Issue 24

i.   I remember my sister once found robin eggs in the post-box. She tells me they were bluer than a shipwreck, but when I ask her what happened to them, she says she doesn’t remember.
My father breaks nests in our house every week. He once threw a birds’ eggs down our fifth storey balcony. I think his hands reek of the daughters he has killed before they were even born.

ii.   I have a photo album from which I cut out pictures to stick on my wall. They flutter furiously to the wind and refuse to be held down by the tape I attach. Yesterday, I cried for an hour trying to find more tape, and maybe it’s the universe trying to tell me that no tape could hold back a broken past. That it’s time to let go. Maybe I’m a dead bird waiting to sink into the graves of the sky.

iii.   My mother likes to stand at the edge of the balcony at exactly 10:47 p.m. and feel the breeze brush against her skin. She says it feels like her dead father giving her a hug, but sometimes she stands on her toes and tips over a little too much. Then, in her eyes, I see a world pulsing. Maybe she doesn’t do that to hug her father. Maybe she wants to see him. Maybe she stands at the edge of the balcony every night at 10:47 p.m. because she likes to watch the ground murmur the names of all the dead birds whose ashes stain this family’s hands.

iv.   My heart remembers too much. It throbs and searches for names of dead lovers on everything it sees. My heart remembers too much and though I forgive the razor, I forgive my hands, I forgive those who saw in me a shipwreck and watched me drown, and I forgive the birds that knock on my ribs, asking to be let out saying—please? Just tonight? Let me be free?I forgive them but my heart is cruel. It doesn’t forget. My heart still remembers the hurt.

v.   Sometimes, I am threatened by the abilities of others. I look at my hands and see a lost soul. I watch others standing at the peak, while I am still trying to drag my feet. I’m still searching for reasons to not fall.
I’m still lying on the ground; dirt seeping into my hair and I am watching the birds in the sky. They tell me it’s time I let go of this heavy pretence of sorrow and do something. Something. Anything. It’s time I bleed meaning into this life, they say. And in the blink of an eye, the birds aren’t dead anymore.

Srina Bose is a high school student based in New Delhi, India. She has previously had her work published in “The Ice Lolly Review”, and “Cathartic Literary magazine.” She has also published her own collection of poetry titled— “Roses In My Mind”, which is commercially available.
You can find her poetry blog on Instagram at @teardrops_of_ink

the rink is closed, the sky is purple and full
of ice, we could say the sky is a bruise and
not talk about what might have happened
to bruise it, but it’s raining, and a flock
of dogs are pointing south through the park
where the train blurs our words together: howl,
for this is not a garden, for this is not
the garden and I drove us here for nothing

and perhaps we already left the walls and there
is no garden to return to, and maybe this fact
has nothing at all to do with us, young and trapped
as we are in the past with no place to go, beating
the ground with our feet for something to do

if today were a bear trap, I would be the spring
gauge lying tacit in the snow trying not to feel
too beat up about the neighbor’s pear tree
(they took it down with a wrecking ball)
(a wrecking ball, and I think about how I might
hurt the people I love) and how I love my eggs in a basket,
how I love the basket and its nest of perfectly timed
meetings, all my thoughts like ribbons
pinned into dinner party art, eating themselves

look, why would a tree be mine, it is not an
egg, it is not a basket, and the wrecking ball is
not a bear trap, something looking for a fight,
something transparent and lonely

look, the ice is melting anyway, the tree
has forgone all possession by becoming a
ghost, the ghost doesn’t want to talk to you
but that’s ok, you’ll both come around

and we’re not talking about any of this really,
who would, when there are so many places to
warm your feet, we’re listening to classical music
on the drive back from the rink, because
the dial’s stuck, because maybe
the world ends, because I know all the words

Norah Brady is a moon enthusiast, haunted house, and mountain poet. They were a runner-up for Youth Poet Laureate of Boston in 2020. Their poetry and short fiction can be found in Rookie Magazine, The Ekphrastic Review, COUNTERCLOCK and Kissing Dynamite.

when they ask you why you do not whisper, tell them fear was not buried in your mouth. your mother’s blood opened your eyes, loosened your tongue, sharpened your teeth. this is your birth right. let them know you belong here. leave no room for mistaken assumptions. fill every room to bursting with your presence. never shrink. for him. for anyone. spread your abundance in every crevice. suffocate them with your light. let them look in every corner and find you. smear your blood on the temple gates; they will not pass over you. when they ask you why you do not hide, tell them that creatures of light have no kinship with the darkness. you inherited fire in your blood, if they touch you, they will burn.

Mofiyinfoluwa Okupe is a reluctant lawyer-in-training writing from Lagos, Nigeria. Her work explores the complexity of human emotions, with a deeply introspective self-lens. Her work is published in Guernica, The Kalahari Review, Agbowo and forthcoming in Black Warrior Review. She tweets @fiyinskosko and publishes monthly pieces on Medium.

Our bus is stuck in traffic
and I’m late for lunch with my grandpa
because his silence makes me feel a little bit less lonely
in a world where it’s easier to forget
the deaths of old friends, the day’s list of tragedies.

I know he longs for fiction—
his home, by the bay, indestructible.
I once ran with innocence through the halls of his apartment,
but I no longer have that lens of childhood sweetness
or his escape from reality.
New York’s too cold tonight.
I shiver in the loss of naivete.

The bus lurches forward
in the city where it’s possible to be enveloped in the heat
of hundreds of apartment lights and still feel a chill
tremble through your heart.

They want me to be myself like a shark might be herself in a city aquarium
Motionless, encumbered by the glass.
I pretend like I’m told.

I am the only passenger left,
waiting to wade in the tide of unknown
undulate along the waves of my intuition,
and send ripples through the status quo,
but I am impatient.

It is now nighttime and for a fleeting moment
the chaos of the pandemic blurs into stillness.
I tell the driver what is beneath my kaleidoscopic eyes,
my truth fading into the endless cries of taxis
and the wispy strands of smoke rising from concrete.
Whether or not he listened,
I entered The Wild, glass shattered.

Gabrielle Beck is a junior attending Tenafly High School. When she is not writing or photographing, she can be found repurposing vintage denim. She is a finalist for New York Times “Coming of Age in 2020: A Special Multimedia Contest for Teenagers,” and recognized by the National Council of Teachers of English. Her writing and photography has been featured in Kalopsia Literary Journal, Cathartic Literary Magazine, Young Writers Project, and Written by the Youth.