Author: Inklette

A Deserving Destination

This is the New York you don’t see in the movies. This is the land of cattle-spotted hillsides and the brightest lights you’ll find are in the stadiums of local towns’ football fields. It’s country in every northern sense of the word–one way roads that sprawl through mountains, diners run by three generations, and locals who can trace their lineage back to a certain ship named after a seasonal flower.
Make no mistake; this is not a land without dreams. This is not a land without “big-city” aspirations. They just happen to be nestled between rolling green hills. Take a left or right, go forwards or backwards–it makes no difference. You’ll eventually find yourself at a cobblestone entrance with proud plaques proclaiming:
University: founded 1754
                                           College: established 1858
                                                                                     Higher Learning: since 1923
There is a passion in this country, you see. A fervor. A history of unquenchable thirst for knowledge. And if you take right on Saxon Drive, go past the ruddy barn, and up the cracked asphalt–you’ll find a place deserving of a movie. You’ll find the embodiment of excitement, passion, creativity, and ambition. You’ll find Alfred University.
A comprehensive liberal arts college, Alfred University is tucked within mountains of Allegany County, New York. Once stepping foot on campus, one is bombarded with the Saxons’ purples and golds. Banners, athletics fields, and even the front sign declares Alfred University est. 1836 in rich violet and vibrant yellow. The color scheme may assault the eyes with a bit of tackiness, but considering the school has been around for 176 years, one realizes it’s a step towards physical modernization.
Many eastern upstate colleges continue to use the same foundations from first establishment. Alfred is no exception with cobblestone streets still wearing dark scuffs from the feet of students over the centuries. Learning minds have actively traipsed across this campus–the eroded stone can attest to that.
Although perhaps not as exciting as strutting down glitzy Broadway, Alfred hones its own thrilling beauty. Originally built into the towering hillside, views of a surrealistic world are guaranteed no matter which window you peer out of.
“It’s amazing here,” a Creative Writing summer camper breathes softly as she gazes out of such a window. Seated at an old varnished table, she peels the backs of her thighs off her wooden chair to get a better look. The sun has poured its evening light over the campus, languorously washing the streets and treetops in a honey gold, sweetening the hot atmosphere that is only intensified by writing on the third floor of Seidlin Hall.
The vintage air of Seidlin, a mixture of blackboard chalk and well-turned book pages, fills the noses of the camper and her six fellow writers. Beads of sweat stream down their spines as freely as creativity courses through their minds. The blistering heat is barely a second thought to the stories that they churn with their pentips.
In her redwine skirt, Professor Dr. Gray weaves around the table. It’s a wonder her black stilettos don’t snag on the aging carpet. Finally, she stops at the head of the table, “Are we ready?”
Damp and frazzled heads nod, energy sparking about the room, excitement shooting off posters of Austen, Emerson, and Orwell quotes. A beam of sunlight cuts through one of the cracked-open windows, creating something of a spotlight on one camper. She taps her pen on the oak for a-one, a-two, a-one-two-three-four,
“I’ll go!” Her hand shoots up, volunteering for first conferencing. This disturbance in the air causes a flurry of dust to fly and the sun reflects off each spec, making it seem as if a handful of glitter were just thrown into the air.
As she reads her story, an overdue breeze sweeps into the room, faintly teasing hairs plastered to the backs of necks. An abandoned piece of notebook paper flutters and, without the notice of an enraptured audience, is carried swiftly out the through the window.
Riding the midday wind, the paper floats past Alfred’s three-story library before settling on the sidewalk outside of the cavernous Ceramics building. It rests on a twig-littered path for the briefest of moments before a group of Art summer students scamper past.
“I can’t believe the professor took me seriously! I kid you not she said, ‘Taylor, with the work, I believe you can become an artist.’ ”

Nathalia Baum is a senior at St. Charles High School in Illinois, USA. She is an attendee of Alfred University’s summer writing program, the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio and the Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp. She is a teacher’s assistant in her school’s creative writing class and is a member of the National English Honours Society. She is fond of writers like Joan Didion, Tahereh Mafi, Laini Taylor, F. Scott Fitzgerald, J.K. Rowling and Jane Austen.

Andante

silence.

1. we don’t talk to each from across the room.

you call it a habit, but I don’t think it’s that.

2. You had once insisted we did away with the barricades

that partitioned the room into two.

There are none now.

But we feel claustrophobic,   still.

3. The silent metronomes of our hearts sound familiar.

Perhaps it rains outside.

4. I open the windows to let the breeze pour in. I can’t hear you over the phone.

You talk too loud.

5. Silence subsides, but

only outside. The breeze

has turned to a wind.

That’s all.

Trivarna Hariharan is an author, musician, filmmaker and humanitarian. Her work has been published across the globe, in various literary magazines, zines and journals such as Teen Ink, YoungMinds, Literature Studio, Writers Asylum, Textploit and so on and forth. Her first poetry book, Musings of an Alchemist was published by CreateSpace. She holds a grade 4 distinction in keyboard from the Trinity College of London. She is also the school representatives member at a social organisation called Redefy, the Social Outreach Co-ordinator at Textploit and the editor-in-chief at Inklette.

Leaving

Listen: I tried scratching my skin,

scarring a ripple  ,  flicking a riot.

Everything else is fine.

My eyes          keep their shadows.

My mother still    cleans her bones.

She shovels water to lattice her limbs.

The water  kneads its skin like  a cloud,

shedding its weight.   Mother pulls her

skin back.   Keeps it light as a drop, but

it is a good thing.

                                 Asking  memory

to wait till this is done.    Boys stop by a tree

to gulp it.               The cold rustle of leaves,

jabbing their toe, stops them.               They

don’t eat it.   The tree soon arches its back

in drought.

                           Skins the tides.     Soon its

skin plunges.   The boys’ black shoes plunge.

They plunge.

                 They have wriggled deep into leaving.

Devanshi Khetarpal is a high school junior from Bhopal, India. She is the author of Welcome to Hilltop High (Indra, 2012) and a poetry collection titled Co:ma,to’se (Partridge, 2014). She is a Poetry Editor for the Phosphene Literary Journal, a Journalist cum Representative for Redefy and the Founder cum Editor-in-chief of Inklette. Her work is forthcoming in Polyphony HS, Crack the Spine, Parallel Ink, Glass Kite Anthology, Eunoia Review, The Cadaverine and Alexandria Quarterly. Devanshi has attended writing workshops and literature seminars at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge and is a recent graduate of the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio at the University of Iowa. Her website can be found here.