Murmurations

Sydney Pearson
April 30, 2023

“There is no single definitive explanation for why starlings murmurate, though most scientists theorize that the behavior helps protect the birds from predators. (Another possible explanation is that murmurations can help the starlings keep warm in the evening by recruiting larger roosts.)”– Søren Solkær for The New York Times, April 2022

The Daughter of a Father’s Daughter

Sofia Barnett
April 7, 2023

My grandfather on my mother’s side—my παππούς, my papou—was a traditional Greek man in many ways. He immigrated to the United States when he was 18, desperate for love and looking for a new start. He moved to Chicago, then West Virginia, and then Chicago again. He met my grandmother, a coal miner’s daughter, in West Virginia when he was 30 and they got married six years later. She was 18 by then. My papou spent the majority of his life running bars and skipping town, two things that usually depended upon the existence of the other. He was a self-taught businessman, handling liquor shipments, managing finances, and hiring “hot” women who loathed my grandmother—my γιαγιά, my yiayia—for reasons only known to them. My grandparents were a beautiful couple: the tall, muscular Greek businessman and his young wife. But like all relationships, theirs was not perfect. Largely because my papou was not perfect. Largely because my papou was violent. My grandparents had three children, my mother being the middle child. Two older girls and one pretty, precious, perfect, little boy. They loved that little boy more than they ever have, ever would, or ever could love anything else. To my grandparents, he was the reincarnation of Apollo, bringing nothing but joy and light into their lives. He shone brighter than the sun, blinding nearly everyone in his path (or in the case of my grandparents, blinding them from their two other children). This dazzling baby boy quickly bonded closer with my grandparents than either of his older sisters, the ones who looked at him with red eyes and steamy ears. ‘How could he have already made them love him like that?’—they used to ask. ‘He’s only two!’—they’d cry. That line soon turned into ‘he’s only five!,’ then ‘he’s only 10!,’ and even ‘he’s only 15!,’ as if it came as a surprise to anyone at that point. My papou hated my mother with nearly as much force as he loved her little brother, if he was even capable of putting forth that much energy into something else, anyway. But she was her father’s daughter. She was loud, rude, defiant, and too much like him for his own liking. This temperament would’ve been an issue regardless, but my mother being a woman certainly did not help. My papou believed that women were supposed to stay quiet and look pretty. Granted he prioritized the latter above all else, but the first still mattered nonetheless. My mother—young Petrina—was a spitting image of her father, and spat the same depravity. Everything she learned in her early life, although she’ll never come close to admitting it, can be attributed to the influence of her father. My yiayia has always told me this, ever since I was a kid. She says this because she thinks the same dynamic is at play with my mother and I—that I am like her in nearly every way. ‘The only difference is you work to change, my koúkla—my κούκλα, my doll—you want to get better.’ And though I have trouble agreeing with her, I know that she is right. Maybe I am more like my mother than I’d like to think.

Birthday Soup

Will Hassett
April 7, 2023

As I walked down the stairs for my second dinner at 10 o’clock, I ran into my mom. “What’s wrong?” “Ah, nothing.” My standard reply.However, an unexplainable unease had been building in me throughout the day, and her perceptiveness has no equal. “Are you tired?” “Yeah.” We had had this conversation hundreds of times.“Well, I’m going downstairs to make some birthday soup if you’re interested.”Birthday soup. It was nobody’s birthday, but interest and hunger brought me downstairs.There are four ingredients to birthday soup—a very simple recipe of water, wonton noodles, eggs, and sugar from when my mom lived in a very simple Hong Kong apartment the size of my college dorm room. She tells me I once loved the snack as a toddler, but I had no recollection of it. As my mom watched water bubble on the gas stovetop, I picked at 荔枝 [lychee], and we revisit our childhoods. A brightly lit kitchen contrasted the darkness outside while steam gathered under the range hood. I sat at the butcher’s block table and my mom again asked, “What’s wrong?”“I don’t know.” And it was true—neither of us knew. The water began boiling and noodles were added. Handing my mom fruit, I distracted myself with Minesweeper on my laptop. The spacebar clacked idly as blue 1’s and green 2’s revealed themselves. My mom cannot fathom how such a simple website can hold my attention so completely, but I was on a mission. Birthday soup was ready. My mom presented two big bowls, one for each of us, filled with noodles and two poached eggs each, along with a faintly sugary soup. “你可以落糖如果唔够甜 [You can add more sugar if it’s not sweet enough],” she said, blowing on her soup spoon. I’m alright. The first sip scalded my tongue. With the sweetness, I managed. My mom gave a small smile as she noticed my enjoyment. I broke an egg yolk with my chopsticks and my mother said, “唔好有乜嘢事都收埋喺自己个心喥 [Don’t keep everything hidden in your heart].” I looked up from my bowl. She paused, and continued, “You know, you remind me a little bit of 公公 [my grandfather, her father]. He was quiet, he didn’t always talk. Very stoic.” I had forgotten the context from which my mother had spoken from. Momentarily, all the uneasiness I had felt before vanished. I had not thought about it.“You know you can talk to me.”“I know, 媽媽.” We’d had this conversation hundreds of times. “Okay, what’d you think of the game?”As my mother and I recount my Memorial Day soccer tournament in between mouthfuls of noodles, I think of what she said, about me, about my grandfather. Stoic?

New Normal

Ellison Mucharsky
March 24, 2023

Normal. It’s what makes all days gloss together into one. It doesn’t necessarily refer to something right or humane or a day that anybody would be happy to relive. Normal means what is expected, but just like expectations, normal can change. And now normal will never mean the same thing again. Sure it was always on the news. But who watches the news when they are 13 years old? I sure didn’t. So all I heard were the whispers. The teachers in my middle school who would cluster together speaking in hushed voices, their eyes darting nervously around making sure that no students were coming. And if one wandered too close to their huddle they would dart away, picking up whatever task they thought would look the least conspicuous: stapling packets of paper, running to the printer, or calling, “Oh no I must have forgotten my lunch in the fridge, how silly of me!” So all I heard were wisps of the truth. “Did you hear?” … “those poor kids” … “the parents” … “mourning, grieving community” … “our hearts go out to you.” As though being told the true horrors of these acts was too much weight for our innocent ears to hold. As if shielding us from the horrific reality of school shootings could protect us as we all prepared to enter high school, ready to begin the next chapter of our lives.

The BDW Guru

Ellen Yoo
March 24, 2023

When you walk into the Brown Design Workshop (the BDW), there is a soccer ball with an image of a man’s face taped to it. He wears a wonky not-quite smile and black-rimmed glasses, and even on a crumpled piece of printer paper, you can see the sparkle in his blue eyes. In the School of Engineering, Chris Bull is a name many have often heard, but not a person that many have actually seen. Even as his student advising partner, he’ll often vanish before my very own eyes. The Brown Design Workshop was born in 2013, out of a desire for a student-led makerspace “which aims to make the practices of design and creation more collaborative, open, flexible, and accessible,” according to the website. In the BDW, anyone can sign up for workshops such as Intro to Woodworking, Laser Cutting, and 3D Printing. With the help of several others, Chris Bull transformed what was originally storage space for equipment into the BDW, which now employs nearly forty paid student monitors with hours from 2pm to midnight, Monday through Friday. There are many machines in the space, including a laser cutting machine, nine 3D printers, woodworking tools, and at least six different types of saws. There are also classrooms, larger-than-life robots, a Formula SAE race car, and abundant wood, metal, and hardware for building. The BDW is expansive—with ceilings over 20 feet tall and over 10,000 square feet of workspace, you could fit 40-50 school buses in it, theoretically. During the day, students work on projects such as laser-cutting earrings, and others lead tours and group activities. You can build whatever your heart desires in the BDW—whatever your mind can dream—given the time and energy to do so. Chris is there to help.

chicken stock

Alyssa Sherry
March 17, 2023

I. my grandma sold her leather armchair last week. i don’t live in new jersey anymore so no one told me that it was leaving until it left, until i came home for the holiday and there was just a wide gaping hole in the corner of the living room like an open wound, bleeding and raw. II. i am seven years old dangling my legs off the kitchen counter and she is teaching me how to make chicken noodle soup. my favorite part is adding in the cubes of chicken stock because i can plop them into the roiling pot and watch them melt apart. the kitchen smells sweet as a memory and my grandfather is dozing in a leather armchair in the living room. his foot is broken. i bring him medicine and he pays me two dollars, conspiratorial smiles, eyes bright, don’t tell mom. i’ll tell her anyway and he’ll laugh and say you’re a great nurse but you ain’t a secret-keeper and this will begin my long career of never knowing how to shut up.but right now i am seven with two dollars in my pocket and now i can almost afford the calendar that i’ve been eyeing at the card shop on route 23! and i’m watching the chicken stock dissolve in the greedy throes of the soup like a sandcastle washed away by a rip current. and i’m thinking that sometimes it must be good to give yourself away as long as it makes the soup happy…III.when i was seven i crouched behind the armchair to hide from monsters in a dream

Thursday

Deeya Prakash
March 17, 2023

Dedicated to Michigan State University, the most recent location of the hundreds of mass shootings that have paralyzed the classroom. There’s snow on the ground on my way to school. It’s Thursday, and my cheeks are pink, the color they get when Nani has just pinched my cheeks and said something about me looking just like my mother. My mother, oftentimes crazy and paranoid, calls me on the way to school because she wants to make sure I haven’t been hit by a car in the five minutes it takes me to cross the bridge. You’re okay, right? Yes mom. I’ve done this a hundred times. Okay beta. Have a good day at school. I love you.

Linear Regression

Libby Dakers
March 3, 2023

A gentle feeling of sleep tugs at my eyelids and I lie down. I focus on the sounds, on laughter and conversation mingling, until they become contorted, moving at an irregular pace, hanging densely in the air like honey as it pours.My eyes snap open and I stand in the basement. Our paintings cover the walls from the week before, so when the house sells, something will be left behind. I widen my eyes because I cannot see. My skin stretches over the curve of my brow and I try desperately to pull my eyes open, but I continue to stand in darkness. I feel a tug at the corners of my mouth and I start to sob. Her voice is calling to me, so I make one last, panicked attempt to see. The dim light against the shapes in the basement register, but when I turn to face her, her eyes are ablaze. My stomach falls because her mouth lies closed, but I still hear her voice talking to me. What if I am tripping, and I trip forever?They are rubbing my back and the pressure is cutting in and out like radio static. Numbness settles over my skin. Every second I feel more conscious. I wake up over and over again. Days after The Event, my body sits tight with anticipation, waiting on lagging vision, numbness and muffled hearing. My mind feeds me whisperings, convincing me that I died that night, until death became a coma, and instead I had made a home for myself in my vegetative brain. I will live here for the rest of my life, walking on a line where nothing is real and I will never know the truth. But that thought soon grows old, unrealistic, even. Instead, I’m convinced that my anxiety will spiral into schizophrenia. As I’m falling asleep, I hear voices calling me into my dreams. Pieces of everyday conversations making way for phrases out of place. “Let’s go swimming outside. Let’s go outside before lunch. Make lunch for school! Elizabeth, wake up, it’s time for school!!” Distorted like dreams with circular timelines. I jolt awake. Soon after The Event, I started the anxiety medication. As I drove to school, something broke in my head and a chill washed over me. I felt like the passenger seat was going to sink to the asphalt and I was going to turn to dust. I developed a daily fear that the walls would melt away until I was alone in a bright white room for eternity. Or that any second I would drop dead. Or wake up in a lab. I come to the same nursing home where I visited my great-grandmother ten years ago. I remember her in shapes: her wiry hair curved around her head like a pear, and the bulky outline of her recliner. The miniature Shasta Cola can from the fridge down the hall, where my brother and I would venture when my great-grandmother needed privacy. She called us “the boys,” which always made me a little sad because I was proud to be a girl from a thin line of women. Proud to be my mother’s daughter, my grandmother’s grand-daughter, and my great-grandmother’s great-granddaughter.The nursing home has become the synthesis of my wild fears and reality. The world condenses to a small cream-colored room where the syrupy voices of nurses call you to the next place you are due. In the clean hallways, you may run into another traveler. Their faces warp the picture of gentle tranquility into the force of a tranquilizer. Now, ten years later, I come to visit my grandmother. The halls see how I have aged. I notice that pills come with meals. Pills come with waking and sleeping. When I swallow my one pill, I feel a crushing dread of the effects to come—mornings of clarity followed by paranoia as the day drags on. How come no one else is concerned by the way the light is poking through the curtain? My fears are accompanied closely by sadness. A profound sadness, an unanswered question. Why am I no longer the person I once was? Am I dissolving into my lineage, into a trail of women who eventually lose their minds?One night, I listened to my mother describing my grandmother’s dementia to my uncle. She is not blissfully forgetful like most dementia patients. My mom describes her hallucinations, paranoia, psychosis—words that make me feel like the air is tightening. Words I fear will stretch towards me and weave themselves through my nostrils to my brain where they can plot my decline. My eyes stiffen as I obediently watch for straight lines to sway, in case it starts now. She sees people coming from the walls, from closets; dark people. I am never there when my grandmother is having an episode. But I know that whenever my mother leaves the house in the middle of the night to see her, it is to ease her paranoia and disarm her thoughts. During stretches in which my mother has to stay with her for a few days at a time, I know that when I visit her she will tell me made-up stories about cars driving through buildings and trips she has planned for the week. About a month after The Event her dementia is wavering at a peak. Each day is like a splotch on a graph climbing higher, and I am the regression line trapped between them all, mapping the upward trend. My magnitude shifts with her changes. My anxiety and her dementia are tethered. I hold her when she cries. I watch one of the women who raised me live through my biggest fear. The fall following The Event, things begin to change. She’s coming down from the peak, the points falling steadily downward. She has moved to a new facility where the nurses speak to her like she’s a grown woman. I have grown tired of thinking I am dead, or planning how I will wake myself from a months-long dream. When I think of her old house, I think of the scent of lake water on my T-shirt, the birds trilling and the rustling of afternoon leaves. I think of the sun hovering over the water. We float on the lake, pulling up weeds from the sand. I am afraid of fish, the snake I saw last summer and the feeling of mushy leaves on the bottom. She isn’t afraid of anything.‍

Shoes

Stella Kleinman
March 3, 2023

Ballet shoes are made to be destroyed. Professional dancers go through hundreds of pairs a season. After purchasing each new pair, they take an entire toolbox to them: stomping, slicing and stabbing. This process softens the shoes, making them easier to dance in. Mine are pale pink and rough canvas, ribbons and rips and tape. When I force my feet into them, they flush and peel, like sweet, ripe fruit. Blisters spring up and flower. The perfect fit. I’m four years old and can finally touch the kitchen counters. I decide it’s the best idea in the world to hang off of one, sliding my socks across the tile floor. My mom sits at the table, watching me and her crossword puzzle with a wary eye. When I trip over the air and fall on my face, my mom sighs, laughs and scoops me up into her arms.“That’s it. You’re going to ballet lessons next week!”In class, every girl wears a pink leotard with a white skirt. I could rip the ensemble apart with a hangnail. I’m wearing my first pair of ballet shoes and two Bandaids. I feel like I could flutter away, or be swept up in a gust of wind. Years later, I audition for The Nutcracker, a ballet about Christmas, magic and candy. For my part, I have to dye my ballet shoes green. They look wrong in my hands, but perfect on stage. My mom does my makeup for the first time and my skin glows under the stage lights. The older dancers, none of whom I know the names of, hug me after the performance, chattering on and on about how beautiful it was. The Sugar Plum Fairy compliments my pointed toes, saying they stood out in my green shoes.I sit in the basement, smashing my next pair of shoes against a cinderblock to mold them to my feet. After ten hits, they are soft. After twenty, they are flimsy. After thirty, they are broken. So much destruction in the pursuit of perfection.‍

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Anna Hurd
February 24, 2023

TW and Editor’s Note: This piece includes graphic depictions of sexual violence. We feel that this sort of story needs a platform where it can breathe and be seen, but also recognize that sexual assault is a complicated and triggering topic for many people. We want you to be safe while reading. If this is not the kind of subject matter that you feel comfortable reading at this moment, we encourage you to save this piece for another day. The “night sea journey” is the journey into the parts of ourselves that are split off, disavowed, unknown, unwanted, cast out, and exiled to the various subterranean worlds of consciousness…. The goal of this journey is to reunite us with ourselves. Such a homecoming can be surprisingly painful, even brutal. In order to undertake it, we must first agree to exile nothing. -Stephen Cope There was a man. Let’s call him Man 1. I never kicked him. I never screamed. I never really fought back. I just cried, two tears, while he beat me between my legs; while he shoved his thumb inside my cheek and held my head to the passenger seat of his car with the rest of his hand; while he choked me, once with his hands and once while he forced my mouth onto his lap.1 He wiped away my tears, asking, Why are you crying? Advertisement He leaned in, whispering, I am not a pedophile but I know a pretty girl when I see one. I was 17. He was 23. He called me names. Mean, degrading names. He said, You need to learn. When he entered me, I thought of my best friend’s advice after she had sex with her boyfriend for the first time. The more you relax the better it will be. It will hurt at first, but then it’ll feel good. I could not relax. It hurt at first, it hurt during, it hurt after; it hurt the whole time and still does. And then there was the dad. Let’s call him Man 2. Man 2 was a manipulative motherfucker. Truly, I do not believe Man 1 ever thought he committed rape against a minor. I would like to believe that. I would like to believe he simply wanted to act out what he had seen in porn, how he saw women treated, how he thought he could treat women like that too. I believe this because he continued to text me, When can I see you again, baby girl? He continued to ask if he could pick me up. If he could get a hotel room for us. When he could see me again. I would like to think that society failed Man 1. That he did not believe his actions constituted the rape of a minor. That he didn’t know it was not, actually, hot to hit a woman (who was a girl) like he did. I would like to believe he didn’t know it was not, actually, hot to choke a woman (who was a girl), to call her names, to leave bruises like he did. Not Man 2. Man 2 could smell it on me. He knew exactly when, where, how to take advantage of an eighteen-year old girl. An 18-year-old girl, who, in the eyes of the law, was a woman, an adult. An 18-year-old girl who worked with his 12-year-old daughter. An 18-year old girl who did not know the type of manipulation 46-year-old men were capable of. Advertisements REPORT THIS AD And, oh, how he made me think it was all my fault. That I was the one asking for it. That it was not assault when I said no, and that he could simply rub my back, hold me on his lap, continue to sneak his hands deeper and deeper in and around me until I stopped fighting him. How he made me think that because I stopped fighting, it was all my fault. How he made me think the town would hate me. How he would twist my words around his slimy, grimy, crooked, tobacco teeth to make me think I wanted it, that I signaled to him that I wanted it. And of course there was money involved. Because I just graduated high school and because he was 46 and financially stable he could give me AirPods and an iPad and Tiffany earrings and shopping money for college clothes and all of these things all in exchange for my body and my silence. Because I was worth nothing, and dinner and a car and a club membership was worth something, I took the gifts and gave him me. Does that mean I’m guilty? Does that mean I’m twisted? Does that make me responsible for my manipulation? Because, after all, I got something out of it. How the money made me so confused. Well, now I know. Now I know, at 19, what 23-year-old men are capable of. What 46-year-old men are capable of. What men are capable of. What the world is capable of. When should girls and women know better? When they are 7? 17? When should we know what terrible things can happen to our bodies? Post-traumatic stress disorder. Advertisements REPORT THIS AD I stare back at the woman. I stare back at the licensed, professional, very kind woman, and replay the new words she gave me to describe my reality (?). Post. Traumatic. Stress. Disorder. PTSD. Four little letters that describe the nightmares, the cold sweats, the panic attacks and seizure-ish episodes, the inability to trust in the love of the people that love me, the constant triggers, the mood swings and the tears. Post. Does that mean it’s over? Why do I see it, then, on the back of my eyelids every time I close my eyes? Why do I feel another pang in my chest every time I see my younger cousins, high school girls, thinking, When I was their age…? Why do I feel the hands on my body when I finally manage to drift off to sleep? Why do I dissociate while having terrible sex with terrible men instead of walking out?2 The event, that period of time, has ended, yes. But, really, it will never be truly over, truly post. Traumatic. But, I didn’t go to war. I didn’t watch my comrades perish by bullet fire. My parents, my brothers are still alive. My house didn’t burn down with the people I love inside. I have never had to flee a country to avoid persecution. Does my experience, do I, really deserve to use traumatic? Advertisements REPORT THIS AD Stress. My heart constantly trying to contract, hide further and further into my chest. Waking up in the middle of the night in a pool of sweat, wading, grasping for anything to ground me, prove to me I am real and I am alive. Hitting and hurting the person I loved while we laid in bed together after having a sudden flashback. Bearing moments when my entire body shakes, my neck whips back and forth, my eyes roll back in my head and I can no longer speak, when I am overloaded with flashbacks and my body no longer wants to stay present, to cope, can no longer bear another moment of trying to hold it together. The weight I bear down on those who know; I can feel it on their shoulders, feel when the burden gets heavier under their own personal stresses, too; I can feel when it’s nearing time to stop talking, time to rotate to the next ear, time to get better already, to be stronger for them; after all, they have their own weights, too. The three friends I still talk to about what happened, who still show up for me when I am crying, alone in the dark, who are probably just as tired as I am, who probably think, What more is there for her to say? What more can I say? What more might there be to listen to? 3 The ears and the hearts and the bodies that have saved my soul from disappearing into a vacuum. Disorder. Did he win? Did they win? Did they truly break me? Am I finally disordered? Now, I end pretty much every single sexual experience in tears. Either in tears of joy, because I was not hurt, because I felt loved, seen, appreciated, or in tears of dismay, because I had a flashback, because I could not contain my anxiety about my body being touched. I survived, but I am not a survivor. They took things from me I will never get back. I am not brave. I am terrified all of the time. I rarely feel moments of true safety, and in those moments, I usually cry. I have so many things I want to explain to the people around me. To hold up my pain and say, Here, this is why I am so broken. This is why I am me.4 Advertisements REPORT THIS AD Between and since, I have felt love, I have felt loved. That gives me a glimmer of hope. But this is not a hopeful story. This is not me coming out victorious on the other side, of fighting the good fight, of going to therapy and feeling healed and whole and ready to be loved by the world. I tried, very, very hard to be that girl, that woman. That who needs no one. That survivor. On my good days, I win that battle and I convince myself that I have overcome the past. My bad days, then, hurt that much more, when memories come back at me like knives aimed at my chest. I survived but I am a bad survivor. I need people. I need people to need me. This is me in the trenches. This is me in the trenches. Footnotes 1 “I contributed nothing but an open cavity.” Lisa Mecham, Only The Lonely. (from Roxanne Gay’s essay collection, Not That Bad.) 2 “I did not care about my body because my body was nothing. I let men, mostly, do terrible things to my body. I let them hurt me because I had already been hurt and so, really, I was looking for someone to finish what had already been started.” Roxanne Gay, Hunger. Advertisements REPORT THIS AD 3 Bless the hearts of these friends. 4 “It’s hard to admit, but part of it has to do with the need for an audience. We don’t exist without other people; therefore, our pain isn’t real until somebody else looks at it and goes, ‘Damn, that looks like it hurt.’… the antidote to losing your mind is to have a handful of people around who know your wound and will verify its existence.” Nora Salem, The Life Ruiner. (from Roxanne Gay’s essay collection, Not That Bad.)

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