Places
by Michael Buckmire '17

I am from the house
In Blue Bell

I am from

The middle of nowhere
In the hidden mist
Where no one will see me

I am from

The hot streets in the summer
Where I travel day in and day out

I am from

The place where noises
are banned
The quiet is where i thrive

I am from

A different place
The place you imagine
But never go.

-

Exhilaration
by Gabe Sansone

The soft
Cool mist of the waterfall
Gave me a kiss

-

Metamorphosis
by Anya Hutter '12

If Kafka could turn a man into and insect in one sentence,
perhaps i could create a world in my own,
strings of words changing books into butterflies,
or making everything neon pink
in my imaginary world of consonants and vowels.

Of course, I'd keep the people as people, but maybe my teachers
could use some wings to get them away from class.
I imagine a classroom of laughter and shouting,
where students fight over power and other such notions,
leaning back in the wooden chairs

that i make cushioned, floating off the ground
like little hovercrafts charging by fluorescent lightbulbs.
Ah, the schools could have no roofs and we could see the sky.

I would make it rain on the kids who annoyed me
and wind would pull on the hair of girls

tying their hair up in pigtails in my roofless bathroom.
I would construct new reality with letters and words.
I would sit in the sky and change lives with a straight face.

-

Splinters
by Bailey Higgins '10

you taught me to
burn the preludes from the books
that i read
because what happens
      before
      is insignificant

together we are two
ribcages and two
pairs of eye and four
hands.
      Only one heart, though.
      One takes less maintenance.

it takes too
much effort to think about you--
my mind just clouds
and it's ugly
      'darkness isn't ugly - it's just lonely.'
      (but i'm good company)

you stand on rooftops to
drop jars from them, to watch
glass shatter into tiny pieces,
because
      breaking things is beautiful.
      broken things are beautiful.

-

Sugar
by Samantha Burke '10

Sometimes I see you on the train,
even though you never took the train,
sprawled out in a two-seater like you used to on my couch
one leg higher then the other, back twisted, arms crossed,
you wear those faded cargo shorts that need to be thrown out
and the old gym shirt you took from me when I could still see straight.
You don’t look at me as we round a turn
and you vanish.

Once, about a year ago, we dined al fresco at a café that served Italian.
as the breeze rustled around us, our paper napkins taking flight,
you took my menu (there was a map of Italy on the back) and used
sugar granules to trace a trip across the countryside.
Then we licked our fingers and dragged them across the trail,
along Florence and Siena and down to prosciutto and panini.
when we finished the loop we went to taste the sweetness of it all,
instead our mouths puckered.
It was salt sitting in little clumps on our tongues.
You made a mistake, always thinking the bitter was the sweet.

But it wasn’t you I tasted when I let my eyes slip open this morning.
I didn’t even feel your hands clawing around at me in the dark that night.
Instead, I pushed myself further under my covers
and looked up through the seams of my comforter,
the one from my childhood, the one I put back on my bed when I ended it,
and stepped inside my own church, glowing with stain-glass windows
of all colors and shapes, their fuzzy, warm outlines above my head,
still forming sinister shapes in the morning light.

When the food comes, my tomatoes sizzle, redder then my hurt,
blanketed in mozzarella and sprigs of green basil more alive then I am
slip onto my tongue, textures mingling,
covering the saltiness of moments before with something tangible.
For months after I leave you I can’t eat without my tongue lighting on fire,
a phoenix finally beginning its beginning.
I knew it was the salt as soon as you picked up the shaker
and spread it across Italy.
I didn’t stop you.

Sugar would’ve been a lie.