you & me (after school)

by Watson Deacon ‘24

take back your tears from my sleeve

and step out and sway and smile 

with our skinny friends.

we have known bloodthick love

in a soft top confessional parked outside,

soft drugs and Snickers at the silent retreat.

remember the fits your dizzy head

would throw through smoke 

to make me walk you home,

or the cinnamon stranger 

you told me to hold and wet whiskey kiss?

my smile stepping out was real,

like how the camerafake fades when

we are framed for sweet nothing,

or we laugh when no one gets our jokes.

brother, how

the people we aren’t anymore miss each other.

do you still look at me

and see the seat I saved for you?

every time you drowned in shallow water,

I turned around to drag you to the shore.

but I know better now than to ask 

why your words don’t sound like you lately.

snow hides in funny places.

I see you still, some bright June nights,

and it’s turning okay

that we’re here and dry and too old to cry.

how i learned to fly

by Alison Christmann-Vener ‘25

somewhere near you         there are drops of lemon-lime soda     dripping

down blue-green agave blades           in fibonacci rosettes 

slitting necks to let out the syrup       that reflavors

morning bitterness there is a chlorine sea i dived into once

with a  winter-eyed boy who had pecan-blonde hair

the kind a million mothers           & picket-fence princesses 

would die for when we scrambled out one of us

was in love       i could not be held responsible 

for ad-lib ardor         he could not be held long although        i still wonder

where he is now   if he thinks of me inside

cyborg cranes cutting               oxygen into ribbons    

leaving me breathless               if he looks down & sees me

glittering in lava lamp colors drowning 

intestinal iridescence with coffee       

that slices cocoons         like charcuterie; the kind

of destruction that frees.

(tribute to “portrait of the alcoholic floating in space with severed umbilicus” by kaveh akbar)