Aubree Landau, Author at Blue Marble Review

The Devil’s Mouth

By Aubree Landau

Friday, July 12

Okay, before you say anything, I just need you to know that Winnie is fine. I already know what you’re going to say, and I know it sounds pretty bad, but just remember while you’re reading this that Winnie ends up being 100%, honest-to-god, certifiably, absolutely FINE! Like, probably more fine than the rest of us have been in a long time. Even more fine that time Jamie accidentally found Uncle Ted’s gummies and started hallucinating that the birds in the sky were angels here to rapture us back to Heaven. That’s how incredibly fine Winnie is.

So, remember how you told us to avoid those spongy spot out in the yard because you were convinced one day it’d collapse in on us and we’d be sent straight into the Devil’s Mouth? Yeah. Well, Winnie has never been one to listen. I tried, Ma! I’m telling you, I tried! I yelled “Winnie, get back here! Get back here, now!” but she just kept running. Even Jamie tried chasing after her, and you know that boy can’t run. Winnie didn’t take two steps out there before the ground collapsed and she was gone within the blink of an eye. All that was left was a circle of earth bigger than the Thompsons’ in-ground pool. Jamie and I were pure stunned. We just stood there like a couple of fools for a moment. I had to think to myself what would Ma do? but the obvious answer was, of course, to never let Winnie near the Devil’s Mouth to begin with. Then we never would’ve gotten into this lousy scenario. But here we were, and poor Winnie was about to get sent straight to Hell, so we came to our senses and chased after her.

I just want to tell you in advance, sorry about your dogwood tree. It did not fare as well as Winnie did in this whole situation. But you’ve never seen such a sight! Once you see it for yourself you’ll forget all about the tree and the fact Winnie even went on this joyride to begin with.

For something you call the Devil’s Mouth, it sure makes a pretty picture. Maybe other people aren’t as blessed and theirs are full of thorns or fire or something, and that’s where you got the idea that they’re all bad. But this one is different. Jamie and I couldn’t believe our eyes.

There Winnie was, happier than Uncle Ted on Free Fish Fridays, swimming around in the most crystal-blue pond you’ve ever seen. There’re a bunch of trees that put that old dogwood to shame. Flowers, too, with bees and hummingbirds buzzing around them. A tiny little planet right there in our very own backyard. Jamie figured out that the ground had carved itself into a little staircase for us to get in, so we went to join Winnie. That pond is just about the best ever swimming hole you could find. If the Thomspons knew about it, they’d be livid! Jamie and I swam around with Winnie for hours and hours before Uncle Ted came to call us for dinner. I think he might’ve had some more of those gummies of his, because the Devil’s Mouth didn’t seem to faze him one bit. He just told us to dry off and come inside. We begged him to let us stay out and eat our dinner in the Mouth, but he said “Civilized children say grace and eat with a fork and knife at the dinner table.” As if you can’t say grace and eat with a fork and knife out in a swimming hole!

We tied Winnie to the table so she couldn’t go out and create any more Mouths and fed her her kibble. Jamie might’ve slipped her some of his meatloaf, partly because we have her to thank for this miracle, and partly because Uncle Ted’s a real rotten cook. She just kept wagging her tail so hard I thought it might fly off. Like I said, Ma, Winnie’s fine. She’s had just about the best day any dog could have. As for Jamie and I, I’d better wrap this up soon so we can go back out to the Devil’s Mouth before dark.

We’re also brainstorming better names for it than the Devil’s Mouth, because we think that’s not a very nice thing to call something so lovely. Let me know what you think.

Monday, July 15

I already know what you’re gonna say. No amount of “I told you so’s” will change what’s happened, or how Jamie and I feel about this whole thing. We already spoke to Father Murphy about it so rest assured, we’ve gotten it right with God and everything.

Jamie and I were real thrilled about the sinkhole (that’s what Uncle Ted told was the “proper” name for the Devil’s Mouth) and decided to take Winnie out for another spin yesterday. If she was able to find that swimming hole on the first try, who knew what else she’d be able to conjure up!

Here’s where I’ll admit that you’re right, Ma. We probably should’ve counted our blessings and left it at that. But things went so well the first time, we figured “What’s the harm?”

Turns out, there was some harm. Don’t freak out, but Uncle Ted’s gone. He came out to the backyard with us and stepped right into a sinkhole. This one didn’t collapse into another swimming hole or nothing. It just collapsed. And Uncle Ted’s been gone since. I hope he didn’t end up in a real Devil’s Mouth, because he may be a lousy cook, but he’s a pretty good uncle. We’re thinking Winnie must have some kind of special touch that made the swimming hole appear. She’s always been a really good dog, so it’d only make sense.

Don’t worry about Jamie and I. The Thompsons have been checking up on us, so we’re not all alone, and Father Murphy’s been doing a decent job of giving us some solace about it all, even though I’m sure this whole thing’s above his paygrade.

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. When Uncle Ted disappeared, he took your garden shed with him. I know you kept your liquor out there, even if it was meant to be secret. I hope that’s not too much of a low-blow with everything else going on.

Friday, July 19

You’ll never believe it, Ma: Uncle Ted’s back! Jamie and I were out in the Devil’s Mouth with Maisy Thompson (who still won’t admit our swimming hole’s better than her in-ground pool, by the way), when he popped his head out of the water like he’d been there the whole time. We asked him where he’d been, and he hadn’t the faintest idea. As far as he was aware, one second he was falling through the earth, and the next he was in the swimming hole!

I know you were planning to cancel the rest of your visit with Mamaw to come back for us, but there’s no need now, we’re all taken care of. Uncle Ted’s doing just fine, but I will say, he did come back a bit odd. We were eating at the dining table last night, when all of a sudden Uncle Ted went ramrod straight in his chair and said in a real deep voice, “All hail the destroyer of worlds.” Jamie and I looked at him all confused, but he just cleared his throat and asked us why we were staring. Then, this morning, he spoke gibberish and tried to feed us goat liver for breakfast. I’m pretty sure the goat was from the Thompsons’ farm, which’ll make church real awkward this weekend. I guess everyone has different coping mechanisms for returning from a pure void in time and space.

Aubree Landau is a writer, seamstress, and hobby collector from Phoenix, Arizona. Her work has previously placed in the Artists of Promise Creative Writing Contest. You can often find her reading in a comfy chair alongside her cat, Sadie.

Bloodied Knuckles

By Ali Adams

The chair beneath you is the same red as the blood on your knuckles. Your foot taps restlessly beneath the large oak desk of your principal. Mr. Clemmons is a graying man in his fifties, and you have likely given him most of his white hairs over the years. His eyes pierce yours; you’ve practically memorized the rain-gray of them by now.

He tells you he’s called your mother, and you hold back a flinch. Your mother coming here means she has to leave her job at the restaurant, and the last time that happened her manager docked her pay. You both spent two weeks living on cups of ramen and rationed peanut-butter sandwiches; she gave you the bigger rations.

“How are you going to explain this one?” Mr. Clemmons asks, and you look down at your lap, grimacing. There’s nothing you can say to her to soften the blow. Your mom won’t care what the other guy said; she’ll only care that you were stupid enough to take the bait. She won’t care that he taunted you or baited you with a watch worth, quote, “more than your father’s coffin,” only that you broke the kid’s nose.

Mr. Clemmons rubs his temple between two fingers. “I should expel you for this.”

“So why don’t you?” you snap, and immediately regret the words as he levels you with a glare. You look away and mutter a begrudging, “Sorry.”

He scoffs. “Your mother was my student, you know.” Your gaze stays firmly planted on the wall behind his head. “I know how hard she works now, and I’m trying not to put any more stress on her than she needs. But you’re not doing much to help, and any more of this and my hands will be tied. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Of course you do. You may be a straight-C-and-D-student, but you’re not entirely an idiot. You know how close you are to being kicked. A part of you is tempted to tell him to just get it over with; there’s no point in finishing school. Your mom didn’t, and she’s… fine. Enough. But you’ve seen her carefully counting and recounting the small stack of bills she’s saved for your college fund one night, as though she’ll ever use it.

It’s then that she walks through the door. Your stomach drops when you see her: frazzled hair, bags under her eyes, lips pursed in a line. Too late, you tuck your blood-stained hands beneath your legs. Her eyes narrow, and she meets your gaze but says nothing before she turns to Mr. Clemmons. The two of them talk, but all you can do is stare at her.

She’s never been this quiet to you. Even last time, when you slammed a freshman’s head into a locker for spewing crap he shouldn’t have, she at least said something—“Why?”. You clammed up; she didn’t need to know. Still, everyone at school knows how she’s only sixteen years older than you, and most aren’t afraid to throw that in your face.

This time, she hasn’t said a word. She’s hardly even looked at you. And twenty minutes later, after Mr. Clemmons told her you’d be suspended for thirteen days, after the car doors close and leave a ringing in their wake, there’s a tension in her shoulders and a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel.

You whisper “I’m sorry” and are met with silence. So you turn to the window, resting your forehead on the cool glass. You close your eyes and say nothing more.

In three months, the two of you are going to snap. You are going to repeat the angry, bitter words of the kids at school to her face. You’re going to add your own, voice the thoughts you’ve only ever had late at night, when your lumpy mattress and pounding heart make it impossible to sleep. You’re going to hurt her, but your voice will crack at her desperately-hidden tears. So you’ll leave. You won’t know where you’re going, only that you have to get out, if only for a few hours.

It’ll be sunset when you finally head home. You’ll pass the cemetery, as you always do, and see your mother sitting with her back to your dad’s headstone, staring at the sky and unbothered by the cold. In the dim light, you’ll see drying tear streaks down her cheeks. You’ll pause, because she doesn’t break, not your mother; not when her high school boyfriend left when he got the news, not when the man who stuck around and raised you died in that car crash, and certainly not when her son is being an annoying little shit. Yet there she’ll be, and you won’t know how to handle it. So you’ll go home. Sit on the ancient armchair in your living room, put your head in your hands, and wait. When she finally returns, you’ll apologize—an actual, genuine apology with tears she hasn’t seen in months. She’ll hear you out, and when you’re done she’ll pull you into a hug and murmur “I just want you to be okay” as she brushes her lips to your forehead.

So you’ll try. For her, you’ll try to be okay.

Right now, you don’t know any of that. The silence stales in the car, and when you get home you go to your room without a word. Five minutes later, you hear the door click shut behind her as she returns to the restaurant. You last another ten before your restlessness drives you to the door. It’s not like you know where you’re headed. Nowhere good, probably, but a flash of white makes you still. Your eyes find the bandages she’s left on the kitchen table—bandages for your knuckles. Your breath stutters out of your chest, leaving something hollow behind.

After a moment, you pick up the bandages and clean the blood from your hands with only the quiet as company.

Ali Adams is a college freshman who plans to study Creative Writing and Data Science. She loves writing of all kinds and hopes to be a full-time author in the future.

Building Ourselves Up With Each Other: A Review of Fredrik Backman’s— A Man Called Ove

By Dongyun (Daniel) Shin

“No man is an island.” This famous quote by English poet John Donne captures the essence of human nature and the unavoidable need for human connection. In other words, it demonstrates that people do not exist by themselves and that in order to grow and live in a society, they inevitably have to interact with and coexist with others. These social interactions build up over time and anchor people to one another. Instead of floating aimlessly in an endless sea of individualism, we are strung together by our differences and proximity. An interesting example of the nature of human coexistence can be found in Fredrik Backman’s novel, A Man Called Ove. In the book, we trace the life of Ove, a fifty-nine-year-old man who is initially very grumpy and strict with others after the loss of his beloved wife Sonja, who was the sun around whom Ove revolved before her untimely death. Through his interactions with Sonja, Ove could escape from his ordinary daily life which in general did not make him feel like he was truly living. After Sonja’s death, Ove is isolated until he meets his young neighbor, Parvaneh. As time passes, Parvaneh helps Ove coax out his true, interior mindset from the depths of isolation and strict rules. These interactions with Sonja and Paravaneh provide valuable insights to Ove. Interactions with others help people develop their initial values or thoughts positively by providing valuable insights. Through Ove’s relationships with Sonja and Parvaneh, Backman illustrates how human interactions provide valuable insights, allowing people to evolve and enrich their lives in unexpected ways.

His interactions with Sonja bring color and joy into Ove’s repetitive life routine by providing valuable insights into finding happiness beyond his strict rules, making Ove change his initial evaluation of himself. Backman utilizes a series of flashbacks that detail the development of Ove’s relationship to Sonja to demonstrate how she was able to slowly pry open Ove’s carefully constructed walls. In the past, Ove was a grim young man who relied on strict rules and routines to structure his days after the loss of his parents. One day, Ove met Sonja on the train—this was a classic example of love at first sight. Through many interactions with Sonja, Ove could find his happiness and start to break free from the shackles of his loneliness. Sonja gave color and joy to Ove’s repetitive routines of life. For example, Ove once recounts how Sonja “stood outside the station with his flowers pressed happily to her breast, in that red cardigan of hers, making the rest of the world look as if it were made in grayscale” (Backman, 133). This vivid description shows that Sonja started to inject colors into Ove’s grayscale world, which is nothing more than a repetitive, grim routine. From another perspective, it is a sign that Ove is slowly cracking away his rough exterior to allow him to eventually compromise on his precise, almost tyrannical routine to seek true happiness. He breaks so far away from his familiar routine that he even unconsciously lies to Sonja that he completed military service in a conversation they were having on the train just to impress her (Backman, 130). This act of improvisation proves that Ove is clearly falling in love with Sonja as lying is completely out of character for a man who is known for his honesty and rigidity. His lie is a small act of rebellion against his own structured nature, suggesting that Sonja’s presence inspires him to step out of his comfort zone. Sonja teaches Ove to find joy in spontaneity and imperfection, lessons that transform his perception of himself and the world around him.

In addition, the interactions with Parvaneh help Ove develop as an altruistic person who helps others rather than an antisocial hermit. Initially, at the beginning of the novel, Ove is a person who doesn’t help others. He used to refuse to help others like Anita and Rune. He was rude to others in his immediate surroundings and openly pessimistic about life. After Parvaneh moved next door to Ove’s house as his new neighbor, Parvaneh tried to have many interactions with Ove by approaching him. During interactions, she often forced Ove to help others. For example, he helped a person who was about to die in a train accident. He also helped Parvaneh when she needed to go to the hospital to see her husband. He even extends his altruism to the cat, who is about to die due to the weather. One prime example of Ove’s growing altruism is when he fixes Parvaneh’s radiator. She pleads with Ove to help her fix the broken machine so that her children won’t spend the night shivering in pain. Parvaneh asks Ove, “And you can’t let the girls freeze to death tonight, Ove, right?” (Backman, 127). By urging Ove to help others, Parvaneh initiated a shift in Ove’s character.

To this end, A Man Called Ove by Backman utilizes the character of Ove as a tool to prove that interactions forged between human beings are the ones that shape and redefine who we are. These interactions help us positively develop beyond our initial forms to become the best versions of ourselves. Through Ove’s journey, Backman reminds us that we are not alone and that even in our darkest moments, there are people willing to reach out, if only we allow them.

As readers, we are invited to reflect on our own lives and consider the ways our relationships mold us into different versions of ourselves. Just as Ove finds solace and meaning through his interactions with Sonja and Parvaneh, we too can find strength and purpose in the bonds we share with others.

Dongyun (Daniel) Shin is a tenth grader originally from Seoul but is currently attending an international school in Jeju, South Korea. He enjoys taking personal notes, especially on interesting articles he reads, things he listens to, and videos he watches. Originally, this piece was for an English assignment but he has since adapted it into a book review of Fredrik Backman’s 2012 novel A Man Called Ove. Daniel hopes that readers get a chance to reflect on their own relationships in their lives and remind themselves of the importance of forging meaningful human connections after reading this post.

Blind Spot

By Nox Nackman

As an artist, my creative process is deeply connected to my neurodivergent identity. I view art as a powerful way to explore and express emotions, thoughts, and sensory experiences that extend beyond what words can express. The world can feel overwhelming and chaotic, but through art, I create a space where I can process and make sense of those intense emotions. Taking risks in my work feels like a bold step, allowing me to challenge expectations and embrace the unpredictable nature of creativity. Art, for me, is like a language without barriers, an open and nonjudgmental space that accepts all perspectives, no matter how unconventional. The blank canvas becomes an invitation for me to explore concepts that I may not be able to articulate verbally. This process of creating art feels sacred and freeing, as it taps into my inner world in ways that are otherwise inaccessible. Inspiration for my work often comes from the sensory-rich environment around me; the way light plays on surfaces, the subtle textures of objects, or the vivid colors in nature. These sensory details shape my material choices and techniques as I strive to capture moments of clarity in an otherwise overwhelming world. Ultimately, art allows me to express my perspective, and to celebrate the creativity and individuality that it brings.

girls born near water

By Idia Enoma

we learn early how to cup silence like salt. our mothers teach us to braid our hair before storms, to never name the waves. the sea does not love you back — she only mirrors what you most fear to lose. at low tide, i find pieces of myself: a spoon from childhood, the voice i swallowed whole in sixth grade, a fishbone shaped like uncertainty. i kissed a boy once who said his mouth tasted like shipwreck. he
wasn’t wrong. some nights i dream of running into the surf until i vanish — not drowned, just gone. like the girls in stories who turn into foam, or wind, or myth.
there is a language only the moon and i still speak. it sounds like this:

stay.

go.

surface.

sink.

anchor.

drift.

Idia Enoma is a young writer and current high school senior originally from New York, now living between Georgia and a boarding school in New England. She has been recognized by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers and is an editor for Girls Right the World magazine. She is also an alum of the University of Pennsylvania’s Kelly Writers House Summer Workshop, and has work forthcoming in Eunoia Review. She is often found cataloging half-heard conversations or writing letters she’ll never send.

unbecoming

By Vanessa Chen

Vanessa Chen is a high school junior from Vancouver, Canada. Her work has been recognized by the New York Times, Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, League of Canadian Poets, and John Locke Institute, amongst others. When she’s not writing, you can find Vanessa chatting vivaciously with her friends or singing (or screaming) her heart out at concerts.