Issue 32

In college, I took a class on video game criticism, which was not something that I knew existed before I enrolled in it. I spent the entire course listening to my classmates discuss abstract concepts in complex video games and pretending that I also did all the readings. When the professor assigned essays, he often used Tetris as an example because it was a simple game that everyone had heard of. No one actually wrote a paper about Tetris until the class final, when I decided that I was going to be the first. In place of a final exam, we were supposed to choose a video game and make an argument about it. The vagueness of the prompt made the opportunity too good to pass up. I downloaded the Tetris app onto my phone, breezed through a couple hundred levels, and called it “research.” Hey, I wanted to gain a better understanding of the game for my paper. The motive was education.

The Tetris Company claims that Tetris satiates the basic human drive to create order from chaos. Falling pieces—Tetriminos—are randomly generated one at a time, and their placement occurs shortly after their generation. A “Line Clear” occurs when a horizontal row is completely filled with blocks. The row disappears, and all pieces above the Line Clear shift down to fill the space. Bonus points are rewarded for clearing multiple lines at once. Clearing four lines at once, the maximum, is called “Tetris” and gives the same type of satisfaction as watching a scene in a movie where a character says the movie’s title. The Line Clear makes the game addictive and theoretically endless.

In the middle of my Tetris adventure, the game got personal. I went through a pretty bad breakup, and by “pretty bad,” I mean that it absolutely destroyed me. While the relationship lasted, it was the best thing to ever happen to me, but all of a sudden, it was over. I felt like the best part of my life was also over. Things are never going to be good again, my mental illness liked to tell me. I’ll never recover from this. No one is ever going to want me again. I’m worthless and unwanted and broken and unlovable. I don’t have the capacity to get to know another person like that. I don’t have it in me to keep trying. I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t.

The truth is, I was in terrible shape long before the relationship ever started, and the relationship was a tool to cover up all my problems. The breakup wasn’t anyone’s fault, and neither was the aftermath; it just exposed all the shit that was already there. I fixated on the tragedy as a concrete explanation for my poor mental health.

Naturally, I began playing more Tetris. Life was majorly sucking, and the game was a good distraction. Playing didn’t cost too much brainpower, and succeeding made me feel better for a moment. The only thing I wanted to think about was colorful falling blocks because every other thought hurt too much. I threw myself a pity party in which the only activities were crying and playing Tetris through bleary eyes. For a few weeks, my life looked like this:

1. Position the blocks.
2. Place the blocks.
3. Complete the lines.
4. Clear the lines.
5. Cry
6. Sleep
7. Rinse
8. Repeat

I developed a bit of an addiction, and I honestly shouldn’t have been as shocked as I was to discover that I had Pavloved myself to associate Tetris with heartbreak. I didn’t forget that I had a paper to write, but I procrastinated so much that I had to whip up the whole thing in less than a day. I played more Tetris during my writing breaks. I submitted my essay with twenty minutes to spare, and I proceeded to delete the game off of my phone. I decided that I could never play Tetris again. But I still think about it. Clearly.

 

 

Lila Wu was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota and grew up in Houston, Texas. She’s finishing her final year at Northwestern University, where she studies Radio/Television/Film and Creative Writing. Her go-to icebreaker fun fact rotates between her favorite ice cream flavor (chocolate chip cookie dough), having five younger siblings, and having attended clown school.

Walking towards the barricade was an uphill climb, and my legs wavered from months of disuse. In another life, it’d be exhilarating to break the law so openly. Instead, it was terrifying to be outside in the quiet with only the cry of cicadas to accompany me. They’d become more noticeable in the absence of cars and busy roads, city highways turning empty. But I wasn’t alone. There past the wire fencing, standing just beyond the short stretch of no-man’s land, was a boy who owed me a date.

In the overripe spring of May, in a locked-down Shanghai choked by heat and regulation, normality was a distant dream. For three months, we’d longed for simple things: walking in the sun, biking past streets once familiar and lively, seeing each other again. Over text, he’d say, We’ll go everywhere. When this is over, I’ll take you to the French Concession’s best cafes. His to-do list was never ending. I’d always reply, exasperated: Okay, okay. I never had the courage to ask, Are we getting our hopes up for nothing? Will I see you again?

 Now he was two meters away, halted in place by a second fence, our hands barely close enough to touch.

It was 9th grade P.E. class all over again; staring at each other from across the gym, then looking away. Blushing at a first crush, a first love. We’d imagined that the following months would go a little differently. The things that seemed so constant in our lives were now a luxury: dim restaurants and bustling city nights, hot steam rising from a bowl of ramen, the song “Stay With Me” by Miki Matsubara playing in the background. I’d imagined dates to be more than just the highway. Had I been given a choice, it’d be in the Lebanese restaurant on Anfu road, in the season of plum rain and wisteria. But seeing him again after months of isolation was enough. So I reached for him on the other side, no-man’s-land separating us from an embrace. He held onto my fingers gently across the distance, both of us pressed up against the metal railings. His hair had grown longer. He looked tired. Yet there was still a giddy smile on his face, as if he couldn’t believe what we’d done.

“I’m going to get into so much trouble,” he said.

I sighed, thinking about how my mom had wrinkled her nose at me earlier in the morning and said, “Really? You’re breaking the rules for a boy?”

“Me too.”

“But think about it this way,” he amended. “We can tell everyone else that we got out months earlier than they did. We snuck out! We’re badass!”

His exuberance made me blush. I didn’t say anything else to keep myself from stuttering.

But I leaned into his warm touch, comforting even in the humidity and 37º heat. “When this is all over, we’ll go everywhere,” he said.

I let myself believe him. His endless supply of hope. I imagined the barricades falling down, cars rushing back onto the highway. I imagined holding him close in a picturesque cafe downtown, the French Plane trees on Avenue Joffre blowing pollen everywhere.

“Okay,” I said. “Okay.”

 

 

 

 

Jessica is a poet from Shanghai. She loves art, music, and Arabic poetry.

after Casimir Pulaski Day

 

 

“Goldenrod and the 4H Stone: the things I brought you when I found out you had cancer of the bone.”

I am staring at a body at my first funeral. She was my great aunt, Shirley, and she lived three houses away from my grandfather and her hair has remained curled. I stand, thinking about all of the cow trinkets within her house. I wonder why there aren’t any cows at the funeral or in her casket. Didn’t Ancient Egyptians bury the dead with their favorite things? I feel a hand on my shoulder and convince myself it’s Shirley agreeing.

“Your father cried on the telephone and he drove his car to the navy yard, just to prove that he was sorry.”

I sit on my friend’s back patio as he tells me about the days his mother snuck into the movie theaters with him. The way he and his mom mixed milk duds with popcorn and he’d stick some in her hair as they left. He tells me about the day he found her hanging and I want to know if there was any popcorn left in her hair when he did.

“In the morning, through the window shade, when the light pressed up against your shoulder blade and I could see what you were reading.”

My grandmother touches my shoulder as we stare at Shirley’s corpse. She brushes my hair with her fingers and asks if I want to touch Shirley. She tells me every funeral she’s ever been to, she finds herself always wanting to touch the body. I realize the reason she’s brushing my hair now.

“All the glory that the Lord has made”

I spend most nights grieving. Grieving the versions of me that never got to exist, grieving the ideas I never got to see. Some part of me wants to be immortal, to stay forever, to only grieve and never be grieved. But I think about how many more winters I’d have to go through, how many more corpses I’d try to touch. I’d like to believe I’d never get used to that amount of death.

 “and the complications that you could do without when I kissed you on the mouth.”

My grandmother tells me not to.

“Tuesday nights at the Bible study we lift our hands and pray over your body”

I sit with a man who tells his hospice nurse that he doesn’t want to die. He says he doesn’t care about heaven or if God is waiting for him, he says he wants to know what will happen here. Less than a week later, his skin turns blue and he stops. I wonder if he really did stop believing, or if abandonment still meant repentance.

“but nothing ever happens.”

“She’ll be cold,” is what my grandmother says, “every memory you have of her will be consumed by ice.” I remember how cold my hands are. I think about how if Shirley were surrounded by all her favorite things, then they’d all be cold too.

“I remember at Michael’s house when you kissed my neck and I almost touched your blouse”

When my father left, he moved to Florida. He worked on an orange farm and never bought a coat.

“In the morning at the top of the stairs when your father found out what we did that night and you told me you were scared.”

I have been to four funerals, all for people I never knew. I have no hold on grief and yet it is the only word I can think of for those who have disappeared. I keep waiting for them to come back and that’s when I mourn, is when I realize winter will always return.

“All the glory when you ran outside”

The day I was born there was supposed to be a blizzard but instead it was 70 degrees and sunny.

“with your shirt tucked in and your shoes untied”

We drive for six hours for the hour-long service for a man I barely know. The music is terrible and my sweater is itchy. I spend the rest of the night sitting in the hotel hot tub, waiting for someone to come in to tell me my ride left without me.

“and you told me not to follow you.”

I kick my ankles against the patio and tell my friend about the day my father left. He asks if it’s worse to have dead parents or shitty parents. I ask him if there should be a distinction between different types of gone — whether there’s really a difference between snow and ice.

“Sunday night when I clean the house, I find the card where you wrote it out”

It sounds like a prediction doesn’t it? He always sings like he’s mourning, even when he’s worshiping.

“on the floor at the great divide”

 My mother’s church has services for the dead. She would take me the first Sunday of every month and we would pray for those who left. We were the only family dressed in all black but she would tell me it was the only way to show any real respect for those who passed. I asked her about the living and she said every other day was for us, it’s selfish to ask for more than we already had. I prayed for my father to appear in the newspaper with a bullet wound in January and then called it repentance.

“with my shirt tucked in and my shoes untied”

 Whenever I lose someone, I search for meaning or maybe beauty in it but I’m beginning to think it’s better there never was.

“I am crying in the bathroom.”

I tell my friend about when I used to pray. He says he prays for necromancy and climate change.

“In the mourning”

 My mother tells me about the day I was born. She says my first breath took away all the cool air at midnight in January and that’s what made the day so warm.

 “when you finally let go”

 Some people say that in order to become something new, you need to leave everything else behind. That abandonment is its own form of creation, maybe renewal.

“and the nurse runs in with her head held low”

I’m at a funeral for a woman at my mother’s church and the priest says her laugh sounded like her favorite drink. Rock & Rye Faygo with ice on a beach in the middle of the summer. The priest says her laugh was the best part of her, he says she kept laughing, even after the hypothermia.

“and the cardinal hits the window.”

My grandmother says she envies the freedom birds have. The way they can fly away from wherever they find themselves without remorse or apology. She says she feels too guilty to do it herself.

“In the morning in the winter shade”

At her funeral, I wore a dress with music notes on it. I said it was a birds’ song.

“on the first of March, on the holiday”

I wish I could say I’ve lost and then kept living but I didn’t. I was born on a sunny day in January already having lost someone and then survived. I feel like the distinction is significant.

“I thought I saw you breathing.”

Taking my first breath turned my lungs into ice and I’ve had asthma since. I’d like to think when I take my last, I’ll breathe the ice back out. Instead of ice being internal, it will cover my entire body and that will be why I won’t be able to move.

“All the glory that the Lord has made”

My mother’s phone rings with a number from Florida and I answer it. He says his mom has died and I am invited to the funeral. He says he’s grateful I never answer any of his messages because it’d only make him even more guilty. He says he’s sick of the constant heat. I hang up and make  a snow angel, claiming winter for myself.

“and the complications when I see His face in the window in the morning.”

 Do you think when he disappeared he froze over too?

“All the glory when He took our place”

Every time I try to conjure a version of my funeral, the only thing I can think of is the child whose grandmother will speak to them about my corpse, where the ice has consumed me.

“but He took my shoulders and He shook my face”

I just keep waiting for it to sublime.

“and He takes and He takes and He takes.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kaydance Rice is a writer from Grand Rapids, Michigan and currently attending Interlochen Arts Academy. She is the recipient of several regional and national awards from the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. Her work can be found or is forthcoming in the Taco Bell Quarterly, YoungArts Anthology, Cargoes, voicemail poems, and Full Mood Magazine. In her free time, Kaydance enjoys playing the viola, rambling about existentialism, and spending time with her plants.