Lettitor

Dear reader,

As college students, many of us have lives that seem anything but hollow--our calendars are packed with meetings and deadlines, our dorm rooms are crammed with as many people as we can fit, each block condenses a semester of content into a month of concentration. And yet, despite being told that these are the fullest years of our lives, hollowness is something that many of us are familiar with. We’ve all stared at our emptied-out rooms at the end of the year, or lay in bed with a headache on Sunday afternoon, or watched someone walk out our lives like they were never there. Sometimes, these busy years of our lives seem to be emptying out faster than they can fill again. 

Hollowness is an elusive idea. Something different from absence, something different from emptiness, something that can be painful or numb or freeing all at once. As the fall semester draws to a close, as we’ve settled into our routines on campus, many of us find ourselves sitting in bustling airports and bare childhood bedrooms or walking through a vacant campus. Hollowness is felt most deeply in the things that should be most full. And so in our second issue of the year, we wanted to know where that hollowness lies. These writers beautifully capture hollowness in a variety of places-- relationships lacking warmth, desires lacking direction, words lacking meaning, personhood lacking life. And despite the breadth of topics, each piece captures the same deep-rooted sense of hollowness that rings from its core.

We find that hollowness doesn’t always have to be bad. It can be resonant. It allows space for ideas and feelings to flow and expand, where something new and beautiful can make itself heard in the silence. As you read through this issue, we invite you to let yourself feel hollowness without seeking something to fill it right away. We encourage you to seek out empty shells in your own life, and to sit for a moment in the vacant space.

Thanks for reading! 

- The Cipher Staff

Seeking Salvation

My God

Article by Katie Rowley Art by Emmaline Hawley

Trigger Warning: Eating disorders

I am looking for god, again. Maybe not “God” in the religious way, but, regardless, a god. A god I have spent my late girlhood seeking. A god I have perceived in cars speeding down Highway 287 and in dorm bathrooms and in two too many apartments. A god I lost in the churches of France and found again on a dirt road less than a mile from my house. A god that wants nothing from me but cleanliness, emptiness, hollowness. It asks no prayer, no repentance, no sacrifice. Just discipline. And control. And shaky hands. And a hunger that takes months to tame. 

It’ll become apparent so soon that what I am writing, or at least attempting to write, is dangerous. Maybe irresponsible. Maybe too much. I am trying my best to hide the fact that this is being written on the precipice of a cliff I am attempting to throw myself off of. I am trying my best to not break one of the rules I swore to myself I’d keep. I am trying to break my habit of telling everyone all of my secrets. I am trying to avoid the instruction manual that so many of my earlier drafts have turned into. I am trying to not call for help. 

I did not grow up religious. Despite being baptized in an Episcopal church, a white dress made for a baby and an invitation is all the proof I have that I am going to heaven. No part of me is religious, except for the part that feels compelled to pray when I am scared my parents are lying in a ditch on the side of a dark highway (and the one that craves the perfection I have been begging the sky for recently). I cannot place my faith in something so out of my control. I can barely place faith in myself. 

My latest Google searches: “Why am I balding?” “Hair treatments for 21-year-old women” “Hair thickening shampoo” “What causes your hair to fall out at 21?” “Balding young women NOT CANCER” 

I can see too much of my scalp when I look in the mirror. I noticed the emptiness on the day after my birthday while getting ready for dinner with my parents. My bangs were too thin and a closer examination revealed too much space between the strands of hair. This prompted panic. Panic and an obsession every time I look in a mirror. My lack of hair is the only thing I can notice. It’s the only thing I can think about while drunk. 

I mention my balding to a friend as we’re changing in the dim overhead light of my bedroom. Someone spilled a drink on her. She towers above me, a birds-eye view of the top of my hair and she says that she doesn’t think I am balding. 

Weeks later, drunk again, I bring up the fear that all my hair will fall out and no one will ever love me. She proposes different causes for the hair loss and assures me that I will be loved. I tell her I think it’s brain cancer. I can’t tell her the real reason. (The girls from Twitter recommend taking biotin to reverse the hair loss that is destined to come and I bought a bottle of supplements but god I am bad at following through with anything.)

I can’t tell anyone anything. This, whatever it is, has turned into something so sacred it cannot be uttered out loud. I hold our (this god and my) relationship so close I am worried it will kill me and everyone will be left wondering how they didn’t know. I am worried that I want nothing more than for it to kill me. 

It started with a boy. And a much skinnier girl. (But, if we’re being honest, it probably started with my mom.) It started with trips to Target and chocolate chip cookies. It started bent over porcelain, four fingers lodged into the deep of my mouth. 

God first came to me in the form of that skinnier girl. I met her a year before she moved to the Netherlands for her dad’s job. She was good at painting. Pretty. Funny. Surrounded in my memory by a golden glow of perfection:; an angel. When she moved back to our town, she fucked my boyfriend. They’d get high together and, months after, when I asked her for details, she told me everything. Those messages, and the difference in everything about us, pushed me to seek out a hollowness that could only be reached through an emptying of everything I ate that day. And god, did that feel good. 

God soon left, or perhaps faded. Slowly sunk into the shadowy part of my brain. And the after-school bad habit I had acquired shrunk into an anecdote I’d tell my mom in a couple of years. Something I would be able to laugh off. Something I would chalk up to a spout of normal teenage girl behavior; you can blame the extra estrogen or maybe my period.

I never lost anything significant, except for my gag reflex (which maybe is a win). Even when this god returned to me in the bathroom of my freshman year dorm. I was eating enough to offset any loss. I was never able to conjure the first feelings of guttural emptiness. I grew full in the sun of my friends and a boy who, I could have sworn, loved me. For months their warmth would fill the parts of my chest and stomach and arms that I had spent a year wishing away. They would replace the fingers that cut up my esophagus. I would forget about the shape of my body. 

But, everything always comes back, and in a snowy loneliness, god resurrected in the shape of a spoonful of peanut butter as the only meal I had for weeks. I was writing much more back then. Cataloging every morsel of food I consumed in between paragraphs about a different boy who would never love me back. Listening to obscure music, and sitting in the cold. I felt so cool. I didn’t talk to my friends for weeks. I dyed my hair black. The less I consumed, the closer I felt to god. Snow started glittering in the sunlight. I revered the sound of my stomach growling. 

I fucked it all up when the snow melted and I started talking to my friends again. I fucked it all up when I flew 5,000 miles away and started eating freshly baked chocolate croissants and drinking a bottle of wine a day. I fucked it all up when I realized he would get hard no matter how big my thighs were. I fucked it all up; I let life fill me. I let that glut feel like a virtue: a reason to be alive. 

That boy, the one who left me bloated on delusion freshman year, that summer after fucking it all up, told me about the shape of her body. Her: the other girl who lived in his sheets that summer. The other girl who I obsessively stalked on Instagram for weeks. The other girl who is much smaller than me. The girl whose name lived on the roof of my mouth for weeks. The other girl who became my obsession. Became my god. 

God that summer came in the form of a bagel for breakfast immediately followed by a two-hour walk. In the form of blacking out from a bottle of rosé in my parent’s basement, bent over the toilet with no one to hold my hair back. In the form of passing out, twice. Black spots and red-hot pain flooding through my body. Bile covering the dirt roads. A call to my mom. Forcing myself to eat a banana curled up on cold tile. 

Summer catapulted into a birthday of hating how I looked, and by November I had mustered the courage to stop eating. I loved it. (I look for that courage in everything now.) I loved that I could go days without eating. I loved that my hands were so cold. I used the hottest tap-water I could bear to heat them. I loved that the number on the scale was going down. I loved those months. (I want them back.)

The girls I became friends with on Twitter call it a “honeymoon phase.” Because you’re losing weight so drastically and it seems like you can’t do anything wrong. And the water you're chugging at any sensation of hunger tastes so good. And you do not think about the things you will miss in weeks (your once so regular period) or in a year (your hair). You just think about how euphoric losing feels. How it feels like winning. 

What does winning taste like: a dryness in your mouth that cannot be cured even though you are drinking a gallon of water a day; a $110 pair of jeans that look so fucking good on you; polar ice; the most matches on Tinder that you have ever gotten; an exponentially decreasing number; the salt and dirt on your fingertips as they reach the back of your tongue. 

I spent the majority of junior year cold. And making excuses to not eat with my friends. And feeling in control. I spent two blocks writing about god and how she had stayed with me longer than ever before. I spent junior year learning what every inch of my body looked like, and now I can never go back. 

Something about this summer fashioned a nonbeliever. Maybe it was the proximity to an actual church and the Sunday hymns that flooded through my open window, reminding me that my belief and my god were never that tangible. Or maybe it was the edible consumed every night. Or it was my friends’ stories of recovery evoking my dad’s voice, telling me that I have never been able to commit. That I am a quitter. 

So I stopped believing in that god that woke me up last October, with a tender rubbing of my head and a promise that I would be saved if I just stopped eating. I grew out of those expensive jeans. I started eating lunch. I spent too much money at the 7/11 off campus. I told myself that I could be loved as I am. And I believed that for so long. 

Half of me still wants to believe in an existence without my god. Half of me wants my hair to grow back and sell those jeans. But half of me stands outside of the shitty off-campus house I live in and prays. In the dark and cold, I stand in the weeds and look up at the towering brick of the church we live right next to. A stained glass Jesus that the church pays to light up stares back at me. I ask him how to believe again. I ask him to save me. I beg him. I tell him I will fully commit this time. I will give up the nights laughing with my friends in our kitchen as we make cookies. I will give up the edibles. I will give up anything if he sends my god back to me again. I want to be saved. I have never wanted anything more. 

Lucky for me, my praying has seemed to work. Slowly, in faint apparitions, I can feel her presence. I can hear her when I spend an entire day fasting. I can hear her when my first meal is a screwdriver as I pregame the bar. She speaks through me as I tell my friends that I want to buy a carton of cigarettes from 7/11 next time we go. (The heathen in me reassures them that I only want a pack to smoke when I am drunk and want to look cool.) She sits next to me as I smoke outside with a pretty girl. She whispers in my ear that the reason he does not want me is because of my body. She yells that there is an easy solution; I just have to learn how to listen again. 

Every second my mind flips. I want so badly to eat pasta from the pot in my underwear and a tank top. I want to look in the mirror with my friends by my side and not see how much wider my waist is. I want to cherish the similarity between my mom’s body and mine. I want to be too cold for hot water and three layers of blankets. I want god to appear in someone who loves my stomach the way it is and I want to hear god in the laughter of my friends. I want my grocery budget to decrease to zero. I want to stop comparing my body to every single person I know. I want to be loved, and I want to fit into those jeans again. 

Art of an Email

A UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FILING

COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO

CASE: CALDWELL(PLAINTIFF) v. SCUTTLEWIRTH(DEFENDANT)

CASE #96024

DOCUMENT TYPE: EVIDENCE

SUBMITTED BY: CATO ROGERS (ATTORNEY)

SUBMITTED ON BEHALF OF: JASON SCUTTLEWIRTH (PLAINTIFF)

DOCUMENT SUMMARY

This document presents evidence relating to the civil case relating to an alleged altercation between Mr. Jason Scuttlewirth and Mr. Ulysses Caldwell. The following pages contain emails, presented in their original format, sent from the phone and computer of Mr. Scuttlewirth during the weeks leading up to, and after, the events central to this case alleged to have taken place on December 8. 

DATE: TUESDAY, OCTOBER 30

Email #1A

Timestamp: 6:07 p.m.

To: emma.light@thedailyletter.com

Subject: I Hit A Goose

Hey Emma,

Bad news. I probably can’t make it to dinner. Our neighborhood has a bit of a goose problem and, well, I may have hit one with my car on the way over. I’m taking it to a vet now. Are you free sometime later in the week?

- Jason

Email #1B

Timestamp: 8:15 p.m.

To: juliascuttlerwirth@gmail.com

Subject: Hope Is Not A Thing With Feathers

Julia, 

Did dad ever say anything about how to take care of a geese population that’s gotten out of control? Did he drop any tips? These Canadian Geese have moved in – awful white squawking things. They get noisy and unbearably loud at night. And they’re feisty during the day. 

I thought dad might have mentioned something about geese when he lectured us on bat houses and mouse traps. Let me know if that rings a bell. 

Also, I have a goose in my possession which is hooked on leftover breakfast food and is now currently looking for a home. Are you interested? Do you know anyone interested? 

Your brother,

Jason

Email #1C

Timestamp: 8:27 a.m.

To: home.owners.association.president@hollowshirerow.com

Subject: The Geese

Dear Mr. Caldwell,

I just wanted to reach out about the geese. As our HOA President, I thought maybe you would know the protocol for getting a situation like this to a manageable level. Just let me know if there’s anything you need from me. 

Cordially,

Jason

DATE: FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 3

Email #2A

Timestamp: 1:05 p.m.

To: home.owners.association.president@hollowshirerow.com

Subject: The Geese II

Dear Mr. Caldwell,

Maybe you missed my last email. Just checking in on the geese. I’ve noticed your bird baths are wrecked and overflowing. Please. Let’s take care of these monstrous fowls together.

Cordially,

Jason

DATE: MONDAY, NOVEMBER 6

Email #3A

Timestamp: 10:11 p.m.

To: emma.light@thedailyletter.com

Subject: Breakfast-for-Dinner

Emma,

I had a lot of fun over the weekend. I’d love to hang out sometime this week. If, by chance, you are free tomorrow night, you could come by and meet my pet goose, Gregory. Maybe we could do breakfast-for-dinner at my place?

Yours,

Jason 

Email #3B

Timestamp: 9:59 a.m.

To: home.owners.association.president@hollowshirerow.com

Subject: The Geese III: The Third Part of a Trilogy We All Dreaded

Dear Mr. Caldwell,

Ok, this is just out of hand. I can’t walk my pet around without a flock scaring him back into the garage. I’m going to start finding their eggs and making omelets soon.

Cordially,

Jason

Email #3B

Timestamp: 3:47 a.m.

To: juliascuttlerwirth@gmail.com

Subject: Uh Oh

Julia,

I got into a fight with my neighbor this morning. It was a part of this whole dispute with the HOA – a long chain of correspondence back and forth about geese in the neighborhood. They’re everywhere now. Down the street. On the sidewalk. In your yard. You can’t park your car in the driveway without parting the feathered sea.

The guy lives one house over, but I didn’t want to just bang on his door. I tried to draft polite correspondence. He never answered. Just never said anything. Then, when I was walking Gregory the Goose, he asked if I had read the HOA handbook on exotic pets. Said maybe I would have to get rid of him. 

Exotic pets? The most common thing in Hollowshire Row is a fucking goose. And this particular goose broke its leg when a car bumped into it. So I took it in. That’s not an exotic pet. That’s the origin story of my best friend. 

And when I asked about my emails, he said he hadn’t seen anything. What a load of goose shit.

Also, Emma didn’t respond to my last message. I’m a little worried that breakfast-for-dinner was the wrong way to go with it. Or maybe I signed off wrong. Or maybe I tried to do it all in the wrong order. Who knows. 

Just feels like no one’s listening. 

Your brother,

Jason

DATE: THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 30

Email #4A

Timestamp: 9:19 a.m.

To: home.owners.association.president@hollowshirerow.com

Subject: An Apology

Dear Mr. Caldwell,

Just wanted to apologize for the way the conversation went last week. I checked in the handbook – as long as I register Gregory with the state, it shouldn’t be a problem. Thanks for your patience. 

Cordially,

Jason

Email #4B

Timestamp: 7:34 p.m.

To: emma.light@thedailyletter.com

Subject: Re. Dinner Tomorrow

Emma,

Yes! I’d love to go to dinner with you. 8:00 p.m. tomorrow works great.

Cordially,

Jason

Email #4C

Timestamp: 7:35 p.m.

To: juliascuttlerwirth@gmail.com

Subject: You Know What Is Up

Julia,

Kachow.

Your brother,

Jason

DATE: MONDAY, DECEMBER 4

Email #5A

Timestamp: 3:07 p.m.

To: home.owners.association.president@hollowshirerow.com

Subject: Stage Five – Acceptance

Dear Mr. Caldwell,

The geese have taken over my yard now. My sunflowers don’t know which way to point. Soon I will accept these beasts’ terms of surrender. 

Cordially,

Jason

DATE: TUESDAY, DECEMBER 8

Email #6A

Timestamp: 7:05 p.m.

To: juliascuttlerwirth@gmail.com

Subject: This Day Could Not Get Worse

Julia,

Two emails which would have, independently, made this the worst day of the year. Both come within an hour of each other. Seems I can’t catch a break.

Your brother,

Jason 

Email #6B

Timestamp: 7:06 p.m.

To: emma.light@thedailyletter.com

Subject: Re. How I’m Feeling About Us

Emma,

Yea. Totally makes sense. No hard feelings. I’ll see you around. 

- Jason 

Email #6C

Timestamp: 8:00 p.m.

To: home.owners.association.president@hollowshirerow.com

Subject: Re. A Civil Suit

Mr Caldwell,

Thank you for informing me of this case you’ve brought forward to the district court. I understand that you feel grieved by Gregory’s actions today – I know firsthand it can be scary when an angry goose gets in your face.

All the same, I would love to remind you that Gregory is, ultimately, a goose. As domesticated as he can become, he will remain as such. 

And to be straightforward, I understand the stakes. If you win, Gregory will be returned to the wild. I cannot say I am surprised that the one action would choose to take the effect of adding a goose to the swarming flock plaguing our neighborhood. Suppose I’ll see you in court, Mr. Caldwell.

Squawk,

Jason 

DATE: THURSDAY, DECEMBER 10

Email #7A

Timestamp: 11:57 p.m.

To: home.owners.association.president@hollowshirerow.com

Subject: Who I Am

Dear Mr. Caldwell,

It’s been a long night. I’ve been walking around the neighborhood, taking Gregory to all of my favorite spots around Hollowshire Row. 

I imagined these might be the places I would share with special people in my life. The benches along the treeline by the lake. The koi pond on Columbus Avenue. The big tree above your yard – I like to sit against it and look at your birdbath display.

But, after three years of living here, I don’t have anyone to share those places with. Not that I’d much want to nowadays – there’s goose shit everywhere. 

You read my emails and methodically filed them into your spam folder. And now you bring forward a case which could well be the end of Gregory. You would return him to the wild. Yes. You display an utter disregard for basic principles of neighborliness. But even more appalling, you bypassed our most fundamental tools for compromise. 

Talking to each other is how we can become something beyond ourselves. We are unbounded. We are unrestrained by the usual confines of ourselves. We are, entirely, what we draft. 

I will concede, without question, that emails and texts possess bleak origin stories. A world moving too fast for letters does not produce, through necessity, something altogether more elegant. Just something more efficient. 

But everything is practical. 

Bird baths, for instance. In their first iterations, ancient cities-dwellers built them to attract songbirds and woodpeckers. Now, millennia later, we see them as beautiful fountains. But their origin remains rooted in pragmatism. To me, that’s how you know they mean something. We chose to maintain them, elevate them. And not because an academic conceived of some broad aim, but because they are, like everything in our lives, a means of expression. We, the people of suburbia, shaped these items to our liking. It’s the reason we have door mats and vanity plates.

And the world is quickly producing new opportunities of expression all the time, physical and digital. I’m not sure where we’re going. But these messages, these snippets of familiar self-expression, are the backbone of human connection. They repair the shattered windows between worlds. They make up mirrors which allow us to really look at ourselves.

And maybe it’s all failed prose. But to me and the people who matter to me, they’re more than that. They're hugs. They’re consoling nods. They’re attempts, each in their own small way, to build bridges across an infinite, online space.

And they are items which can not be expressed outside of themselves, immortalized pieces of identity. And you just ignored them. You can sue me. You can try and take away Gregory. But ignoring my emails? You can not dismiss who I am. 

Read it again. Show it in court. I have more to write. 

But before I get to that, I am going to make pancakes for me and my goose. 

Sincerely,

Jason

The Man, the Web, and the Why

Article & Art by Linnea Anderson

Some people walk with a purpose. He didn’t. 

He meandered. He worked that way, picking up sticks and thinking of God. He sought to uncover what always was; there and bare. 

It wasn’t only some strange illusion, or a puzzle waiting jumbled. It was a web that expected no resolution.

It wasn't a fight or an undying urge to understand. Wonder or curiosity didn’t do his deeds justice. It was simply juvenile, silly, and confounding: his process.

Clichés did not grip him. To him, an olive branch meant nothing about peace. 

It didn’t break norms. It didn’t leave people questioning. He just worked that way, no end in sight, none needed. 

And so he twiddled through his days sinking into what plainly was, thinking of nothing more, and things made less and less sense. 

He rarely fell into the why. The Why was far too much, too deep, and too serious. It expected something definitive. 

He understood that everything he knew, even what he saw plainly, would soon be torn up and carried away with what he called wind. It just worked that way: the web. 

Without a footing, he still found interest in shallow things. Simplicity was disturbingly thoughtful. He had his preferences; clarity and stillness.

You couldn’t call him lost, or even confused. He had a better understanding of his world than you. 

People thought little of his brains and dinky demeanor. He absorbed all the attention in the room, harnessed it, used it to see others, and no one studied him. 

Clean nails, well-shaven, and clear-headed, he stayed true to being a part of the web. Although slightly tangled, he was never caught. 

Far from a robot, he was viciously human. That was the danger of it, in the web at least. 

He sought no goals but to think. It did him in. 

Never satisfied or even concerned with solutions, his method, even his full life, was consumed. It plagued him, a nothingness birthed by a tremendous understanding of chaos and complexity. It all existed within him, all that he could grasp with his limited senses. With the perfectly painted picture he formed within his head, he saw holes. Ones that reminded him of childhood restlessness and fervor. It tore at him, those imperceivable elements. 

God was easy. God thought and functioned. What was more was what was stupid. Infuriatingly real, he never truly grasped all that was dumb. 

Disillusioned as he was, desperation took its toll and the long road back turned short.

He stumbled one day and that was it, the whole map. It wasn’t bloody, just bare. 

Now the web is somewhere deep in a yard, a lawn covered with big old stones and big old names. 

He would be one of them but no one knew him well enough. They only knew what the paper said folded up in his back pocket. In thin delicate letters, soon to be weathered away or covered by moss, the sentiment read the same, word for word, on his headstone. 

“Oh why, oh why.”

I Promise to Haunt You

Confessions of a Ghost

Article by Margot Swetich Art by Max Montague

In the morning, I swing my feet off my lofted bed and I stand without touching the ground. Feeling the softness of the air, I glance down. My feet are hovering just above the cold tile of my bedroom floor. I try to walk it off like it's an injury and my dad is watching, but there’s nothing I can do to reach the ground. I try to swim down, just to feel the earth, but my desperate hand can only fall through the world, warping through solid life like I am mist in the summer air. I should be excited that I can walk through walls, but all I can wish for is to be alive again. I am a ghost.

Sometimes when I’m out on a walk or enter a busy room, I feel like the smallest person in the world. The thought pops into my head: “I’m the tiniest creature.” It isn’t my size, though, not truly. It’s more of a transparency, like I’m a cup of water full of salt that has dissolved perfectly. Like there is substance that one must search for. Not all people put in the effort, but if they sip me they find me overpowering instead of seeing me as something to gargle, as something with a particular use. No, I don’t think I am always useful. Sometimes I just taste bad.

         Perhaps that isn’t right. I am more solid than air but less solid than water. I am something that floats, but I am not transient like a cloud. I’m stuck where I am, no matter where I go.

It occurs to me when I look in a mirror and do not recognize myself that I am already dead. I am a spirit trapped between worlds. There is no one qualified to exorcize me. I worry that I am an unsettling presence because of this. I can never truly be with the living. Even if they don’t know it, everyone I meet is haunted.

         When you are a ghost, it is easy to forget that others can see you. For most ghosts, I would imagine this isn’t true. They can exist without being worried about prying eyes, only seen if they cause a commotion. I am not expected to disappear, but I do it anyway. I force others in my life to look for me, to ask where I have gone. I lose my grasp on the plane of the living. I drift underneath it, or I slip through its clearness into a haze that most people only see when they get high. That is what it’s like at times. I feel like I am high when I am not. There are people who would say that sounds enjoyable, but the entire time I am in the hazy world, I am begging to be let out of it. In this ghostly plane I cannot move quickly enough, or speak loudly enough, to change my state. I am a Claymation person, and every flashing image takes painful effort to form. I move inch by inch and agonize over each frame. I wonder about how I got the keys to this hidden room of consciousness. Were they an heirloom? Was there a skeleton key in my genes or a secret code? A curse? I have never run into another ghost. I would be grateful, at this point, to find out that someone else was stuck haunting this world. 

         I feel evil on those days when I can’t focus my eyes or locate my body. If I run into someone I know, even someone I love, I am completely without the resources to interact with them. They ask me how I am doing, and I forget to return the question. I speak only in short statements, mumbling, “good” like a reticent teenager. I let them all down and sometimes make a first impression that is impossible to repair. They think I’m cagey, or they run into me on a day when I am not ghostly and could be friendly, but they feel confused or think I am being fake. All because I wake up dead some days, but not every day. I can’t help it. With strangers and acquaintances, I can be destructive. Even dangerous. I can not be trusted to make new friends without making a playground faux pas. With close friends, I can tell them that I’m having a slow day, and they’ll leave me alone, checking in the next morning to see me alive and no longer strange. I’m not sure if my friends can see how translucent I am or if they just know to look the other way so they don’t spook me into disappearing completely. I am grateful for their gentleness. 

Today my ghostliness is more of a friend to me. I like to taste it, to notice when it dips away and when it returns. There are times when my brain demands that I be alone, when it roars at me to isolate and float across the earth without any connection to anything. There are times when I choose to be alone, when I cherish myself as the only thing I need. Ghostliness is something I want to perform, to allow myself to slip into the in-between and just feel everything–my own soul, if it exists, and the fullness of the air and the earth–that envelops me. 

There are two of me: one of me is the “I” which I speak from now, and the other is the ghost whose body I hold at night when I try to coax it into sleep. To me, these are separate things because someone else responds when I tap my shoulder and say it’s time for rest. There is something living there beyond me that snaps its teeth at my fingers or needs to be shaken into wakefulness and action. How do I make sense of this? Would I be more at peace if I could pull these halves together, or if I could remove one completely? If I were never that ghost, would I be relieved, or would I feel lonely without it? I think it’s possible I’d miss my ghostly self, who is so purely part of life by being separate from the corporeal world. 

When I first realized that I was a ghost, I thought it meant that I was supposed to be dead. I thought that I had stepped over my allotted time, and I was destined to feel like I was a specter because of it. It was such a cruel and morbid way of thinking, and yet I feel that my first instinct about this sensation may have been right. Why should a living person feel so disturbingly separated from reality? Why should I constantly have the thought “I do not exist?”

I would have had a ball in the time of skepticism. Shakespeare thought about it a lot, the idea that we can never be sure that others exist in the same way we do, or that they exist at all. “Art thou not Lysander, and I Hermia?” he wrote. I try to make assurances to myself in the same way, but I cannot. How can I prove to anyone that I am real if I myself do not believe it? When I was in love, I used to wonder: how can this man love a person who tells him she doesn’t exist? How can he know me if he doesn’t know that I am split in two, and that he could never meet the ghost inside the person he knows? Does he too contain a ghost who I never met? And if he does, then how can I possibly claim to have loved him? I was always trying to get him to acknowledge there was a deeper part of him who I didn’t know, who I wanted to know. I’m not sure what it would do to a relationship to think that you fully understood the other person, fully knew all their layers. It might be a foolish endeavor to try. Like pretending you know God. In both cases, you are faking an understanding.

Once, I saw the man I used to love in a place and at a time I didn’t expect to see him. I turned a corner and seeing him was like walking straight into a mirror. Facing him, I saw my doppelgänger. He was so familiar to me it was like he was a part of or a version of myself. How am I right there and also here, where I’m standing? I remember thinking. I told him that I felt like I had bumped into myself, not him, and he didn’t get it. It was the most vulnerable I had felt in a long time. It’s strange how you can know someone impossibly well and yet they still can’t enter your head even when you explain over and over again how you feel. A few weeks ago I caught my own eye in the window of a bar, and I didn’t recognize her. Or I did, but I didn’t know who she was. What mattered to her? Where was she going? Where did she want to go? I realized I had no idea. When I see him next, I wonder what it will be like, if there will be any of the doppelgänger effect left over. I think I might see a little bit of myself haunting him. I am good at haunting.

I like to take pictures at museums of statues and paintings of women who I think bear a resemblance to me. The problem is that I see myself in nearly all the faces. That’s the thing about feeling like a ghost, is that one becomes almost transient through history. While I don’t think I believe in reincarnation, it seems to me that I am contained in everything. I do not come from every woman who has ever been painted or sculpted, other than through the connection of our sex. From what has been constructed for both of us, or our matching bodies. And yet, in my not-so-solid personhood, I feel the ghost in me call to the ghost in those works of art. I have been collecting examples of ghostliness in other women, trying to figure out if mine is connected to something broader. I want to find a way to feel that it is less painful. I want to find a way to perform it and to love it.

            The novel Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson tells the story of a transient family, of women who don’t want to sit still in one place. They are travelers, known only by others who are always on the move as well. They are misunderstood by those who live stationary and acceptable lives. I feel a connection to these women. Not because I don’t ever want to settle but because I find it uncomfortable to be overly corporeal. I’ve been alone in my travels for several days and I don’t have a single photo of myself because of it; this disappearance from my own camera roll suits me fine. I am not meant to have evidence of myself. This reminds me that I have outrun my intended death. However, stories like Housekeeping help me imagine that ghostliness is not a death, but a way of being alive. And I don’t feel the need to disappear completely, just to go unseen when I feel called.

I went to Eiko Otake’s exhibit that was featured at the Fine Arts Center last spring. Films were projected all over the walls, showing her moving her body in ways that felt unnatural or broken to such a degree that my brain was forced to question why we move the way we do. Clothing and blankets and books and ropes taunted me from the floor, begging to be touched but requiring that they weren’t. The noise made me feel like I was going to weep and I didn’t know why. There was wailing from one side, and running water at the other. The weight of the body is heard as Otake moves in waves through her films. I couldn’t help but feel afraid in that space. 

            In one film, I saw my ghostliness played out before me in the way the artist moves. It made me wonder what it would be like to embrace and perform my transparency, rather than to shove it down and fear it. To move slowly, to slink into softness and feel my fragility. The issue is that sometimes I would have to be something frightening, and other times I’d just be free. 

At this point, I can usually hide that I am not quite real. But what if I couldn’t? Would I be something to fear if everyone could see that I am haunting them? That I am already dead? There are times when ghostliness feels gentle, but these are rare. If everyone knew, could I finally float above the earth in peace?

Your Absence Consumes Me

Article & Article by Michelle Solomon

How do you feel? 

Overwhelmed maybe, 

Lonely sometimes, 

Like a loser always. 

Only concerned with the losses. 

Wondering, why? 

Your disappearing image haunts me.  

The face still. The heartbeat slow. The brain sporadic. 

Your spirit was long gone, but staying in the presence of the body gave me comfort. 

My thoughts manifest as waves in my head and whenever you come up, I experience the rising adrenaline and the devastating aftermath of a typhoon. You hurt me even as a declining memory.  

When my family mentions you, I get nervous. I get sick. I feel cold, dry, my head aches, my chest tightens, my arms tense up. Then limp, exhausted. The body feels like nothing without you. 

How can I feel you so much, so much, so much more now than ever? 

It’s not fair when all I wanted was to feel you. It has been in your absence that I find you disrupting the waters of my mind the most.  

Why is that? Does it make you feel better that others can see it in me, too? 

They sense my urgency in coming back to you and my hesitance all the same.  

They smell it. They smell the rotting of my teeth because the depression is taking over. The cavities in my mouth reflecting my insides.  

They hear it. They hear my withdrawal. The rhythms that guide the body to and from the thought of you. 

They see me. They see it in my eyes. They see me. 

 I save myself every day by resisting you. Your persistence scares me, though.  

Join you in the empty nothingness of your world. Existing in the lackluster.  

Where would I be with you? Where would I be without you? Erase it from your mind while the memories live strong in the body. 

You have claimed my ocean as yours with the way you inhabit my mind. I put down my journal but keep the pen in my hand, prepared to continue scribbling you in and out of my thoughts again.  

At night is when the tides are at their highest. At night is when the Moon sings me her pretty songs to try and distract me from your hauntings. At night is when you still manage to reel me in. 

You’re reborn. I feel you. You’re more than the body and that scares the shit out of me. I ride the waves of emotion until your passing. Living another lifetime. Witnessing another death. Each and every time.  

I continue to ask myself: How do you feel? 

Overwhelmed maybe, 

Lonely sometimes, 

Like a loser always. 

Only concerned with the losses. 

Wondering, why? 

A Theory of Nonexistence

One of Substance

Nullipara 1. noun: a woman who has never given birth

Article by Charlotte Maley Art by Avery Carrington

Trigger Warning: Eating disorder

There are small, figurine-type toys called Little People… My kid sister has a set of them like the one that I had, almost two decades ago. As I sit on my single dad’s dirty green couch, looking lazily at this familiar group of playthings scattered across an unkempt floor, I am taken back to mementos of my own childhood. Amongst all the figurines of farm animals, magical creatures, and beings whose categorization I could never place, I remember that I only ever wanted to play with the one which was shaped like a baby. Barely more than a toddler, I had no other inclination than to be a mother. 

I have always experienced what so many people like to call real life as a dream. I often blur these two allegedly distinct realms; I mistake visions for memories and forget true events as hallucinations. I exist in liminal space, and it is because of this that I’m convinced that children who gravitate towards baby dolls are not sweet or caring by nature. Children only like these dolls because they’re trying to make sense of an emptiness. I have always felt as though, if only I could have a baby, just once, then I could convince myself that I had really been here after all, despite my doubts. Babies serve this purpose only. 

This void that I speak of is not one regarding meaning, but one of substance. I could care less about purpose. So much of philosophy fears that all which is real is our soul and thoughts and nothing that is material. I fear the opposite. I am convinced that there is a world which is pulsating with life, but that I am not part of it; I’ve never felt love. I see the connection between other people, as real and as undeniable as it can be, but have never experienced such a tether to this planet. It is as though I am a hollow tree trunk with no roots to nurture or intertwine with others. I am completely for show, and cannot even reach out to take the nutrients of my neighbors. I am excluded from the ecosystem… a being who is unconcerned with conviction, I am a plastic tree in a vibrant forest. 

For the longest time, I was convinced that deep within me was that substance, that soul, which allows everyone else to bond with each other. I thought that everyone had a plethora of gilded keys in their pockets, and that they could love me if only I gave them the small, golden jewelry box that lay hidden somewhere, buried in the depths of my gut. If only they could see the box, they could use this key, and open it to reveal that pure and loveable substance. I think that this is why I starved myself for so much of my life. But why, people ask, would you ever want to starve yourself if you already feel empty? The stupid answer that I’ve heard other anorexics give is that they want the physical state to match, metaphorically, the barren land within, blah blah blah.  

The truth is that at some point, we convince ourselves that this magical little box, that which everyone has a key to, could be revealed if only it weren't trapped under layers of fat and skin. Like buried treasure, we dig and never find it. All that anorexics are is a dirty old man on the beach with a rusted metal detector, whose skin is scourged from years in the sun and whose plastic shark-tooth necklace has long rotted away, only we never find so much as an old coin or tin can. This delusion, the one that convinced me that underneath all the flab and muscle is me and that, if only I could free her, then I would feel alive, was broken the moment I turned to nothing but skin and bone, only to find no pointy corner of my jewelry box sticking from my abdomen, waiting to be opened by others. I had waited so long to reveal my jewelry box to everyone. It was like my very own elementary school show-and-tell day that you wait for since the first day of school when the sign-up sheet goes up. Ok, November 4th, that’s my date! The biggest heartbreak of my life came when I realized that I was empty, meaning that I would have nothing to show the class waiting patiently on the rainbow rug of the dim, musty classroom. When people ask me how I recovered from the deadliest psychotic illness in this country, I can only say this; the moment I failed to find my soul, I regressed to wanting a baby once again. 

A few weeks ago, I was at work and took some students that I mentor to a bar in downtown Colorado Springs. One of them studied palmistry, and naturally took up my sweaty hand to examine it. Among the observations that I’m an artist, a traveler, a liar, and a leader was one that I would never have children. It was here that I panicked.I had once and for all ran out of options. There were no other answers to my problem. I would never find out if I was ever here. As he went around the table situated in the damp, intimate cafe, exclaiming that everyone else was foretold children, it was only confirmation that everyone else is real but me. I am not convinced, yet, that I am damned to be a regular nullipara based upon lines of my palm, for this is a fortune I cannot accept. 

When I was eight years old, the baby Jesus from my mother’s old nativity scene went missing. Every year, even when we would move houses and most everything had not been unpacked yet, the carefully constructed first-Christmas replica would end up somewhere in the kitchen, living room, or vacant shelf. Each time, the many skillfully painted figurines would all be staring into an empty faux straw cradle. Every year, my mother would sigh for the missing child. The truth, that I thought I would take to my grave, was that I was the one who stole Jesus. I kept him in a miniature dollhouse amidst my polly pockets and neglected barbie dolls until, one day, the baby boy wearing an unfasted linen diaper went missing. God wouldn't even let me have a fake child. No food, no golden jewelry box, no baby… I am a cave that bats find inhospitable… a vacant shack which will only rot and fall. Laying on that couch, observing each toy, I mourn a self that would never be lost, for it never existed. 

Life After Birth

Article by Emma Devlin Art by Kristopher Ligtenberg

At first there is cold and light and hands spanking your bum. A cry reluctant to escape your stomach, sticking to your throat, not knowing that this world requires air. Then you scream and this makes them happy. You are placed into a woman’s gentle arms. Love is the only thing you know. You've been born. 

Stars dangle over your head. They are attached to a plastic machine that plays music when you sleep. When you pull one of the stars, it jumps and twirls around. You find this trick funny. When you laugh, a man and woman laugh with you. You often see them pointing a device at you. Sometimes it flashes and blinds you. Other times, it releases an alarming sound and is placed at the ear and you see their mouths moving: blah blah blah. You do not yet realize these are conversations. Words are an enigma. 

The orange mush tastes better than the green one, you’ve decided. It comes from a clear glass in a large, silver shape that hums and gurgles and smells of many unknowns. When the woman or man brings a spoon to your face, you suck on its contents and attempt to chew without teeth. You know what food is now, though not exactly. You know food is what goes into your mouth, but not what it stands for. Survival. You will understand what this means after enough living.  

You are dressed warmly because you are outside in the snow. It is white, a color you will learn in preschool; it numbs your fingers, which you don't like, so you scrunch your face. The man carrying you makes you watch him sculpt a snowman. You hear this name and save it in the back of your mind until you can make sense of it. It is time for bed. You tire quickly. The woman cradles you while the man points the device in your direction. The flash is startling. You wonder why there are so many flashes in the short period that you've existed. 

A furry creature licks your cheek. You grab its nose and it sneezes. You squeal. It licks you again. You grab its nose and it sneezes again. You are not aware that it is a dog, but you know that you love it. This feeling comes often nowadays. You feel this way towards the man and woman, who give you kisses and hugs and pats and scratches and baths and blankets and juice and mush. When you are not near them, you cry. 

The tub is decorated with floating objects. A rubber boat. A purple octopus. A sailor with half a face. You scratched off its paint. The woman sits by your side and rubs goo in your hair, behind your ears, between your toes. You do not mind because the goo creates bubbles in the water. You pop them one by one. The woman yawns. It is late. You do not understand that you are being bathed because you made a mess of yourself in your crib. Orange mush everywhere. You are cleaned at least twice a day. You smell like strawberries. 

You are strapped to a car seat in a speeding vehicle. You are mesmerized by what’s outside: blurry trees, blurry houses, blurry people, blurry animals. When the vehicle slows, your head stops spinning and you piece together what you've observed–you do not yet realize that you are forming a vocabulary list. Along this journey, you close your eyes and, once opened, see another woman come to your window. She shares your mother’s features. She holds you like she's done this before. She caresses your head and rubs your feet and brings her face close to yours, cooing like the birds on your windowsill. You know she is someone to be loved.

Your reflection takes you by surprise. Pink nose. Pink cheeks. Chubby fingers. Wrinkled neck. Big brown eyes. Small lips. No teeth. Reddish blob on your face. You are tempted to grab the mirror and take a closer look, but you forget you can't walk. You are tempted to tell her, well, anything, perhaps how beautiful she looks, but forget you can't talk. You wonder what to think of yourself. Should you love her like the man and woman and older woman and furry creature? You will learn over time the importance of self-love. When someone frowns upon your birthmark, you will see it is part of who you are and therefore unique. When a classmate makes fun of your passion for classical music, you will recognize how cool it is to like what others don't. When you experience your first heartbreak, you will realize you deserve better. Through these moments, you will reflect upon your worth and acknowledge your potential. Sadness doesn't last forever, as you will discover.

You are a baby

That much is clear 

With soft skin and hair and eyes

Curiosity ever-consuming 

Vulnerable to everything that fascinates and frightens you

Searching for answers without knowing how to find them

The meaning of life 

A blank in your brain 

Unformed, undefined, unleashed

You are hollow

And ready to be filled 

Amarillo by Morning

Delusions of Night Driving

Article & Art by Ra Omar

I remember first driving my car in the dirty evening sunlight from Memphis to my home in Little Rock. I bought it from a friendly old couple who wanted a new car with cooling seats to survive the Southern summers. It’s one of the most precious things I own: a Toyota Avalon with a V6 engine that is smooth and powerful at the same time. When I step into the car, the gently worn faux leather embraces me. More than enough legroom and buttery steering and acceleration makes driving it a form of therapy. 

I don’t know if intrusive thoughts on long drives are a common phenomenon among most males. Juan Chicoy is the protagonist from John Steinbeck's novel, The Wayward Bus. He transports drifters and travelers in his barely-running bus in California's Salinas Valley. On his drives he thinks, wonders, creates scenarios and judges their possibilities. Among his scenarios is his meticulous plan to leave his family and business, and escape to Mexico. The idea of escape can be a powerful one. It is attractive to souls bullied by the complexities and dryness of daily life. Unfortunately daydreaming about escape has been a recurring theme throughout my life. I get to live this reality of escape for about a day on my drives back and forth between college in Colorado and my home in Arkansas.

The drives never start in the plains. When I leave Colorado, the highway is skirted by the beautiful Rockies. What a sight the mountains are, especially in the winter, when the plains are white and the mountains are dotted with patches of snow. Arkansas does not have a lot of snow, but the hills and mountains there are much greener and more hospitable towards life. A couple of hours into my drives I enter the realm of the dry and dusty plains of Texas, Oklahoma, and, for a brief period, New Mexico. They are not fun. However, the barrenness of the land is made up for by the niceness of the people. Even though sometimes I worry and keep up my guard in those towns because of my beard and skin complexion, the gas station people are generally nice. One gas station in New Mexico will always have two attendants chilling outside no matter the weather or the time of night and they’ll give me tire pressure consultation for free. The plains look bad during the day. The harsh sunlight bullies my eyes with the sight of yellow nothingness up to the horizon. It ties up my attention and offers nothing pleasant to think about. However, this irredeemable landscape becomes somewhat amusing when the sun goes down.

The highways seem to get calmer as the skies turn red in the late evening.  The rush hour crowds at this point have reached home and are probably having dinner in front of their TVs. From this point I share the road mostly with freighters. At this point I’ll get some dinner, fill up gas, and stretch my legs before I start the long night drive. As the day turns into night my playlist changes from upbeat to mellow and melancholy. The harsh plains of the panhandle put on a surreal light show. The windmills disappear, leaving only their stark red lights blinking in unison across the horizon. How beautiful the dreadful plains look hidden in obscurity. I pass silhouettes of sleeping farm equipment, grain silos and quiet oil refineries gently smearing their fumes in the air. I look out at the sleeping moonlit wasteland dotted with oil rigs. I like night driving because it’s a time of introspection and delusion. College, family, friend groups, and society expect nothing from me at that time. The gas station attendant treats me like a traveler that he’ll never see again and I feel the small talk I share with them at this hour to be of the highest quality of human interaction. I use that time to hide from the world; a world that constantly expects so much from me and I have to perform. 

It is a time of delusion too. In the back of my head I wish for an unwanted encounter with who knows what. Sometimes I check the clothes piled in the back seat to see if a sneaky stranger is waiting to choke me with piano wire. This one time I could’ve sworn I was looping in time-space when the dashboard on my car flickered and I ended up passing the same “Sweetwater Creek” three times. If there’s any aliens reading this, my night drives would be a perfect time to pick me up and give me a tour of your ship. 

The isolated semi-agricultural landmass of the Texas panhandle is not the most reasonable place to be driving at night. If my car breaks down I’m pretty screwed. The region’s climate is not known to be kind to travelers. Violent hailstorms, cold fronts, and strong winds can really ruin someone’s day (or night) if they get stranded. The sparse dispersal of gas stations and man-made shelters along the route make it more hazardous. Detached and dimly lit state highways don't make for an ideal place for fellow drivers to show their kindness towards stranded motorists. I got a first-hand experience of this when a seal in my engine-bay hood came loose and I unsuccessfully tried to attract an extra helping hand at a crossroad. Looking back, being a rather large brown guy with a disheveled beard waving at strangers in the middle of the night probably didn’t help my case either. That’s why on those drives any little noise or driving abnormalities puts me on edge. But I just take it as extra motivation to take great care of my car in my free time. 

As life gets complicated and challenging, I get pulled towards the memories of my night drives. I want to go on my drives the same way a middle-aged man would dream of his fishing trips under the constant demands of his overbearing boss and unsatisfied wife. I think of those memories of lacing through strangely lit freighters in a hostile landscape while being protected by the budget-friendly luxury and reliability of my vehicle. I really have to shout out Toyota for making the most reliable cars in the world and making the lives of cash-strapped college students and questionable insurgent groups easier. The reliability of my car garnered the nickname “V5 Avalon” from my friends when a spark plug failed during a trip in Arizona and we used it to limp back to college, driving about a thousand miles with a blown out cylinder. The thought of my night crossings become my escape when life gets hard. I find peace in the idea that no matter what life throws at me, whether it be failing a class, filing annoying paperwork, or talking to tax professionals, the dark and bumpy state roads of Texas and Oklahoma will be waiting for me when the semester is done.

"The Implications of 'Her'"

Article by Mattie Valinksy Art by Kristopher Litenberg

It’s in those moments that always feel too intimate 

despite being a daughter, 

stood rigidly against her dad,

 that she finds herself praying against her womanhood. 

Because suddenly nothing else matters 

besides the chance that he might

disengage his fingers 

from the silhouette of her body. 

“I pity you,” rings over and over in her head.

As the cyclical droning of his fingers 

magnetizes something inside of her 

that causes all the acid in her stomach to rise 

and conquer the airway in her throat.

By way of fire. 

They share a sort of quiet desperation

in these moments.

His born of thoughtless depravity,

hers a semblance of wistful denial.

Both centered on the root of her nausea. 

Does she accept her fate,

look forward and strain to understand

 the fumbling gestures?

 The ones her dad sometimes leaves

 lingering in the spaces between them?

A lot can be blamed on space.

She’s no longer a religious person per se

But there are these moments

that still call for something deeper than begging where the loss of prayer is felt. 

Something that feels less demeaning,

less dreadful…maybe?

Then once again finding herself at the mercy of him.

I am Nothing Without Nicotine

Three Broken Rules

Article by Anonymous Art by Liz White

I am nothing without nicotine. Is that a crazy statement to make? I think it is. I am unrecognizable, even to myself. 

When I was in middle school I made three resolutions: never drink coffee, never drink alcohol, and never do drugs. It sounds religious, but I couldn’t care less if there was a God or if he was judging me. The reasons I made those rules were purely narcissistic and selfish. 

I refused to drink coffee because I heard it stained your teeth, and my dad complained of headaches every day he went without a cup. My mom’s drink of choice, wine, made her angry or sad and I also heard that it stained your teeth, so I decided to never drink. My mom also said alcohol had a lot of calories and made you fat. It was a logical decision to want to please her and avoid becoming like her when she reached the bottom of the bottle. The drug rule was also obvious; private school drilling taught me that addiction was bad and that drugs, more or less, would kill you eventually. At the time it didn’t seem like too far of a stretch, because my grandma had passed due to health complications resulting from her history of smoking cigarettes. My prepubescent brain could easily equate drug usage to early mortality. 

I have broken all three rules. 

The first blow came when I went to high school and all-nighters became a thing. I pulled all-nighters to pass chem. I stayed awake to write my final essay for IB. I never slept before a debate tournament. Once, I stayed up for 37 hours because I wanted to binge a TV show before school and then run a marathon the next day. Some chose adderall, but my poison was coffee. Namely, iced lattes. That shit was so good because it was cold enough to wake you up, and at the time I wasn’t lactose intolerant, meaning I could guzzle at least two before I felt the urge to go to the bathroom. Coffee was exciting. It was the big girl drink that all the cool upper-class girls would waltz into class late with, shiny car keys and perfect blonde hair in tow. Coffee kept me awake in BioMed, it kept the pressure off my back from being called into the office to discuss how I had fallen asleep in said class a few days prior. Coffee was coping, and coffee correlated success. I quit drinking it when it started making my stomach hurt. It was so easy to cut it off, too. I thought I had a uniquely strong will to be able to cut something out so quickly. I retain this sentiment of thinking I can quit anything. But that’s a lie. I can’t quit school. I can’t quit loving some people. I can’t quit needing more. Apparently, I can’t quit nicotine. 

The first time I drank alcohol was also in high school. In my penultimate year, my friend and I decided to do shots of the liquor we found in the alcohol cabinet in my house. My mom had some nasty assortment of flavored rum and this shitty vodka that was probably expired. The bottle was covered in so much dust we had to wipe off the other bottles so our transgression wasn’t noticeable. We did shots and my friend gagged, but surprisingly, I took it well. We did a second round and she threw up in my sink. The only buzz I felt was the thrill of doing something new and exciting. I wouldn’t say I’m addicted to alcohol. It also makes my stomach hurt, and I only enjoy its effects when I’m with my friends. The only time I questioned my dependency was that one week when I got wine drunk every day right after class. Considering my grade, I think it added to my life rather than subtracted. It made me more creative. Perhaps while writing this I will pick up a glass, take a sip or a shot, and see if more riveting sentences can be formed to express my experience. 

Is addiction truly addiction when it’s endorsed? I made Thanksgiving dinner for my family, and my dad and I bought liquor for a spunky apple cider sangria I wanted to make. They didn’t even check our IDs, despite me (hopefully) not looking 21 yet. When we got back from the store I joked that we had to hide the alcohol from the children as I put the bottles on top of the fridge. My dad laughed – in the store, he had even asked what my favorite wine was. (It’s Moscato for anyone wanting to supply me). It’s hard to find a problem with your behavior when no one makes a fuss about it. Even harder when it’s a punchline for a good joke. 

The first time I experienced weed, I greened out. My friend got some free edibles from her drug dealer boyfriend, and being noobs we had no idea how much to take, so we each took 25mg. I remember eating it in the car and laughing. I drove home cautiously hoping that it wouldn’t kick in before I got back. I was alone in my basement when it hit and the only thing I could hear was “Caleb said it almost killed him.” Caleb was the drug dealer boyfriend. He was six foot something, heavy, and a huge stoner. If one edible had nearly killed him then I knew for sure that I would die, too. I ate spicy red chips that I threw up on the carpet and spent the next week bleaching and scrubbing so that my parents wouldn’t find out. I would hear my sister walk by and want to cry out for help, knowing that she would help me and that I wouldn’t be alone or die afraid. But I also knew she would force me to tell our parents, so I kept silent even when I curled into a ball on the floor and cried. I kept a high diary the entire time in case I truly did die and the last thing my mother ever saw of me was my dead body on my bed. 

My death letter, my goodbye: 

It’s like your body is a Ferris wheel that rotates, so you move in a circle with it and you can’t go against the wave or it will take you so you just go around in circles and if you lose the wave you can’t see but if you ride it your eyes buzz and the good thing is your ears ring when you ride it mine is dead now because I’ve been keeping a record for future me and now I return to the call of the wave.

Whenever you think about being high or that you are high, the high goes away so you know you’re high but you refuse to acknowledge it because you want the high

I’m the kind of high person who reminisces when high all my childhood memories or whatever. I am also paranoid

Are my fingers swollen? I don’t wanna barf ew

I will never want to do this again. I hate it at first it was fun and now it’s too strong and I’m scared and I don’t want to die and I don’t like it anymore now it makes me dizzy and sad I just want it to be over

It was 500mg 

It wasn’t 500mg, I’m just bad at math. Especially when I’m high. 

I remember at the worst point I wanted to just fuck it all, go to the ER, have them stick me with an IV or drain me somehow of that terrible feeling of dread and fear. 

The next time was a lot better, though. It was almost a year later at college, at my first party of freshman year. Weed was so much more fun mixed with alcohol and surrounded by friends. 

Nicotine came another year later; it started off as a casual joke. A friend of mine worked as a hostess at a local seafood restaurant, and her coworkers constantly lost their vapes around the establishment. She would find them and sneak them away, promising to let me try one and joking that I would hate it because I hated weed so much. Eventually, we rallied and bought a new one; I was so sure that nicotine would immobilize me as much as weed had the first time I tried it that I don’t even think I hit the vape properly. I have this habit of not understanding things until I think heavily about them. Nicotine has a negligible effect on my body, which I realized when I thought about how in Europe everyone smokes cigarettes at every meal and still manages to function just fine. Nicotine isn’t like weed; it doesn’t make me slow or tired. It’s just fun. It’s a drug you can use so casually it can become a part of everyday life. 

I think the dictionary would define it as a habit. A hit before a lecture to get the courage to participate for my grade. A hit after work because it was exhausting using a customer service voice. A hit during homework so that I can write a fucking great essay my professor will compliment later. A hit while I write for a magazine. A hit before a meeting to mediate the mundanity of a packed schedule. Hit before my car breaks down. Hit before my grandfather ends up in the ER. Hit before my dad gets cancer. Hit before my breakup. A hit can prepare me for anything. I hold my pen like a cigarette in class sometimes, which I realize is both funny and tragic. Sometimes I think it makes me look classy: a finger edging the line between pen-twirling nerd and full-fledged addict. It is a reminder that looks are deceiving, and that addiction is high-functioning. 

I am made of my memories. I am made of the promises my memories tell me I have made. I am nothing without either. But memories are fickle, hollow, and so easily forgotten. 

And I can lie. To everyone and to myself. In my mind I am still little me, my rules are still steadfast, and they have not yet shrunk into a hollow, meaningless symbol of my naive youth. In my mind, I am still free. 

Something Sweet

Article by Mira Springer Art by Leyla Kramarsky & Mira Springer

I think about you like it's a hobby, like it's something I could win a prize in if I really put my mind to it. Mostly, I think about you because it's fun, but I will do it until it's not. I'll do it until I win a blue ribbon for thinking about you and then wonder what I wanted with a blue ribbon in the first place. 

You've never been to my home state, but when I walked into my room, my childhood bed reminded me of you because I talked to you on the phone there twice. You were high both times and you didn't know that your voice was in my room with me, nestled in the tender softness between the blanket and my naked body, asking me questions about high school theater. You couldn't see me grinning.

I go from smiling into my phone to smiling against your lips. You taste like coffee and instant ramen and popcorn. You taste like the joint between your teeth, now tucked behind your ear. You like it when I taste like gin. I taste you in gentle kisses that demand no sequel and in the mixed salt of your pleasure and my sweat.

We left the party out the back door (again) because one of the other girls was on the porch (again). You told her you were sick and I lied to my friend on the phone about going to bed. (It was more of a misdirection than a lie. I was going to bed.)

"If you want to hook up with her you should go do that and if you don't, you should tell her." I'm not trying to be unkind. I'm trying to protect her from being strung along while clutching my own string tightly between your hand and mine. 

"Yeah. Yeah. It's just that it’s almost the end of the year."

"And then what— it dissolves?"

"Yeah."

"Does this dissolve?"
A beat. (An intimate conversation with theatrical rhythm.)

"I don't want it to."

I don't know how much you meant it but it was a pretty thing to say. I like hearing you say pretty things to me so I let you do it even when you don't mean them. I keep falling asleep in your bed without even hooking up with you first.

In broad daylight, you intertwine your fingers with hers while I stand four feet away. 

"Tough watch," I joke when you walk by me. 

"Was it?" asks my friend later.

"Sort of," I tell him. But really it doesn't matter where your fingers wander at midday because I woke up with them on my waist and I'll go to sleep with them in my hair.

I used to treat my sore throats with honey pomegranate cough drops. I would put one in my mouth before bed and I wouldn't start to fall asleep until it dissolved completely. Now, when it gets late and something is aching, I keep myself awake sucking gently on the thought of you. I used to sleep better in my own bed, but the absence of your body next to mine inflates your presence in my mind and now I sleep better in yours. 

One of those late nights in my own room, I wrote in my journal, "I wonder if he knows that he could text me to come over at midnight when I'm about to fall asleep and I'd wake up in his bed the next morning." Half an hour later, my phone lit up in the dark; an incoming call paused my white noise app, tugging me out of a hypnagogic state. I woke up in your bed the next morning.

I guess we don't need to text each other about getting lunch if you turn on my white noise before we fall asleep and whine when I disentangle my limbs from yours to turn it off in the morning.

You write while I'm in your bed. You write about your bed and you don't write me into it. She's a ghost that you conjure in the library when she isn't there; I'm a phantom you erase from your sheets so you can write about her.

I told my best friend that I wonder sometimes if I lack self-respect. She said, "if your goal is not to get hurt (and that's a stupid goal), you make different decisions."

Some days you seem sadder and tireder than others. Green eyes and smile lines give way to purple shadows and vacancy. I'm scared of losing interest in you. I'm scared that I won't lose interest. I'm scared you'll stay sad and tired and I won't even have the heart to convince myself that I can change you. 

Something you said to me once: "I want to see so much theater with you." You said when we saw that play together, you imagined that we were in our 30s and had been married for ten years. You imagined this and you told me it was nice and still I never know which nights I'm coming home with you and still you don't write about me.

Something you said to me once: "Talking to you is like reading good creative nonfiction." I like that we compliment each other in literary terms. I told you that the thing you said to me in the library would make a good monologue. I wrote about you in my journal all the time. I wrote down all the pretty things you said to me. 

Maybe writing requires distance. I didn't write about you outside my journal until now that we are three time zones apart. The space in between allows my thoughts to ferment into something that leaves a stain. Maybe three time zones isn't enough for you. Next week, we'll be on opposite sides of the world. My noon will be your midnight. Maybe you'll write about me then.

Distance must be carefully considered by anyone writing about sirens. Too far away and they are too blurry to describe in any detail, but too close and you get swallowed up into the sea. Your siren is holding you at arm’s length; she tempts you to drown yourself and you resist just enough to write about it. I'm not asking you to drown yourself. I'm sick of watching your head dip below the water but my voice isn't made of satin and I don't have the power to lure you back to land. 

Holding you is like holding my breath. Holding myself hostage, holding my tongue.

The idea of you is suffocating in my cupped hands but if it encounters air with enough oxygen, it will start to rust on contact. So I hold my breath, hold my tongue, pretend my hands are empty.

I am allowing myself something sweet without feeling guilty.

I am allowing myself something sweet without feeling guilty.

I am allowing myself something sweet without feeling guilty.

Two out of every three times I repeat it to myself it feels true.

The idea of you is hot maple syrup. I keep my fingers shut tight so that you don't spill. My hands are growing tired with the effort. Every night that I drink you, you slide down my throat, coat it with your sugar, and fill my stomach with your warmth.

In the morning I don't feel warm or guilty. My teeth are crusted over with your sweetness and I don't have a toothbrush at your house.

Putting the Honey in First

Article by Tasha Finkelstein Art by Isabella Hageman

Disclaimer: there are things I will not disclose here. Feral things like digging through trash cans, affirmations of my tastebuds, details of my relationship with the moon, etc. I get the sense that there is no place appropriate enough to host the parts of myself that sink to the bottom. And so I have to remind myself just because I don’t speak of these things doesn’t mean they aren’t there. For instance, what I don’t say: the moon spilled out on me, not you (let him think it’s him).

Left to my own devices, I will spill it all out until I become drenched.

INT. KITCHEN - MORNING

A little girl sits at the kitchen table over a plate of waffles. Her mom is gone for the weekend, leaving her dad in charge of breakfast. He passes his daughter the jug of syrup, unaware that his wife usually does the task of pouring it for her. The little girl welcomes the jug in her hands, unaware that its weight will topple over her little fingers. 

This is where my shakiness was born, trying to lift what is too heavy to hold. I won the award of my Dad’s grin when I let my hands slip. I was trying on independence when I let my hands slip. With my waffles drenched, this sugary freedom didn’t exactly fit. It was a little too roomy in there but still warm, something like a winter coat a few sizes too big. I was too small and the kitchen table too sticky. I remember my Dad offering me a napkin to clean up the spill but when I reached out my hands they clung to the paper. Too soggy for this world, I stick to everything I touch. 

EXT. DOCK - DAY

A little girl visits her best friend in a beach town where people walk barefoot and there are no cars. There are no cars but there is a boy around their age. He is sweet and he crosses over from a boy into their friend. The little girl instantly has a crush on him. 

That summer we were seven. We met a boy who lived in that summer town all-year round. One day, the three of us went to the dock, looking for fish that struggled to make themselves visible against murky, July water. The day dragged along and we followed the boy to his house at the end of the island. His mom let us in when we got there.

We were in the basement of his house and I had this idea. I didn’t want to just be a girl anymore. I wanted to be tough like the boy we had met. I thought if I could be more like him and less like me he’d be impressed. I wanted to be tough so I thought of a triple dog dare for the both of us. I’d put a pillow in front of my stomach and he’d punch me and it wouldn’t hurt. But when I put the pillow in front of me, it didn’t protect me from anything. When I felt the blow of his hands something inside me ached. I wasn’t sure what it was exactly, but that day I encountered a leaky thing in me trying to get free. 

INT. DORM ROOM - EVENING

A little girl is now a college girl. She makes a cup of tea, watches the steam rise, and waits for the kettle to beep. Before the water is done, she opens the cap to the plastic bear-shaped bottle and drizzles the honey into an empty cup. Something gooey. Something rough. Honey. Clay. No heat yet to melt the two into one.

I used to tell the boy I loved that he had a funny way of making tea. I’d tell him you’re supposed to add the honey in after pouring the water, not the other way around. I have a habit of creating arbitrary rules for myself and others. I don’t like being wrong. But now I think maybe he was right about putting the honey in first. It’s easier for it all to melt that way. 

When we ended things, I tried to replace what I knew. You see, I needed warm things to hold onto. Things such as a cup of tea. A simple task, really. And yet I expected my hands to do something different. I didn’t realize I was a puppet and my puppeteer a 19 year old boy manipulating my fingers to open the plastic bear of honey before the water was even done boiling. Some ways of moving aren’t fully mine as much as I want them to be. 

One of the last times we were together I told this boy about the nature of his hands, how I loved their weathered texture. Rough enough that they weren’t my own. Not so rough that I couldn’t connect. He’d get self-conscious thinking my comment was a jab when all I wanted to do was make myself a pair of gloves out of these hands, something to put on when it got cold. It was nothing personal. Just poor blood circulation, you know. 

Now that I am no longer in love I have time to Google things like “why is honey in a bear shaped bottle?” My brain feels like real mush when I find out it’s because, duh, A BEAR LIKES HONEY. The bear takes the form of its desire and the honey is contained by whoever desires it and isn’t that just utterly twisted? Sometimes I wish I could take the form of a plastic bear but without any of the honey. Sure, I’d be full of air, but I wouldn’t have to deal with any of that stickiness. 

EXT. PARK - AFTERNOON

A girl finds herself in a park. She’s coming from the bookstore on St. Marks Place, where a rainstorm almost left her dripping into the sewer. With books and postcards sheltered away in the waistband of her jeans, she zig zags the walk back looking for shelter under scaffolding. When she reaches the park, the sun comes out. Drying up what came spilling forward, glistening over the arch.  

Spring break I returned home to the city I spent three years sharing with someone else. I remember seeing cherry blossoms so pink and puffy in the special afterglow the rain likes to leave. I took a picture of these flowers but there was no one to send it to. I remember finding three incredible songs in a row. I found him in the lyrics of the last one, trying to tell me something but I couldn’t hear any of it. The rain had drowned him out. I remember I found a key left on the sidewalk and I wondered what someone was trying to lock away.

While I was home, my mom and I got lunch. She told me I seemed lighter, like a weight had been lifted from me. I was lighter. But how to explain to her that I didn’t know what to do with all my emptiness now? When I was with him I had someone to confirm there was something more than air inside of me. So a scary thought appears. What if I only knew wholeness through someone else? I know that there was once something inside of me because waiting for him to call felt like scooping my insides out. So that thought turns into a darker one. What if he took all that was left of me on the way out? 

I’d like to believe there are ways of moving that are mine, just mine. But the only true movement I know is the way my hands like to shake. After we broke up, I think I dropped five mugs in the span of three months. I was tired. I threw the shards in the trash and didn’t bother gluing any of the bits back together. 

INT. BAR - EVENING

A girl sits in a bar and it doesn’t really matter which one. In Dublin, she will juggle drinks back to a table where someone new waits for her. The pints escape their glasses, sweet liquid sticking to her hands. She gets it now, that desire is so often a balancing act. 

All this spilling makes getting to know myself tricky. I am studying abroad this semester, I have never been so social, and I am stuck between two different hypotheses for why that may be. One, because I am not lonely for once. Or two, because I am the loneliest I have ever been.

The emptiness I feel makes me search for wholeness all the time. When I start seeing someone new I find that defeat lies in sticky unavoidables, in leftover beer on the table. There’s something inherently hollow in not knowing someone well. But the hollowness paves the way for a more fluid mode of desire. You get to fill in the gaps of what you don’t know with yourself, encountering something unfamiliar and true. I wish I could feel whole without leaking all over the place, without needing people to stick to. But I’m not there yet and I don’t know if I ever will be. 

When I find people to stick to I can see omens. I was drinking wine on the roof with this someone new and I saw a shooting star move at lightning speed. I questioned my eyesight for a second but he said he saw it too. When I find people to stick to I discover snails and hedgehogs around hidden corners of a new city, and the dingy bar we go to play pool at turns into a glowing backyard garden, a portal of sorts. I think I see the world through glasses I borrow from other people. I’m not sure if I’ll ever get the prescription right and I do feel dizzy most of the time. 

In the park, I feel less empty when I look up from my phone and see a woman in a bright green hoodie wrap her arms around a crumbly tree stump, giving it all the love she’s got. She looks my way and smiles, as if she’s been expecting me. It’s a common occurrence: I see strangers and I get sad that I won’t see them again. In the airport bar, I spot a woman with pink hair and lose sight of her and wonder if she was just a product of my imagination. I think if I count all the older ladies with pink hair maybe I will become closer to who I want to be. 

Last spring, I remember one particularly bad night where I spilled too much of myself out on someone else’s floor. When I woke up the next day, I spent the whole morning in bed trying to find the perfect poem to send in lieu of an apology text. A few hours later, I realized that I was never going to send any poem after all. I was just looking for the words to apologize to myself.