A Ghost’s Revival
by Victoria Johnsson ‘23
Here’s an inconstant dreamer,
a midnight watcher,
awake in the gray-orange mornings.
Timid footsteps so light on the world
they don’t crack the ice
over her heart’s blood running.
Embroidery stitches glide through
her skin’s translucence.
Her canoe skims over a hazy lake, but
she’s just another reflection of the sky.
Her soul’s glassy fragments
linger shattered in the dust.
What help can a ghost ask for
when the end has already come?
She ties herself back into reality
with frivolous things,
spring green ink and paper satin-soft.
She builds herself from grenadine sweetness
and the tickling fizz of Sprite,
weathered metal flowers painted bright.
Her heart devours the memories of every time
she is both looked at and seen.
She fills her hollow hands with
small joys, foundation stones
of knowing and being known.
She makes herself visible
in what she loves.
Every vivid stitch she sews
proclaims she was here,
she is here to stay.
“Alexis,” Gabriela Gomez-Misserian ‘21
Sometimes
by Virginia Laurie ‘22
you think you’ve outgrown the need for it,
Tenderness, I mean, then the peeled orange,
lotion, someone rubs space between your
joints, your elbow smells like cucumber
& it’s always been there
slicking your thumb with blood
while they crawl through the wire, there
in that field that caught your eye on the drive
back, some nocturne in minor key, the cow field
she likes so much
everywhere, her tender
that one yellow summer
that bent itself to fill a year of nosebleeds
and empty space
& all the April she made in me and
corners of light
“Hasselblad No. 1,” Ann Douglas Lott ‘22