February 2019

 

Just one last chapter.

Just one last episode.

Just one last bite.

Just one last piece.

Just one last time.

Just one last try.

Just one last level.

Just one last round.

These are the lies we tell ourselves,

Time after time after time.

 

 

Kolbey has been a proud writer since he was in fifth grade. It all started whenever his fifth grade teacher started a monthly writing competition. He usually won, but he always found a way to make his stories dark and gritty, no matter what the topic was. Horror is the genre he thrives the most in.

 

 

Mama sits under the hanging lamp with her eyeglasses on,
fingers feeding fabric steadily
beneath the pulsing needle.
She shows me how to cut, to sew,
edge against edge,
stitch after stitch.
Remove the pins, snip the thread,
finish this square and trade it for the next.

In the end, there are eighty-eight of them
joined neatly together
they lie atop the twin xl in my new dorm room
and I trace the seams with my fingertips:
patterned squares cuddle up next to each other like cottages down the lane,
stitches weave through like picket fences,
and blues and pinks spill like smoke from a chimney.

One fall morning, I trek up the hill at the edge of campus
and breathe heavily at the top.
In the valley below,
houses spill like thimbles across fabric,
fog presses down like thick cotton,
and the trees thread up and through.

Slowly, methodically,
I will take each square of this new-city fabric
like mama taught me
until I know every edge and every color
until I can lay this landscape across my lap
and trace the streetlights of its seams.

 

Caroline Fuller is a sophomore at Occidental College in Los Angeles, California. She enjoys playing frisbee, dancing, and trying new restaurants in the city. Her writing can also be found in Germ Magazine and Teen Ink.

 

 

this, pinprick wetness,

the sky falling like knives into our back,

the pretending i’m not road-kill at parties,

the million little letters monsoon writes to my cheek.

tuesday, i saw a pair of lips that looked like they’d just been

kissed, and bit down on mine, and thought about how my hair

gives away under the water, you see: nothing wants to hang onto trouble.

 

Sonali is an eighteen year old studying economics and mathematics in Delhi.

 

 

 

My aunt leads her blind husband
down a steep narrow path
guiding him solely with the
handle of the brand new broom

I avoid stepping on the other graves we
pass on our way down
into the structure with a blue-tiled roof
our family name embossed thickly in
flamboyant gold as though
airbrushed onto the dark marble

dust had settled everywhere
we come every year to clean up the
weeds threatening to colonize the grand yard
lanky red candles with broken backs are
unfaithful foot soldiers of this sacred place

when every speck of dust has been abolished
every weed and fallen leaf swept away
leaving the courtyard slightly less morose
(good spirits dwell in clean places, I hope)

my aunt lights the skinny incense sticks
I avoid breathing in the mysterious finger like
projections reaching upwards, upwards
to heavenly blue

My fingers feel incompetent
clasping an unknown god’s cigarette
There is a certain coldness
about the way my fingers are
positioned squeezing the sticks
hovering in mid air
I must be doing something wrong—
But I resist the urge to interlock my
clumsy fingers together
mountains colliding with a gentle
steadiness

Does this unknown god inhale
every confession every hope
every plea and heal
with his warm breath
I wanted to ask

The flames dancing to a
tune nobody hears remain
silent—but I am not a guard
watching over a mirage
of a castle— I think I will
keep on hoping that someone,
even fire, can ferry our
wishes across.

 

Vanessa is a high school senior who is a Social Media & Marketing editor and staff reporter at her school newspaper. She can also be found jumping and spinning (and falling) on ice in her free time.

 

 

 

We are strong
We are not weak
We are family
We are not enemies
We care for each other
We don’t hate each other
We stick together
We are not alone
We are the next generation of the human race
so let’s join together and be ONE.

 

 

Adryanna Revill is a seventh grade student at Kuumba Academy Charter School, in Wilmington Delaware. She is from Wilmington. She is fourteen years old and will be fifteen in April 2019.  She loves to dance, sing and rap.

I met you years ago
In a building tired and warm
Where the voices of children carried
Its bricks weathered many a storm

In a building tired and warm
Now cold and left behind
Its heat all but forgotten, its warmth impossible to find

Where the voices of children carried
Now silence fills its halls
No crying can be heard here, no laughter off its walls

Its bricks weathered many a storm
They crack and crumble now
The wind whistles through them, and longing the gaps allow

 

Jayden is an eighteen-year-old high school senior in rural southern Illinois. She grew up in a small town with a farming background, and is also a PFC in the Illinois Army National Guard, having enlisted as a Horizontal Construction Engineer. She plans on attending college in this area and earning a degree in Civil Engineering. She enjoys movies, drawing, working out and spending time with friends.