Category: Non-fiction

Partition

Today, I sat with my grandmother and asked her about the partition. She didn’t say a word and yet her eyes held tears. She did not stop; she sighed and began a story.

A Sardar police officer came home in a hurry, he asked us to pack a few things and leave the house as soon as possible. We were supposed to go to the station, and then leave for Delhi with everyone else. My mother panicked, Papaji (her father) wasn’t at home. I still remember that morning she had boiled some ‘chana’ and cooked some rice. She packed all of it in a big vessel because we weren’t sure how long it would take for us to leave for Delhi. My mother, along with my three sisters and two brothers wore layers and layers of clothes because mother didn’t know if bags of clothes could be kept. And then we left our house in Lahore. That was the last time I saw it. We all rushed to the station and the police  there told us that we would have to stay the night in a tent. Mother wasn’t sure about it but agreed ,seeing we had no other option. On the other side we could hear blood curdling screams, my older sister asked mother what it was, and she hugged us closer and told us that it was the Muslims, they were killing the Indians. Finally Papaji came back, and asked to spend the night in the bus, as it would be safer. We did so. We spent the night there and next day we left for Delhi, leaving behind our house, memories and Lahore.


                When she finished telling me this, she held a strong face and did not cry. She continued.

Once we reached Delhi we stayed at my Aunt’s house, which wasn’t big but we managed. Soon some of our relatives came back, and we shifted to Kanpur. But some of them stayed there. They couldn’t come, even though they wanted to. They were tortured and killed by the Muslims, or they killed themselves because it was better than being tortured. That’s all I remember from those few days.

By the end, I realized that even though it was been years since this happened and we read about it only in our history textbooks,  our grandparents have experienced this. The memories of those who died remain even today. The memories and the pain of the partition remains.

It was not only painful but also unforgettable.

Deepti Chadha is an aspiring journalist from India. She is currently a student in the 12th grade, studying commerce. She is an avid reader who loves all kinds of books. Deepti wants to travel the world, meet new people and learn about different cultures. Writing is a part of who she is today, and writing is what keeps her content. 

 

Click Here to Begin Your Ascent

And how I keep it in, keep it in when all it wants to do is fly up and away until it is lover well met and lover well spent, tongue hanging out, briny palms, sweaty forehead in the joy that wants to romp and play and laugh a little, laugh a lot, weep arm in arm with St. Francis walking down the winding cobblestone streets circa now circa always with frayed ropes for belts, and how hard it is to keep it in day after day, year after year through the calendar of days and the counting of days that exist only as figures while inside I feel it turning and churning like foam in the bubble line of the river and how to enjoy the world and every fruit and nut of it and one day offer my own skin and bones to the river or cairn of stones and would you dopple me, would you motorolla and turn me inside out and upside down so that the brook trout colors can shine like dawn light and raiment of sky streaked with clouds and for this we were made, you and I, to rise as smoke to be one with the firmament and one with the lilacs who take their cues from the constellations and we will sing and we will dance and not have to keep it in anymore, oh, the moon will bathe our nakedness in pools of its own and we will love so much we will come back only as rain to water the fields and valleys and the little old Mennonite woman’s garden that is already blessed because she poured her whole life into it and the deaths of her children, her favorite cat Ivan as her one blind eye stares without seeing though somehow recognizing the roundness of our drops as we fall.

Note: The line “the blissful responsibility to enjoy the world” is taken from Clarence Brown’s introduction to Nadazhda Mandelstam’s book Hope Against Hope.  

Robert Vivian‘s next book will be a collection of dervish essays (prose poems) called Mystery My Country, which will be published next year along with another book co-written with the poet Richard Jackson called Traversings. 

Two Pieces

Specks of Nothingness

When I was growing up, I would stare at the ceiling. I must have been eight years old when I started to do this. I would tilt my head up, focus on one spot, and stare. My eyes would begin to water as I tried not to blink. And I would wait. After a couple of minutes, little specks and shapes began to dance before me. I’ve seen television screens turn to static when there’s a power fuse. The white noise would crash into the room and the black and white fuzz would be enough to drive anyone crazy. That’s what I saw.

I would stare at the off white ceiling of my living room and watch the static of nothingness jump in front of my eyes. I would follow each small pigment until bursts of white would start flashing like fireworks. They were rare but I looked at them with wonder.

Now, when I think back to those days, I understand that my eyes were playing tricks on me after being pried open so wide but back then, I didn’t know what it was or if anyone else could see it. Since I was a shy kid, I never mentioned it to anyone in my family. I was the youngest, the baby, and didn’t want to be laughed at. And so, I continued on quietly. Usually at night when everyone else was asleep.

Some of my most prominent memories from childhood begin in the dark. My bedroom would be as silent as it could be. My sheets crisp. My pillow soft. I would listen to the soft snores of my older sister sleeping in the bed next to mine. Sometimes I peaked outside the window to make sure robbers weren’t trying to break in. Mostly, I would stare at the ceiling.

In the near blackness, the leaping particles would appear faster and louder. I would watch them and try to fall asleep. Counting sheep never worked for me, so I counted spots. When my eyes started to doze, I would catch that spurt of white and my eyes would jolt open and look for it again. “What was that?” I asked myself. I would question whether it was real or my imagination. I would wait to see if it would return. When it didn’t, which was most times, my eyes relaxed again. But while my eyes were tired, my mind was not. I could not stop picturing the moving specks from the ceiling. Did the ceiling mind that they were there? Did it welcome them? And then I would remember that the ceiling didn’t feel. The ceiling was the ceiling. The bed was the bed. The alarm clock was the alarm clock. These objects were real but they were simply objects. Before I knew it, the tall walls started to crawl into themselves and shrink in on me. I would take a deep breath. Then another. And another.

Breathe. Breathe.

I was breathing but the stuffed whale next to me was not. And one day, I wouldn’t. I would cease to breathe. And so would my snoring sister and my sleeping brother and my loving parents and all my friends. I was eight. I should have been dreaming about new dolls or thinking about the play date with the best friend of that year. I should have been but I wasn’t. Instead, I let my breathing get heavier, My arms were now tingling deeply with nerves. There was sweat gathering on the back of my neck that I did my best to ignore.

People say that one day, it will all be gone. The material items that we so desire will be meaningless and the forced family dinners will no longer exist. But as I lay in bed, I realized that I was being lied to. It wouldn’t be gone. I would.

Who would wrap themselves in my favorite blanket? Who would wear my clothes? Who would live in my house? Or would it crumble to pieces after we were all gone? Were the beating hearts of my family the very foundation that our house stood on? I didn’t know. I didn’t know what would happen to any of it. I have never felt the thud of my heart more vigorously than in my eight year old body. Like a

prisoner trying to break free, it would pound fiercely in my chest. It was like it knew that one day it would stop. It was pumping. It was pumping. I was alive. Right now. This moment.

I’ve heard it said again and again that kids believe that they are invincible. That they can surpass injury and do whatever they please. I was the opposite. I grew up so keenly aware of death that it made shutting my eyes hard. If the world would one day be black, why miss the opportunity to look at it now? I would stare at blank space for the sake of staring. I would feel myself sink into my bed and wonder how it would feel to no longer feel.

When we’re gone, we can’t speak and those who loved us can’t ask us out to dinner or which movie we preferred. When the ones we love leave, we can’t hold them in our arms or tell them a joke. It’s the law of life. But what are the laws of death?

My young self refused to believe that it all came to a halt. There had to be a world that allowed the dead to miss the living. There had to be a place where the long gone could laugh and dream. I refused to believe these kinds of places didn’t exist. But it didn’t stop me from thinking the unthinkable: what if they didn’t. I began to feel so hard when that thought crossed my mind. I would try to feel everything at once just to feel. I would breathe in such heaps that I would choke.

I can feel her blue bathrobe against my cheek. I can feel how unconvinced I was at her kind words of false reassurance. I can feel.

When I was growing up, I would stare at the off white ceilings of my house and watch scraps of nothing hiccup around me. And every so often, I noticed small white flickers of the unknown appear and disappear so fast that a blink meant missing it. I would lay in bed and let the whispers of death crawl into my ears.

Now, I am twenty-two years old, and so much of me is still that little girl who was afraid. The little girl who would hold on to belief. The little girl who would lay in bed wide awake while the rest of the world slept. The little girl who was grounded in reality while everyone else floated in dreams. The little girl who told herself that those white glimmers were messages from a world that could only be reached by death. Our little secret.

But so much of me is not that girl anymore. And while I still lay in bed at night with my eyes staring up at the ceiling, I don’t think of death. I think of life.

I breathe.

SIDE EFFECTS

Elliot,

I had to write to you and tell you about the dream that came to me last night. I actually began to write it down as soon as I woke up. Impressed? How many mornings did we spend over coffee (no milk with three sugars and heavy on the milk with no sugar), trying to remember our dreams? How many mornings did we curse ourselves for only remembering details like “a squirrel with a top hat” or “the clouds above me turned deep red?” But this one jolted me awake the way unexpected thunder does. It had me reaching blindly for a piece of paper and pen, both of which, luckily, I have been keeping close to me since I arrived here.

I was in a hallway. I have no idea where. The walls were annoyingly off-white and there were no windows or paintings. In what felt like four steps, I was walking through an open door and entering an elevator. It was carpeted with ugly floral and had handsome wood panels for walls. There were no buttons. No up or down, no 1, 2, 3. This didn’t bother me.

I stood in the center and let the doors close automatically. I took a deep breath. I took a shallow breath. I went on breathing. It was a matter of seconds before I realized I was falling. The elevator kept going on and on. Startled. I think that’s the first feeling that came to me. I didn’t know where I was going and I held my breath in anticipation. The elevator stopped. It came to a halt so fast that my neck whipped forward and back. The way it does when you slam on the brakes at the sight of a bunny crossing the street. When I collected myself, I let out a breath of relief. And then I was falling again. For as long as I breathed, the elevator would fall. It was as if my existence was the button that allowed the gears to turn. I went on for miles. Or so it seemed. And then the very floor I stood on, covered in hideous flowers, turned to glass. My feet felt the transition, slick and fast. Out of painful curiosity, I looked down. Below me, maybe two hundred feet away, was concrete. Solid concrete. And I could do nothing to stop it. Unless I could cut off my own breathing, that is.

We spend the majority of our time imagining our futures. Endlessly frustrated that we can’t know for sure what’s going to happen next.

Well, I knew. My future was that concrete getting closer and closer with each unsure breath. I could finally see what was ahead of me and what was ahead of me was the end. I closed my eyes. I could feel the skin fold over and try and save me. I opened them. Felt my lids lift with hesitation. I wanted to see but what was there to see? Dark wood straight ahead, grey concrete below me. My eyes shut themselves once more. There were only a few more feet.

I saw you. I saw your ginger beard that tickled my cheeks. I saw those green eyes that I compared to creek water. I saw those ripped up shoes that you refused to let go. I saw the smile of a fox. I saw you getting smaller and smaller as the escalator took me up. The promise of revisiting “us” upon my return lingering between us as I waited for you to walk away. But I was off and moving before I could see if you ever did. I have a feeling you didn’t.

I saw you, Elliot.

And then I woke up.

Side effects include: vivid dreams.

It’s on the label of the pill bottle. The anti-malaria ones. Riding in the car with you after picking up the prescription. Laughing at our made up side effects all the way home.

This one is real.

I hope all is well. I’ll see you soon,

   Lizzy

Leanne Carman is a graduate from the State University of New York at New Paltz. It is there, in that vibrant town, that she earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Creative Writing. She loves words, spring air, and a perfectly cooked egg. Her work has been published in On the Rusk.

Chronicles of The Chronically Ill

On March 17, 2015, Hunter and I went to IHOP to celebrate that she didn’t die last year, which I think is a pretty cool thing. We called it the celebration of her Tumorversary, the fateful day a year prior that she had her brain tumor removed. We didn’t cry, we just ate, and ate, and ate, and posted on Instagram a picture of “I love you” spelled out in sweetener packets. This is how we cope. I think about it a lot, the fact that I met her three months after her surgery. I think about how I could not hold her or assure her that I would be there when she woke up. I wonder how scared she was. Sometimes we talk and she tells me the stories, and even in the little anecdotes of her ten days in the hospital, and a month stuck in another state, she sounds brave. I wonder what she saw when she opened her eyes for the first time after surgery, without the tumor eating away at her.

When we first met, we found out the medical anomalies of one another. She asked me about when I was sick, and after four years, I was used to the story: “I was in the hospital for nine days, I could have died, they were watching to see if they needed to amputate my toes, I went to physical therapy for a year and a half, my body still sucks, blah, blah, blah.” She told me her surgery was “months” ago, never with specifications of how long “months” was. It took a while to get it out of her. I didn’t know that when I met her she was newly out of brain surgery, bearing fresh scars, fresh worries, and fresh fears.

And a year to the day she got her rare benign brain tumor removed, the doctors claim she is healed. It does not matter that she can’t stand for long periods of time without feeling like someone cut a string inside of her and tied them back incorrectly, or that she passes out about ten times a day. You are not allowed to take that long to patch up from a surgery. A month is okay, a couple months maybe. A few months, now that is pushing it. You have to heal. Being sick isn’t an option in a world that won’t stop for you, and how dare your body question the healing power of your physician? And there we were, a year later, spelling out “I love you” in packets of artificial sweetener. We ripped open the packets and poured them into our drinks. Bittersweet.

If I measured out our relationship, it would be approximately thirty flares shared between the two of us, three colds, two cases of food-borne illnesses (shigella for me and a nice bout of c-diff for her), six onsets of MRSA, a bit of strep—all in about a year. This really isn’t fair when you’re sick year round and having a “real” sickness makes you feel like you’re ready to dig your own grave. And yet, the “real” sicknesses are the ones that give us pride. Finally our symptoms are proudly displayed on the outside instead of the invisible illnesses we hide inside our skin and bones. Yet, all of those infections make our already hard lives even harder. Hunter and I try to take turns patching each other up. Sometimes I guide her when she blacks out. Sometimes she pets my head when the pain is overwhelming my brain.

I love talking to Hunter. I loved how from the moment we met, we clicked. I tell her every day that we understand each other better than anyone else could, between illness and ideals, politics and opinion, wandering thoughts and life circumstances, we were made for each other.

But lately I can’t understand why I can’t help her. She served her time in the mousetrap of hospitals and pain. I can’t figure out why her body won’t let her be in control, why it refuses to let her do things that other people take for granted, like run or go grocery shopping. And I can’t seem to understand why I can’t understand, since I used to go through the same thing on a daily basis.

We call them flares. The moments, or hours, or days, or weeks, or months, when our already painful and uncooperative bodies decide to be even more rebellious. And I sit in pain a lot, I do. I have migraines almost every day, sometime excruciating, and sometimes bearable enough to tolerate doing daily tasks. Fibromyalgia morphs my body into a tree with gnarled branches. But still, the pain I feel watching the person I care most about hurting so badly shocks me out of my pain. When I met her, I saw strength. I didn’t expect this. Why can’t her body see how strong she is?

There are good days. We went to the Miami Youth Fair during Spring Break 2015. We lasted an entire five hours there, four hours longer than we can usually tolerate standing outside. We didn’t even get tired. I almost felt like I was a kid again.

The Youth Fair is probably the size of Disney. It’s huge. We walked through the entire thing. We took so many pictures and rode the Ferris wheel and the ski lift and surrounded by all of the thrills of the amusement park, she still made me happier than anything in the entire world.

There was a ride I thought we could both go on called Crazy Mouse. It was designed for children, but apparently not designed for someone with neurocardiogenic syncope, the sweet little chronic illness that makes her pass out and become unconscious. Nor was it designed to suit the rather intimidating hole that is a lack of brain in her brain. It wasn’t kind to my vertigo, migraines, or fibromyalgia either. This ride, it spins, it drops, but it doesn’t do anything major. We got on a colorful mouse-shaped seat and gave it a go. We got to the top of the roller coaster, and Hunter just said my name flatly. I saw her face change. The rollercoaster held at the top for a moment of suspense, and then we dropped. We twisted. We turned.

We got off the roller coaster, walked to the little concrete bench to the ride of the ride, sat next to an old couple with their grandchildren, and cried for ten minutes. People passed by over and over again. No one asked us why. Two nineteen year old girls really just shouldn’t be crying in front of a child’s roller coaster. I looked at the tears falling down from her eyes, and how her eyes were vaguely illuminated through her dark tinted sunglasses. Her eyes, at that point in her life, were nearly always cloaked in dark glass, except when alone with just me. This is how we cope.

I look in her eyes a lot, and I’m convinced I can see the entire world in them. Not because she’s some magical being, but because her eyes are so amazing, so unlike any eyes I have ever seen. One is blue and the other brown. The blue one has the slightest brown halo, and the brown eye looks like someone took a piece of chocolate cake and tried to hide it by piling blue frosting where the slice used to be. Her brown eye is like the earth, and the blue like the waters. I see all the wonders in her gaze. And I see hope. I see she’s not going to give up.

I have the fortune of living my life with the pleasure of knowing Hunter Kathryn Tallman. I have watched her grow in the time that I’ve been lucky enough to call her my girlfriend. I was there when she started telling people that she was disabled instead of forcing herself to do things she wasn’t able to, when she faced an old man yelling at her for supposedly using her father’s handicap decal. I was there when she started telling people she had a tumor about a year ago, and that she can’t do everything that everyone else is capable of. I was there when she stopped being embarrassed of who she was and the things she can’t control.

Her dark prescription sunglasses do serve the purpose of protecting her from her intense photophobia and allowing her to see. But they also served the purpose of blocking people out. The first time we skyped, she sat in a dark car with her sunglasses on. She sometimes slept with her eyes covered. Perhaps she didn’t want anyone to see what she could see or the pain in her eyes.

Recently, Hunter bought a second pair of prescription glasses. This time, they aren’t sunglasses. I think perhaps she sees the world differently, and she’s ready for the world to see her differently, too.

Haley Zilberberg is a student at the University of Central Florida where she studies Creative Writing and Social Work. 

I’m in Hell and I Have No Idea how to Come Back

“I think it would be a good idea to pick you up on Thursday instead of Friday since it’s going to rain on Friday and that will make it a pain to move out of your dorm,” said my Dad through the other end of the phone, making plans for the end of the Spring 2014 Semester.

The idea jabbed me. It wasn’t about being selfish. The thought of packing and moving out of my dorm was overwhelming because a sense of urgency existed about my Dad wanting to pick me up one day early. It was just one of those ideas I couldn’t fully articulate in words even if an uneasy feeling lurked in the back of my mind.

“We also have to focus on keeping her comfortable,” he added.

With every passing second after my phone call with my Dad, the red flag got brighter since focusing on comfort indicated a shift instead of general conversation about how my Mom was doing.

I might not know everything. But when I get an intuitive instinct I know I can’t run away from it even if I don’t like it. Not only did my Mom stop chemo after one last attempt on my first day back home from college, but also, “comfort” is the main goal of hospice.

***

It was Friday May 23, 2014.

I had been home from Fairleigh Dickinson University for over a week, and my Dad and I sat in chairs in my Mom’s hospital room at the moment.

Her latest visit to hell was due to a combination of factors related to her declining health. For example, low blood pressure was one of the problems.

A woman in a white lab coat shuffled into the room, and I knew who it was immediately.

After a minute or two of general conversation about how my Mom felt that day, it was time for my Mom’s oncologist to have “the talk.”

“I think it’s time to stop treatment,” she said. “You’re getting all of the nasty side effects of the chemo but none of the benefits. It’s time to focus on getting you home and having hospice.”

There was no denying it. It was almost as if I had been shot in the stomach as I was left gasping for air.

I suppressed the urge to burst out into a hysterical fit of sobs even if there was no shame in crying because it would be mortifying if I lost it right then and there.

The most tragic aspect about what my Mom’s oncologist said was that I wasn’t surprised even if I was absent for a lot of the daily details of my Mom’s struggle with Lymphoma since I was away at college a lot. My intuition still tugged at me tighter than any game of tug a war though because the feeling of doom never escaped my mind.

Her eyes remained focused on my Mom. “I have no regrets. We gave it the Big Augusta.”

It was true. My Mom fought her Lymphoma with 1000 percent since she battled it on and off for the last 18 months in addition to her oncologist exhausting every possible treatment.

Her oncologist turned to face me before zipping out of the room. “Your parents are so proud of you.”

Her words wouldn’t take away the suffocated feeling of agony that swept through my entire body at that point. However, even the smallest actions expose human nature since she could have left the room without a word to me. But she didn’t. She cared about providing me with some form of comfort.

And she didn’t just say it once, as my Mom’s oncologist uttered that sentiment to me several times before my Mom left the hospital.

***

I strutted into the TV room (which was now my Mom’s bedroom) as I went to go say goodnight to my Mom one night while she was on hospice at home.

I leaned in as she gave me a hug while a lump formed in my throat. There was no escaping it. I wasn’t an idiot. There was nothing I could do to change her prognosis. But the thought of finding out she passed away when I first went to greet her in the morning plagued my thoughts because there was something morbid about knowing a person would never wake up.

Knowing my Mom was going to die wasn’t even the worst part of this hell. It was the fact I felt like I was watching a car crash before it happened that stung the most.

By having a relative that is terminally ill, you are forced into a devastating situation because you have no choice but to watch since a person sees the inevitable creeping closer.

That’s the nature of decline. The situation plummets until there is nowhere left to go. But the feeling of being part of a situation that would someday have nowhere left to go was terrifying because it wouldn’t help me, or my parents.

I hated that the clock was still ticking.

But I had numerous positive memories with my Mom, and that was one thing cancer couldn’t ruin even if I would never have enough time with her.

The clock was still there. Maybe, just maybe, it would click a little less loudly someday. Although if I were being honest, this wouldn’t bring me closer to religion as making someone live the majority of life without having a Mom surpassed cruel. People aren’t dolls to be played with only to add as many stressors as possible to see how much can be endured until the breaking point is reached. And the argument that tragedy is part of God’s plan didn’t matter since it would never make my Mom’s impending absence from the rest of my life okay.

            ***

July 4, 2014.

I stood in the shower as the water flowed out, splashing onto my body like the comfort of a breeze on a summer day. Then it hit me. This eerie feeling that was death. It just hung there.

I finished dressing myself twenty minutes later before plowing out of the bathroom.

The door to the TV room opened, revealing my Dad.

Red flashed across his face. “I think she might have died.”

Wow. I couldn’t believe it. My intuitive feeling during my shower was right despite the lack of a logical basis for it.

My Father explained to me that my Mom had been unresponsive for some time, and we rushed into the TV room before hovering on each side of her bed.

Opaque blobs trickled down his face. “Come on Donna. We love you. Wake up.”

I just stood there.

He shot me a glance a moment later. “Say something to your Mom.”

A scorching sensation twisted through my stomach. “I love you Mom.”

My dad expelled more sobs. “Come on Donna. Wake up.”

I continued to just stand there, as there was nothing to prepare me for the “actual” moment even if I knew my Mom was going to die.

More tears crashed down his face. “There’s a big place in Heaven for you Donna.”

The hospice nurse arrived at my house over an hour later.

I shot her a gaze after she undid her stethoscope. “So, just to be clear, my Mom is dead?”

She nodded. “Yes. She’s dead.”

A local funeral home took away my Mom in a body bag an hour or two later, leaving my Dad and I to sift through the emotional rubble.

***

 It has now been over a year since my Mom died.

I fake productivity, fake moving on, exercise on occasion, write, go to class. A makeshift hopeful ending to a period in my life I would never be able to forget.

The truth is, I’m still in hell and I have no idea how to come back.

My Mom and I will never see each other again. Never talk, share stories late at night. Those nights, towards the end, when I heard her aching and didn’t know how to help haunt my every waking moment. I could only think to look at her, a look of desperation across my face and apologize. Maybe offer her some morphine the hospice provided just in case.

But even though the mantra “life isn’t fair” might be true, it doesn’t make it right, as no nineteen-year-old should ever have to see his or her parent being carried away in a body bag.

The biggest catch of all is I might not want to forget about my Mom, but if I think about her that almost guarantees sadness because we were just getting past the turbulent teen years before cancer stole her from me.

So yeah, I’m still a little haunted. Might improve someday. Just not today.

Chris Bedell’s essays have been published in the online magazine,Thought Catalog. He has also had several stories published in online literary magazines, which include ‘Surface Tension’ on Crab Fat Literary Magazine, ‘A Little Accident’ and ‘The House That Never Was’ on Quail Bell Magazine, and ‘The Wrong Murder’ and ‘Game Over’ on Short-story.me. Furthermore, Pidgeonholes Magazine will publish one of his stories in December.

Journal Entry of a Dead Soul

A gargantuan pandemonium transpired in front of my moist pupils and I was in thorough ambiguity. I was completely panic-stricken and so also, were the most valiant of people around me. Perplexity and anxiety together outpaced my senses as destruction like a mystery novel, unraveled and imposed itself onto us. Every being on this planet was utterly clueless as to why everything was demolishing and we, the best of the creatures being dispatched. There was so much more to life than forcibly sighting a scenario as piteous as this.

Mountains descending, glaciers melting, buildings collapsing; one could only hear cries and spot welled up eyes. Everything seemed labyrinthine to me.

I sprinted out of what I once called my ‘home’, towards a Cathedral that was half-destroyed already. I entered anyway and observed the priest offering a prayer to the Almighty. Although, being an agnostic throughout my life, I dreaded a painful death; and so I gathered the leftover fragments of my slaughtered courage and offered the most sincere prayer I was capable of, to the God I once almost refused to believe in.

The prayer ignited a flame of hope in my very being and I ran out to face my fears, fearlessly. My irrational decision led to something extremely awful, yet inevitable. Something very common, yet horrendous enough to traumatize one for lifetime: a vehicle pushed my rear causing me to collapse on my face on the cobblestoned pathway. The gigantic and expensive car, with its crude driver, however, drove over and past me, thereby worsening my vertigo. My sight got dreary, eyelids heavy and pain unconditional. My consciousness was now voyaging with my soul; the journey of an anatomy transforming into a corpse. The journey of death approaching life, the struggle of whether I truly deserved to live or not.

As my soul abandoned my crushed body, I felt a quaint sense of relief rush up my back, and make headway all the way to my chest. Pangs of bliss bombarded my otherwise aching head, even though a slight tinge of disappointment crawled underneath my skin. It was an eccentric, mixed feeling. I was not entirely pessimistic about this, in fact, I was pretty ecstatic; I felt free. Completely free from all worldly apprehensions. I penetrated through the hymen of stereotypes and overcame all barricades whatsoever. All the insecurities that once rooted from my core, my beeline; all the tentacles of fright that once outstretched from my torso; all the times that I cringed with uneasiness, yet gave in anyway; all my fragments of vicissitudes, all my smithereens of solitudes, everything, vanished like a mirage. Nothing mattered anymore, because I didn’t exist anymore, only my soul did. They say even God doesn’t have the right to judge your soul, I say who is God in front of a pure soul at all?

I don’t know if death is so beautiful and ethereal to all. All I know is that I felt absolutely free.

Kriti Mehra is a sixteen-year old student from India. She has won several literary competitions and is an attendee of  journalism and creative writing workshops. She strives to achieving a stance in the literary world through her online blog which can be found here. 

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.