October in Triple Meter

December 2, 2022

Caroline Sassan

I’m starting to see why some things matter more than others, the reasons why that is allowed. Somebody told me so. Maybe that was G. and he was talking about freedom or that was J. and he was talking about the Phillies or you were my mother and you were talking about love, in which case you were standing in the kitchen with that one burnt-out lightbulb and your hands on the granite countertop. Maybe you were me and I was sorry, or you were somewhere else entirely and my heart was still beating in my teeth. And there were the birds flying south right behind us, and each year at least one would fly into the glass back door, and some of those times you didn’t even flinch. There was the dew dripping slow out beyond us. Maybe we were talking about selective attention.

Magic: A Sole Collection

Maison Teixeira, Sia Han, Desi Silverman-Joseph, Ina Ma, Luca Raffa, Juliet Corwin, and Annabelle Stableford

May 28, 2025

The fourth edition of our Collections series asks our staff writers to interpret the word “magic,” and all the memories, postulations, and emotions that come with it. From childhood wishes to peeling clementines to the process of illustration and design, our writers probe deep into their schema and produce exciting perspectives on the magical elements within our world. Porku - Maison Teixeira The small island of Brava goes completely dark every midnight, when the government shuts off all the island’s electricity—street lights, lamps, TVs and all. Ne walks home from work and checks his watch—it’s 11:57 PM. He starts to run, but doesn’t make it home before the lights go out on Brava. Luckily, the moonlight is just bright enough to see his path home. Ne keeps running, whizzing by the houses, trees, and bushes in his small, rural town. Then, out of the bushes bursts a PIG, fat enough to roast over a fire, followed by her six stumbling piglets. The mother pig hisses at Ne. He breaks into a sprint, then turns around to find the mother pig galloping behind him, her six piglets in tow. Ne tries to sprint faster, but the pigs always manage to catch up. Stopping to catch his breath at a tree, Ne has an idea. He grabs a branch from the tree and whips around to face his pursuers, striking them with his newfound weapon of choice. The pigs return to the woods, limping and whimpering. Ne 1, pigs 0. *** The sun shines over Brava. Ne walks the same path where his fateful standoff against the swines had taken place a few days prior. On the path is a lady who is followed by her six children. The lady has a sling on her arm, and her kids limp behind her on crutches. “What happened to you?” Ne asks her. She glares at him angrily and walks away, her kids trembling in fear as they stare back at him. Clementines - Sia Han I’m really good at peeling clementines. By good, I mean I can peel one in under 10 seconds and all the way around so all you’re left with is one long, winding spiral of peel. How do I do it? Well, first, get a good grip: dig in your thumbnail and carve out a circle around the little green knob. Make sure it’s wide enough, ’cause if your starting point is too thin, it'll tear. And to be as efficient as possible, peel using the blunt side of your thumb at a 45° angle as you turn the clementine in the other hand. To let you in on a secret though, I didn’t peel my own clementines until I was 15. I hated the way strips of peel and pith would lodge themselves into the crevices beneath my nails, how the smell would stain the tips of my fingers and linger all day. So I always got my mom to do it for me. It was like magic, how with one touch she could tell how ripe a clementine was and how, if she thought it was too sour for my liking, she’d wordlessly put it aside to search through the bag for a better one. How her thumb always seemed to know exactly how deep to dig before piercing skin, her thumbnail reemerging slightly yellow, stained by pith. And how she’d roll it, peel-pith-patches and all, back in one, endless, graceful brush of the hand. I’d watch, fascinated and wary. She complains to me now that her nails have lost the pinkish tint and slight curvature of mine, now yellow, opaque, and flat. It’s like someone squeezed each nail so hard, the edges have lifted and the color has been wrung out like a wet towel. I think I could reach over and just peel one off. Today I peeled a clementine. The skin was very thick, but it was okay because I cut my nails last night. And it ended up breaking three-fourths of the way done, but it was okay because the second piece kinda looked like Brazil. I shared halves with my mom and a bit of juice dripped down my palm, which I licked off. It tasted sweet and bright and good. Habits - Desi Silverman-Joseph Magical thinking. That’s what I heard it’s called. The twelve times I must jump and touch the ceiling when I get ready in the morning. The need to throw my socks onto the bed without them bouncing off before I put them on. The fact that I must put on my left shoe before my right, wipe my butt with certain hands in a certain order, soap up my body from bottom to top in the shower (yes, I know it’s gross). The way I cannot fall asleep without first cracking my back—folding my left leg ninety degrees over the right before reversing this position. It’s the doom I feel if I were to abandon these rituals. The slope between routine and superstition is slick as ice. What starts as an arbitrary habit to make a task automatic or avoid a decision can cement into a terrifying rigidity of mind—into a need that feels as vital as drinking water. What would happen if I forsook the twelve jumps or the sock game? If I put my shoes on right to left, soaped my body top-down like a normal person, violated the rulebook for wiping my ass? Lord, spare me from finding out. The stitches which hold the world together would surely disintegrate, the dams would burst, my downfall would be all but ensured. So please, let me work my magic. Hat Trick - Ina Ma I operate in extremes. It’s unsettling, to sit down with the midday sun hanging high in the sky then blink and find her setting, leaving me behind in the dust because I squandered the afternoon doodling. On other days, I can’t bring myself to open my drawing program lest the sight of the white and gray user interface makes me physically nauseous. The ability to create is as supernatural as any magic. Art is my magic, with shaky/uneven lines and disproportionate anatomy, but my magic. If I am a magician, then digital art is my hocus pocus. Like pulling a rabbit out of a hat, this is a trick I’ve done a thousand times before as my fingers slip over the keyboard, stabilizing lines, gradients, and fill buckets. When the rabbit listens, my flesh does not bind me. The nerves between mind and body are severed, gnawed through, no longer sending the signals requesting sustenance or rest. Every function within my body is working in tandem, synced in stable equilibrium solely to create. Hours are carved out of my day, waking up at five or retiring past midnight, skipping meals and events, to satiate the smoldering desire. I am only brought back to my body when the mental barrier is no longer strong enough to withstand the barrage of physical pain: bleary sight, deep aching in my back, an ominous pain in my wrist that says “impending carpal tunnel.” But sometimes, the rabbit grabs you by the ears. After these bouts of obsessivity, it spurns the suggestion of illustration, thumping its foot in my stomach at any hint of creative effort. It is a motion sickness where the motion is the firing of neurons in my brain. I have a playlist of songs that I would play on loop for hours on end for forays into animation, songs that I do not allow myself to listen to casually, in case the rabbit’s ears catch wind and it comes for me with disparaging rage, twisting knots in my abdomen. At the end of the day, I lure the rabbit back, not with a personal desire to draw or looming deadlines, but with gentle touch and promise of carrots and rest. As much as it wishes it could, the rabbit does not exist without me. It cooperates, and the cycle begins anew. Magari - Luca Raffa I dreamt about a prior life, a life I would not have merely existed in--a life I would have instead lived. I would probably be a peasant picking pears or peaches all day in the orchards; the limoncello sun would pinch me alive with the ripeness of passion and pride, and I would suckle the sweetness of life like the flesh of a persimmon, though my shadow might be my only companion. Or I might be nu piscaturi alone in the water, my golden face rough against the salty winds. I would whistle a charming melody about the fish that could fly across the uncertain sea. I would be as certain as the sun. Then I met you. I woke up, and your eyes appeared like the shallow turquoise waters I saw in my dreams and your hair appeared as soft as those peaches glistening in that sun. You make me see fish flying in the deep blueness of the sky, make my passion turn sour and my pride become mouldy. You make me want to dance to your drunken melody and nourish this helpless feeling. You make me ask God: “what do you call this magic? Love or Foolishness?”. For it is as perfect as lemon blossoms in the springtime. I Believe in Magic - Juliet Corwin When I say I believe in magic I mean I believe in evolution. I believe in growing out of our pasts, that we do not know how to stay still, that we build ourselves along the way. When I say I believe in magic I mean I believe in hands. I believe in skin, that we can touch in a way that does not hurt, that palms can hold all of this life. When I say I believe in magic I mean I believe in dancing. I believe in moving with our heartbeats, that we all have a bit of rhythm aching in our chests. When I say I believe in magic I mean I believe in scars. I believe in healing our wounds, even quietly, that we can create shields out of air. When I say I believe in magic I mean I believe in the big bang. I believe we are explosions, that we are made of stardust, that there is a drop of sunshine in each of us. When I say I believe in magic I mean I believe in sweat. I believe in salt, that we all can glisten, that we can melt and glide and shine. When I say I believe in magic I mean I believe in neurons. I believe that we are electric, firing across synapses, that we create our own sparks. When I say I believe in magic I mean I believe in ladybugs. I believe in wishes, that we make them just in case, and who’s to say they don’t come true after we’ve forgotten them? When I say I believe in magic I mean I believe in wombs. I believe in cradling close, that nests can be made of scraps, that we all learn a way of coming home. Desert Magic - Annabelle Stableford “Avada Kedavra!” Snape yelled, lunging out from behind the sandstone boulder. His black cape swirled in the red dust. Lupin, Ginny, and Hermione froze. The sky was a special kind of blue over the orange cliffs; the sand stung in their nostrils and watered their eyes; they did not know which of them had died. “No—wait—you can’t say that, it’s unforgivable,” I said, dropping Hermione’s accent to make sure my brother Sam, playing Snape, got the message. “Fine, but I’m still evil right now, okay?” Sam said. We all agreed, then kicked our feet in the dry sand as we wondered how to recover from our break in character. “Let’s go to Gringotts,” said Ginny, played by our family friend Liza. “I have a deposit to make.” Lupin, played by Liza’s brother Misha, jumped in: “I’ve heard rumors of a security breach. Keep your guards up.” Hermione, Ginny, and Lupin brandished their desert sticks as they turned to the pock-marked boulders, perfect for stashing gold deposits in. “Wait—and then how ‘bout I’m waiting there to attack,” Sam said. “And then how ‘bout I turn into a werewolf because it’s a full moon,” Misha replied. “And then how ‘bout you chase me and I have to retreat.” We “and then how ‘bout-ed” our way to our favorite boulder with large cubby-holes indented in the rock, where we took our places. As Ginny, Hermione, and Lupin deposited gold, Snape jumped out from behind a rock and yelled, “stupify!” Hermione fell back against the boulder, Ginny cast “expelliarmus!”, then all hell broke loose. Wands exploded, capes billowed in the wind, the battle raged. Darkness soon fell on the land of magic. Our shoes filled with sand and debris from the twiggy brush and our throats ached for water, but Hermione, Ginny, Lupin, and Snape carried on, riveted with adrenaline. As Lupin began writhing in the emerging wash of moonlight, a group of climbers walked down the path, heavy bags of rope and gear shouldered on their backs. They stared at us—our Crocs, our scraped skin, the sticks we clutched to our chests, the way we swished at cloaks they could not see. We took no notice, purposefully ignoring the amused glances the climbers exchanged with each other. “Muggles,” Ginny whispered to Hermione with an eye roll. They would never understand.

Goodbye

Luca Raffa

May 21, 2025

August/ September 2015 Although the nervous sweat evaporated from my skin in the high August afternoon, the driving sting of my salty fear still remained. The heat burnt me like it did the bitter grass in the fields—rusting under the merciless, almighty sun. On the eve of September, the rattling sighs of crickets hiding in the fields welcomed me; the crickets sang about death so beautifully. Amongst the fields, there it was: this cluster of white buildings, which appeared to me like castles. I walked towards the building with the golden bell, bright as freedom—it could almost be confused with the sun. The green doors of hope opened, and a man stood to greet me. His smile was big. He shook my weak hand: a firm, practiced grip. As our hands fell to our sides, his rolled up sleeves exposed the hair that grew wildly on his arms. He wore a blue dress shirt that erupted with sour sweat all over, tucked into a new pair of khaki pants and cinched by a leather belt to keep his belly in. Like me, I learned that Mr. Bates was new to this school. And at least that was something we could share. That September, Mr. Bates taught me and my boisterous peers how to greet one another. Give them your eyes. Give them your hands. Give them your words. I rehearsed over and over and over again until I had memorized this perfect display of human decency. Mr. Bates was teaching me how to navigate the spectacle of human interaction. He was teaching me how to belong in this world. * October/ November 2016 A layer of frost crusted the fresh decay of leaves that, by the evening, would continue to rot in the late October mist. The wind in the dark was nightmarish. It brought shivers to the trees, whose sick leaves would slowly dance to the ground, awaiting the night’s nip of winter. Like the trees I often trembled, alone in the dark and blind with nervousness. Stumbling up stairs, I would enter a bright room fresh with the rousing exuberance of youths I did not know. On opposite sides of the ballroom, the boys in their blue suits pretended to be men while the girls glistened in a resplendent rainbow of dresses. This was etiquette class. I learned how to waltz. The stiff clutch of my tie eased when I finally managed to approach a girl to dance during the first lesson. The question, sinking in my throat, at last burst forth frantically. My eagerness became our awkward foxtrot. She wore a taut black dress that complimented her smoothe, dark hair. Below her soft and secretive eyes, her face was scattered with rosette freckles all over. She leapt like a leopard into the night, forever disappearing from me––nameless. Each week, I danced with a new girl. I practiced introducing myself respectfully, meeting her elegant eyes, shaking her hand gracefully, moving my feet, touching my left hand to her shoulder, touching my right hand to her hip, swaying, dazzling. * December/ January 2017 At dawn, the dim glow of the moon was fleeting, the stars fading. The soft snow slept on the driveway like the powdered sugar that dusted my breakfast. The avenue was still, and everyone was inside still asleep. The wind yawned, releasing a sweet puff of life that wandered freely. The sun kissed its warmth on my neck. The cold embraced me too. At Christmastime, my family would drive ten hours to visit my grandmother. She was a round woman with a bullous nose, sharp eyebrows, and defiant eyes. She would summon me and my brother with a sputtering yell––boys, the food is ready––her way of saying that she loved us. The suitcases huddled ready in the shut trunk. The muffled sighs of the car and the blue fumes rising upward became one with the cool winter sky. The icicles stuck to the edges of the undercarriage melted into a puddle of slush black as charcoal. The car’s fresh leather seats were warm, causing the frost on my window to melt away and reveal the figure of my grandmother, small and motionless in the frame of the door, watching us leave. She was waiting for our promise to return again. Goodbye. *** In our youth, we are taught how to greet one another. It is an act of maturity, an act of integration into the world, an act of becoming. We learn to be actors who play our parts with projected voices and firm, dramatic motions. Our masks and costumes are charming. We follow the script.We perform ourselves. Yet no one ever teaches us how to say goodbye. Perhaps, letting go must be a truth then: a testament to our character, to our love, to the depth of our souls. We do not need to go to school or to ballroom dancing to learn how to say goodbye. It already glows in our hearts. Ultimately, life is an act of letting go. It is standing alone in the open doorway, the cold creeping inside, and silently watching those you love leave for new adventures. It is welcoming the uncertainty of when you will see that person again. It is the comforting pain of their absence, and the sweetness of your longing. It is the fateful pleasure of the unknown.

Paranoid in Detroit: A Retrospective Airport Guide

Elsa Eastwood

April 28, 2025

In the beginning, Delta Airlines created a 10am flight to Los Angeles, and I arrived early at my gate, enveloped in a net of peace, anticipating a night in my childhood bed back home, and the sun rose over Providence. But then the Intercom said, “Let there be a $1,500 airline voucher for any travelers willing to transfer to the 5pm to Los Angeles through Detroit,” and I awoke. Too good to be true? Perhaps. This morning would mark only the beginning of my chaotic pilgrimage. Here’s what I wish I had been told: Accept the voucher, but know what you’re getting into. Don’t lose yourself in visions of a restful Christmas vacation—you must first earn it. Your new flight is in nine hours. Text your dad: no longer getting home today, sorry. Listen to the charismatic British-Canadian rugby player you meet at the gate when he informs you that no one wins anything by standing patiently in line. Muscle your way to the front for your updated boarding pass. Find creative ways to pass the time while you wait. Stare at the stretches of gray carpet, the seas of hurried bodies. Treat yourself to a $16.50 meatball sandwich, which will inevitably taste like wet cardboard. Find a nook and doom-scroll into oblivion as time crawls, turtle-like, past you. Apologize to the universe for cursing the droning intercom voice that announces each delay. Airport attendants have dreams and families. Attempt to restore your karma. Once finally on board, strike up a conversation with the young, bearded Amazon employee in the neighboring seat. He may buy you a small bottle of airplane bourbon and confess to you his aviophobia. Comfort him, but know you’ll be on the tarmac for another three hours and that he’ll be drunk enough by then not to notice he’s airborne anyway. When your phone informs you midair that your connection out of Detroit has already departed, accept the truth: no airport sprint nor desperate plea will get you home today. And don’t say you hate Detroit. It doesn't want you there either. After you land, an agitated agent at a Delta “Help” desk will claim she can’t rebook your flight or help you find a place to sleep. Ignore her. Get a second opinion and an off-the-freeway motel voucher. Don’t talk to irritable strangers at 1am on the airport shuttle en route to said off-the-freeway motel. Hop across the lily-pad stains on the lobby carpet to lighten the mood. On the way to your room, try not to picture bodies in a range of consciousness behind each door or an eerie solo violin accompanying you down the hallway. If you must, have a makeshift weapon ready. You’ll hear water running when you enter. The bathtub is full, the faucet stuck. Estimate how long you have before a flood consumes the room. Futz with the thermostat to no avail. 30°. Nice work. You’re sleeping in your clothes. Never rely on a fatigued and hungry mind. There is no skeleton hand on your pillow, no gelatinous tentacles emerging from beneath the bed. That languid, naked woman on the windowsill? A trick of the light. (Deadbolt the door twice.) Sacrifice your vigilance for some shivery sleep. Imagine yourself somewhere more forgiving—the dentist’s office or DMV waiting room, the kitchenware aisle of a suburban IKEA. Wake up to a 5am alarm. Brave the snowstorm, the lonely motel muffin, the shuttle back to the airport. Drag your bag the final few yards. And once you’ve collapsed into your seat and let your eyes fall closed, find solace in the Los Angeles skyline appearing against the darkness of your eyelids, the weight of a new $1,500 in your pocket, as the plane wheels roll steadily forward.

Language Undone

Juliet Corwin

April 15, 2025

I was born in silence. In the first year of my life, my hands and my face were my only ways of communication. My curiosity was not limited by a lack of sound, and as an infant I absorbed the colors, shapes, textures, tastes, smells, and vibrations all around me. I spent much of my time on the floor—in part because walking is a skill that takes practice, but also because lying on the floor is the best way to experience the world. Through the floor, my body learned to recognize my father’s footsteps, a closing door, my sister’s excited hops, the calm ring of my mother’s laugh. I learned the different meanings of eyebrow and lip movements, which twitches meant worry and which meant laughter. My parents, both hearing, spoke endlessly to me, pressing my hands to their throats so I could feel the changes in pitch, the pauses in their words. I remember the warmth of their skin, the steady hum of their voices against my palms. They picked up elementary signs to teach me, pairing them as best they could with the words streaming from their mouths. My first signed word was “shoes,” two fists knocking together—sometimes I wonder if this wasn’t just an accidental bump of my knuckles. My pudgy fingers learned to fly. Soon my words soared through the air, my sentences sprouting wings, flying higher than my parents’ unpracticed eyes and hands could reach. But Mmy parents made the decision to raise me with hearing technology in the hearing world. This was by no means an easy choice, but the world has not been a kind place to Deaf people, and has been particularly unkind to Deaf women. My parents wanted their daughter to be safe, to be autonomous, to feel that this life was mine to create. *** I was one year old the first time a surgeon drilled into my skull. In a cochlear implant surgery, a small area of the skull is shaved away to create an indent in the shape of a tiny upside-down snowman, an exact match to the internal magnet which is placed in the indentation and cemented in with bone paste. Attached to the magnet is a string of electrodes, which are wound around the cochlea in place of cilia, the tiny hairs along which soundwaves dance to the brain. As a result of a recessive gene, GJB2 Connexin 26, my cochleas cannot receive sound properly. The cilia that transmit waves to my brain are absent, broken, bent, or lonely. Through two surgical procedures for cochlear implants, my cilia were replaced by electrodes spun through the spirals of my cochleas, which now receive electrical signals from an external processor. This leaves the bones in my ears without a job. I hope they are not too bored. There are three bones in each ear, named for a hammer, anvil, and stirrup. They bring vibrations from the eardrum to the inner ear by turning them into waves that can travel through the membrane and fluid of the inner ear. Their main function is to bring sound to the cochlea, which connects to the brain. The bones in my ears, dedicated to connecting my eardrums to my cochleas, must be very confused. Soon after getting hearing technology, my preschool teachers held my hands in my lap and I was taught to speak using only my mouth. For Deaf children that are turned into deaf children—assimilated into the hearing world through the use of hearing technology and verbal language—there is debate around continued use of sign language. Some believe that a focus should only be placed on spoken language, as it is assumed that young children will default to sign language if given the opportunity to use it freely. The first time a scalpel graced my skin it un-capitalized a letter, grazed my not-yet formed identity. The second time a scalpel stroked my flesh it cut away a language in my fingers. *** The human hands generally consist of twenty-seven bones each. Eight carpal bones, formed in a row between the wrist and the palm, five metacarpal bones reaching up to the fourteen phalanges that hide in the fingers. These bones are carefully situated so that the hand is flexible and can rotate freely. Two sets of twenty-seven bones working in tandem are used in nearly every human activity. My two sets of twenty-seven bones grew wings, flew too close to the sun, and were left stunted and slow. In my oralist early-intervention education program, my hands were not free. My eyes were trained to read lips and to maintain eye contact at the same time. I still rely on lips about thirty percent of the time, and more in poor acoustics. Reading lips is a skill that I tire of sometimes. Each person, regardless of their language, moves their lips and shapes their sounds differently. Each person I meet means a new pair of lips to learn. As a toddler I was presented with posters and books of cartoon faces squeezed into scary expressions, rewarded with smiles and cheers when I spoke and left my hands behind. Every year since I was one, I have been led into listening booths and told to repeat the words coming at me through a speaker until the heavy, sound-proofed door opens again. This process typically takes about three hours in total, and leaves me exhausted and drained for the next two days. I often grow increasingly tired as the tests go on, and I begin responding to beeps that haven’t played or saying nonsense words back to the speaker. *** I’ve always found it difficult to speak up. I’m not sure how much of this is due to being a deaf woman. I don’t trust my mouth to make the correct sounds. I am scared to take up space in the hearing world, terrified of what it may mean to remind those around me of my disability, of my constant accommodation of their language and lifestyle. Sometimes, a word will slip out of my lips coated in the Deaf accent I still sneak back into at night, and I will pray it goes unnoticed. I grew up being complimented on my clear language, on how invisible my disability was. My preschool classroom was a praise paradise, so I fell in love with hiding this part of myself. I was good at it, and even at that young age I understood that in order to succeed, hearing was the best thing I could be. I used to dream of waking up to noises instead of light. From a young age I knew I was supposed to speak up when I needed more. I was taught to advocate for myself, to explain my disability and to demand accommodations from reluctant ears and swatting dismissals. I was never taught how to say no to a man who was determined. I didn’t know how to run away from someone who showed me affection, even when he became an aggressor, attacked me in a way that seemed far too easy and familiar. Eighty-three percent of disabled women are sexually assaulted in their lives. I had watched a boy turn into a predator, naively believing that I didn’t make for easy prey. I fell into the hands of a boy on the hunt and found myself helpless. In all my training of how to gracefully need more, I hadn’t been taught when to walk away. Under his grip, my hands forgot how to fight as quickly as they forgot their first language, lay limp by my sides the way they were trained to. My protest, rough against my lips, lay in the air and settled along the dust on my cheek, pressed to the floor. *** When I was nineteen, a pulsing tattoo gun scraped along my right hip. A black-ink fine-line daffodil. I was in Minnesota, fighting to keep my body with me. I was a few months into my first year of college, in denial about the flashbacks that kept me awake and the nausea I couldn’t push down when I kissed new people. I told myself he couldn’t follow me here, told myself that was enough, and called my new ink a sign of how healed I was. Daffodils represent forgiveness and rebirth. A type of starting over that accepts the past. I was trying hard to be a daffodil. I wanted to be a flower, open and bright, standing tall on my stem. I wanted to cover up the handprints I felt along my hip with petals and leaves. The artist was rude, which felt unfair since she was dragging a needle through my skin. She started the appointment an hour late, glared at me when I presented a sketch of what I hoped the flower would look like, and silently drew her own version instead. Hers was much better than mine, and I quickly admired the purple outline along my skin before settling in for the session. She didn’t ask me what the tattoo meant, just told me to sit still. At one point she asked me, annoyed, if I was holding my breath. I was. Over the years I have collected more ink, sprinkled over me in whispers. Behind my ear hides a black-ink fine-line outline of the sun. My earliest memories are silent and bright. Fuzzy rays of warmth, dust floating and illuminated in front of a glowing window. The few mornings that I am left to wake without an alarm, I open my eyes to a shift in the light. The first moments of the day are my tired blinks and the beckoning brightness.

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