Lettitor

Dear Reader,

As the end of the year looms, loose threads abound: rooms we need to clean, Cipher pieces we never wrote, people we never kissed, etc. There’s an urge to weave them all in, tie a neat knot, and cut the excess with a snip of scissors. But we can’t stop picking at them. It’s all unravelling.

Most of us here at Cipher are seniors, and every year before, the loose ends left at the end of May could be set aside and returned to in the fall. This spring, we’re starting to realize it won’t be possible to wrap it all into a neat bow. We wish we could buy more time, but some things will just be left unsaid, undone.

Our writers this issue tug at loose threads of what they carry from their parents, who they can’t help but love, and what it feels like to leave a place. The pages are littered with stray objects left behind: dusty puzzle pieces, a rock from an ex lover, a scarf perpetually in progress.

There is no clean break. We’ll stay in each other’s magnetic fields, orbiting further and further from each other. But even when the porches and dragonflies are far away, we’ll be left with a familiar feeling of something frayed and worn.

We are excited for so much, but we’re sad to leave Cipher behind. We’ll miss the vulnerability, humor, and downright weirdness we’ve found with each other in these pages. But this scarf won’t fall apart; new people will continue to pass through and pick up the needles.

We hope you enjoy the tapestry of this issue, woven from threads of different colors and sizes, tied together in a tangled knot. And if we don’t see you again, HAGS!

Yours, always,

Cipher

Artificial Gods

Article by Margot Swetich and Mira Springer Art by Mira Springer

Dear Hermia,

Fuck Demitius. Fuck Lysander. It’s you and me, bitch. When we travel from place to place, tote bag and backpack, jackets and suitcases, we are one person with four hands carrying everything. My favorite sound is making you laugh. Can we keep playing for a while?

Sincerely, 

Helena

***

Dear Helena,

It seems to me that we were always on a path toward one another. Every coincidence, every fated moment was just a method for the universe to buy the two of us some time. Time spinning in each other’s magnetic fields, time in each other’s beds, curled up against a world that was hurting us, time to play like jesters and find out how far our imaginations could stretch. We were inevitable, I think — that’s why we met the moment we both came to this strange and mythical place. We were bound to one another by something more real than anything that our outstretched hands could touch. 

Best wishes, 

Hermia

***

Dear Hermia,

You tell me that your body is becoming your mother’s body. But to me, it’s just your body, caressed by evening light from my window. You make me less afraid of femininity.

Tenderly,

Helena

***

Dear Helena,

Sometimes I remember the time when we were torn asunder, twin cherries plucked and left to rot, and it seems very clear to me that I never could have lived without you. Those months were far too long. I’m sorry that I needed to almost lose you to learn that I can’t stand to be without you. I want to watch you smile and to write you letters and to make you laugh forever. 

Warmly,

Hermia

***

Dear Hermia

I wonder how younger versions of ourselves would have felt about each other. As children, I feel certain we would have been best friends. As middle or high schoolers, we might have disliked each other. I feel lucky that we met when we did, that our differences are what make knowing and knowing and knowing you so interesting. I get to keep learning to love you better.

With love,

Helena

***

Dear Helena,

I felt so relieved when you called our love ancient after we spent some time apart. We have grown out of necessity, both of us, to love each other better. It’s my great horror that one Lysander or another turned me against you when they have all been nothing in comparison to you. Sorry, Shakespeare dear, but none of that was true love; this is. Just you and me, bitch. Strong and stubborn and endless.

Yours, 

Hermia

***

Dear Hermia,

Our love story wasn’t the most obvious part of the plot, but it’s there, a hidden string running underneath everything else.

We, Hermia, like two artificial gods,
Have with our needles created both one flower, 

Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion,
Both warbling of one song, both in one key;
As if our hands, our sides, voices, and minds,
Had been incorporate.

(A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III, Scene II)

The thread is loose, but only because we’re working at it from two needles. We’re not done weaving it in yet.

Yours,

Helena

Where Does Dust Collect?

Article and Art by Gemma Marx

Dust collects in the places you forget.

The things you cease to touch, to look at. 

His face is now dusty, obscured by time.

Dust collects when you are careless. 

Underneath the radiator in your room and in the corners of ceilings. 

The places you avert your eyes from.

Two nights ago you started a new puzzle.

You got it at a thrift store last year and it has been hidden (sitting) under Shira and Anna’s coffee table since.

Shira started it at one point, and then gave up.

When you began the puzzle two nights ago thick dust coated each piece.

Though covered by a lid the dust appeared like mice in a cupboard, snaking through tiny passageways, reaching and grabbing.

Clinging on.

Dust has no care for boundaries nor borders. It will not listen to you when you ask it nicely to please leave or when you scream and howl at it to go.

It is a reminder

Of your indelicacy, your carelessness. 

Of what you have forsaken.

Like a hoarder, incapable of throwing away their leftovers, allowing them to linger and fester and eventually grow mold, you have allowed certain things to fall to the wayside. 

Unwilling to throw them away altogether, they sit and the dust accumulates. 

You pretend not to notice the cobwebs building in the corner of your ceilings, the texts you’ve failed to respond to. 

The old tote bag he made for you is now crumpled at the back of a shelf. You thought you would eventually mend the burnt hole in the center of it, but it has become too painful to pick up so there it remains, 

crumpled,

ignored, 

its white canvas becoming grey.

The presence of dust gives you a choice. You can blow on it, make all the particles fly up and scatter (some onto your face). You can get a wet wash cloth and gently pick up every last speck. You can throw it away entirely.

Or you can leave it.

This may come as a surprise, but sometimes you have to let it lie. Some things are meant to be cloaked by time, to be obscured from clarity.

Some things you must allow to accumulate dust until they are taken over completely. 

Until it disappears and you are left only with piles of dust.

It is not always possible to identify something as trash; when you hold it in your hands, to your chest, it still has value, so you cannot yet part with it.

I have a bad habit of blowing the dust, sending motes flying into the air, into my lungs obstructing my breathing, sending me into fits of coughing.

I am not good at letting things lie.

This is what I tell myself, anyway, when I try to uncover what is old. 

I can’t help it, 

I am sensitive. 

I have the memory of an elephant and cannot let things be.

An archeologist of my own remains, I find a new thing to dig up every few months. 

They arrive in the form of a dream while I sleep:

A forgotten friendship from 6th grade, the face of a lover who should be left in the past, a thoughtless comment I made to my roommate, that one big fight I had with my brother, the selfish decision I made in 2nd grade, the friend’s secret I spread in middle school.

I wake and pick up my tools, scour the crevices of my room, and dust off the dirt that’s collected under planters, the loose threads from pants I have hemmed, the strips of magazines I have cut, the stems of apples discarded late at night, pieces of dried contact lenses, and get to work. 

I keep myself up all night and all day, going over every detail. 

I polish the memory until, for a moment, it shines brightly, as though no time has passed. 

I torment myself, unable to let go, to give up.

It becomes my fault, and I must make it right.

I end up with debris in my lungs, gasping for breath, 

particles in my eyes, bringing tears to the surface.

I remember why the thing had dust on it to begin with.

And I remember that no matter how diligently I work, the dust will find its way back. 

It will reach and grab through any airway.

It never goes where I want it to, anyway. 

The dust finds its way back in through pinholes and razor thin cracks. It refuses to be contained or manipulated or controlled. 

The things you wish that it would cover, hide from your view, 

it does not.

The things you spend countless hours brushing with one of those pink puffy brushes, or even a rough bristle brush, on the other hand, never seem to reveal themselves. 

It is rarely ever a good idea.

The dust always returns.

I regret most of the digs I have participated in. People get hurt, most often myself. The ethics are dodgy. Some things are meant to remain buried, hidden in the darkness of time. Allowed to be buried under layers of small particles, so enshrouded that it is safe from my clawing hands.

The dust protects me from myself.

I never did finish the puzzle. 

It was too difficult, the pieces of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” too similar for my brain to fit together. 

I have hidden it from myself again, not wishing to be confronted by my dusty failure every time I am in front of the coffee table. 

I have shoved it under the couch; I am trying to forget it.

But I know that one day while I am searching for a missing cat toy, I will see the box and be confronted by the memory of what I could not finish. 

self love through a mother

Article by Sophia Murphy Art by Chloe Jung

I would always get embarrassed when my mom would laugh. Bracing myself after every joke in a public situation, she would snort. 

We would be at church, a dance recital, dinner with our family, meeting my friends. I would hope for a lack of humor and resent jokes, giving no opportunity for this commotion. Yet it would always come, this remark of joy that I would only regard with judgment. I would want to crawl under a rock and hide there until it was done. 

My impatience with my mother was not just limited to this snorting. There were times where the rock I wanted to hide under wasn’t due to embarrassment, but lack of understanding of each other, constantly ending in frustration with her. Ending in sadness with us. I’d want to hide under that rock, hide away from constant conflict and anger. There was a time when it felt as though she and I could never escape from the depths of hell that is a middle school girl and their mother. It feels like every girl goes through the phase with their mom where all they can do is battle. Grades not good enough, skirts not long enough, my phone used too much. When you’re in this phase it feels as though it could only ever be this way. How could two people ever evolve and change so much that their heads aren’t constantly butting, their paths constantly colliding, tangled up in each other’s grievances?

The teenage years are hard; self love is infrequent and anger is common. You lack understanding of yourself, leading into your lack of understanding and empathy towards others. It’s often hard to love other people and give other people grace when you can’t even award it to yourself. Unfortunately for my relationship with my mom, she took the brunt of that phase in my life. My mind was spiraling and in any moment I could snap at her. Following was the guilt, following was the sadness and shame of how I could ever treat someone I loved, someone so caring, with immediate judgment and anger. 

The answer to my “hows” and “whys” could only be found later in my life when I faced deep reflection of who I was, how I loved myself. I think I just didn’t think it was possible to be so authentically you, to laugh so freely and unravel your joy so that it intimidates others, so that it intimidated me. Intimidates in a way that makes you wish you could be them, your initial thought is judgment, but what you truly feel is longing, longing to be that free. My mother didn’t care if her laugh caught people off guard, she probably didn’t even think twice because it was just her. I cared about what other people thought, how other people perceived her, judging her through measures of how I would judge myself, judging her on the standards of perfection and alignment with normality that I set for myself. With the standards most teenage girls set for themselves. 

I can’t remember the first time I snorted when I laughed, but I know immediately what I thought. I CAUGHT IT. SHE GAVE IT TO ME. Sure I understood now that she was awesome, but now I was really faced with the test of my own unraveling, of my own accepting. And here I was, scared and shocked that this beast had been released from within. 

Over time this snorting became more frequent, it was something I kind of just expected if there was a really funny moment. Snorting started to accompany my laugh. 

Snorting around my family became okay, even if my brother would make fun of me.

Snorting with Abby, Bella, Marisa, and Lucy became okay.

Snorting around those I loved and those who I knew would be kind was okay. I started to find the people that dragged me out from under the rock. Crushed and frail as first, my laughter started to expand me in every direction I was meant to grow.

I now realize there is beauty in the absurd, in the obnoxious, in the pure joy many lack, that I once lacked, and being able to express it so unapologetically. I mean, I think I’m at a point where I can’t even control it. And this almost makes me happier. I am so naturally her, which I guess is so naturally me. With uncontrollable and overflowing joy.

Everytime I snort I still feel slightly embarrassed. Like I let myself let loose and the people around me caught me in my moment of imperfection, of absurdity, of an obnoxiously loud commotion in the sea of steady laughter. I’ve started to find this embarrassment quickly transforming into an abundance of gratitude and love. My laughter often erupts more after I snort, and it usually triggers laughter from others, maybe at me, maybe with me, but it doesn’t matter because it’s something that I got from my mother. A part inside of me that I know I will always love.

Through the Rearview

Article by Skyler Williams Art by Jill Coleman

It was one of those windows that takes offense anytime you’re not looking out of it. It wrapped itself where two whole walls should’ve been. It stretched perhaps 12 feet from floor to ceiling. The mountains shone blue in the distance under the cloud-blotted sky. Nearer was the yard tilted at a forty-degree angle and enclosed by a wall of dense pines. Nearer still was a beech tree, at least I think it was a beech tree, just barely poking its way into view from the edge of the window. Its branches, though, reached across the landscape obstructing the background, adding to the tapestry. I still think of that view often. I couldn’t have been more than six the last time I saw it with my own eyes.

I spoke my first word staring out that window. The story was told to me so many times I can’t tell if I remember the moment or if it’s become implanted in my mind. My grandmother and I sat at the window staring out over the rolling blue green hills. Before I could talk, even before I could remember, we’d watch the birds come and go past the window. We’d watch them dance, eating from feeders hung from the branches of the beech tree. An occasional squirrel would make dashes for the feeder, much to Grandmother’s dismay. She’d hoot and holler and try her best to scare the squirrels away. It worked sometimes, didn’t others. The cardinal still stands out in my head, at least the image I conjured does. It landed softly on a branch of the beech tree in its full bright red commanding beauty. My grandma had turned her attention away from the window for a moment. I pointed and screamed “Cardinal, Cardinal.” I’m sure the words sounded broken and off as any child’s must, but that was my first, at least other than “dada” or “mama.”

Beneath and to the left of that window I had secured my hidey-hole in the bushes. When I was small enough, it was an obsession of mine to climb through the densest underbrush. I believed I’d find the portal to another world just like Alice. Despite never being successful in my quest, I never stopped dreaming it was a few feet away under the next thicket of doghobble. Where the portal was missing, I’d find little openings only a few feet high and a few feet wide, completely hidden among the bushes of mountain laurel, rhododendron, and doghobble. Nothing could touch me, and nothing could find me. The world outside didn’t exist. There was only dense greenery and dirt.

I created whole worlds shrouded in the bushes. I played with dinosaur toys and little army boys, creating stories with my fingertips. They’d battle and work together to fight even bigger monsters and threats. Most of all, the bushes were where I dodged my parents’ screaming. My first memories of the house are filled with the beauty of diverse species of trees and the woods in my backyard, but they’re equally filled with resonant sounds of screams that rang through the house in nights and days. The sounds were palpable. The house shook and quivered as if it too was trying to shrink away from the noise.

I heard the crash not too late one night while watching TV. It wasn’t the first nor the last I’d hear, but it is the one I remember. I couldn’t tell you what it was, probably a vase or glass or plate, but I knew it was shattering. It thundered in my eardrums echoing as the screaming only grew despite the walls and doors muffling the sound. Sometimes I think the house was trying to protect me, turning its hallway into a maze because finding whatever I was looking for was surely worse than being lost.

All the other memories of that time, when my innocence still lay untouched and gently sleeping, are vague, existing as small snippets of moments. I can’t seem to remember them in wholeness. The images sit in my head scattered like a splatter painting on canvas; time did not exist then. There is no before or after. There are just individual moments without connection to others. 

—

The light shone. It was midafternoon, I assume, on a weekend. The air that day seemed to rest heavy in the house. The sunlight felt choked and weakened.

“Your dad and I are going to be separated. We’re going to move into different houses.”

She seemed to be on the verge of tears. I didn’t understand at first, as most children probably wouldn’t. It is a lot to understand, the irreparable break in the foundations of childhood. To know the radical changes that would occur and the unknown of where they will lead. I remember, though, in that moment of breaking, feeling relief. The shouts would end, the smashing of things would cease, my hidey-hole may have no use, and the house may finally breathe again. The window would shine beautifully with afternoon sun basking the living room in an air of peace.

Not long after that, my mom moved out of the house and not much longer after her, my dad did too. That house on the hill lost its residents. My last memories were the garage stuffed with all my parents’ things slowly moving on to the truck, growing empty. I ran through the woods and the yard and the garden. Through the hallways of pine. I climbed the Japanese maple. Ran along the rose bushes on the boardwalk. Touched the swing I sat on with my grandmother. Ran up the hill with the terraced garden now barren and empty of vegetables. Finally, I made it into the house, empty and without a trace of us. I couldn’t imagine that people had lived there, that we had lived there. That once my parents had hosted gatherings and garden parties. That the whole extended family had gathered for Christmas around that large window, a fire burning in the hearth. But that fire had long grown cold.

I couldn’t imagine that anyone else would live there. I think the saddest thought was that no one would see that view of the mountains and rolling hills. The birds would no longer have the onlooking stare of me and my grandma. That it would all grow quiet and that warmth would fade and the whole hillside may grow into an eternal winter.

I too was afraid of that winter of muted love and warmth, not knowing what a broken family could begin to be. Not knowing where the next warmth would come from. My mom took me away. And like most things, the last image was through the rearview mirror. 

Loosely.

Threaded. (at the end)

Article by Sherai O’Riley Art by Kristopher Ligtenberg

There be a reason it’s called the fabric of the universe

‘Tis made of threads

Threads that come together in spirals. Helixes. Double helixes.

Solar systems.

If we spin around the sun then what does the sun spin around? 

Maybe ‘tis dancing with a black hole.

The thing about threads is that they don’t make themselves useful.

They need a calculated hand and a loving architect.

To be created

To be nurtured

To be used protected and reborn.

Just like us

Nothing was born from nothing.

Sure, 

Sometimes things come together from distant galaxies and explode into volcanic mushrooms.

Other times apes are great.

Regardless, these rebirths simply illustrate the indisputable fact that

If you accept the existence of a finite thing

Like a circle

Or a sphere

You accept the existence of an infinity.

Like your mom.

Or a T-shirt.

They exist only by virtue of one another.

(Your mom IS a T-Shirt!!!)

What a beautiful thing it is.

To be a loose thread. 

And what’s the greatest honor a thread might ever receive?

To be part of a rope!

And what do ropes do?

I’ll let you guess…

Times up. They hoist the sails!

Threaded sails, fresh out of their awkward adolescent threadhood years,

Need to be allowed the space to grow into their skin so they can be threaded and unthreaded.

Ropes return back to threads.

Planets return back to rocks.

Magic moment when you get to be the weaver.

You beaver.

To have agency!

And be a garment of value!

Worthy of a patch.

A wash.

A caress.

There’s much cleaned by the washing machine of gratitude.

Like a whispering serpent smashed by an elephant foot.

Too often we believe we are supposed to want things because we’ve been told that someone else knows what we are supposed to do.

Nobody knows!

Stop wanting more than your gut tells you you need,

Listen to it,

The churning ocean gut.

It knows.

Because it's inspired by the divine rhythm of your breath.

Chump.

The other day someone said to me, “if you have something,

Then by definition you do not want it.”

WHAT?!?!?!

Rebuttal:

If you want things then you do not have them.

Why does it matter if you love them? You ask?

Well because then you will never want!

The labor of love is something a good parent knows well.

“Waste not Want not.” - wise lady.

I often forget that I have stuff because I love the stuff I have,

Which means,

That I am always pleasantly surprised!

With a burning passion, I desperately crave the clothes that are already on my body.

Threaded.

-Sherai O’Riley

Gold Can Stay

Article by Ethan Kirschner Art by Liz White

The fields glittered with gold, shining brightly amidst the midday sun. Bright and yellow, hints of brown and auburn, green complemented the gleam. The fields rolled, on and on, smashed between the freeway and subdivisions. They rolled from the steep, rectangular hill delineating one side of the road to school, through the gulches where an old wood building stood, across the plains and up, growing until they reached Green Mountain.

Cows roamed these fields, brown and black, speckled, spotted, and solid, grazing and releasing manure with the most horrible smell. It wafted over the road. Close the windows. Yet for all its terror, the smell was sometimes nice — a reminder that the cows were here, living.

Occasionally horses appeared, brown, white, black, and gray, speckled, spotted, and solid, coming out from behind the homes or over the hill. Magnificent. Gallant creatures, briskly walking, joyfully running. Sometimes they stared out like they were looking at you or seeing something you couldn’t. Beautiful, were these fields. Nature, wild, grand, and peaceful.

At the time, I did not know these fields were actually a farm, and the cows and horses were owned by a farmer. I did not know that the farmer would sell the land, had sold the land, and would remove the cows and horses — those majestic silent creatures with fur glowing in the sun. My mom told me, but I often forgot things like that. Those things were unimportant to me.

When it finally sunk in that the farmer had sold the land, I was worried. We all were, my siblings and I. We loved that land, its simple beauty and existence. We loved the cows and the horses. For a while, it seemed like the sale was called off, that the horses and cows wouldn’t actually leave, and the land would remain as it was. The animals roamed those fields for years. We forgot.

Sunflowers grew along the edges of the fields. Tall, gold, honey, amber. They popped up, standing along the fence and decorating it with life, in contrast to its stillness. Shining petals stood out, prominent. I recall going up to them once, inspecting the number of petals on each head, the complex pattern of seeds spreading out from the center, the buzz of bees around them, content and slow on a warm summer day.

When building started at Green Mountain, the sunflowers there disappeared. The ones lower down, within our sight, remained alongside the cows and horses. The initial building was slow and uneasy. It was distant — hidden above us by another subdivision. To us nothing was happening, so nothing had happened, and nothing would happen. The fields remained.

During this time, my sister had a dream. Horses were her favorite animal, white horses especially. When we saw them, she beamed, pressed her face up against the car windows. In her dream, she was in a herd of horses, the world blanketed in snow. It was cold, icy, frost everywhere. She was standing close to a white horse. Briefly, she looked away, and when she turned back all the horses were gone. Brown, red, black, gray — no sign of where they went. With these other horses went her white one. She searched, but they were nowhere. She was alone.

“I can’t find my white horsey on the snowy hill,” she told our mom. There were tears in her eyes.

Although my brother and I made fun of my sister for the dream, I enjoyed seeing the horses too, and hated when they hid. I thought of what it was like to lose our dogs, loving and gentle members of our family. I knew what she felt.

Later, wanting to rationalize the dream, I decided the white horsey hadn’t actually disappeared. It was still there in front of my sister, looking at her, but its white coat blended in with the snow, the eyes lost in the turn. Now, I question that interpretation. With what has happened to the fields, the cows, and the horses, the dream seems less like a child’s imagination and more like a prophecy.

Around the time of the dream, the horses appeared less often. They were always more elusive than the cows, but the number of appearances decreased to where it was an event if they appeared at all. The cows too slowly dwindled, rarely seen except for a few occasions on the hill. Then that stopped. The farmer finally moved the creatures away, and development came into our view. 

We lost something over those years. Something childish perhaps, some belief that what was good would stay forever. In its place, I gained a realization: “Nothing gold can stay, Ponyboy.” Yet, I still felt like it could.

They took a long time to build that subdivision. Over seven years. Most of the fields remained, and though those houses were a scar, their villa-stucco style wasn’t that distasteful. Gold replaced with bronze. In addition, they stopped building down Green Mountain, instead building towards the freeway. Yes, the development still expanded, destroying our fields, but it was distant again. It left most of our gold. Furthermore, the cows and horses occasionally returned, giving back joy. Something gold can stay, Ponyboy.

Then in my last two years of high school, the developers prepared for total takeover. They tore up part of the road to school, crunching it down to one lane. They added sewer lines, power lines, and a sidewalk before re-adding a lane. They also worked in the fields, hidden by the hill and houses. 

While this development appeared quickly, it felt slow. The developers had trouble getting water rights from the city, extending the time half the road was unusable. Things seemed stalled, fizzled out. When all lanes finally reopened, it was a celebration of returned normalcy. But behind it was a realization that things might be happening again.

We got a dog during Covid, like many families. During walks I took her through the neighborhood behind our house, giving me a better view of the fields. Last year, before I came to CC, they started building houses there, but behind the other homes. Except from certain angles, I couldn’t see anything. Certainly not on my walking path. When I went home for a break, I took my dog through that neighborhood, and I saw it. The fields, the gold, the auburn, the brown, the green, the sunflowers; they were torn up by massive machines. Wide, ugly dirt roads were destroying my gold. The grasses remained only along the fence, replaced by massive yellow dump trucks and gusts of dust.

The new houses were ugly too. Grey and dirty blue and brown, lacking any light or character. They were not bronze like the other subdivision. They were not even steel. They were mottled, rusted iron, poisoning the landscape as they dissipated into it. It wasn’t alive, but dead and depressing.

I stopped walking in that neighborhood, but a slip of gold remained. The primary one, the one I always saw. It shrunk, kept shrinking, but it remained. Maybe something would be saved.

This past winter break I returned home. It’s just ugly dirt roads now too, soon to be houses that add no character or emotions — asphalt and heat in place of nature, peace, and gold. Those fields with their grasses, cows, and horses, their beauty and simplicity, are gone now, existing only in memory, glorified as something of a past life. Things were better when I was younger. Only an undergraduate in college, and I’m already feeling old, broken down.

“Nothing gold can stay, Ponyboy.” No, nothing can, but why couldn’t it stay for longer, for another fifty years, for when I grow so old that I forget about it, and even then take another fifty years, so the following generations can still enjoy them for some time? The gold will fade for someone, but why did it have to fade for me?

I was originally going to end here, but then I figured I should research where in The Outsiders that quote appears. As it turns out, nowhere. It’s actually two different quotes: “Nothing gold can stay,” spoken by Ponyboy, and “Stay gold, Ponyboy. Stay gold.” These quotes aren’t some cynical outlook on life, but rather an urging to keep seeing and supporting the good in life. Yes, the beauty of a sunrise will fade, but why should we let all beauty fade? Try to keep the gold. Our lives will be better if we do.

My gold may be gone now, but there is much more gold out there, gold I can try to help keep. And not all gold I have close connections to is gone yet. Much of it still remains, even if partially faded. Maybe that “white horsey on the snowy hill” truly is lost, or maybe it is merely unseen for a moment until your perspective readjusts. That white horsey is still there, staring at you. It is never gone — not until it joins the other horses. You are not alone. Gold can stay.

Beyond the Child

Content Warning:

strong discourse around eating disorders

Article by Raychel Stark Art by Mariana Martin

It always starts like that—the mirror. Silver and exact with indentations that create a pattern representing nothing; frivolous for the sake of distraction and for what stands in between. She sees darkness until I fill the reflection with every flaw and curve of my body. I grow old under an intensity of questioning looks. 

I live inside my thoughts—breathing in sadness and exhaling no relief—a deep cesspool of self-hatred. I thank Sylvia Plath. 

From my journal in my senior year of high school:

My mind holds no value. My subconscious stretches to grasp a sense of worth, yet I am left empty-handed. I imagine its fingers extending in every way, distorted, wanting to find a solution to my loveless substance. Like an alchemist, it experiments again and again, conducting trials on the flow of my brain, attempting to create renewed connections to my external, to my friends, to my family, to my teachers, to my therapist, to my work, but fails to understand that I hide in a cave—one that's carved deep inside of me: further than my thoughts, surrounded by no light, lifeless, and devoid of nutrients. 

I’m writing from a river near my house, isolated and covered by large boulders. Rain is starting to fall. I’m not moving. Sitting still, I let my hair soak in Mother Nature’s sacred possession. Like stammered kisses on the back of my neck, I appreciate that when I choose to self-deprecate the rain chooses to soothe me. Increasing speed, the rain allows soft splashes in the river, singing me a lullaby. I unfurl my clenched fists for the rain to caress me with its lips. The air smells of green leaf dusk, reminding me of childhood days when I could find joy from splashing in puddles and running through wet grass. 

My mind unfurls and unfurls like a loosening thread. I have no hope of returning. Will someone please teach me how to tie the strings on my shoes? 

Will I ever be a kid again? 

With deep concern,

Ray 

I’m twelve, in pink tights, a tight, black leotard that reveals all my bulges, a loose, big bun, and ballet flats, staring at myself in front of a floor-to-ceiling mirror. My eyes immediately dart to my thighs. They jiggle when I turn and quiver when examined too closely. My blonde, skinny, tan friend stands beside me—Brooke, what a stupid fucking name. She looks at my shapeless legs. 

“Where is your thigh gap, Ray?” 

Six staggering words that succinctly stab me. I wish to ooze out my fat and watch as my body reduces to nothing. I yearn for Brooke to slip and fall on my greasy, gross insides. I daydream she soaks up my beef and flesh, becoming a disgrace to my ballet teacher, Madame Catalina, becoming worthless in her eyes. 

Madame critiques the curve of our feet, the spread of our toes, and the placement of our dangling fingers. In purposeful ignorance and disobedience, while at the bar changing from fourth to sixth position in perfect silence, I dissociate. My eyes follow the delicate raindrops falling gently outside as they waltz to the music playing inside. Synchronised swimmers, perfectly in time. The sun warms them as they fall on the black, greedy asphalt. Something so simple, so mesmerising, so — she approaches me with her luscious, ominous oval eyes. Her loud footsteps juxtapose her mantra: “Graceful and Gentle like a Woman.” Her icy, bitter, long fingers squeeze my arms; her eyebrows locked in constant agony and contempt fill my heart with cold blood. Her nails are sharp, painted a bright red that stings me. The fluorescent light reflects on her forehead, creating a shine that forces me to turn away. Her long flowing chestnut hair grazes my neck; I wish to grab and pull it. She holds onto my fat for longer than necessary, and without words, I know she desires to see and touch only bone. She moves my arms up and down, showing me the correct rhythm in which I should shift. I remind myself that my thick skin allows me to persist and resist her psychological damage. Yet, what comes to shape my sense of self is Madame Catalina’s words, opinions, and attitudes. 

I go home, grasp the gilded frame in my room, and direct her towards my lower half until the world sways. What is staring back at me? I contort my waist by grabbing my fat and pulling it behind me — I look like Brooke. How worthless has my life become? 

I’m thirteen. My mom is complaining about sugar and calories and fats. Through her whispers and weight watching, I learn and gather information from my elder, my muse. 

I imagine decomposing my food, picking out each morsel of sugar, counting each calorie of the crumbs, washing away all the badness. As I collect scraps and smidgens of each chip before it enters my mouth, as I wipe the grease from my pizza, take off the fatty cheese, as I clean the butter off my toast, I wonder if my mother is proud. 

I stare at every thigh that passes me. I have a mental ruler that serves to compare my own measurements to random figures in my life — woman after woman travels around me. They circle me, surround me, their bodies suffocate me. I’m wrapped around by fat and bones, my face pushed up against each thigh. She grabs my eyeballs and positions them downwards, dizzy, stumbling, on the verge of passing out, she traps my face with Saran wrap. When I try to speak, I realize my only power now is to survey thigh after thigh, forced to mock or gawk. With a lack of nutrients, I hallucinate. Tripping, I lose my voice. 

I’m sixteen. I’m still taking the bread off my hamburgers and putting my dinner and lunch under a microscope. I’ve started weighing myself on my mother’s scale. Watching the weight decrease one pound by one pound, I feel healthier, more put together, and in control. I can wrap my hands around my upper arms now. I’ve learned the calories of every scoop of oil and piece of fruit. My thighs no longer quiver or jiggle. I’m motionless. Stripped, I’m bare from years of exhaustion and exertion. 

My mother is starting to loathe me; I see jealousy in her eyes. I’ve surpassed her diets and workouts, I’ve surpassed her goal weights, I’ve surpassed her calorie limits. I am more. Yet, I’m on the floor of my bedroom looking deep into my eyes, searching for my soul, but get lost staring at my thighs. 

I’m no Barbie doll. My body is discombobulated. I’ve been moved and twisted and warped and tortured by her and her and her; my mirror, my mother, and Madame Merciless. I never got to feel pretty. I never got to feel free. I lost my childhood. I never got to explore myself and my capacities. I’ve never felt at ease. 

Why I Write

Article by Kole Petersen Art by Mariana Martin

The Horizon Bites Itself Around Me

Article and Art by William Compton

It’s a cave-sliding entry. I round-mouth breathe and round-mouth scream. The horizon bites itself around me. I’m a Kansas boy already. In the arms of a milkmaid — I’m in the arms of my mother. Amongst us an agreement that between us no other.

I scream but there’s someone comforting me. I’m sticky — scream on — I’ll hate sticky always. Eventually, I open my eyes to see Papa and Momma, the eternal we Side A staring back at me. At home, an older sister watches movies and waits.

Our parents have beautiful green eyes, but unto their children they cracked them, yolk from white. Yellow-orange in the middle. Outside, ocean blue, the cobalt mixing bowl shining through: a wide brim. My sister’s colors are fierce. An orange sunset still warm on your face, deep water over white sand. My subtle colors? Butter yellow quite willing to hide under stormy seas. Her eyes near-like me, first to see beyond me, through deep sloshing sea. My own to see bright lights and shining green torn lovingly between the eternal we Side B.

         We’ll watch black-white koi fish swimming around each other endlessly. Born in our strained eyes, a truth of supremacy in balancing. I’ll know her to be my cosmic balance orbiting, her transformations transforming me. Says nature: head flipping flips tails.

         From stormy-blue, golden heaven a creed: worship the inverse of your existing. Worship at the altar of diversity. And binding your balls, Mr. President, binding your mouth, truth rejoices on earth in the heaven-sent fact of equality.

         We are kitty and puppy, but committed to switch. The sun and the moon and a popsicle split. The popsicle and the stick. Balance is an uneasy state except where it sits, in souls. It’s a tough sell in this world of money pits and serpents — a tough sell with penthouses to be had. I’ll want the penthouse bachelor pad and the boyfriend and the charity and the nice clothes. I’ll want it all, but there’s no balance like that.

         To my future self a creed: when the balance becomes an act, knock a bit from your right. Baby boy, watch it fall. And remember that balance is soul, not society. Society is not balanced at all.

         When I find my voice, I’m a chorus of momma, moomoo, mimi, my mommy. I cry for you and lie down for you — I’m a good boy. The nighttime terrifies, but momma’s bed is near.

         Because of my mother I fear the devil and those on that same page. Pages turn, eyes burn because of my mother. The quiet part rips loud from my mouth and I loathe to be in an idiot’s charge. Because of my mother I’ll believe I’m loved when I’m unlovable. I’ll love hard the messy man, love the voice, the mouth that loves glass clinking. I’ll say yes to snow-sniffers and rave-goers and men who don’t know any better. Men who hate themselves and can’t treat me any better. Because of Mother Bey I remember: “I will always love you, but I can’t expect you to love me if you don’t love yourself.” Because of mother mine I believe I can fix him, love him into submission. Generational sickness because of my mother, the cure because of her too.

         Now, I drink coffee because my mom made the morning cup Dad delivered to bed look so good. Now, every morning is a missed drink away from a headache. No one brings me coffee in bed.

When I find a man like my father he haunts me — the King of Pentacles haunts me. I’m so afraid that I put him in my pocket. So afraid that I dance with him. So afraid that I text him back and so brave that I stop responding. I could beg of this pattern: unleash me. But my destiny seems to be falling between Pentacle Kings.

There’s a man in my mind always waiting for a face. I call him my man. If he has your face you’ve become him. He becomes no one, although I try to make him. Today, he has blue eyes.

It's the day after Good Friday. Sunday will be so good it’s frightening. My man has calm eyes like a swimming ocean. Getting near him magnetizes, or it doesn’t buzz. Sometimes it hmm’s. Sometimes silence is simple with my man and sometimes it’s not.

Dreaming of you makes me hit snooze, Baby Blue. I like the back of you, Purple Shoes. I can’t handle that sometimes you’re lonely. I can’t handle the idea that you’ve woken up in a chilly bed.

His calm eyes might be sadness. He shares something sad and always apologizes. But I want the messy and the complicated. Let me see and I’ll never run. Hide from me and turn me away. I am my mother’s son. I can take a character flaw easier than flawlessness. I can take the stormy and the swimming sea.

         But my man is pulling away from me.

         It’s a momentary slip, a night spent awake and worried of wide eyes. More than I want to be, I’m my father. My memory of manic times requires context — its content blurs and dimples. You bring me to the edge, baby. The edge of gore and bone shards, the edge of glory. Will arms widen and hands remember their utility? Are you coming nearer or further from me?

         Good god, on my guts we’re relying. I know I have to speak but tongue ties. I almost call you friend, then stutter, then lie. If I know cosmic law to be true, tension’s table sets up for two. If patterns hold, we caught this flu together. Into fever-hot Wonka bed fell beside you.

         I don’t say anything.

         Me thinking sounds like shuffling cards. The King of Pentacles bent in my pocket and now he sticks out of the deck. I shuffle and he slips to the floor. I bury him under clothes, then go back. I put him back in my deck.

         I’m sick of writing about the King of Pentacles, so I go on a random first date, not meant to be good. The next weekend, they take me out to a party.

Hallelujah, a new thing to write about is risen. One great night is enough to ink them into my life — I just needed to know they don’t know better. Bruised neck and big hair and morning wood and a kiss goodbye. I’m convinced, then I wake up scared. I like them, then I think of him. I’m on a river flowing towards a forked choice beyond my choosing. So into your hand I commend my spirit, River. Plunge me deep and angle my affection.

         I plant my feet and turn my face to the sky. I think of sky and earth and the horizon in between. Through the shaking beam of my eyes I give energy so that I may take. In from my face and my feet, Father and Mother complete the colors swirling through me. They turn me into a vibrating vessel, single love-being complete. The skin of my feet begs of my mother to drown me, to choke me and blast me with lava. Destroy my long-lasting mentality. Vary and cycle my spirituality or destroy the spiritual me, phoenix-ifying.

         And may endless Father Sky humble me, isn’t the only thing to fear infinity? I can never be rejected endlessly, yet the sky is willing to befriend me, this infinity deigning to focus on me. Endlessness is the context of all humanity. If all context breeds humility, no action is scary; there’s no earth to shatter with this simple me.

Side A and Side B play together from me: they’ve been made to harmonize, I’m finding. I chew, as if through perfect egg scrambles, the kind only I make. I’m the popsicle to be licked and the stick to hold. The ocean and the sun and the green flash between them. I’m a Kansas boy: midwestern humility and country audacity. My mom and my dad and my sister and me. On the horizon, heaven and earth balance. Maybe our souls are a horizon. I’m learning to balance, to hold my core and feet and my head right above my beam.

The face on my man can’t balance with me. Remember Bey: a man can only love me if he loves himself. If he fills his cup, he has sweet juice to pour on me. The King of Pentacles is a goal, or maybe an eventuality.

But until then, I’ll love my morning coffee.

the long game

Article and Art by Linnea Anderson

last time i saw him we were walking along the railroad track. we slingshotted pebbles, stacked stones, and knocked them down. i handed him a rock. told him i liked the look of it. 

he said, do u wanna keep it? i declined. the rock wasn’t really special, just a way to break the silence. 

a magical card told me everything lost will come back in higher ways. i think that could be true for me, in my life, with my things. but not for us. 

this is a long haul. the kind trains take. but we can’t seem to follow the rails. 

instead, we’re each in our own car. it’s an awkward caravan. only stopping every once and a while for gas and a chat. what’s new? did i tell you about that? glad you had a good birthday. 

not the conversations of people who are in love. 

and we always get back in our cars. i want to follow him on the same off-ramps. but sometimes i pass by and he just lets me keep driving instead. i get excited when he signals for an exit. it reminds me that he wants to see me too. 

i tell my friends we’ll get married one day. but when i think of him now, i can’t even recall what he sounds like. just the way he makes me nervous. 

knowing him is knowing my high school self. i fear deserting her will make me too rigid. 

she, all lust and an infinite crush. a little body of wonder. feelings i can never seem to hold onto anymore. 

past relationships shredded and scattered all those sensitivities. the connections that had beginnings and ends. they don’t come easy. 

but in my brain, he is endless. 

he can stay perfect. and i can stay immature. we can go to the movies and i can get nervous. 

i’ve thought of him in all my passing relationships. figured that one day, he would set them all straight. 

tell me i’m wrong to love only passively. tell me it’s not playing pretend. tell me it was silly to keep quiet all this time. tell me the game is fun. but it should end. 

i figured one day i’d have some sort of revelation, know how to act, tell him how it is. but the divine hasn’t guided me yet. and sometimes, i think it just wants me to keep stumbling.

because where’s the fun in a mutual feeling? it is so finite. if i’ve held onto the game long enough, it can’t end. 

his voice will change or stay the same. i won’t be able to tell. he’ll just live on that railroad track. 

and i’ll just have to sit with it. 

do you want to keep it? 

that day, he accidentally left that rock on the passenger seat of my car before i dropped him off at home. i didn’t know he had kept it. he didn’t know it fell out of his pocket. 

he played it off fine. 

i knew the rock wasn’t special but maybe now it is. i hope he has the memory of it in safe keeping. 

when the cards are down, the game comes to an end. we finally give up on our cars and catch a train instead. 

Ruminations

Article and Art by Margalit Goldberg

1. Today the sky is heavier than usual. It is holding its weight in stillness and my bangs are where I placed them before I left the house. The sun is not skin-melting, which makes me believe that fall is near — despite the fact that I’ve lived in Colorado all my life and know that there will be more 90 degree days before it finally cools. In my memory, the weather on the first day of school is always stagnant like this, familiar and unremarkable. Except for the first week of 5th grade when the heavens opened and the rain didn’t stop for a week. That was the most rain I had ever seen in my life.  

2. “Take out the trash on Tuesday nights/Seems like the small things are the only things I’ll fight,” sings Liz Phair in “Gunshy.” I don’t mean the second line to offend my roommates, but don’t you think I’m so Liz Phair!? I do love to take the trash out every Tony’s Tuesday and disappear the evidence of our wasteful existence. Liz Phair is so me again in “Extraordinary” which goes like “You may not believe in me/But I believe in you/So I still take the trash out/Does that make me too normal for you?” However, my excitement to take out the trash I think in fact makes me not normal but an “average everyday sane psycho supergoddess.” 

3. Somedays I feel like I’m standing on a precipice. Where can I put all this shame instead of letting it convince me I deserve less? My friend once described me as a messy bookcase of a person. Constantly out of place. I used to hate this feeling. Now I see it as a way of being, becoming. Unhinged. Can’t keep my mouth shut. Long winded. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I’ll dance anywhere and in front of anyone. If there’s one thing that belongs to me, it's the words I write. 

4. The folding table in our backyard, which came with the house, finally got washed off yesterday. The dirt sloughed off satisfyingly and revealed an archive of painted names and messages. Many things have faded but you can still read some: “This belongs to Mathias 461”. They are names of people who were Seniors when I was a First-Year.  “Table established 2/16/2020” is written neatly on the side and I appreciate that the author had a penchant for marking dates. Secretly, I think about the people who’ll live here in four years and see my name signed on the walls of our garage and maybe they’ll remember me like I remember the people attached to the names on this table. 

5. The red leather recliner on our front porch is starting to become my most beloved piece of furniture. The color is somewhere between dark brown and ketchup. It’s just the right amount of pre-loved that you sink in so much it's almost impossible to get up. The loveseat has two leg rests that fold in and out with a lever. We’ve been having a lot of porch time in the waning weeks of summer, on nights when we don’t want to go out. So we'll just sit out on Wahsatch. 

6. I can recommend the Pikes Peak Trolley Museum a million times more than the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame. There was a “100 things to do in Colorado Springs” book in the gift shop. I felt like I had done them all by now, most of the touristy things when I was a kid. I’ve done almost everything on my CC bucket list. Spend the night on Tava quad. Throw a Bar Mitzvah in a dorm room. Attend a mass wrestling event. Create super long straws to drink out of other people’s drinks. Here is one thing on my to do list I’ll have to leave undone: Naked Rastalls. Unless there's an underclassman who wants to swipe me in. 

7. I want you to be able to tell me when you want to take your brain out from your skull and slam it against the wall. Cry in my arms and I’ll cry in yours while we think about who we think we are and who we think we want to be. The XXL Yankees shirt you gave me, which I sleep in most nights, has a hem that's become loose. Every time I cut the loose thread it pulls and pulls again, unraveling itself to a raw edge. I could decide to cut you off and you’d still be unraveling me. You don’t think I treat you like a bus stop, right? No, I treat you like a college house. A place to find home until it’s time to move on. Can I write you a letter? I want to make you feel free.

8. I have eaten too much beef. Tonight I ate a beef tube. So beefy. So beefy. So beefy. So beefy. So beefy. So beefy. So beefy. So beefy. So beefy. So beefy. So beefy. So beefy.

   Yesterday I ate a $1.50 ¼ Pound Hot Dog from Costco. Too Much Beef. Too Much Beef. Too Much Beef. Too Much Beef. Too Much Beef. Too Much Beef. Too Much Beef. Too Much Beef. Too Much Beef. Too Much Beef. Too Much Beef. Too Much Beef. 

   Beef Limit Reached.

9. The porch light is on and there are dragonflies swarming. They are pale blue and about two inches long. They are dive bombing at us like they’re out for vengeance but they are without any attack mechanism. The poor things. I turned the light off and went inside so they could find the moon. I’m not sure if they even fly by the light of the moon. 

10. Here are some things I hope will remain unraveling and revealing themselves to me besides the nature of the universe. Where the heights of my pleasure can take me, spinning me into my body so fully. The contours of relationships in all their love and hurt and confusion and joy. What power can come from opening yourself up to another. The things I will be willing to leave behind when inevitably I am swept up and carried to the next chapter of my life. How much discomfort I will be able to put up with until I can’t keep it to myself anymore and my feelings must spill out onto my life, staining everything in their path. If I am too easy or too hard to love. Or both. 

I’m Knitting a Scarf

Article by Tasha Finkelstein Art by Talia Cardin

If I could find a way to make the days last longer, where would I begin? 

1. I could try knitting a scarf long enough to hold everyone I love. This way, when it gets cold, we could all be warm together. This way, no one could ever run too far from me. They’d be wrapped in this scarf, the one I knit for them, the one I still haven’t finished yet.

I like to pull the thread out long — twist it between my fingers, get tangled in it, search for a pattern of braiding that will turn all of my tangles into a piece of art, something nice to look at at the very least.

Sometime later I will resurrect the thread, find it hidden at the bottom of a basket full of yarn, peeking out silver, shimmering through to me. When the thread is glistening and alone, I will be reminded of a scarf I never finished knitting. I could try to start the project up again but we both know I’m not going to finish it before the year ends. 

I like to speak in metaphors and riddles and say things I don’t really understand, but I promise I have a very real relationship with a very real scarf. The scarf is purple and teal and maybe I will add the orange yarn in soon. I started the scarf about a year and a half ago. I went to the yarn store with Ruby, who is good at finishing projects. She’s made a small chair out of yarn, and a crochet case for her vape too. 

Ambitiously, I thought I could make a scarf. I even thought I could finish it. I’ll pick this scarf up every now and then, knit a couple of rows, and eventually spend enough time with it that I’m on to the next ball of yarn. The trouble is I have no actual stopping point. 

I’m starting to think my lack of design is its own genius design. If I never have a stopping point in mind, the thread doesn’t have to end. 

2. I could take inventory of all the loose threads I never picked up. They’re scattered around my room and sometimes I trip over them. (By now you should know that this essay is not an essay. It’s my attempt at another scrappy scarf that I will be forced to finish half-complete because the ending could never be an actual ending.)  

Sophomore year, I had an idea for a Cipher piece about making friends and melting wax. My mom would tell me about her college days living with roommates —  the light fixtures they made by melting candles over empty wine bottles, peanut butter noodles for dinner, the doors of their house painted all different colors. I live with my friends now too, and we did make some of our own wine bottle candles, but that’s about it. I never became an amazing cook or anything else I thought I would be when I lived in a house. I still get stressed out every time I try to make a proper meal. Instead, I like to sit on the couch with my roommates and watch music videos for hours. I suppose thats it’s own kind of heaven.

Last year, I had an idea for a Cipher piece about parasocial relationships I’ve had with celebrities — Leonard Cohen, David Beckham, etc. I didn’t want to know anything about anyone except people who had no idea I existed. At the time, I thought it was funny. Now, I read what I wrote and it is so very lonely. I don’t think it’s something I could finish anymore. 

This summer, which I now realize was last summer, I had an idea for a Cipher piece about driving instructors. I was learning how to drive in the Springs and, to my surprise, it was more of a wonderful experience than a stressful one. I wanted to write about Keith, my favorite instructor. I never wrote about him but I think I’ll remember him and that July anyway. 

This year, I had an idea to make greeting cards. I like to fill my notebooks with doodles that don’t make sense and pair them with words that might help them make more sense. I like to turn these loose lines into creatures I can tuck away, talk to on another day. We have a room in our house that gets flooded with sun that I wanted to turn into an art studio and I have all the materials but I never made the art. In the version of this Cipher issue where I am writing an essay, the sun room is an art studio and I am making something new everyday. It’s never a scarf; it’s always something I can finish. 

3. I could join the intramural water polo team.

I joined partly so I could keep my mind and body busy from thinking about the future and dreading all the things, things I have no idea about, things I like to imagine in their worst iterations. 

I don’t know if joining the water polo team is working in the way I hoped it would. I still go to the library and get so nauseated from anxiety that I can’t do any of my work. But for about an hour last week, I got to smell chlorine and forget about everything that lies ahead. I got to see people I have known for years committed to an activity that is pointless and beautiful, beautiful because it is pointless. Something about all of us making the conscious decision to bring a towel, jump into the pool, wear an ugly swim hat, and paddle backwards — something about it makes me want to stay in the water forever.

Then, of course, I tell myself I should’ve joined an intramural team earlier in my college career. And then I remember there’s nothing I can really do about that. I’m glad I’m here now. 

4. I could start vaping. I’m not sure it makes the days last longer. Really all it does is make me count the days.

I got a Geek Bar (California Cherry) over spring break after making it to 21 without ever owning a vape. It makes me way too out of breath when I try to do things like play water polo and is arguably too sweet, but I don’t regret buying it. I am trying to make it last until the end of the school year. It still has 79% of its juice left. I don’t use it often. Just when I am okay being out of breath, or when a friend wants to hit it, which is sort of all the time these days. I have decided to breathe in all the sweetness until I no longer can.

5. I could add on to a never ending list. 

Over second block break, me and my roommates made a list of all the things we wanted to do while staying on campus. We had a huge piece of paper and put it up on the pantry door. We had so many things on there, pumpkin patch picking, making banana bread, cleaning out the entire house. I don’t think we even did half of the activities on the list. It was more of a point of reference for us throughout the fall and into the spring — something we could look at and think of all the things we could do, how many things there were left for us to do. 

Now, the list is nowhere to be found. I think the paper got ripped up during our last party. Someone must’ve thrown it out when we were cleaning. 

Making a new list — one I could hang somewhere other than our pantry door, one I could bring outside of the house — sounds like an impossible task. There isn’t anything new I’m looking forward to. And besides, there’s too much to do together in the days we have left. Instead of more things, we’re all just trying to conjure up more days. 

6. I could end by telling you about March 24th. A Monday.

Sitting on the porch. Waiting to watch him find me in the rocking chair, grinning wide like he’s holding in a laugh. Sprinkled in light green shimmery light green dragonfly light, airy honeysuckle dew beginning of spring. The most magic time of day. The air is always dry here, but this evening it is dew. Earlier, I remember how to give myself a gift of small things. I come home, watch an episode of TV with Maddy and Ruby, eat a piece of cheese, take a shower, shave my legs for no other reason than I like to waste time. I cannot do the things I should do ever. When I make my way over to the Cipher meeting I feel open and airy and alone. I move the boxes of the new issue from the Pub House into the Canoe Room and then people trickle in and someone says it smells good. I think it could be me because I just showered and put on body oil. I remember that it’s good to have secrets with yourself even if they are small. And it is so nice to be in this room surrounded by people who choose to be here every week and we laugh and talk about nothing and then I think maybe the job search is tough because I feel as though I already have the best job in the world. And I guess in the back of my mind it also makes me hopeful because at least there’s something I know I like doing. I walk around campus and place copies of the new issue in places I think people go to. The magazine always seems to disappear anyway. I hope people take it home. I hope someone somewhere is reading a story they like. I circle the quad. I take the long way home. The light is shining, illuminating the grass, creating sparkles and no one seems to be anywhere. It is alone and beautiful. It is about 6 p.m. Maybe everyone is at dinner. Sometimes it feels stupid to write about the light and then I think it’s all I can do.