Non-Fiction

She wanted to buy the fridge freshmen year, just in case we ended up hating each other. She didn’t want us to have to bicker about who got to keep it. We laughed about that in the first dizzy April, then again in the fleeing November sleet – we laughed about it as we barreled toward one another at the airport, against each other’s lips, we were always laughing, we laughed at everything but most of all at her foolish attempt at safety before she knew me and realized we would share a fridge forever. We laughed about it during the months we spent apart, me getting high in the Netherlands and her working at Jersey Mikes, we laughed about it in the greedy mountain river, swimming naked and freezing and unashamed, and we laughed about it when she moved in with me, a shitty one bedroom apartment in Colorado, where she stayed for three days and kissed me blind and said she liked men, not women, and boarded a plane the next morning, and I was laughing as I carried her suitcase down the stairs, laughing as I crammed her clothes in a box, laughing as I stood barefoot in the dorm again and saw the same fridge pushed against the wall, kept there just in case.

 

Kelsey Day is a poet and novelist from southern Appalachia. Her work is urgent, timely, and relentlessly vulnerable, and has been published in literary journals such as Reservoir Road Literary Review, Storm Cellar Literary Magazine, Brave Voices Magazine, and Our Shared Memory Collective. She is a recipient of the University of Chicago’s Young Memory Fellowship and is an honors student at Emerson College. She works with women from across the globe with the International Women’s Writing Guild, is a staff writer for Two Story Melody, and serves as the Head Poetry Editor for the Emerson Review.

Trying to keep it in, I bite my lip. I try taking some deep breaths to shake it off, but it does not work. My shoulders start shaking, and I burst out laughing. My small giggle quickly becomes hysterical. The word “tampon” would not get out of my head, and this was the cause of the commotion. As my loud, infectious giggles fill up the whole room, others join me.

I, along with the rest of the girls in fifth grade, was in a human development class learning about puberty, specifically menstruation. As an eleven-year-old, the words “tampon” and “period” were hilarious, but that is exactly the problem. Why do periods spark incessant laughter? Why is “menstruation” seen as a dirty word? Well, it is simple. We are all taught at a young age to feel this way about periods.

Children are not the only ones who feel uncomfortable when talking about menstruation; adults are too. In 2017, WaterAid surveyed over 2,000 women, 18 and older, about how they feel towards menstruation. The survey found that two-thirds of the women felt “uncomfortable openly carrying their sanitary products to the toilet in public, and around half wouldn’t feel confident to tell their dad or male boss about period pain or PMT.” (1) Most menstruators are ashamed about their periods and are afraid to talk about it openly. A study carried out by Clue in association with The International Women’s Health Coalition in 2016 reported that there are about 5,000 slang words for menstruation. (2) Do we really need 5000 different ways of trying to avoid referencing a totally normal biological process?

There is a familiar situation that almost every menstruator has experienced: using menstrual care products in a public bathroom. You are at work or at school and need to change your menstrual care product. You open the stall door, and you take a few moments to get situated. As you are searching your bag for a pad or tampon, you hear the stall door next to you open and close. There is someone right next to you and if you open up the wrapper of your period product, they will know you have your period. It’s an awkward moment. In this instance, the menstruator does not want anyone to think they have their period, but why is this the case?

With that same mindset, why are people comfortable saying “I have to use the restroom” or even “I need to go pee?” Utilizing the bathroom and having your period are similar in many ways. They are both necessary bodily functions that no one has any control over, but there is a stigma around only one of them.

The shame around menstruation is dangerous because it results in a lack of health education. This ignorance is exactly what fuels myths about periods. In 2017, Betty for Schools found that 44% of girls do not know what is happening when they get their first period. To make matters worse, their research also found that 60% of women feel scared and 58% feel embarrassed about their first periods. (3) Many menstruators around the globe are not given proper education about menstruation. Unicef in 2018 explains, “Many girls do not have a complete and accurate understanding of menstruation as a normal biological process. Educating girls before their first period — and, importantly, boys — on menstruation, builds their confidence, contributes to social solidarity and encourages healthy habits. Such information should be provided at home and at school.” (4)

However, the root of the stigma around periods is from society. Society has ingrained the idea that periods are absolutely disgusting, and like many other issues, we fall into the trap of believing it; all of it. The stigma around menstruation has created a situation where menstruators actually contemplate the idea of wanting care products where the wrapper does not make any sound when unwrapped.

If people are not comfortable talking about periods, then when there is a prominent issue around menstruation, it will not be discussed. There is a crisis that is being ignored: period poverty. Period poverty, simply put, is not having access to period products. Period poverty, in other words, is when menstruators do not have tampons, pads, or menstrual cups to manage their periods. Many menstruators who experience period poverty use alternatives, such as socks, garbage, cardboard, plastic bags, rags, and anything else available. These so-called alternatives can lead to horrible health consequences, including infections. Imagine that you are an impoverished woman who has her period. You look around and you have six dollars. What do you spend this limited money on? Do you buy a tampon or get yourself something to eat?

Unfortunately, this is a situation that many women face around the globe.

Period poverty leads to girls staying home from school and women staying home from work. According to BBC News in 2019, it is estimated that 1 in 10 girls in Africa will miss school when they have their periods. (5) When this happens, girls and women are potentially missing crucial opportunities that could greatly alter their future. This causes the gender gap to expand, making advancing gender equality more difficult.

I often hear the phrase “It’s a problem over there” said by people who do not live in developing countries, but this is inaccurate. Period poverty is a problem that affects everyone everywhere. Global Citizen in 2019 states, “In the US, nearly 20% of girls have missed school because they could not afford period products. Yet, due largely to social stigma around menstruation, period poverty isn’t often discussed and hasn’t received the attention it deserves.”

• Excuses for not discussing this issue need to stop Remember, there is a woman right now using a sock as a pad. How would you feel? Change will only occur if people stop denying the severity of the issue around period stigma.

The taboo around periods is the reason for many large issues today. Gender equality cannot be attained without first eradicating period poverty and the negative stigma regarding menstruation. It is an issue that needs to be solved, as it impacts so many lives.

There is one main solution that we can easily do: start thinking about periods normally. “Ew” or “gross” should no longer be words associated with menstruation. Instead, we should all have positive or neutral feelings towards menstruation.

Most of the world sees periods as dirty, but this can change. I, as a fifth-grader, thought periods were funny, but now, as an eighth-grader, see it as something natural. Change is difficult, but it is certainly possible. No menstruator should ever feel embarrassed to say “period” out loud, and we need to start normalizing the normal. We do not need menstrual care products where the wrapper does not make any sound, but we instead need to eradicate the stigma around periods.

This is not just an issue for menstruators. Activist and founder of Free Periods, a non-profit organization that is working towards ending period stigma and period poverty, explains about involving boys and men in education regarding menstruation, “Indirectly, periods will affect them too, and, for too long they’ve been left out of the conversation.” (7) Everyone is part of this conversation, regardless of their gender and background.

Open up that wrapper in the restroom. Do it. Loudly.

 

Sophene Avedissian expresses her thoughts and opinions through her writing. To draw attention to important issues in the world, Sophene wrote a book, Stand Tall, at the age of twelve. Stand Tall consists of many short stories that all relate to problems that must be combated in order to advance gender equality. Sophene has written for her school’s newspaper for the past two years, and will be the Middle School Managing Editor next year in ninth grade, where she will oversee the work of middle schoolers. Sophene is also a LA Times High School Insider, where she writes a wide range of articles.

 

 

 

1. https://www.wateraid.org/au/articles/new-survey-reveals-awkwardness-around-periods-in

-lead-up-to-menstrual-hygiene-day#:~:text=Two%2Dthirds%20of%20women%20feel,ne w%20research%20released%20by%20WaterAid.

2. https://helloclue.com/articles/culture/top-euphemisms-for-period-by-language
3. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/girls-teenagers- start-period-menstruation-education-women-s-health-betty-schools-a7636246.html
4. https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/fast-facts-nine-things-you-didnt-know-about-menst ruation#_edn5
5. https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-africa-49437059
6. https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/period-poverty-america/
7. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/28/stigma-periods-boys-young-w omen-bullying-menstruation

Everything that exists is you, so treat it well.

In essence, this is Andy Weir’s The Egg, a two-page philosophy on the nature of humanity and the purpose of life. Weir’s short story narrates the reincarnation of a forty-eight- year-old father who, after dying in a car crash, meets God in some sort of gray zone between life and death. God goes on to explain that the meaning of human life is for the man’s soul to mature, elaborating that the protagonist has lived many lives before and will continue to be reincarnated into every life that ever has existed until he is worthy of being a god as well. Earth, therefore, is an egg — a vessel in which the man’s soul can prepare for the immortality that awaits him.

Andy Weir wrote The Egg to invoke reflective thought and remind readers of their common humanity, but if we — just to make food for thought — isolate the religious aspect of the story and analyze it as if it were a legitimate belief system, we find that it is just like most other religions: it provides a rationale for why we exist, describes the afterlife, and demands obedience to a moral code, but ultimately places the thing we crave most — certainty — out of reach. By publishing his 2009 excerpt, Weir inadvertently demonstrates that religion can be created by writing answers to life’s existential questions and dangling the work beyond human grasp.

For humans, forming and following religion is a natural development. We live in a world where matter and energy cannot be erased, only transformed or transferred. To us, it is illogical that life should cease to exist. Religion gives us a comforting explanation: life is eternal, only ever changing in nature. Recognizing this continuity can sometimes make it seem like religion is orchestrated and that we gravitate towards it out of a desperation to prolong our finite existences. If we try to prove otherwise, we fail; proof always lies conveniently in another dimension.

Provability and truth are not necessarily the same thing, however. Even mathematics, which is based on amassing knowledge through provable theorems, has true statements that can never be proven (see Godel’s incompleteness theorems) and questions that can never be solved (see Turing’s undecidable problem). No matter how much we grow to comprehend our being, there will always be gaps in our understanding that are impossible to fill — things we can just never know.

Accepting that we cannot know certain things — the afterlife, the existence of God — provides a sense of calm security. Personally, though, I am unable to shirk the violent restlessness that screams to know and understand. Most people seem to ultimately find answers in religion, so is that where the truth is held? Well, to be honest, I don’t know. With religion, believing will always require we cross the gap of uncertainty with a leap of faith. Think hard about whether or not to jump, because what we choose defines the things we stand for and the people we become.

 

Aidan is a high school student and avid writer from Middletown, CT. In his free time, he enjoys reading, exercising, and browsing the web.

CW: Body horror, homophobia, internalized homophobia

 Dear Lilah, yesterday my tongue fell out of my mouth and into the bathroom sink. Slippery organ twisting red into the porcelain bowl. The smell of sea salt from the open window. Nǎinai warned me that something like this would happen. She told me Western ideals would darken my mind and scramble my brain until she couldn’t recognize her own granddaughter anymore. Gut my heritage like fish bones from flesh and strip me from my roots. As if ethnicity is something to be earned and maintained, a title gifted and taken away. Lilah, I wish you could have seen her expression when I told her about you. I was foreign.

When I was younger my Nǎinai loved me. She made me sticky white rice with guttered pork belly and washed my back with rough cloth. We were from mirror worlds, same blood different bodies, extension and predecessor. She sang songs about sparrows and springtime echoed from my mouth, I learned how to count and spell through my limbs, our bodies connected by something deeper.

One rainy day I clung to her leg and watched her chop scallions with a large vegetable knife as she told me a love story. There once was a cowherd named Niulang. He fell in love with the weaver girl, Zhinü, but their love was forbidden by the Jade Emperor. As punishment the emperor cast a sea of stars and galaxies between them, purple waves pulling the two lovers apart. But on the seventh day of the seventh month they would be reunited for one day. That night Nǎinai and I watched the sky from my bedroom window and we saw a shooting star, a crystal drop that fell from the same celestial sea. I wished for my own Niulang and Nǎinai promised me that I would find one.

But loving was a blade, Lilah. A curved vegetable knife with a peach wood handle. Loving smelled like salt and reeked of Nainai’s wrinkled breath. It carved me with its edge, eviscerated me into something else entirely, deemed me unworthy of something I never had to earn.

Lilah, I’ve never learned the Mandarin character for queer. Never saw its scratched letters on the cubed paper dished out by my Sunday school Chinese teachers. Never rang its syllables on my tongueless tongue. It did not appear next to the plates of pickled mustard roots and red paper lantern. But sometimes I saw flashes of it, a curve of a character, pinyin dangling above my hair, a black dot seeping into my skin. A friend of a friend of a friend who left the groom on her wedding day. A cousin of a cousin who refused to date. Clipped newspapers of young girls abandoned for the traitorous act of loving.

The day Nainai found out she threw me into the bathtub, steam fossilizing my hair as I drifted in the simmering water face down, liquid puckering my lips. Liar. Liar. Liar. Say it isn’t true. She scrubbed my back raw, peeling back a body of a body until I was nothing at all. I stared at the bottom of the tub with my eyes open, the ancestors of my ancestors cursing my existence. I wept salt because queerness has no roots, Lilah, no defining heredity for me to cling onto.

I dreamed about you last night as I wilted into half of myself. Monolids thinning and nails popping off like Coca-Cola bottle caps. Anatomy wrung inside out. In my dream we sat on a park bench and ate grape ice pops together, purple staining our teeth, saccharine flowing through our veins. But every time I looked at you, held your hand in mine, burned red from your sweet gaze, I became less than the entity I once was.

The truth was I loved you without loving you. I loved without knowing what love was.

Lilah, do you even remember me? We spent a sticky July afternoon drifting in a boat together. You wore a pink life vest and held your tan arm towards the sky, fingers clenched to your shiny iPod that sang songs about Watermelon Sugar and summer sweat. We talked about boys with citrus gel hair and washboard abdomens. You told me your letterman jacket crush behind your cupped hand and I told you my basketball jersey one. You watched as I got up and stood at the mast of our boat and shed yellow skin in the Long Island air, bare feet fracturing into spiderless spider webs as I stared into the sun.

Tongzhi. Tongzhi. Tongzhi. Say it with me, whisper it into my ear when I dream of ice pops and lying in the meadow with you, when I lose a body of a body. That’s the character, Lilah. I’ll never write it in their boxes, never show it to my vegetable knife Nainai. It’s my word. I’ll keep it here in the cave of my tongueless mouth, chew it with no teeth, run my lipless gums over the bleeding texture.

That day on the boat I had slipped, fell briefly into starry limbo before I lost myself in all this saltwater. Everything is foggy under the sea, muted. The fuzzy bottom of our boat. White flapping sails. Your face red from the sun. Zhinü, my weaver girl from the sky. You were more than Western ideals yet I paid the price anyway. You dropped the boat rudder and reached out to me, dipping your hand into the dark water, fingers tangling in mine as you pulled me up into the air, skinless, limbless, and whole.

 

Pinyin Footnotes:

Nǎinai- Paternal grandmother
Zhinü – Weaver Girl
Niulang. – Cowherd Boy
Tongzhi – Queer
Pinyin – The standard system of romanized spelling for transliterating Mandarin.

 

 

Jessica Wang is the founder of the youth literary magazine Ice Lolly Review. Her work has been nationally recognized by Scholastic Art and Writing, NCTE, and Susquehanna University. She is a Kenyon Young Writers’ alumna and her work is forthcoming in The Apprentice Writer. In her free time, she doodles and listens to Indie Rock. She hopes you don’t let Imposter Syndrome get to you!

The anxious chatter of the crowd fills the small, dimly lit space of my dorm room.  My laptop is open in front of me, the flickering image illuminating the fluffy corners of the blanket I’m clutching to my chest.

My heart pounds and my hands shake as I stare at the screen.

This is it.  At seventeen my brother is only ten points away from making one thousand points in his high school basketball career.  Players don’t usually make it to that milestone point, and if they do, they don’t even make that one-thousandth point until their senior year.  But here my brother was in his junior year, once again, defeating the odds and breaking records one shot at a time.

Being two hours away from home, I don’t get the latest basketball news from my brother every night.  When I talk to my mom on the phone, I get a summary of the latest, but it’s never the same as hearing my brother relay the details through excited or disappointed retellings.  When it comes to his own game, my brother has always been humble.  The one-thousandth point had been mentioned a few times, but I hadn’t realized how close he was until my mother texted me the night before: “Fyi, I saw on fb that the game will be live streamed tomorrow night.  He needs 23 points.”  My brother’s average was around twenty-five points a game.  This was it.

With each basket he makes, the crowd goes wild, causing the speakers of my laptop to screech with an electronic buzz.

Every dribble, pass, and basket feels like an eternity, the clock ticking down slower and slower with each second.  I frantically text my mother to make sure I’ve counted correctly.

Six points.

I keep my eyes on number thirty-five, the red and white uniform blurring in a clump of pixels.

I double and triple check my WiFi connection.

Four points.

The blanket I had been clutching to my chest falls away as I lean closer to the screen.  My legs have fallen asleep, protesting against the criss-cross position I had been sitting in for the past thirty minutes, but I don’t risk moving.

White and black uniforms run down the court, the camera failing to fluidly follow the players’ movements.

Two points.

Through the pixelations, I see he’s standing tall, moving freely with his teammates.  No sign of stress or anxiety.  His shot has been perfect the entire game.  Whenever he gets the ball, it soars through the air in a perfect arch, swishing into the basket.  My brother had the weight of the school and game on his shoulders, yet he held it with grace.  He runs down the court as if this is just another game, as if nothing extraordinary is about to happen.

My heart stops as my brother is intentionally fouled at 998 points.

He moves to the free-throw line, arms swaying casually at his sides, as the other players take their positions in the paint, forming a pattern of white, black, white, black on either side of the basket.

My brother wipes the soles of his red shoes with his palm as the referee dribbles the ball.

Each thud of leather against wood sparks the thought of a different shoe.

My brother is suddenly six-years-old wearing black, bulky hip-hop shoes hopping across the stage.  Another year goes by and his foot is slightly larger as he kicks a soccer ball with neon green cleats across the grass.  The next year rushes by with a thud.  He’s eight-years-old bringing up dust as he steps up to the plate with mud-stained baseball cleats.  The mud and dust wash away as his cleats become shiny, black dress shoes.  He’s nine-years-old balancing a double bass between his feet, delicately swinging the bow across the large instrument’s strings.

Over the years, he had tried on many shoes, but he had only ever asked for new basketball shoes.

A silent murmuring settles over the crowd, and suddenly I’m sitting in the bleachers.  “Come on, bud,” I whisper as gossip-like mutterings wisp around me.

He kicks the floor, getting his feet into position, and practices his form.

My heart races as I watch his chest rise and fall.  He’s calm and collected as his eyes move away from the basket and to the referee still dribbling the ball.  My brother nods and the ball bounces across the paint into his hands.

He licks his lips and dribbles the ball at his side, taking in the basket before him.

Suddenly, he’s three-years-old and his little hands are now dribbling the tiny rubber basketball on the carpet as he licks his lips in concentration.  He dips and dives in his dinosaur pajamas toward the blue and yellow Fisher-Price basketball hoop.  He dunks the ball, standing on his tiptoes, pretending to hold onto the rim.  “Beat that!” he says with a beaming smile and a gusto other three-year-olds could only wish for.

The small ball rolls across the carpet and hits my knees.  I pick up the ball, which fits perfectly in my palm, and say, “Bet I can!”  I toss the ball between my hands as I ponder my next trick shot.

I blink.

He bends his knees and lifts the ball up in the air.

A perfect arch.

One point.

I can imagine the bleachers vibrating under my feet as the crowd hollers, the electronic buzz of the crowd from my laptop’s speaker filling my ears.

My brother puts down his arms and shakes them out at his sides.  His teammates step over to give him high-fives of encouragement.

Because my brother was fouled intentionally, the referees move the other players to the half-court line, leaving him alone with the basket.

A hush settles over the crowd as the ball is tossed across the paint to him again, the echo surging through us all.

The ball bounces next to his red basketball shoes as he dribbles.

I hold my shaking hands to my pounding chest.  “You can do it, bud,” I whisper into the two-hour distance between us.

Everything goes quiet as my brother bends his knees and lifts the large, leather ball into the air.  The ball lands into the net with a swish.  He pumps the air victoriously with his fist.

Robbie Rusciano has made one thousand points.

A sob escapes my lips as I watch the crowd stand and cheer.  I scream and clap, disrupting the dark quiet of my dorm room.

Robbie jogs to his coaches and teammates, doing a different personalized handshake with each of them.

The pixels of the livestream and my tears blend together as a warmth spreads across my chest.

Robbie’s beaming smile reaches me from ninety miles away, and for a brief moment, he’s three-years-old again shooting a rubber ball through a plastic hoop in dinosaur pajamas.

 

 

Aly Rusciano is a twenty-two-year-old recent graduate of The University of Tennessee at Martin, where she majored in English while focusing in Creative Writing and minoring in Theatre. Aly can often be found reading outside or typing away at her computer. She has been writing ever since she could hold a pencil. Aly’s love of books and passion for writing continues to positively affect her life as she pursues a career in the publishing industry while simultaneously chasing her dream of being a published author.

 

The cathedral was big, absurdly big. It towered over the cobblestone streets of Chartres’ medieval center, imposing its harsh Gothic symmetry on a place that otherwise seemed to exist in a state of perpetual pastel charm. I stared at it, biting into a baguette. The cathedral was impressive. But being a twelve-year-old atheist, I had chosen to stop at the bakery before starting my sightseeing, even if it meant sacrificing the opportunity to experience mass. I found the baguette and the gentle June sun a far more sacred form of communion. I finished my bread, then, holding my parents’ hands, entered the cathedral. I was curious to see a building with such a fascinating and ancient history, but I was ambivalent to the faith that drove the miracle of its construction.

The air was cooler inside the cathedral. It smelled like old stone. What struck me first was the singing: passionate tremulous notes that seemed as old as the walls off which they echoed. Despite my bakery detour, mass had found me. I looked up. The arches rose to pointed pinnacles with a solid grace. The cathedral was composed of curves accented and grounded with the geometry of angles. It was dark, yet in that darkness was so much color. With an almost ascetic sensibility, precious sunlight filtered through windows stained with stories, touching the gaudy marble of the partially refurbished walls.

Juxtaposition brought out my reluctant spiritual side. The cathedral was a place of contradictions. It was there I first saw a detailed depiction of the crucifixion: the grotesque, yet passionate image of self-sacrifice was bathed in the soft glow of candle light. I stared at it, horrified, while a glorious aria played. Beauty emerges from contrast: from a dark church illuminated sparingly with the warm incandescence of the faithful’s newly lit candles and the colorful light of ancient stories.

The grace of this place astounded me. A small melancholy ache rose in my chest, like I was missing or maybe longing for something. I could feel the careful geometry with which the architects had sought to please God. I could feel the many hands that had dedicated their lives to the cathedral’s construction in poignant faith. I realized that I didn’t have to be Catholic for this place to be holy. Its story made it sacred.

In that cathedral I found pieces of myself that didn’t fit, yet I felt whole. For a moment, I let myself become part of an established and complex rhythm. I let myself dance with history. I realized that this experience was incompatible with my atheism. In the years since, I have become an agnostic. I believe patterns are sacred: the ones we follow, the ones we seek to understand, and the ones we create. Notre Dame de Chartres was full of patterns of religion, architecture and art. These patterns created a throbbing amalgam of humanity and math, of logic and faith. As a writer and aspiring linguist, it is my dearest ambition to translate this amalgam into something I can understand.

One of the defining characteristics of humankind is our ability to create stories, our ability to believe in things we cannot necessarily see. Sometimes the things we are not able to fully understand can be the most beautiful. And the process with which we attempt to make sense of these mysteries can be even more exquisite than the enigmas themselves.

After leaving the cathedral, we returned to the bakery to buy another baguette. Meandering through Chartres, we took turns tearing off chunks of the long loaf. As we walked and ate, my mind lingered in the cathedral. Despite the early summer flowers, I could still smell the musty stone.

 

 

Zinnia Hansen is a seventeen-year-old essayist and poet from Port Townsend, Washington. She has a tendency towards abstraction, but a deep love of the idiosyncrasies that make us human. Her work has been published in several magazines. She was a participant in the 2020-2021 Hugo Young Writers Cohort. And she is the 2021-2022 Seattle Youth Poet Laureate.