Zenith Issue 2

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Table of Contents

5 Letter from the Editors
8 Masthead
10 CLOSINGS AND POSTSCRIPTS FROM THE SMALL

AND STRONG AND SIMPLE
16 the body has music
17 Untitled
18 Piano, Piano
22 Untitled
24 It Was a Car Accident
30 64wet8
32 RELIGION FOUND IN A CORPSE-CANDLE
33 The Cards Never Lie
36 Untitled
38 How to Clean a White Dress
41 Untitled
42 THE WEIGHT of BALLOONS
50 Turing Test
54 Eden
56 Sad Trampoline
57 If the Witch Floats We’ll Kill Her
58 Collage 2021-03-09
60 //::i_have_no_fking_clue_ext.
63 For the Twenty-First Century
65 when the air was sick
67 Knotted Roots
69 Untitled
70 The Gleam the Mirroring Variety
71 Untitled
72 solstice and symbiosis
76 Untitled
77 after from the dinner table
78 Self Portrait as the Process of Preparing a Meal
80 A Borderless Manifesto

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84 Untitled
85 Memories of Home
88 Love Letters
90 Guilt Arousing Cotton Curtains
92 This Poem is a Voice Recording
94 Contributors

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Letter From the Editors

Dear Reader,

It is not always clear where we fit in, especially when there
are so many moving parts, and we, as humans, seem so small.
When we reflect on the state of our earthly existence, we cannot
help but wonder about transcendence. In doing so, we are forced
to acknowledge what binds us. The first half of this year has been
nothing short of exhausting. We are contained by our bodies,
perspectives, and experiences. As we bear witness to suffering
and unrest in the world, losing hope in one’s capabilities has
become human nature, an inescapable habit. How do we surpass
it to better serve ourselves and others?

This is something we found ourselves wondering one sun-
filled afternoon, while drinking coffee in a setting so peaceful
that we felt guilty for existing in it. As creators, the co-senior
editors of Zenith, and human beings, we felt powerless and small
when faced with the world’s ongoing suffering. Yet, we were able
to find comfort in each other by voicing our thoughts, and soon
realized we had the ability to provide a safe space for others.
This is why, with our second issue, we aimed to create a platform
where we can transcend that which holds us back, and connect
with the lived experiences of others. “Transcending the Self” is
a creative space that aims to foster empathy and belonging, as it
acknowledges pain, hopelessness, and all of its sources.

For this issue, we asked our creators to let us step into their
shoes and show us the rituals, practices, and habits that bring
them comfort and understanding. We asked them to share their
fates, sufferings, and purposes. We asked them to go beyond what
they do know into the things they have not yet uncovered. And
with trust and vulnerability, they did.

This issue contains thirty-five incredible pieces. We are proud
to be sharing them with all of you. We know that our readers
and contributors will find so much within these pages. Most of

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all, we hope you find something that you’ve been looking for, and
that it reassures you. We dove deep into the writing and artwork
we received and discovered a multitude of approaches to “Tran-
scending the Self”. Through curating this issue, we have seen
universal love, abstraction and the malleability of the self, inner
chaos, nature as a vessel for transcendence, self-truths, belonging,
and peace, among other themes. Each piece flows into the next,
moving through a collective narrative. Yet, each individual voice
speaks for itself, bringing a wealth of experience and emotion. For
us, this second issue is a return to peace, or what remains when
we embrace letting go and transcend into acceptance.

The only way out of the body is through the body; the only
way out of the world is through the world; the only way out of
hopelessness is through hopelessness. Transcension is not about
avoidance, it is about persistence. Our contributors have utilized
their craft as a means of navigating their paths. Their truths are
evident on the page, and have taught us that the self is both the
greatest opponent and ally. It is a brave act to go through what
we go through to understand ourselves better, and this issue is
a celebration of that.

In this celebration, we have so much to be grateful for, start-
ing with you, our readers. We cannot continue our work without
your support. To our contributors, you showed us the answer
before we knew it ourselves— we offer our endless gratitude.
To everyone that submitted their work to us, thank you for your
trust and candor. To our wonderful staff, we thank the universe
every day for all twenty-five of you. You are incredible creators,
team members, and friends. Your drive and conviction are what
breathe life into Zenith. There is a time and place for mourning
and for joy, but in this issue, with all of you, they coincide.

Throughout our lives, we will have variants of that conver-
sation on the bench at different places, and different times, with
different people. Our biggest concerns and questions are things
we may only reach for, but never grasp. However, it is through
such reflections that we gain understanding past the confines of
our individual selves. Through the creation of this issue, we have

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come to realize that our lives and paths are the fingerprints we
leave in the universe, not one of them the same, yet all simulta-
neous and of equal importance. We hope this issue serves as a
reminder that in spite of our limitations, transcendence and the
ability to see beyond the self, is what connects us, fuels our empa-
thy, and our desire to overcome the passivity of our hopelessness.
We wish you strength, peace, and endless love,
C & M.
Catalina Irigoyen | Senior Editor.
Mikey Waller | Senior Editor.

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Masthead

Senior Editors
Catalina Irigoyen
Mikey Waller

Managing Editors
Kaitlin Channell
Emily Wiegand

Assistant Managing Editor
Sophia Kilburg

Creative Director
Hayden Williams

Designers
Natalie David
Chloe Tharp

PR
Corinne Beltrame
Madi Meek
Mackenzie Vlazny

Copy Editors
Elyse Apple
Maya Penning
Eden Smith

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Art Editors
Ellie Chouinard
Abigail Kurten
Poetry Editors
Theo Colaiace
Sarah Licht
Courtney Stearns
Aubrey Young
Jillian Zeron
Nonfiction Editors
Nicole Adams
Della Gritsch
Jeff Piekarz
Fiction Editors
Emma Greco
Evalyn Harper
Sarah Moss
Sara Siepker

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CLOSINGS AND POSTSCRIPTS
FROM THE SMALL AND
STRONG AND SIMPLE

Leiz Chan

Winter here feels long and seems bleak, but it’ll end,
and we’ll have more sunlight at night, and you’ll be

back with us. See you very soon.

I write sloppily and my feet are cold. All I can think about is what
I should eat next, and if by the end of this year, I’ll be someone
else. I want to be someone else, but also still a refined image of
myself. I want to change and become colorful, but also be true
to whatever my current cocoon holds. Every day I just have to
wait and create my own growth. It’s terribly slow, and terribly
cold outside. I can cover up but I don’t want to. The extra hour
of sunlight in spring is for my skin. The extra hours of darkness
in winter is also for my skin, a slap and a warning in the shape
of wind and gusts and ice.

Your friends love you. Do not forget this. I will be here
to remind you.

I don’t really know what I want from everyone. I want honesty,
and to feel their skin on mine, and to sleep on their carpeted floors,
and then when we all wake up after noon, we brush our teeth togeth-
er. We leave our hair falling over our shoulders, with waves and
fringes spilling over our scalps like brushstrokes, in styles that we’ve
never seen each other wear before. Our shirts are wrinkled, and we
clink our morning beverages together over a cluster of miscellaneous
pantry items. Leaving is hard and the drive afterwards is lonely. I
want to be in the hallway in just our socks and cotton pants and lack

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of inhibitions and we just breathe each other’s histories over the low
hum of the movies through the walls downstairs. The silence with
company always sounds like something and this time I think I heard
your smiles and your relief. I think I even heard you two relax your
jaws, loud like how my joints crack. Loud like a sigh.

Leave the meat out in water and use something heavy to
weigh it down. And help yourself to the lemon grass in
the freezer; that should be boiled too. Come home safely.

In five years, I will think of her differently. We, as a unit, will
be different altogether, and I’m not currently sure if it’s for the
best. What used to be Saturday mornings of lullabies and dishes
and running water manifested into silence, shuffling, and the
need to track when the garage door opens, and who’s opening
it. Who goes through the two doors, up the two stairways, and
by the impact of their feet on the landing, how will the day feel
then? Do I escape, or does she escape? Do I eat cold food quietly
in my room and listen to her movies from the opposite end of the
house? Does she sleep to forget my name in her black and white,
soundless dreams? The microwave is so close to her chair. I’m
afraid of being too close.

I accepted the job offer! Isn’t it exciting? Another city,
to begin anew. To the next stage.

During dress rehearsals, I would fear coming onto the floor
late. Everyone seems to already be in the spotlight, and some-
one in the audience already has an actor or actress picked out.
They hold show programs and bouquets and fundraiser cookies.
I know my fellow cast members are off to bigger theaters and
transatlantic voyages to palatial schools. Campuses full of cas-
tles where they’re crowned and I have to kneel. And what fun
we all have had here in the same stage, with the same colors in
our brace wires, and thin clothes from the same stores. I know
goodbyes like I know my father; I know that he will always be

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with me, but sometimes, he makes me uncomfortable, upset with
myself, or confused. But I want him here, and love him, and it
takes so long to drink in the disappointment. The doubt and the
criticism. Saying goodbye should feel like saying goodbye, but to
me it is our eulogy.

P.S. - Let’s make something for the man across the
street (the old man, I don’t know what he’s called). His
back is so hunched, he looks like he’s sleeping when he

mows the lawn.

I am a world record holder for memory. I’m so good at remem-
bering sometimes that I need to pretend to forget, so no one will
feel uncomfortable. Sometimes that includes me. However, I gen-
uinely don’t remember much from when our house, with three
bedrooms, was filled with twelve occupants. I don’t remember
the code to my first high school locker. I also don’t remember
sometimes that everything is fine and that I deserve love. But
I know a lot of names; I have a roster from my entire life. The
first boy who had ever made me laugh is in Tennessee, making
something out of himself. The worst girl to ever grace my primary
school life is drinking across the border in party dresses and high
heels. The coworker who had given me my first set of paperwork
still works with me and passes me in the office, but doesn’t know
my name. How do we walk side by side for hours, exchanging
small talk and laughter and workplace secrets, for you to feel the
breeze of my body passing, and only think that I have a shadow
and nothing else? How do we steal from and break each other
for years only for us to cease fire without a treatise? How do we
laugh over the illustrations of children’s books for weeks, and
suddenly, we both disappear and now we’re isolated entities? We
shared so much and at the end of the day I don’t know if maybe I
took more than you and put it in my backpack by mistake. I have
all of you and you have none of me.

P.S. - It’s a plus one. Bring someone if you’d like, we’d
love to have them!

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Your head leaned onto my shoulder quite heavily, and in the
moment, you glowed with bluish moonlight filtering through
my opened trunk door. I had wished you would stop standing
up so fast, and I still do, for you see stars way too often without
looking up at the sky. From time to time, I think that no one
else can brush up against me the way you do. I don’t necessarily
want it to be identical to your touch. I don’t want their drawl
and their breath on my lips like yours; they should be different.
I, next to the bed with you, should be a different person too. I’m
glad I still laugh about our first dinner at my house. I don’t know
Morse code, but stepping on your foot under the table seemed to
provide enough semantics for the night. We have so much food
left, and we’re using our hands for the chicken and sticky rice. I
don’t step hard enough to distract you from the meal, though. It
would be rude of me to lead you astray when you have aims, when
you have tasks, and when you have wants. I know you don’t want
to eat some of the things I’m feeding you but you take the bowl
from my hands and together we spoon from it in anticipation.
Your face swells with multiple emotions and I don’t look at all of
them more than I just bury my head in the crook of your neck
and feel you chew. No one else has to watch either.

P.S. - Please feel free to contact us again and give the
process another chance. It was a pleasure hearing
from you.

Fourth place forever is like winning, in its own way. I like
failure when I know I need, want, and will meet it. It’s at the
apartment door and I know I’ll cry tonight, and tomorrow I’ll still
be swollen and grey and foggy from the congestion. But it’s like a
friend, and it reminds me constantly that things don’t really end
until I’m dead, or until I really say goodbye. Not say goodbye but
still have tension, and not say goodbye but still see them behind
everyone’s backs. And I really don’t hate losing, I hate the fact
that this isn’t fun. I hate the fact that your encouragement is
born from pity. My friends love me like they pity me. I want to

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fail laughing, like a fall. I want to catch myself making mistakes
authentically and immerse myself in the memory that it is to
become. It is so easy and nice to be embarrassed sometimes but
to feel it incessantly, soaked in it like I’m a clump of steeped tea
leaves, allows for shame to enter my pores. It gets under my skin.
I own the title of fourth place, runner-up, good sport; sometimes
it goes as far as being sore in the way that winning is the source
of others intentionally losing. I don’t want to win this way. You’re
only telling me that you’re proud because I want to hear it, aren’t
you? But don’t stop because I don’t believe in the quality of my
trophies. It’s still a trophy in my hands.

P.S. - We love you, kid.

How old am I, really? She still thinks I like pink and holds
a grudge from when I removed earrings I no longer saw fit my
needs. I got my ears pierced when I barely could babble; how did
I express jealousy and idolatry, and how did it turn into years of
me being exactly like her? But also vowing to never be like her,
because I have a body that doesn’t agree with imitation. Skin
blooms dark in some places, and bruises pop up on my shins
like they’re revealed secrets. Markings on my skin flower in such
ways that post-mortem, they would know it’s my leg. They would
know it’s my hand with the pencil mark under my knuckle. I
can remember the year I was born, but not the current year, nor
the distance between becoming something and still trying to
become something. I have the same goal as I did during the time
of my delivery. I have the same habits too, like crying and not
understanding and being easily upset. I know it disappoints the
old man. I know it paints me as a child and renders my friends
confused and makes my relatives laugh at me. But all in all, I am
joyous and giddy when I see progress, like a growing kid with a
tape measure and a colored pencil and a wall. I still like stuffed
animals and ice cream and breaking curfew, but I like quiet and
crosswords and working the graveyard shift. I also like being
loved and loving, and hope I still know how as a child does. Pure,

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unadulterated, palpable, and a bit humiliating. I am missing teeth
and still smiling with my mouth open. When I laugh uncontrol-
lably, I sound like an animal. I will try to not hold back when I
feel what I feel, and if I feel love, I will say that I feel love for you
and them and everyone and maybe, just maybe, the golden rule
applies and I receive love too.

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the body has music

Amanda Pendley

on the axis of a head, heavy rolling against hollow
of violin gut. I fish my fingers in to feel for a
possible clog of voice. artery that needs plunged.

spine has been accordionized and I lurch sideways
at the middle, go limp-limbed and let the movie
score pull me back up to echo in Malibu drive by.

I register at a lower frequency, sizzle
in reverberated speaker of an empty room.
slice letters off my name and you will find
a pen scrawling sloppy chord progressions
into an unwritten internal choir of guilt

transference of self-hood to choral performance
leaks and the band sings drainage, bow grazes
faultline voice, circumvents a repressed hitch.

when I go to open myself all that comes out is unheard,
crinkled newspaper chucked from the bike basket of a voice box.
I am a subscriber to memorized history, and ears pressed to the
the audience shouldn’t be allowed to swallow mine.

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Untitled

Amanda Pendley
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Piano, Piano

Aliyah Warwick

It is a bright morning on July 7, 2020 and I am in my online Ital-
ian class. On my laptop screen, arranged in gallery view, are my
classmates from around the world and our teacher, Roberto. We
have been meeting like this for two hours a day, five days a week
for the last two months.

Normally, a lesson begins with a little bit of chiacchiere, the
wonderfully onomatopoeic word for chit chat. The one hard and
fast rule is that we must speak only Italian. If one of us says some-
thing in English, Roberto either pretends not to understand or
quickly reprimands, “Italiano, Italiano!” He wears white polo
shirts and reading glasses on a chain. He told us his age on the
first day of class, but I struggle to remember Italian numbers, so
I’m unsure if he is forty-nine or fifty-nine. He leads us in small talk
each morning, which for us is exactly that: small, clumsy sentenc-
es of three to five words strung together. My Italian is like one of
those macaroni necklaces children make in kindergarten, sloppy
but well-intentioned.

Today, however there is no chiacchiere. Instead, Roberto
explains to us rather solemnly that yesterday the world lost an
important Italian composer, Ennio Morricone. Morricone com-
posed the film scores over four hundred movies and television
shows. Roberto asks the class, who can name a Morricone film?
Proudly, I raise my hand and answer, Cinema Paradiso, taking
care to pronounce the “c” in “cinema” as a CH sound. Roberto nods
his approval and then lists other films, many of them famous, some
of them spaghetti westerns. He even lets us watch a clip of the final
duel in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly with Clint Eastwood to
get a taste of Morricone’s work.

Roberto seems to have scrapped his original lesson plan and
today has officially become Ennio Morricone Day. Next on the
agenda is a reading exercise, a simplified version of Morricone’s
obituary. The text is something like six paragraphs long – more

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written Italian than we’ve ever encountered all at once. Mild col-
lective panic sets in.

We are broken up into pairs and put into Zoom break out rooms
with instructions to read the first paragraph and try to make sense
of it. I appreciate this teaching technique at the same time while at
the same time I feel intense abandonment when Roberto leaves us
alone. Aleksandr, a Russian classmate in his mid-twenties, likes
to joke that Roberto sends us away so he can go and watch soccer.

First up, I am paired with Burcu, a girl from Turkey. Our lev-
el of Italian is roughly the same, though I learned from her the
phrase, non sono sicuro: I’m not sure. Since I am rarely sure of
anything I say in Italian, this qualifier comes in handy to bulk up
my meager sentences. It’s like a spray of baby’s breath filling out a
scraggly bouquet. Burcu and I look up words we don’t understand
using Google Translate, even though Roberto has begged us not
to. Google Translate is, in his words, un disastro.

After some time, we are brought back into the group, and
allowed to ask Roberto questions. He will answer using simple
Italian and often a good deal of gesturing. We can ask something
like, “Que significa starnuto?” What does the word starnuto mean?
Roberto pretends to sneeze dramatically and now we all under-
stand.

Sometimes an unknown word is more abstract and can’t be
acted out like a game of charades. When this happens, we stare
blankly at Roberto who seems only mildly defeated that his mime
performance failed. Now he tries a different tactic. He begins, “Per
esempio…” I am always relieved when I hear this phrase because I
know comprehension is around the corner. Per esempio, for exam-
ple. Each concrete esempio is a lifebuoy we grab onto as we’re
pulled through the waters of confusion, bobbing awkwardly until
we smack into the meaning of the word.

Next, I am exiled to the breakout room to discuss paragraph
two with Mitsuhiro, a middle-aged Japanese man who lives and
works in Moscow. His wife and two teenage sons live in Milan.
Before the pandemic he would fly to visit them once a month for
a long weekend. Mitsuhiro has recently been emailing our group
videos he’s taken of a nest of baby blackbirds discovered in his

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porch alcove. His obsession with the birds puzzled me at first. They
really only have two modes, either sleeping or squawking rather
irritatingly. But as days pass and Italian words ripen, I can picture
Mitsuhiro, stranded alone in his apartment, uncertain when he’ll
be reunited with his family. When we are lonely, we find company
in whatever we can, per esempio blackbirds.

As we read the obituary text, Mitsuhiro gets stuck on a sec-
tion about the courtship of Ennio Morricone and his wife, Maria.
Maria was a good friend of Morricone’s sister and in 1950 she was
involved in a car accident that left her seriously injured. During
her convalescence, Morricone began visiting her in the hospital.
At this point in the story comes the particular phrase Mitsuhiro
doesn’t understand: cosi piano, piano e nato il loro amore. So,
slowly, slowly, their love was born.

Piano, piano (slowly, slowly) is an expression that fills me
with childlike excitement because it’s so familiar. Spotting it in
the obituary is like spotting Waldo in a Where’s Waldo illustration.
Roberto has used this phrase with us dozens of times by now when
we can’t remember how to conjugate the verb essere, or when we
mix up masculine and feminine articles. He waves his hand dis-
missively and repeats, “Piano, piano.” In other words, “Learning
takes time. Slowly, eventually, you might get it.”

Mitsuhiro remains baffled. “Perche?” he asks. Why was the
love born slowly, slowly? At first, I think his problem is the word
nato, a conjugation of the verb to be born. It is irregular and we
haven’t used it much in class. But no, he insists that he knows the
verb. Now I begin to suspect we may be dealing with an issue of
abstract versus literal. I wonder if he is unable to conceptualize
love as something that can be born. Desperately, I pull out Google
Translate and attempt to convey this. “E poetico,” I say. It’s poetic.
How do you explain poetic language in a language you yourself
barely speak? How do you mime the birth and growth of love? I
don’t have the linguistic strength to rescue Mitsuhiro. Non capisco,
he says, shaking his head. I do not understand.

We go back and forth deciphering the remainder of the obit-
uary in different student pairings. When Roberto reunites us
after the final paragraph, Karla, an American archaeologist who

20

is always lounging in bed with a glass of white wine during class,
informs Roberto that Mitsuhiro still is stuck on the piano, pia-
no part. Several other classmates nod in agreement. Mitsuhiro is
sweaty and frustrated.

Roberto adjusts his glasses and pulls out the old per esempio
trick to get the job done. “Mitsuhiro listen,” he begins. “You met
your wife many years ago, yes? Maybe when you first knew her, you
were friends or colleagues. Maybe you asked her to dinner. Maybe
you went to a movie. Maybe then over many weeks or months or
years, you got to know her better. And then one day she was no
longer your friend, she became your wife. Slowly, slowly, your love
for her was born.”

Mitsuhiro throws back his head and laughs. Everyone in class
breathes a sigh of relief. Mitsuhiro explains, “I thought it was the
woman, his love, Maria who was born. I didn’t understand how
a person could be born slowly after a car accident in a hospital.
How could she be born when she was already alive before? But
I understand now. I understand how love is born, piano, piano.”

Mitsuhiro’s confusion was both grammatical and existen-
tial. How could a person be born long after they’d literally been
birthed? But sometimes the misunderstanding holds the more
beautiful meaning. When we start a new endeavor, learn a new
language, have an accident, go through a pandemic, it is like being
born a new person. And it takes time.

Ennio Morricone said of his compositions, “They’re all my chil-
dren…every score I’ve done.” I don’t think Roberto envisions us
as his children, but I often wonder what he thinks of us. We are
adults with jobs and university degrees and love lives, speaking
like toddlers and behaving like baby birds. We’ve imprinted on
him, following his every movement, helplessly opening our beaks
as he feeds us phrases and guides us esempio by esempio.

In a few days, Mitsuhiro will sadly report that the blackbird’s
nest is empty. Every bird is gone, and he didn’t even see them
depart. We will be reminded of how precarious life is, especially
during this particular summer. But this morning, we are safe in
the small world we’ve composed, our language class family nestled
together as Italian unfolds itself to us slowly, slowly.

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Untitled

KDK
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23

It Was a Car Accident

Patrick Schiefen

It was a car accident. It was a motorcycle accident. He crashed
in the crosswalk while riding his bicycle. Some thought he inten-
tionally stepped out in front of the car. The truck. His twisted
body rested limply on the sidewalk begging to be outlined in
chalk. I couldn’t see blood but the couple standing at the barri-
cade tape swore that they could.

“Who is this guy?”
“Did you know him?”
“Where did he come from? The driver didn’t see him.”
“Why would someone do such a terrible thing?”
“He’s not from this neighborhood. I would have seen him
before.”
“I think he’s from out of town.”
It wasn’t the biggest city in the world, not even the biggest in
the United States, but it was big enough for the body to be just
some body to most passersby. And some weren’t passersby at all
but ambulance chasers who would further reduce the body to
anonymity, to just a number on an ever-growing list of numbers.
He was No. Sixty-Four to someone. And No. Twenty-Two to
another someone. To most, though, I was just one body in a city
of eight hundred thousand of them. The body was just some body.
One of the greatest tragedies of death is how faultless the
reduction of the body is. No one at the scene truly cared for the
guy, even if—for whatever reason—they could empathize with
his finality. There are simply too many people in the world. That
and people subconsciously live as if they’re going to live forever.
This guy had been no different.
But then there’s the matter of who—or what—this body had
become. Which is the real tragedy, if you ask me. Alive, his faults
were forgivable, manageable, and even positioned within his
promises to be taken care of. But like this, very un-alive, any

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faults not addressed were permanent. Or worse: his faults would
be the only details of his life that some would remember.

But, being human, he also had moments of true compassion.
None consequential enough to change the world but effective in
their own, small ways. Like a pebble’s momentary ripple when
dropped into a moving stream.

(Following through with this particular metaphor, he had
now become the pebble weighted at the bottom of the riverbed:
lifeless and drowned.)

These are what would be brought up at his funeral. By a select
few. By my mother, most certainly. And maybe by my sisters. My
brother would probably remain respectfully quiet.

Whatever agency the person who occupied the body had was
now gone. His existence had been handed over to everybody else.
Its importance quickly diminishing until it’s yet another number
to a sexton.

I’ve tried not to think about it too much but lately, it’s been
in the front of my mind more and more: Death is grim in ways
that are both obvious and not. What a thought to be having while
standing over this body in the middle of the road. In the cross-
walk. In the middle of the sidewalk. Inside of the ambulance.

I thought I was going to live forever.

***

“Did you hear the news?” my mother asked as she hand-
ed the coffee mug to me before sitting down on the sofa. “This
country’s goin’ to Hell. People actin’ like they’re more important
than the rest.”

My mother always talked politics in the vaguest of ways
(whether it was strategic or not, I couldn’t decipher). I didn’t
actually know where she stood and I never asked. I was sure we
disagreed on many things but I kept my own views to myself
despite being reminded over and over that I should talk about
these things with family. Especially with family.

Later in the evening, she’d buckle in the hospital lobby and

25

wonder out loud what she did—or what I did—to deserve such a
thing. But, in this moment, she seemed happy to have me sitting
across from her instead of listening to my voice through the phone.

She had a point this time: This country was going to hell.
But what pissed me off the most was that no individual could
indulge themselves in their own personal disappointment any-
more; the collective pain was too big, too real to shift focus on
the tiny tragedies of one body. And anyway, any show of sadness
would be written off as a sign of the times.
I had been hurting for some time. Secrets are a fact of life but
I had one too many, and frankly, it was enough to cast doubt over
my ability to swim. I had one too many pebbles in my overcoat
pockets. I kept all of that to myself.
“What are you thinkin’?” It was as if she caught the static
from my thoughts: she could hear that I was thinking but couldn’t
make out what I was thinking. “Have you been doin’ okay?”
It had been difficult to lie at first. I hadn’t gotten caught up in the
morality of lying, it was more that I was still solidifying the details.
It needed a specificity that doubled as a dismissal. And most of all,
it needed to be something I could make sound believable.
This approach, however, would not work on my mother. I’d
have to lean into the dismissal.
“I’m okay. Just a lot going on right now.”
I wanted to tell her everything because I wanted (even more)
for her to tell me it would be okay. But I sat quietly and took a
sip of my coffee.
“What roast is this?”
It was, truthfully, a small comfort being with her.

***

He had traces of drugs in his system—mostly marijua-
na—and people would blame his death on that. At least partly.
A few would even take to his history and exploit some of the
less-flattering details. They never knew me that well but they’d
become experts on my shortcomings. For a week or two, he’d

26

finally get some of the fame he’d be aiming for with his art.
His family would look through his paintings for clues and

convince themselves that they should have seen it coming. That
they could have done something. Anything. More.

It was a car accident. It was a stress-related heart attack and
he just dropped while walking across the road. Who cares about
the details? The end result is the same.

He was dead.
I had been thinking about it for a while.

***

I think I had mistaken the metaphor and life isn’t a
stream at all. It’s the goddamn rapids. And I was being thrown around
beneath the surface, taking hit after hit from the river’s rocks.

The process of living was becoming disorienting.
After all, there are two sides of the coin: the great potential
people always knew you had and the inevitable downfall that
people would forever use to justify their own ignorance. Neither
of the sides really mattered.
I was drowning. I had drowned.
A penny sinks with both of its sides intact.
But, while parked outside of the supermarket, I sat in front
of the wheel and pondered which side my life had landed on. I
could have told you who I had been before but wasn’t at all certain
about who I had become—or who I was becoming.
I had either hit someone with my car or I had been hit by a car.
I was either behind the yellow tape or within it.
The body in the middle of the parking lot looked a lot like
my own body and it sent me into a new spiral. I thought that I
would live forever.

***

There was something delicate about the way the body was
positioned, with one leg out below in the most natural of ways

27

and the other one bent backward—almost behind him—like he
was suspended in an effortless ballet jump.

His eyes were closed and his face, relaxed. After all of the
years he spent burying his anxieties, the quietness that flushed
his face was a relief. And even with the blood that, until now, I
couldn’t see and the one shoeless foot, he looked peaceful.

It was as if this, of all things, was what everyone alive was
working so tirelessly toward. It was as if this was the actual
answer to life’s big question.

The headlights of the car reflected off of the wetness of the city
street, bringing attention to the blues and yellows and reds that
weren’t as recognizable before. The same headlights hit one side
of the body, like a spotlight, and threw the other side into shadow.

It was a study in highlights and lowlights. In tints and hues.
In unabashed brightness and unapologetic darkness. Most people
wouldn’t dare to call death beautiful but I stood in the crowd,
looking to the lifeless body, and admired the aesthetics.

***

I had spent the evening at a friend’s place, drinking cheap
wine and burning through a joint or two. I had promised to quit
both drinking and smoking but, considering the circumstance,
had given up on giving anything up. Both of these vices—along
with the many others—relaxed my mind, if only a little.

The rain had stopped and I had seen it as a small courtesy
from the universe, maybe even as an acknowledgment that I was
dealing with enough already. The roads were still slick though,
especially when beneath my bicycle’s two tires.

I had been trying to pay extra attention to the roads, know-
ing that any sudden stops would send me skidding across the
pavement but a sad song had come through my headphones and
I knew enough not to listen to it on my ride home. I was shuffling
through a playlist, trying to find a positive yet still relevant song
that I could sing to in the streets. Into the darkness.

Just as the right song started to play, I saw the body in the

28

middle of the road. The incident hadn’t happened yet but I could
already see that it would. So, in a way, it had already happened,
I just hadn’t yet caught up with time.

Did a car hit him? Was he on a motorcycle? My mother always
warned me about the dangers of motorcycles. Was he riding a
bicycle when it happened? His bicycle looked a lot like my own.
Was he in the crosswalk and the driver didn’t see him? Or did
he step out into the middle of the road without looking? I saw
one of his shoes untied on the other side of the road. Was it the
pickup truck?

I rode by the body, mosaic-like among the pieces of broken
glass, and thought I recognized it. Did I know him when he was
alive? He too, had been visiting his mother. He too, had been
collecting stones in his pockets. He too, carried one too many
stones. How could I have known this? Did I know him?

This was the obvious conclusion. He had become too heavy
to be propelled forward in the stream.

I had been riding by him for what felt like an hour when I
finally turned my head away to look into an expanding white
light. It started small until it filled the entire plane of vision.

It was a car accident.

29

64wet8

Jin Ren
30

31

RELIGION FOUND IN A
CORPSE-CANDLE

after Outlander: Dragonfly In Amber

Ashley Sapp

She stumbled upon a corpse with bright, blue fungus
thriving over his thin, white skin. They preserved
his body like flowers in a vase: beautiful yet departed.
She recalled how a soldier said once, “It makes you wonder
where they live between battles.” The thought
brought me to my knees, fingers searching
the soil furtively for seeds that do not exist:
a glimpse at how little we know beyond ourselves.
I can picture how the blossoms would look permuting
from my hands, vivid blooms cascading across
my bony wrists and reaching towards my stilled bosom.
This is how fiction is created, an image plucked
and pressed like petals, captured and reinvented.
I am not her. But she is all of us, facing
the certainty that is death though buoyed by tiny miracles.
It is, after all, how we approach faith. Often too tired to listen,
we find dogma in the blooms that emerge from our bodies.
Perhaps that is why our veins run blue under our skin,
a whisper yet - of what is to come, of what has transpired.

32

The Cards Never Lie

Madisyn Meek

The High Priestess – Reversed
Major Arcana

Reconnect | Neglect* | Secrets

When asked about childhood,
I’m always unsure on how to answer.

But I know one thing,
What I went through was not my fault.

I suppose that the memories of what took place there no longer
matter.

I’m supposed to keep moving forward,
Or at least that’s what Meet the Robinsons told me to do.

I think that’s why I took my own father to court
I can’t move forward if I’m trapped in the past.

Three of Swords – Upright
Minor Arcana

Heartbreak* | Rejection | Pain

The judicial process is rigged.
I know because my case should not have been taken.

I am overly privileged and white.
It’s sad that that’s how I escaped my childhood home.

No matter how, I supposed all that mattered was that I was out.

I have years of trauma that refused to be erased,
Like permanent marker on a white board.

No matter how hard I scrub and wipe and pray that it’ll leave

33

me alone,
It’s hold on me causes me to laugh instead of cry when

going to therapy.

The Hermit – Upright
Major Arcana

Soul-Searching* | Reflection | Truth

For the next two years,
My father texted me twice a week.

He would guilt me into coming to visit my siblings,
Inevitably, I’d end up standing in front of the kitchen sink

for the next three hours.

He’d tell me that I was welcome to visit anytime, but it never
truly felt like it.

I called my stepmom a bitch before the court case,
That’s when the welcoming smiles of my family stopped.

That day tortures me, more than anything my father ever said.
I wouldn’t take it back, it was deserved, but the memory

was burned into my skull.

Ace of Cups – Reversed
Minor Arcana

Release | Emotional Exhaustion* | Repression

I left when I was sixteen,
And yet I still find myself thinking that maybe something

could have been different.
Deep down, I know that no matter what I did,

Nothing would have changed.

My father had made his choice of who he wanted, and it was not
his daughter.

34

There is something ironic about my sharing my trauma
A stranger would ask, and I’d hold nothing back

But if my therapist does, I’d laugh and move on.
Talking about it professionally makes it too real.


Two of Wands – Upright
Minor Arcana

Advance | Explore | Prospects*
I’m twenty years old now,

But I’m still trying to make up for lost time.
My friends do not understand when I ask to go to the trampoline
park or Chuck E’ Cheese.

They say that they are for kids.
It’s fruitless to explain that that’s exactly the point so I let the
conversation move on.
There are some days that are better than others.

The bad days leave me incapacitated in my bed.
The good days turn into better days

And soon the better days turn into my best days.
It’s a journey, but it’s a journey I’m willing to embark on.

35

36

Untitled

Bhen Alan
37

Content Warning: Sexual Assault

How to Clean a White Dress

Georgia Sampson

1. You will have to spend a moment looking at the stain. Assess
it as much as you can. Remember that it’s just a stain. You
will have to convince yourself that the stain will come out so
you will have to be calm for this step. Disregard the previous
step and stare at the spot a little longer. Fixate on it. You’ll
have to do some research prior to beginning to clean. Look at
multiple websites. Determine that the supplies are as follows:
isopropyl alcohol, cotton swabs, makeup remover, and liquid
detergent. You will find out that you have three out of four
of those items. Ask your roommates if they have isopropyl
alcohol. They will not.

2. Try your best to clean the dress without alcohol. The stain
will have already set in because the dress is white and the
lipstick is pink, bright pink. You will have to use more deter-
gent to make up for the lack of alcohol. You won’t know if this
is right. You won’t know if any of this is right, but you will
continue on. You will try and scrub the pink down to noth-
ing, but instead, you will rub more lipstick into the white. It
will be a shame, too. You will discover during this step how
much you liked this dress. It’s not so much that the dress is
nice or that it fits you well, but you’ll think about the times
that you had in the dress. They weren’t necessarily good. In
fact, most of them were terrible. And yet, you will convince
yourself that this dress survived with you in some way and
upon this realization, you will blot harder.

3. You’ll throw the dress in the machine and push whites. Think
to yourself: maybe the machine will release bleach. Won-
der, “is that how washing machines work?” Go online for

38

confirmation in your thought process and realize, no, you
have to put in the bleach separately. This will add an extra
step. Wait for the spin cycle to end so you can start it again,
this time with bleach. It really will be a shame—pink of all
things. Think about the other colors that could have been
much worse: red, blue, and purple. All of these shades would
have left more noticeable marks. Decide that pink is still bad.
Pink is still noticeable, still a stain. This is something you can
not change, so you will have to accept it now.

4. Call your mother to check that you are doing everything cor-
rectly. She will tell you to wash the dress again. Before start-
ing the cycle again, stop to assess the progress so far. It will
be minimal. The stain is still bright and noticeable: slashed in
the middle of the torso as if reminding everyone that it can’t
be taken away. You will think it is unfortunate. Like the time
you were called a whore at a party. You didn’t know anyone,
but someone called you a whore. You tried to leave it alone
but everyone noticed and you had to leave. Even though she
didn’t know you, she likely thought you were a whore because
of your clothes or your attitude or your glances and flirts with
every man there. Whore-ish girl, you were then. Think about
that word again. Think about that time too. They’re the same
in your mind, at this point.

5. At this step, you will think that you should have forgotten
about it; clearly, you have not forgotten about it. You will
notice that a lot has happened in that year, yet you still think
about the word whore written in pink across your stomach as
everyone stares deeply at it. It could have been written in red
but, with your pale skin, pink will shame you just as clearly.
Was she right when she called you a whore? Wallow in that
feeling for a moment.

6. You have wasted time following those steps and decide it
is time to check on the dress. Before you do check on the

39

dress, remind yourself that there is no way that you could
be a whore. You need to have sex to be a whore. Think about
the one time you had sex. Feel completely unclean. Remind
yourself that that time was not sex. Sex needs consent to be
sex. In that sense, you have not had sex. This will be reiter-
ated to you by the counselor you have had to see since your
mental breakdown. In a couple of weeks when you confess all
of this to your mother she will tell you the same thing. Many
will question this in the future. They will ask you what you
were wearing or will tell you that you kissed him too so you
asked for it. Who cares if you were drunk? You knew what
you were doing when you were drinking with your attitude
and demeanor and whore written in the middle of your body.
You knew what you were doing.

7. In these moments, tell yourself it is not your fault. Say it again
and again; it is important that you hear it. The more you hear
it, the more you will absorb it. Say it to yourself now.

8. During the next step, you will listen to John Denver because
you want to relax. It won’t work but you tried, at least. Whis-
per to yourself, “It’s not my fault.” You will find the dress still
in the wash and the rinse cycle is over now. Whisper again,
“It’s not my fault.” Open the lid and find that the dress is still
stained in the front. Remind yourself that you can always
cover the front with a belt or sash, but you do not have to do
this if you do not want to.

9. In fact, you do not have to do any of this if you do not want to.

40

Untitled

Emily Hartman
41

Content Warning: Bulimia, Anorexia

THE WEIGHT of BALLOONS

Mario Aliberto III

Carlotta Guerra-Montejo at 117lbs.:
A simple Google search tells you that it takes about 4,000
helium balloons to lift a person weighing 110lbs. off the ground.
Carlotta doesn’t really care about that. The idea is ridiculous.
Anyway, she doesn’t want to float away. What’s the point? Six foot
two at the age of sixteen, she doesn’t need any help from balloons
if she wants to soar above everyone.
In her sophomore year of high school, on the first day of try-
outs for the basketball team, when she leaps for an uncontested
layup, she barely has the energy to get her feet off the ground.
When Coach calls for a scrimmage, the white girl trying out
against Carlotta for center position, barely five seven, effortless-
ly boxes her out beneath the rim, snatching rebounds that three
months ago no question would have been Carlotta’s.
The white girl teases her, affecting a terrible Spanish accent.
“¿Qué pasa, chica?” Over and over.
Carlotta’s father is not in the stands.
After practice, as Coach announces the names of girls who
survive first day cuts, Carlotta slinks off to a corner of the gymna-
sium. She slumps down the wall onto the hardwood floor behind
the stands, and she doesn’t hear her name. No one says goodbye.
She’s still there when they turn out the lights.

Carlotta Guerra-Montejo at 123lbs.:
One month until high school basketball tryouts and 10th
grade begins the usual way. On average, it takes about a half-
year before the kids in her classes stop staring, but eventually
they get used to her. The random kids in the hallways or cafeteria
never stop staring. Of course they tease her. She’s heard all the
names before. Giraffe. Bigfoot. In a month, when she’s on the

42

basketball court in her team’s yellow uniform for tryouts, chants
of Big Bird are a given.

At home, she doesn’t even bother to pretend to eat anymore.
She thinks she hears her mother tell her father, “Well, at least
she’s not pregnant.”

Carlotta Guerra-Montejo at 126lbs.:
The final game of summer league takes place two weeks
before 10th grade begins, and Carlotta’s team doesn’t even come
close to making the playoffs. For the first time Carlotta can
remember, she doesn’t start, but comes off the bench in the 3rd
quarter. She tires easily. Doesn’t fight for rebounds. At one point,
she has an open layup, but blows it by somehow managing to
wedge the ball between the rim and backboard.
Her father sits in the stands. He doesn’t cheer. He doesn’t
say anything.
There are five college scouts in attendance, including the
three who showed interest in her at the beginning of the season.
They all seem infatuated with a point-guard who set a season
record for assists. She’s five four in sneakers.

Carlotta Guerra-Montejo at 131lbs.:
Tonight’s practice, she’s missed more shots than she’s made.
Her father thinks she has an infection from her bellybutton pierc-
ing. He threatens to take her to the doctor, but she knows he
won’t. They don’t have the insurance for it.

Carlotta Guerra-Montejo at 133lbs.:
Her father is six three and her mother is five ten, and they’ve
bragged about Carlotta’s height being in the 99th percentile since
before she can remember. Of course her sport is basketball. What
choice did she have? Crazy ups, her father tells anyone who will
listen. Mainly other basketball people.
At home, her mother tries to give her second helpings after
dinner. Carlotta dumps the food in the garbage when her mother
leaves the table to wash dishes. Her mother eventually refuses

43

to leave the table until Carlotta finishes eating. Carlotta waits
her out, and her mother doesn’t have the patience for it. But
her mother is tricky. They only have the one bathroom in the
apartment and her mother slyly races after meals to occupy it.
It works the first few times, her mother staying in the bathroom
long enough that when Carlotta finally gets in there, she can’t
force any food up no matter how far she jams her toothbrush
down her throat. So she begins saving plastic bags and skips
the bathroom, vomiting in her bedroom after dinner. She hides
the bags of puke under her bed and then waits for night, until
her parents are asleep. Then she sneaks into the bathroom and
dumps the foul contents into the toilet.

In the morning, when she rises from bed and stands too
quickly, the room spins around her, and she must sit before she
blacks out. When she regains herself, she stands in front of her
bedroom mirror. She lifts her shirt, admiring the dangling blue
jewel on her stomach, framed below the outline of ribs poking
through skin.

Carlotta Guerra-Montejo at 137lbs.:
Carlotta doesn’t have friends, really. She has teammates.
She has practice, and training camps, and her father, who wears
a whistle around his neck to signal starts and stops even if she’s
just shooting around for fun on the blacktop courts outside
their apartment complex. That’s not true. It’s never fun. It’s
hard work. Her father’s favorite words. He shouts them over
and over, hobbling behind her on bad knees from his busted
chance at playing college.
Whistle. Hard work. Whistle. Hard work. Whistle. Whis-
tle. Whistle.

Carlotta Guerra-Montejo at 139lbs.:
Her parents finally see the bellybutton piercing when she
least expects it. She has just finished vomiting macaroni and
cheese into the toilet, and a bit splashes back up on her shirt.
She has grown accustomed to the piercing. Unfortunately, she

44

doesn’t think about it when she strips out of her stained shirt into
her Nike sports bra. She’s sneaking back to her room when she
bumps into her mother in the hall, and her mother’s eyes, like a
shark’s, seem to roll up into their whites.

There is a sit-down in the kitchen. Her mother somehow
connects the piercing to a future pregnancy with a non-existent
boy. Her father thinks this is the reason she’s losing the touch
on her jumpshot.

They compromise. Carlotta promises to take it out for games.
Carlotta has no intention of ever taking the piercing out. They
don’t discuss her throwing up, which she’s pretty sure her mother
was standing outside the bathroom listening to.

Carlotta Guerra-Montejo at 141lbs.:
During her first game for summer league, Carlotta runs faster
and jumps higher than ever before, but she tires easily. She drops
twenty-two points on the other team and grabs ten boards before
halftime. Her father’s shouts of “Hard Work” from the stands are
constant. Her bodyfat is depleting, and veins striate her muscles.
After the half, she grabs a couple more rebounds and adds anoth-
er ten points, but she’s winded and feels dizzy.
When she steps off the court, her dark skin glistening with
sweat, her father can’t help but compliment her on how ripped
she looks.
The scouts gather around her father. She hears him call her
‘The golden goose.” The scouts’ eyes never leave her. She feels
like some sort of livestock, graded and rated. A goose indeed.
Her father beams as if he is being drafted.
Her teeth hurt. Her gums. They bleed easily from the con-
stant brushing to cover up the scent of vomit.

Carlotta Guerra-Montejo at 143lbs.:
Carlotta stops digesting her food a week after getting pierced,
a leftover slice of her mother’s chocolate rum cake that serves
as her last “official” meal. She drinks only water. She eats only
when her parents are watching, and slips her fingers deep down

45

her throat so she can trigger her vomit reflex and throw up as
quietly as she can into the toilet.

She reads the internet for tips. Chew ice if you’re hungry.
Throw up. Eat celery. Throw up. 8 glasses of water a day. Throw
up. Use a toothbrush instead of your fingers. Throw up.

Somedays, she lies on the floor of her bedroom for hours. On
her back, she isn’t taller than anyone.

Carlotta Guerra-Montejo at 150lbs.:
Carlotta is out early waiting by the basketball court. She
doesn’t bring a ball with her. The boys on the court pass by with-
out a word and take up a game. She rolls up her t-shirt and ties it
in the back. A blue sparkly gem dangles from her stomach.
The girls filter out of the apartments in cliques of three and
four. Carlotta nods at each group as they pass. Some girls nod
back. Some only look at her out of the corners of their eyes. They
all whisper when they reach the parking lot. Some look back.
Some laugh.
Carlotta waits for a game to end before joining the next one.
She rolls down her shirt.
She takes an elbow to the lip.
She doesn’t keep score.

Carlotta Guerra-Montejo at 150lbs.:
Because of her height, Carlotta looks much older than six-
teen. When she finally summons the courage to enter the dimly
lit, trendy tattoo shop inside of Sawgrass mall a few weeks after
her birthday, the employees don’t even question her when she
asks to get her bellybutton pierced. The girl passing along the
non-indemnity forms makes two jokes about Carlotta’s height
that are meant to be friendly. Or not. Carlotta can no longer tell.
Reclined in a leather chair at the front of the store, in full
view of the shoppers passing by with their stuffed plastic bags,
Carlotta rolls up her t-shirt up, exposing her stomach. She stares
at pre-drawn tattoos on the wall that customers can choose by
pointing. Dragons. Skulls. Dice. The green-haired girl with two

46

full sleeves of nautical tattoos selects a needle that looks identical
to one of Carlotta’s mother’s sewing needles, except much larger.

The girl pinches the roll of fat over Carlotta’s bellybutton,
then drives the needle through. Sweet pain in the dull ache of the
piercing. For payment, she uses the birthday money her abuelitos
mailed her, folded twenties she carries into the store inside the
birthday card they came in.

Carlotta Guerra-Montejo at 150lbs.:
Carlotta decides that wishes cannot be stolen, and wishes are
like dreams. They have to be worked for. She will get her belly-
button pierced. She imagines how it will look, a sparkly jewel
dangling from her navel, and she is almost hypnotized by the
thought itself, fixated, like the focus it takes at the free throw
line with the crowd heckling you.
Something for her. Something of hers.
She will have to sneak over to the mall while her parents are
at work if she wants it done, and hope the shop doesn’t ask for
parental consent. She’s been thinking about it since her birthday.
She’ll have to hide it all summer, because practice for her com-
petitive basketball summer league has begun (where not one, but
three college scouts approach her father the first week), and the
league doesn’t allow players to wear jewelry. Also, her parents,
second generation Cuban-Americans, are against piercings of any
kind. No piercings, no tattoos, no make-up, no nothing. Carlotta’s
mother constantly reminds her that Carlotta’s abuelitos, Mima
and Papa, did not flee Castro, smuggled in the hold of a leaky fish-
ing boat with crabs crawling all over them, so their nieta could
turn herself into a freak show carnival act.

Carlotta Guerra-Montejo at 150lbs.:
During the first days of summer vacation, Carlotta watches
the neighborhood girls cluster in packs and scream and laugh
and talk loudly about their plans. Beaches and malls and boys
and girls and taking photos and car rides and music and camps
and pools and shopping and movies and sleepovers and tattoos.

47

She watches from the free throw line. From the three-point line.
Under the baking heat of a relentless sun and courts packed
with boys and men who make it their mission to prove she
doesn’t belong.

Summer evenings, her father and his whistle.
Hard work. Hard work.
A group of girls return when the streetlights switch on,
exposed midriffs and dangling baubles pierced to their bellybut-
tons. They come and go from their apartments in the time Car-
lotta’s father has her shoot a hundred free throws. The girls climb
into cars with blankets and coolers sloshing with ice, wearing less
clothes than they did during the day, their jeweled stomachs on
display, headlights shining brightly onto the court and taillights
leaving red tracers fading into the night.

Carlotta Guerra-Montejo at 150lbs.:
Every time the phone rings, it is a phone call from Carlotta’s
summer coach. Her father stands in the kitchen, staring at her.
Her mother sits on the couch next to her during these calls,
a hand on Carlotta’s knee meant to be reassuring. Her father
answers questions about her college goals. About her training.
About how strong she is. About her diet. About her need to
lose fat and gain muscle. About how soft her body is. About
what her body is or isn’t, or what it needs to be in order to take
the next step. About what it takes for her to attract a scout’s
attention. Or maybe her father just offers these things without
being asked. When he hangs up, he high-fives her as hard as
he would one of his construction buddies, and her palm stings
for a long time afterwards.

Carlotta Guerra-Montejo at 150lbs.:
On her 16th birthday, the day after 9th grade ends and sum-
mer vacation begins, Carlotta celebrates by blowing out the can-
dles on the chocolate rum cake her mother baked. Her parents
orbit around her, serenading her with an off-key duet of “Cum-
pleaños Feliz” at the kitchen table. There is a ‘Happy Birthday’

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