Ouroboros

by Leia Barrow ‘22

Let’s propose all the divine ways to eat your youth

To change form

Shapeshifter

Into someone new, or perhaps

Someone you have always been,

Just hidden, needing to be unearthed

Do you recognize yourself in the mirror?

Can you see the memories you lived, hearer?

Can you spot the parts of you, changing and pieced together

Like Frankenstein’s monster

Except what’s become of you is no monstrosity 

But change chosen by intentionality 

Endlessly, a cycle eternal of creation and destruction and recreation 

Alchemic 

All things made from singularity

Singularity the ultimate return of all

Universally - every place has some form of alchemy 

or perhaps you’d like to call it chemistry

Alchemy with different names:

Rasayana

Al-kīmiya

Khēmeía

But with all the same ideology

All of us changing, with no need for the philosopher’s stone

Our minds,

Our thoughts,

Beliefs,

Our hearts,

Changing - finding ways to consume and convert moments of our youth

To rebirth them into something new

To speak and be heard

To love and to lose and to love again

To discover and reclaim passions hidden

To change our names, our faces, our clothes, and our souls

To change every part of our foundational couth

So, let us find all the divine ways to eat your youth

Communion

by Lilah Kimble ‘23

Hands shuddering,

but only I can see it,

feel it, the rush

of adrenaline

consumes me, 

starved

deep inside my body,

breaking at the sound

of your voice.

Take this, eat.

The pit of my stomach

growls, hungry

for something, someone

to happen

to me.

My voice cracks, as I try

spitting up the words

that have lingered within me.

Eternally 

concealed in silence,

they have penetrated your very core.

Does it sting

that I’m alive 

in this crowded world

waiting for you 

because you could have me

with just three words?

Drink of it.

I taste notes of you now

like Sunday wine.

Walnut and apricot

dissolved together.

An all too distinct mixture of an indistinct

meaningless thickness remains.

My voice may crack, but at least

it doesn’t quiet

at the possibilities

outside of what we see.

A mind constrained

by lack of imagination 

is a faithless body

chained to a mundane world,

depleting it.

Fresh fruit, now rotten

from time and waste

should never be consumed.

Eventually decomposing,

feeding the maggots

born into it, yet

my stomach aches.