This is a piece I wrote in the summer of 2016. It’s unpolished and unedited, but that’s why I’m publishing it. By Sofia Sears I confront adolescence through a soccer ball. The wind breaks and cracks against my neck and the unsparing humidity of the Rhode Island summer night stifles the soft panting of tracheal discomfort into heaving gasps. Loose feet dazedly stumbling over one … Continue reading soccer practice
A letter from our editor-in-chief, Sofia Sears. The world is a brutal thing that contorts and destroys; things do not falter in their impermanence or instability. Tonight is one of those very things we cannot ever accept or think of as fair but must live through anyways. It is a night that feels cruel, and unwanted, and we shiver away from in this nauseated helplessness, … Continue reading one last time
a piece by Sofia Sears, recently published on the political blog OpinYoung, copied here: “No woman can call herself free who does not control her own body.” – Margaret Sanger The free reign of rape apologists and anti-abortion activists (often synonymous)– is a topic we ought to scrupulously dissect. However, in a country as embedded with deep-seated fear of the potential “dangers” intrinsic to women … Continue reading The A Word
An anonymous submission/poem I cut it out of me I cut it out and I didn’t look down I didn’t speak nor did I change my mind It was done Infinitely, deliberately, beautiful It was gone Out of me, you are You small bump of human suffering I saved you from this hellhole A universe of female bodies being legislated Where my humanity shreds itself … Continue reading goodbyes like these
A piece by Lily Alexander When I was younger, I would tie balloons to my wrist and walk around, a short creature tethered to a brightly colored floating orb. I used to love doing this and would instantaneously burst into tears whenever my balloon got caught on a tree branch and popped. The loss of air and thus life, caused me to become distraught. ⏏ … Continue reading a popped spirit
A piece by Perry Mayo Wham, bam, thank you man, get inside my fuckin’ gold Trans Am. As a teenager growing up in a world of social media, insecurity, and the struggle to find an identity, it’s hard to find someone to look up to and to model myself after. There are so many wholesome options, Oprah, or Taylor Swift, for example. How boring. … Continue reading standing with kesha
A poem by Domonique H. We’ve got this sense of belonging. Like we’re all a part of something magical. And we all know it’s bigger than us, but the warm feeling that finally fitting in leaves in the pit of our hollow bellies is more love than we’ve ever known. We’re all like floating stars and the longer we float the farther from everything we … Continue reading collision, belonging, & peace
This is certainly not intended to overgeneralize the adolescent population, because we as a generation clearly face far too much stereotyping/adult condescension/overgeneralization as it currently is, but as a teenage human, I can infer that the majority of my fellow teenage Americans find much meaning in music. Music. This is not a piece on music, because that is a far different piece, a highly complicated piece … Continue reading riptide- a cover
An anonymous submission. After careful analysis, I’ve discovered that pool parties serve only two purposes. One, to be used as a social gathering for ten year olds, in which you invite only your bestest friends (or, for that matter, the entire grade) over and spray each other with water guns while simultaneously screaming and busting out the earholes of anybody nearby. The second, and primary … Continue reading through thin skin
A piece by Lucia Zheng I prefer to avoid cliches, but unfortunately, in this incident, it’s unavoidable. I fear the Night. Perhaps because I treat it too much like an actual, tangible character, when in reality, it’s simply a space, a state. But its emptiness claws at me, its spidery fingers come lunging at me. When the silence sets, when everything sleeps, I am left … Continue reading Monsters in the Night
The Odyssey Zine 