
they sound the same to me.
I want to know you.
But here we stand
words in my throat,
heart at my chest.
Morgan Almasy is a junior creative writing major at her high school. She has twice attended the creative writing summer camp at Interlochen Center for the Arts. Almasy has previously been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing awards and has been awarded Gold Keys, Silver Keys, and Honorable Mentions at the regional level. Almasy has previously been published in Moledro Magazine, Blue Marble Review, and Literary Orphans magazine. She hopes to pursue a double major in marketing and creative writing in college.
Mistress of the Sea
It shone upon the tallest bow
The figurehead’s coquettish smile
Carved in the glint of goddess-eyes
To prowl the Southern Isles
The men arrived when light was hot
The sky still blistered blue
Some women spread out tapestries
Of bright landlover’s hues
They tied them ‘round the ropey necks
Of still-sweet sailor men
And begged, “Diana of the stars
Please bring them home again”.
Yet far above, the figurehead
Unleashed her languid laugh
“Oh, foolish churls, you silly girls
Know you nothing of men?
When any child of Zeus
Hears his sea mistress cry–
He cannot drown away my calls
To me, he must oblige
I wrap the winds about his waist
I parch his lips with salt
His soul fills deep with wanderlust
He begs me, ‘Keep me in the thrall…’
And then–
And only then!–
I snap his back with thunder’s whips
Rip his chest with seaman’s steel
Grind down his teeth to dealer’s meal
Slap him in waves to draw his blood
As blue and black as ocean’s flood
Splayed out upon the deck at dawn
His flesh-sack racks with sobs
But he cannot cry for anyone
Silence is the seaman’s job
Yet by next night, he begs again
For my smooth steady hand
‘Oh, sternest lady, drag me down
In wand’rer fortune’s palm!’
What can womankind provide him
When his heart belongs to me?
No man can remain on sand
In domesticity
When a wanderer’s loved to madness
By his mistress of the sea.”
Julia Spano is from Hillsborough, New Jersey. She is a member of the Writer’s Circle at her school, and is joining the school newspaper next year. She enjoys writing, playing the guitar and writing poems about ancient mariners. This is her first publication.
Uncle T
When I was eight, my Uncle Tom, who loves working with his hands, got me a go-kart kit for my birthday, and a few months later, we had it built and painted. His vision was to send me down the tourist infested Lombard street, a steep, curvy, brick road in the middle of San Francisco. But, during our first ceremonial test run on the hill behind my house, one of the wheels very nearly fell off as I swerved to avoid a dog. Uncle T decided the wheels were, “kind of shitty,” so we put it back in my grandmother’s garage and left it for almost four years.
“There may be fake news but there are no fake uncles.”
–Frederick Wehlen
Uncle T was trying to teach me basketball. It didn’t matter that he didn’t really know how to play. It didn’t matter that I was too young to properly shoot a ball. He was going to teach me.
On the court, my short, slender, six-year-old frame was completely dwarfed by the 6’4” 200-pound man standing over me.
He dribbled past me, going for the layup. As he jumped up, he said, “Shaquille O’Neal.”
Wow you really crushed that six-year-old.
But Uncle T is not the most agile man, and as he came down, I found myself underneath him. He fell hard, landing squarely on my head.
“Eh, it’ll toughen him up,” he told my mother later.
“I am the first Brigham to not be asked to leave Phillips Exeter Academy since 1928.”
–Tom Brigham
Four years after our initial test, we brought the go-kart back. We cut off the old roll bar designed for 4’6” me and pretty much just screwed a little kids’ bike trailer Tom had found in a dumpster to the back of the go-kart. Having re-sparked our interest, my uncle proceeded to purchase a stroller from “some dude named Jeff” on craigslist to replace the other two wheels.
A few weeks of work later, the go-kart was functional. However, the brakes were questionable, and the steering was imprecise (essentially, you could steer hard right, hard left, and slight left).
Most of his effort had been placed on making it look cool, and look cool it did. He had redone the paint job and carved flames into the back. His specialty was making things look worn, so he added several coats and went over it with sandpaper. The finished product looked like a steampunk hot rod car that had been sized up to fit a human.
In the Exeter nation, he’s a fourth generation,
but the truth is quite hard to divine…
As he scans through the masses of graduating classes,
the Brighams are hard to find.
–Excerpt from “Willie and Freddie”
By Tom Brigham
“Hey Freddie,” said Uncle T over the phone, “any chance we could move breakfast to 9:00?”
I agreed despite my hunger, and an hour later I walked down the hill to his apartment. I rang the doorbell, and a few seconds later the door buzzed aggressively. I climbed up the stairs and opened his door to the smell of pancakes.
“I know you gotta be home by eleven for some funeral or something so we won’t work on our project for too long,” he said.
I was about to tell him it wasn’t a funeral but decided to eat my pancakes instead. They were thin; he insisted on thin pancakes to differentiate his from the half-cooked IHOP ones. He is a pancake artiste.
While we ate, he told me stories from his time at Exeter. We talked about his dismay upon hearing that his brother had been expelled, right as he was about to enter. He told me about his fights with his roommate, and how his banjo skills helped him win friends and influence people.
Suddenly, it was 1:30 and we were just finishing up lunch at a divey Thai place on Clement.
“Is looking cool a category?”
–Uncle T
(Upon being asked if the go-kart was being built for speed, handling, or comfort.)
After what Uncle T called, “decades of planning” (it was really more like fifteen minutes), we showed up at 6 AM on Lombard Street. Armed with nothing but a clipboard, my uncle walked out into the middle of the road, stopping several early morning tourists.
We rolled out the go-kart. Then, he pushed me down a hill steeper than we were sure the brakes could handle, curvier than we knew the steering could handle, and bumpier than we knew the suspension could handle. Essentially, he was willing to send me down a terribly steep road with questionable brakes just for the story.
But I love him anyway.
Frederick Wehlen is an eleventh grader at boarding school in New Hampshire. He is the fourth generation in his family to attend the school, but none of his relatives have graduated since 1929. They have mostly been asked to leave. This is a character profile of one of those family members: Uncle T.