Nicole Orejuela

I waved goodbye to the moon last night

but I was really waving goodbye
to you.

Or the you that you were

Before

Before what, exactly?
I am not sure.

Certainly before you turned 16
when the treble in your voice turned bass
But not before grade seven
when your weeds of legs sprouted up
so that your face
glistened
as it touched the Sun.

Perhaps it was just before
age 13
that momentous birthday
when the unspoken threshold is finally crossed:

youth becomes adolescence
child becomes teen
innocence becomes curiosity
becomes experimentation
becomes rebellion
becomes regret
Becomes
of us all

What is the ‘before’
you may ask?

I am not sure.
The only before that matters anymore
is the one that precedes
your death.

I am the lost time traveler
stuck in a never-ending loop
reliving every precious moment with you
Before

We never got to say goodbye, though,
did we?
The sand in your hourglass
had already run out
Sitting in a
motionless
mound, at the bottom
of tinted glass.

No
we never did get to say goodbye,
did we?

So now every night,
I sit by the bay window
in your favorite, leather chair,
drinking tears and warm, honey tea
while your college sweatshirt hugs me.
And as I gaze
through misty lens
towards the watching sky,
I see your perfect, little face
smiling down at me,

and so I wave
goodbye
to the moon.

 

Nicole Orejuela (she/her/hers) is a twenty-year-old undergraduate junior from Brookfield, Wisconsin, studying psychology at Northwestern University. An ardent writer since elementary school, Nicole won her first writing contest in the 4th-grade for her essay on the Peel Mansion Foundation. Since this early accolade, Nicole’s love for writing and storytelling has only grown as she’s progressed in her academic career, and her poem If I Were a Boy has recently been published in the Alcott Youth Magazine.  When she’s not drinking too much coffee at a local café or reading a new psychological thriller novel, Nicole enjoys creating new literary pieces in the form of short stories and poetry and hopes to one day publish a book.

The service is slap-dash. Hard not to believe
in signs and wonders when sun breaks sunken clouds
the second the pastor taps the mic, but his speech
is tone-deaf. Don’t speak to me of Jesus. I want to remember.

Death makes parents of children and children of parents.
See my father and his brother in sleeping bags on the floor
of their father’s house. See my grandfather never alone.
For dinner, they feast on steak, chicken, chips, salsa and guac,
grown men turned little boys rogue in the kitchen.
I drive my family to the service. My mother cries in the backseat.

In the box in the ground, hand-hewn by my uncle the carpenter,
beside my grandmother’s ashes, her requests:
a TJ Maxx-looking necklace still in cellophane packaging
that says “Gratitude” in cheap nickel. Her 40-year AA chip.

 

 

 

Livia Daggett is a copy editor by night and a senior at the University of Pittsburgh studying writing and philosophy. She has previously been published in Imposter: A Poetry Journal. She loves to read, knit, and provide overbearing care to her houseplants.

My mates and I agree on one thing:
It’s easiest to think when your hands
Are curled up in fists and everyone
Knows you for your loud words

Or louder punches.
Your ruffled up uniform,
And your abandoned tie.

And no one knows about how your mother
Screams like glass shards or how
You lie alone in a dark room sometimes
Because you’re too much of a man to cry.

And that the word whispered around is not a label of such,
but a verb of what you do
Which makes it not as bad as the other words
you’ve been called before.

And we all agree (though we don’t say it)
The fun never lasts as long as the scab or the pain
or the tears that you wish you could shed
in a half made bed.

But we don’t know what else to do
and no one would believe us if we changed
and to be honest I don’t even think we would be strong
enough to brave the laughter like the others do.

And so we agree.

 

 

Marcellus (they/he) is a queer, neurodivergent teen exploring family, love, and religion through their words. They love nature and cats, occasionally engaging in fencing sabre.

 

 

 

1. stir raspberry soda into a champagne flute. Setting sun / cheek pink & neck yellow.

 

2. buy two fountain pens. Black / Blue. Siphon the ink across your palms. Wash in the sink.

 

3. visit China. Tell nainai again, again, again, until she forgets.

 

4. buy a cat. Make sure it will love you back.

 

5. pour yourself a bowl of music. Eat it / cross-legged / 6th period classroom.

 

6. go star-gazing. Find an empty highway. Be anywhere, anything. Let the grass kiss your skin. The fireflies flit away, the wind like a snake language, swallow the hot air, let nothing breathe down your neck. Empty mall / empty ride / empty waters / empty hot-air-balloon. Be anywhere, anything. Be anywhere, anything.

 

7. take the SAT.

 

8. curl up in bed. Don’t think about the dying or the bucket list or the whirring refrigerator downstairs. Don’t think about the future /past / present at all. Knock on your knee thrice for extra protection. You know the rules.

 

9. go to college.

 

10. finish this poem.

 

 

Selena Zhang is a high school student living in Montgomery County, Maryland. Her work has been recognized by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers and is featured/forthcoming in the WEIGHT Journal, the Eunoia Review, Sad Girl Diaries, and The Candid Review. She particularly enjoys writing poetic interpretations of her dreams.

There is no tragedy without loss,
or at the very least,
a lack of something.
I am consumed by my family’s loss of heritage,
of religion,
of mother tongue-
there should have been no loss,
there should be no aching lack!
No man nor woman should fearfully shed anything for fear of retribution.
My ancestors should never have felt the need to suppress themselves,
fearing persecution in the land they fled to,
seeking freedom.
My great-grandfather should not have been ashamed to speak with an accent.
He should never have felt as if he was doing his children a favor,
refusing to teach them Russian.
As a result of unfounded fear,
I am empty,
void of what should have been mine,
void of what should have been passed to me,
void of true connection with those who fled and those who died!
What was for so long a thing of pride,
turned to a source of shame,
soured like milk left in the sun
by those who allowed paranoia to consume them.
Worst of all, my familial tragedy is common.
The Red Scare was only a single instance
of a single boogeyman,
who we are always reinventing.
I am not alone- I am one of many,
stripped of a heritage
I would have proudly embraced!
For those who could have passed it to me did not, out of unjust fear.
I bear witness to the slow death of their memory.
I may tell my children their story,
but I will never know how to tell it in the way it was written:
In Russian, a language I was never taught to speak.
I cling to what is left,
to the few fragmented pieces of my heritage,
preserved by diligent grandmothers and great-aunts.
Potitsa dough rolled thin across a table,
brushed with butter,
sprinkled with cinnamon sugar.
Small jars upon which pictures of forests and pretty girls are carefully painted.
Inside, written prayers are kept safe.
And pictures,
and stories,
of endless sacrifice.

 

Savannah Sisk is a sixteen-year-old woman who lives in the American South, where she spends the majority of her time daydreaming about ways to move to New Zealand. She is extremely passionate about writing, having loved to write ever since she learned to hold a pen. Most recently, her writing and poetry have been published in the Alcott Youth Magazine, Quail Bell Magazine, and Across the Margin Literary Magazine. Her work is forthcoming in the Academy of the Heart and Mind Literary Magazine and Anti-Heroin Chic Literary Journal.

 

before it learnt to
break at the hands of boys
my heart twisted at
lives curved into
yellowing paper with
the shadows of a
hundred hands dancing
over sacrosanct phrases
my breath whispers with
pages that melt into
my fingers leaving a
dust of desire and dreams
i find myself in
the corners of worlds in
sentences tucked away like
lovers’ notes
invisible to the wind
i breathe poetry and
bleed prose and there are
paragraphs inked on my arms
if you cut me open you
would find the centuries flood
out of me like blood
it is quiet here i
am not here i
skip stones across galaxies
find secrets pressed into
pages like autumn leaves
transparent dreams with
sunlight tearing through
knotted canopies
the words carve castles
into the air and i
pour into rooms
full of the perfume of
stories i haven’t lived yet

 

Urvi is a poet, artist and musician at heart. She is currently in high school in Bangalore, India. She co-hosts a podcast, whY A book, focusing on young adult literature, a topic about which she is very passionate. She also has a blog: https://gotablankspace.wordpress.com