NONFICTION
Knives and Cigarettes
By Madeline
“This is for the simple fact that there will come a time when what I bring to the table tastes a lot more sour than it does sweet. But I hope the people I care about continue to give me the benefit of the doubt and still offer me a seat.”
— Michael Thompson
In the summer of 2013, my older brother, Roman, and I sat together on the back porch, anxiously smoking a cigarette before our dad got home. His phone rang. The voice on the other end of the line sounded unfamiliar, but the tension in my brother’s voice made my heart sink into my stomach. He ended the call and said, “We gotta go. There’s something wrong with mom.” Without realizing it at the time, what happened on this day proved to me that anyone could have their way of life completely undone.
Astral Plane by Ella Stevens
Iceland
By David Wanczyk
My friend’s daughter is doing a high school project on Iceland, and when she told a group of folks about it the other day, we all stammered off our “facts” about the island nation in the Atlantic Ocean whose capital is Reyka-something-vek-spelled-who-knows-how. All of us made fun of our lack of Iceland-knowledge by spouting off about pretend national heroes, fake imports, fantastical international skirmishes, the Icelandic space program, Bjork.
Aerial Photography of Blue Vehicle at Road by Tomáš Malík
Blooming Mind by Ella Stevens
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Monkeys at the Zoo
By Maggie Malloy
Monkeys at the zoo: a simple phrase that seems to be full of ambiguity and unimportance. Yet, my ten-year-old self found that these four words held so much power and control over my future.
My mother has always been an avid psychic-goer for as long as I can remember, and her experiences have inadvertently allowed me to place trust in these individuals. So with prefacing this thought of psychics and placing preconceived notions aside, my mother visited her dependable medium, Jane, one random Saturday in the year 2009. As my mom bore three children, two boys and one girl, she naturally always asked about us. When she brought up my name and inquired about what was in store for her only daughter, Jane hesitated for a couple of minutes and frantically wrote down on her loose-leaf piece of paper, “Monkeys at the zoo,” with no explanation or description. Jane did not understand why or how this statement had any correlation to me, but she could not nudge her inclinations.