Issue 23

Transcendent Hues of Music

By Mihikaa Singh

This piece depicts the convergence of the hues of my paintings and euphonious melodies. How both of them have the ability to invoke powerful emotions- entrancement, anxiety, hope, craving. How the power that creative expression holds, is almost transcendent.

Mihikaa Singh is thirteen years old, and in the ninth grade. She is profoundly passionate about art, writing, piano, music, and reading. Moreover, she is also a published author and a certified pianist from the Trinity College of London. Most of her canvases feature vibrant subjects, made from acrylic. She writes on the blog- https://mihikaasingh.wordpress.com/

From the Dog’s Eye, Among the Wildflowers

By Kiley Brockway

This photo was taken on one of my walks through my suburb. I love to play with perspectives on ordinary subjects because it forces us to approach the object in a new way. I’m fascinated by the overlooked ordinary, so I try to capture that in striking ways with my photos.

Just after the last frost in March is when the first April wildflowers start to pop up. I placed the camera at level with the flowers because I wanted to create an effect that not only focuses on a subject in the flowerbed but also places the onlooker in the flowerbed. The girl in the flowers adds a new depth to the photo, as she takes it from an image to a story.

I love black and white photography because I find it adds a layer of elegance and sophistication to the photo. It plays with light and shadows, creating an experience vastly different from colored photos.

Kiley Brockway is a high school senior in the Chicago suburbs. She has been previously recognized for both writing and photography in “Halfway Down the Stairs” and “Briefly Write” literary magazines, and participated in the young writers workshop through the University of Iowa. You can find more of her work @kiley_a_brockway on Instagram.

I-270

By Grace Gent

it’s 8:17 on a Sunday night in May.
the sky is bright enough
blue enough
that if the moon wasn’t shining pale above us you’d think it was
mid-afternoon.
when i turn my head
pink swaths of cloud wrap around the horizon,
cradling the last rays of sun as they
sink
into the ground.
the endless rolling green of the foothills of appalachia stretch out beyond the dashboard.
my feet are tucked beneath me,
a book cushioned in my lap,
its pages soft from years of love.
my father sits behind the wheel of the jeep he cherishes so much,
singing softly to the songs he raised me on.
a guitar hums through the speakers,
strums of americana fill the car,
vibrating through the dust-laden seats.
my father turns 51 in three months.
in four, i’ll sit on the morning damp football field of my high school with the rest of my senior class.
the cicadas won’t be singing anymore,
their song passed onto the crickets and the morning doves.
in eight months, i’ll have sent out my transcripts
to the schools i hope to spend the next four years of my life at.
in 12 months, i’ll know which school that’ll be.
when my father turns 52,
i’ll be packing my bags,
leaving the blue grey room i grew up in
for the dust bunnies.

but for now, my father is 50. we ride through the mountains that the country forgets, and i watch their secrets pass by in the twilight. tonight, my father is whistling in tune with jason isbell and i am turning the pages of a novel. and though memory is a fickle thing that i am sure exists only to confuse me, i hope that if i return to these forests, these hills, these winding roads, i remember them beautiful, held close by the moon, the future stretching into the valleys below.

Grace Gent is a high school student from Northern Virginia. When she isn’t writing she can be found forcing her dad to take her on road trips and trying very hard to learn the guitar.

Twelve Summers

By Lili Namazi

Eliza tucked paint-stained hands behind her back and took a step closer to me. Her faded summer camp T-shirt was knotted at the waist, daylily-gold skirt brushing the tops of her sandals. Standing in the blunt fluorescent of the airport terminal, her contour was more defined, shadows seeping through her neck. Graduation had weighted her to the ground like I thought nothing ever could.

We used to draw all over our geometry notes, faces and flowers and flowy dresses. They all ran into each other in the margins, collarbones intertwining with hibiscus stems, tangles of tie-dye arteries twisting through wide-rule lines to the sun. Once we realized how to put summer onto paper, we could never focus on math again.

We were always afraid of the dark. On those wide-eyed August days, we would spend the whole afternoon sprawled in tall field grass, tracing clouds with our fingertips. We stretched our arms to the sky and let hazy pinks and yellows fog our vision. But when the sky flooded periwinkle, and mosquitoes swarmed around our heads, we would run all the way to her house, set candles on the windowsills, switch on all the lamps and flashlights we owned, sit cross-legged on the floor, and wait for dawn.

And that was how it was. Every summer, from when we first learned how to stretch our arms wide like the sky, to the moment we realized we could never win against the world.

The day after graduation, she didn’t paint flowers on her jeans or run cursive paths through the open field overlooking the lake. She sat in my backyard and scuffed patches of dirt with her big toe and picked at an orange peel. And made small talk. And then a mosquito landed on her arm and she said she had to pack and she drove herself home.

That night, I fell asleep with the sunset.

She went to college in California. “Where winter doesn’t exist,” she said, burying her nose in my neck as she hugged me goodbye. She pressed a small, square canvas into my palm — a painting of a sunflower, flush against the bluest sky.

Her hazel eyes burned gold with tears as I looked up. She said, “I’m going to miss you so much.”

Half an hour till her midnight flight. Five and a half hours more, and she’d be landing to an L.A sunrise. I said, “Me too.”

I left for Chicago the next day. Full scholarship.

I can’t remember exactly when we stopped talking. We FaceTimed every day at first, and then one afternoon she had too much to do, and so it became every other day. And then once a week. And then just texting. And then silence.

I let it hurt.

Chicago doesn’t see the sun, but I wouldn’t know the difference. I have watery suns awaiting me at all hours of the day now, nestled in sagging ceilings that are either off-white or dirty. Sometimes, during lectures, I stare up at them just to feel the spots in my eyes again, but it’s not the same.

We still follow each other’s Instagrams; her posts always show up at the top of my feed. The algorithm is taking a while to catch up. She’s smiling her genuine smile in every picture, made only truer by crystalline California light, not the heavy Jersey heat we tolerated out of necessity. I wonder if her new friends — glimmering, molten, like her, like I could never be — take her to the ocean at sunrise on the warmest days of the year. I hope they do.

Once, the summer we were eight or nine, we were lying on a beach towel in her backyard, benevolently competing to name all the birdcalls we heard. As I said, “Indigo bunting,” Eliza asked, “Do you think the sun and the sky and the clouds can see us like we see them?”

Intellectually, I knew the answer. But I said, “I think they can see you.”

Her brow furrowed as she contemplated. “Why not you?”

“‘Cause I’m just me, and you’re a lot more than just you,” I said, and this, I know, is true.

I was born lonely, and then I spent twelve summers with Eliza, and now all I do is look for her.

Lili Namazi is a fourteen-year-old rising junior with a passion for all things literary and musical. When they are not writing, composing, or playing an instrument, you will probably find them drinking iced coffee, listening to music, and daydreaming. They plan to continue their artistic pursuits in college and as their career.