Pottery
Maya Serrano '24
The Lemon Tree
Maya Serrano '24
Skinwalkers of Timbermill
Bernie Gallagher '25
Auditory Poetry
Althea Culaba '23
Velvet Vines
Abigail LeBovidge '23
Wisp
Katelyn Puglia '23
a figure worth Nothing
Andrino Sabia '24
Within the Eyes of a Desert Owl (excerpt)
Bernie Gallagher '25
Fall for Me
Maya Serrano '23
Equilibrium
Abigail LeBovidge '23
Maya Serrano '24
The Lemon Tree
Maya Serrano '24
Skinwalkers of Timbermill
Bernie Gallagher '25
Auditory Poetry
Althea Culaba '23
Velvet Vines
Abigail LeBovidge '23
Wisp
Katelyn Puglia '23
a figure worth Nothing
Andrino Sabia '24
Within the Eyes of a Desert Owl (excerpt)
Bernie Gallagher '25
Fall for Me
Maya Serrano '23
Equilibrium
Abigail LeBovidge '23
Pottery
Smooth pottery sleeps on my shelf,
Like pearls from a deep ocean,
Crafted by salty currents,
Stained watery lapis patterns,
Glass dancing with the light,
Frightening.
Porcelain shrieks in agony,
The cry pierces empty space,
Beauty breaks,
So suddenly,
So tragically,
Into jagged, serrated, fragments.
Fragility is designed to shatter,
So I ask myself:
Is it wiser to avoid delicate items?
Or to love until its destruction -
And be left with the pieces.
- Maya Serrano '24
The Lemon Tree
upon the grave of
his loyal German Shepherd,
grandfather planted a lemon tree.
the plant flourished,
its roots hugging the remains of life,
its arms dripping,
vibrant yellow,
flavorful fruit.
when granddaughter visited,
she remembered to bring a basket,
to fill with sour treats.
soon, her wicker basket
creaked under the weight,
and she clambered across
smoldering, summer pavement,
to offer a sweet lemon to
each and every pastel door.
but now,
she is old,
sitting across from me,
stuck in time, in a silent house,
tugging the story from her memory,
like she used to tug the lemons
from the branches
of her grandfather’s tree.
- Maya Serrano '24
upon the grave of
his loyal German Shepherd,
grandfather planted a lemon tree.
the plant flourished,
its roots hugging the remains of life,
its arms dripping,
vibrant yellow,
flavorful fruit.
when granddaughter visited,
she remembered to bring a basket,
to fill with sour treats.
soon, her wicker basket
creaked under the weight,
and she clambered across
smoldering, summer pavement,
to offer a sweet lemon to
each and every pastel door.
but now,
she is old,
sitting across from me,
stuck in time, in a silent house,
tugging the story from her memory,
like she used to tug the lemons
from the branches
of her grandfather’s tree.
- Maya Serrano '24
Skinwalkers of Timbermill
I was six years old the day it happened. My father never came back from work. I left the television on. He didn’t call. On that day, there was something in me that thought he would reach out to me. As if he would call me and say, ‘Billy I’ll see you soon,’ but he just never came home. There were people who knew that it would kill off about seven billion people out of the near eight billion. There were less than a billion people within the world after it happened. They predicted it. The television told me to stay inside. They showed pictures and videos. They thought it was a virus or something. The way people were dying was not anything like a virus. It was almost as if people were dropping dead. This happened repeatedly. Until the news stopped talking.
After nine days I ran out of food. The street was so empty. There were no cars running, dogs barking and fighting in the streets. The sky was gray and the air was stagnant. I did not leave the house until day ten, the grocery stores were closed. Chained shut and locked. I was scared, alone, and starving. The news called it the year of terror. I did not see anyone. The news explained how the disease worked, but I was so young. My tiny brain couldn’t comprehend it. I kept the door locked.
The next eleven weeks I lived off of scarce food. The power shut off a while ago. The television stopped giving out news. I realized I couldn’t survive without people. I had to find an adult. I had to go find people somewhere. There had to be a family that survived. There had to be more than just me. I didn’t know where they all went. I assumed that the disease was so fast that within over a week it made almost everyone gone.
I packed all of my things that I needed, the news spoke of gas masks. Although they weren’t even entirely sure that there was a virus. I wouldn’t take the risk of denying the possibility. There was one in the basement. For painting or cutting wood, never knew. It was too big for my face but generally it was okay.
I walked about as far as the next town over, there was loud music playing from a brown house. The brown house stood stoically. The grass around it was tall, and not only was there loud music playing but underneath the noise, there was a baby crying. The early september air stung my skin. It was hot and dry. I went inside the house, the inside was dark and the crying continued. There was a dinner table and on it was a baby.
I looked over it, it looked back at me with its eyes. The mask I had on scared it more, so I took off the mask and it stopped crying. The music was still playing, loudly. If there was a baby there had to be a mother. The house was slow, hardly a home. I walked until the back end of the house. The window had dust on it, so wiping it off would allow me to see the backyard. I found its mother there.
She was sleeping in the backyard. The baby kept crying, so I went to go meet her. Wake her up and tell her that her baby was crying and that her baby was very cute. The backyard was bigger when you stood in it. She was sleeping face down. I realized that she was not alive. I had never seen a dead person.
I turned my head around to face the house. Painted in huge white words, ‘NO HOPE, PLS SAVE BABY.’ She killed herself when she thought she was sick. Or ran out of food for the rest of the people. There was something farther, in the back of the yard. I walked closer to the thing in the back of the yard. It was a pile of people. Rotting away.This was uniquely scary because I had never actually seen a dead person before that, only fake dead people.
I turned away, and walked back to the house and took the baby and looked for baby food. Taking whatever was there, was the only thing I could do for this baby. It was so small and quiet. There was a crudely made bracelet fashioned around its wrist. In sharpie words, Joseph was written on the bracelet. I took him, and promised him that he would live a long life.
By the time I was twelve we had made it to a community, Greenville. The Monadnock Valley supported it. Joseph was 6 years old. We were put in apartments and we went to school. We had a nanny, Esmeralda. She had dark hair and eyes, she wore reds and pinks and dark browns. Her voice was sweet when she talked of the before. I hardly remember anything from before.
Greenville became known as one of the most metropolitan communities in the Monadnock Valley. The Warmen built walls around Greenville, and it kept expanding. There was no electricity. Grass grew through the cracks in the concrete. Horses would graze from it. When there were batteries or gasoline we would use them for whatever electricity they could provide us. Generators gained cobwebs because we never used them. When we first made it to Greenville, they had loudspeakers that played music for prayers.
People don’t believe in god anymore. They believe in spirits. Esmeralda told Joseph and I that after everyone dropped dead, she thought that the god she prayed to was evil. Her son and husband died six years ago. She believed that ghosts and spirits would manifest themselves as good luck or bad luck and you can really only hope for the best.
Greenville had only some scientists, they told us that the dropping dead was caused by a blip in the frequency emulated from Saturn's rings that ceased brain activity in some people. There were waves of it, but I had never witnessed the dropping dead, only the surreal feeling of being alone within a matter of days. Thinking back on the past years I don’t know what I thought it was. I was just existing with the consequences of it.
When I was thirteen, Joseph and I had become desperate. We diverted to worse ways of gaining Federal bank notes. We began smuggling contraband into Greenville. Many people wanted alcohol and pot, but we could only get those from the river hippies and fishermen. So we traded books with the river hippies for pot and we traded batteries with the fishermen for alcohol. We could only leave at night though the river gate. They needed fish, and so they put no filter though the water of the river. We only had to swim under the wall of steel. We would return at the crack of dawn with the amenities that people generally couldn’t get in Greenville. This got us good money. Money to help us survive and maybe one day be set free from Greenville.
Esmeralda got me a job when I was fourteen, she knew what Joseph and I were doing. She wanted us to find a way to launder the Bank Notes. People in Greenville called them Units. Pieces of paper that qualified as currency. The ‘before’ currency was never used; only burned. The old way of life was gone. Esmeralda talked of New Hampshire, what it once was. United, no famine, no wars, and no violence.
An older boy, who bought from us, his name was Noah. He said he would come with us if we ever needed help. He spoke rough, and he reminded me of Esmeralda. Although his actions said differently. His voice and mannerisms show that he had been a reflection of the fact he had probably been raised by Esmeralda. He probably grew up hearing her.
By the time I was fifteen, we were disappearing from Greenville for days and going north and meeting the crystal meth gangs. Trading food, water purifiers for meth. Greenville got larger and more addicted. The suicide rate in Greenville went up, people were depressed, they couldn’t leave the boundaries. None in, and none out. Self sufficient. People couldn’t be happy when they were trapped.
Sixteen years old, they caught us. The Monadnock Warmen caught us coming back with contraband. They sentenced us to death, they were going to hang us. Joseph and I sat in the concrete cell. The walls were slightly moist with the summer's humid air. The bricks were cold, and we sat on the wooden planks on either side of the room. There was no light, just wind.
“Billy, are we gonna die?” Joseph asked me, as he looked up from the ground.
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t wanna die Billy.”
“I know.” I said, trying to reassure him that he was okay. In reality, it was likely we were going to die. We had seen public executions for praying to “a false god” and executions for leaving.
The Warmen that came to take us was tall and dark. His voice was rough, his face wasn’t visible, but his mannerisms were. It was Noah, He had enlisted as a Warman last year.
“I am going to get you two out of here,” He said softly. “They shouldn’t execute children, it's unjust.” He unlocked the door of the cell and slid the metal bars open slowly, not even a clank or crack could be heard. He guided us both out of the prison, and brought us to the wall.
The wall was made of shipping containers and fences, steel beams in some spots. But it was a barricade. The Warmen held their stash of weapons in the storage containers. He gave both Joseph and I a gun and extra rounds. He took all that he could. Food, water, more guns.
He came with us out the door. There were Warmen patrolling the wall, and they saw us leave. Within seconds they ordered that we stop trying to leave. They kept yelling, halt, stop, return. They began to fire at us.
“Run in a zigzag pattern!” Noah yelled, and so that's what we did and before we knew it we were in the woods still running. It was dark outside, a cold freezing night. The scratch of fall before it even arrived. Left its mark in the air as my breath became visible. The moonlight did nothing for us. We kept running. Zigzagging through the trees. We had to make it to the river. The Warmen came after us on horseback. Their automatic guns rang in the distance, bullets pierced trees and then pierced Noah.
“F***!!” He yelled, causing us to reconvene, but he kept moving, running, probably faster than any of us. The thud of hooves against the ground, the sound grew and grew. We made it to the river, and I looked back to see the Warmen on our paths barreling at us. We began to swim across the river.
The three horses stood on the riverbank, they were looking for us in the river. Their guns pointed at the flowing water. There was an unspoken idea that we needed to stay under the water. We kept going and going. Joseph grabbed onto me, not my shirt, not my pants, but my skin.
Once we made it to the other side of the river, we crawled out. I had to pull Joseph out, the river bed on the other side had trees and bushes so we hid in those until the Warmen gave up. Walking deeper into the forest on the other side brought us to a road that ran along the side of the river.
The Warmen would not go more than 7 miles away from Greenville. There was grass coming through the road. More out here than in Greenville. We never usually saw this area in the daylight. There was no sun, just gray sky for miles. The late summer heat had returned to my skin. The humidity made my hair frizz up.
Noah was hurt badly, they hit his side. He was bleeding, there was a stain on his shirt. Deep maroon nearly black. Noah’s lively warm skin was now pale. His breathing was sharp and weak. Soon he couldn’t walk. We carried him to the River Hippies, they immediately took him in.
They knew what to do. After they took him into a trailer, we didn’t see him for a day. On that day we did nothing but worry. They gave us herbs, Joseph was tired from moving so fast so quickly. We stayed in the community, they took care of us.
The next morning we sat on lawn chairs outside of where Noah was. Alvara, the medicine woman, emerged from the trailer where Noah was being treated. She walked down the wooden stairs; they bent under her weight, which seemed close to nothing. The state of the stairs was revealed. They were rotting away.
Those wooden steps remained in the same place for their entire life and now they are rotting away. Never appreciated, only used. Joseph and I would never return to Greenville. Or we would be like those steps. No way in fuck would I rot away, I am going to be free, a walker in my own skin. Greenville would pronounce us dead, but something told me that Esmeralda would know we were alive. She had that way about her.
Alvara walked up to us and took off her thick glasses, “He’s going to live, but he will be weak.” She said before she sighed, “How long do you plan on staying?” Alvara tilted her head and faced towards me.
“Not long, it should be quick.” I said to her, softening my expression. Knowing that Noah was going to be okay was enough for me to soften.
“He told me everything,” She paused and breathed a deep breath. “Will the Warmen come?”
“Alvara no! They won’t go too far from the city walls.” Joseph chimed in.
“Are you certain Joseph?” Alvara said condescendingly, as if she didn’t believe in his comprehension of the government that he had been living under, but he was correct. They do not generally leave the area of Greenville. As she continued to talk with us she seemed unsure about harboring criminals. She talked of how she did not want to get raided again.
The next morning we saw Noah, his eyes were yellow and his mouth hung open. He walked with a limp. A very noticeable limp. When we saw him he was standing on a dock by the river and clutching a stick for balance. He turned around and his eyes were yellow.
“They hit my liver.” Noah said as he turned back toward the river.
“Are you gonna die?” Joseph asked.
“No, my liver will just be slow and I can’t drink no more.”
“We need to go.” I said to Noah, he turned around and faced me his facial expressions didn’t soften, only grew in confusion.
“Where would we go?”
“Far, far from here.”
“Hey, Billy I know a spot!” Joseph exclaimed, Noah and I both looked at him. We wanted him to explain. “Remember that abandoned community…?”
“Yeah, it was called Timbermill, right?”
“Yes, we could go there because they think everyone there is dead.” Joseph said confidently as he said everything. His blond hair looks greasy; he hadn't washed it in a while. Timbermill was on the Merrimack but out of the Merrimack valley. It was perfectly hidden.
We grabbed our things and planned our route to Timbermill. We left within an hour, and followed main roads for multiple hours. There was a sinister smog in the air, there was tall grass growing through the concrete canyons that formed due to absolutely no maintenance.
We came to something out of place, something strange. It didn’t belong where it was. Noah covered Joseph's eyes. I looked up toward a phone poll, it stood stoically in the smog. The wood was rotting but it remained tall. The only thing odd about it was at the top was a body. A naked male body, he looked young and I recognized who he was.
He was Derek Savio. He went to school with me in greenville. He and his father tried to escape and Greenville had told us they had been executed outside of the walls. This token, this symbol represented he had escaped. He was missing skin and he looked skinny, on his chest the words “Be wary Skinwalkers” were carved deep into the muscle.
Skinwalkers was a term used by the New-Spirituality that defined people who had died and came back possessed by evil spirits. To Greenville we were Skinwalkers. We were dead but alive to them. A bounty must have been posted on our heads and sent to all the valleys. We were going to be hunted. We had to move fast, faster than we were already moving.
They knew we were alive, but posted us as Skinwalkers. They wanted us to be Skinwalkers, they wanted to portray us as evil demons in the bodies of children. In this moment I remembered my promise to Joseph, he would live. I would have to be a Skinwalker to protect him. We were now Skinwalkers.
We continued on to Timbermill, staying weary of the danger ahead.
- Bernie Gallagher '25
Auditory Poetry
Every Friday night, I scream at the top of my lungs.
The microphone is a familiar weight in my hand, each nook and groove having impressed its shape into the grip of my palm. I’m sweaty, my vocal chords are aching, and my ear drums are raw from four instruments worth of sound that the amps are generating: the roaring beats of the drums, the glaring distortions of both guitars, and the deep hums of the bass. I glance to my right, waiting and unsure, making eye contact with the bassist befo-
The snares loudly crash once, twice, thrice. I scream.
To achieve the perfect sound is far from just the perfection of the individual parts. It is to have an acute awareness of the artists you’re surrounded by, to communicate to them without spoken language, to share a single glance that will catalyze the beginning of a masterpiece. It is as much of a collective experience as it is an individual one. It is our band, as much as it is my band.
We call ourselves The Wackys. We are an entirely combined effort, a synergism of 5 members that cannot be replicated. I am proud to have founded this experience. I may be a top student and a prospective English major, but nothing on my transcript will have the capacity to convey my ability to collaborate and create original music. My GPA cannot communicate how my mind visualizes melodies and harmonies, or how my vocal chords can easily recreate it. No amount of academic award or recognition will illustrate my knack towards artistry.
That said, my pure obsession with poetry and literature has certainly aided this creative process. I’ve always dreamed of being a writer—I’ve written many essays, poems, and short stories, and I’ve fallen in love with novel after novel. It turns out that writing a song is essentially just writing poetry. I can write a song in the iambic pentameter, annunciating the syllables in just the right way to follow the meter of Shakespeare’s greatest works. I may choose to run on a lyric without pause, similar to the way a poet uses enjambment, in order to illustrate the rising tension as the song reaches a climax. Every song and poem of mine follows a specific pattern, ebbs and flows a certain way, and captures profound significance in its careful diction. To be a poet is to be a musician, and vice versa; one cannot exist without the other.
When writing any poem (or really, any piece of literature) or song, you ask the same set of questions: What message do you want to convey? From what perspective does it speak from? What’s the tone, mood, theme? How much will your audience be impacted? Will you leave the audience wanting more?
Once answering these questions, only then can you allow yourself to look for the specific components of the piece. Finding the correct arrangement of instruments and their specific setting and mixing requires the level of forethought and nuance as fleshing out the characters of a novel. If these characters, these instruments, are made too slow and monotone, you risk losing the captivation of your audience. Yet, if made too aggressive, they become widely unappealing and dislikable.
After the lyrics are made and the instruments are set, can we finally combine the musical components in their entirety. It is a lengthy and finicky process: repeatedly adjusting the guitar and bass tunings, singing with a backup vocalist to solidify harmonies, going through the song a million times to ensure that everyone knows what happens and when. It requires the same amount of effort as one puts into writing and editing an essay; I’ve had to rewrite this very one about three times already.
Being in this band and collaborating with fellow artists exposed me to the greater meticulousness of the writing process. These songs, unlike a poem or a novel, don’t reflect the voice of one author, but the voices of five. The sheer amount of cooperation necessitated in the process is an art in it of itself. It is the culmination of analytical thinking and social awareness, with regards to the different perspectives of everyone it involves.
The point of it all is to leave a lasting mark on those impacted by our work; we perform for Filipino communities throughout New England, advocating for diversity and inclusivity. I know that my love of music, reading, and writing combined can translate into something so much bigger. With 15,000 Filipinos in Massachusetts and 4.2 million in the US, I aspire to tell our stories. My voice doesn’t just sing for a band, it speaks a universal language: the language of my people, of human persistence.
I am the combined voice of five, of 15,000, of 4.2 million, of 8 billion. I bring forth the voices of writers, rockers, immigrants, and advocates alike. I am what I was raised by—a collective.
- Althea Culaba '23
Velvet Vines
You hold me steady in your arms
My lips still sweetened from your kiss
I’m wrapped up tightly, safe from harm
And nothing could be thought amiss
We sit and watch the sunset bliss.
But I remain here after dark
Entwined, you will not let me go
It’s getting cold in this gray park
But how was I supposed to know
How fast these velvet vines can grow.
The apple core has fallen down
Its flavor faded, mouth is dry
And I’m suspended, far from ground
Strung to branches, bound to sky
And wailing out my bitter cry.
The sting of vines around my wrists
The scrape of bark all down my bones
When a tree falls in the forest
It lets escape its horrid groan
And maybe then I can go home.
- Abigail LeBovidge '23
Wisp
You are a traveler, walking alone. Though it is dark, you know your way with no need for lanterns or maps. Your only guide is the road, but after years of routine journeys, it has become a trusted friend. The sound of dirt crunching beneath your boots has become so familiar that it is soothing. Your thudding footsteps and the gentle song of crickets are the only things that break the fragile silence. You know that each footstep will build off of the last. The worry from your week falls away.
You picture your destination, turn the image over in your mind, see how it glimmers-- the city all crowded with people. They are safe in numbers there. It’s a safety you don’t have on the path, familiar as it may be. When you arrive, it’ll be a bright, clear morning. For breakfast you’ll gather round a table with a big group of people whose company you love. Their eyes will be bright with tears forming in the corners from laughter. As you walk the path, you remember how your ribs feel aching from a true belly laugh and what it feels like to have a stomach full of good food. These thoughts keep you going.
In the distance, there is the faint scent of salt. You’ve heard there is a bog near here somewhere, but you haven't seen it, and you’ve never wanted to visit it. Well, maybe once or twice the thought has crossed your mind, but then you thought of how the mud would cling to your shoes and how you’d carry the rotten smell with you to the city. Besides, how would you find it in the dark?
That is when you catch something out of the corner of your eye. It’s so faint, you wonder if your eyes are playing tricks on you, or if perhaps it’s only a glint of moonlight reflecting off of something. When you turn to look, though, you see a humming blue light just beyond the path, beyond an old wood fence with huge gaps in the triangle-cut logs.
You can tell it’s not the soon-to-set moon or the soon-to-rise sun. It’s something new, yet something familiar. It’s not a comfortable kind of familiarity, like the road is, but the sensation of being startled by something you didn’t think you’d recognize. It’s the jolt in your heart when you bump into an old friend from your school years at the marketplace. It’s deja-vu from a fairytale.
You recognize that it’s the ghost-light. It’s the Wisp.
As a child, you were warned many times by many grown-ups you respected: “you must walk the path without straying.” Scolding voices told you if you ever saw a blue light beyond the path to look away. It’s faeries or demons-- they could never quite make up their minds --trying to twist your mind and lure you to your doom.
But you’ve grown up since then. If you wanted to, there would be nothing to stop you from going after it. The freedom of this moment is thrilling and terrifying all at once. It’s up to you, and only you, to make the choice.
You catch yourself. Choice? you think. There is no choice. You imagine your city friends’ faces contorting in judgment if they could see your hesitation in following the path.
It’s the first time you’ve seen the Wisp, though. Maybe it will be your last. How many travelers pass up this opportunity out of fear, you wonder? How many adventures are lost by following the road? That’s a dangerous thought, and you know it, but you can’t quite shake it. What waits beyond the Wisp? There is only one sure way to know.
You step off of the path.
Your boots sink in the muddy grass a bit, but you move quickly enough to not get stuck. You start out walking, but as the mud clings more to your shoes and the light seems brighter and closer, you’ve broken into a run before you know it.
You hop the fence. It’s easier than you ever would have imagined.
Then, you take off into a sprint. You can see the Wisp before you now, a cluster of blue flame darting away from you. You chase after it, splashing the cold water with your boots as you go, weaving around cattails and leaping over stones. Frogs croak and birds begin to stir as the first rays of sunlight mingle with the fog. The world is waking at last. It’s like a game of tag from when you were younger, and your gasps for breath turn into giddy laughter like that of a child’s.
There’s a moment when you think you have the Wisp cornered, surrounded by trees. As you reach out for it, however, the Wisp vanishes all at once. The world plunges into shadows and silence-- no frogs, no birds, only you and the cold.
You stare into the darkness in disbelief as if that will bring it back, as if any of this made sense in the first place. Why did you have to stray from the path? You whirl around, trying to discern which direction you came from, but it’s no use. The morning light feels so far away.
But just as you think the Wisp is gone forever, it reappears in your hands. The brilliant blue fire burns your eyes, but somehow not your palms. You hold the Wisp tight to your chest…
- Katelyn Puglia '23
a figure worth Nothing
When you walk out that door,
You must make people's heads turn.
When you step outside,
You will make people say “woah”
But nothing more than that!
do looks define a person,
if you wear different attire?
does a face define your figure,
if you put makeup on?
do you cover yourself up,
if you hold on to the past?
does it wound you like marks,
if you let them bleed through?
does it make you estranged,
if you cut off your hair?
do you lose your Identity,
once you look in the mirror?
Or do you aspire to be
The person in the mirror?
do you gain anything,
if you are smart?
only to be called insufferable.
do you climb mountains,
if you start below the valley?
only to be pushed down once atop.
do you try to be yourself,
if you are at risk of being yourself?
Only to be yourself in the end.
You mustn’t fight a war,
Even if God gives you the will
You must wear the face,
Of the reflection in the mirror.
- Andrino Sabia '24
Within the Eyes of a Desert Owl -- Chapter 1
I remember my mother would tell me stories of the desert. How it was once an ocean, filled with life and creatures beyond comprehension. The ocean drained and millions of years later people arrived. They built empires, cities, and culture and religion. That was soon to be wiped out and drained like the ocean before them. White men came and changed their culture. It became new. More and more white men came and divided the land. They kept the indigenous inhabitants that had been warped by the white man and were now bound to the south. The white man kept the land to the north.
The white man labeled the people who had been living on this continent as red or brown. The colors of materials, used to degrade them of their genetic makeup. The men of the south would do things that the white man could not profit off of, the white man banned which they, themselves could not profit off of.
The White man designed an environment in which the brown or red man could not thrive. The men of the south began to thrive by profiting off of white men. Soon the white men banned the narcotics from the southern men. Whilst continuing to manufacture it within their own borders and using demonized narcotics to demonize certain communities.
All this history started and happened in the desert. A biome which stretched over a considerable percentage of the continent. The world consisted of biomes, places, and empty space.
The universe is simple to one when you look at it from an engineering perspective. It's a composition of light, matter, and energy. Consciousness is energy. Energy is never created nor destroyed, so if consciousness is energy and energy is never created or destroyed maybe the energy from consciousness is reused and recycled. Or it could linger, taking up space in between dimensional planes of existence.
Thoughts like these filled my head while driving down the same, long desert-road late at night. My work was quite far out in the boonies, so I had to go down a derelict road cutting through the desert. My company was an engineering firm for scientific advancement. They only hire three people per year, so I considered myself lucky that I had the opportunity to come back to Texas to work in a job for which I had a reasonable liking.
Working for a scientific research company in Boston would have been hell. Having an occupation near where I went to college was not appealing. Paying off the debt of my accumulated loans wouldn’t have been possible if it weren’t for the incident. Being home in El Paso made me happier because there was more time with my mother. My siblings and I couldn’t tell if she was so inclined to do to herself what my father had done to himself. My father was a great man, he was an engineer, a mathematician and a pioneer of revolutionary sciences.
I wanted to get home faster, so these thoughts wouldn’t be occupying my head aimlessly and without permission to set up shop and tell me of occurrences I wished to forget. The only way to get home would be to drive down the road continuously until I got back to my house in El Paso. The long commute did not bother me, a job that allowed my family to be supported was more important than a lousy hour long drive to work.
Cacti and desert shrubbery passed by, shadows illuminated in the setting sun. The landscape was alien to anyone else who had not lived here. The road stretched further though the barren bush. Staring out into the blank land with barely anything was my attempt at redirecting my intrusive thoughts about my father. Thinking about my father caused me to speed up.
The air conditioning in my car was broken. My car was hotter than the desert, even though night time was drawing close and the sun was almost fully submerged under the horizon. Working late caused me to miss my wife and children more, it was as if the only chance I got to speak to them was when it was appropriate to say ‘Good morning’ and ‘Good night’.
The heat was slapping me in the face, causing me to break a sweat. Feeling the crevasse and round shapes of my frontal cranium get wetter, I wiped the spaces between my facial features. Sweat dripped from my scalp and fell to my eyes. It stung, I blinked repeatedly, taking attention away from the road. When I looked back at what I thought was a completely empty road, a tanker truck emerged from the amber sun-rays. In hurry, I spun out of control and went off the road into a ditch faster than my mind could process.
The force caused me to whip my head on the steering wheel. A flash of unearthly images appeared in my vision. Machines, people, Things that are not of our planetary biology. There was no perceivable explanation to what was happening.
I woke up, and my car was surrounded by desert brush. The sun had fully set now. Cacti and Joshua Trees. A cactus stood solidly in front of my car, the moon illuminated its stature.
On the arm of the cactus was an owl, facing away from me. Looking out into the nothingness of the desert. looking up in awe at what I was seeing as if this were my first time seeing a desert owl, but there was something about this owl. It turned its head fully around to reveal completely orange eyes.
The eyes were more animal than bird, but more human that animal. It was like I was making eye contact with someone who I knew and they knew that I knew them. Blood trickled from my face and into my left eye. Looking down in discomfort, I wiped the blood out of my eye with my hand. My head turned and faced back up at the cactus on which the desert owl was perched and the desert owl was gone.
My arm weakly opened the car door and I managed to crawl out. Coughing up blood, still processing what happened. My body was sore, it tried with struggle to hike its way out of the ditch, which wasn’t a deep ditch at all. Looking back at my car had allowed me to realize how bad the accident was. The front was dented inwards and the front was almost completely crushed against the thorax of the car. It was astonishing how my car had just found its way off the road with such distance. As I was walking up a cactus snagged my shirt and ripped the shitty material off of me. I was shirtless now, and the moon illuminated my tattoos.
The long stretch of road sat calmly and dryly below my destroyed four year old shoes. I looked side to side. Remembering that there was a gas-station down the road caused me to walk back to my car. I took the gallon of water out of my trunk so it was less likely to die of dehydration.
I walked along the side of the road. The stars were bright. The desert was pale and dark at the same time. Everything was still. After walking for 30 minutes, the gas station stood in front of me. It was a small square building with gas pumps out front. Then a quaint derelict white building that was wrapped in a red and gold band of light. It stood in the barren landscape as a token of humanity, a sign that capitalistic values can reach to the farthest regions of the planet. I walked to the pay phone and called my wife. She picked up the phone.
“L-Luciana..” I muttered.
“Joseph, are you alright? You sound disoriented,” She said. “You should’ve been home by now.” Her beautiful voice was somewhat distorted by the pay phone’s poor quality.
“Yeah, I’m alright. I crashed my car coming home from work.”
“Are you alright?”
“You already asked me that,” I said. “I’m alright physically.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m at that gas station on the road coming out of the city.”
“Which one?”
“It is literally the only one on the street.” I said, frustrated at her for not knowing a road that was barely traveled by anyone.
“I’ll be there,” said my wife
“I love-” I was cut off by her hanging up.
I put the pay phone back up in its box, and I walked into the store. It was a small convenience store. Walking to the back, made me realize the actual spatial depth of the store. At the back there were freezers filled with drinks and booze. I walked down the middle aisle until I got to the third aisle down that was perpendicular to the middle aisle. There was a man in the aisle. Adjusting my glasses allowed me to see the man. He was facing the chips on the shelf, he turned to me. He didn't just resemble my father. He was my father. He could not truly have been my father because my father had killed himself when I was thirteen.
“Gordon Wienberg?” I asked, puzzled by what I was seeing.
“What?” The man who greatly resembled my father said back. He looked just as confused as me. He turned his head to face me, the iridescent light reflected off of his glasses. He was wearing exactly the same clothes as I last remembered him wearing. It was a sight that confused me beyond my comprehension. He started talking.
“Joseph… your tattoos.” He muttered.
I could not come to terms with what I had just seen. I looked at the anti-shoplifting mirror that faced me. It only reflected me, and no one else. The mirror showed me how shitty I looked from the crash. No shirt, and my tattoos were showing. My glasses were cracked and my hair was engulfed in sweat. My face was covered in blood that dripped down the middle of my face. His image faded at the same rate as his nearly incoherent muttering.
Mirages are quite common for people who work deep in the desert of the American Southwest. The head trauma as well as the heat were the probable cause of my deceased fathers appearance. There was no other rational explanation to what had happened. There was nothing of importance at that gas station except a shirt. I bought a cheap gas station brand tee-shirt and waited outside on the curb for my wife to come.
I thought about what needed to be done after today, I’d have to find the money and time for a clean up crew to pick up the remains of the car. Then I’d have to see the doctor, and get a new car. My pockets were deep and there was something metallic in the bottom of my right pocket. I pinched it and pulled it out.
It was my graduation ring, a brass ring with a beaver carved into the top. along the side read the year 1976. It was thirteen years ago that I graduated from MIT. Waiting for my wife, left me with time to think. Being alone with my thoughts was dangerous in my opinion.
After waiting for thirty minutes she finally pulled into the lot of the gas station in the dark green car equally if not more fucked up than my car had been. I stood up off of the curb and walked over to her car. She let me in and I sat down. She opened her arms with the intention of embracing me. She hugged me and the feelings of fear and confusion dissipated.
Five seconds into our hug it felt as if a dream was playing in front of my eyes. The world stopped and this vivid dream was my only existence. My arms were still wrapped around her and I could feel that.
It was like the dream was allowing me to see from someone's perspective. This perspective I had never seen before and was not normal. The perspective allowed me to view a bathroom that had seemed to be originally white but by years of time having its effect upon it, it had faded into a putrid yellow color. There was no light except for the lights around the mirror. Which only furthered the yellow hue of the bathroom.
There was someone banging on the locked door of the bathroom. A man's voice was yelling in Spanish. The perspective looked down, and it allowed me to realize that this perspective was the perspective of a child that was standing in the back of the bathroom. When the child looked upon the ground, I saw blood on its legs. The blood stained the white dress with yellow embroidered sunflowers on it.
The child crawled up on the sink to the left of itself and buried its face in its knees. My vision went dark and I couldn’t see anything else. The yelling continued, and the child looked up and then at the mirror.
It was a young girl with dark hair and dark eyes that glistened in the coating of tears that covered her eyes. She was crying very visibly and was in some sort of pain or discomfort. It occurred to me who this little girl was. This little girl was my wife.
Bernie Gallagher '25
Fall for Me
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Equilibrium
Abigail LeBovidge '23