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Blue Marble Review

Literary Journal for Young Writers

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Issue Nine

Soar

By Simon Matela

The problem with learning to fly is that, on the first few attempts, you actually think you might be able to do it. I was luckier than most on my first try. I only shattered my tibia, a minor price to pay for the sake of progress. The whole ride to the hospital my mom was crying, both for me and the medical bills she would have to cover.

“What were you thinking, jumping out the window like that?” she screamed between the short, choked sobs and occasional honking of our rusted-out ford as we navigated the back roads to the hospital. “Never do that again. Look at me Charlie. Never. Do that. Again.” The thick musk of whiskey hung on her every word.

I spent what seemed like forever in the hospital, trapped in an oppressively white room, surrounded by a small army of nurses that watched over me like my mom used to. Then came the doctors, measuring my reflexes and asking all sorts of questions about my injury and family.

“Have you ever done this before?” / “Tell me if you can feel it when I do this?”

“Can you rotate your ankle for me?” / “How’s your relationship with your father?”

For the first few weeks after I was got home there was nearly always someone with an eye on me. Family dinners, a new concept in our house, were suddenly the norm. Most ended with little being said. Dad occasionally skipped them altogether to work in his den, or because he had to work late. It didn’t matter to me. Eventually, they would stop watching. Things would go back to normal. I’d learn to fly, whether they wanted me to or not.

That chance came on a wonderfully sunny Sunday afternoon. Mom was sleeping on the couch, beer cans strewn about the floor. Dad had been in his office all day, only coming out to use the bathroom. Every once in awhile I could hear his Keurig splutter out another coffee, the only indication I had that he was still there.

I crept up the steps to the second-floor window, slid the screen out and took a deep breath. The breeze rustled my hair a bit, I could see the trees swaying from side to side in the sunshine. I took a few steps back, got a running start, and propelled myself out the window. For one, beautiful moment, I hung in the air. Then the ground came rushing up to meet me.

 

 

Simon Matela is an undergraduate Creative Writing major at Chatham University with a focus (on/in) Fiction. He has been published in The Minor Bird and now The Blue Marble Review. He lives in Pittsburgh, PA with his cat, Lola.

Water Yourself

By Rhea Bhatnagar

 

 

My creativity is spontaneous and usually strikes me by a deluge of thoughts resulting from boredom. While creating “Water Yourself,” I sketched my concept out first, noting down every minor detail. This art piece was different for me since I usually work on projects with no clue about what the final piece will look like- it’s like opening a present on the night of Christmas Eve. Over the months, I’ve found that I create best when I merely sit down in the company of nature, listen to indie folk and let my imagination take over me which is exactly what I let happen when creating this art piece.

 

Rhea Bhatnagar is a high school student studying at Delhi Private School, Sharjah. She is a passionate feminist and animal rights advocate who likes to spend her free time volunteering at local cat shelters.

Kissing: A Soundtrack

By Bec Kashuba

“Zombie” – The Cranberries

I’m eleven and dressed in a Nightmare Before Christmas costume, and I sit, tugging at my gloves, surrounded by other eleven-year-olds in costumes. I’m not like them. They all laugh and talk and enjoy each other’s company, and I’d rather die than stay here for one more minute, except I don’t get what I want. I’m very much alive and my mom’s not getting me ‘til nine-thirty. It’s seven now and everyone is playing Truth or Dare. I pray nobody calls on me, but God makes sure that one girl named Kassandra does. I pick “dare” so people might think I’m cool. She tells me to kiss one of my best friends, and everybody “ooh’s” until I give him a nervous peck. I’m lying when I say this isn’t my first kiss. He wipes the red lipstick off his mouth and I run to the bathroom to cry because I wasted your first kiss on someone I don’t like, in a desperate effort to impress people I like even less.

 

“Backseat Serenade” – All Time Low

            I’m thirteen and at a concert for a band I used to like. I’ve been abandoned by all of my friends, and I’m hitting it off with a girl I met in line. I’m different from her. She’s tall, has long, pink hair, and is way out of my league. I’m nervous, five-foot-three, and my hands are sweaty. Even though I know little more than her name and her music taste, that’s enough for me. She’s into me, and that’s more than I can say for a lot of people. It feels better than being alone, so I stand on my tiptoes to kiss her. I’m lying when I tell my friends that I’m the type of person to make out with a near stranger at a concert. I lose my best friend Siarra that night because I’m turning into someone I’m not. She’s telling the truth when she says this. I don’t learn my lesson.

“Stay” – Rihanna ft. Mikky Ekko

            I’m fifteen and I can’t tell for sure if that’s what’s playing over the chatter of high-school dance attendees swarming around me. I’m with another girl, also tall and out of my league, and my nerves are getting the best of me. She holds my hand and looks at me with sad, helpless eyes, and I look away guiltily, apologizing for ruining the night. She’s lying when she says I’m not ruining anything. I know how much she loves to dance, and I’m stuck here wallowing in self-doubt. She’s quiet for a moment, and then she breaks the silence by asking if she can kiss me. I’m lying when I tell her I’m okay with it, and when I convince myself that the last time I kiss her a year later really will be the last. I know this isn’t going to work.

 

“Just for Now” – Imogen Heap

            I’m sixteen and it’s just after Christmas break. I arrive at school and find her waiting for me, box in hand. She hands it to me and we don’t talk about what’s happening. We both knew this was coming anyway. She apologizes and I reach for the door. I hesitate, turning to look back at her. I’m lying when I tell myself I don’t want to kiss her goodbye. I punish myself for ruining our relationship by not doing it.

 

“Arabella” – Arctic Monkeys

            I’m sixteen and a narcissist. I’m alone in my room, applying makeup even though it’s the middle of the night and I’m not sneaking out to go anywhere. I’m lying to myself by pretending to admire my reflection; instead, I scrutinize every detail of my appearance endlessly. I cry, and the makeup smears. I kiss the mirror and slam my fist into the glass. I’m lying when I say “Pain is beauty” as I pluck the lipstick-coated shards from my hand.

“Ivy” – Frank Ocean

            I’m seventeen and the loneliest I’ve ever been. Siarra isn’t the only one who’s left me; all of my friends tell me that I’ve changed, that I’m not the person they used to know. I sit in a stairwell by myself and scroll mindlessly through the photos on my phone. I come across something a friend sent me a few months back: a photo from Halloween in 2012. I’m dressed in a Nightmare Before Christmas costume and surrounded by people who genuinely liked me for me, not just for the person I convinced them I was. I’d never been kissed.

“It’s quite alright to hate me now,” Frank Ocean sings.

I’m telling the truth when I say that I hate me now. But it’s quite alright. I finally learn my lesson from all of this. I go home that evening and remove the makeup, the clothes, and the facade I’d put up for years. I delete the phone numbers of those old flames, and I come across Siarra’s number. When I call, she doesn’t pick up. I leave a voicemail, telling her that I’m sorry for everything that happened that night at the concert. I never hear from her again, but I do see her the next day when she comes through the drive-through at work. She knows who I am; I can see our history in her eyes when she looks at me. But she says nothing. She grabs her frappuccino and drives away. Somehow, I am okay with this. I don’t spend my break crying over the fact that I’ve been ignored. I don’t dwell on the years of time spent together, or the way it all fell apart. I hand her her drink and that’s that, and I am okay.

“We will never be those kids again.”

 

Bec Kashuba is a writer and coffee-hating barista from Pittsburgh, PA. Her interests include dogs, calligraphy, and drag. Her least favorite song is “Margaritaville.”

Thanks for the Mangoes

By Sofia Bajwa

Thank you, mangoes: thank you for long summers spent with remnants of yellow stuck like plaster all around my mouth, like rusted ring-lines around a bathtub. Thanks for coating my fingers with the same sweet, sticky chrome tint that I promised my grandmother I would wash straight away, but I never obeyed because the bathroom was oh so far. Thanks for being the first streak of paint on Nani’s immaculate, white canvas of a carpet that had been laid down only two months ago. But it’s no big deal because they replaced all the carpet floors with wood three years later. Thanks for cooling me down in the sweltering summers when the box fan’s breeze was not frigid enough, so my tongue playfully immersed itself in the refreshing wake of your juicy liquid that oozed between my teeth and coated the insides of my throat. At eight year’s old, my cousin and I would be content with sitting idly in front of the box fan, transfixed by the monotonous rotation of the blades as we ingested every inch of your surface right down to the peel. Unscrupulously, we cast the bowls off to the side as we proceeded to amuse ourselves by talking into the fan to make our voices sound all echo-ey. But Nani always selflessly cleaned up our messes for us; well, I guess except for the time I stained the carpet because some messes just can’t be undone. Thank you, mangoes, for teaching me alongside Nani that what’s on the inside matters more because the first time I ever met you I defiantly shook my head in disgust. To me, you looked like what the awkward result would be if a potato and an apple had a baby. You were a weird shape; you were not quite circular or ovular, and your color was if a second grader hadn’t yet finished blending their paint stripes together. Despite my protests, Nani bribed me to try you in exchange for a lollipop, and by the time I had polished you off, I didn’t even want that lollipop. Thank you, mangoes, for becoming my comfort food and my go-to midnight snack. I’d choose you over a pizza any day. I love to bask in your sweetness, and I love your psychedelic yellows that hide beneath your obscure, outward appearance. Thank you, mangoes for providing a distraction when my cousins and I had to wait in the hospital lobby on Christmas Eve as Mom and Dad left us. “It’ll be fine,” they said. That was a lie. Thank you, mangoes for helping me reminisce the good times, the bad times, all the other times in between. But most of all, thank you, mangoes, for reminding me of her.

 

 

Sofia Bajwa is a high school student, and her work has appeared in a small amount of anthologies by students. She is an emerging writer who also claims to be a DIY guru, chocolate enthusiast, and professional Netflix binge watcher!

I Keep the Time

By Lauren Nolan

i keep the time

from slipping

by pouring it away.

pouring it into the kitchen sink

where it sluices

between coffee grinds and egg shells

it’s all rushing away anyways

i am four five seven eight eleven thirteen sixteen sixteen sixteen

a rush of birthday candles

‘what do you want to be’, they asked

and i had no answers for them

‘an artist?’

i am a child

for whom time is swirling too fast

and my mind is whirring too slow.

so i keep the time from slipping

by pouring it away.

because maybe if i push it away

it’ll come back to me

like everything i’ve never found.

 

 

Lauren is a senior at Avon Grove High School. In addition to writing, she enjoys piano, violin, and drawing.

 

 

 

Writer

By Max Paik

 

Often I wish that I could just  lie down. But not on my bed. The zebra-striped blanket or the pillowcase that should’ve been replaced years ago or the mattress that feels only slightly softer than concrete will not satisfy my needs.

Maybe the couch will work, perhaps for just a day, or an evening, or an hour. Maybe just three minutes of my back against the sharpie-stained fabric that’s been torn apart by years of curious cats and my pretending to be a Jedi, will fix me up. No. It won’t work. It can’t. The couch is too cold and I know that dad would never let me have the blanket. You’d think he’d buy another one. I saw them on sale at Ikea the other day.

I think maybe the floor will have to do. The carpet is better than the hard wood. The cat barf doesn’t smell too bad, right? Maybe if I turn and  lie on my stomach,and shut my eyes and pretend I’m tanning somewhere in Hawaii. Or maybe Fiji. But then it’s dark and I’m in a car again and the stars are bright and I’m coming around a turn a bit too fast and two faces are lit up in the darkness,like they’re under a spotlight. Because they are, I think. But was it the moonlight or the headlights? The floor won’t do.

The grass is nice. But I’ve tried that one before and as fun as it is to watch the ladybugs dance on my fingertips and feel a breeze rush over me, I know I’m allergic. And I know that hives are no fun. And I know that the grass isn’t really where I want to lie.

I want to lie down on the page. I want to fold myself up like origami and tuck myself into the middle of some notebook or maybe a novel and feel how I felt when my mother tucked me in; like there was nothing to be afraid of. And even if there was something to be afraid of it was far away and non-threatening and not a bright red 2013 Ford C-max with the license plate 5HAR619 that was sliding around like I did the first time I went skating.

The page is all too inviting. But I’ve tried this before; I know its tricks. I know that I’m no more easily digestible when I come in the form of 12 point Times New Roman. I know that the second you try and leave a little bit of you behind, maybe just a small seeping or a little leak or maybe even just a colon or semicolon or some other bit of punctuation that the paper rejects you. Not your writing or your plot development: You. The way that Goodyear tires reject traction when they’re spun around too quickly. The way that the night sky rejects screaming by letting it fade into the black between the stars, destined to eternal hiding behind constellations.

But maybe if I just tap the page. Not lie on it. Just tap it. Like a boy seeing if the pool is too cold by lightly dropping his toes into the water. But not even that. I wouldn’t even break the surface. Just a tap.

But damn it, I don’t want to tap. I want to dive in, headfirst, like an Olympian. Forget not breaking the surface. I want to rip through, like a knife shoved into a balloon. The way being told to get over your fear of darkness,— like every time you shut your eyes you don’t see bodies and hydroplaning and screaming and crying and a police officer telling you you’re safe and that everything is okay even though the skid marks on the road and the shaking legs and crying faces say otherwise,— cuts through you.

But I know that a page is only as comforting as it is full. I know the pain of staring at blankness. The suffering and torment of knowing that any stories you may have, any poems or metaphors or characters that dance through your mind like ballerinas, will never make it to the page without a few scratches. That whatever ideas may be in your head will be trapped there forever. Like prisoners. Like a son, a mom, and three cousins trapped in a skidding middle class hybrid vehicle on a Monday night the day after Christmas— forever destined to imperfection. Like circles drawn with pencils or pens. Like humans.

 

Max Paik is a junior at Half Moon Bay High School in California. He enjoys sunsets, avocados, and traveling when he gets the chance. He also enjoys math but he likes to keep that relatively private.

 

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