Millbrook High School

Art & Literary Magazine

2014

Identity

2

25. Daisy Bouquet by Alec Duncan

31. Run by Joshua Masters

32. Vietnam by Linda Nguyen

33. The End is Never the End by Cameron Townsend

38. My Voice by Morgan Dean

Back Cover: Plastic Expressions by Sydney Warren

3. 50/50 by Jennifer Haines

5. Fat Girl by Joy Black

6. McDonald’s Cooken’ by Eli Kay

7. Writing Utensil by Jennifer Haines

8. Pretty by Jessica Lane

9. Black and Blue by Daniel Monazah

10. Endure by Jennifer Haines

11. Paper-Crane Grace by Eli Kay

12. Damned Little Punk by

Emie Fischer

16. To Middle School Me by

Elizabeth Knowles

17. Swift Nostalgia by Jens Myers

18. Last Words by Eli Kay

19. Forth by Adrian Janni

20. Tell Me Not Gold by Eli Kay

21. Toc-Tic by Sarah Gray Lesley

24. Down by the Bay by Lydia

Granholm

32. Ignorance by Spencer Lane

Cover: Man in the Mirror by Payton

Jameson

3. Camera by Caitlin Rathvon

4. Salée ou non by Caitlin Rathvon

5. Shatter by Payton Jameson

8. Deterioration by Maryam Yamadi

11. Balancing the Void by

Hannah Harris

13. Shake by Rebecca Costa

14. Self-Portait by Sonia Wrobel

14. Obstacle by Andrew Feist

14.Death of Creativity by

Peyton Jameson

14. Glimpse by Madison Rivera

15. Protective Embrace by Lurae

Rubenstein

15. Self-Portrait by Mary Claire

Dawson

15. An Apple a Day by Hannah Harris

18. Headdress Whispers by

Maryam Yamadi

19. Ballerina Tattoos by Maryam

Yamadi

23.Space Time by Anna Rinderer

24.Bay-bound by Jacob

Katzenstein 26. Prodigy by Sarah Gray Lesley

34. Que Sera by Adrian Janni

3

50/50

The paperwork gleams.

The instructions glare at me

CHOOSE ONE:

(A) White

(B) Black

(C) Asian/Pacific Islander

(D) Hispanic

I am eight years old

Picking which to be, but I

know

I am (E)

None of the above.

I am other.

The color outside of

the lines.

I am torn.

The clock ticks.

CHOOSE ONE:

(A) White

I bury my disowned half

Beside my mother’s grave.

I avoid her eyes in the mirror

that day.

CHOOSE ONE:

(A) White

I bury my disowned half

Beside my mother’s grave.

I avoid her eyes in the mirror

that day.

Cam

era

by

Cai

tlin

Rat

hvo

n

Jennifer Haines

4

Caitlin Rathvon

5

Curly red hair

Pulled up in a bun,

Exposing a neck full of

freckles.

Sharp bones press

Tight against pale skin,

As though

they are trying to escape.

On a curved back is a

spine

that is clearly defined.

Below a flat chest are ribs,

despite being fragile,

Stand out defiantly.

Jeans are pulled up

stick legs

and are left sagging

on thin hips.

A sweater is shrugged on

and swallows a

slender frame.

She glares

at the fat girl in the mirror,

and she has the audacity

to glare back.

Joy Black

6

Burning hearts

In an angel oven,

Like a glowing exit sign

That opens up to a cliff.

Angel over, angel over angel, over, angel

Still force feeding hearts to a stone Golgotha

often called 'life'; filled with false promises

That hold back suggestive rules.

There’s an old book

Bound with lavish leather laughing

At the ravenous maw of the world:

It’s Scratched down in hate, power,

And, Genitals.

It’s pre-heated eternity; that’s so sought after

They run backwards- without question-

The cook;

Looking down;

Sly smile;

Twinkled eyes-

Knowing:

They’re just osteal over-all.

McDonald’s Cooken'

-From God.

Eli Kay

7

What am I then?

I’d say I’m pretty plain.

Not too much of

Anything.

Steady and reliable,

But able to change

my mind.

I can be light or dark.

It’s all about my mood.

Some say I’m boring grey,

But those who get to

know me

Find I can be colored too.

I admit I have my faults.

I smear on occasion,

And yes, sometimes I break.

But every time I

come back sharper.

I’m persistent that way.

And I’m proud to be

a pencil.

A Writing Utensil

I guess I’m a pencil.

I used to think I was a marker,

Interesting and colorful,

Flowing, easy-going,

Permanent or washable,

Depending on the day

I suppose I’m not that bold though,

So sure and striking,

Always an eye-catcher,

All over the place.

No, that’s not me.

I don’t think I could ever be a pen,

Strong and certain,

Slow to fade,

Knowing what I want,

Never changing my ways.

I’ve never thought myself a highlighter.

I’d like to think I’m not that shallow,

Attention seeking,

Irritatingly bright,

Constantly in your face.

Jennifer Haines

8

Pretty Jessica Lane

I am not pretty.

I am not lovely or quiet.

I am not a work of art, not the

All American Mona Lisa that you painted me to be,

with a generic lipstick smile

and starched white apron

as my eyes sigh promises

of mundane, not-quite-love.

I am not a face-

I am loud. I am expressive and fearsome.

I come home, holding anger in my fists

and enough sunlight in my eyes to burn you with a glare

from how you tried to touch me.

I am erupting flames,

like fire from a mountain

that has slept for too long.

I will not go back to sleep. I will burn until I blind myself

from my own luminescence.

and all the oceans in the

world will not

freeze

me

over.

9

What did I do

To be so black

And blue?

at first, afraid.

Action,

of which I was incapable, lingered beneath the

surface.

Few

really listen.

And yet, it

was satisfying to hear the silence

of sound. I had discovered my being—even

though I could not answer.

To see around

corners is enough,

But to hear

around them inhibits action,

and

I believe in nothing

of not in action.

One’s sense of time would run down.

Or I might forget to leave my hole.

Meanwhile I enjoy my life, compliments of

Light&Power. You never recognize me,

and you’ll hardly believe that I exist; it won’t

matter.

Before, I lived in darkness By Daniel Monazah

10

Jennifer Haines

11

You have these wrinkles

Imbedded in both your hands

That symbolize Sky.

I swear you know flight,

Finger-tip-creations breathe:

They conquer such height.

Poem by Eli Kay Art: Hannah Harris

12

I wanna be that damned little punk.

Who steals her parents’ liquor

And blows smoke through

Bathroom ventilation fans. Because maybe,

If I blow hard enough, it’ll carry my prayers

To the heavens like the incense does in churches.

I may not believe in capitol G God,

But I surely believe in capitol S Someone, and maybe if I

Wear tights with a snag for every time I’ve sacrificed myself

For someone else, or if I wear boots big enough to let them

Hear me coming, or if I encase my nightly prayers in

Carcinogens they’ll float up because they have

No where else to go. And maybe someone will hear.

But when I cry, I only echo. My voice bouncing back to me,

Ricocheting off the empty walls,

Because I am that dammed little punk, who hides

Behind clouds of smoke and empty bottles.

At least then, it’s harder to notice their absence.

At least now, there’s always something to steal.

Emie Fischer

13

Rebecca Costa

14

Self-Portait- Sonia Wrobel

Obstacle- Andrew Feist

Death of Creativity- Peyton Jameson

Glimpse– Madison Rivera

15

Art

Gallery P

rotective Em

brace- Lu

rae Ru

ben

stein

An

Ap

ple

a D

ay-

Han

nah

Har

ris

Self-Po

rtrait- Mary C

laire Daw

son

16

If I passed you in the halls today

Would you recognize me?

You’d have to look up to see my face, and know your oval morphed;

You’d have to recognize my darker hair, and look past its shortness.

Would you understand why

I would be wearing skinny jeans

And a shirt saying carpe diem?

If I talked to you in the halls today,

Would you know me? You’d have to listen past the country

To hear Boy and Panic’s strains.

You’d have to understand why

I throw my head back and laugh

As I toss out my favorites,

My dreams and my cares.

Would you recognize

in my vivacity your reserve?

Would you recognize in my

Verbosity your carefully meted words?

But if I met you today,

Would you think that I

Still have your love?

That I still have your care,

Your intelligence and faith

That everyone is good?

If we talked for hours

And I showed you my scars,

Would you know how I got them

And think me worthwhile,

Despite them or maybe because of them?

Six years separate me from you.

I’ve been places you haven’t

And done things you don’t know

Could be done.

If I passed you today in the halls

Would you trust me and my goodness

As I today trust yours?

Elizabeth Knowles

17

Jens Meyer

18

“Dandelions

will grow from your

grave, and some

will call them weeds,

while others

say flowers.

But you will be buried

with kings,

only to

awaken

within the hour.”

-Eli Kay

Headdress Whispers - Maryam Yamadi

19

Adrian Janni

“Dandelions

will grow from your

grave, and some

will call them weeds,

while others

say flowers.

But you will be buried

with kings,

only to

awaken

within the hour.”

-Eli Kay

Ballerin

a Tattoo

s– Maryam

Yamad

i

Forth

Sally!

Don’t stop the train–

No, the comet in which soars

Higher and higher,

Bristling and ambitioning

With the fire

That christens your family

In the blood

of this infinite sky.

Sally,

Don’t crave the shade–

No, the carcass in which rots

Darker and darker,

Putrefying and deadening

With the stone

That anchors your family

In the flood of this desolate plain.

Sally.. Fight!

Take this heart of mine!

Tear it beating from my chest,

Bleeding, bleeding,

Seeping blood into your veins,

Brimming, brimming,

Bursting them open to set

Ablaze the very things that we

Fear with the invincible vigor of

Love!

Sally…

live.

20

Tell-Me-Not-Gold Mermaid flowers Bloom Iridescences between hues Of seas left unseen Wolf-whistles real low And night lights with sea foam glow: Petals made to woo. [Comatose and bleach All-in-all the same white thing: Gray never bloomed right.] Mermaid Flowers Sway In to waters just too deep. Still believing sun. They aren't the lost ones They have songs that sing fever And hearts without cure

They have deep-sea eyes They chime out "Come fol-low us, We're just ecstasy: Our minds are racing, Left us- went chasing Pirates. Their Tell-Me-Not-Gold." Summer hands

break warmth, Kneed fire, immolate thought. Harlequin flowers All but arbitrary lust: Small cries of ire. We grin all but gray Our flowers can't bloom that way- Our Tell-Me-Not-Gold It was made to gleam. Deep waters of in-between 'Twas made to be seen.

-Eli Kay

21

What they are is not there,

Tucked inside skinny paper plates. Are

They going to be gone so

Soon? Before they drink too many

Or they cry before the tictoc

Of their quick, adolescent clocks

Stop? Heralding to all, everywhere,

That though they will tell their telling

Tales, they are no longer people

Of endless dreams. They are not what

Memory-making feeds because toctic

Has come to them, first time,

Last time, nine o’clock, it,

The cold, geriatric witching hour, is

Listlessly arriving in order for

Them to meet the aging tictic

Body-craved curfew, came at that instance

When they swore that to have five

Was not even the starting toc

To their toctic night, where minutes

Were slurring together so that only a toc

Felt as though it was far past

The means to down, to force, a number six,

The means to reach that solitary tic.

She, sprawled across a down-covered box spring,

Pinches here, pinches there, where there is

Tastelessly lumped flesh, not her, not

The mini-skirt and tank-top, carb regulated

Form. But he comes anyway and

Makes her shift to the right and the bed does

This ship-deck screech, not her, not

Like it was before, where now, later, to get,

Crawling and mascara-stained, out

Of the searching crowd below, out of

The boom-booming waiting, placed order

Of seeking, but never touching, intoxication nor

A lost-in-translation moment between do

And don’t. Ten-year-old music, its

Nostalgic fingers have calloused hands

- Sarah Gray Lesley

22

With patches of hair collected beside a

Line of ink-stained, paper-cut, bit little

Nails. His attempts, feeble, caresses, jerking

Rather than soft. You should move, move

To the left, he says. They’ve gotten over

Romance and play love like color-by-numbers.

No use in taking this charade slowly.

Wish it was that one guy, three years. We

Were not so tattered then. We do

Not have the stamina to jump, not

Have the hope to even try to wind

Ourselves up: Jack-in-the-box. It

Will do its job. It will get us up

Enough to look as though we relived it

But there is that man, not boy, who has

No drink, no lacy sweat beads, no

Organization on the ledges of his hand, weights

Of waiting weighing way down to springs

Of break, where car horns and rubber-burned wheels

Because of the soundtrack to the dance of inside

Circles, not circles of trust, circles of

Using and usability, and the feeling of its

Sweet, slobbery promises against the slender

Curve of a nameless girl. Drowning in self

And the loss of it. But now there is no

Slender, bottle-fed Barbie, no, indeed

All of the faces looking like those stalagmites of

Lessons unheard when moments were too dear

To waste with legs trapped underneath a learner of nothing.

But was the rush he felt, release of

Inhibition, the endless dazedness, the

Cataclysmic wanderings, made of the kind

Of joy he thought he’d never find again? So,

He leaves his coat and lunges himself back to when

The bass didn’t give migraines and a kiss

Did not wait to come only from one Spring

23

To the next, when a girl that, to you, comes

Comes as no surprise and thoughts of “we’ll

Never meet again” is followed by a hot wet kiss.

But he looks around, at all he sees, each

Has a pencil-colored mouth, and lines, not lips, to kiss,

To kiss another, one of those precious other

Who have too little cares and too little on

To dare try to say that they don’t want a kiss

From the one who has had too little of the

Punch, too little lacking, to dare think to kiss,

A trial run for bliss, a journey on foreign lips.

So he grabs one quickly, deftly, because

He’s swarmed and can’t tell which reached their tic

Of the toctic, but never tictoc, clocks.

She spins and stumbles, so clearly past toc.

“Hey, my name is…” But he tells, “Don’t”

Because he wants nameless faces to make

Tame-less graces in the nameless room, a

Head-of-the-bed clock going toctic

And with each locked lip, he feels the difference,

But he’s on his way, not going to

Missmiss yet another misguided kisskiss

Because the moment’s truth, so locked in you,

Is saved for few who rarely knew, and

Sweat’s bleeding unlike it used to

And all he wanted, dear God, was a

kiss

For the night’s ends of emptying of a

tocticked me.

Space Time - Anna Rinderer

24

Way out by the bay,

we drove for miles.

Because we thought,

that if we bought,

that idolized car they all would

say,

popularity can be taught.

But way out by the bay,

we witnessed,

what we never expected to see.

That person we never expected

to be.

That horrible time in May,

when it was she and not we.

And way out by the bay,

when things were said but not meant.

When we were who we weren’t,

And we never thought we’d learn what we learnt.

That the area that is all too grey,

won’t always protect you from getting burnt.

Way out by the bay,

when our only intention,

was to buy that beloved car.

Bay-bound Jacob Katzenstein

Poem by Lydia Granholm

25

Even though it was so far.

And when the populars spoke it was never just play.

It shouldn’t be up to her to keep her feelings in a jar.

We were way out by the bay,

with plans of a purchase,

so that the others would think,

that we,

and she,

were on the brink,

of no longer being less than “nothing” but more than “okay.”

But their words,

they

made

her

sink.

And so way out by the bay,

we achieved our goal, and they theirs.

And though we technically returned victorious,

to not cast blame they implored us.

But now in this car I see only what they say.

Once a fond memory, it’s now only

notorious.

Dai

sy B

ou

qu

et -

Ale

x D

un

can

Poem by Lydia Granholm

26

Prodigy

Sarah-Gray Lesley

Here we sit, you and I. Your finely filtered interior placed, systematically and aggressively high against the stiff, varnished wood. My face stuffed between the folds of your skin, my mind sag-ging under the weight, the mundane newness, while they sit round, legs crossed and fifty fallibly fancy papers crescendo-ing at their feet. Father and Mother consume one edge of the parental ring. From their parental loins I came, lathered and lavished, to be presented to the world with my head on a platter. A gift, I was, at the smashing age of three. Legos attached and detached to present a work of architectural genius, and they drained my satisfaction with a long game of photo-clicking and newspaper-publishing. The boy in the shadowed corners of such chronicling is barely notice-able now, sitting, on the other end, with malice in eye. His heart-hearty body slanted at a forty degree angle against the plastered wall, he is Br-other. Who knew that adding two roll-off-your-tongue consonants would break into a natural –other? It takes one to make the other. The otherness found in his two-a-day toned legs and my hairless pegs, the bulges riding through his biceps and the bones peek-a-boo-ing from mine.

Brother, Mother, Father, gnawing on boxed pizza pies, have stretched on mental tiptoes to find me, where I am, stapled on a prestigious precipice of prodigy, scavenger through the pages of the retreat inside my favorite novel. Oh there, found here, is a piece of compassion, tucked inside the pages of a Rushdie. One moor sigh and a half-moored life. Knifed. Sometimes I can sympathize. Fourteen years have passed since my crowning, my debut; eight years of fingers calculating for solutions that held no meaning that led to an innumerable number of checks sent to the doorstep of Brother, Other, Mother, Father: Home. You were delivered, shiny and new, drawing closer and closer. My work as an entire a child-hood, one confined to the halls of books and journeys and delights, ablaze. They surround me but do not touch.

27

White pages sensually seared with figures that merely tickle my brain. You, with the soft ideas and hard facts, grasp hold of some lobe that was earlier occupied. We were lost amidst the barbarian-ism, that cold-blooded anarchist mutiny, coiled inside the library. A cluster of students clumped in the stacks of the local university, where I, with growing pubescent savagery, scoured, with my paper-cut, ink-stained hands, the grotesque works of that fiend Tolstoy and that madman Hemingway. I brought them home to my family, arranging both bodies of blood and of work around a table. But when I was there, I swam solitary in those halls, sequestered by a team of sun-kissed elders with half-minds to mine, smiling and spill-ing laughs that tasted sour when my silence swallowed them. My sallow face played like imitations of you, incarnate in these pages. You have brought me here, sowing the unsolvable benefits. I re-main straddled with a howling hall of faces, pouring over fresh in-formation that stains stale in me. How could Mother-Father have known, adorned with that phos-phorescent lighting, holding my slickly formed new body, to not drop my bald head on the plastic linoleum? How to know that after only a few years, I would place on them a certain sense of placid-ity? You, oh school of guided thoughts, crammed with the wastes of knowledge, have sat inside me since that fateful moment. I, at the age of two and zero, crawled towards you and grasped for your meanings and organized them amongst my blocks, where women with butterfly glasses and cotton-ball hair would declare, “Ah, gen-ius!” We were proclaimed, you and I, me and you, verbally af-firmed. No time can separate us now, years not bring any divide. They still give me to you and you to me, both thicker, finer, and laminated to slaughter. I sigh half-moored sighs and watch the laughter of semi-scholar-ed barbarians play like a motion picture in the back of my thoughts. I wish wisely wait-full wishes with the slamming of another cover. Angel’s dust ascends. Descends. Again. I watch you, wading up to me, with cold passivity. Enjoy or not, we are bound or bonded together, surfaced to the world with con-joined identity.

28

We are the presented. Four through eleven we found each other with a visceral attraction of sorts, discovering and creating each of our growing figures, and me worshipping your ethereal essence and intelligence, molding myself to each. Now, how routine has trumped ecstasy, and a sense of the other-Brother jealousy and Mother-Father bothers have created muffled divides. I ask you to recall, upon a birthday, when I blew out spit and miniature flames with you placed against my hands. Recall how we retired to the soli-tude of my chambers. The light above, as we illuminated, flickered and died miserably, but I held you, in the darkness, your smell and mine mixing to a mysterious musk. Sleep subdued expectations.

With a defamatory spat, Brother viciously sends your fallen comrade to the floor. I feel no pang of worry for your care, nor how you are arranged. He states that he shall be leaving for bed, fol-lowed by a swift departure. Mother-Father watches, and I watch them. They contemplate Other-Brother philosophies with steady stares, then motor away, each, one following the other, always in alphabetical order. They seem to waddle more than walk. Either way it is the same.

My fingers clasp to the sharp-edged corner of your squared margins. We are one. I breathe your air, as you breathe mine. I stay, trapped against you, careening through all your ideas, proving all your theses, filling all your empties. I look, no, I dare a cheating, adulterous glance at my insidious collegiate novels. Those commu-nal, classless conspirators once stuffed in those universal halls are probably paperless-ly preparing for a night alit with unintelligent conversation along with a superfluous use of tongue in the passion-ate embrace of drunkenness. Where would I be placed in this riot-ous romp, if it weren’t for you? Perhaps I would be stacked be-tween the pillars of sweat-drenched bodies, reading the covers of empty beer cans, or uncovering the slope of the curves drawn on a disillusioned female? But you know that I will not. I could not.

29

Eleven rings on the clock above. It is late for us, but you, desperate you, reach from your two-dimensions and strangle the sleep from my drooping eyelids. I watch you unravel into naked theories, pulled from nothing like children’s salami-fingers reaching, into the darkness of curiosity, for any connection to the host of ob-servations. There is no basis, no priority. It is rather dull. I disprove each of your whims, avoid each conniving trick and dodge them, through the muddled haze of my weakening determination. I write a few thoughts on this self-proclaimed rogue’s work that you have led me towards. He finds himself revolutionary, while I find him insipid. For a moment, I believe that something may come from the glorious pouring of ideas that travel like electric cur-rents from the edge of my thoughts through the tense taught-ness of my arm into my clenched fingers. Scratching and scraping, you bleed into the page, and I think that I have it. I think that I have you. And it is wonderful, primitive, wistful. Flying through you, conquer-ing you like I will others when manhood has dressed me in inde-pendence and decisions. I can see him, a man born from you. And then you disappear from my ink, your blood no longer flowing, and there is justice in the subtle slowing of my instrument. A single tear sits on my bottom lid, but it is extraneous. I sleep with-out you, in the coldness of white-colored sheets that you bought me, and dream the dreams that are tattooed with you. I breathe the air in a way that you once told me was the best way to lengthen a life, my half-moored life. Knifed. I wake with thoughts of you. You, Brother, Other, Father, Mother congregate like dogs to the smell of breakfast without speaking in any semblance of eroticism, just weather and eggs that were birthed onto my plate from Father who grunted at me in ac-knowledgment. Yet I gain far more from his caveman communica-tions than you.

30

You are cradled in the crook between my right thumb and index finger, where your weight, over the years, has hollowed out a groove to rest in, take residence, and remind me, when you aren’t there, that you should be. We walk to my bed, where it is warmer with you here, where, at the scheme of chance, you begin to bring up something I have never heard before. It is Freudian, the study. Emotions described in linguistic calculations, that once read, can never be felt as it did previously. I see myself as a distorted reflec-tion against your pages. I hear my story inside your words. Your freshness overtakes me. It is quick, tender, like playground kisses underneath the swing sets, or at least how I imagined them when I read those barbaric books huddled underneath the covers of my protective fort of a comforter at the age of six. I analyze you, and you analyze me, and I realize that there is no you. There is only you inside me and me inside you. This is our half-moored, Other-ed life. I cannot hold you. You are shedding black tears, tiny roads mapping out reality and blurring the facts. I can no longer look at you, and as you drop to the heap of white, I can no longer see where you began or will end.

31

Joshua Masters

32

“Ignorance is not bliss: ignorance is mislabeled. Ignorance is used too

often. Ignorance shades the mind and creates a false fairy tale world for

us to subside in and fight over. We find ourselves speaking out against

others’ views, calling each other ignorant instead of just disagreeing.

We talk with no open mind nor a changeable opinion. In order to be

ignorant you need to be shaded from the truth, not disagree with

opinion.”

-Spencer Lane.

Linda Nguyen

33

Cameron Townsend

34

Qué Sera by Adrian Janni

“Qué sera,” my father would say, “sera.” I heard him say it first

when he, my two brothers, and I were by Pa-Pa’s bed as he died. Pa-Pa, my

grandfather, was as resilient as the steel he had worked. His heart, though, was

as warm as the fires in the mills. He fought death for months in the stuffiness

of our guest room, and was lively for every moment he had left. “Qué sera,

sera” was the verbal lifeblood of my father and his father alike. It means, in

Spanish, “What will be, will be.”

Pittsburgh was a hard place to be at the time, and even harder to be

from. White people were still uneasy around minorities, and would jump to

conclusions whenever crime was in the question.

“We’re all Americans in this country, even if our last names don’t end

in ‘son’ or ‘ton’,” my mother ranted. I was born to a Hispanic family, my

grandparents being from Spain. Both of my parents had been born in the

United States, my father Spanish-American and my mother African-American.

I did not feel the racial-tension until I started school (a year after Pa-Pa

passed). My family would then teach me to be tough before it got tough.

“Life will hit you hard, but not as hard as you can hit it back,” was one of my

dad’s many sayings. I was an easy crier, though, so I doubt would have ever

swung back. I had more toys than friends; I spent most of my days as a toddler

crashing my cars or smashing my G.I. Joes together. The neighborhood kids

never wanted to play with me, and would steal my toys to watch the water-

show my eyes would perform. My parents would scold me for the racket I

made, in what seemed to be their way of toughening. It would only make me

feel more alone—if it were not for Pa-Pa.

His scraggly face, framing his hazelnut eyes, would nuzzle my face as

we wrestled on his bed. The smell of rioja wine was woven into his jubilant

laughter. My mother would warn that all of the excitement was not good for

Pa-Pa’s condition, but he would just flash his smile of corn-teeth and say,

“Well, who else is going to tame mi pequeno monstruo?” He was my best

friend—unlike my brothers at the time. The two boys, both black-haired and

wild-eyed, were either finding trouble or making it. Pa-Pa told me that every

young man goes through such a phase, and said I would eventually too. I just

wanted to play with my best friend forever.Before his accident, Pa-Pa worked

the steel-mills alongside my father and uncles. He never complained about his

labor, unless it pertained to the outsourcing of factory jobs. “The Garcías have

melted iron ever since I fled Spain and its silly civil war. We forged the coun-

try you see today—and how do the big businessman on-top repay us? With a

swift kick to mi culo!” Pa-Pa swore up and down that he could still work de-

spite his third-degree-burned arm, but the company kept him suspended.

When it finally did heal, they did not fire him, as the men in suits claimed, but

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instead “implied retirement”. He had been employed for forty-two years.

His heart withered to be as wrinkled and dried as that scorched arm. After

Gramma passed away from unforeseen illness, years before he lost his job, Pa-

Pa stopped visiting and began avoiding our calls. My dad said he was suffer-

ing “depression”. I didn’t like the word at all, and I hated it more when my

grandfather wandered down the street on a weekend night and stood on our

front porch. His knocking on the door was hardly a tap and I was aghast to see

him when I opened the door. The street light behind him cast him as a silhou-

ette, making him look empty. His eyes were milky and stared unblinkingly

from the dark pits of his stony face. He seemed to be trying to say something

before he fell in a crumpled heap on the floorboards. My parents were there

faster than a Conway train. They called for our neighbor—a nurse—who then

kept him alive until the ambulance arrived. It was the most dead I had ever

seen him. The image of the hollow carcass that he embodied that night is for-

ever my definition for “depression”. For the first time in my life, I did not

sleep that night.

I didn’t know if he was still alive. After seeing him that night and

how he collapsed, I assumed he had died. When my father took the family to

visit him the next day, I thought we were going to his funeral. I saw no differ-

ence between a hospital and a morgue, so I was already in tears by the time we

got to the front doors, drowning in the mocking sunshine that plagued the sky.

Mother shushed me, and I grew quiet. I was startled by the fluorescent light-

ing, thinking a funeral home would be illuminated more subtly. Walking

through the halls, I thought the patients were corpses, and I held my breath

when I saw them walking too.

“Mama! Mama! Are those people… dead?” I whispered.“What?

No, they’re not dead! Don’t bother them, you got it, boy?” my mother, who

was busy with my little sister, ignored me. I continued to shiver with every

cream-colored door we passed, expecting some zombie or ghost to pop out.

We arrived at Pa-Pa’s room, and I became certain that he was dead. He laid

there unmoving, eyes closed and as pale as a desert. My parents and brothers

released a sigh of relief that appalled me. What, are they happy to see Pa-Pa

dead? Tears welling in my eyes again, I ran to the old man’s side and yelled,

“I am the only one who ever loved you, Pa-Pa!” My eyes remained clenched

shut until I heard his gravelly accent say, “Well, that’s all that matters.”

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Pa-Pa spent one week in the hospital, and after much argument on his part, was

moved to our house. The doctor told us to keep an eye on him and that he

should not overexert himself. He, of course, turned a deaf ear to the doctor. Pa

-Pa, who would defy the claim that he was bedridden, became my first play-

mate. No one my age wanted to play with the crybaby. My mother would be

cleaning or cooking in the house while he and I played pirates in the front yard.

Whenever my father wasn’t working, and had enough energy, he would come

out and play soccer with us. He guarded the goal (our driveway) as our

‘dynamic duo’ attacked with the tattered, brown ball. I always scored, even if I

missed the ball when I swung my foot at it.

For weeks we followed the routine of playing games, drawing pic-

tures and reading books (he did most of the reading, though). He would tire

easily, but could be rejuvenated with some cheese and two glasses of wine.

This man had changed—one moment he’s just my grandfather down the street,

and in another he’s my best friend. Pa-Pa was constantly criticized that he was

“not acting his age”. I thought that whatever age he was supposed to act, I

never would want to be it. He was always happy; except for the few times I

found him crying. At those times I would sit down and cry with him. That

would always cheer him up, and he would begin tickling me in response.

“Ooh, mi pequeno monstruo!” he would giggle.

One day, Pa-Pa and I were taking a walk through the neighborhood,

counting the cracks in the sidewalk and being extremely careful to not step on

them for my mother’s sake. My brothers had just gotten a car for themselves

and we thought it be gracious to not break her back when she was at risk of a

heart attack. He knew that he shouldn’t be out of bed for this long, and I told

him, as my mother always did. Spewing his wine-flecked breath, he spoke:

“You see, nietecito, I have been sick. But I… won’t be for much

longer. I have learned something in the time I have spent with you. You have

taught me so much, and I thought I had learned all that there was to know. We

all have so much to learn, and such little time to do so. I have found a certain

pride in realizing this, but sadness too,” he gets down on one knee and his eyes

meet mine, “Don’t ever grow up. You’ll waste too much time trying too.”I

was completely clueless to what he had said. It was just big person talk to me.

That began to change, though, when he collapsed for the second time the next

day. We didn’t even take him to the hospital. My father just carried him to the

guest room bed. The closest my father ever came to crying was when he said,

“The doctor’s prediction for his time left was too precise.”I did not leave Pa-

Pa’s side for days— I needed to be there for when he woke up. I had to be

dragged out of there just to eat dinner, and I would not even do that unless I

could bring it into the guest room.

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“He’s still breathing, heart rates faint— I’m sorry. He is still alive, but…” the

doctor stuttered the one time he visited.

“But what?” my father barked, his face either seething anger, fear, or

both.

“He’s comatose.”

“Comatose”— one of the few grown-up words I had known. I was

disheartened, but not hopeless when I heard it. Pa-Pa just had to live. He just

had to.

I want to say my grandfather went peacefully, but two days later the

whole neighborhood could have heard him die. Thrashing and screaming,

clawing and biting, he had awoken on a sunny evening and had taken to trying

to open the room’s tiny window. When he returned home by my mother’s call,

it took all of my father’s strength to pry him from the sill. Pa-Pa’s eyes bulged

with the same milky glaze again, and the vessels in his wrinkled, red neck

seemed fit to burst. Soon the whole family had gathered around the horrific

scene, stunned silently. I stood at the foot of the bed, where I was just tall

enough to watch my father grapple my withered friend. He continued to strug-

gle under my father’s restraint for what felt like an eternity. Finally, when I

couldn’t take it anymore, I jumped on the bed and screeched, “Stop it!”

He did— Pa-Pa stopped all of himself, with only his quivering lips

mouthing some incoherent words. His gaze was transfixed on me, no longer

glazed. The pain had passed, and with a labored inhale, Pa-Pa exhaled, “Mi

amo.” Light fled from his eyes, as the sunlight from his window did too. I

closed my eyes, and without crying, whispered, “my love to you too.” It was

then that I understood Pa-Pa’s words.

“Qué sera,” my father said, “sera.”

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Morgan Dean

39

Note to the Reader

Identity: The clichés are endless. Advertisements, movies, books, and articles

all implore teenagers to find their identity inside the halls of high school. We

are to know who we are by the time we finally reach the ever-approaching

“real world.” Being a generation bred from High School Musicals and epi-

sodes of Glee, we have been inundated with self-identification. Our journeys to

this moment of self-epiphany, however, aren’t strung together with catchy cho-

ruses or romantic rooftop dances, but more often than not, strings of the ordi-

nary. The literary magazine wanted to celebrate how this ordinariness can

breed the extraordinary in individuals, individuals who can then translate these

moments of realizations onto a page, whether that be through photographs,

paintings, poetry, etc.

Through selecting the stories, poems, and artwork that goes into this

year’s edition of the Tempest, we were thrilled to see the vast range of defini-

tions the authors and artists had for identity. More importantly, we found that

students not only explored their own identity but the identity of others, placing

themselves in others’ shoes to understand a perspective beyond their own.

Through this, I came to my own realization that this search for finding how we

are unique frequently overshadows the search to understand the unique facets

within and beyond communities that we live in. I hope that inside this maga-

zine there is at least one story, poem, work of art, or pieces within each, that

connects to your perception of your identity. I invite you to open up and ex-

plore the themes throughout, explore the stories, explore the tensions within

the sketches, explore the line breaks of the poems, because each has the direct

purpose of allowing you, the reader, to explore, not only the identity of the

writer or artist, but a piece of your own identity.

Many thanks to Mrs. and Mr. Davis, our supervisors. Thank you for

tirelessly rallying the staff throughout the year to allow this magazine to be-

come reality, and more importantly, thank you for understanding the impor-

tance of a literary magazine within a high school community. Also, thanks to

Eli Koterba. Without your constant efforts to perfect (and then re-perfect, and

then re-re-perfect) the layout of the magazine, this year’s Tempest would never

have become a reality. Thank you to all the Tempest staff who have devoted

many hours to selecting and perfecting this magazines. Your input and ever-

available assistance were irreplaceable. Thank you to all who submitted. Your

work both inspired and challenged the staff in more ways than one. Thank you

for your bravery to give us a piece of yourself, let us publish it, and then shuf-

fle it around school. Finally, thank you, Reader, for exploring this collection of

identities. There is no greater gratification than to have your work seen and

appreciated.

With gratitude,

Sarah Gray Lesley

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